Duel Identity

Chapter 15

For a long time Leif continued to sit in the living room of his virtual work space, trying to decide what he ought to do. What he'd discovered wasn't exactly illegal. It was very distasteful, though. Would Megan appreciate learning that her wonderful pal Alan Slaney had feet of clay-and dirty clay, at that?

No, Leif told himself. If I go to Megan with this, it will just look like sour grapes on my part. She already thinks I bailed from Latvinia because I couldn't hack it there.

On the other hand, he couldn't keep this new information to himself.

In the end he decided to discuss it with someone whose opinion he respected-someone who would be personally interested in his discoveries, as well.

David Gray looked surprised when Leif called him.

His image floated in the display of the virtual computer console in the virtual living room.

Obviously, David recognized the background from Leif's image. "I see you're in your fortress of solitude. What's up?"

"It has to do with our little walk through Herzen. I was wrong, and you were right. I've come across a couple of things about Alan Slaney, and I need to discuss them with someone who has a cool head. Can you synch in for a while? I warn you, it may take some time."

David grinned. "I think I can fit you into my busy schedule. Give me a couple of minutes."

Soon enough, he appeared in Leif's workspace. "What dark secrets have you uncovered?"

"It all started when I encountered this picture in a presentation on old-time fencing," Leif began. From the picture of Louis Rondelle, he went on to explain how he'd identified a number of other members of Gray Piotr's inner circle. "All this seemed like a surprise-"

"Coming from Prince Charming," David finished. "Knowing you, I expect you've already gotten the low- down on our oh-so-nice friend."

"I've barely scratched the surface," Leif said, "but already I've turned up some stuff I don't like very much." He explained about Alan's accelerated academic career. "You've got to read his doctoral thesis to believe it," he ended.

David looked surprised. "Why isn't he using the thesis to get a job?"

"I think you'll be more interested in the content of his paper than Alan's employment or lack thereof," Leif said. "It explains a lot about his sim. You should read it."

"Okay," David said, his face showing no expression. "Maybe I should."

Leif sat and fidgeted while David went through the holotext version of the downloaded manuscript. The process took even longer than he'd expected. Where Leif had only skimmed, David was actually wading through large sections of Alan Slaney's scholarly prose.

It took all of Leif's patience not to start reading over his friend's shoulder, pointing out what he considered to be the relevant parts of the thesis.

Finally David turned away from the glittering text display. "Very.. interesting," he said.

"Interesting?" Leif echoed. "I think appalling is the more appropriate description. How can you, of all people, be so calm after reading what that-that jerk had to say?"

"Well, he's not just a racist," David replied. "I'd say he was more of an equal-opportunity reactionary. He's not a fascist, either. I expect the proper label would be to call him a classical conservative."

"What's the difference?" Leif wanted to know.

"Alan's kind of conservatism is the nineteenth-century kind-the sort that wanted to keep things as they were back then in the old days. World politics was a sort of 'rich white guys who picked their parents well' club." David's smile turned wry. "To those guys, today's so- called conservatives would seem like rabble-rousing radicals-"

"But that's what they are," Leif said.

David continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Who are in favor of way too much democracy."

Leif closed his mouth with a snap.

David gestured back to the displayed text. "Once you get past his sugar-coated view of the Fin de Siecle, Sla- ney actually has a logical argument. He suggests that the turn of the century was the last chance for what he calls 'the better classes' to stem the currents that pushed Europe into World War I."

Leif frowned. "More like 'keep the lid on,' I think. Things were happening all over-France, Britain, the Balkans, the Far East, Russia, and Africa."

David nodded. "The tide had been running against Alan's heroes for a good fifty years. Art and science and many men of letters were, for the most part, on the enemy side. When you've got people as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Sigmund Freud saying that the status quo was no good, you've got problems."

Leif's friend spread his hands in an all-inclusive gesture. "That's why I say Alan's an equal-opportunity reactionary. He's not just about people of color keeping in their place, but about everybody staying in their place: working folks, union types, artists, what we'd consider the lower middle class, women, you name it."

His tone grew a bit more pointed at Leif's shrug. "For instance, he probably wouldn't be too wild about someone like your father making a fortune. That, too, would be rocking the traditional boat."

"The guy's a nut!" Leif burst out.

"He just has a very different point of view," David responded. "I might not like it, but I think I can understand it. In the history of the world according to Slaney, the methods used to vent off the steam gathering among the diverse people threatening the traditional systems- national pride, imperialism-that's what brought on World War I. And what came out of World War I is what has led to the world today."

"I don't think we came out so badly," Leif said.

"But we have lost some things from that earlier world," David argued. "Today, things like individualism, privacy-they're in short supply. Personal honor isn't as widespread or as trustworthy. Causes were considered to be bigger than people then-that later bred political expediency. Mass politics, mass economics-wouldn't you like to be thought of as something more than a faceless consumer? Even information has become a commodity."

"You might have a point. But Slaney's alternative would be to turn the clock back about a hundred and twenty years. Can you imagine what that would mean?"

David gave a curt nod. "Not all that much honor to be found in a cotton field," he said. "But it would have been nice for all of us to pick up some of those old ideals along the way."

"In theory," Leif said.

"In theory," David agreed with a sigh. "But out in the practical world, the classical conservatives made some pretty bad choices. For instance, in Germany, they backed Adolf Hitler, figuring they could use him to stop the slide."

"And we all know how that turned out," Leif said. "So I was right. Slaney is a fascist."

"He's a romantic," David corrected, "holding to a set of beliefs that just don't fit in the world we live in."

"Maybe that's why he came up with Latvinia," Leif suggested. "He created an environment friendly to his point of view"-he gestured from himself to David- "and unfriendly to others."

"Makes sense," David admitted. Then he frowned. "But I think we're missing something, somewhere."

"That helps narrow things down," Leif said sarcastically.

"If I knew what it was that we're missing, we wouldn't have to look for it," David responded. "I propose a division of labor. You're already deep into Slaney's background-with one surprising exception."

Leif blinked. "What?"

"His fencing," David replied. "Slaney's teaching at the salle probably takes more effort than his day job. Why don't you look into that? I'll take his other big- time investment-Latvinia. We still don't know why he made up his own country. Maybe we can learn a few things from how he went about building it."

David synched out from Leif's stave house and transited to his own virtual workspace. This month, he was trying out a new simulation-the bridge of one of the new deep-space probes.

He opened his eyes to find himself in the captain's acceleration couch, facing the main control arrays.

Leif's dubious words still rang in his ears. "You act as though you can retrace Slaney's course through the Net. Unless you've been holding out on old Uncle Leif, I don't know of any software that can crack Net anonymity-or track what sites someone visited months ago."

Leif was completely right, of course. But there were other ways to peel that particular onion.

David began issuing orders to his system. When you want to build your own large-scale sim, he thought, all roads lead to the Creators' Quorum.

After all, he had some experience at shaping veeyar to his own designs. David's recreations of early spacecraft had a certain reputation among a select group of hobbyists.

And the chat room where he picked up his best simulation hints was the Creators' Quorum. Some of the biggest names in the business synched in to shoot the virtual breeze. Even Chris Rodrigues-the infamous Rod of Sarxos-turned up occasionally, it was rumored.

But nobody was sure. Lots of the visitors to the Creators' Quorum did so behind proxies. Would Alan Slaney have done that? Maybe, if he thought he had something to hide.

But as David's search agents began working their way back through discussions stretching over the past few months, he was looking for certain connections among the questions.

His profile called for intelligence, perseverance, and an interest in getting beyond the store-bought software most people used to craft the virtual realities of their choice.

"Oh, yeah," David breathed as parts of the holotext transcripts began switching over to highlighted mode. These were possible hits. His search agents also color- coded the selected portions depending on how many of the profile parameters matched.

David scowled. Even when he scanned the sections highlighted in red-the most likely possibilities-there were a lot more than he expected.

Sighing, he began to read. And read. But as he plowed through the vast amount of material, certain patterns began to emerge. The questions were numerous, posed under a variety of Net handles. But David saw a quiet agenda that tied them all together.

One set of questions, spread over a couple of months, really jumped out at him. Supposedly coming from several different participants, they essentially asked for the best methods to erase inactive computer archives to create sufficient cyberspace for a large-scale sim.

And what was Alan Slaney's daytime line of work? He maintained a building full of corporate computer systems-including tetrabytes of inactive computer archives!

Wellf I've probably learned where the Latvinia sim is located-if I wanted to plow through a building's worth of memory, David thought.

He was about to dive back into that mass of holotext when he suddenly had another thought.

Beyond the other stuff we've discovered, what I've just learned is that no matter how much of a nice guy he seems to be, Alan Slaney is no angel.