Idols (12 page)
I am doing nothing, feeling nothing. Remembering nothing. Right now, at this minute, it is what I need to do.
Forward, not back. Forward, not back. Like switchbacks in a mountain trail.
I will my mind shut until it is completely silent. The voices, for this one moment, are quiet. I imagine myself safe in the heart of this mountain. I believe what the Bishop said; nothing can penetrate this deep. Not the Lords, not the Embassy, and not the suffering.
It is bliss.
And then I go back to sleep for what I hope will be a thousand years.
The dream returns to me the moment I shut my eyes. Of course it does. I’m back in the jungle again. I see the trees with no tops, the distant field of water. Green layered upon green.
But where the girl used to sit, there is only the little white bird—on the chessboard across from me. It’s the bird from my dream.
The bird makes no sound, but flaps up onto my shoulder, and I freeze as its tiny talons dig into me.
You are still here.
It isn’t the girl’s voice. It’s someone watching my dream, just like I am. It’s a strange voice—not male or female, not young or old—that sounds like many voices at the same time. Like a chorus—only spoken, not sung. The words are everywhere and nowhere—they flood the field and the sky and the chessboard and the green upon green, all around me.
Only now the sky is dark and the chessboard is empty. In the distance, a pointed golden temple roof—or maybe a tower—rises from the top of the hillside.
Strange. I didn’t notice that before.
The bird’s claws dig deeper into my skin.
They come for you, again and again. Yet still you live
, the voice says.
“I do,” I say. “I’m alive.” It’s almost all I know.
I say nothing else.
It pauses.
Fascinating.
“Why?”
Inexplicable.
“I don’t understand.”
You are a thing of quick and endless and always-changing beauty. Humanity.
“I’m what?” I look around the field. “Why do you say that?”
Another pause, a longer one.
I do not know what or why you are. I do not comprehend anything about you. You defy all protocol. You are an anomaly. An exception. Exceptional.
“Do I know you?” It’s all I can think to say.
Do I know you
, the voice repeats.
“Who are you?” I try again.
Who are you
, the voice repeats.
I shake my head, back and forth. Lift my hands and pinch them.
“I have to wake up. I’m dreaming. You’re just something in my dream.”
I am—that. Your dream is one place I am. Also fascinating. And inexplicable. Another unexpected exception to the rule.
“What?”
This time the words come slowly, as if they require great searching.
I hope you keep living. I do not believe you will, it is not something I have foreseen. But I hope you do.
I pinch harder. Still harder. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
I am nobody. I am Null.
I dig my fingernails into my own skin at the sound of the name I do not want to know.
Null.
Until I wake up, staring into the darkness as if I have seen a ghost. Listening to the echo of tiny wings as they flutter their way up into the sky.
Gripping my chestpack—and the Icon shard—in my hand. It has become my nighttime companion. I don’t know why, but I am continually drawn to it. Even if it only brings the most troubling thoughts into my mind.
I try not to forget a thing.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH: EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
Note: Contact Jasmine3k, Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA, Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang, for future commentary, as necessary.
FORTIS ==> HAL2040
2/24/2043
PERSES Scans/Data
//comlog ctd;
FORTIS:
OK, I’m back. The president is requesting daily updates. I think she might have a thing for me, actually.;
HAL:
Difficult to say, dialogue analysis does show a high ratio of innuendo, largely on your side…;
FORTIS:
Enough, HAL. How’s that cargo analysis coming?;
HAL:
Yes. As I was saying, I have focused on what I believe is cargo or equipment that is or may be hazardous.;
FORTIS:
Hazardous, you say. You mean, of course, aside from being part of tons of rock speeding toward Earth, with enough mass to create an extinction event?;
HAL:
Yes. In addition to that. Highest priority: schematics and data on cargo indicate what can be best described as a weapon. Or weapons. Constituent material analysis requires double-checking, but weapon/s could be a highly advanced and effective method of—suppression. Could also be used to achieve, as you said, extinction. Possession of weapons points toward probable intent to gain control of, or eliminate, indigenous life on any “target.”;
FORTIS:
… I see. You have prioritized well, my good boy. Send all available data and analysis to my terminal immediately. I need to know just how effective this “method of suppression” really is. And if there’s anything we can do to prepare.;
HAL:
Done.;
//comlog end;
When I can force myself awake, I make my way out to the mess hall, where Tima and Ro and Lucas sit around the table.
“I wish Fortis was here,” I say. I have so many things to ask him—and even more to tell him.
Starting with my dreams.
I must sound strange, because Lucas looks up as soon as I say it. “Bad dreams?” He leans forward over his plate, which I notice is still empty.
I nod, lowering myself down to the bench next to him. I feel for his hand, wrapping my fingers around it, and he looks down at me with a wistful expression. Something not quite like a smile.
It fades away before I can smile back.
“Anything relevant?” Tima rolls long strands of some sort of brownish noodle meticulously around her fork, pausing to dip it in an almost razor-straight vertical line through the pool of darker brown sauce at the bottom of her bowl. Next to her, Ro stuffs his face like an animal. Of course. Hydroponic food may not be beautiful, but it does the trick, if Ro’s face is any measure. Especially when your rations have all been lost in a Chopper crash.
“Your dreams,” prompts Ro, with his mouth full.
“There’s a little girl,” I begin, trying to ignore how my mouth is beginning to water even from watching them eat.
Ro looks up from mopping up the sauce on his plate with what looks like nearly half a loaf of bread. “Yeah?” He tries to speak, but his mouth is too full of bread, his face smeared with homemade butter. It’s the most food I’ve seen in weeks—since I can’t remember when. Tima looks disgusted.
I look at them. “And a bird with a strange voice.”
Tima puts down her fork. “And?”
“And the girl has five green dots on her wrist,” I say, without looking at any of them.
“She what?” Ro drops his bread on his plate. “You’re dreaming about us?”
“Five?” Tima looks at me. It’s sinking in.
I nod. “It might be nothing. It might just be a dream.”
“Is that what you think?” Tima asks.
I shake my head.
It’s not.
“It’s something,” Lucas says, quietly. So I tell him everything. Him, and Tima, and Ro. I don’t stop talking until there is nothing left unsaid between us. Until the dream is as much theirs as mine.
Tima is thinking. Her expression reminds me of the Padre when composing a sermon. “So. You believe this girl is real. Not something manufactured by your subconscious? Which is, you know, what dreams usually are.”
“She felt real to me. I don’t know, it was more like a message, maybe—even a vision—than a dream.” I try to sound confident, even though I know I could be wrong.
Tima nods slowly. “And you’re saying she may be—you know—like us? A fifth Icon Child? You really think so? Is that even possible?” She sounds wistful.
“We didn’t know there were four of us, not too long ago. Why couldn’t there be five?” It’s not the greatest logic, but there isn’t a whole lot of logic to our situation to begin with.
“Okay. And you think she’s waiting for you?” Tima tosses a bread crust to Brutus, who wags his tail from her feet.
“For me.” I shrug. “For us. Who knows?”
Ro sits forward in his chair. “And according to your dream message vision thing, she needs you to hurry and find her? But we don’t know where?”
“I told you. It seemed like Eastasia or the Wash. There was a temple, I think. Tall, with a gold roof. On the top of a hill.”
Ro looks at Tima, skeptically, and then at Lucas. As if they are silently voting, without me.
Lucas shrugs. “If there’s a chance we can get to her…”
“A chance?” Ro isn’t buying it. “Guys, this is a dream girl we’re talking about. I’m all in favor of chasing dream girls,” he says, stealing a glance at me, “but this isn’t the time. You’re talking about a chance? I can tell you right now there’s already a one hundred percent chance that a very real Icon needs to come down right now. A hundred percent chance that the Lords took Fortis. A hundred percent chance that Choppers are circling just outside this mountain. How about those odds?”
“Stop it, Ro.” I look at him. “If she’s real, and if there’s even a possibility she’s one of us, wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Maybe we have to try. Maybe we owe her that much,” Tima says. “If she is—you know.”
“A figment of Dol’s overly active imagination?” Ro snorts.
“Or a trick,” says Lucas. “Or a trap.”
“Yes. That. Buttons is right. As much as it pains me to say that,” Ro adds.
“I wish Fortis was here,” Tima sighs. “He’d know what to do.”
Nobody says a word. Fortis isn’t here. Fortis might never be here again.
“We have to stop relying on Fortis,” I say, finally. “He wouldn’t want us to do that.”
“Doc?” Lucas looks at Tima. “He might know something.”
“No relay signal. Not in here. The Bishop wasn’t kidding—nothing gets through this granite.” Tima sighs again.