Zero Sum Game

Chapter 27

My senses stayed foggy for a long time. I kept seeing Arthur’s face during my intermittent spurts of consciousness, which my brain still thought was strange, but eventually it adapted. Rio was around, too. I became vaguely aware of Arthur making a fuss about letting Rio near me, which didn’t make any sense. Rio and I went way back. Arthur must not know that.

He also must have forgotten how Rio had saved all of our lives. And had kept his hand steady, which had saved me. If he weren’t such a good shot, shooting exactly where I aimed…the thought struck me as funny. I started to giggle, but it hurt too much.

Odd that Arthur would forget all that; he’d been there.

Occasionally I registered the presence of a third person, a middle-aged black woman who must have been a doctor. I tried to push her away the first time I figured out she was there, but I didn’t think the signals even made it out of my brain.

Time seemed slippery, too much of an effort to hold onto. Half the time I thought I was awake but then realized reality wasn’t Hausdorff, and what kind of topology was I in anyway if Twinkies were allowed? And the totient function was a rainbow, a beautiful rainbow and the greatest mathematical discovery of all time, but if you put a Möbius strip in the fourth dimension could a rabbit still hop down the side?

I became more lucid slowly; maybe they were weaning me off the drugs, but I stopped thinking I was the next Erdős every time penguins waddled through my dreams on a four-colored map. I slept or floated, the world still foggy but solid now, which was a vast improvement over it being wibbly.

The disorientation cleared enough once for me to see Rio’s face as he changed my dressing. His movements were swift and certain, and his lips moved in the whispered litany of a prayer.

“Rio,” I slurred. “You’re a good friend.”

“I’m not your friend, Cas,” he said quietly. “You know that. Don’t ever think otherwise.”

I did know. Friends cared about you. But friends also knew you well enough to communicate without words, and did things like save your life and then stay by your side and take care of you while you were injured. Did it matter that Rio didn’t care about me, as long as he acted like he did, and always would? Did it matter that he did it for other reasons, for his own grand religious reasons, instead of because he felt any sort of affection for me?

Plenty of people were only generous and kind and giving because they thought it was the way of God. They were still good people. What was friendship, after all?

I slipped back to sleep.

The first time I woke enough to have a real conversation, Arthur was back. “Hi,” I rasped.

He was instantly attentive. “Hey, Russell. How you feeling?”

“Fuzzy,” I answered. “Where’s Rio?”

His lip twitched. “Out.”

“You still don’t like Rio?” I frowned at him, trying to string the right words together. “He saved all our lives. He saved me. Again.”

“He shot you!” burst out Arthur.

“Because I told him to.” How could he not get it? “I knew I could line up a nonlethal shot.”

“A nonlethal—! Russell, do you have any idea how gunshots work?” He took a deep breath and visibly calmed himself. “That was absolutely, positively a lethal shot. Any gunshot can be lethal. You get hit in the leg it can kill you.” His voice cracked. “Russell, he shot you in the chest and you almost died, and if the bullet ain’t bounced and missed your heart—”

“I made it bounce,” I told him thickly. “It bounced ’cause I told it to.”

Arthur looked like he wanted to cry.

I ended up drifting off again at that point, but the next time I opened my eyes, feeling a good deal more alert, Arthur was still beside me, almost as if he hadn’t moved. It was kind of creepy. “How you feeling?” he asked immediately. “Up to eating something?”

“Don’t you have a job?” I said.

“Pithica was the only case I was working on.”

I couldn’t help thinking it strange that he kept hanging around. The last I remembered, we’d been at each others’ throats and he’d been swinging between trying to get Rio sold into slavery and having a massive guilt breakdown over getting me killed. “You don’t have to be here,” I told him. “You can go if you want.”

“I ain’t going to leave you alone with a…with someone who shot you,” he said darkly.

I started to sigh, but it hurt too much. They’d taken more of the drugs away, I realized. “We’ve been over this,” I said. “It was the plan.”

“Getting yourself shot is not a plan.”

“It allowed Rio to get us out of there,” I argued. “Any other option would have gotten one of us killed.”

“This one almost did get you killed!”

“But it didn’t.” He was making me tired, and my whole body ached. “You said something about food,” I reminded him, even though I wasn’t hungry. “I could get behind that.”

Arthur hurried off to make me some soup, and I fell back to sleep.

When I finally woke again I was starving, but Arthur wasn’t in his usual spot next to me. I could hear his voice, though; I looked over to see him on the other side of the room, leaving a quiet but intense voicemail for someone.

I pushed myself up a few inches and looked around. I was in a spacious studio apartment, and not one I recognized; it must have been Arthur’s or Rio’s. An IV stand stood beside my bed, with a long clear tube that wound around until it ended in a catheter taped into the back of my hand. On the way it passed over a crumpled pillow and blanket on the floor—someone had been sleeping close enough to keep an eye on me. Probably Arthur. Jesus.

The man in question hung up the phone and saw I was awake. “Hey. You’re looking better.”

“I’m feeling better,” I said. “What’s been happening? I take it we got away clean?”

“Your, uh, your buddy got us out—he took out the troops and took Dawna Polk hostage. Turns out she’s so valuable we managed to swing trading up to get out. I got the impression only a handful of ’em can do the mental jazz; they didn’t want to lose her.”

“I suppose she’s one of Pithica’s higher-ups, then, huh.”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding unsure and unhappy.

“So you let her go?”

“Your friend was the one calling the shots, but not much choice on that one.”

“He’s not my friend,” I said automatically.

Arthur made a face. “What, then? He owe you money? You owe him money? I can’t figure it out!”

“Then ask when you can tell me why it’s any of your business.” There wasn’t a chance in hell I would tell him how Rio and I had met. That wasn’t his to know.

The apartment door opened at that moment and Rio himself came in. He was back in his customary tan duster, and water slicked the mantle in dark patches. Apparently it was raining outside—I couldn’t hear it. It made me wonder how long I’d been out; the rainy season in Los Angeles doesn’t usually start until December or January, though sometimes it was months earlier.

“Hello, Cas,” Rio greeted me, when he saw I was sitting up. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been shot,” I answered.

He nodded. “Understandable, given the circumstances.”

Arthur threw up his hands in what I could only have described as flailing.

“But I’m getting better,” I told Rio, ignoring Arthur. I felt more energetic, and I was awake, which was a change, and the numbers surrounding me weren’t quite as sluggish as they had been, and I knew the answer to how fast I was metabolizing the drugs, so things were looking up.

“Thanks be to God,” said Rio. He came over and checked the IV bags hanging above my head.

I thought the thanks were due to Rio, myself—oh, all right, Arthur too—but I was sensitive enough to Rio’s beliefs that I didn’t say it out loud. Instead I said, “I heard you made a daring rescue.” Arthur mumbled something about getting me food and retreated to the kitchen area at the far side of the room.

“It was not hard once you provided the opportunity,” answered Rio.

“Dawna Polk’s that important, huh?”

“The people with her skills are the core of Pithica. They are rare and precious to the organization. It is their greatest resource weakness.”

I mulled over that tidbit of information. In hindsight, this meant I might not have needed Rio’s help at all. I could have taken Dawna a hostage in her library without blinking. Heck, I could have taken her hostage back at the town where they had first captured us. Why hadn’t I at least tried? All I could remember thinking was that they had Arthur and therefore I had no other options…

“I could have gotten us out,” I blurted.

“No,” said Rio.

“I could have. I had plenty of opportunities around Dawna—”

“Do not fault yourself, Cas. She can make herself safe from anybody.”

Oh. Right. I never would have considered attacking Dawna as an option because she had made sure I didn’t think of it. I wondered if I’d had other escape options, too. It was hard to think back; I’d been so certain at the time.

Rio pulled up the chair that Arthur usually occupied. “You said before that she talked to you. Will you tell me what about?”

Well. At least she hadn’t mind-zapped me during that part. I kind of wished she had—it would make my doubts easier to swallow. “She talked about Pithica,” I admitted softly. “How it’s all because they want to make people’s lives better. How they want to make the world all peaceful and wonderful for everyone.”

“Did you believe her?”

I picked at the blanket across my knees. “I’m not sure.”

“I see,” he said.

“She didn’t brainwash me,” I insisted. “It wasn’t like that. I remember everything. She just…she had a lot of really logical arguments.”

“Cas,” said Rio, “She had logical arguments for you because you respond to logical arguments.”

I was confused. “What other type would someone respond to?”

“It’s clear you don’t often converse with other people,” said Rio with a hint of irony.

“Oh, and you do?”

“Touché,” he said. “Cas, she used the method of argument that would most appeal to you. With another she might have used emotional appeal, or irrelevant facts, or fallacies of any stripe.”

He was missing the point. “It doesn’t matter what she would use on anyone else,” I said. “She had logical arguments. The logic in them doesn’t go away just because she wouldn’t have mentioned it to someone-not-me.”

“She had what seemed like logical arguments,” Rio corrected. “People can pretend to logic to perpetrate almost any reality.”

“Except when you dig deep enough, that kind of ‘logic’ always has deductive flaws,” I contested hotly. “This was different. I think I would know.”

“Are you so sure?” asked Rio.

“Of course I’m sure! I’m perfectly capable of differentiating—”

I stopped. Rio was smiling.

“What are you laughing at?” I asked crossly.

“We can keep going until you call me names again,” he said.

My brain screeched to a halt. I had been getting steamed up at him again, and for no reason except— “Oh,” I mumbled. “Sorry.” I buried my face in one hand. The familiar—and suddenly welcome—thudding of a headache started up in the back of my skull. “She did get to me, didn’t she.”

“Only in the incipient stages. If you keep out of their way from now on, it will be of no consequence. If they cannot find you, they cannot do anything. Will you stay off the case this time?”

But she had logical arguments. She had logical arguments! Was there a flaw? Could I find it?

Rio, though not psychic, seemed to know what I was thinking. “Cas. It is much more difficult to apply logic to morality than you sometimes believe it to be.”

“That’s stupid,” I muttered, but without any vitriol, and without any real belief behind the words. “You should be able to axiomitize everything. How else can you know right from wrong?”

Rio was smiling again. “If you’re asking me personally, you know how. Sumasampalataya ako sa iyong tsarera.”

“What does that mean?” He didn’t answer me, but I knew already. “God’s not my thing,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he countered. “Whether you believe or not, it remains that there are no mortal answers to these questions, and any claimant thereof must therefore lie.” He sounded so calm. So sure.

I’d never talked philosophy with Rio before. I had always assumed his blind faith meant he hadn’t given it much thought and he would parrot Bible verses as his version of argument…but apparently I was wrong.

The pending migraine notwithstanding, I started feeling better about my tangled feelings regarding Pithica as an organization. I was less sure than ever of the right answer, but if Rio was correct and a right answer might not even exist, then I didn’t have to plunge wholesale after where Dawna’s logic led. At least not right away.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I realized something. “You think Pithica’s pretty bad, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Cas, the Lord could force us all to peace and righteousness if He wished to. Our world would have no war, no pain. Instead, He gave us free will.”

Huh. That wasn’t a bad way of looking at it. “But you could argue that Dawna’s using her free will,” I pointed out. “Even if it’s to take away other people’s.”

“And like all those who use their freedom to harm others, she sins in doing so.”

“Oh.” I mulled that over. Because Rio was the only religious person I knew, I tended to forget that mass murder wasn’t supposed to be in the playbook. Except…Dawna was doing the exact same thing Rio did: hurting people to make the world a better place. “But what about what you do? I thought—your God…”

“Cas, I am a condemned man in the eyes of the Lord,” he said. “I have sinned far too gravely.”

Shock rippled through me. Rio believed in God and also believed that he was going to go straight to hell? “But you…” Words failed me.

“Do not think me such a tragic figure, Cas. I am too weak to my baser desires. The least I can do is use them to do God’s work.”

I was stunned. Not that I believed in heaven or hell myself, but the fact that Rio did and still thought no matter how faithful he was, the former was closed to him—I couldn’t imagine living that way.

Rio had given me a lot to think about. It was so strange—Dawna had seemed so right, her logic absolutely inescapable. Rio had only brought up more questions, and not even entirely consistent ones, and if possible everything was less clear than it had been and I was developing a killer headache to boot, but at least I knew the muddy snarl was my own thoughts on the matter.

“Did our friend Miss Polk discuss anything else with you?” Rio asked.

“Not really. Mostly she just offered to answer my questions.”

Rio looked far more serious about that than I would have expected. “I see,” he said again.

And the realization blazed through me, viscerally painful, my recovering wound hot with agony and every nerve ending on fire. By asking her questions…by asking her questions, I had been willingly telling Dawna everything she wanted to know. I had asked about what I had thought was important, and in asking about it, I had thought about it, and in thinking about it…Jesus Christ, if she had let me keep going, I would have asked her about everything, given away the smallest detail of everything I knew, as far back as I could remember.

But she hadn’t been interested in any of that. She had stopped our session even though I was still ready to spill a lot more than I already had. Thinking back, I realized with horror that she had only taken the time to converse with me on one topic: Rio. She had turned the conversation toward him at the very beginning, and then taken all the information I had.

“Oh, God,” I said. “I—I’m so sorry. Rio, she only wanted to talk about you—” Dawna was a bloody psychic; I had given away every last morsel I knew about Rio in that conversation; I was sure of it. Tresting’s treachery was nothing compared to what I had done. “I told her…I told her—” I was so stupid. The only person in the world I could trust, and I had spilled my guts about him at the first opportunity.

“Cas, calm yourself,” said Rio. “I expected that. I do not think you could have given away anything of harm to me. Take me back through what you spoke of, as nearly as you can remember.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said desperately. Why couldn’t he hate me? “She’s a mind-reader! She got everything!”

Rio raised his eyebrows. “She had me her prisoner and could not use anything you gave her to any effect. What does that tell you?”

It didn’t matter whether she had hurt him with it; I had still betrayed him. I turned away.

Rio sighed, the barest susurration of breath. “I promise you it is of no consequence to me. Melodrama does not suit you, Cas.”

Melodrama? I had just proved myself completely untrustworthy, and he was calling it melodrama?

“In fact, considering why I am insusceptible to her influence, had you been able to resist her, you would now have a far more significant worry.”

I still felt wretched, but that almost got a laugh out of me.

“Now, humor me, Cas. Take me through your discussion with her. I don’t believe there is any cause for concern.”