The Complete Karma Trilogy (45 page)

Mars 15

Betrayed by Firefighters

Darcy was in
a panic. A week before, nine of his men had been attacked and killed, five firefighters and four guards. They were all easily replaced, from a nearly endless reserve back on Earth, but the threat had never been removed—even though he had sent hundreds of people out as search parties to address the problem, still sixteen more firefighters had died, as well as several entire search parties. An entire week they had been looking, and still they had found nothing. Because he knew that the threat was directed at him, he doubled the guard at his manor.

It was supposed to be his biographer’s last day on Mars—the shuttle was already scheduled for that afternoon, and all of the man’s bags were packed. Darcy wasn’t entirely satisfied with the conversations he’d had with him, but he was rarely satisfied with anything in his life. It would have to do. But all of that was a side note—huge tracts of land were on fire, and the fires were getting closer and closer to his house. The entire Martian fire department was deployed, and still they couldn’t contain the fires. If something wasn’t done, his house was going to burn down. He told his biographer, who was standing next to him, “I don’t know if you’re going to be leaving today.”

The biographer looked out the same expansive window, at so much smoke in the distance, and nodded in agreement.

Darcy thought once more of the pictures he had seen of the rebel’s leader, from printouts of the guards’ Karma Chips before they died. He even had a name, since the pictures were clear enough for identification—Salvor Hardin. A name that meant nothing to him. Several people had researched Hardin’s entire life at his request, and came back with nothing. The man was a non-entity. So were the various other people that were with him. The only thing of note about any of them was that they had all been a part of an illegal society called New Karma, which he had already dispatched several of his men to go destroy. If his enemies didn’t want to fight directly, Darcy was more than willing to fight them indirectly.

Apparently they had been able to reach Mars by impersonating engineers. Then they had taken a bus out to the farms, and disappeared from there. The whole thing reeked of Martin Ficken. There was no other way that they could have so many resources, no other way they could get around so many of his defenses. He wanted to hurt that man so badly.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to attend to. I’ll update you periodically about when you’ll be able to leave,” Darcy said, and left his biographer where he was standing.

For the past day, everyone in his household had been digging a trench around his outer wall, in preparation for the approaching fires. Large portions of his extensive gardens had to be uprooted because of their flammability, until the resulting moat was three meters wide. His manor had never looked more like a castle. He went outside, to check on its progress.

The air outside smelled like burning. There was a light haze to the air, and all of the colors seemed different. There was no humidity—it always rained on Mars, except when he needed it. He went around until he found the leader of the trench operation, holding a shovel and sweating heavily. “Brian, how much longer, do you think?”

“Oh, another six hours, at the very least,” Brian replied, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“No sooner?” Darcy asked, impatient.

“If you’ve got more people to spare, I’ll take them.”

“Just do what you can.”

Darcy walked out past the trench, into his damaged garden. He stopped by one of his many statues, which had been uprooted with his garden and unceremoniously dumped by a grove of trees. The statue was Michelangelo’s Bacchus, a drunk man with a cunning satyr at his side, holding a pod of grapes. Bacchus held a chalice in one hand, and a cloth in the other. In the worker’s haste to move the statue, a large gash was taken out of the satyr’s face. “This is the cost,” Darcy said to himself.

Then he felt a change in the wind, and all of his nerves flared. The smell of smoke immediately intensified. Worried, he started back towards his manor, when he saw one of his firetrucks approaching from the distance. Wanting to know what they had to say, he went instead to the road they would take to his front gate.

When they arrived, he spoke to the driver through their window. Darcy said, “Is there a problem?”

“We have reason to believe the fire will be here very soon,” the driver said. “We’ve come to warn you, and to see if there was anything we could do to help. We would advise you to evacuate.”

“All of that is very kind,” Darcy replied, “but I won’t evacuate. I’ll let some of the other people here go if they want, after the trench is built, but I’ll be staying.”

“Very well,” the driver said. “If you intend to stay, we’ll join you. Where can I put the truck?”

“I’ll have them open the gate. From there, put it wherever you feel it would serve best.”

The gate was opened, and the firetruck drove in. Darcy felt much better, to have men around that were trained in fire prevention. Relaxed, he went back to his study, where he picked up a book to distract himself from the torrential world around him.

He picked the Brothers Karamazov, and sat in a chair that faced away from his clock. The world disappeared for a while, and he was beginning to feel very Russian—a culture that no longer existed—when a man burst into his study.

“Rex Darcy, there’s an emergency.”

“I’m well aware,” he replied, annoyed.

“I mean, the firefighters that came here just a little bit ago have killed most of your guards, and locked themselves in your panic room.”

Darcy was speechless. He stood up and, in a daze, returned the Brothers Karamazov to its shelf. Finally, he said, “Can we break in? And get them?”

The man replied, “You know as well as I do how hard that would be. But they can’t stay in there forever. We could always starve them out, however long that would take.”

Darcy frowned. He then said, “Is Jackson one of the dead? Do you know?”

“He’s still alive. He’s the one giving orders.”

“Take me to him.”

The man led him down several corridors, and down a staircase, to the core of the mansion. There they found Jackson, standing with a group of men that were still covered in soot from digging the trench.

“What happened?” Darcy asked him

Jackson replied, “They had Evaporation Pens, and took us completely by surprise. One minute they were telling everyone that the trench was going to have to be a little wider, the next they were killing everyone. I fell back and led a counterattack from a distance, but they came straight here. As if they knew exactly where to go. It’s creepy.”

“You didn’t get any of them as hostages?”

“No, I didn’t. They’re all in there.”

Another man walked up to them while they were talking, and interrupted. He said, “They’ve used the panic room phone to call us. They say they’d like to talk to you, Rex Darcy.”

“Want to negotiate, do they?” He followed the man to a nearby phone, which he took in hand. “This is Rex Darcy,” he said, feigning politeness.

A man’s voice said, “I have a message for you. My leader would like for you to go outside.”

“Is that all?” Darcy replied, but the man had already hung up. “If he thinks I’m just going to do whatever he says…”

He returned to Jackson, and said, “Jackson, post two of your most trustworthy men at the panic room door. Everyone else you’ve got, I want them on the roof. Their leader says he wants me to ‘go outside’, for whatever reason, and I’d like to see what this is all about.”

“Do you really think that’s wise?” Jackson replied.

“There’s no point in having all of those crenellations up there, and a barracks in here, if we’re not going to use them when the time comes. I’ll join them up there shortly.”

“As you say.”

While Jackson went around making preparations, Darcy went to the room where Vincent was monitoring the men that had Karma Chips. He asked his old friend, “Did you see what happened? Can you tell me anything I don’t know?”

Vincent turned away from his monitors. “What do you already know? These fake firefighters killed a lot of people, if that’s what you mean.”

“I knew that. Their leader says he wants me to go outside, do you know what that might be about?”

“No, no I don’t.” Vincent said. “Everyone you have is on the inside. You’ve got people getting ready to go on the roof now, but until that’s done outside’s a blank.”

Darcy was extremely irritated by a feeling of his own impotence. He was working blindly, he was caught entirely by surprise. There was no correct way he could act. “Well, tell me if you see anything else suspicious. No more surprises. I’m going up.”

“Best of luck,” Vincent replied.

On the roof of his castle, surrounded by what was left of his guards, Darcy could see three people in the distance. Their details were vague, but he could make out that they were two men and a woman. He was certain that the man in the center was Salvor Hardin. Behind them, the fire was encroaching dangerously close.

“Can we hit them from here?” Darcy asked Jackson, who was standing nearby.

“If you wanted to hit them with a nuclear missile, sure. Otherwise no.”

“Well I wonder what he possibly—”

In the middle of Darcy’s sentence, everyone’s heads began to explode around him. He dropped to the ground, and so did Jackson beside him. “What the hell was that?”

“A gun? But he should have been out of range. They must have some other people, somewhere else. I knew this was a bad idea.”

Desperate in his frustration, Darcy chanced to look out above the crenellations again. One of the men had disappeared, the one that wasn’t Salvor. The remaining man seemed to be reloading a rifle. “This is ridiculous,” Darcy said to no one in particular. To Jackson, he said, “New plan. Run him down with one of the armored cars. He shouldn’t have anywhere to go—the fire’s behind him, and we’re in between him and the forest. Take him alive, I want to talk to him. And hurry.”

Jackson did as he was told. Less than a minute later, Darcy could hear the sounds of the armored car as it struggled through the trench. Then he stood up to watch what happened. The girl had already run away, but the man was standing his ground. He shot at the car a couple of times, but it was to no avail. Jackson ran the car into him, which sent him flying to the ground. A few men disembarked from the car and surrounded the body, their Evaporation Pens drawn. But their caution was unwarranted—the man had given up. Darcy watched as his body was picked up and deposited in the back of the vehicle. Then the vehicle turned around, and drove back towards the manor.

“Finally,” he said. He left the roof, and made his way to his study, where he would receive his hostage. On the way, he passed by his biographer.

“I can’t help but feel unsafe here,” the man said.

“Don’t worry,” Darcy replied. “It’s almost over.”

Decay 17

Death to Karma

“Will Spector, wake
up.”

Will was startled from his sleep, which it felt like he had hardly begun.

“There are people in the building.”

“What do you mean?” he asked the darkness that was around him. Karma never answered—it was just the silence of his own mind, and the building around him. He looked at his Karma Card to see that he had only slept for an hour. Every one of his joints ached, and every one of his muscles. He was confused and tired.

He tried turning on a nearby Karma Map, to see if he could see any of the people that Karma meant. The Map worked, but it showed that no one was inside of the building, including himself. He was not broadcasting. And Karma wasn’t talking to him. As tired as he was, he picked up all of his weapons, stepped into the hall, and picked a direction to begin looking.

The Privacy Room was set up. Charles had sent Jackson and a few other groups out ahead, and when they had everything in position and turned on, it worked just as he had hoped. He was looking over Vincent’s shoulder at a Karma Map that the man was holding, and he saw exactly what he wanted to see. Nothing.

“We’re clear to go in,” Charles said. “Blow up the elevators behind us. And start setting up all of the explosives around the ground floor, too. I’m still not sure that we can knock it over, but if we can, all the better. Have everyone else go into the building, and kill whoever they find there. Tell them to be sure to use the stairs, and get out on time.”

He took a small group of his ghosts with him, which he was sure to hand extra Evaporation Pens to. As he walked with them to the nearest elevator, he said to them, “As you all know, there’s that stupid rule the officers have where if they shoot their Evaporation Pen in a Privacy Room, it automatically turns off all of their weapons afterward. But that still gives them one shot, so let’s not take any chances. You see someone, you shoot. Except for Marcus, no shooting Marcus.”

They got into the elevator, and he had it take them to the roof. While they went up, he continued telling them, “Any Helicars try to land on the building while we’re up there, we shoot them down. I told Marcus to fly with his spotlight on, if he comes in, so that’s the sign that you let that one past.”

They reached the roof, and he had them spread out so they covered it from all sides. Charles hoped that he wouldn’t have to wait long for Marcus to show up. When he had been on the ground, he had Vincent verify that he was on his way with a Helicar, but Charles didn’t take a Karma Map with him to the roof, because he hated them. If, for some reason, Marcus didn’t show up within five minutes, he would go on without him.

He leaned over the edge of the building, from a dazzling height, to see if he could make out what was going on below him. He felt the building shake lightly when the elevators were blown up, and he could see red beams on the distant ground, but he couldn’t tell what was being shot at. As long as the Privacy Room remained intact, it would be alright.

A Helicar without a spotlight tried to land on the building. While it was still approaching, he shot it down himself, and its fragments collided with the side of the building, causing a slight tremor to go through it. There had been around ten men riding on it, and a few had tried jumping from it when they saw the red beam coming at them, but none of them had made it to the building. On the opposite side, he saw a similar scene unravel with another Helicar.

Then he spotted Marcus, arriving from the west. He hurried to that side of the building, just to make sure that no one shot him down when he came within range. “Marcus!” he yelled into the noise of the Helicar as it landed. “Good to see you well!”

“I’m only so well,” Marcus said.

“But you took care of the people I needed you to? The people that were rooting around my mansion?”

“Yes, I did. And I brought a pilot, for the escape. We’ve got plenty of Helicars around here,” he said, indicating the spare vehicles parked around the roof in rows, “but I figured you would want someone trained to fly one. Even though they’re not that hard.”

“A brilliant idea, but of course we’ll have to kill him afterward.”

“I’ve got him cuffed to the helm,” Marcus said.

“Did you bring me a ship? Very nice. But let’s talk about the now. Show me to Karma.”

“You blew up the elevators?”

“Yes, yes I did.”

“Then we’ll take the stairs.”

They only had to go down two flights, before reaching the floor that Karma was on. Marcus led the way, opening the doors that were locked and selecting the branches of the hallways they encountered. They reached a long hallway, the end of which couldn’t be seen because of a staircase that went down at the end of it. They passed several doors, walking slowly.

“At the very least,” Marcus said, “there will be two people down there.”

“And how far will they be from the base of the stairs?” Charles asked.

“About twenty feet.”

“This is absurdly easy,” Charles said. “It’s almost embarrassing. Ghosts, you go ahead, and take them out where they can’t reach you. We’ll be right behind.”

Charles waited and listened, as he could hear blasts and sounds of human exertion below. When it became quiet, he and Marcus descended the stairs, into the room below.

He had lost a ghost somehow, but they were there, directly in front of Karma.

“This is really it?” Charles asked.

“Yes it is,” Marcus said.

“And Karma’s memory is kept here?”

“You know the system more than I do, you know how Karma works. I don’t. But as an officer, this is the one and only place I’ve ever heard referred to as containing any part of Karma. This should be it.”

“Well then, here we go.”

“Stop there!” came a shout from the hall they had just left.

“Tell him he’s too late, Brother Clinton,” he said to one of the ghosts that was standing next to him. “That he shouldn’t even bother. I’m going to go into this room and finish this, and we can take care of him after.”

“I know that it’s you, Charles,” the voice said again.

“Never mind. He has my attention. That isn’t that Will kid, is it? I recognize the voice. Marcus, you told me you took care of them all.”

Marcus didn’t respond.

“Marcus! I asked you if you could handle it, and you said that you would. Now why is he still here?”

“He wasn’t around, Karma had him off doing other things,” Marcus said. “And he’s a good kid. He hasn’t been an officer that long, he hasn’t turned into an inhuman machine yet. I was hoping that he would be wise and stay away. But let’s say we let him live, what’s the worst he could do?”

“Marcus,” Charles started. “I know that you’ve spent a lot of time with these people, and that you were bound to develop some attachments to some of them. I know that I’m asking a lot. But I can’t have any of this. There’s no room for this kind of thing. And there’s especially no room for you lying to me, that’s what upsets me the most. Now we’re going to go deal with this right now, you and me.”

Charles took Marcus by the arm, and walked him back up the stairs. When their heads were above the level of the next floor, they could see Will standing at the other end of it, Evaporation Pen in hand.

“He doesn’t have a range limit,” Marcus said, as soon as they saw him.

“You definitely should have told me that sooner,” Charles said. They fell to the ground, still on the stairs, as a red beam of light tore through the air above them, and caused pieces of ceiling to rain down everywhere.

“That’s your one shot,” Charles said, as he stood back up. “That’s all you get.” He slowly ascended the staircase, Marcus close behind him, and approached the man at the other end of the hall. He could see Will, still pressing the button of his Evaporation Pen, concern spreading through his face when it didn’t work.

“You have to know the rules,” Charles said. As he passed them, Charles spotted a few small, black objects placed at shoulder height halfway down the hall. “A nice little trap you set for me, Will. Let me tell you where you went wrong, two things: first of all, nothing you have will work right now, except your own two hands, and your own two ‘feet’. Second of all, these are Identity Mines, am I right? Set to detonate on me? Do you have any idea how they work?”

Will did not respond, wouldn’t play along. He just looked at Charles dead in the eyes, as the man approached. “It would have been extremely easy to program them to recognize a face. And that’s probably how you think that they work. They probably
would
have worked, if that’s what they did. But Karma was too confident. So confident, that its Identity Mines don’t actually recognize faces. They recognize Karma Chips. And I don’t have one of those.”

Charles stopped ten feet away from Will. “If you wanted to beat me, you would have stood a much better chance as an engineer,” he said. “Now Marcus, please finish this so we can go on.” And he stepped aside to let Marcus pass.

“I can’t believe you, Marcus,” Will said, finally speaking. “I thought you were an officer.”

“I am an officer,” Marcus said. “I’m just not on your side.”

“There’s only one side that’s right,” Will said.

“I’m not a moral absolutist.”

Will never lowered the Evaporation Pen that he was pointing at Charles and Marcus. Like he was mentally broken, he just kept pushing the button, even though nothing happened. When Marcus stood face to face with him, he could hear the man muttering over and over again, in a low voice, “Karma, I need you now.”

“It’s over, Will,” Marcus said. “Stop saying that.” And he hit him in the stomach, sending him through flying through the doorway he was standing in front of, into the hall it opened into.

“This isn’t the way I would have it,” Marcus said, as he hit him again on the ground, and again. Before he could hit him a fourth time, Will’s Evaporation Pen went off, and Marcus was gone.

Charles could only watch—he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He took out his own Evaporation Pen, but when he saw that Will wasn’t getting back up, he relaxed slightly. The Pen fell from Will’s hand.

He walked up to the prostrate body and kicked the Evaporation Pen away from it. He grabbed Will’s limp arm, and started pulling him down the hallway, back towards Karma.

“Normally I don’t get upset, Will, but you’ve caught me under special circumstances. For the trouble you’ve given me, I’m going to make you watch Karma get destroyed.” Will’s head made loud banging noises as they went down the stairs. “Because I know how much you love Karma.”

He propped Will up against a wall, on the opposite side of the room as the door to Karma, near the base of the stairs. “And to make it even better,” Charles said, digging through Will’s bag of weapons until he came out with a pair of high-torsion handcuffs. He verified the mark on the side that showed they weren’t the normal variety. “Since these seem to work again. I’ll demonstrate the barbarity of your arsenal to you.” He cuffed one of Will’s hands to the railing of the staircase, which extended out partially into the room. “Try not to move, or you’ll regret it. Just watch.”

He left Will there, and walked into the room with Karma, leaving his ghosts behind him. He was alone in a dark, entirely green room. “I’m here for you, Karma,” Charles announced.

He didn’t expect the voice that spoke back. “Welcome, Charles Darcy. I trust that you are healthy.”

“That’s beautiful. Marcus told me to expect you to sound like a person, but irony, from a machine? Not in my wildest dreams.”

“Your dreams aren’t that wild, at least none of the ones I’ve seen,” Karma responded.

Hatred filled Charles’ being. He took his Evaporation Pen back out from his pocket.

Karma continued, “Do you really think that what you’re doing is right?”

“Let me hear your opinion on that one, just for the humor. How would you rate my actions, what value would you give them? You are the grand arbiter, after all.”

“I’m afraid to say that they have no value.”

Charles laughed harshly, for a long time. “No value. No value at all. That’s why I’m going to kill you. Because no matter how much you learn, I think you’ll judge the same way. And it will be the same thing on Mars, the same system. People will be allowed to procreate and pollute all they want, as long as they do Good Works every now and then, and you’ll be buried so deep under the ground that no one would ever be able to try to change your mind, ever again. Whether I’m right or not, I came at the right time. It was now, or not at all.”

“What will take my place, Charles Darcy? When I am gone? Do you have a plan? Everything I have done has been a necessity. People need to be economically limited somehow. People insist that they have basic freedoms. My system is a natural development of those two propositions, nothing more, nothing less. Nothing you will propose could do it better. I’ve made all of these considerations.”

“It’s good to see you lie, Karma. You don’t believe in their basic freedoms either, these countless people. I saw you take away their Privacy Rooms, to save yourself. Did you really change the rule, back then, to let Will use his Evaporation Pen again, after he used it in a Room? Because it really surprised me. And furthermore, I’m impressed. You’re expressing a high level of self-preservation.”