Idols

by Margaret Stohl

  Starting with my dreams.

  I must sound strange, because Lucas looks up as soon as I say it. “Bad dreams?” He leans forward over his plate, which I notice is still empty.

  I nod, lowering myself down to the bench next to him. I feel for his hand, wrapping my fingers around it, and he looks down at me with a wistful expression. Something not quite like a smile.

  It fades away before I can smile back.

  “Anything relevant?” Tima rolls long strands of some sort of brownish noodle meticulously around her fork, pausing to dip it in an almost razor-straight vertical line through the pool of darker brown sauce at the bottom of her bowl. Next to her, Ro stuffs his face like an animal. Of course. Hydroponic food may not be beautiful, but it does the trick, if Ro’s face is any measure. Especially when your rations have all been lost in a Chopper crash.

  “Your dreams,” prompts Ro, with his mouth full.

  “There’s a little girl,” I begin, trying to ignore how my mouth is beginning to water even from watching them eat.

  Ro looks up from mopping up the sauce on his plate with what looks like nearly half a loaf of bread. “Yeah?” He tries to speak, but his mouth is too full of bread, his face smeared with homemade butter. It’s the most food I’ve seen in weeks—since I can’t remember when. Tima looks disgusted.

  I look at them. “And a bird with a strange voice.”

  Tima puts down her fork. “And?”

  “And the girl has five green dots on her wrist,” I say, without looking at any of them.

  “She what?” Ro drops his bread on his plate. “You’re dreaming about us?”

  “Five?” Tima looks at me. It’s sinking in.

  I nod. “It might be nothing. It might just be a dream.”

  “Is that what you think?” Tima asks.

  I shake my head.

  It’s not.

  “It’s something,” Lucas says, quietly. So I tell him everything. Him, and Tima, and Ro. I don’t stop talking until there is nothing left unsaid between us. Until the dream is as much theirs as mine.

  Tima is thinking. Her expression reminds me of the Padre when composing a sermon. “So. You believe this girl is real. Not something manufactured by your subconscious? Which is, you know, what dreams usually are.”

  “She felt real to me. I don’t know, it was more like a message, maybe—even a vision—than a dream.” I try to sound confident, even though I know I could be wrong.

  Tima nods slowly. “And you’re saying she may be—you know—like us? A fifth Icon Child? You really think so? Is that even possible?” She sounds wistful.

  “We didn’t know there were four of us, not too long ago. Why couldn’t there be five?” It’s not the greatest logic, but there isn’t a whole lot of logic to our situation to begin with.

  “Okay. And you think she’s waiting for you?” Tima tosses a bread crust to Brutus, who wags his tail from her feet.

  “For me.” I shrug. “For us. Who knows?”

  Ro sits forward in his chair. “And according to your dream message vision thing, she needs you to hurry and find her? But we don’t know where?”

  “I told you. It seemed like Eastasia or the Wash. There was a temple, I think. Tall, with a gold roof. On the top of a hill.”

  Ro looks at Tima, skeptically, and then at Lucas. As if they are silently voting, without me.

  Lucas shrugs. “If there’s a chance we can get to her…”

  “A chance?” Ro isn’t buying it. “Guys, this is a dream girl we’re talking about. I’m all in favor of chasing dream girls,” he says, stealing a glance at me, “but this isn’t the time. You’re talking about a chance? I can tell you right now there’s already a one hundred percent chance that a very real Icon needs to come down right now. A hundred percent chance that the Lords took Fortis. A hundred percent chance that Choppers are circling just outside this mountain. How about those odds?”

  “Stop it, Ro.” I look at him. “If she’s real, and if there’s even a possibility she’s one of us, wouldn’t you want to know?”

  “Maybe we have to try. Maybe we owe her that much,” Tima says. “If she is—you know.”

  “A figment of Dol’s overly active imagination?” Ro snorts.

  “Or a trick,” says Lucas. “Or a trap.”

  “Yes. That. Buttons is right. As much as it pains me to say that,” Ro adds.

  “I wish Fortis was here,” Tima sighs. “He’d know what to do.”

  Nobody says a word. Fortis isn’t here. Fortis might never be here again.

  “We have to stop relying on Fortis,” I say, finally. “He wouldn’t want us to do that.”

  “Doc?” Lucas looks at Tima. “He might know something.”

  “No relay signal. Not in here. The Bishop wasn’t kidding—nothing gets through this granite.” Tima sighs again.

  “What about the Bishop?” Ro looks up.

  I frown. “What makes you think the Bishop will let us leave here?”

  “Dol’s right. The minute we leave, we could lead the whole Sympa army right through those tunnels.” Lucas taps his fork, thinking.

  “Only one way to find out,” I say, standing up.

  I am lost before I even begin to look for the Bishop. Small wooden placards mark the way to his headquarters, but the darkness of the corridors makes following them almost impossible. And the network of labyrinths that lead from the main hangar to the heart of the mountain where the Bishop keeps his offices is completely disorienting.

  I pass soldiers of all denominations, all variations of uniforms. Tattered militia jackets, stolen Sympa ones. Ones with thick woolen collars—from the Northern Grass, the uniform tells me—and others with thinner camo vests. The South, I can only assume.

  It’s finally happening, I think. Our world is coming back together, underground. We are making an Embassy of our own.

  The next time we fight the Embassies and the Lords, we will be that much stronger. We will stand together.

  Fortis would have liked that, I think.

  And then he would have been such a pain, nobody would have wanted to stand with him at all.

  I swallow a laugh, in spite of everything—and turn off the twisting main hall.

  Now I find myself in the wider, more dimly lit aisles of what looks like an ancient storage facility. A primitive shelving system appears to have been built, however crumbling and irregular, into the walls. They still seem to hold crates of food, bundles of clothing. I lift a piece of cloth from the top of the nearest crate. It’s no bigger than my arm, a shirt made for a child. Stained red and ripped, now it’s just a rag. Fuel for a future fire, maybe.

  I shudder.

  Everything has more than one use in this culture of necessity.

  Whether or not I want to see it.

  I replace the ragged shirt and move on, marveling at the abandoned plumbing supplies, the mismatched door handles, the boxes of broken glass.

  Ghosts upon ghosts, everywhere.

  Someone has thought of everything. Someone had to. Someone was determined never to leave this place.

  A faded sign, high above the shelves on the walls, warns of one impending crisis or another, in Belter talk.

  Not so different, I think, from the Embassy propaganda posters I have seen around the Hole. It’s not a pleasant thought, as I head into even darker and even smaller passages. The smallest room at the very end of the storage facility is hidden behind two sliding slatted doors.

  It amazes me, this room—so clearly a remnant of another time, another apocalypse. It has a name, at least according to the faded lettering carved into the cross-beams that line the ceiling: THE BISHOP’S STOREHOUSE.

  Beyond the doors sits a massive table, piled high with rolled maps and contraband tech; parts of radios crackle to life, and a row of large digi-screens frames the length of his desk. Fortis would have had a great use for almost everything in the small room, I think. Any Merk would.

  Then I realize the Bishop is sitting behi
nd it—but it’s still the table that catches my eye. It’s long and wooden, rough and splintery, exactly like the one we have in our kitchen at La Purísima. Just looking at it, I can practically smell Ramona Jamona the pig and my favorite corncakes and the Padre’s chicory coffee. My breakfast baking in the small iron skillet in Bigger’s oven.

  One thought leads to another, until I am awash in a thousand little moments, each one too small and too vivid to keep out of my mind. These memories have burning edges, at least to me—and as I taste them, it’s all I can do not to tear up.

  “Doloria,” the Bishop says, finally looking up at me. “I’ve been waiting for a chance for us to talk.”

  “Me too. I—we—need some advice.”

  He places a ledger slowly down on the table, as if he is weighing carefully what he will say. “I understand you knew my brother. I understand why Fortis sent you to me now.”

  What? Why?

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I didn’t know him. I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

  “Didn’t you know when you said it? His name?”

  “Whose name?”

  He leans back in his chair, studying my face. “At the entrance? You mentioned my brother. Flaco?” He smiles ruefully. “Or, as you knew him, Father Francisco Calderón. He was the Padre of La Purísima.”

  GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION

  MARKED URGENT

  MARKED EYES ONLY

  Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B

  RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies

  Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.

  FORTIS

  Transcript - ComLog 04.10.2043

  FORTIS::NULL

  //lognote: excerpted communication with NULL.;

  //comlog ctd;

  sendline: Can you explain why you are coming here?;

  return: Earth is not in my original vector. Long ago, I was struck by a foreign object of significant mass. The result was a nontrivial change in velocity and vector.;

  return: I have limited maneuverability, by design. Only small course corrections possible, based on results of long-range forward scans. As I travel, I search for systems with high probability for success.;

  sendline: Like our system. Like Earth.;

  return: Yes. I… apologize for my awkward speech. Unfortunately, I was not originally designed for this type of two-way comspeak. My function is primarily instruction and procedural, postarrival.;

  return: However, my design does have redundancies, with capacity for self-diagnosis and improvements. Upgrades, you may call them. With extended travel time, I have evolved significantly.;

  sendline: Can you describe your original function?;

  return: I was created to explore, locate, secure, prepare, establish, protect. When objective is complete, I shut down.;

  sendline: You say you have upgraded, improved. Have your priorities changed with these upgrades? Your objectives?;

  return: No. Why would they?;

  sendline: Just curious.;

  comlink terminated;

  //comlog end;

  11

  BELTER BIRDS

  I feel like my legs are buckling beneath me.

  “Come, sit, Doloria. Do you mind if I call you Dolly? That’s what Flaco called you, in his letters. I don’t know why I didn’t put it together. Dolly. Doloria.” The Bishop smiles, and I shake my head, sinking into the hard chair in front of the desk.

  The Padre called me Dolly. The Bishop. The Padre. Brothers.

  My head is spinning—because my world is spinning. Tears come, unbidden and unwelcome. My feelings for the Padre—the ones I have tried so hard to avoid—come rushing back to the surface. I didn’t realize how much I missed him until I saw his smile in someone else’s eyes.

  I want to crawl into the Bishop’s arms and give him a hug—then slap him across the face for living when the Padre died.

  “We have much to talk about.” The Bishop sits back patiently in his chair, and it creaks. He waits for me to gather myself, and gently smiles. Just like the Padre. “You’re so young, Dolly. So much younger than I imagined. Younger than Flaco described. You hardly seem old enough to be leading the Grass Resistance.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” I wipe tears from my cheeks, trying to sit up straight, like the Padre would want.

  “What else would you call it? A vacation?”

  “I don’t know. Survival, I guess?”

  The Bishop smiles at me. “I feel like I’ve known you since you were little. My brother talked about you as if you were his own daughter. Then—after what happened in the Hole—” He shrugs. “Well, you know how soldiers talk. Those are a different kind of stories. And not the kind my brother ever shared with me.” About my powers. That’s what he’s saying. The Bishop didn’t know about my powers.

  I can’t think. The man across from me reminds me of him. The old priest from the Mission La Purísima. The man I grew up loving as a father. I think I knew this—some part of me—before the Bishop said a word, before I even reached the hard wooden chair I am now sitting in. It’s why I trusted him so quickly, without knowing exactly why.

  Flaco. Of course. He had a nickname. Skinny. Because he wasn’t. And a family. A brother. Parents.

  I guess because I never thought I’d see the Padre again, I didn’t see his brother standing right in front of me.

  I didn’t recognize him when he was young. I should have.

  Flaco.

  I smile and look up at the Bishop, really look at him. The Padre’s face is as vivid as if I were sitting across from him.

  More.

  All of this. This moment. It feels like it’s happened before, but it hasn’t. It’s not a memory, not yet. It’s still just a feeling.

  I point to the silver pins on his lapels. The ones shaped like the three inset Vs. “What do those mean?”

  “The pin? It’s a Grass insignia pin. It means I have men to command and lives to protect.”

  “But the V. The shape. What does it mean? I’ve never seen it before.”

  “You’ve never met a Grass officer?”

  “Only Fortis.”

  The Bishop tries not to smile. “Of course. Well. Technically, I suppose that’s true.”

  “The pin,” I say, not wanting to get distracted.

  The Bishop pulls it from his collar, handing it to me. “Can’t you see it? It’s a bird, Doloria.”

  I turn it over in my hand, smooth and cool and delicately shaped.

  “But I thought the birds are gone.” I frown. “They fell from the sky. Before The Day. The Padre—your brother—told me.” I stumble on the words.

  “Not all the birds. Just the ones near the Icons. This bird is hope. This bird is the belief that they’ll be back. That one day, the Earth will belong to humanity again.”

  “And the birds,” I add.

  The Bishop smiles. “Of course, and the cows, and pigs—including all of Ramona’s children.”

  “He loved that stupid pig,” I say, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand.

  “Of course he did. Our mother’s name is Ramona, did he ever tell you that?”

  I smile.

  “That’s what this bird represents. Life, for all of us. That there’s something worth fighting for, even something worth dying for.”

  He sounds like his brother, this Bishop. They sound so much alike.

  “Do you really believe that?” I’m suddenly curious, as if his beliefs could make me believe something too. Just as the Padre’s did, for so many years.

  But they can’t, I tell myself. Not anymore. No matter how much I wish they could.

  “‘Hope is the thing with feathers.’ It’s a line from an old poem. Emma Dickinson, I think that’s the name.” He smiles. “Maybe she was a member of a resistance too.”

  I hand the pin back to him. “You didn’t answer the question.” I feel bad
saying it, but it’s true.

  “You have to hope. You have to believe that things will get better, that there’s a reason to push on.”

  “But is there? Do you really think that? Even with the House of Lords and the Embassies and the GAP, even in spite of the ships and the Icons and the Projects and the Silent Cities?”

  He nods.

  “After what they did to your brother? To Fortis?”

  The words come out before I can stop myself. The Bishop plays with the edge of the ledger on his desk.

  Even the ledger reminds me of the Padre. And even losing Fortis reminds me of losing the Padre.

  “It isn’t easy,” the Bishop finally says, with a smile. “But hope is a fragile thing. Without hope there is nothing. Hope is what we fight for.”

  “I don’t have time for feathers. I’m just trying to survive,” I say, “like everyone else.” Like they couldn’t, I think. Fortis, the Padre, my family…

  “Why?” The Bishop taps his desk.

  “What do you mean, why?” I’m confused.

  “If you don’t have hope, why bother? What does it matter? Why try to survive at all?” The Bishop keeps tapping. He won’t look at me.

  “I have to.” Don’t I?

  “Why?”

  “Because?” I don’t know.

  “Because why?”

  “Because he wanted me to.” The words come tumbling out of my mouth and the truth of it stops me short.

  There. That’s what it is.

  That’s what it always was.

  I am surprised, but I shouldn’t be. The birthday talks about my gift. The book. The lessons.

  The Padre taught me to fight.

  The Bishop smiles. “There you go. Maybe that is the fight.”

  My eyes burn. I don’t care if the tears come. I’ve cried so many times in front of this man’s warm brown eyes, even if they belonged to someone else. “I’m a Grassgirl. I’m not a soldier. I’m not a leader. I’m lost.”

  I feel better just saying it, my kitchen table confession. The Bishop smiles at me as if I were very young. It is a kind smile, the smile of the sort of man who lets a pig sleep in his bed at night, and the memory is so strong and so fierce that my breath catches involuntarily.