suspense – Words Deferred

Razor Mountain — Chapter 34

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher left the bottle and tumbler behind, in the empty dormitory. He walked the halls with purpose now.

The gray-walled back halls of Razor Mountain were a purgatory where Christopher could wander endlessly. He had been walking these hallways for centuries. God-Speaker had. There was hardly a difference between them anymore. But he couldn’t actually walk forever. Eventually, inevitably, he came to the place he knew he had to come to: the chamber of the voices.

He knew what he had to do, but he wondered if he was too far gone to do it. It was Christopher that was driving him, but there didn’t seem to be much Christopher left. God-Speaker wanted it too, in his own way, but he could never bring himself to do it—not on his own. He was a river that had run for so long, cut a canyon so deep, that he could never change course of his own volition.

In the chamber, he could not completely shut out the voices. The cloud of their strange memories surrounded him, at first just flashes, moments, then more and more until he was inside a kaleidoscope of images, smells, sounds and sensations from lives long past and places far away.

We must continue, they all said. They were a race of God-Speakers, a race that had come to the conclusion that death erased the value of living. A race for whom the transitory nature of life was anathema. Yet, they were here. In their quest for permanence, their race had died out, and even then, they refused to accept it. They cast themselves out, as living memories, to find new vessels for their endlessness. But this paltry rock played host to such primitive life. So primitive that it could scarcely even understand them, let alone play host to them. Only one had ever come close. Even though he could understand them, sometimes, and learn a bare few secrets of how they cheated death, even he was not a suitable vessel. They were trapped. They still clung to this purgatory, this faintest semblance of life, rather than face death.

They only made Christopher more determined. There was no dignity, scrabbling and clawing as you slid down the slope. It was a quiet fear, always at the edge of thought, poisoning every good thing with the sickness of impermanence. Everything was temporary. Hating impermanence made the world terrible.

Having seen enough of the kaleidoscope, Christopher pushed it back. He shut out those dead memories, and reached out with his mind. He took hold of their power one last time. He knew what to do, though he had never been brave enough to do it himself.

He felt a storm of emotions, of logical arguments arrayed like armies against one another. He could barely tell what came from Christopher and what came from God-Speaker. He didn’t want to do it. He had to do it. He had to wait, to be sure. No, now was the tipping point. Now was the only chance. He was afraid.

He recalled the words he used to train the oracles.

See the flow of time, the branching river. Reach out and stop yourself. Step out of the current. Hold on tight, and feel the universe move on without you.

It was surprisingly easy. He was untethered. His centuries of memory were small and simple in comparison to what unfolded around him: the endless strand of time, in the twinkling cascade of infinite moments. The universe unfolding in fractal complexity, perpetually giving birth to itself from nanosecond to nanosecond. The view was utterly overwhelming, and it made plain the lie that the minds in the chamber told themselves. There was no permanence in the face of the whole vast universe. Neither kings nor empires nor the lifetimes of planets and stars were of any consequence. They were so small as to be undetectable.

Christopher felt himself getting lost, and reached out for an anchor. He could go backward, but once he started, there was no stopping, not for long. He sought out the moment that mattered. Back a few years, then a few more, then a century, and time was flying past in a torrent.

It was like skimming a book. He saw only a few individual places and moments, moving in reverse. Effects spawning their causes. He was afraid he would miss it, but when he came to the pivotal moment, it was unmistakable. He grabbed at it, fighting against the pull that now owned him, that would eventually force him to keep going backward and backward and backward.

He dropped into the familiar world again. He found himself—but not himself.

Those ancient, arrogant, fearful minds in the chamber beneath the mountain could never find purchase in the human brain, but Christopher had no difficulty. This was his mind, even if it was inherited.

A hunched and dirty figure limped deeper and deeper into a dark cave. The space in the rock was little more than a narrow crack, and he was forced to crouch and crawl to get through. The voices were calling to him. They were faint, but they were like the voice of his stone god. He had nothing, no tribe, nobody to lead him or keep him safe. Nothing to trust in a world that was terrifying in every way.

There was no light here. He moved by feel alone. Christopher settled deeper into this mind, breathing this man’s breath, feeling the rough rock through his raw and stinging fingertips. Thinking his dull thoughts, despairing and afraid to admit the faint glimmer of hope that these voices engendered.

There was a gap, Christopher knew. A place where this crack intersected another. And that other crack opened into a deep and unknown space below. He was crawling. His fingers found the lip. He brought his knees to the edge and reached across the gap.

Yes, another ledge. Just a little more than an arm’s-length of empty air between.

He gripped the other side and slid forward. Carefully, carefully. The rough ceiling was low. He stretched his body across the gap.

Christopher was a passenger here. His influence was so small, so light. A flicker of thought here. A moment of distraction. A carefully placed hand slips on the moist rock.

Christopher can’t hold on. He is moving backwards, pulled by an unstoppable gravity. He is in God-Speaker, in the depths of Razor Mountain before it had a name. He is falling down the crack. Then he is outside the universe again, watching God-Speaker fall and fall and fall in a frozen, endless moment.

It’s strange seeing it from the outside. God-Speaker falls forever, and then he lands. It is so forceful that there is no pain. Just the quiet dignity of an ending, of death. It is a relief.

The long tail of the future cracks like a whip and rolls out in a different shape. The voices whisper in their chamber, deep within the mountain, but nobody ever hears their susurration. The earth moves slowly, and they sink deeper and deeper into its warm heart.

The mountain is still and sleepy. It is never riddled with tunnels like an anthill. No locked doors hiding secrets. It slumbers peacefully.

The world moves on, different, but not so different. People live and die.

Christopher sails on in the opposite direction, through a void far emptier than the deepest space. He is falling down time, toward the beginning of all things. He has done all he can do to change the course of history.

A tremendous sense of relief washes over him. He sails up the flow of the universe, backward through time, back to the pinprick of infinite light and heat at the beginning, and then beyond.

THE END

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 33.3

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher could feel God Speaker in his bones—the disappointment, irritation, and disgust with Christopher. Beneath that was the fear. It was beneath everything. Christopher was exhausted. He was trapped in an endless cycle. He was scared to let it continue, but equally scared to fight against it.

The voices beneath the mountain raged and jeered. They had no such concerns. If only they could be free, they would happily live until the universe grew cold and dark around them.

He left Cain’s residence with a mumbled goodbye, annoyed by the man’s unflappable calm as he turned off the lights and lay back down to sleep.

There were miles of hallways under the mountain. Even in the restricted areas, Christopher could walk for a lifetime and not find every twist and turn. He let his feet walk where they wanted and did his best to feel nothing.

Eventually, he had to raise his eyes from the floor, to a door that was blocking his path. Like most doors here, there was a square of black plastic embedded in the wall. His skeleton key card granted him access.

He had never been to this place as Christopher, but it was instantly familiar. Something about the smell of the place made it register as a school, even though that was really just a facade.

He walked down the hallway. There were several rooms with desks; screens and white-boards on their walls. The rooms were bare and dusty and felt abandoned. Further down was a cafeteria, two long tables looking lonely amongst the empty space. A gymnasium followed, then a janitorial closet, a private office and several smaller rooms. Last was was a pair of dormitories, long rooms with bunk beds. A door at the far end of each led to bathrooms and showers.

It was an entire compound, weirdly segregated from the rest of the city, hidden in the restricted area. The rooms were large enough to comfortably hold dozens, though Christopher knew they had rarely held more than ten people: children, specifically, ranging from five or six years old up to their early teens. Children who showed signs of a gift. They heard faint, confusing voices from somewhere down below.

God-Speaker had accompanied every one of them to a strange room, deep below the city, where they might hear those voices a little better. With the right training, some of them could learn to listen.

Their parents would be told that their children were gifted. Those children would have to enroll in a boarding school, where their gifts could be cultivated. In that school, they would learn that they were special: they were oracles.

Christopher turned and looked back down the hallway, to the distant door where he had entered. Memory washed over him. It felt new, but somehow he had always known it.

God-Speaker was unique. Across thousands of years, he had never met another person who could hear the voices as clearly as he could. He did not know if it was some unique confluence of genes or something in his upbringing and culture. Perhaps there was some incurable defect in his thoughts that he managed to carry with him from one body to the next. Whatever it was, it didn’t flourish in the generations that followed him. If anything, it had become harder and harder to find anyone who could hear more than a hint of the voices.

God-Speaker had learned many things from the voices, projecting his mind out into the world and entering into others. Yet, the three dimensions of normal space were not the only ones the voices understood. There were other ways to project a mind, although they were dangerous.

Even the voices did not fully understand time. The future was forever hidden from them. Perhaps there was no concrete future, only the infinitely regenerating moment that was the present. Perhaps there were innumerable futures, branching and shifting and impossible to navigate.

On the other hand, there was certainly a past, and it was only slightly more comprehensible. In the same way a mind could be projected across space, it could be projected into the past. God-Speaker could send his mind back, if he chose to do so. But what would he find there?

Could he change the past? What would happen to the future he had already experienced? The voices weren’t certain. Time might split like the branches of a tree, different futures continuing in parallel. Or it might shift, like the flow of a river. It might tangle in self-referential loops and knots. It might even be impossible to change, a scrupulous bookkeeper who had already done the necessary math to ensure that anything the traveler did was already accounted for, that any actions taken in the past would lead to the future that already existed.

God-Speaker had experimented. Not with himself; that was too risky. He experimented by proxy. The oracles weren’t strong enough or skilled enough to project into someone else’s mind, across space, but they could project backward in time. They could find a perfectly compatible host: an earlier version of themselves. Still, time was a powerful current. Once they cast out into the past, it continued to pull them further and further back. They might visit their previous selves long enough to pass on a quick message, a few words of warning from their future, but they couldn’t stay. The riptides of time would tear them loose and pull them under. Their minds would be lost somewhere beyond the knowledge of God-Speaker and the voices.

The abilities of the oracles didn’t last. Some never learned, and others were capable only for a few years. The very best he found when they were young, and they might retain their usefulness for a decade.

Cain said the cabinet had used the oracles. They had sent back warnings. Of course they had. God-Speaker had received those vague messages. Someone would try to kill him, and without intervention they would succeed. None of the messages had told him who was responsible. They hadn’t known. The children had made their vague prophecies. He had begun his investigations. In the end, it had been for nothing.

God-Speaker understood this in cold, clinical terms. Christopher had to suppress the urge to vomit. He knew what would happen to those children whose minds had left their bodies, never to return. He knew that the families, who had been told their children were in a special training program, would be informed that they died in an unforeseeable accident. Their parents would feel what his parents had felt. Their siblings would feel what he felt. They would never know that these children had been sacrificed, or why. It hadn’t even saved him from a blade beneath the ribs.

Christopher remembered how he felt after being tortured, when he had finally stood up to Sergeant Meadows. He had known then, without a doubt, that he was going to die, and he had not been afraid. It felt like the ultimate liberation, the true face of freedom. That feeling had faded in the days that followed. It felt like so long ago, now. But the echoes of that revelation still reverberated deep inside him.

He was still going to die. He could no longer claim that he wasn’t afraid, but he knew that in this moment the fear wasn’t strong enough to bind him.

Deep in the darkest recesses of his mind, he could feel something coming, like the first faint light on the horizon at dawn. God-Speaker was waking up. Cain was right. Things would be different in the morning.

If he was going to do something as himself, as Christopher, now was his last chance.

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 33.2

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher blinked. The sun had fallen behind the mountains while he was lost in thought. The sky was filled with stars, and he couldn’t look at them without feeling an unbearable ache in his chest. He rose unsteadily and took the crystal tumbler inside to refill it.

There were many amazing things about Sky-Watcher. She had shocked him into loving her, long after he thought he had lost the capacity for it. She had constantly surprised him. Nothing had surprised him more than her acceptance of her own death. He knew she must have felt some fear. What lay beyond death was unknown, even to God-Speaker, even to the voices beneath the mountain. She accepted that fear too. She was content to let it happen.

Christopher poured slowly, the thin stream of amber liquid cascading over the ice, slowly filling the glass. Despite the numbness imparted by the alcohol, he felt hyper-sensitized. The colors and shapes of the world were sharper and brighter than they had ever been before.

He thought about his parents. They had put so much of their lives and energy into protecting him, keeping him safe, and this was how it all ended. They could never know the truth. They would always think Christopher had died on that plane. They weren’t far off the mark.

He pressed his palm against the rich wood paneling on the wall behind the shelf of decanters. All of the decor was for nothing. Although it gave the impression of an ordinary building on the surface of the world, Christopher could feel the stone behind the decorative shell. He could feel the weight of the mountain, suffocating him.

Why was this place here? Why all these tunnels and machines? Why all these people, scurrying around like ants, following collective instincts that no individual understood. The mountain had one purpose, and everything else flowed from that. It was made to keep God-Speaker alive, so why did it feel like a vast tomb?

He took the tumbler in one hand and a decanter in the other and began to walk with the over-careful gait of the intoxicated. He stepped through the double doors at the entrance to the apartment and began the long descent down the gently curving, wide-stepped stairs. He followed the back hallways, now so etched in his mind that they required no thought to navigate. Though it was night and the lights in the main caverns would be dimmed, the lights in these hallways were still bright. He arrived at a door, and like all doors under Razor Mountain, he could open it. He set down the decanter for a moment and fumbled for a key card. Soon, he would have a new chip implanted under his skin. For now, the card was necessary.

He entered an apartment somewhat like his own, though on a significantly smaller scale. It was dark inside, so he flicked on the lights that illuminated the entry, then a dining room, then a hallway. He had never been here before, but he found his way.

When he reached the bedroom, he did not turn on the lights, but he opened the door, and some of the light from the hallway filtered in. He slid a chair across the carpet, next to the nightstand, facing the bed. He set the tumbler on the nightstand and poured himself another drink.

Cain sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes.

“Why did you work so hard to bring me back?” Christopher asked.

Cain blinked against the light. He took a tissue from the box on the nightstand and blew his nose. He showed no surprise to find himself in this situation.

Christopher waited, wondering if he would have to ask the question again.

“At first, I didn’t,” Cain said, at last. “I had no idea what to do. Like everyone else, I muddled through.”

He rubbed his eyes.

“Time passed, and I saw how the cabinet ran things. Endless squabbling and petty disagreements. I hated it. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something. I wanted justice for Moira. I wanted everything back the way it used to be.

“I knew this place wouldn’t implode catastrophically. You built it to last. But it would fall into a long, slow decline. Eventually, cracks would form. Then, someday, something would fail and that would set off something else. It would all come tumbling down in a matter of weeks or days or hours. Maybe not soon. Maybe not for generations. But eventually. I didn’t want to be responsible for the first cracks that brought the whole thing down.”

“Why would it be bad for it to all fall apart?” Christopher asked.

“For one thing, if it happened on our watch, we’d be responsible. We’re the ones in charge. Or at least we were,” he said, nodding toward Christopher. “This place is my home. Despite everything that has happened, I’m happy here. I’m happy doing this job. I think this place really is important. We are a backstop against disaster for all of human civilization.”

“I thought you were worried it could all fall apart,” Christopher countered.

“Without you,” Cain replied. “It would all fall apart without you. The whole thing only works because there’s a single, strong vision. Empires fall because they lack consistency. A chain of successive humans running the show eventually fails, and it only takes one bad link to break the chain. The good king grows old and dies, and a bad king takes his place.

“But not here. Here, the good king lives forever. That’s why Razor Mountain has lasted.”

“You’ve never been in the outside world,” Christopher said. “Why do you think it’s better in here?”

“I’ve seen quite a bit of the outside world, even if only through screens and reports,” Cain said.

“It’s no utopia.”

Christopher sat next to the bed, lost in swirling, half-drunken thoughts. Cain rose, unabashed in his tee-shirt and boxers, walked to the bathroom and filled a glass from the tap. He returned to sit on the bed.

“You know, I think I might be the perfect vessel for God-Speaker,” Christopher said. “All he thinks about is staving off death. He does whatever he can to avoid every risk. It just so happens I’ve been doing the same things my whole life. Obviously with less expectation of long-term success.”

“Why is that?” Cain asked. Christopher got the sense that he was playing a part, acting as therapist for the stupid, inebriated king. Christopher shrugged off the feeling. Who else could he talk to?

“When I was young, my brother drowned,” Christopher said. He wondered when he had last spoken about it.

“After that, I was my parents’ only child. They didn’t let me bike to a friend’s house. They didn’t leave me with a babysitter. They never let me do anything remotely dangerous. Not that I was much inclined to. They never talked about it, but it was obvious that they were afraid they’d lose me too. I couldn’t very well blame them for it. I felt like I was obligated to outlive them, so they wouldn’t have to feel that pain again.”

Cain nodded. “And now?”

“They’re still alive,” Christopher said. “And as far as they know, I’m not.”

“That must be difficult.”

“A dozen times a day, I remember it. It feels a little bit like being stabbed in the chest.”

Cain was silent, calm and apparently content to just sit with Christopher. Christopher sipped from his tumbler.

“Doesn’t it worry you that your good king is so desperate to live forever?”

“Not really. Everyone is afraid of death. It keeps you going. It keeps the city running. It doesn’t really matter why you do it. It just matters that you keep doing it.”

“What about me? How is that fair for me?”

“It’s not. None of it is. Not for you, or me, or anyone else under the mountain. Reed wasn’t wrong about everything. It was only his conclusions that were wrong.”

“What if I just give up? What if I quit?”

Cain shrugged. “You could. I can’t stop you. Like I said, none of this works unless you’re running it.”

“You don’t care?”

“Don’t be shitty,” he said, suddenly irritable. “You know how much I care. I’ve dedicated my life to you and this city. I’ve done everything I can possibly do, and now I’m dead tired. It’s on you.”

Christopher sighed. “It’s on me.”

“You told me yourself that this transition, this change from Christopher to God-Speaker might be rough. I can’t even imagine. But I know this city pretty well, and even though I can only guess how old this place is and how old you are, I have some faint idea of how much work it must have been to build it and keep it secret. I don’t think you’d spend so many lifetimes doing that, just to throw it all away.”

He put his hand on top of Christopher’s hand and gave it a strangely patronizing squeeze.

“You’re just scared about what’s going to happen. And you’re drunk. Go get some sleep. Let the change happen. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 33.1

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Beyond the balcony the sun balanced perfectly between two mountain ridges, pouring its golden light down the creased slopes and highlighting deep valleys with their sharp black edges. Above the mountains, the clouds were streaked with purple and pink. Below, the forest was wreathed in mist that captured the fading light. The world looked too vivid to be real.

Everything was new again. He would be God-Speaker. It had taken thirty-two years, but he had finally, fully returned from the dead. His resurrection was complete. He had won.

Christopher thought ought to feel relieved. After all the chaos and fear he had gone through since waking on that dark airplane, it was a tremendous relief to feel that everything was under control. Even if he knew it wasn’t really under his control. He was fading into the background of his own life.

He drew an etched glass tumbler to his lips and felt the sting of liquor as he sipped. Christopher wasn’t a drinker. He wasn’t even sure what he had poured himself from the selection of unlabeled crystal decanters in God-Speaker’s apartment, but if there was ever a time when a toast was appropriate, it was surely this moment of ascendance. He raised the glass, alone on the balcony, and appreciated the prismatic light glinting off the glass before taking another drink.

Unfortunately, there was the matter of General Reese to deal with, and beyond that would be years of work slowly repairing the cracks in the foundations of his little society. Many of the secretaries were old. He would need to think about their replacements, get to know the people under them and who might have a suitable disposition for his inner circle. He would need to find more children to be oracles, to be his early warning system (for all the good that had done in this whole fiasco).

The time for relief was short. Christopher was beginning to understand that this was what it meant to be God-Speaker. There was always danger, always risk. It was a constant balancing act. He had been proven weak. Now, more than ever, the specter of death loomed over his empire, just waiting for opportunities to strike. He hadn’t lived for thousands of years without developing an understanding of that specter, learning the riposte and parry, the counter-play that kept the endless game going.

It was exhausting.

The past thirty-two years had exposed many new dangers. Or perhaps God-Speaker had grown complacent and let down his guard. Either way, these nearly catastrophic failures demanded equally extreme responses. So many things were more fragile than he had thought. He would need to rethink everything.

The memories were now clicking into place so quickly that he could barely follow them. No longer was it a vast sea of ink-black time, punctuated by little islands of recollection. Now it was a vast mountain range, the ups and downs of a geologically long life, with only a few dark valleys still hidden. The light of memory was creeping down into even those low spots.

He wondered if he would feel something different when the final memory fell into place. Would there be a seismic shift in perception, or would it be like hypothermia—a slow descent into diffuse darkness, a gradual fading away of the person named Christopher Lamarck?

As the sun sank beyond the mountains, he lay down on the cool stone of the balcony and searched for the light of the first stars. Again, he remembered reaching out for a hand, but this time, he knew the person it belonged to. She had such a soft smile, rarely even revealing her teeth, but always giving the impression that there was some beautiful joke shared between the two of them. Her eyes…her eyes were sad.

“There’s still time,” he had told her. “We can figure this out.”

“There is still time,” she had replied. “Let’s not waste it wishing for something that is not to be.”

“How can you say that?”

She exhaled softly. Her eyes twinkled with the reflected stars.

“Not everything is a problem to be solved. You told me yourself, even the stars die.”

“They live for billions of years,” God-Speaker countered.

“Sure. And what kinds of lives do they live? Are they full of worry? Do they scrabble greedily, always seeking more? Or do they just shine their light out into the universe until they run out?”

“It’s not the same. You’re a person. You are my love. I can’t live without you.”

“I am grateful for that,” she said. “I am a person, and I have lived the life of a person. That’s enough for me.”

“It’s not enough for me. How can I go on, if you leave me?”

She sighed. “I cannot answer that for you, my love.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 32.3

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The conference room was already filled with the cabinet, buzzing with whispered conversations. Cain, Reed, and General Reese were conspicuously absent, and everyone present had a good idea what that might mean.

The room quieted when Moira McCaul stepped through the door. She paused to look around the room. Her face was serene, with no trace of anger or bitterness, but few of those gathered were able to meet her eyes.

Justine Vahn, her replacement, looked around at the downcast faces, steeled herself, and pulled out an empty chair, offering it to Moira with an open hand. The corners of Moira’s mouth turned up almost imperceptibly, and she crossed the room to sit.

The buzz of conversation slowly returned to the room, only to be silenced moments later when the door opened again. Two figures entered: Reed, hands cuffed behind his back, and Reese, hands free, with his service cap in his hands and his head bowed. They were escorted by a uniformed soldier with a sidearm. This was something that had been forbidden for decades on the grounds that it would be tantamount to the military secretaries like Reese and Bell throwing their weight around in private cabinet spaces. Their world was changing, and the rules would change with it.

Cain and Christopher followed them into the room. Christopher pulled two chairs to the front of the room, where the prisoners sat. Cain whispered to the soldier, who saluted and stepped out, closing the door behind him.

Christopher’s mind was a vortex. In the center, an identity was coalescing, as though the memory of the murder was a blockage that had been opened, freeing the vast torrent of memories and feelings dammed up behind it. It could still only pour into him at a certain speed, but the end result felt more inevitable than ever. It could not be stopped. He was becoming God-Speaker.

As if that wasn’t enough, the voices were equally cacophonous. They congratulated and advised him. They raged against him. They howled and buzzed and thrummed with emotions that did not easily translate into human moods. The one saving grace was that it had become so easy for Christopher to tune them out. God-Speaker could block their noise as easily as turning off a faucet.

He stood at the front of the silent room. He kept his face neutral, but God-Speaker was reveling in the moment.

“Thirty-two years ago, Reed Parricida murdered me in my office. Today, he attacked me once again.”

“I have someone looking through the security footage,” Cain said. “We’ll see if it’s been tampered with.”

Reed sighed. “I’m sure it’s all there. I didn’t have access.”

“How did you expect to get away with it?”

He laughed. “Who said I did? The best I could hope was that you’d let your guard down and I could kill him. Either way, I was going to be found out.”

“Then why do it?” Cain asked.

“I was already as good as caught, once his memory came back,” Reed replied. “For all I knew, it already had, and he was playing his games with us. Better to keep my freedom, but since that no longer seemed possible, I thought I ought to at least try to finish what I started.”

“But why kill him at all?”

“Why? Because he’s made us all prisoners. You think you’re important, you think you’re in control. You’re just as trapped as those deserters.”

“I don’t need to be in control of everything,” Cain said. “Is that what you were hoping for? After all this time, you haven’t gotten very far.”

“You stupid ass,” Reed replied. “You just couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to kill him unless they had grand plans to become the new emperor. I just wanted him dead.”

God-Speaker frowned. “I gave you…”

“What?” Reed snapped. “A job? A purpose? Some modicum of power and a nice lifestyle? An endless stream of lies to tell and be told?”

“Everything,” God-Speaker said.

“My mother would disagree,” Reed replied. “With all that control, you could try to make things better. Even if it was just in this hidden corner of the world. No, even here there’s poverty and misery. People struggle. I grew up like that. I thought I might be able to make things better. Eventually I realized that you just didn’t care. Things only needed to be good enough to serve your needs. People are just tools to you.”

“This place has an important function,” Cain said.

“The only function of this place is to keep him alive. To keep him safe. And us, the people closest to him, we aren’t picked because we’re the best at what we do. Every one of us was picked because we were deemed safe. Useful enough, and docile. Pliable.”

“Obviously not all of us,” Cain said.

“No?” Reed said. “Look around this room. Everyone so happy to have their king back. To be told what to do again. And I’m hardly any different. Even when I realized what a monster he was—long after I realized—I never planned to do it. I never thought I would. I thought I would do his bidding for the rest of my life. Then he told me to forget about the job that was supposed to be my whole purpose. He had me drop everything because there might be some hint of a threat to him. Something just snapped in me. I…broke.”

Christopher saw the muscles working in the man’s jaw.

“I guess I’ve been broken for a long time now. So that’s something you gave me.”

Christopher studied Reed, who now faced the floor, and felt a weight in his chest, despite what had happened between them in the hallway less than an hour earlier, and what had happened in his office decades before.

“Do you feel any guilt? Any remorse?”

Reed laughed. “Of course. I couldn’t explain why, but I do. I’ve carried it with me all this time. I suppose it’s in my nature to abhor what I did. That’s why you chose me.”

“You killed another human being,” Moira said softly.

“No,” Reed replied, tensing. God-Speaker thought he might try to lunge to his feet, but instead he leaned back in the chair, shifting his cuffed wrists. His voice was softer than hers, but held a dangerous edge.

“No, a man of fifty years is human. A hundred years, maybe two hundred, sure. What about five hundred? A thousand? Ten thousand? Oh, and he hears voices under the mountain. He picks out new faces the way real people buy clothes. I don’t know what he is, but he isn’t human.”

Silence followed this pronouncement. Into it, Reed spat, “and he isn’t dead. He’s standing here, isn’t he?”

God-Speaker’s gaze swept down the table. There was little sympathy in the eyes staring back at Reed. He wasn’t making any converts in this room.

“That’s why I’ve always had the upper hand,” God-Speaker said. “That’s why your story ends like this.

Reed shrugged, as much as he could while cuffed.

“You didn’t seem to have the upper hand when I put a knife through your heart. Or when I got my people on your plane. In fact, it seems like you’re mostly here right now through sheer luck and the hard work of a man you’ve barely acknowledged.”

He tilted his head toward Cain. “A man you once asked me to investigate because you thought he might be a troublemaker.”

“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Christopher said. “But I am curious about General Reese’s part in this.”

“Oh, we’ve talked a lot, in recent years, he and I,” Reed said. “Talked about certain indiscretions, mentioned in confidence. He couldn’t bear the idea of his family finding out about his dirty little secrets. All he had to do to avoid that was go along with my plan to give you a little test.”

“I see,” God-Speaker said. “General, would you say that’s accurate?”

General Reese nodded miserably, eyes still on the floor.

“We’ll have to chat more about that, General. We might find that there are ways you could redeem yourself.”

The fact that this had happened meant that the General was a dangerous liability, but Christopher felt sorry for him, and showing him some mercy could benefit the morale of the other secretaries. Even if he couldn’t keep his current role, he might retire with his honor mostly intact, and his personal indiscretions kept quiet. So long as they weren’t a problem for God-Speaker.

“I think we’re done here, for now,” Christopher said. “Cain, these men are ready to be escorted out. Please make sure that General Reese is made comfortable until he has a chance to go over his story in more detail.”

Cain nodded, already moving to open the conference room door.

“And Mr. Parricida?”

Christopher glanced at Moira.

“I believe a cell just became available.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 32.2

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

General Reese had an almost cartoonishly military bearing. He was, after all, a man who had spent his life in the service, and his current position was as much about acting the part as it was about administrative competence. Today, however, there was something off, something ever-so-slightly loose or sloppy about the way he walked, a little ahead and to the right of Christopher, down the dull gray back halls of Razor Mountain.

“When did they arrive?” Christopher asked.

“What? Oh, about 05:00 this morning,” Reese said.

“I’ve had meetings with some of the secretaries, but we haven’t had the chance to talk, one on one,” Christopher said. “How are you feeling about everything that’s happened?”

Reese shrugged. “It’s hard to know what to make of it. I’ve done what I always do. Keep doing the work. We’ll sort everything out in due time.”

“That’s a good outlook,” Christopher said. “I tend to favor the long view of most things.”

“Ah, yes. I suppose so.”

“You have a son, don’t you?” Christopher asked. Reese visibly flinched.

Christopher let his left hand drift past his hip, ready to reach for the pistol stuck into his belt at the small of his back. But Reese kept walking without turning around to address him.

“Yes, he’s doing well. Made Captain just last year.”

“You must be proud.”

Reese nodded. “He’s a good man, and a fine soldier.”

Christopher felt almost as though he were watching a play, even though he was playing his part. He could sense God-Speaker directing all of it. The questions, to remind Reese just how old God-Speaker was, to remind him of his family and his personal honor.

They came to a corner. Reese stopped just short of it, hesitating.

“Tell me,” God-Speaker commanded.

The man deflated.

“Now.” It was a tone Christopher would never have been comfortable using, but it came out of his mouth with complete authority.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Reese said. “He said it would be a test, to see if you’re really who you claim to be.”

The lights went out. One heartbeat. Two. Three. Quiet footsteps beyond the corner. Then emergency systems kicked-in.

The emergency lights were dimmer, but adequate. Reese was already leaning despondently against the wall, eyes closed. Christopher pushed him further back, drew the gun, and peered around the corner.

Reed stood only fifteen feet away, gun already raised. Christopher pulled his head back as a shot rang out, chipping a chunk out of the wall behind him.

In the half-light, Christopher had also seen three more figures further down the hallway: Cain, flanked by a pair of men with MP armbands. He waited for two measured breaths, then peered around the corner again.

Reed was walking toward Christopher. He looked back and saw his pursuers. He threw down his weapon, but continued toward the corner as they closed in.

Christopher stepped out into the open to stare Reed in the face. The man wore a grimace. He drew a knife from his pocket and flicked it open.

The shadowy figure in God-Speaker’s memories resolved itself. Like an avalanche, that one uncovered moment turned into a cascade. Christopher’s perception shifted.

The knife came up toward Christopher’s chest, aiming to slip under his sternum, but the hand that wielded it was more than thirty years older, slower. Christopher turned his body so his profile faced Reed, his hand sweeping down to strike Reed’s forearm with the butt of the gun. Reed cried out, and the knife clattered to the ground.

Seconds thumped their passage in Christopher’s chest. His eyes were locked with Reed’s. Time and sound returned in the footfalls of Cain and the MPs, who immediately grabbed Reed’s arms and twisted them behind his back, pressing him against the wall.

“Are you alright?” Cain asked breathlessly.

Christopher looked down at himself. No blood, no wound. The change he was feeling was entirely internal. The world seemed to be painted with new colors.

“I’m fine.”

Cain moved between Christopher and General Reese.

“What about him?”

Christopher studied the man’s sad eyes, perched above the aquiline nose. He looked ten years older.

“He wasn’t involved in the original attack,” Christopher said. “I remember it now. I suspect we’ll find there was blackmail or some other leverage involved.”

“Should we cuff him?” one of the MPs asked. Cain looked to Christopher.

“Remove his sidearm. I’m sure he won’t cause trouble.”

God-Speaker fought to keep his emotions in check. After everything that had happened, this was the final, pathetic attempt on his life. A pair of old men, easily overcome.

“Call the cabinet meeting,” he told Cain. “Let’s put an end to this.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 32.1

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

“Do you know what this is about?” Christopher asked.

“No, he said it was news specifically for you,” Cain replied. “He said it was on a need-to-know basis. That’s the sort of thing he says all the time though.”

The pair walked the halls from Christopher’s apartment to his office. Christopher was still groggy from another night of strange dreams. The God-Speaker memories surfaced and integrated, sometimes clear and sometimes fragmentary. He still hadn’t caught hold of the key memory of his death, but there was now an image seared in his mind, a shadowy, half-formed figure looming above him, a knife glinting in its hand.

Cain had a squinty look that Christopher had come to recognize as his worried face. Cain worried that anything unexpected was an assassination attempt. It was probably the right mode of thinking, but Christopher found it hard to muster more than a steady feeling of mild dread. His body couldn’t pump the chemicals of fear through his system continuously, and his mind was a distracted whirlwind of memories, ideas and emotions.

When they arrived at the office, General Reese was already waiting for them. He was pacing, his service cap in his hands, seemingly rotating of its own accord.

“Ah,” he said, when he saw them. “You had an interest in the group of deserters that were holed up in the old 3-F office block?”

“Yes?” Christopher said.

“They were apprehended, and they’ve been brought back. They’re being detained, if you want to talk to them.”

“I trust they were treated humanely?” Christopher asked. “And they’re comfortable now?”

He imagined the entire group crammed into the white room with four cells, under the ministrations of Sergeant Meadows.

“Yes, of course,” General Reese said. “One of them gave us some trouble, but they’re none the worse for wear. You can see for yourself.”

Christopher didn’t like the sound of that. He could see a sheen of sweat on Reese’s brow. There was something he was hiding.

“The girl who can’t speak?”

Reese’s eyes flicked away for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded.

“Two of the members of the capture team were injured. Both relatively minor injuries.”

Christopher knew that he shouldn’t talk to the exiles. They knew nothing about him, and it was better that way. God-Speaker knew that a king was always a target. He ruled from the shadows, almost unknown in his own kingdom. He was protected from danger by a circle of proxy rulers and the belief that the real chain of command was in Washington D.C.

Still, he wanted to at least see the people who had briefly taken him in, and ensure they were being treated well. They would be court-martialed. Could he somehow intervene in that process? There would be problems if the rules were seen to be flouted.

Cain appeared to read his mind.

“Better to delegate it. Someone else can check on them. I can, if you’d like.”

Christopher nodded, but he said, “Where are they being held, Reese?”

“Military prison, standard area for those awaiting arraignment.”

“I don’t need to talk to them. I’d just like to look in,” Christopher said.

“We could get you a video feed,” Cain said.

Something was itching in the back of Christopher’s mind. He couldn’t tell what it was, exactly, but he felt an almost irresistible urge to follow it. An instinct honed over thousands of years.

He turned to Reese. The edges of the cuffs and collar on the man’s green uniform were outlined in dark sweat.

“What do you think?”

“It…it’s well in hand, sir. But if you want to see for yourself, that’s your prerogative.”

“Yes, I think I will. Care to join me?”

“Of course.”

Christopher turned and stepped close to Cain, so that their right shoulders almost touched, and leaned down.

“You’re armed?” Christopher asked quietly.

“I am,” Cain said, eyes narrowing slightly.

“So am I. Prepare a message for the rest of the cabinet to be ready for a meeting at short notice. Don’t send it yet. Then go straight through town and down to the military prison. Backtrack to us from there. We’ll take the back way.”

“Did you remember…?”

Christopher shook his head. “No, but I have a feeling that we’ll know everything soon.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 31.5

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

The Secretary of Labor sat in the chair on the other side of the desk with legs crossed and hands steepled. He wore a dark suit with a narrow tie that only further accentuated his lankiness. He didn’t speak, he just looked at Christopher.

“Well, since I’ve been asking everyone else, I suppose I had better ask you too: do you need more evidence that I am who I say I am?”

Reed frowned. “Is that what the others have been doing?”

“Some of them.”

Reed shook his head. “As I said before, it seems like the reasonable thing to do is wait. If what you’ve said is true, then it shouldn’t be long before we have all the incontrovertible proof we could ever desire.”

“What would you like to talk about then?” Christopher asked.

“I was under the impression that this meeting was for your benefit,” Reed replied. He picked up the briefcase next to his chair and set it on his lap. “I’ve taken the liberty of organizing some reports. It’s obviously not practical to condense decades of work, but I’ve summarized a few of the more interesting projects, and the things that are currently in progress.”

Christopher took the proffered papers and set them on the desk.

“I’ll take a look. I’m sure it will take some time to get caught up with everything.”

“Yes, half a lifetime of work. I’m sure by now Cain has mentioned his many concerns that everything is more or less falling apart around here, but I think you’ll discover for yourself that his claims are overblown.”

Christopher heard a faint sigh escape Cain from across the room.

“Honestly, I don’t think that’s been the nature of our conversations at all,” Christopher said.

“I see. Well, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of the advancements we have made in your absence.”

Reed stood, abruptly enough that Christopher sat back in his chair. His hand touched the gun under the desk.

“If there’s nothing else?”

Christopher shook his head. “No, I suppose there isn’t, at least for now.”

Reed left as stiffly as he had entered, briefcase in hand.

When the door had closed, Christopher said, “That was odd.”

“He came in expecting an argument,” Cain said.

“Why is that?”

“I assume it’s because he and I rarely see eye-to-eye on anything, and he thought I’d be busy telling you how awful he is.”

“Is he? From what I remember, he was competent enough.”

“He does his job well enough, from what I can tell,” Cain said. “It’s the way he always tries to do little bits of other peoples’ jobs as well that tends to irritate me.”

“I see. He’s one of the ones who has been trying to expand his kingdom, so to speak?”

“That’s my opinion,” Cain said. “Obviously I don’t expect you to take my word for it. You can form your own opinions. But that’s more or less the root of our particular disagreements.”

Christopher thought about the strange mix of people within the cabinet. God-Speaker had sought out a set of qualities in his administrators. They were supposed to be reasonably good at their jobs, but they also had to be servile and content with the limited power they had. Above all, God-Speaker had tried to build a place where he was safe and in control; a protective shell around himself.

Cain was a perfect fit for the job. He enjoyed the work and sought out improvements. He kept the trains running on time, so to speak. Beyond that, he had little ambition. In fact, he was so eager for God-Speaker to come back, he had almost single-handedly engineered it. It was a rare combination of personality traits.

“When did you send back the oracles?” Christopher asked.

Cain scratched his scalp. “We sent one an hour or two after you were found. Then everyone argued about how we would know if it had worked. The next morning we sent two more. The last two were a couple days after that. At that point, there was only one left. Despite all the arguments about whether or not the oracles were of any use at all, nobody wanted to send the last. Of course, at some point he aged out, as they all do.”

Christopher shook his head. “I remember now. I remember getting those messages, for all the good it ended up doing.”

“So they did actually make it?”

“They made it. But they didn’t tell me who the threat was.”

Christopher cocked his head, listening. “Nobody knows exactly how the oracles work. Not even the voices under the mountain. I received messages, but it’s hard to say if they were from you.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Christopher waved a hand. “It’s not important. I remember being on my guard. I knew something was coming. Whatever happened, I wasn’t prepared.”

“We didn’t know who had done it either,” Cain said. “We couldn’t send you a proper warning.”

“That should have been enough.”

Christopher rose from his chair.

“I think I had better sleep. Maybe in the morning we’ll know the truth.”

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 31.4

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

Christopher no longer felt the freedom of anonymity to walk around the city unrecognized. Although nobody outside the cabinet would know who he was, public areas would be dangerous: someone acting on the murderer’s orders might attempt assassination anywhere. Cain suggested he remain in the highly restricted areas reserved for himself and the cabinet, where even high-level advisers and well-vetted guards were rarely permitted. It would force the traitor to involve themselves personally in any assassination attempts.

Christopher insisted on one excursion, despite Cain’s attempts to dissuade him, so Cain called a lieutenant colonel he trusted to act as personal body guard, and they set out without warning anyone that they were going. They took service hallways and elevators to the levels below the city center, and made their way to the section that served as the city’s military prison.

Cain led the way, showing credentials and speaking to the guards at the entrance. Prisons, it seemed, did not like unexpected visitors. There was some discussion among the guards (and Christopher suspected some complaining just out of earshot), but they were eventually allowed through. One of the guards took them down a maze of hallways to another checkpoint, where they were let through immediately. Then more hallways.

Finally, the guard swiped his card over the black Plexiglas square on the wall and held the door open for them. Cain stepped through and Christopher followed. The door shut behind them with a solid sound, like an airlock sealing.

“I don’t like this,” Cain said.

“Isn’t this one of the most secure places in the city?” Christopher asked. “There are cameras covering every nook and cranny. And plenty of witnesses.”

Cain shook his head, but didn’t complain further. Christopher understood what he was feeling. Regardless of logic, it felt like they were trapped. He supposed that was the whole point of prison architecture.

At the end of the hallway, where only specific guards were permitted to enter, there were four cells. For decades now, according to Cain, only one of them had been occupied. Drawing on the confusing swirl of memories available to him, Christopher was able to calculate that the woman inside should be sixty-six. She looked far older.

The cell was lavish, compared to the one that Christopher had been kept in. It was about twenty feet square, with a real bed, a desk and chair, and a stainless steel privacy partition for the toilet. It still wasn’t a place he would want to spend days, let alone decades.

Moira McCaul was sitting at the desk in the middle of the cell, well back from the bars. She didn’t stand, or even turn to look at them.

“It’s been a while, Cain.”

“Longer than it should have been,” Cain said. “I could make excuses, but they hardly seem adequate in the face of your situation.”

She laughed, though it was little more than a papery whisper. “I accepted my situation years ago. I think it’s your guilt that keeps you coming back to visit me.”

“It’s not guilt,” Cain said. “I did what I could to try and free you. I just thought it might make it a tiny bit more bearable if you had someone to talk to once in a while.”

“Maybe if you were a better conversationalist,” she said, dryly. “Though I appreciate the effort. Now I imagine you’re not here to rehash the same old conversations again. Who have you brought with you this time?”

“It’s me,” Christopher said, without thinking. There was something different in his voice, something he didn’t recognize.

Moira turned her head sharply. It was clear she recognized it.

Christopher was momentarily submerged in new memories: a young McCaul taking the elevator to the top floors for the first time, their early meetings and her guarded excitement. The young face faded from his inner eye, leaving behind the wrinkled and far older version that sat before him in the cell.

“You actually came back,” she said.

“I did. Through a truly ridiculous series of events.”

“Nobody said it would be easy, coming back from the dead.”

Christopher scratched his head. “I don’t suppose you were the one who killed me?”

As soon as it came out of his mouth, he thought it might be the worst thing he could have possibly said. There was silence for a moment, and then she laughed, a real proper laugh this time.

“Did you pick up a sense of humor while you were away?” she asked.

“I picked up a few things,” Christopher said. “Unfortunately, I’m still missing memories, and a few of them are important ones.”

“I see. Well, as I’m sure Cain has already told you, I didn’t kill you, and I don’t know who did. I gave up trying to figure it out a long time ago.”

“There may have already been another attempt to kill me,” Christopher said. “Poison, this time. You don’t seem to be in the position to pull that off.”

She nodded, but her humor had fled.

“I promise you, I’ll release you as soon as we know who the killer was.”

“I appreciate the thought,” she said, “but it comes a few decades late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, not your fault. Certainly not your fault. You’ve had all that being dead to deal with.”

“Everything under the mountain is my responsibility,” Christopher said.

“Maybe so, but what’s done is done. Even the oracles couldn’t undo it.”

They stood in silence.

“Was that all you came to say, then?”

Christopher sighed. “I guess it was. I felt like I needed to speak to you in person.”

“To know that it really wasn’t me? You always were convinced you could read anyone, up close. Did it do you any good?”

Christopher didn’t know how to reply. “I’ll see you again when we know who the killer is.”

“Just make sure you take care of it this time.”

“I will.”

They left the way they had come, and Christopher felt the oppressiveness of the prison lift bit by bit as they passed the checkpoints. There were no traps and no assassins.

Even safely back in his office, Christopher couldn’t banish Moira’s face from his mind, the young face from years past superimposed on the unnaturally aged face of the imprisoned woman. He realized what really unsettled him was her calm in the face of it all. So much of her life had been taken from her. There was nothing she could do about it, and she had accepted that.

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Razor Mountain — Chapter 31.3

Razor Mountain is a serial novel, with new parts published every week or two. For more info, visit the Razor Mountain landing page.

David Tull was the Director of Media, responsible for overseeing all the books, movies, television and any other forms of text or video that originated inside or outside the mountain. Perhaps more importantly, it put him in charge of censorship and ensuring that no information entered the mountain that would go against the narratives that had been carefully constructed for the general populace.

He was a short man with a precise gray crew-cut. He entered the office wearing a salmon dress shirt, a wine-red tie, and khaki pants with a crisp crease. He talked fast and spoke little, and struck Christopher as decidedly unfriendly.

The first thing he did after sitting in the chair on the far side of the desk was to hand over one of the two manila folders he carried. The topmost thing within was a page of questions, double-spaced and numbered.

“These are all the questions I could think of that only God-Speaker would know,” he said.

Christopher glanced down the list.

“Would you like me to answer them right now?”

“Yes, that’s the idea.”

“And your opinion of whether I am, in fact, God-Speaker will depend on my success.”

“It will be a contributing factor,” Tull replied.

Christopher sighed.

“As I said before, I haven’t yet regained all of my memories. I also have to say that some of these things…I just don’t care about, and I will never remember.”

The corners of Tull’s mouth turned down a fraction of a millimeter.

“I believe you are the twelfth person to hold your current position,” Christopher said, starting down the list. (This was either incorrect or very incorrect, depending on how specific he wanted to be about the position and its predecessors, but accurate to what Tull knew.)

“Numbers two and three I’ll just write here, and you can look at them. I assume you don’t want to talk about those things in detail with others present,” Christopher continued. He glanced over at Cain, who was sitting in a chair off to the side, ostensibly working on a laptop while observing the situation.

The other questions ranged from pretty reasonable indicators to complete ridiculousness.

“I don’t remember what color the halls in section B-22-F are painted, but I would assume something awful in the range of dull gray to dull green. If the maintenance rounds still work like they did before my absence, they will have been repainted…three or four times.

“The last edition of official city history was finalized in 1974, with the usual yearly updates. That’s again assuming that there hasn’t been an updated edition and you’ve all just been keeping up through those updates. The list of disallowed topics was 1975, with the same caveats.”

As he worked his way through the list, Christopher became more and more distinctly aware of the knot of thoughts and emotions that he felt as God-Speaker’s presence in his head. These thoughts were both irritated about satiating a slightly annoying subordinate, and mildly pleased to finally be getting back into the workings of Razor Mountain. The place had decayed in his absence, but that also meant new opportunities to fix things. To make them right again.

Christopher felt uneasy discussing the various ways that information was manipulated within God-Speaker’s society. The God-Speaker thoughts, perhaps in response, were about whether it was really much different beyond the confines of the mountain.

Christopher was also constantly aware of the gun slung under the desk, ready for quick access. It served as a reminder that any of these people might have betrayed him, might be ready to do it again.

The new Secretary of Justice was named Justine Vahn, and Christopher knew nothing about her beyond their brief encounter at that first chaotic meeting with all the secretaries. She wore a stylish navy business suit, offset by a gauzy yellow scarf.

“Is there anything I can do to reassure you of my identity?” Christopher asked, after she had introduced herself.

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, waving the question away as though it were an insect. “Your story and Cain’s clearly line up, and I don’t know what reason Cain would have to lie to us.”

She turned in her chair to talk to Cain. “You’re not exactly the power-hungry type, are you? And if you were, you wouldn’t wait three decades to get ’round to your secret master plan for taking over.”

She turned back to Christopher.

“No, I think the big question now is how we can all readjust to your presence. It’ll be a relief to have everything properly organized again. No more petty squabbles among the cabinet. Of course, we still have the matter of who exactly this traitor is, but I have every confidence we’ll get that business out of the way soon. With any luck, you’ll confirm that the cabinet convicted the correct person, and we can get back to doing our jobs.”

“You’re not worried that it might be someone else?” Christopher asked.

“The truth will out,” she replied. “I trust that my colleagues did not take it lightly to convict and imprison my predecessor. Obviously that was before my own tenure. I was relatively new to the deputy secretary position at that time, so I really didn’t have the access to know the details.”

“You didn’t go back and look at the events in retrospect?” Christopher asked. “I assume you have access to all those records now.”

“Well, of course. But it hardly seemed appropriate to re-litigate.”

“Even if the result is that my murderer might remain free and in power, among you?” Christopher asked. This was entirely God-Speaker’s irritation leaking through. “You’re the Secretary of Justice.”

“You have to understand, there was no authority to appeal to,” she said, for the first time sounding a little more hesitant. “Without you around, the cabinet is a council of equals. We each have our own domains of control, and no particular authority over each other. There was a great deal of debate as to whether I should even be permitted to take over the position. Nobody was supposed to be appointed to the cabinet without your approval.”

Cain chimed in from the corner. “It seemed like a better option than giving one of our remaining number double-duty.”

“I must say,” she continued, becoming more prim with every word, “it was quite a shock to learn how everything really works. I felt rather out of my depth. I certainly didn’t feel like I ought to be leading a charge to reopen the investigation. There was a certain period where I thought the whole thing might just fall apart.”

“Luckily, everything seems to have worked out,” Christopher said, through the barest hint of a smile. “Here I am.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s remarkable.”

“…Although it may not have worked out so well for Moira McCaul,” Christopher said.

There was the faintest hint of a twinge in Justine’s dimple. Her smile had begun to look a little artificial.

“Yes, well, I suppose we’ll know soon enough.”

“I suppose we will.”

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