Sweep in Peace
Page 64
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“When?”
George arched his eyebrows. “When what?”
“When did you suggest that to Robart?”
“On the second day of the peace summit.”
I stared at him.
“It was the kind of seed that needed to be planted in advance. Robart is a sensitive man, possessing an unfortunate combination of nobility of spirit and certain inborn belief in the fairness of the world. His instincts tell him that if only he does the right thing and makes sure that everyone around him does the right thing, life will respond in kind and reward him for his efforts. He is a more sophisticated version of the proverbial knight in shining armor who believes that if he slays the evil dragon, he will rescue a beautiful princess who will love him forever and they will live happily ever after in their castle. He worked so hard, he had fought his way past the dragon, but his princess is dead and his castle stands hollow and empty. He’s come to learn that life is a bitter bitch. She is inherently unfair. She took his happy future and crushed it, grinding it into dust. That realization is too much for him; he is emotionally volatile, swinging from one extreme to the other. A man in that emotional condition isn’t able to make quick, reasoned decisions. I had to give him time to process the nudge, until his emotions finished churning. Meanwhile, the interaction with his opponents began to foster some sympathy in him. He had come here with the desire to burn everyone and everything to the ground, and yet here he was, feeling compassion toward his enemy. This created a conflict within him, one he wasn’t capable of resolving, so he did what I suspected he would do – he reached out to his allies, hoping that they would assess the situation and point him in the right direction, eliminating his doubts. He came to the inevitable conclusion that the Meer should witness the summit for themselves.”
He couldn’t possibly be human. No human being could calculate the odds that far in advance.
“The rest fell into place,” George said. “The poisoning was a wild card, but it worked in our favor. Given a choice, I wouldn’t have poisoned you, Dina. It was too risky. I need you for the final act to this drama and I am genuinely fond of you. For all of my ruthlessness, my friends are very dear to me. That’s why I have so few. I try not to form friendships.”
“Because you might have to kill people you know?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
A thick root slid out of the opening in the floor, wrapped in a network of thinner shoots. I let it rise about three feet and opened the bag. A round white jewel sat inside, as big as a soccer ball and rippling with all the fire of a diamond. The thinner roots bent toward it, scooped the gem, and pulled it to the main shoot, wrapping tightly around it, forming a cocoon. The psy-booster was in place. Hopefully Gertrude Hunt would bond with it in the next few hours.
“I understand the Khanum, Robart, and Nuan Cee.” I shook my head. “I still don’t understand you.”
George sighed, his handsome face resigned. “Very well. I owe you that much.”
He raised his walking stick and gently tapped it on the floor. A huge projection burst out of the top of the cane, curving in front of us, taking up almost the entire half of the ballroom. Jagged mountains thrust through the barren brown and green soil, their yellow cliffs reflecting the light of a green sickly sun, puncturing the sky like an infected wound. Nexus. Hot during the day, cold at night, ugly at all times, yet hiding immense mineral wealth just beneath its crust.
“I was five when my grandfather died,” George said. His voice was hollow. “He was a pirate, a swordsman, and a vagabond. He told the best stories. He was the best grandfather a child could have. Our mother was dead, our father had abandoned us, so it was just my older sister and my grandparents. So when he died, I was very sad.”
On the screen George walked into the desolation of Nexus. He wore plain pants and a simple white shirt. His loose blond hair streamed around him. His face was serene and so beautiful… He was almost angelic, a strange haunting mirage conjured up by a planet wishing for something other than a wasteland.
George’s voice was soft, intimate, the kind of voice that reached deep into your soul. “I was so sad, that I called him back to life.”
The other George kept walking. The jagged cliffs parted and a vast valley, its floor rough and uneven, stretched before him.
“Everyone thinks the dead rise as mindless monsters. It is always that way for necromancers. The dead rise without the burdens of their past lives, without mind, and without pain.”
I sensed what was coming and braced myself.
“The thing that came back wasn’t my grandfather. It had claws and fangs. It devoured stray dogs. But it could speak and it knew my name.”
On the projection George stopped. His blue eyes blazed with a pure white light. He raised his right hand, his fingers pointing up like claws. A wind stirred his hair.
“It remembered me,” George said. “It remembered how the man it used to be died. It remembered the pain of his passing and it mourned the love he had lost.”
The ground broke around George’s feet, as if the dry crust of Nexus’ desert turned liquid. Bodies rose, some rotting, some skeletal, but all reaching to him, hundreds and hundreds of corpses, their limbs held out, as if pleading, and then I heard it, a muted, desperate wail, coming from hundreds of creatures at once, so terrible, I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and run.
“They say the dead have no memories and know no pain.” George’s voice was barely above whisper, but somehow it was louder than the pleas of the corpses. “It’s not that way for me.”
The dead cried out, louder and louder, grabbing at George’s clothes, begging. George stood in the center of this maelstrom, his eyes brimming with pain. Tears wet his face. He wept and the dead cried with him. White lightning tore out of him. The corpses fell as one. He stood alone.
The real George, the one next to me, touched his cane and the projection vanished.
“The war on Nexus has to stop,” he said. “It won’t be ended by noble means, because if good intentions, compassion, and meaningful dialogue could’ve solved this, peace would’ve been reached already. Sometimes to stop something this terrible, you have to do something equally terrible in return at a great personal cost, and that terrible thing can’t be done by one of the principals in this conflict. They must be able to walk away clean, united and guiltless or the peace won’t last. Someone must bear the blame and the rage. I am that someone. I take the full responsibility for tomorrow. I am the one responsible. I forced it to happen. I’m sorry that you must also be involved. It is unfair that I used you. Nobody will ever know what you have done or what it cost you. Your name and mine will be forgotten quickly, but we will both know and remember what we have done and why it had to be done. The psy-booster runs on magic. I will fuel it for you tomorrow.”
George arched his eyebrows. “When what?”
“When did you suggest that to Robart?”
“On the second day of the peace summit.”
I stared at him.
“It was the kind of seed that needed to be planted in advance. Robart is a sensitive man, possessing an unfortunate combination of nobility of spirit and certain inborn belief in the fairness of the world. His instincts tell him that if only he does the right thing and makes sure that everyone around him does the right thing, life will respond in kind and reward him for his efforts. He is a more sophisticated version of the proverbial knight in shining armor who believes that if he slays the evil dragon, he will rescue a beautiful princess who will love him forever and they will live happily ever after in their castle. He worked so hard, he had fought his way past the dragon, but his princess is dead and his castle stands hollow and empty. He’s come to learn that life is a bitter bitch. She is inherently unfair. She took his happy future and crushed it, grinding it into dust. That realization is too much for him; he is emotionally volatile, swinging from one extreme to the other. A man in that emotional condition isn’t able to make quick, reasoned decisions. I had to give him time to process the nudge, until his emotions finished churning. Meanwhile, the interaction with his opponents began to foster some sympathy in him. He had come here with the desire to burn everyone and everything to the ground, and yet here he was, feeling compassion toward his enemy. This created a conflict within him, one he wasn’t capable of resolving, so he did what I suspected he would do – he reached out to his allies, hoping that they would assess the situation and point him in the right direction, eliminating his doubts. He came to the inevitable conclusion that the Meer should witness the summit for themselves.”
He couldn’t possibly be human. No human being could calculate the odds that far in advance.
“The rest fell into place,” George said. “The poisoning was a wild card, but it worked in our favor. Given a choice, I wouldn’t have poisoned you, Dina. It was too risky. I need you for the final act to this drama and I am genuinely fond of you. For all of my ruthlessness, my friends are very dear to me. That’s why I have so few. I try not to form friendships.”
“Because you might have to kill people you know?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
A thick root slid out of the opening in the floor, wrapped in a network of thinner shoots. I let it rise about three feet and opened the bag. A round white jewel sat inside, as big as a soccer ball and rippling with all the fire of a diamond. The thinner roots bent toward it, scooped the gem, and pulled it to the main shoot, wrapping tightly around it, forming a cocoon. The psy-booster was in place. Hopefully Gertrude Hunt would bond with it in the next few hours.
“I understand the Khanum, Robart, and Nuan Cee.” I shook my head. “I still don’t understand you.”
George sighed, his handsome face resigned. “Very well. I owe you that much.”
He raised his walking stick and gently tapped it on the floor. A huge projection burst out of the top of the cane, curving in front of us, taking up almost the entire half of the ballroom. Jagged mountains thrust through the barren brown and green soil, their yellow cliffs reflecting the light of a green sickly sun, puncturing the sky like an infected wound. Nexus. Hot during the day, cold at night, ugly at all times, yet hiding immense mineral wealth just beneath its crust.
“I was five when my grandfather died,” George said. His voice was hollow. “He was a pirate, a swordsman, and a vagabond. He told the best stories. He was the best grandfather a child could have. Our mother was dead, our father had abandoned us, so it was just my older sister and my grandparents. So when he died, I was very sad.”
On the screen George walked into the desolation of Nexus. He wore plain pants and a simple white shirt. His loose blond hair streamed around him. His face was serene and so beautiful… He was almost angelic, a strange haunting mirage conjured up by a planet wishing for something other than a wasteland.
George’s voice was soft, intimate, the kind of voice that reached deep into your soul. “I was so sad, that I called him back to life.”
The other George kept walking. The jagged cliffs parted and a vast valley, its floor rough and uneven, stretched before him.
“Everyone thinks the dead rise as mindless monsters. It is always that way for necromancers. The dead rise without the burdens of their past lives, without mind, and without pain.”
I sensed what was coming and braced myself.
“The thing that came back wasn’t my grandfather. It had claws and fangs. It devoured stray dogs. But it could speak and it knew my name.”
On the projection George stopped. His blue eyes blazed with a pure white light. He raised his right hand, his fingers pointing up like claws. A wind stirred his hair.
“It remembered me,” George said. “It remembered how the man it used to be died. It remembered the pain of his passing and it mourned the love he had lost.”
The ground broke around George’s feet, as if the dry crust of Nexus’ desert turned liquid. Bodies rose, some rotting, some skeletal, but all reaching to him, hundreds and hundreds of corpses, their limbs held out, as if pleading, and then I heard it, a muted, desperate wail, coming from hundreds of creatures at once, so terrible, I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and run.
“They say the dead have no memories and know no pain.” George’s voice was barely above whisper, but somehow it was louder than the pleas of the corpses. “It’s not that way for me.”
The dead cried out, louder and louder, grabbing at George’s clothes, begging. George stood in the center of this maelstrom, his eyes brimming with pain. Tears wet his face. He wept and the dead cried with him. White lightning tore out of him. The corpses fell as one. He stood alone.
The real George, the one next to me, touched his cane and the projection vanished.
“The war on Nexus has to stop,” he said. “It won’t be ended by noble means, because if good intentions, compassion, and meaningful dialogue could’ve solved this, peace would’ve been reached already. Sometimes to stop something this terrible, you have to do something equally terrible in return at a great personal cost, and that terrible thing can’t be done by one of the principals in this conflict. They must be able to walk away clean, united and guiltless or the peace won’t last. Someone must bear the blame and the rage. I am that someone. I take the full responsibility for tomorrow. I am the one responsible. I forced it to happen. I’m sorry that you must also be involved. It is unfair that I used you. Nobody will ever know what you have done or what it cost you. Your name and mine will be forgotten quickly, but we will both know and remember what we have done and why it had to be done. The psy-booster runs on magic. I will fuel it for you tomorrow.”
