A Call to Arms

by Bradley Hutchinson

  James gave a slight bow, and Elias wasn’t sure if he was being mocked or not – after all, why else would James be telling him all this? “Yes. I’ve already arranged for the Genetics Centre on Elysium to courier the kids’ genetic sample for you to work with; it should be there within a few weeks, maybe a little longer.” He sighed. “There’s also a complete copy of his profile included, just in case.”

  “I can do that… but it’ll be, um, rather expensive, James,” Elias said, mentally doing the calculations in his head. He hated verbal communication, always have to slow his thinking down to choose his words. “And time consuming… what’s the family going to be doing in the meantime?”

  “You only have to deal with the mother – the rest of the family died on New Baltimore… along with a lot of other people.” That last was said with a degree of bitterness and hatred that Elias had never heard come out of James’ mouth before… not that it was all that surprising. “I’m arranging for her to stay in one of our vacant apartments on Elysium for the time being.”

  Elias sat down slowly, easing himself into his seat. It wasn’t that he disapproved of what James was doing, it was just… unusual. James was usually a creature of cold logic – it’s what made him such an excellent attorney… and a functional cog in the Hunter family. While he was hardly a cold fish, such acts of generosity were a rarity.

  Elias imagined the same was not said of himself – while he had no doubt that his family cared about him, he knew that he was seen as something of a black-sheep (or even a disappointment) to many in the family. Elias’ sole purpose in life was to help others.

  “This is a lot of effort for you to go to for one person, James. There are lots of people needing to be re-lifed, to be rehoused and stuff. Why is this one so special?”

  James stared at him for a long moment, and Elias wasn’t sure if the connection had been lost or not. “Does it really matter all that much?”

  The evasion to the question wasn’t lost on Elias. “I… don’t know, James,” Elias replied, carefully modulating his tone so as not to sound condescending or patronizing. “Do you think it matters all that much?”

  Again, James was silent a long moment as he seemed to consider that, his brow furrowed, his dark eyes seeming to penetrate the wall behind Elias as if he was lost in thought. “Have you ever seen a child die, Elias?”

  “Of course not, you know I haven’t, what an odd thing to ask –” Elias answered gruffly, then calmed himself, sniffing in disdain at the thought. Thinking of death was not how he spent his hours – quite the opposite, in fact. “No, I haven’t, and nor would I care to, for that matter. I don’t think anybody would.”

  “Exactly.” James nodded sagely. “Well I have, and it was horrible, and I need to fix it if I can.” He shrugged. “You are my means of fixing that.”

  Elias pondered that for only a moment, before shrugging. He was unaccustomed to being used – usually, his family was content to let him potter around with his pet projects, no matter how expensive they were. Or time consuming.

  Truthfully, with his funding crunch, he didn’t have all that much to do around here these days. He was over-staffed – a situation that would have to be rectified in the next few weeks – and was on the verge of being bored. And while what James was offering him wasn’t overly complicated, it was better than the abyss of nothing he was staring at.

  “Alright, James, I’ll do it… but it’ll take a while.”

  James smiled ruefully as he ran a hand through his hair. “I know. All the details on how to contact the family are in that package I sent you… I’d appreciate it if you kept her updated on a fairly regular basis. I’m… concerned… about her mental state.”

  Or are you worried about your own? Elias resisted the urge to shuffle awkwardly, biting down from asking the question. He hated dealing with people. “Alright, I can do that for you.”

  “Thanks Elias. I’ve told Jennifer to donate some money to Sanctuary... least I could do.”

  Elias smiled appreciatively. “Good… dad slashed my budget by almost two-thirds so he can donate to more… militant causes… like I don’t have enough problems.” Elias shrugged. “I have enough to maintain the project in its current state, but progress won’t be made if things don’t change.”

  James didn’t even look surprised at that pronouncement. Belatedly, Elias supposed that his younger brother did have quite a lot on his plate already, without having to worry about Elias’s eccentricities. “Unfortunately, I don’t think you’ll be seeing a change to the status quo any time soon.” James sighed as his attention was grabbed elsewhere. “I have to go, Elias, I’ve been online too long as it is.”

  “Where are you, anyway?”

  “About to depart from Calder II.” He nodded at Elias, giving a casual little wave that Elias returned, and James shimmered out of existence, allowing the darkness to consume the room again.

  “Happy New Year,” Elias whispered to the thin air, letting out a dejected sigh, just as the doors to his office opened, a lithe blonde woman sweeping through gracefully. He smiled as he recognized the entrant. “Well, that could have been awkward.”

  Alice Chamberlain – one of the last people Elias had hired before his financial crush stalled all progress on Sanctuary – stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him, holding up a datapad in confusion. “Did I miss something?”

  Elias snorted, waving her question away. He wasn’t going to open that can of worms any time soon. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Chapter Four

  “The nightmares haven’t stopped.”

  Rebecca Gold offered her son a sad, understanding smile as she looked at his hologram. James Hunter was a tenth of his usual size, standing atop the marble-finish top of her desk.

  “I’d be surprised if they had, to be honest, James,” she said. She was trying to sound like a mother and not as a psychiatrist, but it wasn’t easy – these days, whenever she spoke to James, it always seemed to turn more into a therapy session than a family reunion. “You’re suffering from –”

  “Yes, yes, I know all about PTSD, mother. The counsellors here have been very informative on the subject, for all the good it’s done.”

  Rebecca ignored his contemptuous attitude. “Is it the same nightmare?”

  James nodded sullenly, screwing his nose up in a snarl. “Yeah. I walk into a house, and it’s full of children that have been butchered. Throats slit, heads blown off or skulls caved in –”

  Rebecca sighed, holding up a hand and silencing him. She looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked northern San Francisco. She tapped a button on the computer on her desk, and the hologram disappeared, replaced by an avatar on her virtual-vision. With a grace that she wasn’t feeling, she rose up and strolled onto the balcony that adjoined her office.

  Sunsets in San Francisco were usually magnificent, and tonight – a warm May evening – was no exception. Setting over the murky Pacific, Rebecca always had a magnificent view from her penthouse suite in the Acacia Towers in the northern portion of the suburb of Richmond. From up here – several hundred meters above ground level – she had a priceless view of the Presidio, the inappropriately named Golden Gate Bridge – still a red-orange after all these centuries – and far off, sparsely populated Marin County.

  The air – brimming with the sounds of distant hover-cars, pedestrian traffic down below, and, if you listened intently, the ocean – was tinged with salt and city-living, and the breeze – much stronger up here than it would be down below – was more than a little chilly, coming straight off the ocean, so Rebecca pulled her thick jacket tighter over here. Sky traffic was rather heavy, but at this time in the early evening, it was still rush-hour.

  Her office was more comfortable, but the view from inside was terrible. Rebecca tried to spend as much time as possible out on the balcony when she was home – after all, she’d paid a premium for this view.

  “You hold yourself to too high a standard, James,” Rebe
cca said softly. “You were like this when Menacor was attacked, remember? You took having to flee badly, despite the fact that there was literally nothing you could do.” She nodded, if only to herself. “Beating yourself up over being unable to help one boy – out of how many millions – isn’t going to accomplish anything.”

  “I’m trying not to think about it. It’s not easy. I’m not used to seeing children dying.”

  “It’s a temporary death, James. You downloaded his VA, you’ve got Elias cloning him… soon, he’ll be up and about and running around, as if nothing had happened.”

  She was being rather flippant about it, but a cold, logical argument was something James could appreciate. Ideally, he should have been seeing a therapist, but, aside from his reluctance, the military’s mental health services were back-logged as it was, with soldiers who were legitimately compromised. Which isn’t to diminish what James is going through, but it does put it in perspective.

  “So, if you know all about it, why are you complaining about it? You’ve already ruled out having a memory wipe –”

  “I can’t have a memory wipe while on active duty, mother.” James sighed heavily.

  “From what you’ve told me before, you don’t think you’ll ever want to get your memory wiped.” James was silent for a long moment. “The Navy has psychiatrists on its payroll, James. Maybe you’d feel more comfortable –”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to be able to sleep every night without waking up in a cold sweat, my heart threatening to break out of my chest.”

  Rebecca sighed, a hand reaching for her temple. “For someone who doesn’t want to talk about it, James, you’re doing an awful lot of rambling about the subject. Every time we talk, in fact.”

  James’ mouth hung open, seemingly at a loss for words. Finally, he thrust his chin out, almost defiantly, and nodded sagely. “No, you’re right. I need to talk about this to someone.”

  “I’m your mother, I’m always right,” Rebecca chided. “Don’t feel bad, your father always underestimated me, too.”

  James smiled, a genuine one this time. He’d always had a beautiful smile, gleaming white teeth framed by long locks of dark hair – too bad it was his twin brother that did most of the grinning in their little family these days. James was always the more serious, demure one.

  “Are you still dabbling in those strategy games?”

  “Infrequently.” James smiled sheepishly, sounding embarrassed. He hadn’t been much a gamer since he’d graduated university, and had only taken it up on account of long hours of tedium and boredom while out on deployment. “But apparently I’m quite good at them… still.”

  “How good would that be?”

  Her son considered the question carefully, his avatar displaying a confused or bewildered expression. “… Very? I have no idea how they would apply under real circumstances, but I’ve managed to beat everyone I’ve played against at least once.”

  Rebecca waited for him to continue, but after several awkward moments of silence, she opted to change the topic… again. It was increasingly hard to talk to James about almost anything these days – all things came back to the war, and his reluctance to fight, despite being a competent soldier.

  It was as understandable as it was heart-wrenching, and despite treating multiple patients with PTSD, it still managed to hurt Rebecca in ways that surprised even her – it just wasn’t natural to see your children in such states of despair in this day-and-age.

  “How are you and Troy going?”

  The bewilderment vanished quickly, replaced by a severe scowl and a short, uncomfortable silence – vintage James when the subject of his twin came up… and the same could be said for Troy, for that matter, who only seemed to acknowledge James’ existence when pressed on the issue. “Outwardly, I suppose we’re doing okay. We’re not fighting as much these days… and that’s probably because we seldom talk as much as we used to…”

  “But?”

  James heaved a sigh as he ran a hand through his hair. “I think we’re both finding it difficult to put our differences behind us.” His lips thinned as a thought occurred to him. “Troy is, at his core, a coward, and the notion of fighting for anything is an anathema to him.”

  “That’s not true, James,” said his mother archly. “Not even close.”

  Wrinkling his nose, James just took the rebuke in his stride. “This long-distance crap certainly isn’t helping, though. It’s impossible to have a heart-to-heart over subspace… too easy to cut the connection, and then we’re back where we started.”

  This was true enough, but Rebecca knew that the chances of James returning to Bastion anytime soon was next to impossible – the ruckus he’d caused to get posted away from Elysium had ensured that any leave he took wouldn’t get him past that world – the High Command’s way of ensuring that he didn’t back out of the war he’d tried so hard to get involved in. Not that it’d be worth his while, wasting half his leave just getting home.

  “You know, I’m sure if you coordinated with him, you could catch up on Earth for a couple of days. With me. It’ll be a family reunion.”

  He didn’t look at all convinced that that would be a good idea. “Maybe. We’ll see. Applications for leave aren’t exactly getting approved in a brisk manner these days… especially if your destination is other than Elysium.”

  “Well, I suppose we could always come to you, there. It’d be safe enough… and Elysium’s capital is probably nicer than the Citadel.”

  James rolled his eyes at that, the digital representation of the act being nowhere near as smooth a motion as the real-life version. “Like I said, we’ll see.” Rebecca knew the promise was a platitude, meant to placate her, and she let the matter drop. One thing James still had in common with his twin was his penchant for over-reacting if pushed… or nagged.

  “Well, I suggest that you continue to try using those meditation techniques I taught you, and see if they help. I doubt they’ll make the situation worse.”

  His avatar nodded. “I will, mother. I better go.”

  “I love you,” Rebecca said, meaning it.

  “I love you too.”

  His avatar disappeared, and Rebecca cleared her virtual vision, soaking in the view. In a few minutes, it would be completely dark – already, the sky was almost devoid of orange light, the sun having disappeared beyond the horizon some minutes before.

  It was a few minutes more before there was a knock at the door. Slowly, the door creaked open, and her fiancé – Sean Palhares – stuck his head in, his neck and body obscured by the darkness in the hallway behind him.

  “Am I interrupting anything?” he asked delicately, his bushy eyebrows meeting together as his gaze swept the room, finally setting sight of her on the balcony as she gave a gentle wave.

  “No, I was just talking to James.”

  “Finally decided to call, did he?” He tried to keep his tone neutral, but there was an underlying sense of resentment towards her son – after all, his own son was a serviceman too, and he called on a frequent basis.

  Sean and James had crossed paths sixteen years earlier, when Sean had been called to testify in a case James was prosecuting – Sean’s testimony had helped cause a mistrial, and an alleged killer had walked. James had taken issue with the ‘psycho mumbo-jumbo’ that had confused the jury, and his attitude towards his would-be stepfather had been frosty ever since – compounded by the fact that the accused had gone on to commit another murder before he could be re-tried.

  Rebecca had stayed carefully neutral in their little quarrel, not taking a side – despite the fact that, as a psychiatrist, she agreed more with Sean than with her son. Which doesn’t mean I don’t understand where James is coming from.

  “Yeah, he did. He’s having nightmares.”

  “Hmmm.” Sean seemed about to say something else, then thought better of it. “You’d better get ready, the dinner starts in half an hour, and you can bet parking will be a bitch.”

/>   Rebecca nodded, shivering – with the sun gone, the temperature had dropped rather quickly, the effects made worse by their altitude and the salty sea breeze, which seemed to have picked up in the last hour or so.

  “I’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

  *

  As charity balls went, the Festival Gala, held in Berkeley, was a rather low-key – and low-tech – affair. Held at the University of California Berkeley campus, in its largest auditorium, which could easily house a couple of thousand people. There was barely half that number tonight, though, and Rebecca and Sean were one of the last guests to sign in – fashionably late, as Sean had put it.

  The hall was decorated as if it was a high school debutante ball, with five long tables – draped in black table cloths and bunches of blue and white balloons floating high above, and through, the various holo-streams of news broadcasts, special interest stories and the like, that danced over the surface – running north-to-south. Most of the seats were empty, the guests to the dinner standing around in clusters of five, six or even seven people – the din of conversation ebbed and flowed like a tide.

  True to form for most events like this, an area in front of the stage had been set aside as a dance floor, with a string ensemble waiting in the back to be summoned after the initial preparations. There was an open bar along the eastern wall, with an open buffet next to it.

  “I’m so sorry about the commotion out the front.”

  Bradley Gibson – the Chancellor of the University – grimaced as he extended a hand to Rebecca and Sean. He was a small man, rather corpulent, with thinning hair that was determined to beat genetic resequencing, and was a consummate administrator – he’d been Chancellor of the University for nearly fifty years. Rebecca – who was a part-time tenured professor – had had a few dealings with him since she’d moved to Earth, but he was by no means a friend of her.

  “It wasn’t that disruptive,” Sean said politely, though that wasn’t how Rebecca would have phrased it – at the gates to the campus, a small gathering of protesting students had rallied, airing their myriad issues with the government, with the university, to anyone who would listen – and naturally, nobody would.