The Knowing

by Sharon Cameron

  I don’t answer. Four levels down and we are off the stairs, through a door and into one of the carpeted tunnels. I adjust my pace behind Reddix. The Knowing all tend to wear clothes that reflect and shimmer, I suppose because of all the lamplight. But Reddix is wearing pure black today, his eyes painted heavily to match, and he’s wound black and silver strings through his braids. Two Knowing come walking together down the hall, and I keep my eyes down, but only until they pass. This place is a maze. I need to see where I’m going and memorize the way, or I won’t get back to that door and all this will be over before it’s even begun. I can hear my pulse in my ears.

  We go down some stairs, along a corridor, and back up again, and I’m swearing so hard I think my lips are moving. He’s taking me in circles. On purpose. But I know where I am. That was the entrance hall at the end of the corridor, with the soaring ceiling and marbled walls sloping up to the gates. I could get back to the kitchen stairs from there.

  I have more of a memory than you think, Reddix Physicianson.

  We go down one more level and take a right. This corridor is empty. Quiet. Reddix pauses, and when no one comes from either direction, he puts a key to a door on our left. There’s an empty flat here, like Sam’s uncle’s, only instead of the river rushing beyond the room’s double-paned doors, I can hear echoing voices. A crowd. I go to the doors, stand to one side to look beyond the edge of a damp curtain. The Forum. I suppose I knew there were more of the Knowing. But seeing them is different. There’s a family below me, a father retying the ribbon on a child’s hair braids.

  “Wait until she is in the Forum,” Reddix says. “If you cannot see her, wait until she steps up onto the platform for Judgment. Then go out onto the balcony and drop the Forgetting. There will be no need to speak.”

  Yes, I really think there will be a need for it. But when I glance back at Reddix, I see something that surprises me. Emotion. Raw. Like a thirsty man who smells water. He wants me to throw that bottle down.

  “Do not give them time to hurt her, Earthling,” he says. “They will, if they think justice might be thwarted. When the time comes, act quickly. Please.”

  He goes without another word. And he locks the door behind him, and I don’t have a hairpin this time. I don’t have anything.

  I never can decide whether I pity or hate Reddix Physicianson more.

  And if I don’t work fast, this is going to go very badly.

  Mother dresses me with care, arranging the red dress just so over one shoulder. She doesn’t braid my hair, but gathers the top half high on my head, letting the ends hang down, tendrils escaping all around my face. It’s not very proper at all, and maybe that’s her point. If she could Know how well I’m caching my true feelings right now—and the memories this room brings me—she would be pleased. She would not be pleased to Know that her knife is now under the red dress, tied to my thigh with a scarf.

  “Mother,” I say. My voice sounds like the gristmill Outside. “Why did you choose Nita as our help?”

  Mother puts a finger beneath my chin, tilting my head, and the soft paint across my eyelid is like a caress. “We Knew, of course, that she was from a family of rebels. But after my first disappointment, it was important to find out what kind of blood ran in my second child. The Wardens only create situations, darling, not the choices. And at some point, enough was enough, wasn’t it?”

  Disappointment. She means Adam. Her son, who she executed. Brutally. Like Nita. The hatred I’ve been caching blazes hot as Beckett’s fire in the ruined city, and with it comes a grief so painful I have to dig a nail into my palm. But I breathe, tell my memories Not now, and I am back in control. But I will have to feel those things. Later.

  My mother wipes the brush against the rim of the jar. “It is difficult being the judge of New Canaan,” she begins, wiping the brush again. And again. “Choosing the chosen is not an easy task. I hope you realize that, Samara. Like the picture tiles. One cannot think only of a piece, even if the color and shape is beautiful. One must think of the beauty of the whole, decide which piece detracts from that, and then remove it.”

  Like Adam. Like me. But all I say aloud is, “Like Ava Administrator.”

  “Oh no, darling,” says Mother. “Ava was very different. She had such an incredible mind, as did two of her children. Creative, problem solvers, traits the Knowing need to perfect. It was important to study them. For the good of us all.”

  This makes me so sick I’m having difficulty playing my part. “And this is why you closed the Archives, then,” I whisper.

  “Yes,” she says. “Exactly so.” I close my eyes while the eye brush runs slow across the other lid. “Our family profession was not as important as keeping minds focused … ”

  The minds you are forcing to be that way, I think.

  “… and it was a profession not strictly necessary for the building of a Superior Earth. And though most of the more … sensitive of the books had already been removed, bits of information were cropping up, and secrecy for the NWSE is key. It has been so since the First Warden, in the old city … ”

  “Janis Atan,” I say.

  She pauses her painting to look at me. “Perhaps I should have tried to bring you in early. It worked for Reddix. But it was such a mistake with your brother … ” She shakes her intricately braided head. “People have always been too narrow-minded to see the vision, to understand the greater good. The writings of Janis Atan were rediscovered at a time when life in the old city had become impossible … ”

  Because of the Forgetting, I think.

  “When one Forgetting tree was chopped down, four more would spring up to take its place. But her memories guided our path, and we became the Knowing, and built a new and more perfect city, just as the First Warden had conceived. And the judge was reinstated, removing what did not serve the whole, and now we are becoming what we were meant to be. The best of the best of the best … ”

  Which puts herself at the pinnacle of worthiness. I tilt my cheek to her paint.

  “… and now, very soon, we will be better still.”

  “And what are you going to do about Earth?”

  “Oh, I won’t have to do anything about Earth, darling. Earth will soon be weak, while I have ensured that the Knowing will always be at a place of strength.”

  “They want to take us back with them, Mother.”

  “They will not take us. We will take them. We will use their technology to fly back to our home, to fulfill our ultimate directive. And then will come the time for which the NWSE has waited nearly four hundred years. To build and rule the Superior Earth.”

  I only just keep from shaking my head. Mother and her little band of NWSE are not going to rule Earth. I wonder if Mother thinks Earth is a city, like New Canaan. Not a planet of billions.

  I study the serenity of her face while she attends to the perfection of mine. I can’t see anything inside her. Maybe this is what happens when you cache emotions for too long. Do they become hard to access? Get lost inside your mind? Maybe it’s something like Forgetting after all.

  I agree with Reddix. This has to be stopped. But not by killing us all. I think the Knowing need a choice. I have to keep Beckett from dropping that bottle. And my mother from having me killed before I can.

  Mother steps back and looks at me with more approval than she ever has. “Come, darling,” she says. “It is time.”

  I had to use the glasses and burn through the door lock. The beam is small and it took awhile, but my choices were limited. And I was sure to check all the metallic content this time, and not blow up the Underneath. I don’t know where my charge went. The glasses are low, out of nowhere—just under 12 percent. I have to tear them off my face and run. There’s no time to avoid anyone. Nathan has to get through that door so he can open the gates, and I have to get back into the Forum before Sam.

  I sprint full-out down the corridor—the straight way, not the crazy route Reddix took me on—careening past a surprised mother with a baby
strapped on her back, but there’s no one else out. They’re in the Forum. For Judgment. I don’t slow when I hit the kitchen stairs.

  Up, and up again, and now the lamps aren’t lit. I have to use the glasses, and my breath is coming hard, a pain in my side. I burst through the door into the kitchens, through to the empty storage room. Only this storage room isn’t empty. Crates and sacks are stacked high against the walls. I stand there, panting, stunned, swearing at full voice. I’ve missed the level. I don’t know where I am. And I’m scared. That Nathan gave up and crawled back up the shaft, that I’m down here alone. That they’re bringing Sam onto that platform.

  I grab two handfuls of my hair, thinking, run up one more level, and this is the right kitchen, and this is the empty storage room, and my charge is 11 percent. What is draining the glasses? I knock the pin out of the latch and throw open the door. Nathan crawls out, sweating and not pleased.

  “Took you long enough. What—”

  “Go!” I yell.

  He follows me as fast as he can in the dark, back down the steps, and I am counting the levels more carefully this time. I’m at 10 percent on the glasses. As soon as we hit the lamps, I jerk them off my face.

  “There,” I tell Nathan in the corridor, pointing left. “The way I told you. The main entrance to the Forum is opposite the gates, down the sloping hall. Do you understand?”

  Nathan nods. He’s already running. I look over my shoulder, at the way I came. I don’t think I have time to get back to that empty flat and the safety of the terrace. I’m going to have to go right in among them.

  I run down the hall, take the stairs on the left, the same way Sam took me the first time I came Underneath. There’s a short tunnel at the bottom, and on the other side of it, rows of columns and braids and backs in shining cloth. I slow, panting, sliding down the wall until I can see the platform, high above the crowd, almost in front of me and a little to the left. And the people are silent, hushed over the rush of the river water. Waiting.

  I put on the glasses and zoom them. The Head of Council, Thorne, with his long braids tied back and clipped beard, waits at the top of the steps, along with Craddock, who I watched flog a woodworker three days ago, and the other man who chased Sam in the ruined city. Thorne has called a name, an Administrator, and a teenage boy is now climbing the steps.

  There are two tables on the platform, one with a tray stacked with syringes. Wellness injections. I watch rather than hear the boy’s hiss when his goes in. On the other table, there is only one tray, one needle sitting in its center. I think I know what that one does. And it’s for her. But I can’t see her. I can’t find her.

  I shut the glasses again and wait, and it feels like my breathing should be echoing in the Forum. I watch feet shift as the next Administrator goes up. And then the next. Thirteen of them. We’re doing this in alphabetical order. And then Thorne calls out, “Archiva, Samara.”

  She’s in shimmering red, her hair half up and half down and all over her head. I slide on the glasses and zoom. A woman I think must be Sam’s mother hands her up the first three steps, tall, with white braids piled high and an expression that is … nothing. And then Samara goes on alone. She looks back once over her shoulder, scanning the crowd, and I know she can’t see me, but it’s like her eyes gaze right into mine, and I feel it, hard inside my chest.

  She is so beautiful, but I know that look. She’s decided. Fearless. I don’t think she’s going down without a fight. And the thought of what they are minutes away from doing to her takes my fear away, too. I’m not even nervous. I’m just mad.

  I drop the glasses back down my shirt and take the vial of white powder out of the pouch. One deep breath, and with the bottle in my fist, I step out of the tunnel and into the Knowing.

  I listen to the tap of my shoes against each step of black rock, the Torrens gushing through its channel behind the platform, the painted history of my people stretching upward before my eyes. They’re waiting for me up there, and I think somewhere behind me in the silence is Beckett Rodriguez. I can feel his eyes. I look back once, but below me is a still sea of color. The rest is in shadow.

  I’ll have to move fast, before Beckett does, and I don’t Know how it will end. Maybe not well. Maybe well enough for him to get away without killing us all. Maybe not well enough for me to get away without being killed. I watch Thorne’s serious face rise above the edge of the platform, Marcus and Craddock behind him, and then I am standing on the platform, too. We look at each other, and Thorne opens his mouth to speak.

  And then I kick over the table of syringes, and both tables go down in a scatter of rolling needles. While Marcus and Craddock are reacting to that, I step behind Thorne, stab the back of his knee with my sharp heel, and when he stumbles, I grab his long hair and jerk it downward. His knees hit the stone, and the knife that was against my thigh is now at his throat. Thorne goes still, his bearded chin up, hands half lifted in the air.

  I think someone screamed. I can hear the last of the echo fading in the returning silence. Reddix has run halfway up the steps, and I see a smile lurking in the corner of his mouth, full of despair. My mother is just behind him, face hard and cold, but when I find my father, standing far down at the base of the platform among the startled Council, he gives me the tiniest of nods.

  “Tell them to open the gates,” I say to Thorne. And then I yell it. “Open the gates!”

  He shuts his mouth tight, and I feel him go calm in my grip. Caching. I look to the rest of the NWSE, but they are not going to move or try to save him. I turn Thorne to face the crowd, the knife tight against his skin.

  “People of the Underneath,” I shout, “you have a choice. Starting right now. If there is one of you who has had a family member condemned, a child end their life, one of you who would prefer not to live with your memories anymore, then go and open the gates of our city and let the Outside in. You do not have to live as one of the—”

  “Stop!”

  The voice cuts through the Forum, cuts across my words, and it’s only then that I see Craddock pause in his move toward me. He has a syringe in his hand, and I’m not sure whether it’s the kind that kills me or puts me to sleep or makes me well. We both look down from the platform. The people are parting, making an open circle around a shirt of undyed cloth. He’s leaner than when I saw him last, harder, his black hair longer, and in this complete mess we’re both standing in, he smiles at me once, and that smile is his gift. He holds out his hand, and there’s a bottle in it.

  “This city,” Beckett says, his words sharp and clipped, “belongs to the Outside.”

  She’s standing up there with a knife to Thorne’s throat, looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world. I want to grab her and run. But it’s not time. Not yet. I need the Outsiders in here first. If Nathan got the gate open.

  “Stay back,” I say, holding out the bottle to the Knowing around me, and then a thrum goes through the rock beneath my feet, a ripple of motion that comes and is gone. I see the flinch in the crowd, a murmur and turning of heads. I don’t know what that was, and there’s no time to think about it.

  “This is Forgetting … ” I let my voice echo. “If I drop this bottle, then all of you, everyone in this room, will Forget everything you’ve ever Known.”

  “Don’t!” Sam yells. “Beck, do not drop that bottle … ” At the same time, Reddix says, “Do it! Now!”

  I can tell which ones belong to their little sect by their reactions. Craddock and the other man on the platform stare hard at Reddix, like they’re trying to understand what he’s up to, and there’s another group huddled at the bottom of the steps, eyes narrowed at the bottle in my hand. But the rest of the Knowing are just confused, and Sam is a little tight with that knife. There’s a drop of blood running down Thorne’s neck.

  “The city belongs to the Outside,” I say again, loud enough for all of them to hear, and I really hope it’s true and that the Outsiders are coming in through the hall. I need them. Now. �
�Your gates are already open”—please let this be true—“and the Outsiders will discuss the peaceful transition to a government chosen by both—”

  “No.” The woman who I think is Lian Archiva, Sam’s mother, steps forward.

  “Beckett!” Sam shouts. “You were right, they don’t have to be—”

  “No,” Lian says again. And another ripple of movement shakes the rock, this time with the lowest rumble. And then there are voices calling in the entrance hall. Finally.

  Lian takes another step. “This city was built by the Knowing, and to the Knowing it belongs. This is not your fight, Earthling.”

  Okay, so we’re out in the open with that. I smile at her. “And you,” I say, “are not in a position to dictate the rules any … ”

  Or maybe she is. Because that’s a twenty-fifth-century katana laser she’s got in her palm. From the Centauri II.

  And a lot of things happen at once. I duck beneath the beam of light and run forward, and there’s screaming, probably because Lian has just sliced someone to pieces behind me. Those things were outlawed for a reason. I knock straight into her, the Forgetting bottle tight in my hand, and the laser stops, the katana rolling out of her grip, the foot of a man with long gray ropes of hair kicking it out of her reach. The stone beneath us thrums, and thrums again, setting up a rhythm. And then I realize that some of the screaming is Samara.

  I’ve started up the stairs before I even know what’s happening to her. Thorne is on his knees, hand to his throat, and Sam’s had to let him go because Craddock is after her again with that needle. Reddix gets there before me, though, knocking the syringe from Craddock’s hand while Sam holds off the other NWSE member with the knife. Then Reddix sees me, and his expression changes. And not only is there no calm face of Canaan, he is furious. Insanely mad. Sam yells my name, and then he’s coming for me.