30

The voice and the changing face that went with it were with Istvan almost all the time now, very quiet most of the time, but still something he could hear and understand as long as he was listening in the right way. It was like having a brother again, only better because it wasn’t going to abandon him as his brother had done. No, this was a new friend: someone, he felt, that was willing to be with him forever, someone with whom he could spend the rest of his life.

It was beginning to teach him things. He could feel it sometimes touching his brain lightly, smoothing parts of it out, scrunching other parts of it up, and doing so in a way that was beginning to build something within him. It was a strangely intimate sensation, as if someone had their hand in his head and was caressing his brain softly, and he wondered if he shouldn’t be afraid. He was, admittedly, a little afraid at first, but then it stroked a particular part of his brain and the fear diminished at least a little. There were shapes and figures beginning to form, strange twisted and watery shapes that he could not only see but that he felt he understood, that he felt somehow, if he just had the right tools and the right training, he could build. It could be glorious, the voice whispering in his head told him. Glorious. The next step in evolution. Marvelous Convergence, the extension of consciousness from bodies to a place both within and between bodies.

It was wonderful, so wonderful that he almost didn’t feel the pain as the burst came, stronger than it ever had been before, and took him into the other world. He could hear, behind that world, in the world before, the groans and cries of his fellow convicts and knew that somewhere they were feeling it, too, though not in the same way as he was. Where the fingers in his brain moved delicately, stroking and rearranging in a way that he found at once sharp and exhilarating, they must have felt like their heads were being torn off. Indeed, once the burst faded and parts of his vision started to return, he did see that the man roughly across the table from him had beaten his head over and over against the surface of the table until that head had cracked open. Blood was pooling on the surface of the table, slipping over it and toward Istvan. Istvan watched it come, unconcerned, not moving even after it began to drip slowly into his lap. Was the man dead? he wondered. What had been the convict’s name again? And then he decided that it didn’t really matter. He wasn’t dead yet, but he’d be dead soon.

The alarm went off, sending them back to their cells. The other convicts looked almost in shock, some of them wandering aimlessly about, others just staring at the body, one hitting his head over and over again with his hands. But slowly they began to come back to themselves and move. Istvan braced his hands on the table, to either side of the pooling blood. But before he stood, the voice said something to him.

Wait, it said.

“Wait?” he said. “Why?”

But for once it didn’t answer. He looked around him, at the other convicts moving back to their cells, at the dead or dying man across the table from him. What did the voice know? If he listened to it, he’d be beaten by the guards, maybe killed. He again started to stand.

Wait, the voice said again.

He stopped, confused. Why should he wait? What did he gain by doing so? No, it was a mistake. And yet, he waited.

The loudspeaker crackled out its warning, giving him thirty seconds to return to his cell. He counted it down, and then counted a minute or so more before he heard the cell doors clang closed. Now it is too late, he told himself. Now you are in trouble.

He raised his hands and put them behind his head so that they wouldn’t think him a threat. He waited. A minute later the doors to the outer ring opened and the guards came in.

Only they didn’t rush this time. They were moving more slowly, dressed in riot gear, and were flanking four people, two men and two women, dressed in ordinary clothing.

New prisoners? he wondered at first. But no, their hands were free, they were at ease and relaxed, and they were carrying various pieces of technical equipment. The door closed behind them. Slowly they moved through the ring of cells and toward the central circle.

One of the guards raised his weapon. “Shall I neutralize him, sir?” he asked.

One of the four people in the middle, a man just approaching middle age with salt-and-pepper hair who was apparently their leader, shook his head. “No need to bother him unless he becomes aggressive. Leave him as he is.”

The scientists came forward, sweeping their way into the room, moving back and forth, the guards awkwardly flanking them and sometimes bumping into them as they moved in unexpected directions. Istvan just stayed there, watching them come.

“Check and see if that one is dead,” said the apparent leader.

“Will do, sir,” said one of the guards. He came forward and examined the man slumped across the table, then stripped off one glove and pressed his fingers into the man’s neck. “He’s dead,” he said.

“Ugh,” said one of the others in the group, a woman. “Ghastly.” But despite saying that, she came forward and stared at the body with some interest, as if fascinated. She looked up at Istvan. “What made him do it?” she asked.

Istvan hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t see it.”

“Of course you saw it,” she said. “You were sitting right across from him.”

“I heard it,” he said. “But I didn’t see it.”

Two of the guards were assigned the body. They dragged it away by the arms, leaving an irregular smear of blood in its wake. The other guards and the people with their machines kept circling around, slowly narrowing their focus until they were all standing around Istvan.

“Right here,” said their leader. “I’m sorry,” he said to Istvan, “but you’ll have to move.”

You can move now, said the voice to him, and he saw again Conn’s ghastly face flash up before him, his strange smile. You can go back to your cell.

Istvan nodded. Very slowly he stood and stepped out from the bench. “I want to go back to my cell,” he said.

Distractedly, their leader nodded. “Yes, yes,” he said, “go on, then.”

Hands still up, he walked away. The guards’ eyes followed him, as did their weapons. He could feel their eyes still on his back as he went slowly out of inner circle and into the cell circle and then stood by the closed door of his cell, waiting.