Veracity (23 page)

Before I can say another thing, Mr. Mitchell claps his hands together. "Okay. Materials away, please! We're going to start
right now
!"

"Harper!" Lucille reaches out to me, as if I can physically save her. Scoop her up in my arms and carry her out of the school.

But Mr. Mitchell is already there, next to her desk. Shouting into her hair, "Miss Campbell!"

She startles. Turns quickly around. "Yes, sir?" She dips her head. Offers him her blushing scalp.

"Let's begin with an easy one. How many continents are there?"

Lucille shakes her head. I can feel the heat coming off of her from here. "I know the answer, Mr. Mitchell . . ."

"Then give it to me, please!"

Lucille swallows. "Seven?"

The Pandemic had taken out every other country and human on the planet. There were pictures on the national website showing a world now only partially blue and
green. Most of it had turned gray. Most of the sea a chalky brown.

I don't know why the government has lied to us about the number of people killed during the Pandemic or the number of continents swimming between the two poles of the earth. I'm not even sure how I know it's a lie. I just do, in the same way I know I have two eyes, two hands, two feet. I don't care what particular bit of power they're attempting to keep. I just want Mr. Mitchell to leave Lucille alone. Her mind has never been able to keep up with her sentient abilities and one day it will kill her.

Mr. Mitchell pulls on his chin. Wheels around and points at a red-haired boy in the front row. "Russell?"

The boy shoots to his feet. "Yes, sir! Five is the right answer, Mr. Mitchell!"

"That's correct. And what do most of these continents have in common, Russell?"

"They're dead, sir. They're uninhabitable."

Mr. Mitchell smiles big and turns back to where Lucille is almost crying. "Let's end our mutual misery, Miss Campbell. You get the next question right and I'll leave you alone, how's that? I'll let you stay here and squander away my time. But if you get it wrong, it's a transfer."

A
transfer
is no such thing. It's a
removal
. From class, hope, society, family. Kids who can't learn for whatever reason are yanked out of school. They're given jobs, the basest work. Made to leave their families and disappear.

Mr. Mitchell clears his throat. "How many people were lost in the Pandemic? Round up to the nearest hundred thousand."

Something's forming over Lucille's face and upper body. As I watch, she's covered by a morass of storm clouds, gray and silver and white. They rotate around her, obscuring her arms and chest, most of her face. I can see nothing but her eyes and the sharp knob of her chin. Out of these clouds, an answer rises.

150,000,000
. The numbers are somehow recumbent on the twisting heave of Lucille's colors. I watch as the first few digits proceed out of sight.

One hundred fifty million
. One-half of our former population. It is a pure energetic truth that's going to get Lucille sent away. A real number, but not the answer Mr. Mitchell is looking for.

"Lucille." I say her name and she turns, blinking. The numbers floating around her drop away.

"That's enough, Miss Adams!" Mr. Mitchell shouts. He reaches out and yanks Lucille back to attention. "The answer, please!"

Lucille opens her mouth to provide the number her body has already produced, but I beat her to it.

"Ten million," I say. It's the official answer. A figure sanitized for our easy consumption. Too late, I realize I'm out of my chair. Taller than our teacher by three or four inches, I find myself looking down at the top of Mr. Mitchell's head.

"Out of my classroom, Miss Adams!" He points a finger at the hallway. Takes me hard by the elbow and leads me to the door.

I look back and see Lucille crying. But this time, it's for me. Her face breaks. Stumbles headfirst into a smile, then into something else, like joy or relief. Her colors have changed. A patch of bright blue has bloomed just over her heart. It's a good sign. Tells me I just might have taken away a little of her fear for self, having done something she might remember. Maybe she'll be better now, having seen good things from somebody. Anybody. Maybe she'll stop being so afraid.

Lucille waves the tips of her fingers. Some of the other students wave, too. I've followed that internal voice and it's the best feeling of my young life. And then my back hits a hallway locker as the hard ridges of Mr. Mitchell's fist unhinge my jaw. Pain like I've never imagined shoots through my head and into my ears and his voice becomes a high-pitched note. He's hitting me in places the other students will see. And I'm sobbing. Begging for him to stop.

Mr. Mitchell takes away my beautiful, giving feeling and makes me walk back into the room bruised and bloodied. Anything I've provided the other students is also taken away. They've learned the price for stepping up and the better choice that is compliance.

The next day, Lucille is gone.

Noam has built us a gym. We walk past it on our way to training. There are weights here, or things to be used as weights. Canned tomatoes, thirty-two and sixty-four ounces. Irons, the kinds used for pressing wrinkles out of clothes. Some have been strung to the ends of pulleys, some sit in duos on mats. Some of them have been conjoined to a bar, the weights at either end. Noam tells me he built this place long ago, which explains his well-muscled physique.

We turn into a small, clean room. Cool air is being piped in through a footboard grate. The walls are painted light blue. In the center of the room is one long wooden bench on which is one computer. Next to it, an empty chair. Sitting at this desk is a young woman with white-blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She gets up when I come in. Curtsies, as if I were President.

"This is Amy." Noam nods at the girl. "She'll be assisting with your training."

"My training? On BodySpeak?" I ask. I both dread and resent this.

"We call it sight training," Noam says. "To keep you well tuned, if you'll forgive the expression. What we're going to do first is get a base line on your current abilities." He looks at Amy, who writes something on her clipboard. She messes with her computer and something bright comes up on her screen. It lights up her face.

"Now, you need to relax your body . . ." Noam is reading
from a script. It's a premature gesture, as I've already closed my eyes and begun my way out.

I hold a finger to my lips and shush him gently. As soon as my eyes go soft, I can open them again. Or keep them closed. It doesn't matter. If I can make everything else fade away and get to that one plane of awareness, the colors come. The rest of it is all filtering. Who's who and what's what. There may be a day when I'll need Noam's guidance to find my way into this calm, but I hope not.

"Harper," Noam says. I look over at him. A spot of color the size of a kiwi has started just over his neck. He walks to the far corner and the color trails with him. It paints the whole end of the room a curious pale green. "What we're going to have you focus on is the following. In the back gathering room, we've asked two of our members to sit on the floor. Amy has pulled them up on our monitor so we can watch this with you. Is that okay?"

I nod yes. It doesn't matter.

"Can you identify those two people, please?"

I breathe in and out. Loosen my gaze until Noam dissolves and I move through him, too. I advance myself through the wall and into the hallway, where there are four tall dark blobs of people waiting just outside the door. They wonder how I'm doing, are abloom with anxiety. Their mud-brown worry expands down the hall toward Noam's gym, where others are working out. A woman wound in an aura of light yellow senses the long, twinkling bank of clouds as they approach. She turns around, looks to see what's there, and absorbs a bit of the brown into her color. Her beautiful butter yellow turns to a sickly orange. She sets down her weights, suddenly tired. Tells her friend she might go back to her room. Rest.

"Where are you now?" I hear Noam asking, but I'm not in a position to answer.

I'm moving through our sleeping quarters, aware of people below me, some of them in the middle of varying intimacies.
These acts and their creators toss up streaking red arcs that tickle as I pass, fireworks of passion that startle me with their warmth.

I see the back hall long before I get there. It's shaped like a barrel, and brightly lit. The source of this light is a rectangular book sitting between two people. A hundred years and thousands of hands have left their mark on it. Fingerprints, soul prints, whatever the leftover of faith should be called, it's been painted onto this book like so many coats of iridescent lacquer. It's so full of shine, the base of the surrounding walls are thick with its cast-off whorls. Separate, self-contained units of color swept into the corners by movement. Next to this light source, the two people are dull. Sixty-watt bulbs. Forty.

One male, one female. They don't seem to understand this book's great glow. They sit upright, unaware of the white-hot glare between them that should have them bending away, their sides at an outward arc. The male energy on the right is that of a young man. Pale yellow, telling me he's kind, with a good heart and good intentions. There is a patch of dark orange over his belly, indicating a tendency toward sickness. Fevers and stomach trouble from another tendency to overdo. I like him. Would prefer to spend time with this man than with his partner. The woman sitting on the left is pulsing an all-the-time, red-hot rage. Her youth has given her reserves of heat she uses to fuel this fire. I know her name, but more than this I can't tell. She's hidden herself away behind a thick band of puce that keeps me from looking any deeper. It bothers me. People who hide usually have a reason.

I take one last look around the room, blow out my breath, and am recoiled.

Amy is there with a cool cloth. I put it around my neck as Noam leads me to a seat. He paces back and forth while I collect myself. It takes a few moments to readopt a perception based on sight and sound. Until then, I'm not good for much. Speech is slurred, my words put together wrong.

"Okay," I say, and Noam starts his questions.

"Can you tell me who you saw?"

"A man. And a woman."

Noam beams, happy with such parochial things. Behind me, Amy squeals.

"Can you tell me anything about them?"

I put the cool cloth down on the table. It's now hot. "I think the man is . . . what do you call people who go up top for supplies?"

"A runner. Yes!" Noam nods at me through clasped hands.

"His name is Eric. I think he's sick."

"Could be, I suppose." Noam's hands fall back down to his sides. "I'll ask Lilly to give him a checkup. Anything about the woman? Do you know her name?"

This part's easy. "Rita Ramirez." The thousand-year-old teenage girl.

Noam smiles. "We didn't think you'd be able to identify people this early."

I wish he wasn't so easily impressed. Down here, it's a small pool to choose from.

"Anything you noticed in the room?"

"There was a book between them."

Noam practically leaps in the air. "This is wonderful, Harper! We weren't absolutely sure you could read inanimate things. Do you know the name of this book?"

It's simple.
"The Confederation Bible."

Noam's smile falls slightly. Behind us, Amy's fingers have gone silent on the computer keys. She's having a hard time typing up my response to Noam's last question.
F.A.I.L.E.D.

I nod good-bye to Amy and step into the hall. Noam follows so we can talk alone.

"You did a good job," he says.

I try to keep my voice light. "So, it wasn't the Bible."

"Stop it now," Noam whispers into my ear so the others around us won't hear. "We've got plenty of time." It's something he truly believes.

Noam is full of hope. It floats off him like a broadcast, pink and sparkling. Bumps into the waiting crowd, who's happy to accept Noam's faith. They open up for it. Turn their heads into it. Absorb his optimism like rays coming off the sun.

Lazarus is walking around the edges of his room. He waves me in. "Good morning, Harper. Sit down. Have something to eat."

On the table is a tray. And on the tray a pitcher of water, a plate piled high with biscuits, a jar of honey, and long, peppered slices of bacon. I consume the food quickly, barely bothering to chew as Lazarus completes his laps. Every time I look up he's smiling at my bulging cheeks. He enjoys watching me eat. Or rather, watching me become full.

"Try the honey." Lazarus falls into his seat.

The jar has been marked with a photograph and some strange labeling. It was made in a place called Toronto and shows a picture of a brown bear playing with a hive. Circling bees have printed the honey's name in dotted lines,
Dunbar's Best
. In the Confederation of the Willing, all labels are the same: product, date of packaging, ingredients. We have nothing like this inviting little bear I'm assuming is supposed to be Dunbar.

I turn the label toward Lazarus. "What's this?"

"Advertising." Lazarus removes the top and pours a few drops of the honey onto his halved biscuit. "Before the Confederation took over, citizens owned and operated their own businesses. Because they had to compete with one another, they created brands people could identify with. That little bear is an example of marketing. He's the face of the brand and, therefore, the face of the company."

No doubt Lazarus has just imparted nuggets of intellectual gold. But all I get is a sprinkling of recognizable words between strings of others I've never heard.