Kelley Eskridge (15 page)

“We want to step out of the loop,” Pale
continued. “Instead of figuring out how to house more people for longer
sentences, we're trying to offer an alternative that produces the same
severity of effect in a markedly shorter time period. You'll appreciate
the technology.” She began to use her hands then, drawing pictures in
the air. Jackal sat numbly. “We use a shaped magnetic signal that
affects your temporal lobes.” She placed her hands like a cap over her
own head. “You'll be given a drug that increases temporal lobe
sensitivity—sorry, am I going too fast for you?”

Jackal felt her face twisting. “Garbo?
You're using Garbo technology?”

Pale shrugged. “Never heard of Garbo.”

Jackal tried to get her brain to slow down
and think.

Pale was saying, “…replace your normal
sense of time and place with a programmed template replicating the
experience of conventional solitary confinement.”

Solitary. “Solitary confinement? You want
me to spend eight years alone in some kind of jail in my head?” She
heard her voice thinning and becoming shrill.

Pale put her hands down, regarded Jackal
warily. “Actually, you'll spend about ten months in a maximum security
psychiatric facility. It will only feel like eight years. That's the
beauty of it, don't you see?” Pale spoke earnestly, sincerely. “We can
process people faster, more efficiently, no violence, controllable
costs, all without losing the punitive effects mandated by the courts.
We can handle more people in less space. When that percentage rate gets
up to twenty-two, twenty-five percent, we'll be ready. It's a great
system solution. Long-term, self-containing, scalable.”

“It's more than that,” Dusky interrupted.
“It's your ticket back out into the world while you still have some
time to enjoy it, Ms. Segura. Do the time and come back to the world at
the age of sixty-three. Or do it this way and spend your twenty-fourth
birthday in the sunshine. In case you're not very good with math,
that's an extra—”

“Thirty-nine years,” Jackal said hollowly;
the number seemed to echo around the small cell. “I'm good with math.”

“Smart,” Dusky said. “Stay smart. You'll
never get this offer again.”

Jackal closed her eyes. She heard the dark
woman say, “We'll give you a minute to think it over.”

She tried to shut her ears to the sound of
their breathing, to their whispers in the corner. She wanted to listen
only to herself; she wanted to find a small voice between her ears or
in the pit of her stomach that would speak to her. But there was only
her heartbeat and her stomach groaning; there was only wind and viscera
inside her, and no one to tell her what to do.

Thirty-nine years.

She opened her eyes. The two women were
watching her.

There were more tears now, spilling gently
down her cheeks. “I don't think I can be alone for eight years,” she
said, helplessly.

Dusky shrugged.

There were six security guards with her on
the journey to the Earth Government Rehabilitation and Adjustment
Center on the outskirts of Al Iskandariyah. They put two diazepam
patches in her elbow, so she felt distanced enough to be amused at the
excess of muscle power that quivered around her, ready to uncoil and
crush her at the slightest provocation. They bound her with
monofilament restraints that bit into her slightly every time the
transport hit a bump.

They rode in the back of an armored truck
with a financial security service logo on the side. When she asked, one
of the guards, a middle-aged latina with soft brown eyes and hard
muscles, told her that all dangerous prisoners were ferried in rented
money transports. “These're much more secure than your ordinary prison
vans. Nobody wants to lose their money. They take better care of it
than they do the prisoners, that's for sure.” The guard laughed with
Jackal, but when the truck arrived at the R&A she was rough getting
Jackal out of the van, and she did not answer when Jackal said good-bye
and tried to smile.

Two guards delivered her to a
white-smocked man with tanned white skin and gray hair. He was
solicitous with her, calling her Ms. Segura and asking if he could
bring her coffee. She drank it while she signed a stack of consent
forms. She authorized the procedures. She accepted the terms. She
agreed not to discuss her participation in the program with anyone
prior to entering virtual confinement. It took almost forty minutes,
and she had to ask him to remove her arm restraints after the first
ten. “Oh, yes, of course,” he said, and apologized for not having
thought of it himself, but he did not offer to take the filament off
her ankles.

She did not bother to read the forms. She
had already consented.

After that, he took her to a tiny room
with a steel door, where he freed her legs and let her sleep.

“You have a call.”

She did not know how long she had been
asleep. The guard led her to a room with a table, two chairs, an
observation camera. A viewscreen. She saw Snow.

“Oh, god,” she whispered, and went forward.

“Jackal?” Snow's voice was faint and
tremulous. Behind her image, Jackal could see that Snow was in her own
apartment, on Ko. Home.

“Jackal…Hi…Your lawyer got me this call.
He said you're being—that when they take you to prison I won't be able
to talk to you again and I wanted…Jackal, are you okay?”

“Snow…” She did not know how to answer.
She wanted to put her hands right through the screen, wrap her arms
around Snow, pull her close. And she was glad that Snow was so far away.

Snow said, “You look terrible.”

“Great. Thanks.” Jackal shook herself,
tried again. “I”m okay, really. I…I'm scared, I guess.”

Snow began to cry, a hopeless sound. “Me
too.”

“Don't cry, Snow. Honey, don't.” Snow was
sobbing now, dragging in short sharp breaths like a drowning woman
about to go back under. Jackal said desperately, “I can't stand it, I
can't…you have to stop, please stop. Please.”

“I'm sorry.” There was a long moment of
silence. Jackal watched Snow steady her breathing, tamp down her fear,
wipe her eyes and nose and then look back at the screen, straight into
Jackal's eyes across the miles and the horrible distance between them.
Jackal thought, she's so beautiful.

“Oh, Snow,” she said softly, “What are you
doing?”

“I had to see you. I had to say…I don't
know. I don't know what to say. I can't imagine saying good-bye.”

“No.”

“No.”

Silence.

“My parents?”

“They're…they can't…” Snow turned her
hands palm up.

“No, I guess not.”

“No.”

Snow sighed. She was sitting cross-legged
on her bed, her hair half in her face. Jackal burned the picture into
her brain.

I will never forget
, she
thought,
I will never never forget how
it
feels to touch her and how she laughs and the way she eats apples and
the smell of the skin on her ribs and how everything is more clear when
I see it with her, I will never forget, I will never
and
then the guard put his head inside the door and said, “One minute,” and
she knew it was almost over—not just the call, but her life as she'd
known it. She couldn't breathe. Her life. Her life. What was she
supposed to do? “Snow—” she said frantically, “Snow, I—”

“No,” Snow said, “Jackal, no—”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The web,
I…please don't hate me, Snow—”

“I love you, Jackal.”

“I'm so sorry. I wish…I just want you to
be happy. I want you to have all good things. I'll miss you every
single fucking day.” She put her hands right up against the screen,
against Snow, and Snow reached out too.

“Don't leave me, Jackal.”

“Snow—”

“Don't leave me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Snow, I—”

The screen went black, and a second later
the message

Transmission terminated
flashed in red letters. “Sorry,” the guard said from behind her.
“Regulations.”

Jackal wrapped her arms around herself and
held tight, and kept herself together that way until she reached her
little cell; then she howled until finally someone came with a needle.
She held out her arm and was glad to feel the sting.

9

I WILL WALK
ACROSS THE PLAZA NOW AND THINK
only
about my project. I will think about how to solve the problem
—

“

Hi, Snow
.”

Nod. Walk—the
problem with the incentive program at the vendor in Lyons, how do we
reward them for increasing just-in-time delivery volumes without
inadvertently encouraging them to loosen their quality standards in
order to meet schedules? Walk across the plaza. Ignore the voices
around me, all the voices
—

“—

noodles? There's
a place
—”

“—

miss the train
—”

“—

see me anymore,
she says I
—”

“—

middle of the
meeting
!”

“—

the garden in
summer
—”

The garden in
summer. The web in the garden in summer. Jackal
with her face turned up to the sun, breathing
in the
smell of the garden. Jackal. I will not think about Jackal now. I will
think only about my project
.

“—

it's just that
I've been a little tired lately
—”

That's a
familiar voice and because I am not thinking I turn, and there is
Donatella in a bright blue suit and a startled cosmetic smile: but her
eyes are dull
.

“

Snow! Snow, how
wonderful to see you, honey
.”

“

Hello
.”

“

How are you
?”

What a stupid
question. “I'm okay
.”

“

Me too. I'm good
too. I have a terrific new job, did I tell you? My new boss—” The woman
next to her with the still face
.

Nod. Speak
quickly. “I have to get going.” I need to keep walking and thinking
only about safe things, busy things
.

“

I'm sure you can
take a minute to tell me what's happening with you. It seems like such
a long time since we've really talked
.”

“

Since Jackal was
arrested
.”

“

Oh.” She doesn't
like that I said that; she looks at the new boss to see how she's
taking it. “Really? I guess we just let the time get away from us. That
was wrong. Jackal would have wanted us to stay in touch
.”

“

Why
?”

“

Well…of course
she would. She would have wanted us to be family
.”

I can't begin to
imagine what I should say now. Does Donatella Segura know that she's
insane? Should I tell her? Sometimes I wonder how Jackal survived this
woman's mothering. And I understand why Jackal is so blindly duty-bound
and why she is afraid to ask people for help. Why she guards her core
so fiercely. It's because she's an orphan whose parents are still alive
.

I said good-bye
to Jackal yesterday, I want to say. I want to throw it in her face. I
want to scream. And what does Donatella Insane Segura want? She wants
to hold my hand. “We have to help each other, Snow. Like family. We
have to go on. Our Jackal is gone and we have to learn to live without
her.” Now she's crying. “She fell off the cliff and she's gone
.”

I've just
figured out how to solve that problem in Lyons. It's just fallen into
my head. I'll propose a contract that deep-discounts the price of the
parts we're buying and supplements with huge incentives for quality.
They'll only make money if the parts meet standards. Then we'll
escalate the volumes over the next six months. That will give them time
to figure out how to scale their processes. It's the frog in the
stewpot model
.

“

I have to go
.”

“

Of course,”
Donatella says, smiling brightly as if there were no black streaks of
makeup starring her eyes. “Now don't be a stranger
.”

I will walk the
rest of the way across the plaza and down the broad steps, take the
right-hand path that leads toward the koi pond. I will hate Donatella
Segura for the rest of my life. When I scuff through the gravel of the
path, each step sounds like Jackal's name; Jackal Jackal Jackal; and
when I run, the gravel whispers don't leave me, don't leave me
…

10

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, A SECURITY
GUARD TOOK
Jackal back to the same conference room. It was hard
to look at the blank screen. She kept her head down. A man came in. He
was dressed in casual trousers and a loud jacket, silk in a
multicolored fishscale pattern that had been in fashion six years
earlier. His hair and his face were too long, and he wore neither well.

“I'm Jenkins,” he said in a monotone. He
sounded indifferent and chatty at the same time; it confused Jackal and
made her wary.

He sat in the chair across from her. When
she kept silent, he nodded, as if he had been talking to himself and
agreed with himself on some particular point.

“I'm the VC counselor at this facility.
Here's a brochure about the procedure, read it at your convenience.
It's my job to talk with you about the program, answer any questions
you have. That kind of thing.”

“It'll be the first time since I got here
that anyone explained anything.”

“Uh huh.” He nodded again. There was
another silence. “So, any questions?”

Jackal blinked.

“No? Great,” he said, and stood up. “Good
luck.” He was halfway to the door before Jackal recovered and said,
“Wait!” But when he turned, she didn't know what to ask. She was
clutching the brochure he had given her so tightly that it was creased
along its length; she held it up so he could see it. “Is this going to
tell me everything I need to know?”