“Emily?” Leonard asked, confused.
“The girl from Omega.”
Chapter Nine
When he slammed the door she was already lying on her bed. She was propped up on three pillows, the quilt buckled up like a stormy ocean beneath her as she pulled her feet in closer, her arms wrapped around her knees. She knew it was coming. She knew he was home as soon as she saw his shoes by the door. She had tried to tiptoe into her bedroom, but he had heard her pass by his office. He called her name in the deep voice that she still feared as much as she had as a child, and when she chose not to answer, she knew that he would follow.
He was standing in the doorway, his cheeks pink. His blood pressure was up. “Emily, where the hell have you been at this time of day? Why weren't you here for dinner?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I don’t care if you are hungry or not, I expect you here. There are rules, young lady. You have been there again, haven’t you? You’ve been back.”
“Dad, I'm a grown woman. I can do whatever, and go wherever, I like. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“As long as you are under this roof I can demand what is expected of you. What is necessary.” Emily tutted, looked away, and drew her knees in closer still like a battle shield. His hand was outstretched, his fingers manipulated into a single point of authority like the point of an archer's arrow. “And you cannot do whatever and go wherever you like. There are rules, Emily. Not my rules,” he said, stabbing at his own chest. “The rules of the Republic. This has to stop. You are supposed to be an example. How do you think this behaviour reflects on me? This has to stop right now.”
“The Republic's rules are your rules, Dad.”
He picked up the rucksack that she had discarded on the floor. She lunged upright on her knees and reached out for the bag, but he snatched it away from her reach. He pulled out the top half of a grey-white overall. It was the Republic's issue. He shook his head as he looked around the room, throwing the bag back on the floor. “And this,” he said, pointing at the wall of windows. The view was consumed by thick grey cloud cover, the same that hung over Delta Tower. The bare walls were painted a pale beige colour, warm and comforting like hot sand. “Why do you insist on watching this?” He stomped across the floor, his hand outstretched as he reached for the remote control panel.
“Stop it, Dad. Leave it!” She burst from her bed, snatched the remote panel from his hand before sinking back into the soft waves of the duvet beneath her. He stood with his hands on his hips, his breathing erratic and nerves frayed.
“I just don’t understand you, Emily. I don’t understand this need that you have.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands resting on the tops of his knees. He turned slightly, but avoided eye contact as she edged herself away from him. When she was a child, a tiny bundle curled up in his lap, he used to imagine the day when she would hit puberty and become distant from him. He knew that with the growth of breasts and the surge in hormones his daughter would push him away, and that he too would find it hard to reach her as she grew into a woman. He had always dreaded that feeling of her effortlessly slipping beyond his control, but knew he would live through it a thousand times over if he could go back to that now. If he could choose to be the father she despised because he stopped her dating a wayward boyfriend, or imposed an unreasonable curfew, he would trade in a second. “You have to try to accept your life,” he said, more kindly than he had set out to be when he had first sat down.
“I can’t.”
“You’re not a child anymore, Emily. You are a grown up, just like you say you are. I know I treat you like you are still fourteen years old, but you persist in acting like it.” He turned closer but she drew her knees away from him, shifted across the satin bed sheets that Beda would be arriving to turn down shortly. She would be bringing clean towels for the bathroom, too. “I only want the best for you. I know what that is, I promise. You have to trust me.” He stood up and wandered over to her dressing table. He regarded her things as one might a box of old coins. He rifled a fingertip through her belongings. A selection of dated magazines, a hairbrush, a pot of lip balm that had lost its smell, and a few dog-eared photographs. He picked one up. “I remember this being taken,” he said as he turned and looked at her, tapping the photograph with the back of his fingers. Her silence remained like a noose around his neck. He knew that at any moment he could say the wrong thing and she could kick the stool out from underneath him. He placed the photograph back down from where he had picked it up from amongst the meagre possessions from her childhood.
“I don't know why you keep all these old things. I have seen the girls of your age on the Community Level. They spend lots of time getting different colours on their fingertips and their eyes. You don't do anything like that.”
“They don't have anything else to do.”
“Why don’t you spend some time out of the house with them?” he suggested. “It could be nice. You might enjoy their company. You used to enjoy going down to the lobby and playing with the others. You used to enjoy the Community Level, and the dance classes.” The Community Level was supposed to be a place of unity, a place where people could go and always find company. Loneliness was dealt with by the third creed of the Omega Manifesto: No citizen of New Omega shall feel alone. That's what they promised. Emily had been avoiding the Community level even before she found out, she knew something wasn't right, even then. She didn't want to be around the girls completing their forced Population Planning Checks, or the men carrying out Renunciation Pledges like robots. Not when everybody knew that she didn't have to do the same.
“I used to be fourteen, Dad.” He nodded his head to show that he understood. “They spend time down there making themselves look stupid and eating too much, and then worrying about getting fat and ugly because they are bored. I am not bored.”
“Well, what else do they like to do?” he asked, not able to accept that he was beaten, or that he couldn't drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. “Maybe there is something else you could do together.” She looked up without moving her sunken head.
“They go up to level seventy two.”
“Excellent. It is very nice up there.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What, you’re trying to tell me you have never been?”
“Never,” she said, before he had even taken a breath. Emily couldn't work out if he was awkwardly putting his hands in and out of his pockets because she had never been to the outside viewing deck, or because he didn’t know that she had never been. They had drifted so far apart. Or rather he had pushed her. But it was hard not to relent when he looked so bewildered. “It was easier before, Dad,” she said, relaxing her shoulders and her hard line stance. She placed the remote control panel, a small glass square that looked almost transparent, back on the edge of her bedside table. “It was easier when I didn’t know.”
Her last comment burdened him, his back curved, surrendering to the responsibility. If he could take time back, he would. He would keep her in the dark like the rest of the remaining world, tell her that they still had no choice. At least this way she would accept the world before her as the truth, and she would accept that there was a purpose to their way of life other than self serving greed. “I wish you had never found out.”
“Maybe so, but you can’t expect me just to accept it now that I have. I can’t, Dad. I just can’t.”
“But you don’t have a choice,” he said. Again they remained in silence, her staring at her feet and him staring at his hands. Lies were easier believed when they were told convincingly, she thought. She had read that somewhere. She always knew he was being truthful when he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye. When he couldn't handle her judgement. “Regardless of how you feel, this whole charade of yours of going backwards and forwards to whichever tower it is,” he raised his finger again, “has to stop. If I find out who is helping you I’ll.....”
“You’ll wha
t? Cut their oxygen rations?”
“I don’t know what you think you know about the other towers, Emily, but here in Omega Tower there are rules. We must abide by them. However you convinced one of the Coordinators to take you I’ll never know.”
“Guardians, Dad. They call them Guardians.”
“What if you are seen?”
“What if I am?” She considered the words already on her tongue, and before she could stop herself she was already saying, “Maybe I already have been.”
“What?” he screamed as he reached forward and took her chin in his hand. He gripped her so hard she bit the inside of her cheek and the metallic taste of blood streamed into her mouth. “We'll talk about that in the morning. You won't be going anywhere until then. Got it?” He released her from his grip, shoving her backwards and she ended up lying in a heap on her bed. She swallowed the blood in her mouth and suddenly felt hungry. It was hours since she had eaten. He snatched the control panel away from her bedside table. He was fast, and although she reached out to intercept him she missed, and instead slipped forward in time to see him holding it in his hands. “The first thing,” he said, pressing one of the glass icons. A sun. “This has to go. I can’t watch it, and I will not have you watch it either like some sort of prisoner.” Before she could say anything the room filled with sunlight, golden shards of it pouring through, refracting through the glass. It was close to sunset. She saw the greenery in the background, the oversized clouds which were made up of so many colours they hurt her eyes. “This is how your room will stay. Do not let me catch you with that old programme. I’m going to have it uninstalled.”
“Then I’ll never come home.”
“With that attitude, you’ll never go out. I’ll keep you locked here until you face up to it. Until you are begging for the opportunity that I have given you.”
“Like a prisoner,” she said, slumping down on her bed.
“You’re the one that always says you want to know how it must feel for them. I’ll teach you. See if you like their life any better than you do yours. I’m pretty sure you’ll soon know what’s for the best.” He slid the control panel into his suit pocket. He was one of the few people who still dressed like a person from the old world. He wore a suit each day. Today was a tweed jacket and casual trousers. His evening wear. He only wore Republic issued clothes during presidential engagements.
“I’m already a prisoner,” she spat, her lips stained red with blood. He noticed but ignored it, and pressed on regardless.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said as he tapped a series of icons on the control panel until music could be heard filtering through the walls. Music of nature, panpipe music with the occasional interjection of a bird singing. Something that would have once been played in a spa. “There, that’s better.”
“If it wasn’t for you I could have had a life. A real life.” She wiped her lip with the back of her hand, sweeping a streak of blood across her cheek.
“If it wasn’t for me you’d already be dead.”
“Like Grandpa, who you killed,” she shouted as he turned to leave the room. “And when Mum dies you will have killed her too.” He stopped, his hand gripping the door handle, his jaw bone clenched and his teeth set together. “You’re the reason the war started.”
“That’s very unfair, Emily,” he said, his words flat and emotionless, but he knew he was teetering on the brink of disaster. She could always do this to him. She could always break him. It was so easy for a daughter to slice you apart when you managed to be strong against the rest of the world. “The only reason anybody survived is because of what I did.”
He stepped out of the room and slammed the door shut. She jumped off the bed and tried the door handle. She was too slow. He had locked her in. She drummed her fists against the door and screamed, “No, Dad. You are the only reason that anybody died.” She slipped down the door, the earliest of tears forming in her eyes.
She didn't know that her father was also on the floor, their heads pressed together, separated only by the door that he had trapped her behind. She didn't know he was still listening as she said, “You’re the reason the war started, and you’re the reason why for everybody who survived, it will never end.”
Chapter Ten
Zack couldn’t concentrate for the next series of bells and alarms. On occasion he would realise that he was still working even when the next shift had begun, and then later in his room he would find himself still lying on his bed staring at the sky when the bell had sounded for him to be back at the water treatment plant. The Tenth Creed: Every Citizen of New Omega shall work for a better future without complaint or malaise. Since he met Emily, the rules had started to feel breakable.
There were two main problems on his mind that he couldn’t, no matter what he tried, shift from his conscious thought. The first was how Emily had slipped into Delta, at least the sublevels, and then mysteriously slipped away again, even though everywhere was either boarded up or tightly controlled by Guardians. But the second was altogether more troubling. Why the hell would she be here?
Everybody in Delta wanted to escape. Everybody wanted out. There were those on the highest levels who were doing it with drugs. There were those who spent all their credits on lottery numbers, desperately hoping to be selected for redistribution into Omega. There were those who did it in the sublevels with beakers of Moonshine and in the embrace of a woman like Roxanna. And then there were those who did it through denial, by keeping their head down, doing what they could to survive. But all of them wanted the same thing. They all wanted out. People from Omega just didn't come to a place like Delta Tower. The towers were there to serve, to provide, to be regulated and controlled. Delta Tower didn't offer anything that Omega Tower didn't already have.
The oxygen was produced by Alpha Tower. This is what made Alpha Citizens so precious. The delivery of oxygen to Delta Tower came every sixth shift, the gas pumped through giant pipes that cut through the sky, just as it was to each tower. The previous lotteries, with the only exception the first ever draw, had all been won by Alpha residents. Alpha was rumoured to be almost as good as Omega inside, with Community Levels rather than Mess Rooms, shops spend credits, and food so good that nobody ever went hungry. He had heard they only worked one shift a day. Zack wasn't sure he believed it, though.
Delta was the water tower, and it too had its delivery quotas to meet. It was from these delivery quotas that people had started to estimate the size of the other towers. If you knew how much water they used it was easy to guess which of the towers must contain the most citizens. Epsilon was the largest, save Omega Tower. These guesses were was also where the rumours about the deaths in Gamma Tower had originated. Their water supply had been suspended for a while, but then after six missed deliveries they had been instructed to resume water transportation. The delivery quantities had been halved. The previous residents couldn't have survived on half a water supply. Not unless there were half the number of citizens. The supply to Omega was over ten times the size of Epsilon.
The worst thing to come directly from Omega was the live stream. The lobby was brilliant white, interrupted only by the green trees and ice blue water of the pool. There was a fountain that trickled water over a series of rocks, cascading across a manmade waterfall. There were children playing, their clothes clean and bright, A-line dresses for the girls, red and blue and yellow like a spilt tube of sugary sweets. Smart shorts for the boys, long trousers in the winter, white shirts and jumpers. The adults all wore the same. White A-line dresses for the women, similar to the girls' dresses but sleeker in design, and for the men, outfits that looked like white hospital scrubs. Omega Tower was white because it was clean. They introduced the uniform, the regulation dress, within what Zack imagined to be the first year. The clothes were distributed and cleaned centrally, another perk of Omega life. They had been promised in all towers, but Delta hadn’t got them yet. It was designed so that nobody felt different or excluded. The Eighth Creed: No citiz
en of New Omega shall feel inferior to another. What a joke, Zack thought. There had been talk about Alpha having the uniforms but nobody could be sure. Nobody had them in Delta. That was what was important. Nobody could be sure about the other towers because there was no way of communicating with them. At least until now.
Leonard had seen the lights again, but Zack hadn’t got there in time. They had developed a signal that when the lights appeared Leonard would pummel his fists against the dividing wall six times. The first time Zack hadn’t heard the knocking because he had got lost in the iPod. In the period after the triple bell Zack had listened to it so much that by the time the next shift had started the battery was already flat. The next time when Leonard knocked the wall, Zack had been asleep. The third time Zack was ready, sitting coiled like a spring waiting, but he scanned the sky with the same attention that a hawk would scan a cornfield and he saw nothing. Leonard came blustering in after that time, didn’t even knock.
“How can you not see it?” Leonard asked, his hands working up and down his side, scratching through his clothes. “It was right around here,” he said as he pointed at a particularly dark section of cloud. “It's gone now, but I promise you I just saw it.” Zack's belief in the lights had been fading with the same certainty that light would disappear at the end of a sunset in the old world. But he didn’t want to be honest with Leonard, he didn’t want to shatter his dreams or extinguish that flicker of hope that he carried within him. Plus, he realised that he was also asking Leonard to believe in something both impossible and dangerous, and yet Zack had no doubts about what he had seen. He hadn't been back to NAVIMEG since he had seen the Omega tattoo on Emily's wrist.
The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5) Page 10
