Keepers

by Brenda Cooper

  That comment earned her a disgusted stare from Julianna. “I need him for something else for a few days,” she snapped. “I want a list of what you’re looking for by the end of the day. Adam will be around to help this afternoon, and then you’ll have to do without him for a few days.”

  “Okay.” He kept trying to talk her into drinking, and no matter how pretty he was or how good he smelled, she felt wary. “What do you need him for?”

  Julianna stayed silent for so long that Coryn began to think she wasn’t going to answer. “We have some faint traces on the weapons people have been hinting at. He’s got the skill to help the analytics team pluck threads. There is also a rumored timeline for the next attack.”

  That startled Coryn. “Soon?”

  “In the spring. I think Lou was right when she suggested our enemies will use the winter to regroup.”

  “What about this Valeria? Is she an enemy?”

  Julianna stretched. “What did I say last night?”

  “That she’s not a full Returner, but she doesn’t really support the wilding.”

  “That’s right. That means she might be either. Maybe both. But I bet her enemies are ours.”

  The idea of Valeria being both friend and enemy reminded her of Bartholomew, who had in truth been enemy. That encounter had taught her to mistrust gray people. “What if Lou has to get Valeria in trouble?”

  A frown crossed Julianna’s face. “That will probably happen.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s one of the things you need to learn.” Julianna spoke without looking at Coryn, her diction low and precise. And cold. “Leadership. Leadership means taking the hard things on and following through, fighting uphill like we just ran that bridge. Harder if you have to.” She finally looked at Coryn, her gaze level. “I’ve got another job for you.”

  Coryn was again startled. But that was Julianna’s mode of operation, at least lately. “Okay. What?”

  “Not here. Let’s use the West Seattle touchdown and go to Jake’s Park.”

  One of their quiet places—a spot the city didn’t have sensors in. Coryn swallowed. “Let’s move before I cool down.”

  That made Julianna smile at last. “Remember not to push it down the hill.”

  A fair warning. Coryn loved the wind in her hair, and she loved this bridge. The slow run down was glorious. Nothing automated was allowed here except for companion robots. Lines of bicycles passed them on their left in the wheeled lane. A stream of at least twenty runners in the bright purple and silver uniforms of the University of Washington passed them, most of them tall, with longer legs than Coryn had. That was who she had to beat. People built like that.

  She and Julianna raced down and down until Seacouver’s bright green roofs and silver buildings, twisting and arching bridges, and tall in-city gardens enfolded them again as they ran above the waterfront. Then the bridge spiraled up again, less brutally and not as far, before it dumped them on the running surface along Alki Beach. Fancy buildings rose high on their left. To the right, only the seawall and the Sound. They joined cars and busses again, robotic and real dogs, companions shepherding children or the old, or even acting as trainers for the middle-aged.

  As always, Julianna’s guard robots ran a few hundred feet ahead and a few hundred feet back, invisible in the crowd unless you knew what models to look for, and how to expect them to behave.

  They ran up to the lighthouse and made a left and kept going along the coast, the Sound washing angrily against the seawall just outside the weather dome here. Twice, salty spray surged over the wall, spattering them with briny water.

  “Are we going to have to build the seawall higher again?” Coryn asked.

  “Work has already started. It’s supposed to be done before the winter storms.”

  “How bad is the storm going to be over Chelan today?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  She swallowed. There was no point in saying she’d just gotten up and come down to breakfast and hadn’t checked anything.

  Silence would result in fewer demerits.

  Julianna led her into a privacy-screened gazebo in a waterfront park that faced Bainbridge and Vashon Islands. It didn’t look any different from the other picnic shelters, but the posts and roof had jamming equipment in them, and they could talk without being overhead by the city. It might know they’d been here, but not what they said. The silencing mechanisms worked when Julianna was present. She had places like this scattered throughout the city, places designed to fool it and let her have privacy.

  Coryn reminded herself not to think of the city as a single entity. She had learned better working with Adam. It was a collection of data and analytics that served many masters in addition to its job of keeping the people in the city safe. Sensors listened everywhere, but they didn’t save every single conversation. They could be fooled by simply making sure you did nothing far enough out of the utter ordinary to draw attention. It seemed like a single entity, acted like one. People talked about it as if it had a personality. But Adam swore it was just many systems with many interfaces.

  She drank water and pulled salted nuts and some boiled small potatoes out of her pouch. “What did you want me to do?” she asked.

  Julianna paced, at least to the extent that the small space allowed. She stopped long enough to look directly at Coryn, her expression stern. “I need for you to start stretching your thinking. In addition to the list of analytic targets I want from you today, I want your own assessment of the three biggest risks to Lou while she’s in Chelan and the three biggest risks to Seacouver.”

  “I can tell you what I think they are.”

  “You can write them down for me.”

  She nodded, dismayed that Julianna seemed so unhappy with her. But this wasn’t what she needed privacy for; Coryn had been the subject of even more cutting lectures in more public places.

  Julianna kept pacing.

  It felt like being locked up in a room with a very anxious animal. Coryn waited, eating slowly, letting her body recover. By her reckoning, they were halfway through the run. A strange time for such a long stop.

  Julianna stopped again, and again focused her stare on Coryn. “I’m testing you for a purpose.”

  Coryn smiled. “You’ve been testing me since I met you.”

  “And teaching you.” Julianna paused. “But I’ve only been testing you for a narrow band of skills—helping your sister. You’ve not been doing anything complicated.”

  Coryn stayed silent, stung again. Getting and keeping all the permits up had been complicated. Negotiating for and testing connectivity Outside from Inside had been almost impossible. The politics of supporting an NGO in the field was crazy-making. Other NGOs wanted to fight you, regulators wanted to slow you down, logistics and supply were hard. She’d learned so much!

  Julianna continued. “Jake has always understood the interior politics of the city the best. He is a dancer; I am a klutz.”

  Coryn blinked at Julianna’s strange statement. Julianna was brilliant at politics. She ran like a dream, graceful for any age and certainly for her age. Her words made no sense.

  “I need to know if you are a dancer or a klutz. I need you to learn how to move in the world outside of my household. I thought there was more time to train you. Maybe years. But maybe there isn’t.” She stared out over the seawall just as a muscular wave sent up a spectacular spray pattern that reached high over their heads. “I’m sorry, Coryn. But I am about to be very hard on you. You will succeed, or you will fail.” She turned her attention more directly to her. “You will work with Jake—apprentice under him, if you will—every afternoon in the foundation offices. That’s in addition to your existing work for the foundation and your athletic training.”

  Coryn felt as if she’d been slapped. “I don’t know how to do one more thing. I barely sleep enough now. You keep telling me to be mindful, and then you want me to work harder.” She realized she sounded like she was whining, and Julianna
hated whining. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I don’t know how to do more.”

  Julianna didn’t look at all moved. “We’re at war. When we’re at war, we stretch. You’ll have to find a way.” She looked out at the Sound. “There’s more. You will move out of my house tomorrow. We’re putting you into an apartment in a building where a lot of the young politicians and support staff live. I’m covering the cost of moving you, and giving you a furniture allowance and raising your salary to cover it. You will still work for me. After the move is completed, I will not pay your bills directly. You will need to do that, and you’ll have enough money if you’re careful.”

  She didn’t even know how to think about that. It reduced her to a monosyllabic response. “Okay.”

  “You need to learn from more than me.”

  “Okay.” She still didn’t see why they’d had to run all the way out here. “Maybe it will be good for me to be on my own.”

  Julianna smiled for the first time since they left the breakfast nook. “That’s the idea.”

  Coryn nodded, feeling abandoned in spite of herself. It made her feel weak.

  “It won’t be as fancy.”

  “I spent three years in an orphanage,” Coryn reminded her.

  “You probably only have three months with Jake.” Julianna stared at an invisible point on the horizon. “Maybe less.”

  Coryn stopped. “Why?”

  “He has an inoperable brain cancer. More accurately, there have been attempts to operate. He decided to stop them, to die with dignity instead of in a hospital.” Julianna looked away and spoke so softly that Coryn had to struggle to hear her. “Cancer still kills the very old. After all, we have to die of something.”

  Coryn swallowed, suddenly immensely sad and even more adrift. When she first met Jake, he had helped her and Lou talk to the city about the attack, or perhaps they had helped each other. Since then, he had become part of her. Family. Her voice came out thick, trailing to a whisper. “I was starting to think of him like a . . . like a father. I’m so sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am.”

  Of course not. Coryn stood up beside Julianna, slid an arm around her waist, leaned in to hug her.

  Julianna smiled at her, but pushed her away. “We can block sound here, but not visuals. No one must know this, not right now. I can’t break down, not here.”

  “It’s a secret?”

  “Jake has significant economic resources. He has no heir except me, and I am old and already a target. If the news that he is dying comes out, it will affect the markets. Jake matters to the spirit of this city. We both do. I don’t talk about that much, but our deaths will matter, and how we die will matter.”

  She straightened, as if gaining strength from her own words. “More importantly, there is much good he can still do if he is not discounted. He hates this. We cannot afford it.” She had gone back to staring at the islands and beyond them at the mountains. Her jaw looked like an iron bar, and she blinked from time to time. “People in power can’t show weakness. Not this much weakness. He agreed that I could tell you, but you can tell no one. No one.”

  “I understand.” A fierce spark of love for the old woman replaced all of the frustration she had felt. It explained why Julianna was being so hard on her.

  Maybe this was why Julianna ran. To show strength. “Are you ready?” Coryn whispered.

  “Almost.” Julianna stared out at the Olympic Mountains, then back at the city, still blinking. “Let’s go.”

  Coryn followed her out. At first, her steps were slow and leaden, as if her sadness had filtered into her joints. But Julianna ran strong ahead of her, and Coryn had no choice but to find a way to catch up.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Coryn was not at all surprised to find Jake sitting alone in the conference room when she returned. She stopped in the doorway, looking closely at him. Did he look more tired lately? Thinner?

  “Come in.”

  His small smile offered very little reassurance. She sat down, fiddling with a pen. He liked real paper, told her over and over it was more secure. As a result, colored pens always cluttered the table.

  “I see from your face that Julianna told you what’s . . .” he paused, swallowed. “What’s happening to me.”

  She managed a soft nod and a long pause. Then something broke free in her, and she rushed to his side, put her arm around his shoulder, and squeezed. A tear gathered in her eye and she willed it away, wanting to be strong for him.

  His bony hand crept to cover hers for a moment, and then he said, “Sit.”

  She did.

  He gazed at her for a few minutes, as calm as usual, and then when he asked her, “What do you want?” his words were laden with seriousness.

  So he knew the content of her grim conversation with Julianna. She looked over his head at a blemish in the nearly perfect wall, her eyes stinging. She took a few long breaths before she said, “A place to belong. I love working to support Lou. I love running. I love my dog.” She was babbling, so she shut up.

  “What would a place where you belong be like?”

  Lou had always known she belonged Outside. But Coryn had no idea what a home was. Her favorite place was on a bridge staring down at the city, but that was no answer. “We had thirteen homes growing up. All over the city. Then we landed in an orphanage. You know we lost our parents.”

  “Julianna also lost her parents at a young age.”

  She glanced past him at the current satellite shot. Clouds. Not even a scrap of lake, much less ground. Everything light gray on slate gray on ash gray, light and dark shades caught swirling over each other and frozen in time. She had looked up the storm while she showered. There were warnings for local flooding and rain, but the city only carried some news of Outside, even with her current access levels as staff here.

  “She grew up in an orphanage, too,” Jake added. “She never remembered her parents at all. They died of drugs, and she never learned whether they killed themselves or died of stupidity or if it was just an accident.”

  “I suppose I knew some of that.” She reached for a piece of paper and started doodling. “It was in my high school history book.”

  “She believes that she accomplished so much because she had nothing to lose.”

  “I can see that.” The doodle was turning into a purple horse, with the head and tail both too big. “You grew up richer, though, right?”

  “Middle class. My parents were small-time politicians for cities that are now dead. They taught me to care deeply about politics.”

  And now he and Julianna were two of the richest people in Seacouver. Not the richest anymore. They had once been the most powerful, and while they weren’t that anymore either, they were still icons.

  The satellite view refreshed. A bolt of lightning arced between two clouds. She pointed at it. “See that?”

  He smiled. “Yes. I’ve seen lightning storms from airplanes many times. They’re strange from above, and beautiful. That bolt is pure power.”

  It looked small and bright on the film, caught in a twist of air like a striking snake. “Is it dangerous?”

  “To Lou? Sure. But she should be okay.” He leaned back, thoughtful for a moment. “What do you think Lou wants?”

  Coryn laughed. Wasn’t it obvious? “She wants to save the world. That’s what she’s always wanted. The wild world. She doesn’t care if all the cities just blow away. She blames all the people for the death of the world.”

  A half-smile played around his lips. “It’s not dead yet.”

  “Lou loves to look at pictures of what it was like from before.”

  The screen refreshed to all grays, the lightning bolt gone from the room as well as from the storm. “I see.” He circled back to the first question he had asked her. “What do you want?”

  “For Lou to save the world.” She hesitated. “To win a race.”

  He stared at her for a while. “Really? Just to win a race? Haven’t you already done that?”<
br />
  “Second place.” She sensed danger in these questions. He liked her, but he and Julianna always put power over friendship, and they had goals for her. She was being kicked out of Julianna’s house. Maybe. Maybe it was a reassignment. Who knew? It unsettled her, though. And now Jake was asking her questions when maybe she should be asking him questions. “I want the big dream to succeed. I want the city to be safe so people don’t kill themselves like Mom and Dad did. I want the wild places to get wild again, I want to see the earth repaired. I maybe even want to help with that. I want to matter. Doesn’t everyone?” She was rambling. She’d given up on the horse doodle so she started over, talking while she drew. “I want to know the things you know. How to be effective at politics. How to hide from the city’s systems, and how to work with them. How to negotiate.” She stopped for a moment, focusing on the curve of the animal’s neck. “Julianna says she’s no good, but I’ve seen her work a crowd. She’s incredible.” She glanced up to see Jake watching her carefully. She was used to him being the one distracted by paper notes, and now they had changed places.

  He stood and circled the long table slowly, talking as he went. “Julianna broke her heart over and over on the world. It sprawled then, you know. People everywhere. Everywhere. There were almost no roadless places, almost no truly wild places. We were destroying everything and most people didn’t care. They played games and they danced and they ate richly fed cows and pigs fattened in pens and they traveled. They beat each other up for religious and racial difference, and for differences smaller than that. We were still on oil then, a lot of us. The feds had power.” Jake paused, turned, started walking the other way. “Julianna saw the way to keep humanity safe was to scrape most of them off the land. I agreed. It seemed harsh. Hell, it was harsh. We failed, and failed, and failed. But then we didn’t. What do you care about enough to fail at over and over?”

  She stared at him, blinking. “Lou. Saving Lou. But I’m not going to fail.”

  He kept coming at her verbally, leaning on her with words. “What will you do if you can’t save her? You might not be able to, you know. You might make a mistake, or it might be out of your hands. What will you do if she dies? What will you do if she’s hurt? Is taking care of someone you can’t protect your biggest goal?”