The One We Feed

by Kristina Meister

  He turned back to the computer monitor. “Relax, Lily. I know you want to be in The Loop, I was doing independent analysis. Checking the data, you know.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “And?”

  “And it’s the same as the other tests. Their DNA is different.”

  I put my hands down on his narrow shoulders and squeezed. “How’s it happening?”

  He couldn’t shrug with me pressing down on him, so he leaned back and stared up my nose. “Dunno. Need more assays. A sample of your DNA. At any rate, it seems as if it’s through fluid transmission.”

  “Duh, figured that much out. Is it like a germ or a virus?”

  “Possibly.”

  “How would either of those things take away their gifts? And why am I ending up with them?”

  He scratched his head and chewed on his lip piercing. “Um...got some ideas on that, all kinda wackadoodle, but for now, can’t say exactly how it’s occurring. There are some interesting facts that indicate a possible answer for the first question.”

  “I’m all ears,” I said, tugging on his decorated lobes.

  “Well, we only have a couple cases to go on, because unfortunately not everyone you’ve affected has a baseline brain scan to compare to.”

  “Huh?”

  Devlin coughed. I turned around to find him watching me with the black queen nestled in his fingers. “Karl made brain scans mandatory for all of his...colleagues. He cataloged people with abilities, forming a database. It was one of the things your sweet little mathematician stole when he wiped the Vihara’s hard drives.”

  I looked back at Jinx. He nodded. “So we have Karl’s baseline scan and the scans of Petula, William, and Hal. Comparing first to second, what we see in all but William’s case is that the structures most active when the subjects are using their talents are no longer active. Whatever you’ve done, it’s broken down the neuronal connections that they had formed over the span of their lives. You reset them and presumably altered their DNA to prevent it from happening again.”

  “But we don’t know how?”

  “Nope.”

  “What does it matter?” Devlin sang in a tone of voice that dripped with exhaustion. “The only question worth asking is whether or not it can be used to instill gifts, instead of remove them.”

  I must have looked what I was feeling, because Jinx rolled away from me as if I was about to projectile vomit like one of those spitting dinosaurs. I shot a glare at our host to find him smirking.

  “And what would I do with it if it could?” I asked through gritted teeth.

  He laughed and closed his hand around the queen. “I should think that would be obvious.”

  Chapter 22

  At Every Turn

  “You don’t agree?” he asked with an almost sinister sneer. “Unfortunately, it is not debatable. The destructive human condition demands a certain type of strategy. Optimism is noble, but sadly, unwarranted. History has proven that no other course of action will do. Ask your friend here”—he pointed his angular chin in Arthur’s direction. “As compassionate as he is, even he understands.”

  The long fingers were poised in air, a smooth marble pawn caught in them. Still, his eyes flicked to mine and my stomach turned over. For the first time the blue I found there was chill, so detached that he looked like a wolf glaring at an intruder, and the intruder was me.

  I swallowed.

  “Art….” Jinx’s voice was hoarse. “Answer us for once.”

  I asked the same with my gaze, but his said nothing. The moment stretched. Ananda smiled unabashedly and airily at the board. Jinx frowned silently beside me. Finally I could bear it no longer; I reached some kind of mental limit that felt as sturdy as a wall.

  In my thoughts, I repeated phrases over and over and began to feel a heightened, almost nervous apprehension that all my random memories were things of importance. But these were not the kind of self-fulfilling prophecies I wanted. I got to my feet, disturbed and utterly confused, and walked back out into the hall, followed shadows to the cavern, traced its rippling walls to the reception area, my soul gasping for air.

  I could see the precipice, one from which Devlin had already leaped wholeheartedly. It was such an easy thing to do, and I could already feel it happening. The game was growing, the board expanding to encompass more than just me, or my sister, or Reesa. We had begun to speak of the whole world in clipped phrases and little nuances, tiny approaches to such an enormous responsibility. How tempting it was to go from considering each human life as a unique and irreplaceable to seeing each one and the interplay between as a simple balancing of sterile numbers. Human minds, irrational and overwrought with emotion, sought out patterns, rationality, organization, and if we weren’t careful, we’d cure ourselves right into a third world war.

  When I got to the outer stairs, I halted and leaned against the cold, rough wall.

  This can’t be where it’s meant to go.

  “There is no feeling in destruction,” Arthur said into my private misery. “No meaning one way or the other. Death is a simple thing and is unstoppable. There is an end to everything and Shiva dances without apology.”

  I forced myself to swallow the bitterness I felt. “Is that a rationalization? Are you making excuses for Devlin’s behavior, because if you are….”

  From a dark shallow at the edge of my periphery, he reached out and caught my shoulder. Like a peevish child, I tried to pull away, but those fingers I had admired for their grace and artistry were suddenly like vices. Gasping, not in pain but in surprise, I turned to demand an explanation, as silly as it might have been. He stepped toward me in an instant, threw me off balance, and without a single word of explanation or apology, pressed me into the wall. I staggered briefly, but his hands turned to gentle supports and held me in place. The soft pad of his thumb caught my chin, and forced my eyes to his.

  My breath caught in my throat as I tried to remember a moment like this, when his practiced veneer had cracked showing traces of what turmoil was within. I looked to find the telltale anxiousness, need, or something easy to understand, but as always, his face was unshakably calm. He was not trying to jar my reality, push me from my emotional state through some extravagant show. No, this was just a moment like any other in the scripted destiny I could not yet comprehend. Something about that civil acquiescence unsettled me.

  “Do you know why it had to be you?” he said, his voice so soft and low I almost could not hear it.

  My eyes wide, I shook my head, captive in his hands.

  “Because you are fearless, Lilith.”

  He smiled slowly and I began to relax. No, it was not possible that Arthur, my Arthur, could be anything like Devlin, a man who’d tossed human lives aside if they fit his plan. Such a thing was impossible. Doubt was for other people who did not know. I was fearless and because of that, had no reason to be faithless.

  “No matter what the cost, you will do what is necessary,” he said, and my heart plummeted.

  What exactly, I wondered, was necessary?

  I struggled, but he held me still and stared down my anxiety.

  “Ours is not an easy task, but Lilith, we were not made to care too much for ease, were we?”

  A stillness settled over me then, and halted a trembling I didn’t even realize was occurring. Suddenly the air was close, the dark was comforting, and his smile was the most important thing. It was no magic spell of his, but some kind of internal peace. Something in my heart was silenced.

  “I can’t be so….”

  “You must be fearless, ceaseless, and ruthless, Lilith. You cannot allow compromise of any kind, because this is the only moment—now. You’ve always felt it, haven’t you? The undercurrent beneath your life that pulls the ground from you. I know you have. I know you’ve always felt like there was something you were meant to do.”

  I let my mouth fall open in a mute entreaty, but I wasn’t sure what there was to say. All our time together had felt choreographed, set in
a familiar pattern. It went only so far and no farther, but here in the dark, there were no such thing as boundaries.

  He gave a knowing blink, slow and deliberate. “You asked me once, how it was. If I saw the future, or relived the past, or if I was just some kind of mind reader.”

  I nodded hesitantly, still afraid that if I breathed, the moment would scatter like so much dust.

  “I couldn’t tell you then, but this is the moment. Now I have no choice. This is the time when you are to know.”

  I could see how conflicted he seemed. Suddenly he was not the plotting genius or the perfect icon. He was a man, dealing with a terrible decision that he believed, for some reason, had already been made.

  I reached up and put my hands on his shoulders. “I’m ready. Whatever it is, say it.”

  He managed a sad smile and gathered my hands in his. For a long time, he toyed with them, turned them over, brushed the palms with his thumbs, all the while staring into the space without seeing it.

  There he goes again, neither here nor there, I thought, and as I thought it, he smiled.

  “For me,” he said, “there is only now. As I stand with you here...I sit beneath the tree, I walk with Ananda in the garden, I sit in the coffee shop and read your sister’s journals. As I am here with you….” He looked up, and in the glance I understood. “I am everywhere I have ever been and everywhere I might ever be.”

  I blinked at him in astonishment.

  There is only now.

  It had never been a profound statement of the oneness of all things but the revelation of his particular insight. Or perhaps they were one and the same.

  To live every moment of one’s life, not just every moment that would be, but every moment that could be, all at once, simultaneously; it was unthinkable. Every book he’d ever read, every word spoken, every decision made, all concurrent, contiguous, and somehow, unconfused. He saw it all and yet somehow managed to live it too. No wonder he had always seemed so distant to me, with brief interludes of focus.

  All those stories, knowledge fed to me bit by bit at key times, it was not a plan, just as Jinx had said; it was an evolution. To him, outcomes existed already, but it was still essential that he go through the motions so that they existed for everyone else too. To him, I was what I was, and he was an integral part of that. Not because of him, but with him.

  I collapsed back against the wall, stunned, and finally surrendered.

  “You’re here with me….”

  His eyes distant again, he nodded.

  “And you’re there with Eva, in the alley?”

  The eyes sharpened and found my face, in sync with this moment once again. “Yes.”

  “Tell her I love her.”

  “I cannot. Everything that has been said, was what needed to be said. I have the ability to direct, as a farmer tills his rows, but seeing all, know that I am not planting seeds. I am simply weaving through not rows but roads and all in divergent directions.”

  “Arthur, you’re losing me.”

  His lashes swept over his cheeks but an instant, “You have already told her that you love her, and will again. Be satisfied that she knows.”

  He had stepped back from me, though when he did, I couldn’t say. I lifted my hands to my face and smoothed the creases I felt there.

  If he was with me, this me, then he was also with a different me, the me I would be, somewhere down the line. That was how he knew, how he was so confident in my progress. He knew us both and, without pushing, was attempting to align the two. And then I saw it, that there was no reason to align anything, because he was the force that had caused my transformation. Just by existing near to me, I had changed forever.

  He was not some chess master, positioning others to his will. He was the pawn, being positioned by our needs, our flaws, our difficulties. He belonged to the world and at every turn had been placed to cause some kind of reaction.

  A catalyst.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, all disingenuous thoughts toward him stifled.

  But sent by whom? And when had it begun?

  “Here with me….”

  His chin dipped.

  “Beneath the tree.”

  “Yes, Lilith.”

  “Then, in a way,” I whispered, “I’m there with you too.”

  His smile grew, but still it seemed almost sad. “And always will be.”

  I dropped my gaze to his feet and, in the deepest part of my soul, knew. This was the moment he had spoken of. He had to leave. I knew his secret, and, because I knew, everything had changed.

  “There is no other way. You understand me all too clearly.” He took a small step back, his hand out in something of an apology.

  I heard the words and recognized them as the foreshadowing they had been. I had never understood him before this moment, but for him, I had always known.

  I smiled and completed his thought. “If you’re here at all, it’s because you’ve seen something worth fighting for in me. I know it now and so….”

  His nod was perfunctory and accompanied another step away.

  “You’re the general,” I whispered, but emotion caught me off guard and choked my words.

  “And you,” he replied with an endearing nod of his head, “you are the furnace. They are your creations. I will see to it they find their use.”

  His heel found the bottom step and he drifted slowly away.

  “Arthur.”

  He halted, though it seemed he did not wish to look back at me. I felt I could understand that. “Yes, Lilith?”

  I pushed away from the wall and stood looking up at him, certain it would be the last time I would ever see him in the flesh. He was just an outline in the dim glow of the single gas lamp.

  “I love you. I can’t explain how, but...I do.”

  The smile he cast over his shoulder shaded into something of a boyish grin before it was lost in the gloom. “I know.”

  “Of course you do,” I said to myself, because he had already gone.

  I dropped to the stairs and wrapped my arms around my knees. There was no going back anymore, no point debating eventualities. I was a machine, whether it was fair or not. Something was being asked of me, a difficult choice had to be made, and I was the only person who could or would ever be able to make it. That was not a reason to exist, because there was never a reason, never a purpose. There was only what we decided, and, somewhere in my past, a line had been crossed.

  It had to be done.

  “Fearless, ceaseless, ruthless,” I murmured to myself. Fearless of the cost to myself, because there was no cost; ceaseless because I did not tire as others did; ruthless because there would be no stopping me.

  “If come it must, then by my hand alone.”

  I got to my feet and walked down the hall, numb. My mind wandered, thinking of the Buddha beneath the tree, with me as his imaginary friend. I was pulled from the fantasy by Jinx insistently calling my name. I glanced up.

  “Where’s Art? Are you guys okay?”

  I blinked. His face seemed so adult then, either because his inner maturity had come out of hiding or I was suddenly able to see it clearly.

  “He’s gone.”

  He didn’t ask when Arthur would be back. “Was only a matter of time, I guess.”

  The phrase tugged a laugh from me. “No such thing for him.”

  “Oh?”

  “I figured out how he cheated.” Devlin was reordering the pieces; Ananda had taken Arthur’s place across the grid without complaint or remark. I sat down beside the hacker, plucked the black queen from the table and rolled it around in my fingers.

  “I think…,” I said with a sigh, “I think Arthur just told me he’s the Kwisatz Haderach.”

  Jinx raised a studded brow. “That’s it?”

  I shrugged. I could already hear the tirade coming and, needing the familiar warmth of his impotent intellectual fury, let it blast by me.

  “I spend hours trying to describe character theory
for groups of transfinite order, evanescence in a tangled system, and infinite dimensional topologies, and all I had to do was talk about standing on a sheet billowing in the wind? This isn’t laundry day for fuck’s sake! We’re not hanging linens in high wind shear! You’ve got to be kidding me!” He got up from the table, paced futilely in a circle, then sat back down in a huff.

  I shrugged again and put the queen back in her place. “Sometimes it’s just that simple.”

  “Yeah, well...you’ve got forever now, so get a friggin’ education.”

  “Why bother? When I need one, there’ll always be time. And if there isn’t, then I’ll just have to surround myself with people like you and make sure you either really like me, or really owe me.”

  Devlin was watching me with a hawkish glimmer in his shrewd eye.

  “Tell me, Vlad,” I said casually, leaning my chin on my knuckles while Jinx steamed from the ears, “You didn’t refer every Siren you knew to Mara, did you?”

  The smile curved around his sharpened bicuspid. “Never show all your cards.”

  “Any chance the last Siren is indebted to you?”

  His laugh was like a hiss. “You know me so well already.”

  Chapter 23

  Stratagem

  “He’s rubbing off on you,” Jinx said, his face stuck to the table. “You’re both mental.”

  I leaned back, my eyes still focused on the game board. Until this point, I had been one of the pieces, bound by rules and unable to escape, but an idea was blooming in my mind, an idea about ideas. A strategy was forming that would make all strategy unnecessary.

  “Jinx,” I interrupted quietly. My immortal side-kick sat up like a Pavlovian terrier, scowling at me as if the weight in my voice was indicative of a beating. “Do you think what Karl suggested could be true? I know your feelings, but is it real?”

  “You know it’s real, Lily,” he growled. “You’ve done it now, many times. Doesn’t mean you should go running into trouble, though. Remember what happened when we tried that?”

  I leaned back in my chair till it rocked on its hind legs, determined not to think about his bloody midsection and a side of beef. “What do you think could possibly have done it to me?”