Marie continued and they all listened around the campfire.
“The princess had everything she could ever want, but she couldn’t sleep at night. The croaking of the frogs from the swamp beside her castle kept her awake. As the swamp grew larger and larger, the frogs grew louder and louder. Night after night, she lay awake in agony, her beauty shriveling into exhaustion. The princess’s father worried as the dark circles under his daughter’s eyes grew as fast as the swamp. Worry stole his sleep as well. So he ordered the frogs exterminated, every last one, and there was a great murdering of frogs and the swamps were drained and then, there was quiet.”
Knox rested his head in his hands. He closed his eyes and listened to the crackle of the fire and sound of Marie telling the story.
“But the quiet did not last long,” Marie continued. “The night after the great emptying of the swamps, the princess heard the croaking of a solitary frog. She called out for her father, who called out for his soldiers, who called out for every man in the kingdom to search the swamp for the one surviving frog.
“While all the men searched for the frog that got away, the princess lay in bed tossing and turning with the sound of its croaking echoing off the walls and shattering her dreams, until suddenly, she felt movement beneath her.
“She hopped from her bed and jumped off her mattress, so thick and soft it was a wonder she could feel anything move beneath it at all, and yet there, below the mattress, croaking loudly, was a pea-green frog. It was big and warty and bug-eyed and loud as a missile. She screamed, but no one was left to hear her. They were all out in the swamp, searching.
“The princess knew that she was all alone, so she took a deep breath and dove at the frog, grabbing it as hard as she could with her delicate hands. It felt slimy and sticky and she looked at it and she hated it for its ugliness as much as for ruining her sleep.
“So she squeezed and squeezed to kill the frog, but as she squeezed, she caught its eye and the eyes, those ugly bulging eyes looked so profoundly sad that she was filled with pity. She stopped squeezing and, instead, she kissed the frog.
“And there was light, like a nuclear blast, and the frog transformed before her into a prince, the prince of the swamps, and he was angry at the murder of all his frogs and the draining of his swamp. He demanded that she seek redemption.
“‘It wasn’t my idea!’ she objected.
“‘But it was done in your name,’ he said. ‘And the guilt is yours to bear.’
“The princess could not undo what had been done and so, racked with guilt, she offered all her riches, and the frog prince took them, but he said, ‘It is not enough.’
“She offered her father’s kingdom and all its power, and the frog prince accepted, but said again, ‘It is not enough.’”
“Greedy frog,” muttered Egan.
Marie didn’t let the interruption stop her: “The princess offered herself to the frog prince in marriage and the frog prince accepted, but after the wedding, as she offered her body to him as well, he said once more, ‘It is not enough.’
“She offered her love to him too, her desires and her cares, all the compassion and truth she had, every part of herself she knew and those parts she had yet to discover, her past and her future, she offered to him, and he accepted and they grew old together, and she made him happy and he too, in a way, made her happy and they had many children, but as he lay upon his deathbed, his breath coming out like the croaks of a long-forgotten frog, he said again, ‘It was never enough,’ and he died and her debts would never be forgiven, and for her curse, she would live on alone until all the swamps in the world were silent.”
Knox opened his eyes and saw that Marie was done. That was the end of her story. Everyone in the cave was watching her.
Marie wasn’t the girl he’d gone out with in the borrowed car, and maybe she never had been. She was painted red and yellow with dirt from their desert ride. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles, like he’d seen on syntholene addicts and holos of refugees at Benevolent Society fund-raisers. Tired eyes.
Knox must look the same. He’d never thought he’d be someone with tired eyes. Never thought he’d stare across a fire at a girl who had them, a girl who’d lied to him and insulted him and, really, when it came down to it, ruined his life. He never thought he’d want to keep staring at her.
“So you’re in love with Syd,” Egan said. “You want to marry him because he’s poor? I hate to break it to you, but he’s not buying what you’re selling.”
“You don’t understand at all,” she said.
“Oh yes, I do,” said Egan. “Your mommy played too many stories for you when you were little and now you feel bad for all the proxies in the world and you’ve turned into a revolutionary because of some crazy story about Syd’s blood that you are desperate to believe because it gives meaning to your cushy little life to be part of a cause . . . sound about right?”
Marie looked away from him. Her purple eyes were wet in the firelight. As stupid as it sounded, she’d revealed part of herself with that story and Egan had thrown it back in her face. Maybe Knox would have done the same a few days ago. Even a few hours ago, but he didn’t want to now. He looked at Syd. Syd didn’t look so amused by Egan either.
“Syd’s no frog prince,” said Egan. “He’s just a guy you screwed over.”
“Leave her alone,” said Knox. His throat felt dry, and not just because of the desert air. Marie’s eyes drifted over the fire toward him. She met his gaze; her purple irises locked with his green ones.
“Or what?” Egan spat at Knox.
Knox looked away, picked at invisible fuzz on his shirt, then found a real bit of fuzz and picked it off. He tried to project some of that old Knox swagger. Indifference.
Egan stood and moved toward him, towered above him by the fire.
“Something bothering you, pretty boy?” Egan snarled. The flickering fire made shadows dance all around them. Knox remembered one of the advos for Cheyenne’s parents’ NeoBuddhist centers. Let go of anger and achieve your desire.
He exhaled slowly, turned to the fire, and felt the uneven heat on his face. He watched an ember ignite in a ferocious red blaze and float up on the heat, twirling and darkening as it rose until it was cool and black and dead. It fell away as ash.
“You want to defend your girlfriend?” Egan mocked him. “Patron solidarity? Can’t have us wretched debtors insulting you and your lux life.”
“It’s not all lux,” said Knox. “We’ve got our own problems.”
“Yeah?” Egan kicked at the dirt beside him, showering his pants with dust. “You got malaria? Syd had it. Twice. You got stab wounds? Syd does. You got nerve damage from those EMD pulses, or broken fingers from hauling concrete? You got nightmares? Huh?”
“E!” Syd stopped his friend’s rant. “Relax.”
“I’m sorry about all that.” Knox looked past Egan, spoke straight to Syd. “You have to believe that I am sorry.”
“You’ll be sorry, that’s for su—” Egan said, but Syd cut him off again.
“I believe you, Knox,” said Syd, his voice so soft that Knox had to lean toward him to hear. “And I don’t care,” Syd whispered. “Got it? I believe you’re sorry. I. Don’t. Care. I don’t want your sorry. Live with your guilt. It’s the one debt you owe me and I don’t ever, ever want it repaid.”
Knox didn’t have a charming response. He swallowed and searched Syd’s dark face for some hint of kindness. He never meant to hurt anyone. He got in trouble, but that was just him being Knox. When Syd got punished that was just how things worked. It wasn’t personal.
But it was to Syd.
Knox looked around the campfire. Everyone was watching him. The bandits looked amused. Marie’s expression he couldn’t read.
The fire crackled. Knox had never felt so alone in all his life, at least, not since the day his mother died.
He was born a patron; he didn’t choose it. He didn’t choose for his mother to die. He didn’t choo
se Syd as his proxy or the car crash or the virus in Syd’s blood. Everything that had ever happened had happened to him. He wasn’t responsible. He wasn’t the princess and he wasn’t the frog. He was just a guy getting by the only way he knew how.
“Got no comeback, pretty boy?” Egan chuckled. “Not so brave without Daddy’s company around, huh? You need to run back home to your mommy?”
Before Knox could even decide to do it, his muscles uncoiled, and he sprang onto Egan, slamming into his chest with as much force as his legs could give him, knocking the sneering rat onto his back in the dirt.
[36]
KNOX PUNCHED HIM IN the chin before Egan got an arm up to block. Then Egan hit Knox in the side with his other hand, a quick strike that Knox felt through his whole body. Egan knew how to aim for the vital organs, that was obvious.
Knox returned the favor, jammed his knee into Egan’s crotch—no honor in a brawl, anyway—and tried to land another punch on his face, but Egan had gripped him by the back, trying to spin him over, and he couldn’t throw a punch.
“You got nothing,” Egan grunted, trying to roll Knox into the fire.
“More than you,” Knox grunted back, trying to twist out of Egan’s grip.
Knox couldn’t get an advantage, couldn’t break free, but Egan couldn’t break free from him either. They cast monstrous shadows on the wall, a two-headed beast thrashing in its death throes. No one stepped in to stop the fighting.
Knox expected Syd to dive in to kick him in the ribs or grab him by the neck to defend Egan, but he didn’t. He heard Syd’s voice, calling them both to stop, but as he turned his head to look over in Syd’s direction, Egan smashed into his left eye with a head butt.
“E, no!” Syd shouted.
Knox saw flashing lights, sparkles, and he stumbled. Egan wriggled out from beneath him and wound up for a full-force kick to Knox’s face.
Knox saw it coming like it was in slow motion, but he couldn’t get his arms up in time.
His shoulders tensed and his face curdled in expectation of Egan’s foot smashing into his jaw.
The explosion that came next was not in his jaw.
He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until he opened them again and saw Egan standing on one foot in front of him, just like one of those pink zoo birds. Still dazed from the head butt, he thought Egan was transforming into one, a pink stain spreading across his chest, splatters of pink on his neck and face. His eyes were wide and black in the firelight. A loud gasp wheezed out of him and he fell into the dirt.
It was a trick of the eyes in the dim cave. The stains weren’t pink.
They were red.
Knox looked up at Syd, staring to the other side of the fire. He followed Syd’s shocked expression to the woman next to Marie, holding that rusty museum-piece weapon, two metal tubes, smoking in her hands, the same thing she’d used to kill the Guardians.
Marie stood beside her, alert but not afraid.
The other bandits were on their feet now, all of their weapons pointed at Syd.
“Why’d you do that?” Syd yelled. He knelt beside his friend, wrapped Egan in his arms. The boy wheezed and tried to gulp in air. His lux clothes from the club were soaked in blood.
“I’m sorry,” Syd said to him, cradling his head. “Don’t die. Just don’t die.”
Egan died.
Just like that.
Syd looked at his friend for a long time. The only sound was the fire crackling, the pop and hiss of the burning scrap wood, charred fragments from the desert floor. Syd’s world had just shrunk to the space in front of him; he couldn’t look beyond it, couldn’t take his eyes from Egan’s face. The mischievous light behind the eyes was gone.
“Can’t hurt the rich ones,” the woman with the weapon said, like it was nothing that she’d just killed Egan. “We’re supposed to get them home safe and sound.”
Knox couldn’t reconcile his feelings; there were too many jostling for space. Relief and terror churned in his stomach, the bitter taste of adrenaline and the metallic taste of blood, earthy with dust. His back to the fire was hot, while his face was cold.
The rich ones, Knox thought. That’s all he was to her.
But Knox had a whole life. He saw pieces of it then, not like people said, not the whole thing, like a holo, but like a dream, flashes of a memory, disjointed and rearranged. His mother playing with him on the floor of their living room, her lips made up zoo-bird pink, kissing him and laughing; his father smiling and dancing with her while old music played, the temper tantrum he threw because he wanted the new—what was it? He couldn’t even remember now. She took him out to get it. That’s when the men in masks stopped them. They’d come from the Lower City or they were Nigerian agents or they were ghosts. No one ever found out. They grabbed Knox and they grabbed his mother, but Knox slipped away. He was tiny, barely able to walk, but he ran.
“Run,” his mother told him, or maybe she just screamed, but he ran and he hid. While he hid, they took her away. Guardians found Knox in his hiding place, brought him home. There was a ransom call, but his father wouldn’t pay.
“We don’t negotiate,” his father said. “You can never negotiate with these people or they’ll take everything.”
And then her body, dumped on the road. A message for his father, who wouldn’t negotiate. His mother’s body mutilated by criminals. Knox didn’t know what “negotiate” meant, but he knew it was bad, bad enough his mother would never come home because of it.
Even so, Knox kept asking when she would be home.
Then the funeral under a blue sky in a part of the old city, the part they saved for the dead. They said his mother was in the long box on the stand, but that didn’t make sense. It was just a box. Why would his mom be in a box?
His father tapped at a projection. He didn’t cry. He tapped at a projection and the box burned.
Knox yelled, ran out to stop him. “My mommy’s in the box!” he yelled, but the box still burned.
He knew now, of course, that she was already dead, dead as Beatrice, dead as Egan, dead as anyone who’d ever died and there were billions of them. But then, back then, he also knew that only one death mattered and it happened in front of his eyes. He was sure he saw his father kill his mother. He was sure his father blamed him for hiding when the masked men came and blamed him for looking like his mother, for having her smile and her laugh. Her joy.
He cursed his father. A tiny child, barely able to form a sentence on his own, and he cursed his father. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that only happened now, in the instant flash of dreaming in the firelit cave. Knox saw his own face in his father’s glasses and behind his face, the flicker of flames.
Knox looked up. Syd had closed his eyes. He was crying. He’d told Knox back in the alley that he never cried anymore, not since he’d first taken Knox’s punishments. Then, he’d cried. As little boys, they both had cried together.
And now, in the cave, Knox couldn’t help it. He felt a tear roll down his cheek and then another and another. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it. He wanted to throw up. His body shook; his nose ran. He sobbed, right there in the dirt, with the bandits and Marie watching him, he wept and he didn’t know why he wept and he hated himself for weeping. He saw his mother’s coffin burning, heard the echo of his own childhood cries. His first memories were of grieving.
“Enough of the histrionics,” the woman who’d killed Egan said. “Egan was a low-rent punk and a fool. He should have known better and he got what he deserved.”
Knox looked to Syd to see what he would do. Neither of them moved.
“No,” said Syd. He held his friend’s body on his lap. “No.”
The woman sighed.
“He was a bad kid, believe me,” she said. “Not worth your tears.”
“He was my friend,” said Syd, which wasn’t the opposite of being a bad kid. He was a liar and a crook, tweaked out half the time and sarcastic all of the time, but how many guys had a friend as good as he’d
been? He’d done some bad, maybe would have done more if he’d lived, but he wasn’t all bad, not all the time. He was better than the bad he did, but he died just the same.
He died for Syd. Or least, because of.
“He messed up,” the woman said. “Mistakes have consequences.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue on the back of her teeth. “We needed him because you’d cooperate if he was here and he thought that meant we were on your side.”
Syd let his friend’s head rest on the ground and he stood. “You aren’t taking me to the Rebooters, I guess.”
“You guess right,” said the woman.
Syd looked down at Egan’s body and shook his head a tiny bit, side to side. It was a look of disappointment, not anger. “Figured.”
“He did say you were clever.”
“So, what now?” Syd looked back at the woman with that same bored look he had on the projection when the Guardians first came for him, like nothing could disappoint him anymore. Something had broken that he did not know how to fix.
The woman dropped two new little cartridges into her weapon, snapped it shut, and pointed it at Syd.
“This is it,” the woman said. “Just this and then we’re done. The reward for killing you where no one will find your body, and some more for bringing these two home. That’s all this is. Nothing personal, Sydney. Maybe your next life will be easier than this one.”
Syd glanced to the wall of the cave where he’d left the EMD stick lying. Knox looked at it too. The silver pole shimmered in the firelight, too far out of reach to save him.
Knox pressed his fists into the rocky ground, trying to find the strength to stand. He didn’t want to be the little boy who hid when the criminals came. He would always be the little boy who hid.
[37]
SYD SAW KNOX TENSE. If Knox dove for the weapon against the wall, the bandit might hesitate to shoot him. It might buy them enough time. He tried to signal Knox with his eyes, but Knox didn’t pick up on it. He had a faraway stare. Tear tracks streaked the dust on his cheeks. What did Knox have to cry for? When this was over, he’d get to go home.