The Anathema (44 page)

Alex was leaning back against the couch, which had too many throw pillows on it to be comfortable, Emily tucked underneath his arm, holding her own wine glass. Across the coffee table, Anastasia, Katya and Timor were arrayed in overstuffed chairs, and even Anastasia appeared mildly tipsy. On the opposite side of the room, Therese sulked in a corner, while Anastasia’s two little sisters played some sort of complicated game involving a great deal of shouting and excited involvement on the part of Donner and Blitzen. Alex had lost track of Renton a while ago, and frankly, didn’t care very much – though he did notice that the fawning Svetlana wasn’t anywhere to be seen, either.

Then Alex remembered that Katya was talking, answering some question Emily had asked that he had forgotten, and tuned back in, trying to figure out from context what it was she was talking about.

“…we were mostly in Portland until I was twelve and Timor was thirteen. Then we got adopted by the Black Sun, and… is it okay to tell them this part, Ana?”

Anastasia looked up from her primly held wine glass, an inch of something the color of clarified butter swirling inside it.

“Of course,” she said indifferently. “You can tell them whatever you like.”

Emily smiled and Alex wondered hazily exactly how much she was enjoying this, being important, sitting there with the major players in the Black Sun and treated as a peer. He worried drunkenly for her feelings, because he couldn’t believe that Anastasia intended for things to be this way forever.

“Okay, well, at that point we’d been activated, so we did a couple of years at the Academy, before the Black Sun arranged to pull us out for ‘vocational training’. We came back last year, but we were so far behind academically we ended up in the standard class,” she shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed at the revelation. “Timor finished up his program, more or less, but I had some… disciplinary issues, so I have to go back next year to polish it off.”

“Interesting,” Emily said, bright eyed. “But you never really said what it was like. Were their other kids to hang out with, at assassin’s camp? Did you meet any boys?”

Katya blushed and laughed, while Anastasia looked amused and Timor looked aghast. Alex laughed along with Katya, not thinking about it too hard.

“Yes, and none of your business, respectively,” Katya said, picking up the bottle from the table to refill her glass. “It was okay. Hard work, not a lot of free time, a whole bunch of killing things over and over again until it didn’t bother me anymore. Sound like anything that’s happened in your life lately, Alex?”

“Yeah,” he said nervously, spinning his glass between his palms. “The other day they made me kill and then clean and dress an entire fucking cow. It took all afternoon, and it was, you know, horrible.”

“I always hated the part with the animals,” Katya said sympathetically, while Timor excused himself quietly and went to go join Anastasia’s sisters. “I felt bad for them.”

“Me too,” Alex said, nodding emphatically. “Of course, it would help if you hadn’t made me do the same thing the other day to those chickens.”

“What?” Emily said, looking from one of them to the other in confusion. “That’s where those chickens came from? That’s horrible!”

“Alex, the Program doesn’t end,” Katya said sadly, “didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Nobody tells me anything,” Alex said, shaking his head. “Probably because I don’t ask the right questions, or understand the answers.”

“Well, why do you think that you and Katya have had so many charming experiences in common of late?” Anastasia said mildly. “What exactly do you think you are being trained to do, boy?”

“Well, Alice Gallow is my teacher, so I did figure that I wasn’t going to be learning first aid and nonviolent conflict resolution, but the Academy is neutral, right? It’s not as if they are training me to kill other Operators or anything…”

“Are you sure? Then why is it that Katya, who is being educated for that express purpose, has been trained in such a similar manner to you?” Anastasia asked idly. “Are they training you simply to kill Weir? You seem capable of that already, without further desensitization. Wake up, Alex. They are teaching you to be a killer who can sleep at night. Like Katya, for example.”

“I do sleep fairly well,” Katya offered, swirling the last mouthful of wine in her glass.

“Is it possible that we could have one conversation that isn’t about killing people?” Emily scolded, sitting up from the couch and brushing her hair back into place. “Perhaps an evening without sinister overtones?”

“Sorry,” Anastasia said, obviously amused.

“Sorry,” Katya echoed, reaching again for the bottle, and upon finding it insufficient, taking it back to the kitchen for replacement.

“Katya is a total lush,” Anastasia confided, leaning forward to talk directly to Emily. “And I wouldn’t normally tolerate it, but she is rather entertaining. If you give her an audience, she will be up all night regaling you with her adventures.”

“That’s hurtful,” Katya said accusatorially, returning with a fresh bottle of something else, also a red, though Alex couldn’t read the label from where he was sitting. “You are vastly underrating me, Cousin Ana. I don’t limit myself to only my adventures. I tell stories from your childhood, as well. You see, before my family was disciplined, our dads were tight, and my family used to come along on vacation at least once a year. So, I know everything.”

Anastasia laughed.

“Nothing worth repeating,” Anastasia said, a mild warning that Katya ignored.

“Are you sure? I know all about the boy you kissed last summer on the boat…”

“Katya!”

“Who did she kiss?” Emily asked eagerly, leaning forward. “I want to know!”

“It might be better, for everyone concerned,” Anastasia said softly, “if we picked another topic of conversation. Now.”

“Do you know?” Emily demanded, ignoring Anastasia

“I do,” Katya said proudly, nodding.

“Who was it?”

“I am not telling you that,” Katya said firmly, much to Anastasia’s evident satisfaction.

“Oh, what a tease. Why not?”

“Because,” Katya confided, “the poor kid probably still works on the property, and I’d hate for rumors to start about what Anastasia likes to do to the local boys they hire as gardeners.”

Katya sat back and smiled sweetly at Anastasia, who, for the first time in Alex’s experience, looked utterly dumbfounded.

“I cannot believe you actually said that. I think perhaps it is time for you to go to bed, Katya dear,” Anastasia suggested.

“That’s a good idea,” Emily whispered in Alex’s ear, drunk and inviting. “We should do that, too.”

* * *

There was no explosion. The bomb that destroyed Analytics was a word. A corrosive, blasphemous word, a sin against reality itself. A team of telepaths fed an operative the word remotely, each relaying a syllable in isolation, so that they might not be destroyed by comprehending the whole.

His name was Brian Turner, and he had worked at Analytics for three years as a staff scientist. When he was a child his cartel had been proscribed, and as his parents were deemed to require ‘correction’, he had been placed with another Hegemony cartel. He had always been careful to tow the line after that, whenever anyone was watching. It had not been difficult for the Anathema to recruit him; when he realized the depth of the conspiracy and its intentions for him, he had no capacity to resist. As he marched robotically into the Analytics building and relayed a word, syllable by syllable, that caused every mind within the reach of his own broadcast telepathy to wither and die, he felt nothing at all. Not even fear.

It had to start there, of course. The part of the Analytics building he worked in contained both the precognitive pool that anticipated future events as well as the telepathic bank that all of Central relied on to maintain communications.

Therefore, when there was a brief, monumentally sickening telepathic cry as dozens of precognitives and telepaths died simultaneously, there was almost no one capable of hearing it. There was no warning, and the only reaction was from one man wearing glasses in front of his pink eyes who hurried across the Academy, hunting through his key ring for a seldom-used key. All around the Analytic building, there was expanding silence and a ring of dead birds that had fallen from the sky.

* * *

If it was a test, then Alex wasn’t the first to fail it. There was a girl somewhere else, and a bed that he wouldn’t be sleeping in tonight. And then there was the naked girl on top of him, the smell of saltwater from her hair and the softness of her breasts cupped in his hands, and the utterly unprecedented thing that they had done together, that had left them both moist and out of breath and looking at each other with different, softer eyes. The first time was over quickly and a little embarrassing, but still a revelation for Alex. The second was sweet and languid, continuing for a time that was indeterminate and utterly consuming.

Alex considered guilt, in the interval between, when Emily excused herself and went to the bathroom, and then put it aside. It was too soon, and he was still too much in the glow of pride and excitement. He wished that he could have called someone to brag, even if he did feel a bit bad about it. Then, when she returned, Emily was too warm and permissive, such an immediate and fascinating reality that Alex had no room in his mind for anything other than her, for the places where their bodies met and joined.

He told himself he had tried. Alex lay contentedly beside her, neither of them moving much, in the warm, floral-scented darkness on her side of the bed.  Eventually she begin to move along the length of him, and he reached for her and pulled her close. Her hair fell across his face as she kissed his collarbone, her nails scraping his chest…

“What was that?” Alex asked, sitting up halfway and almost spilling Emily from off him.

“Hush,” Emily instructed. “You are the least romantic boy.”

Alex laid reluctantly back, his eyes closing. Then it happened again, this time much louder, the bed shaking slightly beneath them.

“Okay, what the fuck is that?” Alex asked, again sitting up partway. “You heard it that time, right?”

Emily smiled at him.

“Alex, it’s nothing for you to worry about,” she said reassuringly. “Try and focus on being here with me, okay?”

“That was definitely gunfire,” Alex said, pulling her down with his free arm. “You should stay down, keep out of the line of fire while I try to figure out what the hell is going on here…”

“Alex,” Emily pouted, gripping at the sheets bunched up in her hands. “You really don’t like me at all, do you?”

“No, I do, but… is this the time?”

Alex stood up and took a single step toward the window, meaning to sidle up to the wall next to it and peer cautiously outside, and then he stopped and looked down at his feet.

“That’s weird,” he said. “The floor is totally soaking wet. There’s like an inch of water in here…”

“I know,” Emily said, pulling her slip up and sighing. “I turned the tap on a few minutes ago, when I went to the bathroom. I didn’t think you’d notice. And I’ll probably need it.”

“You’ll what?” Alex asked, puzzled. “Emily, none of that made any sense to me. Do you know what is going on here?”

“I made a deal, Alex. You forced my hand and I made a deal, but not with the people expected me to. Silly boy,” she said, laughing or crying, he couldn’t tell which in the dark. “You don’t even know the names for the things you should be afraid of. Anathema, Alex. The exiled are returning to take back what was theirs. I made a deal with them, Alex. Now I get everything that I ever wanted, only not the way I wanted it. Would you like to hear how I paid them, what I had to do because you wouldn’t make up your mind?”