Alight

by Scott Sigler

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  My eyes sting. I leave before she can see me cry.

  I’ve had it with all of this. Our symbols are a simmering poison that will corrupt what we’ve worked so hard to build.

  O’Malley knows something about them, and he’s going to tell me.

  I turn the wheel. I open the door.

  O’Malley pivots to see who has joined him—the image above the pedestals suddenly changes. I don’t know what was there a moment ago, but now it’s the same thing I saw the last time I was here: little heads of Aramovsky, O’Malley and Matilda.

  O’Malley seems pleased—he probably thinks I came to take him up on that kiss—but only for a moment. The look on my face tells him otherwise.

  “Em, what’s wrong?”

  I think he’s hiding something, but I’m not sure. My father’s voice echoes through my head: Attack, attack, always attack.

  “You lied in the meeting,” I say, letting him hear the anger in my soul even while I hope I’m wrong. “You already knew the Observatory had power.”

  His mouth twitches, just once.

  “I did,” he says.

  I was right. I don’t want to be. I wanted to trust him.

  “Did you remember your access code?”

  He stares for a few seconds, his expression blank and impenetrable. He’s weighing his options: lie and see if he can get away with it, or tell the truth.

  “I didn’t remember it, but I figured it out,” he says. “I thought maybe my progenitor picked a code of something important from his childhood. I’ve been working on it since I first found this room.”

  I wait. There is more and he will tell me.

  His stone-face cracks, shifts to sadness. He looks away.

  “When I was little, I had a kitten,” he says. “I mean, he had a kitten. White, with a black spot on its face. They made him kill it. The kitten’s name was Chromium.”

  I have no idea what to say. I’m excited and jealous that he recalls something from the past. I also feel for him, because it’s clear that—although the cat has been dead for a thousand years and was never really his to begin with—this is a hard thing to remember.

  “Why did they make your creator kill it?”

  He stares at the floor for a moment, then shrugs.

  “I’m not sure,” he says. “I think they were trying to teach my progenitor something about emotions.”

  What kind of lesson on emotions could be gained from making a little boy kill a kitten? Then I remember who we’re talking about—the Grownups. Compared to what we’ve seen, making a child murder his pet is nothing.

  “So that was your access code? Chromium?”

  “That and some other numbers and letters,” he says. “I’m not sure what they mean, or if they are just random stuff.”

  The pig I killed in the garden—it was so hard to take that animal’s life. I can’t imagine what it must be like to do the same to something you love. How unfair that O’Malley remembers that act when it wasn’t even him that did it.

  Maybe this is something he needs to talk about. If he wants to talk to me, I will listen, but not now. There are more important things than a dead cat.

  “We need to know more,” I say. “Can the pedestals tell us about the city? The mold?”

  He shakes his head. “It looks like most of the information was permanently erased. The Grownups did that, I think. I don’t know why. I was able to see some organizational information. That’s how I learned the Observatory has power.”

  The Observatory. All he had to do was come out and tell us about it. Instead, he wanted us to think that going there was someone else’s idea.

  Attack, attack…

  “What do the symbols mean, O’Malley?”

  His stone-face returns. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, don’t I? Now you know what I want?”

  “I know what you need.”

  How arrogant. My sympathy for the hurt he feels over the cat is fading fast.

  “Out with it. Right now.”

  He pauses.

  “You’ve been telling us that we can’t afford to be divided against each other,” he says. “You’re correct. So, if I found something the Grownups did that doesn’t apply to us, and would upset people, then you’re right to say it’s best if we leave it alone.”

  Arguing with each other, splitting into factions, that’s the fastest way to failure, to disaster. Do we really need things that could divide us? I want all the information I can get, but…

  …wait.

  Wait.

  I know we can’t afford to be divided—but I never said that. Just like I didn’t say anything about looking near the shuttle to see if spiders were close.

  O’Malley said those things, not me.

  My anger spikes, but this time I’m ready for it. I shove it down. I set my spear against the wall, reach out and take his hand. He stares at our linked fingers, somewhat surprised. Maybe he’s only comfortable with contact if he’s the one initiating it.

  “You want people to think your ideas are mine,” I say. “Why?”

  His eyes go wide. He’s been caught and he knows it. Did he think I wouldn’t notice? Does he think I’m stupid, just an empty?

  “My training,” he says. “I know ways to…to convince people to do things. Ways to make sure everyone thinks the leader knows exactly what’s going on. It’s bad for people to doubt the leader. As soon as I started helping you, back on the Xolotl, I remembered some of what I learned in school.”

  He had a flashfire of memories. The same thing happened to Gaston, to Aramovsky, to Bishop and Spingate. I’ve yet to have mine.

  “What you did was wrong,” I say. “Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it.”

  He shrugs. “It’s how I was trained.”

  “That wasn’t you. That was your creator.”

  He huffs. “Is there really a difference? I remember that kitten. I remember holding it, petting it. I remember how it purred, loving me, trusting me, right before my hands closed around its tiny neck. I remember it scratching me…”

  O’Malley seems confused. He slides up the sleeve of his black coveralls, stares at his forearm. He turns his arm this way and that, looking for something.

  “It scratched me,” he says. “Really bad. There were scars.”

  I take his forearm in my hands. My thumbs make slow circles on his skin.

  “Your progenitor had scars. You are not him. You asked if there was a difference. There is—you don’t have to do things like he would have done them. You have a choice. We have a choice. I don’t need you to lie for me. We’re not going to make the same mistakes our creators made. If people doubt me, that’s fine.”

  “You’re wrong,” he says. “If people don’t think you know exactly what needs to be done, they’ll look for someone who does.”

  I shrug. “Then we’ll have another vote and pick another leader. We can’t keep secrets from each other.”

  He laughs, looks away. “That’s what you say now.”

  I cup his face, force him to look at me. “We will not keep secrets. Tell me what the symbols mean.”

  His eyes plead with me. “Leave it be. This will change everything.”

  I nod. “And we’ll handle it.”

  O’Malley closes his eyes. He slowly tilts forward until his forehead presses against mine. That tiny spot of contact sends a tingle through me. It isn’t aggressive, like his kiss, yet this gentle touch reaches me in a way that kiss never could.

  He straightens, faces the pedestals.

  “Shuttle, show her the wheel.”

  The invisible voice speaks: “Yes, Chancellor.”

  The little heads above the pedestal blur, then fuzz out. A circle forms, dotted with tiny images around the outer edge. In the circle’s center there is a flat, fat-cheeked cartoonish face that looks like it was carved into flat stone. Its tongue sticks out. The style of art reminds me of m
y birth-coffin’s carvings.

  That circle of images…

  I look at the red circle embroidered on the left breast of O’Malley’s coveralls.

  “Our ties,” I say. “That face with the symbols, it matches what was on our ties.”

  O’Malley nods. “It does. But before you ask, I don’t know what it means.”

  He sees my doubtful expression.

  “I told you information was erased. I know it’s hard for you to believe me right now, but that’s the truth. Shuttle, show her the symbols.”

  Above the pedestal, three glowing dots appear around the circle. At the very top, the dot turns black, spreads out and becomes a symbol: Spingate’s gear. The other two form near the bottom, connected to the gear and each other by straight lines that form a perfect triangle. On the left, O’Malley’s half-circle; on the right, Aramovsky’s double-ring.

  Words appear by each symbol: SPIRIT by the double-ring, MIND by the gear, and STRUCTURE by the half-circle.

  “The double-ring is obviously religion,” O’Malley says. “The gear is for scientists and engineers. My symbol represents administration—helping leaders, organizing, managing other people who do actual labor. As far as I can tell, people who had these three symbols worked together to rule. Whatever type of culture there was back on the Xolotl—I mean before they started slaughtering each other—those three symbols were in charge.”

  “But Matilda was the leader. If I’m a circle, wasn’t she one, too? Circles would have to be in the leadership group, wouldn’t they?”

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to go on.

  “Tell me the rest of it,” I say.

  He clears his throat, speaks loud. “Show the secondary symbols.”

  Three more dots appear, one each in the spaces between the existing symbols. The dots take shape…

  Top left: Bishop’s circle-star.

  Top right: Smith’s circle-cross.

  And at the bottom, finally, my symbol—the empty circle.

  Words appear: MIGHT next to the circle-star, HEALTH next to the circle-cross. By mine, the word SERVICE.

  O’Malley points to the circle-star. “Might means military. Soldiers or police. People who protect the order of things.”

  I think of Bishop and the others, of how they are always the first to face any danger, of how without them we would all have been overwritten by now.

  “Soldiers help keep people safe,” I say. “People who keep us safe would be part of the ruling class.”

  “They weren’t.” No hesitation in O’Malley’s voice, no doubts. “They did the bidding of the primary symbols.”

  So Grownup O’Malley would have been in charge of Grownup Bishop? Interesting.

  O’Malley points to the circle-cross. “That symbol was for doctors, nurses, people involved in the health of others.”

  The dead Brewer boy in the coffin, he had the circle-cross on his forehead. Is Brewer a doctor? Perhaps he was in charge of the receptacles. That might explain how he had control over our coffins, how he was able to wake us up, to lock out Matilda and the others for all those centuries.

  I wait for O’Malley to continue. He doesn’t. He looks down, unable to meet my eyes.

  “Stop stalling,” I say. “Explain my symbol. What was my role in their society? What special skills am I supposed to have?”

  He lets out a slow breath. His blue eyes shimmer with tears. Maybe he fakes emotions at will, but he isn’t faking this.

  “Circles don’t have special skills,” he says. “Your role was to do whatever the other symbols told you to do. Em…the circles were slaves.”

  Like a key sliding into a lock, that word destroys barriers in my mind. Matilda’s memories—fractured, distorted, but still real—flood in. I am in school, carrying a tooth-girl’s things for her while she walks five steps ahead of me, laughing with other tooth-girls…

  …I am in class—no, waiting outside of class, with other circles, being taught basic math by an old woman while my tooth-girl—my owner—is in the classroom learning physics…

  …I am in the cafeteria, on my knees, wiping food off the floor, food that my owner knocked over just so she could see me pick it up while she and her tooth-girl friends laugh at me, call me a stupid empty over and over again…

  …I am in a small room in a church where every person I see is a circle, except for the pastor, a woman in red robes with a double-ring on her forehead, who is saying that service is the life the gods planned for us and that if we do it well, if we serve, if we obey, then we will be rewarded after death when we go to the Black Mountain…

  …I am outside the church, talking to an older circle-boy while I wait for my owner to finish her own service in a church that is far more beautiful than mine, and the boy looks around carefully before he asks if I’ve ever heard of the god called Tlaloc, the one who can empower the soldiers and doctors and workers to rise up against the rulers…

  …the feeling of anger, of humiliation, of hatred at belonging to someone else, at having no rights, the need to do something about it, anything, no matter what the cost…

  “Em?”

  O’Malley is staring at me.

  “Em, are you all right?”

  No. I’m not. I finally had that moment I wanted, that flashfire, just like my friends had. Gaston gets to fly, and I get this?

  I share my creator’s memories. For the most part, I am those memories. Matilda didn’t wear chains, she didn’t live in squalor, but she was a slave nonetheless. She was property.

  “On the Xolotl, it seemed like Matilda was in charge,” I say. “How could a slave be in charge?”

  “Because she led a rebellion. The details of it are erased, but I’m pretty sure she started the war on that ship.”

  I thought she was a monster, inside and out. Maybe things aren’t so simple, so cut-and-dried. All those mutilated bodies, the butchered babies…only someone who is pure evil could do that. And yet, a part of me—the part of me that is her, perhaps—understands why she would start that war.

  “She didn’t want to be a slave,” I say. “She didn’t want anyone to be a slave.”

  For the first time, I truly understand my creator.

  O’Malley gently grips my shoulders. “Now you know why we can’t tell the others.”

  “We have to.” My voice is thin, drained of life. “Everyone wants to know what the symbols mean.”

  He cups my face in his hands, doing to me what I did to him only moments ago.

  “Em, please. I was trained to counsel leaders, how to know what people are thinking and how to make sure the leaders say the right thing at the right time. If we share the meaning of the symbols now, it will destroy everything we’ve accomplished.”

  I know I should tell everyone, but I don’t want to. A slave? That’s all I was? But no, that wasn’t me, it was Matilda. Omeyocan is a new world. It is our world—we can make it whatever we want it to be. My people can handle this news. They can make the right decision and not be ruled by the structures of our history.

  “They need to know,” I say. “We have to be honest.”

  O’Malley shakes his head in exasperation. “All right, they need to know, fine, but not now. Aramovsky is just waiting for the right opportunity to call a new election. Do you want to take the chance that he’ll win?”

  I think of Aramovsky talking about his God of Blood. So many young minds on this shuttle now. If he could say whatever he wanted, he might corrupt them all.

  O’Malley is right—Aramovsky can’t be in charge now, it would be a disaster.

  “But we will tell them, right?” Now I am the one with the pleading tone in my voice. I have never sounded less like a leader. “We’ll tell them soon?”

  O’Malley pulls me in and holds me tight. I let him.

  “We will, Em, I promise. We’ll tell everyone about our past, but after we’ve secured our future.”

  There is nothing arrogant about him now, nothing expected from this hug—I
need him to hold me, so he does.

  I will tell everyone. I will.

  Just not now.

  The sun hangs low in the sky. Bishop has not returned.

  I sit alone atop the pile of vines at the landing pad’s edge. The pad is alive with activity, as I have put everyone to work. Under the direction of Opkick, kids are chopping vines and clearing them away from the pad’s metal deck. They toss the cut pieces onto the vine wall, making it thicker and taller. If the spiders stay at street level, they can’t see the shuttle. Maybe they have other ways of detecting us—sound or smell, perhaps—but we’re out of sight, and that’s something.

  The kids doing the clearing work are mostly circles. That’s because most of us are circles. Six teenagers have that symbol. Fifty-two of the Xolotl kids. All 168 kids that were stored on the shuttle. In total, circles make up three-quarters of our population. I watch them, and I can’t stop thinking: clearing away unwanted plants is the kind of work a slave would do.

  From here I can see so much of the city—not far enough to spot Bishop somewhere off to the east, but if a spider tries to come this way I’ll have plenty of time to call out a warning and get everyone back inside the shuttle.

  I’m worried about Bishop, Bawden and Visca. There is nothing I can do to help them. The Observatory has power—does that mean people are there? People who could hurt my friends?

  I need to see Bishop again, if only just to lay eyes on him. Spingate has shown her true feelings, O’Malley plays mind games, Gaston is busy teaching Beckett how to fly and Aramovsky is a constant threat…Bishop is the only person I can count on.

  The city is still. Hot. No breeze. Sweat mats my hair to my head, yet the black suit keeps the rest of my body perfectly cool. I don’t know how that’s possible. The Grownups knew so much about so many things. If we solve the food problem, rediscovering their knowledge will be a high priority.

  I wait. I stare. I don’t see Bishop. I don’t see our exploring teams, either. Coyotl, Okereke, Cabral and Aramovsky each lead three circle-star kids, searching nearby buildings. They are all close enough to come running if I sound an alarm. So far, they have found only empty buildings.

  Borjigin, Ingolfsson and D’souza are moving contaminated food into a single storage room. Easier to guard that way. I didn’t want to risk the younger kids doing that job, for fear they might ignore my warnings and sneak some of the bad food for themselves. Borjigin is a half, like Opkick, like O’Malley, and naturally took charge of the operation. Part of me waited for Ingolfsson or D’souza—both circles—to push back, to tell Borjigin to stop being so bossy, but they didn’t. Are they working hard because that’s what has to be done, or because they were created to follow orders?