“Simple? Did the Bosnians, the Serbs, the Croats, the Muslimsindeed, the citizens of the entire predark worldhave the future they wanted? Hardly.” He pronounced the last word as if it tasted exceptionally unpleasant.
“The causes of war are never simply based on territorial struggle, economic conflict, or religious or ethnic differences. If we don’t come to terms with that, the cycle repeats itself, doesn’t it? The whole of history all over again.”
Brigid had heard variations of Lakesh’s pet theories, about time cycles, about one event impacting on another, continents, even centuries apart. Sometimes it was a bit too metaphysical for Brigid to comprehend.
“The futureif we still have onecould have been changed in the past, you know.” Lakesh’s voice had dropped to a musing whisper, then trailed away.
Suddenly he glanced around him in momentary confusion, as if he expected to see somethingor some place else. He blinked, and his bloodless lips creased in a shamed smile.
“I’m ranting again, aren’t I? And you’re too well-bred to ignore or interrupt me.”
Patting her shoulder encouragingly, he shuffled away. “Get to it.”
Brigid gazed after his age-stooped form for a moment. For a ville official, in any division, Lakesh was a definite anomaly. The most productive years of his service were long behind him, and why he hadn’t received an administrative transfer decades ago was baffling.
Exhaling a long breath, Brigid flipped open the cover of the file and began working. She expected the documents to be dry packing, and she wasn’t disappointed. But as she always did, she kept her expression and mind neutral as she read the copies of the two-hundred-year-old reports. There were pages upon pages of it, culled from various and sundry predark governmental bodiesCIA, NSA, UNSC, DIA and something called Amnesty International.
Though several pages were already censored, blacked out with ink, she was able to patch together a fairly reasonable account of the causes behind the horrific, genocidal conflict in old Europe.
People were at the heart of it, of course. Disobedient, unevolved, unregenerately selfish humanity who surrendered to their baser natures and slaughtered and massacred and tortured on very flimsy pretexts. The core of the fault lay not with governments, which after all were vast extrapolations of the private citizen’s selfish, sinful urges, or with socioeconomic hardships, but only with vicious humankind, who thirsted for the blood of their neighbors.
Despite what Lakesh had said, reading through and collating all the data to conform with the standard point of view was simplicity itself.
Brigid copied the final version onto disk, output it, placed it in her completed tray and indulged in a stretch. Three hours remained on her shift, so she allowed a bit of the professional distance to fade from her mind. Unsurprisingly she found the recollection of Kane’s visit occupy her thoughts.
She shook her head impatiently. There had been other men in her life, a few fellow historians, but none she had ever truly connected with. She was ville bred, just like the men she had involved herself with, so she never quite grasped why the emotional spark couldn’t bridge the gap. They had been raised much like herselfordered, fed, clothed, educated and protected from all extremes. And their narrow, limited perspectives, their solemn pronouncements regarding their ambitions, had bored her into a coma.
Of course, she couldn’t be certain, but she doubted Kane would have the same effect.
Without appearing to do so, Brigid made sure none of her co-workers was paying attention to her, then she selected a blank disk and inserted it into her machine’s hard drive. Carefully she overrode the voice control and transferred it to the keyboard. She typed in the proper numerical sequence to access the main data base, then input the word “Dulce.” As she had anticipated, the programmed safeguard kicked in, and the legend on the screen asked for her access authorization. She tapped in “Baptists, gr. 6 arch., clearance Quatro.”
The data infeed digested the identification, and transmitted the message to her console “Authorization denied.”
Brigid tensed. If she tried again and was denied again, she would trip a security relay and alert a monitoring official. She thought it out dispassionately for half a minute before she cleared the screen and typed in Lakesh, gr. 12 arch., clearance Xeno.