The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  And the strings in my mind yank, painful, and this time I sink, away from the feel of Reddix’s face, down, down …

  … to pages of a book that are turning, flipping, three jagged edges where some have been torn, and then the pages still, and say: Anna, Planter’s daughter … Forced immunity … Three sessions of injected exposure … memories intact. Air exposure resulting in extreme cranial and spinal pain before an immediate rise in blood pressure, leading to death …

  And the book dissolves, parting like water as I fall through it, into …

  … Uncle Towlend’s office, with my shoes tucked under my dress, while my uncle sews the map book. His voice is low and mellow, reciting, “ ‘… Nadia, Dyer’s daughter, is found to be naturally immune … Exposure was ten times average predicted dose for the Forgetting. Memories intact, severely ill … 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 … ’ ”

  I rise back to the present, to my dark cage of a body, to Reddix’s lips on my forehead. And now I think I Know what papers my uncle found, what he recited to me when I was three. The three missing pages from the Notebook of Janis Atan, the book hidden behind my mother’s mirror. No wonder my memory kept tugging. The instructions for creating a forced immunity to the Forgetting were in the notebook, but not the results of Janis’s experiments. Forced immunity to the Forgetting does leave your memory intact, which is incredibly useless, since the spores just decide to kill you instead. But could Reddix Know this? Where did Uncle Towlend leave those papers?

  I sift through my mind, fast, searching my memories of every visit to Uncle Towlend’s office. The yellow lamps flash, memory after memory. And then I take away the bright lights, and there is only one lantern, and it’s in my hand. And I have it. Those papers were lying on the dirty floor when I came back out of the Archives, after I read the book about Forgetting. Like they were rubbish. Like they were nothing. But I see them, illuminated in a dim flash of my lantern.

  And Reddix said he’d been to my uncle’s office.

  I feel a finger on my neck. Feeling my pulse, and Reddix whispers, “Don’t be frightened, Samara, when the time comes … ”

  I am frightened. I have a right to be.

  “It is a kindness. So much better than Judgment. And the pain will be gone. And you will see your lover once more, and then he will Forget that it ever happened … ”

  He does Know. He Knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s doing it on purpose. He’s killing us all. With Forgetting.

  And he’s getting Beckett to do it for him.

  I’m sitting with Cyrus on a bench in the back of the workshop. It’s an hour or so before the waking bell, so technically we’re out during curfew, but the streets are so muddy from twenty-two straight days of rain that I doubt a supervisor is going to walk them. The clouds have gone now, three moons hanging low behind the mountains, the flower glow on the hillsides dimming. Sunrise is coming. A white sunrise. Not this waking, but the next. I’m going to Sam as soon as the streets fill, and this time of waiting feels like the long breath before a scream. I couldn’t sleep, and neither could Cyrus.

  He leans back on the bench and says, “Tell me about money.”

  I sigh. This is all part of Cyrus’s plan, started after Sam was gone, when Annis switched our rooms, putting me in with Cyrus and herself with Jill. To keep an eye on us, probably. It wasn’t a bad change. But I’m at my worst during resting, stewing and steaming, so Cyrus started telling me everything he knew about the history of Canaan, Old and New. Stories, songs, anything he could think of, stretched out on his bed, talking to the ceiling. I documented a lot of it, and I looked forward to showing it to Mom and Dad. If I knew they were alive.

  Now Cyrus has moved on to making me explain the ways of Earth, and so he says, “Come on. Tell me about money.”

  I rub my temples. “It’s something we give a value to … metals, and later a paper representation, but you use it to trade for what you want or a service that you need. It’s like deciding that a pane of glass is worth ten. So if you make a pane of glass, the person who wants it gives you ten, and then you can trade that for food that’s worth ten. Or whatever else you want. If you need more than ten, you make more glass that other people will give you more money for, and then you can trade for more.”

  Cyrus cocks his head, thinking. “So what you’re saying is that everyone on Earth is just good at pretending.”

  I laugh, which is some kind of miracle, and he elbows me once to shush me. I’m not even going to try to explain that we don’t even use the metal and paper anymore. I guess it is a little like pretending. Not using money was one of the creeds of the Canaan Project, which I didn’t think would work, and Sean Rodriguez did. So Dad scores on that one. And now I’m back to stewing.

  “Are you ready?” I ask Cyrus.

  He nods. “We know what to do.”

  I spent a week training Cyrus and Annis on how to take out the cameras without being spotted. “The timing has to be right on,” I say for the millionth time. “On the middle bell. Cameras first, block the ventilation shafts, and open the gates.”

  “And if it goes wrong, have you decided what to do?”

  “I’ll do what I have to.” And that sounds like my dad. But one way or another, Samara Archiva is going to breathe the open air before the next resting.

  The door to the house opens and Jill steps out, looking us over. “Is this a party?”

  She looks really pretty in the dark. The yellow hair and blue eyes stand out. And she’s smiling like there’s nothing wrong in the world.

  “What are you doing up?” I snap.

  She raises a brow. “Latrine. Problem?”

  “No.” I look away first.

  “The bluedads come to the honeyfruit,” Cyrus whispers.

  I cut him a glance. I think he just said You catch more flies with honey, but I don’t know if that was supposed to be advice to me or a warning about Jill. Jill has been on her very best behavior. No dousing herself with spray. Not even a wrinkled nose. She’s been nice to the kids, made herself helpful to Annis, and Nathan is her extra limb.

  I ought to be happy that she’s acclimated. That her eyes are on Nathan and off me. I want her to be happy. I want to be happy for her. And if we’d been dropped off the ship straight into this house I would’ve been, and would’ve thought she was. But we weren’t, and I just don’t trust Jill anymore. Which makes me sad. And then mad.

  Jill whispers, “Which way does the sunrise come, Cyrus?”

  “Straight ahead,” he says, pointing at a peak, the far barrier of the Outside.

  Jillian smiles. “That will be beautiful, won’t it?”

  She moves off toward the back of the workshop and the latrines, and Cyrus shakes his head, his reply coming too late for her to hear.

  “Not on a twelfth year.” He turns his head to me. “You should eat. And then go.”

  I nod, though I’m not sure I can eat. My stomach is churning with nerves. But it feels better as soon as I get up and do something. I slip back into the staler warmth of the house, and when I’m grabbing my sandals in the light of the lantern, I notice the edge of the glasses sticking out just a little from beneath the bed pillow. There aren’t any secrets in this house anymore, even with the technology, but I never leave the glasses in sight. Especially with the children around.

  I put them on. Everything is the way I left it, except my charge is less than 25 percent. I don’t know what I’m worried about. They won’t work for anyone else. But I tie the glasses to my shirt lace anyway, and keep them next to my skin.

  For the faithful of the NWSE, when the time comes we must act without hesitation and seize what is our birthright: the technology of Earth. For who could stand against the people of memory and Earth’s technology? And when we, the best of the best, the worthy of Canaan, take what is ours, we will dare to fly back through the stars and take back
our home. We will dare to build our new civilization. We will bring beauty, peace, prosperity, and, most of all, justice, and rule the Superior Earth.

  FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF JANIS ATAN

  I feel a sharp prick, a sting, and I open my eyes. Not the memory of my eyes, but my actual lids, fluttering at a new stab of pain that comes from the brightness of one dim light. When my vision adjusts I see my mother standing at the foot of a bed, Marcus Physicianson with her. Lian Archiva is straight-backed and elegant, her face as perfect as a well-polished stone, and Marcus sweeps a look over her that is pure reverence. A showing of emotion that would have surely brought a correction from my mother had she seen it. Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Mother likes to be admired, and Marcus admires, I think, that she is standing there so calm, about to condemn her own daughter to death. Or worse than death.

  Marcus must think she’s strong. Principled. I feel nothing for either of them.

  “It is time, Samara,” she says, like I need to hurry and go to the learning room. I try my arms and my legs, and find that I can sit up. The blood rushes from my head and I close my eyes again, dizzy.

  “She will still be somewhat medicated,” Marcus whispers, “to keep her docile.”

  I don’t think so, Marcus Physicianson. I think Reddix has been seeing to my medication, or lack of it, and there is not one docile thing about me at this moment.

  I’ve had a long time to think about Reddix’s words in my ear. A long time to plan what I will do. And there’s a white sunrise coming.

  I wonder what Lian and Marcus would do if they Knew Reddix means to have a boy from Earth come into the Forum and kill us all with Forgetting.

  Mother comes around to the side of the bed and hands me a plate of bread and a glass of water. I drink the water in one go, and she pours me more. When I’ve eaten the bread, she helps me stand, taking me to the corner of my small, plain room, where there is a latrine with a composting box behind a curtain. She leaves me there, and I decide I do not want to consider how this has been handled while I’ve been sleeping.

  I come from around the curtain and Mother says, “Come, darling. We will make you ready.”

  When I don’t take her hand she reaches down and takes it herself, waits for Marcus to unlock the door, and leads me slowly down a long, narrow hall, past empty room after empty room. I’m in the medical section, a whole internal corridor I’ve never seen. Reddix said he had witnessed the deaths reserved for the condemned, and I think that must have been here, in this hidden back hall, not on the platform in the Forum. We’ve all seen the condemned die there. Except that they didn’t, did they? After reading the notes of Janis Atan’s experiments, I think I’m glad Reddix didn’t tell me any more.

  We wait for Marcus to unlock another door. My feet are bare, silent on the cold stone, a straight dress of white linen, thin and simple, like I’ve been in seclusion, swinging at my calves. Bumps rise up on my skin as we walk again, down the main corridor of the medical sector, though whether I’m chilled from the air or the touch of my mother’s hand I’m not sure.

  But I’m not going to protest. Not yet.

  Mother lets me walk slowly, getting used to my legs, through the doorway to the back stairs, the ones that go to the parks. But we take the downward route, Marcus following for a long way, two levels below the Forum, until we are at the side entrance of the women’s baths.

  “You may leave us here. Thank you, Marcus,” says my mother. “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. Come, darling.”

  I follow her through the changing rooms, and already I can smell the heat. There is no help today. The city is being cleared, ready to be sealed for Judgment and the celebrations afterward, so we make our own way. Mother’s heels click on the damp stone, past the few women still lounging in the hot pool, mist making halos around the lamps. The conversations slow and stop as we walk by, but Mother doesn’t let go of my hand. She shuts the door to one of the private bathing cells, locks it; takes me to the raised, empty pool in the center of the room; and opens the sluice gate. A smooth ribbon of steaming water pours down.

  “Let me help you in,” Mother says. She unties the laces behind my neck, the linen dress falls to the floor, and she holds my hand while I climb up four stairs, then down four more and into the pool.

  I shudder at the heat of the water. At my mother’s touch. But I sit like she tells me, letting her work the tangles out of my hair, curl by curl, feeling her fingers wash my scalp, my eyes staring at the flame flickering near the ceiling while she rubs lotion into every strand. Memories prod and nudge, and I am a baby, crying while my hair is washed; then fingers are tugging, braiding, pulling my scalp, and then I’m arranging my curls. But none of these memories are of my mother, because my mother has never done any of this. Not now, I say to the memories, and their weight goes away.

  I’m still in control. Like when I thought I was dead. But I wish I didn’t have to remember this.

  I’m biding my time. But it is difficult.

  Mother wraps me in a soft white dressing gown, and we leave the baths and go down the corridors, causing one or two stares. But most of the Knowing are in their chambers, caching, preparing for Judgment, and soon I am in mine. To do the same. Two lamps burn in front of the terrace doors, and someone has started a fire in the brazier.

  I have no memories of my mother being in this room, so seeing her reflection in the many mirrors is strange. She sits me on the stool at my dressing table and crosses quickly to the gold curtain, pulling it back to look at my clothes. “We will find what is best,” she says. “You can be so beautiful when you take the trouble … ”

  I glance down, amazed that her subtle criticism still has the weakest of stings, and see that the drawer of my dressing table is slightly open. I look back in my memory, see the last time I sat here, painting my eyes, and for one moment I sink, plummet down, and Beckett is catching my hand and saying, “I understand.” I feel an ache inside that is longing for him. But the drawer was definitely not open then.

  Mother has her back to me, her eyes on the red dress that was for Reddix. I slide open the drawer, slowly, silently, aware that there are mirrors in every direction. And then I Know that my father loves me. At least a little. He will not save me, but he will give me a way out. Because inside my drawer is the knife that is supposed to hang on my mother’s bedchamber wall. The knife that says “NWSE.”

  I’m not sure who I’m supposed to use it on.

  Nathan squats beside the square hole in the floor of the supply hut, looking down the dark shaft. It’s time, and my chest is slamming.

  “Okay,” I whisper. “Climb a little way down after I’m gone, so you won’t be seen, but no more than halfway. Reddix is really good at Knowing when someone’s there. Like a change in temperature, air, smell … ”

  I catch Nathan trying to sniff his shirt.

  “It’s not you,” I say. “It’s him. Just don’t get caught on either end of the shaft, okay?”

  The supervisors are all going Underneath, to be sealed in with the city, leaving the Outside free. But not every Outsider is a rebel.

  “How about you just get going,” is Nathan’s answer.

  I nod. “You know the way?”

  “If it’s what you told me, I do.”

  “Get the gate open. No matter what.”

  “Go already!”

  I do. Down the rabbit hole. The smell comes, that odor that is spice and flowers and a little bit Samara, and then not. I stop my slow slide before I’m all the way down, and put on the glasses. Looking. And I swear in my head, or maybe it was out loud, because Reddix is already down there, turning toward the door as if he’s heard a noise. We’re both early. Both wanting to be first. And he wins.

  I sigh and let the glasses drop down inside my shirt, next to the pouch Cyrus gave me to wear around my neck. There’s a small, sealed bottle of white powder in the pouch, and a blue and green box with a lock of Sam’s hair. Plus a note inside the box, telling me my name and how t
o get to Cyrus’s house. And next to all of that is one of the crudely made knives, wrapped in cloth, hanging beneath my left arm and strapped to my chest. It’s not a great knife, but it’s sharp, and in the end, that’s what matters.

  I almost laugh. Here I am, sneaking into what has to be the holy grail of anthropology, a brand-new civilization, taking sides in a cultural conflict, with the direct intent of irrevocably changing everything I find. Jill was right all along. Nobody is ever, ever going to hire me.

  But I’m going to do it. For her. And if I fail, then there’s a good chance that one way or the other, from Forgetting or death, neither one of us is going to come out of this remembering anything.

  I don’t trust Reddix.

  The hinges of the metal door grate as I reach the bottom of the shaft, and Reddix says, “Welcome to the city Underneath.”

  Whatever. I slide out, over Sam’s shoes, still sitting partway up the shaft, and onto my feet. “Where’s Samara?”

  “Being prepared for Judgment. Are you prepared?”

  “Are you?”

  He chuckles, and it’s the least funny sound I’ve ever heard. I can’t see a thing without the glasses, and when he shuts the door, I hear something I shouldn’t. An extra noise. Metal scraping on metal.

  “Keep a hand out,” Reddix says, “if you are not used to the dark … ”

  I let him get a few steps ahead, pull out the glasses and take a quick look at the door. He’s put a thick metal pin through the latch. Nathan is not coming through that, and there’s not a thing I can do about it, not without Reddix hearing me. I’m cussing in my head again. I drop the glasses back into my shirt and follow him down the steps, his voice still coming soft through the black air.

  “The city is almost clear of Outsiders and the gates will soon be shut. But there will still be a few of the Knowing in the corridors. We’re going to walk quickly, as if you’re my help. Keep three paces behind me, eyes lowered. Your face will be remembered, of course, and eventually they will Know that I was with someone who does not belong. But in just a little while, none of us will remember anything, will we?”