The Line (12 page)

“Indigo is my grandfather.” Pathik spoke so quietly that Rachel had to lean toward him to hear. “He sent me here to get help. My father is sick. Indigo has been caring for him, but he can do no more. My father may be . . .” Pathik’s voice broke. “He may be dying. Others have died from this sickness.”

Rachel frowned. “If your father is that sick, why haven’t you taken him to a doctor? I mean, have you? Is Indigo a doctor? Why—”

“We have no doctors.” Pathik looked angry. “You say you don’t have much time, right? So why don’t you listen instead of talking.”

Rachel’s retort was in her throat, but she let it die there. “I’m listening,” she said.

Pathik looked down for a moment. Rachel thought she saw the shimmer of tears before he ducked his head, but when he looked back up, his eyes were dry.

“Indigo says Father needs medicine that we don’t have. He called it Anti-biotics. He said to come here and try to get it.” The expression on his face was one of hope suppressed. Rachel recognized it right away. Later she would wonder why; there was nothing so desperate in her own life that his expression should seem so familiar, was there?

In the present moment what she felt was happiness. She was about to make a difference. She could help this boy, and no one could tell her to stop it.

“I can get antibiotics for you.” She beamed at Pathik. “I know where some are.”

Pathik sniffed the air.

“What is that?” Rachel felt irritated. She had just told the boy she could help him save his father and all he could do was sniff. “What are you doing when you do that?”

He looked at her for a long time before he answered. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. Rachel wondered if he was considering whether to kill her. She hoped she hadn’t been foolish to think of the Line as protection. She knew nothing about this boy.

She actually flinched when he finally replied, as though his words were a blow. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“I’m feeling,” he said, watching her face. “I can feel . . . emotion. If it’s strong, and if it’s close enough. I can sense if someone is happy or angry or even lying. People feel afraid when they’re lying, a certain kind of afraid.”

Rachel was impressed. It wasn’t as interesting as a cat the size of a sheep or someone shooting flames from their eyes, but it was something. Something Otherly.

“So do you think I’m lying? About getting the medicine?”

“I know you’re not.” Pathik smiled. He looked so different in that moment, not frightening at all. Rachel felt that vague pull again and unconsciously shifted backward.

“Well, then . . . Oh.” Rachel looked stricken. “Oh no.”

“What?” Pathik’s smile dimmed.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t matter if I can get the antibiotics. I can’t get them
to
you.” She pointed at the Line.

“I have that under control.” Pathik’s smile returned, full strength. He looked around, and for a moment Rachel thought he was going to start his sniffing again. Instead, he got up and walked a few feet along the Line, stopping at a large rock that was half buried in the ground. Rachel watched as he took a metal rod of some sort from his jacket pocket. It looked like part of an old, broken tool. It was flattened on one end, and Pathik used it to dig in the soil at the base of the rock. He dug fast, and in no time he had excavated a deep, narrow hole. From it, he withdrew a small, battered box, which he set on the ground with near reverence. He refilled the hole he had made, smoothed the dirt a bit, and returned with the box to where Rachel waited.

“This will disable the Line,” he said, sitting down near her again. He held the box out to Rachel so she could see its contents as he opened it. “A key.” He watched her face.

Rachel peered into the box, excited and nervous. What would the key look like? How would it work?

Her eyes must have given it away. She didn’t even have time to look up at him before Pathik had withdrawn the box to see for himself.

It was empty.

Pathik opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He dug his fingers around the inside of the box, held it upside down and shook it. Finally, he dropped it on the ground in front of him. His head sank down, as though he had no more energy left in his body. Rachel wondered how far he had come to find this. An empty box.

“No key,” she said.

Pathik raised his head then, his eyes blazing at her. “Just get the medicine. If you get the medicine, I will find a way.”

“I’ll get it.” Rachel was more than a little frightened of him at that moment, but she also felt awful for him. “I’ll get it. I’ll bring it tomorrow night.”

He exhaled, as though he had been holding his breath until she answered. He nodded, still looking into her eyes. “Thank you.”

V
IVIAN HUMMED SOFTLY to keep herself awake while she dusted the parlor, a tune she remembered Daniel whistling when they walked together on Sunday mornings. Before Rachel. Before . . . before a lot of things. “Our gamboling,” Daniel had called it. They never had a destination; they would set out from the apartment and walk where they pleased. They would usually end up at some café, sharing a pastry and laughing at nothing. Daniel’s eyes had crinkled at the corners when he laughed.

Something was going on with Rachel, something more than her being troubled by the revelations about her father. She had been out until very late last night, though Vivian knew that she hadn’t been far. Where was there to go, really, on The Property? Vivian had gone to bed after Rachel left to go check on her seedlings, but she was restless. When Rachel had still not returned after darkness fell, Vivian had finally roused herself and padded in her bare feet down the moon-lit path to the greenhouse. She saw no sign of Rachel at first, and she had begun to worry. Then she saw a minibeam light playing on the meadow beyond the greenhouse. She traced the path of the beam back to the greenhouse.

Rachel was sitting inside the potting room in the dark, holding the light. Vivian didn’t call out. She thought it might be best to let the poor girl think things through. Instead, she watched as Rachel clicked the minibeam on and off, wondering how she could help her daughter make some sense of things, now that she knew the truth of it. After a few moments she turned and headed back to bed. Hours later she heard Rachel come in, heard her slide carefully into the cot where she had slept since she was four. That was the year she had declared herself “too growed up” to share a bed with her mother. Vivian had been able to sleep then.

But this morning she was worried again. There had been something familiar about that moment in the moonlight last night, about the minibeam clicking on and off, on and off. Something Vivian didn’t like.

“Ms. Quillen.”

Vivian stifled a yawn as she turned to face Ms. Moore, who had entered the room.

“Ms. Moore. I was just finishing up in here.” Vivian smoothed her hair back, eyeing the strict perfection of Ms. Moore’s bun. “Did you have any special requests for the market today, ma’am? I was going to finalize the list for next week.”

Ms. Moore sat down in one of the chairs near the fireplace. She stroked the fabric on the chair arm for a moment. Then she looked up at Vivian. “You look tired this morning, Ms. Quillen. Come sit down for a moment.”

“Oh, I’m fine, Ms. Moore.” Vivian folded her dusting cloth in half, then in quarters. “I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep last night, but I’m fine.”

Ms. Moore smiled faintly. She pointed to the other chair near the fire. “Actually,” she said, “I wanted to speak with you. Briefly.” Her left eyebrow raised a half inch. “If you have the time?”

Vivian returned Ms. Moore’s look for a beat, then moved to the second chair, still clutching her dusting cloth. She sat on the edge of the chair. “Is there something wrong, Ms. Moore?”

“Oh, I should hope not,” said Ms. Moore mildly, watching Vivian’s face. “I should hope there is not.” She smoothed the arm of the chair again, petting it as though it were a cat. “I wonder, Ms. Quillen, if everything is all right with you? I wonder if there has been anything troubling you lately?”

Vivian’s chest tightened. She stared intently at her hands strangling the dusting cloth in her lap, willing them to relax around it. “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Ms. Moore,” she said, her voice cool. “Everything is fine.”

Silence rose up between the two women, drawing a lazy line from one pair of eyes to the other. The air seemed to grow still. Vivian held Ms. Moore’s gaze calmly, steeling herself inside. Then, before she could stop herself, she yawned. The dusting cloth fluttered in her hands as she tried, too late, to cover her mouth.

“That,” Ms. Moore said, politely looking away, “for instance. I don’t believe I have ever seen you look so tired, Ms. Quillen.”

“As I said Ms. . . . Ms. . . .” Another yawn struck, and Vivian had to wait for it to end before she could continue. “As I said, just a little trouble sleeping.”

“And something else.” Ms. Moore looked uncomfortable. “Something that was seen in town.”

Alarm flared scarlet in Vivian’s mind. She searched Ms. Moore’s eyes for some clue of what was coming. She knew better than to speak. She had been through collaborator training after all, and though it was years ago, she did remember a few things. One was
never add to the evidence
. She still remembered the trainer’s face; a young face in an old man, at least she had thought so at the time. In truth, he was probably no older than she was now. But at the time, he had seemed ancient to her. His hands had been weathered, much like Jonathan’s, and he got up from the sessions with difficulty, as though his joints were painful. It was rumored that his relatively youthful face was due to a backroom laser job years before; he had been “reconfigured” so the authorities couldn’t easily spot him. He was born before recording genids became routine at every birth, when changing your appearance might still save you. She remembered his warning during a training session. “If they are trying to dig your grave,” he had said, “you don’t grab a shovel and help. You sit still and you shut up.”

Vivian sat still. She met Ms. Moore’s eyes with an innocent expression. “What do you mean, Ms. Moore?”

Ms. Moore studied her, tilting her head slightly. At last, she spoke.

“Ms. Quillen.” Her voice was low, but severe. “I won’t dwell on details here, but a source informs me that you and Rachel behaved oddly during your last visit to Bensen. That you behaved in such a manner as to cast suspicion upon yourselves. That . . .”

“Suspicion of
what
, exactly, Ms. Moore?” Vivian’s face was almost as red as her hair. “And who, may I ask, is this source?” She stopped herself, taking a deep breath and unclenching her hands. She flattened the wrinkles in the crumpled dust cloth, ironing it with her fingers. Calmer, she began again. “Rachel and I went to Bensen to do the marketing as we always do. If shopping is suspicious, then I guess we were acting suspiciously.”

Ms. Moore remained silent, watching. Flustered, Vivian twisted the dust cloth into a tight wad, trying to restrain herself. Her fear got the better of her though, and she spoke. “After all the years I’ve worked for you, I cannot believe that some mean-spirited gossip from town could make you question me in this way . . .”

“Ms. Quillen!” Vivian was stunned into silence. Ms. Moore
never
raised her voice, and while her interjection could not be called a shout, it was certainly the closest thing to one Vivian had ever heard from her. She waited, afraid to hear what would come next.

Ms. Moore leaned toward Vivian. “Ms. Quillen,” she said, more quietly. “You
have
worked for me for a long time. And you have been a good employee, despite my initial misgivings about you. But there has been no trouble on The Property for many, many years, and I have no wish to see it return.” Ms. Moore shook her head. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the fireplace mantel. She stared at it for a long time, so long that Vivian looked too.

The trinkets she saw there were as they always were. The black stone candlesticks, cool to the touch and heavy. The glass box, the porcelain cat figurine, the framed digim. She had dusted and polished these objects so many times, they had become invisible to her in some sense, yet they had grown to represent something to her too—a feeling of familiarity, the sense that she belonged simply because she, like they, had been here so long. Looking at them now, frightened as she was, she felt as though she had never seen them before. They seemed foreign in some way, abstract.

“The source I received my information from is reliable.” Ms. Moore’s voice startled Vivian out of her reverie. “And I must question you in order to ensure that I am aware of any risk.” Ms. Moore scrutinized Vivian’s face, searching it for something. “When you came here, Ms. Quillen, so many years ago, as you say, you were in some sort of difficulty. I want to know if that difficulty has arisen again. From what I understand, there were Enforcement Officers in town, and you appeared to be quite reluctant to be noticed by them.”

Vivian knew better than to deny
everything
. She hoped she could minimize the damage by admitting to a lesser evil. “I was . . .” She bowed her head. “I was a bit reckless in my youth, Ms. Moore. I didn’t realize how serious things could get. My husband and I dabbled in certain . . . activities we shouldn’t have, because we were too young to know better. And once your name is associated with the collab . . . once you have a brush with the authorities, it’s hard to forget how harsh they can be. We were marked as troublemakers, and it made our lives very difficult for some time.” Vivian stopped for a moment. Her eyes had filled with tears, and she dabbed at them with the dust cloth.

“Ms. Moore, my husband died for this country. I don’t think you can ask for a show of loyalty more genuine than that. But I still remember how hard the authorities made it for us because of one mistake. When Rachel and I went to town, we did see an Identification. It made me feel nervous, that’s all. I wanted to get as far away from it as I could, as fast as I could. If someone saw us there, they may have misinterpreted my nervousness as some sort of guilt.” Vivian met Ms. Moore’s look candidly, hoping her explanation was believable.