Alt.History 101 (Alt.Chronicles)

by Ken Liu

  Jo moaned in the policemens’ arms.

  “What were you saying to Jo?”

  “You mean Ms. Candy?” He spared a glance her way and pulled the sleeves of his shirt tight beneath his jacket. “We’ve set things right, this... carnival of hers will be cleared out.”

  “What arrangement?”

  My father’s face flushed and his eyes flicked up as if he were avoiding looking at me.

  “What arrangement?”

  “Enough.” He puffed his cheeks.

  “Calvin...” Jo groaned. “Let the girl stay.”

  He ignored her and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward the door. “Pants on a daughter of mine. I certainly made the right decision about the Registry. What would a boy in good standing think of a girl like you?”

  “Calvin,” Jo called out, pulling herself to standing. The police stayed close, as if they expected her to launch across the room at him. “Let her stay. She’s nothing to you, you don’t need her.”

  “She belongs to me and the entire cornerstone of my allowing you this experiment was for you to leave my family alone. But you brought this into my home. You allowed Hwei to undermine me under my own roof! Now she’s in prison awaiting trial for crimes against her sex, kidnapping, and accomplice to murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “How else could I explain the death of Leda and the disappearansce of Helen other than a break in and attack on my home? Hwei set all this up, her guilt is as sure as if she’d pulled the trigger herself.”

  “I didn’t know who she was when I agreed to take her. But she’s here now.”

  “Don’t you get it?” My father dropped his hold on me and approached Jo. Outside I heard gunshots and screaming. “This is over. The building is being demolished, your farm has already been raided, your crops burned. I couldn’t protect you from this if I wanted to, and I’m not particularly inclined to help you anyway.”

  “Calvin, how could you? What about all the people?”

  “You should have thought of them before you took her in.”

  “All this is because of me?” I asked.

  “No, Helen,” Jo said, the blood from her split lip staining the corner of her mouth. “This is entirely your father’s doing. We’ve offended his ego.”

  “Josephine, watch your mouth or I’ll have you executed this time.”

  “No you won’t. You’re a coward. Ba Wong!” She spit a bloody glob in his direction. “You’re far too afraid to take me in and be exposed for your involvement.”

  “You’re right.” He pulled a pistol from inside his pocket and aimed at her head. “I should have never indulged you in the first place, Sister.”

  He pulled the trigger. Shards of bone, brains, and blood splattered the wall behind her.

  I stared, open mouthed, a shriek suffocated in my horror.

  “Clean that up,” My father said to the guard holding Jo’s limp body.

  “What should we put on the report, sir?”

  “She went mad, attacked the Deputy Constable. As you can imagine, I had no choice.”

  “Yes sir,” the first guard said, but the second paled and stared at me, confusion and pain etched on his Asian features. I knew that look. I’d had it on my face only hours ago. It was the haunted look of someone’s humanity awakening to the injustice around them; the look of one who might do something drastic like jump out a window.

  My father dug his fingers into my arm and led me from the room. Outside, children cried and men were corralled into police cars. I tried to stop and look around but he dragged me, his stronger body forcing my compliance. On the way to the car, I passed by a pile of bodies. All those with Negro blood had been shot. I searched for Manuel but didn’t see him in the jumble, only dark hands, some holding the fingers of the person next to them, now lifeless.

  The sun glared down upon the scene around us with shame.

  My father shoved me into the backseat and climbed in after me. He held the handgun he’d used to shoot Jo—his sister—in his lap.

  “Mr. Zhang, take us home,” he commanded via the intercom.

  “Your mother’s funeral is the day after tomorrow. I expect you to be there in full veils. Mr. Zhang will escort you there and home. You will not be permitted to attend the mourning gathering.”

  I nodded, holding my hands in my lap.

  “There will be no talk of this with your siblings, not of your mother, not of Mother Hwei, and certainly not of whatever perversion you witnessed here.”

  When I didn’t respond he reached over and took my hand in his own.

  The feeling of his skin against mine caused me to shudder but I didn’t pull away. What would he do to me if I disobeyed him? This man who I had loved as my father had killed his own sister and sent a wife to prison for nothing more than wanting a better life for her daughter. I kept my silence on the way home and for the next week I stayed in the maid’s quarters, forbidden to return to the rooms I shared with my brothers and sisters. I ate only what Mr. Zhang placed in front of me and I didn’t utter a word.

  After my mother’s funeral, my father sent Mr. Zhang for me.

  I ignored his request and sat on the edge of my bed, refusing to acknowledge Mr. Zhang’s presence or words as he had done to me for so many years. When he left, tears streamed down my face as I mourned the life of my mother. A woman who had sacrificed everything to give me a chance at freedom and now here I was, sitting and waiting. No better than I had been before her death. In my mind I played every word Jo and Betty said to me during my short time with them as well as my mother’s dying words: No more crying, no more agreeing. You are stronger and smarter than you can ever imagine.

  After a month my hair grew enough that First Mother wanted to cut it. As my hair grew, so did my indignation and fury. It bubbled up inside me each day I stared at the wall across from the bed. I remained locked in the maid’s room until I complied with my father’s request to visit him in his study. Each time Mr. Zhang relayed the same demand and I ignored him with stoic determination.

  “You may not listen to your father but you will listen to me, girl. I’m not above beating you,” First Mother threatened as I ignored her presence.

  I stood without a word, took the scissors and locked myself in the bathroom.

  “Helen! Let me in.”

  “I’m just cutting it First Mother. I’m not about to slit my wrists.”

  Her gasp from the other side of the door gave me my first genuine smile since I witnessed Jo’s execution.

  I trimmed the sides and back close to my head. I snipped my ear and a few drops of blood fell to the skirts I’d been issued to wear. On the top, I left it longer, brushing it forward so it fell to my brows. Not long enough yet, but my reflection appeared both more like the me I remembered and like Jo. For the first time I noticed my eyes weren’t just a nondescript hazel, they also had flecks of gray.

  I tucked the scissors into the back of my waistband and strode out past a startled First Mother. I grabbed the vest I’d been sewing from the work table and pulled it on, buttoning it tight across my chest.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I need to have a conversation with my father,” I said as I headed out of the work rooms for one final time.

  About Pavarti K. Tyler

  Award-winning author of multi-cultural and transgressive literature, Pavarti K Tyler is usually found with Doc Martens strapped on over fishnets, and a girlish giggle as easy and likely as a throaty guffaw. She is an artist, wife, mother, and number cruncher. She graduated Smith College in 1999 with a degree in Theatre. After graduation, she moved to New York, where she worked as a Dramaturge, Assistant Director, and Production Manager on productions both on and off Broadway. Later, Pavarti went to work in the finance industry at several international law firms. She now lives with her husband, two daughters, and two terribly behaved dogs. She keeps busy working with fabulous authors as the Director of Marketing at Novel Publicity, and penning her next genre-bending
novel.

  The best way to stay up to date with Pavarti is to join her mailing list. If you do, she’ll even send you a free short story! Sign up at http://eepurl.com/f1iL5

  Follow her at www.PavartiKTyler.com

  Renegat

  by Logan Thomas Snyder

  IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE it’s been over a year since the bombs fell. That mankind could be so hopelessly cruel as to wipe out thousands of years of shared history in the span of a single evening.

  Nobody knows why our two countries unleashed their arsenals upon one another that fateful day. There are theories, of course. Rogue operators, technical malfunctions, even something so benign as a garbled transmission; the blame has been laid at the feet of any number of causes, though those are by far the top three.

  There is still so much about the events leading up to that day that we do not know. What we do know, all of us—what we are certain of—is that on November 11, 1983, America and the Soviet Union settled their decades-old conflict amid an atomizing storm of unearthly fury.

  The Cold War was over, and with it, the world reborn of fire and ash.

  The Americans rounded us up quickly after word of the attack spread. Herded us onto trains and buses under armed guard and sent us far from the places we knew and the people we cared about. Whatever became of my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, I’ll likely never know.

  The bus I found myself on took me to central Wyoming. Precisely where, I cannot say. No one has been allowed to leave the camp since we arrived, and there are no points of reference other than guard towers and the empty horizon all around.

  The camps went up fast. Ours was already completed when we arrived, leading many to conclude the Americans had advanced knowledge of the attack. Looking for all the world like an empty outpost in an alien desert, the camp’s population swelled quickly upon our arrival. There proved to be no shortage of our people to occupy all that unused space, though; the Americans made certain of that.

  There are over one hundred tents in my camp. With ten people to a tent, that makes for one thousand of us, give or take. The tents themselves are as unremarkable as you might expect. Just row after row situated around a square of open space about the size of a city block. A towering flagpole anchors the square. Every morning, the guards raise the massive banner to half-staff, never an inch below. Of the fifty stars on the flag, twenty are blacked out—one for each of the American states lost as a result of the Motherland’s failed counterattack. They raise the flag not just to mourn, we know, but to remind us that in their eyes we are all considered guilty by association.

  On a good day, conditions can be charitably described as filthy. There is no privacy within the tents, and little guarding against the leering eyes of those passing outside. That alone might be barely tolerable, but it does not end there. The tents are searched frequently and at random, with no regard for those living in them or what precious few belongings they have left. There is no provocation or warrant required for these searches, only the passing whims of bored and petty guards. Always these searches are justified in the name of security, though rarely do they turn up any actual contraband or conspiracy.

  Worse than any of the depredations the Americans force upon us, though, are those we inflict upon ourselves. Instead of acting out of mutual interest, too many of our people allow themselves to be governed only by naked self-interest. Some actively aid the Americans, accepting appointments among the Residents’ Watch that afford them a measure of benefits and freedom. Most of the residents despise the Watch, but rarely do its members abuse what little power they are allowed. In fact, I’ve often thought that many of them accept their positions out of a belief that they can police their own more compassionately than the Americans. However misplaced that belief may be, I can admire, even respect the place it comes from.

  It’s the self-appointed hardliners that I have no respect or admiration for. Touting themselves as defenders of the Motherland, they roam the camp in packs like yapping dogs, harassing and intimidating anyone they deem to have failed in their duty as Russians. As proud as I am that my father stood by our heritage as staunchly as our innocence, I understand why so many expats claimed to trace their roots to Chechnya, Lithuania, Ukraine, or any of the other now-scarred and obliterated former bloc countries. I’m no renegat, but nor do I choose to hold people in contempt for bad decisions borne out of difficult times.

  For others, contempt is all they know now.

  Arkedy Verat is the man in my section of the camp that has taken it upon himself to wear that broken crown. It’s hardly his physical size that makes Arkedy so intimidating (even at five-foot-nine, I stand a head above the man) but rather his fierce, hair-trigger temper. To say the man is easily provoked would be an understatement. Rather, he seems to exist in a constant state of provocation, waiting for any perceived slight of his defective character or inferior size to touch off a seismic response.

  My father used to say that some people strive for, even thrive in times of mayhem and uncertainty. Arkedy Verat is the very definition of such a person. What’s worse, the camp has no shortage of young, disaffected men for him and his ilk to woo as potential disciples. I was even approached once. In another time and place, the fact that I refused to compromise my principles would have earned me respect and distance. In this place, though, all is upended. In some ways being a refuser is worse than being a renegat. Only the fact that I don’t back down easy has bought me a little leeway. How much longer that will last, I can’t really say.

  Especially when I turn the corner to find none other than Arkedy and three of his flunkies doing what they do best. Today they are hassling Irena, a girl from a few tents over. I know her only in passing, but I feel for her nonetheless. She’s a small, shy girl, not the type to stand up for herself, and all she wants is to be on her way. She’s struggling with a basket of her tent’s laundry, a task that’s complicated by the way Arkedy and his friends surround her. She tries to ignore them, but they block her passage, calling her a slut and worse. One of the men spits at her, pumping his crotch lewdly.

  The sight enrages me. In a flash I cross the dusty lane, running straight at the spitting man. (I do this sort of thing a lot, I think, far too late for it to do any real good.) Plowing into the man, we tumble to the hard-packed earth. He takes the brunt of it and I manage to get in a few solid blows before several sets of hands take hold of me, pulling me off the man. The scene has quickly become a wild scrum and we’re all thrashing about, a twisted whirlwind of limbs everyone else is trying to avoid, when the heavy crack of a rifle brings the whole thing to a stop.

  “That’ll be enough of that, then,” Sergeant Dennehy says.

  Dennehy is not a man to be trifled with. This much is known throughout the camp, and the matter is settled that quickly, no explanation or adjudication required. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

  Not that any of us are complaining. Another guard might have thrown us in the stockades or worse. Dennehy shuffles us along, letting us all know in that ineffable way of his that he does not want to have to break us up a second time. We’ll see how that works out in the long run.

  Irena seems to have her own ideas, at least so far as the short run is concerned. “Thank you, Anatoly,” she says, drifting closer to my side. “Would you mind walking me back to my tent?”

  There’s no doubt that Irena is a lovely girl. There’s even less doubt that she deserves the scorn of a scumbag like Arkedy Verat. Irena and I may be roughly the same age, but she’s lived in America nearly her entire life. Her only crime is that she shares her ancestors’ blood, and yet she seems to regard me as if I might somehow be the one to save her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here any more than the rest of us. Unlike most of us, she is able to make the least sense of it.

  “I… of course not,” I say. “After you.”

  I have to admit, my walk with Irena is pleasant and, even better, uneventful. After a few minutes we arrive at her tent and she passes th
e laundry inside.

  “Well, thanks again,” she says.

  Not knowing how else to answer, I say, “My pleasure.”

  That’s when she tries to kiss me. It’s a glancing thing, easy to turn my lips from, but I can see she’s crestfallen nonetheless. I can’t blame her, even if the attraction isn’t mutual. Everyone here is looking for a little comfort in whatever form it comes.

  “Sorry,” she says, playing it off like an awkward stumble when I don’t return her affection. “I must have stepped on a rock. Thanks you again for helping me out back there.”

  I nod, trying not to blush. I don’t want her to feel any more embarrassed than she is already, especially when any number of eyes are assuredly upon us. “I, ah… yeah. Just doing what anyone would do, I guess. You’re welcome.”

  And that’s how we part, on that supremely awkward note. I’ve barely turned the corner back to my tent when I’m swarmed by a small gaggle of fellows, all wondering what’s happening with Irena and I. Friends and nothing more, I say, to their groaning distaste.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Have you even tried to get it wet since we’ve been in here?”

  “If you don’t snatch her up, it won’t be long until she’s making eyes at someone else.”

  The pealing blast of a trumpet signals the changing of the guard. It proves a welcome distraction from talk of my sex life (or lack thereof). As usual, camp activity grinds to a halt as the Americans demonstrate their daily show of force. As with any prison, we outnumber our guards nearly ten to one, but they are so well armed—and we so demoralized and undernourished—that any attempt to rebel would be roundly, violently rebuffed.

  The snipers in the towers ringing the camp are on high alert as the column of soldiers files through the center of camp three abreast. At each block of tents, a dozen soldiers peels off left or right and take their places. So it continues until the column comes to its inevitable end. Another trumpet blast signals the end of the changing of the guard. Slowly but surely, the rhythms of the camp resume.