The Dark Side (42 page)

Right now he can hear the Sinners massing outside the Kasr for his morning address. They're earlier than expected and seem to be chanting something. It's the first time Brass has summoned
them for a general announcement in over a year, and he has no illusions that it will be easy. He's not even expecting it to be well received to begin with. But he's confident that he—and only he—has the charisma to pull it off. It's why he hasn't delegated the task to that wife-murdering actor. He simply can't count on anyone else to feign the right mix of sorrow, anger, implication, and resolve.

Sorrow that his daughter, along with a few others meeting for an emergency conference, has been killed.

Anger at those mysterious forces that committed the atrocity.

Implication—and this will require real skill on his part—that his daughter was not completely innocent. That in colluding with criminal elements and political dissidents, she was either assassinated by co-conspirators or became the victim of a mistimed explosion.

And resolve: that Purgatory will nevertheless survive. Bleeding, but alive. Stronger than ever, in fact, and ready to face a new dawn.

As to the details of that new dawn, Brass intends to be vague. His expedition to Mars will proceed as normal, of course—it's too important to be postponed now—but the unprecedented events of recent days have convinced him that an iron hand is needed to replace him while he's away. It's only his own iron hand, he'll point out, that's held the whole volatile territory together for so long. And regarding the identity of that iron hand, well, he's given it a great deal of thought and will make an official announcement in the coming days.

He's not halfway through the bacon—sawing it into digestible pieces and dipping it in egg yolk, as is his habit—when he hears echoing footsteps and sees Leonardo Grey enter the chamber, looking strangely ill at ease. Brass can't quite put his finger on
it, but the droid looks
paler
than usual. Though that, of course, must be his imagination.

“I trust you are well this morning, sir?” Grey says in his clipped voice.

“Well enough,” replies Brass, sipping on Zeus-Juice. “But where have you been, Grey, that you didn't put out my clothes?”

“I was called away, sir—I apologize profusely.”

“Called away by whom, exactly?”

“By Lieutenant Damien Justus, sir.”

“Justus?” Brass frowns. “I thought he was running for the hills.”

“He may have been, but he's now back in Sin.”

“Really? He came back?”

“He did, sir.”

Brass wonders if the plans he had in place—an assassin was going to take Justus out at Doppelmayer, implicating forces from Earth—will be necessary after all. “Well, what does he want?”

“He has requested an audience with you urgently, sir.”

“He wants to see me
again
?”

“He does, sir.”

“Then he can wait until after the speech—
if
I feel like it.”

“He has requested an audience with you
now
, sir.”

Brass stops sipping. “Are you telling me he's
here
?”

“He is currently in the sitting room, sir.”

“You let him in?”

“I escorted him all the way from his home.”

“Oh really? That's very accommodating of you, Grey.”

“You did say I was to extend to him my full cooperation, sir.”

“Hmm, well, you can go too far sometimes, you know.”

“I apologize, sir.”

“I once had a choice between you and Leonardo Brown, you
know. I chose you because you
looked
more distinguished. And because I assumed you'd acquired a better understanding of me. But now you make me wonder.”

“I will try to do better in the future, sir.”

“Hmm.” Brass enjoys demeaning Grey—he considers humiliation a form of motivation—but with Leonardo Brown gone he can no longer make so much of their rivalry. So he sighs. “Well, let the fucker in.”

“Very well, sir.”

Grey starts to turn, but Brass adds, “And stay close to me while he's inside.”

“I intend to, sir.”

“Make sure he keeps his distance. I doubt he'll try anything, but you never know. So if he makes a sudden move, you know what to do.”

“I believe I am adequately equipped, sir.”

Brass, watching Grey leave the room, still finds something odd about the droid. Something peculiar in his bearing or attitude. He sounds almost insolent. As if something has happened to him overnight. But he doesn't dwell on it. He shovels the rest of the bacon into his mouth and chews hurriedly, to give himself a good protein boost before the confrontation.

He's washing it all down with a few sips of juice when Grey returns, leading the fully uniformed Justus into the chamber. Brass watches as the droid directs the lieutenant to a high-backed chair at the far end of the table—about twenty meters distant—and then discreetly moves along the length of the table to take up a position at his master's side. But Justus doesn't sit, just as Brass doesn't bother to stand. He just looks around at him, appraising the great magnitude of the room and all its trimmings, and finally says something that sounds like, “Satire doesn't work, does it?”

Brass gives a shake of the head and says, “I beg your pardon? You'll need to raise your voice while you're in here.”

Justus says louder, “I said, satire doesn't work, does it?”

“That's what I thought you said. What does it mean?”

“It's just an observation. When cartoonists satirize the lives of the rich and powerful, they often show some evil old trillionaire sitting in a castle eating caviar and hummingbird tongues. It's meant to be larger-than-life—an exaggeration, an absurdity. But the rich and powerful too often don't see it that way. All they see is a standard that needs to be emulated. So clearly satire doesn't work.”

Brass is even more disconcerted by the lieutenant's attitude than he is by Leonardo Grey's. It's not as if he hasn't seen Justus being disrespectful before—they parted the previous day after a veritable torrent of vitriol—but this is something altogether new. Justus is now being disrespectful with a hint of mockery. It's almost as if he believes he has the upper hand.

“Take a seat, Lieutenant, before the irony overcomes you. I'd offer you a coffee but I wouldn't want you to get any more excited than you seem to be already.”

“That's okay—I've eaten half a pack of BrightIze
^™
. I don't normally touch the stuff, but it's been a long night.”

“Been a few places?”

“You could say that.”

“How's your daughter?” Brass asks.

He expects Justus to flare. Or glare. But instead the lieutenant just chuckles and draws up a seat. “I think she's going to be okay,” he says, sitting down. “It's what I came here about, actually.”

“Oh?” Brass raises an eyebrow, doing his best to appear unfazed.

“Yeah. After all, I came to Purgatory in order to protect my
daughter, in a roundabout sort of way. And when you pulled that rug from under my feet I figured I had nothing to lose.”

“Now you're being presumptuous again, Lieutenant—I didn't expect that. Nothing in your profile suggested that you were presumptuous. Or intemperate.”

“I'm neither. But when you threatened her, I just—”

“Who says I threatened her?”

“I know a threat when I hear one.”

“Then I suggest you rewind our conversation in your head and listen to what I said again. Because I never made a threat. Nothing of the sort. And I would have clarified that point yesterday if you'd given me a chance to respond. In fact, my only intention in mentioning your daughter was to draw a similarity between the two of us. You have a daughter, as do I.”

“A daughter you ordered assassinated.”

Now Brass feels free to act completely outraged. “That's contemptible, Lieutenant. Where do you get off, making such preposterous accusations?”

Justus just shrugs.

“If you weren't fired already,” Brass goes on, “then consider yourself fired forthwith. This is scandalous. Who do you think you are?”

“I'm just an honest cop. Or at least I was.”

“An honest cop, or just an incompetent one? What gives you the
gall
to say I ordered my daughter's assassination? Do you have the faintest proof?”

“Not me personally. All I know is that Leonardo Brown, your daughter's valet, accepted delivery of a high-powered explosive at her front door, then carried it inside. Whether he was acting on instruction, or knew what he was doing—that I haven't been
able to determine. And I'm sure I never will. In fact, I'm sure that all the available evidence will somehow implicate the very people who were blown up. That's what happens in corrupt states with corrupt law enforcement bureaus. My only regret is that I refused to see it from the start. Because I desperately wanted to believe that there was a way out. And because I wanted to live—
anywhere
—that made me no danger to my daughter's life.”

“How very moving. But you still haven't explained how you came to this preposterous theory.”

Justus smirks. And though Brass doesn't like it—the brazen insolence—he feels compelled to hear the man out.

“You know, Mr. Brass, I've had a very interesting twelve hours. Fourteen hours, whatever—I'm not even sure anymore. First, I drove all the way to Peary Base and made a call to the South Pole. Then I drove back through the night to Purgatory. Top speed. I reached the Gates at around three o'clock in the morning. But I struggled to get in at first. There was something going on in the screening section. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I forced my way through and what I saw was absolute chaos. Seemed an android had arrived and demanded access to Sin. And when he didn't get it he went berserk. Killed all the security personnel, a secretary, a nurse, and one of the people who'd been with him in the van. The only survivor was a lady the droid was carrying to the hospital. There was blood everywhere. Severed limbs. Seven people dead, altogether.”

Brass is genuinely shocked. “I wasn't informed about this . . .”

“Of course not. Who'd want to interrupt your sleep? When you had such a big day ahead?”

“That's another contemptible comment, Lieutenant. Of course I'd want to be informed. Who was this android? Where did it come from?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“And what does
that
mean?”

Justus smirks again. “Well, you see, Mr. Brass, it seems you
knew
this android already. He's one of yours. He worked for you. You certainly didn't know he was on the loose—one of the drawbacks, I guess, of being so busy and distracted is that you can't keep an eye on everything—but you sure knew about him. You were the one who ordered his reprogramming, in fact. You tried to keep it secret, and it might've worked too, only something went wrong. The technicians made a mistake. The android got loaded up with your psychopathic corporate philosophies
before
the proper inhibitors could be activated. And he went insane. Out of control. Just the way you've been out of control for decades, Mr. Brass—except that you, most of the time, have been getting away with it. You've used all your power and influence to get away with it. And yet here we are.”

Brass has never felt more discomposed. It's rare that he's the last to know something, and even rarer that he doesn't know how to react. Part of him wants to explode and storm off, just as a defensive ploy. But he senses that's not in order. Added to that, he just doesn't like the way Justus is communicating all this news to him—as if he doesn't care about his own fate, or worse, has no reason to be concerned.

“This is preposterous,” Brass manages again. But he has the knife and fork clutched in his hands like weapons. “I hope you realize how preposterous this sounds.”

“Preposterous?” Justus says. “You keep saying that. Then again, I probably would've thought it was all preposterous myself until I came to Purgatory. Until last night, when I heard the story of Leonardo Black. Until a few hours ago, in fact, when I actually spoke to Black myself. I spoke to him just as you prefer people
to speak to you. Because he
was
you, in a way—your black soul. So it wasn't hard to fit into place the last pieces of your grand plan. I can tell you now, if you like—what was
supposed
to happen, anyway.”

Brass can't decide how to respond. So Justus just goes on:

“You didn't trust anyone to take your place while you were away on the Mars expedition. Not any of your associates, not any of your department heads, not that actor who stands in for you, and certainly not your daughter. So you got the bright idea to replace yourself with an android: Leonardo Black. Your bodyguard. You were going to make him a proxy Fletcher Brass—only many times more physically powerful. And he was going to rule this place like a tyrant. He was going to make all the ruthless decisions, fire people, even kill if necessary. But to pave the way for his appointment you wanted to create a bit of chaos—you wanted to make it look like such a tyrant was justified by the circumstances. And you wanted to get rid of anybody you feared might seize power anyway. You'd kill two birds—three birds, ten birds, whatever—with one stone. So you had your assassins go to work, with the full cooperation of the PPD—political murders that would never be solved because crucial evidence was erased, contaminated, or falsified. And that part might've worked too, only half the players in the PPD were too shiftless to play their roles. And of course there were others who knew more than you thought. People who were just as ruthless and cunning as you. People you thought you were moving around like pawns but who in fact were moving you. ‘Don't play chess, play people'—isn't that one of your laws? Well, sometimes the master should be wary of the apprentices.”