Neptune's Tears

by Susan Waggoner

  ‘Double rose. Is that it?’

  Mr Caldwell nodded vigorously. Maybe he couldn’t yet recognise the words, but he recognised a rose, and remembered that a double flower needed a double word.

  ‘Very good, Mr C. I’m impressed! ROSE.’ She enunciated the word carefully, pointing to the word. ‘DOUBLE ROSE.’

  ‘Roadj. Dhubba roadj,’ Mr Caldwell repeated, smiling. It was a good start.

  At first, the multiple bombs seemed to be a major victory for the anarchists. Stock markets fell, people got into arguments and accidents, governments came up with protocols no one could follow. Then something changed. So many people in so many cities had been affected that their thoughts turned and focused on the anarchists like a swarm of angry bees. Ideas, as Dr Branning might say, were out there. And not all of the ideas were bad. After years of feeling like sitting ducks, people began to see ways of fighting back. A flautist in Vienna suggested lining public places with exquisitely sensitive tuning forks that would sound an alert if touched by the shock waves.

  One of the most successful ideas was the Shock Sock, a microfibre tube that folded into a package smaller than a deck of cards. In case of attack, the user slid the corsetlike tube over his torso so the tube encased the entire trunk of the body. Pulling a ring caused the tube to contract. If the person hadn’t been injured, no harm was done, but if they had been hurt, the compression slowed internal bleeding and kept organs functioning for up to forty-eight hours. Factories swung into high production and within weeks governments were distributing them to citizens. Zee’s was blue and identified her as a Priority One Responder. David’s was grey with a red AG for Alien Guest. Zee didn’t like to think about the markings because she knew they meant that in an attack she would be evaluated and treated first, while David would be left to the very end.

  At the end of September, the Royal London was asked to contribute to a three-day seminar on shock bomb triage held in Paris. Emergency services, surgery, and the department of empathy were specifically invited. In addition to senior and teaching staff, four teams of three empaths each would train empaths from around the world. The good news was that Zee and Rani both made the cut and were on the same team. The bad news was that their third team member was Piper. Zee spent most of the long weekend on pins and needles, hoping Piper wouldn’t reveal her relationship with David to Rani. And while Rani complained about their schedule being so heavy it left little time for socialising or sightseeing, Zee was relieved that it kept Piper occupied too. Each one of them was responsible for training a team in different parts of triage protocol, and each saw more of the team they were responsible for than of each other.

  On their free afternoon, Zee and Rani went to the city’s colourful and extravagant flea market. While Rani was trying on her hundredth vintage dress, Zee drifted to a jewellery seller nearby. In a tray of antique charms she saw a small silver eagle in a circle of silver on a leather thong. David had once said that of all Earth’s animals, so different from those on Omura, his favourite was the American eagle. Now that he knew her, he said, he liked the eagle even more. Zee bought the talisman without hesitation, even though it took most of her spending money. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to give David such a personal gift, or if he’d remember the comment he made, but she knew the eagle was meant to be his and she needed to buy it.

  ‘That must be for someone special.’

  Zee whirled around to see Piper standing behind her. Before she could say anything, Piper gave her an unreadable smile and melted back into the crowd. For all Zee’s worries, Piper never said a word about David, and at the end of the weekend even Rani noted that Piper had been not-quite-but-almost-very-close-to normal at work.

  ‘Maybe she’s just vibing the way everyone feels,’ Zee said. That happened with empaths a lot. The skill was always there, on duty or off, and when there was a mass mood afoot, empaths often picked up on it.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Rani said.

  Everyone’s mood had improved over the last few weeks. Even though the anarchists hadn’t been caught and there was still no way to detect a shock bomb before it went off, people no longer felt helpless. They were developing survival strategies. Just as they had found a remedy for the Thanatos virus years ago, they would find a remedy for this, too. They would eventually find a remedy for everything the anarchists tried, and then they would find the anarchists themselves.

  Zee willingly rearranged her schedule to make home visits to Mrs Hart on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. Though her adviser was pleased with her performance, Zee sometimes wondered who got more out of their sessions, herself or Mrs Hart. No one in Zee’s immediate world had ever died before, except for a great-great-grandmother she hadn’t seen since she was six months old. As Mrs Hart stepped closer to the end of her life with each visit, Zee saw there was something natural and even freeing about it, and that who you were and how you’d lived came shining through to the very end.

  One day she arrived to find Mrs Hart at an easel, painting.

  ‘I’ve heard that if there’s a skill you’re working on near the end, you can pick up where you left off on the other side,’ she explained. ‘This is a picture of the house I grew up in. I probably won’t live to finish it, but so be it.’ Mrs Hart caught Zee blinking rapidly. ‘Now, now, no tears. We agreed. And I expect they’ll find an apprenticeship for me over there somewhere. After all, I’m dying to get in.’ Mrs Hart chuckled but stopped when Zee didn’t join in. ‘Really, dear, this isn’t such a big deal.’

  But it was a big deal to Mrs Hart’s daughter, who cried every time she visited and sent far too many email updates on newly discovered miracle cures. Watching her sadness wash over Mrs Hart, Zee realised that if you truly loved someone, letting go of them was sometimes part of it. She resolved that when her parents came to the same crossroad, she would put their needs ahead of her own.

  Mrs Hart finished wiping off her brushes. ‘Now, dear, before we start – and I’ll need more help with that pain in my side, it’s like being bitten by a wolf – tell me about that boyfriend of yours. What’s happening? Did you give him that eagle yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Zee said. ‘I still don’t know how he feels. Not for sure.’

  Without Mrs Hart, Zee would have had no one to say this to. She still hadn’t told Rani about David because she knew what Rani would say. To Rani, boys were like dresses you took into the dressing room. If one pinched at the waist or didn’t make you happy, there were dozens more on the rack.

  For Zee, David was the only one for her, but the more she believed that he cared for her, the more she sensed there was something that would forever keep him at a distance. She had told him all about her family, but he had told her nothing about his. He seldom spoke of Omura, and the only details she knew were ones she picked up by asking pointed questions. Did they have pets or were animals considered frivolous and unproductive? Were the colours the same? How did women wear their hair? Sometimes he gave a vague answer. Sometimes he distracted her with a joke or a kiss. Twice she was sure his answers contradicted things he’d said before. Yet, on a deeper level, she trusted him. But how would she ever make Rani understand that?

  And now there was the big issue, the one Zee was too embarrassed to talk to Mrs Hart about, because it would have started with describing that moment in Brighton when Zee had wanted to spend the night with him and he’d turned her down. Her cheeks still burned with the shame of rejection whenever she thought of it.

  Zee couldn’t help but notice that their dates always began with her meeting him in some public place – a park, in front of a theatre, the Victoria Embankment. They held hands, walked arm in arm, and kissed like any other couple, and there were times when their desire burned so hot Zee was sure they’d end up in his apartment in a tangle of sheets. But at some point he’d draw back, and the date would end with him putting her into a taxi and kissing her lightly on the forehead, leaving her with a slightly hollow feeling. A few times, when she arrived early or the taxi ta
king her home got a slow start, she thought she saw the young woman with the long black hair, then did her best to convince herself she was mistaken.

  Wasn’t it funny, Zee often thought to herself, that resolving Mrs Hart’s pain was so much easier than resolving her own?

  On a warm October Saturday, Zee and David spent the whole day together at the festival that was held each autumn along the Thames, when the whole riverside was turned into an old-style open-air market, with souvenirs, food stalls, street artists and wandering performers and musicians. David had a stomach-ache from eating too many apple tarts and they were resting on a park bench until he got his energy back. Later, after sunset, they planned to cross Blackfriars Bridge, carrying lanterns like everyone else, and find a good spot to watch the grand finale laser show.

  ‘Never let me eat another apple tart,’ he groaned.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she teased back. ‘I tried to get between you and that last one, and it was a dangerous place to be.’

  They watched tides of people stroll by. Some were wearing costumes and masks, and children had their faces painted to look like lions, puppies, tigers and kittens. At the same moment, they both saw a short, round man struggling to ride a unicycle through the crowd. It was an impossible task. Every time he got on the bike and went a few metres, the crowd brought him to a halt and he fell off the bike. Shaking his fist at those in his way, he’d get on again and fall again, over and over. Zee and David leaned against each other, swaying with laughter. At moments like this, when they were in perfect tune with each other, Zee could not imagine it ever being difficult between them. She wasn’t sure how long it was after they lost sight of the man with the unicycle, but suddenly Zee felt a vibration in the crowd, a low, panicked hum that crescendoed as it rippled towards them.

  Zee sat up straight. It was exactly the scene that had been described by eye witnesses before. ‘Shock bomb,’ she said. ‘I think it’s a shock bomb.’

  They got into their Shock Socks as fast as they could and started the futile task of trying to halt the panicked crowd. If any of them had been hit by the wave, running would only make their injuries worse. Even David standing on the bench and yelling didn’t work. The crowd was unstoppable. Telling Zee to stay where she was, he headed into the crowd to see if he could find the centre of the blast. Zee had already called both police and ambulances and now, as the crowd started to thin, began attending to those who’d been left behind – children who’d got separated from their parents, a woman with a broken arm, others who’d fallen under the crowd’s feet. Zee helped them one by one into their Shock Socks and gathered them together in a cluster by the bench. It was all unnecessary, she thought. No one had needed to run. No one did anything but make things worse by running. They all knew this. Yet despite knowing, despite the public information campaigns and the drills and family discussions of what to do in such a situation, they had all panicked and run. The anarchists’ greatest ally, she thought, was human nature.

  As the initial fear subsided, people began to flow back into the area. This was a different group from those who had fled, Zee realised. These people had been far enough away to be certain they hadn’t been affected. They’d put their Shock Socks on anyway and headed for the bomb site, bent on helping in any way they could. Soon Zee had several volunteers following her directions.

  David hadn’t been able to determine the centre of the blast zone, but had been told the first bodies fell in the middle of Blackfriars Bridge – far enough away, with luck, not to have reached deep into the crowd around them. As he was explaining this, the first wave of ambulances began to arrive. Their way had been all but blocked by the crowds, and they were forced to travel in a long, slow caravan. Nevertheless, Zee felt a wave of relief when she saw them. She handed David a marker and told him to write a priority number on anyone he could: a one for those who had been closest to the presumed centre, a three for those who’d been nowhere near, and a two for everyone else.

  She turned again to check the ambulances’ progress and suddenly felt a wave of nausea and splitting headache pain. Five, five, five screamed in her head and she found herself fixated on the fifth ambulance in the line. It looked exactly like all the other ambulances and yet she knew – knew – that everything about it was different. There was a bomb, but that was different too. It wasn’t a shock bomb, something more old-style. A mental image of debris raining down flashed in her mind. She picked up the child closest to her and caught David’s eye. ‘Run!’ she screamed, as loudly as she could. She glanced at the child he was helping and hoped he understood. ‘Run!’

  David managed to pick up two children and caught up with her. ‘Not toward the stalls – over there, behind that wall.’

  They crouched down, sheltering the children with their bodies. It was an endless second before the ambulance, rigged with a conventional bomb and filled with nails and pieces of metal, exploded into the air.

  Zee realised she’d felt the same crushing nausea and splitting pain behind her eyes once before, the day she’d stood at Mr Caldwell’s bedside as shock bombs went off around the world. She remembered Rani’s look of broad relief when Zee told her it was a chance occurrence. And she remembered her adviser’s words about the toll divining took on personal lives. This time, she wasn’t going to tell anyone what she’d just felt. Not even David. People had lucky hunches all the time. This would just have to be one of them.

  CHAPTER 9

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY

  ‘Spill it, McAdams.’

  Zee was enjoying the artificial sunlight of the residence hall’s courtyard. ‘No idea what you’re talking about, Kapoor,’ she replied breezily, not bothering to close the book propped on her knees.

  ‘Oh goodness,’ Rani said in a high-pitched cartoon voice. ‘Whatever might I mean?’ Striking a pose of innocent confusion, her forefinger daintily tapping her chin, Rani was the spitting image of her great-great-great-grandmother, a famous Bollywood star.

  Laughing, Zee laid the book aside.

  Rani grabbed the little volume and held it up. ‘Romeo and Juliet. What’s this – our Zee reading for pleasure? Not Further Thoughts on Diagnostic Empathy or Empathy and the Mind-Body Paradox? This is serious.’

  Zee held out her hand. It was the volume David had given her that day at Brighton and she really didn’t want to see it in anyone else’s hand, not even Rani’s. ‘I’ll have it back, please. Some of us like to improve our minds, and I have two more acts to go.’

  ‘I’ll save you the trouble – it doesn’t end well.’ Rani leafed through the pages. ‘Let’s see, end of third act, Mercutio – gone, Tybalt – gone. It doesn’t get better, you know.’ She handed the book back and Zee tucked it safely away. ‘Why are you reading about star-crossed lovers anyway?’

  Zee had been wondering that same thing herself. She wasn’t sure if David had bought the book for it’s luxurious stamped-leather binding, because it was one of the world’s great plays, or to tell her something that was too painful to say in his own words. Or had he known that the hearts of the characters, whose world lay centuries in the past, would echo all the secrets her own heart held?

  ‘It’s just a story,’ she said at last.

  Rani’s eyes flashed with insight. ‘It’s that boy, isn’t it? The one who brought you and those kids in after the Blackfriars bombing and just happened to stay the whole night to work with you.’

  ‘He didn’t stay to work with me. He was a volunteer. There were a lot of people who needed to be seen.’

  ‘Riiiiight,’ Rani said with exaggerated scepticism. ‘Well, he certainly seemed to need to see you. Now, I want all the details. And don’t tell me you just met him because that is so clearly not the case.’

  It would be a relief to tell Rani all about David, but Zee hesitated. Then she took a deep breath and said, ‘He’s an alien.’ For just a moment, Rani looked surprised. ‘Do you still want to hear?’

  ‘Of course.’ Rani lifted her head and grinned. ‘I had no idea there
were such cute aliens among us. What have I been missing? I’m going to have to rethink this whole thing. They can’t possibly be that hot and be as nerdy as we thought. How did you meet him and why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

  Zee was embarrassed not to have trusted Rani more. She tried to make up for it now by telling her the whole story, including the part she hadn’t told Mrs Hart, about the desire he ignited in her. ‘Maybe he just doesn’t like me that way,’ she said.

  ‘But he kisses you?’ Rani asked.

  ‘Mmmhmm.’

  ‘And keeps seeing you?’

  ‘Mmmhmm.’

  ‘And it’s more than a kiss on the cheek?’

  ‘A lot more.’ Zee smiled.

  Rani tilted her head, considering the facts. ‘When he hugs you, where are his hands?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where does he put his hands? On your shoulders?’

  ‘No, about here, I guess.’ Zee turned to indicate the small of her back.

  ‘That clinches it, then. He’s definitely into you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s the hands. Arms and shoulders – no big deal. But hugging below the bra line, oh yes, he’s up nights thinking about you. Now all we need to do is get those hands of his a little more active.’

  ‘Rani!’

  ‘I’m only thinking of your happiness. And have you told your parents yet?’

  ‘Last night, and only because I had to. They wanted to come for my birthday next week. They didn’t want me to be alone. I had to tell them I wouldn’t be, though I did leave out the detail about him being an alien. I think that sort of demands a face-to-face.’

  ‘So you’re spending your birthday with him?’

  ‘He’s taking me out.’

  ‘Where to?’