The Death of the Wave (12 page)

An Author wrote after the death of Newton,

but the flames began to die, didn’t they?

His words were not enough.

Who was the placeholder Artist?

Once when you went to check the crowd,

I picked up a paper off your desk,

to glance at your work,

To the Camps—

and you crossed the room in two quick strides

and ripped it from my hands.

You are so beautiful when you are angry.

Terrible, and beautiful, like an angel.

But not

when you start

like a guilty thing.

Darwin, you tore your writing as I watched

and threw away the pieces.

She never used my name again.

Not after the first time.

Even as we fell into a kind of peaceful rhythm,

it was always “Boy,” with that imperious twist in her quiet voice.

“The boy,” when she spoke of me to others.

I disliked it intensely, it was so impersonal.

It could have meant any boy, but I knew that she intended it to be affectionate.

But neither cajoles nor caresses could change the fact,

I was always nameless, until the day that she died.

I was never sure that she loved me, for I was never sure what she was.

During the best of times, it was easy to think that

I knew all there was to know about Author, as I quickly came to think of her.

She was so tangible in the darkness, so real, and yet the real her, the thing beyond the flesh,

was as ethereal as smoke, and just as mysterious.

I knew the placement of every scar on her body, but had no idea how they came to be there.

She became almost familiar, but forever apart.

It was never really a routine, however, for I never got used to the idea that we were partners.

For the first three months I would tiptoe around her as if she was a tiger in the house.

I would wake up next to her and listen to her breathe,

and we would have breakfast in the Palaces.

She never ate much, even less as the revolution progressed,

and there would be the inevitable fight to get her to eat as her doctors insisted.

She would, for me.

And we would talk about the impending fall of Eden, and in the nighttime when I lay beside her

I would wonder at the fact that she was mine.

She rarely looked me in the eye, and she rarely smiled

but her dark eyes no longer darted at shadows in corners.

Sometimes, when I said something clever that pleased her, she would smile her crooked smile,

and her eyes would look over to me with uneasy affection.

For one day, as I followed her into the Citadel, she turned to a guard Breaker

and when asked who I was, said,

“This is my boy.”

And with dawning knowledge I noted the slight stress on the first syllable.

My boy.

My
boy.

And so we fell into domestic bliss, Darwin.

Our favorite pass-time in a world outside our own

was watching the probationary Watchmen train out in the snow.

Together we would sit at the side of the king,

and watch from the wide window the struggles below.

My dreams are of crimson coats and the sounds of dying men.

And sometimes we would sit to watch them near the field, in the cold.

Galileo joined us on occasion, his eyes hooded in displeasure from the proximity of the trainers.

Watchful.

We were not the only ones.

Many of the workers in the Palaces would amble out to see what could be seen,

on lunch-breaks, to grab a breath of air after the labs.

And they would converse amongst themselves and place bets.

Which one would lag behind, and which one would earn the right to survive.

And you, Darwin, would be the only tense face, tightly gripping the side of your chair,

you would jump and sigh when a shot rang out

as if the soul escaping was tied to your breath.

My dreams are of crimson coats and the sounds of dying men.

Most often it is the simple hit of a body falling to earth.

But sometimes a scream like a rabbit caught in a snare.

How you hated to watch, Darwin.

But you made yourself do it.

Didn’t you?

You owe it to Author.

Because of her actions, the Breakers have no choice.

Score high across all areas and you don the black.

No incentive to serve.

Nothing left to protect.

The first assignment is for each Watchman to execute their families.

Galileo will not have a bond driving a Breaker to rebellion.

They are bred to serve and then to end.

Darwin.

Idealistic darling.

How wrong we were.

How right we are.

And so it was.

Nights with my Author.

Half-days with the king.

I would share everything with you, Galileo,

but I puzzled at your serenity.

The world was close to burning

and still you would do nothing.

You had promised her life.

You had punished her with living.

Galileo, you never wanted her dead, only stopped.

You never enjoyed causing her pain.

It was for the sake of Eden.

Everything, for the State.

I stopped withholding information from you quickly.

For 376 taught me the peril of a stunner gun and water.

Only a mark, but you feel like dying.

You wish for dying.

But Author, when she saw a mark said nothing.

She was a good soldier.

Galileo, remember that I killed your lord

and almost leveled your kingdom.

For you destroyed my Author at the last,

but first you wanted to see what she would do.

How far she would go.

Was that for Eden?

The deaths of the children?

The gunning down in the Camps?

Was that needed, Galileo,

or just another experiment?

And your eyes at the window—

There is warmth and calm, it is like meeting an angel,

and those eyes, those eyes are so far away.

So immensely indifferent to human suffering and pain, and never knowing fear,

twinkling as the stars gleam somewhere long past the city lights.

I knew instantly that he saw me only as an insect on a slide,

a creature whose death throes would at worst be tedious and at best amusing,

but I had fallen in love, and love makes you blind.

Shah mat,

from a place without a name.

For the one who came after me

Leveled a king.

Our project, at last, I understand completely

what you, Darwin, were trying to tell me, to show me.

Author, you had always said, had turned my head.

To me, she was a hero.

The only one who had seen the horrors

of the Camps and dared try to alter the system.

Because of her the children died

but only because she failed.

And I thought her right.

That it was better to live without hope of a future,

to starve from overpopulation,

than it was to support a system that was

corrupted and cruel, and wrong.

But you were right, Darwin.

I had never truly seen men hungry.

All I knew of the Camps were the fairy stories told to me

by little boys, the propaganda machine’s declarations

and from the time you led me into the Camps.

You never wanted me to believe in the ideals of the rebellion,

only to support it as an agent of destruction

so we could build Eden anew from the ashes.

You wanted to see my reaction.

What I would do.

Darwin, it would have taken too long with the Proto-pills.

Switching them so there were no more placebos in the Camps.

It would have taken too long to see the life spans of the Artists rise.

You had to raise the stakes.

I had always wondered what you were writing.

You sent out a letter to the Camps

telling them that they had been deceived,

that the Proto-pills did nothing.

Our engineering them was only an illusion.

You would have never let me distribute working pills to the Camps.

Every one that I created under your watchful eye, a placebo.

You taught me to create them.

You only wanted to see if I would continue.

If I would believe.

So I worked on your diversion,

as you worked on your own lesson

to prove to me what happens.

When the people have their way

and there is rioting in the streets.

There is already rioting in the streets, Darwin.

But you know as well as I that the system will not fall until Galileo does.

And then what?

Overpopulation.

Starvation.

Freedom.

All a rebel’s ideals, yes, but you support the new State.

When the freedom-fighters starve, your new State will rise from the ashes,

and I will be at your side, my liar, waiting.

You told me that you only wanted to see what I would do.

That you never lied to me about your intentions.

You promised me lives, Darwin,

and I intend to take them.

Starting with your father,

to tie into your game.

For, yes, I am a piece in your game.

I am meant to be used.

But I will not be lied to,

not even by a good man.

Not ever again.

But Author lived on.

She had hid her pregnancy as long as she could.

Descartes told me.

When she was found out, he protected her.

As he had so many years ago.

The fire between them had long since cooled,

for their own son had been sent away.

But if he was not an aristo, I would say that he had loved her.

And that she loved him, as she never would me.

I watched her stand over the cradle in our darkened room,

watch-guard over our infant son who slept so soundly.

She thought she was alone, for with others she would show little tenderness.

But alone, she reached into the cradle

to touch the infant’s cheek like porcelain,

so carefully, as if she feared he would break,

and I heard her murmur her goodbyes.

For she would leave him on the steps of a Hive,

like she had another, so many years ago.

The revolution had begun, near ended.

And angry tears stood in the eyes

that were like the eyes of the child.

“For I will find you,”
she said, and raised her head.

And a look of such hatred passed over her face that I took my leave

and ran from the room.

Damages in the night.

When once I supported her,

I would tell her to wait.

Wait to start the next stage,

the silencing of Newton,

until our son was of age.

Like she had with her other son.

Perhaps with time,

she might have been persuaded.

I was thinking of her,

and of our son.

If she had shown reason,

she might have been saved.

But she would not wait.

Months passed and it was winter again.

The children were hungry, but the Keepers could do nothing.

No assistance from the Citadel until the rebellion had ended.

I watched from the corner, the Breaker in black

and in my hands, a rifle.

The other Breakers could do nothing.

Only stand in solidarity with me

to watch the slow death of a civilization.

I cannot eat either.

Hunger means greater failure coming testing-time.

And now

I have no time

to clean the rifle.

We were at the precipice of the world.

And it was

it would be

better to burn than to linger.

I watched the children, their arms like sticks

and their bellies engorged with the empty wind.

They sat in silence, their eyes drawn hollows,

too listless even to play with a ball.

And in those eyes was confusion:

Why do we suffer?

And in the older ones: accusation.

You know.

You will know

everything about the fire.

To save those lives

would mean that others would die.

So I had to think of the children that came after.

I was so sorry.

I am so sorry.

Why do we suffer?

Because of my words.

And I only prayed.

Please give me strength.

Give me the strength to let the children starve.

Night and flowers at the cross-roads.

I took my badge and walked the Camps.

The people were hungry,

all assistance from the Citadel had been cut off to quell the rebellion.

And bodies had fallen, holding her words.

Author did not sleep at night any more.

She waited, standing sentinel at the window.

Expecting.

And the posters that marked the walls of Writer’s Camp,

the tree of Eden over the first edict that

Knowledge of the Edicts Will Set You Free

was defaced.

Knowledge Will Set You Free.

The world was close to burning,

but Author had waited as long as she could.

Waited for it to brew, knowing that the people starved.

We often fought about it in the night.

I asked her to remember the children.

Our son,

to think of him.

But she had waited so long.

Suffered so much.

She would not wait longer.

How much time?

The State were so few

and the people so many.

We can’t support them. They are locusts crawling over the land.

But their skeletal figures moved me.