The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Careful, Beckett. You’ll trip,” Jill says next to me.

  I look down at her, confused, but only at first. Then I’m ticked. “I am studying her,” I say under my breath. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

  “Studying? Is that what they call it now?”

  I stare down at Jill’s big blue eyes. Fine. We’re fighting. I pick up my pace and get ahead of her, walking just behind Samara and not looking back.

  After a long time of that, Samara says, “She is your partner?”

  They’re the first words she’s said to me since our so-called deal, and I know exactly what she means just from the tone. From a linguistic standpoint, what an interesting use of the word “partner.” From a Beckett standpoint, what an uncomfortable one. But I did tell her to ask anything. I glance over my shoulder. Jillian’s light has dropped back.

  “No,” I say carefully. “Not partners. We’ve just … known each other a long time.”

  We walk on, the blue stone every now and again veined by a ribbon of shining black. A passage opens up to the left, little more than a crack, and when I check it with the glasses, I see that it widens, taking an almost perpendicular course. Samara ignores this and stays with the river. I want to ask her questions. A hundred of them. But since I’m following instinct here instead of protocol, I wait.

  Then she stops and looks directly at me. Like she did before. I hold my breath. “Why do you want to come to my city?”

  And this, I think, is my second challenge. I can see Jill through the glasses, small and far away in the dark. She’s using the cartographer. I turn back to Samara. Her eyes are amber lined with black lash. It’s really not all that hard, breaking protocol.

  “I want to study it,” I tell her. When she doesn’t respond, I add, “To learn about it. Like how you live. Your history.”

  The mask on her face shows the smallest crack, but I can’t identify the emotion. She asks, “You want to know our history?”

  Yes, Samara of New Canaan. Five million times, yes. I can’t tell if she believes me. I really want her to believe me. Since I’ve already climbed out on a limb, I edge a little farther. “History is both my parents’ … ” I try to think of a word that won’t seem foreign to her. “It’s what they were trained for. Finding history that’s been lost.”

  I’ve piqued her interest. She walks forward slowly, holding up her light. I don’t bother; I’m on night function. “My family trained for the Archives,” she says. “I think that must be much like history.”

  Archives. New Canaan has an Archives. Joanna Cho-Rodriguez may forgive me yet. And Samara has a family. I think I may die of not asking. But she’s doing more talking than I’ve ever heard from her, and I’d be crazy to stop the flow. She pauses again, looks right at me.

  “My uncle trained for the Archives, and he used magnifiers to repair the books.”

  I wait. I’m not sure what she’s trying to say.

  “He used magnifiers to see small things,” she explains. “What do yours do?”

  And there it is. The third challenge. I take another look back. Jill’s light is bobbing now. She’s not too close, but I don’t have much time. I touch Samara’s arm, just a little, making her jump, steering her to the other side of a landslide of rock that sparkles in our light. She looks wary, like she might cut and run. Or fight. But I only take off the glasses and offer them to her.

  “They help me see,” I tell her. Or that’s one way of putting it.

  She sets her jar on the ground and takes the glasses like they might sting or bite, turning them over in her hand. She looks at me through them, her brows down.

  “But they only work for me, not anybody else.”

  She stares at me so deeply, the glasses held gingerly between two fingers, that this time I see something I recognize. That I know well. She is aching to know. Maybe just as bad as I am.

  “Is it technology?” she whispers.

  The word is a surprise. A big one. But I can feel myself grinning at her. It’s not only easy to break protocol, it’s downright satisfying. “Yes. That’s exactly what they are.”

  “Can you see through walls?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can you see what’s coming in this passage?”

  “Yes. For a long way. And there’s nothing in the passage.”

  “Can you see inside me?”

  I really wish the glasses could do that. “Some things.”

  “Like bones?”

  I nod. She’s been observant.

  “Can they start a fire?”

  “Sure.” Okay, that one would’ve been hard to miss.

  “Can you see through clothes?”

  I smile, mostly because it’s embarrassing. “Sort of. If I asked them to. I wouldn’t ask them to. But it’s against the rules to tell you this stuff, so don’t say anything in front of Jill, okay? You’ll get me in trouble.”

  I watch her think about this. Or about something. She’s running one slim finger over the edge of the glasses, slow.

  “Did technology heal your ankle?” she asks.

  “It helped.”

  “Would you show me?”

  “Yes. Just … when we’re by ourselves, okay?” I smile at her again. She lays the glasses carefully back in my palm, but I don’t put them on. She’s looking right at me, and I’m thinking about that mask she wears. As perfect and hard as the insides of this planet. But now I don’t think she’s hiding just one or two things beneath it. I think she’s hiding her whole self. Just below the surface. I wonder why.

  “Have you … ” Samara stops, drops her gaze. I want her to look up again, so I can see her eyes.

  “Have I what?” It works. She looks at me.

  “Have you been here before?”

  The question was barely a whisper. But what I want to know is, why did she need to ask it? I shake my head. “No. I’ve never been here before.”

  Samara picks up her light, and then Jill is coming around the stones.

  “Are we stopping?” she asks.

  I slide the glasses back onto my face, but before either of us can answer, Samara’s eyes drop closed and she’s just … gone. Away.

  “What is—” Jill starts, but I shush her. Last time I saw Samara do this she fell down, so I wait, ready to catch her or the handblown jar, whichever goes first. Her mask dissolves, just like it did before, and this time I watch her concentrate, searching. I see exactly when she finds what she’s looking for. Because she smiles. A real one. It changes her face. Then her eyes snap open and the mask drops back into place again. I feel disappointed.

  “In eight and a quarter bells we will be halfway to the boats,” Samara says. “A little sooner, if we move quickly.” Then she glides ahead in that fluid way she has, like she’s melting through the dark.

  Jill gives me a look like, What boats?

  I don’t have an answer. In fact, I have more questions than I know what to do with. About the Archives and bells and what she knows about technology. What her people might remember about Earth.

  We move on down the passage without talking much, Samara pushing our pace until there’s no breath for it anyway. We rest behind a pile of rocks, and then get up and do it again. And again. Moving toward a city I’ve been ordered to find, with the girl I’ve been ordered to maintain contact with. As per protocol. But I’m not sure protocol is right anymore. I’m not sure our training is right.

  I want to see what’s inside her again.

  I want her to tell me everything.

  I want her to want to talk to me.

  Nita was the one who gave me my Outside name. Nadia. Like she gave me her extra tunic and leggings, which probably weren’t extra at all. Like she gave me secret lessons during the middle bell, when I was supposed to be caching, showing me how to walk, talk, and wear my hair Outside, both of us giggling at my efforts. When I asked why she chose Nadia, she just shrugged and said, “Because it suits.”

  Nadia, we decided, worked with Nita,
helping in the Archiva family chambers, and she lived with the planters, nearly two kilometers from Nita’s house, at the foot of the mountains near the wheat fields. And three seasons ago, on the first of the dark days, Nadia went Outside, and ate a resting meal with Nita’s family. She was shy at first, quiet. Until she discovered that she didn’t have to be careful. That Nita’s mother, brothers, grandpapa, didn’t mind what she said or what she didn’t. Didn’t mind her ignorance about certain facts—that streets could smell, that you could be cheated in the Bartering Square, that making a clay pot meant getting your hands filthy. They didn’t mind anything about her at all. Love, Nadia decided, was so much easier to feel in the Outside.

  And when I climbed back down the supply shaft, back to the opulent lamplight and perfumed silence where my name is Samara, that was when I first began to suspect. A suspicion that grew and grew until I Knew.

  That we of the Knowing are not as we should be.

  FROM THE HIDDEN BOOK OF SAMARA ARCHIVA

  IN THE CITY OF NEW CANAAN

  Nita told a story once, all of us sitting around the heating furnace in her mother’s house, about how the Earth people liked to eat each other. Complete with sound effects. Her littlest brothers were shrieking with laughter, Nathan smacking her arm, egging her on until she cheerfully explained how Earthlings also had wings on their heads, like the bluedads in the fields, and that was how they flew through the stars.

  So far, not one thing I’ve ever heard about Earth seems to be true. Then again, three days ago I didn’t even believe in Earth’s existence, so I don’t Know why being wrong should come as such a shock to me. I’ve slept for six bells, and then another three, unharmed. Beckett showed me his technology, told me that technology could heal. I think he told me the truth. And coming to study the history of New Canaan is nothing like the wanton destruction we’ve been taught Earth would bring.

  I sneak a look at Beckett in the light of his jar, Jillian just behind him. He’s thoughtful, one corner of his mouth turned up, a shadow darkening his chin. No sign of wings. Or cannibalism. And he’s been telling me other things. Little things, about a father, a mother, a grandmother he knew as a child, small offerings that he gives along with his blanket and occasional food. Maybe he’s only giving what it doesn’t hurt for me to Know. That would be an intelligent way to gain my trust. And it’s not like he’s once admitted where he’s from. Maybe studying New Canaan means studying us like the plant specimens under glass in the chemistry labs. Maybe Earth will take us away to study us more, like the stories say.

  Memory nudges, and I see Beckett smiling, his face open and unguarded as he puts the glasses in my hand. His smile also comes like a gift. One that’s given often. But smiles can be lies just as easily as words. And I don’t think Beckett would be smiling at me if he knew what I’d done.

  I need to understand how I dreamed him.

  Jillian catches my eye. I think I’ve been looking at Beckett a long time. And just like him, her feelings are open and impossible to miss. Anger—she’s been furious for ten bells now, walking close, no more lagging behind to hide that technology she’s been using. And then I watch her expression change into something like disdain before she looks away. Dismissal. The look carries a sting just as potent as words. Like a candle flame on skin.

  And this is why we don’t show our feelings Underneath. Because that flame is going to keep on burning, blistering, while Jillian, who shows no sign of having memory, will forget one day that she ever looked at me like that at all.

  I lift my light to the path ahead and try to think of a world where the Knowing could Forget. Where you wouldn’t have to be afraid of love. Or your children. If I can bargain with the Council for time, heal the Knowing with Forgetting, then that world could still be possible. If I cannot, then my time is short, and I might as well indulge in the memory of a smile.

  And that sounds a little like Sonia.

  I need to be even more careful than I thought. And for different reasons.

  I walk fast, and we go a long way, in a silence that might have just as much to say as speech. The water beside us has been slowing, widening for some time, and then we pass into a huge room where there’s not a river anymore at all, but a lake, dark and glossy, pooling to one side. Columns of blue-and-black-riddled stone drip down from the ceiling, climb up from the floor, sometimes meeting in the middle, reflecting in the water, making the rough cavern look almost formal in the shadows of our lights. It reminds me of the Forum.

  When I compare the steps in my memory, I think we must be halfway to New Canaan. We’ve made good time. Better than I thought. There hasn’t been the first sign of anyone coming behind us, and there’s no point having the two of them falling down when we get to the city.

  I cache the thought about what we’ll do when we get to the city. And with more success than usual.

  “We should rest here,” I tell them.

  “Beck?” Jillian whispers.

  He does a slow turn with the glasses, checking the shadows and peering at the water before he nods to Jillian. And because I Know what he’s doing when I shouldn’t, he sends me a hint of his smile. Conspiratorial. A little naughty. And I flush. Hard. Jillian doesn’t see this, thankfully; she’s sighing with relief, dropping her pack in a smooth, flat section of stone a few meters back from the shore. I turn and face the pool, hoping the dark and my skin will be enough to hide the heat in my cheeks.

  I should just ask him. Get the question out in the open. Are you from Earth? See if Beckett tells me lies or truth. And then I tell myself it doesn’t matter. The outcome is the same, and that’s why I don’t bother to ask.

  I push a stray curl behind my ear. I feel dirty. Ragged. Unsure and ridiculous. I set my pack on the ground, lift the strap of my book over my head, reach for the end of my braid, and pull the tie.

  “I’m going to swim,” I say to no one in particular. I don’t care if I have to sleep in wet clothes. It will be worth it to be cleaner. And I need to do something. Occupy my mind. I’ve been in good control today, but now I’m upset, and that’s when memories pull the hardest.

  Then a voice I don’t recognize says, “I’ll come with you.”

  It’s Jillian. A bright, cheerful Jillian. She pulls on the little fastener at the top of her clothes, like Beckett did, and the cloth splits in two. I wonder how they do that. Beneath the loose clothes, Jillian has on a tight-fitted kind of tunic, very short and of a thin, dark cloth, no sleeves, and leggings that don’t actually have legs. She’s small, and very curvy, and it’s not all that much to wear. I look back and see Beckett, who must have been lying full length on the flat stone, now sitting up on his elbows.

  Jillian smiles, big and confident, and steps toward the water. I put out a hand.

  “What?” she snaps, and I’m a little relieved. This tone seems more natural.

  “Only walk in water when the rock is solid below your feet,” I tell her. “Never step in loose stones. Or sand.”

  “Oh? And why not?” She’s back to cheerful.

  “Because it could be sinking sand.”

  “And what does sinking sand do?”

  “Sucks you down and drowns you.”

  She smiles again, puts a delicate toe into the water, and pushes. “Solid,” she declares, and goes in up to her knees. “And what about out here, where it’s deeper? How do you know what the bottom is like there?”

  “I don’t,” I reply, kicking off my sandals. “So I think I’ll swim, instead of sinking to the bottom to find out.”

  I wade out and dive beneath the surface. It’s not as warm as the baths in the city, but it’s not cold like bathing Outside, either. I let the water slide by in a vast, black dark, and it pushes back the memories.

  When I come up for air, Jillian is treading water a few meters away, and Beckett is stepping out of his baggy clothes, the glasses already set aside. Coming in with us. I push back my hair. What he wears underneath is much like Jill’s, only a little longer. How do the
y manage to make cloth fit so snug against skin on Earth? I can’t imagine. But I Know he must have been doing more than learning history, because only the Outsiders of the fields look like that.

  I duck back beneath the water again, before Jillian catches me looking, and wonder if I’ll be going back to this again, in my memory.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.

  I run my fingers through my hair, letting the water flow through, and when I come back up Jillian has moved near me, almost close enough to bump legs, and Beckett is swimming toward us, slow, with a glowing jar in one hand.

  “Don’t drown our light!” Jillian warns. But he doesn’t seem worried. He’s grinning, huge, holding the jar half in the water.

  “Try not to make any waves,” he says, “and look down.”

  The jar sends a wide, circular beam of light through the water, which is not black after all. That was only a reflection of the darkness. The lake is clear, and when the surface stills, far below our kicking feet, I see a bottom made of crystals, hundreds, thousands of them in squares of varying heights, white and luminous. Every now and then a crystal that is more delicate, pale green and glittering, drifts up from the others, its ends splitting again and again, looking more plant than mineral. It makes me feel enormous, like I’m looking down at a planet from above.

  Beckett moves the light this way and that, showing the different formations, and then he says to Jillian, very low, “What does it remind you of?”

  “Los Angeles,” she breathes, and his smile gets bigger. I don’t Know what this means, but Beckett sighs and lies back in the water, one arm out, the other balancing the light jar on his stomach. A floating lamp. The light puts his body in stark relief, and I can see a bruise running the length of one arm and down his side. He looks chiseled out of stone. He closes his eyes.

  Then Jillian says, “So, Samara, how long have you been training to be a physician?”

  I tear my eyes away from Beckett, to Jillian’s big blue gaze. On guard. “I’ve finished my training.”

  “Oh? How long did it take you?”