Tomorrow

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  “I bet that’s not true about your artistic ability.” Her mouth slipped into an easy smile. “Your egg shading showed potential.” She was teasing and I felt my cheeks begin to blush in response, chiefly because she was older than me and may have been flirting. Or maybe I was misreading her and she was just friendly. “Can I ask who recommended the class to you?”

  “Just a guy named Isaac. I hardly knew him.” I didn’t bother with Isaac’s last name; I didn’t expect her to know who I was talking about.

  “If you care about things you really should stick it out,” the woman advised, her eyes gleaming. “Minnow would know if you were right for this, believe me. You must show promise.”

  “What does that mean? Do you people always speak in code?” I drummed my pencil restlessly against my leg. “Look, I need someone to be straight with me and spell out what I’m doing here. I came because I thought I could do something. Not learn how to draw a straight line. And who the hell is Minnow?”

  “Isaac is Minnow. I just thought”—the woman shook her head—“everyone who knows him calls him Minnow. Sometimes I forget that.”

  A trio of people squeezed by me on their way out of the class. I hopped back to make room for them. “It’s a nickname,” the woman continued from her side of the divide. “Because of his size and because the word sounds a bit like ‘Monroe.’ Some of his old school friends started it years ago and the name stuck.”

  “So you do know him.”

  “I know him, yes. He’s done a lot for a lot of people, me included.” The woman reached out as if to brush my forearm with her hand, her fingers pulling away before they could reach me. “Come back and you’ll see. Sometimes it just takes a while to—”

  “I don’t have long. I have to be in New York in a few weeks.” My arm tingled where she’d almost touched me. It wasn’t only that she was pretty; I already explained that didn’t mean much in 2063. She had an aura about her that I wasn’t used to—a heady mixture of mystery, self-discipline, intellectual curiosity, and compassion. Our brief conversation on the tenth wasn’t enough for me to glean all those things, but I saw enough to convince me to come back, and when I returned to the Billings Library on the seventeenth and then the twenty-fourth, I found myself increasingly drawn to her.

  The woman’s name was Seneval—I learned that and other things about her during my subsequent classes—but mostly people wanted to know about me, my beliefs and dedication, what I thought I could do for the movement. At the same time they were judging Silas, the middle-aged bearded man the instructor had singled out on my first night. It wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone who dropped into the class looking for a drawing lesson but, as Seneval explained it to me on the seventeenth, these were gateway meetings, a vetting process. If enough members of the class voted that they could trust Silas and me, we’d be moved up the chain where someone more important would deal with us.

  Aside from the awkward first class, Silas spoke passionately about the changes he wanted to see in the U.N.A. One night he seemed especially angry as he said, “I’ve seen too many bad things in my time. The Ros, the government, gushi—all of it has a tighter grip on people with each year that passes. We’re a country of sleepwalkers now. We’ve given our freedom away for the sake of leading quiet lives dreamt out in a fantasy world. Meanwhile flesh-and-blood people waste away in the camps. If we don’t put a stop to it soon, every last one of us will be in there eventually, prisoners without any need for bars because we’ve stupidly embraced this fate.” He slapped his thigh, his cheeks ruddy. “Well, I’ve had enough of it, at last. I’m tired of being afraid to act. Tired enough to risk whatever I have to in order to change things.”

  I wished I were as brave as Silas, and I was sure the class would approve him. My own fate, I was less certain of. I answered my classmates’ questions as truthfully as I could, telling them I had no objection to passing information on for the movement when needed, but not weaponry. I didn’t want to be responsible for hurting anyone. I would help illegals if they were looking for sanctuary, but not terrorists. I could recruit for the underground movement, if they wanted me to, sending people to classes like this one, but I wanted to remain at a distance from the hard-core movement. I didn’t want to do anything that would get me wiped. I wasn’t ready for that kind of sacrifice.

  The fear seems ironic now, because not long after that I was wiped and covered anyway, but not because of anything I did. Only to save me. The people I was ready to act against rescued me. Because of Bening and because they didn’t want the entire U.N.A. population of 2063 to perish. They thought they were doing the right thing and I can’t entirely fault them. The truth is, I might be dead if not for them. Me and Freya both.

  But I can’t forgive the way the scientists played with our minds and how the director’s security forces tried to chase us down like animals. U.N.A. motives and methods are as complex now, in 1986, as they were in 2063. Not simply evil but misguided.

  Things seemed more clear-cut before I was sent back. I thought, as the minutes of art class slid by, that I could just tick boxes in my head and live by them. Help but don’t hurt. Rebel but don’t stick out your neck so far that the government steals your sense of self as punishment.

  I was frustrated by the pace of the screening process, but I understood the need for it. As well as the standard amount of caution the group proceeded with, there were concerns about my age. Some people thought I was too young to be serious about the cause while others believed my youth was an advantage because the young had more to lose than anyone. I heard those things from Seneval, who sat nearest me. She was the one who questioned me most deeply, often whispering to me during class. Whoever was in charge had probably assigned her to me because she was closer to me in age than any of the other people in the art course.

  Seneval didn’t just grill me; she shared things about herself too. Every U.N.A. citizen had to perform eighteen months of compulsory government-assigned work starting when they turned twenty-one. Hers had been at Yellowstone National Park, helping out at the visitor centre and sometimes assisting in doing food drops to the grizzly bears. She said the grizzlies had been in trouble for over half a century because of the destruction of the whitebark trees. The seeds found in whitebark cones were an important part of their diet.

  “What a lot of people don’t realize,” she explained, “is that the only reason there are any grizzlies still left in Yellowstone is that the biologists began genetically engineering them to be born with something more like a dog’s digestive system. But they still need a massive amount of food and it’s easier to maintain the numbers of other dwindling animal populations, like moose, if the rangers keep the bears’ bellies full. The mutation wasn’t intended to change them in other ways, but it has.”

  “What ways?” I asked. “And how come no one knows about this—the bears not being real bears anymore?”

  Seneval shrugged. “It’s not a secret. But you know how it is, that isn’t the kind of thing the government likes to put on the Dailies. Besides, most people just wanted to pretend certain things are like they’ve always been. The important thing to them is that bears are still in the park. They don’t want to look below the surface and hear that grizzlies like to live in packs now, which isn’t normal bear behaviour aside from mothers and their cubs, and that they no longer hibernate.”

  It was my second week of class when Seneval told me about the grizzlies, the two of us talking under our breath while the bearded man quietly conferred with the woman seated next to him. One of the funnier aspects of the vetting process was that my artistic skills were progressing. Probably his were too.

  During the third class I learned Seneval’s parents had been salvagers. They’d gone down to southern Nevada with a crew six years earlier and never returned.

  My pencil had been skating across the page, sketching ‘negative space,’ and I pulled away from the page and froze with my pencil in the air. “None of them?” I asked. “The entire crew dis
appeared?” The bottom half of Nevada was abandoned, only patrolled by DefRos for defence purposes. The second you crossed into abandoned land you had no one to rely on but the people you’d come with. While the Ros would approach to scan you, if you read as a U.N.A. citizen, they would leave you alone, for better or worse. DefRos didn’t rescue. Their mission was only to expel and destroy illegals.

  “All twelve of them,” Seneval confirmed. “Last anyone heard they were salvaging in Hawthorne.”

  “I’m sorry. How old were you when they went missing?”

  “Seventeen.” Seneval focused on her paper, concentration lines criss-crossing her forehead. “My younger sister and I went to live at the camp in Fairfield.”

  “That must’ve been hard, having to take care of your sister on your own and adjusting to life at the camp.” I shuddered to think of Kinnari growing up in such a soulless place, sleeping in a bed sandwiched between seas of others.

  Seneval nibbled her lip, her eyes never leaving the paper. One of our fellow students was posing as a subject that day, a man with a long, straight nose and eyes that appeared perpetually startled. I glanced down at the space between the man’s nose and the curve of his upper lip that Seneval had captured faithfully on her page. How many lessons had she sat through? I bet she could’ve taught the course herself.

  “Most of the people there keep to themselves a lot, like you must’ve seen while you were visiting,” she said. “But my sister and I learned to swim in the camp. An older woman who used to live right by the water in North Carolina taught us. So it wasn’t all bad. We’d never been swimming before. And that’s where I met Minnow. After my comp work was finished he got me my job too.”

  “Where do you work?” I’d only be able to make one more art class. After that I might never see Seneval again. She was so different from everyone else I knew; I wanted to find out more about her while I had the chance.

  “Wyldewood.” She glanced up at me with a guarded expression, her spine straightening against her chair.

  Wyldewood was a shopping centre right off the I-90 near Laurel. It catered to people over the age of sixty who had fond memories of the suburban shopping mall experience. Essentially the centre was the equivalent of a dozen super-sized Walmarts but with superior interior decorating. Wyldewood had waterfalls, copious amounts of greenery, and an indoor beach with a blue sky as convincing as any you’d find on gushi.

  I’d gone with my grandparents a few times, to help them pick out furniture and various decorative items. Not that they really needed me for that; at Wyldewood you were assigned a personal shopper as you walked through the door. I’d heard that some grounded folks just went for the social interaction. Oddly enough, a few people even went with their domestic Ros in tow.

  Tranquil as it was to look at, I couldn’t understand Wyldewood’s appeal. What was the point of spending hours ogling mundane objects you probably didn’t really need in the first place? At least in Moss you could discover forgotten treasure.

  “I have a tough time picturing you in Wyldewood,” I confessed. “It doesn’t seem like your scene.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not all lucky enough to be able to choose law school,” Seneval said coolly. “I was fortunate to get into Wyldewood. That’s how I see it.”

  My jaw dropped an inch before I snapped it shut again. “There’s nothing wrong with Wyldewood. I didn’t mean it like it that.” I’d been saying all the wrong things. Seneval was a proud person and didn’t want me feeling sorry for her; I should’ve been able to see that.

  I watched Seneval’s pencil poke through her paper. “Damn.” She tore the page from her easel and crumpled it up. As it fell towards the floor, I reached for it, grasping it in my left fist. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I botched it. Just toss it and I’ll start over.” She was already making a stroke on a fresh page.

  But I didn’t throw away her drawing. I smoothed the paper down and slid it between the pages of my notebook. “To remember you by.” I smiled flippantly to undercut the implications of my actions. It didn’t escape me that I’d been rescuing a lot of damaged or abandoned things lately. The unicorn bracelet. Cleo’s plate. Seneval’s unfinished sketch.

  “You’re still coming next week, aren’t you?” The worry in her voice changed my demeanour to serious.

  I almost lost my grip on my pencil, regaining it just before it had a chance to slip. “Is that when things will finally be decided for me—next week?” My life was on a knife’s edge of changing. What would the movement ask of me in New York?

  Seneval’s lips set in a somber line. “Minnow wants to meet with you Tuesday night. Do you think you could make it out to Wyldewood to speak to him?”

  “Why Wyldewood?” I’d been back to the Fairfield camp every Saturday to help Michael Neal with his clients but hadn’t seen Isaac again. The time I tried to search him out on level nine I’d only gotten lost in the dorms again. Anyone I’d asked him about either didn’t know who Isaac was or pretended to be clueless.

  “He lives there,” Seneval explained. “We work together.”

  “Wait. You live at Wyldewood?”

  Seneval stared at our subject, her hand beginning to recreate the curve of his top lip on her page. “Almost everyone who works at Wyldewood lives there too. We don’t earn enough in wages to live any other decent place.”

  Guilt for my privileged upbringing kept me silent. I’d already put my foot in my mouth enough times that night.

  “So will you be there Tuesday?” she asked.

  “I’ll be there.”

  I didn’t loiter around when class was done; I took off as fast as I could. At home I flipped through my notebook and opened to Seneval’s crumpled drawing. The hole in the paper was tiny. She hadn’t needed to throw it away. She could’ve finished the picture.

  Sometimes, during those weeks we shared a class, I’d find myself thinking about Seneval while I was at school. No one else knew about her or the art class and that made the secret feel like something more than it was. Rosine and Bening thought I was at a friend’s house. I’d never breathed a word about Malyck or anything else and it was as if Seneval and I were on the verge of something together, like soldiers about to go into battle. Only there was no together. She’d just happened to be in the same room as me for a time. I was her job. Part of her cause. None of our conversations meant anything more than that.

  If you’ve ever felt like you could be friends with someone but knew you didn’t have the time or the opportunity—that was how it was with me and Seneval. I didn’t know how she felt about me or even what I meant by ‘friends.’ I only knew, when I fell asleep that night after class, that I was feeling the seeds of something that would never grow.

  Six: 1986

  The few tools we own—a hammer, screwdriver, and wrench—are bundled in a plastic bag we keep in the hall closet. I grab the screwdriver and drag the overturned dining room chair into the bedroom with me to open the vent that’s spaced four inches from the ceiling.

  I’d honestly started to think they’d stopped looking for us. Now I know we stayed too long, got too comfortable.

  I yank the grill off the vent and toss it onto the bed. Reaching inside, I close my fingers around the gun and box of bullets we bought when we first reached Vancouver, a tight roll of twenty-dollar bills totalling eight hundred dollars, and two sets of fake IDs for Freya and me under the names Chris Henderson and Amy Lewandowski. We have more money at the bank, but I don’t have time for that. I load the gun, then shove everything into my duffle bag along with a fistful of underwear, socks, and T-shirts that I swipe off the floor. I throw a single pair of jeans into the bag along with them and hoist the strap over my shoulder.

  Too late it occurs to me that I’m already letting their trail go cold; I should’ve run out to the street to catch sight of anything suspicious when I first saw that the apartment had been ransacked. My legs whirl me out to the balcony anyway. I stare up and down Fourteenth Avenue hoping my eyes will sn
ag on something—anything—that will help lead the way. When that doesn’t happen I turn and step back inside, freezing as I hear someone burst through the front door. I jump back onto the balcony, easing the sliding door shut as quietly as I can. Whoever it is won’t have seen me yet—the balcony isn’t visible from the entranceway.

  But what if it’s Freya and she wasn’t taken after all? I stare through the glass, hope dying inside me as a balding man with severe sideburns glares back. He breaks into a run when he spies me, jerks the sliding door open and grabs at the front of my jacket, wrenching me inside with him. The duffle strap slides down my arm as I stumble into the apartment.

  For all I know, this man’s only one of many the director’s sent, and if the others reach me I won’t stand a chance. I draw back my fist and hit his Adam’s apple dead-on, just like I saw old Freya do on the day she saved us. The man instinctively bends at the waist, both his hands releasing me. I stomp on his left foot with all my weight and watch him buckle in pain, skirting to his side to push him back out onto the balcony and lock the door behind him. Flustered, my fingers trip over the locking mechanism. The man’s tanned hand closes around the exterior handle just as I successfully lock the door. Momentarily proud of myself, an involuntary smile begins to burn into my cheeks.

  The feeling doesn’t last a second before the man reaches into his blazer for a holstered gun. I twist to run, hearing the glass shatter behind me.

  Out in the apartment corridor, I launch myself in the direction of the stairwell, wondering how much of a lead I have, whether they’ve had a chance to mess with Freya’s head yet, and what I can do about any of it.

  I don’t look back. My ears tell me that my tail hasn’t reached the stairway yet, and instead of running down to street level I ease the third-floor doorway open, squeeze through it, and close it gently behind me. What now? Think, Garren. You got away from them in Toronto. You can do it again.