I come from around the curtain and Mother says, “Come, darling. We will make you ready.”
When I don’t take her hand she reaches down and takes it herself, waits for Marcus to unlock the door, and leads me slowly down a long, narrow hall, past empty room after empty room. I’m in the medical section, a whole internal corridor I’ve never seen. Reddix said he had witnessed the deaths reserved for the condemned, and I think that must have been here, in this hidden back hall, not on the platform in the Forum. We’ve all seen the condemned die there. Except that they didn’t, did they? After reading the notes of Janis Atan’s experiments, I think I’m glad Reddix didn’t tell me any more.
We wait for Marcus to unlock another door. My feet are bare, silent on the cold stone, a straight dress of white linen, thin and simple, like I’ve been in seclusion, swinging at my calves. Bumps rise up on my skin as we walk again, down the main corridor of the medical sector, though whether I’m chilled from the air or the touch of my mother’s hand I’m not sure.
But I’m not going to protest. Not yet.
Mother lets me walk slowly, getting used to my legs, through the doorway to the back stairs, the ones that go to the parks. But we take the downward route, Marcus following for a long way, two levels below the Forum, until we are at the side entrance of the women’s baths.
“You may leave us here. Thank you, Marcus,” says my mother. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. Come, darling.”
I follow her through the changing rooms, and already I can smell the heat. There is no help today. The city is being cleared, ready to be sealed for Judgment and the celebrations afterward, so we make our own way. Mother’s heels click on the damp stone, past the few women still lounging in the hot pool, mist making halos around the lamps. The conversations slow and stop as we walk by, but Mother doesn’t let go of my hand. She shuts the door to one of the private bathing cells, locks it; takes me to the raised, empty pool in the center of the room; and opens the sluice gate. A smooth ribbon of steaming water pours down.
“Let me help you in,” Mother says. She unties the laces behind my neck, the linen dress falls to the floor, and she holds my hand while I climb up four stairs, then down four more and into the pool.
I shudder at the heat of the water. At my mother’s touch. But I sit like she tells me, letting her work the tangles out of my hair, curl by curl, feeling her fingers wash my scalp, my eyes staring at the flame flickering near the ceiling while she rubs lotion into every strand. Memories prod and nudge, and I am a baby, crying while my hair is washed; then fingers are tugging, braiding, pulling my scalp, and then I’m arranging my curls. But none of these memories are of my mother, because my mother has never done any of this. Not now, I say to the memories, and their weight goes away.
I’m still in control. Like when I thought I was dead. But I wish I didn’t have to remember this.
I’m biding my time. But it is difficult.
Mother wraps me in a soft white dressing gown, and we leave the baths and go down the corridors, causing one or two stares. But most of the Knowing are in their chambers, caching, preparing for Judgment, and soon I am in mine. To do the same. Two lamps burn in front of the terrace doors, and someone has started a fire in the brazier.
I have no memories of my mother being in this room, so seeing her reflection in the many mirrors is strange. She sits me on the stool at my dressing table and crosses quickly to the gold curtain, pulling it back to look at my clothes. “We will find what is best,” she says. “You can be so beautiful when you take the trouble … ”
I glance down, amazed that her subtle criticism still has the weakest of stings, and see that the drawer of my dressing table is slightly open. I look back in my memory, see the last time I sat here, painting my eyes, and for one moment I sink, plummet down, and Beckett is catching my hand and saying, “I understand.” I feel an ache inside that is longing for him. But the drawer was definitely not open then.
Mother has her back to me, her eyes on the red dress that was for Reddix. I slide open the drawer, slowly, silently, aware that there are mirrors in every direction. And then I Know that my father loves me. At least a little. He will not save me, but he will give me a way out. Because inside my drawer is the knife that is supposed to hang on my mother’s bedchamber wall. The knife that says “NWSE.”
I’m not sure who I’m supposed to use it on.
Nathan squats beside the square hole in the floor of the supply hut, looking down the dark shaft. It’s time, and my chest is slamming.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Climb a little way down after I’m gone, so you won’t be seen, but no more than halfway. Reddix is really good at Knowing when someone’s there. Like a change in temperature, air, smell … ”
I catch Nathan trying to sniff his shirt.
“It’s not you,” I say. “It’s him. Just don’t get caught on either end of the shaft, okay?”
The supervisors are all going Underneath, to be sealed in with the city, leaving the Outside free. But not every Outsider is a rebel.
“How about you just get going,” is Nathan’s answer.
I nod. “You know the way?”
“If it’s what you told me, I do.”
“Get the gate open. No matter what.”
“Go already!”
I do. Down the rabbit hole. The smell comes, that odor that is spice and flowers and a little bit Samara, and then not. I stop my slow slide before I’m all the way down, and put on the glasses. Looking. And I swear in my head, or maybe it was out loud, because Reddix is already down there, turning toward the door as if he’s heard a noise. We’re both early. Both wanting to be first. And he wins.
I sigh and let the glasses drop down inside my shirt, next to the pouch Cyrus gave me to wear around my neck. There’s a small, sealed bottle of white powder in the pouch, and a blue and green box with a lock of Sam’s hair. Plus a note inside the box, telling me my name and how to get to Cyrus’s house. And next to all of that is one of the crudely made knives, wrapped in cloth, hanging beneath my left arm and strapped to my chest. It’s not a great knife, but it’s sharp, and in the end, that’s what matters.
I almost laugh. Here I am, sneaking into what has to be the holy grail of anthropology, a brand-new civilization, taking sides in a cultural conflict, with the direct intent of irrevocably changing everything I find. Jill was right all along. Nobody is ever, ever going to hire me.
But I’m going to do it. For her. And if I fail, then there’s a good chance that one way or the other, from Forgetting or death, neither one of us is going to come out of this remembering anything.
I don’t trust Reddix.
The hinges of the metal door grate as I reach the bottom of the shaft, and Reddix says, “Welcome to the city Underneath.”
Whatever. I slide out, over Sam’s shoes, still sitting partway up the shaft, and onto my feet. “Where’s Samara?”
“Being prepared for Judgment. Are you prepared?”