The Complete Karma Trilogy (38 page)

Saori panicked. She tried to reach for the computer, with the intention of turning their Kaishin off and sparing them any amount of further suffering, if she could, but Mr. Perry blocked her with his hand.

He gave orders to one of his guards. “If any of them are left alive after this, return them to their holding cells. We can discuss a time that they’ll be available for observation to the Kaishin team at some other point. That is, if this wasn’t enough time for observation?” The last sentence, he directed at Saori. Toru had rushed to her side to hold her up, since she had become unstable. Hideo also seemed disoriented, standing in a corner, saying nothing.

“What was the point of doing any of this, if you were just going to kill them?” Toru asked. “You could have done this somewhere else, quietly and discreetly, without shaming our project.”

“I thought it could be informative. Was it exactly like your rats? I didn’t notice anything different. Perhaps all of the work to be done has already been done, with them.”

“They weren’t our rats,” Toru said. “They were Reiko’s.”

“Arguing over the ownership of rats. Reiko. You’ve reminded me, I must be going.” He didn’t wait for a response, he headed directly to the elevator, followed by his three guards.

He turned around to watch the doors of the elevator shut, looking back into Kaishin momentarily before it was blocked from view. There was nothing to see, though, except a small lobby and an empty hallway.

Instead of going to the Ranch, which was his impulse, he went to the floor where the direct terminal to Karma was set up. He wanted to speak to the program immediately—about the sabotage of the cameras, and his suspicion of nearly every member of the Kaishin project. It was possible that they would all have to be dealt away with, which would set them back farther than Karma would like. But if he kept Karma informed, and asked for its help, it diminished his responsibility for the whole ordeal, even if it was a complete failure. He had done his part, faultlessly. The Japanese were just insufferable. And with any luck, Karma could perhaps unscramble the mutilated audio he had been collecting for days, and the audio would help him with his current problem.

The elevator opened up, and he rushed through the halls, following his memory around the various turns. He passed numerous Japanese employees, nearly all identical to his eye, with a minor divide between male and female. They all wore their business suits, all had black hair and brown eyes. As blinded as he was by the monotony of their appearance to him, one man caught his eye as he passed him down the hall, and instinctively he grabbed him by his shirt collar, holding on to it firmly and drawing him closer.

It took him a moment to recognize who he caught. “Noboru Wataya,” he said. “Recently fired, for his uselessness to the company. You fit that description, don’t you?”

The man said nothing, he just looked dumbfounded into Mr. Perry’s eyes. When his being captured finally registered in his mind, he began to struggle against the indignity of being held by the shirt collar in the middle of a busy hallway. Mr. Perry didn’t let go.

“And what’s this?” he said. He turned the man’s head, to find a fresh incision identical to the sixteen he had just seen performed. “Why would a former Kenko employee have such a remarkably coincidental cut?” He looked further down the hallway, where more employees were aimlessly milling about. He was one turn away from reaching Karma, and yet he had another prisoner on his hands, who he could hardly take with him to Karma’s small room. He decided to go back to the Ranch with Noboru, and then to return to Karma afterward.

“You caught me at a very busy time, but I’ll open up my schedule a little bit for you. Guards, could you please take this man into custody, and accompany me to the Ranch? I have a few questions I would like to ask him, certain things that I’m curious about.”

Noboru struggled wordlessly, but was no physical match for the men that took him by both arms and dragged him back to the elevator.

Instead of getting off at the floor of the Ranch, the elevator opened up at the floor below. On account of the recent tension in the building, he had seen to it that the entrance to his floor was sealed off with brick and mortar, so that even though the elevator would still open up on his level there was no direct way in. Instead, he had evacuated the floor below, filled it with guards, and installed a staircase at the end of a literal maze of cubicles. The staircase led up to one of the former guest rooms, which had not been living up to its intended use.

He carried a white flag that was given to him by two guards at the elevator mouth, which he held above the height of the cubicles to indicate to the interior guards that he wasn’t to be shot while passing. Still he was nervous as he took each corner, and nodded curtly to every guard that they passed.

The familiar, domestic surroundings of the Ranch calmed Mr. Perry, when he finally arrived. In the kitchen he leisurely poured himself and his guest a drink, before joining the group in the living room. He took his usual seat by the fireplace, and waited as the guards seated Noboru across from him. Only then did he speak to his captive.

“Once upon a time, I only used this place to persuade dissidents. Lately, I’ve been doing more interrogations, of instigators such as yourself. I would do the normal procedure, so as not to deprive you of its beauty, but sadly I’ve run out of firewood. I’ve sent for more, but for some reason firewood is hard to procure in this godforsaken city and I’m still waiting. So there will be no fire. But here’s a cigar, and we can still sit here and enjoy the atmosphere together.”

He stood up and tried to hand Noboru a cigar, but when the shaking man wouldn’t take it in his hands Mr. Perry inserted it into his mouth directly, and lit it for him with the gold lighter he kept in his pocket.

Mr. Perry resumed his place in his seat, and the interrogation. “If you have an acceptable reason for being in this building, and with that incision, then I can send you on your way, no harm no foul. I’m a perfectly reasonable man. But I have to like your reason—that is what I mean by acceptable. If you were involved in acts of treason, though, against this holy Kenko building, then your tragic fate is sealed. Do the terms seem fair?”

“No treason,” Noboru said, in a barely audible whisper.

“I get that a lot. A lot of you blatantly attack one of your supervisors, damage company property, and claim that they weren’t really your supervisor, that your supervisor mysteriously died a couple of weeks ago, and that the American that took his place has no right, the attack was warranted, and so on, so on. A lot of horribly racist thoughts and impulses is what it boils down to, really.

“What you all fail to realize is that this is still Kenko, and even though you might not like the direction it has taken, it is still the company that you’ve been so loyal to, up until recently. Our arrival has not changed that. Tell me, how did it change? The location is the same, the infrastructure is still largely intact, and they even still do science here, occasionally. How is this not Kenko, and how do you do ‘no treason’, when you carry out these subversive acts? And don’t think that being fired makes your case special in any way—this is still the company that fathered you, professionally.”

“You changed it,” Noboru said around his cigar.

“I changed it. I, who am only one ten-thousandth of the population of this company. Let’s play a hypothetical game. Let’s say that I was not Mr. Perry, the invading American, but I was Mr... Ishibashi, the ambitious young entrepreneur from Kyoto University. Let’s say I was hired at some sort of entry-level position, but quickly made my way through the ranks through merciless business maneuvers—the kind you see in the real world all the time. With me so far?

“I take over the company in this hypothetical world as well. And in this hypothetical world, the company flourishes. We make billions of dollars, create new jobs at the expense of others—yes, you are still fired, but other jobs were created as well, and the flux is what matters in the long run—does that not make my career a success? And Kenko, a success? Which employee would say that it was no longer the Kenko that they once would give their life for? Now, I ask you, what is the difference between the real world and the one I have portrayed? The machine in your head is proof that we will be a success, moving into the future—there is no denying that success. The only thing I can see that would make it a different story for you is that I am not Mr. Ishibashi from Kyoto University, but instead Mr. Perry from a university you’ve never heard of. It’s racism, it’s xenophobia at its base, that makes you so inclined to think you are righteous to defy me.

“On a larger scale, America is this Mr. Ishibashi. I have no problem calling it that, even if it is a Japanese name. We’re climbing the ranks of this business that is the world, in a struggle to reach the top. And we’re practically there, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. And now we’re doing what any good CEO would do, we’re making the business more efficient. Did you know that the whole world is now on course to have English as its official language, in just twenty years? That’s the official plan of the American government, and therefore the world. Do you know how many stupid problems that will solve? It’ll be one of the largest benchmark achievements in history. Think of the convenience, the productivity that will come out of it. People like me wouldn’t be necessary, I’m mostly just a messenger and a translator, rolled into one.

“I digress. The situation at hand, our problems. Perhaps it’s my violence you object to. But I insist to you that all the precautions I’ve taken have been necessary, and have been made necessary by the actions of all of you, who were prejudiced and hateful. You started this war, here in Kenko. Maybe not the invisible war happening around you, in this place you call Japan for convenience’s sake, but what has happened here in Kenko, that can be traced back to your actions as employees. What would I have to gain, by making you all angry, and turning you against me? Even with my guards, you still outnumber me by a very large ratio. I wouldn’t start a war I couldn’t win. But I would fight a war that I was forced into, because what choice would I have?”

“I really do have to make this short, since those friends of yours are undoubtedly running around at this very moment, wreaking havoc. Now tell me, why are you here? And why is that thing in your head?”

Noboru remained silent.

“Whatever suits you. I’m going to take you to this special room we have, in the back. Guards, would you mind?” While the guards carried Noboru off to the white room, Mr. Perry took his gun from where it hung on the wall, and then went to join them.

“You can stay out here,” he told two of the guards, to free up space. To Noboru, he said, “No matter where you go here, there are too many people in such little space. Even in my own house. I’m still not used to it. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, just fields and fields, as far as you could see. Not a lot of exciting things to do in a place like that, but at least you can move around. Me, I took up shooting. I’m almost an archetypal redneck, it’s disgusting. This is an 1873 Winchester that I keep loaded and up on the wall. It won the west, my real home. Now I’m going to ask you one more time, since I really want to know,” Mr. Perry said as he placed the tip of the gun on Noboru’s forehead. “What are you doing?”

His guard asked in English, “Should I be getting the rats?”

“We’re skipping the damn rats,” Mr. Perry said, irritated at being interrupted. “Does it sound like I need rats right now?”

“It sounds the same as it always does,” the guard said. “I have no idea what you’re saying. And usually you want rats. I asked because it looked different.”

“Just leave,” Mr. Perry said. He waited until it was just him and Noboru in the room.

“I can’t say ‘one more time’ again,” he continued. “It would spoil the rhetoric.” In one fluid motion, he worked the gun’s lever and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“What in the name of...” Mr. Perry said, turning the gun to look into the ammunition carrier.

Outside, he heard the sounds of a struggle taking place. “This isn’t possible,” he said, to no one in particular. “There are at least sixty guards in between here and the only entrance to the place.” He hid sidled up against the wall that the door was on, holding his gun like a club, waiting. Noboru tried to leave, and Mr. Perry was going to let him, when a guard quickly opened the door and shut it behind him, keeping Noboru inside.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Perry asked.

“One of the guards defected, or something. He was right outside your door, and killed Mark. Larry got him, but only barely. He was trying to get inside.”

Both men turned to Noboru, who said nothing.

“Evaporate this man. And then follow me. Replace Mark. I need to get back to Karma, right away.”

“It’s not safe out there,” the guard said. “There’s violence breaking out on every floor, and we had to turn off the elevators.”

“Turn them back on,” Mr. Perry said. “Long enough for us to get down there. It’s an order.”

The guard turned to Noboru, took a Pen from his breast pocket, and pressed a button on the end of it. Noboru turned to smoke, leaving nothing but a metal chip when he diffused away.

Mars 10

Waiting for a Rocket

They were at
the space shuttle launch site, waiting to be let on to the ship. While they were waiting, Hardin spoke to Lucretia, since he could sense the strength of her apprehension. He moved his lips as he spoke, but instead of vocalizing the words he just projected the sound to her mind. To her, it seemed as if she was actually being spoken to—she couldn’t tell the difference.

He said, “So my original plan was to go there alone. I intended to get a job as one of these engineers they’re constantly sending up to Mars. I interviewed for this very same position, actually, right before I met you. These are the people that Space Engineering chose over me. That’s mostly irrelevant now, though.

“But if they would have hired me, I would have been taken care of. I would have been on Mars, with a place to live, food to eat, all of that. And when I wasn’t on duty I would have been secretly working on this elaborate plan I had to kill Darcy without anyone noticing.”

He noticed her looking around nervously at the engineers that were in small clumps, not too far away. He could also hear her thoughts, the ones that were concerned that they would be overheard. He told her, “Don’t worry. They can’t hear us,” then he continued what he had been saying. “But I somehow underestimated the difficulty of getting a job there. I’ve always known how saturated the job market is—people will do anything, even submit themselves to a decent education, just to get away from this place. But I thought technical skill alone would be enough. It’s hard to believe how wrong I was.

“And I still prefer that plan, to tell you the truth. Objectively. I could have taken my time. And I wouldn’t have needed to depend on anyone else. I could have done it alone.”

“You can depend on me,” Lucretia said. Hardin could feel the wounded ego behind the simple statement.

“Yes, I can depend on you,” he replied. “But it isn’t just you and me, either.”

Hardin thought it would be best if he didn’t tell Lucretia his misgivings about the new plan, as it was. To hint at them was enough. What his new plan required was a deeper understanding about the social manipulation of people than he’d ever intended to develop in himself. Since it was perhaps his only remaining option, he would do it, but he found the difficulty staggering. And the probability of failing was too high.

It was already underway. At random, Hardin had chosen ten of the fifty engineers that been hired instead of him. Ten people that he had then replaced with members of New Karma. He didn’t dare make the fraction any larger, because the original fifty had already met with one of the Mars officials that would be travelling with them on the space shuttle—that person needed to see enough recognizable faces in the crowd, and not too many brand-new ones.

To the ten people that he had chosen to replace he sent a perfectly forged document, explaining that their deployment to Mars would be delayed until the next shuttle launch. For the amount of people that were on Earth, the traffic to Mars was surprisingly small—besides the food vessels, which were largely unmanned, the ships that went between Mars and Earth were nearly a month apart. So he informed those ten people that they would be taking the shuttle a month hence, since their job site wasn’t entirely ready.

And then, to make sure that the misinformation was never corrected, he had arranged that every bit of digital communication between them and the world go through New Karma, so that it could be monitored for content—if they wrote back to Space Engineering, New Karma would intercept the message and forge a reply, using a set of instructions Hardin had written out before he left. If they tried contacting other fellow engineers who had been hired to the same position, to ask if they knew anything about the delay—something Hardin knew to be in the realm of possibility—New Karma had corresponding instructions to deceive them. At least that was the method for all written communication. Any phone calls they would try to make in the remaining days before the real shuttle launch would never be answered. With hardly any effort at all, Hardin had isolated his chosen ten from the world.

When they landed on Mars, the ten members of New Karma would go their own way, and set up camp somewhere in the endless fields of corn and wheat. Hardin had already picked out the location, using recent satellite images of the surface of Mars.

It was a plan he couldn’t have done alone, as opposed to the one he had told Lucretia about. If he had performed the same isolating of just one engineer, and took their place, he would have had two options when he reached Mars—to run away, as he was doing with ten people, and to set up some sort of living habitat in the fields; or to stay with the engineers, and continue to pretend to be the person he had replaced. The problem with the latter option was that he would have been quickly found out, and for no simpler reason than that the person he replaced would have failed to meet their food growing quota on Earth, and would have asked for the government to supplement the rest. And the government would have told them no, because their supplement had been cancelled due to their living on Mars. And the situation would have developed from there, until Hardin was found to be using their same name on Mars, in a place he could easily be found.

The former option, to go into the wilderness of the fields alone, wouldn’t have worked well for him either. He would have been vulnerable while he was sleeping. He would have had to prepare his own meals, an activity that would have wasted hours of his day if he wanted to eat something other than raw corn for months. His focus would have had to switch almost entirely to survival, which was something he couldn’t afford. He needed as much time as he could get for implementing his plan. The people he brought were there to provide for him, while he did what he had to do. But they wouldn’t want to hear that.

When his group didn’t report to their jobs shortly after landing, their absence would be noticed. And about a week later, ten people would ask for food from the government, and be told that they were listed as currently being on a different planet. It was very likely that Darcy’s government would immediately set about trying to find Hardin’s group, and investigating how it was that they were able to get onto Mars. It was a plan that couldn’t be repeated twice—the government would change the system somehow, to prevent the possibility of more people getting to Mars the same way. Perhaps they would genetically identify every person, before allowing them on the shuttles. However they reacted, it didn’t matter much to him—he had enough people for his purposes that would soon be on their way to Mars, by methods that were already well underway. As long as he aimed well with the single shot he had, nothing could stop him.

The other members of New Karma were sitting close by. They all wore wigs, by Hardin’s command. They had argued and complained about it, since their shaved heads were a matter of principle to them, a symbol of their devotion to New Karma, but Hardin didn’t relent. The last thing he needed was for all ten of them to be conspicuously bald, in a crowd of fair-haired people, when they already didn’t belong there. He had let them choose the colors and the lengths, within reason, but it was like asking them to choose which form of torture they best preferred. Lucretia especially had a hard time managing her long, curly brown hair, which she was always pulling on and brushing from her face. The rest picked at their heads incessantly, scratching and adjusting as they sat in silence. It annoyed Hardin, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, short of rewiring their personalities. Which he strongly considered doing, after having to sit with them for over an hour, waiting.

Finally, they were let on to the space shuttle. But there was a moment, as he and Lucretia were walking amongst the gathering people, that required Hardin to focus all of his energy—one of the people in the group, from the remaining forty engineers, was Number 399 from the interviews, who Hardin had yelled at as he was forcibly removed from the building. As Hardin walked by, he saw a spark of recognition in 399’s eyes. And 399 didn’t just leave it at that—he walked up and spoke to Hardin.

“There’s absolutely no way that they hired you, after your performance during the interviews,” 399 said. And he even turned back to one of his friends, and said, “Hey Douglas, this is the guy I was just talking about. You know, the one yelling at everyone.”

Hardin said, and quickly, before he lost too much conversational momentum, “If you could believe it, I was forgiven for my little outburst.” Hardin added, when he saw the incredulity in 399’s eyebrows, “Yes, even though I behaved so poorly. We really do have a gracious employer, you and I. They were able to overlook my glaring mistake, and to see my credentials objectively. I couldn’t have asked for more impartial treatment.”

399 became somewhat resigned, although he obviously still had some sort of inherent dislike for Hardin, no doubt due to what Hardin had said about his unemployment. “You’re not going to do it again, are you? Get all violent when things don’t go your way?”

“I wasn’t violent then. We just had a disagreement, and both of us, both me and the interviewer, decided to deliver our points loudly. I would have gladly walked out of my own volition, but they preferred to have guards do it for me. I suppose it was easier to do that than to tell me to leave. And that bit that I said to you, back there.” Hardin could tell by his expression that 399 hadn’t expected Hardin to bring it up himself. “I only said all of that because you were laughing. Laughing at another man’s misfortunes isn’t polite, wouldn’t you admit?”

399 had nothing to say to that. With a nod, he detached himself from where Hardin was standing with Lucretia. Through the course of their conversation, they became the last people to board the shuttle.

Confronting 399 hadn’t bothered Hardin. In fact, Hardin could have replaced 399, and made him one of the ten who would be isolated on Earth until Hardin’s subterfuge was discovered. But when Hardin had come across 399’s name, on the list of people going Mars, he saw an opportunity that he couldn’t pass by—at some point in the future, the concatenation of events permitting, Hardin would kill 399. Only then would he properly avenge himself of being laughed at.