The Octagonal Raven

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I forced myself to take a deep breath, and to look over my shoulder and at oncoming gliders more carefully.

  There were no other incidents on the way.

  As I eased the glider to a stop on the grass of the park opposite Anna’s office, I remembered to reengage all the cutouts, and to arm full security. The glider seemed all right, but I hoped I had a chance to inspect it thoroughly before I tried any other stunts.

  Anna’s office was on the first floor, and she was waiting.

  “For a man in a hurry, you’re a little late, Daryn.”

  “I ran into some delays. There was an accident on the guideway.” Both were true enough. “What do I have to sign, authenticate, whatever?”

  “There are three sets: your property allocation, establishment of a primary trustee, and establishment of a secondary trustee.” She pointed.

  I went through the procedure of signing them and affixing a holo print before I turned to her. “These are legal now?”

  “They’re legal now, but they need to be recorded officially.”

  “By hand?”

  Anna nodded. “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Fine. I’ll take you wherever that is, and I’ll pay for the time.”

  She smiled. “I take back my statement about your not being in a hurry. I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Well … it did occur to me that the family needed to be taken care of.”

  “Family?”

  “Majora and I are going to get married, and, no, we haven’t set a date yet.”

  “Impetuous, aren’t you?”

  Hardly impetuous, when I’d known her for more than ten years and hadn’t seen what she really was until the last few weeks. “You could say that. I don’t know as it would be accurate.”

  I gestured toward the door and the glider that rested in the glider park. “Shall we go?”

  * * *

  Chapter 67

  * * *

  Can it be said that I saw the sun,

  setting before the day has yet begun?

  Can it be sung that I heard winter’s cold,

  howling through green summer’s fold.…

  I’m not a poet, not even a versifier. My lines prove it. I wish that I could put down in verse what I feel … the anger and the frustration involved in trying to open others’ eyes. I have spent most of my life in the insulated arrogance of privilege. I still do, but unlike the others who share that privilege, I’d like to think that I look beyond it. A brief touch of being outside, not even fully outside, has opened perhaps one eye to the subtleties of control. An earlier generation might have called it oppression. I could be rationalizing, but I don’t see it as that kind of oppression. It’s more of a transparent ceiling. Most people can do more than any generation previously, and in less fear and greater freedom.

  The unseen ceiling bars most of those few norms who are brilliant from entering the upper reaches of the power structure, and even some pre-selects. Frydrik was right, and wrong. Most pre-selects barred from the power structure have no business there. If one cannot penetrate the ceiling with all the advantages of birth and wealth, then there’s usually a good reason why.

  The norms brilliant and fortunate enough to succeed … I wonder how many end up like Eldyn, twisted into near insanity by the ravages of the struggle. Or quietly dead like Mertyn, because he raised too many embarrassing questions.

  Yet for all the questions, I have no answers, not ones that are suitable for a society. Majora would make better choices about who should decide than would I, but no one will select or support a Majora. By accident of birth, by twists of fate, it may be that I can change our world, and I can hope that it will be for the better. But it will be far from perfect, and the resistance to change and the anger of those who dimly perceive that some of what they believe to be their birthright has been denied will ensure that change will not be easy.

  Birthright — what a strange word. Do any of us have birthrights really? We are born with varying degrees of assorted abilities into families with varying degrees of power and possibilities. If our abilities are great, does that mean our birthright is to achieve great things or amass much wealth? If our abilities are meager, does that mean we are doomed to misery or to be looked down upon? Who decides? And upon what bases?

  I am taking power in an attempt to make decisions, knowing that my decisions will be wrong for many, hoping that they will benefit more than they harm, but also knowing that what has seemed to be an inevitable progression toward a tyranny of the self-proclaimed elite is both right and wrong — and a path to destruction. The vast majority of the pre-selects are indeed more gifted and able, and never has there been such great prosperity and freedom of individual action and expression for all of the peoples of the world at all levels. Yet not since the years immediately preceding the Collapse has there been such anger and resentment.

  People want to control their own destiny. We never control that destiny by ourselves, but we must retain the illusion that we have such control, and over time an elite perceived to govern by pure ability shatters that illusion

  Personal Notes

  * * *

  Chapter 68

  Yunvil

  * * *

  Although the sky was clouding over heavily, the trip to Yunvil was uneventful. So was the conversation, and so was the procedure of recording the documents in the regional advocate general’s office.

  We walked out of the recording and transfer office, back toward the underground, multilevel covered permacrete structure for parking magscooters and gliders.

  “Are you happier now?” asked Anna.

  “Somewhat.” I wasn’t totally happy with the heavy clouds and the light rain that had begun and threatened to get far heavier. “I’ll be happier in a few months.” Happier or dead.

  “Looking forward to getting married? I never would have bet on that.”

  “Neither would I, but times can change a man.”

  I frowned as we started down the ramp to the second level, for I heard voices. Although they were loud, they didn’t sound angry.

  “People are mad.…”

  “… be mad, too … friggin’ pre-selects … think they run everything … getting theirs now.”

  “Bastard … bitch … right there …”

  Two pre-selects jumped from behind an abutment, and they hadn’t been pre-selected for brains. A third lagged slightly behind.

  I saw the glitter of a blade — and blades were the obvious choice in a covered area — and I swore at myself for not wearing a nanite-screen, uncomfortable and hot and cumbersome as they were. Rather, I began the thought, but my nanite-boosted defense system — and all the routines I’d learned in FS training — kicked in, and I scarcely remembered much of anything that followed.

  Several moments later, I was standing in the open space between gliders, panting, with a shallow slash across one arm and a damp feeling on the left side of my skull that I suspected was blood from the stinging of a cut or slash above my ear.

  Three bodies lay sprawled on the permacrete.

  “Lord …” Anna glanced from me to the bodies, and then back to me. “I … never saw anything like that.”

  I kept scanning the area, but couldn’t sense anyone else. Another attempt by my dear friends — set up where the skytors couldn’t see.

  “They’re dead. There were three of them.”

  “They were out to kill us both.” My first reaction was to leave the bodies. My second was to avoid committing another crime and to capitalize on it as I could. The problem was unfortunately simple. If I left I was committing a crime; if I remained I’d be charged with murder or something, initially, even if it were later dismissed. As a fictional heroine I’d read somewhere had said, I was faced with two doors, and both of them were labelled “damned.”

  I glanced toward my stunned solicitor. “If the CAs look into this … what’s the probability that I’ll get off?”

  “The garage is monitored, an
d you waive privacy and let them run truth nanites through you, and you’ll be out of the building in a couple of hours.” She paused. “I don’t know how you feel about waiving privacy.”

  “Let’s do it. But … I want you to make sure they ask some questions … about why this might be happening … and who might be behind it.…”

  “I can try.” She sounded dubious.

  I had been looking around, searching for an alarm, and finally located one, on the wall, past a battered glider that was so old that half the solar cells were the dull black that meant they were fused into uselessness. I walked over and pulled the alarm lever.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  A building guard and a CA appeared within two minutes. They both looked at me, and at the bodies and the filament knives on the permacrete, and then back at me. The way they did almost made me feel guilty for defending Anna and myself.

  The CA went into a link even before he addressed me. “Ser … what happened?”

  “I’m Daryn Alwyn. This is Anna Mayo. She is my solicitor. We were here to register some documents with the regional advocate general” I described what had happened as factually as I could.

  Before I had finished, another CA and a much larger glider had arrived. The second CA was harder looking and more senior, and he gave the bodies, and me, the same kind of look. I wasn’t sure why, since all three men were at least my size — or maybe that was the problem, but they should have known what a pre-select with FS training and a nanite-boosted system could do. I wasn’t about to explain.

  “… and then I found the alarm and pulled it and waited.”

  “Ser, do you have a legal representative?” asked the senior CA.

  I nodded to Anna. “She’s my representative.”

  He turned to Anna. “You understand, counsel, even in self-defense, with three men dead, your client will have to be held until … ”

  I cleared my throat. Loudly.

  Anna and the CA looked at me.

  “I’ll waive privacy. I’d just as soon get this over.”

  The two looked at each other. “Are you sure, ser?”

  “Absolutely. This lady is my solicitor, and she has advised me of my rights.”

  Things moved quickly after that, and in less than a half hour I was in the local CA station, my cuts spray-sealed, the blood wiped away, with a senior CA reading a statement at me.

  “You understand that under the laws of the Federal Union, until authorized by judicial authority, you cannot be required to submit to a nanite-based verification of the accuracy of your statements, and that you are under no compulsion and no obligation to testify about the events which occurred?”

  “I do.”

  “And you still wish to waive privacy?”

  “I do.”

  With that, they moved Anna to the side of the room, and a forensic medical tech arrived with his mask, and I inhaled all sorts of sprays, and then we waited until he looked at his screen and nodded.

  Then I got baseline tests, from colors and deliberate lies, and everything else.

  It was a good half hour later before I got to repeat my story.

  No one said anything, not even the medtech, while I talked. Then, the CAs began to question me.

  “Could you have avoided killing the attackers?”

  “I don’t see how. There were three of them, and they had us cornered. I was worried about Anna.”

  “Why did you kill the attackers?”

  “I didn’t have any choice, if I wanted to live.”

  “Could you explain that, ser?”

  “I have FS survival training, and I have an implanted augnite defense reaction system. My only choice is whether the situation is dangerous enough to trigger that. I am not someone who uses those systems daily or weekly. The system reacts according to my degree of fear and concern. I was scared blue.”

  “Why were you scared, ser?”

  “All three men were clearly pre-selected for physical attributes. They were larger and more muscular than I, and younger, and all were carrying weapons.”

  “But you knew you had a nanite system.”

  “They didn’t give me a chance to explain that, and if we tried to run, Anna might have been killed, and I wouldn’t have had a real chance to defend myself.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “I’m not absolutely certain. I couldn’t be in that situation, but I had to decide quickly. They had weapons. We didn’t.”

  The CA must have asked forty minutes of questions about the location, about the attackers, about anything that might have indicated that I had other options. I still didn’t see any, and I was trying not to get angry, but that was very hard. Whoever had set up the attack had clearly, I realized in hindsight, expected me to kill the three. It would come out that I was a madman, or at least a dangerous man, and if I’d been foolish enough to leave the site, would have put me under legal attack as a possible felon. Either way I was damned, because no one would believe I’d been set up.

  “You seem to be angry, ser. Why are you angry?”

  “I was attacked by men I don’t know, and I feel like I’m being considered the criminal. I still don’t see that I had any choice but to defend myself.”

  Anna said something, and one of the CAs turned and glared at her.

  The other asked, “Have there been other attempts on your life?”

  “Yes.”

  Both CA’s eyes widened when the tech nodded that I was telling the truth.

  “Would you please describe them?”

  “Earlier this afternoon, on my way to Lady Mayo’s to authorize the papers we filed this afternoon, two men in a glider van attempted to force me off the guideway. They had a high-powered laser, FS issue.” I had to be very careful in phrasing the next sentence. “When they discovered that they couldn’t disable my glider with the laser, they tried to get close enough to ram me — or so that the laser would be effective — I’m not sure which — I tried to avoid them. I turned at high speed onto the opposite guideway. They followed me, and when I tried to accelerate they lost control, and their van exploded. I think if you or the Yunvil CAs investigate the accident, you would find traces of explosives in the residue.”

  “Why weren’t they successful in forcing you off the road?”

  “I was a pilot, once, and I used that training to take evasive action. Also, my glider has heavier shields and inductors than most passenger gliders.” All of that was absolutely true. “There was an earlier attempt that is on the records. Several months ago, someone used a laseflash on me when I was leaving my house. And …” I went on to explain that.

  “Ser? Is there something else?”

  “About two weeks ago, there was a man who looked like a monoclone following me after I visited a stonesmith in Helnya. I was walking to the induction tube station, and he jumped at me. I pushed him away, and ran, and there was an explosion.” I shrugged. “I probably should have reported it, but it was under the oaks where the skytors could not have seen anything except the energy, and since the CAs hadn’t been able to uncover anything about the laseflash effort, and since there was no evidence there, I didn’t. The CAs did contact me, and I did report seeing the man. I didn’t report the explosion.” That could get me in trouble, but not so much as lying where I was standing — or sitting.

  The CA glanced at the medtech, who made a gesture I couldn’t see.

  “I don’t believe that is the entire story, ser. Could you tell us more?”

  I hoped not to, but that had always been a risk. “You’ll find on the record in the Helnya CA records that I was injured in what was classified as an accident in Helnya. I did not believe it was an accident, but a clever trap set for me. The evidence only proved that the cemetery wall had deteriorated, and that there was ground erosion. I thought I heard and saw a child about to fall, and I ran to help her and the wall fell on me. I realized that the child was a one-dimensional holo projection when my hand went through the image. By
then, it was too late.” I looked at the two CAs.

  They were looking at the screens.

  “He’s telling the truth.…” the medtech murmured.

  “While I was in the medcenter, another CA questioned me about the cemetery wall. The skytors showed nothing except the wall falling on me. Then, when I got out of the medcenter, I found a number of snoops in my comm systems. With all that, I didn’t see the point in reporting yet another incident where there was absolutely no evidence. There was always the possibility that someone was trying to set things up so that, if I did report the incidents, after a time, it would appear that I was somehow deluded or unbalanced. Either that, or they’d eventually succeed, and I’d be reported dead in some unfortunate accident.”

  “Do you have any idea why this is happening?”

  “Yes.” I had hoped to get them to ask for it, and now they had.

  “Would you like to explain?”

  “I have very mixed feelings about that, officers. Let me explain. As the only surviving Alwyn in two generations, except for my mother, I hold the controlling interests in UniComm. My sister held the largest interest. She was killed in the only induction tube explosion in a generation. There have been a number of attempts on my life, the last two following the death of my brother and father in the latest pre-select plague. I have no proof of anything, but I have no reason to think that anyone has a purely personal motive. I have no spouse. I have no children. So far as I know, I have no one who would wish me enough harm to kill me for personal reasons. That only leaves as a reason my interests in UniComm.”

  “Green clear, ser,” murmured the shorter CA. They clearly weren’t used to pre-selects who were augmented waiving privacy, or they would have known about augmented hearing.