Bliss

by Lisa Henry

  Why they’d chosen his bag to search, Tate didn’t know and didn’t much care. He’d concentrated on getting some distance between him and the cops when the bright idea had hit him: what he needed was a distraction. And there he’d been: a young guy standing on the platform staring at a piece of paper in his hand. So engrossed that he’d been chewing his lip.

  Sorry, man.

  Tate had punched him, seen him go down, and in the ensuing chaos had figured it had been a good plan. Until that bony cop had come out of nowhere and flattened him.

  “What . . . what happens if I take the plea bargain?”

  Mitchell smiled at him. “You’ll undergo the induction program, and then you’ll begin your sentence.”

  “Induction program?”

  “It takes a couple of days,” Mitchell said. “Then you’re assigned to your restitutional duties.”

  “Like what?” Tate asked. “Like hard labor? Breaking rocks in a chain gang or something?”

  Mitchell looked shocked. “Certainly not. This is to rehabilitate you, Mr. Patterson; it’s not barbarous. You’ll be expected to perform basic domestic tasks. Cooking, cleaning, perhaps some gardening . . .”

  Tate raised his eyebrows. “Like a maid?” Or a slave?

  “Like a functioning, contributing member of a family unit.”

  “What?” He was even more confused.

  “You’re not being punished, you’re being rehabilitated. If you feel your duties are too onerous or that you’re being mistreated, you always have the right of complaint.” The lawyer smiled. “And what’s worse, really? You’ll get to live in a nice house and be treated with dignity. Seven years in Beulah sounds a lot better to me than seven years in the concrete torture boxes they have in Tophet.”

  Tate shifted uneasily. Yeah, there was that.

  “All of the rezzies I’ve spoken to have been nothing but grateful for the chance to rehabilitate themselves. Even once they’re free, they speak highly of the program. You should take the plea bargain, Mr. Patterson. That’s my advice to you.”

  “I get to live in a house?” Tate had been picturing, well, not a prison since Beulah didn’t have those, but some sort of labor camp. “With a family?”

  Crazier and crazier.

  “That’s right. Well, I don’t know if your sponsor has a family, but you’ll get to live in his house.”

  “My sponsor?”

  “The person who has agreed to oversee your rehabilitation, yes.”

  “No, I can’t . . . Seven years cannot be my best option!” He slammed a fist on the table, his cuffs rattling.

  “Once you get there, you’re going to wish for longer than seven years.” Mitchell sat back in his chair with a lazy slouch that spoke of absolute sureness. “But look. I’m your lawyer, and it’s my job to defend you. I’ll do my job if you want to take this to trial, I will. But seriously, confess. Take the plea bargain. It’s only seven years, and they may well be the best seven years of your life.”

  Tate didn’t believe that for a second.

  But what if he went to trial and lost? Seven years or life. Right now they both sounded impossible. In seven years he’d miss so much . . . But life? He couldn’t do life. Couldn’t take that risk.

  “Fine,” he rasped. “I’ll confess. Accept the plea bargain. All of it.”

  Mitchell’s face lit up with a smile, and he shook both of Tate’s hands. He seemed elated, ecstatic, a little like a guy who’d drunk seven cups of coffee in short order. “You won’t regret this,” he blabbered, rifling through the folders and papers that had half spilled out of his briefcase. “Now, just let me gather all of the required paperwork for you to sign, and you can be on your way to your new life.”

  Tate put his head in his hands.

  Yeah, well, that had been the point of coming to Beulah in the first place, right? Get enough to pay off his debts, maybe even move away from Tophet. Five grand wasn’t much, but it would have been enough. Enough for a new start someplace where the air didn’t stink. Someplace where there was more to a neighborhood than concrete and razor wire and fucking dealers pushing their shit day in and day out.

  And now what?

  No fucking clue.

  Seven years.

  But he signed the papers anyway. He didn’t have any other choice.

  i!” The face that poked around the hospital room door was a little anxious, a little impish, and topped with spiky hair. “I’m Aaron. Mr. Lowell sent me to come get you. Wow, your face looks pretty bad.”

  And just when Rory had been telling himself that the swelling really was going down. “You’re the driver?”

  Aaron stepped inside. “Actually, I’m the intern. So I guess that makes me the driver. And the coffee boy. And the guy who does the photocopying.” But he didn’t seem disheartened by his long list of lowly, unpaid duties at all. Absolutely overjoyed, more like it.

  “Wow, Mr. Lowell must be some kind of a boss.”

  Aaron smiled. “Yeah, he’s great.” He flushed. “Uh, I mean, it’s an honor and a privilege to work for him. I mean, he buys the whole office pizza on Friday nights, and he’s really cool and stuff. And smart. And so charismatic. I don’t think Beulah could even exist without him, and— Oh God, I’m gushing, aren’t I?”

  Rory smiled. Lowell had seemed nice enough on his visit to the hospital, but Aaron was talking about the guy like he’d hung the moon. Someone had a touch of hero worship going on. It was a little . . . nice. Yes. Safer to go with nice than with weird. Maybe it was a cultural thing. Maybe people here were just . . . happier. Or maybe it was just Aaron.

  “Mr. Lowell says I’m to take you home and help you unpack, and then I have to go get your groceries and whatever takeout you want.” Aaron’s smile grew. “He gave me his credit card.”

  “I don’t think I need the taxpayers of Beulah to pay for my groceries just because I got hit in the face,” Rory said, scrunching up his nose before he remembered how much it hurt.

  “No, his credit card. Mr. Lowell is really careful about stuff like that,” Aaron said proudly.

  An honest judge? Beulah really was paradise.

  “So have you got everything here? I’ve already got your luggage in the car.”

  “I guess,” Rory replied. It wasn’t like he’d come here with much. Nobody had much of anything in the outside world. What you had got stolen, or you pawned it to pay off your debts—to the protection rackets or the bank, depending on who had your balls in the tightest vice. The fact that his hospital room had a nice TV over the bed, one that hadn’t been busted or stolen, was a whole new experience for Rory. And the fact that his stay here was free. No insurance reps lurking around like vultures, trying to convince him to sell blood or organs to pay his medical debts. Still not worth getting punched in the face, but it was nice to know that the things he’d read about Beulah hadn’t been exaggerated. It really was close to perfect. A hell of a lot closer than anything Rory had ever known before.

  Aaron held out a bag. “I got you a new shirt. Mr. Lowell worried your old one might have blood on it.”

  “Thanks.” Rory shrugged off his hospital gown and pulled the shirt on. He wondered what had happened to his old shirt. Even if there was blood, he might be able to clean it. To throw it out seemed wasteful. Groceries, a shirt . . . Rory felt a little uneasy with this sort of generosity. No such thing as a free lunch, his grandmother had always said.

  Aaron followed Rory to the nurses’ station, where he signed his release form, and then they took the elevator down to the parking bays. Rory couldn’t help smiling as they passed the rows of cars, every one a hybrid.

  “These take ethanol, right?”

  Aaron nodded, opening the passenger-side door for Rory and helping him in. “We make it ourselves, from sugarcane. It’s not perfect, but it’s cheap, and it’s better than relying on oil. We’re self-sufficient here in Beulah. We pretty much have to be, honestly. If we start tangling our economy up in the outside world’s, pretty soon we’d
inherit the rest of their baggage, too.” He winced. “Sorry. Not trying to imply that you brought baggage with you. What happened to you was totally abnormal, I mean. Violence doesn’t normally follow immigrants in, you know? Since the vetting process is so thorough. All you people usually bring with you is new perspective and fresh ideas.”

  “No, I get what you mean,” Rory said.

  Protectionist. Elitist. Creepy perfect. A lot of people said a lot of sneering things about Beulah. But Beulah was also safe. Safe and clean and— Wow. Green. The car had pulled out of the parking garage, and Rory was stunned by the beautiful foliage lining the roads. Trees and shrubs and flowers, all well maintained and perfectly landscaped. People here didn’t live in massive, towering apartment blocks; they lived in beautiful condos with green roofs or in houses with sprawling yards and riotous gardens. Solar panels gleamed and windmills spun in the breeze.

  Rory’d never seen anything like it in his whole life. He wanted to know more. In fact, as a new citizen, it was practically his duty to know more. “Is all of your power solar or wind generated?”

  “There’s a big hydro scheme up north,” Aaron said. “But most houses and businesses generate at least eighty percent of their own energy. It’s better with the newer houses, but the technology wasn’t as advanced twenty years ago.”

  “It doesn’t look like a city at all,” Rory marveled.

  Aaron smiled. “No skyscrapers, you mean? We live densely for the good of the community and the planet, not because landlords are packing people into slums for maximum profit. That’s why we have to keep a cap on immigration. Grow too fast and it gets messy. Overcrowding. Not enough resources to go around. And then there’s the possibility of the wrong people coming in. Not like you, of course—Mr. Lowell says you came here with high recommendations and impressive credentials—I mean people like the man who assaulted you. Anyway, a few years of restitution and rehabilitation, and he’ll be as valuable to the community as you are. But too many others like him, and the system gets strained. You know?”

  “Makes sense,” Rory acknowledged. It was brutally pragmatic, but he could see the point. If Beulah opened its borders, it’d be overrun. Already, people on the outside were banging down the city-state’s door trying to get in. Rory knew; he’d been one of them.

  “So,” Aaron said, flashing him a smile, “your house is nice and new, with enough solar panels that you’re feeding power back into the grid. It’s over by the university. The train station is only about a block away. You’ll need a card to use the transport system, but they don’t cost very much. I think Mr. Lowell will be providing you with a company car anyway. As his assistant, you’ll probably do near as much running and fetching as me. But you know, for a salary.”

  Rory laughed. “Are you still a student?”

  “Yeah, I’m working for Mr. Lowell for the summer. I was really lucky to get an internship. My whole class put in for it, and I didn’t even have the best results. I guess I just interviewed okay or something.” He grinned. “You should have seen the look on Alexandra Holt’s face when she found out I got it. She looked like she was gonna throw up! Or punch me in the head, but I guess she thought better of getting stuck as my rezzy for the next seven years.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “Environmental law. Which is why I can rattle off statistics about solar panels. It’s just . . . It makes me mad sometimes that we’re doing so well here in Beulah and it makes no difference in the outside world. What I’d like to do, one day, is set up a program to send out our best and brightest as emissaries to teach the rest of the world, instead of always just letting their best and brightest in. Or hell, arrange a system where people like you come in but also return to where they came from periodically to bring back their learnings. Share the wealth of knowledge, you know?”

  Rory smiled at the passing landscape. “Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. They could use a lot of help out there.”

  They. Not we. Rory felt no sense of loss for the outside world, or for the life he’d had there. And what kind of life had it been anyway? Working sixteen-hour days in data entry for the Interim Government, removing people from the social security database. Criminals, loan defaulters, political agitators—the people the government felt were no longer eligible for assistance. Nothing to show for his degree except a piece of paper and a student debt that was rapidly bankrupting him. One of his former professors had told him about the job in Beulah, and Rory had applied. He hadn’t expected to make the shortlist, let alone actually land the thing. Beulah was his salvation. He could be happy here.

  They turned off the main road into a narrower street. They passed a school where kids ran around on the green playing fields. There were no chain-link fences, no battered old basketball hoops. Then a shopping mall and a street of restaurants.

  “If we turn left here, that takes you to the university,” Aaron said and turned right. Another right turn and then a left, and the car slowed to a crawl and pulled up outside a small house.

  God. It was better than the pictures.

  “This is mine?”

  It was perfect. A sleek, modern design, set in a yard full of shady trees.

  Aaron handed him a key. “I’ll bring your bags in.”

  Rory’s eyes stung as he walked up the front path. The lawn was a little overgrown compared to the neighbors’ yards, but that was a luxury in itself. Thick green grass. Potted trees on either side of the door. Neat red flowers planted the whole way up the path to the house, bright and fresh. He could hear birdsong.

  “You have a vegetable garden in the back, too. The more you grow yourself, the less you have to buy, right?” Aaron lugged a suitcase up the path behind him. “And you can keep a couple of chickens, if you like.”

  “Right,” Rory said, a little dazed at the possibility. He unlocked the front door and pushed it open. The small house was light and airy. Louvers set around the ceiling allowed both the light and the breeze to enter. The living room and kitchen were open plan. He could see gleaming appliances and a polished stone countertop. There was a fireplace in the living room, and a big sectional sofa. Nothing looked cheap or like it had been made in a sweatshop.

  “Is this a . . . a standard house?”

  Aaron nodded, his face falling. “Is it okay? Mr. Lowell doesn’t like to play favorites. In fact, he lives just a couple of houses down in a pretty similar setup.”

  “Oh fuck.” Rory sucked in a shaking breath. “Language. Sorry. No, it’s perfect. It’s better than I’d dared hope for.”

  Aaron beamed. “I’m glad you like it.”

  Rory wanted to cry. His last month in his old bed-sit, he’d had to sleep with his bed shoved up against the door because someone had broken the locks while he’d been at work. Lying there every night, listening to the doorknob rattle and people laughing in the hallway. “Come out and play, neighbor.” He’d been terrified.

  And now this. It couldn’t be real.

  “It’s perfect,” Rory repeated, gazing around in awe. “It’s just perfect.”

  Would it still be perfect once he was sharing it with the man who’d nearly busted his head?

  “Get the fuck off me!”

  Right up until his lawyer had left, everyone had played nice, including Tate, more or less. But as soon as he’d signed the plea agreement, as soon as Cal Mitchell had shaken his hand, wished him well, and walked out the door, it’d started.

  Tate didn’t even know who these guys were. They weren’t cops; their uniforms were wrong. More like doctors in a mental hospital, maybe. Some One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest kinda shit. But they’d barreled into the room, uncuffed him only long enough to pull his hands behind him and slap the cuffs on him again, and shoved him onto the floor. One of them was kneeling on the back of Tate’s neck to keep him down.

  “Get the fuck off me!” he yelled again, the noise muffled as his face was pressed into the concrete.

  “Shut your mouth, rezzy.”

  Tate
bucked but couldn’t dislodge the guy. He should have known there was something fucking fake about how nicey-nice and perfect this place was.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” the guy said. “Not pleasant, is it? You’ll learn to behave soon enough.”

  “Where’s my lawyer?” Tate shouted. “He said this wasn’t a punishment! He said I’d be okay!”

  “You will, rezzy, you will,” the man said. “Just as soon as the chip’s in.”

  Tate froze. “The fucking what?”

  The man stood up and pulled Tate to his knees. He grinned down at him. “Just a little chip. Goes in the back of your neck and turns you into a nice boy.”

  Tate knew about chips. They had them back in Tophet too, if you had the money. Chips to make you lose weight, chips to make you quit smoking, chips to make you a better public speaker. And then there were the black market versions: chips to make you a ruthless killer, chips to make you a shameless whore, chips to make you a card counter. But they were expensive and fucking patchy at best. Which explained the number of fat, smoking stammerers still around the place, right?

  “That’s fucking bullshit!”

  The man grinned at the other two officials, then narrowed his eyes at Tate. “You kiss with that mouth, rezzy? Your master’s not gonna like hearing language like that when your lips should be around his dick.”

  The blood drained out of Tate’s face. “You’re fucking kidding me. This is a fucking joke.”

  Master. My master? No. My sponsor. My sponsor! I’m supposed to be a member of the family, not—

  God, why had he even fallen for that fucking sales pitch in the first place? Hadn’t he told himself not to get caught up in any of Beulah’s bullshit? Hadn’t he decided it was all a front, all too good to be true?