Chapter Seven In Which Skullduggery Is Contemplated
Can I come in?” said Daphne in an undertone. “We shouldn’t talk about this out here.”
Zada nodded, heart pounding in her ears. “My parents will be home soon,” she said as she let them back in.
“Your room, then?” asked Daphne. She said it casually, as if they had done this a hundred times. Zada nodded and led Daphne past the credenza piled high with even more paper mail congratulating the future Mrs. Arnoth, up the stairs to her bedroom.
Standing in the doorway of her room, looking at all of her timeworn and familiar things, Zada felt a flutter of panic.
What was she thinking? This was her haven from the outside world, the one place where she could be wholly herself.
What would Daphne think of this small space—the window collecting beads of water, the ungainly bookshelf, the glowing fish tank, and her unmade bed?
Who would take her chair, with its uneven legs, where she practiced playing her triple cello? And who would sit on the bed?
Daphne solved this particular problem by dropping down onto the floor and folding her legs. Zada did the same, a careful distance away.
“Well?” said Zada. “What is it? This mysterious something that I should know?”
Daphne hummed, tuneless. “I’m trying to decide where to begin. Okay.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “So what do you really know about Heartsong?”
“I—” It was like Daphne was asking what Zada knew about water, or air, or music. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Come on,” said Daphne, leaning forward. “Wow me. Where’s that girl who taught herself hacking just so she could jailbreak her triple cello? Give it a shot. Nerd mode.”
“Nerd mode,” said Zada. “Is that what you call actually-paying-attention-in-class mode?”
“So far, all you’ve done is stall,” Daphne pointed out. She lifted her chin, and Zada felt herself rising to the challenge.
“Heartsong is a function of the Core,” she began, “which is an imprint of the minds of our five Founders. With their combined wisdom, the Core is functionally infallible. It doesn’t make mistakes.
The Core determines school placements, job placements, and matters of the court.
As the New Ionian charter says, we strive not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and to eliminate the common sources of pain and suffering—”
“Yes, great, full marks. It’s like I’m back in the classroom. And Heartsong?” Daphne prompted.
“You’re the one who asked for nerd mode,” said Zada.
She brushed the hair from her forehead. “Okay, in social studies class, we provide information about ourselves. Our likes, our dislikes, and so on. That data, along with things like our grades, our aptitudes, our spending habits, and our activity on the various feeds, comes together to form a complete sketch of a person. And one of the ways we use this sketch is that it gets plugged into an algorithm created by the Founders themselves, which finds each person’s perfect romantic match.
That program is called Heartsong, and as a function of the Core, it too is infallible. ”
“Well,” said Daphne. “You’re close. Heartsong has made some mistakes recently.”
Zada blinked. “That’s impossible. By definition, it’s never wrong.”
“Almost, but not quite,” said Daphne. “You know I’ve spent a lot of time at my grandfather’s estate, right? Especially since my mom was Extricated and my dad, uh, passed?”
“Of course,” said Zada.
“And in that time, I have happened to overhear some meetings.” Daphne shrugged a shoulder. “Some stray comments here or there, raised voices caught as I happened to pass by.”
“You eavesdropped,” Zada filled in.
“An eave may have occasionally been dropped,” said Daphne. “Who’s to say?” Then she sobered, her mouth pressing into a straight line. “I’ve heard enough to know there’s a possibility the error rate is increasing.”
“The error rate? There’s an error rate?” Zada spoke with the slightest tremor. Fitting, because it felt like an earthquake was thundering through her mind.
“There is,” said Daphne. “And the council has decided not to allocate the budget to investigate further. That’s a direct quote.”
“The council wouldn’t do that,” said Zada. “If they earnestly believed there could be a problem—”
“Reading between the lines, I’d say they refuse to believe it,” said Daphne. “Despite growing evidence to the contrary.”
“You think Flora and Aiden aren’t each other’s true match?” Zada said.
Daphne nodded. “What’s more, I think you and Buford are a mistake, too.”
Zada stared at her palms, tracing her left love line with her thumb. “How can you say that? We’re obviously supposed to be together.”
Quietly, barely audible above the hum of the fish tank’s water filter, Daphne asked, “Do you think he loves you?”
“I—” Zada swallowed. “I don’t know.”
She thought of Buford’s resolute face, his declarations of steadiness, that short dry kiss on the front step. She could feel her face going red, tears prickling humiliatingly at her eyes. The shame wasn’t the worst part, but it was the first to bubble to the surface.
She thought of the letter from Persuasion, the one she’d read aloud with her friends, her heart thrilling at the emotion behind the words. I am half agony, half hope.
She thought of what Buford had said when she’d crashed into him. I don’t feel a thing. The contrast was too stark to deny.
Something was stuck in Zada’s throat. She swallowed again. “Is there any way to ever know how anyone else truly feels?”
“So, no, then?” Daphne offered, almost gently.
Zada shook her head, blinking away her tears. “No. I don’t think so.”
“In a way, that’s good news,” said Daphne. Zada shot her a disbelieving look. “No, it is! If one of you loved the other, I could see an argument for the match. But if neither of you feel that way, I think there’s a good chance this was a miscalculation.”
Zada glanced at her reader, which lay at her feet where she’d tossed it last night.
“Suppose he is the best I can do, though,” Zada said, studying the rounded corners, the familiar slightly cracked screen. “Suppose this is the closest I’ll ever come to love.”
“No,” Daphne said. “I refuse to suppose it, and you can’t make me.”
“What if,” Zada pressed, “the Heartsong program put us together because we really are each other’s best match, our best chance at happiness?
The Core has all my data, and it has all of his data, too.
Maybe they accounted for the fact that I’m just not suited for—for the kind of grand romance that I’ve always dreamed of.
Maybe there’s something the matter with me, something deep inside myself that I can’t even—”
A loud noise cut across the room. It was Daphne, making a fart sound with her mouth.
“Seriously, Zada,” said Daphne. “There’s nothing wrong with you. And you not falling head over heels in love with that damp rag of a human being, that isn’t a sign that you’ve failed or that you don’t deserve better.”
“Buford’s a very nice man,” said Zada. “I wouldn’t say he’s a damp rag, necessarily.”
“Fine,” Daphne conceded. “He’s a dry rag, whatever. My point is, I know dozens of very nice people and you’re not required to feel sweeping romantic passion for any of them solely on the basis of their niceness.”
“He’s handsome,” Zada added.
“Such conviction,” muttered Daphne.
“I believe that he’s handsome.”
“Maybe. But you don’t care.”
“I don’t.” It was getting easy—too easy—to admit the truth about how she felt. This was dangerous. Zada buried her face in her hands. Through her fingers, she said plaintively, “What do I do?”
“There’s plenty of options,” Daphne said. “You can flee New Ionia, never to return—”
“I’m not doing that.”
“You can tell the whole world that you hate Buford Arnoth with a fiery passion—”
“I don’t hate him.”
“Fine, you can tell everyone that you feel lukewarm about Buford Arnoth and don’t wish to marry him—”
“Then I’ll have to join the sisters.” Rejecting your Heartsong match was unheard of.
The only exception was if you chose to join the Sisters of Perpetual Reflection, which would mean giving up all nonessential technology, including her triple cello—her heart hurt at the thought of it.
And if you chose to break off your Heartsong match any other way, then you went the same way as Iphigenia Fallow—you were Extricated.
And there was the matter of her family. Rejecting Buford would relegate her parents, who’d worked so hard to ensure she had everything, to the social margins. She couldn’t do that to them.
“Or you can prove that your Heartsong match was an error.”
“I can’t do that!”
“Sure you can.”
“It’s—” Zada sputtered. “Treasonous. Seditious behavior. A violation of the Civil Order clause of the New Ionian charter.”
“Disagree. You’d be doing a service to the city. You’d be providing valuable data for the Heartsong program.” Daphne grinned. “They might even give you a commendation!”
“Somehow, I can’t picture that,” Zada said. But maybe, just maybe, this was the way forward. If Daphne was right, and it really was possible for Heartsong to get things wrong, then it wouldn’t hurt for her to check whether she was in that tiny minority, right?
“So.” Zada hesitated, not quite believing what she was about to propose. But there was no time for doubts. She was engaged to marry Buford in two months. She barreled on. “Let’s say my Heartsong match was an error. How would I go about finding this out?”
Daphne clapped her hands together. “Simple. We just have to do some digging. Gather some data. You love data.”
“I do,” Zada confirmed.