The Line (4 page)

When Vivian looked at that digim, her eyes would glow for a moment. That’s how Rachel thought of it—that they glowed. But the glow would soon fade, replaced by the sadness that Rachel was used to seeing. She was so used to that sadness she hadn’t realized that was what it was for the longest time. It had just always been there, a part of Vivian, like the tiny scar on her chin or the bump on her nose. Once, Rachel had found her mother holding that digim, crying. When Vivian realized she was watching, she had quickly dried her tears and smiled at Rachel. “It’s okay, honey,” she had said. “I still have you.”

Rachel tried hard to be enough. She rarely disobeyed Vivian, and she always did her chores around the guesthouse. She had even begun to learn to cook, so she could make dinner sometimes. Still, she didn’t think there was anything she could do to make the sadness in her mother’s eyes disappear. And though she only had stream shows to use as comparisons, she didn’t think that most mothers looked at their children as though they were afraid they were going to break. Still, Vivian didn’t
always
act sad. In fact, most of the time Rachel couldn’t imagine a better mother.

They were their own little family, with their own unique family history. Like the story of how they came to live on The Property. Retelling that story was one of their rituals; one of the things they did together, like some families retell “How I Met Your Father” stories.

“I was at my wits’ end,” Vivian would say, when she was feeling particularly safe and secure. Those were the times when she took a moment to relax. She usually only did that on holidays, her work for Ms. Moore temporarily done, the few holiday bonus creds she earned safely transferred to Rachel’s education account. She had time then to take a long, warm bath, or enjoy a glass of wine. Then she would snuggle into the old afghan on the couch, pat the spot next to her to invite Rachel to come snuggle too, and tell her the story about coming to The Property.

“I had no idea how we were going to eat the next day,” she would say, “let alone pay the rent, which was a week and a half overdue. I was so afraid, Rachel. It seemed like I had been desperate for so long, though it had been only a few days since I got the letter about your dad.”

Rachel had seen that letter too. It was in the portfolio along with the rest of the memories Vivian kept. It wasn’t a printout of a netcomm. It was a real letter, which looked very official, with the blue U.S. seal impressed into the paper. It still said her father was dead no matter how many times Rachel read it.

“What did you do, Mom?” Rachel didn’t need to ask; she knew the story by heart. But there was something about the ceremony of it, snuggling together on the couch, asking the same questions, hearing the same answers, that comforted her. She thought it comforted Vivian, too.

“I was looking in the Domestics section for jobs, since I didn’t really have any other skills.” Vivian ruffled Rachel’s hair. “When you go to college, we’re going to be sure you take more than art history classes. And that you get your degree
before
you fall in love with some man and marry him.” She laughed.

Rachel smiled, but she said nothing. She wasn’t going to fall in love. If love took the light from your eyes, the way it had from Vivian’s, Rachel wanted nothing to do with it.

“I thought I could clean and do shopping for someone. So the Domestics section it was. The ads all wanted someone to come in once a week, maybe twice a week, but that wouldn’t work for us. I had nobody to leave you with, and none of those jobs paid enough to cover a place of our own anyway. I was sure I would have to register for the general Labor Pool. We would have ended up in a community residence. Oh, Rachel. When I think of what could have happened! Then I saw Ms. Moore’s ad.”

This was the place in the story where Vivian always took out the printout, unfolding it and smoothing its wrinkled surface carefully. It looked like this:

“I was a bit nervous about the job being so far away from anything. I mean, we’re practically in the middle of nowhere,” said Vivian. “But once I actually saw the place, it looked perfect—way out here where nobody would bother us. I knew we would be safe here.”

Rachel thought she knew what her mom meant. It was good to be out in the country. Things weren’t so great anywhere in the U.S., but the cities were the worst, especially since the government passed the New Rights Bill.

The New Rights Bill was, according to Vivian, a travesty. Rachel agreed, since she had actually seen a copy of the old bill, the original one from before all the new amendments were added. Rachel didn’t know why Vivian had a copy; possessing one became a crime once the New Rights Bill went into effect. It was not kept in the portfolio. Too dangerous, according to Vivian, and she wouldn’t tell Rachel where she kept it. But she did show it to Rachel one evening during their lessons. She went over each line, explaining how the original bill protected the people and kept the government from doing anything too bad. She told Rachel how the government kept adding new amendments and how they finally scrapped the whole thing, replacing it with the New Rights Bill. Vivian always called it the
No Rights Bill
.

Now the government could do pretty much what they wanted, and sometimes what they wanted was not so nice. Rachel and Vivian were lucky, because living on The Property, they didn’t have to deal with most of the things that happened in the cities. Things like Identifications, or getting charged with a random tax and not having the creds to pay it. The government stopped collecting random taxes in rural areas when they stopped the road maintenance, but in the cities people were Identified all the time, hauled away for nonpayment or some other unexplained infraction, held until they came up with creds for the fine. If they couldn’t pay, they were sent to a Labor Pool.

Everyone was in the Identification System, of course; individual genids were recorded at birth, so if someone’s name was flagged in the system and the government wanted to Identify that person, they could, even out in the rural areas. But it probably cost more for Enforcement Officers to come out to places like The Property to claim someone than they could collect in fines. Mostly they didn’t bother.

 

 

THE GUESTHOUSE WAS small, but it was warm in the winter and the rent was part of Vivian’s salary. There was a tiny front room and an area off to one side of it that served as a kitchen. Vivian and Rachel shared the bedroom, and they had a little garden in the side yard where they raised their own vegetables. Vivian brought some things with her when they came, but not much. There was a woolly crocheted throw for the couch and an old-fashioned reading lamp, almost as old-fashioned as the stuff in Ms. Moore’s house. It had a real glass shade that was the same color as the daffodils that sprouted in the yard every spring. It sat on a little table next to the couch, where they read to each other at night, when Vivian wasn’t too tired. Sometimes Vivian ended up snoozing in front of the streamer. Rachel thought she worked too hard. She wished she could help in more ways than she did, but she wasn’t sure what else she could do.

Until she started in the greenhouse, the only work Rachel did besides her regular chores was to study for the tests Vivian gave her as a part of her homeschooling. After a brief experience at the Bensen Council School, Vivian decided Rachel would be better off learning what she could teach her at home. Rachel barely remembered attending the Bensen School, only flashes of too many people and lots of other kids and how mean the teacher looked. One of her first homework assignments was to write a paper outlining how the New Rights Bill benefited the citizens of the Unified States. When Vivian saw that she pulled Rachel out of school.

Vivian tried as hard as she could to get accurate information for Rachel to study, but it was difficult. She used library texts and printouts from streamer sites for lessons, but those were usually scrubbed pretty clean of the truth. She filled in information where she could, and she and Rachel had a lot of discussions about how the materials available were edited to show the government in a positive light.

“You can’t always believe what you’re told, Rachel,” she would say. “Whenever you watch streamer coverage about some issue, remember who controls the media.”

Rachel wondered how Vivian thought she could forget, the way she repeated that over and over. Sometimes Rachel would stare straight ahead and in the most robotic voice she could come up with she would chant, “The government controls the media, the government controls the media,” until she couldn’t help but laugh. Most of the time, Vivian laughed too. But she
always
said, “Remember that.”

Vivian wanted Rachel to attend a private college when the time came, one that didn’t teach what she called “the party line.” But she also told Rachel that with their lack of connections,
any
college would do. If Rachel could get into a college, she could register for a Profession, and that was all that really mattered to Vivian. Rachel didn’t see where she had much choice; the alternatives to a Profession were pretty grim. Vivian made her study the political and social systems in the Unified States as a part of her home lessons, so she knew what the options were.

There were limited choices for people in the Unified States: a Profession, Private Enterprise, Gainful Employment, or the Labor Pools. People in the Professions—doctors, attorneys, engineers and other highly skilled occupations—had to pay high taxes, but they were insulated from the worst of the governmental intrusions and lived comfortable lives as long as they conformed to the rules. Her father had been registered in a Profession as an architect. She thought that might be as interesting as anything.

Private Enterprise, which was what Ms. Moore did in her orchid business, was more and more difficult to succeed at because of all the tariffs and regulations the government enforced. People who couldn’t afford college made a go of Private Enterprise if they could, because the only other choice was Gainful Employment, which was precarious. If a person lost their job, they had a limited time to get another one. If they couldn’t find one fast, they were sent to the Labor Pools. That had been Vivian’s greatest fear before she found Gainful Employment with Ms. Moore. The Labor Pools were not where anyone wanted to find themselves.

People also ended up in a Pool because they couldn’t come up with the creds to cover a random tax, or sometimes because the government wanted them to disappear, though those people usually disappeared in a more permanent way, if the rumors were accurate.

Poolers lived in “community residences,” a fancy term for barracks, and worked for room and board. The one perk they had was that they were given generous reproduction licenses, because their children were basically a renewable government resource. Pooler kids were registered into Labor Pools on the day they were born, trained from toddlers to become grid maintenance workers, or highway or computer techs; whatever the projections showed there would be need for in the coming decades.

Vivian swore that Rachel wouldn’t end up in a Labor Pool no matter what, and college was the only sure way to prevent that from happening. Vivian saved every cred she could toward tuition, and she put together pretty tough course work for Rachel to master in the meantime. Rachel got so tired of the lessons sometimes.

Still, she knew Vivian was doing it for her own good. She also knew that it all had something to do with her mother’s fears, with the idea that if anything happened to Rachel, life would not be worth living. So Rachel did her best to apply herself to her schoolwork. She didn’t want to add to Vivian’s sadness. And to be truthful, the idea of ending up in a Labor Pool was frightening. She didn’t know much about them; just the way her mother said the words was scary enough.

O
H, RACHEL,” VIVIAN said. “Not again.” She had just come from the main house, finished with work and ready to review Rachel’s homework before dinner.

Rachel looked up guiltily from where she sat in front of the streamer. She had been reading another article about Away. “What?”

“You know very well what, young lady.” Vivian shook her head. “If you think I don’t know what your reading habits are when I’m not looking, think again.” Vivian crossed the room and glanced at the streamer screen. “More nonsense about Away, I see.” She flicked off the streamer.

Rachel said nothing. She knew better than to protest.

“I think before dinner, it’s quiz time,” Vivian said.

“But I’ve got dinner all ready to go,” Rachel said, hoping Vivian would let her off easy. She
hated
quizzes. “It just needs a few minutes to warm up and we can eat.”

“That was so
thoughtful
of you, dear. We can use that few minutes for our quiz.” Vivian tilted her head at Rachel. “Hmm. Since you’re so fascinated by Away, let’s review how it actually came to be. Starting from the Deactivation Acts and the Global Weapons Accord.”

Rachel groaned. So much for getting off easy. “Mom, those were
way
before Away. The National Border Defense System wasn’t even built yet.”

Vivian just looked at her. “What were they designed to do?”

Rachel hung her head. “They were designed to limit the destruction of war. Wars were becoming too damaging. The weapons used had the potential to destroy the earth. Certain types of weapons were prohibited.”

“Were the limitations effective?”

“Well, that depends on what you mean by effective. We probably won’t destroy the planet, but we still have wars.” Rachel shrugged.