by J. R. Harber
“I said I’m leaving,” Asa repeated patiently. He had been rehearsing this all night; he was braced for an outburst, ready to counter any of their objections.
“I understand what you said.” Sarah’s words were clipped as she began to move again, pouring her coffee and setting the pot back down, spooning in sugar with a crisp, angry deftness.
Isaac watched warily from the doorway; he had not yet responded to his son’s declaration, and Asa could not read his heavy-featured face. Finally, Sarah sat at the table, her back straight as a post, and gave Asa a withering stare. He met her eyes, not giving ground. Sarah sipped her coffee, not breaking eye contact, then set the cup down.
“What I don’t understand, Asa, is why you would choose to leave us. What have we done to hurt you?”
“What?”
“There must be some reason you’re saying this, son,” Isaac said, coming in to stand behind his wife’s chair. He rested his hand on her shoulder, and her face lost a fraction of its tension. “Your mother just wants to know what it is. So do I. We’ve always tried to do the best for you.”
Asa looked from his father to his mother and back again. This was the only contingency he had not planned for. He was ready for arguing, even shouting, tears and dire warnings of what happens to young men in the city. It had not occurred to him that his parents might be hurt.
“Mom, Dad, you didn’t do anything wrong,” he said quickly. “I just want more out of life. I want to see what the world really is, not be stuck here in this tiny, suffocating place—” He broke off too late.
“Tiny, suffocating place? Asa, this is your home, your community,” Isaac said, the shock visible on his face.
“I didn’t mean it that way!” Asa sighed with frustration. “It was a great place to grow up. It’s a great place now. I just want to try something new, now that I can.”
“It’s not about the place, Asa,” Sarah murmured. “It’s about the people.”
“I know that, Mom. I just want to see a little more of the world, that’s all.”
His parents were silent. Isaac pulled out a wooden chair and sat beside his wife. “I suppose we can’t stop you,” he said doubtfully, as if realizing this new state of affairs for the first time.
“No, you can’t,” Asa said quietly. His mother and father exchanged a glance. His mother shook her head and took another sip of coffee.
“I don’t like it,” she said in an even tone. She didn’t look at Asa, staring at the middle of the table as if something very interesting were happening there.
“I know, Mom.”
“Asa, can you really imagine starting a new life, surrounded by people you’ve never met? The people of Rosewood have known you all your life. They know the whole of you—who you were the day you were born, who you’ve become, and everything in between. How would it be if everyone around you were a stranger? How could they truly love you without knowing the whole of you, the way the people here do?”
Her voice grew strident, and Isaac put his hand on hers. “Your sister Ruth met Matthew outside of Rosewood. She went all the way to Deerfield, remember? And they’re happy as can be.”
“They have no children, Isaac,” Sarah said, lowering her voice.
“That’s their choice,” he said calmly. “All I’m saying is, I don’t think it would be such a bad thing if Asa went to Pine Valley or Pleasantdale for a little while. Some young people need to breathe a different air before they can settle down.”
Sarah sighed and shook her head. “I don’t like it,” she said again. “But maybe your father is right. Do you know where you want to go?”
Asa swallowed. He had meant to get everything out all at once, but the conversation had gotten away from him almost immediately.
So much for having an answer for everything, he thought.
“I’m going to Horizon,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. “Today.”
His mother gasped, and his father’s face darkened. “Asa,” Isaac said, his voice taking on a firmer edge. “Horizon is quite a different thing.”
“People live there, don’t they?”
“People who live there have reasons,” Isaac corrected. “Authority Figures, people training at the medical and engineering schools, anyone who has chosen to become a vessel of the State. People who need to be in Horizon to learn or to serve the greater good.”
“Other people live there too.”
“People who live dangerous lives,” Sarah said. “Asa, you’re a risk-taker. I know that, and it has terrified me ever since you … I have feared for you. I’ve always hoped that when you reached maturity—or perhaps when you married—you would settle down, and I would stop having nightmares about what you might do next.”
“Mom …” Asa half-heartedly tried to interrupt, but his father glared him into silence.
“And now,” Sarah continued, “you tell me you are about to take the greatest risk of your life—and worse, I won’t even know what is happening to you, because you’ll be hundreds of miles away!”
“Mom, it’s only a few hours away on the rail!”
“Did you know there was a young man who moved to Horizon from here?” Sarah said slowly. “He was our age, Isaac, remember? He went when he was twenty-three.”
“Adam,” Isaac said.
“Adam,” Sarah repeated, nodding. “He was only in Horizon for three months before he broke his Social Contract. Then he was sent to Work.” She looked plaintively at her son. “Twenty-three years old, and he never saw his family again. Why must you willingly enter the same trap that he did?”
“What? I’m not Adam—I never even met this guy! I’m bound by my Social Contract just as much as you are. You raised me to know right from wrong. Do you think I’m going to become a different person just because I move to the city?”
His father opened his mouth to speak, but Asa rushed on.
“It’s not like I can break my Social Contract by accident, Mom! I would never hurt anyone or anything deliberately. I would never damage the world around me. And you raised me from the day I was born to act with respect for myself, for my community, and for the State that keeps us all safe and provides everything we need.” He heard himself falling into a singsong rhythm as he finished, going back to his childhood, when they first learned how to remember the words. Sarah and Isaac still looked at him sadly.
“It’s not always up to you, son,” Isaac said finally. “Whether or not you become a different person. People do change, and you can’t know how something will change you until it happens.”
“You should know me better than that,” Asa said. “I don’t want to become a different person. I just want to see what it’s like to live differently.”
“And once you experience this? Will you come back?” Isaac asked. His mother waited anxiously for his answer.
Never, Asa thought, the word on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed it.
“Maybe,” he said instead. The answer ended the argument, but it didn’t seem to have reassured anyone.
His mother stood abruptly and went back to the coffee pot. She refilled her cup slowly and stood looking out the kitchen window as if she might never turn around. She was done with the argument, apparently. Isaac came up behind her and whispered something in her ear, and she leaned back against him. Suddenly uncomfortable, Asa retreated to his room.
His things were already packed—he had been packing and unpacking for weeks, carefully choosing which of his possessions he would give precious space to in his hiking backpack, then having to undo the whole thing when he inevitably needed socks. Last night, though, had been the final round. He had stripped it down to the bare essentials: nothing sentimental, nothing that could not be used every day.
He hefted the pack onto his back, testing the weight, and nearly dropped it as he turned at the sound of a knock on the door. Hannah was hanging onto the frame, half in the hallway, her eyes wide and anxious.
“You’re really leaving?” she asked
.
Asa set the backpack down. “Yes,” he said. “It’ll be okay though—we’ll see each other soon. It’s only a few hours away on the rail.”
Hannah frowned. She hesitated in the door for another moment, then darted across the room and sat down on the bed, twisting her braided hair in her fingers. “What’s wrong with Rosewood?” she asked. “Susanna would marry you, Asa, or Leah, or even some of the girls in my class, if you wanted to wait.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought, and Asa laughed.
“Hannah, it’s not about that. I just want to explore a little, see something new.”
“What will you do there?”
“I don’t know yet.” Asa sat beside his sister. “I just want to try something new. You can come visit me, as soon as I have a place to live. I’ll send you a rail pass, okay?”
“Okay,” Hannah said, but she looked unconvinced.
Asa picked up the backpack again. If I’m going, it had better be now, he thought.
He leaned down and kissed Hannah on the cheek, passed through the kitchen and hugged his parents quickly, not giving them time to respond, and hurried out the door, heading for the road.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS NOT UNTIL THE PIERCING WHISTLE OF the tea kettle had reached its highest pitch that Gabriel heard it. He glared at it for a moment, letting the sound go on; maybe the noise could drown out his thoughts. Get it together, he told himself and turned off the stove, letting the sound fade away. He started to pour the water into his cup, stopping when he realized he had forgotten the tea bag. Gabriel closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then set the kettle aside and sat down at the table. He knotted his hands together, dread swelling in the pit of his stomach.
I can’t do this.
He clenched his jaw, staring down at the pale, worn tablecloth. He had never liked it; now, he could not bear to move it. His phone beeped on the counter behind him, and he ignored it.
Joan. Bright, shiny, newly minted stalker with her wide-eyed excitement. Of all the partners to replace—
He shoved his chair back from the table and went to get his phone. Nobody’s replacing anyone.
“You just have to adjust, get reacclimated to your role as an Authority Figure,” the doctor had told him. Gabriel had nodded and said thank you, thinking, Reacclimate? I was raised to this since I was three years old. A month’s leave can’t make me less a stalker. You’d as well make me less a human being.
He looked at the phone. Joan had called twice. He sighed. Have to start sometime. Gabriel turned on the water in the kitchen sink as cold as it would go and splashed some on his face, shocking himself back to a kind of calmness.
He dried his hands and face on a dish towel. As he was replacing it, the phone rang again. He glared at it for a moment, then sighed and answered.
“Gabriel.”
“Gabriel?” a young, female voice repeated.
“Yes.”
“It’s Joan. Your new partner? We met last week?”
“I know who you are,” he said shortly, irritated at her questioning tone. Going into the field, she should have more confidence. “What do you want?”
“It’s almost three. You’re late. You’re supposed to be meeting me at Municipal 7 right now.”
“I know,” he said, then, belatedly, “Sorry. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He looked around the kitchen. There was nothing else left to do, but it seemed strange to leave like this, just walk out of the house without a word to anyone about it. He hesitated at the door; by now it had become a habit, almost, to pause before he touched the knob, to look down before opening the door, not wanting to disturb the now undetectable spot on the floor where she had lain.
Gabriel set his jaw, opened the door, and went out into the too-bright sun.
Joan was waiting for him outside Municipal 7. He saw her across the plaza as he got off the train, standing perfectly still as people streamed in and out of the building. Despite himself, Gabriel smiled.
Her expression was almost completely neutral, neither hard nor inviting. Her posture was straight without being stiff. Her eyes flickered over each person who walked by her, and he knew she was sifting, filing away details or letting the information pass through her mind, making split-second judgement calls about every piece of data. She was dressed in dark, close-fitting pants and a matching shirt. Authority Figures didn’t have uniforms, but there were guidelines for every division, and for stalkers—Contract Enforcers, to use the official term—it was simple: wear anything you like, as long as you can run, jump, hide, and take down hostile threats.
“You look like you stepped out of a textbook,” Gabriel said, voice dry, as he reached her.
She nodded. “See everything, notice everything, forget everything except what matters,” Joan said with a faint smile. “You can’t remember everything you see. Your job is to notice patterns—to notice breaks in the patterns. Raw data collection is for drones.”
“So, you did step out of a textbook.”
“I’m not that new,” Joan said lightly, but there was something steely in her brown eyes.
Gabriel looked her over quickly. They’d met a week before, at Municipal 5, where he had undergone testing for his reentry approval, but he’d scarcely been paying attention. She was not as young as he had thought, he realized now, in the bright light of afternoon. She was just small, and pretty in a delicate way that probably made people like him misjudge her all the time.
She looked Panasian—the word didn’t mean much; at this point no one was quite sure whether any of Panasia was still above water, but people kept descriptions like that—and she had long, thick, dark hair. The last time he saw her, it was loose around her face, but now it was pulled back tightly, adding to her more sophisticated impression.
“What are you looking at?” Joan asked without a challenge in her tone.
Gabriel shrugged and told the truth. “You seemed younger last time.”
“Gee, thanks,” Joan said sarcastically, then grinned. “They told me you were coming back after—I wanted to make it easier for you,” she finished disjointedly.
Gabriel laughed. “You wanted to appear nonthreatening, so you wore your hair down?”
“It’s a basic technique.” She lifted her chin.
“You’re right out of training.”
“Did you even read my file?”
“Yes. You’re right out of training.”
“Everyone starts that way,” Joan said.
She was looking at him thoughtfully, probably trying to read his face—whatever nonsense might be scribbled there. Gabriel headed for the front door without another word. He heard her hurrying behind him but didn’t slow his pace.
So now I’m stuck with her for how long? he thought, and then, Naomi would have liked her.
They entered the building, a large concrete structure saved from ugliness by the enormous windows on every wall. Gabriel signed himself in, which meant stepping into a small box of a room while a robotic voice gave him instructions. Because of his long absence, it was a multistep process, examinations and questions both to confirm his identity and determine his fitness for duty. Thankfully, it was all automated—all he had to do was say “Yes” and “No” to the computer-generated voice while his body was scanned, mapped, and approved for duty.
When he emerged, Joan was waiting again.
“You’re starting to feel like my guardian,” he remarked, and she laughed, though he had not meant it as a joke.
“They were everywhere, weren’t they? Sometimes I thought there were more guardians than kids! I grew up in Sumac Ward Home. How about you?”
“Acacia,” Gabriel said. “We should go. If we catch the train down the block, it’s faster.”
“Oh—it’s a new sector, actually. We can walk,” Joan said awkwardly, and Gabriel shook his head.
“I forgot. Come on.”
He strode out in front of her, feeling the need to prove that he remembered where they were going. H
e had expected other people to wonder about his fitness for duty, but he had not expected to question himself. They were five city blocks from the municipal building when Joan called his name.
“Gabriel! Turn here. And slow down, would you? You’re too tall.”
“Maybe you’re too short.”
He looped back to meet her, but the attempt at friendly banter fell flat. Joan gave him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and his stomach tensed. He knew what that look meant. Joan glanced around; they were beside an alley on a side street, as close to alone as they were likely to get.
“I just want you to know, Gabriel, I know what happened and I am so sorry,” she said in a low voice. Gabriel felt his face hardening, his eyes taking on a flat glare. “If you ever want to talk … I just know these things are hard,” she finished in a rush.
“You don’t know anything.” Gabriel had turned to lead. Joan drew back slightly, then straightened.
“So, tell me,” she said.
Something inside him broke open. Gabriel grabbed Joan’s upper arm and pulled her into the alley, and she gasped but didn’t pull away. He let go and turned away, talking to a blank wall.
“Naomi was my partner for six years,” he said.
“I met her one time,” Joan started, and he ignored her.
“I fell in love with her. You’re not supposed to, technically, but it’s one of those rules that no one worries too much about. And it didn’t matter. She had a boyfriend, a guy named Timothy. She was happy. I was just her partner. Sometimes it was great—we’d make an arrest or prevent a crime and she’d smile at me, and it was like we’d just saved the world together.
“It made me a better stalker, and not just because I wanted to impress her. When she was there, I was just better. The best version of myself that had always seemed just out of reach.” He forced a hollow laugh. “Sometimes, of course, it was a little like going around all day with a pulled muscle, where no matter what you do, it just hurts more. But eventually I got lucky—she loved me too. Happy ending.”
“Okay,” Joan said cautiously.
“She left her boyfriend and moved in with me. For almost three months it was … perfect. I know that sounds like I’m remembering it with some kind of nostalgia, but it was—it was perfect. No one had ever loved me before. That sounds maudlin, but I don’t mean it to be. I hadn’t really expected love or wanted it. I didn’t know what I was missing.”