Wheeling the freezer through the alley, she attracted the attention of some young Wasters lounging in front of a betel parlor, who called out loudly to ask if she had a private stash of beer in there, and if they could have some. When she scowled and didn’t answer they laughed and called her a lush. By the time she got home, her exaltation had been jostled aside by disgust and fury at the place where she lived. She managed to wrestle the freezer up the stoop and over the threshold into the kitchen, but when she faced the narrow spiral stair, she knew this was as far as she could get without help. The kitchen was already crowded, and the only place she could fit the freezer in was under the table. As she was shoving it against the wall, Maya came down the stairs and said, “What are you doing?”
“I have to keep this freezer here,” Thorn said.
“You can’t put it there. It’s not convenient.”
“Will you help me carry it up to my room?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I didn’t think so. Then it’s got to stay here.”
Maya rolled her eyes at the irrational acts of teenagers. Now Thorn was angry at her, too. “It has to stay plugged in,” Thorn said strictly. “Do you think you can remember that?”
“What’s in it?”
Thorn would have enjoyed telling her if she hadn’t been angry. “A science experiment,” she said curtly.
“Oh, I see. None of my business, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. It’s a secret,” Maya said in a playful tone, as if she were talking to a child. She reached out to tousle Thorn’s hair, but Thorn knocked her hand away and left, taking the stairs two at a time.
In her room, Thorn gave way to rage at her unsatisfactory life. She didn’t want to be a Waster anymore. She wanted to live in a house where she could have things of her own, not squat in a boyfriend’s place, always one quarrel away from eviction. She wanted a life she could control. Most of all, she wanted to leave the Waste. She went to the window and looked down at the rusty ghetto below. Cynicism hung miasmatic over it, defiling everything noble and pure. The decadent sophistication left nothing unstained.
During dinner, Maya and Hunter were cross and sarcastic with each other, and Hunter ended up storming off into his office. Thorn went to her room and studied Magister Pregaldin’s secret charts till the house was silent below. Then she crept down to the kitchen to check on the freezer. The temperature gauge was reassuringly low. She sat on the brick floor with her back to it, its gentle hum soothing against her spine, feeling a kinship with the owl inside. She envied it for its isolation from the dirty world. Packed away safe in ice, it was the one thing that would never grow up, never lose its innocence. One day it would come alive and erupt in glorious joy—but only if she could protect it. Even if she couldn’t protect herself, there was still something she could keep safe.
As she sat there, the Note came, filling the air full and ringing through her body like a benediction. It seemed to be answering her unfocused yearning, as if the believers were right, and there really were a force looking over her, as she looked over the owl.
* * *
When she next came to Magister Pregaldin’s apartment, he was busy filling the crate up again with treasures. Thorn helped him wrap artworks in packing material as he told her which planet each one came from. “Where are you sending them?” she asked.
“Offworld,” he answered vaguely.
Together they lifted the lid onto the crate, and only then did Thorn see the shipping label that had brought it here. It was stamped with a burning red sword—the customs mark of the city-state Flaming Sword of Righteousness. “Is that where you were?” she said.
“Yes.”
She was about to blurt out that Hunter’s Gminta had been murdered there when a terrible thought seized her: What if he already knew? What if it were no coincidence?
They sat down to lessons under the head of the copper-horned beast, but Thorn was distracted. She kept looking at her tutor’s large hands, so gentle when he handled his art, and wondering if they could be the hands of an assassin.
That night Hunter went out and Maya barricaded herself in her room, leaving Thorn the run of the house. She instantly let herself into Hunter’s office to search for a list of Gmintas killed and brought to justice over the years. When she tried to access his files, she found they were heavily protected by password and encryption—and if she knew his personality, he probably had intrusion detectors set. So she turned again to his library of books on the Holocide. The information was scattered and fragmentary, but after a few hours she had pieced together a list of seven mysterious murders on five planets that seemed to be revenge slayings.
Up in her room again, she took out her replica of one of Magister Pregaldin’s charts, the one that looked most like a tracking chart. She started by assuming that the geometric shapes meant planets and the symbols represented individual Gmintas he had been following. After an hour she gave it up—not because she couldn’t make it match, but because she could never prove it. A chart for tracking Gmintas would look identical to a chart for tracking artworks. It was the perfect cover story.
She was still awake when Hunter returned. As she listened to his footsteps she thought of going downstairs and telling him of her suspicions. But uncertainty kept her in bed, restless and wondering what was the right thing to do.
* * *
There were riots in the city the next day. In the streets far above the Waste, angry mobs flowed, a turbulent tide crashing against the Protectorate troops wherever they met. The Wasters kept close to home, looking up watchfully toward the palace, listening to the rumors that ran ratlike between the buildings. Thorn spent much of the day on the roof, a self-appointed lookout. About five hours afternote, she heard a roar from above, as of many voices raised at once. There was something elemental about the sound, as if a force of nature had broken into the domed city—a human eruption, shaking the iron framework on which all their lives depended.
She went down to the front door to see if she could catch any news. Her survival instincts were alert now, and when she spotted a little group down the street, standing on a doorstep exchanging news, she sprinted toward them to hear what they knew.
“The Incorruptibles have taken the Palace,” a man told her in a low voice. “The mobs are looting it now.”
“Are we safe?” she asked.
He only shrugged. “For now.” They all glanced down the street toward the spike-topped gates of the Waste. The barrier had never looked flimsier.
When Thorn returned home, Maya was sitting in the kitchen looking miserable. She didn’t react much to the news. Thorn sat down at the table with her, bumping her knees on the freezer underneath.
“Shouldn’t we start planning to leave?” Thorn said.
“I don’t want to leave,” Maya said, tears coming to her already-red eyes.
“I don’t either,” Thorn said. “But we shouldn’t wait till we don’t have a choice.”
“Hunter will protect us,” Maya said. “He knows who to pay.”
Frustrated, Thorn said, “But if the Incorruptibles take over, there won’t be anyone to pay. That’s why they call themselves incorruptible.”
“It won’t come to that,” Maya said stubbornly. “We’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
Thorn had heard it all before. Maya always denied that anything was wrong until everything fell apart. She acted as if planning for the worst would make it happen.
The next day the city was tense but quiet. The rumors said that the Incorruptibles were still hunting down Protectorate loyalists and throwing them in jail. The nearby streets were empty except for Wasters, so Thorn judged it safe enough to go to Weezer Alley. When she entered Magister Pregaldin’s place, she was stunned at the change. The apartment had been stripped of its artworks. The carpets were rolled up, the empty walls looked dented and peeling. Only Jemma’s portrait still remained. Two metal crates stood in the middle of the living room, and as Thorn was ta
king it all in, a pair of movers arrived to carry them off to the waystation.
“You’re leaving,” she said to Magister Pregaldin when he came back in from supervising the movers. She was not prepared for the disappointment she felt. All this time she had been trustworthy and kept his secrets—and he had abandoned her anyway.
“I’m sorry, Thorn,” he said, reading her face. “It is becoming too dangerous here. You and your mother ought to think of leaving, as well.”
“Where are you going?”
He paused. “It would be better if I didn’t tell you that.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Forgive me. It’s a habit.” He studied her for a few moments, then put his hand gently on her shoulder. “Your friendship has meant more to me than you can know,” he said. “I had forgotten what it was like, to inspire such pure trust.”
He didn’t even know she saw through him. “You’re lying to me,” she said. “You’ve been lying all along. You’re not leaving because of the Incorruptibles. You’re leaving because you’ve finished what you came here to do.”
He stood motionless, his hand still on her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“You came here to settle an old score,” she said. “That’s what your life is about, isn’t it? Revenge for something everyone else has forgotten and you can’t let go.”
He withdrew his hand. “You have made some strange mistake.”
“You and Hunter—I don’t understand either of you. Why can’t you just stop digging up the past and move on?”
For several moments he stared at her, but his eyes were shifting as if tracking things she couldn’t see. When he finally spoke, his voice was very low. “I don’t choose to remember the past. I am compelled to—it is my punishment. Or perhaps it is a disease, or an addiction. I don’t know.”
Taken aback at his earnestness, Thorn said, “Punishment? For what?”
“Here, sit down,” he said. “I will tell you a story before we part.”
They both sat at the table where he had given her so many lessons, but before he started to speak he stood up again and paced away, his hands clenching. She waited silently, and he came back to face her, and started to speak.
* * *
This is a story about a young man who lived long ago. I will call him Till. He wanted badly to live up to his family’s distinguished tradition. It was a prominent family, you see; for generations they had been involved in finance, banking, and insurance. The planet where they lived was relatively primitive and poor, but Till’s family felt they were helping it by attracting outside investment and extending credit. Of course, they did very well by doing good.
The government of their country had been controlled by the Alloes for years. Even though the Alloes were an ethnic minority, they were a diligent people and had prospered by collaborating with Vind businessmen like Till’s family. The Alloes ruled over the majority, the Gmintas, who had less of everything—less education, less money, less power. It was an unjust situation, and when there was a mutiny in the military and the Gmintas took control, the Vinds accepted the change. Especially to younger people like Till, it seemed like a righting of many historical wrongs.
Once the Gminta army officers were in power, they started borrowing heavily to build hospitals, roads, and schools for Gminta communities, and the Vind banks were happy to make the loans. It seemed like a good way to dispell many suspicions and prejudices that throve in the ignorance of the Gminta villages. Till was on the board of his family bank, and he argued for extending credit even after the other bankers became concerned about the government’s reckless fiscal policies.
One day, Till was called into the offices of the government banking regulators. Alone in a small room, they accused him of money laundering and corruption. It was completely untrue, but they had forged documents that seemed to prove it. Till realized that he faced a life in prison. He would bring shame to his entire family, unless he could strike a deal. They offered him an alternative that was surprisingly generous, considering the evidence against him: he could come to work for the government, as their representative to the Vind community. He readily accepted the job, and resigned from the bank.
They gave him an office and a small staff. He had an Alloe counterpart responsible for outreach to that community; and though they never spoke about it, he suspected his colleague had been recruited with similar methods. They started out distributing informational leaflets and giving tips on broadcast shows, all quite bland. But it changed when the government decided to institute a new draft policy for military service. Every young person was to give five years’ mandatory service starting at eighteen. The Vinds would not be exempt.
Now, as you may know, the Vinds are pacifists and mystics, and have never served in the military of any planet. This demand by the Gminta government was unprecedented, and caused great alarm. The Vinds gathered in the halls of their Ethical Congresses to discuss what to do. Till worked tirelessly, meeting with them and explaining the perspective of the government, reminding them of the Vind principle of obeying the local law wherever they found themselves. At the same time, he managed to get the generals to promise that no Vind would be required to serve in combat, which was utterly in violation of their beliefs. With this assurance, the Vinds reluctantly agreed. And so mothers packed bags for their children and sent them off to training, urging them to call often.
Soon after, a new land policy was announced. Estates that had always belonged to the Alloes were to be redistributed among landless Gmintas. This created quite a lot of resistance; Till and his colleague were kept busy giving interviews and explaining how the policy restored fairness to the land system. They became familiar to all as government spokespeople.
Then the decision was made to relocate whole neighborhoods of Alloes and Vinds so Gmintas could have better housing in the cities. Till could no longer argue about justice; now he could only tell people it was necessary to move in order to quiet the fears of the Gmintas and preserve peace. He was assigned to work with an officer who was in charge of setting up new housing for evacuees, but he could get no specifics about where the housing was or what would be provided.
People started to emigrate off-planet, but then the government closed down the waystations. This nearly caused a panic, and Till had to tell everyone it was merely to prevent people from taking their goods and assets offworld, thus draining the national wealth. He promised that individuals would be allowed to leave again soon, as long as they took no cash or valuables with them.
He no longer believed it himself.
It had been months since the young people had gone off to the army, and their families had heard nothing from them. Till had been telling everyone it was a period of temporary isolation, while the trainees lived in camps on the frontier to build solidarity and camaraderie. Every time he went out, he would be surrounded by anxious parents asking when they could expect to hear from their children.
Fleets of buses showed up to evacuate the Alloe and Vind families from their homes, and take them to relocation camps. Till watched his own neighborhood become a ghost town, and the certainty grew in him that the people were never coming back. One day he entered his supervisor’s office unexpectedly and overheard someone saying, ‘… to the mortifactories.’ They stopped talking when they saw him.
You are probably thinking, ‘Why didn’t he speak out? Why didn’t he denounce them?’ Try to imagine, in many respects life still seemed quite normal, and what he suspected was so unthinkable it seemed insane. And even if he could overcome that, there was no one to speak out to. He was alone, and he was not a very courageous person. His only chance was to stay useful to the government.
Other Vinds and Alloes who had been working alongside him started to vanish. Still the Gmintas wanted him to go on reassuring people; he did it so well. He had to hide what he suspected, to fool them into thinking that he was fooled himself. Every day he lived in fear of hearing the knock on his door that would m
ean it was his time.
It was his Alloe colleague who finally broke. They rarely let the man go on air anymore; his nerves were too shattered. But one day he substituted for Till, and in the midst of a broadcast shouted out a warning: “They are killing you! It is mass murder!” That was all he got out before they cut him off.
That night, well-armed and well-organized mobs broke into the remaining Alloe enclaves in the capital city. The government deplored the violence the next day, but suggested that the Alloes had incited it.
At that point they no longer had any need for Till. Once again, they were very generous. They gave him a choice: relocation or deportation. He could join his family and share their fate; or he could leave the planet. Death or life. I think I have mentioned he was not very courageous. He chose to live.
They sent him to Capella Two, a 25-year journey. By the time he arrived, the entire story had traveled ahead of him by pepci, and everything was known. His own role was infamous. He was the vile collaborator who had put a benign face on the crime. He had soothed people’s fears and deceived them into walking docilely to their deaths. In hindsight, it was inconceivable that he had not known what he was doing. All across the Twenty Planets, the name of Till Diwali was reviled.
* * *
He fell silent at last. Thorn sat staring at the tabletop, because she could not sort out what to think. It was all wheeling about in her mind: right and wrong, horror and sympathy, criminal and victim—all were jumbled together. Finally she said, “Was Jemma your sister?”
“I told you, I was not there,” he said in a distant voice. “The man who did those things was not me.”
He was sitting at the table across from her again, his hands clasped before him. Now he spoke to her directly. “Thorn, you are unitary and authentic now as you will never be again. As you pass through life, you will accumulate other selves. Always you will be a person looking back on, and separate from, the person you are now. Whenever you walk down a street, or sit on a park bench, your past selves will be sitting beside you, impossible to touch or interrogate. In the end there is a whole crowd of you wherever you go, and you feel like you will perish from the loneliness.”
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection Page 32