chapter 30
When the darkness finally lifts, it is a flat, hot, steel-colored morning, a morning without dimension or depth. The houses around me could be the set for a showing; they could be pictures on a bigscreen. I feel that if I walk too far I’ll walk right into canvas or through a paper wall and then out into black-nothing and the end of everything.
Somehow I’ve run out of fear; I feel lethargic instead, which is almost worse. Why care about a flat planet populated by flat people? Who cares about a place where there is no Ky?
This is one of the reasons I need Ky, I realize. Because when I am with him, I feel.
But he is gone. I saw it happen.
I made it happen.
Did Sisyphus have to do this, too? I wonder. Stop for a minute and concentrate on holding firm, on pushing the rock just enough to keep it from rolling down and crushing him, before he could even think about trying to climb again?
��
The red tablet took effect almost immediately after the Officers and Officials shepherded us home. The events of the past twelve hours have been wiped from my family’s minds. Within the hour, a delivery of new containers and tablets arrived with a letter of explanation that ours were found to be defective and removed earlier this morning. Everyone else in my family accepts the explanation without question. They have other things to worry about.
My mother is confused—where did she put her datapod for work when she finished with it last night? Bram can’t remember whether he finished writing his assignment on his scribe.
“Well, turn it on and check, honey,” my mother says, flustered. My father looks a little blank, too, but not as confused. I think he’s experienced this before, possibly many times in his line of work. While the tablet still works, he seems less bewildered by the feeling of disorientation.
Which is good, because the Officials haven’t finished with our family yet.
“Private message for Molly Reyes,” the generic voice from the port calls out.
My mother looks up, surprised. “I’ll be late for work,” she protests softly, although whoever sent this message can’t hear her. They also can’t see her straighten her shoulders before she walks over to the port and puts on the earpiece. The screen darkens, the picture on it only visible from the exact spot in which she stands.
“What now?” says Bram. “Should I wait?”
“No, go on to school,” my father tells him. “We don’t want you to be late.”
On his way out the door, Bram complains, “I always miss everything.” I wish I could tell him that wasn’t true; but then again, would I really want him to keep the memory of what happened this morning?
Something happens to me when I look at Bram leaving our house, and things become real again. Bram is real. I am real. Ky is real, and I need to get started on finding him. Now.
“I’m going into the City for the morning,” I tell my father.
“Don’t you have hiking?” he asks, and then he shakes his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. I remember. Summer leisure activities ended early this year, right? That’s why Bram’s already on his way to school instead of swimming. My mind’s foggy this morning.” He doesn’t seem surprised by that fact, and I think again that this is something that’s happened to him before. And I remember how he let my mother take the red tablet first; somehow he knew it wouldn’t hurt her.
“They didn’t assign us anything else to do yet to take the place of hiking,” I tell my father. “So I have time to go into the City before Second School.” This in itself is an oversight, another little hitch in the well-oiled machine of our Society that proves something is wrong somewhere.
My father doesn’t answer. He stares at my mother, whose face is ashen and pale as she stares at the portscreen. “Molly?” he says. You’re not supposed to interrupt a private message, but he takes a few steps closer. And then closer again.
Finally, when he puts his hand on her shoulder, she turns away from the screen. “This is my fault,” my mother says, and for the first time in my life, I see her look through my father, not at him, her gaze fixed on some distant point beyond. “We’ve been Relocated to the Farmlands, effective immediately.”
“What?” my father asks. He shakes his head, glances back behind her at the port. “That’s impossible. You submitted the report. You told the truth.”
“I suppose they don’t want those of us who saw the rogue crops to continue working in positions of authority,” my mother says. “We know too much. We might be tempted to do the same. They’ll put us out in the Farmlands where we won’t be in charge. Where they can watch us and wear us out planting what they tell us to plant.”
“But at least,” I say, trying to comfort her, “we’ll be closer to Grandmother and Grandfather.”
“Not the Farmlands in Oria,” my mother says. “The Farmlands in a different province. We leave tomorrow.” Then that blank, stunned gaze of hers shifts to my father and I see her begin to feel again. I watch realization and emotion come back into her face. As I see it happen to her, I feel a sense of urgency so strong I don’t know if I can bear it. I have to find out where they sent Ky. Before we leave.
“I’ve always wanted to live in the Farmlands,” my father says, and my mother leans her head on his shoulder, too tired to cry and too overcome to pretend that everything is all right.
“But I did what I was supposed to do,” she whispers. “I did exactly what they asked.”
“It will be all right,” he whispers to my mother and to me. Maybe if I had taken the red tablet I could believe him.
Down the street, there’s an Official air car in front of the Markhams’ house. Our Borough has had entirely too much attention from the Officials in the past few weeks.
Em bounces out the door of her treeless house. “Did you hear?” she asks, excited. “The Officials are gathering the Markhams’ things. Patrick has been transferred to work in the Central Government! It’s such an honor. And he’s from our Borough!” She frowns. “It’s too bad we didn’t get to say good-bye to Ky. I’ll miss him.”
“I know,” I say, and my heart aches, and I stop again under my stone, pushing back against the weight of being the only one who knows what really happened this morning.
Except for a few select Officials. And even they don’t know that I know. Only two people truly know what took place, that I didn’t take the red tablet. Me. And my Official.
“I have to go,” I tell Em, and I start moving again, toward the air-train stop. I don’t look back at the Markhams’ house. Patrick and Aida, gone for good, too. Have they been assigned Aberration status or a quiet Retirement somewhere far from here? Have they taken the red tablet, too? Do they look around their new place with surprise, wondering what happened to their second son? I’ll have to try to find them, too, for Ky, but right now I have to find Ky. There’s only one place I can think of to look for information about where they might have sent him.
On the ride to City Hall, I keep my head down. There are too many places I can’t look: at the seats where Ky used to sit; at the floor of the air-train car where he set his feet and kept his balance, always making it seem easy, natural. I can’t bring myself to look out the windows at all, knowing that I might catch a glimpse of the Hill where Ky and I stood yesterday. Together. When the train stops to let more people on and a breeze wafts in, I wonder if the strips of red cloth that Ky and I left there flutter in the wind. Signal flags of a new beginning, though not the kind we wanted.
Finally, I hear the announcer’s voice, calling my destination.
City Hall.
My idea won’t work. I know it the minute I stand on the steps of the Hall for only the second time in my life. This is not the place of open doors and twinkling lights that welcomed me, invited me to catch a glimpse of my future. In the daylight, this is a place with armed guards, a place of business, a place where past and present are locked safe inside. They won’t let me in, and even if they did, they wouldn’t tell me anything.
They might not know there was anything to tell. Even Officials carry red tablets.
I turn back and there across the street I see possibility and my heart flutters. Of course. Why didn’t I think of this first? The Museum.
The Museum is long, low, white, blind. Even its windows are made of frosted white opaque glass to keep the artifacts inside safe from the light. City Hall, across the street, has tall, clear windows. City Hall sees everything. Still, the Museum might have something for me behind its tightly closed eyes. Hope quickens my step as I cross the street, gives me strength as I push open the enormous white doors.
“Welcome,” says a curator, sitting at a round white desk. “Can I help you find anything?”
“I’m wandering,” I say, trying to look relaxed. “I have some extra time today.”
“And you came here,” the curator says, pleased, puzzled. “Wonderful. You might want to try the second level. Some of our most popular displays are up there.”
I don’t want to draw too much attention to myself, so I nod and climb the steps, their metal echo reminding me painfully of Ky’s feet on the stairs at the station. Don’t think about that now. Stay calm. Remember coming here that time in First School, before Ky came to the Borough? Back when we had time to consider the past, before we went to Second School where all that matters is the future? Remember walking into the dining hall in the basement of the Museum with the other schoolchildren, all of us so excited to be eating somewhere new and different? Remember Xander’s bright blond head among the rest, the way he pretended to listen to the curator’s speech but kept making jokes to the side that no one else could hear?
Xander. If I leave him here, will another piece of my heart be torn away, too?
Of course it will.
A sign points to the Hall of Artifacts and I veer right, suddenly, wanting to see the display. Wanting to see where they put all those things they took. Perhaps I’ll see my compact, Xander’s cuff links, Bram’s watch. I could bring him here one more time before we leave for the Farmlands.
I stop in the middle of the hall, realizing that none of those things are here.
The other cases are still crammed with artifacts, but the new display is nothing but a long glass case, huge and empty. A sign in the middle of it, printed in lettered words that look so different from Ky’s cursive, reads: ADDITIONAL ARTIFACTS COMING SOON. A light from above illuminates the sign in its empty, cavernous case. That sign could last forever in this sealed and pristine environment. Like the scrap of my dress from the Match Banquet.
But I’ve already broken the glass; I’ve given the green away; I’ve made my choice. I’m already dying without Ky here and now I have to make sure I live to find him.
I realize that our artifacts will likely never make it into the case. The sign is the only display there may ever be. I don’t know what they’ve done with them.
Now I know for myself that there is nothing left.
I walk down the stairs into the basement. Where they keep the Glorious History of Oria Province, where I meant to go all along before the chance to glimpse what was lost distracted me from what must be found.
I stand close to the glass and look at the map of our Province with its city, farmlands, and rivers, listening to the footsteps on the marble floor behind me. A small, uniformed man comes to stand next to me. “Would you like me to tell you more about the history of Oria?” he asks.
Our eyes meet: mine searching, his sharp and bright.
I look at him and realize: I will not sell our poem. I am selfish. Besides the scrap of fabric, it is all I had to give Ky, and we are the last two people in the world who know the whole thing. Even this is a dead end, even this last idea of mine won’t work. I could trade the poem but it would gain me nothing. This isn’t something I can barter; it’s something I have to do.
“No, thank you,” I tell the man, even though I would like to know the true history of this place where I live. But I don’t think anyone knows it anymore.
Before I leave, I look once more at the geographic map of our Society. There, in the middle of the map, fat and happy, sit the large plump shapes of the Provinces. And around their edges are all the Outer Provinces, the lines dividing them into sections, but none of them named.
“Wait,” I call out to the man.
He turns and looks back at me expectantly. “Yes?”
“Does anyone know the names of the Outer Provinces?”
He waves his hand, uninterested now that he knows he isn’t going to get something worth trading from me. “That is their name,” he calls back. “The Outer Provinces.”
Those blank, divided Outer Provinces on the map hold my gaze. The map is thick with letters and information, and it’s hard to make out all the names. I scan them over, not really reading them, not sure what I’m looking for.
Then. Something stands out to me, one piece of information lodges in my sorting brain: Sisyphus River. It threads through some of the Western Provinces and then through two of the Outer Provinces and off into the void of the Other Countries.
Ky must be from one of those two Outer Provinces. And since that’s where the attack came when he was young, that could be where the trouble is now. I lean closer to the map to memorize the location of the two places that might be his.
I hear footsteps coming closer, again, and I turn. “Are you sure I can’t help you with anything?” the small man asks.
I don’t want to trade anything! I almost exclaim to him, and then I realize that he seems to be sincere.
I point to the Sisyphus River on the map, one tiny black thread of hope running along the paper. “Do you know anything about this river?”
His voice hushes. “I heard a story about it once when I was younger. A long time ago the river turned toxic partway down and no one could live near its banks. But that’s all I’ve heard.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, because now I have an idea, thanks to what I’ve learned about the way our elderly die. Could our Society have poisoned the waters on their way down to the enemy country? But Ky and his family weren’t poisoned. Perhaps they lived farther up, in the higher of the two Provinces along that river.
“It’s only a story,” the man warns me. He must have seen the hope flash across my face.
“Isn’t everything?” I say.
I walk out of the Museum and I do not look back.
My Official waits for me in the greenspace outside the Museum. Wearing white, sitting on a white bench, backed by a white-yellow sun. It’s too much; I blink.
If I close my eyes a little I can pretend that this is the greenspace next to the game center, where I will meet my Official for the first time. I can pretend that she’s going to tell me that there’s a mistake with my Match. But this time things will take a different turn, go down a different path, one where Ky and I can be together and happy.
But there is no such path, not here in Oria.
She gestures for me to come and sit by her on her bench. It strikes me that she’s chosen a strange place to meet, right here next to the Museum doors. Then I remember that it’s a perfect place, still and empty. Ky was right. No one here is interested in the past.
The bench is carved of stone and feels solid and cool from the hours it spends in the shade of the Museum. I put my hand against the rock after I sit down, wondering where they quarried the stone. Wondering who had to move the rocks.
This time I speak first. “I made a mistake. You have to bring him back.”
“Ky Markham has already had one exception made for him. Most Aberrations don’t even have that,” she says. “You’re the one who sent him away. You’ve proven our point. People who let the data slide, who let emotions get involved, create a mess for themselves.”
“You did this,” I say. “You set up that sort.”
“But you performed it,” she says. “Perfectly, I might add. You might be upset; his family might be devastated, but it was the right decision, as far as his ability was concerned. You knew he was more than he pretended to be.”
“He should be the one who decides whether to go or stay. Not me. Not you. Let him choose.”
“If we did, everything would fall apart,” she says, patiently. “Why do you think we can guarantee such long life spans? How do you think we eradicated cancer? We Match for everything. Genes included.”
“You guarantee these long life spans but then you kill us at the end. I know about the poison in the food for people like Grandfather.”
“We can also guarantee a high quality of life up until the very last breath. Do you know how many miserable people in how many miserable societies across the years would have given almost anything for that? And the method of administering the—”
“Poison.”
“Poison,” she says, unflinching, “is unbelievably humane. Small doses, in the patient’s favorite foods.”
“So we eat to die.”
She dismisses my concern. “Everyone eats to die, regardless of what we do. Your problem is that you don’t respect the system and what it offers you, even now.”
This almost makes me want to laugh. The Official sees the twist of my lips and launches into a list of examples, of ways I’ve broken with the Society’s rules in the past two months—and she doesn’t even know the worst of them—but she doesn’t cite a single example from all the years before. If she had a way to track all my memories, she would see they are pure. That I truly wanted to fit in and be Matched and do everything the right way. That I truly believed.
That part of me still believes.
“It was time for this little experiment to end anyway,” the Official says, sounding regretful. “We don’t have the manpower to focus on it anymore. And, of course, situations being what they are—”
“What experiment?”
“The one with you and Ky.”
“I already know,” I say. “I know that you told him. And I know it was a bigger mistake than you led me to believe that first time we spoke. Ky was actually in the Matching pool.”
“It was no mistake,” she says.
And I am falling again, just when I thought I had hit the bottom.
“We decided to put Ky into the Matching pool,” she says. “Now and then we do that with an Aberration, simply to gather additional data and watch for variation. The general public doesn’t know about it; there’s no reason they should. What’s important for you to know was that we were in control of the experiment all along.”
“But the odds of him Matching with me—”
“Are virtually impossible,” the Official agrees. “So you can see why we were intrigued. Why we let you see Ky’s picture so that you would be curious. Why we made sure you were assigned to the same hiking group, and then to the same pairs. Why we had to follow it through, at least for a time.”
She smiles. “It was so intriguing; we could control so many variables. We even reduced your meal portions to see if that would make you more stressed, more likely to give up. But you didn’t. Of course, we were never cruel. You always had sufficient calories. And you’re strong. You never did take the green tablet.”
“Why does that matter?”
“It makes you more interesting,” she says. “A very intriguing subject, in fact. Ultimately predictable, but still unusual enough to want to watch. It would have been interesting to see your situation play out to the final predicted outcome.” She sighs, a sigh of genuine sadness. “I planned to write an article about it, available only to select Officials, of course. It would have been an unparalleled proof of the validity of Matching. That’s why I didn’t want you to lose your memory of what happened this morning at the air-train station. All my work would have been for nothing. Now, at least I can see you make your final choice while you still know what happened.”
The anger fills me so full that there is no room for thought or speech. It would have been interesting to see it play out to the final predicted outcome.
It was all planned from the start. Everything.
“Unfortunately, my skills are needed elsewhere now.” She runs her hand along the datapod in front of her. “We simply don’t have the time to monitor the situation anymore, so we can’t extend it any longer.”
“Why tell me all of this?” I ask. “Why do you want me to know every last detail?”
She looks surprised. “Because we care about you, Cassia. No more or less than we care about all our citizens. As the subject of an experiment, you have the right to know what happened. The right to make the choice we know you’ll make now instead of waiting any longer.”
It’s so funny, her use of the word choice, so unintentionally hysterical that I would laugh if I didn’t think it would come out sounding like a cry. “Did you tell Xander?”
She looks offended. “Of course not. He’s still your Match. In order for the experiment to be controlled, he had to remain in the dark. He knows nothing about any of this.”
Except what I told him, I think, and I realize that she doesn’t know.
There are things she doesn’t know. With this realization, it is as though something has been given back to me. The knowledge drops into my anger and distills it into something pure and clear. And one of the things she knows nothing about is love.
“Ky, however, was different,” she says. “We told him. We pretended we were warning him, but of course we were hoping to give him impetus to try to be with you. And that worked as well.” She smiles, smug, because she also thinks that I don’t know this part of the story. But, of course, I do.
“So you watched us all the time,” I say.
“Not all the time,” she answers. “We watched you enough to get an effective sample of what your interactions were like. We couldn’t watch all of your interactions on the Hill, for example, or even on the smaller hill. Officer Carter still had jurisdiction over that area and did not look kindly on our being there.”
I wait for her to ask; somehow I know she will. Even though she thinks she has an accurate sample, there is a part of her that has to know more.
“So what did happen between you and Ky?” she asks.
She doesn’t know about the kiss. That was not what sent him away. That moment on the Hill is still ours, mine and Ky’s. Ours. No one has touched it but the two of us.
This will be what I have to hold onto as I go forward. The kiss, and the poem, and the I love you’s we wrote and said.
“If you tell me, I can help you. I can recommend you for a work position in the City. You could stay here; you wouldn’t have to leave for the Farmlands with your family.” She leans closer. “Tell me what happened.”
I look away. In spite of everything, the offer is tempting. I’m a little afraid of leaving Oria; I don’t want to leave Xander and Em. I don’t want to leave the places that hold so many memories of Grandfather. And most of all I don’t want to leave this City and my Borough because they are where I found and loved Ky.
But he’s not here anymore. I have to find him somewhere else.
The prisoner’s dilemma. Somewhere Ky keeps faith with me and I can do the same for him. I won’t give up.
“No,” I say clearly.
“I thought you’d say that,” she tells me, but I hear the disappointment in her tone and I suddenly want to laugh. I want to ask her if it ever gets tedious being right all the time. But I think I know what her answer would be.
“So what is the final predicted outcome?” I ask.
“Does it matter?” she smiles. “It’s what will happen. It’s what you’ll do. But I’ll tell you if you’d like.”
I realize that I don’t need to hear it; I don’t need to hear anything she has to say or any predictions she thinks she can make. They do not know that Xander hid the artifact, that Ky can write, that Grandfather gave me poetry.
What else doesn’t she know?
“You say you planned this all along,” I say suddenly, on instinct, acting as though I want to be certain. “You’re telling me you put Ky into the Matching pool yourselves.”
“Yes,” she answers. “We did.”
This time, I look right at her when she speaks and that’s when I see it. The faintest twitch of muscle in her jaw, a slight shift of her eyes, the smallest ring of performance in the tone of her voice. She doesn’t often have to lie; she’s never been an Aberration, so this doesn’t come easily to her, she hasn’t had as much practice. She can’t keep her face perfectly still the way Ky does when he’s playing a game and he knows what he has to do, whether it’s better to win or lose.
And although she’s been told how to play, she doesn’t know exactly which cards she’s holding.
She doesn’t know who put Ky into the Matching pool.
If the Officials didn’t, who did?
I look at her again. She doesn’t know, and she isn’t listening to her own words. If the almost-impossible happened before—my being Matched to two boys I already knew—then it can happen again.
I can find him.
I stand up to leave. I think I smell rain in the air, even though there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and I remember. I still have a piece of Ky’s story left.