Beauty and the Beast — 15 (End)
But Victoria keeps her arm raised.
“No…… I have to kill every one of them here. Let them go like this, and they’ll come after me again.”
She isn’t wrong. Would people who have come this far simply give up? If she means to live in safety, killing them all is the sensible choice. They threw themselves in chasing a greater desire; leave them alive, and they become a danger. Had there not been, among them, a Harvester making use of the knowledge I gave, I would have left the lot of them to die.
But I can’t. A Harvester has appeared who can, just barely, put the technology to use. I have to see what kind of world they make of this one.
“This happened because of them! Berne City is completely ruined, and now I can’t even see Mom and Dad! You think I don’t know? They want me dead! What the hell is so wrong with it!”
Everything she has piled up until now comes pouring out with the rage. Strictly speaking, they began in the ordinary way. All they asked was that the truth of the great fire in Berne City be brought to light. It was a legitimate question. Weigh right against wrong, and the wrong belongs to the three companies, who bought Marquis Gaston — the man who governs the land Berne City stands on — so they could erase the problem.
“It is wrong.”
So I tell her that. Wrong, at least, by a human measure. Victoria’s face twists, and she glares at me the way a child glares when she has lost the road, is furious, and has no idea what else to do.
Yes. I know. What you are supposed to offer a child is sympathy: stand on her side and condemn the enemy with her. I will not. I press her instead.
“You already know who is truly in the wrong, Victoria.”
She knows the three companies are the root of it.
“The best thing you can do here is not to kill them. It is to persuade them.”
I can call it the best if I like, but the moment I slip my own selfish best into it, it stops being the best. My standing beside Victoria is her misfortune. She is already at the far end of misfortune, and misfortune has stacked itself on top. Being hard with her is not something I do for her sake. I don’t believe they will be persuaded either. What I want is to comfort her as she is and tell her she did well. Then she would feel better. She might even come to depend on me. Dependence would give me a doll that does as I say.
But either way, the gain is far too small beside the risk. Approve the wickedness of killing, and a contradiction opens in the good I have done until now. If Victoria depended on me, I could handle a Victoria who holds such power — but only someone who does not know her would try it. This child, in the worst of circumstances, once chose the most powerful thing available to her. She has done it once. There will be a second time. And I am afraid of what follows if that choice turns into resentment aimed at me. So I am harsh on purpose. I force her to stand up straight and look at the truth.
“Victoria. If there is anyone here doing the greatest wrong, it is you.”
“Doesn’t this make you angry, Bell? Or is it fine, since they look up to you? You’re a god to them!”
Yes. She is properly sulking. She jabs a finger forward and twists the knife with real skill.
“I am not that kind of shit.”
Hm?
Why? Why has it gone so quiet all at once? Victoria stares at me, utterly startled, and Polaris, standing behind her, is looking at me just as strangely — the look of someone watching a person say something foul who was never supposed to. I may have carried myself like an introvert, but I never claimed to have no feelings. I only moved when I was moved; when the moment demanded it, I stepped forward. Both of them saw that. So why the stares?
“Or shall I put it this way? People ought to do what they want to do.”
The air has gone strange, so I ease the words around. Someone who has been pushing, and suddenly pulls, is bound to throw the other off balance. Under the water, the purple barrier being ground away is webbed with cracks and a breath from shattering. Every ability that had been outside it has already been swallowed and gone, eaten by something closer to a black solid than to water. Even so, there is still time. Push a person without pause and they only push back, so I draw Victoria in as I persuade her.
She opens her mouth.
“Why are you stopping me?”
A reason. A reason, is it. I have no intention of saying it is for her sake. That would be a lie. So I need another answer — a reason they should be left alive that belongs to Victoria, not to me.
Ah. I have one.
“Do you mean to fight the companies alone? You’ll need more allies who know the truth.”
I quietly set aside the royal house, which looks as if it might help. They have an odd habit of seeing Victoria and me as a single family, so if she asks, that king will grant it. On top of that, the country has been thrown into chaos, and someone carrying out the royal will has already been won over. There is, if anything, no reason he would refuse. But I leave all of that out. Frankly, the people in that water will be no help at all. It will be luck enough if they don’t cause some disaster later. They may even be foolish enough to turn their resentment on the one who spared them. Killing every one of them would be the cleanest choice — except that among them is a Harvester who used the technology. The talent that will change the age is sleeping in there. They have to be kept alive.
“Berne City’s army knows the truth now. Shouldn’t the citizens know it this time? Shouldn’t they be asked who turned Berne City into a horrific battlefield — or who left that disaster to stand?”
Even if they learn it, half of them at most will change their minds. They have already given up on the country. Victoria, standing here, doesn’t know that. I work the facts in my hands and offer them to her: a proposal a cold-blooded mind, or a psychopath, would have cut down at once. Victoria is not that sort of person.
“R-right. I don’t want the truly bad ones getting away.”
She looks up at me with her face terribly twisted, and slowly lowers her arm. Her hand rises to her eyes. She closes them, and the hand settles over them, and the tears come.
“I want Mom and Dad……”
She barely gets it out. Thank goodness. The purple barrier has, just barely, kept the people inside it alive. What had been transparent is cracked on every side; some of the barriers are leaking water. A little later, and they would have been wiped out. But the mass, hardened further still, is no longer bearing down on them. Annihilation has been avoided. My plan is complete.
“First we return to the capital. Victoria Vett — quickly. We get clear of this place. The truth can wait until later, can’t it?”
I mean to move her before the survivors say something strange and get themselves killed for nothing. The presence in the forest is stirring. The army will be back here soon. Some of them are already hidden.
“No.”
The moment her arm comes down, cold shoots high into the sky, like a scream that had never been allowed out. The black mass doesn’t part the way water parts. It crumples and splits the way metal does. That really isn’t water anymore, is it? From the cold spreading off it — ice? But does ice do that simply because it has been compressed? Inside the split, a barrier shows itself, like a broken eggshell.
“Come out.”
Victoria seizes my shoulder, shoves me behind her, and goes forward. No — she mustn’t kill them. The killing intent is still rolling off her. And I can’t go after her. Polaris has hold of me. This is me giving up. It would be out of character for me to push Polaris aside and go to her.
Someone from the Purple Twilight Society, rigid with terror, looks up at Victoria. Not one of them is unafraid of her. Is it really to that extent? Couldn’t they manage to shout a little more wildly? All that happened was pressure closing in from every side, the barrier shrinking by degrees until the cracks began. Shameless people shout louder at the one who frightened them, don’t they?
“I don’t know what you were thinking when you came here. I don’t want to know. But before you do anything else, you listen to me. You’ve been fighting to learn the truth too, so you have a right to the facts I heard.”
Cold keeps pouring off the black mass. Shivering in it, the people come forward one by one, and with them in front of her Victoria opens her mouth and lays out what she has learned. The three companies, and Marquis Gaston. That she killed the marquis herself. That the army which had been above them was wrecked when the clockwork machines ran wild — and that the companies were the ones who set that rampage off. When someone asks for proof, she lifts with water the lump of machinery she had been carrying until the moment she turned it on people, and brings it up into her hand, and tells them where it was.
A few of those inside react. Some know the machine in her grip. Some know that clockwork machines move beneath the capital. Some know of the transmitter fixed beside a programming device that is not in Victoria’s memory. Then comes the fatal flaw in the power unit, which everyone standing here already understands. And, astonishingly, Polaris cuts in partway through and tells them what happened aboard the airship: a royal airship, and still the clockwork machine inside killed people and tried to kill Polaris as well.
It is a strange sight. Overwhelming violence has only just passed, and not one of them is in their right mind, and yet they are talking, steadily, carefully. The Harvester who meant to take the country, and the Harvester who meant to found a religion and stand at the head of a new flock — both of them join the talk in earnest now. They are thinking properly, in order to drag the truth into the open.
Something worse happens next. From the forest behind me, a Harvester who had been hiding there walks out, a left arm missing. The Harvester named Richard Gaston steps into the conversation.
Weren’t these people killing one another across a long stretch of time? Shouldn’t they hand themselves over to desire and impulse, and foolishly offer me warmth? Foolishly.
No. Of course not. Unfortunately, becoming a Harvester sharpens the mind. It would be convenient if all that increased were vicious little schemes, if they only grew better at taking from others — but what improves is ability as a whole. All the more when they stand here not as a crowd but as single people: then they think more rationally still.
You aren’t supposed to be like this. What are you doing?
If they had gone on fighting, I meant to slip away through the gap. Not the passenger airship I came on with Polaris — a flying battleship under direct royal command is already on its way here. Walk a little north, join it, and all of this ends. Then the Purple Twilight Society and Gaston’s army would scatter in every direction like spiderlings, and spread the misfortune they have lived through just as widely. It would be the same as guerrillas rising across the whole kingdom. And the Harvesters, made wretched, would take in the knowledge I send all the more eagerly, and go on changing the world.
So why has it turned out like this?
From a distance I watch them — grave faces turned toward one another, none of them denying their own guilt, all of them searching for the truth.
This alone is a failure.