by Ally Condie
“Drinking the sky,” Ky says. “That’s what Indie said they were doing. We had a picture like this in one of our ships, too.” He takes a deep breath. His voice sounds stronger already. “It’s a picture of you bringing water to the Enemy to help them survive the Plague,” he says to the Pilot. “Isn’t it?”
For a few minutes, the Pilot doesn’t answer. Then I hear his voice coming through the speaker in the hold. It is quiet and sad, and I think that we are, for the first time, hearing his true voice. “The Society told us the Plague would make the Enemy ill and easy to defeat,” the Pilot says. “They said we’d bring the Enemy in as prisoners. But when the Plague started to work, our orders were to leave the Enemy where they were.”
“And you saw them die,” Xander says.
“Yes,” the Pilot says. “When a few of us ran the risk of flying in water, most of the Enemy wouldn’t drink it even though there was a drought. They didn’t trust us. Why would they? We’d been killing one another for years.”
I think of those thirsty, dying people, unable to drink anything but the rain which did not come.
“So there really was an Enemy,” Ky says. “But after they were gone, the Rising stepped in to act their part. Did you kill the farmers on top of the Carving to keep your cover?”
“No,” the Pilot says. “That was the Society. For years, they used the people in the Outer Provinces as a buffer between the main Provinces and the Enemy.” He clears his throat. “So I should have realized that we were no longer a true rebellion when we let the farmers, and so many other Anomalies and Aberrations, die. We told ourselves that the timing wasn’t right to reveal ourselves, but we still should have tried.”
Ky’s hand, warm in the dark, tightens on mine. If the Rising had stepped in, so many might have been saved. Ky’s family, Vick, the boy who took the blue tablet.
“You should know that the Rising was real,” the Pilot says. “The scientists who came up with the immunity to the red tablet were true rebels. So was your great-grandmother. And so were many of the others, especially those of us in the Army. But then, the Society realized that their power was slipping and discovered that they had a rebellion in their midst. At first, they tried to take back control by getting rid of the Aberrations and Anomalies. Then the Society began to infiltrate us the way we had infiltrated them. Now I don’t know who is who anymore.”
“Then who put the Plague in the Cities’ water supplies?” I ask. “Who tried to sabotage the Rising, if it wasn’t people working for the Society?”
“It appears,” says the Pilot, “that the water supplies were contaminated by well-intentioned supporters of the Rising who felt that the rebellion wasn’t happening quickly enough and decided to move it along.”
For a few long moments, none of us speak. When things like this happen—when what was meant to help results in harm, when a salve brings pain instead of healing—it is clear how wrong even choices intended to be right can become.
“But why didn’t the Society destroy the Rising outright if they knew you existed?” Xander asks, breaking the silence. “The Society could have cured everyone on their own—Oker told me that they always had the cure. Why didn’t the Society make enough cures so that they could let the Plague come in and administer the cure themselves?”
“The Society decided that it would be easier to become the Rising,” Ky says. “Didn’t they?”
As soon as he says this, I know that he’s right. That’s why the transition of power was so smooth, with so little fighting.
“Because if they became the Rising,” I say, “they could predict the outcome.”
The final predicted outcome. That’s what my Official said back in Oria at the Museum. That’s what she wanted to see in my case, and what the Society always took into account.
“The Society had discovered that we’d been making people immune to the red tablet,” the Pilot says.
“So more and more people couldn’t forget,” I say, understanding. “People were showing signs of wanting a change, a rebellion. This way, they got one, and the Society stayed in power without the people—including many of those who participated in the Rising—knowing what had really happened. They’d make a few changes, but for the most part, things would go on as they had.” The Society must have known that people become restless eventually. They may even have predicted it. Why not have a rebellion, if they could calculate the outcome and secure their power again under a different name? Why not use the Rising, a real rebellion in the beginning, to make things seem authentic? The Society knew people believed in the Pilot, and they took advantage of that.
But it didn’t turn out as the Society intended. The Plague mutated. And the people know more and want more than the Society thought they did, even people who weren’t chosen for immunity to the red tablet. People like me.
The Society is dead, even if they don’t know it yet.
I believe in a new beginning. And so do many others out there—those writing on scraps to hang in the Gallery, those who continue to work hard to take care of the sick, those who dare to believe that we can all be the pilots of something new and better.
We step like plush, we stand like snow—
The waters murmur now,
Three rivers and the hill are passed,
Two deserts and the sea!
I look at Ky and rewrite the end of the poem in my mind.
But I must count this journey, all
For it has brought me thee.
The door to the hold opens and Xander comes down, the light from the cockpit flooding in behind him. “I thought I should check on Ky,” he says, and I smile at Xander and he smiles back and for a moment it is all as it was, it is the same. Xander looks at me with longing and pain in his eyes; we are flying wild through a world that could belong to anyone, and I know why Ky kissed Indie back.
And then it is gone, and I know for a certainty that it is too late for us, for Xander and me, in that way. Not because I can’t still love him, but because I can no longer reach him.
“Thank you,” I say to Xander, and I mean those words as much as I love you, as much as anything I’ve ever said. And I feel a heavy, low, longing note of regret. For in the end, I didn’t fail him because I didn’t love him back, because I do love him back. I failed him because I cannot do for him what Ky does for me. I can’t help Xander sing.
When we land in Camas, I find that I am soon to fly again. We pause only long enough for Xander to make more of the cure so that I can bring it with me to Keya. And though this is a journey that I long to take, it is hard to leave Ky and Xander behind.
“I’ll be back soon,” I promise the two of them, and I will, in a matter of hours, instead of days or weeks. But I see the worry in Ky’s eyes that I know is in mine. We are haunted by other good-byes, so many of them.
And so is Xander. Hunter was right about one thing. There has been too much of leaving.
We land in a long field, not even a runway, near the small town where my parents lived in Keya. As the pilot, the medic, and I leave the ship, I see several figures on the ground walking to meet us. One of them, smaller than the others, breaks into a run and I begin running, too.
He throws his arms around me. He’s grown, but I am still taller, and the oldest, and I was not here to protect him. “Bram,” I say, and then my throat aches so much I can’t speak anymore.
A Rising officer comes up behind Bram. “We found him right before you were due to land.”
“Thank you,” I manage, and then I pull back to look at Bram. He stares up at me. He’s so dirty, very thin, and his eyes have changed and darkened. But I still know him. I turn him around and breathe a sigh of relief when I find the red mark on his neck.
“They both got sick,” Bram says. “Even with the immunizations.”
“We think we found a cure,” I say.
I take a deep breath. “Is it too late? Do you know where they are?”
“Yes,” Bram says, and then he shakes his head. His eyes fill with tears, and I can tell he’s pleading with me not to speak any more, not to ask which question he’s answering.
“Follow me,” he says, and he begins again to run, just as he always wanted to do, right out in the open, down the streets of the town. No Official stops him, or the rest of us, as we hurry through the empty streets under a brilliant, careless sun.
To my surprise, Bram takes me to the town’s tiny Museum, not to the medical center. Inside the Museum, the display cases have all been broken into, and the glass swept up. Any artifacts that were stored are now gone; the map of the Society has been drawn on, altered. I would like to look closely to see what is marked there now, but we don’t have time.
There are many of the still, lying on the floor throughout the room. A few people look up when we come in, and their faces relax slightly at the sight of Bram. He belongs here.
“They ran out of space at the medical center,” Bram says, “so I had to bring her here. I was lucky, because I had things to trade. Other people had to do the best they could at their homes. Here, at least they have the nutrient bags some of the time.”
Her. My mother. But what about him? What about my father?
Bram kneels down.
She looks very gone. I try not to panic. Her face is so pale against her scattering of freckles; there is more gray in her hair than I remember, but she looks young with her eyes open like this, young and lost to us.
“I turn her every two hours like they told me,” Bram says, “and her sores have healed. They were bad, though.” He speaks very fast. “But look. She has one of the bags now. That’s good, isn’t it? They’re expensive.”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s very good.” I pull him close again. “How did you manage it?” I ask.
“I traded with the Archivists,” Bram says.
“I thought the Archivists were all gone,” I say.
“A few came back,” Bram says. “The ones that had the red mark started to trade again.” I shouldn’t be surprised. Of course some of the Archivists would not have been able to resist coming back, seeing the void into which they could bring their trades and their trinkets.
I lean closer to Bram so that I can whisper to him. “We’re taking her back with us,” I say.
“Is it safe?” Bram whispers back.
“Yes,” the Rising medic says. “She can be transported. She’s stable, and shows no sign of infection.”
“Bram,” I say softly, “we don’t have very much of the cure yet. The Rising thinks Mama might be able to help them, so they agreed she could be one of the first to have it.” I glance over at my mother, with her staring-ahead eyes. “And I bargained for him, too, since we were coming here. But where is he? Where is Papa?”
Bram doesn’t answer my question. He looks away.
“Bram,” I say again, “where is Papa? Do you know? He can come with us to have the cure—they promised—but we don’t have much time. We have to find him now.”
And then Bram starts to sob, great heaving sighs. “They bring the dead out to the fields,” he says. “Only those of us who are immune can go out to check on them.” He looks up at me with tear-filled eyes. “That’s what I’ve been doing for the Archivists,” he says. “I can go out and look for faces.”
“No,” I say in horror.
“It’s better than selling the tubes,” he says. “That’s the other job that pays well.” His eyes are different—so much older, having seen so much more—and still the same, with that obstinate glint that I know well. “I won’t do that. Selling the tubes is a lie. Telling people whether or not their friends or family are dead is the truth.”
He shudders. “The Archivists let me choose,” he says. “They have people coming all the time wanting information or tubes or to know where the people they love are. So I helped them. I could find the people, if they gave me a picture. And then they paid me with what I needed for me. And for her.”
He did everything he could to take care of our mother, and I’m glad he saved her, but the cost was so high. What has he seen?
“I wasn’t in time for him,” Bram says.
I almost ask Bram if he’s sure; I almost tell him that he might be wrong, but he knows. He saw.
My father is gone. The cure is too late for him.
“We need to leave,” the medic tells me as he helps the Rising officer lift my mother onto a stretcher. “Now.”
“Where are you taking her?” someone asks from across the room, but we don’t answer.
“Did she die?” someone else calls out. I hear their desperation.
We pass through the still and those who tend them, leaving them behind, and my heart aches. We’ll be back, I want to tell them. With enough cures for everyone, next time.
“What do you have?” someone asks, pushing through. An Archivist. “Do you have a different kind of medicine? How much is it worth?”
The officer takes care of him while we hurry through the doors out of the Museum.
On the ship, Bram climbs down into the hold with me and with the medic, who starts a line for my mother. I pull Bram close and he cries, and cries, and cries, and my heart breaks, and I think his tears will never end. And then they do and it is worse, a shivering and shuddering that shakes his whole body, and I do not know how I can feel this much pain and survive, and at the same time know how much I have to live. Please, I think, let Bram feel that second part, somewhere inside his despair, because we are still together, we still have each other.
When Bram falls asleep, I take my mother’s hand. Instead of singing her the names of flowers, as I had planned, I say her name, because that is what my father would have done. “Molly,” I say. “We’re here.” I press the paper flower into her palm and her fingers twitch a little. Did she know this lily would cure us? That it was important somehow? Was she simply finding a way to send me something beautiful?
Whatever the case, it worked.
But not soon enough for my father.
CHAPTER 55
XANDER
This all comes naturally to you,” Lei said once before. “Doesn’t it?” I wonder if the medics watching me inject the cure into the line think the same thing. The patient getting the cure went still within the same time frame that Ky did—that’s a requirement for this first trial of the cure.
“That’s all you’ve got to do,” I tell the medics. “Inject the solution and wait for it to work.”
The medics nod. They’ve done this before. I’ve done this before, back during the original Plague when I first gave cures and speeches at the medical center. There aren’t many of us left now. “These hundred patients are the only ones we have on this trial,” I tell the medics. “We’re trying to find more of the plant, but it won’t be in flower much longer. We know the structure of the parent compound, so we’ve got people working around the clock to find the synthetic pathway so we can make it in the lab. But all you have to worry about is taking care of the patients.
“You’ll need to give new doses every two hours.” I gesture to where the supplies are stored, in a locked cabinet guarded by several armed officers. I don’t know their allegiance, except that it’s to the Pilot. “You might see some improvement by the time of the second dose. If their rate of recovery is as quick as our initial subject’s was, they’ll start speaking and talking again after only a few hours, and walking within two days. But I don’t anticipate that rate of recovery here. Be sure not to waste any of the cure.”
As if they need the warning. What we need are more flowers, and Cassia’s mother to come back. She was still for weeks, a lot longer than Ky was, and it’s taking her more time than it did him. The Rising has not yet been able to find her report on the rogue crops in the Soc
iety’s database, so we need her help desperately.
Meanwhile, the Pilot has teams scouring the fields and meadows near the city of Camas, with instructions not to pull up everything so that the flowers can grow back in case we need them again.
I wonder if they’ll be able to resist. It’s not exactly easy to save things for the future when the present is so uncertain.
“You sound like you’re sure this will work,” one of the medics says. Their uniforms are dirty and they all look exhausted. I remember some of them from when I was here before. It feels like years have passed instead of weeks.
“I don’t know how much longer I could have done this,” one of the medics says. “Now there’s a reason to keep going.”
I wish I could stay and help, but I’m due back at the lab to oversee the Rising pharmics who are making more of the cure. “I’ll be back to check on the patients later,” I say.
The medics start down the rows with the cures. I’m finished here for now, and I think I have just enough time to visit my old wing.
Lei’s eyes are very glassy and she smells of infection. But she’s been turned recently, and her long sweep of black hair has been braided back out of the way. And the paintings still hang above each patient. The medics here have been doing their best.
It doesn’t always come naturally to me, I want to tell her as I inject the cure into her line. Not right now. Please come back. If you were here, it would help.
This is one of the cures I made in the village. I didn’t turn them all over to the research team trying to synthesize the ingredients in the lab. I saved some for her. She didn’t go down that much earlier than Ky, so there’s a chance. Of course, she didn’t have Oker’s medicine in the bags.
I hear footsteps behind me and I turn to look. It’s one of the medics who worked here back when I did. “I didn’t know we were getting any of the new cure up here,” he says.
