by K. Makansi
“My mom told me I could have some champagne to celebrate,” Vale says, as if he had just won the competition. “You want a glass?”
Hana nods excitedly.
“Please!”
“Let’s go. Everyone’s already outside.” Hana looks at me as if she expects me to tag along, but I just stand there, dumbfounded. And then they turn and walk off. His arm is still around her shoulder. I am left behind without so much as a word of goodbye. I watch them go, rooted to the spot, as he picks up two glasses of golden wine and turns to her, handing her one. She reaches her long fingers down to take his hand. My throat closes up. The melody ringing in my ears has turned sour. Any happy feelings I had left flicker and die.
I watch for just a second more as Vale’s eyes go up and over Hana. I follow his glance, and see Remy Alexander standing with Tai, clutching her plasma to her chest, her eyes fixed on Vale.
I turn away, my stomach rebelling. I grab the nearest member of the wait staff and ask him to summon the Chancellor’s airship. I spot my parents down the hall and I wave to them, signaling that I’m ready to leave. My father gives me a You really shouldn’t leave just yet look, but he nods anyway. I make a break for the exit out to the airship bay.
Outside, the spring air refreshes me. It’s a beautiful March day and for a second I forget about Vale and Hana. The airship bay, a healthy, deep green lawn peppered with ferns and cherry trees, overlooks the main campus of Okaria’s learning and research institutions. I can see the Academy and the Sector Research Institute, where I hope to be a student in a year and a half. And the Okarian Agricultural Consortium building, on the same campus as the SRI. Where my father works; where my mother worked until she was nominated to the College of the Deans, and finally to the Chancellorship.
“What the hell are you doing, Soren?”
I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn towards the voice. My best friend, Jeremiah Sayyid.
“Running away from you, tubby,” I retort. He’s lost most of the extra pounds he used to carry, a result of the Academy’s strenuous athletic programs. But I still tease him, and he gives back as good as he gets.
“At least I’m not the Sector’s most recently registered skyscraper,” he says. “You put Jack’s magical beanstalk to shame.”
“You seem to be catching up to me pretty quickly.”
“Seriously, though, what are you doing out here?”
“You know. Escaping the politicians.”
“So Vale, you mean.”
I shrug.
“What’d he do this time?”
I glare at the skyline I was so recently admiring.
“He and Hana are running around together.”
Jeremiah sighs.
“Tough, man. Sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a silence for a few minutes.
“Well, I’m always bored to tears at these political functions—although I should tell you I loved your performance, not that I can make heads or tails of those pieces, but it was pretty mind-blowing. Anyway, none of these politicians have much to do with me, nor do I give two shits about them, so maybe we can get out of here and play some chess.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Twenty seeds says I check you in as many moves.”
“Forty says I beat you two out of three,” he returns my challenge.
“You’re on.”
II.
“Ha!” Jeremiah exclaims, slamming one of the pieces down. “Checkmate!”
I sit back and study the board. I’m still in my dress clothes, though at least I was able to take off my jacket and vest. Jeremiah caught me in a trap that time. By the time I’d seen it, it was too late. When he’s playing, Jeremiah’s stony-faced and emotionless until the very last minute, when he’s either celebrating or chucking pieces at the walls.
“Damn,” I mutter. Then, louder: “You still owe me twenty seeds, though. Unless you beat me at the next game.”
Just then, the enormous, ironclad front door to the Chancellor’s mansion swings open. I can hear the hinges creak, and I listen for my parents’ voices.
“Soren?” The voice belongs neither to my mother nor my father. I leap up and run out of the sprawling living room where Jeremiah and I are playing and into the main hall.
“James!” I exclaim.
“There you are,” he says gruffly. His weary, rugged face looks like photos of the desert sands from the South. His one good eye is bright and dangerous, currently fixed on me. Doctor James Rhinehouse.
“No need for you to get up,” he rumbles. He leans heavily on his cane and I can tell he’s in a lot of pain.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Nothing, nothing. I just wanted to congratulate you on winning the competition for the second year running. I watched the performance from my lab.”
“Thank you,” I respond, “but that’s not what I meant. You look awful. Do you want a drink?”
“Love one.”
Jeremiah comes out to the hallway.
“James, this is my friend Jeremiah.” Rhinehouse looks him up and down, and then sticks out his hand by way of greeting.
“I’ve heard about you,” Rhinehouse says, glaring at Jeremiah. “Soren’s friend from the factories. Which one are you from again?”
“Ellas,” he responds.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. You’re a Sayyid, aren’t you? I’ve met your father. You look just like him.”
“People always tell me that, sir,” Jeremiah says.
“Don’t ever call me ‘sir’ again, and maybe we can be friends. How about that drink, Soren?”
I head over to the Dietician’s panels. They’re built into every room, so we can call in orders for food or drinks whenever we want. I press a button on the glass panel and speak.
“Cocktail order – Doctor James Rhinehouse.”
Jeremiah leads the way back into the guest room. As usual, James refuses to be helped. He limps by himself through the long hallway and finally sits down in his favorite plush chair. He heaves a sigh once he’s seated.
“They cut down on the pain dosage,” he says, before I can ask what’s wrong for a third time. “Damn Dieticians think their stem cell implants are helping. They’re not. Still a long road ahead before they’ll be able to fix this old leg.”
“What changed?”
“Halved my dose of ibuprofen, cut out the hydrocodone altogether. Say the implants they put in last month should be kicking in about now. They think they know everything.”
James’ leg was blown to smithereens when one of his friends stepped on a landmine back in the days when Sector scientists were still traipsing around the Wilds, trying to piece together what all happened during the Religious Wars and the Famine Years. His friend didn’t make it out, but James managed to get an airship to lift him out. If it weren’t for the medical advances we’ve made in the last century, his leg might have been amputated. But fortunately, the doctors were able to recreate the destroyed parts of the leg using stem cells, and the rest was salvageable. But where the stem cells and the natural leg came together, they had to do extensive nanosurgery, and that’s where the pain comes in.
“Have you appealed to the Board?” If you’re over eighteen, you can appeal the Dieticians’ decisions about the ingredients put in your Mealpaks and Snakpaks. Not very many people do this, though, because not everyone has the education necessary to understand what the Dieticians’ readouts mean. James is one of the Sector’s most prominent biologists, though, so he has no problem challenging the Dieticians whenever he thinks they’re wrong.
“I’m about to. Tonight.” He sighs and leans back in his chair. “I just wanted to stop by and say congratulations first. Your parents not here?”
I shake my head.
“Jeremiah and I left them at the concert hall.”
“Had enough of all the politicking, hmm?” he growls. “Good for you. Last thing this country needs is another politician.”
&nbs
p; I smile. One of our butlers, Evan, comes in carrying a platter. A tall glass containing some dark purple liquid sits in the center, and the butler hands it gracefully to James.
“What’d Fallon put in it this time?” James asks, none too politely.
“Enough vodka to make even you happy,” Evan responds with a little less gentility than usual. Jeremiah and I snicker. James doesn’t mind, and the wait staff like it when he comes around—they don’t have to be quite so formal as they do with some of our other guests.
“I’m much obliged, then,” James replies.
“Oh,” Evan says, “Fallon was wondering if you could get him the recipe for that cheese you brought over last time?”
“Thought mine was better than his, did he?” James growls. “Glad he’s finally admitting defeat. I’ll get it to him. Tell him to look for a courriel tomorrow.”
Cooking and home food production is strictly prohibited, as the Dieticians are responsible for providing all our meals and nutrition. Most flats in Okaria don’t have much more than a heat lamp for reheating MealPaks. But some people quietly work around those rules, and if the food is good enough, most people will look the other way. Rhinehouse has been making his own cheese and jams for years, a skill he told me he got from his grandmother, who suffered through some of the worst of the Famine Years. His cheeses, in particular, are quietly famous around the capital.
Evan looks up and around suddenly, as though listening for something none of the rest of us can hear. He touches his finger to his ear and turns to me.
“Master Skaarsgard, the chancellor and the doctor are home.”
I sigh and settle back into the sofa. Jeremiah glances at me. I cock my eyebrows at him. I’m going to get it now. My parents won’t be happy I abandoned the celebration so quickly. As the chancellor’s son, I’m expected to put on a good show whenever possible, to engage those in power and play the part. But there’s not much I dislike more than small talk and forced socialization.
The door in the foyer rumbles open, and I don’t bother to get up.
“James is here,” I call to my parents, hoping his presence will serve as a buffer for the talking-to I’m about to get.
“Oh, wonderful,” my mother calls, but the words sound more like a sigh. When she and my father join us, I notice that both of them look worried and anxious—my mother especially.
“Hello, James,” she says. “Good to see you, Jeremiah.”
“Hello, Chancellor,” Jeremiah says, stiffly. My mother waves her hand at him as if trying to brush his words away.
“How many times have I told you to call me Cara? No reason to be so formal around here.”
“Cara, Odin,” James nods to them both. He starts to get to his feet, but my father waves him off.
“Don’t bother, James. No reason to get up in the company of friends.” He smiles, but there’s no warmth to it. Only fatigue. Where is the lecture I was expecting? Something big must be going on.
“I was hoping I could speak with you about the contingency plan Philip’s proposed in the People’s College,” James says. “The Orleáns want you to approve it, don’t they?”
“Yes,” my mother says, as though she’d rather talk about anything else but that. “They’re insistent. Philip wants an answer by tonight.”
“Damn them,” James swears, his voice quiet but still loud enough that we can all hear it. “Going to waste hundreds of lives if they have their way.” I cock my head. What’s he talking about?
“Let’s head to the meeting room, why don’t we?” my mother asks.
“Ugh,” James grunts, but pushes himself to his feet. My father picks up his cocktail and follows him and my mother through the halls. He turns to me and Jeremiah, almost as an afterthought.
“Feel free to take the airship out for dinner, Soren. Your mother and I won’t have time to celebrate with you tonight, but I promise we’ll do something tomorrow. Okay?”
I nod dumbly, and he turns and walks off without another word. I turn to Jeremiah, who is staring at me with a mixture of excitement and shock. What was that about? he mouths to me. I shake my head. I don’t know.
“Well, we best take advantage of this opportunity, hmm?” He grins. “The Chancellor’s airship at our disposal? I’d say it’s time we went out and had some fun.”
I return later that night after dropping Jeremiah off at his Academy dormitory. I’m stumbling a little, and I’d prefer no one know that my vision’s a little hazy. Jeremiah and I both turned sixteen this past year. With that came the freedom to drink beer and wine, and both of us have been taking advantage—maybe too much so. My head is heavy and full and I have trouble aligning my eye to the retinal scanner to open the back door.
The doors slide open and I immediately make a break for the kitchen. Fallon won’t be working late tonight, so I can grab a glass of water without anyone watching. I fill up a glass and chug it down, then fill up another and lean against the metal, my mind cloudy.
There are voices floating down the hallway. The door to my mother’s office is open. I can hear James’ low, growling voice echo through the halls.
“These are your citizens we’re talking about, Cara!” James says, trenchant.
“Corine seems to think it’s the only way to stop the famine,” my mother responds.
“If word ever gets out to the public that human trials were conducted at this stage, there will be a revolution,” James says. “You can’t just take a bunch of Farm workers and shoot them full of drugs like lab rats!”
My father interrupts, his voice quiet, so quiet I can’t hear what he’s saying.
“That’s a different story, Odin,” Cara says.
I creep through the halls, trying to get closer to the voices. I worry that I’m being louder and clumsier than I think I am, in my current state, but that’s not going to stop me.
“This is an order of magnitude worse than what the OAC is already doing. This is why I refuse to work for them.” James’ voice is shaking with anger. “If you allow this to proceed, Cara, you’ll be undoing everything we’ve worked towards for a hundred years.”
“We could allow them to volunteer,” my mother says desperately. “It wouldn’t be coercion, James, if they volunteered for the studies… .”
“They’ll take anything if they see it as a solution, Cara. If it’ll stop them from starving to death. You’re offering them a choice between a slow, painful death and a quick, painful death. You’ve seen the results of the lab trials. You’ve seen the molecular models. You know what these drugs can do when the biochemistry goes wrong.”
“We’ll never know unless we try,” my mother says quietly.
There’s a long pause. I wish I could see inside the office, to watch them around the table. I try to breathe as quietly as possible.
“Cara, I won’t speak against you publicly if you allow this to go forward. But I won’t help you, either. You have to use your best judgment. But know that if you approve Philip’s contingency plan, you’ll more than likely be condoning the deaths of Okarian citizens. That’s just the way the science works.”
“He’s right.” My father’s deep voice seems to echo down the halls. “Statistically speaking, allowing these trials to proceed will mean at least a few deaths out of every hundred. Until they get the doses right, the combinations right.”
“What other options are there?” Her voice is suddenly loud. “We have no choice. There’s no other way to feed our people until the OAC successfully re-engineers the dying crops. Until this whole nightmare is over. Until then, people continue to die.”
James coughs, and I hear his cane tapping on the floor.
“All right,” he says, “I’ve said my piece. I’m tired and I don’t have an easy solution. I’ll leave you two to sweat over this. I’m going home.”
I immediately duck around the corner and into a dark adjacent room.
“Thank you, James. I appreciate your advice, as always.”
“Be a damn nice s
ight if you’d actually take it, for once.”
My parents laugh, but the silence afterwards is thick. I can hear his ungainly steps as he walks down the hall.
“Oh, James,” my father calls to him. “If you want me to talk to the Dieticians’ Board….”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”
He stumps down the hall and out through the same back door I came in. I don’t move from my hiding spot. But my parents are silent for a long moment before either of them speaks.
“Did you hear Soren come in?” my mother finally asks. I hold my breath.
“Yes,” my father says. “I think he’s in the kitchen.”
“Should we tell him?”
“We can’t, Cara. It’s classified.”
“I know, but—this is a big deal. People are dying.”
“Maybe.” My father pauses. “You’re probably right. We should talk to him in the morning. We never did celebrate his award.” He sighs audibly.
“Another sacrifice we’ve made to politics. Some days, I wish I’d never accepted the nomination.”
“There’s no place in our world for regret.”
Somehow, listening in on discussions of top-secret controversy felt less invasive than this personal conversation. Suddenly I feel guilty. I tiptoe as delicately as possible back down the hall and into the kitchen. From there, I head upstairs to my bedroom. But by the time I’m in bed, the guilt has faded and my head is swimming with the haze of the alcohol and of everything I just overheard.
Likely condoning the deaths of Okarian citizens … undoing everything we’ve worked towards for a hundred years … James isn’t one for melodrama. He couldn’t have been exaggerating. We have no choice, my mother said. I know there’s been talk of dying crops on the Farms, of a disease that’s spreading through the wheat, but I didn’t know people were starving. I didn’t know it was this bad. I stare at the wall, thinking about everything James and my parents said, wondering what alternatives there are, and if the Orleáns really do have the only solution.
Spring 9, 07h48, Sector Annum 102
Gregorian Calendar: March 28