Voice of the Whirlwind

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Icehawks.”

  “That’s right, buck.”

  “Why did you try to kill me?”

  Steward looked into the lights. “Because you killed me, Curzon. Brought me out of Vesta just to put an ice jacket on me.”

  There was an intake of breath from somewhere behind the lights. Steward tried to find Wandis behind the floods. “Is that a surprise, Wandis? You didn’t know Curzon had your husband killed?”

  “That,” said Curzon, “is untrue.”

  Steward laughed. The drug and pain put a nasty edge to the laugh. “Now who’s not telling the truth?”

  Curzon’s voice was calm. “Steward died on Vesta. The extraction went wrong. We only got the body back.”

  “Rien n’est beau que le vrai,” Steward said, a proverb. For Wandis’s benefit he repeated in English. “Nothing is beautiful but the truth. Your lies reek, Curzon.”

  “I want to find out about this.” A flat declarative from Wandis.

  “Someone’s programmed him,” Curzon said. His voice showed no excitement, nothing that proclaimed Steward’s allegation was worth his consideration. “Someone who wanted me to die.” He cleared his throat. “Wandis, I’ll show you the reports. You can talk to the pilot if you like.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Wandis,” Steward said. “Pilots lie. Reports lie.”

  Curzon cleared his throat again. Steward wondered if he had a head cold. “Our information shows you were implanted with memories fifteen years out of date. You can’t have experienced anything since before the war. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where did you get your information, Mr. Steward?”

  Steward laughed. “From me. My former personality. He sent me a message, saying you were going to kill him.”

  “You believed him.”

  “Wandis.” Steward peered urgently into the darkness behind the lights. “He sent the message after he got out of Vesta.” A lie, but Steward reckoned that even if their monitors showed the lie for what it was, it wouldn’t matter much—it wouldn’t put him in a worse position.

  “The point is, they wanted de Prey,” Steward said. “I killed him on Vesta, and then Consolidated stole his clone and memory threads when they took over LifeLight Insurance. He was more valuable to Consolidated than I was, and if I returned from Vesta to find de Prey here, that might make me…I don’t know. Rebellious…difficult. So Curzon had me killed. The reward for doing a good job for him.”

  Wandis didn’t answer. Instead the next voice was Curzon’s. “You received a communication from your—former personality…”

  “My Alpha.”

  “From your Alpha. Informing you that de Prey had betrayed him and that I had killed him. And that’s the sole reason you have for trying to assassinate us?”

  “I suppose I could have sought a murder indictment in Flagstaff. But I don’t think that would have done much good.”

  Steward had the impression the people behind the desk were consulting. Running the conversation back through their monitors, trying to certify the truth of Steward’s statements.

  He smelled tobacco. Someone in the room was smoking. The scent made Steward’s mouth water. He was grateful for the returning moisture.

  Curzon cleared his throat. “I think,” he said, “that Wandis and Dr. Nubar can leave. Mr. Steward and I are about to begin discussion of things for which they do not possess the proper clearance.”

  Steward laughed. “Right. Grownup talk now. The boys and girls may leave.”

  Curzon continued unruffled. “Thank you both. Wandis, I think you can go home. Dr. Nubar, I’d like you to wait at your station in case I need you.”

  There were the sounds of feet, a door opening, more feet, a door closing. Pain filled Steward’s eyes, his brain. He wondered if he’d just wrecked Wandis’s career. If Curzon thought she believed him, it was possible she’d be under suspicion in case she tried to avenge the Alpha, or spread a scandal about his death.

  That was stupid of him, if that was what he’d just done. He was going to have to attempt better control. With the pain and the lights and the speed they’d just shot into him, control was going to be difficult to achieve. He began breathing, trying to use his training, establish control of himself.

  I have no tactics, he thought. I make existence and the void my tactics.

  The floodlights died, and Steward breathed his relief. Their brightness still burned behind his lids. The pain in his head receded slightly. He heard Curzon moving, sitting in the chair Wandis had used, clearing his throat again.

  I have no talent. I make a quick mind my talent.

  The blaze slowly faded from Steward’s vision. He opened his eyes, saw Curzon frowning down at him. There was a plastic headset on his balding skull, electrodes pressed against the skin, allowing him, Steward assumed, to monitor the readouts connected to Steward’s body and brain.

  I have no castle. The immutable spirit is my castle.

  “You are correct in one thing,” Curzon said. “I had your Alpha killed.”

  Steward’s mind flooded with surprise, followed instantly by suspicion. If Curzon was this open, there was a reason.

  “I hope it didn’t cost you too much paperwork,” Steward said.

  “There were overriding reasons,” Curzon said, “which you cannot appreciate.”

  I have no sword, Steward thought, and the thought was triumphant. From the state which is above and beyond, from thought I make my sword.

  Steward barked a laugh. “I can appreciate bacteriological attacks on an alien race. I can appreciate a Brigadier-Director having a colleague assassinated after successfully completing a dangerous mission. I can appreciate the value of a man as cynical and evil as de Prey.” He glared at Curzon. “I am not lacking appreciation for the details of your business. So tell me your reasons. Maybe I can appreciate them, too.”

  Curzon reached with his good hand into his pocket for a tissue and blew his nose, then leaned back in his chair and looked at Steward. He still wore a fairly abstracted frown, looking like a middle-aged exec working at a difficult acrostic, a purely intellectual problem.

  “Your Alpha,” Curzon said, “went to his death with a certain grace. Death was what he wanted, Steward—he never convinced himself he should have survived Sheol. But he wanted an honorable death, and he wanted to accomplish certain tasks beforehand. The de Prey mission, mainly. I think he was happy when he died.”

  “Nice of you to help him along. When you kill me, I suppose you’ll be doing me a favor as well.”

  “Perhaps I will not kill you. Perhaps not.” Spoken as if the possibility was somehow intriguing. Salesman genes, Steward thought. Lies built right into the DNA.

  “If I cooperate,” he said.

  Curzon shrugged. “Your cooperation is irrelevant. We have our methods, we have all the time we need. The answers we want are assured one way or the other. No”—a brisk shake of the head—“I think I may recruit you instead.”

  Steward laughed. A spear of pain entered his side and he gasped for air.

  Curzon showed no surprise at the laughter, no resentment. His voice continued in the same quiet fashion. Steward began breathing again, striving for control. Speed ran down his flesh like nails on a slate.

  “I think your Alpha wanted to give himself to our purpose, but he was too scarred by his personal trauma to appreciate what we were trying to build here. He affected cynical, mercenary attitudes for which I have little patience or respect—people whose loyalty can be bought have never impressed me. De Prey, for example. He would work for me, for Vesta, for the Powers if they gave him what he wanted. He was of limited value—we could not trust him. He could indoctrinate ideals into others but he had none himself.” His voice turned meditative. “I wonder if your Alpha realized how much his attitudes made him like the man he wanted to kill.”

  Steward shook his head. “You’re a gem, Carlos Dancer Curzon. A real original.”

  Curzon
looked at him. “No. Not at all. I am simply a man superbly adapted for his work. As are you.” He looked at the woman in uniform. “As is Colonel Godunov, sitting behind her desk.” His eyes turned to Steward. “As is our Prime, Mr. Steward. The undisputed king of his people.”

  Steward said nothing. Curzon tilted his head to one side, looking at his problem from another angle. The gesture was spoiled when he went into a brief spasm of coughing. He cleared his throat and dabbed his tissue to his lips. “Bronchitis,” he said. “Just getting over it.” He stuffed the tissue into his breast pocket, then frowned down at Steward once again. There was something merry in his eyes. Like Father Christmas.

  “What do you know, Mr. Steward, about the Powers?”

  “They’re hierarchical. Alien. Complicated. Not like us. I know you sent my Alpha to kill Vesta’s Prime and a lot of his people, but Prime-of-the-Right escaped. I know that Powers are addictive to people with the vee tag, that their aerosol hormones make the addicts think the Powers are God.”

  Curzon stiffened in surprise, and shot a quick glance at Godunov. Steward rejoiced at getting a reaction out of the man at last.

  When Curzon spoke, his voice was meditative. “It is going to be more difficult to keep you alive than I expected, Mr. Steward. Most people who find these things out simply disappear.”

  “Can you loosen this sheet around my shoulders? I’d like to be able to shrug.” Steward bit back on his words. The speed was making him talkative, and every word he spoke was monitored, compared against every other word, forming a pool of data against which to test his future reactions. He had always been told that during interrogation he should keep his answers short and simple, and never elaborate or launch into long-winded explanations. Interrogators wanted their prisoners to get boastful and talkative—it gave them so much more rope with which to lasso their victims. Steward started his regular breathing again, tried to concentrate on something else. Constellations, as he had on Vesta. Make the universe in his skull. M44, he thought. Where the hell was it?

  “I wonder if I can ask you the source of your information?” Curzon’s voice was conversational.

  Cancer, Steward thought. Merde. He couldn’t think. No reason Curzon shouldn’t know this. “The Born put into Vesta last year,” he said. “The Pulsar Division thought I was the Alpha and picked me up. Their interrogator gave away a lot more information than he got. And then I worked in the Legation as part of a backup crew. There were some old Icehawks working there. Power citizens. I got a look at them.”

  “And you put it together from that.”

  “I’m superbly adapted for my job. Or so people tell me.” Steward looked up at Curzon. “The Pulsar people weren’t nice. Brutal, in fact. They don’t like you killing their Prime for them.”

  Curzon pursed his lips. “I didn’t like it, either. The operation was put together very quickly and for reasons I don’t entirely understand. It wasn’t my idea. Our own Prime insisted, I’m afraid. We undertook the operation as a courtesy to him.”

  Steward was trying to build Orion in his mind and the picture vanished under a wave of surprise that jangled like sleigh bells along Steward’s cranked nerves. “The Powers go around poisoning each other?” he asked. “I thought they were all so disciplined and perfect.” Orion, he thought once more. Rigel here, Betelgeuse here. Curzon’s voice came from far away.

  “That is a story we find advantageous to spread. We wish to encourage people to believe they can be like the Powers. Stable, intelligent, cooperative.”

  Obedient, Steward added mentally.

  “The truth is that there are…nations within the Power community. They are as divided as we are.”

  The picture of Orion disappeared again. Ideas flickered like gunflashes through Steward’s mind and it took a moment to assemble them into a coherent whole. If the Powers were as fragmented as humanity, if the Artifact War had been fought on territory divided between two Power nations…that would explain the necessity of two ports of entry, Vesta and Ricot. And explain as well the way the humans of Vesta and Ricot were suspicious of each other—their success depended on their own Power nation’s success. And it explained as well the fact of one Prime launching an attack on the other.

  Steward thought of that huge cone-shaped part of the sky where humanity was barred. Where there were other Power nations that might pose a danger to, or at least prove competitive with, the two nations already contacted. No wonder the Primes have forbidden human exploration of that area.

  “Come now.” Curzon was talking to Godunov. “Mr. Steward already knows enough information to justify our having him killed three times over. I’m just giving him a little more to reason with. Maybe he can tell us about our friends on Vesta.”

  It occurred to Steward that Curzon might be high on painkillers and that this was making him talkative. No wonder he seemed so jolly. Curzon turned to Steward. “Yes?” he said. “I can tell you’ve been thinking.”

  “I—I’m not sure,” Steward said. The picture of Orion was firming. “The feeling I got from Vesta was that things were divided there. Pulsar and their other group—”

  “Group Seven.”

  “Yes. They were taking different positions over things. Over me. Pulsar was interested in what I knew about Ricot. So maybe they were interested in retaliation.”

  A muscle in Curzon’s cheek twitched. “Yes. I warned the Prime of that. But he said that Vesta’s Powers had to be stopped. That his sources told him they were about to conduct some kind of major operation, and they had to be warned not to go through with it.”

  Orion gleamed in Steward’s mind, the hunter with his studded belt. Hunting not the Powers, like Steward, but the Pleiades.

  “Worse,” Curzon said, “the operation missed its target. It was Prime-of-the-Right we particularly wanted. Not the Prime. We were told that, but not why.” He frowned at the floor. “A damned bad op. Lucky we accomplished as much as we did.” He reached for a tissue and coughed into it. Frowned again, but there was a twitching grin in the frown. The man was full of painkillers, and they were warring with his salesman genes. From thought I make my sword, Steward repeated, and watched carefully.

  “It won’t matter in the long run which of these little factions triumphs. One of us will command the future.”

  Goad him, Steward thought. Orion was glittering in his skull like diamonds. Diamonds that could cut. “I’ve heard that before,” he said. “From Coherent Light. Derrotero. Gorky. Far Ranger.”

  Curzon looked at him in mild surprise. “Ah,” he said, “I recognize that warrior cynicism of yours.” He cleared his throat. “I used to agree with you, you know. That the policorps were nothing but squabbling factories for conformity, each motivated by nothing but scorn for weakness and greed for power. Each looking for an edge, hoping their ideology or system would prove what they needed. I was…brought up in a particular craft. Destined for it by my genes. I did it very well. But I lacked a certain…inspiration.”

  “You’ve got it now, I gather.”

  Curzon seemed amused. “I sympathize with your point of view, I truly do. During the time of the Orbital Soviet, there was an ultimate authority that ruled on policorporate conduct. But the Soviet fell in a haze of nerve gas and tailored viruses, and since then it has been—”

  “Darwin Days,” said Steward. It was getting hot in his sheet. His mouth was turning dry.

  Curzon smiled. “Yes. Nothing but policorps struggling for their edge. A war of all against all. And in the absence of any other responsible authority, in the presence of a corrupt ethic in high places, you, Mr. Steward, have set above all else your own sense of personal morality. You have ruled on de Prey’s conduct, and mine, and found it inexcusable. But it is a very…lonely…mode of existence, is it not? Perhaps even sociopathic. You can find no others worthy of your company, saving only yourself.”

  “I have plenty of friends,” Steward said. “And apropos sociopathy, one thing I don’t do is have them killed.”

&
nbsp; “Your Alpha did,” Curzon said. Steward felt himself stiffen. “On Sheol he killed his superior officer.” Curzon pointed a finger at Steward like a gun. “Bang!” Curzon’s eyes twinkled merrily. “Shot him dead. And he gave orders, in battle, that resulted in many of his friends being killed. He was in a position of responsibility, and responsible people sometimes are compelled to decide these things.” Curzon looked at him. “You feel free to be virtuous because you are also free from any degree of authority. Your Alpha was never as lucky. He had responsibility over human life, and the responsibility scarred him for life. That is part of his tragedy.”

  “It didn’t have to be a tragedy,” Steward said. Sweat was beading on his scalp.

  “Listen,” Curzon said. “When the Powers came, I knew instantly I wanted to work with them. I knew the interface between humanity and the Powers was the place to be, where our consanguineous destinies were to be forged.”

  Consanguineous destinies, Steward thought. Orion was laughing his britches off.

  “The Powers are divided,” Curzon said. “So are we. Consolidated and Brighter Suns are kept deliberately weak, and that is out of fear. The other policorps know what we are creating here, and hope to control it. They will fail.” He shook his head. “The synthesis of Power and human will prove greater than either. The Powers recognized that right away. That was why the Primes relocated to human space. They were searching for the edge as well. And they knew they could find it in us.”

  “It doesn’t make them better,” Steward said. Sweat coursed down his face. “Or you.”

  “Perhaps not,” Curzon said. He was flushed. His pupils were dilated black obsidian. “Not in the sense you mean. Not more moral, or ethical, or better behaved. But it makes us better in another sense, an evolutionary one. Because we are the future, and all else is obsolescent.”

  Orion blazed in the night sky, the towering, threatening hunter. The sweat that poured down Steward’s face tasted like blood. He bared his teeth. “Your victory is inevitable, so that makes you right,” he said. “I’ve heard that before, too. That was de Prey’s line.”