by Julian North
Havelock led us up a creaking spiral staircase with a wooden railing worn as smooth as glass.
“Here we are,” he announced as he stepped through a doorway just off the second-floor landing.
Entering Havelock’s study was like stepping through a portal into a different world. Three massive floor-to-ceiling panels, each four feet across, dominated one side of the rectangular space. The trio of images depicted a single scene: a snapshot of an undulating verdant hillside, with half an inch separating each panel for aesthetic effect. Men and women with brightly hued bandanas around their heads, woven baskets on their backs, and richly colored skin worked amid the dense greenery, the colors so vibrant that the pictures transported me to that place. A sprawling double-flue fireplace topped by a white marble mantle took up much of the opposite wall. The narrowest section of the rectangular room had two great arching windows that overlooked the street below. In the center of the study was a matching pair of deep couches in chocolate leather. Between them sat a long, silver-legged table with a surface screen. Alissa stood next to one of the windows, still wearing her Tuck uniform, her forehead scrunched with lines of worry. Lara lounged on one of the couches, idly gazing at her viser.
“Please, sit,” Havelock offered. “Would you like some tea?”
I stepped tentatively into the room, this nest of nameless disquiet. Nythan bounded onto the couch opposite Lara, easing back with his feet up, as if this was his living room.
“I’ll stand for now,” I said. “Alissa, are you all right?”
She looked at me, her eyelids heavy. She nodded lamely. “Yes, I’m fine. Thanks to you and Nythan.”
“You all acted with determination, intelligence and compassion for each other,” Havelock declared, looking in turn at Nythan, Lara, and me. “You are to be commended for your efforts.”
“But can you tell me what happened? Alissa, why did you do it?” I asked.
Her face sank towards her feet, before rising again to look at me. “I don’t remember it. I believe what Nythan has told me—he even showed me the video you stole from Drake. But I can’t believe that was me. I was on the administration floor, yes. I went there to ask Mr. Lynder a question. He wasn’t in his office, so I left.”
I turned towards Havelock, the man who had brought me to this school. The man who could explain all of this. “How can that be?”
“Are you sure about not wanting any tea?” he asked.
My nostrils flared. “No.”
“Ah, well, I’m going to brew a pot. Anyone else?”
Nythan raised his hand in the affirmative. My jaw clenched tighter.
Havelock strolled to a bookshelf in the corner of the room, about three feet from where I was standing. A wave of his hand revealed a sliding panel, behind which was a water dispenser, a blue-and-white porcelain teapot, several cups, and a variety of jars containing dried leaves.
“Please excuse me, as I tell a little personal history while this steeps,” Havelock began, his voice rumbling. “You noticed the pictures on my wall, no doubt. Can you take a guess as to where they are from, Daniela?”
The images were beautiful, but they weren’t why I was here. “Bronx City.”
“Ah, you are impatient. You think I am wasting your time. I am not. I assure you there is relevance. Perhaps you might take one more look.”
I looked. “Rwanda.”
“Yes, of course. It is of my homeland. More precisely, it’s the farm my parents once owned, and where I was born. They sold it to raise money to pay our citizenship fee and come to this country, before any of you were born. A beautiful country, my old home…But do you know what it was like several decades ago?”
“No.” I didn’t bother to conceal my impatience.
“It was knee deep in blood, as one ethnic group wiped out another. They had fought before, but this time it was to create a final solution. My mother’s people killed my father’s. Two years of slaughter and ethnic cleansing. Seven million people dead—not that the rest of the world noticed. When it was over, a new Rwanda rose from the fields of slaughter. A country with the veneer of peace upon it, working towards a single purpose. A land that has become the envy of Africa—the most prosperous nation on the continent.” Havelock held up a long, crooked finger. “But all of it was built on genocide. Don’t forget that. When we’re speaking this evening, do not doubt the horrors mankind is capable of committing, or the indifference of your neighbors to such crimes.”
The only sounds that followed were those of the headmaster pouring steaming tea from the pot into cups. He placed one on the table in front of Nythan, then seated himself beside Lara, the other cup held delicately between his two hands.
“Daniela, I understand that you and Alissa have come to know each other well?”
“Yes.” Except for her secrets.
“Knowing her as you do, as we all do, can you think of any reason why she would do something so dishonest as to steal a teacher’s examination? Or be so reckless as to allow Drake Pillis-Smith to record her doing so?”
“No.”
“Then what can explain what happened today?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out—among other things. Start telling me.”
“I shall give you what you want.” He placed the untouched cup of tea in front of him. “You are an unintended witness to an audacious endeavor, a secret conspiracy to do what was nearly unimaginable. For years, men labored in secret to bring it about. Except that the project failed. Billions of dollars, years of toil—and it didn’t work. Or so its progenitors think. But they are wrong. The seemingly impossible has come to fruition. But, until very recently, only a handful of people in this world knew.”
“I’m not Nythan. I need to have things explained to me. What the hell is the secret you’re keeping from me?”
Havelock’s stared at me like a patient teacher. “You already know. You saw it yourself: A highly intelligent girl, whom you know well, took an action that she never otherwise would have contemplated. And she did it merely because someone instructed her to do so.”
“So Drake is the key to some secret conspiracy to…What?…Help people cheat at Tuck?”
Lara barked her derision, while Nythan let loose a simultaneous snort of similar sentiment. They didn’t improve my mood.
“Mr. Pillis-Smith’s actions are an indication that time is running short, and a confirmation of our suspicions,” Havelock told me. “He is but a pawn in this game, yet he unintentionally revealed a truth to you that we would otherwise have had a hard time convincing you of—the power of trilling.”
“The power of what?”
“Trilling, that’s what we call it, but the name does not quite capture the terrible genius of the trait. In nature, many animals trill—that is, make rapid, repetitive noises that aren’t speech. The sounds reverberate at different frequencies, which affect the range of the sound, among other things. It can be a signal, a warning, a beacon. But what the designers of the human trill attempted was far more profound. They wanted a sound that would result in communication at the most primal level, one not processed by our brain’s auditory cortex, as regular speech is. They wanted to create a form of communication that acts as a direct line to the human mind, unfiltered and unedited by the regions of the frontal lobe that would normally control our actions. When this trilling is combined with the human trait of extreme charisma—the ability to inspire—the overall effect is like an override command that can make people do whatever the triller chooses.”
I stood in silence, blinking, breathing, but not much else. I thought about walking out the way I came in. I mulled jumping onto the couch and attempting to put the bottom of my foot to Havelock’s throat, or bloodying Nythan’s white teeth. I didn’t consider accepting what I had heard as the truth.
“I’ve seen that face before, Daniela,” Alissa said, her voice steadier than it had been a few minutes ago. “It’s a hard thing to accept. But you saw what trilling can do. As much as I hate Drak
e, we owe him a debt for his spiteful recklessness. You’re too stubborn for words alone to have convinced you.”
Nythan brought himself to the edge of the sofa, assuming a rare look of gravity. “It’s not such a great leap from what we take as normal, is it? The highborn have been genetically manipulated to be physically and mentally superior to the majority of conventionally conceived people—us pures, or nopes if you prefer; I’m sure that seemed fanciful when it started as a rich man’s fad, decades ago. The scientists describe the procedure of birthing a highborn as ‘optimization to eliminate undesirable traits or defects,’ but it’s simply genetic manipulation to bring out the best of the parents’ DNA. Is it so great a leap to begin adding traits to the mix?”
“That’s illegal,” I insisted, knowing I sounded naive. Since when had the law mattered to the rich? To the highborn?
“Ah, yes, the International Treaty on the Sanctity of Human Life,” Havelock said. “It outlaws research or procedures that would result in the introduction of non-indigenous genetic material or traits to the human genome. Our country is a founding signatory to the Treaty. President Ryan-Hayes himself quotes it with approval. A nice piece of work, but one totally unpersuasive to the people of whom we speak.”
“Of course, the Humanity Tribunal declared that chipped slave zombies are perfectly fine, because that’s not an upgrade,” Nythan interjected.
“But they developed this…trilling anyway…The highborn, I assume,” I said. “That’s who did it, right?”
“At least one company tried it,” Havelock confirmed. “But it’s subtler than that. You see, we refer to the genetically manipulated as ‘highborn,’ as if they are the same. But there are thousands of birthing clinics offering ‘corrective gene therapy’ for mothers; what these places are really selling is a branded product, like toothpaste or detergent.”
“You mean there are different brands of highborn?” I asked. The notion would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so plausible. Of course, making children was just another business for the corps.
Havelock took a sip of his tea. “Genetic birthing clinics offer one or another of five strands of highly specialized bacterial DNA that, when introduced to an unfertilized human egg or a newly conceived child, result in a reordering of the DNA. The helix is sliced, diced, reordered, and manipulated to get the best possible result—as measured by the AT scale, of course. The proprietary bacterial DNA colonies, known as controlColonies, took decades and countless amounts of research to develop. They are organic things, closely guarded, and are constantly being improved. Every treatment utilized in a birthing clinic was grown from one of those controlColonies. Each company claims their product produces the best offspring, of course. Rose-Hart and Tyrell Ventures are the industry leaders.”
“And one company decided to do even better, I suppose.” I imagined it all too easily. “Let’s not just make people with a high AT. Let’s make them all generals, each one a Caesar, a Katniss, a Darrow.”
Havelock dipped his head in acknowledgment, looking at me expectantly. I realized they were all looking at me that way.
“And what is that company?” I had already guessed, of course.
“Rose-Hart Industries.”
It hurt somewhere inside me, hearing it. It shouldn’t have, but it did. “But why does the world need a million generals?”
The hint of a smile crept onto Havelock’s lips. I was thinking the way he wanted me to.
Don't trust these people.
“Indeed, why?” Havelock stood, walking over to the window. Drops of rain-water clung to the exterior of the glass. He glanced to the street before turning back to me. “First, I should say, that although our information is not perfect, we speculate that not every highborn would have been given access to that strain of the controlColonies—cycle DN10-191. It wasn’t intended as a money-making product. Although I’m sure families would’ve laid down millions and billions to have it for their children. No, it was developed as a social tool, not an economic one.”
I shivered as the words sank in.
“You are from Bronx City, Daniela. You already know what it would’ve been used for, don’t you?”
“To control us,” I whispered. “To control the people with lower AT classifications. To control those with less, who dared to want more.” To control people like Mateo.
The horror of it gripped me. My skin prickled; my heart pumped cold blood. I imagined the announcement, a voice from a drone, or on the net, telling us how wonderful life was. To be calm. To live in peace. To not pee in the alley, or to scrub behind our ears. Or to eat less. To buy only this brand of soap. Worse than being a chipped slave—maybe.
“Prosperity through order,” Havelock told me, sounding pleased. “Luckily for all of us, doing this thing—this audacious, horrible thing—is not easy. As they do with all controlColony changes before general use, the new strand was tested in controlled trials. We don’t know how many subjects, but we believe it was less than one hundred over a three-year period. In all cases, the desired trait failed to materialize, and there was no trace of its genetic marker in any of the samples taken from the test subjects. Rose-Hart’s very expensive gene appeared to have vanished. Eventually, they tired of pouring money into what they thought was a black hole. Our belief is that Rose-Hart abandoned research into trilling several years ago.”
“But Drake can trill,” I said.
“Welcome to the Planet of the Apes,” Nythan declared.
I didn’t get the reference, but I got the sentiment.
“Nythan, why piss off a guy who can screw with your mind?” I asked.
Havelock turned sharply towards Nythan. It was the first time I’d seen true emotion in his dark eyes. It reassured me: Havelock didn’t know everything. He could be surprised.
“Who’d have thunk it?” Nythan admitted. “We had no idea.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Havelock sighed. “Everyone in the world believed DN10-191 was a failure. Except for the one person who developed the ability to trill.”
“Kris Foster-Rose-Hart,” I reasoned.
Havelock clapped his hands together in a single gesture of compliment. “You continue to exceed even my expectations. How did you know?”
I willed myself not to bite into my lip as my mind raced.
Don’t trust these people.
They didn’t know about my conversation with Mateo. They didn’t know a mysterious girl fitting her description had walked into a safe house and using only words, commandeered both men and equipment to try to kill Landrew Foster-Rose-Hart. Everyone in this room had secrets. It was best to keep some of my own.
“It had to be a student here—that’s how you know about it. Her dad’s company developed the technology. And when I first started here, the way she handled Drake, and Mona Lisa Reves-Wyatt was…remarkable. Plus, she has an unnatural charisma. Even on me, she had an effect. People here near worship her, even utter jack-A’s like Drake.”
“Correct on all accounts,” Havelock told me. “I noticed it about four years ago. I keep close tabs on all my students, of course, but Kris’s transformation was remarkable. She went from a rich girl with a clique to…something else. An object of admiration, even among the faculty. She’s something special. But it wasn’t until she tried to use a trill on me that I knew for sure.”
“On you?”
Havelock chuckled with memory, but not warmth. “She tried to sway the vote of the honor council to help a few cheaters. Sons of allocators.”
“I mentioned them to you on your first day,” Alissa added.
“But it didn’t work?” I asked.
“Oh it did, after a fashion. I voted to acquit the kids, just as she wanted. But I was outvoted by the rest of the council. Kris thought I had more power than I did. It was an out-of-character action for me, that decision. They were guilty. I based my choice, or so I thought, on the good work their families had done, and would do, for the school. Another uncharacte
ristic position for me. Over the weeks that followed, my vote continued to nag at me. Then months later, quite out of the nowhere, I remembered a conversation in my office just a day before the honor council hearing that I had previously forgotten. A meeting with Kris Foster-Rose-Hart, where she had made that exact argument to me. I thought it strange that I should have forgotten that meeting. I went on to learn the truth, which I now share with you. After years of covertly observing her, we still don’t fully understand how trilling works. We know some people are more resistant than others, and it doesn’t work on highborn at all. Kris has become much more cautious over the years—she never uses her power in school anymore. What you and others experience around her is a residue of her charisma and the trilling trait, but not the full power—it’s something special Kris has, an aura of charm. Something to do with her unique combination of genes. We don’t know exactly. But that’s all she shows us. Until today with Drake, we weren’t certain she’d revealed her abilities to any other person, even her father.”
“Can Alexander trill?” I asked, my voice unsteady.
From the corner of my eye, I saw an uneasy look pass between Alissa and Lara.
“We don’t think so, but we cannot be certain,” Havelock told me. “It may be he is just cautious. We have limited access to their activities beyond school. That family values their privacy.”
I studied Havelock’s face, then the faces of Nythan, Alissa, and Lara. Havelock showed me nothing—a master poker player. Alissa was hopeful, Nythan amused, and Lara, skeptical of me, as always. But none of them displayed any doubt about the veracity of this account. There was no surprise in the room, except my own. This was a tale they knew well, and had lived with for long enough for it to be part of them. Yet my spider-sense nagged at me. A low throb, not of immediate peril, but of budding danger.
