Icons

by Margaret Stohl

Lucas pulls back from the girl and puts his hands to his temples, shaking his head.

  “No. Elena, wait.”

  But it’s too late. At that moment, the Ambassador marches in. A younger Catallus and a posse of Sympa soldiers follow closely behind her. Catallus smirks and nods at Lucas.

  “Don’t,” Lucas starts to plead.

  The Ambassador holds up her hand, and the Sympas hold Lucas by either arm.

  Elena smiles innocently, never taking her eyes off Lucas. Pleased that she’s done what he asked.

  Lucas looks like death.

  “Take her,” the Ambassador barks, and two more Sympas pull Elena from the room, chains and all.

  The girl never stops smiling.

  “Take her and her father and execute them for treason.”

  I drop Lucas’s hands and open my eyes. “Lucas!”

  He won’t look at me. Tears catch in his eyelashes, but he doesn’t let them fall. His guilt and sorrow are so strong, I feel like I’m struck with the force of a rock-slide.

  “I didn’t know she would do that.” He’s telling the truth, I think.

  “I just wanted her to love me. Look at me as a son, not some pawn in whatever game she’s playing. Everybody deserves a mother, Dol. Even me.”

  I try to feel something other than shock. I am overwhelmed with disgust at a woman—a mother—who would do something like that to a child.

  To her son.

  I shudder. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Don’t. I just needed you to know.” I know more than Lucas could imagine.

  “I understand, Lucas. I do.”

  Our conversation is over. We should probably go. But I don’t move a muscle. Instead, I stare at him, willing him to lean closer to me.

  Miraculously, magically, he does.

  “Please, Dol.”

  Let me.

  I feel the touch of his skin against mine, light as a breeze. He slips his finger beneath my bindings, and without his eyes leaving mine, yanks at the muslin. I catch my breath.

  “I’m not one of them. I’m not like her,” he says.

  He pushes up his own sleeve, slipping off the leather cuff and exposing his wrist. “I’m like you, Dol.”

  Four blue dots, the color of the sky.

  “I like you, Dol. You make me feel better.”

  I like you too, Lucas. But I don’t say it.

  “I can make you feel better, too.”

  The bright daylight grows brighter. I can’t hear anything except the buzz of wind and water in my ears.

  I let my binding come loose in his hand. My naked wrist is a pale white stripe against the rest of my arm, but it feels warm in the sun.

  I shiver anyway.

  Lucas looks at me. It is a question—again, that question.

  Let me.

  Slowly, he takes my hand, slipping his fingers between mine. He begins to wind and wrap the cloth. It is exactly like my dream. Our elbows touch, then our forearms. Our wrists. I close my eyes and feel his warmth—it’s different from the rush of raw heat I felt from Ro. This is dizzying—my heart starts pounding, and I can’t breathe.

  He presses his fingers through mine even more tightly. His fingers push into the back of my hand, inching closer…

  Only this time the hands are real, and I’m not dreaming. Nothing about my life is remotely like a dream, not anymore.

  From this safe place, out of the peaceful bliss, I feel a surge of sadness. Pressure behind my eyes—tears pushing, trying to escape. I feel like I am about to lose control, like my tears will drown me. I see my home, I see Ro—everything I’ve lost and might still lose, if I let go—

  I can’t let go.

  I’m not ready for this.

  I ball up my hand. Again.

  “Lucas—” I jerk my arm away. “I can’t.”

  “What? Why?” He’s startled. Confused.

  “I don’t know.” But it’s a lie. I do know. It’s a lie with a name and that name is Ro.

  A shadow passes over Lucas’s face.

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t say that, Lucas. It’s not fine. I can feel it, remember?”

  “I felt close to you. I wanted to make you feel better. If you don’t want to feel better, that’s your choice.” Lucas tosses my binding at me. He’s angry. “We should go. I told Freeley we’d meet him before dark.”

  He turns to the road and begins to walk. I’m reeling, and I catch up, closing the distance between us. I try to change the subject.

  “How’d you do that? The thing with Freeley and the papers? Did you know you were going? Did you really file papers?”

  He pauses. “I don’t know. I was as surprised as you were. I was getting ready to shove him out of the Chopper and take it myself.” He’s lying, at least about the last part.

  I stop walking. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “I’m a lucky bastard?”

  “No, you idiot. Someone knows we’re here.”

  “News flash. I’m Ambassador Amare’s only child. Someone knows where I am practically every second of every day.”

  “Oh. Right. I forgot.”

  “Yeah, well. I never do.”

  We walk on in silence.

  I used to think about how alike we all are. The human race, those of us who survived. Then I thought, if the stories were true and there were other Icon Children—if I met any—we would understand each other perfectly, the way Ro and I so often do.

  But now, standing here in the middle of the desolate highway, I can see how different we are. How little Lucas actually has in common with me, the girl who is never known and never remembered and never looked after.

  Not usually.

  I try to sound reassuring. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s nothing.”

  “I didn’t say that. It’s always something.” He looks at me, with a hint of a smile on his face. “It’s just never what you want it to be.”

  RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

  CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

  To: Ambassador Amare

  Subject: Amare Bounty Letter

  Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

  19

  THE HOLE

  We’ve reached the road to the Avenues that lead into town. Las Ramblas. I stop following Lucas when the road flattens out in front of us, at the top of the hill. “Do you have any idea where you’re going?”

  He points. “All the major roads run west to east in the Hole. Las Ramblas will take us there.” I nod, but I’m impressed. I only know the basics—that Las Ramblas is known for its massive crowds, and that today is no different.

  The crush of people is dizzying, particularly for me. I can’t think—at least, I can’t separate out what I think from what the world is thinking. “You said you’re here to meet someone?” I fumble to string together the words.

  He nods, but doesn’t answer.

  “Who, Lucas?”

  “You’ll see when we get there. This way.” Lucas motions, and we begin to move eastward into the Hole.

  We walk beneath the giant banners that flutter in the air over the city streets. Here’s what I learn in the span of a few short blocks: The Lords Are Generous. The Embassy Is Kind. The People Are Lucky. The Future Is Bright. A stern-faced painting of the Ambassador in her scarlet jacket rises to the height of an abandoned building. I can count the golden birdcage buttons on it, each one the size of my head, while the breeze blows through the broken-out windows that puncture the paint.

  Are all cities like ours?

  I don’t actually know, seeing as I’ve never seen another, except for those few moments of the Silent Cities that the Ambassador showed me. The Embassy media is so tightly controlled, it’s impossible to know for certain. Sometimes, Ro would come to dinner at La Purísima, his eyes crazy and full of fire, and tell us bits of stolen Grass news. How the Lords have wronged us. How
the Embassy lets them.

  Right and wrong. The whole world divides into two columns, for Ro. He sees things differently than I do. I’m overwhelmed by a million perspectives, all at once. There’s no one right answer, not when everyone is shouting at the same time. That’s why the feelings are so hard for me to sort out. So draining. Half the time I agree with everything they feel and everyone I meet.

  Weaving my way through the crowded street with Lucas at my side, I realize Lucas isn’t afraid of how he feels. He wants to feel it—it, me, everything. Everyone. He takes it all in, deep inside him.

  Not Ro.

  For Ro there is only black and white, right and wrong—and he is right. He doesn’t care if you agree with him or not. In fact, it’s better for him if you don’t.

  Ro just wants to fight.

  The famed Avenues food vendors line the curb. Handmade tortillas fry on the top of the nearest overturned trash can. Potatoes sizzle together with onions on the next. Ropes of cheese or bread dough twist around sticks. Ropes of snake meat, too, but I look away before my eyes can rest on the place where the sticks push out of the blackened, impaled mouths.

  “Why are you making that face?” Lucas looks at me, laughing.

  I shudder, shaking my head, and he relaxes against me, letting our shoulders touch.

  You’d almost think we were regular seventeen-year-olds, on a regular walk, through a regular city. But none of those things are true. I’ve escaped a military complex for an illicit rendezvous with an unknown source in a dangerous city.

  With the Ambassador’s son.

  Part of me is glad the Padre isn’t here to see it. He’d worry, I think—like I’m worrying now.

  We reach the end of the Avenues, Las Ramblas, and though Lucas hasn’t said anything, I see the rails and realize we are going to ride the City Tracks—my first time. Unlike the Californias Tracks, which run along the coast, the City Tracks only operate within the Hole.

  Ten minutes later, we’re heading east. At least, so says the sign on the door of our boxcar, which is nearly empty; only Embassy Brass can ride the City Tracks. Though Lucas’s plastic couldn’t get us into the Hall of Records, a quick flash at the bored Sympa guards still got us onto the Tracks. Thankfully, they didn’t look too closely at the last name.

  At Union Station, I hop down from the edge of the car, after Lucas, and follow him as we make our way through the crowds in the vast, spacious lobby. A row of Sympas watch us. I try not to look in their direction, as if not watching them will keep them from watching me.

  The lobby is endless. My heart pounds, and the doors to the street seem a mile away. Thickly cracking leather chairs sit in groups like a brown herd. Beneath them, the floor is beautiful, a mosaic tile pattern that builds into the center of the room as if it were a long, ornate rug.

  The windows are tall. I think of the pictures of the cathedrals I have seen in the Padre’s study. The light filters through them, and most of what I can see in the light is dust.

  We push open the doors to the visible world.

  In the broad whiteness of daylight, I have to blink to make out the dark shape I am looking at. It’s a tree, growing in the center of the plaza across from the train station. People peek out from the roots, hiding and sitting and even sleeping inside them. Sympas stand idly by, ignoring them, as if this mess of humanity was something invisible, something that never could be considered part of the city plan.

  “So many people.” I can barely choke out the words, because I feel them all. Everyone in the plaza, the streets—needing, grasping, wanting. Fear seeps into every other emotion, every interaction. I clutch Lucas’s sleeve while I struggle to get my bearings.

  He slips his hand down to my wrist and pulls me gently through the crowd. His touch is reassuring, and I let him calm me.

  Lucas points. “That’s the Pueblo. The oldest building in the Hole.” I can’t see where he is pointing through the crowd.

  I pause, and focus on breathing. I focus on not feeling. I focus on the wall between my feelings and theirs, willing it to hold. Willing the Hole outside to not absorb me.

  “Come on.” Lucas disappears in front of me. Our fingers pull apart, and I try to follow, but within three steps I have lost him.

  “Miss lady. Miss lady. Miss lady.” I move carefully past the extended hands. A hammer drops rhythmically in the distance. I hear drums. No. Firecrackers—and drums. Stomping feet beat to the rhythm. The twanging of strings, maybe a kind of guitar? I crane my head to find the music, but it is easier to hear than to see in the mash of people. Three competing groups of street musicians perform in three plazas nearby. A fringe of feathers bobs, appearing and disappearing in a splash of bright color above the clustered heads of the crowd.

  Another hand appears in front of me. I shake my head: “Sorry. No digs.” It’s true.

  The hand grabs my arm and pulls. I turn to see Lucas, looking exasperated. “There you are. Stay with me.”

  Stay with me.

  I take his hand. It is warm and his sleeve is once again down over his wrist. I squeeze it, without realizing what I am doing. He stops walking.

  “What?” I look at him, embarrassed. I try not to act surprised to find myself holding his hand.

  “Nothing.” He smiles and looks away.

  But it isn’t nothing. I can feel him. Lucas on the inside is as sprawling and chaotic as the Hole itself. He’s warm and pounding and hopeful and scared. Terrified. He’s overwhelmed and intimidated and alive. He feels like the Hole, only better. He feels like the only hopeful thing in the Hole. Because I can feel that too, the hope. It’s only a tiny spark, a flutter. But it’s there.

  I’m lucky to feel it, even once in my life, I think. I don’t feel it often. So I don’t say a word when he laces his fingers through mine as we walk.

  We push past the stalls, and I catch a glimpse of the inside of a shop, through a doorway. A woman is selling Mexicali dresses, long swaths of cotton that hang off the shoulders in brilliant colors, embroidered with rainbows of thread. Feasting-day dresses, I think. I should steal one for Biggest, back on the Mission. She would like the green one, with the rainbow woven belt. But that isn’t what catches my eye. It’s a painting, on hammered tin that looks like silver, of the Lady. Stripes come from her head like the rays of the sun itself.

  “Miss lady? You like?” The shopkeeper is a woman with black hair and brown skin. Her eyes are brilliantly blue. “Tres. Three hundred digs. It’s a good price, para la madre de todos.”

  Lucas tugs on my hand. I keep walking.

  “Miss lady! Miss lady!”

  Lucas turns back to her, and I can feel the moment she recognizes his face. “El hijo! El hijo!” For a minute I think she is talking about the son of the Lady—but she means the son of the Ambassador.

  Her own face freezes as she takes it in. That’s right, the son. She must have access to a vid-screen. Now she disappears inside the shop, slamming the blue-painted doors behind her.

  “I have that effect on people, sometimes. Or, more to the point, my mother does.” Lucas looks at me. “Sorry. You weren’t really going to buy that, were you?”

  “With what digs?”

  “It’s just as well. If you like that, I can show you a better one.”

  “A better painting?”

  “No. Not a painting. A better Lady. You’ll see. Come on, it’s on the way.”

  We weave through the alleyways of stalls, passing pepper candies and peanut candies. Old candy from old Mexicali. Pulpa de tamarindo in waxy packets, as sweet and as sour as the Hole itself. Mangos rolled and dried in chili powder. Miniature accordions and blue toy guitars and yellow maracas and pink harmonicas and red trompos. The colors and faces appear in layers, drifting in and out like the breeze and the sky.

  We turn up a broad boulevard, where a man walks a donkey carrying bundles of what look like T-shirts past a giant wall of graffiti.

  “You can’t possibly know where you’re going.” I pull on Lucas’s ha
nd.

  “But I do.” He looks at me with a sideways smile.

  “But I don’t.” I smile back.

  “Have a little faith, will you?”

  “I wish I could.” My smile fades. “I wish I did.”

  “Are you always this cheerful?” He laughs, and I shake my head, looking up in time to see an archway as we pass beneath it. Two dragons, hammered together out of some sort of red metal, are fighting overhead, from one side of the street to the other. Their bodies are long and twisted like snakes, but their clawed arms and legs are short and sharp.

  “Laowai. Laowai.” I can hear the crowd murmuring as we pass. I don’t know what the term means, except that it is me. Someone who does not belong in this part of the Hole.

  Neither Lucas nor I do.

  The heat overwhelms us. I motion to the side of the road, where the edges of market stalls lean haphazardly together. Small square signs tell their names. Bok choy, yu choy, gai lan pile against each other in as many different greens as there are colors. Purple yams sit together between faded orange satsumas and pale green oroblancos, bigger and sweeter than grapefruits. The yuzu lemons, bright little balls of sunlight, only make the day seem hotter.

  Between the stands, a wrinkled old woman sells bags of something unfamiliar that I think is a drink, from a red wagon. “Paomo hongcha? Paomo hongcha.” Another woman sits next to her on a folding stool, wearing a T-shirt that says Sexy Mama. Together they are probably seven hundred years old.

  “What is that?” I look at Lucas.

  “I’ve gotten it before. Not here, not from her. I don’t know what she’s saying, but I think it translates to something like sea foam.”

  Fizzing water, part of a lime, and a kind of sugary powder are all dumped into what looks like a paper cup.

  Lucas looks at her. “Sea foam?” She nods and the woman next to her, the Sexy Mama, starts to laugh. Her smile is almost entirely gold, or something that looks like it.

  He fishes a coin out of his pocket and hands it to the woman.

  The woman howls at me in a language I do not understand. Her face has a thousand wrinkles.

  An older man stops next to me. “She told her friend she is going to rip you off because you come from Grass.”