Nadia Reyes lives in this house. It’s not much of a house, but I suppose if it was anything to talk about I probably wouldn’t be standing in front of it right now. It’s orange for starters. Only crazy old women live in orange houses. Them and the poor families that buy their ugly orange houses after they die. It’s orange and it has brown flower boxes with nothing but potting soil in them. I hate this house. I’m very close to deciding that I hate Nadia Reyes, when I shake myself out of it. I’ve been doing this too long. I really need a break. I really need time away.
But there is no time away. Time away for me means people die. But then, time with me also sort of means people die. I’m better off not thinking about it.
I knock on the door and wait. They know I’m coming. They should anyway. Nadia’s school was supposed to tell them.
The door opens and the little woman standing there glares at me very, very hard. She has tight, brown skin and small black eyes and she’s very obviously accusing me of something before I’ve even said hello. I very briefly forget what I’m there for. Mostly I just want to run away.
“Hello, I’m Caulden Foss,” I manage to say, mostly out of reflex. “You must be Nadia’s mother?”
She keeps staring at me, her hard, black eyes twitching ever so slightly between her half-closed eyelids. It strikes me that she may not speak English, but then she steps back ever so much and says, “Come in.”
I slide in between her short frame and the door. Inside the house is warm and a little moist. I smell something sweet and figure she must have been cooking before I got there.
“The school told you I was coming?” The woman nods. She hasn’t moved from the doorway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”
“Maria,” she says softly.
“Maria,” I smile. “Beautiful. Is Nadia home? Or your husband?”
“Nadia is upstairs,” she says. “My husband is still at work.”
I wander away from the door, hoping to lure Maria a little further into her own house. It’s not going to be a great conversation however you slice it, but the more time we spend in the doorway the worse it’s going to be. It puts entirely too much power in Maria’s hands. The threshold of any home is very powerful. They teach you that on the second day.
“Do you want to talk about Nadia’s scores first? Or do you want to bring her down here and talk about the program?”
She doesn’t answer. She seems to be thinking. Finally, she crosses to the kitchen table and sits down. She motions towards a chair, so I come over and sit down, too.
“I want to know…things.” She looks at the table. I wonder if she’s having a hard time with the language. She doesn’t have that much of an accent. She looks back towards the door. “I want to know why her. That first, I guess.”
I nod. “Nadia’s scores were outstanding. She’s in the top ninetieth percentile nationwide in all categories. Most impressive though were her aptitude tests. I interviewed her peers. It all comes together. You know the slogan, We Only Recruit Heroes. Well, I think that’s Nadia.”
Maria nods, slowly, less to what I was saying maybe, and more to whatever she was saying to herself. “I have three others. Two boys and another girl. Younger. Will you come back and take them from me, too?”
She wasn’t asking out of pride, but fear. Fortunately, they teach you how to answer that question on the first day. “Mrs. Reyes, I’m not taking your daughter. That sounds like I’m stealing her. I’m just giving her an opportunity. It’s ultimately her choice.”
“How could she say no?” Maria seemed unable or unwilling to look at me anymore. “What did her friends say? When you asked, what did they say that made her a good candidate?”
“She’s brave,” I say. “She’s loyal. She’s smart and she’s dedicated.”
“Dedicated to what?”
I shrug. “Her friends. Her family.”
Maria nods, an unhappy little smile just at the corner of her mouth. “See? She is those things. She is brave and she is loyal to her family. So how could she say no?”
“Easy,” I say, not understanding. “She just says no and I go to the next one on my list. It’s not complicated. If she doesn’t want it…”
“Forty thousand,” says Maria, suddenly meeting my eyes. “Forty thousand credits? That’s right, isn’t it?”
I nod again. “For confirmed kills, yes. Forty thousand. Plus, there’s a special fifty thousand bonus if she hits ten.”
“Ten kills?”
“Yes ma’am.”
Maria turns back to the front door. “And for misses?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. Not at the moment, anyway. Though we are working on getting partials for near hits that disable enemies or in some way directly lead to hits.”
“But…” She seems to be thinking of exactly what she wants to say. “It would kill her all the same. Wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“It would kill her. A miss the same as a hit. It would be the same…to her.”
“The radiation.” I’m nodding again. I have to work on that. I nod too much. My instructor told me it starts to look fake after a while, like I’m not really listening. It’s a hard habit to break, though. “They’re working on that, you know. They come up with new models all the time, always safer than the last, less…radiation.”
“But still…it will kill her.”
I shake my head. “We have a cap at thirty shots per cadet. So yes, while there is going to be damage, we put that cap in there specifically because we don’t want anyone taking too much radiation.”
“They say that one is enough.”
I don’t like where any of this is going. It’s better when the kid is present. The pride thing takes over. Makes things easier. “I’m sorry, one is enough for what?”
Maria smiles again, the angry, sad, wistful smile that dies at the corner of her mouth. “I wanted grandchildren.”
“They haven’t done any conclusive studies on that,” I offer. “I know a girl who took her full cap of thirty shots and came out just fine. Started a family of her own and everything. Plus, she had seventeen kills worth of money in the bank to start out with. That’s true.” I don’t know why I can’t stop myself from saying that. It is true, it just doesn’t make it sound very true when I end with That’s true! Of course, it doesn’t help my argument that she’s the only one of 500 plus cadets to manage something like that.
“You know a girl.” Maria nods a little. “I know she will go. Will you come back for my other children?”
I know well enough what she wants to hear, but I can tell she’s the sort that remembers and when the next oldest passes his tests and I knock on the door she’ll let me know about it. “Nadia is very special. It isn’t likely your other children will score like she did.”
“She’s a hero.” Another slow nod.
“Besides, I don’t believe this war is going to last that much longer. The more talented cadets like Nadia we recruit, the sooner the Quads’ll have no choice but to turn around and go home, right?”
“Right.” She’s gone. She’s like a soldier on a battlefield who knew they were going to lose but wanted to empty their clip first. Now the clip’s empty. Nadia joins us at the kitchen table. She signs her papers. Maria offers me some stew, but she doesn’t want me to stay and I feel the same. Besides, I have to be at John Dilmore’s house soon.
*Ω*
I saw the name on my list this morning when I left the office, but I didn’t look closely. I didn’t see the address.
“Robert Reyes.” The house is still orange, but the steps are new. There are flowers in the flower boxes, whites ones and reds and blues. I knock on the door and hope the father is in this time. Fathers are so much easier.
Maria opens the door. “Hello.” It’s hard to make out what that look means. It’s not the same as the first time, but it’s still unhappy. It seems almost guilty.
“Hello, Mrs. Reyes,” I say. “May I come in?”
Maria stands aside without protest. I enter the orange house again. There’s a new TV in the living room and a com-screen near the kitchen.
“I hear Nadia is doing very well,” I say.
Maria moves past me, disappearing into the kitchen. “Coffee?” Her small voice travels well in the quiet house.
“Yes, please,” I say. I expected a little more hostility, but I suppose it helps quite a bit that Nadia is doing well.
Maria returns with a steaming mug. “They say she is the best in her class.” She’s unable to tamp down her pride. “She has four kills already.”
“Wonderful!” I take a very small sip of the coffee because I’m still a little paranoid. “The tests don’t lie. There’s a reason she was selected. And four kills? That’s fantastic. I didn’t know it was so many. A few more cadets like Nadia and this whole thing will finally be over with.”
Maria nods. She glances at the com-screen. “She bought that for us. So she could talk and see us and we could see her.” Maria runs a hand across the screen, almost affectionately. “But she does not use it anymore. For a time it was voice calls, but now just e-mails. Little notes. We don’t see her anymore. Not ever.”
“Well,” I say, “there’s probably some sort of technical issue. I mean, getting good reception out there is probably difficult.”
“That’s what she says. But I know that’s not it.” Her fingers move over the com-screen’s interface. “She doesn’t want us to see her. She doesn’t want us to hear her voice.”
“Why would she…?”
“The last time…” Her small fingers tap on the black screen. “The last time she was wearing a wig. I asked her about it. She said she wasn’t. And since then…” She turns away from the screen and holds her arms out. “Nothing.”
“But the phones, you said…if she can’t even call you, then maybe there’s just interference.”
Maria looks down at my coffee cup. “She used the phone for a time, but her voice…it became rough. It was…very slow and…not like it was. She’s sick, Mr. Foss. I know she’s sick. Her hair falls out, she cannot speak. She’s sick. I tell her to come home, but she won’t. She’s good at what she is doing. My husband lost his job. She earns all of our money. She won’t come home. She says she will take all thirty shots before she comes home, but she will die before then. I know she will.”
I’m really not sure what to say to this. There was optional training once, I think it was about going back to the same house twice. Recruiting a sibling. Having to talk about the first. It was optional though. I skipped it.
“That’s her choice, I suppose.”
Maria looks at me, very hard now. I guess that wasn’t the right answer. Maybe she wanted me to say that I’ll get Nadia back, but I’m a recruiter. My authority ends when I file the paperwork.
“Roberto did well, too.” For a second I’m glad that she changed the subject, but I know, in a way, she hasn’t really. This is still the same subject, just a different part of the conversation.
“He scored almost as well as Nadia,” I say.
“My children are too smart,” says Maria. I start to laugh, not a real laugh, but the automated laugh I give when I think someone’s told a joke or said something that’s supposed to be clever. Because at first I think that’s a little joke. In most circumstances it would be. But this is not the circumstance where it’s a joke.
“Well, like with Nadia, I’m just here to offer. He’s not required…”
“He will go,” said Maria. “He’s jealous. Everyone is so proud. He wants to be like his sister.” She shakes her head, corrects herself. “He wants to be better than his sister. He wants us to praise him instead.” I wonder if she ever cries. Her face is so hard, but her eyes are so soft. I worry she might cry right now. “He wants to be a hero.”
“We think he’ll be a fine one,” I say, dumbly. I had to say something.
“I had hoped…sometimes I imagine that if Roberto goes, maybe Nadia will feel like she can come home.”
“Maybe she will.”
“Why isn’t it over yet?”
I swallow and sigh. “We’re winning,” I say. “But they…they are very tough. We hope it will be over soon.”
“James…he graduates in two years. Will it be over then?”
“James is the next oldest?” She nods. “I don’t know. I hope it will be over tomorrow. But I don’t know.”
“If it isn’t?” She doesn’t need to say the question. I know what she’s asking me, but I briefly consider playing dumb, if for anything just to buy some time.
“It’s the same,” I say eventually. “The same as last time. If James tests like Nadia and Robert…”
“He will.”
“Maybe he won’t. I’ve never heard of three from the same family testing like that.”
“My children are all heroes.”
“He can fail…or he can say no. You can make him say no.”
She turns and stares at the blank com-screen for a long time, long enough to make me uncomfortable, or more uncomfortable I suppose. But then she calls out for Roberto and he meets us at the kitchen table and we make small talk and he signs the papers eagerly. I thank him and I thank Maria and I wish them well.
I desperately hope I never come back to this orange house.
*Ω*
I keep thinking “I’m almost done with this.” I keep telling myself to get ready to walk away. But things are not going well, not anywhere. And I’m a senior recruiter now. I’m hardly ever home. The pay is disgusting and if we win the war I’m retiring immediately.
The house is brown now. It’s better, I suppose, but still an ugly color. I wonder who picked it out.
There’s a garage now. It’s not very big, but it wasn’t there before. Robert must be doing well, too. It’s been too hectic to keep tabs, though, so I don’t know. I hope it’s been going well. I suppose I’ll know pretty quickly.
I knock on the door. There’s shouting inside. No one answers for a long time. Finally, the door opens. It isn’t Maria this time. It’s a boy, a young man. A teenager, I guess.
“James?”
There’s a shout from somewhere behind the boy. Banging.
“Yeah,” says the boy. “I’m James. You have the papers?”
“I do.” I stick my head into the house. “Is your mother home?”
James considers this for a moment. “Yes.” More banging.
“What’s going on?”
James looks back into the house. Then he turns back to me. “She doesn’t want me to go.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s upset.”
“But where is she?”
“Can I see the papers?”
I push past James and enter the house. I follow the banging. James follows me and tries to get me to leave. There’s a door in the back with a chair wedged under the knob. I pull the door away. Maria bursts out of the room.
“No!” she shouts. “How dare you! How dare you! I am your mother!” She grabs James by the shoulders and shakes him. “I said no! I said no!”
I push myself in between the two of them. “What’s going on?”
“No!” Maria slaps me. I was not prepared for that. James steps forward to protest and gets slapped, too. “No!” shouts Maria. “No! No! No!”
“Mrs. Reyes, calm down,” I say, holding up my hands. “Please, calm down. What’s going on?”
“She doesn’t want me to go,” says James again. “She just…doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t have to go,” I say. “Really. He doesn’t. Please calm down, Mrs. Reyes.”
Maria’s eyes are wild. She looks fifteen years older than the first time I saw her, not three. Her slack skin hangs gray at her cheeks. “She’s dead. You know that?”
“Nadia?”
“Yes, Nadia!” I feel very cold and a little ill. I stand there stupidly for a long while waiting for someone else to say something and knowing that if I’m the next one to talk I’m going to say something stupid.
“I’m very sorry,” I say finally. “I didn’t know.” That wasn’t so bad. But they’re still very quiet and I ask the follow-up despite myself. “And Robert?”
Maria turns away from me and mutters to herself. It’s James who answers.
“Military prison,” he says softly. “They say he killed another cadet.”
“I’m…sorry to hear that,” I say. I wish it surprised me though, but it doesn’t. If he had been eligible in the first years of the war, Robert wouldn’t have been picked. His emotional/maturity/stress testing was way off. But he came eligible in the fifth year of the war and the standards were different. “I’m sure there were…circumstances. The military will provide him with a qualified attorney. He’ll be fine, I’m sure.”
“He killed another boy,” says Maria. “He won’t be fine. And we…they don’t send money for killing the other boys.”
“No. But Nadia, she was very proficient, I know that.” I’m no longer sure what I’m doing. I just know that I don’t want to take the papers out of the briefcase. I don’t want James Reyes’ signature.
“Yes,” says Maria, with a disgusted laugh. “Very.”
I glance at James, hoping for a little clarity.
“Father left,” he says stoically. “He took all the money.”
I feel even colder. Nadia’s dead, Robert’s in prison and the father’s gone. Just Maria and James and the little girl and no money.
“Do you have the papers?” says James again.
Instinctively I raise up my briefcase.
“No!” shouts Maria and she shoves me and the briefcase towards the bathroom. There’s not much to her anymore, though. I hardly rock backwards.
“Mom,” says James. “Let me. Please, let me.”
“No,” gasps Maria. “No. Oh, my Suzie and Roberto…oh, my babies…” She still hasn’t wept. Now she’s groping blindly across the living room, muttering the names of people lost to her. But no tears.
“They’re going to take the house,” says James. I look over and realize that he’s pleading with me. I’ve never had one pleading to sign. Well, not one who’s already passed all the tests, anyway.
“Not unless she says you can,” I sigh. I need James Reyes. We all need James Reyes. He’s just like Nadia. None of what made Robert such a scary proposition, either. Anyone else’s son and I would hand him the papers and the pen.
“Mom,” he says. “For you and Collette. For your debts. To keep the house.”
“Those are not your debts to worry about,” says Maria. “And I hate this house. I want you, James. Here with me and healthy. We’ll find a way.”
“This is a way,” says James flatly.
“This is not a way!”
“I can leave you two to talk about this,” I offer. I want to leave. I wanted to leave before I ever got here, really.
“Mother!” James takes Maria by the shoulders. “What else? What else will we do? Where else do we go? You want me to work at the grocery store? What will that do? Do you understand how bad it is? How much he owes – how much we owe? Losing the house won’t solve it. Losing everything in the house won’t solve it. Working at the grocery store won’t solve it. Everything will be gone and what will there be for Collette?”
“I’ll worry about Collette,” says Maria. “I’m the mother.”
“I don’t want to work at the grocery store!” yells James. “I want to go to school.”
Maria mutters something too quietly for me to hear it.
“Forget the debts and forget the house,” says James. “What about me? What about what I want?”
“You’ll die,” says Maria weakly. “Like Suzie.”
“I’d rather,” says James simply. “I’d rather that than this.”
“We’ll be okay,” she says. “I’ll figure it out.”
“I already did,” says James. “Let me do this.”
James Reyes is going to be an officer someday, I think to myself. But being an officer means regular military pay. Officers don’t shoot the cannons. So I guess he won’t. That’s another shame.
Maria waves her hand. I don’t exactly know what that means, but James seems to think it means she’s given up. He asks for the papers. He signs them. I shake his hand. Maria’s left the room. I don’t know where she’s gone so we don’t say goodbye.
I walk to my car and start to open the door. I can feel someone watching me. I turn around. My eyes sweep over the face of the house.
Two eyes on the top floor. A small face, brown, thin, almond-shaped. Collette Reyes watches me very intently. I can’t see her very well, through the smudged window, but she looks like she’s about 11 years old. I wave. She doesn’t wave back.
I get into my car and start the engine. Maybe she’s 12 or 13, at the oldest. I’ll look at the file, later. Unless they change the rules again, she’s got to be at least three years from eligibility. Three years.
I’ll be retired by then, I tell myself, pulling away from the curb. The sun is setting and the sky is pale green. Even if we win, it won’t go back to being red or purple, like it used to be. That’s permanent. Like Nadia. Permanent.
Three years. I have to be retired then. I’ll be…39, I think. Or maybe they’ll move me into training. I can train people. I’m told people listen to me. Not the kids. That’s different. I mean other adults. Someone told me once that I have a commanding presence. I don’t remember who. It’s probably easy to train people. Everything comes out of a manual these days, anyway.
“Your son is very special.”
“Your daughter is in the top ninetieth percentile.”
“We only recruit heroes.”
Collette Reyes is a hero. I know it. It’s not even a question at this point.
Three years. I'll probably be retired by then.
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