The Line (16 page)

“No,” said Ms. Moore. “I think that will be all. Let me know if you think you’ll be late getting back. I know how unreliable the Maglev schedules can be.”

Jonathan didn’t reply. He just tipped his hat at Rachel and left.

Rachel and Ms. Moore watched him go.

“Well, that’s over,” said Ms. Moore.

“Do you think he had any suspicions?” Rachel wasn’t certain what she had interrupted, but it seemed like it had been a little tense. She’d never seen Jonathan in such a mood.

“I don’t know. I sometimes think I haven’t the first idea about what goes through Jonathan’s mind.” Ms. Moore peeked out the doorway. “He’s gone now. And we had better get busy.”

W
HILE VIVIAN WAS in Bensen meeting with Peter, Rachel stayed at the main house helping Ms. Moore. Her cast had been removed weeks earlier and her leg was almost back to normal, though she still used a cane when she felt tired. Rachel tried to make sure that Ms. Moore didn’t do too much. She rummaged through boxes in the cellar until she found the ones Ms. Moore told her they would need and hauled them upstairs to the parlor. She brought kalitea from the kitchen so Ms. Moore could drink it while she poked through the boxes.

“This will probably be useful,” Ms. Moore said, taking a small, battery-powered heater from one of the boxes. “And this will be important.” She added a square black object to a pile of items.

“What is it?” Rachel asked. She couldn’t figure out what most of the things in the pile were, though a few were recognizable. There was the heater. There were thermal blankets made of thin, highly engineered fabric, which could keep a person warm even in a blizzard. She knew about those from watching adventure shows on the streamer. There were tools, some minibeams, and various items of clothing.

“It’s a solar charger. A very old one.” Ms. Moore picked up the square object. “You open it like this.” She flipped a latch, and the square popped open like an old-fashioned book. “You just keep unfolding it until you have an array of panels. Then you can set it up wherever you are to catch the sun. It charges these.” She picked up a case from the pile and opened it to reveal ten batteries, each in its own compartment. “They work in all the things here—the heater, the tools, all of it.”

Rachel was impressed. “This is all for Pathik, right?”

“This and some other things.” Ms. Moore began to pack things in a duffel bag. “Indigo said that they were able to cobble together certain conveniences, but not much survived the initial blasts. I would imagine that most of what did survive wasn’t useful once the infrastructure was destroyed.” She saw Rachel’s puzzled expression. “Power, working plumbing, all those things we take for granted here. Did Pathik say much about the state of things?”

“We didn’t have time to say much.”

“I see.” Ms. Moore pointed to another box. “Could you hand me the folder on top there?”

“What’s this?” Rachel lifted a folder full of printouts from the box. A small blue book, bound with real cloth, fell from the folder.

Ms. Moore finished fitting the tool kit snugly into the duffel bag, wedging it next to the heater so that it was secure. She tugged at the drawstrings of the bag, testing them for weakness. “That,” she said, “is my own little research project, all about the Line. And that”—she nodded toward the little book—“is my great-grandfather’s diary. He was still living when they activated the National Border Defense System. He was a military man. Quite important, from what I understand. And his diary has some interesting tidbits from that time.”

Rachel wondered what the printouts said. “I still don’t understand how they got away with cutting off all those people. Didn’t anybody care? I mean, that was before they even had EOs. It seems like the people could have done something to stop it.”

“Well, the people didn’t really know
what
was happening, until after it had already happened. There were no public announcements, no warnings given to those who found themselves on the wrong side of the Line. The U.S. government claimed later that if they had attempted to warn people, any communication would have been intercepted by the Korusalian forces.” Ms. Moore shook her head. “My grandfather told me some of the stories. I shudder to think of what they went through. Imagine the father who got up that morning, the morning they activated the System, packed his overnight bag, and started the trip back home to Toron from his business trip in Ganivar.”

“Toron?” Rachel didn’t know where that was.

“Toron used to be a city in the U.S. Now it’s a part of Away.” Ms. Moore reached for the folder Rachel still held.

“Here,” she said, showing Rachel a printout of a map. It looked familiar to Rachel; she recognized it from geography lessons. It showed the U.S., Unifolle, and parts of some surrounding countries. There was a heavy blue line indicating the U.S. System. At the northwest corner of the U.S., the System jagged inland at a sharp angle, cutting across to the Unifolle border. That jag was the Line, though it wasn’t labeled as such. The land area to the north of the Line wasn’t labeled either, but Rachel knew it was Away.

“See?” Ms. Moore pointed to a spot in the area that was Away. “Toron used to be here. It would have been a short jaunt to Ganivar for a business trip.”

Rachel stared at the point on the map, trying to imagine a whole city that no longer existed.

“Think of that father,” said Ms. Moore, “trying to return home to Toron from his business trip. As far as he knows, all is well. But halfway home, there is a roadblock. The father is informed by a soldier that he cannot pass. His wife and daughter are waiting at home, the man says, but the soldier tells him no. He is given a number and told to report to a temporary shelter.

“That afternoon, when the father realizes, more swiftly than most I imagine, what has happened, he walks out of the shelter and slips past the sentries. He has decided he will walk all the way to Toron if he has to and fetch his wife and daughter to safety. He walks and walks, and then . . . the stories all ended the same way.”

“How?” Rachel was so caught up in the story that she whispered her question.

“He bounces.” Ms. Moore was gazing at the map in her hands, but Rachel didn’t think she was actually seeing it.

“Against the Line.”

Ms. Moore nodded. “You and I
know
what the Line is, Rachel—it’s been a part of our experience forever. But to that man, it must have been terrifying. He bounced against thin air, in the middle of a field he must have passed countless times on his trips home. Imagine what he experienced. Think of it. He walks into
nothing
, and is thrown backward. Before he has time to get up, there are soldiers surrounding him, but he manages to get past them once, perhaps twice. He throws himself against—the thing—whatever it is, trying different spots, trying to leap over it. By this time the soldiers have backed off, standing at ready with their guns, letting him wear himself out. Once he has, they carry him, sobbing, back to the shelter. He never sees his wife or his child again.” She blinked and looked at Rachel as though she had just realized there was someone else in the room.

“They probably died in the blast. There were many, many stories like that.”

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes.

“If I were that man, I would have protested,” Rachel said. “I would have done something! Why didn’t they do something once they knew?”

Ms. Moore smiled, a small, sad smile. “Oh, but they did, Rachel. At least they tried. Of course, when the System was first activated, in the few days before the Korusalians attacked, people were in shock. And the government issued statements about national security requirements and temporary sacrifices, assurances that the people trapped in the unprotected zones would be fine. But those who had someone on the other side of the Line weren’t mollified. Especially when the news broke that certain people, people of wealth or power,
had
been warned prior to the activation of the Line, so that they could gather their families together in safety. They charged the reporter that uncovered that information with treason and executed him.”

“Michaels,” said Rachel. “Wasn’t that his name?”

“Correct.” Ms. Moore looked impressed. “Your mom really is quite thorough with your lessons. Though I doubt she is able to get materials that go into much factual detail. There is only the official story anymore.”

Rachel nodded. “My mom always tells me the official story isn’t necessarily the true story.”

“She’s right.” Ms. Moore shuffled through some of the printouts in the folder. “There are reports in here . . . ah!” She pulled a few pages out and handed them to Rachel. “Reports from various military branches about the events right after they activated the System. All from my great-grandfather’s things. There are details in those that were never released to the public.”

“Like what?” Rachel flipped through the pages, but they were all in tiny, faded print. She wondered if she could keep them and read them later.

“Yes, it is rather dense stuff, isn’t it?” Ms. Moore reached for the papers, which Rachel reluctantly gave to her.

“I remember the high points from reading these so many times.” Ms. Moore carefully replaced the pages in the folder. “When they activated the System, riots broke out; mobs charged the border. After the Michaels execution, they declared a police state in the Unified States. People were jailed, and worse. That’s when the U.S. government commissioned the EOs and started giving them the sort of power they have now. Power to simply haul people off if they want, with no formal charge.”

“Is there stuff in there about Away?”

“There is some.” Ms. Moore sorted through more pages, but she didn’t take any out. “According to these reports, they were still in contact with the people on the other side of the Line immediately after the attack, through multiple frequency comms. But soon communications became less frequent; the hysterical calls for help died down, and there began to be fewer reports. The ones that did trickle in carried word of strange burns, of people dying after drinking water, of terrible chaos. Within days there was no answer to the comms the military put through.”

“Why didn’t they disarm the Line and go see what had happened?”

“The U.S. determined that radiation levels were unsafe outside the border and that no rescue efforts could be attempted. They issued a statement saying that as soon as scientists indicated that it was safe to proceed, they would begin relief efforts. Unifolle confirmed their findings. They claimed the U.S. had not informed them that people would be abandoned outside the System and promised they would begin their own emergency rescue efforts as soon as it was safe.

“Days passed, then weeks. All communication from the other side ceased, though they were sent multiple frequency comms every hour. The radiation levels decreased, but other contaminants were detected that the scientists could not identify. No one Crossed the Line. The people abandoned on the other side were left to suffer unknown horrors. The government did keep sending comms, but there was no answer.”

Rachel felt like crying. She kept imagining the wife of the businessman Ms. Moore had described. The wife and her little girl, left there, alone and scared. Images of Jolie and her little girl being Identified in Bensen, of the girl screaming and crying, mingled in her mind with those of the faceless woman and child left Away.

Ms. Moore picked the little clothbound book up off the floor where it had fallen. It was blue, with no marking on the cover. The edges were worn and soiled.

“This is my great-grandfather’s personal diary.” There was a marker in the book, and she opened it to that page.

“The government heard only once more from Away, about two months after the bomb was dropped. But they never made public what it was they heard. My great-grandfather copied it word for word in here. I think it frightened him.” She handed the book to Rachel. The marked entry was handwritten in a bold scrawl.

Rachel looked up with wide eyes. “The Others told the government to stay out?”

“Yes.” Ms. Moore reached for the diary. “Can you blame them?”

Rachel thought about how they must have felt when they realized what had been done to them, when they understood that their government had deserted them, discarded them. She thought of Pathik’s anger when he had said “We have no doctors.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t blame them at all.”

Rachel and Ms. Moore spent a few more hours going through boxes, finding things that might be useful to Pathik and the rest of the Others. Finally, Ms. Moore closed the last box and sat back on the sofa.

“Shall we take a break? We could have another cup of kalitea before your mother returns. The rest of the things I want to send won’t be here until tomorrow anyway.”

Ms. Moore had made a call to Dr. Beller earlier. Rachel had heard only one side of the conversation, but it was enough for her to deduce that Dr. Beller would be coming to The Property the next day to deliver quite a large assortment of drugs and medical supplies.

Rachel poured fresh kalitea for both of them.

“Does Dr. Beller know about Pathik?” Rachel wasn’t sure how much Ms. Moore had told him.

“Dr. Beller?” Ms. Moore frowned, uncertain why his name had come up. Then understanding flooded her face. “Ah, you were eavesdropping during my call this morning.” She waved away Rachel’s protest. “It’s all right. It’s as much your business as anybody’s.” She added some sugar to her kalitea. “Dr. Beller doesn’t know anything, except that he will receive double the creds his supplies are worth if he brings them tomorrow. I suppose even at that I should be grateful. He is taking a risk given how closely medical supplies are monitored, though he’ll cover his tracks by reporting them stolen.”