by Victoria Lee
Right. Noam swallowed against an uneasy stomach. “What happens if we fail?”
“We won’t fail.”
Lehrer touched chilly fingers to Noam’s cheek, turning his face toward the streetlamp. His thumb skimmed the throbbing skin just below Noam’s eye. Noam shivered. It still hurt.
“Would you like me to heal this?” Lehrer asked.
“I think I’d rather keep it,” Noam said and caught Lehrer’s gaze. “I earned it.”
Lehrer laughed, and after a beat, his hand fell away. “Stubborn youth.”
Doubt crept back in only when Noam was back in the barracks, sitting next to Dara on the sofa and trying to concentrate while Dara lounged about, reading Pale Fire and being consummately distracting. Was it a mistake to uncritically trust Lehrer? Even if Lehrer was telling the truth about his coup, who said he wouldn’t try to pin the blame on Noam if things went sour?
No. No more excuses. It was time to act, the way Noam had promised himself he would, back when he first started Level IV.
Noam watched Dara lick his thumb and turn the page, right in rhythm.
Dara would tell Noam to choose a direction headed away from Lehrer, to start running and never look back.
But Dara wasn’t a refugee, and Dara didn’t have anything to lose.
Noam slid his holoreader out of his satchel and opened it on his knees. He’d finished downloading the contents of the government servers on his way back from Lehrer’s, two flopcells full of damning emails and violent memos.
Four terabytes of Sacha’s evil.
Noam plugged the first flopcell into his computer and uploaded its contents to a public repository.
Time for Carolinia to learn the truth.
Time for a real revolution.
Encrypted video recording, April 2017, from Calix Lehrer’s personal archives
The camera displays a therapist’s office: two armchairs facing a sofa, a desk by a window, bookshelves. A man, Dr. Gleeson, is visible on the right edge of the frame. He stands in an open doorway, facing away from the camera and speaking to someone in the waiting room (off-screen).
GLEESON: “You must be Calix. Would you like to come on back now?”
[inaudible response]
Gleeson moves away from the door, retreating deeper into the room. He is followed by a tall boy, nineteen years old, attractive with light hair and lighter eyes. The boy, Calix Lehrer, carries a book. He scans the room, as if assessing for quick exits.
GLEESON: “Take a seat wherever you like.”
Calix sits in the chair nearest the door. His body is too long for it, knees bent at a sharp angle and elbows tucked in close. He opens his book on his thigh and begins reading again.
Gleeson takes the seat opposite.
GLEESON: “Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation?”
Calix tilts the book to show him the spine.
GLEESON: “Interesting philosophy. The world, and humans as part of it, are mere manifestations of a metaphysical Will. Depressing, I always thought. Since we don’t understand others are composed of the same Will, we are doomed to perpetual violence and suffering.”
CALIX (without looking up): “That’s about the whole of it.”
GLEESON: “Tell me about yourself, Calix.”
CALIX: “You know everything there is to know.”
GLEESON: “Tell me something I couldn’t read in the papers.”
Calix eyes him without lifting his head. Frowns. The desk drawer opens and a bottle of scotch emerges by telekinesis, accompanied by a snifter. The bottle uncaps itself, fills the glass.
CALIX: “I think I’ll just read, if you don’t mind. Analyze that however you like. Or you’re welcome to just sit there and think whatever baseline humans think about when left idle.”
GLEESON: “That’s not very nice.”
CALIX: “Did Wolf tell you I was nice?”
Calix licks his thumb, turns the page. The scotch arrives and rests on his knee.
Silence. Then Gleeson reaches for a pen and begins writing.
Calix looks up, handsome mouth in a dissatisfied moue.
CALIX: “What are you doing?”
GLEESON: “Taking notes. Tell me more about your relationship with Adalwolf.”
CALIX (confused): “Why are you—”
Gleeson looks up, then smiles. He puts down his pen.
GLEESON: “Your power doesn’t seem to work on me, does it?”
CALIX: “I beg your pardon?”
GLEESON: “Your power. It isn’t working.”
Calix stares. He’s forgotten his book entirely, the pages falling shut and losing his place.
GLEESON: “Of course, I’m not an expert or anything, but I’m guessing it has something to do with my telepathy.”
CALIX: “What?” (His expression shifts, a calm sea roused to anger.) “You can’t—you—get out of my head!”
Gleeson is still smiling.
Calix pushes himself up so violently the glass topples off his knee, spilling expensive liquor on Gleeson’s carpet.
CALIX: “I’m leaving. Tell Adalwolf whatever you want, but I’m not sitting through this. No.”
He’s halfway to the door, flinging it open by telekinesis, before Gleeson speaks.
GLEESON: “I should have thought you’d jump at the chance to speak to someone who understands you.”
Calix turns, fixes him with a narrowed gaze.
Gleeson uncaps and recaps his pen.
CALIX: “Just because you can read my mind doesn’t mean you understand me.”
GLEESON: “Not that. Think about it, Calix. Pyromancy, telekinesis, healing . . . those powers are all very impressive, yes, but they aren’t like ours. We’re something else. Something not quite human.”
Calix hovers there in the doorway. At last he closes the door and returns, this time sitting on the sofa. His face is impassive, but one gets the sense of something else, movement beneath dark waters.
CALIX: “All right, I’ll bite. When did you learn telepathy?”
GLEESON: “It was my presenting power. I woke up with it after the fever. I was twenty. But you survived the virus quite young—two, yes? This ability is all you can remember. Your view of other people is completely shaped by it . . .”
Calix says nothing. He sits there, holding Gleeson’s gaze until Gleeson sighs.
GLEESON: “That’s a tangent, of course. My real question is, how long have you been having these nightmares?”
CALIX: “We’re not talking about me.”
GLEESON (laughing): “My boy, of course we’re talking about you. If you want me to answer your questions, you’ll have to answer a few of my own. It’s only fair.”
Silence.
GLEESON (as if in response to something unspoken but overheard): “Yes. But I’d still like to discuss them with you. So, I’ll ask again. How long have you been having the nightmares?”
CALIX (eventually): “Since the hospital.”
GLEESON: “Every night?”
CALIX: “Just about. Wolf got me some sleeping pills, but they don’t help . . . if you write a word of this down, I’m leaving.”
Gleeson puts down the pen.
GLEESON: “What are the dreams about?”
CALIX: “No, it’s my turn. You made the rules, remember?”
GLEESON: “By all means.”
CALIX: “Have you met any other telepaths?”
Gleeson pauses for several seconds, perhaps considering if he intends to lie.
GLEESON: “Yes. But it was not their presenting power.”
Calix’s strange eyes are too bright now, fixed on Gleeson.
Gleeson shifts in his seat, uncomfortable.
GLEESON: “My turn. What are the dreams about, Calix?”
CALIX: “They’re about what happened to me in the hospitals.” (pause) “They tortured me to inspire new powers. They thought if they put my body under enough stress, it would be forced to defend itself. It worked. I was useful because I wa
s powerful, and the more powerful they made me, the more useful I became. If they could suppress me, they could suppress anyone.”
Calix pauses, then shrugs.
CALIX: “They were trying to invent a vaccine for the virus when I was liberated.”
GLEESON: “Did they succeed?”
CALIX (shaking his head): “They were able to make suppression work on me, though, if only for an hour per dose. My question, now.”
GLEESON: “Not so fast. You still haven’t said what the dreams were about. Not specifically.”
CALIX: “I told you, they’re about what happened to me in—”
GLEESON: “They tortured you, yes. So you said. But how?”
Calix’s hands clutch the sofa cushions. When he swallows, his throat bobs visibly.
CALIX: “They . . . anything they could think of to induce pain. Cutting into me, breaking bones. Capsaicin injections. They . . .”
Calix shudders, eyes fluttering shut.
GLEESON (gently): “It’s all right, Calix. That’s enough.”
Calix doesn’t appear to hear. He drops his head back, his voice thin and shaking.
CALIX: “They had me gagged. I couldn’t . . .”
GLEESON (urgent, his expression nauseated): “I know.”
At last Calix opens his eyes. He’s pale. Gleeson removes his spectacles with trembling fingers and scrubs the heel of his other hand against his face.
GLEESON: “Go ahead and ask what you were going to ask me.”
A long moment passes. Gleeson puts his glasses back on.
CALIX: “Can you learn telepathy?”
GLEESON: “I don’t know. It would seem so, although the only other telepath I knew could never quite define how she acquired the ability. But she couldn’t read every mind, as I can. Her ability was limited, perhaps because it wasn’t her presenting power. She could only read the minds of people she had a close, personal connection to. She spent years trying to cultivate telepathy but never got past this limitation. She could read the minds of people she understood on a deep and intimate level, and only if they felt a close connection to her in return. But no one else.”
Calix says nothing.
GLEESON: “I advise against it. Telepathy is a curse as much as a blessing. Far worse when you use it on a loved one and realize all the nasty things they think about you but would never say out loud.”
CALIX: “I want to help him.”
GLEESON: “I know you do.” (He drags his hand through his hair again.) “I know, Calix. But reading Adalwolf’s mind won’t help you help him. Believe me.”
CALIX: “You think I could learn, though.”
GLEESON: “I think . . . I think that would be a very bad idea.”
Calix is still looking at him, his face lean and hungry. He opens his mouth to speak again.
The video ends here.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Noam was sprawled across his bed on Friday afternoon, halfway through Oryx and Crake, chewing on one of Taye’s red lollipops, when Dara and Ames cornered him with demands that Noam attend some dinner party Ames’s dad was throwing. It wasn’t the kind of thing Noam was into, hanging out with old rich people and playing sycophant. He was about to make his excuses, but then Dara said, “You should come.”
And that decided it, really.
That night, Dara and Noam took a cab out of downtown toward Forest Hills and the massive mansions belonging to the rich and famous and government employed. Noam watched the houses slide past, each more ostentatious than the last. Some were larger than the entire training wing. Dara, smiling down at something on his phone, didn’t seem to notice.
“So glad you could make it,” Ames said. She met them at the door to the home secretary’s residence, drabs replaced by tight black trousers and a well-fitted men’s blazer. A glass of brandy dangled from one hand. “Go home, Dara; I’m sure Noam and I can find some way to entertain ourselves without you here.”
Dara laughed. “Consider me his chaperone.” He plucked the brandy out of Ames’s hand, finishing the rest of it in a single long swallow. “I’m here to make sure you don’t take advantage.”
“Me? Take advantage? Never.”
They followed her into the mansion—and it was exactly that: a mansion, with a white board façade and an interior constructed of hardwood floors and fleur-de-lis patterned wallpaper, fine art framed on the walls or featured as centerpieces. Noam had read in the bookstore history section that traditional Carolinian architecture was considered unpretentious by contemporaries. Still, he couldn’t help comparing it to what he’d seen of Lehrer’s apartment. Here there were no faded rugs or worn-down upholstery. Everything was restored and polished to gleaming perfection, down to the silver candlesticks.
If Noam stole one of those candlesticks, he’d feed a whole tenement for three months.
Maybe he was morally obligated to do just that.
General Ames met them in the sitting room along with three other guests—Major General Amelia García, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; a handsome black man Noam recognized as James Attwood, a famous actor; and a blonde woman who was probably Attwood’s wife. Noam saluted on reflex; Major General García smiled and told him “at ease,” but Ames Sr. just laughed.
Noam realized why a second later as Dara swept past him, all smiles, to shake the general’s hand like they were equals.
And maybe they were. Lehrer was General Ames’s commanding officer, and Dara was Lehrer’s ward. Perhaps in the home secretary’s eyes, Dara wasn’t a cadet—he was political royalty.
“So glad you could make it, Dara,” General Ames said, tugging Dara in by the shoulder for a one-armed embrace. “And you brought your friend, too, I see—that’s good. Very good.”
Ames had joined Noam in the doorway; she pressed two fingers to Noam’s spine, nudging him forward. Noam went, feeling too aware now of his ill-fitting sweater and battered old shoes creaking against the floorboards. All gazes lingered on the bruise at Noam’s eye.
“Nice to meet you again, sir,” Noam said, trying to be careful of the way he said it, to emphasize the right syllables and drawl the right vowels. Great. Here he was, worried about whether he sounded Carolinian enough to impress a rich white man.
The general paused, clearly not remembering having met Noam before, and Dara said, “This is Noam Álvaro. Lehrer’s new student.”
“Ah!” General Ames’s affect brightened considerably at that. “Yes, I remember Calix saying something to that effect. You do some mess with computers, isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir. Technopathy.”
“Impressive,” García said, shaking Noam’s hand as well. “Minister Lehrer has many good things to say about your abilities, Cadet.”
“Really?” Noam said, hoping she’d elaborate, but General Ames barreled on before García could answer.
“If we’re lucky, Calix will join us later on. He’s stuck in some meeting or another, but I told him I wasn’t going to tolerate any more excuses.” He laughed. “They’re fixin’ to serve dinner, at any rate. Shall we get started?”
As it turned out, rich people didn’t just eat one dinner. They ate several. One course was even beef—real beef, not synthetic. It wasn’t until the dessert course that the general turned his attention to Noam, swirling his wine in his glass. “Who were your parents, my boy? I don’t believe Carter said.”
Wait, was Ames’s first name Carter?
Noam had just put his fork in his mouth, which meant he had to sit there and finish chewing while the home secretary looked on with his watery eyes, his daughter tapping the tabletop the way she did when she craved a cigarette. Next to him, Dara was carefully disassembling his dessert into its component parts and eating none of it; no one but Noam seemed to notice.
“Um,” Noam said at last, once he’d forced down a bite and chased it with a sip of water. Attwood watched with polite interest; even García seemed to await Noam’s answer. He got the sense they weren’t expecting Jaime
Álvaro and Rivka Mendel.
“Noam’s father died three months ago,” Dara said before Noam had to figure out what to say, looking up from his deconstructed cake. “I don’t think he wants to talk about it.”
Noam didn’t know how to thank Dara, not right now. He settled for nudging Dara’s ankle with the side of his foot and received a tiny smile in response.
“Minister Lehrer has arrived, sir,” a footman announced, half a breath before Lehrer stepped into the room.
Everyone present immediately rose to their feet—everyone except Noam, who fumbled out of his chair a beat too late, and Dara, who was busy examining his fork prongs.
Lehrer was in a suit, not his military uniform, but that did little to undermine the way all these powerful people stared at him, like his presence sucked all the air from the room.
“Please,” Lehrer said with a small smile. “Continue.”
“I’m glad you could make it, Minister,” Attwood said as they all resumed their seats. “I know it’s a nightmare right now.”
General Ames snorted. “You don’t know the half of it. This whole scandal with the leaks, with the whole damn network being posted online bit by bit, for the world to see . . .”
“Can’t you just shut down the site?” Attwood’s wife asked. “Call the domain provider?”
Lehrer didn’t look at Noam. It felt like a calculated decision. “The domain is registered in Texas.”
Noam took a hasty swallow of water, hiding his smile behind the glass.
“Twice the treason, if you ask me,” Ames Sr. muttered. “Texans hate witchings more than anyone. This is a matter of national security.”
Yeah. That was the whole point. Governments didn’t have to listen to the people until the people made it hurt not to listen. Right now, or so Lehrer had told him earlier that afternoon during their lesson, after sending Dara home—right now, everyone in the Ministry of Defense was terrified that Texas or England or York or another enemy nation would glean some precious detail from something Noam had leaked and use it to demolish Carolinian defenses.