Three Days in April (18 page)

 

16. ELISE

“I
am disappointed,” says Aaliyah. “Your sister is more ill mannered even than her friend. I foresee many unpleasant holiday dinners.”

“I'm sorry,” I say, “but I really don't see why you got so upset. Anders was just trying to figure out what was going on.”

“You have been given the Gift of the Moon, Elise. What more is there to understand?”

She takes my arm, and guides me back into the sitting room.

“Is it true, what he said?” I ask. “Are we really tapping the panopticon?”

Aaliyah scowls.

“For the love of my brother, I will not cast you out as well—­but I will ask you not to blaspheme in my home. Was there a panopticon in the time of the mother-­of-­all?”

“No,” I say. “I don't guess there was.”

“Then how could this be the source of our visions? Our ­people have been shamans and wizards and seers for sixty thousand years. The panopticon has existed for fewer than fifty.”

Which is true, as far as it goes—­and until I find out what's going on with Tariq, I'd rather not get into a screaming match with his sister. She sits at the table. I take the cushion across from her.

“Tea?” Aaliyah asks.

I
t's maybe an hour later when my third cup of tea is interrupted by a pounding at the door.

“Is this your friends again?” Aaliyah asks.

“I doubt it,” I say. I get to my feet and make my way to the door. I put my hand on the knob. The pounding comes again.

“Who is it?” I ask, in a high falsetto.

“Elise.” It's Tariq. His voice is hoarse, almost ragged. He coughs twice and spits, and something solid thumps against the door. “Please let me in.”

I turn the knob. Tariq's weight pushes the door open, and he staggers in past me and drops to his hands and knees. He's wearing a black leather jacket that I haven't seen before. There's a small tear just under his right shoulder blade. Tariq coughs convulsively, and a mixture of blood and phlegm sprays the floor.

“Aaliyah!” I crouch down beside him and put a hand on his back. He flinches, and I take it away.

“Brother.” Aaliyah stands beside me. “What have you done?”

“I have done what you said I must do.” He coughs again. His head sags, and blood runs from his nose and drips to the floor.

“Elise,” Aaliyah says. “Make sure that my brother keeps breathing until I return.”

She glides away down the dark hallway. Tariq lowers himself into a half-­sitting position. I lean back against the stairway banister, and let him sag against me.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

“I have been to Chantilly,” he says. “NatSec did not appreciate my intrusion.”

“Are you shot?”

He nods, and touches the right side of his chest. I crane my head forward and see a small tear there, matching the one on the back.

“The bots knew I was there,” he rasps. “Their eyes were blinded, but when I had uploaded Gary's seeker, they knew I was there. They filled the air with bullets. One of them found me.”

He coughs again, then gasps wetly.

“The wound is small,” he says, “but I think it has punctured my lung.”

I reach around him, unzip the jacket and gently pull it open. There's a bright spot of blood on the front of his pink polo shirt, but it doesn't look like much more is coming out. The words ‘sucking chest wound' pop into my head and start flashing like a neon sign, but as he said, the hole is pretty small. I don't see any bubbles, anyway.

“Shouldn't we be taking you to a hospital?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

“NatSec will be watching. They could not see me, but my blood . . . they have my DNA. I fear I may be a fugitive for a very long time.” He curls forward and coughs, and a trickle of red mixed with black runs from the corner of his mouth. “Or a very short time, as the case may be.”

He leans against me again. I smooth his hair back with one hand and kiss his temple. He puts his right hand over mine, pulls it down to his shoulder and closes his eyes.

“Aaliyah,” I say. “I don't know what you're doing, but could you please hurry?”

She doesn't respond. Tariq is slowly becoming looser and heavier, and his breathing is rapid now and shallow. His hand releases mine, and slides to the floor.

“Tariq,” I say. “Stay with me, please.” I pull him tight against me and squeeze my eyes closed. A tear trickles down along the side of my nose and across my upper lip.

“Elise,” he whispers. “I did as Gary told me. You will be safe now.”

“Shh,” I say. “Please, don't leave me.” The side of my face is pressed against his, and I can feel him smile. He turns his head slightly, so his mouth is almost touching my ear. Still, his voice seems far away.

“If I ever leave you,” he says, “I promise you it will not be by choice.”

“Enough of this foolishness,” says Aaliyah. She's standing over us with a syringe in her right hand. Not a medical syringe, though—­it looks like something you'd use to baste a turkey. It's filled with a dark brown fluid. She holds a long, serrated knife in her left hand. She offers it to me. “Get out from under him, and cut away his shirt,” she says. “We have work to do.”

I slide out from behind Tariq, and lower him to the floor on his back. His breathing becomes more labored. He coughs out another bolus of blood. I take the knife, cut the shirt down the center, and lay his torso bare. The hole is just below his right pectoral. Blood leaks from it slowly. Aaliyah kneels beside us, and places the long plastic proboscis of the syringe against the hole.

“Gather yourself, brother,” she says. “This is likely to hurt.” With that, she puts her weight behind the syringe, and sinks the tip deep into his chest. Tariq groans. His fists clench, and his eyes squeeze shut. Aaliyah depresses the plunger with the palm of her hand, and I watch the liquid drain into his lung.

“What is that?” I ask. “What are you putting into him?”

“Hush, sister-­to-­be,” Aaliyah says. “Our ­people are healers as well as seers.”

She pulls out the syringe. Tariq's eyes pop open. His head strains back, and his limbs begin to shake.

“Hold him down,” says Aaliyah. She grabs hold of Tariq's arm at the elbow and shoulder. I take hold of him on the other side, and together we press him to the floor as he begins to thrash.

This goes on for what seems like hours, until finally Tariq begins to tire. At first I think he's fading again, but his breathing is clear and regular, and all the blood on his shirt and his face is old now, and dried. Aaliyah releases his arm, stands and climbs the stairs. She returns a minute later with a pillow and a blanket.

“Best to leave him here until he is stronger,” she says. She covers him with the blanket, tucks it beneath him, and slips the pillow under his head. She stands again, and turns toward the kitchen.

“You stay with him for now. I must start cooking. When he wakes, he will be hungry.”

Sauron's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron
's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron's Eye:

Randgrid:

Sauron's Eye:

T
ariq comes back slowly, drifting up from the depths with drooping eyes and a dreamy half smile. He's still on the floor in the entryway, with the blanket wrapped around him and his head resting in my lap. I'm stroking his hair and humming softly when his eyes open fully, and he focuses on my face.

“Elise,” he whispers. “I am alive.”

“You are,” I say softly.

He reaches up and feels the wound on his chest, then brushes away dried blood to reveal what looks like a week-­old scar.

“I have a memory of my sister stabbing me in the heart. Was this part of a dream?”

I shake my head.

“Not exactly. She stabbed you with a syringe the size of my forearm, and pumped what looked like about a quart of gravy into your chest.”

“Ah,” he says. “This is something she prepared in the kitchen?”

“Yes.”

He levers himself up into a sitting position, flexes his shoulders and takes a deep, steady breath.

“Well,” he says. “I cannot complain of her work. I would like to know what was in that syringe, however.”

“Do not worry, brother,” says Aaliyah. She's standing in the entrance to the sitting room. “I gave you nothing that would contradict our agreements. In truth, I gave you little more than you would have received at a trauma center. I would not take advantage of your misfortune to drag you back into the fold.”

He smiles.

“I did not think you had, sister. But thank you.”

“You are welcome,” she says. She steps toward us, and offers Tariq her hand. He takes it, grabs the banister with his left hand, and slowly stands.

“Come,” says Aaliyah. “You need to eat.”

“W
hat did you mean before, when you told Aaliyah that the bots' eyes were blinded?”

Tariq looks at me, then at Aaliyah. We're seated around the low table in the sitting room, passing around tea and flatbread and bowls of unidentifiable mush.

“Did I say this?” Tariq asks.

Aaliyah shrugs.

“You did, brother.”

“Would you care to explain this to her, sister? I fear you might find my answer blasphemous.”

“Though he denies our mother's faith,” Aaliyah says with a scowl, “my brother still is one of us. As I told you, Elise—­this is a bell which cannot be unrung. The faith gives us dominion over dead things that believe themselves to be alive. Because NatSec puts its trust in these things rather than in the true living, Tariq was able to do what needed to be done.”

“Could I have done that?” I ask.

Tariq looks confused now.

“What do you mean, Elise? As my sister has said, these things are aspects of the faith.”

I look to Aaliyah. She raises one eyebrow. Tariq's eyes shift back and forth between us.

“Aaliyah?” Tariq says. “Sister? What have you done?”

I
lie on the bed in the guest room as the wind picks up outside, and listen to the grown-­ups argue. I can't hear most of what they're saying. A few words come through, but mostly it's just the rising and falling cadence of their voices—­Tariq's low and angry, Aaliyah's louder, and almost shrill. For the first time since Sunday morning, I find myself in familiar territory. My strongest, most consistent memory from childhood is of lying alone in my room, listening to my parents fight. Fight about money. Fight about work. Fight about how they always seemed to be fighting.

Fight about Terry, mostly.

My mother never really forgave my father for Terry. They both were part of the decision to cut her, of course, but it was Dad who really pushed for it.

She never forgave Terry for Terry, to be honest. And in a weird way, she never really forgave me for being who I was either. I was her perfect, natural girl, and Terry was her constant reminder that we weren't actually members of the new genetic elite. Mom took me shopping. Terry mowed the yard.

Trust me, though. The whole Cinderella thing is no picnic for the stepsister, either. It says everything you need to know about Terry that she never carried a grudge.

Well, not against me, anyway.

Finally, the voices downstairs fall silent. A door slams, and I hear footsteps coming slowly up the stairs. Tariq comes into the room, closes the door behind him, and sits down on the bed with his back to me.

“So,” he says. “You have accepted the Gift of the Moon.”

“I have,” I say. I reach out to touch him, but he pulls his arm away.

“Why, Elise? Why did you do this? This is not what I wanted for you.”

I sit up, slide closer to him, wrap my arms around his chest.

“I wanted to know,” I say. “I wanted to see the world the way that you see it. I wanted to see the world the way it really is.” I lean my head against his shoulder. “I didn't want to be the dog.”

He turns half around to look at me.

“Well? Is it what you imagined?”

I sigh.

“I don't know what I imagined. Not this, I guess.”

Tariq opens his mouth to speak, then shakes his head and closes it again. He hesitates, then relaxes and leans back against me. I rest my head against his.

“Do you remember how we met?”

“Yes, Elise.” I can hear the smile in his voice now. “I do vaguely remember.”

“That felt like fate, didn't it? You knew my name.”

He sighs.

“That was not fate, Elise. That was a street magician manipulating the panopticon to catch the eye of a very pretty girl. You are of the faith now. You must already know this.”

And the sad thing is that I hadn't realized that—­not until he said it.