The Death of the Wave (9 page)

and if it was what she might have felt in those last moments.

But was she dead?

And did she die?

The writings—

Knowing that this was it,

that this second was the one for the ages.

I imagined him straight-backed for the blast.

Some of them plead and cry and kick when they are led from the ceremony

to the retest and death.

But I am certain that he was straight-backed

and thought of poetry.

I think, therefore I am, Descartes,

I knew your namesake because you knew it.

Long ago a Frenchman died, and there you stood.

But where is France?

Where words are like music in a darkened room, like the twitter of birds.

And does it exist still, far off beyond the boundaries of Eden?

I dream of a world where France exists,

and the people speak like birds.

You showed me your writings, and so many poems and works

from the hidden library in the Palaces,

the one locked with the heavy deadbolts and guarded by Breakers.

You copied them down in your careful hand, as if you had to think carefully about every word.

All these entities, like specters from the past,

Yeats, Shakespeare, Dante, Dumas, Hearst, Hugo, Tolkien, so many,

and you spoke each name like a prayer, in reverence to these dead men.

You knew of the world before the Censor because Galileo knew it,

and he told you everything.

But what if I had told you, Descartes, that I hated your father,

Galileo,

that I sought to destroy him?

Would I have earned another of those lost looks,

or would you have urged me regardless to take up the paper and the pen?

You taught me all that you knew.

What the world was.

Is.

What is a sonnet?

What is music, beyond a word?

I had told you of my fears of the world.

In three days after my week, I had been reassigned,

but you promised me you would not leave me.

We would meet when I came back to the Palaces.

I came back often.

You would not forget.

You will not betray me.

How will I remember that there is a world beyond the Breakers?

To remember is to write.

To forget is to love.

And I loved you, Descartes.

But enough to put aside the pen?

I think, therefore I am.

But

I do not think of you.

Instead

I think of the souls that danced in the cold and in the snow,

and lost

so many, many fires ago.

EDICT 6706: The Government of Eden is trusting. If a man should prove to be a perjurer and an equivocator, there must be evidence of his wrongdoings. If the evidence proves sound, that man will be imprisoned or else put to death.

If the right arm offends, cut it away.

I never should have loved.

There was once a moment when I trusted

that the world was strange,

that the world was unfair

and that I was to be alone.

I am no different from them, Descartes.

I did what I had to do.

I am a measure in uniform,

I am a mind without a heart,

a bullet in a gun and

a footfall upon a stair.

I am a monster, Descartes.

And without the guilt that consumes me

all I could note is your white face in the darkness

with your shattered lips and silent eyes.

Your cold arms in the darkness were always mine.

And I was home.

Home,

and then our baby boy.

Our pure infant fire

that squalled and shook in

his makeshift cradle.

Our terrifying angel,

dark-haired, and like

an Artist born.

You protected me,

and our son,

had him sent to the Hives

and the child stalled a rebellion.

Twelve years, our promise charred upon your lips.

Wait until the child is grown

so he cannot be used against you.

Wait until he can take his chances.

Descartes.

I waited.

I waited too long.

And when the twelve years had passed

and our son was grown.

I stayed in the Palaces.

I read the works of dead men.

You had smuggled out the saved words of the ages

from the forbidden library.

Piece by piece under a jacket that was too small for you.

Only three books on the first day.

And I transcribed the words in my own handwriting,

the works of Genius lessened by my hand, their references tainted.

Milton spoke of angels and of Eden,

the tree of knowledge, our death by,

our lives in the words of men who are dead.

Hugo wrote of rebellion and extremists,

and Shakespeare wrote plays.

But what of France, of England, of Angel-land

that kingdom of Angels

sunk under the sea, or conquered?

What of the world before the fire?

I wrote late

on slips of paper torn from my brother’s CEE workbook

He would save them.

Prepared names.

Destinies of children.

My new position was in the Hives,

so I would remember,

the life-determined and the executioner.

I cannot think, I cannot feel.

But the words, and my words, make it back to the Camps

in the hands of those children who survive.

For I would give them not only a name, but a future.

There are some there who yet remember,

though most still try to forget.

The Citadel controls all higher technology.

What we did was the only way.

Galileo, unknowing, had given me my chance.

I had no intention of wasting it.

I would have salvaged the books that last from the fire.

Why, then?

The bartering of a life?

A life for words.

No meaning.

For one day, the Camps will say,

we will be dead.

But not today.

We are not dead today.

The books that last from the fire,

and yet I cannot remember them.

It happened before I was born,

and I no longer crane to look along the line for my letters.

On Cleaning Day.

On Cleaning Day.

Close call today, I’ve not been eating.

I’ve searched too long for a window.

Waited so long

that they pulled me aside at the signal,

the Cleaners, specters, in their bird-like masks

to feel my bones.

543,

the sole female Breaker left, watching with still hunter’s eyes.

Waiting, so long,

for the mirrored Palace car has lingered today longer than expected.

And I saw a pale hand gesture imperiously

from a window implacable as black ice.

None of us have looked inside.

None of us.

But I am alive,

and words know how to wait.

Cleaning Day and

the faceless old woman

sweeps as though she is born to it.

No matter.

Descartes is dead, and who is this other that knows

my failures, victories, ecstasies, agonies?

Of course it is meaningless now.

My phantom. My chess-master.

My game.

The one who dares to call me Artist.

I know no one here, most of the ones from the old days,

enemies and friends,

are dead or insane, save for the last aristo.

The one child, Darwin, glimpsed in the Palaces,

he is grown now, has taken over after the murder of Galileo.

The mercy-killing of Galileo.

Is it him? He must remember, though he was so young.

But here, in the Barracks?

He was there at the dawning of the last of the rebellions

when the Scientist shattered and slew an angel.

What then?

The Scientist must be dead.

His social experiment forgotten.

And Author—

What means it, then?

Author is dead.

Why share the words, the methods, the reasons?

Shall I play this game?

I should not.

The Artists must be beyond help,

and I have grown above them.

But I am childish and hate to lose.

Involuntarily, my eyes glance about for paper.

The other side of each letter is torn by impatient hands

and written on the back of a page of Edicts,

the same as the others.

I will reply.

I write in human ink in margins,

like this other, with all my little tricks.

And yes.

It is better to remember.

Remember, than to risk forgetting.