by Kelli Kimble
I had to humor her.
I held up my hands. “I meant it, okay? I just . . . it’s disrespectful to use my brother’s illness for my own gains. I won’t do it, and I hope you understand.”
She continued to study me, but she didn’t stop me when I stood and moved towards the door.
“Just so I’m clear,” I said. “There’s no treatment, no medicine, not even pain management. Nothing that can be done for Maestro.”
“That’s right,” she said. “But, don’t worry. He won’t suffer much longer. Most that are exposed to that level of radiation die within a few weeks. It’s already been over seven days.”
I nodded once and left the room.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, Silver!” she called to me as I moved toward the elevator. The carpet felt like sludge beneath my feet, sucking me down and making each step harder than the last.
◆◆◆
Tabitha didn’t answer her door when I went to her house. I thought she might be ignoring me, so I opened the door and went inside. She wasn’t there, and I retreated as quickly as I could and went home. I should’ve gone there to begin with; she was sitting at my table waiting for me. “Where’ve you been?” she said. Her face was smooth and impassive, but from the way her shoulders were bunched up to her ears, I could tell she was still angry.
“I know about Maestro,” I said. “That he’s got radiation poisoning.”
Her shoulders sunk, almost to their normal position. She was softening. “You talked to Preia?” she said.
“Yes.” I sat next to her and gathered her hands in mine. “She asked me to do something. To consider something.”
Tabby’s eyes glossed over with tears. “She offered you a job at the power plant?”
I shook my head. “She wants me to consider being her successor. You know, to be the next leader of the city.”
Her mouth dropped open, and after a moment of staring at me it, snapped shut. “Oh,” she said.
“I’m only considering it,” I said.
“No. It only appears grey. It’s black-and-white. You’ll either do it, or you won’t. She thinks you’ll do it.”
“How would you feel about that?”
“You couldn’t possibly,” she said.
A twinge of anger shot through me. “You think I can’t do it?”
“No, that’s not it at all. I . . . she didn’t offer you that for free, did she?”
“She told me about Maestro, in exchange for saying I’d consider it.”
She pulled her hands away and sighed. “You’re a good man—a good brother—to do that for Maestro,” she said. “But, Preia’s path for a man like you won’t end in happiness. Do you see what I mean?”
“No,” I said.
“She does terrible things—orders others to do terrible things. Sends people to their deaths and kills anyone who defies the way things are. You can’t do that, can you? Could you live like that?”
I pushed the thought of my siblings who would die doing dangerous jobs, because I’d only secured safety for three of my family. But, I hadn’t meant it; I’d only said those things to smooth things over with Preia. Things didn’t have to end up that way.
But, if I didn’t follow Preia, wouldn’t we all die? We’d all eventually be forced into some awful job that ended in an untimely death. Wasn’t saving at least three people worth it? Once I was in a position of power, couldn’t I effect change for the better?
“You need to leave,” she said. “You can’t stay here.”
“Where would I go? She’d just send someone to find me.”
She started to cry. “This is all my fault. If I’d just done my job and left you alone, things would be fine.”
“She would still be sacrificing the outsiders,” I said. “I’d be one of the people waiting to die.”
She shook her head and went to the door. “You don’t understand.” She opened the door. “No matter what happens now, you’ll die. It might only be inside, but there’s no coming back from that.” She slipped out the door, and it clicked shut softly.
I sat at the table for hours, not moving. Numb.
◆◆◆
I woke with a jolt and nearly fell from the chair. Someone was tapping at the door. “Come in,” I said. I stood and stretched.
Tennie poked her head around the door. “May I?”
“Of course,” I said. I pulled her to me when she approached and hugged her tight. “I’ve missed you. You and Leif.”
She tolerated my hug but only returned it halfheartedly. I tried not to hold that against her. “I came to tell you that Maestro’s gone,” she said. Her voice was small. I wondered about that. Hadn’t he treated her nearly as badly as he’d treated me?
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Fiona says you visited him.”
“I did. He apologized for the way he treated us.”
“Wow,” she said.
“Don’t give him too much credit. He wanted me to apologize for getting him killed.”
Her expression turned wistful. “Didn’t we?”
“No,” I said. “We couldn’t know these people were here, or that they meant us harm, or that they’d hunt down the rest of our people. How could we have known any of those things?”
“We didn’t,” she admitted. “But, we could’ve just stayed in the mountain.”
“Tennie, I went to Preia. To find out what was wrong with Maestro.”
“What did she say?”
“She made me promise to consider becoming her successor before she would tell me. So, I did.”
Tennie’s nose crinkled up. “What do you mean, her successor?”
“She wants me to take her place. To be leader of the city.”
“Why would she want that?”
I sighed. “I wish I knew. I’m no different than anybody else.”
“But, you are different, Silver. You’ve been different since the day you came out of the tank. You’re driven. Ambitious. Anyone can see that.” She patted me on the arm. “You’d be a good leader, I think.”
“Tabby doesn’t think so. She thinks the leader is required to do awful things, and once I do those things, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
“Look, Tabby barely knows you. She doesn’t know you like I do—like Leif does. I know you’d be a good leader. You wouldn’t do awful things, because a good leader wouldn’t do awful things. You’ll do what’s best for the city.”
“Well, I guess they consider what’s best is bringing in strangers to do the dirty work,” I said. “They hunt for people who aren’t in the city so that they can bring them here. They pretend to incorporate you into the population, but really, they’re just waiting until something needs to get done that nobody who lives here wants to do.”
She cocked her head. “What are you saying? That they knew we were in the mountain?”
I stopped and thought about that. I didn’t think they had; it was a coincidence that we’d come close enough for them to find us, and they hadn’t done anything to entice us out. “No,” I said. “But, once they knew where we were from, they sent people there to get the rest of us, didn’t they? They’re using us to do dangerous things so that they don’t have to. Maestro died from radiation poisoning. Tennie, they made him do something at the power plant that exposed him to lethal doses of radiation.”
Her mouth formed into the shape of an O.
“That’s not the worst of it,” I said.
“I don’t really see how there could be more.”
“Preia said that if I agreed to succeed her, she’d spare some people, and I chose people to be spared.”
“You what?” she demanded.
“I tried to ask for everyone. I wanted all our siblings, and Fiona, to be spared. But, she said that was too many. It’s getting harder for them to find other humans, and she can’t give up a group as big as ours. So, I picked three.”
“Only three?!”
“You’re one of them,” I sa
id, trying to placate her. “You, and Leif, and Fiona.”
“The rest are going to die?” she said. She was staring at me with a blank expression, her face flushed.
“Well, not right away. Maybe never,” I said. “Some of them may never be called upon to do this sort of thing, and anyway, they won’t know. Maestro had no idea that what he was doing was dangerous. He died not knowing the cause. It won’t seem like a death sentence when it comes.”
“That’s not really a comfort,” she said. “I can’t believe you. You’d leave all our siblings to this kind of fate? It’s not like you.”
“Look, if I didn’t take her bargain, we’d all die. Including you, me, Leif, and Fiona.”
She shook her head, as if she were trying to clear cobwebs from her vision. “You just said that maybe some of them would survive.”
“Yes, but we’d all be in the pool, waiting our turn. Don’t you see? We’re free to live normal lives now, without fear.”
“I think we should be very afraid of any situation in which that is the thing to be grateful for,” she said. She brushed past me and out the door. She didn’t bother to close it behind her.
Fiona was standing there, and she’d obviously been listening at the door. As Tennie rushed down the hallway, Fiona entered and closed the door behind her. “What did she mean by that? That we should be afraid?”
I didn’t want to hash it out again, and I didn’t feel like I could tell Fiona about this. Not only would she not approve; she wouldn’t keep it quiet, either. Besides, even though Preia hadn’t told me to keep her proposition and all the things she’d told me a secret, my intuition told me that if I wanted to stay off the death-job list, I’d better not let it get out. “I’m sorry about Maestro,” I said. “She told me he passed.”
Fiona dissolved into tears and collapsed into a chair. “I can’t believe he’s gone,” she said.
“This must be difficult for you.” I stood beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, letting her lean against me as she blew her nose into a tissue.
“I knew a day like this would come. It’s unbearable. Even worse than when Adam died. I just can’t believe this is happening.” She blew her nose again. “Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay? He asked about you. After you left.”
“I just didn’t like seeing him like that,” I said. It was true; I hadn’t liked seeing him looking like the ghost of his former, healthy self—though it wasn’t why I’d left.
I wondered for a moment if I’d been cruel to include Fiona in the surviving group. Would she grieve each of my siblings this way? Would it break her to watch all but a few of them die? But, then, I realized the will to live would outweigh any loss.
“I heard what he said to you,” she said. “He was wrong to think you needed to apologize, Silver. I hope you know that.”
I nodded. I did appreciate her telling me she disagreed with Maestro’s opinion, but her new eavesdropping habit was cause for concern.
She stiffened against me and abruptly stood up. “Anyway. I just came to make sure you knew, and I can see you’ve been told. So, I’ll be on my way.”
“Wait, Fiona. What can I do? I mean, do you need me to do anything?”
She pulled me to her in a fierce hug, and as she pulled away, she put a hand on either side of my head and pulled my forehead down to kiss it. “Is it wrong that you’ll always be my favorite?” she asked.
I twisted away. “You shouldn’t say that,” I said.
“I’ve always had a special bond with you. I don’t know what it is, exactly. But, from the time you were a baby, you were always so much more interesting.”
While I liked being the interesting one—and it certainly felt nice to be a favorite—I was sure I didn’t deserve it, especially after I’d agreed to let most of her grandchildren die. I didn’t respond to her statement.
“There’s nothing to be done, really. We called the doctor’s office, and they said someone would be sent to collect the body. He hardly had any possessions—at least, none that he brought here with him.” She hesitated.
“What?”
“It’s just—” she clutched at my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “I’d really like for him to be buried back at the mountain. Next to Adam, I mean.”
“I seriously doubt they’d let us go back to the mountain,” I said. “We’re not allowed to leave.”
“Yes, I know.” She dropped her hand from my arm. “You know what? Never mind. It doesn’t matter what they do with the body. It isn’t him. Not anymore.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “But, I’m not making any promises.”
A tear welled up in her eye and fell down one cheek. She brushed it away. “Thank you, Silver, and thank you for coming to see him. Maybe it didn’t mean much to you, but it meant a lot to me.”
I nodded, and she left. I sat down at the table.
How could I get Maestro’s body home to the mountain?
◆◆◆
Of the three I’d agreed to keep alive, I hadn’t yet seen Leif. He’d always been a good sounding board, so I made my way to his apartment. I knocked, and he opened the door, nodded at me, and walked away with the door open, apparently inviting me inside.
I went in and shut the door behind me. He sat, stiff-backed, at his table, and I took up a spot next to him. “You’ve talked to Tennie, then,” I said.
He nodded. His jaw flexed.
“I won’t pretend it wasn’t a flattering offer,” I said. “Being offered leadership of a place like this . . . that’s beyond my comprehension, really. Who wouldn’t want to do something like that?”
“I wouldn’t want to,” he said. “Can you imagine? The responsibility of thousands of lives being on your shoulders?”
“There already are lives on my shoulders,” I said. “Everyone’s here because I wanted to find evidence of others. Well, here we are. We found it. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that others wouldn’t be friendly towards us, but there it is.”
“We didn’t know anybody was alive,” Leif said. “You were looking for historical evidence.”
“We found that, too,” I said.
“Forget about what Maestro said. It isn’t true. Tennie and I followed you here because we wanted to help you succeed, and we did. We succeeded.”
“I just can’t stop thinking about the other siblings. I didn’t want them to die. I don’t want them to die. I just don’t know how I can save them.”
“Now, you lost me. Who’s dying besides Maestro?”
Tennie hadn’t told him everything, then. So, I spilled it. Leif was even more angry than he’d been when I got there. “Look, I did what I could,” I insisted. “She wasn’t offering me a lot. I tried to negotiate for everyone, but she wasn’t buying. What was I supposed to do?”
Leif smacked a fist on the table, making me jump. After a long silence, he blew out a sigh. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what you were supposed to do.”
“I know we have to figure something out,” I said. “We can’t stay here and let them all die.”
“They won’t let us leave, Silver.”
“No, not under normal circumstances,” I said. “But, what about for a funeral?”
He stared at me, then shook his head.
“No, really,” I insisted. “Fiona asked me to find out if we could somehow bury Maestro’s body back at the mountain. What if we all went? For a funeral?”
“I don’t even really know what that is, other than it had historical significance,” he said.
“Right. It’s a ceremony people used to do, before the winter. When someone died, they’d have this gathering to say goodbye and comfort each other. Then, they’d most often bury or cremate the body.”
“There’s no way Preia will let all of us leave to have a funeral,” he said.
“Maybe not. But, does it hurt to ask? They don’t know anything about our current habits, or what rituals we might follow. As far as they know, a funeral
is how we do it. So, why not insist we be allowed to do it?”
“I guess it’s worth a try,” he said. “But, I think it’s a little cruel to let everyone see home, and then drag them back here for this . . . death march, or whatever Preia calls it.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “Who says we have to come back? It’d be the perfect time for us to make a run for it. They know how far we’re going, and where we’re going. So, we just get there and keep on going. By the time they realize we’re gone, we’ll have days on them. They won’t be able to find us.”
◆◆◆
I went back to Preia’s office the next day.
“You’re here to accept my offer, I hope,” she said. Her mouth twisted up into what was probably supposed to be a smile—but instead of looking pleased, she looked rather predatory.
“I’d like to,” I said, sitting on one of the couches. A bowl of apples sat on a low table in front of me. I took one and bit into it. The crunch was loud, and it nearly drowned out her response.
“You want something more,” she said. She inclined her head, a look of respect lighting up her eyes. “You’re a clever man; I’ll give you that. What is it?”
I wiped apple juice from my chin. “I’m sure you heard that my brother died. The brother you sent to the power plant?”
“Unfortunate,” she said, clucking her tongue. “All reports are that he was a dedicated and hard worker.”
“We have a strict tradition of burial in our culture,” I said. “Fiona wishes to bury Maestro alongside his father back at the mountain. We all wish it, really. It’s of great importance that he return to the earth from which he was born.”
“That is a very lovely tradition,” she said. “Tell me more about this ritual.”
“It’s a return to earth. We take turns digging the hole; he’s lowered in; we take turns throwing the dirt back over. Then, we all share a memory of him—generally, a good one, if you have one. We’ll spend time thanking him for his presence in our lives. Then, we’ll pray for his speedy return to Heaven.”
“Heaven.”
“Right, Heaven. Where souls go after they leave their bodies?”
