Butla's lips parted to reveal straight white teeth. "I have been waiting, Magister. Killing occasional Regan soldiers in the dark has proved sport but not challenge." Butla straightened, excitement in his eyes. "Further, we can maximize on this. I could decapitate the First Division in one night's work. At the same time, if the opportunity presents itself, I might be able to make a substantial contribution to our intelligence net regarding Then strategy and tactics."
"Do so!" Hyde managed, cackling gleefully. His sharp response triggered a coughing fit. The old man's face contorted as he bent double, fighting for air.
Bruen placed a friendly hand on the Magister's shoulder. "Old friend, I fear for you. This affliction continues to worsen."
Hyde waved it off, groping his way to his feet. Still hacking, hand over mouth, he shuffled out of the room, a pathetic broken figure.
Butla sat hunched, head down, hands knotted in his lap.
"I don't know how long he'll last," Bruen admitted with a sigh. "There comes a point beyond which not even the best of medicine can help. Magister Hyde has reached that. The quanta, you understand. Nothing lasts forever — not even a great and kind man."
Ret's voice gentled. "He was my instructor when I first came here as a novice Initiate. He… taught me of love
and God and future when all I had was hatred, anger, and confusion in my soul."
Bruen smiled. "Then he also taught you that observation creates a phase reality through entropy. Phase reality imparts experience of the Now. Experience is knowledge and that, in turn, is stored in energy — which is indestructible. Death, dear Butla, is nothing more than a redistribution of energy which"… in the end is brought to God through entropy when the universe colapses," Butla Ret finished. His smile was warm, relieved. "Yes, Magister, he taught me those things. I fear not for his immortal soul. I regret the loss of his company and goodness. I will experience pain and hollowness at his passing."
"We create our own suffering, Butla."
"Free will, the element of choice, Magister," the assassin pointed out, lifting a huge hand in a motion of futility. "The result of a self-redefinition — the search to establish normality — in a phase reality of constantly changing observation in the eternal Now." He shook his head. "What damage we do to ourselves and others."
"Learning never comes cheaply, Butla." Bruen pulled at his ear. He hesitated before asking, "And Arta?" He watched Ret's thoughts shift from introspection to satisfaction.
"She's doing most remarkably, Magister." Ret grinned to himself, enjoying some vision in his mind. "You should have seen the first time I put her in a dark hallway full of debris. You know, boards, broken glass, stacked tin cans, bits of string hanging from the ceiling." Reg's grin spread. "I turned off the lights and she threw a fit. Practically killed herself in the first meter."
"But she's improved."
Ret steepled his fingers. "A great deal of pleasure comes to a teacher who guides a student he knows will one day surpass him in his mastery. She is such a one. She will be very, very good, Magister."
"And in the doja?" Bruen asked softly, imagining Arta, naked on the thick pads, a stun knife in her hand as she attempted to penetrate the total darkness. She would be standing, legs bent and braced, lithe, her pose alert for the
slightest sound, the least movement of the air against her skin or hair. Extending her senses to feel for her antagonist.
Ret laughed. "I have never had a pupil who learned or modified the situation
as readily as she, Magister. True, I shocked her time and time again with the electric prod, but she has constantly improved, changing tactics from lying still near a wall to switching back to the changing room — even hanging from the walls above my reach."
A deep reverberating laugh exploded from Butla. "She's at the stage now where she hates me with a vengeance because I make it seem so easy while she is blind to her own improvement." He paused, sharp black eyes on Bruen. "I am taking her with me when I kill Atkin."
So, another test, dearest Arta. At the same time, look at the concern in Butla's eyes. Dearest Gods, no! He can't come to love her! Impossible. I must handle this most carefully.
"You are fond of her," Bruen remarked casually as he tried to calm the first creepers of disturbance weaving through his brain.
Butla Ret tilted his head back, broad jaw working from side to side. "Yes, Magister. I am."
Bruen shifted, irritated at the pain in his hip. "You know about the trigger? I don't have to remind you what woud happen if—"
"I understand." Ret nodded slowly, sadly. "Yes, Magister. I'm not a fool. I know what I deal with."
Yes, I suppose you do. And if you only knew who she is — who she is intended for — could you still keep your hands off her, Butla, my old friend?
Bruen grunted a sour chuckle. "She was made for love. That inherent quality has condemned her from the moment of her birth." He frowned, a hollowness in his guts. "What sort of existence do we have, Buta, when an ability to love is damnation?"
"The purpose of God—"
"Yes, yes, I know!" Bruen snapped in irritation. Why does Arta always leave me off balance? "I don't always have to like the way things are, do I?"
Ret's gaze dropped. "No, Magister. We, the Seddi, have already taken a hand in attempting to change that phase reality. You, Magister, made that decision so long ago. You
can see what we've done. Today, at least, humanity has a chance."
Bruen barked an acid laugh,irritated at himself for foolish sentimentality, irritated with Butla because he naively hoped — and that sullied his own cynicism.
"We've increased suffering in this little corner of Free Space, Butla." He resettled himself in the gravchair, moving his pained hip to a different position. "And what else? Rega and Sassa are balanced precariously on the edge of oblivion. The Star Butcher waits, licking his lips for the scraps. That machine down there in the rock is a malignant cancer sending dendrites throughout human society. It's—"
"We have it fooled," Butla reminded.
"Do we?" Bruen's hands spread. "Yes, we… I lie to it constantly, feeding it a bit of misinformation here and another there, but what do we know about its purpose? What is it? Who built it? I don't think its origins were human. There's something alien and incomprehensible about the Mag Comm. Oh, sure, we've seen some of the banks — all technologically impossible to us. Consider. In another day and age, Butla, we would call that. thing a God!" He paused. "And we're enslaved by its powers. Without it, Makarta would die. Without its coputational powers, we can't run our statistics, or access our historical files — or even keep track of our field agents. We need it to do our work."
Bruen laughed at Ret's suddenly cowed expression. "You see, my friend, you begin to understand the dilemma of having that 'power' constantly under our feet. To those of us who know it — deal with it — the question hovers forever in the backs of our minds. Do we manipulate it? Or do we each manipulate each other? Or — and most frightening— does it only allow us to think we manipulate it?"
His thoughts drifted. "There are no parameters of accurate measurement. Why does it order the things it does? At times, I get an eerie feeling that we've become toys, pieces to move about the table for its own amusement — but to what purpose?"
Bruen jerked himself straight, aware of the fear that had come to possess his voice. Doddering old fool, you're too old, too tired to keep control of your own systems! I must get more sleep. Too much is at stake these days.
Ret stared at him, somber-eyed. "Magister, you live a nightmare. What if you fail to veil your mind one of these days? That reality dangles out there
beyond the quantum wave functions, bouncing that potential reality back in so many possibilities. How. how do you deal with the knowledge that you might be betraying all of humanity?"