Maximum Light

by Nancy Kress

  “No,” I said. “Nothing to add.”

  Everyone smiled, and the committee meeting prepared to move on, and Shana Walders’s future fell silently to guns she had never even had a chance to understand.

  6

  CAMERON ATULI

  A week after Rob and I become lovers, I go outside the wall of Aldani House for the first time. Rob insists. Just a short walk, he says, how do you know you won’t like it unless you try it?

  I do like it. The first two blocks outside the gate are lined with pleasant houses, each with a small green lawn and a riot of flowers. The larger cross-street bustles with people enjoying the spring weather. A sturdy metal railing runs down the center of the sidewalk for anyone who might need it. There are outdoor cafes, music, marvelous little shops.

  Essential Ingredients, with food from all over the world and a bakery window full of napoleons, marzipan, and madeleines.

  Seasoned Beauties, a hair salon with “hairdressing, wigs, and transplants for the mature woman.”

  Searchlight, a public deebee search firm.

  The Olde Toy Shoppe, its window full of dolls elaborately dressed in period costumes of antique cloth—are the dolls supposed to be for kids? They don’t look like it, except for the inexpensive “Grandma Ann” dolls in one corner.

  Tree House, a florist. The window displays gorgeous genemod flowers: purple-and-red striped roses, cluster lillies, and marilacs, the sweet-smelling lilacs that last two full weeks after you cut them.

  A pharmacy, a law office, a home-security systems store, a clothing store specializing in “large and hard-to-fit sizes.” A cafe, with well-dressed older people laughing and talking in the warm sunshine.

  The jewelry store Rob mentioned, Jewel of the Ages, glitters and sparkles. I study the display.

  “You’re amazing,” Rob says, a little hesitantly. “Watching you … I can’t figure out if you recognize all this or if you’re so fascinated because it seems new to you.”

  “Both,” I say. It’s true. As soon as I see each shop, I know what it’s for, what the displays will be like. And yet I have no personal memory of them. Until I see a doll dressed like Marie Antoinette I can’t imagine such a thing in the world, but as soon as I do see it, I both remember who Marie Antoinette is and know it for the first time. It’s a giddy feeling, and suddenly I laugh.

  “Let’s buy that bracelet you told me about!”

  We go inside and buy jewelry, but not for me. I find a bracelet of delicate lapis lazuli beads the exact color of Rob’s eyes and insist on getting it for him. I slide my card into the display slot and the plastic opens itself. “Thank you for shopping with us!” the store says brightly. I clasp the bracelet on Rob’s wrist, and he smiles at me before sliding it up under his sleeve, where no one else can see it.

  On the street again, I’m careful not to hold Rob’s hand. Nobody is blithe anymore in America, where everyone shares responsibility to keep society stable and cohesive and reproducing as much as possible. I remember this without trouble; it is a fact.

  But people stare at us anyway, turning around in the street. Because they can tell we’re blithe? No, can’t be; they’re smiling. And it can’t be because I’m Cameron Atuli—that’s the whole point of modern ballet dancing in masks. The dance is what matters, not the dancer. Faces only distract from the form, the line, the movement.

  Then a worse thought strikes me: Do these people recognize me from whatever happened before? Was my face, once, all over the newsvids and flimsies? Does everyone glancing at me in the street know my life, when I don’t?

  I ask Rob. “No, no,” he says. “Oh, poor Cam, did you think that? No, it never hit the media. The police just talked to Melita and Mr. C., and they told the rest of us … some of it. But, no, nobody recognizes you from any of that.”

  “They’re looking at me!”

  “Of course they are,” Rob says. “They’re looking at both of us. Remember how few of us youngsters there are now.”

  And then I do remember. That, too, is a fact. The Tipping Point, the population shift … I never really cared much about any of it, and I still don’t. The Tipping Point must have held no personal autobiographical meaning for me.

  Most of the people going in and out of the shops look well-dressed and cheerful. This is a restricted area, Rob tells me, glow-marked for pre-approved entry. The people are mostly old, at least fifty, and Rob and I are young, and beautiful, and he moves like water. And so do I.

  We shop some more, and eat Mexican food, and visit a VR parlor. Today’s sim is Merry Old England, with bear baiting and troubadours and holo bawdiness and real ale. We start back late for rehearsal, and I don’t even care.

  At Linden Lane a woman comes around the corner pushing a stroller. In the stroller is a puppy wearing a bonnet to protect its head from the sun. Carefully, so as not to jar the puppy, the woman lowers the stroller wheels over the curb.

  “Cam!” Rob shouts. “Cam—what is it?”

  But I’m already running, pushing other people off the sidewalk or into the center railing, staying as close to the building walls as I can for protection. Tears stream down my face, dried instantly by my speed. I run and run, Rob chasing me, and a part of my brain knows it’s only Rob chasing me, not the dog in the sunbonnet—just a puppy, just a puppy—but I can’t stop. When finally I have to, breathless, and Rob pants up to me, he can’t touch me in public. But he makes me sit down, and brings me a soda, and all the time I’m seeing the puppy in the stroller and the woman’s face above it, loving and doting as she fusses to get the stroller wheels over the curb, so careful not to jar her pathetic child substitute. And I can’t stop shaking.

  “Cameron,” Rob says gently, not touching me, “tell me. Talk to me.”

  But I can’t. There is nothing to tell. My memory is blank.

  The next day I call Dr. Newell, and she comes to Aldani House and takes many readings on a portable medical machine. She inserts another patch, with slow-release pharmaceuticals, under my skin. Every day for a week she comes, personally, to Aldani House to check my readings. After a week she makes Rob and me go for another walk outside the walls.

  I see another dog—on a leash this time, not in a stroller—and I feel my muscles tense for a moment, but that’s all. I don’t freak. Rob smiles at me warmly, and the rest of the walk is easy, even fun, although not as much fun as the first one.

  And the dreams persist.

  * * *

  The company tour shatters everything.

  We open with a gala in Washington, at the International Center. Four nights there. Then will come a private performance at the White House, but I’m not part of that, Sarah and Dmitri are principal dancers. But I’ll go to New York, Montreal, London, Paris, Atlanta. The repertoire is the usual weird tour-mix: dances from some old chestnuts like Prodigal Son and Synergy, a few popular favorites like String Theory, some really interesting new work from people like Dana Stauffer and Elisabeth Beaudré, and even, Lord help us, the moldy old Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake. I dance six major roles and two supporting ones. Rob has three supporting roles, plus dancing in the corps de ballet. He needs to work on his extension.

  The first night two blithe-bashers attack Rob and me on our way to the International Center. Or maybe they aren’t blithe-bashers; maybe they just want money or drugs. Except that Rob doesn’t believe that, and he’s the one who knows Washington. I don’t.

  I don’t know anything.

  Not why we are attacked. Not why the blithe-bashers break off their attack and suddenly start to fight each other. And not how a soldier gets into my dressing room on the fourth night of the gala. No one can tell me that, not even after it’s all over.

  The International Center is only twenty years old, built just before the Tipping Point. Like all those buildings, it has formidable security. My dressing room is at the end of a long corridor, all of it robocammed. At home of course we don’t have our own dressing rooms, but the International Center is huge, buil
t to showcase Chinese circuses and French opera and God knows what else, and we’re spread out. Rob and I aren’t even sharing: too dangerous, outside Aldani House. Although this hasn’t slowed down our sex, which is lovely.

  I am dancing Horethal in Dove Upon the Waters, which is typical for our repertoire away from Aldani House. Biblical ballets are big. The audience, Rob says, is full of politicians who believe God created man in his immutable image, period—or at least pretend to believe that. Since Horethal is destroyed at the end of the first act, when the ark is already built and the rain starts, I go back to my dressing room, warm and sweaty and magnificent in my costume of vile decadence. This is part fabric, part body paint, part tiny glued-on mirrors, and part holo, which creates snakes of light writhing constantly around my arms and hips, between my legs, down my legs. Yum. Too bad Rob doesn’t get to wear the same thing. He’s Shem, and saved by God, and so dressed in a boring white tunic and tights.

  The corridor is empty. I close the door to my dressing room, take off my mask, and switch off the holo—nobody needs snakes crawling over them offstage. I move to my dressing table, and in the mirror I see the soldier, standing where the door was before I closed it. She moves toward me.

  Immediately I scream. She levels her stun gun and says, “You don’t do that again. You really don’t. Now, tell me why I saw your face on three chimpanzees in the Lanham train wreck.”

  I look wildly at the overhead robocam. It’s dark. She must have disabled it, but doesn’t that mean someone from Security will notice and come soon? Someone must come soon. The only thing I have to do is not let her hurt me until someone comes.

  “On! Talk!” she says.

  “I’m Horethal.” They’re the only words I can think of. “I’m Horethal.”

  “You’re what?”

  It’s all that she gets time to say. The door flies open, Security crashes through, and the soldier goes down.

  7

  SHANA WALDERS

  My National Service finishes up in July. The week before, my rejection from the Army comes in the mail.

  On late Saturday afternoon I stand in my barracks and open the envelope—no email for this, the envelope is registered and certified. I slide out the letter. A single sentence, that’s all the bastards give me:

  6 July, 2034

  Dear Shana Irene Walders:

  The United States Army regrets to inform you that your application for induction has been refused, on the basis of your official National Service record, a copy of which is enclosed.

  Sincerely,

  Gen. Todd McHugh

  (s) General Todd Winters McHugh

  Recruitment, United States Army

  The barracks is empty except for Meg Delany, snoring in her bunk. Everybody took the free afternoon and evening to go off-base. I waited for the mail. My skin goes hot, then cold. For a minute everything hurts.

  Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.

  I’ll sue. My record don’t look that bad! It was the Congressional hearing—they’re deleting me because of what I said there. Because I told the truth.

  Well, we’ll see who can delete who! I’m a youngster, after all. A goddamn precious natural resource. There are agencies set up just to be sure us youngsters get whatever we need, if parents can’t or won’t get it for us—facilitation agencies, legal agencies. The Army can’t do this to me. I’ll sue. I’ll go to the newsvids. They’ll be damn sorry they tried to delete Shana Walders!

  “What’s that?” Meg Delany says sleepily, coming up behind me. I fold the letter in half and snarl at her. “Nothing!”

  “If it’s nothing, why do you look like you just got dropped from orbit?”

  “Mind your own business, Delany.”

  “Ain’t we touchy today!”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Delete you.”

  Well, I will. I’ll delete all of them, every single person that thinks they can stop Shana Walders from getting what she deserves.

  Every single one.

  * * *

  I start with Legal Aid. It’s a crummy storefront-type office on the edge of downtown D.C. The neighborhood is covered with government graffiti in superbright holos and real-people graffiti in spray paint. One covers the whole side of a foamcast building:

  The Legal Aid office has a single not-too-clean window with electronic bars that flicker and shimmer, trying to make the dump look safe without looking like it’s a jail. The furniture is the cheapest kind of lightweight foamcast, the kind that don’t keep lice. The lawyer, a jellybelly older than rocks, reads my letter, studies my official record, and said, “Hmmmmm.” Then silence.

  “‘Hmmmmmm’?” I say. “That’s it? You’re an attorney here to help me and all you can say is ‘hmmmm’?”

  He looks at me over the top of the letter, that look official types all know how to give: Who are you to question me and my vast experience, kid? But I know who I am. I’m one kid who’s going to get into the United States Army. Or else make them sorry as hell that they kept me out.

  “Private Walders,” he says, handing me back the letter, “in my opinion, you don’t really have a case. Yes, your official record is borderline in terms of recruitment law—the Army could accept or reject someone with a record like yours. They’ve chosen to reject. A different recruitment committee might have ruled differently. But there is no legal precedent for challenging a local recruitment decision in circumstances like yours.”

  “So we’ll be the first!”

  “I don’t think so. There’s no real point.”

  “I’m the point!” I say, probably too loud. “This is my life we’re talking about! The life of an American youngster!”

  He gazes at me calmly. Finally he opens a drawer, takes out a card, and hands it to me. “I would advise you to plan a different life. This is net code for the Youth Career Facilitation Agency. Access them for an appointment for career testing.”

  “I don’t need no career testing! I’m going to be a soldier!”

  “I don’t think so,” he says.

  “Then fuck what you think! I’ll get a private lawyer who knows what he’s doing!”

  “You are free to do so, of course.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what I am or amn’t free to do!” I stand up so fast my chair tips over. I don’t pick it up. As I’m yanking open the door he talks to my back.

  “Private Walders, an unsolicited piece of advice. Try to remember that not even a youngster is entitled to what she wants just because she wants it.”

  I don’t answer, except to slam the door behind me.

  I try two private lawyers. One won’t even see me, after his system checks my credit-balance number. The other one tells me the same thing as the government jellybelly, but in even longer words.

  I call up the New York Times.

  The system eventually routes me to a live human being, a bored-looking woman with sleek copper hair. Why do women that old use that color dye? She looks like a prune wearing a metal helmet.

  “Yes?” Copper Head says. The screen is small, but I can see that she’s seated in a cluttered cubicle somewhere—maybe New York, maybe telecommuting.

  “My name is Shana Walders. And I’ve got a sensational story for you, ma’am. About a crooked Congressional committee.”

  “Your ID number, Ms. Walders?”

  I give it to her. She gazes off to the left, and I know she’s checking my public file. That’s all right. I’m not illegal, not AWOL, not wanted for arrest, not on parole for sex crimes.

  The image says, “And how do you happen to know anything about a Congressional committee? Please be advised that this conversation is being recorded.”

  I tell her the story. While I’m talking, she don’t interrupt. But her face don’t change expression, neither. When I’m done, she says, “An interesting story. The Times will follow through. If we need to contact you again, we will.”

  “That’s it? You aren’t going to … to ask me questions? Or start a big in
vestigation?”

  “The Times will follow through. If we need to contact you again, we will.” The screen blanks.

  I can’t believe it. Here I hand her a terrific story—she could end up with a Nobel Prize or whatever they hand out to newspapers—and she just deletes me! What’s wrong with the bitch?

  But then I tell myself to calm down, maybe that’s just standard newspaper procedure. After all, there are probably a lot of stewdees accessing them with really dumb leads. Venusians on their roofs, anti-grav inventions in their basements. Or people who aren’t insane but who think every little thing in their lives belongs on the front page of the Times. I just need to wait patiently while she checks out my facts.

  I wait a week.

  Nothing happens, except that my Service officially ends. There’s a ceremony, and a certificate, and my barracks sergeant says, “You have three days, Walders, to clear out of here. No more.” Unlike my company sarge, she never liked me, the jealous cow.

  After a week without hearing from the Times, and with nothing appearing on-line or in print about the Committee, I call up the Washington Post-Tribune. Then the Canby Vid Channel. Then two other vid channels. And nobody cares.

  They care about more famine in India because there aren’t enough farm workers left—that’s page one of the Times. They care about the war in China, fought mostly by machines so’s not to risk the young people—page one of the Post. About another fucking baby-stealing ring in Wichita—lead story on Canby. About the riots in London, the military clampdown in Israel, the epidemic in Africa—but not about an American kid who’s getting fucked by the system she only tried to serve by telling the truth.

  My last night in the barracks, I’m so mad my brain burns. Nobody else is around. The company—the lucky ones still in Service—are out on an overnight park patrol. I’m supposed to be packing my stuff, but I keep stopping and just holding things in my hand, shirts and socks and music chips, for minutes at a time. Where am I supposed to go? I haven’t got no parents waiting for me out there, no college acceptance, no job. I was supposed to be transferring to the army. Where the fuck am I supposed to go?