Burn (16 page)

“I remember one time you told me that I lived too much in my head. You said, ‘Don’t you have a gut instinct, Weed? Have you ever just gone with your gut?’ Do you remember that?”

Partridge has no recollection of it at all. “Must be the memory loss,” Partridge says.

“No,” Weed says. “You don’t remember it because you said it without even thinking about it. You poked me in the gut with one finger, and everyone laughed.”

“Sorry, Weed. I’m sure I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Everything you said meant something. You were Willux’s son. It was your free pass to do whatever you wanted.”

“Really?” Partridge says defensively. “Because I remember people offering to beat my ass, and did you jump in and help me? No. You just kept your nose to your studies. And you know what? I was right. You do live in your head too much.”

“And
you
,” Weed says, “should try relying on your gut a little less and your head a little more. If you did, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

He’s blaming Partridge for the suicides, and Weed’s right. There’s no denying that Partridge sparked it all. Partridge raises one hand in the air. Weed’s gone too far. Partridge can no longer allow people to talk to him like this—not even an old friend.

Weed coughs, straightens his shirt. It’s quiet a moment before Weed finally returns to his role as doctor. “What about your memory?”

“It’s still patchy sometimes—you know, my time on the outside.” He remembers most of it—Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan, and Helmud, and the mothers fused to their children. He remembers the
thunk
of his pinky being chopped off and how it lay there, disconnected. And there are things that still come to him in splotches of color—mainly his mother and Sedge dying on the forest floor. He remembers being with Lyda in the empty brass four-poster bed frame, bundled under his coat, the heat of their bodies. “You know how it is. Some things you want to remember,” he says. “Some things you want to forget.”

“I bet,” Arvin says, a slight smirk on his face.

Does Weed know he’s a murderer? If so, Partridge almost wishes he’d come right out and say it. “You bet?”

Arvin leans forward, elbows on his knees, and lowers his voice. “Tell me why I’m really here.”

“First off, where’s Glassings?”

“Durand Glassings? Our World History teacher? This was what you were trying to get at when we were at the memorial service. Still on that?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Foresteed’s telling me the same thing. But someone knows.”

“Not me.” Weed looks at him stone-faced.

“I want to know if you’ve started to successfully take people out of suspension,” Partridge says, “like I told you to.”

“Look, this isn’t easy. Belze is very old. He was very weak when he was put into suspension, postoperative actually. And did you know he only has one leg? The stump ends in a clot of wires. We can’t just yank him from suspension. I mean, if you’re doing this in some way for your sister’s sake, it’s not going to do any good if he dies in the process.”

“How do you know he’s connected to Pressia?”

“I’ve got the highest level clearance possible. In fact, some of us are curious about what really happened in your mother’s bunker. Did you ever come across those vials and maybe some other stuff?”

“I thought you’d only want that for my dad, for a last-ditch effort to cure him, and since he didn’t get them in time to do him any good…”

“I could do a lot with them—trust me.” Arvin stands up and paces.

“Really? Are you sure about that, Weed?”

“Jesus, Partridge! I’ve got all the stuff I need to Purify someone, but then they fall apart.”

“I’ve seen your handiwork,” Partridge says a little sarcastically.

“You mean the wretches we brought in?” Weed says, walking to the window, looking down at the street. “Those were just experiments.”

“No, they were
people
.”

He turns to Partridge quickly and says, “And their sacrifices will not be in vain if I have the formula and that one last ingredient. I’d be able to fix all of the wretches without any of the side effects that killed your father. You think the guys in Special Forces are going to come out of it clean? There are friends of ours from the academy in there, Partridge.”

“I just didn’t know you had this altruistic bent. I mean, Arvin Weed, humanitarian. I had no idea when you were, you know, overseeing my torture.”

“Orders are orders. Some would say I was more dutiful than Willux’s own son. Say what you want about him; he was a genius, your father was. You’ll never even begin to imagine what his brain was capable of. You should show some respect.”

“Weed, in your head and in your gut, you know my father was a mass murderer; you’ve
got
to know that.”

Weed nods. He lightly scratches his forehead. He says in an eerily calm voice, “I can make something good happen. I can save people. I can make good where your father failed.”

Partridge shakes his head.

“You think you can take over where my father left off somehow?” Partridge stands up, turns his back on Weed, crosses his arms on his chest. “I know you were the one who developed the pill,” Partridge says softly. He’s unable to look Weed in the eye. In this sentence, he’s acknowledging the fact that Partridge used the pill to kill his father, as well as the real possibility that Weed was an accomplice to this murder. It could be that Partridge and Weed are not as different as they seem, bound as they are in a moment in history—in an assassination.

“Without you,” Partridge says, “I couldn’t have done it.” He turns and glances at Weed, then looks down at the floor.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Weed says.

Partridge can’t stand the lies and denials anymore. He walks over to Weed, pushes him and grabs him by the shoulder. “Goddamn it! If you admired my old man so much, why’d you do it?”

Weed glares at Partridge, full of hate. He pulls his shoulder free of Partridge’s grasp.

“I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And then Partridge knows the answer. Arvin already said it:
I can make good where your father failed.
Weed wanted to take over.

Weed walks to the couch and sits down heavily. “You don’t know anything, Partridge. It’s the same old shit. You’re strolling along, being Willux’s son, and you haven’t done any homework.”

Partridge sits down across from Weed again too. He presses his palms together. “That’s not entirely true. I’ve been to my father’s secret chamber in his war room. I learned a lot there. In fact, your name appeared in a document there.”

“Of course it did! I’m in the thick of it, Partridge, and I have been for a long time. Even when we were both in the academy, I was already being brought into inner circles.”

“If I don’t know anything, Weed, how about you enlighten me? Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

“Well,” Weed says, “for one, your sister and her friends stole one of our airships. It was tagged, of course. We know its route. We know who they likely contacted—how they figured out where to find these other survivors is a mystery—but
they
actually do their homework, turns out.”

Partridge ignores the dig. “What the hell are you talking about? A route?”

“Across the Atlantic Ocean, and they’re on their way back.”

Partridge laughs. It’s ridiculous. “The Atlantic? In an airship? Not possible.”

“They took it to Newgrange, one of your father’s special locales. If you’ve been in his inner chamber, then you know he’s spared a few holy places and the people lucky enough to be there at the time.”

Newgrange. Partridge thinks back to all of Glassings’ lectures on ancient burial mounds and Partridge’s father’s obsession since childhood with domes. “But Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they went all the way there and back again?”

Arvin nods.

“Foresteed should have told me all this!”

“I’m sure it’s in the reports.”

“I don’t read those reports!” Partridge says to himself more than to Weed.

“And there. You’ve proven my point.”

“Newgrange,” Partridge says. “In an airship.” The world seems to open up. Pressia, Bradwell, El Capitan and Helmud—they’ve been across an ocean. “My God,” he whispers. “But they’re not back yet? It sounds dangerous.”

“Well, they got there and they’re in the air again. The question is why. What did they think they’d find there? And were they successful?”

“Is Foresteed on this, tracking their progress?”

“Foresteed doesn’t care much about your sister and her friends. He’s got other interests.”

“Like what?”

Arvin smiles. “You can ask him that yourself.”

“Arvin, listen. I think we could get a council together—people from the outside and the inside sitting down to talk. We can help each side to understand the other. That’s where my father really failed. These people are killing themselves, but if they knew some of the people out there, if they met Pressia—”

Weed cuts him off. “That’s nice, Partridge. But it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“As long as the wretches wear our shared history on their skin, there will be no peace. Guilt, Partridge. You can’t live with all of that guilt without wanting to blame the victims and exonerate yourself. Human nature.”

“But…”

Weed wags his head, smiling. “Here’s an example. You want me to bring these people out of suspension. What the hell are we going to do with all these people? Huh? Some of them are deformed. Some are even wretches. What are you going to do? Get them jobs? Send them into grocery stores?”

“Why not?”

“I’ve spent the last few days stitching up slit wrists, staring into big, gaping gunshot wounds, pumping people’s stomachs. Because of you.”

“Wait, now,” Partridge says. This is the second time Weed’s pinned the deaths on him. It’s not completely fair. “My father shouldn’t have shoved lies down their throats.”

“So while I was cleaning up the mess, you were busy rationalizing it all away? Is that how you’ve spent your time?”

“No, I told you I went into my father’s secret chamber, and I know that my father knew he’d made a mistake. He knew the end was coming.”

“And that’s where you saw my name, huh?” Weed smooths his hair, rubs his temple. “Yeah, I remember that report. Pretty sobering. So we’re not the superior race after all. Imagine how your father felt when he caught on to that one.” Weed laughs, but there’s no lingering smile.

“I don’t know what made him think we were superior to begin with. I’ll never understand him.”

“Is that what you want from me? A psychoanalysis of your father?”

“I wouldn’t ask that of my worst enemy,” Partridge says. “But I do know that if my father didn’t like a truth, he found a way to change it.” Partridge reaches into his pocket and pulls out the sheet of scientific information that he took from his father’s files. He doesn’t want to show it to Weed, but who else is there? “Explain this to me.”

Weed takes the sheet, glances at it, and hands it back. “It’s a recipe.”

“To make what?”

“People.”

“I don’t get it. People?”

“Why would you? You’re making a person the old-fashioned way, right? Knocking someone up.”

“You know her name. She’s not just
someone
. Just explain the science, okay?”

Weed smiles, happy to get a rise out of Partridge, and leans back again. “This was his recipe to make them from scratch. A little DNA from Pures, a little from the tougher breed, the wretches. Some cloning, some breeding.”

“Did you give this recipe to him?”

Weed laughs. “That stuff is very advanced. Who knows where he got it? But not from us. No. It’s high art.”

“So he was going to start to build his own super race from scratch.”

“He wasn’t
going to start
to do it. It’s under way. In fact, I was with you when you saw them.”

“Saw
them
? Who?”

“Maybe it’s one of the patches that hasn’t yet come clear. Plus, you were a little drugged up. We were taking you in for cleansing.”

“You mean when you almost drowned me?”

“Your father preferred the term
baptism
.”

“Who did I see? Where?”

“The babies—rows and rows of tiny babies.”

And then Partridge remembers it—clearly. The bank of windows like in a giant maternity ward, but all of the babies were premature, tiny, writhing, some squalling, some placid and still. Babies. He was lying down—no, strapped down—rolling…being rolled on a gurney.

“New Eden deserved its own Adams and Eves,” Weed says. “Willux gave up on the people of the Dome too—we’re weak and vulnerable with delicate lungs and testy hearts. He started to hate us near the end, Partridge. And when you went out and survived, he was proud of you. You didn’t even have any of the things that had been built into your brother’s coding. You were just out there, raw and alone and surviving. You should have heard him talk about you.” Weed looks sickened by the memory. And Partridge finds it hard to believe. His father was always so disappointed in Partridge. But then he thinks of the war room, all of those pictures from his childhood, all of those love letters. Maybe his father hid his love and pride well.

Still, Partridge isn’t sure what to think. His father’s feelings for him are so twisted and impossible to pin down. “He never told me he was proud of me. Not ever.” Except at the end, just before he died—knowing Partridge had poisoned him—he told Partridge, “You are my son. You are mine”—which made Partridge feel like his father, for the first time, saw something in Partridge that was a reflection of himself. When Partridge thinks of it now, it’s as if his father were telling him that he and Partridge were alike, maybe even that Partridge was bound to become his father, which his father would have meant as a great compliment. “He only loved himself.”

“Well, the new Adams and Eves became his people, his hope. They were the future.” Weed stands up. “You should see for yourself.”

“What about little Jarv Hollenback? Did you get him out of suspension? Is he with his parents?”

Weed nods.