Agents of the Demiurge (5 page)

The man threw a wild punch. Cazzel shifted
his weight to let it pass, then reached for his walking stick. Its
end had a decorative knob carved to look like the face of a smiling
bald man. When he gave that knob a strong pull, it would come off
to reveal the walking stick had a sharpened point. It wasn't a
spear by any means, but it was a weapon. No one harassed the
Creator's Observer without punishment.

His hand on the knob, Cazzel hesitated. His
opponent rolled back on his hips, face red with anger and
humiliation, moving awkwardly. Where his legs should have been,
there were only stumps. The man's deficit had been hidden by
blankets before, but now that his hasty attack had exposed flesh,
his deformity was unmasked for all to see.

Cazzel dropped his walking stick and bent to
study the man. The flesh where his legs ended was covered with
horrid scars. Clearly this was not a defect of birth. The man's
legs had been removed. Recently.

“What happened to your legs?” he asked.

“Leave my village,” the man hissed. “Or I
will say you hit me.”

Cazzel reached for his walking stick, pulled
off its cap, and pressed the sharpened point to the cripple's chin.
“Answer my question or I will do a lot worse than hitting you.”

“Go ahead. Kill me. You will be doing me a
favor.”

Cazzel tilted his head to the side. “Then I
won't kill you. I will do something you want less. The loss of your
legs bothers you. If you don't give me the answers I want, then I
will break more parts of your body.” He poked at the closer of the
man's hands. “I will smash the bones at the back of your hand so
you can never use your fingers again. If that doesn't motivate you,
then I will knock out your teeth so that you can't chew food
properly or sound out all your words. I could take your eyes and
leave you in eternal darkness, or scar your face so that your
family feels horror every time they look on you.”

He smiled at the man. “I want simple answers.
And you want me to go away. To be fair, I will answer your question
first. You asked what manner of wanderer I am. The answer is a very
dangerous one. I am willing to do more violence than anyone you
have ever met. And I don't care if people hate me. I don't even
care if they try to kill me.

“Your turn now. What happened to your
legs?”

The man met Cazzel's gaze with fire in his
eyes. “They were crushed between the stones of the old well.”

“The old well? Did it collapse with you
inside it?”

“It collapsed when we pulled free one of the
blocks lining the shaft. We needed the stones to hold up the walls
of the new well.”

Cazzel nodded, filling in the blanks in his
mind. “Your old well went dry. Because the soil around here is
sandy, you need stone to keep the new well from collapsing. But
there isn't a lot of suitable stone to be found, so you scavenged
from the old well. Somebody – probably you – pulled a stone free in
the wrong order and caused an accident. Is all of that right?”

“Yes, stranger,” the man spat. “All of that
is right.”

“The pain was terrible?”

“Yes.”

“When your people pulled you free, your legs
were useless?”

“Yes.”

“They knew you would die from the wounds
inside, so they cut off your legs and stopped the bleeding with
fire?”

The man shook his head. “No. My people wept
and held me and said their goodbyes. I was ready for death. But
then the strangers came. The White Man said he could save me, and
my mother begged for his help.

The cripple spat on the ground again. “The
strangers took my legs and said I was healed. The life they gave me
is worse than death. I was a hard worker. My village respected me.
Women looked at me. Now every eye that turns my way shows
pity.”

“What were the names of these strangers?”

“The White Man gave the name Tyro, but his
woman called him Hess. The woman was Mara.”

Cazzel smiled. Mara was the name of a village
ten days' travel south. Not a proper woman's name at all, just a
convenient moniker for an Observer. “Her real name was Elza.” He
spoke before he thought through the words.
Real name.
The
concept seemed odd to him. Names were for the pathetic creatures
they observed. Names were things he used and discarded without a
second thought.

But the Observers he followed had names. Hess
and Elza. Labels of convenience, maybe. Maybe something more. Real
name. The name used by people who knew the truth about you. Soon he
would need to choose a name for himself. A name that would follow
him through eternity, persisting in world after world, one known to
the others like him.

“Which way did the strangers go when they
left?”

The man shrugged. “I didn't walk them to the
end of the village.”

Cazzel placed the knob on the end of his
walking stick, hiding his weapon once more. “You don't have to
worry that I will eat the food of your village without working in
return. I am leaving tonight to follow those strangers.”

“Are they your friends?” the cripple
asked.

“I'll figure that out when I meet them.”

He fired Gwen
Furman after setting her up to fail on what should have been a
simple project. Her disgraceful exit from TFK Motors made it
unlikely anyone would ever take her claims about him seriously. Not
long after he took care of Gwen, the company president gave him a
promotion to vice president of logistics, a title created
specifically for him.

Hess suspected the promotion had less to do
with his performance than it did with the fact that he was a member
of the same Church congregation as most of TFK Motor's executives.
Dating Elza had benefits as well. As Theora Winfield, she had an
uncle who was a judge presiding over Customs violation cases in TFK
Motor's jurisdiction and a cousin on the board of Jones Automotive,
their biggest customer. Also, Theora's father lived a life of
leisure, on occasion attending charity events with important
people.

Elza's trust fund managed to make the wealth
Hess had at his disposal appear laughable in comparison. The two of
them rarely had access to so much money. Usually they lived as
migrant workers in the worlds, drifting from place to place, taking
odd jobs and going where whimsy led them. Those were his favorite
times, when they lived by their wits and never knew what would
happen next. In comparison, the steady grind of regular life wore
on him.

As he had for the past two months, Hess left
work early. He had decided that since his performance had far less
of an impact on his job than the quality of his connections, there
was little incentive to put forth effort.

The logistics department essentially ran
itself, anyway. Connections ensured that the Church continued to
use TFK Motors to warehouse and ship its weapons. Connections
prevented any problems with Customs. Connections kept the people on
top where they wanted to be. Meanwhile, those without connections
worked their asses off to feed their families.

Hess reflected on the mess of a world he
inhabited as he drove home. A world he had created, however
indirectly.
Why,
he wondered,
do I create such
worlds?
When the consciousnesses of the twelve Observers merged
to form the Creator, was equal weight given to Erik's desire to
inflict pain as to Hess's opinions on how the world could be
improved to benefit the people? Did the Creator engineer misery
into His blueprints?

If that was the case, then maybe the religion
of Deispite had a point. Maybe the Creator
was
evil. Hess
ground his teeth. Could everything wrong with the succession of
sorry worlds be placed at the feet of a twisted Observer's
obsession with spite and hatred?

Erik had tormented him the previous
Iteration. Threatened to hunt him through eternity. Two Iterations
ago, Ingrid had led the group of Observers that buried him and Elza
alive, leaving them to beat their fists against the insides of
stone sarcophagi for centuries.

The other Observers were a problem for more
than just him. Their apathy and self-righteous hatred tainted every
world they created, bringing billions of individuals into lives
purposefully filled with pain. For that, they deserved the hatred
directed at them by the Church of Opposition.

When he arrived home, Hess began preparing an
elaborate meal. He removed a flank steak from a vinegar-based
marinade he had improvised and preheated the oven. With economical
motions, he went about cutting sweet potatoes into fries. Cooking
was a calming ritual for him. It combined simple tasks with the
freedom for nearly unlimited variability. When the fries were cut,
Hess pulled a tub of rendered duck fat from the fridge and tossed a
portion of it into a skillet to heat up.

Elza's parents were coming over for a late
dinner. She had suggested eating out, but Hess needed the outlet
cooking provided. Despite what everyone in the community assumed
about Elza's frequent overnight stays, precious little happened
that Hess would consider an outlet.

Whatever consumed Elza left no room for the
two of them. It was worse than the stretch in Iteration one hundred
and four when she had despaired that they had already witnessed all
the variety that humanity had to offer. Everything he had said to
comfort her then had driven her further from him until it
culminated in a year-long separation. When she had finally
returned, Elza had told him that even if the people never did
anything new, she thought there were further insights they could
discover.

This time, he didn't know what problem
haunted Elza. She wasn't sharing and he knew better than to
push.

Hess pulled a bag of fresh green beans from
the fridge and drizzled walnut oil onto a pan. While the oil
heated, he pulled a pomegranate from the fridge and prepared it
with deft strokes of a paring knife. The meal he had devised
consisted of a salad topped with pomegranate and a balsamic
vinaigrette, then a medium rare flank steak with a side of sweet
potato fries and sauteed green beans, with a dessert created from
frozen banana slices.

Before he could start cooking the green
beans, a knock at the door interrupted him. Hess wiped his hands
before going to the door and peeking through the eye hole. On the
other side, a waif-thin white woman waited. Her faded eyes flashed
to the eye hole, no doubt noticing movement there, then rapidly
moved on, taking in detail after detail in a meticulous
fashion.

Hess felt his lip curl into a snarl.
Observer.
He yanked the door open, seized the waif by an
arm, and pulled her into his house. As she swung past him, Hess
looped his other arm around her neck. A combination of her momentum
and his rapid shoulder roll snapped the woman's spine.

Hess closed his front door and dragged the
Observer's body to his basement before she could resurrect.

People took one
look at him and melted into the background. His stocky build didn't
have much to do with it. The somber cap of the Investigator's Corps
scared people all by itself. In theory, Investigators couldn't
violate the rights of a citizen without the prior approval of an
elected judge. The restrictions were even greater for Deputy
Investigators like him. But the power of his office made the rules
nice and elastic.

Of course, it wasn't all rainbows. The world
was four months old and he had yet to entice the ugly truth free of
one of the pathetic creatures. He liked to start every Iteration
with a creative interrogation. Last time he had combined two of his
favorite methods: silence and chemistry.

The silence really messed with the people.
Turned the torture up a notch. His first victim last Iteration had
been a sinewy biker with steely eyes and a chiseled face. A tough
bastard. For the first hour, at least. Then the threats and manly
curses gave way to pleading and questions.
Why are you doing
this? What did I do to you? Why won't you say anything?
That
man had not particularly enjoyed having pepper spray squirted into
his eyes.

Erik's lips twitched towards a smile. He had
broken that man by dribbling a solution of water and lye over one
of his feet until the skin melted off of him into a gory puddle.
Lye always ended the game quicker than Erik liked, but watching the
horrified
reactions of the people to their liquefied flesh
never got old.

Four months. Every day, at least one of the
people did something to draw his attention. Acted tough on a street
corner. Dressed fancy. Talked too loud. Littered. Tried to use
expired coupons at the checkout line. Walked alone at night. Smiled
at him.

Unfortunately, he was too busy playing choir
boy to take care of business. The religion of Deispite somehow
managed to intertwine his favorite things with the biggest flaws of
the people. Torture and murder were permitted; scrutiny and
intimidation outright encouraged. But then there were the
rules
. Arbitrary ordinances for everything.

Of course, that was hardly a surprise when
the religion itself was built on hatred of the Creator and all
existence. Erik thought it was the first religion of the people to
embrace their deepest secret. He had known for a long time what
these pathetic creatures thought of their lives. They hated
themselves, their world, and the grand entity who had made it all.
At least the people of the Church admitted they hated existence.
Their nihilistic attempts to rise above their self-hatred were more
amusing than annoying. For now. Once he no longer needed them to
hunt Hess, that might change.

Erik wore an army surplus jacket with his
current last name, Wilson, embroidered onto the fabric above his
chest pocket. The uniform, plus the high rate of Investigators with
a military background, caused a lot of people to assume he had
served. Some of his fellow deputies didn't care for his
presumption, but none of them had bothered him since the first
called him out. Apparently, even the toughest guys on the
investigation team didn't like someone stalking their family
members.