Chains and Memory (27 page)

Julian expected her to be angry at him — and she was, a little. But not as much as he had expected.
I think somebody got to Ramos,
she admitted.
I doubt they told her outright that the shield is lethal, but they must have done
something
like that. I believe what Grayson said, that they don't leave this thing on us just because it makes a useful leash. But I also believe they like
having
the leash. And they're going to react very badly if we try to take it away.

She went silent again, closing her mind off from him to the point where he almost thought the conversation was over. Then she reached out again, and he restored the connection.
How long do you think it will take you to hack the release? To the point where you could figure out the key to somebody else's shield.

I have no idea,
Julian admitted.
If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have told you that I'd do it in a day, with two actual keys to use as examples. Whoever designed this was a genius, though. It's more complicated than I expected.
He doubted the whole thing was the work of Medina Perez. Shielding hadn't been nearly that sophisticated back in her day. They'd improved on her design, elaborated it, turned it into something more than a mere protective measure for children.

A week, then? A month? Longer?

He bowed his head, looking at his boots neatly aligned with the ribbed flooring of the car.
I really don't know. It could be a week. It could be a year. Right now, it depends on how clever I am. It would probably go faster if I shared what we have with certain other people, but—

But that would increase the risk of you being caught before you get anywhere,
Kim finished.
What about finding an alternative to the shield? Do you think you could make a difference with what Robert and Liesel are doing, if you focused on it?

Focused on that, rather than on the deep shield . . .

It was something he should have thought about years ago — but he'd always assumed the shield could be taken out the same way it was put in. Because of that, he'd been willing to accept to accept the necessity for it in the first place. But that wasn't true anymore.

Julian blew out a slow breath, thinking. He didn't have an answer before the train reached Rosslyn, and not much of one after they got off. “You realize there's no simple answer to that,” he said as they went up the stairs.

“I know. It's like saying, ‘Do you think you could invent cold fusion?' I guess what I'm asking, at least to start with, is whether you think an alternative is even
possible
.”

That, at least, he could answer without hesitation. “Yes. I don't know what it would be, and I can't even promise it would be better than what we have now. But we know so much that we didn't know even a year ago, and oceans more than we knew back in Medina Perez's day. And what's more, I think that's something we
can
ask for help with.”

Because they had switched to speaking out loud, her reply was circumspect. “We can, can't we? I mean, I won't pretend they'll
like
it. But at least it's a socially acceptable thing for us to do. Only—” She bit her lip, shaking her head. “I don't want to divide your attention.”

“Then don't,” he said. “This is more your kind of thing anyway.”

Her golden eyes widened. “Huh? I don't think I can divine my way to an answer, Julian. And my knowledge of CM is hopelessly scattershot right now. If Robert hasn't come up with the solution already, I don't stand a snowflake's chance in a pyrokinesis class.”

They were in public, so he didn't drape his arm over her shoulders the way he wanted to. He did smile, though, and gave it an empathic boost. “I didn't mean you should invent the alternative yourself. You can be a spokeswoman, and a rallying point. For the Fiain and the public both.”

He could sense her doubt just in the tension of her body. “You really think the Fiain would welcome
me
in that role?”

“Not all of them,” he admitted. “But not everybody would welcome me, either. We aren't a monolith, Kim, and gods know we aren't much good at building alliances with the world outside our own borders. The most brilliant solution in the world won't help if we can't persuade the Division to start using it.”

She wasn't used to the protocols of wilder society, which said contact was a thing done out of public sight. Kim slid one arm around his waist, matching her step to his. Julian gave in, returning the embrace, and they walked in step the rest of the way home.

I spent a couple of days thinking about what Julian and I had discussed. Not the technical side—well, mostly not—but the more immediate question of how to go about it. I came up with a few sensible approaches. Then, after consulting with Julian, Toby, and Guan, I went another route entirely.

Messages had piled up on my port while I was ignoring the world, though they trailed off as none of them got replies. I went through them, deleted most, listened to a few, and finally made a phone call.

“Artemis Chang,” a crisp voice said on the other end of the line.

“Ms. Chang? It's Kimberly Argant-Dubois. Fiain,” I added belatedly, remembering the legal change. “I'm sorry I haven't returned your call before now. Are you still interested in doing an interview?”

~

“Your declaration got a great deal of attention,” Artemis Chang said. “Why the long silence afterward?”

She was the epitome of perfectly-groomed fashion, sitting across from me in a minimalist chair, her asymmetrical jacket hanging at an attractive angle. Even her haircut made me feel inadequate, every strand was clipped to such a precise standard. Her show's stylists had worked me over before putting me in front of the camera, but I wanted to look like myself, inadequate fashion and all. So I was in the business clothes I wore to FAR, but had my hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, and relatively little makeup.

I tried to focus on her and ignore the camera, the way she'd instructed me to do. “For the same reason I made the declaration to begin with—at least, that's part of it. The deep shield is very traumatic. I'm sure many of your viewers have been shielded at one point or another during their lives, but this thing just isn't the same. In the days after I left the hospital, I was in no state to talk to anybody.” I allowed myself a small, self-deprecating grin. “To be honest, I probably would have answered your questions with wall-to-wall profanity.”

Chang didn't laugh. This wasn't that kind of interview, where we chatted like old friends and left everybody feeling mildly entertained. We'd agreed that I would crack the occasional joke—it would help humanize me for the people who couldn't see past my golden eyes—but she would keep the tone serious. “When you say ‘traumatic' . . . can you describe that?”

I looked her straight in the eye. To her credit, she didn't flinch. “Imagine,” I said, “that someone has reached inside you and torn everything out. You're a hollow shell, somehow still walking around. It isn't like being tied up. It's like being paralyzed. Not only can't you move, you can't even feel that you have a body to move
with
.”

She nodded soberly. “Is it like this for all wilders, or only for you? Does having the deep shield installed after you're an adult change the effect?”

“Yes and no. When they put the shield on me, I
knew
what I was missing. The other wilders grow up with that feeling; they don't know what it means until they're old enough to understand the explanation. For them, it's more normal.” I paused just long enough to give my next words effect. “But that kind of suffering should never be normal.”

“And so you've vowed to get rid of the shield,” Chang said.

“It's more than just that,” I said. This was the important part; this was why I'd decided to see if any of the interviewers who had contacted me were still interested. I wanted to spread this idea as far as I possibly could, so that even if I got shut down, somebody else might run with it. I just hoped my silence hadn't lasted long enough that everybody forgot about me. “The shield was developed as a means of protecting wilder children, giving them a chance to grow up and then learn control of their gifts. The woman who developed it, Araceli Medina Perez, was a brilliant doctor—we owe her so much. But we've come a long way since then. I think it's time we developed a replacement for the shield.

“I'll be the first to admit, I don't know how to do that. I'm hoping other people will put their minds to the task. We have a lot of brilliant psychics these days, not only here in the U.S. but throughout the world. We even have the sidhe. I don't believe there's only one solution to this problem, and we've already found it. I want to find a new one.”

Chang nodded thoughtfully. It was a pose, but a convincing one; there was a reason she was one of the most highly-regarded interview journalists out there. “What about those who say the shield serves another purpose? One that might not be replicated by your new solution?”

“What purpose is that?” I asked, letting my voice harden. “To keep wilders in line? We're talking about the people who
invented
the concept of the Guardian. Who still, even now, make up nearly a fifth of the Guardian Corps. Ninety percent of them volunteer for that duty. They willingly put their lives on the line to protect us. And we're afraid they're going to become the bad guys?”

“You have to admit that their gifts—your gifts—are formidable.” Images of the Crystal City station would be inserted here after we were done filming, I was sure, reminding everybody just what I was capable of. “It's the loaded weapon argument: if you're carrying a gun around in your head all the time, isn't it in the interests of public safety to see to it that gun is regulated?”

“Last time I checked, we wait to imprison people until
after
they commit a crime.”

“You consider the deep shield to be imprisonment?”

It was easier to talk about the thing now that it had been deactivated, but it still made me tense up. I tried to let that show. “It's worse than imprisonment. It's cruel and unusual punishment, and it's a violation of civil rights.”

Chang spread her elegantly manicured hands. “A judicial review at the turn of the century concluded that it was acceptable to abridge the rights of wilders in that fashion so long as there was a compelling public interest to justify it.”

She'd done her homework . . . but I'd done more. “That has never been brought before the Supreme Court. And the ‘compelling public interest' is safety—the safety of everyone, wilders included. If we can ensure that safety by other, less problematic means, then we should.”

The heat of the lights was beginning to get to me. I wanted to cool myself off, but that was subtle pyrokinesis, of a sort I still hadn't mastered. If I tried, I was liable to do something that totally distracted Chang, like dropping the whole set to freezing. I had to trust that one of her people would call a pause if I started to sweat visibly.

Which seemed pretty likely, given Chang's next question. “In light of everything you've described, why are we only hearing about this now? Why haven't any wilders brought the situation to public notice before, or filed a lawsuit against the state?”

In other words,
who the hell are you to complain, when they haven't?

The easy answer was “because of the
geas
.” But I couldn't say that. It wasn't public knowledge that the Seelie had laid a duty on the half-breeds all those ages ago, and even my thirst for transparency didn't go that far. There were too many ways it could backfire—starting with giving people the idea that the only reason they could trust wilders was because the sidhe had compelled them to be trustworthy. If we ever got rid of that binding, I didn't want the next step to be a pogrom against the Fiain.

Instead I shrugged, trying to look wry. “Maybe I'm just not as good a person as the rest of them. The ones I've met are amazingly generous; they'd rather devote their lives to helping other people, and never mind their own happiness. But I'll tell you this: I haven't found a
single
one who likes the shield. If we had a viable alternative, I think they'd take it. I know for certain that some of them would. And really, is there any good reason not to at least look into it?”

“That's what you intend to do?”

“With help, if I can get it. This is my call to the world, and I hope it's one others can rally behind.” Now, contrary to Chang's advice, I turned and faced the camera directly. “Let's find a solution—together. I'd like to put together a research group, and a foundation to raise money for the work. It's going to take a while to set those things up, but we don't have to wait; we can start looking for answers now.”

I wanted to go on with the rest of it, making it clear that my call was not just to the human population of the mortal world, but also to the sidhe of the Otherworld—the Seelie half of them, anyway. When I'd talked it over with Julian, though, he'd convinced me that doing so would only rile up anti-sidhe sentiment, poisoning people against my cause. I hadn't been able to restrain myself from slipping in one brief reference to them; hopefully that would be enough.

Because for all my optimistic words, I wasn't sure we could solve this problem without them.

~

I expected to get some messages from people after the interview aired.

I didn't expect a
flood
.

“Gods and sidhe,” I said to Julian, the old curse slipping out by force of habit. “I'm glad I set up a dedicated account ahead of time. I wish everybody would use it, like I asked — some of them are pinging my usual account.” I grimaced. “If that keeps up, I'm going to need to switch to an unlisted service.”