Behold a Dark Mirror (4 page)

Jenus tried to comfort her.  "It wasn't your fault." 

She sniffled.

"You saved a boy's life tonight,"  he said.  "But we'll have to talk to Corinne tomorrow." 

"You've...  You've been great,"  She said.

Jenus felt better when he took the frame home, but the feeling didn't last.  His apartment was a shocking mess:  It had been searched, a professional job, not a corner left untouched.  His canary was dead in its unopened and intact cage.  Jenus hastily checked whether the intruders had found what he suspected they were after.

CHAPTER 4

Whose voice was it?
  Nero wondered. 

"Kebe!"  He said the first word he had spoken in days.  "Kebe Hope.  What a surprise this message from her is."  Smiling, he shifted in his chair and turned the volume up a bit, lending if possible an even more attentive ear to the recording:

"As you may already know, the head of security at ConSEnt died recently.  Leonard Duskin was a powerful figure, but just how powerful nobody knew until now.  We obtained some intelligence, and since I want something from you, I'll indulge you with details.

One of our sections was engaged in a hit-and-run mission at ConSEnt headquarters.  I know, this was stupid.  They're all dead now;  I can't figure why they did what they did, and they never told anybody.  The story is a patchwork of real info and big holes that my imagination filled.  It starts like this:  Somebody thought up a scheme that involved junking loot with a custom tracking beacon.  The ploy, however, didn't work as intended.

I’ll tell you that we scan most of ConSEnt's garbage–keep it a secret.  One of our people picked up a strange echo and was smart enough to wonder why.  She found a tracker where none should be, and you won't believe what she fished!

Duskin's personal journal was wrapped in a waterproof bag.  I can say this:  Duskin had written it in longhand as if he didn't trust that information with any other witness but his ink pen.  We now have it.

I can't fathom why ConSEnt didn't keep better care of such an asset.  I think Donald Maast was overeager to claim his chair and threw out the baby with the bath water—he cleared Lenny's effects and sent everything to classification without looking through the stuff himself.  He didn't know about Duskin's journal.

Duskin hadn't told him, probably:  Old Lenny wasn't guessing he'd die in bed with a prostitute–contrary to the official and honorable version of his demise.  Maybe he was planning to tell Maast about the journal from a less casual deathbed.

Some clerk ended up stuffing all paperwork into his own office, thinking he'd get around to it sometime.  Most of what these clerks read is sleep-inducing red tape;  little deserves curiosity.

I'm supposing our agent may have known about the journal from one of Lenny's broads.  Lonely old men tell their lasses stuff they wouldn't tell their confessors.  I can speak personally, from a broad perspective.  The pun is intended.

Well, the book is too hot to handle.  There's enough in it to discredit both ConSEnt and the Tower and start a civil war or two.  I don't know what to do with it yet.  I don't trust my boss, and I need time to think.

Here’s where you come in, living at the end of the universe.  I'd like to safe-keep the book at your place.  Ah!  You don't know anybody underground, except me–right?

I want to offer you this job, pal.  Take it, and believe me, it will be worth your redemption:  you
do
want a piece of the action.  In any case, my life depends on your discretion. I want to trust you, I know I'm right.

Everything is under control, for now.  I'll be waiting to hear from you.  If you don't want anything to do with me at all, please eat this card:  You don't like food anyway, so it won't bother you.  Otherwise, you know where to reach me.  I hope this will be a good excuse to see you soon.  I'm loving it, giving you another chance at life! Please, please, take it.

Oh, P.S.:  Of course, you understand why I'm not signing, don't you?  My apologies."

Silence fell, broken by the howl of the wind.  The card popped out of its slot with a click.  The screen came to life with bright orange letters: 
End of Recording
.

He needed something to drink.  Nero shrugged at how the Tower ran the government.  He didn't like ConSEnt, either, but he'd never had any bad experience.  So Kebe was a real underground hotshot.  A smile came to his lips:  Many questions are better answered when not asked.  He had wanted to ask many of Kebe, but didn't.

Nero walked to the stove to brew licorice tea.  He had meet her about two years ago, on Earth, in a picturesque rat hole called Maun after Margo had died, just before he realized his personal destiny had no redemption in store.  He had taken a trip to Africa to do something new.  A good part of that continent, he had been told, looked then as it had looked centuries earlier.  From what he could remember, they were right.

It seemed to Nero that the quality of people he met on vacation had to be inversely proportional to the comfort of the journey.  He and Kebe had found each other at a bring-your-beans game-watching jaunt a local guide had set up.

He would have asked her to... To what?  He maybe had felt whole for a short while, but it could not have lasted.  Kebe was someone of value, but he didn't have any purpose left.

She left him an address for his private dynabase.  Later, he mailed news to his  correspondents about his move to Doka.  Some of them did write.

Kebe was onto something hot that had now become an inconvenience to Nero: 
If I say yes, I'll be up to my neck in intrigue.  If no, I'll admit to being less alive than I'd like to believe.

He poured boiling water over a bag of licorice tea.  Steam from the cup rose in the air, mixing with the dry airflow from the heating vent.  After steeping, he dropped an ice cube in the hot mug;  the ice cracked on contact with the liquid. When he sipped, the sweet tang stretched into his throat at the right temperature, hot enough to zing, but not to scald–like he had remembered Kebe before tonight.  Now he had to figure out what his own stance about ConSEnt and the Tower would be.  Or rather, he must decide yet again what to do with his life.  Ah, well.

*

In a previous life Nero had always followed politics only for business.  As far as he knew, the Tower was entrenched in a government where small cadres of cognoscenti catered to each other's political needs.  Maybe that was good, and maybe not;  as a practical man, Nero didn't care.  He had freedom to pursue his goals, which was enough.

Even if he was certain Power Sharing as the Tower preached it was a cheap lie, his activism consisted in speculating over lunch about stopping that demagoguery.  As far as Nero was concerned, PS was another failed experiment like democracy before it.

On the other hand, the hold on power of Consolidated Shipping Enterprises was as secure as ever.  To Nero's reckoning, ConSEnt made the good and the bad weather about matters of teleportation.  The Tower was supposed to be in charge, and it was:  It opened umbrellas or donned shades, depending on the rain or sun that ConSEnt decreed.

Nero guessed that ConSEnt had Napoleonic ambitions–and could fulfill them.  There was a joke that ConSEnt was the sole reliable source of census data, even if it didn’t collect survey forms.  The Enterprises built, owned, and operated all teledevices in use.  They also traced anybody moving through their equipment;  so, in a way, they could know where everybody was at all times.

ConSEnt was above the law when Nero had left for Doka.  ConSEnt alone decided who would have access to the frame, or who'd be barred from society.  Yet, ConSEnt had never been in Nero's way.

After tonight, he would choose a side.  Perhaps.

Establish what is right and wrong, and do what is right, Margo preached.  Easier said than done.  Performance, I'm good at;  right and wrong...  I was right, because what I wanted was right by fiat.  Now it's different.  I don't know–I don't!

Nero paused;  he felt a knot forming in his throat.

Margo would have known.  My wife would have if she were alive, if I had not killed her, if I had not killed my children.
  He took a sip of licorice.  Swallowing it was painful.

A large window opened onto the now-dark landscape outside his trailer.  The edges of walkways shone with the eerie luminescence of gloweed, which was dim, but sufficient to mark the way.  Kebe had given him a worthy question to answer, and maybe an excuse to see her again, too.  Tomorrow he would make a decision.  Yes, tomorrow.

*

That night he had a dream.  Margo came and brought a book.  She read to him from it, but Nero could not remember what she told him.  The book had a golden cover, and he knew it was about love.  He had read part of the book;  but Margo was reading from pages Nero never touched.  Margo's words were soothing.  Every word was good.  Then she had to go, kissed him on the forehead and hugged him before leaving. 

When she left Nero woke up and wept.  Margo knew about right and wrong.  In his dreams, she was never angry for what happened.  She never accused him.  She never blamed him.  That didn't stop Nero from blaming himself with endless anger:  forgiveness was impossible.  He made the rules, and he had broken them.  He broke them because of love, he thought.  No, that was not love.  If he had loved Margo and the children, he would have done better.  He would not have broken the rules–his rules.  His own rules would have saved them.

He needed to punish himself for breaking his rules.

But he would not have broken his own rules, had he not loved them.  He loved them, and because of this he had to break his rules.  His rules were an obstacle.  The rules stood between him and his family.  He had to break them to be with his family.

The rules were good, they had stood through trying circumstances.  His rules were right.  But he had broken them, and now he had to pay the price.  He had broken them, and that was bad.  He had broken them for love, and Margo said that was good.

Torment, Nero thought, was here once more. 
Welcome back, robber of my peace.  You have forsaken me for another day, and now return for the night.  Ah, how I can rely on your presence.

Margo loved him.  He loved Margo and the children more than himself, and more than his rules.  That was right and good.  Yet, it was not.  If he had loved them, he'd have lived by the rules, and they'd have lived.  His love was imperfect and without harmony.

Margo knew more about love than he would ever have known, and she taught him, line upon line, by grace, forgiveness.  His painful tears flowed slowly.  Tears rolled down his face, dripped onto his chest.  Emptiness!  His heart was hollow, his existence was hollow, like a dead tree still on its roots, like the memory of life.

Nero needed real life.  He needed to find out about the other pages in Margo's book.  He wasn't going to while baby-sitting solitude;  he had not succeeded in more than a year of trying.

And so Nero realized that he had made his decision.

*

Mornings on Doka were nature's show time.  The radiation of two suns created turbulence in the high atmosphere, and airborne dust painted each sunrise with deep red and purple.  With a couple of clouds, the show was glorious.  Nero's attention, however, was elsewhere:  After waking up, he had started preparing a reply for Kebe.

There was no encoding gear on Doka, so Nero had to rig up makeshift equipment.  Manufacturing a wildcat card was even harder.  When he remixed his announcement, night had long since fallen and the next day was arriving:

"The end of the universe is open for business.  Renovation has been slow, inactivity useless.  Hot potatoes are necessary to feed the hungry and lonely resident.  Hope to see you soon."

Nero slept through another spectacular sunrise and on through the morning.

*

Boring days passed;  routines became a tease, the lack of meaning unendurable.  Nero's penance was now to wait:  The fuse was ignited, would the bomb go off?  Rook and Zochar played their eternal games of light and darkness.  Pook came and went.

One day, a spike appeared on the power monitor.  Suddenly, the faithful cart that had carried Nero around for months on end became insufferably slow.  A parcel filled the mail tray.  Nero brought it to the tea table, blew the dust off, and opened it.

The package contained a hardcover book with pages filled in fine handwriting, an optical card, and a small envelope.  He had no reader at hand for the card.  The cover of the book said 
The Making of an Empire
, and, on the next line: by Leonard Timothy Duskin.  The envelope was full with a deck of microfiches.  Nero turned to the first page in the book.

“Power Sharing was created to reestablish the trust of the public in government.  After democracy failed to deliver its promise of participation, rethinking became a necessity.  Yet, regardless of its package, power always flows by the same rules.

The danger from the collapse of democracy was the onset of anarchy, which is the greatest foe of power because of the absence of rule.  I admire how a few individuals who understand power can influence history:  The council of Bratislava perceived that a novel solution was needed to preserve global influence.  They understood that in due time, influence would become control.

Public governments were lame champions of participation.  The lie they purported to defend, however, was appealing.  If too many idiots had not become so complacent in their zeal for corruption, they might still be in power.  Anyway, after the Disorder, public government yielded to private government.  The concept of private government seems close to that of empire, but this is not the case.  Private government as implemented by Power Sharing is not so dissimilar from its public predecessor, democracy.  Even if they are frauds, both entail the appearance of participation.

The council defined the charter of Power Sharing and established the Institute for Private Government to implement it.  IPG was housed in the surviving Kenzo tower in Bologna, Italy.  Later, IPG became known as the Tower, after the site that housed it.

IPG spawned the Guilds and the Corporations and endowed them with stock in government.  These allegedly private organizations sat at the voting table of IPG in proportion to their stock holdings.  IPG spread its rule to every known human settlement, and its power was shared by all voting members.