by Ally Condie
“How do you know to do this?”
“I work on the gondolas,” he says. “I repair them, at night. So I’m used to working with metal and machinery.”
“When do you sleep?” I can’t imagine when he has time, between night work on the gondolas and making and selling his creations in the deepmarket.
“For a few hours in the mornings,” True says. When he smiles, it goes all the way to his eyes, making them crinkle. Everything about him seems warm—his smile, the open way he looks at me, his hand when it brushes against mine as he gives me the fish so I can take a closer look. “I don’t mind missing out on some rest. I like working on the gondolas, and I like making machines of my own. But how do you know about joins and solders?”
“I used to put the leaves back on the trees,” I tell him. “At the temple. They had to be flexible, too. But we should have done something like this. It would have given the leaves greater range of motion.”
The fish are so fast and fluid. If I had some to practice with, I could use them to simulate the mines. I’ve chosen the floodgates because they’re nearer to the surface than the mining bays—I’ll have a better chance of survival with a shorter swim and less of a change in pressure—but there will still be plenty of mines to get around. I could try to avoid the fish while I swam in the tanks. It would give the people in the stands something different to watch. They could make bets on how many times I come up against the fish, how fast I can make it to the end of the lane.
True’s fish are exactly what I need.
“How long can they go like this?” I ask.
“Almost ten minutes,” he says. “Then you have to take them out and rewind the machinery.”
“Do you sell many?”
He shakes his head. “People buy them now and then for their children’s birthdays. I wish I could afford a stall so I could have a chance at selling more, but to pay for a stall, I’d have to sell more fish.” He laughs.
“But they’re beautiful,” I say. “People should be saving their coin to buy them.” I wish I could tell him this in my real voice.
But I think that somehow he understands, because he sounds very sincere when he says, “Thank you.”
A bucket of metal parts set behind the bowls catches my eye. “What’s this?”
True tries to grab it away from me, but I’ve seen some claws, a gargoyle mouth, a stretch of silver, meshy metal wing. “It’s something I’m working on,” True says.
“You’re trying to make the bats,” I say.
“It’s hard to get them to fly,” True admits. “They keep crashing and breaking.”
It would be interesting to ask him more, to try to help him figure out how to make the bats work. But I don’t have time. I have to get Above. And I can’t tell True about my plans to get there. He can’t help me, and he might try to stop me. Or worse, tell someone what I’m trying to do.
“So what was it you wanted to ask me?” True says. “About Bay and Fen?”
“It’s about a ring,” I say. “It used to be my mother’s, but after she died, Bay wore it every day. I guess I thought it had gone to the surface with her, if I thought about it at all. But I saw it today. The vendor said that a boy who looks like Fen brought the ring to her two days before the anniversary of the Divide. So Bay must have asked him to sell it. Unless he stole it from her.”
“No,” True says immediately. “He wasn’t that kind of a person. He isn’t that kind of a person.” He frowns. “What did they get in exchange?”
“Five hundred and seven coin,” I say.
“That’s a lot of money,” True says. “What do you think they used it for?”
I don’t want to tell him that I have the money. I don’t know him well enough. But I also don’t want to lie to him. “I’m cold,” I say. “I’ve got to get home. I just wanted to see if you knew anything about this.”
“No,” True says. “But I can try to find out more.” He smiles at me. “Does this mean you changed your mind? About working together to find out why they left?”
“Yes,” I say, and I feel a twinge of guilt that it will have to be an uneven partnership. I want to know what he knows. I want his help in discovering what we can. But my main focus is to get to the Above, and I can’t tell him anything about that.
“How much do you charge for each of these fish?” I ask True.
“Ten coin,” he says, sounding surprised at the sudden change of subject.
I try not to smile. A pittance, when you consider all the use they will be to me. “I want to buy ten,” I say, reaching into my bag and counting out twenty coin. “I have enough money to buy two right now. Will you save eight more for me? I’ll pay you the rest tomorrow. I don’t need the bowls or the water.”
True’s face is astonished and happy. “Of course,” he says. And then he reaches into the bowls and stills the fish. “You can have them all now,” he says. “I trust you.” He counts out ten and puts them into a sack. It’s heavy when I take it from him.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
I’m sure that I make a fine sight on the gondola, shivering in my sodden machinist’s clothing. I find myself wishing that Bay could see me right now, sailing toward the temple with a bag full of metal fish. Would she laugh? Would she cry? Is this anything like what she planned for me?
All I know is that it’s the best I can do.
CHAPTER 9
When I swim in the lanes, I keep my eyes open wide and turn to the side, slither, slip. My body feels like it is not my own and like it is exactly, only me. I evade the fish, glide away from them. The ocean sings to me. My sister sings to me.
And then I lose the rhythm, and the fish brush against my body. One. Two. Three. Four. I’m dead four times before I get to the end of the lane.
It’s not good enough. I’m not good enough.
But I will learn. Nothing can be as hard as holding in my voice all these years. I will do this. I’ll learn to swim around the mines, and I’ll earn enough money to buy the air I need.
I stand up in the swimming lane.
Today more people are watching.
One of them is True.
I wave to him. He lifts his hand in response and comes over to the side of the lane to talk to me. I pull off the cap I wear to keep my hair out of the way. The metal fish swim around me—I’ll have to catch them in a moment. I meant to find True in the deepmarket after I finished racing, but he’s found me first.
True’s not smiling, but he seems—I can’t think of a better word for it—enchanted. It’s the way people sometimes look when sirens speak. But I don’t know why, because I haven’t said anything at all, and certainly I haven’t spoken to him with my real voice.
“You’re very beautiful,” he says.
He looks as stunned to have said it as I am to hear it.
“I mean,” he says, “the way you swim. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I feel like he has dropped a piece of light into the dark sorrow of my heart, like a coin into a wishing pool. The warm gold feeling doesn’t last, but it flickers as it goes down. “How did you know I was racing?”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I was here for something else. This was luck.”
“I have your money,” I say. “Let me get out and I’ll give it to you.” I rented one of Aldo’s temporary lockers for today so I could keep the coin secure until I finished swimming.
True shakes his head. “They’re a gift,” he says. “I want you to have them.”
But he needs to take the money. He’s got to earn enough to rent a stall in the deepmarket. I’m about to argue, but Aldo has come over to join us. He ignores True and leans over the lane, addressing me. “They liked it,” he says. “I had people asking when you’d swim again. They thought it was interesting, the way y
ou tried to get past the flickers in the water.”
“Could they see everything all right from the stands?” I ask.
Aldo nods. “And if we get a bigger crowd, we can use some of the broadcast screens like we do for the larger races.”
Bigger crowds mean more money. More money means that I can get to the surface faster. I’ve spent my life avoiding attention, but I’m going to have to court it if I want to get Above.
“Now that you’ve given them a taste for free,” Aldo says, “we can charge a fee to watch you, set times for your swims so that spectators know when to come. And the bettors liked it, too. They can take bets on how many hits you get during a swim. It’s nice to have something new to watch for a change. The races have been going on the same way forever.” He looks at True. “Was it you? Were you holding mirrors to reflect on the water?”
“They’re not lights or mirrors,” I say. “They’re fish. Made out of metal.” I scoop one up and hold out my hand to show Aldo.
“Whatever it is,” Aldo says, “we’ve got enough interest to give it a try. You can have free practice times in the lane if you’ll split the winnings with me.”
This is excellent. Even better than I’d hoped. Of course, people will be watching me but it’s not as though I’ll have to talk. I can have Aldo announce me. “Not down the middle,” I say. “Seventy-thirty, the same as any racer.”
Aldo shakes his head. “It’s a risk,” he says. “I know people will bet on and watch the races. I’m not sure that this will take off.”
“Seventy-thirty,” I say. “All I need you to do is provide the water and the lanes and announce for me. I’ll supply the rest, at no cost to you. I have more ideas in mind.”
And I do. Aldo thinking that the fish were light and mirrors—a trick—has made my mind swim with possibilities.
“Like what?” Aldo asks.
“We’ll show people the fish,” I say, “and tell the crowd that we’re going to up the ante every time I swim. We’ll put more fish in the water. True can make them faster. We could rig them so that they give off an electrical charge when they touch me.” That would be even better practice for getting around the mines—if I could train my mind to equate brushing up against the fish with pain, I’d work even harder to avoid them.
“That sounds too risky,” True says.
“I’m sure there’s a way we could do it without it hurting too much,” I say. “And the more dangerous we make it seem, the more people will come to watch. We’ll keep changing things up, make them interesting.” What if I lock my hands or feet together to make swimming more difficult? What if I go under, deep, and see how fast I can come to the surface with weights tied on?
Aldo nods. “All right,” he says. “We can split it seventy-thirty.”
True looks upset. “Why do you want to take so many risks?” he asks, but no sooner has he finished the question than an expression of understanding crosses his face and he falls silent. I find it much more disconcerting than Aldo’s complete disregard for my safety. Does True really understand me?
If so, then he is dangerous to me, more dangerous than anything I do in the swimming lanes.
Aldo and I set a time for my next event. “We can’t call them races,” Aldo says, “so we’ll call them performances.” I nod in agreement. Though I’m thinking of them as training sessions, I don’t suggest we use that term instead. I don’t want anyone to guess my other purpose in doing this. Especially not True.
After Aldo leaves, True leans farther over the lane to talk to me.
“I know why you’re doing this,” he says. “Why you’re taking so many risks.”
My heart sinks. How did he figure it out? How did I give myself away?
“The ring,” he says.
The ring? Of course. My mother’s ring. He thinks I’m trying to earn enough coin to buy it back.
“I’ll help you,” he says. “I won’t charge you anything for any of the fish you use. I’ll help you make them.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why would you do all of this for free?”
“Because I know how much you want that ring,” he says. “And because I need your help to find out why Fen and Bay went Above.”
Of course. There’s always a price to be paid. True doesn’t know that I’m going to get Above and then ask my sister why she went.
“We know that there has to be a reason why Bay and Fen went Above,” True says. “We know it can’t just be that they were in love, because they could have stayed down here and been together.”
“We don’t even know that they were in love,” I say.
True hesitates.
“So you think you do know that?” I ask.
“Well,” True says, “I used to see them sometimes. Kissing.”
“Kissing,” I say, even more flatly than usual.
“Right,” True says.
Could Bay have been in love with Fen? Is that why she left? I don’t understand.
“When they were kissing . . . did it seem like they were in love?” It’s truly funny to hear me speaking about love and passion in my false, emotionless voice, but to True’s credit, he doesn’t laugh.
“I wasn’t doing the kissing,” True says. “I don’t want to speak for them. But yes, it did seem like there was something between them. Something real.”
“But even if there was, you’re right that they could have stayed Below,” I say. “They could have been married here someday. They didn’t have to go Above for that.”
“I know,” True says. “So there must be more to it.”
He’s right. They must have had other reasons. Deeper than love, perhaps darker.
“Last night I went over and talked to Fen’s brother, Caleb,” True says. “He’s young—ten years old—and he’s devastated about Fen leaving. The family can’t understand why he’d go. But Caleb said that Fen left him a note. He showed it to me.” True holds out a paper. “It’s not the real thing,” he says, “but Caleb let me copy it down.”
The note is short.
It might seem like me choosing the Above means that I don’t care about you, but that’s not true. I do care and I always will.
Fen wrote those words for his brother, but I want to pretend that Bay wrote them for me.
“Caleb also told me,” True says, “that Fen went out at night and came home with his hair wet. Caleb used to see Fen come in but Caleb would pretend to go back to sleep.”
“The night races,” I say. Those contests, which take place after the deepmarket closes, are the most dangerous. You risk hypothermia if you swim at night, and also time in the holding cells if the peacekeepers catch you. But the stakes are high, and you can make money fast if you don’t get sick and don’t get caught. It’s a completely different kind of racing than what Bay used to do. It’s for the truly reckless.
“I’ve never been to the night races,” True says. “I had no idea Fen was in them. But I should have realized. He always liked a risk. That’s why I came down to the lanes today. I was asking around to see if anyone here knew Fen. They did, but none of them had any idea he was planning to go Above.”
“Do you think that’s how they met?” I ask. “Bay must have gone to watch the night races. Or to swim in them.” It makes sense now—how I’d find her next to me when I woke up, her body burrowed close for warmth. Did all of this begin because my sister couldn’t sleep and I was greedy for my dreams?
“I think so,” True says. “And I think they started looking for something together. Maybe something that had to do with your mother, and with how she died.” He stops. He’s finding it hard to say the words, so I do it for him.
“You think,” I say, “that my mother was killed. Murdered.”
“Yes,” True says. “I’m sorry.”
This is all conjecture, but in spite of myself, I feel truth in it. Bay and I bot
h thought there was something wrong about our mother’s death. I never thought Bay would leave me, but I know she loved our mother. Did Bay learn something that meant she had to go Above? What about our mother’s death could possibly lead Bay there?
“You’re not the first one who’s suggested it,” I say.
“But why would someone do it?” True asks. “How could anyone want to hurt Oceana the Minister?”
It’s too much. I can’t think about it anymore, not now.
I start trying to grab the fish left swimming in the lanes, but my fingers have gotten cold and I miss.
“I’ll help you,” True says, folding up the note and putting it away.
“You’ll get wet,” I say.
“That doesn’t matter,” True says.
The fish are fast and True and I are clumsy, which makes him laugh, and that sets me free for a moment because I like the way he sounds. I can’t laugh, because a little of my real voice always comes through when I do, but I let myself smile. We are like children, splashing as we catch at the fish, children who used to do this in pools and streams Above. That word is what sobers me.
Above. I have to go Above.
“How can you be so happy when they’re gone?” I ask. “Don’t you miss him?”
True stops smiling. I feel sorry. “Of course I do,” he says. “He was my best friend. I miss him all the time.” He bends down, catches another fish, and I watch the muscles in his back move smooth as water underneath his shirt. Then he straightens up and says, “But I can’t help being happy. I’m alive.”
I have nothing to say to that.
I’m alive, he said, and he is.
I don’t know that I am.
But if I make it Above, I think I could be.
CHAPTER 10
I’ve just changed out of my racing suit when I hear the bells chiming, the ones that signify closing time for the deepmarket. “It’s too early,” I say out loud, and someone in the dressing stall next to me says, “Not for the third Wednesday.”
Of course. I’d forgotten, lost track of the days. The Minister always gives a broadcast on the third Wednesday of each month. I wonder what the Council wants us to hear tonight.