“Because to Know her is to love her, Earthling.”
I watch one of Reddix’s fists clench in night-vision green. I know the look of a memory taking hold, especially beneath a smooth and calm exterior, and this one is painful. Only just kept at bay. I think of what Samara said, that many of the Knowing might choose healing over status, Forgetting over power. And then I wonder if Reddix is the one who’s been monitoring those screens, saving that data. If he could have been watching in real time when I dragged Samara into her room. I want to hit him. And I want her back.
“That doesn’t tell me I should trust you.”
“I am risking my life talking to you right now. And your technology has already told you that I’m alone. I have no other agenda.”
“What does your Council Know about Earth?”
He almost smiles. “Always everyone thinks this is about the Council.”
“I don’t care who they are. What do they Know?”
He straightens. “That Earth is here, but not in what force or what capacity. They cannot see it, but the sound of a ship entering our atmosphere was caught. And you have been expected. They do not intend to engage with Earth. Or not yet. They are known for their … patience. There. Does that earn me some trust?”
“Your people should stay hidden,” I say.
“As should yours.”
Fine. “How would it be done?” I ask.
“You can leave that to me.”
I don’t think so. “Samara was looking for the Forgetting. That’s how she was going to take down the Council.”
“Oh, Earthling. We all Knew that. I will be back here in thirty-six bells, and I will wait for one. We will talk again then.”
“That’s not soon enough.”
“It will be what it is.”
This guy makes me want to hit whatever is in reach. But I think back to the calm way he watched Samara rising in the caves. What that calm might have been hiding. Sam said that love could only come once for the Knowing, and that Reddix was supposed to be her partner. For the first time, I consider what happens if your “once” doesn’t love you back, not even a little. When you’re trapped for life with a love that cannot be returned and can never die.
He might be telling me the truth.
I watch him walk away through the trees, zooming the glasses, waiting where I am until he’s through the door into the mountain. I feel sorry for him. And I hate him.
And Samara Archiva is not going to die in the Underneath.
To choose the chosen is a delicate task. When considering a sacrifice, the judge must watch, wait, introduce stress to their subject, and evaluate. In this way the worthiness of the subject is revealed, and the judge will decide if they are chosen, or condemned …
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN
My body is gone. All I have left is the memory of my body, and this is how I Know that I am dead.
Dying of bitterblack wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Frightening, but it didn’t really hurt. Maybe it was like that for Adam and Nita, separated from the destruction of their bodies, retreated to a far, deep place where the world just wasn’t.
I hope that’s what it was like.
My memories remind me of the Underneath now that I am dead. A vast, dark labyrinth of interconnected rooms. I wander down steps and corridors, through huge and hidden chambers. Behind one door I’m a child being rocked by my father, another and I’m twisting Beckett’s bones back into place. Here is the pain of my first injection, the swoop in my stomach from the fraying rope. I see Sonia, smiling, showing me the silver cloth for a new dress. My mother, slapping my hand and telling me to cache it. And at the end of a hall is my broken brother, saying “Who are you?” while our father cries.
I wish there were locks on the doors of my mind.
But after a long time, I begin to learn the layout of certain corners. Rows of rooms that remain the same. And if I concentrate, I can stay in the room I want. I spend some time in the upland parks, lifting my face to the sun, then in the dark, jumping off the fern roots. I play a game in the front room with Nita and Grandpapa. I go and find Beckett, feel his lips on my neck on my bedchamber rug, hold his hand Outside while he listens to the weavers.
And then I slip through a different door, into a room of shelves, inked words, and pages. This is the room of the books I’ve put inside my head. And here is a shelf of the books I looked at in the Council’s reading room, when I was with Beckett. I sit on the floor of my mind and take one down.
This is about the early history of the Archives, which was in the old city, before it was abandoned. How it contained hundreds of personal accounts of the first colonists, plus Earth stories and histories by Genivee Archiva, the first of the Archiva name, who is written on the family tree in our receiving room. She was the first to transcribe information from technology to books, so that our history could never be lost.
Then I read an Archiva transcription of the history of the Canaan Project, almost exactly as Beckett told me. Seventy-five men and seventy-five women, the best and brightest in their areas of learning, chosen to create a new and perfect world by a company called New World Space Exploration. NWSE. The letters on my mother’s necklace. The room of the books tries to dissolve, become the room of my poisoning. But I relax, visualize the books, only the books. And then I am able to open up another.
The title is Early Edicts of New Canaan. I thought I’d skipped all those. I set it down. And the next to leap into my hands is very old and tattered. Beautiful. The book of maps. I’d been hoping to find this one. I open it, and I don’t have to be careful now. Pages can’t crack inside my mind. This time I read the inscription. Drawn by my sister Nadia, the first to leave the walls of her city and explore what had been out of bounds, and Gray, a glassblower’s son. —Genivee Archiva.
I smile inside my head, pretending to run a finger over the page. Sometimes the stories of the Outside are better than the learning of the Knowing, and I think I understand now why Nita chose my Outside name. Because I was exploring what was out of bounds.
The next book is thin and coming apart. The paper is made differently, the ink so faded the letters seem more like memories of letters than words. But I can see where it has been repaired. And in a different hand, in darker ink, someone has written on the cover “The Notebook of Janis Atan.”