The Green Memory of Fear

by B. A. Chepaitis

You should know, you of all people should see it marked clearly do you?

  “Right,” she said. “No answer. Do you drink or take any drugs?”

  Even if you don’t I’m glad you’re here there is so much we have to talk about so much we have to do.

  She stared at the file, at the questions she still had to ask. As if any of them would tell her what she needed to know. Ridiculous. Pencil pusher crap. She could think of only one question that might help her, whether he answered or not.

  She raised her eyes, trying to peer around what hid him.

  “What are you after?” she asked.

  You’ll know in time and time is a funny thing isn’t it Jaguar but it isn’t time yet so you must be patient.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Her voice was slow and watery, pouring from her throat like blood.

  Answers will come in time but now you must leave. You must leave. You must leave.

  Time was a funny thing, here in this clouded place. It took a long time, it seemed, for her to rise. Geological ages passed while she pressed her hands into the table and lifted herself from her chair. Planets were born and died as she turned from the table and walked across the room.

  Then, within the speed of light, she was out the door and standing on the street, blinking up at bright sunlight.

  “Eldest brother,” she whispered. “What the hell was that?”

  * * * *

  Jaguar walked Yonge for more than an hour, finding her way into the various markets and just standing and smelling foods, touching fruits and vegetables piled on carts, looking hard at her own feet. She wanted physical contact with solid material goods. She stood in front of an Indian Food Supply store and breathed in. Fennel and peppers and cardamom and unidentified sharpness filled her, and gradually she came back to herself.

  She had to be at the Karas house for dinner in half an hour, but she didn’t rush the process. She didn’t want them to see anything wrong with her. She didn’t want them to ask questions she couldn’t answer, because what did she know except that Dr. Senci was using the arts? Using them expertly, with purpose.

  Standing under bright sun, the sharp scent of cardamom and cumin all around, the nightmare sense she’d felt with him was fading. She took a moment to evaluate her experience.

  Clearly, Senci was a hypnopath, and a very good one, deeply shadowed. She could smell that on him a mile away. And clearly he had an agenda beyond the trial, but what else he was and what agenda he hoped to fulfill were still very much not clear.

  She’d seen a grey field around him, but that could be hypnopath trickery, all showmanship. Smoke in mirrors, quite literally. A good hypnopath could easily create that to scare a vulnerable audience. Still, she understood Daro’s reaction to him. To a young boy already plagued by nightmares, creepy wouldn’t begin to describe it. But she could help Daro deal with a shadowed hypnopath.

  She’d give him a few tips for blocking his moves. She thought he’d respond well. There wasn’t much empath in him, but he was a good kid, with more guts than most. And he had an innate sense of how to protect his privacy, create safe space for himself. Susan had showed her the shed in their well-groomed backyard, which she called Daro’s workshop.

  Jaguar asked Daro about it and he shrugged, “I make things sometimes. You know.”

  She took that to mean the shed was his private space, no admittance. She didn’t press him on it. In fact, she made it a point not to press him on anything, which he seemed to appreciate. She could tell he was expecting her to ask more questions about the trial, about Dr. Senci, about how he felt. When she didn’t, he would shrug into himself and ask if she wanted to play catch, or a computer game. If she said yes, his whole body would breathe out relief.

  She shook herself, and turned away from the Indian store. She knew a few more things, and she could move forward with Daro. That was good. Now she should try and get to dinner on time.

  * * * *

  She took the electromag to the Karas home, was admitted inside and went first to the living room. Halfway across the thick beige carpet, she stopped.

  Daro was sitting on the long white couch, head down, kicking his legs against the bottom wood strip just below the upholstery.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He scowled briefly, and ducked his head back down.

  Jaguar crossed the carpet, kicked off her sandals and sat down next to him. She didn’t know what to say, so she waited. That’s what her grandmother had done for her when she was young and couldn’t find words to circumscribe her moods.

  The moment of her birth was the moment of her mother’s death and so her grandparents had raised her. At first they lived in New Mexico, where she felt the hot sun on her back, the stones soft and gritty under her feet as she listened to the adults drum and sing in their village of 13 Streams. But that only lasted until she was five. Then her grandparents moved to Manhattan, where her grandfather filled one of the first UN representative seats for Native Americans.

  When she turned eleven, the Serials began. Before she turned twelve her grandparents were dead and she was tossed into the streets to seek survival on her own.

  That was her childhood. It was about the extremes. Death and life. Abundance and starvation. Freedom and entrapment. The beauty of the mesa, and the ugliness of the human spirit in fear. Terror and escape from terror. How to kill, and how to avoid being killed. The power of the empath, and the powerlessness of a child in the midst of death.

  And it occurred to her that Daro’s childhood was like hers. He moved between his parents carefully nurtured security and the world of Dr. Senci. She took in a breath and let it out.

  “You want to tell me about it?” she asked.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” He kicked the couch some more.

  “Well, is it something embarrassing, about a girl or something?”

  He wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something bad. “Girls?”

  “Maybe not. Then is it something to do with the trial?”

  “No,” he said, “and it’s not that interesting.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But I feel bad, seeing you feel bad. So I’m trying to find out if I can do anything to help.”

  He frowned, then turned a grin toward her. “That’s what my parent’s always do, isn’t it?”

  “Probably,” she said. “I don’t have much experience with parents, so I’m only guessing.”

  He thought about this, then asked, “Where are your parents?”

  “They died when I was a baby. My grandparents raised me, and they’re… also dead.” She wondered how specific she should be. She settled for plain facts. “They were murdered during the Serials,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, adding politely, “I’m sorry. You don’t have any kids?”

  She shook her head. “No kids. No husband.”

  “You’re not married?” he asked. “Why not?”

  She smiled wryly. “It never came up.”

  He blushed, then wiped at his face to hide the color on his cheeks.

  “Now that you know all my secrets,” she said, “tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Nothing. Just—Mom won’t let me try out for Little League.”

  “Oh. Why not?”

  “She thinks—someone might find out. About me and Dr. Senci.”

  Jaguar’s forehead creased in thought. “I guess you can’t play until the trial’s over, right?”

  “Yeah, but I could try out. They just don’t want anybody to know.”

  She ran a hand through her hair. “They’re afraid,” she said. “But you haven’t done anything wrong. You know that, right?”

  He hunched his shoulders and said nothing.

  “It’s the same as if you were robbed. It’s not your fault, and the trial isn’t about you. Really, you’re just a witness to the crime.”

  “That’s what the lawyer says. Clara. “

  “She’s right, but I suppose it doesn’t feel like that to you.” Sh
e would have said more, but she heard Susan clearing her throat. She looked up and saw her standing in the arched doorway between livingroom and kitchen, her face written with anger and bitter shame. She worked to overcome it, which Jaguar appreciated.

  “Daro,” she said, “Dr. Addams is right. It’s not your fault. I don’t—I never meant you to feel that. Do you understand? Do you?”

  Though she was quite still, to Jaguar, it seemed as if her whole body wanted to propel forward to her son. He hunched back into himself. “Yeah, I know Mom,” he said.

  A sharp sensation of how far away they all were from each other caught Jaguar between the ribs. This, followed by the deeper grief of knowing she would probably only make that worse.

  “S’time to eat yet?” Daro asked.

  “Wash your hands first,” his mother said, “and don’t forget to use soap.”

  * * * *

  Jaguar sat kitty-corner to Philip Karas at dinner, which was conducted at a table set with fine bone china and silver, the proper number of forks, spoons, and glasses. It made Jaguar nervous that she’d spill something, and she could see Daro watching her, chewing back on a grin when her hand moved to the wrong utensil. Except for a very brief introduction over the telecom, all her contact had been with Susan and Daro. Philip was the absence in their lives, and in Jaguar’s picture of their lives together. She hadn’t yet ruled him out as a suspect in Daro’s abuse, but meeting him would settle that.

  He spoke easily and with intelligence about the philosophy of crime, quoting Foucault and Teresian. He was smart, well-read, liked to show off a little, and lived mostly in his head. Brief scans of his interior showed her nothing more dangerous than a need to stay on top of things, an attachment to superiority of intellect. As he spoke she also kept herself tuned to Daro’s signals, searching for any distress. So far, there was only the normal father-son tension.

  “And how do you place the Planetoid’s work in terms of Foucault’s paradigm, Dr. Addams?” Philip asked.

  Jaguar brought her attention back to her host. “Well outside his ken,” she said, “It’s not something he could imagine.”

  “But you hold ultimate power over your prisoners, don’t you?”

  “Only if they don’t kill us,” she said. Susan’s face showed mild shock, and Jaguar smiled to lighten her words. This kind of intellectual discussion always brought out the bad in her. A need to jab and draw blood.

  Philip nodded judiciously. “Pass the salt, please,” he requested. She complied, managing not to knock over any glassware, but just barely. “But I think systems of punishment are in general heading toward extinction.”

  “I hope so,” Jaguar said cheerfully.

  Philip laughed. “Wouldn’t you be out a job?”

  “Not at all,” she replied. “The Planetoids are rehabilitative. Redemptive. Not punitive.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” Daro interjected. “I heard they squish your head until all your brains fall out, then they put your brains through a—like a—”

  “Supersquisher?” Jaguar asked. “Squeeze all the juice out and drink it?”

  Daro made a face, grabbed his own throat and throttled himself.

  “Daro,” Susan reprimanded. “Not at the table.”

  He shrugged and went back to his food.

  “Not anywhere,” Philip said, shaking his head. Then he turned back to Jaguar. “He shouldn’t be encouraged, Dr. Addams. His nightmares. We don’t want them to recur.”

  Jaguar considered him. She wondered how he felt about what was happening to his son. He didn’t seem the type to feel anything easily. Probably he’d think it first.

  “Some experts say it’s good for children to work out their fears through fantasy,” she noted.

  Philip shook his head. “There’s a correlation between fantasy violence in the use of VR systems and increased rates of violence, detachment from reality in children.”

  Jaguar smiled. “You have a VR system, don’t you?”

  “For educational programs,” Susan cut in. “All the latest in language, travel—even a woodworking program. Daro likes to work with wood. Ask him to show you his workshop in the shed. He’s making a guitar, aren’t you, Daro?”

  “Mom,” Daro said. “That’s my business.”

  Jaguar smiled at him, then turned back to Philip. “Maybe it’s different with stories. They seem to help children contain their fears, confront them in small doses. Emotions like that can’t be denied. You have to deal with it, and direct it—appropriately.”

  Philip gave a small, polite smile. “And that’s what you do on the Planetoids?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “We’re good at it, too. We’ve got a very low rate of recidivism.”

  “That’s because you do that mind stuff, isn’t it?” Daro chimed in. “You’re empaths, right?”

  “Daro,” his father remonstrated, “don’t be rude.

  “I’m not. I saw it on the news once,” he said, waving a fork around. “About empaths and how they get into your mind. The army’s researching it. Psi capacities they call it, though.”

  “Daro,” his father said more firmly. He pointed at the fork, which Daro lowered. “Let’s not get over excited.”

  “I’m not excited,” he protested. “I saw it on the news. How the army was researching it, and the Planetoids used it or somebody said they did. Then some guy got on and said that was a lie. Will you use it on him?”

  Him. Jaguar turned to Daro, blinked. “On Dr. Senci?”

  “Yeah,” Daro said. He waved his fork up toward the ceiling. “When you get him up there. Or will you just put a stake through his heart?”

  Susan drew in a quick sharp breath. Jaguar stayed with Daro. “Maybe we’ll just squeeze him until he explodes,” she said.

  “Or blow him up?” Daro said.

  “Mm. With a bicycle pump.”

  “Yeah, but you gotta put a stake in his heart first. Otherwise—you know. They come back.”

  They come back. She saw the fear dancing under his rage.

  I don’t want to become him won’t become him won’t become him.

  “Are you afraid of that?” she asked him quietly. “You’re afraid he’ll come back, make you like him? A vampire.”

  “Stop it,” Susan said sharply, then looked around apologetically. “I—I can’t eat when you’re talking about—about—”

  Philip reached over and patted her hand. “Enough, Daro,” he said. Daro scowled quietly, while his father turned to Jaguar.

  “We’re trying to get him over that vampire notion. It’s obviously a metaphor. The only way he can explain his pain. We really shouldn’t be talking about it now.”

  Daro brought his scowl into focus and aimed it at his father. “It’s not a damn metaphor, and I want her to squeeze his guts out. I want her to kill him,” he said, voice rising in pitch. “I want somebody to kill him.”

  “Daro, nobody’s going to kill anybody,” his father said reasonably.

  “I want her to. I want him dead. It’s the only way.” He was shouting now, eyes wild with terror and rage. He stood, pointed at his father.

  “Or you. You kill him. You’ve got a gun, Dad. You keep it in your desk drawer. I saw it. Why didn’t you just shoot him? He’s a fucker, and he fucked me. I’d shoot him, if it was my kid.”

  He swept his hand across the table, sent his plate flying into the wall where it crashed and shattered. A moment of absolute stillness. Then, breathing hard, he ran from the room.

  Jaguar heard the sound of his door slamming shut. Susan lowered her face into her hands. Philip went pale and sat back.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Addams,” he said.

  “I’m not the one who needs an apology,” she said.

  His lips went tight. “Are you suggesting I owe Daro an apology? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Neither did he,” she said softly. “Neither did he.”

  Chapter 6

  She stood on a mesa and ravens circled her, sp
iraling out of sky like leaves. They landed at her feet and became Senci, who picked at her hair with eager fingers. She drank cold air and stared into Alex’s dark eyes, close to her. Close to her. She held up her red glass knife and let it fall into his chest. His eyes were clear and filled with victory. Her red glass knife plunged into his heart and his blood ran into his hand which he lifted to her lips before he fell and Senci laughed.

  Drink, he whispered.

  Senci laughed.

  “It’s a pretty clear-cut case, and the precedents indicate Dr. Senci’s headed for the Planetoids,” Law guardian Clara Trianos said.

  Jaguar blinked, lifted her head and frowned at the dark, polished woman across the dark, polished conference table. The vision, remnant of a dream, dispersed, leaving a bad taste in her mouth. Clara regarded her mildly.

  She and Chief Prosecutor for the Province Diana Richburg had called the meeting, a normal part of the protocol, but then they proceeded to natter on about facts she already knew. Her mind had drifted, and now she called it back to business.

  “If it’s so clear cut,” she said, “why do you look so worried?”

  Diana and Clara studied each other, then her. They’d both worked with Planetoid researchers in the past, but not with her. When she introduced herself to them their faces were closed like bathroom doors, and they exuded tension. Apparently, they’d not only heard of her, they didn’t like what they’d heard.

  “We’re concerned for Daro,” Diana said. “He won’t be questioned by the attorneys, but he has to speak before the judges after they view his interview tape. Frankly, our only worry is that he’ll bring up the vampire issue.”

  “Why?” Jaguar asked, and saw the exchange of glances again. “I mean,” she amended, “isn’t it normal for traumatized kids to do that sort of thing. Name their molesters as monsters.”

  Clara grew thoughtful. “Sure, but it’s one of those things that could go either way—generate sympathy, or take a bite out of his credibility. His ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality is a big issue, something defense’ll use against us. So he can say it, but we have to direct how he says it.”

  “But you have a recording of Senci admitting what he did. Seems to me Daro could say he’s a purple elephant with bad breath if he wants.”