“A what?”
Wanda smiled for the first time. “You ever call her that, she’ll use your own knives on you. The wall has towers and parapets. They call AWE sentries parrots because they’re up there in their perches. Your home is New Atlanta now. The wall is the Circle and it’s what makes the Select Few possible. Climbers are massing in Old Atlanta, looking our way with envious eyes. That’s why the parrots are always watching everywhere. Surveillance is everywhere.”
For a fleeting second, Wanda pointed at the truck’s dashboard. It was the most subtle of warnings that even at that moment, someone could be listening.
“The world is not a safe place,” Wanda continued. “Today Eye got her first real glimpse of how dangerous it really is. Until this morning, she was an untouchable princess, safe in her fairytale castle.”
The wall was a blur, zipping by on our right. Behind it, several glass high-rises towered like uneven teeth against the darkening sky. The Circle made for an intimidating fortress. As we approached a gate to enter New Atlanta, Wanda’s words came back to me and this time they sounded pleasingly ironic. “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
There were micro-fractures in the foundation of their barrier to reality. Sissy’s mission for me was to turn those tiny cracks into fissures.
Chapter Sixteen
We approached the gate at dusk — number 27 — the same place where I’d been an unwelcome outsider that morning. The little red car had been towed away. Two small AUTONAV trucks were ahead of us in line to enter the Circle. A gate of steel mesh raised and lowered before each vehicle could advance.
“They’re on higher alert now,” Wanda muttered. “It’s a bother. AWE is on the lookout for spies all the time but they’re more uptight now. They consider going after the daughter of the Captain of the Guard impolite. Mrs. Rossi was in the Security Center most of the day scanning surveillance recordings inside and outside the Circle. They will catch those escaped prisoners and anyone who helped or harbored them.”
Good luck, Picasso, I thought. Run far, run fast. Vaya con Dios.
As we paused at the gate, a CSS officer scanned Wanda’s face. It was a formality since it was obvious he recognized her. However, when he scanned my face, the guard’s brow furrowed. He put a hand on his sidearm as he ordered me to get out of the truck.
“Hold on, Baxter!” Wanda called out in an amiable tone. “She’s new to the house of Rossi. Call before this gets out of hand. Her name is Kismet Beatriz. She must not be in the system yet.”
House of Rossi? I suppressed a smirk. I sat on the border of a foreign country whose ways were strange and exotic.
The guard reached for his radio instead of his handgun and made the call. After a moment’s consultation, he told us to wait as he retreated into his shack.
I peered through the gate to get my first glimpse of what lay beyond the wall. I’d pictured large estate homes. What I found instead was a crowded city street not so different from the rest of Atlanta. The first business I saw inside the circle was a Starbucks. I’d heard of them but I’d never seen one. I had no idea such remnants of the Old World still existed and I told Wanda so.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Wanda groused. “When the Crash hit, everyone suddenly realized they were poor. Fancy drinks faded a bit after that.”
“But they’re still a thing here.”
“The Select can afford it.”
“I never asked,” I said hesitantly. “As a servant in the high house of Rossi, what will my salary be?”
She shrugged. “You’ll take what they give you and you’ll be happy about it. Just don’t expect to be swigging down espresso drinks at that coffee shop, okay?”
“Whatever I make, I need to send most of it to my grandmother.”
Wanda glanced my way. “I’m sure Mr. Rossi can arrange that for you. I don’t mean to pry but your grandmother, she got troubles?”
“Yes.” I looked away so she wouldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes.
To my right, a familiar stranger stood alone in the gathering gloom. There were a few other people on the street but she pulled my attention because she was the only one standing still. She stared at the gate.
No, not at the gate. At me.
I rolled down my window and leaned forward to get a better look. She was too far away for me to be certain. I felt a wave of discomfort cresting at the edges of perception. Did she emanate fear? Was the fear all mine? Was this a warning and from what quarter would the danger come? I couldn’t be sure.
I wanted to call out to her and perhaps she sensed it. Or maybe she just wanted me to know how she felt. The figure quickly turned and strode away.
The guard emerged from his shack and gave us the nod to proceed. “Kismet Beatriz, you’re in the system now.” He said it as if I’d won a prize. I suppose in a way I had.
As we rolled through Gate 27 and inside the Circle, I asked, “Wanda, you said I replaced Eye’s nanny.”
“Tanya, yes.”
“What will happen to her?”
Wanda was quiet for a moment. I wasn’t sure she was going to answer. Finally, she said, “Banished. She’s out of New Atlanta for good and she won’t be coming back. I get the feeling you have a soft heart, Kismet. Harden it a little. There are dangers on either side of the gate. She might be safer than you are now. Watch your step.”
I closed my eyes and pictured the young woman. Maybe she’d sleep in a crowded shelter and working off her breakfast somewhere in the city the next morning. Whatever became of my predecessor, the quick and casual way she lost her place within the Circle served as a dire warning.
“Never drop your guard or allow yourself to get comfortable among those people,” Sissy had cautioned me. “Until the war is over, you have no friends you can trust.”
A day that had begun with a man coughing himself to death in a homeless shelter had tilted from chaos and violence in the street to the horrors of arrest, mistreatment, and captivity. As Wanda drove me toward my new home, I should have been relieved.
As we waited for the steel gate to rise, a sign ahead of us glowed bright yellow: May the Circle be unbroken. Welcome to the Future!
Then the sign blinked to read in bright red: See something? Say something. Always Watching Everywhere in full effect.
I’d changed places with Evelyn Rossi’s servant. Instead, I felt as if I’d swallowed a stone. Some days you just want to crawl into a hole and pull it in behind you. That was how I felt as I entered the realm of the Select Few.
Chapter Seventeen
New Atlanta was labyrinthine, like the inside of an anthill. Instead of a grid, the streets wound and curled in hairpin turns around high-rises and gigantic mansions. If there was an order to the city within a city, I couldn’t detect it. My new home was a drunk libertarian’s dream of design. As I thought about it, the layout reflected New Atlanta’s founders. If the Select Few had a motto it might be, “You can’t tell me what to do!”
The speed limit seemed more appropriate for navigating a crowded parking garage. I was reminded of the American base in Bermuda. The tiny island was made larger by a slow speed limit. It seemed to take a long time to get anywhere, but time meant less then. Mama was flirting with a medical discharge. We had a few empty days to spend, paid for with pain. For once, we were well-fed and unhurried.
I stayed at that base through most of her recovery. Though she’d lost a leg, our time there was the happiest of my childhood. The library was well-stocked and when she wasn’t working in physiotherapy getting used to her new prosthesis, we spent our time reading on beaches of pink sand. On my final night on the island, I wept.
“Don’t cry, Kismet,” Mama said. “I’m well enough to go back to work so that’s what I have to do. Besides, Grammy misses you.”
“I’m gonna miss you,” I told her. The memory made me tear up a little.
Wanda slid a glance my way. “Feeling overwhelmed?”
I was supposed
to be impressed by what the Select had created. Instead, I asked, “Is there, like, a business district and a residential area or is it sort of all over the place?”
“This is the home of the Select Few,” Wanda replied sourly. “Everything is business, even the golf course. Especially the golf course, or so I’m told. I’ve never been.”
“Beijing had the Forbidden City,” I said. “They called it that because no one could enter or leave without the permission of the Emperor.”
“The Circle’s full of emperors. You need to concern yourself with the permission of three people: Mr. Rossi, Mrs. Rossi and little old me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Call me Wanda, not ma’am. Every-damn-body calls me Wanda. Titles of any kind aren’t for common people. Don’t want anyone thinking I’m putting on airs.”
Was Wanda always so humble or did working for the Select demand humility? From what I knew of Evelyn Rossi, I’d entered a place that demanded unquestioning servility. That sounded terrible but it wasn’t so very different from anywhere else.
Darkness came a little earlier within the Select’s walls. By the time we made our way through those narrow winding streets, I was ravenous again. It couldn’t have been far to the Rossi’s home but every route seemed circuitous. I was later to learn that the only straight streets within the circle were around the big stores and the armory. The autonomous trucks required more room and wider passages to deliver their goods.
The Rossi house was taller than most single residences I’d seen, five stories. It seemed almost everything was new within the Circle but the narrowness of their home made me think of a nursery rhyme my father taught me.
There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse
and they all lived together in a crooked little house.
Daddy said there was a serious story behind the silly rhyme. It was about how people in Scotland and England found a way to live together peacefully. Mama laughed at that and told him not to fill my head with stories that weren’t really true and never would be. Mama taught me facts. Daddy taught me to dream.
I wondered what they’d say if they could see me arriving at the Rossi home. I guessed that Daddy would tell me he believed in me, that everything would work out. Mama would warn me to keep a blade close by. “Just in case, because you know how people are. Remember Dobbs.”
The narrow driveway snaked around the back of the house and into an underground parking garage. There was enough space for four vehicles: Wanda’s pickup, a blue sedan, and a long white limousine. One space was empty, probably for the sporty red car Tanya had driven into trouble.
As I got out of the truck, I looked around and tried to marry the wide dimensions of the garage with the narrowness of the house above us. I mentioned my confusion to Wanda.
“The Rossis own the houses on either side of this one. There’s a short tunnel that ties all three. I’ll let Eye give you the full tour tomorrow. I’m sure she’d enjoy showing off.”
“Three houses?” That struck me as an extravagance that was not just foreign. This was an alien culture.
My surprise must have shown on my face. Wanda explained, “The CSS has their centurions but AWE is elite, Mrs. Rossi’s praetorian guard.”
“I don’t really know what that’s supposed to mean.”
“That’s the problem with your generation: no future, no sense of history, either.”
She pointed to her left. “That door leads to the Rossi’s private home which you’ll be allowed to clean if you’re good.”
Wanda pointed at a steel door with a key card lock. “That’s the Circle’s Security and Surveillance Center.”
“Convenient for Mrs. Rossi, I guess.”
“Precisely,” Wanda whispered. “The only way to get in there is to wear a uniform … or maybe sneak in, I suppose. Up to you.”
I smiled weakly.
“First things first: I’ve got boxes of vegetables in the back of the truck. Your first official service will be carting them upstairs for me.”
As I went around to the back of the truck I risked another glance at the door to the Security Center. A surveillance camera sat above the steel door. Without a key card, there seemed no way to get through. And how many AWE guards worked in the rooms beyond?
That was a problem. On the other side of that door was where I needed to be.
Chapter Eighteen
The decor inside what I came to call the narrow house was dark, cramped, old-fashioned and littered with antiques. I was cutting up beets in the kitchen when I met the master of the house, Kirk Rossi.
He was a tall, thin man of about thirty-five with thinning sandy hair. He stood at a distance in the small dining room for some time before approaching me. I said nothing and went about my work under Wanda’s direction. He must have preferred to watch me before announcing his presence. By the time he emerged from my peripheral vision and entered the kitchen, I was already annoyed with him.
“Well, well! You must be Kismet!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where you from?”
“Up north, a couple of day’s travel.”
“What’s the news from up there?”
“News, sir?”
“The caravans? See any in your wanderings?”
“No caravans. The people coming north are a steady trickle but I saw no large groups.”
“That can’t be,” Kirk said. “The news is full of them, thousands at a time. It’s on the news every night.”
“They’re pretty dispersed north of the city as far as I could see.”
“You must have not been looking in the right places.”
It was at that moment I realized Evelyn Rossi had married a rich idiot. No one took what the propapundits said at face value. Grammy made a sport out of hate-watching them and there was entertainment value in listening to my grandmother’s commentary on the string of lies spewed. “Set a timer!” Grammy would crow. “Betcha they can’t go one minute without spewing a lie I can spot in a snap.”
Arthritis crept through her bones so she couldn’t snap her fingers without pain anymore. She said “in a snap” in lieu of doing so.
“Wanda, I’m going to borrow Kismet for a few minutes. You haven’t shown her to her room yet?”
“No, sir.”
“C’mon. Got a nice surprise for you up there.”
I put down the knife and ran water over my hands so I wouldn’t smear beet juice everywhere. As I followed him, he pointed to a piano crammed into a corner off the dining room. “See that space? That’s a nook. Other places in the house are called crannies. This house was one of the originals. Not many originals in New Atlanta. The city already burned down once and then a good portion of it was plowed under to make way for our retreat. I hardly live in this house but I’m mighty proud of it.” His tone was friendly, but too familiar too soon.
After we climbed one set of stairs, Kirk was already panting and his face flushed red. “I have a minor heart issue,” he explained. “Can’t do too many stairs at a time but fortunately — “
I thought he was reaching for a door but it was a wide panel in the wall that concealed the entrance to a small elevator.
Kirk ushered me in first and then stepped in, slid the door closed and pushed a button for the fifth floor. He faced me and the quarters were so tight, I felt his quick breath on my forehead. “This is part of the house that isn’t original. Added the elevator at the same time we put in the garage and our house next door.”
The heat of his body radiated off him and I pressed my back in the wall.
“Evelyn tells me you’re twenty.” He touched his hair in a prissy way, as if I were a mirror and he was inspecting his reflection. “What do you think of Atlanta so far?”
“So far I’ve seen a dead man in a shelter, a prison break and a woman shot who was trying to help. Two CSS g
ot hurt. I was nearly shot and then I was arrested. They didn’t treat me very kindly, either.”
I would have thought a normal reaction to my litany of the day’s trauma would have set him back a step. Kirk Rossi was undeterred. “Quite an adventure for you.”
Maybe they really are aliens, I thought.
“Anyone back home missing you?”
“My grandmother.”
“Ah, yes. My wife mentioned that. But no brothers? Or boyfriends?”
I was relieved the elevator car lurched and squealed to a stop. When I made for the door he did not move at all so I had to squeeze past him.
Though the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, my room was actually in the attic. A ladder led up to a dark square in the ceiling. Kirk pointed the way and I climbed the ladder past a trap door. I was sure he was watching my behind closely.
So this is what it’s going to be like. I’m not putting up with a lech. I won’t be here long.
As I got to my feet, a low buzz preceded a weak light in the ceiling popping on. A large white dollhouse sat in a corner to my left among several cardboard boxes. A clothes closet on wheels and a chest of drawers stood on my right. My backpack lay on the narrow cot in the middle of the room. Someone had rifled through it and cast my belongings aside carelessly.
The sloped roof was low so when Kirk Rossi followed me up the ladder, he had to hunch to avoid banging his head. “Kind of grim, isn’t it?”
“It’ll do.” A trickle of sweat ran down my neck. It had to be several degrees hotter in the attic than it had been in the kitchen with the stove on. A window stood in a gable at the far end of the attic. I went to the window hoping to catch a breath of cool wind but the air stood dead still.
Grammy would say, “The air may as well be a sweater.” I missed her and wondered how she was feeling this evening. Standing in this strange room with this odd man behind the Select’s walls, I guessed I would never see my grandmother again. It felt as if I’d taken a couple of days to get to Atlanta but the road back may as well have been across the stars.
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