Authors: Ty Beltramo
I left the house in silence, barely aware Aello was following me. I had a lot to think about, and I didn’t need her cloud of hostility impairing my vision. After a time, I found myself at the steps of the Supreme Court building.
Aello stood there and stared at my ill-fitting suit while I sat down to think.
“Elson, why did Melanthios chose you to free Diomedes?” she asked.
Is that what he did? That’s not what I heard. I heard I was to resolve this to his satisfaction. That’s not the same thing as finding and freeing Diomedes.
“Why would he do that? Melanthios is no fool, but I don’t see how you could possibly be up the task,” she said.
“Really?” I said. “Why not?”
“Because you’re a nobody who has never done anything of renown, Elson. I’ve checked up on you. It seems everyone knows of you. I mean everyone. Which is surprising in itself. I also learned that, while everyone knows of you, no one agrees as to what contributions you’ve made to the Endeavor. You’re an Engineer of renown who is known for nothing. I can’t understand that. Please help me understand.”
It was not an accusation, but a plea. She obviously was close to Diomedes and chilled at the prospect of his future being in my hands. She was looking for hope, for me to tell her something that would make her believe I was up to the job. I hoped she was used to disappointment.
“You can’t understand,” I said flatly.
“Please, Elson. I need to. I really need to.”
I didn’t know much about Aello, but I could tell she was usually in control and by the numbers. Diomedes was beyond her reach, and the most powerful person in the domain had told her that he would do nothing to help--nothing but send me.
“Do you believe in the Designers, Aello?” I asked.
“Of course, everyone does. Don’t you?”
“Not the way you do. Why do you believe in them?”
“Because they’re the reason we’re here. They made all this and gave us the job of perfecting it. Everything comes from them. The Endeavor is their creation. The Directive is their plan. They created this world then left the Preceptors to complete their work.”
“Hmmm. That does sound like the party line. Ever met a Designer?” I asked.
She looked a little confused. “No, I’m not that old. What does that have to do with anything?”
“You asked me for understanding. I said you couldn’t understand. So I’m showing you why you’re unable to get it.
“You don’t simply believe that the Designers exist and did the things you say they did. You trust them. You trust them because they provide meaning and an anchor for all that’s happening in the world. Your understanding of what’s happening, of what will happen, is built upon the foundation of what you trust about the Designers. The Designers define the boundaries of what you are capable of understanding. They are your world. They’re everyone’s world. The whole Schism is a war that’s been fought for eons over how to interpret their instructions and their intent. You’ve never met a Designer, but you trust them. Me? I’d like to give them a stiff kick in the balls, if they had any,” I said.
“Really, Elson. You sound insane. I’ve never met anyone who actually worked with a Designer. But that doesn’t change the Doctrines. It doesn’t change our mission. They put us here to make this world evolve into the best possible world, and they left us with all the tools and skills we need to do that. I don’t see how knowledge of that truth prohibits me from understanding whatever it is that’s in your odd little mind.”
“Because, Aello, what you just said, all the things you know about the Designers, isn’t half of the story,” I said.
“Then please, Elson, enlighten me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know the rest of the story, either.”
She was looking worn. With a touch of tiredness, she said quietly, “So why do you believe there is more to it than that, Elson?”
The morning crowd began to flow into the Supreme Court Building. With it came every kind of vermin.
I got up and kicked at a pigeon that was getting too close. I hate pigeons.
Brushing off the dust from my new suit pants, I said, “Oh, lot’s of reasons. I’ve seen things that don’t fit into that view of the world. I’ve been to places that don’t fit into that view of the Designers’ plan. Mostly, it just doesn’t add up.”
“You’re a fool, Elson.”
“Yeah, so everyone tells me. But at least I’m busy at it. You need to do something for me,” I said.
She stiffened and said, “I want daily reports of your progress. I’ll help you, as commanded by Melanthios. But I want to know what’s happening every step of the way.”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘nope’.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ve already covered that,” I said. “But let’s review. I’m under a spell by Melanthios to ‘resolve this to his satisfaction.’ You are to help me, apparently in a discreet manner. But I don’t have to tell you anything.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Of course not. But that has nothing to do with it. I don’t answer to you or your kind, girlie. I’m an only-slightly-less-than-free agent. My approach to this problem might involve a small amount of havoc. Or possibly, some minor mayhem. Neither of which you’d tolerate. So, it’s best if you don’t know what’s about to happen.”
She raised a finger and pointed at me. “Elson, you had better not be thinking of doing
anything
that will endanger Diomedes any more than he already is.” She started to talk more slowly. “I’m serious. This is serious. You need to be serious.”
Only my mouth smiled. “I’m always serious. You should see me when I’m hilarious. Now, either help, or run back to daddy M and cry on his shoulder, because I have things that need some doing.”
I could see the muscles around her jaw tighten. But she kept her cool. “So what do you need from me, then?” she asked. Aello was disciplined, I had to give her that.
“Find out what information was transmitted to the Thoth during the past month or so. My guess is that something on that ship needed to be hidden. Let’s find out what it was.”
“I can do that. Anything else?”
“Aeson is a conservative coward. He’ll have Diomedes in the safest place possible. Find out who is his strongest ally, and what domain he’s in,” I said. I thought about my conversation on the river earlier that day. “And while you’re at it, see if you can find out who Aeson has been chumming around with lately.”
I pulled a napkin from my pocket. This one had “His Bigness” written at the top. I turned my back to Aello so she couldn’t read the list. I scanned the napkin for the right idea.
“And what are
you
going to do?” She sounded venomous.
I thought about it. Number Six was the ticket. I stuffed the napkin into my pocket and turned back to Aello.
“Visit Aeson,” I lied. But only a little. I would visit Aeson, but only after I created some cover for yours truly. I felt a bit exposed in this gig, and I don’t like to expose myself.
“What? Why?” She asked.
“To screw with him, mostly,” I said. Aello looked at me with great suspicion. “It’s a hobby. Practically an addiction. But it’ll work to our advantage.” I smiled, and left her on the steps.
I needed some coffee. It was going to be a busy day.
CHAPTER SIX
What’s the point of being a free agent if the things you do have to make sense to line-toting bureaucrats? I have never known a time of close collaboration with any Discipline on either side of the Schism. I have never benefited from their idea of “teamwork.” The ways and means used by the Engineers for millennia are matters of doctrine, handed down, supposedly, by the probably-absent and apparently-none-too-smart Preceptors. Tragically, that ethical system is open to wild interpretation and re-definition. Violá—Schism. While I had rejected that system, I have spent plenty of time arguing with greater and lesser Engineers as to the apparent disparity between the Doctrines and a little thing I call “Reality.” A common symptom emerges: the whole cosmological framework makes complete sense to them. I realized that their view of the universe had been shaped by and interpreted through the Doctrines. Whenever I point out an inconsistency, it is analyzed and twisted to be conformed to the framework.
My observations don’t fit into their synthetic worldview. That means that I don’t fit into their complementary society. But I have found, over many years of working from the outside, that the world is much bigger than they believe. I don’t have much clue as to how big, but it is bigger than even those as ancient and powerful as Melanthios could conceive.
I’m after what’s really going on. So I’m a free agent. But to stay a free agent, happily free of an eternal prison, I have to be careful.
Aeson and his minions of social chaos were working a scheme that was directed at the North American domain. Now that things were going badly for him, his attention would be drawn to me, a known antagonist of his efforts. Melanthios was squeezing me from the other side and would be watching me carefully. It was entirely too much accountability for an upstanding citizen such as myself. Accountability is clearly overrated, so I needed to shift everyone’s attention away from me and back toward each other, where it belonged.
I am not a powerful Engineer in the grand sense. As I’ve said, I’m all about the details. But tweaking the right detail, here and there, could have spectacular results--explosive, in fact.
I returned to my hole in the ground—which was literally a hole in the ground—in an active quarry outside Oxford. The mining company had scattered immense concrete cubes all over the place, each nearly three feet on a side. Their purpose was a mystery, but experience had shown that they made for excellent blast shields. I had found a remote spot where several stood in a rough circle surrounding a large hole. Well, the hole was my doing. Infrequent explosions draw no attention in an active quarry. Miners invariably thought someone should be blowing something up pretty much all the time. Miners were simple but perceptive folk.
Matter contains a tremendous amount of energy frozen within its atoms and molecules. Releasing that energy is difficult. Controlling it is iffy. Timing the release of that energy so that it made a big bang when you weren’t around is practically impossible. But I was learning. Engineers normally use ambient energy as the source of their strength. It was low key, readily available, predictable, but weak. In my travels, I have often found it necessary to make use of more exotic sources. Watching the elemental in my pit gave me an idea for containing mass-energy conversions.
I kicked the rock and dirt around looking for the right specimen. A small pebble of black basalt sparkled in the sun. Perfect. I weakened the barrier between the material and the ethereal planes, leaving an opening more like a screened window than a door. As the ether mingled with earth’s matter, wispy tendrils condensed, like spiderwebs waving in the wind. I bent them to my will and began imprisoning the pebble in a cocoon of the threads. I had never used the ether in this way. But it felt natural, and was easy enough. The cocoon would contain the energy within, but only for a time. Once I started the fission reaction, the atoms in the stone, seeking to burst apart, would erode the strength of the threads one by one. That was the first part of the trick: knowing how much webbing to use to create the proper delay. It would be difficult to achieve any real accuracy. But that just meant I had to plan ahead.
A repeat of the destruction of the Thoth was unacceptable. I couldn’t get caught this time. I’d need to be far away when this deed was done, so I needed a delay of at least several hours.
Once the stone grenade was complete, the only thing left to do was to place the gem in the right spot to evoke the desired response, which was to have Melanthios believe someone was threatening his domain, and for Aeson to be defensive about it. I was counting on Melanthios to be suspicious of Aeson and to know Aeson’s proclivity toward natural, and unnatural, disasters.
Deep in the desert there is a highway junction with a fueling station that is frequented by supply vehicles entering Nellis Air Force Base. Nellis is the only military support facility for the entire area, and the natural target of anyone preparing to mess with, say, the Hoover Dam.
How does a Detroiter know about a fueling station in the middle of nowhere that just happens to service vehicles entering a military base? When you sit around in a coffee shop all day with nothing to do but research how to mess with the powers-that-be, you fill lots of napkins with interesting lists. This was idea Number Six on my Melanthios napkin.
The fueling station was an oasis of light and civilization. For many miles in every direction, the desert held sway. Rocks, cacti, and scaly creatures of all kinds populated the rugged terrain, as they had for millions of years. The wind was light and warm. It carried the scents of earth, sage, and things I couldn’t identify, but enjoyed.