UnDivided (38 page)

He takes in the big picture. Kids running everywhere. His ground crew chasing them. Half of the kids are already over the fence.

“Let them go,” Divan says. Then, louder: “LET THEM GO!”

His bodyguard turns to him confused.

“But they escape. . . .”

“Why chase silver,” Divan says, “when we have gold to move?”

He turns to his valet, who watches the spectacle with one-eyed impotence. It's all Divan can do not to smack him. “Skinner!
Go help collect the ones we managed to tranq, and put them back in the hold. The rest are no longer our problem.” Then he looks down to see Nelson in a heap on the ground. “What happened to him?”

“Don't know,” says Skinner. “Must have been hit by a tranq.”

Well, Nelson's not his problem either. “What are you waiting for?” he asks Skinner. “Get to work!”

Skinner bounds off, and Divan focuses his full attention on the real business of the day. He supervises the removal of the active stasis coolers, paying close attention to the ones marked
LOT 4832
. His big-ticket items. The various and sundry parts of Connor Lassiter.

Only when all the crates have been loaded onto their respective planes bound for their buyers does he relax. Skinner reports that nineteen out of one hundred and seventeen Unwinds were recovered, and are back inside. As for the lost Unwinds, it may sting in the moment, but it's barely a setback at all. One trip around the world, and his suppliers will fill up his harvester once more. Divan looks around. Everything seems to be in order. The smaller jets are lining up to take off, and although Nelson's car is still there, Nelson is nowhere to be seen. Divan doesn't trouble himself with it. His work is done here. He grasps Skinner on the shoulder. “Good work,” he says. “Now please draw me a bath.”

Skinner trots up the stairs dutifully, but before Divan gets in the plane he takes a moment to consider the events that have just transpired. This was clearly sabotage by the Dah Zey. No question about it. That means there's a traitor on his staff. As far as Divan is concerned, this is the last straw. If the Dah Zey want a war, they'll get one. He'll recruit a militia of skilled mercenaries and fight the Dah Zey to the death.

But in the meantime, Divan must deal with the traitor—
and he's pretty certain who it is. The medic was the only one with access to the harvester, both the day Starkey died and today. Divan prides himself on rewarding loyalty and hard work. Disloyalty and sabotage, however, must be met with swift and decisive action. No time to make a bonsai this time. And so before he boards the plane, he makes a request of his bodyguard. “I need you to release the medic from my employment, effective immediately.”

“Release from employment,” repeats his guard. “Use tranq?”

“Tranqs,” says Divan, “are for AWOLs and other naughty children. The medic requires something more permanent. What's our next stop, Korea? We'll pick up a new medic there.”

Then Divan, who abhors violence, gets on the plane, happy to let his guard take care of business, as long as it's out of Divan's presence.

The choke hold knocked him out for a good twenty minutes. Now he's no longer on the airfield tarmac. Nor is he anywhere familiar at all. Nelson regains consciousness to find himself lying in a claustrophobic space larger than a coffin, but much, much worse.

“Hello,
Jack
ass
Dirt
bag
,” says a perky computer voice. “Welcome to your divisional experience! I am your fully automated Unwinding Intelli-System, but you can call me UNIS.”

“No! It can't be!” He tries to lift his arms and legs, but they won't move. He seems to be wearing that same gunmetal-gray bodysuit the Unwinds wore. Only now does he realize it's made of metallic filaments, and he's magnetically fixed in place.

“Before we get started,
Jack
ass
Dirt
bag
, I have a few questions to make this a smooth and positive transition into a divided state.”

“Is anybody out there! Somebody let me out of here!” He's able to tilt his neck just enough to see someone peering in through the small window of the unwinding chamber. “Divan, is that you? Help me, please!”

“First, let me confirm your comfort level,” says UNIS. “Please rate your current level of comfort on a scale of one to ten, ten being least uncomfortable.”

And then he realizes with more than a little dismay who the observer is.

“Argent!” he yells. “Argent, you can't do this!”

But Argent offers nothing but a stoic cyclops stare.

“I'm sorry, I didn't get that,” says UNIS. “Please rate your current level of comfort on a scale of one to ten, ten being least uncomfortable.”

“Argent, I'll do anything! I'll give you anything!” But Nelson knows what Argent wants. He wants the right half of his face back. Now.

“All right,” says UNIS, “I'll assume you're sufficiently comfortable. I see that my controls are set for an express unwinding without the use of anesthetic plasma. That means we can begin right away!”

“What? What was that?” Adrenaline panic makes his whole body begin to quiver. “Wait. Stop! Halt!”

“I regret,
Jack
ass
Dirt
bag,
that without anesthesia, you shall be experiencing extreme discomfort, beginning with your wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees, then quickly moving inward. This is perfectly normal for the machine's current setting.”

As the process begins, Nelson locks on Argent's impassive eye, and suddenly realizes that not only is Argent going
to unwind him, but he's going to watch every last minute of it. And he's going to enjoy it.

“To take your mind off of your discomfort,” says UNIS, “I can project a variety of scenic vistas for you. Please choose from the following: mountain flyby, ocean tranquility, vibrant cityscape, or landmarks of the world.”

But all that comes from Nelson is a shrill, bloodcurdling wail.

“I'm sorry,” says UNIS, “that's not a valid response.”

“This is Radio Free Hayden broadcasting live once more, until we get chased away from the station. Today I have something special to share with my listeners. This comes from an article in a major national newspaper. Other articles just like it popped up in print and online everywhere this morning. Of course, some papers buried the story on page twelve beside mattress sale ads, but kudos to those who ran it front page, with a nice headline, like this one:

ARÁPACHE TO GIVE ASYLUM TO UNWINDS

By a unanimous vote of the Arápache Tribal Council yesterday, the nation's wealthiest and most influential Chancefolk tribe has officially announced it will give protective sanctuary to all Unwinds seeking to remain whole. A spokesperson for the Juvenile Authority has stated that they do not recognize the tribe's right to grant sanctuary to AWOLs, and vows to retrieve any fugitive Unwinds from Arápache territory. Chal Tashi'ne, an
attorney for the tribe, responded by saying, “Any incursion by the Juvenile Authority on sovereign tribal land shall be seen as an act of war against the Arápache people, and will be met with deadly force.

“Regardless of what side you're on, you've got to admit it took a lot of guts for a Chancefolk tribe to spin the wheel and go all in. If the Juvenile Authority thinks a tribe of once-great warriors is going to blink, they're in for a surprise.

“And so, this week's song—you know the one—goes out to our Arápache friends. Hopefully, we'll see one or two of you at our rally in November. But until then—

“I've got you . . . under my skin. . . .”

Pretty purple monkshood accents the ornamental gardens of Proactive Citizenry's Molokai complex. The gardeners wear gloves, not only to protect themselves from the thorns of the rosebushes, but because of the monkshood, which they know is chock-full of aconite, a deadly poison that shuts down the respiratory system. It's the roots of the plant that are the most dangerous, especially when boiled and distilled down into a concentrated toxin.

Once more, Camus Comprix defeats the security system of the Molokai complex by tapping the security computer on the wrong shoulder and making it look the other way. It's night now. Not too late, just about ten o'clock, but late enough that activity in the medical research building is at a minimum. They never figured out how he compromised the video surveillance system that first time, so he does it again—now toward a different end.
He's delayed the signal by fifteen minutes. That's how long he has to do the job before anyone sees what's going on.

He slips into the ward of preconscious rewinds unobserved, carrying in his hands a bag with syringes and vials of his special aconite elixir. When it's injected directly into the port of their intravenous PICC lines, they'll die within a minute. Once he gets into a rhythm, he estimates it will take him twelve minutes to euthanize all fifty.

Cam thinks he has it all under control. He's sure his plan can't go wrong. But then he makes a crucial mistake. Rather than beginning at the far end of the chamber, where the freshest rewinds lie, still heavily bandaged and nowhere near consciousness, he begins closest to the door, where the bandages have been removed and the rewinds are further along. Much further along.

As he fills the first syringe with the deadly liquid, he happens to glance down at the rewind.

And the rewind is looking back.

He studies Cam with a kind of vigilant terror, like a rabbit a moment before it bolts. Cam is hypnotized by two entirely mismatched eyes. One green, the other so dark brown it's almost black. The lines of scars across his face are like the roads of an old city—random, and senseless. His hands—one sienna, one umber—test the bonds that tie him to the bed.

“The fly?” he says, pleading. “The fly? In the web? The fly?”

It would make no sense to most, but Cam knows the way a rewind thinks. He understands the strange connections its patchwork brain must make in order to communicate, leaping over the concrete, grasping only upon impressions. Metaphors. Of the many languages Cam knows, this one came first. The inner language of the rewound mind.

Cam knows the reference. An old movie. The head of a
man on the body of a fly. It said, “Help me,” as it struggled in the spider's web. “Help me, help me,” and then it was devoured.

“Yes,” Cam tells him. “I'm here to help you. In a manner of speaking.” He presses air out of the syringe, the muddy poison fluid squirting just a bit from the needle tip. He finds the injection port and readies himself to end this poor rewind's life.

“Hike in the woods,” the rewind says. “I told you to wear long pants. Pink lotion everywhere.”

“Yes, you're itching, but it's not poison ivy,” Cam tells him. “I'm sorry that you itch all over. That's just the way it is.”

Then a single tear forms in the rewind's darker eye, coursing down the rough ridge of a scar, until spilling into his ear. “Back of my jersey? Card in my wallet? There, on the birthday cake, in blue?”

“No!” says Cam, surprised by his own anger. “No, I don't know who you are. I can't tell you your name. No one can!” He finds his hand that holds the syringe is starting to quiver. Best to do it quick. End it now. So why is he waiting?

“The fly . . . the fly . . .”

And the desperation, the absolute helplessness in the rewind's eyes is too much for Cam to bear. Cam knows what must be done . . . but he can't do it. He can't do it. He pulls the syringe away, capping it, furious at his own compassion.
Does this mean I'm truly whole?
he wonders.
Is compassion a virtue of a soul?

“It's all right,” Cam says. “The spider won't get you.”

The rewind's eyes get a little bit wider, not with fear, but with hope. “Slide into home? Run scores?”

“Yes,” Cam tells him. “You're safe.”

Sometimes we must kill our babies. It's a basic tenet of every creative or scientific endeavor. Become too attached to any single aspect of one's work, and one risks failure. Such is the result of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Hope for Cam's future had been shaky since that troubling meeting they had with Cobb and Bodeker back in Washington. The one where Cam became violent—if not in action, then in thought—and although they appeared to accept the cover story of Cam being sequestered in Molokai this whole time, Roberta suspects there's a mole within the staff who informed the senator and general that Cam was AWOL.

“We've decided that it's too unstable for our purposes,” Bodeker told her earlier today. He always refers to Cam as “it,” which has always annoyed Roberta, but now she's beginning to understanding the practicality of his approach. “We'd prefer that our entire investment go into the reintegrated infantry.” That's Bodeker's euphemism for the rewind army they've commissioned. Roberta's understanding is that this reintegrated infantry will be carefully introduced to the public as “Team Mozaic,” an even more euphemistic term to offer up the rewinds in the most appealing light.

As for Cam, he was like a toe dipped into the hot water of a bath. The public was intrigued by him, dazzled even. Thanks to Cam, they've come to feel that the water is fine. Now all that remains is for the public to be eased into the bath in calculated measures, lest they balk at the heat. Skillfully spun, Team Mozaic will become an accepted facet of the military, without anyone realizing exactly how it happened.

“You are to be commended for your vision,” Bodeker told
Roberta, “but Camus Comprix is no longer a part of our equation. Its job is done.”