"One at a time," he pleaded.
– Are you crying?
– Michael, when will you take over RiverGroup?
– Are those tears of love? Or is this another of your dad's crazy schemes?
– You're breaking a billion girls' hearts, Michael! Sure she's the one?
– Are you both virgins?
– Michael, they say you still secretly dance Bäng. Is it true?
– Nora, will your family company become a unit of RiverGroup or merge completely?
– Is your father's dna mutated?
– What's it like to be with Michael Rivers?
– Have you two done it?
– Are those nude photos in
Sir Princess Zonk
really you, Nora?
– Will you deflower her at the product show?
– How much are you both worth?
We fielded the proper questions as best we could, but they kept coming faster and faster. Meanwhile, the moderator became so flustered, he started shouting. The reporters screamed back. I decided to try and calm the crowd and released Nora's hand. At first, our palms stuck, then the seal was broken. Stepping before the microphones, I raised my arms, and said, "Thank you, all." I tried to smile and say it nicely, but the mass of reporters began to push in on the barricades, and soon a dozen family police, in their protective orange satin suits, were pushing back. People started screaming. The next moment a fire burst out and someone was engulfed in flames.
Nora's attendants quickly covered her with a protective net and carried her off to her green and gold Loop limousine. I wanted to go after her, make sure she was okay, say goodbye, and gaze into her left eye so she would know that I felt precisely the same as her, but after I took one step, it felt like a knife stabbed my hand. The force whipped my arm backward and almost knocked me over. As I turned to see if one of the family security satins had accidentally hit me, I was surprised to see Joelene beside me, covered with a fine spray of blood.
Joelene was my tutor, my advisor, and my best friend. She was a good five inches shorter, with loose, curly, light brown hair, a slim mouth, and thin, amethyst eyes. "Joelene," I said, afraid the blood was hers. She had the strangest, saddest expression. "What's the matter?" I asked, as the pain in my hand turned white hot.
Besides Nora's blood that had dried in the wrinkles and creases of my palm, now a dot of my own blood welled up in the middle. For an instant, I thought it perfect and symmetrical. I glanced after Nora as if to show her, but when I turned my hand over, I saw that the back was bloody too.
The wound went all the way through as if I had been shot. I was about to ask Joelene what was going on, when my left hand was violently snapped backward and another spray of blood atomized in the air. I cried out because the pain was excruciating. Bones had been shattered and tendons severed.
Joelene's face was now covered with a heavy splatter and she was grimacing and blinking fast as if it had gotten in her eyes.
"I'm shot!" I said, pulling my hands toward my chest to try to comfort and protect them. How could this be happening? I was first son of RiverGroup,
the
security company.
"You'll be all right!" she said.
Before I could move, I felt a horrific stab in my right foot and screamed. Then I felt the same blast in my left. The tops of my shoes were cracked open like tiny bombs had gone off.
My knees buckled as my body felt clumsy and heavy. I shuffled forward trying to stay upright, but couldn't keep my balance. I began to fall and on the way down, felt someone try to grasp my waist. If there was an impact, I didn't feel it, but then my face was flat on the ground. The pain in my hands and feet burned like the white flame of a welding gun. The salty smell of blood filled my nose.
All around, I heard screams. Joelene shouted the word
ambulance
several times. A siren began to whine and at first it rose and fell like a perfectly formed and pure white sign wave. A moment later, though, the tone turned harsh and the smooth wave I had been imagining became rough and jagged. The siren began to fade, and the wave shrunk to a single point of green light. It held for a moment then disappeared.
What appeared to be the same green dot hovered before me in a vast nothing, like a single jade-colored star in a night sky. I wasn't sure if just a few seconds, hours, or days had elapsed, but I felt I might be in a different place. Concentrating on the green point of light, I felt it was me or was just like me—a tiny entity in the middle of nothing. I wanted to reach out to it and comfort it, if such a thing were possible.
Then another green pinpoint of light emerged and gradually became as intense as the first. I felt glad because the first star wasn't alone. It had a companion.
Then a third dot appeared, and I hated it. I didn't want it to interfere. But soon more dots bloomed from the darkness. Clumps appeared, then dozens, and finally hundreds filled in. The first two were lost in an emerald cloud that looked like the vapors of a nebula. The cloud became opaque and filled my vision from top to bottom, left to right.
Without warning, slashes of yellow and gold cut the cloud to shreds. Molten masses of bloody reds and petroleum blacks bubbled up. The brutality and vividness frightened me, and from whatever state of sleep or dream I had been, my consciousness rose a level.
The mass of glowing dots was actually a huge screen hovering inches above my nose. From the black a lavender froth emerged and then hundreds of orange abscesses erupted like a disease.
"No," I said, squinting into the blinding light, "stop!"
Grape vortexes swallowed up the orange and vomited acid greens.
"Relax, Mr. Rivers," said an amplified voice.
"Get this thing away of me!" I said. My fingers touched cold metal as I tried to push the screen away, but couldn't budge it.
"Quiet please. And do not touch the equipment."
"Where am I? Where's Nora?" The greens mutated into a brittle red, like a giant scab. I slapped the screen and the pain in my hand jarred me further awake.
This was color therapy! Father ranted about how wonderful it was. I was in some sort of a hospital or spa—which explained the medicinal and alcohol tinge in the air—being exposed to the glaring horrors of photochromism. Then I fully woke, and as if remembering who I was, closed my right eye. The atrocious hues became a thousand soothing shades of grey.
"Mr. Rivers," said the voice, "open both eyes. The therapy will be more effective! Mr. Rivers do as you're told. Open your right eye, please."
The giant screen slowly faded to black and pulled away. I relaxed. At least I didn't feel like it was suffocating me.
Footsteps approached. A bald man in a long emerald coat appeared beside me. I could see thick black hair in his nostrils. Leaning down, he peered into my right eye with a lit device. "Tsk!" he said, as if admonishing me. "Burning the cones is illegal."
Only those few who are fully committed to grey have the procedure. Last year, without my father's knowledge, I found a neuro-ophthalmologist in Saru Pauro who performed the delicate operation. While I lay sedated, a microscopic sodium laser destroyed all the cones in my right retina. When I healed and the bandages were removed, my right eye, with only its rods intact, perceived nothing but the creamiest black, white, and grey.
I told the man with the hairy nose, "I want out of here." Instead of answering, he examined my left hand with another device. "Where's Nora?" I asked. "Is she all right? What happened?"
"All I know," he said, still peering through his contraption, "is that the bullets were also illegal. Curiously, they released drugs that healed the wounds they caused." He eyed me angrily, as if all of these infractions were my fault.
As he moved to my feet and examined them, I sat up and saw that I was naked except for a green cloth with some complicated orange and gold logo that covered my crotch. "Where am I?" I demanded. "Where are my clothes?"
Touching his ear, he seemed to listen to something. "Someone is here to see you." With that he headed across a yellow floor so polished it looked like he was walking on his upside-down twin. The room was round and the walls were covered with enormous photos of people who looked like they were in terrible pain. He exited through a door covered with the face of a woman whose mouth was wide open and had blood splattered over her forehead and cheeks.
"Can you bring my clothes?" He disappeared through the bloody woman's face without acknowledging me. "Hello? My clothes please!" Shouting drained me. I felt dizzy and flopped back. I would rest for a moment, I told myself, then get up, and find my way out of here.
The door opened. I expected the man with my clothes, but Joelene and her upside-down yellow twin came in. Both wore long dark coats, high-necked shirts, and held bundles under their right arms. Her change of clothes made me wonder how long I had been here. I was going to ask, but when she came to the side of my bed, I saw tears in her eyes.
"You look good," she said, suppressing a sob. "I have your clothes."
Joelene had never cried before. She had always been strong and efficient. As she laid out a slim, silk-goat wool charcoal suit, a pressed, white cotton shirt, black briefs and socks, and a new pair of shoes, I asked, "What's the matter?"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry to see you like this." Her violet eyes met mine, and then she glanced down at her hands. "I'm very sorry."
"Thank you," I said, touched. "Is Nora okay?"
"Everyone is fine." She straightened the collar of the jacket. "Healthwise." Running a finger over the fabric, she added, "Isé–B ironed this for you." Isé–B was my favorite competitive ironer. The shirt was beautifully done, and while I could see his trademark creases, I felt she was avoiding something.
"Healthwise?" I asked, worried that there was something else.
She shook her head quickly, and said, "Last night millions of girls held a candlelight vigil. They're drawing pink dots on their hands and feet." Her smile lasted for an instant and then a melancholy returned. I could see circles beneath her eyes, and her cheeks paled. However long I had been here, she had probably been awake, gathering information, answering questions, and figuring out what to do. "You and RiverGroup are the only news on the channels."
"But what happened?"
"It was a breach."
Every six months or so a bomb exploded in a distant hospital, a little-known ceo was kidnapped, or an illegal blimp was shot down in Europa-9. But breaches rarely happened to the strongest families, and they never happened to RiverGroup. We were the ones who established all identities and kept track of all the information. I said, "That can't be."
"The gunman . . . " she began, her finger still traveling back and forth on the collar of the shirt, "was . . . a . . . freeboot."
Freeboots had been the worst outlaws. They were people—if you could call them that—who didn't have identities, names, families, numbers, papers, or anything. When I was a boy, new stories of them popping up in boardrooms and bedrooms circulated weekly. "But aren't they all gone now?"
"Despite the official declarations," she said, "they exist. I doubt there are more than a hundred, but it's impossible to tell. They live off the system, completely beyond the laws. Forty years ago, though, they helped defeat the Pharmaceutical Warlords and allowed the families to take control of the cities. At that time they were admired. They were the artisans of anarchy." She stopped fiddling with my shirt, straightened, and faced me. "The slubbers and the warlords are the official enemy, but the freeboots are worst. And from all the information I've been able to gather, I believe your shooting was an act of retaliation."
"What did I do?"
"I don't think it was about you in particular—although RiverGroup's role in security and identity is fundamental to the families—you were just a high-level target in retribution for a series of fierce attacks on the freeboots last year." She exhaled and her eyes fell again. "I am sorry."
"Well," I said, not quite sure what all of this meant besides a huge nuisance, "what happened to the freeboot?"
"At first, the reports were that the freeboot was killed by family satins, but now it seems he escaped."
"How?"
She shook her head. "They're very elusive. And no one was prepared."
Whipping a hand around the room—the awful images and the now black therapy screen, I said, "I want out of here. I want to see Nora."
She didn't move.
I waited several seconds for her to speak then began to panic. "She wasn't shot was she? Please don't tell me that!"
"No! She's fine. She's perfectly fine . . . " Her voice trailed off. Joelene was not usually this reticent.
"Is there something bad?"
She took a breath, looked me in the eyes, and said, "The marriage is off."
My marriage to Nora was to signify the merger between RiverGroup and her family's company, mkg. Father had invented the scheme a couple of months ago. Although RiverGroup was still number one, we were losing customers because we hadn't introduced anything new in years and our market share had slipped to just below fifty percent. Our biggest rival, mkg, had an innovative approach, and Father's idea was that together, RiverGroup and mkg would dominate the market. As for me: I didn't care for business, or code, or promotions, or money, or any of it. And in the beginning, I didn't want anything to do with his marriage-merger scheme, but when Joelene and I began to research Nora, I couldn't believe how intelligent, beautiful, and serene she was. And then we met and I learned that she was colorless, that she was the epicenter of grey, that she was my conclusion. "Well," I said, saddened, but not devastated, "that's not good, but when can I see her?"
"The marriage-merger is off," she repeated.
"I heard you! I just want to see her as soon as I can."
She spoke slowly, as if reluctant. "You cannot."
"I have to see her!" I laughed because I was so unused to Joelene not understanding. "Marriage or not. Nora and I are one. You saw what she did with her hand. We're grey. We're perfect together!"