“Show me,” Masozi said as she held the doctor’s angry, defiant eyes for several seconds before the stream of documents appeared in her monocle. She scanned them for the highlighted passages and was forced to conclude that Eve was right: reasonable certainty had indeed been satisfied.
It boggled her mind that a surgeon general would do the things for which Dr. Barnes was about to be Adjusted. But private documents which had passed between himself and his collaborators painted a clear picture: the doctor had actively sought to increase access to various forms of birth control, but he had done so with an undeniable pattern of greater emphasis placed on lower-income—yet upwardly mobile—segments of Rationem’s society. In particular, he had instructed specific sub-directors of regional healthcare to practice subtly different post-birth education to those parents who fell into this particular band of society. For the most part he had left urban centers and those who lived within them alone since, by his own words, the watchdog groups which observed civil liberties focused primarily on those populations when rooting out government suppression of individual and community rights. As a result, not only would acting within these communities be riskier but it appeared that doing so would not have satisfied his agenda.
For those individuals who had already emigrated from such relatively low-rent locales—or who had successfully elevated themselves to five percent above the average earning power of a Rationem citizen—significantly greater emphasis was placed on passively encouraging semi-permanent birth control measures.
More than even that, however, was one particular letter which was completely damning in and of itself: in that letter, he had openly discussed the subject of cross-population, genetically-linked diseases with an off-world colleague where he made a statement which read: ‘These diseases, if left unchecked in their spread from community to community, will eventually infect the populations of Rationem’s most stable and productive socio-economic groups. The ensuing societal instability caused by the predictable rising costs of community-specific healthcare makes this issue one which should be contained using any available means. If these means are deemed illegal, I will accept full responsibility and any attendant consequences, but in my position as Surgeon General I cannot allow our already overburdened economy to be more greatly burdened than is absolutely necessary.’
Masozi’s family, just a few generations earlier, had been part of a group which would certainly fall under the scope of the doctor’s unthinkable statement. The fact that the statement had been in a private letter, which was part of a long chain of correspondence with an out-system colleague, removed the necessity of that colleague—who appeared startlingly sympathetic to Dr. Barnes’ views—reporting it to the authorities. Under Chimera Sector interstellar law, communities were actually prohibited in many cases from interfering with local issues like this one. But, even if the doctor on the other end of the conversation had not been prohibited from doing so, it appeared that she was far from eager to do so.
“How could you?” Masozi found herself asking yet again before her eyes bored holes into Dr. Barnes’ own. “What is wrong with you?!” she hissed angrily. According to Eve’s numbers, his brand of unauthorized eugenics—practices which were actually ratified as common law in several other Systems—had caused no fewer than sixty deaths due to post-operative complications, and had prevented some thirty thousand children from being conceived.
He jutted his chin out defiantly, and Eve’s voice crackled into Masozi’s ear, “I’m inbound, babe; forty seconds to pick-up.”
Masozi was unable to help herself from removing the ball-gag, and after she had done so the aged doctor looked up at her with the same burning gaze she had seen in Mrs. Kearcher’s visage just before her Adjustment had been executed. “I did what was needed,” he said shortly. “This planet is the poorest in the Sector and has less access to expensive gene therapies than any other community as a result. If we don’t take measures to improve our economy—“
“That wasn’t your call!” she snapped viciously. “You were put into office to care for the people on your world, not play Emperor by deciding who gets to breed and who doesn’t!”
“I’m not going to explain myself to you,” he sneered. “History will look back on me as someone who was willing to do what was needed.”
“No,” Masozi seethed as she produced a syringe with a poisonous cocktail which Eve had concocted, “it won’t. History will remember you as a tyrant—I’ll see to that personally.”
The cocktail in the syringe contained lethal doses of potassium and organic neurotoxins, which would render him unconscious in a matter of seconds and end his life in no more than seven minutes without immediate administration of counteragents. In the other hand, she produced the Mark of Adjustment which she then tucked into his robe’s breast pocket. She placed the syringe against his neck, which she had to hold firmly in place as he began to struggle, and then she paused.
“Eve…” she began hesitantly, “are you sure about this?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you about this, Adjuster,” Eve replied solemnly—a near-certain indication that she was, in fact, telling the truth. “The numbers I projected for you are the 10th percentile outcomes; the median outcomes are several times worse. Fifteen seconds to pick-up.”
Masozi nodded and, though the doctor struggled violently, she managed to inject the bolus of potassium into his jugular vein by holding him down with her knee on his cheek.
Just a few seconds later, his eyes went wide and then slowly closed. Masozi stood from the closet, peered around the corner to check if her path was clear, and then made her way to the room through which she had entered.
No sooner had she opened the door than she saw Eve’s hover-drone appear outside the same window through which she had entered, “Climb on quickly; my drone’s already under surveillance.”
Masozi complied, and no sooner had she straddled the top of Eve’s drone chassis than a searchlight illuminated their position beside the house.
“Hold, citizen,” an amplified voice pierced her ears painfully.
“No can do, pal,” Eve retorted sassily, and a moment later another power transformer exploded down the street. Eve’s drone swung up and over the house just as a hail of weapons fire lit behind them. “You’re gonna have to jump onto your hover-bike,” Eve explained after he drone had gone completely over the residential block where Dr. Barnes’ house was located. “But I think this drone’s done for; someone put a trace on it two seconds after I torched the first transformer.”
“What about your core?” Masozi asked worriedly as she looked over her shoulder and saw the telltale flashing lights of urban police vehicles following on their trail.
“I’ll eject it onto the ground beside the bike,” Eve explained, “and then the drone will head off as a diversion under automated guidance protocols. It should buy you enough time to get clear of the local LEO’s before they wise up, assuming you max out the bike’s engines. We’ll be out of touch until you transfer my personality matrix to your wrist-link.”
“Got it,” Masozi nodded as her hover-bike came into view.
Eve’s drone slewed beside the bike before ejecting her core, after which Masozi jumped off and picked up Eve’s heavy, metal core. She placed the cylindrical object between her thighs as Eve’s drone rocketed off in the nearly opposite direction which she intended to take, and after firing the hover-bike’s engines she gunned them for all they were worth.
The gee-forces caused by her acceleration were dangerously powerful, but she knew that Eve wouldn’t have suggested maximum possible speed unless it was absolutely necessary.
After just a few minutes of hurtling away from the scene of her latest Adjustment, Masozi allowed herself to relax fractionally as she made for their last destination on this particular planet.
She had no idea how they were going to get off-world when she was finished, but she was increasingly suspicious that the appearance of President Blanco’s fleet was at least p
artially connected to her presence on the run-down world.
And that thought only served to steel her resolve to complete her package of Adjustments so she could get to the real tyrant in the Chimera Sector—her cousin and president of the Capitol System, Han-Ramil Blanco.
Chapter XI: Mercy vs. Duty
“You’re sure about this?” Jericho asked after processing what Shu had told him about their first Adjustee’s present condition.
“I am,” she nodded, “he lost consciousness three days ago and the family decided to pull the plug at midnight tonight. Apparently he’s been suffering from a degenerative nervous system disorder and has been placed on hospice protocols with round-the-clock supervision of a home health worker.”
“And the causes are natural?” Jericho asked as he mulled over the nature of this particular Adjustment. The tribunal had been prior to the Adjustee, Mr. Blackwell, had lost consciousness so it was reasonable to suspect a connection between the events.
“Obviously I don’t have access to everything,” Shu allowed, “but the official doctor’s notes and orders are consistent with a naturally-occurring set of outcomes that are well within the established parameters of his disease’s profile.”
“Interesting…” Jericho mused. He knew that none of the Adjustments which the tribunal—or, more specifically, which Mr. Newman—had given them would be simple affairs. Some might be easier to execute than others, but it was now perfectly clear that each was part of an elaborate trap meant to drive both he and Masozi into overstepping their own authority and mandate as Adjusters—which would clearly be tyrannical acts of their own.
He genuinely admired the complexity of, and message behind, the carefully selected set of Adjustments. It was precisely the kind of thing that he would put new Tyrannis Adjusters through if he found himself in a position to do so—which was almost certainly a message in and of itself.
“Newman’s cleverer than even his reputation suggests,” Jericho said after a lengthy silence, during which time Shu silently worked to harvest more data from their short-lived data-net uplink. “The question before us is whether or not we go into a man’s home—where his family sits at bedside in preparation for the inevitable, more-or-less natural end of his life—and execute the Adjustment before his life is scheduled to end mere minutes later.”
“It seems like a moral question,” Shu agreed, her eyes never leaving the virtual interface of her hardware as she scoured the net for information about their other Adjustments, “but in the end it seems pretty clear that we have to do it.”
“Agreed,” Jericho nodded as he considered the fact that only Chief Afolabi and Masozi’s fourth and final Adjustment targeted officials who were still engaged in the practices which had triggered Adjustments against them. “No sense in waiting around,” Jericho said grimly, “let’s do what we came here to do.”
“Where do you want me?” Shu asked as Jericho prepped the bike for start-up.
“I’ll drop you off nearby,” he replied before snapping down on the kickstarter. He had manually tuned the exhaust muffler to produce a legal volume of engine noise, and the bike thrummed beneath him as Shu got on behind him. “But no net access while we’re in town,” he added sternly. “Did you already set up our second and third Adjustments?”
“Done and done, Jay,” she replied after donning her helmet. “They should be right where we want them in six hours.”
“That doesn’t give us much time,” he said before twisting the throttle and setting off down the paved road which led to the Adjustee’s house.
“Coming,” Jericho heard a voice on the other side of the door say after he knocked. When the door opened, a short woman with curly brown hair looked up at him with obvious confusion. “I’m sorry; did you know my dad?”
“Not exactly, but I need to see him anyway,” Jericho replied, knowing that Newman was painting him into a difficult situation. “It’s important.”
The woman cocked her head dubiously, “I’m sorry…he’s only got a few more hours left, and we’d really prefer it remained private.”
Jericho suppressed a sigh, as he could genuinely feel for the people whose lives he was about to disrupt. But his duty as an Adjuster had to take a backseat to his personal preferences—too much was riding on him, not the least of which was Masozi’s life. He was well-and-truly responsible for her involvement in the chaos of the previous weeks and months, and he would be damned before he let his private feelings get in the way of their mutual mission.
“I’d really prefer if you let me see him,” Jericho said calmly, though allowing an unyielding note to enter his voice. “I think it would be better that way.”
The woman seemed more confused than alarmed, but something seemed to click behind her eyes and she slowly gestured for him to enter, “He’s at the end of the hall on the right.”
“Thank you,” Jericho said graciously, feeling like a complete and utter heel for what he was about to do.
“You’re clear, Jay,” Shu’s reported via his earbud. “There are sixteen people inside, but idents on their personal data devices confirm them as family members—none of them has an expected combat rating over 220.”
He clicked his teeth to acknowledge his receipt of her message, and came to the open door at the end of the hallway. Inside was a mix of individuals, most of whom were in their forties and fifties, surrounding a low-cost medical bed with a stream of biometric data displayed at the foot on a handful of independent monitors.
The man occupying the bed matched the latest photo of their Adjustee, Mr. Blackwell, and Jericho saw several faces turn toward him as he entered the room.
“Who are you?” one of the men near the bed asked, standing from his chair and looking at Jericho with narrowed eyes.
“My name is Jericho,” he replied after verifying the Adjustee’s identity with a quick visual check. He then decided to cut through to the heart of the matter, “I’m an Adjuster.”
Every head in the room snapped up in unison, and several audible gasps circulated the room. But the man who had asked for Jericho’s identity seemed less surprised than the others. “So,” he growled, “you’ve come after all.”
“I have,” Jericho nodded stoically as several other men stood to their feet.
“Why don’t you just turn around and get out of here?” the man said menacingly, taking a threatening step toward Jericho. “He’ll be gone in two hours as it is; what possible good is served by your killing him now?!”
“Jake—“ one of the other men began, but the first one held up a hand angrily.
“He’s not your father, Tad,” the first man, Jake, snapped, “so stay the fuck out of this!”
“Tad’s the only one with a combat rating over 200,” Shu reported via Jericho’s earpiece, apparently having made good use of Benton’s ‘discovered’ combat rating analysis program, “Jake’s down at 120.”
Jericho clicked his teeth again before holding up his hands in a hopefully calming gesture. He knew it was likely that Jake would have to be physically removed from the equation, and he wanted to give the grieving man every possible opportunity to stand aside. “Jake, you were expecting someone like me to show up. That means you know, on some level, that I need to do what I’ve come to do.”
“Bullshit!” Jake snapped as he took another step toward Jericho. “Dad was a good man; he faithfully served the judicial system for his entire adult life. Those accusations are baseless!”
“Your father abused his position, Jake,” Jericho said evenly, his body relaxed even as the other man’s posture became increasingly aggressive. “Would it help if I showed you the evidence?”
“Why the fuck would that help?!” Jake demanded bitterly, his hands balling into fists at his sides as he crouched slightly after entering outside striking range. “Some rich divorcee got pissed at dad for handing him a rough judgment two decades ago, and took out regional ads slandering dad’s good name in the hope of getting some kind of sick revenge—“
<
br /> “Jake,” Tad interrupted solemnly, causing the Adjustee’s son to give the other man a furious look, “the evidence is pretty overwhelming—“
“Shut up, Tad, or so help me I’ll put you down like a rabid dog,” Jake barked.
“Your father presided over seven hundred divorce proceedings during his career,” Jericho said calmly, “and he willfully ruled against a particular subset of people in those proceedings. I assume you know the nature of that subset?”
“I don’t give a damn,” Jake growled before throwing a terribly-conceived haymaker at Jericho’s jaw. Jericho easily weaved his head out of the swing’s path and, as Jake’s forward momentum carried him just past Jericho, the aged Adjuster hooked his arm by the elbow and delivered a carefully-placed knee to the other man’s liver.
Gasping in a surprise known only to those who have been put down by such a blow, Jake fell to his knees with wide eyes and a silent, gaping mouth. Jericho helped him down and gave a nearby pair of men a hard look before saying, “Jake, this isn’t about you. This isn’t even about the people who your father wronged while he sat on the bench,” he said, though Jake’s eyes burned with molten fury as he fought to regain his breath. “This is about the rest of our society, which counts on people in positions like the one your father held to be dispassionate when standing in judgment over them. Your father abused his position,” Jericho said, an unexpected note of sympathy entering his voice, “and now that his abuses have become public, my failure to execute the peoples’ will can only serve to weaken the already tenuous faith they have in their government to do its duty by them.”
“So what…” Jake gasped before managing to stiffen his torso and fight the words out, “so what if he ruled…against a bunch of…rich people who had gained their position as nothing but an accident of birth?”
“It wasn’t his place to make that call, Jake,” Tad interrupted before Jericho could do likewise, and much to Jericho’s surprise he saw more than a few heads begin to bob slowly up and down throughout the room.
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 15