“How long do I keep these bandages on?” he asked, putting the contracts on the leather layback.
The voice didn’t answer immediately. “YOU HAVE A CHOICE.”
Louis glanced up at the ceiling, slightly bemused. “You’re the docs. Aren’t you supposed to tell me when they can come off?”
The voice repeated itself.
Louis shrugged. If that was the way it was, then he chose now. He grabbed a loose end of a bandage on his wrist and unwound it. There was another bandage underneath. He unwound that one too. There was another. And another. “What the hell’s going on?” he said, growling under his breath. Then to the ceiling: “Get these goddamn bandages off me!”
“MAKE YOUR CHOICE,” the voice said. It wasn’t a threat, just a simple statement of fact.
Louis glanced down at the leather layback and picked up the scroll with the purple ribbon. He was surprised to read that it wasn’t a contract at all. It was a goddamn party invitation. Louis DeVille is hereby invited to attend the Celebration of Life at the Mansion of Many Rooms. He reread it, thinking it some kind of childish joke. There was no name, no indication as to who had written it. Nor was it dated; and he had no idea where in hell he was supposed to find the address of the Mansion of Many Rooms. His signature wasn’t even required at the bottom. What kind of goddamn contract was this? Something his useless wife would have come up with. It was even hand written in amateurish scrawl. The whole thing was farcical, just like this entire goddamn state of affairs.
When he glanced down at the thick wad of paper, it suddenly clicked what he was meant to do. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this whole thing is a test.
He tossed the scroll over his shoulder and flicked through the other contract. Now this was more like it. Six hundred and sixty-six typed pages of detailed contractual obligations. Though, to his dismay, there were more clauses and sub-clauses than he had seen on any document, more than he reckoned he would find on the latest amendment to the constitution of the United Goddamn States of America. It would take him over a month to get through all the legalese mumbo jumbo.
He skimmed over the first few pages. It seemed the issuing authority, LeMont International Enterprises Ltd, was undertaking a major restructuring program and he was being headhunted to oversee the project, and at his age that was a goddamn laugh. Still, on page thirteen, the contract defined the proposed position as “Interim Management Consultant,” IMC, and went on to list the terms of his employment over the next four or five pages. Which was the first thing he needed to negotiate. He couldn’t devote himself to another fulltime position whilst remaining head of Global Resolutions Network. Goddamn it. That would mean working around the clock. It just couldn’t be done; and though he was flattered at their interest in him, he would just have to tell them that their expectations were a little unrealistic, to say the least. If they really wanted his consulting services, they would just have to accept he couldn’t do it at the drop of a hat. It would have to be part-time, once a week at most, or nothing.
He continued reading. On page one hundred and four he saw something about “exclusivity of intellectual property” and made a mental note to query it with his lawyers (and he would, goddamn it, even if LeMont International Enterprises had a problem with getting his lawyers involved). There was more, too. The position of Interim Management Consultant entailed living on site, which was just goddamn ridiculous. He would be buggered before he packed up and left his penthouse on Beeker Street. But it was there, in writing. Clause one hundred and sixty-nine, sub-clause (b) on page two hundred and seventy-three: “It is agreed that the IMC undertakes immediate residency within the premises of LeMont International Enterprises Ltd.”
He kept flicking through, shaking his head. From what he could gather, LeMont International Enterprises was some kind of industrial export park where all the employees worked and lived, from cleaners and maintenance workers to administrative and executive staff. It sounded massive, in fact, a corporation leviathan. A corporation metropolis.
How hadn’t he heard of them before? He hadn’t a goddamn clue who LeMont International Enterprises were, and there was nothing in the contract from what he had briefly seen to indicate what they actually produced. They weren’t listed on the New York Stock Exchange, that was for sure; something this big he would have known about. They had to be privately owned. When he got out of hospital, he would make sure Sarah got onto it straight away. Find out just who these guys were, and what in hell they had to do with his rehabilitation.
He put the contract back down on the leather layback. All in all it looked like the real deal. It was tempting all right. Tempting enough that he might just take them up on their offer. Maybe he could manipulate the position of IMC for the good for his own business. Maybe this company was the answer to the recent problems he had been facing.
“I’ll need some time to go through it,” he said to the ceiling. “Devil’s in the detail, you know. I’m not just putting my name down on something without going through it with a fine-tooth comb.”
Louis heard whispers before the voice answered: “YOU HAVE ALREADY CHOSEN.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t signed anything yet.”
“YOU HAVE REJECTED THE OTHER. YOUR CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE.”
Louis glanced over his shoulder at the scroll he had tossed away. He was about to say that the assumption of choice made through indirect action was goddamn ridiculous, and about as legally binding as same sex marriage in the state of Utah, but the voice cut him short.
“LOUIS DEVILLE. ARE YOU READY?”
“What, goddamn it? Ready for what?”
“YOUR JUDGMENT.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Judgment
WITHOUT any indication of what was going to happen, the room suddenly lit up in a flash of brilliant white light, as though a Super Nova had just exploded over his head. Louis’ first reaction was to cringe and bury his head in the crook of his bandaged elbows. “What the hell?” he shouted.
It wasn’t an explosion, as it turned out. There was no noise, no cracking boom that burst his eardrums and rendered him deaf. There was no heat surge, though he half expected to feel himself erupt into flames and frizzle to a pile of ash. There wasn’t even a shockwave to knock him to his knees or launch him into the wall on the other side of the room. Not so much as a breath of wind, just stillness and silence.
Nonetheless, when he peeked from the crooks of his elbows, he found he had been temporarily blinded. The abyss of darkness had returned, to his dismay, though this time he was fully corpus mentis. “Goddamn it you son of a bitch!” he shouted to the ceiling, groping the space in front of him where the leather layback should have been. “I can’t see a goddamn thing!”
He kept groping for the layback. At that moment, he heard footsteps scuffling from behind. He spun around, though what really freaked him out was that it sounded more like a scuttling rodent than an approaching nurse or medic. A goddamn huge rodent.
“Who’s there?” he said. He heard the opening of a door, followed by scuffled footsteps and some sort of scraping noise. “Who’s there?” he asked again. The door clicked shut and he heard more scraping scuffles. “Answer me, goddamn it! I know someone’s there!”
“Now, now, Mr. DeVille,” someone said, and sniggered. “No need to get hot under the collar. I’m here to help.”
Louis almost jumped out of his bandages. It wasn’t the same voice he had heard previously, the one that boomed from every corner of the room. This was meek and reedy and filled with a false sense of courage, the kind of voice that only dared to make itself