CHAPTER 19
Unfairness, and
What to Do About It
In the days after the hateful words had been scrawled on the wall, Doon went to work grudgingly. He didn’t want to work with people who did such awful things. He had to remind himself that they weren’t all ignorant brutes, and that they were still giving the Emberites shelter and food—even though they were no longer allowing them to eat with their lunchtime families, and even though they were planning to send them out to fend for themselves in the winter. But the people who had written those words—no one was trying to find out who they were, no one was punishing them. Who was the one getting the evil looks and being called bad names? He was, he who had done nothing! He couldn’t stand the wrongness of it. He felt it physically, as if he were wearing clothes that were too tight, a shirt that pinched him under the arms, pants that were too short and too snug. Unfair, unfair, he kept thinking. He couldn’t bear unfairness.
One day he was assigned to clean the fountain in the center of the plaza. Chugger handed him his tools for the job: a bucket, a long stick with a metal scraper on one end, and a pile of rags.
Chugger lifted up one of the bricks in the pavement near the fountain. Under it was a round handle. “You turn this off first,” he said. “It shuts off the water coming in from the river.” He gave it several turns, and the spouting water in the middle of the fountain dipped and vanished. “Now the water in the basin will drain through the outflow pipe,” Chugger said. “It goes back into the river. When the basin is empty, you climb in there and scrub. I want this thing clean as a drinking glass when you’re through.”
Chugger left, and Doon watched the water level slowly going down. The lower it got, the more green scum was revealed. It coated the inside of the fountain like slimy fur.
He plunged his stick into the water, scraped it along the fountain’s inner wall, and pulled it out again. Wet green strings swung from the end of it, and he shook them off into the bucket. He thrust the stick in again, scraped again, brought up more muck. Into the bucket it went. For the next ten minutes, he scraped the bottom and sides of the fountain with his stick and filled the bucket with slippery strands of scum, along with a few apricot pits, dead bugs, and rotting leaves.
The water was about half gone now, but it seemed to be draining very slowly. Probably, Doon reasoned, this was because the outflow pipe was getting blocked up with all the loosened scum being drawn toward it. But because the water was so murky, he couldn’t see where the outflow pipe was.
At that moment, Chugger came up behind him. “What the heck is taking you so long?” he said. “If you had any sense, you’d have figured out the drain is clogging up.” He grabbed the stick out of Doon’s hands and began probing in the water.
“I did figure that out,” Doon said, “but I couldn’t see where it was because—”
“There!” said Chugger, who wasn’t listening. He’d pried loose a clump of soggy crud, and the water level was once more going down. He thrust the stick toward Doon again. “Now get busy. And try using your brain once in a while, if you have one.” He stalked off.
Doon clamped his teeth together to hold in the rage that boiled up in him. He glared at the retreating back of Chugger and imagined throwing his stick so that it hit him right between the shoulder blades.
I hate being talked to that way, he thought. As if I’m a moron. Why does he get to talk to me like that?
When the water had all drained out of the fountain, Doon took his shoes off, grabbed a handful of rags, and climbed in. On his knees in the green slime that covered the bottom, he wiped and scrubbed. Now and then people came by and peered in at him. “Ugh,” they’d say as they passed, or “Yuck.” It felt as if they were saying ugh and yuck about him—not surprising, since he was now just about as filthy as the rags he was using. No one said, “Good job!” or said they were pleased the fountain was getting cleaned.
When he finally finished, he opened the inflow valve and plugged the outflow valve, and once again the water leapt from the central pipe and the fountain began to fill. Doon sat down on the rim and put his bare feet in the water to rinse them off. He stayed there for a minute, resting. The cool, clean water felt good.
Chugger came around the corner. “What are you doing?” he yelled. He strode toward Doon. “I don’t know how you do it where you’re from,” he said, “but here when we work, we work. We don’t sit around gazing at the sky.”
Doon started to say he was not gazing at the sky, he was taking a one-minute rest. But when he opened his mouth to speak, the rush of anger that came up through his body was so volcanic that he closed his mouth again and sat there shaking, his face flushed and burning, afraid he would explode if he tried to say a word. Do not get angry, he told himself, remembering the advice his father had given him so many times. When anger is in control, you get unintended consequences.
“You don’t speak when you’re spoken to?” said Chugger. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Maybe I need to make it clearer.” He took a deep breath. His voice came out in a hoarse bellow: “Get moving, you stupid barbarian! Now!” He seized Doon by the arm and yanked him backward.
That was when Doon felt his rage shooting up like steam, unstoppable.
“Let go of me!” he screamed. “I’m not the barbarian! You are! You are!” He tried to jerk away from Chugger, but Chugger held on. Doon pulled harder, wrenching his whole body sideways and slamming against the bucket, which was next to him on the rim of the fountain. The bucket went flying, spewing its slimy contents over a girl who happened to be passing by. She screamed and slapped at the stinking green sludge running down the front of her shirt. People rushed up to her and shouted angrily at Doon, who gave one more frantic pull and finally freed himself from Chugger’s grasp.
For a second he and Chugger stood glaring at each other. Doon knew how he must look to the people around him: clumsy, filthy, wild-eyed, and, worse than that—a violent boy, the kind of boy who would waste good food, the kind of boy whose ugly, fiery temper could cause real damage.
He turned and stalked away. No one tried to stop him. He realized when he’d gone a short distance that he’d forgotten to pick up his shoes, but he wasn’t going to go back for them. He ran barefoot all the way to the Pioneer.
I’ve done it now, he thought. I’ve made everything worse. And yet none of it is my fault. I was trying hard to do my job, and trying even harder not to get angry. But look what happens.
The unfairness of it, the tremendous injustice, felt like a stone in his heart.
“We will do something about this,” Tick said to Doon that night. They were standing by the hotel’s back stairs, where they’d encountered each other on the way in from the outhouses. “You are being abused. We all are. We mustn’t stand for it.”
Doon nodded. He had told Tick about winter, and now Tick was more outraged than ever. The look on his face was hard and determined. Doon admired Tick’s strength, and the way he always seemed to know what to do. He himself was never so absolutely clear. He saw too many sides of things; it confused him.
“What should we do?” he asked.
“Strike back,” said Tick. “They have attacked us, more than once, in many ways. It’s time for them to find out that if they hurt us, they’ll get hurt, too.”
They’ll get hurt. Was this the right thing? But it did seem fair. After all, wrong should be punished. “How do we do it?” said Doon.
“Many possibilities,” said Tick. He leaned against the wall beside the stairs. He had a red patch on his arm, Doon noticed, that he kept scratching at; it was the first time Doon had seen that Tick, too, suffered from the bites and scrapes that plagued the rest of them. He isn’t perfect, Doon reminded himself; he isn’t always right about everything.
“We could refuse to work,” Tick went on. “But everyone would have to refuse, and I’m not sure everyone would. It would be better to take direct action.”
“Action about what?” asked Doon.
“About food. We don’t get enough. This is an injustice all of us feel. So what about this: we storm the storehouse and take what we need by force.”
“Steal food?” said Doon.
“It isn’t stealing. It’s evening things out. It’s getting what should rightfully be ours.” There was not a hint of uncertainty in Tick’s voice.
Doon thought about this. It did make sense. You had to act against injustice, didn’t you? You couldn’t just let it happen.
“I know lots of people who’ll join us,” Tick said. “I’ll call them together. We’ll have a meeting and make a plan.” He started up the stairs and then turned around and looked down on Doon. “But first,” he said, “we have to arm ourselves.”
“We do?”
“Of course. We need to make sure we’ll defeat our enemy.”
“What do we arm ourselves with?”
“I’ll tell you,” Tick said, “when we meet. Tomorrow night, after dinner, out at the head of the road.”
CHAPTER 20
The City Destroyed
When the city came into view before them, the three travelers stood speechless, gazing out over ranges of hills standing dark against the western sky. They could see that this had once been a city—to the right, a cluster of tall buildings still stood, tall beyond anything Lina had imagined. But they were no more than shells of buildings, hollow and broken, their windows only holes. Through some of them Lina could see the sky, turned scarlet by the sunset.
All else was a windswept wasteland. Whatever buildings had once been here had long ago fallen and crumbled into the ground. Earth and dust and sand had blown across them, and grass had grown over them, softening their outlines. Here and there traces of ruins remained—they looked from this distance like outcrops of stone, hardly more than jagged places on the smooth slopes. Faint lines of shadow showed where streets must once have been.
Lina stared, trembling. This was far, far from the city she had imagined. Not even the version she’d revised for the Disaster had looked like this. This couldn’t be called a city at all anymore. It was the ghost of a city.
Even Caspar seemed daunted. He craned for-ward, his hand shading his eyes. “It looks somewhat destroyed,” he said.
“It looks completely destroyed,” said Maddy.
They got down from the truck and stood beside the oxen.
“A trick of the light,” said Caspar, squinting harder. He pulled his glasses from his pocket and put them on. “When we get closer, no doubt it will look different.”
“How do you plan to get closer?” Maddy asked him, and for the first time Lina saw that a few yards in front of them, the road came to an end. There was an edge of broken pavement, and beyond it a great slab of roadway slanted downward. It had stood on pillars once; you could see a few of the pillars still standing, and rods of thick wire twisting out of them. From here on, the road was a chaos of concrete, gigantic chunks leaning against each other. There was no way the truck could go on.
The sun was nearly down now, and the brilliant red of the sky was fading. Between the ruined buildings drifted a gray mist, and the wind blew more sharply. Some white birds soared high above, screaming.
“It used to be so beautiful,” said Maddy. “I’ve seen pictures of it in books.” There was a tremor in her voice. Lina looked up and saw that tears stood in her eyes. “I knew it was destroyed,” Maddy said. “But not like this.”
“What happened to it?” Lina asked.
“It was the wars,” said Maddy. “They must have been . . .” She shook her head. “They must have been terrible,” she said.
“What were they about?” Lina asked.
Maddy shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“And the people who lived here? What happened to them?”
“All killed, I suppose,” said Maddy. “Or most of them.”
Caspar was frowning at the shadowy wilderness that lay below. “In the daylight,” he said, “I’ll be able to see how to proceed.”
“Proceed!” Maddy grabbed Caspar’s arm and wrenched him around to face her. “Are you out of your mind?”
Caspar yanked his arm away. “No,” he said. “I am not.”
Maddy swept her hand out toward the city. “It’s miles and miles of buried rubble!” she cried. “Streets buried under fallen bricks and broken glass! Mountains of concrete and melted metal! Sand and earth blown over it all, and grass growing on it!”
Caspar nodded, his face grim. “Right,” he said. “A challenge. You were right about bringing this one along.” He tipped his head toward Lina. “Someone small and light, that’s what I’ll need. Going to have to do some tunneling.”
“No, Caspar,” said Maddy. “You must give up this idea. You can’t find anything there.”
“I can,” said Caspar. “I can find it, I have the numbers, I have it all worked out.” He plunged one hand into his pocket and scrabbled around and brought out a scrap of paper. He snatched his glasses off, put the paper up close to his eyes, and squinted at it. Lina took a step closer to him and peered sideways. The paper was black with scribbling, a tangle of words and numbers and cross-outs. “Forty-seven east,” muttered Caspar. “Three ninety-five west.” His eyes flicked back and forth between the paper and the dark hills before him, flicked faster and faster. “Seventy-one,” he mumbled. “It’s just a matter of . . . In the daylight . . .” He caught sight of Lina. “What are you staring at?” he said.
“Nothing,” said Lina. She felt suddenly sick and frightened. Maddy was right. Caspar was out of his mind.
The sun disappeared behind the farthest hill, and darkness fell. Maddy turned back toward the truck. “We’ll camp right here tonight,” she said. “We still have enough water in the buckets.”
They set their blankets on the side of the truck away from the wind, but Lina shivered and couldn’t sleep. After days of longing to arrive at the city, she wanted nothing now but to leave. This was a terrible place, full of angry ghosts and sad ones. When she closed her eyes, she seemed to hear their voices—shouts and screams and a dreadful sobbing—and to see flashes of fire in the smoky sky, and sheets of flame sweeping through the streets.
A wail escaped from her. She couldn’t help it, she felt so afraid and miserable. A moment later, she heard Maddy’s voice close to her ear. “Let’s talk for a while,” Maddy said.
“Okay,” said Lina. She sat up, wrapping her blanket around her. Caspar was pacing up and down on the other side of the truck, muttering to himself. “What about him?” she said.
“Don’t worry,” answered Maddy. “He’s lost in his calculations.”
A gust of wind shook the truck. Its loose fender clattered.
“I hate it here,” said Lina.
“Yes,” said Maddy. “Terrible things happened in this place. You can still feel it.”
“Were the people in those old days extremely evil?” Lina asked.
“No more than anyone,” Maddy said.
“But then why did the wars happen? To wreck your whole city—almost your whole world—it seems like something only evil people would do.”
“No, not evil, at least not at first. Just angry and scared.” Maddy was silent for a moment. Caspar’s footsteps came closer, crunching on the gravelly ground, and then receded again. Lina inched a little closer to Maddy. “It’s like this,” Maddy said at last. “Say the A people and the B people get in an argument. The A people do something that hurts the B people. The B people strike back to get even. But that just makes the A people angry all over again. They say, ‘You hurt us, so we’re going to hurt you.’ It keeps on like that. One bad thing leads to a worse bad thing, on and on.”
It was like what Torren had said when he was telling her about the Disaster. Revenge, he’d called it.
“Can’t it be stopped?” said Lina. She shifted around under her blanket, trying to find a place to sit where rocks weren’t digging into her.
“Maybe it can be stopped at the beginning,” Maddy said. “If someone se
es what’s happening and is brave enough to reverse the direction.”
“Reverse the direction?”
“Yes, turn it around.”
“How would you do that?”
“You’d do something good,” said Maddy. “Or at least you’d keep yourself from doing something bad.”
“But how could you?” said Lina. “When people have been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?”
“You wouldn’t want to,” Maddy said. “That’s what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad.”
Lina wondered if she was strong enough to be good. She didn’t feel strong at all right now.
“Time to sleep,” said Maddy.
Lina pulled the blankets over her head, but still she could feel the wind and hear the oxen making low, uneasy sounds. She heard Caspar still pacing, too, and muttering under his breath.
I want to go home, she thought. And for the first time, the picture that arose in her mind was not of the dark, familiar buildings of Ember but of Sparks under its bright sky. She thought of Dr. Hester’s house, and the garden blooming in the sun, and the doctor puttering with her hundred plants. She thought of Mrs. Murdo sitting in the doctor’s courtyard, basking in the warmth, and Poppy playing with a spoon beside her. Even Torren was in the picture, proudly arranging his possessions on a window ledge.
And of course there was Doon. He should have been her partner on this journey. If he were here with her, she’d feel less afraid. She missed him. Maybe when she got back to Sparks, he’d be tired of hanging around that boy named Tick and be ready to be her friend again.
CHAPTER 21
Attack and Counterattack
The morning after the trouble at the fountain, Doon awoke to a clamor rising through his window from the front of the hotel. He looked out, but he could see only the tops of people’s heads, all clustered around the front steps. He ran downstairs with his shirt still unbuttoned, flapping around him, to see what was happening.
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