A Dark, Distorted Mirror. Volume 4. A Future, Born in Pain addm-4

by Gareth D. Williams

I wasn't assigned to that mission. At that stage I had no real responsibilities at all. Even making the coffee was a little too technical for me then. I wanted advancement. I wanted promotion and I resented being held back by jealous and inferior people.

  I wasn't a terribly nice person then. You may have gathered. I'm not a very nice person now either, but there was a time.... when I was with her, when I was different. She made me want to be a nicer person, a better person.

  Anyway, she got the would-be assassin admitted to an underground clinic. I came across it on my private investigations, and ran into her. Somehow.... I still don't know how.... she talked me out of reporting it. She made a speech about compassion, about fear, about the quality of mercy.... I believed it.... coming from her, I believed it.

  I didn't get my promotion.... that time. I moved up a little eventually, as I said. I used my free time to find out everything I could about the clinic, and about her. It turned out she was running it, a place for people who'd fallen between the cracks, who couldn't afford medical care, for the lost, the damned, the lonely.... I could have reported it, but I didn't.

  We were two completely different people, you see. I couldn't stand humanity. I'd spent my whole life watching them, uncovering all their dark little secrets, the petty lies they sought to keep concealed. She thought that there was some good in everyone, that everyone deserved a second chance, and usually a third and fourth. I'd begun to doubt there was any good in anyone before I met her.

  Somehow she convinced me. There may not have been good in everyone, but there was definitely good in her.

  I asked her out over a year after I'd met up with her again. I asked her to marry me almost three years after that. We were married the day of first contact with your people.

  We never had children, and eight years later she was dead.

  Resources were.... tight, very tight after we lost Earth. A good number of things had to be de-prioritised. Everything we could spare went on defence, and after that food and interstellar relations. Medical care for non-essential personnel was quite a way down. Vicky couldn't bear to see this and opened another of her underground clinics, treating people who weren't considered important enough to get treatment in the few hospitals that were open.

  She didn't have enough medicine, or people, or time to treat everyone. She couldn't possibly. Not everyone saw it that way.

  There were numerous gangs in the underworld in those days. Well, there still are. One of the many petty criminal gang members had been injured in a shoot-out with Security and went to Vicky's clinic for treatment. She'd run out of medicine for him, and couldn't do anything. Still, she tried. She did all she could, in circumstances where most people would have washed their hands and said 'there's no point'. She didn't. She tried, but failed. She'd done all she could.

  His companions didn't see it quite that way, and they shot her, point-blank.

  As she went, so went my soul. I didn't even bother hunting down the people responsible.... what would be the point? I didn't even take time off for the funeral. My work consumed me.

  And bit by bit I watched any hint of ethics or morality fall away from me, until all that was left was despair, and the realisation that things would never get better, but that we would tear down all of Proxima before we let them get any worse.

  * * *

  "How are things out there?"

  Corwin hesitated, truly unsure of how to answer. Very little about this meeting felt right, and the Captain.... the General.... John.... did not sound himself. Well, he sounded more like himself than he had in almost a year, but that was still not much. He had been insulated from the real world in his Dark Star for months, a ship built around an imprisoned and probably insane telepath.

  Could he handle the truth? The way things really were?

  "There's no need to think hard, David," the General said wryly. "I know how I must look, but.... I need to know. You're right. I've been insulated from the real world too long. I need to know."

  Corwin started, his heart beating faster. He hadn't said those words aloud, had he? But the near exactness of phrasing.... He coughed, and tried to order his thoughts. He had known General John Sheridan for years, and been his best — sometimes only — friend for so long. If he could not trust him, whom could he trust?

  (An unbidden image of Lyta crossed his mind.)

  "They're bad," he said. "Possibly worse than I can ever remember."

  "Exaggerating, surely? You do remember the years after Orion, don't you?"

  Oh, yes, he remembered. The Orion colony destroyed in a single night by a Minbari war fleet. The death toll had been relatively low.... that night, even if the General's daughter had been among them.

  But the months afterwards, that long and terrible winter. Corwin could see again the people starving in the streets of Proxima, the riots, the prison break-outs, the near-anarchy. But the thing he remembered most was the complete despair. Before Orion there had been a slow and steady increase in hope, a growing belief that humanity had seen the worst the universe could offer, and had survived. After Orion, there had been nothing.

  He did not hesitate in replying. "Yes," he said, simply. "It's worse."

  The General didn't say anything, and a heavy and uncomfortable silence fell across the room. Corwin shivered, seeing a momentary flash of light appear above the General's head. A halo.... or a chain?

  Or just a figment of his imagination?

  "At least then we all knew who the enemy was," he said finally, desperate to fill the silence, to explain his feelings, just to get some reaction from his oldest friend. "The Minbari were the enemies. We could see them, we could identify them. There was absolutely no doubt at all. But now...." He sighed.

  "People are being told so many things. Strange as it sounds, they liked Clark. Really, really liked him. Most of them are saying that he wasn't responsible for the turning of the defence grid. Some say the Shadows were responsible, others that we were. And none of them like us. We're the humans who sold our race out to the aliens, remember. We're the people who swore to defend Proxima and then came back with an alien fleet and Minbari allies."

  (An alien fleet built around enslaved telepaths, some of them human.) If he concentrated hard enough, Corwin could just about shut out their screaming.

  "Nobody really knows who to believe out there. There's a lot of anger and fear and hate and.... I've never seen Proxima this bad. Never."

  "There'll be free elections soon. We'll have a war crimes tribunal, put a few people on trial, reform the Senate. There'll be an elected Government by this time next year, if not sooner."

  "And who are they going to vote for? Nobody is going to believe the elections are free anyway. I don't think we can put together twenty people in this whole planet who actually want to lead it at the moment."

  "You could."

  Corwin did not know what to say. He almost fell from his chair. "Me? But.... that's crazy. I'm a soldier, just a soldier. Why don't you...?"

  "I couldn't.... not any more. Anyway, I'll be going back to Kazomi Seven once this war is over, going back there with...."

  "With Delenn."

  "Yes.... with Delenn." The General's eyes darkened, and he suddenly picked up the bottle and raised it to his lips. "Cheers," he said, taking a long draught.

  "Cheers."

  * * *

  I did.... we did a lot of horrible things over the years. We had to, or at least that was what we told ourselves. The survival of the race mattered. All of humanity was resting on our shoulders. We had to be strong enough to bear that burden, to do what was necessary.

  Me, Clark, President Crane, General Hague, Takashima.... a few others. We would go down in history as the saviours of humanity.... or as the final, pathetic lost: Oedipus twisting and turning to avoid his fate, Lear raging vainly against the storm.

  We had to win. There was no other choice. We would do whatever was necessary. Sell out half our race to the Narns? If they'd protect the other half, then fine! Ma
ke deals with a man who saw us all as microbes and was relishing the chance to assert the superiority of his race over ours? If he'd help, then of course. Institute laws that all but banned freedom of speech, of assembly, that let criminals run free and the innocent suffer? If we had to.

  Ally ourselves with an alien race of whom we knew nothing but that they wanted to help us? Did we even need to think about that one?

  I was never on very good terms with any of them. Well, I was never on very good terms with anyone other than Vicky. When she was alive, I at least had something to focus on. A reason to want to save humanity. In her smile I saw something worth redeeming, worth saving. When she was gone.... there was no longer the dream of survival, only a game.

  I didn't even hate the people who'd killed her. I caught them, eventually, and they were punished just as if they'd murdered anyone who wasn't my wife. I didn't glory in it, though. There was no sense of revenge. I doubt they even knew it was my wife they'd killed. What was the point in taking revenge on them? They were just like the rest of humanity, right?

  So, it became a game. Pitting my wits against yours, against everyone. I studied the Narn ambassadors who came to patronise and mock us. I gathered blackmail information on all of them. I never used it, it was just an intellectual exercise. I studied the records of your people. I gathered as much information as I could. Oh, it was woefully incomplete, at least it was until we captured you, but.... I didn't care what we did with it.

  Every night I went home to my dead apartment, and slept in the bed that still smelled like her. Sometimes I went for long walks, unable to sleep, unable to care. I saw people, I saw humanity, and I wondered why we bothered trying to save them at all. Let your ships come. Let them blow us apart. What did it matter?

  I began to wonder just why my companions in the Government were bothering. It didn't take me long to find out. Crane had been elected before the war had even begun, and still in some sense believed she was leading the same people as she had then. Hague was fighting because it was all he knew how to do and because he knew he couldn't turn that burden over to anyone else. Takashima.... well, all my opinions on her were wrong. At the time I thought she was the only idealistic and genuine person among us, but a couple of years ago I found out she had a secondary personality and was doing whatever Bester told her to.

  Ah.... strange as it sounds, I like being wrong sometimes. It adds variety. But most of the time, it's just annoying.

  And Clark.... He took it all as a personal insult. He was ambitious, and always had been. He wanted power to.... well.... to put things right. That's according to his definition of 'right', of course. There's a blanket assumption that all dictators are evil, megalomaniacal madmen who just want power for its own sake. I've never met or heard of anyone like that. Most of them, I think, just want to put things right.

  Take your Sinoval, for example. Not that I've ever met him, but from my reports....

  Sorry, digressing again.

  Clark had been in politics all his life. Ever since he was a child he'd dreamed of gaining power, of using it wisely, of being so much smarter, so much more adept than the people in charge at the time. In a very scary way he might have been me, except I didn't care, and he did.

  And then you came along, just when he was beginning to get somewhere. He could have been right at the top in ten years, maybe fifteen. But then you came, and threw everything upside down. He shot up faster than he'd planned, but not because he was smarter, or better, or more astute, or more popular. He shot up because most of the people above him were dead. Anyone can rise that way. What kind of intelligence does that require?

  You'd made it easy for him, and that cheapened him in some way. Also, it sort of undervalued his position. When he finally did get to power, it was by poisoning Crane, by the way. Oh yes, I knew all about that. When he did get to be President, what was the point? He couldn't fix anything, because it would take him his whole lifetime just to clean up the mess you'd left him. Oh, he enjoyed doing what he could.... you should have seen him blackmail the Narns.... but that wasn't the way he'd dreamed of it happening. He wasn't the leader of a powerful young race, ready to take its place in the galaxy. He was the last leader of a pathetic people, clinging on to survival by their fingernails, with half of them ready to let go and drop into the abyss.

  He blamed you for all of that, and after a while he blamed us as well.

  Until the Vorlons came along. That, I didn't know. I knew he was acting strangely, but by that time I wasn't thinking straight. Just like all those years ago, when I first saw Vicky, my life had been turned upside down — although just like with Vicky, I wasn't to realise it for some time, almost too long.

  That was meeting you, of course.

  * * *

  Corwin knew he should have moved forward, should have done something, but he didn't. There was nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing even to think.

  Delenn.

  He had not seen her much since she had been found in Sector 301, at the place where she had died and been reborn, a place that had become a shrine to her, in a way he found both disturbing and strangely comforting. It was ironic, perhaps, but Sector 301 seemed to be coming out of the chaos better than anywhere else on Proxima. Perhaps the Shrine of the Blessed Delenn had something to do with that, but Corwin put it down to human industry and endeavour.

  Then.... he didn't want to think about that now. He wanted to think about his friend.

  The General put down the bottle and sighed. "I was so sure," he whispered. "I was so goddamned sure. I mean, I'm a soldier. It seems I've been a soldier forever. A soldier lives off his instincts.... you know that. I've acted on instinct thousands of times, and never been wrong before.

  "But there.... I was just so sure." He shook his head. "How could I have been so wrong?"

  Corwin had a theory of his own, but he did not want to put it into words. He was having enough difficulty coming to terms with recent revelations concerning the Vorlons without having to voice them to another, least of all someone in a condition as.... fraught as the General's.

  "It doesn't matter now," Corwin said finally. "Delenn's here. She's alive. She's safe. You're.... you're together. It doesn't matter any more."

  The General chuckled, the mirthless laugh of someone who knows the joke everyone else is laughing at isn't funny. "Doesn't matter? Oh.... yes it does. It matters a lot. If I hadn't left her there....

  "She was pregnant. My baby. Our baby.

  "They killed him. The people here killed our baby."

  "What?" Corwin breathed out and almost choked. He'd never heard.... he hadn't known.... Good Lord! Surely people couldn't have done that to her.... to an unborn child. "How.... Why? Why, for God's sake?"

  "Some.... political game, I think. I don't know. Probably just because they could. They did it badly, too, really messed her up. Hell, they damn near killed her, even before that mess in three-o-one. She's not going to be able to have any more children."

  "Oh, God...." There really was nothing to say.

  "She's tried to tell me otherwise, but we both know the truth.... It's my fault. I should never have left her there...."

  "No, it's not your fault."

  "Yes, it damned well is, and you know it!" Corwin shrank back, momentarily surprised by the sheer anger in the General's voice. The light surged up around him, blazing and flashing, tendrils of lightning shooting from his eyes. "Of course it's my fault!

  "It's my fault for daring to think I could do something other than fight a war! For deluding myself there was anything else I could do other than kill people! It's so easy to take lives, isn't it? So damned easy, especially when you rationalise it to yourself. I'm a soldier. This is war. It doesn't matter who they are.

  "Delenn's seen that. She's done that, and she managed to break free. So why the hell can't I? Face it, I'm not a soldier, I'm a murderer, and I just murdered my unborn son!"

  "It's not your fault," Corwin said again, desperately trying to get throug
h. Where was this coming from? John had seemed.... better recently. Changed. The discovery that Delenn was alive....

  "No? If not mine, then whose? The people who did it? I don't know who they are. Besides, they were only following orders. You can't blame anyone for just following orders, no more than you can blame yourself or your crew for doing what I tell you to.

  "Welles? He was just doing what he thought was right, and he's on some damned life support machinery now. Clark? He's dead. My father? My own father?

  "I'm telling you, if I can't blame myself there's only one other person I can blame, and I'd much rather blame myself than her."

  "What?"

  "Forget it." He sighed, and buried his head in his hands. "I don't want to. God.... I know it wasn't her fault, but.... could she have done something? Anything? God.... I don't want to blame her.... but somewhere.... somewhere right at the back of my mind....

  "I do."

  He lifted his head, and his eyes were filled with a dark madness, a truly terrible sight.

  "God help me, David.... what kind of person am I?"

  * * *

  Breath came more slowly now. His throat hurt. He could not remember the last time he had spoken so much, the last time he had said so many things he had not wanted to say.

  "There's.... there's an old saying," he said, struggling to keep his eyes open. He should not have stayed awake this long. He should have let the drugs and the painkillers slide him into unconsciousness, but he could not do that. He had to finish, and if not now, then he never would.

  "It comes from one of our philosophers. It goes...." He breathed in, and sharp bursts of pain triggered across his shattered ribs. Ignoring the pain was becoming harder and harder.

  "It goes.... 'If you gaze into the abyss.... the abyss....

  "the abyss gazes back....

  "at you.'

  "That was me. I gazed into the abyss for years.... and it changed me. Then I saw you....

  "just as I'd seen....

  "Vicky

  "for the first time

  "I looked at you....

  "and you looked back at me.