The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  There are two of them, bickering in an accent that is unusually clipped, the girl with the odd hair, and a boy, a young man, lying on the floor in a beam of murky light. He wears the same baggy clothes as the girl, but his hair is black instead of yellow, not nearly as short as hers, the ends curling into his jaw and neck, and where he isn’t dirty his skin is a sunshine brown, like the harvest workers Outside. And I can’t stop looking at him. Because I’ve seen him before.

  I never dream. The images that come to me during sleep are reality. Memory. Knowing doesn’t leave room for imagination. But I can remember dreaming, when I was small, before my memories came, hazy, fractured thoughts that reflected what was familiar to me as a baby. And there was one dream, of being swaddled tight in my mother’s arms, of lights so bright they hurt my eyes. And there was a young man, standing far away from us, his clothes a little like what I see now, only dark blue, his hair shorter. He was talking to everyone at once, though the words were muffled, as if I had the blanket wrapped around my ears. And then my mother put her hand on my head, palm covering my skull, bent down close to my cheek and whispered, “You are dreaming.”

  But I Know it was his face I saw. The face that is turned to the girl right now. He’s wearing something that reminds me of the magnifiers Uncle Towlend used for doing delicate work on parchment, though these are thinner, lighter. Different. He’s also dusty and bloody, hurt, his foot not where it should be.

  The pages of my mind turn instantly to the drawings of “dislocations, legs and ankles” shown to us in the eighteenth recitation of physician training. It must have been his yell I heard earlier. The pain associated with such injuries was described as severe. And while I’m trying to decide if his tibia is actually broken, the boy raises his voice and says, “We don’t know anything about where we are!”

  I feel a relief almost as intense as when I put my hand on the wall stones of the city. They’ve Forgotten. They must have come from Outside, escaped the supervisors and the ring of mountains like I did. How often does this sort of thing go on? I don’t understand how his face could have been in my dreams, but I need these two. If they can’t tell me how they Forgot, then I need to study them. And we all need to be hidden before the Council comes.

  My feet move once, but then I stop. Stiffen. The boy’s face has turned, and he’s looking straight at me. I’ve grown up with darkness, and I Know he can’t see me in the deep shadows around this doorway, not while he’s in the light. But the way he’s staring, intense, unwavering, makes me think he can. The girl kneels beside him now, arguing, then slowly turns her head toward the door. Four beats of my heart go by before the boy raises his voice and says, “Hi.”

  I stay still. I think he’s talking to me. The girl waits, wide-eyed, and I glance up once at the ceiling, at the hole letting in the light. What is he trying to tell me? That he fell? From up high? The girl whispers, but he ignores her. Just watches me, expectant. He must have incredible vision. Maybe he’s asking for my help. I can see that he needs it. I take a step more fully into the doorway.

  The girl gasps and spins around on her knees, stuffing some kind of box back into her pack. Like I might try to take it away from her. Her fear gives me confidence. I don’t want them to be afraid. Or maybe they can’t remember why they should be. The boy is calm, gazing at me through the magnifiers, so I talk to him.

  “I am Samara Archiva, from Underneath. I’m not with the Council, but the Council is coming. Are you from Outside?”

  I realize too late that they might not remember where they’re from. Outsiders are not taught to read or write, so they couldn’t have a book. The girl holds her pack behind her back, but the boy’s dark brows come down, thinking. One side of his forehead is still bleeding from a shallow gash, but he’s handling the pain from that ankle well. Impressively so. I can see that neither of them knows how to answer me. I take another step forward.

  “Have you Forgotten?” I ask. The dark brows deepen, and the girl edges closer to him. I try again. “Do you know your name?”

  This time his face eases. “Beckett Rodriguez,” he says. It’s a low voice. Resonant in the echoing chamber. I look at the girl. Her hand is on his shoulder now, squeezing.

  “Do you remember your name?” I ask.

  She startles like a dustmoth, but eventually says, “Jillian.” It’s barely a whisper.

  I’m pleased. These aren’t names. They’ve made them up. Because they’ve Forgotten. I have so many questions, but first I have to get them to hide. And before that, I think, they will have to trust me. I take another step toward Beckett.

  “Could I examine your leg? I have physician training.”

  They both stare at me, and then the girl, Jillian, shakes her head no. But Beckett smiles. It’s a friendly smile, a little guilty, somehow, like he got caught doing something he shouldn’t. I see the same smile in my memory. But it’s not an expression that goes with his injury. Can you Forget to feel pain? He doesn’t move as I approach, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me, either.

  I set down my pack, get my loose hair out of the way, and kneel at his feet. He’s wearing an odd, heavy sort of foot covering, sewn from a material I’ve never seen. I can’t imagine how he’s managed to make such a thing for himself, and when I move his legging up a little higher, the silver cloth is thin, yet curiously solid between my fingers. Maybe Forgetting actually spurs creativity, I think, when you have no memory of how a thing should be done. It’s an interesting idea that I will leave to the arguments of the philosophers. I touch the ankle gently, bending down to look at it from all sides.

  “Luxatio pedis sub talo,” I mutter. “Antero-lateral.” They look at me like I’ve been babbling. “The ankle is dislocated … out of position,” I explain. “Probably with some small fractures.” And I don’t like the color of it, as if the blood isn’t flowing. “It will heal if I set it, but that should be done soon. An artery may be restricted, and the ankle is swelling. Will you let me set it?”

  I can tell the last part of this has gotten through, because I see them exchange a look, Beckett’s clearly saying, I told you so. This doesn’t seem like a reasonable reaction, either. Maybe he doesn’t understand what setting a bone means.

  “It will be painful,” I say, “but will hurt much less when I’m done. Will you let me?”

  The girl, Jillian, asks, “Are you a doctor?”

  I stare at her. How could that word be in her head? I’ve only ever seen that term in disintegrating manuscripts in the Archives.

  She looks back at Beckett and shakes her head again, hard, but he just says, “Go ahead.” When I hesitate, he says, “Yes.”

  I get to work. It’s difficult to take the sandal, or whatever it is, off his foot, and I Know I must be hurting him. Or at least I should be. But this familiar, bloodied, Forgetting young man of abandoned Canaan tolerates pain better than I’ve ever seen. And he’s strong. I can feel the calf muscle beneath my fingers. He’s definitely been in the fields. Or maybe at a furnace. Though the magnifiers speak to something smaller, like fine metalwork. It doesn’t make sense.

  When I drag a piece of fallen rubble to put beneath Beckett’s leg, the girl gets the idea and helps me move it, positioning it beneath his calf while I hold the dangling foot. Her eyes are large and very blue, and I have to take a moment to cache, to banish Nita’s memory back to the high, dark shelf.

  When I open my eyes, Beckett is still watching me. I wish I’d brought a sleeping draught for him, so he wouldn’t have to remember this, but his face is steady, his concentration on me intense. Maybe he hasn’t Forgotten physical pain. Maybe he can cache it. That would be an amazing skill. But probably not good enough for what’s coming next, and we have very little time. The Council could be here in less than a bell.

  I turn to Jillian.

  “You should sit on him.”

  Her face is blank.

  “He’ll move … ” I try to think how to explain simply. “It will hurt too much for him to be still
. Sit on his chest, and hold his other leg, like this … ”

  She does what I tell her, straddling Beckett’s chest, leaning forward to wrap her arms around his other leg, to keep it in place, her only words a whispered, “Shut up, Beckett,” which makes no sense. I plant my feet, get a strong hold on Beckett’s heel and the top of his foot.

  I Know how to set an ankle. But Knowing can be different from doing. The Outside taught me that. And the rope on the clifftop. I reexamine the recitation in my mind, go over the details, then meet Beckett’s dark gaze through the magnifiers, watching me from over Jillian’s shoulder. There’s something a little different from my dream, I think now, something about the eyes. But his expression is straight out of my memories.

  “I will begin,” I tell him.

  She cannot be real. Tall and lean, with a mass of curling dark hair hanging in loose coils down her back. And the eyes … the lightest brown, a shade or two lighter than her skin, glowing, so that they look … amber, maybe. Her clothes are dirty, embroidered with tiny blue and green stitches, handmade from the cloth to the thread, like the sandals. Like the book she’s wearing tied across her chest.

  This girl has walked straight out of a history file on the early civilizations of … Where? The Southern American continent? Pretech Asia? But Samara is not from Earth. Not really. She is of Canaan, and I don’t know what she’s talking about half the time. But when she came out with what I think are ancient Latin medical terms and “physician,” a word I’ve only seen in manuscripts, all I could think is how both my parents might break an ankle to put themselves in my position right now.

  Samara has my foot, ready to set the bone, Jill on my chest, bracing me more effectively than I would’ve thought. She’s been incredibly gentle, this girl, and she looks like she knows what she’s doing. I hope she does, because either way, I’m about to let her do it.

  “I will begin,” she says.

  She’s speaking English, but with the occasional unfamiliar word and an odd cadence, a lilt that goes unexpected places, so that sometimes I’m slow to catch the meaning. It’s pretty, though, fascinating, and then the girl wrenches my leg like she’s wringing the neck of a turkey. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it’s uncomfortable enough to make me flinch, and I thank every deity of every civilization I’ve ever studied that Jillian got that infusion in me. She’s making it hard to breathe, squeezing me with her legs she’s so tense, her head turned and eyes screwed shut. Samara frowns, gives my leg another killing twist, harder, this time with an audible pop. I feel my leg and foot go back together. Which is weird, and a little disgusting.

  “That is done,” Samara says. She seems relieved, but she’s got her head to one side, looking at me with those amber eyes. I realize way too late that I should have been in excruciating pain, and that I have no way of explaining why I wasn’t. Why I’m not. Jill lets go of my other leg, scrambles off my chest.

  “Are you okay?”

  I hadn’t realized until this second how scared she is. I smile at her, and watch Samara watch me do it. She lowers her gaze and goes back to examining my foot, I think feeling for a pulse. Where did this girl come from? Are there parts of the city still inhabited? The way she looks around this room … I don’t think she’s ever been here before.

  I have a million questions, and I can’t think of one way of asking any of them that doesn’t show the truth. That I don’t belong here. That Jill doesn’t belong here. That we are from somewhere else. How was initial contact supposed to work? The gist of Mom and Dad’s training was to not overwhelm with knowledge or the unfamiliar, to not show surprise or judgment at pretech cultural norms. Making allowances for a civilization that is less developed. Now that I’m here, all that sounds like a kind of talking down. Assuming that their society would want to be like ours if it could. Samara may not understand technology or the culture of Earth, but she doesn’t seem stupid, and we are going to ruin this, Jill and I. Cause irreparable damage, change the course of a world, just because we—correction, I—can’t follow protocol and turn back when I’m supposed to. Samara looks up.

  “There has likely been a fracture as well. Talus, or malleolus.”

  It’s both, I think.

  “You will have to immobilize the leg until it heals.”

  Then Jillian says, “Who trained you? As a … physician?”

  I shoot Jill a look of respect. She asked a leading question, gave nothing away, and used the terminology. But Samara doesn’t answer, only stands. She seems agitated. Nervous.

  “Do you understand that you are in danger?” she asks. When we don’t answer, because we don’t know what to say, she goes on. “The Council is coming. They will be here soon, perhaps half a bell, and … Beckett,” she stumbles over my name, “will not be able to move well. Perhaps not until sunrising.”

  I’ll be moving twenty minutes after Jill gets the medical kit back out, but Samara has no way of knowing that. I say, “Why is the Council coming?”

  For some reason, this stops her dead. “Do you remember the Council?”

  I don’t. At all. She looks relieved at my expression, though I don’t understand why. She sits on a fallen stone next to us, her hair a cascade, eyes rimmed with dark lash, and now that she’s closer, I see that one side of her face shows a faint, almost faded bruise.

  “Let me explain,” she says. “You are from the outside.”

  I feel my stomach sink, see Jill’s eyes go round. She knows already. She knows we’re from Earth. And I think that was supposed to be phase nine or ten of contact. She goes on.

  “You are out of bounds. The Council will kill you for that.”

  Out of bounds, I think. Could that mean beyond a boundary? Out of the atmosphere? Or beyond the wall? But we’re inside the wall. Jill isn’t concerned with an ancient turn of phrase.

  She says, “What do you mean, they’ll kill us?” Samara looks at her like she’s an idiot.

  “I mean they will end your life, because you have forgotten.”

  “Wait. What?” Jill looks to me for help. I’m watching Samara. She has her elbows balanced on her knees, which are also showing bruising, and when she holds out her hands, I see that they are newly healed, a little pink, as if her palms recently lost most of their skin. Culture files move past my memory: self-mutilation, torture, the labs of the Fourth and Fifth World Wars. Something has happened to this girl. But I can’t decide if she knows we’re from Earth or not. So I gamble.

  “Are you from the outside?”

  Samara frowns. “I said to you before, I am from Underneath. From the city.” She tries again when we don’t seem to get it. “From the city of New Canaan.”

  Jill’s hand tightens in mine, and then my brain is racing. There is another city on this planet. New Canaan. They didn’t die out, they just packed up and moved. But why? And why are the Centauri’s scans turning out to be so incredibly, amazingly worthless?

  I’ve been trying to watch Samara’s face. Both my parents trained in the psychology of expression and body movements, the silent language that can tell you so much about another person without having to ask. And now I’m drawing my own conclusions. Samara is a facade, like this building, hard on the outside, mysterious inside, with only the occasional glimpse showing through the cracks. Like right now. Sadness. I gamble again.

  “Are you out of bounds?” I ask. “Are they going to kill you, too?”

  She looks at me funny, her head cocked to one side again, and then the amber eyes fall closed. And Samara just … goes away. The facade comes down in a landslide, and I see raw emotion moving across her face. Uncertainty, fear, and is that anguish?

  I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what Jill and I have walked into. I don’t know if we can walk out again. But I do know that the decades of studying tool marks on a rock or the break patterns of a piece of pottery are never going to be enough for me now, not when the solution to every mystery is sitting right here at my feet. Samara has a head stuffed full of answers
, and my need to know those answers might very well take priority over my personal safety. Which is completely unfair to Jill.

  I think these things in a few blinks of an eye, and then Samara’s snap open. She’s with us again, her breath coming fast. She looks to Jill.

  “They will be inside the walls soon. We need to hurry. I’ll help you hide him, and when the Council is gone, in return, I ask that you tell me everything you know about forgetting.”

  Jill doesn’t respond until I nudge her, and then she says, “Okay.”

  Samara almost smiles.

  “I’ll go for water and something to brace his leg. We should move him into the next room, where we cannot be seen if they climb the mound. And then you must help me block up the door.”

  “How long will they look for us?” I ask.

  Samara shakes her head as she stands, picks up her pack. “I will hurry.” And then she’s halfway to the door, moving like she’s melting into the dark.

  Jill waits, watching me watch Samara through the glasses. I see her in grays and greens, sprinting through the vast, dark room that is beyond the doorway like she can see it. As soon as she’s out the other side, I say, “Gone.”

  Jill immediately relaxes her stance, then jumps to her feet and starts her expert cussing.

  “You know I’ve got the recording function on,” I tell her. It doesn’t improve her mood.

  “I don’t believe you, Beckett, I really don’t! She is pretech! A local!” She says it like it’s something to be ashamed of.

  I get up on my elbows, carefully lift my leg to the floor while she rants. That infusion is starting to wear off a little. Jill doesn’t even slow down.

  “You know this changes everything. And someone is coming to kill us in ‘half a bell,’ whatever that means. And what is she talking about, ‘forgetting,’ and asking if we remember our names? Who wouldn’t remember their own name … ”

  I think about the wall behind me, and the carved sign that brought me up the pile of rubble in the first place. “Remember Our Truth” and “Without Memories, They Are Nothing.” I have to know what happened here.