The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Heart rate?” she says. “Blood pressure?”

  I nod. No major change. Sam touches the mark gingerly with a finger, and then she pulls off the face covering and she smiles. A real one, like I haven’t seen since she was jumping off those roots in the caves.

  “That,” she says, “was amazing.”

  “Was it infected? His appendix?”

  “What? Oh, yes. It nearly burst when I was cutting it. Do you want to see?”

  Nope. Never again. I look at Michael, still deeply asleep. “He would have died?”

  “Yes, he would have.”

  “Then you did good,” I say. “Really good.”

  She smiles like that again, huge, which is exactly what I wanted. And then we both spin around, guilty, and with bloody hands. Jill is standing in the doorway of the resting room, her short hair rumpled, the undyed cloth Sam put on her rolled up at the arms and legs. And her eyes are huge.

  “What … are you doing?”

  Sam doesn’t even bat a lash. “Being pretech,” she replies.

  Jill needs to watch what she says to the Knowing, because it’s not like they’re going to forget it. That was a jab going right back to that awful conversation at the lake, in the caves, when Jill tried to tell Samara that her training wasn’t “advanced.” And the meaning wasn’t lost on her. Jill steps back.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No,” I say. “Of course not. It was an appendix, Jill.”

  And now she’s looking at the stained sealer on the table, at the infuser still sitting on the bench, and the open cloth lying beside it. She looks up and our eyes meet. It’s a gaze that lasts a long time. I don’t think Jill has realized until now just how far off the path of careers and protocol I’ve strayed. How far I probably will stray.

  “They don’t understand surgery, so don’t say anything, Jill. The kid would have died without it.”

  And I can hear her telling me, without her saying it, that I swore an oath to never influence, alter, or interfere with an emerging history. Screw protocol.

  “Beck,” says Samara. “Quick. Before somebody comes back.”

  We go back to work. I get the blood off my hands and clean up Michael, wrapping another sanitized cloth over the wound, just in case, scooping him up and getting him warm inside the blankets. Jill must have left at some point, because the resting room door is shut again. Samara makes a bundle of all the used cloth, including the appendix and the piece she had pinned over her clothes, and throws it all into the heating fire. Whatever is in that antiseptic makes the whole thing go up in a blaze.

  I move to help her and she says, “No, stay with him. Watch his breathing until he wakes up.”

  So I monitor while Sam carries everything to the sink, scrubbing tools and herself until the water is gone, and before I know it the lamps are back in place, the kit is stowed away, the doors unlocked, and the room looks innocent. Like we’ve haven’t just cut somebody open.

  Then Samara is on the bench beside me, with two mugs of tea. She holds one out and I take it. She’s being funny with me, keeping her gaze on the floor or lamp flame, but she can’t stop smiling, even when she blows across the hot mug. It’s a pretty thing to see.

  “So why don’t you need to eat?” I ask her. “Or sleep? Much?”

  She lifts a shoulder. “It’s part of being one of the Knowing. We heal fast, too.”

  “But the Outsiders don’t?”

  She shakes her head, getting down on the floor beside Michael like she wants to change the subject. He’s deeply asleep. “Is Jillian angry?”

  “Disappointed is probably closer.”

  She sips her tea and asks, “What would happen if … the others, on your ship, found out that you’ve shown me your technology?”

  I try to think how to explain. “If the Commander finds out”—which I’m 100 percent sure she has—“then it’ll be bad if I go back. But … I don’t really plan on going back to the ship. Not to live. Mom, Dad, and I … we planned on staying here.”

  “Would Jillian tell them what you’ve done?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just not turning out to be what she had in mind, that’s all.”

  “I’ve never been what my mother had in mind,” Sam says. “My parents preferred my brother.”

  She touches Michael’s forehead, on the side away from the heat, and I see the shadow of a memory tempt her. I have thoughts about her parents, now that I’ve read her book, especially the mother. But I’m not going to ruin the mood. Then I realize what she’s doing with Michael. “Can you feel his temperature? With your fingers?”

  “Yes.” She smiles again. “He’s already dropped a degree. A little more.”

  I didn’t think to tell her that the infuser would take care of that. I tilt my head. “What’s the temperature of this room?”

  She closes her eyes and says, “Eighteen Celsius, where we are.”

  I check the glasses. She’s right on. “How far is it to the ceiling?”

  Her brows go up the tiniest bit, but she runs her eye up a wall and says, “Two-point-four meters.”

  Again, she’s correct. To the decimal. And she just saved a little boy’s life with what was in her mind. “Sam, are you sure you want to Forget? Everything?”

  The facade comes down over her face. I hate it. But we need to talk about it.

  “I can’t pick and choose.” She stares at the rise and fall of Michael’s chest. “And … I can relearn. Can’t I?”

  I don’t think she has any idea how long it takes for most people to learn.

  She doesn’t look at me when she asks, “You said it was against your rules, but do you think Earth would ever … share, what could be used for healing? If the Outsiders had technology, they might not need my Knowing.”

  “If it were up to me, we would. But even so, technology is no good unless someone knows how to apply it. The scalpel didn’t take out his appendix. It just helped.” I set down the mug, thinking. “How long do the Knowing live?”

  “If they don’t … If they die naturally, then maybe about a hundred and forty?”

  I have to stare at her for a full minute. “You have got to be kidding me. Is it the same for the Outside?”

  “A little less, I think.”

  “How old is Cyrus?”

  “One hundred and eight.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  Now both her brows are up. As if she could be unsure. “How long do people live on Earth?”

  “Eighty-five or ninety. Maybe a hundred. Something like that.”

  “Is something wrong with them?”

  “No. Well, yes, a lot of things, but age isn’t one of them. That’s a normal human life span, Sam. And it proves my point.”

  “What point?”

  “That none of this is genetic.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She looks uncomfortable now. I can see her drawing in. I forge on. “I mean that all of you are descended from the first one hundred and fifty. You have their DNA. Earth DNA. And Knowing, Forgetting, none of that happens on Earth. Something is making you like this. Something here. On this planet.”

  Sam puts her hand on Michael’s chest to feel his breathing. But she is listening.

  “What if you didn’t have to Forget to break the power of the Council? To help the Knowing heal? You said they’d want to Forget. That they would choose losing their memories over jumping off cliffs. But what if they could get the same thing without losing themselves? What if you could show them how to not be Knowing at all?”

  She gazes at me, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “That would break your Council, wouldn’t it? And you could still be Samara Archiva, and go on healing Underneath and Outside alike, because there wouldn’t be any difference between the two. Not anymore.” I let her think about that. “You’re going Underneath soon, aren’t you?”

  She looks at the floor.

  “Are you going tonight? At resting?”

  She blin
ks, and I lean forward.

  “Take me with you. I can use the glasses. I’ll know where the people are. I can keep you from getting caught. And I can find out in less than a minute what’s inside those wellness injections.”

  She lifts a hand to her upper arm, where her scars are. “But … they’re only vitamins … ”

  “Vitamin injections you get every year, that leave a scar?”

  She drops her hand.

  “Samara, something is doing this to you. Let’s go down there together and we’ll use the technology, just like with Michael. Take me with you, and I swear I’ll help you get what you need.”

  Samara’s eyes lower, and then they close, and for a moment, she’s gone. But she comes right back, and when she does, the facade is down. She jumps to her feet, and looks at me. And she only says one word.

  “No.”

  And where shall we, the chosen of the NWSE, find our judge? From the knowledge that is deepest and the memory that is longest, for it is from knowledge and memory that wisdom is derived. And so I, the first of memory, shall be our first judge, and continue to choose our chosen, that we may fulfill our directive, and build the Superior Earth …

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN

  As soon as the door to the resting room shuts behind Beckett, my mind begins to tilt, teeter—pulled down on one side, jerked to the other, memories vying for the privilege of dragging me under.

  There is a humanness to our facial expressions, and the Knowing learn to recognize them. Quickly. It’s why we work so hard at hiding our own. And there is one I’ve seen before, a reflex, like a hand coming up to cover a cut, a kind of looking inward at unexpected pain. I saw it on Sonia’s face, the first time her boy from Outside did not come to the Level Eight storage rooms. On Uncle Towlend, when he learned Aunt Letitia was no longer in the city. And I saw it on the face of Beckett Rodriguez, when I told him he could not come with me Underneath. My answer hurt him. And I think a deep part of my mind Knew what that meant before I did.

  Beckett loves me. At least a little. Whether he realizes it or not.

  And I am so angry about it.

  I stop pacing, sit on the bench, and put my head in my hands. Why? Why would he feel like that? How did this happen? All my life I’ve been able to avoid this. It wasn’t even hard. And then I meet a boy from Earth, the enemy, who is inexplicable, whose planet I can’t even trust, and I go to him like a dustmoth to lantern flame. It doesn’t make sense. And yet here it is. My “once.” Ruining me. And now it’s him, too, until he can forget. I never will. Unless I’m healed. Or dead.

  I cannot let Beckett go Underneath.

  Michael wakes up then, hardly even groggy, with none of the aching sickness he would’ve had with a sleeping draught from the city. He’s sore, though, and very willing to lie where he is. I get him dressed, gently, and then Angela, his mother, comes back from the fuelmaking sheds. Michael’s arms cling to my neck while I give her instructions for his eating and rest. They feel warm. Trusting. I hand him over to Angela. Lurking memories seize me. I seize myself back.

  At least I will always be able to remember one thing: The time my Knowing did some good.

  Unless I Forget it.

  I walk Michael’s mother to the door, smile, struggle to stay present. And at the click of the latch, I plunge, like the floor planks opened up beneath my feet, and I am …

  … in the Archiva receiving rooms, and there’s a lamp lit beside the mirror, shining down on my mother in a blue-silver chair, my father in the one opposite. Mother has a low table set in front of her, sprinkled with the multicolored picture tiles. The pieces tap sharp on the wood as Mother picks them up, sets them down, making patterns, or a picture, and then doing it all over again.

  This game is supposed to distract the mind while promoting creativity, which the Knowing lack. Mostly the Knowing just remember what someone did before, rather than thinking of something new. And it’s the sort of game Mother likes. Orderly. With pieces that are predictable and do not change. Where she can construct what she wants, and then take it apart again.

  I have a set of tiles, too, spread out on the floor. There are nine marks on my arms, and my hands are already lanky, skinny as I move them back and forth. But I keep making the same picture Mother does.

  “Mother,” I say. “Do you love anyone?” I’m curious because we’ve just come back from a partnering, and the man looked so happy.

  “Samara,” Mother says, her voice gone sharp. And I freeze. I Know I’ve done wrong. My father, who I think was pretending to sleep when he was really in a memory, opens his eyes. “Retrieve the memory of your last visit to your uncle,” she says.

  I find the memory, and then I am eight years old, and there is Uncle Towlend, thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.

  “That,” she says, when I open my eyes, “is the result of love. Your uncle was happy at his partnering, too. Now retrieve the memory again.”

  I don’t want to, but I do it. It’s worse to tell her no. And Uncle Towlend is thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.

  “Again, Samara.”

  Uncle Towlend is thin and wasting, unwashed, tears running down his cheeks to the pillow.

  “Eight more times.”

  Mother’s tiles slide and click, and my own tears are spilling.

  And then my father says, “I remember love … ”

  I rise inside my mind, and fall …

  … and Nita is writhing with happiness, blushing as she talks about her metalworker …

  … and then I rise and fall again, a gentle wave …

  … and it is the waking, and I am laying a brand-new baby in its father’s arms …

  I fall and I rise, and fall …

  … into the Bartering Square, where Josef is tied to the post, and I am sick, sick, and Carma Planter is holding his head in her hands, spattered by every crack of the whip, because she will not leave him …

  … and I am falling, and I Know this descent, because I’ve taken it so many times. I welcome it, pull it closer …

  … and the pain of Adam is inside me, hot and searing, but Beckett’s arm is around me, too, his other hand cradling the back of my head. My face is against warm skin, tucked beneath the roughness of a jaw, and I breathe his smell, feel his pulse beneath my hand, his breath across my hair, the tightening of his hold. And my grief is soothed, comforted …

  I retrieve the memory again. And again. And the last time I let it go on, and I feel Beckett’s mouth, his cheek beneath my palm, my fingers in his hair. And I retrieve it again, only this time sooner, drifting down until I am crying in the crook of Beckett’s neck, my soul ripped to shreds by watching Adam die, whispering …

  “There is a way … to Forget. I ran to the Cursed City looking for it.”

  And Beckett whispers back, “Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  “Then let me help you find it … ”

  I open my eyes. Ari is running pell-mell through the front room from the workshop, wet from the pond, and I am on the floor, knees to chest, back against the wall below the window. There are voices above me in the loft. Nathan, Jasmina. Jillian. And when I sort back through my memory, I realize that Nathan came home, made tea with Jillian, and took her up to the loft while I sat here, lost on the floor with Beckett.

  I let my embarrassment slide away like it’s been cached. Beckett thinks I don’t have to be Knowing. That I might not need to Forget. But I want to live without pain. Without grief. I also don’t want to lose my memories of him. I want to remember how to fix things, like Michael. And yet, I’m not sure if I can live with the memories I’ve got.

  And none of this, I realize, is why I was angry. I was angry because I am afraid.

  Annis comes in then, a little out of breath, holding her hair off her neck. I think she’s been chasing Ari. She looks me over. “Are you well?”

  I don’t answer. I’m huddled on the floor. But she�
��s seen me like this before. Only that was for Adam.

  This is different.

  We eat the resting meal together, all of us, and I’m only half present. I don’t speak to Beckett, even when he tries to talk to me. And I don’t go Underneath, either. I have one more waking, one more resting before the Changing of the Seasons, and for all my Knowing, I can’t decide what to do.

  That’s not true. I can’t decide what I’m willing to risk.

  I sit in Grandpapa’s chair while the house sleeps, and when the children stir and he goes out to the workshop at waking, I follow him. The streets are waking up, too. Doors slamming, shadowy figures with pitchers going for water. Irene, across the street, singing to her new baby in the lamplight. The red light is deepening. The dark is almost here. Grandpapa is checking the city’s requests for the day, getting ready to stoke up the fire of the furnace. He looks up, startled at the sight of me. I haven’t even pulled up my hood, but there’s not a supervisor due for another five-eighths of a bell.

  “Do you have bad memories?” I ask abruptly. “Even though you forget?”

  He throws a brick of biofuel on the glowing coals, forehead wrinkled. “Of course.”

  “What do you do with them?”

  “Make peace with them.”

  “And that takes them away?”

  “No. They never go away. Not fully. They just heal.”

  But what if I’m too damaged to heal without the Forgetting? What if there’s nothing Underneath that can change who I am?

  “Grandpapa … ” I lower my voice. “It’s the Changing of the Seasons. I have to go Underneath. But Jillian, Beckett … They will need a safe place. I … It’s not fair to ask … ”

  Grandpapa tilts his white head toward a young man at the street corner, playing a game of toss stones. “Do you see that boy there? He’s one of my warning bells. There’s a whole network of them, all through the Outside. Word of trouble gets here faster than any supervisor, little girl. You don’t think we’d bring you Outside and never keep you safe?”