I’m careful to keep my voice calm and level. This should be anything but an argument, especially in front of so many Optics who have suddenly decided to look to us for answers. “There are other ways to make that point than getting yourselves killed. If you can figure out why there are lower rations by your own ingenuity, you’ll gain respect from the Governors and they’ll know that they can’t pull this again.”
He stares at me intently. “And would you like to share with us what these ‘other ways’ are that you’re thinking of?”
I look out at the back wall, trying to ignore the crowd before me so I can think, but it doesn’t take long for a plan to come to mind, building on itself as I go. “Well, to start, we need to make it impossible for them to deny the existence of the problem. Complaints alone, if the city is still functioning, will do little to facilitate a change. But if we’re so hungry we can’t do our jobs anymore, even the Governors will be affected. When I fainted today, I was unconscious for hours. I wasn’t working, and the Governors actually asked me what the cause was.”
Peter steps forward immediately to challenge me. “So that’s your plan, Io? We faint?”
I can’t help but smirk at the way he phrases his questions, his tone riddled with criticism, because that’s exactly my plan. “Is that so far-fetched an idea? We pretend to faint, make them believe that it’s not possible to survive on so little food.” I remember what Daniel told me last night. “They don’t know what the minimum ration is to live on, what happens to people when they eat so little, so let’s teach them that they’ve already gone below that limit by putting ourselves as the example. Once we have their attention, we can get answers using the connections we do have to the government. We don’t need to go to them because they come to us, every single week. Ask your Plenties to ask the examiners questions about the rations when they come. The examiners won’t listen to us, but they can’t ignore the Plenties.”
Peter’s face is beginning to reflect his understanding of the stability of such a simple plan. If rules aren’t broken, there can be no repercussion for failure. I’m starting to wonder if he’s going to accept my idea completely in lieu of his own when a door in the far corner of the room, opposite where I entered, slams wide open on its hinges, scattering the Optics standing nearby. In the obscurity beyond, I can make out little but shadowy motions, something darker moving around in the darkness. And just as I’m beginning to question why the Optics’ clothes aren’t shining bright, even through that blackness, I realize my mistake. It’s because the people coming through aren’t wearing white. They’re wearing black. Guards.
Even as I gather my breath to shout, Peter has already recognized the threat and leaps down from the garbage chute, drawing a stream of panicked Optics in his wake as they all work in unison toward the same tiny passage. As much as my instincts want me to flee with them, I know it’s pointless. The ones forcing their way toward the only exit are the ones who will be caught first. The guards pour in – ten, twenty, thirty – further crowding the cramped space, and I stay where I am, watching from the raised platform as those familiar faces are handcuffed one by one and passed forcefully down the line of black uniforms.
Someone finds a third exit into the air ducts and a few Optics manage to slip into it. Others try to follow, but the guards have already noticed and move quickly to block the area. In the back corner, I notice a pair of girls wriggling themselves into an opening behind a set of massive pipes, intentionally coating their uniforms with the grime of the floor so they don’t stand out so much. Nellie and Mary. I try to give them an encouraging smile across the confusion between us, but, so caught up in their concealment, neither one notices. In the din, they seem to go unseen, but I carefully avoid explicitly glancing their way again. I don’t want a guard to notice me watching.
Again, the thought of running crosses my mind, now that the clump of people by the door is beginning to thin. I could blend in with the rest of them and use my knowledge of the tunnels to find safe passage back. But the option is eradicated in an instant when one of the guards spots me. He makes no move to come nearer, only fixes his eyes on my face with a glint of recognition. He knows I won’t flee because I’ll have nowhere to go. Not to the dormitories, nor to Ruth and James’ house, and maybe not even to the Neithers, because the government knows where they are, too. The Governors would spare no expense in the search effort, because I’m the only one standing up here and I was the one talking when the guards entered. Everything they see before them points to me being the leader and the organizer of this whole meeting, and I doubt there’s a thing I could say to convince them otherwise.
So I sit down and wait. To protect the people I love, I sit down and wait, because to run to them now would place them at the hands of the government, where no innocent person should ever be. They will have the area secured in time, and then they’ll come get me, but until then, I’m not going to move.
So sure are they of their own power, the guards who finally climb up to arrest me don’t even question my failure to run. They’re probably convinced I was frozen in terror at the sight of them, but I’m the last person I’m worried about right now. I know how to handle myself before the government. The other Optics, many of them so young and not often so daring, are going to have to learn very quickly.
I don’t fight as they lead me up through the tunnels and out into the atrium. A few windows in the Governors’ City and half of the lights overhead are illuminated, casting strange contrasts on the walls. Every person has five rippling shadows as we pass by the line of handcuffed Optics being led to see old Leo. Most keep even, blank faces, but a few of the youngest, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, have broken down in tears. No one moves to comfort them. Not with the guards and their clubs right there.
They take me around to the side of the Governors’ City, to a different arched entrance marking a path between the towering buildings. The two guards who hold me between them nod to their colleagues as we pass into the City. These are the professionals, not the bumbling fools I encountered so often earlier today, and they won’t be deceived.
We pass through a pair of glass doors, past an empty desk where I would imagine all who enter and exit are monitored by a supervisor during the day, and up to a pair of panels that slide open to reveal a familiar sight. The vertical monorail. In the tiny windowless box, I finally realize where exactly they’re taking me. To the person who has made it his business to find his way into my life whenever possible in the last two weeks.
And sure enough, just a few steps down a carpeted hallway, I am thrown to my knees opposite a desk at which Mack sits, watching me expressionlessly. I try to look anywhere but his face, and I don’t have a hard time of it. There’s more color in this small room than there is in the entire city. Two walls are painted a muted shade of red, the other two dark brown. Three large, square windows look out onto the atrium below, the best view I’ve ever seen of it. Their edges are framed with some thick, draped fabric, an even deeper, darker brown than the walls. Without any change of temperature, I think the whole place would manage to feel warmer if not for the circumstances and the cold stare of the man before me. The guards drag me up to my feet again. Mack dismisses them with a casual wave of his hand and they file out, shutting the door behind them. The moment he smiles at me, that same awful, sinister smile that sends chills down my spine, I wish the guards had stayed. It would be better than being alone with this man.
He gestures at a chair opposite his with the same false cordiality that Peter so aptly displayed earlier. “Have a seat, Io. We have quite a bit to discuss and I don’t want you passing out again.”
It doesn’t take much to pick out the threat among the niceties, but there’s little reason not to sit anyway, so I obey.
“Now,” he begins, so polite that I don’t even feel like I’m about to be punished, “I wasn’t particularly pleased to hear that you lied to me back in the medical building.”
He pauses, waiting fo
r me to elaborate, to desperately offer my explanation, but I keep my mouth shut. Less is more when you feel an interrogation coming on.
“Do I need to refresh your memory? You told me that you didn’t know of anything that was causing Optics to faint, that there was nothing in particular that had come up in conversations. Clearly, given that clever little plan you outlined to your companions by the garbage chute, that is not the case. What I don’t understand is why you felt the need to keep it from me. I see why you wouldn’t mention the meetings – to protect your friends – though we’ve known of those for a while anyway. But beyond that, why wouldn’t you just explain to me your concerns about the rations? If that was your goal anyway, why not accept an open invitation to do so?”
Part of me still screams to keep silent, but a much bigger part is ready to join right in. If he’s going to play ignorant, pretending that the unspoken threats of the government, the prohibition of any sort of complaint or suggestion of insufficiency don’t exist, then perhaps I should participate as well. I’m already screwed as it is.
Careful not to directly provoke his legendary anger, I arrange my face to look as politely mortified as possible and throw myself head-on into the charade. “Is that what you were trying to tell me this morning? I’m so sorry. I didn’t even realize you were asking me a question with all the implied threats getting in the way.”
He matches my ridiculous etiquette with an affronted simper. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about, Io. I wasn’t lying when I said that the government cares for its citizens.”
My sarcasm blows through the doors I’ve locked it behind. This is too much for me. But subtlety is best, so I fight it off however well I can. “Yes, I suppose that is the impression I’ve gotten in the last twenty years of what care means. Take the people you care about, blind them, beat them, starve them and then pretend none of it is happening. But, you know, it’s probably for the best that Optics don’t follow your example when it comes to caring for our Plenties. Your poor examiners would lose their minds and you’d have to arrest us all for abuse.”
That’s when I know I’ve gone too far. It’s not his expression, but the sudden lack of one that shuts me up immediately. He maintains the same air of formality, but everything about it has turned frigid.
“Speaking of Plenties, Io, I want to commend you on your excellent care of Ruth and James these past six years. I mean, not a single problem with either your or Ruth’s chips in six years? That’s fantastic, remarkable! Almost unbelievable. Tell me, what does Ruth like to see? She hasn’t ordered a single painting in all this time, so there must be something else.”
My throat closes up, keeping me from answering even as my palms grow sweaty and my foot takes to tapping incessantly on the floor beneath it. His questions are too specific, too perfectly matched to the secret I carry for coincidence to be possible. But then again, this is Mack, a master at inspiring meaningless fear.
“Ruth doesn’t like paintings. She never asks for them. She prefers to see real things, things that are…moving.”
Mack smirks. “Moving?”
“Like…running water, or wind blowing fabric, or – or a person beginning to smile,” I struggle to explain. “She just doesn’t care for paintings. She thinks they’re boring.”
“Ah.” He smiles and nods, but I know that this was far too easy. He won’t let it go so soon. “Well, I am very curious to hear from Ruth herself about all this, to see if there’s anything we can do to improve our Plenties’ quality of life. Perhaps I should pay Ruth and James a personal visit in the morning.”
I almost take to my feet right there. In six years, I’ve never had to do anything to keep my side of our pact, certain as I was that the government would never touch a Plenty. But what’s so ironic about the whole thing is that I may very well have to protect James from a threat that only exists because of the pact binding me to protect him in the first place. Whether in detail or not, Mack knows that something is different about my relationship with Ruth. In some way, someone has told him about that pact, and there is only one other person who knows about it outside of Ruth and me.
But that’s an unthinkable possibility.
“Is something wrong, Io? You look troubled.” That same question. He always asks the same question. Regardless of what he may know, though, I still have to shield Ruth and James. Maybe he’ll take my warning as that of an overprotective Optic instead of a guilty one.
“Stay away from them.”
Mack puts his hands up in the air, as though my weak command could actually be enough to disarm him. He takes to his feet, walks around the desk and kneels beside me. “I don’t understand what you’re so concerned about. I’m not going to hurt them. Why would I ever hurt them? They aren’t breaking the rules or causing any trouble. The government is not in the habit of hurting its Plenties, unless they hurt us first.”
I would dismiss his every word as nothing but talk if not for that final phrase, right at the end. Unless they hurt us first. Because in those words, I don’t hear a reassurance, but a justification. An excuse to do harm, and when it’s Ruth and James at the center of it, it infuriates me more than anything in this city ever has.
In trying to control it, my voice shakes, and it comes out so low, so ominous, I’m not even convinced it’s my own. “Don’t you ever come near Ruth and James. They are innocent, and I will never, never let you hurt them. You’ve done far too much damage already for me to believe any one of your empty promises. Leave them alone, and let them have what’s left of their lives.”
The next thing I know, I’m on the floor, half my face stinging from an uninhibited blow. When I look up at Mack again, I see only a tower, taller than any in the Governors’ City, that’s powerful enough to trap me and hold onto me forever. Mack’s foot swings back, taking aim at my face with every possibility of breaking bone, but he seems to decide against such extreme damage. Instead, he silently returns to his desk and waits for me to find my place in the chair again. After a few seconds watching me, just as when the guards first brought me here, he smiles and says, “I want you to leave, Io, and go straight to the Optic dormitory. No stops along the way, not even Ruth and James’ home. Do you understand? And I assure you, I will know it if you fail to obey.”
There is something wrong with the way Mack looks at me, something a step beyond unsettling about the manic glint in his eye. It doesn’t make sense that he’s letting me go so abruptly, that he isn’t calling on the guards to escort me to see Leo. There’s some other part to it, some trademark threat of his that I’m not recognizing, and I fear it will be too late by the time I do. But right as I finally turn for the door, he stands once again, faces the windows, and casually declares, “Oh, and by the way, I would watch out for the guards. They’re not particularly happy with you at the moment, and it would not be wise to cross their path tonight.”
And then, with a single glimpse through the window, I understand. All around the first floor of the atrium – every staircase, every quadrant, every doorway – nearly every guard in the city stands in formation. This is why Mack is so calm, so content to release me.
There is nowhere I can go and no one I can run to. Mack has won, and for the first time in my life, I think that I may very well die tonight.
Those Green Eyes
Henrick kicks his feet back against the chair, blinking a few times to fight back the sleep he just slipped out of. He never would have expected them to come fetch him this late, already a good three hours after the city has gone dark. The Governors keep different hours, they explained by way of apology. And by the time he dragged himself out of the tiny bedroom, his temporary home until they find him a real apartment, by the time he navigated the complex of hallways to get to Mr. Watson’s office, half the lights in the atrium had already been lit.
Something must be happening, Henrick thinks through the fogginess, noting somewhere in the back of his mind that Mr. Watson has kept him waiting ten minutes already, a
far cry from the man’s usual faultless punctuality. He finds himself staring around at the walls, soaking up the pale green, resting in it, savoring it because it reminds him so much of her eyes. Those brilliant green eyes, always wide with curiosity, sharp with intellect, soft with compassion, set into her small face framed by a bob of brown hair. Even when she cries. When she cries, though it hurts him maybe more than it hurts her, those impossibly bright green eyes turn brighter with the pink surrounding them. But it can’t smother the brilliance, the everlasting green.
If she had tried six years ago to become a Plenty instead of an Optic, he would have stepped in and stopped her, fought off the guards, whatever it took just to keep the Governors from destroying those beautiful eyes. He wonders where she is now, worries if she made it back safely after he left her in the tunnel, realizes with a smirk that she’s probably somehow involved in what’s happening down below, but then frowns as he remembers the reason she had to sneak back to Ruth and James’ house in the first place.
I have a Neither in the closet.
With the way her heart works, the revelation shouldn’t have surprised him, but in the back of his mind, some small part of him – the jealous part, the weaker part – began to draw lines. It began to trace an infinitely complex web of analogies, drawing all the way back from their shared childhood until the net was woven so tightly, he began to suffocate. All night last night, as he tried to sleep, Henrick choked and fought against the pressure of this net. She’s always had a special bond with the Neithers, he told himself, keeps telling himself. This is no different. So what if she prefers the company of Neithers to Governors? Most Optics would. That doesn’t mean she’ll choose…there’s not even a choice to make. She has a Neither in the closet, but she’s only trying to help him, nothing else. Not like the story. Because that was just a story. A true story, but someone else’s story.
Be Thou My Vision (The Population Series) Page 13