Out (17 page)

“Chris?” Sam
hisses. “We’ve got to know now. You have to commit to this or forget it.
There’s no going back once you say yes.”

“This is a
mistake,” Magnus says, disgust in his voice. “He’s too tied in to Bryant and
the rest of them, the
Anglicants
. He won’t do it.”

“Hey, fuck you!”
Jana spits, and takes a threatening step toward him. This is the same
terrifying person I saw in the car. “If he says he can do it, he can. Don’t you
ever say that my brother is part of that fucking church. Never. And if he
doesn’t do it, I’ll do it. I’ll kill that bastard McFarland myself.” She
hisses, a frightening, sibilant curse. “I will
gut
him. And I don’t care if I get caught. So, yeah. You can count on him. Because
he won’t want that on his conscience. Will you, Chris?”

Moonlit eyes
alive with rage, hate, fuel coming from somewhere deep inside, a furnace stoked
by years of resentment and anger. I don’t know her. I guess I never did.

“No.” I answer,
and I mean it. “No, I don’t want that on my conscience.”

Magnus frowns,
and then motions for me to follow him. “I thought this might happen. We can’t
have you feeling any doubts. We’ve got to be sure we can trust you. You’re
gonna
talk to Mary.”

“Mary?”
 

He doesn’t
answer.

We trudge
through the dark forest, and I keep my eyes on the boots in front of me.

“Who’s Mary?” I
try again. Magnus puts a hand up to silence me. I glance back at Jana, who
shrugs but keeps marching with Sam bringing up the rear.

The dirt fort
is harder to find in the dark, which is I guess the point of having a dirt
fort. Ben walks hip to hip with Jana, and she buries her head in his shoulder.
She keeps her eyes on me. Magnus taps on the door three times, glaring into the
woods like a paranoid maniac.

A middle-aged
lady who looks like she works at a school cafeteria emerges. Her white hair
pokes out at odd angles from a beanie, and even in the dark, I can tell she’s
wrinkly and shaped like a pear. “Chris, Jana,” she says in a voice that belongs
to someone’s grandma.

“Mary, we’ll
guard the perimeter. How much time do you need with them?” Magnus’s voice is
respectful. She must be a big honcho.

“Oh, depends on
them. Probably about twenty minutes. That okay with you?” she asks me, and I
just nod. “
Alrighty
, then. Come on in. Sorry the
place isn’t set up for company, but I do have some tea.
Gotta
remember we’re still civilized people living in an uncivilized world.”

Inside, an LED
lantern illuminates the space, giving everything a cold blue-white glow. Jana
parks on a crate and Mary takes the single real chair. I lean against a wall as
the woman hands us stoneware mugs steaming something fragrant. It’s just the
three of us.

“So,” she says,
sipping. “Magnus thinks you need to be persuaded of the righteousness of our
cause.” She chuckles, then sprinkles a packet of sweetener into the tea. “I do
like it sweet. Probably get the diabetes at some point.”

Jana sighs
heavily. “We’ve never met before.”

“True enough.”
Mary sips her tea. “I’m on what you call a ‘need to know’ basis. You didn’t
need to know. Till now.”

“What do we
need to know now?” Jana puts her tea on the floor. “We really don’t have time
to visit.”

Mary nods. “Right.
First thing you should know, I’m Parallel. I’ve been a practicing
Anglicant
my whole life. I know your daddy. Used to go to
church over there.”

“But…if you’re
Parallel, why are you here?” I ask.

“I’ll do the
talking. You listen, and then if you have questions, you can ask. Can’t guarantee
I’ll answer, but you can ask.” She crosses her legs, and I notice she has on
those big, over-furred
Ugg
boots. She doesn’t look
like a rebel leader, at least, not to me.

“Here’s
something you probably didn’t know. This thing about Parallel and Perpendicular,
that wasn’t always the way it was.” She pours another sugar into her tea. “Used
to be—and I’m talking a few hundred years—that people lived both ways, no worse
for the wear.”

“They…they let
us be Perpendicular?”

Mary snorts,
amused. “They didn’t let you be anything. It’s just how it was. Does anybody
let you be seventeen years old? Anyway…I’m not
gonna
give you a whole history lesson here, and you won’t be able to find anything
out there to back it up. It falls under the same category as Atlantis and the
Bigfoot, an urban legend. But it’s true. Perpendiculars were no more deviant
than Parallels at one time.”

“Perpendiculars
could just get together, have children, live out their lives? Why would they
give that up?” Jana asks. She didn’t even know this. She looks stunned.

“They didn’t
give it up.” Mary purses her lips, sighs. “It was taken from them. From you.”

“Why? How did
it get taken?” My brain is about to explode.

 
“Well, Perpendiculars did one thing real well
that Parallels did not. Can you guess what it was?”

“No,” I say
desperately.

“Reproduce.”
She nods as if she’s just said something profound. “Perpendiculars can just
reproduce at will. And they can rape, and there can be offspring from that
rape. They can accidentally make a baby in the heat of passion. These are all
things that a can make society…a little bit unmanageable.” Mary smiles
sympathetically. “I know it’s a lot to take in. You can learn all the details
later, once you’ve done what you need to do. But think about this: if the
majority of people have a structured life, orderly, totally engineered and
controlled, would they want a tiny handful of other people messing it up, doing
whatever they want, having babies all over the place without the proper
documentation and planning?” She shakes her head. “It’s about control.
Parallels have to plan a pregnancy, choose genetic donors or surrogates,
consciously want to raise a child. All genetic defects are screened out—except
for
Perpendicularism
, which can’t be detected
genetically, although they’ve tried. Believe me.”

“They’ve tried?”
I shiver involuntarily. “How do you know that?”

Mary drains the
last of her tea. “I used to work for them. I did a lot of the genetic
experimentation to try and locate the Perpendicular gene. That’s why I’m here
today. Doing penance for the evil I’ve helped create.”

Jana stares
down at the floor. “We’re a minority,” she whispers. “So it’s easier to control
us. Doesn’t anybody think it’s wrong?”

“Some people
do,” Mary says, standing. “There have been quite a few people working quietly
for many years to stop this torture, this inhumane treatment. Other countries
have already been liberalized; ours is just too ass-backward to see the truth.
The time is right. You are going to help us start this fire, and it’s going to
spread all across the country. There are more Parallels like me, people who, if
they knew what happened to you, would object and stop it. But we have to show
them. Nobody believes there’s a Bigfoot unless you show ‘
em
the carcass.”
 

“Why hasn’t
anyone heard of this? Why isn’t it on the news?”

“Media is
controlled by the government and Church.”

 
I glance at Jana. Maybe the old lady is just
nuts.

Mary looks up
at me. “Our Church mated with the secular government when our country was
founded, and the Church has never wanted anyone to know the truth. That when
the Church was founded…when
Anglicants
crusaded,
spreading the word…they were eradicating Perpendiculars. Forcing others to bend
to their will. To control the population…for power. They wiped out so many
Perpendiculars, and made it so only Parallels would be legally recognized in
their Church, that only Parallels could marry and have families, that
Perps
became a minority. Arranged marriages were made to
ensure no bad genes were passed on.” She motions toward the door. Just like
that, she dismisses us. “Time for you to go now. Magnus will tell you
everything you need to know.”

“But—”
 

She stops me
with a raised hand. “No more questions right now. You
gotta
have some faith. Once you’re out of this mess, you can study
Parallel/Perpendicular history till you know everything, if you want. Right now
it’s the time for action.”

 
Outside, the dark seems thick and tangible.
Mary stands at the door of the dirt fort and waves to us as if we’d just been
in having cookies and milk. I have so many questions; but I don’t dare ask. I
know Jana was right – we have to get back. And Magnus doesn’t look like he’d
tolerate any hold ups from me.

Magnus walks
beside me, calmly reciting the laundry list of things I need to do before
Friday, including telling Carmen what to do, where to be and when. We’ll have
one more contact, he says, before Friday. Jana will know what to do.

We’re back home
an hour later, and my head is pounding. The thought of what I’m going to
do—what I’m going to allow to happen—eats at me, but the thought of being with
Carmen wrestles with my guilt, and leaves me feeling worked over, muscles sore,
head sore, heart sore.

Before we get
out of the car, Jana leans in close and kisses my cheek. “Things will get
better.”

I don’t know
how to answer. I’m not convinced, not really, that things will get better. But
it’s too late now. “You’d really—do that?” I shouldn’t ask, but it’s been
gnawing at me all the way home. “You’d kill him? For the cause?”

Jana is softer
now, not the bitch-warrior princess from the forest. But her jaw is set firm,
and she answers: “I don’t want to. But something has to be done. Waiting has
never worked. Nobody is going to give us what we aren’t willing to take.”

I still don’t
want to think she’d do it.

Warren and
David are both home, unfortunately, so I know we’re going to get a grilling
when we go in. Maybe they’ll be drinking and we’ll escape.

We go in as
quietly as possible, holding the handle of the old back door so it doesn’t
squeak, but he hears us anyway. “Kids?” he calls. Jana grimaces, holds two
fingers to her head as if it’s a gun, and pretends to shoot.

“We’re home,” I
yell cheerfully, trying to sound like someone who just went out for a ride and
did not just commit a huge act of conspiracy against home and church.

“Come on in the
parlor,” David says, too happy. We hang up our coats and trudge on into the
arena. McFarland is sitting there on the piano bench, swirling a goblet of red
wine. Christ, why can’t this man disappear, for everyone’s good? I can’t even
look at him. How am I going to survive a two-hour car ride without spilling
everything?

“Where were you
two?” David asks, tossing in a little confused laugh that’s supposed to come
off as concerned yet not really worried.

“Didn’t Warren
tell you?” Jana asks, tossing the keys to him. “We went to buy some drugs.”

McFarland just
happens to be sipping at that moment, and he chokes, spits merlot on the floor,
and everybody freezes except for Jana, who is laughing hysterically at her own
joke. I’d like to laugh too, but I’m too chicken.

David’s not
laughing. His face is stone; Warren’s is pale as he thumps McFarland on the
back to be sure we don’t end up with a dead dinner guest.

“Jana, a moment
in your room please?” It’s not a request.

Jana chuckles,
ambles out of the room, a defiant prisoner being walked to the gallows. David
grabs her elbow to steer her upstairs.

“No harm done,”
Warren chatters. “Chris, go get a rag to clean this up, will you?”

“Sure.” I am so
happy to be out of that room. And I’m sure Jana is getting a chewing out of
epic proportions upstairs. Maybe I should just bolt out the back door, start
running, and never stop. Instead, I grab a clean dishrag and bring it to
Warren, who immediately starts dabbing at McFarland and then at the Persian
rug.

“I should get
going,” McFarland murmurs, eyeing the red spatters on his khaki trousers. It’s
not blood, I keep chanting in my head. It’s not blood. Just looks like blood.

“I could soak
your pants,” Warren offers.

“No, no.”
McFarland moves toward the kitchen and his coat. “I’ll just go back to the
hotel and have them take care of it. Oh, but you could do one thing for me,
Warren. Can you get that Quintana book on philosophy that David was talking about?
He said it was in the library.”

Warren frowns
as if trying to remember, but nods and heads for the library. As McFarland
brushes past, he links arms with me and pulls me along into the kitchen, then
backs me up against the counter. I’m too shocked to protest; my whole body
freezes.

He pushes
uncomfortably close to me. “Chris, your family is nuts,” he whispers in my ear,
his hot breath tickling. “But I think we’ll become very good friends.”

I’m trapped.
He’s too heavy for me to push away. Just as I start to panic, he leans in,
grabs the back of my head, and pulls me to him, planting a wet, desperate kiss
on my lips, and he won’t let go, and I don’t even think about it, but I bring
my knee up quick, a real knee-jerk response, and next thing I know, he’s lying
on the kitchen floor writhing in pain.

Warren calls
from the parlor as he comes toward us, “I can’t find that book anywhere, Jim.
Sorry. I—”
 
He sees the man on the floor,
sees me hovering over him, looking contrite. “Oh my God. What now? What did you
do?” He swats at me with the dishrag and I quickstep it out of there and
upstairs, running, hoping to get to my room before anyone stops me.

I just
feel…dirty. Gross. My heart pounds an irregular beat as the image of
McFarland’s leering face hovers at the edge of my consciousness.