UnSouled

Connor’s expression hardens. “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care.” Which he obviously does. Then he tosses a card at Lev, which he fumbles a bit before catching.



“What’s this?”



“Read it. It was supposed to be your new identity once we left the rez.”



It’s a fake Arápache ID, with a bad picture of him he doesn’t remember taking. The name on the ID is “Mahpee Kinkajou.” It makes Lev smile. “I like it,” Lev says. “I think I’ll keep my new identity. What name did they give you?”



Connor looks at his own ID. “Bees-Neb Hebííte,” Connor says. “Elina says it means ‘stolen shark.’ ” He looks at the shark on his arm for a moment and opens his fingers, releasing his fist.



“Thank you for getting me out of the Graveyard,” he tells Lev, his anger resolving into a reluctant acceptance of the situation and maybe a begrudging respect for Lev’s choice. “And thanks for saving me from the parts pirate. I’d probably be shipped around the world in pieces by now if it weren’t for you.”



Lev shrugs. “It’s nothing. It wasn’t so hard.” Which they both know isn’t true.



51 • Una



Una thought she’d be relieved that her obligation to Pivane was now over and her uninvited house guests would be leaving. However, the prospect of being alone with the knowledge of where Wil’s hands have gone and where all his talent resides—a knowledge she can share with no one—is a difficult burden to bear. Things may go back to the way they were, but for Una, they will never be normal again.



She wishes her parents were here, or Elder Lenna, her mentor who left her the luthier shop—but they have all retired to Puerto Peñasco, a resort town on the Sea of Cortez that caters to ChanceFolk retirees. Perhaps Una could retire at nineteen—just pick up and move down there, spending her days like an old widow who never actually had the chance to marry.



The Tashi’nes are expected to come at nightfall, removing her guests and leaving her in ambivalent solitude. Now Cam will be going as well. She had thought she would be asked to sequester him a little while longer before flinging him back into the world, but he’ll be gone with the others.



She busies herself that afternoon working on a new satinwood guitar, bending and bracing the sides by hand; then just before dark, she hears music coming from the basement. She knows it must be Cam, and try as she might, she cannot bring herself to ignore it. She unlocks the door and slowly descends.



Cam sits in a chair, playing an old flamenco guitar he must have found in some forgotten corner and tuned on his own. The music coming from that old guitar seems to suck the oxygen out of the room. Una can’t catch her breath. It’s a powerful tune he plays, laden with rage and regret, but also with peaceful resolve. This is nothing Wil had ever played in his life, but is most definitely of Wil’s unique composition.



Cam is too absorbed in the music to look up, but he knows Una is there. He must know. She doesn’t want to speak, for words will break the spell woven by Wil’s fingers on the strings. Cam crescendos, holds on the penultimate chord, then allows the song its conclusion, those final tones resonating in every hollow of the basement, including the hollow that Una knows resides within her. The silence that follows feels as important as the music that came before it, as if it’s also a part of the piece. She finds she can’t break that silence.



Finally Cam looks to her. “I wrote that for you,” he says. The expression on his face is hard to read, for, like her, he is filled with the many emotions the song carried.



In some inexplicable way, Una feels violated. How dare he push so deeply into her with his music? His music, because Cam has layered his own soul upon Wil’s. Something new, built upon the foundation laid down by the monsters who created him.



“Did you like it?” he asks.



How can she answer that question? That piece of music wasn’t just for her; it was her. Somehow he distilled every ounce of her being into harmony and dissonance. He might as well ask if she likes herself—a question that has become just as complicated as the tonal qualities of the song.



Instead of answering, she says, with her voice catching in her throat, “Promise me you will never play that again.”



Cam is surprised by her request. He considers it and says, “I promise that I will never play it for anyone but you.” Then he puts down the guitar and stands. “Good-bye, Una. Knowing you has been”—he hesitates in search of the word—“necessary. For both of us, maybe.”



Una finds herself drawn by his gravity, as she has been since he first appeared in her shop. Now she finds herself unable to resist it. She steps close to him. Looking to his left hand, she clasps it and caresses it. Then she looks to his right hand and takes it as well. Never looking up from those hands, she intertwines her fingers with his.



“You’re not going to hit me with a rock again, are you?” he asks.



She closes her eyes, basking in the feel of those hands, which she loves still. She brings his right hand to her face, and he caresses her cheek. She feels that old shiver again, and this time she embraces the feeling, all the while hating herself for it.



Finally she looks into his eyes, unexpectedly shocked to see the eyes of a stranger. And as she kisses him, she knows she’s kissing the lips of a stranger as well. How can his music be so in tune with her soul and the rest of him so disconnected? So out of joint? She should never have allowed this to happen, but she can’t let go of his ill-gotten hands. And she finds it almost as hard to break away from the kiss.



“Once you leave here,” she tells him, “never come back.” And then she whispers desperately, passionately into his ear, “I despise you, Camus Comprix.”



52 • Connor



They must travel by night, because a carload of young people is always suspect. At night it’s easier to hide their identities, and the highway patrol will leave them alone as long as Connor doesn’t speed or do anything to draw attention. Also, the car is a purple sedan. Not exactly low profile. Another reason why driving at night is called for.



“It was the best we could do,” Elina told them as they saw them off. The Tashi’ne family had said their good-byes at Una’s shop—and Una had volunteered to drive them to the car that was waiting just outside the northern gate of the reservation. It was the only way to keep Cam’s presence a secret from them.



Lev’s farewell to Connor was subdued and stilted, neither of them very good at saying good-bye.



“Do good. And stay whole,” Lev had said to Connor.



Connor had thrown him the slightest of grins. “Get a haircut,” he said, “by the next time I see you.”



It’s midnight when they cross from Colorado into Kansas. Cam and Grace are both in the back—Connor not trusting Cam enough to let him ride shotgun, but also not trusting him enough to leave him in the backseat by himself. With an unpleasant blast of déjà vu, Connor sees the sign for the Heartsdale exit and the approximate spot where he hit the ostrich. The bird is long gone, but Connor still grips the wheel, in case another one launches a suicide run into their path.



“Homesick, Grace?” he asks, as they near the town.



“Home always makes me sick,” she says. “Drive on.”



Connor finds himself holding his breath as they pass the exit, as if the place will reach out tentacles and drag them in. Once they’re past, the air in the car seems to lighten. Connor knows it’s just his imagination, but he’s grateful for the sense that their journey is back on track.



While Connor wants to drive through the night, drowsiness overtakes him a little after three in the morning.



“You can let me drive,” Cam says. “There are a few excellent drivers in my internal community. I’m sure I can rally them to do the job.”



“Thanks, but no thanks.” Putting Cam in control of anything is still far beyond Connor’s level of trust—and anyone who talks about an “internal community” really shouldn’t be behind the wheel of an automobile anyway.



They pull off in the town of Russell, Kansas, in search of an inconspicuous place to spend the night. Most hotels require interaction with people, and any interaction will mean trouble, but like most interstate towns, there’s an iMotel in Russell that dispenses its room keys via vending machine. All it requires is an ID and cash. As they stand before the vending kiosk, Cam grabs Connor’s ID to look at it and is irritatingly amused.



“ ‘Bees-Neb Hebííte.’ There’s a mouthful.”



“He’s the bees knees!” says Grace, and laughs.



Connor grabs the ID back and inserts it into the slot. “If it does the job, it’s the best name in the world.” Sure enough, the vending kiosk accepts the ID without a problem. Connor feeds in some of the money the Tashi’nes provided, and they have their room for the night. No worry, no hassle. They hunker down in a room with two beds that they’ll have to share, but since only two of them will be asleep at any given time, the arrangement is just fine.



“You want me to keep an eye on Cam till dawn so’s you can sleep?” Grace asks Connor, and although Cam protests that he doesn’t need to be guarded, Grace sets herself up in a chair by the door, so even were she to doze, Cam would have to go through her to escape, and amuses herself by watching old war documentaries on the History Channel.



“I’d think you’d be more interested in the Game Show Network,” Connor says innocently. “I mean, the way you like games.”



Grace glares at him, insulted. “Those shows are all dumb luck and dumber people. I like watchin’ wars. Strategy and tragedy all rolled up in one. Keeps your interest.”



Connor falls asleep in minutes to the faint sounds of twentieth-century artillery barrages. He wakes a few hours later to the sun streaming in through a slit in the curtains and the TV playing old cartoons almost as violent as the war documentaries.



“Sorry,” says Grace. “I couldn’t close them tighter than that.” Connor can hear activity in the rooms around them. Other muffled TVs, showers turning on and off, doors slamming as travelers leave to wherever it is they’re going. Cam sleeps, without a care in the world it seems, and Connor relieves a grateful Grace, who takes Connor’s space on the other bed and is snoring in a matter of minutes.



The room, which Connor had taken little notice of when they arrived, is the standard, unmemorable efficiency sleep space that dots highway off-ramps around the globe. Beige institutional furniture, dark carpet designed to hide stains. Comfortable beds to assure a return visit to the chain. There’s also a computer interface built into the desk—also standard these days. Connor pulls out the slip of paper with the ID and password Cam had given him and logs in, to see if Cam’s information is worth the trouble of having him along.



It turns out that Cam wasn’t bluffing. Once logged in, he’s given access to page after page of files Cam was hiding on the public nimbus. Files that had been digitally shredded but painstakingly reconstituted. These are communications within Proactive Citizenry that no one else was ever supposed to see. Much of it seems useless: Corporate e-mails that are mind-numbingly bland. Connor has to resist the urge to just skim through them. The more he reads however, the more key phrases begin to stand out. Things like “targeted demographic” and “placement in key markets.” What’s also curious are the domains where many of these e-mails are going to and coming from. These messages seem to be communications between the movers and shakers of Proactive Citizenry and media distributors, as well as production facilities. There are e-mails that discuss casting and expensive advertisements in all forms of media. It’s pretty vague—intentionally so—but taken together it begins to point in some frightening directions.