Veracity (25 page)

"What do I do in the meantime? How am I supposed to train her?"

Lilly's voice comes back softened by distance. "You see now? I told you there wasn't time!"

Lazarus comes back into the room and sits gently down at the table. But his mind is elsewhere. Maybe on how I'm to be trained while he's strategizing a war. "I need to end today's session early. We'll work on history and tackle your language skills tomorrow. Do you have any questions before I go?"

I pause. "What am I here to do? Please, just tell me that much."

"The answers I have for you will just leave you with more questions. Why don't you just process this much for now--"

"Please," I interrupt.

Lazarus sighs. "You're here to give us hope. To help us on media watch. To oversee the deconstruction of Tracking and Data when we're in office."

"Do you know how people are looking at me?" I ask. "They're looking at me like I'm supposed to save the world. Please tell me what I'm supposed to do, Lazarus. Please."

Lazarus clasps together his large, knobbed hands. Looks thoughtfully down into the cross-hatched digits, steepled like a church. "You know the Geddard Building."

"Yes, but what's that got to do with this?"

"At any given time there are thousands of Blue Coats sitting at their desks, doing whatever it is they do when they're not out on patrol. Their real duty is to watch what's in the basement. You know what's in the basement, yes?"

"The redactors."

"Fifty thousand of them, all set up on a docking tree and slaved to one master. We turn off a slave and we take out a hundred thousand slates at odd places throughout the Confederation. If we turn off the master, we take them all down at once."

"So I'm supposed to find the master."

"Yes."

"And if I identify the wrong redactor, a slave instead of the master, an alarm goes off?"

Lazarus nods. "Yes."

"And?"

"And Blue Coats will rush in and our man will be gunned down."

"And who is our man?"

Lazarus sighs. He doesn't want to tell me what I, somehow, already know. "John Gage."

"How long do I have to find it?"

"How long do you need?"

I blink. "I'm serious. How long do I have?"

Lazarus puts a hand on my cheek. "I know you want me to give you a date. But that's not how your gift works, is it? I could tell you exactly when we plan to go to war if I, in fact, had that information, which I do not. But what good would that do, Harper? You know what we need and you know
that we'd like to have it before wartime, so just . . . find it as you're able."

I'm frustrated. Even though, if I were Lazarus, it's the same answer I'd be giving me, too. "What if I can't do it, Lazarus?"

"
What if,
nothing. What you can't do is start thinking like that."

"People won't join us if their slates aren't turned off."

"They'll join us. It'll take longer, and cost more, but they'll stand with us. We don't plan on leaving the other guys an option."

Lazarus is trying to diminish the impact.
Lives
is what it will cost if I can't produce the redactor. "People will get killed trying to follow us. Just trying to
speak
like us." People like my daughter.

"Harper, stop this." Lazarus has his hands over his face, fingers drumming against his forehead. He slides them down slowly. I'm expecting worry and disappointment. Instead, he's smiling. "You're going to find the master. I'm sure of it."

"How can you be so sure?"

"The same way I know the sun's going to rise in the morning. When you know a thing, you just know it. You don't need evidence." He nods over to the door, where Lilly is waiting. "Now, Lilly's going to show you latrine duties. We each take a turn and today just happens to be yours."

Mr. Weigland is rushing me. Sweaty palms on my back, he pushes me without knowing, his mind elsewhere.

"You ready for this?" he asks.

I nod. "Sure." But I'm nauseated and sweating. Praying I won't lose my cool or pass out.

Every few years, it's another go. Another test to see if we're ready. If we've been able to put aside our emotions, like computers, and read a scene
properly,
without the filter of compassion. With our eyes as well as our ears, in real time, and without the crutch of playback. Last time, a Sentient Monitor named Martha was chosen to take this test program out for a drive. She came back a wreck. Took a seat at her desk and didn't move for twelve straight hours. Not to go home. Not to go to the bathroom. We never knew what happened. She was there the next day. The day after, gone.

And now it's my turn up to bat for the Monitoring team. Management and the Executive Elite want me to knock it out of the park. They'll be bringing the suspect into an interrogation room so I can watch through a mirrored window as the Blue Coats do their thing. If I perform well, we'll be doing this kind of Monitoring from now on. Really, it's a prelude to the BodySpeak program. A way to see how viable it will be to turn Sentient Monitors into investigative police.

"You doing okay?" Mr. Weigland asks from next to me. He's looking at our reflection in the closed elevator doors.
Watching the floor buttons blink as we move down.
97, 93, 89, 86
. . .

"Fine."

We get off at the Murdon Building's basement level and trek through a tunnel that stretches for blocks beneath the city streets. We walk until the bright lights of an underground foyer come into view and, behind them, a different set of elevator doors. This is a hidden entrance to the Geddard Building. Somewhere beyond are all the redactors in the Confederation of the Willing. I can feel the heat of them from here.

Mr. Weigland nods at the Security Guard. "Good afternoon."

"Good afternoon, sir." The young man runs a mobile scanner over our necks. Opens the elevator doors and pokes in his arm. He hits the button marked 88 without looking. "Have a good day, sir."

The room to which we're directed is medium-size. Large enough to comfortably hold Mr. Weigland, myself, and the two men in black suits who crowd us toward a long table. Their hands are odd-looking. Long and thin, the knuckles too large. Their faces are white and have slipped some over the bones. They don't look human, and not just because they're the oldest men I've seen aside from President and his Ministers. It's their colors. Red-brown through their centers. Charred black around the edges. The clouds wrapped around these two men look like fallout from a bomb.

"She the Alpha?" one asks. He's frowning at my dove blue tunic with mother-of-pearl buttons. The shoes Mr. Weigland gave me for Christmas.

Candace is the Alpha but she couldn't come. There was some kind of conflict, a meeting somewhere she couldn't miss. I was there when she told Mr. Weigland. To my amazement, instead of chastising her, he'd walked across his office and taken her into his arms. I was asked to leave,
please
. To close the door on my way out. Mr. Weigland would be by in a few moments to discuss my files, or whatever I'd come to
discuss. He never stopped by that afternoon three days ago, or made himself available when I stopped in to ask why I hadn't seen Candace since.

"No, sir," Mr. Weigland answers. "She's not the Alpha Sentient, but she's damned close. Damned close." He pumps a fist in the air for emphasis. Chortles nervously.

The old men huddle, speaking to each other in an indistinguishable hum. A moment later, they look up again. Nod at Mr. Weigland and disappear through the door. I've been approved for the task.

"What do I do?" I ask.

Mr. Weigland points to the opaque window behind me.

"Watch."

He flips a switch and the fuzz clears. On the other side, four people appear. Three men and one woman. Already, there's blood on the floor. Hers.

"Oh, God."

In the other room, cameras are mounted to the walls. Their toggles are here, on a control panel before me. I move one until a close-up of the woman appears on a screen. She's sitting on the floor. Her head is down, showing me dark roots with the barest hint of gray starting. She's in her thirties. Around my age and a little too thin.

"Is she a known terrorist?" I ask.

"Unknown."

The woman opens her mouth and I see where a tooth has been knocked free. I pan down with the camera. See the pale edge of it in the cup of her right hand. It shines white off her dirty palm.

"What do we have on her?" I ask Mr. Weigland. He's messing with some papers and hasn't yet seen the blood or the woman.

"You're supposed to be watching," he whispers. "Not asking questions." He points at a fan on the ceiling and the round outline of a lens farther up. I'm being monitored. Recorded for later review.

It's a sickening feeling, to know that later, people will be checking this recording to validate the authenticity of my effort. Going over every single peak and line, sorting me out. Deciding what to do with me if I've thrown the test.

"Harper!" Mr. Weigland is looking at me. He jabs a thumb toward the window. Mouths,
Watch!

"Watch with me." I wait for him to put down the page and come over. Together, we look at the assemblage on the wall's other side.

"Oh, God."
Mr. Weigland hadn't anticipated the woman and her lost tooth. And, really, this much is nothing.

Mr. Weigland puts a hand to his mouth. He's made his days about the numbers and the words and not the people and events behind them because he doesn't want to acknowledge the violence. This woman in the other room is evidence of what he's chosen to ignore. It compresses him like a coil. I watch his small, knobby shoulders roll forward as he backs away,
whist, whist, whist
. He moves until his shoes hit the closed hall door and I can no longer see his red face without turning.

"Watch the screen, puh-lease." His voice is thick, breaks the one syllable into two.

I turn away from Mr. Weigland and do as I'm told.

The lead Blue Coat is on the far right side of the room. He has white hair and a full belly. Is sitting atop a desk. The other two defer to him. They keep their heads slightly bowed while asking permission to lift the woman from the floor and give her a little what for, just to make things go a little faster.

"You ready?" the older Blue Coat asks. He's looking at the wall between us. They see it as a mirror.

Mr. Weigland leans over a small cluster of holes drilled into the panel. Depresses some button or throws some hidden switch. "Yes, sir."

The old man nods at his men. They pick the woman off the floor and stretch her arms away from her body. She doesn't complain or lift her head. She stays chin on chest. Knows someone's watching and doesn't want me to see.

"Subject is thirty-eight and single," the older man says. "We started watching her ten months ago when she got flagged for too many Red List violations." He slides down from his table seat. Walks slowly to the trio on the other side of the room. "She's Maintenance, level one. A garbage collector. Not too damned bright but smart enough for them, I guess."

I turn to ask Mr. Weigland,
Them?
Who's
them
? But he's already scrambling. Trying to press the intercom before the old Blue Coat can say anything else. "Sir? Sir!"

"Yes, Weigland. What is it?"

"She's not cleared yet, sir!"

"Not cleared?" The man rumbles over to the mirrored window. Puts up his fat hands so I can see the hollows of his palms. "What in the hell are we doing here if she's not cleared? She's the goddamned Alpha, for Christ's sake!"

"She's the Beta, sir."

The old man chews on this for a moment, then turns and goes back to the table. "Fine, then. We think the subject is a trafficker. Running books. Just the one, if you get what I'm saying. Am I allowed to say that.
The one book?
"

Flushed, Mr. Weigland nods. I have to point him to the intercom. "Yes, sir.
The one book's
fine, sir."

He's talking about
The Book of Noah
. A week ago, the phrase was again placed on the restricted list. This time, even for me, the Beta.

The old man continues. "We pulled a kill pill out of her mouth just in time. You know what kinda pill I'm talking about, right?" They're talking about a poison pill. Terrorists call it a
kill pill
. Something to keep their people from being tortured for information.

"Yes, sir." Mr. Weigland is glowing in his discomfort.

The old Blue Coat loosens his collar. "What I'm trying to say in this goddamned moronic way is that the suspect isn't stable! We need to get on with this interrogation, with or without your uncleared Monitor,
before
this suspect gets
another chance to take herself out! Are we good, Mr. Weigland? Our department's not taking any shit because you people couldn't get your Alpha to come." The old man smiles coyly up at the mirrored window.

Mr. Weigland is sweating profusely. "Yes, sir. Just proceed as you need to. I'll, uh . . . I'll write a note."

"Your girl want to start first or what?" the old man asks.

Mr. Weigland looks at me and I nod.

He answers for me, "Yes, sir."

"What do you need us to do, then? We need to move the subject or something? You want us to get her face up for you?" The old Blue Coat doesn't wait for my response and shouts at the woman, "Look into the camera or I'll have my boys do it for you!"

The Blue Coat nearest her marches over. He grabs the woman by the hair and yanks back until all her features are clear under the lights, save for her eyes, which are pressed shut.

Oh, God
. I put out a hand that lands on the window. There are the same long brown lashes. The full lips, no longer chapped. It's Lucille, the girl from Mr. Mitchell's class.