The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  “Yeah, tough girl,” Kym said. “Gonna take it all on, turn it around for us. Doesn’t seem to be goin’ so well just yet.”

  Crazy fuck.

  “Actually, ma’am, it is. Think about your own experience and I bet you’ll remember a time when you just didn’t care what happened anymore, a time when your desire to fight was too strong for fear alone to stop you. Maybe you fought, or perhaps you refrained from fighting only because there was nothing to gain, but I’m sure you understand the feeling of power that comes from having nothing to lose.”

  “So what? Nothin’ I do is gonna change anything.”

  “Of course you’re right about that, ma’am,” he said. “One’s feeling of power is meaningless as long as she remains isolated. The General’s power arises from her ability to inspire all those thousands and thousands of people who feel that way. Individuals with nothing to lose may fight a few small battles. Groups with nothing to lose, however, when rallied around the right leader, can become a revolution.”

  A teenager and her dirty hobo were going to take on the power structure, with its Feds, its guns, its Unnamed…

  “Okay,” she said. “Dok said I need rest. Nice talking with you.” Kym closed her eyes.

  “You still think as an individual,” he said. She could feel him staring at her. “You see yourself alone, myself alone, even the General alone, and you see weakness. But coming together for a common goal can make us strong, and the General brings people together. Imagine joining us and gaining your own followers, people willing to support you. You might become an officer with us, maybe even the General’s second-in-command, able to take the helm in her stead, perhaps eventually becoming a general yourself. I can see that you have true leadership ability, even when it is hidden by doubt, as now. I, for one, would be proud to follow you, ma’am.” He slowly lifted himself off the floor. “Excuse me a moment, please, ma’am.”

  He went to talk to his general, giving her what was apparently some kind of warning, though cryptic and strange. The girl told him she’d consider whatever it was he was saying, and he bowed and sat back down.

  He bowed?

  Kym couldn’t help thinking about it. An army of reasonable people who could truly support her and give her power to change things? In her mind she saw Mikk’s sneer, the one his face always wore right before his first blows struck her, and then she heard her own voice commanding. The vision changed and a wave of people—soldiers—justice!—swept past her to annihilate him.

  Even Mikk, with his gun, his physical strength, and his cruelty, was insignificant to a real army. What if Kym’s weakness did stem from thinking she was alone and therefore had no power? Maybe this weird little bunch could change things, or maybe not. Probably not. Almost definitely not. But like the bum said, Kym had nothing to lose.

  He was watching her again. She faced him, finding herself no longer disturbed by his blank stare. “I’m Kym,” she said.

  He bowed as he had done for the General. “It is very nice to meet you, Kym, ma’am. Perhaps one day we’ll call you Colonel Kym, or even General Kym.” He grinned slightly. Kym’s bruised face ached as she clenched her jaw, suppressing a shiver. “And if you like, you may call me as others do. I am the Prophet.”

  Coach V’s Clinic

  After the gunfire had erupted outside the clinic yesterday there had been the predictable and terrifying Horde response, and then silence. Porter had gone out to speak to the mass of pointing fingers, and apparently he’d known enough of them personally to talk them out of a swarm. Many of the ones he’d spoken with had quit the Horde right then to join the Saved. Coach had growled that the clinic would go on as it always had, and now she and her “girls” were back at work, bustling between beds and triaging emergencies.

  Wanda removed a bottle from the spiral of coat hanger wire that held it upside-down above a patient’s bed. She checked the inked letter on the bottom. The sun was going down, making it harder to see the dark marker on the dark glass. This one read “Q,” so she replaced it with another “Q.”

  The bottles were old longnecks that had once held beverages, but sealed with sterilized plastic putty, they functioned as IV bottles here.

  “Q” was for Quanara, an Amelix patent that had now made it to the street. Wanda had learned about it in her lab tech training, but she’d never imagined she’d actually be holding a bottle of the stuff, let alone using it to treat patients. One of the sixth-generation engineered antibiotics, Quanara was mostly outdated and useless except against the deadly FLIEs bacteria it had been sold to combat. Amelix, always the world’s most innovative company, had created and released the FLIEs strain, knowing that only Quanara could fight it. The monopoly had been a huge boost for the company economically as other organizations scrambled to license it, though Amelix soon found itself paying similar ransoms to other biotech companies who’d created their own lock-and-key diseases and cures.

  The corporate class no longer used antibiotics. The drugs were too clumsy, and reliance upon them made corporations too vulnerable. Once the engineered antibacterial fungal strains had reached their twelfth generation, R&D had taken a new tack, producing a new generation of synthesizers that could test for specific pathogens and develop special hunter-killer antibodies for each one. Microbes mutated incredibly fast, especially when they were human pathogens in a world with seventeen billion people to attack, so companies now had entire departments of scientists and programmers whose sole function was to monitor and tweak the relationship between the synthesizers and all the targeted germs.

  Wanda peered through the glass, hoping to gain a little insight into the situation outside. What was happening with the Saved and Horde? Would there be more shooting?

  Nobody would count on Quanara to cure anything today. Coach undoubtedly added it to control contamination, as a prophylactic safety measure more than a treatment.

  “Sister Wanda!” Sister Chi Sun called from the front of the room. Wanda dropped the empty bottle into her sterilization bin and scooted toward the area where they were admitting new patients. Her pace would have been a run, but one of the rules she’d learned here was that the girls were not allowed to take steps longer than a foot’s length. Ostensibly it had to do with patient safety in the cramped space and the stirring up of germs. Wanda had noticed Coach observing her girls with a look of satisfaction as they minced around the place, though, and it was obvious that bullying and control were the main motivations for this constraint.

  Sister Chi Sun handed her a thin dowel with a cardboard disc attached across one end. A spiral pattern on the disc would rotate when the dowel was rolled between palms.

  “Show him this spiral and just keep quietly repeating to him that he needs to stare at it, that nothing matters but watching the spiral, okay?”

  Wanda took the dowel and began rotating it, speaking softly. “It’s okay. Just stare, right there at the center. Watch it go inward, down and down and down. And watch it come up, now, up and up and up, always turning. Which way does it seem to be going to you?”

  “Look here, Chi Sun,” Coach V. said, running two fingers in a light circle midway up the patient’s calf. “See this indentation, the cavity beneath the skin?”

  “Yes, Coach,” Chi Sun said.

  “Ruptured tendon,” Coach said. “Let’s get him into the operating room. If we were busy now we’d triage this down, but right now it’s slow enough for us to address it. Wanda, help us move him.”

  “Yes, Coach,” Wanda said.

  Wanda moved the patient’s hand to the dowel and got under his shoulder. “Your turn to work the spiral for yourself, now,” she told him. “Just keep staring at it. Let yourself get lost in the pattern as it pulls all your pain away.” Chi Sun put herself under the other side and together they lifted, half-dragging the man backwards to the room where Wanda had first spoken with Judee. The powerful light came on as they hoisted him to the table, helping him turn onto his stomach.

  Wanda took the rod again. The
patient lay with his head turned to the right, so she moved toward that end of the table and knelt down next to him. She held the spiral a short distance from his face, alternating from one hand to the other so she could keep it spinning in the same direction. “Stare at the center,” she told the patient in a hushed, calm voice. “Is the spiral coming up, up, up, or going down, down, down?”

  Coach and Chi Sun poured sodje onto the back of the man’s leg, spreading it around with their hands. The alcohol was the best means of sterilization they had available in an environment like this, without soap or running water.

  “Okay,” Coach V. said. “See here? Look at the anklebone, and then see this slope in this direction and the curve in the other? In this case we need these muscles relaxed, so we’re going to put one needle here, and the other up here on the other side, behind the knee. You see that?”

  Wanda wished she could see, but the spiral was in the way. They were doing acupuncture, which she’d not yet been allowed to observe. Coach had made it clear Wanda was to learn only what Coach taught her, whenever Coach decided to teach it.

  “This guy’s Golden,” Coach said. “So you can see where the ends of the snapped tendon are inside the flesh, from the borders of the dark red patch that formed on the skin, there. Now, I’m going to make an incis—”

  “Stare into the spiral,” Wanda said to the patient. He certainly didn’t need to hear about the incision. Coach turned to get some equipment from the counter behind her and Chi Sun whispered in Wanda’s ear. “Never stop talking when you do the spiral. Coach will punish you to help you remember that.”

  Wanda went blank for a moment but quickly recovered, saying the first calming thing that came to mind, a simple “Shhh, shhhh, shhhh.” She discovered she could still see some of what was happening in the reflection in one of the glass cabinet doors. Coach cut but the man stayed surprisingly quiet, even as Coach prodded around with forceps in the incision, looking for the ends of the tendon.

  “Wanda,” Coach said. “This foil is ruptured so I can’t use this packet. Hurry to the storeroom and ask Piyumi for a gut-threaded needle. Chi Sun, you take the spiral until she gets back.

  Wanda handed off the dowel and passed through a little door at the back of the operating room. Sister Piyumi was there in the storeroom, standing on a stepstool to place a box onto a shelf.

  “Coach said she needs a gut-threaded needle.” Wanda said. “I guess that’s cat gut?” Wanda had seen a live cat, once, when visiting the home of a schoolmate whose parents were much higher ranked than her own.

  Sister Piyumi descended and moved over to a different set of cabinets and drawers. She opened a long, narrow drawer and examined various items inside as she talked. “Our job is to do and learn what we are told, Sister,” she said. “We do not wonder. We do not speculate. Coach said a gut needle, so you will be given a gut needle. And we address each other as Sister, Sister. Coach will punish you to help you remember that.”

  “I’m… sorry, Sister,” Wanda said haltingly. “I have noticed that you all say that, about Coach punishing me to help me remember.”

  “What did I just say about wondering, Sister?”

  “I’m sorry. Sister.”

  “Coach will punish you to help you remember that.” She selected a small foil packet and closed the drawer. She spoke more quietly as she came up and placed the packet into Wanda’s hands. “We are required to educate and remind each other of Coach’s rules, and also of the fact that we are watching each other so that Coach can help improve us through punishment. Coach is responsible for every life here. Her gift to us is allowing us to do exactly as we’re told. We absolve ourselves of ultimate responsibility through obedience to her.”

  “Yes, Sister,” Wanda said. This was her life now: absolution through obedience. “Thank you, Sister.” She hustled back to Coach, making sure her feet stayed close together.

  Dok’s place

  Kym averted her eyes. General Eadie and the Prophet had run off just before this nasty fucking giant Fed had showed up looking for them. The Fed had been beating on Dok, asking him all kinds of questions. Dok had been shining him on, making him madder and scarier until finally the Fed had just thrown him to the floor.

  He stomped on the back of Dok’s head and Dok went limp. Then he focused his icy stare on Kym.

  Mikk was weak because he was alone. Or rather, because he’d only had control of his whores and Kym. This Fed was just like Mikk, but there were thousands and thousands of other Feds like him, all armed and protected by an entire society. Kym had never hated anything like she now hated this Fed.

  He reached her in a single stride and yanked her up by the arm, his thumb digging into a bruise. “How about you?” the Fed said. “Do you know where the waitress with a cut face might have gone?”

  It had to stop.

  Kym should have been terrified, but instead she remained steady. A rock. A tiny stone, flung by the General, straight into this clunky Fed’s eye. She had nothing to lose and no fuel but hate.

  “Didn’t see any waitress,” she said, truthfully. She had seen only a general.

  The Fed’s thick fingers hooked into Kym’s shoulders and lifted her until her toes dangled. She tensed her neck muscles in a desperate effort to keep her head attached to her body as he shook her violently. He stopped and shifted his grip, taking her by the throat. This Fed could snap her neck with his thumb, and he could see she knew it.

  “Tell me where she went, you dumb bitch,” he said quietly.

  Kym thought about what she should say. Should she be angry and insult him, proving she was innocent by her more extreme reaction? Or maybe she ought to be calm and meek, acting like she was impressed with his power? Or cower and whimper?

  It didn’t matter what she had to do, as long as whatever it was helped the General and her cause.

  Behind the Fed, Dok slowly pulled himself up to a standing position and leaned against the counter. The thought flashed through her mind that Dok could kill him, smash his head from behind, but that would never happen. Dok wouldn’t have the heart to kill anyone, even this giant demonically engineered Fed.

  The Fed grabbed her shoulders, preparing to shake her again. It didn’t matter. He could shake her, choke her, beat her, or whatever else. Mikk had beaten her all the time and she’d just taken it, mostly out of fear, and yet now she was facing this Fed and the power of thousands and thousands of Mikks, and holding her ground. There was no longer any fear. As the Prophet had said, Kym understood the power of having nothing to lose. The General was something to believe in, and Kym would not betray her.

  A loud crack sounded somewhere outside the clinic: a door getting kicked in. The Fed let go of her and turned his attention to Dok again, punching him in the face for some comment he’d made.

  Pivoting back to Kym, he said, “I have no further use for you. You may go. Now.”

  (?)

  “Dr. Kessler, sir?”

  It was Keiko’s voice.

  “Dr. Kessler, sir?” she asked again. Kessler sat up.

  “Keiko,” he said. “Where are we?”

  “This is Lincoln’s, the club you’d told me we were heading for,” she said. “After that man on the street threw the powder in your face, you were okay for a little bit, and then after a few more minutes you became disoriented. The doorman recognized you and pulled us in, sir. It was lucky he did because this place has no sign and the door just looks like part of the wall outside.”

  He looked around, recognizing the private room Lincoln’s had provided. The floor was raised to about knee-high and padded in black vinyl, everywhere but the space into which the door opened.

  “How are you feeling, sir?”

  He realized he probably looked foolish, repeatedly massaging his forehead and temples with the tips of his fingers. He imagined the action was working badly needed blood back into his head. “What time is it?” he asked. There was no way to know inside the windowless space.

  “Twenty-oh-four
GMT, sir,” she said.

  That was midafternoon.

  “The office must—”

  “I told them you had been attacked on the street, sir, and that I was caring for you. I know it’s not the best story but I didn’t know what else to say.”

  “They’ll say it’s still my fault for being out of the secured areas,” he said. “But you stayed with me, Keiko. You cared for me.”

  She grinned. “Yes, sir, I stayed. I was very concerned for you, and I was also afraid to leave here alone.”

  Kessler made himself lower his hands to the vinyl pads. He realized he was leaning against a wall, also padded in vinyl, though he had no recollection of having leaned. “We’ll square it away with the office. Don’t worry.”

  “I have complete faith in you, sir. Are you all right now?”

  He nodded. “It was the strangest experience, that drug. It was like…like I was a cup, and the drug was trying to pour something in. Like it was trying to make me into something else. A junkie, maybe, I don’t know. But I was already full, so it just skimmed over the top and down the sides. I kept thinking of Amelix. I…I feel like I was saved by the fact that my heart was already full of my love for the company, as if reconditioning had vaccinated me.”

  “Reconditioning is truly a blessing, sir. Do you think you’re ready to go back to the office now? I’m sure you’re sorely missed.”

  “Yes, I think so. Better to walk through this area in the middle of the day, too, I think. Let’s get back to work.”

  Approaching Dobo Protein Refinery

  Rus led the way back to where it had all started, where that cheat fuck Garbageman had ripped him off, where Murph had gotten killed and probably carbon recycled, lining the Garbageman’s pockets even more.

  “Tonight the Bridges are doin’ some payback!” he said, far too loudly for a part of the Zone this far from home. He’d heard there were some tough gangs around here. One called Plague was known to come running straight at you and beat you into the ground with no warning, no demand, no nothing. Another that called itself the Hueys was supposed to have more machine guns than any other street gang. This street, J Avenue, was said to be at the center of a territory dispute between the two, but Rus hadn’t seen anyone wearing any colors at all here yet. It seemed like there were fewer and fewer gangs lately. In any case, it was better to be safe. There was no excuse for shouting like that, even if he was pretty messed up right now. He’d finished the sodje bottle and another, needing to clear his head after he’d—