He turned to look Trevin in the eye, searching for something.
"I'm a few years ahead of you on this road, if that's what you're wondering," Trevin said. "Only, in my case, Judith is missing in action, and declared dead. We have reason to think she's dead, but we don't know for sure. I won't lie to you. Losing a wife is savage-tough, and once the initial shock wears off, it's going to be worse than you can imagine. But hang in there. You'll make it."
There were more footsteps. Trevin heard them first, but Adrian – used to being in harm's way – noticed Trevin noticing something, and keyed in. He pulled himself together as well as he could.
Three more servicemen were walking home. They were all friends with Adrian. They were all experienced with getting bad news, and seeing other men get bad news, but they weren't used to having bad news delivered to them in the tunnel, and it had been a long, long time since any of them had dealt with really bad news about a close friend's wife or child. In short order, they were nearly as shocked as Adrian and Scott, but fiercely determined to help a buddy get home to his kids. Trevin handed Adrian and Scott off to them, and headed to Lt. Ott's office.
The door was open. Ott was at his desk. Trevin knocked lightly to get his attention. "Hi, boss. So far I've had a horrible, no-good, rotten, terrible day that has refused to honor any plan assigned to it. On top of that, I have a death to report. How's your day going?"
"It was going pretty good until you showed up. Come in, close the door, and sit down."
Renzo had been prepared to die after complaining that Julia hadn't been given proper protection. In some ways, he had hoped to die, harboring as he did the fond fantasy that it would simply end a life that had become too confusing to navigate. Instead, he'd been confronted with more confusion. The people around him had partway melted – there was no other way he could describe it – and had rallied to comfort and reassure him. They also seemed pained.
In the recesses of his mind, Renzo remembered a caretaker in the KinderFormer. He tried to shut the memory out, like a good citizen should, but it clawed its way to the forefront. There had been a man who had given the children hugs in greeting, and had lavished tenderness on them when they got hurt. He hadn't lasted long. Renzo's mind did a few somersaults. There was more than one face to his memory. All of them were gentle, smiling, except when they were firm, which happened when he misbehaved. But even when they were firm, there was concern for him written into everything they said and did, and usually there was patience, too. By contrast, the other caretakers were harsh, scornful, quick to anger, violent, and prone to yelling that they wouldn't tolerate any child doing anything that might make them look bad.
The gentle ones had never lasted long. The scornful ones had gloated over their dismissals, while ordering the children to forget them. Renzo, like his fellow students, had learned to block thoughts that got him into trouble, and eventually he had forgotten the gentle ones. Until now.
He fought a sense of terror. He'd been going a little mad lately, at least off and on. Perhaps he had gone totally mad, and was surrounded by phantoms conjured up from forbidden memories? Government said it was madness to not strictly obey its directions. It was true, then – all too terrifyingly true, in ways he had never imagined.
Or was it?
It was too much to deal with, so he went off to a corner to sleep for a while.
He'd been sleeping in a corner when the demons had snatched him from the real world and hauled him to this one. When he remembered that, he woke up, but he was too overwhelmed to stay awake. He slept again, fitfully at first, and then deeply, and then well, with a curious sense of safety, and something like gratitude to his guards, for reminding him of the gentle ones. He also rather liked it that no one had stopped him from crawling into the corner, proclaiming it not a proper place to sleep. It was, he thought, a perfectly proper place if you felt like crawling into a corner.
He dreamed of Julia's hidey hole, and wept that he hadn't known about it when she was alive. Nurse Chan came to him then, and held his hand until he was calm again, and then she left him to his dreams.
Voices broke into the dreams, and the sound of a door closing. Renzo woke, but pretended to be asleep, so no one would bother him.
"Hey, Garrity, I hope it's been more fun filling in for me than being me today." The voice was Mr. Lexington's.
"It's been dull, but I can handle it. Do you guys need me now that the original's back?"
"No, we've got it. Thanks," Mr. Johnson said. There were footsteps, the door opened and closed, and someone was gone, presumably Mr. Garrity, who had been called in after Mr. Lexington had been sent away.
"You were gone a while," Nurse Chan said.
"Tell me about it," Mr. Lexington said.
"Pastor's not with you?" Nurse Chan said.
"He'll be a while. There's been a death over at town. Anybody here know the Adrian Alcorn family?" Mr. Lexington said.
There were gasps, moans, murmurs.
"I hate to tell you this, but Adrian's wife died in a freak accident," Mr. Lexington said.
More than one person asked what happened.
There was a pause.
"All right, I hate to say it, but some of the women were horsing around and she choked on some food, in front of most of her women friends and a horde of children, no less."
There was a chorus of oh-no, from alto to bass.
"Does Adrian know yet?" a man asked. The voice was oddly pinched and husky. Renzo couldn't tell if it was Mr. Johnson or Mr. Davis.
"Would I be telling you if he didn't?" Mr. Lexington said. "Sorry. Scratch that. Yeah, he knows."
"You got notification duty?" Nurse Chan asked.
"Yeah," Mr. Lexington said. He sounded tired, and distracted.
"I'm sorry," Nurse Chan said.
"Don't be. I signed up for it," Mr. Lexington said, with renewed vigor. "Anyway," he said, more softly, "I told Anthony that we were big boys and girls over here, who'd been walking with the Lord a while, and we'd take care of each other while he looked after the women and kids over there, thank you very much."
"I'm glad you did," Mr. Davis said.
"Careful there, Harvey. Your brother is my prayer partner and main confessor, and I might just unleash confessions on you, if you act enough like him," Mr. Lexington said.
"Oh, like what?" Mr. Johnson said.
"Oh, let's not – " Nurse Chan started.
"Not what?" Mr. Lexington said. "Confess our sins to one another? Aren't we all Christians here, except for the poor, exhausted, shell shocked lad in the corner, who shows promise of becoming one? You can leave the room if you want, but I'm not going to carry this garbage around, and Anthony's not here to take the blows, so you guys are it."
"There's no point trying to stop him. He always gets this way after he does a death notification," Mr. Johnson said.
"Do I?" Mr. Lexington asked.
"Every one that I've been around for, at least," Mr. Johnson said. "That's all right. I can take it. And have I ever repeated any of it to anybody? Ever?" Mr. Johnson said.
"That does it. Do I haul Joel into the next room, or will you all help me out?" Mr. Lexington said.
There weren't any footsteps.
"All right, I won't go into gory details, but today I harbored murder in my heart toward Aunt Sandra. Then, when I met Adrian, I didn't pray with him. When I turned him over to friends to convey him home, I didn't pray with them, either, or offer any words of spiritual consolation. I don't mean the chirpy, 'everything happens for a reason' or 'God's timing is perfect' stuff. When the Bible says to mourn with those who mourn, I'm sure it means it. Where Proverbs describes people who impose cheerfulness on a sad person, it's not kind to the 'let's all be happy, no matter what' folks. And thank God for that. But I had plenty of opportunity to just mention that I know that God will be beside him even through the worst of it, and I didn't. I didn't tell him he could come talk to me if he needed to, either. I told him I lost a wife, too, and left it at that. Maybe t
hat's good enough. But it doesn't feel like it."
There was a heavy pause. Renzo imitated a sleeping man rolling over, and snuck a peek through cloaked eyes. Mr. Davis was looking at Mr. Lexington in a funny way. Afraid of getting caught, Renzo shut his eyes again, being careful not to shut them too tight, because that was a good way to get caught, too.
"Yes, Harvey, I'm officially a widower, too," Mr. Lexington said. "But I'm in no-man's-land about it. Judith is missing in action. She's declared dead. She's almost certainly dead. But there's the wee, tiniest bit of a chance that she became some vile bureaucrat's human pet instead. So if you ever wonder why I'm not so dead set against a hot war as some folks, that's part of the reason. Under present conditions, we can't go running around topside, busting into the palaces of the elite, looking for possibly kidnapped women. I consider that to be a shame. Silly me. You know, I'd openly argue with them regarding the wrongness of owning people, if discussion was still allowed. I'd pursue legal action, if it was available. But if the only options left to honest men are either to try to find some way around those in power, or to help bust up their precious hold on power, count me in for some justifiable busting up action if there's an opening," Mr. Lexington said.
"You have company," Mr. Johnson said.
"I know. And I don't mean that I'd go around stirring up trouble, hoping for war instead of the choppy stalemate we have now. Even if I got tempted, there