“Why are you speaking in a different dialect?”
“I’m being funny. I’m pretending to be a cowboy and I’m asking you for your name. You’ve seen some old flics. Try it.”
She game me time to think.
“Ain’t going to tell you my handle. These woods ain’t big nuff for the two of us.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. Stranger, I’m a telling you for the last time. Get your miserable carcass down to that lake and don’t come back without you being all squeaky.”
“Huh?”
“Take a bath, Will. You stink.”
# # # # # # # #
I returned to camp to find her squatting next to a smokeless fire, stirring some porridge in her beaten-up pot. “Fire OK in the daytime?” I said more as a statement than a question.
“Yeah. You know what type of wood burns clean, right?”
“Sure. Wet pine usually works well.”
She looked up with a big grin. “Way to go Will, not Willy!”
I felt kind of embarrassed, so I looked down at the ground and then an idea popped into my head. “Aw shucks, Ma’am,” I said. “I just gets all tongue-tied around you.”
She giggled. “Thank you. It’s a pleasure to accept this honour. I’d...”
“...like to thank the members of the academy,” I finished.
Then, she gave me some porridge and showed me the little container of brown sugar that she had been saving especially for me.
# # # # # # # #
I was washing the porridge pot and plates in the creek, Izzy was on the bank supervising me and splashing me with water every now and then. “So, what’s your real name?” I asked.
“Melissa,” she said. "It means that I can go by Izzy which is both a boy’s and a girl’s name.”
“Do you want me to call you Melissa?”
“No. It would attract attention. I’m always called Izzy, but in my mind, I know my name is really Melissa.”
“How’d you swing getting seven letters in your name?”
“I guess I’m special, eh?”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“It will have to do for now.”
Later, when I was packing the pot away, she said. “There’s a big flat rock down by the lake that will be in the sun by now. I want to wash my clothes in the lake and then sunbathe on the rock without any clothes on. Will you promise not to spy on me?”
“Sure, I promise” I said and made the necessary signs.
“You won’t peek even if I do something like this, beckoning you to join me?”
She began swaying her hips sideways and making gestures with her hands.
“Sure, I promise,” and closed my eyes because she was making me feel kind of funny.
“Keep your eyes closed, Will. Do you promise that you won’t peek at me even if I do something like take my ankle sleeves off which I’m doing now?”
I knew she didn’t really want me to peek. So, I shook my head and promised, “I won’t peek.”
“The shirt’s coming off now. You aren’t peeking, are you Will?”
“No. I promised.”
“Thank you, Will.”
I stayed by the fire the whole time she was away from camp. Once or twice, I felt the twitch of someone spying on me. I had thought she trusted me enough not to check. It made me kind of mad that she had doubted me.
# # # # # # # #
I didn’t go near Izzy for the rest of the afternoon. She come up from the lake early in the afternoon and yelled over to me that I could have the rock if I wanted it. She sounded angry. So, I washed my clothes, but lying in the sun didn’t help my mood. I was willing to trust her not to turn me into the DPS to get tortured, but she wouldn’t trust me when I had promised to stay in camp for a few hours? I stayed a long time on the rock wondering why she suddenly wouldn’t trust me.
When I returned, it was dusk and she was spreading the coals of the fire around so that they would go out without smoking. There was a pot of something set aside. “Supper’s ready,” she said. “I don’t know that you deserve anything since you broke your promise. You said you wouldn’t peek!”
“I didn’t.”
“You did. I checked and you weren’t here.”
“I was here. I never moved. If you trusted me, you wouldn’t have checked.”
“If you kept your promises, I’d be able to trust you.”
Well, things got hotter and hotter. She kept accusing me of peeking; I kept saying that I hadn’t and got madder and madder when she didn’t believe me. She gave me one of her shoves, so I shoved her back. We started wrestling and I gave as good as I got. At one point, the pot of food went flying upside down into the air. I think it was her foot that did it, but I was too busy defending myself to know for sure. The fight went out of her soon after and she just collapsed on the ground. I was straddling her and we were hand wrestling like we had done yesterday, but angrily this time, and I felt her hands guide mine to her throat. “Pretend to squeeze,” she whispered. “I brought you into a trap, Will. We’re being watched.”
She bucked and kicked, but it was all show. I held her down without even trying. She whispered, “I’m sorry, Will” and started clawing at my face. As she was flinging her hands around, she whispered, “Look at my nose, Will. Look closely at my nose.” She was crying freely as she said it, but I knew I hadn’t hurt her at all. I was the one bleeding all over her hands. I looked at her nose and saw a big rip in its skin. Only it wasn’t real skin. It was brown fake skin with some padding underneath that would have made her nose thicker than it actually was. Underneath were her real skin and her real nose. They were white.
Izzy continued to fake fight me, all the time whispering instructions. “When I’ve finished talking, lift my shoulders up and bang me against the ground. When I pretend to be unconscious, slap my face hard. Don’t hold back – you have to leave a mark. Then, open my jeans like you’re looking for something. You’ll find a piece of your sky-rope. I stole it from you days before you found me and that’s the only piece I ever took. I swear that on my grandmother’s name. The night goggles are on top of my pack. Use them to get away. Go northwest. The watchers are coming now but you’ll have a ten-minute head start at least. They have a copter but it will be dark by the time they can get to it. I put a bot in your pack that will explain everything. Don’t come near me again, Will. They’ll kill you. Pretend to knock me unconscious now, Will.”
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she urged as I fumbled with her clothes. I found the filament tied loosely around her waist, and never looked back.
# # # # # # # #
I couldn’t run very far. The two packs were just too awkward to handle. So, I got the sky-rope going, although it was a lot harder now without Izzy.
I had thought that I was beginning to understand Izzy. The vital clue was what had been written on the jigsaw piece in my dream. Cool, man, cool, she had said about me licking my fingers the first time I had tasted chocolate without my brain-band. She admitted that she had licked her fingers too. But, how could she have experienced the real taste of chocolate if she had a real brain-band? The brain-band that she had let me see was obviously a fake.
That led me to review all the confusing things that she had said and done but this time I knew that she was wearing a fake brain-band. Everything fit. If Izzy could enjoy chocolate, she couldn’t be an agent of the DPS; she had to be a dissident. When she told me that long lie about her being the granddaughter of a dissident when I first met her, that was probably the truth. Once I had that worked out, all of her anger about what the DPS had done to me was logical.
Tonight, when I saw her white skin and when she swore on her grandmother’s name that she had only stolen the one piece of filament, I knew that I had figured it out correctly. I could even understand why she had led me into a trap – she wanted to get me to work for the dissidents. I would have agreed if she had asked me. Dissidents might be weird, but at least they weren’t out to to
rture and turn me into a zombie. But, once I was in the trap, why did she push me out? And, why did she warn me not to come near her again? Why would the dissidents kill me?
I trekked most of the night, listening for copter noises, and wondering if she had deceived me again. I didn’t think about that for long. She had been crying really hard. That was real. I kept telling myself that as I fled northwest.
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 14
From Izzy's journals: July 10, 2081.
Dear Will, not Willy.
You have probably figured out by now that I’m not a DPS agent. I’m the next leader of the dissident movement. I knew that you might not believe that I’m white, so I ripped my fake nose skin during our fight so that you could see for yourself. Speaking of fakes, I put my fake brain-band in the bottom of your pack. It will stick on tight, but you can pry it off if you use enough pressure. Don’t worry: it doesn’t have a tracking device.
I’ve lied a lot to you, Will. Well, perhaps not quite lies, but I’ve been deceiving you. Especially at the beginning. Not so much at the end. Everything in this letter is the truth – again I swear on my grandmother’s name. You may not believe me, and if you don’t, I understand. I just hope that you’ll forgive me for what I almost did to you. I didn’t have a choice, but you may not believe that.
I have to go back over fifty-years if you are to understand why I led you into a trap.
When the IOF leaders first announced their intentions of imposing genetic controls and producing cookie-cutter babies, the dissident movement was a mixture of many different groups who hated the idea. We had to cooperate together because we were facing overwhelming force. The White Supremacists were very influential in the movement from the beginning. There’s some information on them on one of my bots, but it was written from an IOF perspective so they really look bad. That’s probably fair because they were, and are, evil. They hate anyone who isn’t white no matter how good that person might be. I am NOT a White Supremacist, although I do have white skin.
The Radical Militants were also very influential. For decades they had been warning people that the government couldn’t be trusted, that the government was corrupt, that the government was secretly controlling people, among other very extremist views. When the IOF came right out and said what they were going to do, the militants went berserk. They started to use their stockpiles of weapons. The supremacists had weapons too and the two groups found themselves joined together by a common hatred. I am NOT a radical militant either.
A lot of other groups were in the early movement. Most weren’t violent. My grandmother was the spokesperson for this third group – I’ll call them the moderates.
After the extreme dissidents began shooting people, the movement fell apart. Most of Alberta opposed the IOF at the beginning – they just didn’t know how to do that effectively. When the militants and supremacists started ambushing IOF leaders, the IOF brought in the army. That escalated the violence. The militants began killing anyone who supported the IOF, and the IOF responded in kind by killing anyone suspected of terrorism. In time, the population as a whole decided that perhaps the IOF was right about needing to control extremist behaviour. In effect, the dissidents behaved so dangerously that they guaranteed the IOF’s success. I wonder sometimes if the IOF had agents planted in the early dissident movement, but I’ve never been able to find any evidence of that. We were certainly our own worst enemy.
You won’t find any mention of the mutual atrocities in the history books now. All reports on the real beginning of the IOF have been purged. People who remember what really happened are dying, and soon the true story will be lost. A science guy like you may not appreciate how impossible it would be for a society to shift to such a different model like the IOF. Read some of my history courses and you may realize how the IOF’s picture of a peaceful transition has to be false.
After a couple of years, the dissident movement was thoroughly beaten. Our members hid in the cities, trying to fit in but still defying the IOF edict that everyone had to wear a brain-band. We continued to have children in a natural way. When it became apparent that our children could be detected just by looking at them, we fled to the wild-lands. The IOF eventually decided to ignore us. We were well hidden and we had lots of weapons. We all became skilled at woodcraft, we knew how to hide, we knew how to track, and we knew how to ambush anyone coming into our territory.
That balance of power has begun to shift recently. We are still a force to be feared; however, we are losing members slowly but surely. Unfortunately, most of our losses have been from the moderate group. The mood of the movement is now heavily influenced by the supremacists and the militants who warn that we’ll become extinct soon if we don’t make some difficult decisions. That means they want to start killing again.
My mother joined the White Supremacists a few years after my grandmother was murdered. Being the daughter of a martyr, she quickly rose to the top. My father was raised as a militant. At that time, the two groups were in a vicious struggle for control. My father and mother were married so that the two groups could be merged. My mother always hated my father. They would argue about what the dissidents should do, but because he was her husband, she had to do what he told her. Sometimes she’d keep arguing and he’d beat her for talking back to him. My father urged violence at every opportunity. My mother wanted a more restrained approach. She didn’t mind the violence; she just wanted it to be effective against the brown horde taking over the world.
Doc Bedard, the movement’s doctor and my teacher, once told me that I was the only thing my parents had in common. He said that I was supposed to be my parents’ claim to fame – their legacy to the movement. He said that each of them tried to make me think like they did. Since they both had powerful personalities, I grew up confused. Doc’s been helping me with that ever since.
I had my first undercover operation when I was four-years old. My dad had developed a plan where I would ambush and kill an important target. My mother opposed it because she thought I was too young to do it properly. Since I kept messing up in practice, she won the argument. The operation was cancelled. However, when my dad killed himself after DPS agents cornered him, she changed her mind. She told me I had to do the operation; otherwise, my dad would have lost his life for nothing. I was vital to the operation because, as a four-year old, I was the only person who could get close to the next Z-man and murder him before he could grow up. You were my target, Will.
# # # # # # # #
My mother rehearsed the operation with me for weeks. Only, it was a teddy bear that got the poison. Eventually, she pronounced me ready. She took me to your Infant Care Center, gave me the poisoned drink, reminded me that I was doing this for my father, and pushed me through a tiny hole in the hedge. I’m going to describe what happened in detail because I don’t want you to think that I’m making this up.
I was dressed like all the other four-year-old girls in your dorm. Your care center had a big dormitory building for the boys and a similar building for the girls. The care center had a common eating area and a variety of different play areas open to all. There was a big outdoor play area – sand box, swings, and the usual. Inside, there was a little padded room where kids could run and bounce of the walls – boys liked that a lot. There was a mini-trampoline as well. They also had separate areas where they kept all sorts of different toys – a separate small area for each kind of toy.
The day I snuck into the dorm, you were playing with a toy sailing ship that had sails that could go up and down, or left and right. You were sailing it in circles and adjusting the sails depending on if it was sailing into the wind or with the wind.
You played by yourself the whole time I was watching you. Whenever any other kid came into your area, you’d back away if they came too close, hugging your ship to your chest. I think you were scared of someone taking it from you. I watched you for a long time, pretending to read my book and followed y
ou around like I had been told to do.
One time you walked right in front of me and I asked if you would like to read my book with me. I was smart enough to know that you were attracted to sailing ships so I said that my book had a picture of a sailing ship. I said that there was some blue sky and a fog on the ocean and a ship was sailing through that fog. The picture made it look like the ship was sailing in the air. I had seen you flying your ship in the air, and so just made that part up when you didn't seem interested at first. You sat down next to me and chattered away about your ship. You still had it in your hand – you carried it everywhere. You kept talking and talking about how you were going to learn to sail a ship. Think about that, Will. This is important. You weren’t a loner back then. When someone was friendly to you, you were friendly back. You were just a little shy. The IOF made you into a loner so that they could control you more easily.
You wanted to show me how it was very important for the sails of the ship to be adjusted according to the wind. So, we went into an empty room and you flew it around in the air for me and you wanted me to be the wind, but I couldn't because I didn't want to put down my cup of juice. It had a blue cap on it so that I couldn’t spill the poison by accident. I didn't want someone else picking the poison up.
I asked if you would like to read my book with me, and you said OK, so we sat on the floor against a wall and I leafed through the book slowly with you. We reached the center of the book where my mother had pasted our Message of Defiance, as she called it.
I didn’t understand that part. It was a copy of a newspaper picture of my grandmother. The picture had been front-page news when it was first published back when the IOF society was brand new. My grandmother was murdered for protesting that women couldn’t have babies any more. In the newspaper picture, she was holding a big sign that said, Babies should be born, not manufactured. She was wearing a bright green coat. I thought since she had been so brave, I could take her name and I’d be brave too. Instead, the only thing I've inherited from my grandmother was her red hair.
When we reached that picture, I was supposed to offer you my drink. I was supposed to have already watched you to see what you liked. You liked grapefruit juice. So, I was supposed to tell you that my drink was grapefruit. It wasn’t, but by the time you had one sip it would be too late. You were supposed to die quietly – you’d just fall asleep. I was to leave you curled up on the floor with the book face down, but open to the right page. Nobody would think much of that – kids were always having naps on the floor. I was to walk, not run, to the outdoor play area and through the hole in the hedge. I’d have revenge for my dad. I didn’t know what revenge was, but it was something my mom said would make me feel better.