“What can the glasses see?” Jill asks.
“Not a thing. I could see in the caves as long as there was empty space, but I can’t see through this rock. I’m catching the power source through sound.”
“So what now?”
I take a deep breath. “I think I ought to find it, try to restore communications.”
Okay, I tell myself. That was not a lie. It’s just not the Centauri I want to restore communications with. I want see if I can talk to Dad’s field set. But it’s going to be tricky. And dangerous. And maybe impossible.
Jill frowns. “I thought we were ordered to cut off communications?” She’s caught me, but I don’t think she realizes it. Then she waves a hand. “Never mind. There’s no way Commander Faye sent that order.”
I look hard at Jill. She’s correct. That order was created by Dr. Sean Rodriguez. But how, exactly, is she so confident about it? I think of all those things Jill said about making decisions that were bad for my career, suggesting that the situation could be different from what I thought. But Jill wouldn’t keep something really important from me. Would she?
I really want to talk to Dad.
“No,” Jill says, still musing. “You’re right. Even just finding out what’s blocking communications would be huge.” She looks at me. “What are you thinking?”
“That you need to take awhile to get better, so I can convince Samara to take me Underneath. Into the city.”
“I have to stay in here?”
She actually does. I can see that she’s done in just from sitting up. But not so done in that she can’t be creative when she cusses. She falls back on the mattress.
“I bet you’re about to die of happiness, aren’t you?” she says. “Getting a chance to live all rough and pretech like the locals.”
I wouldn’t put it exactly that way. And I don’t like her tone.
“Fine,” she sighs. “But listen, Beckett. There has to be an exit plan. If this doesn’t work, if you don’t find it or it takes too long, we cross the plain anyway, okay? We’re not trained, and no one would expect us to stay in these conditions. It’s not sanitary.”
Leave it to Jill to think that living conditions are more important than our pretend orders. She was so out of it when I had her on my back, I don’t think she really gets how hard it would be to cross that plain now. I know she doesn’t understand how dangerous it will be to go down into the city. Because I’m not just going to look for their technology and try to make contact with Dad. I’m going to make sure Samara Archiva comes back out again. I’m going to help her do what she’s set out to.
Even if it means she Forgets me.
But I don’t think Jill really needs to know that.
Beauty, peace, prosperity, and justice. These are the gifts of the perfect society, what those of memory will bring to the Superior Earth. But the greatest of these must be justice, because from it flow the other three, and to receive that justice, there must be chosen a judge …
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN
Annis, don’t you think it would be best to let them sleep?” I say. I’m slicing a loaf of thick bread. There’s one for every day of the dark stocked on Annis’s shelf, and slicing it is my one learned skill in food preparation. The preparation I haven’t done is getting Jillian and Beckett ready for the Outside, and I’m not sure how well the Earth and the Outside are going to mix. “Jillian hasn’t been well,” I go on. “And the rations … ”
“They sleep in my house, they can eat at my table,” Annis replies, smiling at my reluctance. “And I’ve already sent in Luc and Ari. They’re awake. And I’ve worked out the rations.”
Which means the neighbors are sharing. And then I see Beckett coming out of the resting room. My knife slows. His face is rough, hair mussed, and he lifts one hand, mouths the word “Hi” before Annis whisks him off, showing him the way to the latrines and the water and soap. I slice bread faster, insides twisting into a nervous knot.
Beckett Rodriguez knows everything about me now. Only Nita has ever known as much, and there were things in that book I never told even her. The feeling is uncomfortable. Vulnerable. Exactly what my mother warned me of when I wasn’t controlling my face. But it’s also … freeing. I caught one corner of Beckett’s smile as he followed Annis out, a smile that yes, he knew, and that yes, it was still all right.
And then I’m thinking that if I go back Underneath, that if I somehow manage to succeed in everything I’m trying to do, that I will Forget that smile ever existed. I feel the ache of a loss that hasn’t even happened yet.
I am so ruined. But there’s no reason that anyone has to know about it.
We sit. Beckett, Jillian, and Nathan on one side of the table, Grandpapa, Annis, and me on the other, the boys on the ends, Jasmina in her mother’s lap. The benches are full, cramped, and there’s a hole in this table at least a kilometer wide. I’ve never sat here without Nita, and I’m not the only one feeling it. Memories of her swirl, sometimes reach up and nudge, tugging. But I’ve just slept, and it’s always easier to control memories when I’ve rested. It won’t be later. I love this house, and being inside it is difficult.
Annis serves each plate bread and dried fruits, preserves, the last of the greens, working out the portions according to the rations. Bread lands on my plate, and I open my mouth to protest, but Annis speaks first.
“When did you eat? Has it been more than two days?”
I close my mouth. And see Jillian’s brows go up.
“All right, then,” she says, ending what was never an argument. “Who wants preserves?”
It’s an odd sort of meal. Beckett and Jillian are wary of mistakes, and Grandpapa and Annis seem determined not to ask them anything at all, even when the omission is painfully obvious. For a while, the only one talking is Ari, and that’s about waterbugs.
“Do you blow glass?” Beckett asks Cyrus, smearing preserves on his bread. His accent is like one yellow apple in a barrel of honeyfruit.
“Yes,” says Grandpapa. And nothing else.
I’m not sure what sort of preserves Beckett thought he was going to taste, but I don’t think it was pepper. I see his eyes widen, and out of nowhere, I have to hold in a laugh. Jillian takes note. She’s done with almost everything. Except the preserves. I hope she understands the concept of rations.
“You’re interested in glass?” Cyrus finally asks.
“Why would he be?” Nathan snaps. Not because he thinks glass isn’t interesting, but because Beckett isn’t worthy of being interested in glass. Annis shushes him and throws me an apologetic look. I Know what’s wrong with Nathan. He’s not angry. He’s sad, and now my guilt is as hot as the jelly. Jasmina tears the bread into pieces, eating from her mother’s plate.
“I’d like to watch sometime,” Beckett says, as if Nathan never spoke, “and see how it’s done.” I think he’s sincere in that. He’s watching everything now. The food, the manners, the plates. And he’s going for the preserves again, just to show he can.
“Actually,” says Annis, “we’d be grateful if you all stayed in the house for now, until … ” No one knows how to fill this blank, so the table goes silent. Again my guilt is hot. I’ve put them in a terrible position.
“If they were coming about the false information last resting, they would’ve done it already,” says Grandpapa. “But we have to assume we’re being watched.”
How often, I suddenly wonder, is this house being watched?
“Nathan, I need you to take the children to the metal shop.”
“Why can’t she watch them?” He means me.
“Because Nadia has people coming to see her.”
I’ve already tended to a sprained wrist, a second-degree burn, and a birth. The last one didn’t actually need much of my help, but Nathan was not pleased to come down from the loft at waking and discover it.
“I’ll watch them,” Jillian says unexpectedly. She smiles at Annis, her eyes big and blue, and I wonder what she’s playi
ng at. But Annis is captivated by those eyes, so uncommon, and so close to Nita’s. And now Jillian is eating a second piece of bread. Did Nathan just put that on her plate? He’s looking at her from the corner of his eye. And she knows it.
There’s a knock on the door, and we all go still, except for Annis, who goes to the closed curtain. “Mika,” she says. “Nadia, are you finished eating?”
Mika, unfortunately, needs her hand stitched. I go as fast as I can while she sweats, half my mind on this house. Without Nita here, smoothing over the rough patches, protecting me from what might hurt, I feel that for the first time, my eyes are fully open. How did Mika know I was here to stitch her hand? How do any of them? No one ever questions me or my unusually good grasp of medicine, no more than Annis has questioned Beckett. They never seek me at my supposed home on the far end of the Outside. I am just Nadia, and I come to Annis’s house and I heal them. It’s the way things have always been. But the way things have always been doesn’t exactly make sense. And there’s a hole beneath Annis’s floor.
Being Knowing, I think, has not kept me from being naive.
Then I don’t have time to wonder anymore, because a broken nose comes in, which there’s not much to do about, and a five-year-old boy, crying in his mother’s arms. The boy concerns me. He’s pale, sweating when it isn’t hot, and when Angela, his mother, sits him on the table, I can feel that his skin is more than two degrees too high—unusual for an Outsider, unheard of Underneath. He’s vomited twice into one of Annis’s pots, and there’s a point of pain when I press on his side. A pain that makes him shout. His mother gathers him close, strokes the little boy’s mop of soft brown hair.
“How long has he been like this?” I ask.
“Three days. Has he eaten something that disagrees?”
I don’t answer, just close my eyes, searching my memory. I don’t like what I find. I think I Know what I should do. I Know what the training recitations say I should do. I’m just not sure I can do it.
“Wait just a minute,” I tell her.
I hurry to the second resting room, slip inside without even thinking about knocking, shut the door, and lean on it.
Beckett straightens from a small mirror hung on the wall between the beds. He’s down to the tight shirt he was wearing when he first got here, wiping soap from his face, a long, thin blade in his hand. There’s also quite a bit of blood. Whatever he usually shaves with, it’s not a razor. It’s probably something I wouldn’t even understand.
“I’ve always wanted to try one of these things,” he says, waving the razor. “Turns out it’s terrible.” Then he runs his eyes over me. “What’s wrong?”
“What can the glasses see inside a person? Besides bones?”
“It depends.”
“Can you see an appendix? Could you tell if it’s inflamed?”
He rinses the blade in a bowl of water, brows together. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d know what I’m looking at.”
He’s right. This wouldn’t be clear. Not like a cracked bone. Then I’m decided.
“I need help,” I say. “I can’t ask … ” I leave the thought without finishing it. There’s not another soul I could ask.
He doesn’t even look at me a long time. He just says, “Tell me what you need.”
Ready?” Sam asks, and when I nod, she turns the lock on the front door.
We get to work, fast, Samara throwing a piece of cloth over the table we’ve already scrubbed, dousing it with a bottle of antiseptic that smells like alcohol and peppermint, me lighting every lamp I can find.
The little boy, Michael, is still, eyes closed, breathing hard in a way that’s all wrong for a kid, and that seems worse to me than the crying. Sam convinced his mother to leave him with us for three or four hours, so he could get several rounds of medicine for his stomach. Outsiders do not understand surgery, so what we’re doing here is against every bioethic Earth could think up.
I don’t know if I’d have the guts for it, when I knew I couldn’t forget if something went wrong. But when I asked Sam if she was sure, she said, “Eighty-five percent,” which didn’t seem that great, until she explained that there was an 85 percent chance that Michael was going to die if she didn’t do something. And, she reasoned, if she didn’t try, “Then what is all this Knowing for anyway?”
But one thing I’m learning about Samara Archiva: When she’s decided what to do, she’s fearless about it. Even when she’s scared of what she is doing. Like surgery. For the first time. On a child. On Annis Weaver’s kitchen table. Before Annis, or Nathan, or Cyrus, or Jill, or a wandering family member takes it into their head to walk into this room.
As soon as the lamps are done, I grab the medical kit from the resting room, bring it to the counter, and whisper, “You won’t believe what’s going on in there. The kids, they’re all in kind of a pile. Asleep.”
Sam looks up from pinning a scrap of cloth over her front. I can smell the antiseptic. “With Jillian?”
“I know. Weird, right?” Jill’s not actually having to fake her recovery yet, and the lack of light has both our sleep patterns in a mess.
Sam comes and stands next to me as I lay out the medical kit, tense. I start talking fast, because I know she will remember.
“Everything I have is field first aid, so super basic … ” She looks confused. “For when you’re traveling. Away from a city. For emergencies.” Now she nods. “And this is not my area, so … ” She nods again. I pull out a smaller pack with a face covering, gloves, clamps, and a kit of medical tools, all sealed in a clear film.
“This is the scalpel.” I show her through the package. “Slide your forefinger into the slot on top, and the knife will cauterize as it cuts. Slide your finger out when you want it to stop. And this”—I pick up a slim cylinder—“is for sealing a wound. Slide your finger in again, and run a ribbon of the cellular material between the two ends of tissue you want to fuse. The harder you press, the more material you’ll get.” I glance at her face, focused, storing the information in her memory. “So no sewing people up with thread, okay?”
She smiles. “Are you sure?”
“Definitely.”
“Help me wash.”
I stand behind her and pour water from the pitcher while she holds her arms out over the sink, sleeves folded up so they can’t fall, waiting while she washes up to her elbows. I probably should have moved back, given her more room, but I don’t want to. Her hair is tied away from her face, and I want to put my hand in it, like I did in the caves. But I also don’t want to give her another memory she didn’t ask for. She holds out her arms and I rinse with the pitcher again, then open up the face covering and let her get it in place.
I can see only her eyes now, through the thin film of the containment barrier. She looks half Earth, and half Canaan. “Okay?” I ask. Her shoulders rise and fall. She nods.
It takes just a few seconds to let the infuser calculate the dose of anesthetic and get it into Michael. I stay behind him, so he won’t see anything he doesn’t understand, Sam hanging back for the same reason. But he’s so out of it, I’m not sure he even noticed when it went in.
When his eyes close and stay that way, I get his clothes off fast and lay him on the table, the cloth still damp from antiseptic, and use more of it to scrub his abdomen and right side, and basically everywhere I can reach. He’s breathing deep and slow, but he’s sweating, his skin coming out in gooseflesh. I cover up his lower end, because it seems like the right thing to do, and then I wait for Samara. She’s not with me. She’s inside her mind. Going through her information.
Then she opens her eyes and says, “Watch his breathing and his heart rate. Tell me if it changes. Wait, can you see blood pressure?” she asks. I nod, and slide on the glasses. I’m pretty sure my own vitals are changing as we speak.
Samara unseals the package of instruments, laying them ready, and feels carefully around Michael’s side, poking and probing. Then she picks up the scalpel and cuts a five-ce
ntimeter gash into his smooth brown skin.
I know it’s why we’re standing here, but somehow, I can’t believe she actually just did that.
I’ve never thought of myself as squeamish. Part of anthropology is the study of bodies, and I’ve seen a lot of them, in various states of dead. But this is different. There’s a pulse beating, living blood I can smell, and the smoke of burning tissue making wisps in the lamplight. I can’t look at it.
I watch Sam instead, focused and with her fingers bloody, working quick inside the boy’s body. I hear her hiss once, the clank of metal as she switches tools, and after a few minutes she’s triumphant, holding up a red-and-pink piece of flesh no bigger than Michael’s little finger.
And then her eyes get big. She has nowhere to put it. And Jasmina has just started crying in the other room.
“Here!” I grab one of the sanitized cloths we had ready for dabbing blood, and hold it out. And Sam drops Michael’s severed appendix into my palm.
Okay.
She gets right back to work. I can hear Jill shushing Jasmina in the resting room.
“How’s his heart rate?” Sam whispers.
“A little fast.” Like mine.
“Breathing?”
“Normal.” Mine’s not.
The resting room has gone quiet again. I hear a soft whirr, see the blinking green light on the end of the sealer, and think about the herbs on the ceiling until Samara says, “Beck, help me.”
I leave Michael’s wrapped appendix on the bench and come around the table. She’s ready to seal her original cut, and I can see the tissue she’s been working with through the wide gap of skin.
“Can you do the last one?” she asks. “I need two hands to hold the skin together and yours aren’t clean enough.”
I take the sealer, which is sticky, look away while she pulls the skin back together, then fill the cut with cellular fusion material. It sinks in, bridges the gap in Michael’s wound. Samara holds it in place for another minute, then lets go, wiping away the telltale smudges of blood. The incision looks like a small scrape. Like Michael brushed against something rough. And that’s it. In two days, he won’t even have that.
The Knowing Page 21