The Far Shores (The Central Series) (45 page)

“You’re gonna wanna back
off, Doc,” Alice said, with a thoroughly unpleasant smile. “We’ve got a real
friendly working relationship at the moment. I’m sure you have the best
intentions, but you aren’t coming off very well right now. Push any further and
I might start asking all sorts of questions. I don’t need to say anything more,
do I?”

Dr. Graaf pulled his arm
free of Mr. Windsor’s grasp, glaring at both of them.

“Very well,” he snapped,
straightening his jacket and tossing aside his mangled cigar. “There is no need
for us to continue. I understand the situation – and my place – very well now,
thank you. Let us act as if the matter had never been raised, then, shall we?”

“An excellent idea,”
Gerald agreed with a smile. “I think that would be for the best.”

“Then, if you do not
mind, I have some pressing business in the Biology Lab that I must attend to,”
Dr. Graaf said, making a curt bow and then turning his back. “Do enjoy the rest
of your evening.”

Alice Gallow and Gerald
Windsor watched him leave in silence, Alice staring after him while Gerald
smoked thoughtfully.

“Okay, Gerald,” Alice
asked, once she was sure he was gone. “What the fuck was that?”

“Old ghosts,” Gerald
Windsor answered, an expression of melancholy briefly crossing his face. “How
much do you remember?”

They both knew what he
was really asking – how much she read from her diaries. But Alice appreciated
his diplomacy nonetheless.

“Very little,” Alice
admitted. “I was bluffing. Mostly rumors and a bad feeling he gives me.”

“Ha! Well played, Miss
Gallow. I would never have suspected.” He paused to tamp down the contents of
his pipe before continuing. “Paul Graaf was one of the most brilliant students
the Academy ever graduated. Along with Vladimir and the Director, he was
instrumental in a series of experiments that violated a number of the basic
tenets for experimental science in Central – while simultaneously pushing
nanite-related science forward further than any individual on record since the
Founder.”

“You mean – Gaul and
Mitzi’s implants?”

“Indeed,” Gerald
confirmed. “He and the Director were responsible for the physics and the
biological work that led to such procedures, while Vladimir provided the
engineering and surgical expertise. The result of their experiments were the
implants you mentioned – along with a number of unfortunate deaths. The Board
demanded an Audit, and all three received reprimands. Paul took it the hardest,
and resented Gaul for accepting the punishment so readily, and then recovering
from it so quickly. He tends to put people off...”

“I noticed that.”

“Gaul’s advancement
through the ranks was, at worst, slightly delayed. Vladimir’s talents were
indispensible, and he enjoyed Gaul’s protection. But Paul Graaf could never let
go of the implantation experiments, admit guilt, and move on. He didn’t agitate
against the ruling, but he made it very public the he disagreed, which held
back his advancement, despite his revolutionary work with the Ether and
inanimate materials – the same work that eventually led to that amazing power
plant, by the way. His attitude and his status as a political liability kept
him from gaining a position at the Academy. Instead he joined a floundering
mini-cartel in the Hegemony, and transformed it into the genesis of what we
know today as the Far Shores.”

“Huh. Not as bad as I
was prepared for...”

“What I have told you
already are the facts. The final part of the story, however, is mostly, shall
we call it,
informed
speculation.” Gerald Windsor tapped the burning
embers of his pipe onto the sand, then ground them out with the heel of his
shoe. “A few years after the formation of the Far Shores, another cartel in the
Hegemony decided to start applying their own radical eugenic precognitive
theories on their children...”

“Oh, fuck,” Alice
moaned, putting her head in her hands. “Thule, right?”

“Yes.” Gerald’s voice
was unchanged, but his expression was troubled. “They started screening
potential Operators, and hording nanite injections for the ones deemed most
exceptional. Naturally, this led to a reduced membership and an extraordinarily
high death toll in their cartel, but the Operators who survived were
extraordinarily powerful, capable of operating multiple disparate protocols.
Now, if one simply provides an Operator with multiple nanite injections, not
only are the results unpredictable, they are very often fatal. While the Thule
Cartel had a high mortality rate, it was not nearly as terrible as modeling
predicted. And the survivors, when examined, appeared to have received implants
– similar in theory but radically different in design from the one residing in
the head of our beloved Director. An Audit was decreed, but a source for the
implant technology was never discovered. The Thule Cartel avoided being
declared Anathema, and, though no blame was officially cast in their direction,
the Far Shores membership in the Hegemony was severed, and they were relocated
to their present-day facility.”

“Shit. That’s...fucked.”

“Yes. Rather.”

They both regarded the
blank sky in silence.

“Gerald?”

“Yes, Alice?”

“I’ve been over
Alistair’s notes, and all the records, but I’ve never understood. How did the
Thule Cartel avoid being declared Anathema? It seems like a textbook case...”

“I’m afraid I can’t
answer that question. Because I don’t know myself.”

“Hmm. I see.”

Gerald tucked his pipe
back into the narrow wooden case he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“If you are curious,
though, I can offer one piece of advice.”

“Which is?”

“If you really want to
know the answer to the question, as well as how the Far Shores came to be what
they currently are, then I would suggest you take your question to the
architect of that particular solution...”

“What? Oh. No.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
Gerald Windsor smiled at Alice, but there was no joy in his expression. “You will
have to ask the Director, Alice.”

***

“There you are,” Alex said, taking a
seat beside Eerie on a log that had been dragged to the vicinity of the fire
pit to serve as crude seating. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Me too,” Eerie said,
nodding and offering him a wrapped package on a popsicle stick. “Here.”

“Um. Okay.” Alex took
the paper-wrapped ice cream from her. “And this is?”

“An ice cream bar.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Alex started to unwrap
it without enthusiasm. He was half-drunk already, and ice cream didn’t really
sound that good on a cold beach, even with a roaring fire nearby.

“It’s not for you,”
Eerie corrected. “It’s for me.”

“Ah. Then, why did
you...?”

“I need you to eat the
chocolate off the outside.”

“O-okay. But, ah, why?”

“Because I don’t like
chocolate,” Eerie explained, shaking her head. “Alex is stupid.”

“Oh. Right.” Alex
finished the process of removing the wrapper and tried to figure out exactly
how to remove the chocolate shell without disturbing the ice cream beneath. “You
don’t? I mean, I thought you loved candy...”

“Not
all
candy.
Chocolate is gross. And bad for you. Margot...Margot said it made you fat.”

Alex left aside the
question of why Eerie would worry about fat, when she seemed to consume a diet
made up entirely of refined sugar, and wanted the ice cream portion of the
frozen treat. Actually, he decided not to bring up the dead vampire girl
either. It was a sore subject to say the least. He had approached it poorly in
the past, and had not, as of yet, devised a method he was totally certain would
be respectful to address it.

Which was too bad.
Because sometimes he felt that one of the things he and Eerie truly shared was a
mutual sense of loss over Margot.

After a few abortive
experiments, Alex settled for cracking the chocolate coating with his front
teeth, causing large chunks of it to break off, which he ate because it seemed
wasteful to simply dump them on the sand. The chocolate was cold and tasteless,
with a waxy texture.

“You are wearing your
hat,” Eerie observed shyly. “It looks good.”

“I like it,” Alex said, pausing
to swallow a mouthful of lackluster chocolate. “Thanks for rescuing it.”

“I’m glad you like it.”
Eerie’s strange voice was hardly audible over the crackling of the fire, and
she clutched her hands between her legs, her skirt just long enough to preserve
her modesty. “Alex, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” He finished
peeling the chocolate off, returning to Eerie a rather naked-looking rectangle
of white ice cream. “Whatever you want.”

“Do you – do you like it
here?”

“At the Far Shores?”

“Yes.”

Eerie licked the side of
the ice cream bar like a popsicle, which struck Alex as a very peculiar way to
go about eating it. He considered saying something, but decided that it was
really none of his business. His gaze drifted off to the roaring fire while he
answered.

“I guess it’s okay. It’s
not…not like the Academy. I mean, Katya’s here, but I don’t have, you know,
friends here or anything. It’s not as fun, I guess – though I don’t really have
too many classes, either. Just training. So that’s a bonus. Why do you ask?”

“Um, no reason.” When
Alex glanced at Eerie, she had a precariously leaning bar and ice cream on her
nose. “It’s just…that doctor guy. He told me that I could stay here, if I
wanted.”

Alex was startled by the
suggestion, but Eerie didn’t notice his expression, as she was too busy
attempting to consume the remainder of the ice cream before it melted off the
stick. He didn’t trust Dr. Graaf – and not just because of Katya’s unrelenting
suspicion. There was something vaguely off about the Far Shores, and the way
Dr. Graaf had stared at Eerie after she rescued his hat from the Ether.

“Would you want to do
that?”

“Don’t know,” Eerie
said, licking the last of the ice cream from the stick. “Maybe. We could spend
more time together.”

She looked at him
hopefully, while he tried to compose a response that would convey his unease
without sounding like he was rejecting her, or trying to hide something.

“Huh. That would
be…well, wouldn’t you miss the Academy? I mean, I do, and I haven’t been there
half as long.”

“Dummy,” Eerie scolded,
tossing the stick into the fire. “Maybe that’s why.”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess
that…that makes sense. But, I don’t know…”

“Alex.” Eerie slid
closer to him on the log, so that their legs were touching, her bare leg
against his jeans. No matter how many times he saw it, Alex was still puzzled
by Eerie’s resilience to the cold. “Do you not want to see me more often?”

“No, that’s not it,”
Alex said forcefully, shaking his head. “Not at all. It’s just…this isn’t a nice
place, Eerie. And I’m not sure…”

He found himself
avoiding her dilated eyes, staring at the fire instead as it crackled and
hissed. On the other side of the pit, Haley and Min-jun were feeding more
unnecessary logs into the fire, chatting and looking a bit tipsy. Eerie took
his hand with her mitten and waited.

“I’m not sure I like
what I do,” Alex said finally, not entirely sure where the words came from. “Working
for Audits, I mean. I’m not sure I would want you to see more of that.”

“Why?”

“I’m…I’m not proud of
it. I’m not always sure that we are doing the right thing.”

“Like what?”

Alex shook his head,
trying hard not to remember the body floating in the sea off the coast of
China.

“I can’t, well, I’m not
supposed to talk about it. It’s secret, or whatever. But I’m sure you can
guess, right?”

Eerie nodded slowly.

“If you don’t like it,
then why do you do it?”

Alex shrugged.

“Because someone has to,
I guess. Because I can. Central took me in when no one wanted me. This is my
home. And I want to be…useful, I guess.” Alex frowned, trying to put words to
something he didn’t fully understand himself. “I don’t know. That sounds all
wrong.”

“I get it.” Eerie
squeezed his hand. “Nobody wants to be useless.”

“It helps that I’m not
entirely hopeless at it. And the Auditors are important. I didn’t really
understand that until the Anathema made it to Central.” Alex rubbed his
forehead with his free hand, trying to figure out exactly what the fuck he was
trying to say. “They hurt people I cared about. For a while, I thought they
hurt you.”

“Alex – do what you need
to do. But do it for yourself.” Eerie patted his head affectionately. “I don’t
need protecting. I don’t need you to save me.”

“I know. Damn it, I
know. I haven’t forgotten. It’s just, doing this, it feels meaningful, like I’m
doing something worthwhile. I wouldn’t want you to be part of it, though.
You’re better than that, Eerie. Whatever you do, it’ll be a lot better than the
violence of the Audits department, I know that much. Anyway, the time I spend
with you, away from this shit, is what keeps me sane.”