THE FEAR PRINCIPLE

by B. A. Chepaitis

  Terence whistled low as she turned on her heel and left.

  "Things gone that bad between them?" he asked. "Or—maybe I don't want to know?"

  "You don't," Alex replied. Quiet, he told himself. Just stay quiet.

  "I didn't think so. That Jag," Terence prattled on, "she's a tough cookie. I wouldn't want to mess with her. Nick's an idiot if he thinks he can get her back this way." He shook his head. "Mm-mm, but she's a looker, too. Can't really blame him for trying. Did you ever try to—you know—with her?"

  Alex pulled his attention back into the room. What was Terence saying? Something outrageous, it seemed.

  "I'll bet it'd be like trying to do Teflon," he continued without waiting for Alex's answer. He slid a hand smoothly and swiftly down his arm, curving the line of motion up at the end. "Like Teflon. She's got no place you can stick to, and no soft spot at all. Always smells of mint. There's some story about that, isn't there? Jag and her mint?"

  "Don't call her that," Alex said automatically. "She hates it."

  "Huh? You think she uses that—you know, mind stuff? She's got that look in her eyes."

  Alex tried to keep his attention on Terence, but found the conversation was boring him. He needed to focus on what to do about Nick. Needed to think about what she had just done to him. Needed some clear space. Had to deal with Terence, first.

  "The empathic arts," he said, "aren't approved for use. Not officially, anyway."

  "Right. Like that makes a difference. Like it ought to. Don't get me wrong, though. I wouldn't go near it. Not me. Gives me the shivers just thinking about walking around in some of the minds we see."

  "That's why we advise against it."

  "Yeah. I think you gotta be cold. Cold as death to use that stuff. And Jag—I mean, Jaguar. Well, I don't even have to say it, do I?"

  "It would be better," Alex agreed, "if you didn't."

  Terence winked knowingly. He was glad he'd caught this little interlude. It gave him an idea. Something he could discuss with the Looker tonight.

  Jaguar left Alex's office to meet Rachel at a diner and get the results of her most recent research. Usually, they would pass this sort of information over the computer lines, but Jaguar didn't want any record of what she was looking for. If she could avoid trouble, she would, though it would be a new experience for her. But too many eyes were on her, and she didn't like that. It wasn't safe.

  She went over the new information while Adrian was out, looking up prospects from the Ascension Project.

  Rachel brought her nothing on Clare's life during the Serials or immediately after, and this was disappointing, but not surprising. The three years that covered the Killing Times and the year following had been lost to many people, and a quarter of a century later the ripples of it could still be felt in a number of ways. Although the cities had rebuilt themselves, and the social structure had rewoven itself into a whole again, nothing would ever be the same.

  Jaguar wondered if it would have been easier to live through a war. In the Serials, there was no enemy to point at and say, "See. There he is. There's the problem." No enemy to identify and remove.

  Instead, the killing had arisen from within the chronic sickness of a culture steeped in denial and underground despair, covered by the hope of technological salvation and material wealth. A pile of physically homeless and spiritually starved people, tottering on the crumbling foundation of a culture that could only consume. In this catastrophe, everyone was the enemy, from the woman who sold groceries to you, to the cabdriver, to the man in the blue suit with a briefcase who went to work every day on Wall Street until the day he took out a knife and started playing Jack the Ripper in the night.

  You had to defend yourself against an enemy who could be anyone. An enemy who was the person you saw when you looked in the mirror.

  In the end, even the army simply waited until enough people killed each other that there was a manageable number left. Only a few groups had the courage to go right into the cities and help in the heat of the riots and killing sprees. Nick was in one such group, working with a few other cops and a priest and a New Age guru to stalk the city, combing it for survivors and getting them out, out, out of the hell.

  How many children had he rescued? Picking them up as he picked her up, by the backs of their shirts. Keeping them from stepping on the live wires—electric devices that the safety squads ran around their homes to keep the killing out. Yelling at them and checking them for weapons all the while.

  How could he have gone from that to what he'd become? It was a betrayal. It felt like a betrayal that he could do so. How could he lose himself so completely, and why hadn't she?

  She felt her anger at him rise, then soften in the question she asked herself.

  How could he lose himself so completely, and why hadn't she?

  Your darkness, Jaguar. Where is your fear?

  Survivor guilt. Survivor fear. Survivor resentment. She looked at Clare, and resented her luck. Looked at Alex and mistrusted his. Nick probably looked at her and did the same.

  "Stop it," she told herself. "Just—cut it out. You have work to do, and plenty of it."

  She turned her mind away from Nick, away from herself, and continued reading. Most of the report was old news, held up in as many lights as possible. She read, keeping a running file in her head of what might and might not connect to create something like a coherent whole out of so many various and apparently unrelated bits of information. It took an uncomfortable attentiveness, a hyperawareness that was tiring, and she knew she'd have to go through it all again—and again—seeking the bits of information that would stop her, make her think, cause that little click of apprehension in her mind.

  The first item she noted was that Clare had already known a Planetoid worker, years ago, on the home planet.

  As a teenager, she'd been picked up for possession of cocaine, and the officer who brought her in was Nick Lyola.

  "Great Hecate's cloak," she said. "Can't I get away from the bastard?"

  It could mean nothing—a blip in the scheme. The random at its meaningless best. It could correlate with what Clare said about wanting to meet her. It could all be more smoke in mirrors. In a universe of infinite possibilities, the odds were anyone's guess. It was pre-Serials, and Clare was young, so she was probably just experimenting. The amount she had wasn't enough for sale, since the charge was possession. Nick had recommended probation and regular sessions with a counselor. The courts had assigned her to a probation officer for counseling rather than a social worker. In all likelihood, she'd had no further interaction with Nick at all.

  The next item of note was about the Golden Corporation, and it was negative. There was absolutely no connection between the Golden Corporation and any of the government offices Jaguar was interested in. The Golden Corporation had two primary sources of income—casino management and the exploitation of mining rights of various kinds. They'd begun their existence copper mining in Brazil, and had gone on to explore the potential of renewable resources—such as the Cut Thread plant found in the rain forests, which was increasingly employed in the manufacture of the conductive lines that surgeons used in replacing damaged neurons. They continued to mine for garnets in upstate New York, and were slated to have first crack at mining on the moon, the nights for which they had optioned, if the Global Union of Peace ever let the legislation through for them to begin.

  They purchased a chunk of the preservation land to mine for pyrite, and another for Casino development, contracting out the building to construction companies that also had no connection to NICA or DIE. In other words, all news was negative, except for one interesting item.

  "Pyrite," Jaguar mused. "How very odd." What, she wondered, did they do with the mineral commonly known as fool's gold?

  She filed this item, and continued reading.

  Rachel had gone on to explore the possibility of a connection between the Lieutenant Governor and corporations opposed to the development deal. There was nothi
ng to indicate any such connection. The only interesting items about the Lieutenant Governor were that he hoped to run for president someday, which made Jaguar groan in disgust, and that he had recently attended his wife at the birth of their first child, a daughter named Golda.

  "Fool's gold," she muttered again, and flipped back to the Golden Corporation, reading through the annual report, which was a public document.

  She stopped only briefly, to note that the corporation anticipated the amount of money garnered from the sale of pyrite in the next fiscal year to make up about a quarter of its profits.

  "Fool's gold?" she asked herself.

  She read the report again thoroughly, to see who the buyers would be. From what she could make of the business jargon, a variety of purchasers would be making use of the metal. All of them were in the business of distribution of goods. The middlemen who bought, held, and sold, but did nothing beyond that. All were small, low-profile groups.

  "Thank you, Rachel," Jaguar said. "Very much indeed."

  She wasn't sure what she had learned yet, but something in her visceral region told her it was important. She closed the file and went to her room to pick out something in a warm color. Perhaps her red silk, although that crossed the border from warmth into heat.

  Still, it would do the job she had in mind, which was to add something that might melt the ice in the House of Mirrors.

  The lakeside wharves were dark and deserted, except for one man in a dark blue suit who stood at a dock, staring pensively out across the ruffled waters toward an unseen shore. As he stood he periodically lifted his wrist close to his face and make clucking noises at it.

  The Looker was an exceptionally punctual man, and found tardiness disturbing, no excuses allowed.

  When he finally heard, from some distance, the sound of footsteps coming toward him, he was even more disapproving. His contact should not have allowed himself to be heard. What kind of man were they hiring for this job, anyway? Late, and noisy, apparently.

  The Looker tensed, and turned on his heel to face his appointment as he walked the long dock toward him.

  The two men stood sizing each other up for a minute. The Looker spoke first.

  "You're late," he said.

  "Stuck in traffic," the other man said. Then he stuck out his hand, stiff and formal. "I'm Nick Lyola."

  The Looker jutted out a pointy nose even farther and pointed a finger with long nails at Nick. "Don't tell me that," he hissed. "This is strictly no-name."

  "Hey," Nick said, raising his hands, in the position of surrender. "Nobody told me."

  "When we spoke earlier in the week, I said as much," he said triumphantly. Catching the incompetent in error brought its own joy.

  "Okay," Nick said, scratching at his ear. "Okay. So I forgot. Anyway, you must know who I am, otherwise how'd you find me?"

  The Looker said nothing, and Nick held up his thumb and index finger in the shape of a gun, cocking an imaginary hammer and pulling at an invisible trigger. "Gotcha," he said, grinning.

  The Looker said more nothing. Nick shrugged, backed off a step, and shifted from one foot to the other.

  "So," he said at last, "what's the game? You said you had a job for me. Something to do with Jag."

  The Looker pursed his thin lips and breathed in half the air of the wharf through his thin nose, then expelled it with flaring nostrils. "I have an assignment for you. Classified. It involves the Addams woman merely by chance, and you were chosen because of your relationship with her."

  "Yeah," Nick said, "that's cute—my relationship with her is more like a boxing match these days. What am I supposed to do?"

  The man blinked three times, then continued. Nick wondered if he was receiving instructions from an invisible telecom even as he spoke. There seemed to be some delay between the questions that entered his ears and the resultant answers. Some kind of delayed processing time, or something.

  He continued to say nothing, but raised his hand toward Nick, palm out. Nick stared at him, then at his hand, then more closely at his hand.

  In the center of his palm was a small flat chip that gave off a lightly gold metallic sheen. Nick pointed at it.

  "For me?" he asked.

  "You have," he said, "some empathic ability?"

  Nick shrugged. "I thought I wasn't supposed to tell you nothing."

  The Looker nodded in approval.

  "This," he said, "is a projection chip. It allows an em-path to both receive at higher-than-real emotional amplifications, and to project scenes toward a subject with increased intensity."

  Nick felt the chip between his fingers, brought it to his nose, and sniffed it, held it up to the light, and examined it with one eye closed.

  "You don't have to bite it," the man said through clenched teeth. "It's not a fake coin."

  "I'm just trying to figure out what I do with it to get it to work," Nick said. "Eat it? Stick it in my ear? Stick it up—"

  "Don't be juvenile. You implant it subcutaneously in the region of the medulla oblongata."

  "Like I said, stick it up my—"

  "At the back of your head," he said, his lips growing tighter by the second.

  Nick laughed, flipped the device with his fingers, and caught it in his other hand. "Okay. Don't get so bent. I know how to insert an implant, and I got what I need at home. What do I do once I got it in, and how's it gonna help with Jag?"

  "She's an empath," the man said coldly. "Practiced. Very practiced. Use it to ... influence her. To disturb her."

  "What for? I mean, I know why I'd like to, but what am I doing for you?"

  "Maintaining security."

  "Yeah. Right. How?"

  "Get her off the Rilasco case."

  Nick lifted his head from staring at the disk, and whistled at the man. "Rilasco, is it? Jag getting a little too close to the bone with her? A few things you don't want known, maybe?"

  The Looker said nothing.

  "Okay. I can take a hint. Suits me fine, anyway. Do you mind if I try a trick or two of my own while I'm in there?"

  "We assumed it would be to your advantage to do so. As long as you get her off the case, we don't care what else you do."

  "Great. Am I supposed to contact you when I've got her taken care of?"

  "No," he said. "We'll know."

  And with that, he turned back toward the water, staring again at the unseen shore. Nick, taking this as dismissal, clattered his way back down the dock, whistling as he went.

  The Looker stood at the end of the dock, waiting.

  His next visitor of the evening was both punctual and a silent walker. He turned and greeted him with approval.

  "Hello, Terence," he said. "Did you hear?"

  "I got it," he said, then shifted his weight, looking around. "I hope Nick can manage it. He's looking a little frayed at the edges these days."

  The Looker shook his head. "You recommended him for the assignment. If you're thinking better of it—"

  "No. I think it's the best move. They already have a connection. From what I heard in Dzarny's office today, it's a pretty hot one right now, so if anything goes too wrong, it'll just get blamed on that. Minimizes the risk some."

  "Good. Because most important is to get that Addams woman off the case. Any other Teacher would be no problem. But with her—Terence, I don't need to explicate, do I?"

  "No. You don't need to explain, either. And if Nick blows this one—"

  "If he does, we'll dispose of him."

  "No," Terence said. "I know you want to play with your Supertoys—"

  "E-wave amplification devices," the Looker corrected.

  "Right," he said. He knew what the devices did, and how powerful they were, but he preferred to think of them by their common name. Toys. Supertoys, but toys. Just boys and their toys, on a more lucrative scale than grade school. If he thought of them that way he didn't have to keep remembering what the Looker was using them for at his research center.

  "If Nick can't handle the
technology, there's something else we can do with him. I thought of it this morning, because of the fuss Jag's making," he explained, and waited while the Looker ran the information through his personal process of decision making, which was to take a deck of cards from his suit pocket and shuffle.

  "No," he said. "We've started with this. We'll stick with it unless it proves futile. When you choose to move your cards a certain way, Terence, it's important to stay with what you have until you see it no longer works."

  "Yeah," Terence said. "Sure. And if it doesn't work, then what?"

  For the first time in the years of their association, Terence saw the Looker's mouth twist into what might have been, on any other person, a smile.

  "Then," he said, "you cheat."

  The Looker turned back to the water, and Terence watched his own back on the way home.

  Alex's apartment overlooked one of the nicer shores of the Lake Ontario built for this replica city of Toronto. He would often sit at the front window staring out at the shadings and shiftings of the lake while he brooded his way through a difficult assignment or a Teacher's problem.

  The designers had done a good job—almost too good, because the one complaint made about all the replica cities was that they were better than the originals. Of course, that was due in part to their newness, and in part to the absence of heavy industry on the Planetoids. They imported most of their manufactured goods from the home planet, and as a result, the years of pollution that left scars on the home planet never happened here.

  Alex also thought the population of the replica cities had a better attitude. They were all misfits on the home planet in one way or another, but here they were involved in something real. A real, if flawed, attempt to treat the problems of crime and violence instead of stuffing the criminals into a hole and trying to forget they existed.

  Every night he could look out his window at the play of water and light and remind himself of that. Then he could clear his mind, and perform his final ritual before he went to sleep.