by J. R. Harber
Gabriel broke off, suddenly aware of Joan’s wide eyes, intent on his face.
Naomi was more than I was, he had been about to say. Not better, although she was that, but more. She was exacting in her work, no less than I, but she was so compassionate to everyone we caught and sentenced. I was scrupulous about right and wrong, thinking through scenarios every night, as if I were still in training, just to be sure I would never make a mistake. But to her it was like breathing. She didn’t have to think about it. She just knew.
“Gabriel?” Joan said softly, interrupting his thoughts, and he looked at her.
“Right.” He cleared his throat.
She was looking at him with a softness in her eyes, and suddenly he was tense with anger. How dare you pity me.
“So, one morning the doorbell rang,” he said, his tone sharper. “I was upstairs. We both started for the door, but she got there first. I was still at the top of the stairs when she opened the door—it was Timothy. He just stood there for a second. He had the strangest smile on his face, and I saw the kitchen knife in his hand. I ran down the stairs. I almost fell over my own feet. Naomi tried to turn and run, but he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back. He stabbed her over and over as I tried to get to them—it was like a dream where you’re in slow motion. She was screaming. I saw her blood spray in an arc across his face, covering it. He stabbed her again and again, and then she stopped screaming.”
Joan’s eyes were wide, and she clapped one hand over her mouth. Gabriel couldn’t tell if it was from shock or nausea, but he pressed on with a sick satisfaction at her distress.
“I reached the bottom of the stairs, and he dropped her and ran—I caught her before she hit the floor. I didn’t even think of chasing him. I pressed my hands over the cut in her throat, the deepest one, but it was too late—he had sliced her carotid artery open. She was already unconscious, and she would be dead in seconds.”
He paused, getting his voice under control.
“I called Emergency Services, and while I waited for them to arrive, I held her head in my lap, still covering the wound in her throat even though there was no blood pumping out into my hands. I studied her face, memorizing it because it was the last time I would see her. Her eyes were brown, and there was a little dark fleck near the pupil. I looked into her eyes, fixing on that point like I had a thousand times before, and I realized I wasn’t looking into her eyes, I was looking at them. She was dead, just a thing. There was nothing left of her. I kept looking though. I didn’t want to forget. By the time Emergency Services arrived, my clothes were soaked through with her blood. They took her away and said someone would come to clean the blood up so I wouldn’t have to do it myself.
“I searched for Timothy. I didn’t go to the hospital. What would be the point? Naomi was already gone. But it was useless. I hadn’t even seen which direction he ran. Still, I swore I wouldn’t rest until I brought him to justice. I would dedicate my life to it.”
“And?” Joan said softly.
Gabriel gave her a sideways glance. “And nothing. Someone else found him a few hours later, just a mile or so up the road. He’d cut his own throat with the same knife he’d used to stab Naomi. So, I went home and I cleaned the front hall. I wiped up her blood and washed the tile until it was clean—I couldn’t bear to have someone else be the one to strip the last traces of her from my life. I guess that makes me a romantic,” he added sarcastically.
“Not really,” Joan said. She looked pale and slightly off-balance.
“Breathe or you’ll faint,” Gabriel said shortly.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then looked at him, some of the color returning to her cheeks.
“They told us she died in an accident,” she said at last.
Gabriel laughed abruptly. “Time to get back to work.” He strode ahead, not looking back to see if Joan was behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WELCOME TO HORIZON. PLEASE MAKE SURE you have collected all of your belongings before disembarking.”
Asa lifted his head fuzzily, awakened by the pleasant automated voice of the rail announcement. He had managed to fall asleep with his arm and face pressed up against the window, and as he sat up, he rolled his shoulder, trying to work out the kinks. His backpack was still between his feet, and he grabbed it and scanned the floor in case something had fallen out.
“Welcome to Horizon. If you see someone having trouble, please lend a helping hand,” the voice intoned. People were moving past him toward the exit; Asa wasn’t sure when he had fallen asleep, but the compartment was a lot fuller than he recalled. He watched them go by, men and women with sure steps and compact luggage.
Does everyone but me do this all the time? he wondered.
The compartment emptied quickly, and Asa got to his feet hurriedly, falling in line behind a middle-aged man with clipped gray hair and square shoulders.
“Welcome to Horizon,” the voice began again as Asa emerged into the station. “Enjoy your time here, and always report any suspicious activity. Remember, we are all in this together.”
“… in this together,” Asa said under his breath along with the recording, saying the words like touching a talisman.
The rail station was bright and open. The high ceiling was made of irregularly shaped glass panels, and the sun streamed in unobstructed. Asa stared upward until someone bumped into him, almost knocking him off his feet. Asa stumbled, then recovered his footing to find himself facing a thin, dark-haired man a little older than him.
“Are you all right?” the other man said. “Sorry, I should have noticed you.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have been standing in the middle of a crowd, staring up at the sky,” Asa said sheepishly.
The young man grinned. “Don’t worry, everyone does it the first time they pass through this place. Look.” He pointed discreetly across the station, where an elegant-looking woman was gazing upward, exactly the way Asa had been. As they watched, a man hurrying for the door pulled up short, barely avoiding a collision.
Asa laughed. “I guess it’s not just me.”
“Not at all. By the way, welcome to Horizon!”
“Thanks, I’m—” Before Asa could finish introducing himself, the man was gone, vanishing into the crowd with a final wave. “I’m Asa,” Asa said quietly.
He tightened his grip on his bag and followed the largest section of the crowd out the main door and onto a sprawling plaza. It was reminiscent of the town square in Rosewood, writ large, but it was so much more.
To begin with, it was thronged with people—more people than Asa had ever seen in one place. Some were crossing the flat, pale stones purposefully, on their way to something important, and others were sitting in the sun or playing games that Asa could not recognize from a distance. There were stone benches and clusters of tables, but what made Asa stare were the spots, scattered across the plaza, where lush plants grew boldly as if in the wild.
He went to inspect one. In a circle about ten feet in diameter, meadow grass and wildflowers rippled in the wind. Asa glanced around; the air in the plaza was still. He walked around the circle until he came to a plaque, which read “Microclimate: Meadow.” Asa reached forward, about to pick a blade of grass, and his hand went suddenly numb, a buzzing sensation striking all the way up to the elbow. Asa grabbed his wrist, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed, but no one was looking at him.
He looked at the plaque again. In the bottom corner, small script read “Do not touch: microclimate protected by electrified air barrier.”
“Probably should have read that,” Asa mumbled to himself, flexing his hand as the feeling slowly returned to it.
Despite the shock, he went to another one. It was the same size, a large circular space, and this one was mostly sand and rock, with strange flowers scattered thinly on the ground.
“Microclimate: Desert,” Asa read aloud.
He looked on for a moment, then was startled as a small animal darted fr
om behind a rock, vanishing under another too fast for Asa to see what it was.
Leaving the desert, Asa made his way to another one of the spots, labeled “Microclimate: Forest.” This one looked as if it could have come straight from Rosewood, with shady trees, maybe fifteen feet high, with heavy leaves. Asa sat down on a nearby bench, feeling a little more at ease with trees standing beside him. He took off his backpack and sighed.
Now what?
He had considered everything up to this moment, directed all his thoughts and plans toward getting to Horizon. Now that he was here, the future was a vast open space. He didn’t know what to do; he didn’t even know what he could do.
Asa squinted up at the sky. The sun was falling; it was late afternoon. I should probably find a place to stay, he thought.
He got up and started out of the plaza, picking a direction at random. The first large building he saw had a sign that read “Bank” above a row of doors, each leading into an individual booth. He picked one and went inside.
“Good afternoon, Asa Isaac Rosewood,” said an automated voice as he entered.
“Um, hello. How did you know my name?”
“Your name is Asa Isaac Rosewood,” the voice replied pleasantly.
“Right …”
“How can I help you, Asa Isaac—”
“Please, just call me Asa.”
There was a brief pause.
“How can I help you, Asa?”
“Yeah.” Asa took out his phone and held it up. “Can I check my account, I guess?”
“You have 199,988 credits available.” As the autom spoke, the number appeared on his phone’s screen. Below the total, in smaller print, a deduction was listed: twelve creds for his train ticket.
“Oh. I can just use them, right?” he asked awkwardly.
“You have 199,988 credits available. They are valid for all transactions except those in violation of your Social Contract.”
“Right.” Asa hesitated.
The bank autom wasn’t really equipped to answer his real questions. I can really go where I want, do what I want? I don’t have to ask anyone because I’m not a kid anymore?
“Would you like to view the bank’s official financial planning advice video, covering such topics as budgeting, spending priorities, and saving for a secure future?”
“Not now,” Asa said.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Asa?” The autom’s voice didn’t change, but Asa felt a little like he was being asked to move along.
“Not now, thank you,” he said.
Asa looked down at the phone in his hand. Financial planning. Two hundred thousand credits, deposited every year on his birthday, seemed like more than he could ever need, but he had heard stories about people who lost everything, getting sent to Work for their foolishness.
I don’t know how much it costs to live in an apartment, he thought. I don’t know how much food costs in Horizon. He wavered at the door, feeling briefly guilty for skipping the bank’s video. I can watch it another time. It’s not like the bank’s going anywhere, he decided.
The sun was close to setting when Asa emerged from the bank. He looked up and down the street with rising excitement. Even though the bank autom was just an autom, the interaction had lifted him up; now he wanted to talk to someone else. But no one magically stopped to chat, so once again, Asa picked a random direction and started walking.
He tried not to gawk, but the city was everything he had hoped for: it was nothing like Rosewood. The main streets were straight and wide, crossing regularly in a slightly off-kilter grid, and the buildings varied widely: some were simple—square and concrete, and a little ugly—while others looked like pieces of art, daring structures with jutting curves and colorful patterns. He paced back and forth beneath a strange tower whose height seemed to shift depending on which angle he saw it from.
Asa kept walking, gazing up at the strange buildings until his neck began to cramp. As it grew dark, he began to notice lights coming from the narrow alleys. They were not dead ends, as he had assumed. He hesitated a moment, then quickly slipped between a square concrete block of one building and another that appeared to be an enormous fountain, water running continuously down its walls and into an invisible gutter.
Careful not to get wet, Asa went into the alley. It was long and narrow and opened out into another narrower alley. He followed that, then turned the next corner and found himself back on the main road, about a block from where he had started. Asa smiled and set off down another alley, which took a sharp left turn down another alley before opening onto a new road, not as wide as the main streets and lined with smaller, much less impressive buildings than the ones on the outside. All around them, the backs of the enormous buildings loomed, hiding the main street from view.
It was like a whole hidden section of the city—he would never have known it was there if he hadn’t followed the lights on a whim. Asa stared for a moment, feeling as if he had stumbled on a secret treasure. This was, he thought, the thing he had always wanted but never knew existed.
Some of the buildings were marked with brightly lit signs, and one across the road caught his eye. “Zipporah’s Nightbar.” Asa’s pulse rose.
He had heard whispers about places like this, but he doubted most of the adults in Rosewood had ever seen one. People always said strange things could happen in Horizon’s nightbars. Maybe even dangerous things. No one had ever specified what those things might be, and the vague warnings had given these places an alluring edge to Asa and his friends.
He crossed the street and went inside.
Asa looked around. It was dark and a little grimy, with patrons seated at a long bar counter or at little tables along the facing wall, and when he walked in, half the people there raised their heads simultaneously, looking him up and down as if taking his measure.
This is just like Tom’s place back home, Asa thought with a pang of disappointment. Right down to the stares if you don’t belong. Nevertheless, he went up to the bar and waited while the stone-faced redheaded barwoman gazed off into the distance, apparently unaware of his presence. He moved three feet to the left, placing himself directly in her line of sight. Her eyes narrowed.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she said.
“It’s a big city,” Asa offered warily, wondering if this would be some strange dominance test.
But she just asked, “What do you drink?”
“Moonshine,” Asa answered honestly, and she laughed. He felt himself flush and looked down at the bar.
“New in town?” the bartender asked with a kinder tone, and he nodded. Her lips twitched into a smile. “Welcome,” she said, looking him up and down deliberately. Asa smiled slowly. This he was used to.
“Leave him alone, Zip. He’s too young for you!” a man called good-naturedly from down the bar.
Asa winked at the barwoman. “Don’t listen to that guy. He’s drunk,” he quipped, and Zip—presumably the Zipporah the place was named for—laughed and pulled a glass out from under the bar. She poured something into it from an unmarked bottle and set it in front of Asa.
“Here you go, blue eyes. Moonshine, from my personal distillery. Welcome to Horizon.”
Asa sipped the drink and grimaced; it was nothing if not authentic. And possibly corrosive. More at ease after chatting with the overly friendly Zip, he looked around again, hoping for another conversation. The patrons were dressed in a variety of fashions, old and new, only a few of which were familiar to Asa. He took another sip of his drink and nearly choked as he saw her across the bar.
The sight of her hit him like an actual blow to the chest: a young woman, perhaps a little older than he was, with long, straight black hair almost down to her waist and smooth, light brown skin that seemed to glow under the dim light of the nightbar. She was wearing white, which shone in bright contrast to the darkness of the place. She was looking down into her drink, and her large dark eyes and full lips were almost expressionless. She didn’t lo
ok bored, exactly. She actually looked restless.
Asa tried to catch her eye, but she didn’t look up. He hesitated and brushed his hair back carefully to appear more mature. He was not usually nervous around women—most reacted to him much the way that Zip had—but she was different. She seemed like something new.
Asa finished his drink quickly, and the rush of alcohol steadied him as he made his way down the bar to where she sat. There was an empty stool beside her, and he grabbed it. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye, the movement scarcely visible, and Asa grinned.
“Hi. I’m Asa,” he said. She turned her head, then laughed suddenly.
“Did I say something funny?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. About five minutes before you got here, a guy asked me if I wanted a wild ride, and fifteen minutes before that someone else asked if I wanted to ‘plant my melons in his community garden’ in a very inappropriate manner. I know it was a sexual euphemism, but I still can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s a euphemism for.”
“Well, ‘Hi. I’m Asa,’ only has one meaning, as far as I know.”
“Glad to hear it … Eve.”
“What?”
“My name is Eve. In case you were curious.”
“Eve—yes, I was curious. Thanks,” he added with a giddy, off-balance feeling. She—Eve—kept catching him off guard, switching the conversation before he was ready for it, but it didn’t make him feel silly. It was exhilarating.
“I’m from Rosewood,” he said. “Asa Isaac Rosewood.”
“Asa Isaac Rosewood,” Eve repeated slowly, holding the tones in her mouth as if she were tasting each of them. Asa felt his face getting hot, and he slid off the stool, stepping in a little closer to her in the process. She didn’t move away.