by Lyga, Barry
“We’ve been plotting and planning and observing for weeks now.” He came back to her, tears in his eyes behind the SmartSpex, his expression forlorn. “And we’re so close.”
“There’s one thing we haven’t talked about,” Deedra reminded him. “One last thing to consider.”
“What’s that?”
She took a deep breath. Reluctant to speak the words, but someone had to. “What if he did it? What if it’s all true? If he killed Jaron and is spying on us so that Magistrate Dalcord can take over the Territory?”
“You don’t really believe any of that.”
“No. But you told me that a good scientist never discards a possibility based on belief, not facts.”
Dr. Dimbali straightened, pleased. “Yes, well, I did, didn’t I. Still, I can tell you with complete honesty that I don’t care if Rose killed Jaron Ludo or not. In fact, Rose could murder half of Ludo Territory, and I still would not care. Because what that boy is—the very biology of him—is so important that it removes him from the petty concerns of individual morality.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that…” He paused and adjusted his SmartSpex. “I’m saying that if my hypothesis is correct, I can change the world. But I need Rose to do it, and that necessity trumps anything as petty as murder. The needs and concerns of fifty billion people far outweigh the death of even the scion of our Magistrate.”
She pondered this for a moment. “You didn’t really answer my question.”
“My dear, your question is irrelevant.”
Maybe it was. She put it out of her mind.
Deedra hadn’t bothered going to work very much in the weeks since Rose had been arrested and Lissa had been shot, but with Dr. Dimbali covering her absences via a little opportune hacking, she feared no loss of rations. Her nights became about reconnaissance and planning, while her days were devoted to catching up on the sleep she missed.
Lissa had been released from MedFac. A stray round had perforated her left side during the shoot-out, and she lost a kidney. Too busy plotting and planning with Dr. Dimbali, Deedra didn’t have a chance to visit her friend until Lissa had been home for a week. She buzzed at the building and was let in, then knocked at the apartment door. There was such a protracted period of silence that she wondered if Lissa was even home, but then she heard a thump, a click, and the door creaked open. There, in the sliver of space between the door and the frame, was Lissa.
Deep black bags sank her eyes far into her face. They were moist, glittering gems at the bottom of twin wells. Her skin was the color of old cement, her hair lank and knotted. But she perked up at the sight of Deedra, just as Deedra had hoped she would. There was something to be said for surprising a sick friend.
Not sick, she reminded herself. Shot.
“Deedra.” Lissa’s voice croaked at first, but perked up. “Deedra!”
She opened the door the rest of the way. She was using a walker to get around, and Deedra immediately felt guilty for making her come to the door. “Are you alone?” she asked as she slipped inside.
Clumping over to a chair, Lissa nodded. “Everyone else is out. Work or scavenge. I mean, we’re glad for the sympathy ration and the compassion bonus, but no one knows if I’ll be able to go out on my own or not. Not yet.” She settled into the chair, which groaned and creaked. Deedra sat across from her on the old sofa she knew Lissa slept on. There was a single door to another room, and a kitchen nook. The main room was crammed with mattresses for Lissa’s siblings, boxes of clothes and other personal belongings. Deedra couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Dimbali’s enormous, sprawling quarters. Was there more room just for the taking? Could Lissa have her own room, her own apartment?
“How do you feel?” she asked Lissa.
Lissa smiled wanly. “Everything hurts. I can’t even eat crispies. They’re feeding me sludge.”
Sludge. It had some kind of official name, but everyone called it sludge because, well, if it looks like sludge, feels like sludge, and tastes like sludge, why not call it sludge? It was a thick, viscous “nutritionally dense food-supplement product” usually given to those who couldn’t get by on standard rations. And apparently, to people shot through the kidney who were having trouble eating after surgery. Everyone had slurped it (eaten was the wrong word) at some point. Never voluntarily.
“Gross.” Deedra didn’t know what else to say and was horrified to feel a smile creeping along her face.
But Lissa smiled back, her face lighting up just a bit. “It is gross. Remember a couple of years ago when we had that fever…?”
Ugh. Yeah, she remembered. A week of sludge, mostly because it was “genetically modified to promote health and regular bowels.” At one point, Deedra had vomited her “dinner” of sludge, and Lissa had collapsed into hysterical laughter, pointing. “It looks exactly the same! Exactly the same!”
“That was gross,” Deedra said, grinning. “And you were no help.”
“After you puked, it was all I could do to hold it down myself. I had to laugh. Otherwise, I’d spew, too.”
They chuckled themselves out of memory, then into silence. Deedra leaned in and put a hand on Lissa’s knee. “Other than that. How are you? Your parents being cool?”
A shrug, followed by a wince. “They’re dealing. I don’t know. They were looking forward to having one of us out of here, and now…”
Deedra had lived on her own since the orphanage had closed down. She’d been happy to get out of there and imagined Lissa was similarly looking forward to some privacy. Sharing one big room with your brother and sister couldn’t be much fun for anyone involved.
“Maybe you could move in with me,” she said brightly before even considering how complicated that could be. Or how impossible. She would probably be dead or in prison soon enough for her part in Rose’s rescue.
“You don’t want to have to take care of me.” Lissa wiped a tear away. “But thanks for the offer. Honestly, Deedra… honestly… I’m just…” She glanced around—unconsciously, almost instinctively—at the corners of the room where the safety monitors nestled in shadow, then dropped her voice so low that she was almost only mouthing the words:
“I’m just so glad he’s dead.”
Deedra’s hand tightened on Lissa’s knee.
“Him and his Bang Boys, all those years… Being afraid at L-Twelve, under his command. You know what I mean, Deedra.”
Something in the way she said it made Deedra think that maybe she did know.
She shivered at a recollection of Jaron’s hard, seeking hands on her.
“Lissa… did Jaron ever… were you ever…” She tried to think of the best way to put it, the right words to use. She’d been able to lock away that day on the rooftop in a steel box in her mind, to decorate it with memories of Rose, to make it disappear. And now Lissa’s hatred of Jaron threatened to make perfect sense, and she was afraid knowing the truth would open the box of memories.
“Were you ever alone with him?” she settled on.
Lissa stared at her for too long. “There’s no point talking about it anymore,” she said at last. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Oh, Lissa…”
Lissa shook it off, raised her voice. “So what are the rest of the Bang Boys up to? Now that their leader is dead.” Lissa was going to keep saying the word dead as many times as she could, apparently.
“Not much.” And that was true. Deedra had witnessed the Bang Boys in a scuffle with some workers. Kent Massgrove had seemed to be in charge, and things weren’t going well. Halfway through the melee, Lio declared the whole thing “stupid” and backed away. When Kent ordered him back into the fight, Lio had said, “If you want to kick their asses so bad, do it yourself.”
Rik had joined Lio’s mutiny, leaving just Kent and Hart. The next day the two groups ended up pummeling each other almost into MedFac.
“Good,” Lissa said, leaning back and sighing. A small, satisfied smile played at the edges of her mouth, flickering b
ack and forth with a grimace. “Good. I’m glad. I hope they all end up off-ration.”
Off-ration was the nightmare scenario in Ludo Territory. It wasn’t official or sanctioned, but everyone knew it could happen: You could be cut off entirely from the government ration program, set adrift, and forced to survive on whatever scavenge you could dig up, whatever charity you could beg. Fleeing to another Territory was a possibility, maybe. But she’d never heard of anyone managing to do that, and arriving in another Territory with nothing to offer would make it hard to persuade that Territory to share its rations. She supposed between scavenge and outright thievery, it might be possible to survive… but in the end, she couldn’t find it in herself to wish it on anyone. Death seemed far kinder. Off-ration was death with slow torture preceding it.
“They’re not all idiots,” she told Lissa. “They’ll straighten out, now that they don’t have Jaron around to protect them.”
Lissa shook her head fiercely. “You think you know them. You don’t. It’s not about being an idiot. They think the world owes them something. They think they should be able to take whatever they want. Believe me, Deedra, they’re going to keep taking what they see in front of them. They’re not going to stop.”
Deedra nodded soberly, but deep down she couldn’t muster the emotion to care overmuch about the disposition or ultimate fate of the Bang Boys. Rose was still in prison, and she was going to be the one to rescue him.
“Do you want a blanket?” She noticed Lissa beginning to drift off, as if her rant and her fantasy of the Bang Boys starving in the streets had lullabied her. Her head dipped low, her chin against her chest.
“It’s the meds,” Lissa said, slurring slightly. “They make me tired. Help me up? I’ve been sleeping in my parents’ room. Can you help me get there?”
Deedra helped Lissa up and walked her to the other room. She’d always been in awe of people who had more than one room. After seeing Dr. Dimbali’s on-the-sly suite of rooms and massive basement laboratory, though, she was a little more difficult to impress. Lissa’s parents’ room was cramped and tiny, barely bigger than Deedra’s own sleeping nook, with a grimy slit of a window set at floor level. She felt for the light control, couldn’t find it, and decided not to bother.
She let Lissa lean against her as she lowered herself into bed. To be alone all day, in such pain, so helpless…
Then again, at least Lissa had a family. At least at night, there would be someone. If Deedra had been shot…
There would be no one. Once, she might have imagined Rose being there for her. But now…
What would it be like when he was rescued?
Lissa cried out, and Deedra snapped back into the moment, helping her settle onto the bed. “Can I get you anything?”
“Sure. A turkey steak with tomato pellets.”
“And a side order of sludge?”
“Yum!”
She sat with Lissa for a few moments as her friend began to drift off, then picked her way carefully through the dark room. But she’d only taken a couple of steps when her foot collided with something that almost tripped her. She stooped down to push it out of the way so that it wouldn’t trip Lissa later. When her fingers touched it, they recognized it immediately. It took her brain a moment to catch up.
It was a tendril. A vine. Whatever you wanted to call it.
One of Rose’s extensions.
In the murky light, she could barely make it out. It was mottled green and brown, clearly old and decomposing. But unmistakable. Similar tendrils had wrapped around her and borne her aloft; she knew them instantly.
“Lissa!”
Sleep-clogged: “Hmm?”
“Where did you get this?”
“Hmm?”
She hauled it up off the floor. It was at least five feet long. “This.”
Lissa’s eyes fluttered open and took a few seconds to focus. “Found it. Before I got shot. On the way to work. Thought it might be edible.”
“Are you sure?”
But Lissa had drifted into sleep. Deedra coiled up the vine as best she could, then tucked it under the bed.
First, though, she drew her knife from the small of her back and cut off a two-inch-long section.
When she got to Dr. Dimbali’s basement lab, the place resounded with a harsh, unrelenting mechanical buzz. Deedra clapped her hands over her ears and pressed forward until she spied Dimbali himself, leaning bodily against some kind of machine that looked like the offspring of a drill and a jackhammer. He was hollowing out a hole in the concrete wall, and from the amount of dust in the air and the evidence of other, similar, breaches of the wall, this wasn’t the first. His belly jiggled amusingly with the vibration of the machine, and she couldn’t repress a giggle. Some of the potted plants strewn around the lab shivered with the tremors caused by the machine.
After a few minutes, he thumbed off the machine and leaned back, gasping for breath, sweat streaming down his face and neck. He pushed his safety goggles up onto his forehead, and once again, she saw him without the SmartSpex. Humbler, maybe? More normal, maybe?
He startled when he noticed her watching him. “Ms. Ward! You gave me a fright!”
So much for normal.
“Sorry. What are you up to?” She gestured to the four, five, six holes in the walls. Seven, if you counted the new one.
He shrugged. “An experiment. That’s all. Testing a hypothesis. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”
And so much for humbler.
“I have something to show you.” She dug into her pocket for the chunk of vine she’d taken from Lissa’s place. He managed to tuck the machine under one arm and reached for the chunk. Closer, the reek of his strong sweat, mingled with concrete dust and an undertone of something rich and dark and alien, made her nose wrinkle. If Dr. Dimbali noticed, he didn’t show it. Or care.
“Fascinating,” he murmured, turning the chunk over before his eyes. “Where—”
“My friend had it. Lissa Stanhope. She said she found it. I’m thinking it comes from Rose, doesn’t it? That’s the only explanation.”
“I won’t know until I run some tests to compare with specimens already in my possession. An mRNA comparison should be dispositive. Sadly, I’m sure it won’t contain the necessary human/rose tissues that I require.”
Deedra blew out an exasperated breath. “Come on! It’s his. You know it and I know it.”
“I am unwilling to commit to a specific—”
“Dr. Dimbali!”
He sighed with a peculiarly adult annoyance. “I do believe he mentioned once that he sometimes… sheds such things when he’s done with them. So, yes, anecdotally we could assume—”
“What if someone found a bunch of them while scavenging? What if that person killed Jaron, using these?”
Dimbali said nothing.
“We could prove Rose is innocent!” She almost shouted it, infuriated at his calm, at his reticence. “We could take the evidence to the Magistrate and prove Rose didn’t kill Jaron. We wouldn’t have to break him out of jail—we could just get him out that way.”
Dr. Dimbali considered this for a moment, then chuckled and shook his head. “You had me actually contemplating it for a moment! But it’s useless. To begin with, the powers that be don’t need evidence. They don’t even understand Rose’s true nature; they have no connection between him and the vines left at the scene, and they don’t care. They don’t need a connection. Not when they have suspicion and a stranger.”
“But that’s not fair. And besides, they do know that Jaron was killed by the vines, so if we can show someone else had access to them…”
“You are behaving as though some sort of conventional explanation is needed, some kind of rationale for what has happened. I’m telling you—I’ve told you—that all that matters is rescuing Rose. We don’t need to prove his innocence or someone else’s guilt because those matters are irrelevant.”
“But if we can prove he didn’t kill Jaron—”
“Not that it matters,” she interrupted. She’d heard it before.
“Something else to consider. Let us assume—simply for the sake of our current discussion—that this is, in fact, an… artifact of Rose’s presence. Let us further assume that this artifact presents compelling and true evidence pointing to the actual killer of Jaron Ludo. What would be the logical conclusion in such an instance?”
She didn’t understand what he—Oh. “Lissa.”
“Precisely. If you present your evidence to the DeeCees or even to the police, the most likely scenario is that they will simply ignore it. They have their orders from Max Ludo, and they won’t deviate from them. But let’s say they decide to pay attention. First, they would put you under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Then they would interrogate you until you crack as to where you found it—”
“And go straight to Lissa.”
“Exactly.”
Was she willing to trade Lissa for Rose? Those were the kinds of questions she never wanted to hear, much less answer.
“I just feel like it’s safer. Maybe there’s a way to try. To send it in anonymously and then…”
Dimbali clucked his tongue and shook his head sadly. “There is one path ahead of us. It goes in one direction. I wish I could tell you exactly what will happen. Some consequences are more likely than others. All I know for certain is this: Once he is free, I will be able to use what I know of him to change the world for the better. How long that will take, I cannot say. People’s reactions, especially those in power? Again, I cannot say. The world is the way it is because someone somewhere has a vested interest in it being so. Entrenched powers are difficult to…” He paused and looked down at the machine in his hands. “Difficult to drill through, if you will.”
It was his idea of a joke. Deedra forced herself to smile. To encourage him.
“I might remind you as well,” he went on, “that rescuing Rose from prison was your idea.” He tapped at the SmartBoard, and Deedra was shocked to see herself appear on-screen.