Chapter Twenty

Hansen sensed a presence in North's palace of carved light, though the owner himself was not in his gleaming hall. Someone waited in the sheets and columns of material radiance. . . .

"Dowson?" called Nils Hansen. "I'd like to talk to you."

A plane of light dissolved, uncovering a wall niche. In it were a stalagmite of multi-hued ice and a tank of clear crystal—

Which held a human brain.

The outermost layer of the stalagmite scaled away like dry ice subliming. A lilac bubble, almost too pale to be called pastel, expanded from the stalagmite. When the bubble's edge intersected Hansen, he heard Dowson's voice say, "I'm always glad to help you, Commissioner Hansen."

The cold equivalent of laughter swept from the cone as a hint of yellow. "I'm always glad," Dowson added, "to interact with any of you who still have flesh."

Hansen walked closer to the tank, though there was no need to do so. The floor beneath his feet appeared to be parquetry of black and white slabs. Closer observation showed that the black was absolute void, while the white shimmered like sections from the heart of a sun.

"I may visit Plane Five," Hansen said. Gas beaded at the bottom of the tank and rose sluggishly through the fluid in which the brain was suspended. "I wanted to know about the Fleet Battle Director that I'm told is there."

Mauve and blue-violet sprang from the ice cone. Dowson's voice was cool and dry, but that had probably been true when the speaker was a man and not a disembodied brain.

"Fortin told you that APEX is in Keep Starnes," said the voice in Hansen's mind. "Which is true. And he told you that APEX knows how North took us out of the universe, how he stole all Northworld from the Consensus. . . ."

"Is that true?" Hansen demanded. He couldn't help staring at the once-man when he spoke to him/it, but he kept his face rigidly blank. "Does APEX . . . have that information?"

"I don't know, Commissioner," whispered the moss-green scales which drifted past Hansen. "I would tell you if I knew, but I do not know."

If the voice were fully human, Hansen would have said there was a wistful quality to it.

He turned from the encased brain and looked across the hall. When North wished, the lines of congealed light could reach infinitely high, and there were a thousand bright gates in the walls.

When North wished.

"Commissioner," Dowson's voice said. "You came to me because I live in the Matrix—"

"Because you see it all," Hansen said with the harshness of disappointment. "Because I can look here or look there, but I'll miss the context. And the context is everything."

His voice echoed from the distant wall with a sound like that of keys turning in a tumbler lock, inhuman and inanimate. He'd wanted a simple answer, This Is or This Is Not, so that he wouldn't have to make a decision himself. So that Commissioner Nils Hansen could just follow orders without being responsible for whatever resulted from his actions.

"I live all that exists in the Matrix," Dowson corrected gently. "But Plane Five has its own rules, Commissioner; as you know."

Hansen spread his arms. He felt the bubble of tawny thought tingle through them on its way across the hall's expanse. He turned again and crooked a smile to the crystal tank.

"I'm afraid, you see," Hansen said quietly. He had been twenty-nine years old when he entered Northworld; a powerfully built man who was even quicker than he was strong.

His body was still that of the man he had been, but his eyes were ageless and terrible.

"If APEX knows how North took the planet . . . ," he said. He squatted down, resting his forearms on his knees. He stared at the floor beneath the tank as he used Dowson as a mental sounding board. "Then I'll go there and get the information. But I don't trust Fortin—"

"Not even a madman would trust Fortin, Commissioner," said a dusting of blue light.

"—and Fortin himself says that Count Starnes isn't to be trusted."

"You're afraid to die?" Dowson asked, as though he were compiling emotional data to add to his complete knowledge of objects and events.

Hansen looked up, still balanced on he balls of his feet. He smiled again.

"No, Dowson," he said. The lilt in his voice was a defense mechanism, an instinctive trick to prevent listeners from believing the truth that they were about to hear. "I'm afraid that I want to die, because—"

Hansen laughed. The sound was as humorless as chains rattling.

"Because so many other people have, you see?" he went on. "Either because they tried to help when I got in over my head, or because they were in my way and I was, I was . . ."

"APEX may have been able to analyze Captain North's actions," Dowson said. His words were olive and soothing in their emotionlessness. "But no one can command you now, Nils Hansen. Not the Consensus, not North himself. You have free will."

A drift of thought so faint that it was gray by default trailed Dowson's voice across Hansen. "As those who followed you and faced you had free will."

Hansen stood up in a single smooth motion. "When I choose to do something," he said, "It makes things worse! Have you seen what the West Kingdom is like, Dowson?"

"I live all things in the Matrix, Commissioner," the brain responded in a shower of sublimed azure. "You see here and see there; and you miss the context, as you say. Don't—"

"I—" shouted Hansen.

A wash of orange thought swept over Hansen with the force of the surf combing a beach. "You pretend that until you have all knowledge, you are unable to act on your own decision, Nils Hansen. I tell you now: when you have all knowledge, you will be like me—unable to act at all."

Another bead of gas lifted from the bottom of the tank. It began to crawl upward, hugging the convoluted surface of Dowson's brain.

Hansen stretched and laughed cleanly. When he bent backward, he closed his eyes so that the saturated radiance of the hall's high arches wouldn't dazzle him.

"Guess I'll go talk to Count Starnes in a little while, then," he said as he straightened. "Thank'ee, my friend."

He grinned, wondering if Dowson could see the expression; whether Dowson could actually see anything at all. There was humor in the smile, and in Hansen's tone as he added, "Not because the Consensus ordered me to do it. I'm going because I'm curious to see what I'll learn, and—"

Although Hansen's expression did not precisely change, the planes of solid muscle drew taut over his cheekbones. They formed a visage more terrible than a grinning skull.

"—from what I hear, there are some things that ought to be fixed on Plane Five. Nobody's paying me to fix things nowadays, but if Fortin's little friend the count wants to make it my business . . ."

Hansen's words blurred off into savage laughter, echoing from the vaults and niches.

"Then you will oblige him," said Dowson in a thought of pure blood red.

"Nobody better," Hansen agreed. He flexed his supple, gunman's hands and grinned. "Nobody better at fixing that sort in the twelve hundred fucking worlds of the Consensus."

"Hansen . . . ?" Dowson asked as his visitor started to leave. The curtain of light was in place again, so the scales of ultramarine seemed to expand from a solid wall.

"Yeah?"

"When you say 'friend,' as you did," Dowson's voice continued, "that is a mere form of address, is it not?"

"It can be," Hansen said. "That's not how I meant it this time, though."

The trim, cat-muscled killer turned toward the portal leading out of the enormous hall. As he left, he called over his shoulder, "I'll be back to see you when I get back, friend!"