When Stars Go Out

by Grey, Ransom;

  Chapter 32

  The next morning was the typical beginning to a typical day on the Hill. Everyone got up, had breakfast, and left for work as usual. The morning rush was crowded, loud, and much too early, as usual. In fact, the only thing that wasn’t as usual was Reed. He was tired, thoughtful, and silent as though he hadn’t slept well or hadn’t even slept at all.

  He ran into Hunter at breakfast, who wondered aloud what was wrong with him. Reed explained grudgingly as he poured a cup of coffee that he had missed supper the night before and didn’t sleep well with an empty stomach and a full head.

  Hunter was sympathetic; he, too, had missed supper and hadn’t slept much. He had been working on a special assignment the night before and would be doing the same most of the day.

  “But, hey,” he shrugged, reaching for a Styrofoam cup, “you do what you’ve got to do when you’re on your own. One day it’ll pay off.”

  Reed didn’t see Hunter as being truly “on his own,” but he said nothing.

  The rest of the day was no different from the morning. Everything seemed completely normal to everyone but Reed. A thousand tiny fragments of what he had heard last night orbited his mind like asteroids around a spinning planet. He couldn’t focus on his work, he couldn’t remember what he’d had for lunch, and he ate supper by himself. He felt distanced from everything else in the world, like he was watching the rest of the Hill go on around him from behind a glass wall. Part of him longed to return to his old, normal life but, in a way, he didn’t want to go back to the way things had been. Something needed to change. He yearned for it, but he dreaded it.

  He was still struggling with the feeling toward the end of the day as he sat on the edge of a flowerbed on the Square, watching a game of foursquare. It was a warm evening. A mesh of streaking clouds, orange and red, stretched over the western horizon like a flaming fisherman’s net. Occasional laughter echoed off the walls of the surrounding dorms and drifted away in the still air. The Square was overhung with the exotic sweetness of late Japanese cherry blossoms, wafting from the bloom-laden tree at the corner of Dorm Three. Reed was alone.

  The sun had not yet set behind the ring of misty purple hills when he felt a quick tap on his shoulder. Turning, he was surprised to find Alec fidgeting by his side. The other boy wasted no time with formalities.

  “When you saw ’Lijah last night, were you two by yourselves?”

  Reed blinked. “What?”

  “When you met with Elijah last night, did you see anyone else around?” Alec repeated. He was not smiling, and he jerkily shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back.

  “How did you…”

  Alec shook his head. “Never mind how I know! Did you?”

  “Well, yes,” Reed said slowly. “There were a couple of joggers and some tennis players.”

  “So you were at the park on Harvard Street?”

  “Yeah, it was a park, but I don’t know where.”

  “You don’t know?” Alec asked.

  “No! Now what’s this all about?”

  Alec calmed somewhat and fixed his eyes on Reed deliberately. “Early this morning, before Cody and Elijah left for work, Cody went out to pick up breakfast. When he came back, he found their apartment had been broken into and the living room completely ransacked. Elijah’s gone. The Council took him.”

  Reed felt like someone had punched him in the gut.

  Alec went on. “If Cody had come back a few minutes earlier, they would’ve gotten him, too. He’s left the city to hide out in the woods. He only stopped long enough to tell Sarah what happened on his way out of town, and she got word to me and Gabe. He told her you might know something since Elijah had seen you sometime last night.”

  “No! Just what I told you,” breathed Reed, still in shock. “I wasn’t paying any attention to anybody when I ran into him. But what will they…”

  “I don’t know. I just found out, and I’m headed over to the apartment.”

  “I’m coming, too.” Reed stood up quickly. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”

  A few minutes later, they reached the quiet street where the green-shuttered apartment stood. As they neared the door, Reed saw that it had been kicked in and still hung slightly ajar.

  Alec examined the doorframe. “They didn’t even bother turning the handle,” he muttered, running his fingers along the broken wood.

  Reed pushed past him into the dim interior. It was hard to believe this was the same room where he’d waited for Cody only a few weeks before. The leather recliners lay like lifeless animals, their arms and backs torn open and the handles snapped off their sides. The loveseat was tipped upside down and its bottom crushed in. The couch was still right-side up, but its cushions were scattered across the floor. A thick layer of sheetrock dust had settled across its once-brown leather surface. The huge metal star had fallen from the wall and buried itself deep in the couch’s back, still lifting two of its points in defiance.

  Reed could only stare. Everywhere he looked, the room had been mutilated. All the chests and bookshelves were overturned and broken. One of the floor lamps, its metal post bent into a crescent, lay almost at his feet. The sturdy coffee table alone seemed to have retained its shape, though the carpet was covered in a layer of broken glass.

  Reed touched the torn arm of the couch where he had sat on his last visit and clenched his fists in sudden anger. “They had no right!” he seethed. “Council or not, they had no right!”

  Alec joined him. “No, they didn’t,” he agreed, stepping over the shattered glass to examine the table. “But they don’t care about rights.”

  “Why?” Reed exclaimed. “Did they wreck this whole place just out of spite? Of all the…” his last words were inaudible.

  Alec didn’t answer. He dropped down and studied the floor. “No,” he said suddenly. “No, it wasn’t for spite. God bless him, he gave them the fight of their lives! Look.” He pointed to the floor beneath the bent lamp. A dark, crimson stain dyed the beige carpet. Blood.

  Reed eyed it. “Yeah, but is it his or theirs?”

  “Theirs, of course. I know him. Believe me, you don’t mess with ’Lijah. Whoever tried here has the biggest headache of his life. That’s what bent the lamp!” Alec straightened up and surveyed the room. “That’s what happened to all the furniture! They were fighting all over the room. Boy, he must’ve really given it to them! Those holes in the wall came from fists and heads. Sweet, he even flipped one over his back!”

  “How do you know?” Reed was baffled.

  “Look.” Alec jumped over the broken glass to the loveseat. Sure enough, the crushed bottom was broken in the size and shape of the posterior end of a large person. “That was a special trick he had. Dude, that must’ve been awesome!”

  “But they took him anyway,” Reed said softly.

  Alec stopped in his excited investigation. “Yes, they did.” He looked at Reed. “I wonder how. I’m afraid they’ll make him pay for everything he gave them.”

  There was nothing else to see here. They left the room just as they found it and locked the front door’s deadbolt, still intact, with a key under the mat. They hurried away from the site and out of the quiet street. They had put a few blocks behind them before either of them felt like speaking.

  “I’ve got to go break the news to the others.” Alec shoved his hands into his pockets. “You can go back to the Dorms.”

  “Alec,” Reed said, a sudden thought breaking on him, “I’m going to get blamed for this, aren’t I? I saw him last night. You have to tell them it wasn’t me.”

  “I will,” Alec assured him, shaking his head. “All the same, you’d better keep out of Gabe’s way for a while.”

  When Reed arrived back at the Dorms, he found the news of the arrest had already gotten out. Nothing like it had ever happened on the Hill before, and Elijah’s name was on everyone’s lips. He found the Hill buzzing with anger and resentment.

  “How dare they?” and “Who do t
hey think they are?” were the questions that flew back and forth. Behind the closed doors of their halls and rooms, teens swore against the police, muttered about the government, and even talked of starting a petition for Elijah’s release. Reed was shocked. He knew Elijah had once been popular, but he never would have expected this kind of reaction. Everyone seemed to be up in arms over the arrest. Why? he wondered. Why do they care?

  It wasn’t until later that night, when he ran into Lucy out on the Square, that he began to understand. They hadn’t seen one another since the ill-fated night in the woods, but neither of them seemed to remember that now.

  “Oh, Reed!” Lucy moaned as soon as they met in the crowd. “What’ll they do to him? It’s awful to think about!”

  He had to agree, but he comforted her with what he’d learned of the general opinion. “They’ll have to take that into consideration,” he consoled her as they moved over to a flowerbed and sat down on its stone edging. “Everybody’s against it; I just don’t understand why. Why does the Hill care what happens to him?”

  Lucy looked up from rubbing her face with both hands. “Why? Because, even if they don’t understand him, that doesn’t mean they don’t respect or even like him. Elijah was the way he was and wasn’t ashamed of it. He never got in anybody’s face about anything, but he stuck to what he believed with a quiet resolve that very few people have. He was brave. It showed strength people respected, even if they didn’t like what it meant. Not everybody can do that. Take Sam, for instance.”

  Reed smirked. Lucy held up a finger. “Hold on. I just mean he’s different from a lot of people here, but he doesn’t even respect himself for that. You know as well as I do that he sells out to the highest bidder. He’s constantly molding to fit in with whatever’s popular because he’s too weak to stand out.”

  She looked away. “People are quick to spot a jelly backbone, and they don’t like it. They despise it. Sam wants to be liked and accepted, and he tries to get that by ‘fitting in.’ But he’s not getting the thing he’s trying to get because he’s trying to get it that way.”

  Reed had to think about that one for a moment.

  Lucy dropped her hands and sighed. “He doesn’t understand. He’s just a lonely little boy in a big, crowded world. Reed, people like him need help more than anything. That’s why Elijah’s always been so nice to him, even though they were complete opposites.”

  She watched her fingers twining and untwining in her lap. “’Lijah never tried to hide his differences like that. He’s a nice, easygoing, likable guy, but he won’t budge on his faith. People respect his strength. When he left the Dorms, it showed everybody how serious he was about living out his faith in a practical way. That’s why they didn’t just forget about him. He’s not like Sam because he’s got a… a…”

  “An identity,” finished Reed, staring across the darkened Square.

  Lucy looked at him curiously. “Yeah, that.”

  He gave her a slight smile in return. “I think you answered my question. I guess now we just have to wait to see how everything turns out.”

  She sighed and rose. “Yeah, I guess. Wilson said the trial’s set for tomorrow afternoon.”

  “The what?”

  “The trial. They’re not wasting any time. They’re putting him before the Chairman, the head of the Council himself. They picked tomorrow afternoon ’cause it’s a Saturday, and everybody’s ‘invited.’ They’ve never done that before; it probably means they want to make an example of him. I don’t like the way it sounds.”

  “Me, neither, but I’m going.” Reed stood up grimly. “Somebody’s got to show up for support. Are you?”

  She let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I could stand it.”

  “Then maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.” He patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Just go to bed and try not to think about it.”

  “Thanks, Reed,” she said, smiling and wiping her eyes. “I feel a little better just having talked it through. But I’ve got some praying to do before I go to bed. Good night.”

  But Reed did not have a good night. The shadow of what was to happen the following day hung over him with a deep-seated dread that haunted his thoughts until the early, gray hours of the morning.

  Chapter 33

  The trial was to be held in the city courthouse downtown which, in reality, was no longer the city’s. It had become the Council’s headquarters, and it belonged to them. Reed couldn’t shake feelings of fear and awe as he entered the great building. He crept through the silent, lofty halls, his pulse pounding in his ears. The marble floor echoed his footsteps back like cannon shots. All the forces that held the Hill in place and kept it in submission seeped out of these dim, wood-paneled corridors: fear, force, mystery.

  Reed swallowed and turned down the third hallway to the right like the secretary had told him. Great doorways of carved oak frowned down on either side of him. A mahogany side table and empty, claw-footed chairs glinted in the dim light. He had the uncanny feeling he was being watched. An invisible presence pervaded the atmosphere, just like the night Reagan first told him about the Council. He felt the same chill that had shot up his spine when he saw the two officers in the dark alleyways of the apartments or when the eyes of the factory overseer fixed on the back of his skull.

  Whatever it was, it hung over him, menacing and cold, like the threat in the eye of a coiled snake. He shivered as he climbed the stairs to the gallery and stepped through the great, mouth-like door. Man, I hope I’m not the only one here.

  He wasn’t. As soon as he stepped in, he saw that the large room was packed. Hill residents overflowed the gallery and spilled down into the floor-level seating. But it was quiet—deathly quiet. The only sounds were the subdued hiss of hushed whispers and the rustle of people trying to settle themselves in their seats.

  The gallery ran along three walls of the room, leaving the wall opposite the door open for the judge’s stand. Reed squeezed through the crowd to the far end that would be on the judge’s right. He would be able to see faces from this point. He sat in the front corner of the balcony and looked around.

  The judge’s bench at the front of the room was set high above the pale wooden floor where the defendant, given no dock, was to stand. Black curtains draped around the seal of the city, gleaming dully behind the judge’s straight back chair. Both the tall desk and the wall behind it were of dark, heavy paneling that brooded over the rest of the room. Even the rows of seats on the floor shrank back from it, cowering behind their balustrade. There were no windows. Reed swallowed. It was intimidating. Worse, it was oppressive.

  A bailiff entered the room. “All rise.” The sepulchral tone was chilling.

  The command was almost unnecessary. The few teens who managed to get seats rose, but it was practically standing room only. No one sat back down. The whispers dropped away like the fading patter at the end of a rain shower.

  A door in the paneling opened. Out of a darkened hallway stepped a tall man in the black robe of judicial office. All noise of any sort ceased as the room held its breath. It was the Chairman of the Council. A shadow fell over the room in his presence, like a cloud that blots out the sky or a heavy fog seeping into a valley. The very air seemed heavy and cold. His slow, measured steps reverberated on the wooden floor as the door swung noiselessly shut behind him. Every eye in the room fixed on him.

  The Chairman mounted the judge’s bench with a sweeping hiss of his long robe. He sat stiffly in the high-backed chair and brought his gavel down with a bang that echoed through the silent courtroom. The packed galleries waited.

  The drum of approaching feet broke the hush. Several officers in uniform led by a man in a black suit entered the room, a prisoner in their midst. Not a soul in the crowd stirred. The man in the suit and two of the guards led the figure to the center of the floor and left him there alone, the two guards taking a few steps back and the leader moving directly in front of the judge’s stand. He snapped his hands behind him and turned to fac
e the crowd. Vonhauser. Reed recognized the stony face of the Council’s head of police from months before in the Mushroom. Perhaps that explained a little more about the brutal scene at the apartment.

  He tore his eyes away from the officer and turned quickly to the prisoner. He immediately hoped Lucy was not in the crowd. Elijah looked terrible. Even from a distance, he looked like he hadn’t slept all night. His arms were jerked tightly behind him, tied or handcuffed, and his shirt was stained and ripped across the chest and shoulders. Reed could only see half his face. A narrow bruise showed black against the left side of his jaw, and a streak of dried blood etched down his cheek. But there was no defeat in his tired posture.

  The trial began with a reading of the charges. They were written in legal terminology no one could understand, but they sounded very serious. After that, several witnesses were called. None of them were from the Hill, and their testimonies made even less sense than the charges. The Chairman seemed satisfied by their words all the same. A few more legal procedures that Reed did not understand were enacted before the Chairman finally looked down to Elijah over his glasses.

  “You stand so accused.” He spoke coldly, and there was no emotion on his clean-shaven face. “These charges have been drawn from the testimonies of reliable eyewitnesses and augmented by your hearing before the Council last night.”

  Reed shuddered. That must have been terrifying.

  “Your role in plotting insurrections and civil disturbances, and your direct violation of the law laid down by the aforementioned body, is indisputable. However…” he removed his glasses, “in the view of justice, I must ask: have you anything to say?”

  Elijah raised his head to look at the Chairman. The blue of his eyes seemed to light up the gray gloom around him, lifting Reed’s heart like a streak of rising dawn.