The Octagonal Raven

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You didn’t have a team.” I was grasping at anything.

  “Oh … I did. I just had the resources to take those results and adapt them.”

  I could see exactly what he meant. How many men would ever come along with that combination of intelligence, anger, drive, and expertise, and be in the position to use knowledge the way he had?

  “You see, don’t you?”

  I was afraid I did. “You are insane,” I repeated. In a way, it didn’t matter if he happened to be wrong, and if someone else could repeat his work and find a cure to his plague. The damage already was done. The norms could see that pre-selects were vulnerable, and the pre-selects who survived would attempt to retailor the pseudo-augnites.… I winced.

  “No, I’m very sane. Too sane. If I were as unbalanced as you think I am, I’d have just tailored a pre-select plague with close to a hundred percent mortality. I’m actually giving you a chance, Daryn … and it’s because of you and your sister. You’re arrogant and self-centered, but you treat people the same. If they’re stupid, whether they’re pre-selects or norms, you’re quietly contemptuous, and if they’re intelligent, whether norms or pre-selects … you listen.

  “I’m giving you the tools … or maybe the forerunners did … so many pre-selects are dying that no one will take a pre-select conspiracy that seriously, and you can use UniComm to change things. Of course, you’ll have to survive an immediate frenzied attempt to track you down and kill you, because the PST group will want to destroy your control of UniComm out of revenge. Or in a last effort to restructure the world into a place even more favorable to inherited position.”

  That didn’t exactly surprise me.

  “There’s one other thing you should recall.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help the wariness in my voice.

  “Human beings are like horses — we’re ecological failures.”

  “If we control the world …”

  “We don’t. The bacteria do. They always have. Remember a couple of things. If you reduced the Earth to the size of an orange it would seem as smooth as a spheroid of polished stone. The Earth has existed for five billion years, give or take a few hundred million. Humans in our present form have existed roughly a million, and we require an ecological niche that is very narrow. The problem with pre-selection is that it artificially narrows that niche further, in an effort to allow those who use the techniques to maximize their control of that ever-narrower niche. It also creates huge social resentments, and an ever-greater arrogance and temptation for those who can show their superiority within that narrow niche to exert greater and greater control over social direction and resources.” He laughed. “You don’t believe me — yet — but you will. Indeed you will.” From somewhere came a folder which he extended.

  “Those five names are the people who are behind the death of your sister and the last two attempts on your life. There is background information on each.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Kill them?” I took the folder, looked at the flat gray cover, then slipped it into the inside pocket of my traveling vest.

  Nyhal smiled his dead’s head grin. “You may not have to do anything. Then again … you may. If you choose to do anything at all. That is your decision.”

  A dull thud shook the small study. I glanced around.

  Nyhal stood. “Go … right through the window there! There’s a wall gate to a tunnel that opens into the maglift train concourse on the next street.”

  I moved to the tall window, sliding the casement open, then stopped as I realized Nyhal wasn’t following. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be behind you.”

  “How about in front of me? No one is ever going to believe me.”

  I shouldn’t have been talking because the door splintered open and a giant of a man, even for a pre-select, rammed his way through. A smaller man, almost my size, followed. Both wore commando-style black singlesuits, with the fabric distorted light, making it difficult to focus on them. Focusing on the black slug-thrower the taller man carried wasn’t that hard. It was a model I hadn’t seen since FS training — the kind with osmium tipped uranium slugs — the assault weapons supposed to be restricted to Federal Service troops.

  A curtain of electric force enveloped the two intruders, shrouding them in an eerie blue-green glow.

  The smaller man just pitched forward. The man with the slug-thrower slowly turned it toward Nyhal, moving so slowly that I had a chance for one move. I pivoted and drove a boot through his knee.

  A dull cracking and a grimace on the big man’s face indicated my success. A nanite shield won’t stop that — it’s designed to respond to higher levels of kinetic energy. He staggered sideways, somehow catching himself on the door frame, and started to bring the slug-thrower to bear on me.

  He never made it, because Eldyn’s body slammed into his arm, and across the weapon.

  The slug-thrower exploded.

  Several moments later, I picked myself up from where I found myself thrown across the table. My entire body felt bruised … like ancient armor, the body screen had distributed the impacts, but those had been so great that I was one large contusion.

  Both thugs were dead — and so was Nyhal. All three were bloody messes. I had to swallow hard.

  I blinked. There wasn’t anything else I could do, and there were probably others coming, although I could hear nothing except a ringing in my ears.

  My fingers fumbled with the window casement, and I finally slipped out the long window into the late afternoon. My legs felt like lead, but I had been up for almost two days running.

  Hssst!

  A laser burned into the tree above my head. I didn’t know where it was coming from, except it wasn’t in front of me. I saw no gate in the stone wall, just what looked to be a tool shed with a rough wooden door, built out of the wall.

  Anything was better than standing still and getting fried with an FS-strength laser, the kind that would shred my shield. I sprinted for the shed, reaching for the door lever and yanking the door open.

  Inside was a set of steps. I closed the door behind me just quickly enough for it to take another laser bolt. I could smell the wood burning behind me. I bolted down the dozen steps, only to run into another narrow door — this one of smooth steel. I fumbled with the knob, and it turned.

  I opened the door to see a passage lit dimly by glow strips — a blue corridor less than a meter wide. Behind me I heard the tool shed door open, and I jumped into the passage and shut the door behind me. I saw the locking lever below the knob and twisted it, glad to hear a dull clunk.

  The odor of fresh plastic welled up around me, and I sniffed, but I kept moving. I’d gone about thirty meters along the blue plastic lined way when there was a dull rumble, and the passage shook. Vibrations ran from the plastic underfoot up through my boots.

  Although I hesitated for only a moment, there wasn’t any doubt that Nyhal’s refuge or safe house had exploded. The only question was whose doing it had been. The odor of plastic was even stronger at the far end, where a third door blocked the way. I opened it gingerly, peering into a small cubicle with a sink and mops, dimly lit by a minute glowsquare set in the ceiling. After I stepped through and shut it, the door clicked locked, and I could not turn the knob. The side of the door in the closet looked merely like a gray metal institutional door. I had to chuckle. Who would ever follow a door set in the side wall of a janitorial station?

  I eased the janitorial door open just a crack, trying to see what lay beyond.

  As Eldyn had said, I was in the maglift train station. I waited until there seemed to be a lull in the foot traffic before stepping out. Still, I almost ran into a young woman carrying a child.

  “I am sorry.” I bowed deeply.

  She smiled, almost as if in mirth.

  I flushed, knowing full well what she was thinking — dumb pre-select stranger who can’t even find the men’s facilities. But I bowed again before walking down the next ramp to the platform.


  * * *

  Chapter 51

  * * *

  Once a poet wrote about the letter C as a comedian, or perhaps it was the letter D as death, or it even could have been the letter P for pilot … or pool, and it rhymed with something else, and everyone thought that it was a clever way to begin a poem or a song.

  No one but I and perhaps a handful of antiquarian scholars have read those words, just the words by themselves, in centuries, if not in millennia. No one writes poems any longer, not in ink or stone, or even in plain script or typeface upon a screen or a holo-field, and the songs people listen to, if they listen at all, are composed with the use of linked arrays based on DNA resonance and the codified mathematical rules of music discovered long before the new era.

  Is that why I went from being a pilot to a methodizer to an edartist? Because the only power perceived to be remaining in words is linked to images, music, and resonant voices? In codified rules that no one even examines any longer?

  Or is it a deeper reason?

  Personal Notes

  * * *

  Chapter 52

  Sub-Pacific

  * * *

  I found a pubcomm station in the corner of the maglift train station and put in a call to Mother. The last thing I wanted to do was explain things, but she and Father needed to know. She didn’t answer. No one did, except the sim. So I blurted out a quick message.

  “See if you and Father and Gerrat and Rhedya and their children can get to Kharl. Have him use the treatment he did on me when I got sick at his place. He’ll understand.”

  Then I tried to get Rhedya, but no one answered there. I left a similar message.

  I also left one with Majora. She wasn’t in, or couldn’t answer.

  The last call was the direct line to Father’s office — with the same result.

  I could have waited for hours to reach them, and I didn’t have hours. So I fumbled my way from the maglift train to the local induction tube platform to the main Byjin station, where I had to find somewhere to purchase a passage. It seemed to take forever, but it was only about thirty minutes to find the booth in the corner and wait behind three others — just long enough to miss the first departure. And, then, to get on the transcontinental induction tube train in anything other than a single seat, I had to purchase the luxury compartment, the one that cost four times what anything else did. I didn’t care about the price.

  Taking the transcon was fairly safe, as matters went. Security against energy weapons was good, and there wasn’t much of a way the PST group or whoever could get a monoclone from wherever they kept them to where I was. With the restrictions on clones, they couldn’t have an unlimited supply all over the world. Besides, I was safer in Calfya where I could better note things that were strange than in the Sinoplex where everything looked strange.

  But I did have to wait. I walked around on the platform under those high Sinoptic arches, and as I walked, I realized that there were only a handful of pre-selects on the platform, and all stayed well away from me — and from each other. In fact, all of the norms on the platform gave us space. I’d never thought that much about pre-selects being different enough to stand out, but we did, not by any one characteristic, but by the cumulative effect, and yet, except for generally greater height, I wasn’t sure I could have identified a single specific characteristic.

  As I paused beneath one of the Sinoptic arches, my hands touched the box Nyhal had given me. It was warm, but that was all. I could only hope that it functioned as he had designed it. It should, since everything else he had done had worked. That thought, in itself, bothered me. His wife had died under mysterious circumstances, and I’d meant to pursue that as well, but … our conversation had been cut short. And within hours of her death, OneCys had news commentaries running against the man.

  Kharl had confirmed I did have strange nanites in my system, and calls with my identification codes to Eldyn had been rerouted. Elora’s references to Eldyn hadn’t been coincidental, nor had her bequests of the UniComm stock. The very epidemic Eldyn had claimed to have begun was occurring. And, also rather convincingly, two rather impressive physical specimens carrying unauthorized weaponry had showed up and attempted, it appeared, to kill us both.

  So, insane as Eldyn had sounded, especially with his talk about aliens sending octagonal nanites across the Galaxy, there was a great deal of something there, and I was getting more than a little concerned that he had been right about more than I’d wanted to accept. After all, Kharl had confirmed the octagonal nanites.

  I glanced around, but I still had almost thirty minutes before the train was due to arrive. I’d also been debating with myself about whether to try to reach Majora again. In the end, I compromised. I waited until just a few minutes before the train was due, and then went and found the pubcomm booth, trying to convince myself that the positives outweighed the negatives.

  Majora answered immediately. She was wearing a deep blue singlesuit with a cream vest. She looked wonderful.

  “You look wonderful,” I said. “Did you get my message?”

  “Yes …” She paused. “I can’t reach him.”

  “Keep trying. Otherwise, keep to yourself if you can.”

  “You look terrible. Are you all right?”

  “Besides being exhausted, pursued, and a few other details I’ll mention later, I could be better. I met my friend. Things are worse than I thought. What should I know?” I decided against mentioning my travel plans.

  “The Federal Union council will decide tonight whether to restrict travel. The analysts say that they won’t because the threat is largely to people with the resources to protect themselves by not traveling.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I take it that pre-selects are still dying.”

  “The deaths have dropped off in places like Ankorplex where they started, but people are starting to die in Westi and elsewhere in Noram.”

  “Majora … can you just stay home for a few days? Unless you can reach my cousin?”

  Her lips quirked into a crooked smile. “I can manage that — if you’re not gone too long. But what about you?”

  “According to my friend, when I got sick after the party months ago, I got an early version. So I should be immune.”

  Her eyes widened, understanding exactly what I meant.

  “It’s been a long couple of days, and the next few weeks are going to be most interesting.”

  “You need to be careful.”

  “So do you. I’ll certainly try. That’s been difficult lately.”

  “Try harder,” she suggested.

  “I will … for you.”

  She smiled, and I wondered how I could have forgotten the warmth that her generous mouth and large eyes showed.

  After the call, I headed back to the waiting platform, watching to see if anyone else happened to be following or monitoring me. If they were, I couldn’t tell. The only pattern that remained clear was that the norms were staying well clear of the handful of us who were pre-selects.

  When the train did glide out of the tunnel and drop into the platform channel for boarding, I forced myself to saunter toward it, rather than run, letting others scurry. Even so, I was among the first to step into the second car. It was probably my imagination, but I could almost feel the scanner run over the shouldertab.

  Compartment one is the last compartment to the left. I followed the resonating-nanite instructions, eyes and systems trying to watch everything. Everything felt as it should, and I hoped I wasn’t deluding myself.

  The first compartment was indeed luxurious, and opened after a scan of my passagetab. It was empty, and I quickly checked the bathroom/fresher to make sure it was as well. Then I locked the compartment door, and sank into the overstuffed armchair set beside a club table.

  A small replicator rested in a recess above the table, and on the far side was a door into a another compartment — just big enough for a triple-width bed, and to turn around.

 
The faint scent of freesia or something similar disguised the sanitary air that circulated through the other compartments.

  The train is departing. Please be seated. The train is departing. Please be seated.

  I sat down and tapped in the codes on the replicator for a cup of tea. Nothing happened. I shook my head and extracted a cup from the alcove beside the replicator. The tea was a black tea, mild, and not bad. I still missed my Grey tea, but I sipped slowly as the train accelerated, almost without vibration.

  After finishing the tea, I rose and stepped into the bath-fresher. That was one of the luxuries that came with paying multiple times what anyone else did. I looked at myself in the mirror, and I looked surprisingly good — if I discounted a smudge of grease or something on my right cheek forward of the ear. Or the dark stains on the cuff of my jacket, blood, no doubt, but barely visible against the dark gray. Or the dark circles under my hollow eyes.

  Somewhere along the line, I’d left my bag — in Nyhal’s exploded safe house, I thought, and that left me without toiletries. I did shower. It helped. I didn’t feel so grimy when I stepped out onto the thin floor mat — until I dressed in the same old singlesuit.

  I slipped back into the main room of my cramped luxury compartments, and, after checking the compartment door to ensure it was still locked, I took out the folder I’d thrust into the inside vest pocket and opened it slowly.

  There were five names with, as Nyhal had said, backgrounds and other information. The names were Grant Escher, Mutumbe Dymke, Darwyn TanUy, Anya St. Cyril, and Imayl Deng. All that they had in common, on the surface, was pre-selection, wealth, and membership on the board of the PST Trust.

  Escher was from Austrasia, where he was the operating director of his family’s engineering firm — EDQ, and apparently very private. There were business addresses, and the locations of three dwellings, and what looked to be a standard business resume.