The Forgetting

by Sharon Cameron

  I meet Gray’s gaze. There it is. The answer to our questions. And I think I believe her, and I can’t decide if that’s stupid or not. But it does fit with what we saw in the white room. I think of those fat buds on all the limbs along Meridian Street.

  Gray looks at Janis from the corner of his eye. “You said in most cases.”

  Janis gives me her lovely smile. “He’s paying attention today, isn’t he?” she says, and I don’t realize at first that she’s coming at me with the needle. She jerks down the wide collar of my tunic and drives the sharp end into my upper arm, quick. I gasp.

  “This will sting a bit,” she says pleasantly. Gray struggles against his ropes while she holds in the needle, the liquid in the tube oozing, burning beneath my skin, her face beside mine. Up close Janis’s skin is smooth but old, drying out like paper. I hold my breath. She jerks out the needle, wiping away a tiny bit of blood with the cloth of my tunic, not bothering with the blood that’s drying all over my neck.

  “What did you do?” I say. It’s hard now to keep the shake out of my voice.

  “Just experimenting, my dear. It’s important to collect data.”

  I’m afraid of what’s inside my body now. Afraid to the center of my soul. Gray is straining to hold up his head, to ask with his eyes if I’m all right. I suspect I’m not. Janis goes back to her high table, starts running her needle through some sort of solution.

  “Every now and then,” Janis says, going back to Gray’s question as if nothing had happened, “the spores do not seem to cause inflammation in the brain. A body will hold them in the blood instead. In these cases, memories are retained with only a mild sickness while the body fights the spores in the blood. Too many in the blood, however, and the body is overwhelmed. Then the body sickens and it dies. There’s still so much study to be done on this. It took me years to—”

  “You leave those trees all over the city,” I say. Janis turns around. Fury is overwhelming my panic for the moment. “You could have saved us, and you didn’t. You don’t. You just let us forget!”

  “Let you forget? Let you? Nadia, my dear. Do you think the Forgetting is a punishment?” Her dark, dark eyes seem to pity me. “No, no, my dear. The Forgetting is a privilege. A gift. A rebirth. A chance for the wrongs of the past to disappear. The Forgetting stopped a war, brought us peace. A second chance to fulfill our directive and create the perfect society.” She smiles at me again. “The Forgetting has saved us.”

  “How,” Gray says, his voice thick and slow, “do you think that losing everything you are, every twelve years, makes a perfect society?”

  Janis looks thoughtful. She sets down her now clean needle with a row of similar ones on a cloth, walks around her desk and sits behind it, sandals silent on the stone. There’s a knife on the desk, with “NWSE” engraved on the blade. She wants to talk, I realize. She’s eager to. This must be the only time she ever can. Because she thinks we’re going to forget it. That she will make us forget it. I, however, plan to remember every word. Unless she’s put something horrible in me.

  Janis folds her hands and says, “Have you ever pruned a plant? We look at all the branches, all the leaves and the buds. And then we pluck one here, snip one there, say yes to this one and no to that. But what if the plant could remember its pruning? That would be most unpleasant for the plant. But is the plant not better off? Will it not flourish? Isn’t it a much healthier plant for being pruned? And is the plant not fortunate to have never been conscious of its pruning at all?”

  I stare at this beautiful old woman sitting behind the desk, describing how she picks and chooses people, tossing away the ones she doesn’t want like discarded branches.

  “Our directive,” she says, “is to build and to populate. To create the ideal society, that Earth might learn from us. We were all born of the chosen, the best of the best. And now Earth is waiting for us to re-create that society. Needs us to re-create it. One hundred and fifty of us, the best of the best of the best, will return to Earth and transform it. We will be kings. As soon as we send the signal.”

  Janis picks up a book on her desk and opens it while Gray lifts his head to look at me. This is like what we heard in the white room, read in the First Book, only it’s a distorted version, a child’s perspective twisted into the logic of an adult. One hundred and fifty names on that list, crossed out, replaced. Gray slides his gaze to Janis.

  “And so what happens when you send your signal?”

  Janis looks up from her book, brows arched. “Why, Earth comes, of course. As was arranged. When we send the signal, we go home.”

  “And what about all your leftover branches?” he asks, heavy on the sarcasm.

  She lifts a pen, dips it in ink. “When Earth comes there will be no extra branches, of course. They will find what they were supposed to find. The perfect society. One hundred and fifty. The best of the best of the best.” She smiles as she begins to write.

  A list of one hundred and fifty. Not a list of the dead, I realize, a list of those she has chosen. It’s the rest of Canaan Janis is going to kill. As soon as she gets into that mountain.

  Janis sits back for a moment in her chair, running one skinny finger over the open book in front of her. “It takes honing,” she says, “and extreme care to keep one hundred and fifty always ready, to raise up replacements when one grows old or falls short. To find those with the right combination of intelligence, looks, mental health, physical health, the ability to bear children, and a thorough understanding of the common good. It takes firm management to keep the wrong ones out of the gene pool. Did you know the original chosen for Canaan had to pass very strenuous tests, not only the simple things I just mentioned, but for stress, resourcefulness, problem-solving … ”

  And empathy, the light wall had said. I don’t think Janis is passing the test on that one. I wonder for the first time what the Forgetting has really done to her, being the only one to remember over and over while everyone else forgets. It devastated me once. How many Forgettings has she lived through? Maybe what she’s forgotten is herself, squeezing and compressing her emotions until they were all but gone. Like I tried to do. Until Gray.

  “I have to know the potential chosen well,” she is saying, almost to herself, “put them in peril, under stress, in extremity, to see how they’ll react. You must be very perceptive to know how to push them, to make sure they can pass the tests. That is why there is only one who can decide which buds to pinch.”

  Which is her, I suppose, because she can remember.

  “There are three kinds of people born in Canaan,” Janis says, “those who fit the directive, those who could fit the directive, and those who never will. And it is easiest, of course, to test them right before the Forgetting, a natural time of confusion and anxiety, to see how they will react. As the city has grown, I admit to having used it more and more. It is interesting to watch, to see what people do. To see how spectacularly they fail. The city weeds itself for me like an overgrown field.”

  I remember all the things I saw during the Forgetting, the cruelty, the fighting, the woman with the dead children. Could Janis have really sown all those seeds? Put those people under stress, pushed them to their limit? I think of the floggings, the way she manipulated Gray, the rumors that run rampant through the city. Hedda and her low rations. And now I believe Janis really is up in that clock tower, safe, watching the results. Watching as we weed one another out. And then we forget it all.

  “But we are very nearly sorted,” Janis says, satisfied, “our numbers almost done. It’s time to move into the bigger field.”

  Gray says, “I think I might be looking forward to being Lost again. Sounds like I’ll be in there with all the best sort.”

  Janis waves a hand. “Oh, I don’t think we’ll be having any Lost after this Forgetting. It’s too difficult to keep them from producing children. And we have a food shortage, or haven’t you heard? But, Nadia, how are you feeling?”

  She comes around the desk to my pos
t, lifts my chin, peers at my eyes, puts a finger to my pulse. I’m looking at her close up again. It’s only our belief that’s given her this power over us, and it’s only the Forgetting that gives her the power to be believed. Janis steps back.

  “Hmmm. I’m going to ask you a question, Nadia. Think hard, then tell me the first thing that comes to your head. What is your earliest memory?”

  I blink. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be remembering or forgetting. My arms ache from being pulled back, from straining at the ropes, but I can’t feel any reaction to that liquid she put inside me at all. And then I know what I want to say to this woman who remembers everything about everyone in Canaan, whether I should say it or not.

  “Anna.”

  I get a reaction. Janis goes still, lifts a finger to her chin. “Really?” she says. She walks back around the desk, picks up her pen. “What about Anna?”

  “Nothing much. Putting me to bed.” Gray is trying to adjust his position to look at me better. “And then Anna was gone.”

  Janis is writing. “Yes. She was particularly sensitive.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. Sensitive as in personality or … sensitive to what Janis put in her? The doctor said Anna had too much poison in her for it to have been an accident. Did Janis kill my sister? Like this? Maybe Anna didn’t feel anything, either.

  “What happened to her?” I ask.

  Janis dismisses me with her hand. “Anything else? What about Lisbeth?”

  Liliya’s old name. She’s looking to see if I remember. “Who is that?”

  “How about your father?”

  “No.”

  “Well. That was helpful, Nadia, and rather interesting. Thank you.”

  She goes on writing at her desk, the pen scratching quiet across the page. I realize I can’t smell the foulness of the room anymore. Janis sets down her pen, leans forward.

  “And now, it’s time to discuss the code. You will remember me saying that I want you to understand, so that you will know to answer my questions without delay. I need the code to the bunker door because at long last we have nearly completed our directive and it is time to send the signal. It took me years to find the door. I was never there as a child, and Zuri blocked it up. Hid it. The Forgetting takes longer on the mountain, where the spores are not so concentrated, and when I finally found it, oh, the combinations I have tried. The books I read, the people I questioned. And nothing. I nearly lost faith. And then I saw you, Nadia, Sergei Dorokov’s great-granddaughter, over the walls, coming down from the bunker door in the mountain. I thought you must have the code and so you do. And now you have shared it with this one … ”

  She comes around the desk, bringing a vial of blue liquid with her. She sets it beside the knife with “NWSE” and touches Gray’s hanging head. I can see his shirt stretch as he pants. Shallow breaths. I think his ribs might be broken. She says, “You like him, I think.” She sounds almost puzzled by it. “And your scores were so high. But your associations … I’m afraid those are all wrong now, Nadia. All wrong. Such a shame to have to cross you off.”

  She sighs, and I’m twisting my wrist bloody inside the ropes while she talks.

  “I would have preferred not to alert you. It’s so much easier when the plant doesn’t know it’s being pruned. But … ” She jerks Gray’s head up by the hair.

  “Did you tell me Nadia the Dyer’s daughter was going over the wall, Glassblower?”

  He meets her eyes. Two dark gazes. Trust him to be smirking just a little. He shakes his head.

  “Did you tell me you had the code I was looking for?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you tell me that you had been over the wall? That you had been inside the mountain?”

  He shakes it again, still smirking.

  Janis lifts the top of the blue vial, a dropper attached. She lets a single drop fall onto the back of Gray’s right hand. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen next. But it wasn’t this. I hear him hiss, and then his hand clenches, and there’s a small trail of smoke rising, the smell of burning hair and skin. He doesn’t make a sound, but there are blisters already forming, a small amount of blood.

  Janis sets the top back in the vial, still smiling. “One of you,” she says, “is going to give me the code. Would you like to give it to me now?”

  My gaze meets Gray’s, and he gives me the tiniest shake of his head. The entire population of Canaan minus one hundred and fifty is going to die when she sends that signal.

  “You do remember,” Janis says, looking back and forth at us, “that I will make you tell me, one way or the other. That this could be short or long?”

  I raise my eyes to her, my breath coming hard, keeping my face still while I twist my wrist. I can feel the blood running warm down my hand. Neither of us answers her.

  “Then we begin with you, Glassblower,” she says. “You’re going to tell me the code. Or Nadia is. And then you will forget. You do recall me saying that?”

  I lock my gaze with Gray’s. That burn on his hand is terrible. I can see him sweating with the pain of it. I don’t know what to do. I twist my right wrist. I’ve got my thumb halfway out.

  “Are you ready to tell me the code?”

  He looks at her with hate-filled eyes. “No.” He doesn’t even know the code. And he is so afraid of forgetting.

  Janis turns to me. “Are you?”

  Gray is telling me no vehemently behind her. I blink tears, undecided. We are going to lose, I think, and no one will remember it but me. And her. And then Janis decides I have taken too long. She takes the knife, slits the strap of Gray’s book and lets it hit the floor, then slides the knife up the back of his shirt, slitting the cloth with a soft rip. He tenses as the air hits his bare back. He knows what’s coming now, and so do I.

  “Stop it!” I yell. “Stop!”

  “There is a very easy way to make me stop,” Janis replies calmly.

  “Nadia,” Gray says. “If I don’t break, you don’t. You promise me.”

  “Tell me anytime you’re ready, Nadia,” Janis says, picking up the vial.

  “Promise me!”

  I see his face when the first drop hits his back. A wince that becomes distorted.

  “Stop!” I scream.

  “Tell me the code,” Janis says. Gray shakes his head, panting, and she lets the liquid drip again. Twice. Three times.

  I could make up a code, but that’s quickly found out. I could tell her the code. But who will remember for the people she plans to kill? To weed away? We are two of those people, and then I realize, with certainty, that forgetting or remembering, we are not walking out of here at all. Whether we give her that code or not. We never were.

  The blue liquid drips. Gray yells and I go crazy in the ropes, pulling and sliding in the blood until my thumb comes free. I smell Gray’s skin burning. His head moves back and forth, trying to escape what’s inescapable.

  “Are you ready to tell me the code?” Janis says. She leans closer to his head. “No? Then is it an ear next? An eye?”

  I thrash, and my right hand is free, then my left. My feet are still tied. I can’t even feel them, but next to me are the shelves full of bottles, and then I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to blot that code from existence. As far as Janis is concerned. I stretch for the bottles, grab the one I want.

  “Gray!” I scream. He’s shaking, smoke rising, blood running from his back. But he turns his head to me, raises his eyes. I show him the bottle of white powder in my hand.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Don’t … forget,” he pants. “You have to remember … for us … ”

  Janis turns from her task, opens her mouth, but before she can speak I toss the bottle. It spins in a slow arc in the air. And then glass shatters, a white puff like a miniature cloud flying upward. A sweet smell, thick, like rotting honeyfruit, fills the room. The smell of forgetting. Janis runs, snatches her damp robe from the
hook and holds it across her face.

  “Nadia!” Gray’s voice is ragged. “Do not … forget me. Do … not … ”

  His eyes fall closed. And when he opens them, he will not know me.

  Pain spreads through me like the spores in the air, the sick sweet smell on my tongue, in my head. Gray’s face is losing its expression and it hurts, hurts to be forgotten, to be blotted from his mind like a word is lost to spilling ink. To watch him lose himself. But at least she’s stopped. Now Janis will stop.

  I clutch my head, unconcerned with my bloody wrist, and then the pain inside me suddenly becomes something different. More tangible. Very physical. I double over, gasp. I’d meant to mimic Gray’s expression, to fake my forgetting along the lines of his, but this is like knives, knives in my head, knives in my back. I cry out, fall forward onto my hands, my feet still tied to the post. Then the pain doubles and I scream.

  Dimly, I’m aware of Janis’s feet walking slowly toward me.

  “Oh, Nadia the Dyer’s daughter,” I hear her say, muffled through her damp robe. “It seems that you are a liar, too.”

  I hope I never again have to see someone die. I think it might be the same as watching them forget.

  NADIA THE DYER’S DAUGHTER

  BOOK 10, PAGE 74, 9 YEARS AFTER THE FORGETTING

  When I wake, I don’t open my eyes. I feel heavy, like I’m part of the mattress. I have memories, unfocused, dim. Of lamplight, and of pain. A lot of pain. Of the glassblower’s son’s face. I stir, frown at what that movement feels like, and decide not to do it again. Something rustles nearby, a whisper of moving air. I open my eyes.

  Brightly dyed cloth hangs at intervals over stone walls, and the matting has a pattern woven into it, red and blue, like the blanket on top of me. The bed is raised, and there’s someone on the floor beside it, hair wild and untied. I relax. It’s Gray, his shoulder level with my eyes. He has his shirt off, and for one second I think we’ve been swimming, that it’s been raining, that we’re in the white room, except nothing around us is white. I reach a hand from beneath the blanket and touch his arm.