The Sky Inside

by Clare B. Dunkle

  Sim didn’t leave off his cleaning. “For questions about your clothes, you need to see William,” he replied. “I’m just a bot. William’s in charge.”

  “Well, let’s do it, then!”

  Sim conducted him through the maze of hallways to a small, bright, bare meeting room furnished with a cheap dinette set of imitation wood. The room would have felt crowded and claustrophobic except for the large mirror that took up most of the back wall. It gave an illusion of greater space.

  The brown-haired girl sat on top of the table, her red high-tops resting on the seat of a chair. She was busy typing into a large handheld that rested on her lap. She looked up at their entrance and saw the shoes in Martin’s hands. The corner of her mouth twitched.

  “Is something the matter?”

  “These things aren’t mine!” Martin brandished the sneakers.

  “No. They’re new. Yours were falling apart.”

  “They were not! They were perfectly good—”

  “Cracked and dirty—”

  “Just the way I like them, and I demand to know what you did with my—”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?” Martin stared at her, dumbfounded. “Gone?! You dumped my shoes?”

  At the look on his face, the girl burst out laughing. Then she hopped off the table and retrieved his old sneakers from a cardboard box in the corner.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “A behavioral experiment. I wanted to know if all Fourteens were irrationally devoted to their worn-out clothing. And—” She couldn’t even finish the sentence. She just waved her hands toward his shoes.

  Martin glowered as he put them on. “They’re perfectly fine,” he muttered. This would have sent her off into fresh gales of laughter if she weren’t already laughing as hard as she could.

  “I had them fumigated,” she announced brightly as soon as she was able to speak.

  To the end of his days, Martin’s brain would collect devastating replies to this insult, but unfortunately, it didn’t start right away.

  He had to lace his sneakers in humiliating silence.

  “Look, can we just go see this William guy now?” he said when he was done. “I’m ready to talk to somebody in charge.”

  The girl’s laughter switched off with the abruptness of a packet car wreck. She sat down on the table and crossed her arms. “You’re talking to her,” she said coldly. “I am William.”

  Martin felt his ears heat up.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she went on. “I need to go to class. Rudy already knows you’re here, so he’s coming in a minute. In the meantime, Sim is standing guard outside the door. I don’t think he’ll go through with the electrocution order because he seems rather protective of you, but he’s certainly going to keep you from leaving.” She tossed her handheld into the cardboard box, picked up the box, and departed.

  Martin prowled the small room after her exit, feeling ill at ease. Aside from having cleaned up and changed clothes, he hadn’t gained much since his arrival. He knew nothing about who was holding him, he’d lost track of Chip, and he had bolted out of the shower room so quickly that he had forgotten his knapsack.

  He poked his head out the door. The aged bot was loitering in the hallway outside. “Sim!” he called. “I need my dog. Can I go get him?”

  “Your bot is still charging,” Sim said. “Its batteries were low. What did you need?”

  “Well . . . nothing, I guess. Can I get my gear, then?”

  “Your pack? I’m afraid not,” said the old man. “Some of the items were dangerous. Rudy has to decide about you before you can have it back.”

  “Okay.” Martin shut the door again. There was no way around it. They had him trapped. Interesting how the ones who could kill him always seemed like the nicest people.

  Then he remembered something odd. That girl William had called him a Fourteen. But she wasn’t the first person to do so. Someone else had called him that too.

  You were the very best model of your year. Not so good at talking, though. When it comes to that, Fourteens are easy to outsmart.

  The door opened, and Motley walked in.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The young man no longer wore bright, splashy colors. He was dressed exactly like Martin, in a blue T-shirt and jeans. But this didn’t dim his remarkable appearance in the least. Like the lovely William, he was a star.

  “You!” cried Martin, stunned.

  “You!” said Motley, looking pleased to see him. “When I got word that a Dish Fourteen was in our facility, I immediately thought of you. You and that fancy bot of yours. If every Fourteen had a modified bot, this would be a different world.”

  Martin refused to fall for his charm. “What have you done with her?” he demanded furiously. “Where’s Cassie? And none of your tricks!”

  “Cassie,” pondered the young man. “Cassie is in geometry at the moment; I believe they’re taking an exam. I’ll call her out so you can visit with her as soon as we’ve finished our talk.” When Martin stared at him wildly, he sat down on one of the chairs and spread his hands in a mollifying gesture. “I told you when I came that I was taking her to a special school. That’s exactly what I did.”

  So it had all been perfectly fine! Cassie had just gone to school. This man had come, the parents had voted, and the children had been thrilled to go.

  “No,” Martin said, and he shook his head violently. His hands were beginning to tremble. “You weren’t there to take them to a school. You were there for the product recall. My dad didn’t believe in that special school for a minute.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Motley said, leaning forward. “You didn’t believe that I told the truth because the packet chief thought I was lying. But he only cooperated with me in the first place because he thought I was lying. Our whole society is based on lies, on the myth of the blowing sand and poison gas. So you think I made the truth into one of my tricks.”

  “Well—yes,” Martin stammered. “At least, I think that’s what I think.”

  “You’re right, I did,” Motley agreed.

  “Stop it!” Martin cried. “I’m tired of you doing that!”

  “What, talk circles around you?” Motley smiled. “Fair enough, Fourteen. I’ll try to stop.”

  “And Cassie’s really safe with you?” Martin asked. Motley nodded. “And nothing bad happened to her? No recall?” Motley shook his head.

  “Well, then I just don’t get it,” Martin said dolefully. “I mean, not at all. About the suburbs. The sand. The whole big neighborhood out there that’s empty and falling down. Why all the lies? I mean, why? None of it makes any sense!”

  Motley folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “It was all done with you in mind,” he said. “Close to a hundred years ago, our nation was slowly decaying. Handhelds and robots had just been invented, and that meant factories didn’t need so many humans to work in them anymore. The armies didn’t need them either, because war was changing too. Killing people wasn’t important. It was which factories and machines you could blow up, and the robots were getting better at doing that than the humans were. All these unneeded people were crowding up the cities—suburbs, you’d call them—eating food and getting sick and demanding medicine. They cost more to keep than they could earn, and they were fouling up the air and water, too. New people were being born every day.”

  “Born?” Martin asked.

  “The stork kept bringing them.”

  “Oh, I get it. And then what?”

  “Then a certain President came along. A real man of vision. And he knew just what to do to save his people.” Motley paused. “The world’s most dangerous tyrants,” he explained, “are invariably real men of vision.”

  “So you mean this guy was going to save those people who were sick?” asked Martin.

  “No, not those people. His people. People like you, who weren’t even born. To save his people, he killed off almost every person in the country. Nine hundred and ninety-six out of
every thousand. I hope I’m making this clear.”

  Martin shook his head, and Motley sighed. “I know. It’s not so clear to me either. But what happened was this: the President had the domed suburbs built to house and protect those four people out of each thousand. His people were going to have a great way of life. They would be the envy of the whole world.”

  “And they had game shows,” Martin guessed, “to choose his people.”

  Motley nodded. “Yes, it was a big media circus.”

  “And everyone else, the people who lost, the people who didn’t count. What did he do about them?”

  “They died,” Motley said. “Quickly. Many of them died right on the shows, just like they do today. Those who didn’t usually paid for the privilege of dying. You see, in order to talk people into the steel suburbs and the game shows, the President convinced them that all life on Earth was going to be wiped out. The television was full of it in those days, how nobody would survive the disasters and diseases that were about to strike humankind. People were so scared that they paid to be killed painlessly; they got the shot, just like people do today. My predecessors helped quite a bit—certain members of the scientific community, that is—predicting things and then faking things like deaths by disease. The President had promised scientists their own special compounds and laboratories. And besides, they wanted to save humanity too.”

  “That’s sick!” Martin said. “And it’s crazy!”

  “I’m afraid,” said Motley apologetically, “that it all made quite a bit of sense.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Nothing,” said Motley. “It’s been the same ever since. The television shows have changed, and the lies have gotten older, but that’s the way things are to this day. You’re descended from the lucky ones, and you used to be one too. Now you’re a condemned criminal, running from the law under sentence of execution.”

  “What?” Martin sat up straight. “Hey, wait a minute! I didn’t do anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” Motley said. “You followed me, another condemned criminal. And now you know the truth about the myths and the lies. You can’t seriously imagine that a government like ours would let you live after that.”

  Martin already knew that, he realized. He’d known it since the blond bot had come to take him away in her special car.

  Maybe he had known it since the Wonder Babies had been recalled, and he had realized that his own President could classify children as unsafe products.

  “I wish you hadn’t come to our suburb,” he said bitterly. “You should have left us alone.”

  “I’m not so sure that would have saved you,” Motley said. “You seem to have learned quite a bit about the lies without my help. And what about your sister, Cassie? Didn’t somebody need to save her?”

  “It’s none of your business,” Martin muttered. “She’s my sister.”

  “She’s mine too,” Motley said. “As near as any of us comes to having a sister.”

  Martin glared at him. “Just how do you figure that?”

  “My real name is Rudy—Rudolph Church,” Motley said. “I was named for my designer. I’m a prototype, the prototype for the Wonder Babies, but when I was little, I didn’t know that. I grew up in the GenLab, so I thought I was a scientist. They gave me my first lab coat when I was three.

  “The Human Genetics Laboratory was an amazing place in those days, part of the larger scientific compound, which practically made up a world of its own. We scientists had done very well for ourselves under this government, and it shows in our remarkable achievements. My designer, Dr. Church, ran the GenLab for almost thirty years, and he gathered the brightest scientific minds there. They were determined to use their freedom to do what had never before been done: apply science to improve our species. And they died convinced that they had done it too, convinced that we were a generation beyond them. But when I think of their genius, I wonder. Do we surpass them?”

  He looked earnestly at Martin. “I do hope that we at least equal the clarity and rapidity of their reasoning, but I fervently hope that we never equal their cruelty.”

  “Cruelty?” Martin said. “Their babies were a good thing. My suburb was always happy when the stork came.”

  “Of course you were,” Rudy said. “You saw only success. But I lived in the lab, and I saw all the rest of it. The incubators that got turned off. The experiments that failed. Disease resistance, for example: How can you be sure that your designer children are genetically immune to a deadly disease? You expose them to it. If they catch it, you’ve learned something. The children die, and you move on. The next ones may survive.”

  Martin grimaced. “They did that?”

  Rudy nodded. “I remember Dr. Church trying to explain it to me when I was small. I was missing Terence, my playmate. Terence was a prototype too, and she sang like an angel, but she couldn’t learn how to read. When she disappeared, I kept looking for her, so finally Dr. Church told me. Terence was an experiment, he said, holding me on his lap, and she had been terminated that morning. All the scientists loved her very much, but they loved our species more. They had to do what was best for humanity.”

  “I bet!” Martin said. “Like that President and his people. Anybody they didn’t like just didn’t count. The way I see it, they’re the criminals, not me. This whole place is run wrong.”

  “Just what someone I know used to say quite often,” Rudy remarked, “but she used more colorful language. The Dish Fourteen in our lab didn’t take their word on any of this. She was the oldest prototype, our big sister, and she didn’t care about humanity, she cared about us. Whenever something was up, she’d find it out somehow, and then she’d come to me. ‘Rudy, they met about Isadora today. You have to help me hide her.’ There’s nothing more loyal than a Dish Fourteen, except maybe a modified bot. I’m not surprised that an angry Fourteen has hunted me down.”

  “And did you?” Martin asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you hide Isadora?”

  He sighed. “Yes, we did, but sooner or later, they always found us. And I suppose that was the ultimate irony. Here this team of scientists had caused untold suffering to produce what they thought was an improvement in the species. Then they had to face the tragic fact: no one wanted their improvement!

  “Oh, it sounded good to the marketers for a while. ‘New and improved’ always sounds good to marketers. But, ultimately, the Wonder Babies were a disaster. And by the time the scientists of the Human Genetics Lab were finished with their tinkering and inventing, they had given our government every tool it needed to treat babies as merchandise. We humans could be designed, patented, ordered, and sold under distinct product lines. And that meant we could also be recalled. So last winter, when they learned that little children were starting to ask dangerous questions, the government decided to recall the Wonder Babies.”

  “Last winter?” Martin interrupted. “I don’t get that; I mean, about the winter part. They just had the Wonder Baby vote last week.”

  Rudy looked surprised. “You believe the votes get counted?”

  Martin thought about that and shook his head.

  “Along with the recall, we prototypes were scheduled for demolition. But the scientists refused to give us up. We were their life-work! They managed to sneak us out of the compound instead. So the government put those geniuses on the game shows, where most of them didn’t last ten minutes. But Dr. Church wound up on a question-and-answer show and held off death for almost a month. I know he had done horrible things, but he was a father to me, and I loved him. I would have taken his place if I could.”

  “I don’t see why!” Martin burst out. “How can you love a father who chooses between you and your sister? I mean, how can you even try to love someone like that?”

  “By not growing up to be like him,” said Rudy quietly. “At least, that’s what I hope I’ve done. But dying for him wasn’t an option. I had to rescue the Wonder Babies before the government cou
ld dispose of them. It was a tricky business. You were an anxious moment, in fact, with your talk of game shows and lab coats, but I managed to save Cassie—your sister and mine.”

  Martin sat frowning at the table, trying to take it all in. After a minute, Rudy got up from his chair.

  “She’s sure to be finished with her exam now,” he said. “I’ll have her called out of class.”

  Cassie came along a few minutes later, accompanied by another child carrying two lunches on trays. As soon as she saw Martin, she jumped up and down and squealed.

  “You came, you came!” she shrieked. “My brother came to see me! I have a visitor! I’m the first student in the whole school to have a visitor!” Then she hurled herself into his arms.

  Martin hugged her skinny little body and tugged a few golden curls, unable to speak at first. But William had already heard about his tears over Chip’s demise. It would never do to get a reputation for being weepy.

  “Well, duh, I came,” he said gruffly. “I had to check this school thing out. I wasn’t just going to leave it up to that rat catcher guy.”

  They ate ham sandwiches and fruit cups in the little room while Cassie told him about her new life. Martin let her rattle on about quadratic equations and logical paradigms without interrupting to ask for explanations. She looked happy and healthy, with pink cheeks and the start of a tan, so she wasn’t spending all her time studying.

  “You’re wearing our uniform,” she laughed, plucking at his T-shirt. “Rudy says these are the best clothes for everybody: comfortable, easy to launder, and very durable. But sometimes he still wears his lab coat. He points it out to us as a case of irrational attachment.”

  “I hate lab coats,” Martin said with a shudder.

  “I wish Mom and Dad had come too. How are they?”

  “They’re doing just great,” Martin lied as cheerfully as he could. Then he remembered that he wasn’t a very good liar. “Mom said, ‘Be sure and find your sister for me and make sure she’s okay.’ She’s really glad you’re at a special school, and she hopes”—Martin choked up for a second—“she hopes you’re doing math.”