The Island (12 page)

“She thinks I can resist Filina.” Rachel spoke quietly, directing her words to Pathik as though there was nobody else in the room. She waited, as though she’d asked him a question. After a long silence, Pathik nodded. His eyes were shining in the low light from the lamp.

“But I can’t. When I found Nipper in the cage, when I wanted to stay with him, protect him, I went along with her instead.” Rachel turned to Sarah. “Remember? I followed Filina like a puppy, as soon as she told me to do it.”

“I do remember.” Sarah smiled at Rachel. “The thing you don’t realize is that you
didn’t
. You didn’t do what she said to right away. She had been trying to make you go with her from the minute she walked up to you, but you resisted. I saw it. She really had to work to get you to go. The only other person I’ve
ever
seen who could resist her even a tiny bit was Keith, and he’s gone now. You’re our best chance. Our only chance.”

Rachel didn’t look convinced. “Even if I can resist her, what good does that do us?”

“Tomorrow, during Celebration, you can expose her.” Sarah saw the look on Rachel’s face and held up her hand. “More and more of the people out there are beginning to doubt Filina, doubt the whole idea of Honorees. They don’t know, most of them, exactly what happens to an Honoree—all they know is that some sort of arrangement has been made, that if we give the government one person a year they’ll leave us alone.”

Pathik spoke. “What
does
happen to the Honorees?”

“And which government is it Filina’s dealing with?” Daniel leaned back. “Given the location of this island, I’d say it’s either the Unified States or Unifolle.”

“What difference does any of that make?” Vivian glared at Sarah. “Rachel’s not doing anything for you. If Filina can just control everyone except for Rachel, why wouldn’t she just make them think Rachel was lying if she exposed her? Why wouldn’t she turn the rest of your people against her?”

“It doesn’t work that way.” Sarah sounded frustrated. “Filina can’t control everyone all at once. She can send out a wide-range suggestion, but it’s weak compared to when she focuses on a single person.”

“She did that yesterday, didn’t she? Sent out a suggestion?” Nandy kept stroking Nipper, who had tensed again at Vivian’s outburst. “When the crowd started getting loud at assembly, and then suddenly they quieted down.”

Sarah nodded. “Yes. But she can’t
really
control a crowd, like I said. She can only suggest something and hope it takes. And there are those of us who will be ready for that, ready to take action if things get out of hand. We’ll have surprise on our side.” She looked at Daniel. “In answer to your question, it’s the Unified States taking the Honorees. I heard Filina telling Keith when this all first started.”

“Keith was last year’s Honoree, wasn’t he?” Pathik looked gratified at Sarah’s evident surprise that he knew this. “Are you going to tell us what happened to him, what happened to the others before him?”

Sarah bowed her head. For a long moment she was silent. When she spoke, it sounded as if each word caused her physical pain. “Keith had been arguing with Filina more and more about the Honoree system. He thought we should stop sending people, thought Filina should tell everyone what was going on so we could all decide what to do.”

“What do the rest of the people
think
is going on every year when you ship off one of your own to the government?” Malgam folded his arms and cocked his head dubiously at Sarah.

“Everyone knows we have an agreement, but nobody knows the details. They just know that a person is picked by the council each year and sent to the mainland. ‘Fostering relations’ is how Filina puts it. It’s considered a distinction for the Honoree, a brave sacrifice to preserve our freedom.

“They don’t know that there
is
no real council vote. Filina picks the Honoree—someone with inconsequential talent who matches the general requirements they asked for that year.” Sarah nodded at their surprised looks. “Keith told me they send a list each year, with guidelines for what they want the next year. Filina always picked someone who matched their requirements but who didn’t have an incredibly powerful talent. Pingers, movers, as long as they couldn’t move much. That sort of thing.” She sighed. “Anyway. Keith only knew all this because he was on the beach that day, the day the first government men showed up and tried to take Melissa. He was there when Filina made the deal. He saw how frightened Melissa was when they tried to take her. He saw how changed she was when Filina returned with her and gave her to them. He said it was like she was sleep-walking.”

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, but a tear escaped. “None of them have come back, even though they’re supposed to return them before they get someone new. Every year, the men from the government tell Filina that whoever went last decided they’d rather stay, that they’d rather live on the mainland. Who wouldn’t, they say, when life here is so hard, so crude.” Sarah wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.

“I think Filina actually believed it for a while, but Keith never did. I don’t believe it either. I think . . . I’m afraid something terrible has happened to them.”

“What about last year?” Nandy asked the question as gently as she could. “Why did Filina choose Keith as Honoree?”

“As I said, Keith had been pushing harder and harder to stop sending Honorees. He’d argued and argued with Filina, but she kept telling him it was our only hope, that the government would just eradicate us if we didn’t work with them. She insisted that the secrecy about what they were actually doing with them was necessary, that the people didn’t have the stomach to do what had to be done to save us. She talked about it being a small sacrifice for the greater good.” Sarah’s lip curled.

“He planned to expose her himself, to bring it all out in the open so the people could decide what we should do. But she suspected. At assembly last year, she announced his name as Honoree. She must have got lucky in terms of him matching what they requested.”

“But why did he go?” Vivian was watching Rachel, as though she feared the girl would disappear right before her eyes. “If he could resist Filina’s power, why didn’t he go ahead and expose her anyway?”

Sarah took a deep, shuddering breath. Her tears fell unchecked. She tried to answer, but a sob caught her, wracked her. All she could do was shake her head.

“That was the one time, wasn’t it?” Nandy whispered the words. “The one time you amped for Filina. She turned her power on you, first, so that she could overcome Keith’s resistance.”

A fresh round of sobs overcame Sarah. She stared at Nandy, trembling. A slight incline of her head told the tale.

Nandy put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder and pressed down gently, as though she were afraid Sarah might fly away in her pain. “You couldn’t help it. She made you do it.”

Sarah’s face crumpled. She tried to say something, and choked on her tears instead.

Pathik didn’t seem moved by her pain. “You say Keith knew all this because he was there on the beach that day. He could resist Filina somehow, or at least try, and she had to take him into her confidence.” He studied her. “But you weren’t there, were you? How do you know all this? She can just make you do what she wants—she doesn’t have to fill you in on the details. So why are you privy to Filina’s schemes? Unless it’s because you’re on her side.”

After a moment, Sarah was able to speak. What she said sent a chill through all of them. “Keith is my father.”

H
ours later, after plans had been made, after Sarah had slipped back out the door, the group still sat, exhausted, around the table. Light from the lamp flickered, casting ominous shadows. Rachel’s orchid seedlings looked shriveled in their cubes, rubbery and pale.

“Can you imagine,” said Vivian, “being forced to act against your own father that way?”

“If she’s telling us the truth, he’s probably in some lab somewhere on the mainland, with electrodes hooked up everywhere they can think to attach them. Either that or dead, by now.” Malgam looked grim. “It’s disgusting.”

“The way she said Keith acted on his Celebration day, like he didn’t even know her. And Hannah, giving Rachel her mementos in case she was chosen as Honoree.” Nandy shook her head. “It’s more than just controlling them so they act like they want to be Honorees. I think Tom’s theory about wiping memories must be true.” She sighed. “I wonder how Filina is doing that.”

Pathik caught Rachel’s eye and tilted his head slightly toward the door. “I’m going to sit outside for a while.”

“I’ll come, too.” Rachel smiled at Vivian’s expression. “It’s okay, Mom. We’ll be right outside on the bench.”

“Don’t wander off.” Vivian tried to smile back at her daughter, but her lips remained pressed together in a tight line.

Outside the unit, Pathik sat down on the rough bench and patted the spot next to him. He leaned forward, elbows on thighs, hands dangling between his knees, staring out toward the cave’s central area. People moved about, doing the things they did to keep the camp going. Someone baked bread, someone watched children, someone else repaired a table, winding twine around a loose joint.

“It looks like it could be a good place, doesn’t it?” Rachel sounded wistful.

“Are you going to do it?” Pathik didn’t look at her.

Rachel followed his gaze to the group of children, who were being given some sort of lesson. It looked like the youngest ones were learning the names of colors, while older ones were learning to spell the names. “It seems like it could work.” She’d been thinking, ever since Sarah laid out the plan, about how it could work even better.

“We could just go back. We could try to make it work Away.”

Rachel laughed, a gentle laugh. “How would we do that? We lost the boat.”

“I bet they have a boat, somewhere.”

“You don’t want to go back there, do you?” Rachel waited, watching Pathik. “You wanted something better. So did Indigo. This could be it.”

“I don’t want you in danger.” Pathik still didn’t look at her. “I—” He swallowed. “I keep thinking about that first night. If I hadn’t come to you for help, if I’d never asked you to get the medicine—”

“Malgam would be dead. And we’d never have met.” Rachel remembered that night, the shape coming toward her in the dark, from the other side of the Line. How the shape turned into a boy, how the boy turned into Pathik. The magic feeling of seeing someone across the Line, someone from Away.

“You wouldn’t be in any danger, either.”

“There are all kinds of danger.” Rachel thought about her life on The Property, always hiding, staying out of trouble, never really free. She was afraid to do what Sarah suggested, afraid Filina would find a way to control her, to stop her. But she knew she had to be brave. “Do you believe I can resist Filina?”

Pathik sat up straight. Then he turned to her, his blue eyes shining. “It sounds like you already have.” He studied her face as though he were memorizing it. “If anyone could, it would be you.”

“Why do you say that?” Rachel didn’t like how sad he looked just then.

“You’ve always . . . you’ve always sort of known, haven’t you, what’s right and what’s wrong. And you’ve always had the strength to do the first one. To actually
do
it, Rachel, not just know the difference.” He smiled. “That’s a huge thing. It’s a thing that takes such courage.” He looked down at his feet. “I’ve always loved that about you, and sometimes, I’ve wondered if I can keep up.” His voice became a whisper. “Actually
doing
the right thing is so hard. Sometimes, I’m . . . I’m afraid to do the right thing.”

Rachel laughed. “Do you think I’m not afraid?”

Pathik looked up at her. “Are you?”

“Every time. Sometimes I think I’m afraid
most
of the time.”

“You seem so brave.”

Rachel had to laugh again. “You know what Ms. Moore told me once? She said, in order to be brave, you
have
to be afraid. Otherwise you’re not really being brave.”

Pathik thought about that. “She was pretty smart, wasn’t she?”

Rachel’s smile fell away. “I miss her.”

Pathik looked out at the people in the cavern. He watched the woman who was fixing the table as she coated the twine repair with some sort of tar-like substance. “She reminded me a lot of Indigo. I can see why they fell in love.” He scowled. “I wish she’d come with us. I wonder what she’d think of this place.”

Rachel knew Pathik would have liked both of them, Indigo
and
Ms. Moore, to come. She knew he’d always blame himself for Indigo’s death, for Ms. Moore staying behind. “She stayed because it gave us a chance to get away, Pathik, it gave us some time. The government was watching The Property—if she’d turned up missing they would have been after us all so fast, we’d never have made it Away.”

“She wouldn’t have stayed, if Indigo had been alive to make her come. Besides, what good did it do us, really, to get away? We just ended up here, where they
still
fear the government.”

Rachel reached out her hand, waiting until Pathik saw it. When he took it in his, she smiled. “I have an idea, Pathik.”

The group spent the rest of the day trying to act normal. Tom came by to say that Hannah’s parents had had no luck in retrieving their daughter. When they’d banged on the office door, Filina’s lackey David had told them Hannah was fine, that they would see her at Celebration before she left, that they knew how these things worked. When they’d protested, he’d simply shut the door in their faces. Hannah’s mother was hysterical and Hannah’s father was trying to comfort her and Polly back at their unit.

Tom looked as grim as a person could look. Rachel suspected he was thinking about Hannah being wiped. She stole a glance at Pathik, wondering what it would be like if he suddenly stopped being
him
, with all his irritating habits, all his singular traits. What if he stopped doing all the things that made her love him? What if all his memories of her disappeared?

“Have you seen Sarah, Tom?” Malgam asked the question cautiously; he didn’t know how much Tom knew about the plan, or if he knew about it at all.