by Laura Bynum
The girl smiles up at me, unfazed by my confusion. She leans closer, whispers, "I think you are." Then says good-bye and goes back to her station.
I nod my farewell and go to my room. Hold up the ceiling for a few hours with a concentrated stare, ruined for sleep.
The cot I've been given is lumpy. I turn from side to side but a comfortable position eludes me. So I get up and pace around the edges of the room. I'll walk myself into tired, I think. But just a couple laps passing the canvas door, and I'm pushing through it. Out into the hallway that's lit exactly like it was this afternoon, even though now it's deep night. It's an expectation I've brought down with me, that the light will change. But it won't. Come morning, it will be as dark as it is now.
There appears to be no one else up so I take a turn around the front hall, letting my outer shoulder drag against the wood planks that have been put up on the north and south walls. I pause. Look more closely at these odd vertical beams. They're grooved, thick as my hand. Starting at my knees, they run up the walls six feet, all the way to the top. There are seven on this side and another seven on its opposite. Fourteen total. They are our tables. Built to be tucked away inside the walls when not in use.
I reach down, trace the worn strip of plastic at its base, and accidentally press. There is a loud metallic click, then release. The beams come snapping out bottom ends first, a zigzag of boards and hinges that straighten as they're lowered. Click, click. Too loudly, aluminum rods pop out of the far ends to catch their fall. Boom! They land, silver legs shaking.
Oh, God.
I duck behind my hands as if this action will stop the noise from leaking into the ears of my underground comrades, who are all fast asleep. No such luck. I hear them before I see them. The canvas doors come open and the people behind them, tired and sullen, spill out.
"Harper!" Noam is running down the hall. I can see his bald head fading in and out beneath the lights. Other people are following. Lilly, Rita, Ben Dean, and his pregnant wife, Mary. A dozen others with names I don't remember. Lazarus brings up the end of this wave. All of them are peaked and frowning. They probably thought it was an alarm of some kind. A bust.
"I'm sorry." I'm whispering. As if there's anyone left to wake.
Noam makes it to me first. He puts one hand on my shoulder, the other on the table. "What are you doing?" He's not quite awake. Keeps looking from the table to my face as if there's any sense to be made of us.
"I'm sorry," I say to no one in particular and everyone in general. "Sorry!" I repeat to Lilly, who marches up next. Again to Lazarus, who's trying very hard not to look mad. He'd obviously just gotten to sleep, having finally found a position to quiet his bones. "I barely touched it." I point at the place on the wall where the lever should be. Where now there's a dull brown table in the way.
Lilly turns and waves her arms at the people still coming up the hall. "False alarm! Harper put down a table!" I cringe at the sound of my name bouncing off the walls.
Noam pats me on the back. "I'll put this up in the morning." He follows the others down the hall and off to their rooms.
Lazarus takes me by the hand. "Follow me."
I'm escorted past the stairs that lead up to Lilly's house and on to a solid brick wall original to the foundation. The door leading through it isn't made of canvas. It's black velvet, or velour, and heavy, as if its base has been hemmed with sand.
"It's weighted," Lazarus confirms, stopping to show me a thick quilted backing. "Noise absorption." He looks up. Points at the acoustic tiles that run down a wide main hall. "Helps keep the generator noise from leaking out."
I roll the material between my fingers. "Why not use regular doors down here?"
"Two reasons." He turns and looks down at me. "The noise. And because people become interested in locking them."
Lazarus motions me into the kitchen, padding his way across its dark floor. There's the soft issue of a pulled string and then light. Just one bulb's worth, but it's enough to illuminate the small space. There's a refrigerator packed into the corner and a sad, squat microwave atop the round table in its center. The kitchen is barely larger than my room.
Lazarus opens an overhead cabinet and I see columns of silver cans and thick, wide-handled mugs stacked neatly inside. I'm given the rules Noam already provided as he boils some water.
"Never use a plate when you can eat directly from the container. Eat all of whatever you open. Don't use too much water. And don't leave on any unnecessary lights. Too many people and places have been taken down by utilities disproportionate to the number of citizens on file." Thus this hidden generator. The single-bulb, low-wattage lights.
"We have cocoa if you don't mind a mix." Lazarus positions a package over my coffee mug and I bob my head enthusiastically.
"Yes, please."
"Any questions I can answer?"
I didn't think such an offer would be extended. Try not to sound surprised. "When it's time, how will we be moving out?"
Lazarus looks up from his stirring. The mug in his hand looks like it's full of muddy water with a twirling island of dirt in its center. "We have a contact in Antioch. When it's time to move out, we have T-Units lined up to take us to a rendezvous point." He hands me the drink handle-side out, so he's the one touching the hot part.
T-Units. Huge buslike vehicles with wings off the front. These manned vehicles are used by the Confederation to mobilize large numbers of Blue Coats. They're partially armored and carry gunner stations off a T-beam that rides above the vehicle. Each T-Unit carries fifty people and there are only forty-eight of us. "Do we need more than one?"
"We will by then. We're the central spoke in our region. Other groups will gather here in waves a few days before the war. We'll mobilize together."
Lazarus shouldn't have asked if I had questions. I'm like a plugged-up hose, finally sprouted a hole. How are we going to get people to join us? What freedoms do we have to show them? If the SKEYE program goes up, we'll be seen in those T-Units. How will we get anywhere?
Lazarus smiles. "Then I guess we'll walk."
I look down at the floor. "Veracity . . ."
"Is safe. Candace knew what she was getting herself into. And Hannah . . . what happened to Hannah is exactly why it's time to go to war." Lazarus's voice is as sad as I've ever heard it. I won't come near these questions with him again. "Now." He claps his hands. "It's time for bed. We have a big day tomorrow."
I watch as he sets his empty mug in the sink.
"Lazarus, people are thinking of me as being way more important than I am."
His hand goes still on the faucet but he says nothing.
So I ask, "What does it mean?"
Lazarus turns the knob. Pours out enough water to rinse the basin. "How many people have been referring to you this way?"
"A couple of people. My relief in the library."
"Christine." He turns around. "She doesn't mean to gossip. She's just young."
I look down at my muddy cocoa. Most of the mix is still floating on the surface, clumped together. Doesn't matter as I'm no longer thirsty. "What does she mean?"
"Nothing. It's just superstitious hope to get us through the days."
"She thinks I'm some kind of savior, Lazarus. I don't want anybody being misled." The stress of it rushes up on me. The fear I've been cultivating is a black mass in my chest. It keeps me from breathing. Melts my shirt against the hot skin beneath.
"We're all somebody's savior." Lazarus is unaware of my spinning, can't see past my still body. "I'm asking you to trust me, Harper."
"I need this one answer, Lazarus."
"You need something you can control." He takes my full mug and frowns down into its middle. "You didn't like it?"
I take hold of his hand. Squeeze until he can surely feel my pulse racing along beneath my skin. "I wasn't thirsty."
Lazarus sighs. Sets my mug on the kitchen table, where it's fair game for whoever comes in next. "Lucille told us about you, your friend from Mr. M
itchell's class. She said she recognized you." He's talking about hair-eating, lip-sucking Lucille who got thrown out of class. The needy girl who grew up to be so much more than me. Lucille, whom I watched die through an interrogation room window.
"Lucille was a part of this group?"
"Came down here at age sixteen." Lazarus nods. "She was one of our best runners."
I pause before asking, "What did she say about me?"
"That we should keep our eye on you, bring you down when it was time. She believed that, someday, you'd be the one to save us."
"Lucille . . ." I have a hard time telling Lazarus. He's going to be so hurt. "Lucille was confused."
Lazarus looks fatigued. He goes back to the table. Pours himself into a seat. "Why does it bother you? Lucille believing you're the one."
I turn my head, dabbing at my eyes with a sleeve. "Because I know why she thought it."
"You're talking about the time you stood up for her." Lazarus laughs, strong and hard. Both voices buckle and snap until he starts to cough and I have to bring him some water. "It wasn't that, Harper. It was something she saw in you. You're not the only Sentient in the world. Yes?"
I sit down across from him. Glum. "I didn't save her."
"What do you mean, you didn't save her? You saved her not once, but twice. And in the most important way a person can be saved. From hopelessness." He reaches across the table and taps a finger on my palm. "It may not seem like much to you. But it's everything to us. Hope is how any war is won. It makes us fight better. Makes us stronger. I know in my heart that you're going to get us what we need to take down that one redactor when the time comes. But what you need to hear is something different."
Lazarus repositions, scooting onto one hip. "With or without the master, we've already won, you see? Because, for the first time in years, there is the feeling that we just might. Let people believe in you, Harper. Maybe some of it will start to rub off. Deal?"
I nod, pensive. "Deal."
Lazarus picks up a towel and dabs at my moist head and flushed face. "This is why I didn't want to tell you. You think you need that worry and pain. You think it serves you. You think it saves you, but it doesn't. Try keeping those walls in place with a little faith for a while. Now." He slaps his knee.
"It's late."
Lazarus gets up from the table and leads me back to the main hall. He says we could both use the next five hours' sleep. I'm to go straight back to my room and lie down. Ezra will be waiting for me in the morning, six o'clock sharp.
He won't let me talk. Shushes me, good-naturedly, every time I start to ask another question.
CHAPTER TWENTY
AUGUST 12, 2045. LATE MORNING.
Lazarus comes in with a jar of honey and a plate of cut lemon to go with his tea. Things I've seen Lilly bring in to soothe his voice. Means he'll be talking awhile.
"How are you doing today?" he asks.
Lazarus's eyes are drawn. It's the pain in his joints. Moist days like this, when the rain up top swells the beams of our underground home, are his worst.
"Fine," I answer. "How are you?"
Lazarus waves a hand. "Yesterday's training with Noam go all right?"
A shrug. "Yeah."
It was another of our daily sessions in which Amy was taking notes behind her computer and Noam was at my side, guiding me farther and farther out. He hasn't come right out and told me so, but each day's training is obviously an actual attempt to find the main redactor. With Noam's soothing voice in my ear, I'm guided as far as my mind will go. We're making progress toward the fields of redactors that lie in the Geddard Building's basement, but it's often one step forward and two steps back. Yesterday, I was able to approach National House Square and even get close to some of the people walking the streets. But then I couldn't find my way around a city I know like the back of my hand. Travel via the mind doesn't work the way it does with the body. It's not Turn left here. Take a sharp right there. It's Imagine a room you've never been in and think yourself there. The process can be so disorienting that today, I wound up in an entirely different city.
"It's going okay," I offer.
Lazarus doesn't buy my answer, but he lets it go. "I have a tight schedule so we need to get right to it. I'm going to tell you about the beforetime," he says, then proceeds without pause.
Before the Pandemic, our country was governed by a central text known as the Constitution. A doctrine that established a government by the people and for the people, meant to keep us from becoming what we are now--a tyranny. Slowly, the freedoms it provided were rolled back. Plucked away only as quickly as people could adjust. So when the Pandemic hit, there was some precedent for the exchange of rights for security. It had become natural, this forfeiture. Expected.
The first few were small. People handed them over as if they were old clothes. Things they never got out of the closet anyway. Warrants. Trials. Privacy. All last year's fashions. By the time Blue Coats came calling for the real finery, people were already beginning to lose their good taste. Out came the big-ticket items, the ones they kept stored in clear zippered bags. Personal beliefs. Personal possessions. Personal anything. It was no longer in vogue to be an individual. It became more about not standing out. Not standing up.
The Pandemic was coming across the water. On the backs of birds, in their waste. Sometimes the story changed. The birds became fish that would pollute every lake, stream, and ocean. The disease became a flu and then a fever that went up and up. They were all variations on the same theme. What the Pandemic brought was the fertile seed of fear. It was planted and took root, choked out all reason. Allegiance became servitude. Servitude became acquiescence. You either lined up for the silver shackle worn in the front of your neck or you were proved a traitor. Taken away to the unknown elsewhere or shot loudly and on the spot because that had become the right way to serve your country. To hold still and die when you're told. To take aim and, on command, fire.
The Pandemic coincided with an election year.
In the beforetime, our government was different. People voted for a president. A man or woman subject to the title, willing to submit himself or herself to an article such as a or the. If they proved themselves not equal to the task, they were removed or replaced. So passionate was the respect for the title of President, the man or woman holding it melted away. They became their role. The role did not become them.
A month before the vote, the government announced the election was being postponed. The Pandemic was coming. It would be too dangerous for citizens to leave their homes. People were to stay inside. Protect themselves with blue masks worn over their mouths. They could leave their homes to buy groceries, to go to church, and for medical emergencies only. December passed, and January. In February, small pockets of resistance formed. A few troops were attacked outside the National House.
One died.
It was the opening those in office had been waiting for. They could remove all remaining liberties in the name of safety and defense. People were turning on one another. Riots would ensue and morph into civil war unless we gave them everything they asked. They couldn't help us without our compliance.
"Compliance became another word for patriotism," Lazarus says.
If a citizen so much as questioned a command, they weren't good Americans, weren't fit to keep company with other, better citizens. One word might spread their restlessness, so such toxicity was protected against. The murders of these freethinkers and the eradication of their poison was deemed preemptive self-defense. A beautifully marketed term for Confederation-sanctioned genocide.
Lazarus takes a sip of his coffee and sets his mug too hard on the table. Some sloshes out. "We lost our capacity for tolerance when we lost our freedom. Or maybe it was the other way around. I'm not sure which one I miss more." He's angry, one finger banging against the table.
"The trouble comes when we forget we're family! You, me, the people living halfway around the world! The problem is this ridiculous idea that
there is an us and then an other! A them to which the rules of humanity don't apply! If I could put one word on that goddamned Red List, that's the one I'd choose! Them! There is never a them, Harper! There's only us! If we could get that learned, we might just figure out how to stop killing ourselves!" Lazarus sits back. Pours out a glass of lemon water, rubs some of the butter melting in a small dish over his chapped lips and into the gray, crusting skin of his palms. It is his rite of composure, moisturizing. Putting back in some of the soft that's been leeched out.
People began to sorely miss those giveaway rights. They were detained with no charges levied against them and no appointed time set to go before the judge in their Sunday best. Detentions could go on for as long as the government felt necessary. Families didn't warrant notice or information. Those that grew too loud or drew too much attention disappeared. A person, many persons, could fall off the face of the earth and no one would have to know. All government records were closed to the public. The policy became Don't ask.
A new kind of military took over. They took down the old flags and replaced them with their own. Those too loyal to their former cause, too honorable to serve under this new flag, were lined up against a wall. Made to go away. Those who were left, and others who were recruited, were to collect data and record any potential threats. Renting a book on world religions, purchasing the wrong ingredients at the grocery store, saying the wrong thing could get a citizen hauled away. Killed outright or imprisoned without trial.
Families gathered around their kitchen tables and prayed. They stayed indoors until Sunday, then went clambering off to church in record numbers, even before it became mandatory. The new church was so successful an advocate for the new government, it became an extension of it and was given reign over media, communications, and social programs--anything endemic to the human condition.
Lazarus has been talking for two hours. Lilly's come in three times to fill up the water pitcher and pout over his bleak countenance. She's asked him to take a break. Go lie down, settle his voice. The first was a request, the second a demand. Lazarus responded to neither and out she went. If he was going to keep this up, he wasn't going to see the new world. She had other, more important things to do. A whole library to turn digital while he was pushing himself, compromising the whole thing. Lilly continues her tirade out into the hall. Off to wherever she works night and day, fingers spent down to the bone.