by Ann Christy
Nine
It took the man who was making the wake-up calls several shakes before Lillian was awake enough to give him an answer he would accept. He asked once more at the door if she was truly awake and Lillian groaned, but swung her feet to the floor so he would go away.
When the door clicked closed, Lillian groaned again and popped her cheeks with the flat of her palm to get rid of the fog brought about by a very poor night’s sleep. She hadn’t really slept at all. It had been more like a disturbed drift than a true sleep and she had felt herself half aware most of the night. She thought she would have done better to keep herself awake considering how she felt.
She got up, stomped her feet on the mats a few times to get her blood moving and grabbed her little basket of toiletries to go to the bathroom. The male sign was up and she sighed. Leo was always faster to wake than she and almost always got to the bathroom first.
Lillian banged a fist on the door and yelled for him to hurry. She received only a muffled and undecipherable group of sounds that might have been words in reply and she sighed again. She really needed to pee and was just to the point of making for the second bathroom when the door whooshed open and Leo’s head popped out.
“If you don’t mind sharing, you can come in too,” he offered. “Toby sure won’t be joining me in here so it doesn’t matter.”
Lillian pursed her lips at the thought but her need outweighed her concern over what others might think and she went in when Leo retreated and opened the door wide for her. Besides, she wanted to talk to him and this was probably the most private chance she would have.
Out of habit she went to the far stall of the three within the bathroom. Leo considerately ran water while she peed and she smiled at his thoughtfulness. When she emerged he shut off the water and took his things from the shelf above the second sink so she could use it.
She put down her basket and started her daily ablutions, cleaning her teeth and washing her face while Leo carefully examined every single pore of his face for possible future eruptions. He was rather vain but his father had scars from his own bout of teenaged acne and Leo was determined that would not happen to him. He had a startling array of bottles and tins filled with herbal concoctions he doused and dabbed himself with daily.
As she brushed her hair, Lillian asked, “Did you hear anything last night?”
Leo looked at her from his reflection in the metal mirror and said, “No. And I was listening for anything, too.”
She sighed deeply as she dampened her brush to try and control her cowlick. “I was too. I barely slept. I’m so tired I don’t know if I can even face training today.”
“You’ll be fine once they tell us what is going on,” Leo said. “Once you get started and your blood gets moving, you’ll feel better.”
Lillian put the last of her things in the basket and realized that Leo had long been done and was merely stalling so he could talk to her. She patted his shoulder and asked, “You okay?”
Leo dropped the pretense of looking at his skin and turned to her, his expression sad. “I feel bad. I have absolutely no idea why, but I do.”
“Because you’re a nice person and he is hurt. Or, rather, we think he probably was hurt. That’s why,” Lillian answered.
She took up her basket and looped an arm through Leo’s. He grabbed his own kit and they walked out of the bathroom and down the hall toward their rooms, arm in arm. Lillian rested her head on his shoulder— which was at the perfect height for her to do so— and it gave them both comfort to have a loved one close. She let his arm go as they reached his door and gave his hand a last squeeze of support before turning away to her own door.
Just before Leo’s door closed, Lillian heard him say, “I love you too, Other breath.”
Lillian grinned, went in to change into her gear and prepare for what the day might bring. Whatever it was, they would be alright.
Twenty minutes later they stood at the line where they stood for each day’s training start and saw the serious looks on the faces across from them. Not just serious in the way that let them know they were in for a punishing day of physical training, but serious in the way that there was something of import outside of training going on. That is how Lillian knew she was right about Toby. That, and the fact that he wasn’t there standing at the line with them.
“I have some news to tell you about your fellow racer,” Zara said. She looked from Lillian to Leo and added, “Though it appears that you may already know what I’m going to tell you.”
Lillian shook her head and raised a hand. When Zara nodded at her, she said, “No, Trainer. We don’t know anything. We did hear a little though.”
“I see,” Zara said. “Well, whatever you may have heard, I’ll tell you what actually happened. Toby has broken his leg and will not be competing with the two of you. It is unlikely that he will ever compete again, though the medic has reported to us that he was able to successfully set the bone. The damage to his knee was more severe than a mere break.”
Lillian put a hand to her mouth and felt tears spring to her eyes. She looked at Leo and saw the shock on his face as well. It was a terrible injury that Zara was reporting. A person with a knee damaged badly enough would live a life restrained by the stairs. It was an unkind fate for one whose joy was found in running and leaping the great circles of the silo.
Zara came forward and reached out to take Lillian’s free hand and then take one of Leo’s in her other hand. She pulled them closer and spoke softly, “This will be a hard thing for Toby and we are still discussing with the council what impact this will have on the race.”
At those words Leo glanced at her sharply and Zara reassured them. “No one understands your feelings better than a former racer so I do know how this uncertainty affects you. While we will certainly consider Toby’s feelings, there is no intention to halt the race for this year. It will go on. You will compete.”
She let go of their hands and stepped back. She said nothing, but waited for any question that either might have.
“How did it happen?” Lillian asked, thinking about the way Toby always pushed the envelope in training.
Zara glanced quickly behind her at the other trainers and cleared her throat. “Well, he had been drinking and for some reason thought it was a good idea to see how high he could run up the walls.” She shook her head, clearly amazed that anyone could be so stupid. It wasn’t like a lot of kids didn’t try that at least once, but not when they were grown and definitely not when they were candidates for the race.
Leo looked uncertain as he asked her, “Should we…I don’t know…go see him or something?”
Zara seemed to consider the question for a moment before answering. “The relationship between you three has been noted. It is less than harmonious, wouldn’t you say? Rather than answer you, let me ask you a question instead. If your positions were reversed, would you want Toby to visit you?”
Before Leo even had a chance to consider answering, Lillian interjected. “That isn’t the right kind of question to ask, is it? We were nice to him. He was the one that hated us for some reason. Not the same thing at all.”
Leo nodded his agreement and said, “Yes. What she said.”
“Okay,” Zara conceded. “I would think that the rules of polite behavior would say that you should visit. I also think that people in general will wonder at it if you don’t visit at some point and be seen to have done so.” She paused and looked at Greg, who had remained still and silent behind her with the other trainers that were in the room.
When she turned back toward the pair she seemed somehow colder or perhaps just less touched by the situation. “But that is according to the rules of a polite society that assumes Toby was equally polite to you. If you want my opinion, you should just forget about him.”
Lillian glanced toward Greg, standing behind Zara. His eyes were shadowed and deep and his mouth set into a firm, unyielding line. Even though she could only see the shadows where his eyes should be
, she sensed he was looking at her. He gave an almost imperceptible nod, as if to confirm what Zara was advising. She turned her gaze back toward Zara.
“In fact,” Zara went on, “I think it is very likely that, when he is able to, he will speak negatively about you to family and friends. We are going to do our best to reason with him and prevent that as soon as the medic says he is ready for one of us to come down. But it won’t stop him from making digs completely. I think you should make a condolence call on his family, straight away.”
Zara stopped and motioned Bedie forward, her ever present clipboard firmly gripped between her hands and held like a shield at her chest. She came to stand next to Zara and said, “We have some talking points for you so that your visit is productive.”
Lillian had absolutely no idea what Bedie meant and a glance at Leo told her that he was equally confused. Bedie noted it too and added, “What I mean is, we’re going to help you figure out what you should say to the family so that the visit goes smoothly and the family will think well of you.”
“Ah, okay,” said Leo. “Why didn’t you say that then?”
Bedie cleared her throat and answered, “I’m an administrator at heart. We always speak inscrutably.”
Zara barked out a snort of laughter and Bedie smiled. Lillian had no idea what that word meant and was pretty sure Leo didn’t either. She scowled at Bedie.
Bedie waved her clipboard and said, “I’m sorry, dears. It’s a bad joke. It means to speak in ways that no one understands but it’s only funny because I do it by using a word hardly anyone understands.” She genuinely appeared to feel bad about the humor gone awry and her cheeks were flushed pink with color. “I really am sorry. Don’t be cross with me.”
Leo lost his scowl first. He was always the first to forgive anything while Lillian was usually the last. He stepped up and gave Bedie a peck on the cheek that made the older woman’s face light up and turned her cheeks a deeper shade of pink.
“It’s alright, Bedie. I guess I’m just not feeling very funny right now,” Leo said, rather seriously.
Greg came forward from the shadows and told them, “Since there won’t be any training today while we wait for a council decision, we’ll get you both ready for your visit and you’ll do that during the down time. You two, go to the classroom and wait. Work on your less than adequate mapping skills while you wait.”
With that, the two were dismissed and left the trainers to gather in a huddle, deep in discussion. Lillian tugged Leo by the arm as he dawdled, trying to hear what the trainers were saying. The classroom was just off the main training room. It was a small room that might have once served as a small conference room or large office. Just by the nature of the race— with only three competitors making it to this level of training— their need for space was equally small.
Rather than desks, there was a single large table with four chairs around it and chalk boards on either end of the room. There was just enough space left over for an instructor to stand comfortably while writing. On the table was the precious book of maps that almost never left this room during the training cycle. During the off season, it was secreted away in the secured vault where all the things too precious to risk were kept.
All children knew of the maps, so it wasn’t that they were secret. A single large map cobbled together from many pieces of the finest paper covered one entire wall of the Memoriam and was a popular exhibit. One side of the paper was covered by the silo, a simple circle with the word, ‘Us’, written in bold blue ink upon it.
The detailed work mapped the area around the silo showing the locations of various experiments. It also outlined the resting places of the remnants of those people that went out in the time before the racers, where such could be found, and the locations of those Racers that had failed to return. Lillian’s father was represented by one such marker.
Beyond the circle were the wonders that drew people to look at it. Drawn was the ridge of hill that surrounded their world. And out further still, the great depression that represented what some believed to have been a body of water at one time. Though it was an oily and thick sludge that was not approached too closely now, it was amazing to imagine it filled with water.
No one had gone too far beyond the near edge of that depression so its edges were incomplete. The suits were just not good enough to withstand the eroding poison of the outside long enough to map further. Above the incomplete line of that border was a ragged line of mapped patches where Racers had gone and recorded what they saw.
Strange artifacts rested just beneath the dusty soil and were recorded on the map when discovered. Small things were brought back on occasion. Larger items that couldn’t be carried were shown to the control room via the helmet cameras for as long as was possible. So often, the next Racer sent in that direction would seek it out only to find whatever it was gone. Any information that needed to be gleaned from an object needed to be gleaned when it was found.
Nothing uncovered remained for long, except for concrete, some metals and glass. They had found that out long ago by accident even though the knowledge had been right in front of them, literally, for ages. The dull glint of the sun on the old glass of helmets from those sent outside in ages past could still be seen long after the last traces of bone or suit had been blown away. And once runners began bringing back items, it was always the glass that was most preserved.
Since that discovery, it was the precious glass they used to mark their limits of each race, each racer dropping a ball at the furthest point of their run before turning back. Inside each ball was the number for their year, a memorial to their trek outside that would last.
They also used thick hollow balls of glass blown from the blanks stored in the vaults to encase objects for experiments to see what would happen to different materials. Once encased, they behaved differently, and it was through those experiments that they found the thickness of the glass could make the objects inside impervious to the ever hungry air almost permanently.
Cameras inside such balls relayed images for weeks until the batteries finally wore out, though the images grew blurry and grainy as the scouring air destroyed the clarity of the glass. Last year they used the ablative film reserved for the sensors outside and the images were pure until the moment the batteries died.
Lillian sighed and looked back at the map book. Leo was already working on one of the worksheets, calculating a distance, direction and time to return from one spot to another on the map. They would need to be able to do this in their heads before going outside. She dragged a slate across the table, creating a screech of sound that Leo winced at, and started on one of her own worksheets.
It was an alien skill, this orienteering on one level that was not level at all. It was terribly difficult to learn and Lillian smeared out a wrong answer to try again. Leo let out a grunt of disappointment as his own answer came back wrong according to the answer key. Both of them were having trouble with this so Greg had not exaggerated when he said their skills were less than satisfactory.
In truth, the concept simply didn’t register well in Lillian’s mind. To know where one was within the silo one needed only to know a few simple things that any other person would understand exactly the same way. There was no ambiguity about it. One was at a certain level, at a place somewhere between the landing and the outer wall and then in one of the fourteen sectors of the circle that made up the level. It was simple, clear and direct.
According to their lessons in mapping, nothing was so simple or direct in knowing where one was outside and it was a matter of living or dying to always know exactly where one was. Great raging movements of air blasted the outside and carried with it obscuring loads of dust and dirt that sometimes made it impossible to see beyond the glass of a helmet.
Rises in the land obscured what was in front of or behind a person so any racer also had to be constantly aware of how far up or down they had gone even as they counted their steps and the direction. Directions were confusing too.
They used a circle but there were no markers by which to measure it save for the great post the sensors stood on and that was easily lost to sight once the hill was breasted.
Instead, they used complicated geometry they measured with a special rod of glass and what markers they could find. By holding the rod up in line with markers any spot could be defined by distance and direction throughout the exploration area, at least in theory. To do that, each of them must memorize the location of every marker and understand how to measure using the rod and time and the location of the sun in its path around the land. It was tedious and difficult.
“I’m still getting a wrong answer on this one,” Leo announced, startling Lillian by breaking the silence.
She tossed down her chalk and rested her head on the dusty slate. Her reply was muffled by her arms but it was clear enough to understand. “Me, too. It would be so much easier if we could just tie a rope around our waists and follow it back home.”
“Sure it would. Of course, the idea is stupid so there’s that.” He nudged her arm and said, “Can you picture being buried under a giant mound of rope three or four silo depths long?”
Lillian giggled at the image and lifted her head, her spirits a little lightened. She had chalk dust stuck to her forehead and the side of her face. Leo swirled a finger around in the air close to her face so she wiped it off with a sleeve.
She looked at the big book of maps and asked, “Want to switch to the book?”
The pair set their slates aside, opening the book to the detailed map that they had left off at the day before. This one showed the most marker balls from previous Racers. Since everyone raced only to one side of the silo— in order to avoid the Others who were known to live on the other side of the silo and beyond view— the line of balls from the generations of Racers was a thick one. With each succeeding year the balls were dropped a little further and the most recent ones were mostly those that were farthest out. Except for Zara’s, alone and furthest out of all the balls.
