Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 116 Read online

  Fox’s heart pounds now. He sees Jonas’s silhouette turn to leave, and he quickly darts back to his usual waiting place outside the main door. The boy comes out with a scowl on his face that falters, then deepens, when he catches sight of Fox. He gives only the slightest jerk of his head as acknowledgement, then goes to walk past.

  Fox doesn’t let him. “What did you tell him?” he demands in a whisper, seizing Jonas’s arm.

  Jonas wrests it away. His expression turns hard to read, like his parents’. Then a hesitant smirk appears on his face.

  Fox feels the panic welling up. “What did you do?” he demands, grabbing for him again.

  Jonas grabs back, pinching his hand hard with his nails. “Come on, Damjan,” he says with a fake cheeriness, tugging him along. “Home time, Damjan.”

  “You stupid little shit,” Fox rasps, barely able to speak through the tightness in his chest. “They’ll take your parents, you know that? They’ll take them away for helping me. You’ll never see them again.” He can already hear the whine of a hunter drone, the stamp of soldiers’ boots. His head spins. “The fall wasn’t my fault,” he says, with no aim now but lashing out like a cornered animal. “It was yours.”

  Jonas’s face goes white. His hand leaps off Fox’s like it’s been burnt. “He followed me,” Jonas says. “I told him to wait on the low branch. But he didn’t.” He’s gone still as a statue. A sob shudders through him. “I didn’t tell teacher anything.”

  “What?” Fox feels a wave of relief, then shame.

  “I didn’t tell teacher about you,” Jonas hiccups, and then his eyes narrow. “I should have. I should tell him. If I tell him, they’ll forgive my parents. They aren’t aristos. They’re good. They’re Liberated People.”

  Suddenly, Jonas is turning back towards the school, his jaw set like his father’s. The red mark on his forehead is back.

  “Wait,” Fox pleads. “Jonas. Let me explain myself.”

  Jonas stops, turns. Giving him a chance.

  Fox’s mind whirls through possibilities. “The fall wasn’t your fault,” he says slowly. “And Damjan knows that.”

  “Damjan is dead,” Jonas says through clenched teeth. “His brain had no electric in it.”

  “But when they did the transfer,” Fox says. “You remember that, yes? The surgery? When they put my storage cone into Damjan’s brainstem, I got to see his memories. Just for a moment.”

  Jonas’s eyes narrow again, but he stays where he is. He wipes his nose, smearing snot across the heel of his hand.

  “I saw Damjan wanted to follow you up the tree,” Fox says slowly, feeling his way into the lie. “Because he always wanted to be like you. He knew you were strong and brave and honest. He was trying to be like you, even though he knew he should have waited on the lower branch. And when he fell, he didn’t want you to feel bad. He didn’t want you to feel guilty.” Fox taps the back of his bandaged head, where the storage cone is concealed. “That was the last thing Damjan thought.”

  Tears are flowing freely down Jonas’s cheeks now. “I wanted to go higher,” he says. “When I go high enough, it feels like I can touch the sky.”

  Fox reaches up and puts his hand on Jonas’s shoulder, softly this time. His panic is receding. He has Jonas solved now. There’s a bit of guilt in his gut, but he’s told worse lies. He would tell a dozen more to make sure nothing goes wrong, not now that Petar has seen the ship and agrees it will fly. Not now that he’s so close to escaping.

  Jonas’s father has forbidden him to go near the granary again, but he still goes out to the fields the next day. He has always bored quickly of the games the other children play, even though he can throw the rubber ball as hard as anyone and dodges even better. He’s always preferred to wander.

  His nameless uncle is with him. It’s still hard to look at Damjan’s face and know Damjan is not behind it, but talking comes a little easier since what happened yesterday. When his uncle asks why he was kept behind after school by the teacher, Jonas tells him the truth.

  “We’re learning about the revolution,” he says. “About the heroes. Stanko was my favorite. He took the capital with a hundred fighters and he’s got an eye surgery to see in the dark. But yesterday the lesson changed on my pad.” He motions with his hand, trying to capture how the text all dissolved and then reformed, so quick he barely noticed it. “Now it says General Bjelica took the capital. It says Stanko was a traitor and they had to execute him. So I told teacher it wasn’t right.”

  Damjan’s face screws up how it does before he cries, but no tears come out, and Jonas knows it’s because grown-ups don’t cry. “I met Stanislav once,” his uncle says. “He was a good man. Maybe too good. An idealist.”

  “You met Stanko?” Jonas demands. “What did his eyes look like?”

  His uncle blinks. “Bright,” he says. “Like miniature suns.”

  Jonas stops where he is, the tall grass rustling against his legs, as he envisions Stanko tall and strong with eyes blazing. “Like stars,” he murmurs.

  His uncle nods. “Maybe he got away,” he says. “There’s a lot of false reports. Maybe he’s in hiding somewhere.”

  Jonas asks the question, then, the one that has been bubbling in the back of his mind for days. “The revolution is good,” he says. “Isn’t it?”

  His uncle gives a laugh with no happiness in it. “I thought it was,” he says. “Until the bloodshed. Until cynics and thugs like Bjelica took over. After everything I did for their cause—all the rallies, all the writing—they turned on me. Ungrateful bastards.”

  “Why did you want the revolution if you’re an aristo?” Jonas asks plainly.

  “Because there weren’t meant to be aristocrats or underclass after the revolution,” his uncle says, with a trace of anger in Damjan’s shrill voice. “Everyone was meant to be equal. But history is a wheel and we always make the same mistakes. The only difference is who gets crushed into the mud.” He picks anxiously at a stalk. “The ruling families were bad,” he says. “The famines, and all that. But this is worse.”

  Jonas considers it. The teacher told them that there would be no famines anymore. They would keep their whole crop, except for a small token of support to the government of Liberated People. “Did you lose many in the famine?” he asks, because it’s a grown-up question. “I had a little sister who died. And that’s why Damjan is different. Was different. Because mother couldn’t feed him well enough.”

  Damjan’s mouth twists. For a moment his uncle doesn’t respond. “No,” he finally says. “Not many.” Damjan’s face is red, and Jonas realizes his uncle is ashamed of something, though what he can’t guess. “I wrote a poem series about the famine,” he says. “Years ago. I still remember it. Do you want to hear some of it, maybe?”

  Jonas hesitates. He doesn’t know if he likes poetry. But maybe if he listens to the poetry, he can ask more questions about Stanko and the capital, and then about the stars and the other worlds his uncle will soon go to.

  “Alright,” he agrees. “If it’s not really long.”

  The week passes at two speeds for Fox, agonizingly slow and terrifyingly fast. Petar has spread word that the old granary past the edge of the terraform has broken glass and an old leaking oil drum inside it, to ensure the other parents keep their children away. Fox’s nights are spent poring over schematics with Blanka or else sneaking out to the ship itself with Petar.

  During the day, he spends most of his time with Jonas. The boy is bright and never runs dry of questions, and ever since Fox’s first recitation he’s been devouring poetry. Not necessarily Fox’s—he prefers it when Fox recites the older masters, the bolder and more rhythmic styles. He has even started scribbling his own poem using charcoal on the wall of their bedroom, which made Petar and then Blanka both shake their heads.

  He reminds Fox a little bit of himself as a child. Too clever to get along with the other children, too brash and too stubborn, worryingly so. But Fox has other concerns. The ship is tuned and
refueled and finally ready to fly, and the village’s weather probe predicts a rolling storm in a fortnight. That’s when Fox will launch, while the thunder and lightning masks the take-off. His days in the village, his days in Damjan’s body, are finally numbered.

  Fox is in the cramped bedroom, laboring with a piece of Jonas’s charcoal. The boy’s favorite poem is a short one, but even so it takes a long time for Fox to transcribe it onto the clear stretch of wall. He’s only halfway finished the memento, his small hands smeared black, when he hears Jonas arrive home from the school. A moment later, he hears a shriek from Blanka.

  Fox goes stiff and scared, ears strained for the thump of soldiers’ boots, but there’s nothing but Blanka’s angry voice and Jonas’s near-inaudible reply. He wipes his hands on his trousers and goes to the kitchen.

  Jonas is standing sullenly with his shirt knotted in his hands. Blanka is in a rage, and Fox realizes why as soon as he sees the bruises on Jonas’s bare back.

  “That spindly bastard, I’ll snap him in halves,” she’s snarling. “What happened, Jonas? What happened, my beautiful boy?”

  Jonas lifts his head. “Teacher switched me,” he says. “For telling lies.” He turns as he says it, and his eyes catch on Fox. He gives a smile that fills Fox with pure dread. Fox knows, somehow, what’s coming. “We learned about enemies of the revolution today,” Jonas says. “There was one aristo who tried to convince the Liberated People to let all the aristos go without getting punished. They called him the Fox because he had red hair.”

  “Oh, no,” Blanka murmurs. “Oh, Jonas. What did you say?”

  “I said he helped the revolution,” Jonas says defiantly, looking Fox in the eye. “I said he wrote the poem, the one about aristo bellies full of our blood.”

  “You should not have done that, Jonas,” Fox says, surprised he can speak at all. “That was dangerous. That was very dangerous.” His panic is welling up again, numbing him all over. “They have gene records. They know that I’m a cousin to your father.”

  Jonas bites at his lip, but his eyes are still defiant. “I wanted to be brave,” he says. “Strong and brave and honest. Like Damjan thought I am.”

  Fox feels adrift. He knows Jonas, no matter how sharp he seems, is still a child. There’s no way he can understand what he’s just done. Maybe it’s Fox’s own fault, for filling his head with all the poems.

  Maybe they’ll be lucky, and the teacher will keep Jonas’s transgression to himself. Fox has been lucky before.

  When father comes home mother tells him what happened, and his whole body seems to sink a little. Jonas feels the disappointment like he feels the welts on his back, and worse, he can tell that his father is scared. There is a brutal silence that lasts all evening until he goes to bed, lying on his stomach with a bit of medgel spread over his back. He knows he made a mistake. Even though he didn’t say his uncle was with them, he said too much.

  Jonas tries to apologize to his uncle, who is lying very straight and very still, staring up at the ceiling, and Damjan’s voice mutters something about everything being fine and not to worry about anything. It doesn’t sound like he believes it. Between the aches in his back and the thoughts in his head, Jonas takes a very long time to fall asleep. Halfway through a bad dream, his mother’s hands shake him awake.

  “Up, Jonas. You, too, Damjan.”

  Jonas wrenches his eyes open. It’s still dark through the window and he hears a high whining noise he recognizes coming from outside. A hover. Jonas feels a spike of cold fear go all the way through him.

  “I need to pee,” he says.

  “Later,” mother says. “There are some men here to speak with your father. To look around the house.” Her voice is strained. “If they ask you anything, think three times before you say anything back. Remember that uncle was never here.”

  Then she’s gone again, leaving Jonas alone with his uncle. In the light leaking from the hall, Jonas can see Damjan’s small round face is etched with terror, so much that he almost wants to take his hand and squeeze it. As if he really is Damjan, and not the Fox. Jonas listens hard to the unfamiliar voices conversing with his father. One of them sounds angry.

  Loud stomping steps in the hall, then the door opens all the way and two soldiers come in with mother and father close behind. They are not as tall as father but their black coats and bristling weapons make them seem bigger, more frightening, like flying black hunter drones that have turned into men.

  “Good morning, children,” one of them says, even though it is the middle of the night. He gives a small smile that doesn’t crinkle his eyes and raises one fist in the salute of the Liberated People.

  Jonas returns it, and shoots his uncle a meaningful look, but Damjan’s little fists are stuck to his sides. Fortunately, the soldier is focused on him, not his uncle.

  “You must be the older,” he says. “Jonas, isn’t it? You told our friend the teacher something very strange today, Jonas. What did you tell him?”

  Jonas’s mouth is dry, dry. He looks to mother, who is framed between the men’s broad shoulders, and she starts to speak but the second soldier puts a warning finger to his lips.

  “We want to hear from Jonas, not from you,” the first one says. “What did you tell your teacher, Jonas?”

  Jonas knows it is time to be brave, but not honest. “I said that the Fox helped the revolution,” he says. “I was confused. I thought he was Lazar. Lazar makes the songs for the satellite to play.” He looks at both the soldiers, trying to gauge if they believe him. He lifts his nightshirt and turns so he won’t have to look them in the eye. “Teacher was mad and didn’t let me explain,” he says. “He just started to switch me. Look how bad he switched me.”

  “A few stripes never killed anyone,” the soldier says. “It’ll make you look tough. Your little girlfriends will like that, right? Turn around.”

  Jonas drops his shirt and turns back, ready to meet the soldiers’ gaze again. His uncle gives an encouraging nod where they can’t see him.

  “Did you know that this Fox, this enemy of the revolution, is a relative of yours?” the soldier asks. “A cousin to your father?”

  “Yes,” Jonas says. “But we don’t know him. He’s never come here.”

  The other soldier, who hasn’t spoken yet, barks a short and angry laugh. “We’ll see about that,” he says, in a voice like gravel. “We’ll have a sniff.” He pulls something from his jacket and fits it over his mouth and nose like a bulbous black snout.

  Jonas has heard of sniffer masks—his uncle explained them when they were in the field one day, how each person born had a different odor, because of their genes and their bacteria, and you could program a sniffer mask to find even the tiniest trace of it—but he has never seen one before now. It makes the soldier look like a kind of animal. When he inhales, the sound is magnified and crackling and makes Jonas shudder.

  Behind the soldiers, mother has her hands tucked tight under her armpits. Her face is blank, but Jonas imagines she is thinking of all the scrubbing, all the chemicals she used anywhere uncle sat or ate. But uncle’s old body has been gone for weeks now, and the smells would be too, wouldn’t they?

  As the sniffer moves around the room, the first soldier leans in close to the wall to look at the charcoal lettering. “What’s this?” he asks. “Lessons?”

  “Yes,” Jonas says quietly.

  “Good,” the soldier says, and Jonas sees his eyes moving right to left on it, instead of left to right, and realizes he’s like most of the older people in the village who can’t read. It gives him a small sense of relief.

  That only lasts until he looks over and sees the sniffer has stopped beside his uncle. “What happened to the boy’s head?” the sniffer asks, voice distorted and grating.

  “He fell,” father says from the doorway. “A few weeks ago. He isn’t healed in the brain yet. He’s a little slow.”

  “Are you, boy?” the sniffer demands.

  Jonas clenches his thumbs inside
his fists. There is no part of uncle’s body left in Damjan’s, only his digital copy, his soul, but Jonas wonders if the sniffer might somehow be able to detect that, too.

  His uncle looks up with a confused smile and reaches to touch the sniffer mask. The sniffer jerks back, then pushes him towards the door, more gently than Jonas would have expected, and continues searching the room. Jonas releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

  The sniffer works through the rest of the house, too, and Jonas and his family drift slowly along with him to open doors and cupboards, to make sure there are no traps or surprises. The horrible sucking sound of the sniffer mask sets Jonas’s teeth on edge. It feels like a strange dream, a bad one. His eyes are sore and his bladder is squeezing him.

  When they finally finish with the cellar, the sniffer looks irritated but the other soldier is relieved. “We’ll be off, then,” he says. “Remember, if he ever contacts you in any way, it’s your duty to report him. He’s not one of us. He cut ties with you and with all decent people the day he had his storage cone implanted.”

  Father nods, his mouth clenched shut, and shows the soldiers out. Jonas follows, because he wants to make sure, really sure, that the nightmare is over. Father doesn’t send him back in. The soldiers are out the door and past the bushes when the sniffer suddenly stops. His mask is still on, and the sucking noise comes loud in the still night air.

  Jonas remembers that the last charred bits of uncle’s old skeleton are buried underneath the bushes. His father is not breathing, only staring. The sniffer lingers.

  Jonas braces himself. He reminds himself that he is brave. Then he darts away from the door before father can pull him back, jogging up behind the sniffer and tugging his arm. “Can I see the hover?” he asks loudly.