The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  She looked at where her cigarettes had just been and felt sorry for herself. What other staff member suffered such indignities? Who else would put up with this kind of crap? Who would want to?

  “What do you want me to say? There’s no precedent for anything we do here,” Rebecca said quietly, reigning herself in. “We’ve never had a catalyst like you before, Alex. The girl you are dating is a Changeling, about whom we know next to nothing. Your relationship is interspecies, which is the very definition of new ground. I’ve been over the records for the entire history of the Academy – and it’s never happened before. No student has ever had a romantic relationship with a nonhuman. But, hey, if you are tired of being a pioneer, it’s as easy as breaking her heart...”

  Alex made a face like she hurt him. Maybe he had a right to it.

  “That’s not fair. You’re supposed to help.”

  “And you are supposed to obey the rules,” Rebecca snapped. “Hasn’t slowed you down much. You think obligations only matter for other people?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You wanna be reckless, don’t come whining to me over the consequences, that’s what. We can’t keep you safe if you won’t participate in the process. This is the second time you and Eerie have gone out of bounds. After what happened the first time, I’m stunned that you would do it again.”

  “This isn’t the same!” Alex was yelling, getting in her face. “We didn’t leave campus. And don’t act like this is all my fault – I didn’t ask to come here, and I didn’t ask to be whatever it is you people made me.”

  “You think everyone in life is a volunteer?”

  “No,” Alex said, shaking his head sadly, performing one of those sudden, infuriating emotional swerves that were a teenager’s stock in trade. “We all have a part to play. I understand that. I went out for Audits by my own free will. I’d just like to know what it is that’s going on.”

  Rebecca sighed, spared a glance at her cigarettes, then sat down on the corner of her desk.

  “I’ll tell you whatever I can,” she said, resignedly. “But you won’t like what you hear. I don’t have all the answers, Alex.”

  He rolled his eyes and started for the door.

  “Not this bullshit again…”

  It was her temper that did it. Her promise broke like glass. She spoke with Authority, her head burning with the fury of the protocol.

  “Listen to me, you little bastard,” she said, rooting him in place; not quite fear, not quite awe, but damn sure he was taking her seriously. “The problem is the same, with Eerie, with everything in your life. You act like you can just disappear as soon as things get difficult. As if there wouldn’t be any consequences. As if no one would be hurt and no one cares about you. Tell me, is that the way you really feel?”

  Alex hung his head.

  “No,” he muttered, “it’s just...”

  “Even if we gave you a bus ticket and a farewell party, what makes you think our enemies would let you walk away? Do you remember the Weir who captured you, back in San Francisco?”

  Alex nodded miserably.

  “Sometimes they don’t kill Operators for days,” she said, hating herself for saying it – wishing she didn’t have to say it. “And sometimes, Alex, sometimes we find very unlucky ones that have been held for years. We put them to sleep, painlessly, because it’s the only mercy we can offer them. And that’s the best-case scenario. Worse, you fall into the Anathema’s hands. And God only knows what they would make of you. And you know what? It isn’t just you, kid. It’s every single one of us. Do you understand?”

  She let him feel a little bit of what it was like. A quick sequence of images, like the pitter-patter of rain on a thin roof – walking deeper into a cul-de-sac off Sepulveda in the still early morning, aware of the two men following her but not yet panicking; her car failing to start one morning outside school and the bomb she discovered wired to the engine just as neatly as if it had come stock; the kindly old nurse in the hospital in Chicago who injected her with a veterinary tranquilizer in an attempt to poison her, miscalculated a fatal dose and abandoned her to hallucinate for thirty-six agonizing hours. She empathized with his fear, his distrust, and shared a small part of her own. The enormity, she knew, would paralyze him.

  “We only have each other, Alex, the time that we carve out, and the space that we make for ourselves. We hold on to that by sacrificing little pieces of ourselves. You can continue pretending you’re alone, if you want. Eerie won’t wake you if you don’t want to wake up for her. One day, though, you will lose something, and by that absence you will come to understand everything you took for granted. Your life will take on the shape of things that have departed.” Rebecca wasn’t sure whether she was talking to Alex, or if she was reminding herself. “That won’t necessarily make you bitter. You will be haunted, though, by nostalgia for things you never experienced, time that you let pass by, people you let slip away because you thought they would always be there. You can lose things because they were taken from you, or from inaction, or despite your best efforts. It’s all your choice. Some people might think worse of you, but everyone will understand.”

  “Rebecca…”

  “Do you know, Alex,” she asked gently, leading him back to the couch and sitting down beside him, “how it is I sleep at night? Why I’m not afraid all the time?”

  He leaned his head on her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around him as if he were a much smaller child.

  “Every night,” she said quietly, holding him. “Every night, I tell myself, ‘The Director knows what he is doing.’”

  And you had better, Gaul, you old bastard, she added mentally, or I will never forgive you for what you have made me make these children believe.

  ***

  She took the seat across the wrought-iron table, set her bag down by the metal chair legs. She refused the offer of a menu from an overly solicitous and starry-eyed teenage waiter, ordering from memory instead.

  Made sense. She had chosen the place, after all.

  They didn’t say anything. It wasn’t hot, but the sun was pervasive, brightness trickling around his sunglasses, saturating the old marble and acid-etched limestone of the plaza. In the spring, the marketplace smelled like freshly cut wild greens, seafood, bread fried in olive oil.

  They had been to Greece once before, under circumstances so different that they could have belonged to a different lifetime, or to different people. In his memory, they were carefree, though it couldn’t have actually been like that. She was never young, after all, and even then there was enough blood between them to stain the white stone road.

  The waiter brought her coffee in a tiny cup and the flakey pastry that she liked, the kind with white goat cheese folded in layers of golden Phyllo, which she covered in honey and ate hot. She took a bite, flashing perfect white teeth, then mopped excess honey from lips painted burgundy to offset black hair, sipped the bitter coffee from the porcelain cup, and then set it gently back down in the matching saucer. He admired the economy of her movements, the subtle threat of her awareness that never fully receded.

  “You’re quiet today.”

  He saw no need for a response. Apparently, she didn’t expect one. She watched the people in the plaza doing their early-afternoon shopping, circling the roundabout on polished vintage scooters that would have brought big money in New York or San Francisco. Kids played in the fountain, while slightly older children flirted with each other and tried on the pretensions of an adulthood they had not yet reached. Her eyes fell on him only occasionally, then flitted away, but he could feel the heat behind them, and a response stirring within himself, and treasured a small hope that they might find some small time for themselves, between the ugly realities of business.

  As if reading his mind, she put on the smile she wore as naturally as a Tokyo businessman wore a conservative grey suit. All business. He knew what she looked like when she was happy, and when she was, she did not wear this s
mile.

  “They’ve started killing each other, you know?”

  “Who?”

  He asked only because he knew that she wanted to tell him.

  “Those Thule nutjobs. There’s no proof, obviously, but rumor is the Linfield Cartel got scrubbed out entirely, along with a couple other Hegemony cartels. The Black Sun’s in crisis mode, too, but nobody’s talking. Whatever happened, they are practicing total information sequester, so it must have been bad.”

  “History repeats itself,” he offered, lifting his empty coffee cup to get a refill from their waiter. He didn’t think the kid much cared for having a black man in his café, but it was too nice of a day to let that bother him. “No big surprise.”

  “The surprise is that Gaul brought them back at all. Just to win a vote in the Committee. Hope he thinks it’s worth Hell breaking loose.”

  “He must’ve seen it coming.”

  “I suppose. I’ll find out tomorrow. Got a meeting, and he isn’t gonna like it.”

  “Yes. I heard about that. I’d imagine it’s going to be fun for all involved.”

  They both paused while the waiter replaced their empty cups with fresh ones. Michael sipped the bitter, thick coffee, while Alice stirred brown sugar crystals into hers.

  “How’s things in the old country?”

  “Uneasy. Nothing I can put my finger on, but the cartels all seem on edge. What about you? I haven’t seen you for more than a week, even before I was deployed to calm the natives. What have you been up to, Miss Chief Auditor?”

  “The usual. Paperwork. Chasing my own tail, probably. You know an investigation is fucked when the chief investigator starts reading her own diary for clues.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said, weirdly anxious, for reasons he didn’t care to think about. “Rebecca told me about your new remit. I heard that the Board meeting was more than a little tense, and not just because of all the new faces.”

  “Yeah,” Alice agreed. “You oughta be glad they kicked us out. I sure won’t be going back unless I’m required. It’s not really Gaul’s clubhouse anymore.”

  He didn’t really know how to feel about that. The Committee-at-Large had voted to purge the Board immediately after the war powers vote, largely out of displaced anger that could not be aimed at the Director personally. All of the current seat holders were dismissed, and then promptly replaced with an even split of Hegemony and Black Sun stalwarts, in the promptest voting he had ever witnessed from the Committee. To a degree, he was sympathetically with their ideals – the body had served to do little more than rubber-stamp Gaul’s motions in recent years, and was admittedly packed with members who were either disinterested or personally loyal to the Director – but he suspected that the new arrangement would prove to be ineffectual and partisan. He wanted oversight of the Director and his actions, but he didn’t trust the Committee to provide it.

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “It’s a loud thing, that’s for sure,” Alice said, wincing at the memory. “Beyond that, I couldn’t say. I always hated that political nonsense.”

  He nodded. The role had always fit her poorly.

  “Anyway. Glad to have my marching orders and be done with it.”

  “Rebecca told me that the scope of this particular Audit has expanded considerably. I’m told that you aren’t just looking into externals anymore.”

  “Mikey…”

  “Specifically, I heard that you are looking into Gaul’s actions, before and after the attack on Central, and the general fitness of this Administration.”

  Alice’s brow creased with frustration.

  “Yeah, look, I know, that you and him are tight, and I respect that. But you have to understand, baby, it’s my responsibility to…”

  “Hush,” Michael said. “Let me finish, please. I need you to understand that this calls some things into question for me.”

  Alice winced and shook her head. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but he knew that they had narrowed, the way they always did in the old days, when they had their arguments about things that must have been trivial, because he couldn’t even remember the topics. Time had smoothed out all those rough edges.

  “Oh, come on,” she protested. “Not this again…”

  “One of the things it calls into question,” Michael plowed on, putting his hand over hers, “is my lack of faith in you, in your character, in who you are and who you’ve become. Hell, maybe this is who you always were and I just didn’t see it. Alice, I’m impressed. I couldn’t be more impressed.”

  She smiled – not the normal, toothy affair, but something quieter, maybe more honest, and then she turned so that her hair fell across her face.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t believe in unchecked authority. It bothers me, how successful these attacks were. I’m equally troubled by the power Gaul has handed himself over the years. Hell, I’m troubled by all sorts of things,” Michael said, laughing halfheartedly, shaking out his dreadlocks. “Even if Gaul’s my friend, that doesn’t change the need for accountability. Everyone is more honest when someone’s watching, no exceptions. I believe in the rule of law. I believe that the Founder put the system of checks and balances we use in Central in place for a reason. And I don’t think anyone other than you is capable of standing up to Gaul.”

  “That’s all politics,” Alice said, shaking her head. “Don’t tell me this is about principle.”

  “You’re right. It’s more than that. And it isn’t just about you. I think that working with the kids changed both of us for the better. Could just be that enough time passed for me to grow up a little. Or, maybe it means I’ve fallen in love you.”

  He felt her hand stiffen beneath his own, and her mouth hung slightly open.

  “What?”

  “Maybe I never stopped loving you,” Michael said, shrugging. “I forget.”

  “Don’t you start forgetting, too,” Alice said sternly. “You do remember who you’re talking to, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The Chief Auditor herself.”

  “That’s right,” Alice said, brushing her hair back. “By regulation, every Operator in Central is compelled to aid an Auditor in commission of audit, personal and professional considerations be damned. Those are the rules that you have such profound respect for, are they not?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Michael confirmed, touching her knee beneath the table.

  “You have a room already?”

  “Right across the street. Nice little hotel, top story.”

  “Okay. We have a few hours before we need to get moving. Take me to bed already,” Alice commanded, “since you’re so fond of following orders.”

  ***

  Gerald Windsor was nearly finished disassembling the projector and packing his laptop for the class trip to the Far Shores when he heard the door to the classroom open and then quietly shut. He peered into the darkened auditorium, only able to see what the windows illuminated.

  “Hello?” He called out to the figure at the door. “Can I help you?”

  “I certainly hope so, Mr. Windsor.”

  Katya descended the steps in a patterned dress and sandals, looking serious.

  “Oh, Miss Zharova,” Windsor said, finishing packing up his projector. “I’m surprised you are still on campus. I thought that you might use the day off as an opportunity to visit home, assuming the Black Sun didn’t have other work for you. I do hope that the rumors of recent ugliness between the cartels have not affected you?”

  “Just the usual nonsense. Nothing to do with me, Mr. Windsor.”

  “Then what brings you to class during your day off?”

  “No rest for the wicked,” Katya said, smiling. “I had work that kept me around the Academy today.”

  “I see. Well, whatever the case, I am happy to be of assistance. What can I help you with, Miss Zharova?”

  “You could start,” she suggested, walking slowly around the perimet
er of the stage, “by calling me Katya.”

  Mr. Windsor hesitated momentarily, then gave her a hesitant smile.

  “I suppose. Given that class isn’t currently in session. What is the issue, Katya?”

  “I can’t sleep at night, Mr. Windsor. I can’t sit still. I try not to think about it. But my mind keeps going in circles. It really is terribly distracting.”

  Gerald stopped packing to glance apprehensively at the girl running her hand across the backs of the first row of chairs.

  “Katya,” he asked nervously, “is something bothering you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she responded, with a broad smile. “Very much so.”

  “Ah. Something emotional, perhaps? Shall I call Rebecca? I’m certain she would make herself available, should one of our students require it.”

  “She can’t help me,” Katya said, stopping directly in front of Windsor. “Only you can, Mr. Windsor.”

  He cocked his head to side.

  “This is hardly my area of expertise, but if you insist...very well. What seems to be troubling you?”

  “You, Mr. Windsor.” Katya took firm hold of his necktie. “You are troubling me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Windsor said, his jaw hanging open in dismay, “but there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding…”

  “Not in the slightest,” Katya giggled. “I know just what I want. I always do. Tell me, Mr. Windsor – have you read my file? Do you know what I am?”

  “I know what you choose to do, Katya,” he said gently, stepping back as far as the room would allow, till his back was touching the whiteboard. “You work as an assassin. That, however, is not who you are. It is a choice. There is a world of alternative possibilities for a bright and talented young lady like yourself, should you decide otherwise.”

  She followed him, step for step, staying close, but not quite making contact.

  “I’ve really enjoyed your class, Mr. Windsor. I always wanted to go to the Academy, not to that awful Black Sun assassin’s training camp. Homeroom has been a lot of fun. Now, though, I have to spend half my week at the Far Shores, and at most, I get two days worth of class with you. As soon as they can think up an excuse, I’m off to the Audits department, and it breaks my heart, knowing that I won’t be in your class next year. You see, there’s something that I need, before I go…”