World Of Shell And Bone (4 page)

I walk up the concrete stairs to my apartment, my feet aching with every step. I wish it was empty. I wish I didn’t have to play a part, put on my mask. I wear so many masks—one for the streets in case a Spark is watching, one for Moon, one for my coworkers, one for my mother, and one for Shale—that I am beginning to wonder if I even exist under them. If no one sees the true kernel of my self, does it exist?

Le marché noir does brisk business with alcohol and pills, especially in times of distress. The last time there was a riot, the NNB reported that eighteen in every hundred homeless persons overdosed fatally in a three-month span. I’m sure there were good citizens in that number they didn’t disclose. That wouldn’t be good for morale.

But I don’t waste my money. I’ve found that sleep is the perfect drug. I’m draped with fatigue every minute of every day anyway. I simply utilize the resource I have. We’ve all gotten adept at making the most out of available resources. People do that in scarce times. We’re adaptable.

I’ve adapted so I can sleep whenever I want. I simply close my eyes, and the next thing I know, I wake up and it’s hours—sometimes days—later. Once I missed work because I slept twenty-four hours. I had to tell my boss, Miss Adams, that I was sick.

I round the fourth flight of stairs, turning my face up to the crude windows punched into the walls to let in some light. If you want to go out at night, you risk falling down the steep stairs and plunging to your death. One of my neighbors fell, broke her leg, and lay at the bottom of the stairs in the frigid cold of winter until someone found her. She lost three toes.

Haumea Kay, another one of my neighbors, hurries down the hallway clutching a putrid, stinking rug to her chest. I plan to give her a wide berth, but she stops when she sees me at the top of the stairs. She seems discombobulated, as if someone has woken her from a nightmare. She looks at me, then down at the stained rug in her hands.

“Just off to the trash chute,” she says, her eyes wild. “Onyx is sick, but I should think it’s only a stomach virus. He’s always been a hearty boy, that one. Should make a fine Husband one day!” She laughs, and the sound is too high, much too unsteady.

I smile, trying not to be unkind.

Her son, Onyx, is only five years old, and about the sickliest child I’ve seen. He came home from the hospital puny, but since he was over the weight limit, they didn’t send him to the Asylums. Ever since then, it’s been a litany of diseases. I know because Haumea has borrowed medicine from me in the middle of the night before.

I edge past her and go to my apartment. I’m undoing the laces on my boots, and Shale is asking me what I would like for dinner, when I hear the sirens.

Shale and I hurry to the windows, even though it is clear that the siren is the Escort van, parked in front of our building. As we peer down, we hear the heavy
clomp-clomp-clomp
of the Escorts’ boots coming toward our door. My breathing completely stops until their footfalls are the only thing my brain registers. But then the sound passes by us, and I begin to inhale and exhale again. There’s a heavy pounding as they order someone to open up their front door.

I hear Haumea begin to beg, and then little Onyx’s piercing cry. Shale strides toward the door, but I grab his arm. I shake my head at him and he stops, his fists clenched at his sides, his gaze burning a hole in the door. I watch him, but I can’t see the complacent person I met at the Match Clinic only three weeks ago. He is someone else.

Onyx screams all the way past our door and Haumea follows behind, pleading and crying. I cringe. She should submit. There is never any allowance for the Défectueux, no matter how well-connected. The human race simply cannot afford to let unhealthy genes into the gene pool anymore. We’re an endangered species.

The van peals away, and there is silence, resounding and inescapable. A soft scraping sound outside our door is followed by a muffled thud, and the muted sound of someone weeping. This time, I cannot stop Shale.

He opens the door and lets Haumea in.

She looks from me to Shale, her chin wobbling. “They took him. They took him.” A pause, then she yells, “Onyx!”

Shale gathers her in his arms, and she flails against his chest, saying her son’s name over and over as if this will bring him back. I steel my heart, force myself to think contemptuously of her. That is what my mother would do. That is what is expected of me. I am a woman—intelligent, capable of higher reasoning. Haumea does us an injustice. She should be happy that Onyx will further the cause of purifying the coming generations. She is young; she might be Matched to a Husband again.

I wish she would leave. It is dangerous, her being in our home right after Onyx was taken. It might appear to our neighbors that we are sympathetic to her situation. My heart begins to pound. Before I can ask her to leave, she leaves Shale’s arms and approaches me.

“Vika,” she says. “You work with BoTA. Maybe you could—”

I do not want to hear what she has to say. Whatever it is will be considered treason. I cannot afford to be anywhere near this conversation if I hope to emigrate.

“Stop,” I say. “Please. I can’t help you. Please leave now.”

She stares at me for a long moment, her thin frame rigid. Then she looks at Shale, but he is staring at me, too.

She lets herself out.

After Haumea is gone, I go to the washroom to splash water on my face. When I look up, Shale is standing behind me, looking at me in the mirror. I jump and wheel around, water droplets spraying. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you want to help her?”

I sigh and reach for the towel. “Shale…it’s not a simple situation. I can’t use my position with BoTA to help someone do who-knows-what. It’s treason. Besides, I’ve been entrusted with a very grave responsibility by being assigned to BoTA.” Again, I am saying what I have been trained to say. But I inject as much plausibility as I can.

He nods, then looks down at the floor, thinking. “Did you ever lose someone you loved?”

I cannot speak for a long minute. I am struggling to reign in images of Ceres running through my mind like an old movie: my sister laughing, running in her rompers, picking flowers and gathering them in her chubby, sweating fist. I am glad Shale is not looking at me.

Finally, I clear my throat. “No. Why do you ask?”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I’m wondering what it must be like for Haumea, for anyone really, who has to give up a loved one—a daughter, a son, a sister—to the Asylum.”

This conversation is making me perspire. I hang up the towel so I don’t have to look at Shale as I say, “Well, it’s for the best, really. The Défectueux are taken care of while also performing a valuable service to the rest of humanity. It’s the most humane solution.”

There’s silence, and I turn around to find Shale staring at me with that strange expression on his face. “Do you believe that?”

“Yes. I work for BoTA. Of course I believe it.” I keep my eyes on his. “Don’t you?”

Invisible bars seem to slam down between us. “Of course,” he says. And then, echoing my thoughts from only moments before: “It’s what I’ve been told my whole life.”

We eat a quiet supper. My mind keeps escaping across the hall to Haumea’s apartment. What is she doing? Is she fixing herself a dinner, one of Onyx’s favorites? Will she set Onyx’s plate as usual? She chose to send her Husband away when Onyx became old enough for school, so she is alone. Maybe it’s a comfort to her to not have a sick child to take care of. But even as I think this, I know I am only fooling myself.

Because we can think of nothing else to do, Shale and I head to the bedroom in silent consensus when he finishes cleaning the dishes. I hitch my skirt up around my hips and lie on the bed, trying not to think of Onyx or Haumea, or the emigration bottleneck. Stress is not conducive to fertility. That has been drilled into my head on numerous occasions.

Shale takes an inordinate time to freshen up in the bathroom, but he finally slips out and comes to me. I smell the redolence of his skin, warm and slightly sweet, as he positions himself above me. I part my legs.

There’s a pause. Shale adjusts himself, puts his knees on either side of me. I wait for the starting words, my eyes trying to search his out, but it is too dark in our bedroom. Finally, he pushes off me.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I can’t tonight.”

And he disappears into the bathroom again. I lie there, my legs open, staring blankly into the utter blackness. I wait for sleep to overtake me, to wash away the shame burning in the hollow of my soul.

I slip out of the house early the next morning. Shale is still asleep, which is the way I planned it. I look up and down the hallway and then go knock on Haumea’s door.

She does not answer.

“Haumea,” I say, careful to speak softly so no one else will hear. “It’s Vika Cannon. Please open the door.”

I do not intend to collude in treason, but I would like to speak with her. I’m not sure why, and I don’t probe further into my subconscious to try and reason it out.

But it’s pointless. She does not answer. She is likely angry.

I walk outside to the bus station. The day is calm, the world still buttoned up and asleep. Steam shimmers above a sewer grate in the distance, and the whistle blows for the end of the night shift somewhere.

My office building is sporadically lit up. No one in my department is in yet, but I set my bag down and go to the kitchenette. As I lean against the counter, sipping the compost stock that we call tea, I allow myself to think about Ceres.

After she was taken, my mother went to bed for days, claiming she had a headache. When she emerged, she told us we were to never mention Ceres again. I obeyed, but at night, I slept with Ceres’s nightgown cradling my head. It still smelled of her, of baby oil and soft heat. Then one day I came home from school and it was gone. Ceres’s pictures and belongings had been taken down and disposed of. She was erased.

I set my tea cup down and make my way to the second floor, where the Code Agency is based. An idea simmers at the base of my skull. I make sure not to prod it because I’m a bit afraid of the exact nature of it. Before I can lose my nerve, I turn the doorknob and enter.

The workers on this floor wear pale teal skirt suits. A woman with a zero armband and teal hair sitting nearest the door looks up at me. “Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m from floor three. Uh, BoTA.” I gesture at my uniform.

“Yes?”

“I got a message on my terminal yesterday, but I wasn’t familiar with the code assigned to the action. The code file on my computer appears to be corrupted. Is there any way I could see the master list?” Treason, my brain chants. You will be gassed for this.

But the woman merely smiles. “That seems to happen quite a bit,” she says. “Those files are so old. We’ve been meaning to rewrite them, but there’s just no time, is there?”

I smile and try not to show my relief. “You’re exactly right.”

She hands me a printed and laminated page. “A bit old, but at least paper is more consistent.”

I take the sheet with shaking hands. On the list, there is a list of alphanumeric entries, along with a brief guide to decoding them. I could potentially read the names on the lists they send me. I can’t believe it’s so easy. I can’t believe it.

I arrive back at my desk, my head bursting with the information. It is quite a complicated system. There is no way I could memorize the sheet in its entirety, but I think I know now what I am looking for. The Os are represented by the alphanumeric term 09g2. Ks are represented by 46t3. I wanted to look for C, but I didn’t trust myself to retain all of that information accurately. So I memorized only Onyx’s initials.

I sit at my desk as the rest of the workers arrive one by one. Though they don’t look at me, I feel as if they can see my act of rebellion suspended in a cloud above my head. My face must give it away; surely I look guilty as a cat with a rat’s tail drooping from its mouth. But no one says anything.

It is only when Moon comes in and remains quiet that I truly begin to believe I might get away with it. But will I remember the information for the next twenty-four hours? They will be transporting Onyx by tonight at the latest, which means I might not get the report till tomorrow. I do not dare to write down the codes in case I am found out.

“…she sometimes takes food to the Nukeheads. I’ve seen her.”

Moon is leaned in conspiratorially toward me, her eyes on someone across the room. I realize I need to pay attention. “Who?”

Moon sighs and juts her chin forward. She has a small tattoo of a green tulip right in the middle of it. “Naiad,” she says. “You know what they say about women named after satellites.” She sneers. “I think she’s in with the Rads.”

“The Rads? Naiad?” I look at the diminutive woman, her black hair clipped into a gamine cut. She looks around the room every so often, her eyes huge. She reminds me vaguely of a forest animal in an ancient children’s book, docile and pliant. “It can’t be.”

“The Rads have some terrorist females,” Moon replies. “Why else would she be so endeared to those vile Nukeheads?” She makes a disgusted clicking sound. “Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

“What’s the right thing to do?” I ask, confused.

“Report her.” Moon’s voice is so low, I have to strain my ears to hear her over the hum of the computer terminals. “I’m calling the Escort Tip Line tonight.”

I stare at her. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not? Are you willing to give up your spot for her on the ship?” Moon smiles.

I look away.

“I didn’t think so.” She puts a cold hand on mine. The green paint on one of her nails is starting to chip. “Look, it’s for the best. The fewer people there are, the less competition there is.”

So that’s it. Moon’s desperate bid for an emigration voucher. She will sell anyone down the river. The alphanumeric codes buzz in my head like neon.

I say nothing.

I knock on Haumea’s door before I go home, but she doesn’t answer. I’m standing outside, wondering if I should try the doorknob, when a neighbor comes into the hallway. She doesn’t smile, just looks at me and then slowly to Haumea’s door. I turn and walk quickly to my apartment.

When I let myself in, I’m a bit dazed by the fragrance. It’s spicy and citrus-y all at once. I go into the kitchen and find Shale getting pots together for dinner. He smiles. “You made good time.”

“There wasn’t much traffic.” I gesture at the pot simmering on the gas stove. “What’s this?”

“I’m boiling cloves and orange peels,” he says. “It’s an old trick for making the home smell better my mother taught me. Clever, isn’t it?”

I lean against the counter and smile. “Very. I don’t think the apartment has ever smelled so nice.”

He chuckles. “Nuclear pollution isn’t very conducive to pleasant smells, I’ll admit.”

I smile and play with a ladle. “Were you close to your mother?”

“Oh, as close as a boy can be to his mother nowadays, I suppose.” He measures out oats and pours them into a small bowl. “Do you worry that we may have a boy?”

I’m surprised by his question. Most Husbands don’t talk about gender since they are the ones responsible for it, for carrying the Y chromosome. A Husband who only produces boys is unlikely to be re-Matched if his female sends him back to the Husbandry. Most of them end up becoming Maintenance workers, an occupation at the very bottom rung of the workforce ladder, even for a male. “I suppose I do, a little. But your father produced two girls in addition to you, did he not?”

“Yes. You know, in the days of Before”—this is how we divide our time, in the days of before and after the War of the Nations—”you could pay to have only female eggs implanted into your uterus. It was one benefit of technology.”

“Really?” I raise my eyebrows. “Did they teach you that in the Husbandry?”

Shale laughs. “No. My father did. He had a great many stories about the days Before.”

“You knew your father?”

“Yes. My mother chose to keep him as my nanny after I was born.” He glances at me. “You didn’t?”

I try to remember a single image of my father. My mind remains blank. “No. Would you like a hand with the protein blocks? I could chop them.”

“Chop them? You?” Shale’s tone is absolutely thunderstruck. “Do you know anything about cooking?”

I pretend to be offended. “Actually, I know quite a bit. I used to cook for myself before you came along.”

“I don’t believe that for an instant.” Shale waves the dull knife at me. “You must have eaten at the cafeteria at work like most women do.”

I’m opening my mouth to argue when there is a knock at the door. Since Shale’s busy, I answer it, expecting Haumea.

But standing not four feet from me, his blue coveralls soot-smeared, his eyes wild, is my brother. I haven’t seen him since he was sent to the Husbandry six years ago.

“Mica?” I stare at him, at the haggard, sharp planes of his face. His jaw, chin, and upper lip are covered in brown stubble, growing unbridled like moss. “What—”

“I need to talk to you.” He looks over his shoulder at the other doors. “Please.”

I step aside in spite of every scrap of intuition screaming at me to not. Mica closes the door behind him. Shale comes out of the kitchen and the two men stare at each other. I’m startled to see that Shale is much bigger than Mica. In my mind, Mica was always the tallest person on Earth. There was never anyone who towered over him.

“Shale, this is Mica. Mica, this is Shale…my current Husband.”

They nod at each other, and then Shale disappears back into the kitchen.

“I need your help, Vika.” Mica chews compulsively on his lower lip until I almost pull it out from between his teeth in an attempt to salvage what’s left of it. “I’ve been reported to the Escorts for failure to produce progeny. I ran.”

I take a deep breath. “There is nothing I can do.” I take a step backward. “You shouldn’t be here. I could get arrested.”

Mica lunges forward and grabs my hands. “Mother won’t accept my calls. I have nowhere else to go. Do you understand? You’re my last hope.”

I try to back away, but he holds my hands tight, his grip warm and damp. He is panting, and his breath smells like metal. I wonder if he has been drinking. “What do you expect me to do?”

“I just need a travel voucher. I’m going north.”

I pull my hands away, my wrists throbbing. “I can’t. They’ll be able to trace it back to me.”

Mica’s eyes darken, that stormy look I remember so well casting a pall over the living room. “Do you want me to die? I’m your brother, Vika. Have mercy.”

An Escort siren echoes in the distance, and Mica’s head jerks toward the window. Guilt presses hard against my chest.

“I don’t have any vouchers with me,” I say, my voice quiet. “I’ll have to request them at work tomorrow.”

“I can hide out till then,” Mica answers. “I can come back tomorrow, around the same time.” He leans in, as if to hug me.

I put my arms stiffly around him. He whispers in my ear, “Careful. They know everything.”

And then he flees.