A Few Good Men (22 page)

Sturm Und Dragged

I had no recollection of getting home, no recollection of going to bed, but when I next became aware of myself, I was in bed, in my room, completely naked and wrapped around a stuffed giraffe. I didn’t remember sleeping. I didn’t remember anything. Everything was dark. I got up and checked that my door was locked, then went back to bed, and wrapped myself around the giraffe again.

Oh, please. Stop the pity party already.
It was Ben’s voice in my head. He sounded furious. But I didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t having a pity party. I’d realized what my life had been. It had all fallen in place.

I turned over and stared at the perfect darkness that obscured the ceiling. Ben had been thrown at me by his family, by his religion. I refused to believe he hadn’t loved me. There were too many moments of shared humor, too many moments of delight in just being together. Those can’t be faked or pretended. The friendship had been true and perhaps the love, but it remained that it had been an arranged relationship. He hadn’t felt about me the way I’d felt about him.

But most painful, I’d killed Ben. I’d truly murdered him. I looked at my hands and remembered the homemade knife, and Ben’s throat and the final flash of gratitude in his eyes. Rescue had been on the way. And I’d bet that the Remys could get access to the best regen. It could have saved—

It’s a pity party with guilt streamers. Listen, knucklehead, my religion didn’t throw me at you. We worried Sam half to death being involved because he was afraid I’d get hurt, while I . . .

“You?”

I was afraid you’d get hurt.

I turned over and buried my face in the giraffe. “You don’t exist,” I said. “You’re a figment of my imagination. To all my other charming characteristics I will now add being completely crazy.”

Now?
He raised his non-existent eyebrow at me.
Luce!

Could I smell a trace of his cologne, a hint of his shampoo in the giraffe? After fifteen years?

Only if they saved it in a sealed bag. Wait, they had to have, or it would be dusty.

I pressed my face into the giraffe and inhaled and tried to conjure Ben from non-existence. “I’m sorry. If I’d known—”

I didn’t know; you didn’t know. It might never have been true. Look, the SOL are not the most organized people in the world. They might have told Nat they were about to rescue me. They might even have believed that. But the chances are small to none.
His memory in my mind waggled his hand in a dubious manner.
We used to joke by saying that the individualists had failed to organize.

I didn’t dignify that with an answer, though if I thought about it, I’d confess that they didn’t seem the best organized group in the world.

Are you going to arrest them? Have them executed?

“What?”

Sam. Nat. My family. They are guilty of illegal beliefs.

They were. And I knew they were. And while I didn’t know what the Sons of Liberty actually had done, as compared to what the media claimed they did, I knew it had to have involved some murders, some destruction of property, but how much, and in what circumstances?

And in my head, Ben set his jaw in the way I’d been familiar with, the way that meant he was about to stand his ground and hold it because he was sure he was right.
We look after our own,
he said.

“Nat killed my father.”

I think that fell under private vendetta,
Ben said
. You can’t deny him the right of avenging Max. But I won’t deny we’d kill Good Men if . . . Most of them do such things that . . .
He stopped and shrugged.
You’ll figure it out. Most Good Men aren’t good
.

If they were three-hundred-year-old Mules who murdered their own children to survive, I supposed they couldn’t be, but I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “I will presume that . . .” I couldn’t believe that Ben would do anything bad. Illegal, perhaps, but not bad. And Ben had been one of them. “I’ll presume that you wouldn’t have joined if they committed evil acts.”

Define evil.

“Things that hurt people.”

Don’t be an infant. Of course we hurt people. Even if they’d managed to rescue me from prison, guards would have died in the raid. I guarantee it. And property would get destroyed. By that definition I did commit evil more than a few times.

“You killed people?”

Only when it couldn’t be avoided.

I wanted to ask him where and when it had happened, but reminded myself he wouldn’t be able to tell me. One thing is to allow your subconscious to pretend to be the ghost of your long-lost friend. Another is to start believing he really is such. Instead I concentrated on the evil part. “You wouldn’t hurt someone who either hadn’t deserved it . . .” I paused. “You wouldn’t kill someone unless doing so would prevent more deaths. Or if you had to kill in self-defense.”

I wouldn’t imprison them either, he said. Or interfere with them. You could say I respected their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So. He’d won. He usually won our verbal sparring bouts. “It’s not that simple,” I said. “They can’t make me change my religion to suit their needs. They can’t ask me to sell my soul.”

You aren’t sure you have a soul, remember? I’ll agree that Nat handled it badly, but—

“There was no way they could have handled it that I would have agreed. Your Usaian fanaticism is a pipe dream. If it was so wonderful, why did the original fall apart, amid external and internal strife? Why couldn’t it even defend itself? The Regime of the Good Men has been stable for longer than it existed. And we’ve kept people happier.”

Or so we’ll think so long as news is censored.

I was quiet.

So, you’re not going to denounce my family.

“Or harm them, no. How could you think I would?”

Then what are you going to do?

“I’m going to govern.”

Riders on the Sturm

I would also have to find a way to defend my house and my seacity. I’d been holding on to a mythical hope, a child’s game of pretending. I’d always known in the end it would come down to me, and just to me. It always had. And it should. My problem, my solution. Why should I have been counting on Nat Remy? As much as I’d failed in the past, everything that needed to be done to protect myself, or Ben, or anyone else for that matter, had been my business. My job.

I dressed and went to the office. My father’s office. My office. No one stopped me. No one questioned me. I dreaded that Sam would ask me about where I’d gone with Nat, but he didn’t. He took no more notice of me than if it had been my routine always to come and sit behind the desk and deal with accumulated paperwork.

The first day I did no more than sign piles and piles of paper with my signet ring. It was surprisingly tiring, the movement of pulling a paper from the pile and pressing my ring against it. I didn’t read the paper. I couldn’t read the paper. I couldn’t concentrate enough to do it. But just signing them gave me something to do, and while the rest of the office moved around me, and Sam Remy now and then brought over new piles of paper, I found myself fitting in, acting as though it were all normal. Routine. No more than routine. Someone brought me coffee. I drank it. Then I returned to my work.

After sundown, someone turned on the lights, and clerks started leaving. At last Sam Remy stood up. He looked hesitantly at me. “You should have dinner,” he said. He didn’t add “son” but I could hear it in the tone of his voice.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. But I did get up and leave the office. There was no one else there, so my staying would serve no purpose.

Sam left before me. On my way to my room, I passed a room where the door was insufficiently latched, and voices came from it. I’d swear I recognized Sam’s voice and Nat’s voice.

“—an unconscionable risk,” Sam said.

Then something muffled, and then Nat’s—I was sure of it—voice, “He’s not going to.”

“How can you be sure? Nat, you should have asked before, you should have tried— You pushed him in a stupid way. What on Earth made you think it would work?”

“It would have worked with Max.”

“He’s
not
Max. ”

“No.” A pause. “No.”

“Are you sure that . . .” Muffled.

“Out of time.”

Muffled.

“Not if he dies. I couldn’t stand it. I tell you I couldn’t stand it.”

I wondered if he were talking about me, but it seemed unlikely. Why wouldn’t he be able to stand it if I died? Until a few days ago, he’d thought me dead. More likely that he couldn’t stand the mess if I died. That made perfect sense. But I had no intention of dying.

I went to my room. I crawled into bed, fully dressed. Sometime in the night, I felt the impact of a body on my bed and a furry face pressed near mine. Goldie.

From the darkness came the sound of Nat settling down inside my door. So, he was still guarding me. Of course he was. He didn’t want the seacity thrown into worse turmoil by my death.

In the morning when I woke up, he was gone. There was no one in the room, either, but a small table had been wheeled in with breakfast. Just looking at it turned my stomach, but I forced myself to have coffee and a slice of bread before cleaning—I used the fresher on vibro this time—and putting on clean clothes.

For three days I went to the office. For three days, I electronically signed papers I didn’t read. For three nights, Goldie slept in my bed, his warmth and company my only protection against the terrible cold of knowing myself alone, the terrible fear of knowing I couldn’t do anything to protect those who depended on me.

For three nights, Nat slept across my door, on the inside. I knew this, because I could hear him breathe, and because Goldie wouldn’t be there without him. But I didn’t see him. And it was better I didn’t see him. After all, what good would it do to dredge up old trouble? He had tried to railroad me into joining a religion. I’d contravened his plans. He was still protecting me for the sake of the rest of the people in the domain. But that was it. It was not like there was any great affection or even respect between us. I would say I felt sorry for him.

Except you’re so busy feeling sorry for yourself
, Ben said, and I supposed he was right. And there was nothing I could answer to this, so I didn’t.

On the fourth day, I accidentally skimmed one of the papers on my desk, and paused. The paper made no sense whatsoever. “Sam,” I said, puzzled at my voice wavering.

“Sir,” he said and approached my desk. Did Sam look like he was afraid I’d turn on him and have him arrested, or worse? Oh, not outwardly. His external demeanor was the same as always—responsible, respectful, perhaps paternal despite and behind all this. But there was a hint of cringe in his gaze.

I suspected it wasn’t even for him. Sam Remy had the sort of mind that could face the noose or worse easily enough. But this, if I were so disposed, would mean the death of his entire family. And I knew Sam much too well to think that didn’t matter.

The worst was that part of me longed for him to treat me as he had when I was a child—as though I were his brother or his son. I longed to hear him call me Luce, or “son.” But he just stood there, very tense, staring at me.

“These papers,” I put my hand on the pile I’d just skimmed. “They direct farmers what to plant where, right?”

He inclined his head.

I frowned at him. “We don’t have farms. There isn’t enough soil on the island to make for significant fields.”

He shook his head. “No, but we do have territory in North America that falls under our jurisdiction.”

I frowned at the paper. “But . . . North America doesn’t have two growing seasons. Not in the northern parts. Show me where this is.” I stabbed my finger at the coordinates on the map.

Sam looked grave. “No. I know. But we always do it like that. We issue the seed to farmers and have them seed in November.”

“Excuse me? Why?”

“Uh . . . it’s always been policy.”

It just wasn’t good enough. I pulled another paper. “And this one?” I said.

Sam looked around at the office.

“Samuel Remy, answer me, is that also policy?” Was the man I had trusted since I could remember, a monster, as big a monster as my father, or worse?

He shook his head. “Not here, sir. Those documents are eyes only, and have always gone from the Good Man to me and from me to the Good Man. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it was under my father too. If you wish to discuss it, I think we should be in private.”

“You can’t mean we’ve been kill—”

“Not here, sir. I have your best interests at heart.”

“My best—” but then I looked at the pile of papers and back at Sam Remy. My best interests might be right. If anything in these papers got out, I suspected that no Good Man would be left alive. At least I hoped not. And regardless of how bad my kind was, of this I was innocent. Other Good Men had sons who might be as guiltless. And I didn’t want to reignite a new set of turmoils that would consume the innocent along with the guilty.

“Into my private office, Mr. Remy. Now.” I picked up the pages that puzzled me and stalked out into the plush confines of the inner sanctum that could be locked and which I knew, from my father’s use of it, was soundproof.

Sam Remy walked in after me, standing very tall in his plain dark suit. And it’s no use at all telling me he was shorter than Nat and Nat was shorter than myself. I know all that. But in my mind, he was still a father figure. And I still believed he must have a moral reason for this, but I’d be damned if I could explain it.

As soon as he closed the door, I thrust the sheaf of papers at him. “Why are we creating famines? Why are we releasing targeted plagues among the people? Why are we killing inventors and curtailing inventions? Why—”

“We?”

The single word stopped me, and looking at Sam I could tell he looked grey and tired, exhausted, really. Like a man who’s been carrying a heavy weight uphill for a long time, like a man who’s lived divided, and who knows it, and on whom the pressure of a double life has been growing over the years, and who has been aged and sickened by it.