by Dan Wells
“I’m just a soldier, ma’am.”
“Is she not here?” asked Marcus. “I mean, is she out on the front lines or something? Is she in a different city? We can go to her if that’s easier.”
“She’s here,” said the doctor, pointing at a set of wide double doors on the northern wall. “She just . . . isn’t available.”
“What is she doing that she can’t even see us?” asked Woolf. “Is she busy? Who is she talking to if she isn’t talking to any of the people who need her?”
“We’re in the middle of a war,” said Vinci. “She’s leading that war from a central hub; she can’t just leave it for everyone who comes to visit.”
One of the human soldiers sneered, a huge man rippling with muscles. “We could force our way in.”
“That’s not the best tactic when we’re trying to be diplomatic,” said Woolf.
“Is there anything you can do to hurry it up?” asked Marcus. He gestured to the doctor. “I mean, I know you’ve probably thought of everything already, but . . . I don’t know, can we send her a message? Can we tell her why we’re here? We’re the first humans in the city in twelve years, proposing a peace treaty and a medical alliance, that’s got to pull some weight.”
“I know it’s important,” said Vinci. “That’s why I brought you here. But I warned you it would be hard, and you’re going to have to be patient.”
“That’s entirely reasonable,” said Marcus. “We’ll wait.”
“Except it’s the same story they told me yesterday,” said the doctor, raising her eyebrow. “My report is just as vital, almost certainly more so, but Trimble sees people on her own schedule, when she wants to, and not before.”
“Then we’ll wait,” said Woolf. “As long as it takes.”
Marcus wondered how many people would die, both here and at home, while they waited.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The doctor introduced herself as Diadem, but said no more than that. Her hostility toward Marcus and the rest of the humans was palpable, and not, it seemed, simply because they took her place in line to see Trimble. Add in the constant watch of the armed Partial guards, and the mounting threat of the imminent Partial war, and the room was starting to feel more and more like a pressure cooker. Marcus worried that if they didn’t get in to talk to Trimble soon, the soldiers were going to explode.
Minutes turned into hours. Every time the clocked chimed they would roll their eyes or sigh as the time slowly trickled away; every time a door opened every head jerked up to see if it was finally their turn to see Trimble. The sun tracked a slow arc across the wide skylight overhead, and Partial soldiers would bustle in and out of the room, whispering anxious conversations that Marcus could only guess at. None of his guesses were happy. Commander Woolf was going stir-crazy, pacing up and down and trying, unsuccessfully, to ask their Partial guards what was going on. They wouldn’t even let him get close, waving him off first with their hands and, when he pressed the issue, with their rifles. The background activity increased, and Marcus felt the tension in the room like an angry spirit, hot and ranting. He decided to try talking to Diadem again, asking her what was going on, but all she did was stare at the soldiers in what Marcus was beginning to realize was a Partial scowl.
“They’re preparing for battle,” she said at last. “The war is coming to White Plains.”
“But Morgan’s forces are all on Long Island,” said Marcus. “Who are they fighting?”
Diadem refused to answer.
When night began to fall, Marcus despaired of ever seeing Trimble at all, and swore not to fall asleep and risk losing his chance in the middle of the night. He kept himself occupied by examining the various bits of technology scattered throughout the room—objects so arcane he could only barely recognize them, but that the Partials apparently used every day. On an end table he found a small plastic stick and picked it up, certain that he knew what it was but completely unable to remember—something out of his childhood, he knew, but what? It was covered with buttons, and he pressed a couple of them to see what happened, but nothing did. Diadem watched him with the calculating eyes of a hungry insect.
“Do you want to watch something?” she finally asked.
“No thanks,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out what this thing is.”
“That’s what I meant,” she said. “It’s a remote—it runs the holovid.”
“I knew I’d seen one before,” said Marcus. “Most of the houses in East Meadow had the wall units, all speech- and motion-activated; I haven’t seen a hand remote like this since I was a kid.”
“I have a wall mount at home,” said Diadem, and it seemed she might be willing to make a little conversation. Marcus gave her his full attention. “But the waiting room is so big, and with so many people, the sensors would get confused with only voice or motion controls. It’s kind of funny using these old primitive things, but whatever works, I guess.”
“What you call primitive I call futuristic,” said Marcus, still staring at the remote. “You have a nuclear power plant that gives you more energy that you know what to do with. We have a handful of solar panels that barely keep our hospital running. My friend has a music player, but I haven’t seen a working holovid in twelve years.” He stood up, searching the room for a projector. “Where is it?”
“You’re standing in it.” Diadem stood up and took the remote from him, pointing it at the skylight; one click dimmed the glass, keeping out the glare, and another click lit up a bright holographic mist in the center of the couches, projected down from hundreds of tiny lights in the skylight’s latticed framework. Marcus and Diadem were standing in the middle of the gently shifting photonic mist, different vid icons moving lazily back and forth like sediment in a pool. Marcus stepped out to get a better view, grinning like a little boy as he recognized first one title, then another. He realized with amusement that all the titles he knew were the kid shows—Windwhisper the Dragon, Nightmare School, Steambots—the stuff he barely remembered from just before the Break. Most of the titles were “grown-up movies,” the cop dramas and medical romances and alien invasion gorefests his parents had never let him watch. As he looked through the menu, the other humans were clustering around it as well, as fascinated as he was. Marcus realized that they must have looked ridiculous, a bunch of slack-jawed yokels awestruck by a piece of commonplace technology, and wondered if Diadem had turned on the holovid just to be amused by their reactions to it. Just as quickly he realized that he didn’t care. This was a part of his life that he’d lost, and seeing it again was almost heartbreaking.
“What do you want to watch?” asked Diadem.
Marcus’s first impulse was Windwhisper, his favorite cartoon as a child, but the soldiers were all standing right there, and he felt a little foolish. He searched the shifting mist for an action movie, but before he could find one that looked good, the soldier beside him, the same giant bull from before, smiled broadly and said, “Windwhisper! Loved that show.”
He’s a soldier now, thought Marcus, but he was only seven or eight when the world ended.
Diadem swung the remote, scattering the holographic mist and grabbing the Windwhisper icon, and suddenly there it was, a giant hologram filling the center of the room as the cute purple dragon soared across the opening credits. “Windwhisper!” came the theme song, and Marcus and the soldiers sang the next line in unison with it: “Spread your wings and fly!” They watched the entire episode, laughing and cheering, reliving for half an hour the childhood they’d lost, but minute by minute the magic seemed to seep away. The colors were too bright, the music too loud, the emotions too broad, and the decisions too obvious. It was hollow and sickly, like eating too much sugar, and all Marcus could think about was: Is this really what I missed? Is this really all the old world was? Life since the Break was hard, and the problems they had were painful, but at least they were real. When he was a kid, he’d spent hours in front of the holovid, watching show after show, effect after eff
ect, platitude after platitude. The episode ended, and when Diadem looked at him with the remote poised for another, he shook his head.
She turned it off. “You look awfully sad for someone who just watched a friendly purple dragon knock a wizard into a lake made of marshmallow cream.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Marcus. “Sorry.”
She put the remote away. “You seemed to enjoy the beginning, but not the end.”
Marcus grimaced, flopping onto the couch. “Not really. It’s just that it’s . . .” He didn’t know how to phrase it. “It’s not real.”
“Of course it’s not real, it’s a cartoon.” Diadem sat beside him. “A 3-D cartoon with photo-realistic backgrounds, but still—just a story.”
“I know,” said Marcus, closing his eyes, “that’s not the right word, but it’s . . . I used to love watching the Evil Wizard get it,” he said. “Every week he’d have another scheme, and every week Windwhisper would stop him: one up, one down. Problem surfaced and solved in twenty-two minutes. I used to think that was awesome, but . . . it isn’t real. The good guy’s always good, and the Evil Wizard is always, well, evil. It’s in his name.”
“There were not a lot of children’s shows about ambiguity and unsolvable moral quandaries,” said Diadem. “I don’t think most five-year-olds were ready for that.”
Marcus sighed. “I don’t think any of us were.”
Vinci came and talked with them after dark, apologizing again that they weren’t able to see Trimble yet, and bringing stories of the world outside: The war was going poorly, raging closer and closer to the city.
“But who’s fighting?” asked Woolf. “All of Morgan’s forces are on Long Island.”
“There are other . . . issues,” said Vinci.
“Issues?” asked Marcus. “I thought you were going to say ‘other factions.’ What does ‘other issues’ mean?”
Vinci said nothing, and Marcus couldn’t tell whether he was thinking of a response or just refusing to answer. They waited, trying to decipher his actions, when a voice called out from the far side of the room.
“Trimble’s ready for you.”
They all looked up, surging to their feet. Diadem practically ran to the guard at the big double doors, but he stopped her with a look and, presumably, a burst of link data. “Not you, the humans.”
“I’ve been here longer.”
“Trimble wants to see them,” said the guard. He looked at Vinci. “Bring their commander and their ‘Partials relations consultant’ and follow me.”
The hallway beyond the double doors was wide and clean, nearly empty because of what Marcus was starting to recognize as the Partials’ typically pragmatic style—they didn’t need any plants or pictures or cute little tables in this hallway, so they didn’t have any. At the end of the hall was another cluster of doors, one of which was surprisingly loud; Marcus could hear shouted arguments and . . . yes, and gunfire. Why is there gunfire? The guard opened this door and a wave of cacophony rolled out to envelop them, shouts and cries and whispers and battle, and Marcus recognized it as the chaotic blend of multiple radios all blaring at once. The room itself, as they entered it, was lined with wall screens and portable screens and speakers of every shape and size and even, in one corner, another holovid depicting a giant glowing map of New York, including Long Island, as well as parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and even further north. It wasn’t a multitude of radios, but of video feeds. Red dots blinked on the map, faces and bodies ran back and forth on the screens, Jeeps and trucks and even tanks rumbled through televised walls and cities and forests. In the center of it all, bathed in the light and sound of a hundred different screens, was a single woman sitting at a circular desk.
“That’s her,” said the guard, standing to the side and closing the door behind them. “Wait for her to talk to you.”
Woolf and Vinci stepped forward; Marcus, more self-conscious, hung back by the door guard. The woman was facing away, so Woolf cleared his throat loudly to get her attention. She either didn’t hear him, or ignored him outright.
Marcus looked at the screens lining the walls. Many of them showed the same scene, often from the same perspective, though he guessed that of the hundred or so screens there were still several dozen separate feeds. Most showed battle scenes, and he assumed that they were live; Trimble was watching the war unfold from a central location, the way Kira had done with her radios. He wondered again where Kira had gone, and if he would ever see her again. Most of East Meadow had given her up for dead, no one having come forward to end D Company’s murderous occupation, but he still held hope—probably vain hope, he knew—that she would survive.
One of the largest screens was repeating a single scene: a running soldier, an explosion of mud and grass, and then it would all rewind in rapid motion. The flailing man would fly forward, land lightly on the ground, and run backward while the earth knit itself together again, and then suddenly the feed would reverse once more and the man would run forward and the ground beneath him would explode. After the fourth such cycle, Marcus realized that the speed and the stopping points were slightly different each time—it wasn’t on a loop, someone was manipulating it, back and forth, searching for . . . something. He stepped forward, circling slightly to the side, and saw that Trimble was sitting at a faintly glowing desk-screen, her fingers sliding back and forth across a series of digital dials and sliders. She zoomed in and out, she wound the video backward and forward, and all the time the young man died in the explosion, over and over and over again.
“Excuse me,” said Woolf.
“Wait for her to talk to you,” said the guard.
“I’ve been waiting all week,” said Woolf, and strode forward. The guard stepped up to follow him, but Vinci waved him off. “General Trimble,” said Woolf, “my name is Asher Woolf, I’m a commander with the Long Island Defense Grid and a senator in the Long Island government. I’ve come to you as a duly appointed representative of the last remaining human population on Earth, to broker a treaty of peace and a sharing of resources.” Trimble didn’t respond, or even acknowledge him. He stepped forward again. “Your people are dying,” he said, gesturing at the death and destruction that plastered the walls. “My people are dying, too, and we both know it’s not just from fighting. We’re sterile and diseased, both of us. In a few more years we will all be dead no matter what we do—no matter how many wars we win or lose, no matter how many times we shoot or shoot back or lay down our arms. Your people have two years left, I understand; mine will live longer but still be just as dead in the end. We have to work together to change this.” He stepped forward again. “Do you hear me?”
The guard moved in as Woolf’s voice rose, but Vinci ran forward to Woolf’s side. “Thank you very much for seeing us, General,” said Vinci. “We realize that you’re very busy, coordinating so many different wars at once—”
“She’s not coordinating anything,” said Woolf quickly, gesturing at the screens dismissively. “She’s just watching.”
“Please check your tone or I will ask you to leave,” said the guard.
“You want me to wait quietly?” asked Woolf. “I can wait quietly. I’ve been waiting for a day and a night out there, but we don’t have time—”
“Be quiet,” said Trimble softly, and Marcus stepped back in surprise as Vinci and the guard both staggered under the weight of her will. The guard regained his footing and stared silently at Woolf; Vinci opened his mouth, his face turning red with the effort, but he couldn’t speak. Marcus had seen the same thing when Dr. Morgan had ordered Samm to obey her—the leader commanded, and thanks to the link the Partials had no choice but to obey.
“We’re not Partials,” said Woolf. “You can’t just force our minds with your ‘link.’”
“I’m not a Partial either,” said Trimble.
This stopped Woolf in his tracks, confused. Marcus saw him struggling for a response and stepped forward with the first thing he could think of—anythi
ng to keep her talking.
“You’re human?” he asked.
“I used to be.”
“What are you now?”
“Guilty,” said Trimble.
Now it was Marcus’s turn to be shocked into silence. He cast about for something to say, and finding nothing, he simply walked forward, putting himself between Trimble and the view screen. Forcing her to look at him. She was an older woman, late sixties, maybe, the same age as Nandita and with similar coloring. Nandita is the other reason we’re here, he thought. We need to find her, too, just like Kira. He seized on this thought, and when her eyes finally met his, he spoke softly.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” he said. “Another human. A woman named Nandita Merchant. Do you know her?”
A spark of recognition lit up in Trimble’s eye, and Marcus considered again her statement that she had once been human; no Partial he’d met was that visually expressive. Her hands came up to her face, half covering her mouth, her eyes going wide. “Is Nandita alive?”
“I don’t know,” said Marcus softly, still surprised that the woman seemed to know who Nandita was. “We haven’t seen her in months. Do you know . . . anything about her? Maybe you’ve seen something on your screens to help us find her?” He paused, watching her face, watching her eyes grow moist with tears. He decided to push his luck just one step further. “We haven’t seen Kira Walker, either.”
An odd look passed over her face, like she was peering into a long-forgotten memory. “Nandita didn’t have anything to do with Kira,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Hers was called . . . Aura, I think. Aria. No, Ariel; it was Ariel.”
Marcus’s eyes went wide, a thousand questions crowding his mind so abruptly that none of them managed to come out. Ariel? Trimble knew about Nandita and Ariel? That could only mean that Nandita had communicated with her at some point; maybe she’d even come here. And yet Trimble had asked if Nandita was alive, implying that even if she’d come here before, she was gone now. As he searched for words an alarm sounded, and Trimble swung her chair to the side, tapping a button on her console that sent a rippling cascade across the wall of screens, calling up a score of new videos and images: roaring artillery, crumbling buildings, long lists of names and numbers scrolling by so fast Marcus couldn’t hope to read them.