“Here.” She stopped at a rocky outcropping overlooking a set of rough-hewn cabins at Bastogne’s edge. The rough granite had been swept clear of brush; Paul realized Aliyah had sat here for the last two days.
Laughter carried up through echoes from the cabins. A family canned food for the winter, the mothers boiling bushels of fruit, the fathers stoking the fire, the children tasked with putting the fruit into jars, the grandparents supervising.
The littlest children broke off for impromptu games of tag; the parents corralled them, laughing merrily. They told incomprehensible stories in their thick dialect – though Paul could tell where the funny bits were from the lilt and pause.
“Look at them.” Aliyah spoke in an astonished whisper. “They saw the sky crack open two days ago, witnessed that Thing lunging down. And yet… here they are. Canning food like they expect winter to come.” She shook her head. “I keep thinking how brave they have to be.”
Paul hesitated before putting his arm around her. She snuggled against him, blissful. “You could go down with them, you know. Help out.”
She shook her head with slow certainty. “No. I’d ruin it for them. I’d try to perfect the canning process, or I’d get too caught up in playing tag the right way…” She tapped her scars. “I’m a ’mancer. I’m always going to be obsessed.”
He closed his eyes. “I wanted you to be down there.”
“That dream was dead when our apartment caught fire. You tried to save me with ’mancy. I got burned. And from there…”
She shrugged.
Her effortless dismissal of his dreams made Paul’s chest hitch.
“…I’ve been trying to fix you, Aliyah.”
“I know.”
“I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking.
She cupped his cheek, serene, offering forgiveness. “I know.”
“I fucked up in that fire. And I kept thinking if… if I changed America enough, if I found you the right place, I could erase your scars. I could give you that village. But I…”
YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DAUGHTER IN WAYS YOU NEVER IMAGINED
“I can save the world, Aliyah, but I can’t save you.”
Paul collapsed, sobbing. Aliyah held him just long enough to show him she wouldn’t leave him.
“Dad. Listen to me.”
He sniffled, rubbing his cheeks.
“I’ll never live in that village.”
He squeezed his eyes tight, nodded reluctantly.
“But I can live up here.” She patted her guardpost. “Protecting them. I can’t lead the life I wanted – but I can make damn sure other people can. That’s good, Dad. That’s satisfying. That will do.”
Paul looked down, shamed by how much he needed to believe her.
“Can you let me do that, Dad? Can you let me serve in the Unimancers? Not as a mascot – as someone accomplishing something real. Protecting Bastogne. Protecting Morehead.”
“Aliyah.” Paul gripped her jacket. “You might die.”
She thumped his chest. “That’s the enemy.”
“…what enemy?”
“The enemy that’s stopping us from saving the world.” She waved up at the broken sky, which throbbed like a tumorous heart; a child dropped a jar of peaches, got scooped up in a grandmother’s hug. “We all need to do this – you and me and Mom and Ruth and the Unimancers and General Kanakia. And you can’t make this safe. I might die sealing this rift–”
“Aliyah, don’t say th–”
“I might die, Dad. I don’t want to die. But as long as you’ll do anything to protect me, we’ll fail all over again. And… too much is at stake.”
Paul froze, taking in the immensity of what she asked of him.
She forced him to look at her. “If you love me, Dad, you have to let me go. Now tell me. Tell me you’re OK with me dying.”
He thrashed in her grip. “I can never be OK with that. I can never–”
“Would you sacrifice your life for me?”
“Yes.”
“Have you sacrificed your happiness for me?”
“You know I have.”
“Then do this for me, Dad. If I can’t be in the village… help me be its guardian.”
Forty-Four
Uncomfortable Mortalities
I can’t, Paul thought, trembling. I can’t do this…
Then he looked into her eyes, and realized the only hope Aliyah had of being happy came with the risk of her death.
More than anyone, Paul knew what would happen to him if she died. He’d lived that experience already – he’d imagined her funeral in the burn ward, listening to Aliyah scream as the doctors pulled necrotic flesh off her. He’d laid down in a dumpster once, rotting in the garbage, believing he’d never see her again – and the loss had been so great it had crippled him. He’d been reduced to a breathing corpse, letting cockroaches crawl in his ears.
And he and Imani had been estranged, then. Aliyah’s death would punch a hole through their rekindled marriage, extinguish any possibility of joy, condemn him to years of inescapable anguish.
Aliyah smiled, offering encouragement.
A smile he hadn’t seen since the fire.
“Yes,” he said, swallowing back tears. “I’ll help you be the guardian.”
“Then help me heal the Unimancers,” she asked.
Forty-Five
All Locked Doors Must Open
The first woman Aliyah had ever killed told her how ’mancers were created. It was, Anathema had explained, a simple formula: “Misery. Withdrawal. Obsession. ’Mancy.”
A surprising number of ’mancers had stumbled upon their magic after a bad breakup.
Hell, her daddy’s bureaucromancy had been spurred by Mom asking for a divorce. The collective was saturated with memories of sundered relationships – so Aliyah understood that after breakups, people sometimes conceded places. That restaurant you’d dined at was too painful to go to, and intolerable when you saw the man you still loved there on a date with someone else, so you just… stopped going.
She’d never understood how that worked until she and Ruth had broken up.
And the collective had become the restaurant she couldn’t bear to go to.
Yet as she helped Daddy limp down to Bastogne, approaching the muddy field where she and Aunt Valentine had once stolen his leg, Aliyah realized she’d have to hook back into Unimancy. You couldn’t sever the tie, but with a bit of work you could relegate it to background noise.
Even as background noise, Aliyah heard her ex-girlfriend appointing herself leader of the “Paul Tsabo needs to be executed” faction.
Which, she supposed, was to be expected: Ruth had always had parental issues.
They emerged from the treeline, the shanty-town patchwork of Bastogne looming large before them. The Unimancers worked like busy ants to repair the town’s damage; they didn’t know what to do about the worsening broach overhead, so instead they’d channeled their efforts into hammers and nails, sawing wood as if to gift Bastogne’s residents with a beautiful town to live in before the apocalypse fell. They were perched across the plank-bridges that linked the crumbling brick buildings, repairing walls, thatching leaky roofs, anything physical that could distract from the howling chaos that roiled through their networked minds.
She braced herself, opened her mind to the collective. It felt like a dog pound – everyone barking, vying to drown out the competition.
Seventy years and we’ve never sealed a broach
Valentine was right we’re ’mancer dregs
No Tsabo weakened us with his rules
He had new magic we didn’t know the Thing could talk there’s so much we don’t know
Men like him cause broaches their magic rips open holes
Because we fight them we scare them broaches form when two magics collide
We have to bring everyone into the collective…
Ruth had been repairing a broken door on the stables. But she dropped her screwdriver as Aliyah led
Paul into the cracked cobblestones of the town square.
Aliyah saw Ruth’s leather-clad hips, longed to slide her arms around them. She felt Ruth’s regret boiling up, felt Ruth running her hand down her thigh as a sad replacement for Aliyah’s touch.
Then Ruth’s anger exploded into the collective:
You made me choose between keeping the world safe and keeping you as a girlfriend
Aliyah shook her head. You know it’s not that way.
Then give us Tsabo –
–call him Daddy, call him Paul, call him a human name –
–I call him Tsabo. I call him enemy. When he wanted to kill us, he could do anything – but when it came time to save the world, we gave him all our power and he failed. Untamed ’mancy creates murder.
The Unimancers put their tools neatly away, clambered down from Bastogne’s multi-layered heights to form a tribunal circle around them.
Ruth wrinkled her nose. I can’t believe you’re still talking to him after what he did to Valentine…
Who you also hated, Aliyah pointed out.
The Mom-construct cleared her throat, a teacher starting class. The impact of Valentine’s sacrifice has strewn great conflict within the collective. Hatred of Valentine DiGriz is no longer a given position; after seeing her sacrificial actions during the last broach, some feel she made some valid points about the hivemind’s demographics–
Ruth snarled. Stop explaining shit, Mom! I know what I think! And why am I not putting a bullet through this motherfucker’s brain after he nearly got us killed?
The Mom-construct, again. Now Ruth, you know there’s great conflict over what danger Paul Tsabo exposed us to. There’s an ongoing discussion of our potential culpability in not investigating Paul Tsabo enough, of rushing to judgment–
Ruth dug her fingers into her thighs. And if you were smart enough to remember what I thought, Mom, you’d know my opinion is that I should have killed the bastard back at Morehead–
Aliyah took Ruth’s hand. You need to talk to him, Ruth.
Tell me what he’d say. Aliyah felt Ruth yanking on the locked doors in Aliyah’s mind. You’re keeping secrets from me. You’re keeping secrets from us.
Unimancers keep no secrets, Ruth – only surprises. And we need a surprise.
“Talk, Dad.” Aliyah elbowed him.
The Unimancers crowded into Ruth’s skull to see things from her perspective. The hivemind fragmented at the sight of her father – some saw the dark circles under Paul’s eyes and marked him as an out-of-control maniac.
But some recognized Paul’s haggard face for what Aliyah knew it to be: a man in torment.
Dad stood before Ruth, a full-grown man in a rumpled suit wringing his hands before a teenager. He muttered to himself, knowing all his excuses were insufficient.
Ruth headed back to the stable, leaning down to pick up her screwdriver. “I’ve got no time for this bullshit. Nothing you can say will–”
“I’m sorry.”
Ruth’s head snapped around as if he’d fired a gun at her. “Pardon me?”
Paul sucked in a breath between clamped teeth, forestalling tears. “I thought SMASH teams were… were brainwashed into government control. I thought destroying an individual body was like clipping a toenail. But…”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“I realize I was – I am – a murderer.”
Ruth looked down at him imperiously. “You see, Aliyah?”
“I killed a hundred and fifty people.” His voice quavered as he addressed the crowd. “And I… I killed SMASH operatives – soldiers – people – back when I dropped an earthquake on them to rescue me from a drug dealer. I killed more of them when I lured them into a trap Valentine had sprung – and I, I…
“Valentine said I didn’t take shortcuts. Killing Unimancers… it was a shortcut.”
“A shortcut?” Ruth rolled up her sleeves to punch Paul. “You stupid fucker, you–”
Paul fell to his knees.
“No court can convict me for these crimes.” He quivered but kept his spine straight, refusing to cloak himself in self-pity. “I would submit myself to the law, but there is none; every tribunal on Earth would hand me back to you. So I…”
He held out his wrists.
“I will accept whatever punishment you see fit to inflict, with the full understanding this won’t make up for the deaths you can lay at my feet.”
“You think we’ll excuse your crimes with a sentence?”
“No,” Paul said. “I think you’ll do whatever helps you heal. This isn’t about justice. It’s about fixing wrongs the best I can.”
Remember, Ruth, some feel we need his knowledge, the Mom-construct volunteered. If you can insert a copy of me into his brain, I can strip his memories, extracting the necessary discoveries we’d need to fix the broach. When that’s done, I could arrange it so all that’s left is remorse. He’d spend his life a suicidal amnesiac–
Finally, Mom, you came up with a good idea, Ruth thought.
I’m here to advise! the Mom-construct chirped.
Ruth turned to the collective.
This is what happens when you let a lone man follow his obsessions! she roared. Without our restraint, a sole ’mancer’s mania curdles to murder. He slaughtered a hundred and seventy-seven men because they got in his way. And what happens when we loosen our grip upon the world? What happens when more unrestrained ’mancers go free?
For the first time since Valentine’s death, the Unimancers reached consensus. Tsabo’s killing spree was proof no ’mancer could be trusted.
Ruth paused – and Aliyah felt that sliver of regret buried in her triumph. Condemning Paul would forever separate them.
But Ruth genuinely believed that Paul Tsabo was too dangerous to set free.
“Our sentence is this: we’ll scoop out your thoughts and turn you into a self-hating Wikipedia.”
She positioned herself to intercept him if he ran – but Paul hung his head.
“Will that help you heal?”
“Yes.” The Unimancers smothered Ruth’s regret with revenge…
“Sit back.” Ruth reached out with her powers. “We’re gonna take our time on this one.”
Come with me!
Aliyah hauled the Unimancer collective deep into the mansions of their memories.
Let me go! Ruth shrieked, panicked Paul Tsabo would escape to trigger more broaches. He gave himself over, it’s our right to do what we want with him!
Tell me why you’re punishing him. Aliyah dragged Ruth down a long hallway filled with locked doors.
Ruth flailed. Because he blinded himself to the damage he caused!
Aliyah found a sturdy locked door beneath black gossamer curtains – and tore it off its hinges.
…the agent whipped off her helmet to get a better look at the pudgy goth bitch she’d tackled.
“No worries, ma’am!” she told the squad leader, trying hard not to think about how she’d disobeyed a direct order. She’d been supposed to let the videogamemancer go.
Remember what we did to Valentine? Aliyah asked.
The air was worn thin from the magical battle; she heard buzzsects swarming. The slightest magic would trigger a broach; the squad leader had ordered them to stand down rather than risk instigating a broach on American soil.
But they couldn’t let this bitch get away with what she’d done to them.
You were furious because she’d interlaced her ’mancy with yours, Aliyah said. She’d used her videogamemancy to turn you into mechanical guards in a Metal Gear Solid game. Rather than admit she’d fused her magic with yours, you freaked out–
“We got her!”
The agent pinned the rogue ’mancer to the ground, grabbing for her Magiquell hypodermic. She had to knock this bitch out now, because–
The flux boiled off the videogamemancer, arced towards her boyfriend.
“No!” The flux gave the videogamemancer’s boyfriend strength to pull free from the other
squad member who’d been handcuffing him. He grabbed at her holster–
She shoved him backwards, realizing too late that was what the flux had intended all along.
The videogamemancer’s boyfriend tumbled backwards, impaling himself on jagged pipes–
Aliyah hauled Ruth out, furious. We murdered her boyfriend. How’s that make us any better?
We didn’t murder him! We–
Aliyah’s quiet fury stilled Ruth’s protests. We disobeyed orders to take on a ’mancer overflowing with flux. We got him killed.
Ruth thrashed. That’s just one m–
Every door in the hallway sprang open, flooding them with botched operations – all the times SMASH had pursued a hapless ’mancer until they choked on their flux. The butterflymancer’s glass house raining down glass shards, the dancemancer’s heart exploding from exertion, the hackomancer’s computer monitor exploding.
No, Ruth begged – but Aliyah opened hundreds more doors, filling the hivemind with the knowledge that yes, Valentine was right, hundreds of ’mancers had fought to the death rather than be absorbed. Literamancers burned to death in their own libraries, tattoomancers shredded by their needles, woodworkmancers beheaded by rogue sawblades…
Stop! Ruth cried, horrified by Aliyah’s mercilessness…
We killed hundreds, too. Aliyah sifted through Numbers’ statistics, threw them at the collective: 16.5% chance of self-destruction. We knew that. Yet we were comfortable killing one out of every six ’mancers as long as it swelled our ranks. And you call my dad a monster?
He killed us for nothing! Ruth cried.
Aliyah was merciless. He thought he was making a better world. Just like you.
Ruth wriggled under Aliyah’s logic. We took a risk to save people! Those poor solo ’mancers endangered themselves – we brought them someplace safe, where they could be cherished!
As she felt Aliyah’s exhilaration, Ruth realized too late this was exactly the argument Aliyah’d wanted her to make.
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