Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(61)
Young looked confused for a moment before he finally shrugged. “Is that what you’re pissy about? For a second, I thought you were going to come and demand I give your nephew a reprieve. I would have given it to you, you know. You owing me a favor would have been worth it. I’m surprised you didn’t cash in on it.” He rolled his eyes. “Instead, you barge in here demanding to know about a f*cking job.”
“Time Laws were broken! Who ordered it? The High Director needs to be made aware of this!”
Young chuckled in a raspy voice. He opened his mouth and paused, his eyes glinting. Finally, he leaned back and spoke. “Do you know why? Even though you’re a planetary high auditor of the most important planet in the solar system, you’re still just ninth in the chain, Levin?”
Levin felt bile climb up his throat as he quivered. “If this is an indictment of my abilities—”
“Oh, nothing to do with that,” Young said. “You are the finest auditor ChronoCom has, which is why Earth is in your care, but you will never rise above the ninth. Do you know why?”
Levin kept still.
It was Young’s turn to slam his fist against his table as he stood. “Do you really want to know who authorized the Valta job? High Director Jerome did, you f*cking inflexible idiot. You want to hang someone for breaking the Time Laws? You better go to the very top!”
Levin felt his stomach twist and a jolt shoot through his body as those words sunk in. “Why would he authorize this? This goes against everything the agency stands for.”
“Have a seat, Levin,” Young snapped. “No, sit, damn it, and let’s talk about your promotion.”
Levin reluctantly did as he was told. Most of this information he already knew. It hadn’t escaped his notice that his career within the agency, while exemplary by any measure, had leveled out. It had never bothered him much, until now. He knew he didn’t play administrative politics as he should, but he had always felt his record spoke for itself. Apparently it didn’t.
“You don’t know the balancing act all the directors must do against the rest of the solar system,” Young said. “Our power and control is delicate. When a powerful corp like Valta wants something, it has to be done. The only thing we can do is extract a high enough cost from them that they will think twice about making a similar demand again.”
Levin snorted. “Or we can just cut off their power supply. We hold the keys to keeping these companies civilized and lawful.”
Young sighed, and for the first time, Levin saw the hard, confident exterior of the director soften, revealing cracks in his legendary iron facade. “You’re a good auditor and even a better man, but there’s more to being a director than being a good auditor. This shit we do jumping back in time is the easy stuff.” He pointed out the window. “The real dangers lie out there, where all the megacorporations and governments lie.”
“I don’t understand,” Levin said. “We power half the solar system. Without us, humanity will collapse.”
Young nodded. “Yes and no. We do hold the fate of humanity in our hands.” But the corporations hold our balls in theirs. The agency is at the mercy of every single megacorp’s whims. They’re the ones that supply us with support: manpower, education, equipment, and technology. In return, we supply them our salvage.”
“Seems to me our leverage is as great as theirs.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, son,” Young said. “Let me tell you something. Where do you think our jump bands come from? Our exos? All our equipment?”
Levin listed off every piece of equipment assigned to the monitors, chronmen, and auditors in rapid succession as well as all their component suppliers.
Young cut him off halfway down the list. “All from corporations. None of this is proprietary. What is to prevent someone like Valta from obtaining their own jump bands and running their own salvage?”
“The Time Laws strictly—”
“Nothing!” Young finished. “Not a damn thing. We are the only agency allowed to jump because Valta, Finlay, Radicati, and all those other f*cking megacorps know that if one of them starts messing with the chronostream, they all will. They all know that it’s better that none of them have that ability than all of them do. That’s why ChronoCom has that authority, because they f*cking give it to us.”
Levin was stunned. “If that’s true, then why do we still allow them to break the Time Laws?”
“Because that authority is an illusion that they can take back at any moment. If Valta wants something, we can push back only so much. In the end, it’s better we do the job right than reject their request and have them flub it going off on their own. We try to stay as true to the Time Laws as possible. Otherwise, those bloodthirsty corporations will simply plunder the entire chronostream for every scratch of profit they can claw out of it.”
Levin sat through another ten minutes of Young lecturing him about the way everything in this universe actually worked. He felt numb, but he knew what the director said was the truth. He had seen small signs of this many times throughout the years, but had always had such a disdain for the corporate side of ChronoCom’s operations that he had stayed in the dark regarding those matters. It was a somber realization.
For years, he had considered ChronoCom the beacon that stood before humanity and stemmed the tide of collapse. Now, he realized he was nothing more than a referee, a mediator making sure all the corporations didn’t play too rough.