L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 34

Chapter 3-3

He nodded and she frowned, her victory stolen. “You admit it? I thought Inspectors aren’t allowed. It is a punishable offense, no?”

“It is.”

“Then why tell me?”

“I cannot lie.” He took another mouthful of water. Poison. Bright light. Pictures that moved so fast he felt sick with their movement. “I have been conditioned.”

She sat back. A glass of red wine in her hand shone deep and clear—casting its own kind of light. Her eyes caught on his face, on his own eyes which he hated and his pale, untried skin. “Good to know,” she said.

“You sound amused.”

She hesitated, her eyes rolling to the ceiling as if considering her own emotions. “Just … speculative.”

She fell silent for a while as she savored her food and he drank water to keep himself from wanting to taste everything on the table.

The waiter had to fill his glass twice.

“Mahati?” he reminded her.

She shook her mane of dark hair dismissively. “What can he do? I am married to an Inspector, and it would be foolish for him to try anything now. He will go to my father, and that is hardly my problem.”

“You said he was a gangster,” he said. “Will your father get hurt?”

She hesitated, her eyes dark and veiled. “No,” she decided. “My father killed Sasha, the man I loved, to prove that his contract was in good faith. He will also most likely kill my dogs to spite me, but there is too much good history between him and Mahati for this to end badly between them.”

“Sasha,” he mused, balancing his glass between two fingers.

“Was not a good man either,” she said bluntly. “I loved him anyway. But he is dead, and they cannot hurt me anymore, not if I am married to you.”

Fabric covered every possible surface of their luxurious room. Carpets, the drapes above the beds, two layers of curtains over the tall windows, thickly upholstered chairs and footstools, it was all too much. Deacon felt like he was sinking.

Extravagance like this wasn’t meant for him. Only real people could appreciate the softness and the exquisite colors.

He left his briefcase on the table and stood beside the bed, focusing on the street outside the window. Chairs and tables were set outside under soft neon lights of every color. The glowing canopy zig-zagged between the buildings in every direction, marking the extent of the celebration.

“The bed is big enough for both of us,” the woman said. She had already collapsed onto the covers, her hands writhing under the pillows, searching for an edge of the sheets.

“I have work to do,” he said absently, staring down into the starkly lit street.

“All night?”

“Yes.”

She huffed a disbelieving laugh. “You haven’t even visited the factory yet. I think you are skittish. You needn’t be. I am too tired to poke fun at my djinn tonight.”

She wasn’t drunk, but obviously exhausted. Deacon said nothing back to her, keeping his gaze fixed on the distant desert, just visible through the buildings. She muttered a curse, then groaned with effort. Deacon didn’t have to turn to know she was undressing.

A sigh of release. The sound of metal rain, as she discarded her chainmail beside the bed. “I’m not n***d,” she said to him, a smile in her voice.

He turned to see her sitting up in the bed, wearing the simple cotton shift that had kept the metal off her skin. She looked better. Less dangerous. “I think under the circumstances, God will forgive us if we do not consummate our marriage tonight.”

Under his gaze she removed the metal ornamentation from her hair. There were many pieces.

“I don’t believe in God,” he said.

She shrugged. “I suppose it is hard for you. You were not made by him, after all.”

“No,” he said, “but I don’t believe he made you either.”

“I believe you were made from fire,” she said, “like the old books say about the djinni.” She struggled with a clasp at the back of her head. “I can see it in your eyes.”

Again. She was trying to be playful. No one had ever spoken to him the way she did.

“How did you keep your head up, under all of that?” he asked, not sure if he was trying to make a joke. Not likely. He had never had a sense of humor before.

“Practice,” she said.

Deacon turned away, back to the desk. He sat down, ignoring the way the pillows encased him, molding to his back. He opened the briefcase only to be staring down at his f*******n treasures.

The evidence of his insanity.

He ran his fingers over the golden watch—an antiquated thing. The smoothness of it had first captivated him. The symmetry of its lines. There were other things, too. Postcards from the cities he had been sent to examine. A stolen painting—the memory of that pain still bit at him as he brushed a hand over its colorful smudges. It was a simple portrait of a man at a desk, the light catching on golden buttons and the folds of his ceremonial dress, mysterious and dark. Deacon did not know why he took it—only that he had to have it. He had to possess it, because it pulled on something in him—an urge stronger than that he had been trained into.

He ran a thumb over the corner of it, feeling the phantom burn that came with guilt—another emotion he supposedly could not feel. Axeonos began to snore, startling him into movement.

He could not linger. He would need all his willpower and strength to complete his final act. He pulled the tablet from underneath his treasures.

The form only had two questions. He was supposed to visit the factory. He was supposed to shut it down. He took the job for that reason. If anybody bothered to see why this desert town leaked money and resources, he would be long gone, and they might guess at his victory.

He shouldn’t be able to lie, but he was insane.

And that helped.

Is the factory profitable?

No.

Yes, he wrote carefully, feeling the betrayal in every nerve of his body. He stared at the word he had written, felt the wrongness of it in his bones. It started as an itch, a burn.

His shoulders stiffened. His brain rebelled. Untruth! Pain. He let out a shaking breath. The woman snored behind him. How much time had passed?

Notes during inspection:

He readied his stylus and steeled himself. His imagination. How they would wonder at it—how all their conditioning, all their tests had failed.

And his bones in the desert, scraped and bleached white—a monument to this one act of disobedience. He would win.

Dawn peeked under the bathroom door when at last he finished. He had been sick twice, and even now sweat soaked through his clothes. He shook, unable to grip the stylus.

Axeonos had slept through it all. He had retreated to the bathroom to keep the pain to himself. He stood on shaking legs and let the tablet clatter onto the counter. He didn’t let his eyes focus on it again. It was bad enough to know what he had done without having to face his crime.

His fingers were so numb the buttons on his shirt became almost unmanageable.

The shower thawed his fear and melted through his icy skin. He hugged himself and turned around and around under the torrent, trying his best to soak in every drop of hot water.

Water. There would be none in the desert. Not even enough moisture in the air to keep the sweat on his skin. He closed his eyes and saw himself striding among the dunes.

With his resistance finished, he was released from the compulsion to faint or vomit, though his eyelids felt like sandpaper, and his mouth tasted like blood.

He reveled for a long time before a knock on the door startled him back to his guilt.

“I know it is not possible to use up hot water in the Shalloota, but it seems you are trying.”

The woman.

“I’ll be out in a moment,” he called back, his voice rough from a night of muffled screams.

He switched the water off, scrambled for a towel, and gathered his clothes. As he opened the door, she brushed past him. The sun had risen while he had been in the shower and golden light filtered through the large windows. Outside, vendors were calling out wares, their voices undulating in rhythm with the sounds of foot traffic.

Deacon peered down at the city as it set up for a parade. The streets were full of sound. Instruments warming up, chatter and laughter as the festivities took shape. Barriers rose along the sidewalk, and the beginning of celebratory noise filtered through the air.

His heart began to pick up, a strange sort of excitement rising in his chest, in his head, answering to the noise outside. A madman and a liar, he was. He hissed wordlessly and forced himself away from the window. His only destination today was the desert.

He laid his clothes out on the bed. They were rumpled, and smelled like sweat. It was a uniform of sorts. A blue shirt, black pants, black jacket, black shoes, white collar, all mass-produced for Inspectors.

He ran his hands over the fabrics, smoothing out the wrinkles and spots. Idly he picked at the cuffs, examining the scents of yesterday—the train, the meal, the woman.

The door opened, and he turned.

She was wrapped only in a towel, and for the first time he saw her bare face. Even unadorned by makeup and jewelry she struck him as a fascinating creature.

“What is this?” she held up the tablet, the screen trembling in her hand.

Deacon paused. “Work,” he said.

“What were you going to do? Where were you going, if you had already signed off the factory?”

She was afraid. Now he hesitated, but the words were pulled from him. “To the desert,” he said.

“Why? There’s nothing there but sand for a hundred miles.”

“I was going … to walk,” the words forced themselves from his lips.

She frowned. “Where?”

“I was going to walk until I couldn’t.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“Please,” Deacon asked her. “Please don’t make me—”

He was too weak to fight the conditioning now.

“Tell me,” she commanded.

“I have gone mad,” he blurted as the familiar pressure began in his head. The will to answer.

She drew back, her brows furrowing in fear and shock.

Of course. He was disgusting, useless. A shadow of his purpose. “I am insane,” he confessed again. “And when they find out, I will be reconditioned. They will t*****e me with poison and light, to force me not to want. Not to lie. Not to think.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

Too late now, the desert beckoned in the distance. She would report him, and the Administration would come for him. And then he would be forced back into training.

“How are you mad?” she asked steadily. She stood still and straight, unadorned.

He ran a hand down his face in a claw, scratching at his brow and the bridge of his nose. “See this! This is the face of an Inspector, the body and mind of a djinn!”

She retreated, but he went after, reached for her, grasped her wrists, and pulled her close. “Can you see it?” he asked desperately. “The madness? Look at me. You must be able to see it. It must be obvious now.”

Her chin trembled; she tore free. “You are scaring me.”

“No! No! Watch!” He ripped open the briefcase, and showed her his treasures. Those he would take into the desert. He had tried, had been fighting his symptoms, and all the while these things had been corrupting him, turning him inside out with addiction and fear of discovery. He was helpless.

“See?” he said, holding his breath as if afraid to break her concentration. “Do you see it?”

She held her hands over her chest, fingers clasped together as if in prayer. “Oh, my djinn,” she whispered.

But her expression stilled him. Instead of fright, he read something else. He frowned. Was that delight? Amusement?

No. She had corrected him.

It was speculation.

The day was long, and full of beauty. They ate in the café, amid crowds of people. She bought the most expensive dress she could find, and they wandered in and out of the shops on the main street. Food. Entertainment. They spent money as if it were sand. Time passed quickly, and that night they wandered into the parade, hand in hand, fingers woven together.

The lights spun around them, laughing faces, such a variety of people and costumes. It all blended together. He felt giddy, breathless.

The woman dragged him to an alley, where the stream of people passed by unseeing, like water over rocks, like wind over mountains. This was a pocket where together they were unhurried, protected by darkness and enclosing buildings.

“Would you leave me now?” she asked.

He gazed at the curl of her lips, at the slant of her eyes. “No,” he said in her language, intoxicated by the feel of the words on his lips. The first time he had spoken the words he had so long ago learned.

“Then no more talks of the desert,” she commanded. “You are my djinn now, and I am your woman. Where you go, I go, and I have no wish to walk in the desert.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be bound,” he said, feeling the curl of her ear between his forefinger and thumb, tangling his fingers in the luxury of her hair.

“With you, I am not bound,” she smiled. “Together, we will be free.”

She curled around him, her breath like the flutter of wings against his skin. “But we must never let them know,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

He twisted against her, wrapped in her limbs, in her presence. “We must choose when to fight.”

He breathed her in, unable to answer, but she understood anyway. Her lips were at his ear. She probably wouldn’t hear him anyway. Her voice swelled hypnotically, like the lights in the street, and the echo of the music from the festival. He felt dizzy with the spin of it.

“Shut down the factory.”

Of course. It was the only way they could be together. The only way to avoid re-conditioning. He had to play a part, and lying? She was the daughter of a spider. She would teach him how to lie.