DURABLE LIES

“Wake up, No Name.”

I’d been having a very pleasant dream about a pretty girl I’d known in junior high school, and wasn’t pleased to feel someone prodding my shoulder.

“Not going…” I mumbled, burying my face in the pillows. “I’m sick…”

“Matthew,” said a girl with laughter in her voice. “Don’t you want to eat?”

My eyes flew open. I looked quickly down, remembering where I was, relieved to find that, yes, I’d dressed again after my bath. I rolled over to find Rain and Piper by the bed looking down at me. She had changed clothes too, wrapped now in something far less prim than before. “Is it dinner time?” I asked. The light outside my windows seemed little changed.

“No,” said Piper. “I just said that to get your attention.”

“I’m that easy?”

“You’re a boy. Only one or two things really matter to a boy.” She smiled impishly.

I gave her a wary look, wondering just how stupid it had been to jack off in The Lady’s guesthouse. How closely did they keep track of what went on here? If they knew, would they care?

“In a couple hours,” said Rain, “you’ll be having dinner with The Lady and a friend of hers. It is imperative that you understand the rules of that engagement beforehand, so we’ve come to fill you in. Would you come join us at the table, please?”

He didn’t sound disgusted with me, so they probably didn’t know. I got up and followed them to the small, round table, where we all sat down before still dispiritingly empty plates as my teenaged stomach lamented Piper’s careless talk of dinner.

“The first thing you must come to terms with,” said Rain, “is that this is going to be very hard and very dangerous. There is no easy solution to this situation—for any of us. So prepare yourself to think, how can I make this work? Not, why do I have to do this? Understand?”

“Yes sir,” I said, crisply, and almost followed with, I’m not a child, you know. Except, I was. Sort of. I wasn’t all that worried, really. If anything, this seemed like the part where being fourteen knowing everything I’d known at fifty was going to start paying off. With this energetic young body, and my wise old work ethic, how much harder could whatever they had planned for me be than what I’d already had to navigate?

“The Lady’s friend, to whom you will be introduced tonight, is named Mikayl Stbrich,” said Rain. “He is an artist of considerable renown among both our people and a number of your own. You will find few of our kind more fascinated by, or fond of, the Andinalloi than he and his family are.

“He has been told that The Lady wishes to discuss the commission of a painting, and will not learn the real reason for tonight’s invitation until he arrives to dine with her. Even there, he will be told only that you are a casualty of Anselm’s predations. He will think he knows what that means, though, of course, he will be mistaken by design. Your primary job tonight will be to do absolutely nothing that might set him straight. Now, or ever, actually. If he or any of his household ever attempt to talk with you about your supposed trauma, however sympathetically, just act lost for words, and claim you can’t remember. He will half expect that, and respect the boundary. Is this all clear to you so far?”

It wasn’t, entirely, but I nodded anyway. Requesting clarification around here only seemed to result in disapproval and greater confusion.

“Good,” said Rain. “You must never to do anything, even inadvertently, to make them so much as wonder if you were ever other than the Andinol boy you seem. In fact, your only hope of success is to forget the fact yourself. No more begging to be changed back. No more remembering there was ever anything to change. Like it or not, the man you were is dead. The time has come to bury him as permanently as you would any other corpse. Are you ready to accept that yet?”

“Yes.” Having arrived at more or less this same conclusion during my bath, my earlier desire to be restored was already fading. “I am this now.”

Rain’s brows climbed slightly in apparent surprise. “Good. Then you must start by learning to be what you are now.”

“Meaning…what?” I asked.

“Learning to sound and act much more like a child, for one thing.” I glanced at Piper, who looked pointedly away. “You must take care to use fewer, more rudimentary words. Or better yet—especially tonight—just say as little as you can. No one pays as much attention to a quiet child as they do to a precocious one, and attention is precisely what you mustn’t draw now. When you meet other children, memorize their lingo, their cadences and affectations, and imitate them. Apply yourself, and this will soon become so reflexive that you’ll find it hard not to speak as they do.”

Having worked around a lot of younger people, and watched plenty of TV, I imagined I had quite a grasp of how teenagers slumped through life these days. “Whatever, dude.” Rain neither smiled nor looked much impressed at this little sample of my expertise.

“You must also start at least pretending much more deference to authority,” he said. “No matter how defiant your people’s youth may act at times, they know in their bones that they are near the bottom of the food chain. Real children have never experienced being anything else, and show it, even when they wish not to. You must grow better at acting like you’re used to being polite—or at least scared and insecure—around adults, or even older children. Fail at that, and Mikayl won’t be the only one to start putting risky bits of rumor together in his head.”

I let my gaze fall, stuffing a bit of authentic irritation, looked as sullen and embarrassed as I could, and nodded awkwardly.

“That’s better than your previous attempt,” Rain said. “You’ll also need a last name. We’re going to let Mikayl assume you’re using your birth name. No Andinole boy should know not to. He is not the sort who’d try to use that knowledge to manipulate you, so we’ve little fear he’ll discover our omission; but if your presence in his circle should ever draw unwanted interest, his assumption that your name is genuine should help confuse the trail. You’ll need a story as well, which is where things get tricky. Think carefully. Have you told anyone anything about your past so far?”

I thought, then shook my head. “I mostly told the paramedics I couldn’t remember anything about myself or what had happened. …Though I did tell them that my suit and everything belonged to an uncle. That I’d been with him when…something bad happened.”

“Something bad,” Rain said. “What else did you tell them about that?”

I thought back to that first morning, reviewing my exchanges with the paramedics as best I could after so much time and trauma. “Nothing I can remember.”

“Nothing you remember? Or nothing? It matters.”

“Nothing,” I said.

Rain nodded. “And others? Anyone at all?”

I continued reviewing the people I’d met since running from the hospital. “I told a couple people I was in a play at school, to explain my clothes that first morning. Does that count?”

“It all counts. What else?”

“I…told a taxi driver I was home schooled—which contradicts what I’d told the others about my clothes, I guess. Is that a problem?”

Rain tilted his head, clearly thinking. Then he shrugged. “Not really. You were panicked, on the run. Lying about all sorts of things would be expected. We’ll go with the home schooling story though. Makes you harder to search for in existing records, and the bit about your clothes sounds more like the sort of lie a fleeing child might have told. What else?”

I shook my head, unable to recall any other claims, until I remembered my mugger. “I told the man who robbed me that my parents were dead and the cops were after me, and that I had nowhere to go. But he was drunk, and clearly didn’t believe a word I’d said.”

“That doesn’t make him any less dangerous,” said Rain. “In fact, a drunken criminal is more likely than most of those you’ve mentioned to be found and pumped for information by Anselm’s operatives. Is there anything else?”

“I don’t think so. I called myself Matthew a few times, but I don’t think I said anything else to anyone about who I was or where I’d come from.”

“All right then,” said Rain. “These fragments are the kernel of your story.” His gaze turned inward. “Your parents are dead. A tragic car wreck. You’d been sent to live with an uncle—your only living relative. Something bad happened to the two of you—late one night, as you were…” He pursed his lips, and thought again. “Your uncle didn’t like being saddled with you. He was abusive…and so controlling that he’d even yanked you out of school, so you ran away. But street life was harder than you’d expected. Late one night, you finally called and begged him to come get you. He was a bastard, but all you had.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “This ‘bastard’ was me, you know. Can’t we—”

“No he wasn’t,” Rain cut me off. “You were never anyone but you. You cannot be attached—at all—to that man anymore. You can’t care how he’s described. Your survival and ours depends on that.”

“Understood,” I said, unhappily.

“So,” Rain continued, “he was a bastard, but he needed the support money he received for taking care of you, so he drove into the city to retrieve you. As you two were walking back to where he’d parked, something very bad occurred—so bad, it has damaged your mind, leaving you unable to remember anything more. You have dreadful nightmares now. You can’t remember what exactly happened, but you feel certain that he died—and that the people who killed him are now coming after you. Just because you saw them. You live in fear of anyone who might bring you back to their attention, even the police. In fact, this pervasive fear has left you unwilling to speak about your past at all. You don’t want to remember any of it. As far as you’re concerned, you were born the morning after all this happened, and may never be able to stop hiding.” He fell silent, seeming to review his tale, then nodded. “That should do.”

“That’s … awfully close to what really happened,” I said. “Shouldn’t my story differ from the truth enough so that it doesn’t line up in someone’s mind with the very event we’re trying to hide?”

Rain shook his head. “First of all, you are never going to tell any of that story to anyone except yourself—every night before you sleep, and again the moment you wake up, day after week after month until it has become your truth. The boy I’ve just described wouldn’t dare tell his story to others. He wouldn’t even want to.

“But if you are ever unavoidably required to speak of it, you won’t have to worry that it might not line up with other little things you’ve said or done in reference to what you actually remember. To get past Anselm, your lie must be more durable than any complete departure from the truth could be. Much of this tale might pass a polygraph test precisely because it is so nearly true.”

Yes, I thought. These people really do know how to hide. “So what last name do you think I should use?” I asked.

“You have to decide that,” said Piper.

Rain nodded. “The name, like the lie, must come out of your experience, or it will give itself away. Think about it and decide between now and dinner. I think we’re done ’til then. The remaining details of this plan will be worked out over our meal tonight, though your only tasks there will be to listen carefully to everything said, say as little as you are allowed to, and save any questions you may have until after Mikayl is gone. Volunteer no bright ideas unless they are asked for, and then deliver them as a teenage boy of your kind would do in intimidating, adult company, yes?”

“I won’t have to fake feeling in over my head,” I replied.

Rain finally smiled. “As I said, the most effective lies are nearly true.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Someone will come for you when it is time. If you choose to wander, don’t be gone past dark. We’ll not want to hunt you down when Mikayl arrives.”

Piper stood to go as well.

“Could you stay?” I asked her.

“Why?”

“I… It’s nice here, but…there’s not much for me to do.” Though I didn’t want to say so in front of Rain, I had more questions than ever by now, and supposed I was more likely to get answers to at least a few of them from her than from the chancellor. “Is it safe to wander around in these…woods without a guide of some kind?”

“You won’t get lost here,” Piper assured me.

“It’s not that kind of wood,” said Rain. “Just don’t open any doors but the two you’ve already used.”

“Okay,” I said, looking back at Piper. “But, maybe you could give me some pointers about sounding more my new age. You’ve had a lot more practice, after all.”

She looked at Rain, who shrugged. “All right,” she said. “Since you’ve already bathed, I guess there’s time for a hike.”

I felt my face flush. “How…do you know I took a bath?”

She glanced awkwardly at Rain, then back at me. “You’re wearing fresh clothes, your hair is washed, and…I’m sorry to be indelicate, but you no longer smell.”

“Oh!” I grinned in relief. “Well, that’s okay.”

She gave me an odd look, as did Rain.

“I mean…I don’t like smelling either.” I barely managed not to cringe at the even greater stupidity of this reply. “There just weren’t any showers…on the street, I mean. Last night.”

After another awkward silence, Rain said, “You’re better at this than I’d hoped. That was quite convincingly adolescent.” He nodded. “Keep it up.” After a slight bow to Piper, he left.

“Okay. He’s gone,” she said, turning back to face me. “Why am I really here?”

“What? …I just told you. I—”

“—hardly need lessons from me on being convincingly adolescent,” she cut in with a crooked smile. “You’ve already noted—several times today—what a poor job I’ve been doing of that. I’m sure Rain was no more fooled by that excuse than I am.”

Was I really so transparent?  “I just…have so many questions. They’re eating me alive. I need to talk with someone. My respect for Rain’s abilities grew by leaps and bounds in those tunnels this morning, but to him I’m nothing but a problem. As kind as your mother has been to me,” or seems to have been, I revised silently, “I can hardly impose on her any further. And it seems like I’m not supposed to talk at all with anybody else here. You’re the only one I feel like I might be able to confide in—anywhere, now.”

Her skeptical expression softened. “Rain was right. This is all going to be very hard. I’m truly sorry about where your collision with us has left you. But you should know that Rain will ask me to repeat everything we say here, and I will. Every last word.” She looked away, unhappily. “I should never have lied to him this morning. I should have gone right out to meet him on the stairs and just told him you were there.” She offered me a sympathetic smile. “We are, neither of us, much cut out for lying, Matthew. So, do you still want to have this talk?”

“Desperately.” Only now, as we said these things, had I begun to realize how lonely this new life might turn out to be. “I’m not plotting anything, Piper—or interested in deceiving anyone. I’m just looking for a few straight answers. I know that everything is ‘yes and no’ here. I haven’t forgotten our talks this morning. You said my life would be all about coping with riddles now, and after this…impossible day, I think I understand that. …Much better than I did this morning, anyway. But how am I supposed to work out riddles I can’t even pose aloud to anyone?” Her expression grew steadily sadder as I spoke, making me hope I might finally get something more from her than just ‘yes and no.’ “By all means, tell Rain everything. In fact, start by telling him that I might learn how to hide from your kind a whole lot better and faster if my teachers would stop trying so hard to hide from me. Trust makes learning so much easier, for my kind, anyway. Tell him I said that as well.”

Piper gazed at me a while, her face a bleak mask. “I fear that we keep…underestimating you,” she said at last, then looked down pensively. “I’ve been cross with you at times today,” she said quietly, “for not understanding us—me—better. As if…” She looked up, offering me a rueful smile. “What are these riddles you want help with?”

I looked back at her, thinking carefully about which of the blizzard of questions inside me might be most important—now. “There are two I’d like to start with.”

She nodded, waiting.

“First… I need to understand, at least a little, how your people make me see…or even think…whatever you want me to.”

Her face fell again. She shook her head. “Too big a question. I don’t know where to—”

“I know. How do you explain quantum physics to a tribal toddler?”

“When I said that, I didn’t mean—”

“I know that too,” I cut in again, with a smile this time. “I get it. I do. But…I’ve seen so many impossible things today. And…when I was with your mother…” Did I want to risk seeming to accuse Piper’s mother of something I could not be sure had even happened?

“What?” Piper asked with apparent concern. “What happened with my mother?”

In for a penny… “I had planned to ask her these questions. She invited me to do so. But, her first answer was too evasive to translate. And then…somehow…” I shrugged, searching for the softest way to say it. “It was like I just forgot to ask them. Forgot what my questions even were. We talked about other things. I said things I’d never meant to say at all. And later, as I followed her page into the woods, I began to feel like I was…waking up from something. Without ever having been asleep. …Did she do something to make me forget my questions? Forget myself?” I waited, half fearfully, for whatever might come flying out of the nest I had just dared to poke.

“You’re asking if she controlled your thoughts.” Piper’s tone was as uninflected as her mother’s had been after I’d asked whether the forest was real. Once again, it could have been a question or a statement. But it hadn’t been an answer. I waited, half expecting to feel all my questions vanishing again. But this time they didn’t. “Did she? …Can you people do that?”

Piper’s gaze drifted toward the ceiling, then off through a nearby window. Everywhere except back to me.

“I’m not blaming anyone for anything,” I tried to reassure her. “I don’t begin to know enough about any of what’s going on to know how I should feel at all. That’s the problem, really… Understanding nothing at all about what’s happening…makes anything possible. All the very worst answers—all the best ones. I have no way to weed any of them out. Can you see how frightening that is? Maybe much more frightening than it really is, but—”

“You don’t have to keep explaining.” Her eyes were suddenly on mine again. “There is only one short answer to your question, and we both know you won’t like it.” I slumped down in my chair, and dropped my face into my hands, knowing all too well what that answer was. “But I will try to give you something more than that this time.” She sighed. “Dare I hope that your second question might be easier to answer?”

“How would I know?” I raised my head, and leaned wearily back in my chair. “Everyone’s made it crystal clear that I’m the biggest political crisis you’ve had to deal with in…centuries, maybe?”

“Not yet,” she said, unsmiling. “We’re still trying to prevent that.”

“Okay. But I still have no idea why.”

She blinked at me, looking incredulous. “Well, obviously—”

“—not to me!” I said. “In a single day, I’ve seen you guys turn whole buildings inside out, blow up train tunnels, change one body for another, create whole forests even—this forest is a fake, right?”

“Let’s not add any more complicated questions to the mix, okay?” Piper’s eyes sought the ceiling again. “Stick to the point, please.”

“Okay, fine. The point is that you guys seem to go around remaking the world at your whim. So what’s so awful about turning one inconsequential old man into an even more inconsequential teenager? One more little rabbit out of one more little hat! Why does this rabbit matter so much more than all the others do?”

Her mouth was actually hanging open now. “Because this rabbit is real,” she said, a little shrilly, “as I clearly recall explaining at some length this morning.”

“Yeah, and a real rabbit breaks all your deepest rules. I remember that part too. So, let’s pretend that anyone has told me—still—what any of those deepest rules are, much less how my existence breaks them. Even if I knew all that, I’d still just ask why anybody has to know I’m ‘real.’ Assuming any of your kind ever even thought to ask, why not tell them I’m just one more tricky trick? Nothing to see here, people; move along, move along.” Piper just stared at me, seeming lost for words. “Wouldn’t that be so much easier and safer than rushing me around in secret this way, sending me off wrapped in dangerous lies to be trained, until I’m exceptional enough to…what? Leave here safely on my own? Won’t turning me into some kind of hybrid ninja just make it even harder to miss me in a crowd?”

“Did I say, tribal toddler?” Piper moaned. “I meant alien toddler.” She shook her head, seeming almost stricken. “I think a lot better in motion, Matthew. And my mother’s fake forest is especially lovely as evening arrives. Let’s go for that hike, and see how much of my planet I can explain to you in—” she glanced briefly at the window “—about an hour and a half.”