by Isaac Hooke
Hoodwink sighed. "No. But I have a feeling you'll make me go inside anyway."
Al smiled widely. "Smart boy."
He opened the door. Seven people were seated on ladderbacks in a circle, hands folded in their laps. They all turned their heads toward the doorway.
"Welcome to the secret society of the Users," Al said.
But Hoodwink hardly heard.
She was here.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hoodwink quickly shot a hand against the doorframe. It was all he could do to hold himself up.
There she was, the woman he'd given up everything for.
She regarded him uncertainly. "You."
He shoved the old man away, and lunged forward, step, by step. He felt certain his legs would give out on him at any moment.
When he reached her, his legs at last stopped working, and he fell to his knees. He covered his face in his hands. "Forgive me."
Al came up beside him. "You know her?"
Hoodwink didn't look up. "Of course I know her. She's my daughter."
He felt hesitant fingers rest on his head. Hers. "I'd wondered who my real father was," she said.
"Yolinda." He looked up at her, and he couldn't help the tears.
"I'm Ari now," she said, and she held his palm in hers. She looked older than he remembered her. Much older. It had only been six months, but she seemed to have aged at least ten years.
"Is this the man who interrupted you?" A rasping voice came from somewhere else in the circle.
"It is," Ari said.
Hoodwink looked from her, not caring who saw the emotion written all over his face, and he let his gaze pass from person to person.
So these were the legendary Users, those who had broken free of their collars and defied the gols. They looked ordinary enough. Unlike his daughter, they were all old, well into their eighties and nineties.
Al lifted Hoodwink into an empty chair beside his daughter, and pulled another chair up beside him.
"This is Hoodwink Cooper, everyone," Al said.
"Why did you interfere?" That rasping voice again. It belonged to an old barrel of a man with a pinched face that would've put the performers of the macabre circus to shame. He had intelligent eyes though, and spoke confidently.
"That's Marx by the way," Al said. "Though we call him Karl sometimes. Karl Blacksmith."
"I don't smith no more," Marx said. "Now answer the question."
Al whispered in his ear. "He's our torturer."
"She's my daughter, she is," Hoodwink said. "And I've passed her on the way to work every day since mayor Jeremy revised her. Every day, when she went out on her morning run. I guess I hoped she'd remember me. But she never returned my gaze, not once. Until this morning. She seemed so scared. Her eyes were huge, like she was calling out for help. So I followed her, I did. Watched as she waited by the Forever Gate. Watched as she dropped her satchel in the snow by the wall. I didn't know she was waiting for the street to clear. I didn't know she did it on purpose. I didn't know it was a bomb.
"So when she walked away, leaving it behind, I ran and picked it up from the snow, and that's when the gate guards grabbed me. They opened the satchel, accused me of terrorism. I broke away, and ran. That's when it went off." Hoodwink shook his head, looking at her. "I would have never thought she was capable of something like that. My own flesh and blood. Bombing the Gate? Never. But it's my fault. I shouldn't have let Jeremy have her those six months ago."
"It's no one's fault." Ari met his eyes steadily. The old Yolinda wouldn't have done that. Met his gaze, that is. She would've stared at the floor rather than face the full intensity of his wrath, or in this case, his disappointment. "No human beings died in the explosion. There were only gol casualties."
"Did Jeremy put you up to it?" Hoodwink asked her.
"Jeremy's powerful, I'll give him that." It was Marx who answered. "But no, Jeremy didn't order the bomb. The man's the mayor. He suckles the teat of the gols. He wouldn't dare risk something like this. No. We ordered Ari to place the bomb."
"You." Hoodwink spoke the word tonelessly. He glanced at Ari. "How did you get mixed up with these Users?"
It was Marx who answered. "When Mayor Jeremy had her revised, we sought her out. Her connections gave us access to the raw materials we needed to make the bomb."
"I for one didn't know she was revised." This from an old lady dressed in quilts who could have been Hoodwink's grandma. She held two knitting needles, with a spool of yarn in her lap. She seemed to be knitting the very same quilt that she wore.
"That's because you never pay attention at the meetings," Al said. "Ari refused to marry the mayor. So Jeremy had her personality revised."
Hoodwink shook his head. There was more to it than that, but he wasn't about to volunteer information to these Users.
"You poor dear." The old lady's eyebrows drooped. "Did it hurt?"
Ari smiled stiffly. "I don't remember."
"That's Vax by the way," Al said, nodding at the quilt lady. "You'll like her. Used to be a man."
The old lady sniffed, and returned to her knitting.
Hoodwink pressed his lips together. "Jeremy should have had me revised too. Should've made me forget I ever had a daughter. Spared me the pain."
Ari rested a hand in his. He wanted to shake it off, but she was his daughter. At least, she used to be. Even if she didn't remember.
A thought occurred to him, and he regarded Al suspiciously. "Why did you bring me here?"
Al looked across the seated old men and women to a frail elderly pauper dressed in rags who held a cane in palsied hands. The pauper kept his eyes forward, not looking at anyone else, maybe not able to look at anyone else, staring at some distant point on the wall.
"There is an old saying," the frail pauper said. "The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache."
"That's Leader," Al whispered.
Hoodwink studied the shabby-looking man. "Leader?"
"Aye, he leads us."
Leader focused his attention on Hoodwink suddenly, and those eyes held him in a grip quite unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. Hoodwink felt naked beneath those eyes, as though this man could see through all masks and pretenses and read the true nature of anyone. Hoodwink couldn't look away, though he sorely wanted to.
Leader broke the grip, and resumed his observation of the wall. There was nothing there that Hoodwink could see, except worn, curling wallpaper.
"I'm twenty-nine years old," Leader said.
"Thirty-nine here," Vax volunteered.
"Forty-two." Karl Marx.
And so the company rattled off their ages. No one present was over forty-five, though they all looked eighty or more. All save Ari.
"It's the price we pay for vitra," Leader said. "When the gols tell us that they collar us for our own protection, they mean it. Without the collar, the electrical current flows freely through our bodies, and ages us. Rapidly."
Hoodwink studied the man uncertainly.
"That is one truth." Leader nodded to himself. "Do you feel the better for knowing it?"
Hoodwink rubbed his hands together. "I never asked for the truth." He stopped the gesture. It was too much like washing his hands. Of the truth.
"But that's what you'll get when you're with us. The truth. Or a version of it, anyway." Leader gripped his cane tightly, and for a moment Hoodwink thought he was going to stand. But Leader merely shifted in his seat. "Something is wrong with the gols. They have been distracted lately. The gol banker giving out a thousand more drachmae than he should. The gol lutist forgetting his notes halfway through the ballad. The gol butcher misjudging his swing, and cutting off his own hand. The gol executioner, forgetting to sharpen the guillotine blade. I can cite examples from across the city. Then there's that blank, slobbering look so many of them have developed. It's as if they've contracted a plague of the mind."
"But the gols can't get sick," Hoodwink said.
> Leader nodded. "So we have been taught. Perhaps they are under an attack of some sort, in the world beyond the Gate where they reside simultaneously to our own. The Outside."
Hoodwink rubbed his arms together, feeling suddenly cold. "I don't know what you're talking about. Residing simultaneously? And the Outside is dead. Everyone knows that."
Leader arched his eyebrows. "Indeed?"
"And if there really were an attack on the gols," Hoodwink said. "Would that be such a bad thing? I say let them be wiped out. A world without gols is a better world."
Leader smiled. "We blame them for imposing upon our freedoms, for collaring us, for confining us to the cities, it's true. And they hunt us, the uncollared. The Users. We all hate them, with passion. But at their core, they service us. You do realize this don't you? It's a love-hate relationship. Without the infrastructure they provide, civilization as we know it would collapse. We'd fall back into the dark ages, quite literally, and we'd all freeze to death."
Hoodwink wouldn't back down. "And we're not in the dark ages already?"
Leader opened his mouth, but he had no answer to that.
Hoodwink pressed his attack. "Why did you make Ari bomb the Forever Gate?"
"She was merely trying to open a path to the Outside," Leader said. "We want to help the gols with what ails them, you see."
"Help the gols." Hoodwink stood. "I've just about heard enough. You go and enjoy helping your gols." Hoodwink held out a hand to his daughter. "Come on Ari, let's go. You don't need these people ordering you around."
She didn't move.
Hoodwink heard a low buzzing. He glanced around the circle. The elderly men and women had raised their hands, and electricity flowed between them, from fingertip to fingertip.
"Please, Hoodwink, sit down." Leader said. "Please."
Hoodwink lifted his palms in surrender, and sat back down. He was relieved when the electrical flows ceased.
"Your daughter is the one who planned the Gate attack." Leader smiled that distant smile, and his eyes locked on Hoodwink. "Do you want to know the truth? What lies beyond the Forever Gate?"
Hoodwink couldn't answer. That gaze overwhelmed him.
Leader was still smiling when he looked away. "It is a land quite unlike any we have ever known. It— well, it is the land where the gols reside in actuality. As different from this world as the bottom of the ocean is from the top of the sky. In the city, none of the gols can even comprehend our offer of help. It's beyond their programming. We can't break past the generic response loops. But beyond the Gate, they will listen to us. They will."
Hoodwink sat back. "How do you know they'll even want your help?"
Leader sighed. "We don't. But we must try."
"Okay." Hoodwink glanced from face to face. The expressions were grim, and some of those present glowered at him. "You're forgetting one small thing. You have to go through the Gate. Ari couldn't even make a dent in it with that bomb of hers. So as far as I'm concerned, this discussion is pointless. And I still don't know why you're even telling me all this."
"The bomb was only a hope we'd entertained. To create a passage for us all. But there is another way." Leader was silent a moment. He stared at that peeling wallpaper, and the guttering wall candles flicked shadows across his face. "It is a dangerous path, too perilous for most of us. A path only the strong and hale among us can take."
Leader's eyes found Hoodwink, and then shifted to Ari, at his side.
Hoodwink realized what the man implied, and he stood. "Ari's not doing it."
"You're not my father anymore, remember that," Ari said quietly.
Hoodwink didn't look at her. "Whatever you planned for her, I will do. Send me in her place."
Leader nodded to himself. "This is what I want, too. Ari must stay here. Her connections to the mayor are too important. Someone else must go. Someone newly uncollared, yet still strong in body. But you should know, no one we've ever sent beyond the Gate has returned."
"I don't need you to save me," Ari said.
"I'll do it," Hoodwink insisted. He wasn't going to lose her again.
Leader nodded solemnly. "If there's anyone you want to say good-bye to, anyone at all, now's the time. Because as I said, no one's ever come back."
Hoodwink glanced at Ari. "I plan to be the first."
CHAPTER SIX
Hoodwink strode through the wintry streets of the city that birthed him.
He'd spent the night in exhausted sleep at the inn. By morning, the snowstorm had let up, allowing the sun to shine weakly in the cold sky. The Users had given him leave to make his good-byes, and so he left. Ari had joined him. He wasn't sure if she came for the company, or to act as his keeper. He didn't mind either way.
He made his way across one of the richer quarters of the city. Even here the gols were still shoveling the snow from the recent storm. A few shopkeepers had pitched in, piling the snow into deep drifts beside their walls, and for the most part the street was clear. Many of the shops had reopened, since most of the buildings also served as homes for the owners—to open up was as simple as unlocking the front door and flipping the sign. Almost all of the buildings were single-story dwellings of gray rock, though there were a few two-stories among them.
A few buyers were already out, dressed in heavy cloaks, moving between the shops. Pretty-faced hostesses in fur coats beckoned customers to eat at their restaurants. Smoky-voiced doormen announced post-snowstorm deals at their taverns.
Hoodwink tried to soak-up as much of it as he could. This might be the last time he saw all of this. Leader had given him only an hour to get his affairs in order, and then Hoodwink was to seek him out on Forever Street. One hour.
I'm going to miss this place, he thought. And yet he felt content, because Ari walked at his side. Ari, the daughter he had thought lost to him. The daughter he would have sacrificed everything for. At his side. Even if he only had an hour to live, it was all worth it, because she was here.
"I'd given up, you know," Hoodwink said into the dragging silence between them.
Ari glanced at him distractedly. "On what, Hoodwink?"
"On you. On myself. I didn't, well, I guess you could say, when you left, my world ended. It really did. I wasn't myself anymore. And now you're back and everything's okay again."
"I'm not sure what to say to that." Ari crossed her arms. "Sounds like I've some pretty big shoes to fill."
"You don't have to say anything." Hoodwink smiled. "You're filling them just by being here, you are."
Ari declined an invitation to eat at a restaurant from a well-groomed host. When the host made the same offer to Hoodwink, he immediately raised his hands. "Not me young man, I'm poor." The man smirked, and then turned to accost the next passer-by.
"You know," Hoodwink told Ari as they continued on. "I've always felt a little uncomfortable in the richer parts of the city like this. It's not so much I can't afford to shop in these places—if I really wanted to, I could come here and blow a few month's wages—but it's more the beggars looking for handouts that bother me." He nodded at a dirty-faced mendicant perched between one of the storefronts. He and Ari had passed many such men already, and he gave each and every one of them a wide berth, including this latest. "They remind me of the ashes of poverty I've risen up from. Maybe it's a reminder I need now and again to keep myself sharp, knowing that it can be something as small as a month's pay that separates the haves from the have-nots."
Ari was smiling, and seemed to be struggling to suppress a giggle.
Hoodwink frowned. "I was being serious. You find something funny?"
"Nothing," she said. "It's just, I've always wondered what you'd be like. My real father. Not the one from my revised memories, but the father I hoped I'd one day meet. And here you are, eccentricities and all."
Hoodwink watched her uncertainly. "Am I everything you expected me to be?"
Ari shook her head. "I'm not sure yet. I just, well, all of this is new to me."
"I
t's new to me too, Yolin— Ari. The past doesn't matter. The memories you have, they don't matter. What we have here, right now, this is the truth. This is what matters. I never want to leave your life again."
Ari tightened her crossed arms, shivering. "And yet you'll soon do just that."
"But I will return, I promised this already." Hoodwink rubbed the tip of his mustache, a nervous habit of his. "And I'm not one to break promises."
Ari didn't seem convinced. "Even if it's a promise you can't keep?"
"I never make a promise I can't keep."
She laughed, shaking her head. It was the same laugh he remembered. "Are you always this confident?"
Hoodwink grinned widely. "Only around my daughter."
Ahead, a street busker strummed a mandolin. Hoodwink began edging sideways, acting as if the man carried the plague. But Ari stayed true to her course, and stopped—actually stopped—to listen to the man play and sing his sad song. When he was done, Ari dropped three fat coins into his hat, and the man thanked her profusely.
Hoodwink reached into his pocket and guiltily left a small silver coin, all he had on his person.
"You're better than me, Ari," Hoodwink said as they moved on. "That's why I'm doing this, you know. The world needs you. But me, I'm just, well, I'm just a middle-aged, miserly barrel-maker. Not young and generous of heart like you."
Ari seemed troubled. "Generous, maybe, but I won't be young for long unfortunately."
"Then leave the Users. You don't owe them a thing. You have your whole life ahead of you."
She shook her head. "I can't, Hoodwink. First of all, I'd have to give up vitra. You've tasted it. The power, the sense that you're truly alive. That's not something you can let go off easily." Hoodwink couldn't disagree there. "And second of all, for once in my life I feel like I belong to something. Feel like I'm making a difference. We can help the world as Users. I have to stay. You must see that."
"What I do see," Hoodwink said. "Is that you've inherited my famous stubbornness. A part of the old Yolinda is still inside you after all."
Ari pressed her lips together, and she looked away. "I'd like to think so."
