Office of Mercy (9781101606100)

by Djanikian, Ariel

  Natasha changed into her nightclothes, threw back the covers and got into bed, her thoughts screaming with the fact that the people Outside had talked to her, and that they had wanted to meet her again. The leader of the Pines knew her name; and the beautiful man whom she’d watched on the sensors was a real person who actually seemed to like her. As she lay on her mattress, staring up at the ceiling, the secrets burned in her core. Happy secrets and disturbing ones too: the Tribe’s claim about the Palms, their understanding of the sweeps, and their apparent belief that her helpfulness fit some supernatural prediction about a “god-person” doing them good. At least we warned them, Natasha thought as her tiredness took over, we gave them a chance. As for the rest, she and Eric had no choice but to keep what they’d learned about the Tribe to themselves.

  Now it was morning, and Natasha sat at her desk in the Office of Mercy, her mind still raging with the memory of the Outside. She was not exactly sure how Eric was feeling today. Their trip back to the settlement had left little time to discuss more than the basics: that the Tribe would not leave the area, and that they claimed to be the same group as the Palms. He had told Natasha that he was furious with her for going into the caves, and that he did not share her trust in the Tribe. Apparently, when he broke away from the group with spears, they had poked him several times in the sides. The spear points did not penetrate the fabric of the biosuit, or even damage it in any way, but the affront was enough to dispel much of Eric’s sympathy.

  Meanwhile, the news of Jeffrey’s team and the intended manual sweep became public, and, in the hour after lunch, the updated news that the mission had failed. According to Arthur, the Pines had deserted the cave area and left no trace of their presence and no trail to a new camp. Eric, as soon as he had an opportunity, caught Natasha’s eye from around the side of the cubicle wall and glared at her with such alarm that (though she had no regrets) Natasha’s stomach tightened with fear. The full consequence of their actions must have sunk in for him at this moment, as it had for Natasha. The Pines had listened to them after all. They had moved before the team could get them and now they were somewhere out in the forest, and it was all Natasha and Eric’s fault.

  As the days passed, Natasha’s fear only grew. She was afraid that someone (particularly Raj) would come forward, claiming to have seen her and Eric leaving the settlement; she was afraid that the Pines would try to attack; she was afraid that they would stay in the area as they had promised and get themselves killed. Plus Natasha had Jeffrey to deal with. It seemed that their talk on the night of the Crane Celebration had made him nervous about leaving his team alone all day. He did not return to the morning or afternoonshifts, but he began checking on them in the Office of Mercy at random hours—on Natasha especially. She could not really blame him, given all the blatantly unethical things she had said. But his attention, his calm, stony way of standing over her desk or listening in on her conversations with Yasmine made her jumpy and distracted. She could not believe how desperately she had craved his notice just days ago, when all she wanted now was to slip through the tasks of her shifts ignored.

  During the long, idle moments—watching the cumulus clouds drift by on her screen while Jeffrey watched her—Natasha could not help but wonder how Jeffrey would react if he found out that she had left the settlement. Would he keep her secret? Or would he turn her over to Arthur? To the Alphas? After the way he’d treated her since the mission, Natasha could only fear the worst, that one more tug would snap the already tenuous bond between them. Despite how angry she was with Jeffrey right now, it still hurt Natasha to think that her actions within a mere cluster of hours could destroy what remained of his affection for her, for herself as a whole person. Could his regard for her—could the years of history between two people—crumble as easily as that?

  Unfortunately, Natasha could not dismiss these as idle worries because she was constantly and increasingly aware of the possibility that Eric might give them away. In the last minutes of one otherwise uneventful afternoonshift, Arthur sent Natasha and Eric to wheel two faulty memory cubes (which together backed up three hundred years of sensor data) to the Office of Dry Engineering, and Eric seized upon this chance to once again make his opinions clear.

  “You know I don’t like this,” he said, as soon as they were out of hearing range of the Office. “I mean I really, really don’t like this.”

  “They haven’t caught us yet.”

  “I’m not worried about getting caught, Natasha. I’m afraid we made the wrong decision. Going out and telling some random Tribe to disappear is one thing. But they’re not leaving the perimeter. Apparently they have no intention of leaving. And according to you, they’re not random at all.” They pulled the cart to a screeching halt while they waited for the Department doors to open. “According to you, they’re the Palms.”

  “That’s what they said. But maybe they’re lying. Or misrepresenting themselves, you know? Like how we would call ourselves citizens like the citizens of other Americas, even though we’re not really the same group.”

  “Then how do they know about the sweep?” Eric challenged. “There was no one left to tell them.”

  The doors opened and they passed into the Dome. The other citizens hopped out of the way of the cart and veered sharply along different paths. The din from the construction site was deafening; Natasha had heard that the workers were pulling double shifts this week.

  “The thing is,” Eric continued, “if they really are the Palms, then we’re not dealing with just any Tribe. The Palms were the smartest, most aggressive Tribe that this America has ever seen. Even more dangerous than we thought, if they managed to hide the existence of a dirty sweep.”

  They arrived at the Department of Research, and Natasha tapped her finger; Arthur had temporarily granted her genetic code access to the wing. They maneuvered the cart in a clumsy arc across the circular lobby, toward the door marked OFFICE OF DRY ENGINEERING.

  “We shouldn’t keep this secret, Natasha.”

  “If you tell Arthur or Jeffrey what we did,” Natasha said, “we’re both getting eternal bans from the Department of the Exterior. And I can’t even imagine what the Alphas would say.” Eric only shrugged but, sensing a weakness, Natasha pressed on. “Look, I’m not crazy, okay? I don’t want to put the settlement in danger any more than you do. But we have to be smart about this. Jeffrey has always told us that the Tribes are tricky, so before we throw away our careers, let’s figure out if they’re telling the truth.”

  “How do you expect to do that?”

  Natasha tapped her finger once again, and they wheeled the memory cube into the Office of Dry Engineering. The room contained a series of long, high metal tables with men and women in white lab coats and goggles tinkering with small instruments. A contained wreckage of computer and electrical boards lay scattered before them. At the back of the room, a few stooped and very still bodies peered into the eyeholes of compact u-quark microscopes, which, according to a recent bulletin, the scientists were using to investigate new subatomic energy sources.

  Upon seeing Eric and Natasha, two of the engineers stepped stiffly down from their stools.

  “Just leave it to me,” Natasha said. “My free day is coming up soon. I’ll go to the Archives and have Min-he dig up everything there is about the Palm attack. If the sweep looks as clean as we’ve always been told, then we’ll assume they were lying. If not, then I agree with you. We have to tell someone.”

  Eric was already nodding hello to the engineers.

  “Fine,” he said, under his breath. “Do what you have to do. But I don’t want it to be ‘we’ anymore. I shouldn’t have let you convince me to leave the settlement in the first place. They could’ve killed us, easily. I mean, Alpha, we’re lucky the Office didn’t sweep us by accident. I’m out, okay? I’m wiping my hands clean of this mess.”

  11

  The Archives were one of the great feats of
America-Five. In the time before the Storm, when other Alphas had put all their energy into transforming the Yangs’ underground bunkers into suitable homes, shoring up their Domes, and gathering enough seed, animals, scientific equipment, and raw DNA supplies to last them until the Day of Expansion, the America-Five Alphas had also had the foresight to gather information. For the first two hundred years after the Storm, the piles of books, digital files, and paper records had lain fallow in one dehumidified room on level eight. Later, though, sometime just before the Gamma birth, the Alphas and Betas had decided to siphon off the top story of the Department of Living and make this area into a reading room and library. At first no one saw much use in it, since they already had the Pretends for entertainment and schooling, and the Ethical Code for moral grounding. But as the years went on, interest in Pre-Storm documents grew and, eventually, added to that interest, there arose a desire to keep detailed histories of the happenings within the settlement itself, records beyond what individual memory could retain. Now, as had been the case since the first professional assignments of the Gamma generation, the Archives maintained a healthy staff of twelve to fifteen citizens. Their work consisted of recoding the old, Pre-Storm documents and books, maintaining the living record and the yearly biosnapshots of each America-Five citizen, and—though Natasha would never say as much to Min-he—endlessly shifting information from one organizational system to another.

  After breakfast, Natasha climbed the spiral staircase to the top floor of the wing. Today was her first free day in weeks, and she was all too happy to spend it away from the Office of Mercy and the dull, streaming data from the satellite feeds. She cleaned her hands in the decontamination sink at the landing and pushed through the handsome, Pre-Storm–style glass doors that led to the Archives. The air in this room was cool from the dehumidifying vents and smelled of old paper. Towering shelves cut narrow rows along each side of the aisle leading to the archivists’ stations, and each shelf boasted a tightly stacked row of faded book spines. Except for the printings of the Ethical Code, these were all Pre-Storm books—really, the only sentimental relics that the Alphas had preserved from that previous world.

  Tucked off to one side of the room was the reading area: a comfortable nook of plush armchairs with ottomans and little tables that one could draw up and over the armrests. Along the opposite wall were seven windowed conference rooms that citizens could sign out for private meetings. Arthur met here sometimes with the heads of the Department of the Exterior offices; and often, a handful of citizens would organize discussion clubs that gathered in the evenings. Natasha herself had attended a few meetings of the Moral Principles Discussion Group in her first year out of school, and Min-he had once dragged her to a culinary club responsible for providing the kitchens with innovative menu ideas. Just now, there were five Betas talking animatedly (though silently, to Natasha’s ears, since the rooms were soundproof) around one of the tables. They were not volunteering, though. A sign on the door identified them as the Reeducation Committee, a subgroup from the Department of Government. These men and women helped the Alphas organize specific behavioral and psychological goals for citizens who had acted against the common good, against the Ethical Code. Natasha looked away; she could not worry about them right now.

  Natasha found Min-he at a large desk in the back corner of the room. A giant book was propped open on a wooden stand, and loose papers were scattered across the desk and floor. Min-he sat hunched over a small computer, typing rapidly. Wisps of black hair had escaped from her usually neat ponytail, and her eyes exhibited a wide, slightly crazed look.

  “Hey,” Natasha whispered, “can I bother you for a second?”

  Min-he’s head shot up from the screen, but she smiled when she saw Natasha.

  “I forgot it was your free day! Sure, I was about to take a break anyway.” She closed the massive book gingerly, so all the pages lined up straight, then laid it down on its side.

  “What are you working on?”

  “A new index of the Bible. My Director gave me the assignment this morning.”

  “Didn’t someone just finish a new index last year?”

  “Yes.” Min-he sighed. “But this one will cross-reference thematically parallel passages in the Ethical Code. Anyway, were you looking for something? Leisure reading?”

  “No, something for work, actually.” It was harder to lie to Min-he than Natasha had anticipated. “Well, you know we’re still having trouble with the Pines. Our tracking methods haven’t been working, and we need some new ideas.” Natasha faltered a moment, looking up as one of the archivists coughed. “A few of us have been talking about the Palm attack,” she continued. “Just to see—behaviorally, I mean—what we might be up against.”

  “Does Jeffrey know you’re here?” Min-he asked, with some suspicion.

  “Of course,” Natasha said, “it was practically his idea.”

  Min-he frowned, and Natasha was pretty sure that her roommate guessed there was more to the story. And yet, without further questioning, Min-he set Natasha up at one of the viewing consoles in a dimly lit corner of the room, with a list of video codes from Year 283, on the day of the Palm attack. With a last glance at the archivists, Natasha typed in the first code and tapped her finger on Play.

  The recording came from one of the sensors on the green, and began seconds before the alarm sounded. Natasha watched, captivated, as teams of suited citizens jogged up from the stone steps and fanned out into different positions, their weapons snug under their arms. Some climbed ladders to the roofs of the wings, while others knelt on the green, with still others standing behind them. One team of four vanished around the side of the settlement and into the trees, perhaps hooking through the forest to keep the Palms from retreating.

  When the manual sweep happened, it happened fast. The Tribe burst onto the green; they emerged running from the trees amid a flurry of arrows and spears aimed for the hearts of the citizens on the ground. But the Tribe’s weapons could not stop the quicker and sharper spray of bullets from the citizens’ guns, and the Palms fell, if not all at once, then in very quick succession. Natasha leaned in toward the screen, searching for any clue that the Palms and the Pines were connected, as Axel had claimed, or else searching for some great discrepancy that would make a connection unlikely. But it was too hard to say. Many Tribes had overlaps in appearance and dress, and any difference Natasha noticed could easily be attributed to the elapse of twenty-two years. Now on the recording, medworkers were rushing up the stone stairs, and Natasha saw with horror that at least five citizens had arrows sticking straight up from the tough fabric of their biosuits. Then, while the others were stowing their weapons, a group of three citizens went from body to body, guaranteeing with precise, single shots to the back of the head, which made the bodies jump as if shocked by live wire, that no human being of the Palm Tribe would continue to suffer.

  The video was in its last minute when Natasha noticed, in the sliver of sky above the tree line, a column of dark smoke dividing the screen in two. That must have been the fire that the Palms had set in their wake, the fire that had caused Jeffrey’s burns and, if Axel was telling the truth, that had killed many Tribespeople too. Jeffrey must have been among the four who had left the green before the attack. Natasha watched anxiously for his return, but before anything more could happen—and to Natasha’s frustration—the recording ended.

  Natasha hurriedly selected the next code. She wondered if there was footage of the Palms actually starting the fire, or a record of whatever tricks they’d performed to trap Jeffrey in the flames. But this next video showed a similar location as the first, only from a different angle on the green; and it cut off even earlier. The third recording was from Inside, when the archivists used to keep a camera in the Dome, attached to the maincomputer. (They had since dismantled it, after too many complaints from the citizens about being treated like Tribes in the field.) By the time Natasha entered the c
ode for the fourth and final recording, she had remembered something important. There probably would be no documentation of the Palms in the forest because the Office of Mercy didn’t have as many sensors back then—hence the Palms’ success in reaching America-Five undetected.

  Indeed, the last video again showed the attack on the green, though at least this one was a little more interesting. Here, Natasha could better make out the faces of the team of four who had gone into the forest before the Palms arrived.

  As she had suspected, one in the party was Jeffrey. A second was definitely Claudia. As for the identities of the other two, though, Natasha could not tell. She wondered if the team had inadvertently startled the Palms with a covert approach—and in that way had instigated the Tribe’s violent and sudden retaliation—or if the Palms had seen the team coming from a long way off and had set the fire deliberately in their path. She wished that Jeffrey wasn’t already watching her for signs of unethical thinking, or that she didn’t have so much to hide; otherwise she would have tried again to get him to talk about that day. For now, though, she decided she could not risk it.

  This last recording, once again, ended abruptly, and Natasha turned off the console and went to find her roommate.

  “Hey,” she said, squatting down beside Min-he’s desk. “Do you have any more information from that day? Audios or logbooks or anything?”

  “Nope, that’s it,” Min-he replied. “Why? Didn’t find what you were looking for?”

  “No, it was helpful,” Natasha said evasively. “It’s just that all the records stop right after the sweep is over.”

  “Well, we can’t keep everything. If the records stop, then probably not much happened afterward. You saw the whole sweep, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Min-he tore her attention away from her computer to gaze at Natasha. “I promise I gave you everything we have. The Archives are open to everyone. I’m not allowed to keep things back. I’d lose my position here if I did.”