I… spent a lot of time being interrogated, and eventually cleared. I’d been a dupe, I guess. Used to make her seem normal, connected? As a cover for her other intrigues? The Synarche doesn’t care if you’re sneaking around because you’re having an illicit assignation, and one sneak is as good as another.
Or maybe she needed… an outlet. Somebody who wasn’t part of the inner workings of her cell.
Her wife exploded too, over in H sector. Killed five people for no good reason except some political philosophy from the dark ages.
So I guess they were still an item after all.
There was a trial.
I was tried as an accessory. And I was acquitted, because having revolutionary ideas and associating with revolutionaries is not a criminal offense, and nobody could prove I did more than that. Because I hadn’t, I told myself, but it’s hard to shake the guilt. The sense that if I’d been paying attention, I could have stopped that from happening. That those eight lives—not counting Niyara and her wife—were on my conscience.
Because I was a juvenile—under twenty-five standard ans—my name was never released to the senswebs and my identity was legally protected from all but my family. Or in my case, the clade. When I was acquitted, I was absolved. The records were sealed. My… “family” knew.
It worked out in one way. My clade didn’t really want me back after that, and who could blame them? I had mostly decided to leave before Niyara killed herself. After Niyara, I mostly contemplated coming home because I couldn’t figure out where else to go. And their obvious reluctance—their distaste for the association—
If it hadn’t been for Niyara, I probably wouldn’t have stayed away as long as I did. If it hadn’t been for what Niyara did, I would have asked to go home when I realized she was never going to love me back the way I loved her. She gave my happiness a lot of lip service, but that’s all it ever was. Her actions never supported what she said, and I flatter myself that I would have figured it out eventually and had the courage to walk away.
As it was, I was still blaming myself for her not loving me, and then blaming myself for not seeing that she was a monster. And then blaming myself for a clade I didn’t care about not loving me enough to take me back joyfully even though I’d become a liability. I mean, they sued for custody, and they would have made me one of them again. They’re supposed to let you walk away whenever you want.
In practice, that’s not how it works.
I won the first court case. And I was saved from appeals. The Niyara thing hit the feeds, and they decided they’d had enough of me. Bad publicity. Otherwise I’d still be fending off lawsuits from my clade questioning my competence to make decisions for myself, and seeking protective custody.
So I wanted to go back in order to feel like part of something again, and in order to not feel terrible, and I would have done it if they would have not made me feel like they were taking me on charity. Maybe I’d had enough of guilt and manipulation by then.
The judge decided I wasn’t culpable. It took two suicide attempts and a lot of rightminding before I started to be able to contemplate that they might have a point.
I’m sure I’m better now.
She got under my skin, I guess. Looks like letting things under my skin is a lifelong failing of mine.
Anyway, if my clade had wanted me, they would have wanted me to find a mate and for each of us to birth a couple of offspring for the crèche, and…
I could have had myself adjusted to do that, of course. Rightminding is amazing stuff. If I’d chosen to, I could have gotten tuned right back into the perfect clade member, and I would have liked the life I was leading. I would have been perfectly satisfied to give up adventure and settle down and take up my appointed tasks in the community of people who all thought exactly the same things I did, so we never argued.
I would have been utterly content. No restlessness, no hollowness, no sense of searching. No sense of anything missing, which I wake up with pretty much every dia and which follows me around while I wonder where the hell my pants are and if there’s any toothpaste left. No existential angst, no ontological dread.
No striving.
Anyway, I stayed out in the universe and found a way to keep exploring, finding new things. Being useful and scratching that hunter’s itch both.
I could have had the guilt turned off. But sometimes tough feelings are there for a reason: so you can learn from them. They’re your endocrine system’s way of saying don’t do that again. So I decided to listen to what my conscience was telling me, learn a few things, and grow up.
And I got all that romance shit turned off at the root. I’m obviously not somebody who can be trusted with strong emotions.
It took me a lot of soul-searching to get to where I could let him do it, but I told Singer he could put the details of what happened to me on the Jothari ship in his packet. He was right, and if anything happened to us, somebody had to know. Much as that level of exposure and vulnerability terrified me. We got our information back, and buggered out into white space as fast as we possibly could.
There was no BOLO, which was almost more threatening than if there had been. Did that mean our malfeasance had gone unreported? Because the stationmaster wanted to keep the hunt private? Because the Goodlaw did? Because they weren’t pursuing us?
We traveled on.
Haimey.
Fist-sized bees were tangled in my hair. Never mind my hair is short and tightly curled and sometimes shaved right off; in the dream it was a long fluffy cloud and there were bees in it, tugging me every which way as their wings found purchase in atmosphere and pulled me across a habitat. I couldn’t control my trajectory; there was nothing to push against and nothing to grab. I went at the whim of the bees.
Haimey.
Their buzz was a bass line; their wings tickled my ears. They pulled me along a station corridor, toward a shadowy figure silhouetted against a viewport that glowed with a suffusing light. The broad shoulders and solid frame revealed her identity, however. It was Farweather. She drifted, anchored by the fingertips of one hand, and turned slowly toward me.
Haimey. Don’t you think it’s time you charted your own path?
I wanted to stop, to back away. The bees in my hair pulled me along the corridor, tugging harder—left, then right, then left again, surging by turns, yanking at the roots of my hair. I couldn’t reach the walls to slow myself.
As your bee friends are letting me do now?
Bees? she asked.
It wasn’t worth arguing about. How is following you charting my own path?
It’s better than buying the program, serving the Synarche, isn’t it? Working for the benefit of everybody but yourself?
Somehow, I felt like I’d had this conversation before. What does the Republic offer that’s better?
The Freeports offer freedom, she said archly.
It was funny, and I struggled not to laugh. I didn’t want to give her the advantage, even in points.
Right. I said. Freedom from responsibility. If you don’t mind, I was reading. You’re interrupting me.
As the jailer bees brought me almost within touching range of Farweather, I flailed wildly and swatted at them. My movements felt sluggish, impeded. Drugged.