A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  We weren’t moving very purposefully, and eventually we lost sight of Nat in the crowd, but Martha seemed to know where we were going as well as he did. A toddler running full tilt hit up against my leg and looked up, with an arrested expression on his face. Martha laughed and patted his head. “He’s ugly, but he doesn’t bite,” she said.

  There were food shops under arcades, and broomers wearing various color markings. No one bothered us. We came to a narrow alleyway, to the left of which an even narrower doorway opened. Up from that doorway was a stairway, built with the sort of tall steps that weren’t designed to be convenient to anyone’s legs.

  I heard Nat’s voice somewhere, up there. The stairs were in complete darkness. Martha let go of my arm and—from the sound of her steps—fell back behind me. I couldn’t tell, I had no reason to believe it, but I felt as though she were pointing a burner at the middle of my back.

  My shoulder blades twitched, and I felt like shrugging convulsively. I didn’t do it. It made no sense for Martha to be pointing a burner at me. And if she were I’d be damned if I let her see me sweat.

  At the top of the stairs, the door was open into . . .

  I couldn’t see anything. There was a light pointing directly into my eyes. I closed them, reflexively, while I growled, “Shut the damn light off.”

  It was Nat’s voice that answered me, “No.”

  In the Dark

  “What do you mean no?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “It’s for your protection,” Martha said.

  “My what?”

  There was a long, drawn-out sigh. I thought it was Martha, but it might have been Nat. It was Nat’s voice that said, “If you see anyone in this room, you become a risk,” he said. “If you decide to persecute us—”

  “Which begs the question of why you brought him here, Nathaniel Greene Remy,” a voice that felt older, and also angry, spoke from somewhere ahead and to my left.

  “Because he needs our help,” Nat said, his voice vibrating with an odd defensiveness.

  “I wasn’t aware we were a charitable organization,” another voice said. This one sounded young and female.

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” Nat said. “You know we take care of our own.”

  “He’s one of our own?” another voice said.

  “My father vouches for it that he has a claim on us through Benjamin Remy.”

  Hearing Ben’s name pronounced aloud startled me. I sucked in breath, loudly and my face went tense and it must have shown because someone else, in the dark said, softly, “Oh hell.” And then in a tone of deep disbelief. “You brought us the Good Man of Olympus, didn’t you?”

  Nat didn’t speak. I didn’t know if he’d made some sign, because I couldn’t see him. Having to keep my eyes closed was making my skin crawl. I looked down and risked opening my eyes a little. I was standing on wooden floorboards that looked like they’d never been dusted, not once in the last three hundred years or so. Soft and grey with dust, they looked like they’d contracted, leaving spaces between them through which I could stuff my rather large fingers.

  The room smelled of dust and disuse, but there were other smells, too. Soap and washed male and female bodies and something else which took me a while to identify, and when I did made my hair try to stand on end—it was the hot, scorched scent of a freshly discharged burner and of spilled blood.

  I closed my eyes for a second, and when I opened them just a sliver again, I saw Nat Remy’s boots, so close to me that he must be standing right by my side. “He’s not what you think. Remember my last report. He’s in peril for his life and he needs us.”

  There was a sound like huffing from the darkness. Then the same male voice who’d spoken first said something in a language I didn’t understand but which sounded like old English, except it started with Nat’s name and ended with Olympus and it sounded dirty. I heard a burner’s safety slide off, and saw Nat’s feet spread apart, as if he were bracing.

  “Oh, for the love of the founders, John. Don’t wind Remy. Or I won’t be your second, this time.”

  Nat took a deep breath, as though to say something. I can’t explain it, since I can’t read minds, but I knew for a fact that whatever had been said in English was an insult, or at least an insulting joke. It had that feel. And I knew just as well that Nat had a cutting response on the tip of his tongue. But he let it go with a long exhalation. “I come,” he said, “because I can’t find any other way to protect him. The safety of the retainers and inhabitants of Olympus, many of whom are our people, depend on him and his life. They depend on us protecting him and keeping him alive and the Good Man of Olympus. The other Good Men want to eliminate him. And if he is eliminated, then my entire household dies. And all his other retainers.”

  “Dies?” someone asked. “Aren’t we being a little melodramatic? Good Men have taken over other Good Men households with no major incidents before. Your family might be at risk, I concede that. But we’ve offered you—”

  “Nat,” the young female voice said. “Please repeat your report. I think George hasn’t read it.”

  Nat swore softly, then recounted the gist of what he’d told me the night before. The incredible history about the Mules becoming Good Men. The brain transplants. It sounded insane, here, in the full light of . . . a lamp in my face. But no one else acted like it was impossible. Nat referred to reports turned in by Ben. Reports? Who were these people? And what did they have to do with Ben? I remembered what Nat had said about Ben sending out reports. Working for someone or something. Why had he never told me? His voice was suspiciously absent from my mind. Ghosts are never around when you want to interrogate them. One of the advantages of being imaginary, I suppose.

  Nat ended with the description of the raid on my house the night before, then stopped.

  Someone else swore. I didn’t know who. The voice was too low and breathy to identify gender or age.

  “So you bring him to us?” the voice they’d identified as John said. “Like that. What are we supposed to do about him? He’s not one of us, and all of us risk our lives by revealing ourselves and what we are to him. You are the most at risk of all.”

  “Oh, please,” Nat said, at his most bitterly sarcastic. “What’s the worst that can happen? Yeah, I can get killed. Oh, I’m so scared.”

  He sounded like me, and I knew better. Suicide is only easy at times. At others, you have to work at convincing yourself you want it, no matter how miserable your circumstances. The body, the animal side, wants to live, no matter what the mind feels or thinks.

  Then I thought of that tunnel through the side of the seacity, of Nat’s admission to sleeping in Max’s room most nights, of his knowing everything in that room, and of his flat description of torturing Max—no, my father in Max’s body—and of what my father had confessed. But it had been Max’s body. I suspected at an animal level it was also difficult for Nat to believe it wasn’t Max he’d killed slowly. No matter what the brain knew. I shuddered.

  “We can’t protect him if he isn’t ours,” a voice said.

  “We can,” Martha said. “We’ve done it in the past for wives and husbands and daughters and sons.”

  “And whose husband—” John said.

  There was a sliding ceramite noise from beside me.

  “No, Nat,” the young female voice said. “Easy. Burner safety back on, please. You don’t want to do this.”

  It’s amazing what you can get from a pair of spread-apart feet in dusty boots and the tautness you can guess in the calves and legs above them. I couldn’t even see Nat’s upper body, but I knew he was holding his burner in both hands and pointing it, somewhere into what was to me blinding whiteness. “Are we going to stand on points of law?” he said, and it sounded like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “Do you want me to walk out and never return?”

  “You know you can’t. No one walks out of the organization.”

  “Really? Try me. I know I’ll have to kill all
of you. See if I don’t.”

  “Are you asking us to make an exception to bylaws?” the female voice asked again, softly, then added, in a familiar-command tone, “And please, do put the damn safety on. You’re not going to kill me. You know that.”

  “I’m asking you to do whatever you have to do to keep him protected. I believe he is a strategic asset and a strategic advantage, but if the only way you can make this legal is to make him one of us, we can play that tune.”

  “We shall discuss this,” another male voice said.

  A door opened somewhere within the light. I heard steps walking away. Then Martha walked forward and turned off the light.

  I blinked once, twice, and then I could see. We were in a large room, completely unfurnished save for two long benches against the wall in front of me, on either side of a firmly closed door. The one window to my right was crooked on the wall, implying significant age and settling. And the light that came through it was reflected shop light. I was effectively in the deepest dark for a few minutes, then my eyes adjusted and I blinked.

  Nat got out his ubiquitous silver-metal cigarette case and pulled out a cigarette. He smoked in quick, short puffs, and paced, looking out the window now and then, as if he expected a flying ambush. He finished the cigarette and threw it on the floor, stomped on it, and started another. His burner remained in his hand, the safety off.

  A glance at Martha showed me that she was looking at him and, unguarded, she wore an expression of the deepest concern. But when she saw me looking at her, she smiled. “Come sit,” she said. “This is going to take some time. They call it a love of parliamentary procedure, but the truth is everyone who gets elected to the council is a windbag or becomes one.”

  Nat snorted. “You can say that again.”

  “Why, dear? I’m not a council member.”

  He snorted again, but his body remained tense, his shoulders taut across, his hand clenched on the grip with deadly force. I was relieved his finger was not on the trigger. Once more I had the impression that Nat Remy was waiting to explode and hoping someone would give him a reason.

  Then I remembered something I’d read in history books of the twentieth century. Suicide by cop. That was when someone started a shoot-out with the police, or even just waved a gun-shaped toy at the police, to cause the police to shoot him down. I doubted any of those people behind the closed door were peacekeepers, but I’d bet that the violence Nat Remy wanted to commit was mostly against himself. However, if needed, he’d incite deadly violence, in the hope someone would kill him. One of the ways of overcoming the body’s reluctance to die.

  Voices came from behind the door for a long time. Nat smoked. Martha sat on one of the benches and I sat beside her. I inclined my head back, closed my eyes, lulled into a quasi-hypnotic state by the droning sound of voices behind the door, and by Nat’s pacing and sharp inhaling of smoke. You could set your clock by the man’s noises. Tick, tick, puff puff, breathe. Tick, tick, puff.

  The door creaked open, not enough for anyone to look in, but enough for someone to speak through it. The young female voice. “Nat? We have some questions.”

  Nat stomped on his cigarette. The door opened for a moment on a glimpse of a grey suit, a well manicured female hand with perfectly oval, polished nails. And then Nat was in and the door closed.

  And I knew who the young woman was. Abigail Remy. I was sure of it. Yes, a hand is very little to go on, but I’d seen her hand gripping that tray, and it now found a place with her voice, and between the two I was sure. Why the masquerade, when I knew of two of the siblings?

  From the other side of the door, Nat’s voice echoed, responding to their droning tones in a bellicose manner. I remembered he had taken his burner with him, and prepared to dive in and rescue him if shooting started. After all, he’d saved my life the night before. Besides, I was almost sure that Goldie wouldn’t like it if Nat died.

  After a while, the door opened a sliver, and Nat asked, “Lucius? Do you know the constitution?”

  “What?” I asked. I was thinking I knew my constitution. I was built like a mountain with granite underpinnings. I’d not managed to die no matter what I did to myself. But what did that have to do with anything?

  “The Usaian constitution!” Nat said, as if I were a particularly dumb student who’d just failed to spell his own name properly.

  “The what?” Was this religion? I’d stayed away from religion most of my life. As far as I knew, my father didn’t have any. I’d not been taught any. Now that I thought about it, if what Nat had said was true and we were made-beings, there was no religion on Earth that would accept us. After all, we didn’t have souls. Which, now I thought about it, sounded about right.

  I was sure my father didn’t have a soul, at least. And if I had one, I’d never found it.

  I didn’t know if there was life after death. I was almost sure that Ben lived only in my own head. And though in moments of despair, I’d almost prayed, I didn’t do it according to anyone’s dictates. And besides, now I thought about it, I didn’t think the Usaians even believed in a real God. Well, not as such. Something about the inherent goodness of mankind. Even if flawed goodness.

  “Lucius!” Nat said, urgently, and I realized I’d snorted.

  “I read it while in Never-Never, yes. I could recite some of it, if I tried.”

  “Okay, okay, basics. What about the Declaration of Independence, to begin with. Do you believe in natural, God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

  All right. Nathaniel Remy was insane. God-given rights. That sounded so nice. Where had God been when Ben had been killed miserably? Where had He been when I’d been thrown into a cell for fourteen years? And don’t get me started on the pursuit of happiness.

  And yet, I knew—I knew beyond all reason—that I was expected to say yes. Whatever these people were doing was supposed to make me and the city safe. Nat had said as much, if not directly clearly enough. And I knew he wanted me to say yes. So, what could I do?

  But the thing is I didn’t—couldn’t—believe in God-given rights. Not really. I wasn’t even sure I believed in God. “Uh,” I said. I said it as though it meant something. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never seen any God come out to defend those rights for anyone.”

  This time Nat snorted. He muttered something that sounded like “cork head” but which might have been ruder, then said, “No one believes God will defend them. We just believe they proceed from a source outside human granting. That they’re inalienable and should be so. Mere law can’t strip them away. Humans didn’t give them and therefore can’t abrogate them. You are supposed to defend them for yourself and others, because they’re supposed to have them. Do you believe in that?”

  I felt vaguely sick and couldn’t think straight. Did I believe in those? I was supposed to defend their rights, was I? How well had I done at defending Ben’s right to life? Or for that matter Hans’s? They’d both died, rights or no rights. As for Liberty. “It’s mumbo jumbo,” I said. My voice came out as a growl.

  Now Nat sounded almost pleading. “Lucius. Would you believe it if you . . . I mean, do you think it’s something that society should strive for?”

  “What? Nathaniel Remy.” His full name, as they’d called it, with the middle name I’d never heard, pushed itself into my mind, and there was something associated with that name, something I’d read about. “Nathaniel Greene Remy. Are you an Usaian?”

  Martha made a choked sound. Someone within the room shouted, though I couldn’t tell what. Nat said, “Damn it.” And then the door closed, and Nat was on this side, holstering his burner, grabbing my forearm in a death grip. My mind was still turning over, turning over things I’d half heard from my father and at my father’s councils while I was growing up. Things I had read. Things I had thought.

  Sam, Nat, Martha, Abigail. No. My house was shot through with Usaians. “Going to our people,” Nat had said, and I’d thought he meant suicide. No. It me
ant taking refuge somewhere. Ben. Oh. Ben. It couldn’t be. He’d have told me. Wouldn’t he have told me? He’d kept secrets from me. Why had he? What had really been going on?

  Nat had a grip on my arm and was dragging me across the room, to the corner most distant from the door. Martha started to rise, but Nat looked back over his shoulder at her, and his face must have told her something, because she sat down again, her eyes very wide.

  And meanwhile my mind, my relentless mind, kept turning over the facts. The council of twelve. Tried by twelve. The thought came from somewhere and a saying about being tried by twelve, rather than carried by six. Protecting their own. Giving me protection. To protect me from the other Good Men, I’d need an army. Army. Most Usaians were peaceful in an almost dopey sort of way. Having lost their country and been sent into exile—those who escaped with their lives, about ten percent of them, if the books were right—through what seemed in retrospect an excess of holding back force and noblesse oblige, they kept mouthing about Manifest Destiny and other nonsense, and talking about the arrival of their prophet who was supposed to be the new George, in reference to Washington. And the new George would set everything right.

  But there were the hotheads, the unrepentant bastards. There were those who said God helped those who helped themselves, and that nothing would happen without strife: the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. They could have been spun off into an independent sect, but Usaians would have to expel them and most of them—from what I’d read—seemed afraid to expel wind. So instead, the hotheads had been spun off or spun themselves off into an armed branch. The Sons of Liberty. It occurred to me I didn’t know what they actually did. The Good Men tended to attribute any violent protest or act of rebellion to them. They tended to use it as an excuse to initiate massacres of hidden Usaians, or sweeps to destroy their information-dissemination branches. And to keep the hatred burning against the Usaians. And to keep the Usaians in fear so they didn’t try anything.