The War Whisperer: Book 1: Geronimo Read online

  “Janice and Jake,” said some woman I’d never before met, “this is Jerome.” The woman doing the introductions was pleasant looking, kind of chubby, with pulled back blond hair, big teeth and a big smile.

  The woman turned to me and said, “Jerome, I’m Laura Petty and this is Janice and Jake Weisman. They live in Beverly Hills, California. They wanted to meet you.”

  I smiled and nodded. “Are you in the movies?” I asked.

  They both laughed. I felt in my heart that I was in. They loved me. As it turned out, David Weisman was an assistant director at Universal Studios. “Did you ever see a motion picture called Black Susan?” he asked.

  I had. It was a movie about a little black girl named Susan who was always being bullied in school and was discovered to be a genius and I didn’t remember the rest of the movie because I had fallen asleep. I said, “Yes. We saw it in the dining room last winter.”

  “Well,” said David proudly, “I worked on that production.” He nodded toward his wife. “Janice headed the wardrobe department.”

  Movie people! I was going to be taken home all the way to California and be loved by movie people! I was lightheaded and tears welled in my eyes.

  Janice asked Ms. Petty if it was okay to hug me, and she said it was. I fell into her arms, I could feel her breasts against my chest and could smell her hair. It smelled like flowers, but different than lilac.

  “The three blue jays,” joked the man. He had a big square chin, brown hair, blue eyes, and white teeth that were perfectly even and almost sparkled they were so white.

  I knew a blue jay was a bird and that the names of he, his wife, and myself began with “J,” but why “blue?”

  The man saw my confusion and asked, “What’s the problem?”

  “Why ‘blue’?” I asked him.

  He grinned and nodded. “Sharp lad. Do you know what politics is?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, that makes you as smart as ninety percent of the human race.” He raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck. “Politics is how we choose the women and men who run the different kinds of government.”

  “Some people in politics want different things,” added Janice. “They form groups to get the things they want. And news people—like on the vids?”

  I nodded that I understood.

  “Well, the news people to talk about the groups,” she continued, “represent them with colors. The Republicans are red, the socialists are green, the Libertarians—”

  “—Are black and white,” interrupted Jake with a grin. I didn’t understand his joke.

  “Social Democrats are blue and we’re Social Democrats.”

  “What do Social Democrats want?” I asked.

  Janice frowned. “Well, Democrats want everyone to be able to run their own lives.”

  “You mean like freedom?” I asked.

  “Exactly like freedom,” said Jake with a big happy grin.

  I was in. Not only were they beautiful and rich, they loved me because I was just like them. I wanted to run my own life. I smiled and said, “Three blue jays.” I was a Social Democrat.

  Someone else, a young man, entered the room and handed Ms. Petty a file folder. They whispered at each other for a bit, furtive glances in my direction, then at Janice and Jake. Ms. Petty opened the folder, looked into it, and stepped closer to Jake Weisman. She whispered something to Jake. His face became like stone. He leaned over and whispered something to Janice. As she listened I could feel her withdraw from me. I could feel all my dreams slipping from my grasp.

  “I’m sorry, Jerome,” she said to me. “I’ll be back. I have to read something.”

  She took the file folder from Jake, read, and I watched the disappointment mist her eyes. She saw something in the file she hated more than she loved me. Was it because I really wasn’t a Social Democrat? Because I wasn’t blue enough? It was gone. I hadn’t done anything, but it was already being taken away. I could see the tear-smeared images of Janice and Jake talk in whispered tones to each other, then to Laura Petty, then back at each other.

  Frowns, a not very well hidden shaking of the head between the pair of them, then another frown and shrug from Jake toward Ms. Petty. Janice turned, stepped toward me. “I’m sorry, Jerome,” she said without touching me. “We’re both sorry, but we didn’t have all the facts.”

  “What . . . what facts?” I cried. “Is it . . . Is it because . . .” But they were already getting up. They were holding my heart in their hands, but the door was already closing behind them. I couldn’t figure out where I had failed, what I had done wrong.

  Their images through the glass doors as well as my dreams dissolved in my tears. Frightening, the emotional distances traveled on the five minute journey from nobody wants me to somebody great wants me and soon I’ll be part of a real family, then back to I was right the first time.

  I felt at that moment it would take me a long time to repair the wound and ease the panicky desperation I felt. What was in that file? Was it politics? Had I been born into the wrong faction, the wrong class, the wrong ideology? Was I really red or black and white? What had I done?

  Then Ms. Petty came back into the room, opened the door to the playground, and told me to go to lunch.

  “What did I do wrong?” I asked her.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong, Jerry. You weren’t exactly what they were looking for. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” I cried out. “I can become anything they want! Let me try!”

  “They’re gone, Jerry. That’s the way it goes sometimes. Go to lunch and forget about it.”

  Forget about it. Forget about it. Ms. Petty told me to forget about it. “What was in the file?” I demanded.

  Ms. Petty waved her hand about. “It’s a medical thing. Not important.”

  “It seemed pretty important to Janice and Jake,” I said, but the office door was already closing behind Ms. Petty.

  “Window shoppers,” one of the older boys said as I emerged into the relentless sunlight, unable to hide my tears. It was Thiago. He was Mexican and a third-grader now, but different. He didn’t hate Indians or anyone else I knew of.

  “Like they in a pet store, see?” he explained nodding toward the parking lot where the prospective parents had left their car. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Next time you in a ankle-biter parade, homi, you do like this.”

  Thiago made his eyes wide, looked up, smiled and hung his tongue out, panting like a puppy, his hands like paws next to his face.

  I laughed.

  When I needed my heart pieced back together Thiago made me laugh, which made him a much more valuable person to me than either of the departed window shoppers. Perhaps being blue wasn’t such a good thing for me.

  There were no more requests to see me from prospective parents.

  Witness

  Later that school year, early in March, there was a playground fight between Thiago and another third grader. At that time I was in a kindergarten thing that was concerned mostly with beating on pots, making nonsense rhymes in Spanish and English, taking naps, eating substitute graham crackers with sour milk substitute, doing really boring computer game tutorials dealing with protecting the environment, and making fun of our stoned general science teacher, Constanza Hermann.

  In her introduction to computers and robotics, Ms. Hermann said that robots are any machine that does what it is designed and told to do independent of continuous human control.

  Antonella Diaz wanted to know if a robot that was broken and no longer does what a human tells it to do is still a robot.

  Ms. Hermann explained that such an entity would be a non functioning robot.

  Then Antonella wanted to know if a lawn mower that wouldn’t start, i.e., wouldn’t do what it was designed and told to do, would be a non functioning robot.

  Ms. Hermann invited Antonella Diaz down to the principal’s office.

  Androids, continued Ms. Hermann, are artificial humans that, once activ
ated, can and do operate independent of humans through AI, or Artificial Intelligence. Aside from the prohibitive costs involved, there was a developing gray area of the law concerning the rights such an entity should possess once activated. Androids were designed, produced, and activated in order to perform certain kinds of services. Since they also possessed AI, they had their own wills and desires. Being forced to perform a service is, by definition, involuntary servitude, i.e., slavery, thus the legal issue, slavery being against the law.

  Cristóbal Arvizu raised his hand and when called upon wanted to know if he was forced to wash dishes and pick up trash out on the grounds, if that made him a slave, and if so, did that mean that the school was breaking the law.

  Cristóbal was also invited to visit the principal.

  I raised my hand because I had something about which I was genuinely curious, although I was convinced my question would both produce a laugh and probably get me a trip to the principal’s office.

  She called upon me.

  “Ms. Hermann, are there animal androids?”

  She actually smiled. “Very good question, Jerry. They are quite rare, but they are called ‘amdroids,’ an ‘m’ following the ‘a’ instead of an ‘n.’“

  She wrote the word “amdroid” on the blackboard.

  “As you all can imagine,” she addressed the class, “they are quite expensive and are mostly playthings for the very wealthy. There are some industrial uses for amdroids, but again there are constitutional problems. Free will for amdroids is almost identical to free will in an android. So, training an amdroid dog to perform tricks through forcible methods may be involuntary servitude.”

  “How much does a slave rat cost?” asked Luis Lujambio, and Ms. Hermann began screaming and crying, pounding her fists on her desk, and ordered us all to go down to the principal’s office.

  Ms. Hermann was “short a few chips,” as Roberto Martinez used to say. Her grandfather was from Argentina, which we asserted meant that her great great grandfather had to have been a Nazi. One time, though, when she was really trashed on pot, she turned on a tune using the classroom’s player, and chose me because I was the tallest, she said, “Fuck science for the day. Move the desks and chairs to the walls. Today we learn to tango.”

  Over the next two weeks she taught all of us to tango. She was crazy as a pocket full of bumblebees, but Ms. Hermann could really dance. I thought I got pretty good at the tango but they never played tangos at any of the school dances. It became my favorite class until one day during recess she climbed on top of the Senior Dorm roof and said she was going to do a head-first dive onto the pavement “for glory.” She did and a white panel van came and took her body away. Thiago told me that had we been in a regular school, those who witnessed Ms. Hermann’s suicide would have been offered counseling. We were in U CrotcH, however, and were told to forget about it.

  A few days after that we were out on the playground in the area between the preschooler’s building and the long classroom module housing first and second grade classrooms. It was spring, but hellishly hot, dry, and still.

  Two boys were circling each other in the dust of the playground. Thiago I knew. He was nine then, thin with light brown hair he wore cut short, and a face so thin I couldn’t help but visualize the skull beneath. Maybe ugly, but he was very strong. Tough as rawhide, the Mexican boys said. They were quietly cheering on Thiago. Thiago had talked with me a bunch of times, taught me games, told me about the police drones over the fence, and was nice to me. He was my only friend at UCH.

  He was fighting with Bodaway. I knew him, too. Bodaway was brown skinned with blue-black hair worn long, high cheekbones, and squinty little dark eyes. He was half Apache, nine years old, and called himself Bodey. He was strong, too. Tougher than rawhide said the boys who called themselves Apaches. I didn’t like him at all. Bodey made fun of my name, made fun of me, and slapped me around when no one was looking.

  Bodey was half Afro and half Mescalero Apache. I was told I was Apache, too, and had to cheer for Bodaway. I didn’t cheer for him, though, because I didn’t like him.

  The Apache boys said “Bodaway” meant “making fire.” One called Bear said, “Fire Maker will beat the fucking spic.” Bear said it as though he could see into the future, as if his saying it would make it so. That would mean that Thiago would have to back down, and I didn’t want to see him back down even if he was a Mexican.

  There were mostly boys watching and mostly boys old enough to be in real school classes. Some girls were there, too. A fifth grader, a girl named Onawa, watched the two boys circle each other, the dust at their feet rising in the still air, hanging there as if forever.

  Mister Makin, who was supposed to be watching things, was talking to the elementary school assistant housemother, Jenny. She was very pretty. The older boys and girls would make comments about Jenny and snicker behind her back. “Jenny of the snack rack and fine behind.” I didn’t understand what they were joking about, but laughed with them, not wanting to appear ignorant.

  Onawa looked at Mister Makin and at Jenny. Just then, however, they had eyes only for each other. Onawa then turned and said to one of the older boys, a Jicarilla Apache named Elan. “We should stop the fight.”

  Elan was big, brute ugly, and always looked angry. He snorted and spat at Onawa’s feet. “You got too much pussy in you, Onawa-wah-wah,” he mocked. Waving a dismissive hand at the fighters, he said, “Couple pussies. Won’t come to much. Words. Maybe a bloody nose. Crying.”

  There was a change in the sounds, but no one was talking. I looked back at the fighters. Bodey’s nose was bloody. He wiped it on the back of his forearm, looked at the blood, called Thiago a name I didn’t understand, reached into his back pocket, and took something from it.

  He pressed something and it opened becoming the most dangerously beautiful weapon I had ever seen: a long, narrow gleaming stainless steel blade flashing in the sunlight.

  I looked at Thiago to see what he would do. He already had a knife in his hand, as well. His blade, though, was wider, scratched and dull-looking from much use. I knew his knife. He was the boy who showed me how to play mumbley-peg. We played the game a lot. I was no good compared to Thiago, but he played it with me, which was really special. I wasn’t an Apache to him; I was just another kid.

  Thiago once bragged to me that his knife was one he took from his father’s corpse before the medical examiner’s ghouls took the body away.

  I asked him then how his father had died.

  He paused for a long time, frowned, then looked at me, slowly shaking his head. “He was bad man, Jerry,” he answered, his voice quiet and cold. “Muy malo. All I can say about that.” Then he pushed my shoulder and asked me if I knew about the secret drones the city police used. I said no, and he showed me the police on the other side of the fence.

  The four Northwest Dorms everyone called “Diaper Dorms” were for preschool through second grade kids. “A” Dorm was near the northwest fence just above the preschool class building. I lived in Northwest “C.” The fence behind the dorms was solid made from boards and wire with three strings of razor wire above the boards. From the second floor of any of the four buildings, though, you could see over the fence.

  It didn’t look like much over there: A sort of wide white road leading to Fort Clark Road, the end nearest the fence widened and shaped into a pretty big circle. A few meters from the circle another wide white road came off of the first, went left until it was in back of Northwest “A” where it, too, ended in a big white circle, mesquite and clumps of burned grass here and there. Far to the left was a huge red-roofed place with palm trees and a swimming pool. I looked back at the white roads.

  “What are they for?” I asked, pointing at the white circles.

  “Police HeliDrones,” said Thiago. “They got dozens. Two of the armored ones are stationed right here. Drone unit send them up before daybreak and run them all day. They bring them back at night. Sometime they run them all night, too.
Depends on what’s goin’ on.”

  He pointed toward a garage looking building to the right of the biggest white road. “That the maintenance and storage shed. They work on them in there.” He pointed to an identical looking building on the opposite side of the road, its roof bristling with antennae. “Flight operations. They control the two HeliDrones from there, take pictures, run character recognition software, shoot bad guys.”

  He grinned and looked around before saying to me in a lowered voice, “Don’t tell no one, but couple weeks ago at night I sneak through fence up in the North Corner. Got through their fence, too. I look through the windows at the operators flying’ the drones, chopper controls, looking at stuff and where they going on big computer screens. So cool.”

  “I never hear them take off or land,” I said.

  “You know ‘stealth’?” he asked, looking down at me.

  I shrugged. “You mean farts no one hears?”

  He laughed. “Okay. Yeah, sort of. See, HeliDrones don’t make hardly any noise, can’t see them, radar can’t see them, and they can’t be picked up by heat or light signatures or radio emissions.”

  I was about to ask him what he was talking about, but he held up a hand. “You can’t see them in operation and nobody else can either, unless you watch cops put out the drones first thing in the morning or put them away after they land at night.”

  “Can’t you see them in the daytime flying around?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “No.” He touched the back of his left hand with his right hand’s index finger. “Mira, they got special one-eighty skin. Once they activate the skin, light don’t reflect off it. Light just go around it.” He pointed at the HeliDrone pads. “They only activate the skins once they ready to take off. So you gotta catch ‘em on the ground to see.” He nodded around at the stairwell where we were standing.

  “You ever see them?” I asked.

  “Sure. Lot’s times. One morning little while ago, me and my homi Dylan sneak into Diaper ‘D’, wait in the stairwell, and watch the HeliDrone Unit put out the drones. Once the techs back away from the drones, see, they give the high sign to flight operations shack, then the drones just vanish. So cool.”