The Sowing (8 page)

“Linnea, I’m really sorry, but if I had any information, I wouldn’t be allowed to divulge it anyway.”

Suddenly she snaps out of her trance.

“Oh, well,” she says, and I can tell by her sultry voice that she’s back to normal. “Don’t worry about it, darling.” She reaches out her other hand and quite needlessly brushes my hair out of my face, now smiling at me with an expression that might seem tender if it weren’t quite so possessive. “So dinner is out, but how about later? One of my friends is hosting a get-together tonight. Why don’t you come with me? You know what they say about all work and no play….” I think about it for a few seconds, wondering what it would be like to fall in with Linnea. But something about her is just too calculating, and I can almost hear Jeremiah and Moriana reproaching me:
You went out with her, Vale? What the fuck is wrong with you?

“No, thanks. Going out at night is difficult when you have to wake up to face General Aulion at 06h00 in the morning. But I appreciate it. Maybe another time?” I have to be nice to her, if only for my mother’s sake.

Anger flashes in her eyes like a lightning strike, and I resist the temptation to duck. But then it passes, and she smiles. “Sure, whenever you want. Until next time, darling,” she says, and turns on her heel and walks out the door. Demeter clicks it shut behind her, activating the lock again.

I lean back in my chair and begin to replay everything that just happened. Now I can’t stop thinking about Elijah. Why was Linnea asking questions about him? Why were she and my mother talking about him, when my mother knows perfectly well he’s a member of the Resistance? What was up with Linnea’s strange behavior, and why—aside from matchmaking purposes—is my mother giving Linnea inside information?

“Time to start digging, Demeter. Bring up all the information we have on the whereabouts of Elijah Tawfiq. Let’s find out why Linnea is so interested in him.”

7 - REMY

Fall 67, Sector Annum 105, 16h04
Gregorian Calendar: November 26

I stare aimlessly at one of the chromosomes Eli downloaded onto my plasma. I use my fingers to twirl it around and zoom in and out at random, keying in on various “genes” on the strange sunflower chromosome. I’ve looked at it from every possible angle, and it still doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. Just a big string of molecules.

It’s been a few weeks since Eli’s big reveal. Soren, Kenzie, Jahnu, and I have spent every free moment peering at the chromosome structure on my tablet, examining the base pair sequences on Eli’s computer, or browsing through every document on cryptography we can get our hands on. And after all our work, we’re all just as stumped as he was. No one has the slightest clue what the DNA codes for, or even how to begin to decode it.

We’ve been ducking out of our other duties as often and as early as possible. We’ve co-opted a little backroom by the giant water filter, which makes an enormous racket and serves as a deterrent for anyone who might want to come poking around. For the time being, we’d like to keep this a secret. After all, it’s entirely possible this information has already resulted in the deaths of a classroom full of students. 

“Some genius. Why couldn’t whoever created this have left us some sort of clue as to how to crack the damn thing?” I mutter while spinning one of the chromosomes aimlessly on the plasma. I’ve been especially bitter the last few days—everyone else in our group is either a science whiz or a master computer programmer. They all speak math and physics and can babble on endlessly about formulas, vectors, and compiling programs—subjects about which I am woefully ignorant. I’m the lone artist of the group, and my skills are notoriously useless when attempting to analyze DNA. So I’ve mostly been playing with my plasma and staring over someone else’s shoulder as they work. I even did a pen and ink sketch of one of the chromosomes. Not that it helped. But it looks good.

“Maybe he didn’t want anyone to figure it out,” Jahnu replies. He sounds just as depressed as I am. As a mathematician, Jahnu’s specialty is in puzzles and patterns. He helps the comm team encrypt messages sent between bases, so Eli was especially hopeful he’d have some insight to offer on the project. Obviously that hasn’t panned out quite the way he’d hoped.

“Well, that’s stupid. Why would he go through all the trouble of coding it in the first place and then putting the DNA in the cell nuclei or whatever if he didn’t want anyone to get to it? And, how do you know it was a he?”

Jahnu stands and stretches. “I’m gonna go find Kenzie. She should be off of KP by now.”

“Gonna spend some special time with your new girlfriend before you head in to work, huh?” The one bright spot on this whole extravaganza has been Kenzie and Jahnu. The two of them are just over the moon about each other, and while I’m sure it’ll pass and they’ll get back to normal eventually, right now they’re preoccupied with being as annoyingly adorable as possible. They walk hand-in-hand all through the tunnels, he puts his arm around her when they’re in the mess hall, and I accidentally walked in on them in various stages of undress two nights ago.

“So what if I am?” he shoots back at me. His skin is too dark to see a blush, but I have no doubt his cheeks are flushing.

“So nothing!” As sulky as I’ve been recently, his happiness is infectious. I shove him playfully as he walks by me on the way out the door. “Make good choices!” I yell after him. He swears at me and slams the door.

I go back to spinning the model on my plasma. I don’t begrudge Jahnu and Kenzie their happiness. It’s just that it reminds me of the last time I felt that way. I rub my temples, trying to erase Vale’s face from the images behind my eyes. Maybe it’s just how little sleep I’m getting, but since we watched the graduation ceremony, I can’t get him out of my head. Every time I close my eyes, he’s waiting in the black.

When we were friends at the Academy, even before he kissed me, I always sort of liked him. He was two years older than me, in between me and Tai, and he was a good friend of Moriana Nair, Jahnu’s cousin, so we all ended up spending a lot of time together, especially after Tai and Eli started dating. He was modest and polite, even though he was the son of the chancellor and a prominent OAC researcher. There were a lot of other kids at the Academy who had something to prove, and they were pretentious and spiteful. But never Vale. Never to me, at least.

But then Tai was killed. I’ve only spoken to him once since the day she died, and that was just the day after. I was still in shock, and I was a wreck—a limp, wet puddle of tears, and he held me and told me he was there for me and to just call him if I wanted to talk. I clung to him, crying into his shirt, and he just held me tighter. Then Eli told us what the killer had said about Madam Orleán, and that he thought she had something to do with the attack, and everything Vale had ever said or done started to seem insincere, like it had all just been an act to get us to like him. Suddenly, I hated him. As far as I was concerned, he might as well have been the murderer himself. About a month later, he came over to ask why I hadn’t spoken to him since then and why I hadn’t been in school. He brought me flowers. I took the flowers and slammed the door in his face. Two months later, my family left.

And now his face lurks behind my eyes, waiting for darkness so he can pounce. He taunts me with his successes, his luxuries and the glamorous life he lives, while my friends and I suffocate underground and drink recycled pee. I can’t get him out of my head.

I toss my tablet on the nearest table in a moment of frustration and stand up. I’m getting out of here. This cramped little office is making me sick. Where are Eli and Soren, anyway? They were supposed to be in here by now.

I head out and wander through our dimly lit tunnels, ducking under electrical wires and metal pipes. Electricity is scarce down here. We can’t afford to have bright lights posted everywhere, so mostly we light our working quarters, the mess hall, and the kitchen. Even those cut out sometimes if someone’s using a high-powered piece of equipment.

I make it to the mess hall, where an unfamiliar but delicious smell is wafting from the kitchen. I see Soren loading up a tray, and I head in to join him.

“Hey! You’re supposed to be working on the you-know-what with me. It’s not even dinnertime.”

Soren and I have been making a conscious effort to be nicer to each other since we started working on Eli’s project. Mostly, this amounts to us saying the same things to each other in a slightly nicer tone of voice.

“Dinnertime isn’t dictated by the hours of the day, Remy. It’s dinner whenever I’m hungry.” He doesn’t even look at me as he responds—he just keeps adding to his plate. I’m about to spit out a really snarky remark when I look down and see the sign.

“
Venison?
Where’d Rhinehouse get deer meat? Who went hunting, and how far did they have to go to find deer?”

“Who cares? There’s so much meat, he’s lifted the ration limit for this meal.” Soren finishes preparing his tray, grabs a fork, and smiles down at me. “You’re welcome to join in.”

Joining Soren for dinner doesn’t sound like the most appealing thought, but we rarely get to eat meat, and the smell of roasting venison has me suddenly starving.

Rhinehouse keeps a small flock of goats and sheep aboveground, which supply milk. In the last year, he’s even started making cheese, a delicacy I hadn’t enjoyed since I left Okaria. But he won’t entertain the thought of slaughtering them for meat. Sometimes, though, someone on base will get bored with our standard exercise routines and request permission to go hunting. Jahnu and I have never done it, but Eli, Soren, and Kenzie have all gone. Eli’s even shown me how to hold and fire the hunting bows they use.

I grab a plate and start loading up. Sliced apples and pears, roasted venison, and goat cheese. This would have been a pauper’s meal back home in the Sector, but here, it’s a feast. On the other hand, Rhinehouse is a stellar cook—and, apparently, a master butcher and forager. He’s got a whole map of fruit trees and berry bushes around the base, and in the mornings, he sends people out to harvest. The food may not be bountiful, but it is delicious.

When I turn back to the general mess area to look for Soren, I can’t find him. I peer around suspiciously, wondering if he’s pulled a trick on me. Just then, I hear Rhinehouse’s gruff bark from inside the kitchen, and I glance in to see what he’s yelling about now.

“One more game, Eli, and then I’m cutting you off. This is ridiculous. You’re playing like a child.”

Eli and Rhinehouse are sitting across from each other at a small table, with a chess board between them. Soren’s pulled up a chair next to them and is munching on his venison, watching the game stoically. Rhinehouse, grimacing, slaps a pawn on an improbable square. The entire board jumps, as does Eli, who looks like a cowed puppy.

“Hey, Remy,” Soren calls. “Sorry, I got distracted watching Eli get his ass kicked. Want to pull up a chair?”

Not particularly,
I think, but at this point I don’t have much of a choice. I set my plate down and drag a chair over to the table so I’m sitting opposite Soren. Rhinehouse glances over me with his good eye and gives me a look that says pretty clearly that I’m to keep my mouth shut.

Oh boy.

I start shoving venison into my face while Eli and Rhinehouse set the board up again. The first ten moves go by in a blur.

As far as I can tell, the kitchen is Rhinehouse’s unofficial living quarters. For all intents and purposes, if he’s not in the kitchen or up aboveground with his flock, he doesn’t exist—none of us has ever seen him outside of those two spots. Eli’s even theorized he may have an alternate dimension all to himself where he hangs out when his onion soup isn’t at risk of being botched by some incompetent underling.

“Rhinehouse…” Eli starts, tentatively holding his knight above a square. His brown eyes flicker across the board, double-checking his move. Rhinehouse leans forward, elbows on his knees, his one eye surveying the board.

“Yes?” he snaps, without looking up.

“I’ve got a question for you.” Eli plants the knight on the board.

“What is it?” Rhinehouse captures one of Eli’s pawns with his bishop.

“Do you know,” Eli takes a pawn in return, “anything about DNA-based data storage?”

“Of course I do.”

I stare at Eli. What’s he doing? Soren and I exchange glances across the board, but Soren doesn’t look nearly as anxious as I feel.

“Is there a standard formula for decoding base pair sequences?”

Rhinehouse finally looks up at him, but only for a half second before ducking back into the game. He takes Eli’s errant knight.

“What kind of question is that?” he barks. “The technology had only just been theorized when I was working at the OAC. Of course there’s no standard formula. As far as I know, no one had even bothered to try coding anything but organic genetic material into DNA.”

My heart sinks. What if the DNA we’ve been working on is just a random pattern, a mistaken genome sequenced and inserted into a bunch of dead cells?

Eli captures one of Rhinehouse’s bishops and declares: “Check.”

No one moves. Soren seems to have stopped breathing, and his fork hovers over the half-eaten food on his plate. Rhinehouse leans back in his chair and eyes Elijah beadily.

“Why do you ask?” he demands, moving a pawn to defend his king.

“No reason,” Eli says casually.

“Like hell,” Rhinehouse spits back. “What did you find, Elijah?”

“Nothing … much.” Eli castles. His expression is cool as a cat. I fight the urge to grin mightily, as I know that will only add fuel to Rhinehouse’s grump.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Eli says, looking up from the board and staring at Rhinehouse. “If you win this game, I’ll take care of your flock for a month. If I win, though, I’ll tell you about the DNA—but you’re sworn to secrecy. You can’t tell anyone about it. Not a word. Not even the Director.”

Now I see what he’s up to. Eli is betting that Rhinehouse’s scientific curiosity will get the better of him. That once he knows what we’re working on, he’ll want to help us crack the code. He’s also betting that Rhinehouse is a man of his word, which is the part that worries me. I don’t know the old man well enough to know whether or not he’ll keep his promise. I look at Soren across the board, hoping for some reassurance, but his eyes are fixed on Rhinehouse.