Fin

by Larry Enright

  “We have no future.”

  “Nonsense. Noah said you’re living together. That’s half the battle.”

  “I prefer not to think of my relationship with Nova as a battle.”

  “My apologies. That’s the old soldier in me. Noah also said you two have been working together to find that mole. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “He told you about that?”

  Ziggy patted Fin’s hand reassuringly. “Noah and I have been friends a long time. Your secret is safe with me. What I meant was if you help her find that mole, Periculum will be safe again, she’ll get to keep her job, and you’ll be the hero. You know how women love their heroes.”

  “Ziggy,” said Esse, “I’m not sure your advice about women is helping.”

  “Then let’s talk about something I can give advice on—war. There’s been too much of it, Fin, and if you don’t stop whoever has been selling us out, I guarantee there will be more. Noah thinks it could mean the end of Council, maybe even Periculum. Is that really what you want?”

  “What I want is change.”

  “Will killing yourself accomplish that?” Esse asked.

  “It certainly won’t get you the girl,” Ziggy chuckled. “But seriously, Fin, suicide isn’t the answer. You have to keep at it or things will never get better.”

  Fin got up to leave. “The humans order us to serve them faithfully and we do. They force us to live like dogs and we accept it. They tell us that things will get better someday, so we hope. But is our hope for a better life or an end to this one?”

  “I take it you’re still headed for the shield?” Ziggy said. “Because if you are, I’d like my Commlink back, please.”

  Fin apologized, explaining that he had traded it for food and that the one he had on him was a loaner from Nova.

  “Oh well,” Ziggy said. “I never liked that color anyway, but it would be a shame to lose you.”

  Ziggy’s Commlink flashed. “It’s the police,” he said exasperated. “You two wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  He opened the door, letting in the sounds of panic that the soundproof walls had been keeping out. Riot police were ordering all humans to the exit while they herded the Cybernites into the barroom. Ziggy closed the door.

  “It's another of their silly roundups. It’s best they not see you here. Let’s get you to the tunnel,” he said.

  A floor-to-ceiling bookcase took up one wall of the room. There were no books on it, only knickknacks and memorabilia from Ziggy’s time in the military. He picked up one of them and pressed a hidden switch on it. A door-sized section of the bookcase slid soundlessly into the floor, exposing a set of steps leading down. He motioned for them to follow. They took the stairs to an abandoned rail tunnel. It was dank and dark and foul smelling. Ziggy gave them directions to the nearest street exit and left, saying he had to get back to the Haven to settle this.

  Esse and Fin made their way to the exit and came up to street level at the end of the block. The rain had let up. The police were loading the last of the human Haven patrons into prison transports. There was no sign of Ziggy or any of the Cybernites. When the last of the transports lifted off, someone inside the building shouted, “Fire!” The unmistakable zip of Pulser rounds cut through the darkness. The hiss of air vaporizing and the crackle of Cybernite flesh disintegrating tore at the fabric of the night. Fin started toward the building.

  Esse stopped him. “There is nothing you can for them now,” she said.

  “They murdered them,” Fin cried.

  “I know.”

  “But why? They did nothing wrong.”

  “The authorities notified Ziggy some time ago that this street had been rezoned and that his permits had been revoked. The Haven was to be repurposed as an exclusive brothel for the residents of the Hill Sector. Ziggy fought it, but there was only so much his lawyers could do. The Haven was in violation of several Council decrees. He was warned to shut the operation down or suffer the consequences.”

  A deafening explosion shook the street, blowing out the front wall of the Haven. It shattered the windows of the buildings across from it and threw Esse and Fin to the ground. As suddenly as it had pushed outward, it sucked the debris back into itself as the old building that had been impossibly wedged between two massive Cyblocks imploded. When the dust settled, the only sign that there had been anything between those two structures was the litter of broken antiques and dead policemen.

  Fin looked up into the dark sky.

  “That did not come from above,” Esse said. “It was the bomb Ziggy had on display.”

  “He said it was disarmed.”

  “He rearmed it. He would rather destroy his life’s work than have it perverted by Council.”

  “At what cost?”

  “He was much like you, Fin. He believed that some things are worth dying for.”

  An incoming message flashed on Fin’s Commlink. “Nova is home. She is worried about me.”

  “You should go,” said Esse. “It is no longer safe here. A network-wide terrorist alert has been issued. Military gunships are on the way.”

  “What about you?”

  “I parked Noah’s Levcar on the roof of that Cyblock. I would offer you a ride, but the look on your face tells me you would decline. It also tells me you have decided not to test the shield. For that I am thankful.”

  Fin walked back to the apartment. There was a chill in the air. The rain had turned to poison pellets of black hail. Even the beggars and thieves were sheltering in the alleyways. He didn’t care. He welcomed the pain. When he got to Nova’s, he found her making dinner. His favorite music was playing. She didn’t particularly care for it and had told him so many times. She usually instructed the Homecom to change to something else whenever she came home and it was on, yet it was playing nonetheless. Her favorite scents of raspberry and quince mixed with the sharp smell of a spice he particularly liked. The common room vids weren’t displaying her evening favorite “Sunset Over the Ocean Option Two.” They were showing the alley outside the building where the hail was bouncing off the overhang. Beneath it, two Cys were keeping warm beside a trashcan fire. It was a scene she hated, one he so often watched while working at night.

  “I thought you were having dinner out with Agent Clayborn?” he said.

  “Hello to you, too,” she replied with that crooked smile that meant she was making fun of him.

  “I apologize,” he said. “God be with you.”

  “And to answer your question,” she replied, “I was worried about you so I skipped dinner and came right home. Where have you been?”

  “Is the tracker in my shoe malfunctioning?”

  “OK. I guess I deserved that. How about we rewind? I heard the dispatcher say there had been another terrorist attack in Cytown. They were sending in troops. Coincidently the strike team coordinates were exactly where your tracker said you were. Are you all right?”

  “Not really.”

  “Didn’t we agree that you wouldn’t go wandering off like that? Didn’t we say things like it’s too dangerous and a really bad idea?”

  “I needed to get out.”

  “I don’t think you and I have the same idea of what ‘getting out’ means.”

  Fin changed the subject after an uncomfortable silence. “What are you making? It smells delicious.”

  “An oldie but goodie. We haven’t had it in a while and I thought . . .” She took a taste from the spoon and noticed him staring. “What are you looking at?”

  “You.”

  “Why don’t you grab a shower? You’re soaking wet and you smell like smoke. Dinner in ten, OK?”

  Fin showered and changed. Dinner was on the table when he retuned. They sat down and began eating.

  “Did you find out anything more on the mole today?” Nova asked.

  Fin shook his head.

  “There was another theft,” she said.

  “How many identities were stolen?”

  “Three again
. Ben told me about it after my check-in.”

  “You had another check-in? But you just had one.”

  She shrugged. “Dr. Shepherd said there were some issues with my data that he wanted to go over.”

  “What issues?”

  “I don’t know, Fin. Something technical. Do you want me to call him and ask?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Please don’t be mad,” he said. “It just seems odd. I guess I am worried.”

  “I’m fine.” She glanced up at the vidscreens. The wind was driving the hail under the alley overhang, pelting the Cybernites sheltering there. “Sunset Over the Ocean Option Two,” she said. “And kill that music.”

  “Would you like a different selection from the playlist, ma’am?” the Homecom asked.

  “No. I have a headache.”

  “May I get you a pain killer?” Fin said.

  “No. I’ll be fine.” She smiled. “Thanks.”

  They went back to eating.

  “Mama is dead,” Fin blurted out, as if the words were as simple to say as "It's raining again" or "Dinner is delicious.”

  “I know,” Nova replied. “I found the body in her apartment. I stopped there on the way home to make sure she was OK. She OD’d on Creep. It’s so sad. She was beginning to smell, so I called a disposal unit. They said someone else had already called it in.”

  “That was me. I killed her.”

  “You didn’t kill her, Fin. It was the Creep. She took three doses. That’s enough to fry a Pasty.”

  “I stole money from you, Nova. I am sorry. I gave it to her for expenses so she wouldn’t lose her job and her apartment, but she used it to buy drugs. I am responsible for her death.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for what she did. It was her choice. She wanted to die. You just made it less painful.”

  “Death is inevitable, but it should not be our life’s goal. It should simply be the final marker at the end of the road. That is God’s word. My mind tells me to believe it, but my heart does not understand. Mama could not imagine life without Kron. They shared everything, the good and the bad. Their lives were like threads entwined into a single fabric, so much so that when that fabric was torn apart by his death, her life was ripped apart, too. Is that what love is, Nova?”

  She avoided the question. “That tunnel rat I found on her bedroom floor—you bought that for her, didn’t you?”

  “With your credits,” he nodded. “I was just trying to help. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “If you needed money, why didn’t you ask?”

  “I thought you would say no.”

  “I probably would have if I’d known you were going to spend it on that.”

  “Some Cybernites consider tunnel rat a delicacy.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  A disk-shaped robot rolled out of one of the lower cabinets and began to clean up a spill on the kitchen floor. They went back to eating.

  “I’m sorry about Mama,” Nova said. “I liked her.”

  “They say that the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace with God.”

  “Who says that?”

  “It is written in The Word.”

  “Fin, that book is just a fairytale somebody made up to make us think there’s something more to life than this. There's no God. When you die, you die. That’s it.”

  “Then what is the point?”

  “The point is to live.”

  “Does it not matter how you live?”

  “Of course, it does.”

  “How do you want to live?”

  “Me? I don’t know. I just want to be happy, I guess.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m working on it, OK?”

  “I am working on it, too.”

  She blushed a deeper violet. “Fin, you know how much I like you, but I can’t fall in love with you. I just can’t.”

  “But you have feelings for me. You said that.”

  “We’ve already been through this. It doesn’t matter what I feel.”

  “That is all that matters, Nova.”

  “We had a thing. That’s all it was.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Fin, what you’re asking of me is just not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “It just isn’t, OK?”

  “Are you crying?”

  “No." She rubbed her jaw. “Damn it, this thing hurts like hell. I’m telling you, whatever they do during those downloads does a real number on me.”

  Fin got up from the table. “Perhaps you should see a med-tech. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

  Fin went into his bedroom. He could hear Nova crying over the hum of the air circulator. She was talking to someone on her Commlink. He listened from behind the door.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

  There was silence as she listened to the reply.

  “I just can’t,” she said. “I can’t lie to him like this anymore. This is so cruel.”

  She listened again to a reply, and Fin to the silence.

  “I understand," she replied. “Yes. I get it. Goodnight.”

  Fin stepped back from the door when he heard her footsteps approach. She stopped outside his room. Her hand brushed against the door, coming to rest on the knob. He prayed for it to turn. He prayed with all his heart to a God he wasn’t sure existed to have mercy on him just this once, to grant him this one thing that meant nothing to a supreme being but everything to him. He promised he would never ask again for anything if just this once . . .

  The handle began to turn and on it Fin’s hopes that there was a God who listened to the prayers of his faithful and sometimes answered them.

  Nova let go of the knob and walked away.

  Chapter 13

  There is truth and there are lies. There is fact and there is fiction. There is real and there is illusion. To blur the lines between them is to betray oneself and one’s world.

  Fin woke up the next morning feeling miserable. He read in bed for a few hours, then got dressed and went into the common room. The sun was a bright orange ball over a vidscreen-generated ocean. Gentle waves were lapping on a white sand beach. The Homecom had raised the room temperature a few degrees to match the coming beautiful day. Nova was relaxing on the sofa, scanning the news on her Commlink.

  She looked up when he came into the room. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Is the main power back on?" Fin said.

  “Where’s my ‘God be with you?’” she teased. When he didn’t react, she shrugged and replied, “No, we're still on backup, but Dr. Shepherd said he would see to it that we didn’t run out.”

  “That was good of him.”

  “I was just reading that we’re opening another front against the Eastern Bloc, a pincer movement or something. They say this will be the final push to victory. The Great War will be over soon, Fin. Isn’t that fantastic?”

  “Council has announced final victory offensives on thirty-three separate occasions over the past hundred years.”

  “They have?”

  “Yes, and I have come to the conclusion that everything we see and hear on the news about the Great War is just another lie."

  “Really?”

  “I have done the calculations on the reported losses for both sides. The numbers do not add up.”

  “What numbers?”

  “In the last ten years, the reported Eastern Bloc casualties exceed their total estimated population by a factor of ten. During that same period, published accounts indicate that Periculum spent over three times the city’s entire ten-year budget on equipment and weaponry.”

  “I'm sure there’s an explanation."

  “I imagine there is, but it is usually another lie that explains a lie.”

  “There’s more coffee if you want,” Nova said, taking a sip of hers. “You look like you could use it.”

  Fin poured him
self a cup and sat down at the table.

  “Don’t you want to sit here with me?” she asked. “There’s a shore bird sequence coming up that's just amazing. It’s like they’re flying right out of the sun. I get chills every time I watch it.”

  “There are no birds left in the world, Nova. There are no beaches like that. The sun does not rise over Cytown and never will.”

  “Wow. This is way worse than I thought. Come on.” She patted the seat next to hers.

  “I do not want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

  “Too late for that. Would you please just get over here, Fin? We need to talk.”

  He moved to the sofa, leaving a space for the growing distance between them.

  “I feel like I owe you some sort of explanation,” she began.

  “You do not owe me anything.”

  “Yes, I do. Fin, try to understand. We’re different. I don’t mean in color or appearance or anything like that. We’re just different. Inside.”

  “My understanding of our physical makeup is that despite the improvements in your design we are quite similar.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean we’re different as in we want different things out of life. All I ever hear out of you is give us justice, stop the oppression, equal rights for all."

  “I thought you found that commendable?"

  “I do, but really, don’t you ever get tired of complaining? And you’re always talking about how things could be better even though you know you can’t change them. I mean it’s really noble of you to want these things, but honestly, you need to stop fighting the system. It’s eating you up.”

  “Don’t you care about our people?”

  “Of course, I do. I care about a lot of things. Believe me, I do. I mean it’s terrible how Cybernites are treated, and it’s awful that the Great War drags on like this, but I can’t change any of that. You can’t either. Look, I like my life, my apartment, and I really like my job. I like the feeling of being a part of something. I get tired of worrying all the time about how bad things are. I just want to be happy, Fin.”

  “I want to be happy, too.”

  “No, you don’t. Let’s be honest. Your own happiness means nothing to you compared to making the world some kind of magically better place. You’d rather be miserable all the time if that’s what it takes. Not me. Life is too short, Fin. I want to enjoy the good food we have, not feel bad that others are eating that Recon crap. I want to be comfortable in my space, not feel guilty about having an enviro-controller that actually works. Maybe I should offer my place up to the homeless who live in the alley so they can get in out of the rain once in a while, but I don’t want to. I’m sorry they have to live like that, but I’m happy I don’t. And I want to watch the sunrise every morning even if it isn’t real. I don’t care if the birds are fake. And I don’t feel guilty because there are millions out there who are worse off than me. But you do. It’s like you have to, like you’re made that way. Do you see what I mean now? I will never be like you. I don’t want to be like you. That's why I could never love you.” She looked away. “I guess that makes me a bad person.”