The Enclave (4 page)
Terra’s stool scraped as she stood. While she walked down to the cold room to pour her milk into the collection can, Zowan sought to express the appropriate words of shock and disgust for Andros’s affront. He knew the hidden Watchers would frown upon him for saying nothing; nevertheless, he could not force the words past his throat, so instead, he busied himself with milking Miss Malpi dry. Then he stood and slid out of the narrow space between the stanchions to carry his own pail down to the cold room, which stood at the far corner of the narrow chamber in which they milked the goats. The roughhewn, cement-plastered ceiling hung but a foot above Zowan’s head, and two rows of wooden stanchions stood end to end with a narrow walkway between them, six on one side, three on the other. A bundle of cables and pipes ran along the top of the wall just under the ceiling, bringing power and water to the cold room.
The cold room had a raised concrete platform for a floor, so when he stepped up through the doorway, he had to duck his head. Inside, the fifty-gallon cold can stood to his left, adjoined by a narrow counter and cabinets that ran around two and a half sides of the small, dim-lit room. The odor of disinfectant tickled his nose.
Terra stood at the double ceramsteel sink in the middle of the counter across from the doorway, washing her bucket in the soapy water of the left sink. She was a slim girl, her curves lost in the baggy green cotton tunic she wore over white cotton pants—the regulation uniform, with minor color variations, for all members of the Enclave. But even the baggy clothes could not diminish her beauty. Her red-brown hair fell in twin braids to her hips, and her heart-shaped face held a sweetness that belied her quick, strong mind.
He dumped his pail of milk into the fifty-gallon refrigerated ceram–steel collection can, careful to keep his distance from her—not easy in a chamber that barely accommodated one person. She helped by stepping to the right as she rinsed her bucket in the empty sink. Being only half an arm’s length away from her, he felt her nearness with a keenness that made him realize belatedly that they probably shouldn’t even be alone in the milking room together, much less this tiny cold room.
“I can’t believe he would do such a thing,” Terra said woodenly, shaking the last drops of water from her rinsed pail, then setting it upside down on the counter beside the others. “How could he be so ungrateful? So unthinking?” Her tone was so insincere, Zowan cringed. But she kept on, tension creeping into her tone. “Here, Father gives him life and he can’t even offer simple thanks?”
Zowan said nothing. Better to keep silent. As she stepped away from the sink toward the door, he moved into the space she’ d left and plunged his own pail into the sink of soapy water.
“He deserves the Cube, of course,” she said from the doorway. “Which is surely what he’ll get.”
Zowan shuddered as he pushed the lever to turn on the water and rinsed his pail.
“Zowan?” She’ d hesitated in the doorway, looking back at him, her tone one of question and of warning.
“Of course,” he agreed. “Of course he does.” But he sounded no more convincing than she had. He set his pail on the counter beside hers and turned to follow her through the narrow doorway back into the milking room. Like many of the outlying sections of the subterranean enclave in which they all lived, its walls were concrete-sealed, roughhewn stone. Two long tubes had been bored into the ceiling rock, equidistant from each other and topped with sky prisms at the upper ends, through which the sun’s light was magnified and channeled. To his right, an opening led into the paddock chamber, where the goats were kept in one of two paddocks. To his left, beyond the rows of milking stanchions, another doorway led down to the Enclave’s central complex of living and common areas.
Now he stood in the cold-room doorway as Terra unhooked her goat from the stanchion and led her to the near paddock. Once she was past, he stepped into the aisle himself and headed for Miss Malpi. Barely had he reached the goat’s stanchion when a bald, dark-robed figure burst from the far doorway and strode toward him. Two others followed in his wake: Enforcers.
Zowan let his hands fall to his side and straightened to face them.
He’ d done nothing wrong. Said nothing wrong. Had nothing to fear. All the same, his heart beat a tattoo against his breastbone, for he had recognized the leader at once.
The youngest of the three, Zowan’s brother Gaias was also the shortest and slightest. Girls had once called him handsome, his deep blue eyes with their long lashes and level brows a cause for much sighing and giggling. Now only the lashes remained above his eyes, the brows fallen out along with his thick blond hair shortly after his third eye had begun to develop. It was bad enough to see his brother bald, but Zowan’s stomach still roiled at the sight of the membrane-covered bulge gleaming in his forehead. The oculus itself was a dark indigo, its color softened by the milky translucence of its covering membrane.
He could not make himself look at it, could hardly make himself meet his brother’s normal eyes. Not for the first time he wondered at the depth of his revulsion, for he’ d lived with Enforcers most of his life. He’ d attended his brother’s induction ceremony, watching as he’ d received the Breath of the Father that would ignite the yearlong development of the oculus and give him the second sight that all Enforcers had. He’ d even joined in the congratulations and subsequent festivities. But it was still hard to see the reality of what had been done to him. For he and Gaias had grown up like two peas in a pod, close enough in personality and looks that people routinely confused them.
Now Zowan hardly knew him.
Gaias frowned. “What are you doing here, Zowan? Why have you missed the morning service and the Affirmation?”
“Oh!” Terra cried, a hand stealing to her lips. She gazed at Gaias wide-eyed. It must not have occurred to her until then that in sending the others while he himself did all the work, Zowan would not only have missed breakfast and the mandatory morning service, he’ d not have said the Affirmation, either.
“I had to treat several of the goats for bag fever,” Zowan explained calmly.
Gaias stared at him hard, and belatedly Zowan remembered the honorific, “Sir.”
His brother’s intense gaze eased. “You could not organize your time better?”
“I only discovered it this morning.”
“And you did not feel you could wait to treat it until after?”
Zowan lifted his chin and refused to let that gleaming monstrous eye rattle him. “No, sir, I did not.”
“Our workload was tripled this morning,” Terra said. “He let the others go so they wouldn’t miss and took the whole shift himself.”
Zowan swallowed the words of admonition that rose to his lips, wishing she would stay out of it. Couldn’t she see that Gaias was suspicious enough already? Couldn’t she see the jealousy that had lately begun to flare in his eyes when she seemed to prefer Zowan over him and how much it goaded him that she had leaped to Zowan’s defense? Didn’t she realize how much power he had over her? As an Enforcer, Gaias could ask the Father for a union with her as soon as she came of age next month, and would most likely get her.
Gaias’s hairless brow drew into a scowl. “I am an Enforcer of the Father’s justice, girl. You will address me as ‘Commander’ or ‘Sir.’ ”
And now Terra’s own eyes flashed. It hadn’t been so long ago they’d been playmates. Still she released a breath and submitted. “Of course. Sir.”
His blue eyes narrowed. “He let the others go, but not you?”
“He sent me, too. I came back after service to help him finish.”
“Came back when no one else is around, I note.”
She blinked at him. Then a tide of red flooded her face and she averted her gaze.
Gaias looked down at her coldly. “How long have you been in the goat barn, Terra? Two cycles now?” He didn’t wait for her to confirm the statement. “I think it is time you moved on. I hear the crèche has need of workers.”
She almost protested, then swallowed the words and held her head high, straining not to look at Zowan as Gaias turned to him again.
“Your friend Andros required separation and reproof today. I suppose she told you.”
“She did.”
“He failed to say the Affirmation.”
Zowan said nothing.
“When we called him on it, he fell into a pique, spilling all manner of blasphemy. It was despicable.”
“I’m sure it was.” Zowan focused on the cement-covered stone beyond Gaias’s shoulder, trying not to see the eye, even as it filled his awareness. The oculus heightened an Enforcer’s sensitivity to sound, vibration, emotion, tone, breathing rate, and other cues that enabled him to discern when someone was lying. And while Zowan wasn’t lying, it had to be clear to Gaias that he did not share his outrage over Andros’s “blasphemy.”
“I find it difficult to believe you had no inkling of his sentiments,” said Gaias. “Close as the two of you are.” Again bitterness sharpened his tone. Gaias was jealous of Andros, too, for having replaced him in Zowan’s affections when Gaias had become an Enforcer.
Zowan set his jaw. “I had an inkling.”
“He spoke to you, then.”
Zowan shrugged. “I thought it temporary madness. I cautioned him against pursuing such contemplation.”
“Did you?” Gaias stared at him intently, third eye shimmering at the edge of Zowan’s field of vision. No one spoke. Miss Malpi stomped her feet and bleated once, impatient to be off the stanchion and back with the other goats. Gaias drew a breath and released it as if reaching a decision. “You failed to say the Affirmation this morning, as well, brother.”
Zowan met his gaze with a slight smile. “How do you know, sir? Perhaps I said it to the goats.”
Gaias’s chin jerked up. “You are impertinent. You will come to the Sanctuary and say it now. I will watch to see that it is done properly.”
Zowan’s anger flared, pressing the bounds of his control, urging words of impropriety. He forced it down and finally glanced at Terra watching them wide-eyed from the paddock gateway. “See Miss Malpi back to the pen, all right?”
She nodded, and Zowan turned away from her, brushing Gaias as he strode past him toward the doorway and the corridor that led down to the Enclave’s central complex. Gaias followed closely, his two Enforcer companions taking up the rear.
The harsh bleat of Lacey’s alarm jarred her from a deep sleep. Groaning, she reached above her headboard to the dresser top, fumbled the alarm off, and brought it down to eye level. A green 7:30 glowed back at her.
It took a moment to register. Then, muttering a word Dr. Swain would find highly inappropriate—he was a fierce defender of civil conversation—she flung off the blankets and lurched up. Pain shot across her back, and stars dazzled her vision. She fell back onto the pillow, memory returning in a rush—her struggle with the stranger in Poe’s lab and subsequent fall into the shelving, Assistant Director Slattery and Dr. Poe coming to her aid, and Cameron Reinhardt carrying her to the prep room, where he doctored the long, bloody glass cut she’ d sustained with a row of butterfly bandages. Slattery had sent her off to the clinic for stitches and an examination—even made her ride there on a gurney.
Except . . .
She lifted her left arm, which had no bandage on it and no stitches, either. Just a fine white scar running across the delicate skin of her inner arm halfway from her elbow to her wrist. She stared at it, ran the fingers of her right hand along it, lightly at first, then with more pressure. It was slightly tender to the touch, pinkish along the edges, but obviously an old wound, not something she’ d sustained mere hours ago.
She let both arms drop to her sides as a wave of disorientation swept through her.
Surely I didn’t dream it all?
She clearly remembered arriving at the clinic, but after that things got fuzzy. Had she stayed there longer than she thought? She picked up her clock from where she’ d dropped it on the bed and pressed the Mode button for the date:
Friday, June 6
. A mere seven and a half hours since she’d been cut. And on her desk stood an orange plastic pill bottle of some prescription medication, indicating she
had
been to the clinic. . . .
But how could this have healed so fast?
Her fingers trailed lightly along the scar again, and then it hit her: she worked in a place that was cutting edge when it came to research into tissue growth and gene therapy. Just last week she’d read the abstract of a paper describing a process of accelerated wound repair on rats. The rats’ wounds had been burns, not cuts, and the acceleration had occurred over days rather than hours, but as Director Swain always said, the field was rife with competition. No doubt Kendall-Jakes had come up with a process of accelerated wound repair that applied to cuts and the clinic staff had used it on her arm. One of the perks of working at the Institute. “It’s about time,” she muttered.
She sat up more slowly this time, taking shallow breaths against the pain and dizziness. Eventually the small room stopped spinning. She sat in a stupor, watching as its pale undecorated walls grew increasingly bright from the fluorescent “sunlight” pouring through the mini blinds at the false window in the back wall—false because the room was underground, one level below the animal facility where she’ d been working. Her roommate’s twin bed stood along that wall under the “window,” running perpendicular to Lacey’s. It was tidily made, a stuffed dinosaur and pelican resting jauntily against the pillow. Slowly it dawned on her that Jade had already left for breakfast, which had started at 7:30.
Why didn’t she wake me?
The hurt and dismay of being ignored and excluded yet again swamped her for a moment. Sometimes her need for a true friend, for someone to see and appreciate her for herself, was so great she thought it would crush her. Yet there was always a barrier: age, social status, interests, personality, job. . . . She never had the right combination to fit in, to find approval . . . or even to be noticed.
She’d thought that coming to Kendall-Jakes, living and working among fellow scientists—the best and the brightest and the most dedicated in the world—would change that, but it hadn’t. Already she was seeing the same old social-pecking-order politics, the gossip, the backstabbing, the sucking up, the ever-present competition. After three weeks, Jade was still no more than a casual acquaintance—one Lacey wasn’t even sure she liked—and the others were even more distant. Nothing was turning out as she’ d hoped, and she was beginning to think she was doomed by her own inadequacies to be alone and friendless for the rest of her life.