Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 78

by Aliette de Bodard

  When Kepler called his Hit Blue, there was a minute or two of quiet. (Now I imagine it must have been some half-interested Archive techie reading it over, their eyes slowly growing wider and wider. Maybe they read it all the way to the end, just to be sure what it was.)

  Then there was a flurry from inside the tent. A second later, the flap flew up, and Kepler marched out with an Archives monitor on each side pushing him a little faster, and in the distance two of the cops had seen them and were already on the move. They were headed back to where we’d been all day, where he’d found it.

  “Jesus,” someone said.

  Jesse left her post, walked out the tent flap to watch them going. She watched them so long the paper in her dryer burned to cinders.

  File 19005314. Document file (“systemsatwork.doc”), containing incendiary allegations against the State. Text has been previously published on liberal website ShoutLouder.org at [ADDRESS REDACTED] on [DATE REDACTED].

  [QuickReference Identifying Text: “Unless our country’s people—its real heart and its real power—are willing to acknowledge that the system is the problem, that the system is broken, and that the people in charge have no desire to change it—and will NEVER change it—of their own volition, it must continue to be demanded, loudly, by all those people they’ve disenfranchised.

  We will demand it on the steps of City Hall, on the steps of Congress, on the steps of the United Nations if need be. We are a country being held hostage by our government—we will cry out for change. They will shout that we don’t matter. We will shout louder.”

  Full file attached for archival purposes.]

  High probability of terrorist authorship. Recovered from Intellicorp brand USB drive (4GB). Flagged RED, PRIORITY 1. Device sent to Schematics for forensic and technical analysis. UPC code sent to Digital Division for purchase trace.

  Human remains located in near vicinity, but due to proximity of the initial blast radius, unable to determine potential body of origin.

  Kepler didn’t show up the next morning.

  After a little quiet, Jesse asked me, “What do you think he found?”

  She was a pretty good Archivist, for someone who’d joined up as an amateur. She always wanted to get to the source of a thing.

  “Maybe we’ll find the first draft and find out.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.” She pulled on the hood of her hazmat suit, until it was just a sea of yellow and her two black eyes.

  He didn’t show up the next morning, either.

  It was five days before he showed back up, with one dark eye socket.

  I started to say, “Shit, what happened,” but Jesse shook her head no, and we all just stood uselessly nearby and watched him get into his hazmat suit, slow and painful and looking like he’d aged fifty years.

  “Good to have you back,” Jesse said, as he headed out, but he never looked up. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.

  “Cops must have had him this whole time,” she said.

  I went cold all over. “What do they think he did? They can’t think he had anything to do with—there aren’t any more of them, the city bombed them out. He’s one of us.”

  After a second she said, “They must know that. He’s back now.”

  He never talked about what had happened while he was away. When he and Jesse were working closely together, sometimes they’d hit a body and have to call in Census, or a cop would walk by on patrol, and they would stand really close, too close, until everything was quiet again.

  Once we came across some Hit Blue material (someone had had a protest pamphlet on their fridge), and Jesse picked her way over half a couch and a hill of splintered lumber and said something to Kepler.

  All that day, he swung wide of us, picking at piles of nothing, so that someone else from the scope picked up the house computers and carried them back.

  I didn’t say anything. It got harder to blame him, the more you looked around.

  THANK YOU, HOMELAND ARCHIVISTS!

  You are the most crucial workers, guiding us closer our vision of a safer, terrorism-free city. The work you do is difficult and exacting, and takes the utmost absorption and concentration, but do not let this discourage you from your duty. This is the necessary work on which a country’s safety is assured. Remember this!

  You are heroes of the city; you are the keepers of the Republic!

  You weren’t supposed to touch anything that was outside your scope—we were professionals, not scavengers—but every once in a while someone saw something they couldn’t resist. It was worse with the Census guys. Working that close to the bodies, it was easy for things to go missing; watches and rings and earrings are hard to keep track of when so much is in pieces.

  Archives people were a bunch of collectors, and they picked up stranger things. A lot of the Museum schrapnel disappeared—half-tiles and slivers of placards and fragments of dinosaur skeletons. Every so often you’d see someone looking at a letter opener or putting a small painting on the trolley. The paintings almost always got confiscated, though.

  “We’ll be rebuilding here,” one of the city reps said once, when they took back a painting of two apples and a brass teapot on a table in an empty room. She said it like they were going to be putting everything back right where it had been, like this had just shaken everything loose and it wouldn’t take long to set right.

  Even then I didn’t think that was a very fair way to put it.

  Somebody pocketed a little toy soldier once, one of the green plastic ones, out of a calf-deep pile of splinters that might have been a tree, or the dining room of a house. That struck me, for no reason I could say, and I looked at her and wondered if maybe she’d known one of the civilians who’d been caught in the blast, and got a sharp pain in my stomach for a second before I pulled it together.

  You didn’t think about that kind of thing. Census workers had to get training about it, once a week, to remind them.

  One of them gave Jesse a receipt once—pulled it out of the pair of jeans that was on a body, looked at it, handed it over. Jesse looked at the Census guy for a long time, and when she put it in her pocket he made a face like that was what he hoped she’d do.

  I waited to see what would happen, but she kept it in her pocket without saying anything, until at the end of the day as we were getting the trolley ready, I said, “Did you want to put that receipt in with the rest?”

  The answer was Yes, it was Yes, instantly; you didn’t pocket paperwork, that was the sort of guilt that made you look like a New Day New City sympathizer.

  Sometimes, since Kepler, I’d gotten nervous.

  She blinked for a second, like I’d surprised her. Then she said, “Oh, right,” and pulled it out, and marked where she had found it, the exact street address like she’d meant to do it all along.

  I couldn’t tell if she looked guilty or not; it came and went in a second.

  It was tiring work. There comes a point where it doesn’t matter; tables or trees, plaster or bone.

  File 19044060. Receipt from Topped o’ the Morning soft-serve franchise, dated 11 April, for one (1) medium cup with toppings and one (1) child’s cone with sprinkles. No indication of terrorist relation. Archived.

  NOTE: Recovered from within pants pocket of civilian collateral damage—preferred notation of Archive provenance uncertain.

  REMINDER TO ARCHIVE RECOVERY ASSOCIATES: Please indicate clearly the provenance of each item recovered and the circumstances of its archiving. Accuracy is crucial in determining the timeline of events leading up to the Raid. Items found on or in the near vicinity of human remains may be considered to be personal effects by the Homeland Archives. In these cases, please return them at once to the appropriate associate at the Homeland Evidentiary Census Office for filing.

  NOTE TO ALL ARCHIVE RECOVERY ASSOCIATES: According to the most recent guidelines delivered from the Greater New York Municipal Authority to all Scope Leaders and Managers, all paper and/or electronic documentation or correspondenc
e, regardless of provenance, is considered the jurisdiction of the Archive Department and will be cataloged accordingly. When part of personal effects, the corresponding remains will be cross-referenced with the Evidentiary Census.

  It had been so many weeks that I’d started to feel like we’d be fighting snow on top of fighting the dust and the splinters and the rats that had just begun to get brave enough to appear all at once out of places that looked quietly dead, the day I found the police report.

  It was curled at the edges—moisture was terrible for paper—but it had been shoved so far back in the drawer, in a folder marked “vacation plans,” that it was still legible right where we stood.

  I glanced at it. Then without knowing why, I said, “Jesse.”

  I showed it to her without letting her take hold of it. I didn’t know how to let it go. It felt like an alarm was going to go off the second I loosened my grip.

  She stood next to me, reading, until she started to shake. Then she stepped back, like she was worried about alarms, too.

  Then she asked, in a voice I didn’t recognize, “Are you going to turn that in?”

  Sympathizer, I thought, even though that was impossible—those were all gone.

  I thought about tucking this into my shoe as we detoxed, walking from the bus pickup to the nearest news outlet. Would they even show it if I did?

  It was foolish to think they didn’t know, if even part of it was true. They’d been on the ground for the protests. They had footage, if they wanted it. Where was I supposed to take it, then?

  I thought, like a traitor, Would Jesse know who?

  I thought about what would happen to me, if I took this outside, and word got out, and the Archives knew this is where I had been.

  “It’s not up to me,” I said.

  She looked at me for a second, eyes flat and hard, and then shouldered past me and headed down the open path as fast as she could, already pulling off her hazmat helmet, knocking aside a cloud of dust.

  I handed it over first thing inside the tent, without even looking at the Archive monitor who took it from me.

  “Would you look at this,” Kepler was saying as I went out, showing me some flier with the Homeland and Municipal seals at the top, and it was the most agitated I’d seen him since he was being escorted out of the tech tent, but I didn’t stop. I needed to be out.

  The hazmat suit felt too close, everywhere, like I had stayed too long in one place without moving, and a layer of dust had settled so heavy I’d never get out from under.

  File 78154406. One (1) incident report from the 87th Street police precinct. Reported by Officer [NAME REDACTED] on [DATE REDACTED], when the NYPD attempted to clear a cell of New Day New City demonstrators. Complaint lists a number of incidents of alleged police brutality. Destroyed.

  THANK YOU, HOMELAND EVIDENTIARY CENSUS WORKERS

  You are the most crucial workers in the field today. Every day, your work brings us closer to identifying the domestic terrorists who sought to bring down our city, and finding justice for the civilians they endangered. The difficult work of the next few weeks will be the linchpin on which our further operations rest.

  You are the key to victory; you are the keepers of the Republic!

  TO: Scope Manager

  BCC: District Superintendent

  Today while working in the field, an Archive worker discovered a motivational flier evidently intended for a Census Worker.

  While we understand the importance of equality and personal validation across all industries during this initial phase of evidence discovery and rebuilding, this flier has had an understandable negative effect on morale on those under my scope. The catalog output has noticeably slowed over the course of the afternoon—correlated, one assumes, to rumors spreading among the archivists in my scope that the Municipal Authority hasn’t been completely transparent about the support they’re receiving from the city in doing their assigned work under time-sensitive circumstances.

  Please let me know any ideas you may have about how you and I can address this issue and restore morale to the workers within my scope; I am eager to help in any way I can, both for the sake of my staff and to improve their productivity on behalf of the city.

  Sincerely yours,

  Scope Leader 10024-B

  I’d never actually seen a Homeland car. I was still trying to figure out what ad would have required painting a police car black (perfume, maybe) when the agents stepped out, and it was only because they were wearing suits that I realized what was happening.

  When they asked where my scope manager was (politely, so politely they had to ask twice, it didn’t sound like the kind of trouble I knew it was), I pointed, because chances were they knew who they were looking for, and they were just testing your loyalty to your scope.

  They took him someplace no one ever found out, and spoke to him for an hour.

  That night, as we were waiting for the buses, he showed up and started in.

  “We are here to do the work the city needs,” he shouted, so loudly some of the electricians turned to look. “If you’re concerned about other scopes or sectors, you clearly do not have enough density of discovery at hand, and will be reassigned as I and the Municipal Authority see fit. I suggest that all of you concentrate on your own fucking tasks. The city asks for your help, but do not think this work cannot continue without you. We’re not finished here.”

  The words echoed off the sides of the trucks for a second after he stopped. Then there was nothing. Everyone must have seen the car, or heard that they’d come.

  From beside Kepler (she didn’t stand beside me any more), Jesse took in a heavy breath and held it. It was the only sound.

  The buses slid north one at a time—86, 87, 88, 89.

  When the bus dropped us off, and all of us went our ways, I saw that at each corner was a black cab with its call light off, pointed away from the intersection, and that one at a time they slid into the traffic and followed someone.

  One of them went after Kepler, but he looked like he already knew.

  (I should have asked him more about what happened, I thought. How long had our city been looking over our shoulders, and me with my eyes only on my own work?)

  One of them turned the corner with Jesse, and I put my hand on my phone to call her and warn her, and let it drop. If they were watching us, they were listening to us.

  This was what had been waiting for us, when we discovered anything they had asked us to discover, about the people they had rid themselves of.

  The night had gotten cold, all at once, and even though store lights poured into the pavement and food carts along the avenue made rackets for the crowds, the street might as well have been empty, for how alone I was.

  The car that followed me home parked in front of my building, right near the door. They had a mission, and nothing to hide.

  To: Scope Manager

  BCC: District Superintendent

  I am in receipt of your message. Thank you for the swift reply.

  Please understand that when I filed the initial question, the team morale had momentarily faltered due to the strain of the work and the circumstance that seemed to an outsider like potential carelessness from the Census division. In my initial questions, neither I nor any member of my team meant any disrespect or insubordination. We remain committed to our work.

  Of course I have explained the situation to all members of the scope team, and they are very happy to be working alongside the Census team for the safety of the City’s people.

  The situation has been resolved—I hope it will be to your satisfaction. Thank you again for your attention to the matter.

  Sincerely yours,

  Scope Leader 10024-B

  If you stood on the east side of Central Park West at 89th, next to what was left of the wall, you could see straight down to the Museum.

  They had trucks there already, mobile stations and cranes and trucks loaded with stone. A coat of ants moved through and over it, people s
eparating everything they could and start rebuilding.

  “I heard about this,” said Jesse.

  She was standing carefully on top of the rubble, beside a file cabinet sticking up like a knife from the ground. We were in the middle of the street—the remains were from a truck.

  It was a clear day, cool and bright. If you looked ahead of you, it was the patches of Park that were left, and the piles of dust, and the museum in the middle of the green like a palace.

  (If you looked behind you, there was a cop car parked half a block away. There were more of them every day, studding the streets anywhere in our scope where the roads were passable. This one had an ad for orange juice painted across it, bright and crawling halfway up to the roof. They weren’t Homeland. They didn’t care who saw them.)

  “There are so many,” I said.

  There were so few of us—a handful of buses could carry us—and so much of what we were doing was still dust and trouble.

  I looked around absently for Kepler, though I wasn’t sure why I’d want him to see it. He should be looking at the park. He’d had enough unhappiness.

  “The museum damage has been making the city look bad,” said Jesse, like she’d heard someone talking about it on the radio. (She hadn’t—there was radio silence about everything, since the Raid—but she always sounded like she knew her sources.) “They want something to show that it’s really over. That they got ‘em all.”

  Sympathizer, I thought, but it seemed less terrifying now. Part of me was worried for her—they didn’t care if you were lying at all when they took you away, look at Kepler, she had to be more careful than this—but it was just a thing that made me numb, set in the row of other numb things, beside the place where you try not to tell plaster from bone.

  I said, quietly, “I don’t know what they must have done, to bring this down on them.”