Veracity (17 page)

Before we can ask questions, Candace and I are ushered into place on a makeshift podium of uneven boards that have been secured on the prow of the landing. We face outward, toward the hollow space. It gives the feeling of being about to step off a cliff.

"Ladies, what we're doing today is
not
remote viewing. Today, we're working on a more proximal stage. Before you is a bunker thirty yards wide by seventy deep. And directly in front of you is a schematic. Murphy, light it up."

I see Rumney's assistant move and a piece of floating
plastic blooms into view. It separates into two pieces, each traveling on invisible cords toward us. Mine stops a foot in front of where I stand. It's been angled like the top of an old-fashioned school desk and shows the room before us in miniature. More than two hundred boxes have been drawn in luminescent blue ink. Someone steps forward and puts a stylus of the same color in my hand. When brought close to this map, the working end catches light.

Helen Rumney clears her throat, drawing our attention back to her. "Before you are two hundred and eight spaces and, in them, one hundred and ninety-eight targets. Some have volunteered. Some have been drafted, thus the Blue Coats you noticed coming in. We'll be keeping the lights off and you'll be wearing earphones to prevent any attempts at echo-location." Rumney pauses as a black drape is lowered between Candace and me. She continues with her pale face dipping in and out of view. "You have ten minutes to put a mark over each square of space you determine as occupied. If it's a woman, we'd like you to use an
O.
If it's a man, an
X.
If you have trouble finding the spaces, you can ask your assistants for a correct location and they'll direct you. But you are to make your own marks and to never speak about them out loud."

Helen moves closer until her nose is almost touching the black drape. "If you pick up any colors of interest to the Confederation, anything that may represent a potential terrorist within this group, you are to forgo the use of an
O
or an
X
and put down a number. The number one represents a minimal threat and ten represents a certain and aggressive threat. Your time begins now."

I startle as headphones are clamped over my ears. I thought there'd be time for questions, of which I have many. Time to meet my assistant, a woman already here to my left. She's featureless in the dark, an outline wearing an oversize watch that ticks down the seconds. The assistant moves nearer, scoops away my hair, and adjusts the headphones so they're
tight against my skin, and taps a short-nailed finger against the time.
Ten minutes
. I'm flashed so many fingers to confirm. She steps toward my shining map and her uniform comes into view. She's a Blue Coat.
Shit
. I focus on Candace and her beautiful blue-purple aura already beginning to grow. On how pleasant the air-conditioning feels on my skin, the perfect temperature of the room. Anything to help me put away this woman's profession and the distaste that will color my results.

Candace is thinking what I'm thinking. I can feel it through the drape.
Helen Rumney's crazy if she thinks we can be timed.
Time isn't a part of the process when we're out of our bodies, looking for whomever they've prescribed. But how to explain? There are no words for what we do.

I breathe in and breathe out. Soften the muscles of my eyes so no one thing is in my sights. It's pitch-black out where the people are standing. There is no ambient light to differentiate them from one another. The first thing we have to do is stop trying to see. To stop placing the matrix of expectation over ovals of black wanting to be faces or figures. Even under bright lights, we never get it right anyway. We see in two dimensions and use conjecture to bridge the gap. The biggest part of letting go is remembering this. That most of what we consume as truth skips sight and sound and goes right to becoming what we just know.

I breathe in and out until my palms grow hot.
There is no building. No cement landing. No us and no them.
We are an atomic family, these people and I. Things circling things circling things. I ignore an itch on the back of my shoulder. The pull of the headphones on a few strands of hair. Next to me, my assistant glares hard at her watch. Her impatience is distracting.

Each ball of light begins small. Not anything bigger than the glow of a cigarette. Each inhalation makes them brighter. Their breaths or mine, I don't know, an insignificance. How
suddenly these sparks become observable clouds of energy always surprises me.

The room is glowing. Blinking like a Christmas tree. Blobs of color are everywhere, of nearly every hue. Dull red fear and deep red anger. Mustard-yellow self-concern. Dull blue arrogance. Light pink guilt. The prolific mold-brown of confusion. There is a woman in the front row drawing my attention. She wears a veil of black. Throws up contrails of smoky puce as she fidgets in her space. She's afraid of what we'll see. And she should be. We can both read her like a Confederation manual.

This woman is a Manager, maybe of Blue Coats. The things she's done are marked on her body like open sores. They leak patches of burgundy into the roiling black storm that surrounds her, mapping the unthinkable things she's done. She's killed people.
Kills
people, present tense. So often, it's become a chore. The ubiquity of it bores her, so she tortures them first. And she'll keep doing this forever until she's locked up. Candace and I have been empowered to stop her. All we need to do is write down the number ten on her square and she'll be put away. It would be easy. Good for the people she works with, best for her future victims. But it would also be bad and for far more people. Really, for everyone. The program would receive too many funds, too many green recruits anxious for too much power. It would be straight to the gallows for anyone standing at the end of a pointed finger. So the question becomes,
Should we?

Tap, tap, tap. Five minutes left
. Next to me, the assistant flares.

I step toward the floating map and begin with the back row.

I don't fill in all the spaces correctly. Helen Rumney doesn't need to know the depth of my abilities, or how far into a person's mind I could reach if so inclined. I don't write down a ten where the Manager stands, either.

Our time ends and the lights are turned up. Candace and I
are allowed to sit down on the edge of the landing with our feet dangling into the abyss while we wait for our answers to be tallied. We're exhausted. Drink glasses of juice and nibble on protein bars. Rumney has learned the hard way to let us recuperate. Used to be she'd put us in her fancy car, anxious to get to the office, and one of our weak stomachs would ruin her fine cloth upholstery on the way back.

With the lights brought up, we can see the people lined up in the sunken room. Some of them are putting on a show for us. Looking bored when they should be scared. Calm when they should be nervous. Like the guilty woman in the front row. She is a well-practiced stone. No one will come to get her because I've kept her little secret. Better to have her on the streets than the government any further into our heads.

Helen Rumney marches over. "Excellent results," she says. "Candace. You're our Alpha." Copies of our answers are dropped onto the floor. My chart has a couple dozen markings. Red circles placed around the squares I've thrown. Candace's answers are nearly identical, save for one--the awful woman from the front row. Instead of an O, she's put down a ten to show them a terrorist.
A ten
, meaning absolute threat.

Candace!
I try to look in her face, but Helen Rumney steps between us.

"This effort has proven very helpful to our argument, ladies. I can guarantee that within the year, you two will be the heads of a brand-new department! You have no idea what BodySpeak means for Tracking and Data! We'll be bringing in bad guys without the drag of judicial input. Monitoring as we know it will become obsolete. No more post-event, after-the-crime processes of justice. It will become a new, proactive approach to handling terrorism. That's how we're going to roll out the campaign. What do you think?" She kneels down and picks up Candace's chart and I'm able to see my friend's face. She's calm. Almost happy.

She knew what she was doing.
But why?

Helen Rumney shows the chart to both our assistants, then
motions to the guilty woman standing just below. "Row one, space two. Take her into custody, please."

The woman shrieks and flails all the way out of the room, glaring up at us whenever she can. She's indignant, stunned to have been caught. Next to me, Candace has her eyes glued to the piece of paper in Rumney's hands. She won't look at me, our new Alpha Monitor.

Two weeks have passed since the test and the conference led by Manager Strauss. Candace and I are barely speaking. We are busy. We are avoiding each other. It's both, in equal parts.

I feel as if I don't know her anymore. Worry I might have been best friends for all these years with an illusion and not the real Candace Hillard. The thought makes me leave the women's gym when she comes in to run. Keeps me falsely preoccupied with files all day long.

"Harper." Candace has stopped at the door to my cubicle. She speaks while rifling through her mail. "I'm going out of town for a while . . ."

I push away from my monitor. Pull off my headphones. "Where?"

Candace shrugs, her eyes glued to a pink notice from Quality Assurance, nothing she cares about. "It's one of Rumney's projects. I'm sending Hannah to stay with Mrs. Cutchins for a while. Could you water my ficus while I'm gone?" An ugly plant that's been molting brown leaves onto her floor ever since she got it.

"Sure."

"And would you stop by sometimes to check on Hannah? You know how Mrs. Cutchins can be."

I look at Candace's face but her eyes are still averted. It's a strange request. Emily Cutchins, Hannah's housekeeping assistant, is as organized a woman as I've ever met. "Sure."

"Thanks."

Candace goes to her office and grabs her purse. She begins
to walk down the aisle leading to the elevators without anything further.

I jump out of my seat and follow her halfway down. "Candace!"

She stops but doesn't turn around. "Yeah?"

I cross the final few feet between us and put a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

She reaches up and puts her hand on mine. "I'm great." But it's a lie. She's radiating worry and pain. Is virtually blinking with it.

"Hey." I try to turn her around, but the hand on mine squeezes and then lets go. And off she runs to catch the elevator.

Once there, Candace never turns around. Not even when I shout an
I love you
and the silver doors close.

I go back to my cubicle and immediately call Mrs. Cutchins, who tells me in a very strange tone that everything is fine. I'm not to worry. I can come over to see Hannah in a week, maybe two. In the meantime, she's thinking of going to the ocean for a while. She'll be pulling Hannah out of school. I'm not to bother coming over until she calls. They won't be home. They'll be gone. She has to go. They're packing.

A couple of days later, I go to the break room for a cup of coffee and find it filled with Monitors. They look back at me with pale faces. Knit themselves into a barrier through which I won't be able to see whatever it is they're watching.

"What's going on?" I ask.

No one answers.

In the silence, I hear a man's voice coming from the television. "We've always suspected a dormant strain might have survived. Now we know."

Another, deeper voice follows. "Dr. Priory, how might this illness progress? Do we have a trajectory on the symptoms and, well, how they may play out?"

I strain to hear the doctor's answer over the Monitors, who are shooing me away. "Well, yes and no. When we have the mother here, we'll be able to do more testing on her and then, well, we'll see . . ."

"For God's sake, Becky!" a Monitor named Ann shouts at the woman nearest the set. "Turn it off!"

Becky looks over as I thread myself toward her. "Harper, you're not going to want to see this . . ."

"Don't you turn off that television!" I clear the crowd just in time to find an image of Hannah up on the screen.

Becky puts plump fingers over her face. "Oh, Harper!"

Oh, God
. There is my vivacious goddaughter, now a scared, skinny girl lying in a hospital bed, eyes big, tubes running into both arms.

A doctor with bad skin and thick glasses stands next to her, his face trained on the near camera. In a cool voice he says, "This young lady has contracted a resurgent strain of the Pandemic. Look there, on her arms." He points and stands back so the camera can zoom in on an array of crusting red sores. They're as large as bottle caps, maybe a few dozen on either arm. The doctor adds from offscreen, "She's also got them on her torso and upper thighs."

"Harper." It's a whisper in my ear. Someone has taken my arm. They lead me away from the screen to a chair someone else has pulled out. "Sit."

"Look at her eyes," the doctor clucks. "Such immediate loss of fatty tissue . . ."

I'm pushed into the seat as the doctor is replaced by a Manager with black eyes and white hair. He tells us that masks will be distributed and symptoms will be posted on the Confederation website. Adds while walking to the mouth of the hallway, "We're attempting to contact Alpha Monitor Hillard, who's been sent on a highly classified mission." He motions for the camera to pan back toward Hannah as he finishes his comments. "Candace, we hope you're able to see this." The camera closes in on my goddaughter's face. Finds
a tear starting at the outer corner of one eye and follows it down to the splotched and scabbing skin of her neck. "Time to come home, Alpha Monitor. Time to come be with your daughter."