Office of Mercy (9781101606100)

by Djanikian, Ariel

  She and Teacher Robyn were about twenty paces from the Department of Health when Natasha saw them: three ghostly faces peering through the glass, two men and a woman, their pale heads floating like impossible little moons, swags of dirty fabric wrapped around their necks, and their eyes fixed directly on her. Natasha screamed. She screamed and threw her weight back, making Teacher Robyn trip to her knees and cry out in surprise. Blood poured over Natasha’s lips and hotly to the bib of her nightgown. The faces disappeared but she screamed and thrashed to get away, back to the elephant, and eventually it took three full-grown Gamma men to restrain her.

  In the following days, certain Betas and Gammas had given Natasha many logical explanations for the faces: that she, Natasha, had been semiconscious, still dreaming; that holding her head back too far had overstrained her windpipe, reducing the flow of oxygen into her bloodstream and making her brain go just a little foggy. They sat her down in the Archives and showed her surveillance images of the green inner lawn on that night. Nothing. No one. But Natasha would not change her story, and her elders went from being sympathetic to being annoyed. They suspended her for three days from her Epsilon group on account of her promoting illogic, and her teachers told her how disappointed they were until Natasha’s anger had transformed to a dull ache in her chest.

  Eight years later, when Natasha applied to work in the Office of Mercy, her past came back to haunt her. The Department of Government had held her application five days past the usual timeline, despite Natasha’s ranking third in her class and scoring a 97 percent on the Office of Mercy entrance exam. She could not be sure, but she believed that Jeffrey had vouched for her. He had visited their Epsilon group a few times as a volunteer teacher, and he had always paid a little extra attention to her. Not overtly, nothing that the other children would notice, but in the way he stood still and listened to her when she gave an answer and how once, when she was very little, he had put his hand on top of her head and kept it there, as if to say, Out of all the sixty-two Epsilons, you are special.

  • • •

  The metallic clang of a chair leg striking the cubicle announced the arrival of Natasha’s fellow Epsilon team member—twelve minutes late for his afternoonshift. As a conciliatory gesture, he had brought Natasha a mug of coffee, which he set down beside the feeler-cube in which Natasha’s fingers danced, controlling the computer.

  “You should see it out there in the Dome,” Eric said, looping his audioset around his neck and rolling back in his chair. “The Alphas finally posted the sweep. Everyone’s cheering around the maincomputer. Hey, you weren’t in the Office for it, were you?”

  “Nope,” said Natasha, taking a break to sip the hot coffee. “Wave One Defense in the Dome. Jeffrey did the sweep himself.”

  “Well, that’s still better than me. I was on ammo support with your roommate.”

  “We’re back to tracking Pines, did you check your instructions yet?”

  “I am right now. Mother, I was hoping to monitor the Crane sweep site.”

  “Claudia’s team got the assignment, I think,” said Natasha, savoring a few more sips, then setting the mug aside. “But Arthur says it’s clean. There’s nothing to see.”

  “Exactly,” said Eric, letting forth a mighty yawn. “By the way, I was browsing the America Boards this morning. Did you know we’re ahead of America-Forty-seven now? Way ahead of America-Six.”

  “Are we really?”

  Natasha flicked her pinky finger in the feeler cube, drawing up the Extra-Settlement connection. This was the single feed used for communication with the other American settlements, the 158 Dome-capped structures stretching from ocean to ocean, all along latitude 39 degrees North. Besides weather warnings and announcements of new generations, the America Boards served almost exclusively to keep track of the sweeps. One of the programmers in a central settlement had set up a ranking system, where settlements could self-report the number of Tribespeople swept. Officially, the Alphas in America-Five did not approve of this program—though they had never made a rule against it either. America-Five usually ranked very high, in part because they were the easternmost settlement (Americas One through Four had been tragically lost during the Storm, when the ocean surged miles inland, in defiance of all computer models and calculations). America-Five, therefore, intercepted most of the fishing Tribes traveling down the coast. Tribes, in other words, like the Cranes.

  The top rankings on the board read as follows:

  America-158

  147,011

  America-5

  146,987

  America-47

  146,935

  America-6

  143,002

  “Check out the total count now,” Eric said, looking over Natasha’s shoulder.

  Natasha scrolled down. The total count, the number of human beings on the North American continent granted mercy since the Storm, was 8,300,019.

  “That’s something, isn’t it?” Eric said. “We’re the ones to push it over 8.3 million. Mother,” he said in a hushed voice, “all those people.”

  There was something in Eric’s tone that Natasha had detected before, a note of giddy self-satisfaction that Jeffrey would have reprimanded him for, had he been here.

  “I saw Jeffrey this morning,” Natasha said, reminded of her earlier conversation. “He’s meeting with the Alphas right now about putting together a Recovery team. It’s supposed to go out as soon as we sweep the Pines. Or at least as soon as the Pines are out of the field.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being a part of that. Too bad we’re Epsilons.”

  “Actually, Jeffrey said he’d bring my name up to the Alphas.”

  “What?” Eric cried. A few people glanced over from nearby cubicles, though when they saw it was only Eric talking, they quickly lost interest. “I logged just as many hours as you this quarter,” he continued. “Plus I was the one to correct the count to 437 when that female gave birth. If you’re getting on that team, then so am I.”

  “The Alphas probably won’t clear it. Like you said, we’re Epsilons.” Natasha was backtracking quickly, but Eric waved her off, shaking his head. “Take it up with Jeffrey then,” Natasha said, very sorry that she had confided in him. She should have known better. Eric was quick and smart at his work, but famously immature.

  “You bet I will. And Arthur too. How come you were on Wave One Defense last night and I got supplies? Playing favorites.”

  “Eric,” she snapped. “We rotate through those positions. Next alarm, I’ll probably be four levels underground—”

  A new shape on the screen caught Natasha’s eye while, at the same time, Eric’s face widened from an expression of self-absorbed petulance to one of genuine shock.

  “Oh, no,” Natasha moaned.

  The IR map burned with a fourth orb of radiating life, one much larger than the men. Natasha knew at once what she was seeing: bear. So that’s what the three Pines had been after. Natasha switched to visual. The men stood on a rocky patch of ground, partly walled off by a sharp rise of stone. They looked terrified, taut and still to the point of being inhuman. Their shoulders tilted toward the same shadowy place, and then the bear came into view—its big round body half obscured by a leafy tree in the foreground. The beast got up on its two hind legs, snapped its jaw, and fell heavily down again with a soundless bellow. The tallest of the men, the beautiful one, stood before the animal, his spear raised and his sandaled feet shuffling as if searching out some magical position that would give him the strength to make his kill. To his right was a round-faced curly-haired man and, to his left, a man with narrow features and spiraling black tattoos up each arm. Natasha fumbled for the switch on her audioset. She inhaled a breath. The Wall rose up in her mind, blocking int
erfering feelings of Misplaced Empathy behind it.

  “What is it?” sounded Arthur’s voice in her ear. “They’re nearing the Crane sweep site?”

  “No. Bring up sensor MC30.”

  “Ah,” said Arthur, with dawning understanding. “They must have gotten desperate. Or arrogant. They’re hard to understand, these guys.”

  “Look!” Natasha interrupted.

  The beautiful man had launched himself forward and pierced the bear through the thick fur of its shoulder. Soundlessly, the beast roared, rolling its head on its muscular neck. “Poor bear,” whispered Natasha, recognizing the perversity of the kill-or-be-killed Outside in a distant sort of way. But then—two seconds later—it was not “poor bear” at all. The blow did not have enough force behind it; the spear unstuck from the flesh as the bear lashed out, enraged. With one sudden swipe, the bear caught the tattooed man in the chest. The man’s face turned to the side and he staggered. His legs crossed over themselves and he fell.

  “Arthur!” Natasha said. She could feel Eric breathing hard at her side. She was already drawing up the command box for launching a nova. Her thoughts from that morning, her doubt about the goodness of sweeps, dissolved in the face of this singular instance of terrible suffering. “We have to do something. A G4. They’re twenty miles from camp. No one would see.”

  In certain, very rare situations, when the suffering was especially awful, the Office of Mercy broke its own rules: it allowed for one group to be swept separately from the rest of their Tribe. In a case like this, it would only take a tiny, compact explosion. Four bodies, all within a radius of ten feet. The yellow box flashed before her, asking for the clearance code to access the nova launch program. She waited, wishing that Jeffrey were here to watch for mistakes, to make sure that their next moves proceeded correctly. She could do no more herself. Only Arthur and certain teamleaders had access to the nova controls. On the screen, the tattooed man twitched once, as if wanting to bring his knees to his chest. The curly-haired man was waving his arms and jumping, trying to scare the bear away. The beautiful man lurched forward ineffectually, reaching for his spear. It could not be allowed to continue, no, they must wipe it out now.

  “Father of races, put them out of their misery,” whispered Eric.

  The audioset crackled. “We can’t sweep,” Arthur said, with an air of finality.

  “But they’re far enough from the camp!” Natasha cried. “I’m looking at the map right now!”

  An echoing in her ear signaled to Natasha that their feed was now public. Likely her computer images were public too, up on the big screen. The Office of Mercy had become very quiet.

  “It’s not an issue of other Pines observing the blast,” Arthur said. “We believe that the curly-haired man is their chief. The other two men are leaders in the Tribe. If we sweep them, the rest of the Tribe will go nuts. They’ll fan out looking for them, a worse scatter than what we observed with the Cranes.” He paused, breathing heavily into the speaker. “If you think the Pines are hard to sweep now, well, annihilating these three would make it impossible.”

  A flash came in Natasha’s mind: the Wall disappeared and in its place was a bright conflagration, her own dread and terror at the sight before her. This evil, this death. Her feelings for the tattooed man and the two hunters forced to witness his pain reached such a state of intensity that Natasha was no longer feeling for them but with them. Suffering what they suffered. Only another small but well-trained part of her mind comprehended that she was being unethical; that she must overcome this passionate burst of Misplaced Empathy in order to do what was right. Natasha was good at controlling her thoughts, when she chose to. She had turned on and off, at will, whole regions of her brain during the Office of Mercy entrance exam, and she had the bioscans that proved it. Natasha gripped the edge of the desk. She looked at the man again, only now with the tether of instinct-driven feeling cut off. Then the tattooed man was receding from her, and existing, now, at a faraway distance. Instead of seeing a reflection of her own fears and her own sadness in his image, Natasha saw a stark human figure, solitary and small in the universe. The Wall had returned, and Natasha’s mind was clear to make the most rational decision. She would, as Arthur was urging, act in such a way as to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

  “Got it,” she said. She closed the program, her hand trembling ever so slightly as she did.

  Out in the forest, forty miles from the Office of Mercy, the Pines fought for their lives. The beautiful man retrieved his spear, and they battled the bear over the body of the tattooed man until their legs moved sluggishly and their weapons circled in tired arcs. The bear was injured, but angry too. The tattooed man lay still. His lacerations were not visible to them in the settlement, but a pool of dark blood was thickening beneath his body, seeping slowly into the earth.

  “It’s horrible,” said Eric.

  Natasha understood his revulsion but understood better the necessity of their restraint. Her mind remained focused; her years of training were serving her well. Instead of wishing for Jeffrey’s help, she thought now that he would be proud of her for keeping so calm.

  Arthur was addressing the group: “This is one of those unfortunate cases in which deferring the present suffering would lead to more pain in the future. . . .”

  With a click, Natasha switched from visible to IR feed. The red streak of life that had once marked the tattooed man had lightened to pink. The other two men began creeping away from the bear, into the forest. Twice they made quick changes of direction, last-ditch efforts to retrieve their third, but soon they retreated and took off at a jog. Meanwhile the pink gave way to orangey-yellow and the fringes softened. By the time the bear returned to inspect and gnaw at its kill, the smear of life was a warm tan. Then the only color was the burning red orb of the bear; the tattooed man had faded into the grayscale shapes of the forest.

  “He’s dead,” said Natasha, aware that everyone in the Office and maybe even the Alphas could hear her. “Permission to change the count?”

  “Permission granted,” said Arthur.

  She pulled up the Pines’ profile and deleted the count of the living. Then she reentered the number: 436.

  3

  Night settled over America-Five, tumbling in its quiet way to those dark, inscrutable hours deep within the nebulous middle between lights out and the underground dawn. The morning and afternoonshift workers from all five departments (only the Alphas in Government kept to their own mysterious schedules) had long retired from their dinnerhour in the Dining Hall—baked apples and sausages tonight, a special treat; they had enjoyed their evening recreation in the Pretends or socializing in the Garden, and had filtered down the elephant in groups of fifteen or twenty to their respective sleeprooms. The current group of nightshift workers were now in the Department of Health, monitoring those citizens who had recently undergone bioreplacement. Two or three agriculture workers lethargically patrolled the cow pastures and pigpens in the Farms, sweeping dim spotlights across the chicken coops and net-enclosed beehives, their steps soft on the dirt and grass ground. There were at least a dozen scientists propped on high stools in the circuitous labs of the Department of Research, attending to the vats of replacement cells and the molecular splicing experiments. Yasmine Gulsvig (a bland but agreeable woman, and the fourth member of Jeffrey, Eric, and Natasha’s four-person team) was working tonight in the back cubicle of the Office of Mercy and, at other workstations, Rachael Kaminski and Vincent St. Peter with her. One door down the hall, a lone citizen operated the panel of blue and yellow controls in the Office of Air and Energy, while outside, beyond the honeycomb, polycarbonate-enforced windows, the half orb of America-Five was shining in the black forest like a star that had fallen and lodged itself there.

  Below all this, in the calm, cool depths of the settlement, Natasha lay fitfully in her narrow bed, in the ten-by-ten-foot room that she sh
ared with Min-he. Her face burrowed into the pillow and she clutched a synthetic-protein wool (or prote-wool) blanket close to her neck. For several minutes now a panic had been growing within her and forcing her, against her will, awake. Her heart bumped loudly in her chest, rebelliously even, as if it were being squeezed between the fingers of a ghostly hand.

  She opened her eyes with a sharp gasp and rolled onto her back. But vision could not pull her out of her head. The dark consumed every detail of the room, save for the two dim squares of the wallcomputers, hovering on either side of the black gulf where the door would be. A soft hiss of air whirled through the ceiling vent and, shivering, Natasha grabbed a pair of thick socks from under her pillow and pulled them over her feet. She huddled under the blanket again and scooted closer into the corner. She could hear Min-he’s gentle snores two arm-lengths away and feel the low vibrations of the level-nine generator traveling up through the floor.