Pure

by Julianna Baggott

  She walks to the alley door, opens it. She hears a screech that sounds almost bird-like; then something dark and furred scurries over nearby stones. She sees one of its moist eyes, staring at her. It snarls, unfolds heavy, blunt wings, and scuttles upward, taking to the gray sky.

  Sometimes she thinks she hears the droning engine of an airship up there. She catches herself searching the sky for the slips of paper that once filled it—oh, the way her grandfather described it, all those wings! Maybe one day there will be another Message.

  Nothing is going to last, Pressia thinks. Everything is about to change forever. She can feel it.

  She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes—as if she’s already gone, as if he’s practicing sorrow.

  PARTRIDGE

  MUMMIES

  PARTRIDGE IS SITTING IN GLASSINGS’ World History class, trying to concentrate. The classroom’s ventilation is supposed to increase based on the number of bodies present at any given time, and academy boys—all of those rambunctious engines of energy—can make a room stuffy and warm if not kept in check. Luckily, Partridge’s desk is situated not far from a small vent in the ceiling, and it’s like he’s sitting in a column of cool air.

  Glassings is lecturing about ancient cultures. He’s been going on about this subject for a month solid. The front wall is covered with images of Bryn Celli Ddu, Newgrange, Dowth and Knowth, the Durrington Wall, and Maeshowe—all Neolithic mounds dating back to around 3000 BC. The first Dome prototypes, as Glassings puts it. “Do you think we were the first to think up a Dome?”

  I get it, Partridge thinks, ancient people, mounds, tombs, blah, blah, blah. Glassings stands in front of the class in his taut suit jacket with its academy emblem stitched in place and a navy-blue necktie, always tied too tightly. Partridge would rather hear Glassings’ take on recent history, but that would never be allowed. They know only what they’ve all been told—the United States didn’t make the first strike but acted in self-defense. The Detonations escalated, leading to near-total destruction. Because of precautions taken by the Dome experimentally as a prototype for sustainable living in the face of detonations, viral attacks, and environmental disaster, this area is likely the only place in the world with survivors—the Dome and the wretches just outside of it now governed by a flimsy military regime. The Dome watches over the wretches and one day, when the earth has rejuvenated itself, they will return to take care of the wretches and start anew. It’s kept simple, but Partridge knows that there’s much more to it, and he’s pretty sure that Glassings himself would have a lot to say on the subject.

  Sometimes Glassings gets caught up in a lecture, unbuttons his suit jacket, walks away from his notes, and looks at the class—his eyes locking onto each boy’s for just a moment as if he wants them to understand something he’s saying in a deeper way, to take some ancient lesson and apply it to today. Partridge wants to. He feels like he could, almost, if only he had a little more information.

  Partridge lifts his chin and lets the air cool his face, and he remembers, suddenly, his mother setting out a meal for him and his brother, glasses of milk with bubbles that clung to the edges, oily gravies, the airy, soft innards of bread rolls. Food that filled your mouth, that sent up puffs of steam. Now he takes his pills, perfectly formulated for optimal health. Partridge sometimes swirls the pills in his mouth, remembering that even the pills he and his brother took back then were tangy-sweet and gummed in your teeth and were shaped like animals. And then the memory is gone.

  These quick visceral memories are sharp. They come at him these days like sudden blows, the collision of now and past, uncontrollable. It’s only gotten worse since his father stepped up his coding sessions—the strange mix of drugs coursing through the bloodstream, the radiation, and, worst of all, being trapped in body casts so that only certain parts of his body and brain are exposed during a given session. Mummy molds. That’s what some of Partridge’s friends started calling the casts after one of Glassings’ recent lectures on ancient cultures that wrapped their dead. For coding sessions, the academy boys are lined up and taken to the medical center, shuttled into private rooms. There, each undresses and fits himself into a mummy mold—confined in the hot suit—and then, after, they get back into their uniforms to be shuttled out again. The technicians warn the academy boys that as the body becomes accustomed to the new skill sets, they can expect some vertigo, sudden losses of balance that will subside as strength and speed take hold. The academy boys are used to it—a few months off from the sports teams because they’ve become temporarily ungainly. They tip and fall, sprawled on the turf. The brain will be just as uncoordinated, hence the strange sudden memories.

  “Beautiful barbarism,” Glassings says now about one of the ancient cultures. “Reverence for the dead.” It’s one of those moments when he isn’t reading from his lecture notes. He stares at his hands spread open on his desk. He isn’t supposed to make asides—beautiful barbarism, that kind of thing could be misinterpreted. He could lose his job. But he’s quick to recover. He tells the class to read aloud from the prompter, in unison. “The sanctioned ways of disposing of the dead and collecting their personal items in the Personal Loss Archives…” Partridge joins in.

  A few minutes later, Glassings is talking about the importance of corn to ancient cultures. Corn? Partridge thinks. Really? Corn?

  That’s when there’s a knock at the door. Glassings looks up, startled. All the boys stiffen. The knock sounds again. Glassings says, “Excuse me, class.” He straightens his notes and glances at the small black beady eye of one of the cameras perched in the corner of the room. Partridge wonders if the Dome officials got wind of his comment beautiful barbarism. Can it happen that fast? Will that do him in? Will they haul him away, right now, in front of the class?

  Glassings steps out into the hall. Partridge hears voices, murmurs.

  Arvin Weed, the genius of the class, who sits in front of Partridge, swivels around and gives him an inquiring look, as if Partridge must know what’s going on. Partridge shrugs. People often think Partridge knows more than everyone else. He’s Ellery Willux’s son. Even someone that high up must let things slip now and then, that’s what they figure. But no. Partridge’s dad never lets things slip. That’s one of the reasons he got to be high up in the first place. And since Partridge has been boarding here at the academy, they rarely even talk on the phone, much less see each other. Partridge is one of the boys who stays year-round, like his brother, Sedge, who went through the academy before him.

  Glassings walks back into the classroom. “Partridge,” he says, “collect your things.”

  “What?” Partridge says. “Me?”

  “Now,” Glassings says.

  Partridge’s stomach lurches. He shoves his notebook into his backpack and stands up. All around him, the other boys start whispering. Vic Wellingsly, Algrin Firth, the Elmsford twins. One of them makes a joke—Partridge hears his name but can’t make out the rest—and they all laugh. These boys all tend to stick together, “the herd”; that’s what they’re called. They’re the ones who’ll go all the way through training to the new elite corps, Special Forces. They’re destined. It isn’t written anywhere, but it’s understood.

  Glassings tells the class to pipe down.

  Arvin Weed gives Partridge a nod, as if to say, Good luck.

  Partridge walks to the door. “Can I get the notes later?” he asks Glassings.

  “Sure,” Glassings says, and then he pats Partridge on the back. “It’ll be fine.” He’s talking about the notes, of course, keeping up with the class, but he looks at Partridge in that way Glassings has, a deeper meaning, and Partridge knows that he’s trying to set his mind at ease. Whatever’s coming—it’ll be fine.

  In the hall, Partridge is met by two guards. “Where to?” he says.

  They’re both tall and muscular, but one of them is a bit broader than the other. This one says, “Your fa
ther wants to see you.”

  Partridge feels cold suddenly. His palms are clammy, so he rubs his hands together. He doesn’t want to see his father; he never does. “The old man?” Partridge says, trying to sound lighthearted. “A little father-son time?”

  They walk him down the shiny halls, past the oil paintings of two headmasters—one fired, one new—who both look pasty, austere, and somewhat dead, then down to the academy basement, which is on the monorail line. They wait in the airy underground, silently. This is the monorail that takes the boys to the medical center, where Partridge’s father works three times a week. There are floors in the medical center reserved for those who are sick. They’re kept cordoned off. Sickness is treated very seriously in the Dome. Contagion could wipe them all out, and so the slightest fever can result in short-term quarantine. He’s been to one of those floors a few times—a small, boring, sterile room.

  The dying? No one visits them. They’re taken to a floor of their own.

  Partridge wonders what his father wants with him. He’s not one of the herd, not destined for anything elite. That was Sedge’s role. When Partridge entered the academy he wasn’t sure if he was better known for his father or his brother. It didn’t matter. He didn’t live up to either reputation. He never won a physical challenge and he sat the bench during most games, regardless of the sport. And he wasn’t intelligent enough to go into the other training program—brain augmentation. That was reserved for the smart ones like Arvin Weed, Heath Winston, Gar Dreslin. His grades have always been borderline. Like most of the boys going in for coding, he was clearly garden-variety, basic overall enhancement to better the species.

  Does his father just want to check in on his garden-variety son? Maybe he was struck by a sudden desire to bond? Will they even have anything to talk about? Partridge tries to remember the last time they ever did anything together for fun. One time, after Sedge’s death, his father took him swimming in the academy’s indoor pool. He remembers only that his father was an excellent swimmer, he slid through the water like a sea otter, and when he came up for air, toweling off, Partridge saw his father’s bare chest for the first time in as long as he could remember. Had he ever seen him only half dressed before? His father’s chest had six small scars on it, on the left side, over his heart. It wasn’t from an accident. The scars were too symmetrical and tidy.

  The monorail comes to a stop, and Partridge has a fleeting desire to run. The guards would hit him with an electrical charge to his back. He knows that. He’d have a red burn spread down his back and arms. His father would be told, of course. It would only make matters worse. Why run anyway? Where would he go? In circles? It’s a Dome, after all.

  The monorail delivers them to the entrance of the medical center. The guards show their badges. They sign Partridge in, scan his retinas, and walk through the detectors into the center itself. They wind the halls until they come to his father’s door. It opens before the guard has time to knock.

  A female technician is standing there. Partridge can see beyond her to his father, who is lecturing half a dozen technicians. They’re all looking at a bank of screens on the wall, pointing out chains of DNA coding, close-ups of a double helix.

  The technician says “Thank you” to the guards and then ushers Partridge to a small leather chair to the side of his father’s massive desk, which is on the opposite side of the room from where his father and the techs work.

  His father is saying, “There it is. The blip in the behavioral coding. Resistance.” The techs are all darty-eyed geese, terrified of his father, who’s still ignoring Partridge. This is nothing new. Partridge is used to being ignored by his father.

  He looks around the office, notes a set of original Dome blueprints now framed and hung on the wall over his father’s desk.

  Why is Partridge here, he wonders again. Is his father showing off, trying to prove something to Partridge? It’s not like Partridge doesn’t know that his father is smart, that he commands respect, even fear.

  “All of his other types of coding have gone so well. Why not the behavioral coding?” his father says to the techs. “Anyone? Answers?”

  Partridge taps his fingers on the arms of the chair, glancing at the wisps of his father’s gray hair. His father looks angry. In fact, his head seems to shake with anger. He’s noticed anger flaring up like this in his father ever since Partridge’s brother’s funeral. Sedge died after his coding was complete and he’d made it into Special Forces, the new elite corps made up of only six recent academy graduates. “A tragedy,” his father calls it, as if giving it a proper name makes it acceptable somehow.

  The technicians look at one another and say, “No, sir. Not yet, sir.”

  His father glares at the screen, his brow knotted, his fleshy nose reddened, and then he looks at Partridge, as if seeing him for the first time. He dismisses the technicians by waving them off. They leave hurriedly, scuttling out the door. Partridge wonders if they are flooded with relief each time they leave his father’s presence, the way he is. Do they all secretly hate the old man? Partridge wouldn’t blame them.

  “So,” Partridge says, fiddling with a strap on his backpack. “How are things?”

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve called you in.”

  Partridge shrugs. “Happy belated birthday?” His seventeenth birthday was almost ten months ago.

  “Your birthday?” his father says. “Didn’t you get the gift I sent?”

  “What was it again?” Partridge says, tapping his chin. He remembers. The gift was a very expensive pen with an illuminated bulb on top. So you can study late, his father wrote him in a little note attached to the gift, and get an edge over your classmates. Does his father remember the gift? Probably not. Was the note even written by his father? Partridge doesn’t know his father’s handwriting. When he was a kid, his mother used to write riddles to help them find where she’d hidden presents. She told him that it was a tradition his father started when they were first dating—little rhyming riddles and gifts. Partridge remembers this because it struck him that they’d been in love at some point, but weren’t anymore. Partridge doesn’t remember his father even being there for his birthdays.

  “I didn’t call you in for anything birthday-related,” his father says.

  “So I guess next comes a fatherly interest in my schooling. You’re going to ask, Are you learning anything important?”

  His father sighs. Does anyone else speak to him this way? Probably not. “Are you learning anything important?” he asks.

  “We weren’t the first to invent Domes, I guess. They’re prehistoric—Newgrange, Knowth, Maeshowe, et cetera.”

  His father sits back. The leather of his seat creaks. “I remember the first time I saw a picture of Maeshowe. I was a kid, fourteen or so. I saw it in a book on prehistoric sites.” He stops speaking and raises his hand to his temple, which he rubs in a small circle. “It was a way to live forever, to build something that lasts. A legacy. It stuck in my mind.”

  “I thought having kids was a man’s legacy.”

  He looks at Partridge sharply. “Yes, you’re right. And that’s one reason I’ve called you in. There’s some resistance to certain aspects of your coding.”

  The mummy molds. Something is wrong. “What aspects of my coding?”

  “Sedge’s mind and body took to the coding so effortlessly,” his father says. “And you’re close to him genetically, but—”

  “What aspects?” Partridge asks.

  “Oddly enough, the behavioral coding. Strength, speed, agility, all the physical aspects are going well. Are you feeling effects? Mental and/or physical? Lack of balance? Unusual thoughts or memories?”

  The memories, yes, he’s thinking of his mother more, but he doesn’t want to tell his father this. “I felt really cold,” he says, “right around the time I heard that you’d called me in. My whole body, really cold.”

  “Interesting,” his father says, and maybe for a split second he’s injured by
the comment.

  Partridge points to a framed wall hanging. “Original blueprints? They’re new.”

  “Twenty years of service,” his father says. “A gift.”

  “Very nice,” Partridge says. “I like your architectural handiwork.”

  “It saved us.”

  “Us?” Partridge says under his breath. They are the only ones left now, a family shrunken down to an embattled pair.

  And then as if this marks a natural segue, his father asks questions about Partridge’s mother before the Detonations, the weeks leading up to her death, a specific trip to the beach that she and Partridge had taken alone, just the two of them. “Your mother made you swallow pills?” his father asks.

  There are people on the other side of the wall-mounted computer screen, most likely. It has an observation mirror’s blank stare. Or maybe there aren’t. Maybe his father’s waved them off too. They are being recorded, though. They have to be. A beady-eyed camera is mounted in each corner.

  “I don’t remember. I was a kid.” But Partridge remembers blue pills. They were supposed to make the flu go away, but they seemed to make it worse. The fever made him shiver under the blankets.

  “She took you to the beach. You remember that, right? Just before. Your brother didn’t want to go. He had a ball game. They were in the championships.”

  “Sedge used to love baseball. He loved a lot of things.”

  “This isn’t about your brother.” His father can barely say his brother’s name. Since Sedge’s death, Partridge has kept count of how many times he’s heard his father say it—only a handful. His mother died while trying to help survivors get to the Dome on the day of the Detonations, and his father used to call her a saint, a martyr, then slowly he stopped speaking of her almost completely. Partridge remembers his father saying, “They didn’t deserve her. They took her down with them.” There was a time when his father used to talk about the survivors as “our lesser brothers and sisters.” His father used to call the leaders in the Dome, including himself, “benevolent overseers.” Language like this still comes up from time to time in public addresses, but in everyday chatter the survivors outside the Dome are called “wretches.” He’s heard his father use the term many times. And Partridge has to admit, he’s spent a lot of his life hating the wretches for taking his mother down with them. But lately, in Glassings’ World History, he can’t help but wonder what really happened. Glassings hints that history is malleable. It can be altered. Why? To tell a nicer story.