Three Years Earlier
Calea gave Bron credit for one thing–he was quiet.
Most days she spent in her lab, sometimes working forty-eight hours non-stop, oblivious to time, fatigue, and hunger. She’d drop deep into the problem before her until she understood the contours of the dilemma, its form and shape and idiosyncrasies. Her theories and the symbols on her whiteboard and the experimental applications of magical transference played one off the other, each held loosely so that it could change with the situation. She tested, dissected, recombined, discarded, and retried. Bron very well might leave for hours at a time when these moods took her, but she knew he did not. He took his required days off, but he watched and waited endless hours. Sometimes she returned to her surroundings with him in the other room, a tray with warm food sitting beside her.
If that had been all a bodyguard was, she could almost have dealt with it, if only because she wouldn’t have to deal with it at all. A shadow was the most forgettable thing in the world as long as it kept quiet. And Bron did admirably–but not perfectly. He urged her to eat or to socialize. He hovered over her, prodded her, gave her looks that showed he thought she was wrong. He did it softly, and subtly, but she noticed.
It was the principal of the thing, too. She remembered that first night. She knew the perception: she needed protecting, because she could not protect herself.
Today, Calea was out of the lab and out of the Tower. She had begun introducing cheap, efficient personal transports into the Section Four economy, as well as a host of less visible but more important upgrades to the power grid. Occasionally, she found it necessary to look over her project personally, if only because she didn’t trust others to tell her the whole truth. Her assistants were largely upper-level students who were both frightened of and in awe of her. They performed the task of administrative paperwork well enough, but they certainly could not judge the results of her current experiments with as critical an eye as she demanded.
So, once a month, on schedule, she descended into the city. She went without announcement. She did not like to draw attention to herself, whatever the rumors in the Wheel claimed. She’d heard the muttering. It was caused by envy. That pleased her.
Though she walked inconspicuously among the people, she could not come alone as she desired. Bron was at her side, quiet, yes, but still there, on alert, like a hawk. He walked coolly enough, but his eyes roamed back and forth.
“You do a poor job of remaining hidden,” she said.
“I am not trying to hide.”
“I wish you would. I do not need you here, anxious to throw yourself in front of some energy blast. There was a study some years ago showing that less than twenty percent of the population could identify the Overseer by sight, and I’m not the Overseer. I do not think I’ll have an angry citizen see me and attempt to punch me in the face.”
Bron said nothing, and this, more than some excuse or explanation, aggravated Calea. She was already in a bitter mood. She had woken up that way. Now, she was beginning to roil within.
“When can I be rid of you?” She tried to say it lightly. Sometimes he seemed to be hiding a smile when she became furious at him.
“When I am no longer needed.”
“Ha! Needed? No one’s needed in this world. We’re all extraneous, accidents. Men live and die. Their names sometimes linger a few generations. For what? I’ll be forgotten soon enough, even if I change the whole world with my mind. I’ll hang on as a name in a book and a picture on a wall, if that.”
Bron nodded. “Then why do you do what you do?”
“They think they need me. It’s a lie. Someone else would do what I’m doing, if not now, then within a decade. But I might as well do it. It gives me a way to spend my time, and it pleases them.”
“Well, protecting you gives me something to do as well. Let’s leave it at that.”
Calea wanted to scream at him. She had rattled off that little speech to make him uncomfortable–and from some uncomfortable emotion of her own. He had accepted it without question. He was either an unthinking brute or he was mocking her. It was possible both were true.
Her destination was a retailer she’d recently partnered with, a bicycle shop she was using to sell the new motorcycle she’d help develop. With the newest battery, streamlined, magic-powered vehicles were now possible. Most cars were still clunky and over-large, but that was slowly changing. Calea wanted to shock the people with her compact two-wheeled vehicle. She hoped to do some interviews with customers today.
“This is going to be a nice place to live,” Bron said. He did not often start conversations.
“The metrics of happiness and prosperity have been rising steadily in this section. Technology is the most efficient means of changing a person’s position in life.”
“Not the only way.”
“The most efficient.”
“Will you spread your work to the rest of the city?”
“I don’t have much say in other sections. In time, others might borrow from my work, as long as it doesn’t contradict with their own experiments. The technology will spread to Thyrion before it’s publicly released, if history teaches us anything. They’re tech-grubby, and it causes them more than a few problems. The minor villages will get it in time. But my work needs tested over years, and verified by others, then repeated, before the socio-economic blueprint will be made officially available.”
He did not respond. He was a normal, a native of routinely poor Section Three. He likely disagreed with the process. The non-Select always took the short view of things. “We’re doing this for your own good, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
He seemed to tense up. That encouraged her. He had been hurt in some way.
People and traffic crammed down the street. This section had more cars per household than any other, not a particularly difficult feat considering how few civilian cars had been allowed in the city. By her estimation, in three years nearly half of all households in Section Four would own one. Her newest battery was more compact, efficient, and long-lasting than any before it, and the method of creation safer. Manufacturing costs would drop, and the retail price to civilians would fall. Previous administrators of Section Four had run a moderately open economy. Calea didn’t plan to make any changes. Let the people work, earn money, and purchase what they would. They’d purchase her work.
Bron leaned over casually. “We are being followed.”
So perhaps his earlier stiffness had not been from affront but paranoia. “It’s lunch hour in the busiest part of downtown. You’d have to work not to follow someone.”
And if she was being followed, what did it matter? She could handle it. It didn’t concern her much.
Don't miss a single word of stories as they are published! You'll also receive first notice of special sales and behind-the-scenes information.