Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

escort, as ordered
by the court, only added to the cruelty of the procedure I was
mandated to perform.’
     
    It was as if somebody had called his name.
    He was alone in his Virtual apartment - drinking whisky, looking
out at a fake view of the New Bronx, missing his ex-wife - alone in a
home become a gaol, in fact. Now he looked to the door.
    Maybe they’d come to get him already. He felt his remote heart
beat, and his mood of gloomy nostalgia gave way to hard fear. Don’t
let ’em see they’ve won, Jack.
    With a growl, he commanded the door to open.
    And there, instead of the surgeons and Commission goons he had
expected, was a Silver Ghost: a spinning, shimmering bauble as tall
as Raoul, crowding the dowdy apartment-block corridor. It was
intimidating close to in this domestic environment, like some huge
piece of machinery. In its mirrored epidermis he could see his own
gaunt Virtual face. An electromagnetic signature was quickly overlaid
for him - Ghosts looked alike only in normal human vision - but he
would have recognised his visitor anyhow.
    ’You,’ he said.
    ’Hello, Jack Raoul.’ It was the Ghost known to humans as the
Ambassador to the Heat Sink. Raoul had dealt with this one many times
before, over decades.
    ’What are you doing here? How did you get past the Commission
security?… Ambassador, I’m afraid I’m not much use to you any
more.’
    ’Jack Raoul, I am here for you.’
    Raoul grimaced. What in Lethe did that mean? ’Look, I don’t know
how closely you’ve been following human politics. This isn’t a good
day for me.’
    ’As in former times, you hide your emotions behind weak
jokes.’
    ’They’re the best jokes I’ve got,’ he said defensively.
    ’The truth is well known. Today you must face the sentence of your
conspecifics.’
    ’So you’re here for the spectacle?’
    The Ghost said, ’I am here to present another option, Jack
Raoul.’
    Raoul studied the Ghost’s bland, shimmering surface. There was no
hope for him, of course. But he felt oddly touched. ’You’d better
come in.’
    The Ambassador sailed easily into the apartment, making the walls
crumble to pixels where its limbs brushed against them. ’How is the
whisky today?’
    Raoul sipped it, savouring its peaty smoke. ’You know, I’m more
than two hundred years old. But I figure that I could live another
two hundred and not get this stuff right.’ Still, maybe this would be
his lasting legacy, he thought sourly: the best Virtual whisky in all
the Third Expansion, savoured and remembered long after the Raoul
Accords had been forgotten - which time might not be so far into the
future.
    ’You are missing Eve,’ said the Ambassador.
    The Ghost’s perception had always surprised him. ’Yeah,’ he
admitted. ’In a way this place is all I have left of her. But even
here she is just an absence.’
    ’You must leave her now,’ said the Ghost. ’Come with me.’
    The abruptness of that startled him. ’Leave? How? Where are we
going?’
    ’Jack Raoul, do you trust me?’
    Escape was impossible, of course; Coalition security was tight,
the Commission omnipresent. But this lunatic Ghost must have come a
long way for this stunt, whatever it was. Maybe it was only
respectful to go along for the ride.
    Anyhow, what did he have to lose? One last adventure, Jack: why
not?
    He put the whisky glass down on a low table, savouring the weight
of the heavy crystal, the gentle clink of its base on the table.
’Yes,’ he said, looking into his heart. ’Yes, I guess I do trust
you.’ He stood straight. ’I’m ready.’
    Again he had the sensation that somebody was calling his name.
    The room crumbled into blocky pixels that washed away like
spindrift, and suddenly he was suspended in light.
     
    ’It is important to understand that Raoul’s fully human brain was
maintained by normal physiological functions. Think of him as a human
being, then, flensed and de-boned, sustained within a shell of alien
artifice.
    ’The operation was more like a dismantling than a medical
procedure. It was rapid.
    ’Immediately after the beheading I lifted the head and observed
Raoul’s eyes.
    ’The lids worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about
five or six seconds. Then the spasmodic movements ceased. The face
relaxed, the lids half-closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white
of the conjunctiva visible. (It will be recalled that Raoul’s
>eyes< were quasi-organic Ghost artefacts.)
    ’I called in a sharp