Twenty-Two

Time had also passed for David Kirk.

He lay in some kind of limbo. He could see nothing, but he could feel his body, or so it seemed.

He remembered quite clearly what had happened. There he had been in his favourite position atop an attractive female; which female had never mattered to Kirk. Maria, for his purposes, was as suitable as Marian. Suddenly, the wave of blackness had become bigger and stronger. Maria disappeared. And here he was in a vacuum.

Am I ill?

He spoke the question out loud or tried to. No sound came. All around him was total silence. And though he repeated the words, and others also a few times, nothing happened. So presently he shrugged and lay there, waiting.

How much time went by, he had no idea. Hours? Days? It was impossible to guess. The question of how long it would go on was, however, resolved suddenly. A baritone voice said to him, “Have you come to a decision?”

The words were spoken quite close to Kirk’s ears. They appeared, therefore, to be directed at him. Decision? he thought. About what?… Brief bafflement. Even a tiny impulse to be naïve and ask what was the meaning of all this.

Naturally, being David Kirk, he was incapable of such a faux pas. As soon as he could, after a few seconds only, after he had time to realize that it could be that somebody had actually heard his own voice earlier and that conversation was possible, he said cautiously, “Would you outline for me again exactly what I am to make a decision about?”

The baritone voice explained, “I must have your agreement that you will help me exterminate the Diamondian people.”

“Of course, I will,” said David Kirk. “So what’s next?”