Incineration (The Incubation Trilogy Book 2) Page 8

  The revelation that Idris's father is a doctor made me suspect, but I’m still stunned. “Wait—Alexander is your father?”

  He turns to face me, one eyebrow lifted. “You didn’t know? I mean, it’s no secret.”

  I didn’t know. No one had mentioned it. It explains a lot, though, like why Alexander tolerated Idris's outbursts and challenges to his authority, and why it felt like Idris was secretly pleased to have a reason to bring Alexander to the ship. “I didn’t know.”

  He scowls. “It doesn’t make a difference. Everything I said yesterday still stands. If Alexander poses any kind of threat to this cell, he’ll get the same treatment anyone else would.”

  I nod, but can’t help wondering if Idris could really bring himself to execute his father. I decide I wouldn’t want to bet on it either way.

  He reels in his line with quick wrist snaps that jerk the lure in hops toward the ship. I sense he regrets sharing so much with me, so I say nothing. Finished securing the hook, he says, “Better get something to eat—you and Fiere are pulling the first sentry shift today, at Point Alpha.”

  Sentry duty is boring. Beyond boring. So boring it defies description. Point Alpha is the spot half a mile from the ship where sentries challenge people headed toward the river or raise the alarm if they spot something threatening. With our radios and weapons, Fiere and I mount a tree to an old hunting hide and settle down in our intelli-textile camouflaged jumpsuits to watch. We lay our beamers on the floor. I try to start a conversation, but Fiere is morose today, mono-syllabic and then totally non-responsive. I take the hint and shut up. There is no one to challenge and no reason to sound the alarm. Eight hours after we climbed the tree, we climb down when another pair reports for the next shift.

  We repeat the process the next day. About noon, Idris and the four people I saw him with in the armory glide up on ACVs. They pause beneath our hide and Idris calls up, “We’ll be gone a couple of days. Red is in charge. Don’t screw up while I’m gone, and we’ll discuss your first mission when I get back.” The ACVs pull away and I wonder where they’re going.

  When they’re out of range, quiet descends again, until Fiere rouses me from a half-dozing state. “I remember pretty much everything up until I was sixteen,” she says. “I’ve been writing at night, doing a timeline, and it feels like my memories are intact to that point. Then, they’re mostly gone, or spotty, like the one I told you about.”

  “So you’re missing—what? Four years?”

  She nods, rubbing one ear. “About that.” She hesitates and licks her lips. “Look, this is going to sound weird, but—”

  “Go on.”

  “It feels like my brain isn’t the only repository of memories. My body is full of memories. I mean, there are scars. They’re like a record of events, things that happened to me that must have been”—she searches for a word—“powerful. But I can’t read the record.” Her fingers work at a spot below her clavicle. It’s covered by the jumpsuit, but I can tell she’s kneading a scar.

  “That’s from when the IPF attacked us at the bordello,” I tell her. “You were trying to get me, me and Halla, out of the kitchen and into the tunnels when a soldier beamed you. It caught you right there and knocked you onto your back.” I try describing the scene, thinking that images of the smoke and chaos, the shouting and the painful keening of a sonic device might bring the memory to life.

  Fiere unseals the top of her jumpsuit and bares the scar. It’s only four and a half months old, so it’s still a slick, red mass of puckered tissue the diameter of a fist. She probes it gently, as if trying to force the memory free, like coaxing pus from an infection. “I don’t remember.”

  “And the one on your abdomen.” I put a hand to my side. “You were shot trying to help a woman named Kareen escape from her husband. You were a decoy—the soldiers followed you and shot at you. Cas got you back to the tunnels and Kareen operated on you, removed your spleen.” I remember carrying the small organ away and burying it in the kitchen compost pile. I wrinkle my nose. Not one of my favorite memories.

  She scrunches her eyes closed for a long moment. They pop open. “Nothing. What about the one—”

  I know the scar she’s hesitant to mention. I saw it when Kareen operated on her. “That’s a hysterectomy scar,” I say matter-of-factly. “You had your womb removed after—”

  “Alexander did it.” She exhales the words.

  “Yes.” I punch my fist in the air.

  “I was worried about the surgery, afraid it was wrong. He told me it was okay, that it was my body, my choice. He said, ‘You will be free to be more you.’” Her brow wrinkles. “I can’t see his face.”

  Her recall of Alexander’s compassion has me near tears. I gulp them back and say, “He’ll be here soon. Wyck’s bringing him. You’ll remember.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Then we’ll find another way.” The words trigger a thought. I remember reading that memories can be closely associated with sensory triggers. My hand lands on the beamer beside me. Maybe the sound, the distinctive smell of a beamer blast will help Fiere grab onto some memories. “Want to try an experiment?”

  She eyes me with some of the old Fiere skepticism. “What kind of experiment?”

  I explain.

  “Okay. Can’t hurt.”

  I stand, grasp the beamer with both hands like Idris taught me, aim it at a tree limb across the road, and say, “Ready?”

  Fiere stands beside me and nods.

  I depress the trigger sensor and a beam sizzles from the muzzle with an odor of hot metal. The limb splinters with a cr-rack and crashes to the ground.

  “You hit it,” Fiere says, sounding surprised.

  “See? You remember—I’m a lousy shot.”

  She shakes her head angrily. “It didn’t help. It’s not bringing back anything new.”

  I’m disappointed that my idea didn’t work, but I don’t show it. Laying the beamer down, I say, “Don’t worry about it. Getting anxious and stressed probably makes it harder to free the memories. It’s early days yet.”

  “I’ve been here almost two months,” she says, “and—”

  The whine of an ACV traveling fast cuts her off. It slews around so the front-mounted beamer is pointed our way and continues to hover. Whoa. Fiere and I stand, instinctively holding our hands up and out. A mass of red hair tell me it’s Rhedyn in the passenger seat. I can’t see who’s driving. After a long moment, the ACV settles to the ground and Rhedyn gets out, weapon at the ready.

  “What happened?” she asks tersely. “We heard the beamer blast.”

  Uh-oh. Sheepishly, I explain. Rhedyn makes a disgusted sound and rolls her eyes. “Don’t ever—Don’t fire weapons for frivolous reasons. What if there’s an IPF patrol within hearing? We’re trying to keep a low profile here, in case you hadn’t realized. Someone may be headed here right now, attracted by your carelessness. Zoah, Henley—take over here. Keep alert.” Two camo-jumpsuited Defiers jump from the back of the ACV.

  Fiere and I climb down from the hide. I don’t know about Fiere, but I’m feeling like the world’s biggest idiot, and even though I know it’s deserved, I’m annoyed by Red’s contemptuous chastising. She eyes us for a moment, and then gets back in the ACV, saying, “We’ll discuss this further back at the Belle.”

  The ACV elevates and glides away with a puff of dust. Clearly, Fiere and I are supposed to walk back. We do so in silence. Onboard, Red dismisses Fiere and chews me out some more in the privacy of the pilot’s cabin. I endure it for several minutes, but then burst out, “I didn’t sign up for this! I’m willing to pull my weight while I’m here, but I’m not a Defier. I appreciate that you and everyone rescued me, but that doesn’t make me one of you.”

  Rhedyn narrows her eyes to slits and pauses a moment before saying, “You are so right. It doesn’t.” Taking a step forward so she’s looming over me, she adds, “Those who aren’t with us are against us.”

  I eye her uneasily. “I
didn’t say that. I’m not going to betray you—you know that. I even agree with some of your goals. I’m just not sure about your methods. The sabotage, the killing—”

  “Oh, I see. Killing a soldier or two to gain your freedom is okay, but killing to gain freedom for everyone is wrong? You turn my stomach. Consider yourself confined to ship until Idris gets back. He can decide what to do with you.”

  I start to say “That’s different,” but stop myself. Is it different? Rhedyn dismisses me with a head jerk and I walk out of the pilot’s cabin like a sleep walker, too caught up in my thoughts to heed where I’m going. I find myself looking out over the river, hands gripping the rail. I don’t see the water or the far bank. I’m staring into the recent past, at the IPF sergeant dead in the prison transport. I know he died, as did the two soldiers in the cockpit, I suspect. I kept Chavez from burning to death, but I don’t know his fate after that. What punishment does the IPF levy on guards who let prisoners escape? I can’t evade the hard question burning in my mind: Was it justified to kill—or let others kill—to gain my freedom?

  It was self-defense. I would have died in the RESCO. If not physically, then mentally and emotionally, like part of Fiere has died from the memory wipe. I tell myself the soldiers knew what they were signing up for—but, no. Not all of them want to be soldiers. Most of the IPF are geneborn bred to be soldiers, as are the Border Security Service officers, but many of the border sentries are conscripted. And just because someone is bred to be a soldier doesn't mean he wants to be one. I think of Saben's story, how he was bred to be a physicist but wanted to be an artist. What if that dead sergeant was as trapped as I was—trapped in a uniform and organization he wanted no part of, but had no way of escaping?

  The complexities roil in my mind, dizzying me. I sway. I have to consider Rhedyn’s point. Is the freedom to procreate at will, to live where one wants and to avoid mandatory state service important enough to kill for? To die for? My knuckles are white on the rail and I slowly uncurl my stiff fingers. Am I a hypocrite? My stomach lurches and I lean over the rail, losing my lunch.

  I sag, letting the rail catch me under my armpits. I’m a bio-chemist, not a philosopher or a militant. I don’t know what to do. A commotion on the landward side distracts me from my thinking. Glad of it, I pull myself up and cross the deck to see what’s going on. A familiar figure is hopping out of an ACV and going around to assist the passenger. Wyck! Wyck’s brought Alexander. I spin and hurry to the stairs, half-tumbling down them in my eagerness to get to the main deck. Fiere. Pausing in my headlong rush, I descend another level to Fiere’s cabin and burst through the door.

  She’s out of her hammock in one smooth movement, poised to fight. Clearly, her muscles haven’t forgotten her training.

  “Alexander,” I say breathlessly. “He’s here.”

  She hangs back. “Maybe I should wait until he—”

  I realize she’s afraid to put it to the test, afraid that seeing Alexander won’t jog any memories. She’s better off getting it over with. I grab her hand and tug. “No time like the present.”

  Jerking her hand free, she crosses to the door. We emerge onto the main deck in time to see Wyck, arm around Alexander’s waist, helping the older man up the gangway. Rhedyn hovers nearby, and a couple of other Defiers look on curiously. “Alexander Ford . . . he’s the one who . . .” I hear one of them whisper to another in the awed tones of one recounting the exploits of a legend.

  They reach the deck and Alexander steps away from Wyck’s supporting arm. It’s only been four months since I’ve seen him, but silver is overtaking the brown in his hair and his cheeks seem more sunken, his eye sockets more pronounced. He has the same aquiline nose, but his hand trembles when he lifts it to greet Rhedyn, and a flush on his high cheekbones suggests he’s feverish. The chemical agents he inhaled when saving disabled citizens from an attack years ago are winning. He looks every one and more of his sixty-odd years.

  Fiere, standing beside me, stiffens. “I don’t know you.” Her voice, brittle as a locust shell, cuts through Alexander’s conversation with Rhedyn. “I don’t know you.”

  Alexander turns with the carefulness of someone not sure of his balance. He acknowledges me with a quick smile, but focuses on Fiere. He studies her for a moment, a warm smile overtaking his face, then reaches out a hand. “No matter.” His voice is the same, rich and smoky with a drawl.

  Fiere put her hand in his and he draws her into a hug. His arms tighten around her back. She’s rigid at first, but then relaxes against him, clinging to him, her cheek pressed against his chest. He murmurs to her and strokes her head. The rest of us stand transfixed. After a long two or three minutes, Fiere pulls away. The tension has drained out of her, but she says, “I can feel that I know you, but I don’t recognize your features, and your name means nothing to me.”

  “No matter,” he says again. “It will come.”

  She nods her acceptance of his surety and steps aside so he can greet me. “Well, Everly, what a twisty road you’ve been on, eh? Did you ever think when you left the Kube that you’d end up here?”

  I know he means more by his “here” than “on a river boat in the middle of nowhere.” The word encompasses the mental and emotional changes I’ve undergone, the losses I’ve sustained, the growth I’ve attained. I know what he means and I answer simply, “Not in a million years.”

  He laughs, the sound deep and alive. After a moment, everyone joins in. My eyes meet Wyck’s; it’s good to have him back. It strikes me that people don’t laugh nearly enough when engaged in insurgent battles and overthrowing the government.

  Chapter Eleven

  Things return to normal the next day. Wyck descends below decks to work on the engine. Alexander and Fiere climb to the observation level and settle down to talk. Rhedyn puts me to work caulking gaps in the deck since I’m confined to the ship. I can see she wants me to object when she gives me the task, but I won’t give her the satisfaction. I merely nod and get to work. I get into a rhythm before long, spreading the caulk into cracks and crevices, letting it dry, and sanding it smooth. Four hours in, I’ve only done half of the main deck. I’m hot and thirsty, my throat raspy with sanded grit, and my knees ache from kneeling on the hard wood when someone’s shadow drapes over me.

  “Are you allowed to take a break?”

  It’s Alexander, smiling down at me. He looks stronger today after a good night’s rest and he’s holding two glasses. “Of course,” I say, not knowing or caring whether I’m “allowed.” I scramble up and wipe my hands on my jumpsuit.

  “How about the bow? I like looking at the water.”

  There’s built-in seating, a wide plank curving with the shape of the ship, and we settle on it. Alexander hands me one of the glasses. I sniff. The fresh, citrusy aroma makes my senses sing.

  “Orange juice,” he confirms with a smile. “I brought a few food items with me. The friend I was staying with had access to a dome and she was very generous.”

  “Offerings from one potentate to another?” I murmur.

  His eyes twinkle. “Exactly. Although I’m not sure Idris would appreciate being called a potentate. ‘Supreme commander’ seems to be more his style. Soldier, not statesman.”

  I drink greedily, liking the pulpy feel in my mouth. I can’t think how long it’s been since I’ve had citrus in any form. “I didn’t know you were his father,” I say.

  “I’m proud of him. He’s a strong leader.”

  “His style is certainly different from yours.”

  Alexander hears the underlying discontent and eyes me without sympathy. “We were leading different kinds of organizations with different missions. His style is right for what he’s doing.”

  I decide to leave it alone. “How’s Fiere?”

  “I examined her arm. It’s repairable with surgery. She can regain full use of it. Unfortunately”—he holds his hand out flat at arm length to observe its tremble—“I’m not capable of performing the surgery any longer.
I’m going to ask Idris to help me get her to a colleague in the Carolinas Canton. He’ll do the procedure—no questions asked.”

  “What about her memory?”

  Pursing his lips, he says, “I tried to fill in some of the blanks for her. Nothing seemed to connect. She accepted what I told her as true, but I could see it was like listening to a history lecture for her, or someone’s else’s story, not like re-living events that actually happened to her. Neurology was not my field, and my training is long out of date, but I wonder if everyone’s being too nice to her, treating her with kid gloves, keeping her safely here on the ship. She might stand a better chance of recovering her memory if we treated her like we would have before. She’s not an invalid or a child.”

  My brow creases as I think about it. He’s right; I am guilty of treading softly around Fiere. We all are. My previous relationship with her was full of edginess and competition, not consideration and kindness. Maybe we need to let Fiere get back in the fight.

  "Do you think she'll regain her memory if we take the gloves off?"

  "Lord willing and the volcano don't explode, as my aunt used to say."

  I nod and change the subject. “Are you going to reestablish Bulrush?” I ask.

  He shakes his head slowly. “No. I’m not up to it anymore. The parts of our underground railroad that survived the April attack are still helping women escape to the outposts, but the effort is more fractured. I’m afraid that Bulrush’s time is past. It was always a stop gap measure. The time has come for more concerted action.”

  Disappointment wells in me, compressing my lungs so it’s hard to breathe. I would have thought Alexander would be the last person to advocate— “War, you mean. Civil war, rebellion, whatever you want to call it. Overthrowing the government by military action. Killing people.”