Caine's Law (30 page)

He lets his head fall back into its cool cushion of fairy-tale snow, and now he has tears.

“Ah.” The horse-witch nods. “It reminds you of your wife.”

Duncan’s eyes drift closed. “Everything reminds me of my wife.”

“That’s sad for you.”

“Sometimes. Usually. It was snowing the day we admitted to each other we were in love.”

“Sad and happy together, then.”

“A writer from Earth said there is no greater grief than to recall, in misery, times when we were happy.”

“Dante Alighieri.”

Surprise opens his eyes and lifts his head. “How do you know that?”

“A man who looked like you told me once. I don’t forget.”

“Someone who looked like me?”

“We met before their son was born. I also met the man’s partner—the woman he would marry. She was very beautiful.”

“Yes,” he said faintly. “She was. Very beautiful. Lucky that Hari favored her more than me. Did wonders for his career.”

“Your son must be very handsome.”

“He was. He is. Probably. Whoever he actually is.”

“You’re proud of him.”

“Very. But I can’t tell him that.”

“He can’t bear to be admired.”

“You know him well.”

“Very.”

“I am also, well … I’m in awe. He’s killed people, and saved people. He’s fought monsters, and he’s fought men who became monsters. He’s saved kingdoms and toppled empires. Now he has set himself against the gods to save a universe … and I used to change his
diapers
. I used to yell at him to make his bed.”

“You used to beat him so hard all he could do was lie there and bleed.”

Some few moments passed before he could respond.

“He said you know right where it hurts,” he said, slow and thick. “I should have believed him.”

“He told me once that every time you look at him, you see only where you hurt him. Is that true?”

He laid one hand over his eyes. “Why would you ask me that? And why would I answer it?”

“It’s what I do. Answer, or not, for whatever reasons please you, or for no reason at all.”

“Then not. I can’t talk about this.”

“You should know: you’re not here because you beat him.”

“
He’s
here because I beat him.”

“That’s a matter too deep for me. He brought you here because he wants you here. He thinks he needs you here.”

“I can’t imagine what he could need from me.”

“Are all the men in your family obtuse? You’re here for the same reason I am. And Angvasse or Khryl or whoever she wants to be.”

“He thinks I can help somehow?”

“You’re here because he loves you.”

And this, somehow, is a wound deeper than the last.

“I’m not even his father. Even if I was, I wouldn’t know him. Not really.”

“Do you think that means he doesn’t know you?”

Duncan finds he has no reply.

“It’s not simple,” she says. “Nothing about either of you is simple. I don’t know how well he knows you, or even how well he thinks he knows you. But I know he loves you. And I believe you love him.”

“It’s … difficult.”

“It’s difficult for me too. He’s a difficult man. It’s a good thing I can afford to be patient.”

“I’d imagine so.”

She reaches over to take his hand. “I’m not always right, Duncan. But when I say something that’s not true, it’s because I’m mistaken, not false. I don’t tell you this as part of his plan, or any plan. I tell you because I believe it’s true, and I want you to know it.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because he does.”

Duncan is silent again.

“He cares about all kinds of things,” the horse-witch says lightly. “Some of them are much more unlikely than you. He loves in the same way he does everything else. Any time he backs away from the brink of a cliff, it’s only to get a running start.”

“Most people think he doesn’t love anything but himself.”

“And they’re exactly wrong. His whole life is about who and what he loves. It always has been. For him, love is absolute.”

“Until he met Shanna, he never seemed like he cared much about anything except his career.”

“Some of the things he loves are not nice things. At all. But he loves what he loves.”

“I apologized—tried to apologize. If I had been a good father—even a better father—he never would have had to become Caine …”

“He loves being Caine. His love for being Caine is just as absolute. Like I said: some things he loves are not nice.”

“How can he love being … that? Being what Caine is?”

“Because he’s an asshole,” she says. “You must have noticed.”

The oil trickles into my blood without pain, without heat, without any sensation of power at all. Only an intimation gathering into a certainty that I am loved.

Loved by a power greater than my mind can conceive.

Looking over at the armored secmen, their power rifles at slant arms, I know that Studio Security isn’t a job. It’s an assignment. They’re not retired Social Police, because Social Police don’t retire.

And now I understand why.

Gayle’s frowning at me. “
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

It seems like a year since I asked the question. “Have you read it?”

“I—well, I suppose I …” He frowns, squaring his shoulders and stretching his neck like he can’t quite figure out if I’m pulling his dick. “It’s only—that was my mother’s favorite book. She used to read it to me, a few pages at a time, for bedtime stories. After I started school, we used to read it together. She’d help me pronounce the words, and explain the things I didn’t understand. Why do you ask?”

“It was my father’s favorite book too. For Dad,
To Kill a Mockingbird
was the Bible. More than the Bible. Dad used to say you can learn most of what you need to know about somebody by finding out his favorite character.”
I nod toward the palmpad in his hand. “Dad’s kind of on my mind right now.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Simon? Ever read it?”

Faller shrugs. “Sure. Long time ago.”

“See, Dad had this idea because, y’know, just having read it says you have a brain and some idea what it’s used for, and that you read fiction, and that you have at least a theoretical appreciation for the classics. But beyond that, well—most people who read that novel like to imagine themselves being like this character or that one, because those characters, it’s like they’re more real than you are. Y’know, some guys identify with, say, Tom Robinson, suffering injustice with dignity. Some guys go for Jem, the big brother. Shanna liked Scout—obvious, sure. Dad told me once that my mother favored Maudie Atkinson. And if you know somebody, sometimes you don’t even have to ask who their character is. You, for example, strike me as a Dill guy.”

Faller stares, blinks and stares again. “How can you know that?”

“It’s obvious. Dill’s thing is that he knows stuff, right? So smart it’s scary, not strong but charming and resourceful and inventive … and a little sad. And you grew up to be a necromancer. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He shakes his head. “You’re not wrong. I just don’t get where you’re going with this.”

“Gayle?”

“It’s plausible, I suppose. It still seems to be, well, a little abstract.”

“Sure. Don’t take it wrong if I’m off. I think you liked the sheriff. Heck Tate.”

“Well … my mother and I used to talk about how the sheriff had to enforce laws he didn’t always believe in. And how he knew everybody and liked everybody, and everybody liked him, even though he was the local authority. But he wasn’t the only one.”

“Yeah? I’m thinking, maybe, Calpurnia? Becoming part of a family through devotion and diligence, more to her than meets the eye …?”

He flushes and looks down like he’s suddenly interested in braiding his fingers together. “That’s—well, I mean …”

“How much do you know about my father?”

“I don’t—well, I guess, the usual. Your—uh, Caine’s—promotional pack included a, I suppose, a sanitized profile. You spoke of him once in a while, while we worked together. He was living with you, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. Simon?”

Faller shrugs. “I studied Westerling from the Michaelson text, forty years ago. More. And
Tales of the First Folk
is required reading in the Conservatory’s Battle Magick program.”

“
My
father’s favorite character was—” I have to swallow to clear my voice, and just thinking about it is making my eyes hot. “Dad’s favorite character … 
is
 … Atticus.”

Gayle nods thoughtfully. He’s caught up in the game now. “Plausible. Even obvious. Unconventional single father, educated, intellectual, philosophical turn of mind, exemplary moral courage—”

“That’s not—” I choke on it. “That’s not why.”

And now the stinging in my eyes threatens to spill over into moisture trickling onto my cheeks, because I guess when you come right down to it I’m still that seven-year-old kid.

Sometimes the rage is too big for anything but tears.

“My father wanted to
be
him. My father wanted to be
exactly
him. He pledged his life, his love, his skill and hope and heart in a cause that can’t be won, that he
knew
can’t be won, because Atticus fucking Finch made him believe there were things more important than winning.”

“You sound like you’re angry about it. Him. Atticus. Like you hate him.”

“I’d gut that fucker like a rabbit.”

It’s the truth.

This is truth too. “Atticus Finch made my father believe that
how you lose
can change people, and that changing people changes the world, and you saw that fucking screen. You saw Dad’s prize for fighting his good fight.”

Again his fingers get interesting. “Hari, I—”

“You
saw
. Both of you.”

“I—yes,” Gayle says warily. “Yes, I saw.”

Faller just looks away.

“My father wasn’t—isn’t—a sane man. He couldn’t match his behavior to his ideals, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try. He believed,
believes
, in the rule of law. He believes in civilization. He believes rational discourse can make the world a better place. He believes everything Atticus Finch believes. He couldn’t live up to his hero, but who ever does?”

“I’m still unclear on the significance here.”

“So who’s
my
character?”

“Yours?” His eyes go distant. He’s thinking about it. “Not Atticus. You’re no fan of civilization.”

“I believe in civilization. I just don’t buy the rational discourse part. People are exactly as civilized as somebody forces them to be, and that’s the whole fucking story. Front to back and wall to wall.”

He squints at me. “Jem? He’s not afraid of anything, and—”

“Here, look. The theme of that book—the message that most people take away from it, maybe even the theme intended by the lady who wrote it—is basically what Dad got out of it, you follow? That love and hope and courage and patience and reason can right wrongs, or at least show people what the wrongs are, and nudge the world in the direction of justice and peace. That’s what you got out of it, right?”

Faller shrugged. “That’s what the book’s about.”

“Not for me.”

“My mother,” Gayle says slowly, with a thoughtful look over at the Social Police pretending to be secmen, “said it was about the consequences of losing sight of your place in society. That how clever you are, how good you are—how
righteous
you are—doesn’t matter. At all. Violate the social norm and society will destroy you.”

Faller looks skeptical. “Hari?”

I shrug. “What I got out of it is that Atticus Finch is a fucking idiot.”

Faller gives me a distantly appraising squint that I recognize. That was how he looked at me up on the bluffs above the vertical city: like I’m some kind of exotic bug and he’s trying to figure out how dangerous I might turn out to be.