The Incrementalists (16 page)

“Who?” Jimmy frowned. “You mean the Primaries? Does that even mean anything, after all this time?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” said Irina.

“I wouldn’t mind knowing,” said Ray.

“All right,” said Jimmy. “It’s going to take some time, especially for the first one, to go through everybody.”

“Maybe not,” said Ray. “Just yes or no. Was it Celeste’s Primary?”

Jimmy cursed under his breath, scowled, grunted, and finally closed his eyes. But as soon as Ray had asked the question, I knew what the answer would be.

Less than a minute later, Jimmy opened his eyes and nodded.

Ren

I meant to call Phil on the drive, but the cabbie wanted to talk about the Fourth of July in Vegas, so I just turned up on the doorstep. I expected no shortage of pyrotechnics. Phil answered the door, his face an unreadable tangle of welcome and worry. He had moved all Irina’s flowers back onto the breakfast bar, and his living room, now packed with people, was both emptier without the blooms and full of a tension almost as vibrant.

Irina was perched on one arm of Phil’s love seat in her gauze and turquoise, while Jimmy reclined into its depths in his linen and flesh—the ascetic and the sensualist side-by-side on the sofa. He as swollen as she was shriveled, every pound of the man a proud testament to past pleasures and current appetites. “Ren!” He held out his arms, and I bent over him to take a kiss on both my cheeks.

“Hello, darling,” Irina’s hands lifted from her lap in what I’m sure she thought was a regal gesture reminiscent of rings kissed, but reminded me of the stiff elbows and fallen wrists of zombies. I held her brittle fingers and met her eyes, like little pointed shovels, peering into mine. “Meet Ramon,” she said, waving to the man beside her.

He was tall, black, and thin, his face all sharp angles, his head almost shaved. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his back to the curtained glass doors. He stepped forward smoothly to shake my hand, his clothes almost monklike in their austerity, but exquisitely made of something sheenless and soft. Simplicity, not poverty, if he’d taken any vows at all. “How are you, Ren?” he asked.

And because he seemed genuinely interested, and because he hadn’t said it, I said, “I feel like someone put a flaming stake through my head,” which made him laugh. Which made me like him.

Irina offered to help Phil make us all drinks, and Oskar stood in a single, fluid gesture, to give me his chair. It put his powerful body, of which we were both conscious, closer to mine than necessary, just in case I’d missed the point that it was beautifully formed. I hadn’t, but I plunked into his vacated seat unceremoniously.

Phil’s empty chair was on Ramon’s left, across from Irina, and separated from me by a small coffee table. Oskar drew up a barstool to close the circle. He’d changed out of his T-shirt and sports coat into an open-necked light blue linen which showed a bronze fuzz of chest and a low-hanging charm on a red thread. I wondered what superstition or sentiment a man like Oskar wore over his heart.

“Now we are six,” Irina observed, handing me tea in a dainty porcelain shamrock-painted teacup whose gold trim gave the tea a metallic edge.

“Yes,” Ramon agreed. “Until we’ve located Celeste, I think we must have both Oskar and Ren with us.”

“Then this isn’t Salt, just a gathering of friends,” Irina said raising her glass. “Should we call Matsu as well, to keep the number prime?”

“I don’t see why.” Oskar matched Irina’s casual, breezy tone.

“Ren, you know, don’t you,” the calm in Ramon’s voice was real, although anything but easy, “that you have become the pivot of a rather weighty teeter-totter.”

Lucky me. “Could I play on the swings instead?” Even my tea tasted bitter.

Ramon smiled politely. “Celeste is the only Incrementalist to ever successfully alpha-lock a memory,” he said. “You have her stub, and we can’t find her final memory.”

Jimmy, Irina and Phil all looked at me.

“You do know who Celeste is?” Ramon asked.

“I know better than to ask.”

Ramon nodded, satisfied. “Very well. The rest of us—all of us—have our memories of Celeste, but we have none of her memories. And you—the one who should have not only her memories but her personality—can scarcely remember her name between hours.”

“Is it because she committed suicide?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Phil said quietly beside me. “Maybe.”

I wasn’t sure if it was grief for her or fear for me that kept his voice subdued, but I couldn’t afford to be delicate. “Because I was wondering,” I said. “What if she didn’t?”

“You’re the one who said she did.” Irina’s voice was clear and hard. Something had shifted since I’d seen her last, and I didn’t think it was just the currents of strength I could feel her drawing from Jimmy.

“I know,” I said, still talking to Phil, but something had changed in him too. He felt steeled, but I was just going to pretend it couldn’t possibly be against me. “I know I said Celeste killed herself, but I told you why I said it, and I’ve been thinking more about it since.” I could feel Oskar coiled on his stool behind my shoulder. I didn’t want to, but I turned my eyes from Phil to Ramon, still standing motionless between Irina, fidgeting on her sofa arm, and Phil, rigid in his easy chair.

“Maybe I got it wrong,” I said. “Everyone keeps telling me how out of character suicide would have been for Celeste.”

Phil nodded, and I met Irina’s cold eyes. “What if someone killed her?” I asked. “I understand that’s not against the rules.”

Irina flinched, and something in Phil let go, but Ramon just shook his head. “It is not strictly forbidden,” he said. “It used to happen more, but no matter how hot we all may burn at times, few would choose the cold of isolation over the friction of our fellows. To undertake such clumsy work is to be tribeless until the Second dies.”

“And after?” I asked. “Do you ever just leave someone in stub?”

“No.” Oskar’s voice was a raw growl.

“Almost never,” Phil said. “And then not forever. Doing that now, even for a few years, would mean leaving the stub so lost in how things have changed that it would almost guarantee dominance of the new recruit.”

“But often the recruit chosen for such a stub is a very powerful personality.” Ramon’s professorial tone didn’t waver. “Perhaps someone somewhat unyielding. The personalities integrate, of course, and the stub retains the memory of their reasons for killing and its consequences, but frequently the personality is so broken by them that it does not seek dominance, even with a relatively pliant Second.”

“And that Incrementalist still usually spends that second lifetime alone,” Jimmy said. “Certainly he tends to stay distant from the new Second of the Incrementalist he stubbed.”

“Or they marry,” Irina said softly.

“Yes,” Ramon agreed. “Or they marry.”

“And you do the opposite if you’re in love?” I said, putting down my fragile teacup carefully. “Do you recruit a Second whose personality is weak and more likely to be dominated by the stub’s?”

“No,” Ramon said. “That would be discouraged.” He uncrossed his arms and clasped his hands behind his back. “We always select for strength. How could anyone unresilient, incurious or dogmatic bear up under the weight of what we are? Ren, you know what you’ve been through.”

“Is still going through, Ray,” Phil cut in. “It’s only been four days.”

“I am sorry, Ren.” Ramon inclined his head toward me just fractionally. “It occurs to me that Celeste might have nudged even me a little, in this regard. I did not read the file Phil seeded. And I always do. For some reason, with you, I was looking away.”

“We all were,” Oskar said.

“I wasn’t.” Jimmy’s voice was soft. He was looking at Phil.

“Jimmy sent me,” Irina said.

“Not until it was too late.” Oskar stood up from his barstool. “You chose Ren, Phil. But you may have underestimated her strength.”

“Celeste chose Ren,” Irina said.

Oskar started to demand something of Phil, but Phil’s voice cut over Oskar’s. “Maybe I didn’t,” he said. “Maybe I knew exactly how strong Ren was.”

Oskar barked a laugh and sat back down. “You would never have done that,” he said. “You loved Celeste. You followed her through how many Seconds? Two? Three? Trying to get back those couple of good years the two of you had before the Great War. But everyone had good years then. It wasn’t Celeste, Phil. We were all happy then. Happy, and paying as much attention to the nemones as we do when we are. Which is never enough. And you’re still clinging to that dream of Celeste because you can’t give up. You never could. You’ve never known when it was time to let go of an unrealistic dream.”

“And you never knew when it was time to wait for one,” Phil told Oskar. “You want to reach into the womb of dreams and tear yours free before it’s fully formed. That’s why you found yourself skulking around The Palms even though you’re worse at subterfuge than I am.” Phil closed his eyes, his eyebrows like a fist.

I remembered the way their tough hairs felt under my finger and against my face, and I watched the work of Phil mastering himself, dragging self-control up the sheer face of rage and fear and something stronger. It must have cost him everything he had, but when he opened his eyes and found mine, they were the same warm brown they had been when he first touched me. “Ren,” he said quietly, like there was no one else there. “Do you think someone killed Celeste?”

I wanted something profound to match the depth in his eyes. “Maybe,” I said.

Oskar made a Viking noise in the back of his throat. “That’s stupid,” he said. “Who, beside me, would have anything to gain from Celeste’s death?”

“Matsu would be next in the Salt after you,” Ramon noted.

“Matsu will scarcely come to a gathering when we beg him,” Irina said. “He has no interest in, or talent for, this messiness.”

“But he would step up,” Jimmy said. “Remember Seville? Matsu has never lacked for courage. And certainly, in tribute to Celeste, he would do what was needed.”

“True.” Irina turned to Jimmy, nodding. “He was one of those who always got on with Celeste.”

“Because he never loved her,” Oskar said.

“Ren,” Ramon asked me, “why do you doubt your memory of Celeste’s suicide?”

“Because it was never really a memory,” I said, and took a swallow of tea. “It was just an idea triggered by her word ‘martyr.’ But I’m guessing my roommate’s OD was in Phil’s file. Anyone could have known that I’m twitchy around that idea, and it seems like everyone thinks my head is a fine place to tinker with the future.”

“Not the future,” Ramon said. “No one believes we know that.”

“But Ramon, there is so very much at stake just now,” Irina whispered, studying her hands. “Humanity is poised to upend its mad pyramid of needs and wants and dreams, and drive itself, and us, back to berries and caves. Or to build a new structure on something quite near to that order, inverted.”

“Humanity has long fancied itself thus teetering,” Jimmy said.

“But this time it’s true.” Oskar spoke without moving. “Man has found a mirror. He looks into the clear glass of science and sees his own face for the first time. Neuroscience will show all of us who we are, who we have been, and how we might become who we long to be. Soon, a profile of fourteen neurotransmitter levels will not only explain, but predict behavior.”

Someone scoffed, I’m not sure who. Oskar ignored it. “And consider this: We already produce enough for everyone to have nutritious food, good health care, and decent housing, with only the distribution system standing in the way of panhuman post-scarcity. The new content is there, but needs to break out of its old forms. And we could help, if we were willing. We’ve tweaked oxytocin levels to build trust, and boosted dopamine to generate reward since the days of angels and devils. Let’s use our scientific magic to destroy the blockades of greed in the distribution system and let profit-based deprivation finally die. Or Big Pharma and, hell, advertising, will start using our tricks to drive sales.”

“He’s right,” I said. “There are already half a dozen big neuro-marketing firms out there working to nudge people any direction retailers want them to go.”

“How can we stay hidden,” Oskar demanded, “when our tribe’s gift is exploited to rake in wealth for a few rather than distribute it to the many?”

“Exploited by whom, dear Bronstein?” My voice cut across Oskar’s.

My voice, but not my words.

“Who are these rake wielders of whom you speak? Capitalists? Producers and consumers? You are too eager, my dear boy, to tell another man’s story in just one word. When you assign
-ist
to anyone, you throw all our years of accumulated nuance away.”

“Celeste?” I could feel Phil next to me, but I couldn’t make my eyes move from Oskar’s pale face.

“It is not our ideologies, nor our chemistry, but our memories that tell us who we are. We disclose our histories to our lovers, so they will know us from our infancy. We create ourselves, telling our biographies to strangers, and construct our morality from the same narrative. ‘I could never,’ we say. ‘I’m not the kind of person who,’ and ‘I always.’ But how long is a memory, Oskar? How long is yours?”

We were both standing, Oskar lean and wary, Celeste towering, furious and powerful, inside my smaller body.

“Humanity swims in the shallow skin of an ocean that is infinitely deeper, more complex, and more chaotic than we can bear to look into,” Celeste said. “We develop unique tastes—this kind of food, that kind of sex—and try to satisfy our need for meaning by consuming what we like, not creating what we love. We name ourselves by these petty dispositions: by what we won’t eat—Vegan.” Celeste pointed my finger at Irina. “Or for whom we will not vote—Radical.” She drew my finger to Jimmy. “Or by how, and with whom we make love—wife, sadist, bisexual, polyamorous
amante
.” She stroked my fingers down the length of my throat, and turned my eyes to Oskar. “But how could I have loved you for so many years, dear boy, if I did not keep looking for your other selves? I worked to find them out. Punk, romantic, warrior, child. I wonder, can you see anything but Moderate in me?”