Pandora's Genes (24 page)

Daniel, in particular, was solicitous and took the first opportunity to beg forgiveness of both Lucille and Evvy, pledging that he would protect them with his life. He not only studied harder than the other men, he familiarized himself with all stages of the testing, from questioning to the follow-up statistical work. He had a better basic education than the other men and learned quickly. Evvy was glad that the Principal had forgiven him to the extent of allowing him to work on the project, though she understood that he was no longer allowed in the Principal’s presence. After the attack, she had been afraid, seeing the Principal’s face and remembering what he had once told her about men who betrayed a trust, that Daniel would be imprisoned or worse.

Evvy remembered the way that Daniel used to look at Lucky and wondered if he missed her the way she did Zach, if he was working on the project in dedication to Lucky’s memory, as Evvy had become a Daughter of the Garden in dedication to Zach’s.

While training proceeded, the Principal was having readers go about the Capital and into some of the nearby towns to announce that the testing and birth-control program would resume in some weeks, and posting the dates, the place, and the time. Evvy tried not to think about how soon it was, but concentrated instead on her teaching and on reading books taken from the thousands in the Principal’s library.

Evvy loved the Principal’s House, which more than any building she had seen seemed to reflect life before the Change. Although much was as shabby as anywhere in the District, still, the furnishings, hanging portraits, and carpets were well preserved and more carefully constructed than anything made since the Change. She had her own room here – an unimaginable luxury! It had a desk, bureau, bed, and two chairs, and – best of all – high windows made of glass, through which she gazed for hours, watching the teeming life in the streets.

She had assumed that, living in his House, she would see the Principal often, but in fact they scarcely met, and she only occasionally caught glimpses of him through her window as he strode impatiently about his grounds.

She felt that she knew him better than anyone else in her life, better even than Zach. Yet it was because of Zach, and her vow to protect his memory, that she could never feel completely comfortable with the Principal. Her fear of him had disappeared, but the secret of her origin and of Zach’s betrayal would hang between them, always.

The day the trap was first to be set, Evvy woke before the sun. She sat up and looked out the window at the dawning light. At the foot of the bed Baby was whimpering and twitching in her sleep. The little fox-cat was pregnant for the third time in as many years, but had yet to deliver live kittens. Although Evvy would feel far safer having her pet with her at the clinic, she had decided not to subject her to the possible dangers there. At the thought of what might happen, she felt a tightening in her stomach and throat. At a final meeting the previous evening, the Principal had explained that he did not expect the attack to come on the first day, but that they must all be prepared for the possibility. The clinic would be heavily guarded by the soldiers from the Garden and the Principal’s most trusted men. In addition, among the legitimate citizens coming for testing would be more of the Principal’s men, posing as husbands to women for hire, who were to be well paid for their risk.

At the first sign of trouble, Evvy, Hilda, and Lucille were to crouch under the tables, where they would be guarded. When the meeting ended, the Principal had approached Evvy and taken her hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he told her, “I promise you will be safe.”

She had returned to her room with her heart pounding, from fear and from his touch.

In the end it happened on the first day, and it happened very quickly. Evvy had become so busy with her work that she had forgotten the danger. The table shook, causing her to spoil a leaf-paper, and she looked up from her writing, annoyed, to see standing before her a handsome young man with curly yellow hair. He was bearded, and she was so surprised that all she could think at first was how familiar he looked; it was a moment before she recognized him as the leader of the fatal attack last year.

He smiled and looked directly into her eyes with an openness that reminded Evvy of the Principal. He pulled a short, sharp dagger from his sleeve and held it so she could see it, then said, “Don’t say a word. Pick up your things and come with me.”

From the corner of her eye, Evvy could see that the other women, including the guards, were too busy to notice anything, and the clinic had become so crowded that she was not sure where the nearest of the Principal’s men was.

Her legs shaking, she stood, then gathered the papers in her hands and threw them at him. She saw him step back in surprise, and then she screamed.

Instantly the room filled with armed men and women; the party of Traders was so badly outnumbered that there was little fighting. The blond man, seeing that he had been trapped, stood where he was as the Principal’s men surrounded him.

“That’s him – that’s the man!” Evvy repeated again and again, pointing. She was dizzy, and she thought for a moment she would be sick. “He’s the one, the one who killed Lucky—”

Strong hands took hold of her shoulders and squeezed, then released her. She turned to see the Principal behind her. “It’s over,” he said. “We have him.”

He approached the prisoner. “Are you the one they call the Trader messiah?”

The man nodded. “You’ve finally caught me,” he said.

“Yosh, no!” cried one of his men, but the blond man shook his head and went on, calm and proud.

“I have always known that this would happen,” he said. He looked at the Principal directly. “You will kill me, I know that. But you cannot kill my ideas. The truth will live.”

“The truth is what you filthy Traders are poisoning,” said the Principal.

The Trader shrugged. “The seeds have been planted in the Capital. Nothing you do now can stop us.” The man was as calm and certain as if he had peered through a window into the future.

The Principal had told Evvy and the others last night what would become of the Trader leader if he was captured. He would be questioned under torture, then bound to a machine body without food or water until he died. His body would stay there, at the base of the Great Tower, until it had turned to bones.

It was the most horrible death Evvy could imagine, but looking at the strangely intense face of the young leader, she was sure that he would face it calmly. The Principal was ordering his men to take the Traders to his prison, his voice sounding as strong and confident as that of the Trader messiah. But as he turned to look at his prisoner, Evvy thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty on his face, a tiny hint of fear.

T
HOUGH IT WAS EARLY MORNING
, the Principal could already feel the sun hot on his neck as he stood outside the gate, waiting to be admitted to the new Garden. Nearly two years after she had told him she was sick, the old woman was at last dying.

He had set out immediately, as soon as he received her message, his own emotions so confused he didn’t know quite what he felt. He could not imagine why she had summoned him. She had long since made it clear that he was no more welcome at her deathbed than in her life. Whatever her motive, it must be important to her, and therefore undoubtedly important to him and their shared concerns.

He felt certain that it must somehow have to do with his fight against the Traders. Although the women scientists had long since returned to the Garden, the men who were conducting the clinic were in constant communication with them. He himself avoided the clinic – and Daniel, who was now in charge of the project – as much as possible, but made it a point to keep informed about the testing, and he knew that the number of citizens seeking help had lessened, even though the reward for testing had been increased to two pieces of metal.

There had been no more incidents, but the Principal was coming to realize that he had made a terrible mistake in trying to stop the spread of the Traders by executing their leader. The huge rusted machine body where the man had died in agony was apparently becoming a shrine. Daily, bunches of fresh flowers appeared, despite the efforts of his guards to keep the area off-limits. The guards reported too that every day dozens of citizens approached, making the sign of the spiral as they passed the spot.

He had, the Principal now realized, made a martyr of the man, as the Jewish-Christian messiah had been martyred over two thousand years ago. But the deenas take it! What else could he have done? If the Trader leader had been executed in private or even been imprisoned, there would have been rumors about his reappearance, possibly attempts to help him escape. Yosh himself had seemed to understand this, and the Principal was beginning to suspect that he had, perhaps, deliberately sought martyrdom.

After the questioning, which had produced no information the Principal did not already have, Yosh and the four men who had been captured with him had been bound to the rusting metal sides of a great machine from before the Change that lay rotting at the base of the Great Tower. Not wheeled, like most machine bodies, the execution machine had once moved by means of metal treads; the remaining rusting links gave it an even more fantastical form than most machine bodies. Quite apart from the suffering involved, death on the machine was assumed by most residents of the Capital to involve an especially horrifying form of contamination by wild deenas. Though the Principal repeatedly and publicly denied that wild deenas or anything else inhabited the machine, privately he suspected that the superstition helped serve as a deterrent to capital crimes.

After three days, not certain why he did so, but drawn there – perhaps to show that he had no fear of the Traders – the Principal and two of his men had approached the crowd where the Traders lay dying in the hot sun. The Principal saw, among those who had come from curiosity or to jeer at a prisoner, many faces streaked with sorrow. He heard murmurs as the crowd parted before him, and then he was standing in front of the Trader leader. He was scarcely recognizable now: his face was darkened and cracked, his lips dry and blistered, the bruises from his capture and questioning showing blue and yellow beneath the parched skin. His eyes were filmed, yet a spark within them met the Principal’s gaze. The Trader leader blinked, focusing, and looked at the Principal, waiting.

“What good do your Trader gods do you now?” the Principal said.

“There is one god only,” said Yosh, his voice weak but surprisingly clear. “The god of nature. The god of truth.”

“The god of lies, you mean,” said Red angrily. The Principal waved him quiet.

“You’re finished,” said the Principal. “You’re dying. Two of your men are already dead.”

“We will live again . . . in truth,” said Yosh.

The Principal was uncomfortably aware of the many faces and ears around him. He felt sweat beginning to dampen his tunic, and knew he should not debate with the man, should turn and walk away, but he could not help himself. He was drawn to the young leader, though he could not say why. He wanted to understand him, to convert him, as, perhaps, Yosh wanted to convert the Principal.

I have no doubt that you are sincere in your beliefs,” the Principal said. “But you are wrong, and your ideas are dangerous. I didn’t want to do this. You left me no choice.”

The Trader leader was silent for a moment, then he smiled grotesquely, a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth where the skin had cracked. “Are you asking my forgiveness?” he whispered.

“I ask nothing of you!” the Principal said. He was on the point of turning away, when the man spoke again, his voice weaker.

“Nevertheless, I do forgive you. You don’t know any better. I could even thank you. You have done more to help us by this one act than we could have accomplished in a year of work in the District.”

The Principal felt his anger subside, to be replaced by a prickle of unease in his belly. He knew that this was true.

The man to the right of Yosh moaned then, and muttered something. Yosh turned to him. “Have faith, Brother Martin. It will end soon.” He shut his eyes, and for a moment the Principal thought he had lost consciousness, but the young leader’s eyes opened again, to slits, and he began to speak, so softly and hoarsely that the Principal could scarcely hear him. “The seeds of evil have been planted in you,” he said. “But I know that you are not yourself evil. I learned that from . . . Brother Zach.”

The Principal started so violently that Red put his hand on his arm. “Are you all right, sir?”

“What did you say?” the Principal demanded, not certain that he had heard the man correctly. He could not have heard him correctly. “What did you say?”

He pulled away from Red and grasped the Trader leader’s shoulders. The man groaned and opened his mouth, but his words were lost in a croak.

“Water!” the Principal shouted. Red handed him the water bag, and the Principal held it to the young man’s month. Yosh turned his head away.

“Drink! You must tell me—”

“No,” Yosh murmured. He sighed, then whispered, “Besides, if they see you give me water, they’ll think you do it only to prolong my torment.”

Recognizing that this too was true, the Principal turned and flung the water skin to the ground, where it burst, the clear fluid disappearing into the sparse grass. The Trader leader seemed to be losing consciousness. In anger and fear the Principal strode across the grassy field back toward his House, Red and his guards scurrying to catch up. He heard, behind him, a shout: “Monster! Offer him water and then pour it out! May the deenas take you!”

He was so shaken he didn’t even turn.

Standing at the gate to the Garden, he heard again the Trader leader’s words. He could not have said
Zach
. Thinking it over a hundred times since, the Principal realized that his mind must have played a trick on him. No one else had heard anything.

“The Mistress wishes to see you now.” The Principal looked up to see Gunda, the fat red-haired woman, standing before him. He took a deep breath, dreading the coming ordeal. He had had his fill of death and the dying.