Profiteer

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“None climbs so high as he who knows not wither he is going.”

—Oliver Cromwell

(1599-1658)

 

 

Dom walked through an ancient cavern, his thoughts as dark as the glassy black walls. He was more than two hundred meters beneath the commune. The only signs of humanity down here were the lights left behind by the construction crew and the omnidirectional hum of the overbuilt fusion generator.

 

Whatever the temperature was in the snowy valley that hid the commune, the temperature down here was a constant ten degrees C.

 

Dom’s breath fogged, casting halos around the rectangular lights that lined his path.

 

It would be nice to walk down here forever. Nice to lose himself in the heart of Bakunin’s only mountain range, the spine of Bakunin’s only continent. It would be easy to do, too. If he took a few branches beyond the end of the lights, it would be unlikely that anyone would ever find him. The caverns down here allegedly ran the length of the continent, from glacier to glacier.

 

Dom was surprised that the option held any attraction for him. The impulse revealed a facet of himself he didn’t like. Was he so damn used to running?

 

The walls peeled back as Dom walked into a huge chamber, losing themselves in darkness. The floor collapsed into blackness ten meters away. There was one lone light in here, fixed above the entrance behind him.

 

He’d been walking for nearly an hour, and he had reached the end of the construction crew’s amateur spelunking. Dom was probably the first human being to stand on this ledge since the commune was finished, years ago. He was certainly the first one down here since the Diderot Commune had been abandoned, and that was at least a decade.

 

The commune complex had been his for less than a year, and it was barely operational. Dom was certain none of his people had been down this way yet; there was too much to do, too much to fix, and too few people. The commune was originally constructed to house ten thousand, and Dom only had around fourteen hundred people. Less than a thousand when he subtracted children, wounded, and elderly dependents.

 

Dom ran his hand over the wall. Someone had used a laser torch to carve a list of initials in the obsidian.

 

His fingers traced the carving. It was the most permanent thing that the construction crew had done. This carving, down here where the weather never changed, on a planet that was—for most practical purposes—tectonically dead, would probably outlast other signs of the human presence on Bakunin by a million years.

 

That made Dom think about the Dolbrians, who were supposedly responsible for this planet. Maybe that’s what all their mysterious sculptures, mounds, and trenches were—cosmic graffiti.

 

Dom surprised himself by smiling.

 

His old boss, Dimitri, wouldn’t appreciate that sentiment. Him with his almost spiritual worship of the Dolbrians.

 

But the idea struck a chord in Dom. After all, isn’t that all anyone wanted? What was life but a frantic attempt to make some sort of impact on an indifferent universe? An effort to scrawl “I was here!” as big as possible?

 

The Dolbrians had left one hell of a mark. People were reading their graffiti a megacentury after they’d died out. Or vanished. Or whatever.

 

Dom turned and faced the dark cavern. He didn’t adjust his photoreceptors to get a better picture. He stayed watching the darkness.

 

What kind of mark was he going to leave when he died?

 

His breath puffed out in a cloud as he said, “Brother, what are you doing to me?”

 

For the first time in a long while he was thinking in terms beyond the corporation he’d birthed.

 

“Mr. Magnus?” said a voice from behind, down the passage. Its owner was panting heavily.

 

“Mr. Magnus, sir?” the voice’s owner ran up behind him, boots echoing across the rocky floor. Soon another plume of breath joined Dom’s above the abyss.

 

“Yes?” Dom turned and looked at a short swarthy individual. Having an onboard computer meant he knew the names and history of everyone who worked for him. The gentleman next to him had run the third-shift carpool and dispatch back at GA&A. His name was Desmond.

 

“We’ve got the aircar you wanted out of stores. It’s ready on the pad.”

 

“The contragrav?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Dom nodded. “Can we spare it?”

 

“We’ll get by.”

 

Silence stretched. Desmond remained standing next to him.

 

“Anything else?”

 

“Well, uh, sir—”

 

Dom turned around so he could face Desmond.

 

“We’ve installed the holos and the field generators. There are people who’ve seen that and feel we’re much too vulnerable.”

 

“The generators were supposed to compensate for that.”

 

Desmond nodded.

 

Silence stretched and Dom finally said, “It isn’t enough.”

 

“The commune still feels too exposed. A lot of us are nervous, especially with the potential threat.”

 

Dom nodded. He had purchased this bolt-hole less than a year ago, and there had been precious little time to prepare it.