THE FEAR PRINCIPLE

by B. A. Chepaitis

  Cool silver and white.

  Everything in the House of Mirrors was cool silver and white, giving the illusion of space that opened to infinity. Mirror echoed mirror beyond the visual capacity of any human to see an end. Everywhere you turned, you met a new image of yourself, reflected now tall and thin, now short and round, and then, unexpectedly, what you imagined you might possibly look like if you could really view yourself whole, without emotional prejudice.

  The halls were not complex enough to get lost in, but the visual echoes could be confusing. The narrow halls at the entrance led, in a series of turns and shifting perspectives, to a central open room where mirrors had been placed flat against one wall, curved across the ceiling, and at odd angles everywhere else. Wherever you looked you saw an image of an image, refracted into part of another image, which was only part of yet another reflection.

  Jaguar had worked one other case here, and she'd developed the habit of walking up to her reflection and pressing her hand against it as a means of reminding herself that she existed, was solid, her hands attached to her arms, her physical self contained in her skin rather than these flat impressions that sank into each other endlessly. She still hadn't decided if the images were depth in an illusion of surface, or surface in an illusion of depth.

  Depth and surface were the same in the House of Mirrors, a place designed specifically for those prisoners whose fear had something to do with distorted self-image. Usually self-aggrandizers, those with messiah complexes or satanic worshipers were sent here.

  The testers on Planetoid One had decided that Clare's fear was based on an almost total ego depletion, which she projected onto others, seeing those she killed as without soul, without any existence. This, they decided, was merely a reflection of her own inner state, which she contradicted by creating a self that was the ultimate killer, larger than life, more capable and smarter and without vulnerability because of it.

  Jaguar wasn't sure yet if she thought that was a load of bull or not. She'd have to spend time with the woman and reach her own conclusions.

  She trailed a hand across the smooth glasslike surface of reflective wall, walking toward the innermost chamber. At the entrance to it, she paused, and for the first time saw Clare Rilasco, painted endless in an infinity of perspectives, as she sat in a white chair in the middle of the room, dressed in a formal, stark white cotton suit, staring at her own reflection and smiling.

  Cool silver and white.

  The Ice Queen, admiring the beauty of her own reflection, her own reflectiveness.

  Jaguar admired her coolness, sitting there in the midst of her inescapable image, split and reshaped and rephrased, sitting there and smiling at herself as if she had just purchased a new dress that she particularly liked and was going out to meet someone she particularly wanted to see her in it.

  Or out of it.

  She was beautiful, and she was a killer, credited with taking the lives of over a hundred men, some of them important in business or politics. Although she'd been investigated in a number of cases, not a thing could be traced to her, and she kept her white suit and white hands clean. Jaguar had to admire her for her competence in her chosen field, and her ability to be what she was.

  She was a predator animal, and as such would feel no guilt about what she did. Her relationship with fear, if she felt any, would be strictly pragmatic. She would let it tell her when there was danger, and then proceed along the line of greatest likelihood to save her own ass. These were both qualities that Jaguar found admirable, but they would make her job more difficult.

  "Start at the start," she told herself, and she walked across the smooth white floor, toward the smooth white woman who sat in the center.

  Clare heard her, and her eyes refocused as she saw her in the mirror. Jaguar came up behind her and stood, one hand on the back of her chair.

  "Hello." Clare smiled. "You must be my ... teacher?"

  "That's what I'm called. Your teacher. My name is Jaguar Addams."

  Clare let her gaze run up the length of the reflection in the mirror, stopping briefly at Jaguar's amber face and sea-washed eyes, taking in the dark silk of her hair, the long, lean health of her body, with approval.

  "We look well together, don't we?" she said, smiling at their reflections. "It's the contrast between dark and light, as if we were the completeness of a day, or the two sides of a horizon meeting at dawn and the end of the night."

  Jaguar looked at the two pairs of eyes, the two alive faces, and nodded. "We look well. How do you know my title?"

  "That lovely man told me. Alex Dzarny. Mm, but I wouldn't mind a little bit of time alone with him."

  Clare laughed into the mirror, and Jaguar frowned. She had never considered how other women would see Alex. He was a constant part of her life, but she'd preserved very strict personal boundaries with him. Of course, she thought ruefully, leave it to him to arouse desire in a she-demon like Clare.

  Clare, who continued to gaze at her own reflection, hadn't once turned to face her, hadn't, as far as Jaguar could tell, moved a muscle except her lips in speaking.

  "I hope you won't take offense," she said, "but I was rather hoping Alex would be my teacher, for the obvious reasons. Still, you're just as much a treat on the eyes as he is, in your own way. Have you ever slept with him?"

  "No," Jaguar said. "I haven't."

  She let the sentence stay flat and unelaborated in the room, waiting to see what this woman would come up with next. Remarkable serenity, Jaguar thought. In her profession, probably a prerequisite for staying alive.

  "That's a shame. If you had, you could tell me all about it."

  "That would take time away from the work we have to do," Jaguar commented.

  "That," Clare said, waving a graceful hand toward the mirror image of herself and smiling. "Must we?"

  "I'm afraid so. Have you been told anything about what we'll be doing?"

  Clare shook her head. "Not a lot, though my understanding is that my job isn't much different from yours."

  Jaguar tilted her head inquisitively. "How so?"

  "It's about fear. I find fears to use as a point of weakness and they help me accomplish my assignments. You do the same thing."

  Jaguar grinned wryly. It was as good a job description as she'd heard. "I thought you concentrated more on desire than fear," she commented.

  Clare's face brightened and she smiled into the mirror, running a finger across her teeth as she did so. "How very astute of you," she said. "I'm glad I'll be working with someone who's intelligent and observant as well as beautiful."

  "Thank you," Jaguar said. "Am I also correct?"

  "Yes, to a certain extent. Of course people's desires are so often the same as their fears. They fear not getting what they desire."

  "Such as?"

  "Oh—money. Power. Me."

  Jaguar laughed. "And what do you imagine my fears are?"

  "I wouldn't want to guess yet. I'd have to study you further. I imagine they'd be minimal, and not along the usual lines. But your desires—now those might be worth exploring."

  Jaguar ran her tongue over her teeth and smiled. "And what would you do if you knew them?"

  "Why, I'd offer them to you, of course. Pull you closer and closer to me with them, until—well, we'll draw a pretty veil over the rest."

  She was good, Jaguar thought, painting just enough of a picture to get the energies of the imagination working, then stepping out of the way. She dealt in generalities to deflect giving any real information, and whoever listened to her heard the specifics they wanted within her words. If she allowed it, she imagined they'd talk the philosophy of murder all day in cool and self-reflective tones. Jaguar thought she'd get back to specifics.

  "And what was the recently deceased Gregory Patricks afraid of?" she asked.

  Clare gave a small laugh, her fine teeth flashing at them both in the mirrors. "Oh, that would be telling."

  Time, Jaguar thought, to shift the perspective a little.
She found it dizzying to speak to reflections, seeing herself as she spoke to someone whose reflection stood in front of hers. She walked around to the front of Clare's seat, standing directly between her and the image projected onto the wall. Clare didn't startle, or move. She merely stared at Jaguar as if she were still a reflection in a mirror.

  "I would imagine," Jaguar said, "that he was the kind of man who never swam in dark water." She watched Clare's face closely, looking for any kind of reaction to this. Maybe a slight shift in focus, a little more alertness. The barest minimum necessary. She was reserving her energy for something else. Perhaps expecting things to get much worse. But her voice remained exactly the same.

  "What makes you say that?" she inquired politely.

  "He would be afraid of what would reach up from the bottom to grab him. He was afraid of depths, in general. Am I right?"

  "Very good," Clare said, a certain respect in her tone. "And you never even met him, did you?"

  "No, but I knew his policies. They weren't that different from the pre-Serials federal policy. Cut education. Cut the arts. Focus on material gain for already-established companies and let the money piss down to the little people. It was stupid then, and it's stupid now. You would think the Serials would have taught us something."

  "Perhaps," Clare noted, "people have forgotten already. We do forget quickly. And some of us didn't have any trouble with the Serials at all."

  "Very few people can say that. Are you one of the few?"

  "Oh yes. I've always been lucky. Wealthy parents, a good home, the best schools. And we lived so far outside the city, we were perfectly safe. I never even saw a newscast about them."

  "Nice for you," Jaguar said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. She checked in with herself and found—what? Resentment. Stupid, but there it was. She felt the same knot in her stomach when she thought about Alex's luck. It was resentment and more than a little jealousy for those who had come out unscathed. And what did Clare do with her luck but turn assassin.

  "How did you manage your luck?" she asked.

  "I managed it... carefully," Clare said, and a smile twitched around the edge of her mouth.

  Back to specifics again. "As carefully as you manage desire?" Jaguar asked.

  "Pardon me?"

  "Patricks's desire was—money, power, and you, wasn't it? I understand he sold off some preservation land. He wanted to make Colorado rich with casinos, strip mining, and strip joints, right?"

  "I believe so. To be honest, I was very bored by all the government strategy. But I believe you're correct. Some state park or other he wanted to convert to casinos."

  "Yes. Casinos. He claimed money from the casinos would help preserve the remainder of the lands, but I gathered that was bullshit to appease the protesting masses. No, I was not an admirer of your late lover."

  "Nor was I," Clare admitted. "But the job takes one into some interesting beds, doesn't it?"

  "It can. And are your jobs often your lovers? You take them as lovers before you kill them?"

  Clare laughed lightly, and lifted a hand to touch Jaguar's hair. "Such a beautiful woman," she crooned, "and how many of your lovers have you killed?"

  "I didn't kill them," Jaguar replied, placing her own hand over Clare's to stop its motion. "They died in the course of the assignment."

  "At the end of your gun, or— you look more like the sort to carry a knife, actually. So on the blade of your knife? Is that how they died?"

  "Sometimes." She shrugged. "But that's a little different than your lovers."

  "How so?"

  Jaguar held out a hand, palm up and empty. "They were prisoners," she said.

  And Clare let loose a peal of laughter clear as ice melted into rivers of rushing water. "My dear," she said, when the waters ceased to roll, "they're all prisoners. Every last one of them."

  Jaguar felt her body stop as if a wall had been placed in her path. Everything just stopped, and she felt the resonance of an inner truth at the words this woman said.

  They're all prisoners, except for Nick. Except for Nick.

  She stared down at Clare and her forehead creased, light lines she could almost see reflected in this woman's eyes.

  But Clare had already taken her attention away from Jaguar, and was smiling, nodding wisely, at her own reflection in the mirror.

  "Why did you let yourself get caught, Clare?" she asked softly. "So many hits without a hint of trouble, and on this one you fall all the way down on your face. Why, Clare?"

  "Perhaps," she said politely, "so that I could have the pleasure of meeting you."

  Was that it? Did her employers, whoever they were, want her on the Planetoids for some reason? Or was that more obfuscation? Mirrors in mirrors in a House of Mirrors. Clare could be giving her what she wanted to see, and nothing more. Reflecting the familiar back to her. Jaguar shook her head. Try something else.

  "But you're not an empath," she said lightly. "You didn't know I existed before you got here."

  "Is that what you think?" Clare asked. "Then I'll let you think that."

  Slippery as wet glass. An absolute absence of friction making for an absolute absence of foothold. She thought of watching Hecate stalk the grounds of the breeding complex, her motion a frictionless glide over the earth. They were similar, Hecate and Clare, except that they were attempting to breed the killer back into the cat, and out of the woman. And how did one establish communication with a creature that was a killer by nature?

  Carefully, with a slow hand that offered safety for both parties.

  On an impulse, Jaguar put a hand on Clare's shoulder and caught her gaze reflected in the mirrors. "You have beautiful hair," she said. "Would you like me to brush it for you?"

  Clare blinked in surprise. "Brush my hair?"

  "Yes. Your hair. Would you like that?"

  "That would be lovely."

  "Then that's exactly what we'll do."

  "What I want," Jaguar said to Rachel's face as it appeared in her telecom, "is a cross-check of the corporation Patricks was selling the land to. The Golden Corporation. Who they dealt with, what they dealt in aside from Patricks. All other business connections. It may take some doing."

  "I understand," Rachel said. "Anything else?"

  "The CEOs. I want to know who they've been fucking around with in their spare time. Same thing for the CEOs of associated corporations. And find out if any have past dealings with either Clare, or with NICA, the Pentagon, DIE."

  Rachel leaned back in her chair. "You mean, organizationally?"

  "Or personally. In terms of government contracts—could be NICA covering for DIE, too, so look out for that. Or, if any of the CEOs have a lot of personal long-distance calls to anyone at these organizations, but they happen to be home calls. That sort of thing. Like I said, it'll take some doing. Oh—and I'd like to know what specific research DIE has going lately, if you can think of a way to get at that."

  "DIE's research? Jaguar," Rachel said, "I'm not sure that's such a hot idea. I mean, you know the people at DIE—they're like the original rat babies. They only come out at night, or when they sniff fresh kill. If you start poking around at their business, you'd be drawing them to you like—like—"

  "Like I was anything that smells, right? Don't worry, Rache. I know what I'm doing."

  "You think so," Rachel said. "You want me to look into Pentagon research, too? And NICA?"

  "No. Just DIE. They do the bulk of the new stuff for the others. And I already know what the Pentagon's up to."

  Rachel saw a certain look of distraction that told her Jaguar's thoughts were already elsewhere. Whatever she was working on, she'd play this one close to her chest. In a minute, Rachel thought, she'd ask her to do the same.

  "Rachel," she said, "keep this quiet, okay? You have my access to private files, and you can delete your time when you're done."

  "Right," Rachel replied. "I'll have to get around Terence, though. He likes clearance on everything."

 
"And he is such a long way around," Jaguar noted wryly. "If you delete, I think he'll miss it. Lemme know what you come up with."

  Rachel's telecom went blank, and she sat staring at it for a moment, thinking through her next moves.

  After a few minutes she pushed her chair back and stood, turned, and found herself face-to-face with Alex. She drew in a startled breath and held a hand up to her mouth.

  Alex grinned at her. "Sorry," he said. "I have a very soft walk." He backed up a few paces and motioned with his arm for her to pass freely.

  She stood and crossed her arms, frowning at him. "That's not fair at all," she said.

  "What's not fair?"

  "Eavesdropping."

  Alex laughed. "I'm an empath, Rachel. I do it all the time. So does Jaguar. You know that."

  "Yeah, but this is like the normal way. Did you find out what you wanted to know?"

  "She wants to track the corporation to one of the intelligence organizations. She'll have you check them all before she's through. I thought she would."

  "Any idea why?"

  "A few bubbles floating around. Nothing definite. I'll talk to her about it when I have the chance. And I want you to pass me anything and everything you give her. Got it?"

  Interesting, the way her thoughts were running. He knew that she'd already gathered information on specifics of the land deal in Leadville, on Patricks's tax status and other finances, and the same for the Lieutenant Governor. Nothing on either, so she was moving further afield. Good for her, he thought. He'd handed her a tough one, and she was going to crack it, just to prove she could.

  But her interest in DIE and NICA, the Pentagon—that could be trouble. It made sense, since the hit was political, that it might have backing from a governmental agency, or an affiliate. The Pentagon had taken heat for that sort of thing in the past, but Alex couldn't imagine Clare working for them, somehow. She had too much finesse to be associated with such a corpulent body. However, both NICA and DIE were known for a silent efficiency, for learning everything and giving away nothing. Nobody knew for sure that they hired assassins. But he couldn't think of anyone who wanted to test the theory with their own lives. Except possibly Jaguar.