Jacob's ladder

Flanked by his captors and preceded by Blatsov, Luis went in the cave, which was not as dark as he had assumed. A narrow and straight passage, lighted by torches in the walls, opened at the other side of the entrance. It was about thirty paces long, clearly artificial, and its end was closed by a big oak door. Blatsov knocked with the jet black pommel of his sword, whispered an unintelligible password and moved aside for his men and the prisoner.

The chamber which became visible when the door opened blinded and confused Luis. It was so huge that he could not see the other end: perfectly rectangular, about twenty paces wide, lighted by many sources which threw a white, cold light, similar to the daylight, very different from the fitful flames he was used to. At right and left, in unending rows, there were tables covered by strange mechanisms and glimmering screens. At the tables were seated many human beings whose appearance made Luis strangely uneasy. He could not explain it until he noticed with horror that they were all identical, not just in their attire, but also in their bodies and faces. They even moved exactly in the same rhythm. That army of copies of a single individual produced in him such loathing and nausea, that anything in his stomach would have been thrown out immediately. But he was completely empty.

Blatsov led the way along the chamber and looked at the screens without stopping at any. After about a hundred paces, they came at two doors, one in front of the other, the right one guarded by two soldiers. Blatsov opened the left one, dismissed his men, made a sign for Luis to get in and followed him. After his experience with Napoleon, he recognized in the room the headquarters of an army. The left wall was covered by a map of the world, with several places marked by colored tacks. The right wall was black, covered by a material that Luis did not recognize. The opposite wall was white and showed several moving images, projected from a cabin placed above the door. Luis recognized in one of the images the flat space before the cavern at the end of the gorge, where the man in black had captured him.

Blatsov went across the room to a table covered by different instruments and sat with his back to the map of the world, looking at the black wall. He took an object from the table and completely covered his head. It looked similar to one of the helms used by medieval knights, but it was not made of metal. The section covering the face was dark, perhaps opaque, without holes for the use of the eyes. For an instant, Luis considered the possibility of a surprise attack, but the fact that Blatsov had got rid of his men indicated that he did not fear that Luis would be able to harm him. Then he remembered that Pierre could not hurt him with a rifle shot, and came to the conclusion that Blatsov was invulnerable: attacking him would be useless.

After a long time, Blatsov took the helm off and looked at Luis, who was still standing at the opposite side of the table, half dead of hunger and weariness, but decided not to ask anything from his enemy. The man in black, however, read his thoughts, pointed at a chair and clapped his hands twice. The door opened and a man came in, with a tray laden with victuals, which he left on the table. Again Blatsov covered his face with the helm and did not look at Luis for one hour. Then he took off the helm, stared at Luis and spoke for the first time since his capture:

“You have been a nuisance, but I’ve finally got you.”

“What do you want with me?” asked the boy with a quaking voice: it was difficult to dominate his panic at Blatsov’s mere presence.

“Nothing. You are just a tool that will get me what I want. I’m not personally interested in you.”

Luis did not know whether to feel relief or worry.

“Long ago I discovered that you, not Philippe, were the key character,” continued Blatsov. “I claimed you when Gérard joined forces with me to capture you both, but he was stupid enough to let you escape. Since then I have followed you, until you have finally come by yourself to my headquarters. Late is better than never.”

At that point, Luis remembered that Jacob’s ladder was still in his power, but dared not mention it, fearing that Blatsov would want it. Through his clothes, he felt a slight pressure on his breast and something like a small galvanic current passing through his flesh. The amulet seemed charged with energy since he had got in the cavern. He wondered if Blatsov could detect it, but the man in black had not seemed interested in searching him and acted as though he was not there, using the helm frequently and appearing to be waiting for something which could happen at any moment.

Three hours after they had come in the room, Blatsov went suddenly rigid and looked attentively at the point in the opposite wall which displayed the image of the flat space before the cavern. Something had changed. A person clad in white had just come from the gorge and stopped before the cavern. Luis had to make an effort not to cry aloud: it was Lydia. If that image was real, then his protector angel was coming to save him from the demon’s lair.

While Blatsov whispered commands before the instruments which covered the table, always staring at the projection, Lydia walked through the entrance of the cavern and went in the corridor. Luis could see her movements, for as soon as she stepped out of the field of vision of one image, another projector showed her shape. When she arrived at the oak door, it opened by itself and let her enter the huge chamber, a part of which now appeared on the wall. Lydia stopped and looked at the men sitting before the desks. Luis seemed to detect a slight shudder and understood her feelings, which he shared. Then the woman walked on, while the camera followed her up to the door of the room inside which they were. One of the men at the opposite side pointed at it. There was a slight noise. Luis and Blatsov turned simultaneously toward the door. It had opened and framed the real Lydia.

“At last!” exclaimed Blatsov in triumph, getting up and walking to her, but she looked at Luis and said:

“I’ve come to take him with me.”

“He is not important,” said Blatsov.

“Then why have you pursued him with such fury?”

“To make you come. I win.”

Lydia looked at him for the first time.

“So you are the hacker?”

“Nikomakos is the hacker. I’m only his avatar.”

“I am Lydia’s avatar, but I also am Lydia.”

“That means that you have risked more coming here. If I perish, Nikomakos runs no risks, but you do: if you die here, you’ll probably die there too.”

Luis, who had stood up when Lydia came in, was watching them without understanding. They seemed to be speaking in an unknown tongue, even though he knew most of their words. Looking at them from some distance, he saw that they were of the same height, but a curious effect made the one he was looking at seem taller and stronger than the other. The contrast between the white clothes of the woman and those black of the man was so marked as their faces, which seemed to him the incarnation of right and wrong in human shape.

“Why did you want me to come?” asked Lydia.

“So that you won’t disconnect the experiment. If I keep you here, Nikomakos, I in his name, will rule this world.”

“So much work, just to become the ruler of a secondary simulated world! I don’t understand you.”

“You can’t get so much power up there,” explained Blatsov with a grimace. “Lots of frustrated Napoleons must play secondary roles. But the advance of science makes it possible to enjoy power in secondary worlds such as this. I intend to keep it.”

“At the cost of the death and unhappiness of many?”

“What are you talking about? These are only the characters in a game. Their life and happiness don’t count.”

“They do for me, so I came.”

“Don’t make me laugh! Your altruism has made you fall in the trap.”

“I can resist, fight you.”

“You won’t do that, for I’d destroy the boy and he’s important for you.”

“Let him go.”

“No. I’d lose my control on you.”

“What if I promise you not to leave, if you let him go free?”

Blatsov watched her with a sardonic smile.

“I believe I can trust you. People like you have a sense of duty and usually fulfill their promises; therefore you are at the mercy of people like me, who don’t have those scruples.”

“Is there nothing sacred for you?”

“Just myself.”

“I’m ready to promise. Let him go.”

Although Luis did not understand most of the conversation, he saw that Lydia was offering her freedom in exchange for his and tried to protest, but Blatsov didn’t let him speak.

“Just a moment,” he said. “Before you take a final decision, I want to show you what I have here, so that you’ll know exactly how things are.”

He walked around the table, took Lydia’s arm with a familiar gesture and led her out of the room. Luis followed, for he did not want to be left alone. Blatsov walked toward the door in front, but Lydia stopped in the big chamber and stared at the silent identical workers. Blatsov noticed and turned to her.

“Who are these people?” asked Lydia.

“They are my creation, I mean, Nikomakos’s,” answered Blatsov proudly. “They are similar to your characters, but much simpler. We don’t waste effort trying to give them personalities and all that foolishness. We make them all equal, thus they are more manageable, that is, more useful.”

“Then these are the zombies of which everybody was speaking!”

“Zombies? Ah, I see what you mean! No, they aren’t zombies, they never were alive. They are simple automata, thus our armies cannot be overpowered.”

“But they are not all equal,” said Lydia pointing at the guardians at the other door. “Those, for instance, have different faces.”

“I must acknowledge that your characters have some advantages over mine,” replied Blatsov. “They are better for special purposes. I have recruited a few and put them in trusty positions. Come, I want to show you a few things that I’ve assembled here.”

He opened the door and went in, followed by the other two. The new chamber was almost as large as the one they had just left, but it was not a workplace, rather a store or an arsenal, full of weapons of every type, many of which Luis could not recognize.

“Cannon,” pointed Blatsov, “machine guns, armored cars, rifles with bayonets. I have hundreds. With these weapons and these soldiers, what can your Wellingtons, your Napoleons and your Prussian emperors do? What can you do? And you haven’t seen the best. Look!” he added, pointing at a roughly spherical artifact, half a meter in diameter, with its top bored by a groove. “This is my chef d’oeuvre. A uranium atom bomb, a little primitive, but it works. At present I have just this one, but I’ll soon have them in large numbers.”

Lydia seemed to be looking around at the store and its contents, but Luis noticed that most of her attention was addressed at the bomb just mentioned by Blatsov. When the man in black turned around and went to the door, with his back to them, she made a sign with her eyes, turned as though to follow Blatsov and extended her hand back with her palm upwards. Luis understood what she was asking, put his hand among his clothes, took Jacob’s ladder, broke the thread with a jerk and put the object on Lydia’s hand, which closed immediately. Then she got out of the room without looking at him or making any comment on what had happened.

Once again in his headquarters, Blatsov sat at his table and gazed at Lydia with a disagreeable smile.

“How do you like my arsenal?”

“It’s impressive!”

“Will you surrender?”

“With a condition: you must let Luis go away.”

“I’ll do that if you promise to remain here without offering resistance.”

“I promise that I won’t try to escape nor raise my hand against you.”

“It’s enough! Boy, you may go.”

Luis did not move. He was baffled by the speed with which the situation was changing, not sure that he should let Lydia sacrifice herself in such a way. Knowing what was on his mind, the woman moved near him, put her hand on his shoulder and said:

“Listen carefully: you must obey me blindly. Get out as fast as possible and walk to the end of the gorge outside the cavern. Charles and Pierre are waiting for you there. You must leave at once. Go to the Spanish border by the shortest way, then to Salamanca. Whatever happens, you must not come back. Understood?”

Luis nodded. Willy-nilly, he knew that he had to do what Lydia was asking. She made him turn toward the door and pushed him slightly. Without a word, because his voice would have broken, he left the headquarters, sent a farewell look at Lydia, whom he saw blurred through his tears, and walked quickly toward the exit. Nobody opposed his going out. The oak door opened by itself when he arrived. Two minutes later, he was outside the cavern.