He had half an hour's entertainment flicking the view away from the current speaker to watch the rest, picking out the beginnings of bitter rivalries and back-stabbing emerging among the participants. In many ways, the New Administrative Council was not easy to distinguish from the old, and the comparison both amused and disgusted him. He'd set out with grand plans for reform, and he'd ended up here, with his achievements constrained as ever by the inadequacies of others.
Still, with these tools, however blunt, he would at least achieve something. The more idealistic resister networks he had found and investigated were pathetically ill-organised. Worse, they were so out of touch with political and social reality that examining their so-called 'plans' was nothing short of depressing. He'd been forced by circumstances to turn a number of them in to Int-Sec — many of those had no doubt ended up at I&I. Cruel as that seemed, it had been necessary to keep his reputation intact and above suspicion, as well as to unify and strengthen the overall resistance movement. While he deeply regretted it in one way, from another perspective he couldn't help feeling it had only improved the net intellectual quality of the human race.
He'd settled on this uninspiring coalition of dissatisfied corporates and dissidents within the Administration and Service because they were at least marginally competent. More importantly, they appreciated the role he had played in the coup and understood (as he had made a point of ensuring they did) that without him they would have got nowhere.
They were manipulable, and currently grateful enough to him that they would serve as his instrument of destruction. Not, regrettably, sufficiently grateful that they had been willing to eliminate I&I straight away. There was simply too much inertia in favour of the status quo. Hours of debate and weasel words had boiled down to the summary that they might not like the idea of torture, but they accepted it as a useful and necessary tool. The ends justified the means, so long as they didn't have to think about them too much.
Well, he'd damn well
make
them think, and see, whether they liked it or not.
When it was all over he might go, or stay on, depending on how much longer he could stand their self-interested hypocrisy. Not long, he suspected, since they were beginning to bore him already and that always lowered his resistance. Nor was he so certain of their stamina in power that he was willing to tie his name to theirs irrevocably. For now, he would participate in their interminable meetings, and keep an eye on them while he thought about other things.
Today, it was his current star pawn that occupied him.
Toreth.
With the hangover an unpleasant fading memory, he reassessed the encounter at his hotel.
The sex itself wasn't entirely surprising, given the starting point of the evening. Buoyed by the excellent progress of the plan so far, by the nearness of his final goal, he had allowed himself to become careless. Toreth's newly acquired scar had clearly failed in its role as reminder of that man's dangerous nature and violence. Why it had done so was something he felt compelled to think about, although he doubted he would like the answer.
'Hated' was perhaps too strong a word, or perhaps not, but at the least he disliked Toreth. He despised him, for what he represented and for his unpleasantly damaged psyche. At the same time, he recognised that, physically, Toreth was extremely attractive, and he was, when he chose to be, a skilful lover.
In all honesty, Carnac was forced to admit that under the right circumstances the latter considerations might outweigh the former. He was accustomed to sex with men he despised, because there were so few who fell outside that category.
Keir Warrick was one of those few. He almost regretted now that he had let the days in Keir's flat go past without any attempt at greater intimacy, but it had been painfully obvious that Warrick was caught up with the fate of his paramour and family. Trying to seduce him then would have been tactless and counterproductive.
He smiled, unconsciously. There would be time enough to remedy that omission later.
For now, he disciplined his mind back to the hotel.
He had been drunk — extremely drunk. Although it was probably too late to have a screen done, it was likely that Toreth had found a way of administering some kind of drug or drugs as well. That would economically explain both the alarming degree of memory loss and the fact that he had been induced to drink as much as he had.
He did wonder why Toreth had bothered. 'Pathologically unfaithful' might be an acceptable working description of Toreth's sex life, but he was by no means out of control. It was a pathetic defensive mechanism to shield him from feelings he feared, and to that extent it was compulsive in the extreme. However, he was certainly capable of choosing who he fucked, and when, and in what condition.
So why had he chosen Carnac, and gone to so much trouble to have him? A desire to rub his face in it the next morning was the most obvious explanation. The combination of revenge and physical gratification would certainly appeal to Toreth.
Fortunately for the peace of his remaining time at Int-Sec, the plan had been fatally flawed. It surprised him that Toreth hadn't realised that he was placing power in Carnac's hands by setting up the encounter. However, he knew from previous experience that Toreth was accomplished at banishing Warrick from his mind while he perpetrated his serial infidelities.
In any case, a more pressing problem was what he might have said to Toreth. He hoped that, even drunk, he had had the sense to keep his mouth closed about his plans for I&I.
What if he had let something slip?
The most likely outcomes were that Toreth might run, or he might plot against him. Running would be an irritation, although not a major one, because the work of restoring I&I was well underway. It would disturb his plans, but not damage them significantly. Besides, he doubted that Toreth would do anything of the kind. The man was psychologically incapable of it, unless absolutely convinced that he had no other choice, and his native arrogance made that unlikely.
That left the second option. Carnac smiled again, at the idea of Toreth trying to outmanoeuvre him. He almost hoped he had been a little indiscreet. At least it would in some small way alleviate the current stirrings of boredom.
The sim room wasn't one Toreth had been in before — a clearing in a forest, which fuzzed out a few yards into the trees, suggesting that the room wasn't completed yet. They stood in a tangled garden of vivid flowers crammed into tiny beds. Narrow paths, paved in multicoloured pebbles, wound between them. A grassy orchard held a few apple trees, bearing an improbable mix of blossom and fruit. In the centre of the garden stood a small house — cottage, he thought the correct term was. The building was as colourful as the garden, its shiny brown walls patterned and painted.
The warm breeze carried a strange smell, out of place in a countryside setting. He couldn't identify it — something sweet and spicy.
"What do you think?" Warrick asked.
The most tactful thing he could think of was, "It's a bit . . . twee."
Warrick laughed. "Special room for a well-paying customer. It's adapted from a children's story."
"Never read any."
"Here, try this." Warrick bent down and broke off one of the more lurid flowers. "Go on, taste it."
Toreth took the flower and tried it dubiously. Then he spat into the flowerbed. "Oh, God. That's revolting — it's like neat sugar. Pink-flavoured neat sugar."
Warrick gestured around the garden and the cottage. "It's all flavoured. The house is gingerbread, which wasn't easy, texturally speaking. At the moment, it's just a shell, but when it's finished the interior will be edible as well. Silis is trying to generate something to make furniture from that's strong enough but still behaves sufficiently like toffee to satisfy the spec."
A fat bumblebee droned past and Toreth wondered what it would taste like, and if it would still sting. "Jesus, some people have more money than sense."
"I wouldn't dream of saying that about any of our clients."
Warrick led the way over to the tiny orchard and they sat down under a tree. On closer inspection, the apples were coated in toffee and the trunk proved to be slightly sticky to the touch, but at least the grass felt normal enough.
"Well, what's so urgent that it can't wait until this evening?" Warrick asked.
"We're not on record?"
"The session is being wiped as it goes. There'll be nothing."
"Good. Right. I need to tell you something." Concise and straightforward would be best. "I didn't make it home last night because I was seeing Carnac — outside work. I put something very relaxing in his drinks, then I fucked him, and got him to tell me what he's planning to do at I&I."
Warrick looked at him for a long moment. "Was the fuck absolutely necessary?"
"Yes."
He smiled wryly. "Technical reasons?"
"Something like that."
"So why are you telling me?"
"Well, for one thing, because I expect that Carnac will try to find some way to mention it, and if I hadn't told you first, you'd be thoroughly pissed off about it when he did."
Warrick said nothing. Well, it had been a fifty-fifty bet which way round would prove more hassle in the end.
"Warrick, if there'd been another way —"
"No, no. I understand. I was merely contemplating the fact that informing me that you had sex with someone else last night — after drugging him — falls under the heading of your being unusually considerate."
God, he hoped this wasn't going to turn into an argument. "And?"
"And I came to the conclusion that I have a strange life. Not at all how I once imagined it would turn out. However, on balance, it's not unsatisfying. Was that it?"
"Er, no." For a moment, he wondered what Warrick had really thought about it. Then he dismissed the speculation. There were more important things than Warrick being difficult. "I need you to come up with a bloody good idea. Probably several."
Warrick smiled. "I'm flattered by your confidence in my abilities."
"At the moment they could be all that's standing between the staff at I&I and a busy execution schedule."
Warrick stared, eyebrows lifting. After a moment, he said, "All the staff?"
"Paras, interrogators and investigators. And I wouldn't put it past Carnac to include everyone down to the maintenance staff if he can get away with it."
"This is what you got from your . . . from last night?"
"Yes. He's going to do to the new Administration what I did to him — show them high-level interrogations. Then he's going to persuade them to give him carte blanche in stopping them."
"And carte blanche means executions?"
"Yes. I'm serious, Warrick."
"I can see that."
"He wants I&I destroyed. Finished for good. And I haven't got the first fucking clue what I'm going to do about it."
Warrick raised one eyebrow slightly. "You're asking
me
to help you save I&I?"
"Yes." Put like that, it did sound unlikely. He'd hadn't thought about —
"No. I won't do it."
Won't. No apology along with it. Clear enough this time. "
Why
?"
Warrick sat up straighter, considering his response carefully before he spoke. "I've never made any secret of how I feel about some of the functions of I&I. If I help, then I'm perpetuating something fundamentally wrong. Everyone who is subsequently interrogated, everyone who dies there — it would be my responsibility."
Toreth didn't believe it. No — he did believe it, he just didn't want to hear it. He clenched his fists, suddenly aware of his real body, lying in the sim couch.
"Responsibility? You fucking hypocrite." Warrick started to protest, but Toreth carried on over him. "What about all this? I remember that first fucking lecture — some stupid bastard who probably ended up on level D asked you about the applications. 'Tool for oppression' or the usual bollocks like that. I know the Administration keeps sniffing around; Psychoprogramming are still drooling for a chance to get at it once they can scrape up the budget. You're happy enough to make money off it, and you won't help me?"
By the time he finished, Warrick was pale with anger. "That is not the same."
"No? I knew what you could do with this thing the first time you showed it to me. I could reel off a dozen interrogation scenarios for the sim right now, but you know what? I don't need to, because you already know, don't you? You can pretend all you like that it won't happen, but it will. It started as an Administration project, for Christ's sake. Do you think they wanted it for fucking children's stories?"
"'All this' — " Warrick waved his hand to indicate the clearing, " — is what
I
do with the sim. I am not responsible for the uses others may wish to put it to. I can only make it as difficult for them as possible, which I also do." He was overarticulating, every word sharp with anger in the way that usually started Toreth looking forwards to the make-up fuck. Not this time.
"You made it, you're fucking responsible for it. Seems simple enough to me."
"No doubt. But if you cannot, or will not, see the distinction between helping to invent a technology which may have undesirable applications and helping to protect a collection of — an organisation whose sole function is destructive, then I think the discussion is over."
He was right about that, anyway. He could recognise Warrick being insufferably, infuriatingly stubborn when he saw it. "'Sole function is destructive'? That could be considered seditious, you know — defamation of the Administration or a part thereof."
A childish, spiteful threat, which didn't impress Warrick at all. "Really?" He smiled faintly. "Apparently not under Carnac's new definitions."
No, now Toreth was probably the treasonous one. "So . . . what? You make a fuss over us annexing a few resisters, but you're happy to let that bastard kill everyone?"
Warrick looked at him sharply. "No, I'm not happy about that, and if it had to include you, I'd be very unhappy indeed. But it doesn't."