Profiteer

Dimitri sighed and started walking back to the aircar. He had seen enough of the Face. “Do you remember Helen, Ambrose?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“You wouldn’t. It isn’t relevant to you, is it? You don’t retain anything that isn’t relevant, do you?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Helen was before your time, anyway. When I knew her personally, that is. I dealt with her fifteen years ago, and now I’m going to have to deal with her twins.”

 

“Sir?”

 

They reached the aircar and Dimitri leaned on the hood. He decided that he probably should have brought a respirator. “The propagation of Evil, Ambrose. Sins of the fathers and so on—” Dimitri paused and caught his breath. In a few seconds he was racked with painful coughs that made him dizzy.

 

Ambrose was at his side before Dimitri could say, “Back!” He warded Ambrose off with his cane. “I’m fine! No doctors this week. They’ll only replace another organ.”

 

“Are you sure, sir?”

 

Dimitri nodded, even though his head was spinning. The aircar door was open and Dimitri slipped inside. Ambrose took the driver’s seat and the door closed. Dimitri felt better when the car repressurized.

 

He looked out the window at the Face and realized that it was probably the last time he would see it. Whether he managed to create a successor or not, his doctors could keep him alive for only so much longer.

 

Dimitri didn’t want to live any longer. He had lived too long already.

 

He had lived through the rise and fall of the Terran Council and the forced depopulation of the Earth. He had seen the wormhole network superseded by the first tach-drive starships and the subsequent explosion of mankind across the sky. Humans had founded colonies on fifty separate worlds since his birth, most of them in the last century. In his lifetime the Martian atmosphere had been made breathable and the majority of mankind had moved to the stars.

 

It was too much history for one man.

 

He was the head executive of the Terran Executive Command, the secret police, army, and enforcement arm of the eighty-three planet Confederacy. Dimitri and the TEC represented the only centralized authority over all of those eighty-three planets. Eighty-three independent governments that would gladly tear the Confederacy apart if it weren’t for the thin diplomatic glue holding the whole thing together.

 

Sometimes it was nearly too much to bear.

 

And, speaking of diplomatic glue.

 

“Let’s go, Ambrose. We have a meeting.” As the vehicle lifted off, Dimitri added, “Someday you’ll make me late for my own funeral.”

 

* * * *

 

Far away from Dimitri’s aircar, in a Martian rock formation that could have been a Dolbrian artifact, or simply a weathered crest of rock, a lone figure lowered his binoculars. The man knew it was a risk to be this close to Dimitri, especially with that creature, Ambrose, hanging around. In fact, he was just remembering how much of a risk it was. He had almost forgotten about Dimitri’s pet golem.

 

Not forgot, just another thing I didn’t want to remember. The man looked at the dull chrome cybernetic hand at the end of his right arm. The hand was scarred and pitted by years of use, and he walked on a leg that was similarly tarnished. The old man has a habit of making people over in his own image.

 

He backed down the rock, away from Dimitri’s aircar. He was risking too much. Dimitri, the Confederacy’s chief executive, was a white-hot nova of unwanted attention.

 

Once he was out of view of Dimitri’s aircar, he put the optical binoculars back into their case.

 

He stayed immobile past the point where Dimitri’s car should have disappeared beyond the Martian horizon. He maintained as low a profile as possible. It helped that they weren’t looking for him.

 

No one was looking for him.

 

No one knew he existed.

 

He had spent nine years making sure that he had as little impact on the world around him as possible. It was very necessary that no one knew he was here. He was an anomaly, a temporal hiccup that could destabilize the events he was here to correct.

 

So much could be disrupted if he was discovered, if his crystalline caverns were discovered—and still, despite the need for caution, despite his fabricated—and all-too-real—nonexistence, he still made his pilgrimages to see the Face. He had braved this hive of academics many times over the past nine years, just to get a good look at the alien structure.

 

The Face reminded him of home.

 

He now knew the other reason he’d done it.

 

He had hoped to see Dimitri.

 

He had known about the old man’s obsession with the Dolbrians and the Face. Deep down, despite his efforts to remain unobserved, he had wanted to look upon the man who was responsible for everything. He wanted to see his former commander, a man he had respected at one time.

 

Now, at the Face this last time, he’d finally seen Dimitri as well. This close to exile’s end, it had been an unexpected shock.