Chapter 16
He wanted to head for his apartment in Hitachi Tower. He wanted to sink into his soft bed and let the tiredness seep away from his body. He shuddered.
He was losing control.
He could not allow that to happen. He was Kasimir Sukui, man of science, principal adviser to the Prime of Alabama City. He was shivering a little, even though the sun was still warm on his shoulders. He concentrated on lifting and placing his feet in the correct sequence, on walking slowly through the jostling streets of the city.
Gradually, his breathing steadied itself and he began to feel refreshed. His mind was disciplined; from past experience he knew that sufficient concentration could make his body feel however he desired it to feel.
He still wanted to return to his apartment and sleep, but now that desire was isolated in a remote part of his mind: it existed but he paid it no heed.
His position demanded such discipline of him.
Passing through a wooden archway, he stepped out on to Grand Rue Street. A glance at the position of the sun confirmed what a public timepiece above a small Harrod-store told him: he was due shortly at the Capitol. Prime Salvo had commanded a dusk consultation. The Prime's equerry had passed on a warning with the message. 'The Lord is insistent,' he had said.
'Things are tight in the Capitol—the Lord is causing havoc among the domestics.' Sukui had chastised the equerry for his loose tongue, but privately he was grateful for the warning. He had planned to broach the subject of the Orbitals this evening; now that would have to wait until the Prime was in a more receptive mood.
Grand Rue Street took Sukui into the heart of the city, through the fringes of Soho and then on to the Route Magnificat that fronted the Capitol. The streets here were even busier than the rest of Alabama City. Sukui surveyed the excited faces, wondering what had awoken the crowd. Soon it became hard to move for the press of bodies. Spicy, sweaty scents drifted on the air, along with bawls and screams and cascades of laughter. The faces were quizzical and happy, mostly looking up at Canebrake House, a tall building that faced the Capitol across the Magnificat. The people were merely curious, there was no hysteria to this crowd. Sukui relaxed and waited; the currents of bodies had drawn him to the heart of the gathering and he could barely move. He drew out his diary and then tucked it back inside his robes—writing would be impractical within such constrictions.
Canebrake House had a fourth-floor balcony, wide and overgrown with flowering clematis, fronted by a bowed metal railing. A big-bodied man stood on the balcony; there were others in the background, but this man was clearly the focus of attention. He was tall and broad shouldered, his hair rusty brown and standing angrily out from his skull. His face was clean-shaven and flushed and he was waving expansively at the crowd.
He was wearing a violet robe, tied with a chequered sash, and a matching skullcap.
They were the clothes of a scientist.
Sukui forced a path through the crowd but there was no need. He already knew what the closer view confirmed: the man on the balcony was Siggy Axelmeyer.
Axelmeyer was holding something in front of his face and, with a start, Sukui recognised what it was: a microphone. He thought of the Project. What if Axelmeyer knew of the Orbitals?
But then Sukui relaxed. The microphone was only part of a voice amplification system, what Mathias had once called a 'PA' system. Axelmeyer was talking into the device and his voice was being blurred and distorted and thrown out in a jumbled torrent. Sukui tried but he could barely make out Axelmeyer's words. Only the occasional phrase came through—words of dissent and revolution—but somehow it was enough to feed the crowd's curiosity.
Axelmeyer continued to gesture and wave for a time, and the listeners continued to laugh and talk over his words. He did not appear to be put off by this reception, in fact he looked to be in his element.
Unable to move, Sukui watched the Prime's cousin. No matter how hard he tried, he could find little in Axelmeyer's nature that he liked. He was the only person Sukui knew that irritated him even more than Mathias Hanrahan.
With Hanrahan it had been a conflict of egos: Sukui had tried to instil discipline into a potentially able scientist and he had succeeded, at least to a degree. But Axelmeyer was different: he had turned to the Project purely for access to power. Science, for him, had merely been a way to win the Lord Salvo's favour. He had used the Project, he had used Sukui; it was inevitable that he had failed.
Squashed between hot bodies, Kasimir Sukui concentrated on slowing the pattern of his breathing. No one had the ability to make him angry in the way Axelmeyer did. He inhaled and counted, exhaled and counted, inhaled, exhaled. Inhaled. Exhaled. As his pulse returned to normal he surveyed the crowd again, noting expressions, the faces he recognised. All would be entered in his notebook when he had the time and the space to record them.
Up on the balcony, Axelmeyer was coming to a conclusion, or so it appeared. His arms were held wide and his voice boomed out of his crudely assembled loudspeakers. '...a position of power to one of defeat,' he said. '...time to get together and... play the mother-fucking blues!'
Sukui jerked to attention. Had he just said...?
Up on the balcony, Siggy Axelmeyer pressed something to his mouth and the sound of music came out of the loudspeakers. First there was a rising and then descending chromatic scale, then a 'One, two, a one-two-three-and-a.' Axelmeyer played his mouth-organ and some of the people behind him must have had instruments too, for the sound was that of a full band.
The music was ragged and undisciplined. There was none of the precision Sukui knew well from the streets of Orlyons. But there was something, there was most certainly something.
The tones were fuzzy and distorted, but the PA system was better suited to music than to words and the sound held together remarkably well. There was an energy to the music, a flood of raw aggression. Sukui looked around at the gathered faces, their attention finally focused on the onslaught of sound and rhythm. The crowd was beginning to take on a mood of its own, fed by the music. Sukui felt himself caught up in it, too, his dislike of Axelmeyer coming to the fore once again.
The crowd was moving. Spaces were opening and people were dancing. Sukui slipped through the gaps, plagued by the thought that Axelmeyer probably did not even have an entertainments licence, but then, looking around at the manic faces of the people, the masks the crowd had given them, he wondered if this could really count as entertainment.
Gratefully, Sukui broke free of the mass of people and found himself only a few tens of metres from the Capitol gates. He presented himself to the guard who waved him through with an impatient flick of his bayoneted rifle. He glanced at the colouring sky and was relieved to see that it was not yet dusk, he was not late for his appointment.
~
'Have you seen what that worthless cluck of a cousin of mine is doing out there?' demanded the Prime, when Sukui entered the
High Office. 'He's mad! They're all mad. Tell me, Kasimir: do you think I'm mad? Everyone else is, so why shouldn't I be? Will you answer me that? Will you? No, don't. You are an honest man, I don't want your answer.'
Prime Salvo marched around the large office at a frantic pace. He kicked a chair at the central desk and cursed when its back splintered under the impact. 'What did they make it from, anyway?' he mumbled, as he resumed his pacing.
His long, red beard hung in tangled strands on his chest from where he had been twisting it through his fingers, pulling at it and smoothing it with food-greasy hands. 'I tell you, Sukui, he's pulling the mat from under his own feet—he won't get my continued support now. He must know that!'
Sukui thought that as Axelmeyer was being so open in his dissent he would, at least, be aware that the Prime would no longer pay his endowment.
Prime Salvo took a bottle from his desk, proffered it to Sukui, and then drained it himself. 'Have you seen him? Have you seen him out there?' Sukui bowed his head and waited. 'He's taken up rooms in Canebrake House. He's got himself a balcony and he stands on it, whinging at the people, telling them I'm no good. And they listen! After all I've done for him, after all I've done for them. I've given them street-lighting, haven't I? Hmm? We have a fishing fleet that catches three times as much as when I came to the Primacy. We have farms that grow four times as much. We have the grandest capital city on all Expatria! Hmm?'
'Sir, it is not me that needs convincing.'
The Prime glared at Sukui and then grunted. 'You're right, Kasimir. As ever. Did you know there are Conventist chapels springing up in Alabama City? They came with the Hanrahan mob and some of them have stayed. They're moving damned fast. Captain Mahler tells me they've linked up with some of our own churches—the smaller ones—and there's a lot of scope for them. Cousin Siggy has been stirring them up, too. He marched into their inaugural Gathering and told them to pick up their weapons and fight if they wanted to get anywhere.
'They picked up their weapons and they threw him out of their chapel, but that won't stop him. Listen, Kasimir: why is he mixing with them? They're fundamentalists and he's a scientist—opposite extremes. Why is he doing it?'
This was all disturbing news to Sukui. Was this the peace Mathias had sacrificed himself to preserve? 'Sir,' he said. 'I fear young Axelmeyer is looking for someone to fight. I feel certain that the Primacy's least positive move would be to rise to his bait and offer him such conflict.'
Prime Salvo sat heavily on his big desk. 'You're right again, Kasimir: he wants a fight. And by the gods will he get one! He cannot do this in my city. I cannot let him challenge the Conventists—that would only lend them some sort of credibility among the people of the city. I think it is time my young cousin learnt something of his real place in this world.'
Sukui bowed his bead even lower. The Prime was trapped: by his own nature he could not sit back and let things fade away, as they would, but by intervening he would only escalate matters. That way he would be giving credibility to Axelmeyer and then the struggle for power would become genuine. 'Sir, were there any matters that we should deal with now?'
'Huh? No, no. Nothing that has to be done now. It seems my cousin has rearranged my schedule. Very impolite.' The Prime laughed loudly, but it was forced. 'You can go,' he said. Then: 'Oh, there was one small matter. Tell me: what is it that commands so much of your attention up at Dixie Hill? Hmm?'
'The finds from our last trip to Orlyons.' He had not meant to lie. It would only make things more difficult in the long term. 'My best team works at that installation—we have a number of projects in hand.' The words slipped off his tongue so easily.
'Hah!' The Prime had found another half-full bottle and he took a long swig from it. 'Hmm. You're lying, Kasimir. I bet you really brought that whore back with you from Orlyons and you've got her hidden away in that hut. Hah! Ha hah!' He took another drink and Sukui gratefully slipped out of the High Office and into the still coolness of one of the many corridors of the Capitol.
As he walked, his heart beat slowly and calmly. He was thinking, running through the endless possibilities and permutations arising from what he had just learnt about the political upheavals occurring all around. He would have to consider matters carefully. The Project must survive. Progress must continue, at whatever cost.
~
'We've met before.' The tall, dark-skinned woman dismissed Sukui's junior with the casual wave of one big hand.
A night's sleep had refreshed Kasimir Sukui. His head had been clear, his responses reasoned and rational.
And then Lucilla Ngota had entered the office he was using in the Merchant Chapel.
Her voice sent ripples of tension across his skin, her eyes pinned his own in place and he felt that she could read his thoughts as clearly as if they were painted across his forehead. Over the years of monitoring the functioning of his own body, Sukui was certain that he had never felt this way before and he did not want to feel it now.
But her eyes drew him on and he gestured to a seat and offered her a small glass of minted mulberry. 'You asked to see me,' she said.
Sukui nodded. 'You recall faces well,' he said.
'The Woodrow Gates, Greene Gardens, Orlyons.' Lucilla smiled, a strange expression in such strong features. 'You made me remember. An untrained mind out-manoeuvred me.'
'Untrained in a military sense, perhaps,' said Sukui, wondering why he had summoned her from her work with the observation unit. 'I hope the incident will not impair our relationship.' He felt his face flush, something he was not accustomed to. He resisted the impulse to seize a notebook and write it all down.
'At that time we were on opposing sides,' said Lucilla. 'Now we are not. And anyway, justice is being done and I will return for the trial. A grudge would serve no purpose; it would be irrational.' She looked around the small office. 'Is this a social invitation, or did you have something to tell me?'
'Let us label it a social call in the cause of our respective duties,' said Sukui. 'If we are better acquainted then both our jobs will be more straightforward. I trust you are receiving adequate co-operation in your duties? I will arrange a tour of our scientific establishments for you, if you require. Unless, of course, you object on...'
'On religious grounds?' Lucilla laughed. 'No, I'm not a cultist—I have little preference as far as the old technologies are concerned. I live in whatever world I am put in, technology or no. Greta calls me a pragmatic bore.' She shrugged.
'Perhaps I can convince you of the value of the scientific view of life,' said Sukui. 'Or maybe I am the bore.' He wanted to stop but could not. This woman was corrupting the self-control he had taken years to accumulate. He talked on, about nothing in particular. He poured Lucilla a liqueur and had one himself. She told him what it was like to be a successful figure in government, coming from a backward valley in the Massif Gris as she did.
After a time, she stood and replaced her glass on the drinks shelf. She smiled at Sukui and said, 'I'm glad you invited me, Kasimir. You must show me your Project and try to win me over. I have to go now.'
She went.
He was desperately glad that she had gone. He could have taken little more. The first time he had met Lucilla Ngota she had made him feel tiny, insignificant. She could have killed him and it would have meant nothing to her. Now she was charming and diplomatic; he felt at ease with her pragmatic view of the world and the discipline of her thoughts. A genuine friendship was in prospect. And she made him feel terrible. He felt weak, he felt empty when she left the room, he felt totally under her power when she was with him.
Worse still, he liked it, this animal urge that was clouding his senses.
He stopped himself. He stood and walked around the small office. Lucilla was clearly unattainable; he should forget her. But he felt constricted—he had no outlet for his feelings, no Orlyons to drain his urges and help him regain his self-control.
For long minutes, Kasimir Sukui paced around that borrowed office in Merchant Chapel, wondering what he should do. Then a repeated cry from the Traders' Gallery finally filtered through the layers of his confused mind.
'Chet Alpha's Pageant of the Holy Charities has come to Alabama City!'
Sukui hurried across to the window and looked out over the packed trading place.
'Your munificent host, Chet Alpha, invites you all to come and see his Glorious Pageant!'
There was a horse-drawn caravan inching its way through the masses, the same brightly painted caravan Sukui knew from Orlyons. Alpha's women were sitting in the caravan and on top of it, staring out at the writhing shapes of the crowd.
Sukui spotted the man who was doing all the shouting. Chet Alpha had come to Alabama City.
Sukui smiled. Maybe things were beginning to work out in a positive fashion, after all. He left the office. It was, perhaps, an appropriate time to renew some old acquaintances.
~
The tightly packed bodies and the curious expressions reminded Sukui uncomfortably of his last encounter with a crowd, below Siggy Axelmeyer's balcony. This time the people were looking at the gaudy little caravan being pulled in their midst by a pair of bony horses, they were looking at the confident little man who pushed his way through, shouting, 'Come around and see what's here—it's Chet Alpha's Pageant of the Holy Charities and it's setting up right here in the Traders' Gallery!'
Immediately, Sukui noted the differences in Alpha's appearance. He was wearing a long, dark cloak, tied around his bulging waistline with a length of cord. His hair was cleaner and longer, flowing in blue-silver strands to his shoulders, and his face had been shaved accurately, without the occasional missed tufts of stubble that had been his fashion in Orlyons. The women were wearing pastel-coloured robes and were clean-faced; not the exotically clad, painted whores of the Rue de la Patterdois Sukui had frequented before. Alpha had cleaned up his act, a sensible precaution when arriving in a new city.
Chet Alpha turned and put his hand out to stop the horses. 'Here, girls,' he barked. 'This is the place. I can feel it in my bladder.' The procession came to a halt and the girls busied themselves removing boards and cases from the caravan and giving corn to the horses.
'Chet Alpha, I see you have taken up my offer,' said Sukui, emerging from the crowd. 'You have come to Alabama City.'
Alpha turned and squinted at Sukui, then he nodded and smiled. 'Sukui-san,' he said. 'A familiar face, that's nice.' Alpha's skin was flushed, his eyes wide, but he did not smell of alcohol. That was something else that was new, since he had been Orlyons's foremost Purveyor of Pleasure. 'Offer?' he asked. 'What offer?'
'Your memory fails you,' said Sukui. 'In Orlyons you were concerned about the political climate and I suggested that you come to Alabama City in order to continue your trade. I told you of the Lord Salvo Andric's interest in the arts. Do you recall?'
'Mister Sukui,' said Alpha, patting him jovially on the arm. 'I remember what you said, but I'm not here because of that. I'm here because the hand of fate has brought me here.'
Alpha smiled and accepted a mug of beer from one of the women.
Sukui remembered her and nodded. Her name was Larinda and, despite her sharp tongue, he liked her. He had money with him and for once he had time to spare. Larinda smiled meekly and returned to grooming the horses.
'Chet,' he said. 'Are you in a position to begin business at the moment, or shall I make an appointment?' He smiled politely.
'Business? You mean...?' Alpha laughed and slapped Sukui's arm again. 'Excuse me, Sukui-san,' he finally said. 'It's good to be reminded of the old times in Orlyons. You see... you see my purpose in Alabama City is more of a recruitment campaign. We are looking for people to join us.'
'Business is expanding?'
Alpha laughed again. 'Would you like to join us, Sukui-san? The girls will give you all the training you need.'
Sukui was not accustomed to Alpha joking in this manner. Then he realised that it had been a serious suggestion. 'Me?' he spluttered. 'But...'
'You see, Sukui-san, I am here to pursue a higher goal. I've seen the light. I had this dream one night. I was being spoken to. First I thought it was Larinda, then I thought maybe the chillis—my old mother used to blame everything on the chillis—and then I saw the Truth.
'I was chosen, Mister Sukui. Chosen to spread the Word. In my vision I learnt that my function in the current life is to travel the settled lands of Expatria, telling people... well, telling them the Word. You want a beer? Benasrit brews it in a tank under the Caravan of the Holy Charities. That's what they are, you see. The girls, they're not whores no more. No, they're Charities, consorts of the gods. But the goddesses must need consorts too, so I'm looking for a few boys as well. You'd get a nice robe if you joined, Mister Sukui. You want to try out for a trial period?'
Sukui glanced across at Chet Alpha's Charities. Suddenly they seemed so pure, in their pastel robes and their unpainted faces. He looked back at Alpha and tried to decide if he had been driven entirely insane or if it was only a temporary setback. 'I would need to understand your theology,' said Sukui. Alpha looked blank. 'Your divine purpose. Tell me, what is this message you have been chosen to spread? What is this Word?'
Alpha looked smug. He grinned broadly and then took another swallow of his beer. 'Sukui-san,' he said. 'You are truly a man of wisdom. Your intellect shines through like a... well, it does, anyway. You are—'
'What is your Word?' prompted Sukui.
'God didn't tell me that.' Alpha shrugged. 'He just told me to spread it. Said He'd tell me the Word some other time. Shit, I'm in no hurry, Mister Sukui. The Guy wants time, I give Him some time.'
Sukui smiled; he bowed his head and made ready to leave. He had business that required his attention.
'Now,' said Alpha. 'Which of the Charities was it you wanted to fuck?'
~
Lui Tsang had acted against Sukui's directions but now Sukui was eager to see the results. Sukui had told him to concentrate on a simple visual link; Tsang had wanted to be more innovative. Tsang had wanted to use the Toshiba trifacsimile as the basis for their communication system.
'You've got a trifax?' Decker had said, as reported by Sanjit Borodin. 'Then we're in business. And it's a Tosh? That's amazing. I'll tell you what to do and we'll be fixed up in zero time. OK?' It appeared that the Toshiba unit was the basis of the standard means of communication in orbit—'It's kind of like a quasi-hologrammatic real-time simulator,' Tsang had said, one time when he had failed to explain it to Sukui. The initial broadcast had only utilised TV to keep things simple.
Now, half of the hut had been transformed into what Lui Tsang was calling a 'Com-studio'. The windows had been covered over—darkness improving the clarity of the trifax—and the adapted Toshiba had been arranged on a four-legged stand, cables trailing across the floor in an unruly tangle.
The TV screen was filled with a face Sukui had not seen before. 'Hi, I'm Decker's and Mathias's and Edward's cousin,' she had said, when Sukui had enquired. 'Who are you? You've gotten a screwy voice.'
'He's OK,' Sun-Ray Sidhu had said over Sukui's shoulder. 'He's the boss.' Then to Sukui he had added, 'She meant she liked your voice, sir. By when she said "screwy", I mean. She's cover for Decker. He's working on the trifax.' So was everyone in the hut with the exception of Sukui.
Sukui said, 'Call me,' and then went outside and sat on the damp grass. He drew the diary from his robe and the pencil from his skullcap. There was much to add, he was growing lax. Soon he was adrift in the world of memory, sorting, sifting, deciding what was important and what could be forgotten.
He paused to push the lead further out of his pencil stalk and noticed that there was no noise coming from the hut. He turned just as Helena Lubycz emerged and waved at him. 'It's time,' she said, then turned and vanished inside the hut.
Sukui felt nervous as he brushed himself down and headed for the door. Everyone looked up as he entered. 'Stand there,' said Tsang, pointing to an open space in one corner of the hut. 'This is your camera, you have to look at it here.' He pointed to a trio of lenses, each directed at Sukui.
Sukui stood straight; it was a proud moment. Tsang flicked a switch and Sukui noticed a gasp come from the TV screen. Decker's cousin was staring to one side. 'Look at the camera,' hissed Tsang.
Decker appeared on the TV, looking in the same direction as his cousin. 'Lui,' he said. 'You've done a good job. Hello. Hello, Kasimir Sukui—you've now got yourself a twin, here in Orbital Station Blue. How does it feel?'
It felt vaguely disappointing. Sukui was still in the hut, looking at the TV screen. At least Decker appeared pleased with the results at his end of the link.
'Will you move a bit?' said Decker. 'No, not too much, you'll get out of range. You just lost an arm for a moment there. Right. OK. You'll like to know that we now have a full visual link this end. We can see you. I'll need to fix up your colour a bit—you look a little green—but that's easy enough. We'll fix your end up in a few minutes.'
'It is good that you are satisfied,' said Sukui. 'Do you have any news?'
Decker looked serious. 'How are you doing with putting word about? We've got us a definite fix on the GenGen ship. Their blue-shift has dropped drastically and they're close enough for us to look for parallax. ArcNet puts them at a little over eight months distant, but that's still inspired guessing. We have to decide on our response, Kasimir. Time's running out. And I'll tell you another thing. They've started broadcasting at us again. Only this time it's different, it's propaganda. They're telling us how GenGen has improved the lives of millions, how they're so wonderful that now they want to improve life for us. I'm not so sure about wanting to be improved by them when they don't even know us. Listen, we've got to do something.'
'In your conversations with Mathias you must have discussed the options,' said Sukui. 'What do you think?' He was stalling. With the Prime in his present frame of mind, the only thing possible was to delay.
'Mathias wanted us to land. He asked if we had shuttles that could take the trip.'
'And have you?' Sukui had not considered this possibility—it could cause problems, but on the other hand it could well be the answer to everything.
'Yes, but... it wouldn't work, I'm sorry. The shuttles could take it, it's the people that couldn't. You see, we don't live at gees out here. There are a few stations with low gravities scattered around, but they're just for industrial use. We don't need it. So you see, there's none of us who could take the gravity, it's not possible.'
'Then we must think further,' said Sukui. 'You mentioned completing the trifacsimile link. Shall we continue?'
'Yes,' said Decker. 'Yeah. I've told Lui: we're going to end this transmission and send you down a looped holo sequence, one that will repeat over and over. It'll let you set your equipment up how you want it—you set it for that and everything'll be fine. OK?' The picture on the TV cut out and Tsang deactivated the camera that pointed at Sukui.
Sukui stood to one side and watched Tsang and Sender moving about, positioning what Sukui recognised as another part of the trifacsimile, the projector. It was all very cumbersome, but he knew that, given time, they would grow accustomed to the equipment. He would have to direct the team's work towards such a goal. The way things were going, they would have to be ready to move out of the hut at short notice. Watching them set up the holo, Sukui decided to instruct Tsang and maybe Sender to devise a wholly portable communicator, even if it took two or more people to transport the device. It was a necessary precaution.
'Ready?' said Tsang. Sun-Ray Sidhu nodded. 'Right.' Tsang made a final adjustment and stepped back from the projector.
At first Sukui thought they had been tricked. A figure appeared in the centre of the hut, looking around but not meeting anyone's gaze. Was this the onset of an invasion?
Then Sukui forced himself to be rational. He studied the figure and made himself see that it was merely a projection, an image. It had no substance.
He looked at the face and saw that it was the face he knew from the TV screen. It was Decker, his features still blurred, sparks of varicoloured light flashing excitedly around his image. His body was thin and weak; Sukui could see clearly why the Orbital peoples could not land on the planetary surface. Their wasted muscles would never resist the gravity, their atrophied bones would snap under their own bodyweight. Decker's feet were twisted under him, a few centimetres clear of the floor, and he drifted occasionally, shifting position without the impediment of gravity. One hand was outstretched, holding a ghostly rail, fixing Decker's position against the perturbations of freefall.
Sukui glanced at the others, trying to read their expressions. They were excited and nervous, but above all else, Sukui could see that the apparition scared them. Its ghostly green hues, the strange angle of lighting and the 'wrong' shadows, the way it hung unattached in the air.
Tsang was looking at Sukui; he appeared less intimidated than the others. Sukui nodded, remembering that Decker had mentioned refining the image. He held his breathing steady, trying to remain rational, but this image, this ghost, was a potent thing.
Tsang adjusted one of his controls and the trifax wavered and split into a double image. He made another adjustment and the images merged, then split again.
Sukui moved over to stand behind Tsang, then impatiently he said, 'Lui, move over. I will make the necessary adjustments.'
Tsang vacated his seat without protest.
Sukui looked at the controls and allowed Tsang to show him which ones Decker had told him to set. They were simple knobs. Twist them one way or the other until the image was satisfactory.
He turned one, noted how it separated the images as Lui Tsang had done. He turned it the other way and then adjusted it minutely until the image was single again. Another control threw the trifax into blurred confusion and then back into a clarity Sukui had not expected from a mere projector. Over the ensuing hour, Sukui experimented with each control, testing the trifacsimile's range of capabilities.
It was a powerful tool. He could create an image so convincing that he could barely believe that it was not Decker, floating in the middle of the hut; Mags Sender actually tried to touch the image at one point, but her hand passed through without even causing a ripple.
But there was more that could be done with the image. Sukui found that he could selectively alter its coloration, adding light to the eyes and skin. He could blur and twist the features into an animate snarl, twisting Decker's face to such a degree that even he, Kasimir Sukui, scientific adviser to the Prime of Alabama City, was filled with a tremulous, pathetic fear.
Eventually he gestured for Tsang to close down the power. In an irrational moment he jumbled the dials, losing the setting for the last, most powerful figure he had created. The trifacsimile was truly a potent device.
Quietly, he left the hut, not wanting to stay and hear the inevitable discussions among the team. He had a lot to consider.