The Death of the Wave (3 page)

I was Breaker, but the fire was warm and I was near asleep.

It was only the low warning hum of a stunner gun that broke my trance.

I nearly missed the tall Breaker in the shadows, clothed in sleek black and watching me.

I studied him curiously with sinking apprehension.

He was not attempting to blend into Poet’s Camp.

My pitiful disguise, interrupted by a Bohemian scarf like a distress flag, did not throw him off.

My identity.

I remembered that smooth death’s head.

376.

Strange to see him back from the Hives.

He is defined by me, the shadow a solid figure casts.

He waited and he watched, his stunner prepped, and I knew that he would have informed

the Palaces without hesitation if I was lenient.

For he had nothing left to lose.

Sonnet said it best, that one may smile and smile, and yet still be a villain.

But all things and all smiles would stop altogether.

So I killed the man whose words were music.

I killed him in front of the fire.

Did you hear?

Horror stories in the midst of the season, the night before the CEE.

56859 told me of the outcomes of the last CEE.

He slept in the bunk across from mine.

Did I hear of the boy who got into the Palaces and found out he had family back in the Camps?

Did I hear that he threw his future away?

A few boys and a girl failed the test last time in our Hive and were taken in

for a retest for the entire district.

The scores of the failures were compared not by the Keepers, but a Breaker.

Governmental business.

Did I hear who survived?

A girl, a lower number than us, her family from the Perform Camps, she got the highest score.

The others were killed.

I pictured them in my mind, even though 56859 assured me they were taken outside,

that it was humane.

That the Keepers, the Breakers lie, that it is not spoken of—

I pictured a Breaker in his black uniform, setting his gun on the students at their desks.

But what of the girl that lived?

She was sent to below the poverty line, 56859 told me, to scrounge along the edges of society.

Her idiocy tattooed in bright ink.

I never knew shame to have a taste, but it tasted like metal as

I climbed the stairs of the capital Citadel.

My scarf had been discarded and my clothing stank of blood,

but the steps shone like pure marble.

I stumbled near the top and a hand grabbed mine,

blunt like wood, with dried blood under the fingernails.

Once before had he offered his hand to me when I had fallen,

but this time I did not pull away.

Breaker 376 nodded to me and helped me to my feet.

His head is narrow like a whippet dog and there is strength and serenity in his movements.

I did not like 376, but I respect him.

He is as honorable as a Breaker

as a traitor, could be,

and I saw why he had caught me.

An aristo stood in the sunlight.

He was tall, unnaturally tall and thin, even for an aristo, his thigh the width of 376’s arm.

The head was narrow and clever with a mouth like a slash in parchment.

All this might have passed for human but his hands.

His hands, stretched palms, with their long, delicate fingers were folded,

I was not to be touched with those peace-maker’s hands.

Newton.

The Voice of Eden and Human Services Assistant, back from the clock-tower.

The Voice of the State brushed my shoulder and those hands were cold as the marble.

They gave me a medal for killing one of my own.

I never knew that they watched me, that they attempted to win me by

this
futile
gesture.

He put a gold medal around my neck,

held up by a ribbon as blue as a primordial sea.

He proclaimed my innocence and he raised my pay.

Two instances more and my little brother would have gotten extra time on the CEE.

But why? Sonnet was not leader and Dante was dead.

Was it a diversion? A bribe?

To kill one of the last who remembered?

My soul was damned instead of ransomed,

For gold is worth much more than silver.

And as Newton touched my shoulder once more

I could see a streak of Sonnet’s blood dried to a powder dart across that cool white palm

and I trembled at the hang-man’s hands.

I stand outside in the curving line and resolutely search for the sun.

There are so many of us, stamping our feet against the cold.

What are these men? These faces?

They are different, but all share that look of quiet desperation.

We are packed so tightly our window of sky is between the heads of other men.

The Sickness

the Cull

has started.

The man in front of me is close.

His hair is falling out, and his eyes are shiny and blank.

He does not move,

and his shadow is weak on the snow.

What month, what year is it?

The air tastes of December and I hug myself in the cold like the other men and feel my bones.

A shout hovers on the air.

A skeletal man, his eyes blazing canned fire is pulled by Breakers and marched from the line.

The Cleaners in their pristine white uniforms and masks chatter in swift high voices.

They wait for the order to inspect from the black limousine

that pulls up to the Barracks every Cleaning, the Palace car with its tinted windows.

We have never looked inside.

What then, for the bartering of a life? An extra ration?

A plan drawn hastily with stick and ashes?

The man in front of me passes something down the line and presses it listlessly into my hand.

Words. Words. Words.

What is considered precious about words?

What power do they hold, to blaze white-hot trails across mind and soul?

If preciousness is considered in terms of rarity then what lunacy is it to treasure words?

Spewed in their thousands, by infants, knaves and madmen…what gamble is a life,

to clutch these words to my heart?

The order must have been given.

Cleaners move down the line, their strange bird-like masks with empty eyes swaying

with their leisured gait,

their sticks prodding and questioning.

Every so often, the sticks will gesture, and another Breaker will appear and lead

another dying man from the line.

At long last, the Cleaners have reached the end of the line and stand in quizzical silence

as the shots begin to ring out,

the characteristic pow of an old-fashioned hand-gun,

the finishing buzz of a stunner.

We wait patiently, shivering in the cold.

One, two, three shots.

Three more rations of bread.

With thoughts of the food in our heads we enter our separate kingdoms.

There is bread for us.

We eat in silence.

The old woman has cleaned my cell while the Cleaners cleaned the hearts of men,

the woman with the face that is covered and the tall back that is bent like a bow.

The letter burns with its metal clip close to my heart,

and I remember eyes like canned fire.

The aristo was killed in his cell by another prisoner.

One more shot and one more dead, one more dead, that means more bread.

I smile to stave off forgetting.

The night before the test seemed to last forever, the morning even longer.

I stood in the line with the other kids from the Hive.

56859 was in front of me and his face was white,

but as he saw me he winked as if he had a secret.

We sat in the cafeteria, amidst the hot steam and clatter of a thousand dishes.

An hour until exams.

The Head Keeper, the one who told the stories of Author, he smiled at us,

but the smile did not reach his eyes.

Breaker 376, with the narrow face and broad shoulders waited by the door to discourage escape.

He held a rifle in his hands but as we passed he met my eyes,

and his gaze was dark and steady.

We lined up to go back to our bunks and change in the hurried dark.

As I went to join the others who were ready for testing, 56859 ran up to me and pushed

a wrapped something into my hands.

“In case”,
he said, and I looked at him, a small dark figure scrubbed almost crimson,

his uniform mended with bright blue patches.

I told him he was clever, and that he was not to worry.

He told me I was silly, and ran off to join the line.

The medal jangled upon my chest as I made my way towards the Camps.

I stopped it with my hand.

My uniform had been cleaned and darned,

Sonnet’s blood had long been washed away and

the insignia shined, no longer hidden for a Poet’s benefit.

I glanced furtively around the corner, hoping not to spy a Watchman.

They are under the Breakers, they go where it is far too dangerous for Breakers to go.

Young and inexperienced, every Breaker pays their due as a Watchman.

Although they are young, they are full of adolescent zeal,

and their warning red uniforms are that hue for a reason.

Blood-proof and highly visible.

I saw one wandering aimlessly down the street in alarming red vinyl,

his dark hair gleaming under the street-lamps.

He was headed in the direction of the Perform Camps, and his thin face

in the washed-out moonlight was young, and had the frailty of a child.

I waited until I was certain I was out of his sight.

When I was certain, I removed the heavy medal and held it at arm’s length

and watched as it swayed and glinted insolently in my grip,

the bright copper tree of knowledge outstretching in all directions

and the delicate insignia gleaming over its graceful branches:

Knowledge of the Edicts Will Set You Free.

I put it away, folding it into my pocket, and

entered into Writer territory and the Poet’s outcropping.

An all-night pharmacy blinked bewilderedly into the night

with a line of stragglers still outside its dark doors.

It must have been the first of the month again, Citizens’ health care for free on the first.

Nutrition is poor for everyone here in Eden, especially in the Camps,

and supplementary Proto-pills are meant to address this problem.

The aristos told us that it was fair, but the life expectancy discrepancy

still exists between the Camps and the Palaces.

Some of the aristos seem to live forever.

I turned to the entrance of Poet’s Camp, when a dark mass blocked my way.

It was 376.

The big man looked uneasy.

His dark eyes were fixed firmly on mine, but his hands were

twisting and untwisting, reaching for his gun and then relaxing away.

His voice, ever familiar, was soft in the darkness.

“What are you doing here, 256?”
he questioned levelly, direct and serious.

“I am only doing my duty, 376,” I responded calmly.

“Why are you out of the Hives? Did Galileo tell you to watch over me?”

“That is irrelevant. Your shift is over.”

I raised my head.

He looked away.

“You should go,” I responded slowly,

and watched his implacable face,

the face that could not tell a lie,

as a tremor went through his frame.

He gazed at me again with troubled eyes.

“Go now,” I urged quietly. “I will not be followed—”

He fretted and whispered:
“I will not be forced.”

Something had shattered in the great man’s conscience,

and he shook his narrow head.

“You are not wearing your medal. I knew of your hesitation. You are sympathetic to the Camps—”

“As I should be,” I retorted, “we are from the Camps. Leave now, 376.”

He reached out for an instant, and rested his hand upon my shoulder—

the banality of evil but we still had trained together.

“If I know anything about any intention contrary to the State,”
he whispered,

“I will report it. I will not save you. I will do what must be done.”

And with that, he turned, and left me to my work.

Poet’s Camp was quiet, they must have been still mourning Sonnet.

So.

Who was I, through their eyes?

Now that I am nothing?

What is it to be a Breaker?

It is to police the boundaries between Camps and Palaces,

to administer the remake tests,

to guard the jails.

To be the guard dog of what passes for justice,

more the guardian of the aristocracy.

Their eyes focused accusingly on my uniform,

on the revealed insignia that had been covered before.

I took the medal from my pocket

and placed it at a girl-child’s feet and said:

“For you.”

I was, I am, not one of them.

The aristo that was killed is not a major figure in my memories,

but he is there with me in my thoughts of the Barracks.

Aristos, they are hard to miss.

He towered over the other men, and his strange elongated face had a self-absorbed look.

I never really gave him much thought.

Like all aristos he was elegant and imperious.

The striped Barrack uniform draped easily over his clothes-hanger frame

with a grace that was alien to us.

He was only notable in that he was the first aristo most of us saw up close.

Not me, however. I have seen enough aristos to last a lifetime.

I vaguely remember many of the other prisoners jostling him like children at the zoo, wanting to look at those strange eyes with their flat opal shine and to touch his freezing flesh.