Called, page 20
“The walls keep us safe…”
“Walls keep us in. That’s why they promote breeding the way they do; they want to minimize the propensity of citizens who question the system. They set up Guardianship to monitor for signs of rebellion anywhere inside the Citadels. Outsiders were dangerous back then…but they were made that way by the violence used against them.”
I looked around, wondering what had been there when my father was alive. The rolling mounds of crumbled rock and refuse that had gathered at the base of the cliffs were not likely to hold any secrets from that long ago, but the archways…
“If there’s no one out here, what would my dad have left for me?” I wasn’t asking, I was only speaking aloud. “If only I had my bag.”
Simeon perked up. “The one from the alley in Jericho? I forgot to mention it sooner.”
“You knew?”
“I made sure to have a special set of eyes on all the physical evidence collected with the suspects.”
“You have had it this whole time?”
He nodded.
“Then you knew I could commit the identity transgression.”
He nodded again.
“So, you could have prosecuted me?”
“After speaking with you, I decided it would be better if the Conglomerate didn’t know about the contents of that bag.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I believe you can help me find the secret I’ve spent my life trying to learn. You gave me your word that you would help me do that.”
“You are too much! You want me to believe you’re just some, what, passionate scholar who wants to know stuff? Yet you’re willing to threaten me with losing my life to get it? You know how cold and harsh that sounds, right? You’re ruthless.”
Simeon left the seat and crept across the auto’s interior. I hadn’t really digested how big this thing was. We had been sat on a bench together, facing the direction of travel. Because there was no need for an organic driver, there were banks of seats on all sides of the interior. Simeon knelt in the deep, buttery seat opposite me.
“You don’t understand. Have the past couple of sols changed your mind about how any of this operates? I am only doing what they’ve taught me to do.”
“And you’re simply fine with that? If you know the Conglomerate is a big load of garbage, how can you pretend to be blind to the things you’re doing?”
He grimaced and was silent for a moment.
Turning back to look at me again, “I was willing to do…anything.”
I considered him. “I don’t know who I am or what it is I’m supposed to be doing, but ever since I found out about my parents, everything has fallen apart around me. I’m willing to do anything, too. I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m supposed to understand more about this than I do.”
“You said this might help?”
He pulled on a tab, and the seat rocked forward, revealing a storage area and the pack Pauly had given me. I opened it to find my sling bag on top of everything, just as before I strapped it on to climb the waste chute.
I smiled at him before I caught myself.
I dug deeper, pulling out a hooded jacket for Simeon. I had a few of my face coverings, so with that and some gloves, he would look less like an executive.
Hopefully, he would blend in with…who?
There is no one here.
I masked up and pulled up my hood, gesturing to Simeon to do the same. While Conglomerate air was mildly toxic, the Outside was practically unlivable. After suiting up, Simeon opened the door, and we stepped into the air that didn’t burn but felt clear in my lungs and gentle on my eyes.
I pulled down the face covering and took a deep breath; I didn’t feel like coughing at all. It felt ten times milder than in the center.
“Is it safe?” Simeon asked with a muffle.
“Seems to be,” I nodded.
He removed his mask, “It’s not like there are going to be any cameras to recognize us.”
At least we could take our time exploring instead of rushing. We looked up at the cliffs and the vast, dark expanse behind the auto. The pale rock of the cliffs reflected light from the stars unevenly in the small clearing among the rubble. Stray too far from the cliffs and there wasn’t enough light to see more than a quarter terraspan.
“Any idea where to start?” Simeon asked.
“I’ll go look along the face. You should move the auto out of the way…”
“You didn’t bring me all this way on a lie, did you?”
I scoffed, turned on my heel, and stomped towards the nearest mound of rubble, glad to slip into a shadow.
I shouldn’t be cross with him; he’s been extremely helpful.
Feelings.
I’m embarrassed.
He knows so much about all of this, but I’m the one who’s supposed to figure it all out?
How can I be so special if I don’t have a clue what that means?
I peered back toward the auto, moving toward another dune. I heard its motor quietly begin to purr, the sound retreating. I felt a pang of…fear?
I just met Simeon and now I’m worried when he’s out of sight?
I shook my head.
Dad wasn’t lying. His message set in motion a truly wild set of events.
I made my way through the dunes, reaching the cliffs. The arches that looked shallow from the auto were deeper than I expected but after peering into one or two, I could easily see where they ended.
“Find anything?” Simeon called as he returned to the central clearing where the auto had stopped.
I didn’t want to admit that I was running out of ideas.
“Clementine?” he sounded almost concerned.
“No, there’s nothing here,” I called back. “You were right,” I added under my breath.
Simeon approached me, wearing my pack. He handed me my satchel, and I slung it around my shoulder. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the cliffs.
“I know, I know. There’s got to be something I’ve seen that will help. Something from my dad’s video or Pauly’s papers…”
“Pauly?” He came closer, bracing himself next to me and stretching his shoulders.
“Oh, yeah. My old friend – he’s the librarian in Exurb 32.”
“Be serious,” he nudged me. “A librarian in an Exurb!”
“I am being serious. I met him at the library in 32. He worked there.”
“But Clementine, there’s no such thing as an Exurb library. They only have them in Suburbs and centers. The closest thing might be a room in an Exurb school.”
“What are you talking about? I spent countless chrons at a library in Exurb 32. I got online there. I studied. I got my identity—well, both of them—there. I took my practical exam to get into Academy at that library!”
Simeon was pacing in front of the cliffs now, the reflected starlight dappling him.
“But the only utilities offered in Exurbs are water, power, sustenance, and transportation. Even those aren’t always reliable. They don’t invest in Exurbs like that. Those communities are designed to…” He noticed the look on my face and looked ashamed. “Sorry.”
It was his turn to twist the toe of his shoe in the dirt.
From where we were, with the cliffs at our backs, we faced an open patch between the dunes that was almost a semicircle. There were plenty of shadows but the clearing itself glowed under the lights bouncing off the cliff’s face. Simeon kept staring in the direction of Zion.
“Doesn’t sound great, does it?”
“No, it does not,” he said as his eyes met mine. “Don’t you see though? That’s why I’m willing to risk my whole life for this adventure. If anyone finds out that I abducted a suspect in the first unlicensed cryo case in a decennium, then I am in more than enough trouble…”
“So, you’re staying then?”
“I guess so,” he said warmly. “I don’t mind so much; it’s pretty exciting so far.”
“I’ve been too busy staying alive to notice.”
He looked stricken until he noticed my wry smile.
“Have you been to any other Exurbs?”
“I went to 37-8 Station once, but Pauly said—”
“I think you might want to question anything he told you.”
“I’m telling you: it was a proper building in the Exurb Junction. There were two floors and a basement. It was full of books and Conglomerate manuals. They had digital terminals!”
“But did you see others there?”
Almost never.
“I never really noticed. I spent most of my time alone in the basement workshop than I did—”
“Wherever you were, it wasn’t an official building. I’ve never heard of anything like that. I suppose we can ask TESS,” he said, drawing the glasses from his pocket. “But I think it would be safer to assume the worst.”
“I swear it was real!”
“I don’t doubt that it existed. I am only questioning whether this library was what Pauly told you it was. It could have been possible someone else knew your identity, right? Maybe he was hoping you could lead him to—well…”
He gestured to the rock and debris surrounding us.
Ouch.
“Wait a moment!” I spun him around and yanked my bag off his shoulders, rummaging around until I found what I was looking for, holding it up to Simeon.
He eyed the radio dialer strangely.
“This is the first real tech I worked with – I have taken the pair of these apart and rebuilt them so many times. They started as dialers, but I boosted them to triple the signal. We used them to communicate when I lived on the farm.”
He inhaled sharply, “Are you sure?”
“Not even a little bit, but I have to know.”
He smiled at me.
“Besides, I told Pauly where I was going and would let him know when I made it. He might be worried since I should have arrived several sols back but…”
“Look, I think I am doing a pretty good job of making it up to you, aren’t I?”
I grinned and turned on the radio dialer. “Hello? Hello, Pauly?” Pops and fizzles of static were the only reply. “Pauly? Come in, Pauly.”
Maybe he didn’t have it with him.
Maybe he wasn’t listening.
The dialer remained silent.
I looked out into the vast nox beyond the glow from the cliffs, wishing the signal to find him. I turned to Simeon, “Setting up a fake library seems like a pretty elaborate ruse, wouldn’t you think?”
“I built my life around trying to learn these truths,” he said, crouching beside me to neaten the objects I’d rifled past inside the pack. “Shortly after meeting you, I threw all that away in one moment, only for a chance to be closer to the answers. If I would go that far, there must be others. I thought I knew all the prime Trailers. None of them have the kind of resources for something like that…”
I felt a stone in the pit of my stomach.
Could it all have been fake?
Was the library just some ploy?
Pauly helped me.
He did so much for me.
Was it all a lie?
I thought he was my friend.
The stone in my stomach burst into wave of revulsion so strong I felt like my throat was closing in, a rising urge to—
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
The wave calmed, and I swallowed the mucus that had collected on my tongue. My eyes were watering, and I felt weak, but that vanished the millichron the radio dialer crackled a response.
“Kiddo? Is that you? Come in, kiddo?”
Relief washed over me at the sound of his voice.
“Pauly, I made it…to Bethelton.”
Simeon looked around, curious. “What is making that echo?”
“Well spotted, Godwin,” came the voice again, suddenly menacing.
Simeon was right, it was coming from the dialer but also somehow…closer. We both got to our feet instantly as a figure melted out of the darkness.
“I’m glad you finally made it,” he snarled.
Simeon’s hand gripped my forearm as we spoke over one another in surprise.
“Chairman Strat—”
“Pauly?”
Part V:
Revelation
Zion Centre, Cryo Ward
Freddy was relieved to be nearly complete with this clandestine operation as it had been something of a cluster from the off. Everyone on the Lab 4 team had been pleasant enough, but they all clearly sided with Jumaline in the imaginary war between them.
He closed the final box of evidence, sealing it. He’d finished with the medical pod and exhausted Giovanna’s good graces for taking on additional work just to keep his ears open. Now Freddy was glad to store the physical evidence collected from River Mason, who would be held after her interview with Simeon.
The cryo wards creep out some lab techs, but Freddy found them strangely calming. The units themselves require such extreme cold that the nearby workstations had a comforting warmth that reminded him of the weather on the Valtaran shores.
He was glad to be alone again.
He had been forced to be so outgoing in the lab, nosing around in everyone’s work to see if there was anything conclusive beyond the genetics. He’d done himself no favors by jumping in during Jumaline’s presentation, but he couldn’t let her say it. If anyone were going to summon the ghost Jonas Carlton in a monitored laboratory, it wouldn’t be Jumaline.
The Trail had long tarnished his reputation, but she could still keep hers.
Like Simeon, Freddy had been tempted by the lore of the algorithm of life. Carlton’s promise of technologies that could evolve the organism beyond its faults was more than a dream. Freddy followed the innovations introduced by the Conglomerate carefully, and his first brush with danger came in publishing a paper that connected the framework for the Processor’s neural link with what Carlton and his wife called the “nexus point.”
Freddy’s thesis was never published. Instead, he learned an uncomfortable lesson about the scrutiny upon one’s life that follows a Conglomerate censorship inquiry. It was why he spent so many rotations in the cryo wards. Whenever he was up for a new position, his past had a nasty habit of resurfacing. He’d thought he was getting the axe when Simeon sent for him.
He remembered Godwin—they were on the same floor at Antioch first solaris, and then had several classes together. They’d talked about the Trail a time or two, but Freddy would have thought there was no way an executive would ask questions about Jonas Carlton. That’s why it surprised him when Simeon explained what he and TESS had been up to and the role he hoped Freddy would be willing to play in ensuring Simeon could control whatever happened to the suspects.
He reviewed the collected list of personal effects for River Mason and signed off that the items on his screen matched the ones he had packed in the boxes, even though they clearly did not. He knew this was enough to permanently ban him from the lab corps, but he was in too deep now. Secreting the real items into Simeon’s auto motor and replacing them with fakes was the worst offense for someone in his role…but at least that part had been done far away from all the surveillance.
Performing for the camera was the hardest of all of it. Knowing he was being watched whenever he was in a monitored area of the lab but acting as though he didn’t gave him new respect for Geoffrey Lyons’ falling in love with Melisandre Ballinger over and over again.
He picked out a cryo unit near the back of the ward, close to the emergency exit hallway. There was no regulation that suspects had to be returned to the same unit after they were interviewed. Since the plan was to put River Mason in long storage immediately, Freddy thought this would be the best place to avoid extra notice. He stacked the boxes in the corresponding storage locker. He returned to the ward’s workstation just in time to hear the chime indicating the arrival of Simeon’s lift.
Freddy met it, retrieving the stretcher from inside. It was a hasty job, but the sheet covered a passible, if lumpy, form. It isn’t uncommon for subjects to lapse into shock after coming out of stasis, so it wasn’t unfathomable that Freddy might be wheeling a gurney rather than leading someone on foot. Moving quickly, he ditched the stretcher just outside the edge of the surveillance frame, shielding himself behind the unit’s bay door. He shoved the cushions in on top of one another, closed the door, and began the activation sequence.
Pre-stasis checks began, bathing the dim corridor with faint blue light.
The lab’s reporting was inconclusive as to whether or not there was anyone present at the scene personally responsible for the explosion or the unlicensed cryo. The only connection to Carlton was the cryo, but that was a dead end. Officially, no one alive knew what happened on that farm, and it could be decennia before anyone found out what happened to Simeon’s meditation pillows.
Maybe Simeon would get him permanently stationed here to keep an eye on the unit.
“Doctor Orson, have I caught you?”
He whirled around to see Jumaline Chakravarti tapping a toe at him.
“I’m sorry? Caught me?”
“Before the suspect was recommitted to cryo?”
Freddy relaxed ever so slightly. “Oh, no, I’m sorry, Jumal—Doctor Chakravarti. You are too late.”
“Pity.” She eyed him contemptuously before turning away and leading him back to the workstation.
“Was there something you wanted to examine further? You did not arrange for any further tests on this suspect. Else, I would not have done so.”
She turned back to him, her voice a razor blade, “I highly doubt you would go to any measure of discomfort on my behalf.”
“Don’t be so sure.” He put up his hands in surrender. “You don’t know me, Jumaline.”
“I know exactly what kind of man you are, Doctor Orson.”
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t think you do, Doctor Chakravarti.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
