The Forever Gate - By Isaac Hooke Page 0,8

Should've made me forget I ever had a daughter. Spared me the pain."

Ari rested a hand in his. He wanted to shake it off, but she was his daughter. At least, she used to be. Even if she didn't remember.

A thought occurred to him, and he regarded Al suspiciously. "Why did you bring me here?"

Al looked across the floor, to a frail old pauper dressed in rags, a cane held in palsied hands. The pauper kept his eyes forward, not looking at anyone else, maybe not able to look at anyone else, staring at some distant point on the wall.

"There is an old saying," the frail pauper said. "The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache."

"That's Leader," Al whispered.

Hoodwink studied the shabby-looking man. "Leader?"

"Aye, he leads us. I thought you were supposed to be smart?"

Leader focused his attention on Hoodwink suddenly, and those eyes held him in a grip quite unlike anything he'd never felt before. He seemed naked beneath those eyes, as though this man could see through all masks and pretenses and read the true nature of anyone. Hoodwink couldn't look away, though he sorely wanted to.

Leader broke the grip, and resumed his observation of the wall. There was nothing there that Hoodwink could see, except worn, curling wallpaper.

"I'm twenty-nine years old," Leader said. "Could you guess?"

"Thirty-nine here," Vax volunteered.

"Forty-two." Karl Marx.

And so the company rattled off their ages. No one present was over forty-five, though they all looked eighty or more. All save Ari.

"It's the price we pay for vitra," Leader said. "When the gols tell us that they collar us for our own protection, they mean it. Without the collar, the electrical current flows freely through our bodies, and ages us. Rapidly."

Hoodwink studied the man uncertainly.

"That is one truth." Leader nodded to himself. "Do you feel the better for knowing it?"

Hoodwink rubbed his hands together. "I never asked for the truth." He stopped the gesture. It was too much like washing his hands. Of the truth.

"But that's what you'll get when you're with us. The truth. Or a version of it, anyway." Leader gripped his cane tightly, and for a moment Hoodwink thought he was going to stand. But Leader merely shifted in his seat. "Something is wrong with the gols. They have been distracted lately. The gol banker giving out a thousand more drachmae than he should. The gol lutist forgetting his notes halfway through the sonata. The gol butcher misjudging his swing, and cutting off his own hand. The gol executioner, forgetting to sharpen the guillotine blade. I can cite examples from across the city. Then there's that blank, slobbering look so many of them have developed. It's as if they've contracted a plague of the mind."

"But the gols can't get sick," Hoodwink said.

Leader nodded. "So we have been taught. Perhaps they are under an attack of some sort, in the world beyond the Gate where they reside simultaneously to our own. The Outside."

Hoodwink rubbed his arms together, feeling suddenly cold. He didn't like talking about the Outside. No one did. "I don't know what you're talking about. Residing simultaneously. What? And the Outside is dead. Everyone knows that."

Leader arched his eyebrows. "Indeed?"

"And if there really were an attack on the gols," Hoodwink said. "Would that be such a bad thing? I say let them be wiped out. A world without gols is a better world."

Leader smiled. "We blame them for imposing upon our freedoms, for collaring us, for confining us to the cities, it's true."

"And revising those we love!" Hoodwink said.

"And sometimes revising," Leader allowed. "Yes. And they hunt us, the uncollared. The Users. We all hate them, with passion. But at their core, they service us. You do realize this don't you? It's a love hate relationship. Without the infrastructure they provide, civilization as we know it would collapse. We'd fall back into the dark ages, quite literally, and we'd all freeze to death."

Hoodwink wouldn't back down. "And we're not in the dark ages already?"

Leader opened his mouth, but he had no answer to that.

Hoodwink pressed his attack. "Why did you make Ari bomb the Forever Gate?"

"She was merely trying to open a path to the Outside," Leader said. "We want to help the gols with what ails them, you see."

"Help the gols." Hoodwink stood. "I've just about heard enough. You go and enjoy helping your gols." Hoodwink held out a hand to his daughter. "Come on Ari, let's go. You don't need these people ordering you