Awakening

by Margaret Ball

  Devra nodded. “It’s the lower oven, the one I was using for that batch of sweet rolls. I just baked some rolls in it and they were scorched so bad the tops are practically charcoal. Then I put in a tray of muffins and triple-checked the temperature settings. Everything was set right, but the muffins took ten minutes longer to bake than they should have, and they were still raw in the middle.”

  “Hmm. First too hot, then too cold… In Esilia we’d say you had a gremlin playing with the settings. But this is Harmony, and you don’t approve of superstitions, so of course it’s not a gremlin.”

  “What it is, is a nuisance, that’s what.” Devra went to the sink and washed her hands. “I’ll have to do everything in the upper oven, and that means reorganizing the bake schedule so that I fill the oven with things that need the same temperature every time, and even at that I’ll be slow getting goods out for you to sell. I’m sorry.”

  It got even worse when Mikal came back without the butter and sour cream. “There was nothing on the shelves.”

  “Oh, you probably didn’t look in the right place. I’ve seen you at the market; you wouldn’t see a snake until it bit you.”

  “Devra, there was a lot of nothing at the market. The only goods they had were the ones that aren’t price-controlled yet.”

  Devra sighed. “Oh well, we can get through today all right. I can go to the market myself after we get through lunch, maybe they’ll have restocked by then.” There were probably plenty of dairy products on the shelves right now, but she didn’t want to start a fight with Mikal.

  “They don’t have anything to restock,” Mikal said grimly. Right, Mikal, anything you can’t find obviously isn’t there.

  “In that case,” Devra said patiently, “I’ll go to the bazaar and find somebody who’ll sell me enough butter for tomorrow at grossly inflated prices, and surely by day after tomorrow the market will be restocked.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” said Mikal. “In fact, I’m going to fix your oven right now, because I wouldn’t want you to be juggling too many things in and out of the one oven when you make that tray of Chocolate Ecstasy you’re going to owe me.” Somehow he managed to wink and waggle one eyebrow simultaneously, and for a moment he looked comic instead of handsome. When did I start thinking of him as handsome? Well, it wasn’t that exactly. It was – he had a nice face. Serious or clowning, either way she liked his face. Which will be a great consolation to him, I’m sure, after I report to Security and they shut this operation down. The shiny bright citizenship that would be restored to her if she broke up the Esilians’ people-smuggling was… somehow not quite as shiny and bright as it used to appear.

  “I don’t want to get in your way,” he went on, “so why don’t you go out and pick up some butter while I’m working?”

  “You think you can fix it that fast?”

  “After you check at the community market you’ll have to go out and look for black-market dairy goods.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Devra said patiently, “because I can find what I’m looking for in a market. And I need to start something else or we’re going to be out of baked goods before lunch.”

  “Tell you what.” Mikal waggled his eyebrows at her. “Do another batch of muffins with that flour from the community market. At least they won’t sell out.”

  Devra yanked at the ties on her apron and heard something tear. Resisting the urge to throw it at the floor – or better yet, at Mikal – she hung it neatly on its hook and walked through to the front room.

  When she got back empty-handed from the market, the display shelves were nearly bare. She would have to wait until afternoon closing before going to the bazaar. Keeping up the flow of fresh-baked goods with only one functioning oven was going to be challenging. Apple cinnamon muffins, she thought, and a sheet of those chocolate nut bar cookies. Those could bake at the same temperature, and they were both sweet enough to serve without frosting, which would save a little time.

  She walked into the kitchen and realized that catching up was going to be even trickier than she’d thought. The lower oven had been pulled out to the center of the kitchen and the floor was littered with tools.

  “The thermocontrol,” Mikal said. “It’s decided that it only wants to operate on two settings: too high or too low. Would you rather have your pastries burned or undercooked?”

  “Neither! Do you want to ruin my reputation?”

  “Calm down, calm down. It’s the café’s reputation too, you know. I can fix this.”

  Devra regarded him uncertainly. The smear of dark grease across his forehead didn’t do much to make him look like a competent mechanic, nor did the raw chipped spots on his knuckles. “Shouldn’t we, um, get a professional? I mean, somebody whose job is fixing appliances?”

  “No need,” Mikal said cockily. “Ok, I had a little trouble persuading the controller unit to separate from the rest of the oven, but that’s just a mechanical problem. Now I need to find the bugs in the program and fix it, and –” he waggled his bruised fingers at her – “I happen to be an expert technogeek.”

  “Just what every bakery needs,” murmured Devra.

  “In this case, yes,” Mikal said, “and aren’t you the lucky girl to have me!”

  He pulled the thermocontrol unit out of the oven and started to set it on her nice clean stone counter.

  “Put something under that before you get grease all over my counter!” Devra yelped in one breath, diving for one of the rough flimsies she used for minor spills.

  “All right, all right, you don’t have to be such a grouch.” Mikal set the unit down on the flimsy and wiped his hands on his pants, achieving a further distribution of greasy black stains. “I’ll just wash up and link this device with my minicomp and get to work on the code problem.” He began picking tools off the floor and transferring them to a long box with slots for each hand tool.

  “Minicomp?” She’d never even heard the term.

  “It’s a pocket computer.”

  “Oh.” This was one of the things she’d never understood about Mikal. “My CodeX can be a reader, or a computer, or a message taker, or a way to research the interweb. Isn’t it a nuisance having a different device for each function?”

  “Oh, sure, the CodeX is a handy little gadget – as long as you don’t mind broadcasting what you’re doing to the entire upper echelons of Harmony.

  “Would you like me to go get the minicomp for you?” And give me another chance to look at your room?

  “No, no, you’d never find it. My room is… kind of messy.”

  Devra bit back I know.

  “No, you go on mixing up stuff to feed the late-morning crowd. Oh, and we need meat pies for lunch. He looked doubtful. “Um, can you do all that with just one oven?”

  “Of course I can,” Devra said airily, with more certainty than she felt.

  “I’ll be right back.” Mikal clattered up the stairs and Devra turned to mixing chopped apples into the batter.

  “Here we are,” Mikal announced cheerfully on his return, “me and my minicomp, you and your little shadow.”

  “That sounds almost superstitious. Do you think it has an evil spirit that reports on me even when it’s turned off?”

  “For some definitions of ‘evil spirit,’ sure. It’s got a microphone, a camera, and a constant link to a central computer system that stays active even when you think the device is off. Anybody with the right level of access can hear and see whatever you hear and see.”

  “Ugh!” Devra shivered. “I never thought about it that way before.”

  “Most people don’t ever need to think about it,” Mikal said easily, “There are two million people in Harmony and even Security can’t be watching everybody all the time. But they tend to take an excessive interest in Esilians, so Vess and I assume that whenever there’s a CodeX around, somebody’s listening.” He frowned over the thermocontrol and attached one end of a cable to a slot in its side, the other end to his minicomp. “
You might want to think about it, too. Now that you’re working for an Esilian family, Security might have you on their list of people worth watching. Or they might be using you – your CodeX, I mean – to spy on us.”

  Devra’s cheeks flamed red. She hastily opened the door of the upper oven so that the blast of heat would explain her complexion, if Mikal happened to look up from what he was doing. The muffin batter was ready to spoon into the baking dish. Should she start those now, or wait and cook them at the same time as the bar cookies? It wasn’t really difficult to keep track of two cooking times, especially with her CodeX. She slid the tray of muffins onto the top rack, retrieved the CodeX and told it to sound an alarm after 20 minutes.

  “Oh, good,” Mikal said without turning to look. “I love apple cinnamon muffins. Put two aside for me when they’re done, will you?”

  “You must have eyes in the back of your head!” Devra had already started melting the butter for the next project; now she poured it into a baking pan and began crumbling stale cake crumbs over it. Cream next, just enough to moisten the cake crumbs without drowning them; and then chocolate bits and chopped threenuts.

  “I can smell the mix,” Mikal said plaintively, “and I felt the heat when you opened the oven door. There’s nothing sinister about observing details and deducing from them.”

  He might not feel that way if he knew about the deductions Devra had been making lately. Better change the subject.

  “I took your advice and read a good book on your reader,” she told the back of his head while rocking her chef’s knife up and down on the cutting board until the bar of chocolate was chopped into bits. “At least, it was an interesting book. I’m not sure it wasn’t all a pack of lies.” She still had a jar of chopped threenuts to sprinkle over the tray with the chocolate bits.

  “It was Vess, not me, who told you to go read a good book. And if you were reading the rest of that play about Henry V, I’m pretty sure it is a pack of lies – although the polite way to describe that is fiction.”

  “No. It was a history book.” Devra slid the baking tray onto the lower rack of the oven and told the CodeX to sound a second alarm in 25 minutes.

  Mikal swore under his breath.

  “Oh! I’m sorry. Go on with what you’re doing and I’ll just keep baking. We don’t have to talk, especially if it interferes with you fixing the oven.”

  “I just did – at least, I’ve reprogrammed the thermocontrol. I’ll reinstall it while we’re closed this afternoon. Right now I’m much more interested in hearing about your reading. But first….”

  Mikal went over to the shelf where Devra’s CodeX lived when she was baking, wrapped a dishcloth around the device, stuffed the bundle into an oven mitt and slung it into the pantry.

  “Hey! I need that to remind me when to take things out of the oven.”

  “So we’ll have a very quick chat. But I’m not talking about Esilian history while your little shadow is listening.”

  Returning, he slung one hip onto the end of the kitchen table and perched there, looking interested. “I always did think you’d be reasonably bright, once you got over that the-Committee-is-always-right garbage. That stuff clogs up your brain, you know.”

  Devra thought that over. Maybe he was right. It was hard to think about anything like politics, or economy, or even science, when each subject automatically triggered the truths she’d been taught daily in the crêche. We don’t need to do experimental science any more; science has settled everything we need to know. The needs of the many outweigh the desires of the few. Shortages are sometimes caused by sabotage, more often by greed.

  “I just wish you wouldn’t be so discordant patronizing about it!” she grumbled.

  “Sorry! I know, I know, I’m irritating. I don’t mean to be – well,” Mikal amended with disconcerting honesty, “I don’t always mean to be irritating. Right now, for instance, I’d really like to know what you think of the history you read.”

  Devra had been mixing a quick crust for the meat pies; there was no time to do puff pastry today, the little pies would have to go into the oven as soon as she pulled the muffins out. No, she’d have to wait a few more minutes until the cookie bars were done; the filled pastries wanted a hotter oven. “I’m not sure,” she said, “what I think about it. It’s very different from the history I learned in school.”

  Mikal nodded. “I guess this is where I say that Esilia’s version is the truth, and you say that Harmony’s is, and I go back to fiddling with the controller. If we were in Esilia, we could go to the Reference Library and you could see the reports that went into making that history, printed on real paper that nobody could reprogram. But here, now –” He shrugged. “In Harmony, everything changes all the time, so that history is always what the Central Committee wants it to have been, and there’s no evidence to the contrary. I guess you’ll just have to decide for yourself which version is more plausible.”

  “Well, there was one thing in your book that I know wasn’t true,” Devra said. She would need three sheets of pastry crust for the meat pies. Too bad, she had only mixed enough for two. Maybe Vess could raise the prices on the savory pastries, just for today. She could say it was for the “special” crust. That might even convince patrons that they were getting a treat instead of a last-minute substitution.

  “Oh?”

  “They said that the Colony Debt was forgiven in repayment for our accepting the New Citizens. That’s just not so!”

  “And you know this… how?”

  “Why, every year the Central Committee has a terrible time getting together the annual payment. And it’s even worse this year because some of your people sabotaged a bunch of sasena farms, so they can’t meet their quotas. All the newsers have been talking about it.”

  “And who tells the newsers what to say?”

  “Nobody! I mean, of course they can’t say anything seditious, or they’d be in trouble…” Devra saw, too late, where this line of argument was leading. With a few slashes of her rolling blade, she cut the sheets of pastry into triangles.

  “I wish you could believe Esilia’s version,” Mikal said behind her, “because then you’d begin to appreciate the economic disaster that’s going to hit Harmony.”

  “As far as I know,” Devra said to the pastry triangles, “our worst problem is Esilian saboteurs.” She began dropping spoonsful of cooked meat onto the center of each triangle.

  “Devra, try to believe me. Esilia is not sabotaging sasena production. The sasena collectives can’t meet their quotas because the quotas have been arbitrarily raised, year after year, and there’s only so much lying and fancy bookkeeping they can do to conceal the gap between expectation and achievement. Come on, think back! Weren’t the quotas raised this year?”

  “Well, yes,” Devra admitted, “but that doesn’t prove –”

  “And last year?”

  “Ye-es….”

  “And the year before?”

  “I don’t remember! It was my first year teaching, I was too busy making lesson plans, I probably didn’t even listen to the news! Why don’t you pull out my CodeX and look it up, if you care so much?”

  “I’m pretty sure the CodeX would return Committee records showing that no change had been made in the sasena quotas two years ago.”

  “Well, there you are, then!”

  “And no change last year, either,” Mikal went on, “or this year.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  Mikal shook his head. “You’re sleepwalking, Devra. You’re being lied to, constantly, about everything, and you don’t want to know. Keep my reader a while longer,” he said. “There’s a word in it for you, if you’re ready to hear it. Awake, awake, Deborah; awake, awake.”

  And, infuriatingly, he slipped out to the front and busied himself serving customers, when she hadn’t nearly finished explaining how wrong he was about Harmony.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-0NE

  The New Citizens’ bazaar was livelier than Devra h
ad expected. During the muggy days before the rainy season, the mood had been slow and somnolent; today the gaudy tinseled cloths glittered like jewels in the winter sunshine, children ran and screamed and tagged one another in some complex game, and stallholders called out, vying for her attention, as she passed by. Devra just kept shaking her head. No, she didn’t need a pair of real synthetic diamond earrings; no, she didn’t want a flimsy, glittery striped blanket to keep her warm at night; and no, she definitely didn’t want the teenage boy who kept skipping in front of her, teasingly offering the same service until her lack of response discouraged him.

  It was – occasionally – difficult to remember that no culture was intrinsically superior to any other. Devra told herself that if she’d been raised among New Citizens, the disorder and the noise and the demands for attention wouldn’t have been so irritating; they’d be part of the background.

  They stood too close to you, too. Devra side-stepped to get around the young boy who had come out of nowhere to stand directly in her path. He side-stepped too, blocking her way.

  “You are the teacher of Ferit,” he stated.

  “I – I was,” Devra said. “Do you know Ferit? How is he doing?”

  “You will see Ferit.”

  “I’d very much like to.”

  “His mother also will very much like that you see him.” The boy turned on his heel and set off between two stalls, on a path still muddy from the rainy season, that turned and twisted around houses and shops. No one was calling to her now; the people in the streets fell silent as she passed. After a few minutes Devra had no idea how to find her way back. After a few more silent minutes she was beginning to feel nervous. Had Ferit’s name been a trick to lure her into a back alley where no one would see or care what happened to her?

  She was on the verge of refusing to go farther when the boy stopped in front of a house that barely merited the name – it was more like a shed with curtains – and called something in his own language in which she recognized only the word “Ferit.”

  She was completely unprepared for what happened next.