Veracity (7 page)

The guard flops my things roughly onto a conveyor belt that should have been changed months ago. Its black rubber is pebbled with ink stains and there are long sections where it's been worn down to the white netting. Once my jacket disappears into the scanning chamber, it will be ruined. A Christmas gift from Mr. Weigland, too. Gone.

"Move on through.
Now
."

Press Secretary Johnson continues behind me.
And with an army of prophets such as these, there will be nowhere for the impure to hide!

I walk under the archway scanner, noting my temperature and heart rate as I walk by. Ninety-eight degrees. Sixty-eight beats per minute. The information gathered from my slate will be shown on a screen posted to the back side of the machine. If one were to print this two-second grab of downloaded information, the resulting document would be a thousand pages long. Through this band of metal worn in my neck, the Confederation knows where I've been and how long I've been there. Every word I've spoken. In some ways, the most important ways, every thought that's entered my head.

I go to the end of the possessions belt and watch my jacket tumble out its end, one seam torn open. A black spot on the lapel. I stare down at the violated linen, sad to the core of my soul. There are only so many forms of loveliness in this world. My favorite linen jacket was one of them. I would have stopped this were it any other time. But Candace has just been killed. I feel guilty about how much this ruined coat wounds me. Comparatively, it's nothing.

"There a problem?" The guard comes through the archway behind me.

I hold up my jacket, pry open the broken stitches with a fingernail. "It tore."

The guard smiles. He opens his mouth to relieve himself of a little pent-up hostility when another guard vaults over the gate. His name is Jones. He's been here for years and knows who I am.

So will this new guard in about twenty seconds. When my identity is posted on the rear-facing security screen, this sorry young man with his brand-new gun and pristine green suit will go red.

"Can it, Simmons," Security Guard Jones shouts at the young man. Tenderly, he pulls away my ruined coat. "Sorry about this, Alpha Monitor Adams. I'll call Purchasing and get you a replacement." Jones points the other man to the rear-facing monitor. At my image just now coming up. "I think you owe Alpha Monitor Adams an apology."

On the screen's right side is a rotating picture of my face, last updated the day after my divorce. My hair is unbrushed and falls in snarls down my back. My eyes are ringed in insomnia black. My skin is ashy and broken out. The left side of the screen holds my most vital statistics. Name, address, age. Position. Office. Rank. It's as far as the young guard cares to read. He turns to me, red from the bill of his hat to the bulb in his throat.

Security Guard Jones pulls the young man close. "Apologize to the lady, soon-to-be former security guard Simmons."

A pause. "Alpha Monitor Adams . . . I apologize."

I take back my jacket from Security Guard Jones. Throw it away around the corner.

There are seventy-two High Priority, High Security files in a slumping pile on my desk, none of which I can reissue to other Monitors. I throw my purse into a drawer and take my
seat. Kick the drawer shut with a little too much force and it bounces open again. I reach down to push it closed, and when I sit up again, Candace is across the aisle. Just bits of her. Etherlike dissections of her arms and legs, a see-through head bent low over the screen like she's reading a waveform. I put my hand over my mouth and the tears I haven't yet been able to shed roll across my knuckles.

I told Mr. Weigland this might be a problem. And there's her desk, and her chair, and her plastic cubicle walls. These glowing traces of my best friend will be there for days, or weeks. And no one else will be able to see them but me.

I head down the hall toward Mr. Weigland's office. He comes in early, too, but not for the same reasons. His predawn tendencies have more to do with a loveless marriage and no children. Halfway there, he sees me coming and gives me a half turn of his head, performed so slowly, no one else would notice. Mr. Weigland does this if he's in a meeting I'm not supposed to know about, or if he senses I'm about to say something that will adversely affect my position. We never sat down and agreed upon this sign. I'm not sure he's even aware of doing it, but it happens frequently. There are a lot of things I'm not supposed to know, or say.

Watch it.
He's nervous today. His eyes float toward the other person in the room, Helen Rumney, the BodySpeak Manager. She's a late-twenties woman with thick blonde hair and sharp, deeply clefted features. Her backside is pressed against the nearest pane, elbows, too, revealing flat rounds of scabby flesh. She's attractive. Knows how to use it. Spends all day posing against all sorts of glass walls.

Helen Rumney's colors are like nothing I've ever seen. When she's in a room, it's an effort to look away. Her insatiable need has its own gravitational pull. Her disregard for humanity has turned her into a slow-turning tornado that feeds on air and light. It's not unusual for her to be obscured by this storm of colors in constant rotation around her. Some
days this mass is packed so tight it's more like a cocoon than a cloud. A gray skein of yarn out of which poke arms and legs. Other times, her energy expands into a thick red-brown fog. When it gets like this, I can't even see her for this veil of ambition. She's proud of her resilience and tenacity. Her ability to put emotion away. But she doesn't see what I see--the way it's worked on her like a toxin. On Helen Rumney's worst days, the flesh of her face disappears and all that's left is the pale hue of worn bone.

Mr. Weigland steps past her and opens the door. "I'm running a little late. Give me ten minutes, Harper," he says as if we had a meeting scheduled.

Helen turns her head so I can see the side of her face. One round fish-eye. One half of her A-line jaw. She purses her lips. Says before the office door can be closed, "She's reading my colors again, Richard." Then turns back around.

Ten minutes later, Mr. Weigland is hanging over my cubicle wall, Helen Rumney gone. "She wants to keep going with the program."

I look straight ahead. Don't say a thing.

"You doing okay?"

"You didn't move her desk." I point at Candace's cubicle.

Mr. Weigland bobs his head, contrite. "We're moving somebody else in next week . . ."

"I can still see her!"

"I don't know if I can requisition another office, Harper." He sighs heavily and frowns down at the tips of his shoes. "Manager Rumney's got most of our budget sunk into Body-Speak."

"Then tell her I'm not doing another thing on that program until you move it! The computer, the desk, the walls . . . everything!"

Mr. Weigland opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it. He looks at Candace's old space and nods. "I'll have them move it today."

By midafternoon, the scent of fresh plastic is everywhere. They've taken everything away and replaced it with new pieces not yet out of their bags.

I'm elbow-deep in files when I hear a voice over my shoulder. "How are you today, Miss Adams?" It's Evans, our mailman, standing at the edge of my office. His skin is old, pleated, like drapes. It parts over his eyes and mouth as he smiles.

"I'm okay," I say, holding out my hand. "Anything interesting today?"

Evans drops the bundled mail into my palm and leans against my cubicle wall. "I think so."

I flip through the envelopes already torn open by Security. There are reminders from Quality Assurance about our Dispositioning Codes. A dozen terrorist updates from the Geddard Building. And what used to be my favorite piece of mail all year: our annual travel brochure. It's a quarter-inch-thick set of full-color choices as to where we'd like to spend our one free week per year.

"Let me show you." Evans reaches down and slides the brochure onto my desk. His mouth moves silently as he flips through the pages.
Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four
. . ." Here we go." He stops on page fifty-five. Taped to its center is a key, a wallet-size strip of white plastic, coded to fit into one of a thousand-plus lockers. For security purposes, none of them are numbered. "This is where I'd suggest vacationing this year." Evans taps an old yellow fingernail against the letter
C
that's a part of the featured resort town of Chesney. Then reaches down to the lower right corner and taps against the 5. "What do you think of Chesney?" He taps on the two symbols again: C5. "Ever been down to the southern coast?"

I'm baffled. It takes me a few seconds to respond. "No.What's it like?"

Evans smiles a big yellow smile. "It's wonderful! Warm, I'll say that much. They let you outdoors more than in other regions. Up to three hours a day, if you know someone." He
shuffles through the other pieces of mail until he finds a notice I would have thrown away. "It's the best trip I've ever taken. Bar none." Evans is tapping against the notice from Human Resources. It's one of our standard monthlies. A reminder that it's about time to switch out our lockers in the women's gym.

He stands upright. Puts a hand on my shoulder. "My suggestion is to try Chesney this year, Miss Adams. Turned me into a new man. Might turn you into a new woman. And make that reservation fast. Could fill up."

Then Evans is gone. On down the aisle and into the next cubicle. Asking Mary Gibbons about her bum foot.

I gently peel the key away from the page and slip it into my pants pocket.

There are only two women in the gym. One of them is a woman named Margaret who goes through the cardiovascular stations in alphabetical order. The other is a tall, gaunt woman named Flora, who will be on the treadmill for an hour. I nod as I walk past and glance down at the elapsed time flashing red next to her hand.
Twenty minutes down, forty more to go
. I shoulder my purse nonchalantly, put Evans's key between my teeth, and push open the door leading to the lockers.

There are only two places in the Murdon Building with no cameras affixed to the ceilings and walls: the restrooms and the locker rooms. I race down the room's long aisles until I find the one marked C5. My hand shaking, I slip the card into the reader. A small round light above the handle turns green and the tall metal door pops open.

Inside, half hidden by the shadows of overhead lighting, is a piece of paper unlike any I've seen. It's thick and gristled, full of dark dots that blend with the words written on its face. I sit down on the bench. Put the note into the cup of my lap to read.

The letter goes on to describe a resistance. A movement comprised of thousands of citizens hiding in underground bunkers and hundreds of thousands more above it--members clustered throughout the nation and organized for one purpose: to create what it calls a democratic government and overthrow the current regime. This group has spent more years than I can imagine accruing educational tools and books banned by the Confederation. Aboveground, they've infiltrated some of the highest echelons of government. Even our police. Having an intimate knowledge of the atrocities Blue Coats perform every day, I have a hard time imagining that some of them are members of this resistance.

This group's need of me is simple. I have great knowledge of the monitoring system and I'm a Sentient. There is no emotional plea, not until the last paragraph.

Two additional paragraphs describe exactly what I'll need to do. The when and the how. It's there in black and white, a confirmation of what I've been feeling for years. The sacrifice I've been avoiding equally long. It is an extraordinary request presented in the simplest terms. A perfunctory explanation of the measures required to keep what happened to Candace's daughter from happening to mine.

I shut the key in the locker as instructed and place the note in one of the sinks. It takes no time to dissolve into beads of pulp, then into a thin milky substance. When the note's all gone, I wash the drain with a bit of the soap, splashing some of the water on my face and down my neck. When I go back out into the gym, I don't have to pretend to be too ill to work out. Both women see it. They tell me to forget the weights and the elliptical machine tonight. I should go home, get some rest.