Dedication (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 1) (8 page)

Foothills of the Western Mountains

A University Campus

Weeks have passed since the conference, and yet the man buried in his cell beneath the monolith of concrete is still hunched over his desk. The excitement of his detention at the conference has faded. Simply being let go after being held for a day with no explanation was anticlimactic enough that none of the academics have really thought much about it. The busy cycle of researching, writing papers, begging for funding, and teaching has resumed once more. There simply are not enough hours in the day to worry about the reasons for his detention. Presumably the government had a good reason, but whatever it was, it certainly is not a priority to find out. For Jon, little has changed, except a slightly greater stoop to his shoulders and a significantly greater amount of paper stacked around him. Soon the volume of pulped trees in his office will cease to be a fire hazard, as there will not be enough airspace for the oxygen needed to start a blaze. Today he sits at the corner of his desk, instead of with his back to the door like normal. The door is open, allowing a slight breeze to blow in off the linoleum tiles, threatening to rustle a page and disturb the monotonous hum of the building's mechanical systems but allowing him to imagine the sunlight and fresh air that must be outside. At least while being held at the conference, he didn’t have to do as much work as is required by his current voluntary imprisonment he thinks ruefully before focusing once more.

A light knock comes from the inside of the door jam. He looks up from the paper his fingers were busy churning out. Standing before him, every feature illuminated by the harsh fluorescents, is a remarkably average young woman. Surely if he had ever passed her when walking down the hall, she would not have warranted a second a glance. Not, of course, that he would have been looking around himself to begin with; his friend Ryan, on the other hand, might have been. And while he might have looked her up and down, she would not have drawn a glance over the shoulder after they had passed.

“Can I ask you a quick question on the last assignment?” she asks.

“Yeah, come in, I think there is an empty chair available somewhere in this mess.”

She moves cautiously through the stacks of papers and books, making her way to a chair that seems to balance the least amount of junk on top and with the greatest proximity to the desk, allowing her to avoid moving it. Scooping up the relatively small stack of graded assignments that are sitting on the chair, she sits down and begins rummaging through her bag, pulling out a notebook that has certainly seen better years. Its cover is torn, and whatever color it might have once been has long since faded, leaving only faint traces behind. From within its folds, she deftly pulls out a sheet of graph paper covered in neat block handwriting.

“I started having problems here, on the second to last one,” she says, indicating where the handwriting stops. “Once you bring the two over from that side and take it into account in quantity A, what do you with A?”

Shifting gears from being simply a man buried by work to a man who must interact with the outside world, Jon tries to focus on what she is asking, comparing it with his own half-remembered trip through the same class and hoping she can't tell that he is, in fact, just making it up as he goes along.

“So now that you have A sub one, you're going to have to interpolate between A and A sub one,” he explains. “Once you've done that, you'll have your new value of A that you can use for the rest of the problem.” He sits back, hoping that this instruction is enough to get her moving again on the problem. There is no way he wants to have to go through it all again and actually solve the problem. He has the answer key somewhere on his desk, but searching through the piles seems almost as laborious as figuring it out again; neither is on the long list of things he was planning on doing today.

She hunches over her paper. Her brown hair swings down in front of her face, momentarily cocooning her and her work before she impatiently tosses it back over her shoulder. As her hair settles back onto her shoulders, it glistens in the light of the fluorescents. Jon can't help but notice this, however he quickly peers down the hall towards the window, hoping that she didn’t notice him looking at her. She is not the kind of beauty who would generally attract ogling stares as she walked down the street, but there is a certain vitality and precision in the way she moves that, to his surprise, grabs Jon’s attention and holds it hostage. From the few lectures he attended at the beginning of the semester, he can’t seem to remember her face or name, but now that they are in the confines of his office, he can feel her presence in a potently memorable way.

Fortunately as his eyes search, he can just barely see the window over a row of filing cabinets. Unfortunately, however, his brief daydream of sunlight is only fantasy. The real first snow of the season is starting to fall; small flakes are beginning to drift. If he had access to a window overlooking the rest of campus, he’d be able to see a cloud front mounting the top of the school's stadium, its shadow creeping over the many buildings of the campus. Before he can get too lost in the beauty of the first snow, or before the young woman before him—he now remembers her name as Sara when he glances at the top of her assignment where it is written neatly—can ask another question on the homework, his view of the outside world is blocked by large dark shadow, backlit by the light in the hall. Jon’s reverie is broken by an exclamation.

“Dude!”

“Hey Ryan, what are you up to?” Jon asks, wishing his friend would calm it down a bit some of the time.

“You gotta come see this, like half the campus has gone nuts,” Ryan explains as he wades into the room, his shoulders brushing both sides of the door frame and his hat nearly knocked off by the top. Without even seeming to notice that there are papers on the corner of Jon's desk, he takes a seat and leans down so that he’s closer to his friend’s face before continuing in a very loud whisper.

“So, I’ve been reading some of the underground news feeds, and they’ve been talking up some crazy stuff. There has been like this whole government conspiracy thing where they are arresting and detaining kids all over the country and forcing them to work in labor camps, and then they are trying to brainwash all of us other ones through the school system so we willingly become their slaves. And the whole government is controlled by like this family, and they are in league with a bunch of other governments to keep all the people under their control, but the families that run the government also run all the corporations. Man they're like trying to control our lives, turn us into their slaves or something. And there are a whole bunch of people protesting it over in the main quad. There are like thousands, it’s going to turn into a riot real soon. You should come, it’s going to be awesome.”

Jon sits there, digesting his friend’s long breathless rant. He tries to make sense of it all for a minute before giving up and falling back on his default answer.

“You know I'd love go, but I've got to get this work done, and I still have office hours for the next half hour, so I can't leave yet,” he says, indicating Sara, who is now looking up from her calculations.

Ryan swivels on the desk top, catching a few more papers and sending them drifting down to the floor, the pages looking like the snowflakes drifting down outside. Once his shoulder-length ginger curls slow their swinging, he tosses them back and tucks them behind his ears.

“My dear, I’m sorry for the intrusion, I’d hate to have interrupted the valuable knowledge my friend here was imparting to you,” he says with what sounds like sincerity, but the twinkle in his eye betrays him. And then he winks, as if to destroy any remaining credibility of his last statement. “And pardon my tirade, generally I am quite sane and only occasionally lapse into the mentality of a deranged conspiracy theorist.”

Jon doesn't even need to see his face to know what his happening: This man's charm is enough to win most girls in a matter of minutes. Sara, judging by her expression, is no exception. She sits back and re-crosses her legs before saying:

“Don't worry about that... I think I just figured it out. Jon pointed out where I needed to take it,” she says, all without breaking eye contact with Ryan. “But now I am distracted from it, perhaps you could escort me down to this protest thing you were talking about.”

Her own eyes are twinkling with just as much mischief as Ryan's, and as she gathers up her stuff, Jon can't help but think that his friend may have just met his match. Unlike some of the ladies his friend spends time with, Sara seems to be fully aware of his game but is interested in raising the stakes instead of simply playing along. Such a collision of titans may just be interesting to watch. They both dismount from their seats and leave, Ryan allowing her to step out first before looking back over his shoulder with a wink.

Jon allows himself a smile and a small chuckle before diving back into the work from which he had been interrupted. The thought of why he had never noticed Sara in class or the lab section before never crosses his mind—it is far too busy with at least one hundred different and more important thoughts.

Western Mountains

Government Work Camp

The day seems to be like many before it. William stands before his station, carefully bending and twisting the strips and tubes that the machine on his right feeds him. After a few mistakes and hasty corrections the first day, he has managed to get the hang of the process. Sometimes he completes the bend quickly, and he can take a few seconds break and look around himself. There hasn’t really been a change in the past few weeks since his starting to work in the factory. After arriving in this place, tucked away in some high and arid alpine valley, sheltered from the prying eyes of the media, his life has been simple. The almost comforting twelve hours of work, followed by the three hours of physical training, and finally crashing onto a hard cot to sleep for what remains of the day has been a satisfying way to pass the time. In truth, he hasn’t really given what most would call imprisonment much thought, though to say that he has given anything much thought would be an understatement. His mind has been coasting, allowing thoughts to float across it and on to wherever they belong. He has been content to follow orders and keep from getting noticed.

All that, of course, had been before this morning. He is just far enough into the day that the rhythm of the machines have taken hold, but not so far that he is too tired to spare any energy, when he manages to look up for a few seconds.

Not two stations away, through the steam and haze generated by another machine, he catches a glimpse of the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen. She has grease smudged across her olive skin, making her pronounced, yet delicate, cheekbones and nose all the more striking. Her black hair is turned all the blacker by the sweat that makes her skin glisten.

He stares. He stares so intently that everyone should notice, yet the room remains as noisy and productive as ever. Despite his preoccupation with this wonder of natural beauty, his subconscious manages to respond as the next strip of metal arrives.

The fluidity of her movements, pulling sheets of thick steel plating towards her and installing mounting brackets, makes it seem as if the world is moving in slow motion. A lock of her hair slides around towards the front of her face, and without slowing her other movements, she brushes it back towards its fellows. William is still staring. She glances up, her eyes lock with William’s, and something clicks for him. Some piece that he hadn’t even known existed has fallen into place, completing a circuit. Suddenly his life has meaning beyond mere survival, there is a purpose behind his every thought; he has something to gain or something to lose, but not both.

It all happens in the time it takes for his heart to skip a beat. Then, before his heart can explode with the sudden wave of emotion, he is slapped back to reality by the screeching of metal. His moment of distraction almost results in the machine destroying a piece of metal he was working, and the arm holding it as well. Quick reactions allow him to claw the piece back into position and start again. He only earns a cuff about the head from the overseer, as nothing was actually damaged and production was only stalled slightly.

Throughout the rest of the day, he keeps glancing up, hoping to catch her eye again, but every time he does, the steam is either too dense to see through, or she is absorbed in her work. The day seems to go by faster, measured in glances at her.

Western Mountains

Abandoned Military Base

Gavitte is sitting in his room; the overhead light is turned off, the only illumination a single desk lamp pulled low over the table at which he is hunched. His form casts a bulbous shadow that leaves the majority of the rest of the room dark. Only shafts of light slip by him to illuminate the surroundings. The reason he is hunched alone in the dark is the organizational chart on the table.

The chart is covered in redacted names and missing information, as it portrays the location and relative seniority of the few members of the loose organization referred to as the Resistance who have managed to contact each other. The chart contains very few names, despite the generally reported pervasiveness of the Resistance. Gavitte ponders the difference between the media’s portrayal of this organization and the truth he’s seen since his arrival in the mountains. Certainly everyone he has met is tough and independent, but they are certainly not the crazed zealots bent on global anarchy that appear on the evening news. The names hidden behind the black ink are not the kind of names generally belonging to those involved in an organization blamed with terrorist activities. These names belong to average citizens who, having had enough of the situation being forced upon them, had gotten a couple of friends together to see if they could do anything about it.

To Gavitte, each name represents a potential regional campaign manager, the local voice that is not only dedicated to his cause, but also knows the people to whom he will be talking. He pores over the chart, grappling with the problem of trying to sync the locations of the cells with polling data that sits in stacks along the left edge of the table. He knows that any campaign that he starts must begin somewhere that allows it to gain momentum quickly and quietly, before word trickles up to the government and they squash it. The only problem for him is that where General Lampard has worked the hardest on placing his agents and making contact with sympathetic groups are the areas least likely to support any movement with Gavitte as its figurehead, despite the hard work of those very same agents. Some areas of the country are too deeply entrenched in the government’s tradition or else benefit too thoroughly from its graft and corruption to pay heed to Gavitte’s message. On the other hand, a victory in one such area would upset the entire balance that the ruling families have worked so hard to maintain.

His head drops in frustration. What he needs is so clear, so simple and fundamental, but it doesn’t exist. He can’t seem to wrap his mind into the right shape to see the pattern that has to be present. There has to be some angle that he can work, some way to meld the polling demographics from the areas in which the Resistance is respected into some sort of parallel track with the platform that he represents. Somehow, with a few tweaks, he knows he can even make the Resistance palatable in the areas where they’d had no traction before. His brain is stuck in a loop of the same almost-solutions that have been plaguing him all morning. When his head finally touches the surface of the desk, the sigh he lets out sends sheets of paper with half-written speeches floating to the floor. In frustration, he lets his eyes close.

Gavitte is startled to find himself being gently shaken awake by one of the general’s aides: a slender man with dark glasses and a distant look in his eyes. The aide is holding a folder stuffed with papers, which he hands to Gavitte as soon as the weary politician has a chance to straighten his glasses.

“Sir, pardon for interrupting you, but you missed your scheduled working lunch with the general. He wanted me to give you his notes he’d put together regarding the ‘grass-roots’ campaign.”

Gavitte takes the folder and begins flipping through its contents. There are close to twenty pages of neat handwritten notes, broken out within each page into different sections depending on the type of thought recorded. Before he can get too absorbed into the pages, the aide politely interrupts again.

“The general also mentioned that I should offer my services, escorting you to your next meeting with the Field Committee. I might be able to show you some shortcuts you haven’t discovered yet.”

“Thank you, I’d forgotten about that,” Gavitte replies, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he stands and grabs a notepad and an old-fashioned day planner. “Let’s go, I feel terrible missing the lunch we’d planned. I just got so bogged down. I can’t seem to keep pace with him.”

“If I may speak freely sir?” the aide asks as they exit Gavitte’s room and enter the hallway. Gavitte nods, indicating that he should, while fumbling with his keys to lock the door. The aide continues, “I’ve found since I started work for the general that he can outlast anyone when it comes to administrative tasks and attending meetings. He is always thinking and spinning new webs of intrigue. It’s like he can’t stop, and there is no way a mortal like you or I can keep up with him. Fortunately, he is able to recognize that we work at a different speed and think in different ways. As a result, all he ever asks is that we do what we can while remaining who we are. There is a reason he has embraced you, and that is because you bring a very specific skill set that he needs to the table.”

“Thank you, I think. How do you keep pace with him?” Gavitte asks, then backpedals: “I don’t mean that to offend, it’s just that you’re the person closest to him, and you always seem on your game.”

“No offense taken, in fact I’ll take it as a compliment,” the aide replies. “As for how I keep up with him, I don’t. Among the four of us aides, we each manage a part of his work. None of us do it all, and we each check each other’s work so that nothing goes out without a review. Even with that, he still catches us off guard or corrects us on something almost every week. The general is a unique man. Sometimes, when I am exceptionally sleep deprived, I can almost imagine that he is some ancient god, trapped within a mortal body.”

“That’d surely explain the inhuman ability,” Gavitte says. “Though I’ve never heard of the patron god of bureaucracy before.” They both chuckle wearily as they nearly jog through the halls and let the conversation trail off to focus on their breathing.

The corridors blur by Gavitte, and he hardly notices where they turn or which stairwells they take. While the path they are taking is in fact shorter than any he has been on before, Gavitte will most likely revert to his old path the next time he has to make this trek, simply because it is the one he knows. His tired mind is wandering; the faces passing him meld together, none of them staying long enough in his consciousness to develop features.

He is in the middle of trying to rally his focus, because their destination must be close at hand, when up ahead, where their corridor crosses another, he catches a glimpse of her. Or at least he thinks it is—the hair is the right color to be Angelina’s, but the person with it is moving far too quickly and is too distant for his mind to register anything but a swirl and bright flash of color against the bland concrete walls. Unfortunately for his focus, just the possibility of a fleeting glimpse of her is enough to send his mind wandering down a path that is far away from the details of fomenting a revolution.

When they arrive at their destination, the general and another aide already sit at one end of the table, heads bent together, deeply engrossed in the chart before them. Neither look up as the men enter, allowing Gavitte to walk to the far end and settle into an uncomfortable gray chair. Gavitte is thinking of something much more immediate and carnal than the idealized principals that drive politics as he opens his notebook, preparing for another afternoon trapped within this conference room.