The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  That is not Samara. But it is one of the Knowing. A man, in a sleeveless tunic of silver-gray, with ten scars on his left arm, probably close to the same number on his right. I step sideways in the shade of a well-spaced grove, making a wide, silent circle until I can see his profile. And it’s him, from the cave. The one who called me Earth. Reddix.

  Leaves move above me, fluttering in the breeze, and suddenly he says, “Is that you, Earthling?”

  I go still. I don’t even twitch. He turns his head.

  “I Know you’re there. A wind of this speed makes a certain sound in that grove, and you are a new object that has altered its pitch.” He looks back out over the cliffs. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Why?”

  “To discuss our options.”

  I don’t like this. Not at all.

  Then he says, “She is not coming.”

  The piece of my gut that twisted earlier tightens. “Explain.”

  “She has been condemned. She was taken before the Changing of the Seasons, and will be kept asleep, where she can do no harm, until Judgment. Then she will stand before the Knowing, and they will kill her.”

  I stand so tense I can feel the pain of it in my head. “Is that so?” I say it through my teeth. I’ve already thought of ten different ways to blow up his mountain.

  “You can’t get to her. She is deep, and drugged, and would have to be carried. They are on watch, and are not without weapons. It would take an army to bring her open air. Do you have one of those at your disposal, Earthling?”

  I’m so mad right now I’m shaking. Or maybe that’s fear.

  “Or perhaps you are a renegade, out on your own?”

  I don’t say anything, and he’s still staring at the dark. I don’t think he wants to look at me.

  “Samara is being condemned for stealing Knowing, writing Knowing, and her dealings with the rebels Outside,” he says calmly. “Can you imagine if they had been aware her betrayal extended all the way to Earth?” He does glance once at me now. “Maybe you are not aware that one of Samara’s fondest wishes is to remove the Knowing from power.”

  I’d like to know why he thinks he Knows anything about Sam’s fondest wishes.

  “I wonder if you might be willing to help make that happen.”

  I glance at the corner of the lenses and set a new perimeter alarm without really taking my eyes off him. “You want to take down your Council?”

  “Not just the Council. All of them. If it can be done.”

  “And why would you want that?”

  “Because we are a useless, selfish, and poisonous race, or haven’t you noticed? And because doing so may save her.” He turns his head to me again. “What would you risk to save her?”

  Anything. Everything. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”

  “No. I’m suggesting a partnership of … mutual interest.” He pauses. “I suppose you love her.”

  I take three long breaths. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because to Know her is to love her, Earthling.”

  I watch one of Reddix’s fists clench in night-vision green. I know the look of a memory taking hold, especially beneath a smooth and calm exterior, and this one is painful. Only just kept at bay. I think of what Samara said, that many of the Knowing might choose healing over status, Forgetting over power. And then I wonder if Reddix is the one who’s been monitoring those screens, saving that data. If he could have been watching in real time when I dragged Samara into her room. I want to hit him. And I want her back.

  “That doesn’t tell me I should trust you.”

  “I am risking my life talking to you right now. And your technology has already told you that I’m alone. I have no other agenda.”

  “What does your Council Know about Earth?”

  He almost smiles. “Always everyone thinks this is about the Council.”

  “I don’t care who they are. What do they Know?”

  He straightens. “That Earth is here, but not in what force or what capacity. They cannot see it, but the sound of a ship entering our atmosphere was caught. And you have been expected. They do not intend to engage with Earth. Or not yet. They are known for their … patience. There. Does that earn me some trust?”

  “Your people should stay hidden,” I say.

  “As should yours.”

  Fine. “How would it be done?” I ask.

  “You can leave that to me.”

  I don’t think so. “Samara was looking for the Forgetting. That’s how she was going to take down the Council.”

  “Oh, Earthling. We all Knew that. I will be back here in thirty-six bells, and I will wait for one. We will talk again then.”

  “That’s not soon enough.”

  “It will be what it is.”

  This guy makes me want to hit whatever is in reach. But I think back to the calm way he watched Samara rising in the caves. What that calm might have been hiding. Sam said that love could only come once for the Knowing, and that Reddix was supposed to be her partner. For the first time, I consider what happens if your “once” doesn’t love you back, not even a little. When you’re trapped for life with a love that cannot be returned and can never die.

  He might be telling me the truth.

  I watch him walk away through the trees, zooming the glasses, waiting where I am until he’s through the door into the mountain. I feel sorry for him. And I hate him.

  And Samara Archiva is not going to die in the Underneath.

  To choose the chosen is a delicate task. When considering a sacrifice, the judge must watch, wait, introduce stress to their subject, and evaluate. In this way the worthiness of the subject is revealed, and the judge will decide if they are chosen, or condemned …

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN

  My body is gone. All I have left is the memory of my body, and this is how I Know that I am dead.

  Dying of bitterblack wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Frightening, but it didn’t really hurt. Maybe it was like that for Adam and Nita, separated from the destruction of their bodies, retreated to a far, deep place where the world just wasn’t.

  I hope that’s what it was like.

  My memories remind me of the Underneath now that I am dead. A vast, dark labyrinth of interconnected rooms. I wander down steps and corridors, through huge and hidden chambers. Behind one door I’m a child being rocked by my father, another and I’m twisting Beckett’s bones back into place. Here is the pain of my first injection, the swoop in my stomach from the fraying rope. I see Sonia, smiling, showing me the silver cloth for a new dress. My mother, slapping my hand and telling me to cache it. And at the end of a hall is my broken brother, saying “Who are you?” while our father cries.

  I wish there were locks on the doors of my mind.

  But after a long time, I begin to learn the layout of certain corners. Rows of rooms that remain the same. And if I concentrate, I can stay in the room I want. I spend some time in the upland parks, lifting my face to the sun, then in the dark, jumping off the fern roots. I play a game in the front room with Nita and Grandpapa. I go and find Beckett, feel his lips on my neck on my bedchamber rug, hold his hand Outside while he listens to the weavers.

  And then I slip through a different door, into a room of shelves, inked words, and pages. This is the room of the books I’ve put inside my head. And here is a shelf of the books I looked at in the Council’s reading room, when I was with Beckett. I sit on the floor of my mind and take one down.

  This is about the early history of the Archives, which was in the old city, before it was abandoned. How it contained hundreds of personal accounts of the first colonists, plus Earth stories and histories by Genivee Archiva, the first of the Archiva name, who is written on the family tree in our receiving room. She was the first to transcribe information from technology to books, so that our history could never be lost.

  Then I read an Archiva transcription of the history of the Canaan Project, almost exactly as Beckett t
old me. Seventy-five men and seventy-five women, the best and brightest in their areas of learning, chosen to create a new and perfect world by a company called New World Space Exploration. NWSE. The letters on my mother’s necklace. The room of the books tries to dissolve, become the room of my poisoning. But I relax, visualize the books, only the books. And then I am able to open up another.

  The title is Early Edicts of New Canaan. I thought I’d skipped all those. I set it down. And the next to leap into my hands is very old and tattered. Beautiful. The book of maps. I’d been hoping to find this one. I open it, and I don’t have to be careful now. Pages can’t crack inside my mind. This time I read the inscription. Drawn by my sister Nadia, the first to leave the walls of her city and explore what had been out of bounds, and Gray, a glassblower’s son. —Genivee Archiva.

  I smile inside my head, pretending to run a finger over the page. Sometimes the stories of the Outside are better than the learning of the Knowing, and I think I understand now why Nita chose my Outside name. Because I was exploring what was out of bounds.

  The next book is thin and coming apart. The paper is made differently, the ink so faded the letters seem more like memories of letters than words. But I can see where it has been repaired. And in a different hand, in darker ink, someone has written on the cover “The Notebook of Janis Atan.”

  Janis Atan was born on the first Centauri, one of the first children of the newly built Canaan, and what I’m reading is like a warped view of the original directive, to build a perfect society, an idea mangled and twisted until it becomes something else. She is obsessed with being chosen, being one of “the best,” with her own knowledge and memory—why memory?—and with bringing “beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice,” as if she is the only one who can.

  And where shall we, the chosen of the NWSE, find our judge? she writes. 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 …

  But there are concepts in the words of Janis Atan, phrases here and there that are hauntingly like the Knowing. That memory and knowledge are what make someone worthy. That being without it means you are not. The concept of Judgment to maintain a society’s “perfection.” Condemnation for those not worthy of their status.

  The room tries to dissolve again, back to the place of my poisoning. And now that I am dead, suddenly I wonder if memories tug and pull because they are connected. Subtle strings of meaning that I can only feel, never see. I stop fighting, curious, and let myself go to the Archiva receiving rooms.

  And fear engulfs me. Confusion, panic. My heart is racing. There’s a glass in my hand, one in Thorne Councilman’s. And it’s my mother giving the orders, telling Thorne Councilman to pour, telling him to begin. I listen to him speaking the unfamiliar words: … 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 now I see the thread. Noble Wardens. Superior Earth. I slow my memory like Beckett slowing down the pictures in the square of light. I hear the clink of a fingernail against a glass, the flash of my mother’s necklace in the light. Feel the hands bruising my arms, the taste of bitter in my mouth. Lian Archiva. Pronouncing my Judgment.

  I stop my memory, like a stutter in time. NWSE. Noble Wardens of a Superior Earth. The keepers of memory, of Knowing. Who believe they are the most noble, the most wise, with the longest memories. The most worthy to dispense justice. And now I see. The Council has not been controlling us. The NWSE has been controlling the Council, through Thorne. Thorne, who does what my mother says.

  My mother, who Judged me. Condemned me.

  Lian Archiva is the judge of New Canaan. It’s Lian Archiva who has been deciding which of us lives, and which of us dies. And that means Thorne Councilman did not kill my brother.

  My mother did.

  I don’t even remember getting back up the cliffs, packing my gear, or making my way back down through the fields. I did it at a jog, and then I did it at a run, down into the streets, where I pushed around bodies and bumped into shoulders without even pulling up my hood. When Annis’s door shuts, it rattles the dishes on the table. Annis sets down her tea.

  “You lied to her,” I say.

  Annis stares at me for exactly one second. Then she goes to the front door and locks it, peering once through the window before closing the curtain. Cyrus comes in from the workshop at a trot.

  “Byron said you just came running down the street like a maniac, what—”

  “You used her!” I say.

  “Beckett, what’s wrong with you?” Jill is in the doorway of the resting room, and she’s got Jasmina on an out-thrust hip. I don’t have enough space in my head to register how weird that is.

  Annis sits back down at the table, folding her hands in front of her tea. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  “I’m not interested in sitting,” I say. I’m sweating, and I’ve barely got breath to speak. And I need to strangle someone. “I am interested … in hearing why you let her risk her life … for you.”

  Cyrus turns the lock on the door to the workshop, and Annis narrows her eyes. “If we’re discussing the endangerment of lives, Beckett … That’s your name, isn’t it? Beckett? Then I would be interested in hearing who you really are.”

  My gaze darts up to Jill. Her eyes are big, blue, and give me no help.

  “You didn’t really expect us to believe you were one of the Knowing, did you? The only thing remotely Knowing about you is that you’d be arrogant enough to think we were that stupid. With her”—she jerks a thumb at Jill—“not able to walk? The Knowing don’t get sick. Nadia never would’ve told such a silly lie if she hadn’t been desperate.”

  I don’t think I’ve actually remembered we were supposed to be Knowing since the first day. What would Sean Rodriguez make of that?

  “What?” Annis says. “Nothing to say?”

  “Annis,” says Cyrus, cautioning.

  “No, Dad! After risking my own back and yours. Risking the kids! I won’t sit here and be accused … ”

  And then my mind catches up. “They have her.”

  “Have who?” says Annis.

  “Sam.”

  She closes her mouth. And then Cyrus comes to the table, kicks out the end of the bench. “I think you’d better sit after all.”

  I sit this time.

  “Beckett,” says Jill, “could I speak to you for a minute?”

  “No.”

  “You two,” says Cyrus, nodding at Nathan and Jill, “get in here. And the rest of you”—heads look down from the loft—“get Grandmama’s box from under my bed and each of you count the beads. Whoever gets it right gets a trip to the pond.”

  Luc and Ari scramble down the ladder, Jasmina squirming down Jill’s legs to trot after them. Jill slides stiff-backed onto the bench beside me, head up, Nathan after, and as soon as the resting room door shuts, Cyrus says, “What happened?”

  “She’s been Judged and condemned.”

  “But it’s not time … ” says Annis.

  “They’re keeping her locked up until then. Somewhere deep. Drugged, I think … ”

  “What are her crimes?” asks Cyrus.

  “Stealing Knowing, writing Knowing, and”—I look hard at them both—“mixing with the rebels of the Outside.”

  “Ah.” Cyrus drops into his chair by the clay heater, running a hand over the white hairs on his chin. I see Nathan and Jill exchange a look.

  “You used her,” I say, “to get information on the Underneath. Getting Nita to pretend like she cared about her. It was Nita who got Sam to come Outside, to go down in the Archives and write down what she shouldn’t. And it got Nita killed, didn’t it?”

  Nathan leans forward on the bench. “You need to
shut up.”

  I don’t. “That poison was never meant for Sam, was it? They knew she was sharing her food. Sending it out to you. They’d been watching her for weeks … ”

  “Now you listen,” Cyrus says. Annis knocks a tear from her cheek like she’s angry about it. “It’s true we picked out Samara. It took a lot of doing to get Nita chosen as her help. We wanted Nita with her, and we wanted Nita to befriend her. We needed an ally, and we chose her. Because she was the sister of Adam Archiva.”

  I look at Cyrus. I’m listening, but being still is costing me. “Nita got caught once,” he says, “climbing down the cliffs into the city’s upland parks. She was a kid, she’d been dared, and the girl never was one to back down … ”

  “I dared her,” says Nathan to the table. Jill puts a hand on his arm.

  Cyrus says, “She’d have had her back laid open for sure, kid or not, except that it was Adam Archiva in the parks that day, not much more than a kid himself, and he let her go. Kept watch while she got back up the cliffs.”

  Cyrus has his brow wrinkled now, as if this memory gives him pain.

  “Two years later, Adam was a supervisor, training, and his route took him by the workshop. He remembered Nita, of course, and she was scared, but he said he wouldn’t tell, and I talked to him a little. And pretty soon it was every day, at this table, both of us risking our skins to tell about what it was like to live Outside and Underneath. How many hours we worked. Food rations. No medicine. No learning. What went on inside your head when you’re Knowing. And I told him about a sickness that was hidden, that makes us Forget. And he said he’d been trained to take anyone with those symptoms Underneath for treatment. And I explained that if they go Underneath, they don’t come back out again. That we hide our sickness instead. And he decided to help us.”

  “Help you do what?” I ask.

  “Rebel,” Annis whispers.

  “Adam told us things we could’ve never found out on our own. That the Council wasn’t really running the city. That there was a sect, secret, obsessed with creating a Superior Earth … ”