Behold a Dark Mirror (24 page)

The settlement had been established at a tropical latitude and enjoyed a perpetual early-summer climate.  Virgil's axis was almost perpendicular to the ecliptic, so there were no seasons:  Climate was constant from perihelion to aphelion and back.  Jenus stretched, and yawned.  Twilight was giving way to night;  the street lighting was sodium yellow, and the complexion of the few pedestrians around him suffered from it.

Dozer operator...  Fun for a month, and a drag for the rest of his life.  Maybe he should start thinking about a family.  Other things, besides work, are supposed to fill one's life—like family, for instance.  His eyes began hurting and he swallowed a painful tear.

*

He made it to dozer operator in four weeks as Ike had predicted.  Jenus wasn't too proficient yet;  blade control was an art that required a long time to master, like hand-flying a plane on instruments.  But operators were in demand even when wet behind the ears.

He became a trainee in a team assigned to clear and grub 20,000 hectares of wilderness.  There were eight dozers in the team, an oiler/tanker with a mechanic, and a general purpose vehicle with food and supplies.  They'd work about two hours away from base camp.  This was a rip-roaring assignment:  tearing trees down, stripping undergrowth, a real macho thing.

Rick Smith had been assigned as his mentor.  Rick wore his straight brown hair in a ponytail;  his face was pockmarked and always had a sheen of two-day unshaven stubble.  But he knew his job, and how to teach it.  At sunrise they hooked a chain as big as Jenus's leg to the rear plate of their two dozers, took position so that the chain was stretched between the machines, and maneuvered so that they would advance keeping the chain taught, perpendicular to the direction of motion.  Anything between the huge machines came crashing down.  At sunset they stopped.

The job was rough, but straightforward.  Jenus and Rick had a lot of time together;  because neither had a family, they camped out instead of driving back to base.  Wilderness appealed more to them than barracks or the smells of crowds and stinky feet.

After sundown they collected firewood and lit a huge bonfire.  The coals warmed up their rations and brewed coffee in a tin hanging from a wire, like in the pioneering days on Earth—but Earth it wasn't.

All the trees had yellow paper-smooth bark, and grew perfectly vertical as if machined with a straight edge and a plumb line.  They had no branches, just a tuft of huge leaves at the very top.  Yellowtrees looked like marble columns, and a copse of them like an abandoned Greek temple.  Bushes grew in patches of the same kind:  they never mixed.  Lack of animal life had specialized their defenses against competing vegetation by deploying very selective natural herbicides. 

Yellowtrees made good building timber;  the pulp, however, was bright green, the grain checkered with nodules:  an attractive but alien texture.  Their wood burned with a pungent scent of sandalwood and jasmine.

Rick liked to talk;  tonight he was rambling.  "My dad taught me the job.  His dad taught him.  My great-grandpa made it to operator from grunt.  I had some ninety years of lineage seniority with McAdams Construction when they offered me as many more for coming to Virgil.  Who could refuse?  My kid will start with two hundred years' seniority.  Maybe he'll make it to foreman!"

"You got kids?" Jenus said, kindling the fire.  Tall tongues of flames blew sparks towards the sky.

"Nah, I don't—but I'm planning."

"Anyone special?"  Jenus said.  The fire was magic, the flames tinged with green streaks.

"Hey, I've had no chance to take a look around yet!"

"Just asking," said Jenus.

"There's a good dating service;  lots of girls I understand.  There's even a bonus for marrying.  The Tower puts it up."  Rick looked at Jenus.

"Didn't know that."

"Uh-uh.  Good thing, C-cube says, to help build society.  What about you, lad?"

"Oh, it's a long story."

"Heartbreak?"

"Sort of," Jenus said, stirring the fire.  Poking the embers produced a crackling fountain of green fiery specks like miniature fireworks.

"Why did you move here?"

"Necessity."

"Excuse me for asking!"  Rick said, leaning forward and slapping his thighs.

"No problem."  Jenus answered.

"Hey John, I hear you're a loner.  That's OK.  I’ve known some like you.  I knew one like you that didn't end up happily."

"That is?"  Jenus dropped the stick and looked at Rick.

"One Christmas morning," Rick said, "he couldn't take it any more.  He threw himself out of a window.  From the tenth floor."

"Point taken, Rick."

"Are you...?"

"Am I what?"  Jenus said.

"Homo.  I mean... No offense, John."

"No, Rick.  I'm straight."

Rick exhaled with relief:  "Well, good night then."  He pulled up his sleeping bag, and turned the other way.

"Nite."

Jenus slipped into his own sleeping bag, and zipped it.  Laying on his back, he folded his arms under his head, staring into the yellowtree canopy and the sky past it.  Rick was the closest approximation to a friend he had within a gazillion light years—and Rick was right.  The moons of Virgil shone high and red.  The night was silent, except for a soft whispering breeze through the leaves and the crackle of the fire.  His new life was simple, too much so.  He fell asleep, and slept well in spite of everything.

*

The next morning started as usual.  Jenus proceeded to level their camp as a dozer-blade practice exercise, then he and Rick hooked chain.  Trees crashed and undergrowth piled up in mounds trodden by the beastly force of the machines.  At mid-morning, destiny raised its head.

"John?  Do you copy?"  The radio said on the local channel.

"Ten-four.  I hear you, Rick.  Over."

"There's something funny going on."

"Meaning?"

"Around here, in my dozer."

Jenus looked across the distance between their cockpits.  He met Rick's eyes.  He looked puzzled and afraid.

"What's up, pal?  Tell Johnny."

"I'm serious, there's something in here.  Really weird.  I mean... There... There was.  It's gone!  John, I dunno.  I guess... Oh, sorry.  Didn't mean to bother."

"No bother, Rick—this isn’t Earth.  Let me know any time if it happens again."  He waved to Rick through the half-inch thick pane.  Rick waved back, signaling thumbs-up.  Jenus radioed:  "Any time, pal.  All confidential."

"Thanks, John."

Then Jenus's cabin hosted horror.  A sudden irresistible fear took him without reason;  his rational mind fought for control, striving to remain in charge with only partial success.  Fear was planting unjustified panic in his mind, clouding his conscious thoughts.

"Ri... Rick.  Do... Do you copy?"

"Ten-four.  Over."

"My turn.  I...  I think I know what you mean.  What you meant."  Fear suddenly turned to heat.  He felt unbearably hot in the climatized 20 degrees C of his dozer.

"The funny stuff?"  Rick said.

"I guess.  It's like..."  It disappeared,  gone without a trace.  "Now it's gone!"  He looked at Rick in the other machine:  "It's like waking up from a nightmare, I was scared without reason.  And...  Then it changed, I felt so hot  Rick!  Was that what happened to you?"

"Yo, bud, right between the eyes.  Should we report it?"

"Never heard anybody say anything about this sort of thing.  Have you?"

"No."

"I don't know.  I guess we should report it, but I think we should try the grapevine first."

"That's a good plan, Johnny.  I'll go alo..."

Rick's sentence died in a scream and a gurgle.  Jenus looked over in time to see his friend jerk up in a fit, his back bending at an impossible angle.  Rick slumped into his seat.

"Rick!"  Jenus called. 
Am I next?
  He thought.  "Rick!"

His friend was hurt on a runaway dozer.  He switched to the general alert channel:  "Mayday, mayday.  Crew 6, repeat, crew 6, one operator down, unconscious, presumably hurt, one runaway CK-49.  This is John Doe reporting.  Over and out."

How stupid
, he thought,
a mayday call from John Doe.

Jenus would have to stop both machines before he could get to Rick.  He had to find a way to do that.  The dozers were moving forward at 6 kilometers per hour, chopping small growth, without big obstacles ahead.  He coasted closer to Rick's machine to give slack to the chain between them.  If he stopped his dozer suddenly, like an anchor, the slack would give him just a few seconds before jerking and snapping the chain.  He had to slow Rick's dozer down a little at a time.

When the tracks were almost touching, Jenus slammed on the brakes of his inner track and switched the other to reverse.  This spun his dozer around as if pinned on the braking track.  The gearbox and clutch produced a horrible sound but held.  When Jenus's dozer had spun 180 degrees he switched the braking track, too, to reverse.  Now his dozer was following Rick's in reverse, back first.  The chain was aligned between them, still carrying just a little slack.

He eased on the throttle.  Rick's dozer was chopping ahead through thick and thin, unscathed.  As Jenus slowed down, the slack in the chain lessened, and then the chain was taut.  Jenus shifted the gearbox in neutral to be towed by the runaway dozer.  Gradually he applied his brakes, putting tension on the chain ever so slowly.  He braked harder.  This was a battle between equals, and the chain was the weak link.  It became tight.  Tighter—it was built out of very tough steel.  The machines were slowing down.  He locked the brakes.  Rick's dozer didn't stop, but dragging the dead weight of Jenus's fully braked CK-49 slowed it to a pace Jenus could easily outmaneuver on foot.

He jumped out of his cabin and onto the ground.  His tracks were locked, so he could step on them.  He ran to Rick's dozer, whose tracks were still moving, towing the other machine.  Jenus climbed on one track from the back, letting himself be hoisted up.  He wriggled from the track to the threshold of the cockpit, where he opened the door and pulled the emergency halt lever.  Rick's dozer stopped dead.  The whole exercise had taken only a few minutes.

Jenus approached Rick, whose mouth was foaming.  Rick's eyes, wide open, stared into the void.  His back was broken, but he couldn't be dead or the dozer would have stopped.  Gears would not stay engaged without a live pilot in the seat, so he was taught.  Rick, however, wasn't there if he was alive.  Jenus wanted to cry, but help would be there soon from the mayday call.

*

"Rick is dead, John," said Ike.  "The doctor said he had a violent epileptic seizure."  The foreman was in a private room with Jenus and a senior official of McAdams Construction. 

"He had what?!" said Jenus.

Ike shrugged.  The Tower, Jenus had been informed, owned and staffed all medical facilities:  too delicate a business to subcontract.

"Thank you, Ike.  May I have a word in private with John here?"  said the executive.

"Sure, boss.  Cheer up, John.  Take tomorrow off.  I'll be waiting for you the day after."  He nodded to him on his way out.

"John, you did a swell job,"  said Ike's boss.

"Thank you sir, but—"

"Let me recount for you what you did.  You took charge of a disastrous situation;  you prevented damage to equipment valued at decades of an operator's wage;  you showed exceptional spirit;  and your recommendation to shift from voice control to stick operation will be implemented immediately."  He paused.  "Sticks will stop the machine if there's a dead hand in them, damn voice control and biofeedback traps."

"Sir, I don't think that was epilepsy.  As I reported, there was that episode prior—"

"Son, I'll keep an eye on you.  I think that you will make a good foreman in a few years:  promotions are based on merit and need, here.  Only the Heavens know how big our need is.  And..."

"Yes, sir?"  Jenus inquired.

"I want to give you ten bonus years of seniority and full rank and pay of operator for four reasons.  One, for saving valuable equipment.  Two, because you are showing exceptional skills.  Three, because by your good judgment you took a calculated risk that turned into a success.  Four... Because Rick died of an epileptic seizure.  From now on, you won't just sit on a dozer and make trainee pay.  You will be an operator.  Bless Virgil, and so long, John."  He turned around and exited.

CHAPTER 25

The work part would be hard, when it arrived, but it hadn't arrived yet.  Eugene Galt looked at the data cartridge on his desk.  No games, D'Souza had said.  That meant his revenge against Ayin Najjar had to become a part of D'Souza’s agenda.

On the other hand, the furnishings in his office were splendid:  authentic rococo, centuries old, worth a fortune.  The view from the windows was enchanting, sprawling forests and a lake with a few sailboats.  He'd have to hire his staff;  for now he'd borrowed a decorative secretary.  She sat idle without complaining.

He'd read a lot of classified literature in the last few days.  ConSEnt was a powerhouse with its fingers all over the place.  How deep the fingers reached and how strong they were, he'd only imagined.  Now he'd begun to know, and to understand D'Souza's concern with self-restraint.

ConSEnt owned Power.  Eugene didn't have a problem with Power, or with managing it, except for Ayin.  D'Souza would soon give him a mission:  something requiring statesmanship, understanding, imagination, and flexibility.  He could make a difference—he'd reached a position where he was poised to make history happen.  The good of ConSEnt was the good of the human nation, to an extent.  If ConSEnt prospered, the average person would continue prospering.  Hence, he was working for the common good.  In practice, he was a philanthropist.  And if history is always written in blood, who was he to change that?

What purpose had moral restraint, with the common good of humanity at stake?  Effective execution and results according to plan were all that mattered.  And if there were no justifiable restraints in his public life, why should there be any restraints in his private life?  Duality was hypocritical, and Galt didn't think of himself as a hypocrite.

*