The Raintree Rebellion

by Janet Mcnaughton

  “Well, that’s not what I expected,” Griffin says. “They did make a deal.”

  Astral cuts in. “But they all died anyway. How could they be so naive? It was crazy.”

  Griffin shrugs. “It’s easy for us to think so, knowing how it all turned out.”

  “Nobody even mentioned democracy,” Kayko says, her voice small with disappointment.

  “Edwards waved the promise of power in their faces, and most of their principles went right out the window.” This is Astral.

  “I think a lot less of them now,” Kayko adds. “But they didn’t deserve to die,” I say.

  “No, they didn’t,” Astral agrees. “And neither did those eco-terrorists,” he adds. “People shouldn’t die for acts of vandalism.”

  I know one eco-terrorist who didn’t die, but I keep that to myself for now.

  24

  This new protest movement, led by the Living Lost, is gaining momentum. We expect the Transitional Council to prove its commitment to democracy by taking these demands seriously.

  —Editorial comment, The Solar Flare, October 7, 2370

  The next morning, when Erica and I arrive at work, a larger group is gathered on the lawn, maybe fifty. Security officers are trying to keep them off the sidewalks. Some of the protesters hold signs. The sight of a mob like this makes me want to run away.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Erica says, “I’m sure they’re peaceful.“

  I wish I could share her confidence. I take a closer look one of the placards. “All of us are innocent, all of us are guilty,” I read. “Those are my words. I said that.”

  “Isn’t that her?” a woman cries. “Isn’t that her over there?” She’s looking at me. Now everyone is.

  I grab Erica’s hand. “Come on.” I drag her up the steps and we burst into the building, startling the security guards until they recognize us. “What was that about?” I ask, as if Erica ought to know.

  “It must have something to do with the interview you gave.”

  “Do you think they’ll go away?”

  “I don’t know. This sort of thing should be part of Hanif’s job. He’ll still be on the minibus, but I’ll ask him to meet us later.”

  In the media conference room, Kayko smiles. “You’re famous.”

  “But I don’t want to be. Do you know who those people are?”

  “I don’t, but Security will.”

  We settle into the difficult task of sorting through the remains of the hologram. Compared to the huge information gain we made yesterday, this work is slow and unrewarding. Griffin and I follow persons of interest through fractile after fractile while they talk about nothing. Yesterday, I would have hated to leave my work, but when Erica pages me to come to her office after a few hours, I’m glad for the break.

  “Who are those people outside?” I ask as soon as I see Hanif.

  “They call themselves the Living Lost,” he replies. “The group emerged just after the Uprising. They’re all people who suffered in the technocaust. They’ve been quiet until now.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “From the signs they’re carrying, I’d say that interview you gave struck a chord with them. Have you looked out front lately? There must be a hundred people now.”

  I remember the day he rescued me with Spyker. “But you can get me in and out of here without being seen. If I disappear, they’ll just go away, won’t they?” It seems like the perfect solution.

  Erica speaks. “Hanif and I discussed that option, Blake. It doesn’t seem fair to them.”

  I’m trapped by our principles. “That’s the sort of thing the Protectors would have done, isn’t it?”

  Erica smiles. “I knew you’d understand.”

  “This may pass quickly if we let it run its course,” Hanif says. “I want you and Erica to take a private car and a driver for the time being, but you will have to walk past the crowds as you enter and leave the building, just so they can see you. That might be enough to keep them happy. And someone will be with you whenever you go out now.”

  “Someone?” I ask.

  “A bodyguard. Mostly, it will be me. We’ll be as discreet as possible.”

  Life is getting more and more complicated. “But, I don’t understand why this happened. The Justice Council is about to begin the hearings. These people are getting what they want. What’s their problem?”

  Hanif looks to Erica, who nods. “You should tell her everything. “

  “The Living Lost is not exactly a typical victims’ group. How can I say this? They cast a wider net. Anyone who suffered because of the technocaust can join.”

  “You mean people who were related to the ones who carried out the technocaust?” I ask. I’m slowly starting to accept the idea that some of these people might be victims.

  There’s an uncomfortable pause. “Anyone who suffered,” Hanif repeats.

  “Blake,” Erica says, “people’s lives were ruined by the things they were asked to do. Families fell apart, men were psychologically broken.”

  “So, anyone?” I ask. “No matter what they did?”

  “Yes,” Hanif replies. “They even run a group inside the prison.”

  This almost knocks me over. I sit back in my chair. “I’m going to need time to accept this.”

  Hanif and Erica let me go back to work. I walk through the hall, seeing nothing, I’m so absorbed by my thoughts. A few weeks ago, even the idea of a group like the Living Lost would have made me furious. I can’t feel that way now. Along with a lot of other baggage, I seem to have lost my capacity for righteous indignation.

  “Did you learn anything?” I ask Griffin when I come back into the media room.

  He grins. “A recipe for using up leftover chicken. It didn’t sound bad. What about you?”

  I tell him about the Living Lost.

  “I can understand why they were drawn to you,” he says when I finish. “You talked about your confusion with such honesty.”

  I realize this is my chance to ask him something I’ve wondered for weeks. “Griffin, where do you fit in to all of this? I mean, I know what happened to Astral and me, what didn’t happen to Luisa and Kayko, but I don’t know anything about your past at all.”

  “Both my parents died in the technocaust,” he says evenly. “Monique and my mother were friends from university. Monique was given the chance to escape to Haiti in a cargo ship. There wasn’t room for other adults, but my mother begged her to take me. A few months later Monique heard my parents had been taken, and eventually, she learned they were dead.”

  “But you’re so normal. Compared to Astral and me, I mean. How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t. Monique did. She was sure my parents wouldn’t have wanted their deaths to ruin my life, so she raised me not to hate anyone. I was only about four when she started talking to me about it.”

  I sigh. “I wish someone had done that for me.”

  “Blake, until a few years ago nobody did anything for you. What you’ve done for yourself is remarkable. You know that, don’t you? Most kids who grew up the way you did are either criminals or dead by now.”

  I’m not good with praise. I blush. “I guess I know that, but I feel like I’ve only gotten halfway to being what I’d like to be, and now I’m stuck. I’m so tired of feeling angry and bitter. It’s like I’ve been carrying this huge weight around, ever since I found out about the technocaust and what happened to my mother. I just want to put it down.”

  “Maybe wanting something is the first step to getting it.”

  “But how do I start? It’s too late for me to be like you, Griffin. You were raised to be the way you are now.”

  “I guess that’s true. But there are people like you who seem to have found a way to get over their anger.”

  I stare at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Blake, they’re standing outside carrying signs with your words written on them.”

  It takes me a moment to process this. “You thi
nk I could learn from the Living Lost?”

  “I think so. It’s your decision, though. Let’s get back to work.”

  Until I spoke with Griffin, my only concern with the Living Lost was how to avoid them. His words stay with me for the rest of the day. Meeting with the Living Lost seems impossibly difficult, but I can’t shake the feeling Griffin’s right. They must know something I need to know. Still, I let the afternoon and Friday pass without doing anything about it.

  One impossible task at a time, I tell myself. Because now, I have to deal with Prospero.

  25

  These eco-terrorists are a blight on our society. I won’t rest until I’ve destroyed every one.

  —Interview with Falcon Edwards, the Johannesburg Times, October 12, 2353

  On Saturday morning, when I leave for the ghost library, a bodyguard shadows me. Not Hanif, he’ll take over later in the day. The man is as unobtrusive as Hanif promised. No one watching would suspect he’s following me. The Living Lost have not shown up at our home yet, but I might need him if I’m recognized at the ghost library.

  The crowd on the lawn outside work grew again yesterday. I passed them on my way in and out of Queen’s Park, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. They know me by sight now. They call and reach out to me from behind the barriers set up to contain them. There were new signs yesterday. One said, “No Victim’s Voice Silenced.” When I saw that, I felt a stab of sympathy.

  I enter High Park well before the main entrance, hoping to slip into Prospero’s encampment unnoticed. I’d like to see Sparrow, to know she’s fine, before anything else happens. I might not want to stay after I’ve spoken to Prospero, or I might not be welcome. The air holds a chill this morning. I skirt the camp, scanning for children, dry leaves crunching under my feet. Wisps of smoke rise from cooking fires and the smell of frying food drifts on the sharp air. A group of children have already eaten, it seems. They’re playing a complicated kind of tag involving monkey bars and not touching the ground. I watch for awhile before I recognize Sparrow, she’s changed that much. The quiet, haunted waif is gone. In her place is a cheeky urchin, with glowing cheeks and flying hair, who taunts the “it” and squeals with delight when she escapes. Somehow, in under three weeks, Prospero’s people have worked this miracle.

  Seeing Sparrow like this gives me a surge of satisfaction. Very little of what I do pleases me completely; there’s always a nagging feeling I could have done better. This time, I got it right.

  “She’s settled in perfectly.” In the nanosecond before I recognize Prospero’s voice, I startle. He laughs, not unkindly. “Easy there.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. I shake it off without thinking. The laughter fades from his face. “What’s wrong?”

  He’s caught me off guard, without time to compose myself.

  “I saw you,” I say, “in a hologram. I saw you with Dido and the baby, outside the tent at that rally in 2353.” My voice drops to an angry whisper. “I know what you were.”

  “What I was?” he says. “You mean a husband and a father, or an eco-terrorist?” There’s no anger in his voice, only sorrow.

  “B—both,” I stammer. “You admit it?”

  “I don’t talk much about my past, but I’ve never tried to hide it, Blake. You might as well hear the whole story.” He looks around. “Your timing’s terrible, though. Let me delegate a few jobs that have to be done before the ghost library starts. Then we’ll talk. All right?”

  I nod, speechless with surprise. He leaves quickly, covering the ground in huge, energetic strides.

  I turn back to watch the children. There’s a lull in the game now, and they sit together on the ground. Sparrow’s distinct, reedy voice carries over to me. “My father was as tall as a tree,” she says, “and he sang me to sleep every single night.” She pounds her fist on the ground as she speaks the last three words to give them the emphasis they deserve. I smile. She’s already talking about the time before, something her Tribe would never have allowed her to do. I need to see her more than she needs to see me. I just sit and watch until Prospero returns.

  “The rest of the work is taken care of for now,” he says, sitting beside me. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Explain myself to some idealistic young person who is disappointed by my past,” he says. “It used to happen fairly often, but most people here know my story now. It’s part of the lore of this place.” He gives a deep sigh. “So, you saw Dido and Rosa. At least you know how much I’ve lost.”

  I wasn’t expecting him to be so open. My anger vanishes. “How did it happen?”

  “Dido worked with this environmental protest group, Save Earth Now. You probably know that. Swan Gil was the executive director, and Dido was the office manager, but in fact, they ran the organization as equals. Everyone else came and went. Swan and Dido were the backbone.

  “And I was an eco-terrorist. You know that, too. It’s not something I’m proud of. I was young, I was stupid, and I thought I was immortal. Really. I believed nothing could possibly harm me. We worked together as an independent cell, three stupid young guys. We started off with pranks, jamming communication lines, hacking into government holo-zines, harmless stuff. Only a few legitimate protest groups were willing to help people like us, provide information and sometimes funds. SEN was one of them. That’s how I met Dido. She thought it was exciting at first. I think that’s why she married me.

  “But then we had Rosa, and Dido began to change. I did too, but in the wrong direction. My cell got more violent. We never hurt anybody. Never. But we moved from mischief to vandalism, then we graduated to major vandalism. I still regret the Oak Moraine fire deeply.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yeah, that was me. We’d planned it for months. We knew which night guards were careless and when they worked. We were just supposed to torch some half-finished houses, set the developers back a few million. But the night we’d picked turned out to be terribly windy. We talked about postponing, but the forecast called for rain. We thought it would be all right. We were wrong.”

  “I know. I saw the newscasts.”

  “So you know what we did to the forest. You couldn’t replace those trees in a millennium. I was depressed for months after, pulled out of my cell for a while.” He shakes his head. “Looking back now, I can’t believe how angry I was. I guess being young lets you feel that deeply. But you have to understand, we were seriously concerned about the planet. You know the Dark Times happened because of changes caused by people. Because the Consumers couldn’t stop consuming, even though they saw what they were doing. For more than a century, everyone had to live in horrible conditions right out of the distant past, until, finally, they began to recover.

  “A lot of us felt we were reaching the same critical point they reached in the twenty-first century, where we were beginning to do harm on a global level. I was afraid we’d just repeat the same mistakes again, and send our children back into another Dark Time. Why is it so hard for us to think about the future? How often do we have to make the same mistake before we learn something?” There’s so much passion in these questions, for a moment, he seems just as young as he did in the hologram. Then the lines of age and sorrow return to his face.

  “The Oak Moraine fire was a turning point. The Protectors could not forgive. Of course, it wasn’t the damage to the forest that bothered them. The money behind the housing development came from people in power.”

  “That’s why Falcon Edwards was so upset?” I ask. “Probably. After, the Protectors became determined to stop the eco-terrorists, and, along the way, a few other nuisances they wanted to get rid of.”

  “The environmental protest movement and the push for democracy?”

  He looks impressed. “You’ve already figured out a lot of this,” he says.

  “It’s been my job. We’ve been at it for weeks,” I tell him. “Two of the people I’m working with are brilliant. A lot of the pieces are still m
issing, but I do know about the offer Edwards made, to limit the technology in exchange for eco-terrorists.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Most of our ‘friends’ went for that pretty quick. The protest movement took on new momentum that summer, so the government had to take it seriously for the first time.”

  “Because of the anti-regenerationists?” I ask.

  “Right again. Those people were unlike anyone Dido had worked with before. They could whip up feelings in ways no one else could. The environmentalists thought they’d be able to handle what came next, but they were wrong. Fern Logos was able to tap into fear of technology at a very basic, very emotional level. Once those forces were unleashed, none of us could control them.”

  “But Falcon Edwards could?”

  Prospero nods. “He knew how to channel that hate and make it do what he wanted. I’ve never seen anyone operate like that, before or since.”

  “So what happened to you, after that rally?”

  “We knew I had to disappear right away. Too many people knew what I’d been up to. I tried to convince Dido to stay put with Rosa, but she wanted to come with me. We both felt the coalition might turn on SEN because of its links with eco-terrorists, so I agreed.

  “We couldn’t leave the prefecture without showing ID, so we were stuck in the area. We took what we could carry that same night and left everything else behind, just fled. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. Dido and Swan had a code, and we could send messages from public kiosks to let her know we were fine, but that was all.

  “You can’t get a job without showing ID. We rented seedy little places at the edges of the industrial zones and I started busking. I was already trained in clowning and mime. That was perfect in some ways, because I could work in makeup. I spent a lot of my time in disguise, and people gave me cash tokens. I moved around, taking the commuter trams in all directions—Hamilton, Oakville, even back to Toronto some days. So we were able to survive.