The Forever Watch

by David Ramirez

  More than anyone else I know, Bullet mixes spoken speech and Implant messages and direct telepathy. In one moment, he thinks to us, Aliens behind the crazy tech of this ship that nobody could really explain to us in school? Without missing a beat, he says out loud, “Well. It just figures.” Then he shifts to the Implant to take advantage of being able to attach emotional data from his memories to these silent words in a neat, enclosed bubble: Mincemeat, people dying in secret, the others left behind who are never allowed to know—that wrecks me.

  I stir round and round the peanuts in the little dish in front of me. Our new friend is looking more solid and steady than that night he found us, red-eyed, exhausted. Maybe it’s the knowledge that he is not alone in this. He has never broken down since that first night.

  He looks naturally cheerful, but is just a little bit thinner every time I see him, the shadows under his eyes just a little deeper. Psychometry could be a fun trick in school, around friends. But touching things involved in violence and blood? I think of him walking in all those places, twitching, shuddering when he has to take in psychic impressions by touch, feeling the raw pain, the confused terror.

  “Don’t worry about it. I wish I could do more.”

  “You’re doing plenty, something that Hana and I can’t. You can differentiate the false positives the Monster finds on the Web from legitimate incidents and fill in details that just aren’t in the Network at all.”

  “Look,” Bullet says. I refuse to believe it is Ministry-sponsored assassination.

  “Why?”

  He sighs and drinks his beer, which went flat twenty minutes ago. His hands start to shake as he lowers the glass to the table, and Bullet writes his latest find into our minds. Three nights ago, a little girl in the bathroom at Edo Primary School. There is the impression of confusion, terror, blood.

  And pain that leaves me gasping and Barrens gripping the table’s edge so hard, it creaks, close to breaking.

  “Probably,” Bullet says, after giving us some minutes to collect ourselves, “there must have been some major cleaning up afterwards, because when I asked her classmates, they all thought she’d been transferred to another district school.” Why would anyone assassinate a child? What could she have possibly done? And then the cleanup cost includes Adjustments of other children?

  He swallows down the last of his beer, emptying half the stein in one long, endless swallow.

  Barrens is silent. This is not the first child Mincemeat victim we’ve found—Callahan’s files had Keeper Sullivan’s locked-room mystery. But it’s the first one confirmed by someone else using another method. It’s not just data or possibly distorted memories recovered by my program anymore, not with the terrible sense impressions Bullet can draw from the scene of a death.

  Oh, that’s not enough to convince my suspicious bear, my watchful lion. I don’t have to read his mind to know his thoughts, that maybe the child read the wrong book or was exposed to the wrong memory by a careless Keeper. He thinks the Ministries will not stop at anything if they believe they are justified.

  And I, I ache inside, remembering, wondering about the child I will never know. Yes. How can anyone justify killing a child when so few people are left at all?

  How many more will die like this? Can we really do anything?

  Bullet leaves after that. For now, we’re done syncing up our map of death.

  In between these sessions, there is work and meeting friends and everything that is normal life.

  The Yule festivities rise to their annual apex, with caroling kids, grand parties, and snow festivals with ice-carving contests in the parks.

  I talk Barrens into accompanying me to the party at the new home that Lyn and Marcus just qualified for. I feel guilty. I haven’t been seeing my other friends nearly enough.

  “Do I have to wear this? Why am I going anyway?”

  “They all know I’m with you. I don’t see the point of hiding.”

  “They don’t like me.”

  “And you don’t like them. But you do like me, and I like them too.”

  His scowl is playful and deserves a pinch on the cheek. “Ow. What was that for?”

  “Just because.”

  I rise up on my toes and pull his head down to brush my lips against his jaw.

  A tug settles Barrens’s tie into place. The black onyx suit I have purchased for him fits well and shows off his trim waist, thick chest and back, and the breadth of his shoulders. He still looks more like a gangster from an Earth 2-D movie about the 1920s than any sort of gentleman, but I would not want him to look anything other than a little dangerous.

  Now I check myself in the mirror.

  “Why do women do that?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Look yourself down like there’s some problem needs fixing. You’re better than fine.”

  These opportunities for style and vanity, pleasure and luxury, have value too, brief moments to set aside thoughts of keeping our ark going through the black emptiness.

  The sheath dress is bone white and is a stark contrast with the deep brown of my skin, of which rather a lot is showing, as it is sleeveless, nearly backless, and reveals perhaps too much of that bothersome cleft up top that draws so much attention from the male of the species. It falls to the knees but has a slit along one thigh that goes higher than I am comfortable with. The shoes are the same shade of white as the silk and have heels that will have me tottering and swaying and leaning for support against Barrens quite often, I am sure.

  Still, it pleases me, the way he cannot help looking. I can feel his eyes linger as they trace their way up from my ankles and calves, up to the curves of my thighs and hips. That stare is a spotlight on the bare curve of my back, and his hand feels like fire when it brushes against my shoulder blade.

  Now, a kiss at the nape, and maybe I should not have put my hair up because I know Barrens will be doing that all evening, and each time he does, I can feel the burst of those troublesome chemicals that send tingles sliding down my back, into my belly, and lower.

  “Behave.”

  “Aww. Don’t get the point of dressing like that when it’s always ’behave.’”

  “I’ve read that visual temptation, frustration, and the delay of gratification,” I explain to him, smiling up at his reflection, “have interesting effects on later amorous encounters.”

  His chuckle could be the bark of an enormous dog. I’ve grown fond of it anyway.

  I dab color onto my lips—a sheen of candy pink that glitters when the light hits it at certain angles. I do not like it, but it is a gift from Jazz and she will be pleased to see it on me, even if she pretends not to notice.

  Marcus’s gifts, lapis-lazuli stars, hover in telekinetic fields a preset distance from the studs in my ears. Slowly rotating and tumbling, free-floating, they draw on my natural field of psi energy.

  Just a touch more of the silvery perfume that is from Lyn. The top notes are light and sweet shades of apples, fading to a heart of crushed grass. I cannot detect the base notes, but on the card that came with the blue crystal bottle, it assures me that the fragrance will linger and call to mind the sea. Not that any memories are floating around anywhere from someone who has actually smelled the sea. If they exist at all, they are locked down with the deepest security.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.” I hold out my arms, and he puts my new beige overcoat on me. The little silver-scale clutch bag is heavy in one hand, and his calloused paw grasps the other. Time to go.

  Lyn and Marcus now reside in one of the few hundred private homes in the Habitat.

  These dwellings are always filled by the top officers of the Noah, expensive money-sinks to rebalance the credits of the closed economy.

  Only residents and on-duty crew with assignments for that area are permitted to carry amplifiers of any kind in these areas. Traffic is carefully screened before being permitted through. We show my psi-tablet displaying the encrypted invitation codes for myself and one
guest over and over to the zealous police staff assigned exclusively to this zone.

  We disembark at a cobblestone path winding up a grassy hill.

  A low wall made to look like white-plastered stone surrounds the compound. A three-story pagoda rises from the center of it, gleaming white, except for the glazed tiles on the roof tiers, which are stained cobalt, ultramarine, and midnight. A garden is tucked into the narrow spaces between the house-proper and the walls. Screens of cherry trees, bushes, bamboo stands, pseudo-granite rocks, faux-stone lamps, and water basins are positioned to give the illusion of space. With the light dusting of snow left from the night before, it looks like a fairy-tale cake.

  Theirs is not the tallest or largest tower in the neighborhood, or even along the street, but it is a show of wealth beyond what most of the crew even realize is available in the Habitat.

  The sight of all this gets a scowl out of my man. A thundercloud of disapproval is gathering over him. When we walk through the gates, I dig an elbow into Barrens’s side and send him an Implant-to-Implant message: No arguments about class and privilege tonight.

  His expression eases into something like a smile. You’re sure adding a lot to your tab for tonight.

  A hand-squeeze shows that I know it. I like him this way too, and shiver when he takes my coat off and takes it to the cloakroom branching off the entryway.

  I give my greetings for the both of us as we move in the semi-random paths of social Brownian motion. The other guests compliment my hair or my dress and do not know exactly what to say of my partner. Around these tiny, graceful ladies and the slender, foppish men, Barrens is huge and solid and imposing. When I introduce him, reactions range from curiosity and “What exciting work that must be!” to a sort of baffled, unspoken “What did you say?” Barrens is a sport and answers as sincerely as he can, talking about the many weeks of boredom in between those few moments of terror when he might actually have to inflict violence on somebody.

  My dearest ones—Jazz, Lyn, and Marcus—embrace me. They are frostier with Barrens. The corner of Lyn’s eye twitches at the sight of Barrens, though Marcus does shake his hand.

  “Merry Yule.”

  “Ah. Merry Yule,” Barrens stammers. He flushes at the turn of their eyes, and the notch under his Adam’s apple stands out.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place!” I exclaim desperately. I loathe the words as they escape my lips.

  At least it gets them talking about the many hours of work and the expense of their décor. I get them to talk about their clothes, new acquisitions, the latest fashions.

  “From Corona and Black’s.” Jazz twirls proudly to display hers, the material swirling, showing off her gleaming, tanned thighs, her sculpted abdomen.

  Marcus nods. “We bought them together.”

  Jazz and Lyn are both wearing fairy dresses of gossamer silk and beads of glass. Marcus is in a toga inspired by the style of ancient Rome, crisp and white and scarlet, eagle brooches of gold flying above his shoulders, a crown of oak leaves hovering over his blond curls. Their outfits are held up and draped artfully upon their figures by means of touch routines, much like my floating earrings. A disruptive burst of psionic energy would leave them naked, the strips and ribbons and sheets fluttering away. Jazz is in blues and whites, ice and winter, and Lyn is all summer flame, with burnished steel bangles for one arm and copper for the other. Pagan goddesses to the left and right of a man who could be Caesar.

  They walk and sit as if posing for a catalog. Marcus struts somewhere between a peacock and a general, and the two women sway their hips in an exaggerated fashion that sets their bosoms bouncing with each step, and their hair flouncing from side to side.

  Dempsey. Is there something wrong with your buddies?

  There are memories that go with the clothes. So they can show them off right.

  Other guests demand their attention and they leave us to mingle.

  A large field emanation propagates from the transmitter in the ceiling of the party room, broadcasting music into the mind, all violins and flutes, and the light voices of children.

  The hall is not normally this large. Marcus temporarily removed the walls separating the dining room from the living room, and the addition of mirrored surfaces to most of the support pillars and weight-bearing walls to expand the illusion of space was probably Lyn’s work. Garlands hang from the ceiling, cheery branches from pine trees and ornaments of crystal and gold. It will be recycled by the end of the week, but for now, it is magical. The hall is dominated by the open hearth in the center under a ceiling chimney, with an extravagantly large Yule log burning bright and fragrant.

  Around the log are tables laden with self-heating trays of foods that are only affordable because of the annual culls of the livestock and fisheries. The steam and the scent of the rich volatiles from the pork and mutton fat in the dishes is heady, dizzying.

  It is too much for Barrens. The perfumes from the guests around us, the smoke from the fire, the spices, and the meat are overwhelming. The tightness to his mouth has nothing to do with feeling offended.

  “It’s okay,” I murmur to him. “Take a walk around their garden, or hang out on the veranda. You’re not the only one who finds this a bit much. You’ve got better odds of making acquaintances out there.”

  “I—sorry, Hana—”

  “Hush. I’ll bring you a cup of mead later, maybe figs and bread and cheese.” A kiss eases his anxieties of disappointing me, and he departs with a smile.

  “Finally sent the oaf off?” Jazz places a glass of wine in my hand. The bubbles sparkle. “Have one of these. It’s glorious. Wish we could have Yule every week.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Is he really who you’re shacking up with?” Marcus asks, frowning.

  Lyn completes that thought: “You could do so much better!”

  Was I like them before? I want to think I always valued every citizen of the Noah.

  I try to divert us to the safer, blander topic of our jobs, and what the higher-ups want out of us next year. That only gets them talking about how difficult our work is, the combination of genes for psychic talents, intelligence, discipline, all the rubbish needed to qualify for our positions. It is still about “our place” in society.

  Maybe this was a mistake, but I cannot give up my past and my friends just to have Barrens. I should not have to choose.

  “It’s his schlong, isn’t it?” Jazz asks, grinning. “Does he do you good, my dear? I’ve heard it hurts, when it’s too large.”

  “Guys that huge usually don’t have the equipment to match,” Marcus protests.

  They are only this crude when Barrens is what they are talking about.

  Why fight it? I will do what I wish. I still love them, but I am not letting anyone shame me out of what I have found.

  “Barrens,” I declare, “has a penis worth every one of my past lovers put together. He is good to me and gets me good and wet and ready and has me screaming every time.”

  My hands go out just so and my fingers curl. “His dimensions are exactly thus.”

  All three of them are bright red now.

  They all take long sips from their glasses, ignoring the shocked stares from the guests in earshot. Hennessy is looking right at me and whistling and clapping.

  A little more quietly: “Barrens cooks for me and takes care of me. He does not make fun of me when I buy memories of this old lady’s cat. He cheered me up after Breeding Duty. He was kind to me when I needed it.” I switch to whispering by Implant-to-Implant multicast. And not once did he ever make me feel shamed after I was raped.

  “Wha—”

  They get in each other’s way verbally. I never told them. Immediately, there is that guilt. They’ll guess it’s Holmheim—that guy they liked so much. Whom I just stopped bringing around.

  Hennessy is my savior then. He may not have been a target of my foolish words, but that relationship intuition of his tells him that I just
did something I am not ready to deal with. He slides in, glib and polished, his gold-trimmed frock coat dazzling by the firelight, and he tugs me away, gushing, “Hey, hey! Come, darling, now you simply must tell me more about all this magnificent fucking you’re getting.”

  My throat is all closed up and I am hot from forehead down to the small of the back.

  “Hana—I have to be able to call you Hana during Yule, right? Is there any chance at all I could borrow one of these illicit memories of yours? I promise I won’t even share it with the girls on the team. I’ll just talk about it and make them jealous, yes? I would dearly love to know how that mega-cock you were talking about feels.…” His eyes cross as he oohs in imagined ecstasy.

  Hennessy has me laughing, even as I dab at my eyes. “If you keep me company while I cool off and then when I apologize to my friends and help me keep Barrens out of the discussion for the rest of the evening,” I get out, “I just might let you have a memory.”

  “Glorious! I knew I would get lucky attending this party instead of the stuffy one at Hester’s.”

  “Something happen while I was outside sports-talking with the nongirlie men?”

  Back at my place, we stand on the balcony behind a barrier of laminar-flow air, kept moving by background threads running on the neural Implants of all the residents. I extend my arms forward, catch the flakes of snow falling beyond the heated current, and touch the cold.

  “Oh, just them being them. We amused my assistant, anyway. You know, Hennessy.”

  ”Oh. He, uh. Makes me uncomfortable. Has this look on his face when he sees me.”

  “Leon, he’s one of my few friends that likes you and approves of us.”

  Barrens’s mouth is hot and wet on my neck. His hands slide the straps of my dress off my shoulders. The cloth falls away, pools at my feet.

  “Okay. My apologies to him next time. Tell him he’s a prince.”

  “Ahnnnnnh…” Bites on the nape, on my shoulder. His thigh eases my legs apart. “Not here, please…”

  Those hands start doing what they do. Getting hard to think.