by Steven Brust
“Almost quit.”
“You changed him. He murdered Phil out of doubt-riddled realism and open-eyed loyalty.”
“I can’t feel good about that, Jane.”
“But you know what?” Ren said, the idea surprising her. “I’m starting to.” She looked across the basement again at Phil, who still looked like Matsu.
Phil said, “Revolt would be suicide or martyrdom, and you weren’t going to let Sam die.”
Phil’s still-great timing made Ren smile. Jane’s eyes followed hers.
“Frio loves you,” Jane told her husband.
Sam couldn’t ask whether Jane did too.
“And he shot Phil because that’s what love does,” Jane said. “It gets involved.”
“You want me involved in this mess?”
“It’s who you are.”
“Yeah.” Sam gulped down a sob and bundled Jane into his arms, holding her hard against him.
Ren looked over them to Jimmy, who made a quintessentially French who knows? shrug, and shifted to sit closer to her, his back against the metal shelving. “You remember Celeste’s flogging?”
Ren frowned. “Yeah.”
They both watched Jane’s spine. It wasn’t softening.
“Celeste’s memories have been coming back to me all night, as a kind of background noise, ever since Phil’s stub got distributed across Henry Lattimer’s lifetime and he collected or recollected it to find me.”
“You feel like holding a slalom gate to the snow,” he told her. “The moment I let go, you spring back from me.”
“I want to go home.”
“Me too.” Sam pulled her closer. “But the SWAT cops aren’t going to just give up and go away.”
“I know,” Jane said, but she didn’t relax against him. “I just need some time to work it all out in my head.”
“Work it out with me.”
“I don’t know if I can,” she said.
“Tell me what it’s been like for you. Talk to me, Jane.”
She pulled away again, and Sam let her go.
“I had left you.” Jane took a shaky breath.
Ren didn’t want to be listening, but the moment was too fragile to withstand any outside movement. Ren closed her eyes and wished she prayed. She remembered being left.
“I mean, we both knew we were in trouble,” Jane said. “But I didn’t realize until tonight that I was already done.”
“But you said—” Sam stopped himself.
“I know,” Jane said. “And I meant it. I do love you. Still. I didn’t know that until tonight either.”
Ren knew Sam would have said anything to get Jane to clarify right then whether she loved him or was leaving him, and have it come down on the right side. But he had asked for her experience, and he had the wisdom to wait for it. “Go on,” he whispered.
“Just give me some time.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
Jane looked straight at her husband for the first time Ren could remember. It made her breath catch in her chest. “Because I need it,” Jane snapped.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, to figure things out.” Jane fidgeted like all of her clothes itched.
“What things?” Sam asked.
“Stop it!” Jane jumped to her feet.
“What things?”
“God damn it, Sam! Messy, awful, ugly things, okay?” Jane was angry, but her eyes shone huge and brilliant, not narrowed with bitterness. “Things I don’t understand. Things that scare me and make my body feel too small for me.”
Sam climbed to his feet without his wife’s grace. If he touched her, Ren knew Jane would pull away, but she was shaking. “Things I could learn to help with?” Sam asked her.
Jane looked right at her husband, and she wasn’t angry or frightened or crying anymore. She was challenging him.
“I love you,” Sam said. “If ‘messy, awful, and ugly’ is part of your power, I’m not looking away.”
Jane’s eyes narrowed, summing him up, weighing what it meant to let him in.
“Unless you mean like literally ugly and stuff, because, dude…” It was maybe a risky joke, but he made it for the right reason.
“Well,” Jane said, and she laughed.
“Okay.” Sam put his arms around his wife again, and she leaned into him.
TWENTY-SEVEN
To Kill a Good Man
Kate liked having a den in the Garden she could invite people to drop by and not need to run around collecting peanut butter jars and hamster balls first. Felicia was waiting for her in an overstuffed armchair by the fireplace. “How lovely of you to do this for Matsu, Kate,” she said with a smile.
“How lovely of you to come.” Kate settled herself onto the sofa across from Felicia, arranging her body roughly the way it was back in Pennsylvania. “Do you think we should wait for anyone else?”
Felicia’s pretty smile dimmed a bit. “Kate, you know we aren’t going to get everyone.”
“Of course I do,” Kate said. “I’m sorry,” she amended. “That sounded snippy. I didn’t mean it to. It’s been a blister of a day.”
“Oh, Kate, it’s fine.”
“And you’re right. We aren’t going to get everyone, so there’s really no point waiting, is there? Latecomers can join just as easily.”
Felicia’s smile picked back up, and they both reached for the mug. They laughed a little at the synchronicity, but with the way the Garden was, they could both pick up the mug and hold it in their hands, and it was still on the table. Felicia raised hers in a little toast. Kate did the same, and they drank the memory.
Here and there—Kate was herself, and she was Maud, fifty years old again, and greeting Matsu in the block-long, red-carpeted lobby of The Royal Hawaiian. It wasn’t the immersion it would have been if they’d all been there, but she remembered; it came back. She was Kate, with Felicia next to her, and there was John from California, and now there was Gaston, who had been Matsu’s titan last time.
* * *
I chose not to include the seed Kate played for Matsu’s dust ritual because it doesn’t matter for what I’m trying to show you, and because it might embarrass Kate. But I did promise complete transparency, so if you’re curious, and if, by the end, you understand what I hope you will about us, you can find it. The pointer is Takamatsu_Royal Hawaiian.
—Oskar
* * *
As Kate replayed the memory, she knew why she had picked this seed: because Incrementalists don’t only meddle with the world. Sometimes they fix each other, and sometimes healing hurts, as painful as recovering from third-degree burns.
It was hard to take that pain, and harder to inflict it.
But Matsu never flinched.
The seed ended, and Kate knew Wrecker was going to need her too much tomorrow to stay up grazing just for fun. Kate made a mental note to ask whether to call him Allen around his family. Then she wrote a note to Daniel on a golden Tahitian saltwater pearl and filed it in a jar. It said, “I know it’s common to under-rate heroism in these times, but I have no doubt it’s what you are. I was trying to preserve that, to keep you unchanged and untested, but you were right not to accept my protection. You made the decisions you had to to make things better, never mind the pain felt or inflicted. I’ll do the same. I promise.”
* * *
Frio needed medical attention, but taking him to any hospital in the state would call down a rain of brimstone and shrapnel on them all, so Irina was just waiting to see whether he’d take Phil up on his offer to fuck the police with their help when Jane popped to her feet on the other side of the basement, shouting, “Stop it!”
Frio tensed. Irina put a hand on his shoulder reflexively, and he didn’t shrug it off.
“We really can,” she told him softly. “Fuck them, or convince them, or change their minds. Your call. But you know it’s time—past time—to get involved. The civilian police force in this state is already an army.”
“So what were you d
oing, Irina?” Oskar squatted by Frio’s other shoulder, his whisper erotic in its intimacy. “What were you doing to make that worse?”
Irina looked from Oskar to Frio to Phil, who was watching her from under Matsu’s blond surfer hair, then back to Oskar. She sat down on her ass. “I’ve been building connections with an assistant police chief named Jack Harris.”
“There it is. That’s the countermeddle.” Oskar didn’t crow with satisfaction. He just looked sad, and it twisted Irina’s heart almost in half.
Frio gave a dry laugh. “It’d be a tall order to make Harris worse. He’s about as bad as they come.”
“Really?” Oskar asked.
“Not really,” Irina said.
“Frio?” Oskar was trying for poised but looked all pounce.
Frio didn’t notice. “Harris has been working with the militia groups, shooting at Mexican nationals in the desert, deputizing skinheads, destroying water stations.” Frio stretched out his leg and massaged it gingerly, but Irina kept the pressure steady, and after a minute, he left it alone. “The Minutemen are organized more like us now, like the Hourlies, in small cells. They’re keeping a lower profile, but they’re more radicalized than ever. And more people are dying as a result, especially in places like Gila Bend, where they’re scaring off not just humanitarians, but law enforcement too.”
“Irina?” Oskar asked, like he was handing around a serving tray.
“Not Jack,” she said. “He was on the radio just last Saturday saying how lucky the militia were that his men were all too well-trained to return fire, because their shots don’t miss.”
Frio gave a lopsided rogue’s smile. “Yup. Somehow those boys got their wires crossed out in the desert in the dark. A couple of armored-up border-watch fellas and a couple of camo-wearing deputies each thought they’d collared some smugglers. Who knows how that could have happened? But the Silver Ranger’s been helping out the Nativists for at least a year.”
Irina felt all the color and most of the control fall from her face. Her eyes darted to Oskar’s and knew that he’d seen.
“Ol’ Silver figures the feds are the biggest threat to the country, controlled by leftists, legalizing gay marriage, giving amnesty to illegals, and that the highest legitimate law enforcement official in the land is the county sheriff. So he’s the one with the rightful authority, and duty, to protect citizens from any unlawful incursions by the feds.” Frio shrugged. “Harris figures he’s building the army that will set our nation free from federal tyranny sure as the original patriots threw off the yoke of monarchy. He says the next Concord, the next ‘shot heard round the world’ is going to be fired on an IRS agent by a Pima County lawman.”
“That was you, wasn’t it Irina?” Oskar’s voice was a soft, seductive whisper against Irina’s ragged cheek. “I’ll bet you put The Naked Capitalist right in his hand. You said we had no idea how bad things are here, how much of a police state Arizona already is. This is how you knew? And you were making it worse?”
“Nobody cared,” Irina whispered. “Everyone just accepted the small-town SWAT teams, the military tech, the impunity from oversight.”
“So you thought you’d create another Ruby Ridge? Another Waco? The problem with the people isn’t that police haven’t killed enough of them. It’s that they don’t yet know what they can do.”
The sob opened under Irina’s ribs like a sinkhole. All the pegs popped, and the Irina tent went down in a heap. Without words, or even sorrow, she was just an empty ache. Her elbows dropped onto her knees. Her hands curled at her ears. She rattled with crying.
* * *
Phil looked between Irina and Oskar, and settled on the latter. “What did you say to her?” he asked.
“I asked if she remembered the Revolution.” Oskar stood and walked up the stairs.
Irina’s narrow back shuddered like she was being lashed. Phil took over the job of keeping pressure on Frio’s gunshot.
Sam, who’d been first holding and then being held by his wife on the other side of the basement, finally looked up. “How’s the leg?’ he asked across the room.
“Fuck the leg,” Frio said. “And fuck you.”
“Frio?” Sam stood up, and Phil, who’d been about to say the leg needed medical attention sooner rather than later, said nothing instead.
“No.” Frio stopped Sam before he could sit down. “No. You quit. You told me if I knew the ‘why’ of my life, I’d be able to stand almost any ‘how.’ You told me between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose. In our choices lie our growth and our freedom. Then you fucking quit?”
“Frio!” Jane came over looking worried, leaving Ren to help Jimmy to his feet.
Sam didn’t move. “That wasn’t me, that’s Viktor Frankl,” he said.
“You told me despair was the only sin.”
“That wasn’t me either.”
“It was me,” Jane whispered. She turned to Sam. “You quoted me to Frio?” she asked, and Phil saw something in her settle.
“Yeah,” Frio said. “He did. Then he gave up.”
“He didn’t,” Jane said. “Not on you.”
“Now this fucker want me to go double agent.” Frio jerked a thumb at Phil. “Does he think I’m stupid? Crazy?” Frio scowled at Phil, who tried to keep his face blank. “He say he’s not a killer, couldn’t pull the trigger, wasn’t cut out that way. But me?” Frio’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “You think I am? I was a good kid. Nobody’s born this way. But we’re useful, right, once we’re broken, useful to fuckers like you who want bad shit done, but don’t want to get broke doing it. You figure I’m a cop, I kill for them. I quit, I come kill for you, what’s the difference to Frio the killer? There’s a difference.”
Irina lifted her head from her arms. “I never wanted anyone killed.” Her tear-wrecked eyes connected with Phil, and looked nearly as mad as Brown’s. And as kind. “That’s always the worst way.”
“Maybe the worst,” Sam said, looking away from Frio for the first time. “But the de facto last. As long as people, yourselves perhaps excepted—” Sam waved at Irina and Phil. “As long as most people have bodies that can die and feel pain, everything comes down to what you’re willing to kill or die for. What you’ll inflict or withstand pain to do.”
“No.” Phil shook his head. It had been Brown, not him, who’d said it was better that a score of bad men should be dragged out of bed and murdered than that one man who settled in Kansas to make it a free state should be driven out. “No. It’s simpler than that. It’s just a matter of how much can we do without hurting people. Hurting in the physical, bleeding, screaming in the ambulance kind of way. That’s counter to who we are. We won’t do that.”
“But I will,” Frio said. “So you’ll use me—”
“Frio,” Phil said, putting warmth and ice into his voice in equal measures. “We do not want you to kill for us. We want you to help prevent them from killing us. That’s it. You have knowledge we can use. We—”
“For fuck’s sake, Phil,” said Irina. “Don’t you get it? We’re past that. There are tanks in the streets, a wall on the border, mass incarcerations, and killings based on race. But not because they want us to die, Phil. That’s incidental to them. They want us to obey.
“And people do. They obey because it’s easy.” Irina turned to Frio. “They obey because they want to be good.”
Phil remembered the fuchsia blouse, the mother, the “I love you,” and he checked Frio’s shoulders and jaw and recognized his moment. “Think about Santi,” he told Frio. “Think about Manuel. Think about how they and the others look at you—one of their own, a kid from the barrio.”
Frio clenched his teeth. “What about it?”
“You’re Sam to them.”
“I—” Frio started, but caught himself. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Fuck the police.”
“You’re a good man, Frio,” Sam said, and Phil had to look away.
Frio’s
leg really did need immediate attention.
* * *
Words came back to Irina in negatives, like film developing: No. Not again. Not like this. Yes, Oskar. Of course she remembered the revolution. In revolutions, people die. People who don’t get Seconds. People whose bodies are fragile, and too small to hold everything they are—everything their children and their parents love—and would bargain their own delicate shells to save. There’s no market where you make that kind of exchange. And what kind of asshole would you trade with?
Irina opened her eyes and saw Sam watching her. Jane was on the floor next to him doing some kind of irritating bendy thing. Irina had known yogis before South Carolina announced its secession. They’d been stiller.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Ren and Phil are helping Jimmy get Frio into the car so Ramon can stitch up his leg,” Sam told her.
“Oskar?”
“I don’t know.”
Irina closed her eyes again.
They had been going to build a classless society in just four years. Sure, Oskar had said it wouldn’t work, and Celeste had said they’d be sorry if they got involved, but people always argue with any big idea. They had gotten rid of money, abolished the free market, and dismantled all the hallmarks of capitalism. They eliminated the rich and powerful, did away with class enemies: capitalists, professionals, intellectuals, police, government employees. It wasn’t even a countermeddle. They thought they were making things better.
They weren’t.
No private property or religion. No rich, no poor, no exploitation. That was the plan. But nothing ever goes according to plan. Plans are squat, fickle gods whose DIY charms against despair work only on those with even shorter memories.
“America was supposed to be different,” she told Sam.
“I know,” he said.
“It was founded by dissidents and protesters. Now guess who gets maced and thrown out of public parks? The sanctity of the private home is baked into our earliest laws. Now the government reads our mail and watches us through our own cameras, and we the people, the same damn people, who were going to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our children know about it and just figure it’s okay?”