by Hodge, Brian
He could almost see himself talking to her like she was one of his grown-up daughters. Even his wife.
He wasn’t used to change. It reminded him of the heavens cracking. But Naja would have been curious. So would Cari. Maybe it was Naja’s ghost he was feeling, pushing him to this woman, encouraging him to let the past go and move on to a new life.
There were no ghosts, he told himself. Only monsters.
He crossed his leg, pursed his lips, jotted down notes.
He noticed that the path her answers took steered her clear of any connection with the missing man. He brought her back to the Orphanages, where she might have known the missing man. All truths had their roots hidden in the past.
The Orphanages were crowded, she explained, though not as large as the first days after the Turning. Even if they’d come from the same house, they wouldn’t have come into contact. Breeders were kept separated from the others, to spare the children they carried for as long as possible.
He picked up the hitch in her voice, subtle, perhaps false. More likely, she was putting up a brave front. She’d touched on the reasons for her own exile.
He expected signs of her wound to inspire sympathy. But distant cannons boomed, older instincts stood their ground. She wasn’t family. A cold, dusty crater stood in the place where he’d grieved what he lost. He was surprised, and relieved, to discover that he didn’t care. The role of Head Investigator felt as comfortable as an old coat.
Still, her vulnerability made him hard. He couldn’t help returning to the question of what she’d taste like.
She forged on, as if she were explaining the mysteries of adult life to a child. Without prompting, she focused on the tedious discipline inside the Orphanages, without freedom to socialize beyond a circle of fellow-laborers. Yes, there were laws. Security. Executions. But there was also the intimacy of one’s circle, and safety. There were the treasures saved, the legacies of the past preserved.
He couldn’t tell if the woman was remembering, in her telling, that it was the survivors and their provisional government who’d abandoned the children to the fate they found in the Orphanages, or if she was reacting to the emotional distance between them. But as she continued, an edge sharpened her words, and she nearly spat out her encounters with her many lovers, all of them assigned, and how she’d performed her duty diligently to birth many orphans and keep the ranks filled.
He wanted to know how many children she had, and why she called them orphans. But he was true to his work. He brought her back to the missing man, and opportunities she might have had to meet him.
Yes, she’d spent time in the gangs. But she’d been returned to her old role when needed. She denied ever seeing the missing man in the ruins. No, Orphanages rarely traded or cooperated, so there’d been no chance for them to meet. For their immunity from the consequences of crowds, Orphanages had made a different bargain than the survivors’ provisional government. They had chosen to each stand alone in the shelters they’d carved out of the world.
“Survival’s a small and precious package everyone holds close to their chest, without sharing,” she said.
He asked her to repeat what she’d said, and wrote down the line.
After he’d exhausted the possibilities of her connections to the missing man, he let the woman talk about her time with the mining gangs, the warmth and intimacy of the orphans’ tongue, and why the ones who wore sackcloth never learned any other. She needed to wander through her memories, to tell him things about herself and her world. He understood. Relaxed, she might let something important slip.
He made separate notes to file with Security. Though the details she revealed were new to him, he realized they were probably well known by his superiors. Of course. He was a government worker, he knew the culture. Rumors kept the peace better than truth. They were the campaign advertisements for Stability in the elections. They sharpened survival skills, gave meaning to the government’s actions. Facts were dangerous. Like truth. Still, the notes would demonstrate his loyal initiative, and that never hurt.
Her mystery fell away as she let him see the stripped and weathered bones of her old life. She became just another shell of a person trying to find a place in what was left of the world. There was too much vulnerability, hardly any strength. His erection softened.
But as his interest faded, the sense of a trap slowly closing returned. He took deeper breaths, as if the air had thinned.
Despite the lullaby of her voice, the woman was not frightened or intimidated by him, or by Security. Her ease outside with the orphans, and in the Ministry with her job, the rituals of the flag and her dealing with Security, proved she was not lost. His questions drowned in the flood of her answers. She was not a shell.
The interview had slipped from his control. The woman might be deliberately, or unconsciously, hiding what he needed to know.
The possibility that he’d been led to her as part of a test made his shoulder jump as if he’d been touched unexpectedly. He covered up the motion with a stretch of his arm.
He needed to reach into her, grab hold of something, and squeeze.
“So why did you leave?” Marican asked, cutting off rambling reminisces of her time with an orphan gang designed, he suspected, to reassure him that she’d crossed paths with more survivors working as miners than other orphans in the ruins.
He refused to make eye-contact, allowed himself to appear distracted by note-taking. But the momentary silence told him he didn’t need a desk or an office to intimidate.
“My time was up.”
“And what does that mean?”
“About the same out here as it does in an Orphanage.”
Marican shifted in his seat. His heart beat picked up. He’d breached another wall in her defenses. “This missing man, he would have left because his time was up, too?”
“Maybe. But it sounds like he had ambitions. They don’t like ambition in the Orphanages. He probably left when he was young. Very young.”
“Before he had to wear a hood over his head.”
“Not everyone has to, you know.”
“The ones who stay with us can’t.”
“Of course.”
He basked in the warmth of their intimacy, though remained detached. He’d rarely experienced such closeness with subjects, and then, only during interrogations. “But you believe he’s been on this side for a while.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m confirming the background he reported to us. He only entered our rolls recently when he applied for licenses and permits. That’s how we found out he’s missing.”
“Security checks.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been around you for a while, too.”
“Orphan gangs in ruins don’t count. This does,” he said, with a wave of the hand indicating the Ministry, and all that it protected.
Marican waited for her to come back, but realized he hadn’t left her anywhere to go. There was more to be learned. He considered ways to make her bleed from old wounds.
“So, those kids outside, they’re yours?” He nearly smiled when she stiffened.
“No, of course not,” she said, not letting her gaze waver from his. “Mine were taken away. I’ve never met them. Wouldn’t know them if I did.” She blinked, and then her expression hardened. “I just told you all of that.”
He decided to cross the line she’d drawn. “You’re dead to your own children?”
She watched him, as if through steel bars. “That’s what they’re taught. And it’s the truth, most times. Not many mothers survive, or stay, as long as I did. Otherwise they wouldn’t still be called Orphanages, would they?”
“You weren’t born in one.”
“No. I was ten at the Turning.”
“Are there many of you from back then left, with or without sackcloths?”
“No, there aren’t.”
“Life is hard over there.”
“It’s not easy, here.”
> “Why didn’t you run away sooner? Join the Provisional Government? I had a clerk when I started, she was nine.”
“Her parents were alive. Here. You wouldn’t protect the rest of us.”
He didn’t bother to respond with ‘couldn’t.’ “Were you protecting someone?”
“Are you still investigating your missing man?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very thorough.”
“We usually don’t investigate missing refugees. I don’t have much experience with…your kind. I need to understand you so I know where to look for him.”
“Survivors and their children are your Bureau’s priority, not orphans.”
“Of course not. All citizens are treated equally.”
“I’m sorry you’re stuck with this case. Somebody must not like you.”
The ceiling groaned. Dust drifted down like fine snow.
Marican stood, containing the instinct to bolt. Maybe he’d been on to something, but clearly, it was time to move on. “You have to get back to work. I’d like for us to go the Markets later—”
“Why not right now? This is an investigation, isn’t it? So I can be excused from my work. I don’t want to be considered uncooperative.”
Marican froze in place next to the chair while she stormed past him, removed the signal flags, grabbed her leather jacket and took a few steps out into the hall before stopping and calling back, “Well?”
He’d forgotten how fast young people were. Impulsive. That’s why there were so few of them. Maybe, instead of letting her go, he was supposed to use that part of her. He picked up the folder, considered going back to his office. There was tea to be made, a fire to start in the stove. At the least, he should pick up his jacket and patchwork quilt cloth bag.
“There’s a sweater in the closet,” she said. “I took it from one of the empty offices. Old scavenging habit.”
The ceiling stopped shifting.
He glanced up.
“You’re all so afraid,” she called back to him.
“Aren’t you?”
She didn’t answer.
She was only an orphan. He was the Head Investigator for the provisional government. He could let her run out the leash to see where she’d take them.
He picked up the sweater and followed her out, resolving to send the Bureau Chief a memo excusing the orphan from her post when he returned.
“Do I remind you of someone?” she asked as they made their way through Ministry corridors, a pair requiring special consideration by others. She followed his lead through the subtleties of the spacing dance in the Ministry corridors, responding to his hand on her elbow, then her back, the gentlest of pushes, a light change of pressure. The cadence of their steps fell into synch.
Naja had loved to dance, and even after the kids they’d continued taking lessons, going beyond ballroom to the lively music and passionate patterns of meringue, tango. It had kept their spark alive in the storm of the time’s distractions. Nobody danced, anymore.
Marican nodded. “My wife. Am I that obvious?”
“We’re all looking for something. By the way, my name is Oria. We do have names. Or did you forget it after you checked my file, Marican?”
The sound of his name startled him. He’d forgotten that he’d introduced himself to her. “Sorry. I didn’t know it. Never saw your file.”
She looked down, avoiding eye contact and reminding him there was another dance they’d started. “What kind of name is that?” he asked, to get back on the job.
“A funny one.” She wrinkled her nose, turned away.
“Your parents had a sense of humor?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You forgot your mom and dad?” He slowed, staring at her, chilled by how she could recall Orphanage life so clearly, and yet forget her parents.
“I remember the Turning. Do you?”
He couldn’t make himself be heard through the fog crawling over the landscape of his memories. Muscles twitched in his legs, as if they needed to move him in a different kind of dance.
“We kept a lot of things alive, back then. Especially at the beginning. We were always talking. We had pictures. A doll, or a ring. A little electronic game that was never going to work again.” Her concentration wavered. “Not anymore. Not for a while. Not even names. All we have is each other.”
They passed through the gate one at a time. Marican stopped, turned to a guard and handed him the folder with instructions to have it back on his desk. He hurried after Oria before the surprised guard could respond. He was certain she’d noticed. It was important to make that kind of impression.
An ash rain drifted over them as they walked through the remains of the old business district, and they both tied kerchiefs over their faces to breathe. The sweater was dusty, and smelled faintly of another man.
Smoke wisps, rising from underground vents and the occasional shop furnace, dissipated in the silent downfall. A dark shape billowed and darted out of a broken alley, accompanied by an erratic, snapping sound. Marican froze, shivered, until he recognized his terror had seized on an old, black plastic bag billowing and crawling on the ground, caught in a breeze.
Oria had moved on, her attention focused on a half-dozen dim figures lined up on a building ledge above them, nearly invisible. When he caught up to her, she started at his touch. The figures were gone by the time he looked up, again.
The faint, burnt chemical smell from still smoldering underground fires permeated the air as they entered the market’s roughly leveled fields, adding bite to the aroma from nearby bubbling stew pots.
They brushed off ash as clouds parted, revealing the streaked grey sky that substituted for the old blue. The sky was empty. It grew colder, as if heat had fled through an open window.
“Vote for Change, or things stay the same,” a voice shouted as they walked the wide, informal boulevard of ruin dividing the market field.
“Who wins?” Oria asked, turning her head left and right, taking in the widely separated booths and the single and doubled souls drifting between them.
“Whoever rules.”
Half the vendors had re-settled from Orphanages over the years. Though licensed, they obviously hadn’t secured all their goods from sanctioned growers, craftsmen and miners. But policing trade was not his Bureau’s responsibility. Everyone from the Ministry came here, and no one complained. Everyone did their best to survive, each in their own world.
He led her first to the popular food stalls fronting the rest of the city, describing the missing man to his favorite cooks and grocers over bins of insects, fresh and dead, roots, fungi, seasoning derived from diluted Wilderness poisons, stews warming his face with redolent mist rising from clumps of meat he’d never name. The string of polite denials took him to the next layer of merchants, most dealing with clothes, tools, fuel-burning stoves and other necessities, newly made or recovered from the city, until he reached those who mixed the odd with the coveted, from feathers to mirrors, glasses to pornography, searching to satisfy both practical and personal appetites.
“Do you recognize any orphans?” he asked Oria.
“No.”
“Did you think any of them were lying about knowing my missing man?”
She looked over at the Market across the divide, then further off, where the old highways divided city from Wilderness. “Why would they tell you the truth?”
She walked purposefully toward the further reaches of the marketplace, closer to Wilderness than the inhabited parts of the city. He’d never had a reason to go that far out; no one respectable did. There was nothing worth buying. But he followed, bearing the weight of his responsibilities to the Ministry on his shoulders.
Stalls huddled dangerously close to one another in clusters, like villages scattered across a desolate land. There were fewer shoppers, hardly any who looked like they were contributing to the provisional government’s rebuilding programs. They seemed less attentive to the rule of three, as did Oria.
A few sang, as much to themselves as to attract customers, in languages Marican didn’t understand. Their voices were cracked and worn, but their shoulders swayed, heads gently bobbed, to the rhythms of forgotten homelands. He’d heard the tunes before, when the wind carried voices to the rest of the city. The subdued passion and regret in their gentle melodies always made him think of Camille. She’d had a habit of joining any melody she heard, then echoing phrases with improvisational answers, as if she were conversing with the music.
Perhaps, in this world, she would have grown up to be one of the night singers, listening and responding to wails and screams, the distant, booming thunder, the small and terrible clicks and rattles outside doors and windows. She might have told him what all those sounds meant, perhaps even calmed his fears over the Turning’s echoes. At least, he would have heard her voice.
He looked beyond the last of the sellers, to the thin and broken wall of ruins that rose to mark the city’s limits, on the other side of highway clogged with the husks of crumbling cars and trucks. A thick, reddish coat of vegetation, seeded by vent clouds and adapted to the gloomy sky, softened the land’s contours. A wave appeared suddenly near the borderland, as if a subterranean current had breached the surface. It crashed against rock and ruin, raising a small cloud of dust. Marican fought off a flutter of disorientation.
A breeze. That’s all.
“Yes, I knew her, years ago,” she said, cocking her head at a younger woman, her face scarred, grey-brown hair half fallen out, selling a variety of flora and fauna still reeking of vent gases released in hissing jets, like lava escaping the Earth’s bowels through underwater chimneys. “And her, too,” she said, nodding to a one-legged, stick-like woman leaning over a table filled with glass and metal trinkets, staring at her treasures without looking up to call out to potential customers. “I always wondered what happened. I’m glad she made it out.”