These eco-terrorists are a blight on our society. I won’t rest until I’ve destroyed every one.
—Interview with Falcon Edwards, the Johannesburg Times, October 12, 2353
On Saturday morning, when I leave for the ghost library, a bodyguard shadows me. Not Hanif, he’ll take over later in the day. The man is as unobtrusive as Hanif promised. No one watching would suspect he’s following me. The Living Lost have not shown up at our home yet, but I might need him if I’m recognized at the ghost library.
The crowd on the lawn outside work grew again yesterday. I passed them on my way in and out of Queen’s Park, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. They know me by sight now. They call and reach out to me from behind the barriers set up to contain them. There were new signs yesterday. One said, “No Victim’s Voice Silenced.” When I saw that, I felt a stab of sympathy.
I enter High Park well before the main entrance, hoping to slip into Prospero’s encampment unnoticed. I’d like to see Sparrow, to know she’s fine, before anything else happens. I might not want to stay after I’ve spoken to Prospero, or I might not be welcome. The air holds a chill this morning. I skirt the camp, scanning for children, dry leaves crunching under my feet. Wisps of smoke rise from cooking fires and the smell of frying food drifts on the sharp air. A group of children have already eaten, it seems. They’re playing a complicated kind of tag involving monkey bars and not touching the ground. I watch for awhile before I recognize Sparrow, she’s changed that much. The quiet, haunted waif is gone. In her place is a cheeky urchin, with glowing cheeks and flying hair, who taunts the “it” and squeals with delight when she escapes. Somehow, in under three weeks, Prospero’s people have worked this miracle.
Seeing Sparrow like this gives me a surge of satisfaction. Very little of what I do pleases me completely; there’s always a nagging feeling I could have done better. This time, I got it right.
“She’s settled in perfectly.” In the nanosecond before I recognize Prospero’s voice, I startle. He laughs, not unkindly. “Easy there.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. I shake it off without thinking. The laughter fades from his face. “What’s wrong?”
He’s caught me off guard, without time to compose myself.
“I saw you,” I say, “in a hologram. I saw you with Dido and the baby, outside the tent at that rally in 2353.” My voice drops to an angry whisper. “I know what you were.”
“What I was?” he says. “You mean a husband and a father, or an eco-terrorist?” There’s no anger in his voice, only sorrow.
“B—both,” I stammer. “You admit it?”
“I don’t talk much about my past, but I’ve never tried to hide it, Blake. You might as well hear the whole story.” He looks around. “Your timing’s terrible, though. Let me delegate a few jobs that have to be done before the ghost library starts. Then we’ll talk. All right?”
I nod, speechless with surprise. He leaves quickly, covering the ground in huge, energetic strides.
I turn back to watch the children. There’s a lull in the game now, and they sit together on the ground. Sparrow’s distinct, reedy voice carries over to me. “My father was as tall as a tree,” she says, “and he sang me to sleep every single night.” She pounds her fist on the ground as she speaks the last three words to give them the emphasis they deserve. I smile. She’s already talking about the time before, something her Tribe would never have allowed her to do. I need to see her more than she needs to see me. I just sit and watch until Prospero returns.
“The rest of the work is taken care of for now,” he says, sitting beside me. “It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Explain myself to some idealistic young person who is disappointed by my past,” he says. “It used to happen fairly often, but most people here know my story now. It’s part of the lore of this place.” He gives a deep sigh. “So, you saw Dido and Rosa. At least you know how much I’ve lost.”
I wasn’t expecting him to be so open. My anger vanishes. “How did it happen?”
“Dido worked with this environmental protest group, Save Earth Now. You probably know that. Swan Gil was the executive director, and Dido was the office manager, but in fact, they ran the organization as equals. Everyone else came and went. Swan and Dido were the backbone.
“And I was an eco-terrorist. You know that, too. It’s not something I’m proud of. I was young, I was stupid, and I thought I was immortal. Really. I believed nothing could possibly harm me. We worked together as an independent cell, three stupid young guys. We started off with pranks, jamming communication lines, hacking into government holo-zines, harmless stuff. Only a few legitimate protest groups were willing to help people like us, provide information and sometimes funds. SEN was one of them. That’s how I met Dido. She thought it was exciting at first. I think that’s why she married me.
“But then we had Rosa, and Dido began to change. I did too, but in the wrong direction. My cell got more violent. We never hurt anybody. Never. But we moved from mischief to vandalism, then we graduated to major vandalism. I still regret the Oak Moraine fire deeply.”
“That was you?”
“Yeah, that was me. We’d planned it for months. We knew which night guards were careless and when they worked. We were just supposed to torch some half-finished houses, set the developers back a few million. But the night we’d picked turned out to be terribly windy. We talked about postponing, but the forecast called for rain. We thought it would be all right. We were wrong.”
“I know. I saw the newscasts.”
“So you know what we did to the forest. You couldn’t replace those trees in a millennium. I was depressed for months after, pulled out of my cell for a while.” He shakes his head. “Looking back now, I can’t believe how angry I was. I guess being young lets you feel that deeply. But you have to understand, we were seriously concerned about the planet. You know the Dark Times happened because of changes caused by people. Because the Consumers couldn’t stop consuming, even though they saw what they were doing. For more than a century, everyone had to live in horrible conditions right out of the distant past, until, finally, they began to recover.
“A lot of us felt we were reaching the same critical point they reached in the twenty-first century, where we were beginning to do harm on a global level. I was afraid we’d just repeat the same mistakes again, and send our children back into another Dark Time. Why is it so hard for us to think about the future? How often do we have to make the same mistake before we learn something?” There’s so much passion in these questions, for a moment, he seems just as young as he did in the hologram. Then the lines of age and sorrow return to his face.
“The Oak Moraine fire was a turning point. The Protectors could not forgive. Of course, it wasn’t the damage to the forest that bothered them. The money behind the housing development came from people in power.”
“That’s why Falcon Edwards was so upset?” I ask. “Probably. After, the Protectors became determined to stop the eco-terrorists, and, along the way, a few other nuisances they wanted to get rid of.”
“The environmental protest movement and the push for democracy?”
He looks impressed. “You’ve already figured out a lot of this,” he says.
“It’s been my job. We’ve been at it for weeks,” I tell him. “Two of the people I’m working with are brilliant. A lot of the pieces are still missing, but I do know about the offer Edwards made, to limit the technology in exchange for eco-terrorists.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Most of our ‘friends’ went for that pretty quick. The protest movement took on new momentum that summer, so the government had to take it seriously for the first time.”
“Because of the anti-regenerationists?” I ask.
“Right again. Those people were unlike anyone Dido had worked with before. They could whip up feelings in ways no one else could. The environmentalists thought they’d be able to handle what came next, but they were wrong. Fern Logos was able to tap into fear of technology at a very basic, very emotional level. Once those forces were unleashed, none of us could control them.”
“But Falcon Edwards could?”
Prospero nods. “He knew how to channel that hate and make it do what he wanted. I’ve never seen anyone operate like that, before or since.”
“So what happened to you, after that rally?”
“We knew I had to disappear right away. Too many people knew what I’d been up to. I tried to convince Dido to stay put with Rosa, but she wanted to come with me. We both felt the coalition might turn on SEN because of its links with eco-terrorists, so I agreed.
“We couldn’t leave the prefecture without showing ID, so we were stuck in the area. We took what we could carry that same night and left everything else behind, just fled. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. Dido and Swan had a code, and we could send messages from public kiosks to let her know we were fine, but that was all.
“You can’t get a job without showing ID. We rented seedy little places at the edges of the industrial zones and I started busking. I was already trained in clowning and mime. That was perfect in some ways, because I could work in makeup. I spent a lot of my time in disguise, and people gave me cash tokens. I moved around, taking the commuter trams in all directions—Hamilton, Oakville, even back to Toronto some days. So we were able to survive.
“But the situation got worse. Dido stayed at home, listening to a little radio obsessively, trying to find out what was happening. The other guys in my cell were arrested. Big media event, that was. Then Eric Wong was appointed Environmental Protector. Shortly after, Fern Logos became assistant deputy to the Medical Protector. In October, the government announced the list of restricted technologies, and people with specialized knowledge were told to obtain a ‘technology registration number.’ A few were actually given numbers, but most who reported to Internal Protection never came back.”
“How do you know that?”
“During the winter, a resistance began to emerge. It didn’t take me long to figure out how to connect. I’d been living a double life for years. Ironic, isn’t it? Just a few months after Falcon Edwards cut that deal, I was working with the very people Dido and I had been trying to restrict. The techies knew I was an eco-terrorist, but we didn’t talk about it. I had skills they needed, and we had a common enemy.
“I enjoyed my years in the resistance. We rescued people from under the noses of officials and got them to safety. It was a lot like being an eco-terrorist—hating the Protectors, putting myself in danger, getting the same rush. But things were had for Dido. The technocaust just ate at her soul. And I was too busy playing hero to notice.
“By spring, the technocaust was out of hand. Just a few days after Eric Wong died in that highly unlikely ‘accident,’ Fern Logos was killed, supposedly by eco-terrorists. There were no real eco-terrorists left by then, but the government used his death as an excuse to declare all members of environmental protection groups eco-terrorists. Suddenly, they were all criminals. It’s hard to describe the climate. The military was helping the government, of course, but even gangs of ordinary people went door to door with lists, checking ID cards. The government only had to brand you an eco-terrorist or say you were involved in some sort of advanced technology. When key ‘eco-terrorists’ were caught, there were big media stories, with profiles of their lives and their supposed crimes.
“I was still moving Dido and the baby every few weeks to keep them safe, but not spending any time with them, not understanding how isolating that was.” He stops and looks down at his hands. “I couldn’t see what was right in front of my eyes.” He stops and I wait, saying nothing because I can’t think of anything to say. Finally, he takes a shaky breath and continues.
“The day after Swan was arrested, Dido took the baby and turned herself in. Just walked into an Internal Protection office and told them who she was. We were able to find that much out later, but we lost the trail after that.” His voice chokes. “I couldn’t find them, so I couldn’t save them.”
One hot tear spills down my cheek, taking me by surprise. I had forgotten myself and everything’ around us. I hesitate, then put my hand over his. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He shakes his head. “I’ve tried to tell myself that. It doesn’t work.” He gestures to the camp around him. “This is my life now. I take the children no one else wants. It doesn’t make up for what happened to Dido and Rosa, but it gives me a reason to keep going. That has to be enough.” He stands and pats me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve lived with this for a long time now.” He looks past the bench to my bodyguard standing at a distance. “Tell your minder we’re putting you inside a tent today, so you’ll be out of sight. It’s too chilly to leave the little ones outside. I’ve got a lot of work to do now. Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I say. Then I cover my face with my hands and burst into tears.
Spending the day with the children helps me recover, but Prospero’s story haunts me. By Sunday evening, I can’t keep it to myself any longer, so I go to Erica and tell her everything. We’re both crying by the time I finish, but I feel better.
“That’s so terrible,” Erica says, wiping her eyes. “But how strong he must be, to pull himself together and go on like that.”
“Yes, and if I’d known about his past a few weeks ago, I would never have spoken to him. I’d have hated him. Just like Astral would have hated me.”
“That’s true,” Erica says. I sense she’s waiting for me to go on.
“I must be changing,” I say, “because it seems to me I don’t have the right to judge anyone anymore.” But I shake my head. “If every change is going to be this painful and confusing, I’m not sure I want to keep going.”
To my surprise, she agrees. “It would be easier to stay the way you are now.”
“No! No, it wouldn’t. I can’t stay like this.” I remember what I said to Griffin. “I want to find some way to put all this anger and bitterness down and just walk away from it.”
Erica smiles.
My mouth falls open in surprise. “You tricked me.” Then, somehow, I find I’m laughing.
She laughs too. “I didn’t trick you, Blake. It’s what you said, you are changing. So, what are you going to do next?”
I’ve already made up my mind about that. “I guess I’d better meet with the Living Lost. Not all of them,” I add quickly. “Just one or two to begin with.”
She smiles again. “I’m sure Hanif can arrange that.”
I shake my head in amazement. “I can hardly believe I’m doing this.”
Erica puts her hand on mine. “It won’t always be this hard, you know. Eventually, you’re going to come out the other side.”
I pretend to agree as I say goodnight, but when I’m alone, I allow myself to wonder how I can get to the other side without going past my father. Maybe this is just a way of stalling.