The Death of the Wave (14 page)
Read The Death of the Wave Online
Authors: G. L. Adamson
“What is—”
And then your lips were upon my forehead in a chaste kiss,
the kiss of a protective friend or an angel.
“Strike true when you strike,”
you whispered,
“Stay safe,” I answered.
“I need you.”
And I could hear the strange heart beating.
This time it beat for me.
I took my leave
My purpose.
But
Your kiss burned.
Your kiss burned like ice,
long after I had gone.
DESCARTES
To the Artist:
It has been so long since I have heard from you.
So her words were spread through the children in the Hives.
Ingenious.
How apt were my words!
I have received your draft and I must say that I rather like it.
Specifically the bit about the burning symbol.
The tree of Eden aflame.
Imagine that.
But it will still need some reworking.
So, in return, you might wish to know who I really am.
But really, the question that is far more interesting is who you are.
Isn’t it?
My newest experiment.
Keep writing the words, and practice the message.
You, who bridle at the fact that I write under a stolen name.
We are not so different, you and I, Blue.
Not different at all.
The Artists have grown stronger.
Now they even have some normatives in the Palaces sympathetic to their cause.
Will you lead them?
The king is dead,
but the prince has just been crowned.
And you were wrong.
Wrong again.
There is so much more to take away.
EDICT 8082: The State of Eden is just. If a hand is raised against one of the officials of Eden, there will be a careful review. If the review proves that the offender is culpable, that man will be imprisoned or else put to death.
The last before the fire:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
—William Shakespeare “Macbeth”
Au clair de la lune,
L’aimable Lubin;
Frappe chez la brune,
Elle répond soudain :
-Qui frappe de la sorte ?
Il dit à son tour :
-Ouvrez votre porte,
Pour le Dieu d’Amour.
False Author was never me,
and yet I could remember the words:
Find Author, and my time in the Hives would be at its end.
My punishment would be at its end.
I could go back on patrol, limit the killings,
wash the blood of children from my hands.
But still, I was caught at a cross-roads.
Reveal False Author as Author, and lie,
and my torment would be at an end.
But I would lose my method of distributing
my message to the Camps, the second I was taken from the Hives.
Would I distribute more messages to the Camps after this tragedy?
Could I?
Reveal False Author as Author and lie,
and I would be safe,
but the rebellion would be ended.
So why the hesitation?
My part in it should be ended.
I should have had a choice.
I wanted to reveal her not because I no longer cared for the revolution,
even though my hand should have been stilled forever.
I wanted to reveal her because I thought her guilty,
of harming the Artists and perverting my purpose.
Because I wanted to see her suffer.
Because I wanted to see her die.
I trusted Blue, but I wanted to hear her confession from her own lips.
Not that she was the original Author, as I knew she was not,
but that she stole the words.
How could one torture another, when one has had the experience of torture?
But this formless play is badly written,
and a thousand tools waited in a windowless room.
I looked down at what I thought was a traitor,
at her dark eyes and curling helpless hands
and could not feel a thing.
So many had died because of you.
You, perverting my meaning and my words.
Blind thing, you thought you were in the right.
You thought that you would live.
You, who look like me,
with all my little tricks.
You knew everything about the fire.
You stretched out your hand and told me that we were the same,
that the boy had lied to avoid the shame of the massacre.
You called others traitor until I stopped your tongue.
Not my boy.
My boy.
Confess.
You, who had the audacity to plead for mercy
Think of the children.
Did you see them after?
In rows upon rows like soldiers?
Should I have shown you them again?
You did not have long to wait.
After the fire.
Author did not speak.
She would only gaze out the window,
her dark eyes open and empty.
Nothing I did could rouse her.
Not my love.
Not my words.
A hand on a shoulder as rigid as ice.
I heard them one night.
She had crept from our bed
to meet her Descartes.
Her aristo-who-wrote.
I followed her leaden tread,
and watched as Descartes
stretched out his cold arms
as she crumpled into his embrace.
They stood like that for a long while,
her face buried in his concave chest,
his hand cradling the back of her head
as he whispered meaningless comforts.
Descartes.
What had you done to my Author?
My proud conqueror,
the woman who rushed headlong to a fire
was broken.
For the first time I saw my Author weep.
My Author who had been through so much.
Had stood proud and arrogant against the
breakage of time and the torturer’s blade.
I saw my Author break,
and it was in another’s arms.
Descartes.
You were ever my enemy.
Descartes.
And his strange eyes that had been closed
opened to see me,
as coldly indifferent and cruel
as we all would be, were we gods.
But he said nothing,
only stared to see me,
and held her protectively in his arms.
She trusted you, Descartes, as she never would me.
And she loved you, Descartes.
As she never would me.
Look to your mother. Author go home.
Home.
But I never returned
and my mother was alone.
She sat and watched the angel
cavort on the screen.
Another announcement,
with Galileo stretching out his wide hands for silence.
He cleared his throat and read the names.
I quietly left my bottles of water on the table
where my brother studied, and I remembered
and was about to go when her voice called me back.
“You seem well,” she murmured.
I glanced back, and she was sitting upright,
her glassy-blind eyes focused on the screen.
I shifted nervously, and said:
“I brought you water, mother.”
Her head snapped back at me like a viper
and then her focus returned to the screen.
It was a long time again before she spoke:
“My son is not coming home.”
“Yes,” I replied softly. “He is not coming home.”
I avoided looking at that terrible upright figure
who gazed at the screen as if waiting for an answer.
“Do you have enough food?” I questioned,
and one thin wraith-like hand kneaded her blanket.
“You are wondering where it all comes from—”
“Why I have not starved, when I barely make enough for yourself to live—”
“No, I am just making sure—”
“What, that I am not Galileo’s whore?”
We regarded each other in the silence.
“It was not like that. It was very clean. Professional.”
“You never needed to,” I responded.
“I would have brought you food—”
And she began to laugh.
“What, on your paycheck? It was never enough. You would have me starve—”
“Never.”
“You would have my son starve.”
“My brother is dead.”
And she had risen like an avenging angel,
facing me, her eyes blazing, and a room apart.
“It should have been y—”
“But it is better this way,” I retorted.
“Better dead than realize his mother a whore.”
The words had left my mouth before I could retract them
and I burned with shame.
“You did what you had to do,” I whispered,
and she sat down heavily on the couch.
Descartes.
My lover is a brother.
The monster king, my father—
“I had scored high for a Writer,”
my mother murmured dully.
“But not high enough. I was hungry, and I heard
that Galileo and the others were paying women in Writer’s Camp.
to breed their Breakers.”
Her eyes were tired in the darkness.
“Why do you think no Breakers are born in the Palaces?”
“My son was out of love. You—I wanted to raise you. The others—.”
And I turned away.
“It is always a long shot. Some were born weak and some were born stupid, but not you.
You were lucky.
But the choice of your life was an illusion, 256.
He never intended to let you go.”
Galileo, you had been pressuring me
for any and all information.
In my Breaker’s drawer was hidden
her correspondence with Descartes.
They marked her as the true Author, Galileo.
And that she lied to you.
She lied to all of us.
And sent an innocent woman to her death
to save herself from the fall.
How I wish that I could see
False Author did not die for me.
While my love slept, I took the correspondence
that she had hidden so poorly.
And they were for you.
They were all for you.
I am not cruel,
for I wanted them
to burn together.
So I brought you my Author.
I brought you my love.
Whose face is that beneath the mask?
Once there was a young boy
and he was screaming.
Dreams, here in the Palaces,
and a knife trembles.
The assassin by the parapet.
The ghost there by the stair.
Once there was a little boy
who dreamed of revolution,
who read the war-crimes,
and listened to the Edicts.
But now that little boy is dead
And shadows drift within his head.
I begged to bear the knife myself.
The boy who killed a king.
And in my dreams, there is Justice,
but she is not my Justice.
Justice, with her face covered,
rightfully covered before the crowd.
Whose face is that beneath the mask?
And not just masks, but faces.
And there they were, brought before the king,
the hero that we were all meant to follow.
Lady Justice brought to cruelty by
fear, and love, and petty human frailty,
minimized from what she might have been.
Author was not Breaker 256.
Author was so much greater than that.
Give the Author a name, and it is lessened