Wyrmhole

by Jay Caselberg

  "I see. Continue."

  Jack took a moment to compose his thoughts before continuing. The subject of Anastasia Van der Stegen was likely to be sensitive.

  "It also has to do with your daughter, Mister Van der Stegen."

  "Tasha?" He frowned, his thick dark eyebrows emphasizing the depth of his scowl. "What's this got to do with Tasha?"

  "Quite a bit, I'm afraid. You know she's involved with Warburg?"

  The frown relaxed, and he sat back in the chair, looking thoughtful. "Is she now?" He laughed.

  It was not the reaction Jack had expected, at all.

  "I believe your daughter to be a very ambitious young woman, Mister Van der Stegen. That ambition stretches to Outreach and well beyond, I would imagine. She and Warburg have been working together to take full control of the Outreach operations, cutting you out of the picture. Your handipad was part of that scheme. With the material you had on it, it was going to be evidence enough to force you into a position where you would have to effectively retire and hand your interests over to her.

  Together, she and Warburg would then be free to take over completely."

  "Hmmm." Van der Stegen gave a wry grin. "She always was impatient. Just like her mother in that regard." He quickly became more serious. "How far does this involvement go, do you know? Does she love the man?"

  "Warburg? I don't know. Does it matter?"

  "No, probably not." Van der Stegen leaned his head back and rubbed his throat slowly with his fingers. "So how was this supposed to work? I don’t understand how the simple contents of my handipad could be used to do as you claim."

  "Okay." Jack leaned forward. "I believe that both sides, you and Warburg, were following the same path of investigation. You, on one hand, had a team working on the gateway question — how to open the vortex. Warburg at the same time was treading the same route, but he went about it in a slightly different way. He'd actually come further but he was keeping that fact secret. They'd managed to open the gateway. The only question remaining was how to use the gateway effectively. To be able to do that, they had to be able to pass people through unharmed. That was the key. He was using the Dairil III mining crew as experimental subjects. Some of them made it through, and some of them didn't. Just to confirm what I'm about to tell you, can you answer me one question...?"

  "Which is?"

  "Francis Gleeson. He works for you, right?"

  Van der Stegen hesitated, and then nodded, reluctantly.

  "Well, you see, one of the things that let them down was that one of the miners, Gilbert Ronschke, was involved with Gleeson. Ronschke was one of the crew that disappeared, that I'd been hired to locate ... or not locate, as it happens. They couldn’t have known that. It was a detail that escaped them. Gleeson was very sensitive about his relationship with Ronschke and didn't want it advertised within Outreach. Gleeson was in charge of the personnel records of the mining crew, so it was easy enough to manipulate the data to hide that fact. When Ronschke disappeared, there was one interested party at the heart of their operations that they could not have known about. Francis Gleeson. Gleeson came to me. That tied one of the threads together, but only one.

  "I actually got the handipad from Gleeson. He'd passed it on to me, because he wanted me to find Ronschke. He couldn't afford to pass it back to you, because he couldn't be sure that you weren't involved, knowing your connections to Outreach, even though he was working for you. How he got it, I never found out. It didn’t matter in the scheme of things. Somehow, it came into his possession, either directly or indirectly from your daughter. I have to assume that your daughter had passed it on to someone on Warburg's team and somehow it came into Gleeson's hands. He obviously knew what it was, and was using it as a means to try and manipulate my involvement in the case and to point to your involvement without giving anything away about his own association with you. Gleeson always claimed that it had come from Ronschke. I eventually worked out that couldn’t be true, that it was simply a ploy on Gleeson's part to further tie Ronschke into the investigation. Gleeson’s a lot smarter and a lot more devious than he might appear on the surface."

  Van der Stegen finally placed his brandy glass down on the table and leaned forward. "Yes he is. All that is highly plausible, Stein," he said. "So, we don’t know exactly who took my handipad. Whether it was Tasha herself or not is unimportant. I still don't see how they could possibly use it to do any damage."

  "Ahh, that's where I come in. I'm fringe. I recognize I'm fringe, Mister Van der Stegen and I've already been told directly by one particularly unsavory character who worked for the other side that William Warburg intended to use that to his advantage. He had no expectation that I was going to come up with any real results from my work on the case. He was going to report back to the board that the investigation into the crew's disappearance had drawn a blank. Due diligence and all that, but nothing that would tell anybody anything. That would also buy him enough time to complete the experiments on Dairil III. To Warburg's mind, Psychic Investigation, psychic anything, is a waste of time, and that would be used to prime the Board."

  "I don't see how ... "

  "That was just the first step. With that sitting in the back of their minds, Warburg was going to distribute the contents of your handipad to the Board. There's a lot of stuff there, Mister Van der Stegen, that is just as fringe as anything I'm involved in. Alchemy, the Philosopher's Stone, Ouroboros, all of that. Warburg was going to use it as evidence that you'd lost your grip. He'd come up with real results because of hard scientific work, and you, dithering around with this suspect philosophical stuff had gone nowhere, throwing away company resources along the way. His argument would have been that you’d obviously lost your grip on reality, perhaps become a little senile and had become a risk to the company's operations, wasting funds with nothing to show for it. One research effort is a significant drain on company resources, but two, when the second one is highly suspect and undertaken in secret, without the Board’s approval…well, that would hurt.

  "No doubt you’re pumping Outreach funds into your effort. You would be seen not only to be wasting money and resources, but to be losing your mind. Faced with that evidence, you’d have no choice but to cede control to your daughter. Warburg would have suggested it, and he would have gained full backing of the Outreach Board. Then, in partnership, she and Warburg could continue unhindered. You'd be out of the picture, Tasha would have what she wanted, and Warburg would be free to carve out his empire. The perfect union. Until of course Tasha decided to take how much she really wanted. But that would be another game to be played out accordingly when the time came."

  Jack sat back and spread his hands. "That's it. That’s the whole story."

  Van der Stegen said nothing for some time, and then he grinned. He actually grinned.

  "Very good, Stein. I'm afraid Tasha and William are going to have to wait a while longer. I always knew he was a sly, calculating bastard. It was my work that put him onto this path in the first place. Just like him to ignore that and deny any connection. He probably doesn’t realize that I have complete records of our initial discussions about this problem. When I confront them with this, they're going to have to sit back for a while and learn some patience. I'm not ready to retire yet. Not by a long way. And now that I have the full information about the mining crew, I'm the one who'll have the upper hand."

  "And what about the crew. Aren't you going to do anything?"

  "What? What should I do Stein? They're not my responsibility."

  Jack had had enough. "Don't you feel anything, Mister Van der Stegen? Anything at all? You're acting as if this is just some big game to you."

  Van der Stegen said nothing, just shrugged.

  "Dammit," said Jack quietly. There was nothing he could do to influence this man. Nothing at all. And there was nobody he could tell either. No one that would make any difference. He leaned forward, slapping his hands on the tops of his thighs. "Fine," he said with finality. "Look, there is
one thing I want to know. Call it my own curiosity, but can you tell me something?"

  "Hmmm? What is it?" Van der Stegen was only half paying attention now.

  "I don’t understand, Mister Van der Stegen. What is all this stuff about alchemy, about the Kabala? What relevance does it have to any of this research your people have been involved in?"

  "Fair question, Stein, and actually one I’m actually prepared to answer. As a race, we've made enormous advances over the last centuries. Science, technology have moved at a pace that it's almost impossible to track, and yet we remain ignorant. As we've advanced, as things have become easier for us, we've moved further and further away from true knowledge. How many of us really understand the way things work? How many really know the way things fit together? I have long believed that we, humanity, have known things far beyond the accumulated scientific and technical knowledge we profess today."

  "I don't understand ... "

  "And nor do we, Stein. Fundamental beliefs, accumulated knowledge of being, these have fascinated our race since the dawn of time. We, my people, were stagnating in the smug hubris that surrounds our own accomplishments. I wanted to go back, explore those areas of knowledge that perhaps went beyond the boundaries that we had set ourselves. The ancient mystics and churchmen were the true scientists of their day. In our modern technical viewpoint, their endeavors were little more than superstitious nonsense. But, if we really analyze their texts, their knowledge, we find pointers to other, more basic and practical truths.

  "They had answers to the big questions that we were seeking. The Philosopher's Stone is nothing more than a pointer to exotic matter. I don't expect you to come to grips with the technical details, but the underlying message was held there in coded form. With the right key, we could open the gate to transcendence, moving beyond the material world. That's exactly what we've been doing. Exactly. In that respect, we are no different from the ancient alchemists and Kabalists. Where they received that knowledge originally, who knows? Maybe some ancient race, maybe some other way, perhaps there had been a fall, but their problem was that they just didn't have the resources or technology to exploit it. But we do, Stein. We do. Imagine if someone like Newton had had our resources…"

  There was a light in Van der Stegen' eyes and Jack almost found himself being caught up in the man's evangelical vigor — almost. He swirled his drink and looked down at the intricate pattern in the woven carpet beneath his feet. He still didn't quite understand what it was about, but Van der Stegen clearly believed what he was saying. He looked back up at the older man sitting across from him, his gaze firmly fixed in the distance.

  "You’ve got a pretty strong set of beliefs there, Mister Van der Stegen. Or at least it sounds like you do."

  "Certainly, Stein. It's about our future, about our advancement. It's about progress. That's what it's about. When it comes down to it, I don't mind admitting I'm an idealist. If it turns out to be profitable along the way, then all the better."

  "And what of the people that get hurt along the way? Don't they matter."

  "It depends, Stein," Van der Stegen said slowly, clearly annoyed with the line of questioning. "You have to look at the bigger picture. You have to look at the net result. What people anyway? Do any of them really matter in the broad scheme of things?"

  "The obvious ones of course, but others. You had that pair of thugs, Alexis Grecco and his sidekick, working for you. I know. I know intimately. How can you seriously justify that?"

  Van der Stegen shrugged. "They're good at what they do."

  Jack sniffed. He knew pretty well firsthand how good they were.

  "And the Locality. What about what goes on there? What about the corruption, the kids down in Old, all of that? What about the mindless patterned consumption?"

  "Listen, Stein. My family built the Locality."

  Jack knew that full well from the background on the man that Alice had sent him from the library, but he said nothing.

  Van der Stegen continued. "Where would those people be if we hadn't? Safe, secure, a modern and serviced environment where they can be assured a quality of life, every convenience at their fingertips. Where else would they get that if it wasn't for what we'd done? I can't be responsible for what people do with their lives. Nor can I be concerned about what they do to entertain themselves. As long as the system keeps ticking over and it doesn't impact me, why should I care?"

  "But you know it goes on."

  "Know what goes on? The same things that occur and have occurred throughout history wherever people congregate in numbers. Is that what you're talking about?"

  It was clear Jack was going to get nowhere following that path. He didn't want to alienate Van der Stegen just yet. He knew what he should be doing was standing and shouting at this man with his smug confidence and glib answers. Some sort of idealist Van der Stegen was. He didn’t give a damn about the people he affected.

  "And what if I were to tell people what you're doing, what your people are doing?"

  "What, Stein? What are you going to tell them? More to the point, who are you going to tell? The police? Who employs them?"

  He was right. Van der Stegen did have a responsibility, whether he'd admit it or not, but there was not a thing Jack could do about it. Were the people in the Locality victims? Were they victims because they chose to be so?

  "What about Gleeson? He's working for you."

  "And will continue to do so until he no longer proves useful."

  "Well then, will you do something, Mister Van der Stegen? Just one small thing." Jack let the question hang heavy in the air between them while Van der Stegen sized him up, perhaps assessing if he was really going to make trouble.

  "So…what is it?"

  "Find Gilbert Ronschke. He's somewhere in the facility on Pandora. Let him go home."

  "I don't think I ... "

  "Listen, as long as you want Gleeson to remain of use to you, Ronschke's your key."

  Van der Stegen slowly rubbed his upper lip with one finger before finally speaking. "All right. Yes, I can see the value in that. I can have my people see to it. There’s no point in upsetting the machinery. It takes time to put these things in place."

  "Fine. Thank you."

  "And now, Jack Stein, with that, I think our business is concluded. There will be flier waiting for you to take you back to the Locality. One of my people will see that your needs are accommodated on the way out. I truly am grateful for what you've done, and I have notified my people appropriately, but I don't really expect to see you again."

  Don't worry, thought Jack. I doubt you ever will.

  He'd clearly been dismissed, and placing his glass carefully on the low, carved wooden side table — real wood — next to the leather armchair, he got to his feet.

  "One last thing, Mister Van der Stegen. What will you do about Tasha?"

  "That's none of your concern, Stein. Suffice it to say, Anastasia will have learned a valuable lesson by the time I've finished with her. It will make her stronger in the long run, and that's a good thing for her and for the Van der Stegen name and the future of our interests. We all need lessons, Stein."

  Van der Stegen barely seemed to notice as Jack left the room.

  TWENTY

  All the way back to the Locality, Jack was deep in thought. His mind floated with images of the past few weeks, of Pinpin, of Van der Stegen, of Billy. He hardly noticed the broad landscape passing beneath his gaze. He'd finished at least one side of the contract, the Van der Stegen part, and brought it to a conclusion. Regardless, it still left a sour taste in his mouth. The one real point was that maybe he'd managed to satisfy Francis Gleeson, or at least put the things in place that would make it happen. He was sure Van der Stegen would make sure Ronschke was found and returned. He needed Gleeson and therefore he needed to keep the little man satisfied. Jack felt that at least he’d achieved that much.

  What about Van der Stegen though? Van der Stegen owned the Locality. He didn't own any title to
it; there was nothing saying it belonged to him, but he owned it all the same and a hell of a lot more besides. Yet, despite that ownership, Van der Stegen held no responsibility. He was above accountability for his actions. The man was right, in a way. How could he be held accountable for the things people did to each other, the things people always did? The real question was, did Jack want to stay as part of the collection of trinkets that belonged to the Van der Stegen family and those like them? That's all the residents of the Locality were to them — playthings. And it didn't matter whether it was Van der Stegen or Warburg. On a scale, there was probably quite a bit to separate the two, but ultimately, they were part of the same game. What could he, Jack Stein, do? There'd always be a Van der Stegen or a Warburg and there would always be victims that suffered the consequences. By living there, by being a part of all that, Jack bore as much of the burden of passive responsibility for its continuance. Well, he wasn’t going to be passive any more.

  And what about Billie? She was as much a part of it as any of them, but did that mean she had any debt? No, in the end, he guessed she was a true victim – a real victim. Others, many others, were really little more than casualties of their own design. But not Billie.

  And as he sat there, the air rushing past the flier, as it soared toward the belly of the beast, Jack came to his final decision.

  He barely hesitated to nod his thanks to the pilot as he descended and made his way past the locks into the landing bay shoved up one end of the Locality like a blister. There were some practicalities to attend to, but first he needed to get back to the apartment. When he finally got there, a wary Billie let him in.

  "Billie, will these things work outside the range of the Locality?" he asked, digging out his handipad. He guessed they must. He'd seen them used in the Residence, which was a fair distance from the Locality, a distance that must change daily with the Locality's continued crawl across the countryside.