The Scorpion Jar

by Jason M. Hardy

  “Gareth Sinclair, isn’t it? We worked together on Ryde a few years ago, after the meteor strike.”

  “That’s right.” Sinclair smiled, as if happy to be recognized. “I’m surprised that you remember me. I was mostly running errands and directing traffic.”

  That was, Jonah reflected, a massive understatement. When the meteor had hit the continent of Kale, one of the few habitable places on Ryde, the resulting social and ecological breakdown, combined with spilled chemicals from Ryde’s many plants, had required the full-time attention of a Paladin and half a dozen Knights of the Sphere. The seven of them, along with a support team the size of a small army, had labored for more than six months just to get things back to where long-term aid and reconstruction might actually have a chance to work.

  Jonah said, “You also had to deal with that enterprising gentleman who believed that losing comms with the planetary capital meant that he could set up his own little kingdom out in the backwoods. I believe there was some fighting involved—you were piloting a Black Hawk’Mech at the time, if I recall correctly.”

  Sinclair nodded. “I still do, whenever I get the chance. I like Black Hawks. I did my initial training in one, and they’re what I know best.”

  “They’re good ’Mechs,” Jonah agreed, although he himself preferred a heavier ’Mech such as his own Atlas, now safe in a hangar at the DropPort. He didn’t like resolving disputes by force, but when only force remained, he felt happiest with a ’Mech that could deliver a blow strong enough to settle the issue. He’d seen the principle stated most clearly in an inscription cast into the iron barrel of a cannon on display outside one of Terra’s many museums: ultima ratio regum, the final argument of kings.

  Sinclair, meanwhile, was looking around the crowded ballroom. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many Knights and Paladins in one place before.”

  Jonah nodded agreement. “It’s only a few of the Knights, relatively speaking, but you’re right about the Paladins. All but three of us are here this evening.”

  “Three?” Sinclair’s gaze flickered around the room again. “I know that Victor Steiner-Davion isn’t here—he doesn’t travel these days, so he’s going to be addressing the convocation tomorrow by tri-vid hookup—and David McKinnon is still on Skye, but who else is missing?”

  “You’re forgetting the Ghost Paladin.”

  Sinclair reddened a little—the curse, Jonah supposed, of a fair complexion. “Oh. Yes. I’d forgotten about him.”

  “Or her,” Jonah said.

  “Yes. He or she isn’t here tonight either. So far as we know.”

  “So far as we know,” agreed Jonah.

  Silence fell for a minute. Then Sinclair’s expression brightened. “I see Paladin GioAvanti over there, by the potted palms. We traveled from Woodstock on the same DropShip; I should go and wish her a good evening.”

  He faded away into the crowd, wearing the expression—had he but known it—of a young man determined to speak with a pretty girl.

  Jonah suppressed a smile. Paladin GioAvanti was strong, forceful and opinionated, characteristics that occasionally alienated her more old-fashioned potential suitors. But she was a handsome woman, and she possessed an undeniable charisma. Most Paladins did. Jonah wondered, not for the first time, what an essentially unremarkable man like him was doing in such dazzling company.

  He abandoned that line of thought—his Anna, if she knew of it, would have already scolded him for giving in to imposter syndrome. He moved around the ballroom instead, taking in the groupings and constellations of the guests.

  Thaddeus Marik and Otto Mandela held court with a group of Knights, describing a battle they had fought together before either were even Knights. It was a safer topic than politics, and their relaxed listeners laughed easily at their account.

  Tyrina Drummond and Meraj Jorgensson were talking together earnestly in one corner, next to a table serving smoked salmon on flat crackers and some kind of transparent liquor in frosted glasses. Jonah made the mistake of reaching for an hors d’oeuvre, putting him in their conversational orbit.

  “Victor will try to control us,” Drummond said in dire tones. “He thinks he can play at kingmaker.”

  Jorgensson shrugged. “That is okay. Victor has shown that he is on the right side of things often enough. If he wants to use his influence to make sure someone qualified ascends to Exarch, what harm is there in that?”

  “Steiner-Davion did not form The Republic. He had his chance; he was far more powerful than Devlin Stone early in his life. But he failed where Stone succeeded—he could never unite the Sphere. He could not do it then, and I do not see why we should trust him to do it now.” Her eyes caught Jonah’s. “Paladin Levin. Surely you will not be subject to Steiner-Davion’s manipulations.”

  “Nobody, not even Steiner-Davion, has attempted to manipulate me yet,” Jonah said through a mouthful of fish. Until you, Tyrina, he silently added as he ducked away.

  He was buried in a mass of staffers for a time, finally emerging in front of Kaffyd Op Owens and Maya Avellar.

  “We are here to preserve Devlin Stone’s vision,” Owens said in insistent tones. “Our borders are being eroded, our weakness is being exposed. We need to restore our strength and restore our borders.” Staffers around Owens murmured their agreement.

  “I agree that we must defend against further invasions, but escalating the war is asking for trouble,” Avellar returned. “The more we encourage the Clans to hate us, the stronger their future assaults against us will be. We have to find a way to deal with them besides incessant warfare.”

  “We didn’t choose that method! They did! They brought the war to us, we are only responding!”

  “The vision of The Republic is one of peace! We are supposed to rise above petty provocation!”

  Jonah could see where this discussion was headed, and he wanted no part of it. He stepped backward, bumping squarely into Anders Kessel.

  “Neither of them is going to convince the other,” Kessel said with a sad shake of his head, “especially with Owens spouting the lines David McKinnon would use if he were here. Their eloquence is best saved for Paladins who might be swayed.”

  Jonah glanced at the sparring partners over his shoulder. “I don’t think they’re considering politics right now,” he said.

  Kessel smiled, an expression that always seemed more genuine on him in the vids than it did in real life. “They have that in common with you,” he said.

  “I suppose.”

  “You know you can’t avoid it, though,” Kessel said, crinkling his gray eyes. “By yourself, you represent nearly six percent of the vote. Did you know that? Have you thought about the power a single vote has in our council?”

  Jonah looked Kessel square in the face. “Yes. Honestly, I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

  “I knew you would have. While the rest of them are playing games, you’re doing the real spadework.”

  Jonah sighed, hoping Kessel noticed. Flattery was the inevitable first step of a political courtship.

  “You and Victor, that is,” Kessel added.

  “Victor?”

  “Rumor is he’s putting in long hours on a secret project. The smart money says whatever it is could determine the outcome of the election. Though I’m sure you’ve heard similar rumors already.”

  “I don’t hear many rumors,” Jonah said, applying a light veneer of scorn to the final word.

  Kessel ignored it. “Then start listening. I know you think I’m just playing silly games, but the future of The Republic is at stake. There’s nothing silly about getting the right person in place.”

  Jonah noticed that Kessel was not yet ready to commit to who that “right person” might be. Just then, a loud burst from Owens and the crowd surrounding him drew Kessel’s attention, and Jonah took advantage of the moment to slip away.

  He found a corner free of any other Paladins. He looked over the room, thinking of how all these people were going to be penned
up together in Geneva until they agreed upon the next Exarch. The Paladins had originally been a close-knit group, bound together by loyalty to Devlin Stone and to The Republic; but like any small group that needed to work together for a long time, familiarity had produced its own tensions and disagreements. The troubles of recent years, and the void left by Stone’s resignation and disappearance, and the fact that The Republic was large enough to keep the Paladins apart at most times, had only made things worse. Damien Redburn was a good man and Devlin Stone’s chosen successor, but he wasn’t able to inspire an equivalent level of profound emotional commitment. And now the Paladins were expected to choose one of their own number to take over his position.

  The situation reminded Jonah Levin of the story he’d once heard about an old hermit in the North American desert who would amuse himself by capturing scorpions and throwing them into a jar, then sealing the lid. He would leave the jar sealed overnight, and by morning all of the creatures inside it would be dead—stung to death by their comrades in misfortune.

  A shiver passed down Jonah’s back. The story was not really that amusing . . . but it was an explanation, perhaps, for why Damien Redburn had chosen to call for elections at the earliest legal moment. The man had been living inside that jar for years.

  13

  Residence of Paladin Victor Steiner-Davion,

  Santa Fe

  Terra, Prefecture X

  26 November 3134

  Darkness had fallen once again in Santa Fe and Victor Steiner-Davion was back in his office, leaning back in his desk chair, a glass of whisky in his hand. The whisky wasn’t good for him, but he didn’t care. No matter what the medical staff here thought, he’d reached an age when a man was entitled to a few moderate vices. After all, it wasn’t as if he had to worry much about the long-term effects of anything.

  Tonight, moreover, was an occasion for at least modest celebration. His report to the Paladins was finished—both the extended version for publication, fully annotated and with transcripts of all the evidence, and the short summary version that he would present tomorrow in his live speech to the assembled Paladins. He would put on his full-dress uniform for the first time in years, he would go down to the tri-vid studio in the headquarters complex, and he would tell the other Paladins in his own voice exactly how bad the problem was.

  He would have preferred to make the physical journey to Geneva and deliver his speech in person, but he had known from the start that such an appearance, personally satisfying though it might be, was unlikely to be possible. His energy failed him too easily these days, and the mere mention of so much travel would set his nurses and physicians to shaking their heads and making grave pronouncements.

  A real-time hookup, then, would have to do. He had labored over the speech for long enough; anything he did tonight would be mere nervous tinkering. He would finish his whisky, then go to bed and rest for tomorrow and an old Paladin’s last hurrah.

  Victor lifted his glass. “Here’s to The Republic and to the dream of Devlin Stone.”

  He drained the last of the whisky and set the glass down on his desktop.

  All of the lights in the room went out.

  In the silence that followed, he realized that all of the electronics in the room had gone quiet as well. Their mostly unheard and forgotten sixty-cycle hum, that on a normal day droned on steadily beneath everything, was dead.

  The outer door to his apartment clicked open. No light followed the sound; the hall outside was also dark. No power there either, Victor thought. Whoever had entered would have had to use the emergency key—and yet, no alarm had sounded.

  Somebody was in the outer room, moving with deliberate quiet.

  This, thought Victor, was not good. He pushed his chair away from the table so that he could stand unimpeded. He marked where faint beams of light from outside penetrated the windows, making the shadows of the room even deeper by contrast. He knew where the intruder would have to walk to reach him. The intruder would have night-vision goggles, while Victor would have his knowledge of the room’s furnishings to guide him.

  All the instincts honed by a lifetime spent in war and politics were sounding an alarm even louder than the one that should have been shrilling throughout the entire headquarters complex. Victor had understood as soon as the door had opened that they wanted him dead.

  He didn’t have much doubt as to who “they” were. He’d outlived or made peace with all of his old enemies—except, of course, his sister, but if she came after him she wouldn’t strike in the dark. She’d want to be sure to see his face.

  Anybody else left from his youth or his middle age who might harbor a lingering grievance against him had stopped trying to act on it years before. This was a new quarrel, and he’d only done one thing lately that might account for it.

  In the dark, he smiled a little. If he’d wanted a final proof that the structure of ideas he’d built up so laboriously was solid, he had it now. Somebody intended to kill him over it.

  They would succeed. He had no illusions about that. He was an old man, older than he’d ever expected to be, older perhaps than he’d ever had a right to expect, and the person moving quietly through the darkened outer room would be without doubt a professional in the prime of life. That person would kill him, and would destroy his work.

  Moving in silence, he reached out and grasped the empty whisky glass. His other hand found the decanter. He stood, the glass in his left hand, the bottle in his right, and stepped away from the desk. He backed to the wall and allowed the bottle to hang from his fingertips. Then he swung it backward, so that the bottom rim struck the wall. The glass shattered away from the point of impact, leaving him with a jagged dagger below the bottle’s neck. The noise of its shattering was as loud as blasphemy in the deadly silence. The scent of alcohol surrounded him.

  He had a weapon now. Not enough to save his life, or even to take his assailant down with him. But enough, even in the hand of an old man, to mark the other, and mark the scene.

  One of the beams of outside light flickered as a black-clad shape passed through it and stepped closer. Victor realized that the plan must be to make the agency of his death look like some natural cause or accident of fate—a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism, something that his doctors could shake their heads sadly about and say, “Well, he was an old man.” That would explain why the killer hadn’t already used a laser pistol or other projectile weapon. They must have expected him to be asleep, allowing them to slip in, do the job, and leave with as few traces as possible. They wouldn’t expect him to be awake, and they hopefully wouldn’t expect him to put up a fight. It was a small advantage, but at least it was something.

  Considered in that light, Victor thought, his course of action was clear. If he could make it plain enough that his death had been not accident but murder, then all the rest would come out in time.

  No point in waiting any longer. Victor threw the heavy crystal tumbler with a sidearm toss he’d learned nearly a century before on the grenade range, aiming for the intruder’s head. The man would duck, or, if luck ran wild, might even lose his goggles. And the low coffee table barely a foot away would hamper him, maybe even trip him, if he tried to sidestep.

  Victor was no longer as quick on his feet as he had been even twenty years ago, but when fighting for his life, a man can do wonders. He was moving fast, forward, around his desk, toward the spot where his would-be assassin had yelled with surprise and fallen.

  Victor shouted out a hoarse and wordless war cry of his own. A warrior dies bloody, he thought, and am I not a Paladin still? In the next breath he was on his opponent, clawing for the night-vision goggles with his left hand, stabbing downward with the broken bottle in his right.

  Then strong arms seized him from behind, pressing a cloth over his face, and his heart sank. There had been two assassins, and not just one.

  He kicked backward and felt his heel strike a shin. The second man’s grip loosened. He tried to twist, tried an elbow st
rike, but a pain bloomed in his chest, running up to his jaw and down his left arm. A pinched nerve, he thought. Cold sweat started on his forehead. He couldn’t breathe.

  The cloth over his mouth and nose pressed harder. He felt like a ’Mech was standing on his chest. He stabbed backward with the neck of the broken decanter and felt a slight resistance. Then the pain overwhelmed him and he dropped the bottle. He heard nothing more. The pain grew, becoming worse than any he had ever felt, and he fell into blackness darker even than a lightless room in Santa Fe.

  Elena Ruiz came to work in the morning with a cheerful heart. She’d had a good night last night; dinner with Henrik was always nice, but this had been one of their better evenings. The old Paladin had gone to sleep early, and her periodic remote checks on his health and welfare showed nothing on her pager but a darkened apartment, with all security and biometric systems reading green. She’d enjoyed a pleasant meal, for once free from concern about Victor Steiner-Davion’s habit of burning the midnight oil, and had slept soundly afterward.

  Today was a clear, sunny morning, and the November air was dry and cold. Inside the building, Elena took a moment to hang up her jacket in the staff coatroom—the heat in the retirement wing was always kept higher than in the main part of building. From the coatroom, she made her way to Victor Steiner-Davion’s suite.

  The door was locked—not surprising, since the old man was careful enough about such things to qualify as paranoid—so she had to open the outer door with her passkey. She put on her professional smile and cheerful voice.

  “Paladin Steiner-Davion?” she said as she opened the door.

  Elena wasn’t surprised when she failed to get an answer. She expected that the Paladin had fallen asleep at his desk again, as he so often did these days. She let the outer door swing shut behind her and moved on into the apartment, purposefully making no effort to be silent. The noise of her voice and her footsteps usually proved sufficient to wake him, if he happened to still be asleep after sunrise. This time, however, there was no response.