ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT: Know Thyself

 

188

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A large cargo delivery drone shaped like a helicopter headed toward the eastern tip of the Apex crescent, following the flight path it had been assigned over a landscape marked with evidence of both ruin and recovery. As it approached Sānjiǎo Beach, most signs of human habitation below it disappeared. Land was being readied for new construction, but for now, the one neighborhood that had been untouched by the disaster stood by itself. From the drone’s altitude, the town square at the center of it was a vibrant green postage stamp, surrounded by dollhouses. The manufacturing facilities, the workshops, and the community center around the perimeter were all whole as well. “Γνῶθι σαυτόν” was written on the roof of the largest building, irrelevant to the drone but a source of curiosity for human viewers. The letters stood out like a legible, three-dimensional marble sculpture from every angle.

The drone began its descent, and at the sound of its approach, the only person currently enjoying the square looked up.

She was a gaunt young woman, kneeling beside a chubby golden retriever so that she could rub his belly. Droplets from the pithos fountain near her splattered her heavy coat and crocheted hat. Her eyes followed the drone as it set down at the edge of the square. The dog showed no interest, but he whined a little when her hand stopped rubbing. She went back to it, ignoring the delivery, and a couple of minutes later, the door of one of the picturesque townhouses opened.

The Informant, with a jovial expression on his bearded face, came down the stairs and crossed the street at a stroll. He was wearing slacks and a light, red sweater. He took the time to remove his shoes and socks so that he could walk across the grass barefoot. Then, he spoke to the woman for almost fifteen minutes, not glancing even once at the drone, though her own eyes turned to it curiously a few times.

Finally, he nodded, complimented her on her hat, and headed to fetch the package that had arrived.

When the cargo drone’s door slid aside for him, a single wooden crate was revealed. The Informant pulled it out and shook it—something the average non-Avowed wouldn’t have been able to do given its size. The muffled thump of something heavy moving around within it could be heard. His smile widened, and he shook it a few more times.

“HANDLE WITH CARE” was stamped in white letters on the side.

On the short way back to his house, he managed to flip the crate twice, and once, he sat down on top of it to have a lengthy discussion with one of the current residents of his neighborhood. The Wright had a question about the feasibility of purchasing a component for his latest project from Fetuna Avowed, instead of trying to have it crafted by one of his fellow Anesidorans.

“Everything is possible,” the Informant replied in Mandarin. “I’ll make sure you receive what you need.”

He watched his employee head down the street, then lifted the crate again and carried it up the front steps into his house. He placed it in the sitting room beside a dog bed that was same shade of olive as the low sofa and almost as large. Then he knocked on the lid a few times and waited.

The crate rocked sideways. With a crack and shriek of protest from the lid and the metal tabs that failed to hold it in place, a woman stood up as gracefully as if she hadn’t just splintered plywood with the top of her dark blonde head. She was wearing a torso-hugging, long-sleeved black shirt and leggings. Her own smile was unperturbed as it met her host’s.

“Elias! It’s been too long since you’ve had me over, so I invited myself. I hope you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.” He offered her a hand as she stepped from the crate. “I’ve already ordered a coffee cake for us.”

“That sounds perfect,” said Aulia Velra. “I haven’t had a decent meal since I loaned my chef to Matadero.”

 

“All in black,” Elias noted as Aulia’s boat shoes touched the edge of a pale wool rug. “You’re showing off too much of your stunning figure to be in mourning. Have you come to burgle?”

“Is there still a ten million argold prize for stealing from you without being caught?”

“Always.”

She stepped over to the sofa and sat down, letting her arms stretch outward along the back. “Did you have to shake my little traveling box so much?”

“Did you have to arrive by crate?” he countered. “I haven’t heard that you’re wanted by the law. In the official sense.”

“I didn’t want to be filmed on my way to see you. Or joined by anyone. Or publicly invited for a sit-down with any of the people who would so like to have a little talk with me just so that they can make implications about me with a pinch more credibility.” She sighed and let her head fall back to stare up at a metal light fixture made up of vaguely floral shapes that opened and closed one by one. “Elias, I’ve found nothing.”

“I told you that you would find nothing.” He took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa and angled himself to face her. “If you weren’t you, I would be stunned that you thought you could hunt for information better than the people who’ve already looked. Did you think the System was lying? Or even if you did, did you think I was?”

She cut her eyes toward him.

“I’m hiding nothing about the Submerger from the rest of you. Why would I?” he said mildly.

“Maybe for the Artonans,” she said.

“Maybe,” he agreed, “ if they asked. But they haven’t. And I’ve asked a thousand questions a thousand ways, standing at the fountain. A boat left Anesidora full of people. Those people wanted different things from the trip. None of those things were the immediate destruction of Matadero.”

“We’re missing something.”

“Life itself happens because coincidences line up.”

Her lips pursed. “You don’t really think it was an accident either.”

“I think there must have been an accident or two along the way because if it was a conspiracy to attack us, it must have been a very complicated one, and very complicated conspiracies have flaws.” His fingers drummed against the front of the armrest. “But I also think that the origins of a few of the coincidences are…suspiciously obscure.”

“Yes!” Aulia straightened. “Who told Orpheus to take the Submerger from Libra? Who told him how to do it?”

“That’s one of the suspiciously obscure points,” Elias agreed. “But my friend here—” he lifted a finger and made a circling gesture with it to indicate the neighborhood around them “—can’t find a culprit for the theft beyond Orpheus. From what we can see and hear, it looks like he came up with the idea himself.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in my life. He isn’t a mastermind. He couldn’t even break into the area where it was stored. He’s tried before because he knows there are things of value in there, but he tries with as much effort as he puts into everything else. He rattles knobs and bangs on walls with his fists for a couple of minutes, then he goes away to look through all the first aid kits so he can guzzle the potions inside them. Like usual.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that every question I ask in that direction has no conclusion other than him. My records show he went to sleep one night in New Sybaris with a woman who later complained to a friend wearing an Infogear watch that he’d hired her for the whole evening and failed to give her the wordchain he’d promised.”

“He was probably too high to figure it out,” Aulia spat. “He enjoys having no self-control. I swear I think he…never mind. What next?”

“Next, he woke up in the mood to sell your Submerger for some drugs and with the knowledge he needed to do it. As far as I can prove, anyway.” He grinned. “So far.”

She made a sound of disgust. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Archie accuses me of the same thing. Yes, I admit that puzzling over a problem of this magnitude is fun. There’s no harm in appreciating the moves of an opponent. Or an imaginary opponent if a chain reaction of bizarre occurrences really is all we ever find.”

Aulia chewed on her lower lip for a second and then released it. “A Sway could have put the idea in his head while he slept.”

“Sure,” Elias agreed. “And the Contract wouldn’t have revealed that to me explicitly. I was asked by the investigators from the Triplanets to provide detailed intelligence on several people who seem to have very tenuous connections to the situation. But if you shift the blame from Orpheus to a Sway of your choice, you still run into the same problem. Why did the Sway do it? If they were knowingly part of a serious plan to upset the balance of things on Earth or Anesidora, the Contract would be aware of that.”

“Obviously it made a mistake.”

“If it did, we all did,” he said. “My creation, the System, all the Avowed who nose around looking to stop trouble, and all the wizards, too. Meditate on that while I go make coffee. Our cake is here.”

He stood and went toward the kitchen. On his way past the front door, he opened it to allow his dog inside. The retriever was wagging his tail and carrying a pink cake box in his mouth by the twine that wrapped it.

Elias praised him profusely, then pointed toward Aulia, who was watching with an arched brow.

Several minutes later, with cake and coffee in hand and the dog sprawled on his bed, Elias said, “There’s a piece of information I’d like for you to confirm.”

“Gee, how rare.”

“You’ve said that Orpheus has forgotten most of the thoughts and interactions that led to our current mystery. I assume that the truth is he never remembered them in the first place?”

“He’s fond of trading away his ability to recall information, yes,” Aulia said bitterly. “Sustaining a few mind-altering chains may be the only contribution he’s made to the universe. It means there’s nothing there for a mind reader to find.”

“And since the charming Hazel is volunteering on another planet, I haven’t been able to watch her behavior. You did read that special letter from her during your update from ‘mission headquarters.’ But the truth is…?”

Aulia’s mouth twisted. “She knew what the device was, and what it did, and what it cost me to obtain it all those years ago. She was having a little pity party for herself, and when she saw what her brother had gotten his hands on, she decided to let him trade it away to punish me and her parents for our failings.”

There was a pause.

“You’re sure?” Elias asked.

“Yes, I’m sure. Do you think she planned an assault on Anesidora?”

“No,” said Elias. “She doesn’t strike me as someone capable of orchestrating a cool-headed plot that would have involved the careful manipulation of multiple people. I ask because one of the more likely possibilities, in my opinion, is that if there was a scheme, it must have originated with someone who isn’t on Earth right now. Or someone who spends long stretches of time away.

“If you want to hide your intentions from a System, the best way to do it is probably not to be around one too much, or to be around one that knows you less well than your native one.” He plucked a walnut from his piece of cake and ate it. “I’m suggesting that someone like that might have whispered an idea or two in Hazel’s ear while her ear was off-planet where a System that was a little less attuned to Earth-protection might have found the words unremarkable.”

He blew on his coffee. “Maybe Orpheus stole the Submerger because his sister somehow suggested it. Maybe she suggested it because someone she met in the course of her work on the Triplanets provided a sympathetic ear and put the idea in her head.”

Aulia was frowning deeply.

Elias shrugged. “With no answers, I’ve fallen back on imagining ways it could be done. This is just one of several possibilities I came up with. Our Contract doesn’t know everything, but it can usually find out what it thinks it needs to know. If someone were going to play a trick on it, I think they might want to do it by using another person with innocent—or innocent enough—intentions who didn’t realize they’d become the Trojan Horse.”

Aulia ate and drank, staring off into space for a while. “No,” she said finally.

“You don’t think it would work?”

“It might, but not with Hazel. I know the people she regularly interacts with on the Triplanets. None of them would want to do this, and none of them would understand everything they would need to about human nature in order to make deliberate attacks on Matadero through such convoluted methods.”

“Hazel was only an example of a possible avenue. One I wanted to cross off my personal list. Do you think I could…?”

“What do you want me to do, implant one of your keys in her hip so you can hear every word she says?”

“That would show real commitment to your cause as Anesidora’s protector!” he said brightly.

Aulia frowned. “I’ll bring her to you for a discussion. You can use lie detection methods. She does owe you a favor.”

“Surprisingly few people have queried about Manon Barre,” he said. “And all of them have reason to assume that the lock on information about her was purchased by her. A hazard of her personality type. What were you thinking when you hired her?”

Aulia didn’t answer.

“Did she even acquire anything worthwhile for you, or was it—?”

“A few interesting baubles, a few insights. Less than I hoped,” she said in a brusk voice. “I came here to barter for your services.”

“Do tell.”

“I want to question people.”

“Which people?”

Aulia stared at him. “All of them. Anyone who we know was involved. At the rate this is going, I’ll have little choice but to cast blame on SAL—”

“You have the choice not to do that. After all, you’re not sure they’re to blame.”

“They’re not innocent. That was a sizable bomb they had with them.”

He fixed his attention on his cake.

“I think some of our old friends are still around,” she continued, “waiting to see if the latest generation is going to be useful enough to them for them to kick off a war between humans and Avowed.”

“So you’re going to poke them in the eye? Make sure you get the first strike in?” Elias shook his head. “I wish I could persuade you to slow down, Aulia.”

“You’re one to talk. I remember when—”

“It’s been half a lifetime and then some,” he interrupted, “since I learned to let go of ambitions that might destroy what I’ve already built and what I love.”

She looked away from him and stood, going over to peer through a gap in the curtains toward the square.

After a while, she said, “I hear them all effervescing about what you’ve built here. ‘Oh, the Informant is someone even the Artonans turn to for help! His Infogear came through for us even when the System couldn’t.’”

“I’m getting more credit than I should for that. Cutting nonessential communication was such an exciting decision for it to make. It threw an unexpected wrench in the works for any schemes that might have relied on its services, altered everyone’s behavior, reduced the number of authority figures trying to weigh in…”

“And forced everyone to feed you more words about the trouble.” Aulia’s eyes were on the fountain.

Behind her, still on the sofa, Elias shrugged. “Violating the privacy of millions of humans and Avowed to help the Artonans investigate would have been very expensive for the System. If it had to do it by itself. So it created a scenario that provided plenty of intel to a much cheaper source. Do you know how many times someone said the word Matadero within reach of one of my keys that night? How many people specifically asked what had happened there through Infogear? I’ve never gotten such crystal clear reception for a targeted question before. Just between the two of us, I’ve got a complete recording of what was said in the Oval Office during the first ten minutes I spent scanning.”

“Good for you.”

“Thank you. But I still haven’t found satisfactory answers, and the information grows more muddled every day.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Aulia walked back over to join him. “Use your skill. Let me talk to some members of SAL—whoever was in contact with the captain. I know you must know who that was by now.”

“That’s a waste of my time and yours,” Elias replied. “I activate the keys. I make a phantasm of some unregistered Avowed for you to talk to…and whatever they tell you might be true or not. The flip of a coin. Remember, I’m not widespread beyond Anesidora. Any unregistered smart enough to arrange for your own great-grandson to steal from you is smart enough not to be around Infogear unless they’re trying to get my attention or send misinformation.”

“Then let me speak to the captain of the boat and the one who killed him. The teenagers. All of them who were onboard.”

He blinked at her. “How many keys with unadulterated records of those people do you think I have left? And it’s not necessary. The Artonans interviewed the phantasms of all of them in the aftermath. And I did my own investigating. I’m much too close to burning out the keys I’ve set aside, and I might want to ask my own questions of them in the future. You can speak to the versions of them I’ve stored in M—”

“I don’t want to talk to a machine that thinks it knows how a person would behave. I want to speak to your skill, your gift, to magic.”

He set aside his half-drunk coffee and rubbed a hand over his chin, like he was considering something. Aulia’s lips tipped upwards.

“No,” Elias said.

She started to protest.

“No,” he said, “because I have very methodical approaches to talking to the phantasms. Questions are carefully planned in advance so not a single moment is wasted. You’ll ask them whatever your gut instinct and your…faith…tells you to in the moment.”

“I know you think I’m some kind of woo-woo woman,” she said after a beat.