The Death of the Wave (18 page)

And 376 answered:

“Your mother is dead.”

And so to us angels aspire.

One died for treason

The other for fire?

Time before the Barracks.

Darwin, you warned me

that you would not be with me

when the time came.

That last time,

before they took me away,

you tried to keep me safe.

“The time of the Cull has already begun,”

you murmured,

“The time of sickness that the Cleaners have released in

the Barracks.

I will protect you,

but only the strong will survive.”

And then you held me at arm’s length,

gazing fiercely into my eyes.

“Eat, and stay strong. The Cleaners are under my command

now that my father is dead.

But who they choose is not under my command.

Stay safe, and find the Artist.”

The Artist. Find him.

Artist.

Barracks.

Cleaners.

Words from a nightmare,

tales told to frighten children,

little boys swapping stories

at night-time in the Hives.

I remember the Cleaners.

There are some who say that

their heads are like the heads of birds,

elongated and strange,

and that their robes are white.

They only start their selection at the command

of the Human Services Coordinator.

“You are their commander?” I questioned,

and you smiled and nodded.

Their heads are smooth and white

like the skulls of the angels,

but their skins over bones—

“Some say,” I murmured, “that their masks are

pieced together from the bleached skins of liars.”

And you at long last—

you looked away.

“The Breakers wear masks,”

You replied softly.

“What the Cleaners have,

are not masks.

merely faces.”

And I shook away the image

of a scabrous skin, and said:

“So what are they then? Masks or faces?”

And you smiled

your manufactured little smile

and said:

“Sometimes what were masks

turn into faces.”

And the sweetness of your confession

that you loved me as

one loves something that

one is fond of.

And as you lifted your head

to hear the sound of leaden boots

meant to bring me away,

you embraced me,

and I jumped as I felt

the needle meant to save me.

For you showed the syringe

with all of it empty.

And your eyes—

they were empty.

When the Breakers came, and

they took me away.

I dreamed of a man in a fire.

He was with the sickness.

And the masks of the Cleaners

were not masks at all but faces.

They dragged him to the makeshift fire

and he screamed as they tied him to a pyre of rubbish.

And he screamed as they lit the match.

But he was sick

and fire purifies all things.

Fire is fair.

And my letter

to the last

has been given to the assumed Descartes.

The one that calls himself Scientist

and will be in the Camps tonight.

I have seen men roasting on our merry fires.

They now burn them in the Barracks

to keep the Breakers and Cleaners from infection.

But they do not bother to kill them first.

And in my dream,

the man sang to me as his hair caught on fire

and the light was a crescendo.

He sang that all men,

that all men deserve a fall.

To be a constellation of stars

in a riot of blood.

And here I am.

I will twist the metal clasp

from each of the letters.

And I will walk to the fire,

when all the Barracks burn.

Whichever comes first.

The tall dark figure in an industrial mask.

He cleaned my facial burns with a cloth and alcohol from a stolen kit

and his eyes behind the mask were dark and steady.

“Our fallen hero.”

I winced away from his touch and he soothed me,

waiting for a moment until I could take the healing.

“Why do you call me this?”

He paused, turning my head back.

All business.

And then said:

“Is that not what you are? You cannot be a martyr.”

The tiny room was stifling and the sweat had begun to run into his eyes.

He carefully snapped off his mask and added casually—

“You have to be dead to qualify.”

“I led an innocent to her death, 376,” I whispered and my words were loud in the small room

as if I had shouted my confession.

The cloth ghosted over my useless eye and I bit my lip.

I would not cry out.

Not here, not now.

376 watched me, the slender face pale, the eyes under arched by exhaustion.

“You did what you had to do,”
he replied finally.

“Why help me now?” I retorted into his startled face.

“You near killed me. You were against me.”

Memories.

His fractured form above my sight in a darkened room.

Descartes.

“You could kill me now. There is still time. If they find out you saved me—”

And he hesitated, shaking his head.

“I am the leader of the revolution, I am—”

“But you are not now, 256. You are nothing again once more.”

The guileless eyes were troubled.

“Why did you torture me,” I murmured.

“Why didn’t you stop then? Why did you not save my brother and Descartes?

Why did you kill innocents—”

“And you did not?”

There was no venom in his mild reply. He had simply asked a question.

“The child under my care…my daughter, is dead,”
he answered quietly.

“Galileo had held her for years, held her life over my head in the Hives.

She was killed after my questioning of Descartes.

Your lover would not speak so I had him write. He only wrote a word.

He would not betray you.”

And the cloth was folded and put away.

“What did he write you?”

“
Write.”

“Now I could take a risk, I can choose my way. I chose to save you, but to retain my Duty.”

“But the Duty is wrong! You do not even have a cause—nothing to fight for.”

“If I stop now, I will be apprehended. You will be found out, condemned.

While I serve with my men, you live.”

“Then kill me.”

And he looked at me with unspeakably weary eyes.

“While I serve,”
he answered softly,
“Your son still has a chance of protection.

For once, think of him.”

And something in me trusted, trusts, him.

This honest man, too fair to lie.

Did you so often protect children?

The child-made bracelet had been put away.

I nodded and he placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Hive 45834,” I whispered. “Keep my son alive… as long as you can.”

“As long as I can, and I will add him to the fold,”
he replied,

and a genuine smile touched his lips.

There and gone so quickly I could scarcely believe in its existence.

“Good, Author,”
he whispered,

and my head lifted at the sound of what has become my name.

It would be the last time that I would hear it

and have it meant for me.

“Now
you
have nothing left to lose.”

For who is it to say

that the warden is not the prisoner?

Descartes would not eat in the Barracks.

He did not speak.

He lay staring at the ceiling as if to find images written in stone

or faced the wall.

He did not talk of suffering,

but sometimes in the night,

I would hear savagely stifled cries in the darkness

and other times nothing.

Only strange eyes red-rimmed

gazing as if to find a window.

Was he ill? Dying?

I am safe for now. Darwin’s medicine will last as long as it may—

Descartes.

The wound, was it from a stunner?

It must had healed many years ago.

But you still wore a bandage as a reminder.

Didn’t you?

Descartes.

Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood.

Your son, the foolish Artist, the betrayer of the Camps, he lives.

He lives.

Look at me.

But he looked at no one.

When I would take the pointed straw, and turn it to my wrist,

to write in human ink,

with all my little tricks,

he shuddered,

and murmured:
“Write.”

Was that the last word that anyone said to you?

You could not speak another.

It stood for hatred, fear, cajoling, confusion, all.

The last word before the fall.

When I write, it is under your name.

For you cannot write anymore, Aristo-who-writes.

No matter.

You were content to remember your Author

and I must protect what is mine.

Think for the children.

Remember the words that live on.

And wait for the signal that burns.

There will be a bonfire tonight,

but I do not think I will live to see it.

They must have caught on to our letters.

Assumed Descartes,

Uncertain scribbler.

The boys who killed the angels.

And even if the execution failed,

I would not pass the Cleaning.

I am sick,

I am smiling.

I do not sleep.

I only write to stave off forgetting,

and my kingdom is traced behind my eyelids

as if fired behind by the sun.

You promised me, nothing, really, false writer.

Only to take part in the leveling of a kingdom.

Young Darwin is crowned and the King is dead

by the precise hand of a Scientist.

False writer—

soon I will be dead.

And the fair Author,

that lives inside my head

will die with me.

I fold up my letter,

written within the margins of the Edicts, and smile.

“Remember me,” I say,

even though, Scientist,

we both know it to be nothing.

Remember the one that was no longer an Artist,

for once I had apologized to no one

and once I had loved.

Do be patient. Wait, remember me

And think for the light.

Remember for the words, free

Will be the signal that in night

In our children, that live. For the tree

Nearer here burns on ever bright.

I remember the day that Descartes died.

During Cleaning, the cells had stood open,

and someone shot his complicated brains out into the snow.

No one knew who did it,

but we all knew the reason,

for no one save myself and the traitor

knew the aristo-who-wrote.

That day, I had passed Cleaning,

and my first letter down the line,

to linger in the hands of the Artist.

And when I returned

the woman had found him before any of us.

We found Descartes.

He is dead.

They put a bullet

through his head.

The woman who cleaned the cells,

the woman with the hidden face,

she held him in the center of our cell

and she held him like a child.

The aristo-who-wrote,

who had risked everything,

would never write again.

Descartes.

You lay in her arms

as if you were sleeping.

As perfect as a fallen angel.

Your face as pure as marble,

the side destroyed away.

The stink of him and the thought of a fire.

Did they tell her that you were dead back in the Palaces?

It must have been Author.

For I knew it then.

The tears, even stranger as she held you,

were almost your tears.

“Fly for the both of us.”

And she bent to kiss you.

Her lips were white by fire, Descartes,

and she must have loved you.

But now, no more.

A riot in the Barracks,

for they heard of the Camps’ uprising.

The prisoners were out of their cages.

It’s Cleaning Day, It’s Cleaning Day.

And the Artist—Blue was there, I could feel him.

Does art need to be beautiful?

Does love need to be fair?

It is your grotesqueness that I find beautiful.

Artist.

You kept every one of my letters,

and with your inventive mind

saved each metal clasp

to twist into the tree of Eden.

The blaze in the parade grounds

was it the forge of your soul,

or your funerary pyre?

And the look on your face was transported,

beyond the veil of pain or pity.

The serene countenance of

a demon or an angel.

Your makeshift brand cast away,