by Jack Blaine
“Probably plenty, if someone paid you enough.” Thomas’s voice had gained an edge too.
“Here we go.” Deen came in with two plates, heaped with food. He set them down before us. The steam rising from them smelled delicious. “Soy links, and onion fries. Some fresh cheddar beans and a side of greens.” He stood back, and noticed that we were glaring at each other.
“Oh,” he said.
“She thinks I’m one of the bad guys.” Thomas didn’t look away from me.
“Ah,” said Deen. “Well, you can’t blame her.”
We both looked at him, Thomas with indignation written all over his face, me with interest.
“You’re a Society member, Thomas. She’s a . . . ” He assessed me, taking in my skinner haircut, looking at my forearm even though my designation was covered by my sleeve, as though he could see the tattoo beneath. “You’re a complex girl, right? Just trying to get by, you’ve got some lower designation assignment, you mind your manners, maybe grab a touch with one of your complex boys now and again, maybe play a game of shads with your girls of an evening. Right?”
“Right.”
“And here comes him,” Deen nods toward Thomas, “or at least his unit, and now suddenly you and that one are living the dream.”
“Right.” I couldn’t have sounded more sarcastic.
“I didn’t do it!” Thomas sounds frustrated.
“No, but you could have.” Deen raises his eyebrows.
“You know that I wouldn’t.” Thomas’s voice is subdued now.
Deen puts a hand on Thomas’s shoulder. “That,” he says, “I do.” He looks at me. “And so should you. This one really is one of the good guys.”
Chapter Seventeen
After Deen leaves us, I think about what he said. I don’t know him any better than I know Thomas, but I trust him more. He’s like me—there’s a designation tattoo on his forearm, too; an L. I didn’t see it until he brought our wine, but the moment I did I knew I could probably trust him. Because a man designated as a Laborer should not be serving wine in a restaurant. He’s found some way to jack the system, and I don’t think it’s because somebody bought him.
I watch Thomas eat some of his cheddar beans. He won’t look up at me.
“I’m sorry.” I wait. Nothing. I try again.
“Thomas.”
“Don’t you mean sir?” He keeps his eyes on his plate.
I giggle. I can’t help it—the whole thing is like we’re having some lover’s spat. I take another drink of my wine.
He looks up, and smiles. Pretty soon he’s laughing too.
“What’s so funny?”
I snort some of my wine. “It’s just . . . it’s like we’re lovers having a little fight.” I can’t catch my breath—the giggles keep coming. “And given that I’m a lowly Helper, and you’re a kink . . .”
“What?” He’s not laughing anymore.
I stop laughing too. “I’m sorry, I mean, homosexual . . .”
“What makes you think I’m a kink?”
I don’t know what to say.
He waits.
“Well, what you said about your mother not wanting another homosexual son. And the fact that you got expelled from school over your lover, Gregory.”
Thomas just stares. “Gregory wasn’t my lover,” he says.
“Look, I don’t care a bit if you’re . . .”
“I’m straight.”
“Seriously, it doesn’t matter at—”
“Gregory was a kink.” Thomas smiles faintly. “He called himself that, too, a kink. It’s not a bad word.” He looks sad.
“Who was Gregory, if he wasn’t your lover?” I don’t know what I’m risking to ask, but I don’t care, suddenly. He looks so wounded and miserable.
“Gregory was . . . is my brother.” Thomas’s voice is ragged. “He’s still alive. But he’s not Gregory anymore. He’s who I went to see yesterday, when I told Driver I was going to the PIC. I had him drop me there and then I caught a train out to the facility.”
I wait. I’m afraid I know what’s coming.
“We were at the same school—he was two years behind me. He was such a great kid—always happy, always so loving to everyone.” Thomas smiles again, remembering.
“I think I always knew—at least I remember knowing when he was around four years old. That he was a kink, I mean. He just had a certain way of doing things, and then, when he got old enough that he should be interested in girls, he wasn’t.
“I didn’t care, but I thought he knew other people would. I mean, he knew Mother would—he was smart enough to hide it from her. I just figured he knew to hide it at school, too. And maybe he did, at first. But they caught him. Him and another kid—Robert—I didn’t know him that well. They caught them in one of the storage rooms. They beat them both, the boys who found them, beat them senseless.
“The school sent him home—I was on a debate tour at the time. I didn’t find out until I got back, and then it was too late. I went straight home; I knew Dad was on a business trip and I knew without him there to stop her she would do the worst. I kept hoping I was in time.”
Thomas’s voice has been getting softer and softer; I can barely make out what he’s saying. I don’t want him to have to say the rest.
“She had him wiped, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” The word is a sob, a long, low cry of pain. Thomas covers his face with his hands, shaking his head. “Yes she did.”
He scrubs his face with his fists, drying the tears that slip from his eyes. He inhales deep breaths, pushes them out of his lungs as though if he can gain control of that simple bodily function, he can gain control of his emotions. He does grow calmer, but I don’t think he’s beaten his grief.
“You should see him.” He shakes his head slowly. “He’s not even in there anymore. He just sits in that chair, a lump of flesh, nodding and staring off into the distance.” Thomas looks at me. “He didn’t even know me.”
I look back, into his reddened eyes, and wonder how a mother could do that to her son. I reach across the table and take his hand. I don’t have any words.
We hold hands for a long time, in silence. Jobee is sleeping, content with his full stomach and his warm blanket. Our lunches grow cold, and neither of us moves. Then, there’s a knock at the door, and Deen comes in with new plates of food.
“I thought you said this place was just swept?” Thomas shakes his head at Deen.
“I did—it’s swept of outside listeners, not of our vid feeds. We have to know what’s going on in our rooms, you know that.” Deen grins. “I saw a lot of talking and no eating—not hard to figure your food is cold.”
“Thanks, Deen.” Thomas fishes out his C-card. “Put double on this.”
Deen waves the card away. “You know that’s no good here. I don’t charge my friends. And you, my boy, and your girl here, are my friends.”
Thomas’s face reddens. I can feel mine doing the same. We quickly let go of each other’s hands, and busy ourselves with our fresh plates of food. Deen takes the old ones with him, chuckling as he goes.
We eat in silence for a few minutes. Then Thomas raises his glass.
“A toast.”
“To what?” I raise my glass, too.
“To us trusting each other?” He looks a question at me.
“Can we?” I watch him to see what his answer will be.
“We can.”
We click our glasses together.
“You know, that is a two-way risk,’ he says.
“I still don’t see how.”
“The person who tipped the boys off to Gregory’s storage room tryst was a Maintenance Helper. I found out he’d been spying on Greg and Rob for weeks. Once he’d had enough thrills, he turned them into the school authorities.”
“But I thought you said that school boys found them?”
“They did. After the school authorities told them where to look.” Thomas narrows his eyes. “I guess they wanted to be cer
tain that the punishment was befitting what they saw as the crime. And they couldn’t do more than expel Greg and Rob.”
I think about that. It doesn’t surprise me a bit. I think about the Director, and how his eyes took on a certain look when he was threatening me; it was a look of anticipation, of pleasure. He liked the idea of hurting me. I imagine the school Director wearing the same look.
“Why did they expel you?”
“How do you know I got expelled?”
“The help gossips.” I grin.
He grins back. But then he looks serious.
“I ruined every one of them. Every boy that touched Greg or Rob. They weren’t hard to ruin—cheaters and liars, the whole bunch. I made sure they all got exposed as what they were. Because that school takes poor behavior very seriously, if it’s directed at them. So cheating on exams, running rackets for contraband in the dorms, all of that sort of thing is frowned upon.
“All but one of them had some racket going on. The last one, the ringleader from what I was told when I checked into it, seemed to be clean, except for his hatred of kinks. Him, I ended up having to fight. And fighting is against the school covenant. All violence is against the school covenant.” He grinned, a thin little grin, full of anger.
“Of course, none of the boys who beat my brother were expelled. Not for that anyway.”
I guess it works the same everywhere, whether you’re in the complex or a private school.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time we got done eating lunch, it was much later than we’d planned and we had no time to linger at the Commons exhibits we’d missed on the first trip through. Thomas apologized and said we could come back. But really, I was so tired I didn’t care. We hurried out the gate we had come in that morning and in only a few minutes the Driver pulled up to pick us up. Once Jobee and I were in the back I was ready to fall asleep.
And I did, as it turned out. I awoke just as we were pulling into the courtyard. The Driver helps get Jobee out and hands him to me. Thomas thanks him and dismisses him, and we walk toward the house.
“We’ve got to be careful,” he says, as we neared the door. “We can’t behave as though we’re friends. Helper, even Driver, I think, would tell Mother. And that would be that for you. Mother would have you sent away.”
I feel a chill that the balmy late afternoon air doesn’t merit.
“I understand.”
“I don’t,” he says. “I don’t understand it at all.”
Jobee and I both need a nap before dinner. The short time I slept during the ride home didn’t seem to touch my fatigue. And Jobee has had so many different sights and sounds to absorb today, he’s exhausted. I keep thinking about how Thomas called us friends. I wonder if we really could be; it would be such a wonderful thing to have a friend here.
We’re up and refreshed by the time we need to be downstairs. Helper brings out the dishes and retreats; Thomas serves me. He calls Helper back to ask for another wine glass.
“Is yours chipped, sir?”
“No, I want Helper12 to have a glass.” Thomas opens his napkin and places it on his lap.
Helper looks astonished. “Ms. Sloane never, I mean, she never—”
“I’m sure it was an oversight, Helper.” Thomas tilts his head at her as if he is asking her opinion. “You know mother has impeccable manners, and would never allow a dinner guest to have an incomplete place setting.”
Helper brings me a wine glass. I keep my eyes on Jobee’s cereal spoon the whole time she is flustering around my plate with it. When she finally leaves, I look at Thomas and raise my eyebrows.
“It’s fine,” he says. “She knows that Mother won’t approve, but she also knows that Father will overrule her.”
“Your father,” I whisper. “What did he say about Greg?”
“He’s said very little.” Thomas swirls the wine in his glass, and watches the patterns the liquid makes. “I think he wanted to leave her at first. I’ve never seen him as angry as he was when he arrived home and found out what she’d done. But something holds him here.”
“Perhaps he stays for you?”
Thomas looks past his glass to me. “No. Greg was his golden child. I’ve never been the son he really wanted, and Greg was in every way—the way he played sports, the way he excelled in school, the way he thought about his future in the business—except that one. Father could have overlooked that one so easily—he did overlook it. He loved Greg best of all. We all did, really. Besides, he knows how much I loathe Mother. If he was doing something for me, he’d have thrown her out as soon as she sent Greg away.”
He shrugged. “I love Father, but I think he’s basically a very weak man. Sometimes I even wonder if he would have had the strength to stop her from having Greg wiped, if he’d been here at the time. I’m sure she would have had some convincing arguments about how it was the best thing, with six different doctors lined up to support her. No, Father stays because it’s what he knows how to do.”
“I’m so sorry.” I don’t know what to say. Having no family at all seems so much easier, suddenly.
As if he’s read my mind, Thomas asks me about it.
“Is it true that tracked designees don’t have any parents?”
“Well, we have Biological Contributors. And Breeders who carry us to term, after being inseminated with sperm from the Biological Contributors. But we never know who they are. We grow up like Jobee would have.” I touch his cheek, softly. He’s fast asleep again, full of cereal and dreams.
“How would he have grown up?”
“You really don’t know?” I can’t believe that he doesn’t know how it works. How do people think that the basic necessities get done in the world? Certainly it’s not because of Society members—they’re too busy being educated in multiple subjects and playing at politics to actually do any work. And in this world, a lot of work has to get done to keep civilization functioning. Kris used to laugh about it sometimes. “How long do you think they could go if suddenly nobody was tracked for garbage disposal? The world would be one big stink in a week!”
Thomas shakes his head. “I really don’t know, I’m afraid. I mean, they teach us the general idea of it in early school, but I think it’s some homogenized version. I remember pictures of happy looking babies being held by happy looking Breeders in frilly nightgowns. And lots of pictures of wheels and cogs and how a successful society is a planned society.”
“Frilly nightgowns?” I cannot believe that.
He nods. “I swear.”
“I was designated a Breeder.” I say it before I think.
“What? I thought you were a Baby Helper. What were you doing in that Ward?”
I push up my sleeve and hold my arm out so he can see my designation tattoo.
“See? You can see where the B was—they just tattooed the H over it. It must have just been a mistake—some test result was inaccurate. They took out my uterus and changed me to a Helper.”
“Are you sad?” He asks almost shyly.
“About what?”
“About not getting to have babies.”
I stare. “Breeders have the earliest death rate of all designates except Reactor Laborers. They get impregnated, brood, cesarean, go to recovery for a month and then start all over. They never see the babies. They never see much of anything except the inside of their rooms. They aren’t even allowed to live in the complexes. They have to stay in the Breeder Wards so that they can be monitored.”
“That sounds horrible. At least in the Ward you got to help the babies, and be with them. You’re wonderful with William.”
I think about the babies in Pre Ward, about Helper29 cooing at them while she kills them. About me, not cooing, while I do the same thing.
Thomas traces a finger over the H on my arm. Then he follows the outline of the B. He shakes his head.
“I’m so sorry, Helper12.”
I pull my arm away and cover it with my sleeve. I start to eat. I don’t want to talk anym
ore. When he asks me if I’m okay, I tell him I’m just tired from our day.
I don’t want him to know what I really feel.
I want to be friends with Thomas. Today I feel like I’ve seen inside him a little bit, like I’ve seen a person I could like. I person I could trust. But how can I be friends with someone who doesn’t know what I’ve done; what I’ve been made to do? How can I trust someone who doesn’t even know my real name?
Chapter Nineteen
I don’t see Thomas the next day until a few hours before dinner. I’ve done my best to avoid him, staying in my room, keeping Jobee occupied with toys instead of going down to the courtyard. But when he knocks on my door, I can’t hide.
“Hello.” He pokes his head in after I open the door.
“Hello,” I say.
“I wanted to bring this by.” He holds up a reader. “May I come in?”
I hesitate, but I can’t refuse him entry.
He walks over to where Jobee is sitting in his whizby. Thomas said I could keep it to use with Jobee, after our trip to the Commons. It works well as a chair for Jobee—it supports him while he plays with his boggles or just looks around at things.
“How are you, William?” He turns to me. “How is he doing? Is there anything he needs?”
“He’s doing well.”
“I wanted to show you this before dinner.” Thomas sits on the bed, and pats the spot next to him.
I walk over and settle myself a foot away from him. He flicks the power on the reader.
“See this?” He shows me the menu displaying on the screen. I nod.
“Here, you should take it—that way you can get the feel of it.” He holds the reader out to me, and I take it.
It’s larger than my player is—built more solidly, too. The screen is small, but I can read it easily. Right now it lists what seem to be the titles of books.
“Are these what we got yesterday?”
“Yes.”
Thomas points to the first listing. It’s called Childhood Development: From Birth to One Year.