World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (26 page)

28

“N
O FUCKING WAY.”

That was Dev’s immediate response. Banerjee was dead. He hadn’t been heard from in two whole years. Not a peep from him since submitting his paper. He
had
to be dead. How else to account for his silence?

But Trundell was adamant. This straggly-bearded, shaggy-haired individual Dev was holding was the moleworm expert.

“I’d recognise him anywhere,” Trundell said. “He’s lost a ton of weight, he’s a mess – but it’s him. It’s you, isn’t it, Professor Banerjee?”

The man stirred, muttering something inaudible.

“What’s that?” Dev demanded, giving him a shake. “Speak up.”

“I said I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not this Banerjee person.”

“You are,” said Trundell.

“You’re mistaken.”

“You live in that hide, right?” said Dev. “Don’t deny it. You reek of it. You were coming home, saw us standing here, panicked, ran. If you’re not Banerjee, how come you know the access code?”

“I’m... I...”

“You’re a bad liar, prof. Trundle’s IDed you. Time to come clean.”

“Trun
dell
,” said Trundell. “My name’s Ludlow Trundell, professor. Big fan. I’m actually in the same line of work as you, more or less. Xeno-entomologist. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

Banerjee shrugged. “Since I’m not this Banerjee you seem to think I am...”

Dev shook him again, more roughly. “Let’s cut the crap, Banerjee. You’re a respected zoology bigwig, but you’ve been hiding out here in the moleworm tunnels for two years, living like an animal. What’s going on?”

“I’m just a cave dweller. Look.” He pointed to a net bag that hung from his belt. In it were the carcases of three scrawny birds. Their plumage was smoky grey, their eyes blank white. “I snare blindwarblers for food. Would a professor do that?”

“He would if he’d turned hermit and didn’t have any other supply of protein.”

“What happened to you, professor?” Trundell asked, sounding almost plaintive. “How did you end up like this? Why didn’t you return to Earth once you’d finished your work here?”

“All good questions,” Dev said. “Answer him.”

Banerjee drew a deep breath, expelling it as a heavy sigh. “All right. I’ve no idea who you people are, but I don’t suppose it matters. You’ve found me. I knew this day might come. I can easily imagine why you’ve come looking for me, too.”

“Oh, yes?”

“One or more of you, I strongly suspect, is from Interstellar Security Solutions.”

“One is,” said Dev.

“The aggressive one. Of course. You’re on Alighieri investigating possible Polis Plus activity. The trail has led you here, to Lidenbrock, to me. Let me go, and I’ll be compliant and tell you what you want to know. I don’t see that I have a choice, and perhaps it will do me good to unburden myself to you. To confess.”

“Works for me.” Dev relinquished his grip on Banerjee. “I should remind you that there are four of us and only one of you, and we don’t take any crap. Clear?”

“As crystal.” Banerjee rubbed his throat tenderly, turning to give Dev a reproachful look.

Now that Dev could see his eyes, he understood why Banerjee’s attempt to flee had been so hamfisted. He was wearing image intensification contacts like Trundell’s. The unexpected flare of the flashlight, catching him full in the face, had overloaded them. He had been running dazzled, half-blinded. The afterimage of the flashlight bulb was probably still imprinted in his retinas.

This
was
the great zoologist, though. Dev had no doubts about that. He pulled up an image of the man from his commplant for comparison. The Banerjee in the picture was neat and plump, with sleek hair and a confident smile – a tenured professor snugly ensconced at Harvard. The Banerjee in front of him was a gaunt, tattered scarecrow with grubby skin, an unkempt beard and wild, matted locks. But the nose was the same, the prominent forehead identical, the deep-set eyes...

“I am,” he said, “Sunil Banerjee, and until two years ago I had everything to live for. I was pre-eminent in my domain. I had a wife and two daughters. I was inquisitive and, without wishing to brag, intrepid. I lectured all over the Earth, and off it, too. I conducted field research on eight worlds. I was even among the select few who took part in the Sanctuary Conference on Europa, where it was decided to make the moon the first ever whole-planet game reserve.”

“So now tourists can go under the ice in submersibles and gawp at the deep-sea beasties,” said Dev. “All very commendable, prof. You were at the top of your game. What went wrong?”

“Polis Plus, that’s what went wrong. I was here at Lidenbrock, preparing to leave. My plan was to head back to Calder’s Edge, wind down operations there as well, collect up my belongings, then hop aboard the next available cruiser home. I was looking forward to seeing my dear Anji and my two little girls again, holding them in my arms, hugging them. I had missed them so much. I swore to myself that I would never again be apart from them for such a long period...”

Banerjee swallowed.

“Then one day
he
appeared,” he said. “I had no idea what he really was, at first. None at all. He sidled up to me while I was on a supply run in the city, stocking up on drinking water and food rations. He engaged me in conversation. He seemed to be interested in me, my work. He was well-informed, articulate, erudite.”

“Not a Lidenbrocker trog,” said Stegman.

“Absolutely. That’s absolutely what I thought. Another outsider, like myself. A smart one, what’s more. It was pleasant to have intelligent conversation again, after so long without. We went for a drink. He was charming. And yet... there was something off about him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Perhaps I should have been more guarded. He was so nice, though. So keen. So complimentary.”

“Flattered you, huh?” said Dev.

“I have to admit, he played on my vanity, yes. But you must understand, too, that I had been starved of good company. Emailing with family, friends and colleagues is all very well, but you can’t replace the joy of one-to-one, real-time interaction. Our topics of discussion ranged across all the sciences, different disciplines, and my interlocutor repeatedly deferred to my judgement, calling me ‘wise’ and ‘insightful.’”

“He have a name, this brown-noser?”

“Jones. Ted Jones.”

“As unimaginative as they come. An alias only a Plusser would choose.”

“But I didn’t realise he was a Plusser, not until later, much later. I’ve no experience of them, unlike you, Mr...?”

“Harmer.”

“To me, he was just Ted, and he wasn’t a Lidenbrocker and therefore I wasn’t worried that he was going to pick my pocket or stick a knife in me for looking at him the wrong way or try to sell me drugs. I was simply glad to have met him – someone I could talk to on an equal footing, someone who said he found Lidenbrock as unruly and intimidating as I did. I did enquire as to why he was in this city, of all places.”

“And?”

“He told me he had wound up here through a misunderstanding. He was a medical supplies sales rep, he said, and he had received a tip about Lidenbrock. Allegedly it was an untapped market, great potential, virgin territory. Within a week of arrival he had had all his samples stolen and his life threatened twice. He was waiting for the next cruiser to dock so that he could go. ‘Worst lead I’ve followed ever,’ he said. ‘I thought the work associate who gave it to me was an ally. Seems he’s a rival instead.’ He also blamed himself, saying he should have done his homework better.”

“Poor Ted,” Dev drawled.

“We spent an enjoyable evening together. We made plans to meet up again the next day. As we parted, however, I began to feel unwell.”

“He’d spiked your drink.”

“Must have; some sort of soporific. Next I knew, I was in his apartment, bound to a chair. And a nightmare began.”

“This isn’t a date rape story, I hope.”

“You mock. It was worse than that. Ted, my new-found so-called friend, subjected me to hours – days – of torture. It wasn’t physical. It was mental. My mind...”

Banerjee shuddered.

“What did he do, professor?” Trundell asked, but Banerjee was so overcome by the horror of the memory, he was finding it a struggle to continue.

“He hooked you up to a hypnagogic exposure template,” said Dev. “Is that it?”

“I don’t know if that’s the name for it, but it sounds right,” said Banerjee haltingly. “Somehow, through my commplant, he forced me to undergo continuous dreams. Vivid waking dreams of the worst possible kind. I saw myself degraded, disgraced, fallen. My work was discredited and I become a laughingstock, my reputation in tatters. Over and over. And I also saw things done to my wife and daughters, hideous things, the most awful things imaginable. Sometimes it was me – I was the one doing the things. Other times I was watching, helpless, as humiliations and desecrations were inflicted on them.”

“Hypnex pulls imagery from your subconscious and stimulates the amygdala at the same time,” Dev said. “It overlays private thoughts with fear responses. Takes the worst you can imagine and makes it seem real.”

“I don’t care how it works, Harmer. I have no interest in that. All I care is that he violated me. He intruded on my brain and filled it with nightmares, nightmares seemingly without end. And by that method he broke me.”

“That’s dreadful,” said Trundell.

“Don’t take it so hard, prof,” said Dev. “During the war, Plusser interrogators cracked captive soldiers in next to no time, using the same technique. I’ve heard of marines, toughest of the tough, who were reduced to blubbering babies. You can’t be trained to resist it. No amount of conditioning can prepare you for having your own mind turned against you.”

“The truly shaming part,” said Banerjee, “was that Ted himself featured in the dreams. He was cast as the hero. Many times he came to my rescue. When, say, bloodthirsty thugs were menacing my children and there was nothing I could do, in ran Ted like the lead actor in a movie. He would slay the evildoers and liberate their victims, earning my fawning gratitude in the process.”

“It’s known as trauma-bonding sympathetic transference.”

“Again, I don’t care. Call it whatever you like. Amid all the horrors I was experiencing, Ted stood out like a beacon of hope. He shone before me. As far as I was concerned, he wasn’t the person responsible for my torment. He was helping me. He was my salvation. I don’t know how long it lasted, but by the end, when it was finally over, I loved him. He was my brother, my best friend, my teacher, my leader. I would have done anything for him, anything he asked.”

“And you did, obviously,” said Dev. “What did he want?”

“To begin with, access to my data about moleworms. It seemed an inconsequential request. Hadn’t I just gone public with that? Transmitted my paper? I could see no harm in allowing Ted to have a look at it, even though he wasn’t an academic peer or, to my knowledge, in any way zoologically qualified. He pronounced it fascinating.”

“It is,” Trundell said encouragingly. Dev could see how crestfallen the xeno-entomologist was. Banerjee was someone he had looked up to and longed to meet. And now, in the flesh, the man was at a depressingly low ebb, filled with remorse and self-loathing. “It’s held in the highest regard in our circles.”

“Thank you,” said Banerjee feebly. “That’s something, I suppose. Having digested the content of the paper, Ted then made me show him moleworms
in situ
. We visited all of my hides, many times. We logged the creatures’ comings and goings, their pack affiliations and pair bondings, how they communicate. He was acquainting himself with their behaviour patterns, and I was assisting him. I did it with enthusiasm. I was Ted Jones’s thrall. I was under his spell. He controlled me utterly. His wish was my command.”

“Look, hate to interrupt,” said Stegman, “but is this going to take much longer? We’re on the clock, remember.”

“Stow it, Stegman,” said Dev. “We’re not in any immediate danger. Let the professor talk.”

“It’s not immediate danger I’m worried about. It’s the danger we’re likely to come across further down the line if we don’t head back soon. The longer we stand around here yakking, the more Kobolds there’ll be out on the streets.”

“Kobolds?” said Banerjee. “They’re never good news. Are they after you? Then you’re in dire trouble.”

“Yeah, I think we know that,” said Dev. “What if we get moving, then, huh? You come with us, prof, and you can fill us in on the rest of the story along the way.”

“No.”

“Pardon? I’m sorry, I could have sworn you just said ‘no.’”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Banerjee. “I’ve done so much that’s wrong. I’ve betrayed my most cherished principles. I’m here now, in these miserable tunnels, and I’m staying. I don’t deserve better than this.”

“You’re happy to hang out in that hide of yours for the rest of your days? That shitty little dump? Eating birds that eat ants that eat turds?”

“It’s where I belong. It’s my life. I can’t go back to Earth. I have no place in civilised society. Not after what I’ve been a party to, the crimes I’ve committed.”