John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

Arnie nodded. “Look how fast the tribes happened. They weren’t even in our maybe-trouble file back in March; first we heard of them was right after the war scare and Open Signals Day, at the end of April, when Larry Mensche came in with that report, and then all of a sudden Springfield, Steubenville, Augusta, and Kettle Valley were all trashed between May 10th and May 12th. Maybe a tenth, maybe more, of the surviving population is in tribes, you see? Daybreak had the moon gun ready to go, physically, and it had the tribes ready to go, as a cultural idea with organizers and bards and everything.”

“Bards?”

“Something I got out of interrogations. When Daybreak had Jason, for at least three years before 10-28-24, he was fantasizing intensely about being a wandering poet for tribal people and wandering between Castles—and none of that existed then, but in less than half a year, it all did. You see? Daybreak prepared him for a world that Daybreak had designed.”

Heather tented her hands and leaned back. “Do we have to decide anything tonight?”

“No, but soon. Look, if I’m right, Daybreak is so far ahead of us—”

“All right, Arn, you’ve given me the reality.” She was nodding, but she looked tired and sick. “Let me give you the politics, and then let’s see if we can drag the reality and the politics anywhere near each other, and find a way to accommodate them both. I realize it’s true, but you’re telling me the worst possible news, because if Daybreak is really everywhere, if we’re falling right into its plan, and we don’t even know what that plan is, if we have to doubt every move we make… oh, man, Arn. Not an easy sell either to Graham or to Cam.”

“But if I’m right, and this is true, then we’ve got to study this thing, understand what it’s capable of—”

Heather sighed. “Politically, Arnie, I need a program, some definite number of steps that will definitely defeat Daybreak, so I can get the resources for the study you need to do.”

“But you need the study to know what to do, to make sure we’re not falling right into Daybreak’s plan!”

“I know, I know, I know.” She waved her hand at him in the invisible yo-yo gesture that meant Calm down and shut up . “Arn, we’ve got to find a way for you to investigate this, I agree. But right now as far as they’re concerned, I’m the dumb bitch that wrecked one of our last big surviving generating stations to prove that the other side didn’t like us, and you’re my pet head-in-the-clouds Doctor Doofus. Olympia and Athens are looking for an excuse to cut us off and start back down the warpath with each other.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe I can’t dismiss you. So find me something somewhere. A few good pieces of evidence that we haven’t seen before. A real clear analogy. One good completely counterintuitive thing to try that works. Whatever. Just remember, Arn, the people in Athens and Olympia are much dumber and less patient than I am. It has to be so simple that even an old cop like me can explain it to frightened, imagination-free bureaucrats like them. I know it’s probably impossible but you’ll have to do it anyway. And soon—because if you’re right, we might already be too late. Want another shot before I throw you out and get my motherly sleep?”

“I want ten of them, but I better not.” He rose, wiped his face, and said, “Trish was the best, Heather. You don’t know what you lost.”

“None of us ever do.”

He followed her gaze to Lenny’s picture; she looked back at him soon enough to see the moment when he realized she was looking at the father of her child, the husband she’d lost in the first month of the Daybreak crisis, and he said, softly, “Sorry. I guess we’re all pretty clueless.”

“It makes us human, and if you’re right, that’s what this is all about—staying human. The world will never be able to add up how much we all lost, will it?” She looked at him steadily. “But I am sorry you never had any time together, and that in this new world, we never even have the simple time to grieve.”

He nodded his thanks for her sympathy, not trusting himself to speak, because he could hear the rest of the message as clearly as if she’d said it aloud: But we all know there’s nothing anyone can do.

Arnie walked alone; he’d taken an isolated house farther away from downtown, to give himself some privacy and space.

A scraping sound. He spun, cross-drawing his knives from his hip sheaths, hoping all the sai katas he’d studied—

“I’ll come out if you put away the knives. I mean you no harm.” The voice was behind him.

He leapt forward and pivoted. “If you mean me no harm, it won’t matter that I keep my knives out. Show yourself.”

The tall, thin man emerged from the shadows. The blanket covering the top and sides of his head, his long curly beard, and his large round eyes made him look like a cheap religious painting. Bare feet gripped the warm summer street above pirate-style pants—a big piece of a sheet wrapped at the waist, cut up to the crotch front and back, and sewed up the inside seam.

Jeez, Arnie thought. With a zillion Wal-Marts out there to loot, he couldn’t just find some all-cotton basketball shorts?

“My name is Aaron,” the man said. “Last fall, you were looking for me with every weapon and tool that plaztatic civilization still had.”

“What are you here for?”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Well, talk.” Arnie’s heart was pounding. This guy at least looked like Ysabel’s description of Aaron, who even now was the single most wanted Daybreaker. “Talk,” Arnie repeated. “If that’s what you came to do.”

“Oh, that’s what I came to do, Doctor Yang. Doctor, from the Latin doceo . Taught, educated, having mastered the documents, learned the doctrine, having been indoctrinated.”

“You sound like you used to teach English.”

“I do, don’t I? After I go, will you look up all the missing English teachers to see if you can find a match?”

“Just an observation.” Arnie shifted his weight.

“If people would confine themselves to observations, everything would be fine . It’s their insistence on taking action that condemns the species.”

“You’re one of us.”

“I intend to be among the last of us, actually.” Aaron advanced to just out of arms’ reach. “So you want to see into the soul of Daybreak. Here I am. What do you want to know?”

“How do you communicate with Daybreak?” Arnie asked.

“That’s a rather blunt question.”

“I’m blunt, and I don’t believe you’ll actually tell me the truth about anything. I might as well shoot for the moon.”

“Nowadays, the moon shoots for you . I don’t share my colleagues’ optimism that if you understand Daybreak, you’ll join it. I think there are plenty of unredeemable people.”

“And you don’t have any trouble with killing them.”

Aaron stared at him, head cocked to the side. “So you are a statistical semiotician, an occupation that could have explained immense amounts about culture and society and all that, but in practice was used to refine methods of selling politicians and soap—not very well because no one could get funding for the basic science to underlie it.”

Arnie brought his knives up slightly; he felt like his bowels were trying to pass a frozen cannonball. Aaron’s words were—

“You could have told everyone about Daybreak before it happened, but it was the same old thing, wasn’t it? Give us the payoff from your research, first, and then we’ll pay you to do it. That was where you were last year, eh? You knew Daybreak was coming but they wouldn’t let you really study it unless you told them the answers before you studied it.” Aaron clicked his tongue. “Very tough on Doctor Arnie Yang, they don’t want the doctor, the know -er, the one who makes know -ledge, they want the doctus, the guy who already knows . Give us your results, better yet tell us we’re already right, and then we’ll pay you to do the research.” Aaron was standing close enough now for Arnie to just step forward and strike, his huge dark eyes holding Arnie’s. “And even now, eh?” Aaron said. “Even now, they want you to just tell them what to shoot. They don’t want you to understand Daybreak, do they?”