Джош Малерман - Inspection

“The girl outside my window…”

“Yes?”

“Her told me the word.”

“ She told you the word.”

J’s boat moved forward. Its wake a white mist. Actual droplets descended to the tabletop.

The water in D.A.D.’s board, J realized, was real.

“Thank you,” D.A.D. said. It was clear he was already waiting for his next turn. But J had turns of his own.

“What’s a girl?”

D.A.D. answered without hesitation. “A girl is the opposite sex of a boy. She is necessary in procreation, being the one who carries the baby.”

Ever seen a new boy growing on a Living Tree?

It was D.A.D.’s turn.

“Where did she tell you the word?”

“In my rooms.”

J’s voice trembled as his boat advanced. As a small yellow light turned on outside the captain’s cabin, illuminating the darker waters ahead.

At first, D.A.D. said nothing. Only stared. As if whatever he’d been sipping had turned him to stone. Then, “Your turn.”

J saw red rising in D.A.D.’s face.

“Have you always known what a girl is?”

D.A.D. smiled, but there was nothing happy about it. “Yes. How’d she get in your rooms?”

D.A.D.’s boat advanced. Its light came on, too. J tried to process what D.A.D. had just said. Yes, he’d always known. Then why hadn’t J?

The Parenthood has been lying to us.

Boats had a way of making an Alphabet Boy want to tell the truth, if only to pull it from his opponent sooner.

“She climbed Q’s ice ladder. She came to my window.”

D.A.D. leaned back in his chair. He let out a single clipped syllable of angry laughter.

J’s boat advanced.

“I have so many questions,” J said. “I can barely—”

“ Your turn, J. ”

J’s mind reeled. A wheel of worries. He took hold of the closest one. “Am I sick?”

D.A.D. did not look him in the eye. “No,” he said. “You’re not sick.”

“But I—”

“One question per turn, J.”

D.A.D.’s boat moved forward, rocking upon bigger waves.

“Which of the other boys did you talk to about her?”

J was still trying to make sense of the last answer. Not sick? Yet…unclean?

Lies. K’s voice in his bedroom in the dark.

“Boats is so much more than a game,” D.A.D. said, a spark of pride in his eye. He ran a finger along the tabletop, the space between himself and the board. When he lifted it, water glistened. “It’s what’s known in the real world as a lie detector. I’ll ask you again. Which of the other boys did you talk to about her?”

The real world, J thought. And what was his own?

“None of them.”

J’s boat moved forward, approaching the increasingly rocky middle of the board.

“Why did you hide the second Turret from us?”

“Because I didn’t want you to know what’s in it.”

D.A.D’s boat advanced. J knew he’d asked a bad question. It was one of the tricks of Boats: asking a question that could be answered halfway.

“How long have you known, J?”

“How long have I known?”

“ Play the fucking game, J! ”

J leaned back in his seat. His entire body felt bright with panic.

“Her came last night.”

His boat advanced.

“Why did you hide girls from us?”

“I wanted to breed great thinkers, J. The opposite sex gets in the way of this happening. Men waste their lives chasing women.”

D.A.D.’s boat didn’t move. The woman cleared her throat behind J.

D.A.D. said, “I felt my life was a failure. In precisely this way.”

His boat advanced.

“How was your life a failure?”

D.A.D. slammed a closed fist on the table.

“One question!”

D.A.D.’s face went as red as his coat, which hung on the back of his chair. He gulped from his glass. He said, “You say you didn’t mention it to your brothers—”

“No, I didn’t—”

“Do not interrupt me, you little shit .”

J’s mouth snapped shut.

“You say you didn’t mention it to your brothers, but did any of them see the girl?”

J shook his head no.

“Answer the fucking question out loud, J.”

“Not that I know of, no.”

J’s boat reached the rough waters at the middle of the board. He felt water upon his face. The boat sank, momentarily, before rising again.

How deep did D.A.D.’s board go?

“Ask me a question, J.”

“Were you raised, side by side, with girls?”

“Yes.”

D.A.D.’s boat advanced, dipped, stayed down long enough for J to think it had fallen to the floor below, then rose again, level with J’s at center-board.

“How?” J asked. “How did you pass your Inspections growing up?”

“One question, J.”

“But how did you pass?”

D.A.D. rose and slammed both palms on the table. Cold water from the board splashed onto J’s hands.

“The Parenthood is an isolated community, J. In the real world there are millions of children raised without Inspections. You were given the opportunity of a lifetime. And you blew it.”

J only stared.

Millions.

D.A.D. sat again. The table shook. He said, “Did you write down what you know?”

“No.”

J’s boat advanced, but not much. The water pushed back past center-board. Only big truths could deliver a boy to the end.

“Your move.”

“Is my whole life a lie?”

This time D.A.D. did hesitate. He stared long at the two pieces bobbing between them. He sipped his drink. Then, “Do you know there are twenty-year-olds reading at the same level as you right now ? That you could pass a university mathematics course? If you’re asking if you’ve been lied to your whole life, the answer is yes. Things have been hidden from you. Many things. But if you’re asking me if the person you are is not real because of this, then I would answer with an emphatic no. I would argue that you and your brothers are more truth than any boy ever was.”

J watched as D.A.D.’s boat advanced. It moved farther than his own had.

“There are no Living Trees?” he asked.

“No,” D.A.D. said, ignoring the double question. “You were created by a weak father and a murdering mother.”

J wiped water from his face. Boats?

Tears?

“What’s her name, J?”

J shook his head no.

“What’s her name, J?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“You know that I’d never hurt her, right?”

J looked to D.A.D.’s troubled face. The man looked as pained as he felt himself. It sounded so true, those few words. Sounded so much like the man J knew D.A.D. to be.

“You wouldn’t?”

Of course not, J! The Parenthood protects!

“Never.”

“I can’t.” Crying now. Unable to make out anybody in the room. Unable to make out the room.

Even the action on the board was a blur.

“What’s her name? Was it B? I don’t think it was.”

“I can’t, I—”

J wiped his eyes and D.A.D. was beside him. The board shifted as the wires connecting the nodes to D.A.D. were pulled.

“Richard!” the woman behind J yelled.

But it was too late. Through the foggy wall of tears, an open hand. J didn’t realize he was falling until he hit the floor.

“You want Vees, J? You want Placasores ? TELL ME HER NAME OR I WILL GIVE YOU ROTTS! ”

J didn’t want to get up. Didn’t want to open his eyes. Didn’t want to hear D.A.D.’s voice ever again like he’d just heard it.

And, despite K’s words, despite what he believed to be the truth, that Vees and Placasores did not exist…he thought then that maybe they did.