Skinner Luce

  It doesn’t matter. The truth returns with fresh surprise, like something she’d forgotten. She’s not getting out, either way.

  Ain’t no serv ever comes back from the Gate.

  “I have no idea,” she says, every word an effort, her longing to collapse so overpowering she can hardly see. “They never took me. I don’t know if Theo ever even finished building it.”

  There’s a sound, and Lucy turns to see the serv getting up and rounding the table. Lucy finds herself ashamed of her pathetic state, confronted by this short, brisk guy who moves so easily in the presence of the Qadir. He comes right to her, peers up at her face like he might find something. “So they never mentioned a road, a mountain, any landmark?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did they say how long it took to get there?”

  She struggles to find an answer. How long did it take. How long. Did. It. Take.

  She drifts far back in time to the white house in Ayer with its rolling meadow and open door, Theo beckoning her closer. The tile floor in the kitchen, violets dropping purple, the scent of candles. Ernesto, his huge brown eyes wet with emotion. Alita and Soren, down for a visit, always so elegant. “It was far,” she says, remembering. “Alita said once it took them all afternoon to come down to Ayer. She had a truck. It was black. She always wore black, and I thought it was funny the truck was black, too. And then I couldn’t picture her there, because they called it Eden, and that word always makes me think of white.”

  Shit, she’s rambling. She sways, liable to keel over. Gabriel steadies her at the elbow. Whatever he gave her was way more potent than the usual. She wouldn’t say no to more.

  The serv gestures impatiently. “Don’t stop. Tell us anything you know.”

  “It was in a valley. Julian said that once. It was in a valley, and there was a river, and fields. It sounded boring to me, but I never said that. I never got to see it. They cut me out.”

  “Did he ever describe it?”

  “He called it a compound. I always thought, wow, it must be really big, lots of houses, because there were supposed to be a lot of freed servs up there, eventually. Everyone was supposed to be there together.”

  He frowns. “Freed servs?”

  “The ones he buys out. Well, whoever he thinks is worthy, anyway,” Lucy adds bitterly.

  The Qadir raps his cane for her attention. “You wanted to live there?”

  The way he asks, she feels ashamed of the wanting. “Sort of. Not really.”

  “What about your duty? What about your Service?”

  He can’t possibly mean she’s supposed to feel an obligation. But apparently he does, as he grows incensed by her obvious surprise. He lifts his gnarled hand, points to his livid face. The hideous scars blur in Lucy’s vision. “The Qadir should Serve, but you go free?”

  “But—what about—” Lucy struggles to piece together an argument, finally grasping her point. “But the Gate takes buyouts.”

  “Only because we have to. Freed servs!” he spits in disgust.

  “I don’t understand,” Lucy says weakly. His gaze feels like it’s drawing on her insides, churning them into a whirlpool.

  “You are all the same, ungrateful and stupid,” he accuses. “We have given you quota. You can come and go as you please when the season ends. What more do you want?”

  What more—? She twists in place, staring up at Gabriel in confusion. He indicates sternly that she should return her attention to the Qadir, who is edging closer. She cringes, his rotting odor making her gag. “I was told Elander believes servs used to be Nafikh. Is this true?”

  She nods.

  “He kills other servs so he can live longer. And now he thinks he can live forever, with all the power of the Nafikh, by killing Dara-Lin. Am I right?”

  Dara-Lin: She’s the one that strangled the serv in the limo that time coming back from Swampscott. The name is Her own mangling of what the Gate called Her, perhaps its own form of sick humor: Darling.

  Then what the Qadir said penetrates the woolen muffle of Lucy’s thoughts. It’s like bits of a puzzle falling into place at last. She always assumed Theo would combine grabs, create a megadose to restore what he called his true form. It never crossed her mind that he’d grab from a Nafikh. It’s totally insane. “I guess,” she whispers. “No one ever told me.”

  “Do you think you were once Nafikh?”

  He leans in close, glaring at her. She glimpses yellowed teeth, receded gums. His lip trembles. She averts her eyes. “I don’t know,” she says. “No. I think.”

  The Qadir grunts, stands back. “We were never Nafikh. They do not have Sources that can be grabbed. He will kill Her for nothing. And we will pay. And pay! And pay!”

  He drums out the last words with his cane, causing her to want to cover her ears.

  For nothing.

  They were never Nafikh. But Theo was always so certain. She wanted it to be true, she realizes now. There was always a tiny spark of longing, never completely extinguished, from that time with Theo. Maybe she was once a Nafikh. Just maybe. Instead of being just nothing. Nothing to Them, or the universe—

  “Lucy,” Gabriel shakes her, and she opens her eyes, startled. “You have to try and think. We’re just a few hours behind them right now. Dara-Lin is probably still alive.”

  She wishes she could help, because she doesn’t want him to think badly of her. But she’s at a loss. “Maybe there’s something in Ayer?”

  The serv who was interrogating her says, “We’re still searching. I’ll keep narrowing things down on the map, but it’s a needle in a haystack.”

  “Try,” the Qadir nods. He looks like he’s really ailing now, leaning so heavily on his cane. She swallows, swaying against Gabriel. She might throw up, she realizes. That wouldn’t be good. She swallows again, her whole head rocking with the effort. The Qadir struck her in the stomach, that’s what happened. That’s why it hurts in this thudding, distant kind of way, muffled by the cocktail Gabriel gave.

  The thudding: it’s not from her stomach.

  “What’s that?” she whispers.

  “More Nafikh,” Gabriel mutters. “Eric, how many now?”

  The serv is back at the table, shutting his laptop. He tucks it under his arm. “Of the three already out, one’s in a burn and won’t last. The other two are freaking, but it’s contained so far. There are two in holding, still under. And whoever’s coming now.”

  Lucy follows Gabriel to the window. They are high up, under the roof. The center of the building, she understands, has been gutted to create an empty space two stories high. The floor down below is empty but for what looks like a giant iron safe in the center. Scaffolding covers all the surrounding walls, with metal stairways and landings giving access to the quarters, Lucy surmises. Sentries are coming in now. They take up position in a wide circle around the iron structure.

  “That’s the Gate,” Gabriel says curtly, when she lifts her eyes in question.

  She’s too exhausted to feel embarrassed, but really, it was dumb, to imagine the Gate would be anything more elaborate. The Nafikh can come and go as They please; every season there are one or two that blow. What They need is privacy, security, a structure that can contain the explosive violence of Their travel. Something just like this.

  The other Qadir is down there, too. Lucy presses her forehead to the glass, hands to either side of her face. She is as massive as the First, but without sign of any weakness as she steps into the circle, towering over the sentries. She has long gray hair in a braid and is dressed in dark, shining clothes, leather boots. She looks up, as if aware of Lucy’s gaze. Her face is chiseled, gray, a landscape of deep-etched lines, like an ancient tree. Her stare is hard as a punch, filled with anger and hatred.

  “She’s not happy,” Gabriel states.

  No shit. Lucy drags her eyes away, feeling sick again.

  There is a thunderous roar, and the sentries edge closer to the Gate. Through the narrow windows at the top, Lucy glimpse
s blue licking flames within. The thunder is so loud that she presses her hands to her ears, her whole body humming with the reverberations. The ring of sentries tightens, rifles drawn. Sina is among them, sweat pouring down her face, hair plastered to her skull. They’re all aiming in one direction, a door Lucy couldn’t make out before, now outlined by the shimmering smoke seeping out the sides.

  The flames explode.

  One second there’s a flickering dance of fire, the next there’s an inferno whirling inside the iron walls. She almost misses it, it happens so fast: the door swings open with a crash, and from the depths, two figures hurtle forth.

  Just as suddenly the fire is gone, leaving only the bland dark interior, the door already being shut by a sentry.

  The Nafikh leap to Their feet, turning in place. They are naked, muscled like stone statues come to life, Their skin sleek with sweat. One female and one male, both with long, white hair. Lucy can’t tell if she’s Served Them before, Their faces are so distorted from screaming, the cries shattering the air. The cords in Their necks stand out, Their faces purpling, every muscle in Their bodies ripped.

  “What’s the matter with Them?” Lucy asks.

  “They’re always like this when They get here,” Gabriel says. “We dose Them till They’re stable, then They go out. Except today, They’ll want to go out fast. They’ll want to find Dara-Lin.”

  The Nafikh lope around dumbly, arms and legs loose as rags. The female succumbs first, holding Herself on hands and knees for as long as possible before collapsing. The male takes longer. The sentries fire at Him, one shot after another, with calm precision.

  Within minutes, They lie crumpled in a heap, twitching.

  The sentries shoulder their rifles, move towards the prone Nafikh. They bend in pairs, two at each end, to lift first the female, then the male, onto gurneys. The Second Qadir turns her stern face to the window where her counterpart stands. She mouths something, then holds up two fingers, then three, wags her hand.

  “Aante ey gosh. Khadji,” the First steps back, leaning heavily on his cane. “Osh bey. Osh.”

  “Neyyel en adar,” Gabriel says.

  “What’s going on?” Lucy grabs at his arm, but he shakes her off, goes over to the Qadir. He talks low and fast in Nafikh.

  She turns to the serv. “You, Eric, what’s happening?”

  He swallows, his knuckles white, clutching the laptop to his chest like a shield. “The ones that just came, They’re Hansel and Gretel. You’ve probably Served Them.”

  “Gretel, I have,” Lucy nods.

  “They’re old-timers. They’ll be out fast, and They’ll push the others out with Them.”

  “So dose Them, keep Them here.”

  “Too much can kill Them. The risk is too high. Gabe, the Qadir’s right. We’re out of time!”

  Gabriel whips around. “Shut up and get to work. Get what you can out of her.”

  The Qadir makes a gasping, stifled noise and sags, clutching his chest. Gabriel seizes him under the arm, helps him over to a couch at the far end of the room. The Qadir lowers himself onto the cushions, wheezing. His furious eyes rove the room. Gabriel levers up a blind above the couch, revealing one of the tall exterior windows framed in stone. Lucy blinks at the sunlight pouring in. She glimpses the silvery motion of the river, a tugboat moving slowly against the current. The Qadir sits back, staring out, hands pressed to his chest. His breaths sound ragged, hoarse.

  His earlier accusation returns, about giving them quota. He’s Served since arriving. Now he’ll fritz, and all he’s ever had of this world is what he sees out windows. Come and go after the season, he said. How could he go anywhere? Look at him. He’s like a creature out of a fairy tale. He suddenly goes rigid, knees drawn up. A shudder racks his frame, and he hisses against the pain.

  “Why can’t he be dosed?” she whispers to Eric.

  He gives his head a small warning shake, as if she’s made a faux pas. “It just isn’t done.”

  “Get a move on,” Gabriel drives them out, closing the door behind him. “Work fast,” he warns Eric, and lopes off down the corridor.

  Eric sets off in the opposite direction. Lucy half runs behind him along some corridors, down a set of stairs, into yet another corridor. She can’t get the Qadir out of her head. That he could seem so pitiful is too much to fathom. Her whole body feels soggy and weak from the dose, and it’s difficult to think clearly. The Source barely tweaks at all, now. It feels like a bruise, if that. It must be what Eric’s on, and all the rest of them, to be able to endure being with the Qadir.

  Eric holds a door open for her and she steps through. They’re on the Gate level: the iron safe looms in the middle of the room, the silence huge after all that just happened. She looks up, turning in place, until she finds the window where they were just standing, opposite from where they are now. They aren’t alone, she notices; sentries are posted here and there beneath the scaffolding, the crackle of their walkies alerting her to their presence.

  “This way,” Eric says.

  He guides her through a nearby doorway into a long room humming with computers, metal desks stationed at intervals. There’s a rustling sound, murmurs from the servs peeking around their screens to see who’s arrived. Lucy feels like a zoo specimen. “What is this place?”

  “We keep in touch with the overseers from here, and the bosses, and so on. We also maintain contact with all the other Gates around the world. It’s 24/7 in season.” Eric talks over his shoulder, leading her to the far end of the room, where a more imposing desk with three screens is located perpendicular to the rest. He’s got his own window cutout, no glass, giving onto the Gate. Lucy thinks, Window office, and almost laughs. A sentry across the way meets her eyes, causing her to flinch. She can just hear what he’s thinking, that she’s the serv who worked with Elander. The one who fucked them all up.

  Eric’s already hunched over his keyboard, eyes darting from one screen to the next. She says, “Can I ask something? Is that where servs arrive, too?”

  “It is.”

  Lucy blinks at the image of herself, minuscule infant, wailing and thrashing in the midst of the whirling fire. “How do They make us?”

  “We don’t know. They do it in Their world, then send us over.”

  “So—we’re there for a little bit, before we come here?”

  “I guess. We’re not really finished till we get here. There’s a whole phase of cooling down, compression. But you know about that,” he says, with a sideways glance.

  “I guess I do,” she says flatly.

  She sits down on the empty chair next to him. He’s perusing columns of numbers, and there’s another screen with some kind of satellite feed. It’s all gibberish to her. Ice. Endless. Darkness. How many times she recorded these memories for Theo. They could mean anything. They could describe the Nafikh world itself. Or, the place where servs are created, a frozen womb from which they are pushed out into this world. There are servs being made right now, most likely. Clueless, staring dumbly into the dark.

  She becomes aware of the others in the room, watching. She feels awkward about her bedraggled, bruised appearance compared to these tidy servs in their clean clothes. They seem soft and weak. Like they’ve never done anything but sit at these desks, clicking away and gossiping.

  “Does anyone here ever Serve?” she asks.

  Eric shoots her a glance. “It’s not like what we do is a cake-walk.”

  I’d beg to differ. “How did they educate you?” she asks, trying to keep her tone more neutral. She juts her chin at all the fancy screens on the desk. “Did you go to M.I.T. or something?”

  “We don’t get to go to school,” he says. He gives his glasses a push up her nose, and his magnified, dark eyes fix on Lucy. “The Gate keeps a percentage of arrivals. If they’re lucky, they get training for jobs like this. Otherwise, they stay on the sets.”

  “The sets?”

  “The Nafikh have to be taught Their manners,” Eric says. “Even ol
d-timers need refreshers. The whole west side is just stage sets where They practice real situations. We’ve all put in our time.”

  The remark’s meant to shame her, which gets under Lucy’s skin that much more. She’s in a roomful of servs who, by the luck of the draw, work on computers all day. She’s hard-pressed to care that they put in their time. “Where do you all live? Those rooms up there?”

  “Some do.”

  “And the rest?”

  “There are apartments in Chelsea.”

  He says it boldly, in her face. Daring her to object.

  Fuck him and his cushy job and apartment. She turns her attention to the jumble of information on the screens. If Eric thinks she’s supposed to understand all this, he’s dumber than he looks. She folds her arms and sits back. “I don’t get how you think I can help.”

  “Look at the map, is all I want you to do,” he says, pointing with a pen. “It’s a topographical map of Maine. We know wherever he’s built his Eden, it has to be out of the way, and probably protected with security apparatus which, if anyone looked closely, would seem irrational. I’ve already set up possible areas, marked with those red circles, and I’ll keep adding to them. There’s got to be a pretty deep underground component, so that other Nafikh and servs can’t detect Her presence. That limits where it might be built, so, uh, not where the land is rock, for example, or with a high water table.”

  “But what am I looking for?”

  “Anything. The name of a town. A mountain he might have mentioned. A cavern, a river. Just keep looking. Maybe something will jog your memory.”

  “This is nuts. That’s your plan?”

  “That’s all you can do,” he says irritably. “Everyone in here is working on this. You can’t engage in that kind of construction without leaving a trace. We’re assuming the house was already being built when you met Elander. We’re scouring fifteen years’ worth of town records, permits, newspapers, electrical usage, sewerage notices, security firms, looking for anything that might hint at construction that includes rock blasting, for example.”