“I’m simply being honest,” Kalinin returned. “At the time of its founding, those five men’s intentions were pure.”
Edmund Jr. was neither stubborn nor self-righteous enough to insist that Kalinin was wrong, but even so, it felt like some kind of sick joke. “Fine,” he finally said. “Let’s say Amalgam had ideals and that it got results, too. But... eventually, it became what it did.”
“I’m afraid so,” his father agreed. “Amalgam expanded its network at leisure and secretly grew its membership. Its original five founders retired one by one, and alternates popped up in their place. Twenty years after its founding, it had become an organization larger than its own members even realized. That was around the end of the 60s.”
“Around the quagmire of the Vietnam War?” Edmund Jr. guessed.
“Amalgam wasn’t involved with all of it, but they were one of the reasons it went on for so long. You see, the organization had unintentionally ended up being composed primarily of people whose financial interests were better served by the war continuing,” Lord Edmund explained. He went on to say, “I don’t think they even realized it at the time. Since then, Amalgam’s actions have been primarily focused on the protection of their members’ vested interests. There have been wavering goals, conflicting desires, and tug-of-wars of compromise... There were repeated internal conflicts, and before long, they started holding ‘fixed matches’ on the world stage. A new rule naturally came into being, and fraud became expected.”
“And that went on for thirty years?” Edmund Jr. asked.
“The current membership is entirely unaware of Amalgam’s original ideals,” Lord Edmund said. “They use the organization simply as a tool for their little power games, drunk on the wine of invisible authority.”
Over the course of many years, an organization founded with lofty goals in mind had changed, swelled into something ugly, and made self-preservation its only goal. It was an archetypal fall from grace. No matter how many brilliant people you brought together, no matter what kind of systems you put in place, you couldn’t escape that eventual rot.
“Then it’s already a conspiracy without purpose or morality,” Edmund Jr. insisted. “And its resilience just makes it more out of control.”
“That’s right,” his father agreed. “Twenty years ago, when I was bequeathed the role of arbitrator by my father, Amalgam was already out of control. ‘Mr. Mercury’ has a fine ring to it, but in practice, I had no power beyond that of mediation. Although I maintained the network and expelled rule-breakers, I wasn’t allowed a voice at the executives’ conferences. Even if I tried to share Amalgam’s original ideals with them, I was simply ignored. Mr. Mercury’s arbitration is only tolerated because he does not assert himself. There was nothing I could do.”
“You couldn’t destroy the network itself?” Edmund Jr. suggested.
“No,” the elder Mallory said with a sigh. “Fifteen years ago, I sincerely tried to find a way to destroy them. We didn’t have the online conferences then, but communicated solely through codes made up of three-column announcements in newspapers and text information services. The public key was decided in rotation among executives. I used stock prices in trade journals, some used weather reports for the American East Coast; others, tabloid gossip columns. Those who wrote for those publications never even dreamed that their articles were being used this way.
“Of course, the purpose of this setup was so that no individual could disrupt the encryption key,” he continued. “There were always multiple backup communication methods, and since it was all based on public information, it couldn’t be altered. The advent of the Internet has only made it harder to control and disrupt their communications.” The elder Mallory then added, with a glance at Kalinin, “Of course, I’m told Mr. Silver made it possible.”
“He has limited precognitive abilities. He can predict the encryption code and transmission protocols in advance, then analyze and manipulate them to serve his ends,” Kalinin acknowledged.
“He planted a virus in the network, then?” asked Lord Edmund.
“Put simply, yes,” Kalinin told him. “Not just an electronic virus, but a psychological one, as well. It appears to have been inconceivably complicated, as well as time and labor-intensive.”
The conversation taking place between his father and Kalinin was completely over Edmund Jr.’s head. It sounds like someone tried to take control of Amalgam from within, he thought, and succeeded. There was no sign of the pain of his wound abating, and he wanted to curse in order to distract himself. But he also didn’t want to show weakness in front of the other two.
“What were we talking about again?” Lord Edmund wondered. “Ah, yes, my inability to stop the growth and rot of Amalgam...”
“I think I’ve heard enough,” Kalinin told him. “So, that’s why you created Mithril, is it?”
“Yes,” Lord Edmund affirmed. “If I couldn’t control them from within, I knew I’d have to make an organization to oppose them from without. I used Mithril to halt Amalgam’s excesses. You may be able to guess when it started: with the use of nuclear weapons in the Gulf War. That was the height of Amalgam’s arrogance.”
That nuclear launch, still wreathed in mystery, that left the Middle East in a state of ongoing tragedy... And here is my father, thought Edmund Jr., saying that Amalgam was behind it.
“In that moment, I made a decision,” Lord Edmund continued. “Which was that I would create an organization to stop them.”
“You don’t think that was a noble decision, do you?”
“It was the only option I had.”
“You stayed in hiding, betrayed both organizations, and manipulated them... Even if it was for a noble purpose, it’s unforgivable fraud,” Edmund Jr. fumed. “I can’t even conceive of the cowardice, the arrogance—!”
“Spare me your childish criticisms,” Lord Edmund said tiredly, cutting his son off.
But Edmund Jr. didn’t stop. “It’s not just the organization you betrayed. You mocked and used me, your own son! You sweet-talked me into recruiting the people you needed!”
“Because you were the man for the job. A romanticist disguised as a pragmatist was ideal for leading Mithril’s executives.”
“You—”
“Your reaction disappoints me,” said his father, cutting him off. “You should reserve your shame for your own weakness in failing to outwit me.”
At this, a soul-rending rage welled up in Edmund Jr., who found himself itching to kill the older man now. He’d asked himself over and over on the drive from his hideout in London, Can I really shoot my own father? But now, he knew for sure that he could.
“I’m glad I took your gun away earlier,” Kalinin observed, clearly sensitive to the man’s rising bloodlust.
“I suppose I am being unbecomingly antagonistic, Mr. Kalinin,” said Lord Edmund, turning away from his son. “You said you wanted to confirm something, didn’t you? Perhaps you should get that done first.”
“No, I’ve heard enough.” There might have yet been many things even Kalinin didn’t know about the circumstances around the founding of Amalgam and Mithril; their conversation thus far had made that clear. He probably just didn’t want to have to watch any more sniping between father and son. “May I have the registry now?”
The elder Mallory furrowed his brow at Kalinin’s request. “It’s not complete.”
“I don’t care,” said Kalinin, who had expected this answer. In fact, it had seemed the most likely scenario. “I believe you know the names of most of the executives throughout Amalgam’s history, from its founding to the present. There are multiple examples of Mr. Mercury ‘expelling’ rulebreakers by revealing their names to the other executives.”
The trouble was that the arbitrator couldn’t give out those names for reasons other than rule-breaking, as that would diminish trust among other members. Leonard Testarossa’s limited precognitive abilities had enabled him to track down most of the current executives, but still he knew nothing about the past ones. The only person in the world with that information was the arbitrator, Mr. Mercury.
“What do you want with information on past executives?” Lord Edmund asked suspiciously. “They’re almost all dead.”
“There’s no need for you to know that,” Kalinin told him unpleasantly.
No, there was no need for the elder Mallory to know, as Kalinin and the others already had an unchallenged grip on Amalgam through their knowledge of the current executives. But that information was also worthless to their current needs; it was the past that had real value. More precisely, the information on the Amalgam of eighteen years ago.
They would be redoing everything from that point, after all, so the contemporary members of Amalgam would be useful tools in setting the world right. That’s why she wanted this registry—as a reference, to carry into the next world with her. Kalinin was just following her orders.