The End Has Come (5 page)

“How close were they to earning a banner?”
Were.
Telling word, there.

“I can’t say they were close. They have three healthy young women, but people came in and out of that house so often we couldn’t call it ‘stable.’ They fell short on quotas. I know that’s usually better than going over, but not with food processing — falling short there means food potentially wasted, if it goes bad before it gets stored. Frain — Frain is not the easiest man to get along with.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You’ve already been out there — I wish you would have talked to me; you should have come to see us before starting your investigation.” Trevor was wringing his hands.

“So you could tell me how things really are?” Enid raised a brow and smiled. He glanced briefly at Bert and frowned. “Aren had a romantic partner in the settlement, I’m told. Do you know who this might be?”

“She wouldn’t tell you — she trying to protect him?”

“He’s not in any trouble.”

“Jess. It’s Jess. He works in the machine shop, with the Ironcroft household.” He pointed the way.

“Thank you. We’ve had a long day of travel, can the committee house put us up for a night or two? We’ve got the credits to trade for it, we won’t be a burden.”

“Yes, of course, we have guest rooms in back, this way.”

Trevor led them on to a comfortable stone house, committee offices and official guest rooms all together. People had gathered, drifting out of houses and stopping along the road to look, to bend heads and gossip. Everyone had that stare of trepidation.

“You don’t make a lot of friends, working in investigations,” Bert murmured to her.

“Not really, no.”

• • • •

A young man, an assistant to the committee, delivered a good meal of lentil stew and fresh bread, along with cider. It tasted like warmth embodied, a great comfort after the day she’d had.

“My household hang their banners on the common room wall like that,” Bert said between mouthfuls. “They stitch the names of the babies into them. It’s a whole history of the house laid out there.”

“Many households do. It’s a lovely tradition,” Enid said.

“I’ve never met anyone born without a banner. It’s odd, thinking Aren’s baby won’t have its name written anywhere.”

“It’s not the baby’s fault, remember. But it does make it hard. They grow up thinking they have to work twice as hard to earn their place in the world. But it usually makes people very careful not to pass on that burden.”

“Usually but not always.”

She sighed, her solid inspector demeanor slipping. “We’re getting better. The goal is making sure that every baby born will be provided for, will have a place, and won’t overburden what we have. But babies are powerful things. We’ll never be perfect.”

• • • •

The young assistant knocked on the door to the guest rooms early the next day.

“Ma’am, Enid? Someone’s out front asking for the investigator.”

“Is there a conference room where we can meet?”

“Yes, I’ll show him in.”

She and Bert quickly made themselves presentable — and put on their reputation — before meeting.

The potential informant was a lanky young man with calloused hands, a flop of brown hair and no beard. A worried expression. He kneaded a straw hat in his hands and stood from the table when Enid and Bert entered.

“You’re Jess?”

He squeezed the hat harder. Ah, the appearance of omniscience was so very useful.

“Please, sit down,” Enid said, and sat across from him by example. Bert stood by the wall.

“This is about Aren,” the young man said. “You’re here about Aren.”

“Yes.” He slumped, sighed — did he seemed relieved? “What do you need to tell me, Jess?”

“I haven’t seen her in weeks; I haven’t even gotten a message to her. No one will tell me what’s wrong, and I know what everyone’s been saying, but it can’t be true —”

“That she’s pregnant. She’s bannerless.”

He blinked. “But she’s alive? She’s safe?”

“She is. I saw her yesterday.”

“Good, that’s good.”

Unlike everyone else she had talked to here, he seemed genuinely reassured. As if he had expected her to be dead or injured. The vectors of anxiety in the case pointed in so many different directions. “Did she tell you anything? Did you have any idea that something was wrong?”

“No . . . I mean, yes, but not that. It’s complicated. What’s going to happen to her?”

“That’s what I’m here to decide. I promise you, she and the baby won’t come to any harm. But I need to understand what’s happened. Did you know she’d cut out her implant?”

He stared at the tabletop. “No, I didn’t know that.” If he had known, he could be implicated, so it behooved him to say that. But Enid believed him.

“Jess, I want to understand why she did what she did. Her household is being difficult. They tell me she spent all her spare time with you.” Enid couldn’t tell if he was resistant to talking to her, or if he simply couldn’t find the words. She prompted. “How long have you been together? How long have you been intimate?” A gentle way of putting it. He wasn’t blushing; on the contrary, he’d gone even more pale.

“Not long,” he said. “Not even a year. I think . . . I think I know what happened now, looking back.”

“Can you tell me?”

“I think . . . I think she needed someone and she picked me. I’m almost glad she picked me. I love her, but . . . I didn’t know.”

She wanted a baby. She found a boy she liked, cut out her implant, and made sure she had a baby. It wasn’t unheard of. Enid had looked into a couple of cases like it in the past. But then, the household reported it when the others found out, or she left the household. To go through that and then stay, with everyone also covering it up . . .

“Did she ever talk about earning a banner and having a baby with you? Was that a goal of hers?”

“She never did at all. We . . . it was just us. I just liked spending time with her. We’d go for walks.”

“What else?”

“She — wouldn’t let me touch her arm. The first time we . . . were intimate, she kept her shirt on. She’d hurt her arm, she said, and didn’t want to get dirt on it — we were out by the mill creek that feeds into the pond. It’s so beautiful there, with the noise of the water and all. I . . . I didn’t think of it. I mean, she always seemed to be hurt somewhere. Bruises and things. She said it was just from working around the house. I was always a bit careful touching her, though, because of it. I had to be careful with her.” Miserable now, he put the pieces together in his mind as Enid watched. “She didn’t like to go back. I told myself — I fooled myself — that it was because she loved me. But it’s more that she didn’t want to go back.”

“And she loves you. As you said, she picked you. But she had to go back.”

“If she’d asked, she could have gone somewhere else.”

But it would have cost credits she may not have had, the committee would have asked why, and it would have been a black mark on Frain’s leadership, or worse. Frain had them cowed into staying. So Aren wanted to get out of there and decided a baby would help her.

Enid asked, “Did you send the tip to Investigations?”

“No. No, I didn’t know. That is, I didn’t want to believe. I would never do anything to get her in trouble. I . . . I’m not in trouble, am I?”

“No, Jess. Do you know who might have sent in the tip?”

“Someone on the local committee, maybe. They’re the ones who’d start an investigation, aren’t they?”

“Usually, but they didn’t seem happy to see me. The message went directly to regional.”

“The local committee doesn’t want to think anything’s wrong. Nobody wants to think anything’s wrong.”

“Yes, that seems to be the attitude. Thank you for your help, Jess.”

“What will happen to Aren?” He was choking, struggling not to cry. Even Bert, standing at the wall, seemed discomfited.

“That’s for me to worry about, Jess. Thank you for your time.”

At the dismissal, he slipped out of the room.

She leaned back and sighed, wanting to get back to her own household — despite the rumors, investigators did belong to households — with its own orchards and common room full of love and safety.

Yes, maybe she should have retired before all this. Or maybe she wasn’t meant to.

“Enid?” Bert asked softly.

“Let’s go. Let’s get this over with.”

• • • •

Back at Apricot Hill’s common room, the household gathered, and Enid didn’t have to ask for Aren this time. She had started to worry, especially after talking to Jess. But they’d all waited this long, and her arrival didn’t change anything except it had given them all the confirmation that they’d finally been caught. That they would always be caught. Good for the reputation, there.

Aren kept her face bowed, her hair over her cheek. Enid moved up to her, reached a hand to her, and the girl flinched. “Aren?” she said, and she still didn’t look up until Enid touched her chin and made her lift her face. An irregular red bruise marked her cheek.

“Aren, did you send word about a bannerless pregnancy to the regional committee?”

Someone, Felice probably, gasped. A few of them shifted. Frain simmered. But Aren didn’t deny it. She kept her face low.

“Aren?” Enid prompted, and the young woman nodded, ever so slightly.

“I hid. I waited for the weekly courier and slipped the letter in her bag, she didn’t see me; no one saw. I didn’t know if anyone would believe it, with no name on it, but I had to try. I wanted to get caught, but no one was noticing it; everyone was ignoring it.” Her voice cracked to silence.

Enid put a gentle hand on Aren’s shoulder. Then she went to Bert, and whispered, “Watch carefully.”

She didn’t know what would happen, what Frain in particular would do. She drew herself up, drew strength from the uniform she wore, and declaimed.

“I am the villain here,” Enid said. “Understand that. I am happy to be the villain in your world. It’s what I’m here for. Whatever happens, blame me.

“I will take custody of Aren and her child. When the rest of my business is done, I’ll leave with her and she’ll be cared for responsibly. Frain, I question your stewardship of this household and will submit a recommendation that Apricot Hill be dissolved entirely, its resources and credits distributed among its members as warranted, and its members transferred elsewhere throughout the region. I’ll submit my recommendation to the regional committee, which will assist the local committee in carrying out my sentence.”

“No,” Felice hissed. “You can’t do this, you can’t force us out.”

She had expected that line from Frain. She wondered at the deeper dynamic here, but not enough to try to suss it out.

“I can,” she said, with a backward glance at Bert. “But I won’t have to, because you’re all secretly relieved. The household didn’t work, and that’s fine — it happens sometimes — but none of you had the guts to start over, the guts to give up your credits to request a transfer somewhere else. To pay for the change you wanted. To protect your own housemates from each other. But now it’s done, and by someone else, so you can complain all you want and rail to the skies about your new poverty as you work your way out of the holes you’ve dug for yourselves. I’m the villain you can blame. But deep down you’ll know the truth. And that’s fine too, because I don’t really care. Not about you lot.”

No one argued. No one said a word.

“Aren,” Enid said, and the woman flinched again. She might never stop flinching. “You can come with me now, or would you like time to say goodbye?”

She looked around the room, and Enid wasn’t imagining it: The woman’s hands were shaking, though she tried to hide it by pressing them under the roundness of her belly. Enid’s breath caught, because even now it might go either way. Aren had been scared before; she might be too scared to leave. Enid schooled her expression to be still no matter what the answer was.

But Aren stood from the table and said, “I’ll go with you now.”

“Bert will go help you get your things —”

“I don’t have any things. I want to go now.”

“All right. Bert, will you escort Aren outside?”

The door closed behind them, and Enid took one last look around the room.

“That’s it, then,” Frain said.

“Oh no, that’s not it at all,” Enid said. “That’s just it for now. The rest of you should get word of the disposition of the household in a couple of days.” She walked out.

Aren stood outside, hugging herself. Bert was a polite few paces away, being non-threatening, staring at clouds. Enid urged them on, and they walked the path back toward town. Aren seemed to get a bit lighter as they went.

They probably had another day in Southtown before they could leave. Enid would keep Aren close, in the guest rooms, until then. She might have to requisition a solar car. In her condition, Aren probably shouldn’t walk the ten miles to the next way station. And she might want to say goodbye to Jess. Or she might not, and Jess would have his heart broken even more. Poor thing.

• • • •

Enid requisitioned a solar car from the local committee and was able to take to the Coast Road the next day. The bureaucratic machinery was in motion on all the rest of it. Committeeman Trevor revealed that a couple of the young men from Apricot Hill had preemptively put in household transfer requests. Too little, too late. She’d done her job; it was all in committee hands now.

Bert drove, and Enid sat in the back with Aren, who was bundled in a wool cloak and kept her hands around her belly. They opened windows to the spring sunshine, and the car bumped and swayed over the gravel road. Walking would have been more pleasant, but Aren needed the car. The tension in her shoulders had finally gone away. She looked up, around, and if she didn’t smile, she also didn’t frown. She talked, now, in a voice clear and free of tears.

“I came into the household when I was sixteen, to work prep in the canning house and to help with the garden and grounds and such. They needed the help, and I needed to get started on my life, you know? Frain — he expected more out of me. He expected me to be his.”

She spoke as if being interrogated. Enid hadn’t asked for her story, but listened carefully to the confession. It spilled out like a flood, like the young woman had been waiting.