Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (23 page)

Raul nodded; London gave a whoop of excitement. Mercedes, Eduardo, Sarah, and Ben looked questioningly at Natasha, but Natasha only shook her head, emerging from the fog of her own thoughts. She had no idea what was coming—what weapons they had to show.

Two men hurried over to the trees, to a place still within the glow of the fire. The land rose precipitously here and two slabs of high rock lay upright against it; the men began dragging the slabs away.

Inside, though Natasha could hardly believe it, was an armory, a very ancient armory. And not only that, but a room remarkably like their own supplyhouse in both its construction and arrangement of weapons. The metal shelves were lined with guns. The Tribe poured in with their torches aloft, pushing and shoving each other down the aisles. Their hands ran along the weapons: guns that resembled LUV-3s, only bulkier and caked with rust. They fingered the crumbling leather holsters and the rotted wooden boxes of ammunition, chattering excitedly to one another and looking to the citizens for their reaction.

“How is this possible?” Sarah asked in a low voice.

“It must be a Pre-Storm construction,” said Ben. “The nearer you get to the settlements, the more structures survived. We learned a little about them in school.”

“I don't remember that,” said Mercedes.

“Probably because our teachers didn't make a big deal about it,” Ben continued. “They definitely never implied that any of these structures might still be intact. I always assumed buildings like these were totally decomposed by now.”

“There're other buildings too,” Natasha said. “The night I left the settlement with Eric, they took me to one. I thought it was a regular cave at first, but it didn't make sense. The room I was in had windows, like it used to be above ground. I haven't even had time to think about it. But it was weird—I thought it was weird when I saw it. There must have been a whole city right in this area once, and whatever stayed standing got buried during the Storm.”

“Still, why would the Alphas leave guns outside the settlement?” asked Eduardo, raising his eyebrows. “That wasn't too smart. They should have brought all the weapons inside before the Storm began.”

“No,” said Ben. “I bet whoever was fighting the Alphas left the guns here. There were still people around while the Alphas were converting the old Yang bunkers into settlements, and those people probably wanted in. The Alphas were stockpiling food and animals and a thousand other necessities—of course they must have had people attacking.”

Around them, the Tribespeople were loading the guns with slow but accurate movements. A second entrance revealed itself at the opposite end of the armory—marked, like the cave at their old camp, by the red-brown print of a hand. They all pushed in that direction, the citizens with them. The Tribespeople had painted a series of targets on tree trunks, each target illuminated by torches. It appeared that they practiced their aim in a similar manner to what the citizens did in the Pretends.

“Our people have known since the tragedy in our youth,” Axel said to the citizens, “that we could never succeed against your glasshouse with bows and arrows and knives.” He began to load a gun, dropped the cartridge, but then succeeded on his second try with surprising skill. “I told you that we have been coming back here to spy on your people for twenty-two years, that for twenty-two years we have planned our return. We envisioned it in our minds and in our dreams. Gladly any one of us would have died for that purpose. Except that we knew better. It would do no good to march on the glasshouse again, not when our goal was to save our people—to get
inside
and destroy their Birds. Then, when the first frost was melting last year, Raul, Tezo, and I made a tent against this hill, and we discovered a hollow behind it.” He laughed and gestured toward the guns. “Finally we had some of the god-people's power for ourselves. It was a gift from God, and we will use it well.”

He thrust the gun into Eduardo's hands.

“Here,” Axel continued, “we are all together. One moon from tonight, we will sneak through the woods with these guns and the Bird. We will go to the stone stairs and you will let us inside. They will be so afraid of us, the god-people! And while they are on their knees, pleading for our benevolence, we will steal their Birds away. The ocean will swallow the Birds whole, and then we will pass through this forest whenever we please. At last, only God will have the power to make us tremble. And the god-people will be people again.”

The citizens heard this speech with silent accord, accepting the pats and handshakes of the Pines around them and betraying only slight unease at the thought of Tribespeople (even self-proclaimed peaceful Tribespeople) in possession of guns. A woman draped in green cloths tapped Natasha's shoulder and handed her a weapon. They wanted Natasha to shoot at the targets, the concentric circles of white on the bark. Natasha complied; she aimed for the farthest target, a tiny white dot in the knot of an oak, barely visible in the light of the torches. She exhaled a controlled breath and pulled the trigger.

The shot rang out, and a splinter of wood burst from the center of the knot. Now a black hole marked the target like the pupil of an eye.

“Whoa,” breathed London. He aimed at the same spot with his own weapon and fired. The bullet disappeared in the dark beyond the trees.

“Let me try!” Another boy rushed forward, missed, and laughed wildly at himself. He drew up the sleeves of his tunic and missed again.

Mattias shot next and hit the oak, but well below the target. The other adults took up the challenge, accepting the citizens' help when required. Natasha shifted toward the back of the crowd.

“Are all your people as good as you?” asked Raul. He was the only one without a gun. “Because if they are, they may be less terrified than we need them to be.”

Shots fired haphazardly into the dark, and Natasha felt the tug of doubt.

“If everything goes according to plan,” she said quickly, “there won't be shooting on either side.”

“It's a very delicate plan. Are you sure, little Nassia, that you are willing to risk your wonderful life for a family you don't even remember?”

“My life can't be wonderful in the settlement,” she said, “now that I know the truth. Listen,” she continued firmly, “I know who I am. I'm with you now. Of course I don't want anyone to get hurt on either side. But if something goes wrong, I'm willing to turn against the citizens.”

“And fight them? Shoot at them and risk their lives, if they take up arms against us?”

“I won't let them hurt you,” Natasha responded, her voice breaking. “I can promise you that. The citizens have done enough harm in the last three hundred years to last them their eternity.”

Raul nodded; he believed her. And for some reason, his trust mattered greatly to Natasha. She liked Raul. He seemed like a good man. A man who had suffered. She wondered if, in the landscape of his thoughts, he would forever connect her to his family's death. She could understand if he did. Because if the Tribe had not abducted her, then the team would not have initiated the manual sweep. But there was no malice in him, no anger.

“I don't know any better than you why the settlement took me,” Natasha continued. “Why they chose to save me after they'd killed all the others. But no matter what they've done for me, it can't change the fact that they tried to murder me first. And for that reason, they made themselves my enemy.”

•   •   •

The moon rose large and bright. Raj had promised twelve hours of blackout, but Mercedes, Eduardo, Sarah, and Ben felt anxious and wanted to return to America-Five. They urged Natasha to come with them, but she was not ready to go; instead, she gave her word to meet them in the Office of Exit in the hour before dawn. The group said their farewells and started across the sand, but at the last second Sarah doubled back to hug Natasha goodbye.

“Is it true?” Sarah asked, before letting go. “Do you think you were really born out here?”

Natasha nodded. “Yes.”

“I know they won't hurt you,” Sarah whispered, after a pause. “But you still have to be careful. We're not used to Outside dangers.”

“I will,” Natasha assured. “And you be careful getting home.”

The Tribe returned to the beach, and Natasha with them. The tide had come in and the waves rose high and crashed on the shore, drawing back into themselves and rising again. The planet seemed to breathe and speak through the ocean.

Tezo grabbed Natasha by the hand and pulled her down the beach to the water.

“You have to go in,” he said, laughing. “You haven't lived until you've felt the ocean.”

At his continued insistence, Natasha took off her boots and her socks and, for the first time she could remember, felt the coldness and give of real sand under her feet. The ocean spoke. The forward drift climaxed into the roil and churn of high waves, angry and beating against the earth as if wanting to burrow into the land. Natasha stepped closer, her body tight with anticipation. She watched the mountain of water approach, tall and unstoppable. A crash, the air exploded, and then the cold struck her and climbed her body. A white spray of salty iciness awakened her face with exhilarating pain. She screamed and Tezo caught her around the waist. Behind them, the rest of the Tribe howled with laughter.

The cold was stinging her legs, but Natasha held her ground, braced against Tezo. The water was rushing back now, hard, like it wanted to drag her with it. A piece of prickly, slimy seaweed caught around her left ankle and she kicked it off in horror.

Beyond the crests of the waves, which were sharpened by the brief reflections of moonlight, the ocean fanned out into black. Natasha and Tezo stood together, looking. Cold, white stars appeared, reflecting the ocean's vastness above. How beautiful and terrifying it was! And how the emptiness seemed to creep toward them, reaching out to engulf them! Tezo let go of her and Natasha wrapped her arms over her chest, her teeth chattering. She watched and cheered as Tezo chased the waves as they receded, then raced them back to the sand.

Higher up the shore, the fire burst alive as new wood was thrust into its center. The men beat their drums and sent hollow, rhythmic cries to the moon. Natasha smiled as she listened. A song swelled up from the group and Natasha went with Tezo to join them. The Tribe knelt together around the fire. They chanted while two drummers made a rhythm that pitted a chaotic, shattering rise and fall against an ordered thud like a heartbeat.

“God watching us from above,” said Hesma. “We honor You and we pray for the strength to finish the work we began when we first marched on the god-people.”

“Ah-men,” answered the Tribe. The words beat like the drums and the power of this curious music merged the sounds into one voice.

“You have delivered to us the child we lost. She is ours now, we pray she will be ours forever.”

“Ah-men.”

“We hope you
will
stay with us,” Axel said, once the song had ended. “We hope you'll live with us for good.”

“Yes, I want to,” said Natasha, looking around at them all, feeling the strength and vivacity of this life compared with her life Inside. For a moment, Natasha forgot Raj and the others, she forgot Min-he. And as for Jeffrey—Jeffrey whose very presence had for years deceptively promised this heat, this feeling of love and belonging—Natasha spit him from her thoughts. “Once we destroy the novas,” she said, “there won't be anything left for me in the settlement. I want to leave with you. I want to come home.”

They slept on the beach that night and, in fitful bursts, Natasha slept too. Tezo smoothed out a place for her beside him. He rolled up a blue tunic for them to use as a pillow. The sand dug into Natasha's hair. The dampness seeped through her clothes and through her flesh to chill her bones. The hard ground made her shoulder ache. Eventually this would be normal to her. One night soon it would seem the most usual thing in the world to sleep on a bed of earth, and then the strange thing would be beds and walls and ceilings and sheets. She looked at Tezo—his face ethereal and sweet in sleep—and imagined a future that might fulfill the wishes that, according to Axel, their two mothers had dreamt up long ago. Already, the settlement was receding from her. How far away it seemed, the long white hall of the Department of the Exterior; she never wished to see the Office of Mercy again. She understood now about the importance of living over all else, and the horror of ever stealing a life from the Earth and throwing it to the abyss. How could they? How could one human being do that to another? Like what Raj had said: The citizens of America-Five could build a body, they could build a person almost from scratch. But essentially, at the most basic level, they did not understand how life worked. They tinkered and pulled molecules apart and threw them together and thought their successes good enough to shove out the mystery, that embarrassing gulf of not-knowing that lay beneath their science. All of life was beautiful; all of life was mystery; to end it was the most horrible thing in the universe. Worse than suffering. Worse than pain.

She was awake when Axel came to her and said she should go back to the settlement. Raul stood beside him, his face drawn and tired; the rest of the Tribe lay sleeping. Natasha considered waking Tezo to say goodbye, but it was no matter, she would see him soon. She followed Axel and Raul, picking her way through the slumbering bodies.

“We'll walk with you through the forest,” Axel said, “to where the trees end. You might know your way around the Eyes, but we know the way around bears.”

They moved in silence through the woods and across the ridge. Natasha thought about the next full moon, when Axel and Raul would take this path again, that time with the nova. By their looks of consternation, Natasha guessed that their thoughts hovered around similar visions.