by Jinn, Bo
“Here,” he said, placing the bowl before the girl.
She came down off the couch and briefly studied the contents of the bowl before looking up. “Thanks,” she said, and started to poke at the contents with her spoon.
She was a model of obedience, always seeming content with what she was given. He found himself having to guess all of her wants, needs and thoughts, which were unfathomable enough barring the fact that he had barely said a word to her since the first day. He picked up the pack of cigarettes lying on the kitchen counter, shook it, opened and stared into the empty pack, certain he had had a few left in it the night before. He compressed the cigarette pack in a fist and glanced over his shoulder just in time to see the little head quickly jolt away. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, a bell chimed three times in quick succession and echoed through the house and his head jerked toward the front door.
Not a sound or a movement as the echoes dwindled. Naomi’s eyes zipped about, anxious and confused, her mouth full of porridge.
He sauntered up to the door just as the bell chimed a second time. On the wall beside the door, there was a small display. When the screen lit up, he breathed a half-relieved, half-nervous sigh. The door opened.
“…I did not think that you would come,” he said
“That makes two of us.”
Celyn stood on the other side of the threshold, arms crossed, daggers in her eyes. It had not occurred to him until that moment, that it had been close to four months since they had last seen each other, yet he remembered the dream as though it were yesterday…
“I am thankful,” he said
“Don’t be thanking me so soon. I don’t know why I’m here yet.”
Celyn made to step forward and he, discretely, narrowed the space between the double-doors to keep the other side hidden from view. She stopped and regarded him with an askance look.
“So… why the secrecy?”
“I am sorry. I could not risk the Commission…”
He faltered when he felt a nudge at the back of his knee.
Celyn’s eyes narrowed and her arms uncrossed.
“The Commission?” She lifted her head back and to the side and regarded him sideways again. “What are… you…” Her speech wavered as one of the doors gently swung open and her eyes journeyed down from his eyes to his legs, stopping on the little blond head peeping out from behind him, and the great, grey eyes gazing back up at her.
“Hello,” chirped the little figure standing below.
There was pin-drop silence.
“Saul… who’s the lady?”
Celyn’s gaping eyes did not allay for several minutes, even as she drifted in through the door in a trance and lowered into a seat at the kitchen table, her eyes fixed on the little girl across the hall. Not a word was uttered.
Having got dressed, Saul sat across from her and quietly opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lit, peering up from time to time as he did so. Even as his own stare deepened, gliding up and down the side of her face, the strong, dark curves of her features, the smooth tendons of her neck down to the deep cleft line of her breasts, her eyes did not yield. He recalled the dream again…
“Who is she?” Celyn broke suddenly with the long-delayed question.
He broke his stare and shifted his attention away nervously.
“Her name is Naomi,” he replied. “By civil calendar she is six years old…”
“How is she here?” Celyn broke in again.
“I brought her here.”
She slowly turned a severe look upon him
“You found her in a warzone.”
“Yes.”
“And you brought her back?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Silence.
“I do not know.” Hints of ire began to simmer in his voice. “I… do not remember.”
“How the hell can you not remember?”
When he did not answer, she leaned back and regarded him with fresh suspicion.
“Did they clean you?” she asked
“No,” he rapidly answered.
“Then what happened?”
He hesitated at first, then reached into his pocket and took out the neural canister. He placed it on the table in front of her.
“Overdose,” he said simply.
There was a tense pause.
“You OD’d on neurals?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember!”
His fist beat down on the table-top and the sudden rise in his voice resounded through the house. When his shaking fist allayed, he noticed something in the angle of his vision. The girl was standing just across from them, rigid with fright at the sudden outburst.
He averted the look of fear in her eyes.
“Wait in the upstairs room,” he said.
After a pause, the girl turned away without a word.
“Close the door, Naomi,” he added sternly, stopping her in her tracks.
“… OK.”
The little legs scuttled away.
She scaled to the top of the spiral staircase two feet to each step at a time. He followed her with his stare until the sound of the closing door shut before turning away.
“Naomi…” Celyn repeated with a snort. “A civy name if ever I heard one.”
“I do not remember anything after Nova Crimea,” he said, finally.
Celyn glowered and looked away. There was a long silence.
“I am sorry about Malachi…”
“He’s dead,” she snapped. “He doesn’t exist. He never existed. That’s how it works.”
“Martial order.”
“The world,” she corrected. “The universe doesn’t know, doesn’t care, about anyone or any damn thing. We’re martials; we live, we die, we pass through the system and when we’re gone, nobody knows; nobody ever knew or gave a damn. The ones who do are the ones who die first.”
He did not miss that same shimmer in her eyes as before, the flash of irresolution.
“I know that you are not like everyone else in this place,” he said.
“You don’t know shit about me,” she scowled.
“Why did you save my life?”
She fell silent, looked away and glared ahead and into the depths of herself.
“You had every reason to leave me to die” he said. “You did not. Why?”
Still she remained quiet.
“The Commission will not…”
“Who – gives – a – fuck – about the Commission?”
The irresolution instantly changed to wrath. He was silenced.
“You know,” her voice took a sullen dip, “you keep talking about the Commission as though they’re the enemy, when the only thing you really ought to be afraid of right now is about three feet tall and hiding in your attic.”
“I could not leave her to die.”
“Why not?” She asked. A pause followed the question. “You’ve killed plenty of times before…”
“In battles. In warzones.”
“This war means no more to you than it does to me or anyone else in this world…” She paused, smirked and laughed him to scorn. “Every life has its price. Every ego has its reasons for fighting. Maybe yours was to get the hell out of Dodge. Whatever the reason, we both know that that’s what another life is worth to you. So, what makes her life different?”
He looked away with a frown, put the cigarette out and rose to his feet.
“Maybe you do not understand,” he said
“No, I think you’re the one who doesn’t understand.”
They remained locked in a war of gazes.
“Help me out here…” She probed him with her eyes, “As I recall, you hated this world so much you wanted to get out even if it killed you – which it damn near did. So, I’m curious. What exactly did you think you were saving this kid from by bringing her here?”
“They were going to send her to a D.P. camp. She was alone
.”
“And now what? You’ll both live happily ever after?”
He did not answer.
The small issue of the distant future had occurred to him. Until that moment, he had succeeded in hiding from himself his own resolution that the problem would resolve itself. Now that he was posed the question directly, however, he had no answer.
Celyn leaned back in her chair, tapping the table-top with her fingers.
“I will find a way,” he said.
“No you won’t, because there is no way and you know it,” she said. “You can lie to yourself, but you’re not fooling me. You didn’t bring this girl here to save her; you brought her here for you. Whether you want to admit it or not; she’s just a temp. A stand-in…”
“For what?”
“…For those.”
Her eyes motioned toward the neural canister on the table.
Both of their heads turned around and up when they heard the door open at the top of the spiral staircase. The little golden head poked out from behind the corner.
“Saul,” called a small and dry voice. “…Can I have some water?”
After a short silence, he replied with a slow nod.
He stood up, took a glass and filled it at the tap whilst the girl descended the spiral staircase, judiciously watching her every step, holding on to the railing with both hands. She tottered across the foyer and into the kitchen. Celyn kept her head forward, but he could see that her eyes were closely following the girl’s every movement, even as she scuttled up to him and stretched out on her tiptoes to take the glass.
She raised the cup to her mouth like a water jug and drank, and drank. Having emptied half the glass, she paused for breath.
“What’s your name?” chirruped the girl.
Celyn’s head revolved in line with her mesmerised gaze. Her eyes flitted from him to the girl.
“What’s your name?” Naomi asked a second time with the same melody.
A long quiet.
The girl stepped forward beckoning her answer with a patient silence.
“…Celyn,” she replied, her voice softened to honey.
The smile on the girl’s face brightened and she started to giggle.
“Your eyes are pretty,” she said
Celyn’s head tilted curiously to one side.
The girl suddenly toddled toward her and started running her fingers through the long locks of her hair. She flinched and immobilised with fright. Her lips loosed, the lines on her brow receded and the emerald eyes shimmered. Her breaths started to shake.
“I like your hair...” The girl’s touch worked like a subtle hypnosis which dispelled the instant she stopped to lift the glass back up to her lips. She drank the rest of the water, wiped her lips, then raised the glass over her head and set it on the table-top. “Thank you, Saul.”
Naomi tottered off again, back up the staircase and Celyn was left staring at the same spot.
The door at the top of the staircase shut.
After a long pause, Saul spoke: “Will you help us or not?”
Celyn blinked awake at the sound of his voice and faced forward. Her brow furrowed again.
“What do you want from me?” she asked
“Clothes, medicine, and a few other things.”
“Where am I going to find clothes for...”
“Duke will have everything ready for you,” he said. “You know where to find him. You need only pick up what we need and bring them here.”
“That’s what you need? A delivery boy?”
“Yes.”
“There are amenities for that.”
“No one whom I trust.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Duke is on the other side of the city. I cannot leave her.”
“Why don’t you tell him to come?”
“I promised we would keep our distance,” he said. “He has done enough for me already.”
“So have I.”
“I know that,” he said. “But… you are the only other person I trust.”
She snorted. “I’m the only one you know.”
He was out of answers.
He pulled open a drawer, took out the two stacks of notes amounting to 10,000 dimitars and laid the notes on the table-top in front of her
“It is one delivery every four days,” he said. “If you want more money I will give it to you.”
Celyn looked from the short stack of notes up to him. Her frown deepened.
“It won’t work,” she said.
He resignedly nodded, having nothing left with which to beseech her.
“I understand,” he said, taking the money back. “I will find another way.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” she said. “I mean this … All this. You and this girl. Whatever it is you’re trying to do; it won’t work. You’ll be begging them to clean you before the end.”
That same contrivance from before was now noticeably absent from her voice. It unnerved him.
“That will never happen,” he determined.
“It already happened.”
“I would rather take my own life.”
Celyn snorted and shook her head.
”And there it is…” She pushed her seat back, rose from her chair and, turning away, said, “You can keep your money” and walked out the door.
C. 5: Day 491
Little Naomi quickly developed a fascination for the beautiful, emerald-eyed martial woman who came by every fourth day of the three weeks following. When the bell would chime at the front door, she would rush over to snatch a glimpse of the tall, dark pillar of womanly splendour standing at the brink. Her eyes would burst with wonder and then droop with a disappointed sigh again when the door would close and she was gone.
He resisted the girl’s company for the most part. Something about her scorched like vitriol. At first he had thought it might have been the lasting effects of the neurals, but the bizarre aversion only seemed to get worse as time passed and a horrid doubt began to loom over him … She, meanwhile, seeming to feel that she should keep her distance, did everything in her power to please him. Although, the fact that she had quickly overcome her inhibition to converse openly with her unnamed, unseen friend, he supposed, must have been a symptom of her sudden isolation from everything she ever knew. Even now, he could see her from the corner of his eye, sitting at the kitchen table, twirling around the leftovers on her plate and peering up from time to time.
The holoscreen showed a broadcast from the First Region headquarters in New York. The blazoned words “RUSSIAN WINTER SUMMIT” floated past the bottom of the three-dimensional image. The speech had something to do with warzone proliferation, containment and some other new and wonderful legislative measures to make war a more efficient enterprise. But he was not as much concerned with the subject of the latest UMC Council Summit as he was with the woman with the sapphire eyes and chestnut hair standing at the address pulpit.
After a while, the speech faded into the background.
He gazed intensely at the woman, at the chestnut hair swaying over the sapphire eyes, with almost voyeur fascination. His eyes stopped blinking. He focused in on the rose lips moving. And for a moment he thought he saw the lips pronounce: “Ubey menya … Ubey menya…”
“… Saul.”
He roused back with a jolt.
The girl suddenly appeared. When she saw that she had startled him, her face drooped and she bashfully stepped back.
“Ah – s-sorry.”
He sighed a half-relieved sigh.
“Are you tired?” he asked.
“Oh. Hmm…” the little face started up. “N-no,” she stuttered, “not yet.”
She lingered, looking down at the floor.
He’d noted that she had a peculiar habit of shuffling one foot over the other whenever she wanted to ask for something.
He shifted his weight in his seat, and as soon as he made the slightest move, she seemed to take it as permission to scuttle f
orward without warning, then hop onto the sofa and huddle up beside him before he could say a word. He recoiled in a turn of panic and looked down at the little head on his lap as one would after spilling a hot beverage over oneself.
He remained anxiously silent.
Once the initial shock subsided, he assessed his passions. He found that he was tempered. It was alright.
His hand slowly lowered and settled over her and as soon as his fingers made contact, she reached back over her shoulder and blanketed herself with his arm, and the warm little hands gripped tightly, imbibing the affection out of him and her little breaths shivered with a reprieve of affection.
After a very cautious while, he tried to turn his attention back to the broadcast. Every so often, she would cuddle up just a little closer and eased into the interaction until her fingers gently laced with his.
About a minute later, the silvery voice called his name: “Saul…”
He peered down.
“Saul, who’s that?”
He looked back up at the screen. The media report had since shifted to a zoomed-out view of the Council Assembly House: the crest of the UMC hanging over the image of more than a thousand councillors seated amphitheatrically.
“Who?” he asked.
Naomi let go of his hand and pointed an indicating finger. “Him,” she said.
He followed the line of the girl’s finger, not to the image on the holoscreen, but a book, sitting on the table in front of them. The open pages were yellow with age and they showed a picture of a brawny man rolling a boulder up a steep hill.
“Him?” he asked, leaning forward and taking the book.
The girl sat up and peered over his arm at the open page.
“Who is he?” she asked
“His name is Sisyphus.”
The bright, curious eyes looked up.
“Who’s Siphisusus?”
A vague smile fissured on the sides of his mouth.
“Sisyphus… was a king.”
“Why is he pushing the ball?”
He paused to consider how to explain the story.