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Banner by SRoni
the Tyranny of Numbers
by Aadler
Copyright July 2019
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
This story was done for the 2019
summer_of_giles.
She had ceased struggling some several minutes ago, but she tensed now as he came back into the room and took a seat in the padded armchair. He placed his saucer on the small table before him, picked up the delicate china cup to take a measured sip, then regarded her with a bland gaze. “Very well,” he said to her. “Clearly, we have a need to discuss certain matters.”She glared at him, wishing it was possible to set someone aflame through sheer fury. “I am so going to kill you,” she gritted out.
“Oh, I certainly shan’t allow anything like that to happen.” He crossed his legs, settled back into the chair, ostentatiously unconcerned and at ease. “Were you able to satisfy yourself that you can’t escape from your current bindings, or do I need to provide you with more time?”
His assurance was galling (and, perhaps, calculated for that effect), but she saw no dignity in denying the truth. That didn’t mean she had to openly admit it, though. “Just tell me why,” she said. “I didn’t want to believe it, and now I guess I have to, but … why?”
He lifted an ironic eyebrow. “Come, now. I have any number of duties, responsibilities, roles to fill, and … one might say, personal projects. Could you be more specific?”
Again she quelled the urge to scream in outrage. He was in total control here, and she couldn’t improve the situation by giving in to every impulse. “Oh, I don’t know, Giles, maybe the part where what you’re doing is evil?”
He smiled, the only reaction to the accusation. “You have a good mind, Dawn, but I have more than once chided you at not applying that intelligence with adequate rigor. Tell me, what flaw have you evinced in your stated inquiry?”
She had to think about it, but he had indeed lectured her on this issue before, and she had in fact paid some attention to the lessons he attempted to impart. “I’m … I’m assuming — I’m acting as if I’ve assumed — that there isn’t more than one ‘project’ of yours that’s evil.” She clenched her jaw, and repeated the glare. “Which I don’t actually have any way of knowing.”
He nodded his approval. “In addition to which, I might not regard my present course of action as evil at all; but I’ll let that pass, since regardless of my own perspective I do have a fairly clear apprehension of what you would include in that classification. Still, I must request specifics. You have accusations; that’s why you came here, and why I saw it as necessary to take measures against you. At the same time, you’ve yet to clarify just what comprises those accusations.”
Dawn nodded grimly, trying to gather her focus. He had established physical mastery over her, so words and thought were the only levers she could bring to bear. (Which wasn’t encouraging, given that this was Giles she was facing on that particular battlefield.) “You’re taking out Slayers,” she said flatly. “Draining them. Sucking out whatever it is that makes them Slayers — and leaving them helpless — and doing God only knows what with the power you’re stealing from them.”
He returned the nod. “Ah, yes,” he said. “That personal project. There was little doubt, of course, but one likes to be punctilious regarding the points to be addressed.” He sipped his tea again, surveying her with the same even imperturbability he had so far demonstrated. “Still, I’m surprised you need to inquire as to my reasons; it really should be an elementary matter, hardly requiring much imagination. The most frequent motive for acquiring power is, obviously enough, the desire for power.”
There was an odd duality to the exchange between them: the near-indifference Giles displayed was a trigger for yet more anger, yet at the same time it made her own control not only possible but necessary. “You never cared about power before,” she said, holding her voice level. “At least, not for its own sake.”
“Perhaps I cared more than you recognized,” he offered gently. “Or perhaps I had enough power to satisfy me at the time, but I found larger appetites as the canvas expanded.” He leaned slightly toward her, and there was something not quite the same about his smile. “In the original state of things, I had an essential responsibility. Buffy was the Slayer, she was the one with the status and the power, but it was I who channeled it. Despite her innate disregard for authority, she respected me and — generally — heeded my counsel.” He sat back in the chair. “Now there are thousands of Slayers, and she their recognized leader, and I am but one voice among many. That is a change in status the significance of which might call for rather more assessment than it has received.”
Dawn realized she was staring at him, and recovered herself with a start she did her best to gloss over. “Seriously? you’ve gone Darth Vader on us because you’re a small fish in a big pond now? That’s … that’s petty. Even when I started letting myself wonder if you might have gone bent, I thought it might be over something that actually mattered. This is small-time. This is chickenshit.” She shook her head, as if trying to dispel something unwelcome. “I was barely ready to accept the possibility of Bad Giles; Penny-ante Giles, that’s something I never would have believed. It’s, it’s unworthy of you.”
That brought a slight chuckle. “I must endeavor, then, to somehow deal with your disappointment in me. A formidable task, to be sure, but I believe I can meet it.”
He hadn’t said anything remotely resembling a threat, but he was so comfortable in this macabre situation that she found herself fighting an unexpected fear. She made her shoulders relax, shook her head slowly, pityingly. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“Doing all right at it so far,” he observed with unruffled amusement. Then his expression sobered somewhat, and he went on. “I did not approach this undertaking without an acute awareness of the attendant hazards. From the very beginning, from the first moment I took any action for which I might someday be held to account, I made certain to have measures in place.” He regarded her steadily. “Measures to conceal, to mask and camouflage. Measures to distract and supply useful blind alleys if suspicion ever did begin to aggregate. Measures to provide opportune warning.” He nodded toward her. “And, as you discovered when your investigations led you my way, measures to protect myself.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “And they may have worked against me — mostly because I didn’t really suspect you, there were just a few things I was hoping you could clear up — but you know they wouldn’t stop the people who’ll be right behind me.” She kept her gaze level and defiant. “Or did you really think I came here without letting anybody know?”
“I rather thought you had,” he replied musingly, “and you just confirmed that I was correct in so believing.” She did her best to hide any reaction, but he seemed to see it anyhow, for he nodded with satisfaction. “If you had rescue or even backup in place, you’d never hint of its existence. So, yes, you came here alone, and without telling anyone what trail of speculation you were following.”
She let a little smirk turn the corner of her mouth. “Pretty sure of yourself. So, nothing you didn’t see coming. Nothing you wouldn’t see coming. Nothing that ever might put a crimp into your very precise, very thorough, very compulsive advance planning.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he returned, rather more crisply than he had thus far spoken. “No such assurance would ever be reliable, for there are too many unknowns which could combine in utterly unexpected patterns. No, I took it for granted that I would always be under threat of discovery, and so have done all I could to formulate responses, protocols, strategies to meet various exigencies. No plan can be guaranteed, but I’ve done what I could, and even if my preparations should prove insufficient, I’ve committed myself too far by now to be able to withdraw at this late date. As such, I’ve nothing to gain — and much to lose — by faltering when threatened. So, I shan’t falter.”
“Preparations,” she repeated with subtle mockery, as if privately amused. “You really think you could do anything to prepare against Willow?”
“Willow would be the greatest force arrayed against me if she knew,” Giles agreed. “And, yes, it would be all but impossible to oppose her in such an event. It’s why I’ve focused so strongly on keeping her unaware, on keeping all of you unaware of my activities and the reasons for them.” He smiled briefly. “If you must know, my greatest fear was Xander … and then you.”
She’d been doing what she could to stealthily undercut his confidence (didn’t have much else to work with), but she looked to him now with genuine surprise. “Xander? Me? Why?”
“You all trust me,” he explained. “Buffy and Willow more than anyone else, but all of you. Faith, now … Faith’s life history would naturally prompt her toward paranoia and suspicion, but her efforts to atone for past misdeeds predispose her to a determined loyalty that makes it all but unthinkable for her to regard me with the necessary measure of doubt.” He shook his head. “Xander, however … he trusts me as well, but his basic foundation is of a rather different nature. He wouldn’t be inclined to regard me as suspect, but there’s nothing there to prevent the thought from occurring to him.” He shrugged, a rueful twist to his mouth. “And you … you have a near-supernatural talent for falling into trouble. As we can readily see.”
There really wasn’t much answer she could make to that, and while she was trying to come up with one he regarded her with a slight tilt to his head and asked mildly, “Which does raise the pertinent question: what did make you suspect me?”
That, at least, she could answer. “No single thing, really,” she said to him. “Lots of people are worried about these girls coming up de-powered, and I wasn’t part of the investigation but I was curious enough to do a little poking around. I kept seeing … I don’t know, traces. Suggestions. Times when you could have been in place for what happened, only something had come up and you’d left before then. Not a problem by itself, and no false notes because you move around a lot and you do have schedule changes, but by the fifth time I’d seen a record of you leaving just ahead of one of these incidents — or even changing your plans and not going to a place where one wound up happening — I started getting the weird feeling that this looked a lot like somebody making sure he had an alibi …” Dawn stopped suddenly, hearing what she had been saying. She stared at the man across from her, and blurted, “What? What? What the fu—!? … … Truth spell?”
“Not quite,” he said to her, and raised the cup of tea for another sip. “All the truth spells have flaws, weak points; same with the mundane pharmacopeia, there being no such thing as a genuine ‘truth serum’. I’ve experimented a bit with combining the two, however. One can’t assign too much confidence to the results, but it can still be a useful supplement to conventional questioning.”
“Too bad I caught on,” she said, thin-lipped. “I’ll know what to watch for now.”
“Oh, yes,” he agreed, nodding. “But I believe you’ll find it difficult to maintain your guard every moment; your own judgment has been compromised, you see, so that you can’t even properly assess the degree of compromise. You’ll think you’re in control, and discover again and again that you’ll have revealed more than you intended.” Again the disquieting smile. “Or perhaps I’m attempting to prime your suggestibility by emphasizing how thoroughly you can’t be certain. Or perhaps it’s bluff, or wishful thinking. Or perhaps I’m simply winding you up.”
The thought was horribly threatening, but she refused to let anything show. With deliberate, vengeful force she said, “Whatever you get out of me, or think you can get out of me, you’re going to have to work for.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” He glanced off to one side, as if gathering his thoughts. “You came to have questions. Concerns. You wanted to reassure yourself that there was an ordinary, innocent explanation for what you didn’t wish to believe. You thought you could learn what you needed by casual conversation, and then go your way without having to deal with the embarrassment of my realizing you’d ever had such undeserved thoughts about me.”
“If I’d known,” she said, glaring, “I’d have shown up here with an army, and screw your feelings!”
“Oh, of course,” he agreed. “No army present, however, so you didn’t tell or warn anyone. Shame you were so reluctant to offend me; even greater shame that you didn’t leave any record of your tenuous theory for anyone else to discover.”
Dawn started to defend herself, then tried to think: did she need him to believe she had left a trail for others to follow, or did she need him to believe she was trying not to show that she’d done that? It was all so confusing … God, he was right, she couldn’t even tell how far gone she was! She temporized by saying, “You don’t know I didn’t.”
“Not with complete certainty, no,” he acknowledged. “The evidence continues to accumulate, however.”
“I don’t understand this,” she burst out. “This isn’t like you, Giles, none of it is! Whatever you’re doing, whatever you think you can gain … it isn’t worth it! Nothing could be worth what you’re turning yourself into!”
He shook his head, sighing. “You’re still allowing yourself to be constrained by the limits of your own imagination.” He put down the teacup and set his elbows on the armrests of the chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin. “When the mandate of the Slayer was unlocked and freed to reach out, the world expanded. The multiple manifestations of the Slayer essence … that altered the established order in ways few have even thought to consider, and of which I myself — who have considered little else — can scarcely begin to see the beginnings.” His smile had faded to only the barest suggestion. “That opens out … vistas. Possibilities. The potentiation of an entirely different way of approaching the pre-existing paradigm. A man with sufficient vision, and the willingness to act on that vision, can reorder everything. Nor is it a matter only of individual choice; once the possibility is there, someone shall move to embrace and exploit it. To fail to seize such power means allowing it to be seized by some other person or entity. That is not a consequence to be tolerated.”
Dawn fought back the urge to flail against the mystical bonds he’d placed over her. “Giles, are you hearing yourself here? You’ve gone full-on cliché nutbar.”
“Have I?” he challenged her. “You’re accustomed to thinking of the state of things in the supernatural realm from a certain perspective; couldn’t avoid doing so, really, you grew up in it. And that perspective is widely shared, is in fact the foundation of the Council’s charter of operations. Threats arise, and they are met by sufficient opposing force: not just the Slayers, they’re vital to the whole and are the core around which our purpose is built, but they’re not the only weapon we wield. Evil moves, and we move to counter it, and so it has been for centuries. Our entire function is reactive: even when we make advance preparation, that is simply foreseeing the necessity of the reaction, and ensuring that it is in place.” He stood suddenly, not literally looming over her but taking a more commanding posture. “It needn’t be that way, not anymore. Rather than continuing to forestall these supernatural menaces, we can see them locked out, banished, forbidden entry. Till now, our earth has been a … a verdant pastureland, subject to raids by whatever force chooses to launch such depredations. With the collection and shaping of the new power available, it can be turned into a fortress, against which those ancient enemies beat their weapons in vain!” His expression was triumphant, all but gloating. “It requires only the will, the imagination, the recognition of what must be done.” He raised his hand, tightened it into a fist. “Control. Total, iron control, the gates barred and sealed and vigilantly monitored such that nothing may enter. Control.”
Dawn found herself transfixed by the sight before her. “By you?” she whispered.
Giles nodded in grim satisfaction. “I have the will, the vision. I am gathering the means. I would entrust this dread responsibility to none other.”
Dawn couldn’t bear what she was seeing, couldn’t make herself look away. This Giles wasn’t just a stranger, that would have been bad enough; no, it was a twisting of the man she did know, a terrible reworking of something that had always been familiar, reliable, good. “You’re insane,” she breathed, horrorstruck. “I already said it, but I didn’t believe it, I didn’t realize …” She caught herself, and her voice hardened. “You mean it. This is real. You’ve gone totally ’round the bend.”
“Do you really think so?” he asked, that same awful smile still in place.
“You better damn betcha,” she shot back without hesitation.
The smile fell away, and he leaned forward, something showing in his expression that she suddenly couldn’t read. “No,” he said. “I mean, do you truly believe this of me?”
It was the same teacher’s challenge he’d put to her before: question her own perceptions, weigh the strength of her reasoning and ruthlessly examine herself for any betraying misconceptions. He was prompting her, yes, in that sense he was leading her, but this was a solid tool (which he had likewise taught her), so she brought all her concentration and inward-analysis to bear. He watched while she focused those moments of intense self-inspection; then she looked up at him. “Yes, you’re crazy,” she pronounced flatly. “You’re completely crazy. You’re so crazy, crazy people give you sidelong looks and edge away from you because you make them nervous.” She held his eyes with her own, defiant in her utter helplessness. “I’m pretty sure what you’re saying makes perfect sense to you, which just proves you’re total absolute bug-nuts CRAZY!”
The tableau held, their gazes locked, and after the first several moments she realized that he was searching, weighing what he could see in her. Then he straightened. “Very well, then,” he said. “We can proceed to the next step.”
He turned and went to a small side-table in the sitting-room where she had thought to artfully draw him out, and then found herself taken prisoner. His back was to her and she couldn’t see what he was doing, but she could hear the sound of a drawer opening. “What are you going to do?” she couldn’t keep herself from asking.
He turned back to face her, holding a single-edged dagger. She could tell by the runes on the blade that it was an athamé rather than a straightforward weapon, but that wasn’t as reassuring as it could have been, her own nature meaning that ceremonial uses could be just as deadly as the standard stab-or-slash. “Whatever I choose to do,” he said in reply, “is outside your ability to prevent or even to influence. You recognize this?”
“Oh, you’ve got the drop on me, all right,” she agreed bitterly. “But you might want to think about what Buffy will do to you once she finds out about this.”
“Which of course means that I shall have to ensure that she doesn’t,” Giles pointed out. “As that is already necessary, it doesn’t change the basic situation. The overriding fact, however, is that all the choice here is mine. You cannot escape. You cannot resist. You cannot in any way prevent my taking whatever action I choose to take. Do you agree?”
She gritted her teeth, but couldn’t deny the obvious truth. “Yes. I’m helpless. You have the upper hand, you’re in control. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“What I wanted,” he told her, “was to be sure you understood.” He held the blade vertical between the two of them, moved it in one of the basic dispel patterns, and she felt the imprisoning bonds slide away from her and fade into nothing. “Now that we have that out of the way,” he said, swiveling away from her again, “we can sit down together and have the conversation we need to be having.” This time when he turned back, he held a second cup in one hand and an enameled pot in the other. “Tea?”
* * *
“Ultimately,” Giles said to her as he poured, “it comes down to numbers.”
The feeling of unreality just kept growing. “Num–… are you serious?”
“Utterly so.” He regarded her mildly over the edge of his cup. “Ah, you’re still somewhat off-kilter from the effects of my little improvisation. I do apologize for that, but it genuinely was necessary.”
Dawn struggled to shake away the sensation of numbness. “What? How? Why?”
He gave her a reassuring, even affectionate smile. “Well, first of all I wanted to impress your helplessness upon you in such stark, emphatic terms that you could see I had nothing to gain by releasing you; that is to say, my command of the situation was so total that my only reason for setting you free must be that I had no actual desire to keep you prisoner.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.” She tried again to collect her whirling thoughts. “You … you said ‘first of all’. Meaning there’s more. So what’s the more?”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes.” His face formed an expression that was slightly embarrassed, slightly amused. “Well, I did need to test out how convincingly I could portray myself as lost in the madness of greed for power. To see if even one who knew me well could find it credible that I should embark upon such a course, become such a creature.”
“You were convincing.” Dawn pushed back a shudder. “I believed it so much, part of me is still afraid this will turn out to be a trick and it was real all along.” She pulled her shoulders inward. “Make that a big part.”
“Again, my apologies. And, again, it was necessary, which I will explain in due course.”
Dawn looked at him with doubt and hope. “So it wasn’t true? You haven’t been draining power from those girls?”
Giles set down his cup and regarded her with a resolute self-possession that set off fresh alarms. “To the contrary, I have been doing precisely that. And it is vital that I shall continue to do so.” He waited, and seemed to recognize the fear and the uncertainty as to whether she should attack him, flee from him, or wait to hear him out. “Again I remind you: I never intended to harm you, and indeed am determined I never shall. I need you to hear me. Hear, think, consider, and — I most fervently hope — understand.”
Under the steadiness of his gaze, she found herself regaining her internal footing. The fear was still there (he had done a good job of selling himself as a maniac, assuming that really had been an act), but she could navigate through it. And there might still be some emotional-psychological after-effects of whatever he’d used to suborn true answers from her under his so-subtle interrogation … “All right,” she said. “I’m listening. Whatever this is, I hope it’s as convincing as the … the other was.”
Giles nodded. “Thank you,” he said. He studied the liquid inside his cup, and his face grew pensive, somber. “I’ve spent so much time considering this matter,” he said softly, almost as if speaking to himself. “Endlessly rehearsed the arguments I could muster, and evaluated each according to its strengths and flaws. Yet, now that the moment has come —” He sighed. “I haven’t the slightest clue as to whether I can properly express the importance, the urgency of what I must communicate. Can make it as real to you as it has become to me.” He looked to her with sudden decision. “Tell me: do you know what brought down the Roman empire?”
“Uh …” She tried to remember what she had learned of the subject, aware that it could never equal his own comprehensive knowledge. “I’m not sure. I mean, I could name some factors …”
“Don’t bother,” he said brusquely. “That’s the point, actually: nobody knows. There are various theories, all having some degree of credibility, and — as you said — various recognized factors. Widespread long-term poisoning of the upper classes from the practice of using lead as a lining for wine vats, the rise of the German principalities, the Antonine and Cyprian plagues, the drought-driven migration of invaders from the steppes, the growth of Christianity and then Islam …” He dismissed the subject with an impatient gesture. “Certainly all those contributed, but even within the known factors there is no agreement as to the proportion by which each contributed. Nobody knows what brought about the disintegration of Rome, because truthfully nobody knows what holds a civilization together in the first place. Civilization itself is such a, a fragile construct, and even that tottering edifice is built atop the tumultuous volcano of human nature, the endless titanic clash of animal and demon and angel.”
Dawn was having trouble following; every word made sense, but where was this all going? “O-kaay,” she offered.
Instead of showing any offense, Giles smiled at the dubious tone. “I could go on,” he said. “Offer many more offshoots and examples — neuron cascades, the self-reinforcing interrelations within contained ecologies, Hoyle’s theory of universal physics having been deliberately designed — but I fear that would only lead you to once again question my sanity. The overall thrust of all those considerations is eventually the same, however: for all our knowledge, the most basic fundamentals of what makes everything work is still largely a matter of guesswork.” His smile faded. “Any smallest change could unravel it all. And the change now taking place is … not small.”
Hoping this was finally getting to a point, Dawn asked, “What do you mean?”
“Forgive me,” Giles said. “I’ve no wish to play coy with the truth, I simply am attempting to give you a sense of, of context.” Again he sighed. “Right, then. So: how many Slayers are currently known to exist?”
Dawn thought about it. “It seems like the last estimate I saw was around three thousand.”
Giles nodded. “Your information is somewhat out of date, but only somewhat; the known total as of three months ago was three thousand, one hundred and eighty-three. It’s a bit higher now.”
“Okay,” she said. “So?”
“The spell activating the Slayer essence in every Potential,” Giles said, “was a desperation move. We were facing a foe we could defeat by no other means, and only that added power would prevent the First Evil from assuming a stature that would have led to the almost certain destruction of the human race. In such circumstances, possible side-effects were a … lesser consideration.” He added more tea to his cup, but let the cup rest before him, contemplating it rather than picking it up. “Afterward, of course, we felt a responsibility to reach out to all those new Slayers we had created: locate them, explain to them, offer them support if they needed it, a place in our organization if they wanted it. Old magicks and techniques were dusted off, with the remaining Council researchers and the new affiliated covens — and Willow — operating together to enhance the existing spells by which a new Slayer could be located. We were in a rush, you see, getting the best tally we could and trying to move quickly so that as many as possible of these young women, by then both seeking and attracting the kind of supernatural foes a Slayer naturally faces, could be found before they began to die from fighting enemies for which they were completely unprepared by any degree of training, experience, or understanding.” He raised his eyes to Dawn’s. “I watched the weekly census of those detected but not yet contacted, dreading to see the numbers begin to fall. Knowing that, however necessary our initial action might have been, every death would have been caused by choices we made, with the subjects having been given no choice at all.”
“Yeah,” Dawn agreed. “I remember those days. We were kind of frantic for a while there. We never really got the toll we were afraid of, though.”
“We did not appear to,” Giles corrected her primly. “The aggregate total, in fact, never declined at all.” His mouth tightened in something that, if it was a smile, had nothing to do with amusement. “It increased, in fact. At a small rate, but steadily.”
“Okay,” Dawn said. “That’s good, right?”
“So it seemed at the time.” Giles shook his head. “As I continued to acquire and assess data, I found myself reaching a different conclusion.”
Dawn frowned. “I don’t get it. We all knew something like this would happen. That was the deal: ‘From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer, will be a Slayer.’ We understood that. And the ones who weren’t old enough yet, well, it would be there for them once they were.”
“Yes,” Giles said. “Yes, that was indeed what we expected; that, or something like it.” He shook his head again. “What is actually occurring is rather different.”
“All right,” Dawn said, trying to figure where this was going. “Different how?”
“As I said, the numbers never fell. Never. The increase was quite small at first, but it was there even from the very beginning. There was no depletion, it seemed, only growth.” He looked to her. “That was the appearance. The appearance was … not merely inaccurate, but entirely misleading.”
“So new ones were called just a little faster than the ones that were there were dying,” Dawn said. “Still not seeing the problem. I mean, yes, it would mean some were dying, but not the way Slayers used to. That’s good, right?”
“As I said, the appearance was misleading.” Giles drew a breath. “Growth did not exceed depletion; it derived from it.”
“Uh …” Dawn tilted her head to one side. “What?”
“Our previous knowledge of the process was almost entirely theoretical,” Giles said to her. “Observation, historical record, some speculative analysis. One girl in each generation, we used to say; but, of course, even then we knew that was a mischaracterization, for few Slayers lasted more than a year, many quite a bit less, so there frequently were dozens per generation. Each being called as the one before her died, one after another. And when one died, the Slayer essence would look about, reach out, and come to life again in the next suitable Potential. It was bound, you see. One girl in each generation …
“With the activation spell, we loosed the binding. Every eligible Potential became a full Slayer at the exact same moment, all over the world. And, as you indicated, the expectation was that the process would continue, with each new Potential coming into her own once she reached the proper maturity. But … the binding was loosed. The old limitations had been removed.”
“Right,” Dawn agreed. “You said that already. And?”
“In the past, the rule was simple: one dies, the next is called.” He regarded Dawn with a rigid expression. “What happens now, when one dies?”
“I …” Dawn stopped, thought about it. “I don’t know. I mean, you’d expect the next to be called, but with every eligible Potential already a Slayer, there really wouldn’t be any to choose from —”
“No, no,” Giles said. “We changed the application, but the process itself continues. When a Slayer dies, the essence within her reaches out for a new host, just as it always has … but now the binding has been loosed.” He put his hands together in his lap. “As best I can tell, when a Slayer dies … five more are called.”
Dawn sat back in her chair, not exactly reeling but still shocked. “But … but how? Like I said, every Potential who could be a Slayer, already is a Slayer. There aren’t any candidates to pick from.”
“Not if the status of Potential indicates one chosen by Fate as a possible bearer of the Slayer essence,” Giles pointed out. “But if what we called Potentials were simply those young women so far above ordinary that they were the ones the Slayer essence would look to as a suitable vessel, then it would just keep looking till it found the best choice available.” His expression darkened. “Regardless of how far down into the pool it had to dip.”
Dawn sat silent, letting the implications soak in. “Whoa,” she said. “So we’ve got a big jump in quantity, but you think we’re seeing a drop in quality?”
“I do,” Giles said. “And that would be a serious matter in itself; in comparison to the actual issue, however, it pales to insignificance.”
Dawn sighed. “Suddenly,” she said, “I’m thinking brandy would be better than tea. So what’s the big deal, if mediocre Slayers are the small deal?”
“Numbers,” Giles told her. “As I observed at the beginning, it comes down to numbers.”
Though her formal education had been considerably less than demanding, Dawn had a good mind, so comprehension came quickly. “Numbers. One dies, five are called, so the growth just keeps building on itself …” She frowned. “But that’s not really like bacterial reproduction, or even compound interest, there are limits built into the system. With the organization we have in place, the death rate is way down for Slayers, and it’ll just keep dropping as we get more recruits and better systems.”
“To a point,” Giles said, nodding. “But only to a point. Slayers seek out demons for combat, it’s fundamental to their nature; the vocation can be made less perilous, but never truly safe. Even aside from that, however, is one unalterable fact: everyone dies, eventually. The Slayers’ lives are longer now, more successful and productive and even more happy, but in the end they will still die. The growth may be slow, but it remains inexorable.”
“All right,” Dawn said. “So, more Slayers every year. Fine. Bad news for the forces of evil.”
“That, certainly.” Giles shook his head wearily. “But more than that. Unless other limitations come in — and we can neither predict such a turn of events nor count on it — my more discouraging calculations predict that this geometric growth will have the Slayer essence inhabiting every adult human female in the world within twenty-two years. Even the most extravagantly optimistic projections forecast the same result before the end of this current century.”
Dawn’s eyes widened. “Every … every woman? Wow. Wow. That would … that would change everything, absolutely everything.”
“Indeed.” Giles was facing her, but his eyes were focused somewhere else entirely, perhaps on a future only he could see clearly. “And that is why it must be stopped.”
“What?” Dawn sat up. “Why? Stronger is better. Men have been physically stronger than women for, well, for forever. The world didn’t come to an end. Turn it around the other way, it might do everybody some good.”
“Don’t be facile,” he snapped at her. “There are two reasons why that comparison is invalid. First, the average man has nearly double the upper-body strength of the average female, but a Slayer is anywhere from fifteen to twenty times as strong as a healthy man; the scale of difference is so enormously much greater that one might as well be considering two entirely separate species. Second, we are not speaking of men and women; we are speaking of men and Slayers.”
“Who are women,” Dawn countered.
“Who are Slayers,” Giles returned implacably. “This is not merely a matter of strength; it goes far beyond that. Instincts, drive, the very nature of how this entity came to be and what it was created to do —” He broke off. “You have seen Slayers, and you have seen them typified by the best: your sister, those who have gathered around her, those who joined the battle against the forces that threaten humanity. Consider, however: one Slayer at a time was enough to hold the balance against those forces for millennia. — Augmented and aided by other forces and other organizations, true, but all the same, millennia. If every female on earth is a Slayer, however, demons will inevitably be exterminated … and, when the demons the Slayers are driven to hunt are entirely gone, what will they hunt?”
“Uh …” Dawn tried to find an argument, ground to a helpless stop. “You’re, you’re hyping this up,” she said weakly. “Looking at the worst possible interpretation of how things might turn out to be. Might, which is a long way from will.”
“You could be correct,” Giles said. “I am convinced you are not, however.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “As I said, you have seen Slayers … but I have undergone an actual encounter with the primal Slayer essence, or at least a manifestation of it. Its mind and awareness touched mine; I have felt it, to a very limited extent, in ways you have not. This is neither human nor demon, but a blending of both: channeled to serve a larger good, but still violent and relentless and — to those it perceives as its rightful prey — utterly without mercy. If you had yourself experienced such an encounter, you would never be able to regard this animating essence with anything less than the most scrupulously focused wariness.”
Dawn still wanted to argue, but this was a man she had trusted for … well, really for longer than she had been alive, if you considered that her memories went back farther than her actual existence. Even apart from his character, she trusted his judgment, his intellect, the many-times-proven incisiveness of analysis and assessment and decision. “Assuming you’re right,” she said slowly, “you’re telling me this as … as part of the explanation for why you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing.” She regarded him doubtfully. “So all that other, the bit about pulling the Slayer essence out of Slayers … that’s supposed to stop this big every-woman-a-Slayer future you’re so worried about? or at least slow it down?”
Giles nodded in seeming relief. “Precisely. Precisely. It’s not yet too late to forestall the result I have foreseen; terrifyingly far along in the process already, but not yet too late.”
“Okay,” she said, still trying to pull the threads together in her understanding. “So how does that de-Slayerification work? And how did you figure out how to do it in the first place?”
His laugh was sharp and hard-edged, but nonetheless held a measure of actual humor. “My discovery of the process was the most preposterous accident imaginable, the unintended and essentially induplicable combination of different spell structures, substances, processes, and bizarre circumstances that should have never been allowed to come into proximity to one another to begin with. I’ve kept it as secret as the rest of my activities, for I’ve no desire for anyone else — particularly the things we fight — to know how to remove a Slayer’s internal force and render her powerless. At bottom, though, it’s a fairly basic concept. Once again: now, when one dies, five more are called.” He shrugged. “This, this freak process, allows me to detect the indications of when such a death is approaching, and to … beat it to the punch, as it were.”
Dawn’s eyebrows went up. “To what?”
“The Slayer essence has learned to expand,” Giles explained, “and now seeks to do so whenever possible. Some part of it can sense the growing imminence of its vessel’s demise, the circumstances of a Slayer’s approaching death, and it … gathers itself, to be able leap out and seek more hosts for its multiplication. When it has reached that excess of, one might say, exit-inclined volatility? It makes itself both prominent — if one knows how to detect and follow the signs, as I do — and vulnerable. At this state of excitation, I can draw it out, redirect it and store it until I have the opportunity to return it to its original wellspring of power.”
“Huh,” Dawn said. “But … but that means, every time one of these girls was ‘attacked’, and stripped of her Slayerness, you were actually getting in ahead of her dying and keeping it from happening.”
“A fortunate by-product,” Giles said to her. “And it has heartened me immeasurably in following the course I have chosen. Make no mistake, however: if I could only have accomplished my ends by siphoning away that essence at the moment of a Slayer’s death, I would still have continued to do exactly as I have done. The necessity is that dire.”
Dawn nodded, pushing away the chill of those words; brutal honesty, however hard to hear, still meant he was being honest. And, though she was a long way from being completely convinced, she believed him in the basics. He’d laid out his case with the usual care, made his arguments, and — once again — this was Giles.
Still, there was one issue that hadn’t been discussed yet. “So why have you been going all Lone Ranger on this?” she asked. “Why not pull Willow into it, or even just Buffy?”
He sighed. “I told you I had experienced an encounter with the Primal Slayer,” he said to her. “That was years ago … but, at that same time, Buffy and Willow had similar encounters. — and, er, and Xander as well, but I’m less concerned with his exposure. Willow, however, dipped further into that essence when she performed the Slayer activation spell, and Buffy remains a Slayer herself, the pre-eminent one. I can’t … can’t know how much of it is currently active within them, and so can’t take the risk of how either or both might react to knowing of this endeavor.”
That set her back for a moment. “You’re afraid of them? Seriously?”
His eyes were steady on hers, level and unwavering. “I have met this creature,” he said again. “It makes quite an impression. I will not hazard awakening it if the likelihood can be avoided.”
“Well,” she said. “Okay, then. I still have plenty of questions, but you’ve earned the benefit of a whole bunch of doubts. I’ll still want to talk out a lot of what’s going on, but … but I won’t be running off and telling on you while we go over it all.” She frowned again. “The opening act you pulled on me: you said one reason was so you could practice it on me, see if you could be convincing. Why would you want to convince me, if you were going to turn around and explain it anyway? Why would you need to do that?”
Giles nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, now we come to it.” He looked to her. “The masquerade to which I subjected you: I worked that out over time, and have documented it comprehensively, in secret journals that can be used in evidence against me if ever I am discovered. A contingency carefully formulated to provide an alternative explanation for my actions, so that the true purpose is never suspected.” A quick, dismissive gesture. “The means by which I have been draining Slayer essence, of course, is not therein revealed, only alluded to in hints and references designed to lead anywhere except toward how to accomplish such a thing.”
Another surprise, but she was starting to get used to them. “If anyone finds out what you’re doing,” she said, thinking it out as she went, “you want them to believe you’re guilty of something completely different. So that the, the overall Slayer spirit, isn’t warned.” She shot him a sharp look. “Which means you have something else in place to keep it going even if you get found out.”
His smile was gentle, patient. “I was rather hoping I could persuade you to join me in this endeavor yourself,” he said mildly.
“No, no.” She waved it away. “No, you’re not going to distract me. You had this ready to go, so there must be other operators already helping you with what you’re doing.” She looked up suddenly. “Xander!”
Giles chuckled. “Xander would be an obvious choice. I would prefer to avoid the obvious.”
“Xander would be obvious if you were running a secret project for everybody’s good,” she corrected. “Evil Giles, power-crazy Giles, Bwa-ha-ha Giles, Xander would never help that guy, so it wouldn’t be obvious at all.”
The answer was a rather impatient shrug. “You may suspect him if you wish, but I would urge you never to trust him in such an issue. His dedication is to the greater good, but he, er … he tends to see that greater good as entirely congruent with his loyalty to Buffy. And, as I mentioned, he too was exposed to the Primal Slayer. His perceptions might be less than completely reliable.”
Dawn nodded almost absently, caught up in sorting through and evaluating all the different ramifications of this new (and weird, and threatening) chain of understanding. “What if you hadn’t been able to get me to listen, and believe you?” she asked him. “Or … what if you weren’t convinced that I did believe you? If this is as important as you say, you couldn’t let me stop you; but how would you stop me from stopping you?”
That indulgent smile still in place, Giles said, “I told you the truth because I believed you could understand the stakes, would be able to see what needed to be done and willing to commit yourself. I hoped — still strongly hope — you can be recruited into this programme, for I need whatever assistance I can gather. If you had defied me, however, or I had believed you to be shamming cooperation, I would have worked upon you as complete a memory-erasure spell as I could possibly apply, with inlaid injunctions preventing you from ever suspecting me in the matter at hand.”
She winced at that, but said, “Okay, better than being sacrificed, even if it brings back un-fun memories. But … let’s face it, I could be pretending. What if I’m planning to nod and agree and make all the right noises, then scamper off to tattle to Buffy the moment I’m away from you?”
The smile broadened. “I cannot tell you how much it pleases me,” he said, “to see that you are applying genuine intelligence and imagination to this so very important matter.” He raised his cup for another sip. “Before you leave, we will undergo a rather more complicated mutual spell, involving voluntary oaths. Once that process is complete, any attempt on your part to betray what I am attempting to accomplish here will trigger the following results.” He counted them off. “First, you will forget the actual purpose of my labors. Second, you will forget any part you had in it, assuming you were genuinely working with me even temporarily. Third, you will remember my madness, my megalomania, my determination to set myself atop the world as its firm, benevolent — but permanent and undeposable — ruler. Fourth, you will have intuitions as to where you should look to find all the documentation I have so meticulously prepared to prove my guilt in said megalomania.” His expression became even more bland. “Fifth, I will receive warning, through an etheric subcommunication, that all the preceding steps have been activated.”
“Warning,” Dawn said, considering. “So you can escape?”
The correction was firm, quiet, implacable. “So I can commit suicide,” Giles said, “by means not apparent as such, and in circumstances that will serve to cement the evidence of my guilt.”
Dawn was positive she could actually feel the blood draining from her face. “What? Giles, no!”
“I’ve no eagerness to die,” he assured her. “If I didn’t have faith in you, I would already be layering the memory spell into place. All the same, past experience has taught me that faith, however justified, should always be accompanied by a backup plan.”
She was still thinking, even more furiously now. “That, that can’t be the way you’re doing it,” she said. “Not for everybody. I already know this is important enough to you that you’d have set it up to outlast you, if anything happened, so that means a crew of some kind. More people involved would make more possible failure-points, though. You can’t have arranged it so you’d die if anybody, anybody at all, ever broke or changed his mind. So you’re just trying to use this to convince me how serious you are about the whole business, and to keep me in line if I ever start having doubts.”
“Sound reasoning,” Giles said approvingly. “But incomplete. True, it would be illogical for me to secretly acquire an extensive team — the existence of which, by the way, is still entirely theoretical on your part, and by no means proven — with every single one of them holding the key to my doom if ever they wavered or failed. Simply because it would be inadvisable to subject myself to such peril at every point, however, does not mean it would be out of the question for me to make arrangements for such a stricture to bear on me at one point.”
“That …” Dawn stopped, thought, stared at him. “What I mean is, huh?”
Giles smiled. “I have set myself against the Slayers,” he said quietly. “I have set myself against the new Council, for it was designed — as it should have been — to put the Slayers first, and I am now working directly against their nature. I have set myself as controller for a process that, even if focused to an entirely different purpose, continually accrues greater and greater power to myself. In an entirely different way, I do threaten to become something very like the menace I farcically presented myself to you as being already.” He shrugged. “And so I place a limitation upon myself. You are that limitation. You do not wish me to die, so in any area of conflict you will argue with me instead of ever revealing our purpose to anyone else. I do not wish to die, so I will always take great care that my actions and choices never become so extreme that you would see my death as preferable to allowing me to continue as I intended.”
Dawn didn’t reply immediately, her eyes downcast and her thoughts turned inward. “You … you really are just as ruthless, just as dangerous as you pretended. Not the way you pretended, but you’re still planning to use threats to control me and spells to get your way if that control isn’t enough. You’re giving me choices, but you’re making sure all my choices work for you.”
“Yes,” Giles said. “Yes, exactly. That is why I will have you as my limitation. That is why I have chosen to reveal everything to you. The enormity of the threat we are facing, the relentless press of numbers, will allow nothing less than absolute commitment; yet that very commitment poses its own dangers. You are to be an answer to some of those dangers.”
Dawn nodded, her gaze still distant. “You and I are going to fight all the time,” she said softly. “There are going to be times I’m screaming at you, because you’ve roped me into this whether I like it or not. You’ve got me, it worked, because it really does matter that much; but I resent it, and I’ll always resent it, and I’ll keep looking for ways to tell you so and make you pay for it.” Her eyes met his, and held. “But, yeah, you’ve got your agreement. I’m in.”
“Excellent.” Giles stood. “You mentioned brandy, some minutes ago. I do in fact have a quite adequate vintage at hand, and this seems an appropriate time to bring it out.”
“I’m not sure I’m in much of a mood for celebrating.” Dawn’s mouth was pinched, her tone haunted. “We’re going to be … Watchers within the Watchers, undercutting everything the Watchers are supposed to support. We’ll be alone, because the people we love the most are the ones we’ll be setting ourselves against as enemies, and we’ll spend every moment of our lives lying to them.”
“Not every moment,” Giles said. “And not all that we say will be lies. But, essentially, yes.”
Dawn sat in the chair Giles had drawn up for her, letting the doom sink in on her. She was imprisoned more completely than when he had kept her ensorcelled, bound now by chains of logic and shackles of necessity. He had done this to her, knowing exactly what it would mean because he had already done the same to himself.
A big part of her, she knew, would never forgive him for this.
“All right,” she said flatly. “So we’re the bad guys now. Let’s get on that, then.”
– end –