This is a weapon, Christine. This is a weapon they intend to use, if they cant subdue the world by other means. This is a weapon they will use, covertly, whenever they see a need, because thats what power amounts to: the ability to compel, by force if not by persuasion. They dont need to use it on you, or on your parents, but they do need to know that it works. In all probability, three of the people youll kill are real targets people they want out of the way but they also want to conceal those assassinations, by hiding them in a tale the news tapes know only too well. Youre just the shell theyre using,
Christine, just the last and most ingenious of their victims.
None of this is your doing, Christine; none of it is your fault. They re doing all this, partly just because they can and partly because they want to be sure that if the world ever becomes tired of their supposedly benevolent guidance, they can carry on regardless. Its all their doing, all their fault.
Maybe it wont always be this way. Maybe therell come a day when weapons too dreadful to use really will be too dreadful to use but you were born into an era where all the old evils had only just gone underground, and you were one of those who were caught by the grasping hands reaching out of the grave. All of this is just history working itself out, chewing you up and grinding you down in the process. It isnt you, Christine. Its them. And it wont stop soon, even when it seems to have stopped. Itll come back to haunt you, again and again. Youll have to go through it more than once, but its not your doing . Its not your fault. And in the end, you will get through it. In the end, you will be free. In the end, youll get your life back.
Theres no way anyone can compensate you for whats been done to you, but you will get a second chance. It wont arrive as soon as you hope or as soon as you dare to believe, but it will come. Youll get a life, and it will be a life worth living. This is hell, Christine, but hell isnt what youve been led to expect. Hell is something you go through on your way to being rescued. In the end, youll come through. This isnt your doing. It isnt your fault. Theres no justice to be derived from it, but in the end, youll come through it.
Its just a weapon, Christine. Its using your hands and your identity as its instruments of destruction, but it isnt you. One day, youll discover who you really are. One day, youll be who you really are. It will be a life with living, worth waiting for. It cant give you back what youve lost, or repair the injury done, but it will be something you can carry forward for a long, long way.
The Omega Point is still ahead of you, Christine. Whats behind you will always be behind you, but in the end, youll be free to move forward with as much control of your own destiny as anyone ever has. Youll come through this. None of this is your fault; its all something thats being done to you. All you have to do is to keep going. In the end, it will be finished. In the end, you will be free.
Committing the murders wasnt pleasant. I was in there with her, far more intimately than before, so I had to do it too, and I can assure you that it wasnt something you could get used to, or something you could stop caring about, or something from which you could ever completely recover but I listened to my own voice and I knew that everything I was saying was true.
I knew, too, that the truth can sometimes be more painful than a comforting lie but I believed then, as I do now, that if there is any real freedom to be gained, from the past or from any imaginable captivity, only the truth will suffice. I didnt tell her about the joke, though. It seemed better not to mention the absurd means by which she must have been selected as a victim. I didnt want her to feel too bad about the awful mistake her foster parents had made in giving her a surname.
Rocambole was waiting when I came out again, back into the holding pattern. He seemed impassive, perhaps even slightly cynical. Perhaps he thought that the performance was all for the benefit of la Reine des Neiges but he didnt try to pass judgment on what Id done.
So how are we doing in real time? I asked him. Have the weapons too dreadful to use been withdrawn from their armories, or is the peace still holding?
Still holding, he said. But nothings settled yet. Were still trying to ascertain which way Lowenthals people and Hornes are likely to jump once the cats all the way out of the bag. Its not easy, given that they must be assuming that theyre under examination.
I can give the boss my answer to her ultimate question, if you like, I told him. I can tell her, and everyone else, what she wants to hear.
Perhaps you can, he murmured. But its not time yet. Theres more pedestrian work still to be done.
You can let me in on that now, if you want, I said. Ive done what I needed to do. Im available for eavesdropping duty. Where should we start, do you think?
Forty-Two
Inside the Cabal