“The psyche assessor won’t hurt you,” Amu says. “Just stick your head within its receiving range.”
“How does it work?” Dybathia asks. He frowns skeptically. “How do I know this isn’t one of those machines to condition prisoners? I don’t want to end up like a PEACE convert.”
“Explain it to him, Theowane.” Amu smiles at her, as if he knows how it will rankle her.
Theowane blows air from her lips. “Everyone has a basic mental pattern, like a normal position that can never change. However, certain training—brainwashing, you’d call it—can superimpose another set of reactions on top of it. If you’ve been brainwashed or specially trained to do anything to Amu, or Bastille, it will show up here.” She adjusts her apparatus.
Dybathia rolls his eyes. Amu smiles at that. Dybathia knows he is easing past the leader’s defenses. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Without a word, the boy leans into the psyche assessor’s range. Theowane makes no other comment as she works with the apparatus and takes her reading. She asks him a series of questions designed to break down mind-blanking techniques.
Dybathia answers them all without resisting.
Finally, Theowane shrugs. “It’s clear,” she says. “No one’s been messing with his mind. He has no special training. He hasn’t been brainwashed.”
“I could have saved you trouble if you had just listened to me in the first place.”
Amu claps a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know when I’ve thought of a suitable way for Theowane to apologize.”
When the survivor of the PEACE ship comes through with Theowane and Amu, I receive the unmistakable impression of tourist and tourguides. No, that is not quite correct… more like a visiting dignitary being shown points of interest.
Inside the forcewalls I watch them. True, I have a million different eyes around Bastille, optics to observe through, from monitoring cameras around the corridors, to the remote sensors of automatic digging machines. But my real eyes are here.
Purposely, I think, Amu ignores me as he brings the boy down the corridor. He points to the auxiliary control systems, explaining them with deceptive ease, making them sound simpler than they are. The three keep their backs pointedly turned and walk to the viewing window, outside of which the diggers continue their relentless excavations. The sky swirls with dark, oily colors over the hostile sea.
“It’s going to be generations before anybody can bask under the Bastille sun, but at least it is now ours,” Amu says, then lowers his voice. “And we aren’t going to give it back when this world becomes habitable.”
“Is it going to be worth the wait?” the boy asks, pushing his face close to the thick glass. I flick my concentration to one of the digger machines outside, looking through a different set of eyes, but the coarse optics and the glass distort the boy’s face through the window.
Amu shrugs and rubs a hand on his silvery beard. “Theowane spends hours down here staring out the window. Actually, I think she just likes to taunt the Warden.”
Finally, they turn toward me. I am too familiar with Theowane’s close-cropped reddish hair and her narrow, hard eyes. Amu carries much more capacity within him—an extraordinary person, with charisma and intelligence and compassion that allows him to do virtually anything he wants to. But he has chosen a path that society deems unacceptable.
The boy is the last to turn away from the sprawling view. He looks at me directly. I see him.
I know him.
He has counted on me recognizing him.
Instantly, I flash through a handful of buried newsclips, quick photographs shaded by the promise of anonymity, but it is enough. It augments my suspicions. I can remember few details of the person on whom I myself have been based, but some things are impossible to erase.
I remember.
I wonder what he is up to. Why is he here, and what am I supposed to do about it?
The three visitors say no word to me as they continue their tour. I am left with the absolute conviction that the fate of Bastille, and perhaps the Praesidentrix’s Federation, depends upon me recognizing this boy, understanding what he wants, and acting accordingly.
I can no longer avoid the risk to myself. I must save my son.
Amu sits across from Dybathia for another meal. The boy fascinates him. He reminds Amu of himself as a young boy, or what Amu wanted to be—scrappy, irreverent, and intelligent.
Amu serves the two plates himself. Prisoners in the kitchen have prepared a tough pancake-like dish from cultured algae and protein synthesizers. They are trying to develop a pseudo-steak, but they are several years from perfecting it. No matter. Amu is used to it and it is, after all, nutritious. What more can they ask for, with their limited supplies?
“It’s tough. You might need to use your knife to cut it,” he says. Dybathia frowns at the crude knife in his hand, but Amu continues. “It is easy to get mush from the hydroponics tunnels, but we keep striving for something with a firm texture. It’s only been in the last month or two that we’ve been able to have something tough enough to cut.”
Dybathia works at the food on his plate. “I was looking at the knife.” The blunt instrument is barely serviceable.
Amu smiles; it is the “winning” smile he uses when making converts to his various causes. “A holdover from prison life.”
“That was long ago,” Dybathia says.
“Yes, and things have changed now.”
Dybathia lifts an eyebrow.
“We’re here alone, with no non-prisoners for us to worry about. Knives are no longer any threat. And the Warden is nicely contained. But we like to remember what we are and where we are. We manufacture these knives, and they serve the purpose.” Amu lowers his voice. “Maybe if the meat gets a little more meat-like, we’ll need better ones.”
Amu looks across the table at Dybathia. The boy seems fascinated with everything about Bastille, and Amu waits for him to ask the obvious question. But over several days it has not been forthcoming. Finally Amu breaks down and answers it anyway. “I grew up on New Kansas and left my parents, and their religious sect—” he burns inside, thinking of the PEACE converts.
Dybathia smiles. Amu dims the lights, bathing the room in a softer glow. It is storytime.
“New Kansas was a young planet, the soil somewhat unstable. We had planted grassland across entire continents. Wheat, alfalfa and prairie grass, with some used as rangeland for imported animals. But three-quarters of what we grew, the landholders exported offplanet. They were a handful of people who had financed the first colony ships and therefore claimed to own all of New Kansas. We were forbidden to leave our holdings.
“But I had learned how to whip my followers into a frenzy of religious devotion. We fought for our freedom. The colonists had come to New Kansas to start a fresh life. They felt that the Federation owed them at least a chance at autonomy. I knew how to galvanize them.
“They burned their fields. The fires swept across the plains for dozens of kilometers, pouring smoke into the sky that you could see from landholding to landholding. The others rose up.”
Amu speaks with a sense of wonder, paying little attention to the boy. “My people were ready to die for me. Can you imagine that? Holding people so much in the palm of your hand—” Amu extends his fist across the table, opening it so that Dybathia can see the callouses from his hard life—“they were ready to die for me. And we almost succeeded.”
Amu lowers his eyes and pushes his plate away from him. “Almost.”
“I’ve had enough,” Dybathia says. He has eaten most of his pseudo-steak, but Amu stares at the wall, seeing in his memories the visions of burning grass and the bodies of his followers after the landholders had called in Federation reinforcements.