by Julia Keller
Each time Violet visited Starbridge, New Earth’s retirement community, with its vast replicating hive of specially equipped apartments, she felt the same thing: a sort of hybrid emotion composed of happiness and anguish. She loved her father and was glad to see him, but it was hard to watch someone you cared about grow older. More feeble, more helpless. Even if she didn’t visit for long periods of time, she knew what was happening here. Life was a one-way journey toward the dark.
Day by day, the sadness seemed to spread a little further in Violet’s heart, like a crack in a vase.
Her father took a deep breath. He steeled himself and gripped the arms of the chair tightly with his withered hands. Pushing down with a fury that was reflected on his face—his eyes widened, and two shiny pearls of sweat rolled from his temple to his chin—he tried again to rise. And again.
Finally, he let out a deep, frustrated sigh. He relaxed his hands. He sat back against the thickly padded chair, panting.
“These old bones,” he said lightly, casually, once he’d caught his breath, “are giving me fits today. Just not getting the job done.” He smiled as if it were a rare thing, as if, had she only come tomorrow, things would be different.
But things would never be different for Ogden Crowley. As a small boy, he’d been grievously injured during the Mineral Wars on Old Earth; his right leg was useless now, gouged with scary-looking scars. Age and overwork had run roughshod over the rest of him.
Violet walked toward his chair. With a simple supple motion, she sat down on the floor next to it, close enough for him to be able to reach out and touch the top of her head. When she was a little girl, this had been their nightly ritual. She would sit cross-legged on the floor, and they would talk, talk, talk, weaving a spell of words around themselves like a soft cocoon that only had room for two.
“You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine, Dad.”
“Any leads?”
“Not yet. Kendall and his team are working on it, but trigger-traps are hard to trace.”
“So that’s what it was.”
“Best guess.”
He nodded.
“Back when I was president,” he said, “I would have speculated that they were trying to get to me through you. But now? Hardly. I’m just another old man. Put out to pasture.” He frowned and waved a gnarled hand in the air as if he wanted to bat away the noxious fumes of self-pity. “Are you working on anything controversial? Anything that would make somebody mad enough to attack you? You should have Jonetta go through the list. How many cases do you have going right now?”
Violet paused. She didn’t want him to know how bleak her business prospects really were. It would only worry him.
Um, there’s just the one case, Dad. And even that came after a long, long dry spell.
He’d figure out in a flash that one case wouldn’t pay the bills. And offer to help. The notion of needing help made her cringe inwardly. She was entirely her father’s daughter, a thought that made her proud.
“Um, total number of cases?” she murmured. “I’m not really sure.” Quickly, she added, “But there is one that’s a little different. You read about the suicides, right? Four of them, one right after another?”
His face clouded over. “Terribly sad news. Tragic at any age, but they were all so young. With so much to live for. So much to look forward to. If it had happened on Old Earth, I could understand it. That’s such a hopeless, depressing place. But here? Here on New Earth?” He turned his head sideways and down so that he could look at Violet. Perplexity filled his rheumy eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe it does make sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if they weren’t suicides?”
Ogden’s expression reflected his surprise.
“The first victim’s mother,” Violet continued, “hired me to investigate. She doesn’t believe her daughter killed herself. She says that’s impossible.”
His features relaxed again. “To be sure, Violet, it’s a very hard thing to accept about your own flesh and blood—that your child was in such pain she would rather die than endure life another second.”
“But what if she’s right? What if it was murder? And what if the murderer was able to make it look like suicide just to throw off suspicion?”
He considered her words.
“Well,” he said, musing aloud. “I’m wondering how somebody would pull it off in the first place. Making a murder look like suicide is not a simple task. Captain Mayhew runs a topflight forensics team. He’s not going to be easily fooled. And why would somebody want to kill that particular girl, anyway? Or those twins? What’s the motive? Wendell wasn’t adding much to society, but he was a harmless kid. How would his death help anybody? I remember when Arianna would bring him around sometimes, trying to motivate him, showing him how hard she worked.” He shook his head. “Out of the entire population of New Earth, why go after those young people?”
“You said it yourself, Dad. They’re all young.”
“What?”
“Meaning,” Violet said, her voice growing more emphatic the longer she talked, “that maybe somebody is deliberately targeting young people. It was Jonetta’s idea, and I think it’s a good one. There’s always been tension on New Earth between the young and the founding generation, right? Especially since you lifted immigration restrictions from Old Earth. Thousands of young people have come up here in the past two years. The young outnumber the old by a lot now, right?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe somebody’s jealous. Maybe they think the influx of younger people somehow endangers New Earth. I don’t know.” Violet shrugged. “It’s just a theory.”
“They might be right.”
“What?”
“Well, every civilization has to constantly renew itself,” her father said thoughtfully. “But it’s a balance. Because while the young have more energy, the old have more wisdom. We created New Earth with a careful balance of young and old. That’s why I restricted entrance from Old Earth. To keep that balance. I maintained a very careful watch on age levels. But then we opened the gates to New Earth and let everyone come up. Only the prisoners were left behind on Old Earth. And a few hundred people who wanted to end their days there.
“And so now, here on New Earth, no one adjusts the population for optimal age equilibrium anymore. And we’re definitely skewing young.”
“So you think New Earth is out of balance?”
“I do.”
Violet contemplated this. She was thinking about potential suspects. “So does anybody else at Starbridge feel that way, too?”
Her father smiled a rueful smile. “Sweetheart, everybody at Starbridge feels that way.”
So the suspect pool had just increased by several thousand. Violet let out a small groan of discouragement.
“Well,” she said, “I’m going to do my best to find out the truth. I made a promise to Mrs. Bainbridge.”
“That’s my girl.”
The warm tone of her father’s voice had a definite effect on Violet. She wanted him to think well of her. She was his reflection in the world now. Since his retirement, he was rarely seen on the streets of New Earth; he was too old and too weak and often too sick to go out for any length of time. In many ways, his legacy—and the legacy of her mother as well—was in Violet’s hands.
She couldn’t think about that too often or she got sort of frozen with the responsibility of it all.
“So maybe,” Violet said, getting back to business before emotion overtook her, “the killer can sense I’m getting close to the answer. So they want to shut me down. Send me a warning. Get me to back off.”
“That would explain the trigger-trap.”
“Yeah. It was a close call. Jonetta’s been pretty cool about it—actually almost too cool about it—but still—” Violet broke off her sentence and shivered.
“She’s a brave girl,” Ogden said. “Her fathe
r told me she was, and she’s proved it. Lucien Loring is an old and dear friend, and I’m glad you could find a spot for Jonetta. Have you met Rodney yet? Her older brother?”
“No. Just missed him. A few times he came to take her to lunch, but I was out on a case.”
“He’s a bright young man. Rather reminds me of your friend Steven Reznik.” Ogden changed his position in the chair, in search of a comfort that would never come. “Reznik sent me a note, you know. From prison. Apologizing. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No. You didn’t.”
“It was thoughtful. And sincere. It was about how emotions can get hold of us and make us do things we never believed we could do. He wasn’t making excuses. He just wanted me to know how sorry he was. He’d learned the astonishing power of emotions. Before—just working his shift with you in Protocol Hall, monitoring the Intercept—he hadn’t thought of feelings that way. He should have, of course; he saw it every day during the interventions. He saw people brought to their knees by love or anger or jealousy or fear. But he never put it all together. He was too mesmerized by the technology itself, he told me, to think of emotions as powerful in their own right. As guideposts for a life, in both good and bad ways.
“Anyway,” her father went on, “I appreciated his note. Very much. And it convinced me once again that I made the right decision when I shut down the Intercept.” He paused. “I’ve always identified with those leaders back on Old Earth, the ones who ruled in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They knew how destructive an atomic bomb could be. First they wanted it built, because it was for a good cause. And then they saw where it might lead, so they tried to keep a lid on the technology. They did their best to keep it out of the hands of those who were power-mad or greedy or just plain evil.”
“But they didn’t succeed, Dad,” Violet said. “Bad people did get hold of atomic weapons. And used them. That’s part of what destroyed Old Earth.”
“Eventually, yes. But the leaders tried. And sometimes that’s all we can do. We can try.” He glanced down at one of his gnarled hands. He drew it into a fist and then let his hand relax again, like a problem considered and solved. “I had to take a long, hard look at the Intercept, and that’s when I told myself, ‘It’s magnificent—but it’s much too dangerous.’ So all in all, I think we’re better off without it. Absolutely.”
An uneasy feeling fluttered in Violet’s stomach. This time, she couldn’t blame a Neptunia Node.
Whenever her father talked so ardently, so passionately, about the fundamental rightness of destroying the Intercept, Violet always had the impression that there was really only one person he was trying to convince.
Himself.
17
Delia
“What’s this?”
Delia held the small gift-wrapped package that Violet had just handed her. The wrapping was an elegant silver foil made up of myriad light-catching crinkles.
The two of them stood in the foyer of the small home where Delia lived with her son, Tin Man. Delia dressed proudly every day in her Old Earth clothes: baggy trousers with a rope belt; too-big tunic that slouched off one shoulder; stained boots that had been mended and re-mended so many times that they were basically layers of interlocking stitching separated by brief patches of stiff, dried-out leather. Because of that leather, she crackled when she walked.
Tin Man was somewhere in a back room, getting ready for work at Redshift.
Delia prodded the package with a tentative finger. She liked and trusted Violet, but she was a suspicious woman. Violet understood why. Until two years ago, Delia’s entire life had been spent on Old Earth. There, in that dark and dangerous place, suspicion was your best friend. It kept you alert. And being alert kept you alive.
“I promise it won’t explode,” Violet said.
Delia cocked an eyebrow. “Not funny, my girl. Not funny at all. I heard about what happened at your office this morning. Everybody’s talking about it. Thank goodness there weren’t any injuries. You know what? I wish you’d be more careful. You young people, you think you’re indestructible. Let me tell you something, Violet—you’re not. Nobody is.”
“Oh, come on. You can lecture me some other time.” Violet grinned. “Don’t you want to know what I brought you?”
Delia flicked a fingernail at the small rectangle. Then she lifted it to her ear and shook it, trying to figure out the contents from any answering rattle. “If this is some kind of trick, I swear I’m going to—”
“Delia. For God’s sake, open the present!”
“All right, all right.” Gingerly, she peeled back the wrapping, loosening one small flap and then another. Finally, she was able to draw out the wooden box. The top was stamped EARL GREY TEA in ancient lettering. Delia looked at Violet, and then she looked back down at the box. She tried to pry up the lid, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Let me help,” Violet said. She slid off the lid, moving it smoothly through the two parallel grooves cut along the top. Nestled in the crinkly tissue paper were six tea bags. Their strings and tags were wound in a dainty bundle.
For a long moment, Delia did not speak. Violet understood. Tea bags had a special resonance for Delia, and the intense emotions generated by this gift were surely tumbling inside her.
Back on Old Earth, where Delia had lived with Tin Man and her daughter, Molly, tea bags represented a fabulous degree of luxury. They were more than just scarce; they were a reminder of all that had been lost when the earth imploded, when it was decimated by rampaging human greed and jagged-edged ignorance. A reminder of long-vanished days of leisure and contemplation and quiet conversation, of afternoons when people might spend many hours sipping a hot beverage out of delicate china cups. And perched enticingly on the edge of the saucer would be a small round cookie or crumbly biscuit.
Once the Water Wars and the Mineral Wars had begun, little rituals like afternoon tea became more than just quaint relics of a permanently vanished era; they were poignant symbols of all that had been lost. The memories were hurtful.
But Delia, during her long, ragged, difficult years on Old Earth, had squirreled away a tea bag. A single tea bag. She stored it in a small sack in the bombed-out husk of a structure that she called home. She used the tea bag over and over again, until every last bit of flavor from the tea leaves had long been leached out, until the thin paper was in danger of shredding each time she added hot water. Still she kept making cups of tea, tea that wasn’t really tea at all anymore, just water.
And when Violet came to Old Earth and Delia rescued her from a street gang intent on robbing her, out came the tea bag. Delia used it to make a hot beverage that might, she hoped, bring some comfort to the mysterious young woman from New Earth who had shown up out of the blue—or, this being Old Earth, out of the gray.
Things were very different now for Delia and Tin Man. They were safe. They lived in a nice New Earth home in the city of Higgsville. Delia worked as assistant manager of a store; Tin Man had his job at Redshift. But for Delia Tolliver, a tea bag could never be just a tea bag.
“Tea,” Delia said.
“Yeah.”
“Tea,” Delia repeated. She swallowed hard.
Violet wondered if it was all coming back to her now: the terrible dangers of Old Earth, with its radiation-blurred sunsets and its putrid oceans and its foul, pestilential rivers. She wondered if Delia was picturing Molly, her little girl, who had died at five years old of Missip Fever.
Maybe the tea bags had been a mistake, after all.
I’m worse than the Intercept, Violet chastised herself. Now I’m the instigator of painful emotions.
“This,” Delia suddenly declared, “is wonderful. I’m going to enjoy every sip.” She lifted the box again. She squared her shoulders. She could do this.
Violet was relieved.
Her relief was immediately shoved aside by guilt. Her motives weren’t pure. She had brought the gift because she wanted an excuse to visit today.
“Can I
make you a cup?” Delia said.
“No, I’m good.”
“Well, then, come on in. And like I said, Tin Man should be out in a second.”
They settled in the small living room. Beige couch, two chairs, square coffee table—the furniture was simple and serviceable, as was most all of the furniture on New Earth, where everything had to be measured and weighed. The only unique element here was the striking painting that hung on the wall behind the couch. It was a large, lovely portrait of a smiling young girl, running headlong, arms and legs extended in a full beautiful stride that made it look as if she might go airborne in the very next second, her hair flying out behind her. Tucked away in the lower right-hand corner of the picture was the artist’s signature:
SHURA LU
2294
The girl in the portrait was Molly.
“Must have been scary,” Delia said as she settled down on the couch next to Violet. “The attack at your office, I mean. Any idea who did it?”
“We’re still going through the clues. And yeah, it was a shock.” Violet looked around. “You know what? You and Tin Man have really made this place a home.”
“Home.” Delia seemed to be tasting the word. “Yeah, I guess so. But you know what, Violet? Sometimes I miss Old Earth. I know it sounds crazy, but I do.”
It didn’t sound crazy. Violet had heard Kendall say the same thing—that as vicious and violent and shadow-shrouded as Old Earth was, if you were born there, a part of you always missed it. You couldn’t help yourself. And sometimes, Violet knew, you missed it even if you hadn’t been born there.
“I wish,” Delia added, “that I could go back. Just for a visit. But it’s hard.” She didn’t have to explain further. Trips were expensive. And they took a fearsome toll on the body, especially for older people like Delia.
“Yeah,” Violet said. “I’ve had to rely on console feeds lately. I’m not supposed to go back for a while.”
Delia’s face split open with a devilish grin. “Do you ever think of just sneaking back? Like you did that time when I first met you?”
