The Boy I Am

by K. L. Kettle

  I keep thinking about the Gardener. If I’d killed the Chancellor, the Gardener would still be here but then I’d never have learned you were alive. You’d think the women would be talking about it, the Gardener going missing? Maybe they’re used to their wards disappearing. Not one of them has mentioned it. Are they too afraid to talk?

  The Chancellor can do anything she wants. In the dark of my blindfold, the idea of you pokes at me.

  Stop worrying. You’re going to expose Romali; we both know it.

  *

  Bzzzz

  Appointment two: a meal, three ladies. The women talk politics, ask my opinion and laugh because I can’t answer. They didn’t pay for me to speak.

  “Opinions?” says Ms Harry. “Their brains are too small. And I read they’re shrinking. It’s the hormones the House of Life puts them on to stop them jerking off until their brains melt.”

  I think she sort of said something less than nice about the Chancellor once. Am I kidding myself, or could I still persuade the Chancellor to accept someone else’s name instead of Romali’s?

  The loudest of the guests, Ms Joy, has her upcoming Insem – the appointment at the House of Life when the women get their babies. “You know, talking about hormones,” she says, “I heard that there was a woman on the fifty-second floor who thought she had been Insemed with a girl – like everyone else – except when they did a scan it turned out to be a boy!”

  “Ugh, fifty-second, no surprise there. They don’t wash,” says the third woman, Ms Box.

  “Lies,” says Ms Harry, with chewable disgust. “The Gardener only puts boys in the – you know –” her voice drops to a whisper – “the Meritless.”

  “Like I said,” continues Ms Joy, “she was on fifty-two. Bet her merits were only in the double digits. Can’t afford soap, see. Infections.”

  Ms Box laughs.

  “Nonsense,” Ms Harry sighs. “Don’t you remember science class? History? The Mathematical Repopulation Act.”

  Ms Box swears. “You’re such a swot, Leah. Science is for nerds.”

  Ms Harry sighs. “All ’bryos are female at first, that’s just fact. You have to afford the treatments to keep it that way, though. It’s the hormones, the balance, the pills the Gardener prescribes. Read the literature, Su. Saints, all the reading, thought I’d go blind. And the pills. So fogging many.”

  Her friends throw things at her and laugh like it’s funny.

  “Seriously, it’s a delicate process the Insem: one germ and you end up with a boy. Nobody wants that.”

  Ms Harry I remember. Her name is Ms Leah Harry.

  *

  Bzzzz

  Appointment three: auction tea. Paid for by the House of Entertainment as a ‘perk’ for helping with the swimwear show later. I’m meant to serve tea, perform a traditional dance, listen and laugh and be my most attentive. But all three guests arrive already drunk, I think, still debating the opportunities we boys are so grateful to receive.

  “Education is entirely irrelevant to the life they have to lead,” says a woman with a sharp voice, slumping down on the cushions with a burp.

  There’s something about the way they talk over each other, in a garble, that makes me guess that they’re younger than most of my guests, nearer my age. Three guests, no names on the appointment list, so I name them by how they sound: Sharpie, Squeaky and Crackly.

  Barking their food orders, they try to outdo each other with how crude their meat orders can sound. I fumble to open the hatch of the dumb waiter and carry hot plate after cold plate through as obstacles, pillows and legs are moved into my path. They snicker as I count steps, hoping my instincts find the table before my shins.

  Sharpie sits near the door, based on the draught. The smoke from the spiced hookah she ordered makes me cough as she blows it towards me. Fruit-and-spice blasts hot. Holding your breath when blindly serving tea isn’t easy.

  “Pour,” she snips as I cough.

  Cradling her cup in my hand, I slip my thumb over the edge and pour the tea. Listen for the sound of the liquid; the note of it landing gets higher as the liquid reaches the top. The steam rises up until the tip of my thumb feels the heat; the note hits the right pitch to stop pouring before the liquid touches my skin.

  The cup is snatched away from me. As her friends laugh, Sharpie carries on between slurps. “It’s a fact that they can’t think out matters coolly and calmly.”

  “Yasmin on one oh nine said reason isn’t possible,” says Squeaky, her voice high like a whistle. “You wouldn’t try and make a fish waltz; why waste time teaching a boy to read?” Squeaky doesn’t sound convinced, more like she’s trying to make her friends laugh.

  “Please,” Crackly protests. “Think calmly? They can’t think at all.” Crackly’s contempt oozes as she stands. There’s a fume of alcohol.

  “Only good for eye candy,” Sharpie laughs with a snort.

  That snort… Sharpie, the woman sitting nearest to the hatch, is the tall officer that pulled me aside on the way to the Chancellor. The one hell-bent on telling me the histories I already knew. The one with the wandering hands.

  My fingers tighten round the handle of the teapot. The room is full of Lice!

  Slow as I can, I turn and move away from them, hoping they don’t notice everything in me tense.

  See you soon. That’s what she said before my ‘date’ with the Chancellor. Did the Lice know about the Chancellor’s plans? About the Gardener? The Chancellor murdered her but it seems as if I’m the only one who knows. Maybe the Chancellor changed her mind; she can do that. Maybe the Lice are here to arrest me for the Gardener’s murder?

  I make it a few steps to the door but Sharpie is up on her feet fast, blocking my way. I bump into her wall of cold armour.

  “Where are you going, gorgeous?”

  Her breath warms my nose. The remnants of her dinner caught in her teeth. Something meaty.

  She’s about my height but she’s got the advantage.

  Sharpie’s voice drops to a whisper. “You have something for me, don’t you?”

  Did the Chancellor send her?

  It’s too soon! And how do I answer if they didn’t pay me to talk? I try to step to the side.

  Sharpie’s hot hand slips between my legs and everything in my stomach jumps into my throat. My whole body goes cold. My teeth clamp together so firm my jaw aches. “Tea,” she orders and rattles her cup between us. “Pour.”

  “What are you doing?” protests Squeaky behind her.

  “Sit down, Trood! I said pour, pretty boy.”

  Crackly giggles and hiccups into her teacup.

  Nodding deferentially (the way the house teaches us) – slow, respectful, graceful – I offer up a gracious-without-being-smarmy smile, lift up the teapot and wait.

  Sharpie lets go of my groin and pushes her rattling cup in between us.

  So I pour. Listening as the hot liquid lands, not to the deep note of liquid landing in cup but to the splash of it scalding the officer’s wrist.

  Sharpie screams as she knocks the pot from my hand. It smashes on the floor. I tighten every muscle in my body, preparing myself for a beating.

  Maybe this time you’ll hit back?

  Her friends are laughing. Splashes of boiling water hit my hands as I hear the officer swipe at her clothes.

  I could say it was an accident, but I won’t. It wasn’t. Inside my head, I’m waiting for you to laugh, or clap, to tell me I’m smart and brave and you’re proud I’m your friend.

  “I think I’ll bid on this one come auction. Teach him some manners,” Sharpie says.

  They’re not here to arrest me? She thinks I’ll make it to auction.

  Smack! Something flat and hard hits the side of my head. It sings through my skull and my eyes water.

  “He’s the Chancellor’s boy, Spinny!” her friend squeaks in protest.

  That’s what they called her before. When I hear her name, the tightness in my chest goes. Could I give the Chancellor her na
me? It’s not like she’s said anything bad about the Chancellor, but I have to do something. I won’t be just another boy who takes it. Not any more.

  “Not yet.” Spinny dismisses her friend. “She’ll go off this one like the one last year. There are always ways to lower the reserve. Even hers.”

  I need something more than a nickname. She’s not just going to give me her full name and I can’t ask, can I?

  Rule Two: don’t talk unless they pay you, you remind me.

  But I’m under the Chancellor’s protection, at least for now.

  “One merit?” I say. Turning to face her, hot saltwater sweat itches at my eyelashes. It seeps into the white cotton around my eyes. I notice every breath as it heaves in and out of me. “Good luck lowering that.”

  “No,” her friend squeakily answers me. “She upped it this morning. Half a million.”

  “What?” I say, holding on to the wall to stop from falling. Half a million merits. That’s over half the debt I owe the house. About twice that and I’d be the first free man in the Tower. No one’s ever reserved a boy for so much.

  “Shut up, Trood!” Spinny shouts.

  “He deserves to know,” adds ‘Trood’ with a defensive squeak.

  “He doesn’t deserve anything. They’re not even meant to talk, dumbclot,” the groper says.

  I clear my throat. This is it: this is how I’ll get her full name. “The House of Boys regrets you feel you’ve had a less than satisfactory service, Officer—”

  “Olive Aspiner, pretty boy, and don’t you forget it.”

  With my best butter-wouldn’t-melt smile, I store the name away to give to the Chancellor.

  “Officer Aspiner, you’re welcome to tell the Appointment Steward,” I say, reeling off the usual disclaimer. “Or maybe the Chancellor?”

  The laughs of her friends are muffled behind me.

  Something cold and metallic rests against my cheek. I don’t need my sight to know it’s a knife. I catch my breath, freeze as she grasps my neck with her other hand. Her palm damp where I soaked her. She pulls me so close I can almost see her features blurred beyond the blindfold.

  “I’ve cut the tongues out of higher-floor wards that speak when they’re not spoken to,” she says. “Who do you think ordered that? Madam Vor? No, it was your future guardian. You’re no more above the law than any of the rest of your kind, not in my eyes, not in hers. I don’t care what you’re worth. Remember that.”

  Every so often, down in the kitchens, the House of Knowledge would send a lesson for the cooks to teach. Maybe they felt sorry for us up Above? Everyone would crowd in to listen.

  “They call it a meritocracy,” the head cook droned as he wrote the word merit on the orders board in dark-text dots.

  “Yes, Cook,” we replied, all sitting between the ovens in a line, picking at the grit between the tiles.

  “Merit,” he said.

  All us boys copied the dots down on our papers. You scribbled in the furthest corner, saving as much of the paper as you could for your sculptures.

  Every woman Above, Cook explained, is born with a thousand merits to their name as well as any inheritance officially sanctioned by the House of Merit. On top of their birthday gifts, girls would be credited merits for doing good works, helping others and passing exams. This is what they call ‘showing your worth’. Although I’d heard stories that some girls got merits from the house fairy when they lost their teeth, I never got merits when I lost mine, no matter how many I pulled free.

  Cook said that girls got to choose which house they’d work in. At fourteen, girls could apply to three houses and, depending on their skills, they’d be assigned a job at the most suitable one, where they’d study and work. The girls could change houses after they turned eighteen, based on application.

  Every house paid the same merits for a job, no matter the rank, but the girls – now women – could earn more from their colleagues, friends and family for hard work, deeds that supported the community or bettered the success of their house. After the age of eighteen, Cook said, by law all women had to pay at least a quarter of their earnings to others within the year. The House of Merit, run by Madam Glassey, monitored the transfers in vast ledgers.

  It’s not like that for us.

  We already knew that boys get a thousand merits at birth too, but that’s used up fast to pay the Surrogacy to take care of us. It’s enough for the first five years and that’s it. It’s all debt after that, the debt of our forefathers, the men of our name who went before, all the way back to the first of our name.

  “Meritocracy,” Cook continued, “means that the best people in the Tower are in charge. The kindest. The smartest. The most selfless.”

  “But—” I raised my hand, the other hand itching at the tattooed number on my ankle – my starting debt.

  “I know what you’ll want to know.” Cook ignored me. “Any woman, or boy, can be demerited, of course, by anyone. Papers of demerit, with a reason, are written and submitted. If the reason for a demerit is considered just, then the individual’s account is demerited according to the amount dictated by the House of Merit’s rules.”

  Rules.

  He wrote the word on the orders board in dots and all the boys copied.

  “But—” I raised my hand again. I was trying to be a good boy, I was. You tried not to laugh.

  “The system is designed to elevate the most worthy person in the Tower –” most worthy woman he meant, because there was no way one of us would ever make it into credit – “to the position of most power. Based on this, we know that our Chancellor will be the most kind, most selfless, most respected—”

  Most most everything ever? “But—”

  “But WHAT, prentice?”

  “But … but what if it doesn’t work?”

  “If what doesn’t work?”

  “The meritogracy.”

  “Meh-ree-toh-krah-see. And I think you’re missing the point – it does work.”

  “But what if it doesn’t?”

  The boys around me laughed like I was an idiot. You actually threw something at my head.

  “It does,” Cook insisted.

  “Yes, but—”

  He pulled the demerit book and a stamp from out of the drawer and waved it in the air. “You want to continue to question the Foundations? How much is it worth to you?”

  “I just think—”

  “Don’t,” Cook interrupted as he stamped a demerit on the slip he ripped from the book – only boys get the stamp for a demerit. Of course he couldn’t use the women’s letters, the ones that aren’t made of dots and bumps. No boy could ever demerit a lady. We can’t. They don’t give us the tools.

  “Don’t think.” Cook sighed and looked at me like I was a lost cause. “Trust me,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

  “But—”

  “One more word and you’re down for kennel cleaning. Since merits mean so little to you, perhaps scraping up dog crap will learn you.”

  “Teach,” you corrected him, and winked at me. My friend.

  That’s how we both ended up with the dogs.

  On the board Cook wrote a third word:

  Worth.

  And all the boys copied.

  I stood up to the Lice! I can do this. I can save you. There’s a small nick on my cheek from Aspiner’s knife. But it’s no worse than a shaving cut, which is how I’ll explain it if anyone asks. Heading down to the dorm dining room, I join the queue for food, my chest lifted up high.

  Half a million merits? Is that what I’m worth to the Chancellor now? For a second, it feels good to know what she’s willing to pay for me. Doubt drips into my ear. Maybe her reserve will go down if I don’t give her Romali. Maybe she’s decided not to let you go. Maybe it’s all a game, giving me hope, before snatching it away. Or is it a promise: I give her Romali, she lets you go? If I stay, maybe, just maybe, she’ll pay enough to erase my debt and give me my freedom. There’s that hope itching away. What if both of us
could be free?

  The weight of the hundreds of floors above seems too heavy for the concrete dining-room ceiling. The pipes, looping in a rusting metal maze, creak. Even the air feels thick, weighted with the stink of dishwater, kitchen crud and old vegetables. Breathing through my mouth so the stuffy air doesn’t ruin my appetite, I move through the queue.

  How do I get the Chancellor to accept Aspiner’s name instead? She wanted Romali to give herself up by this evening. If Walker could get me to see the Chancellor, if I could give her a different name … maybe I could buy some time. But Walker’s not going to come to me either, it seems. Not unless he has to.

  Under the grease-caked yellow light, the House Fathers at the doors check for any trouble, but I keep catching them looking away from me. Groups of boys stop practising dance moves for the ball as I pass. Even the kitchen prentice peer at me through the long hatch as they slop out our late meal.

  By the time my tray’s loaded up (the usual brown protein-powder stew), the pressure inside my head is back.

  Maybe I can make Walker come to me. He’ll be rehearsing the boys who got into Swims.

  I’m weaving through the tables to reach the brothers from my dorm when Stink limps in, dripping wet, nursing a black eye.

  He didn’t have that shiner this morning. It could be from his appointments, but as he shuffles into line his eyes are everywhere but on the hulks sitting at the table right beside me. Vinnie and the rest of your old gang, busy running through all seven of the compulsory poses for this evening’s show. They can’t even squeeze on to one table there’s so much meat on them.

  You want Walker’s attention, right?

  It needs to be a big enough brawl for the House Fathers to send for Walker, but not so bad I risk a hefty demeriting. With a reserve of half a mil I can afford the dink.

  Do it! Hit them.

  Aye-Aye isn’t smiling. He’s flexing a full-front double biceps to compete with Toll’s rear lateral spread. Did they go for Stink instead of me? They dunk half the kids in here when they can, so that they miss appointments. It’s been getting worse as we get closer to auction; they haze other boys daily, scare the rest out of the running for the better women.