The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Shhh,” he says, listening. And then, through the hole that was once a window, the first member of the Council comes into view. Craddock. Of course it would be Craddock. He has a thick stick in his hand, capped with metal. I think it’s for my head.

  Beckett slides me down the wall, a finger to his lips, crouching beside me, out of sight. I Know it’s time now. And it will be easy. One word, and they will have me and this boy from Earth. The city will be warned, and I will die. I close my eyes. I’m shaking.

  “Anything?” Craddock asks. And part of a face joins him. Marcus Physicianson. More dirty and dust-coated and unpainted than I’ve ever seen him. I wonder if Marcus realized he would be killing me when he approved me for physician training. When Reddix, his son, accepted whatever deal was offered by my mother.

  “No, nothing,” Marcus replies. “Did you come underground?”

  “Yes. It’s secure, the side entrance is being watched.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “Spread from here to the wall.”

  I take a deep breath, ready to shout.

  “And Lian and Sampson?”

  “Thorne has them,” says Craddock. “In seclusion.”

  Marcus laughs once, and I hold my breath, the shout held just inside my mouth. What do they mean the Council “has” my parents? Lian Archiva has never needed seclusion in her life. Beckett catches my eye, gives my shoulder a little push that means Stay here, and begins creeping down the length of the wall.

  “This is not the way it was supposed to happen,” Craddock whispers. He sounds nervous. “It would’ve been better to let the girl be.”

  “And that is Lian’s fault, isn’t it?”

  “Shhh,” says Craddock. “Don’t tell me your family didn’t have any interest.”

  “If we’d done what we should have and Judged her at the proper time, we wouldn’t be in this mess. It was a weak decision. We’ll have to make an example of them all now.”

  Craddock makes another hushing sound, and for the moment there’s only the wrong kind of silence. An example … of my family. The Council is going to condemn my parents. The whole family. Like Ava Administrator. Because of me. The shout inside my mouth stays there. Beckett takes silent steps, half-bent, to just below the empty window.

  “You need to be careful what you say, and who you say it to,” Craddock hisses. “You Know it wasn’t going to be unanimous. And Thorne thinks condemning still might not be necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “The appearance of the thing. If nobody Knows, then … ” His voice trails away.

  Then, what? If they can come up with a good lie to account for my death, like accidental poisoning, then it might not be necessary to make an example of all the Archivas? Is that what he means?

  “Either way,” Marcus says, “we have to end this before we lose the sun. Before we have more than her to deal with … ”

  My shout is still sitting there, and I’m thinking, thinking … If I could get back to the city, keep what I’ve done from becoming public, would Thorne spare my parents? Or do I give myself up and warn them all about Earth? Right now? I look at Beckett. He’s holding a chunk of broken wall, weighing it in his hand. I draw another breath.

  Craddock says, “She might not even be here.”

  “She’s here,” Marcus replies.

  I draw breath again, ready to shout, and then Beckett stands for a quick moment, heaves the stone, and ducks back down again. The rock goes sailing, over branches, over broken walls and out of sight, landing far behind Marcus and Craddock with a clatter. Two shadows pass beyond the empty window. Then Beckett is up, grabbing handfuls of plants growing from the floor dirt, ripping them up by the roots and tossing them onto the fallen door.

  “What … ” I whisper.

  “Creating a distraction,” he says before I can finish. He clears the growth away from the edges of the metal door, making a good-size pile of plants in the middle of it. “Five more are coming from the other direction,” he says. “Can you see them?”

  My gaze darts to the window, and when I look back, the pile of plants Beckett has made is on fire. An instant, roaring fire. And there’s no more time for thought. No time for hiding or decisions. Those are oil plants burning. And that door is mountain rock. I leap to my feet, yank Beckett by the arm.

  “Wait for the smoke … ” he says.

  “Run,” I tell him. This time I push him. “Go!”

  We jump over the remains of a collapsed back wall and sprint full-out around trees and saplings, angling back toward the rubble mound. I glance back, and a boom hits my ears like a fist, rattling the hidden paving stones of the road. I stumble, leaves and wood and chunks of blue-gray metal exploding upward in a cloud, and then I drop to the ground beside Beckett, hands over my head, back pelted with a stinging rain of broken stone and pebbles.

  I look up when the shower stops. A plume of smoke is billowing into the sky, and there’s shouting all around us, voices calling from both sides. Close. I meet Beckett’s startled eyes. The ones I didn’t dream. We get to our feet and run.

  I see the wall, just a few meters away through the trees, ruined gates open to the grasslands, and then the rubble mound is on our left. We circle it, toward the hole in the other side, and there are the backs of Marcus and Craddock, their hair braids tied for travel, hurrying away down the overgrown street toward the explosion, three more figures running with them. We slide through the hole and into the darkness of the mound.

  “Quick,” Beckett says. He’s grabbing one of the stones I piled inside, blocking up the entrance to the mound. Like I had intended to. I hesitate, and then help him do it, uncovering my book as I set the rocks in place. But if Beckett thinks that’s strange, he doesn’t say anything about it. We stack the stones in silence. If the Council notices the mess Jillian left when she tore open this hole, they’ll find the opening and we’ll be trapped in here, and I don’t Know how many have come. I saw five just then, Martina Tutor running with Marcus and Craddock. But Martina isn’t Council. What is she doing here?

  I need to think.

  When the opening has enough rocks to make the room almost completely dark, Beckett whispers, “Okay, grab your stuff.”

  I don’t Know what that means. But he’s holding out my book and my pack, so I take them, and we feel our way through the first room, the small second one, and then the vast, black, open space full of dust to the inner chamber where I first saw him.

  Jillian is waiting with both Beckett’s pack and hers, one on each shoulder. And she’s angry. Very angry. “What did you do?” she demands.

  What he did, I think, is set fire to mountain rock. And he’s lucky not to have blown up half the city and us along with it. But how? How did he start that fire?

  Beckett doesn’t answer. He just points to the hole in the ceiling, then puts a finger to his lips. There’s shouting in the distance, beyond the mound. Jillian’s eyes dart up and she takes another step back, away from the dim light shining down from the hole, while Beckett stands still, on the ankle I just set, magnifiers on his face, listening.

  Aliens. That’s what Grandpapa Cyrus calls the Earth people. Alien invaders from another world.

  I back away, to the other end of the room, clutching my pack until I feel one of the decorative half columns that ring the room’s outer wall behind me. I can’t believe I’m alive. That I’m here, in the Cursed City, with two aliens from Earth. That I didn’t tell the Council, shout out that Earth was crouched just on the other side of that wall. But all my options were terrible. They still are. How dare the Council throw my parents on my own funeral pyre? Those were my sins. Not theirs. They had no control over my choices, no matter how much my mother might have wished to. And cutting off the Archiva bloodline is pointless. Mother isn’t going to have more children. This is all about fear. The Council keeping their control of the Knowing. The rage inside me smolders. Flames.

  But even if I did go back to the city, attended the Changing
of the Seasons celebrations like I’d just come out of seclusion, removed the need to make an example of my parents, warned them about Earth, the Council is never going to let me live. Not even until Judgment.

  Unless I have something to bargain with. Something they would want.

  I look up and find Beckett watching me. He glances away, grinning a little, like he’s been caught at something. The shouts outside the rubble mound are distant now. Fading. Jillian hoists her pack.

  “Time to break contact, Beckett,” she whispers.

  I don’t know what she means, but Beckett does. He walks to the edge of the light, the last sunbeam of the season, his smile gone, staring down at the stone I set his ankle on. I watch him think, letting one idea inside my head knock the next into existence.

  What would the Council give to talk to two aliens from Earth? Maybe anything I ask. Like the life of my parents. Maybe even my life until Judgment. And if I could live that long, I still might be able to find the Forgetting.

  Hope is a treacherous feeling, and yet here it comes again, sprouting in my chest. Clearing my head. I think the Forgetting is real, and I think the Council must Know how it works already. And that means my answers are in the city. If I could get the keys, get back into that room in the Archives, like I did before, it’s still possible that I could heal the Knowing. That I could break the illusion of the Council’s power. I could still fix this. But I’d have to convince these two to come with me.

  I have no idea how to do that. I breathe, my air unsteady, and I think I must actually be homesick, because I can smell the Underneath.

  “Beckett, time to break contact,” Jillian says again.

  He’s standing in the exact same spot, eyes closed, magnifiers off, arms stretched up and on top of his head, face dirty and bloody, the ends of his dusty black hair sticking against his sweaty neck. I hadn’t realized he was quite this lovely an alien. Or at least, not when I was an infant. How can I have dreamed him? A boy from Earth? But I did. Everything but the shape of the eyes. I don’t understand it. Or him.

  Why pull me out of the street, save me from the Council, if he meant me harm? But he hasn’t admitted where he’s really from, has he? Neither of them has. They lied about—or at least hid—that fact, just like they waited until I was gone to use the technology that healed Beckett’s foot. Why hide, if Earth isn’t a threat? If I asked him about Earth right now, would Beckett lie to me, or tell me the truth?

  It shouldn’t matter. I need him to come with me, either way. Both of them. To keep my city safe. To save my parents. To buy me time to heal the Knowing.

  But it does matter. Somehow. He’s been in my head since I was a baby.

  I think I will have to test him.

  He’s standing perfectly still in the sunlight. I don’t Know what’s happening, but he needs to say something. Something he doesn’t want to. I can see it on his face.

  “Beckett,” Jillian says. “You have your orders.”

  Beckett opens his eyes.

  And then a shadow flits across the last beam of the sun.

  Rule one in initiation contact training, according to the eminent Dr. Sean Rodriguez: Establish trust, but never trust them. Because you cannot trust what you do not understand.

  FROM THE LOG BOOK OF BECKETT RODRIGUEZ

  Day 98, Year 1

  The Lost Canaan Project

  I catch the quick shadow moving across the light, and I know it’s a skimmer. I’m not sure if Jill saw, but there’s no time to figure out a way to tell her. I slide on the glasses and write, fast, choosing letters with my gaze. I don’t know how long we’ll have communication, and I need to tell Dad that I’m breaking orders. That I’m with a local, and will stay to continue establishing relationship. That Canaan is still a living city, only moved somewhere underground. That I need help getting Jill out.

  Jill is not going to understand this. I think I’m going to hurt her. But Samara is exactly what we came for, and this is an opportunity that won’t come again. And when I glance to the side, I find her amber eyes on me. Beautiful, in a smooth mask of a face. I need to write, but I can’t help searching her for cracks like before, for a hint of what’s beneath.

  “The dark days are coming,” she says, out of nowhere. Her voice lilts with the words. “It must be difficult to know how to live through the dark when you’ve forgotten.”

  Forgotten. That’s what she said had happened to us, before she set my ankle. That we were from “outside,” and we had “forgotten.” It really would be nice to have the first clue about what’s been happening on this planet.

  Samara asks, “Will you go on living in the Cursed City? When the Council has gone?”

  I’m processing “cursed” when a message slides across the lenses. One word. “Don’t.” The signature is Dr. Sean Rodriguez. Something must be glitching. Jill comes to stand beside me, close against my elbow. Like she’s closing ranks. It’s time to tell her. I take a breath. “Actually, we—”

  “Yes,” Jillian says abruptly. “That’s right. We’ll stay in the city. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  Samara’s gaze flows over Jillian like a chilly stream. “And have you gathered and preserved?” she asks both of us. “Do you have seeds for the sunrising?”

  “Of course,” Jillian replies. She smiles, all bright hair and innocence, but I’m watching Samara, and I see one of those cracks I was looking for. A quick fracture. She knows Jillian just lied to her. I don’t know how or why, but she knows. And when those eyes flick to me, what I see is … disappointment. I wish I were as good as Jill at cussing, because right now I feel like I just failed an exam I never took.

  “Wait,” I say. “I … ” Then another message scrolls fast across my eyes:

  “Situation understood. Revised orders: Maintain contact according to protocol. Find and report position of subterranean city as soon as possible.”

  And this time the signature is not my father’s. It’s from Admiral Commander Juniper Faye.

  I turn away from Jill and Samara, hands back on my head. Base camp must have uploaded my files the last time the skimmer came through. I was already set to transmit. Which means they’ve seen all the visuals, probably up to Samara setting my ankle and right after, and now, I bet, they’ve just uploaded the rest. The thought of Commander Faye hearing my opinions on protocol and watching me maintain contact with a local directly against orders is enough to make my stomach turn. But maybe I won’t be held responsible for not following orders when I was about to get the opposite ones anyway.

  Okay, there’s not much chance of that. It might be almost as bad as Dad seeing me blow a chunk out of one of the most important archaeological sites since Tokyo.

  “The dark days can be dangerous on your own,” says Samara.

  I wipe away the first message, spell one word, “Understood,” and send. Then I turn around. Those eyes are on me.

  “Come with me,” she says, “to my city. Until it’s light again. I can help you remember.”

  Come with her. That’s exactly what I want. What I’ve just been ordered to do. But why now? The mask is back, hard and impenetrable.

  “No, thanks,” Jill says, her hand on my arm.

  I really do need to find a way of telling Jill to shut up without yelling, Shut up.

  I take my pack from Jill and sling it over my shoulder, keep my gaze on Samara when I say, “How far is it to New Canaan?”

  Jillian goes still, frozen, like she opened the door of the Centauri III and got left floating around in space. And then the lenses flash red. The perimeter alarm. I look up and turn around.

  “What is it?” Jill asks.

  “Someone’s close,” I say. I scan for heat and I find it, hold up two fingers. “Walking along the edge.”

  Jill stares at the wall, tense, while Samara holds that book to her chest, backed up against one of the half columns, ready to run. Like me. I scan again, and one of the heat sources is a meter in the air and rising. Climbing up the mo
und. What has this girl done?

  “They’re coming up,” I whisper.

  Jillian spins, like she’s giving it one last try to find a door we missed, and I grab my pack and move to get Samara, and Samara is … gone. Eyes closed, face open, lost somewhere in her head. Great. Just great. I shake her once, like I did in the ruined house. She frowns, but doesn’t come back. Jill tugs at my arm.

  “Leave her!” She’s barely containing her voice.

  “Orders, Jill.” She backs off, startled, glances up at where the sky should be. I scan again. Our climber is taking their time, more cautious than I was, but still halfway, and I’m more than a little worried the ceiling might come down on us. I grip Samara by the shoulders and shake her again. Hard.

  Her eyes pop open. She has the tiniest sprinkle of freckles across her nose. “We should go underground,” she says.

  “Oh no, we shouldn’t!” Jill hisses. “We go out the door!”

  Then Samara reaches behind her, pulls a latch, and the column swings open. Like a door. Leading down to a damp and hollow dark. Okay, so the glasses missed that one.

  “Beckett, no,” Jillian breathes. “We can’t trust her. She could be leading us straight to them!”

  These words are not exactly phrased to promote healthy relationships across cultures. I keep looking at Samara. “Do you know the way?”

  “Yes. I have remembered.”

  “And how did you even know that door was there?” whispers Jill.

  The amber eyes swing to her. “Because I smelled it.”

  Fine. I don’t know what that means, but fine. Jill is spitting mad, we have about ten seconds before someone’s head comes through that hole, and now that the door is open, the glasses show a long, straight river passage, with at least one branch. “In!” I say beneath my breath. “Go!” Samara slips through the door with her pack and I practically shove Jill.

  I shut the door with a soft snick. There’s no lock, and I consider fusing the latch with the laser, but I think messing up one more thing in Canaan might actually kill me. If the glasses didn’t find that door, it’s not likely they will.