Equal Part 1: The Confrontation

by W.J. Costello

  There it was. 333.

  Should he press the doorbell? Doorbells almost never worked. You press the button, nothing happens. You complain about it, tell the government it’s broken, nothing happens.

  Should he knock? What for? Diana wouldn’t be inside.

  Janus decided to pick the lock. He was about to begin when he heard a door creak open behind him. He spun around to see an aged woman standing there in her gold tunic. She was staring at him, looking him up and down, curious.

  “Afternoon, ma’am.”

  “What?”

  “Good afternoon.”

  “If you say so.”

  Janus felt a draft of cool air coming through the open doorway. The old woman looked cold. She was hugging herself tight.

  “There a problem, Sheriff?”

  “You know Diana?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Lives here. Across the hall.”

  “Never seen her.”

  That was hard to believe. You get assigned a lodging on your sixth birthday, and you live there the rest of your life. Until you’re almost fifty. How could you not know your neighbor? Especially one who lived right across the hall from you. Hard to believe.

  Now the woman asked Janus for his help. One of her windows was drafty. Could he fix it? Please? Her name was Fama. And would he care for a cup of hot tea? Please step inside, Sheriff. Come on.

  He stepped inside. Closed the door behind him.

  Right away he spotted the Equalizer in Fama’s ear. He made a mental note of it. Then he introduced himself. He told her he’d see what he could do about the drafty window. Oh, and tea would be good. Thank you.

  He watched as she padded off to the kitchen. She seemed to move pretty damn well for someone who was almost fifty. He knew she was almost fifty. From her face. And from her gold tunic. Janus kept watching her, amazed at the sensual way she moved. Then he said to himself, What’s wrong with you? She’s a Teacher, almost fifty, ancient.

  Now he felt the cool air again. It was coming from the drafty window. He crossed the room to get a closer look.

  When he got to the window he stooped and then angled his head. He said, “Hmmm,” studying the problem. He stood up and ran his hand under an upper portion of the window.

  Fama was making noise out in the kitchen. It sounded like water being poured into a tea kettle.

  Janus called out, “You got any cardboard?”

  Fama said she did. She went away and came back in no time with some cardboard. Janus began to wedge torn pieces of cardboard into the window. Fama brought him a cup of hot tea. Janus would sip it as he worked on the window. Fama talked to him the whole time, saying how grateful she was for his help, what a good citizen he was. Not five minutes passed before he finished the job and thanked her for the tea and headed out the door.

  He was trying to pick the lock to 333 again when the door behind him creaked opened again. He stopped what he was doing and cursed under his breath and turned to face Fama. Managing a smile, he said, “Yes?”

  Fama hesitated. “Above the door frame,” she said. “That’s where she keeps her key.”

  “You know Diana.”

  “Yes.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “Yes.”

  Janus frowned.

  They were quiet for a time, staring at each other.

  “Why’d you lie?”

  Fama hesitated again. She said, “To protect Diana.” She said, “Diana’s a good person. Always nice to me. Like you just were.” She said, “I saw you trying to enter her lodging, and I didn’t know what to do.” She shrugged, palms up.

  “Do you know where Diana is now?”

  “No.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.”

  That was honest. Janus had to wonder why this woman was trying to protect Diana. Just because Diana was nice to her? Come on, really? Citizens hated Runners. Hated them because they were superior. Something strange was going on here.

  Fama was saying, “Truth is, I hope you never find Diana.”

  Janus didn’t know what to say to that. And he wasn’t sure what to think. He opened his mouth and closed it. Then he shook his head.

  Now Fama invited him back inside. He decided to go along, see what she had to say. They sat down on a worn-out couch. It looked old. It felt old. The cushions were bumpy and prickly. Janus was frowning, shifting around, trying to get comfortable. Fama was sitting beside him, her legs curled up under her, one hand holding onto a bare foot.

  She touched his arm. “You helped me,” she said. “You fixed my window. I think you have a warm heart.”

  Janus wondered where this was going. He kept listening.

  “Diana has a warm heart too. You have that in common with her. A warm heart.”

  There were a few moments of silence.

  Fama said, “You’re here to capture her?”

  Janus nodded. “I am.”

  “Because she’s a Runner?”

  “Because she’s a Runner.”

  “Capturing her won’t be easy.”

  “Give it my best shot.”

  There was another silence.

  “Since you helped me,” Fama said, smiling, “I’ll tell you a little bit about Diana.”

  Janus nodded again.

  “Diana is magical. An enchanting woman. Never met anyone like her before. Sure, she developed three areas of superiority. But it just happened. She never asked for it. All that hassle of being beautiful and smart and physically fit. Always having to get her Equalizer adjusted to accommodate unpredictable development spurts. Every citizen resenting her for her abilities and accomplishments and competence, every citizen viewing her strengths as forms of inequality, inequality in a world where trying matters more than succeeding.”

  That got Janus’s attention. The words resonated with a truth and force he could relate to. Now he felt something jolt in his gut, something ancient and true, something he didn’t fully understand.

  “. . . the burden?” Fama had said something.

  Janus looked at her. “What?”

  “I was saying, can you imagine the burden?”

  “Tell me more.”

  She told him more. She told him Diana was always apologizing for her strengths, always trying to suppress her unfair advantage, always making herself uncompetitive. She told him Diana never fit in, was never part of the group, was never anything but an outsider. She told him Diana never thought she was better than anyone else, never treated people like that, never.

  Janus was nodding as he listened, taking it all in, sitting up straight in the couch.

  Fama was telling him she meant what she’d said about hoping he never found Diana. Fama was telling him it was possible for Runners to escape. Escape to where? A legendary place called Haven. Runners could live out the rest of their days in freedom there. Or so the legend goes.

  When Fama was done speaking Janus got up from the couch and clasped his hands behind his back and stepped to the window and stood gazing out. He sighed, frustrated. After a few moments he turned away from the window and crossed the room and said to Fama, “Thanks for your help,” on his way out the door.

  Reaching for the key above the door frame of 333, Janus was thinking, Could a place such as Haven actually exist? Could Haven be . . .

  Got it, the key.

  He tried it in the door lock. It fit. He entered and closed the door behind him. The room was dark. He kept both his sword and his knife sheathed. There was no danger here. Except of tripping in the dark.

  He made his way, careful, through the cluttered room. When he found the window he pulled back the thick curtain. Harsh sunlight. He squinted and blinked and held up his hands to shield his eyes. All of a sudden he tripped on something and fell to the floor and cursed his luck. Damn this, damn that, dammit.

  Then came the strangest thing, the oddest thing, the most inexplicable and puzzling sensation. On the edge of his awareness, behind the a
nger, there was another feeling. A lighthearted feeling. One that made Janus laugh. He laughed to himself. Then he laughed at himself for laughing. It felt good. Strange, but good.

  Now he lay on his back, looking for clues on the ceiling, thinking, Well, it’s a place to start. Thinking, How come the world’s so damn serious all the time? Thinking, That Fama woman could change the way you look at the world.

  Now Janus raised up on his elbow to look at the room. Paintings everywhere. Colorful paintings. Maybe a hundred or more. Paintings of all kinds of things. Flowers, people, buildings. They weren’t like the paintings Janus was used to seeing. These paintings were good. You could actually tell what the subjects were.

  He got to his feet and started sleuthing, looking for clues that could lead him to Diana. He saw paints and brushes and easels. He saw a variety of plants. But it was what he didn’t see that got him thinking. There were no mirrors. You’d think someone as beautiful as Diana would have at least one mirror in her lodging. But she didn’t. How come? Janus made a mental note. Maybe it was a clue. Maybe it wasn’t. He kept looking.

  There was a jug of red wine on the floor. He picked it up and took a sip. Good stuff, he thought, wiping his mouth on the back of his free hand.

  He carried the jug as he crossed the room. Now he saw something. He stopped. He dropped the jug. Red wine spattering across the floor. He stood staring at the painting. It was a painting of a Sheriff with a scar on his chin. Janus was staring at his own image.

  He ran out of the room and out the front door. He pounded on the door across the hall.

  There was no answer.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE RUNNER WAS cornered. Trapped. No place to go.

  Sheriff Orcus grinned as he watched shadows sliding across shadows. What was amusing, the Runner was like a trapped rat trying to outmaneuver the cat. Runners were always like that. Always believing they could evade tooth and claw.

  Orcus began to prowl toward the darkened building with his sword in his hand. He was whistling as he went. He was thinking the most enjoyable part, always, was this moment. Right now. The moment when his wild-eyed quarry, desperate and hopeful, went scratching through the midnight streets. Through the streets and the grime and the ever-present smell of piss and the rotted dinginess of crumbling ruins. They were always like rats scurrying through dilapidated mazes that led to rat-traps.

  Now Orcus edged along the building, moving toward a recessed doorway. He paused, frowning, straining to hear. Nothing. Then he saw a flicker of shadows, a blur of motion, a silhouetted figure on the move. Damn. Look at the guy go. Moving faster than any Runner ever. Orcus grinned again. He could have some fun with this guy. Play with his mind.

  Orcus crept forward, slipping his sword back into its sheath and then bringing out his knife, the blade winking in the moonlight.

  He said to himself, You did it again. Cornered another Runner. And soon you can add another notch to your capture record. Your perfect capture record.

  He wondered how Janus was doing with his new assignment. Maybe Diana would be the one to finally break Janus’s perfect capture record. Man, wouldn’t that be great? To be the only Sheriff in the department with a perfect capture record. Yeah, that’d be something. Run, Diana, run.

  Orcus was proud to be a Sheriff because Sheriffs enforced society’s most sacred law—the law that every citizen must be Equal. Equal in every possible way. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. This law represented the will of the people. The citizens of Equal craved Equality above all else. And their government gave it to them. Sheriffs were part of that.

  Now Orcus puffed out his chest, smoothed down the front of his blue tunic, and stepped into the doorway. He waited as his eyes adjusted to the diminished light, shapes beginning to emerge, coming into view.

  He thought, Equality provides harmony and social stability. Citizens like to see other citizens that are just like them. Gives them a sense of belonging. But not all citizens are the same. Runners are different. They think they’re better than everyone else. With their puffed-up sense of superiority, their wonderful specialness, they look down on the rest of the citizens.

  Gritting his teeth now, Orcus was about to ease farther into the moon-dappled hallway when he heard the faint sound of chanting. What he did, he slid around a corner and crouched, waiting. No sense continuing the chase till the chanting stopped. The chanting masked other sounds. Sounds made by the Runner. His footsteps. His breathing. His clothes. Orcus relied on these sounds. He needed them to pinpoint the location of quarry hiding in the darkness.

  The wait wouldn’t be long. The chanting never lasted more than a minute. It came twice daily. At noon and at midnight. Noon for the day shift. Midnight for the night shift. Workers on their lunch break would recite mandatory chants. Then, after that, the calisthenics would begin. Also mandatory. Ten minutes for each worker. Lunch would come after chants and calisthenics. Lunches were provided by the government. The food came in premeasured portions. Orcus believed this made life easier because you never had to worry about counting calories. It was a good thing, the government regulating your nutrition.

  Now Orcus could hear them chanting, “We are one.” It was his favorite chant. Ever since he was a young boy. Now his lips formed the words as he listened to the phrase repeated over and over again. “We are one . . . We are one . . . We are one.”

  The chanting stopped. The silence returned. And Orcus froze, his head cocked, straining to listen . . .

  There was a faint rustling of clothes in the darkness.

  Orcus scanned the hallway. Everything was silvered with moonlight, dappled with shadow. He spied movement. Subtle. Looked like a tunic. White. He waited with the intensity of a predatory cat studying its prey.

  The hallway grew darker now. Orcus figured the moon was retreating behind a dark cloud. He could see something in the dim light. Not sure what. But something . . .

  It was the Runner, had to be, hiding in the shadows.

  Orcus thought, Look at this guy trying to hide. This Physician in his white tunic. Wearing white at night? Not a good idea. Not if you want to hide. Dumb-ass Physician.

  Orcus never liked Physicians. They always looked at you like they knew something you didn’t. One time, when Orcus was a young boy, he got injured. So he went to see a Physician. She stood in the examination room, frowning down at him, shaking her head. As if to say, Hey, dumb-ass, you should know better than to play in the woods. Then she threw big words at him, making him feel stupid, like some kind of moron.

  The reason Orcus used to play in the woods? To kill small animals. Birds. Squirrels. Chipmunks. Killing them and burying them. Sometimes torturing them by spiking their food with razor-sharp shards of glass. Watching the little animals chew, Orcus used to imagine he was inside their tummies, stabbing their intestines. It was something to do. Pass the time.

  Then, as Orcus grew older, he graduated to crimes against people. Arson. Robbery. Rape. He was always increasing the intensity of his crimes, seeing if he could away with it, a young man testing the system. He was a young man who couldn’t wait to become a Sheriff at the age of twenty-one so he could get paid to outfox the other lawbreakers.

  What had gotten Orcus started on this path, he’d felt a need to work out his anxiety, having suffered much mental anguish during his formative years. Other kids used to tease him for being a slow learner.

  Orcus was never issued an Equalizer for his learning disability because he never qualified for one. Year after year his area of inferiority fell inside the narrow range of acceptable differences. Always by the tiniest of margins. So his inequality was never leveled, and he grew up experiencing the greatest degree of inequality that was acceptable to society.

  At the age of fifteen Orcus was introduced to the game of chess, and it forever changed his life. He became infatuated with the game. Playing it all the time. Mastering strategies, learning clever maneuvers, thinking outside the box. These were the very skills you needed to becom
e a great Sheriff, so he developed them by playing chess at every opportunity.

  One of the things Orcus liked best about chess, there were no winners or losers. Every game ended in a tie. No one’s feelings got hurt.

  Orcus was a big believer that it was better to work together than to compete against one another. There was nothing fair about competition because not everyone was good at chess. Or sports. Or art. Competition was unhealthy. Collaboration was better. It rewarded you for trying, giving your best effort, regardless of the results.

  Now Orcus scanned the dark hallway again. A plan was coming into focus. What he could do, move toward the back of the building, sneak up behind the Runner. Should work.

  Orcus knew the layout of the building. It had three stories, a square foundation, and a red-brick exterior. It was the same layout as every other building in the country of Equal. All buildings were identical to each other in height and width and length. They were all Equal. No citizen lived or worked in a building that was superior or inferior to any other building.

  The night air was chilly and still. Orcus could hear his own breathing. Could see the white puffs of exhaled breath emerging from his lips.

  Inch by inch, foot by foot, he stepped through the familiar hallways, quiet as a cat, making his way toward the back of the building.

  When a creak sounded underfoot he pressed his back against the wall and stood froze. Did the Runner hear that? There was no way to know.

  Orcus moved on, edging along the wall, slow. He sensed he was within striking distance of his prey. Only feet away.

  Peering around a corner now, he spotted the white tunic trying to hide in the blackness of the night. Dumb-ass Physician.

  Orcus began to whistle again, a familiar tune, the state anthem. Whistling it as he sauntered up behind the Runner.

  All of a sudden the Runner whipped his head around and glared this way with a gleam of terror in his eyes. He seemed to be suspended in a moment of disbelief, a surreal nightmare, a hypnotic trance. As if everything were in slooow motion.

  Now he leapt, bounding away, then running, his pace accelerating, faster, faster, Orcus hot on his heels, the hunt was on, the two of them racing past blurred doorways, boots hammering the floor, arms pumping at a furious pace.