by Hayley Stone
“It’s such a cliché,” he remarks without greeting me. “Longing for the past, for the times we remember as being simpler…when they never were, not really. But it makes the present more bearable, I think, believing we were once happier.”
His thoughts resonate with me more than he knows, more than I can put into words. I think about the past a lot these days. Lately, it seems thinking’s all I’ve been permitted to do. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that Camus must do his fair share of thinking, too.
“Getting sentimental in our old age, are we?” I say.
“I hope not. Humanity can’t afford to be run on sentimentality.”
“Says the man staring out at English pastures.”
He turns toward me now, wearing a thin, but not unfriendly smile, and I get a good look at some of the damage. His head wound is stitched, but not completely healed; his bottom lip is still bisected by a dark cut that’s just beginning to scab over. At least the bruises no longer feature as prominently, now a much paler gold against his skin. In three days’ time, the miracles of modern medicine have managed to heal the worst of his injuries. In a week’s time, physically, it could be like this never happened. But it did happen, and we’re both lucky to be standing here alive, regardless of how negligible the damage might seem now.
Well. I’m standing, anyway. He’s sitting down, his right leg surrounded by layers of gauze where it isn’t in a solid cast. The nurses told me the surgery went well and he was lucky he didn’t break more bones than the ones in his legs. They told me injections of bone foam would expedite the healing process, but that the treatment was still fairly experimental, and he should still make sure to get plenty of rest, and…Honestly, I stopped listening at that point, eager to get inside the room to see him.
“It’s remarkable how alike you are,” he tells me. I watch him drag his thumb across his lower lip thoughtfully. “Right down to the smart remarks.”
“Still singing the same tune, I see.” I don’t know what else I was expecting. Maybe I’d hoped the other day would have improved the situation between us. “What’s it going to take to convince you that I haven’t changed?”
“I don’t know,” he answers with surprising candor. “Although the haircut doesn’t help.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” I touch the shortened strands defensively.
“You look like you’ve just stepped out of a cheap sci-fi film.”
I frown. “Now you’re just being mean.”
“Sorry,” he apologizes, and I believe he’s being sincere. “I suppose I should be thanking you rather than insulting you.”
“That’s traditionally how it goes when someone saves your life.”
“Thank you,” he says, his eyes and voice softer. “Truly.”
“You’re welcome.”
I’m not sure whether this means we’ve reconciled, or if it’s utterly insignificant.
His forehead furrows, becoming deep trenches of thought. “You must understand something. This”—he motions between me and himself—“isn’t easy for me.”
That’s putting it more delicately than the last time we spoke. Progress. I guess.
After another moment, he goes on. “You have to understand; I loved Rhona with all my heart. I mourned for her. I was still mourning for her when you showed up.”
“I—she didn’t give you any hint of what she was doing? With the cloning?”
His sliver of a smile sticks between my ribs like a dagger. “No. She didn’t deign to let me in on her plans ahead of time.”
I inhale slowly, trying to keep my voice level. “Why do you think that is?” I’ve searched for an explanation among my shoddy repository of memories, but none has been forthcoming. I know I kept it a secret. Maybe because I feared Camus would shut the project down, or maybe I was ashamed for having started it at all? The ethics of what Samuel and I did remain hazy. Then again, maybe I simply didn’t want to get Camus’s hopes up, in case our efforts failed to produce results. Whatever the reason, I doubt I’ll ever know. My predecessor took her intentions to the grave.
He rubs his face, appearing double his age once his hands come away. “I don’t know. Rhona was delirious from the blood loss. I could never have guessed that she’d already gone and done something this…extreme.”
“No. I mean before Anchorage. Why wouldn’t I have kept you in the loop?”
“I’ve asked myself much the same question. I wish I had an answer. Maybe she believed I would stop her.” His shoulders slump. “Maybe I would have.”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” I say quietly, reading the agony in his eyes. “That she didn’t tell you.”
“Yes.”
When he admits this, he isn’t looking at me. He’s watching an imaginary horizon through a window that doesn’t exist. I want to go to him, my heart reaching for what’s lost. I want to take away this pain I’ve caused in both our lives, as easily as he squirreled away a few pictures from my room.
But I doubt any comfort I could offer would be well received. Despite the civility right now, I know things still aren’t right between us. They may never be. But, as with his holographic England, I comfort myself with illusions to the contrary. It feels weak, but I can’t accept the alternative—not yet, at least.
I decide to take his recommendation to sit down, and pull up a swiveling stool, the only other seating available. “And the council?” I ask. “Some of them must have known.”
“Yes. I suspect one or two of them must have, but I don’t have any proof. No one’s coming forward, admitting any prior knowledge.”
“Okay. I can accept that, but what about everyone else? I mean, I’ve been getting strange looks, but no one finds it a little more than odd that I’m suddenly back? Shouldn’t they be, I don’t know, putting together a mob to burn the witch?”
Camus cracks a smile, and it excites me. The expression seems more natural on his face, deepened by beautiful dimples. He was a man meant to smile. And, as I recall, once upon a time, he used to. “They’ve been told certain things,” he says. “Enough to satisfy their curiosity.”
“Such as?”
“Enough,” he repeats, evasively.
“Please, Camus. You know how it feels to be left in the dark. Shed a little light for me, huh?”
His smile tightens, the humor going out of it. “Ever the politician,” he says before his face drains of all mirth. “We never told them of Rhona’s death, if you must know.”
“What?”
“She was reported as missing in action. Presumed dead, but never confirmed.”
“Why?”
“Because we didn’t need another martyr,” he explains. “Humanity already had plenty of faces and memories to avenge. One more death—even Rhona Long’s—wouldn’t have made a difference in this war. The people needed hope; they needed the belief she was out there somewhere, still fighting on their behalf. However unlikely. It was a palatable lie.” He breathes deeply, half-sighing. “It was easier.”
“And what about a body?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
He won’t look at me, raking long fingers through his lengthening curls. I detect his discomfort in that gesture and the way he scratches the facial hair growing in around his mouth, the product of going days without shaving. “There wasn’t time.” The words sound rehearsed, as though I’m not the first person he’s told this excuse to. And since the circumstances of my death haven’t been shared with many outside the council, I think maybe he’s been telling it to himself.
“So you left me behind,” I say. This bothers me more than it should. I know it was the right call. But still.
“You were already gone,” he answers after a moment of reflection. Or maybe guilt. It doesn’t escape my notice that it’s the first time he’s referred to me as Rhona, even indirectly. He shrugs. “Perhaps it would have been more romantic to stay, to make my grave with hers. Even in death, not parted. Very Romeo and Juliet, wouldn’t you agree?”
&n
bsp; “Don’t be morbid.”
“No, you’re right,” he agrees, looking away. “Clearly I’ve been trapped in this hospital room for too long. I fear I’m turning morose.”
I have to bite my tongue in order to avoid making another of what he called my “smart remarks.”
“I guess we’re both going a little stir crazy.”
“Mhm,” he murmurs, sitting back, arching his fingers on the metal arm of the chair. “You know, the council has good reason for wanting to keep you safe.”
“You, too?” I ask quietly.
“Do I what?”
We stare at one another for a few tense seconds before I lose the game of chicken and glance down at my hands. I want to ask him: Do you want to keep me safe, too? But I fear the answer I would receive.
“What makes me so special, anyway?” I ask instead, somewhat moodily. His brows come together. “I mean, if they don’t include me in the decision-making process anymore, what does it matter if I’m alive or dead?”
“What does it matter?” he repeats, incredulous. It’s like the curtain’s been drawn back, revealing me for no wizard. His expression of disbelief is so obviously sincere I can’t even pretend it’s a show for my benefit. I brace myself for more truth. “I’m sorry,” he says, not sounding as much sorry as confused. “I’m trying to understand. You mean—you remember nothing? Not the broadcasts, the ‘signal heard ’round the world?’ None of it?”
“Only a little.” That memory I had of the media room makes a little more sense now, as does Matt’s remark about my face being the one the world watches. I broadcast a message—but to who, exactly? And what did I say?
At the same time, I wonder why Camus is putting me through the torture of admitting my ignorance when he must know the extent of my memory loss. Someone would have told him by now.
“I remember the room I must have given the broadcast in. And I remember arguing with you about being the one to do it, but that’s about it.”
Camus shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”
I expect him to elaborate. When he doesn’t, I prompt him by saying, “I don’t suppose you’d care to fill me in?”
“Where to begin? You’re our figurehead—or Rhona was,” he says, careful to correct himself. I’m learning not to let it bother me. I don’t think Camus is actively trying to dehumanize me by separating us into two different people. I think it’s just his way of protecting himself from the emotional fallout of the first Rhona’s death.
“For the base,” I assume.
“Hardly. Try the world.”
“It’s not nice to tease an amnesiac, Camus. I know I managed to fool the people in this base into giving me the title of commander, but come on.” I frown; he must be toying with me. In the old days, maybe he would have. In the old days, when I really was Rhona Long, and he was Camus Forsyth, my Camus, and we were playful and in love. But it’s not like that nowadays, and it dawns on me that he’s unlikely to be anything but serious.
“I wish I were joking,” he agrees with a peculiar sadness, “for all our sakes.”
“Well, don’t be so ominous about it,” I mumble. I look out across the simple fields, wishing I could somehow escape through the window. I’m not sure where I’d go even if I could, but it doesn’t matter. That place is as unreachable as a dream, a refuge accessible only by thought now.
“Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” he says, and then proceeds to give me the abridged version of the last five years, thankfully skipping all the technical bits.
He talks about how we—McKinley base—managed to hijack a derelict satellite running on old technology, forgotten by NASA, overlooked by the machines, and how we decided to send out a message to survivors. I listen raptly, occasionally asking for clarification, which he provides with a stoic patience. I mentally compare what he tells me to the memories I have of that time. It’s fuzzy, but the facts sync up in enough places to give credence to his story. He has no reason to lie, I don’t think. Not about this.
“Someone had to deliver the message,” he goes on. “Text wasn’t sufficient. This was in the second year of the war. The UN was gone, governments all over the world had collapsed, and by now everyone knew what the machines were capable of. They’d lured us into similar traps before, so we knew only a human face was going to be trusted. We needed someone upbeat, who didn’t look as though they had been tortured or manipulated by the higher echelon. But there wasn’t exactly a run on the banks for the opportunity.”
“Because it meant they’d become a target,” I say. I know this part.
“Precisely. Public enemy number one.”
It’s coming back to me again in bits and pieces, just as before. Glimpses of feeling flood my chest, liquid and warm. “I volunteered,” I say, remembering the surge of adrenaline, a life-changing decision made at a moment’s notice. “You tried to stop me.”
He smiles faintly, fondly. “Not hard enough, obviously.”
Camus goes on to explain how there was only a brief window of opportunity to broadcast without the machines triangulating our location, and at the time, there was no knowing whether we’d get another chance.
“So Rhona did what she did best. She improvised. In front of the last remnants of the human race, across the globe, wherever they were hidden and afraid. And she was good. She was spectacular.” He talks with such glowing admiration, as if Rhona had walked on water rather than just winging a public speech. I know the adoration in his eyes isn’t for me personally, but I pretend otherwise. I let myself have those few moments, as though it can substitute for the ones that were never really mine.
“The Americans called it the ‘signal heard ’round the world,’ ” he continues with a look of amusement. “Kitschy, if you ask me, but it caught on. The broadcast catapulted Rhona to global superstardom, and no wonder. She reassured a world aching for leadership, offering much-needed direction. As for McKinley, who on the council was going to challenge the one woman unafraid of confronting the machines?”
“And after?”
“After?”
“One broadcast—however iconic—does not a leader make,” I say.
“Right,” he agrees, and I think I detect a hint of pride in his tone, pleased I’ve caught on. “Since then, we’ve been able to broadcast on occasion without jeopardizing our location. Send out news, share insights on war technology, strategy, understanding of the machines, that sort of thing. Rhona was a natural speaker, and an even better diplomat. It worked—at the time. But with the increased presence of machines in the past year, it’s become increasingly harder to do. Much more dangerous. Not to mention…” He trails off, giving me a meaningful look. Not to mention McKinley’s pretty talking parrot was dead. “I think it’s safe to assume the machines know we’re somewhere in Alaska now.”
“They found me before,” I point out.
“An unfortunate coincidence,” he says, his mouth flattening into a hard line. “The trap at Anchorage wasn’t specifically designed for you. It was just the machines’ good fortune you were there. In any case, they know you’re alive now. I expect they’ll be doubling their efforts trying to find us. You pose a very real threat to them. You may be the only person still capable of raising an army from the ashes. Many will rally to you, if you call them.”
I’m having a hard time meeting his eyes. I feel suddenly shy.
“People really believe in me that much?”
“They believed in Rhona Long, yes. And regardless of my personal feelings, we need to make sure they continue to do so. In fact, that’s the reason I called you here.”
“Actually, I’ve been asking to see you.”
He’s completely self-assured when he says, “I know.”
“Right, then,” I say, sighing. “And here I thought I was making some headway.”
“There’ll be time enough for you to throw your weight around, believe me.” The way he says it suggests he’s not entirely comfortable with the prospect, but Camus wears resi
gnation well, remaining fairly dignified about it. “The council has decided to afford you an opportunity to prove yourself.”
Somewhere in that statement, concealed by his oh-so-careful wording, I detect a scenario in which I can fail as well as succeed. “Like a test, you mean?”
He opens his hands in a noncommittal gesture. “Consider it whatever you like. The fact of the matter remains. A few days ago, a very distinguished person and her entourage arrived from Churchill.”
“Churchill? Like the old British guy?”
“No,” he says, with a faint hint of a smile. “It’s a base to the south and one of our strongest allies. I don’t know how exactly, but their head councilwoman caught wind that you were back. She’s been requesting a meeting with you since, and we’re running out of reasons to tell her no.”
I’m listening to him explain when his eyebrows bunch up suddenly and he reaches for his crutches, rising from his seat, despite it clearly paining him to move on his bad leg. For all their “miracle of modern medicine” selling points, the bone-foam treatments still aren’t capable of mending bones as fast as Camus would undoubtedly like.
In the few seconds it takes him to retrieve something from a small table beside his bed, my nerves have frayed into thin ribbons. I’m worried I’ve inadvertently offended him. I’m angry that he would get mad at something and not even have the guts to tell me. Then I’m just plain worried again. It’s a roller coaster, and my stomach doesn’t unknot itself until he returns, handing me a tissue.
Oh. My nose must be bleeding again.
I stare down at the soiled tissue, torn from the aggressive way I wiped the blood from my nose. I’m squeamish with apprehension, reminded of Samuel’s dark diagnosis, spoken behind closed doors. Is it just stress? Or is there another, more serious underlying cause for these nosebleeds? I want to share my fears with Camus, but I don’t trust him to be sympathetic. Instead, I mumble a thank you, and he continues as if the interruption never occurred.