I finally exhale. Counting the ticks, I wait a quarter bell. Then I creep down the remainder of the hallway—and freeze.
It was too easy.
The Guards wait at the ready just outside the Restoration Chamber. Hands on their swords, they are ready to attack whomever they heard lurking in the room.
Their stances slacken when they see it’s me. Confusion takes hold of their expressions, and they loosen their grip on their swords. I almost start to panic and run, but I know the only way out of this situation, if there is a way out, is directly through it. I scramble for an excuse for my presence in the Hall of Archons long past the nightly locking of its doors.
“Archon Eva. What are you doing here at this bell?”
I summon my most authoritative voice and posture and say, “Still working away on my Chronicle for the Founders’ Day celebration. Holed up in the Scriptorium until it’s done.”
“You know the rules, Archon Eva,” the taller one says. “All Archons must leave the Hall at the final bell.”
“I know the rules, but I also know how important this Chronicle is to Archon Laurence and to Founders’ Day. I missed the final bell because I was so engrossed in writing. I decided to stay through the night to finish my work. I’m sure you understand. And you know as well as I that I am not in violation of The Lex. There is no closing time specified therein. It is tradition, not law.”
They glance at each other, clearly unsure as to how to proceed in this highly unusual situation. Besides, I speak the truth in terms of what is expressly forbidden, and my knowledge of The Lex is now legendary in the Aerie. I’m certain that these two don’t know The Lex as well as I do. Conversely their knowing this about me frightens them, so they dare not question my pronouncement. They seem to reach an unspoken agreement, and the Guard who’s been doing all the talking says, “We can let it go just this once, Archon Eva. But we must escort you to the front door of the Hall. We have rules to follow.”
“Of course. Just as soon as I make safe my work in the Scriptorium. I will meet you at the doors in five ticks.”
I can see they don’t like leaving me alone in the Hall for even one more tick. But they are bound to pareo, too, and begrudgingly agree.
I walk quickly toward the Scriptorium, and once I’m out of the Guards’ sight, I duck down the corridor to the Conservation Chamber. My heart is pounding, more out of fear than exertion. “The Guards found me,” I whisper to Lukas.
He jumps up and starts grabbing his gear. “What are you doing in here, then?”
“I have to meet them in four ticks at the Hall doors. You have to leave now. I’ll keep them distracted in the front while you climb over the back wall. If I can, I’ll meet you back at the Clothing Keep.”
Lukas waves me closer. “Take a quick look at this before I shut it off. You know how the Manifest shows that the Founders were stockpiling resources for at least two weeks before the Healing?”
“Yeah,” I whisper back, my heart still thumping. I glance back toward the hall.
“Well, in the Boundary, we’ve heard rumors that the pre-Healing people had Tech that predicted the weather. I’ve been thinking maybe that’s how they managed to come up with the lead time to stockpile the Genesis.”
For the briefest tick, I’m so astonished that I forget my fear. Tech that predicts the weather? I can’t imagine such a thing. But then I’m reminded of what Elizabet said in her video. “It makes sense, you know … remember how Elizabet questioned how her parents knew to evacuate so early? Long before the seas started to take over the shores. If predicting the weather was commonplace, then she wouldn’t have wondered about that.”
“That’s true.” He pauses as if to trying to determine where to place that piece of information in this huge, complicated puzzle. Whether he doesn’t understand the need for haste or he’s just confident in his own speed, he makes me want to scream.
Lukas turns back to the computer. The screen glows blue as his fingers dance on the rectangular squares. I kneel next to him, hoping he’ll get the hint to stop this and run. Besides, all I see is a jumble of numbers and a diagram. He makes little noises, but whether they indicate understanding or confusion, I’m not sure. Either way, we need to leave. “Come on,” I implore him.
“Just one last tick.” He stops on one page and points. “See this drawing?”
“What am I supposed to see? We don’t have much time.”
“Doesn’t it resemble some sort of weather gauge? And look. Along the margin, there’s all sorts of notes about the depth of the ice and the strength of the currents.”
I really can’t see a gauge, but I examine the notations along the margins. They remind me of some earlier notes, ones that I disregarded on first glance. The pieces are coming together.
All at once, I stop breathing. By the Gods … It’s my turn to delay. “Go back to the first screen, Lukas.”
He returns to the first page. Was this the page I remembered? I scan down the page as quickly as I can. Yes, there are the notes.
In tiny lettering near the very bottom of the page, it says, For more details on the early research behind this strategy, please reference “President Eisenhower’s Science Advisory Committee on Weather Modification for Military Purposes, January 1958, Highly Classified,” and “NATO’s Von Karman Committee Report on Climate Change and Environmental Warfare, 1960, Highly Classified.”
My heart is beating very fast. “Look at the title, Lukas.”
He leans closer to the screen, then glances up at me. His face is blank.
I don’t want to say the words aloud, but it seems that I must. “The Founders didn’t use this Tech to predict the weather. They used this Tech to cause the Healing.”
XXXVIII.
Augustus 11
Year 242, A.H.
As I walk through the doors of the Hall of Archons and into the night, I wonder if the Guards will try to follow me. I can’t be certain that they won’t—for my own safety, I’m sure they would say if I spotted them—so I head toward home. Only when the streets are utterly silent, save the usual shifting of the ice, do I turn toward the Clothing Keep. And Lukas.
I am anxious; the ice clouds of my breath come thicker and faster than usual, ghostly tendrils in the moonlight. I can’t stop thinking about what we’d read. We didn’t even need to skim that much for the cryptic drawing and notations on the Genesis Tech to make sense. The Founders not only had the ability to predict the weather, they could also harness and control it. In the days and bells before the Healing, the Founders, operating under their Pre-Healing name of the New North Corporation, used nuclear Tech to divert sea currents and melt the polar ice caps. The Genesis was fully loaded for a new life in New North not because the Founders knew that the Healing was imminent but because they caused it. They had been planning the Healing for years, if not decades.
As I navigate the dark streets of the Aerie, my thoughts are only half focused on the Ring-Guards’ patrol and steering around the walkways’ icy patches. My mind is brimming with certain terrible phrases from the reports: “presently within man’s reach is the ability to manipulate climate for long periods” and “strategic multi-megaton nuclear detonation to alter the course of ocean streams and global weather patterns.” The truth is more horrible than I could have ever imagined.
But I can’t speak it aloud or even really think about it just yet. Even though Lukas and I didn’t plan to rendezvous, I need to see him.
Not until I reach the relative safety of Lukas’s little room in the Clothing Keep do I allow myself to contemplate in full the horror of the truth. There in the relative warmth of his tiny chamber, in the flickering glow of its small fire—in the comfort of his arms—I can no longer stave off the inevitable.
I fall against him and gasp. “I can’t believe it.”
Lukas hugs me close and chokes out a “Neither can I.” Even in his wildest speculations about the true history of New North, he could have never imagined this atrocity. Who could ha
ve?
A memory flashes through my mind. I recall the tick from the Testing when I stood on the Frozen Shores for the first time and fully comprehended the billions of people who died beneath the seas spread out before me. I think about Elizabet drowning in a flood engineered by her own parents, who were certainly Founders and part of the New North Corporation. The magnitude of that loss and horror of this truth melt my numbness, and I start to sob. “They killed billions of people. Not the Gods, the Founders. They killed their own children.”
“Yes.” Lukas’s voice is as cold as the night air. “They acted like the Gods themselves.”
I slide out of his arms, suddenly dizzy. I rush outside just before I start heaving. If I wasn’t so distraught, I’d be embarrassed.
Once I’m finished, Lukas leads me back inside. Gently, he takes off my sealskin cloak, seats me in his single chair, and wipes down my face with a cloth he dips in water warming over the fire. “Are you okay?” he asks, kneeling beside me.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again, Lukas.” I take his hands in mine and ask a question I know he can’t answer. “Why? Why did they do it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine any rationale that would have made it seem reasonable. I can only guess that the Founders wanted to start over. Create a society that they thought was better than the pre-flood world—”
“At the expense of their children’s lives?” I interrupt, angry at his words. My voice is loud, too loud for this tiny space in the darkest hour of the night.
He flinches. “Eva, I’m not saying that I agree with their reasons. I’m just guessing that’s how they justified the floods to themselves. Sometimes people do awful things in the name of a greater good.”
I hold his hands tighter. “I’m sorry.”
He grips back. “I know. We are being asked to imagine the unimaginable.”
“I don’t think it was unimaginable to the Founders. In fact, they had been imagining it, planning it down to the tiniest detail, for years. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. It’s why they took such care in crafting The Lex. The Founders destroyed the old world so they could create the world they wanted. But they needed to make sure that the people would follow them. So they made the old world seem evil. They invented a fictional history so they could control New North. It’s why they borrowed from the Bible and these other pre-Healing myths. They truly did try to become Gods, just the way they claimed Apple did. They created a past, present, and future to which the survivors of the Healing would cling. It’s sickening.”
Lukas nods. “I know.” His voice is distant.
I stand up, leaving Lukas to kneel by my empty chair. I begin pacing the room. “Do you think that Eamon knew about this?”
“I don’t know. He never said anything. But I’m guessing he got close to this truth.”
“So somebody else out there knows the truth. And that person—or persons—are the ones that killed Eamon.”
“Maybe.” Lukas sounds distracted. “Eva, this is exactly the kind of answer the Angakkuq would seek. The kind of information that would set all the people of New North free to create a real society where we lived by our own rules instead of the falsehoods of The Lex.”
I stop pacing and glare at him. “Lukas, don’t make this into something it’s not. This is about finding Eamon’s killer. Not fulfilling your fantasies about the Angakkuq.”
“I know, Eva.” He bites his lip, then meets my gaze. “But can’t you see that they are one and the same? When you find out who knows the truth by telling the people of New North, you will also find Eamon’s killer.”
I know he is right on some level. But on another he is very wrong. This kind of belief at the expense of everything else was what led to the Healing in the first place. I don’t want my search for my brother’s killer to become intertwined with this role of Angakkuq he’s foisted on me and knows I’ve rejected. I want retribution. Rather, I want justice. Eamon was another victim of the Founders as well. And then I want this painful sojourn into the past to be over. To return to normal, whatever that looks like now. Though I can’t imagine returning to a world where the murdering Founders are toasted and praised and worshipped and quoted over and over again. Still, I’ll deal with the uncertainty of the future when the time comes.
So I say, “I don’t see how telling the truth to the people of New North would expose those who know it already.”
“The ones who know the truth will try to stop you on Founders’ Day.” His tone is suddenly very certain, and very cold.
I wonder where he’s hiding his concern for my well-being, or if he’s even hiding it at all. “Why wouldn’t they just let me speak and then sentence me to swing from the gallows?”
Lukas shakes his head. “Killing you would only make a martyr of you. It wouldn’t erase what you say from people’s minds. In fact, it would probably reinforce the possibility that you are speaking the truth.”
“This will never work,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
“Yes, it will. On Founders’ Day, you are scheduled to march to the center of the town square dais and read your Chronicle of the Genesis dig, right?”
“How do you know that?”
He smiles a little. “Did you forget that we Boundary have ears everywhere? Anyway, it makes sense that the Archons would want you to read. You are the crowd favorite.”
I don’t return his smile. “I can’t promise that I’ll be allowed to read. I am writing it, but I doubt Archon Laurence will let me present it to the people. The Genesis is his big find. It’s his ticket to the Chief position when my father steps down.”
“That may be, but I know you, Eva. You are resourceful. You will find a way to make this happen. It is too perfect. On Founders’ Day, all of New North will be assembled in the Aerie Square. Instead of reading your Chronicle, you will read a statement of the truth. And before you get to the end—but not before the people begin to understand—someone will try to stop you.”
Lukas’s eyes look so steely and determined that he’s starting to scare me a little. “Aren’t you worried about me at all in this scheme of yours?” I ask. My voice sounds small in my ears.
Without warning, he rushes toward me. He grabs my hands and squeezes them tight. “I would never leave you exposed, Eva. My men will be on the Ring, watching everything. Protecting you.”
“Your men?” I pull my hands free. Now he has “men” and “ears everywhere.” Eamon’s Companion. My family’s servant. Since when? Suddenly I feel like a cog in a pre-Healing machine. Unaware of the greater workings and only important in a general sort of way. A replaceable sort of way.
“I am not the only seeker of the truth,” Lukas continues, seeing the doubt and suspicion in my eyes. “There are so many Boundary like me who want to see the Aerie structure topple and New North change into a new, free society. How do you think we Boundary felt when your Founders landed on our island—the land we’ve lived on for thousands of years—and tried to tell us how to lead our lives?”
I’d never thought about it quite that way before. Shame at the presumptuousness of my people courses through me. Shame at my own haughtiness. “I can’t imagine it,” I whisper.
“When my grandmother called you the Angakkuq and told you that we’ve been waiting for you for generations, she was serious, Eva. My people have been waiting for the apiqsaq—helping spirit—of the Angakkuq since the Founders’ ships landed on this shore. And we knew that this time was coming long before then, too.”
I still can’t bring myself to look at him directly. “You’ve never laid out the whole plan like this.”
“I don’t think I was ever really sure that we could uncover the truth. But you did it; you unearthed the buried secret.” He wraps his arms around me so tightly I can hardly breathe. “You are more than I could have ever hoped or prayed for. And for that, I thank my Gods.”
His words sound odd. But I let him pull me close again. I bury my head in his shoulder and squeeze my eyes clo
sed. From within the depths of his arms, I ask, “Are you speaking to me as the Angakkuq or as Eva?”
He takes my head in his cold rough hands so that I have no choice but to stare into his black eyes. I feel a warmth spreading through me and am so conflicted. I want to be near him, but Jasper’s face on the night of the Northern Lights festival keeps appearing in my mind.
Before placing his lips on mine, he says, “As everything.”
XXXIX.
Augustus 13
Year 242, A.H.
I am alone with quills, ink, even fresh, unused paper. Silence pervades the empty chamber; Archon Theo wants to ensure that my creative gifts remain undisturbed. The Scriptorium has every tool necessary for the crafting of a perfect Chronicle except inspiration.
Pacing around the cavernous room, I cringe as my footsteps echo against the icy walls. I pass quarter bells in a state of worry that I may never arrive at the proper Chronicle for the Genesis. Theo peeks in from time for time, but otherwise I am without company. And ideas.
It is frigid in here, colder even than in the Conservation Chamber, which requires lower-than-usual temperatures for preservation. I tell myself that the glacial air is stymieing my writing. I summon an Attendant to fetch my sealskin cloak from the front hallway. Trying to stave off the bone chill, I walk in circles until the Attendant returns. I then wrap myself in the warmth of the cloak that kept me snug even in the Tundra.
Somewhat thawed, I fight to convince myself that I’m able to think again. I play with the idea of picking up where Madeline’s Chronicle left off, vindicating her theories about the suspicious placement of the Tech with all my newfound knowledge. I toy with a Chronicle told from the point of view of the Techs’ owners—the Founders—but I am repulsed by the thought of placing myself in their shoes. I even consider going the traditional route, uncovering the Relics as I found them in situ and disclosing my revelations about them as they came to me.
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