Shattered Lives, page 27
part #2 of Rymellan Series
In closing, disobedience means death. Death to those who commit a Chosen Violation. Death to those who disobey. Death to those who violate the Way.
Yours in the Way,
A group of concerned Rymellans
Lesley stared at the letter in disbelief. Who did these Rymellans think they were, suggesting that she and Mo might commit a Chosen Violation? How insulting, implying they were that weak in the Way, especially in a letter that declared them strong in the Way! And did this group honestly believe that she wouldn’t protect the Way? Jayne wouldn’t be reproducing. The Adams line was over. Finished! Lesley didn’t need anyone dictating her priorities and telling her how to go about protecting the Way as if she didn’t know.
Why did this group even think she’d want advice from a bunch of strangers? The last thing she needed was more Rymellans meddling in her life. She’d already heard enough from some in her and Mo’s families, and was fed up with everyone insisting that a decision to exercise CT134 was easy and obvious. It wasn’t. Everyone kept saying Jayne was a threat to the Way, but their only support for that view was pointing out that her parents had committed Chosen Violations. Depraved and shocking? Yes. But her parents had fallen, not Jayne. It would take a much more compelling argument for Lesley to consider exercising CT134, or Jayne herself would have to show signs of falling from the Way.
She held the letter over the mouth of the recycling chute, but snatched it back at the last second and grabbed the envelope from her desk. Minutes later, she tapped on Laura’s open office door and marched inside.
“What’s the matter?” Laura asked, looking up.
“This.” She handed Laura the letter and folded her arms.
Laura’s expression grew dubious as she progressed through the letter. She looked at Lesley. “Where did it come from?”
“It was in my correspondence slot. And there’s no sender information on the envelope.” She waved it under Laura’s nose.
Laura frowned. “Nothing in it’s a violation, but a military member must be involved. Do you mind if I keep it? I think I’ll open a case file, just so we have a record of it.”
“Go ahead.” Lesley sighed. “The last thing I need is some group pressuring me to exercise CT134.”
Laura dropped the letter onto her desk. “It might not be a group. For all we know, it’s one person. And now that they feel they’ve done their duty to the Way, that’ll probably be it. So don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.” She tapped her fingertips together. “Though I don’t like that it came through our correspondence system.”
Lesley wished it hadn’t arrived at all. What next, messages to her and Mo on the monitors? “I think I’ll keep this to myself. Mo and Jayne don’t need to know.”
“Don’t mention it when you come for supper, you mean? I wouldn’t.” Laura held out her hand.
“What?”
“The envelope.”
Lesley gave it to her.
“I’m looking forward to hosting you all next week,” Laura said. “I want to meet Jayne, and it will be nice to exchange more than a few words with Mo.”
“We’re looking forward to it too,” Lesley said, hoping her smile reached her eyes. Mo certainly wouldn’t agree with that sentiment, and who knew how Jayne felt about it. “Anyway, I should get back to my office. I have more dispatches to read. Hopefully there won’t be any more like that one.”
“I’m sure there won’t be. And forget about this one. I doubt this group will bother you again.”
Lesley hoped Laura was right.
*****
Mo pressed her lips together and pulled Jayne to the left. Jayne groaned. “I’m sorry. Why do I step on your foot every time we get to that step?”
“You’ll get it,” Mo said, fervently hoping Jayne would. Her right foot was probably as flat as a pancake by now. Jayne didn’t just step on her foot, she came down on it hard. “You’re doing good for your first time.” And Jayne was, despite the one step giving her—both of them—trouble. “Do you want to take a break?” At least an hour must have passed since they’d awkwardly positioned themselves and tentatively danced the few steps Mo had demonstrated with an imaginary partner. If anyone had passed by, they would have wondered what she was doing.
“Sure.” Jayne let go of Mo. She shook her head when Mo picked up her flask of water and pointed to Jayne’s. “So how big is the dance floor at the Dance Hall?”
Mo swung up her comm unit to turn off the music, then surveyed the field as she sipped her water. They’d quickly decided that Jayne’s living room wasn’t large enough for dance lessons. At Mo’s suggestion, they’d flown to the Middleton estate and traipsed to a field that was hidden from the house, though a military patrol could wander through at any time. “It’s smaller than the field. When we’ve been dancing, we’ve always remained within the area of a typical dance floor.” She turned to Jayne. “I think I must have done that unconsciously.”
Jayne smiled, then squinted past her.
Mo followed her gaze. “She found us!” She dropped her flask and ran to Les.
“You aren’t dancing,” Les said after they’d hugged. “I expected to see you whirling around the field.”
“We’re taking a break.” Mo glanced over her shoulder. Jayne had sat down, apparently deciding to wait for them to return to her, rather than intrude.
Les looked toward Jayne. “Maybe I should have a dance with her.”
“You know what? She’s tired, and I’m hungry. I was just thinking that I’d like to eat soon.”
“Okay,” Les said, to Mo’s relief. “Your papa and Nathan are home. I told them we’ll be making supper.”
“Andrew wasn’t there?”
“No.”
Andrew was hardly around lately. It couldn’t be a girlfriend. He usually wasn’t tight-lipped when he was seeing someone.
“How’s the dancing coming along?” Les asked.
“She’s picking it up pretty quickly,” Mo said. “Another hour or two and she’ll be ready. We’re only practicing basic steps, though.”
“She’ll learn as she goes along.”
“I know, but when we’re at the Dance Hall, we’ll have to carefully choose our dances with her. It could turn out there aren’t two opportunities the whole night.”
Les gave her a pointed look. “She doesn’t have to be perfect. Stop trying to prevent me from dancing with her. I’ll have to dance with her sometime.”
Mo made a mental note to be more subtle next time. “I just don’t want to put her into an embarrassing situation,” she said, despite knowing she wasn’t fooling Les. “Anyway, let’s go eat.” She cupped her hand to one side of her mouth and shouted, “Jayne, we’re going to have supper now. Can you bring my flask?”
Jayne rose, clutching the flasks’ straps with one hand and picking up her sketchbook with the other. Since Mo had never seen Jayne actually open the sketchbook, today or any day, she was starting to wonder if it was filled with blank pages. Maybe Jayne just needed something to hang onto while away from home.
When Jayne reached them, she handed Mo her flask. “Thanks,” Mo murmured. Jayne mumbled a hello to Les, who returned her greeting. They started to walk to the house.
“Mo said the dancing is going well,” Les said, taking Mo’s hand.
“I doubt her right foot would agree,” Jayne said dryly, making Mo smile. She hated to admit it, but she sort of liked Jayne. Jayne was quiet and accommodating, and easy to hang out with. When she opened her mouth, something interesting usually came out. And if her last name wasn’t Adams, nobody would want them to execute her because there was no indication that she was weak in the Way. Not a single sign.
Mo would rather not be in a triad, but wishing she wasn’t in one would be pointless. Wishing Jayne would go away would be pointless too. There was only one way to get rid of her, and Mo would never agree to it. She’d eaten with Jayne, played cards with her, and now danced with her. Jayne wasn’t some anonymous person to Mo, as she was to all the airheads calling for her execution. Mo was uncomfortable with Les having another Chosen and would do everything she could to make sure Jayne stuck to their arrangement. What she wouldn’t do was kill Jayne to keep Les to herself. She knew in her gut that doing so would kill all three of them.
Fortunately Les felt the same way and had stood up to those in their families who’d wanted a swift execution. Mo would have to get used to having a third person hovering in her peripheral vision whenever she and Les were out together. But that was better than losing all respect for the person who stared back at her in the mirror and the one who sometimes slept next to her at night.
*****
Lesley yawned as she shrugged off her cloak and hung it. It was only 19:30, but a full day of meetings always wore her out, especially when the last meeting of the day ran more than an hour over schedule. She’d grabbed a bite to eat at the cafeteria before heading home, and looked forward to a quiet evening with a book, though Mo had said she might drop in.
“Lesley!” someone yelled as she climbed the stairs.
The shout had come from up the hallway. She backtracked in time to glimpse Jason going back into the study. He wasn’t alone. Her parents peered up at her when she stepped inside. The atmosphere felt tense; she suspected that heated words had been exchanged, but between whom and about what? “Where’ve you been?” Jason snapped.
“On duty. I beeped Mama.” As a courtesy. She was twenty-seven.
“You said your meeting would run a bit late. It’s almost 8:00.”
“I ate supper in the cafeteria. What’s wrong?”
Her parents exchanged glances. Jason opened his satchel, pulled out a black binder, and handed it to her. She opened it and read the top page.
Case for the Execution of Jayne Adams under Article CT134
Prepared by Advocate Christopher Phillips
File: CT1455-B
Blood pounded in her ears. She read it again, then closed the binder. “What is this?” She kept her voice steady, concealing her anger.
“A case that shows Adams is a threat to the Way,” Jason said smugly.
She turned to her parents. “Did you know about this?”
They shook their heads. “We found out when Jason gave it to us a couple of hours ago,” Mama said.
Lesley noticed the open binder on Papa’s desk and the closed one on Mama’s.
“Mary and I commissioned the case,” Jason said, perching himself on the edge of Mama’s desk.
“Don’t tell me you’ve dragged Mo into this, too,” Lesley exclaimed.
“Mo needs to read it, just as you do. Mary gave it to her a few hours ago.”
Then why hadn’t Mo beeped her about it? “You shouldn’t have done this behind our backs.”
“What were we supposed to do?” he said, his tone reasonable. “You and Mo refused to listen to us, so we thought that if an advocate laid it all out for you in a logical and rational manner, you might come to your senses. Adams threatens the triad, and because of that, she threatens the Way. Everyone else can see that. You need to see it too, before you Join and it’s too late.”
Lesley looked at her parents. “I assume you’ve read it?”
“We have,” Papa said.
Mama tapped the binder in front of her. “It argues that the Chosen Council wouldn’t have accounted for the Incident when assessing Jayne.”
“How could it?” Jason said. “Who would ever have thought that both Chosens in a Joining would fall? It’s unthinkable. Nobody’s sick enough to even imagine it.”
“Let me finish,” Mama said, frowning. “Phillips asserts that the Incident invalidates Jayne’s personality tests, that an event of such magnitude would have severely affected her. It would have changed her, perhaps damaged her in some way.”
“So now she’s a victim? And so we execute her?” Lesley wanted to toss the binder over her shoulder in disgust.
Jason threw up his hands. “Don’t you get it, Lesley? She’s not your Chosen. She might have been before the Incident, but she isn’t now.”
She’d never tell him that she’d suspected all along that Jayne wasn’t her Chosen, though not for the reason Phillips had put forward.
“The case includes supporting material that backs up Phillips’s assertion,” Papa said. “You should read it.”
So now it would be three against one, and they had a case to wave in her face. “I’ll read it.” She couldn’t ignore it. “But I’m not happy about you going behind our backs,” she said to Jason. “We said we wanted time. Why couldn’t you respect that?”
“Because the longer you take to make a decision, the more likely you are to Join with her. And once that Chosen ring is on your finger, there’s no way out. You have to exercise the article soon, before it’s too late.”
For a moment, she wondered if he was behind the letter she’d received from that concerned group. She wouldn’t put it past him to stoop that low. “I guess I’d better start reading it, then.” Not for his benefit, but because she wouldn’t sleep until she’d read the case. “I’ll read it in my room.”
She left the study and headed upstairs. The moment her bedroom door was shut, she tossed the binder onto her desk and punched Mo’s code into her comm station. “Why didn’t you beep me when Mary gave you the case?”
“Because I was afraid I’d say a few things about your brother I’d regret,” Mo said. “I figured I better calm down first. I’m still waiting.”
“Don’t go easy on him on my account.” Lesley pulled the chair from underneath the desk and sat down. “Is Mary still there?”
“No. She dumped this on me and left. Have you looked at it yet?”
“I just got it.”
“Les, her whole life is in there. I flipped through it and saw a report from the Learning Academy, from when she was six years old! This is completely unfair.”
Lesley nodded, even though Mo couldn’t see her. “I told Jason they shouldn’t have gone behind our backs.”
“Well, that too, but I’m talking about how we have all this information about her. And now what? We pick over her life.” Mo sighed. “I don’t feel good about this. It really isn’t fair at all.”
Lesley agreed, but refusing to read the case would be irresponsible. “We have to read it.”
“Yeah, I know we have to flaming read it!” She could visualize Mo’s tight face. “Why don’t I come over?” Mo said.
“I think it would be better for us to read the case separately, make up our own minds about it.” And she wanted to pore over the case in much more detail than Mo would. If she judged it lacking, it would be her against three advocates. “I’ll come over tomorrow, as soon as I’m off duty. We can discuss it then.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have finished it by then.”
“You have the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow to read it. I don’t know about you, but I want to read it and deal with it before we see Jayne again.” Silence. “Mo?”
“Yeah, okay,” she said quietly.
“You all right?”
“No, I’m not. This stinks. But I’ll hold my nose.”
For a moment, she reconsidered Mo’s offer to come over, but rejected it again. “I’m going to start reading, then. I only have tonight.” She hesitated, then said, “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Mo paused. “I won’t blame Jayne for hating us if she finds out about this. I don’t know how I’ll look her in the eye next time I see her. I’ll know way more about her than I should.”
“I don’t like this, either.”
“I know, but you’ll be able to shut everything out and read the case like an advocate. I’ll just get angrier. But I know I have to read it. I want my say.”
“Mo, your assessment of this case matters more to me than anyone else’s.” Not only would Mo’s emotional reading of the case balance Lesley’s logical reading of it, but they had to agree on CT134. If they disagreed on such a fundamental issue, the triad would be in trouble, and not because of Jayne. “I’ll beep you when I leave headquarters.”
They said good-bye and disconnected. Lesley stared at the black binder. She opened it and read the title page again, then rubbed her forehead. When she flipped to the next page, there’d be no going back. If she read something she wished she hadn’t, it would be too late. Lesley read cases all the time, many of them in folders like this one and with similar title pages. This was the first one that made her hands clammy.
Yesterday Hall had told her that she’d been accepted into the commander training program and would enter it next month. Laura always said she’d do anything to protect the Way and didn’t shy away from decisions to execute. Lesley was confident that she wouldn’t either, but hoped the first person she condemned to die wouldn’t be someone the Chosen Council had entrusted to her. She braced herself and turned the page.
*****
Mo scrutinized page sixty-four of the case, considering every angle. When satisfied, she released the folded page with a snap of her wrist. It cleared the bed, then nosedived to the floor. She groaned. Page forty-two had flown the best, making it across the room and skimming along the window before gliding gracefully onto her desk. Time to try a new design. She picked up her comm unit and selected Paper Flyer Design #23. Ooh, this one looked intricate, and probably wouldn’t fly very far. Given the rhetoric weighing down every page, she was surprised any had managed to clear the bed at all.
If she had to read the same point again, written slightly differently, she’d throw up. Advocates must be paid by the word. Okay, so the Incident may have affected Jayne. How many years had this Advocate Phillips spent at college to come up with that brilliant conclusion? With a sigh, Mo removed page sixty-five from the binder and glanced at it. Oh yeah, the military report about Jayne’s level three violation, filed by one—she searched for the name—Lieutenant C. Bradley. According to the “report,” Jayne had provoked Bradley, called her names. Come on.
