Founder, Installment 7

Chapters 13 and 14

Chapter 13

The Family Tree, June 2021

The next morning, Hugh settles down at the dining table to start his research. It’s a cool June morning; the windows are open and a flock of starlings are chirping loudly in a tree across the mews. Silvia left for classes an hour earlier and he’s got the place to himself. With his laptop open and a takeaway grande Americano for fortification, he finds the Figan Finder login page on his browser. Using his new credentials, he logs in and, after reviewing the directions, types Hugh Thomas Warding in the search bar.

A second later—just as Callista F. said it would—Figan Finder serves up his profile like a plate of steaming pasta.

Hugh Thomas Warding

Birth: 04/07/1994, 01:37

Sex: Male

Nationality: Bressen

Patrilineal: Warding (Fg)

Matrilineal: Marston (Fg)

POB: West Gloven Medical Center

Father: Tipton Caudwell Warding (D) 07/28/1959 - 07/12/2006

Mother: Amelia Marston Warding (D) 05/15/1962 - 07/12/2006

Mother’s Maiden Name: Amelia Katrina Marston

Siblings: NA

Marital Status: NA

Education Completed: SU6

Primary: Thompson-Merrill Primary School

Secondary: Gloven Secondary School; North Campus Augustus Secondary School

Post-Secondary: Bressen Professional College. NG

Many of the fields link to images of actual documents, including his birth certificate, census data, previous addresses, old school photographs, pictures of his family members, and more. A pop-up window informs him that, with a Silver subscription for only €19.99 a month, he could dig into people’s legal histories, parking tickets, arrests, and lawsuits. Gold-level access would serve up his credit record and other financial data.

Now he drinks from his coffee and begins exploring his profile. Nothing embarrassing shows up, at least, in Bronze-level. His parents’ profiles provide similar but more extensive data, including their death certificates and obituaries, which he avoids. He finds Maggie’s profile as well and wonders briefly what details Gold access might serve up on the old man, but he figures he knows most of the dirt. Next he narrows the search focus to his patrilineal ancestry, eventually finding a link to his paternal grandfather, Albert Payne Warding. Grandpa Berty died of a heart attack two years before Hugh was born, so he knows him only from photographs and family stories.

Berty’s profile contains all the usual information, including an assortment of photographs, one of which Hugh recognizes from his living room wall back in Gloven. The black-and-white image shows a handsome broad-shouldered man leaning against an old Citroën. How that picture found its way into the Ministry database he has no idea, but then nothing seems private in Bressen. Seeing his grandfather standing alone by the car reminds him that Isla Kennison, Berty’s wife and his paternal grandmother, died young from breast cancer. It’s a hell of a family tradition—losing one’s parents early in life.

Hugh decides to check out Berty’s mother, Ulla Tort Warding, otherwise known as Mossey, the family historian who launched this goose chase. Mossey’s younger pictures, from maybe the 1920s or 30s, show a plump young woman with curly dark hair and black, pencil-thin eyebrows. She was born in 1895, died in 1968. Her profile is noticeably sparser than Berty’s, underscoring the reality that people who lived before the Internet would have left fewer traces. Even so, Hugh manages to find Mossey’s census data and her birth and death certificates.

Now Hugh switches back to his male ancestors, clicking on Mossey’s husband, Eugene Andrew Warding, born 1891, died 1943. Eugene died fairly young, during the German occupation of Bressen, which leads Hugh to wonder how exactly he died and if he’d been involved in the war. His death certificate lists his parents (Arno and Eleanor), his address (Tatsall Street in Oskin), his mother’s birthplace (Bratton Avenue in Campus Augustus), and more. A coroner by the name of C. M. Mansfield filed the certificate, noting he had done so “without an examination of the dead body having taken place” due to “wartime conditions.” In the lower-right hand corner of the certificate, where Mansfield made his sworn statement, inapplicable details have been crossed out with a typewriter to read as follows:

… (b) that I examined the dead body and investigated the circumstances of this death, and I further certify from the investigation (complete autopsy) (partial autopsy) (incision) and examination (c) that, in my opinion, death occurred on the date and at the hour stated above and resulted from (natural causes) (accident) (suicide) (homicide) (undetermined circumstances pending further investigation) and (d) that the causes of death were:

In the space provided below, the coroner typed, “Multiple gunshot wounds to the torso,” and under that, in parentheses: “Execution by Wehrmacht firing squad, 12-January-1943. Account of subject’s death provided by reliable witnesses.”

This provocative detail leads Hugh to dig deeper until he finds a newspaper article from 1947 titled, “Murdered Greys Leader Left Inspiring Legacy.”

For an instant, his brain trips over the words Greys Leader. He opens a second browser window and searches Bressen Greys. Sure enough. He sits back in his chair and runs his fingers through his hair.

His great-grandfather died fighting for the Bressenian resistance.

He has no recollection of a war hero in the family. Maybe his mum told him once, and it didn’t register because he was so young, and World War II never really interested him in the first place. Knowing his mother’s fondness for family history, she would have said something; so the story of Eugene the resistance fighter must have sunk into oblivion along with many of his pre-accident memories.

He turns back to The Record article for more details. Eugene Warding was born south of the city, near Mudo Milar (farm country back then); his father was a doctor and his mother a librarian at the local dombok. He graduated from secondary school in Oskin, then earned a certificate at Odra Forita College of Pharmacy in east Vastan. He married Mossey late in life, and she bore two children: Albert (Berty) and Clarissa, who died in infancy. Eugene operated a small apothecary in Oskin until a German bomb destroyed his building during the invasion of 1940. A few months later, he sent his wife and son to stay with relatives in the hills, and then volunteered with the Greys. He put his chemistry training to use as a maker of improvised bombs. When he and some others blew up a German barracks in Old Town, an informant gave them away. On a cold night in January 1943, the Germans found him hiding in a warehouse, marched him and his compatriots outside, and shot them. He was 52 at the time.

The article describes Eugene in implausibly heroic terms. One witness to the execution claimed that Eugene chanted his Murma-Sattme as the Germans shouldered their rifles. That part sounded made up.

Hugh sits back and stretches his shoulders. Great story, for sure, but nothing about Eugene Warding sounds like he could be a lapsed founder. Now Hugh sees that he has a few minutes left before work, so he decides to dig one generation deeper before logging out. There he comes across his great-great-grandfather, born in 1860, who answered to the name of Arno Cauthen Warding. The database lists Arno’s birthplace as Mistauth but doesn’t provide a hospital name or a birth certificate. Nor can Hugh find any primary or secondary school records for him, or much of anything until his medical licensing documents from 1890. Arno—Dr. Warding, it turns out—earned his medical degree at Tothe Minsa on the west side, a figan university still in existence. After 1890, his records are limited to census data, which list him as living in Mudo Milar. His death certificate from 1941 shows his residence as Pavin Corners, Oskin. His cause of death is listed as “acute myocardial infarction.” Arno lived to be 81, a good run even by modern standards. Luckily for him, he didn’t live long enough to hear his son had been shot by the Germans.

Arno’s wife Eleanor, the librarian mentioned in the Record article, has a similarly sparse profile. Eleanor Pierce Warding, born in 1867, died in 1918. Maiden name, Eleanor Louise Pierce. Parents, Stuart Andrew Pierce and Marian Rosehill Pierce. Cause of death, complications from influenza. Hugh is about to close Eleanor’s profile when he notices that her birthplace is listed as Amsterdam, New York, USA. Yankee blood in the family hardly counts as a distinction, but it does add some international flavor, and it’s definitely news to him. For his part, Maggie won’t appreciate hearing he has American blood in his veins; he’s always complaining that yanks can’t tell good art from their own assholes.

Now with a fairly complete picture of his ancestry from the mid-19th century to the present day, Hugh logs out of Figan Finder and heads down the hall to shower.

Later that afternoon, on his metro ride to work, he rings Dory to share the highlights of his research.

“Your grandfather was in the Greys?” shouts Dory over a bad cellular connection. “That’s brilliant, Hugh. I love that.”

“It felt good.”

“And a yank grandmum on top of that.” Dory whistles softly. “So maybe you have people in the States, yeah? Ain’t that some shit.”

Hugh laughs. “Turns out Amsterdam is in northern New York state. I guess people there made a lot of money in the fabric mills business.”

“Hmm. But no yazzers?”

“Nah.”

“So that’s it, then?”

“Seems like it,” says Hugh, though he’s not entirely sure what he expected to find in a Figan database. Just then his train begins its descent into the River Tunnel and the call drops. With his signal lost for the time being, he pockets his mobile and stares outside at the darkness rushing past his window.

Chapter 14

A Breakthrough, June 2021

It’s just past noon, and already the city has begun to stink in the summer sun. On Ambrose Avenue, heat rises in waves off the asphalt, and outside the fro-yo shop Le Yaourt, an old woman in a hijab hoses rancid yogurt from the sidewalk into the gutter. Hugh slept late this morning and skipped breakfast as he hurried to the gym. Now he’s heading home from the gym, stepping over the rancid yogurt water as he hunts for a post-workout bite to eat. After traveling three blocks down Stanfield Street, he comes to a Carrefour Market where he stops in for a chicken caesar wrap.

Now as he walks and eats, he thinks over his work in the ancestry database and what his next move might be—if he has any moves left. This sort of research project has never been his strong suit, and he finds his initial burst of scholarly energy already waning. Back in secondary school he dreaded writing English papers because finding the right source materials and then selecting quotes to use in his paper always fired up his anxiety. Too many interconnected parts. Genealogical research presents many of the same challenges, except that with English papers he was overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of source materials. Figan Finder, on the other hand, feels like a huge city of dead-ends.

As he turns the corner onto Morton Mews, he decides to ring Maggie when he arrives home—to catch him up and maybe get some fresh perspective. Once back at the flat, he changes, tosses his workout clothes in the washing machine, and settles on the couch with his mobile.

“Old man,” he says when his uncle answers. “You wearing shoes today?”

“I am,” replies Maggie, evidently not amused.

“Your neuropathy better then?”

“You call just to ask about my feet?”

“Nah,” says Hugh. “Wanted to catch you up on the ancestry thing.”

“So catch me up.”

Hugh describes his research on the Ministry website, ending the account with his discovery of Eugene Warding’s death certificate.

“Well ain’t that somethin’…” says the old man.

“Mossey ever mention that?” Hugh asks.

“Oh, yeah,” replies Maggie. “We knew ol’ Gene had been in the Greys, but I don’t recall hearin’ he died that way.”

“She never told you?”

“Might have,” replies Maggie. “But she was sort of a tragic ol’ moof, you know? And she was pissed so much of the time you never knew what was real anyway.”

“Makes you sort of proud, though, right?” says Hugh. “To have a hero in the family?”

“It does, indeed.”

Hugh shifts his mobile to the other ear, then asks, “Did Mossey ever talk about Eugene’s father? Arno Warding?”

“Arno?” asks Maggie. “She told me some. He was a doctor in Oskin.”

Hugh hesitates. “Did you know he married an American?”

Maggie makes a soft popping sound with his lips but says nothing.

“Maggie?”

“I heard ya.”

“She was from New York. Died young, in the 1918 influenza epidemic.”

“Lovely.”

“Anyway, I couldn’t find much on Arno,” continues Hugh. “Nothing, really, from his younger years. Then I found some documents from his medical licensing, and his death certificate.”

“Hmm.”

“I think I might have hit a dead end on all this, you know?”

“You think that, do you?” asks Maggie.

He can’t tell if Maggie is relieved by this development, or disappointed that Mossey’s story didn’t pan out. “All our family members are in Figan Finder,” he continues. “And they all check out as feegies. I don’t know how you’d ever figure out if someone changed teams along the way. Plus the farther back I go, the less information there is. How would you ever find someone who’s not listed, you know?”

Maggie remains silent for a minute, his breathing soft and regular in the speaker. “You try looking any of our people up in that yazzer database?”

Hugh sighs. “Maggie, if I found them in Figan Finder, then they wouldn’t be in the yazzer database. That’s the point, yeah? You’re in one or the other.”

At this, Maggie chuckles. “That’s not what I’m sayin’, Hughie. I mean you should get all our family names and dates goin’ back as far as you need—a hundred, maybe 200 years—then you check ‘em against people in the yazzer database, yeah? See if maybe they line up somehow.”

“Check them against what people in the yazzer database?” asks Hugh.

“People who have the same birthdays as ours, or who died on the same day. Or maybe you check other records like graduation dates—that sort of thing. See what lines up.”

At first Hugh doesn’t respond because he is considering if Maggie’s idea is even practicable, given what he’s seen so far.

“You mean like cross-reference birthdays and stuff?” Hugh asks.

“Exactly,” says Maggie.

“Hadn’t thought of that. I’ll give it a try.”

“You do that,” replies Maggie. Then he grunts irascibly and hangs up.

Hugh checks the time on his mobile, then sits back and thinks about Maggie’s recommendation. He decides to focus his efforts on his male descendents born after 1800. If no matches turn up in BACchus, he’ll end the search. For this next round of research, he’ll have to work between two databases; and he’s not familiar with BACchus yet. When he logs in to the founder database a few minutes later, he finds it contains a great deal more information than Figan Finder, much of it relating to religious ceremonies, professional accomplishments, and philanthropic efforts. The BACchus interface and search functions, however, are outdated and clunky, taking Hugh a solid half-hour to figure them out. After he gets his bearings he sets up a process for cross-checking the significant dates of his male ancestors against the founder database. To get started, he logs into Figan Finder and finds the birthdates of each male relative after 1800, writing them on a notepad for reference.

Tipton Caudwell Warding, July 28, 1959

Albert Payne Warding, November 11, 1920

Eugene Andrew Warding, March 22, 1891

Arno Cauthen Warding, April 17, 1860

Finlo August Warding, December 17, 1837

Next, he logs into BACchus and, just to be sure he doesn’t skip an obvious step, searches for each of his ancestors by name, which turns up nothing. He then conducts a search by birthdate, starting with his father and moving down on the list. With the ruling families accounting for less than a half a percent of the city’s population, the odds of a yazzer sharing a birthday with his ancestors seem pretty slim.

Even so, his first search uncovers a match: His father shares a birthday with a woman from the Abra clan, Livilla S. A. Gaurier, still alive and living in Kasabresan. This gets Hugh wondering if he’d ever passed her on the street, or if she and his father crossed paths—maybe celebrated their birthdays at the same restaurant one year and had a good laugh over the coincidence. Probably not. Not in Bressen, at least.

He goes through the same exercise for Albert Payne Warding and gets zero hits.

Eugene Warding turns up none, as well.

Arno the family doctor, however, matches not one but two founders born the same day. The first is a woman, whom Hugh dismisses straightaway. The second is a man from the Willsom branch of the Godor clan, Gaius Penrose Godori Willsom. The Godor name means little to Hugh, though he remembers seeing it on a wall at the natural history museum.

He makes a note to follow up on Gaius Willsom, then moves on to his great-great-great-grandfather Finlo Warding. No matches there, either, leaving Gaius Willsom as the only match in Hugh’s entire 221 year timeframe.

Now returning to Willsom’s profile, Hugh finds it fairly robust for someone born in the 19th century. His birth certificate shows he was born in Brukasa, on the northwestern edge of Old Town, near the river. His father is listed as Philip Augustus Godori Willsom (born 1837, died 1908), and his mother as Sabina Nimian Kestri Willsom (born 1840, died 1913). No occupation is listed for either parent. Gaius gave his first Murma-Sattme in 1865 at the Temple of Mars Athána in Old town. A school index from 1878 shows him as graduating from The English School, an elite academy, also in Old Town. His graduation photograph, the only picture provided of him, shows a handsome, clean-shaven young man wearing a black suit and extravagant silk cravat. He is meticulously groomed, though not particularly handsome. Were he dressed in modern clothing, he could be any number of rich young men Hugh serves at Bar Bruka.

Hugh scans the profile for more information: nothing to speak of beyond the announcement of Gaius’s graduation from The English School in 1878. The Edmiston Registry (registry number 67128-4A-1) lists him as having died in 1888, at only 28. A death notice from The Record provides scant detail: “Mr. Gaius P. G. Willsom of Old Town died this past Tuesday while swimming alone off the coast of Marbella, Spain. He was 28.”

BACchus provides no death certificate or further details of his death. He never married, as far as Hugh can tell, or had children, or even held a job.

Sad story there.

Having a fairly good picture of Gaius Willsom, Hugh switches back to Figan Finder to see how Arno Warding’s life events line up. He’d found a birthplace for Arno—Mistauth—but no birth certificate, church records, or school graduations; nothing until he earned his medical license at the age of 30. After that, the available data is limited to census entries containing his occupation, address, and the names of his wife and children. Then, a death certificate.

Hugh turns the page of his notepad and begins diagramming key events in the two men’s lives:

April 17, 1860—Arno born in Mistauth (no birth cert), Gaius born in Brukasa (birth cert and Record notice)

1862 Gaius first entry in census

1865 Gaius gives first Murma Sattme (church)

1872 Gaius mentioned in newspaper article about father (newspaper) and in census

1878 Gaius graduates English School (school)

1882 Gaius listed in census

1888 Ed Reg lists Gaius as deceased (no death cert)

1890 Arno med degree

1892 Arno practicing med in Oskin, shows him married to Eleanor (census, church, licensing)

1932 Arno listed as retired (census)

1941 Arno dies, Pavin Corners, Oskin (death cert)

Hugh reviews his work: the dates span 81 years, with good documentation available for Gaius through the 1888 death notice; then, starting in 1890, fairly good documentation for Arno. Between those dates, a two-year gap exists in which no documentation appears for either man. The shared birthday is promising, for sure, as is the lopsided distribution of data for the men’s lives—abundant information on Gaius’s early life and then on Arno’s later life—but that hardly amounts to a smoking gun.

There’s something odd about Gaius’s death notice, it occurs to Hugh. Here is the scion of a founding family who, according to the notice, died tragically at an early age. Wouldn’t that have caused more of a stir in high society? Where’s the obituary? The funeral announcement? When Hugh opens a second browser window and searches for additional information on Gaius Willsom’s death, he finds nothing.

He sits back and thinks, eventually daring to ask himself,

What if Gaius didn’t really die?

What if his family reported him as dead because they’d disowned him—as Maggie suggested?

Now growing excited, he turns back to his notes and reviews the timelines for Arno and Gaius, eventually pausing on one particular entry.

1892 Arno practicing med in Oskin, shows him married to Eleanor (census, church, licensing)

That’s four years after Gaius drowned, and two years after Arno earned his medical license in 1890. Hugh turns the page of his pad and checks a related entry.

Eleanor Louise Pierce from Amsterdam, New York.

Eyes wide, he runs his fingers through his hair, then picks up his mobile and places a call.

Silvia answers slightly out of breath. “Hey,” she says. “I’m just heading to my study group. What’s up?”

“I’m doing my family research and had a quick question.”

“Okay.”

She doesn’t sound at all eager to hear more, but he forges ahead.

“Back in the, like, 1880s would it have been a problem if a yazzer guy wanted to marry an American?”

“For sure,” replies Silvia. “That would’ve been a huge issue. The families are all about maintaining the purity of their bloodlines. I mean, they care about that now—and they would’ve been ten times more uptight in the 1880s.”

“Yeah,” says Hugh. “That’s what I figured.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Oh, I just found something chiggy in my research,” he says.

“Tell me.”

He hesitates—because she’s hurrying to study group and because lately she’s greeted his research updates with forced enthusiasm. Sometimes it even seems like she has to fight the urge to smirk. He keeps her informed because she’s his best friend, and he values her opinion, but more and more he finds himself divulging only the most important details. It doesn’t feel good to hold back from her—and he actually understands why a social justice keener like Silvia would disapprove of his project. At the same time, he hopes that someone who grew up with two parents and plenty of money might understand why he’s pursuing this. Failing that, it would be nice if her fondness for him could override her moral indignation.

When Silvia presses him again to tell her what he found, he decides to fill her in. After sharing the major details, he adds, “I’m thinking maybe this Gaius Willsom got involved with a yank from New York,” he continues, “and his parents cut him off. So he changed his identity to figan, married his American, and became a family doctor.”

“That’s really interesting,” says Silvia. “But do you think the Edmiston Commission would have based his date of death on just a notice in The Record?”

He knew there’d be a “but” coming somewhere.

“Here’s how I see it,” Hugh responds. “It was like a game of telephone, right? A powerful yazzer family fakes their son’s death by sending a death notice to The Record, and when the newspaper asks for more details, they throw their weight around and tell them there’s nothing more to know. Four years later, when the Edmiston Commission starts up, they’ve got so many yazzers to research that they don’t bother digging any deeper. After that, Gaius Willsom drowning in Spain just becomes one of a gazillion obscure facts in the database—and nobody’s gonna ask about it.”

“Huh. Maybe that could’ve happened back then,” she says. “But not these days.”

Just as Hugh is about to thank her for the input, half-hearted as it is, he glances back at his notepad. “Oh, wow,” he murmurs. “I just noticed something.”

“What?”

He inhales with a hiss. “Gaius’s father was named Phillip Augustus.”

“Right.”

“Check this out,” he continues. “Arno’s father is Finlo August.”

Now Silvia’s voice drops to a whisper. “Holy shit.”

His thoughts are racing so fast now Hugh can hardly speak. “I never actually thought I’d find something…”