Aquifer

by Jonathan Friesen

  I clutch the book to my chest. I know a way, and break into a run.

  “I’ll be back.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  I sit on Freemanl Pier, the moon low and red in the sky, its light dancing on the waters deep.

  There is nobody out tonight, not a soul in a city of ten thousands. It is the collective hold-your-breath. My father is at the center of an event that brings the entire world together. For once a year, the world feels, and what it feels — though it does not know it — is dread.

  I never want to be the center of that event.

  What if I fail?

  My secret rests on my lap. I stroke the book’s cover like Father strokes his. I will not open it until I’m home.

  Not ten feet in front of me, a great light suddenly blinds me.

  Seward.

  His boat eases to shore, and he quickly douses his floodlight and ties the prow to the pier.

  “What manner of fool is out tonight?” he hisses. “I carry a load that —”

  “It’s not best for a respectable businessman like yourself to be found carrying?”

  “Aye. That’s a way of puttin’ it. But I struck well tonight. I’m finished. Move off, I need to unload on the winched dolly.” He glances both right and left, lowering his voice. “Best you not see.”

  I slowly stand. “I need your help. I need it tonight.”

  “At two in the mornin’? There’s a craziness about you.”

  I grimace, thinking what to share, what to hold. “I’ve found a treasure. I need you to help me get it to my home.”

  Seward’s face turns sly, and inside he’s thinking, calculating, I’m sure of it. He wonders how he can remove the treasure from my possession.

  “This deal be from one pirate to another … Why didn’t ye just come out with it, lad? For this, I’m always here.” He lowers his face so it is equal with mine, and the smell of fish and ale overpowers. “What manner of treasure?”

  I glance at the burlap in my hand. “To possess it is to be debriefed. Perhaps undone. Do you still want to know?”

  Seward whitens and straightens. “I’m already in a pickle with them. I need no more reason for their … special attention.” He takes a step past me, and I grab his shirt.

  “I know the gruesome task you do. The retrieval of the undones from their watery dropping point. Father told me.” I kick at the dock. “You perform this service for the Watchers, the Amongus, and they wink at the water casks you steal.”

  Seward exhales slowly. “So Massa tells you all my good traits —”

  “If your mates knew just who your employers were, it wouldn’t sit well. Would it?”

  “What do you want, little blackmailer?” His eyes twinkle.

  “No.” I step back. “No questions. Can you sit with that?”

  Seward stares out over the sea, waiting, it seems, for the sea to answer. Then it does.

  “Can I get more than your word for the silence you’ll keep?”

  “My word is all I have.” I nod. “As the future Deliverer.”

  Seward rubs his face. “Luca, you are a pain. Help me unload.” He pauses. “Can you stand the sight of an undone?”

  I think back to the guard of the cave. “Oh, I imagine so.”

  I am wrong.

  The skeleton was unreal, distant. An unknown collection of rotting bones. As I drag the recently undone across the deck, I can’t help but wonder about their families, their children and parents. Seward and I hoist his retrievals into bags. Zipping the clasp over their fixed gazes, I know one thing: They are human. No different than me.

  We finish Seward’s work and he flashes me a glance. Does he almost look ashamed? I try to soften my gaze, to let him know it’s okay, he’s okay, but beneath the light of moon he turns from me and unties from the dock.

  Seward’s boat moves silently through the water. Though engine powered, there is not a sound but the lap of waves on the hull. It’s a boat made for stealth, not for speed.

  “Glaugood. What is here to you?” He pulls into the old mine’s port.

  I shake my head. “I’ll need the dolly and whatever wraps and straps you have.”

  “Body bags are the best I can do.”

  “Very good.” I hop out and gesture for the dolly.

  “Luca, wait. I can only give you four hours.” Seward peeks at the sky. “If you be needin’ to be emptyin’ a cave, you’ll not reach it and back. But —”

  “But?”

  “You forget, the mine is filled to sea level.”

  “So …”

  “So, we’re in a boat, and I be the great Seward of the Seas. The mine has crumbled. We float in.”

  “Brilliant!” I leap back into his craft. “Lead on, noble pirate.”

  Minutes later, we leave the open sea and silently glide beneath an arch of stone.

  “Glaugood.” Seward glances around. “To be sure, much gold was found, but they dug too near the sea, and the sea always reclaims her own. Many times I have hidden in this basin. I’ve found it a very private port.” He clears his throat. “I’m none too pleased to share it.”

  “This is the last time I’ll come. Promise.”

  We float into the water-filled mine. “We need to find cave fifty-four. I’m turned around. Can you take me around the perimeter?” I stand and squint. “I can’t see to the top to count, but I’ll know it by the smell.”

  It’s easier than I think to locate the cave. The scent is more pronounced than it was two hours ago. Seward tosses his anchor into the cave’s mouth, and I slosh my way into it.

  “Twelve bags is what I got.” Seward pitches them forward, where they land at my feet. I stack and drag them down the tunnel. Once inside the bookroom, I place my orb on the floor and stuff books. Sweat pours down the small of my back, mats my hair and stings my eyes, but soon every bag is filled, and I back through the pinch, hauling each load into the larger tunnel.

  Father, I wish I had your strength …

  Hours pass, and finally I lug the last bag of books through the squeeze and onto Seward’s weighted boat.

  “Done.” I collapse beside him and we float back out to sea. The feat I performed would have been nothing to Lendi, but my arms scream.

  “Get me to the Shallows.”

  “What are they, Luca?”

  “I don’t think you should know. I don’t think that’s safe.”

  Seward shrugs. “Books never are.”

  I fire him a glance.

  “Oh, wipe that look from ya. What’dya think I be doing while you loaded me down with your illegal cargo?”

  Of all the people to know. A pirate … who works for them.

  “Fine.” I fold my arms. “The tables are turned. What can I pay you for silence?”

  Seward leans back. “Getting to it now. That’s good, that’s good. Yes, I do imagine some type of hushing valuable is in order. But credits do me little good — they are obtained easy enough.” He glances at the sky. “But no amount of money destroys the enemy I can’t fight. This accursed darkness. It is hard to work at night. Always at night, beneath the pale moon and the feeble light of the orbs. My flood light alerts too many of my presence. After all, there be pirates on the waters.” He winks. “Often I’ve thought how quickly my job be done if I had a light rod to see. Small, focused, piercing …”

  “Father gets those from the PM, and only once a year.”

  “He does not!” Seward snaps, and just as quickly calms. “Apologies.” He wipes his brow. “Some folktales are hard for me to endure. Massa gets nothing from the PM. He gets rods from the Nine, the Council.” Seward pauses. “Can you handle a truth?” He glances down, his hands forming the shape of a make-believe bag. Seward slides open an invisible zipper and reaches inside. He pulls out a fistful of air, lifts it in front of my face, and opens his hand. “There is no PM.”

  I stare at Seward, who offers his nearly toothless grin. “Are you surprised that we live in a leaderless world, young Deliver
er?”

  “But we learn about him in school and recite the pledge …”

  “And they told you every book was destroyed. I want a light rod for my silence.”

  “But Father receives just enough. No extras, just enough to pacify the Water Rats.”

  Seward sighs, and slows the boat. “Would you like me to start dumpin’ the discovered?”

  “No!” I grab his wrist. “No. I’ll find a way. Give me some time.”

  “A little.” Seward glances up. “We’re here.” He rubs his arms and gently guides us toward the mainland. “Tell Massa I said hello.”

  I frown as the boat skims the reef and eases into the Shallows.

  Dawn breaks, and we glide past the Cemetery. Old Rub swims at our side. I lean over and stroke her shell.

  “Old Girl, you’ll never believe it.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  I wake from a deep sleep, my nerves on fire.

  I’m always nervous on this day, the day Father returns from the exchange. Not because I doubt him or his memory — the route is permanently fixed deep inside — but because of the Rats.

  From the docks of Freemanl to the boroughs of Scarboro to banks of Garden Isle, rumors of the Rats spread in hushed tones. Speculation about their cruelty mixes with the knowledge that miles beneath our feet the hideous crawl around, and we rely on the hideous for every sip of water we drink.

  Yes, the PM devised the system of diverters, the labyrinth that carries water to the four corners of the world, but those pipes are buried ten feet down, as low as most Toppers dare descend. Below that — below our feet — is the Rats’ domain. Mindless, soulless, and meeting with my father.

  What if they eat him?

  “What’s in the bags?” Walery asks, rolling over in Father’s cot. “They stink.”

  The books remain stacked in the cellar. Their stench does not.

  “It was supposed to be you,” I snap, and remember the bloated bodies from Seward’s boat. “I’m sorry. Just tense, I guess.”

  Seward is long gone, and I shake my head, clearing it of worry about my father’s arrival, and the Ceremony of Rebirth where he will announce his success to the world. Four words from Seward take residence, alter the shape of my thoughts.

  There is no PM.

  Seward is a liar, a thief, and a pirate. But his words didn’t seem to hold deceit. I’ll ask Father; during a break in the proceedings, I’ll ask him. He’ll know.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “The PM,” I say.

  “Does he impress you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him.”

  “It’s good to question things like that. It’s good to question the leaders and the rules and the punishments.”

  Toppers don’t say things like that, and I scratch my head. “You’re an unusual kid.”

  Walery breaks into a big grin. “That’s what they said on the Bottom Floor.”

  The Bottom Floor. We first heard about it as Sixes. Though the higher we schooled, the more the story slipped into myth. A floor beneath the ground? Beneath the Fives? Where the schooled kids never rose? The rumor was that those sent there stayed, year after year, their attitudes ill fit for the climb.

  “So all those times I saw you on the way to school, you were heading … down? What did you do to end up there?”

  Walery swings his legs over the edge of Father’s hammock and stares. “Two small crimes, really. I looked around, and I thought. That’s it.” He scoots forward. “Luca, don’t the controls feel wrong to you? The prohibitions, those wicked dials. I see your discontent. You feel it too — that we were made for more than a tame life. We were made to feel.”

  I lean back and instinctively peek at the door, waiting for Amongus to burst in.

  “Everyone on the Bottom feels this way?” I whisper.

  “They have the potential to, so we’re watched, even encouraged.”

  It makes no sense. “Encouraged to think like this? But why?”

  “From what group do you think the PM’s Council of Nine is selected?”

  I’d never given it any thought.

  “There always must be nine, and even those on the Council eventually succumb to age undoing. When that happens, the PM must choose a replacement. Below, we are referred to as Feelers; we are the pool from which the Nine are chosen.”

  I stand and pace. “But they were about to destroy you.”

  “Yes. During the last Replacement, my agemate was chosen. It was no longer in their best interests to keep me. They had taught me too much.”

  “Such as …”

  He takes a deep breath. “Luca. L-U-C-A. Massa. M-A-S-S-A. They teach us to read, to scratch. If chosen for the Council, it is a necessary gift. If not, it is a sentence which leads to undoing.”

  The smell of the books wafts up from the cellar. “So you can read. You can read any scratch, no matter how old?”

  He cocks his head. “What do you know of reading?”

  “Little. Listen, I need to go take my place at the ceremony. You need to stay here. I’m sorry for that, but when I return, we’ll talk, yes?”

  Walery lowers himself down. “Yeah, let’s talk. You saved me, and I’ve been thinking of ways to repay.”

  “You don’t need to —”

  “I have an idea. I know your burden, Luca. I know what you will one day face. I likely know more than you do, as we are taught everything below. For instance, I know what you fear.”

  “The Rats.”

  “No,” he says. “Forgetting. Letting your father down. He’s entrusted you with the world. What if you dropped it? You would be heartbroken, yes, but more than that, you would look at your father and feel … ashamed.”

  I scramble toward my dressing area and open my closet. With my back to Walery, I release one tear. He sees what he can’t see, what nobody can see.

  “How do you know this?” I ask, but do not turn.

  The floorboards creak, and I feel his hand on my shoulder. “The how doesn’t matter. This is where I can help. I can scratch the route down for you. Think of the relief. You would never forget. No more worries of shaming Massa.”

  “But I can’t read.” I spin and face him.

  “I’ll help you. I can teach you.”

  I wipe my face. “I need to prepare.”

  Walery steps back, and I pull the sheet between the two of us. There must be a PM to teach him all these things. How else could an Eleven understand?

  I dress for the event that defines my life. My finest clothes, my most colorful shirt. For the next three days, emotions are allowed. Wrinkles are allowed. We will rejoice for yet another year of life made possible by my father.

  I open the door and glance back over my shoulder, first toward cellar steps, and then at Walery, resting again in Father’s hammock. He swings back and forth without a care in the world, his leg hanging lazily over the edge. He is far too comfortable in the Deliverer’s quarters.

  So many questions for Father.

  I join the masses moving toward the Swan River. On its banks rises the amphitheater, and we will funnel through its creaking turnstiles. Once inside, nobody speaks. A quickly hushed cry, a nervous cough — these are the sounds of this moment, when wails of children are considered bad omens. A young wail from behind sets the somber on edge, and faces darken.

  The amphitheater is old. Though patched and repatched with concrete, it still appears ready to crumble. It once housed the dark arts of this world, though that’s all the information I’ve received. Walery may know more. Once a year, fifty thousand cram through its gates. All those who do not fit will line the river, gathered at one of the many watching stations. Many purposely choose to view the ceremony on the screen; the tension inside is too much for them.

  I don’t have that luxury.

  I reach the theater and breathe deep. The Ceremony of Rebirth is the only event that brings together every citizen of New Pert. Only the young, those under five, remain far
from the proceedings and under the Developers’ care.

  I push through the gate, and whispers gather.

  Sixteen.

  The next Deliverer is of age.

  The next Deliverer has come.

  My presence brings relief to the people, and I stride in practiced confidence to my chair directly in front of the Birthing tunnel. It stretches down to the Swan, and from it Father will soon emerge.

  Father’s boat is certainly already anchored at the tunnel’s far end. One glimpse of his face, the folding of his arms, and Holiday will begin. I’ve come to hate the event, the attention, my place in front of the crowd, but this year I can’t wait. I have so many questions. Prophecy questions. PM questions. Walery questions.

  Most of all, there is the big stash of books I long to give him.

  I assume my seat and the whispers vanish. Above the tunnel, a large clock marches off the time, each tick amplified in the vacuum of this occasion. It’s five of eleven, too soon for a return, but already the crowd bristles. They should know that even if Father returns early from the exchange, he will pause at the tunnel’s entrance; he must emerge between eleven o’clock and eleven fifteen.

  The clock is all there is … that and the fountain. I peek to my right. Standing atop the granite block, a cloaked man stretches out marble hands, and from his palms water spews. The symbol of every Topper’s hope, this is the only fountain allowed in the city, and it never runs dry.

  Thanks to Father.

  The clock clicks eleven. Tension fills the theater, and I fix my eyes on the timepiece. Only once did Father emerge at eleven. What would be the fun in that? When the task falls to me, I won’t be so predictable. Perhaps I’ll race out at ten o’clock, or linger until noon. Maybe I’ll tweak the signal of success. Cross my fingers or cross my eyes.

  I stare down at my hands. With each click of the minute hand, whispers grow. After twelve minutes, I shift, and a grown woman cries.

  I squint into the tunnel. In the distance, a shape appears. I stand and approach, and the tension breaks. Behind me, the crowd sighs and cheers, their voices connected to my steps. The floor shakes and rumbles as all rise to join me in welcoming Father.