Scorpia Rising

ankles and wrists. The man was wearing only boxer shorts. Dozens of wires had been attached to him—to his head, his chest, his pulse, his abdomen—held in place by sticky tape. By a happy coincidence, the man was French. He was about thirty years old and he was trying not to look afraid. He was failing.
    Razim knew his name. It was Luc Fontaine and he worked for the DGSE, which is the French intelligence agency dealing in external security. The man was, in other words, a secret agent, a spy. Razim had always known that foreign investigators would come looking for him and he therefore kept a careful lookout for them. This one had actually gotten closer than many. He had been picked up asking questions in the central market— or souk—knocked out and then brought here. He was still pretending to be a tourist, but only halfheartedly. By now he knew that he was in the hands of a man who did not make mistakes.
    There was a trolley covered with a white cloth next to the dentist’s chair. Razim wheeled it around and uncovered it to reveal a series of knives lined up in neat rows, each one a different shape and size, gleaming in the harsh light. There were other instruments too: swabs and silver bowls, hypodermic syringes, vials containing liquids that were colorless but somehow didn’t look like water. Fontaine saw this. He tried not to show any emotion. But his naked skin crawled.
    Razim pulled up a stool and sat down. He drew on the cigarette. The tip glowed.
    “What do you want?” Fontaine asked. He spoke in French. His voice was hoarse.
    Razim didn’t answer.
    “I’m not going to tell you anything.” The secret agent had dropped the pretense that he was a tourist. He knew there was no longer any point in it.
    “And I am not going to ask you anything,” Razim replied. His French was excellent. It was one of the languages he had learned at school. “You have no information that I wish to know.”
    “Then why am I here?” The young man flexed his arms, the muscles rising, but the cords held fast.
    “I will tell you.” Razim tapped ash into one of the bowls. “I have been many things in my life,” he said, “but when I set out, I was an engineer. That is how I was trained. Science, in its many varieties, has always been an interest of mine. And you should be glad that you are here with me tonight, Luc. Do you mind if I call you Luc? I am pursuing a project that will be of great benefit to the world, and fate has chosen you to help me.”
    “My people know I’m here.”
    “Nobody knows you are here. Even you do not know where you are. Please try not to interrupt.”
    Razim put out his cigarette. He licked his lips.
    “It occurred to me some years ago that everything in this world is measured and that many of these measurements have been named after the great engineers. The most obvious example is the watt, which measures electricity, and which was named after James Watt, the inventor of the modern steam engine. Joule and Newton were both physicists and have been immortalized in the measurement of energy . . . joules and newtons. Every day we measure the atmospheric heat in either Fahrenheit or Celsius. The first was a German physicist, the second a Swedish astronomer.
    “We measure distance and height and speed and brightness. If you wish to buy anything from a shoe to a sheet of paper, you ask for it by size. There are measuring units that many people have never heard of. Can you tell me what a pyron is? Or a palmo? Or a petaflop? But here is the strange thing. There has never been a measurement for something we experience almost every day of our lives.
    “There has never been a measurement for pain.
    “Can you imagine how useful it would be if you went to the dentist and he was able to reassure you? ‘Don’t worry, my dear fellow, this is going to hurt only two and a half units.’ Or if you went to the doctor with a damaged knee and were able to tell him that it hurt three units down here—but seven-point-five units up here, above the knee? Of course, it is very difficult to measure pain. It all depends on how our nerves react and what the stimulus is—the knife, electricity, fire, acid—that has caused the pain. But I still believe it is possible to develop a universal scale. And I very much hope that one day the unit of pain will indeed be named after me. The Razim. And people will be able to say exactly how many Razims will result in certain death.”
    Fontaine was staring at Razim as