A Dark and Hungry God Arises (49 page)

'After the events which have taken place here, ' the Amnioni continued, 'this network of dealings will no longer be fruitful for us. Therefore our relationship must be altered. Between you and us, Milos Taverner, con-formity of purpose will be achieved through the mutual satisfaction of requirements.

'You require life and support.

'We require you. '

From out of his pocket, Marc Vestabule pulled a hypo.

The vial of the hypo held a viscid liquid, as dark as poison.

Screaming, Milos flung himself out of his chair.

Vestabule caught him easily, however. One Amnioni hand gripped him, as tight as a flexsteel band; one human fist drove like a piston into his solar plexus.

Fear as fathomless as the gap between the stars shocked Milos' nerves. Locked in spasms while his neurons mis-fired, he couldn't defend himself as Vestabule pierced his forearm with the hypo and released mutagens into his veins.

WARDEN DIOS:

JOURNALS OF HASHI LEBWOHL,

DIRECTOR, DATA ACQUISITION,

[This extract is dated several months prior to Angus Thermopyle's arrest by

Com-Mine Security. ]

... Nowhere is the particular and peculiar genius of the man more evident than in his handling of the matter of the Intertech immunity drug.

I have had occasion to note in previous entries that he is my superior because he possesses a quality of charisma

- the ability to lead by inspiration - which I lack. In other ways, however, I consider him my only peer —

certainly my only peer in the hallowed bastion of UMCPHQ. Yet I must acknowledge that I would have been hard pressed to manage the crisis which Intertech's immunity research represented as well as he did. Perhaps because I lack charisma, I might not have been able to obtain — as he did - the most desirable of all possible outcomes...

... the issue is difficult to explain because an understanding of its parameters requires an understanding of Holt Fasner, and an explication of Holt Fasner's motivations is not a challenge to be undertaken lightly. Speculation is both easier and less useful than true insight.

I might, for example, consider the possibility that the common view of the Dragon is inadequate. Of course, I do not refer to the public perception that he is simply the most wealthy, dominant, commanding, glamorous and therefore necessary man living. Rather I mean to cite the view which commonly underlies the public perception - the view that he is a man driven by avarice, impelled by greed to risk all human space against the Amnion for the sake of the UMC's profitability. This view is inadequate because the difference between unimaginable riches and even more unimaginable riches is ultimately trivial.

Instead I might speculate that his avarice is not for wealth, but for power - that he is driven by a desire for godhood, a yearning to attain the stature of unquestionable as well as unavoidable fate for the whole of humankind. And I might further observe that all human aspirations to godhood must fail while the Amnion and death exist. Finally I might conclude that it is this ineluctable failure which both confirms Holt Fasner's lust for power and erodes his ability to control it.

But, having said all that, what have I accomplished?

Have I shed any light into the dark heart of the Dragon in his lair? Have I altered any of the decisions which must be made, the actions which must be taken, concerning him? I have not. I have only constructed a guesswork edifice for my own edification and amusement...

... accept, then, the underlying common view that Holt Fasner is cemented to his own fate by ordinary acquisitiveness - that all his great attainments and cunning are dedicated to the uninteresting goal of acquiring meaningless increments of wealth. Does this imply a concomitant acceptance of the commonly held underlying view of Warden Dios, that he is nothing more than the perfect instrument of Holt Fasner's will? that he is at once so brilliant and so mindless that he can serve Holt Fasner purely, untainted by needs and desires of his own?

that he lacks both of those glorious human foibles, scruple and ambition?

Certainly not. It is patent that brilliance and mindlessness cannot coexist, that ambition metastasizes exponentially in the absence of scruple. Holt Fasner Q. E. D.

Therefore it follows as naturally as humans fear pain that Warden Dios is not the Dragon's instrument, but rather his natural enemy.

This explains the Dragon's selection of him as director of the UMCP. How better to both defang and profit from a natural enemy than by binding him to yourself, sealing him away within your own structures and exigencies, so he cannot serve himself without also serving you? If Warden Dios were not the director of the UMCP, Holt Fasner would have to kill him.

Yet this is a paradox — at once fertile and dangerous -

because Warden Dios' needs and ambitions can never be identical to the Dragon's.

Intertech's immunity research provides a case in point.

Grant for a moment that Warden Dios is another Holt Fasner — less confirmed in his lust for power, less eroded in his ability to control it - but another Dragon nonetheless. Precisely because he has been less confirmed, less eroded, he cannot aspire to supplant his nominal master.

Yet what other outlets remain for his ambitions? What other needs or priorities might his brilliance serve? And

- do not neglect this point - how else can his natural enmity to the Dragon express itself?

Perhaps by identifying himself with the UMCP rather than with the UMC. By assigning to the UMCP an importance which he denies to the vaster and less specific domain of the Dragon. By affirming the stated purposes and restrictions of the UMCP at the expense of Holt Fasner and the UMC.

Now consider the matter of the immunity drug.

The moment Intertech's research threatens to succeed, the Dragon perceives a threat. If humankind may be immunized against mutagens, the peril of the Amnion recedes. Therefore the necessity of the UMCP - and of its corporate host - recedes. Therefore the logic which sustains that host as the sole conduit for alien trade and wealth loses its syllogistic inevitability.

At once the Dragon moves to quash the research. It must be removed before it can become the means by which his hold on human space frays away.

So much is predictable, hardly worthy of comment.

But how does Warden Dios respond? Does he permit himself spasms of self-righteousness, as a lesser man might? Does he fall prey to scruples or faint-hearted alarms? Does he oppose his putative master, either openly or privately?

He does not.

Instead he persuades the Dragon that Intertech's research must be permitted to continue in secret — in my care, in fact. Employing his considerable resources of eloquence and charisma, he convinces the Dragon that an attained immunity drug - if it were kept secret - would be a tool of unmatched power. He does not stake his argument on the proposition that such a drug could be used to secure the safety of his own people. Instead he suggests using, not the drug itself, but knowledge of the drug against the Amnion. By 'leaking' - odious term - that knowledge, he can induce them to be more fearful in their dealings with us. They will be at once confirmed in their distrust of humankind and eroded in their ability to act on that distrust. And this development will conduce to the security of the UMC as the sole conduit for alien etc.

How can the Dragon resist such blandishment? Its virtues are too plain to be refuted. The current state of poised but inactive hostility between humankind and the Amnion is reinforced. UMC profits are maximized. And Warden Dios' purity as the instrument of Holt Fasner's will is demonstrated. His natural enmity to the Dragon is apparently defanged by his implication in the Dragon's disdain for humankind. Once again Warden Dios is sub-sumed by Holt Fasner's avarice.

Inevitably the Dragon cedes his approval. And so the Intertech research comes to me, to complete and use as I advise - and as Warden Dios sees fit.

Therefore the commonly held view that Warden Dios is the perfect instrument of Holt Fasner's will is affirmed, is it not?

I think not.

Consider the beauty of this outcome from the perspective of the UMCP. Certainly the Dragon is given what he most desires - the immeasurable and ultimately meaningless satisfaction of his greed. But the more significant, the more effective, benefits belong all to the UMCP. We have the drug itself, to use both for our own security and for the consternation of our opponents. The risks of actions we have already taken are reduced. The risks of actions which we have heretofore declined are made acceptable. We can manipulate the defensive postures of the Amnion almost at will. The consequences of humankind's quite natural and comprehensible impulse toward piracy are diminished. We are given a bulwark against the depredations of politicians, protected by the mere existence of our secrets from ham-fisted tampering. Only Protocol suffers under the burden of secrecy - and such men as Godsen Frik are born to suffer. Both Enforcement Division and Data Acquisition are made stronger.

Warden Dios has gained all this - and at what cost?

At no discernible cost at all, apart from the delicious expense of allowing the Dragon to retain his illusions.

And failures of godhood will - they must - derive from any illusion. Thus Holt Fasner has been at once confirmed in his lust for power and eroded in his ability to control it by his most necessary subordinate - his most natural enemy...

... having no scruples myself, I do not hesitate to call myself a genius. However, I am more cautious when I apply that name to others...

... because of victories such as his handling of Intertech's immunity research, as well as countless others, I state categorically that Warden Dios is a genius.

Godsen Frik sat in his office and stared at the orders he'd just received. As he read the official hardcopy for the third time, he tried to believe that he wasn't afraid.

Things like this weren't supposed to happen to him.

What was the advantage of being Holt Fasner's protege

- what did he gain by his efforts to serve the United Mining Companies as much as the United Mining Companies Police - if things like this could still happen to him?

Where did Warden Dios get the nerve? Didn't he understand that Holt Fasner was his boss — that the Dragon could simply fire him?

But if Warden fired Godsen himself first - and the Dragon didn't consider the director of Protocol worth losing the director of the whole UMCP for -

That was the possibility Godsen concentrated on, so that he wouldn't think about his real fear. A man who'd been fired by the UMCP for insubordination - or worse

— wasn't a likely candidate to succeed Abrim Len as President of the Governing Council for Earth and Space. All of his ambitions - not to mention his long years of patience and ass-licking - would come to nothing.

The other possibilities were too disturbing to consider.

What if this quicksand of plots and counter-plots proved too thick for him; too subtle and deadly? What if he drowned in it? He could survive being fired. And if he was fired in Holt Fasner's name, the Dragon would eventually reward him. But what if the plotting actually killed him?

There was blood in these orders. He knew without asking that they were a response to the attack on Sixten Vertigus. People were going to die before this tangle of betrayals sorted itself out. Somewhere, somehow, the decision had already been made that the stakes were worth killing for.

Godsen Frik didn't want to be one of the casualties.

He re-read the hardcopy obsessively in an effort to prevent himself from wondering whether his loyalty to Holt Fasner at Warden Dios' occasional expense was reason enough for nameless madmen to want him dead.

Or whether he distrusted Dios enough to call the UMCP director a madman.

His orders were as clear as they were unexplained.

Until further notice, Godsen Frik, director of Protocol, United Mining Companies Police, was restricted to UMCPHQ.

What was Dios trying to do? Prevent Frik from taking one of his sporadic junkets to the fleshpots - Godsen loved words like that—of Earth, where he would presumably be an easy target? Well, in all honesty that wasn't much of a hardship. Protocol was full of attractive women - he'd seen to that as a good PR director should

- and some of them found him attractive in turn, for their own reasons. If they lacked the seductive perversion of the fleshpots, they were still women. Some of them were bound to be worth teaching.

In fact, being restricted to UMCPHQ wasn't a hardship at all, in any obvious sense. His quarters were luxuri-ous in ways which satisfied his sense of his own worth, ways which suggested that he was accustomed to wealth and status, but not ruled by them: his rooms were spacious; full of subdued art, quiet holograms, data terminals and video screens; famished with costly but understated rugs, sofas, chairs, tables, beds. And his office was spartan only by comparison with the official room which Warden never used except on occasions of public display. From where he sat he could perform all the necessary functions of his job: issue bulletins, hold meet-ings, fend off or gratify newsdogs; brief the votes either in session or in private, by public transmission or secure down-link; support or oppose the policies of his fellow directors.

So why did he feel trapped? Why was he scared?

Because there was so much at stake, sure, of course, that was the reason. Angus Thermopyle had been set loose against Billingate. Controlled by none other than Milos Taverner, in the name of Heaven! And explicitly programmed not to rescue Morn Hyland. That was bad enough. But Dios' explosive video conference with the GCES made everything worse. A nightmare for Protocol, impossible to clean up or sweep under the rug. He had

'curled the moral hair' of the votes with a vengeance.

Godsen had already received four calls from Maxim Igensard, five from UWB Junior Member Carsin, and two more from Abrim Len - none of which he'd answered, for the simple reason that he didn't know how.