Si Vis Pacem (Heinlein's Finches) Read online

  “How we do what?”

  “Show us how the lesbians do it. Kiss her. Then we’ll let you out.”

  “What?”

  “We’re not going to let you out until you kiss her.”

  I try not to snicker because I don’t want to make this worse, but I fail. Once I start, the harder I try to stop it the harder the snickering gets, until it turns into laughter entirely beyond my control. I’ve not laughed this hard in months, maybe years. It takes me a while to get enough air in to explain why I’m so amused.

  “You want to watch us kiss, and we are supposed to be the lesbians?”

  Dee’s smile splits her face as she starts guffawing. She has the biggest, richest, deepest laugh I’ve ever heard. She sets me laughing again, until we’re both hooting out of control. I think there’s a chance I might laugh myself to death, and I’m not even sorry.

  The Queen is plainly unimpressed and unamused. She doesn’t seem to have much to say for herself, though. Maybe a sharp rebuttal will come to her, by and by, but for now she settles for walking out with her little gang and closing the outside door. A clonking noise lets me know that they’re fucking around with it.

  I find a dry patch of floor by one of the air vents and slide down.

  “Well, this is it, then. They’ve locked us in.”

  Dee comes to sit next to me. “How do you know?”

  “It makes sense. You can go and check it if you want, but for the love of all that is holy, don’t fight with the door or make too much noise. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

  “Nah, I believe you. It does make sense. Now what?”

  “Now we wait for a Supervisor to find us and let us out.”

  “What?”

  “I bet they didn’t think of that. They want to watch us struggle and make a fuss. If we don’t do anything, they’ll either have to let us out or wait for a Supervisor to find us, in which case they might get in the shit.”

  “I doubt that. Supervisors don’t care about this kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Hey ho.”

  “I’m sorry about this.”

  I turn to look at her. She does look sorry. I don’t get it.

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “No, but it’s probably my fault.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “You shouldn’t. It’s true. What they’re saying.”

  “Oh. OK. I wish I brought my reader, and a coat. I reckon it’s going to be too cold to sleep on the floor.”

  “Say what?”

  “Call me a wuss, but I get cold. And I may be small, but I can’t wrap myself up in a damn towel. A wet towel, too.” I yawn. “And if I have to stay awake, I’d rather have something to do. I’ve got plenty of work I want to get on with.”

  She blinks. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “What?”

  “I just told you that what they said is true.”

  “Yeah. I heard you. You’re a lesbian. And?”

  “And a psi-freak.”

  “Noted.”

  “You don’t care?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “You don’t know what lesbian means?”

  “Are you serious?” I groan. “I spent a term in the dorm. I could write a book about it.”

  She lifts up one eyebrow. “If the pictures in it are good, I’ll buy it.”

  “Heh. You’re the artist.”

  She smiles. “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “That you can draw? Why would it?”

  She frowns. “Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

  “Thank you for believing that I’d have to put effort into it. I couldn’t care less who you want to sleep with, provided it isn’t me and I don’t get to see it. What kind of psi-freak?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know, but it seems to matter to you and you’re the only one of us who knows a damn thing about it. We just have to share a room for however long we’re here, ideally without killing each other. No part of your life is any of my business unless you want it to be. You started talking about this, I don’t know what you’re on about, so I’m asking questions. If these questions are inappropriate, I’ll shut up.”

  “No. It’s just… People don’t generally want to know the details. Knowing that it’s a thing is enough for them.”

  “I don’t get it. I can’t make my mind up about it if I don’t know what it is, what it does, and so on.”

  She stares at me for a while. It freaks me out way more than her talk of psi-bilities. I don’t think she’s trying to intimidate me, but she’s looking at me like she’s trying to look inside me, and that’s not something I enjoy.

  I take the opportunity to check her out, too. From what I’ve seen of her up to now, from a distance, she doesn’t behave like anyone else around here. She obviously doesn’t belong to any of the gangs, she does her own thing, and a whole load of people avoid her. Now I know why. You’d think that it would be dangerous for her, that she could end up everyone’s favorite scapegoat, but she isn’t. I guess her life is engineered much like mine; she is such an exception that she is too costly a target. That’s cool, but not that special. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that tactic: I’m the living proof of that.

  What’s really weird about her is that, from what I can see, she always seems quietly happy with herself. She seems even happier from close up. She’s really relaxing to be near, weird mystical powers notwithstanding. If she turns out not to be an asshole solely devoted to power plays like the rest of the people around here, that will be the freakiest thing about her.

  I’ve had enough of her eyeballing me, though.

  “Are you going to tell me about the psi-thing or not? I’m happy either way.”

  “Honey, you do realize that this makes you the freak around here, right? You’re supposed to be horrified and repulsed.”

  “I’m not terribly good at doing what I’m supposed to do.”

  The lights go off suddenly and the ‘fresher goes pitch black. I guess it’s curfew time. I hear her gasp – I barely manage to stop gasping myself, if I have to be honest. It takes a few minutes for my eyes to adapt so that the light creeping around the door frame lets me see the contours of her face. Her eyes are the only feature I can really see, pale disks shining faintly. Her voice sounds softer in the dark, or maybe just more resigned.

  “It’s mostly telepathy, I think. You know what that is?”

  “Reading thoughts?”

  “Yes. Though I can’t always make it work. Even when it works, it’s kinda sucky.”

  “I should think so. If what people think is half as bad as what they say…”

  “It’s not even that. People’s heads are just so chaotic most of the time. It’s like trying to listen to a badly turned com.”

  I snort. “You think I know what that’s like?”

  “Oh. Sorry. It’s like… Most people’s heads are like crowded rooms. You can’t hear anything because there’s too much noise, too many voices talking at the same time.”

  “Huh. Interesting. Is my head like that?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked.”

  “So you can turn it on and off?”

  “Yes. Just as well, really: in a place like this, crammed together as we are, I don’t think I could take it. Thousands of voices shouting in my head…” She shudders and trails off.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Nobody ever asks that! You know that!”

  “Sure. It’s just that from what I’ve read psi-able people are valuable. You should be at one of the good schools, with the kids who are worth something.”

  “Everyone is worth something!”

  “Not in the eyes of the Fed, they’re not.”

  “Fuck the Fed.” She says that so forcefully she takes me by surprise. “You know what they do to psi-able kids? They study them. All day, every day. They care for nothing but measuring and increasing
their psi-bilities.”

  “It doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, if they care about you doing well, it’s got to be better than here.”

  “They don’t care about you, though. Just about your psi-bility, how they can make it work better. How they can weaponize it.”

  “Weaponize it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Against whom?”

  I hear her shrug. “Anybody. I don’t know. I didn’t get that far. I passed my psi-test, back home, got picked up and taken to a nexus, spoke to a couple of the psi-able kids there, and noped the fuck out.”

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “Failed the admission test to the psi-program. They put my original pass test down as a coincidence, or the sign that I might have just a faint hint of a psi-bility but nothing worth pursuing. It made the woman who was giving me the test really, really angry. That rather supported my decision. What she thought about me…” She snorts. “I don’t want someone like that in charge of my life.”

  “Can’t be worse than here. Come on. Nobody here gives a fuck if we live or die, provided that it doesn’t fuck up their end-of-year reports or make a mess they have to clear up.”

  “If you think it’s bad being controlled by people who don’t care about you, try being controlled by assholes who do. I’m telling you, being a nobody is your best bet. It’s worked for me up to now, anyway.”

  “Dee, we’re currently locked in a ‘fresher. I don’t class this as a strategic success.”

  “Still better than being at a psi-center.”

  “If you say so. How come they didn’t send you back home?”

  I can hear the smile in her voice. “They’d already paid for me and carted me off quite a way. They weren’t about to pay to ship me back.”

  “That makes no sense. Paying your passage back would have been cheaper than keeping you here for years. How old were you when they took you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And how old are you now?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Huh. I thought you were way older.”

  “Thank you!”

  “Well, you’re so tall!”

  “You’re short. It doesn’t make you younger.”

  “Very droll. But there’s no way in hell that sending you home wouldn’t have been cheaper than keeping you for at least seven years. There’s no colony that isolated.”

  “True.”

  “So, how do you explain it?”

  Her voice gets a bit smaller and a lot shakier. “I can do a little more than just read thoughts. Sometimes I can project thoughts at people.”

  “You’ll have to elaborate on that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t know what it means. Do people hear your thoughts, or do they think them?”

  “What?”

  “Do they hear your voice in their heads, kinda thing, or can you put thoughts in there that feel like their own?”

  She swallows. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how I do it. On who they are.”

  “So you could, right now, put a thought in my head without me knowing that? And I’d think it’s mine?”

  “Potentially, yes. It’s less likely now that I’ve told you about it.”

  “Because I’ll be on the lookout for it?”

  “Yes.”

  I feel a smile spread across my face.

  “Ah, but you could have warned me to make me think that you were safe; that you had no intention to use your powers against me. That would make me drop my guard. Or you could have told me because you have a different power, and you want to throw me off its scent. Or because you have no powers at all, and you want me paranoid.”

  She guffaws. “You know, you’re perfect for this place.”

  “You better qualify that statement before I take it as an insult.”

  “You completely ignored the possibility that I might be telling you all this simply because it’s true and I want you to know it. Because I want to be straight with you. Because, as we are to share a room together, I want us to actually get on.”

  “So I’m suspicious to the point of paranoia?”

  “So you’re probably a liar. Liars never believe that anyone could be telling the truth.”

  “Harsh.”

  “But true.”

  It’s my turn to guffaw. “OK, then. So you could put thoughts in my head, and read my thoughts. That is creepy as fuck.”

  “You could stab me in my sleep.”

  “I could stab you when you’re awake. Catch you when you’re off-guard and your hands are busy. In the refectory, while you’re carrying your tray.”

  “The knives are blunt as shit precisely to avoid that eventuality.”

  “Sure, but I bet they’re sharp enough to make an impact if you shove them in hard enough. And there are enough shivs in circulation to fill up an armory. But yes, you’re right: catching you when you’re asleep would be easier and safer. It would definitely be my preferred option. You’re way bigger than me.”

  “Who isn’t? And that’s creepy as hell, you know that? That you’d even think about all that…” She trails off.

  “So we can creep each other out. Great. Better to be feared than loved, and all that shit.”

  “Says who?”

  “Machiavelli. Old dude. In a book.”

  “Well, he’s full of shit!”

  She sounds so indignant that I don’t have the heart to laugh at her. I know she’s bigger and older than me, but she seems sweet. I guess it’s good for her that people fear psi-able people so much. Sweet doesn’t do well around here.

  We sit in the dark in silence for a bit. I try to make sense of everything that’s happened today and everything she told me, but I simply don’t have enough data. I need to fix that.

  “Hey. You know your psi-bility? Can you show it to me?”

  “Say what?”

  “Read me, or project something. Or both.”

  “I can’t choose what I read. If I read you, I’ll see whatever is there.”

  I don’t like the thought of that. In fact, it scares the shit out of me, so I charge towards it: I am not going to leave with a fear I can dispel.

  “Alright. Do I have to do anything?”

  “You can try to think of something. If you focus enough, I should pick up what you’re sending.”

  “Alright.” I take a slow breath to steady myself. “Now?”

  “OK.”

  A few seconds later she’s guffawing so hard she keels over.

  “What?”

  She can hardly speak. “You… Kept thinking… Don’t think…About sex!”

  “Yeah, well, you know how it is when you try not to think of something…”

  She guffaws even harder. It takes her a while to calm down. I don’t mind: the sound of her laughter makes the darkness less oppressive.

  “Are you done laughing at me?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Are you going to project something?”

  “Sure. If you’re sure.”

  “Go on, then.”

  I sit there in the dark, waiting for something to enter my head, but nothing happens.

  “Are you doing it?”

  “Yes! You don’t feel it?”

  “Nope.”

  She grabs my hand and then I get it, just. It’s faint and distant. It definitely doesn’t feel like a thought emerging from me; it’s more like overhearing a voice in the wind. It takes me a long time to manage to distinguish any words in it.

  “You… Are… Dense. You are dense? Are you calling me names now?”

  She laughs again and takes her hand off me.

  “Well, there you go. You needn’t fear me bending your mind to my will. It’d kill me to try. Getting through to you is a bloody struggle.”

  “I got there at the end!”

  “I was screaming at you! And touching you. Physical contact always makes it easier. I don’t know why. I don’t get
to play with this, you know. I used to, when I was a kid, but since I got here…” She sighs and trails off.

  “Is that why you don’t like to touch people?”

  “What? However did you come to that conclusion?” She sounds indignant again.

  “I’ve seen you around. You kind of stick out. And I’ve never seen you touching anyone. Not that I’ve spent that long looking at you.”

  “Great. Not. And no, I don’t mind touching people. People don’t like me touching them.”

  I don’t need a psi-bility to work out that she’s upset by that. A hot, black rage starts to fill the pit of my stomach. She’s a nice kid. She didn’t ask to be different. She gets treated shittily. It’s unfair.

  We carry on talking for I don’t know how long. It’s hard for me to measure the passing of time in the dark. I know it’s been a while because I’m getting really drowsy and pretty fucking cold. A wet towel makes for a piss-poor blanket. Dee’s voice is really soothing, though, slow, warm, and smooth, even though the stuff she’s talking about isn’t soothing at all. She had plenty of good reasons for wanting to leave home, and she hasn’t had a great time since. She doesn’t make a fuss about any of that, though. She doesn’t seem to make a fuss about anything much. I could grow to like her.

  I’m drifting in and out of her story when the ‘fresher door opens, stabbing my eyes with the sudden light.

  “What the hell are you doing here? Why are you out of your rooms at this time of night?” One of the Supervisors is standing in the doorway, looking mightily pissed off and holding some kind of stick. A broom handle, I think. Is that how the door got wedged shut? So much for the triumph of modern technology.

  “We got locked in,” answers Dee in a perfectly calm tone. I don’t know how she manages to be so polite about it.

  “What did you do that for?”

  I lean forward to speak, but Dee rests a hand on my arm. She zaps me a message and I get so distracted trying to work out what she’s saying that I miss my chance to snap.

  “It was probably an accident.”

  “How did you accidentally wedge a door shut from the outside?”

  I get up and have a good stretch. I’m stiff, cold, tired, and I’ve had enough of this. This entire line of enquiry is patently ludicrous, yet this woman doesn’t see it. I can’t be bothered helping her with that.