She reached the stairway and scrambled down the steps. At the window at the bottom of the first landing she came to, she stopped. What was she planning to do, saunter into the lobby? She’d never make it past Reception. Her breath was coming in short gasps now, but she realized what she had to do. She forced the stairwell window open. Despite her terror of heights, she swung herself out onto the fire escape. Trying not to look down, she descended the remaining six flights to the alley below.
Her first impulse on the ground was to run, to get away as fast as she could. But again she stopped herself. Better to move calmly. If she dashed headlong through the streets of St. Louis, somebody would notice her.
A hovercraft passed overhead. She had to get going or they’d spot her here. She walked down the alley and turned left onto Delmar to avoid walking in front of her building. InfiniCorp signs were everywhere—on every billboard, every street pod, every briefcase.
DON’T WORRY!
INFINICORP IS TAKING CARE OF EVERYTHING!
TAKING CARE OF EVERYTHING!
EVERYTHING!
DON’T WORRY!
Tabitha kept her head down. The company had eyes everywhere. The closest dome exit was at the Gateway Arch, maybe twenty blocks away. It wouldn’t be smart to hire a private transport, she decided. Even with the finger pads, it was possible a robot driver might make a visual ID on her. Better to go by foot.
She felt a puff of freezing cold from overhead. It seemed like the Department of Cool and Comfortable Air had the blowers cranked higher than ever lately, but the city was getting warmer anyway. She ducked through the swarm of downtown shoppers, careful not to look anybody in the eye. Where was she even going? The note said “beyond the windmills,” but that didn’t help much. Outside the dome there were hundreds of windmills. They formed a complete ring round the city. She tried to think back on what the Friends had told her about safe places. In one of her many whispered conversations, Sister Krystal might have mentioned the name of a place in the wreckage of Old St. Louis. Was that right? There’d been so much to learn, and now she was having trouble remembering. But yes, she was pretty sure that was correct. And if she remembered right, it was beyond the windmills, somewhere deep in the eastern ruins.
But what was the name? How could she hope to find it if she couldn’t remember?
She wondered how her life had come to this. It wasn’t how things were supposed to have turned out. Back in New Houston, where she’d lived most of her life, she’d been the smartest kid in her class. When she’d taken the InfiniCorp Middle Management Aptitude Test and was accepted into the Program a whole year early, her parents had been so proud. She’d moved to St. Louis and everything seemed on track.
But then Ben changed everything.
From her first day in the Program, this beautiful, smart boy with droopy eyes and an earnest face had been a distraction from her studies. They’d meet in cafés or wander through the city. Sometimes they’d find a park bench and whisper to each other until late in the evening. Being with him was thrilling and fun. He was the one who had lifted the veil from her eyes. About Outside, about the company, about Grandfather, the so-called Savior of Humanity, and his whole horrific Papadopoulos clan. Ben helped her recognize what was real and what was only a facade. At first she hadn’t wanted to hear him; it was all too hard to accept. But in the end she couldn’t deny what she’d felt deep down all along. Then he’d introduced her to Sister Krystal, Brother Arnold, and all the others, operatives of a shadowy organization. Sister Krystal, with her secret Outside maps marked with the image of a burning sun—the insignia of the Friends—was particularly impressive. The group had their own ways, their own secret ceremonies, and they kept it all hidden from the company.
She’d known the risks of joining, but she’d been drawn in by the idea of making a difference. She wanted to help save the world. And she wanted to be with Ben.
So she’d agreed. She took the Oath of Loyalty.
Now all she wanted was to shrivel up and disappear. All she’d done was throw her life away. Her career, her future, everything. She was the worst kind of failure. She would kick herself later.
But first she had to survive this day.
Trying to blend into the crowd, she made her way down North Twenty-first and turned the corner onto Lucas. Which was where she almost walked right into two heavyset girls in white uniforms. Guardians. They looked about sixteen or seventeen, and big. Both were holding their index fingers up to their earpieces and nodding as if receiving instructions. Only a few steps ahead of Tabitha, one of them happened to look in her direction.
As soon as she saw them, Tabitha spun on her heel and held her hand up to her face. She knew she couldn’t dash back the way she’d come without attracting attention, so for a moment she just waited there, pretending to be interested in a shopwindow. It was a Rewards Office, and the giant hologram display was looping through an incentive advert:
The InfiniCorp Department of Productivity Incentives Reminds You What Awaits the Employee of the Month! The yellow words lit up a glorious blue sky over a swanky hotel. Then two beautiful, smiling people, a man and woman in their twenties, were shown ice-skating, skiing, eating in fancy restaurants, and playing with baby seals. The seals leapt out at Tabitha, and then the couple grinned at her as they tossed a pair of particulate filters into the ocean. Then more words: Adventure! Rugged Wilderness! Air-Contamination Levels as Low as 50 AQI! The Arctic Circle … Outside Relaxation at Its Way Coolest!
Tabitha felt the advert’s subtle pull, coaxing her attention away from her immediate danger and toward its beautiful message. She turned her eyes slightly aside and felt the attraction diminish. The Friends had shown her how to do this, but the truth was that she’d always been able to resist the subconscious influence of the CloudNet, even when she was a small child. It was only recently, since she’d met the Friends, that she realized just how rare this ability was.
The two Guardians removed their fingers from their ears and glanced up and down the street as if searching for something. Head down, Tabitha drifted in the opposite direction, careful not to run. Up ahead a crowd of first-year executives talked and laughed as they crossed North Twenty-first. She ducked among them and tried to stop trembling. She had to get out of the open. If word was already out about her, she couldn’t stay on the street.
It was time for a new plan. She decided to risk a private transport after all.
Before long she was hiding in the shadows on Washington Avenue, waiting for a cab. It had to be just right—preferably an old relic. Most of the newer taxi pods were flight-capable, which would be helpful, but they were also more likely to have robot drivers who would recognize her and alert the CloudNet. She waited until a dirty yellow road pod, an ancient jalopy with patches of actual rust, came chugging around the corner. It had old-style rubber tires and no visible flight gear of any kind. Definitely ground-only.
She raised her arm and, thankfully, it pulled over.
With her fake DNA pads in place, she set her fingertips on the InfiniCredit square. Somewhere, some unsuspecting employee’s account was debited. She was sorry about that, but she didn’t have any other options. The door swung open, and the sound of pounding music blared. Before stepping in, she glanced at the driver.
She was relieved to see that she’d chosen well. He was human.
“What are you waiting for? Get in!” he called over the music. A skinny kid with freckles, no older than twelve at the most. “Where to?”
Good question, she thought as she slid onto the worn upholstery and yanked the door shut. She quickly decided on a destination close to the gate but not close enough to raise suspicions. “The corner of Market and Fourth.”
The boy leaned on the accelerator and they shot off. Tabitha watched him, searching for any sign that he knew. But he seemed lost in his own world, more interested in the music than anything else. He nodded and tapped the wheel to the rhythm, occasionally slamming on the brakes and tossing her forwa
rd in her seat. But he never once looked back at her in the rearview mirror. Tabitha decided he wasn’t likely to have been paying attention to any CloudNet alerts. She felt relatively safe, at least for now.
For once, she thought, she’d lucked out.
Across the back of the driver’s seat flashed an advert for a new dream game, a funny one where you flew through a lush cornfield full of fat, machine-gun-toting pigs in flak jackets who jumped out at you every now and then. Tabitha looked away. As she watched downtown roll past, she was almost overcome with grief. This was probably the last time she would ever see the city. She’d never shop on Market Street again, or watch another Cardinals game at InfiniCorp Stadium, or grab a slice of pizza at Union Station with her friends. Even the music seemed designed to torment her. The song was “Doo Doo Like U, Dee Dee Like Me” by Five Go Splat!—the very tune that had been playing when she and Ben had first kissed.
She couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was for her to be in this position. Only last night Ben had asked if she still carried doubts. “Now isn’t the time to lose faith,” he’d said, quoting what she’d heard Brother Arnold say many times. “The future requires personal sacrifice, and the Friends are counting on each of us.”
Worst of all, Ben had been right that her trust in the Friends wasn’t absolute. While she did sense in her heart that the end was near and that the company was dangerous and irresponsible, she didn’t fully buy into everything the Friends taught: their belief in predestination; the prophecy of el Guía; their unwavering faith in the Outsider prophet named Gustavo, a shadowy figure who might or might not even have really existed. How could they be so sure theirs was the only true path? But it was too late to question things now. Doubts or no doubts, she was in this for keeps.
Oh god. She hoped she hadn’t thrown her life away for nothing.
With just moments to go before she reached the gate, her mind scrambled to find another way, a way that would let her stay under the dome. But Inside there was nowhere to hide. If she was going to make it through the gate, she’d need to stay focused. She was grateful, at least now, for the Awareness Training the Friends had provided. Her self-discipline was the only thing that might get her through this alive.
She took a slow, deep breath and tried to calm her thoughts. She told herself she was about to see Ben. At this very moment he was on the other side. He was there. She could visualize him. He was waiting for her.
At the corner of Broadway and Washington, they passed a sign for a one-hour liposuction salon called Skinny Asylum. She’d passed it a hundred times, but today the name triggered something in her consciousness. What was the word the Friend had used—asylum? No. But similar. A refuge. A shelter from danger. She pulled out the note again.
Sanctuary.
At last she remembered. The note itself had been the clue. It should have been obvious, but she’d been thinking too hard. The name of the safe place was The Water Sanctuary. Tabitha even remembered now what Sister Krystal had said about it, that before the hurricanes it used to be a hospital emergency room but now it was one of the Outsider gathering places, what almost passed as a restaurant out in the ruins. She felt a gush of relief. If she could find her way there, she would almost certainly find Friends who could help. Perhaps they’d smuggle her to some faraway place where she’d be safe.
If there even was a place that far away.
The pod pulled over with a sudden jerk, and the boy at the wheel interrupted his song long enough to call back, “Here you go, lady. Have a productive day.”
The door swung open. Tabitha quickly thanked the driver and hopped out. Her head low, she strode down the block, staying close to the nearby housing complex. Here at the edge of the city, the dome angled downward, becoming a near-vertical electronic wall that reflected color patterns all across her face. She took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. The gate was a block away.
Soon the exit station was in sight. She paused to gather her courage. It was Thursday, not even lunchtime, so she was surprised at the long line. Along with a handful of dome engineers and a few others, thirty or forty little kids, fidgety and excited, stood laughing and shoving each other in front of the Arch. A dozen or so education specialists stood among them, many with cameras hanging around their necks. Tabitha recognized right away what this must be. A school field trip, the third-grade Out-visit tour of the dome’s perimeter. She’d been taken on a similar tour Outside at the New Houston dome when she was eight. Every kid did it. It was like a rite of passage.
This was good, she decided. It’d be easier to slip past undetected if she were part of a crowd.
She stepped across the street and joined the line. All the children had environment suits, but some of the education specialists did not. By this time her hands were sweating so much that she had to wipe them on her slacks. But she was here, actually at the gate. Suddenly her situation was taking on a whole new reality. Once she stepped through that arch—if she made it through—there was no coming back.
Not ever.
She tried not to stare at anyone. The line moved quickly. The Friends had told her that getting Outside through the gate wasn’t a big deal. They’d said the monitors cared more about stopping the wrong people from coming Inside than preventing employees from going Out. At most they’d do a cursory ID check and wave her through. Still, Tabitha’s knees felt wobbly. Surely the gate monitors would be more careful than the cabdriver had been.
But what the Friends had told her seemed to be true. She watched as, one after another, the people in line touched their fingertips to the identification pad. Each time, the monitor waved them through. This looked like it was going to be a cinch.
There were only two others left ahead of her now. Tabitha could even see the monitor’s face behind the glass. It was a redheaded girl with acne. She looked about the same age as the boy in the cab.
“Fingers on the pad,” the girl said in a bored voice, a massive wad of chewing gum in her mouth.
A heartbeat later she waved the last education specialist, a big-hipped lady in a Rams cap, through the gate. Now only one other person, a dome engineer, stood between Tabitha and the front of the line. Seconds later the monitor girl waved him on, and he stepped through the Arch.
Summoning all her willpower, Tabitha forced herself to stay calm. She shaped her face into what she hoped was a relaxed, everyday expression and stepped in front of the glass.
“Fingers on the pad,” said the girl without even looking at her.
Tabitha placed her fake fingertips on the smooth plastic square.
That’s when the girl’s InfiniTalk howled. It trailed on and on before breaking down into a wheezy cough. Tabitha recognized the sound. It was famous, the trademark howl of a popular late-night comedian. Lots of kids had it programmed into their InfiniTalks lately. The girl grabbed it just as Tabitha saw her phony information come up in the work sphere.
She could almost feel the blood pulsing through her temples. But she did her best to smile. She watched closely as the girl listened and nodded. Was this it? Was she caught? Should she run?
The girl didn’t look at her, which Tabitha decided was a good sign. But it felt like her heart was about to burst through her chest. Finally the monitor set her InfiniTalk back on the counter, and without even bothering to glance at the information in the sphere, she waved Tabitha through.
At first Tabitha wasn’t sure she’d understood right. What? That was it? But after only a slight hesitation, she pulled herself together and walked through the gate.
Within moments she felt the difference. The atmosphere hit her like a hot, wet blanket. The air was so thick it was like walking through soup. And then the sour smell of the Mississippi filled her nose, and hundreds of tiny insects buzzed in her ears.
It was the most wonderful feeling she could imagine.
She was Outside. She’d made it.
She kept her head down and moved quickly forward, past the crowd of children, who by then had gathere
d around a short woman who was pointing out the technical features of the dome exterior and describing the history of the area. Far ahead was a series of wooden booths where Outsiders, dirty-looking and haggard in their worn environment suits, had set up a makeshift market for trading between themselves. She slipped behind a crumbled wall and made her way in that direction. Maybe one of the Outsiders could tell her where she could get her hands on a suit. Maybe they could even help her make her way through the concrete jungle to the Water Sanctuary.
Maybe she really would see Ben again.
But that’s when she felt an iron grip on her shoulder. Before she could turn to see who it was, a sudden, staggering pain nearly paralyzed her. Like a ferocious electrical charge at her back, the sensation was so sharp it knocked the breath from her lungs and buckled her knees. She fell to the ground. Somebody grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head. The last thing she saw before a dark sack was shoved over her face was two white-suited Guardian boys, one of them crouching over her. Then another stabbing pain, this time in her shoulder. She realized it was a needle. Something was being injected into her. She tried to cry out, but it was no use.
Almost as soon as her head hit the mud, her ears started to hum and her thoughts began to lose their shape, stretching like warm taffy until they drifted away from her, formless and without substance.
The last thing she heard was the droning voice of the tour guide and the swoop, swoop, swoop of the windmills in the distance.
5
foggers
That night Grandfather appeared on the CloudNet and made a speech. “Don’t worry,” he said as the company logo spun behind him, “InfiniCorp is taking care of everything.”
Grandfather had a deep, calm voice. He had a friendly face too, which was part of why everybody liked him—on top of the fact that he’d saved the world, of course. Eli had read an article once where somebody said he was like everybody’s dear old granddad.
It made Eli proud because he really was his granddad.
A Crack in the Sky Page 7
