The Earth Dwellers by David Estes
“Well it’s perfect for our mission,” Lin says, sounding almost eager.
“I think you mean my mission,” I say.
“That’s exactly what she means,” Avery says.
“I just want to help,” Lin says. “That freak president killed my father.”
“You already are helping,” I say, motioning her back to the screen. “What does all this mean?”
“Well, you’re to report for duty tomorrow at seven in the morning. Whoever implanted your chip made your Anything Day today, so you’ll have to work nine days straight before you get another break.”
“I heard an Enforcer say that—Anything Day—what does that mean exactly?” I ask.
“It’s just a normal day off. One in ten days we get one, and we can do practically anything we want, within the laws and restrictions of the city, of course.”
I’m not planning on sticking around long enough to experience my next Anything Day, but at least I know it’s there if I need it. “Okay, what else?”
“You have a consistent schedule. You’ll start at the same time every day and finish at six in the evening. Today we all got out at five because of the presidential message, but most people work seven to six.”
They’re long hours, but not to the point where people will rebel, I think to myself. It seems everything in this city pushes people to the edges of frustration, but not quite over the brink. Definitely part of Lecter’s strategy. It’s like he’s obsessed with efficiency, organization, cleanliness. And he pretends to believe in equality, with the rationing of food, of resources, etc, but it’s an act, because those originally from the Sun Realm get slightly greater rations than the “Lowers.”
“Hey,” I say, “what do they call the people who used to be sun dwellers?”
“The Uppers,” Lin says. “Why?”
I grit my teeth. “No reason, just curious.” It’s the Tri-Realms all over again, just packaged, shined up real nice, and hidden amongst a bunch of other shiny things on a shelf. Where Tristan’s father liked to flaunt the huge gaps between the haves and the havenots, Lecter is more subtle. Tristan was right.
President Lecter is the one man who managed to control my father.
He’s dangerous, that’s for sure. I can’t just charge in there, guns blazing. I’ll have to be every bit as subtle.
“Where is this place?” I ask.
Lin swipes her finger and a map appears on the window, a red dot pulsating in the direct middle.
Avery says, “The city center, 20th and M. It’s the tallest building, rising to just below the apex of the Dome. It comes to a point at the top. ”
The screen flashes back to a close-up of the main doors. “It says you won’t be entering via the main entrance. There’s a side entrance down an alleyway in the back somewhere.”
“Will you take me tomorrow?”
“Hell yeah, I will,” Lin says.
~~~
After Lin turns off the screen, I drink a liter and a half of water, my entire ration for the evening. I even force down the cold slop still on my plate. Avery says he can heat it up, but I don’t think it’ll help the taste much, so I just stuff it in my mouth and swallow without chewing. I have to stay hydrated and keep my strength up.
When I finish, Lin asks, “Where will you sleep?”
I look around at the thin room, the flat wall with the grooves on one side. “I’m guessing these fold down into beds?” I say.
Avery scans his wrist on a glass plate set in the wall. Instantly, the wall begins to move, folding in on itself to reveal a thin bed and a solitary pillow. The covers are pulled tight and tucked underneath the mattress.
“We’ve only got two beds here,” he says, “and as you can see they’ll only fit one person each. When Lin’s father…was gone, we were forced to move into a smaller place. And anyway, if you don’t check into a bed you’ll be flagged in the system. Only night workers are expected to be out and about.”
“They’ll know I’m not in bed?” I ask incredulously. This is even worse than I expected.
“Something like that,” Avery says. “They might activate your tracker, come looking for you, break down our door, that sort of thing.”
“Where do I go?”
“I don’t think Gripes’ old place has been filled yet. It’s a single flat,” Lin says.
“Who’s Gripes?” I ask.
“A—a friend,” Avery says.
“He died?”
“Might as well have,” Lin says venomously.
“He was taken to the detention center,” Avery says, looking like he’d prefer not to talk about the details. But then he goes on anyway. “He was old, good to Lin, almost like a grandfather to her.” Beside him, Lin nods earnestly, looks at her feet. “He was assigned to be a janitor at the army barracks. Showed up late for work once…”
“It was at the complete other side of the city,” Lin says, scuffing her foot on the floor. “Gripes only had one leg.”
“They sent an old one-legged man to prison for being late one time?”
“Three times,” Avery says. “First they gave him a warning, then something more like a threat, and finally…”
“They dragged him away in the middle of the night,” Lin says, looking more and more like she wants to hit something.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Maybe he’s still alive. If I’m successful, we might be able to find him.”
Lin nods. “You know something funny? We never found out how he really lost that leg. He’d always make up stories about fighting for the Resistance in the Tri-Realms.” She blows her hair away from her face, but it settles back down in the same spot. “Anyway, you can sleep in the place he used to. Now that he’s gone, it’s up for grabs. You should get some shuteye; you’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
I yawn, feeling exhaustion hit me like the Enforcer’s club hit that boy today—hard and out of nowhere. Tomorrow I get one step closer to taking down Lecter.
“You’ll take her over?” Avery asks Lin.
“Sure. Get to sleep, I’ll be back soon.”
“Thanks,” I say to Avery as we exit. “For everything.”
“You remind me a little of my brother-in-law,” he says, shrugging. “And I could never say no to him either.”
Lin leads me down the hall, and I scan the number plates until she reaches 1819, one of the doors on the other side of the hall, which are closer together. Even smaller places. Meant for one person rather than two.
“Scan your wrist,” she says.
I do and the door clicks open. I raise my eyebrows appreciatively. “So is this, like, officially my place now?”
She smiles wickedly. “More like your base of operations. But yeah, until you claim another empty place, or are cracked over the head and hauled away by the Enforcers, or are captured and tortured by President Lec—”
“Lin, I get the picture.”
“Right. So, do you need anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’re just down the hall if you do. I’ll meet you out here at six-thirty tomorrow morning. The bed will make sure you get up on time.” And before I have the chance to ask what the hell she means by the bed getting me up, she’s heading back down the hall at a half-jog.
Feeling suddenly alone and almost naked in the dimly lit, empty hallway, I enter the flat, closing the door behind me. I lean my back against the shut door, take a deep breath. Sure, things are bad in the New City, but things below were bad too, and we did what we had to do—I did what I had to do. And I will again.
The room is small, basic, similar to Avery and Lin’s place. I try scanning my wrist on the food dispensers, but nothing happens. I’ve had my rations already, no midnight snack for me. It’s not that different from living in the Moon Realm, where all the food left in the house was eaten for dinner and then you prayed you’d be able to scrounge up enough Nailins to buy more the next day.
My room has no window, just a wall at the end that I a
Not even bothering to undress, I slip under the covers and close my eyes, the lights turning off automatically behind my eyelids, perhaps triggered by my weight on the bed. What a strange, strange world.
Where is Tristan sleeping tonight? On an animal-skin blanket in a cave or a tent or just under the million-star sky? Wherever he is, I wish I was with him, feeling the warm touch of a real breeze, in a world so bright and so real that it can’t possibly be a dream. Is this the last fight? Or will another, more powerful, cleverer enemy rise up after Lecter is gone? Is there always another evil to do battle with? Will I be fighting my whole life?
I once spoke of the inherency of good and evil, but now I realize it’s so much more complex than that. And yet so much simpler at the same time. Although there are hundreds of shades of gray between right and wrong and good and evil, in the end it comes down to a single choice: to care or not. To care about humanity, about the pains and fears and sorrows of others, or to ignore them, to look the other way, to say “it doesn’t concern me.” I know I haven’t always made the right choices, but I hope I haven’t chosen completely wrong either, and in the end, we all die. But we don’t die equal.
Not even close.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Siena
Tristan and his friends—the funny one, Roc, and the nice one, Tawni—head east with Hawk and Lara, back to where they came from, deep underground or whatever. I hope we will, but I don’t ’spect we’ll see ’em again anytime soon. After all, who would purposely join a war?
The day is hot as scorch, go figure. The ground’s so dry that the trod of their feet is already kicking up a trail of dust in their wake.
“See you soon, ya wooloo baggard,” Roc shouts back with a wave.
“You know, if I wasn’t so coolheaded, I might shoot a pointer through your heart for a comment like that,” I say, smiling.
“But then you’d lose your star student,” Roc says.
“Don’t ferget yer side of the agreement,” Skye hollers.
“We won’t,” Tristan says. “Before the end of the third day, I’ll finally prove myself to you.”
“Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” Skye mutters, “but I’ll kill me some Glassies either way.”
“C’mon, Sis,” I say, “we’ve gotta say goodbye to Jade.” I grab her elbow and steer her back into New Wildetown. She’s cursing under her breath, something ’bout how only someone with rocks for brains would trust people who live in holes in the ground.
“Jade’s waiting,” I say, urging her forward faster. We’ve barely spent a lick of time with our sister since we arrived home. Scorch, we’ve barely seen her since we rescued her from a life of slavery on the Soaker ships. In a normal world we’d be spending every moment of every day with her. But this ain’t a normal world. Least not now, if it ever was ’fore.
As we approach the line of tents, I see her, sleek black hair braided in a single spine down her back, sitting cross-legged in the durt, playing with a baby, who’s crawling ’round in front of her.
Skye stops me with an arm in front of my chest. “Promise me,” she says, looking at me.
“Promise you what?”
Skye’s eyes are like glittering brown stones. “That you won’t die. That you’ll be more careful than me. That you’ll stay alive to take care of Jade.”
I chew on my sunburnt bottom lip, feeling it sting a little. What’s she saying? “Skye, you ain’t gonna die neither,” I say. “Yer the roughest, toughest person I know. Yer—”
“Sie—”
“I ain’t finished.” I put my hand on her shoulder, squeeze a little. Skye doesn’t even flinch back from my touch, like she usually does. “Yer my idol, Skye. Always have been. When I lost you…”—I pause, fight back the emotion that’s rolling through me—“…I thought I’d lost me too. But then I realized that I was who I was ’cause of watching you. And I was stronger’n I ever knew ’fore. You’re a part of me, always will be. So I’ll promise you I’ll do my best to stay alive for Jade’s sake, but I won’t promise you I won’t do anything wooloo out there, ’cause if you’re in trouble, I’m gonna do everything I can to save you.”
And then she’s pulling me into her chest, harder and fiercer’n she’s ever done ’fore, and I can hardly breathe but I don’t need to, don’t want to, ’cause I got exactly what I need.
We only release each other when a voice says, “Skye? Siena?”
Jade’s looking at us with those big, brown eyes of hers and she looks so grownup, well, ’cause she is. I mean, scorch, she’s got a foreign boyfriend back in water country. I didn’t even start thinking ’bout Circ in that way ’til I was near on sixteen. She’s had to grow up faster’n any of us.
She’s got that baby in her arms and I recognize it, ’cause it’s got a nose so flat it’s like someone smashed it, which I think is kinda cute, but which his mother thinks is uglier’n the back end of a tug. Polk. Veeva’s kid.
“You babysittin’?” I ask.
“Yep,” she says.
“You wanna hug?” I ask.
“Yep,” she says, smiling broadly, setting Polk in the durt and opening her arms wide enough to reach ’round the both of us. And we hold each other for as long as Skye’ll suffer us, ’cause we’re family, and we’re all we got.
~~~
“How’d you end up with that Soaker boy?” Skye asks, picking Polk up and turning him ’round so he’ll crawl in t’other direction. She’s had to do it a dozen times already, but Polk always seems to head back toward her, like he knows she don’t like babies much.
“Yeah, you never told us the whole story,” I say.
Jade’s face goes slightly red. It’s nice to see her like this, acting her age a little. Usually she’s just like a mini-Skye, all rough’n tumble.
I owe Circ one for this. We should be getting ready to leave, both Skye and me, but he agreed to pack for us, so we could spend this time with Jade.
“I told you, I chucked a scrub brush at his head,” she says.
Skye laughs loudly. “That’s always my favorite part.” It’s nice to see Skye like this, cracking jokes, laughing, like she don’t have the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“But what happened after that?” I ask. “You know, up until that baggard Admiral Jones tied you to the pole and whipped you.”
She picks up Polk, cradles him in her arms, and tells us the whole story. ’Bout how she tormented Huck every chance she got, but then eventually realized he was trying to do the right things, how he did unspeakable things to save her life, how he saved her from drowning. Huck Jones sounds like a real hero. It’s no wonder she’s got feelings for him.
“So that’s why Admiral Jones beat you? ’Cause his son was fallin’ for you?” Skye asks.
We’ve both seen the wounds, which have a long way to go ’fore they’re fully healed. She’ll always have the scars. Red slashes down her back, puffy welts, her perfect, beautiful skin made to look like a battlefield.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” Jade says slowly.
Me and Skye look at each other, then back at her. Polk’s got a handful of her hair and is pulling on it.
“Whaddya mean?” Skye says.
“It’s true that the Admiral Jones you’re thinking of ordered me to be beaten, and he even got a lash in…” She closes her eyes, a long blink. When she opens them a single tear drips out of each eye.
“Then who did the rest of it?” Skye asks, her fists balling in her lap. Sun goddess help him if it’s someone who’s still alive.
“He had no choice,” Jade says, “Admiral Jones would’ve killed us both if he didn’t…”
“Who?” Skye says through locked teeth.
“The new Admiral Jones,” Jade says, clutching Polk to her chest
Skye stands, her chest heaving. “Then how are you…how could you…why do you…” She can’t get the words out, and I understand completely. Anyone who’d hurt our sister this way deserves the worst.
But we don’t know the circumstances, do we? Could there ever be a reason to hurt the ones you love? Would I ever be able to whip Circ, if I knew his life depended on it? I know the only answer is yes.
“Skye, she’s alive and that’s all that mat—”
“I’ll destroy him,” Skye growls. “If I ever see that runt again, I’ll beat him ten times worse’n he beat you.”
She stalks out of the tent, leaving Jade crying and Polk playing with her hair.
~~~
Eventually I’m able to calm Jade down. We both know how Skye is. She’ll come ’round. I mean, she might get a few licks in on Huck Jones if she ever sees him again, but surely she won’t kill him. Least that’s what we tell ourselves.
We say our goodbyes and I leave Jade with Circ’s family, who she’s been staying with.
I take Polk back to his mother, my old friend Veeva, who I haven’t had a chance to catch up with yet. She’s outside her tent, hanging wet bundles on a line, ’bout a dozen of ’em.
“Sun goddess, Siena,” she says, and it’s like I never left. It’s always been that way with her. “Take that spawn of the devil right back wherever you found ’im; I ain’t ready to clean another bundle. He’s down to his last one.”
“I think he’s hungry,” I say. “He’s been fussing something fierce.”
“He’s always hungry,” she says, but she whips out one of her large breasts like there ain’t dozens of people walking ’tween the tents. I try not to look, but it’s hard not to. I notice a few other heads turning, too, mostly men. When I hand Polk to Veeva, he goes right for the food. Guess I was right ’bout him being hungry. “I heard all the warriors’ll be leavin’ soon,” she says. “Guess that means you.”