naodrith | (no subject)

Well, here's what I've got so far of chapter five of My Baby. Just for you, Heather-Dragon. And forget the amnesia. That was Zac talking, and I've gagged him now.

Five teenagers on bikes at midnight were extremely conspicuous, which was why, in the ten or twelve miles they had to ride, Lasa and her friends were stopped no less than twenty-four times by patrolling members of the Justice Guild. Fortunately, news of the runaways had not yet spread as far as Indiana, and Joseph had a permission slip of sorts from the temple.

They parted at Lasa's house, deciding that Joseph would take Roger and Zacharias back to his home for the night, while Ysranna would spend the night at Lasa's. They would convene in the morning for breakfast, in-depth explanations, and decisions.

Despite the fact that it was one in the morning, Lasa's mother was still awake. She didn't seem terribly shocked to find her daughter on the doorstep.

"I suppose you're here about the book?"

"Naturally," Lasa said coolly. "But that can wait. Right now, we need sleep."

"Your friend can have the guest room," Arietta said, waving them in. "I'll wake you at eight, shall I?"

"I can live with seven hours of sleep," Lasa said, and glanced at Ysranna, who nodded.

* * *

Joseph's little sister was having a party, which reduced the chances of any of the boys getting any sleep to almost nil. After the lengthy explanations of their presence and introductions, they had to drag sleeping bags into Joseph's room, the only one not commandeered by the children.

Roger, against all odds, fell asleep almost immediately. Zacharias dug a deck of cards out of his backpack and began to lay them out in a row.

After fidgeting for awhile, Joseph asked, "Do you want a soda or anything?"

"I don't drink soda. Caffeine. Makes it hard to sleep. Not fond of caffeine, anyway. Can be a poison." Zacharias removed two cards from the row and set them aside.

Joseph rolled his eyes and sat down on his bed, which was lumpier than he remembered. "What are you playing, anyway?"

"Holy Matrimony. It's a solitaire game." The blond did not offer any more information, and Joseph did not ask.

Eventually, Joseph slid onto the floor. "You know Speed?"

"What, the drug?"

"No, the game! Why, do you know the drug?"

"I don't know. That depends on what you mean by 'know.'"

"Right."

Zacharias scooped the cards up and began to shuffle them. "Speed's a good game, I guess. I haven't played in awhile, though." He dealt the cards out in the proper fashion.

Joseph idly squared his cards up, wondering how to phrase the question that was burning in his brain. "Do you...you know...like Lasa?"

Zacharias shrugged. "That depends. If you mean as a friend, then certainly. But I don't believe in love."

Joseph raised his eyebrows. "How can you not believe in love? Love is - "

"Love is a violation of human nature, a mutilation of feelings." Zacharias picked up his own cards and skimmed five off the top. "The Greeks have four words for love. Eros, sexual attraction, I can believe in that. Philia, friendship, I can believe in that, to a certain extent. Storge, familial love, I might believe in. Agape...perfect love...giving without expecting to receive, sacrifice...that's too far-fetched." Zacharias's lips twisted in a bitter smirk. "And I believe in love so strong that it is indistinguishable from hate. Do you want to know why?"

"Why?" Joseph whispered, any words in the defense of love vanishing.

"Because that's the only kind of love I've ever felt. All right? So no, I do not like Lasa in that way. Which means that if you like her, you can have her."

Joseph bit his tongue, which he often did when he was trying not to yell. "How can you even live without love? It's just so - "

"Well, since I'm here and obviously not dead, I'd say that love is not something that keeps people alive. I'm good at breathing, though. I do it all the time."

They played Speed for three hours. Joseph lost every time.

There was something subtly different about Zacharias that was throwing Joseph off his game. It was the way he spoke, the way he moved. He gave off an air of sincerity and weariness, and it was profound and heartbreaking, and Joseph knew that if this strange boy were to tell him that there was a God, then Joseph would believe him.

He hoped, for the sake of his own mental state, that Zacharias wouldn't tell him that.

* * *

Joseph, Zacharias, and Roger turned up at eight-thirty the next day. There were dark shadows under Joseph's eyes, and Roger yawned throughout breakfast. Zacharias fell asleep in his pancakes, which luckily did not have syrup on them.

When the dishes had been stacked in the sink and everyone (with the exception of Joseph, who was slouched on his chair in what Lasa recognized as his "dejected and miserable" pose) was prepared for explanations, Arietta joined them at the table. "So," she said eventually. "Tell me what you've learned."

Zacharias was asleep again. Roger made a move as if to push him off the chair, thought better of it, and answered.

"We know that there's a bomb in the computer," he said. "Or something like that, anyway. We know that it was built in to punish America for our audacity in world affairs, for creating new intelligences, for being - well - full of ourselves. We know that there was a secret Christian denomination called the Resistance who were going to take advantage of the bomb and blackmail President Fox into giving them power and the New Constitution that they wanted."

Zacharias sat up suddenly. There were red marks on his face where his glasses had pressed hard. He removed the spectacles and blinked several times. "What's going on? What's happening? Why is there no coffee? There should be coffee."

"I thought you didn't drink caffeine," Joseph muttered.

"We're trying to have a serious conversation here," Ysranna snapped.

Zacharias blinked again, slowly. "Excuse me for breathing, then." He got up, hopped up and down for a moment, then limped over to the coffee-maker, muttering something about "bloody pins and needles."

Roger cleared his throat and went on, "We know that if the weapon goes off America will be totally destroyed. We know that the people building the computer don't know about it. We know that Anna-Maria Eskine stopped them finishing it back in 2093 and got the New Constitution passed peacefully."

"What we don't know," Lasa said, "is how the person who wrote the book found out about this, and how you came to have it, and why you gave it to me, and what you expect me to do about it."

There was a muffled curse from Zacharias, who had spilled the hot coffee on his hand. "Don't mind me," he said coldly, shuffling over to the sink.

Arietta Taylor sighed. "So many questions. I hadn't expected you to translate it so soon. Well - it's rather a long story."

Lasa glanced theatrically at the clock. "It's only just nine, Mother, we have all day."

It took Arietta until almost ten o'clock to tell the story, because of the interruptions and occasional cries of disbelief.

It all boiled down to the fact that, as a young woman working Separation in Madison, Wisconsin every summer, Arietta had fallen in love with a man from the Justice Guild - Lasa's father, Miles. He, in turn, had a brother who worked in the Education Guild, and who had come across the book one day while checking that all the books were in their proper places in the library. No one knew where it had come from, or what it said; but Arietta Taylor had spent some time studying Latin, for lack of anything better to do, and the next time she was in Madison, Miles handed over the book.

The two were married within the year. Arietta, who was due in New York to see the President about job opportunities, decided to show him her translation of it. Unfortunately, all her notes on the book disappeared from her office one night.

Confused and a bit frightened, Arietta and Miles set about the task of making a copy of the book, just in case anything further should happen to it. It was around that time that the plans for the computer came to light - but in their concern over the theft, Arietta and Miles forgot entirely about what the book had said about it.

Eventually, when they had finished the translation, Miles realized what was going on. They tried to alert the President to the danger, but he dismissed their worries as illogical, outdated, and probably made-up. He also ordered them to hand over the book and any notes they might have made on it.

Arietta was, at that time, pregnant with her first child - Alex. She and Miles conferred, and decided to have a copy of the book printed for themselves, while appearing to comply with the President's demands. As Arietta dug further into the mystery surrounding the book, she discovered that there was some sort of strange cover-up going on. Someone high up in the government did not want that book in Arietta's hands.

"That," Arietta concluded, "is where you come in."

Lasa, who was chewing on a piece of licorice, made a sound that might have been, "Me?"

"Yes. We discovered that the weapon is, in fact, not in the computer, but rather, hidden on an island off the west coast. There's a detonator built into the computer, actually. Since it's more or less impossible to stop production of the wretched thing, we knew that, somehow, we had to destroy the weapon itself. Fortunately, they hadn't decided yet whether or not to turn it on. We assumed it would take many years, so, since we were too well-known to disappear for the amount of time it would take to get rid of the weapon, and we couldn't trust anyone else to help us because of the apparent conspiracy, we would entrust the task to our children. It's all come about rather earlier than we expected."

Lasa considered that, then asked, "But why the book? Why not just tell me? And why me? Alex and Shem are older, and wouldn't have had to break the law to get here."

"Because, my dear, they would not have tried to translate it. They would have tucked it away somewhere, forgotten it."

Lasa wisely did not mention that she had actually done the same thing. "I think I see. You made sure we were in the guilds that would let us do this - because I know the sea, Alex might have worked with bombs except he didn't, and Shem..."

Arietta shrugged. "It's possible they left traps on this island. He wasn't supposed to work with animal attacks."

Zacharias tipped his chair back to balance it on two legs. "So, in effect, you have been manipulating your children since before they were born for this righteous cause of yours? That's bloody good parenting, that."

Ysranna tapped her nails thoughtfully on the side of her empty glass. "This is all extremely strange. Conspiracies and nuclear weapons and spies..."

"No spies involved," Arietta said, smiling. "Sorry that it's not as action-filled as you'd like."

Zacharias adjusted his glasses, staring up at the ceiling. "So, where are these brothers in all this?"

Lasa shrugged. "At work, probably."

Arietta smirked. "I've managed to place them strategically. Shem's at a hospital in Minneapolis, which is just on the way to Seattle."

"On the west coast," Joseph noted, and looked smug at having contributed to the conversation.

Zacharias let his chair fall forward with a thud, and stood up, stretching. "Ah, so the pieces fall into place. And now all that remains is, who shall accompany Lasa to Minneapolis, Seattle, and beyond?"

Roger rolled his eyes. "Not like I can avoid it, being a runaway and all. Seems suspicious, though, like Izzy said - all these conspiracies..."

Ysranna exchanged a glance with Joseph, then announced, "We'll go, too. He's got a mission trip coming up. I can offer to act as chaperone, and then we'll simply go with you, instead of wherever they ask us to go."

Lasa looked over at Zacharias, who was now at the window, elbows resting on the sill. She shook her head slightly - how could she ask him to come with her, why had he even accompanied her this far? - and turned to her mother. "Anything else we should know?"

Arietta considered that, then shook her head. "No, that's pretty much it. I can give you a map of the coast - your father and I figured out which island the book refers to - and maybe help with the translation if you haven't entirely finished..."

"Unnecessary," Zacharias said. "We're nearly done. Don't spoil all the fun of resurrecting dead languages for us." He clicked his tongue, then added, "But we're talking a month and a half there and back again, at the very least. We need money, provisions. We need disguises, because we're more or less all wanted by the law. We need to understand exactly what we've got coming once this is over, because the law does not deal lightly with runaways." He did not wait for an answer, but continued, "I've got an idea about that. If we can wait to be off until tomorrow, I think I can make this work."

Lasa tried to control her voice as she said, hopefully in a nonchalant manner, "Oh, you're coming with?"

"Well, no kidding. Where else have I got to go?"

Joseph got up and carried his dishes to the sink. "Good. We need some time to get an okay on the mission trip, anyway. I just love thwarting the church."

Ysranna followed him and rumpled his hair affectionately. "You little atheist, you."

I'm always so frightened of all that exposition, but I think it works better in this draft.

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Well, they weren't doing it before.

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