Chapter Fourteen: Position Play

Chapter Fourteen

Position Play

The first time Ellie had been taken by The Auditors they had drugged her. This time she was conscious. Remembering the experience of reality shifting without eye protection that had nearly blinded her she clamped her eyes tightly shut and did her best to tune out the cacophony of screams that filled her ears. She fought the rising nausea in her guts and braced herself for her arrival, or materialisation or whatever it was called, at their destination, which she assumed would be The Office.

Had it been seconds or hours when she felt solid ground beneath her feet. The instant she did she planted both feet, reached for the Duke's collar and delivered a devastating headbutt to the old man's face. She smiled in satisfaction as she felt the cartilage of his nose crunch beneath her forehead. This time things would be different.

She opened her eyes to find herself back in the eerie white cube cell they'd put her in after her first kidnap - or possibly its identical twin. In front of her the Duke was standing tall and firm, seemingly unaffected by her assault, save for a bent nose which was gently trickling blood down his chin. The little rivulet of scarlet dripped onto his thin black tie.

Ellie braced herself to lunge at him again, but he raised his left hand and she found herself unable to move. With his right hand he deftly whipped a white linen handkerchief out of the top pocket of his pin striped jacket. Gently, almost daintily, he wiped the blood from his lips and chin. Dropping the handkerchief on the floor he closed his pale grey eyes and took his nose between thumb and forefinger, wincing almost imperceptibly as he moulded it back into shape.

Finally he looked directly into Ellie's rage filled eyes. "I really wish you hadn't done that, Miss Sage." He shook his head gently. "I'm not as young as I was, I don't heal as fast." He gestured to his nose. "This is going to take hours to heal." His eyes narrowed. "Now, I can keep you immobile or I can let you go, but we will have the conversation we should've had the last time you were here." He sighed, a long, rasping sigh. "I'm sure the Viscount has been telling you all sorts of things - he's a chatty little chap, after all." His voice hardened. "But he's a dangerous idiot and you need to get some facts straight."

-oOo-

It had been very quiet in Ellie's flat since her disappearance. In view of the shock and the advanced hour Tristian and Samaar had tried to get Mrs Chatterjee to return to he own flat and go to bed but she'd had none of it. Now the three of them sat in the tiny living room, Mrs Chatterjee and her son on the sofa, Tristian in the chair. Each held a cup of the tea that the Viscount had made. None of them had drunk from it.

In the minutes and hours after Ellie's disappearance there had been many words. Some of them harsh. There had been accusations. There had been admonitions.  There had been curses in three languages (although one of them was only understood by Tristian.) Now there was an uncomfortable peace.

After what seemed like an epoch, Mrs Chatterjee broke the silence. "Before? you went after her. Why are you still here?"

There was a long pause before Tristian replied, head bowed over his mug.

"I know where she'll be. I can't get in there without help. Last time I had it. Now I don't."

"So what do we do?"

There was an edge in Mrs Chatterjee's voice which suggested that if Tristian was thinking of giving up he needed to think again. Tristian took a morose sip of tea and looked up. "They'll have taken her to their main headquarters. I got her out of there last time because I had help and they weren't expecting me."

He leaned back and looked Mrs Chatterjee in the eye. "Now I don't have help and they know I'm coming."

He shook his head. "The good news is that "Ellie now knows what she's dealing with." A rueful smile creased his face briefly and then vanished again into the grimness that had overtaken him. "She doesn't know it, but I've also planted a couple of things on her that might give her an edge - especially if I can get back in." He balanced his cup on the arm of the chair. "It's not going to be easy though."

Samaar stood, a solid slab of muscular determination, his short hair nearly brushing the low ceiling of the flat. His voice rang with rumbling menace.

"Right. How do I help?"

-oOo-

Ellie was not feeling particularly cooperative. As a result she continued to stand motionless as Duke Regimen Asquith of the Singularity put his case. He paced up and down the confined space of the white cell, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back. He didn't seem to feel the need to make eye contact or even to look in his captive's direction.

"You are of course aware of the infinite nature of the universe." Ellie was unsure whether this was a statement or a question, and remained defiantly silent, her eyes narrowed into furious slits. The Duke's raspy voice continued. "Our purpose is to bring some order to that infinite chaos. To curate the infinite cascade of realities to ensure that every idea, every possibility not only has a place to flourish, but also can be found."

There was a rising passion in his voice as he warmed to his subject, his sandpaper voice booming uncomfortably within the confines of the cell. "Without order there is no point in existence. What is the use of an idea, or a way of life, if nobody outside the culture knows it is there?" His hands began to jab the air for emphasis, and thin flecks of spittle began to fly from his thin grey lips.

"Order! That is our work. Every reality must be controlled! Each must be shaped so that cultural ideas can be located and studied. Such things cannot be left to the vagaries of chance. If they were, how could things be studied? How could we learn? the peoples of the infinite universe would be living their lives pointlessly, to no purpose! We give their lives value!"

At last he abandoned his pacing and turned to face Ellie - his chalky pale face mere inches from hers, the mothball smell of his breath assaulting her nostrils. "Surely you must see this? Your own reality, Verisimilitude 558, has consistently resisted order and harmony! Are you not frustrated by the ideological uncertainty? We tried to settle it with fascism, to no avail, and so we then switched to communism, but that too did not take. We were able to settle each ideology in adjacent realities, I am happy to say, but that does still leave V558 in a state of flux!"

He moved in even closer and whispered almost conspiratorially "Currently we think your reality is best left with what your media refers to as the 'Christian Right Wing', there are promising factions in North America and parts of Africa that we think can be engineered to take global control. I suppose if that doesn't take root we still have the option of what would would call 'Hardline Islamism'; we have Clerks engaged in both ideologies, and anticipate a firm resolution in the next decade or so."

Now he was even closer. Ellie's vision was filled by the Duke's cadaverous face, his lifeless grey eyes glinted with obsession and the mothball stench was nearly more than she could bear. It didn't matter though. She'd chosen her side when she saw the carnage at the Finningley Air Station. This madman's rantings only confirmed her conviction that the Auditors were bad and needed to be defeated. Mustering all of her strength against whatever force was maintaining her paralysis she drew as much spit as she could muster into her mouth before spewing it into her tormentor's face.

She was sure that this gesture made her position clear, but just to be sure she summoned every ounce of willpower she possessed  and focussed it into just one word.

"NO!"