Infraction (10 page)

Madge drifts away as I approach the desk. I offer my
arm, and the agent scans my tracker. “Worker 7456, follow me.”

She leads me through the pots that bubble and steam
straight to Lily's jam pot.

“
We've had an opening
here.”

Of course. Who knows how long Lily will be in
solitary confinement, and the government still needs its jam.

“
The instructions are on this
sheet.” She points to a piece of paper in plastic tacked to the
side of the huge heating element. “Follow these instructions
exactly and there won't be any problems. Understood?”

I nod. She eyes me for a moment longer. I hate the
way the agents do that—look down their noses like they're
contemplating spraying you with bleach and wiping you away. I study
her chin so she doesn't see the loathing in my eyes. The pores on
her chin are big and she has several small blood vessels close to
the surface. A sheen of sweat makes her shiny. Whenever I'd seen
the agents before, they looked perfect. Perfectly made-up,
perfectly coifed, perfectly dressed. But looking at her up-close
gives me a different view. She's a person—a horrible, rotten
person, maybe more of a machine emotionally—but a person
nonetheless.

“
Get to work.” She turns and clicks
away on the ubiquitous heels. Seriously, do they all have identical
shoes?

I turn to the instruction sheet. “Measure 25 lbs of
berries, mash in the pot, and bring to a boil with 1 box
pectin.”

I look around and see a huge box of blackberries.
Next to it is a large silver scale, but there's nothing to put the
berries in to move them to the scale. I remember Lily's purple
hands. I dig into the box, gathering handful after handful of
berries and moving them to the scale. I've seen the technology
available here. Not quite as advanced as in the colony, but capable
of making all this production automated. Yet they still want me to
measure berries with my bare hands. Everything they do is designed
to make me feel so beat down that I have no strength left for
anything else. No strength for rebellion. That's what they're doing
here. I don't know why it took me two days to realize it. I should
have clued in during detox, one of the most humiliating experiences
of my life. But why? What do they hope to gain from treating us
this way?

I measure all the berries and then find a huge
potato masher with a long handle. I squish it down into the berries
again and again until streams of sweat trickle down my forehead. I
swipe at it with the back of a hand and smear berry juice across my
face. It wasn't this hot yesterday, but now I feel like the sweat
pours out of me and my insides are starting to burn. It must be
smashing the berries. Shucking the corn wasn't as strenuous.

I open a box of pectin. As I dump it in, I feel eyes
on me, boring into my back, into my skull, into my hands as they
study my work. I don't look up. I don't know if I'm being watched
by soldiers or agents or both, and frankly, I don't care. I'm
trying to do this so carefully because I know if I mess up, they'll
pounce.

Next step: “Add 50 lbs of sugar.” Here's where Lily
stumbled. A mountain of sugar bags stands to the right of the pot.
I reach for the top one, but it's at head level, and it's too heavy
for me to heave off the top without smashing it into myself or
dropping it on my feet. Instead I go for one at shoulder level, and
I have to tug and pull until it inches free of the others. My arms
are already aching by the time I heft it under one arm and bring it
to the pot.

Why don't they have one of the men
doing this job? Why are they making a girl of my size or a woman of
Lily's age carry around fifty pound bags of
anything
? I wonder if they secretly (or not
so secretly) want us to mess up. It goes along with what I've been
realizing. They must get some twisted pleasure in punishing us. My
mind rapid-fires through the images of a boot in a face, a boat
blown out of the water, the way the agent watched as Lily was
dragged away, like it was the best entertainment she'd seen in
years. It makes me want to vomit.

I manage to open the bag and get it to the pot with
only a few spilled granules—too small for the soldiers patrolling
the catwalk to notice. The eyes are still on me, and I brush my
shoes over the sugar, sweeping it under the heating element. The
sugar falls into the pot with a soft shushing sound. I watch every
granule, and it looks like snow: beautiful, sparkling, and sharp
somehow. The sugar glistens as it disappears into the warming
fruit, like snow melting. I don't realize my eyes have glazed over
until I feel the empty bag compressing under my grip. How long have
I been standing here with just a brown bag in my hands? I try to
shake the fuzziness out of my head, but it clings. Maybe this is
the beginning of one of those side-effect headaches
Dr. Benedict warned me about.

Huge bubbles rise to the surface and pop with loud
squelches. I stir the jam constantly—the instructions say five
minutes, and I'll cook it to the second—bringing the enormous
paddle around the side of the pot. I switch hands to give my right
arm a rest when the intercom crackles on.

“
All workers report to the
yard.”

All the cannery workers drop their utensils and file
toward the doors. I can't just leave the jam, can I? Soldiers
descend from the catwalk and follow behind, shepherding us toward
the door. One sweeps by me and stops. I never noticed before, but
his mask makes him look like a giant insect.

“
Report to the yard,” he
barks.

I break my gaze from the bulbous insect eyes and
gesture to the jam.

“
Not my problem.” He points toward
the door with his gun.

I look back at the boiling fruit. I wasn't a success
by any definition of the word when I tried food prep for a
vocation, but I'm pretty sure the jam will be ruined if I leave it
now.

“
Get moving, worker!” The insect has
a stinger and it jabs the hard tip into my ribs.

I wince and clutch my side. I turn off the heating
element. I want nothing more than to glare at the insect, but that
will just get me in trouble and my eyes are tearing from the pain
in my side, so I glare at the floor instead.

I slowly make my way down the halls with all the
other women. I've never seen so many of us in the halls at once,
and I'm lost amidst the blank eyes, limp hair, and identical
uniforms. I look for anyone familiar—Kai's dark hair, Madge's red
curls, even Jane's stringy blond locks. No one. I'm adrift in an
ocean of hopelessness.

As we filter down the hall, the flickering lights
put off too much heat and I'm sweating again. Where did I put my
water bottle? I must have left it in the cannery. My mouth is so
dry my tongue stump feels swollen, and I roll it around to get some
saliva moving. I lift the neck of my shirt up to wipe the sweat
from my eyes. None of the insect soldiers are nearby, so I rest my
hand on the cool wall for just a moment.

As I watch the women in front of me, suddenly their
heads change and elongate. Horns rise up out of their hair, and the
mooing starts at my left, but then circles around behind me and to
my right, then gallops down the hall in front of me, and I'm in a
cattle chute, surrounded by stamping bovine.

I shake my head, trying to erase the image. When I
open my eyes, willing myself to see the other women, the cows are
still there—a rainbow of colors this time, not just browns and
blacks and whites—and one of the insects is charging up to me with
his stinger brandished.

I cower against the wall. I try to push down the
panic rising in my throat, but I don't want to be trampled in such
a narrow space, and I don't want to be stung again. Then the insect
surprises me. It doesn't sting me but grabs me by one arm and hauls
me upright. It yanks me down the hall toward a light so bright I
have to cover my eyes. I'm drenched in sweat, and I feel like I'm
going to fly right into the center of the sun.

It drags me outside, and my eyelids flutter as I try
to assemble the pictures in front of me. The mooing has quieted,
and over there the cows are mutating back into women. The sunlight
burns down on us like it's much too close. A huge fence separates
the yard in two, women on one side and men on the other. Focus,
Terra. Knowing where the men are means something, but what? I rub
my eyes. Men. Jack.

I strain against the insect's grip on my arm. The
insect. If the cows have become women again, is the insect still
ready to sting me? I look at it, and the shiny bulbous eyes melt
back into the black mask, and all that's pointed at me is a gun.
It's amazing how harmless it looks compared to a mutant scorpion's
stinger.

What is wrong with me? I rub my eyes, trying to make
all the white spots floating in my vision disappear. I blink as my
eyes fill with tears from the bright sun. What was I even thinking
about before I watched the insect turn back into a soldier? And why
am I so calm about what I saw?

I look at the fence and see a familiar halo of brown
hair, familiar hazel eyes. Jack stands maybe thirty feet from me.
He's so close I feel like I could just reach out and touch him, but
the soldier's clamp above my elbow won't let me move.

“
Hold still, worker. There'll be an
announcement, and then you need to see the doctor.”

Dr. Benedict? Why would I need to see him?

A hush falls over the crowded yard as an agent—the
same agent who captured me and Jack in the woods—stands at a
microphone. He's trying to keep his face solemn, but there's an
annoying smirk playing with his lips. He's sucking on another one
of those mint candies. I squint at him. He looks taller than the
last time I saw him.

“
Workers, I have some important
information to share with you. We've received word from the capital
that some of the inoculations you've received may have been
contaminated.”

I expect a whisper to ripple through the crowd or
some kind of reaction, but there's nothing, almost as if the
workers expect this. The agent gloats over us.

“
Not to worry—there wasn't a large
percentage of you given this particular lot number. But I would
like any of you who received an injection over the past three days
to report to Dr. Benedict. If you do not report to the doctor
immediately following this assembly, you will be punished for
disobedience.”

There it is again—the desire to see us fail and to
punish us.

“
The symptoms of this contaminated
inoculation are fever, dizziness, and hallucinations.
Dismissed.”

Women turning into cows? Soldiers with scorpion
stingers? I've been hallucinating like it's going out of style.

“
That's you, right?” the soldier
says.

I nod dumbly. Dr. Benedict mentioned side
effects from the injection, but nothing like this.

“
Figured. Report to the doctor,
understand?”

I nod again. The soldier steps away from me, back to
the door where he lines up with a few others. They're getting ready
to herd us all back inside. This is what we came out here for? Just
to hear this short announcement? Why couldn't they say it over the
intercom?

Then I realize how hard it will be to leave the
sunlight on my skin and the blue sky. It's too cold to stay out for
long—I already have goosebumps. After flickering lights and just
the windows in Dr. Benedict's office with their offering of
indoor sunshine, I don't want to go back inside. They torture us
out here too.

I turn to the door and Madge is beside me.

“
You feeling okay?”

I shake my head.

“
You got one of those
shots?”

I nod. Did I ever. It's hitting me again as I look
at Madge's green eyes, and the irises start to coil like
snakes.

“
Be careful. There's something funny
with them. They make these announcements almost every other week.
Seems like the capital could manage to make some shots that weren't
contaminated. I had a few when I first got here. I screamed for
days. They didn't give me another after that.” Madge takes quick
inventory of which soldiers are where, how far away the agents are.
It's a skill she's perfected.

She leans in to me, and her snake eyes hiss at me,
ready to strike. I want to stay as far away from her as possible,
but I need to hear her. I tilt my head closer, trying to avoid the
snakes. “I don't think they're inoculations at all. Not with the
way they make people crazy and all the announcements after.”

But if they're not vaccinations or nutritional
supplements or whatever, what else could they be? I step away and
I'm caught in the current of women going back into building. I only
have enough time to turn back and see Jack at the fence. He sees me
and he smiles. I'm relieved he doesn't distort into something vile.
Instead his whole face lights up like a summer afternoon. He's as
glad to see me as I am to see him. I wave once. I don't want to
risk more than that. I suspect personal relationships are one more
way the government can cause you pain.

It's enough, though. The look on his face as he
turns his hazel eyes from me and walks toward the men's building
shoots a burst of energy from the top of my head to the bottom of
my feet.

Now I have to go see Dr. Benedict. Again.

There's a line of about twenty of us waiting to see
Dr. Benedict. We stand single-file in the hall. No one talks.
There's a soldier—mercifully without insect eyes and a scorpion's
sting—on the opposite wall, watching us intently (or what I assume
to be intently; you never know with those black masks), and no one
says a word under his surveillance.