Office of Mercy (9781101606100)

by Djanikian, Ariel

  “There’re other buildings too,” Natasha said. “The night I left the settlement with Eric, they took me to one. I thought it was a regular cave at first, but it didn’t make sense. The room I was in had windows, like it used to be above ground. I haven’t even had time to think about it. But it was weird—I thought it was weird when I saw it. There must have been a whole city right in this area once, and whatever stayed standing got buried during the Storm.”

  “Still, why would the Alphas leave guns outside the settlement?” asked Eduardo, raising his eyebrows. “That wasn’t too smart. They should have brought all the weapons inside before the Storm began.”

  “No,” said Ben. “I bet whoever was fighting the Alphas left the guns here. There were still people around while the Alphas were converting the old Yang bunkers into settlements, and those people probably wanted in. The Alphas were stockpiling food and animals and a thousand other necessities—of course they must have had people attacking.”

  Around them, the Tribespeople were loading the guns with slow but accurate movements. A second entrance revealed itself at the opposite end of the armory—marked, like the cave at their old camp, by the red-brown print of a hand. They all pushed in that direction, the citizens with them. The Tribespeople had painted a series of targets on tree trunks, each target illuminated by torches. It appeared that they practiced their aim in a similar manner to what the citizens did in the Pretends.

  “Our people have known since the tragedy in our youth,” Axel said to the citizens, “that we could never succeed against your glasshouse with bows and arrows and knives.” He began to load a gun, dropped the cartridge, but then succeeded on his second try with surprising skill. “I told you that we have been coming back here to spy on your people for twenty-two years, that for twenty-two years we have planned our return. We envisioned it in our minds and in our dreams. Gladly any one of us would have died for that purpose. Except that we knew better. It would do no good to march on the glasshouse again, not when our goal was to save our people—to get inside and destroy their Birds. Then, when the first frost was melting last year, Raul, Tezo, and I made a tent against this hill, and we discovered a hollow behind it.” He laughed and gestured toward the guns. “Finally we had some of the god-people’s power for ourselves. It was a gift from God, and we will use it well.”

  He thrust the gun into Eduardo’s hands.

  “Here,” Axel continued, “we are all together. One moon from tonight, we will sneak through the woods with these guns and the Bird. We will go to the stone stairs and you will let us inside. They will be so afraid of us, the god-people! And while they are on their knees, pleading for our benevolence, we will steal their Birds away. The ocean will swallow the Birds whole, and then we will pass through this forest whenever we please. At last, only God will have the power to make us tremble. And the god-people will be people again.”

  The citizens heard this speech with silent accord, accepting the pats and handshakes of the Pines around them and betraying only slight unease at the thought of Tribespeople (even self-proclaimed peaceful Tribespeople) in possession of guns. A woman draped in green cloths tapped Natasha’s shoulder and handed her a weapon. They wanted Natasha to shoot at the targets, the concentric circles of white on the bark. Natasha complied; she aimed for the farthest target, a tiny white dot in the knot of an oak, barely visible in the light of the torches. She exhaled a controlled breath and pulled the trigger.

  The shot rang out, and a splinter of wood burst from the center of the knot. Now a black hole marked the target like the pupil of an eye.

  “Whoa,” breathed London. He aimed at the same spot with his own weapon and fired. The bullet disappeared in the dark beyond the trees.

  “Let me try!” Another boy rushed forward, missed, and laughed wildly at himself. He drew up the sleeves of his tunic and missed again.

  Mattias shot next and hit the oak, but well below the target. The other adults took up the challenge, accepting the citizens’ help when required. Natasha shifted toward the back of the crowd.

  “Are all your people as good as you?” asked Raul. He was the only one without a gun. “Because if they are, they may be less terrified than we need them to be.”

  Shots fired haphazardly into the dark, and Natasha felt the tug of doubt.

  “If everything goes according to plan,” she said quickly, “there won’t be shooting on either side.”

  “It’s a very delicate plan. Are you sure, little Nassia, that you are willing to risk your wonderful life for a family you don’t even remember?”

  “My life can’t be wonderful in the settlement,” she said, “now that I know the truth. Listen,” she continued firmly, “I know who I am. I’m with you now. Of course I don’t want anyone to get hurt on either side. But if something goes wrong, I’m willing to turn against the citizens.”

  “And fight them? Shoot at them and risk their lives, if they take up arms against us?”

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” Natasha responded, her voice breaking. “I can promise you that. The citizens have done enough harm in the last three hundred years to last them their eternity.”

  Raul nodded; he believed her. And for some reason, his trust mattered greatly to Natasha. She liked Raul. He seemed like a good man. A man who had suffered. She wondered if, in the landscape of his thoughts, he would forever connect her to his family’s death. She could understand if he did. Because if the Tribe had not abducted her, then the team would not have initiated the manual sweep. But there was no malice in him, no anger.

  “I don’t know any better than you why the settlement took me,” Natasha continued. “Why they chose to save me after they’d killed all the others. But no matter what they’ve done for me, it can’t change the fact that they tried to murder me first. And for that reason, they made themselves my enemy.”

  • • •

  The moon rose large and bright. Raj had promised twelve hours of blackout, but Mercedes, Eduardo, Sarah, and Ben felt anxious and wanted to return to America-Five. They urged Natasha to come with them, but she was not ready to go; instead, she gave her word to meet them in the Office of Exit in the hour before dawn. The group said their farewells and started across the sand, but at the last second Sarah doubled back to hug Natasha goodbye.

  “Is it true?” Sarah asked, before letting go. “Do you think you were really born out here?”

  Natasha nodded. “Yes.”

  “I know they won’t hurt you,” Sarah whispered, after a pause. “But you still have to be careful. We’re not used to Outside dangers.”

  “I will,” Natasha assured. “And you be careful getting home.”

  The Tribe returned to the beach, and Natasha with them. The tide had come in and the waves rose high and crashed on the shore, drawing back into themselves and rising again. The planet seemed to breathe and speak through the ocean.

  Tezo grabbed Natasha by the hand and pulled her down the beach to the water.

  “You have to go in,” he said, laughing. “You haven’t lived until you’ve felt the ocean.”

  At his continued insistence, Natasha took off her boots and her socks and, for the first time she could remember, felt the coldness and give of real sand under her feet. The ocean spoke. The forward drift climaxed into the roil and churn of high waves, angry and beating against the earth as if wanting to burrow into the land. Natasha stepped closer, her body tight with anticipation. She watched the mountain of water approach, tall and unstoppable. A crash, the air exploded, and then the cold struck her and climbed her body. A white spray of salty iciness awakened her face with exhilarating pain. She screamed and Tezo caught her around the waist. Behind them, the rest of the Tribe howled with laughter.

  The cold was stinging her legs, but Natasha held her ground, braced against Tezo. The water was rushing back now, hard, like it wanted to drag her with it. A piece of prickly, slimy seaweed cau
ght around her left ankle and she kicked it off in horror.

  Beyond the crests of the waves, which were sharpened by the brief reflections of moonlight, the ocean fanned out into black. Natasha and Tezo stood together, looking. Cold, white stars appeared, reflecting the ocean’s vastness above. How beautiful and terrifying it was! And how the emptiness seemed to creep toward them, reaching out to engulf them! Tezo let go of her and Natasha wrapped her arms over her chest, her teeth chattering. She watched and cheered as Tezo chased the waves as they receded, then raced them back to the sand.

  Higher up the shore, the fire burst alive as new wood was thrust into its center. The men beat their drums and sent hollow, rhythmic cries to the moon. Natasha smiled as she listened. A song swelled up from the group and Natasha went with Tezo to join them. The Tribe knelt together around the fire. They chanted while two drummers made a rhythm that pitted a chaotic, shattering rise and fall against an ordered thud like a heartbeat.

  “God watching us from above,” said Hesma. “We honor You and we pray for the strength to finish the work we began when we first marched on the god-people.”

  “Ah-men,” answered the Tribe. The words beat like the drums and the power of this curious music merged the sounds into one voice.

  “You have delivered to us the child we lost. She is ours now, we pray she will be ours forever.”

  “Ah-men.”

  “We hope you will stay with us,” Axel said, once the song had ended. “We hope you’ll live with us for good.”

  “Yes, I want to,” said Natasha, looking around at them all, feeling the strength and vivacity of this life compared with her life Inside. For a moment, Natasha forgot Raj and the others, she forgot Min-he. And as for Jeffrey—Jeffrey whose very presence had for years deceptively promised this heat, this feeling of love and belonging—Natasha spit him from her thoughts. “Once we destroy the novas,” she said, “there won’t be anything left for me in the settlement. I want to leave with you. I want to come home.”

  They slept on the beach that night and, in fitful bursts, Natasha slept too. Tezo smoothed out a place for her beside him. He rolled up a blue tunic for them to use as a pillow. The sand dug into Natasha’s hair. The dampness seeped through her clothes and through her flesh to chill her bones. The hard ground made her shoulder ache. Eventually this would be normal to her. One night soon it would seem the most usual thing in the world to sleep on a bed of earth, and then the strange thing would be beds and walls and ceilings and sheets. She looked at Tezo—his face ethereal and sweet in sleep—and imagined a future that might fulfill the wishes that, according to Axel, their two mothers had dreamt up long ago. Already, the settlement was receding from her. How far away it seemed, the long white hall of the Department of the Exterior; she never wished to see the Office of Mercy again. She understood now about the importance of living over all else, and the horror of ever stealing a life from the Earth and throwing it to the abyss. How could they? How could one human being do that to another? Like what Raj had said: The citizens of America-Five could build a body, they could build a person almost from scratch. But essentially, at the most basic level, they did not understand how life worked. They tinkered and pulled molecules apart and threw them together and thought their successes good enough to shove out the mystery, that embarrassing gulf of not-knowing that lay beneath their science. All of life was beautiful; all of life was mystery; to end it was the most horrible thing in the universe. Worse than suffering. Worse than pain.

  She was awake when Axel came to her and said she should go back to the settlement. Raul stood beside him, his face drawn and tired; the rest of the Tribe lay sleeping. Natasha considered waking Tezo to say goodbye, but it was no matter, she would see him soon. She followed Axel and Raul, picking her way through the slumbering bodies.

  “We’ll walk with you through the forest,” Axel said, “to where the trees end. You might know your way around the Eyes, but we know the way around bears.”

  They moved in silence through the woods and across the ridge. Natasha thought about the next full moon, when Axel and Raul would take this path again, that time with the nova. By their looks of consternation, Natasha guessed that their thoughts hovered around similar visions.

  With the power out, America-Five became visible only when they reached the green. The Dome curved in the dark, silent and still, though Natasha knew it must harbor a world of movement and agitation inside.

  “I’ll see you soon,” said Natasha. “I’ll be waiting at the steps to lead you into the settlement.”

  “Be careful,” said Raul.

  “You too,” said Natasha.

  “We’ll wait for you to get inside,” Axel said.

  Natasha moved swiftly over the dewy grass. She knew no one could see her, but still, crossing the open green gave her a tickling feeling on her neck. Once she had reached the supplyhouse, she relaxed. With the power off, getting back into the Dome would be easy. Even if someone caught her at the door of the Office of Exit, she could say that she was all turned around, that she couldn’t tell what was what in the dark. Besides, either Mercedes, Eduardo, Sarah, or Ben should be there, keeping a lookout for her. Natasha passed through the two cubes of the airlock, prying the doors apart with her fingers. She still had plenty of time. Raj had given a full twelve hours and she had only used eight. She curled her fingers into the crease of the last door and pulled. Her mind registered the blue light just long enough to make her freeze in confusion, and then two strong hands reached out and grabbed her shoulders.

  16

  “What in the Father’s name are you doing?”

  Natasha felt herself being yanked violently out of the airlock.

  “What are you thinking? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Jeffrey.”

  Blue lights bathed his furious eyes. Backup power. The backup generator. They must have fixed it.

  Jeffrey kept asking the same questions, shaking her shoulders, but she hardly heard the words.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked. Panic was overtaking her thoughts. She tried to push Jeffrey’s arm away but he held on.

  “The first team down to fix the power found Raj,” Jeffrey said, his voice trembling with fury. “As soon as I heard, I came here. I caught Mercedes, Ben, Eduardo, and Sarah coming out of the airlock. Who orchestrated this? Was it you or Raj? I know it was one of you.”

  Natasha looked past him at the closed door of the Office.

  “Do they all know?” she asked. “All the citizens?”

  “Not yet. Not until the Alphas tell them!”

  “But they can’t—”

  “What do you mean the Alphas can’t? They can and they will. This is it, Natasha. Two months ago you looked me in the eye and told me that you’d never go to the Outside again. Not for the Pines, not for all eternity. How will I ever trust you now?”

  “Yeah, well, what about me trusting you?” Jeffrey’s indignation had suddenly reminded Natasha that she was in the right. That she had nothing to be sorry for. In a burst of anger, she wrestled free of his hold. “Half the people in this settlement have been lying to me my whole life!”

  “What did they say to you? No, Natasha.” He blocked her way out of the room. “You can’t honestly be listening to the Tribes. How many times have I told you that?” His left hand hovered near his sleeve, as if he wanted to show her his burn.

  “Forget it, Jeffrey. I’ve heard the whole story. I know about the attack. The Pines told me everything. About how you set the fire. You trapped those people, you killed them in the worst possible way. And I was there, wasn’t I? I was one of them.”

  The life had withdrawn from Jeffrey’s face; for a brief moment, he looked as old as an Alpha.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” she answered viciously. “And it’s not just the Pines who remember. I’ve seen it all in the Pretends. It’s there, i
n Free Play, the computer has the whole attack. Raj told me how to find it. Your thoughts aren’t as private as you think. You stole me. First you tried to kill me and then you stole me. But you never would have told me, if I hadn’t found out on my own. You would have let me kill them!”

  “Oh, Natasha.”

  He reached out and grabbed her roughly around the middle, and for some moments she did not have the will to pull away. She realized only now that some deep and quiet part of her had expected him to deny her accusations, to prove to her with a few simple but brilliant explanations that the Tribe had tricked her, that she had been born a citizen, and to assure her that everything could go back to normal now. But the seconds lengthened and he made no denial. It was all true; the past was fixed; no person on Earth could undo it.

  “You have to forgive me for starting that fire. It drives me crazy when I think of those people. How easily you could have burned with them.” He choked on his words.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said. “I’ve heard the truth, so you might as well tell me.”

  At first he was silent, and Natasha thought he was either too weak or too proud to confess. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, and for a terrible moment Natasha thought he was sick. But then he began to speak—to speak willingly and freely, as if he wanted very much to tell her everything.

  “We tried so hard to avoid a second manual sweep,” he said. “The sweep of the fighters was inevitable, of course. They had attacked us at our home. But we thought if we could drive the other ones north, away from the settlement, that we could nova them in the usual way. The Alphas put me in charge of the team. Claudia and Arthur were with me—this was before Arthur became Director—and also a Beta, Gaurav Gandhi. He moved to another department a long time ago. I was rushing. The settlement was under attack and I was distracted. I set off the fire bombs without checking the wind speed and direction, without consulting the weather log to get a good read on the forest humidity. We set off too many fires and we lost control almost immediately. The Tribe scattered in two directions. We followed the larger group toward the mountains, while the smaller group fled for the shoreline. We never caught up with them. That’s as much as we know about those people. That part of the Tribe must have escaped the perimeter.”