Finally she offers him a smile, although he suspects it slipped though her defenses. “I don’t know what it is, but people suddenly love you, Lev. Even looking like that.”
He tries to smile around the ventilator tube but finds it too difficult.
“Anyway,” she says, “everyone who donated part of themselves to save your life were total strangers, except for one.”
Perhaps it’s the medication he’s on, or perhaps he truly is dense, but he doesn’t figure it out until Miracolina stands, turns around, and raises her blouse to show a six-inch wound on the left side of her back. “I think giving you my left kidney buys me the right to tell you that you’re an idiot,” she says.
Yes, it does, Lev writes. And yes, I am.
• • •
The rest of the day becomes a receiving line. First comes Elina, who is, of course, his primary physician. When Miracolina leaves, Elina tells him that the girl has barely left his bedside since the day she arrived two weeks ago. “She offered her kidney, but only with a guarantee that she and her family could come to the Rez while you recover.” And then Elina adds, “She’s a sweet girl, although she tries not to show it.”
Chal takes time out of an extremely hectic day to give him a legal briefing of sorts. He tells him that the Tribal Council revoted on his petition to officially give AWOLs sanctuary, and it passed. Now the tribe is threatening a veritable war against the Juvenile Authority. Lev would like to think that his failed attempt at martyrdom might have had something to do with it, but they made the decision a day before, when the Parental Override bill passed in Congress. Still, Lev was the one who planted the idea in their heads.
“One more thing,” Chal tells him. “In order to get you back here to the Rez, we had to jump through some legal hoops. Elina and I had to become your official guardians. . . . The easiest way to do that was to adopt. I’m afraid you’ll have to change your business cards,” Chal jokes. “Because now you’re Lev Tashi’ne.”
“You certainly are building up the identities,” says Elina.
Pivane comes and sits beside him in stoic silence for a while, then later in the afternoon, Una and Kele pay him a visit. They bring with them something Lev was never expecting to see. In truth, he was never expecting to see anything in this world again, but this is something he really wasn’t expecting to see. It’s a small furry creature clinging to Kele’s shoulder. Its large, soulful eyes dart everywhere around the room, before making eye contact with Lev.
They’ve brought him a kinkajou.
“It was Kele’s idea,” says Una.
“Well, it’s your spirit animal,” Kele says, “and people do keep them as pets sometimes.” Kele peels the kinkajou from his neck and puts it on the bed next to Lev, where it promptly climbs to his head, makes itself comfortable, and urinates.
“Oops!” Kele grabs the animal away, but it’s too late. Lev finds that it actually raises his spirits, though. He’d laugh if he could.
I guess he’s claimed me, Lev writes.
To which Una responds, “I think you claimed him first.”
Elina, who enters the unit a moment later, is fit to be tied. “Take that out of here! What were you two thinking? Now we’ll have to sterilize everything, bathe him again, and redress all of his wounds. Out! Everyone out!”
But before Una leaves, she says the oddest thing.
“Your new friend might not be welcome here, but I’ll let you bring him to the wedding.”
He has to run it through his mind again to make sure he heard her right.
What wedding? Lev writes.
“Mine,” Una tells him, with a smile that speaks as much of sadness as it does of joy. “I’m marrying Wil.”
74 • Co/nn/or
In another hospital bed a thousand miles away, Connor lies awake. He has no memory of waking, he just is. And he knows something is off. Not exactly wrong, just different. Very different.
A face looms before him, inspecting him. It’s a face he knows. Old. Wizened. Stern. Perfect teeth. The admiral.
“About time you came out of it,” the admiral says. “I was ready to tear the surgeons a new one for rewinding you into a vegetable.”
It all goes in one ear, but doesn’t exactly come out the other—it just gets tangled inside. He knows what the admiral said, but has trouble grasping it again once he’s done speaking.
“Can you talk?” the admiral asks. “Or did the cat get your tongue?” And he laughs at his own gallows humor.
Connor opens his mouth to speak, but it’s as if his mouth is on upside down. He knows it’s not—it couldn’t be—but it feels that way. Where am I? Connor wants to ask, but his mind can’t find the words. He closes his eyes, reaching through his mind, but all that comes to him is the image of a globe he remembers from his elementary school library. The name of the company that manufactured it was written in bold black letters across the Pacific Ocean. Where am I? Connor wants to ask, but what comes out instead is—
“Rand? McNally? Rand McNally?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the admiral says.
“Rand McNally!” He shuts his mouth, and grunts in frustration, shutting his eyes, trying to grasp what’s happening to him. Another image comes to mind.
“Zoo . . . ,” he says. Caged animals in a zoo. These are his thoughts and memories. All still there, but locked away from one another.
“You’re babbling, boy.”
“Babbling,” he says. Well, at least he can mimic.
The admiral seems a bit troubled by Connor’s responses, and that troubles Connor. “Damn it,” the admiral yells to a nurse Connor didn’t see in the room a moment ago. “I want the doctors in here. Now!”
One doctor comes in, then another. Connor doesn’t see them, but hears them. Connor only processes part of what they say. Something about “a severe insult to his brain.” And “nanites working internal repairs.” And the word “patience” repeated several times. Connor wonders how a person’s brain can be insulted.
When the admiral returns to Connor’s bedside, he seems placated. “Well, if nothing else, you’re certainly building up identities.”
Connor gives him what he hopes is a questioning look. It must work, because the admiral explains.
“First, you were the Akron AWOL, then you were Robert Elvis Mullard at the Graveyard, and now you’re Bryce Barlow.” He pauses, clearly intending to confuse Connor, and further confusion is definitely not something he needs.
“That was the name on all forty-six of the boxes you came in. Bryce Barlow was the boy we purchased at auction, before your friend Argent played the old shell game, and switched all the labels.”
Now it all comes back to Connor. He lets the understanding flow through him.
His own unwinding.
The cheery voice of UNIS.
And the plan. The crazy, harebrained, desperate plan.
Connor honestly didn’t have much faith in it, because it had too many moving parts. Far too many things could go wrong. First, Risa had to contact the admiral—the only person they knew with money enough to actually enter Divan’s auction. Then Argent had to find a way to get him into the auction with various false identities without arousing Divan’s suspicion. Then the admiral had to win the bids on every piece of some other poor kid who’d just been unwound. As if all that wasn’t difficult enough, Argent—who was not the sharpest tool in the shed—had to be counted on to switch the labels, which wasn’t just a matter of changing tags; the stasis containers were all digitally coded. Lot 4832 had to be switched with lot 4831. Every single box.
And even if all that came together, there was no telling if Connor would. No one had ever tried to physically reassemble an Unwind from his own parts. Connor would become the real-life “Humphrey Dunfee,” in a way Harlan Dunfee never had.
“We had help, of course,” the admiral explains. “I put together a top-notch surgical team that could make Connor out of Connor stew.”
“To
othpaste back in the tube.” Connor says.
The admiral is pleased that Connor has said something he understands. “Yeah, that’s the long and short of it.”
Connor finds his mind fixed on poor Bryce Barlow. There was no one to fight for his reintegration. No one to bring him back. What made Connor any more worth saving than him?
And what of Risa? Just because he’s here, doesn’t mean she freed herself from Divan.
“Piano!” he demands. “Wheelchair! Heartbeat! Kiss!” He grunts in frustration, bears down, feeling an ache in his brain, and triumphantly pulls out her name. “Risa!” He says. “Risa! Rand McNally Risa?”
And he hears quietly from somewhere across the room, “I’m here, Connor.”
She’s been here all along, keeping her distance. How awful must he look if she has to build up the courage to approach him? Or maybe she was just trying to get her emotions under control, because he can see that her eyes are moist. If there’s one thing Risa hates it’s for people to see her cry.
As Risa comes into view, the admiral moves away. Or maybe Connor’s mind is only able to hold one of them in his awareness at once. Insulted brain, he thinks.
She takes his hand. It hurts, but he lets her take it. “I’m so happy you’re awake. We were all worried. It’s a miracle you’re here.”
“Miracle,” he says. “Happy. Miracle.”
“It’s going to be hard at first. To move and to think. You’ll need rehabilitation, but I know you’ll be back to your old self in no time.”
Old self, he thinks, and something hits him that brings on a sudden wave of anxiety. “Eating machine! Blood in the water! Amity Island!”
Risa shakes her head, nowhere near understanding him. So in spite of the pain, he raises his right arm, and finds what he’s looking for:
The shark.
It’s still there! Thank goodness it’s still there! He doesn’t know why, but the fact that it’s still a part of him gives him great comfort.
He takes a deep breath of relief. “Fireplace,” he says. “Cocoa. Blanket.”
“Are you cold?
“No,” he says, happy to have found the right word. It inspires him to hack through the thicket to find more words. “I’m warm. Safe. Grateful.” The cages begin to fall in the zoo. His thoughts begin to free themselves.
Risa goes on to tell of the things that happened while he was “in transit,” and how he’s been in a two-week coma since his rewinding.
“Trick or treat,” he says.
“Not quite,” Risa tells him. “Another two weeks.”
She tells him how she and Divan’s other Unwinds were freed, but that Argent never made it out. She tells him how Divan’s black-market auctions have mysteriously stopped. “We think he’s focusing his attention on fighting the Burmese Dah Zey.”
Connor considers that. “Godzilla,” he says. “Godzilla versus Mothra.”
“Indeed,” says the admiral from somewhere out of his line of sight. “Best way to save humanity is to turn the monsters against one another.”
Risa tries to cheer him up by talking about Cam, and what he accomplished on his own. “He’s a hero now!” Risa tells him. “He brought down Proactive Citizenry, just like he said he would—and that awful woman who blackmailed me is being tried for ‘crimes against humanity.’ They’re actually calling her ‘Madame Mengele,’ and I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”
There’s more, about Lev, who, as usual, almost died but didn’t, and Grace, who made herself some sweet deal with the organ printer—and Hayden, who’s called for a march on Washington—but Connor finds he can’t hold on to the details, so he closes his eyes and lets her words wash over him like a healing spell.
He knows it won’t always be like this. It will get better each day. Maybe not easier but better . . . and yet he senses that the mere act of having been unwound has taken something from him. No matter how much he heals, he’ll always have a deep and abiding war wound. Now he knows what Cam must feel. Not so much an emptiness, but a gap between what was and what is, like air trapped between the seams of his soul. He tries to express it to Risa, but the only word that comes is—
“Hole . . .” He grips Risa’s hand tighter. “Hole, Risa, hole . . .”
And she smiles. “Yes, Connor,” she says. “You’re whole. You’re finally whole.”
* * *
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* * *
75 • Gatherings
The granite and marble markers of history hold memories that can’t be unwound, especially so, the monuments of Washington, DC. They have witnessed change and stagnation, glorious feats of justice, as well as shameful failures of democracy. Lincoln’s and Jefferson’s eyes have seen great strides in Martin Luther King’s dream, and have welcomed him as he strides forward in stone between them. Yet those same unblinking eyes have seen Vietnam War protesters teargassed, and thousands tranq’d during the first teen uprising. None of these things can they forget any more than the war memorials can forget the names they so solemnly bear.
A gathering begins to form before those vigilant eyes during the last few days of October. Airlines scramble to add flights to their schedules, the metro is at constant capacity, and vehicular traffic within the capital ensures that walking is the fastest way to get anywhere aboveground.
The grassy expanse of the National Mall begins to speckle with tents in a slow but relentless occupation days before the actual event, which, as it is scheduled for November first, has been dubbed by the media as the “All Saint’s Uprising.”
From Capitol Hill the portent couldn’t be more ominous than the obsidian-dark wall of a thunderstorm rolling in from the Chesapeake Bay.
• • •
Far to the west, there is another, smaller gathering. This one on a commune outside of Omaha, Nebraska. The gathering is a wedding—a bittersweet one at best, because of the parties involved. Una Jacali will wed Wil Tashi’ne in the only way she can.
The Arápache council forbade it to be done on tribal land. The Tashi’nes, although they love Una dearly, could not support it either, and chose not to attend.
It was Lev who came to Una’s aid, and suggested that a revival commune—a place dedicated to the virtual union of someone divided—would be openminded when it came to Una’s concept of “divisional matrimony.” And Lev knew just the guy to ask.
As it turned out, CyFi and his dads were more than happy to not only provide the venue, but also to track down the beneficiaries of Wil Tashi’ne’s parts—a task much easier now that every last rabbit hole of Proactive Citizenry’s database has been opened to public scrutiny.
Not all of Wil’s parts would come, but enough agreed. Perhaps they agreed to come out of curiosity, or for the novelty, or just for the chance to meet Camus Comprix, who is expected to be among them. All told, there will be twenty-seven grooms, representing almost two-thirds of Wil Tashi’ne. That a number of the grooms will be women seems little more than par for the course.
“True, the course is about as surreal as an Escher staircase,” one of CyFi’s dads pointed out, “but what’s life without a little vertigo?”
76 • Lev
“I gotta tell ya, Fry, you really did a number on yourself with those tattoo
s—and that fur hat just ain’t working.”
Lev peels the kinkajou from his head, where he often goes, but rarely pees anymore. Lev lets him cling to his shoulder instead. “First of all,” Lev tells CyFi, “they’re not numbers, they’re names; and second, don’t insult Mahpee, or he might claw your eyes out.”
“What? Little umber Elmo got claws?”
Lev smiles. It’s good to see CyFi again, even if it is under unusual circumstances. Of course, any circumstances are better than when they last saw each other.
“So, I hear you got a girlfriend,” teases CyFi.
“Kind of, I think. It’s a long-distance thing,” Lev tells him. “She’s gone back to Indiana with her family, but I’m still on the Rez in Colorado.”
CyFi raises his eyebrows. “Could be worse, if you catch my drift.”
The sun comes out from behind a stray cloud, lighting up the garden. As the day is unseasonably warm, it was decided to have the wedding outside, within the circle of stones at the garden’s center, the participants within the circle, and the guests standing just outside of it. With no tradition for this sort of thing, rules and structure are all spur-of-the-moment. Right now all the “grooms” mill around the inner circle getting to know one another and asking logistical questions of the minister, who keeps offering up shrugs.
Then, just before the ceremony begins, Lev hears a familiar voice behind him.
“I swear, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes without you doing something crazy.”
He turns to see Connor standing behind him, and not just Connor but Risa as well. The sight of them takes his breath away, quite literally, and Lev starts coughing and gasping. It’s the nuisance of having only one lung. Supposedly, Elina’s getting one of those new machines on the Rez that can grow him a second one, so it won’t always be like this.
“Whoa,” says Connor, “I didn’t mean to freak you into cardiac arrest.”