by Moira Crone
“Why?” O looked up, his chin weak, childlike, trembling, his insect eyes bulging, questioning.
“To give me what you meant for me, because I flew for you,” Ariel said. “I made you so happy. We played so many games, remember?” This was bitter and hard for him. He almost trembled.
“Why?” O asked once again.
“You meant it for me when you were there, in the Great Sunken Quarter, then, that day, remember?” Ariel asked, having to pull up the sentimental times. “We had a Creole rain and a bow?”
“Yes,” O said. “Yes.” And he smiled. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Thank the stars. The surface now. The money. The answer.
I’d been holding my breath. My shoulders dropped, I exhaled.
Ariel raised his chin. Camille understood. She slid a flat book from the shelf into O’s lap to support the paper, and closed O’s hand around the pen. He wrote, mechanically,
Oscar Kingsolver DuPlantier. P.R.H.
So, O was Oscar K. DuPlantier (Proto of the Reveal, Heir). I had never known it. But now I had learned history. A founder of the U.A., fought the early fight to “customize the republic,” back in the 2020’s, before that—He was one who made sure that Heirs and Non-Heirs would never have the same rights again. Kept the rabble at bay. Set up the strat division rules. Trusts that gave WELLFI more and more and more power. Advocated for the de-accessioning of the Gulf Territories. They were dysfunctional, he argued, and should be “thrown back on their own reserves,” though he himself lived in the Walled Museum City, most of the year. A famous, famous Heir.
When he had finished writing his name, O looked up at us all and said, “I see brights. They have flutters. Like Tinker, but they glow differently.”
“Yes I am sure they do, baby,” Camille said, patting O’s hand as Ariel took the pen and document away. She just touched him, didn’t ask permission. Her sweet amber eyes were on me. As if to say, “You know I did this for you.” So there was hope. Maybe. Or she was just reckless. And why did I hope? How reckless was I? Lazarus would be so disappointed, if he knew.
O lost his focus for a few seconds, and sat perfectly still, as he had been when we found him. Ariel’s face was all grief. I had no idea why. He had what he wanted.
Then, as I tried to pass new laws in my heart, forget Ariel, forget Camille, O trembled, quaked, the way he did the other time in the North Tower. Ariel saw a small bottle on the shelf near the bed, grabbed it up. “Here, he takes these,” he said. “They always worked.”
“You’ve seen him like this?” I asked.
“They make you promise not to talk about it. WELLFI doesn’t even acknowledge—” He unscrewed the bottle of pills, counting them out.
“No, they make him sick now—” Camille said. “I have a better cure. It lasts longer. The walls are collapsing on them, it’s like—” With that, she raised her hands, and bent down again, as she had when she first focused him.
“O,” she whispered. “Come back to me. Hey, over here.”
She waved her hands in front of his eyes, very close, right in his gaze. He erupted. “You piece of heat,” he growled. “Get away. Get away.” He quaked, shivered, raised his arms and dropped them down, then raised them again, like a pitiful bird, one I had seen once in a marsh, with tar on his wings, who couldn’t fly. He shouted, cursed. Every filthy word. “Leave me here. Leave me here. Don’t make me come back! Suck the—”
Camille, determined.
Her hands were dancing now, the way Vee’s used to when he entertained us with shadow plays when we only had lanterns because the power had failed once again on Audubon Island. He’d call out the names of birds, or of animals, and say—“This is a mallard. This is an ibis, the bird of the so-longed,” and there were the shadows of the creatures, on the inside of the foundling house wall. Camille was chanting. Time was stretching out.
When I looked again at O in the chair, I saw something strange—following the tips of her fingers: a greenish cast, a swelling color, glowing around his body, and then edging out a little from it. It had to be a trick of the lamps, something coming through one of them above. But they were clear pale yellow light, with no tint. I looked up to check. How could this color, this loose glow, be leaving a man’s body through the top of his head, and going to dance with Camille’s hands? It couldn’t happen. Yet I saw it.
“Do you see that?” Ariel asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“It looks like teal green.”
“Not that dark,” I said. “Fainter, the color of grass.”
“It’s that dark to me,” he said, shaking his head in amazement. Ariel, who was always claiming he’d seen everything, whispered, “Whoa! What is that?” He was looking up, now—I didn’t see what he was seeing, thought he was faking it.
“Shh,” Camille said, in response, but not losing her concentration.
“What is it?” Ariel asked. “Why you put it there?” He was pointing at the ceiling. “Will it stay there?”
“You see it?” Camille said, hardly audible. “What does it look like?”
“Emerald now,” he said. “What is it? What’s the trick?”
Her head did not turn away from her task, but she said, “You see it? I’ve never seen it. I just feel it. It’s green? You aren’t supposed to see it.”
For a moment, I saw a faint oval lozenge in the air above him. His lips formed a relaxed little ring, and his limp form uttered a gush. “Agh, agh.” Then he went a bit limp.
The glow dissipated, vanished. Like the illusion it was, I told myself.
“Where did you put it?” Ariel demanded.
Camille dropped her hands. O was back in his stupor.
“You both see it?” she asked. “Somebody train you?”
“It was right there, like a big orb—you tell me you didn’t see it?” Ariel asked her.
“I feel it. It is kind of wet, damp, like ghosts in a shut up house. But I never saw—”
“Where did you put it?”
“I guess I wouldn’t call it, ‘where.’ It’s like, folded, flat, thin, or thinner—I don’t know how to talk about it, it’s just away, for a while. I’ll bring it back.”
The whole thing made me uneasy.
Ariel said to Camille, “It’s dark green, thick, very alert, and all in one place, but where did you put it?”
“It’s right here, ” she said. “If you must know.” And she started to make a long sweeping arc down the left side of her body, about a foot out, then she brought her hand sideways, so there was a faint green flash. “I see,” Ariel smiled.
Noise. A commotion at the far end of the room. Footsteps, three figures coming out of the dark.
“What’s going on?” The first one who walked in had a high forehead, and beady eyes, red leathery braids, a long Egyptian style nose, a stretched neck enhanced with rings, silverish-black overskin. An assistant of Dr. Greenmore—Dr. Chotchko.
“Nothing. We were leaving, Doctor,” Camille said in her work voice, her yes voice.
Then, from behind her, Greenmore’s loud whisper. “Malcolm de Lazarus? How did you get here? Who is this?” She closed in on us, and eyed Ariel, looked him up and down, frowned at his moccasins. I hadn’t even noticed his shoes before. Then she turned on Camille. “Who brought her here? What’s she doing to the client? Malcolm? One of you tell me what you are doing.” Ariel slipped the document, now tightly rolled, in the back of his pants. Dr. Greenmore missed this.
Camille’s eyes wanted to ask me something. What was it? She was so open-faced, it should have been obvious. In a way, she shone at me, for a second. I blurted out. “It was all my idea, I brought Ariel here, made Camille. Don’t blame Camille—Ariel is from my Foundling House—”
Greenmore’s lowered her chin. “Don’t be gallant, for heaven’s sake, Malcolm. Don’t shield her—honestly.”
I went further, aware I was ruining things, half ashamed I didn’t care. “It’s true.”
Camille looked at me for on
e more long moment.
“I’m not going to let you do this, Malcolm,” Dr. Greenmore said. “I know who the culprit is. ”
“But you don’t—” I couldn’t stop. I knew to stop, and I couldn’t. “You certainly do not. This girl is totally innocent.” I knew I’d done it then.
“You are foolish,” she said. “Say anything you want, Malcolm. I am not believing you.—”
I ceased to be in the room, as far as she was concerned. She should have fired me, sent me packing. “I am guilty. I brought her here, made her show us—”
Greenmore was silent.
Camille’s mouth became a single line. It was the way she looked when she made a mistake, dropped something, forgot a detail, and left her work unfinished. I knew all her moods, I realized. After a second, though, another attitude took over, and she changed her expression to that sharp one, the one she used the day she was mocking the history lecture. The one she used earlier that evening when she told Ariel he owed her. The corners of her eyes sank down, her lips pursed. Greenmore addressed her. “What was that thing you did with your hands? Something vile?”
“Just stuff a traiteur would know. I pulled him loose,” Camille said.
Dr. Greenmore flashed at the word, Traiteur. I knew it meant healer, Camille had told me stories from her enclave. But Greenmore was the healer, not this girl. “And this, what, this Outliar? He a friend of yours?” she asked, accusingly.
I was thrashing. “He’s from the Home, we grew up together—see, he has a collar—”
Dr. Greenmore waved her hand at me to get me to stop. She wouldn’t hear me.
Camille jumped in. “Just to show them. He’s my friend—a Nyet. I—”
“So this was your idea?” Greenmore asked. “This—prank with one of our clients?”
“It’s not a prank,” Camille said, holding firm. “All my idea,” she threw in. “This fellow is my friend. He wanted to see what the Heirs turn into—”
I stepped right in front of Camille. “She is lying. Please, Dr. Greenmore. Listen.”
Camille stepped out from behind me, and gave me a glance, disapproving, her lips still taut, as if to say, don’t you see?
“You can go get your things, and leave,” Greenmore told her, still refusing to hear me.
“No, no,” I protested once again. “Please, Dr.—”
Camille said, “Malcolm, stop it now.” She folded her arms. “I was leaving anyway. I am tired of this—” Her eyes swept the room, not landing on me. “Charade,” she said. “This Shade Charade. As if you can’t see what they, you keep pumping them full of whatever keeps them here, traipsing all over—why don’t you let em go? Why? What do you have to prove?”
“That is just about enough you primitive little—” Greenmore stopped herself. “Just go, get out of my sight.”
“Why, you scared of me?” Camille hissed.
“CAMILLE QUIT IT!” I yelled at her. To counter an Heir. She could be stripped of her enclave rights—
“Out!”
Her face was blank to me. Camille pivoted, stalked off. Why had she tried to shield me? Why had Greenmore believed her?
Attendants gathered around O, propped him up. Ariel stood to the side, watching. Not saying a word. Afraid to.
Greenmore ordered Security to take Ariel to the Sky Rail.
Then she called for some others to come, so they could lock me up in solitary.
VII
7:12 PM October 12, 2121
Crawley’s Crobster House on the Quay
Sunken Quarter
New Orleans Islands, Northeast Gulf De-Accessioned Territory,
U.A. Protectorate
I had to ask myself, what was I doing here, in the Sunken Quarter waiting for some Nat’s, genetically altered, boiled shell fish? Instead of buying the fuel to troll up the Tchoup Canal to see my guardian, to tell him what I’d figured out about my Trust—what Ariel was trying to pull.
I was fascinated by the scene, of course. Such variety. I wondered if the Heirs drank the same liquids as the other. There were about ten true ones in there and, in addition to the Outliars and others, the enclave workers, there were about eight obvious Imposses who weren’t quite succeeding in their goal, to pass for Heirs. I knew all those. Most of the others had the same drink as I did, blue-green, in tall tumblers. I was horribly thirsty. I could keep from eating, but I had to drink. I gulped it down.
A man sat down opposite me then—not directly across, but down a bit, to the left, away from the window. Strange looking. His hair or headjob was in a top knot, which was either very out of style, or something new again. His mouth was no bigger than the end of a thumb, and his upper lip very far from his nose, which made him look a little like the man in the moon. In truth, at a glance, I couldn’t tell what he was. Heir or Imposse. Not in this case. He had a nacreous overskin, the hardest to read, but those were in style again, especially a certain abalone with lots of peacock blue in it. I knew all the techniques because it had been my job to pass as an Heir, at one time. I was good at it.
Something about the middle of this moon-man’s eyes stymied me. They seemed so cool, the way Heirs’ eyes always were. I wondered if a person just masking as an Heir would go to the trouble of putting in sheet lenses—these had been offered to me when I was a passing, but I found them too irritating. I always chose spot lenses instead. And I was crossing borders back then, being interrogated and inspected at close range.
I saw little wrinkles in the corners of this fellow’s eyes—the skin wasn’t perfectly tight the way it was on T’s. So he was an Imposse. For sure. A very good one. There were whole communities of them, who mimicked every feature of Heir life, I had heard. He must have been one of those, a true professional. A perfectionist.
Jeremy had once told me they were often Nyets who had not made it, and couldn’t bear the truth, so they pretended, got away with passing in Heir circles if they could, or at least existing at the fringes in places like the Sunken, living a parody. When he lost his Trust, he promised he wouldn’t become a “travesty,” like that.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” Moonman said. “I’m Gepetto.”
Why talk to a low strat like me so readily if he were trying to pass? Well, there was mixing here, I allowed. His voice had a rasp, but that was easy to mimic—larynx implant. So was the slowness easily copied—the monotone, the lack of rhythm. The staring, nothing so great. Imposse, definitely, I went over the whole thing one more time. An Imposse so meticulous he wore sheet lenses. Perhaps he had a patron. I had heard there were aficionados, connoisseurs, who paid for their ensembles, subsidized competitions. Gaists who once costumed me claimed they had worked for some of the winners, in fact.
“What happened to you?” he asked, gesturing toward his tiny ear.
“Accident,” I said.
“You aren’t getting it sewn up?” he said. “Don’t they still use needle and thread on your kind?” He pinched his tiny lips, in a wince. His mouth was so small, it was in danger of disappearing. I had seen bigger ones on baby dolls.
I shrugged, tried to look in the glass of the window, but it just offered me a silhouette. One side of my face was swollen, I saw that much.
“You know where I came from?” he asked. “I mean, my name?”
I told him I knew.
“The Disney? You are a fan? So rare. No one has any culture anymore. The soft cruises are truly middlebrow.”
“I know the Disney,” I repeated myself. I was staring, still. This fellow seemed to enjoy the attention.
“I think there is a kind of story that draws you in by asking you to wonder what it is, and then when you stop wondering and have made up your mind, you are already on to other subjects—the story shows you more about you than you asked to know. Than you ever wanted to know. I think the Disney is one of those. The boy’s name means knot of pine,” he said. “And he wanted to be a real boy. I think it is the most metaphysical of all of them, truthfully. More than Alice. Have an opinion?”
he pressed.
He was annoying, that was my opinion. “I saw it a long time ago,” I said. “When I was a child.”
“How long ago could that be?” he asked, with his smile, tight as the top of a tiny drawstring purse.
“A while,” I said, looking over at the line under the large clear tank where the live crobsters were crawling, in their last moments before the servers fished them out with a long-handled net and tossed them into the cauldron in the window, to be stirred by the girl with a gigantic mushroom of a toque.
The sign under the elevated tank read, “Now Serving No. 12.” Not much longer in this weird place, I thought.
“No, really,” Gepetto interrupted.
Clever, the way he took so long to answer, I thought. “Years ago,” I said.
“You a Nyet? Or you think you are?” he asked.
I was smiling. I stretched out my neck so he could see my collar. “You an Heir?” I teased him.
“Of course,” he said. “So for fifty some years. Third Wave. Early.” He nodded, pulled back a little. I thought that was a nice touch.
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, you?” he asked, pretending he was recovering from the insult. “When is your Boundarytime? When you making the confessions?”
I nodded. “Soon,” I said.
“You know they make you promise, then they give you secrets so you can’t ever go back.”
“Some do.” Jeremy swore his heart to the Heir Ways, I couldn’t help but remember. Then they wouldn’t let him in—
“Well maybe,” he said. “But you have to believe. Leave all the rest at the door. You ready? Gonads? Heart?”
I nodded.
“Don’t see too many of your kind anymore,” he said, shaking his head. “A lot of wannas, not too many gonnas. What is your count?”
“What you think?” I said, shrugging.
“Don’t know. So many elixers now, so many fountains of youth.”
“Twenty,” I said.
“Never, so early to be mature!” he said. “What did you do? Where did you get the Trust?”
“Rental.” I was bragging. “Sims.”
