The Forever Watch (6 page)

He clears his throat. “ISec is at least involved in hiding it.”

ISec. It does so many things. It handles the testing of all children. After all, those tests determine the kind of crewman a child can be. A janitor. An engineer. An artist. An officer. Testing determines who you are, which determines what you can know. ISec chooses school curricula, chooses what history is, controls the culture of society. What books and movies and plays and music are permissible, and what are on the Proscribed List—just knowing that such a list exists is only permitted for those of my rank and above.

ISec also, of course, handles the security of the Nth Web. What news is fit to be known by the public, and what concentric circles going inward of fewer and fewer individuals are allowed to know of certain truths that must be kept secret. ISec's visible and invisible influence lies everywhere throughout every crewman's life.

The Central Council, the leadership of the Noah, is composed of the Ministers of Information, Health, Energy, the Interior, and Peace, and a single Ship's Captain who is selected from one of the five, along with the support staff beneath them: an Executive Officer and the handful of secretive navigators and pilots that actually fly the ship. Ostensibly, the five Ministers are equals, but for all that Information is the smallest Ministry in terms of staff, it commands the most resources and is allocated the smartest and most capable of each generation's children.

And from the first captain to the present, they have all been ISec. More than this, each has been the Commander of the Enforcers.

The Ministry of Information controls the Enforcers, the ship's most powerful combat officers. I think of those most elite of the elites, ISec's best field operatives, black-clad soldier-scientists who had to have scored at the top tenth of a percentile throughout childhood and training, and shiver.

“Are we going to have Enforcers after us, Leon?”

“Can't say for sure that we won't.”

We stare at each other for just a second. We could have our brains wiped, get ourselves Adjusted until we're just living automata carrying out Behavioralist-implanted routines and programming for the rest of our lives, deeper and worse than what was done to Holmheim.

“I'll look.” Maybe I should not. I have achieved the vaunted status of mission-critical, but Barrens just looks so serious. I have no illusions about my place in City Planning, just one of the administrative departments under the Ministry of the Interior.

He is nervous, and the man that I know is afraid of absolutely nothing. Barrens has commendations for all sorts of reckless feats he does not show anyone, which I know about because I was curious and used my position to get access to his records.

When he was on the streets, he was always first in. He has smashed through a wall into a burning building to get out a single trapped resident, charged right into the teeth of a cross fire of TK-fired projectiles from a dozen Psyn-dealers to get to a downed officer, and more. If someone needs help, he does not wait for backup. If there was danger, he was always the one blasting in the door or busting a hole down from the roof.

So, seeing him blinking rapidly, sweat trickling down his neck, and dark spots spreading across his gunmetal shirt—all this gives me pause.

It is not as if he saved my life. Holmheim would not have killed me, and Barrens did not reach me quickly enough to stop the rape. It is the realization that I am rationalizing down the trauma, the shame, just to excuse myself from this that gets me to repeat, louder, “I'll look.”

He retrieves a psi-tablet from the inner pocket of his coat. “Burned out the wireless access before I put the memory on there and encrypted it. Only someone holding this tablet can get the thing out, and…” He lowers it to the desk before me. “Anyhow, the password is…” He pauses, thinks to me,
Blossom,
and not just the word, but an accompanying flash of thought, the connection from my name to the word in Japanese, the shape of the characters, the sound in his throat, to a scent he has in mind.

Do I really smell that good to him? Normally that would get a blush out of me, but the nerves are getting to me, the talk of ISec and Enforcers and Adjustments.

“Leon”—my fingers pause just before they make contact with the glossy platinum casing—“what am I going to see?”

“That's the thing, little missy.” Barrens is pacing again. “I was the guy that experienced it, and I've looked at it much as I can stand, an' I still don't know what I saw.”

Deep breath, and my hands make contact. I get to the file before I scare myself any more than I have.

 

 

Damned noisy neighbors partying. It is so loud, he cannot hear himself thinking.

It is not at all like Callahan to take so long answering his door.

He knocks again. He tries calling by Implant-to-Implant link. He knows Callahan is in there. They were just talking an hour ago; the guy was saying how he wasn't feeling well.

His gut says to go, so he goes. No badge on him, but he doesn't need an amp to bust doors.

One kick. Two kicks. Crazy coot—gets himself a fancy elite's door and locks when he's got nothing worth stealing. Three kicks, and the doorframe shatters around the three separate dead bolts.

“Cal! You okay, man?”

Then the smell. Awful smell. Like nothing else. The air rushing out is sweltering hot, humid.

He sees blood streaks and pools.

He ought to dial the precinct first and request backup and wait. He never does that. He crouches low, picks up a bottle by the neck. That's enough weapon for a lunkhead such as himself. He calls up his animal instead.

Roaring in his head. Raging mad, mad to smash things, mad to break somebody. He is quiet, he is wolf, he lets the dark place take the wheel. Follows the droplets and pools and trickles. Like packets of ketchup have exploded all over the place. His boot slides in a pool, and the primal beast snarls at him. Careless! The colors all bleed to red and black, adrenaline, and his psi setting him glowing in sangria and carmine.

Nostrils flaring.

He is It and It is he, but he is in the background, watching and thinking, analyzing the way they're taught to in cop school, while the wolf prowls and moves, teeth bared.

Takes in the details even while moving. Half-eaten bean burger on the kitchen counter. In the hallway are bloody bits, flat swatches of stuff. He only guesses at what they are because of old movies and TV shows, 'cause nothing like this is covered in training, nothing. Torn scraps of human skin. Index finger, first knuckle. All the toes of a left foot. Grayish slab; last time he saw he was at the high-end butcher's, thinking about buying liver, something fancy to cook for Dempsey. Bits of bone even, as if something was taking Callahan to pieces while Cal was trying to crawl away.

Ain't nothing like he has ever imagined.

Wolf is looking left and looking right. It's confused. Sniffing. Tasting the air. Nobody else around.

They reach the bedroom together, and he lets the beast go and falls to his knees. Most of what is left is spread out on the bed, which is soaked in it. Piece of the jaw with a tooth. An eyeball. Oatmeal-looking thing's got to be brain, with the little tinfoil spiderweb of neural Implant poking out of it. A short, pink loop of intestine. Creamy globules of fat. Striated shreds of muscle. Even the bones, even the bones are chopped up; the largest is a few inches long. Most of the stuff that was once his friend is reduced to small particles, a paste, mash. It was like a vast, crude sausage were torn open over the bed.

The smell, agh, it's crawling up his nose and down his lungs and into his head through his ears.

Perverse shit, his stomach is growling, 'cause he was gonna grab something with Cal. He can only think of that butcher shop, the machines in the back, the grinders …

 

 

When I come to, I've bitten bloody arcs into Barrens's hand. My head is on his lap. He is humming something, a song. I forget the words, but it is about the sea, and islands, the wind.

He notices and blinks down at me. His shirt is torn. Bloody scratches are on his face.

“Told you it was gonna be bad.”

When I sit upright, he holds a handkerchief out to me, and I wipe my face clean of snot and tears and spit. “It wasn't that bad.”

He barks a choppy laugh.

Terrible as it was, the content of the memory was not the cause of my violent reaction. The way he sees the world is disjointed in a way I have never felt with any other memory transfer. He has two sets of memories on top of each other. All the time. The part of him that is the cop, the man, experiences the world dully, senses diminished, vision almost color-blind as he peers at everything and tries to make sense of it. The beast or the wolf, it is all senses and raw emotion, awareness of his own body, textures of the cloth against his skin, scents in the nose, the press of air currents against his skin.

I went mad, scratching and clawing and screaming, not because of secondhand trauma, but because a little of his wolf took me over, for however many minutes it took me to get free of it. It was a nightmare I could not wake from, with something else moving my body, seeing through my eyes.

He sees it on my face before I can turn away and hide it. What did he see there? I can tell it hurts him. “Oh.” He shies back. “I get it. I'm … uh … Sorry. I was hoping … I wanted to tell you, but couldn't figure out how.”

This is why he's never asked before, what's kept him behind a wall.

He looks smaller somehow, and it tugs at me. He is ashamed of scaring me.

“It's not like—”

“Guess you're wondering how I've not been Adjusted yet. When a Behavioralist
reads
me, the part that's animal knows. It spreads itself thin in the attic, in the basement, deep where nobody goes.”

Several deep breaths of the musty air. I can taste his blood in my mouth.

“Are you going to call them in on me, Hana?” He looks sad, and faded, childishly disappointed and witheringly aged. This is why he has never been in a relationship, why he never lets anyone close.

“No! No.”

We've known each other for years, and I was always wondering why he seemed afraid. And now, I know.

Lick my lips. Put my hands on his rocky hooks. Another step puts my face against his chest. “I was just surprised.”

“Yeah. Surprised.” He feels big and solid against me, but his presence is tight, his voice like glass. “I shoulda warned you more.”

His chin is on top of my head. His arm goes round me; it's like being hugged by a brick wall. He is frightening and safe, a protector and a savage. I have never met anyone else so alone.

“Can you be okay with this? With me?” He shakes as if he can't believe I'm still here, and I get it, that for all that he worries about getting caught and getting Adjusted, what he was frightened of was what my reaction would be to him.

“It's okay. Listen to me, really listen to me.” I pull back and look him in the eye and whisper, “I trust you, Leon.”
And you can trust me.

We do not get any work done that day. Mostly, we sit next to each other in silence. Sometimes, we talk. He tells me about growing up, all these fights, the many times he was this close to getting Adjusted. I tell him about Holmheim, about how, once, I thought I loved him. He talks about Callahan, his teacher at the academy, the only reason he was able to graduate. Callahan found out about his other side, taught him how to discipline and channel it. I tell him about my recent splurge on experiences of this woman pampering a dumb, lazy cat named Minnow. He goes on about Callahan's fascination with the strange, with the out-of-place, and how a hobby of looking into urban legends and rumors on the Nth Web grew into an obsession that got the old man willingly transferred to Long Term Investigations, the better to look into these imperfections in the system. I tell Barrens about being another of those women he's known, devastated and emptied out by Breeding Duty, just holding it together and pretending.

“All these stories heard by a friend of a friend, someone going missing. And they call them Mincemeat stories 'cause that's all they find. I never took him serious, you know? And then whatever he or it was
got him
.”

The way he says it causes me to shiver. Yes, there is this between us, and there is also that, a mystery of blood, a secret that should not be.

“This thing's gotten in my head, and there's no way I'm letting it go,” I say with a confidence that is not, that shakes and quivers. “Anyway. So. What I'm saying is I'm with you.”

He pulls me close again, and I forget feeling scared. He talks into my hair, soft, shy. It feels so good, the way he holds me, the raw need, desire thrumming in that power, a waterfall standing still in midair.

“You're a fine woman, Administrator Dempsey. I … like you.”

I squeeze him back, and my arms don't go all the way around that massive, barrel torso. “I like you too.”

Eventually, we have dinner together. I walk him to his little coffin-size apartment and stay the night.

5

He is gone when I wake.

The neural Implant superimposes a blinking light onto my field of vision, just visible out of the corner of my eye. A message for me. I focus on it and subvocalize the command to open it, and there is the thought unfolding. I feel Barrens's lips on my cheek, his voice in my ears, apologizing for having to leave for an early shift. He has also left some files for me to look at, when I have the time. A thick envelope is on the pillow next to me. I take it with me.

It is a thirty-minute train ride back to my own high-rise unit. The rush-hour crowd pays me no attention, but I imagine that they are all looking at me, and when I shift my feet from side to side, balancing as the monorail curves, a delicious remnant of an ache is down there, and my cheeks are aflame. I imagine their eyes on me, wondering where this policewoman with a badly fitting overcoat is going, and what she was up to the night before.