by Lyga, Barry
“Ms. Ward?” The voice came from behind her as she darted out into the street, meaning it came from someone who had been lurking in the building.
Waiting for her.
She froze.
“Ms. Ward, we need to talk.”
CHAPTER 28
It was, she saw with relief, Dr. Dimbali. He stepped out of the shadows of the building and kept his distance, standing a nonthreatening ten feet from her. He was old and out of shape. If she had to, she could outrun him.
Something about his bearing now seemed almost powerful. He seemed regal, haughty as he stood ramrod straight, his hands clasped behind his back. Even the cracked-lens SmartSpex perched atop his nose was glaringly cyclopean, the unblemished lens wide and all-seeing, the other dark and glowering.
“What do we have to talk about?” she asked. Maybe he knew about the book. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to have it. Why else would he have followed her here?
And… ugh! He must have followed her. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. There were damn few good reasons for men to follow women, and all too many bad ones. This place still bore the memories of Jaron’s hands on her, under her poncho. She put one hand behind her back to touch her knife. For reassurance.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said, and held out both hands, palms facing her. She wondered what the SmartSpex were doing. Was he recording her? Analyzing her somehow? “I just want to talk.”
“Well, it’s almost curfew. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I think it’s best we speak now. In private.” He smiled. She’d seen that smile any number of times, and now it suddenly seemed dangerous.
“I really don’t want to be out after curfew.” Would he suggest he follow her back home? There was no way in the world she would let Dr. Dimbali into her apartment.
Clasping his hands at his waist, he chewed on the corner of his mouth. “I’m not going to hurt you. The very notion is anathema to me. I want to talk about Rose.”
Overhead, a drone silently glided by, its underside pulsating a gentle blue. Ten minutes to curfew. Just enough time to get home. She turned to go.
“Please come with me,” he said. “I think we can help each other, and maybe help Rose. You do know his secret, don’t you?”
That made her pause. Rose’s secret. Which secret did he mean?
“He can do things,” Dr. Dimbali said, glancing around to make sure no one was in earshot. Even so, he lowered his voice and leaned significantly toward her. “He can do things no one else can do. Am I right?”
“You want to help him?” she asked.
“Ms. Ward, if my suppositions are correct, I can help everyone.”
Dr. Dimbali’s apartment was just far enough that curfew fell as they entered the building—the sky lit flashing red with crisscrossing drones as he thumbed open the door. Deedra’s stomach lurched and clenched with curfew panic, but also with the knowledge that she had committed herself to spending the night there. Dr. Dimbali had assured her that he had room for her, but she had already decided that—if she had to—she would break curfew and take the ration hit. Her record was relatively clean, and if it meant more scavenging, so be it. She had just escaped forever the clutches of one molester—she wouldn’t willingly give herself to another.
Dr. Dimbali’s apartment was massive—at least four separate rooms, each beyond a rough-hewn archway. He had several tabs of different sizes scattered around, as well as something she recognized as a near-ancient portable computer. It seemed massive and clumsy, its lid hinged like the book in her backpack, its keyboard chunky and too textured. The lighting in each room was dim, weak, naked bulbs strung along the ceiling. Dr. Dimbali went straight to a room that looked as though it was exclusively used to cook in.
“How did you get such a—” Was it rude to ask? But she couldn’t help it.
He chuckled. “Do you merely accept what you’re given, Ms. Ward?” He puttered at the stove. “Tea?”
She didn’t know what the stove had to do with tea, but she accepted his offer. While she waited, she paced the length of the apartment, in awe of its size.
“I knocked down the walls myself,” he told her. “And made what poor improvements my skills allowed.”
He definitely had enough room for her to stay the night. He had a bed, of course, but in another room she saw a spare. It boggled the mind. He’d taken over other apartments.
“You can do that? What about the people who lived there?”
Another chuckle. She looked back to see him sprinkling something into mugs, then pouring boiling water over it. This was how he made tea? Where were his TeaPaks?
“What makes you think there was anyone in those apartments? This Territory once held in excess of two million people. It now has a population of slightly under one million. There are huge amounts of wasted space to be taken advantage of.”
“But you just did it? You didn’t have to ask someone—”
“Ask whom?” He stirred the contents of the mugs. “Did you ask permission before you went into that building I found you at earlier? No. It was abandoned and so you went there as you pleased.”
Dizzy with sudden possibility, Deedra felt around herself, found a chair, and sank into it. How many people lived in her building? She didn’t even know. She’d been assigned her unit when the orphanage had surrendered her. She knew none of her neighbors, and she had never even considered the idea that the spaces surrounding her own might be empty. That she could capture them for herself.
“It never occurred to me.”
“Of course not.” Dr. Dimbali approached her with both mugs, one of them held out to her. She accepted it. It smelled wonderful. Better than the perfume Rose had brought to her apartment. “It’s hot—don’t drink it right away.”
He pulled a chair over and sat across from her. He blew gently on his tea. She inspected the mug. She’d had tea before but not like this. “Why are there things floating in it?” she asked.
“Those are… well, tea leaves.”
“I don’t understand. Like from a tree?” She’d seen trees before. Even grass. They were rare, but they did exist. She wasn’t sure what their purpose was, but there they were anyway.
Dr. Dimbali sighed and shook his head sadly. “And this brings us back to the earlier topic: You’ve never contemplated, well, modifying your circumstances because nothing in your world, nothing in your experience, tells you that you could do so. From the moment you were born, you’ve known only one world, one system, one way of life. And as far as you can tell from what little history bleeds through the wikinets, the world has always been thus. So why would you try to change or improve things? There’s no evidence anyone ever has.”
It was the very conversation she’d had with herself since talking to Rose—was the world in decline or getting better? According to the Magistrate and the rest of the government, things were improving all the time. No more riots. No more mass starvations. Fewer wars over the Territories. But if things continued on this path, would the world ever resemble the one in the book she’d read? She didn’t think so.
“Now,” Dr. Dimbali said, leaning forward, “I understand that you and Rose have become close since he joined us here in the beautiful, Edenic Ludo Territory.”
“We’re friends.” Something about the way he said close jabbed at her and made her heart jerk at the same time.
“Yes. Friends.” He grinned and sipped at his tea. “Fine. Whatever. I need to know: Did he leave you anything before he… left?”
The book. The book that even now was in her backpack, resting on the floor near her feet.
What could he possibly want with the book?
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“Let us not be coy, Ms. Ward. I know Rose’s secret. I know of his…” He gestured with a finger in the air, as though fishing for a word.
“Powers,” she supplied.
He laughed. “Yes. Let’s call them powers. That will do nicely. I know of his
powers. His abilities.”
She gazed down into the murky water of the tea. Such a lovely scent from such a bland-looking liquid. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this,” she said quietly. “Inside. Or anywhere, really.”
“Are you worried about surveillance?” He waved it away. “We’re quite safe here. There are vulnerabilities to every system, Ms. Ward. Every system has security flaws. Don’t believe everything you’re told. The drones are not infallible. Your apartment’s security is not undefeatable.”
She thought back to the heat map TI Markard had shown her. Maybe Dr. Dimbali was right, but “not undefeatable” was a long way from useless.
“They watch me—”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course they’re not watching you.”
“But they showed me a heat map of my apartment. And—”
He sniffed as though offended by the mere mention. “There are in excess of fifty billion people on this planet. To watch everyone, fully half of those people would have to work for the government, watching the other half. And then someone would have to watch the ones doing the watching to make sure no one falls down on the job. You see how ridiculous this is?”
“They had a heat map. They knew exactly what I was—”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong—they have… systems that monitor everything we do, everywhere we go. But no one is watching those systems. Unless you give them a reason to. And then they can go back and check and see where you were and what you were doing. So they wondered what you were doing the night of Mr. Ludo’s murder and they checked. But if they’d never suspected you, nothing would have alerted them to your activities. And if they’d waited two or three more days, the files would have been gone, automatically purged to make room for new ones.” He grinned at her with what she supposed was intended to be a reassuring expression, but she didn’t quite believe him, so the assurance went unappreciated. “It’s valuable to know how things work. There are a million people living in Ludo Territory alone. Do you really think Max Ludo and his contingent stay up nights watching you sleep?”
He was right. She’d always known it, she supposed. After all, a drone had witnessed Jaron threatening her on the rooftop, but no one had ever done anything about it. No one had ever seen that video, and now it was gone.
She sipped at the tea, which had cooled by now. It was delicious, possibly the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted in her life. Sweet and pungent and so very strong, its flavor smooth on her tongue. With great restraint, she resisted the overwhelming urge to gulp it down at one go. Better to make it last. She sipped again, savoring it.
“In fact,” Dr. Dimbali went on, “I could take you home right now. Despite curfew. There are ways. And if you wish, I’ll do so. But first: Rose.”
“He didn’t leave me anything,” she said, and then immediately regretted the lie. “Except for a book.”
Dr. Dimbali’s eyes lit up at that. “A book! Wonderful. For you. I hope someday, perhaps, you will allow me to see it. But I didn’t mean something like a book. I meant…” He trailed off. “Something more personal.”
She sipped again, thinking of the metal flower he’d brought to her. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Dr. Dimbali. Maybe if you just told me what you want…”
He leaned back and drank his tea and stared at her uncomfortably long. “Did he leave anything of himself?”
That was unexpected. When he said personal, she thought he meant a note or a picture. “Like what?”
“Like what you’re drinking, for example.”
The mug was already at her lips for another lingering, savoring sip. She froze and stared into the liquid’s depths, at the swimming leaves.
She swallowed hard and put the mug aside.
“Do you understand?” Dr. Dimbali asked quietly.
On her leg, an itch. From the healing scab where Rose had inadvertently cut her the night he’d spun her around her apartment. She’d known then. She’d known and she’d denied it. But she remembered what she’d read about roses.
About their thorns.
That’s what had been on Rose’s tendrils: Thorns. And roses smelled good. And so did Rose.
It was insane, but now she would say it anyway.
“I was thinking about his name,” she said slowly, staring at the floor. “And what he can do. I went on the wikis and I looked up rose. They said they were mythical flowers, but Rose saw them, he said.” She looked up at him. “He said he saw them, and I believe him.”
Dr. Dimbali nodded approvingly over his mug. “Go on.”
“And, well…” She shook her head. It was foolish. And stupid. She couldn’t say it out loud. And yet, she would. She knew it. Because she’d been thinking it for a while now, and to say it to someone else—someone who would laugh and mock her and make her feel foolish—was the best possible idea. The humiliation would flush this absurd notion from her head for good.
“I was thinking… what if Rose, well, what if he was a rose?”
The humiliation she so craved did not come. Instead, Dr. Dimbali drank his tea down to the dregs and then stood, hands clasped with no-nonsense intent. “Come with me, Ms. Ward. I have something to show you.”
In his kitchen, Dr. Dimbali moved aside a large wooden plank to reveal a door. Another room? How much space did one man need?
But the door led not to a room but, rather, to a stairwell, its concrete walls stained and rancid with mold. Dr. Dimbali offered her a face mask and apologized for the smell. “I am used to it by now, but I understand it may bother you. No matter what I do, it just grows and grows and grows. In a way, it’s comforting to see something of nature so resilient, our best efforts to the contrary. Too bad it’s useless.”
Still clutching her mug of now-cool tea, her face mask secure, she followed Dr. Dimbali into the stairwell and down several flights and landings and turns. “This was once the southern fire stair,” he explained as they descended, echoing slightly in their confines. It made him sound even more serious and somehow alien. “I suppose the old fire codes just didn’t apply anymore once they were desperate to house people, so it was boarded over. I discovered it quite by accident.”
Dr. Dimbali had a fluoro-tube; but for its shivering, bouncing beam just ahead, she was steeped in darkness.
They arrived at the last stair, with no further descent possible. Dr. Dimbali opened a door and flicked a switch—a series of lights sputtered to life overhead, varying in colors and intensities, bathing them in a vibrating, warm, flickering glow. Overhead, pipes sweated condensation—indoor drizzle. This space was huge, as big as Dr. Dimbali’s apartment, but not chopped into separate rooms; it sprawled the length and breadth of the building, it seemed, its area broken by tables, chairs, desks, some of them intact, others cobbled together from cinder blocks and boards and cushions. Large containers were scattered here and there, most of them with small, spindly green shoots of some sort poking up from them.
“My babies,” Dr. Dimbali said with a gentle smile. He leaned over to one. “How are you this fine day?” he asked it, then put his finger into the pot. “Your soil is a little dry. I’ll water you soon enough.”
Deedra turned away as he chatted briefly with the pots; she scanned the rest of the space. A variety of touch screens and older computers cluttered the desks, and a scratched and dusty SmartBoard flickered quietly to itself in one corner.
She recognized the image on it instantly.
Rose.
She lowered her face mask. The air here was musty but breathable.
“What is this place?”
“This is the old basement. No one was using it, so I appropriated it for my needs.” He strode to the SmartBoard and tapped it. The image of Rose rotated and magnified. “At first, I worked alone. But for the past little while, Rose and I have been… collaborating.” He clucked his tongue absently. “Most of my collaborations have not gone so well, but this one has been rewarding.”
“This is where he stays?” she whisp
ered, taking in the dank, dark basement. “He lives here?” She couldn’t imagine bright and enthusiastic Rose squatting here, but…
Dr. Dimbali blinked at her as though waking. “What’s that? Oh, no. Not here. He has a project of his own out there somewhere.” He gestured to encompass the Territory. Maybe the world. “I’ve offered a bit of assistance, but he spends most of his time without—” He seemed to catch himself, as though disgusted with his own rambling. “No matter. If he wishes to dillydally with his own ideas, that’s fine. As long as he comes back here to do the important work.”
“What’s the important work?” She held out the mug. “And what did you mean when you asked if he left me something like this tea?”
Dr. Dimbali rolled an old chair over to her, its wheels shrieking in complaint against the rough concrete floor. She sank into it, realizing that this was what he’d always wanted: an audience.
“You hypothesized before that Rose, perhaps, might actually be a rose. Reduced to its simplest terms, this was precisely my hypothesis, early on. He approached me one day, you see. He was endlessly curious. About everything.” Dr. Dimbali sighed and stared off into the middle distance. “After years and years of trying to get through to the incurious and the clueless, you cannot imagine what it was like to encounter someone who genuinely wanted to learn.
“Eventually he came to trust me with the mystery of his past and with the even more intriguing mystery of his present. Of his biology. We began conducting tests, right here in this facility I’ve cobbled together.”
“Why?”
A grunt. “My dear Ms. Ward, the pursuit of knowledge is its own reward.”
She wasn’t buying it. No one did anything just to do it. There had to be a reason. Though cold, the tea weighed heavy in her hands. She knew what Dr. Dimbali was going to tell her, but she didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to know it. Even though she already did.