Truth (10 page)

XVII

A
few hours later, Dee peered around the door of my room. “You busy?”

I shuffled a clean sheet of paper over the sketch I���d been working on. I’d been reworking the drawings from the hospital. Dee didn’t need to see them, to be reminded of what had happened at Metro. “Come on in.”

“Sledding was ultra! You should’ve come.” She put my all-weathers that she’d borrowed, clean and folded, on top of the dresser. “I ran these through the Laundry Queen. Thanks for letting me wear them. I would’ve been frozen otherwise.” She snuck a look over my shoulder. “Whatcha working on?”

“Nothing much.”

“You know, Nina, I’ve been through the same stuff you have. We both lost Mom. We both nearly lost Gran, and Pops is in custody.” She walked around the chair to face me. “Whatever it is you’re hiding, I wish you’d share it with me. We’re pretty much all each other has anymore. Please don’t treat me like a little kid.”

She looked so grown up. And, she was right. But still, I didn’t want to burden her with the truth. Mom had taught both of us certain things, like how to think for ourselves, not to get caught up in Media hype, to respect our bodies, and to make our own decisions. She knew how to think as well as I did. And it wasn’t realistic to believe she wouldn’t see the dirty side of life eventually.

The triptych from the hospital. My hand shook as I uncovered it for Dee.

Dee stared at it for what seemed an eternity.

My insides clutched. I shouldn’t have showed her. It was too graphic, too real.

She gnawed her thumbnail. “That’s just like it happened.”

“Yeah.” I clenched my teeth.

“Why doesn’t Media talk about this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because if they did, they’d have to stop making girls believe that being sexy and attracting guys is the most important thing in the universe.”

“Have you drawn more of these kinds of pictures?”

“Yes. But I haven’t kept them. I was afraid if anyone saw them I’d get in trouble. These drawings are the way I can say what I don’t have words for.”

“You could be arrested for doing something like this?” She held it up, studying it more. “I guess it really makes the cops look bad.”

“They
are
bad, Dee.” I took it from her. “Well, maybe not bad, exactly. Just like most people, they can’t stand to see the truth—the real, raw, from-your-guts truth about what’s going on around us. So they stop anyone who makes too much noise about it. They should’ve been finding the boys who raped that woman’s daughter—not shutting her up. But to everyone, it’s not rape if she’s a sex-teen. And if no one sees or hears, no one questions the laws that allow this stuff to happen.”

“Please be careful, Nina. If you got caught . . .” Her face paled. “They’d take you away, like they did Pops. You can’t let them do that. Promise me.”

“Most I can promise is that I won’t do anything stupid.” I tucked the picture back in my drawing pad. “Now, let’s go make dinner.”

Neither one of us really felt like cooking, so we set the cook center to auto and let it spit out seitan burgers and tofu fries.

After dinner, Mr. Jenkins came down. “Nina, we should talk about your meeting at B.O.S.S. tomorrow.”

“It’s at nine,” I said. “In that building where I brought Pops his meds.”

“I know. I wish that Mrs. Jenkins or I were able to be there. I could probably find someone else to go with you.”

“No, I can do this.”

“I know you can. Still . . .” He placed his hand on my shoulder. “It should be nothing more than a formal presentation of the facts and the charges. Don’t give them any more information than they ask for. Yes and no answers are good. You needn’t elaborate on any points. And above all, deny that anyone else in the family knew what that scrambler was.”

The hairs on my neck stood up. “I will.”

He gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze. “You’ll do fine.”

I didn’t feel fine.

***

After a mostly sleepless night, I found myself awake and perusing the clothes in my closet. B.O.S.S. noticed everything; I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look a little bit older, more respectable. That wasn’t going to happen with my Sale-o-rama wardrobe. Shutting the door, I went down the hall to the room where we’d put Gran and Pops’s things. Not quite sure what I was looking for, I rummaged through the boxes, eventually coming to one marked
GINNIE’S CLOTHES
.

The first thing that hit me when I lifted the lid was the aroma of Mom. We’d boxed these things up the day after she died. In the rush to get out of the rented modular, there had been no time for doing laundry. The scent of her perfume mixed with her own personal body smell made me feel as if she was just around the corner. I buried my face in the box, tears streaming down my cheeks. I missed her so much.

It was a struggle, but I pulled myself together. Pushing aside the tearstained clothes, I retrieved a dress and sweater that I knew would fit. Mom and I were close to the same size, and I’d borrowed these same clothes for a school outing. When I was done dressing, I examined myself in the mirror. It would have to do. I didn’t look top tier, and the clothes were ridiculously out-of-date, but they were from when Ginnie was a tier-five assistant. Better than my tier-two wardrobe. I knew tiers shouldn’t matter, but in this case, I needed all the help I could get.

Dee was still sleeping when I slipped out the front door. If she’d hugged me and gotten a full whiff of Mom, it would have been disastrous.

Calling Wei from the trans, I asked her to check on Dee later.

“Not a problem. I could still come down there, meet you . . . I don’t have to tell Dad. Chris will drive me. He’s worried about you.”

“I appreciate everyone’s concern, but honestly, Wei, I have to learn to take care of myself. Wouldn’t sisters want each other to be strong and brave?” That was the most I dared say without giving the Sisterhood away.

“You’re right,” she said. “Absolutely. I’ll see you later.”

I thought about calling Sal, but he hadn’t mentioned how long the NonCon business would be. Since I hadn’t heard from him yet, I knew he was probably still wrapped up in that. Besides, he wouldn’t want me going to B.O.S.S. again by myself, and I’d meant what I’d said to Wei. I had to do this alone.

My PAV beeped, jarring me out of my thoughts.

“Hey, Nina, it’s Chris. You got out of here so fast I didn’t get a chance to tell you to knock ’em dead.” He chuckled. “Not literally, of course.”

“You are silly. Thanks, Chris.”

“Seriously, good luck. If you want me to pick you up afterward—”

“No.” I was too quick with the refusal. Chris’s unexpected compliment at Soma, and a few other little things he’d done—like going out of his way to be sure I was okay after Martinique’s stupid comments—had made me wonder if he was flirting with me. Don’t be silly, I told myself. I was definitely not his type. “I mean, I have a couple of things to do afterward. I’ll see you later. And . . . thanks for calling.”

“You bet.”

I clicked off. My finger slipped, and the blaring verts surrounded me.
“Don’t miss the Holiday specials!” “Shop Sale-o-rama, where every deal is a good deal!”
“All-weather jeans—”
I quickly clicked off my PAV again.

Why couldn’t that call have been Sal? And why had Chris’s call made my heart beat a little faster? The transit pulled up in front of B.O.S.S. headquarters. Taking a deep breath, I exited the trans.

XVIII

O
nce I was inside, the same reception bot as before performed the obligatory weapons and ID scan. At least I knew it was coming this time. And they knew I was coming. No surprises.

The bot then directed me to a waiting room in the Yellow corridor. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet with puke-yellow walls and a frosted-glass window on one end. In the center of the room, two metal chairs were bolted to the floor, their backs to the door. I felt way too vulnerable to sit there, so I stood. Except for a large wall clock and some errant cobwebs, abandoned by any sensible spiders, the room was bare. An ancient light fixture hummed mercilessly overhead.

At forty-five minutes after the appointed time of nine, the door opened. “Follow me,” a woman commanded.

Her heels tapped purposefully down the hall as we passed door after door. Each had a tiny frosted window with a number painted above it. We stopped at number 15.

“Here.” She opened the door, waving me in. Then she closed it with a resounding click.

Inside, a scrawny bald man sat behind the desk, electro-notepads covering all but one corner of its surface. That spot held a name tag—
LIONEL EFFINGHAM
—and a fading plant of indeterminate species, not long for this world.

“Name,” he barked.

“Nina Oberon.”

Searching through the pads, he eventually selected one. After several swipes with his stylus, he finally looked at me.

“Sit.” He motioned to the chairs in front of his desk, identical to the ones in the waiting room.

I sat. His eyes stayed glued to the pad while I glanced around the room. There was nothing to see except the man, his overloaded desk, and the plant. No emo-detectors, no scan rods, and he didn’t even have the luxury of a window.

“Where is Edith Oberon?”

“She’s in the hospital. She had a heart attack.” Too much information.

The man’s eyes darted up at mine, then back to the pad. “You must be the older granddaughter.”

“Yes.”

Beads of sweat rose on his forehead. “You made an unauthorized visit here?” He dabbed his face with a dingy handkerchief. “Highly unorthodox. Highly.” His hand trembled as he picked up his PAV receiver. “Inquiry . . . Yes . . . Oberon . . .” That was followed by a long silence.

My palms turned moist, my shoulders quivering. Maybe those “superiors” whom the female officer had mentioned had changed their minds. Whatever composure I’d felt was rapidly dissipating, and I forced myself to concentrate on breathing, not on Mr. Effingham’s sporadic monosyllabic conversation.

At the very moment I was sure my anxiety would burst out of me in some totally inappropriate way, he said, “Oh, I see. Certainly.” He clicked off and, without missing a beat, picked up the pad he’d been so intent on previously. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Where’s the other one? Says here there’s another child, a girl. Where is she?”

“At home.”

He patted his forehead again. “I see . . . well, then.” He ran his stylus down the pad. “Herbert Oberon is charged with treason, attempting to incite actions against the Governing Council, possession of a contraband blocking device, and resisting arrest. Now, Miss Oberon”—he trained his watery eyes on me—“were you present when the aforementioned Herbert Oberon committed these acts?”

“No.”

“Did you have previous knowledge of the CBD?”

“The what?” I knew he meant the scrambler, but as hard as this was on me, I had no intention of being easy on him.

“Contraband blocking device.” He sighed.

“No.”

“Did Mrs. Edith Oberon and or Miss, uh . . .” He snatched up another pad, scanning it quickly. “Delisa Oberon have any knowledge of this CB—contraband blocking device?” He swiped his forehead again.

“No.” Only yeses or noes.

I was silently thanking Mr. Jenkins when Effingham said, “Do you want to say anything?”

“Uh, may I see my grandfather now?”

Effingham stabbed a fierce dot onto the pad. “No.” Pressing a button on his desk, he barked, “Emalia.”

I listened as the sound of heel clicks grew louder, then stopped. The door opened.

“This way,” Emalia ordered.

Out on the sidewalk, I finally exhaled. “Well, that was fun.”

XIX

I
was so busy congratulating myself on not messing anything up, I ended up on the local rather than the express trans. It stopped across the bridge from our old building, and I noticed a group of homeless women shuffling through the oasis. One glanced back at the road, and I was sure that it was Joan. As soon as we crossed the bridge, I hopped off the trans. Hurrying down the walk, I closed in on the women.

I was catching up to them when they noticed me approaching, and they scattered like a flock of startled pigeons. Joan, however, resisted the pull of her friends and waited for me to catch up.

“Joan?” I remembered how fragile her mind was and I didn’t want to throw her into hysterics or trigger her trauma in any way.

“Nina. I’ve watched for you.”

“You have?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve been seeing a doctor. He’s helping me.”

“Really?” How, I wondered, was she getting help? I glanced around. The river walk was fairly deserted, its usual state in winter. I knew there was a dead zone nearby, one that Sal had showed me months ago. “Can you come over here? We can talk.” I motioned to the dead zone oasis.

“I can’t stay long.” Her eyes kept darting to where her companions stood, half hidden in the shadows.

“Have you been going to Metro?” I said. “Is that where your doctor is?”

“I can’t go to the hospital. I’d be picked up and sent away.” She pulled back her ragged coat collar, revealing the FeLS symbol tattooed on her neck. A black slash cut through the middle of it.

“What’s that?”

“When a girl cracks, they do this. That way, if she escapes, she’s easier to find.”

“Joan, were you on a space station?” My mind was racing. Lessig’s Alert and the fake space station had to be false. Joan could help prove it. “Media is reporting that they found a fake FeLS station in the desert near New Vegas City. Were you there?”

“I don’t know where I was.” Joan shivered. “They drugged me for the transport to Mars, I was still drugged when they rescued me.”

I didn’t want to probe further, to push her past her limit. I pulled off my tensalite scarf and wrapped it around her neck, not just to keep her warm but also to cover the repulsive mark. “So, a doctor is helping you?”

She nodded. “He comes here after dark with medicine, and he listens to me. He doesn’t . . . touch me.”

“You told him about FeLS?”

“I think he knows.” She clutched my coat sleeve. “He has to. He saw my neck. But he won’t tell. He promised.”

I heard voices coming up the way. “Here, sit closer.” I motioned her close to me. When I wrapped my arm around her shoulder, she tensed up. “I won’t hurt you, Joan. I’m your friend. You know that.”

“It’s just”—her voice dropped almost to an unintelligible whisper—“women hurt me, too.”

“That will never happen again,” I whispered.

The voices passed on beyond us.

“I’d better go,” Joan said. “Maybe you could . . . I . . .” She hung her head. “Seeing you reminds me of my family. I miss them . . .” She swiped her sleeve across her eyes and glanced behind her. “I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll come back.” I watched her and her friends melt into the gloom between the buildings. A blast of cold air stung my bare neck. Yanking my collar up, I hunkered down, staring at the green, racing water of the Chicago River. “No one’s going to hurt her again. Ever. Not if I can help it,” I whispered to myself.

It was way too cold to sit by the river for long. The image of Joan’s tattoo got me thinking about my need for a tattoo to surround the XVI on my wrist. I was a Creative. I could do whatever I wanted. And now I had an idea.

***

“Hey, you.” Wei was standing at the top of the stairs. “Come up and tell me how it went.”

“In a nano. I need to tell Dee I’m back and I have something I need to sketch first.”

“Dee’s up here with Chris. Bring your art stuff up here. I need to practice and you can draw while I make music.”

I nodded my agreement. “Let me grab it.” I hurried into the apartment, got my sketch pad and rapido, and joined Wei upstairs.

“You do know you’re spending Holiday with us,” Wei said. “Mom won’t have it any other way. And you do not want to cross my mother.”

As if on cue, Mrs. Jenkins called out from another room, “I’m not hearing any Chopin.”

“See what I mean?”

Wei took out her sheet music, and I curled up with my drawing paper.

“I did what your dad said, only answered yes or no. They wouldn’t let me see Pops. And on the way back”—I fiddled with my rapido—“I saw Joan. She said a doctor has been coming to see her on the sly. Giving her medicine and talking to her.”

“Huh, I wonder if it’s someone Dad knows about?” Wei executed what seemed to me to be a pretty difficult series of notes.

“What’s that?”

“Chopin’s Nocturne Number Eight.”

“It sounds incredible. And it looks like it’s really hard to play. I never understood how anyone could read those lines and dots.”

“If you want, I’ll explain it to you sometime. But it’s kind of like your drawings,” she said. “You make that look easy, and I can’t draw at all. I got my Creative designation for music, not art. I had to get Chris to design my tattoo.”

By the time she was done practicing, I had a few rough sketches of Joan and the homeless women. They practically poured out of my fingers onto the page. Real people, not faceless, worthless scum.

And I had a decent sketch of what I wanted my own tattoo to look like. Granted, I didn’t have the credits to get one yet, but if I saved from my pay each week, I might have enough by spring.

“What do you think?” I handed it to Wei.

Taking hold of my left hand, she glanced from the sketch to it several times, imagining how it would look. “This is magic! Let’s make the appointment. I’ll call––”

“No, I can’t afford it, yet.”

“Okay. Just let me know when you’re ready. I’ll arrange everything.”

I shrugged off a twinge of jealousy. It’d take me months to save up for the tattoo. Wei probably didn’t have to wait at all to get hers. She’d probably never had to wait to buy anything. I shook my head, trying to clear it. No sense in feeling bad over the way things were. If I did a good job at the Institute, and was lucky, over time I’d move up a few tiers.

Our PAVs beeped. Another Alert. “There haven’t been this many Alerts since that meteor strike in the Sahara,” Wei said.

She projected the Alert onto the wall.

A voice-over announcer intoned, “Stay tuned for breaking news on the FeLS scandal.”

The blank screen gave way to Kasimir Lessig, seated behind a desk: Media and Governing Council insignias were prominently displayed in the background.

“Bureau of Safety and Security agents, aided by local enforcement agencies, have completed the first phase of their investigation regarding allegations about the use of the Female Liaison Specialist program as a training ground, if you will, for sex slaves.” He swiveled his chair around, facing a different camera. The scene of the fake space station popped up behind him. “It is here that alleged mastermind, Ed Chamus”—a small picture of Ed popped into the lower corner of the screen—“took unsuspecting Chosens and trained them to become sex slaves for high-ranking foreign officials and corporate moguls. Furthermore”—his chair swiveled again—“Chamus did not act alone. The Bureau has recovered AV chips labeled ‘Training’ that show at least three different men and two women . . .”

A close-in image of one of those chips came up. The camera then cut to Lessig’s face. His eyes sparkled with what I read as pleasure at being able to report on such an horrific story. “I have to say . . . in all my years of news reporting, I have never”—his eyes widened—“never seen anything as disgusting as what was being done to those young women.” His lips parted slightly, and you could hear a sudden huff of breath. “I spoke earlier today with Governing Council president Xander Critchfield.”

The scene changed to Lessig and Critchfield standing in front of the Justice Building on Dearborn.

“Citizens,” Critchfield said. “Rest assured that the perpetrators of this horrendous scheme will be found and brought to justice. Going against the accepted mores of our society, these pathetic girls abandoned their normal, natural sex-teen lives in return for the possibility of lifting themselves out of the muck of low-tier existence. And this is how they were repaid.” He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “A full accounting will be made. You have my word on it.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Lessig turned to the camera. “As further information comes forth, we will continue to provide updates to this story. News at eleven.”

This was bad. They were blaming it all on Ed, which I knew wasn’t the case. Ed, who Dee still thought was her dad.

“Wei, where’s Dee?”

“I think she’s in the kitchen with Chris. Why?” It dawned on me that you got Alerts only if you were of age. But if Dee had been with someone getting an Alert, she could have seen the entire thing. I jumped up and ran to the kitchen, Wei hot on my heels.

Chris and Dee were at the table.

“Nina, my father wouldn’t do anything like that.” Her face was drawn, her jaw set. “I know he wouldn’t. It has to be a mistake.”

“She insisted on watching with me,” Chris said. “I didn’t think––”

I silenced him with a look—he should have known better. I sat down next to Dee while he and Wei quietly left.

After Dee’s reaction to my triptych, I knew sugarcoating anything about Ed wouldn’t work. She’d already shown she was much stronger than I’d imagined.

“Dee, Ed wasn’t the nicest guy.” I felt her body stiffen. “You didn’t know, because Mom hid things from you. I hid things from you. Things that I saw firsthand. Remember all the times I took you to Sandy’s house? Ed beat Mom up. That’s how she broke her arm. That’s how she got all those cuts and bruises.”

“He said she was clumsy. He said that she accidentally hurt herself.” She turned her tearstained face to me and said, “I believed him, Nina.” Dropping her gaze, she murmured, “He’s my dad.”

Oh, how I ached to tell Dee that he wasn’t. But her safety depended on her not knowing the truth.

Dee studied her hands for the longest time. “Does this mean I’m going to be cruel, like him?”

“What?” My jaw dropped. “Why would you think that?”

“We’re studying genetics and character traits,” she said. “Maybe I inherited a cruelty trait from my father.”

Funny how one truth revealed opens the way for others. Still, there were some things that I just couldn’t tell her.

“Character traits, and that’s what cruelty is, aren’t passed down through genes,” I said. “Eye and hair color, how tall you’ll be, and the size of your ears . . . those are decided by genetics. Who you are, how you act, the kinds of things you do . . .
you
get to make those choices. And you learn about them from the people who raise you. Mom, Gran, Pops—none of them are cruel. You couldn’t possibly be.”

Dee looked over at me, tears rimming her eyes. “I miss Mom so much. And Pops . . . and I wish Gran were here.”

Her effort to keep from crying made my own throat ache with unshed tears. “I do, too, Deeds. I do, too.” I rounded the table and put my arms around her.

She allowed the comforting, for a bit, then shook me off and stood up.

“Chris and I made Gran’s green-tomato mince-pie recipe. We should try it while it’s still warm, the way Pops likes it. You go get everyone while I cut the pie.”

She walked to the cook center, shoulders back, head held high, reminding me so much of Ginnie. Those were the genes and the character traits Dee had inherited—those of a strong woman.