Double Helix 03_ Red Sector - Diane Carey [113]
“Once Orsova carne sober again that day, he thought about what you said, that we might be able to predict the Constrictor waves. He came to me and wanted to know how. I told him. He understood none of it, of course, yet I suppose it sounded to him as if I understood something. He went to the authorities and warned that a Constrictor was coming.” “I’ll bet they listened hard,” Stiles chided. “They hardly listened,” Zevon confirmed, his frustration
long scabbed over. “When the Constrictor did come. Millions died. And the people thought Orsova was a genius.” “Ugh… what people won’t swallow….”
“Orsova used his new influence to get me more equipment. He became the ‘head’ of the Constrictor project.”
Spock clarified, “The science of which he knew nothing at all?” “Are you kidding?” Stiles said. “He doesn’t have a clue.”
“Nothing,” Zevon confirmed. “He manipulates the power, I tell him what the science can and cannot do.”
“You’ve been working at the pharaoh’s counting house while he gets the glory.”
“I could never have had the glory, Eric. Don’t mourn it. If the population had ever found out I was the one who started the Constrictor, they would’ve killed me. I cannot be replaced in Red Sector. If I am not here to do this, all the Pojjana will suffer. I would gladly slit my own throat if I thought that would stop the phenomenon. Orsova is the umbrella shielding me from the limelight. He can have the attention.”
Witness to humility and guilt taken to the extreme and somehow transmorphed into a positive, Stiles glanced at Spock and noted the Vulcan’s unmistakable respect for a much younger and much less accomplished scientist. That caught Stiles in a grip between Spock’s generosity and Zevon’s humility. Damn, was this confusing.
“Also, one must say,” Zevon began again, “Orsova was most tricky and skilled at playing the politics, in which I had no interest at all except what he could get for me. The Constrictors were coming every few months and I quickly became very busy. Everything depended upon my predictions becoming more accurate. The more accurate, the more people thought Orsova was a genius. He developed a network, he controls many resources and lives like a king-” “And how do you live?” Stiles asked.
“That matters not at all, not in the least” Zevon warned, hearing a defensiveness that wasn’t necessary for him. “He’s welcome to it. My purpose is served. The Pojjana would never have accepted a Romulan as the genius of the Constrictor.
Orsova allowed me to succeed much earlier than ever would have been possible. I invented new types of antigravs, compression suits, architectural implements, metallurgy-many things that Orsova has parlayed into a huge Constrictor survival industry. He has the power to decide where all the resources go, all the revenue, new materials, technology, the buildings-and I tell him what to say. He wields so much power now that he is the de facto head of the government. As he works his plans and I work mine, fewer and fewer people die with each Constrictor. In the last one, only six thousand planetwide. Six thousand, Eric!”
The victory in Zevon’s voice and the emotion in his expression cut Stiles to the core. He pressed Zevon’s arm in approval, knowing what that meant to him.
“I knew we had to control energy to survive,” Zevon went on. “I have an energy division, a school of physics, a school of mechanical science, defense division, deflection-grid network all over the continent …. “
“Why a defense system?” Spock asked. “Have you had problems with the Bal Quonott?”
“Not yet. And they’ve had no interest in us. Yet. We have no spaceborne fleet with which to defend ourselves. I knew I could never develop conventional weapons sitting trapped on a planet. Instead I’ve used tricks I learned while trying to read or deflect the Constrictor waves. Using the mass of the planet as an anchor for-” “The composite beam that almost killed us, I bet.” “Killed you… ?”
“Well, how do y’think we got here? Magic? We came in a ship that got sucked into that damned thing!