Reaping

by Makansi, K.

  “You two are sitting here with a lukewarm pot of coffee on hand. Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?”

  I laugh. “I don’t really sleep much these days.”

  She shrugs. “Most of us don’t. I just do my not-sleeping towards the beginning of the night, and can’t seem to drag myself out of bed in the morning. But since we reopened satellite connection lines yesterday, I’ve been tasked with seeing what info has come in. I’ve got to see if we’ve had any contact from the other bases before our morning briefing. Director’s orders. So,” she heaves a sigh, “I’m up before everyone else, today.”

  At some point during the battle at Thermopylae, the Director gave the order for all Resistance bases to kill our satellite links. If she’s ready to re-open the lines, it means she thinks the immediate danger has passed.”

  “You think there’s a chance we might hear from Waterloo?” I ask.

  She looks up over the rim of her cup and shakes her head.“ If we haven’t heard anything from them on the radio, we probably won’t via satellite. If their radio communications are down, I’m sure everything else is, too.”

  I glance at Eli. I may be sick of waiting for news, but waiting is all we can do.

  Two hours later, we’re all gathered in the largest meeting room, which is barely big enough for all of us. I’m sandwiched between Bear and my father, leaning against the wall because there aren’t enough chairs.

  “With a cloner or a Sector-quality 3D printer,” the Director is saying, “we could manufacture hundreds of thousands of these seeds, and disseminate them to the populations of the Farms and the factory towns. We can subvert the OAC’s control over the Sector before they ever realize it.”

  “How many plant species are listed in the database?” Adrienne asks.

  The Director turns to Eli, who answers quickly. “We’re not sure of the final count, but approximately ten thousand species in three hundred different genuses.”

  “With that many uncorrupted seed varieties at our hands,” the Director continues, “we have the opportunity to wrest control of the population away from the OAC and put it back in the hands of the citizens themselves.”

  “A revolutionary dream,” my father, at my side, says quietly.

  “It wasn’t so revolutionary once, Gabriel, as you well know. These were the ideals the Sector was founded on. A free and intelligent people, bolstered by the organic and sustainable ecosystems we created on the Farms and enhanced by the foods developed by the Dieticians. A world in which every citizen had access to healthy food tailored to their specific dietary needs. We envisioned a world where food was plentiful and nutritious. Where food-borne pathogens were a thing of the past and no child would ever go to bed hungry. And it wasn’t so long ago that the Sector turned from that vision to create a different kind of world.” She looks at Rhinehouse. “James and I were at the table together when that decision was made.”

  I watch her carefully, realizing that this is the most open I’ve ever seen the Director, the most frank. She’s got something humming in her blood today, I think.

  She’s hopeful.

  “At the time, I was one of the only ones to speak out against what the OAC wanted. How much easier would it be, the argument went, to grow our society, to efficiently allocate our scarce resources, and to provide for the safety of our people if we decided what they ate, when they ate it, and what it was made of? How much easier would it be to engineer a healthy society if we could control who was fertile and who was not? How much easier would it be if the people who worked in our factory towns were designed to excel at their jobs while also ensuring they could not—and did not want—to step beyond their assigned tasks? How much happier would we all be if the bucolic way of life so many yearned for from the past was maintained like a page in a picture book?”

  “Kanaan, Leon, myself, and Cillian were the only ones on a board of fifteen to vote against the changes,” Rhinehouse says. A hush spreads over the room. I glance at Soren, whose eyes are fixed on the floor. His mother, Cara, was on the OAC’s Board of Directors briefly, before she transferred to the College of the Deans. I wonder if she was at the table then, if she voted in favor of taking the freedom of self-determination from Okarian citizens?

  “Many of you know this already,” the Director continues. She’s finally stopped pacing and is watching us, gauging our reactions, her iron eyes gripping us all in the thrall of her story. “But for those who don’t, it’s best you know now. Two months after the vote, I threw myself into the Lawrence River. I left a suicide note and most of my life’s work behind. I took only my personal journals and research notes, loaded onto a waterproof plasma. With a wetsuit and an oxygen converter under my street clothes, I was able to swim far enough downstream to escape the main patrol routes of the drones and swim to safety. For a while, I lived in the Wilds, trying to decide if Okaria was worth fighting for.” She looks off into the middle distance, as if remembering. “So much fighting. The Famine Years were behind us. Okaria was thriving….” She stops again and then looks up.

  “It was only when James deciphered the clues I’d left in my note and came looking for me that we decided we had to try, at least, to fight back. James would stay in the Sector to see who else felt as we did, who else believed in a return to the original principles the Sector was founded on. I would establish a home base in a deserted city, and if he could, he would send people my way. We met once every three months at the same spot on the coast of Lake Okaria, and for years that was our only form of communication. But our little group grew, and we grew bolder. When the Alexanders turned up at our door with only one daughter in tow—” my father’s hand suddenly clenches around mine, so tightly I think he might break my fingers “—we knew we had the potential to make real change.”

  “And now we have what we need to make it happen,” my father says, his sonorous voice ringing through the room.

  “Yes,” the Director says. “With the LOTUS database, we can try. We can try to return the dream to the people of the Okarian Sector.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Zoe asks, leaning forward eagerly with her elbows on her knees.

  The Director stares at her for a moment, her eyes wide and thoughtful.

  “Our goal has never been civil war. We’ve taken the time to grow our movement by word of mouth, and we’ll move forward in much the same manner.”

  I find myself speaking up. After all that she just said, she wants business-as-usual? “That’s not enough,” I say. “We don’t have time for that. We all know what they’re capable of. After their public announcement blaming Vale’s capture on Miah, we know they’re going on the offensive. They’re going public. While we’re taking our sweet time ‘growing our movement’, they’ll be hard at work making damn sure no one can or will join our cause.”

  The Director looks at me, a note of surprise on her features, but she doesn’t go on the defensive.

  “We can’t risk full-out war,” my father says carefully. “We have to take it slowly.”

  “I agree with Remy,” Soren says from across the room. “We don’t have time. We need to act now.”

  “We’ll take action,” the Director says, “though it may not be as immediate as you want. We need to regroup. We’ve heard from the other bases, and we know who made it to safety and who didn’t. We have enough manpower to defend our existing bases and increase security, and to continue to train raid teams for important strikes. Elijah’s team will train to complete the mission to steal a 3D printer from one of the Sector’s seed banks. Of course, we have to work on the logistics, but once we obtain the means to replicate the seeds in the LOTUS database, we’ll begin production and distribution.”

  “How do we do that?” someone asks. I turn to the voice—it’s a face I don’t recognize.

  “The way I see it, we’ll have to work with Dara Oban and others to infiltrate and subvert the Dieticians’ processes. We’ll substitute our own unmodified, untainted food for MealPaks. We’ll hijack
the Sector’s distribution lines and use them for our own.”

  “You’re talking about a process that could take years,” Soren complains loudly.

  “Growing our own food will take months, and doing it in sufficient quantities will take years,” I add. That’s not good enough. “They could have hunted us all into oblivion by then.”

  My father quickly turns to me and squeezes my hand again as though to soothe my pain.

  “It’s for the best, Remy. It’s slower this way, but we don’t want anyone else dying. Not after the carnage we saw at Thermopylae. Not ever.”

  I nod and bite back the stream of oncoming objections to that point. I want Corine Orleán dead. I want Philip Orleán dead. I want Falke Aulion dead. I want everyone who’s ever killed someone else unjustly to experience that pain for themselves.

  “Eli, I want you to prepare a team to search for Firestone’s group. We’ll give them another two days before we go after them. James, Soren, you’re responsible for digging into the LOTUS database. Use all the manpower here at Normandy to help you. Adrienne, Zoe, I want you two preparing a secure information dump that details what we’ve got in LOTUS and how we intend to proceed. I’ll work with you two personally on that, and we’ll send it out to every Resistance base and outpost. Bear, Miah, I want you….”

  As the Director goes on, giving orders to what seems like everyone in the room except me, I start to zone out. People are getting up, milling about, forming teams and getting ready to start their tasks for the rest of the day. I pull out my plasma, trying to keep it hidden from the Director, but it doesn’t seem she’s noticed me in the slightest. With my illustration program, I start sketching, almost thoughtlessly. The sounds in the room dull to a dim chatter as everyone starts drifting off, pairing up, talking about their various projects, and at my fingertips, a pair of eyes materializes, and then cropped straight hair, a strong jaw and a high-collared jacket to frame the portrait. After outlining the image in black pen, I pull up my color palette. The first color I select is a pale green-blue color, like sea foam.

  “Remy,” Bear whispers in my ear, “is that Vale?”

  7 - VALE

  Winter 35, Sector Annum 106, 18h30

  Gregorian Calendar: January 24

  I pull my too-thin jacket more tightly around me, wishing for anything that I had the furs the wayfarer does, or the apparent immunity to the cold she feels. The temperature’s been plummeting, and at this point it’s well below zero. Heavy wet snow with flakes big as thumb prints cling to every surface. Winter is always like this—one day you don’t need a jacket and the next your breath forms frozen stalactites with every exhale. It’s slow going, moving against the wind, trudging through the snow, but the wayfarer seems to have tapped into a boundless energy source, and she plows down the path, clears it for the rest of us. Snow’s piling around our ankles, Kenzie and Jahnu are wrapped around each other for warmth, and the wayfarer finally takes pity on Firestone and tosses him one of her thermals. “Only a few more kilometers!” she shouts above the banshee wind. “It’s not far now!”

  “A few more kilometers might as well be a goddamned marathon,” Kenzie shouts back savagely.

  When it becomes clear Firestone might pass out if we don’t at least stop for a brief rest and a drink, we huddle beneath the boughs of a large pine and pass around our waterskins. Mine, tied to the outside of my pack, has frozen solid. It’s late, past midnight, and the going has been slow for the past few hours. Tension in our little group has skyrocketed, and if we don’t find Normandy tonight, we might not make it at all. The creeping prospect of freezing to death after all I’ve been through is slowly dawning on me. This isn’t how I’d have chosen to go out.

  “You sure you haven’t heard about any raids?” I ask the wayfarer. She’s checking Firestone’s shoulder and dressing his burn. “On Normandy, I mean. What if it’s been destroyed like Waterloo? What happens then?”

  “Normandy’s fine, Vale,” she says reassuringly, but when she turns away, I catch her checking her astrolabe again, just to be sure. She turns back to Firestone, and touches him on the arm. “Think warm bed and smooth whiskey.” Firestone just growls before we put our heads down and trudge on down the path again.

  Just when I’m sure we’re going to freeze and our lifeless icy corpses will be nothing but food for the wolves, the wayfarer pulls up short.

  “We’re here,” she says. Even the limitless enthusiasm she had an hour ago seems to be flagging. She ushers us through a clump of undergrowth, drops to her knees and starts scrambling at the ground. For one paranoid, exhausted moment, I wonder if she’s gone insane. But as she digs frantically at the snow, now up to my shins, and the dull rusted metal of an old manhole cover comes into view. I kneel beside her to help, pushing the snow off in great sweeping armfuls.

  The wayfarer pulls out an adjustable metal tool from her pack that she locks into a hook position, sticking the hooked end into the hole and using it as a lever to pull the cover up. I slide it open to reveal what looks to be a five meters drop to the tunnel below where a dim yellow light casts a dull pall over the floor and a ladder is affixed to the wall.

  She turns to us, speaking quickly.

  “It’s almost two in the morning, but they usually have someone manning the comm center 24/7.” I’m tempted to ask her how she knows that, but I bite my tongue. “There’s probably a security camera.” She looks up at me with that sly grin that once again reminds me of Demeter—even though, of course, my C-Link couldn’t smile at me. “If you want my advice, I’d send your friends down first so you don’t get shot.”

  When she starts to turn away, I reach out a gloved hand to grab her shoulder. It occurs to me that she’s not much shorter than I am, and her storm-hued eyes stand out in the dim biolight.

  “Wait, aren’t you coming? At least for the night? To get some food? Sleep in a warm bed?”

  She barks a laugh. “Not likely. The only reason I helped you and your friends at all is the pendant around your neck. You can use it again, anytime, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go calling me willy-nilly. I expect I’ll be seeing you again soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes gleam as she smiles at me.

  “I mean, Vale, that I think you and your friends will be calling on the Outsiders again in the near future.”

  “Are we gonna chat all night?” Kenzie says with impatience.

  I turn to her. “Yeah, sorry. I was trying to convince the wayfarer to come in with us. You and Jahnu better go first. I’ll help Firestone down and pull the hatch behind us.”

  Kenzie nods, her teeth chattering as she starts down the ladder.

  Before dropping down myself after helping Firestone, I turn to the wayfarer, opening my mouth to say a final thank you. But she’s gone. I stare around into the empty trees, the cloudy shadows cast by the storm’s haze and luminescent snow.

  “Hello?” I call. But I know better than to expect a response.

  I look down at the ground. Her footprints lead back into the deep woods. If she wanted to join us, she would have. She’ll do what she wants.

  “Thank you,” I say out loud, an offering, wondering if the wind will carry the words to her. “We owe you,” I finish, under my breath.

  Turning back to the manhole, I climb down, trying to get my numb fingers to grip the ladder as I descend. Just being out of the wind is a relief, and I shiver pleasantly as my body adjusts. I pull the cover closed, and then slide down to the bottom where Kenzie is punching a numerical passcode into a device against the wall to our right. I hear a clicking noise overhead, and see a camera taking photos of us from above. I cringe. Whatever automated systems they’ve set up won’t let us in if the facial recognition software identifies me, I’m sure of it.

  Just as I predicted, a few seconds later an alarm starts blaring. “Intruder at the perimeter. Entry is denied without prior approval,” a harsh, mechanical voice blares at us. “Intruder at the perimeter. Entry is
denied without—”

  “Dammit,” Kenzie growls. “My fingers are so cold I can't get the code in right.” She starts punching at the keypad as if she wants to destroy it, and Jahnu reaches out and places his hand over hers.

  But then there’s a crackle of static and the voice changes; suddenly it’s not mechanical at all, but very human.

  “Firestone! Is that—hey, stoppit—”

  “—prior approval—” the mechanical voice grates again.

  “Turn that damn thing off, give me that—” I grin. Eli.

  “You can’t override without—”

  “—them in! That’s my team, they’re with us, they—” Eli’s voice is angry now, and all at once there’s a loud buzzing of static and the intercom goes dead.

  “What the hell?” Kenzie asks, after several seconds of silence.

  Jahnu looks up at the camera and says to me, “Not quite the same as all the journalists following you around back in the Sector, huh?”

  “That’s something I don’t miss.”

  Suddenly the intercom blazes to life again.

  “Hey, sorry about that.” Eli’s voice sounds hollow in the cramped cement tunnel—dangerously calm, too, like he might have just shot someone or blown something up in order to hijack the intercom system. “We’ve encountered a little problem here in the comm room. They didn’t have authorization to let you in because Vale’s name is on the ID system. But I’ve taken care of that. Just hang on one second and I’ll figure out how to open the door.”

  “He prolly decked somebody.” Firestone says.

  I can’t help but think that this isn’t going to help my case for popularity much, if Eli had to beat someone up just to get us in the door.

  “They need a drastic overhaul of the controls here,” Eli comments over the speakers. “None of these buttons seem to do anything meaningful.”

  “Damnit … just let me ... stop that—” A girl’s voice. Sounds like she’s going toe-to-toe with Eli.

  But a few moments later, just as I think my teeth are going to break from rattling in my jaw, the enormous metal door rolls open, and we’re hit with a blast of dry, warm air. We spill inside, eager to get out of the cold. There’s a guard inside who greets us with a raised Bolt and an anxious look, but Kenzie puts her hand on the muzzle and brushes it aside carelessly, striding through the corridor as if she’s been there a million times. In the distance, a group of two older men and two women round the corner. The one leading the pack is a short woman with silvery grey hair wearing an oversized sweater. She looks like she just got out of bed. She also looks vaguely familiar. Then I recognize one of them as the man who interrogated me when I first arrived at the Resistance. Dr. James Rhinehouse.