The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  No, I suppose he wouldn’t.

  “We can do the same for your friends.”

  He doesn’t even ask me why they don’t need to go Underneath for the Changing of the Seasons. “How many Outsiders know who I am, Grandpapa?”

  “A few. All of them trusted.”

  “And that hole in your floor?”

  He shakes his head. “Never you mind. But when you come back to us, things may be different, that’s all.”

  He puts a hand on my head, and the breeze sneaks under the eaves of the workshop, bringing the heat of the furnace to my face. What are they up to? Smuggling food? Misappropriating goods? Whatever it is, it’s a dangerous game, and the thought of Annis, Nathan, or Grandpapa tied to the flogging post makes my stomach wrench.

  “Nita told me once that she wanted to be my family’s help. That she trained to do things just the way my mother would want, trying to be chosen. Why would she want that?”

  “Because of you.” He turns his blue eyes on me in a way that is very Nita. “You needed us, little girl. And we need you.”

  I shake my head. I don’t understand him. “What do you do … with a memory like … loss. Like when Grandmama died?”

  “You make peace with that, too. Isn’t easy. But it gets better.”

  Mine can’t ever get better. Not while I’m Knowing. “But wouldn’t it be better,” I whisper, “to have no loss at all?”

  “If you live in such a way that you can never lose, little girl … well, then you’ll never gain anything in the first place, and what’s the point in that? I’d have rather had Grandmama and lost her, than never have had her at all. You still have the memories. If I’d never tried, I wouldn’t have even that. Look … ”

  He pulls up the undyed cloth around his ankle. The cut I stitched is a neat pink line, ten centimeters along his calf.

  “And now look at this.” He raises the cloth even farther, and just below his knee I can see the end of a wide and jagged swell, a twisting scar not properly healed, disappearing up beneath his legging. “See the difference?”

  I do. It is the difference between Knowing and doing. Trying and not. Like everything.

  “Grandpapa,” I say, “do you have another pair of sandals?”

  I don’t even turn over when I hear the door open. I stay still, arm beneath my head on the bed, facing the wall. I’ve already had an earful from Jillian, several of them. On and on. I just let her talk, because the truth is, I don’t really care what she says. Jill isn’t mad that I broke the rules and impacted a culture. If that were her problem, I could respect it. She’s mad because she thinks that when I go back to the ship, I’ll be disgraced. That there won’t be any hero’s welcome with me at her side, names in history files, everybody thinking how lucky she is. When did I get to be Jillian’s bragging rights? I never planned to do much more with my life than run around ruins, make notes, read books, and knock mud off my boots.

  I hear the muffled rumble of Nathan talking from the loft above, a child’s footsteps, the clink of pottery, creak of wooden wheels in the street. Noise that is so very not Austin, Texas. I am inside the lost colony of Canaan, or what has become of it, and I can feel the long dark of space that sits between my old life and the new. I think about the caves again, that moment when I kissed Sam, like an idiot, and she kissed me back. Pulled my hair. She wanted me to kiss her. I know she did.

  And then she rejected me. And then she didn’t. And I helped her do surgery, and she rejected me again. Then I waited up all night, wound up tight and listening, because I think she’s going to go Underneath and never come back out again, and she didn’t even leave when she was supposed to.

  She is making me crazy.

  “Beck.”

  I jump like I’ve been zapped, and look over my shoulder. Samara is standing beside the bed.

  “Did I wake you?”

  I blink. “A little.”

  “What did you mean, ‘the first one hundred and fifty’?”

  I blink again. All this, and this is the thing she walks in here and asks. “What do you want, Samara?”

  She sits on the edge of the bed, and I have to scoot over or get sat on. She’s struggling. I can see that. I rub a hand across my eyes and sigh.

  “The first one hundred and fifty are the original colonists. Your ancestors. That’s how many of them came on the first ship, to build Canaan.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve studied the Canaan Project practically my whole life.”

  She frowns a little. “You have?”

  “Yes. It was a big deal to be chosen to come. They had to pass a lot of tests, and there was at least one chosen from every country, so there were a lot of different—”

  “What is a country?”

  And there’s a concept I’ve never considered how to explain. I’m annoyed, hurt, and I don’t know what’s happening here, but what I am learning is that I’m very bad at resisting Samara Archiva. I sit up, slide behind Samara, her hair brushing my face, and grab the blanket off the bed. I flip it out, the thick-woven cloth spreading over the floor, and squat down at the edge.

  “Okay,” I say. “Pretend that this is Earth, and this”—I snag Jill’s pack, wad up her other T-shirt and drop it on the blanket—“this is a country. And here’s two more … ”

  I drop her socks.

  “… and another … ”

  Hygiene kit.

  “… and another.”

  Meal package. I didn’t know she still had one of those. Sam slips down off the edge of the bed, hugging her knees on the floor beside the blanket. It’s hard to imagine right now that she made that first incision with a steady hand.

  “So countries can have their own laws and their own cultures,” I say. “Their own way of doing things. Sometimes their own language … ”

  “What do you mean, their own language?”

  I think again. “We’re speaking a version of English, you and I. The words are … English, even if they’re pronounced a little different … ”

  I’ve gotten so used to Samara’s accent, I’d almost stopped hearing it. It suits her, though. Rhythmic, like the way she moves.

  “But another country over here, or over here”—I point to Jill’s scattered belongings on the pretend Earth—“they might have their own system of words. So if you lived in this country, China, the word for ‘cloth’ might sound like yīkuài bù.”

  Sam sits back, looking stunned, and then incredulous. “That isn’t a real way of speaking.”

  I have to laugh. “It is. It’s the way my mother grew up talking, and she made sure I did, too. My granny spoke Spanish, and I’m not bad at that one, either. But—”

  “Say something,” she says. She’s got her head tilted, blinking at me. A challenge. Like in the caves. I stare back at her eyes.

  “Tus ojos son hermosos,” I say.

  “What does it mean?”

  I shake my head. I’m not telling her. “Just imagine,” I go on, “that there are all these countries, and all these languages, all with their own ways of doing things. Your ancestors, the first one hundred and fifty, came from all of them. All the major cultures. But they all had to learn English to come to Canaan. Just like we made sure that everyone who came this time could speak English. So we could talk to you.”

  “So you could study us?”

  “Right.”

  “And so why did they come? Why did they leave Earth at all?”

  “It’s like what you wrote in your book. An experiment. To build a better world. To start over without all the bad stuff from Earth. But we never heard from Canaan again, and no one knew what had happened to them. People debated about it for years. Centuries. Dad used to get together with his friends and they’d come up with all kinds of theories. But there’s never been an answer. So, see, you’ve been a mystery.”

  I want to see what she thinks of that, but she’s got her mask on. “But why did you wait?” she asks. “Why wait so long to come back
and find the answers?”

  “A lot of reasons. There was a war a few years after the first colonists left. A big one. All the countries fighting each other … ” She looks over at the blanket. “New World Space Exploration, the company that started the project, got bombed out of existence. That was the Third World War. Then we did it again not long after with the Fourth World War. And because we love to screw up, we did it again with World War Five. But between Four and Five there was another ship sent, only we never heard from it again, either. Have you ever heard stories about Earth being here before?”

  She shakes her head. “But I’ve always thought our history was mostly lies.”

  “Everybody’s is. A little bit.” Some more than others.

  “Is New Canaan like a country?”

  “In a way. Except that it’s small. Countries might have a million people in their cities. At least.”

  She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “A million? In one country?”

  “No. In one city. Countries have lots of cities, of all different sizes. There are three and a half billion people on Earth. But that’s a lot less than it used to be.” And it’s declining. I watch her stare at Jill’s stuff scattered across the pretend Earth, trying to comprehend. And I can’t help it. I have to try again.

  “But this is the point,” I say. She gives me her gaze. “Your ancestors came from Earth, from all of those countries, all those people, and nowhere is there anything like Knowing or Forgetting, or living to be a hundred and forty. These things are not genetic.”

  She whispers, “I shouldn’t have to be like this.”

  “I don’t think so. Something’s doing it to you. And, Sam, I think you’re going to need my help to find out what it is.”

  I stay where I am, balancing elbows on knees while she thinks. Take me with you hangs heavy between us.

  “Show me what goes inside those injections, and we could fix this whole mess.”

  She’s hesitating, her hair half tied back, loose, twisting, curls falling down all around her face. Then she says, “Why would you do that for me?”

  I didn’t expect that question, and I think of about thirty answers, quick. Because you’re smart. Because you’re beautiful. Because you fascinate me and infuriate me. Because you’re in pain, and I don’t want to watch human beings suffer. Because I’m from Earth, and I’m afraid my people might be just as wrong as yours. Because I think I can fix this. Because every time I think of somebody trying to hurt you, I want to park a spaceship on them. But all I say is, “I plan to live on this planet, too.”

  She plays with the tie of her sandal, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking at all. Then she says, “I have to stay Underneath, for the Changing of the Seasons, and I won’t be able to hide you. You’ll have to leave me, and go back Outside.”

  I nod. Though it’s possible I won’t agree to it later.

  “If it’s the injections, like you say, and we can just … stop being Knowing. I might still be … broken. My memories might still … ”

  “Maybe you can heal from your memories, Sam, if you stop reliving them.”

  “But if there’s nothing in the wellness injections, I will have to get into the Archives, and get the book on Forgetting. I will need to make myself Forget, show the Knowing how to Forget, to break the Council. Do we agree on that as well?”

  I shrug. “If you need to Forget, Sam, then you need to Forget.” I say that like it is nothing to me. It isn’t. “I’ll just help you remember after, okay?”

  She’s back to staring at the pretend Earth. “I don’t Know what the Council would do to you if they realized who you were.”

  Nothing worse than they’d do to her. Probably. “I’m not sure it’s that much more dangerous than where we are now.”

  “Promise me, that if we’re caught … you’ll do … something. Use the glasses. Make a fire. Burn someone. Promise me you’ll leave me, and that you’ll run.”

  “Sam—”

  “Swear it!”

  “All right,” I say. “Okay.” Though I’m never going to do that. But I am going to look at those injections, find that power source, and maybe try to talk to Dad, too. And keep Sam alive while I’m at it. Maybe she won’t have to Forget how to save lives.

  Maybe she won’t have to Forget about me.

  She gets up abruptly, turning to go out the door.

  “Wait,” I say. And I am such an idiot. I don’t have anything that she needs to wait on. I don’t have anything to say. I just don’t want her to leave, because I’m afraid she’ll turn around and stop talking to me again. Her eyes run down me in a way that makes me shiver.

  “I’ll find you some sandals,” she says.

  And then I have the whole rest of the morning to consider what a fool I am. When did I get so far gone?

  We eat a midday meal together, all of us, like the day before; and like the day before, Jill offers to watch the children. Nathan can’t take his eyes off her, and she’s not exactly discouraging him. I’m doing the washing up when she sees him to the door, off to the metal shop, laughing at the last thing he said.

  She brings two more plates from the table, still smiling. If her hair wasn’t so short, she’d look very Canaan.

  “What are you doing with him, Jill?”

  She looks around. “I suppose you mean Nathan. But other than that, no idea what you mean.”

  “You’re being very friendly.”

  I wince as soon as I say it, the comparison to my own activities so obvious she doesn’t even go there. “You’re not the only boy in the galaxy anymore, Beckett. I suppose you could pull rank and order me not to be friendly, but that doesn’t seem like good policy for the later phases of contact. We’re here to establish relationship with a new culture.”

  I sigh. “I don’t want to fight.”

  “You sounded like you wanted to fight.”

  That could be true. I lower my voice. “I’m going down into the city before the resting bell. To see what I can find out about the power source and communications. I should be back before everybody gets up.”

  “And the exit plan?”

  “We’ll talk about it after I’ve got more information. But I don’t think we’re getting there in the dark. Not on foot.”

  I hear her muttering.

  “Jill.” I lower my voice more, beneath the clink of stacking plates. “On the ship, before we landed, or at base camp, was there anything you noticed about the crew or the different teams that was … off?”

  “What are you talking about?” Now she’s whispering, too.

  “I mean, if you saw anything, heard anything, that didn’t make sense, you would’ve told me, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why did you think we’d be going right back to Earth? When we first found the city?”

  And she says, “I didn’t think that. I didn’t mean it that way. I knew we’d be here for a while. I think you misunderstood.”

  So which is it, Jill? The whole thing just gives me a bad feeling in my gut.

  The greatest gift given to the worthy is knowledge, knowledge that is derived from memory. It is memory that sets apart the chosen, and must be for the wisdom of the judge to decide. For only the most worthy, the best of the best, will create the perfect society and build the Superior Earth. Without memories, they are nothing …

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN

  It’s Nita pulling at the edges of my mind as I slip into the dark resting room to get Beckett. I spent two and a half bells caching, preparing to go back Underneath, and for the moment, I’m in control. But I Know why she’s here. Fear. I’m afraid of going home. I’m afraid of Beckett being caught. And fear can take a memory that’s whispering and turn it into a scream. I walk to the bed that used to be Nita’s.

  Beckett is on his back, sleeping heavily, an arm behind his head, the undyed shirt gaping open at the collar because it’s a little too tight. His skin is like sun shining through the potter’s sand, a golden brown
, a tiny nick from shaving not quite healed on his chin. I close my eyes, and feel him kiss me again.

  This might be bordering on addiction.

  Then I go to the cracks in the floor planks, straight to where Annis put her fingers when we were escaping the supervisors, lift the planks away and there is the hole, cold and empty. I put my book inside and fold the purple scarf Nita wrapped around my hair the day she died, carefully laying it on top. I’ll leave the scarf for Annis, to trade with, since I used so much of her scrap cloth. Some of the vendors in the Bartering Square ask fewer questions than my patients. I lower the planks back into place, go to the edge of the bed, and sit on it.

  “Beck.”

  His eyes snap open like I’ve yelled. “Is it time?” His voice is rough with sleep.

  “Yes, it’s time.”

  We don’t talk while he wakes up, getting the glasses tied to his shirt lace, where he can hang them beneath, sliding on Grandpapa’s sandals. When he’s ready, we slip out of the resting room. Jillian and Nathan are frying bread in a pan on the burner, jars of sweetened fruits warm in the lamplight, and if they see us go, they don’t say anything. We steal through the workshop, the top of Grandpapa’s head in a plume of steam and heat, and then we’re standing in the street. There’s no more red in the sky, and it’s not time for the moons. The darkness is going to help us. I pull up my hood, and Beckett does the same.

  “Don’t talk if someone is close,” I whisper.

  He nods, face obscured inside the hood, following me down the dimmer edges of the streets, away from the lights, hanging from crossbars at the corners. Beckett doesn’t make any noise, but I might as well have put him on a platform and told him to sing. If he isn’t staring up at the ring of mountains, shining in the dark with the strings of the glowworms, he’s slowing to watch the smiths, or the brewers, or a man pulling a cart. He can’t look fast enough, and it reminds me of me, the first time I came open air. Maybe the Outside is just as different from Earth as it is from the Underneath.