"Here we are. 'Karra Andra Willo,'" he read. "A pretty name." His black-within-black eyes searched her face for some reaction.
Barnis’ face kept trying to overlay the Chief Administrator's. She cocked her head to one side in an attempt to see which one was really speaking. The movement sent a red lance behind her eyes.
"Yes,” he continued when she remained mute. “Pretty. 'Father: Jon Carlon Willo.' Hmm, same name as your eldest brother. Would that not be confusing?"
Confusing? She shook her head, more to clear it than to answer his question. More pain. Keep to the subject, she reminded herself. What was the subject? Oh, yes, my brother’s name. "My father used the name Jon. We call my eldest brother Carlon."
"I see. 'Mother: Chalatta Zanne Willo. Both parents deceased.'"
Dead. A flash of red pierced her sight. Administrator Walliz’ stumpy fingers fired a rifle that assassinated her father. Scarlet blood oozed across the carpet.
What chemicals were in those tablets, Barnis? She clutched for a strand of reality.
“Another name similarity here,” Walliz commented. “Chalatta, your daughter, has the same first name as your mother did. Is this a common practice among Homelanders, giving people in the same family the same names?”
“My mother was a woman of virtue. Why wouldn’t I want to name my daughter after her?” Sudden anger pulled at her. He dared to challenge her decision?
“I see.”
You see nothing! But I will make him see. Oh, yes!
Karra took a deep breath to stifle her growing rage and to smother a wave of terror headed her way.
He returned his attention to the folder. "Is this accurate? Eight children survive your parents?"
"Yes." Every two years Mama birthed a baby while Daddy lived at home. His first arrest had produced the gap between the three older siblings and Karra. The second imprisonment had killed him. She usually avoided that memory, but right now it all but screamed at her. She blinked rapidly.
The image changed. Although his blood still stained the carpet, she now saw her father pounding his fist on the table like a meat cleaver in a butcher’s shop. "Sann’s Health Center isn’t about health at all. It’s a sterilization clinic, just another form of Nevian-approved genocide. They'll use anything at their disposal to kill us off, or enslave those of us who refuse to conform, all quite legal, of course, like their education and employment laws."
But a glance at the Nevian in front of her told her he never heard her father's tirade. She clenched her teeth in grim determination, willing away the vision of her father pounding on the table.
"But eight! An incredible number of children, especially for a family trying to survive in the Outer Area! Why did your mother not have herself sterilized?"
"My father wouldn't have permitted it." Karra doubted the question ever surfaced. But their poverty had not killed him. Bullets had. His assassination was all she remembered about that day, but that one fact kept her burning with rage against her conquerors. Her fury was part of the reason she had finally let herself be talked into this last (Jem promised) job. The other part was that Barnis Ves had become a threat to both the Homelander Front and to her father’s work.
“Barbaric.” He shook his head in disbelief. "'Father was a political activist, imprisoned for treason before his death.’” He looked up from the pages in front of him, studying her. “One of your brothers, the second from the oldest, I believe, is Jem Hesson Willo. He continues as a political activist, Mistress Willo." He raised the black arches above his eyes and gave her an expectant look.
She could not think how to respond, so intent she was on not losing herself to the red, pounding headache of insane paranoia that crouched in her mind.
He tapped the file in front of him. “You see that we have many facts at our disposal regarding your family.”
She supposed she should have been impressed, or at least intimidated, but the pain in her head kept growing, as did the flashes of images (hallucinations?) that should not exist.
When she still remained silent, he asked, “Do you have any idea where your brother Jem is, Mistress Willo?"
"Nobody does."
Nobody does. Investigator Barnis Ves, last night’s assignment, had also been looking for Jem, but he had been more interested in locating a certain collection of Homelander literature reputed to be held by Jem. Jem knew nothing about those books and papers.
The Investigator’s questions, however, had led him too close to her own secret place, the very building where she had placed the literature. According to the paperwork she destroyed, he planned to search the building this very afternoon. She killed him right after he let her read them. Too close! Karra wondered if anyone else would pick up the thread of his investigation and nose around her hideaway in the future.
Nevian authority, uncertain as to which of the Willo children had hidden the work, usually blamed Jem, since he led the militant resistance organization, the Homelander Front. But not even Jem knew where she had hidden their father’s work.
V’anel Kees Sol, the Council member heading the investigative committee, had hired Barnis to confiscate all Homeland subversive materials. His specific instructions were to locate and destroy the history their father had collected before his death. They wanted nothing to conflict with their version of history, which claimed that Nevians had rescued Homelanders from barbarism and savagery. They allowed no other viewpoint. Her father’s collection of true history insisted that Nevians had subjugated this peaceful planet with barbarism.
In truth, Homelanders had developed three distinct cultures, across the main continent, none of which had ever been savage. The Irellis, her mother’s ancestors, had built this Northland city and the cultivated regions surrounding it. Nevians now called it and the surrounding land Sector Five. Irellis had once called this city Northlight Viewing for the display of northern lights that appeared during the long winter nights. They had called the rich farmland surrounding the city the Blue Sentinel Plains and the mountains that sheltered the plains used to be named the Blue Sentinels. The mountains, rugged, always snowcapped, looking like rows of white-helmeted sentries, protected the city and the plains from the worst of the bitter Northrange Winds that howled past the Blue Sentinels each winter. But the Irelli names for their land had all but disappeared, along with the Northlights, which could not be seen because of the well-lit city the Nevians had constructed.
The Zarindan, her father’s people, vibrant traders and storytellers, used to share news as well as trade. Northlight Viewing had been so far north its residents hungered for each tale the Zarindan traders shared. Her father’s father, a Zarindan storyteller himself, had traveled the all over the main continent before the Nevians’ arrival. During the winters, he fostered his children in Irelli homes to attend Irelli schools. Her father, Jon Willo, had inserted his natural propensity for storytelling into his love of history and had taught history at the Public Academy before Nevians had changed the curriculum.
Jon Willo had only taught Irelli and Zarindan history since he knew too little about the people to the south, the Krindarwee, who kept to themselves. The Krindarwee were the least industrial of the three groups, but they had never been savages either. Soon after Karra’s birth, authorities silenced Jon Willo’s version of history by arresting and imprisoning him. Afterwards he had found a part-time teaching job at a local Primary Basic school. When Karra turned nine, her father had been imprisoned for the last time, then killed for collecting and hiding what he knew of the Homelanders’ true history.
To entice her into accepting the job to stop Barnis Ves’ investigation, her older brother, Jem, had complained that the Nevian was getting too close to the Homelander Front. Even so, no matter how much money Jem offered her, Karra refused the job until she learned how close Barnis Ves was also heading toward what their father had died to keep hidden.
“Not even family knows where Jem is.” This time she stared directly at the Nevian. Let him prove otherwise.
She shifted her attention to his thin eyebrows, as black as his head hair, finding them easier than staring into his alien, black-upon-black, eyes. The dark pupil seemed to bore into her whenever she met his gaze. Even so, except for bluish-gray skin color and the strange black eyes, they looked almost human, another fact that upset her. Aliens should look more—alien.
"I see." He frowned. "We keep our records as accurate as possible on the families of known political subversives. You understand that, yes?"
"Yes." She expected this enemy to find out all he could on families like the Willos. Sweat dampened her clothing where her body pressed it against the chair.
Subversive. Subversive, a voice in her thundering head echoed.
"Good. You have a very difficult past to overcome. I would like to believe we could begin your future on a note of trust. I will trust you to be honest with me. You will demonstrate that your past is indeed where it belongs and I will insure that you receive the benefits of Inner City citizenship. How does that sound?"
"Fine, Master Walliz." Exception, Master. What is this going to cost me besides the lives of my father and mother? Jem's life? My own?
He nodded.
Heat seared her stomach. Had she asked those questions aloud?
"Let us begin with the story you wrote for Stiveson's class. What do you have to say about it?"
Say about it, say about it, her head taunted. Yes, what will you say about it?
"It was a fantasy assignment, so I wrote about some marauding barbarians destroying a civilized culture."
"Nothing else?"
"No. What else could there be?" Fear tinged the edges of her voice. What else could there be-be-be-be-be. Her head repeated the single word in rapid fire, like the bullets that had taken her father’s life.
"Stiveson suggested a parallel between your barbarians and, ah, Nevians. You were smiling."
"I was? I…I must have been embarrassed by Master Stiveson's conclusions."
Embarrassed? You? A grin filled with pointed teeth formed in her mind.
“Yes. Mmm.” He returned to her recorded history, reading to himself until he found what he wanted. "'At fourteen years of age, Karra received a yellow certificate from Sann's Health Center.' Fourteen! You were hardly more than a child! This says you were sterilized because of an illegal pregnancy—at fourteen, Mistress Willo?—and accepted the yellow certificate option of your own free will. So, should I expect you have suddenly made a change in your life?”
A bit surprised, Karra stared at Barnis. Last night Barnis had very definitely not wanted her to change.
Change, change, change, her head insisted.
"No,” she assured him, wearing last night’s seductive smile. “I don't think I've changed at all."
He responded with a twitch of his lips and returned his attention quickly back to the file, as if he needed to force himself away from her. "Perhaps.” Several long seconds passed before he continued. “Still, you did promise the school panel your prostitution days were over.”
I did? When did I promise that? At Sann’s they had told her that the yellow certificate option was permanent. If she signed the papers, she would always be registered. They gave her the opportunity to change her mind because she had been so young. She had signed anyway. At least the registration would give her a way to earn a legal income, should she be so inclined.
"You may be surprised that I find you a remarkable woman. Prostitution is, after all, a legal profession. Your goal, of course, is to provide an adequate future for yourself and your daughter. Am I right?"
Right, right, right, her head echoed, its striking tempo increasing.
“Yes," she told Barnis, confused by his question. She couldn’t remember telling him about her daughter.
"Do you see why I admire you? Even the limitations of an illegal pregnancy have not eliminated your desire to begin life anew."
Admire you. Begin life anew, her head mocked.
Barnis resumed reading. “Highly intelligent. Passed all exams through the Public Academy requirements. See what I mean?"
Mean, mean, mean. Investigator Barnis knew, somehow, that she was attempting to return to school. That didn’t matter. He already knew too much for his own safety. But what bothered her was his statement that she had passed all of her Public Academy requirement exams. All the Second Start Option offered was a Public Academy education.
Ah, yes, the voice in her head jeered. Why enroll you if testing indicates you’ve already passed?
"How old were you when you last attended school?"
School, school. What difference does that make? But she decided to humor him.
“Twelve, maybe thirteen. I didn’t go regularly after I turned twelve.” My, the questions this Investigator had for her! The room blinked in red.
"Thirteen? Oh, yes, it is right here. (here, here, here!) Yes, your attendance was terribly erratic.”
Anger replaced her fear. At that moment, she wanted to entice a fight, force him to defend his reasons for incarcerating her father, and for making her sit and listen to the words in her file. How had Barnis received a copy of her file anyway? He had nothing to do with the school.
“Ah.” Barnis examined the file with renewed interest, not noticing the tightening of her lips and the scowl at her brow. “Yet you're such an accomplished writer. Yes? Do you like to write?”
Blink. Blink. Blood. Blink. Ribbons of blood began swirling around his head. He was causing it. He was making the very air cry blood!
She slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt.
“Have you thought about attending a writing academy after you graduate?”
“No… “The idea appalled her. She remembered the pride she had taken in writing her fantasy story. But once within the walls of their academy, all stories of barbarians would be smothered until her very ideas bent to their collective will, the same will that had imprisoned Daddy.
“I think you should. Why, with one short story, you managed to disrupt a whole class. Where do you get your background material?”
A sound clicked audibly in her mind, the sound of a gate closing—or prison doors.
Now she understood the Investigator’s line of questioning. Although Investigator Ves’ people had arrested Daddy twice for pages they had found of his pre-Nevian history, they found neither any trace of his source material, nor the finished manuscript. Somewhere they knew he must have an extensive library, all pre-Nevian, and therefore all illegal. She was next in line on the Nevians’ arrest and murder list, unless she found a way out.
Out! Out! Out!
“I read whatever I could find.” The truth. Anytime she found herself in her sister’s home, she literally devoured her younger siblings’ schoolwork.
“What did you find?”
“Homework. My brother’s and sister’s homework.” She would never admit she supplemented their homework with her father’s collection of books and papers.
But Barnis was not fooled. He tapped the papers on his desk and glared at her. “By these test results I have here you learned far more than your younger brothers and sisters were able to bring home. The oldest three never graduated from the Public Academy, although young Carlon attended. You have been out of school for six years, yet you could enter any of the upper level academies. Explain it to me. Please.”
The top of the wall bristled with rifles. They aimed at her, she glanced around the room for a way of escape. Her father bled into the carpet, his anguished eyes staring at her. “Karra!” he pleaded. Please, please, please.
Daddy! She wanted to scream, terrified. The room grew incredibly warm.
“Mistress Willo?”
She jumped. How did she know her name? She had told him her name was Desire, and now he was calling her by her legal name.
“You were about to tell me how your test results are so excellent. Isn’t that right? Right? Right?”
She could think of nothing to say. Daddy bleeds into the carpet and rifles p
oint at you from the top of a mud-colored wall! Do you want to die with him?
Investigator Barnis Ves gave an irritated sigh. “Your story indicates supplementary material. Does your daughter also read additional material at home? Shall we ask her?”
Ask her. Ask her. Ask her.
“Chalatta!” Her heart beat furiously. The Nevian wanted to use Chalatta!
“What was that, Mistress Willo?”
“Nothing.” But her fingers slid past the hole she had torn in her skirt pocket.
“Nothing? Oh, I am positive you have something to tell me, sooner or later, especially if I choose to bring your daughter into this discussion. What do you think of a special school, for her as well as you?”
Her head began pounding to the tempo of special school. Special school, special school.
“A school?” she managed to ask over the noise.
“Oh, indeed! An Inner City education for the both of you. A writing academy for you, and one of the best children’s institutes for your daughter.” He offered a fake smile. “I can arrange for your greatest ambitions to be realized. Am I asking so much in return for a lifetime of reward?”
Special school. Special school. For you and Chalatta. A lockaway school. For a lifetime.
“Think,” she said aloud. “Must think.” The room began to breathe in red and black. She widened the tear in the pocket of her skirt until her whole hand could slip through.
“Time to think? By all means! I don’t have another appointment until ten hundred, which is, by the way, with the administrator of Barre Academy. Your reward. We make an exchange: your father’s educational materials for your future education. You and your daughter could move out of the Outer Area this very evening into one of Barre’s lovely new student apartments. There need be no delay. Since you have already met all the requirements, we can transfer you today at ten hundred, when the administrator arrives.”
Today! Trap! Trap! Trap! Trap!
Bolts slid back. Rifles drew a bead.
She watched in alarm as Barnis’ head grew as he leaned toward her. A grin filled with pointed teeth split his face.
Terrified, she grasped the hilt of the knife she always kept strapped to her thigh.
Her Darkest Beauty: An Alien Invasion Series - The Second Generation Page 2
