Nine was a family dormitory level. I could tell by the presence of children and the mixture of men and women. Other than that, this dorm looked identical to the one I’d seen previously. It was like an ant farm. A perfectly clean, perfectly ordered, and perfectly inactive ant farm. Only these were no ants, they were people. Thousands of them. Many stretched out in their beds while others curled up in the lounge areas. Either way, ninety-five percent of them were hiding behind their eyes, living out spare hours of their lives in some other place. Gushi.
Anyone who put in a full day’s work was rewarded with the U.N.A.’s drug of choice, and these people were taking their reward. I couldn’t blame them; if I were sleeping on a bunk bed stacked three high with no personal space of my own, nothing to my name, and no future ahead of me, I’d want to escape somewhere too.
I began shuffling down the rows, the noise from my bag announcing my presence to anyone who was in the moment with me rather than drifting in fantasy. A guy roughly my age, with close-cropped hair and skin so pale it was nearly translucent, was watching me from his middle bunk. When I waved at him he looked away, pretending I was invisible. “Hey,” I called, bolting over to him regardless. “I’m looking for someone. A woman whose husband is probably in detention for being AWOL and has been away from the camp since Saturday.”
The guy’s irritated eyes bore into mine, but he said nothing. It was like being watched by a hungry vulture from above.
“I have some of his stuff,” I continued. “I thought I’d get it to his wife, if I could.” I turned to gaze at the long line of beds awaiting me. How would I ever find her in this crowd?
“What do you have that’s so important?” the guy asked with a cock of his head. “Something valuable?”
A number of motionless SecRos were interspersed throughout the dorm, silently maintaining order. They’d be on us in an instant if this guy tried something, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t. “Only to him,” I said, laying a protective hand across my bag.
“Relax.” The guy jumped down from his bunk. He was exactly my height. Our eyes lined up evenly as he stepped towards me. “There’s someone I can ask for you. Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable.” He peppered those final words with sarcasm and disappeared into the crowd.
I lowered myself onto a section of the long, grey couch to my left. Next to me, a woman in her thirties sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, staring into her own private gushi world. If I touched her or addressed her directly she’d land back in the dormitory with the blink of an eye. Undisturbed, she could remain like that for hours, until she needed to eat or drink something or relieve herself. That was how people were in 2063. Chronically distracted by illusion.
Already I was getting restless waiting. Did the guy who’d spoken to me have any intention of returning? Michael Neal would be wondering where I was. He must have started without me by now.
I waited another three minutes and then began wandering the aisles again, at first only speaking to the handful of aware people I spotted, and then beginning to touch the shoulders or hands of people on gushi, pulling their consciousness back into the dormitory to answer my questions about the AWOL man. I’d just begun speaking to a dark-skinned girl no older than Kinnari when the guy who’d offered to help me materialized at my side.
“Someone wants to speak with you,” he said. “Come with me.”
We careened past countless beds, making so many sharp turns that I wondered if I’d be able to find my way back to the elevators. Suddenly the air smelled liked cloves. We neared a crowd of fifteen to twenty people gathered around a lounge area that had been pushed flush against the nearest beds, giving the man in the centre of the circle room to demonstrate. He was standing in front of an easel, creating a pencil portrait of the older woman standing next to him. A bag of cloves hung from the back of the easel, which solved the mystery of where the aroma was coming from, and he must have only just begun the drawing, as the sole marking on the paper was a rough oval representing the woman’s head.
“While proportions vary from person to person and alter with age, there are some general guidelines you can use,” he declared. “Viewed from the front, a head’s width is approximately two thirds of its height. The first quarter measures from the crown of the head down to a person’s hairline. The second quarter…”
Beside me, the pale-skinned guy was nudging my arm and pointing me to the right, towards someone I’d—at a glance from the corner of my eye—judged to be a child. As I swivelled to take the figure in it was obvious he was a full-grown man, maybe seven or eight years older than me, yet no taller than five foot three. Virtually no adult males in the U.N.A. were that short anymore. Genetic engineering didn’t allow for things that would be considered faults. Shyness. Allergies. Colour blindness. None of these things happened anymore. Not inside or outside of the camps. Not to anyone under the age of thirty.
The short man saw my eyes on him and stepped towards us. “I’ll take it from here,” he said, giving my chaperon a meaningful look. The younger guy nodded abruptly and spun on his heel, beginning to retrace his steps through the maze of bunk beds.
Meanwhile the man was pulling me over to the nearest unoccupied bunk. “Just sit,” he whispered. “It’s better not to get too far from the group. They’d take more notice.”
“Who?” I sat down next to him, less than twenty feet from the crowd gathered around the drawing instructor. “The Ros?”
“Or one of the human administration. Anything unusual attracts them so you better show me whatever’s in your bag. We’ll pretend we’re concentrating on that.” The man scratched at his hairline, inclining his head to indicate the instructor. “Supposedly the smell helps boost his creativity. In the past they used cloves for things like bad breath and toothaches but I’m not fond of the stink. I’m Isaac by the way. Isaac Monroe.”
I opened my bag for him and pulled out the intact dish. He’d already lost me. What were we doing if not trying to uncover the identity of the AWOL man so that I could hand over my pieces?
“I’m looking for the woman these belong to,” I said, explaining the situation that had gone down in Moss the previous weekend.
“Unfortunately, I have no idea who she is.” Isaac stared into the distance where the instructor was pencilling in his subject’s deep-set eyes. “Sorry to mislead you. I just had to take this opportunity. I’ve seen you around a few times, heard from various people that you’ve been helping out Michael Neal.”
“And so?” My heart had begun speeding. We’d only been talking and I already felt as though I was breaking the rules.
Isaac rubbed a hand under his chin. “So you want to be a lawyer, huh? Want to help these people?” He turned his head away as he added, “You must be grounded, am I right?”
Obviously someone had been talking about me. One of Michael Neal’s clients, most likely.
“What’s it to you?” I said, gravel in my voice like a tough guy.
Isaac smiled like my defensive attitude didn’t faze him. “Maybe nothing. I thought I might know something that would mean something to you, if you’re serious about wanting to help.”
“The only thing I’m serious about at the moment is trying to get this man’s stuff back to his wife.” My tough guy voice was gone. I was just like Lucy on the elevator, afraid to bring down any real trouble on myself. The corners of Isaac’s lips dipped but there was still levity in his eyes. “Wait, what do you mean by ‘these people’? Aren’t you one of them?”
“At heart I am. You can see it just by looking at me, can’t you?” Isaac didn’t wait for me to answer. “But I don’t live here. I’m only visiting.” He took the plate from my hands and ran his fingers gently around the rim. “I can try to find the owner of this, if you want to leave it with me. You’ll never manage it on your own.”
“How do I know you’ll give it to her?” The instructor must have made a joke we’d missed. The people around him were laughing lightly.
&n
bsp; “What would I want with a lone piece of china? This isn’t worth anything on its own. You’d need a set.” Isaac winked at me, laid the dish down between us, and hopped up from the bunk.
“Wait.” I said it loudly enough that the woman posed in front of the instructor glanced sharply over at me on the bed.
Isaac Monroe kept walking and didn’t look back. When he’d reached the spot where I’d first caught sight of him, he folded his arms and directed his attention to the art lesson. I slid the dish back into my bag and crossed over to him, my voice a whisper. “What exactly did you mean about helping?” As anxious as I was, the thought that I could do something tangible to change things was irresistible. Staying off gushi as much as was humanly possible, paying lip service to the cause, and listening to speeches by small-time grounded politicians who would likely never get into office wasn’t enough. Neither was helping Michael Neal, and maybe law school wouldn’t be, either. There had to be something more.
“You’re moving to New York.” He tilted his head and continued to peer fixedly at the instructor’s likeness of the woman. “Did I hear that right?”
“In September.”
“It’s important to have solid grounded allies in New York. That’s a point of entry for a lot of people.” Illegals. Refugees who came by sea and eluded the DefRos. “But this isn’t a good place to go into details. You really need to check out one of our art courses, if you’re interested. There’s a lesson coming up next Friday.”
“Art courses?” Was that all this was—he was trying to recruit more people into an art class?
“Authentic approaches to life through art.” Isaac tightened his grip on his arms. “You probably already know something about the importance of art in connecting people to a healthy, grounded life. But I think there could be some things you don’t know too.”
“What does any of that have to do with me moving to New York?”
“That depends on you. But if you want to check out the course it’s over at the main library in Billings. It might take you a couple of lessons to get something out of it. And maybe you won’t, but if you come, be sure to bring a pencil and sketchbook.”
My heart was thrumming hard again. “Are these classes dangerous? I don’t want to walk into something that…” That I couldn’t walk away from. I didn’t want to be wiped and covered and sent off somewhere to die, my body riddled with toxins. That fear was what held the grounded movement in check and kept it from becoming a revolution. People were so damn scared all the time that it paralyzed them.
“Trust me, you won’t be in any danger there,” Isaac said. “It’s just a place where things get decided.”
I didn’t ask which things. I could tell by the way Isaac’s eyes had clouded over that he wasn’t going to unload any more useful information.
“Maybe I’ll see you there, then,” I said, non-committal. “Did you mean it about the dishes? About trying to track down the man’s wife for me?” Because I wasn’t used to looking down at adult men, I had to put extra effort into maintaining eye contact. My eyes were getting dry from the effort of not blinking.
“I’ll do what I can.”
That was all I could ask. I had to get back to Michael, and Isaac was right, I’d never manage to find the AWOL man’s wife on my own. “Thanks,” I told him. “I appreciate it.” I stuck out my hand and Isaac snorted but shook it. Then I dug into my bag for the collection of fragments and repaired plate and presented them to him.
As I backed away from the crowd and began threading back through the bunks, I felt a rush of wind at my side. “Malyck Dixon,” a voice said. I turned to find Isaac half a step behind me. “He’s the one who didn’t come back on Saturday and hasn’t been around since. His wife’s Cleo. I’ve never met them but their dorm is level twelve. Lots of worse things happen out there than some smashed china and a few weeks in detention, you know?”
I exhaled stiffly. “I know that.”
Isaac veered away from me before I could say anything more, and several minutes later I still hadn’t found the elevator and had to ask a little boy to lead me out of the dorm. Back with Michael Neal in the consultation room after the next client had left, I came clean about my search for Malyck Dixon and our accidental crossing of paths in Moss.
“You have to be more careful with the SecRos,” Michael warned. “You don’t want too many interference instances added to your record.”
They didn’t wipe and cover people for running their mouths off to the SecRos like I had, or normally assign detention periods for it either, but when they scanned you and saw your record, any programmed patience the SecRos ordinarily had with humans would no longer apply. They could hold you for hours at a time and would thoroughly question and investigate you whenever you crossed their path, increasing your likelihood of accruing additional charges if you happened to be involved in any illegal activities.
I nodded and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “You’re right. I need to watch my step.”
I didn’t mention Isaac Monroe, the art lessons he was pushing, or anything else. I sat extremely still in my seat and asked Michael if he had any background info on the next scheduled client, my pen paused at the top of the blank sheet of paper in front of me and my mind temporarily pushing the nagging curiosity about next Friday’s library meeting into the shadows.
Four: 1986
In the morning there’s a bird singing out on the balcony. We don’t have a feeder, but lately the same brown-and-grey bird keeps returning to hang out on the railing. At least, I think it’s the same one; I don’t know anything about birds and I only wake up for long enough to register the sound before falling back to sleep, my body still spooned around Freya’s. I don’t have to be at work until noon today and the light leaking in through the curtains is an early morning blue.
The second time I wake up, Freya’s shaking my shoulder and peering down at me with serious eyes. For a couple of seconds I think I must have overslept. I’ve already been late for two shifts since Expo opened at the start of the month; I can’t afford to screw up again.
“Garren,” Freya says urgently, “get up. Reagan’s been shot.” The two of us have gotten into the habit of not saying each other’s names out loud much, except when we’re alone and can be our real selves instead of the Holly and Robbie aliases that have helped keep us hidden.
That makes something as simple as my name sound intimate on Freya’s lips, but what I hear now is alarm. In my newly conscious state I don’t understand what she’s telling me. Ronald Reagan was shot back in 1981. The shooter, John Hinckley, Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity and locked up in a psych ward somewhere.
“What?” I murmur. “Again?”
“It’s on the TV right now. He was doing a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery.” Freya’s changed into jeans and a maroon button-down shirt, and she folds her arms at her waist and stares impatiently through the open doorway into the hall. A newscaster’s voice is saying something about clearing the area, his tone controlled but laced with urgency.
I throw my legs over the side of the bed, grab for my jeans on the floor and tug them on. Freya and I sit on the living room couch with our shoulders pressed together, the TV tuned in to ABC news. The correspondent on the scene in Virginia stares penetratingly into the camera as he declares, “At this time no one can confirm the president’s condition, but as we saw, the shooter has been apprehended.”
“The secret service rushed into the crowd and took him down right away,” Freya explains.
“Did you see him?” I ask. The Arlington crowd is chaos. A swarming mess of soldiers in formal military uniforms, politicians in sedate suits, and smartly dressed civilians, almost everyone but the soldiers either panicking or freezing in place.
We both must be thinking the same thing. Is the U.N.A. responsible for this? Last time, Reagan was only shot once during his lifetime. The occasion back in 1981 everyone knows about. This second shooting wasn’t part of American his
tory as we knew it. Neither was Mitchell Nelson, a congressman from Texas and America’s current Vice President. Freya and I have talked about him before, theorizing that Mitchell Nelson must have something to do with U.N.A. plans. Otherwise, wouldn’t George Bush, Sr. be the current Vice President like he was the first time around?
“Only from behind when one of the security guys tackled him to the ground,” Freya replies. “I couldn’t even see that clearly. It happened so fast.” On screen, sirens wail, and back at the studio the anchorman is narrating over footage of the anxious crowd dispersing. Ten minutes later the network begins to replay Reagan’s Memorial Day speech. “They loved America very much,” he says solemnly. “There was nothing they wouldn't do for her. And they loved with the sureness of the young.”
That’s when it happens. A bullet to the neck brings Reagan to his knees. A burly bodyguard throws himself in front of the president and takes one to the chest. In the crowd, security men rocket in the direction the shot was fired from. As ABC slows the footage, I think I spy the shooter holding his gun aloft, not trying to hide his guilt.
“I can’t believe they got to the president,” Freya says, lifting her feet up on the couch with her and wrapping her arms around her knees. “He’s not going to make it.” But Freya only sees things about people close to her or events that will directly affect her; she’s only guessing about Reagan the same as anyone else would.
The bullet to the neck reminds me of a woman I knew and something that shouldn’t have happened to her. For a moment my mind races down a different track. “Maybe he will,” I say. “Maybe they didn’t get an artery.”
Tomorrow Page 4
