Donor 23

by Beatty, Cate

  Joan did as told.

  As she walked back to her place in line, Nox shouted out, “Always nice to see a donor who’s helpful.”

  Against her will, her thoughts dragged back to the last time she saw Nox, eight months ago.

  She came home early to her apartment from a day at the Center. Turmoil ensued. Joan rushed in. Body snatchers stomped down the halls, searching the apartments.

  She made her way to her apartment. In one of the bedrooms, Joan found her mother replacing part of the wall where a heating unit had been. Joan could see a person squeezed into the small hole.

  “Mom, what’s going on?”

  Her mother glanced up, then moved furniture to block the hole, and hurriedly tried to make it appear as if nothing had been moved. Joan couldn’t believe it. Her mother was hiding an evader! They went into the front room.

  “Mom?” Joan pleaded. “What…?”

  “Sh,” was all her mother could say, as the front door burst open.

  Nox and two other snatchers rushed in. They forced Joan and her mother against a wall. The officers searched the apartment, finding nothing.

  “We’re looking for an evader,” Nox said, holding up a photo. “Have you seen him?”

  Joan recognized the man in the photo. It was Frank, the husband of her mother’s good friend, Dolly.

  With calmness and reserve, her mother looked Nox directly in the eyes and said authoritatively, “No, we haven’t seen him.”

  Nox looked at Joan. She turned away. Her fear and hesitation appeared in her eyes. Nox discerned it, as he was well trained to detect it. Just like any good predator, he instantly chose Joan as his target. He pushed Joan’s mother.

  “Take her into the hall,” he ordered the other officers.

  Joan now stood alone with him. Captain Nox was an excellent interrogator. In addition to hunting down evaders, the Tax Enforcement Office, or TEO, maintained a lid on subversive activities in the donor population. Many of his colleagues relied on hidden cameras, tracking drones, and scanning machines to monitor their areas. Not Nox. He relished the human touch—information gleaned from the movement of a hand, a dropped word, or, as in this case, a glint of trepidation in the eyes.

  He studied Joan for a while, as if studying a map to ascertain the best route to arrive at his destination. She was so young, only seventeen, so it should be easy. He made his decision: first the fear, then the hope.

  He said quietly and slowly, “Do you know who I am?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “I’m Captain Nox. I know who you are. I know most all the donors in this quarter. And I know all about them. You’re 23—full number, 1919723.” He uttered the long number unhurriedly, with a sacred tone. “You have an important benefactor.”

  He walked methodically back and forth in front of her, coming closer with each step. Joan looked at the floor, avoiding eye contact.

  “I’m sure you comprehend the importance of the law. You’ve learned in school how critical it is. It’s everyone’s duty to report criminals. You realize that it’s your duty?”

  He stared at Joan, just inches from her face. She swallowed.

  “Answer my question, 23,” he spoke calmly.

  Joan nodded.

  “Speak it,” he said.

  She repeated it from memory, “It is the duty of every person in the Alliance to report anyone he or she suspects is, will be, or may be, in violation of any laws.”

  She stopped, but he remained silent, so she continued, “Be ever a servant of Our Glorious Governor, and never forget that only the Alliance, acting through Our Governor, can guarantee security.”

  “Very good.”

  In truth, Nox unwaveringly believed this himself. For Nox, adherence to the law, support of the Alliance, and allegiance to the Governor were his reasons for living—as it should be with everyone.

  He paused, still staring at her. He touched her chin, turning up her face to him. His fingers extended too long for his hands. At first his eyes seemed dull and sly, and the whites of them weren’t white at all but a musty yellow. He resembled a lizard, with a long, angular head and a prominent jaw, but his lips were almost nonexistent. His unnaturally thin, gawky body appeared flattened, as if a large shoe stepped on him in the garden. Folded in front of him were his long arms. He wore his hair slicked back, in the same fashion as the Governor.

  “You’ve good fortune to live under the protection of the Alliance. It brought us safety after the Impact. It shields us from the dangers outside. Like a father, Our Governor protects you. Doing your duty means you obey the Alliance’s orders without question. You’ve learned that?”

  She nodded.

  “Your benefactor takes good care of you, doesn’t she?”

  Joan nodded.

  “What do you think your benefactor would do if she discovered you, whom she’s been supporting these years, flouted the very laws which protect you? What would she think if you did not do your duty? Think of her disappointment in you.”

  He walked over to the photo of Governor Gates, which all were required to have in their homes.

  “And what would Our Governor think?”

  Glancing at the photo, Joan felt as if the Governor himself was there, watching.

  She could barely formulate the words, “I swear, sir, Colonel Nox, sir—”

  “It’s Captain,” he said soothingly.

  “Captain, sir, I swear, I don’t know anything.”

  Her reverie ended when the man behind her in line gave her a slight shove. The line had moved, and there was gap in front of her. She picked up her bag and moved ahead.

  5

  Once inside the ghetto she breathed easier, as did most donors. In the city donors had to be on guard—always taking care of what they said and how they acted. But not here—this was their own area. It was a large, walled in city. There were countless ghettos scattered throughout the nation. The Alliance kept each ghetto small, enclosed, and tightly maintained with security.

  It hadn’t always been like this. Joan’s father had told her that in his younger days, there were no walls. Donors freely walked and mingled in the nicer citizen neighborhoods, but then a rash of crime occurred. Citizens were up in arms. Blame fell on the donors. Literally overnight, in a well-timed and prepared execution, the Alliance erected walls surrounding each ghetto and restricted travel. Her father surmised the real reason was that citizens feared the size of the growing donor population.

  Joan passed her apartment, magnificent by ghetto standards. It stood near the entrance gate. She needed to stop by the market and knew the walking would help her leg feel better.

  The marketplace bustled with people, even though most had not yet returned from their day of work in the city. Smoke permeated it, and dirt covered the floor. Joan made her way through the aisles filled with gritty groceries. Many of the sellers also sold black-market items, hidden beneath the counters. Some stalls cooked food over open flames, but not the kind found at the high-priced citizen restaurants. Joan enjoyed the atmosphere and the smells, but it was not her destination. She continued to the back of the market.

  “BE SURE YOU DON’T MISS THE NEWLY RELEASED FLICKER ABOUT OUR FIRST GOVERNOR, DEPICTING HIS BRAVE RESCUE OF A VILLAGE FROM A HOARD OF BARBARIANS…”

  An elderly security guard stood at a doorway.

  “Miss Lion, you’re early today,” he greeted her warmly.

  Joan didn’t have a grandfather, but if she did, she imagined he would be like Ed.

  “Hi, Ed. Yeah, caught an early bus.”

  Joan scanned her tattoo, and he motioned her to go inside. Only those with special clearance could enter this part of the market. The atmosphere in this small room differed from the main market—shining, clean and sterile. The aisles stood empty, except for her. The food, abundant and high quality, was displayed beautifully. In the checkout, Joan swiped her cash card and made her way out with her two bags of groceries. She paused by Ed.

  “There’s something on t
op for you, Ed,” she told him, motioning to a small package wrapped in paper from the butcher section.

  “Oh, Miss Lion, you never forget me, do you?”

  The food allotted to the ghettos was minimal. The System walked a fine line between keeping donors alive and ensuring they did not become a drain on Alliance resources. Joan had a large stipend, so she purchased a fair amount of food. She had to. She was under instructions to eat a lot of calories. Even so, she had more than enough to spread some around to others. Besides, Joan was lucky enough to eat many meals at the Fitness Center.

  She made her way back through the main market and out into the sunlight. She had one more errand to run. Venturing a few streets out of her way, she picked up her pace to reach Dolly’s apartment.

  As she turned a corner down a narrow side street, she saw the sidewalk on one side without pedestrians, so she crossed from the busy side to the clear. Trudging along the empty sidewalk, Joan discovered too late the reason people walked on the other side. A poster of the Governor hung vandalized with graffiti on the wall a few feet from her. To the Governor’s smile, the artist added long fangs and a forked, snakelike tongue. The gray streaks in his hair had been changed into an obvious diamond pattern, as on a rattlesnake’s head.

  Joan paused when she saw it and had a brief intake of breath. The penalty for desecrating a photograph of the Governor was severe. The Alliance sentenced an offender to a labor camp for life. No donor wanted to be seen near a defiled poster, lest they be accused or implicated in its defilement. Joan stepped out a few steps into the street and hurried on to Dolly’s home.

  After a short walk, she stood before a rundown apartment building. Odors of cooking food wafted out of the open windows. The names of each tenant were posted to front door. Every month an empty space appeared where a name had been. The residents had moved out—no mention of them, no aromas carried on the breeze from the shuttered windows. Inevitably, a new name appeared, and the cycle continued.

  She knocked on the door. A woman in a wheelchair answered. Dolly’s face brightened.

  “Oh, Joan. Come in. Come in.”

  Joan entered and walked to the kitchen, setting one of the bags on the counter.

  “Sorry I can’t stay and chat today, Dolly.”

  Dolly took the bag and began pulling the groceries. “Oh, what would I do without you? You are a blessing.”

  Joan flashed to the sight of Dolly’s husband Frank, hidden in her apartment wall. What would Dolly do without me? Joan thought. She could be talking to her husband right now, cooking those groceries for him…

  “Hey, a special surprise,” Joan smiled broadly and unpacked a few peaches. “These are fresh. Shipped from the South.”

  Holding a large peach to her nose to savor the smell, Dolly said, “How do you get these things? Mmm. I was just talking to someone about you the other day, telling them how you tried to save Frank—”

  Joan interrupted her sternly, “Dolly.”

  “It was a friend.”

  “Friends report on friends,” Joan warned, repeating a motto of the ghetto.

  It was not that donors had no loyalty to each other, but they were not ashamed to betray a fellow donor. In its wisdom the Alliance promulgated the moral rules—the main one being one’s duty to the Alliance. The Alliance was sacred—all else secondary. But not all donors—or citizens—bought into that. Many knew in their hearts there was more to life.

  But for now in the marketplace of the ghettos, betrayal was a commodity—each transaction bringing the seller more food, better living arrangements, and maybe, just maybe, ever so closer to the elusive citizenship.

  Of course, even for those not inclined to report on fellow donors, there was ample motivation. The snatchers used something called “the machine.” No one knew the real name for the machine. Killing off donors for information was not acceptable to the System. That’s where the ingenuity of the machine came into play. The machine was normally utilized once on any given subject. The pain it created was intense and enduring—like a passionate and powerful sunset, the memories of which never fade. Yet it causes no permanent physical damage. But it wasn’t just the pain. The machine invaded a person’s thoughts—his or her mind. It ascertained and assaulted a person’s innermost fears.

  By using the machine, the snatchers strapped what they referred jokingly to as “the invitee” into what resembled a rather comfortable bed. Many invitees expressed astonishment at first, never having slept in such a comfortable bed. The satin-like cloth of the cot impressed them. They were unaware the fabric was a unique blend, designed to absorb bodily fluids that would soon leave the donor’s body: sweat, urine, and vomit. The invitee’s notice of the machine next to them, however, obliterated that wonder. Then the begging would begin, “Please. No. I’ve told you everything I know.” And sometimes they had.

  “Oh, pish posh,” Dolly uttered. “Besides, everyone in this quarter knows anyways; they just don’t talk about it.”

  “There’s a reason for that.”

  “You’re a very brave—”

  Joan brushed her off, “I’m not brave. I have to go.”

  As she opened the door, she felt regretful—felt she rushed the visit. Guilt. She turned, “So, been out today?”

  Dolly shook her head.

  “You should get out, Dolly. The weather’s warming up. I can come by tomorrow. I don’t have to go to the Center. We could go for a walk—”

  “I’ll get out and enjoy the sun. Don’t worry,” Dolly smiled with an understanding gaze. She squeezed Joan’s arm. Joan started to leave, but on an impulse, she turned and hugged Dolly.

  When she attempted to pull back, she found she couldn’t. Dolly kept a firm hold on her—a bear hug. The peach rolled off her lap and onto the floor. After Dolly let go, Joan picked up the peach.

  “I’ll try to make it tomorrow. It’ll be in the afternoon,” she said. She handed the peach to Dolly. “You know, I wouldn’t mind some of your famous peach pie.”

  Dolly winked, “You got it.”

  Out on the street, two young men rushed up to Joan from behind. One grabbed her shoulders and made a little growl, momentarily startling Joan.

  “Reck,” she cried with exasperation.

  At eighteen years old, Reck Tyndall stood over six-feet tall, with thick black hair set off by his hazel eyes. A quiet and serious demeanor expressed itself in his unassuming manner. His handsome looks attracted girls in the ghetto, but his shyness kept him away from them.

  Kaleb stood near him. He was nineteen, short and slight with dark black skin, black curly hair, and deep-brown, almost-black eyes. He had terrible eyesight and wore glasses, compliments of Joan. They were all best friends and had been since they were kids.

  Kaleb’s grandmother Zenobia called them the Three Musketeers. The kids had not understood the reference. In Zenobia’s younger days, she had worked for a wealthy citizen. Her job gave her access to banned books, which she read on the sly, so she always referred to strange things. She was a sage of sorts in the ghetto. Zenobia told them the nickname meant “all for one, one for all.” The kids liked that motto. They also liked the name and used it in the neighborhood. Soon everyone began calling them the Musketeers, even though no one understood what it meant.

  “Knew we’d find you here,” Reck motioned to Dolly’s apartment.

  “I have plenty of food,” Joan said, shrugging it off.

  “It’s not just that. You try to save her husband and now you help her—”

  “Reck, you know I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Sorry.”

  Joan offered, “Hey guys, I don’t have to get up early tomorrow. Want to get together tonight?”

  “Our Governor and his spoiled brat letting you have a rest?” Reck said sarcastically.

  “Give it a rest, Reck. You know, Our Governor is the one you can thank for the food I just gave Dolly.”

  Joan was still excited regarding her meeting with the Governor. She desperate
ly wanted to talk about it, but she knew her friends’ opinions. So she didn’t mention it.

  She also didn’t want to say in front of Reck that Duncan had been there. Reck had a crush on her. She liked him, too—very much. They had been alone one afternoon the previous week, sitting on the roof of her building. He wrapped his arms around her. She relished the feel of his muscles and delighted in his masculine scent. A cold wind blew, and she nuzzled her face into his neck. He abruptly pulled her face to him and kissed her.

  Two months ago he had been rated a “ten” by the System. The System rated donors at age eighteen for health, vigor, and strength on a scale of one to ten, ten being highest. If highly rated donors married other highly rated donors, the System paid them a cash bonus. The greater the couple’s rating, the higher their combined ranking—then the greater the bonus. The rating scale was a genius incentive by the System to encourage a healthy donor population. The belief was that healthy and fit donors gave birth to healthy and fit donor children, which was all the better for organ donation and all the better for the citizenry. Then, of course, for each healthy child the couple gave birth to, they received another bonus.

  Joan realized she would obtain a high ranking when she turned eighteen in a few months. Their friends and family assumed Joan and Reck, best of friends since childhood, would get married one day. Joan never told anyone her true goal—to buy citizenship for her and her father, to get out of the ghetto. As a result, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—let herself develop strong feelings in that way. She wouldn’t fall in love, at least not right now. She concentrated on maintaining her athletic talents, keeping up donations, and earning bonuses. She couldn’t deal with a boyfriend. Being alone with Reck was problematic, and she was glad when the three of them hung out together. Kaleb took the pressure off. Maybe that was why she liked Duncan. There was no pressure. Nothing could ever come of it.

  She told them, “I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, but it’s later in the morning. How about a flicker? Isn’t there something new playing at the theater?”