Dusk (22 page)

After a moment, Tanner looked up from his
prayer to find Cyrus shoveling chunks of steak into his mouth.
Cyrus noticed Tanner had finished his vigil, “Tastes strange.
Really slimy,” he spoke between exaggerated chews.

“That’s because you haven’t had real meat in
two hundred years,” Tanner said as he opened his own meal. “Any
idea what they’re doing with Toutopolus?”

“I was just about to ask the same thing,”
Cyrus chewed another bite of ground steak, “Meat’s pretty grimy if
you don’t eat it for a while, huh?” He swallowed. “I think they’re
probably
querying
him now about all this
espion
nonsense.”

Someone in the room began sobbing. Tanner
swallowed, and then looked at Cyrus for a long moment. “I thought
you hated the holocast stream.”

“I do. But it’s the fastest way to find out
anything. Everyone here seems bent off their runner—too bent to
fill us in.”

“One way or the other we’re going to have to
adjust.” Tanner looked at his food, hands on his knees, “This is
the deal, huh?”

Cyrus shook his head. “Just trying to figure
out what the timeframe is. I keep wondering how I can keep Darius
from cruising up on this snag a year from now.”

“After they find out what happened, they
could let us go.”

“So far, they don’t seem like the letting-go
type.” Cyrus shoveled a mouthful of rice into his mouth and chewed
quickly. He spoke through the food as he stood, “I’m gonna gather
some more recon.”

Cyrus walked back to the holostation to find
Jang propped up in front of it, his own lunch devoid of rice and
vegetables, with only a small bite taken from the steak. As Cyrus
walked, he noticed Dr. Cohn curled up on a bottom bunk, whimpering
with his sheet over his head.

Cyrus could feel the same pressure that was
flowing through his body when he kicked Colfax 43235. It strangled
his mind into its least common denominator, but it motivated him,
made him impetuous. It took every ounce of his intellect and reason
to keep him calm, but he needed focus now more than piss and
vinegar, and another outburst like the one on the personnel carrier
might get him shot.

Cyrus knelt next to Jang, who was cycling
through streams on the holostation. He settled on a stream that
must have been dedicated to children because there were grown men
grinning unrealistically and prancing around in single-colored
outfits. Jang seem fixated on the ridiculous scene as the men began
singing numbers and counting various fruits, some recognizable,
some strange versions of the familiar. The fruits bounced around
the floor of the barracks in bunches as the men counted in
sing-song voices.

“I’m processing,” Jang said before Cyrus
could ask, and then fell back into his trance. Cyrus ate more of
his dinner and looked around the room. Winberg was rocking himself
on a bunk next to Villichez, speaking to softly to be heard. Cyrus
couldn’t help noticing that it was the quietest he had ever heard
Winberg speak. Commander Uzziah was standing in the corner beside
the lav door with his arms folded. Cyrus could tell his eyes were
absorbing every nook and cranny of the room. Torvald stood at the
window, transfixed at the scene outside. His food was untouched and
his body was limp against the window itself, which seemed the only
thing that kept him from blowing away like a discarded wrapper on a
desolate, windy ave corner.

After what seemed like a half hour of little
change, Dr. Murphy screamed from inside the lav and came running
toward the door, his pants draped awkwardly beneath his waist. When
he reached the door, the cuff of his pants leg must have caught
underfoot, because he tumbled toward the door and crashed against
it face-first. His body bounced, but he lunged back at the door and
began pounding on it and screaming, “What the hell is going on?
Tell us what is going on!” over and over again.

Villichez made an attempt to calm him down,
but it was of little use. Finally, after about five minutes, some
guards came to the room and Murphy collapsed to the floor in a
sobbing, exhausted heap. The soldiers entered and everyone expected
them to attack Murphy or haul him away, but they merely pushed him
to the side. They returned a spent Toutopolus and moved directly to
the bunk of Dr. Cohn, who had seemed to have run out of water to
fuel his tears. Cohn was repeating a verse to a song in Hebrew
softly to himself when they snatched him from his bunk. He seemed
like he was going willfully until he reached the door and saw Dr.
Murphy, now silent, slumped uncomfortably against the wall. Dr.
Cohn stopped, focused on Murphy for a moment, and then began
thrashing wildly and muttering in Hebrew. One of the guards reeled
from being smacked in the face by a flailing elbow, but two others
grabbed Cohn’s arms at the wrists and twisted them painfully behind
his back. Cohn dropped his weight like a veteran tantrum-thrower
and stiffened his legs, but the guards wordlessly scooped his legs
from under him and took him away.

Everyone was silent after the spectacle.
Villichez, somehow composed through all this, moved over to the
bunk where Toutopolus sat and put his hand on his shoulder. Cyrus
went to move closer to where they were so he could hear what had
happened, but Uzziah stopped him. “They are watching us,” Uzziah
said, pushing Cyrus toward the holostation where Jang still sat
mesmerized.

Uzziah ignored Jang and moved his hand,
signaling the holostation to its maximum volume. Jang stayed
focused on the holographic figures moving on the floor. Uzziah
turned his back to the holostation, looking toward Villichez and
Toutopolus, but he stepped so that his mouth was very close to
Cyrus’s ear. Cyrus stayed focused on the holograms on the floor as
Uzziah spoke. “They took the one that was hysterical, the one that
had obviously broken, but the least violent,” he mumbled.

“What does it mean?” Cyrus muttered under his
own breath as if he were speaking to Jang kneeling on the floor in
front of him.

“It means they still think they are fighting
some war. But whatever it is, the rest of the city seems
unconcerned. Something very odd is happening here.”

“Beyond the fact that none of this should be
here?” Cyrus’s attempt at humor was smothered by the tension in his
own voice.

“I think I got it!” Jang yelled, hopping to
his feet and alarming both Uzziah and Cyrus into defensive
positions.

“You’ve got what?” Cyrus said, relaxing his
guard, but falling a step away from Jang.

“The names of the
Dhekad
. They are
like months but shorter. The names are like transliterated Greek
numbers.
Dhekak
is the first.
Murioplex
is when that
Chaldea idiot said this Defiance thing happened.
Aekatomuriox
, the current
Dhekad
, is the sixth. So
it’s my guess they are all named after the respective 10-base Greek
numbers, or at least variations on them, which would imply that
each one is only ten days, or rather DC or Dome Cycles, long. My
guess is, that’s the time it takes for them to complete one
phase-cancelled sunrise and sunset. Their years are called
gyres
and, as far as I can tell, are made up of ten Dhekads
and one hundred DC.” He was so excited he was out of breath from
having not paused to breathe during his oration.

Cyrus stopped, the muscles in his body froze
suddenly as if some visceral part of him knew something his brain
did not yet comprehend. “Wait, did that program say what gyre it is
now?”

Jang looked confused, as if he had been
following a line of breadcrumbs and the trail in front of him had
just been blown away by some unexpected gale. “Uh… three DC,
Aekatomuriox, two thousand, two hundred and sixteenth gyre.”

Cyrus rolled his eyes to the ceiling and
mumbled to himself, rolling numbers through his head as quickly as
he could without jumbling them. After a few seconds, he paused,
quickly checked his figures in his head again, and then looked back
at Jang. “That would mean the war happened about 607 Earth years
ago. Good lord…”

“But we have no idea how long after
settlement the war started,” Jang added.

“I don’t think these hound’s wives are gonna
offer up that information from the looks of it either. We’ll have
to take shifts on the gram until we can figure it out.”

“Sure,” Jang moved back toward his perch, but
then stopped and turned back to Cyrus, “Out of curiosity, why the
urgency?”

“The only way they could have been here is if
someone developed some sort of faster-than-light technology. Some
form of continual-phase shift most likely, but the question is more
when than how.”

“Still not sure what that has to do with what
they are doing to us and when it will stop.”

Cyrus was calm, but his eyes, as focused and
still as they were, seemed as if they were staring not at Jang, but
into some horrific place that humans did not belong and were not
welcome. “Well, it has very little to do with us all directly, but
it has very much to do with me. So if you don’t mind, for the sake
of the others, could you please humor me? Because if I don’t find
out what’s happened to my son soon, I’m gonna set as much of this
place on fire as I can ‘til they shoot me—and if me being shot
doesn’t affect you, I’m sure the fire will.”

• • • • •

—
I have something to tell you, Dada.

—
What’s that Dari?

—
Well, uhh… Uhh, never mind.

—
Come on Dari, you can’t tell someone you have
something to tell them and then tell them never mind. That’s
foul.

—
Well, okay, but promise you won’t get
mad.

—
How can I promise you that? The simple fact that
you feel the need to ask me to not get mad means you believe
whatever you have to say most likely will make me mad. That’s like
asking someone to promise to not die just before you stab them. I
have very little control over the emotions generated by what you
haven’t said yet.

—
Well, that’s why I don’t want to say it.

—
Hmm. Remember when we were coming down the ave
after I picked you up yesterday, and that guy in the bright green
lev turned in front of us against the arrow?

—
Yeah, that was scary.

—
Why was it so scary?

—
Because he stopped right in front of us, and you
had to tweak the x-axis to not hit him. We almost slid into the ave
going the other way.

—
All because the guy decided halfway through his
mistake that he was being a test dummy.

—
But what does that have to do with me?

—
Listen Darius, and I’m gonna say this so you
remember it. You can’t be half a fuck-up. Sometimes, when you start
something, you just have to finish to keep things from being worse.
Things were screwed up the moment you decided to do what you did.
So if you start to say something that might put someone off their
x-axis, own up and finish it.

—
Dada, I lost my ephemeris today and I can’t do
my homework until I get a new one.

—
Then we have to get you a new one before the
gallery closes so we can get it primed and logged in today.

—
You’re not mad?

—
No, I wish you’d take better care of your
things, but no, I’m not mad. I would have been mad if I had to hear
it from Miss Hasabe though. I swear that woman calls me more than
your mother does. Your mother’s going to begin to think she and I
are having an affair.

—
Uhh…

—
What now?

—
I don’t know about mommy being scared of an
affair, Dada. Cuz mommy’s real pretty, and Miss Hasabe looks like a
shaved monkey with a wig on.

—
Dari! That’s not a very nice thing to
say.

—
You can’t be half a… well you know the
rest.

—
Boy, your antics are gonna get us both into some
serious trouble.

—
Well, when it happens, I’ll try and give you as
much early warning as I can.

• • • • •

The room was beginning to smell like a locker room.
Eight DCs had passed since they had been brought here and they had
only seen the cleaning bot once. Jang believed the bot came in
five-DC cycles, at the beginning and end of each Dhekad. Even if
the bot had come in two-DC cycles, it would be impossible for them
to remove the stench of anxiety and misery that thickened the air,
making breathing deliberate. It didn’t help that many did not
shower for fear of surveillance. To some it didn’t matter, others
got over it as time passed, but a few could not get beyond the idea
of being watched every moment. Torvald would walk around normally,
watch the holostation, but he would shiver periodically, as if a
draft had passed over him. Eventually he would huddle up in his
lower bunk, concealed by his blanket and the shadows. The showers
themselves were like an ice bath. Uzziah remarked that the settings
for hot water only worked marginally, probably to keep them from
obscuring the gaze of their observers with steam. This theory
seemed to prompt Murphy and Cohn to avoid the showers completely.
The showers were not as cold as they seemed, but the knowledge of
being watched with scrutiny while naked lowered the temperature for
most of them dramatically. As far as the level of hospitality,
nothing changed. Periodically, someone would sit by themselves for
too long, or would talk too much about their life at home, or would
stare at the wall or outside the window too long, and would get
scooped up by guards. Villichez had unaffectionately named the
guards The Flying Monkeys, as after seeing a hologramized version
of The Wizard of Oz, they had become a frequent subject of his
son’s nightmares. Cohn and Toutopolus had been taken twice, and
Murphy, Tanner, and Jang had all been taken once each. Tanner and
Jang had both been taken—Jang literally while he was asleep—and had
been left in empty rooms for hours without being asked any
questions. Everyone’s actions in turn became calculated and, as far
as Cyrus could tell, no one slept until his body shut down from
exhaustion.