The Death of the Wave (11 page)

EDICT 7890: The Citadel is merciful. If a decision has been passed to restrict information, then that decision has been passed for the good of the citizenry. If a man revolts against the just decisions of the State, that man will be imprisoned or else put to death.

For I am not the Artist!

How I loath that name!

But my Breaker and I are close to the same.

We were born from the gutters together.

We were both desperate and hungry.

Desperate enough to face the tests.

Hungry enough to succeed.

For did we not?

They gave you a gun and a uniform and me a pen.

Is the pen mightier than gun or sword?

Tell me.

But that was where we differed, Author.

Your precious Artists.

I wanted to save them for you,

after my betrayal,

but I was no longer of them.

Remember?

No longer, like you, desperate for their approval,

desperate to wash the blood of the Camps off my guilty hands.

I was guilty only for you.

Why else did you fight with the desperation of the lost?

You had lost before it was well begun.

You had lost from the moment that the plan

began in the corroded mind of the aristo-who-wrote.

You had lost from the second you believed it.

Going against the system had cost far more lives

than you could ever had imagined.

You never understood the cost that you were proposing.

No limit to the lives lost for the winning of a war of principle.

You, a hero?

You coldly weighed their lives and found them wanting.

But still—

you were right

and you were selfless.

Your life was as worthless in the grand revolution as theirs to you, Author.

Just another life

to be ended by fire, torture, firing squad

for the good of your ideal.

And after I lost you, I understood that.

But was the cost worth it?

Did the people understand the true cost of what you were proposing?

For I am like you,

and like you, will be remembered?

Darwin is a monster, but only a little one

and his disguise is better than most.

Shorter, and broader than Galileo

he does not wear robes, only formal suits

for he says robes are old-fashioned.

Darwin possesses a complete and androgynous beauty.

He is referred to by everyone as male.

It suits him better,

the contours of his face,

but he is really not either sex.

He is a new one that can transcend categories and just be.

Often in him I can see the graceful woman in the man

and the man of action in the woman.

But he is neither.

Just coming into himself.

Beyond.

And his black eyes are wise for something so young

so blessed for action, and so new.

He is too far removed from the indifferent, predatory hunger

of Galileo, the perfect male animal.

And that is why I love him,

he is too ethereal to breed.

Something in me does not want

to call him aristo at all.

What is it then that I could call him?

To-be king, but not a son of man,

angel without wings,

yes,

and with the monstrous beauty of an angel.

His lips are like sprayed blood

upon a pane of translucent glass.

His eyes are the dark in the space

between the stars

and like charcoal burned pits

in the face of a figurine.

Perfectly poised prince, now king,

and sackcloth angel.

But alone.

He is always alone.

There is more than a hint of aristo in him.

The skin as white as bleached chemicals

and the superciliously lazy smile of the effortlessly superior.

He is less human than the aristocrats.

His black eyes are serene and filled with

a kind of terrible knowing.

A kind of mindless peace that comes from being mindful.

Behind that smooth brow and implacable glances

is a mind as vast and peaceful as a subterranean sea.

And his eyes betray neither fear nor love

for his love is the love of an atrophied angel.

I sat near him once, with our project on the Proto-Pills

and watched him dole out the chemicals with careful precision.

His hands are formed like tensile steel.

“Are you human?” I whispered,

and smiling again, he bent to his work.

“Are you an angel?” I questioned,

and he looked up again at me

with those eyes as black as space

and asked:

“Do I look like an angel?”

Descartes came to find me, his eyes shuttered like windows

shut long against the cold.

He took my hand in his, it was like falling into a winter pool

I gasped at the contact—such a gesture.

But his voice, so soft, so placid when discussing our words

had taken on an edge like a knife,

and it twisted into my heart.

“Does he know?”
he whispered urgently in the darkness, and my words failed me.

His hand tightened, I could feel the bones of my hand

grinding together like the bones of birds.

So I said what I could think of,

that Galileo did not know.

And those gaunt shoulders relaxed, he breathed out and pulled me towards him.

Descartes.

He was all bones and smelt of the library, the faintly explosive scent of old literature

mingled with the chemicals in the labs.

He was cold, but then, he was still alive.

We stood for a long time before he broke the embrace

held me at arm’s length, and searched my eyes.

“Do not lie to him, he’ll know.”

I nodded, and tried to smile.

“Be brave,”
he urged.
“Hold your head high. Answer all and any questions…

but I do not know what he wants.”

I knew.

Galileo, from which all things spring.

He wanted my heart.

Galileo loved me.

Galileo loved us all,

but he loved each one of us as a princess loves a bauble,

or a dragon loves a piece of treasure in his hoard.

I was insignificant to him, a tiny coin among all the jewels of his kingdom,

but he couldn’t bear it if I were to go missing

before he had a chance to throw me away.

Descartes walked with me to my meeting,

holding my hand so tightly that I feared that it would break,

and standing there before the closed doors of Galileo’s chambers whispered:

“Author, look to your mother. Author go home.”

It was the first and the last time he called me that name

as he bent to leave a kiss on my lips

as insubstantial as a snowflake.

I did not look back.

Galileo.

I had never seen him in his chambers.

They were opulent but simple, like him,

with everything in white.

Once again, I was painfully aware of being misplaced

a single spot of color in a field of white.

But no matter.

My monster sat gracefully near the window,

and watched the small crowd

that had already formed outside the gates.

The Breakers had fired to disperse them,

but the survivors returned always to stand in the rain.

The king was perplexed and displeased with his subjects.

He did not turn to acknowledge me,

only held out a small slip of paper

torn out of a CEE workbook and said:

“Have you seen it? They found it in the Camps.”

I took it, and I gave it a cursory glance.

It was my poem, but I said:

“No.”

And Galileo’s eyes flickered, revealing nothing.

“It must be about the Censor. You know of the Censor?

vMy son must have told you.”

“No. I heard of it from an Artist.”

“They know?”

“Some still remember.”

I paused, the words shards in my throat.

“But mostly they try to forget.”

He nodded once, and turned to look at me.

Everything flooded back in that instant.

The children in the bright sunlight.

The rifle.

The fall.

“How are you enjoying your new assignment”
he asked me casually,

but his eyes were implacable and strange.

“It must be so rewarding…to work with children.”

Something within me jumped as if electrified.

I could not speak.

He leaned forward, intent, predatory.

“Thank me for the opportunity, Breaker.”

I had to struggle for a long time before I could reply.

“Thank you…for the opportunity.”

He leaned back and looked back on the crowd.

I had turned to go when his voice called me back.

“Find who Author is, 256,”
he whispered, facing the masses.

“And I will place you in another post.”

“You will be free.”

The metal gleam in a darkened room.

376 and his lead boots.

The pain behind the stare.

My words that would betray me.

But Descartes—

The rebellion had begun.

And I was,

I am,

Just another piece in the game.

Darwin.

I remember the first time I approached him

outside of the sterility of the labs.

I had made such progress that day,

and had won a smile from my benefactor.

The skin about his eyes is marked by kindness.

Like Descartes did, I heard, he smiles far too much.

His chambers in the Palaces became more familiar to me than my own.

Nothing much.

Spare.

Narrow cot, industrial design,

a desk that is always cleared of papers.

Save for once.

Oftentimes late at night, I would listen for patrolling Breakers,

I did not know then that I had been granted exemption.

I would sit cross-legged on his rather tatty rug,

reading over my notes from the day before.

And he would write late into the evening,

with the throat of his dress shirt wide open

or read from an indeterminate tome,

one spindly finger marking his place

when he would turn to speak to me.

Aristos are not beautiful, but this one is.

We talked, and talk of everything,

especially of the fate of Eden.

And he told, and tells me everything he knows.

It is as if he has lived forever.

Darwin writes, and before I leave,

the papers are carefully put away,

save for once.

Darwin, you know what happens to an aristo-who-writes.

You told me yourself.

You told me of the failures of Descartes, and that of Author, our martyr, and the Artist.

Does the rebellion still live?

After Blue was imprisoned, the flames should have ended.

But still, an Author writes?

Who is it Darwin?

Who kept alive the flames in the Camps,

barely, an Author that had never read the true Author?