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“There were four votes for your petition,” Elina reminds him. “A single vote would have been surprising, considering the council’s resistance to taking a stand on unwinding. You may not realiz
e it, but four votes is a veritable coup!”
“It doesn’t change a thing. The petition failed. Period.”
Elina sighs. “You’re not yet fifteen, Lev, and you came within three votes of changing tribal policy. Surely that counts for something.”
He turns to look at her now. “Horseshoes and hand grenades.” And off her confused expression, he explains, “It’s something Pastor Dan used to say. Those are the only two situations where being close counts.”
She chuckles her understanding, and Lev turns away from her again.
“Perhaps in the morning you can go out with Pivane, and he can teach you to hunt. Or maybe you could help Una in the shop. If you asked, I’m sure she’d let you work with her to build her instruments.”
“Is that it for me then? I go out hunting, or I become a luthier’s apprentice?”
Now Elina’s voice becomes chastising, and a little cold. “You came here because you longed for a simpler, safer way of living. Now you resent us for giving it to you?”
“I don’t resent anyone . . . I just feel . . . I don’t know . . . unfulfilled.”
“Welcome to the human race,” she tells him with a bit of rueful condescension. “You should learn to relish the hunger more than the feast, lest you become a glutton.”
Lev groans, not having the strength or even the desire to parse the poignancy from yet another of Elina’s pithy Arápache metaphors.
“A great man knows not only when he’s called upon, but also when he’s not,” says Elina. “The truly great know how to accept and embrace a common life, just as much as the call to duty.”
“Then I will never be great, will I?”
“Listen to you! You posture like a man, but you pout like a child.” It’s a scolding, but she says it with such warmth in her voice that Lev both appreciates it and finds it embarrassing.
“I’ve never been a child,” he tells her with a sadness no one but he will ever truly understand. “I’ve been a tithe, a clapper, and a fugitive, but never a child.”
“Then be one now, because you deserve it. Be a child, if only for one night.”
The last person to suggest such a thing was Pastor Dan. The night before he was killed by an explosion that was meant for Lev.
Neither of them speak for a moment. If Elina is uncomfortable with the silence, she doesn’t show it. Then she begins to gently rub his back and sing to him in Arápache. Her voice is sweet, if not entirely on key. Lev has learned enough of the language to know what the song is about. It’s a lullaby, perhaps one she used to sing to Wil when he was very little. It speaks of the moon and the mountain. How the mountain pushes forth from the earth, reaching ever skyward in a vain attempt to grab the moon, but the mischievous moon keeps slipping behind the mountain’s peak to hide, remaining forever unattainable. Lev thinks of the challenge of his animal spirit—to bring down the moon—and he wonders if Elina even realizes what she’s singing. Not a lullaby, but a lament.
When she’s done, Lev’s eyes are closed, and he’s slowed his breathing to a gentle snuffle. Elina leaves, probably thinking he’s asleep, but he’s not. Lev will not sleep well tonight, if he sleeps at all. As much as he thought he wanted it, he is immune to a normal life and is addicted to a life of dangerous sway. He must make a difference out there. He must satisfy the hunger, elbowing himself a place at the feast.
The council dismissed his petition out of hand. Perhaps petitions are too tame an approach. Perhaps what Lev needs is a method that’s more extreme. He’s seen extreme. He’s lived it. He knows how to play with fire. Perhaps this time he can use what he knows to serve his own ends, not someone else’s.
He shares none of this with Elina, or Una, or with anyone else on the reservation. But silently and alone, he begins to plan.
Today he failed to change the world.
As for tomorrow, who can tell?
24 • Cam
Security at the Molokai complex is state-of-the-art and extreme. No one gets into the compound who doesn’t belong there. The outside fences are electrified and tranq-charged. The gates boast scanners that can sniff you and decode your DNA just as easily as tell your brand of deodorant. Only the best for Proactive Citizenry’s bioresearch facility. Unfortunately, all security systems are flawed and limited by the arrogance of whoever designed it. In this case, the designers were arrogant enough to think that they only needed to secure the place from people on the outside. No one counts on a fox that’s already inside the fence.
Newly tweaked and effectively remotivated, Camus Comprix is, for all intents and purposes, glitch-free. True, there may still be some issues, but in a few short days Cam will be the problem of the US military, and his issues will go with him. General Bodeker has not only purchased his physical self, but his emotional self as well. Not just his presence but his problems, whatever they turn out to be.
Cam goes for a daily run on the expansive grounds of the compound, where sugarcane and taro root still grow right up to the edge of cliffs overlooking the sea. It’s all still harvested and sold—Proactive Citizenry is all about employing local residents and paying them higher-than-standard wages to satisfy the organization’s need to feel they are Forward-Thinking for Humanity®. Roberta, and everyone else who is a part of Proactive Citizenry, seem to believe in the good work they’re doing. They also believe in getting extremely rich while doing it.
Cam doesn’t run alone. He’s not allowed. One of the guards, a particularly bouef one, always joins him. Safety in numbers. They weave along the path that runs at the edge of the fields that grow year round, harvested in staggered intervals. Some patches are clear-cut, others still green. As they move from a clear-cut area and into tall cane, Cam bursts into a sudden sprint, catching his jogging partner off guard. The path curves left, and as soon as he’s out of the guard’s view, Cam turns sharply, disappearing into the cane.
“Mr. Comprix!” he hears the guard shout. They all call him “Mister” here. Cam pushes on, knowing exactly where he’s going, trying to keep from knocking down the cane and creating an obvious path. The stiff leaves whip at his face as he barrels through, stinging, but he doesn’t care. For a moment he wonders if he’s miscalculated, and if he’ll come from the field into an unexpected ocean inlet, where he’d go flying off the edge of a cliff to his doom.
