by Tricia Reeks
The zephyr had pinched the end of her scarf between invisible fingers and tugged it free of her collar to flap and dance.
Orange.
A band of orange woven into the gentle grayness of her scarf. Like a small, pretentious banner the color flickered and whipped around her head while she tried to catch it, laughing and clutching. Finally she gathered in the willful cloth and tucked it back into the collar of her winter coat. The chrysalides threw dour glances at her but the assault of their disapproval only broke into fragile shards on the rocky bulwark of her joy. He could almost hear the icy crunch of her feet treading over the harmless flakes of scorn scattered around her.
Orange is not forbidden, but it is . . . discouraged. The man watched her walk toward him over the tiles of the Concourse, and she watched him watch. He took his hands out of his pockets and the wind nibbled at his flesh.
“Your scarf has an orange stripe,” he said.
“It does.” She nodded. A small rope of hair escaped her cowl and curled over her cheek. She used two of her long, slender fingers to guide it back into place.
“Orange has no purpose.” He could see a sliver of the useless hue hiding within the folds of her scarf; an ember wrapped in a cloud.
“Must everything have purpose?”
“All good things have purpose.”
“That is the Advocacy talking.” Her smile never wavered as she casually reached up with one hand and plucked at her scarf, exposing another half-inch of the orange stripe. The ember became a tiny flame. “What do you think?”
A woman in a black coat carrying a covered tote bumped into him. “Get to, or get from,” she muttered, stepping past. The insignia on the cuff of her coat told him she was a Seller.
He took the smiling woman’s elbow in his hand and led her closer to the parapet over which the wind was pouring. “I think it is a distraction.”
“Then perhaps distraction is its purpose?” Her gaze was that of a child who had not yet been taught courtesy. Her eyes were as dark as her hair. She smelled of fragrant oils.
“Whom would distraction serve?” He knew it was rude to look into her face, but she took no offense, so he looked. It pleased him.
The woman pursed her lips and scrunched her eyebrows together in a parody of concentration. Finally she poked herself in the chest with one pale finger. “Me,” she said. “It would serve me.” Then that same finger poked into his chest. “Or, perhaps, you.”
Extending both hands toward the passing throng, she continued, “Or everyone . . . anyone?”
An odd thing happened then. The people walking past them reacted to her gesture like a flock of starlings. Moving away from her hands in a flowing mass, without thought, but not without purpose. He saw the crowd redirect itself, and he had an urge to flow with it, away from this strange woman.
“Nonsense,” he said. “To be distracted is to be nonproductive, and to be nonproductive is to weaken the community.”
“And yet here you stand, talking to me, distracted from your purpose.” She pointed at the wall of the Tower along which the Concourse wound. “From their purpose.” He looked to where she was pointing and at first saw nothing. “Aren’t you afraid they will see you standing here being wasteful?”
He realized then what she was pointing at, one of the glistening black blisters hugging the tower stones. “The cameras? There is nothing to fear from the cameras. They are here to protect us.” He could see several of the blisters spaced at intervals along the Concourse, and he knew there were thousands more lining not only the Concourse, but the Avenue, the Boulevard, the Parkway, and all the other paths that twisted their way around and up the Tower. He could see the buttresses and cantilevers supporting the Avenue a hundred yards above them, and he knew there were citizens, just like those streaming past them now, using that path to go about their daily tasks.
“Protect us from what?”
Her question made him uneasy. The way books made him uneasy, or voices in the hall outside his room late at night.
“From distraction, perhaps,” he said, hoping the sharp tone of his voice would put an end to her questions.
Her eyes acknowledged the remark with a brief narrowing, but her smile remained.
“Distractions like this?” she asked, and then reached up and took his face in her hands—they were strong and warm. Before he could react, she pulled him to her and kissed him on the mouth. The kiss was short, and soft. It was over in moments.
Still holding his face between her fingers, she put her lips next to his ear and whispered, “Meet me here tomorrow an hour after tasks.” Then her fingers left his cheeks and she disappeared into the flow of people.
***
That night his sleep was fitful and dream-filled. Dreams of starlings swirling in a gray sky, like ink in water. Dreams of warm hands bathed in orange light. Dreams of soft lips and a tower tall and rigid, its stones wet with rain.
***
She was waiting for him on the Concourse at the appointed time. By the eighteenth hour there were few people walking along the dark tiles, and the man felt uneasy. Crowds felt better, more comfortable. He looked up at the evenly spaced blisters along the wall above them and imagined that they were all focused on him and the woman.
Nonsense, he thought. The Advocacy cares nothing about one man and one woman.
He knew that was true, but it was still a relief when she said, “Come, let’s walk. There is something I want to show you.”
They walked side by side in silence. Keeping close to the Tower’s wall, passing under a camera every few paces. “I don’t think they see as well when we walk close to them,” she said when she saw him looking up at the shiny domes. “I don’t think.”
“It doesn’t matter. We are doing nothing wrong.”
“Of course not.”
“The people are freer now than ever.”
“They are.” Or was that a question?
They walked for a long time, passing through tunnels where buttresses extended down from the tower wall above them, arched over the pathway, and joined the parapet, clutching the Concourse like gigantic hands. Within the passages the cameras glowed with a light the color of ice and the man felt constrained in a way he never did when walking there during the day, even among the press of hundreds of other citizens. He quickened his pace to catch up with the woman. Being close to her was uncomfortable, but it was an unease he liked.
“Where are we going?”
“Not far,” she said, shaking back her head to let the hood of her coat fall. “It’s a place you’ve probably heard about, but never visited. Few have.”
His pulse throbbed in his temples. “Not a forbidden place?” Few places in the Tower were forbidden to citizens, but many were discouraged.
“Don’t worry,” she said turning to look at him with a smile. “You are mostly safe with me.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be any fun if you were entirely safe, would it?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t know how to. Her words cut through the confusion he’d been feeling since he met her like a cold wind slicing its way through a thin cloak. Her tell was true. He enjoyed the distraction of her.
“What is your task? You have no medallion on your sleeve.”
“What do you think it is?”
There were only three groups which wore no emblem: the Advocacy, the Constabulary, and the Untasked. He had never met an Advocate, though doing so was his fondest dream. Constables were seen frequently enough, walking in pairs, or groups, clad in their short, dark green jackets and pale yellow, wide-brimmed hats. The Constabulary needed no emblem.
Rarest of all were the Untasked. Citizens without purpose, with no way to contribute to the health of the Tower. From the time he had left the Rearing Room to begin his task training he had heard stories about the Untasked. Threats mostly, from Teachers and Trainers. “Learn to speak well, citizen,” Teacher Jaffe had once told him. “Or do you want to be Untasked?”
He could think of no more terrible fate than to be a purposeless bit of human dross within the Community. But there were other tales as well. Stories told in the darkness between bunks in the dormitory. Whispers about men and women with no skill, outcasts who made no contribution. Parasites.
The Untasked were horrible to look at, some said. Twisted into strange grotesques by their guilt and shame. Others said they were as beautiful as a sunrise, and just as transient. No one the man knew had ever seen an Untasked, but everyone knew someone who had. Or claimed to have. The only agreement between the tales was that the Untasked wore no emblem and had no names.
“You wear no emblem,” he repeated.
She stopped then and turned to him, a sudden movement that caught him unprepared. She stood on her toes, bringing her face close to his. He thought she was going to kiss him again. He leaned forward.
“And you do.” Her breath warmed his cheek. It smelled moist and sweet. Instead of kissing him, however, she took his hand in hers and spun away. “Come! It’s just a bit farther.”
She nearly ran the last dozen yards pulling at his hand and laughing. Excitement surrounded her like a bright cloak, and it passed through her flesh into his where their fingers were intertwined. She led him to an arched doorway remarkable only for its plainness. On the keystone an emblem was etched into the dark stone; an open book. The emblem looked familiar to the man, but he could not remember where he had seen it before, or what it meant.
“What is this place?” The etching was obviously very old, and it was worn from long exposure to the wind which swirled constantly along the Concourse, even now pressing against his back like insistent hands. But there was something more than that. The man reached up and hesitantly ran his fingers over the surface of the keystone. There were deep scratches running across the rock’s face, as if someone had tried to obliterate the mark, but the damage had been done without skill. “What is this place?” he said again.
“My teacher called it Bibliopia,” she replied as she pressed against the iron lever releasing the latch.
The door opened smoothly, to the man’s surprise, revealing a narrow corridor lit by the same pale light that had illuminated the tunnels along the Concourse. Every few yards a camera dome swelled down from the arching stone ceiling, but the woman ignored them as she led him through the warren of twisting passages. The man quickly lost track of how many left and right turns they made as they worked their way deeper and deeper into the Tower.
From time to time the color, cut and finish of the stone walls changed. After one right-hand bend, smooth gray stones became interlaced with polished black ones which eventually, many paces later, gave way to larger, rough-hewn blocks the color of dried blood.
The light changed also. No longer were the cameras surrounded by rings emitting a watery, silver-blue glow. Here illumination was harsh and yellow and came from small tubes mounted between the cameras, and the cameras themselves were housed in flat sided boxes, not the sleek blisters he was used to. This place felt old. Alien.
“I don’t think we should . . .” he began, stopping under one of the boxy camera housings. But he didn’t know how to finish. What was it exactly they shouldn’t be doing? They were citizens, free to move about as they wished. The door to these passages had opened freely. There had been no warning signs . . .
Or had there been? Might not that warning have been small and orange? Or maybe a sleeve unmarked was a sign?
“We’re here,” the woman said as she stopped in front of a pair of doors. Together they were wider than his outstretched arms. Above the doors the open-book sigil was etched into the stone. It was deeper here, and bore no signs of damage. The woman pushed the doors open.
As the panels swung back the man was bathed in an outpouring of light that reminded him of the sun rising above the parapet along the Concourse. Candles burned everywhere, and the air was redolent with a thin, spicy smelling smoke that tickled his nose and made him feel like he was about to sneeze. The tenuous arms of that smoke cradled a score of citizens—perhaps more. Some walked among the group offering plates of meat and fruits. Some stood alone, but many gathered in small groups nibbling on their treats, or just talking. All were dressed in strange, colorful garments printed with bold patterns and intricate geometric designs. Nowhere could the man see an emblem, or any other sign of Task. It seemed that each face wore a smile, and the space was filled with the sound of voices.
The walls of the chamber were lined from floor to arching ceiling with dark wooden shelves, and each shelf was filled with books. Books jammed together as tightly as the stones of the Tower itself. Thousands of them.
“What is this?” the man asked, perhaps only of himself.
“This is my purpose,” the woman replied.
Never in his life had the man felt as completely alone as he did at that moment. Without conscious thought his left hand sought out and covered the emblem on his right sleeve.
“Ah! There you are!” An old woman disengaged herself from a small cluster of other citizens and walked toward the man and his companion. She was very tiny. No taller than a child. Her silver hair was pulled back into a long braid away from an oval face that was creased in a thousand places. Her eyes were pale and the candlelight danced in them. “We are happy to see you both.” Her robes were the color of lemons and grass.
“And we, you, Mother,” the woman said as she bent to kiss the older woman on her cheek.
“Both of you?” The question sounded playful, but the man felt that it was more. “Are you happy to see us . . . ?” She reached out and gently pulled his hand away from his emblem. She examined the stylized embroidery depicting a speaking face in profile. “ . . . Teller?”
“Why are you called Mother?” he asked. “No one in the Tower has given birth for generations.”
For the first time since he met her on the Concourse, the woman’s smile flew from her face, and she clasped his wrist in her warm hand. “Respect, please!” The touch of her skin thrilled him, but, at the same time, her look of alarm caused a hollow pain in his chest. It was also satisfying.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said, turning to the old woman. “He doesn’t understand.”
Fingers, as wrinkled and knotted as an old branch, cupped themselves over the younger woman’s hand on his wrist, but the words she spoke were directed at the man. “There are many ways to be a mother.” She smiled as she spoke. “Giving birth is the easiest.”
In the silence which followed her statement, the man realized that the entire room had become silent. The droning buzz of mingled conversations had stopped, and it seemed that everyone in the room was looking at him. Smiles still curled each lip, but to him they seemed like hardened, artificial sneers.
“I should go.”
“Nonsense,” the older woman replied, and the man felt the younger’s hand tighten on his wrist. “You are among friends here.”
“No.” His voice felt as weak as it sounded.
“Yes.” His dark companion leaned close as she spoke. The breath of her words caressed his cheek. “I want you to know.”
She released his wrist then and stepped back a single pace, still looking at him. The older woman backed off also, her robe flowing like a sunlit field of wind-rippled grass.
He watched as the woman who brought him undid the fastener at the throat of her own cloak and allowed it to fall onto the closely set stones of the chamber’s floor. Beneath it she wore a thin gown of the same orange hue he had seen on her scarf. Its long sleeves were covered with an intricate and delicate ivory embroidery, and more needlework of the same pattern ringed the gown’s plunging neckline. For a long moment he stopped breathing.
Not forbidden, he thought. Not forbidden.
“A song,” someone within the onlooking group called out.
“Yes!” someone else replied. “A song!”
The old woman began to clap slowly. The sharp, flat sound was swallowed by the thousands of books surrounding the chamber. Others
began to clap with her and soon the room was filled with the sound of skin striking skin.
As if pushed by the insistent sound of the applause, the woman continued to back away from him. The gathered people parted to form a gauntlet between the woman and a raised wooden platform in the center of the room. It was not until she had reached the step at the side of the dais that she turned away from him and stepped up. The crowd sealed itself behind her.
Upon the platform the woman stood half a body above the tallest person in the room. Every eye was focused on her. To the man, the scene looked like a gathering of children watching the first bonfire of Scorching Season. When she raised her hands the clapping stopped.
“We are all kindred here.” Her eyes scanned the faces surrounding her and then found his. “All of us.”
He felt a movement at his side and looked down to see the old woman standing there. When he looked back, the dark haired woman had closed her eyes.
“I sing for the kindred.”
For a few moments she stood there in silence. The only movement was the slow rising and falling of her breasts.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
The man found himself breathing with the same slow rhythm. Not doing so would be impossible. Her eyes remained closed as her lips parted.
The old woman took his hand in hers.
Sometimes when a child laughs in the crowd on the Concourse, or when the West wind strokes the corner of the parapet just so, it will make a sound that touches more than his ear. So it was when the woman started to sing. The words were as pure as sunshine on ice even though he could understand none of them.
He turned to the old woman holding his hand. “What—?”
“It is an old tongue,” she said, cutting off his question. “A language from a time before the Tower. A time when there were mothers.”