Kelley Eskridge (9 page)

SHE LEFT THE EXECUTIVE ONE BUILDING
AND FOUND
the sun still shining, people moving in their
everyday rhythms as if the world had not shuddered to a stop and then
restarted. All she could think was that they had given her the choice,
and it was not the bright, stainless thing she had once hoped for. And
there was no time to sort through what it all meant; she was already
late for the next obligation. She ran, feeling five again.

She did not see Snow that night because of
their conflicting schedules. Even though she knew Snow was with her
study group, her phone turned off, Jackal called her seven times, as if
Snow would materialize on the other end once some magic number of
attempts was reached. Finally she told Snow's voice mail, “Hi. It's me.
I just wanted…anyway. Call me. Okay. Bye.” But later she was too
restless to talk; she turned off her phone and spent most of the night
not sleeping, turning the conversation with Neill over and over in
memory.

By the next morning she was wound tight
with fatigue and accumulated strain. She should feel better—she had a
clear direction now, and she had the company's hand firmly at her back,
moving her forward. But forward was still a murky place.

Her first meeting of the Garbo project was
scheduled for late that afternoon; before that, her weekly advisory
session with Khofi. She walked briskly to his office, stuck her head
around the door.

“Sorry I'm late, Khofi. What…is something
wrong?”

He said, “Come in, Zhakal. Everything is
fine, but we have some changes to discuss.”

“I'm afraid I can only give you a few
minutes,” Chao said. “I'm expecting someone. You said it was urgent?”
She was kneeling on a cushion at a low table, and as Jackal hesitated
in the doorway, she picked up the teapot in front of her and poured two
cups. The steam smelled unpleasantly of anise and oranges. The table
and the cushions were new, placed in the center of the room so they
were framed against the window and a view that today was all smoke and
blue: inky water that rumbled to itself in deceptively gentle swells,
an afternoon sky bruised with indigo thunderclouds, and a widowmaker
fog snaking around the north end of the island, the kind that could
conspire with a storm to hide a fifty-foot trough from an unwary pilot
who might never know her danger until she was dropping down, down, with
the sea tumbling on top of her.

“Oh,” Jackal said. She had meant to have
her say and leave with as much dignity as she could muster: but the sea
in its frame drew her across the room until she was within breathing
distance of the glass, so that she could see her own eyes reflected
against the fog outside. She wished she could climb into it and hide,
like a small fish in coral, slipping easily among the sharp edges of
the world.

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

Jackal took a breath. “I've just been to
see Khofi.”

“Yes?”

“He told me that he's no longer my advisor
and that I've been reassigned to you.”

“Yes, I thought that was understood from
our last conversation.”

“Well, I didn't understand it. And I don't
want it. He's been my advisor since I was thirteen.” She stopped, too
angry to say anymore. The way he had looked at her and said, “Oh,
Zhakal, you have been like a sunflower in a garden to me,” with his
eyes full of tears.

“It's not what I want,” she repeated.

“Jackal, this day was always coming. Khofi
knew it, that's why he let you go. He's not fighting the reassignment.”

“I'll fight it.”

“That's your privilege,” Chao said evenly.
“But think about it carefully. Dr. Andabe can't provide guidance at the
level you need now. He's done a sound and thorough job of making sure
you developed a basic skills set. But he can't tell you what to expect
in Al Iskandariyah, can he? And time is short.”

Jackal turned from the window. Chao still
knelt before the table, triangulated by the cups of tea. She took her
time to sip from one, and shrugged. “It's not his fault, of course,”
she continued. “Our negotiations with EarthGov are highly confidential,
executive level only. I expect it's the same for all the nations
sponsoring a Hope. Everyone's jockeying for the most visible role for
their people, something they can point to and say, ‘Look what our
culture has given the world.’”

“Isn't that the point?”

“It's shortsighted instant gratification,”
Chao said, with a slight wave of her hand. “It's certainly no way to
build an administrative structure for the long term. ‘Therefore when
thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee.’ Matthew.
The Christian Bible, Jackal. We'll add a review of comparative
religions to your learning plan. What's important is that, like
Matthew, Ko believes that service is best rendered unobtrusively.
You'll have a less public life than many of the other Hopes. Maybe
you'd better sit down for a minute,” she said offhandedly, as if she
didn't see Jackal's sudden attention. She waved Jackal toward the empty
pillow on the other side of the lacquered table, and pulled her phone
out of her jacket pocket to punch the intercom button. “Sam, please
show Ms. Bey into the conference room when she arrives and let her know
I'll be delayed a few minutes.” While Chao spoke, Jackal settled
slowly, dreamily, feeling the embroidered pillow through the thin
cotton of her pants like braille against her thighs. Was someone
finally going to tell her what to expect in the new life that she was
about to crest into like a wave? She wondered how much this had to do
with yesterday's conversation with Neill. She had consented and now
they would give her what she needed to know. She clenched her hands
together in her lap, below the edge of the table, so that Chao would
not see them tremble.

“Of course, there's really no point in
getting into this if you'd rather pursue your complaint about the
change in advisors.”

Jackal bit down on the inside of her
mouth. She should say that she was loyal to Khofi and that she'd settle
for ten percent of the information if it came from someone she trusted.
But she so badly wanted to know.

Chao said placidly, “You should also
consider Dr. Andabe's long-term interests. It's a time in his career
when he should be moving on to new accomplishments. It's such a
competitive environment these days.”

Jackal wondered when it had started being
‘these days’ that were so relentlessly hard. And so lonely: she hadn't
been able to reach Snow and they had exchanged voice messages, Jackal's
terse and stressy, Snow's concerned and then increasingly irritated at
the lack of contact.
I hate it when you don't
talk to me
had been the last one. Jackal hated it too, hated
the feeling that what she was really hiding from Snow was not Ko's
deception, but her own participation in it. And here was one more piece
of it that she wouldn't know how to explain.

“All right, I won't argue about the
change,” she said quietly. “But I want Khofi well taken care of; he's
been really good to me.”

“Of course,” Chao answered, as if she were
surprised that Jackal had thought it necessary to mention. She pushed a
teacup across the table. “Let me know if it needs warming up.”

The tea was cold and bitter. Jackal drank
it down.

“Now, then,” Chao began.

“Why do people say that?” Jackal
interrupted. What am I doing? she wondered, but went on speaking. “Now,
then,” she repeated. “English is such an awkward language. So many
phrases that are empty of meaning. Oh boy. What does that mean? Let's
see. Why not let's smell? Or let's hear? That would make more sense, at
least. And so many metaphors of control and violence disguised as
sports. As if it were a game. I've been thinking a lot about it.” She
nodded at the sea in the window as if she were talking to it rather
than Chao. “I can describe my whole life in metaphors. Stay on target.
We're all on the same team. Keep your head above water.” Her teacup
rattled against the table when she set it down.

“What are you thinking about?” Chao asked
carefully.

“Drowning,” Jackal answered without a
pause, without a breath, not even minding that it was the truth and
that she'd already decided never to tell Chao anything that was both
important and true. The fog was now firmly banked across the northern
headland. She should stop now, but she couldn't: it all rolled out of
her like a wave.

“My grandfather was a fisherman out of
Torre la Miguera in Spain. He used to tell me stories about the sea
until my mother made him stop because they gave me nightmares.”

Chao nodded, but otherwise kept still.
Good, Jackal thought, you just be very careful, you just let me howl.

“Did you ever hear of Las Tres Hermanas?
The Three Sisters. Waves a hundred feet high and as wide as you can
see. They hunt ships.”

Chao's phone beeped. She thumbed it off
without looking away from Jackal.

“They creep beneath the surface, stalking
your ship. Then they surge out of the water around you. Impossibly
tall. They blot out the sun. Everything darkens in a heartbeat. Las
Hermanas try to catch you sideways, to roll your boat over and eat it.
So you do your best to turn yourself and meet them head-on, even though
there's never any time, because the first sister has opened a hole in
the sea and you fall in and she throws herself on top of you. You're
overwhelmed. You watch the portholes to see what color the water is
around you. How deep you've gone. Green water means you're in the
wave's hands: she may just swat you and toss you back to her sister
behind her. But if the porthole glass is black then it means you've
been eaten, you're deep in the belly of the wave…” Was this her voice?
Was she the one babbling like this, words tumbling out so fast that she
couldn't even take breath between them? “And then you begin to drown.
My
abuelo
told me that some people
fight as the water climbs their bodies, they swim even though there's
no longer a surface they can reach, but other people just give up even
though they don't want to die and maybe it's because they're already so
tired—”

She didn't seem to have anything more to
say. She watched the fog through the window; it was easy to imagine a
little boat, perhaps it was called
The Jackal
,
riding an ocean that swelled gently, safely, until that unexpected drop
into an open mouth. She barely noticed Chao rising from the table,
unlocking a door at the rear of the office and stepping through,
reappearing seconds later with a small packet that turned out to be a
medpatch.

“I want you to put this on,” she said.
“Give me your left arm, please.” Diazepam, Jackal read upside-down. Ten
milligrams.

“I don't need that.”

“You certainly do. You have your first
meeting of the Garbo project in two hours—well, I'm your advisor,
Jackal, I've certainly made it my business to know your schedule. Put
this on—” she peeled the cover off the patch and pressed it into the
crook of Jackal's elbow “—and sit here. I'll make sure you're not
disturbed for ninety minutes. That will give you time to rest.”

Jackal curled up in the womb chair.

Chao produced a blanket and draped it over
her, tucked the edges around her hips and under her feet. It was an
unexpected kindness, and Jackal could feel herself begin to tremble
again.

“It will be all right,” Chao told her.
“You are under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. It's
situational. It will pass. We will help you manage it. We won't let you
fail.”

Jackal didn't know whether to be reassured
or not. Chao left her. She watched the fog until it seemed to swell
into the room and tumble her into sleep.

She woke to the gentle touch of Chao's hand
on her shoulder. “You have a half hour to get to your meeting,” she
said.

“Okay,” Jackal said, struggling to wake
up. She washed her face in Chao's bathroom and peered at herself in the
mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the skin underneath was puffed and
sickly gray. But she would manage. The drug gave her a sense of cool
distance from herself; she hoped it would last a while. She rolled her
sleeve down to hide the patch.

When she stepped back into the office,
Chao was there with another woman, fifty-ish, short and dark, soft
around the middle. “Senator Bey, allow me to introduce Ren Segura.”

“Jackal,” she said automatically, and
shook hands.

“The Senator is the Asia Regional Director
of the Hope Program,” Chao went on.

“I have followed your progress for a very
long time, Ms. Segura. I know you'll be a valuable addition to our work
in Al Iskandariyah.”

Jackal answered, “Thank you,” and wished
she had finished the earlier conversation with Chao instead of
rabbiting on about waves. She didn't want to look like an idiot in
front of an Earth Congress senator.

“The Senator's interested in observing
your project meeting, if you have no objection.”

“Umm…I guess…” She wondered if she could
reach into her head and massage some life back into her brain.
Oh, suck it up, Jackal. What would a real
facilitator do
? “It's fine with me,” she said, “but I will
need to confirm with Dr. Neill and the project team. If they have
reservations, then I'm afraid I'll have to say no. I hope you
understand,” she added to the senator.

“Why don't we all go over together?” Chao
said brightly. Jackal gave herself another mental shake. Chao seemed
very perky; it made Jackal nervous, although the drug patch had
smoothed her anxiety into something that she acknowledged but didn't
really feel. She watched Chao's body language as they took the elevator
down to the lobby and headed toward the cross-complex monorail: Chao
talked almost nonstop to Bey about Jackal's work with Neill, giving
details of completed assignments and quoting comments from the
evaluations Jackal had received. It was confusing, until she realized
that Chao wasn't marketing Jackal, but herself, demonstrating her
fitness to be in charge of Jackal's transition to Al Iskandariyah.
Jackal cruised behind them, watching Chao work. If it weren't for the
meds, she realized, she would probably be sharked at being talked about
like…well, like a project. It showed poor facilitation skills. She
would do much better when she—