Chapter Twelve: Caryn
“You have a gold card?” Kai whispers in my ear as we wait for the guard to unlock the main doors.
“Yes.” I show him the card attached to my palm.
“How’d you get it?”
“The mayor of Highton gave it to me,” I say.
“Why?” Kai asks.
I open my mouth to answer, but the guard is saying he will accompany us through our tour and if we have any questions to just ask. Kai takes a small step away from me and then we are walking into a room even more majestic and grand than the room where I first saw Kai. Everything seems to be made of marble and the walls are covered with interactive displays. I am lost in a world of the past before I walk through the door.
Heather would have loved this museum. My mouth stays open through the first three rooms and I can’t help pointing out displays and exclaiming over the names of people there. I become so engrossed in one display that by the time I look up, the guard and Kai are nowhere near me. For a moment my chest freezes and I glance wildly around.
Then I spot Kai hovering over a display across the large room. The guard stands in one of the doorways watching as I pass the displays between us, barely getting more than a glance at the pictures and tools behind the glass. He is bent over a display of stones and gems found only on Beta Earth. I peek over his shoulder and see a set of rubies with a dark center ranging in size from one to seven carats.
“Is that the kind of ruby you want?” I ask.
“Huh?” He spins around, his eyes wide as he looks from the guard to me.
“For your payment, is that the type of ruby you want?” I ask again.
“Yeah,” he says, his shoulders slowly relaxing. “A Betan ruby.”
“Okay.” I say. I take a closer look at the ruby. The center is darker than the other rubies around it and under the bright lights I can see how someone would value it.
“Why did you ask for a ruby?” I ask.
“I just wanted it,” Kai says and he turns and walks to the next display.
We are in our own worlds for the rest of the museum, I point out the pictures of the first colonists and the Lyman family, but Kai just shrugs his shoulders. We circle one of the shuttlecrafts that landed the second wave of colonists and pass the display showing a jigger that is now stuffed. Its glassy eyes stare out at me and seem to follow me no matter where I stand and its dark brown body sticks out from the white wall like a moving shadow.
I try not to get carried away with the history behind each display and keep my excitement to a dull roar. Sometimes Kai seems interested, especially over the gun case and the ancient weapon progression to modern weapons wall display. It’s interesting because those are the displays I could walk right past.
I don’t know how long we spend going up and down each level’s hallway, but the near sun beams on the tops of our heads when we walk down the marble steps back to the gate. My eyes squint against the glare from the white stone courtyard after being inside for so long. Under the dome at the Compound the suns are never this bright, partly to protect the candidates and partly to provide a consistent environment for the Aquarium and labs. I wonder how the rest of the world has not gone blind from the intense light. It’s later than I thought and Kai suggests we try a local pizza restaurant which sounds perfect to me.
We haven’t gone more than a block when I notice a line of gold-plated cement blocks running parallel to us in the pavement. According to the Compound’s library, the White Lilac Memorial has paths of gold blocks running down the streets in a four block radius leading to it. The paths converge and swirl around the Memorial like flames around a sun.
“Is the main square close to the Memorial?” I ask.
“What memorial?” he asks.
My feet slow down. How could he not know which Memorial I am talking about? As far as I know it is the only Memorial in Highton City. All the video feeds and books show thousands of people crowding around it. I look closer at Kai to see if he is making some kind of joke, but his face seems serious enough, curious even. He is young, not more than two years older than I and perhaps he doesn’t know about it yet, or what it means. He would have no memory of the previous cure gathering and the name etching afterward.
“The White Lilac Memorial. It’s a tall white pillar with the names of all the people who have died to create the vaccine,” I say.
I feel somewhat more subdued when he only shrugs and says, “Maybe.”
We continue on toward the main square and our path stays parallel with the gold cement path. The street we are on opens up to a large square and the gold cement path shoots out into the open joined by other paths from each street spiraling around a tall, stone pinnacle in the center of the square. The Memorial, my memorial. My first glimpse catches my breath. It is bigger and more beautiful in person than it ever looked on film or paper. The sheer height of it makes me feel insignificant compared to all those who have gone before me.
In a daze I walk up to it, my eyes drifting to each name on the side facing me. Before I realize it my hands are touching those names: Petyr Gurginsk, Jessica Hall, Fredrick GY00175 and Patricia GY22446.
All the contestants had the option of using their given name or their lab name, which is a series of letters and numbers that identify their creation order like a big family. Mine is Caryn GY63728 from the 60,000 series. As I touch each name their face appears on the screen at the top of the monument and rotates slowly like they are looking around the square.
I move on to the next side. The four sides all have four names with the exception of one that still has three. I am the sixteenth and I can’t help trying to picture my name above Hank GY52977 completing the current top row so the next White Lilac can start the row above ours. There is so much space left above these names, empty in waiting, as if there is a multitude in eternity waiting to be saved.
I turn to the next side and see Petyr Gurginsk engraved at the bottom in big, bold letters carved into the stone, the first person to die from anemone poison. He was the one who volunteered to search the bottom of the lake and he managed to gather some jigger eggs and swim to the shore before dying on the beach. My fingers trace the grooves of his name, I barely feel worthy to be standing here compared to all of them. It is like I’m meeting distant relatives I have always been told of and whose mighty deeds I have dreamed of at night. To be here and knowing the lives behind each name and face fills me with more emotion than I think is possible.
I wish May and Janissa could be here. We could probably spend a whole day looking at each name and reminding each other of all the stories we’ve heard of their lives. Just thinking of them makes me look around. No one else is in the center of the square. Kai is standing near the outer golden circles watching me with his hands in his pockets. I give the Memorial one last touch; the smooth stone feels warm under the suns’ blaze, and I walk over to him.
“Where is this pizza shop?” I ask.
“This way,” he says and he leads me across the square to a small shop with a red and green awning. We enter the shop and after asking one of the employees for a large pizza and two drinks we sit at a table to wait for the food.
I stare out the window to the Memorial in the square and then to Kai sitting opposite me. I can taste the silence between us and I feel like I should say something, but nothing comes to mind.
A steaming pizza descends between us and two drinks pop up on either side of the disposable plates. Kai and I tear off pieces and I place mine on my plate to cool. It is much hotter than the food at the Compound ever was and I rub the tips of my fingers to cool them. Kai has finished his first slice and is starting his second before I even take my first bite, but when I do I can’t stop. The cheese, sauce and crust all taste so good, probably filled with all sorts of chemicals that I have never had at the Compound. Together we eat in silence until the whole pizza is gone and I feel so full I want to lie down on a bed and sleep.
“That was the best pizza I have ever had,?
?? I say.
Kai smiles. “This place still makes pizza the old way and you wouldn’t believe how many calories are in a single slice.”
I can believe it. I don’t remember ever feeling this full. But the smells and tastes are so delicious that eating food like this even once a week would be worth losing ten years of my life span, if I had ten years to lose.
We are so close to Old Highton, the site of the first and second colonies, that we head there immediately after eating. I love looking at all the old buildings. Most are original, and the tourist shops with displays of old clothing and technology have been converted from an original dwelling or made from the same materials to look like it. We even take a tour where we walk through Dr. Haydon’s house and lab. The invisible force fields keep us from touching anything but the carpeted path. But being here, seeing his chairs and books, breathing the same musty scent of his chemicals is like seeing the face of long lost friend.
If Heather was here she would know some story about why the rocking chair faced the window instead of the fireplace, or she could tell me what his favorite book was. Heather knew all sorts of random information like that. I wish she was here.
“Who is she?” Kai asks behind me.
“What?” I spin around.
“Who’s Heather?”
Heat rises to my face. I was talking aloud and he heard me.
“Heather was my best friend, but she died four years ago.” My fingers search for a wild strand of hair to tuck behind my ear, but find every hair in place and I resort to a quick scratch of my ear instead.
Kai’s dark brown eyes capture mine and I see pain reflecting in them.
“I lost my best friend too.”
“I guess the hurt never really goes away, does it?”
He turns and ducks beneath a low hanging glass case attached to the ceiling, but not before I hear him say, “Definitely not when he’s the one betraying me.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” I ask.
Kai shrugs. He looks at one of the wall displays on local plants and says, “Noah works for a guy I hate and now he’s making me work for him too. It doesn’t really matter. It’s probably my fault anyway.” He pauses and adds softly. “Just don’t say it’s not.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Cause it doesn’t help.”
“I know it doesn’t. When Heather drowned I was there and I could have done something, pressed my button, swam to her, anything, but I didn’t.” My words slip out, one slowly after the other. “People keep telling me it wasn’t my fault. But I froze and I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive myself.”
“That’s horrible,” Kai says. He takes a step toward me and knocks his head on the ceiling display. His face wrinkles in discomfort, but the mood is broken and I want to smile.
“Yes, it is,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.
“Are you...?” Kai turns to me, a curious expression on his face while he rubs the red spot on his forehead.
I cover my mouth to hide a grin, but part of it breaks through.
“You think this is funny?” he asks, the corners of his lips tilting upward.
“No,” I say. “It’s not. And I can’t stop.” My throat gurgles as laughter breaks free. Kai watches me for a second, his own smile widening, his dark eyes twinkling, and then he is chuckling too.
“You would not believe the week my head has had,” he says, his fingers fluffing his hair as we step out of the house.
“Oh really? Worse than that?” I step around ahead of Kai.
“Wait.” Kai holds out his arm and stops me. His jaw tightens and his eyes flicker over my shoulder. A crowd of people are gathering in the streets slowly moving to the center of the city, but I don’t care what they are doing. Several voices are shouting, “Just say no” and I step closer to hear what Kai might say.
“Is that her?” a woman in the crowd asks. Murmurs rise in the air.
Several people are pointing at me, one is shaking his fist. The crowd’s chant changes from “Just say no” to “No more cure” and the anger in their voices freeze dries my lungs. They raise the projection screens from their handhelds higher, waving them in the air. Most of the screens say similar messages to the ones they are shouting, but I also see signs that say “No more experiments” and “Eighty years is enough.” Then I notice the people in the crowd. Some are using walkers and others have deformed limbs or faces. One woman’s body is so twisted her arms and legs curl up around her. She sits in a hover chair and has a projection screen above her that says, “You’d be better off dead than living like me.”
“It is her,” someone says and two men break off from the crowd coming toward us.
Kai snatches my hand in an iron grasp and we run.