by Ioana Visan
“And the contract that needed to be signed on Thursday?”
“What about it?” Nicolas met his father’s dark eyes, the same as his. “I signed it, didn’t I?”
His father gesticulated with the spoon. “They had to wire it to you because they couldn’t find you.”
“They didn’t need me there for that. The signature is legit.”
“Where were you, Nick?” His mother blew over the spoon before swallowing the burning liquid.
“I took Lucille to Biarritz for an early weekend.”
“Starting on Thursday?” His father forgot to blow over the spoon and swore when the soup burned his tongue.
Nicolas shrugged, taking a perverse pleasure in the old man’s discomfort. “She needed to be in town for an appointment with a hairdresser on Saturday.” Her hair had looked fabulous the previous night at the club.
“Well, if she can’t switch a hairdresser appointment for you, then…”
His father didn’t have to finish stating the obvious. The relationship wasn’t serious, but that was all right. He wasn’t looking for anything serious. If Lucille had even hinted at marriage, Nicolas would have broken up with her right away. He didn’t plan to settle down in the near future, and he would think twice before burdening someone with his problems.
“Isn’t it too early for going to the beach?” His mother delicately wiped her lips with a napkin.
“Yes, the wind was a bit chilly, so we stayed mostly in.” Nicolas didn’t bother to hide his grin.
His mother hid hers behind the napkin while his father rolled his eyes and grunted in his half-filled soup bowl.
“Honey, leave the boy be,” his mother said, the smile still playing on her lips. “You were young once, too.”
“But he’s not a boy anymore, Dora.” His father pointed at him with the spoon. “He’s a man. People his age don’t spend every night at the club.”
Maybe I feel welcome there because no one’s judging me. Out of consideration for his mother, Nicolas kept his thoughts to himself. Besides, they’d had the same conversation plenty of times before.
“They go out there … and do things,” his father continued.
“Like Jean-Pierre,” Nicolas said, fully aware he was making it worse by mentioning his brother’s name, still wanting to end this part of the conversation sooner. “But wouldn’t you rather have him safe, at home?”
“Your brother is doing his job protecting the country.” His father’s dark stare pinned him down, meaning This is what you should be doing, too.
“Actually, Jean-Pierre is shuffling papers around,” Nicolas said. “But it’s true, if we ever go to war, the Defense Ministry building will be the first to go down in flames.”
“Nick.”
Nicolas lowered his head at his mother’s sharp scolding and mumbled, “Sorry, Mom.” When he looked back up, he grinned at Jeannette as she cleared the table. “Thank you, it was delightfully hot.”
Jeannette snorted. If she had been ten years younger, she would have probably smacked him with a spoon like she used to do when he was a kid. Growing boy plus the power-use doomed the pantry.
Silence fell while the salmon was served, and Nicolas took advantage of the break to pour himself some wine. He needed it for the ‘join the army’ speech. The scent of the cooked salmon infiltrated his nostrils, making him salivate. He let his hand hover above the plate placed in front of him and listened to the tiny sounds made by the random fish bones that popped out of their locations.
“Yes, that’s the perfect use for your talent,” his father said.
Nicolas glanced at his plate and shrugged. “It’s better than performing tricks on the street.”
His mother placed a gentle hand on his arm. “Nick, that will never happen.”
“You don’t know that,” he said a little more tersely than he’d intended and immediately regretted it when faced with her hurt look. “Hey, at least we won’t starve! There will always be people who need us to calculate their taxes. War is great for business.” And their firm was indeed doing well.
“And how do you know that?” his father asked.
“I’m making an educated guess. That’s why you had me drag my ass through school for all those years, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad something stuck.”
“Honey, that’s not fair,” his mother said, looking up from her plate. “Nick is a brilliant accountant.”
“You’re right, it’s not fair.” His father sighed. “He’s good at his job and the other thing, too.” He gestured vaguely towards Nicolas’s hands. “He just wastes it all when he could do … much more.”
“I’m perfectly happy the way I am now.” Nicolas drank a sip of wine. “I don’t need more.”
“Well, it might not be up to you soon…”
“What?” Nicolas put the glass down. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Jean-Pierre called last night,” his mother said, and her eyebrows lowered in a concerned frown over her gray eyes. “There’s talk about a new law forcing all of the telechargers to report for military duty. No more enlisting on a voluntary basis.”
“That’s just stupid,” Nicolas said. “You can’t fight machines with people. Most of them can barely bend a spoon.”
“There will be testing … and training—”
“Training?” Nicolas let out a disgruntled laugh. “They don’t even know what this is!” He flexed his fingers, and pale blue light flashed around them.
In the doorway, Jeannette crossed herself.
“Stop that. You’re scaring poor Jeannette.” His mother covered Nicolas’s hand with hers. She squeezed it, forcing him to look at her. “We all know you’ll pass those tests, no matter how they’re designed.”
Nicolas gave her a long look and retrieved his hand. He didn’t know many people like him, but now and then, they appeared on the news, and he could already do everything the others did.
“So, your father and I were thinking…” His mother fiddled with her napkin. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to enlist before the law passes. It might give you some advantages.”
“That’s out of the question. I’m not enlisting.”
The silence grew heavier. Nicolas pushed his plate away. If even his mother was against him…
“I was only thinking to make things easier for you,” his mother said with a hint of apology in her voice.
“It won’t make things easier. And it’s not my war.”
“It will be soon,” his father said. “Reports say the Japanese have invaded the continent. They’ll be here—”
“Not as soon as you might think,” Nicolas said. “They have to cross two continents to get here, and it’s not like they can fly since we’re shooting everything down. It’s on the ground we can’t stand up to their machines.”
“It would be easier if more people like you helped,” his father said.
“You give me too much credit. There’s no way I can take down one of those monsters.” While he’d never pushed his strength to the limit, Nicolas knew how power manipulation worked. What would be the point in destroying one of the machines when there were millions more like it? It would get him killed in the end anyway. It would only bring grief to his family. It wasn’t worth it. And he liked being alive.
“You should be prepared for when the situation changes. It’s all I’m saying.” His mother held up her glass, and Nicolas refilled it.
That was something worth considering. How to deal with it and possibly escape if the dreadful law was passed? Later. Now he was having lunch with his family. “Is there any cake?”
* * *
Days, weeks, then months passed, and nothing changed. War remained a distant threat on the Asian shore. It suited Nicolas just fine. He showed up at work when he had to, spent his evenings at the club, and took Lucille on short weekends across the country whenever she was free.
On the surface, life went on the same. But Japanese imports had stopped sever
al years ago, and it was beginning to show. A machine broke here, another there, and with replacement parts so hard to find, it took forever to fix them. The prosthetics were affected the most, but that was to be expected when you let a foreign power have the monopoly and then sank it. It would get worse in a few more years if the local industries didn’t rise to the challenge and fill the void left on the market.
Nicolas thanked the heavens his family didn’t rely heavily on prosthetics yet. Someday, as they got older, they would, but not yet. Others needed them though, and the Rieux family was not going to stand back and watch them suffer. His mother had volunteered to be one of several wealthy families holding a charity ball at the end of the summer.
As a favor to her, Nicolas walked up the stairs of the Capitole, wearing a tailcoat and top hat. The outfit made him feel like he was going to a costume party, but what was one extra mask on top of all of the others? It made his mother happy, and the ladies loved it, too. Their eyes followed him while he passed through the crowd, looking for Lucille. She was late as usual. Not a bad thing since the party had barely started. The string quartet was just warming up their instruments as they attacked the second music piece of the night, a fugue.
He accepted the glass offered by a waiter but refused the finger sandwiches. They were hard to eat with gloves on. Lucille still hadn’t appeared. His mother stood across the hall, talking with one of the press attachés, and he nodded in their direction but kept his distance. These were bad times for socializing with the press, and he’d been extra careful not to get on the news lately despite his company’s high profile. He wasn’t going to risk ruining everything now. The quiet summer had been bad enough.
The lead violinist missed a note, and the murmurs around him increased in volume. Something had happened. He checked his phone as several people around him were doing, but the deactivated satellites made access to the net close to nonexistent, and he wasn’t desperate enough to subscribe to the war bulletins delivered every hour.
“Korea has fallen,” someone whispered, and the news spread from mouth to mouth. “Korea has fallen!”
The screens hanging on the heavily decorated walls continued to run a loop of images showing advanced prosthetics, smiling children, and old people with serene faces. The party planner refused to let the focus of the evening be disrupted by the usual news scrolls that ran on the screens.
Nicolas reached for another drink when someone grabbed his arm. He turned and found his mother standing next to him.
“Is father—” he asked, alarmed by the lack of color in her checks.
“No. It’s you. Come with me.” She pulled him by the jacket sleeve towards the corridor.
“What is it?”
“Jean-Pierre called. They passed the law.” His mother looked left and right, but they were alone by the grand staircase. She kept her voice down to a whisper anyway. “They’re picking up telechargers starting tonight. You have to go.”
“What?”
His mother’s hand gripped his arm. “You have to leave the country. It’s the only way to escape the draft … unless you changed your mind about it?”
“I didn’t but … I can’t just get up and leave!” This was ridiculous.
“Sure you can. Everything is arranged. Your father and I have been working on it for months, ever since the first rumors appeared. We weren’t sure it would be needed, but we did it just in case. Now I’m glad we did.”
“Father? But he—”
“You two might not always agree on things, but you’re his son, too, and he loves you.” His mother picked up the skirt of her velvet evening dress with one hand and with the other steered him towards the stairs. “He only needed a little convincing to see the right path.” She grinned, and Nicolas felt sorry for his father. His mother could be a determined woman when she set her mind on something. “At the end of the day, he’d rather have a living son somewhere out there than a dead one.”
Well, if she put it that way … Nicolas found himself unable to disagree.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, barely holding back a smile at the idea of his mother doing anything illegal.
“You go straight to the train station. You can’t take the car or any other public transportation that will allow them to track you down. But the train should still be safe, especially with a ticket reserved months in advance.”
“Wait. Right now? I can’t go like this.” Nicolas pointed at himself. “I look like a clown.”
“Benoît will bring your luggage to the station, and you can change there. I already called him. He’s on his way.”
Nicolas was running out of protests. Maybe his mother was right and this was the way to go. He’d never wanted to have anything to do with this anyway. “Okay, I should go say goodbye to father—”
“No, don’t go back in there.” His mother’s voice went up a note. “Several people inside know about you. They’d better not see you leaving. I’ll talk to him. He’ll understand.”
Despite their difference in opinions, Nicolas wasn’t particularly keen on leaving without seeing his father. The man was old and had a weak heart. Who knew if he'd ever get to see him again? He nodded reluctantly and looked back at the entrance to the reception room. “Tell Lucille…” Tell her what? He didn’t know when he would return, and it wasn’t like she would wait for him. He wouldn’t want her to. “Never mind.” He shook his head.
His mother smiled in understanding. “I will. Now go. Avoid Germany. They’ve already passed the telecharger drafting law in the spring. Head for one of the East European countries. They have less advanced tracking systems, and the war is already playing havoc with their economies. Don’t try to contact us. If there’s anything important we want to communicate to you, you’ll find it in the local news. I’m sure you can get it there, too. And—” She was speaking faster and faster as if running out of air.
“Mom, relax.” Nicolas placed both hands on her shaking shoulders. “I’m a grown man. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, unfortunately, that’s one issue your father and I never managed to agree on.” She laughed ruefully and threw her arms around him, holding him tight.
Nicolas buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the familiar jasmine scent. He was going to miss her. He was going to miss the arguments with his father, too.
“Okay, I’ll be fine.” His mother released him and sniffled. “Go. No, wait! Give me your phone and your wallet first.”
Nicolas complied, although he didn’t feel right without them.
His mother slipped a bill into his hand. “For the taxi.”
He dropped a quick kiss on her cheek and started down the stairs. “I’ll send you postcards!”
“Don’t you dare!” she cried after him.
His laughter echoed inside the staircase, and an approaching couple gave him odd looks. He jumped into one of the taxis waiting close to the Capitole Square and told the driver to take him to the train station. The metro would have taken him there just as fast, but not without attracting unwanted attention because of the damned suit.
The ride lasted long enough for Nicolas to catch his breath and wonder what the hell he was doing. No, he couldn’t abandon his family in times like these. After all, war was coming, didn’t everyone say that? But what would bring his parents less pain? If he turned himself in, sooner than later he’d fail, and they would be left with nothing but embarrassment and grief. If he ran away, he was confident he could hide from the authorities at least for a couple of years. It would give his parents some peace. In the end, there was no choice at all.
He found Benoît waiting on the platform with a cheap but sturdy suitcase lying by his feet.
“Madam sent you this.” The old butler handed him a thick envelope.
Nicolas opened it and found enough money to last him a couple of months and a new ID that identified him as Nicholas Renard, twenty-seven years old, from Poitiers. The name gave him a chuckle. It must have been a dig from his father, wh
o often accused him of considering himself smarter than he was. But a fox, really? The age was right, and he’d been to Poitiers before so he could easily pretend he’d lived there at some point. Good enough. He slipped the envelope into his coat pocket.
“Good luck, sir.”
“Thank you, Benoît. Take care of them for me, will you?”
“Of course, sir.”
Nicolas carried the suitcase to the bathroom to change, but when he returned wearing less eye-catching clothes, Benoît was gone, and he was left with the monkey suit and silly top hat. He could always sell them later to a second-hand store if money became tight, so he stuffed them into the suitcase before getting on the train.
* * *
Steam rose from the coffee cup, making the tip of Nicholas’s frozen nose itch. He tapped his just as cold fingers on the lacquered wood, next to the terminal encased in the tabletop, while a group of people headed past him towards the exit of the café. After throwing them a cautious glance, he returned his attention to the screen. No new job offers had appeared since yesterday, none he would ever consider anyway. He’d tried shoveling snow for one afternoon, but after ten minutes, he’d gotten awfully bored and barely resisted the temptation to melt down the snow on his whole side of the street just to be done with it sooner.
Manual labor was not for him. But without a valid diploma and recommendations, no one was going to hire him. His parents had gotten it all wrong when they facilitated his escape, assuming he could make money with a flick of a wrist. He couldn’t. He could gamble some and win, but not for long without attracting attention, and the entire purpose of this trip was to stay hidden from the drafting committee.
So far, he was succeeding despite the cold, but he didn’t know how long he could keep this up. It had to be the coldest winter in Warsaw in the past twenty years—at least that was what the locals were saying—and soon he wouldn’t be able to pay for central heating at all. The last time he’d tried to turn the heating on without the landlord’s permission, he’d nearly blown up the entire eighteenth century building with his apartment in it. He was good at channeling the power, but he didn't know everything, not by a long shot. And this just wouldn't do.