The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Are you safe? Are the locals hostile?”

  “Depends on which local you mean. Dad, I’ve done everything wrong.” I hadn’t planned to say that. I didn’t even know I wanted to. “Orders, the mission, protocol, I’ve screwed it all up.”

  “We saw the visuals. Everything’s screwed up, Beck, and you’re not the one who did it. None of this is what we were told. Listen, we weren’t brought here to study the colony or even mine the planet. The Commander came here to take them, every last one of them, back to Earth. Whether they want to go or not.”

  I run a hand through my hair. I don’t understand.

  “Beckett, are you there?” That was Mom.

  “I’m here. I just … I don’t get it … ”

  “It’s Lethe’s,” Dad says. “It’s much worse than what’s been made public. There are places in the southern Americas that are wiped off the map. The real mission here was to bring back clean DNA. If it existed. For repopulation, and for blood that’s never been exposed … ”

  “But … they can’t just do that … ”

  “Of course they can’t! But they are. It’s why they built the Centauri III so big. The thing’s practically a slave ship. The lower level is not for minerals. And I was supposed to be making contact, gaining these people’s trust, so they’d go without a fuss … ” Dad’s disgust comes clear through the static. “Only you screwed up and made contact before we could, luckily, and … ”

  We came here to take them. Just like Sam’s story said. I feel like I’ve taken a fist to the jaw. “So what’s happening now?”

  “I didn’t like the plan and said so … ”

  I’ll bet he did.

  “And your mom and I are confined to quarters. All our equipment is gone. But nobody thought of the transmission set … ”

  Because it looks like a piece of junk.

  “I’ve had it on for a week. What are you using to transmit?”

  “The tech from the Centauri II.”

  Some silence comes over the transmission. “How much tech do they have?”

  “Some. From the original Centauri and the II. It doesn’t look like they’ve been able to make the formats mesh, but I’ve only just found it. Only the governing Council knows it’s here … ”

  “There’s still a Council? Really … ”

  “Yes, Dad. Listen. The tech is hidden. But the Council has used it to set a perimeter, and they’re mirroring. They might be messing with communications, too … ”

  “I don’t know about that. Communication is off everywhere. Signals are not getting off the planet, which might be why we never heard from the colony in the first place. Do you think they know we’re here?”

  “I don’t know, but they might suspect it. They caught a visual of Jill and me. But even if they can’t get a signal out, they’ve been receiving for years. I just watched a visual of you … ”

  “What?”

  “You were sending greetings from the NWSE.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. They got those? Was I being an idiot?”

  “I guess. I—”

  “Never mind. Is it dangerous, where you are? Right now?”

  “A little.” Or maybe a lot.

  “Then let’s make this quick. Can you stay where you are safely? Are you still with the local in the visuals? Have you established relationship?”

  Well, that would be a great big yes to the last one. “The safety isn’t long-term, Dad. There’s trouble here … ”

  “Commander Faye isn’t going to launch the Centauri until after the comet passes, so she’s playing a long game. She knows she’ll find them eventually, and she’d rather not kill, not if she doesn’t have to. She’s getting paid by the head, so it defeats the purpose. But she will if she’s pushed. She doesn’t know they have tech … ”

  “She might know. She’s mirroring, too. They can’t see her.”

  I can hear a soft muttering, which I think is Dad talking to Mom.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. Do not, under any circumstances, come back to this ship. The Commander will get that city’s location out of you if she thinks it might ease things along, whatever way she has to. Stay where you are, keep the glasses off transmit, do not give up the coordinates. And be careful around Jillian.”

  “Jill? Why?”

  “Because Vesta knew,” Mom says, talking into the headset. I think Dad’s been sharing with her the whole time. “Promises have been made, and we don’t know what she’s said to Jill, so—”

  “But what about the people here? Shouldn’t they be warned?”

  I hear more muttering. Then Dad says, “Not yet. Hang tight, and stay where you are, and let’s see if we can avoid bloodshed. There are others who feel the same as we do on the ship. There’s a plan. Give us a little time to … rectify the situation.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Only what I have to, Beck.”

  And that sounds exactly like me, which is one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard Dad say.

  “But you’ve got to be careful,” he goes on. “We’re not sure what these people are capable of, and I’m worried about what happened to the II … ”

  I think of those words I saw in Samara’s book. “The cultural history here is that Earth is the enemy,” I tell him. “That we’re violent, destructive liars who come to ruin and enslave.”

  “Well, they’re not wrong on that one, are they?” Dad replies.

  “The new city was built as a refuge from Earth. That’s why they left the original colony. And it’s beautiful, Dad. But”—Samara glides inside the door just then, moving like water over a fall—“not exactly what you’d expect. They—”

  Mom’s voice jumps out from the background. “They’re coming.”

  “When will I see you … ”

  I hear scratchy bumping as Mom takes the headset. “Get out of there, Beck,” she says, “and be smart. Yuàn dé yī rén xīn, bái shǒu bù xiāng lí.”

  “Ài, Mom.”

  “We’ll make it right.” This is Dad talking. “I swear it. And … you’re … you’re the best. I … ”

  And I hear a muffled shout, cut off by a spike of static. The channel goes silent.

  I feel sick. I don’t know what just happened. If Mom and Dad are okay or not, or what I should do about it. Dad said Faye would get the city’s location out of me if I came back to the ship, so what if she just found out I’ve been talking to Dad? To Mom? What if she thought they had the information? I’m sicker. And what about New Canaan? If we’ve really come here to take them away, destroy their culture, breed them, and use their DNA like lab rats, then they ought to be warned, no matter how messed up they are. But the Commander—and maybe even Dad, just a little bit—thinks they’re dealing with people less advanced and therefore less smart than themselves. But where, then, is the Centauri II? If I told the people of Canaan that their enemy had landed, what would they do?

  This whole thing is going to turn into a war.

  “Command,” I whisper. “Close communication channels and revert to settings as of two hours ago.”

  Channel closed and settings reverted.

  I feel Samara’s hand on my shoulder and then in my hair. “Was that your parents you were talking to?”

  I nod, still staring at the lit screen.

  “Were they on your ship?”

  I nod again. She sits down in the chair beside me. “And you were talking to each other … through the air?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was your mother speaking another language? Like when you said, yīkuài bù?”

  This gets a smile from me. Sometimes I forget that nothing ever leaves this girl’s head. “That’s right.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Something like, ‘catch one’s heart, never apart.’ It’s a proverb. The person you love carries your love around inside them, so you’re never really apart. She used to say it to me every day, before I went to school … ”

  “An
d what did you say back to her?”

  “Ài means ‘love.’ Just … ‘love.’ ” I look at the floor again. I wish I could cache like Samara. Take the sound of that cut-off shout and send it to a place where I don’t have to think about it anymore. I wish I didn’t have to leave her down here. I’m not sure I can. I wish I hadn’t come here on a ship meant to wreck her whole world. Samara reaches up and smooths back my hair again, one long stroke. It makes me sigh.

  Then she says, “It’s time.”

  I know it. “What did you find in the books?”

  “I was going fast, so I still have to read them.”

  “You did them all?”

  “I skipped laws and edicts.”

  I would have, too. “I don’t want you to stay here.” There. I said it.

  “Beck, my parents think I’m dead. We agreed—”

  “I know what we agreed.”

  “It will take some time to read the books. I don’t Know what I’ve found, or how long it may take to work. I have to be at the Changing of the Seasons … in case it … ”

  In case we haven’t found anything at all, like with the injections.

  “Come back Outside.”

  She waits until I lift my head, looks me right in the face with her painted eyes and says, “What would you do to save your parents?”

  And that is such an unfair question. Because the answer is anything, of course. It’s what I want to be doing right now. I sit forward and take her hands. The palms still have a wide, shiny scar.

  “So be at your Changing of the Seasons. Make your parents look good in front of the Council. But why do you have to stay until Judgment? Tell them you’re going back into seclusion. Like you did before. Come Outside so we can figure out the Forgetting together.” Come and be with me, before you Forget me, I think. I watch her hesitate.

  “I could do that … ” she says slowly. I squeeze her hands. “But if we don’t find anything, I’d have to go back for Judgment, and for—”

  “I know.” Only not. I’m not sending her back Underneath to be killed. I’ll tie her up and put her under Annis’s resting room floor before I do. Or maybe there will be a war before then and I won’t have to. “I’m uploading the data files from all this into the glasses right now,” I tell her. “Between that and the books, we’re bound to find something.”

  She smiles, and I realize it’s been a long while since I’ve seen Samara with her mask on. Not with me. I imagine watching that cool, smooth surface snap back into place as soon as she hears about Earth. The idea hurts.

  We leave the room exactly the way we found it, except for a huge chunk of information inside Samara’s head and a gargantuan amount inside the glasses. I keep watch while she locks the doors, and touch one or two spines as we make our way up the winding balcony past the books. If things had gone like they were supposed to, if we’d made contact like we should have, if our mission hadn’t been a fraud, then I might’ve spent my life in here, in this city, discovering the history of Canaan. But maybe then I wouldn’t have met Samara. Or not like this.

  We make the kitchen-level stairs without trouble, then up into the storage room with the shaft, where Samara will rewind the suture that’s still strung across the door. When I’m gone. The room is cold and dark. Like space.

  “I’ll come at resting,” she says, “as soon as I can after the Changing of the Seasons. But if I can’t get out this way, then it will be the next waking, through the upland parks, like we came before. It may take me some time.”

  I can see Samara standing in front of me with the night vision, beautiful in shades of gray and green.

  “Sam … ” I say it fast, before I decide not to. “Dad told me some things about Earth and the ship, things I didn’t know. We’re not here to study. I mean, I was, and Mom and Dad were, but … Dad is trying to fix it. Before New Canaan has to find out, before it comes to a fight and people get killed. I don’t know what to do.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I can see her frowning in the dark.

  “Sam, I swear I didn’t know. I would’ve never … We wouldn’t have … Your stories were right. We really are the enemy. Your people were right to hide from us, and you ought to be afraid. We lie and we destroy what we touch … ”

  “Do you think I am your enemy?”

  I feel my brows come down. “No.”

  “But I am one of the Knowing, and the Knowing are arrogant and cruel.” Samara’s hand snakes up my neck until it rests on one cheek. “Are you from Earth?”

  I breathe out, “Yes.”

  She slides the glasses off my face. “Then I don’t think being from Earth makes you my enemy.”

  This time her kiss is slow and curious, her lips feeling my jaw and my chin, an ear and both my eyes, and I know she is making a memory. I stroke her back and her neck, the scars on her arms, brushing her cheeks with the tips of my fingers. Until the bells start to ring Outside.

  She jumps, and then she leaves me, unwinding the string, handing me the glasses before she opens the shaft.

  “Hurry,” she says. “I’ll be back at resting.” I can hear her breathing hard. Nervous to stay, upset to leave me, or still remembering our kiss, I don’t know which. Maybe all of them. I crawl into the shaft.

  “Beck!”

  I look over my shoulder.

  “Yuàn dé yī rén xīn, bái shǒu bù xiāng lí,” she says in perfect Chinese.

  “Ài,” I say.

  And she shuts the door.

  The creation of a perfect society, of a people worthy of rule, is not an easy task. The judge must prune here, and trim there, often lopping off what is beautiful, but always for the good of the whole …

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN

  I move slowly down the mirrored corridors. I want to run, but it’s too late for that. I stayed too long with Beckett. I couldn’t help it, and now the early risers are out and moving. I try to look as if I have purpose. Serene, as if I have just left seclusion, and every braided head I pass Knows the location of my chambers, the location of the seclusion cells, and that my current path is not between them. This cannot get back to Thorne. If he thinks my escapades are public, then my parents will not be saved. And with a jolt in the pit of my stomach I wonder if we found all the cameras. If somehow, he already Knows.

  I climb the stairs to Level Three. I don’t Know what a camera looks like, but I can guess where it must be in my room. I want to find it, rip it down. But if I do, they’ll Know where I’ve been. I’ll have to be in my bedchamber, Knowing they are watching. As if I needed another reason to go back Outside to Beckett.

  I wonder if my father will be surprised—or even glad, maybe—to see me. If it was hard when my parents thought I was dead. Not as hard as Adam, but maybe … a little hard. Whatever their feelings, they are Knowing, and I will have to guess at them. I don’t even Know what they think happened to me. If Thorne told them I was dead. Maybe he told them he murdered me. Like my brother. The rage inside me smokes, glows.

  I need to use this day well. I want a bath, a real one, and my mind is so heavy it’s an effort not to drag my feet. I need to cache. I need to start reading the books in my head. I need to think about what Beckett said about Earth, though it’s the threat of the Council that seems more real to me right now. I’ll have to play my part well tonight in the Forum, be normal, maybe even friendly, talk about the benefits of seclusion. Be worthy of the Knowing before I run off again.

  I unlatch the door to the Archiva family chambers as quietly as I can, the same way I let myself in on the day Nita died. I don’t want them to see me come in. It seems like less explanation might be required that way. I turn to shut the door behind me, without noise, and then I hear the doors to the terrace open, the sharp click of my mother’s shoes on stone. It’s a good thing I didn’t try to climb the cavern.

  “Samara,” Mother says. “Darling. It’s good to have you home.”

  I put my back to the carved wood, wary. I was hoping for … someth
ing, I’m not even sure what. But I Know this is not my mother’s real voice. She is smiling.

  “We’ve missed you. Haven’t we?”

  My father is stepping in behind Mother, his dark eyes hooded. He doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t look at me, and I feel the sting. And then I feel it again. I’d thought maybe when he lit the lamps that it meant something. Maybe he’s not looking at me so I won’t see. Mother crosses the room, a long dress the color of coming dark shimmering red-black as she walks, the material draped to show the patterns of wellness scars extending across her back. She sits, elegant in her silver chair, the Archiva family tree stretching from wall to wall above her head. She lifts a hand.

  “Sit, darling.”

  I go to the chair opposite and sit on it. This is strange, and I wonder if believing the last Archiva was dead has made my mother a little crazy. It’s happened before.

  “I’m so glad you were able to arrive before our guests. They’ll be coming any moment now. Could I get you anything to drink?”

  “What guests?”

  “Have you forgotten the Changing of the Seasons?” She laughs, light and airy.

  “We celebrate the Changing of the Seasons after middle bell, Mother. In the Forum.”

  “Not this time, darling. We are celebrating now. See, one of our guests has already come.”

  Thorne Councilman steps off the terrace, and I’m not even trying to hide how much I hate him. He nods at me once, unsmiling. It’s the first time I’ve put physical eyes on him since Knowing that he and his Council killed my brother for Forgetting. The sight of his black robes and neatly trimmed beard scorches my insides.

  “Samara, please,” my mother chides. “Arrange your face.”

  My father has turned to the wall, like he’s in a memory, or caching, but I see that he’s really looking into one of the mirrors, one that gives him a view of my mother. The table beside him has glasses set out, eleven of them, and a pitcher of what looks like amrita.

  The beat in my chest speeds, races, and somewhere, deep in my memory, I am listening to Adam scream. This is wrong. Something is wrong.

  “Mother,” I say. “I’m not dressed for guests. I’ll just go and—”