Time's Chariot

‘If you’d like to come with me, I’ll show you.’ His smile turned into a grin, and there was something infectious about it. Whatever it was, it seemed it could only be good. ‘It’s a surprise.’

‘I’m a bit old and a bit busy for surprises, Yul.’

‘You’re never too old and you’ll love this one.’

And so she went with him.

The carryfield whisked them away to the transference hall. A minute later they stepped out into what had been Daiho’s Himalayan apartment. Without Security Ops crawling all over it and the knowledge of its occupant’s recent death, Marje at last began to savour it for what it should have been. Tranquil, quiet, isolated: somewhere Daiho could come to get away from it all, to immerse himself in ancient philosophies and meditation.

They stepped out into the courtyard. The fountain still chuckled, the sun still shone, the mountains still ringed the view with immense grandeur. Ario filled his lungs with the crisp, clean air, then turned to face her. For some reason, the smile was less intense, as if to emphasize an underlying solemnity.

‘Marje Orendal,’ he said, ‘it is my pleasant duty to inform you that your appointment as Commissioner is confirmed, and the Patrician’s Guild has accepted you as a member. You’re one of us in every way, Marje. Congratulations.’

‘I…?’ said Marje.

‘And that means, this place is yours,’ Ario went on. He handed her a crystal. ‘Your credentials. We’re all entitled to an upstream residence, if we want one, and do forgive the morbidity but this is the only one available at the moment. If prehistoric Himalayas aren’t your thing then of course you can apply for a residence to be constructed somewhere else, but in the meantime, you are mistress of all you see.’

‘I…’ Marje said again. She was finally able to frame the only words that could actually describe what she was feeling. ‘I’m overwhelmed.’

Ario nodded, his mouth quirked on one side in an ironic half smile. ‘I know.’ He led her to the patio edge. One part of her mind protested at the thought of celebrating at the point where her predecessor had fallen, but otherwise she was still too a-whirl with the news. ‘Take a seat. I know where Li kept his drinks: I’ll be back in a moment.’

Patrician! Marje lounged back in a recliner and looked at the great skyscraping peaks the other side of the balustrade. She had made it. She was, as Ario had said, one of them.

Everything she could want was hers. Oh, there were responsibilities, yes. She could expect to be worked into the ground. No more of this tentative offering of provisional sponsorship to errant Field Ops. She would have to cultivate a whole new crop of sponsorees, use her power and privilege to their advantage…

It was what she had always wanted. To do good, to help others and at the same time — she glanced around appreciatively — reap the rewards. A private, secluded lodge far away from the hustle and bustle of the Home Time was only the beginning. It was only scratching the surface of what was now available.

Ario was back with the drinks. He handed her one and settled back into a recliner facing her. He held up his glass.

‘To you,’ he said, and they drank.

‘It’s sudden,’ Marje said.

Ario cocked an eyebrow. ‘Is it?’

‘The patrician thing, anyway. I mean…’ She remembered how she had abruptly put off the interview with the Patrician’s Guild the first day on the job. ‘I wasn’t aware my name was in the system anyway.’

‘Of course it was,’ Ario said. ‘You can’t do a patrician’s job and not be a patrician, Marje. And the full works — you know, interview, assessment, probation period — we only give that to people we don’t really like anyway.’ He paused a beat. ‘Well, maybe we have to keep the probation period, that’s the law, but everything else in an application we can push through on the nod. You have powerful friends, Marje. You were one of Li’s sponsorees. We knew we wanted you.’

‘So I’m on probation?’ Marje said. Ario’s face clouded.

‘Hmm. Yes,’ he said, and he stood up to lean against the waist-high balustrade, palms flat against the smooth stone as he gazed out into the abyss. ‘The people don’t understand us, Marje. To them, things appear so black and white, so right or wrong. They can’t see the pressures we’re under. They can’t see that sometimes we have to delve into the realms of moral ambiguity for the greater good. Do you know the Christian scriptures? 'It is better for one man to die for the sake of the nation.' The people can’t understand that. We can.’

Marje looked up at him, baffled. He continued to look straight ahead.

‘What I’m getting at, Marje, is that many new patricians find that they have some on-going project, some work in progress left over from their previous life that they started for all the right motives… but then they find that their motives were based on a distorted perspective. It turns out things weren’t all they seemed. And why should they be? How can children understand the world of adults? And it turns out that their grand scheme is not only embarrassing and annoying for the rest of us but it’s actively counter-productive, because they’ve inadvertently stuck their nose into something of great benefit to everyone, patrician and non-patrician alike. Marje, I won’t go into specifics, but I will say that if there’s anything in your life or your work that could conceivably rock the boat, show the patricians up in some way… I’d drop it. Quietly, without fuss, without fanfare.’

Now he did look at her, and the friendly smile was back. ‘And the best thing is, you don’t have to explain or apologize to anyone! Look, Marje, I’ve got to get back to the College. I’ll leave you here to look around your new home, take things in, all that.’

Marje stayed in her seat as he left. If she had got up, she might not have trusted herself to speak.

What Ario had just said sounded badly like a very heavy hint. And there was only one on-going project she could think of that came remotely near the kind of thing he had described.

But it involved breaking Morbern’s Code and every tenet of College life! Or did it… How can children understand the world of adults? If she had really believed the worst straight away then surely she would have reported it straight away, rather than hire a Field Op to find out.

That was it. She was still finding out. She had just wanted the facts. Ario was a Commissioner too — he wouldn’t connive at something that struck at the heart of the College. Would he? She felt cautiously relieved…

Marje realized she could argue this in circles for hours, and she had work to do. She would look round the house later. For the time being, she was needed back at the College. Without an assistant, work was piling up.

She stood to go and the blue-outlined eidolon of the house’s intelligence appeared in front of her. It was an old man with a white beard and robe: Plato or Aristotle or Socrates, one of that lot, anyway. She smiled — what else would Daiho have used?

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘A message for you, Commissioner Orendal. The sender was anonymous.’

‘Show me.’

The image was replaced by a simple field of text hovering in front of her. Whichever line Marje looked at, the field scrolled so that the text stayed in front of her. She started at the top.

A few lines down, she frowned.

A bit further and she gasped.

‘No!’ she said when she was halfway down. She took a step back and the text vanished. Socrates was standing there again.

‘Have you finished, Commissioner?’ he said.

‘Bring it back!’ Marje snapped, and the text reappeared. Marje steeled herself and finished reading.

She looked at it for a long time, then re-read it. Slowly.

‘Did Commissioner Ario leave this?’ she said.

‘I have no record of who sent it,’ said the eidolon. This time it was taking no chances and left the text showing.

Marje glanced quickly through the message a third time, but she knew what it was. The first line said it all:

’What follows shows how you could conceivably be implicated in the murder of Commissioner Daiho, were such to have taken place.’

And from then on, the message showed precisely that. It used assorted facts and circumstantial evidence to