[SG] A View Of Genocide: The Ballad of Richard Less #4 (2/2)

[Whistling in the Dark]

[And this, on the other hand, is Side Two]


October 20, 2007
The Combat Zone
Boston, Massachusetts


     "So, we have a first move and that's great," the chick was saying. I
was smoking one of the Kamel Reds she had brought back. I think they were
her way of trying to get under my skin, what since they had a Commie thing
going on. I knew full well that all Camels were turkish tobacco blended with
good old American Virginian, so I guess the joke was on her. "The question
is, who's pulling the strings."
     "You're not ready for that," I said.
     "What, it'll make our heads explode?"
     I chuckled. "You have no fucking idea. And if I told you, you'd screw
this up. In time, young Padawan. In time."
     "All right, so we start with the suppliers. Do you know--"
     "You know, I'm a little sick of this," the chick cut in.
     "Cairi--" the kid said, reaching to put a hand on her shoulder.
     "No, I mean it," she snapped, shaking the dead kid's hand off. "You
know everything we need to know, don't you? You know where the suppliers
are. You know who's feeding them. You know who's turning a blind eye to
*them.* You know who's calling the shots. You've got the whole thing worked
out already, don't you? *Don't* you?"
     I half-smiled. "Yup."
     "Then tell us. No more fucking around." The word was harsh on her lips.
Not like mine. When I say 'fuck' it's just noise. When she says it, it's
what they used to call it -- a *curse* word.
     "Yeah, I'm gonna take a pass."
     "I'm not kidding, Less." Her hair began to smolder. "You know what I
did while I was waiting in line for your *stupid* cigarettes?"
     "Hey, you picked them out."
     "I pulled out my L-Phone, and I websurfed. I looked up Radian. The
second one. *Your* Radian."
     "Cairi--" the dead kid said again.
     "Roger, *shut up,*" she snapped, her skin catching fire as her true
form grew out of the fake flesh. Her wings burned. Her body seemed almost to
swell with the flames. Make no mistake, Incandescence is a *startling* sight
-- and a beautiful one.
     On the whole, there are worse ways to die.
     I took another puff off my cigarette. "Don't be overly dramatic," I
said. "You're going to call attention to this place."
     "Good!" she snapped. "Let the fire department come! Let the police
come! Let them find the most wanted war criminal of the twentieth century!"
     "*Cairi!* The pact binds us! If we out him, he outs us!"
     "Then let's make sure he can't out anybody," she said, moving forward.
And let's not kid ourselves. She was ready to kill me. That fucking sword of
fire was forming in her hand and everything.
     I laughed.
     "You think this is *funny?*"
     "Yup. I do." I finished my cigarette, and pulled it from the holder. I
dropped it to the floor and stepped on it, turning my foot.
     "I'm tired of you underestimating me, Richard Less," she said, her
voice echoing with something extra. Power, maybe. Or authority.
     Or judgement.
     "You want to know something funny?" I said, taking out another
cigarette. "I'm serious. This is hysterical." She watched as I fixed the
cigarette in the holder. "One of the earlier things we did during -- what
did Nouveau Skunk call that damn book again? Oh yeah, one of the things we
did in the hundred and fifty days of American Authority? We rounded up the
people who'd give us the most trouble if we left them free."
     "You did a lot worse than that," she snarled, the fires growing hotter.
     "Maybe. But here's the thing. I approved the lists, when it came to
real prominent Americans. The ones who would be *embarrassing* if they came
out against us. We left some of them to do dumb ass protests -- Sean Penn.
Tim Robbins. That fat fuck Moore. We controlled what the people heard, so
there was no fucking reason not to let them try to make a difference. The
people brave enough or dumb enough to help them or cheer for them we could
tag.
     "But there were plenty of celebrities and influential people who could
do a lot of damage if we weren't careful. Cultural movers and shakers.
People who were quiet instead of stupid loud. And some of them were kids."
     I looked into her flames somewhere near her eyes as I spoke. The
sunglasses meant that I didn't have to squint. "There was this one girl.
Mostly did family movies, but she was kind of the poster child for the young
goth movement at the time, and she was in the middle of staging a breakout.
We let her finish filming this one thing with Kevin Kline and Sigourney
Weaver. Depressing as fuck thing, but it was full of sex and the seventies
and it marked her and there were rumors and she wasn't a fan of American
Authority, so we talked about bringing her in."
     The chick didn't say a word. I know she was remembering spending that
same block of time down at the center of the Earth with the rest of them, or
coming up and fighting in the war.
     "Here's the thing. She crossed a line or two. Kids, right? Only there
was a value in making examples of kids. And so we had to consider what
response to make. In some cases, we killed them. In others we didn't. And I
usually was the one to make that call." I shrugged. "What the Hell -- I was
damned anyway."
     "Why are you telling me this?" she asked, her voice full of something.
Fire maybe.
     "'Cause here's the thing. I know -- on one level -- that all that's a
rewrite. When you came back with a new name and identity, your old one got
rewritten too, and so now she's in fucking 'Prozac Nation.' But on another
level, the powers that be could have closed the books on the discontinuity
right there, so when you came back there wouldn't be someone else living in
your old life. Only they didn't. I remember deciding that she didn't deserve
to die. And I seriously fucking doubt she ever came closer to death."
     "None of this matters," she hissed.
     "Of course it matters," I said. "Don't you get it. I'm responsible for
her surviving the war. So when you came back you had no place of your own to
fit in." I leaned closer. "If you kill me... will it be justice for my
victims? Will it be vengeance for your friend Danielle? Or will it be
personal -- because I screwed up your life."
     "It could be all three," she whispered.
     "No, it really can't. You're divine fire. You've got an Angel's wings
now. If you sully that with your own petty revenge then you're spitting on
your mandate and your mission." I reached out, and pressed the cigarette end
to the halo of fire surrounding her sword. I drew it back and took a puff.
"So, gonna cut my head off now? Or just burn me to a pulp?"
     She stared at me for a long moment, before flaring back into her human
form. She walked out of the room, back rigid.
     The dead kid looked at me for a long moment, and then ran after her.
     I took another puff off my cigarette. "Mm," I murmured. "God roasted
for great flavor."

                              * * * * * *

December 19, 1997
Shoshoni Center
Shoshoni, Wyoming


     Less hung up the phone, smiling slightly. "And that's just about that,"
he murmured.
     "Is it, then?"
     Less froze, and turned.
     Egoiste was sitting in an easy chair. Less's apartment was moderately
comfortable, though of course it wasn't as nice as the Queen's Bedroom had
been. It was interior, as most of the Shoshoni Center's rooms were, but it
had full spectrum lighting which right now was dimmed, in recognition of the
early hour.
     "Jesus," Less murmured. "How long have you been sitting there?"
     "Long enough," Egoiste said, smoothly taking his feet with the grace of
a dancer.
     "Look, I don't know what you think you're--"
     "You've got Scholarman." Egoiste's smile was small. Predatory.
     Less felt his guts turn to ice.
     "You've got Scholarman, when you've been very careful not to tell too
many people who he is. Or why he's important." Egoiste's lips curled more.
"You don't want us to know you have him. You don't want us to know he's the
reason Oracle's lost her veracity. Almost certainly, you have your little
friends developing a carefully designed false lead, which you will
'resolve.' Oracle's predictions will become accurate again. We will follow
her path to total victory. And then *you* will use Scholarman to break
Oracle's abilities, letting you use Radian to eliminate us." Egoiste's smile
broadened. "Do I have the gist of it, Richard Less?"
     Less's heart pounded, but his body was relaxed. He half-smiled.
Egoiste's reactions were a thousand times faster than Less's, and he would
be expecting an attack. Assuming he lived for the next eight minutes, he
would need to get one of the aerosols. No reflexes let you dodge your own
lungs. It was still more likely Egoiste would live and Less would die, but
he'd take some chance over no chance any day of the week.
     The trick was surviving for those eight minutes. "That sounds overly
complex," he said smoothly. "Inelegant. If I were going to--"
     Egoiste snorted.
     "What's funny."
     "You. 'Inelegant.' I have to admit, Mister Director, you're good. You
know exactly what buttons to push. You understand me well enough to use your
words like judo, distracting me and keeping me off balance while you speak."
Egoiste leaned forward with a small smile. "But I also know you, Mister
Director. I know that your plans have always had a certain... complexity to
them. Whenever you can, you like to have contingencies built into
intricacies with no one piece of the puzzle knowing anything about any
other. If anything, using Scholarman to destroy us is almost too *simple*
for the way your brain works."
     Less shrugged. "When all you've got is conversational judo, you might
as well get good at it. So, how does this work. Do you stab me through the
eye and walk out the door? Do you dance around me making me suffer while I
slowly panic and then die? Do we do this all 'to the pain' and you quote
overplayed movies to me? Or do I get to be paraded in front of the whole
crew and decapitated?"
     Egoiste's smile grew coy. He leaned back -- seemingly in an awkward
position. Less knew better. Egoiste wasn't capable of being in an awkward
position. "I'm trying to figure out if you're brave, resigned, or have some
trump card I haven't anticipated."
     "Does it have to be just one of the three? I like to keep my options
open." Less realized he was calm. Calmer than he'd been back in that
dirtpile hotel in Wisconsin.
     Egoiste smiled a bit more. "I want to meet this Scholarman."
     Less arched an eyebrow. "Going to go straight to killing him? I should
mention that's a bad idea. We don't know a lot about why he breaks fate, but
the smart money says the ability will jump randomly into the population when
he's sanctioned. It might take us months or years to identify the new X
factor if that's the case."
     "I'm not going to kill him, Mister Director. I just want to talk to
him." Egoiste sounded amused.
     "On the other side of it, he *is* a mage. While I can't imagine there's
anything he could do to hurt you, magic's a weirdass--"
     "He's also not going to kill *me,* Mister Director. Nor even turn me
into a frog." Egoiste leaned forward again. "We should get going."
     Less's brain went ping, and the pieces clicked. "You want to make sure
you know where he is," he said. "And you want to keep him on ice for your
*own* purposes."
     "It's no secret the original, true Unimaginable League Amoral has
little love for the Secondaries," Egoiste said smoothly. "They have made our
victory both possible and assured, but they lack our vision. They lack our
bond. They *lack,* Mister Less. Certainly, having a trump card of our own,
ready to remove Oracle, is no bad thing."
     "Oh, *certainly.*" Less grabbed his coat. "So, I drive you out there,
and then you stab me in the parking lot? It's probably smarter to have me
drive out into the desert instead. You wouldn't want anyone to figure out
where the safe--"
     "Don't be ridiculous, Mister Director. I'm not going to kill you."
     "Well, that's a relief. I don't believe you, mind, but it's still a
relief." He stepped into the hall, Egoiste falling him. Less's shoulder
blades itched as he waited for the sword to hit.
     "Believe what you will, Mister Director. But the time for
circumspection is at hand."
     That at least was true. If Less survived the next two hours, he'd want
to keep Scholarman's abilities as under wraps as possible under the
circumstances. And the longer Egoiste kept Less alive, the more options Less
had to extend that lifespan.
     It wasn't hard to get to the carport. The soldiers waved them through
easily enough. And then Wyoming stretched before them -- desolate and
abandoned. Less was driving. Egoiste was riding shotgun. It was the first
time Less had actually driven a car since Newfoundland.
     "I'm a little surprised it's in driving distance," Egoiste said,
mildly.
     "It's the nature of a tactical weapon," Less said. "If you can't reach
it to pull the trigger, you might as well not spend the R&D money on it in
the first place. You'd be surprised how many government stockpiles there are
out there, way too far away to ever be useful in any of the scenarios they
were dreamed up for."
     "That's the nature of a bureaucracy, isn't it?" Egoiste looked out the
window. "It's why we would have beaten Lady Awe-Inspiring in the end, you
know."
     "What, your little toga wearing cheat code wasn't the reason?"
     "She was an asset -- but the true victory would have come from our
methodology. With Geneva providing coordination among all our forces, we
have almost no need for bureaucracy in our decisionmaking."
     "Seems to me we've been keeping a lot of records."
     "Records, yes. Data to analyze. But the day we make a decision, our
commanders know instantly. Our troops begin to move. The bits of Geneva that
are near the necessary supplies give those supplies to the bits of Geneva
that will drive them to where the bits of Geneva can assemble and use them.
Lady Awe-Inspiring is smarter than we are, and her authority is absolute,
but when she issues commands they must go through the chains of command. Her
subordinates must interpret her orders, and shape them. Tactical information
must filter its way up. Lieutenants who want to curry favor conveniently
forget to mention details to their rivals, and everyone keeps paper trails
as obsessively as they burn them." Egoiste shook his head. "There was no way
we could lose."
     "So why are we having our asses handed to us in Missouri and Nevada?"
     "It's different for the heroes. They're fast and flexible when bringing
their power to bear. The Allied troops are almost always partisans or small
forces. Andy Awesome lays out a strategy, but the troops on the ground
figure out how to accomplish it. They are Lady Awe-Inspiring's opposite."
     "And we can't compete with that?"
     "We could grind it into dust, Mister Director." He looked back. "But we
are also contending with Lady Awe-Inspiring, and the reliance on Oracle
allowed the Allies to traumatize our forces."
     "Yeah, I think I caught that in one or two meetings."
     "But that will change, soon enough." Egoiste leaned back in his seat.
"We will put Scholarman on ice. Oracle's predictions will return to their
accurate state. She will tell us what terrible prices must be paid to forge
victory. And with the speed of Geneva's thoughts, we will pay them. The
Allies will crumble. The Lady's forces will die on the field. The world will
be ours. And then...."
     "And then?"
     Egoiste was quiet.
     "So when do I die in all this, anyway? After you take out the
Secondaries? At that point, Oracle will be dead anyway, right? You won't
need Scholarman any more, and then I'm just--"
     "It wasn't supposed to be like this," Egoiste murmured.
     "Excuse me?"
     "We were always destined to rule the world," Egoiste said, just as
softly. "Always. Our innate superiority would inevitably lead to victory. It
wasn't supposed to be this kind of bloodbath, Mister Director. It wasn't
supposed to involve all these psychotic *children.* This wasn't what we
meant to do." He turned to look at Less. "Do you understand me?"
     Less felt his heart lurch. Decades of government service in the darkest
recesses of the wildest of conspiracy theories had given him a good sense of
when he was on dangerous ground. Egoiste didn't reveal openings. He never
exposed himself -- never allowed vulnerabilities. No matter what Anthony
DuMarque said, the wrong word now would mean never leaving the car.
     And just as suddenly, Less was sick of it. Sick of 'conversational
judo.' Sick of double talk and lies and mollifying assets and playing three
games to hide your fourth. "Of course I understand you," he snapped. "I went
to college."
     Egoiste frowned. "What do you mean?"
     "I mean that's the shit you say when you're twenty years old and you
still believe the hype. I mean everyone grows up ready to change the world
-- their lives would be different! *They* would be different! Not like their
parents or their teachers or the politicians or the businessmen. Not like
the commies or the right wing nutjobs or the forty-one year olds who never
did shit with their lives -- it was going to be *different.* It was
*inevitable.*"
     Egoiste sat up, crouched slightly. His lip was curled. This wasn't what
he wanted to hear. "And you think your petty little adolescent--"
     "Oh Jesus Christ, grow *up.* Petty? Petty isn't wanting to change the
world when you're twenty. Petty is throwing a fucking tantrum at *thirty
three* that causes the death of millions, wreaks untold havoc across six
continents and then hiding behind '*it wasn't supposed to be like this!*' It
doesn't *matter* what you *wanted.* What matters is what you *did.* The rest
of us graduated from college or got jobs and figured out that our 'innate
superiority' didn't mean shit when you had to buy groceries or pay the
fucking phone bill! The rest of us lived in the real world, and accepted
that maybe, just maybe we were *full of shit in college.* But not you guys!
No no! No matter how many times CalForce or the ALU pounded you into jelly
you kept insisting that your victory was 'inevitable,' right up to the point
where you started the biggest fucking bonfire in history and threw society
into it!"
     "You helped us set that fire," Egoiste said softly. Dangerously.
     "You're God Damn Right I did! That's what I *do!* Because I gave up
dumbass idealism before you ever crawled out of that shithole village you
and your sister came from! I served my country -- I helped do what needed to
be done, because it's never the way it's 'supposed' to be -- it's the way it
*is,* and it doesn't matter what you *want.* All that matters is if you
*win.*"
     Egoiste didn't say anything. Less felt his heart pounding in his chest.
He was curiously exhausted -- like something had broken loose and taken all
his energy out of him. He wasn't entirely sure when he'd pulled to the side
of the road, but he had. It was almost unreal -- staring out at grey desert
sands and the strange rock formations of the Wyoming landscape.
     Egoiste reached over to the pack of cigarettes that Less had slipped in
the dashboard slot under the radio. He withdrew one, and offered it to Less.
     Less accepted, lighting it from his lighter in a fluid motion. He took
a deep drag, then looked up at the ceiling of the car and breathed the smoke
out. He felt light headed.
     "Those will kill you, one of these days," Egoiste said, his voice still
soft.
     "Tell me something I don't already know."
     "I thought you knew everything, Mister Less."
     "I thought I did too, once." He took another puff. "Do you get that? I
believed my own hype once."
     "And what happened?" Less asked, softly.
     "Lars MacPherson went off the reservation."
     "Surely that wasn't your fault."
     "Surely it was." Less took another puff. "See, we didn't make him for
spandex and crimefighting. We made him to sneak into Belarus and do a fast
jig. We made him so we wouldn't have to repeat Napoleon's mistakes. We made
him so we didn't have to have a land war in Asia and we didn't have to lob
missiles back and forth and we *didn't* have to give Mother Russia
justification to retaliate. We made him to win the Cold War, nuke the
Ruskies back to the stone age, and let Freedom Ring all over the world."
     "So what happened?"
     "Peace broke out. The Soviet Union collapsed." Less took another drag
-- longer this time. "We won," he said, his words a cloud of smoke.
     "Why was that so bad?"
     "Because we were sitting on a weapon for a war we'd already won. We'd
devoted you don't want to know how much money to his training, his
development, to creating him. Years, Kilohertzmann and people like him spent
raising the punk, teaching him Patriotism on Tuesday and strapping C-4 to
him on Thursday." Less took another drag, and then another -- smoking faster
now. "And now we didn't have a theater for him."
     "But surely you hadn't been the head of that project all those years.
You're not that old. And--"
     "I wasn't." Less looked at the burning ember on the cigarette.
"Kilohertzmann wanted to keep him. Move him from place to place, hidden from
view, officially stockpiling him against some unknown new foreign power, but
really 'cause he loved that kid like a son. Robert Unethical was pragmatic.
MacPherson was an asset in the Cold War, and now he was a potential
liability in peacetime. He wanted to put a bullet in the kid's brain and
bury him in a lead coffin."
     Egoiste didn't say anything.
     "I told them -- hey, look. With all the money we've put into this, we
should take the offensive. Retrain him, much as we could. Put a cape on his
containment suit and call it a costume. Send him out to fight crime. Pay off
the peace dividend by bringing overwhelming tactical superiority to bear
against supervillains who threw pizza slices at their enemies."
     "You made him Dangerousman."
     "And then he went and got married. He blew up fucking Washington D.C. I
was wrong. I thought I knew what he would do, but I didn't." Less took the
last puff off the cigarette, tasting the bitter smoke as the fire hit the
filter, then throwing it out the window. "That's where it all started.
Wonder Grunion. Ramrod. Harxxon. Radian. Bulletproof. Thomas Kim. Karina
Selanova. Before then, when some project I was part of got all fucked up? I
was always the one who'd warned them. I never personally screwed the pooch.
After MacPherson fucked me, it never seemed to fucking stop." Richard Less
looked at Egoiste. "Not until I figured it out."
     "Figured what out, Mister Director?"
     "That I don't fucking know everything. That I can't know everything.
That I *won't* know everything. And that the shit I didn't know would bite
me in the ass. Once I got that in my brain, I stopped losing."
     "Until the collapse of the Mega Intelligence Bureau?"
     Less shrugged. "I warned them. They didn't listen. Just like I warned
you. I told you to kill Dreamweaver, but you didn't do it. I told you to
keep the American forces bolstered, but you didn't do it. I told you to
treat Oracle as fallible, but you didn't do it. Mister DuMarque, you are one
of the deadliest people on the planet, and you are not known for your
patience with insubordination or insolence. It would be stupid as fuck to
tell you 'I told you so,' but God, Elvis, Satan and Fox damn it all to
Graceland I *fucking* *told* you so."
     There was a long pause.
     "Yes you did," Egoiste said. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
     Less shrugged. "That was then. Now we figure out--"
     "Figure out?"
     "Now we figure out how to *win,* Egoiste. Nothing that's happened
matters. Nothing we intended matters. 'How it was supposed to be' doesn't
matter either. All that matters now is *winning,* by any means necessary."
     Egoiste smiled slightly. "Because that's how the world works?"
     "Damn straight."
     "That's why you have Scholarman, right? So you can let my Unimaginable
League Amoral take over the world for you, and then you can sweep us aside.
So that at the end of the day, *you* win, even if *we* lose."
     Less looked at Egoiste for a long moment. "That's about the long and
short of it."
     "Because our victories aren't shared any longer?"
     "Because *you* planned to have *me* take over the world for *you,* and
then sweep *me* aside. How did your sister put it? 'In the end...' we can be
replaced?' I don't know everything, but I know damn well that 'you *can* be
replaced' really means 'you *will* be replaced.'"
     "You personally?"
     "My country."
     Egoiste nodded. "We should get moving. We don't have much time before
we shall *need* to sedate Scholarman."
     Less snorted. "That's it? No threats? No cold and calculating words or
amused insults? I just declared war on your entire organization."
     "Perhaps you did, and perhaps you didn't. That doesn't matter. Whether
you defeat the Unimaginable League Amoral after the world is pacified or you
go down in defeat instead, the first step is pacifying the world. Right?"
     "Last I checked."
     "One should never play a future game before their present game is
finished, Mister Less. After all, didn't you say it yourself?"
     "What?"
     "What you don't know might just bite you in the ass."
     Less half-smiled. "True enough." He pulled the car back onto the road.
     The safehouse was a shack, more or less. Bankert panicked when Egoiste
walked in, and his operatives were dumb enough to try and draw on him. In
the end, he let them live and I calmed them down.
     The mage was lying strapped to the bed, hands encased in metal gloves,
a pretty nasty ball gag keeping him from speaking. He looked pretty roughed
up to boot.
     "I remember him," Egoiste said softly.
     "Really?" Less asked. "You're one of maybe three."
     "During the Valentine's Day Attack. He was one of the various heroes
who tried to stop the SAS in Boston." Egoiste half-smiled. "He never got the
chance to cast a single spell. Arsenal shot him, as I recall. Right in the
stomach."
     "Yeah, well, that's par for the course."
     "Remove his gag," Egoiste murmured. "And then leave me alone with him."
     "That's stupid," Bankert said. "Give a mage his tongue and you got
magic--"
     "I have been wrong before," Egoiste said softly, "but I think I will be
in no danger. Remove his gag."
     Bankert looked at Less. Less nodded slightly. Bankert shook his head
and leaned over Scholarman, removing the gag.
     Scholarman swallowed, but didn't say anything. He didn't look happy.
     "Get out," Egoiste said. "And turn off the three recording devices on
the way out. Any you miss, I will disable myself, and you will not be happy
about it."
     The agents set to doing it, after another nod from Less. They then
stepped out of the shack, closing the door and walking well away from the
building.
     "How did he find out?" Bankert asked softly.
     "Does it matter?" Less asked.
     "What are they talking about in there?"
     "If he wanted us to know, he'd tell us," Less said. "It's probably some
dumbass French monologue."
     "What do we do, boss? What's our play?" Bankert sounded worried, but
not scared. He was looking at Less. His eyes, despite it all, had something
in them. Loyalty, maybe. Faith.
     Less looked at Bankert for a long moment. "You have a daughter, right?"
     "Yeah?"
     "Your job is to survive, Bankert," Less said softly. "If you have to
fucking shoot me in the head to make it home to your daughter, you take the
shot."
     Bankert looked at Less. "And you'd let me take the shot?"
     "Fuck no. Why do I give a shit about your kid?"
     Bankert half smiled. "Just so we know where we stand, Boss. Just so we
know where we stand."



DO THEY KNOW WHERE THEY STAND?

WILL RICHARD LESS USE SCHOLARMAN TACTICALLY?

WILL DOCTOR UNORTHODOX MANAGE TO GET HIS DAUGHTER KILLED?

WILL EGOISTE KILL RICHARD LESS?

WILL BANKERT KILL RICHARD LESS?

WILL INCANDESENCE KILL RICHARD LESS?

WILL RICHARD LESS KILL RICHARD LESS?


The answers to a number of those questions is 'no,' but to find out which
you'll have to read Superguy.