Lizard Radio

by Pat Schmatz

  Go to the fields.

  I bolt straight up. Lizard Radio never speaks human words.

  The breathing in the next slice continues. The komodo remains frozen where I put it. The moonlight shines steady. The words pulse, not out loud but strong and clear. Gotothefields. Gotothefields. Like someone whispering in my ear from the inside.

  I pick up the komodo again and run my fingers back to the end of the tail. I touch the space between the eye socket bumps, feel the curve of the claws. I bring it to my mouth and kiss it. My clothes are on the floor where I dropped them. I pull them on and tuck the komodo in my pocket, strap on my frods, and kneel at the doorway. I slow-tick the zipper up, quiet, no-wakey.

  A light breeze moves through the rustling woods, and the night air shivers across the back of my neck. The moon casts shadows of spooklight. A small flame still dances inside a glass shield by the privo, and I head that way. I pass it by and continue into the dappled darkness, slinking past the sleeping pies. I climb the steep slope, placing my frods carefully on the unfamiliar terrain. My breath dances in and out. Now is the time. The saurians are here. They’ll take me to the Lizard Radio world.

  At the top of the rise I sense motion and immediately drop, belly-flat, heart hitting the earth. Head down. The treetops whisper and hiss. The wind’s light fingers touch my hair. Slowly, I lift my head. A solitary silhouette stands awash in the moonlight to my right. Not a lizard. A human.

  The moon has begun to drop to the west, and the shadow of the treetops falls several paces in front of me, drawing a clear line between more-dark and less-dark. I belly-crawl forward for a closer view, right up to the edge of the shadow line.

  The figure in the field shrugs out of his coveralls. They fall to the ground, and he steps clear, completely unclothed. Moonlight splashes the long plane of bare hip and the curve of back. He stretches arms to the sky, fingers reaching. His hair flows as he tips his head back and the moon shines on his face.

  It’s that bender boy I saw in the Pavilion.

  “Please.”

  His solitary word carries on the night air and punches my heart. It’s soft but clear, and reverberates through my skull with all of the longing in the world.

  “Please.”

  His voice quavers. Silvery liquid light shines between his outstretched fingers. My whole body leans in his direction, listening, feeling. He collapses to the ground, hugging his legs into his chest. His hair falls over his face.

  I want to help him. Whatever he wants, I want to give it to him.

  A light comes on in the far side of the office building, the short leg of the L-shape. He can’t see it, not with his head down like that. He’ll be caught. Maybe expulled. Ms. Mischetti was very clear about curfew, and about culpas and expuls.

  “Hey!” I huff out a whisper-yell. “Ssst!”

  His head comes up. He turns and looks directly at me as if he can see me. Another light comes on, an outdoor one. A door slams. I flatten again. I cannot risk an expul. I’m too young to go to Blight, but an unknown foster and RepeaterCamp? Away from Sheila and Korm, maybe forever? No.

  A figure moves through the circle of yard light, toward the fields. Tall and broad-shouldered. Ms. Mischetti, on her way to collar him. She stops mid-stride with a strangled cry, as if she’s run into a wall. I look to see what the boy has done.

  He’s gone. I arch up, propped on my hands, searching. The dark crumple of his clothes is still there in the field, but the boy is not. Ms. Mischetti sinks to the ground with her arms over her head. “No.” She mirrors the posture of the boy who was there only seconds ago. “No.”

  Suddenly, I understand. In those few seconds when I watched Ms. Mischetti approach the field, the boy vaped. But nobody has ever vaped from this camp. Ever. Maybe that’s why Ms. Mischetti is — well, it looks like she’s crying.

  I ease back into the deeper shadows and crawl until I find the path. Soft-frod back down to Pieville and slip into my slice. Get in bed and stare into the moony night with a pounding heart. That boy vaped. Korm says that vaping is good, a privilege, a treat. It’s supposed to be a terrible thing, but Korm says that you only get to do it if you’re worthy. She says she’ll vape any day now.

  Of course, she’s been saying that the whole time I’ve known her, and that’s more than seven years. Sometimes when I was younger and she didn’t show up for our sessions, I was sure that she’d vaped. But she always came back.

  Benders and samers, defectives and defiants and violents, that’s who vapes. People just like Korm. It’s the ultimate threat, vaping. Scarier than Blight because no one knows for sure what it is. But that bender boy wanted it. Begged for it.

  Sheila says if and when Korm does vape, it’ll mean the gov finally caught up with her. She also says that Korm has a tenuous grip on reality. Korm says that Sheila’s too attached to the reality of this world, and that’s why she’s so unhappy. I kind of think they’re both right.

  Before they started the camp system, lots of teens vaped. Almost 5 percent. SayFree Gov called it a growing epidemic and set out to cure it, first with the strict bender regs and then with the camps. Vapes are rare now. Almost unheard of.

  But I just saw one with my own eyes. Well, almost.

  THE GONG RINGS, AND I open my eyes to daylight leaking through the fabric walls. I look quickly to the shelf. The komodo is not there. I bolt up in the cold shiver of dawn and grab my pants from the floor, rifling in a panic through the pockets.

  My fingertips hit the reassuring shape.

  “Lizard! Are you over there?”

  Sully calls me Lizard. As if she’s speaking code to my heart, which answers with a speedy thud-thud.

  “I’m here,” I manage to say.

  “How about Number Eighteen?” she yells. “Are you there, too? Did we all survive the night?”

  I take the top coveralls from the stack of three on the shelf, shake them, and pull them on over boxers and T-shirt. The coveralls are lightweight, roomy, and comfortable. I drop the komodo in my pocket, strap on my frods, and step out into the ray of sunshine slanting through the pine needles.

  I rub my eyes, shake my head. The bright sunshine makes the night and the moon shadows seem distant, unreal. The tall girl steps out of the slice next to mine. She looks to be nineteen or twenty, but that can’t be — eighteenth birthday is the upper limit for camps. She has a thin, olive-skinned face, and her fuzz-poof of hair is dark brown. Her dark eyes are fierce, daring me to speak and daring me not to.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “I’m Nona Raglisch.”

  “Nona Raglisch,” Sully repeats, coming up behind her. “I’m Sully, and this is our Lizard. Let’s hug and be alla-One.”

  Sully steps in close, her arms out. Nona stares at her without moving, expressionless. Sully stops, her arms in an arc.

  “No? No love for your new piemates?”

  Nona doesn’t move.

  “No.” Sully answers herself and drops her arms.

  Nona’s eyes slide over me as she turns away. Feeling released, I walk with Sully toward the privo.

  “That was the icy-coldest dose of shut-up I ever got,” Sully says. “What did you do to make her hate me so much?”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t even talk to her last night.”

  Sully grins and pokes me in the arm.

  “Joke, Lizard.”

  Sheila calls me Sweet Komodo, or Gecko, or Whiptail. Skink, if she’s mad at me. But just plain Lizard? Never. I like it.

  Sully and I wash up together at the spigot. She douses her face and shakes it dry, wiping her sleeve across her eyes.

  “How old are you, anyway?” We stroll through Pieville. “You look like quite the young lizard.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Ooh, very tender meat. Fifteen!”

  I think she’s yelling my age to the world, but the door stamped with number fifteen zips open.

  “What?”

  The raspy baby-crow voice stops us both. A girl with a fluff of white
-blond hair zips out the slice door. Her coveralls just about swallow her whole.

  “Sully and the Lizard here,” says Sully. “Who are you?”

  “Rasta Lyn Shorlen, reporting for duty.”

  She salutes me, not Sully, and Sully laughs out loud.

  “Rasta, my friend, with that voice you should be working for SayFree Radio. We’d all line up to comply, even Captain Lizard. Join us for breakfast?”

  The three of us walk the path together.

  “Where are you from, Rasta?” Sully asks.

  “Shyland, west side. You?”

  “Twa Burbs. Lizard?”

  “Shy North, inner sector,” I say.

  “That’s almost local,” says Sully. “Skizzer distance, anyway. Who goes to CropCamp unless they’re A: local, or B: a loser? Present company excepted, of course.”

  “She just called me a loser,” says Rasta. “But not you.”

  “I said, present company excepted.”

  “I think you were being polite.”

  “I don’t speak polite,” says Sully.

  She shoulders me, a friendly bump that surprises me sideways. I bungle into Rasta. She laughs and shoulders me back, although her shoulder’s only as high as my rib cage. I knock into Sully again. They’re laughing, and somehow I am, too. I’ve not had a playful bump-and-push in a very long time. It’s a strange mix of scary and good.

  “So why CropCamp?” Rasta asks Sully. “No good at academics?”

  “Actually, I’m a math brainiola,” says Sully. “But I’m inclined to defiance so my da’s putting me under the Machete blade. He says if anyone can track me out of Blight, it’s her.”

  “Machete.” Rasta nods at the name twist. “Lizard, why are you here?”

  I could say that Sheila is a fikety-fike. I could mention how I almost flunked post-decision gender training, or the whole low-comply at school problem. Maybe I should just tell them that I’m a komodo dragon abandoned by the saurians on planet human. Maybe I should just shut up.

  “Because I am.”

  Rasta and Sully exchange a glance, and Rasta says, “Can’t argue with that.”

  We crest the ridge and stop at the top. The sun filters through the trees on the boys’ side and lights up the dewdrops so the green nubbins of plants glitter with light and color. Beautiful as one of Sheila’s paintings. Beautiful like the moon shadows and vape-scene, but with an entirely different palette.

  “Whatcha lookin at?” A round girl with short dreds huffs up the path and stops to stand with us.

  “Crops,” says Sully. “We’re fascinated. Bunch of burby kids dropped in the middle of agriculture.”

  “I’m not burby. My people are farmers. I’m a proud tradition.”

  “What’s your name, proud tradition?”

  “Tylee. If you all don’t want to be farmers, why are you here?”

  “Getting cleaned up and compliant,” Rasta says. “Ready to be an adult, I am.”

  Rasta’s voice hits Tylee the same way it did me and Sully, splitting a huge white smile across her dark-skinned face. As they talk, I walk over to the edge of the field and look out. Right there: That’s where that guy stood. The crumple of clothes is gone now. I wonder where he is — or if he’s anywhere. Maybe vaping is the best bender thing to do. Just step away from it all. When I get home, I’ll talk to Korm about this.

  The second gong rings.

  “Chop-chop Lizard; Machete summons,” calls Sully.

  They wait for me so we can walk together. As if they’re my friends.

  CounCircle is a grassy oval next to the Mealio, bordered by shoulder-high neatly trimmed hedges. Boys enter from the east and girls from the west, in various raggedy postures of morning. A few boys are clean-shaven, a few still smooth-cheeked, and the rest have everything from heavy shadow to wispy whiskers. Some girls are neatly put together with eyeliner and tidy braids. Others, like Sully, are hair-spiked and sleep-creased. All of us wear the same beige coveralls except for the guides, who are in light green. They direct us to stand at attention within the oval, facing Machete at the north end. Everyone looks more adult than me, except for maybe Rasta, and a small blond boy who could be her paler cousin.

  Machete is back in charge. Looks like CropCamp is going to involve a lot of Machete talk. I watch and listen carefully. Hard to believe that she’s the same person I saw rocking and crying in the night. I scan the comrade faces, hoping to see the bender and cut the night scene loose as a dreamscape. He isn’t here.

  Machete releases us with the “Come from One; live in the light; return to One” and we drop out of formation to enter the Mealio. It’s large and open, with long tables set for breakfast. Counselors, teachers, and guides sit at the tables in back. Sully and Rasta and Tylee and I end up at a table with four guys.

  “Look at me, getting lucky first morning first day.”

  A big, handsome guy sits at the head of the table. He leans on his elbows and gazes at Sully with his long-lashed eyes.

  “I’m Aaron. Marry me after CropCamp, okay?”

  “Don’t you think you should take more time to look over the goods?” Sully says. “Maybe I look like a keeper on glance, but I’ve got flaws. Rasta here, she’s flawless.”

  “Hello, Rasta.” Aaron turns to her, flashing a grin that you know he practices in private. “I’m Aaron, and I’m interviewing women for a life of wedded baby-making bliss. Care to apply?”

  “I think I’ll go for the fellow on your left there,” Sully says as Rasta’s face goes to red. “He’s got good bone structure and he’ll make pretty babies.”

  “What’s wrong with my bone structure? I’m telling you, it’s solid.” Aaron winks at me, of all people. “Do I need to show you?”

  “Please don’t,” says Sully.

  It’s what we’re supposed to do here — meet the opposite sex under controlled conditions and form unions. SayFree Radio is always talking about how stable camp-formed couples are, and how they either beat the low fertility rates or provide stable homes for adopted Blight babies.

  We pass the food around, eggs and vegetables scrambled together with a tasty sauce. A river of flirt continues to flow between Sully and Aaron, and some of it is funny. The table titters with embarrassed laughter as tributaries of the flirtation trickle to the rest of us. Even the skinny pale guy with raging acne at the far end of the table.

  Even me.

  After breakfast, they divvy us up into six crews. I’m a Wednesday, along with Rasta, which means that we get Wednesdays off. Sully’s a Saturday. Our Wednesday guide is Micah, a tall, dark-skinned guy with a beard attempt that looks like mud on his face. We follow him around on a grounds tour. He gives us our schedule, shows us the chart of compost and kitchen rotations, and passes out shower chits.

  “After this,” he says, “you earn shower chits in the power room. There are cycles and treadmills — shower chits cost a hundred cals. You can do that during your free time, before CounCircle, or between Block Four and dinner, or on your day off. Solitude after lunch and evening Social on the Quint are mando.”

  He issues our booktrons, water kaggis, and some heavy-duty scissor-clippers called secateurs. He shows us where to find spades and forks in the toolshed, and takes us out into the fields. The sun is higher now, and it pours like creamy sweet butter across my face and arms. I unzip the top of my coveralls, tilting my face up so the butter can spread to my neck, my heart.

  The biggest fields are potatoes and cucumbers, primo crops for our sector. Organic farming is a big labor demand, so anyone who doesn’t apply and qualify for an academic or specialty camp ends up in some kind of AgCamp, crops or livestock.

  This potato field stretches long to the north. Checking my position from the tree line and the path to Pieville, I step over rows to where I think the bender boy was and drop to my knees to look for footprints. While I’m down here, I stroke one of the bold green plants popping from the dirt. Its little leaves are softly textured.

  “Leave those be
and listen,” says Micah. “We’ll have crop time this afternoon.”

  I stand, brushing off my knees, aware of everyone looking at me. Micah continues with his blattery-blat talk about soil type. Rasta leans in and nudges me with her shoulder, smiling. Micah keeps talking until the gong rings for lunch.

  After lunch, Sully and Tylee and Rasta and I walk together to Pieville for Solitude.

  “Struck a luck with Aaron on my crew,” says Sully. “He’s a pretty piece of work, especially when he shuts up. If I have to crawl around in the dirt all day, I might as well be following his bum. How do things look for the Wednesdays?”

  “I’m not sure I like that Micah,” Rasta says. “Saxem sounds like a lot more fun.”

  “He is,” says Tylee. “He’s got a mouth harp he played for us every time he changed subjects. At least you didn’t get Lacey. Risa on Mondays said that she made them sit in alpha order and repeat back how to care for the secateurs.”

  We scramble down the steep slope, and the shade of the woods pulls us in with a cool breeze. We drop Tylee off at the first pie and head for the spigots.

  “Lizard was petting the potatoes, and Micah acted like she was doing something dirty,” says Rasta. “We’re at CropCamp. I thought we were supposed to love the plants.”

  “Did you see that bender in the Pavilion last night?” Sully asks.

  I jam my hands into my pockets, find the komodo, and clench it in my fist.

  “He didn’t even try to hide it.” Rasta puts her hand on her cheek, fingers spread, and bats her eyes. Her mockery is a sharp poke to my stomach.

  “Did you see how pretty his eyes were?” says Sully. “Greener than green. But I haven’t seen him anywhere today. Have you?”

  “He must’ve flunked PDGT big-time,” says Rasta. “Maybe they made him leave. He screams bender.”

  My face is hot now. My eyes are down, down, down on the ground.

  “Easy for you to say,” says Sully. “What if everyone suddenly started telling you that you’re a boy, and you have to act like one?”

  I snap up to look at Sully. Nonbenders never say anything like that.