Icons

The Padre. The Tracks. The Merk. Ro. Lucas.

I open my eyes, blushing, remembering my dream. Remembering the feel of his fingers on my skin, the way his dirty gold hair hung in his eyes. Then I remember the rest, the part that isn’t a dream.

The Embassy Chopper. Santa Catalina Island. The Embassy.

The realization of where I am makes me sit up in my cot. Because I’m not at the Mission; I’m at the Embassy on Santa Catalina Island. Hours away from anywhere I’ve ever been before, and the heart of the Occupation, as far as the Hole is concerned. The Hole and everyone in and around it. I might as well have spent the night in the House of Lords itself.

I try to remember the details. In my mind, I trace my way from the Chopper to the room. The foggy ride to the island, holding back the urge to vomit from the turbulence. Santa Catalina coming into view through the low mist that hangs over the water. The Embassy walls rising up from the rocks, the windows rising higher above them.

What came after the rocks and the walls?

The docks, swarming with uniformed Sympas? The building-sized poster of the Ambassador in her crimson military jacket, the one she wears in all the pictures?

The doctors. They must have shot me up with something, because that’s where the memories fade.

Ro’s gone. That’s the last thing I remember. Ro’s hand being twisted out of mine. I can’t feel him anywhere. They must have taken him away, to a different prison cell, or a different hospital room.

I look at my hands. Some sort of restraints—cuffs, I think—have left deep, red grooves, but I’m not cuffed now. And my binding—I’m not wearing it. I try not to panic, but I feel naked without it.

As I lie back against the soft pillow, I am almost certain this is not a prison. At least, not officially. The room is plain, military looking. A large gray rectangle. Rows of tall windows line one wall, with stripes of horizontal shades that keep me from seeing what is outside. Gray and white, gray and white. There don’t seem to be any other colors here—except for the beeping, flashing lights on the walls. Beyond that, there are places for many more cots—I count at least three, judging by the marks on the walls. But there is only one cot in the room, and I am in it.

Finally, I see my clothes are neatly folded in a pile on a chair. More of a relief, my worn leather chestpack sits next to it on the floor. It’s unsettling to see it lying there, exposed, instead of hidden beneath my clothes as it normally is. The small pile is everything that belongs to me in the world.

Almost.

Someone has taken them off me. Someone has wrapped me in this robe. Someone has also tagged me like a troublemaking coyote: a wire clamps down on the tip of my middle finger. I wiggle it; the wire connects to a small machine that beeps pleasantly. Screens light up on the walls, all around me, like beating hearts encased in plastic skins. It only takes me a second to realize that these particular flashing lights—the white ones—correspond with the movements of my own wired finger.

The Embassy knows when I move so much as a finger.

I think of the string of lights that Ro got me for my birthday. How afraid the Padre was that we’d be seen.

How right he was to fear them.

I wag my fingers again, but when the wall lights up, I see something more troubling. Beneath the wire tag, my right wrist is covered with a bandage.

As I examine my arm, the machine hum grows louder—

“The Medics did not touch your marker, if that is what you are worried about. You seem worried.”

The voice comes from behind me. I whirl around in my cot, but there’s no one there.

“It was just a routine procedure. Standard Embassy protocol, DNA sampling. Everything went as expected.”

I scramble to stand up. The floor is cold on my feet.

“I am sorry. I did not mean to surprise you. I have been waiting for an appropriate time to introduce myself, as you were so busy with REM sleep.”

I back toward the door, pulling the tag from my finger, ripping the bandage off my skin. My arm appears to be fine, only a small bloody smudge next to my marking. I exhale.

I scan the room, but there is no sign of where the voice could be coming from. Then I see a small, round grating rattling next to me, on the wall.

“Lucas has already taken issue with me twice this morning on the subject.” I start at the name. “Allow me to clarify: I was not watching you sleep. I was monitoring your sleep. For diagnostic purposes. Would you like me to explain the difference?”

I remember my dream. “No.” My own voice sounds wrong here. I clear my throat. “Thank you, Room.”

I steady myself with one hand on the wall. I see other gratings—in the ceiling, the walls, above my cot. This room, it seems, is made for this exact sort of conversation.

Faceless. Bodiless. An ambush.

“Diagnostic purposes?” It is better, I think, to keep the voice talking until I know more.

It talking. Because it really isn’t a person at all, and the voice isn’t a voice. It has no inflection, no emphasis. No accent. Each word is a chord of machine sounds, synthetic noise. Grassgirl that I am, I have never heard such a thing.

“You might be interested to know you are in fact running a low fever. I am curious to learn if that is customary for a Weeper.”

I clear my throat again, trying to sound calm. “A what?” There’s no way in Hole I’m telling anyone at the Embassy anything about myself.

“That is, to be precise, what you are called, is it not? A young person of your genus classification? A Sorrow Icon? A Weeper—that would be the correct Grass colloquialism?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My words echo in the empty room. I grab my clothes off the chair.

“I can see how you would be confused. It is important to understand context, which is of course a problem I find almost singularly ironic. Not having a physical context, myself.”

My underwear and undershirt are strangely stiff. They have been washed, and not in the old Mission bathtubs. I sniff the cloth. It smells like disinfectant spray. I touch my hair with the sudden realization that it is clean, too. I have been washed and dried and scrubbed. It feels wrong. I miss the dirt, my comfortable second skin of muck and must.

I feel exposed.

“Who are you?” I pull my army pants up under my robe. “Why am I here?”

“I am Doc. That is, to be more exact, what Lucas calls me. His companion, Tima Li, calls me Orwell.”

“Companion?”

“Classmate. Kinswoman. I believe she was there when you were retrieved.”

The girl at the Chopper. I make a face, thinking of her glare. “Got it.”

The voice pauses—but only for a moment. “Ambassador Amare calls me Computer.” I freeze at the mention of the Ambassador’s name. As if I could forget she was here. “The Embassy Wik recognizes me by my binary code. Would you care to know it? I am happy to tell you.”

“No. Thank you, Doc.” I add his name, impulsively. Somehow, the fact of his nonhumanness is comforting. You can’t be a sympathizer if you can’t sympathize.

I pull my thick, woven sweater over my head. A present from the Mission looms, made of fifty different colors of scraps of yarn. A Remnant sweater, perfect for a Remnant like me.

“You are most welcome, Doloria.”

A new coldness shoots through me at the mention of my real name. The name only the Padre knew, and Ro. And now this voice, echoing through the walls of the Embassy. I could be talking to anyone. I could be talking to the Ambassador.

I sigh and jam my feet into my combat boots.