The Death of the Wave (6 page)

EDICT 5693: The Nation of Eden is lenient. If a man should prove to be treasonous, there will be a careful review. If convicted, that man will be imprisoned or else put to death.

And the Lady Justice stands at the top of the Barracks,

gazing down without expression on the parade grounds

where the Watchmen once marched, and now Cleaners stand without moving.

The Lady is the last that stands from before the Censor.

She is Justice, but she is not our Justice.

She is Justice grown hideous with human frailty.

She watches the parade ground with blank medieval eyes over the atrocities

with her sword outstretched, and scales,

due to mechanical flaw or irony,

tipped, and blindfold torn away.

She looks on benignly over the workhouses and the Hives,

the staccato of gunshots and the training of the Breakers,

and smiles a manufactured smile over the Barracks.

With her back to the people.

With her back to the Camps.

And the Lady Justice stands at the top of the Barracks,

gazing down without expression on the parade grounds

where the Watchmen once marched, and now Cleaners stand without moving.

The Lady is the last that stands from before the Censor.

She is Justice, and she was once my Justice.

She is Justice grown corrupted apart from morality.

She watches the parade ground with blank medieval eyes over the atrocities

with her sword outstretched, and scales,

due to mechanical flaw or irony,

tipped, and blindfold torn away.

She looks on benignly over the dull pressure of beatings,

the staccato of gunshots and the acrid smoke of the burnings,

and smiles a manufactured smile over the Barracks.

With her back to the people.

With her back to the Camps.

A careless wave of a hand and I was dismissed for the time being.

It had been an uneventful week.

There had been two deaths in Poet’s Camp

and one dramatic execution of a violinist by one of the inner-camp gangs.

Five more deaths in the large section of Writer’s Camp sectioned off for Prose,

filthy water supply suspected.

Normal, everyday stuff and Galileo had long lost interest.

As I turned to leave, I saw that those black eyes,

the whites transparent as lace,

flickered to where my medal ought to be.

The thin mouth never spoke a word.

He rarely focused on my face, but I often looked at his, intent, as if on a new species of animal.

Something about that thin, aristocratic face, with its elongated bones, seemed so right.

It resonated in my being, as if I was plucked like a harp.

He smiled a fractured little smile.

I puzzled at its broken perfection and wondered what it meant,

that
hatred
,

when that freezing hand came to rest upon my arm like it did upon the head of the child.

Confused, I waited in the silence that followed, his lips moved as if about to speak,

I loved it despite myself when he spoke, it was like torn velvet left to rot in the street.

But he only gave me a slip of paper that I recognized with Eden’s white oak seal.

I folded it and bowed my head.

“When next do you have need of me?”

“Tomorrow.”

Home, and there was fire in the big black belly of the stove, and my mother stood tending it.

I had not been home all week, but I came through the door of our humble house

bearing food and bottled water like gifts.

I needn’t have, we had enough.

I thought that this was strange and wanted to ask about the sudden wealth of my mother,

humming at the stove.

But I did not.

My Breaker uniform and coat lay draped over a chair

in the bedroom that my brother and I shared.

In plain clothes, I shivered in front of the warmth, looking at my little brother as

he laboriously went over problem sets in his CEE workbook.

I wish I could have given him a tutor.

Our schoolroom was there, in the warm kitchen with its too-often scrubbed brown table.

We only sent him to regular classes at the next Hive when it came close to mock exams.

He failed the last.

I searched his face as if trying to find anything of me in him, and not succeeding,

I sat next to him and studied with him in front of the fire.

My brother was not the best at the mocks, but he had a genius for words.

I used to find snippets of stories hidden in his drawers when he was younger,

fantastic stories full of heroes and villains and brave little kids.

The stories stopped since heavy CEE prep began, but I’ve kept every one of them.

He looked at me half-way through the set and then reached over to touch the side of my face.

He showed me his hand, a tiny drop of blood had smeared into powder.

“Are you hurt?”

“Someone else’s.”

He turned back to his workbook, satisfied.

Now that he was twelve and had come into contact with Breakers on the job,

I got the sense that he knew who and what I was.

He was good about it.

He didn’t ask questions.

Sometimes I would come home and my uniform would be torn,

bloodied,

burned,

gashed in a thousand different places, but he never asked about my job.

There was a hitch in the last problem, and I guided his progress with patient hands.

That night was the last night for my brother, because testing started the next day.

He could not stay here unless he had by a miracle tested and chosen into being a Breaker.

I did not want that for him.

One night, one test.

Late that night, as he climbed into our shared narrow bed, in our shared narrow room.

I wondered what it was that I could do for him, to give him something,

something that he could remember me by.

He was half asleep, turned away from me, when he spoke.

“Breaker 256. That’s a funny name.”

“Yes. It is a funny name. No funnier than yours, though. Child 3457.”

“But I’ll get a real one once I pass testing. You never will.”

Once you pass testing.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What should I call you, then? You can’t just be another person.”

I smiled in the darkness.

If only that were simple enough.

He waited for my answer, but I did not have one to give him.

Eventually, he spoke again, as if tired of my waffling.

“Well, what is it you do well?”

Well? I could track a man by recognizing his gait from any other man.

I could scale walls without equipment and could fire a pistol at long range and a stunner at short.

I knew a hundred different ways to kill a man without a weapon, and a thousand more with.

I could hide my fears and my sorrows from the most highly trained analysts in Eden.

I could withstand cold, hunger, rain and torture.

I could do all these things, but I am proud of none of them.

I stumbled upon a suitable answer.

“I can tell stories.”

“What is a person who tells stories?”

Someone with a very short life expectancy, I thought, but I said—

“A writer. An author. A fool.”

He seemed to think this over for a moment, and in this instant I felt the mad panic one feels if one is about to lose someone and I thought of the unthinkable, the Breaker in the classroom, the firing range, the heavy tread of a boot upon the stair.

What if he should fail?

“Tell me a story then, Writer-author-fool.”

I held him close in the darkness and paused.

“It won’t be a very long story ’34. What do you want it to be about?”

“Anything you like.”

“How about a fire?”

I stood in the line, my pencil was broken in my grip, my ears filled with buzzing.

Mechanically, the Breaker lifted the scroll, read the score, grabbed the names, read them aloud.

I was numb to all that, all but the memory of the exam.

My thoughts had been like lightning, the test giving up all its answers to me, carefully revealed.

I was saved.

Safe.

56859.

I looked for my friend among the crowd, the faces began to blend, more faces than names.

I looked for the thin kid with hair that was far too short and eyes that were far too bright.

I saw nothing.

No one.

My turn.

I slowly stepped forward and the Breaker read my score.

Number 56409. Score: Fair in Reading and Critical Analysis. High in Mathematics. High in Scientific Induction. Low in Vocabulary. High in Practical Application. Low in Writing. Grouping: Palaces. Segment: Management. Class: First Tier. Profession: astrological research and promotion (probationary). Proposed assignment: Health Corps.

I stumbled from the line with my new name ringing in my ears.

Comet.

My name is Comet.

There was a bright future in front of me.

The world is too bright.

I stumbled and fell to my knees, I was searching, but I forgot for what.

Faces.

His face was not among the others, grouped into their segments,

brand new lives of useful service stretching out in front of them.

I could not find him, I cannot—

The book. The book he gave me.

In case, he said.

A heavy hand yanked me to my feet, and led me to the Palace grouping where I foundered.

In case of what?

Idiocy tattooed in bright ink.

I was almost alone.

The three other kids meant for the Palaces looked down at me with disdainful eyes

and I finally stopped searching.

There was only one place that he could have been.

By then they had led the failures from the room.

My name is Comet,

Comet: a celestial body, moving about the sun—

and my best friend is dead.

A new world was before me,

but I do not want it.

The world beyond my Hive was far too bright.

For the first time in days I could see the sky.

Snow fell like discouraged birds

that were too weak to fly.

I had never felt snow.

It was cold to the touch.

Transient.

It covered the sidewalks and dotted the synthetic black coat of my Breaker,

376.

The big man strode ahead of us to meet the curb, and

the Palace car with its mirrored windows.

From the muzzle of his mask came the steam of his breath

like a great medieval dragon,

rifle slung casually over his shoulder as if he expected not to use it.

I stood by his side, watching the car reach us in the silence,

and his heavy hand that still had blood under the fingernails held mine.

Comfort.

I was not meant to find him beautiful.

His eyes were steady and certain behind his mask.

New world.

New life.

But the others, they did not speak.

Despondently, they watched the cruiser whisper up to the curb and we were ushered inside.

I rested my head against the rich leather of my seat

and could not look upon the world as it passed.

So I closed my eyes

and I thought of the last tale told to me in my Hive.

What did 376 know?

He looked out the window beside me

and watched the world go by.

He rarely spoke, and less often smiled but

it was as if he knew something.

We knew not to fight against Eden.

That had been attempted and failed, so many years ago.

Author.

The broken Breaker.

Eden’s enemy, the one that attempted to take down the State through words.

Her name is in our history trainers along with all the other traitors.

They told us.

It is because of her and the Artist that the testing is more stringent.

It is because of her that the children die.

56859, another casualty.

A long time ago, there were hints of revolutions.

But none have happened since.

For they are too afraid, I think.

The Artists.

They are so afraid and so alone, and they think that they owe them,