Eden's Jester (18 page)

“I didn’t have anything to do with the auto industry.”
 

“I wasn’t accusing you, Elson. I was just making conversation. How are you?”
 

Her eyes found mine.

“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
 

Her eyes searched mine. For the second time I felt naked under someone’s gaze.
 

“Well, you’ve been sitting here for hours staring at your hands. And you’re not writing on napkins, so I know you’re not brainstorming. But the lack of coffee was the clue that gave it away. So, why doesn’t Elson tell Jill what’s troubling him in these strange times?”

Her eyes glowed with the reflection of passing cars. The grey streak in her black hair shone. I wondered how much trouble this girl had ever really seen in her life. She was honest, kind, and caring. She was what this whole thing was about. People like her multiplied goodness in others. She spent herself serving others, as did Captain Richard, whom I had killed only a few days ago—he and his crew. I wondered how many more like her I’d kill before I figured out my place in this world. I could see that as clear as day, now that Aello was part of me. It was her gift to me.
 

“The betrayal of a friend,” I said.
 

She leaned back and studied me for a moment. “Who has betrayed you, Elson?”

I was about to tell her all about Aello. But the words wouldn’t come. Finally, all I could say was, “I really don’t know who betrayed whom, anymore.”

“Change of venue,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ve changed. I think you’ve had a change of venue,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, right when we’re most busy going about our lives, something unexpected happens that forces us to see things from another point of view. Yesterday, you looked out that window and saw traffic. Today, you see people. Change of venue.”

She was right. It seemed I had underestimated her.
 

“I don’t know what to do anymore. Things are getting crazy, even for me,” I said. I had chosen to side with the Patron, but somehow I was still alone. Now more so than ever.

Her hand covered mine. It was as warm as her smile. I felt compassion there. Not the polite stranger kind of compassion, but the deep concern of a worried
friend. I resisted the urge to look into her soul. I never had done that. For some reason I had respect for Jill’s privacy.
 

“Silly Elson. You never know what to do. But you always do it anyway. Listen to that little voice deep down in your heart. It was given to you for a reason.”

I knew which voice she was talking about. It was the one that was always trying to kill me. But I wasn’t going to ruin her romantic notion about my suicidal conscience.
 

“What’s that voice telling you now, Elson?” she asked.

“It’s telling me I’m an idiot. But it always says that. It never liked me much.” Okay. So she should know the truth.

She stood up and walked behind me. “You are an idiot. But you’re my idiot.” She kissed the top of my head. “Sitting here isn’t going to make any more sense of your troubles,” she said quietly. “It sounds like you have too many balls in the air. Maybe it’s time to bring some of them down.”

Normally, when I was at such a loss as to how to continue, I would induce a bit of havoc in some prince’s pet project and see what popped out. It was my modern version of casting the bones. But there was plenty of havoc out there.
 

As Jill had innocently pointed out, Melanthios was busy with radioactive rain, Aeson was busy with hot lava, and plenty of tension was building in everyone’s backyard. Those were some pretty big bones. Diomedes was still held hostage, Aello was out of the picture, and Death was keeping a low profile. Really, the more I thought about it, the more everything seemed to be right where I wanted it. This was the time to sit back and watch the fun. That’s what I would normally do. But I couldn’t do that. Not anymore. Diomedes needed to be freed, Aello needed to be restored, and Death needed a wedgie. And on top of everything else, there was still the small matter of whatever Aeson was really up to.
 

The best thing I could do was to free Diomedes and have him do some explaining. It was a safe bet that he was being held in Chile. That’s why I sent Borse to mess with the place. Right about now, things should be just crazy enough for me to be able to slip in unnoticed. Check things out.
 

I made my way through the ether and approached a town at the foot of one of the until-recently-inactive volcanoes. The place was a scene right out of a bad disaster movie. Soldiers were busy putting out fires and evacuating people. Ash fell like grey snow as peasants ran about, carrying whatever they could.
 

I scanned the area for any trace of Engineer activity. They’d be here. You could bank on it.

Even though Chile was a bastion of Chaos, that didn’t mean Chaos preferred mayhem and destruction. They commonly used disasters to thin the herd, but they didn’t do so arbitrarily. Like Law, they wanted the world to grow into its full stature. But conflict, struggle, competition, and suffering were their favorite teachers and trainers of men. No pain no gain.

Law promoted the “clean living” approach. Let’s all get along, get together, and get in line.

I could feel Aello’s influence on my thinking. Chaos looked less appealing to me than it did yesterday. But I knew better. Things weren’t that simple. Chaos Engineers would be here to help their people navigate this disaster just as if it was of their own making.

Sure enough, they were easy to spot. Two busy little beavers scurried about, flitting between the ethereal and the prime material planes, helping contain the mayhem. I could tell which of the two was the senior Engineer: he was the one who pointed a lot.
 

I waited. I watched.

After a while, they split up and began to leave. I picked the leader and followed him. He moved slowly, scanning the wreckage as he went. I tried to keep a safe distance between us, but it was difficult. Spatial judgment was tough in the ethereal plane. Its close proximity to the prime material plane meant that it was hard to discern which plane things were actually in. Sometimes a tree existed in both places at once. Sometimes only its shadow was here.
 

We meandered through valleys and around hills until we came to a sharp chasm. The Engineer descended into it without hesitation. Even in the ethereal plane, the cliff walls blocked my view. I hesitated. This would be a great place for an ambush. Just in case, I drew some ash from the air and forced it to come with me. I then constructed defensive walls around my will and powered them with the ash. My new trick was proving to be very useful. Once everything was in place, I followed with the ash swirling about me like a grey tornado.

Sure enough, as soon as I had descended a short way into the darkness, I was ambushed. They had suckered me into a two-on -one Psychic Duel.
 

The attack was coordinated and neat. One sent needle-like bursts of suggestion in time with the other’s attempts to dismantle my defensive walls. It was an effective means of conquering another’s will. Luckily, I was prepared. These goons could only handle ambient energy, which was considerable. It could be used to crush a German-made car without a second thought. But the energy within matter was in a different class, and I was now able to handle more of it than ever before.
 

I got the rhythm of their attacks and waited for the right moment. When it came, I yelled a psychic blast at the Engineer working on my defenses. He’d be the weaker of the two. Expecting me to be completely tied up defending myself, he wasn’t ready. His defenses were meager, and collapsed instantly. I sent another ash-enhanced blast to finish him off. He went catatonic.

The other Engineer, sensing he was now alone and outclassed, attempted to run. But that’s not easy. Running and defending at the same time is a tough skill to master. It took me centuries to get good at it. I pounced on this rookie and tore through his defenses with the ferocity that I’d learned from Aello. Or was it Legion? In no time, the Chaos Engineer was limp in my hands.
 

I roughed him up a little. After psychically smacking him around to ensure that he was completely subdued, I began the interrogation.
 

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Koenk,” he said.

“Good. Koenk, you’re going to tell me some things.”

“Yes.”

“Where is the prison in this domain?”

“On West Falkland Island.”

“What?”

“On West Falkland Island.”

“Yeah. I heard that. But, Koenk, the Falkland Islands aren’t part of Chile. They’re not even part of Argentina. They’re part of the United Kingdom. So how can the prince of Chile have his prison in the prince of the UK’s domain?”

“I don’t know.”

Well, that was a fine how-do-you-do. It was possible that the prince of the UK didn’t know about the prison, but unlikely. It was also possible that the prince of the UK didn’t know that Diomedes was his guest, but also unlikely. That meant that Melanthios and his good friend Sancrotos, the prince of the UK, weren’t as close as Melanthios thought. It also meant that Sancrotos must effectively control Chile, a known bastion of Chaos, which is why Aeson didn’t go after the UK for his little development. This was further evidence that Aeson’s plan was malignant. With North America weakened, the UK would be the top of the West again. Finally, it meant that by sending Borse against Chile, I had inadvertently declared war on the UK.
 

Nice.

This kind of thing was exactly why I didn’t buy the party line about the Designers and the Doctrines. If a prince of Law would betray his most faithful ally, you couldn’t trust anybody.
 

The Doctrines stated that we were to cooperate in the Endeavor. The Preceptors, the godfathers of Engineering, said that these Doctrines came directly from the Designers who built this world, wound it up, and let it go with only us to guide it. Well, if that was true, then the Preceptors were incompetent boobs. The Three Stooges themselves couldn’t have made such a mess of this place. I didn’t believe for a second that beings of such age, power, and experience would be blind to these schemes.
 

No, the Preceptors knew what was going on. They allowed it. For all I knew, they encouraged it. And I sure didn’t see their shiny butts stepping in to clean things up.
 

If the Schism extended all the way to the top, to the ranks of the Preceptors themselves, then that made even less sense. These guys met with the Designers face to face—in the beginning. They supposedly worked together for eons, before the Designers buggered out for some other world. The confusion concerning their intentions, the confusion that had caused the Schism, could not have existed at that time. So why does it exist now. Why the Schism? There was more going on than they were letting on.
 

My newly ordered mind--okay, so it was only slightly new and only a smidgen more orderly--resisted the temptation to leave it at that. To simply say that more information was required to understand what was going on was irresponsible. I had a purpose, though I didn’t understand it. But I had always tried my best to do the right thing, though, not everyone agreed with my judgment concerning matters of righteousness. I was forcing myself into a corner. It was possible that some reason was out there that made sense of all this. But I couldn’t continue with that hole in my world view. I had to make a decision and proceed from there. It would probably be wrong, but as usual it was all I had. Only one thing occurred to me that would explain the behavior of the Preceptors--
rebellion
. One, some, or all of them, were rebelling against the Designers, and the current state of affairs was the result.
 

I believed the Designers existed. To think that we, along with this world, were a purely natural phenomena spontaneously generated over time, was possible but far too unlikely.
 

Again, I was pushed into a corner. How could beings such as the Designers, capable of such creative acts as these, not have seen rebellion in the highest ranks as possible, even inevitable?
 

As far as I could see, there were only three options: the Designers didn’t care, the Designers were incompetent, or the Designers had planned for it. Only the third possibility held any hope. And since I was such a nice guy, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. Okay, so I’m jaded and cynical. Choosing to proceed on either of the first two possibilities led nowhere but into the ditch. But by choosing to proceed on the third, I would be justified in rejecting the Preceptors, since they couldn’t be trusted. I could reject the Doctrines, as they were a product of the Preceptors, and there was no proof that the Designers ever ordained them. I would reject both Law and Chaos, as they were simply manifestations of the Preceptors’ attempts to either follow or subvert the will of the Designers. It was impossible to tell which, if either, of the two warring philosophies truly represented the intentions of the Designers.
 

My loyalties would lie outside this whole scheme of things. I would be a free agent.