Swan Song (Book Three of the Icarus Trilogy) (13 page)

“Oh, it doesn’t?  What makes you say that, old man?  You think I can’t beat you senseless right here on the street and get commended for it afterwards?  You don’t think that I can get my buddy over there to hold you down while I illuminate you as to the extents of my authority?” he asked as he stood just half a meter away from Charles Kane.  The older man stared down at the ugly, little officer and grunted.

“I’m saying that what you’re doing is wrong, Pete,” Charles said, his anger rising to the surface, “and that if you keep hurting this man I’m going to stop you.”  The small officer laughed at that, turning to his two colleagues before looking back to Charles.

“You’re going to stop me.  You?  An old man is going to stop an
officer
of the
law
,” he said, emphasizing the words that ceased to mean the right thing.  Charles stepped forward and stared down at the little man.

“All I see is a punk kid with free license to beat on people.  I don’t have to respect a goddamned thing,” he said, waiting for the explosion of activity in front of him.  Pete backed up a bit, looking at his two fellow officers, then turned back to Charles Kane, spitting on the elder man.  The accountant felt the splash on his face, but he had no time to focus on the insult.  Peter had leapt forward with a reckless punch.

Charles Kane had never been much of a fighter.  The most he had done was watch kung-fu movies with his little girls and play at being the bad guys in their home movies.  But he had kept his muscles all those years and knew how to throw a punch.  He also had a solid twenty kilos on the smaller man, even if a good deal of it was fat.

Pete’s first wild strike hit Charles on the side of the head, but Charles pushed him back and onto the ground.  He then fell on the smaller man and started to beat at the officer’s ugly face.  He kept whaling on the little man, just hoping to do enough damage before his two friends came to Pete’s aid, but for some reason time seemed to extend.  He seemed to have all the time in the world to continue beating on the villain with the hero’s uniform. 

After a minute of solid strikes that caused Charles’ hands to hurt and swell, the older man looked up, still sitting on Pete’s chest, and saw that there were three men beating the biggest officer, holding him down and making sure that he couldn’t get up.  Charles was breathing heavily when he noticed the other officer standing off to the side.  He looked to the old man and sighed before seeing that the four civilians were looking right at him.

“Just.... run away somewhere.  Backup’s coming, but I see no reason why you guys need to be here,” he said while nodding towards the cross-street.  The three men who had beaten on the biggest officer suddenly realized the situation and ran towards Charles.

“C’mon, let’s go,” one of them shouted as he ran past Mr. Kane.  The accountant stood up, shaking, his nerves shot to pieces, and looked at the standing officer.

“Why?” he asked, unable to realize why any member of the EOSF would allow such a thing.  The man shook his head and looked at the two unconscious officers.

“Served ‘em right.  This is a paycheck for me, but these bastards, well, I didn’t choose to be partnered with them,” he said before nodding towards Charles’ fleeing accomplices.  “You better join your new friends.  I wasn’t kidding about backup.”  Charles looked back towards the men and realized he would need to sprint to catch up, but he turned back to the EOSF officer and nodded in understanding.

“Thank you,” he said, but the officer merely shrugged.

“No, sir, thank you.”

-

Garrison liked this new habit of his; he liked walking around the neighborhood and getting out of the stale air of his daughter’s apartment.  It had been a week since he had attacked the tiling in the bathroom and he had found a good route for himself.  He would turn down Harriet Street and then to Main before turning back to Johnson and back around.  It was the safest part of town, and even though it wasn’t much of a walk, Maxwell appreciated the sights.  A few days into this habit he found himself walking around in circles over and over again just to get more time outside.

Today, Maxwell was about to turn onto Main Street when he realized that his loop was starting to get boring.  There wasn’t anything new to see in the storefronts or the benches laid out along the broad street.  The bureaucrat instead turned to his left and started to walk towards the university.  He hadn’t been since he and Christine had been to visit.  A very expensive trip, but with his salary as Director of the Northwest Quadrant, Garrison had been able to afford it.  He would have done anything for his little girl.

As Maxwell entered the campus grounds, he saw quite a few students milling about.  At first he thought they were studying or heading to and from class, but as he watched he was able to tell that they were just lining the pathways with signs and banners made out of sheets and paint.  The overweight bureaucrat stopped in front of one of the banners and was not exactly surprised.

“END THE TRADE UNION!  BRING MONTGOMERY DOWN!” one of the students yelled at the side of the white sheet.  Maxwell laughed as he realized that the boy was just repeating what was written on the sheet.  They didn’t get any points for creativity.  The former employee of War World Entertainment looked up and down the lines of students and saw similar messages.  Most were similar to the first boy’s message, though there were a few that stood out.  Garrison grinned at a very eerie likeness of Montgomery farting on a planet; he guessed that it had to be Eris.  As Maxwell walked past the sign, he wondered if the artist’s fellow students were aware of the crude illustration.

“You!  Old man!”  Maxwell turned around to see a very angry and tall youth.  The boy was wearing makeup, had dyed his hair purple and wore black leather with chrome studs; he was a picture of teenage rebellion.  Garrison guessed that he was much older than the other students along the path, just another example of the perpetual student.  Maxwell turned to face the boy, who had more than a few centimeters on the bureaucrat, and then raised an eyebrow.

“Old man?”

“Yeah, you heard me.  You a professor here?” he asked, not bothering to use manners of any kind.  Maxwell sighed and looked around; he didn’t want any trouble, but he wasn’t going to lie about anything.

“Um, no, I’m just a parent of a student here.”

“Well, what are you doing here?” the boy asked again, his behavior making the piercings on his face rattle.  Maxwell coughed, trying to stall, and thought about what he was actually doing here.  He wasn’t visiting his daughter; he wasn’t trying to take a class.  Garrison had no reason to be on the campus other than a breath of fresh air.

“I’m just walking, kid.  I really don’t want any trouble,” he said before backing away, but with just one step the youth closed the distance and invaded Maxwell’s personal space.

“You don’t want trouble?!  He doesn’t want trouble!” he shouted as he turned to the students lining the pathway.  Garrison heard a hundred different shouts, but he felt like he didn’t belong here at all.  This wasn’t his campus, his town, or his planet.  He wished again that his world hadn’t been destroyed.

“I mean, yeah,” Maxwell said as he shrugged and scratched at the side of his face.  The kid in front of him leaned in closer and sneered at the aging bureaucrat.

“Well, what do you do, old man?  How do you contribute to the fight?” he asked, but Maxwell was unable to really think of answer.  Garrison didn’t have a habit of contributing anything to anyone; he just liked to walk.

“I don’t.... I’m unemployed,” he said, doing what he could to omit his past as part of War World Entertainment.  Maxwell guessed that these unruly students wouldn’t take kindly to the Director of the Northwest Quadrant.  The tall man straightened up and laughed at Garrison, though Maxwell couldn’t understand why.

“You’re unemployed and you’re just walking around.  You’re just drifting through what’s left of your life, old man.  Why don’t you fucking help the effort?  Why don’t you stand up and shout at Montgomery to stand down and let people live again?  You know what?” he asked as he stepped forward into Garrison’s face, cowing the bureaucrat.  “It’s people like you, man.”

“People.... People like me?” Garrison asked, almost losing his balance as the boy loomed over him.

“Yeah, old man, it’s people like you who made the world like this.  It’s you motherfuckers that didn’t stand up, who perpetuated the system and let fucking bureaucrats and capitalist monsters take control of everything.  You’re just as bad as them.  You’re just as bad as Montgomery because you didn’t bother to say ‘no.’  As far as I’m concerned, old man, you’re responsible for the deaths of everyone on that planet!” he shouted as he pointed skyward, nowhere even close to Eris, but Garrison wasn’t thinking about that.

In fact, he wasn’t even thinking until he was breathing heavily and watching the angry boy crawling backwards away from him.  Maxwell felt the pain in his right hand and looked over to see that it was curled into a tight fist.  He felt a fury that he couldn’t understand and then remembered what the student had said.  When the youth had accused Garrison of his part in Eris’ destruction, the faces of his wife and son came to mind.  The guilt and anger and fury came at him like a tidal wave and all he wanted to do was destroy the antagonistic kid in front of him.

“Wh- what the fuck, man?  What the fuck?!” the punk kid asked as he started to pick himself up a few meters from Garrison’s position.  Maxwell watched the youth and wondered what would happen next; he still couldn’t think straight and felt all kinds of conflicting emotion.  He hated this child backing away from him for the insult and the accusation.  Maxwell wasn’t responsible for the deaths of all those people thousands of kilometers away.  Garrison would never have done anything to kill Constance; nothing to hurt poor, little Nathan. 

But while all of the students started to drop their banners and gaze in awe of the balding bureaucrat, Garrison heard a thousand accusations and insults from within his own mind.  A maelstrom of guilt and grief battered around the inside of his skull as he realized how right the angry student had been.  In fact, it was worse than the boy had said.  Garrison wasn’t just some apathetic glove that evil had decided to wear; he wasn’t just some bystander.

Maxwell Garrison was directly responsible for the deaths of millions of people and half of his family.

The bureaucrat started feeling weak and dizzy and stumbled in place, unable to dig himself out of the mountain of guilt that had fallen on him.  In his position as Director of the Northwest Quadrant, Garrison had held power over hundreds of thousands of slave soldiers and just as many support staff.  With his quick pen strokes and endless amounts of bureaucratic approvals, Maxwell had been another man making the system worse.  Garrison was part of the problem along with not being part of the solution.

“I’m.... I,” Garrison stammered out as he regained his balance and looked at the horrified students.  All eyes were on him, unable to look away from the violent, old man that had struck one of their fellow students.  “My wife and.... my son.... They were on Eris,” Garrison said as he looked down at the bricks underneath him.  He could see a white shape on the ground and was confused before realizing it must have belonged in the angry boy’s mouth.

“Oh, Jesus, I....” the punk kid started as he reached his feet, but Garrison uncurled his fist and held it up, motioning for the boy to stop.

“No, no.  You’re right.  I could have done something,” Maxwell said as he stared into the sympathetic face which had been angry not so long ago.  The taller man walked forward a bit and put out his hands in a show of peace.

“Ol.... I mean, sir.  I’m sorry, and it’s not your-” he started, but Garrison’s eye twitched and the anger returned to his face.

“Shut up.  I could have done something.  And now,” he said as he looked back up into the sky and instead of Eris or any of the other asteroids, what drew his attention was the mostly blue planet that dominated the heavens.

“Now I’m
going
to do something.”

-

Norris watched the shadow creep away from the exhaust fan, but he wasn’t particularly paying attention to it.  He didn’t care about the drone of the fan blades of the setting sun to his right.  He didn’t mind the rat scrounging around in the corner, trying to build a meal out of someone’s leftovers.

Edward Norris just knew that he wasn’t going to be a father and it was killing him.

He had always gone through his life with no cares or worries; his life was devoted to the moment and trying to have as much fun as possible.  It was the only reason he had ever ended up on Eris; too much of the high life and casinos, not enough of the responsibility to pay his debts.  He had been carted away laughing like a lunatic when the EOSF finally came for him.  Norris just had a knack for humor; he had even turned his maimed ear into a plaything.

But he failed to see anything funny about this situation.  He had known Abrams for years and had grown quite fond of her.  The two soldiers had been perpetually surrounded by death and misery, but for them there was comfort to be found.  For Abrams, it was just a warm body with her in bed; a distraction from the fact that she had sold herself into slavery.