He had a knife. Cavolini’s right arm began to twitch, and his slack facial muscles came to life for the first time, taking on a grimace of pain. It still hurts. Please help me. The bioethicist glanced calmly at some figures on the display screen, but declined to intervene. Any effective anesthetic would damp down neural activity too much to allow the interrogation to continue; it was all or nothing, abort or proceed.

Lukowski said gently, “The nurse is getting some pain killers. Hang in there, man, it won’t be long. But tell me: who had the knife? ” The faces of both of them were glistening with sweat now; Lukowski’s arm was scarlet up to the elbow. I thought: If you found someone dying on the pavement in a pool of blood, you’d ask the same questions, wouldn’t you? And tell the same reassuring lies?

“Who was it, Danny?”

My brother.

“Your brother had the knife?”

No he didn’t. I can’t remember what happened. Ask me later. My head’s too fuzzy now.

“Why did you say it was your brother? Was it him, or wasn’t it?”

Of course it wasn’t him. Don’t tell anyone I said that. I’ll be all right if you stop confusing me. Can I have the painkillers now? Please?

His face flowed and froze, flowed and froze, like a sequence of masks, making his suffering seem stylized, abstract. He began to move his head back and forth; weakly at first, then with manic speed and energy. I assumed he was having some kind of seizure: the revival drugs were overstimulating some damaged neural pathway.

Then he reached up with his right hand and tore away the blindfold.

His head stopped jerking immediately; maybe his skin had grown hypersensitive, and the blindfold had become an unbearable irritation. He blinked a few times, then squinted up at the room’s bright lights. I could see his pupils contract, his eyes moving purposefully. He raised his head slightly and examined Lukowski, then looked down at his own body and its strange adornments: the pacemaker’s brightly colored ribbon cable; the heavy plastic blood-supply tubes; the knife wounds full of glistening white maggots. Nobody moved, nobody spoke, while he inspected the needles and electrodes buried in his chest, the strange pink tide washing out of him, his ruined lungs, his artificial airway. The display screen was behind him, but everything else was there to be taken in at a glance. In a matter of seconds, he knew ; I could see the weight of understanding descend on him.