The Death of the Wave Read Online Free PDF Page A

deserve to , he responded, and his long hand ruffled the hair of the child.
     
    I still stood but for a gesture from Galileo and then I sat there at his feet.
    A strange rebellion had corroded my heart and sickened the feel of his hand on my arm.
    We are all somebody’s dog, I thought, and the boy looked up at me
    with eyes as black as ink, no whites at all.
     
    I looked at the lines of hopeful and doggedly obstinate Watchmen marching out there on the fields, and the one cast to the side, so small and so still.
    How many would be left for the next day?
     
    Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow, I said quietly,
    and Galileo glanced at me with wild dark suspicion.
    He asked where I heard it, came by it.
    I called it foolishness.
    A rash deed, I assured him, and he turned his head.
    He could not have heard it, then.
    Breaking the Censor would be madness.
    Almost as bad as kill a king.
    As kill a king.
    As kill a King.

FLASHOVER
BLUE
----
    Words with a man on Cleaning Day.
    Shivering in the January cold, I stare steadily ahead at the man in front of me
    who on that fateful day had passed me the letter.
    His sickness has worsened, lesions puckering his skin, his eyes blank as two marbles.
    I wait expectantly for my letter and when it comes down the line
    I grab it and seize that moist hand.
    I demand to know who passed me the letter, but his hand lies limp and unresisting in my grip.
    He ignores me.
    I attempt to reason it out.
    How could the aristo have communicated to his man that the letter was for my eyes only?
    How could his man know who I am?
    Who was he?
    And Descartes is dead.
    So who is it now?
    I growl in frustration, and ask if these letters, the first and the last were always meant for me.
    His eyes never bother to turn my way but the corner of his mouth raises in a silent ironic smile.
     
    “We all know who you are and what you have done.”
     
    My fingernails have dug crescent moons of blood into his palm.
    I whisper furiously the importance of knowing my benefactor and inquire if it is him,
    but he only coughs weakly and smiles that sad little smile.
    I hear a Breaker’s shout and I drop the man’s hand, folding up my letter in fifths
    and shoving it unceremoniously down into my uniform shirt.
     
    The Palace car has gone, and the Cleaners wander unhurriedly down the line.
    The man in front of me turns his head to meet my eye.
    He had passed the last elimination.
    He would not pass another.
     
    A plague-stick points towards the left and he is gone.
     
    Who am I?
     
    I thought I knew.
     
    Gunshots in the distance.
     
    I was a journalist, that much I was certain, although I was sure
    that was not the title they would have used.
    I was a promotion specialist.
    I was hired for my lies, and for my words.
    I could convince anybody of anything.
    I had chosen my fate as much as anyone could in my time.
    Confronted by an aptitude for numbers,
    I had chosen to skew the scores, fail the science, choose the Camps.
    I doubt anyone ever knew, but I had long fancied myself a hero.
    Now, here, in the damp and the snow, I’m not so certain,
    and the woman that cleans my cell agrees.
    It reminds me of someone I once loved,
    and a smile that evaporated
    like breath off a blade.
     
    We all know who you are, she seemed to whisper, and he was straight-backed as they led him off.
    They never look back.
    If that prisoner was right, then they all knew of my failure.
     
    Tell me what you know, and the whispers sounded
    of elegant instruments just asking to be used in a windowless room.
    Tell me what you know, and a prisoner I have never met asks me for a name that is not mine.
    Tell me what you know, servant of the State.
    Twenty years ago, I watched the words die in the cold and the snow, and did nothing.
     
    I was happy to live.
     
    I unfurl the letter in the privacy of my cell and turn the paper over to note that it is another page of the booklet, and the Edict number is 4563: The Exemption of Aristos.
    I turn it over again