The Forever Watch (26 page)

I was one of those ten, and I was the only one to win my no-hands game. I was so envious back then, of that incredible mind, just as, I suppose, those who barely have enough psi to power a glow stick must be envious of those like myself.

The days pass. Once a week, I treat myself to a second of memory with Barrens. Just a kiss. Just the feel of my fingers vanishing into those huge, hard, warm mitts.

Boredom becomes the strongest motivation for attempting ever-new variations of
touch
training. When I shower, I create dollhouses out of the water, floating in the air, populated with little men and women sitting at tables. I try gardens. Clear butterflies catch the glow off the walls, and they never get caught in the webs spun by my watery spiders off the stems and leaves of clear, crystalline rosebushes. Fish fly through the air as the water sluices down the diminishing planes and hollows and curves of my skin. Some days, I re-create Minnow and run my fingers down his back, and other days, I draw water into the form of a baby, to cradle in my arms. I sculpt busts of my friends, their faces smiling at me.

On the sixtieth morning of my incarceration, after breakfast, I finally have a guest.

One wall parts down the middle and slides apart.

Red curls tickle my nose. The rich rose and lavender scent is annoying, after my clean, odorless, sterile months, but I do not mind. The embrace is warm.

“I'm sorry,” murmurs the breathy contralto in my ear. “I've been trying and trying to see you. I am in Information Security, but I'm just a researcher, not in enforcement. It took forever. I used up favors just to be the one to bring you in, make sure you weren't hurt.”

“Don't be sorry, Lyn. I'm here because I deserve to be. They were my choices, nobody made them for me.”

“Bullshit! My lovesick darling, if not for that man, you would not be here.”

Is that really so? At times I thought it. But have I not always sought out the limits of available information on my own? I was doing that long before I met Barrens in a dirty alleyway, both of us bleeding and wounded. I started to develop my neuralhacks while I was just a kid in school. Lyn was right at my side with me, only her subversive tendencies died away completely after our discovery of the size and power of the computational network on the ship.

Maybe another person would have blamed Barrens for the mess I'm in. Hah. I could have turned back so many times along the way. I could have said no in the first place. I could have just made Hunter, given it to him, and never participated. It's not him that put me here. I made my own choices. I didn't want to be left behind, I didn't want to be protected.

“Hana, crèche-sister. We met when we were just kids. My Keepers were friends with yours and took us to the same parks and playgrounds, the same concerts, the same museums. I'm not here as an ISec officer—I'm not even a field agent. I'm here because I'm your friend.

“This is your only chance. This evening, they will begin your interrogation. You have to cooperate. They're running out of patience.”

I pull back and look at her teary green eyes. She is my oldest friend.

When we were little, I punched a boy for yanking her braids. She helped me with my homework so many times when I wasn't disciplined enough to start on it in time.

We are so far from the girls we were then.

“Lyn, why haven't they just Adjusted me? Just strip all the data out of my head.”

“If they do that, there will be nothing left of the person you were, I've been convincing them, talking to everyone I can, that you can do more for them if you are still you.”

How could my voluntary cooperation be preferable? I am nothing special. I have my talents and skills, I am in the upper ranks, but there are still many superior to myself.

“Do you even know what this is about, Lyn?”

“Of course not. And I don't want to know. But I know you, Hana. You might deviate from the rules sometimes, but you believe in the mission like nobody else. You read histories, old political tracts, physics papers from the nav archive about our trajectory to Canaan.”

Do I still believe in the mission? In its paramount importance? Ah, well. Of course I do. What matters my lonely little longing for the son I am not permitted to know, or the existence of mysterious creatures in the sewers and shadowy, unexplained deaths? We, the crew of the Noah, have a higher purpose than any of our spoiled, pampered ancestors back on Earth. This colonization attempt is all our eggs in one basket. If it fails, humanity is extinct. There is just far too much data for this fundamental truth to be a lie.

Lyn sees that on my face.

“Okay, good. Cooperate. Then I can have you out of here, and we can start getting things back to normal. Oh!” Her hands close around my arms, fingers probing my biceps. “You've gotten so thin. I'll try to get them to give you a bigger ration. It's so awful in here. Maybe a blanket, at least. And, wow.” Lyn pulls back, blushing. “A robe, or something.”

Such luxuries! Perhaps it is twisted, but I have come to enjoy the empty minimalism of this space. Owning nothing, having nothing but my memories and my talent and the games I can play with water and the programs living in my head.

I see Lyn Starling before me in her expensive, ruthlessly professional business suit, steel blue, without the impersonal harshness of a watery-gray ISec overcoat. Her elegantly coiffed hair. Gold bracelet, platinum ring, pearl necklace. When we embraced, the rich, slick material of her jacket is too much, unreal.

My lack of possessions, my lack of freedoms, the life within my inner self, these things seem more real to me and more true than the life I had before. Our perfect little world maintained by secrets and a willing acceptance that those above us know better.

We chat for a while, Lyn trying hard to pretend I am not naked, and hairless. She tells me of current consumer trends, the latest fashions, the newest commercially available gadgets that Marcus wants to purchase, Jazz's upcoming performance at a concert in the park with the rest of her team from High Energy. Lyn talks about the newest texts, entertainment streams, experimental art-house movies built around the composited memories of the performers.

Only her talk of food gets to me. New restaurants. A change in the culling pattern of the livestock herds that has made various animal products more affordable. My stomach clenches, I can almost smell her breakfast on her breath: butter, cream, eggs, fresh bread.

“Lyn?”

“Yes?”

“If I don't cooperate, they're going to do it, aren't they?”

Her green eyes turn wild. Afraid for me. “You have to, D. Please. What do you owe that creep anyway? He's not sitting in a cell. If he's as resourceful as you think, they can't catch him even if you help them.”

Oh, Lyn. You do not belong in Information Security. You are not hard enough for it.

When she leaves, two men in black armor come in, accompanied by one woman in a Behavioralist's green coat.

Naked but for my best reluctant smile, I seat myself on my tiny cot. “Welcome, gentlemen, lady. I'd offer you all some refreshments, but you haven't deigned to serve me any meals since the day before yesterday.”

18

The longer they stand before me, silently evaluating me from head to toe, the more I regret my flippant greeting. Should I be begging? Should I just pretend they are not there?

In the Enforcer exoskeletons, the men look inhuman. The armor is contoured to the body in curved, segmented sections. Over the face the armor follows the surfaces of the cheeks and jaw and around the mouth, but there are no lenses for the eyes, nor slits to breathe through. It is the woman, though, who is most dangerous to me in here.

I am being read.

Yes, you are
.

She has red-pink eyes, this stranger who has my life or death in her hands. Her skin is unnaturally pale where it is not covered by the gleaming silver lines of her Implant emitters. I have never seen the pattern before—it is only a few lines, here and there, going out from the corners of her eyes and down her neck under the collar of her blouse. But it must spread extensively—I can see chrome threads on her bare hands, like glittering veins. Her hair has faded completely to a pure, snowy white. I have heard, by way of rumor, that adults with extreme psychic gifts all look this way because the constant flow of energy through their cells degrades pigments as their talents mature.

That is true.

It is easy to shut one's mouth. How does one stop one's own thinking?

Don't try meditating. It will irritate me.

In terms of talent, this Behavioralist is as far above the one that evaluated me after my Breeding Duty as I am above a bus driver. She is
writing
herself into my brain, not just sending packets of thought at me. Her ghostly hand is in my brain, manipulating the neurons as she chooses. She thinks it and I think it too. She wears the green, but she could just as easily be wearing the gray, or the black.

Amusing. Usually, they are too afraid to consider such details.

Of course I'm afraid. I'm terrified. My mind races through lessons and rumors from school. She is small in body, inches shorter than me, but the force of her will fills the room, the presence of a giant.

Something I learned from my man, though, is to grasp at anger when fear is paralyzing.

“Are you done showing off?”

She smiles. “I don't often hear that from a detainee. Then again, we don't have very many detainees, as you must know, Miss Dempsey.”

Yes. Their meticulously filled out reports grace my desk quarterly. No names, of course—just the raw numbers of how many men and women whose minds they tear down and rebuild as they see fit. They only need enough capacity to hold people until the Adjustment process is done, usually just a day for a shallow Adjustment, a week at most for a deep Adjustment, with a few more cells for special cases like me.

“Your researcher friend already told you that we don't plan that for you.”

“If you're not going to crack my head open and fry it in a pan, could we observe the courtesy of only considering what I say, verbally, to be part of this discussion?”

Her laughter is the skittering of spiders along my spine. She makes no mnemonic gesture to guide her power—there is only the result, as the floor behind her bulges up and takes the shape of a plain, white chair. It is wax melting, except in reverse. She twists the plastech away from the control of the prison systems with ease.

No wasted energy at all. I might manage such a trick if I had an amplifier on me.

She sits and crosses her legs. The briefcase carried by one of the armored Enforcers pops open. Large envelopes and gray folders and a gleaming, emerald-trimmed psi-tablet float up before her, and just as she releases them, she draws up more material from the floor to make a table to rest them on.

The Enforcers do not make their own chairs and sit. They stand, silent. The black material of their armor reflects no light—the seams, the edges between the plates, the joints, all these things are nearly impossible to see. They are dark silhouettes, holes of darkness shaped like men. It would have been easier to be leered at by macho cops in blue coats who could not keep their eyes off my boobs. Feeling the stares of these non-individuals is more dehumanizing than the entire experience of my imprisonment thus far.

“Don't pay attention to the grunts, Miss Dempsey. It makes them nervous. Keep your eyes on me.”

“I certainly wouldn't want to make them nervous.”

“Now, to business, yes?”

It is not as if I asked her to waste time poking around in my head and intimidating me with her superior talents when she knew all the while that it would come down to a spoken discussion. “Please.” I nod.

Smile, Dempsey. It is probably not wise to give the lady itching to lobotomize you any lip or dirty looks. Best not to think snide comments.

Her shark's mouth is lovely as dimples sink into prominence. I amuse her, I suppose.

“It rather pains my superiors to admit this, but I agree with your friend Engineer Starling. Your voluntary assistance is more likely to result in a favorable outcome than tearing all the facts out of your brain and rewiring you like one of those things from old Earth wars—what are they called? Guided missiles.”

She pulls out 2-D images printed out on stiff, glossy paper and spreads them in front of me.

“I could have just pushed the relevant memories into your head, Miss Dempsey, but sometimes, the old physiological process of seeing an image and that information being processed by the brain has its advantages. It may be less immediate, but the slow realization as the self synthesizes the relevant concepts and takes in the picture, well. It has its own sort of gravity.”

Men and women, they lie naked on cold metallic slabs. Their skin is bluish, except for where it has been torn by violence. Their stillness is more than a lack of movement.

“Don't you think it is ironic, Miss Dempsey? The man brought you under his wing, trying to find the truth of what he thought were serial murders, only to become a murderer himself? Him and his new friends?”

No. Not Barrens. Justice is his life. The value of individual human life, as opposed to the utilitarian cogs that keep the mission going, that's always been what he burns to protect. “I don't believe you.”

“His organization has killed seven officers that we know of. Others are missing.”

Her eyes catch mine. It is not a command. It is not a compulsion. She slams my mind with her conviction, her sincere belief that this is the truth.

“Do you see those funny holes in their chests that are a bit ragged? Better versions of the crossbow bolts that were shot at you at the edge of the inhabited zone. We know about that too.” She pulls out one more picture.

The name escapes my lips. “Miyaki!” So this is why she never attempted to contact me again after that one hidden message.