“I can see light,” he says. “In the glass! But it’s blurry.”
“They adjust to your eyes when you have them on,” I say, tucking them back inside the shirt. He nods.
“I’m taking Jill up into the orchards. Just to walk.”
I pause, about to go over the edge of the cliff. “Is it safe?”
“Grandpapa thinks it can be.”
Cyrus thinks the Knowing are waiting, watching for the situation to unfold before they act. Like they usually do. The difference this time is that the Outside knows exactly how they’re doing the watching.
“She’s going crazy inside the house. And she wants to go. With me.”
Again I stop myself from going over the cliff. I’m in a hurry. Reddix has to be met within his window, and if I miss him, I miss hearing the time of the next meeting. “Are you asking my permission?”
“No. I’m asking if we have a problem.”
My problem is with Jill’s agenda at the moment, whatever it is.
“Look,” says Nathan, “I’m not stupid, and I know what she’s been doing and why she’s been doing it. That’s why I’m saying something. Because … I don’t think that’s what she’s doing anymore.”
Which just means she’s changed tactics. “You have no issues from me, Nathan,” I say. “But … ” I don’t want to say, Don’t believe a word she says, or Don’t let her pull you around on a string. So I opt for, “Just … be smart about it.” He nods, and I get over the edge of the cliff before I have to discuss anyone else’s love life.
I jog down the slope after I hit bottom, sprint a wide circle so I can come at Reddix from a slightly different direction. I think he Knows where I’m coming from—he always Knows when I get near—but it would give me some personal satisfaction to sneak up on him at least once.
He’s staring out over the cliffs again, like he always does, and I wonder if he’s thinking about jumping. Then I wonder if anything he’s been telling me is true. If Sam’s already dead and he’s playing some kind of game to distract his mind, or trick Earth, or some other reason I don’t understand. The thought makes me sick.
I’m always sick now.
Reddix turns his head when I’m still a long way away, and I sigh. I stop my customary three meters away and he says, “You’re not well, Earthling?” He goes on, since I’m not going to answer him. “You have a sickness I understand well. Here, I thought you might be in need of a … token.”
He’s holding something out to me. I’m not wearing the glasses—I don’t want him Knowing what they can do—so I step forward like he’s that beetle on the back of Jill’s leg. What he’s offering is a small metal case of blue glass and green enamel. It’s beautiful, and it wasn’t that long ago that I would’ve studied the aesthetic and craftsmanship of Canaan for days based on it.
“Open it,” says Reddix.
I do, thinking of poison and venomous bugs. But there’s only one thing inside: a long, coiled lock of curling black hair. I snap the box shut, and I’m so mad I go calm. It’s hers. He has access to her, and he’s been touching her hair.
“She is well cared for. I gave her a wellness injection early, to help her keep her strength while she sleeps. Perhaps you didn’t know that I am also a physician?”
“And you’re one of them.”
“Them? The NWSE? Oh, yes. From a young age.” He smiles, and it’s like a cold morning in the Arctic Circle. “I was something of a prodigy.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you want the Knowing out of power?”
“It is because of the NWSE that I want that. Among other reasons … ”
I see the signs of memory beneath his calm face, but only just a little, and only because I’ve learned from Samara.
Then he says, “Tell me, Earthling. What would you give to save her?”
I don’t say anything.
“Because they will kill her. Judgment is absolute. But they may not kill her right away. The NWSE finds the condemned to be useful for obtaining … medical information.” I see another small twist beneath the exterior. “I cannot remove her, not without being seen and stopped. And even if you swept in at the last moment with your rebels of the Outside, they would kill her then and there. Throw her in the Torrens before you got near. Because justice is their obsession, especially the justice they have decreed themselves. Keeping only the best of the best, so we can make more of ourselves, maintain our own worthiness, and create the Superior Earth. That is the ultimate goal. She will not survive.”
I’m gritting my teeth. I have my own thoughts about whether Sam is going to survive this or not, but I wait until Reddix gets where he’s going.
“Here,” he says. “I have something else for you.” Reddix holds out a small glass bottle, but before he puts it in my hand, he says, “Handle it carefully. Do not break the glass or the seal.”
I take the bottle and hold it up to the very faint light of three unrisen moons. The bottle is clear, a white powder swirling inside. “What is it?”
“Forgetting,” he replies. “The Knowing’s greatest weapon. A weapon I would like to see turned on ourselves.”
My eyes snap back to the bottle. “And why are you giving it to me?”
“Because I want you to come into the Forum just before Judgment and smash that bottle onto the stones. And then the Knowing—and even the memory of Knowing—will be gone. Samara will not be Judged, and the city will belong to the Outside. Let them deal with the coming Earth.”
I stand there, staring at the weirdly calm face. “And you need me to do this because … ”
“I will be with the NWSE in seclusion, and then under scrutiny. I will not be able to enter the Forum with that bottle. And it is a bottle that has been … difficult to obtain. But there is enough there for all of the gathered Knowing, if it were to … get in the air.”
“And I suppose that means I would be Forgetting, too.”
“I asked what you would do to save her,” he says. “Is the sacrifice too much?”
If he’s playing a part, he’s playing it well. I think maybe he always plays his part well. “How does it work?”
“The powder in that bottle will go to the air and spread. Even the smallest exposure will wipe away memory, and the city will be sealed once you’re inside. They will not escape. Once in the air, the powder lasts for three days. That is all I Know.”
I doubt that. “Where does it come from?”
“It is processed in the labs, but again, that is not my field. Information is very controlled in New Canaan.” Reddix looks out over the cliffs again. “Have you ever seen Samara … in the grips of a … painful memory?”
I have. And I hate him for having seen it. I’m sure he’s the one who’s been behind those screens. Saving that data.
“Pain is a constant for the Knowing, something we can never protect ourselves well enough from. And Samara has memories that are more … agonizing than most. Would you deny her the peace of Forgetting?”
I’d already decided I’d give it to her if it killed me.
“Could you deny it to any of us?”
And now I’m wondering for the first time what Reddix remembers. He would’ve been something like eight or nine years old at the last Judgment, brought early, he’d said, into their sect. What did he see done to the condemned that he wants to Forget? I grip the bottle tight in my hand. Cyrus got better, didn’t he? He healed. Sam could heal, and so could I. “How do I get into the city?”
“Come down the shaft you used before,” he says. “I will meet you there three bells after waking, and then Judgment will come at the middle bell. But you must see Samara inside the Forum before you drop the bottle. That is important. Don’t give them a chance to kill her.” Reddix looks at my face and smiles. “We will not need to meet here again. Three bells after waking on the day of Judgment. Or there will be no saving her.”
He turns away. Evidently nothing more needs saying. I disagree.
“Wait.” Reddix pauses, but
doesn’t turn around. “What makes you Knowing?”
“We were born this way, Earthling. But if our truth is Forgotten, then maybe our Knowing can be put to better use.”
I slip on the glasses to watch him go. Even if he really thinks he was born this way, it’s just not true. And I’m cold inside. Not because of the Forgetting in my hand or because of what Reddix wants me to do. Because I’m thinking again about what Earth, someone like Commander Faye, would do if they had access to something that would give their soldiers the minds of the Knowing. Their generals, their engineers, doctors, physicists. They would want it. Badly. And after what I’ve seen here, I wouldn’t give it to us if we were a race of saints.
I look back over the dark plain, deeper shades where I know there are canyons and rivers and cracks, and into the distance, where the Centauri III is. And a yellow light blinks, bright. I zoom the lenses, and there’s another bright light, closer in the glasses, coming just as a rumble rolls through the air and beneath my feet. Another roll comes, and if I squint I can make out a plume of white smoke. Something just exploded. Big.
And all I can think is: Dad.
To be immune to the Forgetting is a privilege given to few. But like all privileges, it comes with a cost. Always to remember, yet cursed to die …
FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN
I’m hearing voices in my mind. Echoing through the different rooms. Vague. Indistinct. I don’t Know what they mean. Sometimes I chase the voices down halls. But they’re always gone when I get there. It’s strange to not Know how long I’ve been dead.
My control is so good I can choose any room I want now, or shut the door if I need to, follow the tugging strings of thought to see what they show me. But so many of these memories are faded, stale, a song heard again and again. I can’t say anything I didn’t say. Do anything I didn’t already do.
I wish I could dream.
I feel a tug in my mind, the tightening of a string. I’ve been ignoring this memory, choosing others that seem more interesting, but the pull has become insistent, and my list of new rooms is short. So I follow the pull of my memory and open the door into Uncle Towlend’s office.
And now there is yellow light, stacked books, and bits of paper, and I am curled in a soft chair that is huge compared to my small body, shoes tucked up under my dress. I have three scars, and I feel safe, secure. I am not Knowing yet. Uncle Towlend looks whole, because Aunt Letitia hasn’t gone, and he’s making meticulous stitches, sewing a book’s torn page.
And then I see that the book my uncle is repairing is the map book, the first time I ever saw it, and Uncle Towlend is telling me about the papers he found inside. Loose, from another book, tucked into a sort of niche in the cover. Uncle Towlend lifts the needle, stretching a thread that is the width of a hair, and because he had glanced at the loose pages, he recites their words for me.
“ ‘… and test subject number one hundred two, Nadia, Dyer’s daughter, is found to be naturally immune, only the second known case. Exposure was ten times average predicted dose for the Forgetting. Memories intact, severely ill … ’ ”
Nadia, I think now, with my grown mind, the sister of Genivee Archiva, who went out of bounds, like me, who made the maps. My uncle must have been lonely in his office, I think, to recite these things to a three-year-old. They were hardly appropriate subject matter. Maybe I’d been lonely, too, since I am sitting so still, listening.
“ ‘… heavier exposure is expected to be fatal. However, subject proved more tolerant than those with forced immunity, where exposure is fatal at half the predicted dose in one hundred percent of subjects tried … ’ ”
And suddenly I am yanked upward, flying through the walls and ceilings of my mind. I lose the string of memory I’ve been holding. Lose my control. And then I have fingers, legs, muscles that are stiff, aching. I have a body, and my body is a cage. I want to turn on my side. I want to see. Speak. But I can’t. I can only hear and feel, sheets below my fingers, the give of a mattress as someone sits next to me. The cloth of a sleeve brushing my arm. Breath near my ear.
“Samara,” a voice whispers.
It’s Reddix Physicianson. I can’t see him, but I Know his voice. I feel one finger trailing the length of my arm, and my mind shudders.
“Samara,” he whispers, “can you hear me yet? I’ve adjusted your medication, to ease you awake. But you must be still. Don’t let the others Know … ”
The finger strokes past my row of scars and into my hair. My medication, he said. A sleeping draught. I’m not dead. And that means Judgment is still on its way, and I’m trapped. And afraid.
“Your lover is coming,” he says. “He’s gotten thinner, and his eyes are shaded. He isn’t used to our long dark, is he? But I don’t think that’s what ails him … ”
Beckett. He’s talking about Beckett. Reddix twines his fingers through my hair, picking it up and letting it fall.
“It is fifty-four days since he’s seen you.”
Fifty-four days?
“That is what ails him. And because he is afraid you will die in Judgment Underneath. I Know his pain. And so he will come, and he will throw the Forgetting into the Forum, to save you, to help you Forget, and then he will Forget you, too. And Earth and the Knowing alike.”
No, he shouldn’t do that. I Know how to stop being Knowing. We don’t have to Forget … The back of a hand brushes across my cheek, slowly. Reddix is making a memory. Of touching me. I want to scream.
“You couldn’t help it, could you?” he whispers. “When your love came? I couldn’t help it, either, and you never saw me. Not really. I went everywhere you did. To touch the rope in the parks, where you had been swinging. To the Archives, and your uncle’s old office, to sit in the chairs where you once sat. Only I never went Outside, not like you did. I was never brave enough for that. But I kept your secrets. So much time erased from the cameras, and they never realized what I’d done. But it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t keep you from being caught. Not every time … ”
He pauses, his hand lingering on my neck. “You can hear me now, can’t you? Your pulse is faster, and your breathing … ” His fingers start their slow strokes back into my hair.
“But I still could have saved you from Judgment. A partner would have made you useful. Would have meant the line of Lian Archiva was not over. So she let me have you. I Knew you didn’t want it. I Knew you would look at me with disgust every day after, but I would’ve done it, because it would have kept you alive. And then you ran … ”
The fingers brush the hair from my forehead, and beneath my panic I am sorry. For Reddix and Beckett. And me. For all the Knowing.
“… and you went straight to the Cursed City. When they Knew what you’d written, Knew you were looking for the secret of Forgetting, and so close to where Earth must have landed. It wasn’t easy to make them believe you were innocent then. But I persuaded your mother that you needed rescuing, not punishing. That you’d helped end the life of the same rebel who was trying to corrupt you, who the NWSE had been trying to kill themselves. But you eluded them, and went to the Outside, took your Knowing back into the house of the very same rebels … ”
The one they had been trying to kill. The same rebels. They meant to kill Nita all along. Not me. Grandpapa, Annis, and Nathan really are rebels. And then I think of the cameras. They Knew I was sharing my food. They Knew what I wrote in my book. It was Nita that Marcus and Craddock were talking about in the ruined city. Nita who had been Judged at the wrong time. Because of my mother. Nita’s family that needed to be made an example of, not mine. My parents were pretending to be in seclusion, so the Knowing wouldn’t realize I was gone. Me, they were trying to rescue, with Thorne Councilman actually doing what he could to mitigate my mother’s lust for a bloody justice. I want to bang on the inside of my body like fists against a door. And I can do nothing.
“And what argument was going to save you then?” Reddix whispers. He strokes the other side of my face now, the corner
of my mouth. “But I didn’t tell them about Earth. You wouldn’t have lived to Judgment if I had. Like your brother … ”
His breath tickles in my ear, and I can smell him now, clean, with a faint scent of moonflower.
“I Know what you see when you cry out in your sleep. When you writhe in pain on the floor. I Know why you were looking for the Forgetting. I, too, have seen the deaths they reserve for the condemned. And Forgetting would be peace, wouldn’t it? It’s not so wrong, is it? To want peace?”
Reddix lifts my hand, caressing it, holding it in his.
“But your mother has taken away even that. Do you Know what she has done to us? For twelve years, since her son caught the Forgetting, one harvested spore has been put into our blood. In our wellness injections. As the book said. She has made us immune to the Forgetting. And now, even the curse of oblivion is gone … ”
I can see that page in the Notebook of Janis Atan. Just before the torn ones. A created immunity, not a natural one, by small exposures plus the amrita. Reddix, I think. I want to shout the words. You don’t Know everything. We don’t have to Forget, because we can stop being Knowing. Just don’t drink the amrita. Don’t drink the amrita …
And now my memory is pulling, seizing me, wanting to tell me something. But I can’t go yet. I need to hear Reddix. He lifts my limp hand and puts it on his face, and I feel skin, a smooth-shaven cheek, the brush of long braids.
“And now I will remember that I love you, and you will remember that you love him, and he will fly back through the stars. It’s untenable, isn’t it? This life?” He rubs his cheek across my hand, and I Know pain when I hear it. “I don’t believe this new Earth the Knowing will build is all that superior,” he whispers. “I think it will be like the stories of hell.”
My mind is racing, and if Reddix is monitoring my heartbeat, then he’s feeling the spike in its speed. If we are immune, then why is Beckett throwing down Forgetting? Where did he even get it? From Reddix, of course. Reddix must have taken Forgetting from the labs. But why do it at all?
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