The Choosing (The Arcadia Trilogy Book 1) (6 page)

"And the children?" she'd asked when his voice had faltered and run down.

"If they survived, they would inherit his kingdom."

She'd been a wise child. Looking up from the flower, she'd said, "But none ever did."

Her grandfather had repeated it. "But none ever did."

And then, in hushed tones, fast and with a feeling of apprehension, he told her about the Culling, about the times the Centurions came into villages, sent by the Plutarch himself with orders to bring every sixteen-year-old youth in the commonwealth, taking them to the domed city of Arcadia.

She'd stopped fiddling with the flower then, her heart beating unaccountably quicker. They'd passed from myth to history and near history at that. She'd felt afraid.

"Why? Why do they take them?"

And in a rush, he'd told her. Once a generation, so far apart that people forgot or died without telling their descendants, the Plutarch and his government, sent for those children on the brink of adulthood and an entire year's worth of children went away. They learned, he told her, and for some life didn't turn out so poorly. They learned arts and government, and for those things were all right. Others were drafted into the service of the land by way of the ranks of Centurion and though life was bleak and dark for them, still they were usually martial in aspect, children of violent temperament or cold steal reason who would rise within the ranks.

She'd asked about those from Pastoreum, but he simply didn't know, and she'd asked about those children taken who were not quick and bright and sometimes not even beautiful, and he hadn't known that either, though something in his eyes told Livy he did, and simply didn't want to tell her.

Well, she was here now. She'd forgotten that beautiful day's story until it was too late. Now her grandfather's tales had proved not only true, but prophetic. Now she would find out all of it.

And live to tell the tale.

Somehow.

Now the director of the institute stood before them. He was old, his face lined like Grandfather Bane's but possessing none of Grandfather's patience.

"You are here at the will of the Plutarch," he addressed them, surveying the mess hall with cold, reptilian eyes. "You eat and breathe and live at the direction of the Plutarch and you will serve at his pleasure."

He paused, as if waiting for his words to sink in, but Livy thought that probably most of them were saturated with newness and incapable of doing more than listening and trying to remember.

"While you are here, you will be educated, given opportunities your poor countries could never have afforded you. You will have the opportunity to learn language and the arts, technology, war craft. You will all begin at the same level and the same ranking, the raw red sash of the beginner and at the end of the first learning period you will be tested in every subject. Those who excel in all three areas – language and arts, war and technology – will move up to a blue ranking. Pass two, and you shall wear a green sash. Pass one, and you will wear the yellow. Pass none, and you will be deemed Untouchable and cast out accordingly."

Even the presence of this man, his authority made clear by the Centurion honor guard, wasn't enough to stop the buzz of panic at his words. The director simply spoke over it.

"Blues are afforded luxuries, trips outside, trips to visit museums or the Senate, to have private audiences or dinners with the Plutarch."

He surveyed them all coldly for a second and Livy doubted he saw any of them, only a sea of colors, pale and dark faces looking up at him, apprehensive or downright scared.

"After the testing comes the trials, when you will present before a board of examiners, answering oral questions and showing off what you have learned. You will be tested into personality types and genetically screened. Your caste will then be assigned."

He raised his voice over the groundswell of panic.

"Alphas will continue their education before taking their places in the aristocracy. They will be leaders, Senators, Centurions. They will be the captains of industry and the officers in war. It is worth your time to work for such attainment."

Again another long look at the assembled prisoners, all of them holding their breaths.

"The Beta groups are the workers. To you fall the tasks that keep Arcadia running, to bake, to cook, to clean, to patrol, to care, to toil. It is not a hopeless life. You will work. You will be valued. You will not be cast out. You will not be Untouchables."

A long look. "Alphas and Betas will not be Gammas."

Livy realized she was squeezing her fists together in her lap.

The look the Director now gave them was cold. "Gammas have one place in our society. They are good for one thing." He paused, almost as if he expected call and response.

No one spoke.

"Gammas are sent to the pleasure palaces. To serve."

When they had quieted down again, almost left to react until they calmed on their own, he added one more thing.

"This year, for the first time in more than forty years, one girl, one beautiful, talented, Alpha girl, will be chosen to receive a special honor. Because of her genes, because of who she is, she will be selected to become the mother of generations, the bride of the commonwealth – the bride of the Plutarch."

Livy knew no one at the table. She knew their names, nothing more. Everyone she knew had been left behind in Pastoreum. She longed for Pip, who would be making fun of all the different customs no matter how often their father told her to be more accepting, and Tarah, who would be fascinated by Simon.

She longed for her grandfather's counsel. What would he tell her, beyond the tantalizing
be true to yourself
that rang through her mind even now? Would he tell her to allow herself to be thrown into the street, to scrabble at survival like the other Untouchables who had begged from the buses as they arrived? Free in mind and spirit, but imprisoned by never-ending need. Would he tell her to study hard to become among those who sent harsh laws back to the provinces because that was just how life was; you had to produce and there always had to be those who said how much to produce and who took what was produced and divvied it up and kept more for themselves because they were the ones tasked with distribution.

Would he tell her to get herself sent to the pleasure palaces strictly to stay away from these people who made these rules and ran this government?

Never once did it occur to Livy that she might fail. She would not fall among the betas, the workers society leaned on, depended on and despised. Her father had taught her machine work and horseshoeing and blacksmithing, his patient lessons crouched in simply spending time together. Her mother had taught her numbers, drilling her on math while Livy complained she'd never have use of it in Pastoreum, and in the medicinal uses of the plants that grew so plentiful around their pastoral country.

And Grandfather Bane, who taught her to read, to critique, to think critically, to be awake, to find what she could and resist wherever possible.

And to be true to her own self.

When the time came for Livy to be sorted, she may not have an outward choice, but she'd know what to do and which path to follow.

Their "day off" was spent touring and being introduced to and learning from and being warned by. It was long, and uninteresting.

And intimidating.

S
pring deepened
. In Pastoreum, the planting would be finished. Now the villagers – the
serfs
, the way the Arcadian teachers disdainfully referred to the very people who grew their foods and baked their breads – would be cultivating the young crops, keeping watch to keep birds and squirrels, rabbits, crows and raccoons out of the growing food.

Livy's spring was far different than any she'd had before. By day she and her fellow prisoners –
hostages
, Julia called them – learned all the subjects the director had barked at them the first day. In addition they learned history, the one written by the victors in the last war, not at all the history of the world in the Before Times, the lands before the provinces, or the history Grandfather Bane had taught her, with the sky lighting at night under the barrage of nuclear bombs launched by the ancestor of the Plutarch. The revised history Livy and her peers were taught celebrated the fall of the old society and the birth of the commonwealth, the community where every accomplishment was meant to be shared, every act was
for the community
or it could be considered an act of treason. Livy chafed under the tutelage, hating every word that fell on her ears.

She struggled with her other classes, as well. Reading and writing she found absurdly easy, thanks to her grandfather's instruction, but she kept herself back, advancing no farther or faster than her teammates. Math she hadn't understood when her mother taught her; she didn't understand it in the capital city, either, so there she didn't have to pretend, but biology was fascinating and the other sciences, and art appreciation and art creation classes she excelled in. Sometimes she even forgot where she was, that she had been forcefully taken from her home by armed men who had beaten her fellow students on the way to Arcadia.

Once they'd arrived in the capital, she'd never seen the big pale boy with the discolored cheekbone again.

She tried not to think about that.

At night she would fall into her bunk so exhausted she barely had time to talk with Julia before falling into mostly dreamless sleeps and waking nearly as tired.

Some nights she still dreamed of the Centurions burning Agara. Of her mother running. Of the Centurion with the gun.

She wondered at the child in her mother's arms. As the dream progressed, she'd come to see the child her mother held so tightly.

It had no face.

There were mysteries. What was meant by being the bride of the Plutarch and why the line of government was propagated that way. Why students who didn't exhibit the right skills were sent to the pleasure palaces instead of into the life of beta workers, and who frequented the palaces. At night she and Julia speculated there was an aristocracy beyond the government, a caste of rich citizens above the community who benefited from everything every individual who made up the hive of community provided – without ever providing anything in return themselves.

"They could live in Arcadia," Julia insisted one night when they'd been there only a few weeks. They were both sitting cross-legged on Livy's lower bunk. "The dome extends much farther than what we've seen."

"But – but everyone contributes," Livy protested. "Or society will crumble."

Julia had given her a tired, somewhat patronizing, somewhat sympathetic look. "You're such an innocent. Don't let it get you killed."

She'd refused to answer anything else, only climbed up to her bunk and within minutes, was quietly snoring while Livy lay awaken, pondering. The Centurions who came to collect the taxes from Agara insisted that taking only sixty percent of what the community produced was more generous than it needed to be, that it was fair for the freedoms and benefits the government provided for its citizens in their communities.

But now that she thought about it, the Centurions were only ever greeted with fear, grumbling and hatred. She'd known that, of course, and that the guards were regularly rotated so they wouldn't develop any kind of feeling for the citizens they guarded.

But what, exactly, did Arcadia and the government provide for Livy's village? Fear? Loathing? They could do without those things! They took crops, they took finished foods, they took the men when they needed specific jobs performed, holding them until they were sure the job was finished.

Now they'd taken an entire generation's worth of sixteen year olds to train and mold as they saw fit.

Livy frowned. Her Grandfather had taught her such practices were unfair, that governments should be made up
of
the people and run
for
the people. That was not the way in Arcadia and because of that, it was not the law of the land. The Plutarch ruled with an iron fist.

She knew that.

She knew her dreams were not prophetic but the product of an exhausted, stressed mind that was frightened for the people she'd left behind, who she loved.

But.

Livy frowned harder.

But she liked the luxuries here. They were few so far, but they did exist. Ice cream on Sundays. A half-day off once a week. She'd never gotten
that
in Pastoreum. She liked how clean everything was, and neat, how the buildings had hard, sharp corners and glanced in the sunlight. She liked the order versus chaos and the medicines versus having to squeeze a daisy onto a screaming child's wound.

It wasn't
all
bad, was it?

She
wasn't bad for liking it a little, was she?

But her fear continued. She grew increasingly afraid of the judging that would happen before graduation. She'd be tested, more than she was now. For now the instructors at the institute were testing them on what they'd learned, and taking blood and skin cells and hair samples to test, looking for the genetic patterns within the communities. There was nothing Livy could do about any of those findings, and that frightened her. The schoolwork was changing. She had begun to excel at the reading and writing, to let her light shine. She was now in the top ten percent, and letting herself shine because she was surrounded by other students – Simon, Julia and Damien the Sullen were all in the top ten percent of the class that numbered nearly two-thousand students. Simon's friend Trevor and Kara and Viola were all struggling. The villages they'd been raised in hadn't seen the same need for schooling or education. They were constantly trying to keep up. Livy worried for them, the way she once worried for her family, and sometimes when she slept, when the nightmare came, it was Viola or Kara she saw running into the trees, and it was an instructor with a gun who waited there.

The only person not replaced in the nightmare was her grandfather.

In the dream, it was always Grandfather Bane who fell.

And always Livy who woke with the hope that he had survived.

O
ne other area frightened Livy
. While she knew she had what it took to test into Alpha, didn't really fear being branded Beta, and held almost no fear of falling to Gamma, her mental challenges were in the top percentiles.

That was good.

Physically, she was lagging way behind. In Agara, she worked with a plow, sometimes with a pack animal pulling and Livy pushing, but in the spring in the tender new earth, she often worked a single person plow, putting her more in touch with the land, closer to it and more observant.

Even that wasn't enough to make her strong enough for the tests of lifting weights, archery, swordplay, demolitions, marksmanship or hand-to-hand combat.

The last two were particularly hard for her. She wasn't big and she wasn't muscular and no matter how many times the masters in those fields of instruction yelled at her and insisted she only needed to learn leverage, she only grew more nervous and less competent.

Now she was losing sleep over it, and the resulting exhaustion was making everything worse. One late spring day she told Julia at lunch, just general conversation. From what any of them could tell, the government had more than enough ways to track their presence and listen to their conversations, but for the most part, didn't bother. Why should they? All the students were trapped under the dome, thoroughly cowed and halfway to convinced if they tried to run they'd either get lost within the Forbidden Zone, or their families would be taken prisoner or slaughtered, at the Plutarch's discretion.

Besides, there were only two lunch periods and around two-thousand students. The mess hall buzzed with noise. Even the government with their technology would have a hard time pinpointing one innocent-sounding conversation.

"Ask Simon," Julia said almost offhanded. "He helped me out."

Simon, hearing his name, turned from his animated discussion with Trevor and said, "Did someone mention my glorious name?"

Someone across the table threw part of a roll at him, laughing, and Simon scooped it up, ate it, said, "Thank you," in tones that dripped with sarcasm and made everyone nearby laugh.

Julia said, "Livy needs your help, Si. She's – " and she stopped being serious and started poking Livy's underdeveloped arm muscles. "A real poof. Weak. Helpless. A kitten."

"Stop!" Livy said, laughing. She sobered again quickly and looked at Simon. "Could you maybe show me some moves?"

The leer he threw her made her reconsider her request. "I mean – I mean – " she stammered while Simon said in his most lustful voice, "Could
I
show
you
some
moves…
" while Livy blushed and stammered and hated Julia, Simon and herself.

But in the end Simon too became serious and just as lunch period ended, he told her to wait for him, he'd talk to her tonight, which was impossible, given the dorms. Livy found herself calling, "Wait!" but Simon was already gone with Trevor, the two of them talking with animation and Julia had linked their arms, pulling her away, to class.

S
imon came
to Livy and Julia's room after midnight, moving quietly on bare feet, his straw-colored hair messed up from having slept the first three hours of the night.

Livy tried to coax Julia to go with them, but she declined.

"I'll stay here in case there are any bed checks."

"There never are," Livy scoffed. In fact, they were so alone at night in the dorms she sometimes wondered what would happen if one of them needed help.

Julia just smiled. "Then I'll stay here and get more sleep than you do. I can nudge you in class if you nod off."

Livy sighed. Julia couldn't be swayed, so she followed Simon by herself, wishing as they wound further and further through the institute that she'd asked him to tell her where they were going before they started. As they moved down silent corridors, she didn't want to risk asking a question.

Her first guess had been the mess hall. It was spacious, with a hard floor, but for all she knew betas had to work there at night, preparing the food for students to eat. And anyway, they'd passed the mess hall and were proceeding deeper into the Institute than Livy thought she'd ever go.

Finally she caught Simon by the arm and raised her brows at him, trying to ask her question without speaking.

Simon first looked surprised, then amused, and then he tried to explain it to her without making a sound either. He held up four fingers, then two inverted which he made walking movements with, then he pointed the way they'd been headed.

Livy shook her head in frustration. She
knew
they'd been going that way. She wanted to know how much longer they would
going that way
why and to where. She tried asking all those questions, but whatever she got across to him, it didn't work, because he started laughing silently, his blue-grey eyes dancing, then he took her hand, nodded ahead, held up the unhelpful four fingers again, and went back to sneaking through the corridors.

This time Livy just followed.

They came out finally at what looked like a dead end but turned out to be a very large room, with odds and ends of machinery her father would understand stored around the edges and at the very far end, a stage that looked totally unused. The electric light inside was dim, like no one bothered to put in a very strong bulb because no one ever came here. Which was likely. The only thing that said anyone did come here was that the floor was swept, and Livy only noticed that because she was looking for evidence. It suddenly occurred to her that, though she liked him, she didn't know Simon very well.

But when she turned back to look at him, he had just finished sliding the door closed. He looked back at her and started laughing. "What were you trying to say? I got the bird flying away but not much else. Bird goes bye-bye, up in the sky?"

Livy rolled her eyes. "Time. Time flies. I wanted to know how much longer."

"What are time flies?"

Livy looked at him and decided he wasn't kidding. "It's an expression. I never realized it wasn't common anywhere else. Or maybe it was from my grandfather's time."

Simon looked interested. He leaned against the wall next to the door. "You have a grandfather? That must be nice."

Livy let a smile play over her face. "It's wonderful. Or – it was." Suddenly she fiercely missed Agara and Pastoreum, and she wanted to go home. The wonders of electricity and indoor lighting, the magic of a city so large and the temperate weather the dome allowed all paled under the need to see her mother, talk to her grandfather, follow her father around his shop, find out if Pip had ever had a date with the doomed Denny.

"You all right?" Simon asked.

Livy took a steadying breath. "Missing home. Now. What can you show me?"

Half an hour later she was so sorry she'd asked. And three hours later when Simon the Taskmaster who had steadfastly refused to return her to her room –
If you can find your way back alone, of course you can go; otherwise you're training –
she was even more regretful.

He'd shown her hip throws and joint locks, how to harness the power of her core to throw an attacker off balance with the minimum of strength. He'd shown her how to punch and how to find a position that made it harder for anyone to throw
her
off balance.