Unnaturals (35 page)

"I don't advise you to. Take a piece of wisdom from me: kisses never lead to anything good."

"Mel, you must know that—"

"She must know many things, and yours can wait."

Jerome, and she didn't care to hear his voice ever again in her life. She slept.

The second time she woke up, she was surrounded with medstats, physical wires being stuck into her skin. Fluids were running into her, and her body was heavy and disobedient, though her head was clear. No invisible, virtual nerves or interfaces. Her father was beside her, holding her hand, and Nicolas was standing by the bed. She thought she saw Nicolas sigh with relief.

She looked at the younger man. "Please get out of my sight," she said, "chief of Death."

None of the men said anything at first. Then Nicolas sighed.

"Jerome tells me you didn't get to the most important part of the wonderful experience. The City of Death is what keeps this world from becoming what it was before, Mel. This is why they surround themselves with all that decay. It is a reminder. Of what the world was, of what it should never again become—of what it could become at any point if someone doesn't keep control. You know what those entwined snakes with the bitten tails mean? Repetition, and infinity. None of what has happened to us is just a whim, Mel. It was all for the greater good—"

"Jerome tells you!" She was shouting now, so her voice swallowed his. "Why don't you go to Jerome then!? And leave
me
alone! Perhaps he'd like you around—I know you find it easy to make '
chiefs
' like and trust you and, one day, transfer their power to you, one way or another. Will it work this time? The gods know! What will you do with this, and when will you abandon it? Even the gods don't know that!"

His eyes narrowed and her father opened his mouth to say something for the first time. Mel's eyes closed, and somehow so did her ears. She saw nothing, heard nothing—and she'd once told herself to never cry because of these two, so she didn't.

The third time she woke up, she found a small computer beside her in addition to the medstats with liquids and wires. It wasn't Nicolas'. It belonged to Benedict234354, and there were links to specific text and video feeds on the screen. She watched them and read them. She'd been doing this all her life, and she could not just stop. She could make herself not listen to people and not look at people. They knew it. They used it.

The feeds told her that there had been unnaturals in the old, bad days. Or, rather, some people had had hints of the unnatural—of thinking about more than their own selfish good, of trying to help the world or even establish better worlds. Sometimes they succeeded, a little.

She saw a video of a kind old woman calling herself a mother to many starved, homeless children, giving them food, finding doctors who would heal the sick of them. She saw doctors who agreed to help without being paid. She saw rulers, too, people who had power and wanted to use it for more than buying airtrains and such for themselves. They made schools for children who could not read and didn't know the numbers. They paid for lakes being cleaned of debris.

She saw people with less power, too, who still did what they could. A piece of junk removed from the river was still more than nothing. A piece of bread given to a starving child was more than nothing.

And then, she saw some of the kind rulers send airtrains laden not with snowflakes but with explosive missiles to places where children still lived, though not the children they sent to school.
The enemy.

It had not been possible to care for the whole world, the feed said. Because usually no one was powerful enough—and because, even at moments when someone was, that someone was likely not to be kind—or his or her kindness was broken. Bad genes. All humans had them.

Genes could be better in the next generation if carefully selected, Meliora knew. She watched the world of long ago, and knew it had come a long way.

The City of Death had the power these days, Meliora learned from the feeds. It had had it for centuries—and that, the feed said, was right and good.

It was because of the City of Death's gentle ruling hand that people had genes that these days didn't let them hurt others—at least in the cities—that people were young, led pleasant lives, had only one child per couple, and couldn't concentrate on something, remember something, or
suffer
about something for too long. People didn't overpopulate and poison the earth but were gradually and non-violently becoming fewer. They didn't harm other people on purpose, and on top of all that were happy.

"The slight problem with that, you bastards," Meliora whispered, "is that they live empty lives devoid not only of suffering and violence but of curiosity and love, and that they die young."

The cities were good places, the feeds said. The cities had all the right climate, all the right microbes, all the right air and even meticulously crafted daylight and sunlight, measured to be more beneficial to a human organism than whatever nature provided outside.

There were also, of course, the villages. Places without the cities' health, convenience and tight control. At some point someone in the City of Death had become worried that people were losing their skill to fend for themselves, and not everyone in the city agreed that this was a good thing. What if something happened? What if an asteroid hit the earth, or magnetic rays from the sun destroyed all computers? People could not, should not, become entirely peaceful. Some of them must be able to live in a cruel world.

Hence the villages. Each of those started its existence supplied at least with some goods. Then, slowly, the City of Death let people there wean themselves from the cities' conveniences. Throw in some godly books that forbade or allowed certain things, and it worked quite well.

The City of Death didn't know if there were real gods. They didn't care. And, they didn't let the villages be too free. If a village made too much progress—if it discovered how to make long-range missiles, for example, like Village 15, destroyed two days ago, the City of Death took action.

Oh, old Nicolas,
Meliora thought.
If you knew. If only you knew.
She wanted to throw the computer at the wall, but she didn't. She laid it carefully beside herself and slept away from it all.

The fourth time, the medstats were still there, and so was Jerome.

"You know, if you prefer to die, I'd rather not waste any more medicine on you. Ben has been infusing you with his precious microbes—the ones that keep a person young. Oh, don't worry. It is neither your mother's transformation nor Ben's gruesome thing. We gave you
just the right amount.
Keeps you alive. Not young." He winked at her. "You know about
just right amounts,
don't you—and no, that old hag Stella told me nothing about the herbs she gave you. I thought she might want to get rid of me some day, though. No, I have Ben the frog-guy to thank for the knowledge. He'd been wallowing in what you brought with you like a pig in mud. '
Such knowledge, such great possibilities,
' he goes—and that old hag had it and never gave it to us. Well, what can a man do?" He shrugged exaggeratedly, which resulted in a bout of wheezing and coughing.

She turned her back to him but couldn't escape from his voice.

"So, how about your young man? A day ago he stormed out of here as if wild dogs were chasing him. You should be grateful to him for bringing you—Oh, how much I love that look on your face! Mel, my dear girl, many things are fun in life, but few are as much fun as a broken heart!" He started coughing again.

She took a deep breath. "You could use some microbes yourself, Jerome."

Wheezing laughter now. "Gods save me from that."

"And will they save you from
this,
teacher?"

There were medstats around Meliora, and her body and mind were pulsing with invisible nerves. She reached out—and the medstats reached out, too. Metal hands shoved Jerome against the wall.

You didn't need brute force if you had computers. You didn't need herbs and such. And, in a city so dependent on computers, if you could reach out to the machines, you could bring the whole city down.
Right now.
Perhaps she'd never have the chance again. Benedict and the rest of them were smart. Certainly Benedict or whoever was best at computers—whoever knew about machines, humans,
and
thoughtmotion interfaces, would know how to research her new power. The pilot had even said she wasn't the only one. She might never get another chance—and, right now, her father and Nicolas weren't in the city. She felt them in an airtrain somewhere. She wouldn't hurt
them.

"So. Finally we are back to initiative." Jerome grinned from where the medstats were holding him. "
Will
the gods help me, I wonder?"

Meliora made the medstats push, and Jerome's face twisted in pain, and then she knew that the gods would. She had Jerome at her mercy. She had this whole city at her mercy—and she knew she couldn't break it. Just like she'd known that she couldn't deliberately postpone Alice's healing to control Andreas, just like she couldn't make people deliberately sick. She couldn't hurt. She couldn't break just like this.

The City of Death was evil, she tried to think. The city would certainly kill in the future—oh, gods, the city didn't even heal people when they reached their young age limit or fell sick in villages! But there must be, must,
must be
another way...

The medstats let go of Doctor Jerome. Meliora pressed her hands to her face and cried, even though she'd said she'd never cry because of a man.

***

They let her go out of the room with the medstats after that. They told her that she'd been sick but now was all right enough to walk around. And she was obviously no danger. She obviously couldn't destroy even what she hated. She went to the apartment she'd shared with Nicolas and curled up on one of the beds. Let them think it. Let them think she was someone who would go their way now. Those emotionless people who took lives and played with them so easily must have forgotten something. You didn't have to kill in order to change the world.

There would be a cure for young age, for everyone. She'd failed in so many things since fleeing Lucasta—but
that
she wouldn't fail in. She only had to find the cure, and then she'd find a way to add it to people's young-age treatment. No one would ever again die before their time. And then, she'd take care of the villages, of the diseases and the use of bullets or knives. Jerome obviously wanted her here. The City of Death needed new blood, he had told her. Periodically, new unnaturals must come here—but first they must deserve it. He said that she had. He said she could be a part of it all now, of those who stood above the world.

Nicolas came back that night. She had no computer on her, so she didn't sense him. Her father wasn't with him.

"He stayed in the village," Nicolas said. "After we left, it was a mess. Devils coming from the skies—such things. A division of people of the gods and people of the devils. Whippings, the burning of houses, and—" He sighed, and it was heavy, as if a whole village, or a whole world, had been laid upon his shoulders.

"Old Carlos is dead. He jumped in to defend Ronny from Andreas' wrath when Ronny said he was better with jars now, and that one day he'd build a flying thing himself. Ronny is all right. Mathilda is not—but she'll be better now that your father is there. In their eyes, he was taken by the gods—or the devils, or whatever he decides to make of it—but he came back. He told them he was healed from whatever had possessed him when he tried to kill his own daughter, the child of his blood. You know the Book of the Gods, you know about sacrifice. He said he saw the gods—no matter if it was the gods or devils who took him first—he saw the gods' shining cities and benevolent eyes and could have stayed among them forever, but he decided to come back to spread the gods' words. '
Do not fight. Do not be violent. Do not repeat our mistakes.
' The village has a priest now in addition to the priestess. It might even work."

He lay down on the other bed and closed his eyes, running his hands along his face. Meliora looked at him, then slowly got up and went to sit beside him.

He opened his eyes. They were close to expressionless, though his hand had gone to enclose her fingers.

"I need no consolation, Mel, though I am glad you're willing to give it."

"Don't try to be like them. No emotion, just ruling or watching, even if it is just a village. And it won't always be just a village for you, I know. I am out of place in the City of Death—but you belong here, and not just as someone ordinary."

"You can"—the eyes were suddenly not emotionless, and his hand was tight on hers—"have a place, if you want it."

She lowered her eyes. "I know what you mean. A place with you. You left the village because of me, I know it now. Everything there would have been much better with you as a chief, but you thought I must leave, and you wouldn't let me stay in what you called
this primitive world.
"

"Someone like you"—he caressed her hand—"The village would have either broken you, or you would have broken it. And you would have stayed there. You had bitten into it and wouldn't let go, you would try to heal everyone and everything no matter what."

"And you came for me later. Benedict told me. He told me exactly what Jerome told
you.
"

It had been something completely normal for Jerome. "
Go, boy,
" he'd said, "but then you have the responsibility to bring her back alive. She might not make it. She's done something with computers that no one before her has succeeded in. It might kill her. It likely will. It killed enough others. If you go and she still dies, you lose the chance of ever seeing this city again. You belong here, you know that. Would you sacrifice it all for a girl? But if you stay now, you may stay forever."

"Nic, I hated you for bringing me back here, yet it turns out they were likely the only ones who could heal me after my computer work. You did it all for me, and I—I don't deserve you."