Freedom - 3 (Young Justice in Genosha)

by D Benway

As a photographer for the school newspaper, I often have an excuse for being in places where I would otherwise not be found. Being Bruce's ward opens even more doors, in this case the doors of the Princess Alexandria Concert Hall on the night of the candidate's debate. I'm standing on the steps, near the back, behind the few local reporters who are here to cover the event for the real newspapers. Still, I have the 250mm Olympia Sonnar on the Contarex, and I'm in a perfect position to get a shot of the president when he arrives to moderate. There will still be a lot of natural light, but I will have to push the film to get a proper exposure. We daren't use flashes anywhere near the President, not after that terrible accident with the man from Agence France Presse.

The crowd goes quiet. We all look to the sky, to see the President descending, his cape and cloak billowing behind him. He is wearing his helmet and his usual sombre expression. He lands in the forecourt, at the base of the stairs. A perfect shot, then another. I'm doing well here. Somewhere from behind, there's a crack, like a peal of thunder. We all hit the ground, except, the President. He turns, so we can't see his face.

Sirens start howling in the distance, and some of the President's bodyguards start creeping about in front, weapons out, hand and eyes glowing. He's standing, stock still, staring out across the street towards the school. Hanging from the clock tower is a bedsheet. Painted in black letters: Where is Garrett DeVries?

"Oh shit," I hear myself say, and then I take a picture.

"Stay down," says a security man.

I get back down, but my camera, which is made largely of stainless steel, drifts gently from the ground in front of me up towards the President. I drag it back to earth before anyone notices and thinks that it's a weapon.

The President turns, glaring at the television cameras, which are all pointed at the bedsheet. He rises from the ground and floats into the theatre without saying a word. The Magistrates come around and collect all our films. I make a big deal out of taking the film straight out of the back of my camera and handing it to them. They have no idea that a Contarex has interchangeable film magazines.

* * * * *

I've only been in bed an hour when the mobile rings.

"I'm sending a car for you," says Bruce, who then rings off before I have a chance to reply.

I leave the room without waking up Col, stealing one last glance as I make my way out the window and across the rooftops. I descend an old fire escape on the south side of the Refectory, where all the windows have been bricked up. This leaves me outside the walls, and I'm trusting that Bruce has cut out the security cameras with his remote control.

He sends a Land Cruiser, driven by Major Pennyworth. The Major says nothing to me, as he drives us through Mount Campbell and across Horrockstown to The Rand, the old industrial district near the port. It's after curfew, so there aren't many vehicles on the road. We draw into the forecourt of an office complex where I've met Bruce once or twice before. I think this is where he works. I think it's the headquarters of the State Security Executive. The sign at the door indicates that it's the offices of the Secretariat for Import and Export Controls.

The paternoster's been switched off, so the Major takes me up the stairs, not to the first floor where Bruce's office is but to the second. All the doors are closed except one, which leads into a conference room. I'm left at the door, and I can see that Bruce is there, being talked at by a short hairy man in a stetson hat. Bruce is impassive as ever, not showing approval or disapproval of what the short man is telling him. The finance minister passes by without paying me any attention. Apparently, he used to be a professor at the University of Chicago, and has a Nobel Prize in economics. The only others left in the room are the Chairman of the SSE and her daughter. The Chairman is also the President's wife. She catches my eye and smiles. She's American, too. The man in the Stetson glances at me as he leaves, and I wish that he hadn't.

"Enter," says Bruce.

He closes the door behind me. There is a very ugly portrait of the president on one wall, and a map of the entire country on another. The map has a lot of colored flags on it, held there by pins. Areas where I know we're not supposed to go are colored in, in red. There's more of them than I thought.

"Nothing you see or hear leaves this room," says Bruce.

I nod. The president's wife comes up beside me, holding her daughter Aurora in her arms. From what Bruce has said, Aurora is the most closely guarded individual in the entire state.

"Would you like to hold her?" says the President's wife.

"Yes, your, er, excellency" I say.

The husbands or wives of our previous presidents used to stay so quietly in the background, that no-one ever thought to specify a correct way to address them.

"Just call me Irene," she says.

My God, she is an American. Even so, I could never bring myself to speak with her so informally. I know from what Bruce has said that this isn't her real name. He said that he's not sure that even she knows the name she was born with.

"I don't know how to hold an infant," I say.

"Like this," she says. "Support her head with the crook of your elbow."

She hands me the baby. It's small, but surprisingly heavy. It has a white streak in its hair, just like its mother. Its head twists and turns, and its body twitches. It's so small and helpless. I glance up at Bruce. He stares back, impassive. This is some sort of test, I know it. The baby starts to make unpleasant sounds, and I feel the sleeve of my shirt becoming damp. The President's wife takes back her child.

"She's so helpless," says the President's wife. "She couldn't survive a day without me or someone else to look after her. Do you know why?"

"No ma'am," I say, compromising.

"It's because of our large brains," she says. "No human woman would be able to bear a child whose brain was large enough to allow it fend for itself after birth."

That's not what we were told in school, but I keep my silence. I can't imagine what the point of all this is.

"The nation is as helpless as my baby is, right now," she says.

Only an American would use her own child as a public political metaphor. I wonder if I'm going to see this later on television, as when she stopped the riots in Scottstown last month by breastfeeding the child on television.

"Do you know how badly off we are, Robin?" she asks.

"I know it's been quite bad," I say. "The rationing and all."

"This country has nothing," she says. "Nothing but people. The land is no good without mutants to force the crops from the soil at the cost of their very lives. There are no mineral resources, and almost no industries that were not completely dependent on encapsulated mutants. We might have rebuilt those industries with more standard technologies, but the few engineers we had to emigration. In fact, if Bruce's father not been so opposed to using encaps in his steel mill, we wouldn't have any viable industry at all. Isn't that right, Bruce?"

"Yes'm," says Bruce, nodding.

"Even so, we have three million baseline human citizens who have lived very well in the past while doing almost no work, who have no skills other than good pronunciation and penmanship, and who are not happy with the privations they've had to endure," she says. "We've been keeping up the rationing, keeping people employed with the money that the World Bank and the IMF have been giving us since the war. We were supposed to be using it to build a free economy and an industrial base, not for supporting featherbedders in government jobs and companies that should have gone bankrupt years ago. If the donors don't see some developments soon, we're going to have to admit our true GDP is only slightly higher than Mozambique's."

Oh no. I glance at Bruce, hoping that he'll contradict her. He's staring at the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, looking grimmer than ever. I've been to Mozambique. The people they send us as guest workers, their middle class, they have no shoes, let alone cars, houses, television sets and annual trips to Britain. They certainly don't have schools like mine.

"You understand, that's not to leave this room," she repeats, as if I hadn't heard the first time.

She puts a towel over her shoulder and rests the baby's head on it.

"Yes ma'am," I say. "But if that's true, why do we keep letting more people in?"

She starts patting the infant on the back.

"We take in mutants because my husband has decided that we must," she says. "We need the guest workers to keep you baselines quiet. That's my idea, not his. He'd let you all starve, but I know that we can't afford to be seen as another Palestine."

"But surely some of your people could work voluntarily," I say. "They could be paid to work in the old factories."

"If we would, we could," she says. "But the factories still would not be competitive, and the IMF would be all over us in a flash. Most of the mutants who live here are not fit to work, and through immigration we get a few idealists coming in who can, but most mutants would rather take their chances working shit jobs in the US or the EC instead of coming and living in a country full of niggers who don't know their places."

I can feel myself flushing. In the old British way of speaking, I'm part 'nigger' myself.

"Guess I was a bit blunt there," she says. "I come from the South and I used to see that shit all the time. Getting rid of all that race crap is the one thing you folks did get right, but it doesn't help us with those from places where they've still got it fucked up. Most of those we're getting now are the hopeless, the ones with nowhere else to go. Almost half of the recent mutant immigration has come from Africa, people who were driven from their tribes for having the gift of mutancy. These are damaged folks, and we don't have the resources to care for them. Hell, half the time, we can't even understand the tribal languages they speak. We've had to hire back a full third of the old Magistrates just to keep the lid on."

Aurora burps, loudly.

"There, there," says the chairman of the State Security Executive. "Show it to him, Bruce."

"Is this wise?" says Bruce.

"I have your word that he can be trusted," she says.

Bruce picks up a metal reel of wire with a Waynetech label off the table and hands it to me as if it's made of finest crystal.

"Don't touch it," he says.

"No, no," she says. "Touch it. Tell me what you think it is."

I find the end and unreel some of it. It's stiff, more like plastic than wire. I think it's coated at first, then see that its natural shiny brown colour doesn't look like any plastic or metal I've ever seen.

"Is it meant to conduct electricity?" I say.

"Hell, yes," she says. "It's a superconducting ceramic composite. It's superconducting up to any temperature that Africa can throw at it and we think we can do even better than that."

I glance at Bruce. He's staring at the reel as if it's the only thing in the world.

"This is all there is, isn't there?" I say.

"You are one astute young man," she says. "Bruce told me you were bright. We anticipate scale-up and production within a year. We're the only people who know how to make it, and we've got the only three of my kind in the world who can make it."

"Then this is like gold," I say. "Like diamonds when they were only sold by DeBeers."

"Just so, but more valuable to us than that," she says. "This will cut energy transmission costs to nothing. It will perceptibly slow global warming, it will cut the cost of electricity to less than a fifth of what it is now, it will enable us to supply electricity to all of sub-Saharan Africa from three dams on the Congo. You hold the future of our country and perhaps all of Africa in your hands."

I put the reel back on the table.

"If we monopolize production, the world will beat a path to our door," she says. "We need that kind of money to turn this place into a real haven for mutants, a place where we can hire the best people to treat the sick ones and to restore them to health. We will have the funds to purchase all the anti-retrovirals that we're going to need. We'll even have some left over to restore you baselines to something like what you had before, if you're good."

"But not yet," I say.

"Not until we can produce this industrially," she says. "Until then, we have to keep the lid on. We have to keep twisting the world's arm for the cash to keep the economy going. We have to come down hard on the encaps who are still running wild in the hills. Most of all, we have to keep the baselines under control, since you are the biggest threat of all. If you start thinking that it's going to hell, you're either going to leave and kick the foundations out from what institutions we've got left or the Troubles will start up again and that'll be it."

She's holding the baby in her arms, staring straight at me. I need to go to the bathroom, very badly.

"Our nation is as helpless as Aurora, Robin," she says. "This business at your school yesterday was very bad, very bad indeed. We kept it out of the papers and off the TV here, but the international media have been asking delicate questions about the nature of our politics. The future of Aurora, and every child here depends on us keeping the nation as politically stable as possible, until we can begin production of this superconductor. There are many who wish me and my husband harm, and who will do anything to prevent this from happening. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be allowed to threaten the future of my child or the future of any other child in Genosha. Clear?"

"Yes," I say.

They must know, about the conversation. They must know that Col is involved. I don't even see the President's wife leave the room. I almost leap out of my chair when Bruce puts his hand on my shoulder.

"Well, old chum," he says. "Now you understand the gravity of the situation."

"Mozambique?" I say.

"Perhaps not even Mozambique," says Bruce.

"My God," I say.

"If it all falls apart, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands will perish, " says Bruce. "The white humans, like you and I, will be able to emigrate and make their way to the richer countries. Those countries will not want the Blacks and the Indians."

"No," I say.

"You know what is expected of you," says Bruce.

"Yes," I say. "How do you know that it was someone from the school?"

"They used a school sheet," says Bruce. "It had the school crest embroidered on it. They were smart enough to take it from the laundry, else we would have been able to do a DNA test. Is there anyone who you suspect?" says Bruce.

"No," I say. "I'll keep my ear to the ground."

"Do that," he says. "Time is of the essence. We need to know who did this and who put them up to it. We need to know of any future plots, and to know of them in time to act decisively."

"Oh," I say.

"Do you have any questions?" says Bruce.

"Why is a single banner so important?" I say. "Why do we need to keep DeVries out of the debates anyhow?"

"It was decided that he might encourage those who would foment insurrection if allowed to participate in the debate," says Bruce. "It's no different from the way the Americans constantly exclude any agents of radical economic or social change from their electoral process. The stakes are much higher here."

"I see," I say. "But why do we need money for anti-retrovirals? We kept HIV out, with all the testing."

"You know that I was away at the start of the Troubles," says Bruce.

"In America," I say.

"Do you know why I went to America?" says Bruce.

"To uni?" I say.

"No," he says. "I went to indulge my baser instincts. For that reason I went to San Francisco. I saw the first reports of the Troubles on the television news as I was preparing my leathers and gear for my first night on the town. I had been so proud of myself, believing that I could shirk my responsibilities and the strictures of my society. When I telephoned home, I was told my father and mother had both been murdered by the Chosen as their government fell."

"Then-," I say.

"When I was told of how your father had disowned you, I could not allow you to fall into temptation, and I am so very glad that you have so far seen fit to follow my advice," says Bruce. "I believe that God sent me a message, telling me that strict abstinence was the price I must pay to continue. I must forgo all baser instincts for the greater good."

I look at his eyes. They have an other-worldly glow to them.

"You need not believe it, old chum," says Bruce, smiling one of the few smiles I've ever seen from him. "It's the abstinence that's important. We're in Africa, Robin, and although it's often hard for us to admit it, we've got to face up to it. What do you feel about your father's death?"

"Cancer was a terrible way to go," I say.

"Does his death sadden you?" he says.

"Yes," I say.

"I think you are lying to me, Robin," he says.

"Yes," I say. "I am lying. I don't feel anything at all. Nothing. He threw me out into the street, abandoned me at a refugee shelter in Freekville. Sorry, Afriqueville. I don't care what he died of."

As long as it hurt.

"He died of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome," he says.

"What?" I say.

"AIDS," says Bruce. "Your father died of AIDS, which he presumably contracted from a sexual encounter with a prostitute in Sun City."

"But the doctor said-" I say.

"The doctors are saying what we told them to say," says Bruce. "It's now the leading cause of death in this country. Almost 1 in 50 children born today has it, and we expect to see infection rates similar to those on the mainland within 10 years. Perhaps it came over through the guest workers who've come since the Troubles, perhaps it was spread by the prostitutes in Afriqueville, perhaps it came through from those who indulged their baser instincts in brothels overseas. Perhaps it was all three together. It was certainly spread during the troubles. It matters not. All that we do know is that if this becomes public, we expect all to turn upon the guest workers, in spite of the fact that the infection rates are higher for us than for them. Our population are as superstitious and ignorant as Bantu peasants who clean our toilets when it comes to this, and The Chosen are the worst. I never want to see again what happens when a living human is thrown into a bonfire."

"Oh God," I say.

"In America, some believe that their whole society will collapse if their schoolchildren fail to say their prayers in school," says Bruce. "Here, we say our prayers and walk on a tightrope above an invisible abyss. If we see the rope, we shall lose our balance and fall."

"I'm frightened," I say.

"We all need to be," says Bruce. "Do you understand what is at stake?"

"Everything," I say.

"Everything," he says. "Are you up to the challenge? Do you see now why we can allow nothing to disrupt our providing peace, order, and good government?"

"Yes," I say. "I understand. I'll do my best to find what you need to know."

"Thank you, old chum," says Bruce, laying a hand on my shoulder. "I know I can count on you."

Major Pennyworth drives me back to the school. It takes ten minutes to find my way back to my bedroom. Col is lying in bed in his usual fashion, his chest lit by moonlight. I turn to the wall as I try to fall asleep.

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