Human Sister

by Jim Bainbridge

  HUMAN SISTER

  a n o v e l b y

  Jim Bainbridge

  Silverthought Press

  Philadelphia | New York

  HUMAN SISTER

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2010 by Jim Bainbridge

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published in the United States by Silverthought Press

  www.silverthought.com

  Cover artwork by Paul Hughes

  www.paulevanhughes.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9841738-2-2 (print edition)

  Acknowledgements

  I am deeply grateful to the following readers who supplied encouragement and insightful comments along the way: Paulette Alden, Jean Bainbridge, Dan Fingarette, Jennifer Itell, Benjamin Matthew, Laura Pritchett, Amanda Rea, Jim Song, and Mark Wisniewski.

  Many thanks to Paul Evan Hughes for his sensitive, wise, and enthusiastic editing.

  Thanks also to the editors of the following journals in which portions of this book have appeared: LIT, Roanoke Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, South Carolina Review, Thin Air, and Two Review.

  * * *

  The quote from Martin Luther on page 261 is from Luther’s Werke, Erlanger ed., as quoted in Johannes Janssen, History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages, Vol. III, 211-212, trans. A. M. Christie (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1900).

  To my closest friend, Dan Fingarette,

  whose contributions to this book have been invaluable.

  HUMAN SISTER

  Sara

  On the morning of what turned out to be a foreboding New Year’s Eve, the man to my right on the flight home from Calgary began a friendly conversation as soon as I took my window seat. He was attractive, polite, articulate, and well-dressed in a light blue suit with red pinstripes. During the course of our short flight to San Francisco, he asked how old I was (he said that in three months his son would be sixteen, too), what I was studying in school (he thought that Grandpa’s style of homeschooling me was interesting, but didn’t I think I was missing something by not having any classmates?), where I lived (he seemed especially curious as to why I was being raised by my grandparents on a vineyard in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley rather than by my parents in Canada), and so on. But as the plane began its descent into the Bay Area, his questions became more pointed.

  Why was my finger in a cast?

  “I broke it.”

  What kind of work did my parents do?

  “They design robotic instruments, primarily for medical use.”

  Did I think it possible that there still were some androids in Canada?

  Here, I felt the conversation was veering off into dangerous territory. “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d like to listen to my voicemail before we land.”

  I adjusted the earphones and immediately heard the rhythmic push and glide, schzz… schzz… schzz…, of Elio’s blades on the smoothly frozen surface of Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. It had been ten days since I last hugged him as he was about to board a plane in Calgary, and after what seemed like such a long separation, merely the thought of him sent a brief schzz through my body.

  Elio began describing the frozen canal and the many people, old and young, who were out skating, bundled up in brightly colored winter clothes. His words “I miss you so much” and his heavy breathing came through heartwarmingly clear over the background sounds of children’s laughing and squealing in delight.

  The plane shuddered as it touched down. I clicked off the recording I’d listened to repeatedly during the past couple of days and looked out the window. San Francisco was overcast, wet, and cold on New Year’s Eve morning, but Elio had called about an hour earlier to say that he had just arrived from Amsterdam, and I imagined that inside the terminal he and Grandpa waited with warm arms.

  I had just begun to raise my hands to remove my earphones when I noticed that the man to my right was staring at me. I feared that he was intent on starting up our conversation where it had left off, so, trying not to be too impolite, I quickly turned my head to look out the window and clicked the recording back on.

  Elio said that winter in the Netherlands had so far been quite cold and everyone there was excited about the possibility of having the 200-kilometer Elfstedentocht ice-skating marathon in Friesland, a traditional event that hadn’t been held in over thirty years due to global warming. His former schoolmates wanted him to stay for the race, but he’d declined. “I’ll be home to celebrate New Year’s Eve with you, Sara,” he said, “Elfstedentocht or no Elfstedentocht.”

  People began standing in the aisle and reaching into the overhead bins to retrieve their belongings. I again clicked off the recording and, without looking in the direction of the man beside me, began packing my earphones into my carry-on bag.

  It was then I noticed the man wasn’t moving. I fumbled with my bag, arranging and rearranging its contents, all the while avoiding eye contact with him. When people from rows behind us began walking past our row and he still hadn’t made any effort to stand, I turned to him and said, “May I get up, please?”

  “There’s no rush, is there?”

  I clenched my carry-on in my lap and watched as the last passengers walked past our row of seats. “Please, sir. Grandpa will be waiting for me. Please let me out.”

  “Is Elio waiting for you, too?” A thin smile appeared on his face.

  I turned toward the window with a start. Elio’s name had not been mentioned during our conversation. Blood throbbed in my neck. Was I being kidnapped?

  As I’d rehearsed many times when I was a child, I pressed the “5” key on my teleband five times, then the “enter” key five times, all within five seconds. A tiny green light appeared above the time display, indicating that the band was signaling Sakato (our private security service), Grandpa and Grandma (on their telebands), and Gatekeeper that I perceived some immediate grave danger. Within seconds, Gatekeeper would alert Michael, who would deposit a catalyst along the invisible seams of the door in my bedroom wall. The door would open. Michael would quickly gather up everything indicative of his existence—his computer chips, nutriosynthesizer, bedpan—and with this cache in hand, he would crawl into the wall, and the door would close into its self-healing seams, ensuring his safe immurement until the threat was resolved.

  My teleband would also activate a transmitter that had been implanted in the fleshy part of the backside of my knee before I was first permitted to venture into the vineyard beyond the security wall surrounding my grandparents’ home. The transmitter would emit tracing signals until I was rescued—or until it was discovered by my captors.

  I reached up and pushed the red “call” button on the ceiling above my seat. The man didn’t move to stop me or to turn it off. Instead, he said, “You seem anxious. Are you hiding something?”

  “Who are you?” I asked, trying not to appear frightened. “What do you want?”

  “My name is Randy Smith. I’m an agent with the FBI.”

  “May I help you?” asked a flight attendant, who came from the back of the plane.

  “This man is holding me against my will.”

  The man smiled, calmly took a badge out of his suit coat pocket, and handed it to the flight attendant. “Randall Smith, Special Agent. A colleague and I would like to question this young lady about an important matter.”

  “Don’t believe him! I think he’s trying to
kidnap me!”

  “Please check with your security people,” the man said. “There should be another agent at the gate.”

  “Oh… well… I guess—” the attendant stammered. “Please. Both of you remain seated while I check this out.”

  “Take your time,” the man said in the same friendly, assuring voice he’d used at the beginning of our conversation.

  The flight attendant walked away, turning several times to glance back at us as she made her way to the front of the plane. The man beside me sat calmly, his hands folded in his lap. The flight attendant spoke with another flight attendant, pointed toward us, then disappeared behind a partition.

  “We’ll wait here until everyone figures out what’s what,” the man said. “Then we’ll go to a more comfortable place inside and talk.”

  I stared out the window, my mind spinning with questions: Where was Grandpa? Elio? Were they safe? Were they coming for me? What was happening? Then I heard sirens and, within seconds, saw flashing lights of several airport and private security cars racing toward the plane. Guards jumped out of the cars and crouched down, guns drawn. One man reading a scanner pointed up toward me. I put my face against the window, hoping to be seen.

  “I see your grandfather can still raise quite a ruckus when he puts his mind to it,” the man beside me said. “It’ll be interesting to trace how you alerted him.” He reclined back into his seat, and I began to fear that he was who he claimed to be—which meant, I knew, that he was someone from whom not even Grandpa could rescue me.

  I again pressed my face to the window and tried to control my anxiety by focusing on what was happening outside. Through the far right edge of the little window, I noticed a barrel-chested man in a dark gray suit descend narrow stairs leading from the jetway to the tarmac. Grandpa was right behind him, followed by Elio. The man in the suit headed toward the security car. He walked robustly, giving the impression of strength and conviction of purpose. He waved his arms and shouted something I couldn’t hear at the guard who held the scanner.

  Soon, the man, the guard, Grandpa, and Elio were huddled together. They talked animatedly for a short time before Elio lunged at the man in the suit. Grandpa grabbed Elio and pushed him toward the back door of the security car. Grandpa opened the car door and motioned for Elio to get in. Elio shook his head and stiffened his shoulders but finally complied.

  Grandpa walked back and resumed speaking with the two men. The security cars began leaving. Grandpa returned to the car in which Elio waited, opened the door, and pointed toward me. Elio stood up out of the car and, evidently catching sight of me, began waving. He was wearing the Italian-made jacket with a lapis lazuli pattern that friends in Amsterdam had given him for Christmas. He waved until Grandpa placed an arm around his shoulders and said something to him. Then he put his fingers to his lips, blew a kiss my way, and he and Grandpa got into the security car, which sped off.

  “There, now,” the man sitting beside me said. “It looks like everyone’s figured out what’s what.” He reached down and took hold of my carry-on. “I’ll take care of this for you. Please give me your boarding pass. I’ll have someone claim your checked luggage.”

  He took the bag onto his lap, and I handed him my pass. He stood and gestured for me to enter the aisle ahead of him. As I did, the man in the dark suit entered the plane. He walked briskly toward us and stopped in front of me.

  “This is Mr. Casey,” Smith said. “He’s also a member of the investigating team.”

  This short but powerful looking man with deep-set gray eyes acknowledged me with a minatory scowl. “I’ll take the bag,” he said. “Where’s the boarding pass?”

  Smith handed him the bag and the pass. Casey took them and walked away.

  I retrieved my jacket from the overhead bin and walked out of the plane ahead of Smith. In the jetway, a woman held open a door and indicated I should go through it. I stepped, trembling now, through the door, followed by Smith, and down the stairs leading to the airfield where Casey was waiting in a car.

  Casey drove us to another terminal where Smith and I got out of the car and entered a door marked IMMIGRATION: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Smith took me to a small room furnished in a manner appropriate for a doctor’s office: examination table, two chairs, body scanner, washbasin, red biohazard container, dispensers for examination gloves and paper towels, and cabinets below a working surface on which a computer monitor sat. In the far wall was another door.

  “Immigration didn’t give us the most comfortable room,” Smith said, “but we’ll make do. Hopefully, this won’t take long. Please, have a seat.”

  I hung my coat on the back of one of the chairs and sat. He asked whether I was comfortable. I nodded. He asked whether I would like something to drink. I shook my head. He moved the second chair in front of me and sat.

  “Well, then, let’s get started. This room is usually used to examine suspected smugglers who try to hide drugs and other illegal items in every conceivable part of their bodies. Kind of a cat-and-mouse game. Here, the cat always wins. But we don’t suspect you of anything like that. In fact, you can relax because we don’t suspect you of any wrongdoing whatsoever. We know you’re a nice, intelligent, and law-abiding young woman. Maybe someday you’ll be a famous scientist, like your grandfather.”

  I remembered something Grandpa had said about how government interrogations usually begin: They disguise themselves as flowers so the bees and butterflies will come.

  Smith uncrossed his legs and leaned toward me. “What we’re concerned about is that some people you might have come in contact with on your trip to Calgary may be involved in activities detrimental to the security of the United States. So, what I’d like to do is get a clear picture of everything you did and everyone you saw from the time you left here a couple of weeks ago. Okay?”

  I focused my eyes on his knees, which he then covered with his hands.

  “All right. Let’s start with your departure from here on Air Canada, flight 2711. You went with Elio. Right?”

  His fingers began tapping on his knees. Then, in a soothing voice he said, “Sara, please don’t be afraid to talk with me. I’m not trying to get you or Elio in any kind of trouble. I’m simply asking for your help.”

  I didn’t look up. He recrossed his legs.

  “Okay, let’s move on. When you arrived in Calgary, you were picked up by your parents, right?”

  I kept my gaze frozen on one of his knees, and my mind concentrated on one thought: No matter what, I’ll give no response.

  He stood and began pacing. “Come, come, now. I like you. We had a nice chat on the plane. I have a boy nearly your age. I know you’re inclined to resist authority at your age, but you want to do the right thing, don’t you?”

  I fixed my eyes on a leg of his chair.

  “Sara, you’re a U.S. citizen, just like me, and one of the things we have to do, whether we like it or not, is abide by the laws of our country, laws that were created and approved by people like you and me. One of those laws is that we must cooperate with FBI investigations, whether we understand and agree with their purposes or not. You’re an intelligent young woman. You understand that.” He paused a moment. “Sara, you must talk with me. If you don’t, Casey will come in here and take over. Neither one of us wants that to happen, I assure you.”

  I moved deeper into calmness and into my conviction not to answer.

  “All right. I know you’re a real smart kid, so you know why we’re here and want me just to get to the point. My boy tells me that all the time. ‘Dad, you're home now. Don't turn everything into an investigation. Just get to the point.’” He chuckled. “That's another thing about you teenagers that's so funny—you have all the time in the world, but you're so impatient. Right?”

  I continued detaching myself from the situation, finding stillness in my slow, steady breathing.

  “Okay. I’ll get to the point. We’re concerned about the activities of androids in Canada. We know one of them yo
u called ‘First Brother’ frequently visited you when you were a child. We also know your parents smuggled it and another android out of the country eight years ago. Well, ‘smuggled’ perhaps isn’t the right word. It was arguably legal back then. Anyway, we’re not concerned about that. We’re concerned about what those androids are doing now. Did you meet with this First Brother or any other android on your visit to Calgary?”

  His words merely drifted through me.

  “Sara, I want you to understand something. Personally, I don’t dislike androids. So far, they seem to have behaved themselves. But as I said, I’m a U.S. citizen like you, so I have to abide by the laws, just as you do, as everyone does. I’m also a government employee who has to help enforce the laws. You understand that, don’t you?”

  You can no more draw me in, I thought, than radio waves can make the trees sing.

  “I want you to understand how I feel because I like you and respect your opinions, even the ones differing from the majority of Americans. You see, I don’t much care for the anti-android laws either, but like you, I have no choice except to respect them. If we in the FBI could pick and choose which laws to enforce and which laws not to enforce, we would effectively be making or vetoing the laws of the land. We would be, in effect, a quasi-legislature. Now, I don’t think you would want the FBI making the laws of the land, would you? I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

  Remember Nuremberg, I thought.

  Smith sat down on his chair, then extended his hands, palms up. “Sara, take my hands. Please. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  I saw no harm in this and laid my palms on top of his. In my mind I saw a white butterfly, its wings aquiver, light on a pink rose petal.

  “Look at me, please.”

  I looked up at him. When our eyes met, he smiled. Had I met him under normal circumstances, I would have felt that he was a kind man. Perhaps he was.