Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

“That’s odd.”

  His companion nodded. “Yes, especially considering he was dead when he did it.” At Gerald’s shocked expression, the man said, “He was killed in the rioting earlier.”

  Gerald straightened up and his lips parted. “Ah… so that’s it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “My brother was working with Harcourt,” he said and even as he thought it he felt himself grow angry. “He’s a bloody anarchist and I vouched for him! He swore he would…” He was too angry to finish the sentence. He grabbed at the back of his head and dug his nails into the skin. “That son of a bitch. That goddamn son of a bitch!” His chest was heaving. He was either on the point of exploding or collapsing.

  His companion laid a hand on his shoulder but there was nothing appropriate to say. He lingered only a moment before he rose and went back below deck. Gerald remained where he was. He shivered but welcomed the punishment. It was less than would befall him once official reprimands were handed out. My own brother, he thought, deflated, his shoulders slumping and his head falling down until his chin touched his chest. My own brother assassinated the President!

  ***

  In the Civil Guard station Alistair found half a dozen rebels. Three were taking stock of the contents, another was seated at a computer station while two others stood over him, giving instructions. He froze when he recognized one of the men at the computer. His pale skin and his raven black hair, together with the sharp features of his face, were distinct and instantly recognizable. He was one of the men who accosted him the night of the Debate.

  “So if it ever reads over sixty seven you’ll have to use the other program,” the pale man was saying, and as he finished he glanced up and saw Alistair. He too froze for an instant but then relaxed, looking back down at the young man sitting at the computer.

  “Tom isn’t it?” asked Alistair as he approached them.

  The man seated at the station stopped and looked up, noticing the tenseness. The other who was standing, a larger man of middle age with reddish brown hair and beard starting to be overtaken by silver, just stared at Alistair.

  “Tom was my partner,” replied the one with pale skin, his voice as flat and stoic as on the night they met. “But it’s nice to be remembered.”

  “You can probably imagine my surprise to find you here.”

  “You were a marine, weren’t you?”

  Alistair nodded.

  “Well, I was a Civil Guard.”

  “But we’re both on the same side now.” Alistair grinned without humor.

  “Welcome aboard, Alistair” the man next to the pale one greeted him, though it felt more like an attempt to establish pecking order. “I’m Clement and this is Cain. The pleasure’s ours.”

  “You knew my name?”

  “We did.”

  “But I didn’t know yours.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Gentlemen, there’s an excellent reason for that. Don’t condescend to welcome me into my own home.” Alistair’s hard, direct gaze was met with a pair of set jaws and narrowed eyes. “Brad Stanson is on his way to the palace larder. He requires your assistance down there. Feel free to recruit some help along the way… you’ve got some heavy lifting to do.”

  Clement’s salute was as respectful as if he had spit, and Cain didn’t bother with the formality at all. The young man at the computer, who had stared at the confrontation, now avoided Alistair’s gaze. Unfortunately, there was nothing for him to do so a second later he stood.

  “Perhaps I should help in the larder,” he mumbled.

  “Have a seat,” Alistair suggested with a heavy hand on his shoulder. “What’s your name?”

  “Dave.”

  “Dave, I need you to help me with something.”

  Reaching into a pocket, Alistair produced a rolled strip of leather. When he unrolled it he revealed a piece of bloodstained cloth.

  “I need an ID on the DNA in this blood.”

  Dave nodded and took the proffered cloth, rising from his chair and leading Alistair to a machine in the back corner of the offices. He laid the cloth down flat on the machine’s transparent top and positioned what appeared to be a lamp over it, then pressed a button on the side and a red light from the lamp flashed once. He moved to examine a monitor and Alistair peered over his shoulder. There was a flashing code right above a list of names, including his own. The others he did not recognize.

  “We got DNA from six subjects,” Dave reported. “Including you. I don’t know what X-5 means but that’s the blood’s owner.”

  “It means he works for the State and we need a special code to see his identity.”

  “Do we have the code?”

  “We do not.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t help,” said Dave, taking the strip of cloth and holding it out for Alistair.

  “Not done just yet. Come with me.” Alistair led Dave to another machine nearby. This one was box shaped like the first but had a small door on the front and on top, instead of a monitor, a 3D display. On the right side there was a seat and a computer with its own smaller 3D display. “Can you operate this?”

  “Probably.”

  “Good. It’s a DNA decoder. It can read a DNA sequence of any sort and project a probable image of the subject on the monitor. But it takes a while.”

  “How long?”

  “Maybe a few hours and I need to leave. You stay here and get me an image of this guy.” So saying he opened the door and placed the cloth on a small stand inside. Then he closed the door and pressed the ignition.

  Dave sat down at the computer and switched on the monitor, taking a second to read the prompts.

  “What assumptions?” he asked, his fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “Healthy, adequately fed from infancy on. Active lifestyle, no serious diseases. Climate… I don’t know. We’ll assume he grew up in a temperate climate… it shouldn’t matter too much. He’s not overweight—”

  “Diet?”

  “Just give him a standard Aldran diet.”

  “Age?”

  “Forty cycles. Just a guess. When it’s finished give me some alternatives too.”

  Dave finished typing and the scanner ran, spilling a tidal wave of technical readouts onto the 3D display.

  “Human,” said Dave after a moment of study. On the 3D monitor on top of the machine a generic and featureless humanoid shape in pure white appeared. “Male,” he said a moment later as the humanoid shape grew broader shoulders, greater musculature and a phallus. “Caucasian… trace of American Indigenous.” The white became a peach color and the skull shape was altered to reflect the new information.

  Alistair patted Dave on both shoulders. “Stay with it. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  “Are you going after the resistance?” asked Dave, turning in the chair to look at Alistair. “There are some groups still fighting—”

  “I’m going to see my parents. I’ll see you when I get back.”

  Chapter 36

  When Alistair left the Mayor’s Palace the sun was nearing the horizon. Someone had thought to douse the flames of the wrecked tanks. There were a few pedestrians about but they moved with less energy than before, and the pockets of resistance were growing fewer in number. Only one distinct gunfight could he hear, and its desultory snap and crackle was a long way off in the eastern part of the city. It could have been mistaken for a distant fireworks display.

  He headed due south and found himself in an empty part of the city quite untouched by the day’s battle. Absent were the craters where shells hit and exploded, the trails of pockmarks left by bullets on walls, the black smudges where fire had burned. Instead, there were the boarded windows, the foundational cracks in abandoned buildings, the layers of accumulated filth.

  There was little wind but as the sun sank a small breeze grew. He tucked his nose under the collar of his coat and his gloved hands into his coat pockets. Oblivious to the world around him, he was likely saved by the vacancy of the
area. In a more trafficked street, the footsteps behind him would not have caught his attention.

  He turned to see two masked men some yards back. There was a noticeable break in their strides when Alistair turned to regard them. They exchanged glances and he tensed his muscles. When one of the men reached behind his back, Alistair did not wait to see what he was going after.

  With no alley nearby, he delivered a powerful kick to a front door which burst inward. A shot rang out as he jumped across the threshold and into the house. His forceful leap carried him into a small foyer and, belly on the floor, into the far wall. He threw up his hands to cushion the impact but still received a good knock on the forehead. With no time to clear his head, he dashed to his right through a dining room and kitchen and into a back living room. Grabbing a chair from the corner of the apparently occupied house, he shattered a back window and jumped through. He heard the simultaneous noises of his clothing tearing on a shard of glass and the footsteps of the assassins gaining entrance to the foyer.

  The small backyard was contained by a rusted chain link fence and was bordered by other backyards. Alistair moved right and tried to hurdle the fence, but the soft snowy ground did not provide an ideal launching pad and his feet caught the top as he passed over, sending him headfirst into the snow on the other side. Back on his feet in a flash, he doubled back and came to the street where he first sensed his assailants, darting across it and between two houses on the other side. Just as he passed between them, another shot rang out and the bullet passed through a window. Racing into another backyard, and this time placing his left hand on the fence top, he jumped over another chain link fence into another backyard. He cut left, then right, taking a jagged path until he emerged onto another street parallel to the first.

  He cut south to move another house over, and then again passed into a backyard, this time without being shot at. There’s no one in the city who can catch me on foot, he thought, as much to give himself courage as anything. He reached the next street over, but one of the assailants anticipated his zigzag pattern and, from the other side of the street, fired off a round at him only an instant after he ducked back behind a house.

  “He’s going south!” the man yelled as the ex marine kicked out a back window and entered yet another home, this one clearly abandoned.

  He raced to the front and came out the main door, dashed across the street and repeated the process, thus avoiding the long open lanes of side yards. Finally coming to a street running diagonally alongside a small ravine, he turned southwest, hearing a belated shot ring out as he flashed across the first open lane. Spying a window whose glass was removed, he went to the house preceding it, kicked in its front door and then hauled himself inside the open window.

  Once he dropped into the cold empty home, he lay for just a moment to pacify his aching legs before he rose and, finding the stairs, ascended to the second story and found a room with a view to the street in front. He surveyed the ground below, noting the snow around the houses was well enough trodden that he had not left a distinct path. He retrieved his firearm from the under the layers of his winter clothing and loaded the magazine with his few remaining rounds. A moment later, the men emerged onto the diagonal street from different side yards, each pointing a gun. They immediately searched the ravine and began to sweep the area, moving southwest towards Alistair’s position. Eventually, they approached the broken front door. Alistair, not wanting to give away his position, elected not to fire.

  A minute passed and he wiped away from the window the frozen condensation from his breath. Another passed and the assailants reemerged from the side yard and onto the street. They scanned the area again but less thoroughly. After a brief exchange of words they holstered their weapons and headed northeast. Alistair watched them until they were out of sight, waited another couple minutes and crept out of his hideout, his muscles quivering when relief chased the adrenaline away.

  A half hour later, he was ascending the stairs in his parents’ apartment building. He saw no one and heard no sound. When no one answered his knock at the door, he let himself in with his key, feeling a growing worry. After stripping off his winter apparel and dumping it on the couch, he heard footsteps in the hallway. Gripping his firearm, he stepped to the kitchen’s entrance and waited for the door to open, breathing a sigh of relief when Nigel and Mary entered. Their haggard and fatigued faces came to life when they saw their son, and Mary rushed to hug him.

  “Alistair, we couldn’t find any of you,” she sobbed as she buried her face in her son’s chest.

  “Do you know where Gerald is?” his father asked, trying to find a part of Alistair he could embrace which his wife had not already claimed. He settled for an affectionate grip on the shoulder.

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “We can’t get through to Katherine either,” said Mary, finally pulling away from him but still grasping his upper arms.

  “All communication is down,” Nigel confirmed.

  “There’s no reason to worry about Katherine,” said Alistair. “She’s in Rendral… about the safest place on the planet right now.”

  “And Gerald?” his mother asked.

  “Gerald will be fine.”

  Nigel studied his son a moment and then sighed. “So how mixed up in this are you?”

  “I was one of the ringleaders.”

  “Was?”

  Alistair nodded. “Was.”

  ***

  Katherine Ashley was one of dozens in the Great Hall of the Civil Palace in the heart of Rendral, Aldra’s capital and largest city. The principally marble hall ran north/south, parallel to the Palace proper, and was open to the elements on its north and south sides. Its eastern façade was checkered with vibrant stain glass windows, all of which were cracked open to admit the warm breeze that, even days after her arrival, she was still thrilled to feel envelope her. The ceiling, decorated with one large mural of the first landing on Aldra and the planting of what would become the Aldran flag, was fifty yards overhead, and the rectangular room alone could have accommodated the entire first floor of the Mayor’s Palace of Arcarius. Statues placed in an ordered, rectangular pattern lined the floor of the hall, each twenty yards from its neighbors, and audiphones were installed on the southern wall. As the myriad bureaucrats, Civil Guard, politicians and all other manner of visitor passed by, she stood at one of the audiphones with the receiver in hand.

  “Are Mom and Dad still there?” she asked, stress making her voice quaver.

  “I’m sure they’re fine… but yes, they’re in the city.”

  “What about Alistair?”

  There was a pause on the other end.

  “I haven’t seen him but I think he got out during the fighting.”

  “If you haven’t seen him why do you think that?”

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine, Kath. And I’m fine. And none of the fighting was near Mom and Dad’s.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “We left on a boat. We were waiting around for a while to see how it turned out but then we made for the main continent. Right now we’re in a small town east of Avon.”

  Katherine sighed and rubbed her knuckles against her forehead. “Will you be going back soon?”

  “The talk is the army is going to be sent in soon. I’ll be back when the city’s secured. Keep trying to call Mom and Dad in the meantime.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Phone use is restricted right now.”

  “I know. God, Kath, I haven’t talked to you since you left. Is everything going well?”

  “The project is great… I don’t give a damn about that right now but it’s going great.”

  “Listen, you can’t do anything about this in Rendral. You can either worry yourself sick or think positive. There’s no reason to think anything bad… there’s thousands of people in Arcarius and about a hundred got killed today.”

  Katherine glanced at the timer on the audiphone. “Listen, Gerald, I’m almost out of time
. Keep safe.” The clock neared zero so she rushed her last words. “We’re running a big experiment next week, when I’m done I’ll head back for—”

  “Kath, don’t let this—”

  The phone clicked and the call was cut off. Feeling alone and homesick, Katherine dropped the receiver back in its slot and, barely managing to raise her feet off the polished marble floor, listlessly crossed the Great Hall to the Palace’s entrance.

  ***

  “… but I don’t think they’re planning on moving out,” said Mary as she whisked through the room, taking empty cups and dishes with her to the kitchen. “But we can’t let that stop us. Every time there’s a problem here we get left without heat or food or something else. And your father’s joints get worse every winter.”

  Alistair turned his attention from the window and the setting sun and looked sharply at his father. “Are your joints hurting, Dad?”

  Nigel dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “No more than anyone else’s my age.”

  Mary swept back into the living room and began to replace the pottery and photos on the coffee table. “Don’t listen to him. He needs warmer weather. Now that the restaurant was taken from us I don’t see any reason to stay here. Katherine’s in Rendral, we could go there. Or any place warmer than here.”

  “Gerald has a job here—” Nigel began.

  “Gerald can put in for a transfer,” said Mary with a firm tone as she plopped down on the couch next to her husband.

  “And that’s what we’re going to have to do if we want to leave,” Nigel reminded her. “Get a permit.”

  “Oh, we’ll get a permit. Goodness sakes. How can they keep an old couple here in the north? It’s not as if we’re a part of the war effort. Alistair, they’ll let us move if we want to, won’t they?”

  “I’m sure Gerald could see to it if there were any problems. Mom, when you were a kid you didn’t have to put in a transfer request when you wanted to move, did you?” Mary shook her head. “Things are different now,” Nigel said softly.

  “Yeah, they’re different now. If what you want doesn’t fit in with the State’s vision, then your plans have to change.” His anger built as he spoke. “Everything else, the propaganda, the brainwashing, the slogans, the bureaucracy… it all grows out of one central fact: someone wants to impose on everyone else, and Dad’s joints have to ache because of it.”