Филип Керр - The Second Angel

Rimmer was intrigued. ‘Would that include the pain threshold, by any chance?’ When Prevezer said nothing, Rimmer replaced the barrel of the gun against his head. ‘I won’t hesitate to shoot you, my godlike friend. Please answer.’

‘Yes. All normal physiological thresholds.’

‘Good. So how are they getting on, right now?’ he asked.

‘Not so good.’ Prevezer showed him the two men’s vital signs on the computer screen. ‘These numbers relate to their physiological responses inside the simulation. They tell us how their bodies are reacting even as we speak. Heart rates, body temperatures, lung function spirometry, blood pressure response, everything. As you can see with Gates, his body temperature is very cold and his heart rate is way down. If you weren’t here, I’d have brought him back to reality by now.’

‘I’m not much interested in him,’ said Rimmer. ‘What about Dallas?’

‘Not as bad. Even so, I’d probably have brought him back too. All I have to do to make the switch is press this button.’ Prevezer reached for the button and then yelped as Rimmer smacked his hand hard with the gun.

‘Not until I’m good and ready. First, we’re going to have some fun.’ Rimmer sneered at Dallas. ‘It’s your own fault, you arrogant bastard. Haven’t you heard? The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walketh in darkness.’ He looked at Prevezer. ‘You. Think of some shit to throw at them.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Not in my mind, I think,’ chuckled Rimmer. ‘Reprogram something bad for them.’

‘The place they’re in right now,’ said Prevezer. ‘It would take me a long time to reprogram that. More time than I assume you have. Days probably.’

Rimmer looked at Prevezer through narrowed eyes. ‘This is your thing, isn’t it? Simulations.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve used them myself. Killing games mostly. You know the kind of thing. See how many monsters you can blast to bits inside an hour. In my experience, a good simulation engineer usually has a whole plethora of programs at hand. Programs he can add, one to another, like silicon building blocks. It would be unlike Dallas to choose someone who was not considered to be the best in his professional field. So think hard, my computer-minded friend. Think hard. What other elements can you add to their existing situation? Something really nasty and unpleasant. Unless you want to disappoint me. Ronica will tell you, I lose all my human skills when I’m disappointed.’

It was another hour before Gates had recovered sufficiently to sit up and drink the hot sugar water Dallas had prepared for him: One box of Jell-O was enough to provide five hundred kilocalories of heat energy.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Dallas.

Gates looked at his still gloved hand and flexed the fingers several times before answering.

‘Stiff,’ he said. ‘Like I spent the night in the icebox.’ Yawning, he added, ‘And I’ve got the mother and father of all headaches.’

‘That’s just dehydration. Keep drinking the sugar water.’

Gates nodded and sipped from the sealed bottle before glancing around at their surroundings.

Arranged along the circumference of the circular-shaped facility, the R&R area reminded him most of the interior of the Clostridium Hotel: a long, sweeping curve of steel flooring underneath a windshield of inclined panes of backlit fretted glass; and on the inside of the bend, a number of glass-fronted rooms that included a galley, a dormitory, a medical facility, a washroom, an armory, a dressing room with spare space suits and life-support packs, a subordinate computer room, and a large lounge. Farther along the corridor was parked an electric car, not dissimilar to the one that had transported the cryoprecipitate from the vault to the landing site, except that it was equipped with four seats and designed to travel all the way around the compass of the facility, instead of to its hermetic and forbidden center.

‘So what’s the story, doc?’ croaked Gates. ‘You got penguin blood or something?’

‘Your cold reaction probably has more to do with your P2,’ said Dallas. ‘I’ve given the matter some thought while you’ve been recovering. You see, the hypothalamus is the major center of the brain for regulating body temperature. It’s sensitive to blood temperature changes of as little as half a degree. I think your own hypothalamus must be even more sensitive than that.’

‘Seem to know a lot about it.’

‘In view of the fact that we were to expose ourselves to hypothermic conditions, naturally it made sense to become a little better informed about the subject.’

‘I guess so. The brain, too.’

‘I’ve always been interested in the brain.’

‘Brains in general or just one brain in particular?’

Dallas looked puzzled.

‘Cavor’s brain, for instance,’ added Gates.

‘Could be.’

Gates waited for Dallas to say something more. When he didn’t, he shook his head sadly and then rolled onto his front.

‘Still don’t quite trust me, huh?’ he said.

‘Surely that’s one of the purposes of this simulation,’ said Dallas. ‘To find out how much we can trust each other.’

‘That’s not the kind of trust I meant, and you know it.’ Gates managed to raise himself onto all fours.

‘After metabolic icebox, you shouldn’t move for a while.’

‘Negative. I’ve got to pee.’

Dallas helped him into the washroom, Gates having refused to pee on the floor.

‘I’ve got my standards,’ he said. ‘Even in a Simworld.’

A few minutes later, after another hot drink, Gates pronounced himself equal to the next stage of the plan, which involved drilling out a block of concrete from the labyrinth wall. At least, he felt equal to it until Dallas informed him of the location he had in mind for this particular task.

‘All sections of the labyrinth wall are smart. Lots of metal wire running through the mortar. And fitted with vibration detectors,’ Dallas told him. ‘If one of those picks up the feel of a drill, the metal wire conducts electric current to the point of vibration. Quite enough to kill you and anyone standing next to you. All the walls except one, that is. You see, there are two power sources for this facility. There’s the solar power field we saw from the air. And there’s a small nuclear reactor that’s inside the main facility on the other side of the building from where we are now. The walls of the containment room in the reactor don’t have any vibration detectors because of the vibrations from the reactor turbine.’

‘And,’ remarked an incredulous Gates, ‘because only an idiot would be crazy enough to choose the containment room to try and effect an entrance to the labyrinth.’

‘That’s what I once thought myself,’ conceded Dallas. ‘However, I now see that this is the weakest part of my original design; and therefore, as a corollary, the best part of my current plan.’

‘I don’t see how,’ argued Gates. ‘There’s the small matter of radiation, Dallas. We spend any time in the containment room — like maybe the sort of high-exposure time it takes to get through a concrete wall — we’ll die. Maybe not in the simulation. But for sure when we try it in reality.’

Dallas shook his head. ‘I don’t believe that’s the case. I believe we can do this and survive the radiation.’

‘These are space suits, Dallas. Made of toughened latex, not lead. Protection against cosmic radiation, maybe. But not on the scale of what you’re proposing. You’re talking gamma, beta, alpha, the whole lousy uranium molecule. Shit, the cold must have affected you more than I thought.’