CHAPTER 7
E bounded off roofs; rebounded off sheer glass; vaulted over gargoyles and pipes and chimneys.
A chicken coop. On a roof?
"This used to be more fun," said E to no one.
Emerald bubbles blew and burst around her, ping-ponging, flipping, rolling, across and up and down wherever she touched the buildings that made up the city that had been her home for near three decades.
The only hard part about escaping. . .not escaping. . .like she was a shaking prisoner. . .was finding a quiet place to hop the patchier parts of the city wall.
City engineers assured her it was ok, but of course that was bullshit. If she found ways out, others could find ways in. Not that she could tell anyone.
She shouldn’t have to push so hard to make others (ya know, the guys supposed to be on her side?), let her out anyway. The Given threat’s old hat, dearest, Wag said. Bless the fools, they can barely keep their ancient power grid up. But their grid was fine. Unrefined skeel. More reliable than First's largely hydro-electric.
Wag didn’t know. Not one of them knew.
Which one had it been?
E’s thoughts were trying to outpace her body again.
She’d dissected it a thousand times a thousand, for all the good. Maw, she didn’t have any evidence they were Wordhealers. They might have been travelers, now a thousand miles away. Maybe Great Sky? Orange shine. They were orange-eyed in Great Sky.
She didn't even have evidence they were kids, or, even thornier, existed at all.
E cleared the edge of the closest skyscraper to the Tower, landed in a crouch, then simply onto her butt.
"Ow.” She stared at her home, the biggest of First's skyscrapers. Bigger even than all three of the Given's so-called "Canton" towers put together. No drones or sirens. Miracle of miracles, had no one noticed? She rubbed her eyes. Ealasaid, you look awful, her mother had said last night at dinner.
"Thanks mom, thanks for that.” She blew a long strand of red out of her face. E could fool Wagner and LJ, Ammi and old man Eterna, but not mom. Her mom knew how thin she was stretched, even if they didn't talk much.
When she asks, which she will, what do I have? There hadn’t even been any wailers that day. Nearly a year. . . nothing.
"Did Strauss ever tell me to trust my instincts? That would be great teacherly advice to remember just now.”
Good rokk no, her blue-eyed master replied from traitorous memory. You, especially you, must think and rethink and think again. Over and over and over. You shouldn’t trust anything about your instincts. Rokk, that you’d even ask! His normally calming laughter ate away at already flayed nerves. Maybe Wagner had said something once? LJ? Nothing came to mind.
She didn’t even bother to remember what her mom may have said.
E stood. "I need better, more affirming friends and memories." She stood, gathered shine into her legs, said, "Damn.” Green bubbles erupted.
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LJ was laying on the sofa when she came striding through the wide-open double doors of the balcony. "Damn. Again!”
LJ rolled his gray eyes, put his data pad on the coffee table. "I’m alone.” Barely twelve his tech wizardry kept both the Tower and broader city systems running. He was, arguably, more indispensable to city defense than E, the head of city defense. "Lucky for you."
Originally from seaside, his immigrant parents had brought him to a doc when he was barely old enough to fart. They were concerned he remembered everything perfectly and without exception, daily roasting them with the contradictions he discerned in their answers of adult condescension.
Regent Tower watched for such prodigies, and immediately placed him in a specially developed accelerated learning program. LJ had maintained a substantial amounts of First’s data systems since his ninth birthday.
She'd taken to him immediately, despite his age. Two freaks, bound by the love of knowledge and their freakishness.
She couldn’t imagine life without him.
"No lectures today, shorty?” She tossed her leather jacket onto her bed. "Getting weak on me? I see you didn’t bring your whiteboard or the presentation this time, thank rokk.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
LJ kept his eyes on her as his hand danced across his data pad, and he must have slaved E’s own pad on her bedside table, for a holo-slides of his fifty-point Why you have to stop leaving the city or Eterna will kill us not to mention your mom lecture appeared between them. E waved at the empty air.
"I’m not going to say your mom doesn’t know,” said LJ, and he sipped from a coffee, "but given the way she’s been stomping around all morning being just a tiny bit brusque, which as you know, for her, is like slashing throats, I’d say it's highly probable that she does, in fact, know. So other than that, you’re home free. I wouldn’t have known had I not dropped by your workshop.” E sighed, plopped next to him. He was a kid with that adorable-as-a-kid-nightmare-as-a-young-man look that would haunt him well into adulthood. Wavy black hair contrasted so radically with his gray eyes that it gave them a spectral aspect. He wore a small, perfectly cut black suit vest with a long, golden chain, a gift from her mom, about his neck.
"Going to make me say it?” said LJ.
"Do you know how far I could punt you?”
"You really going to make me say it again, E?”
"Bet a long way. Never punted a person before. Ya are tiny, though.”
"Are you ok?” LJ’s voice was heavy with concern.
"Why? What have you heard?”
"I’m serious.”
"So am I.”
"Nothing has happened E.” LJ finally sat up. "Whoever it was, if, and that’s a big if, by the way, if he/she was working with Wordheal, he/she would have attacked by now.”
Beginning in a whisper that grew in volume until she was shrieking, E said, "You know, when I told you you were the only person I told about that, I kinda, sorta hoped you wouldn’t walk around shaking TALKIN' ABOUT IT ALL SHAKING TIME!” LJ laughed, and this emboldened her to continue. "You don’t understand the depth of that city’s cruelty, kid.” Smart or not, LJ was still just a boy, and a sheltered one at that.
"E, the Wordheal question has changed, whether or not you want to admit it. We detest the Wordhealers, sure, but we don’t want to annihilate them. Those days are gone.” He was right of course. For most of E’s life First’s leadership had operated on the assumption that war with Wordheal was not merely inevitable, but minutes away. That was how Strauss had trained her to think. Now, her mother, Eterna, and almost all the council thought the rokkists cultists an annoyance.
If it’s true. . . But she couldn't finish. What was a weapon with no wars?
LJ sighed. "I just want to make sure you’re ok, stupid.”
E smiled. No person on the Nameless world, besides Wag or her mother, had the courage to speak to her like that. As if she were not a walking, talking bomb. It struck her only then how tired LJ looked himself. Aping her mom she said, "You look terrible, stupid. What they got you doing?”
LJ snorted, stood. "Brilliant, of course. Council wants the whole library digitized now that one or two of the fossils have learned to use pads. Been going through written records for days, setting transcribers, scanning, combing the system to make sure all that rests on a shelf rests also on the screen. Previous system was like using smoke signals as a backup for rock carvings.” He yawned.
"What are you looking for?”
"Not looking for anything. Just tracking and tracing all the volumes. I’ve had to pull people off of crucial city systems for this. Three weeks of utter insanity. Probably just so some Tower brat can pass a research paper!”
"Whoa,” she prodded him with her foot, "easy big-brain. I’m a Tower brat. Who on the council?” The Library of the Lector, an unfortunate name retained for First's Olde Honour roots, contained millions of books. One of the benefits of being on the Mesogaen sea was that First was able to obtain items from far-flung lands with relative ease. While the people of Wordheal, if they read at all, had to wait for overland caravans, or pay extravagant shipping prices from distant ports, First received fresh books and biblios daily.
LJ stared at E, and from his hardworking eyes she discerned he was deciding whether or not to lie. This alarmed her for two reasons. First, LJ wasn’t a sneak. Second, and order that specific and wide-reaching had to either have come from her mom or her mom's co-regent.
"Goons in suits,” he took up the coffee. "You know the deal.” He walked to her kitchen and threw the remainder of his cup into the sink. "I’d hope you’d tell me if your mom had a hand in my current torture?” He tapped the countertop in an odd, jerky rhythm.
"Hasn’t said a word to me. Why would she, right? What would she need that done for?”
"I just do what I’m told.” LJ looked at his watch. "It’s nearly seven, Council’s been pushed back to ten. I suggest a nap. I know I need one. I’m just telling you to take care, that’s all. Please.”
"I appreciate your concern.” E jabbed at his right arm. "See you tonight.”
Once LJ left she showered. Still dripping, she wrapped herself in a fluffy robe and fell onto the couch. She did need to nap, but was too tired.
She wanted, oh how badly she wanted, to believe nothing would come from the mystery shiner. She wanted, so badly that it made her stomach hurt, to believe it had all been something she’d blown far out of proportion. She had no good, solid, logical reasons to be entertaining the daily, hourly, pounding dread that accompanied each beat of her heart.
She felt it coming, deep inside that unknown vault where all unquestioned presuppositions sat and lulled the mind into daily peace. The sun will be in rise tomorrow morning and in set tomorrow night; I will breathe; the expanse is governed by laws and truths that make inference, science and reason all possible. . . and I am right about that stupid naked kid. She rolled onto he back and stared at the ceiling. "Or kids. Or someone. No better than Wordhealers and their silly Text. Or Archives, or whatever the maw they call it.” A breeze pushed and pulled against her drapes, and it whispered though the room.
From the day she had first seen the true brutality of man, the day Tezm had taken its last breath, to now, life had felt like an increasingly impossible task. Nothing dramatic, only akin to fighting an eternal plague or a shadow. She looked inside for the serenity her gauge, a limitless jade ocean tossing and rolling across the horizon forever and for always, usually brought. Didn’t work. Like at all.
Many years ago, a young and stupid E had believed the Worldhealers could be reasoned with. She devoted time, precious time, far too much, to understanding them. Annoyingly, her ennui reminded of an oft repeated Given excuse: If Rokk is not, why do anything? Why not just die? Why bother?
When E had first read that, she remembered clearly, she had laughed. In the present she said, "Because we do things. We will. And we ignore useless questions.”
E stood, threw together a sandwich knowing she wouldn’t sleep. "Almost time to meet momma and the lads.” The wind blew through her doors again, and this time she shut them, and locked them.
