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22/10/2007
Twelve
It was over twelve years since she’d had a warm bath, Julie thought as she slid into the steaming water and shuddered with the tingling rush of awoken sensation. Unfortunately that also included her many cuts and scrapes, which stung sharply. As if the little injuries awoke the large one, her arm began to throb angrily under the bandage and the slightest movement sent a jagged shaft of intense pain splintering through her. She supposed that in actuality it was simply the mitigin wearing off, then she saw that blood and fluid had seeped through the bandage and felt a pulse of alarm. Trying to keep the arm out of the water, Julie washed her hair and body with her other hand, soaping herself in slow caressing motions, then rinsed.
She lay back in a half-daze and let memories scud in ~ memories of when she and her father stood, marveling at a sunset, perhaps for the last time before the Pols took him away for a murder he didn’t commit. Her father’s eyes had creased when he smiled and lifted his face from its usual sadness. He had been a quiet man of few words, but with an intensity that often struck her with awe. Julie recognized nature’s role in her father’s demeanor. Under the sunset’s forgiving radiance, his bronze face had glowed like a warrior poet as he sucked on his pipe. She remembered savoring the sweet scent of burning pipe tobacco and watching the plume of blue smoke curl over his shoulder. It rose, then broke up into swirling tendrils as he lectured her.
“We have much to learn in stable chaos science, Angel. Ecosystems cycle over millennia in ways we may never discern. This heath, for instance, is a complex system, poised on the edge of chaos. It has the ability to balance order and chaos in ways we have yet to comprehend. Creation and destruction are parts of the same thing, Angel. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that everything degenerates toward entropy. Yet spontaneous order exists all around us in galaxies, cells, ecosystems and human beings. We’ve miraculously managed to assemble ourselves from a primordial, chaotic, soup of chemicals.”
“Mom says God made us.”
Her father smiled thoughtfully. “Perhaps it’s the same thing.”
She slipped her hand into his much larger one and rubbed against him like a cat, studying his great hand. It wasn’t the hand of an outdoorsman. Neither rough nor callused like her uncle’s, whose brown paws were seamed and cracked from the sun. Her father’s hands were pale and smooth like her mother’s, with slender fingers. They were the hands of a scientist who wrote intelligent words. Secure in his firm grip, she was convinced that her father and his words would protect her against anything . . .
More memories bubbled up in a febrile mixture of garish images . . . trying to keep up with her mother as she pulled her and her sister through a sea of people and droids, then feeling her mother’s hand slip away . . . striding the glittering malls festooned with cultured parks and fragrant gardens . . . pushing her way into the crowded tube-jet . . . sitting in her dark office and laughing at SAM’s crazy jokes . . . watching in frozen anguish as her friend, Nancy, was Shamed, then feeling the disgrace of her own Shaming . . . discovering that she was Prometheus and that her own father had given her away as a child to science without asking her and damned her to Darwin disease . . . discovering that her lost sister had died of it. . . stunned by her Uncle Bobby’s suicide in the Pol Station after he was arrested for peddling dystopian literature . . . quarrelling with Frank, then shooting him out of uncontrollable rage . . .
Out of those dark swirling visions, thoughts of Daniel floated to the surface . . . When they’d first snuck out of Icaria to walk the beach of Lake Ontario, already in love but too shy to admit it . . . the time she and Daniel bathed naked in a shallow lake the first day they’d left Icaria for good. She’d bashfully undressed in front of him then took his tenderly offered hand and followed him into the chilly water. They washed each other, then, still dripping wet, they made love in the shallows ~
A brusque knock at the door jolted her out of her reverie. She jerked up with a splash and snapped her eyes open.
“You ready, Ms. Crane?” Tyers called from the other side of the washroom door.
“Yes. Right there,” she responded and pulled herself unsteadily out of the water to dry and dress. When she saw the clothes Tyers had selected for her, she frowned. He’d left her a Com-Center uniform to wear. As she felt the soft crimson fabric and brought it to her nose, inhaling its freshly laundered scent, a whole new jangle of memories scudded in like missals that knocked her off balance. She leaned back against the wall to steady herself, feeling a sudden splintering pain rip through her arm, and saw spots in front of her eyes.
Once dressed, Julie opened the door with her left hand, her old clothes tucked under that arm. Tyers stood up from the same chair she’d sat in before and his mouth twitched as he appraised her, obviously enjoying the view. She was too annoyed to blush. “Why this?” she demanded, looking from the uniform to his face. “I don’t work in your Com-Center anymore.”
“It matches the fire in your eyes,” he teased, then added, “The colour red suits you,” and used the excuse to look her over more.
She held out her soiled clothes. “I’d like these cleaned and returned to me.”
“Why?” he asked, eyeing them with distaste. He added to her slight dismay, “You won’t be needing them again.”
She brought the clothes close to her face to take in the tantalizing scent of seasoned leather. “I just . . . want them. I don’t want to argue with you ~”
“Good, considering how you like to end your arguments,” he said with a smirk. He’d obviously alluded to her shooting Frank during their quarrel in the Den so long ago. Tyers swung his arm in an arc around the room. “You were asking about the Head Pol . . . This is his office and suite.”
Yes, it had been familiar. She’d never come in through the door, always by lift. Clutching her old clothes against her chest, Julie observed that the new Head Pol had thoroughly redecorated. Gone were Kraken’s antique wooden furniture and bookshelf, his classic sculptures and paintings. They’d been replaced with modern designs, sleek black leather furniture, abstract art and stark white walls. The new Head Pol had traded the romance of regal tradition with elegant but stark reality.
“Someone’s anxious to meet you.” The smirk became more pronounced. “An old friend.”
She did a quick rundown of who she might still know in Icaria. She had no friends left here. At least not live ones. The locked door to her left opened and Julie came face to face with a ghost.
“Hi, Julie,” Frank said. He was looking very much alive for someone who should have died from Darwin eleven years ago. He was dressed in a black Pol uniform and wasn’t wearing a helmet. She thought him thinner and lankier than she’d remembered him. Frank appraised her whole body, undressing her with his eyes, glanced briefly at the clothes she clutched, then rested his gaze on her face with a smirk. That recklessly handsome face had definitely aged since she’d last seen him. He’d let his dark hair grow long and had it pulled back in a ponytail. It gave his thin face a severe quality that brought out the coldness in his sea-blue eyes and a lingering bitterness in his sardonic mouth. She thought he resembled an undernourished timber wolf. “You look great,” he said, lips tugging into a leer.
“So do you . . .” she lied and felt her voice break up and drift away in pieces. The fire that smouldered in her arm flared up into her face as though she’d just walked into a wall of flames. Then she was falling and everything faded into blackness.
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