The Victor's Heritage (The Jonah Trilogy Book 2)

by Anthony Caplan

  "You got a comb?" asked Corrag in front of the mirror in the bathroom. She was the only girl in there. The other women prisoners, mostly in their twenties and thirties, were in the gym walking around or talking together in small groups on a break.

  "Nah. Sorry," said the guard woman. She shifted her weight and tried to find something else to look at. She was bored. Corrag used her fingers to pull her hair into a semblance of order.

  "Do I look okay?"

  "You isn’t going to nobody's party."

  "Every day is a party in my world."

  The guard woman put her hands behind her back and cuffed her. Corrag did not resist.

  "Do you really have to?"

  "Of course. You still under custody."

  Then they walked down the halls and the panel slid open, and there were Ricky and Alana dressed in their formal suits and the Federation attorney and the judge in his robes seated beside them. The guard marched her up to the assembled group, uncuffed her hands, and smirked at nobody in particular.

  "Corrag Lyons you have been deemed fit for release under the proviso of Security Code 308 section B," said the judge in a thin, reedy voice. The anti-aging hormones were not totally blocking the effects of advanced years on his vocal production. "At this point your family and Mr. Shearstein will inform you of the state's need for redress and your program of remediation and re-education."

  Ricky and Alana were beside her, hugging and kissing her together.

  "Oh, Corrag. We've been sick with worry," said Alana. Corrag felt a flush of relief to be free and so glad to see her parents. The nightmare was almost over. The attorney cleared his throat and interrupted.

  "We need to inform you, Corrag, that there will be mandatory meetings every two weeks."

  "Where?"

  "With me."

  "Oh."

  Alana was crying. Ricky's face had a mixture of repentance and concern that Corrag associated with his public persona as a college administrator. But she was almost home.

  "We need you to sign off on the agreement and the admission of guilt," said Ricky. The attorney held out the reader.

  "Can I scan it before I sign?"

  "Of course," said Ricky.

  Corrag took the reader and quickly read the document. There were bullet points at the end, which detailed her misdemeanors:

  ● Betraying positions of trust

  ● Absconding with communal property

  ● Inappropriate contacts

  ● Evidence of seditious sympathy with unknown intent

  Corrag looked up. Before she could speak, Ricky jumped in.

  "There's nothing in there that could impede advancement to an augmentation track. Isn't that right, Mr. Shearstein."

  "That is correct," agreed Mr. Shearstein, clearing his throat at the same time.

  "That's a pretty low objective. What if I don't sign?"

  "Low objective? Low objective?" Alana repeated in an unbelieving hiss.

  "Now is not the time, Ally," said Ricky, heading off a fight between mother and daughter within earshot of the judge and the row of defendants and attorneys in the back of the room waiting for their verdicts to be handed out.

  "It's the last two. What exactly are my inappropriate contacts and where is the evidence of my seditious sympathy? That seems pretty vague to me," said Corrag.

  "We can discuss these at further length and you can certainly have questions. But if you don't sign, that will force us to proceed to a trial date with the judge, and you won't be going home today unless your parents make bail, which has been set at $200,000," said the attorney.

  "What?"

  "That's just the way it is."

  "That's not fair."

  "It is according to the articles of status that govern civil conformity in Democravian court jurisdictions."

  Corrag swallowed hard. This was the compromise with principles that meant she had accepted to play by the rules. Alana and Ricky would never forgive her if she chose to favor ethical purity and go to trial. She was angry enough to do it. But the idea of a shower in her own bathroom and a night's sleep in her own bed were impossible to resist. Corrag picked up the stylus hanging from the reader and signed on the line. Mr. Shearstein went for the reader, but Corrag pulled it away from him.

  "Who gets this?"

  "Give it to me, please," said the judge, stretching down his shaky hand.

  In the portagon nobody spoke until they were out on the mostly empty freeway. A crew of internal migrants worked on filling in the shoulder where the last tremors had crumbled the asphalt. Corrag looked at them with understanding and sympathy. Somebody somewhere must realize that the system was corrupt. It would have to crumble. Change could only come from below. From the dispossessed, the migrants, people like Abel. Ricky spoke up, as if he had read her mind.

  "No country is perfect, Corrag. At least we try to get it right here, recognizing the common good as the highest ground of social probity."

  "Yeah, Dad. That's right. I have no problems with that."

  "Give her the emosponder," said Ricky.

  "What? You have my emosponder?"

  "Yes, I have it somewhere. Did I put it in my purse?" said Alana.

  "I don't know. The admin gave it to you, so you have it."

  "It must be in my purse," said Alana.

  "Oh my God, You haven't lost it, have you?" said Corrag.

  The emosponder had an image from Ben. It was a lowdef selfie. His face, hair buzz-cut and freshly shaved, in the São Paulo Tubid terminal. There was a stand for Caipirinhas Del Noreste and several profiles of catlike, feral faces in the background and his large, beige jaw line and smiling brown eyes and underneath he had written: Keeping it on the wild side, Benjamin P. Calder.

  She was lying in bed with the music on, playing a song list from Oomo reflecting her nostalgic mood. Gurgie and Mathew were both at the summer camp for fine-tuning inductees at the UUW campus. Ricky and Alana had planned for an Alaska cruise, and even this situation would not deter them from it. So she was going to be home for the summer with no friends or family, just the scheduled visits with Attorney Shearstein to keep her busy. And Ben was likely to die on patrol in a doomed war with the Basin tribes. And they were all doomed because there was never going to be an interplanetary expedition and none of them were going to live forever in the orbits of Betelgeuse and Andromeda. Not exactly an inspirational tableau, but it was what it was. She was so full of clichés, another sign she was home in the bosom of Democravia and her family. She had had a taste of freedom with Ben on the San Pedro -- with Abel and Sandy. Just a few hours really in her entire life of mental processes unhindered by the Panglossian half-truths she had been reared on. But what could await her, she wondered. She could never fit into the Democravian life plan with its defining motif of self-sacrifice for the common good now.

  A knock on the door sounded and Corrag sat up.

  "Yes?" Why weren't they using the nanowall, she wondered. That's what it was there for.

  "It's me. Can I come in?"

  "Yes," she said with what she thought was an air of tolerance.

  Ricky entered with his face set in a stern, parental setting.

  "It's time for our walk."

  "Does it have to be now?"

  "Yes. I have a cocktail date later so it will have to be now."

  "I'll be right down."

  He closed the door again. Corrag put on her shoes. A walk would do her good, but a serious talk with her father was not something she was ever prepared for, especially not now when she was so unsettled in her thoughts, still processing the experiences of the last few days.

  They went out on Durkiev Drive towards Unity, headed for the park. The neighbors were in the yard with their dog, tossing a disc to it. The Rosaleses were waving. The desert grasses in their yard were brown and scraggly, despite some rain in the last month.

  "Say hi to the Rosaleses, Corrag." Corrag waved and smiled like she had been doing all her life, an unthinking response. The R
osaleses smiled and waved back.

  They walked on. She waited for Ricky to speak, with her head down and occasionally looking up to see where they were. He didn't say anything until they reached the park. Parents milled about, typical pairings of post-racial and post-gender secularists. Their bumbling kids were on the jungle moat.

  "Remember when you fell and hurt your knee, Corrag?"

  "Yes."

  "That seems like yesterday to me."

  "It's an elastic thing. Our memories. Some of them are etched pretty strong, Dad."

  "Having you in my life is etched very strong, Corrag. To me you were, and are, a pretty special, life affirming event."

  Corrag remained silent, penitent. This was not an act, she realized. She genuinely felt sorry for how she had hurt him. She should have been grateful at least for still having these true feelings of filial devotion. Then she wondered how much of his thoughts and words were due to augmented impulses. Was he open at that moment? The feedback algorithm sometimes became overridden in time, and, especially in the earlier implants there was a propensity for the back channels to get stuck in the receptive cycle, which meant their clients became "mimes for the machine," as the syndrome was called in the official literature, or Demodummies.

  "Your Mom, Alana and I, Corrag. We've always believed in you. You have potential, a future ahead of you. That's what is so upsetting about some of your recent choices."

  "Dad..."

  "No, I have nothing against the Calder boy. It's not that. I don't want to go over that ground now. Here’s what I want to say to you, Corrag. I pulled out all the stops for you, went to Councilor Culpepper and they've agreed to consider sending you as a youth emissary for a year to the Republic. Alana has talked to her sister Joan and you will stay with them at the farm in New Albion."

  "Dad," she repeated. She had wanted to protest, but now was gutted. She felt robbed.

  "I just want to be in charge of my own life. When does that happen?" She almost felt like crying. They were at the edge of the park, looking at a stand of azaleas that was humming with late season pollinators.

  "I know. I know," said Ricky. Corrag glanced at him. He had aged in the last few months. There were new wrinkles that hid the scar on his cheek, product of a childhood accident. Maybe he knew he would never see the interstellar. It must be hard for him to have to accept reality, she thought. Or did the augmented access keep him informed of a larger vision? Was it something he was using at the moment?

  He shook his head and rubbed his eyes and then stared hard at his daughter.

  "Who among us is in charge of their own destiny? We all have to answer to a higher authority, Corrag. You know there is no such thing as individual freedom. That is a red herring used by the Republicans to justify their greed. No such thing in reality. You just have to do the best you can in accord with your role, your status in life. Play your part to the fullest."

  "Maybe that's true. But I don't like my part, Dad. I'd like to do some revision."

  "Why, Corrag? You've had all the best. Democravia has provided for you. All we ask is you give back."

  She had no ready answer. She thought of the bees, the circular rounds they made in search of nectar, their orientation in accordance to the seasons and the position of the planet, the awful grind and constancy of their short life spans and the fact that everything depended on it.

  "You'll find that there are no shortcuts to fulfillment. Look to make a difference in the lives of others."

  "Maybe I can make a difference, Dad. Maybe I can. A real difference."

  "I hope so. I am proud of you. I know there are people who are saying you've fallen off the track, but prove them wrong, Corrag."

  The track, the well-worn track was what Corrag didn't want to follow. When would he see that and really trust her to find a better way? Maybe he never would. Corrag was more convinced than ever of the rightness of her wish to be free of the compelled thought control that came with adult responsibilities.

  "Corrag, I didn't want to tell you, but I feel I must warn you. That dream has come back. Now, I don't believe it means anything. Individual destiny is an illusion. But this dream. Its constant reoccurrence intrigues me."

  Ricky's dream. She tried to remember what it was, something that he and Alana referenced from time to time. It got in the way of his sleep.

  "What is the dream again, Dad?"

  "Corrag, this is something I don't like talking about. It's painful. I don't know where it comes from. I have this dream that you and I are on the beach and the tide sweeps you away before we get to you. And then when it sweeps you back it's along with this flood of dead fish."

  "Well, at least it sweeps me back."

  "That's not funny. It always scares me awake."

  "Well, you're just scared of losing me, Dad. It’s natural."

  "Overcoming our mortality is the driving force behind human civilization. I sometimes think you might be the one, Corrag."

  "Isn't that what your father said about you, Dad?"

  "Yes, but he said, before he died, he told me..."

  "What?"

  "That it would take three generations to overcome the death wave."

  "What death wave, Dad. What is that? Sounds like crazy mumbo jumbo from the old days."

  "I don't know what it is exactly, Corrag. But Al, he once said something about how he'd cheated death. I ... I don't remember the story exactly. But ... some kind of story about a Mayan tablet and the drug cartels. I never understood it all. He said he wrote it all down, but I never found the manuscript."

  "Well, Dad. Someday we'll get some clarification on the fine print of your Dad's dream and your dream. Luckily I don't have that dream."

  "Yeah," Ricky laughed and flashed his lop-sided grin that made him look like a grizzled old desert pirate.

  "I'll miss you, Dad."

  "I'll miss you, too. And Mom will miss you. I know you two haven't been getting along all that well, but she loves you more than anything, Corrag."

  "I know."

  "Remember. Service to others is the key to success."

  "I'll try, Dad."

  At the end of the week Alana and Ricky took off in the portagon for the ferry port of Ventura where they were catching the three week cruise in the hover up the coast to the calving icebergs of the Alaskan North Slope. It was the traditional thing to do for the twentieth wedding anniversary. A cadre of UUW faculty and Edmundstown friends and acquaintances saw them off the night before. Alana had a couple glasses of Chilean wine too many and began telling loud stories and bragging about Corrag's achievements, including the escapade in the mountains with "that HumInt boy" as she called him. How was that something to brag about? Corrag decided she would never understand her mother. She retreated up to her room and played MandolinMonkey for several hours. She had fought her way into the headquarters, the obelisk, and been granted access to the highest level, the accelerator, which held the key of cognizance. There she had skipped out, not wanting to end the game too soon. The key would turn out to be a source code, which would provide a year’s worth of free game time and access to the entire Federation approved catalogue of virtualscape productions, she was sure. If dreams were an unreliable reflection of anything real, then the virtual world was even less so. But some days she wasn't so sure. Some days, a game could reveal a flash of insight like turning a corner on your own life. Or something like that. She missed Gurgie and texted her anyways, although she knew that as an inductee Gurgie would have been compelled to give up her through-file at Edmundstown school district and take on a new pass code.

  There was a list on the kitchen nanowall of chores that she had to take care of while they were away. Charge the housebot for its monthly energy upfill during the nights and get the top floor nanowall resegmented. A municipal utility crew was supposed to come out Tuesday to do that. And of course see Attorney Shearstein on Tuesday downtown in the government complex. The gardener was coming Friday to trim the hedges and mow the lawn, and Corrag was
supposed to pay him, as well as the utility crew, from the bitcoin account. And Corrag had gotten permission to buy some summer clothes for herself from Jaceys with the Jaycey card. She thought a bathing suit like the one she'd seen Carson Macroom wearing in that daytime soap, The Bully of Jermaine Street, a recreation of the life of an indeterminate and socially unfit Eastern European woman in London at the beginning of the century, would do, given she could stand to lose some weight.

  The days went by in a blur of unfeeling and sensory-deprived existence. The work crew was a motley group of amnesty men who looked unwell. They managed to get the wall done, but their fear of the work boss, a typical Democravian heavy, probably a HumInt vet who had picked up some jungle ways in the Basin, was palpable. The boss had Corrag sign for the bitcoin account.

  She had no word from Gurgie or Ben. She watched a lot of telly once the nanowall was resegmented and then on Tuesday dressed in a frilly short tennis skirt and yellow blouse that she had bought with the Jaycee card and had express delivered and prepared to catch the subporter downtown.

  The day was clear and dry, like every summer day she had ever known in Edmundstown. It never rained in southern Democravia. Water from the Carlsbad desalination plants provided for most of their needs. The last of the Oglala aquifer was being pumped to give them a few more decades of viable life. There were no settlements east of the desert and very little humans aside from bands of desert nomads. From radio signal drones in outer space Edmundstown appeared as a bastion of light in a sea of darkness.

  The people at the subporter stop on Unity and Western Ave were mostly middle-aged administerial types, some of them nervously glancing up from their emosponders. The one thing about the subporter was it gave her an opportunity to look around and study people. Everywhere she saw little signs of individuality that were like the water creeping in under the concrete wall of the San Pedro dam: a brown man in a stiff spandex suit chewing coca leaves and checking his fingernails while he daydreamed and watched the new station roll in; the mother and the child who fled from her grasp and laughed when she cuffed and cursed him in a foreign language that sounded like some kind of gypsy slang; the old man who smiled at her when he caught her watching it all. She got off at the government complex and walked across the street past the Taylor Jabones Convention Center and thought of the Spring Fest crowds she'd last witnessed there on their way to Democravian citizenhood giving it up in one last whoop of juvenile energy release. The people on the street were like bundles of energy driven in an actually beautiful and orderly dance that was everyday life. And Corrag decided that it was good and that someday she would like to be part of the dance of these people who proceeded on their strangely non-random, tracked orbits with calm and courage and faith in the order that had been provided by the Federation and its processes of law and justice and commerce. Why couldn’t she fit in?