by Beatty, Cate
Kaleb spoke up, “It’s just another propaganda flick.”
“Kaleb, with you everything is propaganda,” she laughed.
Kaleb was the intellectual one in the group—determined, articulate, and persuasive. Reck, rugged and ready for action, looked after his smaller friend. Kaleb always had something reactionary to say—usually something dangerous. Once he explained to Joan donors didn’t cause the now forgotten disease after the Impact. The Alliance relied upon that “fact” for implementing the System many, many years ago.
The reason was straightforward enough at the beginning: some of the population had a precious immunity against a disease that was decimating mankind. The new disease was most likely caused by the asteroid and its resultant dust cloud, coupled with the immediate squalor and lack of food. While many succumbed to the illness, there were many who did not. Not because they were physically superior; it was just genetic luck. The System forced these people with the immunity—later called donors—to transfer it to others through blood transfusions.
Simple enough. That was the undemanding way it started. But over the years, the Alliance gradually broadened the reaches of the System, taking away more and more rights of the donors. Like a poisonous vine, its tentacles now reached into the entire body of a donor, slinking through, wrapping around, and taking whatever organ a citizen desired.
“The new flick is about our heroic First Governor,” Kaleb said sarcastically. “As usual, he’s the saving grace after the Impact. It shows him single-handedly fighting off hoards of violent barbarians, saving what was left of mankind’s knowledge and forming the Alliance, which now protects us from the dangers of the bloodthirsty people Outside. Is that something you really want to see? Didn’t you get enough in school? It’s always the same. You know, Zenobia told me everyone used to be citizens. It was only after—”
Joan interrupted with a lowered voice, “Now you’re talking propaganda. You shouldn’t talk like that out here on the street.” She raised her voice, “I gotta go. My dad should be home by now. Reck, did you happen to see him at work today?”
Both Reck and Mr. Lion worked for the city sewer department.
“Yup,” he said.
She looked at Reck and thought of the kiss they recently shared on the rooftop—not a quick kiss, but long, leisurely and caring. Their lips had parted. She had not pulled away. A boy had never kissed her like that. While extremely fond of Reck, she expected to feel something more…well, something more. She didn’t know what, though.
One time at the Center, Duncan put his arms around her to help her with archery. He had stood behind her, his right arm barely touching hers as he moved her elbow into the perfect position to pre-draw the bow. His left arm reached around to her chin, tenderly shifting it. She had gasped and caught her breath. Tingling had traveled up and down her spine. Goose bumps appeared. Duncan must have noticed because he whispered, “You’re breathing too fast. Remember, take slow, deep breaths from your diaphragm. Exhale as you nock the arrow.”
Joan turned her thoughts from Duncan, and when Reck didn’t respond further, she finally asked, “Well, how was he?”
Reck obviously didn’t want to say, but he couldn’t lie to her. “He looked like the ‘sun had been bright in his eyes’ last night.”
It was a kinder way of saying a person had been drinking heavily the night before. Her father had many nights like that since they executed Joan’s mother eight months ago. Sometimes Joan wondered if her father knew the truth. Maybe that was why he drank.
Changing the subject, Reck asked her with concern, “Hey, what’s up with tomorrow? Not another donation?” He tenderly grasped her hand.
Reck clearly cared for Joan. He always worried about her donations. The threat of donations was a mystery to him, as he never faced the possibility. His benefactor cut him loose and made him a solus at a young age. Luckily for him, he was strong and healthy and able to make a good living working in the sewers. So although he had no benefactor who needed him, he wasn’t a burden to the Alliance. And now that he had a high marriage rating, the System even deemed him useful to the Alliance.
Joan shrugged, “Just the usual.” She squeezed his hand—he was special to her, not exactly as she was to him—but she had her objectives, and she struggled with that. He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it. She gently removed her hand from his grasp and stroked his cheek. Kaleb loudly cleared his throat, reminding them of his presence.
Appreciatively, but with genuine hesitation, she withdrew her hand. “So, tonight?”
Kaleb demurred, saying, “We can’t. We have a meeting to go to.”
Joan looked at them, and she understood. The two of them attended “meetings” often. She suspected they were underground meetings. Joan knew of an underground movement among the donors but had nothing to do with them. Troublemakers and criminals the Alliance called them. Joan had her goals clear in her mind, and she was going to stick with them. Thankfully, neither Kaleb nor Reck ever pressed her to join the underground. Because she wouldn’t have.
6
Joan unpacked the groceries as her father walked in. Staffan Lion limped toward the kitchen. His tall frame hunched over slightly, making him appear shorter. He had dark brown hair, receding on the sides, and brown eyes. Joan didn’t look like him. As her father always said, with a smile, she luckily favored her mother. It was silly self-deprecation because Staffan Lion had been, and still was, a handsome man.
He had never been called upon to donate an organ, but he often had to use a cane to walk. One day while he was working in the sewers, a metal beam in a tunnel collapsed, breaking his back. Fortunately for him, his unknown benefactor had paid for his medical treatment. Joan worried why that happened, concerned a major donation might be in the offing. Although two years had passed, the concern still nagged at her. What if it happened? He was all she had. Every day she waited to hear his footsteps in the hallway coming home from work. She comprehended how it worked. It could happen at any time. He would just disappear. A snatcher van would slowly leave the ghetto.
“Hey, Dad,” Joan called out.
“Sweetie,” he replied.
He came in, and she reached to give him a hug.
“Careful,” he warned. “Had to go down in the tunnels today. Stink a little. How’s your day?”
Joan didn’t care, and she hugged him anyway.
“Wait till you hear. You’ll never guess whom I met,” she said excitedly.
As she told him the story about her encounter with the Governor, Staffan sighed and poured himself a drink.
That evening, Joan tossed and turned in her sleep. She awoke and through the darkness sensed the photo of Gates staring at her from across the room, just as it did eight months ago when Nox interrogated her.
“I swear, sir, Colonel Nox, sir—”
“It’s Captain,” he said soothingly.
“Captain, sir, I swear, I don’t know anything.”
The Master Manipulator continued talking—softy, gently, monotonously. She lost track of what he said—stuff about the apartment, the weather, the food she liked, on and on, always in a calming voice. Like a fish on a line, he reeled her in.
He came closer and put his arm lightly around her shoulder. Joan cringed. He smiled, a bland and forbidding grin, and spoke kindly, in an almost fatherly manner.
Nox watched her intently. Her lower lip quivered. Fear. Now it was time for the hope.
“Breaking our laws is a terrible thing. But the Governor need never know—or Tegan, for that matter. No one will ever know. Not your mother…I can help you. Will you let me help you, Joan?”
She jerked her head at the mention of her name. It always unnerved a donor. Donors guarded their names from citizens as if they were private, sacred. His casual use of her name gave the impression he was on familiar terms with her, knew her thoughts, and was an intimate friend.
“In a moment those officers will come back in here, and I won’t be able to help you. It may
be the machine for your mother and you.”
Joan noticeably gasped.
“I don’t want that to happen, Joan,” he murmured reassuringly.
She wavered. A conflict battled out inside her. He had her. It was too easy.
“I want to help you, Joan. I know it’s difficult. You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to speak. Just show me. Point.”
Then he used her name again, “Joan.”
He paused a minute. He couldn’t wait too long, couldn’t allow this delicate moment to pass. He began to guide her with his arm, ever so slightly, to where, he did not know. But he was certain she would take over and lead the way.
She did. Walking into the bedroom, she stopped. The inner struggle waged again.
Ever so quietly, almost inaudibly, he said, “Just point, Joan.”
And she did.
Joan lay back in her bed and rubbed her eyes. The rest was a blur for her. Nox pulled the façade off the wall and uncovered the hiding place. Frank screamed, she recalled—a shriek full of fright—then he fell silent after being hit with a dart. Her mother rushed into the room. Nox ordered her arrest. They pulled out the handcuffs. Joan pleaded with Nox not to arrest her mother—begged him.
Weeping, “I’m sorry. Mom…please…I’m sorry.”
The expression on her mother’s face was not anger or even disappointment, “Joan, I understand. Remember you—”
Another dart and her mother fell silent.
Joan was alone again with Nox, on her knees before him. He held her chin and looked at her with…compassion.
“You didn’t break the law, 23,” he comforted her. “Your mother did. Don’t worry. I’m not arresting you. I didn’t find you here.”
Joan never spoke to her mother again. The Alliance hanged her the next day, in a public ceremony broadcast live from somewhere in the bowels of the TEO building. They forced Joan and her father to sit in on a podium and watch, as it was televised on a huge mega screen. As the authorities dragged her mother onto the scaffold, they announced her number over the loudspeaker. Joan’s father uttered her name under his breath, “Annika Lion.” The executioner placed the black hood over her head, but the tele-screen cut to Joan and her father, just before the trap under her feet sprung. The Alliance had a modicum of civility, and the actual moment of death was not telecast.
The Alliance rarely executed donors, even those guilty of state crimes. Instead, it imprisoned them in labor camps. After all, it was of paramount importance to the System that donors survive to be of use to their benefactors. But Joan’s mother was not technically a donor. Annika had been born and lived outside the Alliance walls for her early years and so never got injected with any citizen’s cord blood at birth.
The exact story of her youth was sketchy. In those years the Alliance kidnapped people living outside its walls in a futile attempt by the secretive nation to learn as much as it could about—and from—the rest of the world. The outsider would be interrogated and held prisoner for years, oftentimes appearing in the news to thank the Alliance for his or her “rescue” from the wilds of the Outside. The individual would bless the ones who saved him or her and affirm that the Outside was a horror—a wild place to be protected from. Eventually, as in Annika’s case, they would be tattooed and released to live in the ghetto with the donors.
Annika, as with many of those released and most likely because she was so young when she was rescued, had a damaged memory of her previous life. She told Joan stories, usually at bedtime. Sometimes spontaneously she would regale them with an anecdote. Neither Joan nor her father knew what might have initiated the sudden memory recall. The tales were always disjointed, never connected to a larger story. Joan wasn’t sure whether her mother narrated something that happened to her or whether she recounted fairy tales from her childhood. Annika didn’t know, either.
Frank, the donor Annika tried to hide, had been a popular man in the ghetto. The story of the arrest spread rapidly through the ghetto. Everyone hailed Joan as a hero because she risked her life to help hide Frank and somehow escaped arrest.
Joan rolled over in the bed. Some hero, she thought. It made her sick to her stomach every time someone mentioned it. Unable to return to sleep, she walked into the kitchen for a glass of water.
She noticed her father on the balcony. She went out, and he motioned for her to join him on the chair. He slid over, and she squeezed in beside him. Putting his arm around her, he stroked her hair and forehead, as she laid her head on his chest. He held a drink in his other hand.
“Can’t sleep, honey?”
“Nightmare.”
She knew he suffered through them, too.
“Did I hear the landline phone ring earlier?” Joan queried, as she snuggled in closer to him.
Staffan paused a moment before answering her, “Oh, yeah. Jack called.” Another pause. “He wanted to make sure you got the message about tomorrow. You didn’t tell me you were going in for medical tests.”
Joan rolled her eyes, “I’m going in for medical tests tomorrow, Dad. No big deal.” Then after a moment, “Why didn’t he call my wrist phone?”
Staffan interrupted her, changing the subject, “Stars are beautiful tonight.”
She looked up.
“Moon, too,” he gestured to the east of the sky.
Joan thought back to something Duncan told her about the moon. Last week at the Center, she was resting after running the hurdles, and he joined her on the grass. She had commented about how the moon shone, even though it was daytime. Duncan said, “You know, when I was a kid, my dad would go away on business a lot—to the Outside. This was before we had picture phones; in fact, most places didn’t even have any phone service at all. He told my mom that all we had to do was look at the moon at night, and he would look at it, too. It would be as if we were together because we’d be looking at the same thing at the same time. So before bed my mom would take us kids out to look at the moon each night, and we’d imagine our dad looking at it, too. It made us feel closer to him.” Joan wondered if Duncan gazed at the moon now.
Her father interrupted her thoughts, “Do you remember that song your mother used to sing you? About the drinking cup?”
“‘The Drinking Gourd?’” Joan corrected him. “Of course. She learned it from Zenobia, didn’t she? Mom was always getting the words wrong.”
The memory brought a smile to Joan’s face.
“Well, your mom didn’t grow up with it. My mother used to sing it to me, too.”
“Isn’t it an old nursery rhyme song?”
“Yes.”
“Dad, can you sing it to me?”
“Your mother had the voice, not me.” Joan didn’t say anything. “But I’ll try,” he said, giving her a kiss on her forehead.
“The white riverbank makes a very good road
The dead trees show you the way
To the right, to the right, travel on and
Follow the drinking gourd
When the sun comes back and the first quail calls
The drinking gourd is right
For the old man is waiting to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.”
After a few minutes, Joan gently chided him, “You have a good voice.”
“Do you know what the song is supposed to be about?” he asked softly.
“Just nonsense words like most nursery rhymes?”
“My mother told me—well that is they say—it describes a way to escape.”
“Escape? Escape to where?”
There were stories about donors escaping the Alliance, but usually when a donor evaded, he or she remained in hiding inside the Alliance for the simple reason that the Outside was scarier. The Alliance has been quite successful in convincing everyone—citizen and donor alike—of the dangers of the immediate Outside of the continent.
“Well, some say that outside the Alliance borders, the rest of the continent is not wild, not anarchy. There’s civilization.”
>
Joan sat up, “Dad, don’t tell me you believe those stories?! Don’t you watch the news?”
He shrugged and pulled her down. “I’m just repeating stories about nursery rhymes.”
After thinking a minute, Joan asked curiously, “So how does it describe this escape? I don’t get it.”
“It shows the direction—where to go.”
“What?”
“I was told the ‘drinking gourd’ is the constellation of the Big Dipper. See, it’s right there?” He pointed up to the northern sky. “I’d guess you follow the Big Dipper.”
“Follow it where?” she persisted. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, I would guess you keep it on your right. The song talks about it being on the ‘right’…and so on. If you kept the Big Dipper on your right, that would mean you would go west.”
“The West of the continent? The West is all wasteland, from the Impact. Any people living there are wild. Mom was lucky she got rescued from it. What about the rest of the song?”
Her father finished his whiskey, and the soporific effect was doing its work. “Who knows? I’m sure you’re right, and that it’s all nonsense, anyway.”
He kissed her forehead again.
“You know how I love you, don’t you? Now come on, we both should try to get some sleep.”
7
Clouds darkened the noon sky, threatening an early spring rain, as Joan walked up to the front entrance of the medical center, officially named the Alliance Center for Advanced Medical Research. The huge building towered before her. It was the largest, most expensive, and most lavish civilian building in the entire Alliance. Medicine was a booming business, made more so with organ donations that were critical to the economy of the Alliance.
Among the new nations and those rebuilding, the Alliance offered the best in medical care. From its trading partners, many people came willing to pay with desperately needed goods and materials for access to its medical services.
Medicine wasn’t the only service the Alliance had to offer. Many of its steel mills were up and running; a few oil refineries were in operation; and it had ample coal deposits, timber, and an abundance of farm goods, too. But The Alliance possessed one other commodity. Recognizing the possible benefits derived from the large donor population, the Governor recently changed the tax laws to allow other nations access to the System—access to donors. For a hefty price, newborns of wealthy people from these other countries could now become benefactors. It was a stroke of genius on the Governor’s part, and further relegated donors to a commodity—a valuable national commodity.