The Death of the Wave (16 page)

“If you are human,” I answered

“Then I cannot love you.”

So, that is where we stand, my love.

The angel who wanted to be human.

“Is it not enough that you are mine?”
you replied.

And smiled to see, as you fell away.

“No,” I said.

“It is not enough.”

Last report of the day.

Last report of time.

This would be my last Duty, my last work as Breaker,

before I was meant to be executed.

I still had my Hive report in my possession.

This time I did not linger,

and the door, it closed behind me.

Everything was so completely unchanged,

Galileo’s chambers, gleaming white,

and my father himself,

standing like a conqueror to look out of the window,

and listening intently to the roar of the crowd.

I stumbled, and braced myself on the back of a chair,

and the haughty head shifted at the sound.

“Please, sit down,”
he murmured, and gestured with one elegant hand.

I collapsed into my seat,

to watch the king glide as if upon ice

and level himself before me.

Completely unchanged, and his voice when he spoke was gentle,

at ease, the careless timbre of a lord in his own home,

but his eyes were sharp as chips of flint,

and my death was in them.

“The report,”
he ordered imperiously,

and the white fingers snapped like castanets.

I gave him the slim exercise book for my Hive

and he flipped through it, skimming without interest.

“How many lost,”
he murmured, turning the page

to see my report on the test scores.

“Dead,” I heard myself say through dry, useless lips,

and one thin finger paused to the page.

“What?”

His voice was calm,

but an electric current shimmered through it

and the black eyes rehearsed an execution.

I do not know from what reserves

I drew the courage,

but I replied,

“How many are dead. Not lost.”

And that graceful white hand shot out without warning,

connecting sharply with my ruined face

and knocking me off the chair.

I never remember the pain.

But,

I remember him.

Standing over me like a victor,

the report in his hand

and a surfeit of blood in those thin cheeks.

“By your hand,”
he whispered tenderly.

“That was by your hand. Not mine.”

He reached forward and grabbed me by the front of my coat,

the book, he tossed away,

and examined my eyes with those eerie lights in his.

“How many dead, Author,”
he breathed, as the world swam at my feet.

“How many did you let die?”

“I’m proud of you, did you know that?”

And those white hands slipped around to caress my throat.

“What you did…that was noble. Sacrificing others for your cause.”

“How do you sleep at night?”

His grip tightened into a vise.

“Ah…yes…”
he purred, for finally

the room began to fade.

“Easily.”

“Confess, this time, to me.”

I heard Galileo’s voice far off,

and made no reply.

“No?”

“Then yield thee, coward,”
he whispered, for Shakespeare

and for the men who are dead.

“And live to be the show and gaze o’ the time:

We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,

Painted on a pole, and underwrit,

‘Here may you see the tyrant.”

And Sonnet’s words funneled through a demon called me back from the dusk,

and pulled my own words unmeaning from the darkness.

“I will not yield,” I muttered reflexively, and his startled hands relaxed

only for an instant.

It was enough.

I drew my breath, twisting out of his grip,

and we struggled against the whiteness of the room.

Those long hands clawing for me

as I turned him upon his back.

My blood upon him, from him, a blessing,

for the black eyes stared in wonder.

“Kill me?”
he questioned through numbed lips,

as I struck him

again

and again.

“Kill me,”
he breathed as I had, and it was no longer a question.

But I was

I am

resigned.

“No.”

I watched my execution play out.

My last surrender, if the plan should fall.

The sound of footsteps down the hall.

And my father laughed at my hesitation

through a wet mouth as red as paint.

“Why ever not,”
he replied, smiling up at me.

“Because,” I whispered,

as the Breakers opened the door,

cocked the guns,

and smiling, lost.

“I condemn you to be you… for the rest of your life.”

Alone at the window, gazing over the crowd that had gathered, so still and so forgotten.

What could I tell you, there, at that moment,

as you laughed at the winter sunlight,

uncaring, when I asked you why.

Descartes. Our poor tortured soul. Did he know?

What reason, Author? What purpose? You have saved nothing.

The last time I spoke to you,

I told you everything,

before they took you away with my betrayal ringing in your ears.

I gave over the correspondence to force your confession.

I directed all the Breakers with your stolen words, written through another.

False Author, was she dead by your hand?

She was starving when I found her, and I gave her bread

for words and for her children.

Author.

Did you see the children?

Author.

Did I save you from the fire?

Did I save you?

Did I?

I never meant to hurt you.

I loved you, Author.

But you had gone too fast and too far.

I had to save Eden, no matter the cost.

You nearly stopped me at the last.

But a single life could not be worth

more than a nation.

Not even yours.

And so,

nothing could stop me.

Not even you.

They asked me, as one of those closest to her, if I wanted to see the body after.

I didn’t.

I wanted to remember her as she was.

Fearless.

Unstoppable.

Something beyond the rest of us.

But that was shattered when the bullet sounded against her head

and took the dreams of the Artists with it.

But those were dreams they no longer wanted to remember.

Something drove me down into the Palace basements where they kept some of the bodies

that had been pulled from the wreckage of a failed rebellion.

I tried not to look at faces.

They lay side by side, like soldiers.

There, a charred child curled on its side on a stainless steel table.

Beside it a mother-shield riddled with bullets.

Author was stretched out between a man and a fallen child.

Her body was the same, only lax in death,

the delicate fingers splayed, as if reaching to the child.

But her face.

Her face.

I turned and wiped my mouth, nausea burning in my throat.

Remember. Remember. Remember.

The angels in borrowed robes.

I climbed onto the table with her under the uncaring eyes of Breakers

who watched, one through a full mask, as if to cover scars.

And I took her into my arms

as if she was the child.

And later, when they took the body

and burnt it into ashes,

they would speak of her as the Author

as if she belonged to no-one.

And when the Camps began to rise again,

she was their Author, as if she had been always.

But no, I thought, as if I could protect her.

Not your Author.

Mine.

I watched from the window what was meant to be me.

The roar of the masses and I knew that they were calling for Author.

But who am I?

I am finished fighting.

My face was, is, seared with the seal of Eden.

I had to go away.

After the execution, 376 was waiting to help me escape.

Why, I could not, cannot tell.

I cannot—

I cannot remember anything

but the feel of the fire.

I waited for the boy to step forward,

to tell them that I only spoke the truth.

That he was a traitor.

That he lied.

That he sent an innocent woman to torture and death,

and it was too late, too late to turn back.

To save her would have been to lose everything.

But the truth would not bring back the Artists who died

in pursuit of the Voice of Eden,

and the crowd was getting restless.

Still.

His eyes were fixed on what should have been me.

There at the failing of a revolution.

His eyes were fixed on her, on me, and I wanted him to think that I had died.

As I would have, I will, should the plan fall.

Everything was in place,

and Galileo knew nothing.

As the aristo spoke, his pale skin gleamed in the sunlight,

and the blood has been carefully wiped away.

He shone like the birth of the world.

But I did not see it.

I saw her try to be brave for the crowd,

to put on a good show,

but her fear betrayed me.

Because the boy did not move.

And Galileo said:

“Is there anyone here who objects to this sentence?”

And I rehearsed the moment in my mind.

This was the story of the dawning of a dynasty,

and the fall of a kingdom.

This was the part where I was meant to die.

Author is dead,

and I picked up my pen after the fall

to begin a revolution, Descartes,

that I could then, and now, begin to believe in.

I understand now.

Better that we all starve because of love than die of hate.

In our world, only genius on paper is suffered to live.

But what of the others?

There must have been a reason

that she fought so long and so hard.

Was injured, tortured, did the unthinkable,

allowing the man she loved to founder.

All for a revolution.

She stood before a crowd of people that wanted her dead.

She was willing to die, disgraced and alone,

with the people she strove to aid roaring for her blood.

For what purpose, Author?

They hated you.

And some still do,

though most call you the Martyr.

You would have given your life to save Descartes, Author.

But what of me?

Did you ever think of me?

And what of your son?

Author, you will be cursed.

Loved.

Hated.

But you will be remembered.

That was my last chance, Author,

at the end of your rebellion.

I would have saved the Camps.

I signaled to them by the death of Newton.

I fulfilled the promise I had written to the Camps under your name.

And by the true death of Newton,

I gave them a reason to remember you as a hero.

Author

I saved you.

I saved your name.

Did I not?

I was meant to live fully under your name,

and under you, be remembered.

Newton, Galileo’s lord, was dead

He spoke no more.

At last, this time, at last.

But the King lived on.

Long live the King.

We have scorched the snake,

Not killed it.

But the people began to believe in Author once more.

An Author on the side of the Artists,

not out of ideals, but out of love.

An Author that could not be neutral as—

Fire is fair.

After the Voice of Eden was dead,

they took the last books from the library

and burned them in front of the Citadel

with Newton, wrapped like a load of lumber, in a slender sheet.

The stink of him and the smoke cast into the sky.

He burned in a fire made of words.

Eden’s murdered lord.

The books, they burned.

And I meant to salvage them,

and your heart from the ashes.

I destroyed them as utterly

as if I had held the match myself.

This is what you fought for?

It burned, Author.

Like you,

your work all burned to ashes.

Look at your pretty kingdom.

What is left, a few sections in the Camps?

Fire is the only thing left

that is intolerable and fair.

It burns the drivel and the masterpiece.

The hero and the villain.

You were, you are, not different.

Author, your body burnt in a fire

and you were freed from your ruined prison.

Author, I could smell the words burning

and they smelt like a revolution.

You have consumed me.

You have consumed my soul.

For fire cares for nothing,

and fire is fair.

Coming back to you, Darwin

is like coming home

even in the worst of circumstances.

You heard my footsteps by your chambers

echoing against the marble,

and threw open your door.

Your black eyes were near unreadable

as they always are.

But you must have been waiting.

Your dress-shirt was unbuttoned

revealing a throat as white as the marble.