Multireal by David Louis Edelman Page B

nodded. "As you wish, Lieutenant Executive."

    5
    On the way back to the hoverbird docks, Magan took a detour to see
the statue of Tul Jabbor. The atrium where the statue resided was the
one place in DWCR whose location never changed. The statue itself
was a small-scale replica of the one standing in the center of the epony-
mously named Tul Jabbor Complex in Melbourne. A thick man with
mahogany skin atop a tall pillar. No matter where you stood, some
holographic trick caused Jabbor's gaze to always meet you head-onand left you constantly standing in his shadow. This was as unsubtle
an architectural metaphor as Magan had ever seen.
    The founding father of the Defense and Wellness Council needed
no caption, but bold block letters at his feet did pose a question.
DO YOU ACT IN JUSTICE?
    The locution had always seemed peculiar to Magan. Acting in justice, not for or with justice. As if justice were merely a vehicle you
might ride to a particular destination, and the terrain you trammeled
to get there was nothing more than dirt under your wheels.
    Certainly Tul Jabbor had treated justice that way. He had dramatically expanded the Council's power by going after erstwhile supporters like the OCHRE Corporation; some even suspected he had
signed Henry Osterman's death warrant. Then again, Jabbor had come
to power in a world without precedents, a world simultaneously drunk
with the possibilities of bio/logics and desperate to avoid repeating the
horrors of the Autonomous Revolt.
    But Len Borda? Borda had two hundred years of Council history to
guide him, with every manner of high executive from Par Padron the
Just to Zetarysis the Mad as object lessons. He should have known better. Instead, Borda was ever willing to sacrifice principle for pragmatism, ever ready to steer justice down the muddy, unpaved path.

    And you? the lieutenant executive asked himself, kneeling in
silence before the statue of Tul Jabbor. Are you forcing Borda to step down
because he's made a mockery of Par Padron's ideals? Or are you just afraid to
wake up at the bottom of a river?
    Magan Kai Lee was a man of reason and principle, or so he told
himself. He had been drawn to the Defense and Wellness Council by
its discipline, its rigidity, and its stability when compared to the life
of the diss-or so he told himself. Now, after watching Len Borda use
the Council as a blunt instrument of self-preservation for years, Magan
was contemplating the ultimate move against the very discipline,
rigidity, and stability that had brought him here in the first place. And
that contradiction sat in his mind like a poisonous flower with everexpanding roots.
    But Magan couldn't allow Len Borda to repeat the mistakes he had
made with Marcus Surina, could he? Wasn't there a higher principle at
work here that needed defending?
    Do you act in justice?

    Papizon and Rey Gonerev caught up to him in the hallway, no simple
feat in an orbital fortress whose constantly shifting corridors rendered
geography meaningless.
    "We spotted Natch an hour ago," said Papizon as he moved into
step behind Magan like a hoverbird merging into traffic. "He's on a
tube train, headed north out of Cisco."
    The lieutenant executive ground his teeth together. "And you
didn't think to look there before we raided his apartment?"
    Papizon shook his head. He was immune to criticism. In fact, he
seemed to have been inoculated against most forms of human expres sion altogether. Sometimes Magan wondered if Papizon was really
some sublevel engineer's attempt to circumvent the harsh Al bans in
place since the Autonomous Revolt. If so, one couldn't have picked a
more peculiar vessel: lanky, storkish, brown eyes not quite symmetrical
and permanently half-lidded.

    Rey stepped up to Papizon's defense. "We did check there, Magan,"
she said. "We swept half the tube trains in the Americas yesterday.
Natch was definitely not on that tube line."
    Magan gave the Blade an appraising look.