The invisible voice speaks: “Yes, Chancellor.”
The little heads above the pedestal blur, then fuzz out. A circle forms, dotted with tiny images around the outer edge. In the circle’s center there is a flat, fat-cheeked cartoonish face that looks like it was carved into flat stone. Its tongue sticks out. The style of art reminds me of my birth-coffin’s carvings.
That circle of images…
I look at the red circle embroidered on the left breast of O’Malley’s coveralls.
“Our ties,” I say. “That face with the symbols, it matches what was on our ties.”
O’Malley nods. “It does. But before you ask, I don’t know what it means.”
He sees my doubtful expression.
“I told you information was erased. I know it’s hard for you to believe me right now, but that’s the truth. Shuttle, show her the symbols.”
Above the pedestal, three glowing dots appear around the circle. At the very top, the dot turns black, spreads out and becomes a symbol: Spingate’s gear. The other two form near the bottom, connected to the gear and each other by straight lines that form a perfect triangle. On the left, O’Malley’s half-circle; on the right, Aramovsky’s double-ring.
Words appear by each symbol: SPIRIT by the double-ring, MIND by the gear, and STRUCTURE by the half-circle.
“The double-ring is obviously religion,” O’Malley says. “The gear is for scientists and engineers. My symbol represents administration—helping leaders, organizing, managing other people who do actual labor. As far as I can tell, people who had these three symbols worked together to rule. Whatever type of culture there was back on the Xolotl—I mean before they started slaughtering each other—those three symbols were in charge.”
“But Matilda was the leader. If I’m a circle, wasn’t she one, too? Circles would have to be in the leadership group, wouldn’t they?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to go on.
“Tell me the rest of it,” I say.
He clears his throat, speaks loud. “Show the secondary symbols.”
Three more dots appear, one each in the spaces between the existing symbols. The dots take shape…
Top left: Bishop’s circle-star.
Top right: Smith’s circle-cross.
And at the bottom, finally, my symbol—the empty circle.
Words appear: MIGHT next to the circle-star, HEALTH next to the circle-cross. By mine, the word SERVICE.
O’Malley points to the circle-star. “Might means military. Soldiers or police. People who protect the order of things.”
I think of Bishop and the others, of how they are always the first to face any danger, of how without them we would all have been overwritten by now.
“Soldiers help keep people safe,” I say. “People who keep us safe would be part of the ruling class.”
“They weren’t.” No hesitation in O’Malley’s voice, no doubts. “They did the bidding of the primary symbols.”
So Grownup O’Malley would have been in charge of Grownup Bishop? Interesting.
O’Malley points to the circle-cross. “That symbol was for doctors, nurses, people involved in the health of others.”
The dead Brewer boy in the coffin, he had the circle-cross on his forehead. Is Brewer a doctor? Perhaps he was in charge of the receptacles. That might explain how he had control over our coffins, how he was able to wake us up, to lock out Matilda and the others for all those centuries.
I wait for O’Malley to continue. He doesn’t. He looks down, unable to meet my eyes.
“Stop stalling,” I say. “Explain my symbol. What was my role in their society? What special skills am I supposed to have?”
He lets out a slow breath. His blue eyes shimmer with tears. Maybe he fakes emotions at will, but he isn’t faking this.
“Circles don’t have special skills,” he says. “Your role was to do whatever the other symbols told you to do. Em…the circles were slaves.”
Like a key sliding into a lock, that word destroys barriers in my mind. Matilda’s memories—fractured, distorted, but still real—flood in. I am in school, carrying a tooth-girl’s things for her while she walks five steps ahead of me, laughing with other tooth-girls…
…I am in class—no, waiting outside of class, with other circles, being taught basic math by an old woman while my tooth-girl—my owner—is in the classroom learning physics…
…I am in the cafeteria, on my knees, wiping food off the floor, food that my owner knocked over just so she could see me pick it up while she and her tooth-girl friends laugh at me, call me a stupid empty over and over again…