第二十四章

Gladias checked his watch. The time just hit 20,000. He had been awake all night after his call with Seila. He had tried to go to sleep twice, but gave up after twenty minutes each time.

He could not go to sleep knowing that three of the four children he loved dearly were now, in one way or another, in the hands of the Arctics.

He could not go to sleep after Seila gave him that kind of vote of non-confidence, and then cut off communication without giving him any chance to even apologize.

And he definitely could not go to sleep when both of those things were happening to him at the same time, and anyone he could hug for emotional support was thousands of kilometers away.

Finally, thinking as much about redeeming himself in Seila's eyes as about his daughter's safety, he decided to do something unorthodox: he called Zven.

Zven picked up immediately.

"Dad?"

"Are you still in contact with Lily?"

"Her icon went green about forty minutes ago. I think she logged in from a new device."

"Good."

"Zven, are you willing to help us save Lily?"

"Of course! Anything for my sister."

"Then here's what I want you to do. Stay in touch with her. Reach out, ask her what's up. Don't give any indication that you disapprove of her decision. Even show sympathy for her. Just stay in contact, and try to learn where she is."

"Dad..."

"What is it?"

"That's like ... exactly what Mom told me to do a longhour ago. She gave me a lot of good advice for things I should and shouldn't say."

Gladias opened the door, walked through the hallways until he left the hotel area, and then turned left and kept going through the tunnel.

This was now his eighth day living entirely underground, inside the mountain pyramid at the south end of Pafogai Du. Soon after he first arrived in Dzego, he had been relocated there from his original hotel. The new recommendations were for all "important business" to move to underground locations, and as a de-facto Kungaupei advisor, Gladias certainly qualified.

For over two months, he would take daily twenty minute walks every day along the trees around the perimeter halfway up the mountain pyramid, and sometimes a longer walk down and into the nearby forest. For the past few days, he had been spending each day in the library, learning about different aspects of Dzego and having almost daily calls with Verdow to think through how to convince the Veridian military to cooperate with the Kungaupei.

And today, after what happened last night, and after only getting one longhour of sleep after it, he did not have the will to go outside at all.

Gladias walked slowly, taking many breaks to stare at the wall and at any side rooms that he walked past on his way to the library.

High-tech industry of all kinds - biomedical, chip manufacturing, even parts of car production - had moved into the mountain pyramid since he came in, he noticed. And now that he thought about it, there had not been a single successful Arctic attack on Dzego in the news since Northglade had been annexed.

He also noticed that the number of air filters and ultraviolet lamps scattered around various locations had increased more than tenfold. At least the Dzegojan manufacturers and the Bansunpei are doing a good job, he thought.

He passed by the entrance to a cafeteria. Trees about two meters tall growing inside clay pots were now inside, he saw, along with various shrubs. The greenery seemed to play a triple role of giving the people sitting inside a feeling of calm from seeing nature, reducing CO2 levels, and splitting up different sections of the cafeteria to improve privacy.

After about fifteen minutes of slow walking, he finally arrived at the entrance to the library.

He noticed that the slogan at the top of the door had changed since the last time he had been there.

He stopped, and took a moment to read.

"The student says: tomorrow I want to go to a magical and far away place. The teacher replies: for the sake of tomorrow, what have you done today?"

To Gladias's surprise, the admonishment gave him a small burst of energy, allowing him to raise his hand against the green circle to open the door, and enter the library.

He walked through the door, and then slowly turned right and started walking toward one of the computer terminals.

Bai noticed him, and walked up.

"What's the matter?", she asked.

"I'm fine", Gladias replied in a quiet and flat tone.

"Well, I know enough to know that you're not fine. Though I also know enough to know that forcing you to divulge the source of your darkness if you're not comfortable will make you feel even worse."

"So don't worry, I won't ask any questions."

She walked up to Gladias, and gently hugged him.

"I just learned that Lily has been eating up Arctic propaganda for the last year, and Lord Ephelion's sermons made her feel valued and appreciated more than I ever did. And less than a minute later, I learned that she ran away from home. And a minute after that, I learned that Seila now hates me and doesn't want to talk to me."

"What do the Arctics say that someone like her would find compelling?"

"That unconditional love is meaningless. Love is only worth anything if you love some quality that the object of your love has. And so to receive love, you have to deserve it, you have to earn it. Love has to come not as a constant background radiation, but as a reward for winning."

"The most important thing is to always strive to improve yourself. But if you can improve, that means you can be better than your former self - and at that point, you've basically admitted that one person can be better than another. So the whole idea that we're all equal, that the most important thing about us is our equal humanity, is total nonsense."

"You know ... I kind of agree."

"What?"

"I don't mean in some absolute sense, that that way of thinking is healthy for everyone. It definitely isn't. If you think it does, then of course once you think you're the best, you're going to want to start conquering everyone just to prove it. I meant more ... that that kind of thinking was good for me."

"What do you mean?"

"My parents died when I was very young. In an explosion, triggered by the Arctics. I grew up with my aunt, who basically just ignored me. No one loved me unconditionally. I had to start figuring out how to earn money on my own when I was twelve. I learned all my social skills from that. The only appreciation from other human beings that I got, was when I provided something of value to them, or when I impressed them with my success. The loop that you said Ephelion talks about, of love as a reward for winning, that was my childhood. And, I got second place in the Pafogai Du Minpentai games because of that."

"Who got first place?"

"Zei. And he had a motivation to succeed that was even more pure, even more beautiful, than my desire to succeed in order to prove to the world that I deserve love because I am strong."

"And what motivation was that?"

"Curiosity."

The conversation paused for a moment. Then Gladias spoke up again.

"When you hugged me a few minutes ago, were you not offering exactly the thing that Ephelion says is poison? Love as a reward for weakness?"

"I would not have done that a year ago."

"And yet it worked."

"I would love to say that I did that because I gave up the false god of greed and converted to the true religion, that of valuing curiosity. But even that is false. If I was motivated by curiosity, I would probably have just directly asked you what's wrong, and that would have triggered your resentment."

"It definitely would have."

"So what's your conclusion?"

"That maybe there really is no master formula. There are different bags of tricks that work for different people. I'm not going to say I'm fully unopinionated between all the different motivations that human beings might have - I'm very comfortable saying, today, that curiosity is almost always a better motivation than greed. And resentment might be the worst of all. But I don't think there's a one size fits all for everyone."

"So how do I save Lily? And, for that matter, Febric and Hreda? And how do I get Seila to stop hating me?"

"Well, maybe that's the one place where you do need to become at least ten or twenty percent Arctic. Your family will be back together, fully, if we can win. Think about it from Seila's perspective. The only way she can be happy, is if she can hug Febric, Hreda and Lily again. And there is no way to use emotional support and love alone to bring the three of them back. The only thing that will bring them back, is if you win - by helping Veridia win against the Arctics. So let that motivate you to try harder, so that in this next battle you can be a winner."

Gladias and Zei walked down the tunnel, and down the stairs. After a few minutes, they got to a sealed door. Zei tapped his watch against the green circle beside the door. The door slowly opened.

They saw a long room, and at the end of the room there was a large table. At the table, a man was sitting wearing a shadowy cloak.

"Welcome to you both!", Den exclaimed.

"Good to see you again, Den", Zei replied.

Gladias cleared his throat. "mi cin pin fe lo kin do", he added.

"Wow, even your accent is good now. And I'm happy to see you too, Gladias."

"By the way, please sit down."

Gladias and Zei both stepped forward, and sat down on two chairs opposite Den.

"So, Gladias. You called this meeting. What did you want to talk about?"

"Well, so far we have not figured out any amazing plan for how to convince the Veridian military to cooperate with you."

"But, I have a somewhat unorthodox idea for what you can do in the interim."

"And what is that?"

"Spy on us."

Den briefly stared at Gladias in surprise. His face almost immediately smoothed, as though remembering that it was not compatible with his self-image to be openly expressing any excitement or other unplanned emotion.

"I think I see the reasoning. But I want to hear yours."

"The Arctics have made a very deep infiltration into Veridian society. They've corrupted many of the politicians. They've corrupted the military. The only institutions that seem to be resisting are the ones that have some stronger privacy built in: the Order of Steering, Graph Funding and the Courts. Though even within the Order, the intrusion got in pretty deep."

"So if you can spy on Veridia, you might be able to spy on the spies. Figure out as much as you can about where the intrusion into Veridia is, and perhaps even try to counteract it. Maybe even put that information more directly into people's hands, and empower them to try to solve it without going through the central institutions."

"You know the risk, right?"

"If you get caught, a lot of trust between Veridia and Dzego is lost. And then we're divided completely and the Arctics win."

"So why should we be okay with that risk?"

"Well, first of all, we're already pretty late in the game and this is a desperate situation. A ninth intervention turn, as you or Zei might put it."

"Second, I'm not just giving you the one-word suggestion 'spy'. I'm offering to give some very detailed specifics about how the Arctics operate, as well as connections to a whole bunch of Keepers that we're now in contact with, so you can better track the Arctics down."

"Third, I think we should tell Verdow, and convince him to take responsibility, along with me, for proposing and even running the project if this all gets out."

"I like this plan. Zei?"

"You're asking me?"

"Of course. You're already one of our best cryptographers. You've been coordinating the work with the Freetown corps. What do you think?"

"For the past fifteen years now, security on digital devices has been very strong. Spying is primarily a physical-world thing, the physical world is much harder to secure. I think we should take Gladias on a tour of some of the stores and the fabs, like the one you showed me way back then, and we can try to think, what would be a reasonably unobtrusive way to get more information on Veridia."

"Actually ... I think Veridia buys its security cameras from Dzego. The ones that are already in a bunch of places, and that they wanted to put everywhere else too. Veridia used to require cryptographically enforced limits on what the data gets used for if the cameras are in public places, but that got watered down a few years back, an administrative change by the Transportation Ministry no one paid attention to. Could you just ... backdoor those?"

"If it was that easy, then surely the Arctics must have massively infiltrated Veridia already?"

"Yes?"

"Have they?"

"Yes? That's what I've been trying to tell you all along!"