PARTRIDGE
LOVEBIRD
They’re in the academy gardens, surrounded by fake shrubs, fake flower beds, fake birdcalls in the fake trees. It’s winter, but they keep the garden looking like spring. Partridge hates the dishonesty. He’s still shaken by what he saw in the medical center. The shine of this garden—the cheery polish of buds and waxy leaves—only reminds him of the ugliness that’s hidden under the surface of things in the Dome.
Partridge and Beckley are waiting for Iralene and the photographers who are supposed to catch them on this date, as if it’s not all staged. He’s restless. She’s late. He doesn’t want to be here anyway.
“I want to see Glassings set up right. Make sure he has nurses coming in shifts and everything he needs, okay?”
Beckley nods.
“And when I say we’re done here, we’re done.” Partridge feels guilty. Even though Lyda urged him to go through with this charade, it feels like a betrayal. But he can’t bail. What if there were another surge in suicides? He’d only have himself to blame. And he can’t take on any more guilt. He feels like his chest is leaden with it all.
It’s quiet except for the birdcalls. Partridge looks at the dimpled center of a sunflower and wonders if it could be a small speaker. He trusts nothing.
Beckley says, “I can’t believe how you laid into Arvin Weed.” He smiles broadly.
Partridge rubs his knuckles. “I didn’t think about it. I just did it.” He looks at Beckley’s broad shoulders. “You’ve got some coding in you, right? There’s a mummy mold in the medical center with your name on it, I bet.”
“Actually, I was given just some raw stuff. Nothing high-end. No molds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there’s a way to do coding right with all the built-in protections to make it as safe and specific as possible. And then, for a lot cheaper, you can do it fast. I don’t think it was as good for my overall health, but I’m not an academy boy, right? I’m expendable, in the long run.”
Partridge remembers Wilda—just a nine-year-old girl—who was made Pure inside the Dome, and how she started to break down so quickly because it was all too potent and she was so young. What’s going to happen to Beckley ten years from now? Five? Partridge stands up and looks at the boys’ dormitory. “I don’t think you’re expendable. Not at all.” He glances at Beckley, who gives a curt nod and looks away.
And then he hears Iralene’s voice, set on edge, giving instructions of some sort. He turns and there she is, wearing a canary-yellow dress that floats around her legs silkily. The dress is low-cut and looks like an evening gown. Partridge is underdressed. She’s surrounded by a small clutch of young women with fixed smiles. Her mother, Mimi, is with her, looking cold and angry. A half dozen photographers file in behind them, their cameras pointed at Partridge like they’re armed.
“Hey, Iralene,” Partridge says. “Ready?” He wants to get this going.
Her mouth becomes a perfect O of surprise. She smiles and then, oddly, she takes off her canary-yellow heels, hooking them in her fingers, and runs to him. She opens her arms, and if he doesn’t open his, she’s going to run right into him. And so he has to open them, and as he does, she jumps a little so that he has to catch her and set her back down on the ground.
“You’ve been working so hard we’ve had no time together! None at all!” She tilts her head and gazes at him.
The cameras erupt with clicking and flashes.
“Don’t look at them,” she says. “We’re not supposed to know they’re here.”
Iralene’s friends—though he doesn’t recognize any of them and wonders if they’ve been assigned the job—are cooing and awing like they’re watching kittens. Partridge hates it. “Do they have to make those noises?”
“We’re all alone now! At last! Let’s walk to the wooden swing near the trellis.”
“Fine.”
They hold hands and walk. “How are you doing?” she says. “Tell me everything I’ve missed!”
“Mrs. Hollenback tried to off herself taking pills. There are these premature babies…I can’t talk about them. They’ve been torturing people. Glassings among them. He looked almost dead. I punched Arvin Weed.”
“Stop it!” she says suddenly, flushed with anger. “Just stop it!”
“You asked.”
They’re at the swing. She puts her high heels back on, which is as inexplicable as her having taken them off. She sits on the swing and freezes, looking up at him, smiling lovingly.
He can’t smile back. He feels sick. He looks at the dormitories again. The freshman wing is all lit up. The other floors, though, are dark and quiet. Did the older three grades go on one of those dismal field trips to the zoo? He misses it all suddenly. He wants to be a kid again. He’d like to know nothing. Is that wrong?
“Push me! Push me!” Iralene says, sounding more like little Julby Hollenback than herself.
Her friends call out, “Yes, yes! Push her!”
Mimi looks on with disgust.
He feels so deeply manipulated that for a second, he can’t move. He refuses to do what they’re telling him.
But he’s already here. He’s signed on. No more blood on your hands, he hears Lyda whispering. He reminds himself that he’s not going through this little fairy tale for Iralene’s entourage. He’s doing it to save lives.
He steps behind Iralene, grabs the ropes over her head, pulls the swing back, and lets it go. A few pushes later, she’s really gliding, and now he understands the dress. It was made to ripple perfectly along her legs while swinging on a wooden swing.
“Aren’t you happy?” she calls to him, and by this she probably means, Smile, okay? At least try to smile!
He forces the smile onto his face. It’s painful—worse, maybe, because Beckley’s there. The young women clap their hands lightly.
“Talk about something!” Iralene says. “Something pleasant.”
Partridge can’t think of anything pleasant except Lyda. He misses her. He wishes he were here with her instead. But he pushes himself to make idle conversation. If he says the right things, maybe this will end faster. “I wonder where they took the academy boys. The freshmen are here, but that’s it.”
“Oh, who knows?” Iralene says. “I’m sure it’s educational!”
“Right,” Partridge says, but then he glances at Beckley, who’s turned away. Why? “Beckley, you know where the older boys are?”
Beckley doesn’t answer.
“Beckley! What is it?”
“A bird!” Iralene cries out then. Is she trying to distract him? “A real live bird!” She points up into the branches of the tree.
Partridge glances up. She’s right. It’s a real bird. Sometimes they escape the aviary. They even try to nest in the trees. But without anything to eat, they die quickly.
“It’s so pretty! Catch it for me, Partridge! Catch it!”
“People catch butterflies, Iralene. They don’t catch birds.”
“But you can! For me!”
“No, I can’t actually catch a bird.” He walks away from the swing and over to Beckley. “Tell me what’s going on with the older academy boys.”
Beckley won’t look at him. “I’m not allowed.”
“Do I have to make it an order?”
Beckley nods. “Yep, you do.”
“Then tell me, damn it—that’s an order.”
“I only overheard this, so I don’t know if it’s true or not.”
“What?”
“Foresteed’s attacking. He’s taken all the boys sixteen and up and started massive coding. Some are already out there, having joined Special Forces on the outside. Others are being geared up.”
“Who’s he attacking?”
“Wretches.”
Partridge feels like his head could explode. He presses the heel of his hand against his temple. “Why? For the love of God…”
Beckley shrugs. “There’s an airship that was stolen, and he had to start to neutralize the situation before a serious threat could be…” The airship that Pressia, Bradwell, and El Capitan and Helmud stole—but still, an attack makes no sense!
They crossed the Atlantic. Weed told Partridge that Foresteed didn’t care about Pressia and the airship.
“He can’t attack! He doesn’t have the authority!”
“He leads the military, and since you’ve been preoccupied…”
“I’m not preoccupied! Damn it. You think I want to be at memorial services and photo shoots?” He thinks of Pressia, Bradwell, and El Capitan and Helmud. They can’t come back to an attack from the Dome. He needs them—in one piece, alive.
“Radio ahead. I want a meeting with Foresteed ASAP.”
“Partridge!” Iralene calls out. “I need another push.” The swing is still. Her dress, no longer gusting, looks like a wilted flower.
“They got enough pictures. I’ve got to go, Iralene. Sorry.” He walks off quickly. Beckley is at his side.
Iralene calls out, “No, Partridge! The bird! Come and catch the bird for me! It’s a lovebird!”
Was the lovebird planted there? Did someone actually expect him to catch it for her and give it as a gift?
“It’s going to die out here,” Partridge says. “It needs to be taken back to the aviary.”
Iralene cries out, “Oh no!”
He glances back and sees the bird flapping into what would be the sky.