The Forever Watch (45 page)

One wing has been smashed inward by the extended right arm of a replica of the Colossus of Rhodes. Helios's left arm has been flattened out into a shield, his head extruded into a crenellated turret for some ambitious group of combatants that had animated the huge statue.

What were the motivations of whoever did that? Perhaps they had not been trying to attack anything—maybe they had just been bored, stoned artists making some statement during that brief, heady moment when they realized that laws did not matter anymore.

“Follow,” Karla commands again, stepping out of the vehicle. Standing still, arms crossed, she floats up into the air, buoyed up by power alone. She does not require an ornithopter flight pack, or the flight armor restricted to Enforcers.

Though I had wanted to make the OCS training program, her new position is not a job I would ever want. What must it feel like to be responsible for so much?

The amplifier on my wrist still works. My mind's touch pulls a manhole cover free from the sidewalk. I lift it up and sit on it and float after her, feet swinging. Flying with just TK is not beyond me, with an amp and the grid, but it is difficult, like balancing on an oil slick. It is easier to ride an inflexible object to push and pull along a desired trajectory—perhaps there is some psychological block that one can be trained out of.

She enters a balcony on the thirtieth level. Half the floor has collapsed, but she ignores it, walking back and forth without distinction between what is solid and what is air.

“I feel like cooking. The bathroom is intact. Take a shower. You look like shit. Take anything out of the closet—you have enough skill to resize clothes. Take an ISec coat. You might as well wear the uniform. In fact, pack yourself a bag of things. Whatever you like.”

Now what is this about? Well. There's no sense in taking offense at a perpetually prickly person burdened with the fate of humanity. I try at glib. “I'm not doing the dishes. But thank you, I suppose.”

I do need more clothes, and there's always a line for the showers at our makeshift base.

She is nearly a stranger, the me standing in the mirror. The physical me has drifted from my self-image more than I thought. Pale fuzz growing out of her scalp. The chrome emitter plates are the same, but the skin has lost its nut-brown coloring—it is still dark, but with less color, somehow. The eyes are bloodshot. The lower lip has been gashed open by biting. The athletic frame with its hard planes of muscle is all too exposed now, with too little fat to add softness and curves. The hands are trembling, twitching, unsteady.

Behind her, the shower stall is huge, big enough for a gang of people engaging in acts other than just cleaning themselves. It fills with hot mist. The mirror's frame is heavy with gold.

“Stop ogling yourself and get to it. I don't know how long the hot water will last.”

“I was just admiring the facilities,” I call out.

The hot water does run out. It does not matter, I scrub myself hard, trembling and shivering when it turns icy. A plane of telekinetic force shaves away the stubble on my scalp. I try to search for the steel I thought I had found during those weeks in isolation when I had nothing to do but exercise body and mind, and eat, and sleep, and exist.

The towel is soft. Plush.

Her bedroom is in softer colors than I expected. Pastel shades on the walls. Rose, lavender, maize, beige. There are paintings of tiny birds and lush, sexual flowers. Hummingbirds, I think, and orchids.

The underwear in Karla's dresser is surprisingly girlie, lots of delicate, lacy things in bright colors. I wonder if some lover of hers is out there, perhaps pinned under ruins somewhere, or if he is an Enforcer, burning people alive for wanting to know what has been determined, empirically, to be too dangerous to know.

I set out a functional sports bra and panty, and black slacks and coal turtleneck. A pair of her boots.
Touch
stretches out the materials, thins them out, enlarging them enough to fit. The colorless Information Security greatcoat just needs the sleeves extended an inch.

Another glance in the mirror. My eyes are alarming. A minute of searching through her things produces a pair of mirrored shades, and I put them on. The woman in the mirror still seems detached from me, but at least she looks competent now, almost dangerous, rather than like some fragile, brittle refugee.

I fill a duffel bag from her closet with more things. The woman has an extensive wardrobe, mostly deep, autumn colors that probably set off her pale skin. I pick out jeans, slacks, stretchy tops. I doubt there will be occasion to wear any of her ballroom gowns.

When I emerge into the dining room, a fragrant spread is on the table. Soft cubes of tofu in light soy, with leeks and onions. Fettuccine with bell peppers, tomatoes, olives, basil, and cream. Hot, toasted garlic bread. Glasses of wine. The plates beneath are made of lavender crystal, and beneath them is a pearl-white tablecloth of silk.

Now I just have to cross the yawning, ten-foot chasm between the end of the hallway and where the floor still remains. Looking down, I see that the hole goes down several stories, and the other way, it goes up to a crack in the rooftop, revealing the flickering sky of the Dome. I bridge it, reuse the material of the floor.

“Sit. Eat.” She drinks, watching me as I serve out portions for myself.

“Aren't you going to—”

“No.” She shakes her head. “You, however, need to force down as much as you can. You've got all the symptoms. Your body needs to recharge.”

“Symptoms?” She must mean psi fatigue. Still, there must be over two thousand kcal worth of food on the table. “You can't expect me to finish all—”

“Eat it or I'll force you to eat it.”

It is good, at least. But eating and drinking, under her steady gaze, while she explains further about ongoing Ministry operations, is unnerving.

She reminds me that there are yet more extreme measures if need be.

“They involve a lot of dying. So, Dempsey, we cannot fail.”

Just as Archie enabled Barrens's anarchists to dig up all those widespread fragments of lost information, Karla wants me to use her to identify and locate their leadership.

“We will assault these kindergarten revolutionaries across every rat hole they've occupied throughout the ship.”

The larger groups, the mobs, the intellectuals that had started to protest outside the administration offices, they are considered the lesser priority, still salvageable, for the most part. The physical isolation of the separate Habitat sections will be enough to keep them under control, for a time. If the agitators, the leaders, are taken out of the equation, something of a reset is still possible. Those worst affected by the highest doses of Psyn, the mutineers' foot soldiers will need psyche repair, years of therapy.

“What about the Council? The Bridge? Won't they be held hostage?”

“They are not permitted to allow themselves to be captured. They are already dead.”

There is nothing I can say about that. Sorry? Oops? It is the same as everything else. “Can't we negotiate? I mean.…”

“They already know too much.”

We discuss what I am to do. Or rather, she tells me her new requirements of me, my new orders. All the while, I eat. I am starting to understand and it is one more piece of too much.

Too soon, my stomach starts to protest.

“Keep going.”

“I would rather not—”

Her eyes burn, bright green overlaying the pink. My hands move, under her control, not mine. “No, stop, I'll—”

Karla does not eat a bite herself. Though she does drink the wine.

She makes me wolf it down. I feel bloated, stretched out.

Why?
I unicast her.

Karla's eyes are cold, and her voice is colder. “Haven't you noticed, Miss Dempsey? Weakness in the limbs? Nausea? A lack of appetite? Despite that, your talents remain.” She tilts her head back, lets another mouthful of red slide down her throat. “It's not psi-burn you've got. You're dying, Miss Dempsey. Daily excess nutrient intake helps slow the process down.”

Oh.

I should have guessed. But I did not want to. Do others know? Nobody has said anything. Maybe everyone looks this terrible, stressed-out, not enough food. I'm going to look a lot worse, and soon.

The part of Archie that is present in my head beeps in alarm; I sense her processes tapping into the life-signs applications on the neural Implant. I can't freak out and have Archie feel me freaking out. I need to be hard and not just for me.
Nothing you can do, Archie, if it's so. I was always going to die this way. Everyone does.
She lets go a long, mournful tone. I see her in my mind, shaking her head furiously. She shrinks down to a five-year-old, stamping her feet, mouthing, “No, no, no.”

How long since attaining sentience has Archie been attached to me? Could she ever bond with anyone else?

Hush. You promised to behave. You remember promises? You can't throw a tantrum, honey. Everyone's counting on you.

Archie presses her lips into a thin line, grows out to twenty, grows out to my age in a moment, but she's still got my hair. She manifests a Doctor's red-trimmed white coat, marches off as she fades from my awareness.

In the meantime, the foreign push and pull on the muscles of my body is irritating. Karla has a firm grasp on my strings, her mind's projections overriding the impulses from my brain. Even my tears, or lack of tears, is up to her.

I demand,
I'll feed myself. I can do it. I have the will. Get out of my head. I have always done what I had to do. I'll freak out on my own time.

Karla's mouth twitches. She seems … relieved? “Good. I am about as far from the psychological profile of a Keeper as an officer can get.”

My hands, my mouth, my body, are my own again. I make myself eat, set aside the sensations of fullness. The food is good. It is. She is not without kindness, in her way, this stern, gray icicle.

“How much time do I have?”

“You seem to be one of the average ones, Dempsey. Three months. Maybe four. You probably have a month left before you start to come to pieces, and a month more where you are somewhat functional.”

“That's not so bad,” I manage. At least there is a little time, maybe even enough time to put things right.

Rice balls are chewed, barely tasted, swallowed down. The sensation to heave it all up goes back up to my brain; I clamp down on it. There is too much to do to be sick now. I can feel sad later. When I see Barrens again, maybe.

“You may be relieved to know, or not. Your team from City Planning is mostly all right. So are your friends. They will be brought in. We require all the help we can get.”

Hennessy and the others! I haven't worried enough about them. But there was so much to fear already. “Thank you. They will make things more efficient.”

“They had better.”

I plaster on a smile. “They will.”

I am dying. I want him to protect me. To tell me he'll stop it somehow. Keep me safe. Leon, I wanted so much more time with you. How will I tell him?

After I have gorged, we float back to the ground. Multiple transports await us, all different colors, the gray of Information Security, the Enforcers' black, the green of Behavioralists, the police blue. They are huge, armored insects. Rather than wheels, each one walks on six legs ending in great big claws.

The little man is there again. His bald head shines under the simulated noon sun. “We are ready for the move, Captain Waitani.”

The sky flickers again, badly.

Karla turns to me. “Will you accept your duty, Dempsey?”

My throat is dry. Acid and mush push up from my stomach. I nod and brace myself. This will not be pleasant.

“Hana Dempsey is to be granted all authorizations befitting her new status, as ship's Executive Officer,” Karla announces.

“Acknowledged.”

My legs go out from under me, but somebody holds me up telekinetically. My head is a series of explosions coming in wave after wave, as another immense data dump is crammed into my head, leaving me retching, screaming. Karla takes control of my physiology again, to keep me from vomiting.

Long minutes pass as I feel more and more functions updating and expanding in my neural Implant. My brain is battered. Mind too large to fit in my skull. Cannot see. When I hear, it is as if I hear across a great distance, a canyon, echoing. I feel old memories being crowded out. I lose them. Names. Faces. How much of my childhood vanishes in the blink of an eye?

“Let's get moving.”

“Yessir.”

Cannot see at all. If it was bad when Karla Inducted me into ISec, this is ten, a hundred, times worse. Everything is pain. I am manhandled about, belted into a chair.

The convoy rumbles forward.

Archie returns. Subdued. She ties my mind into the transport's sensor suite, distracts me from the wreck of my mind.

It is beyond strange, feeling passengers riding in me. Feeling the mighty legs of the transport push forward. Did Archie do that because she thought it would make me feel better, because she guessed that I would want to see what's going on, or was it just a whim?

In the distance, there is a great flash of light. Then the sound comes. The claws of the transport dig into the roadway. The passengers cry out. The pressure wave almost knocks the insectoid tank over onto its back. Powerful
touch
talents hold it down. The sky simulation dies completely, and it is dark except for the arc lights firing up under and in front of the transport, stabbing out into the darkness. The pseudo-gravity dies too.

Rubble starts floating into the air. The tank's claws dig even harder into the street, and Karla herself lights up with power, keeping the vehicle from falling up into a black sky. She unleashes a ten-minute stream of profanity as she takes in damage reports.

The Archivists' separate cells have been spurred to action by the realization that Archie is no longer on their side. Somebody has set off a bomb under the Paris Habitat Section's life-support center.