by Malinda Lo
“So why don’t you have gender?”
Amber looked thoughtful. “I think… you know, I’ve never explained this to anyone before. I think it’s because of susum’urda. Male and female Imrians still have different physical bodies, and you can never escape that, but susum’urda allows you to see that the physical differences are really superficial when it comes to who you are as a person.”
Reese remembered what it had felt like when Eres Tilhar touched her: a kind of boundlessness. Whether or not the teacher had male or female body parts had been the farthest thing from Reese’s mind. “All right, I think I can see that,” Reese said. “But if susum’urda sort of erases the importance of gender, why do you all look like men or women? Maybe you don’t look like Eres Tilhar because you’re not ummi, but you totally look gendered.” She gestured at Amber’s outfit.
Amber shifted and the hem of her dress inched up. “We’re trying to make ourselves intelligible to humans.” She gave Reese a nervous smile. “Can you imagine how weirded out all of humanity would be if you couldn’t tell whether we were men or women? So we dress like human men or women. It’s easier to fit in that way. Like… if you were going to visit a foreign country and you didn’t want to stick out like an American tourist, you’d avoid wearing shorts and white sneakers.”
“What about when you’re not here on Earth?”
“Well, there are definitely… styles of presentation. There’s an Imrian word for it: ga’emen. I guess that’s the closest we come to gender. Someone’s ga’emen is their external identity, but it’s not connected to their biological sex. It’s just an external expression of their self. Like in all those movies about high schools, where people are nerds or jocks or stoners or whatever.” Amber spread her hands. “Except ga’emen is a lot more complicated than that, but it’s a start.”
Reese glanced at Amber; her gray eyes reflected the color of the bay. “What would you look like if you weren’t on Earth?”
Amber seemed taken aback. “I’d look like me.”
Reese wanted to ask, And who is that? During their date at the Indian restaurant, they had talked about coming out and being queer. Amber had seemed very certain of who she was, but something she had just said about susum’urda raised a question for Reese. “If sharing consciousness lets you see that physical differences are so minor, how come you said you don’t like guys?”
Amber’s cheeks turned a little pink. “You can’t escape your body. I mean, you live in it every day. And I like female bodies.” She shrugged. “Maybe it would be different on Kurra. But I’m here, not there.” She bent down and brushed the clump of dirt off the heel of her right shoe. Amber’s fingernails were painted silver, and they flashed in the sun. “Does that make sense?” Amber asked, straightening up. “All of it?”
There was something vulnerable in Amber’s gaze, and Reese remembered the reason Amber had wanted to talk with her alone, before they had been sidetracked by Reese’s questions about Eres Tilhar. Amber had tried to explain why she had lied. Reese looked away. The water of the bay sparkled beneath the cloud-scudded sky, and in the distance a ferry was chugging away from Tiburon. “Yeah, I guess,” Reese said reluctantly. “It’s complicated.”
They sat together in silence for a long moment, and Reese felt herself tensing up, muscle by muscle, every second that Amber didn’t respond. Finally Amber slid across the bench toward her. “Reese,” Amber said gently.
Being so close to Amber set off every single alarm in Reese’s body. “What?” she said stiffly.
“I’m glad we talked. I hope—I want you to know that I’m really sorry about what happened and I just hope you don’t hate me.”
Reese’s heart seemed to twist inside her, as if someone were squeezing it in their fist. She looked down at the ground, at the pebbles embedded in the gray concrete, at the toe of Amber’s shoe and the curve of her ankle. “I don’t hate you,” Reese said.
“You don’t?” Amber’s voice was tiny.
Reese turned to face her. Amber looked brittle, as if a word from Reese could shatter her. “No. I don’t hate you. But I don’t trust you, either. You lied to me about a big, big thing. It’s not only that you hid who you are—you hid who I was. You knew what had happened to me and you didn’t tell me. We can’t just be friends now.”
Amber went pale. “I know. I know, I’m not saying that.”
“Good.” Reese stood up. She couldn’t sit there anymore. She was brimful of anxiousness and fear and a desire to just look at Amber, and that was what frightened Reese the most. “Then you know where we stand.” Reese forced herself to walk away, putting one foot in front of the other, leaving Amber behind.
CHAPTER 12
David arrived at Reese’s house at five thirty on Friday night. When the doorbell rang, Reese was staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, debating whether her new outfit made her look cool or like she was trying too hard. She ran downstairs to open the front door before her parents got there. She had half expected David to be waiting on the front step with a corsage in a plastic box, and when she saw he was only holding his car keys, she was relieved. His gaze swept down her legs and back up to her face.
“Nice boots,” he said with a grin that made her feel tingly all over.
“Thanks.” She was about to leave the house when her parents came down the hall.
“Hang on, Reese. You’re not even going to let us say hi to David?” her mom admonished her.
Reese sighed and stepped back, crossing her arms. “We have to go,” she said.
Her mom’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?” She looked at David. “You know you’re only allowed to go to dinner and the party. Nothing else. She needs to be back by midnight.”
David smiled a parent-friendly smile, and Reese swallowed an urgent need to giggle. “Of course, Ms. Sheridan. No problem.”
Reese’s dad was right behind her mom and he added, “Reese, you have your phone?”
“Yes, Dad.”
It had taken her quite a while to argue her way into having this night without their supervision. She had to give them the addresses of the restaurant they were going to as well as Eric Chung’s house. Her winning argument, though, came from an unexpected source. After their visit to Angel Island yesterday, Agent Forrestal was waiting at Fisherman’s Wharf. He told them that due to the gunman’s attack, the government had decided that Reese and David would be better off with a security detail.
“You’re already following us,” Reese pointed out.
“And now you’ll know it’s for your own safety,” Agent Forrestal said.
She wasn’t happy about the development, but it did ultimately convince her parents—and David’s—that they should be allowed one night without parental supervision.
She grabbed her jacket and left the house, following David down the steps to his blue Honda. As she buckled her seat belt, he started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “They’re both following us now,” he said.
She twisted around in her seat and saw two champagne-colored sedans merge into the street behind them: David’s security detail, which had followed him to her house, and her own. She and David had agreed it was useless to try to prevent the men in black from tailing them to the meeting with Charles Lovick. They didn’t know how, for one thing, and both of them thought it might be better if they were followed there, anyway. They had no idea what Lovick was going to do. Reese had looked him up on the Internet and learned that he was a board member at Allied Research Associates, the multinational conglomerate that owned EC&R. That was the government contractor that had managed Project Blue Base—and manufactured the listening devices Reese had found in the walls of her house. There had been little else about him online, but it had been enough to make Reese wonder if she and David were walking straight into the lion’s den by going to this meeting. Nevertheless, their need to know what Lovick wanted to tell them trumped her hesitation.
The sedans followed them all the way downtown. The 88 Var
iety Store was on the edge of Chinatown, so David parked in the Sutter-Stockton Garage, a multistory parking structure a few blocks away. One of the sedans turned into the garage after them, but the other did not. Reese thought the men in black might wind up in the same elevator as her and David, but the doors closed before they made it.
Outside, the fog had already crept in, and the air was chilly and damp. Reese zipped up her jacket and stuffed her hands in the pockets as she and David hurried north on Stockton. The street tunneled through a hill at the end of the block, and at the mouth of the echoing tunnel, Reese and David entered the stairwell to climb up to the overpass. A gust of wind blew exhaust fumes at her, and she tried to breathe through her mouth. The stairwell was lit by fluorescent bulbs that cast the dirty corners in harsh relief. On the landing halfway up a sign read THIS AREA UNDER SURVEILLANCE. As they went up the second flight, she saw the video camera mounted on the wall above. She wondered if the men in black had access to that footage.
When they emerged from the stairwell, she gulped in a deep breath of fresh, misty air. They had to trudge uphill past the Ritz-Carlton and then go down a second flight of stairs to get to Chinatown. It was steep, but it beat walking through the tunnel itself, with its noxious air and speeding cars. She glanced over her shoulder as she and David walked, but she didn’t see the men in black anywhere. She wondered if they had managed to lose them, and the idea made her uneasy. She wanted witnesses when she and David walked into the 88 Variety Store. She was relieved when they exited the second stairway and she saw one of the sedans waiting for them in a no-parking zone north of the tunnel.
“There they are,” she said.
“And there’s the store,” David said.
The 88 Variety Store was wedged between an herbal shop and a store selling Chinatown knickknacks. Its sign was faded and one of the number eights was missing, leaving only a grimy outline of where it used to be. Through the single front window, Reese saw cluttered shelves lit dimly by overhead lights. She looked at David.
You ready? she asked him.
He glanced back at the sedan parked half a block away. “Let’s go,” he said, and opened the door.
It knocked against a bell as they entered, but the tinkling sound didn’t quite mask the creaking hinge. The interior of the tiny shop was crammed full of towering shelves stocked haphazardly with plastic colanders and rice bowls and pastel sponges. Reese initially thought the store was empty, but as soon as the door swung shut she heard steps behind her. She spun around to see a tall, broad-shouldered man in a suit positioning himself in front of the door. He had very short hair and his arms seemed too large for the suit, which strained against his muscles.
“Who are you?” she asked, startled.
“Mr. Lovick is waiting for you in the back,” the man said. There was something about him—beyond his muscular bulk—that unnerved Reese.
“Come on,” David said, reaching for her arm. His touch startled her, sharpening the sliver of fear that had gone through her at the sight of the large man. David was freaked out too.
She didn’t like turning her back on the man at the door, but she had to in order to walk down the narrow aisle toward the back of the store. There was a curtained doorway behind the counter where the cash register was located, and someone pulled the curtain aside as she and David approached. A dark-haired man in black-framed glasses, dressed in a blue oxford shirt with the collar open, stepped into the doorway. “Come in,” he said, motioning to the room behind the curtain.
Reese and David walked into the store’s back office. There were a couple of metal desks pushed against the walls, with stacks of ledgers on them. On the wall across from the curtained entryway was another door, guarded by a second burly man in a suit. In the center of the square room was a round table and four chairs. Three were empty, but a middle-aged man with steel-gray hair sat in the fourth. He was dressed in a black suit and had a hawklike nose and blue eyes that regarded the two of them coolly as they entered the room.
“Please have a seat,” he said. “I’m Charles Lovick, and this is my colleague Alex Hernandez.” He gestured to the man in glasses, who took the chair next to Lovick.
David and Reese sat down, and Reese noticed their chairs had been placed far enough apart that she couldn’t touch David without being obvious. “What exactly do you want with us?” Reese asked, eyeing Lovick and Hernandez nervously.
A thin smile pulled up the corners of Lovick’s mouth, but it wasn’t friendly. “I work for an organization called the Corporation for American Security and Sovereignty. You won’t have heard of us.”
“I thought you were on the board of Allied Research Associates,” Reese said.
Lovick seemed impressed by her research. “I am. But my work at ARA is not what brings me here tonight.”
“What do you do at this corporation?” David asked.
“What I’m about to tell you is highly classified,” Lovick said. “It is in your best interests to repeat this information to no one.” He adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, and Reese saw the glint of gold cuff links. “In 1947, when the Imria arrived in the United States, an organization was formed to manage our relationship with them. To make sure that our nation’s engagement with the Imria remained consistent regardless of changing presidential administrations. That organization is the Corporation for American Security and Sovereignty. CASS. It is run by a board of seven individuals selected from business, defense, and the like. I joined the board of CASS twelve years ago. We oversee a variety of initiatives, including Project Blue Base, which you became familiar with last month.”
“I thought that was run by EC and R,” Reese said.
Lovick nodded. “EC and R managed the day-to-day details of Project Blue Base, but ultimately, Blue Base reports to us. Many so-called black operations report to us, not the commander in chief. Unfortunately EC and R—and Blue Base—botched their assignment with regard to the two of you. The task force that was assigned to oversee Blue Base has been replaced. Now that the existence of the Imria has been revealed to the public, our strategy has changed, and I’d like to invite you to work with us.”
“With CASS?” David asked.
“Yes. The two of you have been treated with Imrian science without your consent. They took advantage of you, and I imagine you must have many questions about what the Imrian treatment did to you.”
“They told us it was the only way to save our lives,” Reese said.
“Do you believe them?” Lovick asked, looking directly at her.
Reese tried not to flinch. “I don’t know.”
“And what about you?” Lovick asked David.
David’s shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know either.”
Lovick folded his hands on the round table. He wore a fat gold wedding band on his left hand and a black signet ring on his right. “The Imria can be very, very convincing. When I first decided that it was imperative that we meet, I knew that I might have a difficult time convincing you to join us. You’ve had a regrettable experience with Blue Base, and that must color your impression of your government and, by extension, what CASS does for your government. However, yesterday at the press conference on Angel Island, the Imria revealed something that they have kept secret from us for sixty-seven years.
“For nearly seven decades, the Imria have told us that they wanted to research ways to lengthen human lives, to help us become healthier individuals. They said they came to the United States in 1947 because we were the sole remaining stable nation on Earth after World War Two. They flattered us, and we believed them at first. But over the years, it has become increasingly clear that they have been lying about their true purpose in coming here. They have been conducting unauthorized experimentation on human subjects—including the two of you. We have never been able to determine why. Some of us believed that perhaps they were studying us in preparation for an attack.”
“Colonization?” Reese said, remembering the protesters’ chants.
Lov
ick looked irritated. “That is a popular theory, although I dislike the melodramatic nature of the word. Project Blue Base was one initiative aimed at defending us against a potential Imrian attack. We planned to use their biotechnology against them. And then yesterday at their press conference, they revealed their secret: their ability to share consciousness. They made it sound so wholesome, as if it were the secret to happiness.” There was a deeply sardonic tone to his words. “Do you know what it really means?” He leaned forward. “For one thing, adaptation, as they call it, is simply a pretty spin on what amounts to erasure. They say they want to give us this ability, but by changing us—by adapting us—they erase our humanity. If we become them, we lose ourselves.”
Reese hadn’t thought of it like that before. She wasn’t sure if she agreed with him, but his words still sent a chill through her.
“It also means that they have kept this ability of theirs secret from us for sixty-seven years,” Lovick said. “They have lied directly to us, face-to-face, over and over again. They have told us that they are honest; that they do not keep secrets from us. And yet they clearly do.” He paused and gave each of them a penetrating glance. “Why would they keep this ability—which they described as foundational to who they are as a people—why would they keep it a secret?”
Reese didn’t have an answer for him. Dread made her stomach sink. Do you believe him? she thought, hoping David could hear her. What if he’s lying too? She didn’t know if David understood. All she felt was a burst of frustration, and she couldn’t tell if it came from him or from within herself.
“I know that the Imria have already offered to help you learn how to use these abilities they’ve given you. Your adaptation,” Lovick continued. “I know, also, that you have accepted their offer.”
As far as Reese knew, the Imria hadn’t said anything about that publicly, so Lovick must have spies.
“But now that you know that the Imria have lied for so long—and about such a huge thing—how can you trust them to help you?”