The Complete Karma Trilogy (19 page)

Not a single person raised their hand. It was what he had hoped for, it definitely made things less complicated if everyone went along with him. He had spent the last few years developing their loyalty for that purpose alone.

“That’s very good, that’s what I wanted to see. I will conclude today’s sermon with that display of solidarity, since I feel that it embodies our mission so well. Half of you will now return to the farm, and the other half will commence training immediately. Thank you,” he said, and he stepped down from the pulpit.

Decay 9

No Mirrors

Eric had taken
Will to a Privacy Room inside of the police station, where they were looking at Will’s Karma Map.

“I don’t see what you’re seeing, Will, but like I told you before I think the guy’s suspicious, so I can almost believe you. Even though it’s unbelievable.”

“So what do we do about it?” Will asked, excited.

“If you’re really up for this, I’ll get a small group of people—I’m thinking Steve, John, and Marcus. Don’t tell anyone else. If we can expose this man, and take him out all on our own, we’ll be heroes. I know how much you’ve always wanted to be a hero, I’ve been watching you for this past month. If you’re right, this will be that time. But until we bring him down, you can’t tell anyone. Don’t go around telling everyone you know that Charles Darcy is somehow breaking the system. I’ll tell you why.

“It has happened before, that people have successfully gotten the Karma Chip out of their head. That’s not the kind of thing they teach you in school, even in training here, because I don’t think they want you to know. I don’t think I’m even supposed to know. You’ve already seen the kind of desperate people that try to cut their own Chip out. Most of them don’t even think it was possible, even as they do it. It’s just desperation that tells them they should. Some of them have said that same thing to me, right before I Evaporated them. ‘It isn’t possible. I knew I was going to die instead.’ There would be a lot more people out there trying to get their Chip out, if they knew it was possible to get it out and keep living. I could guarantee you that. And that’s why they don’t want people to know, I think. They go around telling you that you need it to live, they say it’s as important to the functioning of your brain as your spinal cord, in schools and in the newspapers, so people don’t mess with it.

“What I’m trying to say is, if you go around telling people Charles got his Chip out of his head, I think that Karma might start investigating you as well, as weird as that sounds, and you don’t want that. Because you doubted for a second what they taught you in school, about the Card being necessary for life. So it’s our secret. I’m telling you this because I trust you, okay man? And we’re going to go do this, so I need you to be on the same page, alright?”

“Alright.”

“We’re going to get our little group together, and we’re just going to go out there, to where this Charles guy lives. We’re not going to even give a reason. And if we find some Privacy Room he’s be tampering with, or some other electronics, that will be good enough, we’ll have him. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll talk to the other guys, and then we’ll go. Right away, so get ready.”

The five of them were on a subway headed to Champlain, New York. Will was sitting next to Marcus, and the usually laconic man was talking to him for the first time in the month that Will had been working with him. “What is it we’re doing here? Eric didn’t tell me anything.”

The rest of the officers were a few seats down, outside of earshot. Will said, “We’re going to go check out Charles Darcy. You’ve heard of the guy, right? He’s pretty famous now. That guy that got rich doing Good Works.”

“And why are we doing that?”

He didn’t know how much he should say. He wasn’t in a Privacy Room, for one thing, and Eric had apparently not deemed it important to tell the others the situation. But Will didn’t have much of a capacity for lying, or evading questions, so he tried to answer without directly disobeying Eric’s advice.

“I just… we just thought he was kind of suspicious. Eric said he’d thought he was suspicious ever since he talked to him in the City Park. You went with him, didn’t you? Or was it someone else?”

“It was me,” Marcus said.

“And you didn’t think there was anything suspicious about him?”

Just then they stopped at another station, and a large group of elderly people got onto the subway. Most were able to find a seat, but an elderly man was left standing in the middle of the aisle, looking around him futilely. Will stood up. “You can sit here, sir. I’ll just stand.”

“No, that’s alright, young man,” he said, although without much conviction in his voice, as he stared at the empty seat.

“I’m insisting,” Will said, and distanced himself from the seat more.

“Alright, alright. Thank you.”

Will then stood in front of Marcus as the subway started up again, and was still waiting expectantly for an answer. “You were saying?” Will prompted.

“Oh, suspicious? Not terribly, no. Some people just like to go to the Park, even if it is ugly. That’s probably what Eric told you he thought was weird about him, right? That he liked to hang out in the Park? Eric just can’t understand that some people like the little relics of nature that we still have left.”

“That is what he said, but that’s not why I’m convinced.”

“Then why are you convinced?”

“It’s hard to say,” he said, hesitantly.

“Charles is a guy that’s been doing Good Works every second of his waking life, and he doesn’t sleep. I would have figured that would be right up your alley. You seem like a pretty diligent guy. Is it jealousy?”

“Jealousy? No. It’s something else. I mean, I guess we’ll just see when we get there. We’ll either find something, or we won’t.”

“Very true,” Marcus said. “I’m very interested to see which it will be.”

They stood at the front door of Charles’ mansion, and Eric had just rung. They waited, somewhat tensely, for a response. After two minutes, Eric said to the others, “He’s in there. I can see him on my Karma Map. We rang the doorbell, and he went to the bathroom. Make any sense to you guys? If he takes any longer, I say we just break in.”

Only a second after Eric had finished speaking, the door opened and Charles was standing behind it, fairly worn looking but still handsome. “Can I help you?” he asked, a little out of breath.

“We’re here to inspect the place,” Eric said with authority. “And I’ll be asking you a few questions, if you’ll show me around.”

“Naturally. Please, do come in. And I know it’s a quaint tradition, but if you could leave your shoes by the door, I would appreciate it,” he said as he backed up, and opened the door wider to let them in. Everyone but Eric took their shoes off. Will was embarrassed by his metallic feet, which looked so conspicuous among the rest. While they were all still at the entrance, Eric whispered into Will’s ear, “Check the bathroom. Thoroughly. There’s a reason he went in there first. Ask him where it is.”

“Mr. Darcy,” Will started, after Eric had backed away from him. “If you could point me in the direction of the bathroom, please?”

“It’s right down that hall, to your left. You won’t be able to miss it.”

“And take me to the master bedroom, or wherever it is you sleep,” Eric said, when Will had finished.

“Oh, you’re the man from before, aren’t you? That I met in the City Park. I just recognized you. Pleasure to see you again. If you’re offering a position again, now isn’t the best time.”

“That’s not why we’re here. The master bedroom.”

“My mistake. Right this way.”

While they walked down the halls and up the stairs, past all of the tapestries and portraits hanging on the walls, Eric had his Karma Map out, and was inspecting it carefully. Finally Charles stopped in front of a door, and opened it for them.

“Here you have it. Be my guest.”

“This isn’t your bedroom,” Eric said, before even looking into it.

“What on earth does that mean?” Charles asked, genuinely confused.

“It’s not a Privacy Room.”

“Do I have to sleep in it to convince you? Or what? You can stay around for that if you want to, and I’ll try. But I don’t sleep, and I don’t have much need for a bedroom, so I didn’t even bother having one installed. The only Privacy Room is the bathroom downstairs that your young friend is using.”

“And where does a rich man like you take the ladies when they come over, then?” Eric continued.

“If you mean what I think you mean, I’m celibate, and there’s none of that.”

“Celibate? Celibate?”

“Am I not answering your questions properly? I’m sorry, but once again I’ve been sort of caught off guard by your rudeness, and am having a hard time adjusting.”

“Can you take us to the kitchen?”

“Right this way.”

Downstairs, Will was working his way methodically through the bathroom. There was still no mirror above the sink, just like he’d seen it on his Map. He thought he would start there, since it was the most conspicuous. He felt around all of the edges, and rapped his fist against the walls to see if they sounded hollow. He turned all of the knobs on and off on the sink and in the shower, and the light switches on and off. He accidentally broke one of the handles off of the sink, a problem he’d been having ever since he had started taking the steroids prescribed to him by the police. The new strength in his hands, and in his body, seemed excessive. He laid the broken handle on the counter. Then he flushed the toilet and took the porcelain top off of it.

“How ancient is this toilet?” he asked himself. He had never seen anything like it. And the floor was tile, which he had never seen in a bathroom before either. He picked up the rug off the ground, to see what was under it.

The Privacy Room, the small triangles in the corner, seemed normal to him as well. When he thought he had tried everything, he left and rejoined the group, which was by then in the kitchen.

Eric was still rapidly asking questions. “Did you have the place inspected and certified, when you moved in?”

“Surely you have the paperwork for that yourself. It was one of your very own officers that looked the place over, and installed the Privacy Room in the bathroom for me. So I don’t know why you’re asking.”

“If you say so,” Eric responded. He then walked up to the large window on the far side of the kitchen, which overlooked an expansive open field, with trees in the distance, the likes of which were unseen in the city.

“How much of that is yours.”

“All of it, I think.”

“Why haven’t you ever gone out there?”

“You keep on saying things that I honestly don’t understand. How would you know that I’ve never gone out there? Does Karma keep track of that kind of thing?”

Eric showed him the screen of his Karma Map. “These are all places that you’ve been, around this house. And you’ve never gone out there. Apparently no one has, ever since Karma started keeping track. Now why is that?”

“You can really do that? That’s amazing. I’ve never seen that. I suppose I just haven’t felt like going out there. But surely that isn’t a crime, like you’re making it sound.”

“You take a one hour subway all the way into New York City just to sit in your little City Park, for your ‘nature,’ but you don’t ever even go into your own backyard?”

“Well there aren’t as many benches in my backyard. Maybe if I ever get that fixed I’ll switch to that. And there’s so many nice people you meet on the subway.”

Eric’s patience was tested to its limits with Charles. For a while he was silent. Will took the opportunity to whisper to Eric, “I couldn’t find anything. I don’t know why, because like you said he had to be doing something.”

“I’m going to go look myself,” Eric said to Will, at a normal volume. “You ask him a few questions of your own. I’ll be back.”

While he was walking away, Charles said, indicating Marcus, “You still don’t talk much, now do you. I’m starting to wonder what they keep you around for. Is there something you do?”

Marcus didn’t answer. Will ignored the question as well. “Is there a reason you don’t have any mirrors in the place? I couldn’t help but notice.”

“That’s very perceptive of you. There’s nothing a mirror is very good for, if you think about it. I just don’t see the use.”

“I don’t see the use of a lot of the decoration you have around the place, either.”

“For a second I thought you might be less aggressive than the other, but there you go. Well, I assure you that all of these pots and pictures are far prettier than me, and I keep them around for that.”

“You don’t live with anyone else?”

“No, I don’t.”

“In a house this large.”

“I might get it downsized if I don’t figure out a way to use some of the rooms.”

Before Will could think of another question, his Karma Card began to ring. So did everyone else’s around him, with the exception of Charles. Eric returned from the hallway. “Are you getting this too?” he asked, pointing to his Card. “Did you see this?”

They all nodded.

“We have to go. We’ll be back, Mr. Darcy. Some other time.”

The directions on the Karma Card were far more descriptive than Will had ever seen them be before. He was to get off at stop R2-J, which was right next to a Karma Card manufacturing plant on the outskirts of the city. There were people attacking it, at that very moment. He was only to use his stun gun, so that the attackers could be interrogated. It said that the attackers were well armed. Everyone else’s Card said the same thing.