The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  “Stay where you are,” she says, a little sharp before she softens. “You look well.”

  Our front door opens and Mother gets up to greet Martina Tutor and Jane Chemist. Jane won’t look at me, either. And then comes Craddock, and his sister, holding her newest baby. Himmat from the gates. Marcus and Reddix Physicianson. Some of these are not our usual guests. Reddix goes to stand with my father, near the mirrored wall just beyond my chair. Reddix, who all my mother’s hopes were pinned on, who was going to eat a resting meal with us. Has he told what he Knows?

  I try to catch his eye, but I can’t do anything without drawing the attention of the room. It’s too quiet, only the slightest murmur of conversation. Then my mother stands again, heels clicking across the floor stones, dress swishing as she walks to our front door and quietly turns the lock. And faint inside my head, Adam is screaming and screaming …

  “It’s good to be together,” Mother says, loud and to the whole room, “united in memory and in our pursuit of beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice. Thorne, would you make sure everyone has a glass?”

  This should be the job of our help, but for the first time I realize that there is no Outsider in this room. No one coming in and out to take care of our needs. But Thorne says nothing about this subtle slight, doesn’t protest as he approaches the table. We all watch him pour ten glasses of the pale green amrita, sparkling in the light of the table lamps, in the reflections of the mirrors, the smell wafting across the room. He hands a glass to each person. The eleventh glass was already filled. And it’s this one he hands to me.

  I will drink nothing from the hand of Thorne Councilman.

  Everyone who wasn’t already standing gets to their feet. Except for me. Thorne lifts his glass and says the words for the dark days. The words we could all say ourselves, if we wanted to, that he is supposed to be saying seven bells from now, in the Forum. His voice is somehow smaller than my mother’s.

  “Those who remember now remember the stars, from beyond which we came, because our Knowing is our history, never to be forgotten. When we have Knowing, we Know our truth.”

  “Know our truth.” The room says it together, a soft murmur. But instead of drinking, Thorne goes on, his voice slow and deliberate.

  “And we, the noble wardens, the guardians of memory, the architects of Knowing, the builders of the Superior Earth, honor beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice, and drink to the dark of the new world.”

  “To the dark,” they say together, and ten glasses are drained in unison.

  I do nothing. I don’t Know these words. I don’t Know what they mean.

  “Darling,” says Mother. “You didn’t drink.”

  I feel the weight of every eye in the room. Mother’s necklace, engraved “NWSE,” winks in the light. I lift the glass, tip it against my mouth, but I don’t let the liquid touch my lips.

  “You must drink, Samara,” my mother says.

  “Why?”

  The atmosphere of the room tenses, tightens. “Because you are one of the Knowing. Drink.”

  I look at Mother, at Thorne, her son’s killer, at the solemn faces of the people who hunted me in the Cursed City. I can’t see Reddix, or my father. Mother waits, one painted nail tapping against the glass. I raise my eyes to her.

  “No.”

  She nods once, and the room erupts. Thorne snatches my glass, and Craddock and Marcus Physicianson each grab one of my arms before I’m aware of what’s happening. I scream, kick, thrash until I get one arm free, but Martina Tutor comes to help, and Jane, and it doesn’t take them long to pin me to the chair. I’m still fighting, and I’ve kicked someone hard at least twice. But it’s not doing me any good.

  Mother comes into the range of my vision. “Samara, this is unnecessary and unhelpful. It’s time to drink now.” Her tone is the same she used when I was a child, when my memories came.

  I shake my head. Thorne brings the glass and someone forces my mouth open. He pours it in, but I don’t swallow. I spit it in his face. I taste amrita. And something a little bitter.

  “Prepare another glass, Thorne.”

  “Father!” I yell. “Daddy!” I haven’t said that since I was two.

  “You’ll have to drink now, Samara,” Reddix whispers near my ear. He must be one of the ones holding my arms now. “I promise, it will be all right … ”

  I don’t think he can promise me that this will be all right in any way at all. I’m helpless, and Adam is screaming while his bones break, and Nita is dying, and I cannot fix it and I cannot change it. And there is no one to help me. No one at all. Where is my father? The new glass is coming.

  “Marcus,” says my mother, nodding.

  This time, hands take my face and tilt my head back, so that the light of the ceiling lamp wavers through my tears. My nose is pinched, mouth forced open, and the amrita goes down. I choke, gag, and they let me go, let me fall forward onto my hands and knees, coughing. I taste the bitter with the amrita, a warmth spreading down my throat and into my stomach. Is this what Adam felt, and Nita, when they ate bitterblack?

  I look up, a circle of faces staring back at me, then spring to my feet and stumble backward, knocking a wall mirror to the floor, where it shatters. Mother folds her hands. And only now do I realize just how little my hope can live on. Because only now have I found a single sprig of it, a tiny hidden sprout in a stony dark, the hope that one day, my mother might love me. And I have only just found it, because I have just felt it die.

  I do not want these people to watch me die, and I will not let them enjoy my suffering. I won’t show it to them.

  “Today is not just one day of celebration, Samara,” my mother says, as if I’m not standing dripping and bruised and poisoned in a glitter of broken glass. “Today we change the seasons, but it is also a special year. A twelfth year, and as you Know, that is the time for Judgment.”

  “It’s not time for Judgment yet.”

  “But it is time. You have made it so.”

  I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. I can’t believe Craddock’s sister is going to let her baby remember this. “Who are you to judge me?”

  There’s a spatter of soft laughter. The warmth is spreading through me, but there’s no pain in my fingers. Yet.

  “You have not been an asset to the Knowing, Samara. You lack control and the willingness to participate in our society.” She pauses, and I wonder why I ever wanted this woman to love me. “You have stolen Knowing, written Knowing, shared Knowing, and mixed with the Outside. But most of all, you have betrayed us.”

  I am surrounded by faces, eyes, my mother in the center with her perfect braids. Betrayed them. To Earth. They Know about Beckett. I slide down the wall, feel the sting of glass cutting into my knee.

  “You have turned against your people, Samara, your birthright, by aiding and assisting the rebels of the Outside. You have shared our most precious weapon … ”

  I stare down at the blood pooling from my knee and onto the floor. Not Earth. The Outside. But what weapon, what rebels Outside? And my memory jumps, leaps, and Annis is opening the floor planks, Nita showing me the shaft in the deserted kitchens, Grandpapa’s voice, when you come back to us, things may be different …

  They didn’t need me to Forget or stop Knowing to make them rebel. They’re rebelling anyway. Right now. I hear Reddix, in my memory, in the cave. They are coming for you. Is this what he meant? Reddix is Knowing, so I can’t read his expression. He just stands quietly beside my father, who has his back to these proceedings, his ropes of hair twisted with glinting gold. And the world wavers like I’m seeing it through flame.

  “Judgment is not given lightly Underneath,” my mother is saying. “The Knowing are special, and the Noble Wardens do not lessen the numbers without consideration … ”

  “We,” I say, and my voice isn’t steady, “are not special.”

  “Oh, but we are. We were brought to this planet to build the perfect society, and now that
Earth has come, we sit on the brink of our final destiny. The Knowing are the builders of the Superior Earth, each with more Knowing in their fields than any humans before. And we will use that Knowing to fulfill the original directive. To re-create, to transform, and to rule the Earth. What you see, Samara”—she extends a hand around the room—“is only a shadow of what the Knowing are capable of. Imagine what we could do with Earth’s technology.”

  The world has taken up a slow spin, as if I am a planet and Mother is the sun.

  “We are the best of the best, Samara. But we cannot fulfill our directive if the Knowing are not pure. The Knowing must be worthy to rule. And so the Noble Wardens wait, and we watch. We create situations, and evaluate the choices made. All that is required of any of the Knowing, daughter … ”

  I raise my eyes again.

  “… is to be worthy. You are not worthy. You have chosen differently, and therefore you are not chosen. And so, we say that you are condemned.”

  “And what will … ” My words come slow, the sounds rolling aimlessly on my tongue. “What will the Council … think about that?”

  “Oh, my darling. What have we to do with the Council?”

  I meet my mother’s eyes, and I can feel myself sinking, down through my mind, her words chasing me slow, following me one by one through the dark.

  “There … can be … no forgiveness … Underneath.”

  I fall into blackness, a nothingness. And this time, there are no memories to catch me at the bottom.

  I didn’t go back to the house. I decided to wait in the supply hut for Sam. All day—if “day” is the right word for the darkness—stretched out in the tight space behind the crates that Annis and Michael’s mother stacked. It was risky. And probably stupid. Twice I snuck out for water, and when I got too hungry I cracked the lid on a box marked “silvercurrants.” There were cloth bags of berries inside, and below a false bottom, knives. Lots of them. Not very well made, but sharp. I put the lid back, wondering; ate berries that were tart and a little dry; and spent the rest of the waking hours either napping or going through the Council’s tech files.

  There was a lot of surveillance on Samara. Most of the saved data showed her in her bedroom with Nita. Nita telling Sam about the Outside, planning Sam’s trips aboveground, encouraging her to write in her book. They acted like sisters. For being young and a girl, Nita looked weirdly like her grandfather, the same bright blue eyes. I can see how Jillian might pass for a description of her, if you’d never seen her. Though that’s where the similarities stop.

  But some of the data was just Sam alone, doing her hair. Writing. One where she’s crying, doubled over on the floor in a memory, then four or five glimpses of her changing clothes. I felt wrong watching some of that. And mad. This was private. And what sick person has been sitting on the other end of those screens, watching this?

  Or maybe I’m just as sick, because when the footage came of Nita dying, I didn’t stop the visual. I didn’t really get what this poison does to you. The seizures are violent, and agonizing, and when I hear the crack of Nita’s arm, I feel it in my gut. How long did Sam say she listened to Adam’s bones breaking? Two bells? And nobody put a pillow over his face. I watch Nita go still, and Sam, with bleeding hands, cleaning up her own vomit with spare clothes, burning it all in the brazier heater in the corner. And the sick in my guts moves up to an ache in my chest.

  Nita told her to go to the city and Forget. And I know that I will give Sam up, let her go, to let her Forget that.

  She needs to get back aboveground. With me.

  When the resting bell rings, I sit up behind the boxes, tense, listening for the first hint of Sam coming out of the shaft. I hear the gates close, the streets settling. The footsteps of supervisors. The door to the hut opens once, and I don’t move a muscle. But then it shuts again. I go through the official ship’s log of the Centauri II, which is just about as boring as a space-exploration log could possibly be. Until they land, and then there is only one more entry: Contact made. After that? Nothing.

  I listen to the waking bells. Outsiders lighting fires, calling for their children to fetch water from the channels.

  She doesn’t come.

  I tell myself not to be an idiot. She said it could be later, and from the other way, through the parks. I tie the glasses to my shirt lace, drop them beneath the scratchy cloth. Resist a strong urge to climb down that shaft. Getting back to Annis’s house is downright dangerous without Sam’s Knowledge of the patrol routes, and I’m feeling stupid about my choices by the time I get there.

  I find Jill faking some recovery time, Nathan running and fetching for her, and completely happy to do it. She gives him a big white smile, me a filthy look and zero opportunity to fill her in on what I found underground. I’m annoyed, and then I’m mad. What Mom told me about Vesta paired with Jillian’s comments here and there are making a picture I don’t like the look of. Nathan jumps up to get Jill another blanket, and I seek refuge in the other resting room, where Cyrus is tying one of Nathan’s sandals. I’m wearing his.

  “Sorry,” I say, backing out, but the old man waves me in.

  “Not to worry,” he says. “It’s a full house.” He cocks his head. “That bed’s free, if you need it.”

  I decide I do. I stretch out and get an arm behind my head. A month ago, I wouldn’t have thought a grass-filled mattress could feel this good.

  “You alone?” Cyrus asks.

  My gut twists once. He means Samara. “Yes, but she’ll be back before resting.”

  “Oh? I thought she was staying Underneath.”

  “She changed her mind.”

  “So tell me. What do you think of her?”

  I lift my head to look at the old man, who is still knotting the sandal lace. “What’s the real question?”

  Cyrus nods. “Fair answer. But, young man, somebody ought to tell you that you’ve got lip paint all over your face.”

  I sit up, hand to my cheek, Jill’s filthy look explained. Great. A cloth comes sailing at my head, and I start scrubbing.

  “You planning on being here awhile?” Cyrus asks.

  That’s a hard one. “I hope so.”

  “And your friend?”

  “That might be up to her.”

  “She seems to be having a fine time with my grandson.”

  “She’s amusing herself.”

  The old man’s face wrinkles. “And why, young man, do you think your friend is amusing herself with Nathan?”

  The answer is so easy I’m sorry he had to point it out. So I’ll notice, that’s why. “Jill is clear on how things are,” I say. “But okay. I’ll talk to her.”

  Cyrus nods again. He’s taking longer to tie a shoelace than any man in history. “See, the thing is,” he says, “that little girl is special. And I don’t mean because she’s Knowing. I mean, in spite of being Knowing.”

  I know.

  “It’s not easy to be brought up the way she has, and see things the way she does … ”

  “She had Nita,” I say.

  “That’s so.” He fiddles with the lace. “And that little girl has suffered—maybe no more than the rest of them, I don’t know—but she’s suffered all the same, and is likely to suffer a good deal more. The way things are, it’s not good for any of us, Outside or Underneath.”

  Cyrus stops talking, and it’s like he left off a sentence. Then he says, “It would be good to know where you stand.”

  I don’t know what he means. I’m standing wherever Sam is. “Cyrus,” I lower my voice. “What is it like to Forget?”

  He gives up on pretending to tie the sandal. “She told you that, did she?” He shakes his head. “When you Forget, there’s a big part of you that’s … just not you anymore. And you can’t get it back.”

  I tent my fingers over my nose. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t even know what I want to happen. Except that I want her back. Right now. Out of the dark with its poisons and lies and peeping eyes. And Cyrus wil
l be on a slave ship to Earth over my dead body.

  I grab my pack from under the bed. “I have to go.”

  “Suit yourself,” says Cyrus. “You said you like glass?”

  I look back from the doorway, letting the hood fall back down on my shoulders.

  “When things settle, young man, maybe you’d like to learn.”

  I feel myself smile. “That’d be good.”

  I use the workshop door, to avoid drawing Jill’s attention, and then I’m in the streets. The blond man leaves off playing his game, and walks to one side of me. Like he did when Sam and I went Underneath. In less than a minute I’ve walked into the path of a supervisor. It’s the big one, the one who was outside the ruined building in Canaan, right before I blew up the door. And the blond man calls out, gets his attention, pointing back down the street while I change course. I pass the last of the houses, the land rising up to meet the mountain slopes, slip on the glasses, and hurry up one of the gated paths that divide the terraced fields.

  I know I’m being reckless, and that I would’ve never gotten away with this in the sun. I’m not sure I’ll get away with it in the dark. I’ve got an alarm set, but my charge is just under 50 percent. It’s a long hike up to the cliffs, around dark, barren groves and up again through thick brush, glowing with luminescent threads. But I make it a lot faster not carrying Jill on my back.

  Getting down the cliff is easy with the gear, and when I look back the way I came I realize I’m going to have to climb that rope again, by hand, so I can send the gear down to pull Samara up. Worth it. And then I run my eyes over the upland parks.

  It’s dark, hardly any glowworms and just a smattering of stars, a halo behind the mountain range that must mean the rising of the moons. I switch the glasses to heat and scan the clipped, open spaces, the tamed trees. And I find it, a figure standing still on the far side of the park, at the cliff edge, where I saw the skimmer.

  I’m relieved that she’s there, more than relieved, and a little irritated that she’s not running toward my rope at full speed. I start across the parks at a jog. But the closer I get to the figure on the cliff, the more I slow down, and it’s not from all the exercise. I change the glasses to night vision with a glance.