“Four.”
He laughs just a little. I smile, though I don’t really Know what’s funny. He reaches up and takes off the glasses, setting them on the stone beside him, and only then does he glance up. I think he’s giving me privacy. So I won’t worry that he’s looking through the blanket. Jillian doesn’t move.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “that it must be hard to have so many memories.” He watches the waterbug scrabble against the glass of light. “Is it?”
Yes, Beckett Rodriguez of Earth. Knowing is one of the worst things that can happen to you. But I only say, “Yes.”
He doesn’t ask me anything more. And I think he wants to. And then I blurt out, “What is a Rodriguez?”
He lifts a brow. “What do you mean?”
“What does a Rodriguez do?”
He grins. “It’s just a name. Not an occupation.” He sees when I don’t understand the word. “It’s not a job.”
“So it doesn’t have … You don’t work in a field?”
Both his brows are up now. “No. Why would you think that?”
I don’t Know what to say. I adjust the blanket, tightening it across my chest.
“Okay, then I want to ask you something.” Beckett sits up, hands hooked together in front of his knees, wet hair curling against his neck. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
I’m instantly on edge.
“Would you please, for the love of all that’s holy, tell me what a bell is?”
Now I’m smiling. “You don’t know what a bell is?”
“No. And I might actually die of curiosity.”
“It’s time,” I say. “A length of time.”
“How long?” he asks. I can’t think of a good way to answer him. His brows come together. “How do you keep time?”
“I remember it.”
“Really? Every second?”
I’m not sure what a second is, but I can see him considering. Then he grins and picks up the glasses, putting them on his face. “Okay, I’ll tell you when to start, and then you tell me when a bell has gone by.”
I nod.
“Ready? Three, two, and go.”
I note the moment, and he sets the glasses aside again.
“Can I ask you something else? And if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.” This time, I think, he’s serious. “What happened to your arms?”
I don’t Know what he’s talking about until I brush one of the little divots above my elbow. I feel self-conscious again. “Just … wellness injections.”
“Injections, like with a needle? Can I see?”
I nod, and immediately regret it. I haven’t forgotten that I’m naked under a blanket. I wish I could. But I did fail to consider the fact before I moved my head. Beckett steps over the waterbug, across the stone space, and squats down beside me. I turn a little, so he can see the scars on my right arm, three rows of three. This is convenient, because he can’t see my face. He moves my hair from my shoulder, but he doesn’t touch my skin. He doesn’t have to. I can feel his gaze.
“Is it a big needle?”
“Are there different sizes?”
“What are they for?”
“Health. We get them once a year. At the first sunrising. To make our bodies more efficient and boost our immune systems. We don’t get sick Underneath. Not like Outside.” Unless we’re all sick Underneath, that is. I thought once to learn to make the injections myself after I was a physician, and smuggle them to the Outside. The loss of that dream goes slicing through my memory, leaving a fresh cut behind.
“How many do you have? In all?”
“Eighteen.” I remember the pleased look on my mother’s face when Marcus Physicianson pushed in the needle. But I already Knew then that I would be the last of the Archivas.
Then I think Beckett must be able to see my face after all, because he asks, “What is it?”
I shake my head. “When you have eighteen marks, you’re ready to find a partner. That’s all.”
“Do you have a … partner?”
Memories flash over the surface of my mind. Sonia’s body lying on the stones, and Reddix telling me to go home. What was he doing in the Forum? I’d just left him in the medical section. And for the first time I wonder if Mother struck that deal with the Physiciansons, or if it could have been Reddix who made an agreement with my mother. Surely not. And it will never happen now.
“No, I don’t have a partner,” I reply. I feel the prick of Mother’s disappointment from kilometers away. “When do you get partners on … ”
I stop. Earth. That’s the word that was coming next. That’s twice I’ve done that, and the unsaid hangs in the air.
Beckett says, “Do you want to ask me something?”
I drag my eyes to his. Dark, and with the shape that is the only thing out of place from my dream. Yes, I want to say. I want you to tell me you’re from Earth. And then I understand why I will not ask. Because I’m afraid. If he lies to me, it will hurt. Forever. If he doesn’t, then I’m not sure I can justify what I’m about to do.
I shake my head no, and he says, “Okay,” gives me one corner of his grin before going back to his waterbug.
I watch him play with it, gently, until it springs away, skating off across the surface of the water, and after a time, I say, “It will have been a bell in three, two … ” He picks up the glasses. “Now,” I tell him.
Beckett looks at me, and now his smile is huge. “That’s an hour. Exactly.”
“An hour?”
“Exactly. Sixty minutes. With sixty seconds in every minute.”
That seems like a difficult way to keep up with time. Beckett lies back on the stone, arms behind his head, and I think he wants to ask me more. But he doesn’t. He is beautiful. And there is an ache inside me. An echo in an empty room.
This is the sort of thing that can ruin you.
We sleep. Or at least Jillian does. I cache, carefully and precisely, but it’s not working. Beckett thinks. After four bells, I rouse them. I don’t Know how long we’ll be in the boats, or exactly where the boats are going to take us, and we were in this cavern longer than I’d planned. They eat while I put on clothes that are somewhat dry, and when I let Jillian have the place behind the boulder, I decide I was wrong to think she was sleeping. Her eyes are red.
We find the passage by the sound of water pouring back into the river on the other side of the cavern. No need for the glasses. I set a pace that doesn’t leave much room for talking, and after a bell and a half we lose the Torrens, gushing down beneath chunks of fallen rock, and the ceiling opens, sprawling up into a narrow, tall room of stone. On the far end, carved into a flat space of sheer, black rock, is a rounded arch, fog roiling out of it. A tunnel. A human-made tunnel.