The Nightingale Circus (5 page)

“I’m fine, Mom. It was a long night, that’s
all.”

“Not because of work, I presume.” His father
paused to let Jeannette place the bowl of tomato soup on the table.
“When’s the last time you stopped by the office?”

Nicolas tried to remember. One week? Two? It
certainly couldn’t have been that long. His old man probably knew
better. Although retired, his father liked to stay informed about
everything that happened at the company’s headquarters.
“Everything’s fine, nothing to worry about.” He stirred the soup
absentmindedly. It was hot, so he could have been delayed even
longer without missing anything.

“And the contract that needed to be signed on
Thursday?”

“What about it?” Nicolas met his father’s
dark eyes, the same as his. “I signed it, didn’t I?”

His father gesticulated with the spoon. “They
had to wire it to you because they couldn’t find you.”

“They didn’t need me there for that. The
signature is legit.”

“Where were you, Nick?” His mother blew over
the spoon before swallowing the burning liquid.

“I took Lucille to Biarritz for an early
weekend.”

“Starting on Thursday?” His father forgot to
blow over the spoon and swore when the soup burned his tongue.

Nicolas shrugged, taking a perverse pleasure
in the old man’s discomfort. “She needed to be in town for an
appointment with a hairdresser on Saturday.” Her hair had looked
fabulous the previous night at the club.

“Well, if she can’t switch a hairdresser
appointment for you, then…”

His father didn’t have to finish stating the
obvious. The relationship wasn’t serious, but that was all right.
He wasn’t looking for anything serious. If Lucille had even hinted
at marriage, Nicolas would have broken up with her right away. He
didn’t plan to settle down in the near future, and he would think
twice before burdening someone with his problems.

“Isn’t it too early for going to the beach?”
His mother delicately wiped her lips with a napkin.

“Yes, the wind was a bit chilly, so we stayed
mostly in.” Nicolas didn’t bother to hide his grin.

His mother hid hers behind the napkin while
his father rolled his eyes and grunted in his half-filled soup
bowl.

“Honey, leave the boy be,” his mother said,
the smile still playing on her lips. “You were young once,
too.”

“But he’s not a boy anymore, Dora.” His
father pointed at him with the spoon. “He’s a
man.
People
his age don’t spend every night at the club.”

Maybe I feel welcome there because no
one’s judging me.
Out of consideration for his mother, Nicolas
kept his thoughts to himself. Besides, they’d had the same
conversation plenty of times before.

“They go out there … and
do
things,”
his father continued.

“Like Jean-Pierre,” Nicolas said, fully aware
he was making it worse by mentioning his brother’s name, still
wanting to end this part of the conversation sooner. “But wouldn’t
you rather have him safe, at home?”

“Your brother is doing his job protecting the
country.” His father’s dark stare pinned him down, meaning
This
is what you should be doing, too.

“Actually, Jean-Pierre is shuffling papers
around,” Nicolas said. “But it’s true, if we ever go to war, the
Defense Ministry building will be the first to go down in
flames.”

“Nick.”

Nicolas lowered his head at his mother’s
sharp scolding and mumbled, “Sorry, Mom.” When he looked back up,
he grinned at Jeannette as she cleared the table. “Thank you, it
was delightfully hot.”

Jeannette snorted. If she had been ten years
younger, she would have probably smacked him with a spoon like she
used to do when he was a kid. Growing boy plus the power-use doomed
the pantry.

Silence fell while the salmon was served, and
Nicolas took advantage of the break to pour himself some wine. He
needed it for the ‘join the army’ speech. The scent of the cooked
salmon infiltrated his nostrils, making him salivate. He let his
hand hover above the plate placed in front of him and listened to
the tiny sounds made by the random fish bones that popped out of
their locations.

“Yes, that’s the perfect use for your
talent,” his father said.

Nicolas glanced at his plate and shrugged.
“It’s better than performing tricks on the street.”

His mother placed a gentle hand on his arm.
“Nick, that will never happen.”

“You don’t know that,” he said a little more
tersely than he’d intended and immediately regretted it when faced
with her hurt look. “Hey, at least we won’t starve! There will
always be people who need us to calculate their taxes. War is great
for business.” And their firm was indeed doing well.

“And how do you know that?” his father
asked.

“I’m making an educated guess. That’s why you
had me drag my ass through school for all those years, isn’t
it?”

“I’m glad something stuck.”

“Honey, that’s not fair,” his mother said,
looking up from her plate. “Nick is a brilliant accountant.”

“You’re right, it’s not fair.” His father
sighed. “He’s good at his job and the other thing, too.” He
gestured vaguely towards Nicolas’s hands. “He just wastes it all
when he could do … much more.”

“I’m perfectly happy the way I am now.”
Nicolas drank a sip of wine. “I don’t need
more
.”

“Well, it might not be up to you soon…”

“What?” Nicolas put the glass down. “What is
that supposed to mean?”

“Jean-Pierre called last night,” his mother
said, and her eyebrows lowered in a concerned frown over her gray
eyes. “There’s talk about a new law forcing all of the telechargers
to report for military duty. No more enlisting on a voluntary
basis.”

“That’s just stupid,” Nicolas said. “You
can’t fight machines with people. Most of them can barely bend a
spoon.”

“There will be testing … and training—”

“Training?” Nicolas let out a disgruntled
laugh. “They don’t even know what this is!” He flexed his fingers,
and pale blue light flashed around them.

In the doorway, Jeannette crossed
herself.

“Stop that. You’re scaring poor Jeannette.”
His mother covered Nicolas’s hand with hers. She squeezed it,
forcing him to look at her. “We all know you’ll pass those tests,
no matter how they’re designed.”

Nicolas gave her a long look and retrieved
his hand. He didn’t know many people like him, but now and then,
they appeared on the news, and he could already do everything the
others did.

“So, your father and I were thinking…” His
mother fiddled with her napkin. “Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad
idea to enlist
before
the law passes. It might give you some
advantages.”

“That’s out of the question. I’m not
enlisting.”

The silence grew heavier. Nicolas pushed his
plate away. If even his mother was against him…

“I was only thinking to make things easier
for you,” his mother said with a hint of apology in her voice.

“It
won’t
make things easier. And it’s
not my war.”

“It will be soon,” his father said. “Reports
say the Japanese have invaded the continent. They’ll be here—”

“Not as soon as you might think,” Nicolas
said. “They have to cross two continents to get here, and it’s not
like they can fly since we’re shooting everything down. It’s on the
ground we can’t stand up to their machines.”

“It would be easier if more people like you
helped,” his father said.

“You give me too much credit. There’s no way
I can take down one of those monsters.” While he’d never pushed his
strength to the limit, Nicolas knew how power manipulation worked.
What would be the point in destroying one of the machines when
there were millions more like it? It would get him killed in the
end anyway. It would only bring grief to his family. It wasn’t
worth it. And he liked being alive.

“You should be prepared for when the
situation changes. It’s all I’m saying.” His mother held up her
glass, and Nicolas refilled it.

That was something worth considering. How to
deal with it and possibly escape if the dreadful law was passed?
Later. Now he was having lunch with his family. “Is there any
cake?”

* * *

Days, weeks, then months passed, and nothing
changed. War remained a distant threat on the Asian shore. It
suited Nicolas just fine. He showed up at work when he had to,
spent his evenings at the club, and took Lucille on short weekends
across the country whenever she was free.

On the surface, life went on the same. But
Japanese imports had stopped several years ago, and it was
beginning to show. A machine broke here, another there, and with
replacement parts so hard to find, it took forever to fix them. The
prosthetics were affected the most, but that was to be expected
when you let a foreign power have the monopoly and then sank it. It
would get worse in a few more years if the local industries didn’t
rise to the challenge and fill the void left on the market.

Nicolas thanked the heavens his family didn’t
rely heavily on prosthetics yet. Someday, as they got older, they
would, but not yet. Others needed them though, and the Rieux family
was not going to stand back and watch them suffer. His mother had
volunteered to be one of several wealthy families holding a charity
ball at the end of the summer.

As a favor to her, Nicolas walked up the
stairs of the Capitole, wearing a tailcoat and top hat. The outfit
made him feel like he was going to a costume party, but what was
one extra mask on top of all of the others? It made his mother
happy, and the ladies loved it, too. Their eyes followed him while
he passed through the crowd, looking for Lucille. She was late as
usual. Not a bad thing since the party had barely started. The
string quartet was just warming up their instruments as they
attacked the second music piece of the night, a fugue.

He accepted the glass offered by a waiter but
refused the finger sandwiches. They were hard to eat with gloves
on. Lucille still hadn’t appeared. His mother stood across the
hall, talking with one of the press attach
é
s, and he nodded in their direction but kept his
distance. These were bad times for socializing with the press, and
he’d been extra careful not to get on the news lately despite his
company’s high profile. He wasn’t going to risk ruining everything
now. The quiet summer had been bad enough.

The lead violinist missed a note, and the
murmurs around him increased in volume. Something had happened. He
checked his phone as several people around him were doing, but the
deactivated satellites made access to the net close to nonexistent,
and he wasn’t desperate enough to subscribe to the war bulletins
delivered every hour.

“Korea has fallen,” someone whispered, and
the news spread from mouth to mouth. “Korea has fallen!”

The screens hanging on the heavily decorated
walls continued to run a loop of images showing advanced
prosthetics, smiling children, and old people with serene faces.
The party planner refused to let the focus of the evening be
disrupted by the usual news scrolls that ran on the screens.

Nicolas reached for another drink when
someone grabbed his arm. He turned and found his mother standing
next to him.

“Is father—” he asked, alarmed by the lack of
color in her checks.

“No. It’s you. Come with me.” She pulled him
by the jacket sleeve towards the corridor.

“What is it?”

“Jean-Pierre called. They passed the law.”
His mother looked left and right, but they were alone by the grand
staircase. She kept her voice down to a whisper anyway. “They’re
picking up telechargers starting
tonight
. You have to
go.”

“What?”

His mother’s hand gripped his arm. “You have
to leave the country. It’s the only way to escape the draft …
unless you changed your mind about it?”

“I didn’t but … I can’t just get up and
leave!” This was ridiculous.

“Sure you can. Everything is arranged. Your
father and I have been working on it for months, ever since the
first rumors appeared. We weren’t sure it would be needed, but we
did it just in case. Now I’m glad we did.”

“Father? But he—”

“You two might not always agree on things,
but you’re his son, too, and he loves you.” His mother picked up
the skirt of her velvet evening dress with one hand and with the
other steered him towards the stairs. “He only needed a little
convincing to see the right path.” She grinned, and Nicolas felt
sorry for his father. His mother could be a determined woman when
she set her mind on something. “At the end of the day, he’d rather
have a living son somewhere out there than a dead one.”

Well, if she put it that way … Nicolas found
himself unable to disagree.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, barely
holding back a smile at the idea of his mother doing anything
illegal.

“You go straight to the train station. You
can’t take the car or any other public transportation that will
allow them to track you down. But the train should still be safe,
especially with a ticket reserved months in advance.”

“Wait. Right now? I can’t go like this.”
Nicolas pointed at himself. “I look like a clown.”

“Benoît will bring your luggage to the
station, and you can change there. I already called him. He’s on
his way.”

Nicolas was running out of protests. Maybe
his mother was right and this was the way to go. He’d never wanted
to have anything to do with this anyway. “Okay, I should go say
goodbye to father—”

“No, don’t go back in there.” His mother’s
voice went up a note. “Several people inside know about you. They’d
better not see you leaving. I’ll talk to him. He’ll
understand.”

Despite their difference in opinions, Nicolas
wasn’t particularly keen on leaving without seeing his father. The
man was old and had a weak heart. Who knew if he'd ever get to see
him again? He nodded reluctantly and looked back at the entrance to
the reception room. “Tell Lucille…” Tell her what? He didn’t know
when he would return, and it wasn’t like she would wait for him. He
wouldn’t want her to. “Never mind.” He shook his head.