Tell the Machine Goodnight. Katie Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ I got Ellie. We cleaned her up, got her dressed and home.”

      I ask one more question, though I already know the answer to this one, too. “Why didn’t you tell her? After, I mean. Why didn’t you and Ellie tell Saff that it was her all along?”

      “She made me promise that, too: not to tell her. She said it’d ruin it. That it’d make it feel, like, noble or something. And that the whole point was to feel like Astrid did. Like a victim.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t know she was going to get you to—you’re trying to find out what happened that night, right?”

      “She asked me to help her,” I say, but the sentence doesn’t have the same power as it did before, when I would think it to myself.

      “I kind of figured that out when you showed up together at school.” Josiah shakes his head. “I should’ve known she’d go to you.”

      “Wait. Why?”

      “Well, because of the Apricity. Because deep down she must remember taking it.” He gestures at the paper in my hand. “And she knows your mom works for the real thing.”

      “I guess that makes sense.”

      “And because she always talks about you.”

      “She does?” It’s a stupid question, but that’s what I ask: She does?

      “Yeah. Out of the blue, she’ll say, I wish Rhett was here, or I wonder how Rhett is doing. She’s the only one of us who actually says …” He shakes his head again. “But we’re all thinking it, man. I hope you know that.”

      “Yeah, I know,” I say, and suddenly it’s true: I do know it.

      A little while later, when Josiah walks me out, he says, “So I’ll see you again?”

      “Yeah,” I say.

      “Soon?” he says.

      “Yeah,” I agree. “Soon.”

      CASE NOTES 3/30/35

       THE SOLUTION

       I can now conclude with reasonable certainty that Saffron Jones committed the perfect crime. She built a machine of revenge and set it to run, concocting a series of unsavory tasks, eliciting the help of Josiah Halu to carry them out, giving herself an amnesiac dose of zom. She did this to assuage the guilt she felt over bullying Astrid Lowenstein during the Scapegoat Game. Because of the effects of the drug and the promise of secrecy she exacted from Josiah, Saff doesn’t remember that she was not just victim but also culprit. Cruelest are the punishments we visit upon ourselves.

      I MEET UP WITH SAFF, ready to tell her that I’ve done it. I’ve solved her mystery. Even if I don’t know how I’m going to tell her the truth, even if I don’t know how she’ll react when I do. We drive to Golden Gate Park again, to that same road behind the flower conservatory where we met to figure things out right at the beginning. Six days and a thousand years ago. The whole way there, I’m thinking about how I should say it, what the best words would be. I’m thinking that if she cries I’ll go ahead and pat her arm. Or hug her? But before I can say anything, Saff cuts the engine, looks at me level, and says, “You know, don’t you?”

      “It was you,” I say, all my careful words gone from my head. “You did it to yourself.”

      I see her take the news. I see it change the smallest things about her face. She doesn’t cry, even though her eyes are big like she might. She breathes in shakily through her nose, then out again.

      “Okay,” she finally says in a small voice. “Okay. I remember now. I mean, I remember enough.”

      “Do you want me to tell you the rest?”

      “Don’t.”

      She turns and looks out through the windshield. I watch her profile for a second, but I hate people staring at me, so I turn and look where she’s looking, which is up. I remember how you can see the spires of the conservatory through the treetops. I search for them there among the green.

      We’re quiet for a minute, just looking. Then Saff says, “I thought maybe it was the Apricity that told you to stop eating.”

      “What?” I say. “No.”

      So many people have asked me why I refused to eat, my parents, my doctors, my therapists, my nurses, Josiah, and that’s just naming the headliners. But Saff doesn’t ask me why. I mean, she does, but she asks it in a way that I can understand.

      “Motive?” she says.

      I glance over at her, and she’s looking straight back at me.

      “Come on: motive?” she repeats.

      And I do something all the Apricities in the world could never have predicted. I go ahead and answer her.

      “It felt strong. Denying myself something I needed to feel strong. Not giving in when I was hungry felt strong.”

      “Okay.” She nods. “Yeah, okay. I get that.”

      But somehow I’m still explaining. Because suddenly there’s more. “I think it’s that I wanted to be what’s essential. I wanted to be, like, pure.”

      “Shit, Rhett.” She smiles, her eyes big and bright and sad. “Me too.”

      And I want to tell her that her smile is what’s essential, that her smile is what’s pure. But I could never say something like that out loud.

      So I do what I can. I lick my thumb, reach for her face, and rub the eyebrow pencil away. There are little hairs in an arc, just starting to grow back. Then I do something more. I lean over and kiss her, there above her eye, where her eyebrow used to be.

      Means: I am brave.

      Motive: I want to kiss her.

      Opportunity: She bends her head forward to meet my lips.

      

       Brotherly Love

      Carter heard the stories before he met the man: Thomas Igniss, the new contentment technician manager for Apricity’s Santa Clara office. The position was a top spot, a notch above Carter’s job as manager for the San Francisco office. Santa Clara was where it happened, down there in Silicon, working shoulder-to-rump with the boys in R&D. Carter hadn’t even known the job was opening up, not until after it had already been filled. And Igniss an outside hire! Skrull’s people must have tapped the guy, like the recruit for a secret society. Carter imagined a whiff of cigar smoke, the feel of a stately finger on his own shoulder, a tap, tap that spelled СКАЧАТЬ