Little Brother

by Cory Doctorow

  No, that’s bull. I knew exactly what I was doing. I kissed her back.

  Then I stopped and pulled away, nearly shoved her away. “Van,” I gasped.

  “Oops,” she said.

  “Van,” I said again.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I—”

  Something occurred to me just then, something I guess I should have seen a long, long time before.

  “You like me, don’t you?”

  She nodded miserably. “For years,” she said.

  Oh, God. Darryl, all these years, so in love with her, and the whole time she was looking at me, secretly wanting me. And then I ended up with Ange. Ange said that she’d always fought with Van. And I was running around, getting into so much trouble.

  “Van,” I said. “Van, I’m so sorry.”

  “Forget it,” she said, looking away. “I know it can’t be. I just wanted to do that once, just in case I never—” She bit down on the words.

  “Van, I need you to do something for me. Something important. I need you to meet with the journalist from the Bay Guardian, Barbara Stratford, the one who wrote the article. I need you to give her something.” I explained about Masha’s phone, told her about the video that Masha had sent me.

  “What good will this do, Marcus? What’s the point?”

  “Van, you were right, at least partly. We can’t fix the world by putting other people at risk. I need to solve the problem by telling what I know. I should have done that from the start. Should have walked straight out of their custody and to Darryl’s father’s house and told him what I knew. Now, though, I have evidence. This stuff—it could change the world. This is my last hope. The only hope for getting Darryl out, for getting a life that I don’t spend underground, hiding from the cops. And you’re the only person I can trust to do this.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Look at how well you handled getting here. You’re a pro. You’re the best at this of any of us. You’re the only one I can trust. That’s why you.”

  “Why not your friend Ange?” She said the name without any inflection at all, like it was a block of cement.

  I looked down. “I thought you knew. They arrested her. She’s in Gitmo—on Treasure Island. She’s been there for days now.” I had been trying not to think about this, not to think about what might be happening to her. Now I couldn’t stop myself and I started to sob. I felt a pain in my stomach, like I’d been kicked, and I pushed my hands into my middle to hold myself in. I folded there, and the next thing I knew, I was on my side in the rubble under the freeway, holding myself and crying.

  Van knelt down by my side. “Give me the phone,” she said, her voice an angry hiss. I fished it out of my pocket and passed it to her.

  Embarrassed, I stopped crying and sat up. I knew that snot was running down my face. Van was giving me a look of pure revulsion. “You need to keep it from going to sleep,” I said. “I have a charger here.” I rummaged in my pack. I hadn’t slept all the way through the night since I acquired it. I set the phone’s alarm to go off every ninety minutes and wake me up so that I could keep it from going to sleep. “Don’t fold it shut, either.”

  “And the video?”

  “That’s harder,” I said. “I emailed a copy to myself, but I can’t get onto the Xnet anymore.” In a pinch, I could have gone back to Nate and Liam and used their Xbox again, but I didn’t want to risk it. “Look, I’m going to give you my login and password for the Pirate Party’s mail server. You’ll have to use TOR to access it—Homeland Security is bound to be scanning for people logging into p-party mail.”

  “Your login and password,” she said, looking a little surprised.

  “I trust you, Van. I know I can trust you.”

  She shook her head. “You never give out your passwords, Marcus.”

  “I don’t think it matters anymore. Either you succeed or I—or it’s the end of Marcus Yallow. Maybe I’ll get a new identity, but I don’t think so. I think they’ll catch me. I guess I’ve known all along that they’d catch me, some day.”

  She looked at me, furious now. “What a waste. What was it all for, anyway?”

  Of all the things she could have said, nothing could have hurt me more. It was like another kick in the stomach. What a waste, all of it, futile. Darryl and Ange, gone. I might never see my family again. And still, Homeland Security had my city and my country caught in a massive, irrational shrieking freak-out where anything could be done in the name of stopping terrorism.

  Van looked like she was waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say to that. She left me there.

  Zeb had a pizza for me when I got back “home”—to the tent under a freeway overpass in the Mission that he’d staked out for the night. He had a pup tent, military surplus, stenciled with SAN FRANCISCO LOCAL HOMELESS COORDINATING BOARD.

  The pizza was a Domino’s, cold and clabbered, but delicious for all that. “You like pineapple on your pizza?”

  Zeb smiled condescendingly at me. “Freegans can’t be choosy,” he said.

  “Freegans?”

  “Like vegans, but we only eat free food.”

  “Free food?”

  He grinned again. “You know—free food. From the free food store?”

  “You stole this?”

  “No, dummy. It’s from the other store. The little one out behind the store? Made of blue steel? Kind of funky smelling?”

  “You got this out of the garbage?”

  He flung his head back and cackled. “Yes indeedy. You should see your face. Dude, it’s okay. It’s not like it was rotten. It was fresh—just a screwed-up order. They threw it out in the box. They sprinkle rat poison over everything at closing time, but if you get there quick, you’re okay. You should see what grocery stores throw out! Wait until breakfast. I’m going to make you a fruit salad you won’t believe. As soon as one strawberry in the box goes a little green and fuzzy, the whole thing is out—”

  I tuned him out. The pizza was fine. It wasn’t as if sitting in the Dumpster would infect it or something. If it was gross, that was only because it came from Domino’s—the worst pizza in town. I’d never liked their food, and I’d given it up altogether when I found out that they bankrolled a bunch of ultra-crazy politicians who thought that global warming and evolution were satanic plots.

  It was hard to shake the feeling of grossness, though.

  But there was another way to look at it. Zeb had showed me a secret, something I hadn’t anticipated: there was a whole hidden world out there, a way of getting by without participating in the system.

  “Freegans, huh?”

  “Yogurt, too,” he said, nodding vigorously. “For the fruit salad. They throw it out the day after the best-before date, but it’s not as if it goes green at midnight. It’s yogurt, I mean, it’s basically just rotten milk to begin with.”

  I swallowed. The pizza tasted funny. Rat poison. Spoiled yogurt. Furry strawberries. This would take some getting used to.

  I ate another bite. Actually, Domino’s pizza sucked a little less when you got it for free.

  Liam’s sleeping bag was warm and welcoming after a long, emotionally exhausting day. Van would have made contact with Barbara by now. She’d have the video and the picture. I’d call her in the morning and find out what she thought I should do next. I’d have to come in once she published, to back it all up.

  I thought about that as I closed my eyes, thought about what it would be like to turn myself in, the cameras all rolling, following the infamous M1k3y into one of those big, columnated buildings in Civic Center.

  The sound of the cars screaming by overhead turned into a kind of ocean sound as I drifted away. There were other tents nearby, homeless people. I’d met a few of them that afternoon, before it got dark and we all retreated to huddle near our own tents. They were all older than me, rough looking and gruff. None of them looked crazy or violent, though. Just like people who’d had bad luck, or made bad decisions, or both.
/>   I must have fallen asleep, because I don’t remember anything else until a bright light was shined into my face, so bright it was blinding.

  “That’s him,” said a voice behind the light.

  “Bag him,” said another voice, one I’d heard before, one I’d heard over and over again in my dreams, lecturing to me, demanding my passwords. severe haircut woman.

  The bag went over my head quickly and was cinched so tight at the throat that I choked and threw up my freegan pizza. As I spasmed and choked, hard hands bound my wrists, then my ankles. I was rolled onto a stretcher and hoisted, then carried into a vehicle, up a couple of clanging metal steps. They dropped me into a padded floor. There was no sound at all in the back of the vehicle once they closed the doors. The padding deadened everything except my own choking.

  “Well, hello again,” she said. I felt the van rock as she crawled in with me. I was still choking, trying to gasp in a breath. Vomit filled my mouth and trickled down my windpipe.

  “We won’t let you die,” she said. “If you stop breathing, we’ll make sure you start again. So don’t worry about it.”

  I choked harder. I sipped at air. Some was getting through. Deep, wracking coughs shook my chest and back, dislodging some more of the puke. More breath.

  “See?” she said. “Not so bad. Welcome home, M1k3y. We’ve got somewhere very special to take you.”

  I relaxed onto my back, feeling the van rock. The smell of used pizza was overwhelming at first, but as with all strong stimuli, my brain gradually grew accustomed to it, filtered it out until it was just a faint aroma. The rocking of the van was almost comforting.

  That’s when it happened. An incredible, deep calm that swept over me like I was lying on the beach and the ocean had swept in and lifted me as gently as a parent, held me aloft and swept me out onto a warm sea under a warm sun. After everything that had happened, I was caught, but it didn’t matter. I had gotten the information to Barbara. I had organized the Xnet. I had won. And if I hadn’t won, I had done everything I could have done. More than I ever thought I could do. I took a mental inventory as I rode, thinking of everything that I had accomplished, that we had accomplished. The city, the country, the world was full of people who wouldn’t live the way DHS wanted us to live. We’d fight forever. They couldn’t jail us all.

  I sighed and smiled.

  She’d been talking all along, I realized. I’d been so far into my happy place that she’d just gone away.

  “—smart kid like you. You’d think that you’d know better than to mess with us. We’ve had an eye on you since the day you walked out. We would have caught you even if you hadn’t gone crying to your lesbo journalist traitor. I just don’t get it—we had an understanding, you and me….”

  We rumbled over a metal plate, the van’s shocks rocking, and then the rocking changed. We were on water. Heading to Treasure Island. Hey, Ange was there. Darryl, too. Maybe.

  The hood didn’t come off until I was in my cell. They didn’t bother with the cuffs at my wrists and ankles, just rolled me off the stretcher and onto the floor. It was dark, but by the moonlight from the single, tiny, high window, I could see that the mattress had been taken off the cot. The room contained me, a toilet, a bed frame and a sink, and nothing else.

  I closed my eyes and let the ocean lift me. I floated away. Somewhere, far below me, was my body. I could tell what would happen next. I was being left to piss myself. Again. I knew what that was like. I’d pissed myself before. It smelled bad. It itched. It was humiliating, like being a baby.

  But I’d survived it.

  I laughed. The sound was weird, and it drew me back into my body, back to the present. I laughed and laughed. I’d had the worst that they could throw at me, and I’d survived it, and I’d beaten them, beaten them for months, showed them up as chumps and despots. I’d won.

  I let my bladder cut loose. It was sore and full anyway, and no time like the present.

  The ocean swept me away.

  When morning came, two efficient, impersonal guards cut the bindings off my wrists and ankles. I still couldn’t walk—when I stood, my legs gave way like a stringless marionette’s. Too much time in one position. The guards pulled my arms over their shoulders and half dragged, half carried me down the familiar corridor. The bar codes on the doors were curling up and dangling now, attacked by the salt air.

  I got an idea. “Ange!” I yelled. “Darryl!” I yelled. My guards yanked me along faster, clearly disturbed but not sure what to do about it. “Guys, it’s me, Marcus! Stay free!”

  Behind one of the doors, someone sobbed. Someone else cried out in what sounded like Arabic. Then it was cacophony, a thousand different shouting voices.

  They brought me to a new room. It was an old shower room, with the showerheads still present in the mould tiles.

  “Hello, M1k3y,” Severe Haircut said. “You seem to have had an eventful morning.” She wrinkled her nose pointedly.

  “I pissed myself,” I said, cheerfully. “You should try it.”

  “Maybe we should give you a bath, then,” she said. She nodded, and my guards carried me to another stretcher. This one had restraining straps running its length. They dropped me onto it and it was ice-cold and soaked through. Before I knew it, they had the straps across my shoulders, hips and ankles. A minute later, three more straps were tied down. A man’s hands grabbed the railings by my head and released some catches, and a moment later I was tilted down, my head below my feet.

  “Let’s start with something simple,” she said. I craned my head to see her. She had turned to a desk with an Xbox on it, connected to an expensive-looking flat-panel TV. “I’d like you to tell me your login and password for your Pirate Party email, please?”

  I closed my eyes and let the ocean carry me off the beach.

  “Do you know what waterboarding is, M1k3y?” Her voice reeled me in. “You get strapped down like this, and we pour water over your head, up your nose and down your mouth. You can’t suppress the gag reflex. They call it a simulated execution, and from what I can tell from this side of the room, that’s a fair assessment. You won’t be able to fight the feeling that you’re dying.”

  I tried to go away. I’d heard of waterboarding. This was it, real torture. And this was just the beginning.

  I couldn’t go away. The ocean didn’t sweep in and lift me. There was a tightness in my chest, my eyelids fluttered. I could feel clammy piss on my legs and clammy sweat in my hair. My skin itched from the dried puke.

  She swam into view above me. “Let’s start with the login,” she said.

  I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut.

  “Give him a drink,” she said.

  I heard people moving. I took a deep breath and held it.

  The water started as a trickle, a ladleful of water gently poured over my chin, my lips. Up my upturned nostrils. It went back into my throat, starting to choke me, but I wouldn’t cough, wouldn’t gasp and suck it into my lungs. I held onto my breath and squeezed my eyes harder.

  There was a commotion from outside the room, a sound of chaotic boots stamping, angry, outraged shouts. The dipper was emptied into my face.

  I heard her mutter something to someone in the room, then to me she said, “Just the login, Marcus. It’s a simple request. What could I do with your login, anyway?”

  This time, it was a bucket of water, all at once, a flood that didn’t stop, it must have been gigantic. I couldn’t help it. I gasped and aspirated the water into my lungs, coughed and took more water in. I knew they wouldn’t kill me, but I couldn’t convince my body of that. In every fiber of my being, I knew I was going to die. I couldn’t even cry—the water was still pouring over me.

  Then it stopped. I coughed and coughed and coughed, but at the angle I was at, the water I coughed up dribbled back into my nose and burned down my sinuses.

  The coughs were so deep they hurt, hurt my ribs and my hips as I twisted against them. I hated how my body was betraying me, how my mind cou
ldn’t control my body, but there was nothing for it.

  Finally, the coughing subsided enough for me to take in what was going on around me. People were shouting and it sounded like someone was scuffling, wrestling. I opened my eyes and blinked into the bright light, then craned my neck, still coughing a little.

  The room had a lot more people in it than it had had when we started. Most of them seemed to be wearing body armor, helmets and smoked-plastic visors. They were shouting at the Treasure Island guards, who were shouting back, necks corded with veins.

  “Stand down!” one of the body armors said. “Stand down and put your hands in the air. You are under arrest!”

  Severe haircut woman was talking on her phone. One of the body armors noticed her and he moved swiftly to her and batted her phone away with a gloved hand. Everyone fell silent as it sailed through the air in an arc that spanned the small room, clattering to the ground in a shower of parts.

  The silence broke and the body armors moved into the room. Two grabbed each of my torturers. I almost managed a smile at the look on Severe Haircut’s face when two men grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her around and yanked a set of plastic handcuffs around her wrists.

  One of the body armors moved forward from the doorway. He had a video camera on his shoulder, a serious rig with blinding white light. He got the whole room, circling me twice while he got me. I found myself staying perfectly still, as though I was sitting for a portrait.

  It was ridiculous.

  “Do you think you could get me off of this thing?” I managed to get it all out with only a little choking.

  Two more body armors moved up to me, one a woman, and began to unstrap me. They flipped their visors up and smiled at me. They had red crosses on their shoulders and helmets.

  Beneath the red crosses was another insignia: CHP. California Highway Patrol. They were State Troopers.

  I started to ask what they were doing there, and that’s when I saw Barbara Stratford. She’d evidently been held back in the corridor, but now she came in pushing and shoving. “There you are,” she said, kneeling beside me and grabbing me in the longest, hardest hug of my life.