The Secret Under My Skin

by Janet Mcnaughton

  “That sounds wonderful,” Erica says. I don’t know what to do. Kids like me are human garbage. In St. Pearl, you never knew when kids would disappear, only that they would. Even when I lived with the Tribe. One day, a kid would simply not come back. What happened? No one even asked. If this is some kind of trick, I’m finished.

  “Finished?” Erica asks.

  “What?” The mug slips.

  “Careful, dear. Are you finished your tea?” Erica puts her hand out to steady me.

  “I’m finished,” I say. I put the untouched mug back on the tray.

  Lem Howell smiles, showing his big yellow teeth. “Wait till you see this, Erica,” he says. “It’ll blow you away.” I hang back, trying to decide if I should bolt down the path when he opens the door. He notices. “You, too, Little Wheat.”

  Little Wheat. No one has played with my name since Hilary did. I stare at him as he leaves the house. His massive shoulders stoop as if he has been carrying a heavy weight for too long. Lem Howell isn’t going to hurt me. Instead of dashing for safety, I take a deep breath and follow him. We walk around the house to the path that continues up the hill. But after just a few metres, Lem turns sharply into the trees. This path is deeply shaded and well worn, rocks and tree roots showing. Could this really lead to a garden? Then I see light ahead. The path opens onto a big, grassy clearing that is completely hidden from the house. A fenced garden fills the middle, the bare beds already raked for winter. But the garden isn’t what catches my attention. There are strange devices on the fence, in the trees, and staked to the ground.

  Some are made of plastic bottles (taken from the landfill, I guess), others are made of tree branches and flat ribbons, metal bars and rope. Dozens of them. It isn’t pretty. Lem Howell must be insane to decorate a garden like this.

  Then, as if to answer me, a strong wind howls down the hill. It rattles the dry leaves in the maples, sings through the spruce, and swoops down on the clearing, lifting my hair and touching my cheek. And the things begin to sing. Some hum and some whistle, some clang together but in the most beautiful ways, as if the wind itself were singing. It sounds like the music of the earth. Lem raises his arms to the sky and cries above the song:

  Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

  What if my leaves are falling like its own!

  I join in,

  The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

  Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

  Sweet though in sadness . . .

  But I stop, appalled, because just as I spoke the wind fell and my words, which I thought would be hidden, have echoed across the clearing. Both Lem and Erica stare at me. Lem smiles. “Good for you, Little Wheat,” he says. “‘Ode to the West Wind.’”

  But Erica looks shaken. “You’re supposed to be a street kid,” she says. “Where would you learn nineteenth-century English poetry?” She looks as if I have somehow betrayed her.

  “From the lastbook scripts. I love poetry.” I tell her about the biblio-tech and how I found poetry after I’d read everything I was supposed to read. She listens carefully.

  When I finish, she says, “I see.” But it seems she does not. Something has changed between us, something even our conversations about the Commission and the technocaust could not. My chest aches in a strange way.

  I’ve forgotten about the garden. Lem is disappointed. “I wanted to show you this,” he says. “Come on, look.” I follow him gratefully. My eyes sting as if I might cry. I can’t remember the last time I cried. Could knowing poetry be wrong?

  Plastic bottles are mounted on the fence posts. Each one is slit. “This is my wind-organ,” he says. “See? The different size slits make different sounds. But each one has to be cut just so. It’s tuned to a pentatonic scale.” I have no idea what this means. I glance back at Erica. “I thought you were interested,” Lem says. “Look.” He takes me to some wooden frames mounted in the trees. “My aeolian lyres, just like in the poem.” A breeze catches them and they sing again softly as if to say, “Look at me!”

  So I do. The frames are strung with flat, narrow ribbon, brown and shiny. I’ve seen this stuff before. I’ve been looking at it all my life. “What are they made of?” I ask.

  Lem catches the note of interest in my voice. “Audio tape,” he says. “It was a way of recording sound. Useless now, but it lasts forever. It’s just the thing to string an aeolian lyre.”

  “What do you mean, recording sound?”

  “It was a pre-computer technology. The tapes were placed in a mechanical device. Magnetic patterns copied the sound waves. The earliest ones went from one big reel to another. The last ones were fixed into little plastic boxes.”

  “Little flat boxes?” I can’t believe this.

  “Yeah. About this big,” he brings his hands together, “called cassettes.”

  My Object. We are talking about my Object. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “Sure. There was a revival about thirty years ago. Cassettes are easy to find. I used some to make these.” He motions to the aeolian lyres.

  The wind gusts again and I have to wait before I can speak. “Can you hear the sounds? Do you have a way to do that?”

  Lem shakes his head. “It was a fad. The technology was too awkward to work with. Cassettes are just junk now. No one has that sort of machinery anymore.” But Someone must have. I put my head down to hide my disappointment.

  “Little Wheat, why all the questions?”

  I can’t give up the idea. “Couldn’t you? Couldn’t you make a machine to hear the sounds on one of these, what did you call them, cassettes?”

  “It would be a real challenge, even for me. The mechanical and magnetic components have to work together. Those primitive machines are really complex. Anyway, all the music recorded on them was digitalized a long time ago.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Of course,” he continues, “I’m not saying it couldn’t be done.”

  “You aren’t?”

  Erica comes over to us. “What are you talking about?” she asks.

  “My Object. Remember, you saw it the other night. Lem knows what it is.”

  “An audio cassette,” he explains, “a throwback to the dark ages of sound recording.”

  “But why would you have something like that?” Erica asks me.

  “I don’t know. It was the only thing left. Hilary traded away everything else I had when she found me for stuff we needed. But she could never get anyone to take my Object.” In my excitement, Hilary’s name tumbles out. I don’t bother to stop myself or explain.

  “They’re totally useless unless you want the tape to make something,” Lem gestures back to his wind lyres. “Worthless junk to most people.”

  “And you were a baby when you hit the streets?” Erica asks me.

  “A little older. I could talk. You don’t suppose—” I am almost afraid to continue. “You don’t suppose it might have a message? For me? From my parents?” My voice rises with each word.

  “But why use an extinct technology?” Erica asks.

  Lem chuckles. “If you wanted to hide something priceless, you’d be smart to put it in a worthless box. If she still has a message from her parents, it worked, didn’t it?” He turns to Erica. “Only someone really clever would think of a trick like that. They’d need access to the technology, as well. Maybe she’s one of the Disappeared. Maybe her parents were trying to get to the Beothuks.”

  What does that mean! I want to ask, but Erica shakes her head. “We don’t know there’s anything on that tape, Lem. And look at her. She’s too young. She can’t be more than twelve or thirteen. That means she was born around 2354. If she could talk when she landed on the streets, it would have been ‘56 or ‘57. The technocaust was over then.”

  “What are you talking about, please.” It isn’t a question. I’m begging to know.

  Erica looks as if she just remembered I was there. “Oh, sorry. The Disappeared are the children who vanished when their parents
were rounded up in the technocaust. Some of them were taken away and adopted. Some died—”

  “—and some could be street kids like me!”

  When Erica speaks, her voice is kind. “Yes, but, Blay, it was over by the time you were born.”

  I am disappointed beyond words.

  “Don’t feel bad, Little Wheat,” Lem says. “Tell you what. I’ll try to make a working audio cassette player for you. Maybe there’s something important on the tape anyway.”

  “Would you really?”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  “Thank you.” I can’t believe he’d try to help me. Can this be the man I was terrified of?

  “Now,” Erica says, “we should get back.” She smiles. “I have a feeling Blay will come to see you again, Lem.”

  Erica’s right. I will be back. But as we leave, I remember how upset Erica was with me, for reasons I still don’t understand. “That story about your Object is true, isn’t it, Blay?” she asks suddenly.

  “Of course.”

  “You really don’t know who you are?”

  It seems like such a cruel question. “If I knew who I was,” I tell her, “what would I be doing here?”

  She turns to me. “That’s what I need to know. Look at me,” she says, gripping my shoulders. “I have to know I can trust you. Did anyone send you here?”

  I can’t understand why she’s suddenly treating me like this. The tears I managed to forget in the garden fill my eyes. “What do you mean? I thought you liked me.” My voice drops to a whisper.

  She softens a little. “I want to, Blay, but I have to be sure you are what you say. What kind of street kid knows nineteenth-century Romantic poetry? What was that, Keats?”

  “Shelley. ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ Lem knew it, too,” I say, defending myself.

  “Lem went to university. No street kid has that kind of education. It makes me wonder if you were sent to find out things about us.”

  “Who would send me?”

  “The Commission. Remember what I said about the power struggle? The Commission would put someone in our house to spy on us if they could. For a minute, back there in the garden, I was convinced you couldn’t be what you seemed. Then you started telling Lem about your Object. Everything you say about your past is so consistent. Now I’m totally confused.”

  I choose my words carefully. “Marrella picked me. How could she pick a spy out of fifteen kids?”

  She nods. “You’re right. We hoped there wouldn’t be time to recruit you. That’s why William arrived early and why he wouldn’t let you out of his sight after you were chosen. The warders don’t like us, but they don’t dare disobey. Not yet.”

  Now I understand the struggle between Warder November and the Master. I’m terrified Erica might send me back. “But you’ve told me all these things. If you don’t trust me, don’t tell me anything I shouldn’t know. That would work, wouldn’t it?”

  She smiles. “It might. I’ll have to think about it. I was hoping you would be someone I can trust.” I wonder what she means, but it’s not a good time to be too curious. “Blay,” Erica adds, “you do seem to be telling the truth.”

  I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I was holding. As we walk on, I think back to the conversation Erica had with Lem about my past. Who were the Beothuks? I have to ask.

  “That’s what they called the techies who came here to hide,” Erica says. “At first, everyone believed the technocaust was necessary and they let it happen. But the violence sickened most people in Terra Nova, so they set up safe houses to get techies out of St. Pearl and into camps hidden in the bush. No one looked very hard for techies outside the city. Not like in the Industrial Zones. So word spread and people came from all over, or died trying. The ones who made it into the bush to hide were called Beothuks, after the native people who lived here hundreds of years ago.”

  “But Lem Howell was already here?”

  “Yes. He was born here. He went away to university, but he came back with Michelle and they built the house up on the ski slope.”

  “Was he a Beothuk?”

  “No, he didn’t have to leave here. People from Kildevil hid him.”

  “After his wife drank the poison?”

  Erica stares at me. “What are you talking about?”

  Truth

  By the time we reach the house, I’ve told Erica the story of Memory Day and she has grown pale. She stops me at the door. “Don’t go in yet. There’s a bench in the garden. We can talk there.” She sits with a sigh. “I knew they were distorting the truth, but I never imagined it was this bad. No wonder you were afraid to meet Lem. He isn’t dangerous. You understand that, don’t you?” I nod and she continues.

  “Lem Howell was a brilliant musician. People all over the world heard his music. Michelle Blanchette, his wife, could put music together in ways no one else ever had before. The soundscapes she made with Lem’s music were breathtaking. She was a technological wizard. That made her a target in the technocaust. Lem wasn’t with her when they came. He was teaching music in Kildevil. They had to stop him from going to her. It took five or six men. Otherwise, he would have gone to the concentration camp, too. He might have died. Sometimes I wonder if they did the right thing.” Erica’s shoulders sag.

  “There was no plot to sell technology to some evil power, Blay. The technocaust didn’t cause the degradation of the environment. That happened centuries ago. All through the twenty-first century, governments tried to cope with the floods and forest fires, the rise of the oceans, the waves of refugees, the hurricanes, the ice storms, the droughts and famines. Everyone settled into a permanent state of emergency. There used to be a form of government called democracy that gave ordinary people some power. That disappeared. People allowed governments more and more power because it was necessary. We call the twenty-second century the Dark Times. That was when the crises completely overwhelmed everyone and civilization faltered.”

  “Gradually, new institutions emerged. The Weavers’ Guilds formed to provide women with a way to clothe their families and later to support themselves. The Way emerged as people struggled to preserve knowledge. But everyone feared technology. A whole system of beliefs developed around bio-indicators and eco-warnings that was mostly guesswork and superstition. Scientific knowledge was not recovered until near the end of the twenty-second century. Then universities opened again and old knowledge was rediscovered. Civilization was rebuilt but governments still wanted total control, and most people couldn’t imagine things any other way.

  “Then the technocaust happened, just before you were born. At the time we had no way of knowing what caused it. Looking back now, it’s clear it was organized by the Commission and governments like it around the world to allow them to keep power. If the people who understand advanced technology are evil, if the world is still in an environmental crisis, the state of emergency can be prolonged indefinitely.”

  “You mean all those things they said about the techies were lies?”

  “Yes. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, died or else they were left like Lem. Technology and science are strictly controlled today to make sure people like us don’t know that the worldwide ecoo-emergency is ending.”

  I put my hand on the back of the bench to steady myself.

  “If this is true, everything I was taught is wrong.”

  “If you can believe me,” Erica says. She pats my shoulder. “But I can’t ask you to accept this right away. Think about it. We’ll talk again when you’re ready.” She turns to the house.

  “Erica, just one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s a concentration camp? Is that where the Beothuks went?”

  She shakes her head. “No. They were the prisons where techies were sent if they were caught. Not only techies. Anyone the Commission regarded as a threat. There were concentration camps in every prefecture during the technocaust, all over the world maybe. But there was only one on the island, at Markla
nd. That’s where Michelle died.”

  After she leaves I sit in the garden alone for a long time.

  When I finally go to my room, I’m still trying to absorb what I’ve heard. In St. Pearl, there was a black-and-white hologram on the streets for a while, advertising something. The black part looked like the outline of some kind of vessel but if you looked long enough, the white part looked like the outline of two faces almost touching. Reality now seems like that hologram. The truth could be what the warders told me, or it could be what Erica says, but, unlike the hologram, it can’t be both.

  Marrella’s tuneless chanting drifts in from her room. I had completely forgotten her. I knock on her door and she stops chanting immediately. “It’s about time you got back. We have to do the observation set before the sun goes down,” she says. “Did you enjoy your trip?” Her question is a challenge, but, in spite of everything, the memory of Lem Howell’s garden makes me smile. This does not please Marrella. “You get along with that woman better than I do.”

  “That’s not true,” I say, but Erica does seem more interested in me than Marrella, for reasons neither Marrella nor I can understand.

  “Well, you’ll be too busy to go off with her again.” She sighs. “William is so pleased with ‘my progress,’ as he puts it, that the next test will happen in just two days. This one will be about animals. I suppose you’ll want to bring back some kind of plant.” She gestures to a lastbook beside her bed. “I have no interest in reading this. You are supposed to help me. Read it.” The book is called Bio-Diversity for Bio-Indicators . I try not to fall upon it like someone starved for words. Marrella would prefer this to be a kind of punishment. I hug the book and turn to leave but she stops me. “I still think it very odd that you knew just what was needed this morning.”

  My heart beats faster. “It was only luck.”

  She snorts. “I don’t believe that for a nano-second. You are too stupid to know what was needed. Is that not so?”

  I lower my eyes. “Of course.”

  “So there must be another explanation.” She smiles. “That is all for now.”