Chapter Twelve

The man hanging in the center of the white bottle babbled. Count Starnes watched the image of Lena's console with a smile of accomplishment.

". . . anything you want . . . ," the prisoner's voice whispered through a console speaker. His haggard face, the only non-white object in the containment facility, filled the huge curved screen. ". . . only let me go . . . power . . . wealth . . . anything, I swear by the Matrix, only let me go . . ."

"About ready, I would say, Karring," Starnes said complacently.

Lena split the screen to add a full-length view of the prisoner. She giggled like heavy soup bubbling. "He's so skinny," she said. "Just right for you, hey, Lisa?"

Her sister colored and turned away from the screen.

One of Lena's lovers smirked. When he saw Lisa's expression, his face blanked. He shifted so that his partner stood between him and the count's younger daughter. Lena could not protect her lovers from fury like that if it were unleashed.

Not, in all likelihood, that Lena would care. The men who serviced her were fungible goods.

". . . all the power in the world . . . only . . ."

"As you say, milord," Karring agreed coolly. "Though had you permitted me to try, I'm confident that APEX could have sucked from him all the information that you could wish."

Starnes shook his head. "No, Karring," he said. "The old ways are best. For old problems, at least."

The bottle which held the prisoner sat in Bay 20, at the focus of the device by which Karring closed the escape route through dimensions. The chief engineer was more at home in the heart of APEX than anywhere else; but the others, even Count Starnes, found the inner recesses of the Fleet Battle Director to be as disquieting as a crocodile's den. They observed the bottle's internal pick-ups at Lena's outstation in the rotunda rather than on Bay 20's integral displays.

The internal security squad which captured the prisoner had stripped him through the meshes and inserted intravenous drips into his arms. Then they hung the intruder, still trussed, within the containment bottle.

In the three months since the capture, the prisoner had been without sensory input. The inner walls of the bottle maintained an even white glow. Even the water that flushed his wastes was held at precisely blood temperature.

After a time, the prisoner began to talk . . .

"In a way," Starnes said, "I'm sorry we've captured him. For a time, there, when we knew he was entering the keep . . . there was a new challenge, a real challenge again."

"There are the other keeps to conquer, father," Lisa said. She was still dressed—she was invariably dressed—as a common soldier. She spoke without emotion, but her eyes feasted on the pale, slender body of the man on the screen.

"Pft!" Count Starnes said. "That's gotten to be like kicking over anthills now. Oh, I'll go through with it, eliminate the rest of them, because I've started. But there's none of them that'll give me a fight . . . and when I'm done, what then?"

". . . a god . . . power beyond your dreams, just . . ."

"There will be others where he came from, milord," Karring said. His voice held the same wistfulness as his master's had a moment earlier. "Dangerous opponents, perhaps, though we will defeat them. You and I and APEX . . ."

Lena blanked the screens. She reached down the front of her briefs and began to masturbate herself idly. Without looking back at the others around the console, she said, "All right, you've broken him. Are you going to go on from here? Because if you're not, father dear, I have better things to do with my time than watch a thin stick like him drool."

Count Starnes looked down at his daughter without expression. "Yes," he said after a moment. "All right, I'll speak with him."

The images blinked back onto the screen. "Prisoner!" the count ordered sharply. "What is your name?"

" . . . gold and jewels and slaves for torture for any pleasure . . ."

"Prisoner!"

The prisoner's eyes were open. They snapped shut, and he said in a cracked whisper with no hint of inflection, "My name is Fortin and I am a god and I will make you—"

"Prisoner!" Starnes repeated, slapping off the chain of syllables. "Fortin. Who sent you here?"

"No one sent me, your majesty," Fortin replied. His eyes reopened. A chilling intelligence had returned to their amber depths. Karring, perhaps the only one of the observers to notice, frowned. "I came as a visitor, meaning no harm and harming nothing of your wonderful power."

The close-up image smiled vastly. "I can make you still more powerful, if you only release me."

Karring shrugged. "He has nothing we need, milord," the chief engineer said.

Starnes pursed his lips. "The fabric that concealed him was interesting," he said.

"It took time to analyze," Karring agreed. "But it only conceals someone who isn't using any active sensors himself, much less weapons. Frippery, and anyway, we can duplicate it now ourselves."

"He's not even a soldier," Lisa said abruptly. "Give him to me, father. I might have use for a servant."

Lena chuckled. She was now toying with both her lovers as they stood to either side of her couch. Her eyes were on the holographic display.

"I could bring you an expert in war," Fortin said with an ingratiating smile. "Someone who could teach you to fight even better, who—"

"We don't need to be taught war," snapped the count. "We need an opponent worthy of our mettle."

He sniffed and added, "As you certainly were not."

"Though for a time, milord," Karring said, "it looked as if . . ."

"I can bring you an opponent, Count Starnes," the prisoner said. His face twisted into a look of horrible anticipation. "I can bring you a . . . soldier of my own people, to challenge you, if you like."

"No," said Karring abruptly. "I don't think that would be safe."

"Safe?" the count said. He looked at his chief engineer. "I don't see the danger."

"He may be a scout, milord," Karring explained. "He could return with an army of—I can only guess. We don't know the size of the keeps and their armies where he comes from."

"I'll bring him alone, your majesty," Fortin said, reverting to inflated address. "I'll send him, and he'll come without weapons, just as I did. No army, only one man, and you can run him like a rat in your maze. I swear by the Matrix!"

He licked his lips to keep from drooling again.

"His word's worth nothing, of course," Count Starnes said. His eyes were narrow with calculation.

"The Matrix . . ." repeated the chief engineer. "Prisoner: this Matrix is the medium through which you entered Keep Starnes?"

"Yes, yes," Fortin said. "And the oath has power, power to bind even me, even a god, milord."

He bobbed his head as he hung, still wrapped in unbreakable meshes. Fortin didn't know what Karring intended by the question, but he knew that anything was better than an eternity of white silence. . . .

"Is it alive, the Matrix?" Starnes asked his chief engineer.

"No," said Fortin.

"Y—" Karring began. He looked curiously at Fortin's expanded image.

"From what APEX tells me, milord," Karring continued when he saw that the prisoner had nothing to add, "I rather think that this Matrix may be alive in some fashion. But I don't see that it matters to us at present."

"You don't have anything to gain from me, your majesty," Fortin said quickly. "But I can bring you an opponent, a safe challenge. A game worthy of your skill and powers."

"We've caught him," Lisa said. "There's no reason to let him go. I'll take him for—for a time."

Lena chortled. "Just because you're skinny, you don't have to make do with that," she said.

She roused herself in the couch. It obediently shaped to continue supporting her as she twisted to look directly at her younger sister. "Here, take one of the boys. Take them both, child, it'll do you a world of good."

"Shut up," said Lisa distinctly, "or I'll—"

"Daughters!" snapped Count Starnes.

The women ostentatiously turned away, from one another and from their father as well.

"I say," Lena murmured, "let's send him back, and see if the next one is full grown."

"There's a risk, Count Starnes," the chief engineer said simply. "Even to us."

For a moment, Starnes pursed his lips. Then he shrugged and said, "If they can send one scout, they can send another. Keeping this one or killing him, that won't change anything."

Count Starnes reached past Lena and touched a mechanical switch for certainty. "The prisoner can't hear us now," the count said. "Karring, can you take our forces through this Matrix?"

"N—" the chief engineer began. He pursed his lips, then continued, "Not as yet, milord. Every time this one comes or goes, APEX gathers more data. Very shortly, I—we—might be able to do that."

Count Starnes smiled, a look very like that of the prisoner when he started to drool with anticipation. He opened the audio channel to the exclusion bottle again. "If this one can send us a single soldier . . . then that might be an interesting game, don't you think, Karring?"

"I'll send him, your majesty," Fortin's voice pleaded from the console. "One man, a soldier."

"Unarmed!" said the chief engineer. "Swear by your Matrix that he will come without any weapon."

"I swear by the Matrix . . ." Fortin whispered. "His name will be Hansen."

Starnes looked at Karring. "All right," Starnes ordered.

The globe in Bay 20 ceased abruptly to spin. As it did so, the net within the containment bottle fell limp as the prisoner vanished into the Matrix.

APEX murmured to itself, waiting as it had waited through the eons since the settlement of Plane Five.