“He freaked me out yesterday morning when he went for Uldare in the first place, right after his dad was shot,” Byron said. “If I hadn’t pulled him off the guy, that would have been it. He was ready to kill him. With his bare hands.”
Haze raised her eyebrows. “I repeat my question.”
“The answer is, hell, yeah. I hope we can help him get that shit under control.” Byron shook his head. “That was hard to watch. But Donner…I don’t know about that guy.”
Haze raised her hands. “Hello? Finally!”
“He’s a cold son of a bitch. Totally willing to, like, torture Uldare and the other dude. I mean, I never really spent any time with him before…we got introduced when Spencer first brought me here, but that was different.”
“He didn’t shake your hand in between stretching someone on the rack, you mean?”
Byron didn’t laugh. “He wasn’t the dude you see on TV. Mister politician, mister freedom fighter.” Byron pursed his lips and shook his head. “That guy was totally not in the room tonight.”
“It’s like I said. Power corrupts. Nobody’s more powerful than Donner.”
Byron frowned. “I don’t even know if he’s like that, though. I mean, he can do anything, right? How can he be, like, corrupted?” He shook his head, thinking. “No, I just…I don’t…I didn’t think everybody’d be so fuckin’ violent, you know?”
Haze smiled and laughed, but her eyes were sympathetic. “Oh, Byron. You joined the SCET. You had to know that was a full-contact kind of thing.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I get that we’re gonna have…situations. Like this morning, with those protestors.” He inclined his head toward her. “It was totally cool of you to come with us, by the way, even if I was, like, blown away that you wanted to.”
She looked away. “That was for Yvette.” She shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t really do anything. Ed Kelso blocks out the sun, and everybody settles right down. He’s fifteen feet of psychological warfare.” Byron laughed. “But go on.”
“I get that there’s gonna be shit to deal with. That things could get rough,” Byron said. “I’m cool with that; I think it’s, like, necessary if a Sovereign is, like, breaking the law or whatever.”
“You stopped Nate from killing that dude.”
“Exactly. I just figured I had to…like it was the right thing to do, even though Uldare’s totally a killer. It wouldn’t be right, and…I don’t know…it totally wouldn’t be right for Nate to do that. He’d be sorry. I know he would.”
Haze’s “Maybe” was neutral. “So what’s your damage?”
“It just freaked me out to see Donner doing what he did to the militia guy…and not doing anything to directly stop Nate from fucking poking a dude’s eyes out.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You coming to your senses?”
“I just…it’s more complicated that I thought. The whole thing—being a Sovereign. It’s like life is more complicated.” He breathed a laugh. “I mean, a year ago, one of the reasons I took Spencer up on his offer was because I couldn’t handle the idea of going back home. Because of my dad. I…I ditched out, totally left my mom and my friends and everything…because I couldn’t stand being around that guy once I, like, knew what I knew. And I didn’t know shit, y’know?”
She nodded.
“Then he shows up here, and he’s a hero of the Sovereigns and totally, like, still that guy, I think, but…I don’t know. Better?”
“People change.”
“He’s a pretty old dog, Haze. It’s weird. It’s a trip.” Byron sat back, stretched his back, stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to think. About all this stuff.”
“Do you need to have it all figured out?” She laughed. “Right now? ‘Cause I don’t know about that, dude.”
“Nah.” He laughed and leaned forward. He rested his elbows on the table and looked at his hands.
“Here’s the thing, all right? All night, after the fucking shit that went down with Donner and everybody, I’ve been just, like, walking around and thinking. And the thing is…I know I’m not so good at seeing some stuff.”
He looked up at her, then back at his hands. “You are, though. You called a lot of it.”
“I’ve seen it before,” she said.
“Well, I guess I’m sorry if you have…and glad, too, ‘cause you can point it out for me when I’m all gung-ho and shit.” He looked up at her. “Anyway. I don’t want us to be angry at each other.”
“Dude, I accepted your apology.”
“I know…I know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Byron felt better. But now it was him and her, late at night, alone in her apartment again, and she was wearing a T-shirt and maybe nothing else. He started wondering things.
She stood up. “Okay!” She walked out of sight. He could hear her rustling around.
She came back with his hair dryer. “I’m done with this. Thanks.”
He stood up and took it from her. “You’re welcome.”
They stood there.
“Good night, Byron.” She lifted her hand and swiveled it left and right, a tight little parade wave. “I want to go back to sleep.”
“Okay.” He felt a lot better than when he’d arrived. He smiled. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“Okay. Good night.” She moved him to the door. “I’ll see you at…you know. The thing tomorrow.”
That was a buzz-kill. “Yeah.”
He hadn’t wanted to think about it. Now he’d get about five hours of sleep before the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies had its first funeral.
From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Thirty Six
Around eight o’clock Saturday morning, an employee of the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies dropped by and invited me to visit their commissary. She gave me a voucher good for anything I wanted to buy.
The unspoken intention was that I not have to show up at my father’s funeral wearing the same damn clothes I’d first put on Thursday morning. Made sense to me.
After the stunt I pulled on Uldare, I got the very strong impression Denver and Sandy weren’t all that keen on hanging out with me for a while. And Byron didn’t answer his phone.
These things also made sense to me.
So I went alone.
There was a time I’d preferred being alone. The way things were going, I thought maybe it was a good idea for me to get used to it again.
The commissary looked a lot like a K-Mart, which was jarring and strange to me. These Sovereigns wanted to be held separate and apart from the rest of humanity, but I guess they still want all the same stuff, presented in a familiar way, as the rest of us.
I found jeans and a button-down shirt and socks, all black, and a pack of boxers. Picked up some black creepers, too, even thought they were a knock-off brand. Another surprise.
I wandered around the aisles and realized that as long as the Sovereigns were buying, I might as well get enough clothes for a couple of days. I got another pair of jeans, a pack of socks, and a couple of flannel shirts.
I looked at jackets. Would I need a jacket? How long was I going to be in Montana?
I finally couldn’t hide from the fact I was stalling. Plus, the funeral wouldn’t wait for me. Or maybe it would, but that would make me a whole different kind of asshole than some people probably already thought I was.
I paid. The guy at the checkout was actually very nice. He expressed his condolences. I went to the apartment, got cleaned up, and dressed for the funeral.
I had about an hour to kill. I spent some of it sitting on the edge of the bed, trying really hard to think about nothing.
I cried a little. Not about my dad. Not exactly. More out of exhaustion, I think.
I went to the cafeteria. The place was practically empty, which struck me as odd until I remembered that pretty much everybody at the Institute was going the same place I was.
There would be a huge crowd to see him off, but
from what I’d seen, my dad got real nervous around people. I wondered if he’d been like that, but, you know, less so, before the augmentation regimen.
If there was an afterlife, which Andrew Charters was there? The scientist, or the feral homeless wild man?
I got a double-decker cheeseburger and a big pile of chili fries and a corner table.
I had almost finished eating when my mother walked up.
“Nathan…”
The intellectual part of my brain knew her being there should have been a big surprise, but my emotions were so blunted and worn out, I simply waited until my brain reconciled her presence with the surroundings.
She looked like she needed to hug her son. So I stood up.
It was only once we were embracing that I started to feel something. I didn’t like where that was headed. I pulled away from her.
“How’d you get here?”
She studied me as she spoke. “The Institute called me about…Andrew. They arranged everything. A car, a plane, a ride from the airport.” She touched my cheek, and I didn’t even want to pull away. Maybe I was just too tired to care. “I feel like it was ten minutes ago that I was sitting home angry and worried about you.”
There was pressure behind my eyes. I blinked once or twice and hoped for the best. “I told you I had to see him. I told you I needed help.”
“I’m not here to fight with you, Nathan.” She sounded pretty tired, herself. She looked at her watch. “Are you ready? It’s time to go.”
“Okay.”
There weren’t any golf carts available outside the cafeteria, and it would have been pretty lame to go to a funeral riding on a golf cart, anyway. We walked. We didn’t say anything to each other.
It was so strange that my mother was there.
She had a right to be. But it was so strange.
I didn’t know exactly where this thing was going to happen, but that didn’t matter. All we had to do was follow everybody else out across a wide meadow to a square of fresh sod next to a big three-story house.
It was the house William Donner grew up in. He’d had it moved here, apparently, and his uncle still lived there. I saw that on a documentary.
I wondered how the uncle felt about having a tiny cemetery for a side yard.
The sky was a little cloudy. It was a little chilly. I should have bought that jacket.
There were rows of folding chairs, the same kind as in the scene of my latest rage-out, set up before a lectern.
Two coffins. Two rectangular holes in the ground.
The chairs were mostly filled up. Lots of other people milled around. The giant guy stood toward the back. He wore a black suit, the biggest black suit ever made for anyone, ever.
Ewing Kass spotted my mother and me. He showed us to our seats, right in the middle of the front row. Denver, Sandy, Byron, his girlfriend, and his dad were already there, seated.
The skinny guy Marc Teslowski rescued from the speciesists was seated next to him. He caught my eye with his all-black ones and nodded in that somber, respectful way people do. He looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen him.
Sovereign doctors could work wonders, I guess. Just not miracles.
Far as I know, the woman named Yvette Schwenck was not represented by friends or family. Fortunately, about five hundred loved ones she’d never met turned out to honor her.
That was sad.
“Oh, damn,” my mother said quietly. It was mostly a sigh.
I took her hand. She squeezed it and held on.
Doctor William Karl Donner, the most powerful Sovereign known, self-proclaimed steward of the most dangerous minority group on the planet, came out of the house and walked across the lawn to the lectern. The ends of his pant legs got damp from the wet grass.
Other than that, he was perfectly groomed. His suit was very dark gray and, while I don’t know a thing about such things, looked very expensive. He had a dark-red handkerchief folded in the breast pocket of his jacket. His tie was black. His shirt was a little lighter than the jacket.
Understand that I don’t really care what people wear, most of the time. It made an impression on me then because I knew what he and I had both been doing the night before.
No one would see this guy, who, no kidding, looked practically presidential, and think, “I bet he tortured an old man a few hours ago, and liked it.”
Except for most of the people in the front row.
We knew.
It could be said that this wasn’t the time or place for judgment. And even if it was, who the hell was I to cast stones?
I’m thinking about it now, though. So I wrote it down.
He didn’t appear to have a speech prepared. He looked out at us all, pausing briefly to make eye contact with Denver, my mother, and me, and got to it.
“Today, as we begin the second year under our Declaration of Sovereignty and freedom from oppression, it is with deep regret that we gather together to honor two that have fallen. And, it is with great admiration and respect that we recognize that one of those we honor today was not a Sovereign.
“Andrew Robert Charters was a human being with an extraordinary mind and a loving heart, made more than human by the hand of man. He should have been a Sovereign. I name him one today.”
Extraordinary mind? Sure. From what I understand, my dad was one of the scientists that made the augmentation regimen possible. The fact that he used it on himself makes no sense, but, whatever.
Loving heart? How in the fuck would Donner know? I looked at my mother to see her reaction to all of this, but she was staring at nothing, apparently deep in thought. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard any of it.
And posthumously declaring Andrew Charters a Sovereign? That was bullshit. Sorry. My dad wanted to have as little to do with the Sovereigns as possible. The only reason he was even here was because of me.
“Andrew stood up to the forces that, even two decades ago, had gathered to persecute the people I would one day declare Sovereign. In his defiance, he made a choice that changed him forever. A choice that his brave son carries as legacy.”
I felt people’s eyes on me. I didn’t like being a celebrity among Sovereigns any more than I did anywhere else. I was irritated.
“Finally, even though Andrew Charters never asked for the life he lived, he rose to that challenge and, in the end, sacrificed himself in the struggle against the same antagonists that made him the unique person he was.
“May he rest well.”
The bullshit was just too thick.
My father was not a Sovereign hero, and fuck Donner for turning his death into an excuse to spout his particular brand of bullshit. The only thing my dad had in common with this band of freaks was that he wanted to be left alone. Donner wouldn’t even let him have that in death.
Also: my dad didn’t sacrifice himself for shit. He was standing around trying not to freak out, and Lou Uldare shot him in the chest. To death. The end.
I had enough. I got up and walked back to my apartment.
From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Thirty Seven
By the time I got back to my room, I felt kind of stupid. Yeah, Donner was a jackass, but the people at the Institute, the normal Sovereigns, had all been totally cool to me. I worried they’d be offended by my stomping off in the middle of their beloved leader’s speech.
Turned out it was no big deal. None of those people knew me or my dad. Later, my mother told me later everyone assumed I was too broken-up to stick around.
“I almost went with you.” She was never one to suffer through politicians’ lies and propaganda.
Of course, that was pretty much why I’d been so pissed off at her for the past year. She’d lied to me about my dad my whole life. Way to model grown-up behavior, mom.
After everything else that had happened in the past few days, all of that didn’t matter too much to me anymore. It was just one more example of how the world was. I was too tired to make a big deal of it. I decided to adjust my
expectations. Move on.
When she asked to go with me while Doctor Mazmanian and his team ran their tests and drew my blood and scraped my skin and put me through their machines and what not, I didn’t really care. Having some company didn’t suck.
But when Mazmanian called me in late Sunday afternoon to give me the results, I told her to please wait outside.
I liked Mazmanian. He wasn’t a Sovereign, so that was points in his favor right off the bat. He was also super down to earth and funny in the way that people who try too hard to be funny are, if that makes sense. He reminded me of my friend Mel, if Mel had a big bald spot and a bushy mustache.
I went into his office and closed the door behind me.
Mazmanian sat behind his desk. He had a white lab coat on, with a stethoscope draped around his neck, like a TV doctor. He grinned. “Sorry about all the poking and prodding today. Sit down, sit down.”
I sat down. “It’s okay. It’s the whole reason I wanted to come here.”
Unspoken: people died so I could sit here and hear this news.
His eyes narrowed. He blinked and nodded. I think he got it.
“Well. Let’s see if I can get you your money’s worth.” He flipped through a file folder on his desk. “Here’s the deal.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have to worry about ending up like your dad.”
I wanted to be relieved, but it sounded a little too simple. “But…how do you know?”
He tapped the file. “The results. Plus, I know stuff.” He smiled. “I’ll make you a copy of all this, then you go off and get a few doctorates so you can understand it, too. Sound good?”
“C’mon…”
He held up his hand. “I’m just being an ass. The movie-of-the-week version is that Andrew Charters had greatness thrust upon him, and you…you were born great.”
He picked up a pen and bounced the point on the desk a couple times. He looked thoughtful.
“No disrespect to your dad, but his mind simply couldn’t handle the input it received. Not without repurposing important parts to pick up the slack.”
I nodded. “Like the sane parts.”
“Like the rational parts. Sure. But you…I mean, you know this; you’re custom-built, and you were from the beginning, from conception, cell by cell. You don’t have a problem with your…what did you call it, earlier today? Your sensorium?”
The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage Page 30
