I don’t think I can exist this way. Why should any of us have to exist this way?
And on top of my grief comes another sensation. Not anger or outrage. Not even fury. Those are emotions I can remember. This is something new. Simple. It is rage. I lift my head, and when I look back, the dust cloud has moved a little closer.
I wipe the dirt from the shiny new skin of my palms—quick healing is another one of my privileges—get my feet on the ground, and run, drying my cheeks with the passing air, rattling the leaves like the hot, gusting breeze.
I need a memory. A certain memory. But my mind is like the Archives of my city, a deep, forbidden place crammed with books no one wants or will ever use. I shuffle carefully through the volumes in my head, sifting and sorting while Nita’s old sandals pound the soil, staying well away from that high, dark shelf in the back of my mind. And now I Know the number of heartbeats since I left the shade of the pine tree, every centimeter of the landscape I’ve run through. I feel the soft color of my father’s lip paint, tried on when I was two. I hear the twelfth day, seventh bell recitation of surgical training. What I’m looking for is the memory of a map.
The map was inside an ancient book being conserved by my uncle Towlend—when I was young and the Archives were still being tended—a book for Council only, while Uncle Towlend was still Council. But Aunt Letitia had just died, and Uncle Towlend was falling into memories when he was supposed to be doing something else. Like working or eating. Walking. Mother said Uncle Towlend needed to cache his memories of Aunt Letitia, that they were too pleasant for him to be of any use. The Council thought so, too, eventually, and Uncle Towlend mostly stayed in his rooms after that, and there was no one to represent the Archives in their meetings at all.
So while Uncle Towlend was staring at the wall, lost in his head with his dead wife, I pushed a chair up to his workbench. And there was the book. Heavy and tattered, mysterious and beautiful. My mind turns to it now, like Uncle Towlend flipping to a page. I see the inked drawings of the valleys and the mountains, the three peaks that are to my left, the hot springs steaming on my right, watch my small finger trace the unfamiliar words. The handwriting was old, too difficult to read when I first saw it. But I can read it now. In my memory. I find the dot marked “Canaan. The Cursed City.”
I look up, fully in the present. I need to veer left, toward that pass between the mountain and the hills gathered near its feet. I turn my steps, breath coming hard. What if the map is wrong? What if there is no curse? What if I’m running toward a story just as fantastic as Earth?
And with no warning, I plunge …
… into the bridges and columns of the Forum, where huge swaths of yellow cloth are festooned between the upper balconies, lamps behind them, shooting glowing rays of fabric light from an enormous, sparkling glass sun. The false sun hangs high over our heads, lit with fire inside, filling the shadows with unexpected color. It’s the Changing of the Seasons, when the Knowing gather to eat, drink, and celebrate the rising of a sun in a sky that we cannot see. And the Forum is loud. Full of people and finery.
I huddle in the darkest corner I can find. I am painted and shimmering, hair twisted and tamed, because I have just received my eighteenth scar, and now every male in New Canaan needs to look at me. I am supposed to do as I ought: choose a partner with a profession I prefer, train for no reason, and provide my city with more of the Knowing. I hate it.
Sonia stands at my elbow, hair wound high on top of her head—she’s still not quite as tall as I am—dress cut away to show her own wellness scars in rows down her upper arms. Twenty-two of them, her arms say. Safe to look at. But she’s not hiding. She’s using this spot as a vantage point, darkened eyes scanning the crowd. She loves this sort of thing. Craves it, I think, every glance and smile and stolen moment in an unlit corridor. I think she relives it all later, in her memory, each new conquest like some kind of never-ending sweet. I don’t understand her form of addiction, but who am I to judge, if someone else has found a way to cope? Judgment is the Council’s job, and we’re all only a step or two away from insanity anyway.
I see Martina Tutor, Sonia’s mother, chatting with the Chemists, who grow and mix the medicines we hardly ever need, and all six of the Administrators from across the passage milling through the crowd. And there is my mother, exquisitely dressed, gesturing with bright nails, speaking to Thorne Councilman, while my father has a lively discussion with one of the Philosophers, debating ethics we are never, ever going to change. I watch Thorne smile at my mother, an expression imitated by Craddock, who is also Council, representing the supervisors of the Outside, overseeing the plantings and the harvest. I don’t think there’s one person within a twenty-meter range who does anything useful except for Craddock. And he, Nita tells me, is cruel about it.
Sonia sticks an elbow in my ribs. She’s excited, animated, the exact opposite of how I feel. “Smile, Sam,” she says beneath her breath. “I’m the only person here who isn’t afraid to speak to you. Relax and you could have your pick of this room. Just enjoy yourself, and if you don’t, cache it later.”
Since my memories seldom stay cached, this isn’t a valid plan for me.
Then Sonia says, “Look at that … ” Her smile has gone dazzling, and when I search the crowd for her target, I see Reddix Physicianson standing not far away, eyes closed. He’s not with us. He’s in a memory, a loss of control that is unusual for him. I hope he doesn’t drop his plate.
But Reddix was not where Sonia’s smile was aimed. Beyond his shoulder is an Outsider serving a platter of sweetbreads, a young man, a laborer in the fields from the shape of his arms, newly chosen, evidently, for work in the city. And he just raked Sonia with a glance that was unmissable.
“Sonia,” I hiss. The corner of her painted gaze swings up in my direction. I say one word. “No.”
Sonia rolls her eyes. She’d pat my head if she could reach it. Mother swirls a red-painted finger at me, telling me to circulate, but I fix my gaze on the spray of the gushing Torrens. I can feel myself being looked at. Evaluated. If I can’t do something to distract my mind soon—run, jump, possibly scream—then memories are going to come, and this will get much more embarrassing than it already is.
But once I have successfully offended every potential suitor Underneath, I’m telling Mother I’m going for physician training. Without a physician for a partner. And that should take care of any ideas of partnering off Samara Archiva. What I’m not going to tell her is that I plan to smuggle my new Knowing Outside. Where people actually do get injured. Where there are things I can change. Where there’s a sickness the city doesn’t want us to Know exists. A sickness I plan to cure. For once, my Knowing will do someone good. And my mother’s disappointment in me is going to remain razor sharp from now until the end of time.
“Sam,” Sonia whispers, shoving a glass into my hand. Thorne Councilman is climbing up the steps to the platform, dark-eyed and handsome, hair going to early gray, turning to stand in front of the mural of lies that is supposed to be our history, OUR TRUTH CANNOT BE FORGOTTEN bright in the artificial sunbeams over his head. Nineteen more Council members gather around him. He has a glass. Everyone has a glass. I can smell the amrita. Then he recites the words we all Know and couldn’t stop remembering if we wanted to, his deep voice echoing across the Forum.
“And so we who remember now remember the sun, because the light of our truth is written in our memory, and is just as enduring. Truth cannot be forgotten. When we remember, we preserve the truth.”
“Preserve the truth,” the crowd replies together, raising their glasses. There’s a silence while the room drinks in unison. And then a cheer. Amrita will get you a little drunk.
I sip mine until Mother catches my eye, and then I drain it like I’m supposed to. And when I lower my glass, Thorne Councilman’s gaze is on me, like the ray of a dark lantern beaming directly down into my eyes. And he is judging me, slowly, from head to toe. And I don’t think it’s because he wants t
o have a partnering conversation with my parents. My annoyance melts into fear, pure and primal. Does he Know what I’ve done? Where I’ve been? What I’ve read …
And just like that, the floor of my memory opens, and I fall again, drifting through my mind, deep into the mountain …
… to the steps that lead down to Uncle Towlend’s office, sliding a key from a ring into a rusty lock. These are keys I am not supposed to have, because they are keys I’ve stolen from Uncle Towlend’s flat. And they’re keys Uncle Towlend is not supposed to have, because he hid them from the Council before the Archives were closed. The lock turns, creaking in the silence, and all my memories of yellow light, old paper, and my uncle’s comfortable chairs are instantly stained with dark and the smell of rot. Papers litter the floor in the dim, dust thick on my uncle’s desk. I go to the next rusting door, jiggle the lock, and when it opens, pull the cover off my lamp. And for the first time in ten years, I am looking at the Archives.
Books cover every surface, shelves spiraling around the inner walls of an enormous circular shaft, one hundred meters from bottom to top, pierced through the heart of the mountain. The wooden balcony rings the walls right along with the shelves, and I hold up my light and follow it, down through the dark, books on my right, a long, black fall beyond the rail to my left.
The quiet is deep, heavy, the kind that won’t be bothered, the air stale, and when I brush my fingers across the passing spines, I can feel the damp. I Know the Council says books clutter our minds, make it difficult to cope with the masses of information piling up inside our heads. Even my father, who has few opinions on anything, agrees. “Do not look at your mother’s books, Samara,” he said to me when I was small. “And if you have, promise me you’ll cache them. Don’t read. Just cache … ” But surely the books don’t deserve such an agonizing death.
At the end of the balcony is the smooth rock floor at the bottom of the shaft, another locked door, and an empty booth where an attendant used to sit, usually an Archiva, guarding a room that was only for the Council. For the special books. I pause. There’s a sign above the door. “Knowing Is Our Weapon.”
I’m looking for a weapon. Against sickness. And today, I’m going to read the books. I want to find out if what Grandpapa Cyrus said could be true, and I don’t think any teacher is going to recite this kind of Knowing for me. I find the right key and put it into the lock. The hinges open smooth, and the lack of rust or noise makes me wary. I tiptoe down a tunnel cut straight through the thick wall of the shaft, and then I’m standing in a room I’ve never seen.
It’s tiny when compared with the Archives, books lined sparsely on shelves that hug four rectangular walls, another closed door directly opposite. But there’s no dust here. No rot. A brazier of biofuel burns in the center of a matted floor, throwing shadows against ten sets of reading tables with cloth-covered chairs. One of the chairs sits askew, a book open on the table, lamplight shining on the pages. As if someone has just stepped away. Only just pushed back the chair.
My lamp is shaking. I blow out the flame, the Council words that so devastated my family, that took our profession, running loud through my memory. “The books of the Archives are no longer a beneficial resource. The recitations of the learning room will be sufficient for acquiring information.” Clearly the Council does not believe its own rhetoric. But what would they do with someone who Knows this and shouldn’t?
I Know they have floggings Outside. I’ve seen the bloody post in the Bartering Square. But there’s nothing like that in the city. The Council waits for a twelfth year, for Judgment, when the gates are locked and sealed. Only then would they condemn the one who had stolen Knowing, and choose a needle from the smaller tray. Not a wellness injection. The injection that meant my eyes would never open again.
I should turn around. Now. But the pages of the open book flutter in the draft and my feet move until I am in front of it, running a finger along a thick, coarse page in the lamplight. This book is old. And then my gaze lands on a single word, upside down, in faded ink. “Forgetting.”
I spin the book around and let my eyes skim the pages, turning each with delicate care. I’m not reading. The text is sometimes difficult to understand. But I can study it later, in my bedchamber, in my memory. The important thing is to put as much of this book in my head as I can before someone comes back into this room. But it’s impossible not to catch meanings here and there, and I can see that this is a book of Canaan, the Cursed City. And the author is describing the effects of a sickness called the Forgetting.
A key scrapes in a lock. I turn the book the right way around and stumble back into the shadows, bumping into a corner of shelves, dropping to the floor behind a covered chair just as the door beyond the reading table opens. A new wedge of light cuts bright across the matting, very bright, and I resist the impulse to shrink back, to move. To breathe. Two slippers pause in the doorway.
Then the slippers come fast across the floor, silent on the matting, the black robe of Council swinging around the ankles. They stop beside the brazier, someone bends, and for one panicked moment I see Thorne Councilman through the legs of the chair, his face in silhouette, hair braids streaked with gray. I imagine what would happen if he glanced once to his left, and my stomach twists, pulse thudding in my chest.
But he doesn’t look to his left. Only drops the lid on the brazier. The room shadows thicken. I don’t think he can see me now. My tunic is dark. But there’s not a single thing to keep him from sitting in the chair I’m hiding behind. To keep him from taking a book from a shelf that is right above my head. I let out a silent breath, and then hold it again. Thorne straightens, moving with the same abrupt speed to the table with the book about Forgetting.
And my mind is processing, working in the background, like it was while my eyes scanned the ancient book, like it has been ever since the key turned in the lock. Words weave together, giving me their meanings. I read them from my memory, sentences jumping forward in my mind like suncrickets in the rain.
“The Forgetting is a disease of the mind, interrupting an individual’s ability to access information, effectively erasing memories and wiping personal information from conscious thought … Learned skills are often retained, while emotional connections are severed, only occasionally reinstated … Identity is lost … The onset of Forgetting is traumatic … symptoms of fear, panic, disorientation, and paranoia that can lead to unwarranted violence … The curse of the Forgetting does not respect age or social stature and is so deeply embedded in our city that it cannot be rooted out. Canaan, we have decided, is no longer safe for any person to live in.”
And that was all about the Forgetting. Nothing else.
I stare at our Head of Council, standing thoughtful, stroking his chin in the light of the lamp. I have read the book. I have been to the Outside and listened to the truth. And now I can see the lie. That we of the Knowing—the people of memory, the special, the privileged—that we who remember were the people who Forget. All of us. Not just the Outside, like Grandpapa Cyrus tried to tell me. And not just the fading sort of memory, either. The Forgetting erased our existence from our own minds. And this was the real reason we abandoned Canaan 379 years ago. Why we built this city of safety underground. Not to hide from the evils of a mythical Earth. It was to hide from the Forgetting. And now, the ones we have left Outside are beginning to Forget again. The Council Knows it, and so do I.
They cannot Know that I Know it.
Thorne leans forward, almost gently, and blows out the lamp. And I feel myself float, upward, with a curl of smoke …
… to the sun and the slope I am climbing. To sweat on my face, the glinting blue rock of the mountain peaks rising tall in my path. I look back. I’m high in the hills now, and there are specks on the plain, black dots in the nearly horizontal rays of the lowering sun. I double my speed.
I’m going to do what Nita said. I’m going to find the Cursed City. Find the way to Forget. But not just for myself. Because I don’t
think the Forgetting is a sickness. Not anymore. I think the Forgetting might be a way for the Knowing to be healed. A way to peace that does not lead through death. And I am going to bring that Forgetting back to the Knowing like a gift, so that none of us have to live this way ever again.
And what will the Outsiders do when they can see that the Knowing are not special? That there is no Earth for our Knowing to be kept safe from? That we can Forget just like they do? I think they will rebel. I think they should rebel. There are more Outsiders than Underneath. Many more, and this, I think, is what our Council really fears. That the Forgetting will strip their power. That what I Know will give me the ability to strip their power.
The thought blows hot across my insides, and the rage inside me glows. They should be afraid. Because stripping them of their power is exactly what I’m going to do.
I don’t Know exactly what I’m looking for yet. Germ or toxin. I don’t Know if I’m going to Forget first without meaning to. It doesn’t matter. I have my book, and the truth is written in it. If I Forget, I will read the book, and I’ll Know the truth and understand what to do. My feet climb the slope, and I try to imagine the bliss of Forgetting. A mind without grief, without pain, without Knowing what I’ve done. And all this, I think, is why Nita sent me. Whether she knew it or not.
But first, I have to get there.
When I finally crest the pass I am tangled and ragged, winded and thirsty. I lean on my knees, panting, looking down across a valley that is like a shallow bowl surrounded by peaks, a scoop in the center of a ring of mountains. There’s a forest in the valley, oddly shaped, circular, little glints of white reflecting in the sun along the edges. And then I feel my thudding heart beat harder. Once, twice. And again. Speeding. Stealing the last of my breath.
The Knowing Page 5