Perfect Flaw (14 page)

The walk across never got easier. In his years as inspector, he had brought dozens if not hundreds of people across the bridge and deposited them in the confines of the Manor. Anguished people, those like Eirene, were a dime a dozen, but the law was law and he had sworn to uphold it. They were in place for a reason – sworn to protect people from the degradation of society because of undue burdens placed on them because of problems. He didn’t know what caused them, sometimes it seemed to be a freak thing. Other times, like in Garricke’s case, he wondered if it was a case of a bad combination of people. Maybe if Eirene and Gaylen had been looked at more carefully, the union would have been denied. He wondered if the issues – Eirene’s seven miscarriages and now this – would still have occurred if she had been partnered differently.

“Hello, Avrom.” Bryor stood at the doorway, standing as tall as she could with her bowed legs. “What is the problem with this one?”

“You’ll find that the outward appearance doesn’t match that underneath. This is, in fact, a boy.”

Bryor shook her head. Now that they were in the Manor, it didn’t matter anymore. If this child wanted to bang his – her? – head against the wall in the corner all day, Bryor didn’t care to correct the situation. Garricke was no longer citizen number gee-four-seven-nine-six-two-eff, a solid black bar obliterating him from the citizen record. He was a memory, a ghost, and as a ghost, Bryor saw no reason to make him conform to the rules of society. She reached out a gentle hand and took the child from his abductor. “We are done with you now, sir. You can leave us now.”

“I need a count.”

“One, two, three.” She said. “There, a count. Would you like a count of five, perhaps a count of ten would be better?”

Avrom was always taken back by her attitude towards him. “I need to know how many are here, Bryor.”

“How would I know that?” She looked down at her deformed legs, bowed out to the point she had to walk by swaying. “I’m not created like you. I lack something. Surely you can’t expect me to count correctly and understand how many are here. I’m much too stupid to understand that.”

Avrom never understood her opposition to him. The Manor gave her the ability to breathe air a little longer. If it weren’t for the island, weren’t for the system of care that she had been allowed, Bryor would have been eliminated as a small child, certainly before her second birthday.

“I said that we were done.”

“I can give you a fate worse than death, there’s a boat ready as we speak, if you’d like it.” He sneered at her, dared her to challenge him.

Bryor scoffed at the idea. That was the government’s big punishment. Putting a citizen in a boat, tethered with a rope that would dissolve in two days’ time, leaving them to float off to nothing with no food to sustain them. It was the unknown that they threatened, but everyone knew the truth. They never came back. But she’d never come back anyway. “Avrom, please kindly take your inspection documents and go back to Topan. You may threaten me all you want, but there is no way that you can perform on me a fate worse than death, for I do not exist. And for somebody that does not exist, the last thing I need is to be recorded. How do you write that ‘non-people,’ perhaps? If you are through, I have a child here who is very frightened and probably very hungry and tired as well.”

Still clutching Mynerva’s hand, she spun around and walked the child up to the building.

***

Year New 612

Mynerva walked along the beach and around the curve to the post, an outcropping of rock that narrowed and then widened again just into the water. Five minutes with a pickaxe and it would be considered an island. She jumped the narrow part and hopped a couple times to get her balance again. Not her best effort. The grasses grew tall on the post and she slid through them until she came to the rock that they used to keep lookout. It also doubled as her quiet spot and she hopped up on it, looked around, and then sat back down once she was satisfied she was alone.

So much had happened since she left The Manor, so much that she couldn’t explain or process it all yet. But this spot, this was her spot to regroup, to center herself and take a few deep breaths without hearing anyone else breathing. She put her head in her hands and cried for a long time, and when she finally wiped her eyes, one of the dual red suns was already dipping at the horizon, the sky turning a darker shade of pomegranate. She stood back up on the rock and looked around, still nobody, as she expected. They didn’t always patrol this area.

Mynerva pulled off her blouse, skirts and underclothing, and lay down in the grass, looking up at the stars. Total nudity, exposing her. Exposing her flat torso and her misshapen form. The only giveaway that she wasn’t exactly as she appeared to be. Silently, she cursed Avrom for having ever checked when she was born, a product of a Topan government that strove for perfection instead of harmony. Cursed her sister, Ursule, for having screamed at their mother about it, instead of keeping quiet. She had no idea what the other planets were like, but she was certain that anywhere else she could have blended, been exactly what she wanted to be. But not here. The population was small, but certainly large enough that if she had reinvented herself, not everyone would have remembered her from before. She still had nightmares about that night. How long would it be until they were gone?

A noise in the grasses behind her caught her off guard and her breath stuck in her throat. How had somebody gotten that close to her?

“Mynerva, are you out here?”

“Emmerus. You scared me.”

Her husband mumbled his apology and crossed the grasses until he saw her clothing and then her.

“I needed the privacy.” The weight of everything still clung to her, and she often found she couldn’t get that anywhere else. Too many people looked at her like she was in charge, even though she didn’t want to be. Knew she shouldn’t be.

“Should I go?” He stood still; the last thing he wanted to do was leave.

Pulling herself up on her forearms, she turned and looked at him finally. “Why do you love me?”

“Because you’re beautiful.”

“But why?”

“Look around. Look at what you’ve done. You weren’t content to stand still and wait for your life to end, weren’t content to be stricken from the record. You’ve made a difference, Mynerva.”

“You loved me before that. We built our house years ago.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t look at those qualities and see them then.” He stripped off his clothes and crossed over to her so that he could curl up with her, pulling her back against his torso, and wrapping his arms around her.

She could feel his muscles press into her skin. She was muscular too, but not like Emmerus was, and she always felt safe and protected when she could feel him near her. He rubbed his hands across her stomach, one resting just over her belly button, and one just under it. Her breath caught in her throat and he could feel her heart pound.

In response, he kissed the nape of her neck. “I love you for what you are, not what you were. You are my wife, and that is all that matters to me.” His hand slid down a bit further, to her first scar, and stopped there. Their breathing fell into rhythm, and they soon fell asleep.

***

Year New 605

The weather was gorgeous – a little too gorgeous, really. The rain had just given way to fog and it was already clearing out during the day. Inspector Avrom Mikkalistr drank the last of his morning glass of mint tea, kissed his wife goodbye, and grabbed his hat on the way out. As a high ranking government employee, Avrom lived on the government isle, the bridge from the mainland to the government was controlled with armed guards. This part of Topan was almost as disconnected as the Manor on the other end of the settlement, some would argue more so.

Avrom crossed the bridge on foot, his satchel thrown over his shoulders so that it hung down his back. At the end of the wooden walkway, he waved at the guards and continued on. He had been at this job long enough that he was there when the guards were born; he was the one who registered their numbers and approved their names.

He had a number of stops to make, and he decided that he would start on the far side of the island so that he could enjoy a long walk on the beach on his way to his first stop. The beach was his favorite place in Topan. No matter how cluttered and crowded Topan would ever get, the beach looked out onto the water – onto a peaceful expanse of blue-gray and away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Now, he had to say goodbye to the calm waters and hello to his first case, which was two pregnancies and a funeral.

As he turned to head up the walkway, somebody appeared at the edge of the Woods. “Inspector Avrom? We need you. Please hurry.” The man disappeared into the forest, crashing through the brush to leave an almost path for the inspector to follow. He wound his way through the thicket – and away from the path – in circles, hoping to confuse the Inspector at least a little bit. The Inspector wasn’t from the mainland. His father had been government, so he was raised on the island that he still resided on. He had no idea how things really worked in Topan, because they ran differently. In contrast, having grown up next to these woods, the other man knew every tree as well as he knew every one of the sixteen people who shared his cave.

The two men finally crashed out of the trees and onto the beach at the far end. Two other figures were huddled on the beach – one lying on the ground, another crouched next to him.

Inspector Avrom stood, panting, as he picked twigs and leaves out of his hair. “What –“ pant, pant “-can I do to help?”

“He’s hurt, sir. I don’t know what to do.”

The inspector made his way across the sand to the man on the ground. Once there, he leaned over him. As soon as he did, both figures grabbed him and put a gag in his mouth. He struggled but they flipped him on this front and tied his hands together behind his back. A fourth person pulled a waiting boat into view. They rushed to get the Inspector onto it. The fog was almost gone and they had just a very small window of opportunity to get him off the mainland and across the channel. They waited as they watched the bridge sentries. As long as they were crouched, they were out of view, but if they stood up, the sentries would see them for sure. The sentry turned around and they jumped up and launched the boat. As soon as they did so, a boat was launched from the island as well. They passed in the middle at full speed, but neither looked at each other. Mynerva, Emmerus and Zain knew their mission was too important to get distracted – even by the people in it with them. On shore, they passed the boat off to a couple of others and followed a path into the trees.

“Here!” a voice called out. They turned and saw a woman waiting for them. “I have clothes for you. Yours will be obvious from the very beginning.” The trio stripped immediately and changed into the clothes that were handed out to them. “I’m Katha, by the way. A good friend of Ursule’s growing up. I… I’m a government employee, too, but I have the same bridge transportation pass that Avrom has.”

“How did you get your credentials? What job do you have?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s safer that way for all involved. Besides, we need to move now.”

“Come,” Mynerva said, leading her friends and cohorts into the woods. They made quick time behind Katha, running into the forest as fast as they could. With Avrom out of the way, they only had a day or two before the rest of the government sprang into action. By now, he was locked into the small niche on the island, in a cage custom built for him courtesy of their friend Wain’s incredible carpentry skills.

It was a long walk through the entirety of the woods. “Where are we coming out, Katha? Near the top?”

“Well, not exactly.” She stopped suddenly and yanked Mynerva behind a clump of trees. The guys followed their lead. They held their breath as a class of students came around the corner and down the path, the teacher at the front lecturing about the forest as they walked. The children were young and there was little doubt that most of them were completely ignoring everything that she said.

When the last footstep was a memory, the group went back on the path, careful to make as little noise as possible. Katha reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of security badges. “Put these in your front left pocket. You have to be able to pull them out and show them at a moment’s notice.”

Zain flipped his open. “bu-bu-bu-bu-but there are pi-pi-pi grrrr –pictures on them. How will we grrr use them?”

“There are pictures, yes, but they are blurry. We used your real first names, but for last names, we had to invent them because, well, you don’t have them. Side effect of the Manor and all, that family names – family period – doesn’t matter or count. If anyone asks, just say agent and your first name and flash it quickly. Most people don’t look anyway. They think the flashing is just a formality that the government has to do whenever they do anything. Like wiping your ass after you shit. If we have to give them more than a flash, I’ll let them see mine, tell them that you’re up for review and I’m the one in charge. Officials are up for the review all the time, you got it?”

Zain let out a low growl in response and clamped both of his hands over his mouth. “This was grrr maybe a bad idea. I should have stayed grrr on the Island and let one of them come.”

“NO! We need you. You’ve been out the longest. We can’t find your family, let alone trust them, without you, do you understand that?” Mynerva hissed. “Look, this isn’t just ‘shut up and nobody will know’ like it was before. This is life and death and everything else that that entails. Do you get it? Do you understand?”

“Grrr. Yes.” His arm twitched back and forth, shaking and twisting in the process. He caught Katha’s gaze as she stared at it. Of course a government employee would have never seen anyone with the likes of him – they were all sent away immediately, after all, that was the point. “This will grrr keep me quiet for now. It takes too m-m-m-m-m-much ener grrr gy to do it for too long.”