Charles

  I enter our makeshift Parliament in Senator McNaughton’s living room to a standing ovation. Not the normal, pre-Shift, obvious-grandstanding standing ovation, but an apparently genuine—and apparently unanimous—expression of good will. And why not? Winter is ending, the snow is melting, the bill is signed. To all outward appearances, I’ve just won a great victory for the entire country. To all outward appearances.

  Behind my colleagues, I see a surprising sight: Randall Griggs (who has even managed to lift himself out of his wheelchair for a few minutes to join in the ovation, pained though his expression might be) and a dark-haired, blue-eyed man I don’t recognize. Rupi Dhaliwal catches my glance and waits for the applause to die down.

  “I hereby call this meeting of Parliament to order,” she announces. “Before we begin, I’d like to note that we have two distinguished observers with us today at the invitation of Mrs. Heidi Hiscox, the Honourable Member for Medicine Hat. This gentleman is Mr. Randall Griggs, formerly of the Ottawa Police Department”—he nods at me sternly, reassuming his seat in his wheelchair—“and this is Corporal David Ritter of the Second Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group”—now it’s the blue-eyed man’s opportunity to nod.

  “The member for Medicine Hat believes that these men have important information that should be brought to the attention of this house,” Dhaliwal continues. “But before we get on with that, I think that I speak for everyone here when I congratulate the Honourable Member for North Saskatchewan–Athabasca on his success!”

  This prompts a second, completely gratuitous round of applause that only makes me feel worse.

  “Would you care to brief the house on your meeting, Chuck?” Rupi invites, somewhat in violation of our now-only-sparsely-observed parliamentary protocol.

  You don’t need to tell them! the annoying voice in my head insists. It’s out of their hands, anyway.

  I rise to my feet, pushing the voice from my head. People have a right to know if they’re going to die.

  “I’m afraid,” I begin, “that this isn’t the victory you think it is.”

  *

  The mood goes from warm to cool to icy as I recount events. Finally, the room is at a loss for words.

  Heidi Hiscox finally manages to speak. “Well, obviously Elestrine’s lying through her teeth!”

  “She’s not,” I state simply.

  “Oh, don’t be so na?ve, Chuck! This is why she made you PM in the first place—because she knows you’ll be moved by any sob story about refugees she happens to tell you. Don’t you see what this is? We’ve got her over a barrel, and she’s trying to weasel out of it!”

  “She believes what she says,” I reply. “Her mother is willing to kill us all. Unless she’s offered…a token.”

  “You.”

  “Me.”

  “Are you’re going to give in to her?” asks Jeman al-Khouri neutrally.

  “Well obviously he can’t!” insists Charles Simard.

  “Sorry, why can’t he?” asks Jean-Pierre Légault, an ex-NHLer who had been the Minister for Sport and Recreation. “I mean, I feel for you buddy, I really do, but our lives are on the line—”

  “They are not!” Hiscox snaps. “I can’t believe any of you are falling for this! It’s a con-job, pure and simple!”

  “That’s how your party always deals with crises, isn’t it?” demands Joe Koontz in his irate, squeaky voice. “Deny, deny, deny, until—oops—the entire west coast is on fire—”

  “Are you seriously trying to score partisan points right now?”

  “I’m just pointing out a pattern—”

  “The MP for Victoria–West Saanichton,” Dhaliwal announces, cutting off this no doubt worthy debate.

  “Thank you, Mme. Speaker,” says a generally quiet fellow with Coke-bottle glasses by the name of Michael Ng. “I was hoping the Prime Minister could clarify what would happen if he did submit.”

  “He’d become one of them,” pre-empts a generally angry MP called Gordon Cleese, bald but for tufts of red hair above his ears. “And he’d be sworn to an eternity of servitude to that monster in Rideau Hall.”

  “Sorry, but what would this actually accomplish?” asks Ng. “Why would that be a priority for Elestrine?”

  “Why do the Tinks do anything?” Cleese dismisses. “Because they’re a bunch of sadistic, insane—”

  “She thinks I’m a voodoo doll,” I insert.

  “A voodoo doll?”

  “For the entire country,” I reply. “As I go, so goes the nation.”

  “Wait,” says McNaughton, “you’re saying that, if she turns you into a—a Fairy—all of us would automatically change too?”

  “Not automatically,” I correct. “I think what she means is that this would become, in some sense…a Fairy country. You’d all be living in it, same as before; but you’d be eating the food, breathing the air, drinking the water, and…you’d gradually change.”

  “How gradually is ‘gradually’?”

  “Months,” I suggest. “Years, maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Well, that would buy us some time, wouldn’t it?” McNaughton suggests. “Time to think of a new plan—”

  “What, you think Oakes should sacrifice himself?” demands Simard. “We’re being colonized! You start sacrificing your own people, pretty soon you’ll have no one left!”

  “Well, do you have a better idea?”

  “I do,” Hiscox declares. “It’s time for us to fight back!”

  “We’ve been over this,” groans McNaughton.

  “Things have changed,” retorts Hiscox. She nudges her soldier guest. “Tell them what you told me.”

  The parliamentarians calm down as Corporal Ritter clears his throat. “Umm, yeah,” he begins, his voice a deep rumble. “So, ah, I was with the garrison up in CFB Petawawa, and uh…a few days ago, we got some surprise guests. See, there was this, uh, Asian scientist lady, and she’d fallen in with some Fairy because Julia—that’s the, uh, the scientist—was trying to figure out the new laws of physics or whatever…”

  It rapidly becomes apparent that, whatever skills Ritter may have on the battlefield, he could probably stand to join a toastmaster’s society. Hiscox, mercifully, speeds things along somewhat: “Tell them about the magic!”

  “Yeah, ok. To cut a long story short, one thing led to another and this Fairy taught us all a sort of combat magic—”

  “Maybe a demonstration is in order?” Griggs suggests.

  “Okay, so, check this out,” Ritter declares. He strides over to the fireplace and sticks his hand into the flame, much to the gasping of the assembled parliamentarians—which becomes even more pronounced when the fire suddenly goes out.

  “Now, here comes the good part,” he promises.

  He takes a few steps back across the room, levels his hand as a finger gun, and suddenly lets fly a blindingly white fireball, explosively reigniting the logs and spraying pieces of flaming debris across the carpet.

  “Shit!” exclaims McNaughton, leaping to stamp them out. “This is a Persian rug—”

  Her rebuke is lost amidst MPs’ applause.

  “It’s pig-simple to learn and can be scaled up to any size,” Griggs enthuses. “Corporal Ritter here is already training every man, woman, and child he can find and encouraging them to train everyone they know. Pretty soon, we’ll have millions of people, ready to fight the bastards—”

  “How soon is ‘soon’?” intones Dominic Stenton.

  Griggs shrugs. “A week or two, maybe.”

  “The Winter Queen is coming in two days,” Stenton replies. “I fail to see the usefulness of any defences that aren’t ready before that.”

  “We don’t need them all at once, necessarily,” Griggs replies. “We just need to keep them off-balance with an attack every so often—standard guerrilla-warfare tactics.”

  “Is that really what we want, though?” interjects al-Khouri. “Another war? One we might not win? Or—even if we did—one that would leave our entire country a smouldering wreck? To say nothing of dooming any chance the Everglacians may have of survival?”

  Hiscox rolls her eyes. “Are we really going to let our hearts bleed over the fucking Fairies now?”

  “Language,” mutters Dhaliwal half-heartedly.

  “Well, someone needs to bring it up, don’t they?” Jeman al-Khouri demands. “I mean, we’re talking about dooming an entire race! Surely that merits at least a few lines of discussion?”

  “Them or us,” Hiscox declares.

  “I thought you said there were no refugees,” Koontz chips in uselessly.

  “With all due respect, young lady,” says Randall Griggs to Jeman, “I think you fail to grasp the realities of warfare—”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Politique du pire,” she says bluntly. “That’s the governing ethic behind wars of liberation, isn’t it? The idea that the stakes are lower for the invaders than they are for the natives, so a resistance movement can succeed by making things so miserable that the invaders go home. Except it’s not going to work here, because the stakes aren’t lower for the invaders. If they lose, they die.”

  “I thought she was a poet,” Cleese murmurs.

  “I am a poet,” Jeman replies. “I’m also a goddamn Senator! So I make a point of familiarizing myself with statecraft; may I recommend you do the same.”

  Stenton needs to shout above the resulting din. “In any case, if we’re talking about politique du pire, things can get awfully pire before the invaders go home. If we have to make the country look like Iraq or Vietnam to ‘win’, aren’t we better off just going along to get along?”

  “You mean just passively letting them assimilate us,” Simard charges. “That sounds like a brilliant plan.”

  “Well, is that so bad?” demands Stenton, spreading his arms like a martyr. “I mean, call me crazy, but living forever in a state of abundance sounds pretty trivially better than fighting a war of extermination!”

  “Living forever without a heart! And as a slave of Everglace!”

  “Well, why don’t we put it to a vote,” suggests Légault, prompting a flurry of excited chatter.

  “There will be no vote!” Dhaliwal declares.

  “With all due respect, Mme. Speaker,” says Stenton, “the future of our country—of the entire human race—hangs in the balance. Surely, we deserve a say—”

  “Maybe we do,” Dhaliwal replies. “But we haven’t been given one. In the end, only Chuck can decide what he’s going to do.”

  “Well, maybe if Chuck agrees to go along with whatever the house decides—”

  “I won’t do it.”

  Despite the fact that my colleagues have been talking about me for the last several minutes, they seem to have forgotten that I’m present in the room. My words take them thoroughly by surprise.

  “Thank you,” Hiscox exclaims. “I always knew you had common sense—”

  “No,” I interject. “I mean that I won’t go along with the house. My decision will be my own.”

  Légault stands at a loss for words. “But—that’s not fair!”

  “No,” I agree.

  “Your decision affects us all—"

  “I know. But I’m not going to let you vote away my humanity, and I’m not going to let you force me to start a war. Sorry.”

  “But you get to decide for us?” he demands.

  “Yes.”

  Légault stammers for a moment. “Fine. But for God’s sake, at least let us have a non-binding vote. If you’re going to murder us all, you should at least know what we have to say on the subject.”

  This proposal attracts a great deal of chatter, but the overall tone seems to be one of agreement. Rupi Dhaliwal looks at me apologetically.

  “I’m going to let this one go ahead,” she says at last. “Parliament deserves to have its opinion known.”

  *

  I watch impassively as the vote is called and counted. I’m not the only abstention: nearly a third of parliamentarians either don’t know, regard the subject as an inappropriate one to vote on, or—perhaps most likely—are afraid to stand up with me watching. For the two thirds who do vote, however, the outcome is clear: a massive majority urging me to submit to Elestrine’s offer. Of the sixty-five parliamentarians crammed into Senator McNaughton’s living room, only eleven—Hiscox and Simard included—vote “no”.

  No one seems quite sure how to move on after the votes are tallied. Of the “yes” votes, only Légault is willing to look me in the eye. Silence reigns.

  Finally, I clear my throat. “I thank the house for this consultative exercise,” I say flatly. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Everyone looks around awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

  “Well, I think that’s a load of shit!”

  This opinion is expressed by Randall Griggs, who wheels himself, with some difficulty, into the centre of the room. “What the fuck is wrong with you cowards?”

  Dhaliwal speaks up: “Mr. Griggs, I must ask you to refrain—”

  “Oh, don’t get your panties in a knot, I’ll be out of this sorry place soon enough. But I’m going to speak my piece before I go because I should’ve guessed that Parliament was the same bunch of incompetent pants-pissing cucks it was before the Shift!”

  His gaze moves intently around the room. “Don’t you understand?” he demands. “We have the ability to fight back! To drive these Tinkerbell bastards back to whatever shithole they came from! To take our country—our planet—back! The only thing stopping us is your lack of will! So, you know, actually, it’s good that you’ll all be a bunch of Fairies soon enough, because apparently, we’re going to have to liberate this country from you too!”

  “Randall…”

  Griggs spins around to face me. “And you. Chuck Oakes! To think I respected you! But you couldn’t be arsed to stand up for your country! You couldn’t even stand up for your own humanity! You make me sick!

  “Come on, David,” he says, wheeling toward the door. Corporal Ritter follows quickly after him.

  *

  The meeting winds quickly to a close after that, no one really having an appetite to keep talking. Only Hiscox dares to approach me as I rise to my feet, her expression solemn. A small-gauge hooked iron chain dangles from one hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something else Ritter taught us,” she replies. “Put this around your head and you’ll be immune to their illusions. Put this around a Fairy’s head and they’ll be powerless. I figure you’ll need it more than I will.”

  I accept it into my palm and then tuck it in my pocket. “Thanks.”

  “I hope you make the right decision.”

  “Me too.”

  And then she, like all but two of my fellow parliamentarians, is gone. One of the remainders is Senator McNaughton herself, who’d abstained from the vote; she scowls at the mess that has become of her living room but avoids eye contact. The other is Oscar Cloutier, former Industry Minister, Acting Prime Minister, and stag, who stares at me placidly with his head turned to one side.

  “Yes?”

  Cloutier shows no sign of self-consciousness at being noticed. “May I walk with you, Chuck?”

  I shrug and he takes this as a “yes”. We proceed together out of the house and down McNaughton’s now-slushy path.

  “It’s ironic,” Cloutier muses. “You tried so hard to make me human again; now it might not even matter.”

  “Is that irony?”

  “Probably not.” Forcing a grin, Cloutier adds, “Maybe I’ve just listened to too much Alanis Morrisette in my time.”

  I give the reference a single chuckle and wonder what the point of this conversation is.

  “It’s not so bad, you know,” he blurts.

  “What’s not?”

  “Not being human.”

  “…I see.”

  He touches my arm. “I don’t know if this will factor into your decision. But…when I was a deer…I didn’t mind it. There are things humans care about that just…disappear the moment you change. Including not being human. It’s not unpleasant.”

  I breathe in through my nose. “She was going to shoot you, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “And she wouldn’t have felt bad about it. Or even wondered if she ought to feel bad about it. Or even seen why she ought to ask the question.”

  “I know that too.”

  “Do you think that’s a good way to be? That everyone should be like that?”

  “No,” Cloutier replies. “It’s bad. And as a human, I know that. But…” He shrugs. “When I was a deer, I wouldn’t have cared.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, turning away from him. “Deer are stupid.”

  *

  I walk aimlessly down the streets, which have gone from subarctic cold to a wet, slushy mess. Unlike a few days ago, I hear no sounds of axes. Just as well, really: I don’t have my balaclava for anonymity. The streets are still mostly deserted—most people are, sensibly, adopting a wait-and-see approach before returning to their homes—but a few people recognize me and ask to shake my hand. I smile and tell them nothing. Maybe that’s wrong, maybe not.

  It takes me an embarrassingly long time to remember that I can now make myself anonymous using glamour. I wait until no one’s looking and then activate it, making myself appear, to all the world, like a younger, generally studlier version of myself. It’s about as good of a disguise as I can hope for.

  After a while, the shadows start to lengthen. Soon it will be night. And then, one way or another, just one more day before the end of the world as I know it.

  It occurs to me that I should be around other people—not so much out of desire as out of moral obligation. If I’m going to end the world, I should see it in action one last time.

  *

  It’s twilight as I make my way toward the Canadian Tire Centre—my temporary residence in the weeks before Elestrine “invited” me to move into Rideau Hall. It was home to more than 20,000 people, crammed together in horrid, overcrowded conditions. This time, however, the entire atmosphere feels lighter. The blocks around the arena are full of children running and laughing in their jeans and t-shirts; kicking soccer balls, skipping ropes, or playing street hockey in the still-deserted road. It’s almost idyllic—a vision of childhood as it, to the best of my recollection, never actually was. But I suppose that this is what happens when you finally get a nice day three weeks after the apocalypse. As I cross into the arena’s parking lot, even I am momentarily caught up in the mood.

  And then, the loading door swings open, and happiness evaporates. The children around me break off their play as a group of adults make their sombre way into the last rays of the sun. Between them, wrapped in sheets, they carry what are, unmistakably, three human bodies: one woman, two children.

  A crowd slowly forms, looking on wordlessly as the three corpses are carried away.

  “Do you know who they were?” I ask softly.

  “You haven’t heard?” says the woman in a hijab next to me.

  I shake my head.

  “That was Avril McNally-Dodds—the lady who attacked Prime Minister Oakes last week. And her kids.”

  I freeze. A memory comes back to me: an angry woman throwing an apple and accusing me of teaching her children witchcraft. Despite the day’s warmth, I feel a chill.

  “…How?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  I shake my head again.

  “She shot them,” she replies, her voice devoid of affect. “In the washroom, after she saw the little girl making an apple. Then she shot herself. They were starving, you see. Because she thought the Fairies’ food was cursed—”

  I feel my gorge rise. The murmuring of the crowd suddenly seems far away.

  “Sir? Sir, are you alright?”

  “Pardon me,” I mutter, already sprinting away.

  I round the nearest corner, fall to my knees, and vomit copiously onto the slushy pavement. Oh God. Oh Jesus, forgive me.

  My legs, acting more on autopilot than any conscious thought, carry me away as swiftly as they can manage.

  *

  I wander the deserted streets until the sun dips below the horizon and keep wandering for hours more by the light of the three-quarter moon. My pattern is random and twisting, and I can judge the passage of time only by the ever-increasing ache in my feet. Finally, I force myself to stop at the Mackenzie King Bridge over the Rideau Canal, where I collapse in exhaustion against the bars of the parapet.

  I killed them.

  No I didn’t, don’t be stupid. They died because their mom was a fundamentalist lunatic.

  But she was right.

  Fuck.

  I lift my head and gaze out over the canal. Nearby, I see the geodesic form of the Ottawa Convention Centre, now yet another home for survivors. On the horizon, the Fairy-occupied Parliament, still tattooed in luminous blue tendrils of frost, stands out sharply in the dark. A helical ramp of ice—magically saved from melting in the heat—winds its way up the Peace Tower, which has itself been crowned with a clear onion-shaped dome. This is just one of the modifications to the structure, which also include a number of icy spires shining proudly with unearthly light. The aim is to show their triumph over us, to take what had been the centre of political power and have their way with it. In that moment, I feel a stab of sympathy for Randall Griggs; not to want revenge in the face of this humiliation seems almost—

  Inhuman.

  I snap my gaze away, toward the canal itself. The water is still choppy with ice; I imagine it must be damned cold.

  Why not find out?

  This thought comes at me from some rogue part of my brain—the part responsible for questions like “Why not drop the baby?” or “How about sticking your hand into that garburator?” Normally, common sense shuts this voice down, but common sense has been embarrassed into silence since the Shift.

  It would be easy, I think. I could fill my pockets with rocks and just… fall over the side. See how cold that water really is. Didn’t think of that, did you, Elestrine? Us mere mortals always have an escape route if we have the stomach for it. A few minutes of cold and then the decision will be out of my hands forever.

  And the country will die, my common sense insists, frantically trying to re-establish dominance.

  But they will die as humans.

  I gaze transfixedly into the water.

  And I won’t care one iota.

  A perverse giddiness comes over me, and I laugh—genuinely laugh—for the first time in months. It’s so easy! I just need to find some stones, put them in my pockets—

  My pockets.

  A vision comes to me: the photograph of Meaghan and the kids crumpled up beneath several pounds of rocks, soggy in the pocket of a waterlogged corpse.

  I gasp for breath, suddenly realizing the magnitude of what I’d been considering. And sweet Jesus, I had actually been considering it!

  All at once, I feel heavier than lead, older than granite, and very, very tired. I can’t even bring myself to cover my face in shame as the tears come.

  *

  When I wake, I’m lying in a grimy puddle, chunks of gravel scratching my face. My neck, shoulders, and back all protest painfully as I force myself to sit up, groaning all the while.

  “Shit.”

  The first rays of dawn are peaking over the horizon. Less than a day now. Less than a day and still no closer—

  “Chuck?”

  My head turns agonizingly in response to the voice. I blink a few times, not quite able to process what I’m seeing, and then…not able to believe it.

  Finally, I manage, in my rough, scratchy voice, to name the apparition standing not six feet away from me.

  “Meaghan?”