The Forever Watch (18 page)

Bullet says softly, “There is still not enough data either way, and there are still all the possibilities we haven't even thought of yet.”

A Certification Examiner for Keepers, Joe “Bullet” November actually works under the Ministry of Information. Understandably, he does not want to think that some terrible conspiracy involves people who might be his friends, people he trained with and hung out with and graduated with and has known for years. He wants to think the best of people. The existence of the Mincemeat deaths has shaken his comfortable existence. What terrible secrets are out there to justify this if this has Ministry sanction?

Like Barrens, he doesn't care about the Builders the way I do when I show him the memory of the creatures forming the Noah out of plastech under an alien sky.

More than anyone else I know, Bullet mixes spoken speech and Implant messages and direct telepathy. In one moment, he thinks to us,
Aliens behind the crazy tech of this ship that nobody could really explain to us in school?
Without missing a beat, he says out loud, “Well. It just figures.” Then he shifts to the Implant to take advantage of being able to attach emotional data from his memories to these silent words in a neat, enclosed bubble:
Mincemeat, people dying in secret, the others left behind who are never allowed to know—that wrecks me.

I stir round and round the peanuts in the little dish in front of me. Our new friend is looking more solid and steady than that night he found us, red-eyed, exhausted. Maybe it's the knowledge that he is not alone in this. He has never broken down since that first night.

He looks naturally cheerful, but is just a little bit thinner every time I see him, the shadows under his eyes just a little deeper. Psychometry could be a fun trick in school, around friends. But touching things involved in violence and blood? I think of him walking in all those places, twitching, shuddering when he has to take in psychic impressions by touch, feeling the raw pain, the confused terror.

“Don't worry about it. I wish I could do more.”

“You're doing plenty, something that Hana and I can't. You can differentiate the false positives the Monster finds on the Web from legitimate incidents and fill in details that just aren't in the Network at all.”

“Look,” Bullet says.
I refuse to believe it is Ministry-sponsored assassination.

“Why?”

He sighs and drinks his beer, which went flat twenty minutes ago. His hands start to shake as he lowers the glass to the table, and Bullet
writes
his latest find into our minds. Three nights ago, a little girl in the bathroom at Edo Primary School. There is the impression of confusion, terror, blood.

And pain that leaves me gasping and Barrens gripping the table's edge so hard, it creaks, close to breaking.

“Probably,” Bullet says, after giving us some minutes to collect ourselves, “there must have been some major cleaning up afterwards, because when I asked her classmates, they all thought she'd been transferred to another district school.”
Why would anyone assassinate a child? What could she have possibly done? And then the cleanup cost includes Adjustments of other children?

He swallows down the last of his beer, emptying half the stein in one long, endless swallow.

Barrens is silent. This is not the first child Mincemeat victim we've found—Callahan's files had Keeper Sullivan's locked-room mystery. But it's the first one confirmed by someone else using another method. It's not just data or possibly distorted memories recovered by my program anymore, not with the terrible sense impressions Bullet can draw from the scene of a death.

Oh, that's not enough to convince my suspicious bear, my watchful lion. I don't have to read his mind to know his thoughts, that maybe the child read the wrong book or was exposed to the wrong memory by a careless Keeper. He thinks the Ministries will not stop at anything if they believe they are justified.

And I, I ache inside, remembering, wondering about the child I will never know. Yes. How can anyone justify killing a child when so few people are left at all?

How many more will die like this? Can we really do anything?

Bullet leaves after that. For now, we're done syncing up our map of death.

 

 

In between these sessions, there is work and meeting friends and everything that is normal life.

The Yule festivities rise to their annual apex, with caroling kids, grand parties, and snow festivals with ice-carving contests in the parks.

I talk Barrens into accompanying me to the party at the new home that Lyn and Marcus just qualified for. I feel guilty. I haven't been seeing my other friends nearly enough.

“Do I have to wear this? Why am I going anyway?”

“They all know I'm with you. I don't see the point of hiding.”

“They don't like me.”

“And you don't like them. But you do like me, and I like them too.”

His scowl is playful and deserves a pinch on the cheek. “Ow. What was that for?”

“Just because.”

I rise up on my toes and pull his head down to brush my lips against his jaw.

A tug settles Barrens's tie into place. The black onyx suit I have purchased for him fits well and shows off his trim waist, thick chest and back, and the breadth of his shoulders. He still looks more like a gangster from an Earth 2-D movie about the 1920s than any sort of gentleman, but I would not want him to look anything other than a little dangerous.

Now I check myself in the mirror.

“Why do women do that?” he asks.

“What?”

“Look yourself down like there's some problem needs fixing. You're better than fine.”

These opportunities for style and vanity, pleasure and luxury, have value too, brief moments to set aside thoughts of keeping our ark going through the black emptiness.

The sheath dress is bone white and is a stark contrast with the deep brown of my skin, of which rather a lot is showing, as it is sleeveless, nearly backless, and reveals perhaps too much of that bothersome cleft up top that draws so much attention from the male of the species. It falls to the knees but has a slit along one thigh that goes higher than I am comfortable with. The shoes are the same shade of white as the silk and have heels that will have me tottering and swaying and leaning for support against Barrens quite often, I am sure.

Still, it pleases me, the way he cannot help looking. I can feel his eyes linger as they trace their way up from my ankles and calves, up to the curves of my thighs and hips. That stare is a spotlight on the bare curve of my back, and his hand feels like fire when it brushes against my shoulder blade.

Now, a kiss at the nape, and maybe I should not have put my hair up because I know Barrens will be doing that all evening, and each time he does, I can feel the burst of those troublesome chemicals that send tingles sliding down my back, into my belly, and lower.

“Behave.”

“Aww. Don't get the point of dressing like that when it's always 'behave.'”

“I've read that visual temptation, frustration, and the delay of gratification,” I explain to him, smiling up at his reflection, “have interesting effects on later amorous encounters.”

His chuckle could be the bark of an enormous dog. I've grown fond of it anyway.

I dab color onto my lips—a sheen of candy pink that glitters when the light hits it at certain angles. I do not like it, but it is a gift from Jazz and she will be pleased to see it on me, even if she pretends not to notice.

Marcus's gifts, lapis-lazuli stars, hover in telekinetic fields a preset distance from the studs in my ears. Slowly rotating and tumbling, free-floating, they draw on my natural field of psi energy.

Just a touch more of the silvery perfume that is from Lyn. The top notes are light and sweet shades of apples, fading to a heart of crushed grass. I cannot detect the base notes, but on the card that came with the blue crystal bottle, it assures me that the fragrance will linger and call to mind the sea. Not that any memories are floating around anywhere from someone who has actually smelled the sea. If they exist at all, they are locked down with the deepest security.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” I hold out my arms, and he puts my new beige overcoat on me. The little silver-scale clutch bag is heavy in one hand, and his calloused paw grasps the other. Time to go.

 

 

Lyn and Marcus now reside in one of the few hundred private homes in the Habitat.

These dwellings are always filled by the top officers of the Noah, expensive money-sinks to rebalance the credits of the closed economy.

Only residents and on-duty crew with assignments for that area are permitted to carry amplifiers of any kind in these areas. Traffic is carefully screened before being permitted through. We show my psi-tablet displaying the encrypted invitation codes for myself and one guest over and over to the zealous police staff assigned exclusively to this zone.

We disembark at a cobblestone path winding up a grassy hill.

A low wall made to look like white-plastered stone surrounds the compound. A three-story pagoda rises from the center of it, gleaming white, except for the glazed tiles on the roof tiers, which are stained cobalt, ultramarine, and midnight. A garden is tucked into the narrow spaces between the house-proper and the walls. Screens of cherry trees, bushes, bamboo stands, pseudo-granite rocks, faux-stone lamps, and water basins are positioned to give the illusion of space. With the light dusting of snow left from the night before, it looks like a fairy-tale cake.

Theirs is not the tallest or largest tower in the neighborhood, or even along the street, but it is a show of wealth beyond what most of the crew even realize is available in the Habitat.

The sight of all this gets a scowl out of my man. A thundercloud of disapproval is gathering over him. When we walk through the gates, I dig an elbow into Barrens's side and send him an Implant-to-Implant message:
No arguments about class and privilege tonight.

His expression eases into something like a smile.
You're sure adding a lot to your tab for tonight.

A hand-squeeze shows that I know it. I like him this way too, and shiver when he takes my coat off and takes it to the cloakroom branching off the entryway.

I give my greetings for the both of us as we move in the semi-random paths of social Brownian motion. The other guests compliment my hair or my dress and do not know exactly what to say of my partner. Around these tiny, graceful ladies and the slender, foppish men, Barrens is huge and solid and imposing. When I introduce him, reactions range from curiosity and “What exciting work that must be!” to a sort of baffled, unspoken “What did you say?” Barrens is a sport and answers as sincerely as he can, talking about the many weeks of boredom in between those few moments of terror when he might actually have to inflict violence on somebody.

My dearest ones—Jazz, Lyn, and Marcus—embrace me. They are frostier with Barrens. The corner of Lyn's eye twitches at the sight of Barrens, though Marcus does shake his hand.

“Merry Yule.”

“Ah. Merry Yule,” Barrens stammers. He flushes at the turn of their eyes, and the notch under his Adam's apple stands out.

“I love what you've done with the place!” I exclaim desperately. I loathe the words as they escape my lips.

At least it gets them talking about the many hours of work and the expense of their décor. I get them to talk about their clothes, new acquisitions, the latest fashions.

“From Corona and Black's.” Jazz twirls proudly to display hers, the material swirling, showing off her gleaming, tanned thighs, her sculpted abdomen.

Marcus nods. “We bought them together.”

Jazz and Lyn are both wearing fairy dresses of gossamer silk and beads of glass. Marcus is in a toga inspired by the style of ancient Rome, crisp and white and scarlet, eagle brooches of gold flying above his shoulders, a crown of oak leaves hovering over his blond curls. Their outfits are held up and draped artfully upon their figures by means of
touch
routines, much like my floating earrings. A disruptive burst of psionic energy would leave them naked, the strips and ribbons and sheets fluttering away. Jazz is in blues and whites, ice and winter, and Lyn is all summer flame, with burnished steel bangles for one arm and copper for the other. Pagan goddesses to the left and right of a man who could be Caesar.

They walk and sit as if posing for a catalog. Marcus struts somewhere between a peacock and a general, and the two women sway their hips in an exaggerated fashion that sets their bosoms bouncing with each step, and their hair flouncing from side to side.

Dempsey. Is there something wrong with your buddies?

There are memories that go with the clothes. So they can show them off right.

Other guests demand their attention and they leave us to mingle.

A large field emanation propagates from the transmitter in the ceiling of the party room, broadcasting music into the mind, all violins and flutes, and the light voices of children.

The hall is not normally this large. Marcus temporarily removed the walls separating the dining room from the living room, and the addition of mirrored surfaces to most of the support pillars and weight-bearing walls to expand the illusion of space was probably Lyn's work. Garlands hang from the ceiling, cheery branches from pine trees and ornaments of crystal and gold. It will be recycled by the end of the week, but for now, it is magical. The hall is dominated by the open hearth in the center under a ceiling chimney, with an extravagantly large Yule log burning bright and fragrant.

Around the log are tables laden with self-heating trays of foods that are only affordable because of the annual culls of the livestock and fisheries. The steam and the scent of the rich volatiles from the pork and mutton fat in the dishes is heady, dizzying.