Si Vis Pacem Read online

 

  It still takes her a long time to go to sleep, and even then her sleep seems light and troubled. I try to keep my eyes open, to watch after her in case the nightmares come. Even though I know it’s ridiculous, it seems the right thing to do. And if something has really happened to Kris… I don’t want to think about that, but I just can’t stop.

  When the morning bell rings, Dee sits up so quickly I end up falling on the floor. That ought to amuse her, but it doesn’t. Her eyes still look haunted, and she keeps looking at me as if she couldn’t quite believe that I’m there. I keep talking to her in the most soothing tone I can muster, trying to keep my tension out of my voice. All the same, I don’t manage to draw a decent breath until we’re in the refectory and Kris walks in. He looks perfectly unharmed, bar the scabs of yesterday’s adventures.

  Dee heaves a sigh and grabs my hand.

 

  The world seems determined to prove me wrong, though. It takes me no time at all to work out that overnight reality has shifted around us and grown a number of sharp edges.

  My most immediate problem is that the Supervisors are on our ass like a coat of paint. It’s not surprising, really. Between Kris and I getting caught and Dee’s night-time extravaganza, we’ve attracted enough attention to last us a lifetime. They could be focusing on the people who started a motherfucking riot, but those people can cause serious trouble if they’re riled. Dee and I don’t have that kind of power, so pestering us is a cost-free exercise, though a fairly pointless one. Everywhere we go, anything we do, a Supervisor is staring at us, waiting for us to fuck up. We can’t sneeze without getting told off. If Dee couldn’t ‘path, we could hardly talk to each other. Even then, we can only ‘path when we’re touching, and that’s not that easy to engineer. I would wish that her gift was stronger, if I didn’t spend so much time wishing that she didn’t have a gift at all.

  My other problem is that, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Dee can’t get it into her head that she just had a bad dream. To her it felt too real to discount, even though it was obviously bullshit. Instead of seeing every passing day as further proof that she just had a nightmare, she behaves as if we were walking towards a cliff and she couldn’t do anything to stop us falling off.

  I can’t calm her down. I can’t do anything to help her. Part of it is simply that she is so sleep deprived that she is getting incoherent. She doesn’t have the nightmare about Kris again, but she has nightmares about that nightmare, dreams in which she’s dreaming and can’t wake up. Amusingly, those nightmares wake her up. On the one hand, it’s wonderfully meta. On the other hand, it’s fucking with her head. She’s the best person who ever lived, but she needs her sleep to function, same as everyone else. Having her nights fucked around with is messing with her mood something chronic, making her much more likely than normal to snap at everything or nothing. It’s also starting to interfere with her decision-making. It’s not a problem when I’m around because I can take lead, but I’m worried about her. At times she gets so bad that I think I ought to drag her to the med bay, but the chances of her getting any help there are minimal. She would have to convince them that she’s in genuine need rather than just seeking medication for some kind of illicit purpose, and at most they would give her sleeping pills. That would only keep her stuck in the nightmares, which would only make everything worse.

  We muddle on as best we can, trying not to show that we’re getting increasingly frazzled. I am not getting as much sleep as I could, either, but that’s OK. It’s just one of those things. I don’t know when I’ll be able to see Kris again. He has to ensure safe passage to his corridor for me, and that’s not a simple task after the kind of upheaval we’ve had. Not knowing when or even if I will see him is not helping me get any sleep. That would be my third problem, and my main one, if something more pressing wasn’t constantly demanding my attention.

  Until the riot my fling with Kris was an open secret, but a secret nonetheless. Now that it’s gone public, some people have an issue with it. While the Supervisors are on our case, their unhappiness manifests solely as random, hissed insults. I don’t think much of that: the phenomenon only registers with me because of its novelty. As soon as the Supervisors stop hounding us, though, the situation degenerates, until one afternoon when I’m rushing down the hallway trying to get to my fucking class on time, and a gaggle of girls collars me.

  It’s my fault: I am so rushed and distracted that I don’t see them coming until I’m surrounded. I should be furious at myself, but I’m so frazzled that I can only manage a mild irritation. I’m on my own and there’s a bunch of them, which should worry me but genuinely doesn’t. What are they gonna do? They can’t go physical without landing in the shit. I’ll be hurt, but they’ll be as hurt as I can make them and in trouble.

  I run through my options. I could wait to see what the hell they have in store for me. I could try to push my way past them, but that would mean starting a scrap I would then have to explain to the Supervisors. I haven’t been able to see Kris since the riot, and if I get in trouble I won’t be able to see him for a while yet. I don’t want that.

  I’m still trying to work out the best way out of this when one of them breaks the circle and comes towards me. I’ve seen her around plenty of times but I’ve never had anything to do with her. I don’t think we’ve ever been in the same class. I think she’s one of those pretty girls who thinks she’s gonna fuck her way out of here. Maybe she’s right: she’s pretty enough to manage that. She doesn’t look half as pretty scowling down at me, though. She’s so much taller than me that I am getting a perfect view up her nostrils. She could do with blowing her nose.

  When she finally speaks, her voice is perfectly pleasant: a bit too high-pitched to feel natural, but I’m sure that works for her.

  “You’re a fucking whore.”

  “Isn’t that redundant?”

  “What?”

  “Fucking whore. It’s redundant. Are there non-fucking whores? I’ve not really thought about it, but it sounds like a bad business model.”

  She blinks furiously at me. The girls in the circle look as confused. From somewhere outside the circle come a few sniggers.

  “We know what you’ve been up to. I think you’re a whore. We all do.”

  “Oh. OK.”

  She keeps staring at me. This is going nowhere and I’m already late, so I decide to speed things up.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “What?”

  “You think I’m a whore. I got that. Is that it? I’ve got stuff to do. So do you, most likely.”

  Now she looks confused and frustrated. “I just called you a whore! Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”

  “What? No. Why would I?”

  “Because I’ve just called you a whore!”

  “So what?” I’m as confused as she is, until I finally get it. “Hang on. You think I care about your opinion. You really do. Why would you think that?”

  She stands in front of me, her mouth flapping soundlessly. As the smattering of giggles outside the circle turns into a gale of laughter, her perfect alabaster complexion turns deep red. She doesn’t look about to move any time soon, so I just walk around her, through the circle, down the hallway, and on with my life; or so I think.

  Apparently publicly humiliating certain people carries consequences. I would have been able to figure it out, if only I’d been thinking. Instead of starting a nice, open, honest feud, the girls in questions decide to pester me with petty, underhanded bullshit.

  I get tripped up in the hallway a few times, which is annoying but not that big a deal. Then I get shoved in the refectory hard enough to make me drop my dinner in front of half the school, and that bugs me. I’m annoyed enough that when someone tries to push me down the steps to the main lecture hall I react badly: I steady myself by reaching
around and grabbing hold of the girl who is pushing me, nails first. I manage not to fall and to rip off four ribbons of skin from her neck all in one go, which I’d class as a victory if the girl’s overreaction didn’t attract the attention of a Supervisor. I can’t prove that she pushed me and she has plenty of witnesses to the fact that I scratched her bloody, so I get it in the neck for getting her in the neck. I’d be more amused by that if it didn’t mean a loss of privileges so comprehensive that for a week I only get to see Dee at night.

  The Supervisors get back on my case, too, which makes it harder for people to have a go at me in public. Instead they start interfering with my stuff. My study terminal gets covered in something sticky and pungent during lunch. I find that out only after putting my hands on it and the Supervisor in charge doesn’t let me get cleaned up until the end of the study session, so I waste an afternoon staring at a blank screen while trying not to smell my hands or imagine what they’re covered in. My reader gets broken while Dee and I are in the shower. All my unfiled coursework was in it and can’t be recovered, so I’m set back a good couple of weeks in my studies. I am also given another stretch without privileges for needing a new reader.

  I want to go and smash someone’s face in over the whole thing, but I stop myself because the cost would be too great. I keep my head down, act like I don’t give a shit, and hope that they’ll get it out of their system before too long.

  Even though I’m on my best behavior, it’s a few weeks before Kris and I can see each other again. When our visiting finally resumes we don’t go back to a regular schedule. He doesn’t tell me why, but I assume that it’s because the Supervisors are still keeping too close an eye on things. Seeing him less should help me catch up on my sleep, but it doesn’t. Not knowing when I’ll see him means that I can’t get any decent rest even when I have a night to myself. I spend more time waiting and wishing than sleeping. My head is a mess and my body is a tight knot of frustration. It’s not a restful combination.

  I mention a few times to Kris that maybe he could let me know in the evening if he’s planning to call me over so I could plan my nights, but he doesn’t pick me up on it. He’s got plenty of stuff to think about without thinking about this too, I guess. I don’t know for sure. We don’t talk a great deal. There is no time. We only ever have an hour or two max we can spend together and we have other stuff we want to do with that time.

  I like it when we talk, though. Sometimes he tells me what happened in his day. Sometimes he asks me questions about classes. I have to be really careful to find the right words because he always seems to listen to me so intensely. I can feel the weight of everything I say, as if my words were stones that, once laid down, will never go away. It feels good to have someone pay attention like that, but it also feels stressful. Sometimes I wonder how long it will take me to get used to it, to enjoy it more than I fear it. Right now I prefer to just hear him talk.

  There is something off about tonight, though. He’s talking in dribs and drabs, but nothing he’s saying seems to go anywhere, to convert into a dialogue. It’s just a stream of non sequiturs and, pleasant as it is, it’s starting to make me feel as if I’m fucking up somehow, as if I were failing to provide my half of the conversation. When his face settles and he rests his eyes on mine I brace myself, because I know I’m finally about to hear what he really wants to say.

  “My brother turns sixteen next week.”

  I’m so relieved to hear him say something that inconsequential that I have to work hard not to smile. “I know. I pay attention to that kind of thing.”

  “As far as the Fed are concerned, he can quit studying.”

  “I’m aware of that too. I tried to pick the courses that would give him the most options for further studies.”

  “Did you? I thought you picked the courses he was most likely to pass.”

  “That too. But I wanted him to have options.”

  “I’m not sure he does. He’s my brother, but he’s not bright. He’s doing well enough in the tech labs.”

  “He’d do well in any class. He just needs more confidence.”

  “Sure. All he needs is a personality transplant.”

  I really want to snap at him but I check myself. I know that there’s no point. When he starts sniping at people there is no stopping him, and he’s not entirely wrong here. Warner would be his own worst enemy if so many people didn’t actively compete for that role.

  “I’m glad he’s doing OK in the labs. What is he working towards?”

  “He’s not. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I’m starting to get a really bad feeling about this. He’s looking at me with that flat, expressionless stare he saves for when really bad shit is going down.

  “Did he pick the wrong classes?”

  “Nah. I wouldn’t have let him. It doesn’t matter what he picks. We’re getting out of here in two months.”

  “What? But he’s sixteen!”

  “I’ll be eighteen. He can be my ward.”

  “I don’t get it. You don’t have to go for another year.”

  “I want to get out of here.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Yes, but we can. The three of us.”

  “What?”

  “Me, Warner, and you. We can get the fuck out of here.”

  “I can’t. I’m sixteen too.”

  “Are you being obtuse? Of course you can. I’ll be fucking eighteen. Think about it.”

  “You want me to be your ward?”

  “Don’t be stupid. I want you to be my wife.”

  I’ve dreamt about this so many times, but it was never like this. It wasn’t some kind of slushy shit with a ring and him kneeling or anything like that, but the mood was different and he looked like he cared. He looked at me with his open eyes, his soft eyes, the eyes that make my head and body go soft. This feels like he’s throwing it all at my face and it’s my job to catch it, to fill in all the gaps between what he’s doing and what should be happening. I have no idea how to navigate this. My brain gives up. I can’t think or talk. I can’t move either, not that I know in which direction I would go.

  Kris leans back on the bed, his mouth curling up at the corners. “I’m all set. I’ve got enough practical qualification that any colony would take me. Warner has only got the basics, but he can start low and work his way up. Or, as we’re talking about Warner here, start low and stay low. You’ve got all kinds of crap you’ll never use, but that won’t matter on most colonies: nobody’s expecting you to do anything much outside the house in a three-person household. Maybe you can get a teaching job after we’re settled. It would give you a chance to earn some credit around the kids.”

  That unglues my mouth. “What kids?”

  “Are you fucking listening? Our kids. I assume you’re licensed for one.”

  “I’m not.”

  He blinks. “OK. What are you licensed for?”

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Everyone’s licensed for something, even with a half share. Do you have some genetic problem or something?”

  “No. I don’t have a half share.”

  “Don’t talk bullshit. You wouldn’t be here with a full share, regardless of how badly your parents fucked up. Even if they died you’d be somewhere decent, or you’d have been adopted.”

  “I don’t have any shares at all.”

  “You what?” His eyes narrow and start burning inside.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You better simplify it. Quickly.”

  “I am a ward of the Fed…”

  He interrupts me. “As are we all. We’re not here because it’s fun.”

  “Yes, but I don’t have a family. I’m just a ward of the Fed.”

  “How the fuck can you not have a family? Are you some kind of test-tube baby?”

  That floors me. “I actually don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”<
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  “That’s insane. How the fuck could you not? You’re making this up.”

  “I’m not. I grew up on a torus. As far as I know, there are no parentage records on file for me. If there are some, they’re not accessible.”

  “So you could be a test-tube baby!”

  “I guess, but I doubt it. I don’t think any scientist would go through the bother just to make me.”

  He takes a few deep breaths. “You’re probably right. You’re not really ideal Fed material. Unless they were trying to breed someone with more brains than is good for them.”

  I don’t really know what to say to that. Nothing he’s saying is wrong, but all of it hurts. We’re now so far from how I dreamt his marriage proposal would go that I have no hope of finding my way back.

  He shakes his head – just a quick twitch, as if he was trying to dislodge a pesky thought. “Even if you’re a normal human, you’ve still got no shares. You should have told me. Months ago.”

  “You never asked.”

  “That’s because it’s a given around here. That’s why we’re here: parents can’t cope, not a full share, off to a Sorting Center you go. Aside from your friend, from what I hear. But I thought it was just her. I didn’t think you were both…” He trails off.

  “Both what?”

  He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You should have told me. This changes everything, you know that?”

  “No. How?”

  “Because if we get married our household wouldn’t have a full share.”

  “But Warner…”

  “Warner’s half doesn’t count, even if he’s my ward.”

  “But he’d be part of the household.”

  “Until he’s eighteen, yes. Afterwards, that’d be up to him. So his half share wouldn’t count towards the household until he’s of age.”

  “That makes no sense. I’m not of age, and mine would count if I had one.”

  He leans forward and hisses in my face. “It doesn’t have to make sense! That’s how it is! That’s why you should have told me!”