The Dark Intercept

by Julia Keller

  “And if you had long hair,” Delia said, “they would’ve chopped that off, too. So you’re lucky you have short hair. See—you can use hair for a lot of things down here. It’s like currency. Good to barter with. You can put it in cracks in the walls to help keep the wind out. Or you can stuff it in a coat or a pair of pants and make a soft pillow. I’ve even seen some of the older kids take hair and put it inside tin cans when they’re making their bombs. It helps to hold the other stuff—the nails, the wire, the razors—in place.”

  “So they would’ve killed me for my hair?” Violet said. “Or my shoes? I can’t believe—”

  “Yeah. Yeah, they would have. Without a second thought.” Delia peered at her. “Where do you think you are, honey?”

  “Old Earth.”

  “Those are just words. That’s a label. I mean—where are you?”

  “I don’t under—”

  Delia stood up and began pacing in front of the steps. Back and forth. Her quick movement had startled Violet.

  “Look, girlie,” Delia said. Her voice had gone cold, dropping its gentle, friendly bemusement. “You’re in a special place now, okay? All the things you think you know—the books and the music and the poetry and the good manners and the high ideals and all of that—they’re nothing here. Less than nothing. What matters here is survival. What matters here is food. Food for yourself and food for the people you care about. And finding enough warm clothes so that you can get through the winter. And then the winter after that.”

  Delia sounded angry as she marched back and forth along a very short track, so short that she had to whirl around after three steps and go in the opposite direction. “We see you every now and again, you people from New Earth,” she declared. “One or two of you come down, every year or so. Same reason people used to go to zoos, I guess. To gawk. To point. To judge. To feel superior. You come down here and you look at us. Oh, we know what you’re thinking when you do that—it’s like, ‘God, what a bunch of filthy animals. What a bunch of pigs.’”

  Violet wanted to interrupt her and say, No, that’s not me, I’m not like that, I’m not staring or judging—but she couldn’t, because that’s exactly what she had been doing. She found the filth on Delia’s face and hands disgusting. She found Delia’s smell—a pervasive stink that was so rank and complex and all-encompassing that it seemed to originate deep in the woman’s very cells—to be repulsive.

  Delia stopped pacing. She looked at Violet and she nodded. Violet had the unsettling notion that Delia had just read her mind. Or close enough.

  “You, too,” Delia said. The anger had receded. It was replaced by a soft sadness. Violet realized that she preferred the anger. The sadness was almost unbearable.

  “You’re like that, too, aren’t you?” Delia went on. “You’re looking at us and you’re wondering why we don’t clean up our streets. Or live in decent homes. Or read a book. Or take a bath, right?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Let me ask you something.” Delia interrupted her so fast that Violet wondered if the woman had even realized she was speaking. “When you’re going out with your friends, what do you do?”

  “I’m not sure how to answer the—”

  “What do you do?” Delia’s voice was as sharp as scissor tips. “How do you get ready?”

  “Well, I guess I—I guess I take a shower, and then I pick out what I’m going to wear, and then I—”

  “Exactly.” Delia sounded triumphant. “Exactly. You take a shower. Now, in order to take that shower, what has to happen? There has to be running water, right? And a plumbing system, right? And then clean clothes for you to put on—and they’re clean because why?”

  “Look, Delia, I don’t want to—”

  “Why are your clothes clean?”

  Violet spoke in a slow, chastened voice. “Because somebody washed them.”

  “Right. Right.” Delia flung out her arms. “And what do you see here? Do you see anything like that around here? Anything? If we want a drink of water, we wait for it to rain. And even then, the rain tastes like acid. Because it comes from the evaporation of rivers and oceans so full of chemical crap that it stopped being ‘water’ a long, long time ago. It’s something else now. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t water. And as for washing our clothes—” She looked down at her dirt-encrusted shirt and she laughed. It was a hard, dark laugh that caused a chill to ripple through Violet. “That’s not exactly a priority, okay? Not when our children are dying in front of our eyes. Not when we don’t know when—or if—we’ll find anything to eat. Not when we’re living in houses that are falling down all around us. Or living under trees. Or in caves. Or anywhere we can find where we won’t freeze to death.”

  Delia stopped. She was panting. She seemed exhausted.

  “So when you tourists from New Earth come down here,” Delia said, the bitterness still crackling in her voice, “sometimes I want to grab a big stick or some other kind of weapon—anything that will get your attention—and hold it over you and force you to really look at what we’ve become. I want you to see. We’re what you left behind. We’re like the trash somebody forgets to clean up when they move on. You wish you could’ve gotten rid of us, but we stuck. We survived. We’re hanging on.” Delia formed her hands into fists. She shook them in front of her own face. “But sometimes—sometimes—I get so mad at you New Earth people and your stuck-up ways and your prejudices—and I want to hurt you. Hurt you bad. Every last one of you. I want to hurt you and leave you twisted and bleeding and—”

  “But you helped me,” Violet interjected. The woman was scaring her now. Her only hope, Violet thought, was to break the trance of Delia’s anger. “You saved my life. Just a few minutes ago. Why did you do that? If you hate me so much—why did you do that?”

  Delia relaxed her fists. She dropped her hands to her sides. She smiled. It was as if a taut string had finally snapped, and she was restored to herself.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “You remind me of my little girl. If she had lived, I think she would’ve looked a lot like you. My baby. My Molly.”

  22

  Teatime

  “So what’re you looking for?” Delia asked.

  She finished winding the cloth around Violet’s head, tying it off with a stubby little bow. The bleeding had started up again a few minutes ago, and so Delia had held her by the arm and led her into the bashed-up, broken-down house.

  The interior was bare except for one filthy overturned bucket in what must have been—a long, long time ago—the kitchen. That was the seat upon which Delia placed Violet while she checked her own pockets for a piece of fabric with which to wrap the wound.

  The kitchen was very cold. From a large ragged hole in the ceiling the leaves constantly drifted down in a silent serenade.

  “Are you sure that’s clean?” Violet said, eyeing the crusty cloth.

  Delia laughed. “I’m sure it’s not clean. I’ll tell you what my great-great-grandmother used to say. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’” She backed away a few steps and turned her head to one side, looking critically at Violet. “That should keep the blood from dripping all over the place.” She snickered. “Not that we’d notice the mess in this hellhole, right? Okay—now answer my question. What’s down here that you’re after? What’s on Old Earth that you can’t get up there?” Another snicker. “Except for dirt and germs and danger, that is.”

  Violet touched the makeshift bandage. Her instinct was to trust this woman. But she was still wary. Old Earth was different from anything she’d ever known before. Maybe her instincts weren’t valid here.

  “Something that somebody lost,” Violet answered. “A friend of mine.”

  “A friend.” Repeating the word, Delia gave her a look. The look came with a caption: Okay, fine. Be that way. I know you don’t trust me. I can’t force you to.

  “Yeah,” Violet said. “Hey, thanks for helping me. Guess I’d better be going.”

  She stood up. O
r tried to, anyway. She felt a sudden gust of dizziness and a swirl of nausea, and her legs went wobbly, and before she knew it, she’d plopped back down on the overturned bucket. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Delia was peering at her, slowly nodding.

  “You’re still woozy from that conk on the head,” Delia said. “My advice? Rest for a little while. Then you can go out and resume your search for—oh, that’s right. I don’t know. Because you won’t tell me.” She shrugged. “I’m going to make some tea. Interested?”

  “Sure.” The second she agreed, though, Violet had misgivings. What if the teacup was like the bandage—that is, covered with so many gradations and varieties of grime that the original surface was just a distant memory?

  Or what if Delia was plotting to poison her?

  She’d have to take her chances. She really needed a cup of tea.

  Delia began her task. Violet watched her. To call this kitchen primitive was generous. In the fireplace, something large and awkward and smelly had recently burned. The scorch marks licking the bricks around the opening were a little scary-looking; it would’ve taken a ginormous animal carcass to jut out that far, and the vision of such a creature being consumed by flames was like something out of a noxious nightmare.

  There were no cabinets, no appliances, no table or chairs. No cups or saucers.

  As it happened, however, there was a cup. Or at least something you could drink out of. Delia knelt down and rummaged through a brown paper sack that was tucked in a corner, hidden under a pile of leaves. She pulled out a tin can with its label missing. From a ratty-looking canteen also stashed in the sack, she filled the can to the halfway point.

  “We’ll have to share,” Delia said.

  Violet didn’t react out loud, but inside she was thinking: Um—gross. But she still wanted some tea.

  She watched Delia moving around the kitchen. How, Violet wondered, was this woman ever going to make tea in this empty, forsaken place?

  Delia scurried around, gathering up sticks and leaves that had dropped in through the hole in the roof. She dumped three armfuls in the fireplace. Then she turned around and grinned at Violet, wiping her hands on her trousers.

  “There’s one important thing my boy gave me before they took him away,” Delia said. With a flourish, she pulled a small blue box from her pocket. She opened it and plucked out a tiny yellow stick. She scraped the tip of the stick against the side of the box. It took her three tries. At last a tiny but sturdy flame popped up.

  “Matches,” Delia said, in a delighted voice. She flipped the burning stick into the fireplace. The leaves and other debris quickly caught flame.

  Violet had read about matches in Old Earth history. They hadn’t been used in hundreds of years, and no one on New Earth had ever actually seen one, but her father had told her stories about them. When he was a boy, his parents built a fire every night. Outside, in the open, in a small ring of rocks. They used matches to light the flame. The fire kept the wild animals away, he explained to Violet.

  Delia went back to the sack. Out came a small tea bag. Violet could tell by looking at it—it was limp and wrinkled and almost colorless, and the string had long ago disappeared—that it had been used many, many times. Next Delia retrieved a long branch propped in the corner. At the threshold of the fireplace, she set down the tin can, using the branch to push it into the fire.

  “Won’t be long now,” Delia said.

  “There’s nowhere for you to sit.”

  “Sure there is.” She walked closer to Violet and plopped down on the floor.

  Violet had never seen someone this old—Delia had two kids, according to what she’d said—behave quite this way, with a sort of free-spirited jauntiness. Violet had assumed all old people were alike: reserved, dignified. Just like the ones she knew. But then again, she reminded herself, she’d never been to Old Earth before. People were different here. They had to be, in order to survive.

  She looked at Delia, cross-legged on the dirty wooden floor. From here, Violet could plainly see the crook of her left arm. It was home to an exceedingly ugly wound, a red, puckered, angry-looking space that looked as if something had exploded beneath the skin, and then the heaving flesh had been flash-frozen.

  “Your Intercept chip,” Violet said. “Did something go wrong with the insertion?”

  Delia pulled her sleeve down over the damaged skin. It was the first self-conscious gesture Violet had seen her make.

  “Nope,” Delia said. “The insertions always go really, really smooth.” Her sarcastic tone descended into bitterness. “It’s not putting it in that gets you, right? It’s trying to take it out.”

  Violet was shocked. “Trying to take it—? That’s illegal.”

  Delia laughed darkly. “Yeah. And what’re they gonna do about it? How’re they gonna punish me? Ship me off to Old Earth? Oh, right—I’m already here.”

  Violet shook her head. She felt silly. But she wanted to hear what had happened to Delia’s arm. “So what messed it up like that?”

  “I tried to get rid of the chip. Used a rusty spoon. Bad infection. Not one of my better ideas.” She chuckled as if it were a joke. “Looks like a suicide attempt by somebody with really bad eyesight—somebody who tried to slit a wrist but missed.”

  “That’s not funny.” Violet knew that she sounded prissy. She couldn’t help herself. “I’ve read that infections from botched chip removals can kill you.”

  “They can. And it is funny. It’s all funny, Violet, because if it’s not funny, it’s tragic—and you know what? I’ve had all the tragedy I can stand.” Delia unfolded her legs. She stood up. She was a lot more limber than any old person Violet had ever met. “Gotta check on our tea,” Delia said. She used the long branch to fish the can out of the fireplace. She stuck in her index finger. “A few more minutes.” Back went the tin can into the fireplace, which by now was producing more smoke than flame.

  “You must’ve needed medical care,” Violet said. “Antibiotics, at the very least.”

  “Yeah.” Delia sat back down again.

  “So where’d you get it?”

  “What are you—the police?”

  “Just asking.”

  “Unauthorized removal of a chip is a serious offense,” Delia declared. “If your New Earth pals happened to get wind of it, they’d take it out on us. And they’d try to get the doctor, too, most likely. There’d be raids and roundups and—oh, God. Don’t get me started.” Her voice went from brusque to bemused: “There was this doctor, okay? Best person I’ve ever known. If I thought that the people on New Earth were anything like her—well, I’d be changing my opinion about a few things. Fast. She used to come down here all the time. You couldn’t miss her. She had this long red hair. And she’d help anybody who needed it. No questions asked.”

  While Delia spoke, Violet was getting a funny tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It was excitement and anticipation.

  The woman who’d helped Delia had to be her mother. Had to be.

  “What happened to her?” Violet said. She spoke softly and carefully, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. She didn’t want Delia to know anything about her. Not until she was sure it was safe.

  Delia frowned. “We don’t know. About six years ago, she just stopped coming. It didn’t make sense. Before that, nothing got in her way. She’d march into the very worst sections of the very worst towns. Never hesitated. And she’d take the hardest cases—people who were dying of Missip Fever or slab gun wounds or radiation poisoning. She’d do whatever she could. If she couldn’t save somebody’s life, if it was already too late for that, she’d make her final hours as peaceful as possible. So it can’t be that she got frightened. That wouldn’t happen. She was the bravest person I ever knew. And she cared. I know she did. I felt it, whenever she was around me. When she changed the bandages on my arm, she’d ask me about my children. About my life. She cared, all right.”

  Violet let a min
ute go by. She was positive now that Delia was describing her mother.

  “What was her name?” Violet asked.

  Delia shook her head. “We never knew. Down here, names don’t matter much. Most of us just called her ‘Doc.’ She seemed okay with that.” She shrugged. “You could tell when she was close. When she’d come back down from New Earth, I mean. There was a feeling in the air. A sort of lightness. A little bit of hope.”

  The Intercept still had a total-access pass to her mind, Violet knew. Just because no one was monitoring the feed didn’t mean that the Intercept wasn’t doing its job, sparking and whirring, grabbing her emotions and sending them back to the machinery beneath Protocol Hall. But she hated the idea that it was picking up her feelings right now—feelings of awe, of pride and gratitude that her mother had saved Delia, of sadness that her mother was gone forever. The Intercept was picking up her emotions the way somebody shopped in a grocery store: grabbing things and flipping them in the cart.

  It couldn’t be helped, though. Violet couldn’t stop the pride that bubbled up inside her. Let the Intercept have it. She didn’t care.

  She started to say something to Delia, to tell her that she had a pretty good idea who their mysterious benefactor had been. To tell her what had happened to Lucretia Crowley.

  And why Lucretia Crowley had never returned to Old Earth.

  But before Violet could speak, Delia said, “And you know what? I think Doc’s coming back. I really do. I can sort of feel it inside me. It’s like this special knowledge that is part of my body now, like an arm or a leg.” She lowered her head. When she lifted it again, there was a light in her eyes that Violet hadn’t seen before. “That’s all that keeps me going sometimes—the certainty that Doc’s going to show up again one day,” Delia said. “I’ll turn around and—yes. Yes, there she’ll be. Carrying her little black bag. Telling us to hang in there. Smiling, like she always does. And asking us how she can help.”

  * * *

  Violet fell asleep.

  How in the world—she would ask herself this later, when she thought back on the strangeness of this day—had she fallen asleep while sitting on an upside-down bucket in the middle of a freezing kitchen?