Drossen merely laughed… an amiable, grandfatherly laugh.
“I was dead three minutes ago,” he said. “Being at the mercy of an insane current enemy would still represent a net improvement in my position. Oh, I am certain you could take advantage of my condition to invent some new torture that would be a step down, but eventually it would end and I would either be back where I started, or alive. In any case, I could do nothing to prevent it.”
“Are you honestly telling me you don’t care if you live or die?” Rhyme asked.
“I have my feelings on the subject,” Drossen said. “But I also have no illusions about my position. Besides, I’ve already lived more than three times as long as my own father did… I’ve outlived my wife and children. Not to give you the idea that I miss them terribly or I’m in a hurry to join them, or even that I believe there’s any ‘them’ left to join. I don’t recall seeing any pitchforks or hearing any harps. I am in no hurry to die. I would prefer to live and continue my great work. But if it is not to be, it is not to be. Who was that on the public address system?”
“The Webmistress,” Rhyme said.
“You are working for her?”
“That’s kind of up in the air at the moment,” Rhyme said. “Let’s just say I have reasons to be cross with her. She’s also getting a bit frayed around the edges… though I think I might be, too, a little… it’s an interesting situation. She has some things that I want. I don’t remember what, at the moment. But I might deal with her for them, or I might take them from her… or I might blow up her fusion reactor and see what happens.”
“When you say ‘deal with her’, you mean give me to her.”
“No illusions… she already has you,” Rhyme said. “I might let her keep you, or I might take you with me. I’m finding a certain fondness for you.”
“Would you like to hear my thoughts on the matter?”
“Why not?”
“I think it would be a better use of my time and intellect to remain with the party who has well-funded and well-hidden hidden laboratories,” Drossen said. “And safer, as well. Both because in my current state, a stationary habitation would be preferable and because your ‘fondness’ may prove fickle.”
“That is true,” she said. “I like you right now, but if I didn’t get annoyed and punt you off a building, I’d probably end up just cannibalizing you while working on some gizmo… or, you know, scrapping your cybernetics for parts. If I were to be true to how I feel about you now, it seems as though I’d have to trade you to Webmistress. On the other hand, I could keep you with me based on that same feeling, and that way I’d also be able to destroy you when I inevitably sour on you. That way, I could be true to my feelings twice.”
“If my recollection of your last arrest is correct, you were attempting to liberate something from the astronomy wing of a museum in Kansas,” Drossen said.
“Actually, that was my second most recent,” Rhyme said. “But, of course, you wouldn’t know about that.”
“Well, whatever your target was, that is one object at least that you may wish to bargain for.”
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