Equal Part 1: The Confrontation

  She blew her nose on her tunic.

  Janus felt like a heel. But what else could he do? He was just doing his job. Sheriffs captured Runners. That’s how it worked.

  Diana, wiping away her tears, looked up at him. She gave him a sad little smile. “I know you have to bring me in,” she said. “The last thing I want is to make it difficult for you. The reason I came here tonight is because I can’t do it anymore. My days of being a Runner are over.” Blowing her nose. “The reason I came here tonight . . . I wanted to—no, I needed to—explain myself before I die. I needed to explain my thoughts about the world we live in. Explain them to you. So that they can survive after I’m gone. Survive inside you. It’s like part of me will survive too.” Sniffling now.

  Janus took Diana by the hand and helped her to her feet. He sat down in his chair, pointed to hers, and said, “Have a seat.”

  When she sat down he told her he was all ears. He told her he wanted to hear her thoughts about the world we live in. Then he sat listening.

  She told him the world had become a gloomy dwelling where people now lived as soulless automatons. She told him the joy of living had been taken from people. No longer could they experience the thrill of risk. Now people lived without challenges. Without growth. Without accomplishment. Without the meaningful struggle of confronting and mastering obstacles. Life was too easy now. And so people were complacent and unthinking and dependent. Like automatons. Diana told Janus the world had changed. And for what? So that people could live as Equals? So that no one was better than anyone else? So that no one ever felt inferior? Or jealous? Or resentful? Diana told Janus there used to be a time when you came into this world with a gift, something that made you special, different. People used to share their unique gifts with the world so that everyone could benefit from them. Intellectuals used to solve problems. Athletes used to provide inspiration. Models used to bestow beauty. But those days were over now because society had decided that everyone’s gifts should stay wrapped up.

  Now Janus looked down at the table and began to run his forefinger along the wood grain. He was looking without seeing, lost in thought, searching inside himself. He felt something missing, something primal and deep. He wondered if maybe Diana was right. Maybe he wasn’t happy . . .

  “Janus? Are you listening to me?”

  “What?” He looked up. Diana was staring at him.

  “Did you hear what I was saying?”

  He nodded. “Every word.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m interested to hear how you developed your thoughts about the world we live in.”

  So Diana told him a story. A story about growing up. What her childhood was like.

  Janus listened to her story . . .

  * * *

  DIANA COULD SEE out of the corner of her eye the other Students approaching, a sea of red tunics, Invidia leading the pack.

  Invidia was trouble. Especially when she was in one of her envious moods. That was when things could get dangerous. Which they often did.

  Diana was eating her lunch alone. She always ate alone. She never wanted it that way. That was just the way it was. No one sat by her. Ever.

  Now she could hear Invidia telling the others, “They adjusted Diana’s Equalizer again. Fourth time this month. Endless spurts of intelligence.” Invidia rolled her eyes.

  They all laughed.

  The group of Students formed a circle around Diana’s lunch table. Invidia grinned down at Diana, saying, “Oh, look. It’s Little Girl Genius.”

  More laughter.

  Diana was rolling a coin around her fingers. She’d always do that. She’d eat her lunch with one hand while rolling a coin with the other. It was a little trick she’d picked up hanging around the black market.

  “Hey,” Invidia said. “You found my coin.”

  Ignore her. Maybe she’ll go away.

  “And I want it back.”

  Leave me alone. For once. Can you just do that?

  All of a sudden Invidia moved toward Diana. When they were face-to-face, a distance of maybe one foot between them, Invidia whispered, “I said I want it back.” Her eyes were flaming. Her jaw was thrust forward. Her breath smelled of onions.

  Diana gripped the coin in her fist and raised her eyebrows at Invidia and whispered, “What do you think the chances are I’m going to take you seriously?”

  What Invidia did was smirk. She said to the crowd, “Snotface thinks she’s better than us,” and to Diana, “Don’t you, Snotface?”

  Now the others began to say, “Snotface Snotface Snotface,” almost singing it, but stopped when Diana shrugged and said, “Sorry you feel that way.”

  “We know you’re sorry,” Invidia said. “A sorry sucker. Hyuk, hyuk.”

  Giggles from the crowd.

  Diana began to get up from her seat. Invidia shoved her back down. Then someone shove Diana from behind.

  Roars of laughter.

  Diana said to Invidia, “The coin isn’t yours to take.”

  “Who’s taking it?” Invidia said. “You’re giving it. Think of it that way. Then you can feel good about yourself.”

  Diana rolled the coin around her fingers and palmed it in her fist and blew on it. After mumbling some magical words she opened her hand. The coin was gone. It was another little trick she’d picked up hanging around the black market.

  Invidia’s eyes were wild, and her jaw muscles were pulsing. She was rocking back and forth, from one foot to the other, as she stared down at Diana. She whispered to Diana, moving her lips real slow, “You’re nothing. Hear me? Nothing.” She whispered, “You and I will meet again. Soon.”

  “Swell,” Diana said. “I was worried our friendship wouldn’t last.”

  Diana watched as they all left. Then she got up from the lunch table and walked out of the room and found a private place down the hall and cried.

  A little later that day, when Diana was walking back to her lodging near the black market, she thought about school. She wished she never had to go back there again. They resented her there. And she was beginning to resent herself.

  She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to be like the others. She wanted to fit in. Then they wouldn’t hate her, and she wouldn’t feel so lonely all the time. But Diana knew deep in her heart that things would never change.

  Now she cried again.

  * * *

  WHEN DIANA FINISHED telling her story Sheriff Janus blinked and looked away. His eyes were swimming with sorrow. But Diana wouldn’t let him hide from her. She reached up with both hands and cupped his face. Janus stared into her eyes, so close to his. He was lost in those eyes. Lost like stars in day. No one had ever made him feel this way. This alive.

  Now her fingers caressed his cheeks and wiped away the tears. Janus was in the moment, not wanting it to end but knowing that it must. He tried to block the conflicting thoughts from his mind—thoughts of his job, his duty, his perfect capture record—but they wouldn’t go away. These were the things he lived for, the things that mattered most, the very things that now required him to deliver this amazing woman to her death.

  Now Diana rose from the chair and went into the kitchen and brought back a glass. “Drink some water,” she said, handing Janus the glass.

  He took it and swallowed some water. It was cold. He wiped his lips with two fingers. He thanked her.

  She sat down again, took his hand, gave it a gentle squeeze. “Your gift,” she said. “You know what it is, Janus?”

  He thought it was Sheriffing. He was pretty sure of it. There was nothing else he was good at.

  She tapped him on his chest. “Your heart. You have a kind heart. Look inside yourself, and you’ll see it’s true. You have something special, Janus. Yes, you really do.”

  Her words filled him with something. They touched a part of him that nothing had touched before. Ever. Her words meant more to him than he could have ever imagined.

  In this moment, with their eyes locked, somethi
ng magical was taking place. Janus was beginning to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was . . . he was . . . he . . .

  Something was wrong. Janus could feel it. He tried to say something, but his words came out in a garbled spew. Now his field of vision filled with a blurred sense of reality. Now everything in sight tilted. Now his cheek slammed against the floor.

  Pain. Searing. Screaming.

  The room was askew. Ceiling to the left, floor to the right, walls above and below.

  There came echoes of distorted sounds. Echoing. Echoing.

  Janus watched a candle swell to enormous proportions and then blur as it narrowed, narrowed, narrowed. He watched the candle flames lick orange and yellow against black shadows. He watched black clouds come out of the wick and spin round and round.

  This was impossible. Couldn’t be happening. But Janus’s senses were telling him otherwise.

  He tried to raise up and look around. He couldn’t move.

  He shuddered when a drop of cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Then he descended further into twisted reality. His mind’s eye saw a grotesque dog pounce in from the window and bound this way and sit very close and talk very fast.

  Janus was going out of his mind. What should he do? Think, think. He needed to clear the mists. He needed to find his sanity. Think, think. Could it have been the vodka? Not a chance. Vodka doesn’t make you hallucinate. Think, think. Nothing was coming to him. Nothing at all.

  Then he saw it.

  The glass.

  The glass of water Diana had given him to drink. It was on the floor now. Near his foot. He wanted to pick it up. He tried. He couldn’t move.

  Now Janus spotted something inside the glass. Some kind of powdery residue. A drug? Was he drugged? By Diana? Impossible.

  Or was it?

  Janus stared at the glass, wondering, wondering. He was trying to wrap his mind around the possibility. His soul was lurching into a place of nightmare, the kind of creeping nightmare that made for hammering hearts and cold sweats.

  Janus heard a voice now. The voice saying to him, “Tuzzzz meee.” It sounded like human language. Janus wasn’t sure.

  The voice spoke again. This time it was clear enough for Janus to understand. The voice saying to him, “Truzzzt me.”

  Trust me?

  Is that what the voice was saying?

  Now Janus saw a woman’s foot. Diana? Now the foot vanished.

  Janus lay alone on the floor, blinking, his world going dark. Blackness took him.

  CHAPTER 6

  MORNING. SHERIFF JANUS awoke, blinking several times before the room came into focus, the light stinging his eyes. His face felt puffy. His mouth was dry. His odor offended.

  He scanned the room. Window curtains open. Candles extinguished. One chair on its side.

  He tried to move. Realized that he could move. When he raised up on his elbow he saw the blanket covering his body. He figured Diana must have put it there. He put his hand to his head. The throbbing headache was relentless.

  He stood up. Went to the kitchen. Made some tea. Sipped his tea. Went to the window. Stood at the window. It was webbed with frost. Snow had fallen overnight.

  He stood looking out the window, holding the cup of tea in both hands, gazing at the frozen creek running along the back of the building. His mind was on Diana. There was a lot to think about. He stood at the window for a long time.

  Now he put his cup of tea on the windowsill and crossed the room and set the chair upright and picked up the glass. He held the glass up to the light and examined it. He used his forefinger to scrape out some of the powdery residue. He smelled it. Rubbed it between his fingers. He knew better than to taste it. He scraped out more and put it in a piece of cloth. Then he folded the cloth and stuck it in his pocket and set the glass on the table and went back to the window.

  He stood watching the snow fall. White. Soundless. It looked a few inches deep. There were no tracks in the snow. He stood at the window and sipped his tea and drifted into thought. He realized there were only two more days left. He had to capture Diana within the next two days. If he didn’t? The assignment would be given to another Sheriff, and Janus’s capture record would no longer be perfect.

  He frowned as his eyes stared at misty images from last night. Images that haunted him. When the disturbing images finally faded away he shook his head and sighed. Then he shrugged the feeling away.

  He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. His heart was filled with a mixture of emotions. Anger, of course. He was angry Diana had played him for a fool. What a fool. Two cards in every deck carried his image. He felt frustration too. What frustrated him, Diana had slipped from his grasp.

  But there was something else he was feeling. Something indefinable. Some kind of power Diana held over him. Some kind of magic. Something.

  Trust me. That’s what Diana had said to him. What was there to trust? The woman had drugged a Sheriff and escaped into the night. And she wanted him to trust her? Quite a leap of faith.

  Outside the window the snow now began to fall in thick masses. Janus watched it, sipping his tea, a thought swirling behind his eyes. He was thinking about Haven, that legendary place where Runners could go to escape from society, live out the rest of their days in freedom. Diana had told him about the legend. Haven, Janus thought. Bet that’s where Diana’s heading. Might be worth checking into.

  Now he went to the closet where he kept his winter clothes. He put the heavy cloak about his shoulders and pulled up the hood. He pulled on a pair of mittens.

  A few minutes later he was plodding through the snow. Winds were coming up fast, lifting up his cloak, the cloak flapping and snapping. He heard a raven’s call echoing in the woods. He stopped to look at the bird. It was perched in a tree, head cocked, shiny black eyes staring down at him. Caw, caw. Janus moved on. His footsteps crunching through the packed snow. His breath exhaling pale plumes of wintry clouds against the gray sky.

  As soon as he got to the stable he saddled the horse and mounted up. Now rider and horse moved across the white terrain, snow hissing against them, the horseman’s cloak swirling behind. They moved through the rising woods and mounted the crest of a hill and then stopped for a moment to look down at the view below. A frozen landscape. Gray and bleak. Pale blur of sun. Man and animal moved on. Tearing across the countryside, rolling hills giving way to flatland, woods to open fields. After a while they came upon the river. It was serpentine and slow. They followed the river.

  When they reached the tidal basin they headed due east. All along the way were crumbling ruins—the remains of an abandoned world, a forgotten time. One ruin looked like a fallen marble obelisk. It stretched out across the land like a broken and defeated phallic symbol of gigantic proportions. Another ruin looked like an enormous iron dome with at least thirty columns. Still another ruin looked like a marble palace.

  Now Janus blinked away snow from his eyelashes to see street after street of three-story red-brick buildings. These structures were familiar to him.

  As he rode past the Science Building he thought about Antevorta, wondering if she was escorting another group of children through the laboratories today.

  Riding past the Education Building, Janus thought about his former Teachers. Some had been mean. Which was understandable because Teachers had a rough schedule. Teaching wasn’t their only job. They also had to run the government of Equal.

  Janus frowned when he rode past the Government Building. His feet were numb. His face was freezing. It was cold. He reined his horse a little to the left so he could see the line outside the Government Building. There was always a line there. Today there were maybe a hundred citizens freezing in line, waiting to get some bread and soup inside the government-run public market, where every meal was prepared in premeasured portions. Stuff tasted awful.

  The Crematorium Building was up ahead. Black smoke billowed from its chimneys. Wind carried the haunting stench of burnt flesh. Janus looked away and pulled his cloak tig
ht around him. The building reminded him of his deceased lover. Only days had passed since her accidental death and subsequent cremation. Janus rode past the Crematorium Building with his eyes averted. It represented the one thing he loathed about Sheriffing—having to euthanize and cremate citizens.

  Now snow swirled thick around him. His eyes, squinting against the rushing whiteness, scanned the wintry landscape. Blankets of white powder hung heavy on the drooping branches of evergreens. Snowdrifts covered the walkways. Icicles hung from the edges of white roofs.

  What timing, Janus thought. Snow. Wind. Ice. All of it happening while trying to capture the most elusive Runner ever. What’s coming next? A damn tornado? The apocalypse?

  A fierce squall of snow and wind was raging with blinding white fury when Janus finally reached the stable. He dismounted and led his horse into the warmth of the stable. He unsaddled and fed the animal. Then he left the stable and slogged through the white murk. It took him about two minutes to reach the Sheriff’s Department.

  * * *

  SOMETHING SHERIFF ORCUS would always do was make you play a game of chess with him. It was the price you had to pay for getting information from him. Oh, you want to pick my brain? Play me a game of chess first.

  Sheriff Janus needed information. He needed to learn more about Haven. So he needed to talk to Orcus. Orcus was the best source of information in the Sheriff’s Department.

  Now Janus poised his hand over the chessboard. It lingered there for a moment. Then his fingers tightened around a chess piece and began to move it. Keeping his fingers on the piece, now seeing the danger in the move, Janus returned the piece to its original position. His move would require a little more thought. He gave it some more thought. He nodded to himself. Then he moved a pawn.

  And his desk wobbled.

  His desk was always wobbling. It was a constant source of irritation. Janus wondered why everything had to suffer from shoddy workmanship. He knew the answer, but it still irritated him.

  Shoddy workmanship resulted from the system, a system in which citizens moved through life in five-year phases, spending no more than five years employed in any particular occupation. Five years as a Sheriff. Five years as a Blacksmith. And so on. For a total of ten occupations spread out over fifty years—the predetermined lifetime of each citizen. Who could ever master a trade with a system like that? No one could because no one ever remained long enough in any particular occupation. Including the Carpenters who built wobbly desks.