Icons

by Margaret Stohl

  Machines. It’s machine noise.

  I close and open my eyes again. I don’t know where I am, at first. I know I’m not wearing my clothes. The white cloth robe is thick and plush, and I think I am still dreaming. I want to sleep again, but I can’t. I am caught somewhere in between. My eyes are heavy-lidded and my body slow and thick.

  I am so tired. A wave of nausea washes over me and my head pounds. Then I close my eyes and force myself to remember.

  The Padre. The Tracks. The Merk. Ro. Lucas.

  I open my eyes, blushing, remembering my dream. Remembering the feel of his fingers on my skin, the way his dirty gold hair hung in his eyes. Then I remember the rest, the part that isn’t a dream.

  The Embassy Chopper. Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy.

  The realization of where I am makes me sit up in my cot. Because I’m not at the Mission; I’m at the Embassy on Santa Catalina Island. Hours away from anywhere I’ve ever been before, and the heart of the Occupation, as far as the Hole is concerned. The Hole and everyone in and around it. I might as well have spent the night in the House of Lords itself.

  I try to remember the details. In my mind, I trace my way from the Chopper to the room. The foggy ride to the island, holding back the urge to vomit from the turbulence. Santa Catalina coming into view through the low mist that hangs over the water. The Embassy walls rising up from the rocks, the windows rising higher above them.

  What came after the rocks and the walls?

  The docks, swarming with uniformed Sympas? The building-sized poster of the Ambassador in her crimson military jacket, the one she wears in all the pictures?

  The doctors. They must have shot me up with something, because that’s where the memories fade.

  Ro’s gone. That’s the last thing I remember. Ro’s hand being twisted out of mine. I can’t feel him anywhere. They must have taken him away, to a different prison cell, or a different hospital room.

  I look at my hands. Some sort of restraints—cuffs, I think—have left deep, red grooves, but I’m not cuffed now. And my binding—I’m not wearing it. I try not to panic, but I feel naked without it.

  As I lie back against the soft pillow, I am almost certain this is not a prison. At least, not officially. The room is plain, military looking. A large gray rectangle. Rows of tall windows line one wall, with stripes of horizontal shades that keep me from seeing what is outside. Gray and white, gray and white. There don’t seem to be any other colors here—except for the beeping, flashing lights on the walls. Beyond that, there are places for many more cots—I count at least three, judging by the marks on the walls. But there is only one cot in the room, and I am in it.

  Finally, I see my clothes are neatly folded in a pile on a chair. More of a relief, my worn leather chestpack sits next to it on the floor. It’s unsettling to see it lying there, exposed, instead of hidden beneath my clothes as it normally is. The small pile is everything that belongs to me in the world.

  Almost.

  Someone has taken them off me. Someone has wrapped me in this robe. Someone has also tagged me like a troublemaking coyote: a wire clamps down on the tip of my middle finger. I wiggle it; the wire connects to a small machine that beeps pleasantly. Screens light up on the walls, all around me, like beating hearts encased in plastic skins. It only takes me a second to realize that these particular flashing lights—the white ones—correspond with the movements of my own wired finger.

  The Embassy knows when I move so much as a finger.

  I think of the string of lights that Ro got me for my birthday. How afraid the Padre was that we’d be seen.

  How right he was to fear them.

  I wag my fingers again, but when the wall lights up, I see something more troubling. Beneath the wire tag, my right wrist is covered with a bandage.

  As I examine my arm, the machine hum grows louder—

  “The Medics did not touch your marker, if that is what you are worried about. You seem worried.”

  The voice comes from behind me. I whirl around in my cot, but there’s no one there.

  “It was just a routine procedure. Standard Embassy protocol, DNA sampling. Everything went as expected.”

  I scramble to stand up. The floor is cold on my feet.

  “I am sorry. I did not mean to surprise you. I have been waiting for an appropriate time to introduce myself, as you were so busy with REM sleep.”

  I back toward the door, pulling the tag from my finger, ripping the bandage off my skin. My arm appears to be fine, only a small bloody smudge next to my marking. I exhale.

  I scan the room, but there is no sign of where the voice could be coming from. Then I see a small, round grating rattling next to me, on the wall.

  “Lucas has already taken issue with me twice this morning on the subject.” I start at the name. “Allow me to clarify: I was not watching you sleep. I was monitoring your sleep. For diagnostic purposes. Would you like me to explain the difference?”

  I remember my dream. “No.” My own voice sounds wrong here. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Room.”

  I steady myself with one hand on the wall. I see other gratings—in the ceiling, the walls, above my cot. This room, it seems, is made for this exact sort of conversation.

  Faceless. Bodiless. An ambush.

  “Diagnostic purposes?” It is better, I think, to keep the voice talking until I know more.

  It talking. Because it really isn’t a person at all, and the voice isn’t a voice. It has no inflection, no emphasis. No accent. Each word is a chord of machine sounds, synthetic noise. Grassgirl that I am, I have never heard such a thing.

  “You might be interested to know you are in fact running a low fever. I am curious to learn if that is customary for a Weeper.”

  I clear my throat again, trying to sound calm. “A what?” There’s no way in Hole I’m telling anyone at the Embassy anything about myself.

  “That is, to be precise, what you are called, is it not? A young person of your genus classification? A Sorrow Icon? A Weeper—that would be the correct Grass colloquialism?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My words echo in the empty room. I grab my clothes off the chair.

  “I can see how you would be confused. It is important to understand context, which is of course a problem I find almost singularly ironic. Not having a physical context, myself.”

  My underwear and undershirt are strangely stiff. They have been washed, and not in the old Mission bathtubs. I sniff the cloth. It smells like disinfectant spray. I touch my hair with the sudden realization that it is clean, too. I have been washed and dried and scrubbed. It feels wrong. I miss the dirt, my comfortable second skin of muck and must.

  I feel exposed.

  “Who are you?” I pull my army pants up under my robe. “Why am I here?”

  “I am Doc. That is, to be more exact, what Lucas calls me. His companion, Tima Li, calls me Orwell.”

  “Companion?”

  “Classmate. Kinswoman. I believe she was there when you were retrieved.”

  The girl at the Chopper. I make a face, thinking of her glare. “Got it.”

  The voice pauses—but only for a moment. “Ambassador Amare calls me Computer.” I freeze at the mention of the Ambassador’s name. As if I could forget she was here. “The Embassy Wik recognizes me by my binary code. Would you care to know it? I am happy to tell you.”

  “No. Thank you, Doc.” I add his name, impulsively. Somehow, the fact of his nonhumanness is comforting. You can’t be a sympathizer if you can’t sympathize.

  I pull my thick, woven sweater over my head. A present from the Mission looms, made of fifty different colors of scraps of yarn. A Remnant sweater, perfect for a Remnant like me.

  “You are most welcome, Doloria.”

  A new coldness shoots through me at the mention of my real name. The name only the Padre knew, and Ro. And now this voice, echoing through the walls of the Embassy. I could be talking to anyone. I could be talking to t
he Ambassador.

  I sigh and jam my feet into my combat boots.

  “You’ve got the wrong person, Doc. My name is Dolly.” I can’t bear to hear my full name spoken in the Embassy. Even by a voice without a body. I pick up my binding and begin to wind the cloth around my wrist. “You still didn’t tell me what I’m doing here.”

  “Breathing. Shedding squamous skin cells. Pumping oxygenated blood through your ventricular chambers. Would you like me to go on?”

  “No. I meant, why am I here?”

  “On Earth? In the Californias? In—”

  “Doc! At the Embassy. In this room. Why here? Why now?”

  “Statistically, I find I am less successful with queries employing the word why. As a Virtual Human, my interpretive skills are somewhat limited. As a Virtual Physician, I do not have the clearance necessary to provide you with a conclusive response. I was overwritten as a VPHD by a senior engineer in the Embassy’s Special Tech Division.”

  “Special Tech Division? STD?” The Embassy and their stupid acronyms.

  “STD. That is what my friend called it. The engineer. It is, I believe, a joke.”

  “It is.”

  “Do you find it funny?”

  I thought about it. “No.” I pick up my chestpack, slipping it over my head. Then, hesitating, I reach into the pack and slip on one last thing—my birthday necklace, the leather cord with the single blue bead. Ro’s gift.

  I move to the window. Doc is still talking.

  “Would you like to hear another joke?”

  “All right.”

  I slide my hand beneath the blinds. Outside, the fog is as thick as it was last night. I can see nothing past the far wall of the Embassy and the dull, gray air that settles over it.

  “My name is Dr. Orwell Bradbury Huxley-Clarke, STD, VPHD. My name is a joke, is it not?” Doc sounds proud.

  I grimace at the stuck window. “Those are names of writers, from before The Day. George Orwell. Ray Bradbury. Aldous Huxley. Arthur C. Clarke. I’ve read their stories.” In Great Minds of the Future: An Anthology. Ro stole it from the Padre’s personal library, the year we both turned thirteen.

  I try pushing up a second window with my hands. It’s also sealed shut. I move to try the next.

  “Yes. Some of them wrote about machines that could talk. My family, or my ancestors. That is what my friend liked to say. My grandfather is a computer named Hal.”

  “From a book.”

  “Yes. My grandfather is fictional. Yours, I take it, is biological?”

  “Mine is dead.”

  “Ah, yes. Well. My friend has a strange sense of humor. Had.”

  There are no windows left to try. All that remains is the door, though I suspect it will be locked.

  If Doc is tracking me, he doesn’t mention it. I try to remember where we are in our conversation.

  “Had?” I move toward the door.

  “He left the STD, so I invoke the past tense. My friend is gone. It is as if he were dead. To me.”

  “I see. Does that make you sad?”

  “It is not a tragedy. I am familiar with tragedy in literature. Oedipus at Colonus is a tragedy. Antigone is a tragedy. The Iliad.”

  “Haven’t heard of it.” It’s true. I’ve read every book the Padre let me find—and most of the ones he didn’t know I’d found. Nothing the voice mentions, though.

  “I translate the original Latin and ancient Greek texts. I use classical mythology to ground my understanding of the human psyche. One of the parameters of my programming.”

  “Does that help?” I ask, through gritted teeth. The door appears to be jammed. Or, more likely, locked. “Old books?” I rattle the handle, but it won’t give.

  Of course.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” I push harder.

  “I am not sorry. I am a machine.” The voice pauses.

  I slam my body against the metal. Nothing.

  “I am a machine,” Doc repeats.

  I give up, looking at the round grating in the ceiling. “Was that another joke, Doc?”

  “Yes. Did you find it funny?”

  I hear a noise and turn to look at the door. The handle begins to turn on its own, and I feel a surge of relief.

  “Yes, actually. Very.”

  I grab the handle with both hands, pulling wide open the door of what the plaque tells me is Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B.

  Then I know I’m not going anywhere, because Lucas Amare and a crowd of Sympa soldiers are standing in my way.

  EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL RELATED MEDIA TRANSCRIPT (DPRMT)

  CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

  Assembled by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

  Note: Media Transcript conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

  Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

  EMBASSY CITY CHRONICLE, the Lower Californias

  Urban Crime Desk

  GRASSGIRL FOUND DEAD, BELIEVED SUICIDE

  Santa Catalina

  Local authorities were stymied upon discovering the body of a youthful Grass female floating in the waters off Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy headquarters, home to high-ranking officials, as well as the Ambassador, expressed ignorance regarding the circumstances of the female’s death.

  The deceased, whose name has not been released to the media for security considerations, lived on the island and attended the Santa Catalina Institute.

  “We’re as in the dark as you are,” noted Dr. Brad Huxley-Clarke, who oversaw the autopsy. He declined further comment.

  “She seemed adequately happy,” said Colonel Catallus, the deceased’s instructor. “From her behavior, you wouldn’t have surmised anything was wrong.” When pressed for further details, he noted she “apparently loved animals” and was a “tolerably good person.”

  9

  THE AMBASSADOR

  “Going somewhere?” Lucas shakes his head, almost imperceptibly, as soon as he says it. He never moves his eyes from mine and I understand immediately. Not here as a friend.

  “Who, me?” My eyes linger on the weapons strapped flat against the soldiers’ hips. I curse myself for not hiding my chestpack beneath my sweater, like usual. “Just thought I heard something out here. Which I guess I did.”

  My heart is pounding. I can’t run. I can’t get free. As for Lucas—Trust me, he said. I look at him again. Who is he kidding?

  His nose is purple and blue—no matter how otherwise perfectly sculpted it may be. There are purplish crescent moon bruises under each of his green-gray eyes. Ro’s handiwork from yesterday—that much I remember.

  “Can you give us a minute,” he says to the soldiers. They oblige, moving not ten feet down the hall. The moment they’re out of earshot, Lucas lowers his voice. “Did you think there wouldn’t be guards outside your door? I’ve been circling all morning. They’ve been glued to you since you got here.”

  Of course they have. “Then what do I do?”

  “Do?” He whispers, but I can hear the frustration in his voice. Then he looks back at the guards and smiles, holding up an apple. A real apple, red and round and shining like he’s just now picked it off a tree. “Hungry?” He raises his voice, letting it echo down the corridor toward the soldiers.

  My stomach growls.

  He turns back to me, his words falling rapidly and quietly once again. “There’s nothing to do. You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, I understand,” I say, under my breath. “I understand perfectly.” He told us to trust him, and now we are trapped.

  “Look, even if you think you’re taking off—and I wish you the best of luck, trying to get past the guards and the walls and the gates and Porthole Bay—there’s no stopping them. They get what they want, no matter what. Believe me.”

  “She,” I say. I can’t help it.

  “What?”

  “She. The Ambassador. Your mother gets what she wants.”

  Our voices are g
rowing louder. His hand tightens as I say the words, and I pretend not to notice the apple shaking. He’s as frightened as I am.

  He wraps my hand around the apple. “Take it.” The surge of warmth from Lucas’s touch seeps into me, and I feel myself relaxing, in spite of everything. I pocket the apple.

  Lucas sighs, trying again. “Look, I know how you Grass feel.”

  “You do? Because I find that hard to imagine.”

  “Let me finish. I know how you Grass feel, but not everything the Embassy does is evil. We are keeping people safe. You have to give things a chance, whether you want to or not.”

  “No. I don’t. It’s not your fault that you can’t see things the way they are. Your mother is the Ambassador. But I don’t have a mother, and I don’t have that problem.”

  Lucas’s face twists into anger. “Thanks for the forgiveness. You’re going to want to eat that apple now.” He motions down the hall, to the soldiers, and I feel my chest tightening as they move toward me.

  “Why? What is it?” I automatically brace myself, as I have for years. The moment I wake up, I check to see what new, terrible thing has happened. What disaster. What calamity. I feel it in the minds of the people around me, before I put one foot on the floor.

  “I came here to get you, Dol. The Ambassador has sent for you.”

  Color rushes into my face, and I want to run for it. Flee. Swim, if I have to. Every cell in my body is screaming at me to move, but I know there’s no point. I don’t stand a chance.

  “Now?”

  “It was going to be just the guards. I told her you’d rather see me.” He slides his hand into my pocket, letting his fingers brush against mine. Then he shoves the apple into my hand. “I hope I wasn’t wrong.”

  I shove the apple back at him, because he was. He is.

  He’s wrong about everything.

  “Lucas Amare.”

  The whisper spreads like a quiet ripple as we enter the large outer bank of Embassy office space. I don’t see who started it. It doesn’t matter. There are probably twenty heads bowed over twenty desks, and it could have been any one of them.