by Lyga, Barry
“I think I’m probably hopeless when it comes to whistling,” she confided in him when the giggles subsided.
But he didn’t give up. Their walks to work—sometimes with Lissa, sometimes without—became tutorials on whistling, even though Deedra was certain she would never figure it out.
Jaron kept Rose moving. He changed his shifts at the last minute, moved him from station to station with a frequency that would have made anyone else’s productivity suffer. But Rose just took it, bore down, and soon had mastered every aspect of the production line. Routinely, the Bang Boys would hassle him about his coat, insisting he remove it, pointing out that it was a “safety hazard,” that it could get caught in the belt. Rose nodded and agreed with them, but every day he came to work with the coat on. And left it on.
Life at L-Twelve otherwise had returned to something like normal. Jaron never came down from his perch, so Deedra had to see him only on vid, and even that was rare. The Bang Boys were his influence on the floor, his appendages. For a time she feared their dragging her up to the office and to Jaron, but as the days passed, she came to fear them only as much as she always had.
Dr. Dimbali began hovering around Rose early on. Unlike every other person at L-Twelve—or in the Territory, for that matter—Rose did not ignore Dr. Dimbali. In fact, he almost seemed to enjoy the crazy old coot’s rants and raves. One day, when Rose had been stationed next to her, she suffered three solid hours of the two of them discussing something to do with blood flow and veins and heart muscle. She couldn’t imagine anything more boring than that; just being in proximity of the talk made her want her ears to explode so she wouldn’t have to listen any longer. But Rose seemed to enjoy it, even thanking Dr. Dimbali enthusiastically when the man moved on to harass someone else, shouting, “Hearken! Hearken! Mankind descended from the now-extinct apes! Will we follow in their path? This is fundamental! This is truth!”
That was one weird thing about Rose. There were others.
Like this: Every day, she noticed, his lips would not move when they all recited the Patriot Oath.
No one had noticed except her. She knew this because if anyone else had noticed, the Bang Boys would have “persuaded” Rose in their own inimitable way to recite the oath.
She asked him about it one day, quietly, not wanting anyone to overhear. And he said the strangest thing she’d ever heard:
“I work hard. Why does it matter what I say?”
She’d never thought of it that way before. Ever. And now, every day…
Every day, she still recited the oath. But every day, she thought about what he’d said while she did so.
Every day, she wondered.
And every night, she looked at the “flower” Rose had given her on the rooftop and wondered anew. Why was he here?
She could think of only one reason. It was as plain as her vid, which brought her news every morning and every night.
ANTARCTIC WAR: NORTHERN FORCES ON THE MOVE!
And the next day: NORTHERN FORCES ROUTED IN ANTARCTICA!
And the next: MAGISTRATE LUDO WARNS OF POSSIBLE TERRITORIAL WAR!
And the same, over and over. War was the constant on her vid. The war in Antarctica, which had always been going on. And the war between Territories, which had been threatened as long as she could remember. Territories served the Cities, of course, but as long as there was some kind of order, the City didn’t care who was keeping it.
I can make it better, Jaron had said to her that day.
Meet your quotas, meet your quotas.
Was there going to be a war? Dalcord Territory had been threatening to encroach on Ludo for years and years now. That was one reason for the curfews, for the occasional shelter-in-place orders. Dalcord was responsible for the gridhacks.
Was Ludo preparing for war?
Was Rose a spy?
Had he come here to learn about Ludo’s manufacturing? To sabotage it?
What better way to figure out Magistrate Ludo’s plans than by infiltrating his son’s operations?
And I brought him here. I rescued him from the river.
No. It couldn’t be. Rose was kind and sweet. He was teaching her how to whistle! What kind of spy did that?
Was he fearless? Yes. Resolute? Yes. But dangerous? No. Not at all.
She tossed and turned. After a certain hour, lights were disconnected to conserve power, so she had no choice but to lie in bed, sleepless and confused, questioning herself, Rose, Jaron, everything she knew.
She risked a hand out under the netting. A roach scrambled over it, then climbed up the outside of the netting. She was used to it. During the day the roaches were quiet, hibernating, perhaps. But at night they scurried forth from their hidden nests and commandeered the dark Territory.
Finding by touch what she’d been seeking, she pulled her hand back into the netting. A single roach managed to sneak in before she could affix the edge of the net, so she crushed it and brushed its remains onto the floor. She sat up, holding the metal flower Rose had given her on the rooftop.
He’d saved her from Jaron. Or from the need to kill Jaron, if she could have gone through with it.
He’d risked himself to bring her this bizarre and disquietingly beautiful gift.
He’d come back.
She didn’t know why.
The not knowing kept her from sleep for a long, long time as she turned the flower over and over in her hands, memorizing the touch and the curve and the shape of it in the dark.
After a while, she realized—much to her surprise—that she was whistling.
CHAPTER 10
Rose roams the empty streets. Curfew has fallen along with the sun, and no one dares go outside. Not that many went outside before the setting of the sun, either. The air is too poisonous, they claimed. It is safer inside, they claimed. There is no reason to be outside, they claimed.
Who needs a reason? Rose wonders.
It has been the same everywhere he’s been, in every Territory he crossed on his way here. The City is a fractal, the same in every direction, identical in every cut.
Except for one thing.
Deedra.
By paths and byways unavailable to most, Rose makes his silent and swift way to a specific housing unit. He does not ring the buzzer; that would automatically alert the DeeCees to the presence of someone outside after curfew. Instead, he climbs in the manner that is uniquely his, scaling the side of the building until he reaches the right window. It has been left open for him.
He slips inside. A cockroach skitters by and Rose picks it up, studying it. He marvels at the twitch of its antennae, tasting the world for food, for pathways, for danger. So efficient.
After a few moments of examining the cockroach—which sits patiently in his hand, jittering only a millimeter to and fro—Rose places it on the windowsill and goes into another room, where the occupant sits under roach netting.
“Well, good evening, Rose,” he says, looking up. “Something wrong?”
“Why do you ask that?”
With anyone else, the return question would be a delaying tactic, a way to avoid answering the question. But the man under the netting knows better, knows that Rose genuinely wants to know.
“Your expression,” he says. “The look on your face. You look troubled.”
“I see.”
“Are you troubled?”
“I’m not sure,” Rose admits.
“Well, tell me what’s wrong.”
“I think I’ve made a connection.”
“I see.”
“To a person.”
“A… girl? A boy?”
Rose cocks his head. “Is that relevant?”
“I suppose not. So you’ve made a connection.”
“Yes. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”
The man shrugs and gives it a moment’s thought. Then he smiles broadly. “Well, we’ll just have to figure that out, won’t we?”
CHAPTER 11
On Deedra’s vid th
e morning of her weekly optional workday, there were competing headlines. One said POPULATION RISING FOR FIRST TIME SINCE RED RAIN. The other said SCIENTISTS AGREE: POPULATION CONTROL WORKING.
She didn’t know which one to believe, and she wasn’t sure it mattered.
She had a little bandwidth, so she linked into the wikinets and looked up rose.
ROSES are mythical flowers described in literature. While old photographs purport to show them, these are conclusively determined to be falsified, since roses never existed. They were, instead, theoretical plants (see: plants) used in fiction. Roses “smelled good” and were “beautiful” to behold. Symbolically, the attractiveness of the rose was offset by the presence of its “thorns” (more accurately known as prickles), which were sharp enough to draw blood.
There was also an image. Artist’s rendition was written under it.
She stared at the picture. It was beautiful. Beautiful—maybe appropriately—as Rose himself was beautiful. He’d been named well.
Mythical flowers, the wiki said.
Mythical.
Roses, the wiki went on, predate the Red Rain as a mythological construct.
She frowned.
Any of them could be true. You have to decide which one you believe. That’s what Caretaker Hullay had said to her.
And she had said that she didn’t want to decide what she believed; she wanted to know what was true.
And, she realized suddenly, she still did.
There was nothing she could do, though. Nowhere to turn. The wikinets were useless: She would accomplish nothing other than a massive headache and eyestrain from flicking through them. None of them jibed with any other one, and some of them—she knew from experience—would change in an instant, having been reedited or modified from what she’d seen just minutes earlier.
She sighed and gave up. It was nearing the end of the month, and her rations were running low again. Always. Every month, no matter how much she starved herself and no matter how parsimoniously she doled out her bandwidth, she hit the end of the month with two or three foodless days and little to no bandwidth.
Time to scavenge. She’d been lax all month and was now paying the price. Maybe she could find something to trade for someone’s excess ration. Maybe she could find a nonblue rat out there. Maybe…
She thought of those eggs from so long ago. Her mouth watered at the cruel perfection of her memory. She would never get that lucky again.
She slipped on her poncho and her mask, as well as her threadbare, old backpack, and headed out. Between factory shifts, the streets were nearly empty. She marveled at how the Territory could be so congested, so packed with people, yet appear desolate. Staying inside was the safer course, the easier course.
Making her way toward the Wreck, she was determined to climb the bridge today. This time nothing would stop her. And even if she found it to be picked over and barren, at least she could say she’d accomplished something.
But by the time she made it to the Wreck, she was surprised to find Rose there, as if waiting for her. He leaned against the turned-over hulk of an old car, the hem of his long green coat nearly touching the cracked, dusty asphalt. Maskless.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“Just waiting.”
“No. I mean…” She broke off. She meant why was he here, waiting for her, but in that instant, she realized what she really wanted to know was something else, something more important. “Why are you here?” she asked. “In Ludo Territory. Why did you cross the river?”
He shrugged. “Should we talk while we walk?”
They began to thread their way through the Wreck. After many minutes of silence, she came to understand that he was not going to volunteer anything.
“Why did you come here?”
“It’s not why I came that matters,” he told her. “It’s why I stayed.”
She considered that. “So… are you a spy, then?”
“No.”
She laughed. “You would be a pretty bad spy if you answered yes to that.”
He paused and barked out a surprised laugh. “That’s true!” he said, as though he’d never considered it before. And something in the innocence of his answer made her believe him.
“How come you hardly ever touch people?” she asked. “Why do you always stand away from me, like now?”
At that, he nodded slowly, climbing atop the shell of a dead truck. He towered over her, set off in relief from the backdrop of clouds above and behind him. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt people,” he said.
She offered him a hand. “Help me up.”
Hesitating at first, he reached down and took her hand. She didn’t need the hand up to climb something as prosaic as a truck, but she was making a point.
“Here I am,” she said, now standing next to him. “Not hurt.”
“Yes, well…” Suddenly self-conscious, he withdrew his hands and stuck them back in his pockets. The truck underfoot became fascinating, and he stared down at it.
There was something wounded and pained beneath him. “Have you done that?” she asked gently. His self-recrimination was etched in every angle of his face. “Have you hurt…” She thought. Yes, she had to ask. “Have you hurt someone?”
“I try not to.”
Which wasn’t a no. And still, the pain etched so clearly on his face.
“What about something more than hurting? Have you…” She stumbled over the word for an instant. “Have you killed?”
Rose became even more serious. “Many, many times. So have you. So have all of us. Every day, every single thing we do kills. There are bacteria on your skin that die when you wash. There are insects in the ground that die when you scavenge.”
“I don’t mean things. I mean have you killed people.”
For the first time with him, she felt like a child being scolded. “I don’t make that distinction,” he told her. “Everything that lives matters.”
She thought of the bird eggs she’d scavenged long ago from the nest out by the river. Those had been living things she’d eaten. Living things she’d gobbled down was more accurate. She gripped her pendant between her thumb and forefinger and raced it back and forth along its chain. She’d never considered that the eggs were alive. That she was killing them by eating them. She’d just been…
So hungry…
Always hungry, it seemed.
“The world isn’t that simple,” she told him, unable to meet his eyes.
“The world is very simple.” His voice was gentle, but firm. “People make it complicated because it’s too difficult for them to live with simplicity.”
“So we’re all murderers? You? Me?”
“You’re doing what you have to do to survive. Just like me. Just like everyone. I’m not judging you. I just want you to think about it.”
Rose whistled as they walked, and partway into their journey, Deedra surprised them both by whistling along with him. Tentatively at first, fearing reproach for her poor skills, but then with more confidence. He smiled and nodded in time with her, pleased at her progress. Under her mask, the whistling echoed weirdly, so she risked taking it off. The air tasted acrid and smoky.
They managed to harmonize a little as they trekked out to the river. By the time they got there, she’d almost forgotten her desire to climb the bridge. The proximity of the river reminded her of that day she’d first met Rose, of what had happened since then. And it made her worry for him.
“You should just go back across the river,” she said. “You did it once. No one ever really crosses Territories, but you’re not from here originally anyway.”
“Why?” he asked, blinking in innocent confusion.
She blew out a breath in frustration. “Look, you’ve been lucky around here so far. But I’ve been selfish to want you to stay.”
“How so?”
“I felt safer with you around. Which is crazy, because I’ve never needed anyone to make me feel safe before. But Jaron’s not going to
forget what happened on that rooftop.”
And as she said it, she realized that she wouldn’t forget, either. Couldn’t forget. She’d tricked herself into thinking she could just delete the memory, but it was impossible. She hadn’t thought of that day for a long time, but here it was now, as bright and as real as when it happened.
“It’s been a while. If he was going to do something, he would have by now.”
“Maybe. But…” She told him about the threat Hart had delivered on Rose’s first day at L-Twelve. “If he’s worried about what I might say, then he must be keeping an eye on you, too.”
“That’s fine. I don’t care.”
“I don’t think you understand what he’s capable of. He can seem nice, but—”
“I never thought he was nice,” he said, biting out the words.
She felt queasy all of a sudden, right there by the river, and the idea of climbing the bridge or doing anything else bled out of her along with her words.
“He’s up to something,” she said. “I don’t know what. I was an idiot to think he would just let it all go. He’s going to do something. To you. Or me. Or both of us.”
Rose’s expression did not change. “That won’t happen,” he said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I won’t let it happen.”
CHAPTER 12
Later, Rose lies perfectly still on the table as the man inserts a needle into his lower arm with cool, methodical precision.
“Something’s on your mind again. You have that troubled look.”
“Do I?” Rose asks.
“Is it your ‘connection’ still?”
“No. It’s something else. I’ve been thinking about it.”
“We have time. Tell me.”
Rose stares at the ceiling as he speaks. The rough-hewn concrete sweats, and the pipes suspended in a crisscross pattern occasionally groan and gurgle. “I don’t fit in. As much as I try. I still stand out. I’m a freak.”