by Sean Platt
Sam didn’t pause to confirm. A few minutes ago, Nicolai had tried to interrupt to verify or refute what Sam was saying, but he’d already given up, waiting for a pause that never came.
“But Isaac? Or you? Maybe you. We don’t think you’re Beau Monde. You’re pre-Beau Monde. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Nicolai, wondering why it would be offensive to begin with.
“When people switch Enterprise to Directorate, Directorate to Enterprise, nothing really changes. The dole at those positions in Directorate is so high that it’s basically unlimited, like Enterprise, and it feels like a shell game. Are the parties working together? Don’t answer that yet. We’ll circle back. Did you see the Prime Statements?”
Nicolai waited to see if he was expected to respond. He nodded.
“And the wall behind the Presidents? Did anything show up on it?”
“Like what?”
“Exactly! Nothing! So now I’m wondering if he’s working with them. If he’s on my side or not.”
“Who?”
“Once you see the ID tags, you can follow them and watch their patterns. I know someone, he — she? There’s no way to know — made a behavior-matching algorithm to sift the public Beam and watch the visible movements of any ID-tagged people, and do you know about that guy who died a few years back? Or not died — vanished, and I mean come on; we all know he’s dead.”
“What guy?”
Sam nodded as if Nicolai had just said something profound. “That’s right. Had the tag. And you know what some people say? They say it was an assassin. Like someone where, if you watch the tags and sort by Enterprise and Directorate and follow this inner circle, it starts to look like maybe he didn’t just vanish but is dead, and not just dead but killed, and that it was the work of an assassin. But not just an assassin; if you look at the possible assassins, there’s no previous criminal activity, and it’s like they didn’t even know they were assassins, like they were being controlled? Like maybe they’re clerics? That’s one idea that’s been advanced: that Beam clerics — and you know they’re all Quark-controlled, right? You know they’re never handed off to other sectors of service, and that Quark always holds the reins? — that a lot of the political backstabbing does happen through assassins, and that maybe the assassins are clerics, but maybe they’re kind of made clerics, like they didn’t sign up to be clerics, and I know that’s supposed to be impossible, but if you believe there’s really a SerenityBlue out there, then there might be all sorts of things, and yeah I know how that sounds but — ”
“Sam…”
Sam’s eyes darted to Nicolai’s. For a moment, Nicolai thought the other man might leap at him for some reason, but then the sense of mania departed and he seemed to listen.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Nicolai asked.
“I told you. As background. If you’re going to trust me, you have to know you can trust me. And I know some of the things you might have to say, Sterling sort of indicated, I mean not really but in that way he does where he’s, like, wink-wink he might tell you this, and I can’t run with it but maybe you can Sam, and so since this is about politics — ”
“What makes you think what I have to say is about politics?”
“Isn’t everything?” Sam’s mere two-word reply was disarming after his verbal diarrhea.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Sam nodded. He looked toward the door. He reached into his pocket but came out with nothing.
“Can I ask you a question?” Nicolai asked. “In the spirit of background, and helping me trust you before telling you my story?”
Sam nodded. The movement was closer to a spasm.
“What happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
What did he mean? Nicolai had made it through the East mostly due to guts and a particularly acute ability to judge people. People seldom surprised Nicolai. He could see through subterfuge like a superpower. He hadn’t seen the worst of Micah’s manipulations while they were happening, but he’d never trusted the man. Ironically, he trusted Isaac completely because Isaac was too weak for invisible deception. And even though Sam Dial was clearly Beamsick, Nicolai trusted him. He seemed incapable of keeping secrets. He seemed a peculiar breed of naive — naiveté that had managed to survive knowing (or suspecting) many of the world’s darkest secrets.
“What made you like this?” Nicolai held up a hand, realizing he’d been far too blunt. Sam’s diarrhetic honesty was contagious. “No offense.”
“Like what?” Sam looked like a man who didn’t realize his fly had been open and was now trying to cover.
“You’re sick. Why haven’t you been treated?”
“I’m not sick.” Comically, he put the back of his hand to his forehead.
“Not like that. How old are you?”
“Fifty.”
Nicolai raised his eyebrows.
“Fine. Younger than fifty.”
“And you grew up in the city. Probably right in the heart of it.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m a keen observer of human nature. Human nature has accents. I can tell how addicted you are, but it’s different from someone who grew up in the past twenty or thirty years upstate. Your accent feels like someone who’s not just used to checking a handheld every few seconds. I figure you had hardware in you very young, and it was fed from ultra-high-capacity pipelines only available right here.”
“Starbucks?”
“Old Manhattan.”
Sam looked up at Nicolai, chewing his cheek. What Nicolai had said was close to guessing the color of a woman’s underwear. This was the gauntlet. If Nicolai was going to trust Sam, Sam had to know that Nicolai could see right through him. He might run. But if he stayed, Nicolai would spill. If Sam stayed, it meant he was Nicolai’s man, damaged as he was.
“I grew up in SoHo,” said Sam.
“But not in the middle of it. You didn’t grow up in gangland.”
“Fringe. Just on the edge.”
“And your first implants. The connectivity ones. Age seven?”
“Five.”
Nicolai wanted to shake his head, but doing so would cross a line. This poor kid never had a chance. He’d grown up half cyborg. No wonder he couldn’t function without the Beam access he was clearly working so hard to avoid. He’d gone through his formative years with The Beam as part of his mind, body, and soul. Cutting it off would be like Nicolai giving himself a lobotomy.
“But those implants are all inactive now.”
“I don’t trust the network.” Sam swallowed but kept his eyes on Nicolai’s. Nicolai saw strength enter his gaze. What this kid was doing every day of his life took tremendous guts. It would be like going through withdrawal from a horrible drug…but no matter how long he stayed clean, the withdrawal symptoms would never, ever improve.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.”
Nicolai decided not to push further. Sam’s responses had gone from rambling and incoherent to terse and focused. He could fight it off, if he tried.
Nicolai watched him for a few seconds longer, wondering if he should bring up the idea of pharmaceutical intervention. Living as Sam did must be excruciating. But he decided not to say anything because every person needs their pain, and all that had failed to kill Nicolai over the years had only made him stronger.
“Okay,” said Nicolai. “What would you like to know?”
“What did you want to tell me?” Sam countered. His gaze was holding, but his leg was back to bouncing on the ball of his foot. His fingers had resumed drumming atop his knee.
“I’m not sure where to begin.” Nicolai could tell Sam everything, if he wanted. When he’d investigated Sam, it hadn’t taken much digging to see that while he still held valid press credentials, he hadn’t reported to the Sentinel or any other news outlet for years. His public credibility was shot. If Sam was cornered and told others that Nicolai Costa had blabbed, nobody would b
elieve him. But on the other hand, if Sam wasn’t reporting to the Sentinel, he might be reporting to someone — or many someones — even more influential.
“Tell me about the Beau Monde.”
“It’s real,” Nicolai answered, surprising himself with his bluntness — followed by a spiteful appendix: “But I’m not in it.”
“I know that,” said Sam. “But maybe you can tell me about how it’s influencing Shift.”
“I only know that Isaac and Micah Ryan — ”
“According to my sources, a lot of decision makers from both sides — not just the Ryan brothers — will be at a pre-Shift event in two days,” Sam said.
“Craig Braemon’s Respero event for the Violet James Foundation,” Nicolai recited. “What about it?”
“Are you going?”
“No.”
Across from Nicolai, Sam stood. He crossed to the door, touched the privacy seal, paced, then scratched his head like there were bugs in his hair.
“Tell me what Sterling Gibson wouldn’t publish,” said Sam. “And afterward, let’s see if I can change your mind.”
“About going to Braemon’s thing?” Nicolai shook his head. “No way. I’m not in politics anymore.”
Sam sat again, both legs bouncing, all fingers drumming.
“I’ll bet you are,” he said, “whether you realize it or not.”
June 16, 2049 — Grid-Neutral Appalachian Territories
“Leonidas,” said the man with the big arms. Well, big arm. The other — all exposed machinery — was more accurately an armature.
Leo turned the rest of the way around, moving Gregory from his peripheral vision to front and center. He’d been standing with his arms crossed, overlooking the mountain valley. Appearing properly pensive, he hoped. Penitent maybe. Like a man finally growing old, questioning everything he’d always been so sure of in the past.
“I’m just Leo up here, Gregory.”
“Okay,” Gregory said, his face contorting. The face looked strange to Leo, who’d got used to Gregory in his usual backdrop, down in DZ. But Gregory had recently replaced the metal-and-glass eye he’d had since ’37 with a quasi-organic replacement like the ones hospitals gave people who got their eyes poked out somehow — or possibly by buffoonish plumbers like in the black-and-white Three Stooges reruns Leo watched on the Old Time Channel growing up. The thought was depressing instead of funny. If The Three Stooges had seemed ancient to young Leonidas Booker, younger people like Gregory wouldn’t even know them. That would have been true even if there hadn’t been a decade of environmental chaos and decimation between Mo, Larry, and Curly and the kids of today.
“What do you need?” Leo asked.
“Your guy is here.”
“What guy?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“He wouldn’t tell you his name?”
“He wouldn’t tell me who he was,” Gregory said, as if that encapsulated everything.
“I don’t need any surprises. Tell him to get the fuck out of here unless he wants to come clean like the rest of us.”
“I don’t think it’s like that.”
Leo paused. Then he said, “I was Leonidas, but you were Centurion. Does it feel strange to be called Gregory now?”
“Yeah, some.”
“No Gaia names up here. This new man? He picks a name, or he goes back to the city. Things are different now.”
“I don’t think it’s just picking a name that’s getting him,” said Gregory.
Leo looked him over. Gregory was almost a foot taller than Leo and twice as wide. He’d been a demolition specialist. The man had been absolutely fearless and obedient to the death. Leo had once commanded Gregory — then Centurion — to run into a factory with a string of plasma grenades around his waist. If he couldn’t lob them into the machines, his instructions were to yank a single string fastened to the pins — all of which had been ground smooth for easy egress from the explosive bulbs. He would have done it without hesitation: one man dead, one cause advanced.
It was strange to see him tamed now, with his realistic eye instead of his old chrome one. This was a different leap of faith Leo was asking him to take — and for fighters like Gregory, the leap to pacifist living was a harder one than anything involving death.
And that didn’t even consider the larger leap Leo was asking his people to make. All of them going dry, all of them hurting.
“Then what is it?” Leo asked.
“He said to tell you he’s brought salvation. He’s in the meeting hall, waiting.”
Leo sighed. Was that today? He’d totally forgotten. The errand was good, but in a way it was also terrible. The visitor sounded like he was bringing religion, and for now, that’s what Leo allowed the others to believe: that Leo had found God. In truth, he’d found something else. It was strange how conflicted Leo felt about it all. Seen one way, Leo was saving his people. Seen another, he was leading them to doom.
“Okay. Thanks, Gregory.”
Gregory turned. Leo took one last sighing glance across the unincorporated mountain valley. Before the Fall, most of this had probably been owned by someone. Then in the reincorporation and districting, it had gone back to Mother Nature, owned by nobody. To make his group’s claim on the land official, Leo had dragged a large sum from the coffers that NAU Protective Services had allowed the remains of Gaia’s Hammer to keep unfrozen. He’d started this group when it had seemed the old ways were returning even after nature had asserted herself on the planet, and now he himself was doing the same. Buying land. Machinery might come next, followed by mass production. Then polluting. Then raping and exploiting the earth. Humanity seemed incapable of coexisting with the world for long, like a parasite on the planet.
“Gregory,” Leo said, turning halfway.
Gregory looked back.
“I’d like you to get your arm covered.”
Gregory looked down at the shining silver thing jutting from his elbow. It, too, had been state of the art when installed. Today, up here among the rug braiding and Kumbaya, it looked sad. At least Leo had begun with flesh over his own Warrior’s Fist. Gregory had enjoyed the intimidation factor of leaving the metal raw, same as the false eye.
Gregory made a metallic fist.
“Take your time,” Leo said.
“I don’t mind doing it,” Gregory said. “I mean, it doesn’t bum me out. Like the eye. It’s just finding the time.”
“NPS is sending up a team of surgeons. They’ll bring fabricators. Honestly, I hear it’s not much different than having something wrapped with a bandage.”
“Oh.”
“You object to NPS coming up here,” Leo said.
“I just keep thinking we’re done with them.”
“They’re not butting in. They’re just trying to help.”
To Gregory’s credit, he managed not to laugh. But Leo read his skepticism just the same.
“If a bunch of Gaia start showing up in DZ to get themselves stripped and covered, people might start asking questions,” Leo explained.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Gregory seemed to be waiting for dismissal. He turned when Leo didn’t dismiss him. Then Leo repeated his name, causing him to turn again. But this time, Leo kept his gaze outward, seeing the turn only in the corner of his eye. He only wanted to see the valley. Maybe that would help him focus on why they were here and help him believe that this was right. That all of it was right, no matter how conflicted it made Leo feel.
“Yeah, Leonidas?”
“Do you like it here?”
“Sure.”
“Do you miss the old life?”
Gregory didn’t say anything. Leo assumed he’d shrugged out of sight.
“I don’t mean just our purpose as Gaia. Gaia’s time is past. This here — ” he turned and patted the air, indicating the new mountain village, “ — is right for us now. The days of blade and fist are over. The deal we made with NPS — no matter how I feel about it — will keep that
mission going forward. Our best purpose now is to lead by example. Up here. Doing what’s hard, to show that it’s possible.”
“Sure, boss.”
“I meant, do you miss the city?”
By which Leo really meant: Do you miss the technology? Do you miss Crossbrace? But even if the former members of Gaia’s Hammer (now Organa, weak as that sounded) would admit to missing the network they’d embraced as a means to battle against it, Leo wouldn’t need an admission to get his answer. He knew they missed it because they couldn’t not miss it. It wasn’t about willpower. It was biology, and nobody was immune without help.
“Maybe some. But this is what’s best.”
Leo considered Gregory for a moment before giving the big man a nod to dismiss him. It was strange to think that he pitied someone so mighty, but he did. The others all trusted Leo so blindly. Once their leader, always their leader. Where Leonidas led, Gaia would follow.
The thought hurt Leo’s heart, especially considering what the visitor waiting in the meeting hall had brought with him. And to think: Leo had once thought that particular piece of organic, blood-pumping humanity within him was strong.
Leo began walking the trail back to the heart of the village, moving slowly to make sure he didn’t catch up with Gregory. The man wouldn’t be taking his time; they’d all caused enough damage to the NAU infrastructure over the past years for religion to feel like a hypocritical luxury. In another situation, Leo supposed the soldiers would think him weak, but they couldn’t; they respected him too much. So they avoided the issue.
Leonidas had found God. Good for him.
They would settle in time. People had a remarkable capacity to forget, and they were in this mountain community for the long haul exactly the same as they’d been warrior vigilantes for the long haul. All for one, and one for all — lives pledged forever and all that. Despite the violence, they’d joined the Gaia cause as idealists, and this was another kind of idealism. They believed in nature, the Earth’s spirit, and leaving a minimal footprint behind after they died. They had everything needed to be hippies except the aesthetic. In five years, with the help of fabricating nanosurgeons, they’d have that, too.
