With one gesture, he ripped open his tunic and tore into his own flesh.
No, not his own flesh. Pseudo-flesh. He took out the gun that was
underneath.
"The beamer is made of X-ray-transparent plastic, Warden, but it works
as well as one made of steel and lead."
"Now that you've got it in here," I said in time with the pulse in my
throat, "what are you going to do with it?"
"I'm going to make you go down to the vaults and put me back to sleep,
Warden."
I nodded. "I suppose you can do that. But what's to prevent me from
waking you up as soon as I've taken away your gun?"
"This!" He tossed a sheet of paper onto my desk.
"What's this?" I asked unnecessarily. I could read it.
"A confession that you accepted a bribe to put me back to sleep,"
Horbit said, his tic beating out a feverish tempo. "As soon as you've
signed it, I'll use your phone to have it telefaxed to the Registrar of
Private Documents."
I had to admire the thought behind the idea. Horbit was convinced that
I was only a figment of his unfocused imagination, but he was playing
the game with uncompromising logic, trusting that even madness had hard
and tight rules behind it.
There was also something else I admired about the plan.
It could work.
Once he fed that document to the archives, I would be obligated to help
him even without the gun. My word would probably be taken that I had
been forced to do it at gunpoint, but there would always be doubts,
enough to wreck my career when it came time for promotion.
Nothing like this had ever happened in my years as warden.
* * * * *
Suddenly, Coleman's words hit me in the back of the neck. _If I got
through the next twenty-four hours._ This had to be some kind of test.
But a test for what?
Had I been deliberately told that I was living only a Dream to see
if my ethics would hold up even when I thought I wasn't dealing with
reality?
Or if this _was_ only a Dream, was it a test to see if I was morally
ready to return to the real, the earnest world?
But if it was a test to see if I was ready for reality, did I want to
pass it? My life was nerve-racking and mind-wrecking, but I liked the
challenge--it was the only life I knew or could believe in.
What was I going to do?
The only thing I knew was that I couldn't tune in tomorrow and find out.
The time was _now_.