“I don’t think I can ask him to explain,” Marlow said. “Besides, he wasn’t acting is if it was something I should just know.” No, it was more as though….
You and your sociologists don’t know everything, Marlow.
“He knows something that I don’t, that he knows I don’t know.” She grimaced at the repetition. “If that makes sense.”
“So he didn’t get embarrassed because you didn’t know.”
“No.”
You’re so busy analyzing and plotting and watching you’ve overlooked the human element.
What was the human element he knew she wasn’t aware of?
Why had he kissed her, despite everything?
She had been very careful to lay out the boundaries. No relationship until Erron emerged. She remembered the exact wording she had used to explain it to him, too.
We agreed. No…distractions. Not until Erron emerged.
There had been no need to use Taniel’s name, because Jonah had already known it.
Marlow sat up straight, staring through Erron, who was watching her with narrowed eyes and a curious expression.
Jonah had known who Taniel was. What else did he know about Taniel? What knowledge did he have that made him think he was free to kiss her despite the arrangement she had with Taniel?
“Mom?” Erron asked quietly.
Marlow refocused on her son’s face. “I…think…I need to do some research.”
“You figured it out?”
“I think I know what I don’t know,” she told him. She grimaced again at the awkward sentence and Erron grinned. “I know where the hole is and the shape of it. I just have to fill it in.”
“Holes,” Erron repeated. “Yeah, that’s what it is. Holes I have to fill in.”
“It’ll come,” she told him. “Time will fix that for you.”
“It will? How come you’re still finding holes, then?”
Marlow swatted at him. “Because I’m not that old, you little terror.”
“Not so little.” Erron’s grin faded. “No, really. You’re super smart and you have the world of knowledge at your fingertips at work. So how come you have any holes at all?”
Marlow sobered. “You get holes when people hide things from you.”
* * * * *
Erron had research assignments from the farm to complete. He settled in behind a small screen and keyboard at the table, after checking with her if it was okay to stay there, rather than sit in his room.
Marlow was warmly pleased he wanted to stay in her company, so she set up at the opposite end of the table. She used one of the projectors from work, which made the back of her screen impervious. That would prevent Erron from reading anything.
It took her long minutes to psyche herself into starting the search for answers and she sat staring at the blank screen. Staring through it, not seeing anything, while she tried to justify what she was going to do.
Digging into Taniel’s life, poking around in corners she had never looked in before, felt like a huge betrayal. In the nearly twenty years they had been rearing Erron, she had never questioned anything Taniel had told her. Their relationship had been harmonious and productive and Marlow knew in her bones Taniel was as devoted to Erron as she was. He wanted nothing but the best for his son.
So why was she going to do this? Why try to fill in holes she hadn’t known even existed until Jonah implied they were there?
Because Jonah knew what was in at least one of the holes.
Because over the twenty years, there had been…moments.
Marlow knew her interrogation skills made her better able to analyze a person’s face and reactions and body language and read the truth from them. Because those skills were a product of her profession, she had always fought to not use them with Taniel and Erron. She always took what Taniel told her at face-value because questioning him was something Lieutenant Fitzgerald would do. At home, she wanted to be Marlow, mother of Erron.
But there had been moments. Tiny inconsistencies. Times when she had been almost certain Taniel was lying to her. She had always made herself shut down the awful thought before it got out of hand.
She had made herself blind and deaf.
Now, Jonah knew what she had refused to learn for herself. If Jonah knew, who else did?
It was the thought that finally got her hands moving on the keyboard. Retrograde shame that she might have been lied to all these years. How many people had been laughing at her behind her back for her blind faith?
Time to fill in the hole.
She started where it would be easiest—Taniel’s recent work interviews. All the institutions published their interview and selection processes on the Forum, so everyone could see that selection was fair and even-handed.
Marlow went digging, confident that if there was anything to find, she would find it. After all, Lieutenant Fitzgerald was very good at her job.
* * * * *
Erron went to bed early, tired out from a day of physical effort and bright light, for which Marlow was grateful. She didn’t think she could keep up the pretense of “everything’s fine” for much longer. Hiding her true feelings from Erron was a form of lying and she had become mortally aware of the costs of lying in the last two hours.
Her face was stiff from holding it in a neutral position and occasionally pulling her mouth into a smile. Erron had wandered off to bed without asking any direct questions as he had over the hot chocolate, so her dissembling skills were still adequate.
Once his door closed, she sat in the old armchair to wait for Taniel’s return.
Taniel had said the interview would take all day, so once the lights were turned down outside in the market place, Marlow knew he would not be much longer. The trains whizzing past on the other side of the square had slowed down to once every thirty minutes instead of every few minutes.
She turned the room lights on, making them bright. No intimate pools of light from lamps. Not tonight.
She waited, watching out the window. She saw Taniel cross the edge of the market, then walk through the space between the quarters in front of theirs. She stared at him, puzzled.
He looked different. He looked almost like a stranger to her and this was the man she had shared living quarters with for twenty years. They had agonized over Erron’s up-bringing, schemed and pooled their resources, they had even trained together. Taniel had developed the bo stick for her and refined her training to make the most of it.
The man walking toward the house didn’t look like that person at all.
She knew she was looking at him differently because of what she had learned. The sad part was she would never be able to look at Taniel the old way, ever again. She would never see the dimple appear in his cheek and be glad of his happy disposition and what that would do for Erron. The sight of that dimple now would nauseate her.
The door unlocked with the thunk of metal tumblers retracting. Marlow had installed the Bridge-quality lock, not because the Esquiline was particularly crime-riddled, but because it was something she could contribute to the family. She had done it for Erron and Taniel.
Taniel gave her a smile when he saw her sitting in the corner. “Did you have a good day? Is Erron in bed already?”
Her gorge rose up in her throat. The casual friendliness was a lie. It was all a lie.
“Malina Opal,” Marlow said.
Taniel’s smile didn’t fade. It chopped off, as if someone had thrown a light switch. He became very still.
Marlow got to her feet. “Edna Alesio. Susan Timo. Omar Beng. Inga Fini. Bart Shorter.”
Taniel swallowed.
“They were all casual relationships, though, weren’t they?” she said, moving toward him. “They only lasted, oh, about a year or so. Hannah Lucia is the really interesting one.”
Taniel drew in a breath and let it out. His shoulders dropped. His gaze fell to the floor.
“Eight years,” Marlow breathed. “As close as I can figure it, you’ve been virtually living with
Hannah Lucia, in her little slice apartment in the Fourth Wall. All the days off lately, when you were apparently looking for work, you were spending with her.”
Taniel lifted a hand. It was shaking. “It’s not as though you and I were together,” he said. His voice was strained.
“We had an agreement!” She struggled to keep her voice down. She didn’t want to wake Erron. “No distractions. No long-term relationships that would pull our attention away from Erron’s upbringing.”
“I didn’t break that agreement,” Taniel said.
“You’ve been breaking it every day since Erron came home with us. None of these people were overnight arrangements, Taniel. You spent days, weeks, years with some of them! I’m not even sure how you managed it. Did you go running off the moment I went to work?”
“I never neglected Erron!” he cried.
Marlow hesitated. Perhaps that was true. Erron had been one of the happiest and most contented children she had ever met. She just couldn’t trust Taniel’s word. Not anymore.
“You think parking him with babysitters was caring for him?” she flung back.
Taniel’s face darkened. “I did not!”
The door to Erron’s room opened with the rough sound of metal sliding across metal that said he was forcing it open rather than waiting for the house AI to do it for him.
Marlow whirled, dismayed. She didn’t want Erron dragged into this. It was between her and Taniel and she didn’t want Erron hurt because of it.
Erron was staring at his father. “Auntie Susan….” he said with a wondering tone. “There was another one. Yeah. Uncle Omar. He used to bring me candied fruit.”
Marlow whirled to look at Taniel, her horror squeezing her chest and her fury building. “You brought them into this house?”
Taniel was watching Erron. There was an echo of her horror in his eyes. “It wasn’t like that, son…”
“Like what? You lied to Mom. For years,” Erron said stiffly. His eyes glittered. “You lied to me.”
“I never lied to you. Erron, I love you!” Taniel cried.
“No.” Erron shook his head. “I don’t think you do. If you did, you would have given up everything for me, just as Mom did.”
“You don’t understand. I had to…I had to breathe!” It was the pathetic cry of a man who knew he had lost.
Erron’s mouth curled down in disgust, even as the tears slid down his cheeks. “Maybe you should go back to the Fourth Wall,” he said quietly. “Where you can breathe.”
* * * * *
Taniel left. There was nothing else he could do. He didn’t pack a bag. He didn’t collect anything. He just stood and looked at them, his face filled with pain. Then he moved to the apartment door and opened it.
Erron turned to her when the door was fully closed. He was crying openly now. “That was the hole, wasn’t it?” he said brokenly.
Marlow nodded, her own tears just as thick as his. “I’m so sorry, Erron. I didn’t want you to know this about your father. I wanted you to go on thinking he was wonderful.”
“Like you did?” Erron asked.
Marlow hugged him. “Just for a little while longer. Just until your Emergence.”
“I think I just emerged,” Erron said, his voice muffled against her shoulder.
Chapter Eight
For the next few weeks, Jonah attended every single tankball game. He would sit in the box with Veda and Conrad Sansone and an ever-changing list of guests. Sometimes, if the Spanners weren’t playing that night, the giant Lloyd Hampus would take up a chair in the back row, plant his fists on his knees and watch the game with an intent scowl.
On the nights that the Spanners were playing, Veda gave tickets to Jonah for his housemates. Tickets were hard to get for most games because the arena only seated just over a thousand people and in the last year, demand for seats had far outstripped supply.
Agatha and Spiegel attended every game Jonah had tickets for. Roger, who had difficulty negotiating the arena with his chair, most often declined. Sometimes Peter talked him into being carried down to the bottom row seat in his arms all while suggesting he might drop him, or lose his balance.
Those were the best games, in Jonah’s estimation. He didn’t get to sit with them, yet he could see the four of them screaming their support and clapping. Siegel’s arm shooting up into the air whenever he was particularly moved. They enjoyed the games and it was nice to see smiles.
There were not a lot of smiles to be found elsewhere in the audience, most especially on nights when the Captain was in attendance.
Buellens attended two more times, sitting in Veda’s box. His uneasiness never dissipated and Veda stopped trying to soften him into a more amenable frame of mind. She had set her sights on Marlow, instead.
Marlow took her turn supervising security in the arena and would be there every third or fourth game. Jonah made no attempt to talk to her openly and she did not approach him. Jonah explained to Veda that an open relationship with Marlow would compromise her professional reputation, which would negate any use Veda thought she might be. He also let the old woman know he was in constant contact with Marlow, just the same.
Once he had reached through the private channels with his secondary code and made contact with Marlow, most of that contact came at night. It seemed that Marlow had given up on sleep, lately.
It had only taken a week of openly attending games in the unofficial Spanners box before Marlow let him know he had become a person of interest to the Red Guard.
These days, though, there were a lot more persons of interest. Tomas Averill had been added to the list before Jonah and his now almost-daily appearance on the Forum and in the Aventine marketplace had entrenched him in most people’s minds as the voice of opposition.
Veda had been vexed about that. “You’re the voice of opposition, Jonah!” she had told him, her voice wavering with age and fury. “These little essays of yours aren’t doing the job. We should get you speaking in the Aventine like Averill.”
Jonah resisted the suggestion whenever Veda made it. He hummed and hawed and made valid objections and used excuses when that didn’t work. He didn’t want to step onto a platform with Veda by his side. It was too plain a statement about his loyalties. While he simply sat in a game box, no one could be certain what his real loyalties were and that was fine by him.
It wouldn’t last. Veda was applying pressure and Marlow, in her own way, was too.
You can’t keep playing neutral, she had told him in one late night message. A simple speech in the Aventine will reassure Veda you’re on her side, then she won’t watch you as closely.
It had been a surprise to him that Veda had spies watching him, but not a huge one. While he tap-danced and failed to fully commit himself, she would continue to watch him. Marlow was right—as soon as he irrevocably aligned himself with the Spanner cause, Veda would relax. He just couldn’t bring himself to it, though.
You know the truth, he told Marlow. The Red Guard don’t. Neither do any of my friends or the people I know. When this is all over, whatever “this” is, all they will know, all they will remember, is that I was on the side of the anarchists.
Public ill will toward the Bridge and the onerous policies and statutes they issued was growing, day by day. The basic ration limit created hungry bellies and hunger was a beast that could drive men to desperation. The shortage of food underlined every complaint.
The number of physical altercations Marlow’s guards dealt with rose steadily.
They’re complaining with their fists, with whatever they can pick up, she told Jonah. I don’t blame them, yet at the same time, it’s vexing, because I can’t fix it. If there was a button in front of me that would take away their pain, fill their bellies and solve all their problems I would break my thumb on it.
Marlow’s civil division guards were the most visible representation of the Bridge, for they moved out among the public. Captain Sekar was rarely seen and his staff were not as well-known as h
e was. The other two divisions of Bridge Guards were located inside the Bridge area and never ventured beyond the gates wearing a uniform. So Marlow’s black-uniformed guards became the target for physical rage.
That pissed Jonah off. Can’t people see how illogical they’re being, when they push back at you?
If being pushed around helps keep the peace, then that’s our job.
Her calm acceptance didn’t help him sleep better at night.
When Marlow had her arm broken from being rammed up against a safety railing until her humerus had snapped, so had Jonah’s temper. He wrote a blistering essay on the roles and responsibilities of the Bridge and its associated staff and organizations, with the implied suggestion that only idiots didn’t understand such basic ship structures.
Veda had loved it. “You’re making them focus on the Captain,” she said. “That’s perfect. Keep it up.”
That had not been his intention at all. He wasn’t entirely sure what his intention had been. Furthering Veda’s cause was certainly not it.
Marlow’s gentle warning didn’t help. If you can’t manage to look gleeful when the Bridge comes under fire, you at least have to look as though you don’t care. The essay reveals far too much of your real nature to those who know you.
He strode through the Aventine to the arena for that night’s game with his temper simmering, trying mightily to extinguish it. He didn’t do well when he was angry. Lately, everything made him angry.
As he moved along the arena concourse, he saw Marlow, ahead. The black uniform and alert posture drew his eye. Her arm was perfectly knitted and functional.
His temper seemed to leap and writhe in his chest and his head, compressing his thoughts and making his head ache.
As he passed, she looked at him. “Enjoy the game, Mr. Solomon.”
Of course the lieutenant of the civil division would know who he was. He was on the Red Guard’s list. If he was less notorious she would have ignored him completely.
He fell into his seat and pulled out the mini-board that he used for quick notes and writing on the go.
I can’t go on with this. I want to see you. Kiss you.
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