Later in the morning, we drifted close to a hilly island that had a large structure near its top. I thought that I’d go exploring. Izzy didn’t want to come so I anchored the ship and left Izzy bobbing in the waves.
I returned an hour later with what I thought was exciting news. The building had been part of something called Stanford University. When they realized that the main campus of the university was going to be underwater, they had moved all of their scientific resources to the top of a nearby mountain – now this island. It was heavily fortified against looters, but they had arranged the security system so that people could gain entry by answering some challenging physics and chemistry questions. That piqued my interest so I answered their questions and started browsing. I found libraries full of scientific bots – way more than had been available in the New York library. I also found fully equipped, functional labs operating off solar power. Plenty of supplies. I saw no evidence of anyone else having been here – in recent years, at least.
I hovered over Izzy’s raft and told her what I had found. Did she want to go back with me? “Not really,” she replied. Told her that the locations where the other parts of Stanford’s resources had been moved. Did she want to explore those? “Not really,” she replied. Asked her if she would mind if I spent the rest of the afternoon on the island? “No,” she replied. Asked if she was mad at me? “No, just sad,” she replied. Asked her how sad? “Very,” she said.
I came back to the ship at dusk. Izzy was still bobbing in the waves, hands trailing over the side of her raft, her head lying back, eyes open, unfocused. She smiled, sort of, when she saw me hovering over her. Asked her if she wanted to come back aboard. “Not really,” she replied. Asked her if she was warm enough in the sling – pointed out that a cool wind was starting to blow. “I’ll close the sling's cover if I get cold,” she said. Asked her if she wanted food or water? “Still have plenty,” she replied. I pointed out that the tide would be changing and could push her further out to sea. She shrugged. “Tie a rope to me if you’re worried,” she said. So I did.
I heard the water dripping off Izzy’s sling and onto the deck around midnight, I guess. Moon was high. I heard her go below and return a few minutes later. Heard her soft whisper, “Will? You awake?” I said I was and she joined me in my hammock in the mast. We watched the moon together for a while. I would have said something, but she had put her finger to my lips when she climbed in, so I didn’t. We watched the moon some more. Then, she gave me a quick peck on the lips. “Go enjoy yourself in Stanford’s labs for a couple of days," she said. "I have some things to do. Don’t worry, I’ll be safe.” She closed the cover of her sling, blinked into invisibility, and I felt her accelerate into the air and she was gone.
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Chapter 14
From Izzy's journals: March 19.
I spent all of yesterday bobbing in the ocean; couldn’t erase the image of the slaughtered young children lying on the floor with bullet holes in the middle of their foreheads. What freak could do such a thing?
I realized that I was as angry with the parents as I was with their murderers. No pacifist parent had a single mark that showed that they had struggled. They had flopped down on their backs and waited for somebody to walk down the line and blow a hole through their children’s heads while they listened in silence! I could understand their hatred of violence; felt it myself. But, wouldn’t there have been some point at which these people would have stood up and said – “I will defend myself and my children even if I have to use violence?”
I cursed those parents in my mind for hours. How could they not have defended their children? I kept visualizing the scene in my mind; a gang of men coming into the village; parents fighting them; children getting away in the confusion.
Then, the gang of men became a gang of children, and this time, they were attacking my village and my children. I knew that Will would defend me and his children with violence if necessary. He had done that in Chicago. But, would I? Months ago, I had told Will that Zzyk’s men would have to take our pretend baby over my dead body, but I realized now that those had been empty words. I hadn’t been able to use my bow or my knife in Chicago to defend Will or even myself. I couldn’t act against children. But, what was the difference if our murderers were young or old? Will and I would still be dead. We were alive today only because he had acted when I was frozen.
I remembered what I had said to Will much earlier when we had discussed what strategy we would use if the DPS became outrageously violent. Will had argued that if we saw a DPS person murdering or torturing somebody, why shouldn’t he be murdered or tortured in return? Newton’s Third Law of Physics said that for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So, therefore, according to Will, it was only logical that a DPS murderer or torturer should receive the same treatment in return.
I had argued that if we did that, we would be murderers and torturers too. Then, it would be fair for somebody to murder and torture us in return. Will didn’t have an answer to that. He said, “That seemed logical too.”
Bobbing in the ocean, I realized that the pacifist families would not have been slaughtered if somebody had brought the murderers to justice the first time that they had killed people. This obviously was not the first time they had slaughtered people wantonly; not being stopped the first time just meant that they could continue to murder for as long as people allowed them to.
Eventually, Will and I were going to face this dilemma with the DPS. They weren’t going to stop making IOF citizens disappear just because Will and I thought that it was wrong. At some point, we would have to fight violence with violence. In my head, I realized that it would have to be done. In my heart, I realized that I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t been able to do it in Chicago even when our own lives were at stake. That’s why I told Will that I was very sad yesterday. I had realized that I was a coward like Yollie had said I was. Anger in my belly, but a coward nonetheless.
# # # # # # # #
Being a coward is a hard thing to admit. I tried to deny it. But, when I thought about my life with the dissidents, there was no escaping the truth. I was a coward.
When I was growing up in the dissident camps, the other kids had teased me unmercifully because I hadn’t been able to poison Will when I was four. I would run away and hide under a chair. When I was older, I would hide behind a smart mouth. I never stood up to them. Nor did I stand up to my mother for shunning me. She had beaten me when I was four and I remained scared of her even when I was bigger and stronger.
Then, there was Clem the Phlegm. I fought back against Phlegm; revealed him for what he was; stayed in camp to do this even though I wanted to run away and hide. But, I was still a coward because I had never faced him. I had beaten him by attacking him when he wasn't there to defend himself; his own people brought him to justice, not I.
I remembered the time that Will had said that he could invent something that would allow him to identify all the DPS men from a distance. Then, we could just shoot them from our invisible slings. Said that it was the most effective way of ending the war.
I was horrified; told him so. We couldn’t murder people from an invisible sling! What if there were people in the DPS who hadn’t done anything wrong? What if there were people in the DPS who had murdered, but only because they had been forced to? We might be killing innocent people. He finally agreed and we wrote an agreement that we wouldn’t take indiscriminant actions against presumed murderers without proof. It was the only thing we had agreed on.
Then, Will developed his love affair with cowboy movies and learned about bushwhackers. He said that bushwhackers were even worse than the usual bad guys. They were cowardly bad guys who shot people in the back. Heroes faced their enemy; cowards bushwhacked them. Will changed our first rule to No bushwhacking.
Today I realized that my wonderful operation against Phlegm had succeeded because I had bushwhacked him. Perhaps there was no other way tha
t I could have succeeded – he had all the power and I had none. Plus, I knew he was going to turn me over to the DPS, so I was really fighting for my life. I thought about it a lot yesterday, and I still don’t know how I could have done it any other way. But, the truth is – I had bushwhacked Phlegm. I had been horrified when Will suggested bushwhacking as a theoretical solution, but I had been the one to actually do it.
In Chicago, I had been horrified that cold and emotionless Will could hurt or kill children without a second thought; didn’t want to be around him after that. But, Will wasn’t cold and emotionless – he had felt as much pain burying the pacifist villagers as I had. In Chicago, he did what was necessary to save us while I was frozen in fear of using violence.
Yesterday, I realized that if I couldn’t find a healthy way to stand up to the DPS and its violence, I could become the person burying Winnie and asking, “Why didn’t people do something when they had the chance?”
# # # # # # # #
From Will's journals: March 22.
Two days after Izzy left, I returned from the Stanford lab to find her back on the ship – practicing some strange dance routine. She had even brought gifts wrapped up in shiny paper.
“Twenty-five different kinds of chocolate! Where’d you get this?” I asked and put my nose next to each carton. They did actually smell slightly different.
“I went back to New York. Found something called a Chocoholic Shop that had a huge inventory on their shelves. I didn’t know if chocolate could go bad, so I found the most recent shipment and loaded it into the sling. You’re lucky I have will-power, otherwise your gift could have been just the wrappings.”
So, we shared a bit of chocolate. It was way, way better than the chocolate-covered food bars. These bars were made entirely of chocolate. We agreed that we would have to ration it or it could disappear in a day. Izzy had also bought me another gift from New York – a proper blade for shaving. She even offered to test the blade for me, so I sat down on a chair. A whole bunch of different soaps appeared out of one of her bags too – some for her, some for me. But first, she had to make sure my hair was all combed out – not sure why that was – but I didn’t mind her running her fingers through my hair. This took her a long time. Then, she lathered me up, and gave me a slow shave – all the time she was humming something to herself. It was not an unpleasant sound.
After the shave, we had to make sure that it had been close enough. So, we played three periods of hockey, one almost immediately after the other. Purely to check out if the razor was any good. Not sure if it was between the first and second periods, or between the second and third when she said that she had missed me – I kinda lost track. I told her I missed her too. “Ship wasn’t the same without someone around to cook and clean,” I said. Tried to do a Got’cha real quick after that. Didn’t do me any good. She stuck her two pinky fingers in her mouth and stuck them in my ears. Doc was right. It feels gross.
After the hockey game, Izzy said that she was going below to paint another picture of Winnie. I offered to go down with her, but she said that she didn’t like painting with someone watching, so I continued working on my new invention in the hold.
Over supper, Izzy told me that she was feeling better now. She had gone back to New York because she wanted to borrow some bots on yoga, meditation, and martial arts. She said that she thought the first two would be good for helping her to control her emotions; the third was to help her learn how to fight violence without becoming violent herself.
We talked about that for a while and, in the end, she said that I should write a second agreement. “Write Rule #2 anyway you like, “she said. “ Put in something about equal and opposite reaction. Put in something that says we will use violence to combat violence, when innocent lives are in danger and when we have no other choice. You can even phrase it in cowboy language if you want.”
I offered to do the emotion-controlling exercises with her if she wanted. She laughed and said that I needed to control my emotions like she needed to dye her hair red. I said that I didn’t think she needed to dye her hair red because it was already red. I liked her the way she was. Izzy said that she did too and from now on, she would be wearing her whites in Alberta. She wasn’t going to hide her real self behind dyes unless it was necessary for an undercover operation. Later I realized that she had been saying that I had my emotions under control. I sensed that perhaps she thought they were too much under control, but by then, we were practicing some of her martial arts exercises together, so I didn’t ask her if that’s what she intended to say. These new dances were very much like her ballet, but dangerous for the person dancing with her. Namely me.
We set off for British Columbia on a slow, meandering course. Izzy wanted lots of time to practice her new martial arts dances. I slipped into the hold every day and worked on my inventions but didn’t tell her because I wanted to surprise her like she had surprised me with the chocolate.
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Chapter 15
From Will's journals: April 18.
Arriving in B.C. in mid-April, we had to cross over the submerged ruins of Richmond to reach the mouth of the Fraser River. From there, it was a short trip up the river to the broad harbour of Surrey, British Columbia. We could see people of all skin colours walking on the streets, so we figured that it would be safe for both of us to play tourist. We anchored and used our little dinghy to take us to shore. Then, we walked side by side through the streets of the city, Izzy in her white skin and me in my brown, and when nobody paid us any attention, we began to relax.
The people seemed open to tourists, so we asked some questions and learned a little about what was shaping up to be the best place we had visited so far. Apparently, British Columbia had some gas wells still operating near Haida Gwaii, Doc’s ancestral home. Those gas fields provided enough income to drive a flourishing economy that gave the 150,000 people who were living in the Surrey area a comfortable life. The farmlands from Surrey eastward to the mountains gave them their food.
Everywhere we looked, people were going into stores and buying things. The stores were full of merchandise, customers and even owners. Izzy wanted to see what life was like in a city without terrorist swimmers, whereas I wanted to visit Haida Gwaii and the gas wells. So, we agreed to split up and meet back at the ship the next night. It was clear that living in this city required money, so we went into a restaurant – a place that sold you food that had been already cooked – to see if they would take a gold coin. They wouldn’t but said that we could change it at a bank down the street. Izzy said that she would do that if I wanted to leave now. We weren’t sure if we should kiss goodbye or not in front of everyone, so I just hip checked Izzy into the street instead. This seemed to be the way that the people in the city said goodbye when they were on their crowded cement paths.
# # # # # # # #
I found Izzy in the galley cooking supper when I returned from Haida Gwaii. She was wearing an old pair of sweat pants and a sweatshirt with its hood all tied up under her chin. “Feeling cold?” I asked as I came in.
“Will,” she squealed. She really did. It was a squeal! Plus she jumped up and down a bit. “I have the most wonderful news. We have tickets to a dance tonight – one where people will be wearing costumes. We're going dancing! Isn’t that exciting?”
I was going to… well, I don’t know what I was going to say or do, because I didn’t have a chance.
“I was worried that you might not want to go, but I had to make a decision right away because the man at the bank said they were his last two tickets. I bought a costume for you and one for me. Your costume is in the cabin – I hope it’s the right size. Go and try it on – I can’t wait to see you in it. You’re going to love it, I’m sure.” Then, she pushed me out of the galley.
# # # # # # # #
From Izzy's journals: April 19.
I had been worried about the boots to Will's costume. I had taken an old pair of his shoes
to the rental store so that they could give me the right size, but I wasn't sure that he'd agree to wear them. The black leather rose to his knees before flaring out. He didn't say anything about them, so I assumed he was happy. I left Will in his costume and making Zs in the galley's air with his fake sword while I scooted down to the cabin to get ready. I warned him that it might take some time.
The hardest thing about the costume was climbing the stairs with the new shoes that the sales clerk at the store said everybody would be wearing. I found it hard to stand in the shoes, let alone walk; had to hold both railings on the stairs to make it up to the galley. The heels to the shoes were very narrow and high so that I felt like was falling downhill when I had them on. I had been practicing with them all afternoon but couldn't get comfortable in them; decided that I would wear them into the dance and then switch to my ballet shoes.
I told Will to close his eyes and I tottered into the galley and took a deep breath. When I had made the decision to become a different person, I hadn’t imagined doing this. But then, I saw the dress and the half cape and I realized that it was perfect for me. I had told myself – No hiding, remember?
“OK Will, you can open your eyes, but if you make a wise crack, I’ll break Zorro’s sword over my knee for real.” I was really anxious about what he was going to say – I was not the Izzy he was used to seeing. Actually, tonight I was going have him call me Melissa. This was a Melissa night.
Will didn’t say anything for the longest time. I could see his Adam’s apple working, like he was trying to swallow but couldn’t. “Oh, wow!” he finally said.
I saw him looking at my hair, so explained. "B.C. has these places where they’ll wash your hair and then you can describe what you want your hair to look like and they’ll make it that way. What do you think?”