“They didn’t say. You know how they are.” Mark raised his eyes, imploring me to give him some reason to believe in this impossibility.
“Gosh,” I said.
Hands grasped Mark’s shoulders, shook him gently. “Good, kid, good, but remember to show yourself a little so they know you’re still here waiting with them.” Sam hunkered down between us. His “respectable” high-collared shirt and slacks made him the picture of a model citizen of Harmony, a recycling-plant manager or maybe the owner of a small boutique. I looked for Cris again. The “citizen” he was talking to probably was Tua.
“Get up near the streetlamps so that blond head of yours’ll catch the light,” Sam advised. “Use that lovely smile. Remember, it’s all about performance.”
“I’m no performer,” said Mark.
“Too late, kid, you’re all they’ve got. Not all elections are official, you know.” Sam grinned at him happily, practically ruffled his hair. Geared up, as Mali had said. “Go on, now. Give ’em a little touch of Harry.” He urged Mark to his feet, watching after him possessively.
“You’re really enjoying this,” I observed.
“This is the best,” he agreed. “This is the climb, where hope is your engine and everything’s in front of you, where you watch the potential for power rise like sap out of young people like Mark… and you.”
And eloquence from their organizer. “Sam, I don’t get it. It’s not even your issue.”
“Is it really so mysterious?” He regarded me with a certain distance. “As Mali says—I quote, so as not to sound pretentious—when you’re walking the Stations, you clean up whatever mess you come across. Every situation, even the world itself, has its own set of stations, after all.” He looked away, methodically scanning the crowd as it milled about the plaza, restless with waiting. “And we have this habit of resistance, you see. One you would do well to cultivate.” His eyes came back to me and he smiled, heavy lidded. “Except, of course, where I am concerned.”
I laughed. How could I do otherwise? On the step behind me, Songh squealed, “Here they come!”
The Greens were in motion. Lights flicked on, doors sighed open. Mark hurried up the steps from the plaza. Cris and Yolanda intercepted him. “What now?” Mark hesitated, casting a desperate glance over their shoulders for guidance from Sam.
“Talk to him,” Sam urged. “He needs your support.” I signaled both thumbs up. Songh raced up with the BardClyffe petitions. A group of citizens strode across the lobby, the mayor’s familiar strawberry curls bobbing among them. Mark took the petitions under his arm as Crispin’s impatience grabbed his attention momentarily.
“You’re on, lad,” Sam murmured. When I looked back, he’d gone.
The mayor was a tall, bony woman with a beleaguered, forthright manner and bangs of frizz framing three sides of a long face. The sleeves of her fashionable jumpsuit were bunched up in workmanlike rolls. I was surprised she’d come in person. It was an election year, to be sure, but her own term wasn’t up for another two.
She did not cower behind the glass. She strode through the door, gesturing the sixteen members of the Town Council to follow. Cora Lee, as always made less diminutive by her habitual green silk, came last of all. She offered us no sign of recognition.
The mayor halted in the open halfway to the steps. “Would someone care to tell me what the hell is going on out here?”
Our smaller group fell back as Mark stepped forward. This moment we had actually staged.
Mark offered up his old little-boy smile. When he spoke, I envied his steadiness. “Good evening, Your Honor. On behalf of the apprentice population of Harmony, as well as of many of her citizens, the undersigned request a frank and public discussion of the future of the Outside Adoption Policy, as well as of the future of those already participating in this program.”
He stepped back. One by one, he called the names of the eight villages. With each name, two of us came forward to add petitions to the pile already in his arms. When he held them all, he went to stand in front of the mayor like the people’s messenger boy.
“My, my,” said the mayor. She eyed the stack as if it were an unexpected civic award. “This looks very well organized. Perhaps I should put you to work in my office.”
Several members of the council tittered appreciatively.
“We’d like to know if and when this discussion will take place,” said Mark.
“Well, we’ll certainly look into the matter as soon as we can.” The mayor gestured. An aide hurried forward to take charge of the petitions.
Mark held them tight. “We’d like to know tonight.”
“Attaboy!” whispered Cris.
Now the titterers muttered disapproval. The rest studied our delegation, perhaps noting that it exactly matched theirs in number. A mixed lot, this council. One man, one woman elected from each village according to a complicated formula that required seating fifty percent ex-apprentices. Cora Lee elbowed her way to the front. “Under the circumstances, Your Honor, opening a discussion seems a reasonable request.”
The mayor smiled pleasantly. “Are these children friends of yours, Cora?”
“Some of them are known to me.”
Mark raised the petitions in front of him. “There are six thousand, one hundred and thirty-two signatures here, Your Honor. At least twelve hundred are from citizens.”
“My, my. That many.”
“The issue really should be put on this week’s Town Meeting agenda,” said Cora. Mali had coached her well.
“Outrageous!” complained a neat, balding man to the mayor’s right. SecondGen, Founder Family, I guessed, from the tight expensive cut of his clothes and the equally tight set of his mouth. “This is unprecendented!”
“With all respect, sir,” said Mark, “it is not.”
The mayor narrowed weary eyes at him. “Done your research, eh?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
She jerked her head familiarly at Cora. “I take it Ms. Lee is known to you?”
“She is, Your Honor.”
“Will you and your”—she waved a vague hand toward the plaza—“the rest of them trust Cora Lee to be your advocate in this matter before this council and the citizenry?”
Mark glanced at Cora. “If she is willing, we’d be honored.”
When Cora nodded, the mayor nodded, crossing this item off her never ending mental list. “Then Cora, my dear, we’ll let you carry all this impressive paperwork. Just punishment for opening your mouth, eh?” She fixed Mark with a school principal stare. “And you. Who’re you ‘prenticed to?”
When informed, the mayor looked mildly incredulous. “Theatre, is it? Well, if you’ve any interest in Administration, come see me in the morning. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a full calendar waiting upstairs and we’d all like to be home by a reasonable hour. You’re all on probation for breaking curfew, so hustle on back to your dorms.”
As she was turning away, Mark said loudly, “Excuse me, Your Honor, but when did you say this discussion would take place?”
She stopped and looked back. “I didn’t, did I?”
“No, ma’am. And there are a lot of people here who’d really like to know.”
“Now, Dunya,” muttered the balding man, “There’s no need to be ruled by the rabble.”
That seemed to decide her. The mayor, after all, had been an apprentice once. “Well, I see no point in postponing the inevitable. We’ll take it up at the next meeting, how’s that?”
“This week?” asked Mark.
“This Thursday night.”
His challenge met more fully than he’d expected, Mark looked as if all the possible consequences were racing through his brain at once. “That’s perfect, Your Honor. Would you like to tell them yourself?”
“So I can’t take it back, eh?”
Mark met her tired smile. “I thought, rather, so that you could have all the applause.”
The mayor made the announcement and she did get the
applause, and cheering as well, the impulsive, disorganized sort that comes when an outcome is unexpected. Cora Lee twitched her green silk into place and smiled as Mark lowered the thick stack of paper into her arms. He looked relieved to have them out of his hands.
“Now the real fun begins,” Cora murmured.
When she’d followed the mayor back into the South Tower, we milled around a bit. We’d made no plan for celebration.
“Guess we should get back to the Ark,” I murmured. But Cris pounded Mark’s shoulder suddenly and yelled, “We got ’em!” He threw an arm around Mark, an arm around me as if there was nothing awkward between us, and I understood something interesting: as overbearing as Cris could be, he was uninterested in leadership. That sort of responsibility might cramp his freedom of expression as an artist.
But he could celebrate Mark’s leadership and his whooping set Songh dancing and broke the stall. The plaza erupted with cheers and excited babble. Mark’s co-organizers rushed up to mob him with congratulations. He took it with smiling grace but escaped with relief when they moved on to congratulating each other. He grabbed my sleeve. “C’mon. Our part’s done.” The blouse of his coverall was soaked through. “Oh god, I think I hate this.”
“Being scared doesn’t mean you hate it. Like stage fright. Some actors never get over it, but they keep acting.”
“That’s actors.” He brushed damp hair from his eyes. “I remind myself of my father when I’m like this.”
“Can’t be so bad, then.”
“Dangerous. He liked power, my father. Liked it too much. Let’s go home.”
“Where’s that?” grumbled Songh cheerfully, catching up at the bottom of the stairs. “You know, it’s gonna be something when you’re all winning your citizenships and I’m still locked out of my own damn house!”
“You can sleep in my guest room,” said Jane.
“Your guest room?” we laughed.
The crowd was breaking up, spilling onto the paths leading radially into the encircling park. A citizen walking on my right smiled and congratulated me. When I realized it was Omea, I hugged her. “You were here!”
“Of course, child. Did you think we wouldn’t be?”
“Somebody had to show that ignorant crowd how to behave,” said Ule from my left. He’d piled on more clothing than I’d ever seen him in, and none of it looked good. As I fought off the giggles, he loosened his high neon-pink collar, slipped off his pointed white shoes. Ahead of us, Moussa draped a dashiki-clad arm across Mark’s back. Further along, Mali and Te-Cucularit strolled at ease and elegant in gallery-owner tweeds. Cu was turning admiring heads among the crowd moving homeward with us as we entered Founders’ Park. So much for low profile. Behind us, sporadic cheering echoed from the plaza. The irony of it piqued me. Our SecondGen supporters could party on the steps of Town Hall until dawn if they wanted.
“Well, you did it.” Sam had replaced Omea at my side.
I snorted. “I didn’t do anything but show up.”
“Aw, shucks, ‘twarn’t nuthin…”
“I mean, my head’s been completely in the show. It was Mark and the others… and you guys.”
Sam chuckled softly. “For a woman who looks like she spends a lot of time thinking, you aren’t real big on self-aware.”
It was dark under the big trees. The wrought-iron post lights were dim and widely spaced. The homeward stream thinned, veering off to different paths or hurrying ahead. Our group sauntered, splitting into twos and threes as the path narrowed. Talking with Mark, Mali trailed his fingers through the overhanging leaves as if petting a favorite animal.
When I said nothing, Sam continued, “You don’t see your place in the scheme of things—for instance, how much people rely on you. Micah, Mark, Jane, and Songh, even that asshole boyfriend of yours.”
“Cris certainly doesn’t rely on me, and I do wish you’d stop calling him that.”
“Asshole or your boyfriend?”
“Either… uh, both.” A breeze whispered in the branches. Ahead, Tuli and Lucienne moved through a pool of shifting pathlight side by side, black and white mirror images of the same willowy long-skirted girl.
“Well, that’s progress. Does that mean you’re free this evening?”
I shook my head. “Micah’s expecting us back at the Arkadie.”
“See what I mean? Reliable. I answer to that, too, and I’m proud of it. Why aren’t you?”
“I am. It’s just—”
“You think it’s not enough, but at the right moment it can be everything.” He said it lightly, but his face was sober under the post light. He looked away from me, whipping his arm back and forth boyishly as if tossing stones. “Well, I’ll walk you to the theatre.”
“Thank you.”
“She thanks me. Ohh, I am making progress.”
“Jeez, Sam, couldn’t you just talk to me? About ordinary things?”
Again the invisible stone toss, low and flat. “Yes, ma’am, I could. What kind of things?”
“About your life, about the Eye, no, not even. That’s not ordinary. I don’t know. Anything.”
“Still after that what-is-he?”
I shrugged. “Of course.”
“You got your three sentences yet?”
“No,” I replied quietly.
“Ah, you’ll get it all wrong anyway.” A dark nutlike object appeared in his right hand. He rolled it deftly across his palm, under and over his fingers, making it appear and disappear. I was sure if I got a close look at it, I’d find twelve little carved totems. Somewhere away among the trees, cheering broke out again. The dark nut hung frozen between his fingers as Sam stilled, listening. He shrugged, and the nut rolled again, up and around, too fast to be possible. “You’re from Chicago, right?”
I was surprised. “Yes.”
“Terrible town. Can’t have been easy getting out of there.”
“I guess.” I was wondering how he knew.
“And you obviously couldn’t buy your way into Harmony like so many do.”
My turn this time to correct a misconception. “That’s not how it’s done. The computer—”
“Yeah, yeah. About the first quarter are chosen on merit. The rest, well, the world is full of talented youngsters. Why not lean toward those who also happen to be rich?”
“How could you know what goes on in Harmony?”
“I make it my business to know anything useful.”
“What about Jane?” Surely she was proof for my side.
“Must have been a slow year.”
“You’re horrible.”
“Hey, love, doesn’t it make you feel better to know you’re the real thing?”
“I guess.” Of course it did, if I could believe him.
He looked at me sideways. “Aw, shucks, ‘twarn’t nuthin’—”
“Sam, Art is illegal in Chicago. I got out ’cause I had to. Don’t make more out of it than it was.”
He raised an eyebrow in reply, rolling the nut across his knuckles and shaking his head.
I caved in to the silence first. “Did you always live on Tuatua?”
“Nope.” He was listening again, more intently. The cheers in the distance sounded more like yelling. “Ule, hear that?”
“I hear,” Ule replied from the shadows ahead.
“Moussa?”
“Yah.”
“TeCu?”
“Here.”
The Eye closed rank. Mali and Cu pulled up short of the next circle of path light. Cris and Tua halted with them. Omea and Pen caught up behind, shepherding Songh and Jane.
“What is it?” asked Songh. Omea hushed him. We stood in the whispering dark, listening. A woman screamed shrilly off to one side. Angry shouting rose and died away, then erupted anew in three different locations.
Sam interlaced his left hand firmly with mine. “Truce for the moment and do exactly what I tell you.”
Mali’s nostrils twitched. He slid out of his fancy jacket. “I’d call it a bit t
oo quiet in our immediate neighborhood.”
Te-Cucularit slipped off his shoes, bundled them with his jacket and Mali’s, and stashed them in the crook of a tree. He rolled up his sleeves.
“Up ahead, I’m guessing,” said Ule, “at the turn.”
Lucienne and Tuli eased to either side of him. Mali drew Mark into Moussa’s shadow. The three dancers moved to the front. We rounded the turn.
Where the path kinked around three massive spreading oaks, a clot of young men waited in red and white uniforms, armed with SecondGen insolence and branches torn from the trees.
“My old friends, the soccer team,” muttered Mark.
“And several dozen of their friends,” said Ule.
“We’ll match them play for play,” Moussa promised.
Sam considered us quickly. “In addition to the usual, it’s Cu on Mark, Omea on Jane, Pen on Songh, Tua on Cris. Moussa?”
“I’ll cover.” Moussa shifted to group with Cu and Mali. I suddenly understood their constant athletics in the rehearsal hall as another kind of rehearsing, defense and offense, precise coordination and deployment of strength. I got an inkling of why Mali had survived Sam’s beating without a scratch.
“I’ll take care of myself,” declared Cris recklessly.
“Stick tight, pretty boy,” Sam growled. “We’re safer without heroics.”
Cris grinned at him. “Who’s gonna protect you?”
“Shut up and listen,” said Tua. Startled, Cris subsided.
“Down their throats and scatter,” said Sam. “There’s too many of them.”
Ule and his girls nodded. Pen looked eager.
“Okay. What we need now”—Sam flicked back his throwing arm, covered my eyes with his other hand—“is a little light around here.”
I saw the flash through the cracks between his fingers. Immediately he grabbed my wrist and we were moving, all of us, fast and tight together. The soccer boys were blinking and disoriented. The flare burned white-gold on the path like a tiny hungry sun. One boy tried to stomp it out. The odor of burning athletic shoe hit me as we raced toward them. They didn’t see us coming until we were on top of them.
Ule and the girls plowed into them, shrieking like Berserkers, ducking under and around, grabbing arms and clothing and more delicate parts, tearing branches out of astonished hands. Moussa and Cu were close behind, snatching the flying branches out of the air, swinging hard and at random, bare feet kicking sidelong while Mali and Mark ran between them.
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