The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(89)
“You must know why you did it, why you killed so many of us.”
A hesitation. Then, “We’re making something bigger. We’re making something better. We’re making… a kind of god, I suppose. Yes, I think that’s what we are doing, in fact. A kind of deity.”
The quantum mirror. Just enough technology, Harry, just enough lives, and we’ll build a machine that can solve the mysteries of the universe. Look at all things, with the eyes of God. How easily the idea seduced.
My technician was ready. He looked at me for approval, and I nodded, stepping back. Virginia flinched as the first electrode was placed against her skull. “W-what are you doing?” she stammered, unable to fully bite back on her fear.
I didn’t answer. As the next electrode was settled above her right eye she blurted, “Tell me. I’ve paid my dues, I’ve done my bit–always. I always helped the young, got the children away, served the Cronus Club. You can’t… Tell me.”
She was beginning to cry, the tears driving little pink rivers through the thick make-up on her skin. “You can’t… You can’t make me… forget everything. I’m… I’m not ready. I’m… I want to see the… see the… You can’t do this.”
I nodded at a couple of my men, who held her steady as the last few nodes were attached. She gasped as a needle was pushed under her skin, a chemical cocktail to soften up the receptors. “If I’m to for-forget,” she gasped, “you can tell me your name! Show me your face!”
I didn’t.
“Please! Hear me out! He can help you! We’re doing this for everyone, for all the kalachakra! We’re going to make it better!”
I nodded at the technician. The fat machine, all electric parts and stolen technologies, which we had lumbered down the tracks of South Africa, whirred into life, building up the charge that would be blasted into Virginia’s brain. She was shaking now with the tears, and as the charge built she opened her mouth to say something more. The machine triggered, and Virginia collapsed forward–a shell, the mind burned away.
In the years to come the Cronus Club was to debate extensively what to do with Virginia, but in the end they made no radical decisions. The Virginia who had murdered so many of our kind had been destroyed, her mind wiped blank. I had made the decision for them, and that was all there was to say.
Chapter 66
I spent the rest of my thirteenth life quietly hunting Vincent, and failing.
It is my suspicion that, in the aftermath of his attack on the Cronus Club, he was very deliberately keeping his head down, avoiding the attention of his now roused, if weakened, enemies. Nevertheless, I continued my search, as I have no doubt he searched for me, and occasionally followed the odd lead to unlikely places, always a little too late, a little too far behind. If my security measures were paranoid, I suspect Vincent Rankis in that life was operating on a whole other level. I can only speculate as to whether he was as lonely as I.
I lived far longer than I usually do, pushing both my body and the limits of medical science. No one seemed surprised that a money launderer wanted access to advanced technical equipment, nor did my doctors, after suitable bribes were administered, question why I might so firmly dictate the course of my treatment when the inevitable diseases struck. I had been surprised at how easy it is to corrupt men. Even good men, it seemed, could be swayed once you had them used to the notion that it was acceptable to give them a gift of a bottle of wine, then a gift of a new toy for their kid, then a gift of a day out for the family, then a weekend away, then membership of a golf club, then a new car… by which point the great mass of gifts already accepted made the rejection of this latest present hard even for the best of men and their status as morally compromised assets complete in both the eyes of criminals and the view of the law. Mei was patiently loyal to the last. Her lover ran away in 1976 and she never sought another, spending her time instead writing furious letters to disreputable companies and campaigning vigorously for the Democrats. We saw in the year 2000 in New York, neither of us strong enough to travel further afield at our time of life, and Mei wept like a true native as George W. Bush won the election.
“It’s all gone to hell!” she exclaimed. “There’s no talking to people any more!”
We sat in silence watching the twin towers fall in 2001, over and over again, a loop on every screen across the country. Mei said, “I’m thinking of buying a flag to put out in our garden,” and was dead three months later. I had never seen the twenty-first century before. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the medicine, even less so by the politics, and in 2003, having decided at the ripe old age of eighty-five that another round of chemotherapy wouldn’t do any good and that the painkillers I was now physiologically and psychologically dependent on were weakening my mind to the point of no return, I bequeathed half of my fortune to Mei’s favourite charity and half to any kalachakra who could find it, and took an overdose one cool October night.
I think there is a study of the effects of narcotic addiction over multiple lifespans. I died in my thirteenth life utterly dependent on medications of a wide and occasionally interacting kind, and to this day I cannot help but wonder whether their effects on both my body and mind do not linger. I know it is absurd to suggest that any event in 2003 can have implications for those of 1919, but one day, with the subject’s permission, I think I would enjoy studying the physiology of an infant kalachakra, who died of drug dependency in their last life, to observe whether there are any marked effects on the child.