Be Thou My Vision (The Population Series)

by Elizabeth, Cori

  I stumble forward as they return to the mouth of the quadrant, probably to eat and gamble away their shame at being told off by an eighty-four-year-old woman. Ruth slams the door, sealing out the darkness, and hurries off to her bedroom as I fall to my knees in tears. I don’t look up even when she kneels beside me and wraps the blanket from her own bed around my shoulders. She holds me close to her, rocking slowly and murmuring, “It’s okay, Io. They can’t get you now. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re safe here with me.” And all the while I cry onto her shoulder, tears that have been a long time coming.

  It’s only because she’s right, only because I do know that, for now, I’m safe with her, that I can even stop sobbing long enough to explain with an occasional choke what happened.

  “Oh, I remember that one,” she says, when I tell her of Mack’s threats. “He did a number on you the day we met, didn’t he? Dragged you right out from under our noses to try to teach you a lesson, but he certainly wasn’t subtle about it.”

  “You knew about that?” I manage to say, and though it seems out of place, I find myself smiling a little.

  “Of course I did, sweetheart. I heard it in your voice the moment you came back. Heard it in his too. Such anger. But that Mack, don’t you worry about him, Io. He’s all bark and no bite. He’ll beat you up and threaten you, sure, but in the end he’s as harmless as a fly. Don’t let him convince you that he’s more powerful than he is. That man is phony in every sense of the word.”

  There’s something reassuring about her disdain for Mack. To hear Ruth dismissing him so readily, coding her insults in the strange phrases that comprise her vocabulary, pulls me just a little bit out of my misery. This talk of barks with bites and something called a fly sounds like the talk of a city built elsewhere in the Mass. Like someone who has come from outside of everything I know and sees things how they really are.

  Daniel.

  “Ruth, there-there’s something else I need to tell you,” I begin, and so do the tears once again.

  She pulls me even closer, stroking my hair. “Come now, Io. There’s no need to cry. You have nothing to fear anymore. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “A couple of weeks ago, I was coming back from lunch with Henrick, and there was a boy on the ground. He had pink eyes, but the guard was still beating him, and I thought he was a Plenty. So I distracted the guard, and – and…”

  “You’re talking about Daniel,” Ruth murmurs, calmly and meaningfully.

  “How do you…?” My voice breaks apart, but the question goes without saying.

  “The moment you brought him in, I knew. I could hear that there was another person in the room, someone badly injured, and I could hear the fear in your voice. Then I heard you two talking last night.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ruth,” I weep, but she holds me together. “I shouldn’t have ever brought him here. If the government finds him, and you and James…”

  “No, Io.” She releases me, put only to take my face in her hands. “Don’t you dare think for even a moment that it was a mistake to help that boy.”

  “But none of this would have happened, and the Governors would leave us alone if I just hadn’t broken their rules.”

  “Of course you broke their rules, Io. Of course you did. The rules of this city are meant to be broken. The government creates them, knowing how ridiculous they are, and hopes that most people will blindly follow them anyway. Those who break them are the ones who recognize them for what they are: unjust, ineffective and oppressive. That you resist the Governors only makes you a smarter and stronger person in my eyes. Don’t be ashamed of your life, Io, and certainly don’t be ashamed of your heart.”

  “But now you and James are in danger,” I insist, desperate to make her understand my guilt, desperate for her to feel the exigency of the situation.

  “James isn’t in any danger. He knows nothing about any of this. He’s completely innocent and there’s no way they can twist a lie out of that. And don’t you worry about me.” A tear rolls down my cheek to her thumb and she wipes it away. “There’s not much they can do to me that old age hasn’t done already.”

  And then, for the first time in my life, I realize that I’ve never truly understood Super-Plenties, never given them credit for what their decision really means. They aren’t elite Governors trying to prove their loyalty, their superiority over their peers, because people with such inflated self-esteem would never in a million years place themselves at the same level as the Plenties. Super-Plenties are the humble ones, the brave ones, the ones who turn their backs on the government the only way that they can without losing their lives. For the first time in my life I really consider the sacrifice Ruth made, and I understand it.

  “I need to leave, Ruth,” I say to her seriously, and she doesn’t doubt the gravity in my voice for a moment. “Daniel and I both. It’s not safe for you and James if we’re here.”

  “You’re right,” Ruth consents, helping me to my feet. “But it’s not for our safety that you need to leave. It’s for yours.”

  We stand together for a moment and she grips my arm, that familiar iron grip. “Go, get Daniel, and take some extra clothes and towels from the closet. You never know what you’ll encounter.”

  I hurry to the closet, as softly as I can, still wiping tears from my eyes and trying not to make a sound. Maybe James will sleep through all of this and never have to see me in this state. Maybe Ruth is right, and he hasn’t heard anything. Maybe the Governors will never get to him. With her words still in my mind, I burst through the door of the linen closet, startling Daniel to his feet in self-defense.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” He only pauses when he sees the redness of my eyes. “Are you okay, Io?”

  “I can’t explain it all right now,” I say, not because I don’t want to, but because I really don’t think I would be able to and still hold myself together. Even as I gather shirts and pants and towels, I’m fighting off a rising lump in my throat. Seeing Daniel again reminds me of Henrick. “We need to leave, right now. Do you think you’re strong enough?”

  With a grim nod, he softly asks, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  I force the pile of linens into his hands. “Take these out to the living room. Ruth already knows who you are.”

  I follow out behind him, holding tight in my hand my only possession: the square of red and white fabric. For the first fourteen years of my life I went nowhere without it. I screamed as a child when they took it away, and when I was too old for that, I always kept it securely tied around my ankle, hidden away from the Governors, another little taste of freedom. As a teenager the practice faded, but whenever I’m most distraught, most terrified, I always find myself turning back to it. So now, with life at its most grueling, I cling to it tighter than ever.

  In one of the kitchen drawers I find a pair of scissors that have only ever been used to cut hair. Under any other circumstances, this would be unthinkable, but I need to leave a message that will mean something. I quickly fold the fabric down the middle and begin a series of slow, even cuts – a curved top that tapers down to a point at the bottom. My heart aches to see the little slip of fabric torn, but I fold it again, at a different point, and cut the same shape a second time, only smaller. With the two cut-out pieces stowed safely in my pocket, I open the square of fabric to survey my work. The two hearts, large beside small, are symmetrical enough, if a little misshapen. I run to hang it on James’ door handle. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect, as long as the message gets across.

  I love you, little brother.

  The Old and the New

  “I’m not saying goodbye to you, Ruth,” I try to say, but I keep choking up, disrupting the words, “But thank you.”

  “No, no, no,” she replies, and pulls me into a hug. “You have no reason to thank me, Io. You’ve done far more for us than we’ve ever done for you. Stay safe, dear.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” I reassure her, but really I�
��m reassuring myself, because Ruth is as calm as ever. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “I will, Io. I know I will. Just remember, I’m old.”

  I shake my head, still not letting go. “Don’t talk like that. Please don’t.”

  But she just takes a deep breath, squeezes me tighter, and says, “I love you, Io.”

  “I love you too, Ruth.” And I break down silently with the words.

  After a few seconds, she finally pulls away, and Daniel takes my arm in her stead. I had almost forgotten he was standing beside us, the sole witness and catalyst to our sorrowful goodbye.

  “I think we need to go now, Io,” he reminds me, pulling gently toward the kitchen.

  It takes only one swing of my good hand, fueled by emotion, to rip the panel apart from its latch, and this time I catch it before it swings up. Before we take off through it, I turn back again to see Ruth one last time, standing in the doorway, pink eyes flooded red with tears.

  “Goodbye,” I whisper, and she whispers it back, and a moment later, she disappears behind the closing panel.

  Something shifts in my heart and mind, a sense of belonging fast fading away.

  I can’t be a part of their life anymore.

  The North Quadrant

  Distant voices greet us from well around the corner, but before their footsteps have advanced even a few meters closer, we’ve already ducked into an air vent that feeds into the tunnel close to floor level. The excess of emotion inside of me drains away with each turn of the narrow tube, and after a few minutes I’ve stopped leaving a trail of tears. In time, we reach a grate that looks out into the atrium. It can’t be opened, either from outside or within, but it makes for an exceptional survey point.

  “Are you all right, Io?” Daniel begins when we’ve stopped, brow knit in concern. I wave him off weakly.

  “Later.”

  He accepts the delay without question, but I can feel him watching me as he asks, “Where are we trying to go?”

  I point for him to look out through the grate with me, to a narrow view of a very wide space. From where we sit, half-way between the South and East Quadrants, one can just make out the left-most curve of the gaping mouth that is the entrance to the West Quadrant and the endless pattern of windows and doors that wrap around along the wall between the East and West Quadrants. Blocking the view in the middle, the Governors’ City glistens in its unmarked whiteness, brilliant now that they’ve turned on all of the atrium lights. A few guards still stand their ground like before, but most have either been commanded to stand down or have deserted their post in favor of food and sleep. I hold back a shiver at just the sight of those black uniforms. It’ll be a long time before I can forget what they almost did.

  “There are four sets of tunnels that run under the atrium into the Governors’ City, but those are heavily guarded. We can’t go straight through, but we can go around a different way to the far one. It’s not a quadrant, so the tunnel ends by that far wall, but it’s a shortcut to get to the Neithers. I think they’ll be able to help us, at least for tonight until we can figure out what to do.”

  I make to crawl back down the air vent, but Daniel grabs my shoulder, eyes narrowed, and stares back out the grate.

  “Wait. Can you explain something to me really fast?”

  “I – Daniel, we really need to get out of here.”

  “Just really fast,” he insists. “It’s important.”

  Okay,” I sigh. “What?”

  “You said there are four sets of tunnels leaving the Governors’ City, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  He turns to me, eyebrows raised. “So then why are there only three quadrants?”

  “What do you mean?” I shake my head. The longer this takes, the more pointless it seems.

  “What’s the purpose of the tunnels? Are they for transportation?”

  I think for a moment. “No, they carry water… and, and I’m not sure what else, but there are pipes in all of them.”

  “So three of the sets of tunnels carry water to and from the quadrants. That makes sense; people live there. But what about the fourth set? Why would there be water going off to nowhere?” Daniel stares at me more intently now, challenging me to put his doubts to rest. I know that there’s some other explanation than what he’s implying, but I can’t come up with it right now.

  “It just doesn’t make sense!” he continues, and I motion for him to keep his voice down. Anything we say will echo in here.

  “Well, it doesn’t,” he asserts. “Think about it. Quad means four, right?”

  “Four means four,” I respond firmly. “Quad means nothing. What are you talking about?”

  He begins to gesture with his hands, willing me to understand his point. “The root quad means four. Every word that has quad-, or at least qua-, in it has something to do with four. Quarter, quadruped, quadrangle.”

  “Quadrangle? Are you making this up?”

  “No,” he defends. “Those are real words. So if quad always means four, why would there only be three quadrants?”

  “Because quad doesn’t mean four?” I suggest.

  “No! No, Io. Can’t you see? There’s something on that side! There’s a fourth quadrant!”

  I put my hands out before me in question, though it’s difficult in the cramped space. “Where?”

  Daniel points out the grate again. “Where there’s one missing!”

  “Well, that would make sense. The missing one is where there’s one missing, but where is that?”

  “Go into the atrium and tell me there shouldn’t be a fourth monorail running from the city center, opposite the quadrant you live in.” He looks me straight in the eye, daring me, if not to actually do it, then to think about it. I maintain my skeptical glare, but underneath something is shifting in my head, a map rearranging to explain why tunnels seemed to run into the Mass inexplicably, why there were doors where there should have been walls.

  Finally, I nod, and it isn’t just to placate him. This kid, either his brains or the mystery of where he came from, has somehow managed to convince me that there is an entire hidden wing of the city, unbeknownst to any who live here except maybe the Governors, and yet somehow it doesn’t even surprise me. For one, this is the government, reason enough to suspect chicanery. And I always did secretly think there should be something across from the South Quadrant, but I also always dismissed its absence to lack of necessity. Why tunnel an extra quadrant if the space isn’t needed? I think about what Daniel told me, about the pit that they threw him into the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere in my years exploring the city. Maybe they needed the space after all.

  But after a moment of consideration I wave for us to continue, reluctant to sit still for even a few minutes. There’s too much going on in the city right now, and I’m done being in the middle of it all.

  “One more question,” Daniel begins quietly as we crawl back down the air vent. “Just for future reference. What are the quadrants called? Do they have names?”

  “Yeah,” I tilt my head back to whisper. “East, South and West.”

  I hear him stop dead behind me. “What about North?”

  “North? You sure you’re not making up words?”

  “I’m not making up words!” he exclaims, sitting up in his adamancy and managing only to bang his head on the low ceiling. “Ow. The four directions are north, east, south and west. That’s not even a matter of debate.”

  I turn back to eye him. “Are you suggesting that that’s what we call this imaginary fourth quadrant? The ‘North’ Quadrant?”

  He shrugs, somehow reminding me of Henrick in his yielding an argument that never existed. I fight back a stab of pain in my heart.

  “If that’s what you want.”

  I roll my eyes in response, but once I’m facing forward again, I can’t help but smile. Even if I blame him, perhaps unjustly, for the shambles my life is in right now, Daniel is starting to grow on me. If nothing else, he distract
s me from the emptiness that has bubbled up inside of me because of Ruth and James and Henrick, and for now, that makes him worth keeping around for a while.

  I Am an Optic, I Am a Neither

  “Do you know what the code is?”

  I wave him off. “Shhh. I’m trying to remember.”

  Daniel cocks his head, crouched behind a massive support column in the darkness beside me, and whispers, “Didn’t you say they know you? Do you really still need a password?”

  “They’re very particular about who they let into their colony. Half the Neithers in the city live here, and raiding it is one of the Governors’ favorite hobbies.”

  He smirks, and even though it isn’t fair, I glare at him. He may be right about me not needing a password, but if I can prove to the Neithers and myself that I haven’t forgotten them, I hope that maybe they’ll be more willing to help.

  “There were three: for visiting or asking for help, for bringing food in exchange for something, and for bringing news from the city. And they were strange words, fake words. Maybe you should take a guess. You seem to be good at making words up.”

  What I meant as an insult, he takes as lighthearted teasing and snickers accordingly. The kid just won’t be offended.

  “Maybe it’s supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”

  “Shut up,” I say immediately, before what he just said actually sinks in. “Did you just make that up on the spot?”

  “No, I – I don’t know. It’s just a word.”

  “A very strange word at that, and certainly not our password,” a voice states to our right, and we jump to retreat farther behind the column, but it’s too late.

  “Now don’t you even think about running away from us. You can’t come down here whispering in the dark and not expect to answer a few questions. We’re a curious group.”

  This, I suddenly realize, is a voice I know. I step out into a thin ray of light, facing this voice embodied by nothing more than a shadow, and he responds likewise. We stare at each other for a few seconds, straining to discern familiar features in the meager glow, until he finally says, “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming down here without a password, Io Mira.”