Signwave (3 page)

“You have to start from
now
,” they would say. Kindly, but unyielding. They either didn't know what had erased any memory of my life before I woke up in that place, or wouldn't tell me. For me, those were the same.

They would say this “Start from
now
” as if it was a magic chant. But they never would say where I would be going once I started.

Somehow, I knew I could not “start” unless I stopped waiting.
One night, I just dropped out the second-floor window of my room onto the soft, moist grass of the manicured lawn, and walked into the darkness.

How long it took, I couldn't be sure—time is more difficult to measure when you move only in darkness. I know I walked all the way to Paris. There, I became a gutter rat. I was sometimes very cold. I was always hungry. But it never occurred to me to try and return to that clinic.

Then Luc found me.

—

I
was a boy then.

By the time I was big enough to lie to La Légion about my age, the time had come for Luc to leave. I think he probably stayed longer than he should have, but he wanted to be sure I had…a chance, is the best way to put it.

The same thing Olaf had done, many years after that.

English—“American,” as it was called by some men I served with—was my native tongue. French I had learned: some in the clinic, more from Luc. He had warned me not to let anyone see I knew more than the few words La Légion required us all to learn.

I knew I must have a mother—a woman who gave birth to me—somewhere. A father, I never thought about. Luc was my father. I could reason that whoever had placed me inside that clinic must have been wealthy. But if they ever spent a sou looking for me after I'd fled, I never knew.

—

I
never looked for them, either.

I had Luc. Then Patrice. Both long dead. One from age, one from bullets. But, really, from the same cancerous truth:
They could never go back to what they had lost. There was no “home” for them.

Olaf had been my friend, too. Not as I was with Patrice, but we were close enough to watch out for each other in that jungle.

All those I had once cared for were gone. After they left, I became a man very skilled in making people dead.

—

M
aking them dead in exchange for money, that is what I always told myself.

Had I not found Dolly—found she was a real woman, not an apparition—I would never have abandoned my life. Nor ever become part of hers.

Now none of that mattered. For the man I had become, killing wasn't about tools, or even skills—it was embedded, forever to be a part of me.

And
that
part, no amnesia would ever enter.

—

T
he Crown Jewel of the Coast is what they called it on the signs that welcomed tourists.

I couldn't really say if this little town was a strange place. It always seemed so to me, but I'd never lived in any one place before. I'd been many places, but I was always a stranger, passing through. Or an invader, with a job to do.

After La Légion, after I'd stopped working as a soldier for pay and followed Olaf's last advice, there was only one thing that mattered. All I'd ever looked at was how to get out…as soon as I'd done whatever I'd come there to do.

Maybe towns are no different from cities; it's just that the cities divide themselves into neighborhoods. Maybe every little
spot has its own personality, because people who feel the same way always seem to clump together.

For me, it never mattered how people felt. I didn't go to those places to find a job; I went there to do one. I didn't need to make friends; I only needed to make myself a part of my surroundings. And never for very long.

I never wanted people to remember me. It would be best if they never saw me at all.

—

N
ow all I wanted was to be left alone.

But to be alone with my Dolly was impossible. I knew the truth of this village before I found the little cottage near the ocean, the place Dolly had dreamed of for so many years. Why would a tiny little town be any different from the biggest city?

I never said this aloud. To me, it meant nothing. There is a perimeter around our cottage, one several layers deeper than any fence that could be built. Inside it, my Dolly would always be safe.

That was my mistake—thinking the barrier built to protect her would also contain her. I may have wanted only to be left alone, but Dolly, she couldn't
leave
things alone. Once she got the scent of…I don't know what to call it, but it would turn her into a rat-hunting terrier. And once she clamped down, Satan himself couldn't make her drop the bite.

Dolly was immune to bribery or threats. Any fool would know that a former battlefield nurse who had worked the darkest parts of Africa with a Médecins Sans Frontières team wouldn't be tempted by money, and couldn't be scared off. Such attempts would only make her shake the rat by the back of its neck until she heard the
snap!
that confirmed the kill.

—

“W
hat is
wrong
with these people?”

“What people, honey?”

“The people here, Dell. They can get into blood feuds over that stupid ‘paper versus plastic' thing, but when you add
one
more layer to
any
fight, they won't even look at it.”

“Paper is better because people throw the plastic away, and the seagulls could choke on it, right?”

“Dell…”

I just looked up at her. Once Dolly's hands went to her hips, I knew anything I said could set her off—silence was always my best course then.

“They need trees to make paper,” Dolly said, quietly. “So where does a true-blue environmentalist stand?”

“I don't know.”

“When you build a road through the other side of town so the logging trucks can reach the bay, the ‘Buy American' crowd says you're helping the local economy. But when that garbage lumber is shipped to China, so they can make crappy furniture or whatever and sell it
here
, is that supposed to be helping the economy?”

“I guess both sides—”

“Don't even,” she warned me. “The first step you take, in
either
direction, you've started walking in a circle. If the supermarkets have to use paper bags, they say it forces them to raise prices. And the people who have to clean up after their dogs, they want plastic, too. But don't tell them about jobs for the people who
make
those plastic bags
—those
jobs are all in China. And some of those fools actually think you can use dog droppings to make a compost heap. But paper bags are pulp—biodegradable, right?”

“Dolly…”

“Dolly
what
?”

“You're just doing what they do.”

“You mean…just talking?”

“No. I'd never say that about you. But we both came from the same place, didn't we?”

“Us? The jungle, you mean? When we first…I guess ‘met' doesn't exactly fit, but it
is
the jungle you are saying, yes?”

“Yes.”

“What does that prove?”

“We weren't on opposite sides then.”

“Dell! You were there to…”

“Kill people for money?” I said, watching that special shade of rose blossom on her cheeks, then turn dark.

“I don't care what you call it. I didn't care then; I don't care now. But whether you were a…soldier, or a mercenary, or…It doesn't matter. We—our team, I mean—we were there to
save
lives. You were there to
take
lives. How could that make us on the same side?”

“Because, for both of us, there was no ‘right' or ‘wrong.' You didn't care what uniform a man was wearing when you patched him up. Or took off a leg to save his life. You didn't judge. At least you—your people, I mean—you didn't judge
then
.”

“We still don't,” she said, in a tone that told me she wasn't going to be moved off her square. A voice I'd heard before. Many times. Dolly could out-mule anyone.

“It's not that way anymore, girl. Today, your comrades have to make certain deals just to be allowed to save lives. I don't mean take sides, but the only way any medical team can work in some of those places is to negotiate free passage. And when they don't, they're gone. Didn't Burma—or whatever it's calling itself today—didn't they just kick Médecins Sans Frontières out of the country because they didn't want anyone who wasn't Buddhist to have medical care?”

“That's not—”

“Yes, it is,” I cut her off. “You want to drop fifty tons of food supplies into a starvation zone, you have to give the warlords their piece before they allow you the privilege of driving into the zone yourself.”

“So?”

“So what's the difference between feeding an army and giving them weapons?”

“You're saying it's wrong to do that?”

“No. I'm saying what I've been trying to say. Just let me finish, okay?”

She didn't say anything, letting the tapping of one fingernail on the tabletop tell me to get on with it.

“For me, there was no ‘right' or ‘wrong.' If you're a working merc, you assume whoever's hiring you is
some
kind of liar. And once you hit the ground, it doesn't matter—the only way you collect your pay is to get through the fighting alive. And the only way to do
that
is to make some other people dead.

“See what I'm saying here? Sure, you can lie to yourself. But even that doesn't matter: the winners get to name the losers. We're ‘liberators' or ‘freedom fighters.' Or we're hired guns, with no loyalty to any cause…or, worse, a loyalty that's for sale.

“You don't have to hate a man wearing a certain uniform to shoot him, not if you know he's going to shoot you. And you don't have to care what a man's uniform is to
save
his life, either.”

“Saving a life is always—”

“You don't believe that, Dolly. Not anymore. Not for a long time.”

“I guess I don't,” she said, the sorrow in her voice mourning the loss of True North in the compass she'd once carried inside herself. I still remember her telling me that everyone carried
some
kind of compass, but, until I atoned for the things I'd done, mine would just be a dial with no needle.

—

“Y
ou think it's like that…like
this
, everywhere?” she asked me in bed, late that same night.

“I'm not a philosopher,” I told her, as if Olaf was speaking for me. “It's been like that everywhere
I've
ever been, that's all I could say.”

“Corrupt?”

“The place itself doesn't have to be. I don't even think it's human nature to value…things. Yeah, ‘things,' that fits. Everybody wants food and water, everyone wants to be safe. That's in all of us. But some people want…not things, exactly. Maybe, I don't know…power? Whatever you call it, some people want it. Want it bad enough to do anything to get it. Anything to keep it.

“And when they can actually
see
what they want, it's like a sniper acquiring a target—if you're in the way, your life means nothing. We, you and me, we could be the only two people on some tropical island, and we'd be fine. But if one of the people I'm talking about discovered that island held something they wanted, they'd do…anything.”

“Maybe that's why I thought saving lives had a special value,” Dolly said, propping herself on her elbow, like that could make her see me better in the dark. “How could someone whose life was saved, saved by people who asked nothing in return, how could they be the same person after that?”

“Why not? They might bless you, call you their savior, thank whatever god they worshipped for your existence on this earth. But they'd be back doing whatever they'd
been
doing soon enough.”

What I didn't say is how I knew this was pure truth. I'd been one of those killers. When my life was spared only because I stumbled into a coven of mercy-dealing angels, I didn't bless anyone for that. Or even thank them. What I did was go back to work.

“What could be so damn valuable about
this
place, Dell? That stupid logging road, what difference is it going to make? Some people will make money; some people will lose money. It's just money.”

“For a lot of people, there's no ‘just' in there, honey. If you think money can buy you what you want, what you need…if you think money can transform you into someone else, then—”

“Dell, remember—just a few weeks ago?—that old man was walking by himself near the jetty on the other side of the bridge? And that gang of…I don't even know what to call them, but they beat him to death. Four of them, and what did they get? Seventy dollars and some change. How could that be worth a man's life?”

“You've been reading those press releases again.”

“What is
that
supposed to mean?”

“Isn't that what it said in the papers? That the prosecutor said they killed an old man for a lousy seventy dollars?”

“So?”

“So they didn't kill him for seventy dollars, honey. They killed him because they've got lizard brains. When they threatened him, maybe the old man still wouldn't give them his money. So they figured he must have a
lot
of money to stand up to the four of them. Or maybe they just beat him to death for the fun of it, and the money was just a bonus.”

“To you, there's no difference? I mean, whether they were just stupid robbers or blood-thirsty savages?”

“I wasn't there, little girl. But it sure didn't make any difference to the old man.”

—

T
he next few days were quiet.