Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Lewis

  “What we are doing is preserving hope, Lewis. And peace. We know what comes from humanity’s tendencies to form communities . . .” Elza went on, trying to convince me. Why was it so important to her, to all of them?

  I felt tired. I had come here, hoping for something else.

  But I was already as caught up in it as her. “Don’t you exist in a community?”

  “It doesn’t set us apart from them! We are part of their world, we work with them, live with them . . .”

  The investigator in me asked before I could think of the consequences: “Find friends in them, like you did with Anna?”

  Her gaze dropped back to her coffee.

  To hide sorrow, I told myself. That’s all.

  “We have no right to choose peace for them. Peace comes with a price. They don’t want to pay that price!” I told Elza, hoping she understood the warning, at least.

  But all she listened to was my attack on her precious principles.

  “They do not know, Lewis!”

  “Yes! Exactly! They will never know if they don’t learn.”

  “You swore, don’t you remember? You swore never again.”

  “That’s our family,” I spat bitterly. “They never want to remember, never want to forget, never want to trust humanity to know how they are meddling in everyone’s life, shaping them in our purpose!”

  I had spent the previous hour in the Senate’s archive room, watching the record of yesterday’s session. Roland’s mother had been scheduled to speak on the proposed Orealian variation.

  The Orealian’s constitution stated that all citizens were equal before the law, but that citizens were different from one another. In the smaller planet’s case, it had to do with the differences between those who chose to live underwater and those who lived on satellites orbiting the planet’s moon. First-Sonj had proposed to use this as a provisional agreement in the debate on Longers.

  She hadn’t been there to defend her position, though, too preoccupied with her son.

  But her absence and its consequential rejection of her proposal weren’t proof, and I needed proof.

  I wanted not to find proof. Maybe I had misread her scarf’s colors, and the way she had knotted it. Maybe they had changed the marks Grandmother taught us.

  As if the Exiles knew what change was.

  “Why does it have to be this way, Elza?” I cried out, frustrated beyond measure, caught between the same fight we had before I left, and my need to convince myself this case had nothing to do with the family, with her.

  She’s still wearing her damn scarf!

  “Don’t you think it’s wrong that the families can’t even question their right to choose for everyone else?” I tried to drown my own thoughts in words. “They commit their lives only to shaping others’! You won’t commit, not even to . . .” to me “to something else, closed up in your nevermores. It’s a prison, don’t you see?”

  Elza had changed, in ten years, had learned to calm down. For whom?

  “You don’t understand,” she said, in a soft, nonjudg mental voice that hurt. She leaned forward, and I found myself inches from her. “We’re not trying to shut them from their own experience. We’re offering a prayer that never again will a people have to exile a part of their own in order to find peace.”

  She was interrupted by a soft, continuous beep.

  I reached for my palmputer, hesitated for a second. Before I could switch it off, she said, “Go on. It must be important.”

  She was leaning back in her chair, her gaze lost on the whirling of energy of our privacy screen.

  I hooked my palm to the tabletop, and started reading.

  It was Anna Long-Karangel’s autopsy report.

  Before I could stop myself, I took her hand in mine.

  She looked so calm, so far away. Did she know I’d just received the proof I needed?

  “Why did you come here, Lewis?” she asked, softly, her gaze finally meeting mine.

  She knows.

  “Because a murder has been committed,” I lied.

  Her fingers traced silent words, on my palm. Do what you have to do.

  Aloud, she urged me, her calm, resigned voice making a lie of her attempt: “Once you were one of us, you shared our goals. You swore, on the family fire . . .”

  In one hand, I held the report, in the other, her fingers still caressed mine, aimlessly.

  “I never betrayed it, Els. But I think you did. You all did. Generation after generation we listened to our history, and never heard the real, central point. . . .”

  Common Memory

  “Today, you are going to hear the story behind every tale I ever told you,” Grandmother had said, on that long-ago evening, after the oaths had been sworn by the twenty-three young men and women. “Like every beginning, it starts with an ending.”

  Grandmother had stopped there, and they had wondered if she was all right. She seemed sad and resigned. She hushed their concern with a familiar, impatient gesture.

  “At the beginning there was no family like ours and the others you’ve met. It was a long, long time ago. Humanity was just starting to think of itself as one. Never before had all the people known how much of one, unique kind they were, never before had they been so connected to each other beyond their differences. And yet it came to pass that humanity fought itself like it never had before, relentlessly. You know the history of that time already, you’ve been taught by the families the many wars that almost destroyed this fragile awareness of being, beyond boundaries, of one race.

  “By then the stars were within reach; it didn’t change everything, but it changed enough.”

  Grandmother cleared her throat. The fire crackled in the hearth. Incense still hung in the air, even though the oath ceremony had taken place hours ago.

  Elza and Lewis found each other’s hands, in the semi-darkness, and neither felt fear when Grandmother spoke again, in her storyteller’s voice.

  “The first wave of humanity left Earth, ship by ship. One of them was the Exile. Most launches were government approved and scientifically planned. This particular launch had been decided by politicians, prepared by scientists, but in perfect secrecy. That was the first vow. And it was kept.

  “The Exile was the finest ship. Born of a divided country, it had benefited from the technological knowledge only a civil war could breed; it also carried all the knowledge available then in its data banks. Even records on the conflict had been added to it, every opinion, every interpretation of events. Only one piece of information was withheld from the future settlers: from which side of the conflict they came.

  “For, you see, the three thousand and fifty who embarked on the Exile came in equal measure from both sides of the conflict. They were all volunteers. They all swore ‘Nevermore,’ and that was the second vow. Like the first, it was kept. For all of them, it was their only memory, upon waking in deep space. From the moment they had stepped on the ship, the rest of their memories had been erased and all they knew of their previous selves was that they had chosen to become part of the Exile tribe.

  “They went to the stars as one, seeking a world to call their own.

  “But during their trip, some found another goal. And that was the third oath you swore today.”

  Grandmother closed her eyes, briefly. When she opened them again, Lewis and Elza thought they saw tears. But Grandmother’s voice was as strong as ever. “The families were born. What came after that is a tale of hide in plain sight and seek a particular path. You already know part of it. Now, if you so choose, you will learn the rest. Now, the choice is yours. Will you have your memory erased, and become part of the rest of humanity, or will you remain an exile, hidden in sight, a guardian of exiles’ memories, against the future?”

  None chose to have their memories erased. They were eager to learn more about the ties and purposes that bound their community together.

  They would also start to understand the price of silence and protectio
n, wrapped tightly like the strongest embrace around them, one that would turn deadly only to protect its dream—and its existence. Because to break their solemn vow would mean betraying everything they had grown up holding dear.

  Elza

  “It was about preserving life, first and foremost, Els. We forgot that over the generations.” Lewis said softly.

  The memories, the privacy screen . . . those were not enough to hold the world at bay.

  He was clinging to his palmputer. He had tapped a short message before switching it off, and had taken up our conversation where he had left it.

  I chose to pretend, too, for a little while longer, that it was just the two of us, and I argued back: “That’s what we do: preserve life! And more! Preserve humanity’s integrity!”

  “By killing an innocent woman just so her lover’s mother wouldn’t be in the Senate to defend her proposal on differentiating the Longers before the law?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “She might have changed her politics, upon knowing Anna better!” Lewis pressed on.

  “She wouldn’t have! They wanted to get married! The Lawriter said if they weren’t, if Roland kept Anna as a discreet concubine, as it should be, she wouldn’t oppose them, but that sterile unions were illegal!”

  “Then her son would have changed . . .”

  “Too late! Not certain!”

  He looked at me for a long, long time. I thought I recognized that face. He was thinking deep, circling thoughts.

  Yet, when he had disappeared without a word, without a trace, I had been the first surprised.

  What do I know of his face, really? What of his loyalties?

  He asked, very slowly, carefully, “But now . . . everyone is aware of their affair. It’s all over the news, the crushed lover, ready to commit suicide because his beloved had been murdered by some Longer-hater, her fragile neck so easily cut up in the symbol for ‘no.’ Everyone sees it as a new version of Romeo and Juliet. They forget the union would have been a childless one, in a time of demographic crisis.”

  “The possible rift is being sealed.”

  My voice lacked conviction. I was weary beyond words.

  “But how many have you created?”

  I watched him, not understanding his anger. “Do you think I created new differences between humans . . . ?” The thought was frightening.

  “No!”

  “You don’t make sense, Lewis.”

  “I’m not talking about humanity, I’m talking about its reality, about humans. How many people’s hearts have you ripped open with one death? Don’t you know that we never get over grief, we just learn to live with it?”

  “I know.”

  Even when the dead rise up again, like you. . . .

  The screen around us went down. Our half hour of privacy was up, the tabletop informed me uselessly.

  Guards, in the blue and silver of the Force, were waiting for us on the other side.

  I reached for my scarf, fiddled with it while Lewis, in a monochord voice, read me my rights.

  When they took me, my scarf was completely red, tied on the left side with two knots. My hands were empty of rings.

  Mission accomplished—agent compromised—don’t risk a rescue.

  Lewis

  The interrogation room was small and gray. A concrete table, not quite large enough for two, one recorder, and two chairs. Her hands, thoughtlessly stroking the place where a dragon ring had been, were mere centimeters from mine on the table. Soon, my boss would come, would demand to know how the interrogation was going, would ask for the tape I hadn’t switched on yet.

  She spoke before I did, before I could speak.

  “I never thought you’d give me away, Lewis.”

  I didn’t. You did.

  But I didn’t answer her. Because she didn’t mean the murder. She was thanking me for keeping my oath, protecting the family’s existence.

  “Why did you do it, Elza? I thought she was your friend.”

  If I expected tears, I was disappointed. She was still the same girl I had grown up with. Harsher lines around the mouth deepened as she raised her chin, shadows veiled her eyes, but she faced me straight and square. “She was. The best I ever had.”

  “Then why? Why!”

  “Not how, why?” Her voice had a faraway quality, as if she wondered out loud, but didn’t expect an answer. Or didn’t care anymore. “And yet it’s the second one you should know the answer to.”

  “I know how,” I told her. “We found traces of coffee in her veins. It was mixed with a slow poison. You were seen offering her a special brand of coffee, on Friday, when you left. Even Magyd heard you.”

  That’s how you got caught. Not why.

  I didn’t ask her again, though. It was time to play the game.

  I switched the recorder on.

  She put on a good fight, as if she didn’t want to speak, then, reluctantly, with a voice not her own, she painted a credible story, one of jealousy and envy.

  Still the same girl. Ready to sacrifice everything for an oath. And blind enough to think I’m allowing her to do so for the sake of that oath.

  Elza

  I was alone in my cell, and all the others in Death’s corridor were empty. In less than three days, they would fill the place with a toxic, painless gas. Roland’s mother had told me it was too good for me. Roland had said nothing.

  Sofia had cried, but remained true to the oath. Trying to rescue me would endanger them all.

  I hadn’t seen Lewis since my interrogation. But no one had come in search of my brethren, and no one had been suspicious of Sofia’s visits, during the short trial. She hadn’t spoken of the Investigator who was responsible for my arrest.

  Everyone was safe.

  When they had brought me here, this morning, I had welcomed the silence, the loneliness. I came believing this meeting with death would feel like a homecoming, after years as the knife and Edge of our family.

  But death . . . my own death . . . How can I leave the others with the burden, how can I trust them. . . .

  I stopped my thoughts, before they went any further. It was too late.

  They say we shed masks before death. I hadn’t realized they meant masks we didn’t know from skin before shedding them.

  I felt sick, trapped, but retching, giving in to the body’s pain didn’t stop the thoughts, the feelings.

  Death crowded me, choked me, and even that was an affirmation of life.

  I don’t want to go!

  I had slept, after hours of crying and screaming in the dark, my dignity saved only by the soundproof walls of my cell, the emptiness of the place.

  Morning had come through the window just as I opened gritty, puffy eyes.

  I’m almost dead. This time, the thought rang empty in my tired bones, my too-tight skin.

  The words were on my lips before I was aware of it.

  I repeated them, over and over, keeping through the meaningless, repetitive sound nausea and panic at bay.

  Lewis

  I locked the first door, and started down the long corridor that led to her cell. I stopped, the different keys in my hand, sorted through them briefly and put the others back in my vest pocket. With a trembling hand, I opened her cell. Her voice greeted me, with familiar words.

  For a second, I actually wondered why I couldn’t hear the others. But that had been years before, before we were told the story of the Exiles, before words pieced together the dreams and beliefs we grew up with into a net of obligations and choices that shouldn’t have been ours to bear nor make.

  I wanted to leave, wondered why I was pouring salt on such an old wound, and took one step forward.

  The door closed silently behind me.

  She didn’t stop.

  Those words . . . I will never betray the trust, the name, the shelter of my tribe.

  Why was she throwing those words at me?

  I will never forget, I will never remember.

  She stood, repeati
ng the oath I had broken. I waited for her to make a move, anger stopping the words I had come here to say.

  When her voice died out and she was still standing by the window, I finally understood that she hadn’t been aware of my presence. I turned on my heels, ready to leave.

  “Lewis?”

  Her voice sounded so fragile. Uncertain.

  I couldn’t help it. I turned back and took three, quick steps, until she was one breath away. My fists were clenched, at my sides.

  Her black, long hair hung on her smooth, brown shoulders. Her face was turned toward mine.

  “I had to come,” I told us both.

  “Thank you for what you did.”

  She seemed smaller somehow. Almost gone.

  “You were wrong, Elza,” I told her.

  “We just disagree . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant. About me forsaking our cause. I just don’t serve it the same way you do. Life . . .”

  I opened my hand. The key had made a small indent mark on my palm. I could feel my flesh more tender under its light weight.

  “Come with me, Els.”

  She closed her hand over mine. Her head nodded, once, twice, and my heart started beating again.

  “I can’t,” was what she said. It took three more heartbeats for her words to sink in.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t. I’m already too much of a liability for our family. If I disappear, they might follow the trail. . . .”

  I didn’t want to feel anymore, not anger and despair anyway.

  My hands captured her face and I drowned in her.

  The key fell at our feet.

  Against her swollen, teasing lips, I whispered, “I missed you. So much.”

  “You’re not alone anymore,” she murmured, and I wondered how such a strange woman could read my heart so easily. Her shoulders were as smooth as I remembered them under my thumbs. Hungry for her, for the eternity of her, I captured her lips again with mine, let my hands settle on her waist until she melted into me.