As taken aback as he was by my fury, he still recovered quickly. “And you, Counselor? How long would your parade be? And have you accomplished a damn thing in all the hours we’ve given you, or are you still just running in circles?”
I held his challenging stare for several seconds, backing off only because I felt unbearably tired. It was not just physical weariness, or the metabolic crash that always hits a day or so after a long journey in Intersleep, but a deep, soul-sick weariness, of the sort that comes from too much immersion in Mankind’s talent for corruption. “I’ve accomplished more than you think, sir. In fact, as soon as we’re done here, I’m going to gather everybody together and tell you who killed the Khaajiir.”
The announcement had the effect I’d expected. Jason and Jelaine remained impassively pleasant. Philip started, glanced at them, then turned back to me. “Why not tell us now?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Because if it was just a matter of pointing my finger at one murderer, I would have done so already. But you people have made a much bigger mess than that. Indeed, I suspect that once I name the name, we might find ourselves fighting for our lives.”
He weighed my expression for signs that I was kidding, found none, and said, “But if you get the murderer—”
I rolled my eyes. “The one murderer. The individual who put the Claw of God on the Khaajiir’s back. That one I can name, with something approaching certainty. But hasn’t it long since become clear to you, sir, that this is much larger and much more complex than that? After all, we’re facing a conspiracy capable of obtaining and smuggling exotic weapons, enlisting assassins from other worlds, sabotaging this elevator, and interfering with the priorities of those we would otherwise expect to rescue us. It may involve the cooperation of hundreds or possibly even thousands by the time you’re finished counting, and any ability I might have to provide you with one name out of all that many fails to account for how many others aboard might be sharing at least some responsibility for our predicament.”
Philip shook his head as if mere denial could will the facts out of existence. “But none of these people—”
“Please, sir. Refrain from mentioning the ones you know to be loyal, or from telling me why you believe a conspiracy on that scale to be impossible. I know why you consider it impossible, and as I intend to prove in a few minutes, loyalty’s the very nature of your problem. You may think you control these people, but you’ve allowed somebody else to take the reins.”
That took a second to sink in, but when it did, he rose, his face pink, and his eyes turning into little circles. “You know about—”
“Ever since you’ve gotten your hands on the technology, you’ve treated your key people the same way Magrison treated the innocent young woman who became Dina Pearlman. The technology isn’t exactly the same—if it was, then every affected individual would sport the same kind of chip Mrs. Pearlman wears—but the effect is. You put governors on their minds, making sure they define contentment as loyalty and obedience to you.”
There was a moment of shamed silence.
Jason said, “You’re right, of course. It’s exactly as shameful as you say, but Mrs. Pearlman perfected the current system, involving nanite manipulation of the pleasure centers, in my grandfather’s time. But how did you figure it out?”
I answered him without taking my eyes off Philip. “That was downright easy, compared to some elements of the messy business. I was willing to believe people like Monday Brown and Vernon Wethers forgoing personal lives in exchange for proximity to power; there have always been people like them, in every generation. Arturo bothered me, though; he formed his values and his ambitions somewhere else, and he still jumped at the chance to serve you inside this tin box for years on end, when everything else about his life story indicated a passionate longing for a life near the ocean. It was also suspicious that your family would get its hands on somebody like Dina Pearlman without investigating, and if necessary reverse-engineering the technology that allowed the beast Magrison to command her unconditional loyalty. And even more so when she referenced unspecified ‘other means’ used to control Farley’s vile compulsions.” Still looming over Philip, I swiveled my head and focused my anger on Jason. “But it all came together when Arturo was suiting up for his trip outside the elevator, and you told him, quote, ‘You may think you owe us your allegiance, but you don’t. We forged that debt. Do you understand? It’s all us.’ That’s when I saw what you bastards had done to him and by extension all of these other poor souls who work for you. They’re leashed.”
“Get out of my face,” Philip said.
I glanced at him, as if reminded of his existence, then backed off, giving them all a chance to decide who wanted to offer justifications first.
Jelaine brushed a strand of golden hair away from eyes that had not grown one iota less warm or compassionate during the hostile exchanges of the past few minutes. When she spoke, her voice was mild, her tone entirely free of facile self-justification. “Not all of us approve of the governors, Counselor. Some of us loathe the very idea of them. It’s the main reason my brother and I operate without personal aides, as we told you. We prefer to earn the loyalty of those who work for us.”
“That doesn’t make you innocent of profiting from a system that enslaves people.”
“No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t.”
That stopped me.
She continued. “That system existed before we were born. It didn’t leave me, or Jason, much of a choice over a status quo we were too young and too powerless to change. I never walked away, so you may hate me if you must. But Jason left. He left while he was too young to forge his own way, and paid a terrible price for it. And returning didn’t mean he’d changed his mind. It’s just as I told you before. The two of us intend to change what our family stands for.”
I quoted the rest of what Jelaine had said, on that occasion. “‘And how far the web of family extends.’”
She flashed a secret smile. “Quite so.”
Philip turned in his seat, either not quite understanding what he’d heard or unable to accept it coming from her. She raised her eyebrows at him, not in affront but in mute apology. I don’t think he understood whatever unspoken message she was trying to send. Nor did he receive the answer he needed from Jason, who offered him the same sad, sorry, apologetic look, more loving than confrontational, and more infuriating for that.
Skye still refused to look at me. She was paying attention, but wasn’t sharing what she thought, either about the situation or about me. I ached to wonder if the damage was permanent, but could not afford to, not now, not with the worst looming all around us.
Philip did me the favor of giving me another reason to hate him. He straightened his collar and fixed me with the full weight of his contempt. “You’re very clever, Counselor. And you do enjoy your unearned moral superiority. But you’ve never once considered that people operating at our level might have good reason to for the decisions we make.”
I glared at him. “Such as?”
He looked tired. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that our business model requires us to prevent the human race from exterminating itself?”
“Go on.”
“I can’t say we haven’t profited, but we deal in skills that must be kept out of the hands of monsters like Magrison, or some even worse than him. When we race to acquire dangerous technology, it’s so we can control it, limit the number of governments with access to it, or keep it off the market entirely if we feel it’s too risky to allow even in the context of savage warfare. You don’t know how much we’ve locked up or just thrown away over the years. But if our best people were ever able to consider going into business for themselves, either by seizing control of Xana or by wandering from system to system dispensing our secrets at will—”