This Day All Gods Die

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “My committee urges the Council to accept Warden Dios’ recommendations.” At once applause erupted again, filling the hall until the video pickup crackled. Captain Vertigus wasn’t done, however. Somehow he made himself heard through the ovation. “But those recommendations aren’t enough. You deserve more.”

  By the time he sat down, the Members had voted the Emblem of Valor, the planet’s highest civilian honor, for Mikka Vasaczk and Davies Hyland; for Ciro Vasaczk, Vector Shaheed, and Sib Mackern posthumously; and for Morn Hyland in absentia.

  Again Morn blinked at damp fire in her eyes, swallowed against the pressure in her throat. Bit by bit her restraint was being broken down. She feared what would happen when it failed, but there was little she could do to stop the process. Perhaps its time had come. She hardly heard President Len explain that the Emblem of Valor carried a sizable pension as well as the moral equivalent of diplomatic immunity.

  Gently he asked Mikka, “Does that help?”

  With an effort she nodded. “Yes, it does.” Like Morn, she may have been close to tears.

  While Morn struggled to compose herself, Len called on Tel Burnish, the Member for Valdor Industrial. His committee had been assigned to consider the future leadership of the new Space Defense Police, with special attention to questions which had been or might be raised concerning Min Donner’s conduct and Hashi Lebwohl’s self-confessed dishonesty.

  Burnish replied without hesitation. “We’re unanimous, Mr. President,” he reported crisply. “We recommend Min Donner’s confirmation as Director of the SDP. We see no reason to challenge either her qualifications or her integrity. Her loyalty to Warden Dios served him well. It will serve us better.”

  Min bowed her head. Only the tightening in her shoulders betrayed what she felt.

  “Further,” Burnish continued, “we recommend Captain Dolph Ubikwe’s appointment as Enforcement Division Director. His courage and dedication under all sorts of pressure is beyond question. And we respect his decision to let Warden Dios go to UMCHO. We think he should be honored for it.”

  Dolph muttered something the pickup missed. A huge grin stretched his dark face.

  “Finally,” the VI Member concluded, “we urge Hashi Lebwohl’s reinstatement as Data Acquisition Director. However, we do so primarily at Min Donner’s request. She observes that his skills and qualifications are irreplaceable. We’ve seen evidence of that in his efforts to expose Holt Fasner’s kazes. But in addition she’s shown us a transmission which she received from Warden Dios immediately before HO’s destruction. The director’s final message defends Director Lebwohl’s complete probity, and takes full personal responsibility for any actions which might cast doubt on DA. Warden Dios—and Min Donner believe that no man can or will serve SDPDA better than Hashi Lebwohl.”

  Some of the Members appeared surprised by this; but no one objected. When President Len asked the Council to respond, all three appointments were accepted by acclamation.

  Disguised by his smudged glasses, Hashi’s face revealed nothing.

  Morn approved dimly. She didn’t trust Hashi Lebwohl; but she owed both Min and Dolph a debt she would never be able to repay. Under the pressure of her mounting grief, however, she felt too fragile to let their vindication touch her strongly.

  She moved to key off the video screen. The session had become more poignant than she could bear. She wasn’t ready to let go of her defenses yet. But she stopped with her fingers on the keypad when she heard President Len announce that Punjat Silat would speak next. He was the Senior Member for the Combined Asian Islands and Peninsulas; and his committee had been formed to pass judgment on Warden Dios.

  She didn’t want to hear this—yet she was transfixed by it. She’d hardly known Warden Dios the man. But Warden Dios the icon, the symbol and embodiment of the ideals and service of the UMCP, was one of the central figures of her life; perhaps the central figure. Her whole family had revolved around his ideas, his beliefs; his power of conviction.

  Instead of blanking her screen, she sat down to listen as if she believed that any judgment of Warden Dios would be a judgment of her as well.

  The scholarly Senior Member spoke in the slow, dignified tones of a eulogy. Nevertheless his presentation was admirably concise and coherent. For two days, he reported, he and his committee had gathered and studied all the information available on the actions—and intentions—of the former UMCP director. The committee had questioned Min Donner, Hashi Lebwohl, and Koina Hannish at length, asking them to place their personal knowledge in the context of both Koina Hannish’s and Morn Hyland’s testimony before the Council. In addition, the Members had examined the most readily accessible of Warden Dios’ private records—a scrutiny which Hashi Lebwohl had made possible by supplying some of the former director’s codes.

  “Beyond question,” Punjat Silat stated, “Warden Dios violated his oath of office, as well as his own professed ideals, in profound and fundamental ways. That he did so knowingly, with full awareness of the implications of his actions, is made plain by his personal records. However, his records also indicate that he committed his crimes for the clear, unwavering, and single purpose of breaking Holt Fasner’s grip on humanity’s future.

  “This is confirmed—albeit often inferentially—by the most trusted of his subordinates. And it is given circumstantial support by Morn Hyland’s remarkable evidence.

  “Does that excuse him? Certainly not. His actions tainted the entire structure of humankind’s defense against the Amnion. They inspired an act of war. Millions upon millions of lives might have been lost, incalculable damage done. By that measure, his conduct was unconscionable in the extreme.”

  For a moment Morn couldn’t see the screen through her tears. Now more than ever she missed her zone implant control; wanted to be able to stifle and manage her own reactions. But Vector had cursed her—or saved her—by breaking it. She had no artificial defense against herself; no induced strength.

  Perhaps she didn’t need it. Somewhere inside her there had to be a better answer than self-destruct.

  “However,” Silat was saying, “my fellow Members and I found that we could not ignore a question which Warden Dios himself often raised in his private records.

  “What else could he have done?

  “The path of his duty was sufficiently plain. From the moment when he first recognized Holt Fasner’s crimes, he should have worked to expose them. At the least he Should have resigned his position. But he should have done more. He should have arrested CEO Fasner and charged him before this Council.”

  The Senior Member didn’t raise his voice. His dignity and gravity sufficed to fill his words with passion.

  “Do any of you believe that he would have succeeded? At that time the GCES—and all humanity—were dependent on the UMC. Holt Fasner owned the UMCP. Both personally and publicly, our lives hung on his decisions. A man willing to send out kazes might have cheerfully murdered Warden Dios and defied the Council to hold him accountable. Or he could have simply threatened enough of us with ruin to block any investigation.

  “Warden Dios was unable to endure the prospect of failure.

  “Our committee believes that his actions were unconscionable. We also consider them profoundly realistic. Instead of offering a relatively small and premature challenge to the most powerful man in human space, he chose to risk the dangerous path of complicity. By participating in Holt Fasner’s crimes, he gained the CEO’s vulnerability. And when those crimes at last became large enough, heinous enough, to sway even this dependent Council, he took steps to expose them.

  “In this way his own crimes became the weapons with which he put a stop to Holt Fasner’s larger wrongs.”

  Oh, Warden. Morn groaned aloud without hearing herself. His name clogged her throat. Became the weapons— In her own, smaller way, she’d used the same argument to justify accepting her black box from Angus.

  “Most difficult to forgive,” Punjat Silat admitted, “is the former director’s dec
ision to instigate an act of war. There, however, my fellow Members and I believe that events ran beyond his control. His inclusion of the Amnion in his manipulations is clearly culpable, justified only by a desire to ensure that any challenge to the UMC would not be allowed to weaken the UMCP. However, he could not have known that Morn Hyland would give birth to a son in forbidden space—or that Davies Hyland would be a prize for which the Amnion would hazard an assault on Earth. He could not have known that Captain’s Fancy would learn Amnion secrets while Morn and Davies Hyland were aboard.

  “And he did everything in his power to pay the price of his culpability. He went to Calm Horizons alone in a desperate and valiant attempt to negotiate for our survival. Remember this. He absolutely could not have known that he would be rescued, or that Calm Horizons would be destroyed, by the very people who had suffered most for his actions.”

  Measuring out his words with the heavy tread of a funeral march, Silat concluded, “Our committee acknowledges the malfeasance of the former UMCP director. We recommend a full and complete pardon. If our mortality permitted us to truly honor the dead, we would drop to our knees at Warden Dios’ feet.”

  It was too much. No longer sure what she did, Morn stumbled away from the screen. As the session ended, Len spoke of commendations for Koina Hannish and Sixten Vertigus; but she wasn’t listening.

  A full and complete pardon. For a man who hadn’t known her at all—and yet had understood her well enough to abuse her to the core. Understood her so well that he could abandon her to Angus and Nick, and yet believe that she would act on the ideals he’d betrayed. That she would keep those ideals alive for him.

  You’re a cop, she’d once told Davies. From now on, I’m going to be a cop myself. And she’d kept her promise. We don’t do things like that.

  We don’t use people.

  In the end Warden had put a stop to it.

  Through a blur of tears, she found her way to a seat in front of her terminal. Her hands shook as she tapped keys to access his last message. Hugging herself to contain her distress, she picked his words out of the phosphors on her readout.

  Two days ago he’d written:

  WARDEN DIOS TO MORN HYLAND:

  Morn, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you in person. There’s so much I want to say, and I have only a few minutes left. This message will suffice because it must.

  Most importantly, I want to assure you that it wasn’t personal. I didn’t pick you for your ordeal because of who you are. I picked you because you were available at the right time—aboard Bright Beauty, in Angus’ power, when I needed you both. I would have used any UMCP officer in your position. Then I simply prayed that you would find it in yourself to meet the challenge I’d placed in front of you.

  And you did. You did everything I could have asked for—if I’d had the right—and far more. First you raised the stakes beyond anything I dared imagine. You went to Enablement, gave Davies birth—and brought Calm Horizons down on my head. My fault, of course. You’re completely blameless. My only point is that my plans went awry there. Events became too great for me to manage them.

  But you managed them for me. As the stakes went up, you grew to meet them. You took a problem that I would have called unequivocally insoluble, and you dealt with it.

  Don’t sell yourself short about this, Morn. Don’t tell yourself that Angus did the real work, or Davies took the real risks, or Min held the real authority. You dealt with it. You kept Davies alive. You freed Angus from his priority-codes when Holt forced me to betray you. You commandeered Punisher and came to Earth in the only way that allowed humankind to survive my mistakes.

  I didn’t hear it, but I’m sure your testimony before the Council changed everything.

  Do you understand what I’m saying? I didn’t pick you because of who you are. I’m not wise enough. You picked yourself. Or perhaps I should say that you picked yourself up after I’d hit you hard enough and often enough to pulverize a concrete bunker. You picked yourself up and became more than any man or woman I’ve ever known.

  In the end humanity’s future depends more on individuals like you than it does on any organization like the GCES—or the UMCP.

  Sobs rose in her chest before she finished reading. Hungry for comfort, she hugged herself the same way her father had held her when he’d told her about her mother’s death.

  And tell her I told him to say good-bye.

  Angus had suggested this?

  Straining against her grief, she finished Warden’s message.

  I don’t really know you, Morn. I can’t begin to guess how much pain and fear you’ve borne, or what they cost you. But I knew Davies and Bryony Hyland well. You were raised by two fine UMCP officers. Most of your family served with courage, distinction, and honor. And I suspect you’ve always thought you were unworthy of them.

  The tragedy of your gap-sickness must have hurt you terribly. You may have imagined that it demonstrated your unworth. But your parents would have grieved over your illness, not condemned you for it. And I’m sure they would have been desperately proud of you.

  As I am.

  Morn Hyland, you saved my dreams for what the cops should be.

  I hope you’ll give yourself a chance to heal. Min will help you as much as she can. So will Koina.

  Whatever you do, you have my blessing.

  Farewell

  Message ends.

  There her last restraint broke, and a storm of tears swept through her; carried her out of herself into shattering and unanswerable sorrow. Wailing like a child, deserted and bereft, she battered her hands on the board of her data terminal; pounded on her upper arms and thighs. For her this was the reality of being human and mortal, undefended by zone implants: utter pain; the opposite end of the universe from the clarity of gap-sickness. Sobs poured from her so hard that they seemed to tear her throat; seemed to cramp the muscles of her chest like spasms of nausea.

  She wept for her parents and family. She wept for what Angus had done to her—and for the cowardice of accepting her zone implant control from him. She wept for the lies she’d used to manipulate Nick Succorso. She wept over the way Davies had been made to suffer by Nick’s justified outrage; wept over Angus’ welding. She wept for Mikka’s grim courage and Min’s determination. Finally she wept for the dead: for poor Sib Mackern, frightened and abandoned, whose self-sacrifice had helped protect them in the asteroid swarm; for calm, lonely Vector Shaheed, the “savior of humankind”; for Ciro Vasaczk, following Sorus Chatelaine’s example to its conclusion; and for Warden Dios, the last UMCP director, who had used Morn to preserve humankind’s future—and died proud of her.

  She cried for a long time.

  But when the storm finally receded, she found that she understood something she’d never grasped before.

  She could bear it. She sufficed. Because she must.

  Almost tottering in the aftermath of so many tears, she went into the san to clean her face. Instead of washing it, however, she immersed her head in vacuum-chilled water and let the cold baptize her until the sting had brought her back into her body; restored her relationship with herself. While she dried her hair, she stared at her reflection in the mirror as if she wanted to memorize her own face; confirm that it was hers.

  Eventually she discovered that she could look herself in the eyes.

  Once her hair was dry, she put on a fresh shipsuit. Then she unlocked her doors and went out to meet the future.

  HASHI

  CONCLUSIONS:

  EXTRACTS FROM

  THE PRIVATE JOURNALS

  OF HASHI LEBWOHL,

  DIRECTOR, DATA ACQUISITION

  UNITED MINING COMPANIES POLICE

  [This extract is dated three days after Hashi Lebwohl’s reinstatement as director of Data Acquisition.

  The designation “United Mining Companies Police” is code residue.

  The name of the organization had been changed:

  the UMCP was now the Space Defense Poli
ce.

  However, many months passed before all levels of SDPHQ’s computer systems were amended to reflect the change.]

  … a remarkable occasion in several ways.

  Certainly it was remarkable that our esteemed Governing Council for Earth and Space, as righteous as it is august, saw fit to restore me to my former duties. I had not expected so much forbearance. I suspected that the GCES would require a scapegoat. In the absence of the most obvious candidates Warden Dios and the great worm and in view of Maxim Igensard’s manifest inadequacy to the burden, I considered it likely that I would be selected….

  No doubt the reasons cited were to some extent sincere. It is common knowledge that Director Donner argued for my reinstatement. And it is also known that the last message she received from Warden Dios urged her to do so. However, I am confident that the primary motivation behind my public “forgiveness” was and is concern for the functional—as distinct from the ethical—integrity of the new Space Defense Police. The Members fear a preemptive strike from the Amnion, an attempt to cripple our defenses before we can disseminate our antimutagen and attack them. Therefore my experience and knowledge have been allowed to outweigh any inaccuracies which might be laid to my charge.

  Put more cynically, the Members fear that Min Donner is too honest and direct to oppose the Amnion effectively. They believe they need a man with my reputedly imprecise scruples.

  … remarkable also was the Council’s vote to pardon Warden Dios. I was gladdened by it, although it does little to palliate my sense of loss. In my view, it would be right and just to honor him as both hero and martyr. Few among us would have enjoyed the fate Holt Fasner prepared for us. I believed, however, that his self-sacrifice would be met by more resentment. His actions reminded the Members in the most overt and humiliating way of their own failure as humanity’s representatives. Therefore they would seek to diminish him so that they could think better of themselves….