Dark Justice

[PREVIOUSLY ON...] In the heart of the Core, with a dying man's light pouring into the dark and the lattice rotting from the outside, Archie Moran found Matteo Ferrara, who had held the Dimensions together for fifteen years. William Cross had come in through a door that Archie's own anger had opened. A keeper was needed. William's mind stood lit like a lamp in the web. Archie had two roads. He chose the one that was nearest.

…

He did not think about it afterward as a decision.

That was what frightened him most, in the long months that followed. There was no moment of weighing. No moment where he stood at the fork in the dark and looked at the two roads and chose, like a man in a story. There was only the sight of a smiling face, and a thin old man sagging into the dust, and a voice in the back of his head, level as a ruled line.

He built this. He sold you. He will sell the rest.

You can end it.

"Matteo," he said.

"Yes?"

"The Guardian rule. How does it work? Exactly."

The silver-ringed eyes opened. They were very tired. "Why?" said Matteo.

"Tell me."

"It binds a mind to a Space. A mind that is present in the lattice, and conscious, and," he coughed, and a thread of light ran from his lips, "and within reach of the Core. The binding must be set by someone who carries the authority."

"Who carries it?"

"The keeper. I. Or one I have named."

"Name me."

A silence.

"Archie," said the old man, slowly. "What are you going to do?"

"What I should have done at the start."

"That is not an answer."

"Please."

Matteo looked at him for a long time. Then, with the air of a man laying down something he has carried too long to look at it, he put out a trembling hand and laid it on Archie's wrist. A bright thread ran from his palm into the skin. It went up the arm like a vein of silver fire. Archie gasped. He felt something open behind his eyes, a hundred small doors, and beyond each of them a different corridor of light.

"There," said Matteo, in a whisper. "You have it. For a little while. Do not use it lightly."

"I won't."

"You will," said the old man, sadly, "but I cannot stop you."

…

William saw him coming.

He had been standing at the pillar with his hands in his pockets, and a look of mild interest on his flickering face. He watched Archie get to his feet. He watched him turn. He saw the silver thread glowing under the skin of his sleeve, and the light in his eyes, and his smile slid by a quarter-inch.

"Ah," he said. "You've been given something."

"Yes."

"May I see?"

"No."

"That's rather rude." William took a step backward. "Come, Archie. Be reasonable. I'm a man of business. I'm happy to discuss the matter. We both want the same thing. Nobody has to be hurt. You'll do what you like, and I'll do what I like, and the Dimension will be quite safe in either case."

"Matteo's dying."

"Is he? Oh, I am sorry."

"He's dying because of you."

"He's dying," said William mildly, "because he was fool enough to sit in a corridor for fifteen years, and I am not responsible for the decisions of other men." He glanced at his watch. It flickered; it was not real. "I do hate to be abrupt. But I have a meeting."

Archie raised his hand.

He had not known what he would do. He had not rehearsed it. But the system answered as the mirror had answered, to the shape of the will behind it, and the lattice of light overhead stirred like the sea under wind. Threads leapt down from the dome. They looped, glittering, round William's arms. They looped his legs, his neck, the long gray length of his coat. For a moment the avatar stood quite still, wrapped in light, with an expression of faint distaste.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"Making you stay."

"Don't be absurd."

"I'm closing the door." Archie's voice was steady. "You wanted the system. You've got it. You'll be its keeper."

For the first time, a flicker of something went across William's face. It was very brief. It was gone in a breath. But Archie, who had spent fifteen years watching men in good suits decide what to do with the people beneath them, knew it for what it was.

It was fear.

…

"No."

It came as a snarl. The pleasant face fell apart. For an instant there was nothing behind it but a white-hot, naked, furious rage, the rage of a man who has never in his life been told that something he wanted was unavailable. The threads strained. The avatar bucked and heaved. It tore at the light with both hands, and the light tore back.

"You can't do this! You don't have the right!"

"I know."

"I'm a person! I've a family! I've a, I have obligations!" The voice rose to a scream. "You'll be killing me! You'll be locking me in a hole in the dark! You'd do that to a man? You, the quiet one, the nice one, the one who apologizes when he's pushed?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you sold us." Archie's own voice shook. "You looked at four dying people, and you saw a line on a balance sheet. You called us assets. You said we'd have died anyway." He swallowed. "You don't have the right to sell people. I'm sorry. I know it's not much of an answer. But it's the one I've got."

"That's not justice, that's murder!"

"Probably."

"You'll regret it!"

"Probably," said Archie again.

He closed his hand.

The threads blazed. The pillar of white fire, which had stood for fifteen years like a lighthouse, roared up to the dome in a column of blinding light, and every cable, green and blue and copper and gold, flared at once. William cried out. It was a high thin sound, like a child's, and it went on and on. The avatar shrank. It folded in on itself, contracting round a core of bright white, and the white drew into the pillar. For a moment a face looked out of the fire, wide-eyed, mouth open, a man in a charcoal suit with his hands against glass.

Then the fire closed.

It was a very quiet sound. It was the sound of a book being shut.

…

The Core steadied.

It did it all at once, with a long indrawn breath, the way a sleeper settles after a nightmare. The gray stain in the web faded. The dome brightened. The threads, which had been rotting, drew taut and shining, and the five cables sang softly in their sockets. The pillar burned on, serene and blue-white and quite empty-looking.

Behind it, in the dark, Matteo drew a deep breath.

His eyes were open. He sat with his palms resting on his knees, and he was breathing, in and out, as a living man breathes. A little color had come to his face. He lifted one hand and looked at it, turning it over, as if he had not seen it before. The light had stopped running into it. It was only a hand.

"I am free," he said wonderingly.

"Yes."

"I can feel my legs."

"They're yours."

"They are." The silver-ringed eyes lifted. They were wet. "Oh, my boy. What have you done?"

Archie did not answer.

He stood with his hand still raised, the silver thread fading slowly from his sleeve. His heart was beating fast and light. He felt, absurdly, as if he had just got off a very fast ride. He felt clean. He felt, in some small cold remote chamber of himself, satisfied.

It was a wonderful feeling.

It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

…

Far away, a man in a dark control room took his hand from a switch.

Luca Ferrara had been counting. He had counted the sixty seconds in his head, as he'd promised, with his thumb on the cutoff and his eyes on the screen. He had counted forty-one. At forty-two the signal had changed. At forty-three, a white point in the heart of the lattice, which had been William Cross's, winked and went still.

"Doctor?" said Otis, in a whisper.

"He's gone," said Luca.

"Gone where?"

"Into the system." The doctor's face was gray. "He is not in the lab. He is not on any terminal. There is a mind in the Core that is not Matteo's, and it is held there by the rule. It is," he groped, "I do not know what it is. It is a keeper."

"Dr. Ferrara, that's—"

"Yes."

"That's William."

"Yes."

Otis stared at the screen. He stood with his clipboard in his hand and his mouth open, and the bright points of the lattice shone in his spectacles.

"Oh, no," he said faintly. "Oh, no. Oh, he did not."

"He did."

"Archie did that?"

"I think so."

"But that's, that means William's, that's forever, that's," Otis seemed to find it difficult to breathe, "that's a life sentence in a box."

Luca said nothing. His hand, which had been on the switch, was shaking.

He had not been able to cut the line. That was the thing. He had sat with his thumb on the cold plastic and thought, one of them must be saved, and he had counted, and he had been, in the end, a coward. He had not chosen. And in his not-choosing, a man had.

"I will go to Matteo," he said.

He stood. His chair rolled back and struck the wall.

"Doctor," said Otis, "what do I do about the, about the other."

"The other?"

"The body." Otis pointed, with a shaking hand, through the glass. In a bed in the corner of the bay, under a white sheet, lay the long motionless form of William Cross, whose mind was somewhere else. "He's still, he's in a coma. His heart's going. Do we, do we let him?"

The doctor looked at it for a long time.

"No," he said at last. "We do not let anyone."

"Then—"

"We tell the truth. All of it. To whoever will listen." He drew a breath. "And we let the law decide what a man owes for what he has done. It is not what he deserves. It is only what we have."

…

A mile from the lab, on a black bridge, a boy in a blue coat stood up from his stool.

He had been watching the gray concrete building since dawn. The windows had been lit for as long as he could remember. And now, as he watched, one by one, from the top floor down, they were going dark. Not in a flicker. Not in a rush. They simply went out, calmly, like the eyes of a creature settling to sleep.

"Rosalind," said Eli.

The fox-faced girl at his elbow looked up.

"It's stopped."

"What has?"

"The humming." He cocked his head. "I never noticed it. It was always there. Like a, like a tooth." He looked at the dark windows. "I think it's finished."

"Is that good?"

"I don't know." The boy thought. "I think someone did something."

"Was it the quiet one?"

"Yes." Eli's eyes were solemn. "But I don't think he's very happy about it."

A wind came down the river and stirred the black glass. And on the far side of the bridge, from the door of the dark building, a man in a torn coverall came out and stood on the step. He held something in his fist, and did not look at it. He looked at the ground. He looked as though he had never been so tired in all his life.