by J. R. Harber
“Of course,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just nice to talk to you two. No, the other Founders are not here in Sanctuary—I don’t know where they are. And as for the Chancellor, I don’t control him, at least, not in the present. His programming is self-contained. It responds to atmospheric cues, artificial intelligence. But there are certain parameters that cannot be altered.”
“Right.” Eve was still looking down at him skeptically, and he stood smoothly and took the computer from the desk. He held it out to her, but she did not reach to take it. “Don’t you want to keep that?” she asked.
“I can,” he said. “But Daniel always said you have a curious mind, and all the answers you will ever want are in this machine.”
“I don’t know how to use it. He never showed me.” David pushed the computer at her again, and she took it reluctantly as he held up the metal strip he had been fiddling with. “This contains basic instructions. Turn the computer on, insert this like you saw me do, and it will teach you how to use it.”
“Thanks,” Eve said doubtfully as she returned the computer to her backpack and zipped the strip of metal into one of its side pockets.
Asa stood to go, but Eve stayed where she was, hugging the backpack to her chest.
“I’m sorry, David. I appreciate your telling us all this, but you didn’t answer my question. I wanted to know about Daniel. What happened to him? Was it something in his childhood? I just don’t understand what could have been so bad that he would …” She broke off, covering her eyes with one hand, and Asa could see tears on her cheeks.
David sighed and sat back down. “My dear, I was trying to explain. When Daniel was twelve, his father, my son James, passed away—a heart attack. It happened too fast for treatment. He was dead instantly. Afterward, the other Founders decided it was time for me to move on from the world we created and come to Sanctuary. It was an excuse, the death of my son—they claimed it was for my own good, to allow me to rest. In truth, they had been growing suspicious of me, and I believe they feared that such a great loss would drive me to some dangerous rebellion. They were right, though not in the way they imagined.
“James had known the story. I told him just as I told you. He was not disturbed by it in the way I was—to him it was just history. ‘Done is done, and right or wrong, we must look to the future,’ he told me, and we never spoke of it again.
“So, when I knew I was going to be sent away, I decided I had to tell Daniel as well—with James gone, there was no one else to tell him the truth, and I was out of time.”
“You could have told his mother,” Eve murmured, and David gave a choked laugh.
“His mother did not approve of me,” he said dryly. “She wouldn’t have listened. No, I had to tell Daniel so that he would not grow up in ignorance. I could not leave him there without telling him the truth—someone must always know the truth.
“But Daniel was not like James. After I told him, I could see at once that it would consume him. He dwelled on my history as if it were his own. I began to fear I had made a mistake in telling him—now I know it was the greatest mistake of my life. From the day I told him, he dedicated himself to learning every facet, every intricacy of the Network I had built. I don’t know what he had in mind, and, Eve, I don’t know what it was that he was working on. But I know he was consumed by the knowledge of our history—of the blood our State was built on. He saw the legacy of that history everywhere: a culture shaped by cold calculation and merciless indifference, a society ruthless in its quest for the greater good.” David looked searchingly at Eve. “Do you understand?”
She shook her head. “I don’t. What does history have to do with the present?”
David smiled faintly. “Everything.”
“What could be wrong with a quest for the greater good?” Asa interrupted impatiently. David blinked, turning as if he had forgotten Asa was there.
“What indeed?” he said gently.
Eve sighed. “There’s nothing else you can tell me?” she pressed, and David shook his head.
“I wish there were,” he said.
Eve looked down at the bag in her lap, fiddling for a moment with a zipper, then she stood and swung it onto her back.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye,” she said, wavering. “Will we ever … I mean, if I have this computer, will I be able to communicate with you?”
“Yes, you will.” He smiled knowingly. “With me or anyone else you might know with similar technology.”
“Okay, good …” Eve shifted her feet uneasily.
“So, our records are really clean?” Asa asked. “We can go back?”
“I promise both of your records are clean. You can walk into any municipal building in Horizon and be greeted with a smile and no restraints.”
Asa cleared his throat. “Thank you, David Micah—I mean David Pasternak. You’ve given us something we can never repay.”
“It was for Daniel,” David replied,
As he said his grandson’s name, all trace of mirth vanished from his face. His eyes looked suddenly hollow, as if he had aged a decade in moments.
Asa touched Eve’s arm. “We should leave you alone,” he said firmly. “Thank you again.” He steered Eve out the door, and they walked out into the fading sunlight, heading back to the river.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE FLOOR CREAKED OVER GABRIEL’S HEAD, and he backed down the wooden ladder as slits of light appeared, filtering down through the cracks outlining the trapdoor.
“So”—David Pasternak’s voice came from above—“you have come here at last.”
Gabriel glanced back at the high basement window where he had come in; a large trunk beneath it would make it easy to escape. Five seconds, maybe three. He hesitated for a moment, then climbed back up the ladder until he could reach the trapdoor, made a fist, and knocked three times. The door lifted open, and Gabriel climbed out of the basement to face the man he had been listening to for hours.
“Hello, Gabriel,” David said quietly. Gabriel stopped himself from asking, How do you know my name? as he took note of the stunning collection of contraband technology that covered a whole wall of the small cottage.
“A hologram?” he asked instead. “Why? Why not … an autom? I’ve read of them being made to look human.” David gave a small smile and walked to the middle of the room to sit beside what looked like a modified Bureaucracy desk. He gestured at the couch opposite him, and Gabriel went to take the place where Asa and Eve had been moments before.
“Automs that appeared fully human were mostly the stuff of fiction, even back in the old civ,” David said as Gabriel sat down. “It was a problem we never quite solved—the closer to human they became, the more obvious, and unsettling, their deviations from humanity were. In theory, it would be possible, but I did not—and do not—have the technology to create an autom who would be truly believable. Besides which, a material Chancellor would require material repairs. Parts wear out over time. A single malfunction would blow the lid off the whole thing, as we used to say.”
“Isn’t that still the case? If you are telling the truth, which seems … unlikely,” Gabriel said dryly. “I’ve been a Contract Enforcer for fifteen years. I’m not a scared kid. I need more than a story to be convinced the State was founded on a premeditated atrocity and is currently governed by a computer program.”
David spread his hands out in front of him. “I’m not attempting to convince you of anything. You asked about the hologram. And the answer is, it can be repaired instantly and automatically. If a glitch does happen, if the deception is discovered, it is easy enough for the public to convince themselves that the Chancellor is a real man who sometimes has his image projected when he cannot be present physically. It would be harder to explain a robotic duplicate.”
“All right,” Gabriel said. “Then—assuming you’re not lying or insane—why do you want me to know this? You knew I was listening from the basement the whole time. Why did you tell my runners this
nonsense, knowing I could hear every word?”
“Your runners?” David asked.
“There is stronger evidence against them than what they claimed.” Gabriel met David’s measuring gaze with stone.
“Then why are you here with me instead of arresting them right now?” David asked mildly. Gabriel smiled, and David raised an eyebrow, an expression of distaste appearing on his face, then vanishing almost instantly.
“I will get to them,” Gabriel said, but the conversation he had overheard nagged at him.
Daniel’s own grandfather was unsurprised to hear he had committed suicide. Most people look for someone to blame, but instead he believed a woman he had never met.
Gabriel closed his eyes. He did not need to imagine Naomi’s voice to know his duty here. “Why did you clear their records?” he asked. “Did you clear their records? Why did you take the word of a woman you didn’t know and the man accused of your grandson’s murder?”
David sighed and sat back in his chair. “You heard me tell them,” he said. “Daniel and I communicated frequently. Often late at night, often when he was clearly drunk.” He smiled thinly. “I would have to decipher misspelled words and half-finished sentences. He wrote to me about Eve. He sent me her picture. I knew who she was as soon as I saw her face.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t have a hand in his death.”
“No,” David said thoughtfully. “Back in my day, when murder was … all too familiar, it was commonplace that the person closest to you was the one likeliest to kill you. The husband or wife, the ex-boyfriend …” He paused, his eyes flickering to Gabriel’s face for an instant, and Gabriel swallowed, tightening his jaw.
Don’t you dare mention her name, Gabriel thought.
David calmly continued as if nothing had passed between them. “Gabriel, more than once, I talked Daniel down from the ledge. I spent whole nights messaging back and forth with him, begging him not to kill himself, until he finally passed out.” He looked at the blank wall of the cottage for a moment, as if seeing something beyond it, then met Gabriel’s eyes. “I believed Eve and the young man she brought because I have been expecting this for years. I am just grateful to know exactly what happened. Do you understand?”
Gabriel hesitated, then nodded. “I do,” he said.
To his surprise, with the words, he felt suddenly unmoored, as if he was giving up the only thing that tethered him to the world. David stood and dragged his chair to the wall of monitors and arcane tech. He sat and started pressing buttons, and one of the monitors lit up, white letters and numbers on the black screen. David typed a string of what looked like nonsense, then turned back to Gabriel.
“You asked why I told Eve and Asa about the Founding and the Chancellor, knowing that you could hear every word.” He smiled. “My dear young man, surely you can deduce by now that you were really the one I was talking to?”
Gabriel rubbed his temple. “I don’t like guessing games.”
David shrugged. “I don’t particularly like living in exile. But we all do our part.”
“I’m sure the State is grateful for your service,” Gabriel said tightly. He stood to go. “I’ll see you in about twenty-five years, David. I’m sure you’ll still be alive when it’s my time to travel to Sanctuary.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” David asked before he could move toward the door. “You’ve gone out into the Waste—do you really think you can waltz back inside those walls?”
“I was chasing runners,” Gabriel snapped, but he stayed where he was. “I’ll be granted an exception when I return with them,” he added, hearing the defensiveness in his own voice.
“Will you?” David arched an eyebrow, looking up at him expectantly.
Gabriel glared back for a long moment, then relented. “I don’t know,” he said wearily. “Maybe. I’m the best they’ve ever had.”
“So was I,” David said with a faint smile.
Gabriel sat heavily. “Fine. Tell me what you want me to know.”
“Thank you,” David said, sounding utterly sincere. “If you will—for the moment—take everything I said as true, I will continue.”
“For the moment.”
“Do you recall what I said about Daniel? About his obsession with the history of the State’s founding?”
“A society ruthless in its quest for the greater good, I think,” Gabriel said, and David nodded, looking pleased.
“You have excellent recall,” he said, as if he were complimenting a student.
“I know. Continue.”
Gabriel gave David a hard stare, but the old man didn’t seem to notice. There was something odd about his demeanor—something had changed since Asa and Eve had gone. He wants to talk. He’s comfortable with me. Gabriel eyed him suspiciously. When’s the last time I inspired comfort?
“What do you think of that description?” David asked. “Ruthless in a quest for the greater good?”
“I told you I don’t like guessing games.”
“Gabriel, it’s important that I know your answer.” David folded his hands in his lap and sat back, waiting.
“I think it misses the point,” Gabriel said. “The greater good is the purpose of society.”
“Even if it costs individuals their freedoms? Their lives?”
“If it is for the good of all people, then yes, of course. What is the purpose of this self-indulgent line of questioning?”
“What do you think of being a stalker, Gabriel?”
Gabriel stared for a moment; it was as if David had asked, What do you think of being a human being? “It’s what I was created to be,” he said at last. “There has never been anything else.”
“But have you ever thought of having children?” David asked.
“Of course not.” Gabriel straightened in his chair, affronted. “That’s not possible for me, or any Ward.”
“But have you ever thought of it? Imagined having a family? Or—”
“No,” Gabriel interrupted. He looked to the blank wall, staring fixedly at it for a long moment. “I had a family,” he said quietly.
“You remember your parents?” David asked, surprised.
Gabriel kept his eyes on the wall. “No.”
“Then you must mean Naomi,” David said in a tone of dawning comprehension.
Gabriel gave a short jerk of a nod.
David was silent a moment, and when he spoke, he chose his words delicately. “You never wanted a child with her?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Gabriel leapt to his feet, knocking the couch back with his movement.
David was watching him intently, apparently unalarmed by his outburst. Instead he looked interested. “I asked if you wanted a child with Naomi,” David repeated, implacable.
Gabriel shook his head and sat down again. “The role we serve as Authority Figures—as Contract Enforcers—is of far greater importance to the State than anything else we could do. Since Wards aren’t raised in nuclear family units, we could not replicate healthy dynamics, because we didn’t experience them ourselves. We were raised for a specific purpose. We would squander our years of training if we did not fulfill that purpose.”
“But did you ever want a child?” David’s tone was warm, as if he cared.
Gabriel forced himself not to snarl, biting off his words tensely. “Stop asking me that, old man. It was never an option.”
“Because you and Naomi were sterilized as children, like all Wards of the State,” David said.
“Yes.” Gabriel felt suddenly exhausted, as if they had been fighting a physical battle. “And because our duty lay elsewhere.” Don’t make me talk about her anymore, he thought.
“Would you prefer to have had a choice?” David prodded.
Gabriel closed his eyes. “I didn’t.”
He stood and walked toward the blank wall, wanting to get away from David’s kind eyes and inexorable march of questions. Children weren’t something he had ever pined for; like all the rest of th
e Wards, he had known since early childhood what path his life would take. He had welcomed his role, never doubting for a moment that he was meant to be a stalker.
But Naomi, that day in the park …
They had paused on their route to have lunch, and a little distance away in the park were a young mother and father, playing in the grass with their two toddler children. Gabriel asked a question, and Naomi didn’t answer; then he realized she hadn’t heard him, her eyes set, just for a moment, on the family just a few yards away.
It was only for a moment, a shadow cast over her face, but Gabriel’s heart twinged as he suddenly witnessed a pain he had not known she had. He put a hand on her shoulder, and the shadow vanished; she turned to him and smiled and said, “What did you say?”
That night she came home with him, not for the first time, but on that night, something was different: that was the time she stayed for good. As she fell asleep, she whispered that she loved him, and for the first and only time he let himself imagine what it might be like if they could have their own children.
But he knew it was a futile daydream, and only four months later she was dead.
Gabriel sighed and turned back to David, who had turned around to face the monitors and was typing more of the incomprehensible white characters across the screen. As if he could feel Gabriel’s eyes on him, he turned in his chair, waiting expectantly.
“I don’t know that I believe you’re telling me the truth,” Gabriel said. “But I will listen to what you have to say.”
David nodded soberly. “Good.” He stood and put his hands behind his back. “I have told you all this history, Gabriel, not only because I believe you deserve to know the truth but also because I need your help.” He paused, looking at Gabriel with a question in his eyes.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Gabriel said. “Go on.”
“I did not ask you what I asked in order to be cruel. I asked because Daniel’s belief—that the merciless pursuit of the ideal society is not, in fact, for the greater good—has, over many years, become my own.
“I take responsibility for that, in large part. It was I who built the Network and I who programmed your leader, and no matter what we wish to think, societies reflect their leaders—a leader who is, in this case, inhuman. Now it is my intent, and not mine alone, to attempt to introduce a human element back into the State. To introduce mercies and liberties that have been stamped out in the so-called Social Contracts.”