He had had minor success as a poet and personality, and then great success as an activist. Around the globe, people recognized David as the inventor of IAA, Individual Accountability Activism, a radical and very effective new technique in civil disobedience. Past activists had sought to pressure corporations in PR battles, which pitted a handful of young, usually naive activists against vast armies of Armani-clad professionals at Burson-Marsteller and Shandwick and Hill and Knowlton. David bypassed this.
His technique was to find the decision makers in the corporation and take the battle to them. At the soccer game of the eight-year-old daughter of a shoe titan, they handed out photos of eight-year-old girls working in one of the company's dim, smoky Cambodian factories. At the grocery store where the neighbors of the chairman of a chemical company shopped, they set up stands doing chemical analysis of fruits and vegetables on sale, revealing their pesticide content. They took out billboards in white-collar criminals’ hometowns denouncing past crimes, held protests on the sidewalk before a CFO's front lawn, covered a golf course with tenacious genemod flowers at a country club where an agricultural executive was member. They raged against the barrier separating the clean, cold decisions made in boardrooms from the consequences on factory floors, in forests, in distant villages.
It was tough toil. It made a lot of work for cops, and the cops understandably took it out on the activists, roughly rounding them up for jail—usually before the activists made their stand for more than a few minutes. But the technique spread around the world and changed activism: suddenly a decision maker might face people who had measured the costs of his choices.
David was also a de facto leader among those of us who grew up at The Marrion Home. My hope was to turn our new knowledge of our identity into a rallying call of the eighty-eight. For this to work, I would need David's support, or at least not his opposition.
I walked up to the front door, but before I could knock, a young man in impossibly loose and shapeless clothes, his head sprouting a mess of dreadlocks, opened it and stepped out. He stopped when he saw me, noting with a frown my suit and tie.
“Can I help you?"
“I'm here to see David Ressar. I'm an old friend of his, visiting. Allen Sumaran."
He smiled. “Oh. He's up top.” He pointed up, practically at the sky, and then hurried off.
The four-story building was full of people, most of them young students. Some were talking in tight little circles, passing papers and pointing at charts. I walked by one room where a bank of phones rang. Through another doorway I saw people examining maps; they looked up at me with suspicion as I walked by. In many rooms I saw others who were simply reading terminals, digging through what looked like municipal records. I stopped a few kids on my ascent up the winding stairs and was always pointed farther up to find David.
Finally I came to the top story, the fourth floor. There was a small landing with three doors, all of them open. Through one I could see David standing before a dormer window, his back to me. The rigid posture, hands folded behind his back, the broad shoulders, the tight readiness of his stance: these were things I had long before grown used to, but I saw them now in a different light. He did look ominous, powerful, like a warrior held back with an effort of restraint.
We had argued the last time that just he and Jack and I had been together. David was taking Janet with him to Paris, then on to Africa. While Janet had searched her bedroom for some forgotten thing, we stood on the sidewalk outside the apartment David shared with her, waiting for the taxi to the airport.
“Don't do this now,” I had implored. “Janet is not ready for this. I can take care of her here."
“She doesn't want to be taken care of,” David growled. “She wants to live. She wants to go to Europe and then to Africa and be useful to the world."
“But you have no money, no plans, no contacts. Nothing. It's so incautious."
“You plan your life to death!” Then he turned to Jack. “Jack, you have to decide: will you come with us? We need to get out and see what is happening in the world. You could learn so much."
“What should I do?” Jack's face twisted with pain and uncertainty.
“You stay with me,” I told him. Jack would have suffered terribly under David constantly forcing him to make decisions.
That made David angry. He hissed and turned his back to me, just as it was now. Then the taxi had come, Janet had run by planting brief kisses and crying, and they were gone. Gone for years.
I gathered my courage, walked into the room, and closed the door behind me.
“David?” I whispered.
He turned. “Allen? Allen? What?” He hurried to me and hugged me, lifting me off of the floor. “I was just thinking of you, I swear, when Jack called yesterday.” He set me down and stepped back to get a look at me. “I couldn't believe the message from him, that you were coming. It's good to see you."
I smiled with relief and gratitude. “David, it's good to see you, too. I'm sorry I've not come here before, to make a visit with just the two of us. I'm ashamed that I've not come before."
“Life is hard,” David said, waving a hand to dismiss my apology. “Just getting through it takes all of your time. Don't be sorry.” Looking frankly at him now, I saw that his face had become deeply lined. He looked somehow like he had been unhappy. But he smiled generously at me.
“So what is it?” he asked, grabbing my shoulders in his hands. “What brings you here? Why the secretive messages from Jack? Can I get you a drink? How is Jack, really?"
I laughed at this barrage of questions. “I'd love some water.” He walked to a small refrigerator, and I talked as he poured a glass for me. “Jack has been the same. A little sad, and a bit lonely. Still in love with Julian, I think. But he's a success. He'd like to quit Ariel and work full time at OpenMed, of course, but OpenMed is hemorrhaging cash, and it needs the extra money from his VP job. And from my job. Also, we make good use of the connections we have at Ariel. But, listen, we'll have to catch up later. Let me start with the pressing issues. These are not easy things, David. Do you have time now to talk?"
“Sure."
He handed me a glass and we sat. “This is ... well, just hear me out in full."
I told him about Sherman Wall's visits and then about the ghost. I told him all it said about us, including what it had said about him. As I talked his teeth clenched down, and finally he jumped up and stamped angrily back over to the dormer, and stood, just as I had found him when I entered the room, staring out over the street traffic.
“Do you believe it?” he asked when I was done.
“Yes. It knew things only William could know. And ... it makes sense. Doesn't it?"
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. For all of us the world outside was hell. Like having a raw, open wound. The brutal stupidity of everything. It still is like that ... and now we know why."
“That's right,” I told him. “We simply care more. Or, we care farther."
“You care more,” he said. “There's the fact that I'm simply a bred killer."
“That's not true. You have the same frontal lobe enhancements, the same innate greater measure of the future, that all the rest of us do. You are merely stronger, faster, more fearless. That's all. That's it. You've never killed anyone."
He turned and looked me hard in the eyes. He looked at me for a long time. I tried to meet his eyes, but eventually I had to look at the floor. Finally he said, “Do you know why I've dedicated my life to nonviolent activism? Do you?"
I didn't answer.
His voice turned dark and fierce. “Because I want to kill. Every lying executive, every filthy lobbyist, every sold politician. Every son of a bitch willing to sell out the world and everything in it just so he can have another million more. Most everybody, that means. I want to kill each one of them with my bare hands. I can hardly control the rage. I can hardly control it. I spend all my time controlling it."
A shiver went down my spine. I answered slowly, caref
ully. “I know you, David. I love you. I trust you. All of us trust you. You've changed the world for the better. That's something. That's something important. You can be ... proud."
He frowned but said nothing.
We were silent a minute, but finally I said, “We have a lot to do. We have to deal with Wall and this group."
He exhaled sharply and nodded. “What does Jack think? He's always good at thinking these kinds of things through."
“Jack thought maybe we should go public. Say who we are."
“Jack is right."
“If we keep this a secret among the eighty-eight, we could ... organize. Coordinate our efforts. Together, without the attention and suspicion that publicity would get us, we could really work to change things."
David shook his head emphatically. “I'm not interested in secrets and spooks. My whole life is based on not keeping secrets. On transparency. On bringing the hidden into the light."
I sighed. “I want to finally have some effect. Some real effect. Maybe all together, knowing who we are, working without interference...."
“No."
I searched my mind for alternatives. “How about this: we get everyone together, and we put it to a vote. You make your case, and I make mine, and we put it to a vote."
“You know how hard it is to get together for our annual reunion. How will we organize one in the middle of the year?"
“I have a lot of money. And my farm in upstate New York could fit everyone."
He laughed bitterly. “You always were so practical. I thought it was a kind of coldness. But..."
“It was a kind of fear,” I confessed, surprising myself.
“Let's say cautiousness. Maybe even foresight. But I refuse to accept secrecy. Look,” his change of tone made it clear he was changing the topic, “I agree we have to do something about this group with the ridiculous name. I'll come back to New York with you. We'll meet this Wall together. I've dealt with his kind before. There's strength in numbers, and in my experience."
“Okay.” We sat in silence a moment, while I gathered the courage to ask the question. “And ... how...?"
“How is Janet?” he finished for me. He made it sound like an accusation.
“Have you—” My voice faltered. “—found her?"
His expression softened. “Yes. Yes. There's not much left of her. Not much at all."
“Where is she?” I asked, terrified of what I was going to find. In answer, David just pointed, straight out the window, at the building across the street.
“You'll have to go alone,” he whispered. “I watch over her, but I can't bear to, to ... be in the same room with her."
* * * *
I stood before a simple blue door in a clean, empty hallway. After a long time there, gathering my courage, I knocked on the door twice. I waited a minute until I heard a deadbolt turn, and then the door opened slowly.
And there she stood. She was older, of course, and her hair was somehow darker and had been cut short. A long and ugly scar twisted across her left cheek, from the corner of her mouth to her ear. She smiled at me hesitantly.
“Yes?” she asked.
There was no recognition in her expression. She waited for me to say something.
“My name is Allen Sumaran.... We were friends, long ago. When we were children."
“Really?” she said, smiling widely now. The scar folded deeply into her cheek. “Really?"
“Yes, really."
“Cool. Come in."
I stepped inside. It was a small, one-room apartment, with a single dormer opening over the street. I looked out across the boulevard to see if David was there, but his window was empty.
“You don't remember me?” I asked.
“No. But I don't remember much, you know?"
I did know. David told me the story. Janet had always felt the pain of the world more acutely than the rest of us, but she still dove deeper into that pain. As a human rights worker in Angola, she got caught there during the genocide. She saw thousands macheted to death before U.N. helicopters pulled her out of the French embassy. That was followed by some kind of breakdown, and afterward she clung to David, the ultimate protector. But David was not always there, and finally she had wandered D.C. and ended up a heroin addict. David put her into rehab, and thus started a cycle of getting in and out of the addiction. Eventually she stopped with the heroin and started taking rewrite, which was raging through D. C. at that time.
The drug, designed to help repair brain damage, was a neural growth factor. Street abusers mainlined it and got high off the childish awe that resulted from having your memories and beliefs and hopes loosened up, washed away a little, overwhelmed with possibilities arising both from weakened neural connections and an explosion of tentative new ones. Those who shot rewrite frequently for a few months ended up as simple as children, their past erased. They had to start over. It's not hard to imagine why people in pain did it.
When David had finally relocated Janet like this, almost six months before, he had moved her across the street, where he could remain vigilant from a distance.
“Listen,” I told her. “I don't know how else to tell you this except directly. I grew up with you, and I'm friends with other people who grew up with you. We all love you. You may be in danger now. There are people who may want to hurt you. I want you to come away, to my farm in New York, to meet some other people. Maybe next week. You can do anything you want there. I'm rich. You won't need anything. You can stay there as long as you like.” I put my hand on her arm. Tears welled in my eyes. Janet was gone, but this was Janet as a child again. How could I not protect her? “Do you understand?"
She shook her head.
“Will you come with me anyway?” I asked.
“Sure,” she whispered. She smiled a little. There was a sad look in her eyes, and suddenly she was intimately familiar to me. There was still something of Janet here, in this smile, and in the deep pools of kindness behind it. “I just have a feeling that you're okay,” she said. “But what about my friend David? He takes care of me here. I don't see him much, but he takes care of me. He might worry."
“David is my friend, too. We grew up with David, you and I. David took care of me, also, once upon a time. He's going to come with me to New York for a few days. Then we'll come back and take you to my farm. He'll visit sometimes."
“That will be good,” she said.
I started crying then, standing in her living room. She was even more pathetic like this, innocent and trusting, than she had been as an activist who knew and felt all the secret pains of the world.
“Don't cry,” she said.
“Why did I wait so long?” I asked aloud. “Why did I wait so long?"
“Don't cry.” She put her hand on my arm. It only made me weep harder.
* * * *
The next morning, as I sat with David at the train station, my phone rang. It was Jack. He read a phone number to me, a number for a disposable. I wrote it down, hung up, and then bought a disposable phone out of a vending machine. I called the number, leaning against a wall, away from the waiting crowd, apprehensive about Jack's precautions. David watched me, frowning but saying nothing.
“Did you find her?” Jack asked. His voice was distant and tinny through the solid-state speaker.
“I did. David thinks it might be good to get her away from D. C. She's agreed to come to my farm."
“How is she?"
I didn't answer. The silence hung there for a moment.
“Did you get the files?” I asked. I meant the evidence about Enduring Security.
“Yes. I've read and watched some of the recordings. It's horrible, Allen. Horrible. They were just little kids, mostly. Living in little white rooms, like lab rats. The lab coats just watched them, droning on in their monotone observations and measurements. Never touching the children except with gloved hands. And they pitted these kids against each other sometimes. In one fight a girl killed a smaller boy before they could stop t
he fight. On tape. How she cried and cried.” He choked once. “Dear God, they called them ‘Freedom Fighters.’ They were children and they made them live without love and they called them ‘Freedom Fighters.’”
I tried not to think of it. Not yet. “You've made the preparations?"
“R-right ... All of them."
A conductor called all aboard for the train. “We'll see you in three hours,” I said. I broke the phone in half and threw it into a dented and overflowing trashcan nearby. The abused can struggled to say, “Ank-k-k-k-k-k you!"
* * * *
When we pulled into Penn station, I called the number on the fake E.P.A. card for Tom Austin. I got a switchboard, and after a long wait I was given over to Sherman Wall.
“Yes, Mr. Sumaran?"
“Tom, I wonder if you could be so kind as to stop by my office this afternoon. Maybe around two. There's something I want to discuss with you."
“I'd enjoy visiting you again, but I wonder, could you come see me? We could combine a meeting with a visit to the doctor."
“No, sorry. I have meetings nearly all day, and although I can move them around I still have to be in the building. But, you see, I found some old files that William Marrion had left to me. It's stuff I never bothered to look into, but I picked it all up the other day after you visited me. I wonder now if there is anything there that might help your investigation. Most of the data has ‘Enduring Security’ written on it. I suppose that means that these are encrypted files or something. I have them all in the office with me today."
“Why don't I come see you around two?"
“Great. Thanks."
“No. Thank you."
I hung up.
* * * *
Wall was early. I let him in and closed the door.
Analog SFF, April 2008 Page 11
