The Devil Delivered and Other Tales

by Steven Erikson

  Potts, William, is listed as a Subversive Class 01 (potential). The following observation reports are compiled from academic observation reports (aor), field operatives, E-surveillance.

  AOR (course instructors & required Report Review Committee):

  (a) Subject displays an exceptional level of inquisitiveness.

  (b) Subject takes perverse pleasure in challenging accepted applications of Social Theory.

  (c) Subject is advanced in communications theory applications.

  (d) Subject’s father is a known dissident for which Subject displays incorrected pride.

  (e) Subject displays advanced (unapproved) knowledge of Numbers Theory and Chaos Theory. (Chaos Theory is Suppressed Information, See Freedom File 210X210.) Assume Parental Education, contravening NOAC Parenting Parameters, Criminal Code 16-21IIa-f.

  (f) Subject employed No-Trace variants on Net, using a Remote Fieldbook.

  (g) Subject continually disrupted classes with adversarial interrogatives.

  (h) Subject identified two assigned field operatives via Valentine cards with boxed chocolates (chocolates analyzed and cleared).

  (i) Subject displayed advanced knowledge of technological engineering Systems Theory & application.

  (j) Subject revealed knowledge of pre-revised archaeology and anthropological dynamics.

  (k) Subject revealed knowledge of Indigenous Peoples’ History, Mythology & Belief Systems prior to Applied Anthropological Restructuring of Said Peoples.

  (l) Subject successfully breached this file with insufficient trail to advance criminal proceedings.

  Present Net Entries: Unavailable.

  JOHN JOHN: Delete File, Potts, William.

  NOACOM: This file is docked at Securicom. There are no other copies of this file, as per Securicom Subversive Investigations Parameters. Do you still wish to Delete?

  JOHN JOHN: Yes.

  NOACOM: File Deleted.

  JOHN JOHN: Delete File, Potts, Berman. Potts, Lucinda n. Bolen.

  NOACOM: No such file exists.

  JOHN JOHN: Sniff back.

  NOACOM: File, Potts, Berman, File, Potts, Lucinda née Bolen were accidentally destroyed in Data Transfer, A.C. 13. Investigation Ongoing: sabotage suspected.

  JOHN JOHN: Delete Ongoing Investigation Data File, Data Transfer A.C. 13, Potts, Berman & Lucinda.

  NOACOM: File Deleted.

  JOHN JOHN: Delete all Subversive all Classes Files.

  NOACOM: Working. All files deleted, Subversive all Classes Files. 16174.96 QTB now available in Securicom System.

  JOHN JOHN: Delete all E-surveillance Files.

  NOACOM: Working …

  Net

  STONECASTER: A modest query, then. How is it that he’s getting clearer? Hours tick into days out under that deadly sun. The boy’s cooked, his skin peeling, half-blind.

  CORBIE TWA: Into and out of, Stony. Clarity’s the word all right. Crystal clear. He’s pushed through. He’s been cleansed, hell, reborn to the hour.

  STONECASTER: Still kind of suspicious to my thinking.

  BOGQUEEN: Your thinking’s still too linear, Stonecaster. He’s on a seasonal round, moving a cyclical route. When I read him, I feel him orbiting out there, coming round and round, coming closer with each pass of the great wheel. The closer he gets to what he’s been circling, the clearer things become. For him, for us.

  PACEMAKER: This last hint of NOAC data on population projections and biological dynamics has me curious, to say the least. I wonder if such data exist, and if the trend projections lead to certain inevitable conclusions.

  CORBIE TWA: Carefully crafted belief systems acquire a power of their own. Methinks the powers that be are bucklin under an imperative of their own makin. Inertia’s set in, and now that new information’s comin down the line and mussin up their coifs, they can’t do nothin but lean into the wind.

  BOGQUEEN: Political structures don’t adapt, they react. None of this should surprise you.

  PACEMAKER: There are others out there, like us, who have declared war. It’s a war of information, the staccato of data on all sides. And some have taken a step further down the combative line.

  CORBIE TWA: Ah, you must mean the terrorists.

  PACEMAKER: Strictly speaking, that’s exactly what they are. Not that I’m complaining. The walls of silence have been breached, and data spills like blood into our hands.

  CORBIE TWA: How poetic. But I think the reality’s a tad messier than that, Pacemaker. These guys are pulling down satellites.

  LUNKER: That has, I believe, tailed off lately. For the simple reason that NOAC and the rest have laid off harassing Ladon Inc. and the Lakota.

  PACEMAKER: Given that cyclical storm front over the Central Plains, they haven’t much choice. Now that their hi-tech see-all microsats are all gone …

  BOGQUEEN: Around and around he circles.…

  STONECASTER: You can’t be serious, Bogqueen. Leave me out if you’re going mystical on us. The boy’s an opportunist.

  FREE WHIZZY: All very interesting, ladies and gents, but I can’t help feeling these aimless musings are essentially pointless. We need to get organized. We need a list of things to do, things that arise from a set of goals. There’s an ocean of previously restricted information out there. The boy’s dropping enough crumbs. Time for us to start sniffing the trails.

  CORBIE TWA: You seriously think William knows what he’s doing? That he’s callin for our help? That he has some kind of grand scheme to bring the world to its knees?

  FREE WHIZZY: He may not be consciously aware of such motives, Corbie Twa. Nevertheless, they are clearly operant, no matter who, or what the source.

  CORBIE TWA: Divine guidance?

  BOGQUEEN: You said it, not us.

  STONECASTER: The boy’s dragged you all with him, hasn’t he? Right into the quagmire of madness. Raving loons in the Swamp.

  FREE WHIZZY: You’re free to surface at will, Stonecaster. No one’s insisting you remain.

  CORBIE TWA: Calm down, everyone. Look, somethin’s drawn us to William’s Net entries. All of us, Stonecaster included. We don’t know nothin at all about William, when it comes right down to it. An untreated psychotic? Megalomaniac? Or just someone who knows too much—

  BOGQUEEN: We’re not completely ignorant, Corbie. William dances this Swamp like a whirling dervish. He evades every tracking effort, slips through every drift net NOAC’s dragging across the waves. He’s accessed restricted information and tosses us conceptual time bombs. Is he sitting back right now and laughing while we desperately juggle?

  CORBIE TWA: You forget one thing, lass. He’s dyin of rad poisonin and toxemia. And he walked into that of his own free will. That, to my mind, seriously undermines his authority as a revolutionary thinker.

  STONECASTER: Unless it’s all a scam. What if he’s driving around out there in some NOAC-issue rad buggy. Throwing us time bombs all right, then laughing when they explode in our faces.

  PACEMAKER: This speculation serves nothing. I believe Free Whizzy’s desire to organize is worthwhile. For one, I am interested in pursuing these population projection data. Much might be unveiled there, about both William and the Official Domain.

  LUNKER: Some of my associates are already working certain related areas. They are actively widening the cracks in the official wall. I’ll lay out a thread down to this place, and pertinent information shall surely find you.

  PACEMAKER: Thank you.

  JOHN JOHN: Hello one and all. Open a cubby, ladies and gentlemen, while I toss you all some background data on one Potts, William. I’m afraid I can’t stick around and chat. There’s a few more things that I need to do. Stay together, keep talking—you may not know it, but your silent audience is vast, and the threads … they fall toward you like rain.…

  FIVE

  American NW, Terminal Zone, July 11, A.C. 14

  They gathered beneath a tarp that flapped drumlike in the wind. Seated on folding chairs around a three-legged metal table covered in fine la
ce. High-electrolyte drinks served from a refractive decanter. Beneath their feet a thick, broad rug.

  On all sides on the hilltop the big and little bluestems fluttered their flowers like butterflies pinned to a board. Western wheatgrass and green needle shivered their feathery stalks. Blades and stems all sharp-edged now, reflective juices glittering and defying absorption, shunting deadly rad into the buffered earth. Impervious flowers that opened like throats at dusk and gusted out clouds of pollen that drifted in air swarming with flitting insects.

  Bundles of sage smoldered around the periphery of the tarp’s shadow, streams of smoke spiraling and spinning away on the wind. The sage leaves, thicker than leather, burned with an inner fuel, an expulsion of energy as slow and steady as its previous absorption. A balance mocking the chemical descent into ashes.

  William squatted just beyond the shadow, at the crest of the western slope where the cacti spread out and down the sun-drenched hillside in mauve and dusty green. Needles angled in antithesis to ancient sunflowers, away from the sun’s light. The symbiotic spiders had spun a mane of angel hair down the entire slope, glistening false dew like a dense scatter of diamonds. The spiders fed on cactus mites through the night, their webs full of cactus spores and tugged away by the scuttling passage of mice and needle-beaked birds that still hopped from pod to pod, plucking flower buds and drinking succulent juices. A microcosm of dependency, newly achieved—to William, a miracle, a creation so precise, so wonderful, that he felt it light his being.

  Daniel Horn watched Jack Tree light the pipe. The young man’s face hinted at irony, a delicious taste at the back of his thoughts.

  Max Ohman, the Lady’s representative, leaned back in his chair, both hands holding the glass of lime-colored liquid on his lap. Where his eyes held, behind the sunglasses, William couldn’t guess. They may well have been closed, for all the rest of his face betrayed.

  Dr. Jenine MacAlister sat opposite the three men, studying a handheld notebook with the viewscreen draped in the shadow of her right hand. She had been reading the stress data for some time now. Finally she glanced up at Max Ohman. “The tensile properties are clearly best-case scenario, Max. What kind of in-field tests have you conducted?”

  Max cleared his throat. “Eleven years, Doctor. We in-field tested in Saudi Arabia, at Boxwell Plateau, and of course at the source-point orbiting station. As of this morning, we have extended the tether-lines thirty-six kilometers from the station, well into the ionosphere. A free-flying test run. The stress factors are more than satisfactory. The tensile properties are not best-case, they’re actual. When I say this poly-ore matrix bends, I mean exactly that, Doctor. It bends.”

  Jenine closed the notebook’s screen lid and reached for her glass. “Of course I’ll need to send the structural details to our NOAC specialists.”

  Max Ohman’s grin was coldly feral. “Like hell you will, Doctor. Unless you’ve got an optic implant or eidetic memory, that data remains the property of Ladon Corporation. And,” he continued in a droll tone, “our file on you indicates neither implants nor eidetic memory.”

  Jenine let it drop. Just another smoke screen. William watched her, saw her mind work, and knew her soul. All so clear now.

  “What remains unspoken,” Jack Tree said, repacking the pipe he’d yet to pass to anyone, “is what has brought us here. I think the time for true words has begun.”

  Jenine leaned back and steepled her fingers, elbows perched on the arms of the chair. A gesture William had seen a thousand times. A gesture of lies and secret contempt. “Very well. First of all, to whom do I speak? You, Jack, or Daniel Horn?”

  Jack Tree looked away, his eyes squinting as he gazed out across the valley.

  “Begin any time,” Daniel Horn said. He wouldn’t let her narrow her targeting. If she had hidden knives of a personal sort, the kind of information NOAC operatives loved to collect, she’d have to throw them at all three men. Made wounding random, and of uncertain efficacy. No leverage here, Jenine.

  “NOAC has NUN approval for the following preemptive actions, gentlemen. I make that clear now, should you believe—erroneously—that your foes are not united on this matter. We are absolutely united.” She paused, tracking her severe expression across all three faces opposite her. A conscious gesture, almost mechanical. She’d practiced, but not enough, not nearly enough.

  “We’re not illiterate, Doctor,” Daniel said. “You’re united on nothing. Major crises in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Ukraine, South Africa—the whole damn game’s blowing up in your faces, and that’s not even mentioning the economic mess. Now, do go on, Doctor.”

  “Stealth strikes,” Jenine snapped. “Full ground incursion with punitive objectives. Oil fields reclaimed, mineral rights on all lands acquired by your peoples retracted once the areas are secured.” She scanned the faces again, this time more successfully. “Any attempt to resist these missions will be met with the full retaliatory might of NOAC military force. Your people will die, gentlemen.”

  Max Ohman barked, “Justification?”

  Jenine smiled. “Our major concern is for the safety of all indigenous peoples in the Midwest, and all citizen populations of the North American Confederacy who have been assessed as at risk from the Medicine Wheel Project. Your stress data is in my opinion flawed—”

  “Since when did you become an engineer?” Max asked, his teeth still bared.

  “My opinion has been granted authority, Mr. Ohman.”

  “By whom?”

  “NOAC and NUN have placed me in the primary position as negotiator in these proceedings.”

  “Big effing deal,” Max said. “You may have authority in some kind of illusory political sense, but I was challenging your opinion. Crunch some numbers for me, Doctor. Show me the flaws in the equations. Would you like pad and paper? Us engineers still use those, you know.”

  “You, Mr. Ohman,” Jenine said coolly, “have been granted the privilege of attending this meeting as an observer. That is a privilege I am empowered to retract at any time.”

  Max snorted and looked away.

  “Now,” Jenine resumed, “where was I?”

  “Killing my people in order to save them,” Daniel Horn said.

  “More than just your people are in danger,” Jenine said. “NOAC is responsible to its citizens—”

  “Since when?” Max asked.

  She ignored him, and continued. “We are obliged to protect them from unwarranted risks, arising from either corporate activities, or external political instability.”

  Daniel asked softly, “Are you suggesting that my position as head of the Lakota Nation is inherently unstable?”

  “Your recent actions in concert with Ladon Corporation have suggested this, Mr. Horn.”

  “Your ultimatum?” Daniel asked.

  “Close down the project immediately. The sanctions will be lifted, and normal relations can resume.”

  “Dr. MacAlister,” Daniel began, leaning forward, “you more than anyone must know that my people and your people have never had normal relations. As for sanctions, you have maintained the imposition of the most insidious kinds of sanctions for five hundred years and counting. Do you actually imagine that you can still hurt us?”

  Jack Tree spoke, “Kill us, yes, by all means. What is a few more scars on your conscience?”

  “She can’t,” Max said. “Her threats are sheer bluff. Every peripheral nation in the world is watching this play out. Secondary and primary nations are gridlocked on this, politically and philosophically. Protests and riots are erupting in one major city after another. It’s all falling apart, all because one lone independent nation said yes to the dream.”

  Jack Tree said, “You were so certain, Doctor, weren’t you? Convinced by all your covert anthropological data. You thought the dreamtimes were dead. You’ve plied us with schemes designed to make us invisible, even to ourselves. You called it the application of successful adaptative cultural adjustment. For al
l your efforts to save us by destroying us, we have still defied you. We have met our dream.” He paused and studied the steatite pipe in his hands. “Not, I’ll grant you, in the way I would have imagined it. The pattern in the skies is new to me, so new that it sometimes frightens me. But I am old, my days are almost done. What I pass on to my children is and always will be the one thing you cannot control, cannot shape to suit your ends. My gift is the history of the damned, and my poison is truth. You see, Doctor, I remember.”

  Jenine said, “You’re all making a terrible mistake.”

  “If we are,” Daniel said, “it will be ours, not yours. Possessing something—even freedom—is two-edged. Our days of sucking at your collective tit are over. The time’s come for you to let go.” He smiled, and it was a smile of sad wisdom. “I had hoped for your blessing, for the cleansing of your hands. But no, you still try to possess us. If it comforts you to call that possession something else, like protection, compassion, or a justifiable maternal instinct, then so be it. Whatever word you choose, it still means chains to us.”

  Entry: American NW, July 11, 2014

  “Enough of the preliminaries,” Jenine said, “let’s get to negotiating this treaty.”

  Jack Tree repacked his pipe and set a burning ember to the steatite bowl. “We have come to listen, Dr. MacAlister.”

  “As representative of the North American Confederacy and spokesperson for the divine will of the Triumvirate of A.C. 14, I am authorized to negotiate the honorable purchase of the following items from those gathered here as representatives of the Lakota Nation and related sovereign peoples of the Midwest Hole; said representatives being thusly identified and duly recorded: John ‘Jack’ Tree Whose Roots are Deep, and Daniel Horn, of the Lakota Nation. Do you acknowledge your presence here at this gathering?”