I huddle in the darkest corner I can find. I am painted and shimmering, hair twisted and tamed, because I have just received my eighteenth scar, and now every male in New Canaan needs to look at me. I am supposed to do as I ought: choose a partner with a profession I prefer, train for no reason, and provide my city with more of the Knowing. I hate it.
Sonia stands at my elbow, hair wound high on top of her head—she’s still not quite as tall as I am—dress cut away to show her own wellness scars in rows down her upper arms. Twenty-two of them, her arms say. Safe to look at. But she’s not hiding. She’s using this spot as a vantage point, darkened eyes scanning the crowd. She loves this sort of thing. Craves it, I think, every glance and smile and stolen moment in an unlit corridor. I think she relives it all later, in her memory, each new conquest like some kind of never-ending sweet. I don’t understand her form of addiction, but who am I to judge, if someone else has found a way to cope? Judgment is the Council’s job, and we’re all only a step or two away from insanity anyway.
I see Martina Tutor, Sonia’s mother, chatting with the Chemists, who grow and mix the medicines we hardly ever need, and all six of the Administrators from across the passage milling through the crowd. And there is my mother, exquisitely dressed, gesturing with bright nails, speaking to Thorne Councilman, while my father has a lively discussion with one of the Philosophers, debating ethics we are never, ever going to change. I watch Thorne smile at my mother, an expression imitated by Craddock, who is also Council, representing the supervisors of the Outside, overseeing the plantings and the harvest. I don’t think there’s one person within a twenty-meter range who does anything useful except for Craddock. And he, Nita tells me, is cruel about it.
Sonia sticks an elbow in my ribs. She’s excited, animated, the exact opposite of how I feel. “Smile, Sam,” she says beneath her breath. “I’m the only person here who isn’t afraid to speak to you. Relax and you could have your pick of this room. Just enjoy yourself, and if you don’t, cache it later.”
Since my memories seldom stay cached, this isn’t a valid plan for me.
Then Sonia says, “Look at that … ” Her smile has gone dazzling, and when I search the crowd for her target, I see Reddix Physicianson standing not far away, eyes closed. He’s not with us. He’s in a memory, a loss of control that is unusual for him. I hope he doesn’t drop his plate.
But Reddix was not where Sonia’s smile was aimed. Beyond his shoulder is an Outsider serving a platter of sweetbreads, a young man, a laborer in the fields from the shape of his arms, newly chosen, evidently, for work in the city. And he just raked Sonia with a glance that was unmissable.
“Sonia,” I hiss. The corner of her painted gaze swings up in my direction. I say one word. “No.”
Sonia rolls her eyes. She’d pat my head if she could reach it. Mother swirls a red-painted finger at me, telling me to circulate, but I fix my gaze on the spray of the gushing Torrens. I can feel myself being looked at. Evaluated. If I can’t do something to distract my mind soon—run, jump, possibly scream—then memories are going to come, and this will get much more embarrassing than it already is.
But once I have successfully offended every potential suitor Underneath, I’m telling Mother I’m going for physician training. Without a physician for a partner. And that should take care of any ideas of partnering off Samara Archiva. What I’m not going to tell her is that I plan to smuggle my new Knowing Outside. Where people actually do get injured. Where there are things I can change. Where there’s a sickness the city doesn’t want us to Know exists. A sickness I plan to cure. For once, my Knowing will do someone good. And my mother’s disappointment in me is going to remain razor sharp from now until the end of time.
“Sam,” Sonia whispers, shoving a glass into my hand. Thorne Councilman is climbing up the steps to the platform, dark-eyed and handsome, hair going to early gray, turning to stand in front of the mural of lies that is supposed to be our history, OUR TRUTH CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN bright in the artificial sunbeams over his head. Nineteen more Council members gather around him. He has a glass. Everyone has a glass. I can smell the amrita. Then he recites the words we all Know and couldn’t stop remembering if we wanted to, his deep voice echoing across the Forum.
“And so we who remember now remember the sun, because the light of our truth is written in our memory, and is just as enduring. Truth cannot be forgotten. When we remember, we preserve the truth.”
“Preserve the truth,” the crowd replies together, raising their glasses. There’s a silence while the room drinks in unison. And then a cheer. Amrita will get you a little drunk.
I sip mine until Mother catches my eye, and then I drain it like I’m supposed to. And when I lower my glass, Thorne Councilman’s gaze is on me, like the ray of a dark lantern beaming directly down into my eyes. And he is judging me, slowly, from head to toe. And I don’t think it’s because he wants to have a partnering conversation with my parents. My annoyance melts into fear, pure and primal. Does he Know what I’ve done? Where I’ve been? What I’ve read …
And just like that, the floor of my memory opens, and I fall again, drifting through my mind, deep into the mountain …
… to the steps that lead down to Uncle Towlend’s office, sliding a key from a ring into a rusty lock. These are keys I am not supposed to have, because they are keys I’ve stolen from Uncle Towlend’s flat. And they’re keys Uncle Towlend is not supposed to have, because he hid them from the Council before the Archives were closed. The lock turns, creaking in the silence, and all my memories of yellow light, old paper, and my uncle’s comfortable chairs are instantly stained with dark and the smell of rot. Papers litter the floor in the dim, dust thick on my uncle’s desk. I go to the next rusting door, jiggle the lock, and when it opens, pull the cover off my lamp. And for the first time in ten years, I am looking at the Archives.
Books cover every surface, shelves spiraling around the inner walls of an enormous circular shaft, one hundred meters from bottom to top, pierced through the heart of the mountain. The wooden balcony rings the walls right along with the shelves, and I hold up my light and follow it, down through the dark, books on my right, a long, black fall beyond the rail to my left.