Sophie Littlefield - Horizon

“Only Charlie-he surprised me. He may have been the only guy I ever worked with who wasn’t a coward. He just wanted to think everything to death. How he got that far in the military I’ll never understand, because old Charlie’s response to everything was to commission studies and conduct interviews and draft plans. And he didn’t really have a taste for power, either. His heart wasn’t in it. At first he went along with what I told him to do because he was worried about his job. But as the country fell apart and we started hearing from the top brass less and less, he began to push back. He didn’t want to act, he wanted to wait. ‘Let’s see what the outlook is in six weeks,’ he’d say. ‘Let’s not respond out of panic,’ that was one of his favorites. Made me fucking nuts.

“I guess by then I figured this was the last big job I’d have until things sorted themselves out. It might sound funny but I wasn’t too worried about my own future. I had my place in the mountains, it was well stocked because we were always having power outages up there anyway. Nobody really believed this was the end of the world back then, more like a hell of an inconvenience that might wipe out the underclass and decimate a few island nations no one had ever heard of.

“So one day we get this order. The K734IV order, the one that went to all the bases around the country. By then I was reading Charlie’s mail before he did, confidential and otherwise. There’s about three hundred pages of scientific crap about the plant, but all we were concerned about was the flight schedule and maps. It’s a direct order, there’s no decision to be made.

“Except that the order has an attachment for bases in California only. Says how down in UC-Colima, they’ve developed this second strain that appears to boost immunity. They’re making it available on an optional basis, recommending a seed mix that includes two percent of this strain, which has some long name with initials and numbers, just like kaysev did back then. There wasn’t time to get approval in any other state. And on the back page there’s a test schedule and you can see they haven’t done even a quarter of the tests, and the results of the ones they have are either blacked out or marked ‘inconclusive.’

“So Charlie, he gets on the phone with the other guys, in Beale and Edwards and so forth. He wants to know what they’re thinking of doing. Now this is exactly the sort of behavior we’ve been working on for a month now, how he’s going to be accountable, immediate and decisive. A-I-D, that was his acronym, and I made him repeat it every morning when we started the workday. So when I hear him dicking around, should we do this, should we do that, I pretty much lose my shit. ‘This is where you take charge, ’ I tell him. ‘This is where you come out strong, make a name for yourself.’ I ask him if he wants to go back to driving a desk in a cubicle when this is all over, or if he wants to be remembered as the guy who saved California’s ass-at least, a few more asses in his region than elsewhere.

“And still he fights me. There wasn’t enough testing, the results are inconclusive, the blacked-out data is troubling, blah blah blah. I’m ready to deck the guy myself. We’ve got a 4:00 p.m. deadline to make the decision, and by three o’clock all the other bases have checked in as no. They all lack the balls-at least, that’s the way I see it, that’s what I tell Charlie. I lock the door to his office and I start screaming at him. I can feel this vein in my forehead standing out, I’m giving it everything I’ve got, everything in the Edward Schaffer bag ’o tricks, calling him names, questioning his manhood, and he just sits there staring at me, shaking his head. Finally, when I have to stop for breath, he says to me in this calm, tired voice, ‘Ed, the only way that call’s getting made is if you do it yourself.’

“He didn’t mean it, of course, he never believed I’d do it. And, Cass, I’ve thought about it a thousand times and I didn’t ever think I’d do it either. I was giving him one last chance-that’s what I really believe-and I just wanted him to act, he could have punched me in the face and that would have been better than him sitting there with his dick in his hands waiting for the apocalypse and letting the inmates run the prison.

“So I pick up his phone and all the time I’m thinking he’ll stop me, and then I’m dialing and we’re staring at each other, neither one of us blinking, and the guy comes on the line and I say, ‘Benson here,’ and he says, ‘Yes, sir,’ and still I’m waiting, I give it an extra-long pause and the guy on the other line is like, ‘Sir, sir, are you there?’ and Charlie, he does something that- He gets out of his chair and he goes to the window and he turns his back on me. He turns his fucking back on me, and I tell you Cass, every cell in my body turned into the bully I’d failed to make him into and I remember thinking I’d show him, I’d show him what it means to lead, and I gave the order.”

Smoke was perspiring as he came to the end of the story. “After that I went home. It was the last time I ever saw Charlie, actually. After-later-I tried to find him. But you know what happened to the base and…well, I didn’t try all that hard. After a week or so it didn’t matter anyway. And by the time I realized what I’d done…”

Cass listened, horrified, as Smoke’s voice trailed away.

This was it. The thing Smoke had done for which he could never forgive himself, the sin that he would spend his whole life atoning for, putting ahead of everything and everyone else-including Cass.

And she knew how he saw it: Smoke believed he had single-handedly unleashed the Beaters. If he hadn’t made the call…if the mixed seed had never been loaded into the planes alongside the otherwise fine kaysev seed…if the first blueleaf had never sprouted…

“But you can’t believe it’s all your fault.” The words burst from her before she had a chance to think. “There were a thousand parts to play in what happened. The people who developed it, who were supposed to test it, Charlie’s commander…”

But she realized that Smoke wasn’t really listening. He was looking off into space, reviewing the story that would never leave him.

She wanted to make him see, to shake him, scream at him, until he finally gave up his steadfast determination to suffer. But Smoke wouldn’t even listen.

Anger bubbled below the surface of Cass’s sorrow. It was a terrible waste, throwing his life away like this, over something he could not change, a mistake he never intended.

But what was worse-he’d thrown away more than his life. He’d discarded their love the day he left the Box, abandoned it as though it was worthless. It was no wonder, Cass realized, that she’d felt so hurt. Because even though his error had terrible consequences, even though it had changed him irrevocably, it still was not enough. Not enough to trade her for. Not enough to have made her feel so small, so hurt-to have driven her into the arms of another man.

But no. That was wrong. She would not blame Smoke for that. When she went to Dor, she went willingly, and when she loved him, she loved him fiercely.

Cass held Smoke’s hand for a while longer, considering and eventually abandoning her anger, forgiving a man who did not seek her forgiveness. Finally it was time to leave the darkening little room. By then Cass finally understood why Smoke had to leave her back in the Box, why he would always have to leave her for one justice quest after another. He could never fully give himself to her, because he’d already given himself over to the job of punishing himself, forever, one agonizing day at a time.