Ramez Naam - Crux

There was silence across the line again. Then Claire Becker spoke.

“We’re about to leave, Martin. In the evacuation. The girls are almost finished packing. If there are any files, they’d be in Warren’s office. I can give you the door code…”

An hour later he was on his way to the Becker home.

Holtzmann punched the door code into the panel inset on the Beckers’ front door. The lock flashed green at him, and its motor whirred as the deadbolt slid open.

He pushed open the door. “Hello?” he called out.

There was no answer.

It felt wrong, being here. He hadn’t set foot in this home since Warren died. Nothing for it.

Holtzmann padded into the main room, leaning on his cane, then pushed himself up the stairs to the second floor. Something made him move in a hush, an eeriness about the place. His friend had lived here. And now that friend was dead.

ERD had been here, he was sure, cleaning up after Becker. What could he hope to accomplish? But he had no other leads.

He pushed open the door to Warren Becker’s office and stepped in, cane in hand. It felt like entering a mausoleum.

The room was tidy. Wooden shelves lined the wall, filled with mementos, display plates, paper books. A single window gave light. A large wooden desk sat below the window. A circular carpet covered most of the floor. Two doors led to a washroom and a closet, respectively.

Holtzmann sat behind his friend’s desk. It still felt wrong, being here. But he had to.

Pictures of Claire and their daughters decorated the desk. Everything was tidy. There was a workstation atop it, a four-inch black cube with a handful of ports, a large flat display and a keypad. There was a space where his secure terminal would have been, undoubtedly cleaned away by DHS.

Holtzmann activated the workstation. Password-protected, of course.

The desk drawers were unlocked. Holtzmann rifled through them. Papers, nothing classified. A personal slate, also password-protected. Pens. Medals and commendations that Becker never displayed. A drink drawer with a half-full bottle of Laphroaig, glasses, an empty ice bucket.

He emptied each drawer, tapped their bottoms and backs and sides looking for some false compartment. He felt ridiculous, an amateur doing a job for professionals. Warren Becker had been a professional. Holtzmann was not.

He gave up on the desk, moved to the shelves. One by one he pulled down the mementos, the books, searching for a false cover, something hidden between the pages, a false back or side or top or bottom to a shelf.

Nothing.

The carpet caught his eye next. But when dropped to his knees and rolled it up, he found nothing but wooden floor boards beneath. None came loose. None sounded different than the others when he rapped on them.

The bathroom revealed toiletries, cleaning supplies, and nothing else.

The closet was no better. Golf clubs. Spare shoes. A jacket missing a button on the sleeve. He searched all of it, looked for some secret compartment or hidden memory chip or something. He tapped his cane against the walls of the closet, searching for some hidden space.

Nothing.

Nothing nothing nothing.

Holtzmann collapsed back in the chair, frustrated. He’d been here for hours now. He was tired and hungry. He still craved an opiate hit that he had no way to deliver. It would feel so good to just unwind…

Wait.

Holtzmann opened the drink drawer again. The bottle. He pulled it out. It looked… different. He’d seen Warren pour Laphroaig at the office. The bottle he’d poured it from wasn’t quite the same as this. He turned it over in his mind, scanning the label. There it was. “Bottled in 2029.” Eleven years ago.

Had Becker really been sipping from this same bottle for all those years?

Holtzmann worked the cap off the bottle, brought it to his nose. It certainly smelled like whisky.

He capped the bottle, turned it over in his hands again. Why would Becker keep this bottle all this time? Not drinking it? Or perhaps drinking and refilling it?

Sentimental value?

He turned it over again and again, running his thumbs over the bottle’s surface as he did, wondering, wondering.

And then he felt it.

He turned the bottle back. Somewhere… There. His thumb brushed over a corner of the label. And he felt something. The tiniest bump. Could it be?

Holtzmann brought the bottle close to his face. Was there a tiny irregularity there? Was the corner of the label just a bit loose?

He pried one finger nail under the edge of the label, tugged just a tiny bit…

And the label peeled back. And there, underneath it, was a tiny gold sliver. A tiny memory foil. A gift from Warren Becker.

65

A MATTER OF PRINCIPLE

Thursday November 1st

The guards fitted him with a Nexus jammer, then took him to the rooftop. The tiles were wet. Palm fronds were scattered around. Servants were busily cleaning up. The night sky was clear now, but weather had obviously gone through here recently.

Shiva was there, just the same, sitting beneath the stars, sipping chai and staring out at the last bit of color in the sky.

“Kade.” Shiva offered him a chair. “You viewed my files.”

Kade sat, took a mug of chai offered him by a server.

“Thank you for that,” he told Shiva. “It was an extremely generous gift.”

Shiva inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“And now are you inclined to work together?” Shiva asked.

“I am,” Kade said.

Shiva smiled.

“…but not to share the back door with you,” Kade went on.

Shiva’s smile disappeared. “I see,” he said. “And why?”

Kade looked the older man in the eyes, wished he could touch his mind, return a small fraction of what Shiva had given him.

“Are you wiser than all humanity?” Kade asked him.

Ilya woke in his mind, soaring, exulting.

Shiva frowned. “What?”

“I believe in your integrity,” Kade said. “I believe your goals are good. I’d love to work with you in a hundred different ways. I’d love to see you make your solutions real.” He paused. “I know how good it feels to do something right. How satisfying it is. But that’s a trap. Don’t you see? It’s an addiction. It just leads to more and more.”

Shiva opened his mouth, but Kade pressed on, letting the words pour out of him, holding the older man’s eyes with his own. “We’re only part of the world, you and I,” he told Shiva. “We’re only part of humanity. The solutions to our problems can’t be forced on the world. No one should have that kind of power. No one .”

“No one but you ,” Shiva corrected.

Kade lifted his eyes to the darkened sea. “I’m done with it. You’ve shown me where this leads. If I keep the back door, I’ll use it more and more, in larger and larger ways. If you ever let me leave here, I’ll close it, instead. I’ll give up that power. People will have to solve their problems themselves.”

Shiva stared at him aghast. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m completely serious,” Kade replied.

Shiva leaned forward, his hands reaching towards Kade, almost beseeching. “We have a chance here, Kade. A chance to fix the world . This isn’t a game. This isn’t some philosophical exercise. This is the lives of billions we’re talking about.”

Kade looked calmly into the man’s eyes. “I won’t give you the tools to control people.”

“I don’t want to control people!” Shiva almost shouted, gesturing with his hands. “I want to SAVE them!”

“You wouldn’t stop there,” Kade told him. “You’d use that power, and every time you did, you’d find more reasons to use it. If I keep this, I’ll become you. And you? You’ll become a dictator.”