“This belongs to a Commonwealth’s surveillance drone, last year’s model. It seems that it was accidentally hit by a missile part during the explosion,” said Kir. “Nick, you told me there’s no Earth presence here. I … Nick, you are getting a connection request.”
For a moment, I sat frozen, listening to the chime of the incoming call in complete shock. It didn’t make any sense – I was the only registered headhunter here.
“Accept,” I said finally.
A dark-haired man with very intense gray eyes was looking at me from a communication screen.
“Nick,” he said with a slight Earth Central accent, “we need to talk. Please go to your room right away.”
The screen folded, but I didn’t move. The only thought bouncing around inside my head was that Kir wasn’t broken. I pulled myself together, shook off my stupor and looked at Lita, who sat still, intently peering into the space in front of her.
“Kir, pause her program and connect me to her audio,” I said getting up. “Lita, I need to go now. Ask the device to contact me when you are ready, and I’ll return as soon as I am able.”
She nodded, and I left the room.
The man who called me a moment ago was sitting in a chair in the center of my unit. He raised his hand in a standard Earth greeting gesture.
“Sit down, Nick,” he said, motioning towards the bed.
He was dressed in a casual local outfit, but the air of something decisively official about him was so convincing that I obeyed without question.
“JJ, Defense Ministry. I am speaking with you because we screwed up. I screwed up,” he winced in obvious irritation. “I’ve been asked to ban any headhunters. It’s bad enough here without them stumbling around like blind elephants. But no,” his voice acquired a mocking tone, “I was told that a continuing ban on this sector was attracting attention and we couldn’t afford a public investigation.” He stopped himself.
“Sorry, Nick. Nothing personal. You were not supposed to see that drone. In fact, you were not supposed to be there in the first place. We couldn’t keep this planet locked down anymore – the headhunter agency kept demanding an explanation. But we adjusted the parameters in your assignment system so that the difficulty threshold was prohibitively high. I have no idea how the program passed you. You must be outstandingly good, Nick.”
I thought that I should probably be flattered. I couldn’t enjoy the feeling, however, considering the somewhat eerie atmosphere of the situation. His next phrase didn’t make it any better.
“In fact, we didn’t have to tweak the parameters very much. That place is bad, Nick.”
“Wait,” I finally started putting the pieces together, “these explosions … was that really you?”
“Nick, come on. These guys stage the theater themselves. We sabotage their research in infospace. They don’t even know about it.”
I remembered Kir’s glitch during my initial reconnaissance.
“Sabotage their research?” I understood the reason for the first error. JJ and company must have caused it while adjusting the data to cover their tracks. The blond woman didn’t make a mistake; the slowdown was the result of our agents tinkering with her program.
“Nick, we’re an emergency team. Last year our routine satellite surveillance sent an alert that this sector had successfully reverse-engineered some of our old technology. You know, from the pieces that were accidentally left over after the separation. We looked into it. Their classified research was on the verge of discovering the Mirror space structure and a way to cross the borders. And their military was getting to the point that it could penetrate our current defense system. By the way, don’t be fooled by their archaic utilities. They don’t bother about mass consumer goods.”
“But … why didn’t you …” I stopped myself before finishing the question. Of course, they were doing it secretly. Earth wasn’t prepared to make fast decisions anymore. By the time the debate about the ethics of slowing down the progress of a developing civilization was over, Beta Blue’s troops would be walking on Earth.
He read my expression and nodded in satisfaction.
“I guess you get it. You can expose us by reporting this incident to your authorities. Or you can delete your implant log and forget about it. Secret projects are wrong, Nick. Lying is immoral. But people will die when the invasion starts. Hard philosophical dilemma, isn’t it? Think about it. You can use this line to get back to me … to let me know what you decide.”
“Am I … safe for now?” I didn’t know how to ask him directly. But he understood.
“Nick, we’re government employees, not assassins. If you choose to leak information and stop this project …” he shrugged, “the fallout is on you then. That’s all.” He stood up, “By the way, I might as well tell you – we have been following you here. No offense. Just a precaution.”
I remembered the two shadows.
“Here’s some free personal advice,” he said, already touching the doorknob, “just go home. Forget about your target. The political situation is extremely unstable. It’ll get nasty there very soon.”
He left, and I continued sitting on the bed, struggling to reorient my view of the world. The transparency of Earth’s government had been deeply ingrained in my mind, and the existence of a secret operation was as believable as a theory that the Grand Council was a gang of disguised non-humanoid aliens. But the man in my room was real.
I suddenly felt very unsettled. The world where rules were broken didn’t feel safe anymore. I needed some time to calm down, put everything that just happened into one cohesive picture and determine my position with respect to all of its components. I hadn’t made much progress in that direction, however, because Lita called.
She was waiting for me in the doorway, holding the mask in her hand, and after a quick glance at her face I realized that the balance of our interactions had changed. She was looking at me with an expression bordering on awe. This wasn’t surprising. Seeing Earth for the first time in the program often had this effect on people. I had gained the new status of a being that belonged there casually, the same way she belonged to the everydayness of Beta Blue. And even though it wasn’t a reflection of my personal qualities, I very much liked the result. For the sake of the job, I reminded myself.
She looked aside, apparently conscious of the way she was staring at me, and stepped back.
“Your program is very helpful. But …” she cleared her throat, “it feels so unreal. Can you tell me about Earth yourself?”
I thought that this was definite progress. She was relying on me for comfort now.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s get inside and settle down. Make yourself comfortable.”
This time we both sat on the floor across the room from each other, her back against the wall, mine against the foot bed.
“Lita, you’ll need to put the mask on again. I want you to see things through my eyes,” I said, and she nodded in agreement.
I began from the standard narrative, using my personal experiences as examples. I told her about the comfort and confidence from being surrounded by an old and friendly civilization. I gave her a glimpse of our vastly superior bio-technology. I showed her Orbit in its entire splendor and walked her through the streets of my favorite cities.
Before long, I realized that I was telling her as much about myself as about Earth. At least about some parts of me.
“It looks perfect,” she said. “Is it perfect, Nick?”
It was the first time she had called me by my name.
“No,” I said, “for me it isn’t.”
I knew that this was insane. I had never admitted this to anyone, let alone people from the Mirror Worlds. But I told her. Maybe it was my late and senseless revenge on Earth for my broken trust. Maybe her life was also so obviously messed up that I knew she would understand me.
I told
her about the decadence of the Earth’s population and about the boredom of ordinary jobs, where nothing interesting ever happened. I talked about the even temperament of my friendships and the tepid quality of my relationships. In other words, I told her about the things that caused me to get on a ship and blast away every several months.
“But why didn’t you fit in, just like everyone else?” she asked, and I thought that I heard compassion in her voice.
And I told her something that I’d never shared with anyone else. “It has to do with the test, which I gave to Remir,” I said. “You see, I always knew that there was something wrong with me. I was too impatient, too … deviant. My desires were too intense in comparison to other people. I could see that. But I had no idea why. And then there was all this talk about outliers … after the military warning. It rang a bell. I took the test, just for myself. I scored positive.”
“Your program said that Earth needed people like this to make progress,” she took off the mask and looked at me quizzically.
“Yes. But it’s not a very good thing for me, Lita. There was a reason why Earth got rid of us … I mean others like us in the past. My emotions are very strong, but the theory says that they are … not normal. Apparently, I don’t have a moral compass. I can believe it. I don’t like authority. I can believe it too. I don’t feel other people, they say, I can’t feel what they are feeling, vicariously. But I can read people very well. I can pick up on the slightest hint when someone is in psychological pain, for example. I know how it hurts, because I have experienced it myself, and I don’t want other people feel it, especially the ones I care about. And then I use logic to act … to help. I am not a monster.”
She got up, came over and lightly touched my hair as if confirming that I was real.
“I see,” she said, “you and Remir … no wonder. Let’s run your test. I don’t think … but we might as well.”
She didn’t return to her spot and instead sat on the bed next to me.
“Lita,” I looked up at her, “put this thing on again. And these hypnotic sequences can be unpleasant. I’m sorry.”
“Give me your hand,” she asked and covered her face with the mask. “We can start.”
“Kir, turn on the assessment program,” I said and changed my position on the floor so that I could see her well. I took her hand as she asked, and suddenly felt an almost unbearable desire to caress it. Stop it, I told myself. She also tensed, but it lasted for just a brief moment before she fell into the standard program trance.
I was watching her, trying to guess what was happening behind the emotions that gradually passed through her face. They were too subtle to interpret precisely, and the mask was in the way, but there were discernible flashes of a happy smile, a worry, a shade of anger. I thought that she was beautiful in all these states, even though beauty wasn’t exactly the right word. There was something that eluded direct definition, making her expressions unique, infinitely complex, magnetic. I realized that I wasn’t even thinking about the test behind her phantom experiences when Kir abruptly turned on the negative result indicator.
She stirred slightly, her hand still limp, and then I felt the hint of a squeeze as if she was thanking me.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t pass,” I said.
She lifted her arms, taking off the mask.
“So, I am not that special,” she smiled, “but don’t apologize.”
I didn’t detect a trace of sarcasm in her voice, or disappointment on her face.
“One pays a price for being special,” she added calmly, “like Remir, you know.”
Not surprising, I thought. She was in the front row of his self-destructing show.
“Nick, I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning,” she said, getting up. “I’m not even hungry, really, but I don’t want to faint on you. Can we go out and get something? I saw a small place across the street when we pulled in. It will probably close soon, like everything else here.”
I asked Kir to look it up and check the hours.
“It’s still open,” I said, glancing at his response, “we can make it if we hurry.”
The sun had already lost its intensity, and the light breeze was pleasantly refreshing. Fortunately, the restaurant, which was too kind a word for this hole in the wall, had an outside seating area in the back. We chose one of the few plastic tables in the shade of the building and sat across from each other. An elderly couple in the opposite corner was finishing their meal, and, glancing at them, for some strange reason I thought that growing old together with someone might not be as weird as I’d always imagined.
Lita put her elbows on the tabletop and leaned forward, looking right through me.
“I’m not surprised that your test flagged Remir,” she spoke as if simply continuing an old conversation. “All the things you said about yourself, like this crazy intensity, is true for him too, and also … I know that he is a real thing. Life is richer for him than for others. His filters don’t block the world as strongly. That is why he can do his music. But when the filters are not thick enough life burns through. And then it’s not fun … for anybody involved.”
A woman in a uniform that had the same unique character in all shabby joints across the Mirror Worlds approached our table.
“We’re closing for today, but if you order and pay, you can sit here as long as you want,” she said, handing us a paper menu, its frayed pages covered with suspicious yellow splotches.
“Lita, can you choose for me, please?” I wasn’t planning to touch local food anyway. Lita quickly asked for two of the day’s specials. The waitress left and came back with two plates almost immediately, probably prompted by the desire to lock up shop and go home.
Lita didn’t even look at the food.
“And it burns through a lot. Life burns him all the time,” she continued, staring at the invisible point in the distance again. “So you ask why do I stay?” she addressed me, as if finally remembering my presence.
I didn’t ask, but I nodded.
“Because I’m an addict. A weak-willed addict. People say that I’m a saint because I’m always there for him when he needs me. You see, they value me because they want more and more of what he does. So … whatever helps him keep going … whoever. And he does need me, every time when he feels like shit, when life pins him down. Frankly, I don’t think he would have lasted this long if I wasn’t around.” An expression of pain crossed her face.
“But I’m not altruistic. It’s just … when he is at his best, full of energy and charisma and light, and he aims it at me, it feels like nothing else. I get to taste life his way. Everything is brighter. His passion is so … intense while it lasts.”
She was making a rope by twisting a napkin, and it was getting tighter and tighter.
“But then … he is somewhere else. With somebody else. You see – life to the fullest …”
I remembered the brunette at the bar.
“It hurts. But I’m always there when he comes back – because he does love me in a twisted sort of way.”
And unexpectedly, inappropriately, irrationally, I felt the sting of jealousy. I didn’t like it at all.
“But he didn’t even call me before he didn’t show up. I was there for him. I knew that he would drink after that interview. And I wanted him to at least do it with me, not in dingy bars, not to the point when somebody would have to drag him home the next morning. I felt like an idiot, standing there with this wine bottle. He knew what he was doing when he didn’t show up. He screwed up our lives, my life, in a major way. And I wouldn’t blame him, I would understand. But he didn’t even bother to tell me before he did it. And these other women again…”
I gently took the napkin from her and held her hands in mine. She didn’t pull away, and her fingers were trembling. I felt a swell of pity and tenderness and immediately noted that it wasn’t a part of the job.
I let go and sat back.
“Will you go with me?” I asked and quickly clarified, “I mean you and Remir, provided that he agrees?”
It took her a moment, but then her lost expression disappeared.
“It’s funny,” her voice acquired a lighter, ironic tone, “it always made me furious to think that I would spend the rest of my life here. So I always imagined a miracle.”
Her face changed again, now turning cold and disdainful, “Nick, this place is rotten. I always knew it, even when I was growing up. Everything around me was a lie, an enormous farce. I was a kid, a teenager and I boiled with rage, but I knew better than to show it, even to my friends. You never knew who actually believed in what.” She paused and looked down as if noticing something on the unevenly painted surface of the cheap plastic. “And then we grew up. And I saw how it all worked. Nick, they did give us a choice to play their game or not. Of course, they made the rules. And almost all of us did go along, even though the price to refuse wasn’t very high. Our jobs, city permits. Not even jail time,” now there was sad bitterness in her voice. “They corrupted us … me included. They made me feel ugly. So, yes, I want to go with you. This is my chance. Your place is free. You say so. And I believe you.”
She raised her eyes, giving me a wan smile, “You showed up like a fairy tale prince to whisk me away from this misery.”
I scrambled for an appropriately light response, but failed.
“Assuming that Remir is with the program,” I replied in a pointedly businesslike tone, thinking that I sounded surprisingly dumb. “I’ll make him the offer when he wakes up. Given the way things are here I hope he will agree.”
“I don’t think he has a choice now, after what he did,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “They will shut down his music. He has nothing keeping him here now.”
I should have been elated – my goal was getting closer. But instead, I had a strange uneasy sensation in my chest. Jealousy wasn’t a familiar emotion. “You don’t seem to be angry at him.”
Fire of the Dark Triad Page 8
