Awakening

by Margaret Ball

  The girls were certainly more aware of their surroundings than most customers, managing to display all six slender legs as they leaned over the virtual display and glancing to see who was admiring them: Scone in sandals with straps up to her knees, Sugar-Free in heels so high and slender that Devra daily expected to see her with a broken ankle, and Thornberry displaying the latest style in transparent slippers through which her dark blue toenail polish showed, in Devra’s opinion, far too clearly. If you were going to make your toes look as if they’d been stomped in the train, there was really no need to share the bruised color with innocent bystanders. And she didn’t think it was attractive at all.

  She spent her mid-morning break the same way for the rest of the week. Then it occurred to her that Grigg was never going to be satisfied with a collection of data all gathered in mid-morning.

  “I’d have to observe right after opening and just before closing and at least once during the evening and who has time to do all that?” she muttered despondently.

  “Muttering to yourself is a bad sign, you know,” Mikal interrupted her. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, sit down and stop looming over me!” Devra tapped the CodeX to save her notes. Fortunately, the system she’d improvised was consistent with a perfectly innocent explanation.

  “You’re such a party pooper,” Mikal said, sliding out another chair. “Don’t you realize you’re practically the only person in the city that I can loom over? You ought to encourage it for the sake of my ego. And what are those notes about?”

  “I don’t think your ego needs any more encouragement,” Devra said. “And I was just…” perfectly innocent explanation? “Just making a few notes on what our regular customers order, so I can plan my baking better.”

  She wished he would go away. She had a little trouble breathing when he sat so close to her. And thinking. And – well, never mind. She would just have to learn to ignore the symptoms.

  “And I,” said Mikal, “don’t think your baking needs any more planning. What’s to plan? You make delicious things, we sell out, you make more. System’s already working just fine. You know what’s the trouble with you, Devra?”

  Devra sighed ostentatiously. “I’m sure you’re just dying to tell me.”

  “Too conscientious.” Mikal took a giant bite of the slice of honey cake he’d brought with him.

  “Well, that’s certainly not your principal flaw! What are you thinking, leaving Vess alone to mind the counter and her ankle still swollen up like a balloon?” Devra snapped her CodeX shut and jumped up to relieve Vess. Actually, Mikal would have to relieve Vess; she had puff pastry to roll out.

  “Sit, sit,” Vess called. “We’re just doing soup and flatbread now, and Mikal set it up so the lunch crowd can serve themselves.”

  Devra gasped. “I’m so sorry, I must have lost track of time, I meant to come back and make the puff pastry.”

  “It all worked out fine,” Mikal told her. “Last night’s cold snap aggravated Vess’ arthritis. Between that and recovering from her accident, she didn’t feel like making her chopped meat and raisin filling today, so she didn’t need the pastry. I just filled a bunch of mugs with soup and warmed up the flatbread, so like Vess said, the lunch customers can serve themselves. Now tell me, you’ve been muttering into your CodeX for days now, what great insights have you gained?”

  “Well. Um. I’d need to analyze the data.”

  “Oh, come now. You must have some interesting ideas to share.”

  I’m trying to prove to Security that you and Vess aren’t running Dissident Central here.

  Probably not a good answer. Devra stared through the window behind Mikal in search of inspiration – and found it, surprisingly, in a flimsy blowing through the bright, rain-washed street until it fetched up against a window of the café.

  “Actually,” she said, “I was looking for something else. Do you know anything about the Leafletter?”

  Mikal’s foxy eyebrows rose. “No, do you?”

  She didn’t know how to do this. Start conversations, the SecHead had said. Draw them out. Devra thought despairingly that she was better at ending conversations. Except, of course, with Mikal, who was impervious to snubs.

  “When I hired on here,” she said in a low voice, “I told you there’d been some trouble at the school, remember?”

  “You were accused of handling seditious literature.” Mikal leaned towards her. Half-screened by the Esilian trailing vine, they would hardly be overheard by the remaining lunch customers.

  “Yes. Well. I didn’t exactly tell you – or Security – everything. I was afraid… I told them I’d never had anything like that… It wasn’t exactly true. I actually….” She wasn’t stupid enough to confess she’d had a distribution pack of Leaflets in her apartment, was she? Of course not. “I had picked up a Leaflet the day before. I was curious… Anyway, I read it before I destroyed it. There was nothing for Security to find.”

  “What, they didn’t go through your trash?”

  “Probably,” Devra said, thinking back, “but they certainly didn’t go through Scat’s litter box. I tore it up, and he helped me make sure nobody was going to want to look at the scraps…. Anyway, I dumped the box just before they came for me.”

  Mikal let out a sharp crack of laughter. “Devra-Deborah, you are full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  If you only knew. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Devra said defensively. “She thought for a moment. “In fact, it was a good idea. But that’s not the point. For the most part, I didn’t really get what the Leafletter was going on about. But on the back side there was this poem… I didn’t understand all of that, either, but the words stuck in my memory. I can’t remember all of it now, though. Something about a band of brothers. I’ve been looking for it on my CodeX, but it was an archaic excerpt from a play, and I could only find the modernized version.”

  “Of course,” Mikal said. “They wouldn’t leave the old version around once they’d ‘improved’ it. See, Devra, you sneer at my archaic reader – oh, don’t deny it, I’ve seen your lip curl, I know no modern civilized Harmonica would use such a limited tool – but now maybe you’ll grant it has some use. Not being connected means nobody except me can erase stuff off it. Band of Brothers? That’s out of Henry V. I’ve got the whole text of the Agincourt speech – and the rest of the play.”

  Devra shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s so good. When we did it in Literature, we learned that the play promotes war and glorifies violence. Isn’t it a good thing that our more enlightened society doesn’t support those attitudes?”

  “But you liked reading the words,” Mikal pointed out. “The original words, not the washed-out summary you got in school. ‘If we are marked to die,’ he quoted, looking past her, ‘we are enow to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, it comes just before the bit that was in your leaflet.” Mikal grinned. “See, Harry – the king – has got himself cornered and seriously outnumbered by the French forces. But it won’t do his men any good for him to wail about how he screwed up and is probably going to get them all killed. So instead, he tells them how glorious it will be that the few of them stand up against all the French. ‘I am not covetous for gold,’” he dropped back into the rhythm of the play, “’Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; such outward things dwell not in my desires; But if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.’”

  “Well, I can certainly see why you like the play.”

  “Oh? Do I detect a note of disapproval there? What about you, Devra? Do you think it is a sin to covet honor?”

  “I – I – oh, stop mixing me up! Yes, I guess I do. The collective is greater than the individual. The needs of many are more important than the desires of a few. True patriotism serves the state, not the --”

  “Oh, cut it out! Come back and let’s have this argument when you can sp
eak for yourself instead of parroting the slogans you learned in your crêche. And first, Devra, riddle me this: You read Harry’s speech as it was originally written, and the words awakened something in you. Was it the business of the Central Committee to decide that you shouldn’t have a chance to read them? Or do you think that even in the perfection that is Harmony, you should have the right to choose your own reading matter?”

  “I – I – you’re getting me all mixed up. I know what I was taught is right,” Devra said stubbornly, “I just can’t find the words to explain it to you. Anyway – why do you have to make everything into a debate?”

  “I’m Esilian.”

  “What, being argumentative is in your gene pool? Nonsense. You’re genetically the same as us – only more annoying.”

  “Maybe not. After all, for over a hundred years your government shipped everybody who dared have a thought they didn’t like to Esilia. They didn’t stop until we won our independence. You shouldn’t be surprised that we’re an opinionated bunch.”

  “The way I learned it,” Devra said, “we deported our criminals to Esilia, because it was the most humane option. Until you people got to be more expense and more trouble than you were worth, and then we severed relations.”

  “Some time,” Mikal said, “we really must have a discussion on the humane decision to send people on a one-way trip to an undeveloped continent and drop them off in an area whose average annual rainfall compares poorly with one day of Harmony’s rainy season. But I’ll tell you something: we survived it, we never cost Harmony a mark in aid, and we would have been perfectly willing to keep accepting your brightest minds as long as you wanted to ship them to us. In fact--” He broke off and scowled at the remaining customers.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. But do you really think Harmony is being humane now? Buying Earth-developed pharmaceuticals that Security can use to strip away dissidents’ will and memory and destroy most of their minds? You should have kept sending them to us in Esilia.”

  “It wouldn’t have been decent,” Devra said hotly. “Once that war criminal Travis started terrorizing Esilia, how could we condemn civilized people to that hell-hole?”

  Mikal shook his head slowly. “Lady, your version of history and ours aren’t even distant cousins. And remember, yours is the version that gets constant editing and revising. We don’t do that in Esilia; we happen to think that the truth stays the same regardless of political requirements. Sure, Colonel Travis didn’t fight a pretty war – and some of the independent guerrillas were even worse. Wars aren’t pretty. But anything our rebels did to Harmony’s diplomats and soldiers pales beside what Stinking Billy did first to our people.”

  “Stinking Billy?”

  “Probably better known to you as Wilyam Serman, Harmony’s last Governor-General of Esilia. He ran a reign of terror and revenge that brought the whole country up in arms behind Colonel Travis, and in return….” Mikal reached up and snapped a branch from the cluster of stems snaking down from the hanging pot, “in return, we named one of our native plants after him.” He waggled the broken stem under her nose. “Smell that? The full aroma doesn’t come out until you break off a bit. That’s why we can keep it around as a memento. Every Esilian house, shop, and office has a pot of Stinking Billy, just to remind us why we have to guard our freedom.”

  “So your national plant is a thorny vine that stinks like a cat’s litter box when bruised. How appropriate!”

  Mikal threw up his hands. “You can keep my reader for the afternoon. Maybe it’ll enlighten you to look at some history that hasn’t been massaged and spun and edited by one side. Give it a try, anyway. One of these days you really ought to try using your head for something besides a support for your pretty, shiny hair. And here – I bought you a present. Maybe this will improve your mood.” He reached into a pocket, but instead of giving her anything he laid his open hand on her shoulder for a moment. Devra felt the touch through her whole body. Mikal looked as if he was feeling it too. His breathing was irregular; her pulse was pounding. “Devra?”

  “Mikal!” Vess called. “If you’re quite through flirting with the help, you can clean up after the lunch crowd and lock up for the afternoon.”

  But first she made him give her his arm so that with that and the support of her cane she could make her way over to where Devra had stood up, cheeks flaming. “Ahhh,” Vess sighed, sinking down on the chair Mikal had vacated. “Good. Now put out another chair for me to rest my ankle on, and then go do something useful for a change.”

  “You should go upstairs and rest properly,” Mikal groused.

  “In a minute, in a minute,” Vess said. “First I’ve got to make sure you haven’t irritated the best baker in Harmony City into quitting on us. Sit down, Devra. Go away, nephew mine.”

  For all her unpretentious exterior, Vess had considerable authority when she chose to exercise it. Both the younger people obeyed, though Mikal grumbled audibly as he moved away. “Irritated? Irritated? What did I do this time? I said her hair was pretty, that’s a crime? Women….”

  Devra’s face was still burning when she sat down again.

  “If that’s what you call flirting,” she said, “I’m surprised there ever was a second generation of Esilians!” She was not going to think about what his touch had done to her. Not.

  “Well, as I think I heard Mikal telling you,” Vess said equably, “your people were obliging enough to keep sending us more exiles. Anyway, we’re really not all that bad. I did tell you, that first day, that my nephew is a case of arrested social development. And not an unusual type at that. Weren’t there any young men teaching at that school of yours?”

  “Not many,” Devra said, “and none like Mikal!” She’d meant to follow that with, “Thank Harmony,” but as her temper cooled she found it impossible to keep being rude to Vess. After all, it wasn’t her boss’ fault that she was fighting a strong physical attraction to someone with all the tact and smoothness of – of a Stinking Billy vine.

  “No, he’s an extreme case,” Vess agreed with a grin, “but actually one of the nicer types of arrested development. I suppose being mostly around other women teachers, you might not have noticed, but a great many young men seem to revert to an earlier stage when around women they’re attracted to. A lot of them suddenly act as if they were fifteen, and just grab.”

  “Those, I’ve met,” Devra acknowledged, thinking of her ex-colleague Tomas and his perpetually damp and wandering hands.

  “Well. The nicer ones, like Mikal, go back to when they were in primary – eight or nine, just old enough to think that girls had cooties and to be terribly confused when they want to be near one. Mikal’s not really trying to pick fights with you; it’s more like he’s saying, ‘I’ve got a dead frog in my pocket, if you’ll let me kiss you I’ll show it to you.”

  Devra had been about to sip her cold kahve; she just barely saved herself from sputtering it all over the table.

  “And that new nano packet is a lot nicer than a dead frog, don’t you think?”

  Devra followed Vess’ glance towards her left sleeve. Was that her sleeve? It wasn’t grey-green any more; it was a deep turquoise with subtle aqua waves moving through it. She gasped. “I can’t take something like this from him!”

  Vess looked amused. “Well, you can’t exactly give it back. The nanos are already propagating, and there’s no way to strip them out and retain the other smartcloth properties. I grant it would have been more tactful to inquire as to your preference in colors first, but he said this would bring out the color of your eyes and you might not have the sense to choose it if he asked.”

  “Oh….” Blast the man, why did he have to upset all her defenses by being nice to her?

  Vess nodded once, sharply, and levered herself upright. “Now just help me upstairs, my dear, and then you can rest until we reopen this evening. Or,” she glanced at the battered reader Mikal had left on the table, “you might even want to read a good book.”
>
  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  There wasn’t much rest for Devra that afternoon; her argument with Mikal had left her too much to think about. Oh, not the personal matters Vess had hinted at – that was just silly – wasn’t it? Still, when she remembered the way he kept picking fights with her, she thought, “Dead frogs. Huh.” and found herself smiling for no reason at all. And she kept glancing at the tiny mirror she used to make sure her hair was combed. The undulating turquoise and aqua waves did make her eyes look blue. Green. Blue. Depending on the color cycle.

  It was the other stuff that kept her pacing up and down her narrow room. The fact that he’d revealed so much familiarity with the work of the Leafletter – that was bad enough, but what she suspected now was even worse! She tried to organize her thoughts, but the CodeX kept beeping and interrupting her. After a few beeps the voice sim came on and announced, “You have mail.”

  Devra tapped the CodeX and said, “Settings. Notifications off.”

  Mikal claimed that before med rehab, Harmony had sent its dissidents to Esilia. In the history she’d learned, it had been violent criminals they exiled – and now she thought about it, even that wouldn’t have been exactly humane, as Mikal had pointed out. She felt certain he believed his version of history; why else would he keep saying that he wished Harmony had kept sending them her unwanted people? If you’d been getting an annual ship load – or several ship loads – of murderers and rapists, you’d be only too happy for deliveries to stop.

  The CodeX beeped again. “I thought I told you to stop that!” Devra snarled at the device.