Blood Zero Sky (15 page)

The old man is red-faced when he finishes his speech. The beautiful women, standing in their robes at the edge of the stage, nod in approval. One of them claps. Shaw takes one last look at me, to be sure I have no rebuttal, then grins, turns to the cross, points his cane at it, and yells, “Hallelujah!”

“Amen,” the altar girls respond in a dissonant chorus.

“Uh . . . one thing,” I say.

Shaw looks back at me, still smiling, eyebrows raised.

“What about Black Brands?”

“Excuse me?”

“What about the people who disagree. People who, say, quit. Or are terminated. What about the people who can’t work, or who refuse to buy only what the Company sells, or who disagree with Company policy, or who violate the HR handbook? What about people who are good and capable and hardworking but just aren’t suited to the job the Company wants them to do?”

Shaw’s smile fades. He looks at me hard. “They’re transferred to other locations.”

“Where?”

“To other, various Company locations to which they might be more suited. Or to work camps.”

“And what happens to people in work camps who break the rules? Or people who . . . who . . . I’m talking about—”

“Yes, May, what
are
you talking about?”

“People who don’t want to be in either Company, who don’t want to be in any Company at all?”

Shaw moves toward me slowly.

I continue, “In the history of the Company, especially in the beginning, there must have been people who opposed the Company, who didn’t want to be a part of it. People who wanted to start their own businesses or something. Even now, someplace, there must be people who just refuse to be told what to watch and who to worship and what job they can do. Why don’t we ever hear about them?”

“You must be referring,” says Shaw, “to devil worshipers and anarchists. Unprofitables. Yes, they exist. Most are in jail, or dead. Eventually, they all will be. They are of no concern to the hardworking, God-fearing, Company-loving people of the world. You see, Company people live in bliss, working hard, knowing that the harder they work, the more their credit will go up and allow them to have all the beautiful things their hearts desire. A few might even become Blackies. Most will not, but hey, it’s a dream. And what greater gift can you give someone than a dream? An anarchist, on the other hand, has no dreams. He simply lives in misery, with no Company to protect him, no way of getting the things he needs, no pride, no joy, no pleasure, no God. The anarchist will die young and hungry while the Company tie-man lives on, grows fat, and dies old and happy, drenched in luxury, saturated with pleasure, smiling, sucking from the tit of abundance until the last sweet drop. Do you prefer the ways of the anarchist? Do you want to cast yourself out of the Garden? Do you think, May, that your twisted desires would be accepted among those cursed few who live outside the light of the Church and the walls of the Company? Because if you want to be an anarchist, you can be one. I’ll simply snap my fingers now, and we can hang you like an anarchist right this minute.”

Movement above catches my attention. Up in the balcony, several squadmen linger. Rifles in their hands glint in the feeble light.

Shaw smiles at me. “There have been many, many, who’ve said that a woman like you has no place in this Company except at the lowest level. And, of course, those who betray the Company are punished with death. On the other hand, there are some, like me, like your father, who are quite fond of you, who see your potential and who might be inclined to clear your way to a higher station in life. We might even be induced to support your bid to become CEO one day. In light of recent events, you could be positioned to come across as a hero. The media campaign has already begun. We could make your life quite divine—if, of course, you were willing to do us one small favor.”

“What?” I whisper.

“You see, that foul rebel Ethan Greene and his rabble trust you. That makes you the only one who can help us catch them.”

Silence hangs heavily around me as Shaw’s words sink in.

“Are you willing to help us?” he presses. “Are you willing to serve your Company?”

I hesitate, glancing once again at the riflemen up on the balcony.

“Yes,” I murmur. “Of course.”

Shaw’s eyes narrow. “But you harbor reservations.”

“No,” I lie. “I love the Company. And I watch your show all the time, I really do.”

“No reservations?” Shaw leans close to me. “Make sure you’re honest with me, May. No reservations at all?”

“No,” I say. “None.”

Shaw’s stare pierces me; then he smiles.

“Let me show you something,” he says. “I think you’ll like this.”

Stepping over to his pulpit, he takes out an old-fashioned remote control and presses a few buttons. Suddenly, the swirling colors that had engulfed the massive cross give way to blackness. He presses another button, and the lights of the sanctuary dim even further. Shapes become indistinct. The gigantic room feels suddenly, eerily like a cavern. I shiver.

A shape condenses in the darkness, moving toward me. It’s Shaw. He leans close to me and whispers, “Watch.”

He presses a few buttons on the remote control, and on the great cross, tiny white figures appear, trickling back and forth against a field of black, like lines of marching ants. There must be millions of them, filing across the massive imager. At first, I can’t tell what they are, but as I squint and lean forward, I realize what I’m seeing—ones and zeroes, thousands of them. I stare in wonder.

“Do you know what that is?” Shaw whispers.

“No. ”

“Well,” he says, “I’m no scientist, mind you. But the boys at Cranton assure us that everything in the world, every color, word, idea, even every emotion, can be codified with two figures as simple as ones and zeroes, the digital language. Take brain function, for example. I don’t know much about it, myself, but they tell me that most brain cells aren’t good for much but making an electric charge. It’s like a light switch—there are two settings, on and off, charge and no charge, and they can be represented by two figures, in this case one and zero. It’s probably much more complex than that, but that’s how they explained it to this ignorant old man. The code you see in front of you represents the brain function of an individual, an employee of N-Corp, as a matter of fact. And our brilliant Cranton boys assure me that they’ve figured out how to codify and record the thoughts and emotions of an entire human brain with figures just like that. Ones and zeroes. I think it’s pretty amazing, don’t you? And they can decode the meaning of the thoughts, too—tell exactly what people are thinking at any time of the day or night. Isn’t that something? Now whose thoughts do you think those are, up there?”

The huge cross: cloaked in drifting pieces of a human mind. I open my mouth to answer Jimmy’s question, but my thoughts scatter like sand in the wind. All I can do is sit and watch the numbers stream past. Then, a horrible idea hits me, and as it does, the stream of numbers changes. They are still moving, but the pace has slowed. I can hardly breathe.

“Is it . . . do those thoughts belong to . . . ?”

“Yes?” prompts Shaw, and I feel him smiling at me through the darkness.

“I want to say . . . are they from . . . ?”

And Jimmy Shaw says it: “From . . . you?”

I’m mesmerized by the numbers—zero, one, one, one, one, zero, one, zero, zero, one, zero, one, zero, zero, zero, one, zero . . .

“Of course they belong to you,” Shaw says. “Didn’t you recognize your own thoughts?”

He starts chuckling, then laughing loudly. When I say nothing, he laughs even harder.

“I told you not to lie to me in the house of God, didn’t I? But I’ll tell you, May, it doesn’t matter where you are, we can read you from anyplace! We know you’re queer. We know you spent time in the anarchist camp, and we’d have tracked them down because of you, too, but it took some time to recover your thought data because you hit your head so hard jumping from the chopper. We also know you sympathize with those rebel mongrels, deep down in your pathetic, misfit heart. Well, out of respect for your father, instead of tossing you in jail and throwing away the key, we’re going to allow you one last chance at redemption. All you have to do is infiltrate the rebel ranks again. We’ll track you to their refuge and exterminate them. And if you refuse? Well, remember when you asked what happened to all the people who disagree with the Company? You see those numbers up there? It’s as easy as changing a few zeroes to ones or ones to zeroes, and suddenly—voilà—a person’s outlook changes. They go from being a queer, masculine, rebellious misfit of a girl to being—well, maybe even to being the CEO of the Company one day, who knows? And if that doesn’t change your crooked ways, we can always cut your throat and let God sort you out. It’s all up to you, sweetie pie.”

Jimmy Shaw leans heavily on his cane as he straightens up.

“You’ll go to find the rebels tomorrow, and you’ll go alone. They trust you. They’ll let you in, and we’ll trace you to them using your cross. Just get yourself into their midst and we’ll take it from there.”

I stand, trembling. I feel the blood beating through my veins. My flushed face burns. Tears are running down my face, although I hardly notice. I take a few steps down the aisle, then turn back. There’s something else, one other thing I have to know before I leave this place.

“Jimmy,” I ask quietly, “do you believe in God?”

He looks over at his altar girls, and with a nod of his head sends them away. In a flutter of blue robes, they disappear into the shadows. There’s the sound of a door closing, then Shaw turns back to me and smiles. His eyes glitter wickedly. “I believe God-fearing workers work harder, May,” he says. “And if you want to sit on the board one day, that’s all you need to know.”

His raucous laughter follows me as I turn and stride down the aisle. “Welcome to the Company, May,” he calls after me. “Welcome to the inside!”

Outside the church, everything looks the same as it always has: throngs of fashionable people pass on the sidewalk, streetlights burn, and imager screens flash my ads for the new IC.

But nothing is the same.

—Chapter Ø12—

The rain has stopped, but dark clouds still linger.

My fifteen-year-old self walks fast. The steel of the moving sidewalk buzzing beneath my feet is perfectly clean. Looking around, one might even think this a pleasant place to live. At first glance, the low-credit-level arc seems to represent one of my father’s great achievements: every one of these buildings is owned by N-Corp, and everyone who lives here owes his livelihood to the Company. But passing through it today, for the first time I begin to see the differences between this area and the Blackie arc where I’ve always lived. Here, instead of mirror and marble, the buildings are faced with mildewed stucco. Windows are cracked. One of the crosswalk signs is broken and stares at me, dead. All around: the faint smell of urine, but no hint of the animal or person who made it. Why did I never notice these things before?

It’s not a long train ride to where the mid-level tie-men live, but those few miles make a world of difference. I step off the moving sidewalk and onto the cement. At my feet, I see a solitary soda can, the only piece of litter in sight, and I give it a good kick. Seemingly out of nowhere, an old man—probably eighty years old—steps forward, stoops down with a breathy
humph
, and snatches up the can. He tosses it into a plastic trash bin and walks on, pulling the bin behind him. I look for the name under the N-Corp logo on his shirt, but I can’t make it out. He smiles at me as he passes, a nearly toothless jack-o’-lantern grin. He must not have earned enough credit privileges to afford a dentist, I muse. But bless him; he’s on the right track. If he keeps on working so diligently, in a few years they’ll raise his credit limit and he’ll be able to get some dentures.

Ahead, the door to Kali’s building waits beneath a great banner bearing the N-Corp logo and the words: Eat N-Soy, taste the health!

When I reach out to press my thumb to the security scan, I see the door is broken and hanging open. So much for security. I stroll in. The elevator screeches and shudders its way upward and finally deposits me on the third floor. There, with a heavy heart, I knock on Kali’s door.

In most ways, this is almost a normal evening. Kali’s mother is out working. She’s been pulling double shifts all week, which means she’s only home around eight hours per day. Kali’s wench of an older sister is off wherever she goes—some sort of job, I guess. And Kali’s father is nowhere to be seen. Probably, he’s at work, too.

Even though I’m young, I already know enough to realize they’ll never be Blackies, although ostensibly that is the goal every lower-credit-level worker sacrifices almost every waking hour to achieve.

All I care about is the fact that they’re never around. Kali and I get to sit on the couch alone and relax. Pure heaven. But when I suggest she turn on their new imager, she shakes her head.

“Doesn’t work.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? It’s broken.”

“But,” I say, “it’s brand new.”

She shrugs. “Dad was trying to get it fixed, but they spent the last credit they had on it. Then they got charged the support fee when he called to report the problem, then he got cut off, then he was charged another support fee to call again. You should have seen how pissed off he was! He was cursing up a storm. If a watcher had been here, he’d have been fined a month’s credit privileges for sure. Anyway, after all the fees there was nothing left over to get it repaired.”

She laughs at my expression. “Why do you look so shocked?” she says. “This isn’t like the premium products Blackies get. It’s a low-credit imager. They break.”

“What about the warranty?”

“What the hell’s a
warranty
? . . . ”

“Never mind,” I say.

“Whatever.”

A moment passes in awkward silence. I can’t help but look over at her, her ruddy cheeks, silken hair, the smooth skin of her shoulders. She, however, makes a point of not looking back at me.

“I love you,” I say, tentatively.

“I love you, May,” she says, like it’s a tremendous burden.

Reaching out, I place my hand on hers. She looks over her shoulder at the door. I wish she wouldn’t do that. Why is she so paranoid, I wonder? Then I remember Blackwell’s little movie, and I realize she’s right to be afraid.

“May,” she says, “would you do anything for me?”

“Of course,” I say.

“I mean really,
anything
?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Well . . . ” she sighs, “Dad has been saying that . . . we’re almost at the end of our credit. With my sister’s appendix rupturing last fall and everything . . . he says unless he works more hours, he’s going to get shipped to a work camp.”

“So,” I say, “he can pull a few double shifts ”

“He already does,” she says. “He works triple shifts sometimes.”

Her eyes are shining now in the lamplight, not with their normal radiance, but with tears.

“That’s impossible,” I say. “Triple shifts?”

“It’s not impossible,” she says. “People do it all the time. Honestly, May, for somebody so smart, sometimes I think you don’t know anything.”

I pull my hand away from hers.

“Oh, don’t get all pissy,” she says. “I’m just saying . . . ”

“What? What are you saying?!” I shout. “So your dad has to work all the time. Big deal. My dad works all the time, too. I never even see him. If you want to watch an imager that works, come over to my house. Mine’s as big as your whole apartment . . . What? What’s the problem now?”

Kali is standing now, furious.

“You don’t get it, May! My father’s going crazy! He’s snapped. He cries for no reason. He hit my mom the other day; he’s never done that. Right now he’s in his bedroom. He hasn’t come out for hours. And on top of it all, now he might get sent to a work camp.”

I wonder if Blackwell’s tiny listening device, nestled in the pocket of my skirt, is picking all this up. I hope not.

“So what?” I say quietly. “Your dad’ll work there for a while, pay down his debt, then come back home.”

“When was the last time you heard of anyone coming back from a work camp, May?”

A moment passes.

“Maybe you can pick up a shift after school or something and help out.”

Kali shakes her head in disgust. “It won’t help.”

“Or we can help you,” I say quickly. “I can talk to my dad.”

But she’s already walking away. “You don’t get anything, May,” she says. “Of course you wouldn’t; you’re a Blackie!”

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“To pee,” she says. She disappears down the hallway and a door slams.

Silence. Until the upstairs neighbor decides to walk to his closet, that is. Then his footsteps rattle the whole apartment. My hand snakes into my pocket and finds Blackwell’s listening chip. My first thought is to hurl it out the window, smash it under my foot, or toss it into the garbage disposal. It sits there in the palm of my hand, a tiny metallic capsule. Maybe I should swallow it, crap it back out in a couple days, and have it delivered to Blackwell with a note saying,
Here’s what I think of your blackmail attempt
. The thought almost makes me smile.

But what if Blackwell is right? What if Kali’s dad is plotting against the Company? Then I’d have a duty, to God and my Company, to make him pay. Kali even said he was acting crazy, right? From what she says, it’s sounding more and more like he really is an unprofitable. If he were allowed to harm the Company, thousands, even millions of people could lose their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods. As Jimmy Shaw always says, anybody who’s against the Company is an enemy of the people.

Heck, even I’m a stockholder, and I’m only fifteen. An attack on the Company is an attack on me. Rising from the couch, I cross to the hallway. From the ceiling comes the sound of the upstairs neighbor opening his refrigerator. I hear Kali blowing her nose in the bathroom. Beyond, the hallway is dark. But Kali’s dad isn’t sleeping. Already, his voice drifts to my ears. A slim blade of light shines from beneath his bedroom door. I creep toward it now, press my ear against it. Through the hollow wood, his words are broken, barely audible: “. . . Atrocity! . . . all over South America . . . the workers . . . holocaust—mass graves . . . unconscionable, reckless, immoral policies, man. All over the world . . . tell everyone,
make
them see . . . stop this damned Company, in the name of God, in the name of . . . murders!”

The bathroom door opens behind me, and I choke back a gasp.

“What are you doing?” Kali asks.

“I—just—was waiting for you to come out. I was worried.”

She squints at me suspiciously. “Why were you standing in the dark like that?”

“Uh . . . ”

“Oh, my God,” says Kali.

I hold my breath.

“We’re not that poor,” she says. “Turn on a light!”

Back in the living room, the storm of Kali’s anger seems to have blown over. We make out for a while, brainstorm names for all the babies we’re (somehow) having together one day, eat a bag of instant popcorn I brought over, and make out some more. Kali doesn’t mention our previous conversation, but the worry never quite leaves her eyes.

When it’s time to leave, she goes to walk me to the door. On the way, she stops and stoops to tie her shoe. I watch her. The way she pushes her hair back behind her ear, the way she chews her gum; God, I love her.

Still, while she’s busy tying, I drop the little metal listening-pill into a vase of dried flowers. Even though I love Kali and Kali loves her father, the Company must be protected. Because without the Company, how will Kali and I support our eight kids, Katherine, Jase, Ky, Josette, Daniel, Zach, Nigel, and Noreen?

Whispers:

“I love you, baby.”

“I love you more than anything.”

And before I step out the door, I kiss my Kali goodbye—not knowing that I’ve kissed her goodbye already.

~~~

Dawn.

I wake with a smile on my face, sure that yesterday’s events—the descent into Black Brands, the meeting with Jimmy Shaw—were nothing but a bizarre nightmare. But when I sit up in bed and ask Eva to tell me my schedule for the day, she replies with one word:
“Vacation.”

Jimmy Shaw’s mission to track down the rebels still stands. Worse than that, it’s my job now. I sit up, my legs dangling off the bed, my head cradled in my hands.

“Fine. I’ll do it,” I murmur. But, it occurs to me, there’s someplace I have to stop first. I pack and re-pack my bag. At first, packing seems an almost impossible task. How do you pack for a journey from which you might never return? Everywhere I look are little sentimental items, scattered shards of my life’s meaning, begging to be included. I start off packing some of these things—the dried flower Kali gave me long ago, the necklace with the big diamond heart my father gave me on my sixteenth birthday, the tiny headband my mother made for me to wear on my first birthday—the year before she died. But in the end, I take all of them out of my bag again.

Though my thoughts are still obscured behind a heavy cloudbank of confusion, tiny rays of truth are beginning to break through, and one of these truths is that on the path I will soon be walking, wherever it might lead, things will be irreparably changed and the trappings of my former life will only hold me back.

I remove from the bag my lotion, my favorite pair of high heels, my electric toothbrush—all the things that have no bearing on the stark task ahead of me.

I pack a flashlight, two changes of clothes, extra socks, a few cans of tuna fish, a bottle of water, and a loaf of bread. I put on athletic shoes and wear pants beneath my skirt, rolling the pant legs up so they won’t show. I tie my hair back tight and leave my makeup on the vanity. I take a long carving knife from the kitchen, an old compass from my dresser drawer, and my grandmother’s rosary.

My packing finished, I take one last look out at my executive-credit-level view. From here, the Headquarters Hub (What was it called once? Chicago?) glitters in an aura of golden stillness. I shoulder my pack. Who would have thought that everything a person needs to survive would feel so light on my shoulders? I look around my apartment for anything indispensable, anything I might miss too much if I leave it behind, but there is nothing. I take a few steps toward the door, stop, and take the IC out of my pocket. The first impulse is to call my father, but I’m so completely at a loss for what to say to him that I cast the thought out of my mind entirely. For all I know, he’s the one sending me on this terrible errand. Carly, my secretary, will she miss me when I’m gone? Wonder where I went? I doubt it.

And Randal? Poor chaotic mind—despite his misgivings about the Company budget, I doubt he’d understand what I have to do. To call him would endanger him by association. Better just to disappear. I toss the IC on the couch.

I shut off the lights in my lonely apartment, cross the first radiant beams of sunrise, and pass through my door for what might well be the last time.

“
Goodbye, May
,” says Eva’s eerie, computerized voice.

“Goodbye,” I say, and smile because I mean it.

I will never come back here again.

~~~

It’s only a short train ride to N-Academy 13, fifteen minutes at the most, but this is my first time taking it. Visitations at the academy are discouraged and are considered disruptive to the students’ learning process. That’s always been fine with me. Between work, shopping, and dreaming about members of the fairer sex, there hasn’t been a lot of time for chitchat with family members I don’t even know. The front doors are emblazoned with the N-Corp logo and the motto of the N-Ed division:
Effective, Efficient Education
. The woman at the front desk doesn’t even look up at me until her computer recognizes my cross implant.

“Here for a visit?” she asks tonelessly.

“Yes.”

“Name of the student?”

“Fields. Rose Fields.”

“Your relationship to her?”

I start, but the word sticks in my throat. I cough, then try again. “Mother.”

Finally the woman looks up at me, brushes her stringy blonde hair back from her shoulder, showing the N-Ed badge on her chest. Her eyes widen as she takes in my strange appearance—the backpack slung over my shoulders, the bunched-up pants beneath my skirt, the lack of makeup. Her expression drips with judgment, and I bite back a sarcastic retort.