“Did she do this?” he asks. His voice has pain in it that I don’t understand. “Did Jill do this to us?”
He means the ship above New Canaan. The broken mountain. The group of bodies in the street. The bloody people moving Underneath. I don’t Know what Jill did, and only now am I thinking of Beckett’s rules, the ones he was afraid of, that he broke so many times. For me. And with my lips still hot from his kiss, only now am I as afraid as I should be. Because I don’t Know what will happen to Beckett Rodriguez if Earth finds him first.
I run through the streets, yelling at every face I see that Earth has come, to get to the gates and go Underneath. The air bikes are up there, I can feel the wind. It smells like burning roof thatch, and the blood is pumping loud through my ears. Jillian. She did this. The evidence was right there in the glasses, if I’d taken time to see. A simple switch to “transmit.” When did Commander Faye think to add Jill’s DNA to the security program of the glasses? How long has she been sitting there in the Centauri, like the fat spider she is, waiting for Jill to realize it, and for me to be so stupid as to never think of such a simple move? Probably since the last time I had a signal. In the cave, or just outside of it.
I’m so mad it’s hard to see straight.
I’ll bet the Commander fired that shot to scare them, to rattle the pretech locals, never considering what heat does to some of the metal-infused rock around here. She’s going to be merciful, mostly. She’s getting paid by the head. But I’m not letting one local onto that ship. Not if I can help it. And then, two turns away from the workshop, I see a blond head hurrying down a cross street. And there’s no undyed cloth. She’s back in the jumpsuit.
“Hey,” I shout. “Hey!”
Jillian looks over her shoulder, her blue eyes wide, and then she sprints away. Great. I go after her.
“Did you get what you wanted?” I yell. She looks back, but she doesn’t slow. “Is this what you planned? The dead are in the streets, Jill! And Underneath … ”
She looks scared of me. She ought to be. I’m gaining on her. Jill darts around a corner, the turn to the Bartering Square, and when I round the same corner I go flying, landing hard on my chest, smashing the glasses and cracking the case with Sam’s hair. Cutting my side with the tip of the knife. I’ve tripped over Jill’s outstretched foot, and now there are more feet, Earth-issued boots all around my head, stunsticks poking into my back.
“No, Beckett,” Jillian says somewhere above me. “This isn’t what I wanted. It’s just what has to be.”
I pull the stitches tight on a crying woman’s scalp while Grandpapa holds her arms, keeping her still. What I’m really doing is trying to cache. I’m so much better at caching than I used to be, since I spent all that time in my head. And now, it’s still not good enough.
The Knowing my mother killed when she missed Beckett with her technology were from the same Engineering family, all three sliced nearly in half, the mess already covered by one of the tablecloths from what was supposed to be our celebratory feast. I thought I was used to blood. I was wrong, and I cannot cache it.
The weapon my mother used is missing, as is every member of the NWSE, and I have the constant feeling of someone just behind my back, ready to put a needle in my arm. Force amrita down my throat. I can’t cache this, either.
And then this woman’s tears are making me angry, because Earth saw fit to send half a mountain sailing through the roof of her house, killing her daughter, and I am sick with fear because Annis hasn’t come, the children haven’t come, and neither has Beckett. Why did we let him run off by himself? Because we thought he could handle that ship in the sky? Because Earth was his responsibility? I pull the last stitch and my insides are saying wrong, wrong. He should have been back by now. It’s wrong …
I jump at a tap on my shoulder. It’s Priscilla, one of the four Physiciansons I found to help with the wounded, this one being Reddix’s cousin. When I first came back into the Forum, I decided not to mention to Priscilla that being surrounded by the injured, the Physiciansons really might have thought of using their medical skills before I suggested it. And she decided not to mention that I was just nearly condemned and held a knife to the throat of our Head of Council. I can’t tell if she’s upset by what happened to Reddix, but she’s been willing to heal everyone, no matter which kind of cloth they’re wearing, and for now, that’s good enough for me.
“Mama wants me to ask if there are any more wounded coming up.”
I scan the room. “No, I think the rest can stay down here. How many are in the medical rooms?”
“Twenty-two, three Knowing and nineteen Outsiders. Six are critical. All Outsiders.”
The Knowing are going to heal quickly, I think. But why shouldn’t the Outsiders as well? I look up to the platform, then take the steps fast. Wellness injections lie scattered over the stone, jiggling with each pulsing thrum from the Earth ship above us. I’ll bet they’re tainted with Forgetting. Every last one of them. Maybe there’s a Chemist somewhere in here who would Know …
And then I nearly scream. Marcus Physicianson is rising to his feet from behind one of the overturned tables. His face is calm, expressionless. Like the Knowing should be. But his eyes aren’t. Black paint runs down his face from the corners, and he lifts a dull stare to me.
“He wanted to Forget,” Marcus says.
“No, he didn’t,” I tell him. “Reddix wanted to die. He wanted all of us to die, all the Knowing, including you. That was his plan.”
Marcus blinks, frowns, turns his running eyes back to the cracked mural, to the roar of the Torrens. “But how could he have done that?”
And then I feel the tug of memory, insistent, and I don’t resist, because this is a connecting thread. Something my mind is telling me I should see. I let myself fall …
And I am reading the medical notes of Janis Atan, looking at the three jagged edges, where the pages have been torn out …
And I fall again …
… into Uncle Towlend’s deserted office, and the pages he found in the map book are lying on the floor stones, where Reddix must have seen them …
Then the floor gives way …
… and I am on the platform of the Forum again, and Thorne’s neck is warm beneath my knife, and Beckett is below me, holding up the bottle of sand they think is Forgetting. But it’s my mother’s face I watch carefully now. She isn’t frightened by that bottle. None of the NWSE are …