Human Sister (2 page)

Soon, the man, the guard, Grandpa, and Elio were huddled together. They talked animatedly for a short time before Elio lunged at the man in the suit. Grandpa grabbed Elio and pushed him toward the back door of the security car. Grandpa opened the car door and motioned for Elio to get in. Elio shook his head and stiffened his shoulders but finally complied.

Grandpa walked back and resumed speaking with the two men. The security cars began leaving. Grandpa returned to the car in which Elio waited, opened the door, and pointed toward me. Elio stood up out of the car and, evidently catching sight of me, began waving. He was wearing the Italian-made jacket with a lapis lazuli pattern that friends in Amsterdam had given him for Christmas. He waved until Grandpa placed an arm around his shoulders and said something to him. Then he put his fingers to his lips, blew a kiss my way, and he and Grandpa got into the security car, which sped off.

“There, now,” the man sitting beside me said. “It looks like everyone’s figured out what’s what.” He reached down and took hold of my carry-on. “I’ll take care of this for you. Please give me your boarding pass. I’ll have someone claim your checked luggage.”

He took the bag onto his lap, and I handed him my pass. He stood and gestured for me to enter the aisle ahead of him. As I did, the man in the dark suit entered the plane. He walked briskly toward us and stopped in front of me.

“This is Mr. Casey,” Smith said. “He’s also a member of the investigating team.”

This short but powerful looking man with deep-set gray eyes acknowledged me with a minatory scowl. “I’ll take the bag,” he said. “Where’s the boarding pass?”

Smith handed him the bag and the pass. Casey took them and walked away.

I retrieved my jacket from the overhead bin and walked out of the plane ahead of Smith. In the jetway, a woman held open a door and indicated I should go through it. I stepped, trembling now, through the door, followed by Smith, and down the stairs leading to the airfield where Casey was waiting in a car.

Casey drove us to another terminal where Smith and I got out of the car and entered a door marked IMMIGRATION: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Smith took me to a small room furnished in a manner appropriate for a doctor’s office: examination table, two chairs, body scanner, washbasin, red biohazard container, dispensers for examination gloves and paper towels, and cabinets below a working surface on which a computer monitor sat. In the far wall was another door.

“Immigration didn’t give us the most comfortable room,” Smith said, “but we’ll make do. Hopefully, this won’t take long. Please, have a seat.”

I hung my coat on the back of one of the chairs and sat. He asked whether I was comfortable. I nodded. He asked whether I would like something to drink. I shook my head. He moved the second chair in front of me and sat.

“Well, then, let’s get started. This room is usually used to examine suspected smugglers who try to hide drugs and other illegal items in every conceivable part of their bodies. Kind of a cat-and-mouse game. Here, the cat always wins. But we don’t suspect you of anything like that. In fact, you can relax because we don’t suspect you of any wrongdoing whatsoever. We know you’re a nice, intelligent, and law-abiding young woman. Maybe someday you’ll be a famous scientist, like your grandfather.”

I remembered something Grandpa had said about how government interrogations usually begin: They disguise themselves as flowers so the bees and butterflies will come.

Smith uncrossed his legs and leaned toward me. “What we’re concerned about is that some people you might have come in contact with on your trip to Calgary may be involved in activities detrimental to the security of the United States. So, what I’d like to do is get a clear picture of everything you did and everyone you saw from the time you left here a couple of weeks ago. Okay?”

I focused my eyes on his knees, which he then covered with his hands.

“All right. Let’s start with your departure from here on Air Canada, flight 2711. You went with Elio. Right?”

His fingers began tapping on his knees. Then, in a soothing voice he said, “Sara, please don’t be afraid to talk with me. I’m not trying to get you or Elio in any kind of trouble. I’m simply asking for your help.”

I didn’t look up. He recrossed his legs.

“Okay, let’s move on. When you arrived in Calgary, you were picked up by your parents, right?”

I kept my gaze frozen on one of his knees, and my mind concentrated on one thought: No matter what, I’ll give no response.

He stood and began pacing. “Come, come, now. I like you. We had a nice chat on the plane. I have a boy nearly your age. I know you’re inclined to resist authority at your age, but you want to do the right thing, don’t you?”

I fixed my eyes on a leg of his chair.

“Sara, you’re a U.S. citizen, just like me, and one of the things we have to do, whether we like it or not, is abide by the laws of our country, laws that were created and approved by people like you and me. One of those laws is that we must cooperate with FBI investigations, whether we understand and agree with their purposes or not. You’re an intelligent young woman. You understand that.” He paused a moment. “Sara, you must talk with me. If you don’t, Casey will come in here and take over. Neither one of us wants that to happen, I assure you.”

I moved deeper into calmness and into my conviction not to answer.

“All right. I know you’re a real smart kid, so you know why we’re here and want me just to get to the point. My boy tells me that all the time. ‘Dad, you're home now. Don't turn everything into an investigation. Just get to the point.’” He chuckled. “That's another thing about you teenagers that's so funny—you have all the time in the world, but you're so impatient. Right?”

I continued detaching myself from the situation, finding stillness in my slow, steady breathing.

“Okay. I’ll get to the point. We’re concerned about the activities of androids in Canada. We know one of them you called ‘First Brother’ frequently visited you when you were a child. We also know your parents smuggled it and another android out of the country eight years ago. Well, ‘smuggled’ perhaps isn’t the right word. It was arguably legal back then. Anyway, we’re not concerned about that. We’re concerned about what those androids are doing now. Did you meet with this First Brother or any other android on your visit to Calgary?”

His words merely drifted through me.

“Sara, I want you to understand something. Personally, I don’t dislike androids. So far, they seem to have behaved themselves. But as I said, I’m a U.S. citizen like you, so I have to abide by the laws, just as you do, as everyone does. I’m also a government employee who has to help enforce the laws. You understand that, don’t you?”

You can no more draw me in, I thought, than radio waves can make the trees sing.

“I want you to understand how I feel because I like you and respect your opinions, even the ones differing from the majority of Americans. You see, I don’t much care for the anti-android laws either, but like you, I have no choice except to respect them. If we in the FBI could pick and choose which laws to enforce and which laws not to enforce, we would effectively be making or vetoing the laws of the land. We would be, in effect, a quasi-legislature. Now, I don’t think you would want the FBI making the laws of the land, would you? I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

Remember Nuremberg, I thought.

Smith sat down on his chair, then extended his hands, palms up. “Sara, take my hands. Please. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

I saw no harm in this and laid my palms on top of his. In my mind I saw a white butterfly, its wings aquiver, light on a pink rose petal.

“Look at me, please.”

I looked up at him. When our eyes met, he smiled. Had I met him under normal circumstances, I would have felt that he was a kind man. Perhaps he was.

“Sara, please listen to me carefully. There’s an ongoing investigation into the whereabouts and activities of androids. The law is that you must cooperate with this investigation. There are ways, painful ways, to make you talk. And you will talk. Everyone does. It’s just a question of how much you’ll put yourself through before you beg to talk. Please don’t make me leave this room without your statement. If you do, your unimaginable pain will be a torture not only to yourself but also to me and to Elio and your grandparents. Please, don’t do that to yourself. Don’t do that to us. Talk to me. Please.”

I began pulling my hands away from his. He quickly turned his hands over and caught mine. “Ask for me when you want to talk. Just say my name, Randy Smith, and I’ll come back quickly and take away the pain.”

I pulled my hands back and didn’t look up or answer. After a few seconds, he sighed, then slowly got up and left the room.

I brought to my mind’s eye the grape leaf I used for self-hypnosis, seeing the intricate venation of its underside, and above it, a sky, calm and blue and streaked with cirrus, like wisps of hair from Grandma’s comb. But I didn’t proceed to the hypnotic countdown; I didn’t need to, not yet. I just wanted to be sure the leaf was there, and after seeing it, I returned to a meditative calm.

The door opened. Casey walked briskly to the chair in which Smith had sat. I focused on his legs in their dark gray trousers. Suddenly, the chair swung around, its back cracking hard against one of my kneecaps. I tried not to wince. Casey sat, straddling the straight-backed chair.

“Didn’t that hurt?” he asked. “You on something?”

Interesting how different are the many sensations of pain, I thought. They’re all my friends, trying in their way to help me.

“Doc, get in here!”

A man wearing black shoes, black socks, charcoal trousers, and a long white coat entered the room and stood beside me.

“Take a sample,” Casey ordered. “We need to know if she’s on something.”

The doctor pricked my finger and drew a spot of blood. As he was leaving he said, “I’ll let you know in five, ten minutes, max.”

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” Casey said to me. “What’s your name?”

“Sara Jensen,” I answered, without looking up at him.

I was surprised and upset at how my answering this question, a question Grandpa had told me I could answer, seemed to pull me out of the quiet place I’d been in.

“So, you can talk. Good. We’re moving right along. You went to Calgary before Christmas with Elio, right?”

Breathe slowly, deeply, I thought. Feel yourself moving away from him.

“Okay. We know you can hear. We know you can talk. Now, we’re going to hear you answer my questions without all this fucking around. You went to Calgary with Elio. Right?”

He rapped his thick, hairy fingers on the back of his chair, then reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a packet of photographs. “Looky what we got here. It’s you and your love sitting together on a flight to Calgary. Oh, and here. You and him at Calgary Zoo with your father and your lovely, sweet mother. Now, look at this one—it’s my absolute favorite. Warms my heart. The two of you hugging at Calgary International just before he boards a plane to Amsterdam to go see his mother. And he’s crying. How sweet.”

They’ve decided to play good-guy, bad-guy with me, I thought. Ridiculous!

He shuffled through the pictures—there were about thirty—then continued, “You get the picture. We’ve done our homework. Now, back to my question. You went to Calgary a couple of weeks ago with this sweet guy, Elio, right? I understand he likes men, too.”

Following a spike of fear—or was it hatred?—I forced myself to breathe deeply, slowly. Don’t let him rile you, I silently instructed.

“So, you want to be a smart-ass, do you?” With the suddenness of an explosion, he hurled himself up off his chair. “Do you?” he shouted in my ear.

I gave a little start but said nothing.

“Look here, this is no game of hide-and-seek for some spoiled little rich kid. Our country, our species, is in great danger from androids and from those who coddle them. And because of the magnitude of that danger, I really can be your worst nightmare. I’ve made people tougher, a lot tougher, than you or your grandfather or your hotheaded boyfriend whimper and beg and shit themselves.”