The Flicker Men (28 page)

“When did you first meet them?”

“At a conference a few weeks back.”

“What did you talk about?”

“That night? Swords, mostly, as I recall.” I studied the photos in my hand. They looked like security camera footage. Brighton was with a group of men walking into a building. An old bank or an office building of some kind. Boaz was at his side, a phalanx of businessmen striding toward or away from some high-powered corporate meeting.

“Ah, the sword talk. He really must have liked you.”

I handed the photos back. “I didn't get that impression.”

“These are a few years old.” She slid the glossy prints back into the inside pocket of her suit jacket. “They're more careful now. It's harder to get close to them.”

“You seem to manage,” I said. I thought about what she'd said. Corporate budgets. Spreadsheets. “You work for them.”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “More specifically, I work for the foundation. I only see them occasionally at the offices, but I have no illusions. All the directives are handed down directly by them. I'm a good little corporate drone, or was, anyway. They hire straight from the Ivy Leagues mostly, though they'll pull talent where they find it. Certain kinds of minds, good at synthesizing data from a wide range of sources. It's a specialized talent, but I'm better at it than even they know. Better than they ever expected, and that's what has led us to this place. I was a little too good at my job.”

“So I take you've quit?”

“You don't quit,” she smiled. “No one who works for the foundation ever quits. You run,” she said. “You close out your bank accounts, and you run, and then they catch you. That's how this goes. How it always goes.”

“So there have been others.”

She nodded. “Just a few that I've found evidence of over the years. They demand loyalty, but if they can't get that, they'll settle for silence. The permanent kind.”

“If it always goes that way, then why run at all? Why not stay and play the good corporate drone?”

“Because I learned something the others didn't. I learned who they really are.” She stopped in the trail and looked at me. “The foundation is where I first saw your name.”

“Because of the experiment.”

She shook her head. “It goes back further.” She turned away from me and continued walking. “I was a part of the foundation's inquiry and evaluation team, running the groundwork for the Discovery Prize, and there was a lot of research that we watched. A complex weighting system, trying to evaluate whose work deserved special attention. There are always hundreds of projects on the list. Thousands of names. I thought at first that we were trying to find those who were worthy, but over time I realized something different.”

“And what was that?”

“The foundation's stated goals were a lie. We weren't trying to reward achievement. We were trying to predict it.”

“Predict it?”

“Yes.”

“For what purpose?”

She didn't answer. Instead, she turned her face toward the trail and changed the subject. “When Brighton talked to you at his penthouse, what did he speak about?”

“A lot of what he said didn't make sense,” I said.

“Try me.”

“He talked about waves. The anthropic principle. Gabriel's horn.”

“Ah, the horn,” she said. “He does have a penchant for the classical. Was there anything else?”

I tried to recall. The elevator flashed to mind. The feel of the metal on my face. I shook it off. “Something called the aberis or abrex.”

“The eberaxi.”

“Yeah. That was the word.”

“So then it exists after all. What did he say about it?”

And here it was. The gamble. The point where I would pay off or go bust. I saw it in her eyes, the way she waited for the answer. I stopped in my tracks. Vickers took two more steps before she realized that she was walking alone.

She turned and looked at me. There is a moment in any negotiation when you have to draw a line in the sand. This was mine. Vickers was smart enough to see that. Negotiation is about give-and-take. It was my turn to ask questions. Her face was passive, waiting for me to speak.

“Why does Brighton want me dead?” I asked. “Why did he kill my friend?”

Her face didn't change, but her eyes grew weary—the eyes of a defeated general. “The world has its secrets,” she said. “And those who want them kept. Your box tells a story that shouldn't have been told.”

I thought of Satvik. Minimizing it. Digitizing it. Turning it into a product. I thought of him wrapped up in a tarp.

“No,” I said. “There's more than that. The paper is already published. Brighton talked about the ones who can't collapse the wave. He called them the fated.”

“A name as good as any.”

“What did he mean?”

“You're the physicist,” she said. “What do you think he meant?”

“I don't know.”

“Then it's because you're looking at it backward.
They're
not the mystery, after all.”

It was something in her expression. The way she looked at me, as if I had only to consider the obvious. “You mean,
we're
the mystery.”

She smiled. “Of course.”

It was always there, that incongruity. Free will in a determinant universe. Because the math was dead serious. It was only in us that it failed. The mystery wasn't those who
couldn't
collapse the waves. The mystery was those who could.

“Consciousness itself,” she said. “That has always been the mystery, hasn't it?”

“And what about the fated? Who are they?”

“Think of them as the connective tissue of the world,” she said. “They work and raise families. They vote in countries that vote and riot in places that riot. They are behind coups or lose their heads to coups or swing close elections. They are a silent minority, functioning within a complex set of parameters. They stabilize the social order, so that societies can grow and flourish.”

“I don't understand.”

“The anthropic principle requires the universe be just so to produce life, but let's extend that further. Must it not be just so to produce culture? Certain roles all in proportion. The fated help guide things just so.”

“They have intent, you mean.”

She shook her head. “No, they can't intend anything. Their behavior is prefigured, they can only do.”

“Toward what end?”

“Their influence aids civilization. Consider them the grease that keeps the wheels of societies turning. Without the grease, metal grinds against metal. The apparatus seizes. Melts down. The great engine stops turning. But the fated don't invent anything. They can't create. For that, people like you are required.”

“Required by who?”

She blinked. “By the world, of course. That first time you met Brighton, you ate a meal with him.”

It took me a moment. My own gears ground against themselves. “Dinner, yes.”

She turned slowly and started walking again. I realized that she expected me to follow, so I kept close behind on her right. Her shoes made small imprints in the soft soil. She glanced toward me. “What must that have been like to sit across a table like that? I never ate with the man. We've spoken only about business. Even before I learned what he was, I sensed there was something terrible in him. Philosophers write that evil exists so that good might reveal itself.” She looked at me. “Do you think that's true?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“It's all written down, if you know where to look. Little hints in the documentation, and then it all suddenly makes sense. Always there are different sides. Pick any religion, and you'll find warriors in the oldest stories. The names don't matter. I was never a believer, so imagine my surprise when I learned that all the old stories are true.”

Nothing would surprise me, I realized. Not anymore. “And Brighton is one of these warriors? Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes.” Her green eyes were flat and expressionless. “One of the oldest.”

“What does he want?”

“What their kind have always wanted. To halt advancement. To impede progression. To delay the advent of post-Malthusian growth. They sow chaos. They are an enemy of the world. Their goal, quite simply, is to stop us from achieving the next level of societal development.”

It sounded insane. The kind of paranoid delusion made for little white rooms.

“The opposite of the fated, you mean?”

She waved that off. “No. The fated are just a tool of the world and, like any tool, can be broken. Mere pawns in the game. No, Brighton and his kind are the opposite of what
you
are—the ones who push things forward. They're the ones who hold things back. They're enemies of civilization itself.”

“You said, ‘his kind.' Mercy used those words, too.”

She looked at me closely. “They've used different names in different languages.”

“And you? How do you name them?”

Her face was solemn. “The ones who've seen them in action all use the same name. We call them the flicker men.”

I stared at her. A name I'd heard before. A name from a letter.

“Do you know how crazy this sounds?”

“Even after everything you've seen?”

“But why? None of this makes sense. These flicker men … even if they are what you say, what possible motives could they have?”

“You doubt me. That's good. It's the scientist in you, demanding evidence.” At that moment, we came to a crossroads in the trail and a fresh tread pattern in the mud. This trail was the way in and out of the facility. Thirty years ago, this was probably a road, with a neat, white dotted line. Now it was layered over with dirt and grass—the asphalt broken up and buried. She led me down the track to the right. “Tell me what you know about Brighton,” she said.

I followed behind her. “He's rich,” I answered. “He's insane. He—”

She interrupted me, “Runs an awards organization that tracks advancements in the field of mathematics and physics.”

“The foundation,” I said. “Yeah.”

“A cover,” she said. “By controlling such an organization, he gains early access to research. It gives him a foothold on new discoveries. After that, there are several options. There's the carrot, so subtle you'd never see it—luring researchers into high-salary, dead-end positions. A carefully cultivated career path that makes rich, incompetent administrators of brilliant bench scientists. If that doesn't work—and it often doesn't—there's the stick. They choke off funding. Sometimes they purchase new technologies outright, only to shut them down. And then there's patent trolling—legal sleight of hand that makes war zones of courtrooms, while wasted careers and technologies pile up like cordwood.”

I thought of Stuart's corporation.
The funding dried up.

“They are an enemy of civilization,” she continued. “Always working at cross-purposes to the larger good. There's a wide range of tactics they employ, and if those all fail, there's always the final tactic. The one they save for a last resort.”

“And what's that?” I asked. Though I knew the answer before she spoke it.

“Researchers go missing,” she said. “Brighton is careful and selective. Sometimes it looks like an accident. And usually it happens
before
the research goes public.”

“But why Savik and I? We've already published. Even if what you say is true, it's too late. Our work is out there.”

“It's not just the work you've done already,” she said. “It's also the work you might do in the future. Brighton is afraid of something you're working on.”

“That's crazy. I'm not working on anything.”

“Your name was on a list
before
your work at Hanson. It must be some research you've started. Something you were on the cusp of.”

“You worked for them; you don't know what it is?”

“I didn't have access to all the files. There were other analysts watching other names. Meetings and directives that I wasn't privy to. All I know is that he thinks you were on the edge of something big. Some discovery that could advance things. That's why you have to die.”

My head was spinning. It was all too much. Too crazy. “You're talking about a secret conspiracy to kill scientists?” I said. “They can't just make us disappear. There will be questions. We have laws and investigators and reporters.”

She shook her head again. “You have no idea how powerful he is. His money and influence are only the beginning.”

“I'm a witness to a murder. I saw Satvik killed. They shot him in the head right in front of me. I'd testify—”

“If you went public with this, you'd be dead by morning.”

I tried to read her face, searching for the truth. Was it just a threat to keep me cooperative? Or did she really believe it? I thought of Robbins behind his security doors.
You aren't the only one who's lost people
. Whatever Robbins knew, he hadn't gone to law enforcement. Maybe there was a reason for that.

You run, and then they catch you.

“You seek evidence,” she said and pulled something else out of her jacket. A newspaper, I realized, folded open to the middle. She handed it to me. “Today's issue,” she said. “That's why I wasn't here when you arrived yesterday. I knew you'd want proof.”

It was an article halfway down the page. I read the heading: “Man Dies in Car Accident.” I saw Satvik's name. My heart sank as I scanned the paragraph. There was no mention of a shooting. No mention of the other dead men. No mention of foul play at all. The newspaper said he died from blunt trauma.

“But he was shot,” I said. “I saw it.”