The Seeds Trilogy Complete Collection: The Sowing, The Reaping, The Harvest (including The Prelude)

by K. Makansi

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Will you help us, Chancellor?” she pleads. Cara smiles at her, but there’s helplessness in her eyes.

  “We’re trying, Ayla. We’re trying. Can we meet your friends now?”

  Why is my mother talking to her like a child?

  Some of the other Farm workers step forward, and my mother greets them all in turn, while Corine smiles and Evander watches. They all look lost and adrift. Their eyes are dark with shadows and their heads hang like prisoners headed to the gallows. They are gaunt. Nothing like the images of strong, healthy men and women that decorate the propaganda. Nothing like the workers I’ve met on previous visits. I’ve read about the effects of starvation on the body and the mind, but this change seems deeper, more profound.

  Jean stands on the sidelines, apparently unsure of what to say or do. I slip glances every now and then at Moriana, to my right, whose eyes are wide as she stares around the room. I notice her plasma has disappeared. She’s not taking notes anymore.

  “You are all hungry and tired,” my mother says, after speaking with everyone in the room. “We’re doing everything we can to help you. Our top priority in the capital is ending this devastation and bringing rhythm and order back to your Farm. You are the crux of our society, and without you no one in Okaria would survive. So know this: I will do whatever it takes to ensure that you are fed and clothed, as the Okarian Sector promises to do for all its citizens. To the harvest,” she says.

  “To the harvest,” we all echo automatically. The refrain feels empty.

  “We’ll be back to see you soon,” Corine says, with a bright, too-cheery smile. “And by then you’ll all be fat and full again.”

  My mother turns away from them abruptly and heads out the door. Corine and Evander follow her without a second’s thought. I hesitate for a moment, watching as the girl Ayla starts to tremble and then collapses onto the bench nearby. I shudder. Moriana and I exchange glances, her eyes wide and nervous, before I turn after the others.

  “Chancellor,” I call, running to my mother and catching her by the elbow. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Don’t touch me like that in front of the others,” she hisses back at me. I keep forgetting that I’m taller than her now, and it startles me for a moment. I drop my arm and pull back. “You might be my son, but you will treat me with the respect due to my position when we’re in public.” I nod, contrite. But I still want answers.

  “Why are those people so vacant?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Soren,” Corine says, stepping up to us. “Do you think they take kindly to starvation, to watching their friends die around them? Of course not. Famine is a breeding ground for discontent. The OAC has altered their Dieticians’ profiles to make the workers docile until we can get good food in front of them again.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t tell him?” Corine stares at my mother. “I was under the impression your son knew what was happening here. Isn’t that why you asked to raise his security clearance?”

  My mother meets Corine’s eyes, but I can tell by the way she’s not blinking that she doesn’t want to answer that question. Corine doesn’t wait for an answer, though. She turns back to me, full of condescension and false kindness.

  “There were riots, Soren.” Her voice is soft and gentle, but confident. Too confident. Coal-black anger rises in my chest as she goes on. “Three Farms ignited as surely as a match on dry tinder. People killing each other in fights over what scraps of food were available. Buildings and crops burning. We have to keep order somehow,” she says, almost innocently.

  “But you’re drugging them. Dieticians are supposed to enhance your abilities, not destroy them. Those people in there are barely functional.”

  “Would you rather have them killing each other?” It’s not Corine who answers, but Moriana. She pushes her brown hair behind her ears as she speaks, breathing fast. “It’s better this way, Soren. It’s better than if they were dying at each other’s hands.”

  “Yeah, it’s definitely better that they die at our hands,” I spit.

  “Soren,” my mother cautions. “Watch your tongue.” But she lacks conviction. She, too, sounds uncertain.

  “We’re doing everything we can to alleviate their suffering,” Corine says. “And believe me, this is a temporary measure. Once we restore everything to full functionality, we’ll return the Farm workers to the standard core enhancement regimes.”

  I pull back, unsure whether or not to be reassured. I glance at my mother. She nods at me.

  “It’s temporary, Soren.”

  I meet Corine’s eyes once again. There’s a glint of satisfaction in her smile. The same superiority I always see in her. But now I’m unsure again. Maybe she is right. Maybe it is better than people rioting and killing each other over food that doesn’t exist. Surely this is a better way. And if it really is only temporary….

  I drop my eyes, and Corine turns away. She and my mother walk off together, and Jean and his guards follow them.

  “I was worried at first, too,” Moriana says quietly to me as she falls in step behind Corine and my mother. “But this is better than a repeat of the Famine Years. Anything is better than that.”

  I nod. Anything is better than that. I glance back at Evander.

  He hasn’t said a word.

  Spring 75, Sector Annum 102, 13h27

  Gregorian Calendar: June 3

  I.

  I keep my eyes low. The dark, marching second movement of Shostakovitch’s 5th symphony rings in my ears, unbidden, repeating over and over again. It sounds both funerary and triumphal. The Academy’s hallways are glass, open to the skies above. Usually I find myself running into other students because I can’t keep my eyes off the sky. But today, I don’t want to speak to anyone. I wouldn’t mind if everyone vanished off the face of the planet.

  “—Yes, well, my father says that Philip Orleán is going to get it.” A girl’s haughty voice floats up to me from behind.

  “You don’t even know if the vote’s going to go through, Ella,” another voice says, hushed.

  “Everyone in the OAC knows that Skaarsgard won’t be chancellor by the end of the day.”

  “The vote hasn’t even been proposed yet, and even if it does, it’ll go to the College Guardian.”

  The tension inside me reaches a critical mass, and I can’t bite my tongue anymore. I turn around abruptly. The two girls practically skid into me.

  “I’d appreciate you not talking about my mother as if she’s already been voted out of office.” I have to fight to remain cordial. I recognize the two girls. They’re a year younger than me—the same class as Hana. Ella Azizi, whose father works for the OAC, and Nonhla Greene, whose parents are both in the Sector Defense Forces. “Especially while I’m right in front of you.”

  “Sorry, Soren,” Ella squeaks, “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “We can talk about politics at school,” Nonhla says defiantly. “It’s not our fault your mother is the chancellor.” She pauses for a minute, and I can’t think of anything to say to that. But then she continues: “But I really do hope she doesn’t get voted out. And I’m not just saying that. I think she’s a great chancellor.”

  Ella shoots her friend a look that reeks of surprise and contempt. I stare at Nonhla, wondering if she’s being serious. Her eyes are wide, earnest. My confidence falters in face of her kindness.

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  Nonhla nods.

  “Okay, well, good luck today,” she says. She reaches down to take Ella’s hand and pulls her past me, down the hall.

  I sigh. I turn and follow them, trudging down the hall for my last class of the day. Political History. I palm the door to the classroom open and glare at the top lip of the door. Ceilings, low-hanging branches, and doorways are all steadily encroaching on me. These days, whenever I walk through a door, I have to fight an instinct to duck.

  I look around for Jeremiah, but
he’s not here yet. I slouch down in my chair at the circular table and pull out my plasma, wishing this day were over and done with. The door opens again and Vale walks in, chatting animatedly with Moriana Nair.

  “Yeah, the author claims that people in the Old World used to dye their hair and skin unnatural colors, like green and blue and purple.”

  “That’s absurd,” she says, laughing. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “And—get this. They used to draw on their bodies. Permanently.”

  “Like—tattoos?” Moriana gasps. The word is quiet, taboo.

  “Yeah,” Vale says. “With ink and everything.”

  The disconnect between these students, laughing and joking about archaic traditions from the Old World, and the wire-thin Farm workers I met on my visit, suddenly strikes me, like a sledgehammer to the chest. There’s nothing I can do, I remind myself. But that doesn’t make the bitterness go away. I wonder if Vale knows, if has even the slightest clue of what’s going on beyond the city limits. Moriana knows. Has she told him what she saw at the Farm? Does his mother share her concerns with him like my mother does with me?

  The hologram in the center flashes blue and green to indicate that class is starting, and Moriana and Vale finally stop talking. I glance back towards the doorway, wondering where Jeremiah is.

  “If you’ve done the pre-reading,” our instructor begins, “you know that today we’ll be talking about resource and land use in the Old World.”

  The flashing blue and green image morphs into an aerial photograph of an expansive dry riverbed.

  “Who can identify this image?”

  The green light flashes in front of Vale’s desk. I resist the urge to roll my eyes again. Of course he knows the answer.

  “It’s the Colorado River. It’s one of the few photographs we have of that river that have been taken by Sector drones.”

  “Very good. Yes, rarely do drones venture so far from Sector borders today. This was taken a decade or two after drone manufacture—” he stops, his eyes on the doorway. I whirl in my seat. Jeremiah is standing there, chomping on an apple. His hair is windswept and his face enveloped with a grin.

  “Jeremiah Sayyid,” the instructor sighs. “So kind of you to join us.”

  “Sorry, sir. I got lost.”

  “You got … lost?” the instructor responds, skeptically.

  “Yes, sir. In the eyes of a beautiful girl.” He grins at Moriana. I turn a laugh into a poorly-disguised cough as Moriana turns bright red and glares at him.

  “Is this like that time you ‘forgot’ how to get to school in the morning, Jeremiah?” Moriana shoots back, and even our instructor can’t keep the smile off his face. One time when he overslept for class, Jeremiah tried to convince one of our instructors that he had forgotten how to get to school. It would have been an understandable excuse if not for the fact that all Academy students live in dormitories on campus. The story quickly became legendary.

  Jeremiah seems unaffected by the laughter at his expense. The cheeky expression seems permanently attached to his face, and takes another bite of his apple as he takes his usual place at my side. His eyes are still fixed on Moriana. He’s been flirting with her—and being rejected—for the better part of this academic year. It doesn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. I glance over at her and realize that her eyes haven’t left Jeremiah’s, either. My best friend going out with Vale’s best friend? The idea would be ludicrous, if not for the fact that Jeremiah could make friends with a brick wall.

  “That’s enough, now,” the instructor says, after the laughter has died down. “Let’s start getting lost in history instead, why don’t we?”

  What’s going on? I mouth at Jeremiah. He puts a finger to his lips in response. The instructor starts talking about drought and over-irrigation in the Old World, and Jeremiah taps the screen of his plasma and looks at me pointedly. I glance down at my plasma. There’s a green light blinking in the corner—a message.

  We’re madly in love. – J.S.

  You’re a liar. – S.S.

  We’re getting married after class today. You’ll be the best man, of course. – J.S.

  I’d hit him if I could. But I can’t stop smiling.

  Ah, it’s just another day in paradise, trying to convince the girl of my dreams to go out with me. – J. S.

  “It’s that bad?”

  “It’s worse. I don’t know what to do. I can’t do anything, really. But my father’s about to have a breakdown, and my mother is, well….”

  Jeremiah watches me carefully as I palm out of my dorm room. I lean against the wall as the lock clicks behind me. His expression is distinctly different from the cheery confidence earlier in the classroom. Now his eyes are round and concerned. Sympathetic.

  “She’s just being Cara,” he finishes for me.

  One of my favorite things about Jeremiah is that it seems he’s the only one in school keeping up with my growth spurt. Aside from my father, he’s the only person I can look dead in the eye when standing up straight. We seem to be matching each other inch for inch. The only difference is that, while I can’t get a grasp on where my limbs are supposed to be at any given moment, Jeremiah seems to know exactly how every piece of his body fits together. He’s been the top scorer on our soccer team this year, mostly because he’s twice as big as anyone except me, and the only one of us boys who seems to innately understand how to move his arms and legs in a coordinated fashion. Aside from Vale, that is, who I don’t think has ever had an uncoordinated moment in his life.

  “Yeah. Withdrawn. Quiet. The pressure’s getting to everyone. But her most of all.”

  I don’t say everything that I want to. How tired I am of people watching me in the halls at school. How sick I am of hearing the name Cara Skaarsgard on the vidscreens. How I’m constantly exhausted and on the verge of exploding at the same time. In a way, tonight’s vote will be a relief. Even if my mother loses the chancellorship, at least it’ll be over.

  Jeremiah nods, almost sadly.

  “I want to be optimistic. But word on the street is that it’s bad, Soren. My dad says the famine has even reached the factory towns.”

  “You heard from him?” I ask. This is news. Jeremiah doesn’t have a great relationship with his father. Ever since he elected to take the TREE scholarship and come to the capital and to the Academy, they haven’t spoken much.

  “Yeah. He only wrote me to ask for news from the capital.” His voice is wry, notched with resentment. “Never gets in touch unless he wants something. But anyway, he says there’s been serious rationing even in the towns. Belts getting tighter. Going to bed with empty stomachs.”

  The secrecy I was sworn to when I visited the Farm didn’t last long. Word of the starvation got out just a week or two after our visit, when a few renegade Farm workers took matters into their own hands and hijacked a carrier ship transporting food to Rivers, one of the factory towns. They murdered the pilot and took the ship off the Sector’s airspace grid, then flew it back to their Farm. When officials at Rivers got word, they took it public, and suddenly the food crisis was national news. What little control my mother had over the situation dissipated.

  I glare at a blank space on the wall. Pain, hunger, sickness—these are things we thought we had buried in our past. The Sector is supposed to take care of its citizens, and we’re failing them. The virus is the result of an experiment gone wrong, Evander said. We caused this pain. The OAC’s failed experiment with devastating consequences. There’s nothing I can do about it, but it gets to me.

  “So what do you think?” he asks, after a long pause.

  I shrug. I don’t want to say what I think. I know what’s going to happen this afternoon. I know it in my bones, and I don’t want to admit it.

  Jeremiah’s eyes go up and over my shoulder. His eyes narrow only slightly, before his characteristic social grin settles back on his face. I follow his gaze, twisting around to see what he’s looking at.

  “Hey, ’Mi
ah, Soren.” It’s Vale. I cross my arms. He seems to follow me everywhere I go, lurking just over my shoulder. “I just wanted to say I hope everything goes well for your mom with the vote tonight.”

  “Oh,” I say, taken aback by this gesture of goodwill. I narrow my eyes at him, suspecting some ulterior motive. “Thank you.”

  “I’m really sorry it’s come to this.”

  He sighs, all maudlin and contrite. There’s pity in Vale’s eyes, and it brings up a rust-red anger in me. There’s a loud silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  Vale glances at Jeremiah, as if for support, but Miah’s crossed arms and faded smile offer no reprieve.

  “The vote. But there are so many people dying. I wish your mother—the Chancellor—had found a—I wish there were a different way.”

  He doesn’t look so confident now.

  “You think my mother could have done a better job, is that it? That if she’d been a better leader no one would have died, none of this would have happened? That maybe the Orleáns will succeed where the Skaarsgards have failed?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Vale says, meeting my eyes. He opens his mouth to continue, but I cut him off.

  “You come here with smiles and olive branches to tell me you’re sorry, you wish there were a different way,” I snarl. His eyes narrow and his hands twitch as I speak. “But your father is the top choice to take the chancellor’s seat. You’re the one who stands to gain. Don’t condescend, Vale. We both know your well wishes mean nothing today.”

  He clenches his jaw and rolls up onto the balls of his feet. For a moment I think he might hit me. Jeremiah tenses. I fight the temptation to smile. It’s good to see him register some real emotion for once. Then he relaxes and settles back onto his heels.

  “I don’t give a shit about the politics,” Vale says, the anger raw in his voice. “I’m not trying to take anything from you. I just wanted to tell you I hope everything goes well. That’s all.”

  “‘Goes well?’ For you or for me, Vale?”