Chương 27

They gathered at the airfield early, all of them in black formal clothes. The Dominion's presidential jet waited on the tarmac while aides carried luggage and document cases aboard. Gladice came last with her parents, sunglasses in one hand. She looked bored before anyone had spoken. Louis saw Angelique before she looked at him. When she looked at him, he had already put his face in order. He nodded. She inclined her head. They boarded without speaking. Louis was placed opposite Angelique. Gladice sat beside him.

As the engines spooled, Louis looked out the window and kept his shoulder clear of Gladice's. She stretched one leg out, then the other, and settled back in her seat.

"I hate these kinds of visits," she said, leaning back with her head against the cabin wall.

"Everyone stands in rows and pretends they're remembering instead of using the day to prove how much more they suffered than everyone else." Louis did not look at her.

"What do you think they should do instead?" She glanced at him and then at Angelique, who was reading something on her tablet.

"Drink in private. Tell better stories about the dead. And then get back to work."

"People like ceremonies," he said.

"People like what they're told to like." She shifted toward him.

"But you already know that, don't you? I mean, you've been making speeches your whole life. Standing there looking pretty while your father tells everyone what to think." She looked outside.

"I wonder how much of you really believes any of it." Angelique's fingers stopped moving on the tablet. But she did not raise her head.

"That's not what I do," he said, keeping his voice calm.

"No? Then why are you here?" Gladice asked.

"It's not like you have a real job." She glanced at Angelique again.

"You just show up and look like the future." Angelique swiped her finger and turned the page. She said nothing. Louis felt the heat rise in his chest.

"I show up," he said, "because I'm expected to. And because sometimes it matters."

"Oh, it matters." Gladice smiled.

"But not because of anything you say. It matters because of who your father is. You know that, right? The only thing anyone remembers after one of these things is whether the people in charge looked in charge. And you are not in charge, Louis." He glared at her.

"And you are?" She laughed.

"I'm nobody. But at least I don't pretend to be somebody." Angelique closed her tablet. She looked up slowly.

"You talk a great deal for somebody who hates being here." Gladice turned toward her.

"And you don't talk enough for someone who pretends to be so honest." Angelique's mouth curved.

"I don't pretend."

"You don't need to," Gladice said.

"Everyone knows exactly what you are." She glanced back at Louis.

"And everyone knows what he is too." Louis crossed his arms. He was about to answer when Angelique said, "Then it seems we all understand each other perfectly." She opened her tablet again and went back to reading. Gladice watched her for a moment, then looked at Louis.

"I like her," she said.

"She knows how to end a conversation." Louis stared out the window. Gladice leaned back and closed her eyes. Angelique turned another page. The light outside grew brighter as sunlight reflected off the clouds. A few minutes later, the aircraft dropped below the cloud layer. Then Houston appeared in pieces below him. At its center stood a vast black dome. Around it, Houston's new towers rose. He suddenly understood what Gladice had meant.

The memorial had been built so no one could look at Houston without seeing the blast site first. The wheels came down. The aircraft descended and hit the runway with a hard bounce. By the time the cabin door opened, the welcome line was already in place. Houston's mayor greeted Constantine and Harvey. After brief remarks on the tarmac, the families were directed toward the motorcade. The airport roads carried them quickly into Houston. Traffic and overpasses thickened toward the center.

Police drones patrolled above them. The motorcade stopped beneath the covered arrival entrance at the base of the dome. Officials were already waiting there.

"Supreme President. First Consul. Minister Bourbon. Mayor Simington. We are honored to receive you and your families at the Houston Nuclear Memorial Precinct." Constantine inclined his head. Harvey did the same. A veteran in formal black stepped forward carrying the wreath that would begin the public part of the visit. They were led through the outer memorial ring first. Names covered the black stone walls on both sides. Louis moved when the line moved, eyes forward.

He breathed through his nose and kept his pace even. He tried to walk normally. Then he caught himself checking his face again. Beside him, Gladice murmured.

"Remember to look sad but not too sad. They don't like it when you overdo it." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. He did not answer. He kept his eyes on the floor ahead of his shoes. A memorial officer in black led the way. Constantine and Harvey walked just behind him. Judith and Philip followed half a step behind them. David and Jessamine Simington walked a little to the side of the main line.

Louis followed them, with Angelique on one side and Gladice on the other. Serana and Jacques trailed behind. Their footsteps echoed off the pale stone. They reached the official viewing platform, where a black memorial monument stood near the rail. Beyond the rail, the preserved crater lay under the dome. A white wreath waited on a low stand before it. Two ribbons hung from the center. From the Dominion of the Pacific In Memory of the Dead of Houston, 2012 Constantine and Harvey stepped forward together.

Constantine touched the wreath first. Harvey set his hand against it after him and kept it there. His hand trembled once. A tear slipped down his cheek. Constantine turned one ribbon so the lettering faced outward. Then he placed a hand on Harvey's shoulder. Harvey nodded once. Both men stepped back. The memorial officer inclined his head, and the silence began. Louis saw the others lower their heads and did the same. He put one hand over the other in front of him. He kept his eyes on the pale stone.

The air under the dome was cool, and goosebumps rose along his arms. The silence lasted. His shoulders began to tighten. He thought of the horse's neck under his hand, hot and hard with muscle, and the moment his anger tightened his hands on the reins. He closed his eyes. Angelique came first: her hair loose in the scrub, her mouth against his, her thighs tight around him. Then Gladice came next: her legs open, her amused whisper, the folded paper in his fingers, her pussy inches from his face. His stomach turned.

His cock stirred. He shifted his stance. With one hand hidden by the front of his jacket, he adjusted himself through the fabric before folding his hands again. Then he lowered his head a little farther. He forced himself to think of the dead instead. The ones who had been alive when the horizon had turned into fire. The ones who would never stand in the heat again. The ones who suffered in the radiation wards for weeks before dying alone. He tried to summon some honest grief. It flickered and died.

He had not breathed the ash. He had not heard the blast. He knew Houston from edited footage and school lessons. The dead here had shaped the world that made him possible. They had not shaped his nerves. He was still just a man standing in silence, trying not to think about the wrong thing at the wrong time. At last the memorial officer moved. Constantine raised his head. Hawks followed. Then the line began moving again. The officer turned and guided them toward the wall of names near the viewing rail.

Names rose in pale columns on black stone. Louis tried to read the wall. From his distance the names were too many to mean anything, so his eyes fixed on one. THOMAS EDWARD LOCKE The name meant nothing to him. But he kept staring at it. The other names blurred around it. He wondered who Thomas Edward Locke had been. How old he had been when the sky went white. Whether anyone alive still knew how he liked his coffee, what color he hated, or how he laughed at a joke he liked.

Louis stared at the name until it became a point, and then it became the only thing in the wall that was not empty. Beside him, Angelique was looking at the wall as well. Her eyes stayed there. Louis thought she had found a name too. Gladice remained half a step farther back, sunglasses hanging from one hand, her other arm folded across her waist. Up close, her mouth was too flat to be solemn. The memorial director waited a few more seconds, then gestured toward the path descending around the crater's perimeter.

"If the delegation is ready, we may continue to the perimeter walk." Constantine gave a single nod. The line reformed. They followed the curving path down along the crater's outer edge. Bronze lines in the floor marked streets that no longer existed. Louis caught only fragments of casualty estimates and dates as he passed plaques. The memorial director slowed at a recessed gallery built into the wall. Recovered objects sat behind glass under narrow white lights.

"This section preserves items recovered from the western commercial core during the second and third clearance phases," the director said, gesturing toward the items.

"Many are anonymous. We preserve them as evidence of ordinary life at the moment the city changed." Louis stared at a pair of bent glasses. He wondered if someone had been wearing them when it happened. Or if they had simply fallen from a desk or a shelf. Then his eyes went to a silver locket before he understood what he was looking at, and now they would not leave it. It was small enough to be overlooked at first glance. Silver, blackened at the edges, the oval face still faintly engraved beneath the heat damage.

The chain was gone. One side of the hinge had warped but not fully sealed. It had been worn against someone's skin, he thought. Louis heard the director continue speaking about recovery phases and preservation methods. He stopped following the words. He stepped closer to the glass.

"Do you know whose it was?" he asked. The director turned to him.

"No confirmed identification, sir. It was recovered from the western commercial core during the third clearance phase. No surviving ownership record." Louis kept his eyes on the locket.

"Was it ever claimed?"

"No." Louis waited a moment. Then: "Was it opened?" The director hesitated.

"The decision was made to preserve it as it was found, without internal examination." Louis nodded once. Then he said it before he could stop himself.

"If there is no family left to return it to, I would like to ask for it." The director turned from the case and looked at him. Around them, the delegation stopped moving. Constantine looked over. Harvey did too. No one spoke.

"These items are not souvenirs, Mr. Collins." Heat rose in Louis's face.

"I know." He lifted his eyes from the locket at last.

"That isn't what I mean." He turned toward the others.

"If it belongs to no one, let it stay with me. I will keep it and remember that it was someone's, once." He did not look at Angelique, but he could feel she was watching him. Gladice gave him a sidelong glance. The director looked from Louis to Constantine, then back to the case.

"I would need to consult with the memorial committee."

"Of course," Louis said. The group moved on. The path curved lower and opened into a section where dark metal inlays marked the foundations of several buildings. Louis followed where he was supposed to follow. He stopped checking his face. He was thinking about the locket, and about how a person could be reduced to one object behind glass. He wondered if he could remember that every morning when he looked at it. The line ahead slowed once more. They had reached the lowest point of the perimeter walk.

A wide shallow pool had been set into the terrace. The water did not move. At the far edge of the pool stood a black memorial stone carved with the date of the detonation and a quotation: WE WILL NOT FORGET WE WILL NOT FORGIVE Gladice looked at the inscription longer than the others, then breathed out through her nose.

"Now that's honest," she murmured. Louis did not turn his head.

"What is?" Her mouth curled.

"The part where they say they won't forgive. Most memorials try too hard to be noble. At least this one admits it wants revenge." Angelique kept looking at the stone when she answered.

"Maybe it only means justice." Gladice glanced at her.

"Justice is what people say when they want revenge to sound reasonable." She looked back at the memorial stone.

"Houston understands that the two are the same thing in different clothes." The path rose back toward the upper ring and the white overhead lights. By the time they reached the upper level, Louis felt his legs were heavier than they should have been.