Boarmus fell silent, mopping at his face where sweat ran slickly. “While you and I are talking, my young aide is sending a message to City Fifteen. Secretly, I hope. There’s a group there who’ve been looking at this problem for some time. Chadra Hume informed them a long time ago. Even in his time, he felt something was very wrong….”
“What do you want from me?”
“Anything. Advice. Help.” He took in Zasper’s blank expression and sighed. “Maybe I only wanted someone to talk to. Oh, I know what you Enforcers think about the Council, Ertigon. We’d have to be complete fools not to know. You take us for pompous idiots, mostly, layabouts who spend our days eating and drinking and engaging in our effete little rituals, none of which mean anything, accomplish anything. You’re perfectly right, that’s what we are. But then, that’s what we were assigned to do. That’s what we’re here for. It’s what all public servants have always been: roadblocks, resistors, interceptors of change, valves designed to shut down the flow of events, inhibitors of revolution, delayers of evolution, servants of the status quo. Here on Elsewhere we call it maintaining diversity, and we send you Enforcers out whenever there’s a threat to custom or habit. As we see it, we’ve been faithful to our charge, Ertigon, just as you’ve been faithful—more or less—to yours.”
“More or less?”
“Well, there was that business of your rescuing Danivon Luze.”
“You knew?” Zasper was amazed.
“Most Enforcers do things like that, now and then. You have to let them get away with a few things. Give them a little leeway. Otherwise they crack on you. It’s all written down in the Provost’s operations manual. How much unauthorized activity to let you all get away with. Better have a guilty Enforcer than a holier-than-thou. Enforcers who feel guilty try to make up for it by being extra conscientious most of the time. Holier-than-thous are a pain. Nobody knows about the real rules, of course, except the Provosts. We keep quiet about it.”
“You knew!” Zasper repeated, unbelieving.
“Not only knew but was grateful. Danivon has been very useful. Is, is very useful. I’ll confide in you, Ertigon. It’s not just that he’s useful. I’ve grown fond of him. I have no children of my own, and he’s … he’s what I would have chosen to be, if we were permitted such choices. He’s what I’ve imagined myself being, from time to time. He’s quite a boy. A gallant with the ladies. Ah, well. One can get weary of being Provost.”
Zasper stared at him, mouth open. Whatever he had expected to hear from Boarmus, it had not been this.
Boarmus nodded musingly. “And he’s not Molockian, of course, even though that’s where you found him. I got a cell sample from him. His genetic makeup is closest to the people of Shallow, but it isn’t close enough to be proof positive. It may have been modified, of course. So says Files.”
“How did you know where I found him?!”
“There are monitors on the inspection ships. For Provost’s eyes only. An old saying covers it. Who watches the watchers, eh? Oh, Ertigon…. I know a lot.”
“But not how to protect us from this thing in the Core,” Zasper snorted.
“No. Not that. Sometimes I think whatever it is must be immortal, stewing away down there!”
“And you’re scared.” It wasn’t a question.
“Terrified.” Boarmus mopped his face once more. “A Provost shouldn’t have to say such a thing, eh? But it’s true. I’m terrified. One of the voices, I call the gulper. I think it’s part of whatever killed a girl in the tunnels … tore her apart … wrote words in her blood on the walls. Wrote the word ‘fool.’ Wrote what we thought was the word ‘adore,’ but maybe it was the name of one of those … Clore. You said that name to me once. The biography book says he’s down there, one of the four faction leaders.”
“Faction leaders?”
“There were factions on the committee. You know, groups with different ideas. Hell, Zasper, you used the leaders’ names yourself, in that damned rhyme you quoted me years ago!”
“Oh, you mean that Clore! Bland and …”
Boarmus put his hand on Zasper’s mouth. “Don’t talk about it. If it is them … Or if it isn’t … it thinks anyone asking questions must be plotting against it, them, but at the same time it … they’re furious at being forgotten!”
“I don’t understand that!”
Boarmus sighed. “It’s not rational! Don’t expect it to be rational!”
“How much of this is fact?” Zasper whispered.
“I don’t know,” admitted Boarmus in a sick whisper. “Files could probably tell me, or at least give me a probability rating. But I daren’t ask Files. It would know the minute I did, and it would be furious. Instead, I’m going directly to City Fifteen from here. Chadra Hume told me the dinks there have a shielded system, and I’m hoping it can run probability checks for me. Maybe they can tell me why. Tell me how.”
Zasper shook his head slowly from side to side, trying to absorb it all. “Do you think I should go to Panubi?”
“I thought you might want to. If you do, it’s not something they’d find suspicious. They’d expect me to want a report on what’s happening there. Since Fringe and Danivon are involved, they’ll think it’s a natural thing for you to do.”
“I’m retired.”
“Council Enforcers have come out of retirement before now.”
“And when I get there, what?”
“I don’t know, Enforcer. All I could do up until now was send Danivon a kind of warning, all I could think of at the time. I told you long ago I’m not a man of action, and I haven’t the least sticky tail end of an idea what you or they can do. Maybe you can at least offer each other mutual support!”
It was the least Zasper could do, intended to do. In
