Tree: Live to give, give to live (Numbered Book 3)
Page 16
City 02 was the next stop, and though Aurelia had seen the outskirts of the City from the Resistance village, she was little prepared for the experience of crossing poisonous streams of water on bridges to get between City blocks. She found that the people in 02 were more vibrant than those of other Cities she'd visited, more likely to laugh or even sing. The buildings too were a little different, not quite as tall as in other Cities, since the reclaimed swampland simply couldn't support too many floors.
She was well acquainted with City 01, and during the day and night that they were there, she stayed inside the safe house, reading. Though it had been her home for so long, she had little wish to walk the streets here. For one thing, she could be recognised; though with such a huge population, that was unlikely. Mostly it was because 01 reminded her of her childhood, and as happy as she had been, she didn't want the distraction of remembering a simpler world. It was no use longing after the planned, organised life that she'd had before. She knew now that that kind of life was wrong. Leaving 01 came as somewhat of a relief.
Their final destination, of course, was City 05. They weren't to meet Jonathon yet, though; first there was work to be done. 05 was brown. That was really the first word that snapped into Aurelia's mind when she thought of 05. Surrounded by rolling dunes of desert, snuggled into a hollow in the middle of the land, everything in 05 was brown. Everything was also covered in sand, which she soon learned to despise. Sand got into her eyes, between her toes, rolled up in her screen—it was inescapable, and after a while, the scratch of sand on her skin threatened to drive her insane. Though 05 was the hottest City on Earth, it didn't feel quite as bad as 03, mostly due to a strong breeze that picked up every afternoon. They spent two days in 05, longer than they had in any other City.
At the end of the second day, her parents arrived back at the safe house together, looking tired but satisfied.
“Well,” her father said, unwinding a strip of material that had been protecting his face from the windblown sand, “we've done everything we could. We've talked and persuaded and negotiated until there's nothing more to say. We just have to hope now that it all worked.”
“I'm sure it did, dear,” said her mother, shaking sand out of her long dark hair. “And what have you been up to?” she asked Aurelia.
During their trip, Aurelia hadn't exactly been overburdened with work. Her father had insisted that, although he was sure she was an excellent negotiator, the kind of people he was talking to wouldn't take easily to a young girl, and they didn't have the time to prove her worth. Instead she'd read, walked, and learnt as much as she could about the Cities that they’d visited. Today, though, she'd been cooking—a skill that didn't always come easily to her.
“I've made dinner,” she said. “I thought since it was our last night, we should probably have a family dinner.”
All of them knew, though none of them said, that this would likely be their last family dinner for a long, long time. Maybe ever. They ate, talked, and laughed, but there was an air of something in the evening. It was a strange combination of sadness, anxiety about what was going to come, and hope. When dinner was over, her father opened a small bottle of synth alcohol and poured a tiny amount into three glasses.
“Remember, it's not an ending—it's a beginning,” he said, raising his glass. “So, to beginnings.”
“To beginnings,” Aurelia and her mother echoed.
But Aurelia couldn't help but think that they didn't know exactly what they were beginning. In later times, she reflected that if her father had only known what was in store for them, he might not have been so fast to make his toast.
Chapter Eleven
To everyone's surprise, it was Lukas who knocked at the safe house door the next afternoon.
“What are you doing here?” Aurelia asked as he let himself in.
“That's a nice welcome,” he said with a grin. “I'm here to officially escort you to our meeting place. And I'm starving.”
Aurelia's mother quickly warmed up some soup and handed it over. “So,” she asked, “is it far?”
Lukas shook his head, mouth full, then quickly swallowed. “We've got to walk, though. I hope that's okay.”
Darkness fell fast in City 05. One moment the light was bright and clear, then for a brief few minutes it shimmered orange, and then it was gone. They were all ready when the time came, their packs draped with the brown hessian fabric that many 05s used to protect their goods from sand.
“Best we leave early,” Lukas had said. “We'll attract less attention on the streets if we look like Workers going home for the evening.”
The streets of 05 were bustling as they left, and Aurelia was careful to keep her pale skin covered with a scarf lest she attract attention. People here tended to be dark, and she needed to blend in. It wasn't until they reached the outskirts of the City that the crowds thinned, and Stefan called a halt.
“Are we just going to walk out of here?” he asked incredulously.
Lukas laughed. “Yep. That's the beauty of 05. It's so remote, so isolated, that no one cares who walks in and out. Even if you tried to leave the City on foot, the chances are that you'd be dead by the next day, anyway; the sun would just burn you up.” He saw the look of consternation on Aurelia's face. “We'll be safe under cover long before the sun comes up,” he assured her. “As long as we're not shouting and yelling, no one's going to try and stop us going, so let's go.”
The lights of the City faded into the night, and the blackness was complete. Aurelia had rarely known such an absence of light, and she was relieved when Lukas finally allowed them to switch on their light sources. The going was tough. Walking on the dunes with their soft, sliding sand meant that each step was only a centimetre or so of progress. The muscles in Aurelia's thighs and calves burned.
“You okay?” Lukas asked.
Her father was behind them, gallantly helping her mother, though secretly Aurelia thought it might be the other way around. She nodded in answer to his question.
“I hate it out here,” he admitted. “Sand in everything, deathly hot during the day and cold at night, and you can't even walk properly.”
“It's a far cry from 02,” Aurelia agreed.
“That it is,” he said, his voice distant.
“Did you really grow up there?”
“Sure. Had an ill-spent youth trying not to fall in the swamp and exploring the jungle any chance I could get. Tons of fun until I had to join my posting in 01.”
Hmm. Something there didn't make sense. What City kid had time for exploring and fun? Aurelia knew that she certainly hadn't.
“Where exactly did you grow up?” she probed, feet slipping in the sand.
He looked at her strangely. “In 02, I just said.”
“And you trained there?” she asked, not knowing why his story didn't make sense but trying to get more information.
“Sort of,” he said, awkwardly.
Then it clicked. Exploring. Fun. No training. She stopped. “Did you grow up in a settlement?” she asked.
He stopped beside her. “Yes,” he said. “But it's not the sort of thing that I tell everyone.”
She could understand why—the prejudice against settlers would be incredible, and settlers weren't allowed into the Cities at all. How had he managed it?
“I saw how my people lived in the jungle,” he said to her unasked question. “Knew that it was possible, and knew that the Earth was—is—dying. I wanted to do something about it. So I ran away.” He shrugged. “I was lucky that it was the Resistance that picked me up outside the City and not someone else. I was a kid; I knew nothing. All I knew was that I wanted to save the world, quite literally. And, well, here I am.”
“And your parents?” she asked.
“I never saw them again.”
He started walking again, and she knew better than to ask any more questions. Instead she concentrated on the infuriating half-backward, half-forward progress that she was making in the sand.
“Natural,” commented her father. “There must have been a water source here at some point that carved it out.”
Lukas quickly led them down a series of tunnels, and Aurelia noted that the whole place was buzzing. Everywhere she looked, there was someone carrying something: a bag, a box, in one case three chairs piled on top of each other.
“You've been working hard,” she said, and Lukas grunted in reply.
“This place has been used before,” he said. “Though we don't know by whom or when. It's perfect for our purposes, though. There's a large cavern that's fairly central, and a collection of rock tunnels leading off it. Many of these tunnels have niches carved out of them, making private sleeping quarters. At a guess, I'd say the people around here used this during the War as shelter.”
“And for many, many centuries before that,” Aurelia's father said, shining his light source on a primitive sketch emblazoned on a wall.
“I'll take you to the quarters that have been assigned to you,” Lukas continued, ignoring the interruption. “And then I guess someone will come and tell you what to do. I need to report in to Jonathon that you're safe.”
Aurelia's mother thanked him just as they stopped in front of a hanging curtain.
“This chamber is for you and Mr. Cole, and Aurelia, yours is right here.” He pointed to a curtain on the opposite wall of the corridor. “Don't worry, I'll send someone to get you for breakfast if I haven't seen you before then!”
And he was gone, trotting down the hallway. Aurelia realised how terribly busy everyone was. She unshouldered her pack and, carrying it in her hand, pushed aside the curtain in front of her. The small chamber was hewn out of the rock itself, and halfway up the right-hand wall, a ledge had been carved to make a sleeping platform where blankets already sat folded. Not bad for a cave, she thought. Not luxurious, but not bad. She assumed that there would be bio-toilets and a dry-wash facility somewhere close by, and after putting her bag down went off to find them. She desperately wanted to get rid of some of this damn sand.
She hadn't gone more than a few metres down the tunnel when she heard the slap of running footsteps behind her.
“Aurelia!”
Recognising the voice at once, she turned and flew into his arms. Jonathon. She inhaled his citrus scent and heard his heart and felt his warmth and for a second was indescribably happy.
“I came as soon as I heard you got in okay,” he murmured into her hair. “I missed you.”
“And I you,” she said, smiling. And she had. Though she'd been happy to be reunited with her parents, she'd missed the comfort of seeing him every day, being held in his arms. “But I was just about to go find a dry-wash.” She pushed herself out of his grasp. “I must look and smell awful.”
“Yes, you do,” he said, nodding seriously before laughing. “Aurelia, I don't think you could ever look awful.”
There was a beeping, and he pulled a portable com from his pocket.
“That works down here?” she said, surprised.
“Mmm.” He clicked an icon, and the beeping stopped. “We've had our best engineering Workers on that, but we've got full contact now. Listen, that was Tara; I should probably go speak to her just in case there's any news.”
“Right, and I'm going to try and wash off at least half this sand,” she said.
“When you get through, come up to my office. Ask anyone; they'll show you where it is. Promise?”
“Promise.” She smiled.
The dry-wash wasn't quite as satisfying as a real shower, but it more than did the job. Aurelia left the communal washrooms feeling far cleaner and more relaxed than she had when she'd arrived. She stopped off at her chamber to change her uniform, and then coughed outside her parents’ curtain.
“Oh, Aurelia,” said her mother, drawing the curtain aside. “We were just going in search of food. Your father needs a midnight snack so that he can work for the rest of the night and not sleep for the next three days.”
Apparently she'd walked into marital discord, and she tried not to smile. “I'm off to see Jonathon, but I'm sure we'll catch up later. Work well, Dad!” she said, peeking around the corner to see her father grinning back at her.
“Stay out of trouble,” he said.
As if, Aurelia thought, wandering off down the corridor. She found a tech Worker, who gave her directions to Jonathon's office; and once there, she noticed that the office actually had a door. The door was ajar. Hearing no voices, Aurelia pushed it slightly more open. Jonathon was sitting at a desk, his head in his hands, and for a second she thought he might be weeping. Quietly, she slid through the open gap in the door and closed it gently behind her. He looked up at the snap of the latch.
“What is it?” she said, coming to him.
He shook his head, mute with emotion.
“Tara found out who's behind your assassination attempts?” she said.
He nodded.
“And it's someone you know?” she guessed.
Again, he nodded.
“Jonathon, tell me. Who is it?”
His eyes were filled with pain, and when he finally spoke, his voice was choked with emotion. “Aurelia.” He paused to swallow. “It's my father.”
She didn't know what to say. His father? “B-but why?” she stuttered.
He shrugged. “Maybe he got wind of my ideas for change. Maybe he just wants to make a name for himself. If I were gone, it would be relatively easy for him to step into my place and win the election instead. Think about it—the grieving father continuing his murdered son's work? I honestly don't know, and neither does Tara.”
He looked devastated. She knew he had never been close to his parents, but this…this was something else. “What do you plan on doing?”
He bent his head back, looking at the uneven, rocky surface of the ceiling, and took several deep breaths. “For now, nothing. I need to deal with things here, and I need to think about this. I have work to do, and this can keep for the time being.”
She could understand that. They had few characteristics in common, but this was one of them. They both immersed themselves in work and let the thoughts run in the background until they came to a decision. Both were good at compartmentalising. Understanding that he no longer wanted to talk about the subject, she hopped up and sat on the corner of his desk. “And what needs to be done here?” she asked.
“The Resistance delegates have already started arriving,” he told her, concentrating on business now. “The last should be coming by tomorrow; Lukas has done a fantastic job arranging transport and getting people to and fro without question.”
“Where are they?” she asked, because though she'd seen plenty of people, there had been no one who had struck her as anything other than an ordinary Worker.
“There's another layer of tunnels and chambers below here,” he said. “We put the delegates down there, for the very simple reason that I'm still in hiding. None of them know I'm here. At least until tomorrow.”
“And what happens tomorrow?”
“The big speech,” he said, smiling slightly. “Which is what I'm supposed to be working on now, but I just can't seem to get the words down.”
“Then don't.”
“Aurelia, I've got less than twenty-four hours to write a speech that's going to persuade everyone here to back my ideas and if necessary...” He trailed off.
“If necessary, fight for them,” she finished. “Yes, I know, and I've already figured that out for myself. And I'm telling you not to write a speech.”
“Are you going to do it instead?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Jonathon.” She gave a sigh of exasperation and crossed her legs. “Don't write any speech. When the time comes, get up there and speak from your heart. It's the only thing that will work. These people aren't politicians; they
don't see nuances and cleverly written lines. They see truth and emotion. You believe so strongly in what you're doing that I don't see how they could fail to be persuaded as long as you speak from your heart. Writing a speech will make you sound like any other politician. Speaking your emotions will show them that you're different, that you're someone worth believing in.”
He regarded her carefully. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I'm a Worker. I've grown up surrounded by these people. Trust me.”
He reached for her hand. “I trust you more than anything,” he said. “And you could be right.”
“I am right,” she said firmly.
“The only thing I'm worried about is that there hasn't been any word from Nicholas or Elza at all.”
“Then you'll persuade them without the Clone factor, if necessary. You can do this, Jonathon—I know you can.” She squeezed his hand tightly.
He smiled and nodded. “In that case, since my plan for a night of speech writing has been ruined, why don't you fill me in on what you've been doing?”
She laughed and slipped off the desk to sit on his lap. Then she told him every detail that she could remember of the last week. When she was done, he carried her, protesting, down the tunnels and laid her in bed.
“It's a big day tomorrow,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “So you'd best get some sleep.”
The lack of sunlight in the cavern meant that she had no idea what time it was when she woke up, but she knew she was hungry. Following her nose, she found a canteen and was wolfing down a synth meal when her mother found her.
“I need you downstairs helping in the kitchens for the delegates,” she said, without even wishing her good morning. “And then at around three, I'm going to need you back up here so I can help you get ready.”
“Get ready?” she asked, confused. “For what?”
“You don't think I'm letting my daughter get on stage next to the future President without her at least looking half decent, do you?” her mother demanded. “Now finish up and get downstairs. Those delegates need feeding, and they're a demanding bunch.”