Under Cover of Darkness (33 page)

“Who is in charge of the enquiry?”

Lorenz and Sofia were seated on my couch, as usual almost touching, attuned to each other in a way they didn't notice.

They were both focused on me, he with a worried frown, she with a gentleness that made me want to crawl in her lap and weep. I looked away.

“Why do you ask?”

“Maybe it's someone we can . . .”

“No!” I cried out, before Sofia could suggest manipulation or . . . or whatever else she deemed necessary, and leave for me to do. “This would only draw more attention on us. It may be time for me to leave this place anyway.”

Lorenz nodded, but Sofia wouldn't let it go.

“Give me his name, let me see what I can do from Alfens. We have resources at the Investigation Force headquarters they don't have here, you know that. I'll promise I won't do anything before checking up with you.” After a nudge from Lorenz and a pointed look from me, she reluctantly added, “Not before you give me your okay.”

I opened my mouth to speak.

Whether Lewis could still read the marks or not, he hadn't used what he knew of the family. He wouldn't betray our oath, I felt sure of it. While they would sentence him to memory wipe, at best, send the family's Edge to kill him at worst, if they knew he was here. Even his Investigator's badge wouldn't protect him from us. Nothing could.

Years of lies and disguised truths helped me hide my hesitation. When I reached my decision, I said: “I can't remember his name. He's a Second, though. That I remember.”

“Do you know how many Seconds join the Force?”

I shrugged. “What's happened in Alfens since the last family meeting, by the way?”

“Oh, I made sure Adelopoulos' little plot was uncovered by the right journalist. I had some help from Youki, as the Desnos family promised. Now we have to . . .”

I half-listened to my sister. We had just moved to the Alfensial Provinces, at the edge of colonized space, and humanity was still so set on tearing itself apart, on every planet it planted roots on, while the families were so few and scattered.
Gardeners battling weeds
, I thought, as I watched Sofia, undaunted by the magnitude of our task, her voice strong, her gestures passionate.

In my spare room, their son slept. Lorenz went up to check on him at one point. Sofia interrupted her tale of intrigue when he came back, just long enough to take his hand in hers, intertwine their fingers.

I hadn't found someone among my brethren to share my life with. And I hadn't wanted the pain of lying in bed with lies in my mouth by choosing an outsider. Solitude had always suited me.
Since Lewis.
And, right on the heels of the familiar thought, a new one:
Until he came back.

“So, will you?”

“What?”

“You weren't listening,” Lorenz teased.

“You're tired,” Sofia worried, before repeating: “Get me the name of your investigator?”

I looked at their earnest faces. They were waiting for an answer.

I found that I could.

“Of course,” I assured Sofia.

Lying to them had been easier than lying to Lewis earlier.

 

Anna and I met in the coffee shop near our office every morning before work, except on Mondays. Anna couldn't stand Monday, and in truth, no one could stand her either, not until after lunch and her tenth coffee anyway.

But this was Tuesday, and she hadn't come. She wouldn't. Not ever again.

How Lewis had known I would be there, I had no idea. That he had come for me became clear as soon as he sat in front of me with two cups of black, strong-scented coffees. He pushed one of the cups toward me, wrapped his long fingers around the other.

“Who's here?”

I quickly finished my lukewarm, first coffee, and reached for the one he had bought me. “Lorenz and Sofia. And before that, it was Aïsha. And before that, I was the one visiting Dmitri. We are all here for each other.”

He ignored the barb, wouldn't look at me.

“Who's dead?”

I didn't pretend to be surprised. There were always deaths in the family.

“Since you disappeared, ten years ago?”

When I didn't add anything, he reluctantly nodded.

“Too many,” I told him coldly.

“I had to go, Elizabeth.”

“Why?” I cried.

The place was almost empty, and my outburst had drawn attention to us.

I hit the button at the side of our table, probably too hard.

A short message on the tabletop shone, telling me my account had been debited for half an hour of privacy as the force-field screen went up around us.

Lewis half-raised his face, but his hair, longer than it used to be, smoother, fell in his eyes, hiding him still.

“Would they have let me go? Would you?”

“You didn't have to disappear like that. They . . .”

“. . . would have erased all my memories! Do you really think I wanted to forget!” And, with less passion, unexpected venom, he added: “Wasn't that part of the oath?”

Similar emotions rose in me. “Yes, the oath. That was it, then. You wanted to keep your memories, but forgo your duty?”

“What duty? Shape humanity into our reverse image?”

“Is that what you think we are doing?” I asked Lewis. For a second, a wild hope rose in me.

I went on, pretending that, despite our childhood stories, Grandmother's tales, everything we learned after the oaths, Lewis had just misunderstood our life's purpose.

I knew better. He was telling me he had forgotten nothing.

“What we are doing is preserving hope, Lewis. And peace. We know what comes from humanity's tendencies to form communities . . .” Elza went on, trying to convince me. Why was it so important to her, to all of them?

I felt tired. I had come here, hoping for something else.

But I was already as caught up in it as her. “Don't you exist in a community?”

“It doesn't set us apart from them! We are part of their world, we work with them, live with them . . .”

The investigator in me asked before I could think of the consequences: “Find friends in them, like you did with Anna?”

Her gaze dropped back to her coffee.

To hide sorrow
, I told myself.
That's all.

“We have no right to choose peace for them. Peace comes with a price. They don't want to pay that price!” I told Elza, hoping she understood the warning, at least.

But all she listened to was my attack on her precious principles.

“They do not know, Lewis!”

“Yes! Exactly! They will never know if they don't learn.”

“You swore, don't you remember? You swore
never again
.”

“That's our family,” I spat bitterly. “They never want to remember, never want to forget, never want to trust humanity to know how they are meddling in everyone's life, shaping them in our purpose!”

 

I had spent the previous hour in the Senate's archive room, watching the record of yesterday's session. Roland's mother had been scheduled to speak on the proposed Orealian variation.

The Orealian's constitution stated that all citizens were equal before the law, but that citizens were different from one another. In the smaller planet's case, it had to do with the differences between those who chose to live underwater and those who lived on satellites orbiting the planet's moon. First-Sonj had proposed to use this as a provisional agreement in the debate on Longers.

She hadn't been there to defend her position, though, too preoccupied with her son.

But her absence and its consequential rejection of her proposal weren't proof, and I needed proof.

I wanted not to find proof. Maybe I had misread her scarf's colors, and the way she had knotted it. Maybe they had changed the marks Grandmother taught us.

As if the Exiles knew what change was.

 

“Why does it have to be this way, Elza?” I cried out, frustrated beyond measure, caught between the same fight we had before I left, and my need to convince myself this case had nothing to do with the family, with her.

“Don't you think it's wrong that the families can't even question their right to choose for everyone else?” I tried to drown my own thoughts in words. “They commit their lives only to shaping others'!
You
won't commit, not even to . . .”
to me
“to something else, closed up in your nevermores. It's a prison, don't you see?”

Elza had changed, in ten years, had learned to calm down.
For whom?

“You don't understand,” she said, in a soft, nonjudg mental voice that hurt. She leaned forward, and I found myself inches from her. “We're not trying to shut them from their own experience. We're offering a prayer that never again will a people have to exile a part of their own in order to find peace.”

She was interrupted by a soft, continuous beep.

I reached for my palmputer, hesitated for a second. Before I could switch it off, she said, “Go on. It must be important.”

She was leaning back in her chair, her gaze lost on the whirling of energy of our privacy screen.

I hooked my palm to the tabletop, and started reading.

It was Anna Long-Karangel's autopsy report.

Before I could stop myself, I took her hand in mine.

She looked so calm, so far away. Did she know I'd just received the proof I needed?

“Why did you come here, Lewis?” she asked, softly, her gaze finally meeting mine.

“Because a murder has been committed,” I lied.

Her fingers traced silent words, on my palm.
Do what you have to do.

Aloud, she urged me, her calm, resigned voice making a lie of her attempt: “Once you were one of us, you shared our goals. You swore, on the family fire . . .”

In one hand, I held the report, in the other, her fingers still caressed mine, aimlessly.

“I never betrayed it, Els. But I think you did. You all did. Generation after generation we listened to our history, and never heard the real, central point. . . .”

“Today, you are going to hear the story behind every tale I ever told you,” Grandmother had said, on that long-ago evening, after the oaths had been sworn by the twenty-three young men and women. “Like every beginning, it starts with an ending.”

Grandmother had stopped there, and they had wondered if she was all right. She seemed sad and resigned. She hushed their concern with a familiar, impatient gesture.

“At the beginning there was no family like ours and the others you've met. It was a long, long time ago. Humanity was just starting to think of itself as one. Never before had all the people known how much of one, unique kind they were, never before had they been so connected to each other beyond their differences. And yet it came to pass that humanity fought itself like it never had before, relentlessly. You know the history of that time already, you've been taught by the families the many wars that almost destroyed this fragile awareness of being, beyond boundaries, of one race.

“By then the stars were within reach; it didn't change everything, but it changed enough.”

Grandmother cleared her throat. The fire crackled in the hearth. Incense still hung in the air, even though the oath ceremony had taken place hours ago.

Elza and Lewis found each other's hands, in the semi-darkness, and neither felt fear when Grandmother spoke again, in her storyteller's voice.

“The first wave of humanity left Earth, ship by ship. One of them was the
Exile
. Most launches were government approved and scientifically planned. This particular launch had been decided by politicians, prepared by scientists, but in perfect secrecy. That was the first vow. And it was kept.

“The
Exile
was the finest ship. Born of a divided country, it had benefited from the technological knowledge only a civil war could breed; it also carried all the knowledge available then in its data banks. Even records on the conflict had been added to it, every opinion, every interpretation of events. Only one piece of information was withheld from the future settlers: from which side of the conflict they came.

“For, you see, the three thousand and fifty who embarked on the
Exile
came in equal measure from both sides of the conflict. They were all volunteers. They all swore ‘Nevermore,' and that was the second vow. Like the first, it was kept. For all of them, it was their only memory, upon waking in deep space. From the moment they had stepped on the ship, the rest of their memories had been erased and all they knew of their previous selves was that they had chosen to become part of the Exile tribe.

“They went to the stars as one, seeking a world to call their own.

“But during their trip, some found another goal. And that was the third oath you swore today.”

Grandmother closed her eyes, briefly. When she opened them again, Lewis and Elza thought they saw tears. But Grandmother's voice was as strong as ever. “The families were born. What came after that is a tale of hide in plain sight and seek a particular path. You already know part of it. Now, if you so choose, you will learn the rest. Now, the choice is yours. Will you have your memory erased, and become part of the rest of humanity, or will you remain an exile, hidden in sight, a guardian of exiles' memories, against the future?”