The End Has Come Read Online Free Page A

before meeting.
    The potential informant was a lanky young man with calloused hands, a flop of brown hair and no beard. A worried expression. He kneaded a straw hat in his hands and stood from the table when Enid and Bert entered.
    “You’re Jess?”
    He squeezed the hat harder. Ah, the appearance of omniscience was so very useful.
    “Please, sit down,” Enid said, and sat across from him by example. Bert stood by the wall.
    “This is about Aren,” the young man said. “You’re here about Aren.”
    “Yes.” He slumped, sighed — did he seemed relieved? “What do you need to tell me, Jess?”
    “I haven’t seen her in weeks; I haven’t even gotten a message to her. No one will tell me what’s wrong, and I know what everyone’s been saying, but it can’t be true —”
    “That she’s pregnant. She’s bannerless.”
    He blinked. “But she’s alive? She’s safe?”
    “She is. I saw her yesterday.”
    “Good, that’s good.”
    Unlike everyone else she had talked to here, he seemed genuinely reassured. As if he had expected her to be dead or injured. The vectors of anxiety in the case pointed in so many different directions. “Did she tell you anything? Did you have any idea that something was wrong?”
    “No . . . I mean, yes, but not that. It’s complicated. What’s going to happen to her?”
    “That’s what I’m here to decide. I promise you, she and the baby won’t come to any harm. But I need to understand what’s happened. Did you know she’d cut out her implant?”
    He stared at the tabletop. “No, I didn’t know that.” If he had known, he could be implicated, so it behooved him to say that. But Enid believed him.
    “Jess, I want to understand why she did what she did. Her household is being difficult. They tell me she spent all her spare time with you.” Enid couldn’t tell if he was resistant to talking to her, or if he simply couldn’t find the words. She prompted. “How long have you been together? How long have you been intimate?” A gentle way of putting it. He wasn’t blushing; on the contrary, he’d gone even more pale.
    “Not long,” he said. “Not even a year. I think . . . I think I know what happened now, looking back.”
    “Can you tell me?”
    “I think . . . I think she needed someone and she picked me. I’m almost glad she picked me. I love her, but . . . I didn’t know.”
    She wanted a baby. She found a boy she liked, cut out her implant, and made sure she had a baby. It wasn’t unheard of. Enid had looked into a couple of cases like it in the past. But then, the household reported it when the others found out, or she left the household. To go through that and then stay, with everyone also covering it up . . .
    “Did she ever talk about earning a banner and having a baby with you? Was that a goal of hers?”
    “She never did at all. We . . . it was just us. I just liked spending time with her. We’d go for walks.”
    “What else?”
    “She — wouldn’t let me touch her arm. The first time we . . . were intimate, she kept her shirt on. She’d hurt her arm, she said, and didn’t want to get dirt on it — we were out by the mill creek that feeds into the pond. It’s so beautiful there, with the noise of the water and all. I . . . I didn’t think of it. I mean, she always seemed to be hurt somewhere. Bruises and things. She said it was just from working around the house. I was always a bit careful touching her, though, because of it. I had to be careful with her.” Miserable now, he put the pieces together in his mind as Enid watched. “She didn’t like to go back. I told myself — I fooled myself — that it was because she loved me. But it’s more that she didn’t want to go back.”
    “And she loves you. As you said, she picked you. But she had to go back.”
    “If she’d asked, she could have gone somewhere else.”
    But it would have cost credits she may not have had, the committee would have asked