Alistair once again stopped dead in his tracks. Wellesley reached for his weapons but Alistair laid a restraining hand on him.
“It’s over,” he said, his voice equal parts resignation and disbelief.
Wellesley stared at his captors with the wide-open mouth of him who will not believe what has happened. Before commanded to do so, Alistair went down on his knees and raised his hands above his head. A moment later Wellesley did likewise.
“Get down on the ground!”
“Face down! Peckers on the pavement!”
As the Civil Guard advanced, dozens of guns ready to fire, Alistair leaned forward, turning his head to the side, still staring in disbelief. On his cheek he felt the cold wetness of the road, which had soaked up just enough of the sun’s rays to melt the bit of ice left on it. He felt the pavement’s roughness, even felt the ground vibrate as dozens of tin men approached, their boots pummeling the surface of the street. Then he felt a multitude of knees and shins on his neck and head, several on his back and two on each leg as his arms were twisted behind him and securely bound. He could still feel all this as a black hood was pulled over his head to steal his vision.
***
“Thanks for meeting me,” said Clever Johnny as he stepped out from behind a boulder partially blocking the path up the mountain.
Startled, Brad Stanson drew back and nearly dropped the folders he was toting. The lengthening shadows of dusk streaked across the ground, bent this way and that by the shape of the terrain. Brad squinted as he looked at Clever Johnny, outlined by the setting sun.
“I’m not meeting with you.”
“You’re not meeting with Oliver,” Johnny informed him, leaning against the boulder and casually picking at his teeth with a toothpick.
“I didn’t say anything about Oliver.”
Clever Johnny did not immediately reply.
“What the hell do you want? What the hell are you doing here?”
“You’re here because I sent you a message you thought was from Oliver,” Johnny explained as if bored. “‘If you are willing to proceed with the plan against Clever Johnny’ – how do I come by these nicknames, I wonder – ‘meet me this evening by Red One.’ And now you’ve shown up.”
“You can imagine my bewilderment when I got the message,” said Stanson. “I’m here to find out what’s going on.”
Clever Johnny nodded as if considering what Brad had told him. “Is that true, Cain?”
“Not bloody likely,” said a voice up the slope to Brad’s left. He whirled around to peer up at the man Johnny had called Cain, a man with pale skin, jet-black hair and a sharp nose jutting out from his face like a small knife. “When Clement gave him the message he looked like he was expecting it.”
“Bewildered is not the word I would use to describe him,” said a voice behind Brad.
He whirled again and saw a bigger, burly man with reddish hair and a thick beard. This time he did drop the folders and felt his knees go weak.
“Is it your opinion that Mr. Stanson is plotting against me?” Clever Johnny asked. From his tone he might have been asking Clement his opinion on a rugby match.
“Most definitely.”
Stanson was desperate to think of something to say, but his voice failed him and Clever Johnny spoke instead.
“Did you hear that, Brad? ‘Most definitely.’ He’s not just definitely sure about this, he is the most definitely sure that he could possibly be. There is no greater level of definite surety than that which Clement experienced when he handed you the letter.”
Stanson stared at Clever Johnny with absolute dread. “Johnny, I don’t know anything about a plot. I’m here because I thought Oliver wanted to meet with me. Why the hell would I plot against you?”
“Same reason I’m plotting against you, Oliver and Alistair. Same reason I managed to get Alistair working far away from where he could attend our meetings. Same reason we’re all plotting against the State. Same reason Brutus stabbed Caesar.”
Brad staggered backwards, his vision becoming fuzzy as his blood throbbed through his head. He barely noticed when Cain leaped from his perch and landed on the path in front of him. Falling to his knees, Stanson cried silently as Cain pulled from his belt a knife nearly a foot in length.
For Cain, the moment before the kill was the most interesting part. The ineffable mix of emotions coursing through his body when he first assassinated another human being – excitement, shock, fear, nervousness and an almost religious fascination – was something he no longer could feel, though he missed it. What was left for him was discovering how the subject would react, because each one was different and there was no way to predict it. He noted with mild curiosity how Stanson behaved and then his hand shot out and he slid the steel between the ribs and into the heart. Stanson lost his strength and slumped, which Cain scarcely noticed as he withdrew the blade, just as he scarcely noticed the faint disappointment he felt at how commonplace it had become.
The strike of the knife was so quick that Stanson’s heart was punctured before he felt any pain. When the blade entered his body, when hope was eliminated and the outcome made inevitable, the fear lessened, but the sorrow did not. He had a vague realization the knife must have hit his heart, but he spared little energy on the thought. Rather, he thought of his mother, living far away near New Boston. He thought of the warm, safe, happy times with her, and he yearned to be there and then, away from the unforgiving mountain slope. He thought of the father he had never met, whose identity even his mother did not know for sure. Would he ever know he had a son, that his son had died – been murdered – among the rocks and snow and ice on a frigid island far to the north? Then he thought of his mother again, but by the time his face smacked onto the mountain path, he could no longer feel a thing.
***
Alistair’s holding cell was as confined as an outhouse and just as comfortable. It was nothing but a metal box about six feet in height with a cramped floor space. A small bench, made of the same metal as the box, afforded him a place to sit, but his captors had neglected to release his bonds. The space was cramped for a normal human; for Alistair it was miserable. Once, when he was roughly stuffed inside, he tested the strength of the box with a couple blows of his shoulders and feet, but to his dismay it was solidly built. He refrained from any further violence in part because it was futile but also because he wanted them to think he had been cowed into submission.
He knew he would be executed. The Realists, little concerned with due process in the best of circumstances, would waste no time in plying him for information and then sending him to the gallows, the guillotine, the chair, the firing squad or to whatever ad hoc apparatus was being used at the moment.
On Kaldis he escorted his share of prisoners scheduled for execution. With few exceptions they became submissive, resigned, accepting their fate regardless of their prior temperament and behavior. The closer they came to execution the more docile they became. The logic of this at first escaped him. At the precise moment when a prisoner has nothing to lose, when he can attack his captors with abandon and, if not free himself, at least sell his life dearly, he becomes meek and pliant. Several cycles of military experience on Kaldis altered his ideas of Man, and he came to realize the key to the seeming paradox. It was not fear of death that intimidated a man into submission, it was authority.
Authority could maintain an empire. It was the glue that held a battalion together, and it made a man compliant, even when faced with his own demise. Especially when faced with his own demise. A soldier, gun in hand, may fight to the death against overwhelming odds, but a man in handcuffs will go mildly to his execution. The reason, as Alistair eventually realized, was not fear; it was because the man in handcuffs was shown to his satisfaction that he was under authority. Demonstrating authority was as key an element of boot camp as any actual training. All the humiliations the recruits were made to suffer were ways to demonstrate authority. When a king wore a crown, he did so to tap into its p
ower. When men must kneel before a king or stand when a judge enters a room, or when nobility dressed differently from serfs, or when generals wore more medals than privates, it was all to demonstrate authority. With authority, a physically frail man such as the first Solar Emperor Yao Sung could be responsible for the deaths of one and a half billion people.
At the same time, Alistair realized something else about authority: it was not a universal force, like gravity; it was a mental construct. The great economist Ludwig von Mises of Austria demonstrated that value was in the human observer. No object had value; it was simply what a person thought about that object. Likewise, authority was not in the person considered to have it; it was in the person who decided to obey. When he comprehended this, authority no longer affected him. He understood authority was his to grant or withhold, and he therefore had no intention of making his execution an easy affair. I’ll die of a gun shot wound on my way to the chamber, but I am not going to stand still in front of the firing squad.
Thus resolved, he passed the hours in thought in his box. He reflected on the callousness of events, to allow a man to be ripped from his time and place, from his loved ones, and left to die with a life unfinished, eventually to forget he had ever existed. He thought of all the other men and women through time who died unavenged, with lives unfinished, forgotten by time and fate, of all the contributions to the story of humanity whose effects, however slight, were indelible and yet whose authorship, once lost, was forgotten forever. He was about to take his place among the ranks of the forgotten.
A century hence, a millennium hence, a million cycles hence, when people recalled the names of the famous, he would not be among them. At best, his name would be listed in a census file from a dead civilization, one name among millions and billions. Katherine would mourn him; his parents would mourn him; perhaps Gerald would mourn him. Even Oliver might, but he would eventually be forgotten. His grandnieces and nephews would hear a story or two during Foundation Day family gatherings, but their children would not. In a hundred cycles at most he would cease to be even a memory.
He was filled with a desperate anger, and tears welled up in his eyes as he grit his teeth. The injustice of it was nearly unbearable. Only with a great effort did he once again restrain himself from beating on his confining walls. To the extent the six foot box permitted, he stood up and sat down over and over, keeping his muscles loose. He rotated his shoulders, turned his head, stretched his torso… everything he could. He did not want stiff muscles when the cell finally opened to give him one last chance to strike at The Realists.
Chapter 41
The hamlet tucked away on the edge of a valley stream was illegal. Most of the buildings were cheaply made, for the hamlet could only exist as long as the State either knew nothing about it or did not bother itself with it. There were a couple cabins built before the enforced relocation, and when daring souls ventured outside the city, a few added their hastily constructed edifices to these. There was one street, nothing more than a dirt path presently covered in snow. On either side were a few humble homes, and at the far end, up against the side of the mountain, was a two-story cabin, one of the originals, well built and solid.
It was into this last building that two men carried the scrawny body of a blindfolded Henry. Upon entering, they deposited him on the floor and waited for their leader who sat in a rough-hewn wooden chair in the back corner. Oliver gave the two men a nod and they left as Henry ripped the blindfold from his eyes. In the sparseness of the room - it had only a table and a couple chairs apart from the long unused fireplace – it took but an instant to spot Oliver.
“Good afternoon, Henry.”
“Oliver, we gotta talk.” Henry’s voice sounded desperate. “I know you think I’m a traitor—”
“Who told you that?”
“I talked with Alistair. Listen, my name was on the list of their double agents because I signed up to be one. That was before I knew you were involved.” He stepped towards Oliver with his hands turned palms up in supplication. “They were paying for good information and I needed the Credits. But I never gave them any good info. Hell, I didn’t have any good info to give. When I talked with you… I just forgot about being an informant and joined the cause. I swear to you I never told them anything. I was fighting against them.” A moment passed and Oliver said nothing. “I swear on my soul I never said a thing. You have to believe me!”
“No, I don’t have to believe you. Anyone with the power of speech can swear anything they like. If the Civil Guard broke in here right now you would swear you were on their side.”
“A real informant wouldn’t bother to demand a meeting with you once he knew he had been found out. Oliver, you know me. I didn’t give a damn one way or the other. I offered to be an informant because of the Credits. I was…” He shook his head hopelessly. “I was stupid. It was that snitch’s program. Anything useful we told them they would pay us for. Then someone suggested I join the rebellion and inform from the inside. But I haven’t reported to them for a while. I’ve been working for the cause because I’ve seen that it means something. I actually realized you and Alistair were on to something. Oliver, please. I came here to give you information.”
“What information?”
“They’ve captured Alistair and Greg. Alistair was leaving for somewhere and I wanted to go with him. Me, Greg and him wound up taking some wounded to a clinic on the north side. But the Civil Guard showed up and arrested everyone.”
“But not you.”
“They arrested me but my name was on their list…” Henry looked sheepish for a moment but quickly plunged on. “I convinced a commander to let me go, that I hadn’t reported because I had been so deep undercover.”
“And you gave him information.”
“Nothing they didn’t already know. They set a trap for Alistair. When he came back they took him.” There was another moment of silence. “Oliver, please.”
Considering him for a bit, Oliver finally said, “Thank you, Henry. You would have done better to tell me right away you were an informant, but there’s nothing to be done about that now.”
“Are you going to save him?”
Oliver shifted his bulk. “I doubt there is anything I can do. Most of the rebels have been disbanded for now, and my team and I are moving out of here in short order. As much as I would like to, I don’t think I have the capability to help Alistair.”
Henry ran a hand through his hair, stumbled and fell into a seated position on the rough wooden floor of the cabin. “He must think I turned him in,” he mumbled and surprised even himself when a tear formed in his eye. Struggling to his feet, he grabbed the blindfold from the floor and walked to the door, trudging slowly, as a defeated man. When it slammed shut behind him, Oliver heard a pair of feet treading down the stairs.
“We’re moving out, then?” asked the man from the bottom step of the stairs.
“As soon as you can make it happen. Have you gotten a hold of Stanson?”
“Can’t find him. He could be anywhere on the island right now.”
“Goddamn it,” sighed Oliver without any real venom.
“Where are we going from here?”
He rubbed his head with both hands, avoiding his still tender nose. Then he dropped his hands to his sides and took a deep breath. “Gather a force together. As many men as you can. Arm them with whatever we have available.”
“Sir?”
“We’re going after Alistair.”
***
So well did Alistair’s small metal prison insulate him from outside sound, despite the small air vent in the back, that the former marine did not even realize there was anyone outside his cell until the door swung open. Squinting against what seemed to be a bright reddish light, he had difficulty determining how many men were there. Having been trained to fight blind, he prepared to leap from his box and either try an escape or at least crush someone’s ribcage with a kick.
“Alistair Ashley 3nn,” intoned a m
an.
“Wrong cell,” said Alistair, his voice more of a croak. “My name’s just Alistair Ashley.”
“Exit the box slowly.”
Alistair struggled forward, his muscles tight despite his efforts, and when he emerged, his vision beginning to adjust to what was in reality a low level of light, he despaired at what he saw. He was three stories above the bottom level on a narrow walkway with a grating for a floor. There were several stories above him, and each walkway on both sides of the large prison block was lined with metal boxes just like his, probably a hundred to a level. High above, red tinged lights hung from the ceiling and glowed enough to make it tolerably easy to see.
With him on the walkway were three Civil Guard, one of them a Colonel, and a featureless humanoid form in white. The smooth skin, devoid of any identifying mark, was of a flexible yet durable material. The head was human shaped, with only shallow indentations where eye sockets should be, a gradual and small bump at the nose, and just the smallest indication of lips. It was almost like the face had been washed away. There were no ears and no hair. Female in form, there were small breasts and slightly flared hips but no nipples or naval. It stood about six feet tall and, despite its slender figure, he knew it probably weighed in the vicinity of three hundred pounds. Its presence precluded any possibility of escape.
It was a dreadbot. Outlandishly expensive and complicated to manufacture, they were quite rare on Aldra. Even with the advent of Mechanical DNA, by which nanobots could be programmed to assemble a dreadbot out of raw materials, it was still a lengthy, arduous process, but the results were extraordinary. Dreadbots were inhumanly strong, inhumanly fast, inhumanly quick and as remorselessly lethal as their programmer decided to make them. Even well rested and unbound, he was no match for a dreadbot. His face must have betrayed his disappointment for the Colonel chuckled.
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