Alight (16 page)

That circle of images…

I look at the red circle embroidered on the left breast of O’Malley’s coveralls.

“Our ties,” I say. “That face with the symbols, it matches what was on our ties.”

O’Malley nods. “It does. But before you ask, I don’t know what it means.”

He sees my doubtful expression.

“I told you information was erased. I know it’s hard for you to believe me right now, but that’s the truth. Shuttle, show her the symbols.”

Above the pedestal, three glowing dots appear around the circle. At the very top, the dot turns black, spreads out and becomes a symbol: Spingate’s gear. The other two form near the bottom, connected to the gear and each other by straight lines that form a perfect triangle. On the left, O’Malley’s half-circle; on the right, Aramovsky’s double-ring.

Words appear by each symbol:
SPIRIT
by the double-ring,
MIND
by the gear, and
STRUCTURE
by the half-circle.

“The double-ring is obviously religion,” O’Malley says. “The gear is for scientists and engineers. My symbol represents administration—helping leaders, organizing, managing other people who do actual labor. As far as I can tell, people who had these three symbols worked together to rule. Whatever type of culture there was back on the
Xolotl
—I mean before they started slaughtering each other—those three symbols were in charge.”

“But Matilda was the leader. If I’m a circle, wasn’t she one, too? Circles would have to be in the leadership group, wouldn’t they?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to go on.

“Tell me the rest of it,” I say.

He clears his throat, speaks loud. “Show the secondary symbols.”

Three more dots appear, one each in the spaces between the existing symbols. The dots take shape…

Top left: Bishop’s circle-star.

Top right: Smith’s circle-cross.

And at the bottom, finally, my symbol—the empty circle.

Words appear:
MIGHT
next to the circle-star,
HEALTH
next to the circle-cross. By mine, the word
SERVICE
.

O’Malley points to the circle-star. “
Might
means military. Soldiers or police. People who protect the order of things.”

I think of Bishop and the others, of how they are always the first to face any danger, of how without them we would all have been overwritten by now.

“Soldiers help keep people safe,” I say. “People who keep us safe would be part of the ruling class.”

“They weren’t.” No hesitation in O’Malley’s voice, no doubts. “They did the bidding of the primary symbols.”

So Grownup O’Malley would have been in charge of Grownup Bishop? Interesting.

O’Malley points to the circle-cross. “That symbol was for doctors, nurses, people involved in the health of others.”

The dead Brewer boy in the coffin, he had the circle-cross on his forehead. Is Brewer a doctor? Perhaps he was in charge of the
receptacles.
That might explain how he had control over our coffins, how he was able to wake us up, to lock out Matilda and the others for all those centuries.

I wait for O’Malley to continue. He doesn’t. He looks down, unable to meet my eyes.

“Stop stalling,” I say. “Explain my symbol. What was my role in their society? What special skills am I supposed to have?”

He lets out a slow breath. His blue eyes shimmer with tears. Maybe he fakes emotions at will, but he isn’t faking this.

“Circles don’t have special skills,” he says. “Your role was to do whatever the other symbols told you to do. Em…the circles were
slaves
.”

Like a key sliding into a lock, that word destroys barriers in my mind. Matilda’s memories—fractured, distorted, but still
real
—flood in. I am in school, carrying a tooth-girl’s things for her while she walks five steps ahead of me, laughing with other tooth-girls…

…I am in class—no, waiting
outside
of class, with other circles, being taught basic math by an old woman while my tooth-girl—my
owner
—is in the classroom learning physics…

…I am in the cafeteria, on my knees, wiping food off the floor, food that my owner knocked over just so she could see me pick it up while she and her tooth-girl friends laugh at me, call me a
stupid empty
over and over again…

…I am in a small room in a church where every person I see is a circle, except for the pastor, a woman in red robes with a double-ring on her forehead, who is saying that
service
is the life the gods planned for us and that if we do it well, if we serve, if we
obey,
then we will be rewarded after death when we go to the Black Mountain…

…I am outside the church, talking to an older circle-boy while I wait for my owner to finish her own service in a church that is far more beautiful than mine, and the boy looks around carefully before he asks if I’ve ever heard of the god called Tlaloc, the one who can empower the soldiers and doctors and workers to rise up against the rulers…

…the feeling of anger, of humiliation, of
hatred
at belonging to someone else, at having no rights, the need to do something about it,
anything,
no matter what the cost…

“Em?”

O’Malley is staring at me.

“Em, are you all right?”

No. I’m not. I finally had that moment I wanted, that
flashfire,
just like my friends had. Gaston gets to fly, and I get this?

I share my creator’s memories. For the most part, I
am
those memories. Matilda didn’t wear chains, she didn’t live in squalor, but she was a slave nonetheless. She was
property
.

“On the
Xolotl,
it seemed like Matilda was in charge,” I say. “How could a slave be in charge?”

“Because she led a rebellion. The details of it are erased, but I’m pretty sure she started the war on that ship.”

I thought she was a monster, inside and out. Maybe things aren’t so simple, so cut-and-dried. All those mutilated bodies, the butchered babies…only someone who is pure evil could do that. And yet, a part of me—the part of me that is her, perhaps—understands why she would start that war.

“She didn’t want to be a slave,” I say. “She didn’t want
anyone
to be a slave.”

For the first time, I truly understand my creator.

O’Malley gently grips my shoulders. “Now you know why we can’t tell the others.”

“We
have
to.” My voice is thin, drained of life. “Everyone wants to know what the symbols mean.”

He cups my face in his hands, doing to me what I did to him only moments ago.

“Em,
please
. I was trained to counsel leaders, how to know what people are thinking and how to make sure the leaders say the right thing at the right time. If we share the meaning of the symbols now, it will destroy everything we’ve accomplished.”

I know I should tell everyone, but I don’t
want
to. A slave? That’s all I was? But no, that wasn’t me, it was Matilda. Omeyocan is a new world. It is
our
world—we can make it whatever we want it to be. My people can handle this news. They can make the right decision and not be ruled by the structures of our history.

“They need to know,” I say. “We have to be honest.”

O’Malley shakes his head in exasperation. “All right, they need to know,
fine,
but not
now
. Aramovsky is just waiting for the right opportunity to call a new election. Do you want to take the chance that he’ll win?”

I think of Aramovsky talking about his God of Blood. So many young minds on this shuttle now. If he could say whatever he wanted, he might corrupt them all.

O’Malley is right—Aramovsky can’t be in charge now, it would be a disaster.

“But we
will
tell them, right?” Now I am the one with the pleading tone in my voice. I have never sounded less like a leader. “We’ll tell them soon?”

O’Malley pulls me in and holds me tight. I let him.

“We will, Em, I promise. We’ll tell everyone about our past, but after we’ve secured our
future
.”

There is nothing arrogant about him now, nothing expected from this hug—I need him to hold me, so he does.

I will tell everyone. I
will
.

Just not now.

T
he sun hangs low in the sky. Bishop has not returned.

I sit alone atop the pile of vines at the landing pad’s edge. The pad is alive with activity, as I have put everyone to work. Under the direction of Opkick, kids are chopping vines and clearing them away from the pad’s metal deck. They toss the cut pieces onto the vine wall, making it thicker and taller. If the spiders stay at street level, they can’t see the shuttle. Maybe they have other ways of detecting us—sound or smell, perhaps—but we’re out of sight, and that’s something.

The kids doing the clearing work are mostly circles. That’s because most of
us
are circles. Six teenagers have that symbol. Fifty-two of the
Xolotl
kids. All 168 kids that were stored on the shuttle. In total, circles make up three-quarters of our population. I watch them, and I can’t stop thinking: clearing away unwanted plants is the kind of work a slave would do.

From here I can see so much of the city—not far enough to spot Bishop somewhere off to the east, but if a spider tries to come this way I’ll have plenty of time to call out a warning and get everyone back inside the shuttle.

I’m worried about Bishop, Bawden and Visca. There is nothing I can do to help them. The Observatory has power—does that mean people are there? People who could hurt my friends?

I need to see Bishop again, if only just to lay eyes on him. Spingate has shown her true feelings, O’Malley plays mind games, Gaston is busy teaching Beckett how to fly and Aramovsky is a constant threat…Bishop is the only person I can count on.

The city is still. Hot. No breeze. Sweat mats my hair to my head, yet the black suit keeps the rest of my body perfectly cool. I don’t know how that’s possible. The Grownups knew so much about so many things. If we solve the food problem, rediscovering their knowledge will be a high priority.

I wait. I stare. I don’t see Bishop. I don’t see our exploring teams, either. Coyotl, Okereke, Cabral and Aramovsky each lead three circle-star kids, searching nearby buildings. They are all close enough to come running if I sound an alarm. So far, they have found only empty buildings.

Borjigin, Ingolfsson and D’souza are moving contaminated food into a single storage room. Easier to guard that way. I didn’t want to risk the younger kids doing that job, for fear they might ignore my warnings and sneak some of the bad food for themselves. Borjigin is a half, like Opkick, like O’Malley, and naturally took charge of the operation. Part of me waited for Ingolfsson or D’souza—both circles—to push back, to tell Borjigin to stop being so bossy, but they didn’t. Are they working hard because that’s what has to be done, or because they were created to follow orders?

I just can’t get it out of my head. I wish I could deny it, but O’Malley’s information opened up just enough of Matilda’s memories for me to know the truth. She was born a slave. Is that why she led the rebellion on the
Xolotl
? To free herself, to free her kind? But if so, then why did all the dead people we saw have the same symbol as her? The same symbol as
me
?

The setting sun casts a warm light on Farrar and the thirty-odd young circle-stars that aren’t exploring. They are arranged in formation, Farrar facing them. He squats, yells and punches a big fist straight out into the air while tucking his other tight against his body. He yells again, the fists change position, over and over. The children match his sounds and motions.

While the slaves cut and haul, while the halves organize and the gears study, the soldiers drill. Something tells me this is the way things were for a long time, even before the
Xolotl
left whatever planet it came from.

All the buildings cast lengthening shadows, but one shadow stretches farther and faster, gobbling up the buildings before it—the big ziggurat blocks out the light long before night completely falls. Bishop is somewhere in that shadow. Is he injured? Is he
dead
? My chest hurts when I think about that. What if he needs help?

Omeyocan’s two moons slowly reveal themselves. The explorer teams stop searching. Cabral and Okereke smile and wave at me as they return to the shuttle with their young circle-star helpers. Aramovsky completely ignores me, as do the kids on his team. Coyotl sends his kids into the shuttle, then sits down next to me. He’s filthy. In addition to his thighbone, he carries a crowbar he got from the storeroom.

“We didn’t find anything,” he says. “We searched twenty buildings, total. A few were open, but most”—he wiggles the crowbar—“we had to break into. Nothing in any of them. No people, no furniture, no power…nothing. Sorry, Em.”

“Why are you apologizing? You looked, and now we know more than we did before.”