by Lea Daley
A contemptuous note had crept into Whitehall’s tone. Which meant I’d given her entirely too much control. She was beginning to view me as clueless Leslie Burke again—ignorant, out of my element. It was time to assert myself.
“‘A realist’s accommodation?’ That’s not what they say on the streets!”
“I do love gossip. What’s the latest?”
Jesus! If they wrote Chastity’s name in horseshit, she’d be happy—as long as she still had her place in the sun…make that suns. “They say you purchased your power by selling out your compatriots.”
Whitehall laughed long and hard and sardonically. “Is that feeble excuse for their failure still making the rounds? My fellow Returnees had every option I did, Leslie. There’s no quota system here. Any of them could have made the same choices, with the same quite comfortable results.”
I tried to look intrigued. “So, what do you have to do—take out an ad? How in hell do you let the powers-that-be know you’re a team player?”
“That’s a matter of common sense, common courtesy. You honor Jashari tradition by emulating it. In the beginning, you bow lower than anyone else. You spend your money where it will benefit the economy. You develop a little patience, and—” here she glanced at me significantly “—a lot more tact. You scrupulously avoid association with other Returnees. And you never, ever criticize the planetary culture. You accept that this is not Earth, not a democracy—nor was it ever intended to be.”
“But—”
“But nothing! I have yet to meet a Returnee who’d given a moment’s thought to the form of government she’d wake to. None of us said, ‘Oh, please, sir, don’t revive me until there’s a democratic regime.’ We only requested—we only paid for—a shot at a longer, healthier life. And the Jasharians have made good on their end of the bargain!”
She was right—I had to admit it. Be careful what you wish for!
Chastity’s face was animated by a convincing display of passion. “We owe these people something, Leslie! They’re almost devoid of egotism themselves. Yet Jasharians have spent millennia serving pushy, overly-individualized types like you and me. And when they rejuvenate us, do we greet them with gratitude? Do we acknowledge the exceptional constancy of their commitment, or the strain we place on their culture? No! We immediately begin to whine about all the ways this place is different from Earth! Which—may I remind you—none of us thought was a paradise while we lived there!”
Now Whitehall met my eyes with a challenging look. “If you want to get ahead on Jashari, you express sincere appreciation for being here at all, remembering the alternative you once had!”
I considered my alternative: a difficult death at an early age. Chastity sounded so reasonable. She sounded so right. I was being pulled into her version of reality like a small fish on a very long line. Only with an effort of will could I call back Aimée’s confirmation of my deepest suspicions: “This person is rafe’la.”
“You make it seem so easy, Chas! Taylor makes it sound so hard.”
“It was not easy, goddamn it! I worked like a dog to achieve my position here. It took brains and self-control and a kind of political savvy despised by most Returnees. But it worked for me, Leslie. It could work for you too.”
Flattery would buy me more time than anything. “When I listen to you, I feel so ignorant. There’s so much I haven’t understood—not that people go out of their way to explain things here!”
“I’ll answer any questions I can. What do you want to know?”
Oh, this could hold her for a while—I had lists and lists. It would certainly be interesting to hear her take on Jashari. But the time seemed right for a change of pace. “Look, much as I’ve enjoyed chatting, I’m starved. I’ve got to go eat. Maybe sometime soon, we can get together and continue this discussion.”
“I eat too, Leslie. Why not stay for dinner? Then we can keep talking.”
My kingdom for some futuristic timepiece to glance at discreetly, as if I were eager to leave. Instead, I settled for a decisive shake of my head. “I don’t want to intrude on your plans…”
Then, of course, I let her persuade me to stay.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Along with that meal, Whitehall served up an intro course to Jashrine history. Naturally, the story began on Earth, roughly in my era. In the beginning, access to cryosleep was confined to those who had urgent, verifiable medical causes for seeking it. The process was tightly controlled and required judicial approval. Moreover, each candidate had to provide a massive insurance policy. A percentage of the associated funds were invested for the participant until revival. Once patients were iced down, they were declared legally dead. At which point, benefits could be disbursed—and the majority of those payouts enriched the power structure.
I nodded. “That’s how the system worked when I checked out.”
Within a generation, Chastity said, it became obvious there was a lot of money to be made from deep sleep. Easing up on the eligibility standards would give everyone who mattered a nice cut of some heavy financial action. The government. The certifying doctors. The insurance companies. The investment brokers. It was simply too sweet a deal for a crowded planet to pass up. Predictably enough, new legislation permitted very liberal interpretation of the qualifying conditions. Soon perfectly healthy people created a vogue for cryosleep, hoping to be awakened when death itself had been defeated. Insurance policies could even be bequeathed to relatives or friends in the event of a client’s sudden demise pre-icing. For an extra fee, naturally. Up front.
With breathtaking speed, a million schemes erupted. Entrepreneurial types got into the act early on, offering cryo-policies as Grand Prizes in all manner of contests, lotteries and sweepstakes, with themselves as principal beneficiaries. One enterprising fellow drummed up business by advertising what he called “vacation packages”—two weeks at an exclusive resort, all expenses paid, before customers checked out for a long, lucrative nap. Hopefully followed by an uncomplicated revival and an eternity of endless pleasure. The company slogan? “Die Now, Play Later.”
Ultimately, the system threatened to collapse under its own weight. Facilities were woefully inadequate to store and maintain all the applicants. But none of the heavy hitters wanted to kill the cash cow. What to do? Solving the problem would demand vision, commitment and unparalleled venture capital.
After much global hand-wringing, a consortium from the All-Pacific Alliance—which had learned to take the long view of profit margins—bankrolled the creation of Jashari. At completion, the minuscule planet was chartered to permit experimental medical treatments, and consecrated to the purpose of reviving policy holders. Jashari became a hotbed of scientific research, serving multiple needs of Planet Earth.
Maintaining the asteroid was phenomenally expensive. And subsidies from the consortium were designed to phase out gradually, those revenues to be replaced by Jashari’s share of insurance payouts. At last the investors began to realize a profit from the costly start-up. In fact, their gamble was a fantastic success—the money just kept rolling in.
But it didn’t take long to recognize that Jashari’s lifeblood was also the poison in its veins. Before the High Council could access its portion of the spoils, Earthlings had to be successfully defrosted. Yet each revival represented an existential threat to Jashari’s carefully calibrated cultural equilibrium. Because every Returnee was individualized to a degree considered unwholesome—only an egotist, after all, would demand cryosleep.
Which, Whitehall explained, went down hard with the natives from the very beginning. Not surprising since Jashari was originally populated by professionals culled from the inner circle of the World Unification Movement. Mostly Asians and Africans who despised Western culture. People known for their rigid adherence to discipline, their firm commitment to collectivism. People who’d rejected the Singularity.
The phrase wasn’t familiar. “After my time?” I asked.
“Not really. The Singulari
ty was—in part—the moment when it became practical to fuse people with computers. It was anticipated decades in advance, and you were born just as it was kicking off.”
“Why don’t I know anything about it?”
“Your ignorance was part of a nefarious plot.”
“No, really.”
“Yes, really. The cost, status and political advantages of those human-machine mergers were so substantial that only elites were permitted the option. To short-circuit demand, scientists claimed the technology hadn’t played out as predicted. And to reduce the prospect of social unrest, media discussion of both research and application was rather forcefully discouraged…”
Chastity’s voice receded into the deep background as my attention was co-opted by a stunning realization: Aimée must be a byproduct of the Singularity! Part mechanical processor, part honest-to-god human! Could that explain why she’d gone rogue? With regret, I set the question aside. Now Whitehall was telling me that some privileged individuals—like those assigned to Jashari—had preferred to become one with people rather than machines. Over time—inevitably—a discrete culture evolved on the asteroid. A society that valued union and conformity above all other qualities.
Not surprisingly, Returnees soon became known as Les Incurables: those who demand perfect health, yet insist on preserving every ugly idiosyncrasy, no matter how disruptive to the Harmony of the Whole. In response, Jasharians strove to create bulwarks between themselves and their clients. Uncertainty about what was happening on either side of the barricades created constant tension. Chastity smiled modestly. “Part of my ‘portfolio’ as Special Advisor is to serve as liaison between the two groups.”
Though I suspected that transmissions were probably one-way only, I made myself say, “That must be challenging.”
“It’s beyond difficult, Leslie. But let’s save that for another day, because the story’s just about to get interesting.”
At the end of Jashari’s first millennium, Whitehall told me, a mathematical philosopher proposed his world-shaking theory of innate social instability. The fact that he was Cli’aht-zhu—a direct descendant of the original Elder—lent his work unassailable credibility. It was he who’d prophesied the coming of Li’shayla Mar-Né, a devastating concept on such a placid, prosperous planet.
Meanwhile, conditions on Earth were deteriorating. Flagrant disregard of the environment had left its mark on the human gene pool. Increasingly, ordinary births were anything but—far too many fetuses verged on the monstrous. Yet abortion was universally prohibited and penalties for terminating pregnancy were severe. After beleaguered parents began to abandon malformed offspring with overwhelming frequency, whole economies were depleted by the lifetime costs of custodial care.
Across the globe, governments started off-loading these unfortunates. Each was swiftly approved for deep sleep, supplied with a complimentary insurance policy and consigned to the distant asteroid for eventual healing. Upon arrival at the Medical Reception Station, potential Returnees were categorized on a scale of deformity, with revival delayed as long as possible for the worst cases. Yet even those on the low end of the continuum—candidates who would be described as only moderately abnormal on Earth—were horrifying to Jasharians.
“Today,” Chastity said, “relatively few acceptable Earthlings remain to be revived, yet the revenue must keep flowing…”
“So finally, they had to wake me.”
“Yes, Leslie. Despite the risk, you were preferable to most other options. And there was the incentive of your quite staggering wealth. Of course, Jashari’s share of that won’t last forever. My advice is to spend a significant amount of your fortune very quickly. This will greatly enhance your social standing.”
And greatly reduce my potential power. I leaped up and began to hurl myself around Chastity’s dining area, genuinely furious, my aggrieved tone only partially assumed. “So I’m the lesser of two evils?”
“Harsh, but true.”
“Talk about a no-win situation! Align myself with Hemingway and I clash with the power structure. Align myself with the Council and I have the pleasure of knowing that only my money makes me socially acceptable. Why, I wonder, do I feel used and abused?”
“Self-pity’s a zero-sum game, Leslie. We all have to play the hands we’re dealt—and play them by the prevailing rules.”
“Yeah—except everyone knows the rules but me. While I’m still trying to interpret the instructions, you’re all racking up points for your teams. And I gather this game is played for keeps.”
“It is, indeed. Therefore you must choose wisely. Tell me something: Has anyone in Taylor’s camp bothered to educate you about the prophecy they’d like you to fulfill? Have they told you the details?”
No! They hadn’t! I’d absorbed a lot of dark suggestion, a lot of half-baked hearsay, but no real information had been proffered. And how much did I really know about Hemingway or her agenda? How honest was she?
Chastity read my hesitation. “I thought not,” she murmured, as if I’d been the dupe of master strategists. “They’ve left you completely in the dark. Haven’t you wondered about the burden they hope you’ll assume? Aren’t you even slightly skeptical of their motives?”
Until this meeting, I’d never doubted Taylor—or, by extension, the Returnees who surrounded her. I’d swallowed their narrative whole. Out of friendship. Out of trust—perhaps too lightly given. Most likely because Bahji, my first contact, was so disarming. I struggled to remember that Chastity was a notorious prevaricator. But her perspective made a lot of sense, her arguments were so damned logical. “Why don’t you clue me in?”
Whitehall pointed to a place beside her. “Sit, Leslie. All that pacing is annoying.” I joined her on the imaginary sofa, where she took my hand. “Settle in. Even though the prediction’s extremely long and stylized, I’ll recite it in its entirety. In Jashrine, so I can’t be accused of misinterpreting or misrepresenting it. Then you decide whether it’s relevant.”
Switching to her adopted tongue, Chastity began to intone the ancient text. She spoke in the ceremonial case, with phrases long since archaic, yet still freighted with majestic import. To the English-speaking ear, Jashrine is unnecessarily convoluted. But there’s a power in its structures that’s rarely equaled. Even the shrillness of Whitehall’s voice couldn’t diminish its impact.
To translate the passages I heard in that hour is to strip them of their stately force, their awesome weight. From the first stanza, I was consumed by the meter and meaning of the prophecy. The unfolding recitation forced everything else into deep background. Even Bahji—the person, her plight—seemed dreamlike, unreal.
By the time Whitehall fell silent, I was reeling. More than ever, I felt how ill-suited I was to the entwined tasks of revolution and redemption. Still, in that moment I knew that I was destined to become Li’shayla Mar-Né, the Dreaded Conqueror, Sacred Champion, Irresistible Force.
I was not yet that thing. I’d travel down strange pathways and change beyond reckoning before my transformation was complete. I’d wrestle with tragedy and inspire rebellion. But all doubt had fled. For when the revelation fell on my ears, a thousand doors within me opened, as if in welcome. And I yearned only for a reprieve from that fate.
Under no circumstances could I allow Whitehall to guess what I’d just experienced. She was calling my name then, shaking me a little, rousing me from a state almost trance-like. Suddenly everything dear to me was real once more. Bahji. Taylor. Aimée. The three gathered form and substance, claiming my heart, my mind, my loyalty for all time. I knew I must look dazed, so I stretched and yawned like an ill-mannered guest. “How rude of me! I guess I dropped off for a minute.”
My unwitting messenger looked startled. “That performance doesn’t typically put people to sleep.”
“I mean no offense, Chas, but this stuff gives me a headache. I’m not a spiritual type and I’ve had mystical crap shoved down my throat ever since I was revived.”
S
he squinted—prettily—speculation naked in her eyes. “Okay, Leslie. Here’s a modest proposal: You could ease a lot of concern by spending time with me. Publicly, I mean. That would send a strong signal you don’t intend to assume the mantle of Li’shayla Mar-Né. The prophecy would live on, but at least you’d cease to be a sitting duck for every crackpot and charlatan.”
“That sounds awesome! Suppose I come back—say tomorrow or the next day?—and you help me figure out where to go from here. I’m not sleeping well and I just can’t concentrate any longer.”
Chastity was plainly baffled by my indifference to the prophecy, my sudden lassitude. I think she felt me slipping away. Yawning again, I mumbled, “Must be time to go home.”
But, in fact, I’d lost all track of time. Wasn’t certain how long I’d been with her, how much cover I’d bought Aimée. Whether it was safe to leave. I was simply desperate to flee that pernicious presence. Still, I needed to marshal a convincing display of camaraderie before breaking away.
I pulled Whitehall upright until I stood toe to toe with her—te’lal b’jahng, my fated enemy. The space between us was slight, and dense with implication. I looked her dead in the eye. Smiled warmly. Dropped my voice to its sultriest register. “Thanks for everything, Chas. You’ve really helped me sort this out.”
She squeezed my hands and a practiced smile brightened her face. “That’s what friends are for, Leslie. Go home and rest—maybe you’ll sleep better now.”
I doubted it—I sincerely doubted it. But I seized the moment and took my leave. I’d walked half a block when an impulse made me look back at Whitehall’s house. Someone was just entering it. Someone who appeared to slip effortlessly through those impregnable walls. Even in the deepening twilight, I could tell he was tall and fair, like only one man I’d seen on Jashari. I was almost certain it was Peter Johansonn. For some reason, my heart lurched.
I forced myself to amble home, walking as if I were truly exhausted. All the while, an edgy energy pulsed through me. Aimée! Aimée! Aimée! I shouted silently. She’d be waiting in my apartment—if circumstances permitted. But I didn’t want to talk there. As I strolled those patterned paths, I made a plan for our reunion.