Free City Wars by Dennis Palumbo Page B

they might be true. That he— “It’s okay, Jake,” she was saying. “It’s as much my fault.” She kissed him softly, then again. “I tend to explain a lot.”
    “I noticed.”
    He got up after a while and padded across theroom, returning to the bed with a tray. He poured two glasses of wine.
    “It looks like the real thing,” he said.
    She lifted her glass. “It is. Welcome back to Government.”
    He thought that last remark over as he drank his wine.
    The young girl stood before the Instructors and lowered her head. She was afraid, and wanted to cry, but did not cry.
    The Instructors spoke in quiet tones. They used many words she did not understand.
    After a while, they asked her if she knew her age.
    Eleven, she said.
    Would you like to know faith, they asked.
    I would like to know faith, she said.
    Would you like to know strength, they asked.
    I would like to know strength, she said.
    Would you like to know being, they asked.
    I would like to know being, she said.
    They smiled at her and bowed their heads.
    The young girl did not know why they bowed, nor why they dressed as they did, nor why the room seemed to have no walls and go on forever.
    Nor did she know why she’d replied to their questions as she had. She’d merely answered the way she’d been told to that first time she came here.
    Later she would come to know all these things.
    Later she would understand that she’d been selected at this young age for her intelligence, genetic strain, and assertive psychological profile. She’d understand that a series of tests had determined her body to be physiologically and mentally compatible with a complex biochemical implant that would be prepared for her.
    For now, the young girl knew only that the Instructors were bowing to her, and smiling, and she felt good in this room.
    It was an honor to come here. Everyone had told her so. It meant you were special. It meant you wereallowed to live and play within the great spheres outside the city, the great spheres all the children marveled at and made up stories about.
    And now she was here, and they were going to let her stay and learn with them.
    That’s what they’d said. She was going to learn with them. And teach them.
    She did not understand. She couldn’t see how a little girl like herself could teach anything to such wise old ones.
    That is, she assumed they were wise. Why, they spoke so softly and well. And they bowed!
    Yes, they were wise, she decided as they led her out of the room. But she must be wise too, else they’d never have let her come live with them.
    Whether she knew it or not, she’d learned her first wise thing.
    Her formal education was elliptical in the following ten years, always bringing her back to her purpose among the Instructors. She learned the rudiments of math and science, and the rules of nature, and the rules of self.
    And the rules of the Order.
    The First Rule was that to Guard was to know being.
    The Second Rule was that to Guard was to make the rational choice to protect those who functioned as leaders in society.
    The young girl was taught a specific form of meditation, what the Instructors called the “being search.” It was a search to be conducted daily, and one which was never to end.
    At the age of thirteen, she was introduced to the studies of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. She was told by her Instructors that learned opinion considered the human body’s muscles to be divided into two categories: voluntary and involuntary. She was told that such distinctions did not exist for those in the Order.
    This same year she joined her fellow students in an intensive program of physical conditioning. Her lithe body was made to stretch, to test itself, to find limits.
    She began at the same time her schooling in the martial skills.
    At fourteen, she accepted her physicality and mortality in a small ceremony before all the Instructors. She was allowed to ask every question that entered her mind. The ceremony