24 - Cello

I've learnt something in the past couple of days: I can't make assumptions based on things that only one person tells me. I have to investigate the matter for myself and draw my own conclusions. My mother always said that a true liar lies with his soul and spins tales so zealously that they almost become the truth. She was referring to my dad, but it works with all the people I've encountered at the Zephyr.

I leave Syianne standing in the conference room and I know she must be angry with me, and I'm sorry for it. She looks so pale and worried that I almost call after Leolan and tell him that I'm in. But that's the second thing my mother taught me, never agree to something before you know what the stakes are and what you're in for. Perhaps my mom is just a simple woman who works at a hair salon and comes from Tagrya, but one must never underestimate the wisdom of hairdressers (or mothers).

I stride through the winding corridors until I find room 551. The skinny secretary isn't at her desk; she's standing by the door to Xeprim's office looking inside with her arms crossed over her stomach. I look past her shoulder at the wreckage and wince, as if all that was my fault. There are two men inside filling buckets with rubble.

I begin to back away, I don't want to be held responsible for that mess, but just then the secretary notices me. She raises one thinly tweezed eyebrow at me.

"Hi," I salute by holding up one hand and not quite waving it.

She raises the other eyebrow and frowns, perhaps only recognising me now.

"Is Xeprim around?" I try.

"Who?" I knew it! He was pulling my leg with that bogus name of his.

"Old Flent."

She shrugs. What does she mean by that? "You haven't seen him?" I ask.

"Not since before that," clearly blaming me.

"I last saw him somewhere over the Sky Needle," I muse. The Sky Needle is said to be the tallest building in the world. I don't think it's so remarkable; they built a very tall office building and then added a thin metal construction on top.

"Over the...?" she looks perplexed; she tilts her head while staring at me.

"Anyway, I'll go try to find him, thanks for your help."

*

I walk back out into the corridor and randomly choose to head left. I don't know where I'm going or how I'll find Xeprim. My mind begins to open to the possibility that I won't find him, and then there's really no one to give me advice.

I should get used to it. I've never actually had to make any meaningful decisions before, so I never needed advice. Now that I need it, there's no one to give it to me. I'm on my own.

The thought doesn't scare me like it should – it emboldens me -- so I turn around and walk to Leolan's office. The door is open and I see him sitting behind his desk, as if he was waiting for me. "That was fast," he says.

"I'm not finished thinking yet," I let myself in and sit across from him. "I have a few questions."

Leolan leans back into his chair. He's cool and smooth, but there's something about him that just doesn't click for me. I try not to be overly judgmental and keep an open mind, but it's there in the pit of my stomach. I don't like this guy. "Ask away, Cello."

"I want to know who slugged me and I want to know why."

"What will you do when you find out?"

"That depends," I lean back into my chair, imitating his comfortably confident pose, "what reason they give me."

"You're powerless against us Blacks, Cello. Whoever did it, for whatever reason they had, just forget about it."

"I don't like to be messed with."

"No one does. But we're all constantly being messed with, even when we don't know it. Can you actually prove that the thoughts in your head right now are really your own? Maybe they've been planted there by someone, or by something."

For a moment, I don't know what to say. The spookiest part about being slugged was that all my actions and fears made perfect sense to me. Even now, when I look back, I can't distinguish my thoughts from the slug. I was me all the time.

"It was you." I finally say.

The door behind me closes with a snap, my head jerks back to look, but there isn't anyone there. I look at Leolan again. "Yes," he says nonchalantly, "it was me."

I didn't expect him to admit it so easily. "Why?"

"I needed a reason to apprehend you, so I created one. I made sure to have it pulled out before it took full hold. The moment you two left the meeting yesterday there was a race to get you, but I was the first to claim you and now the others can't have you." He's not the least bit disturbed by how disgusted I must look. In fact, he's speaking as if his reasoning is obvious. Maybe around here, morality and logic work differently. "Understand something, Cello, this is all a gamble. You may very well be run-of-the-mill but there hasn't been a new Alprine-holder in sixty years, this is my opportunity, I can't have an Alprine, so I'll make do with an Alpriner."

"You don't have me."

"I expected you to be this way." Leolan smiles, "That's what I meant about your thoughts not being your own. Alprine-holders are notoriously chaotic people. Have you heard about Belgrun?"

"No." I say, but the name sounds uncomfortably familiar, someone did mention it to me today but I just can't remember who or when.

"It's surprising that Flent hasn't told you about him. He's an Alprine-holder like yourself A haughty fellow, with different ideas on how things should be run around here. He wanted reforms concerning Undefined and all the Jewels called "the New Ways", but when they wouldn't listen to him, he hopped on his Alprine and flew away. Some say he was banished, some say he retreated to bide his time and plot how to bring about his so-called chaos. But the fact remains; he's the only man alive to have left the Zephyr."

"How do you know he's still alive?"

"He used to come to Rockdem, but he hasn't been seen in the last two years."

"Nice story, but why are you telling it to me?"

"Because I know the truth about Belgrun. You're just like him, you see. He wasn't banished and he didn't choose to leave. The only reason he left was because he just couldn't stay, he's restless. He wouldn't be claimed by any of us, because he's already claimed by his Alprine, and he's supposedly free to ride the winds. But it's all an illusion, he's like a Darabesh wanderer, who can't stay too long in one place. He can't fight the urge to move, running as if death is chasing after him. Do you want that life?"

I'm uncomfortable with him mentioning Darabesh wanderers; it brings my father to mind. "The way you put it, I don't seem to have a choice," I say.

"But you have something he doesn't have."

"What's that?"

Leolan smiles, "Syianne. She depends on you. You're already part of her team. She's of interest to me, but without you she isn't worth my trouble."

"We don't have that kind of relationship; we just met a couple of days ago." I know I'm stretching the truth here, I'm deeply involved, in over my ears. Leolan knows this, and there's nothing to prevent him from playing that card.

"You may be half Darabesh, but your other half is Tagrin, and no one can beat the Tagrin loyalty."

I purse my lips together, he played me.

"I can assure you, Cello, that if I can't have both of you under my thumb, no one will get either of you. You're right to think that you'll make it without me, but she won't. Are you ready to be responsible for her misery?"

"You're lying to me," I breathe out. I feel trapped and angry. My gut was right about Leolan, I have every reason to dislike him.

"I'm actually being completely truthful for a change," he laughs a short quick bark of glee. "Honesty is honestly refreshing. Don't try to test me, I don't make empty threats. You've witnessed firsthand the length to which I'm willing to go to get what I want. Just join my team; you'll discover that it's not such a bad thing."

I rub my face with both my hands. I hate feeling defeated.

He doesn't need my answer, he already knows it. "Now that we have that cleared up, I have questions for you."

I lower my hands, anticipating more humiliation.

"What did you talk to Risa about? I see she charged you again. Why? How?"

I get up. I may have lost in one place, but at least I can win somewhere else. "None of your bloody business," I say and let myself out of his office.

*

Dangling my uniform bag over my shoulder with my black coat billowing behind me, I stride away from the main dome off toward the main gates. It's around six PM and there's nowhere I have to be so I'm free for the rest of the day. I look at the palm of my gloved hand as I walk, stretching out my fingers and then flexing them. Did Leolan say that I'm charged? With power? With magic?

I close my hand into a fist and look forward as I pass through the gates of the Zephyr and out into Rockdem. It would be nice to know how to use it, whatever it is. To make things happen.

Maybe it's already working; I feel I can endure anything.

Or maybe I feel that way because I know I can fly. I walk down the street with all the earthbound people bustling around me. They suddenly look grey, running about their grey transitory lives, jumping from one redundant moment to the next.

Sensing my thoughts, Risa snakes down to the ground and swells in size as she walks by my side. Instantly people begin taking notice, the crowd parts, they stare, they point — I leap into Risa mid-step and take off. The air sparkles around us as cellphone cameras are caught in the afternoon sunlight. This is the most exciting thing that has happened to these people today. Throughout Rockdem, around family dinner tables, in pubs, in high school hallways and across phone-lines the tale of this miraculous encounter will be told and re-told, accompanied by awe and wonder.

That is, at least, what I'd like to do. However, I don't fly away and Risa remains inside my pocket hidden from sight. I stand in line for the nearest Rail call-board and wait my turn. I'm not brave enough to do it; I'm not cool enough to show off in that way. I'm not arrogant enough to believe that such acts wouldn't have dire implications.

I wish I were. I wish I didn't care about anything or anyone. I wish Leolan was wrong about me, about Syianne. Whether his threats meant anything is up to speculation, but I'm not the type of guy to test that when so much is at stake.

*

At first, when I arrive at the Doorstep I can't find Syianne. She's not in her bed, she's not in the kitchenette, she's not the in bathroom and not in my bed either. I look again at her bed, as if something would change and discover that what I thought was a fold of blanket is actually her. I pat the part of the bump in the blanket that must be her head.

She groans and turns over.

I sigh and stuff my hands in my pocket. "Are you pretending to sleep so you won't have to talk to me?"

No answer.

"You don't have to do that. I talked to Leolan, I told him we're in."

I wait for her to reply, but when she remains silent I give up. I stack the boxes of Zribble I brought next to the ones Syianne put on the kitchenette counter. I hesitate with my hand on the last box, wondering if I'm hungry enough to stomach more of the stuff. I don't know if the fact that I can only eat Zribble has made me lose my appetite, or maybe this sort of food is extremely filling, I'm not as hungry as I should be.

I eat it anyway, out of boredom. As I crunch away on the small dry balls with a pitcher of water and a glass near at hand, I skim through today's edition of "The Rockdem Word". Newspapers come on hologram paper. All the information of the daily paper is burned with laser into the flat bendy plastic material of the hologram paper and you can skim through the different articles by sliding your finger across. They say that in the future, computers, cellular phones and television sets would come in the form of hologram paper. I don't much care for this particular technology. I still remember the paper newspapers that felt grimy and filthy when you touched them even if they were brand new. They'd stack up in my grandfather's house and when spring cleaning came by, we'd always use them to clean the windows.

Anyway, I don't think hologram paper serves the purpose for which it was invented. People still seem to prefer to read the newspaper over the internet for free rather than pay money for the daily paper. The only ones who buy the paper are hotel establishments, who don't care whether the paper is paper or hologram, and old people, who would have preferred the old sound real stuff they were used to as kids rather than the complicated piece of plastic they get now. But that's the trouble with technological advances, once it advances, it can never retreat.

The news isn't very interesting. The Council has passed a law that allows people who employ ex-Blankheads to have tax benefits. An opposition party member challenges the Council's decision claiming that it will increase unemployment and will worsen the already bad financial situation. There are about four different articles about the construction accident in the Barbyur Bridge, the biggest bridge to pass over the Barbyur River, the largest of the three rivers that crosses Rockdem.

Out of all the things written in the paper, only one small article causes me to stop my skimming and pay attention.

--------------------------------------------

Rioting In Corabana Plaza

Rockdem — a riot erupted in Corabana Plaza tonight. Over 100 rioters arrested by police. Mayor Waller: "Council must be prepared. This is the beginning of unrest in Meda."

Late last night a riot erupted near Corabana square. Approximately seven hundred masked men and women participated in the rioting. Shop windows were broken, several rail-cars were burned and two policemen injured. The rioting lasted well over two hours. The reason for the violence is yet unknown.

"Police are investigating the people behind these riots," Chief of Police, Kuradine Ellem, has told the Word early this morning. "It is yet unclear who arranged [this riot] and why it broke out to begin with."

Mayor Waller expressed grave concern over the meaning of the night's events. "We will do all that is in our power to quench the unrest. While we hope that this has been a one-time occurrence, we cannot be certain, therefore we caution the citizens of Rockdem to keep a wary eye when in large public gatherings."

------------------------------------------

That's it. Three small paragraphs over an event that should have been the top headline. Although I assume seven hundred people rioting in a city of 20 million isn't such a big deal, with the news being the way they are, this event should have gotten better coverage. I don't know who the newspaper editor is, but isn't the whole point of the newspaper to sell the news?

There's a black and white photograph of a smashed-up shop window. From the looks of it, it was probably a cafe'. I look at the photograph for a full minute before it suddenly hits me. The sign is lying broken somewhere on the ground, but I know it's the Lemming. I never forget a place that I've been to, no matter how ill I was at the time.

I get up and rush to my bag rummaging through its contents until I come up with a battered old "Rockdem City Map". I found it at home among my grandfather's stuff, it may be a hundred years old, but in the central circle of the city nothing has changed. I spread it out on the kitchen table and standing with my face bent over the map, I scan it until I find what I'm looking for: Corabana Plaza, and right next to it, the Zephyr.

I sit down and lean into the plastic chair, the riot wasn't next to Corabana Plaza, it was next to the Zephyr. I don't know why I feel so astounded to discover that this shady article could only mean that it was reporting something connected with us Jewels. Either Jewels were the rioters, or the riot was an angry protest against the Zephyr. Last night, while I was getting a slug pulled out from my brain, a riot had been happening at the Zephyr.