Veracity (11 page)

On my last evening of Coming of Age, Dana came in to give me a lecture, which was 'of the gravest and most critical importance'. He emphasized, with an overstrung urgency, that under no circumstances would I ever be justified in talking about The Goal inside the community; to anyone; ever. It was essential to understand that
only
behind sealed and soundproofed doors was it
ever
safe to talk openly about
anything
that had been said during my stay. He underlined the fact that only those elite few, who - it was hoped - could override their instinctual impulses for a greater cause, were to be trusted with the information that was shared. I was surprised to find out that, apparently, there were even some Elders whose knowledge about the different phases and what went on in them was limited. And because of this, if even unsupported gossip of The Goal were to leak out into the general community, the consequences would be disastrous. There would almost certainly be a rebellion; in fact, he said, lowering his voice to a solemn murmur, in many respects, when I left the shelter, I would be carrying with me nothing less that the responsibility of the entire island's well-being, the very welfare of every person that I was close to. Did I understand this, he asked (and to help accentuate the word 'understand', he pounded his fist on the table with each syllable: UN-DER-STAND?).

Yes, I promised, of course I understood. Of course.

Early the next day, they let me go.

10

When I was released, I was told that after the midday meal I was scheduled for a normal afternoon of chores and schooling, but that my morning was free.

Free. It was a strange sensation standing on the other side of the shelter's door again, listening to a few of the Elders' footsteps recede into one of the hidden branches of the building behind me. There I was, left alone, completely unrestricted. It was almost hard to fathom - I had time at my very own disposal to do, think, and say whatever I wanted,
wherever
I wanted. It's interesting, I don't think we ever weigh out our freedom until it's suppressed, never question it until someone questions it for us. I smiled, drew a long breath into my lungs, my arms hanging limp at my sides, face pointed at the sky, and just stood there for a moment, feeling blessed. After that, I walked down the path from the shelter and linked up with the main trail system, and then headed toward the peninsula. On my way, I met Siri, the youngest girl on the island.

"Oh. You're back," she said, matter-of-factly. The moment she'd stopped, she starting playing with the end of her hair.

"Yup."

"Huh." She looked over her shoulder, then back at me, "Well. See you later." And she shuffled by, continuing on her way.

I watched her walk down the trail, recounting the few words we'd exchanged, and was completely struck by them. Normally, I wouldn't have noticed, but as it were, I was seeing the world through fresh eyes. She hadn't asked me a single thing; not where I'd been or how I was - nothing. And whereas I would have taken this for granted before, even seen it as normal, suddenly, it perfectly represented the depth of the plot I was entwined in. This was all part of the method, the precise management of the lie. Siri was young enough to be missing one of her front teeth, but already old enough to know that questions shouldn't be asked unless they're prompted. I looked around, feeling as if the walls of my world were unpeeling, as if I were uncovering the apex of a monolith realization, from which the naked air fell away from me on every side. I carried on down the trail with the need to sit and think.

The peninsula was one of my favourite places on the island. As I stepped out from under the shade of the palms and into the open sunshine along the water, crustaceans scattered into hiding and a seabird, its wings sleek and pointed, sprung off the rocks and flew away. Waves crashed onto the basalt, and then subsided, tiny air bubbles clinging to the surface for a few seconds before disappearing into the shining black skin of the rock.

I soon found a warm boulder to sit on, and tried to slow my mind down so that I could take on one thing at a time. But this was proving difficult. It all seemed to be opening up in front of me at once, one thing leading to the next, a domino effect of implications chattering into the distance. I'd never really sat down to objectively probe some of the things that we did on the island, some of our customs, our practices. And maybe it was this way in every culture; maybe no one stopped to question their own traditions, always working on the grand assumption that their ways were the 'right' ways, that they represented a kind of gauge, an accuracy of which to judge the misguidedness of others. But meeting Siri on the trail had sparked me to re-evaluate a few things - like our Incision.

Never once in my life did I stop to think about the function of such an operation. It was just something that everyone went through, no questions asked. Yet if I'd taken even a minute to look at it in a different light, the answer would have been obvious. And of course we would have to be sterile! It would defeat the purpose if we were sent out to wander the world in search of people to sterilize while being fertile ourselves. But it wasn't that which was disturbing; it was the control of it, the complete manipulation of everything sexual in our lives. We'd been carefully kept from all sorts of knowledge - and as a result, I didn't know a single thing about human offspring. What did a pregnant woman look like? How long was she pregnant for? And what about the relationship between her and her mate? Was there even one? Did that happen with people? I couldn't know. I'd certainly never seen anything like it on the island, which, I realized, was also on purpose. It suddenly all fell into place: There were no babies because, once they had enough children to supply a reasonably diverse 'pool' of which to choose from for the expedition, all of the Elders were sterilized. And the Elders that
did
have children could never be a parent, as we had seen taking place in the animal world, only because they were afraid of dangerously tight bonds forming. Instead, we were raised by a collective group of people, any of which could be our actual parents, but whom exactly, we could never know. Though, the thought also crossed my mind that, maybe it was so strictly controlled that the parents were sent away, banished because of what they might do. Or maybe it was the children who were moved, shipped from one safe haven to another, a swap between islands and continents that would ensure that ties wouldn't be too close.

And all of this, every last detail, had to be planned, carried out, and then the lie or misguiding truths constantly upheld and maintained. What devious manipulation! And it struck me that this was exactly what the Elders had meant in saying that we couldn't trust ourselves to make decisions, couldn't put any faith in our instincts. They were excusing their actions, absolving themselves from meddling with our nature, from detaching every one of us from our biological impulses. Yet, as unfair as all of this seemed to me at first, I was already trained enough to wonder if the Elders were, in fact, justified in some way in going about it the way they had.

I was already getting a handle on how their minds worked. Their reasoning would have been something like this: as they could prove that our nature was completely malevolent and distrustful, that it was essentially amiss, then whatever was contrary to that nature, would stand a very good chance of being 'on track'. (Was this also starting to make some kind of bizarre sense to me as well?) Could we, in a way, be certain that we were walking the best path with our species
because
it was the very path that appeared to us as counterintuitive? Couldn't we use our nature as a type of inverted guide? Why not? I mean - it wasn't as if this was a foreign concept, considering the fact that we apply the same logic to our lives on a small scale every day. After all, that was
morality
perfectly defined in a nutshell: the act of restraining ourselves from doing what we're naturally inclined to do, because, if there is one thing that we've learned from our impulsive blunders, it is that when we do
exactly
what we are impelled to do, it ends up being detrimental to our world. They had only taken this idea, which we all subscribe to, and pushed it one bold step further.

So, in many respects, yes, the more I thought of it, the more I saw they were sensible in keeping so many things from us. If they had given us the details, we would have only gotten absorbed in them, lost sight as to why they were kept from us in the first place, and then we would have lashed out because we wanted more. In fact, if I looked at it in a certain way, the most remarkable thing wasn't the depth of which we were kept in the dark, but rather the degree of which I was so maddened by it. What was there to be angry about, really? We all know how accomplished we are at quarantining ourselves from the whole story in order to avoid grief, so why should we be so offended when others do the same thing
for
us? And this was true; they weren't only being cautious with information for the island's safety (or, for that matter, the world's) it was also simply being done for our own good. And it was important for me to finally understand this.

I flinched a bit as a small stone bounced onto the slab of rock in front of me and landed in the water. When I turned around to see who'd thrown it, I was surprised to see Kara standing in the shade, already hunkering down into the underbrush to avoid being seen.

Within the younger generation, the code of conduct to be adhered to when someone threw a rock and crouched down into the bushes, was to check if the coast was clear and, without hesitation, walk over to crouch with them, quickly exchanging some clandestine information before heading off again. But hesitate I did. I wasn't sure how I felt about speaking with Kara at that given moment. It had been a while since we were able to sneak off and have one of our conversations, and I hadn't exactly had the will or energy to rehearse a clever follow-up to it. And whereas before, such rehearsal seemed useful to me, I knew that now, it was essential. I would need to weigh out and filter every last word before letting it pass through my lips, because, rest assured, as I spoke, she would be trying to pierce through the veil that shrouded what wasn't being said, listening for patterns in the things that were avoided, and then slyly chasing after them. So, as I stood up and walked into the trees (as casually as I could, in case someone was watching) it was nervousness that I felt more than anything else.

I was attracted to Kara. She had these intense eyes that were always fixed on the person she was talking to, and they'd lowered with me as I crouched down into the shrubs, surveying my movements. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, and was just long enough to hang lazily beside her neck, the very ends of it waving out in different directions. Her skin looked to be incredibly smooth to me, and I'd always wanted so badly to reach out and touch it, which, considering what I'd just been thinking about, would probably only have led to something disastrous.

"I just bumped into Siri," Kara began. "She told me that you were out, and that you were walking toward the peninsula. So I thought I'd come and see - you know - how you are."

"Oh."

She smiled with a bit of impatience, probably knowing that we would only have a fifteen-minute window to speak with each other and wanting to get right to the point of things, which, in all fairness, was the nature of all of our dialogues. "So..." she leaned in, unable to wait any longer, "tell me - how are you?" Of course, what she
really
meant by this was: Tell me about where you went, what happened, what Coming of Age is all about - tell me what the big secret is.

But I couldn't. I really, truly couldn't. I was just beginning to appreciate the long list of deep-seated reasons why I should keep quiet. In fact, I realized, looking over both of my shoulders, it was crazy to even be sitting with her without having prepared for it first. I wasn't ready for this. She intimidated me.

I tried to squirm out of it as best I could. "To be really honest with you, I've been told explicitly not to talk with anyone except the Elders about quite a few things. So... I mean - I'm sorry for not being able to say anything, but... it has to do with the safety of the island."

"What?" She pulled her head back, as if in disgust, "Wait, wait, wait. You go away for about a week and you come back sounding exactly like them? Is that how it works? No. I don't get it. So I'm afraid you'll have to explain yourself a bit. Why? Why can't you talk about it with me?"

"Safety."

"Oh..." she nodded her head mockingly, "of course - safety. So... if you were to utter just a few honest words, what random, 'dangerous' thing might happen? Would the waves rise up and drag us both out to sea?"

"Come on."

"No? Hmm." She made herself look as if she were playing a guessing game, squinting at the leaves above us, a contemplative finger tapping on her lips. Then her eyes lit up with a probable answer, her finger pointing into the air, "Ah ha! Or maybe..." she paused, leaning in again, her expression growing serious, "maybe the
people
of the island would rise up, and drag everyone who knew the
secret
out to sea. What do you think?"

I wanted to give some quick-witted retort to this, but nothing came out - just a bit of anxious breath. This was exactly the reason I didn't want to talk to Kara; she was a little too sharp. The Elders and I had gone over exactly what I was to say to people who were wondering about specifics, but none of those fixed phrases would have worked with her. She would have only asked a few quick questions to get around them, questions that sounded like they were just on the fringe of safe enough to answer, and then plucked out the few clues and hints that were worth keeping, and sketched the gaps in between. (It occurred to me at that point that Kara would probably make a great Elder one day.) In the end, I decided to just keep my mouth shut until she spoke again, which took a few discomfiting moments.

"Okay, okay - don't worry about it," she said, dismissively, and looked away. "I mean - if you really can't talk about it, I'll have to respect that." I watched her suspiciously. "But... there is
one
thing that I want you to tell me; and I'm sure you'd be allowed to, because everyone that Comes of Age says the same thing word for word. I guess I just want to know if what they say is really true - the rumours I mean." She gestured out toward the horizon, "Were there really a lot of people out there once?"