IGMS Issue 6

by IGMS

  But it was an act. I was pretending to be nice. She saw through me. She knew what I really was. A predator.

  Peter leaned against a tree. Felt the bark pressing against his back through the shirt.

  They are right about me. They should hate me and fear me. They should reject me and exclude me. I don't belong among humans.

  He slid very slowly down the trunk. The bark grabbed at his shirt and pulled it up as he slid down, and the bare skin of his back scraped against the tree and it hurt and he kept doing it because he wanted to hurt. He deserved to hurt.

  I didn't want to hurt anybody, he told himself. As soon as I realized how much pain the squirrel felt, I stopped. And I never did it again. Whatever I am, that's not who I want to be. That must count for something.

  What was I doing, if I didn't enjoy causing pain? Was it all just so I could show Valentine? Scare her? Sicken her?

  It wasn't about Valentine. That had been an afterthought. No, it was something I wanted to do with the squirrel. To the squirrel. Get from the squirrel.

  He had read a lot of psychology, more for the amusement value than anything else. Once you stepped outside the area of drug therapy for defective brains, psychology seemed indistinguishable from religion to him, and he had no use for either.

  But now he tried to imagine: What would a talk therapist say about why I took the skin off living squirrels and opened their thoraces so I could see their beating hearts?

  Symbolic: Because I had no heart, I needed to see one. No, because I was unloved I doubted that people had hearts and ...

  That was too silly even for this game.

  It wasn't about the beating heart. It was about taking control of it. That's what a good therapist would say. I was seeking control because I feel powerless.

  And sitting there on the ground, his back stinging from having scraped against bark, he knew he was on to something. It was about power. It was always about power.

  It's not that they loved Ender, it's that their love gave him so much power over them. He was oblivious to it. He couldn't see how they shaped their lives around him, always oriented to him -- and away from me. I didn't want their love, I wanted the power that Ender had, the ability to shape things the way he wanted them. I could never do it. I could never get a soul to act the way I wanted.

  He found himself getting so excited he wanted to cavort like a madman. Instead he stayed on the leafy forest floor and traced designs with his finger on the bare ground of the squirrel's grave. A circle -- himself -- all by himself. No connections. Power comes from getting other people to do things your way. Power comes from obedience.

  And how do you get obedience? Peter had always tried to get it by pushing, by demanding, by grabbing. He had let his hunger for power show.

  And it's not as if that couldn't work. There had been plenty of coercive dictators in the history of the world. They got their way by creating fear in the hearts of others. They were willing to kill anyone that got in their way. And so the others complied. Did what they were told.

  But nothing those men created outlasted them. As soon as they died or fell from power, or their dynasty ended, their statues and pictures were torn down or flung onto the fire.

  It was the ones who were loved who were the most successful. Hitler terrorized people, yes, but there was more to him than that. He was also worshiped -- not by everybody, but by many. How did he do that? Those eyes, always so sad, looking like he was on the verge of weeping. Or was it the sternness of his face? Was he a father figure, the judge, and they looked to him for approval and he gave it to them: You are the great ones, you Germans, you deserve better, I judge you and find you worthy!

  But Hitler's empire didn't last, either. It was too destructive, what he did with his power. He tore things down, he built nothing.

  Augustus, thought Peter. He's the one. Started out as the frail, conniving, brilliant, ambitious, and very young Octavian. Caesar's heir -- even if he had to destroy Caesar's friends to climb into the martyred hero's chair. Octavian was careful that he cast himself, not as a brutally ambitious warrior, but as the man who would end wars and save the Roman world. He allowed them to call him by the old-fashioned honorific "Augustus," but he preferred the title "first citizen." Princeps. Prince.

  It didn't matter what they called him. Whatever word they used would come to mean what they knew he was: the rightful ruler.

  It was possible for most Romans to believe that the Republic still existed, while Augustus was alive. He understood how civilization worked. He tried to imbue Roman society with the stern virtues that had created their greatness in the first place.

  He gave them peace. And it lasted.

  But how did he do it? When the war began he was nothing. Nobody tagged him as a great general -- and he wasn't one, not really. His power came from convincing people that he truly had their best interests at heart -- that all he cared about was restoring Rome to peace and prosperity.

  That's what I haven't been able to do, thought Peter. I haven't been able to convince a living soul that I care about anybody but me. That there's any ideal that I would sacrifice to serve. Octavian became Augustus because he convinced people that his ambition was never for himself.

  And then, when he got power, he continued to act out that script. He really did use his power for the general good of the empire. Not perfectly, certainly -- I could do better than he did -- but in the main he succeeded. Things were better for almost everyone because of his victory, and he governed well.

  I cannot get power and control with my stone and my scalpel. No matter what I did to the squirrels, they ended up dead, and from that moment on I had no power over them.

  Power flows to the one who convinces everyone that by obeying him, their own lives will be better.

  And in that moment he set aside the religion of talk therapy and took on the religion of his parents. "Whoever would be greatest among you, let him be the servant of all." This was not niceness, what Jesus was saying. It was almost Machiavellian in its forthright deviousness. If you want to be the greatest, to have real power, then you must convince everyone that you serve them. And here's the clincher: For it to last, you really have to do it. So even if you're pretending to care about people, you can never stop pretending, and you have to deliver on the promise. So, in the end, you really are the "servant of all."

  I finally get it, Jesus, said Peter silently. What you said to that other Peter, Simon Peter: If you love me, feed my sheep. If you want my power, then convince the sheep that you care about them more than you care about yourself.

  But I don't care about them.

  But if I act as if I care, and devote my whole life to doing what really will make them happy and give them peace and prosperity, then what does it matter that my deepest motive was to make myself master of the world? If the world I rule is happier and better off because I rule it, and my hand sits lightly on the reins of power and few directly feel the tug of my power, then I can build something that will outlast me.

  He had the perfect people to practice on.

  The next day, the last day before Christmas, he redid all his Christmas gifts.

  So on Christmas morning, while he still gave Father and Mother and Valentine the gifts he had bought for them, he accompanied them with something else.

  He wrote them each a letter. To Father, he wrote of how much it meant to him that he had stood by Peter when the teachers were failing him in school. "I thought I was alone," he said, "but then you stood with me. That was worth more than any grade. You could have rebuked me and forced me to comply with them; instead you gave my work respect and stood beside me against the world. That's the man I want to become: That's the man you are."

  Father's eyes got all teary when he read it. He refused to read the letter aloud or show it to anyone else. "It's between Peter and me," he said gruffly.

  To Valentine, Peter wrote about how well she had cared for Ender. How she had protected him. "It made me angry at the time, because I w
as so childish I thought that you had chosen sides in a war, and I was the one you rejected. But I see now that I was completely wrong. Instead, you stood for peace and against war; all I had to do was stop fighting for your love, and I would have had it. It was the fighting that built the wall between us. I should have seen that the love was in your nature. It was who you are, and if I had only let you, the same kindness you showed Ender could have been mine."

  She looked up from the letter with suspicious eyes. But of course he couldn't win her over with a single letter. She had seen most of his lies; he had told her the truth behind too many of them for her to take anything he said or wrote at face value. It would take time, with Valentine. But at least she didn't jeer at the letter. That was a step.

  To Mother, Peter wrote nothing. He had made a collage of pictures of Ender from the computer archive, and framed the resulting art with a single nickel in the middle. Not a modern five-dollar piece, but one of the old nickels -- it was the one purchase he had had to make on the day of Christmas Eve, but it wasn't even expensive, the coin dealer had only charged him fifteen bucks for it. The frame was more expensive.

  With the framed picture, he had included only the briefest note: A slip of paper on which he had written, "I miss him, too."

  Mother wept as she had wept over Ender's stocking. But in the midst of it, she came to Peter and hugged him and he knew that he was on the right track. He could do this thing.

  After New Year's, school began again, and Peter made a point of seeking out Bell at lunchtime. She was sitting at her regular table, with her regular friends, and when Peter came up and slid in between two of them and leaned on the table and looked searchingly in Bell's eyes, she was poised to wither him with her scorn.

  But he never took his eyes off her face and somehow that silenced her long enough for him to say, "I wanted to thank you, Bell. I understand now how offensive I was, as if I were placing myself above you."

  He ignored the other girls saying things like, "Bell's got herself a boyfriend" and "Robbing the cradle, Bell?" He kept his eyes on hers.

  "But you were wrong about what I wanted from you," said Peter. "I've seen who you are here at school. The way you're kind to other people, the way you create a haven for the people around you. You know how to be a friend. I wanted to have the gift you give to all of these." He indicated Bell's friends. "I went about it all wrong. I offended you when I never meant to. I just want you to know that what I felt for you was pure respect and admiration. You're a good person, Bell. And even when you were pushing me away, you still taught me some important things. Thank you for that."

  Without waiting for the slightest reply, he got up and walked away. Of course, nothing that he said was true. He hadn't noticed much about her except that she was pretty and actually tried to do well in school and if she was an unusually good friend to her friends, Peter would have had no way of knowing it. But he knew that what he said was the kind of thing people liked to think about themselves, and that none of her friends was likely to contradict him. Whether she deserved his admiration or not, she would now believe she had it -- the smartest kid in school admired her! -- and he had done it in a way that showed him to be humble. His guess was that she wouldn't be able to keep her mind off him now, that she would seek him out, that they would become friends, and that through her he would get the chance to play the same game with everyone she knew.

  Served her right, the priggish little bitch. Getting her to adore him and serve his interests completely -- that would be the best revenge for the way she scorned him in the library two days before Christmas.

  Lost and Found

  by David Lubar

  Artwork by Lance Card

  * * *

  "Hey, look at this," Dale said as he noticed the white square of folded cloth lying by the side entrance to the mall. "Someone lost a handkerchief."

  "Yuck," Kirby said. "Don't touch it."

  "No, it's not that kind." Dale bent down and picked up the handkerchief. "See, it's a fancy one." He pointed to the initials that were embroidered in one corner. The letters HCX, stitched in dark-red thread with lots of fancy loops and swirls, stood out against the bleached whiteness of the cloth.

  "What's that mean?" Kirby asked.

  "It's someone's name," Dale said.

  "Then what's that?" Kirby tapped the corner of the handkerchief.

  Dale looked below the initials. In much smaller letters, in the same red thread, he saw YFFI. "I don't know."

  "Yiffy?" Kirby said. "Yuhfie? Whyfee? How do you think you say it?"

  "Who cares? It's not important," Dale said. "But I'll bet we can find the owner. Maybe there's even a reward."

  "How are you going to do that?" Kirby asked. "Anybody could have dropped it."

  "Easy," Dale said. "The last name begins with an X. There can't be a whole lot of people with those initials. Let's go to my place and check the phone book."

  Kirby walked along next to Dale, chanting, "Yiffy, sniffy" for a block and a half before Dale smacked him and told him to stop.

  When they reached his house, Dale got the phone book from the drawer in the kitchen. Sure enough, there was less than a page of people with last names beginning with an X. This was going to be even easier than he'd thought.

  He ran his finger down the listings. "Here we go. Harold C. Xantini. He lives on Bowie Street. That's not far from here." Dale couldn't help grinning. He felt like one of those detectives he saw on TV shows.

  "Are you going to call him?"

  "No. Let's surprise him. I don't want to give him a chance to think."

  "About what?"

  "About my reward." Dale waited for Kirby to say they should share the reward, but Kirby didn't complain. Dale grabbed the handkerchief from the kitchen counter and set out toward Bowie Street.

  "Here we go," he said when they got there. "Number one eight three six." Dale paused, wondering if he'd made a mistake. The house looked abandoned.

  "I don't think anybody's there," Kirby said.

  "Let's knock." Dale went up and tapped on the door.

  Before he was ready for it, the door flew open. Dale jumped back.

  A man looked out. "Yes?" He was old and small and very wrinkled.

  "Mister Xantini?" Dale asked.

  "That's me," the man said.

  "Did you lose this?" Dale asked, holding out the handkerchief.

  "Oh my!" the man gasped, his face breaking into a grin of delight. "I thought I'd never see it again. It means so much that you brought it to me. Thank you. Thank you."

  Dale handed the handkerchief to the man.

  "Please, tell me how you found me," the man said. "It must be a miracle." He stepped back and opened the door wider. "A true miracle."

  "No big deal," Dale said, shaking his head. "It was easy."

  "Yeah," Kirby added. "No problem at all."

  "But how?" the man asked.

  "I used the phone book," Dale said. "You were the only one in it with those initials."

  "Did anyone help you?"

  "No," Dale said. "I figured it out all by myself."

  "So clever. So very clever. You certainly shall be rewarded. The man reached into his pocket. Then he frowned and walked across the room. "I must have left my wallet over here."

  Dale followed him. "Well, it's not really necessary," he said, though he didn't say it very loudly. In his mind, he was wondering what his reward might be. The man had mentioned a wallet -- so it would probably be cash.

  "We both brought it back," Kirby said.

  Dale shot him an angry look.

  "And you'll both be rewarded," the man said as he reached into the drawer. "Such clever boys."

  "So, what does YFFI stand for?" Dale asked "That's the only part I couldn't figure out."

  "You fell for it," the man said.

  "What?" Dale asked, not understanding.

  "You," the man said, "fell," he added, removing his hand from the drawer, "for," he raised the knife, "it," he finished, le
aping forward.

  The knife fell. Dale Fell. Kirby fell. A drop of blood fell on the handkerchief. But the man didn't mind. He had plenty more.

  This is Only a Test

  by David Lubar

  Artwork by Lance Card

  * * *

  Kyle shifted his body slightly, which was no easy task, considering the assortment of casts and bandages that covered him like some sort of grade-school science-fair mummy. He groaned. Then he grinned. At least, the expression that appeared on the visible portions of his lips came close to resembling a grin.

  "What?" I asked, looking up from the copy of Sports Illustrated I'd been reading. I'd brought the magazine for Kyle when I'd come to visit him. Well, I hadn't brought it far -- I'd picked it up at the hospital gift shop. But it was the thought that counted. I'd almost gotten him Car and Driver, but I'd figured, given his recent experience, that wouldn't have been a very good idea.

  "I just realized something," he said.

  "Don't try to ride a bicycle on a busy highway?" It was a reasonable guess. That's what had gotten Kyle here in the first place.

  "Nope." He shook his head -- as much as anything could shake when it was wrapped in so much gauze and plaster. "I realized that piece of wisdom yesterday when I woke up in this fine little bed and breakfast. No, here's what just came into my semi-functioning brain. Do you know the six scariest words in the world?"

  "There will be a test tomorrow?"

  Another head shake. "No. Forget school. I'm talking real scary. I'm talking Biblical."

  That was tough. Unlike Kyle, who had actually paid attention all through Sunday school, my Bible knowledge was on the sketchy side. I was doing well when I could remember that it wasn't Delilah who got the haircut. So I was definitely the person in the room least likely to fill in the blanks with a Bible quote. But one phrase did come to mind.

  I shuddered as it floated up from the dark corners of my childhood. I'd thought it was buried safely in my dim memories. "There'll be wailing and gnashing of teeth," I said. I could still see the caption in bold black letters above a picture of tormented souls in hell. Lots of flames. Lots of little demonettes with pitch forks. One big bad boss, complete with horns and tail, enjoying the ambiance of the place. I couldn't have been more than five or six at the time. We'd had to color the picture for Sunday school. The class used up a ton of red crayons that day. It had spooked me so much, I'd gotten sick the next three Sundays just so I could stay home.