Deep Darkness
A few candles flickered to life in a room gone pitch-black.
The space was so vast, though, that a handful of flames could barely touch it. At best, you could just make out the silhouette of a person.
"They actually caught a real postman. Is this even a good idea?"
"If it isn't, so what? What can the government bastards do?"
"He's just a postman. They won't even blink."
Our own talk had died, but their muttering kept my ears from getting bored. Dozens of spectators, watching us. To borrow the Old Man's phrasing, this was what it felt like to be the monkey in the zoo.
"Did we really need to waste our strength on this? Wouldn't it have been better to grab a doctor?"
"You think that happens just because you want it to?"
"What we need right now is medical supplies."
"If you agree, raise your hands!"
"Even if we just appraised the cores we've got piled up and sold them off, we could buy more medical supplies than we'd know what to do with."
"And how exactly are you going to appraise them?"
"That's the problem."
"Selling cores is faster than finding a doctor. Raise your hands!"
"Is either of those even possible?"
"None of it matters. Once the Savior shows up, everything gets solved."
"The Savior will appear. Raise your hands!"
"Unanimous."
"But... if a new Savior shows up, what happens to the one we already have?"
It might have seemed like an incredible coincidence that Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo were traveling with me, but there was nothing remarkable about it. Headquarters was always short on medical supplies, and core appraisers were precious everywhere you went. They were the things every settlement lacked. An ordinary situation.
"The General is entering! Extinguish every candle except the gatekeeper's!"
A knot of people emerged, cutting through the dark. Not one of them carried a candle, so I couldn't make out a single face. I doubted I'd have recognized anyone even if I could, but being unable to read an expression makes dealing with someone considerably harder. If you want to read a mind, you have to watch the face—the eyes above all.
"The Savior has refused to meet the postman. So today, I'll be conducting this myself."
So the Savior had been meant to come out. I'd been curious what sort of person that was. A shame.
"I will now ask whether you approve or oppose my conducting this matter in the Savior's place."
"If you approve of the General conducting it personally, raise your hands!"
In this darkness, could anyone even see dozens of hands go up? The thought had barely formed when—
"Hm. Unanimous."
The General finished his count in a flash. Were they just eyeballing it? So Hyper-Democracy wasn't much after all.
"Postman. I sincerely hope you're a useful one."
"And if I'm not?"
"You'll die right where you're standing."
"I do like a threat I can understand."
"Bluster?"
"Presence."
"Hm."
For a moment the General seemed to turn something over.
"Fine. Bring it in."
He snapped his fingers and went straight to the point. At his signal, a stretcher appeared. Something lay on it under a cloth. That, I figured, was why they'd kidnapped us.
"Postman. Tell me everything you know about this object. The woman and the old man behind you will keep their mouths shut until I ask them something."
A soldier drew the cloth away and raised a candle so the thing in question could be seen clearly.
Familiar.
What had been hiding under the cloth was the little plane Tofu had sent up. The paint, done so that anyone would take it for military issue, was still vivid.
"Speak. Everything you know."
"A military aircraft. A warplane, I suppose?"
"You recognized it at once?"
"A winged machine in military paint. I just fitted the pieces together."
"An airplane isn't common enough that you'd know one the moment you saw it."
"Maybe, if someone's never opened a book."
"So you haven't actually seen one of these before? And are you going to keep talking in scraps like that?"
What they wanted was a postman's cooperation. And we were prisoners, with no way to resist. For now, the smart play was to cooperate as far as I could and watch how things developed.
"Well, I don't remember ever seeing one of these..."
Cooperating didn't mean telling the truth.
"Did you happen to acquire this plane recently? Found it crashed near the settlement, maybe?"
"That's right. A search party found it a few days ago. Do you know something?"
"So what I saw back then really was a plane..."
"Yes! Tell me everything you know!"
"Not long ago, I saw something on fire flying through the sky."
"And you're still going to keep your answers short?"
"Everyone said it was a meteor..."
"But?"
"To my eyes, it was unmistakably a plane."
"Excellent! Absolutely excellent! We brought in the right man!"
The General snapped his fingers, and this time a map was brought in. As before, a few soldiers held up candles and lit it.
"Mark where you saw the plane. And which direction it was flying!"
So they didn't even know which way it had come from. They hadn't seen it in flight—only found the wreck. That tracked.
Then the key is in my hand.
Shall I push a little?
"That's not hard. In exchange, I'd like to start hearing why we have to stay tied up."
If my read was right, he wouldn't turn violent.
"Is this the nerve of a veteran postman? Or have you simply failed to grasp the situation?"
I could faintly make out a silhouette stroking its chin. It felt as if he were staring straight into my eyes, but that was probably my imagination. I answered by staring right back. Not that there was anything to see.
Then—
"Heh."
A sneer that drove straight for the heart.
He's got an ability.
No question about it. The man could see in the dark.
"Hm... Fine. It's no great secret. But this is the last time I overlook you climbing."
A conciliatory line. For now, I'd pretend I hadn't caught on to his ability.
"You can be reasoned with."
"You ought to be grateful your counterpart is me. If it were the Savior, a word from you wouldn't get through at all. By now, either the woman or the old man would be bleeding."
So the Savior had a temper. This one didn't look especially good-natured either.
The reason he faced me in the dark was obvious: so I couldn't study his reactions, and so he could hide his own. A mask could cover a face, but a mask alone couldn't scramble where my eyes went. There would still be a mask to look at. In the dark, it was different. Steering pupils that had nowhere to settle was not a familiar task.
For now, I'll handle my gaze by staring a hole through the map.
But he didn't give me the opening.
"If you're not going to mark the map this instant, we'll put the candles out."
Bastard.
"In any case, a thorough analysis of this monstrous aircraft has shown us it is a weapon built to drop bombs. The government bastards' intentions sit in the palm of our hand."
Analysis, my ass. They must have gotten hold of the bomber blueprints that had been hanging with it.
"So let me pose a question. Why would the government bastards be building this? A weapon of this caliber would only be needed when taking a settlement—and yet every settlement has the sky shut under a steel roof. There shouldn't be anywhere to drop a bomb!"
Ah. I understood what he was driving at. The plane had produced a result I hadn't expected.
"Exactly one place. There's a settlement famous for having no steel roof, and it's a thorn in their eye?"
"Correct. Right here!"
The Human Meat Factory, watched over by the railgun. This place had no need to go to the trouble of raising a steel roof.
"They're clearly aiming at us. Otherwise there would be no reason to build a bomber. I thought they'd given up, but all along they were secretly making a weapon tailored for us...!"
I'd assumed they would take it as a military plane that had simply crashed while secretly hauling bomber blueprints. Tofu's cheerful notion—that they'd cackle over the captured plans and happily build bomber drones of their own—had missed clean. I'd only thought that far myself.
Fit the auto-nav unit enclosed with the blueprints, and a plane could slip past the steel roofs and into a settlement. The problem was that these people had no way of knowing that. I hadn't put myself in their shoes. Their fear that the government might come to crush them at any moment ran far deeper than I'd thought.
Seen that way, there was nothing wrong with the General's logic. From where these people stood, it was more than enough reason to think exactly that. I hadn't properly understood their position.
But now I have.
From here on, I could feel which rhythm I was supposed to dance to.
"I'll mark the map, so light it up."
I marked the information the General wanted at once, starting with the place I'd seen the plane.
"Hm? Not what I expected. Are you certain of that location?"
He must have assumed I'd spotted it somewhere along the straight line between Headquarters and the Human Meat Factory. I could have matched that for him. It just wouldn't have been any fun. Information, by rights, ought to be high-grade information—the kind that entertains.
"You figured it was a plane that took off from Yeouido. Not even close."
"Hm."
"Actually, I have a guess about where it started. I saw it here, and if you follow a straight line a long way out, there's a munitions factory that was just built, right about there."
"Oh?"
"New enough that you could lick the smokestack."
"Is that true?"
No.
"Yeah. I had a delivery, so I've been there. It probably took off from that place. I wondered what kind of factory it was—turns out they make planes."
"Oho..."
You had to offer at least this much fun if you wanted them moved.
"Then what do you think? Your instinct as a civil servant."
"What's that supposed to be. Instinct as a civil servant. Completely useless."
"Is the government preparing to crush us? Developing a secret weapon all the while!"
Did my saying so, a mere postman, somehow turn it into a story worth believing? He seemed to be after something.
"Mm. The way I see it—"
Better to play along for now and steer him toward treating me favorably. Let things roll the way he wanted, then decide once I'd watched how they landed.
"I think you're right, General. A bomber is a useless weapon unless they're aiming it here."
"Kidnapping a postman was a brilliant plan after all! What do you say! If the operation was brilliant, raise your hands!"
They roared as one. The notion of snatching a postman had come out of the General's own head, it seemed. Which made me curious.
"Why a postman, of all people? If you wanted information on a military aircraft, wouldn't kidnapping a soldier have been the smarter call?"
"Soldiers don't travel alone, so they're hard to snatch. And what with loyalty and all the rest, they're tougher than you'd think. We've dragged a few in before, and their mouths were heavy. They opened them in the end, but we had to get rough."
"And postmen run their mouths?"
"Didn't you just prove it?"
Tsk. No arguing with that. Good thing I'd fed them false information. If I'd handed over the real thing, I'd have been furious.
"The plan was to grab a postman first, and if the information still didn't come, then go fishing for a soldier. But look! The operation was a complete success!"
"We did it!"
"Long live democracy!"
A full-blown festival.
"What do you say! It's even clearer now that this is the government bastards' doing. Not even the Savior will be able to oppose it. Are we just going to sit here with our hands folded and take what's coming!"
"We will not!"
"Let's show them the bite of democracy!"
The country itself already ran on democracy, and I had no idea what these people thought they were saying.
Come to think of it, it wasn't only the General. Tin Can and everyone else spoke of the Savior with easy familiarity. From the title alone, you'd expect them to worship the Savior like a god. Not even close.
"We must prepare for war! Raise your hands!"
So that was it. The General's aim had been war all along.
"One, two, three, four... A tie?"
But it didn't go his way. They were standing in the dark—he could have fudged the count—but the great principle of Hyper-Democracy had to be observed. That was the idea.
"This is absurd. How is the vote split?"
"Which bastards didn't raise their hands?"
"Quiet! Quiet!"
Most of the ones clustered around the General seemed to have raised theirs. I'd clearly heard cloth brushing. So the ones who hadn't weren't his inner circle.
"What are you thinking! Planning to sit there and take it!"
"Well... wouldn't preparing our defenses be enough? War is too much."
"That's right. This isn't something to settle on emotion."
So these people did know how to hold a discussion.
"Then we raise our hands again in three hours!"
Or not. There must have been a rule that the same matter required a three-hour gap.
"Um... General?"
And into the middle of it came Tin Can's voice.
"What is it?"
"It's just... is it all right to take this postman's information on faith?"
"What do you mean?"
"The woman and the old man he's dragging around, passing them off as a doctor and a core appraiser... I can't quite bring myself to trust that, either..."
Tin Can had more sense than I'd given him credit for. Either way, he was clearly not going to be of any use to my life.
"You ought to filter what the postman says..."
"I don't see why you'd think that. Are you trying to claim what you claimed last time—that he's a hunter disguised as a postman? A spy sent by the government?"
"No, that's—"
"We've had that trick plenty of times. You think I wouldn't have considered it? Here. Look."
At the General's signal, a soldier lit a candle over the confiscated Backscratcher.
"The moment I saw that, of course I suspected it first. But this changes the story."
Next, the folding shield laid beside it.
"Hunters don't use military gear. They've got better hunter equipment. So why was he using this? Because he isn't a hunter!"
I'd wanted a hunter-grade folding shield. I hadn't been able to slip one out. A real shame, that. I was working hard on getting one.
"No, that isn't what I— I don't think he's a spy either. A spy wouldn't say the plane belonged to the government. He'd hide it, if anything."
"Damn right!"
"What I mean is... maybe this guy is picking out whatever you'd like to hear and making it up, just to keep his life. That's what I'm worried about."
Tin Can, the bastard, never picked anything but the jobs with no meat on them. Pointlessly sharp. What a headache.
"Fine. Then we put it to a show of hands. If you believe the postman's words, raise your hand!"
The sound of hands going up filled the space.
"With this, we take the postman's words as true."
Tin Can, thoroughly deflated. How do you like the taste of democracy?
"Um..."
"What now."
Persistent, that one.
"Might I also propose a show of hands?"
"Raise your hands if Tin Can may propose a show of hands."
What the hell kind of circus was this. In any case, by democratic procedure, Tin Can won the chance to call a vote.
"The postman is certainly trustwor— cough. Sorry. Anyway, he did give us that information, but that doesn't make him one of us. He'll want to go back to Yeouido, and he must resent us for kidnapping him. Wouldn't you say?"
"So?"
"We believe what the postman said, but before we move on, we ought to make it clear that this person called a postman is not on our side... That's what I was thinking..."
Quite an effective bit of wordplay. Not a move you made unless you were convinced I shouldn't be trusted. One way or another, he wanted them wary of me. An opponent with good instincts is a nuisance. If the others started thinking like Tin Can, my position would get very awkward indeed.
"The postman is not on our side. Hm."
"What do you think?"
To the General, it didn't matter either way. What he needed was the information I'd spit out, not me as a person.
"Fine. Regardless of his having given us information we can trust, this postman is not on our side. If you agree, raise your han—"
I couldn't just sit there and take it.
"Hold on. You're not even giving me time to defend myself?"
"Defend yourself? Hyper-Democracy has no need for anything that old-fashioned."
"You don't have to vote. I'm not on your side."
"You'll admit it yourself? A condition that works against you?"
"Yeah."
"Doesn't matter. We'll settle it with a show of—"
Impatient.
"I'm not on your side. I'm your friend."
"...?"
"And I, too, will propose a show of hands."
From here on, I'd tell them a beautiful story.