“Everyone who knows anything knows,” said Helix. “They just don’t say.”
“Did your parents tell you?”
“Of course.”
“My parents didn’t.”
“Did you ever ask?”
“No,” Honor admitted.
“You were too busy changing your name,” said Helix.
Honor reached over and snatched Helix’s spray hose from him. She shot a stream of water at him. He tried to duck aside, but she soaked his sleeve. “Take it back!”
“No!” Helix snatched the hose and shot water straight into Honor’s face. Helix was laughing at Honor. She dove for the hose again and soaked Helix at close range. Suddenly they were both laughing. Water streamed from their eyes and ears and noses.
“Stop! Danger!” Mrs. Tannenbaum screamed. She came running toward them, scurrying on little feet. She was extremely fast, even though she was so fat her white cook’s jacket strained at the buttons. “Roughhousing in the kitchen is Not Allowed.”
Honor dropped the hose. She and Helix stood dripping before the cook.
“What happened here?” Mrs. Tannenbaum demanded.
Honor looked down at her wet sandals.
“You, Heloise. Tell me what happened here.”
“I don’t know,” whispered Honor.
“Is that or is that not a lie?” asked Mrs. Tannenbaum.
“It is . . . not,” Honor said.
“You, Helix. Wipe that smile off your face,” said Mrs. Tannenbaum.
Helix wiped his hand across his mouth. When he dropped his hand again, he looked so deadly serious that now Honor couldn’t help smiling. It was as if his smile had migrated to her.
Gretel and Hector stifled laughter. Mrs. Tannenbaum whipped around to look at them and the two began mopping again.
“You’ll stay late,” Mrs. Tannenbaum told Honor and Helix. “You’ll clean the stoves. Get back to work.”
The kitchens were dark now. The other orphans went to dinner and Mrs. Tannenbaum went home. Honor turned on the lights over the stove so that she and Helix could see. They scrubbed and scrubbed with steel wool and soapy water, but the stoves seemed as dirty as ever, black with charred food.
Honor rolled up her wet sleeves, and now her forearms were wet all over again, gray and slimy with soap and grease. “This is a job for orderlies,” she said.
“That’s why it’s our punishment,” said Helix.
“How do they turn people into orderlies?” Honor asked him.
“Why did you change your name?” Helix asked her almost at the same moment.
“I wanted to fit,” said Honor. Then she felt ashamed. “My parents weren’t like yours,” she said. “They didn’t explain; they just did everything wrong. They tried to stick out. They even gave me the wrong name. How would you like it if you had a silent H?”
“I would like it,” Helix said rebelliously. “I’d be Elix. My name wouldn’t be on any of the lists. People would think I’m three years older.”
“Then you’d have to take exams,” Honor pointed out.
“Then I’d be leaving school.” Helix lowered his voice. “When I leave school, I’m going to find my parents.”
“How?”
He hesitated. Then he said, “I’ll go to the other side of the island where they keep the orderlies and I’ll get into the Barracks and I’ll find them and get my parents out.”
“But you can’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.” Everyone knew that the other side of the island was dangerous, entirely exposed and unprotected. The City Side had Watchers and Weather Stations, but the Windward Side was unregulated, completely wild.
“You’d never get over the mountains,” Honor pointed out. “Even if you did, how would you know where to find them?”
Helix bent over the grill on the great stainless steel stove top. He was drawing something with his finger in the grease on the front rim of the stove. “Have you ever seen this? This,” he said as he wrote, “is the slogan of the Objectors.”
Honor looked down. He’d scrawled three words: Knowledge is power. “How do you know your knowledge is right?” she asked him. “How do you know the Objectors are right? How do you know Enclosure is barely started and we’re not safe?”
“How do I know?” Helix said. “Because I know! Because my father told me.”
“And how did he know? And why do you believe him?” Honor asked. “Is it just because he’s your dad? What proof do you have?”
“Didn’t I show you the pieces they cut from books?” Helix retorted.
“But have you seen the Polar Seas? Have you really seen them for yourself?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I’ve seen storms. I’ve seen the weather forecast fail and the sky colors run together when it rains. I’ve heard thunder. I’ve seen real clouds cover the overlay and turn the sunsets gray. Winds flatten houses. Waves crash over the seawall. Even here, in the City, with the projection booth, we aren’t safe.”
Honor listened in silence. She knew Helix was right, but the knowledge frightened her. When she glanced down at the words on the stove top, caution took over. She smeared the letters together, blotting the slogan with her scrubber.
SIX
WHENEVER THEY COULD, HONOR AND HELIX TALKED ABOUT the orderlies and which ones might be someone’s parents. It became a private game to say, “I spotted one that looked just like Gretel by the recycling plant. He had Gretel’s eyes—the same shade of green. I’m sure he was her father—or maybe mother.” Or, “I saw an ugly one, just like Hector.” They rarely talked about spotting their own parents, however. That was too painful. Even though they looked for their parents all the time, Honor and Helix never found them.
“Do you think they’ve been redistributed?” Honor whispered to Helix one morning early before breakfast.
“I think they’re here,” Helix insisted.
“Because you know they are or because you want them to be?” asked Honor.
“Because I know,” said Helix.
“Really know? Or think you know?”
“I think I know,” said Helix.
Honor sighed. “You read too many books.”
“I found out what really happens at the end of Bridge to Terabithia,” said Helix, but then he saw Mrs. Edwards coming.
“Move along,” she told them. “It’s time to hurry to class.”
“The girl dies,” Helix whispered to Honor as they picked up their book bags.
“No!”
“Yes.” He nodded.
“But how?”
“Flood,” he told Honor.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I found the pages. A flash flood sweeps her away and she drowns!”
“She doesn’t move away? Her parents aren’t redistributed for three years and then transferred back?”
“Nope.”
“That’s terrible!” Honor shook her head. “I loved Bridge to Terabithia. Are you sure she dies?”
“Yup,” said Helix.
“Well, then, I like the new version better,” Honor said.
“Why?”
“Because if she drowns, that would be too sad!”
“I guess that’s what Miss Tuttle thought,” said Helix. “Haven’t you noticed that there are hardly any sad books in the library?”
Honor had her fourteenth birthday in the Boarders’ Houses. She was lucky, because her birthday fell on Errand Day. Usually the birthday orphan got to bake a special cake with two friends, but because it was Errand Day, the celebration was combined with an outing to the Central Bakery.
The orphans set out in the morning with Mr. and Mrs. Edwards leading the way. They walked to the City in pairs. Helix walked with Quintilian. Honor walked with Fanny.
The orphans were giddy at the chance to leave school. Honor couldn’t help staring at all the people. She’d only been an orphan half a year, but Honor could hardly remember coming to the City with her own fa
mily on Errand Day. She was no longer used to seeing strangers.
“Look at the Square!” Eglantine exclaimed. “It’s so beautiful.”
The Square shone silver in the sun. Bigger than the biggest field at school, it gleamed and sparkled, because it was tiled with millions and millions of tiny solar panels. There were solar panels on every building in the City, but the Central Square was the biggest Solar Collector on the island. In fact, the Square was the biggest Solar Collector in all the Colonies.
“And there’s the New Weather Bureau,” said Helix.
He pointed to a grand ancient building called the Paradise Theater, now used by the New Weather Bureau. On the front of the building a white sign emblazoned NOW SHOWING spelled out the weather and the hour in black letters. Sun with Scattered Clouds, Hour Two, Azure Blue. If the children craned their necks, they could see the beam of blue light streaming through the high window of the New Weather Bureau’s projection booth. Pure bright azure blue so intense that Mrs. Edwards warned, “Look away. Never look directly at the light beam!”
The Central Bakery was tall and white, bigger than any school building. There were special entrances on the side for visitors. Each visitor wrote his or her name in a guest book in the vestibule. There were ten guest books open on ten tall tables, because the bakery was such a popular tourist destination. The Central Bakery was so famous in the islands that many couples chose to marry there. Honor saw a wedding party just inside the bakery doors. The bride wore brown and held Sayings of Earth Mother clasped in her hands. The groom wore a new tan suit with a white flower in his buttonhole.
The orphans signed the guest book, and then a Bakery Guide ushered them to a bank of elevators. Six went up with Mr. Edwards in one elevator, and six waited with Mrs. Edwards for another. Quintilian went up with the first group. Honor and Helix waited with the second.
Honor watched as the bride and groom and their friends made their way down the hall to the bakery’s party room. Wedding parties were small in those days.
“Shift change, shift change. Move aside,” announced one of the Bakery Guides. Honor and the other visitors backed up against the wall to make way for the new shift of orderlies arriving to take the freight elevator down to the bakery floor. There were at least fifty orderlies in the shift, all dressed in working white. They wore white caps on their bald heads and white aprons over their white jumpsuits. Their faces were pale; even their eyes seemed pale, as though they hardly ever saw the sun. The freight elevator doors opened and half the orderlies stepped inside. Those who were left stepped back five paces so that they stood well away from the elevator door as it closed. Honor wondered how the orderlies knew when to step and when to stop. How did they walk together so perfectly, in batches?
The bell rang for Visitor Elevator Four, and Mrs. Edwards hurried the orphans in front of the orderlies so they could squeeze inside. “Move along, move along,” said Mrs. Edwards, but Honor turned to look at the orderlies’ pale faces. Green eyes, brown eyes, black eyes. Wide eyes, pale blue. She caught her breath. Pale blue eyes and a faintly freckled nose. Smooth round cheeks, small ears with no hair to cover them. She was staring into her mother’s face; she knew it.
“Oh,” she said. Despite herself, the word escaped her, but fortunately no one heard. That was her mother. That was Pamela. She was a bakery orderly. Honor wanted to touch her mother; she wanted to rush forward, but she dared not. She only paused a moment.
Her mother made no noise; she made no sign. Honor was looking at her own mother, but Pamela stared straight ahead like all the other orderlies.
“Come along, Heloise,” called Mrs. Edwards.
In that instant, the orderly with Pamela’s eyes did something Honor had never seen an orderly do. She blinked.
“Doors are closing,” said Mrs. Edwards, and Honor rushed into the elevator.
“We are going up to the bridge,” said the Bakery Guide. “The bridge is where we welcome visitors to watch the activity on the bakery floor. Please stay together when the doors open.”
The elevator was packed. Honor could scarcely breathe. She’d seen her mother, and it had happened so fast. Maybe she’d imagined the whole thing. Maybe she’d wanted to see her so much that her mind had tricked her into looking at those blue eyes.
Bing! The doors opened and Honor exhaled. She felt faint as she stepped into the glass bakery gallery. She felt she was dreaming, but she couldn’t tell if it was a good dream or a nightmare. As in a dream, she couldn’t feel her feet when she walked. As in a dream, she wanted to cry out, but she had no voice. She was moving slowly; her feet were heavy. For a moment she was a little child again, walking in marshy fields where the mud sucked her shoes. For just an instant her eyes closed and she was following her parents through tall grasses.
But she shook herself and opened her eyes and followed the Bakery Guide instead. She didn’t stand out; she waited at the first viewing station and watched the orderlies below wheeling tubs of dough and bins of flour. Skilled orderlies by the dozen stood at stainless steel tables. They were cutting pieces of dough with curved metal knives and then weighing the cut pieces on scales. At the next table, orderlies were buttering coffee cans for baking Colony Loaves, the brown bread everybody ate in those days, bread in the shape of cylinders. At a second table, orderlies were spreading cinnamon onto dough, rolling up the dough, and then cutting it into cinnamon rolls. At yet another long table, orderlies kneaded dough with pieces of green olives.
“We make every kind of bread at the Central Bakery,” announced the Guide. “Move along now, and we’ll take a look at our specially built ovens.”
The other orphans were talkative, practically dancing along. Honor followed the group, but she stayed close to the gallery’s glass wall. She kept her eyes fixed on the orderlies. From above she couldn’t see their faces, only their white caps, all alike. The group stared down at the ovens, which were lined with stone. They watched orderlies open the oven doors and shove long-handled wood paddles inside to remove loaves of bread.
“Once upon a time there were wood-fired ovens,” said the Bakery Guide. “People cut down trees, chopped up the trunks and branches, and fed the wood into ovens, stoves, and fireplaces. Black smoke spread throughout the sky. Our ovens are clean and they run on gas made from . . . what?”
“Sunflower seeds,” the orphans chorused together.
“That’s right.”
They marched down the long gallery to watch pie making, where orderlies worked in an assembly line at vast tables. The pie-filling table was ingenious. Vats of filling hung from metal cables in the ceiling. One by one, orderlies slid piecrusts below the proper vat and a skilled orderly pulled a cord to open a hole in the bottom of the vat so that just the right amount of filling poured into the crust. The skilled orderly worked so smoothly that not a drop of apple or cherry or blueberry filling spilled.
It was hard to follow the Bakery Guide’s instructions to move along when there was pie filling to watch. The orphans dawdled and followed slowly, first to the cookie-baking viewing station and then to cake mixing. Honor was last of all. She held on to the metal guide rail as she trailed behind. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
“Come along, Heloise,” said Mrs. Edwards. Then suddenly she put her hand to Honor’s forehead. “Are you feeling well?”
“I’m fine,” said Honor. But Helix was watching and he stood close to her at the next stop.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice so no one else could hear.
“I saw her.”
“Where?” Helix didn’t need any further explanation. He knew exactly what Honor was talking about.
She kept her voice so quiet that she was breathing more than speaking. “Downstairs in the big batch coming for the new shift. I saw her.”
They didn’t look at each other when they spoke but kept their eyes fixed on the view below. Orderlies were pouring batter into flat sheet pans.
“She’s down there,” Honor said. Her voice must ha
ve sounded funny because Helix shot her a quick look.
“Don’t cry,” he warned. “Don’t make any noise. They’ll make you leave.”
It was time for the last viewing station. “Watch your step,” the Guide told them. “Fill in the front rows first.” The last viewing station was the highlight of the tour. Stairs led down from the upper gallery into a glass viewing box with seats almost like a theater. There were at least thirty seats, enough for several tour groups to sit and watch all at the same time.
Mrs. Edwards said kindly to Honor, “Heloise, you are our birthday girl; please come sit in the front next to me.”
“Lucky you,” said Fanny.
Honor was afraid to look at Fanny. She didn’t know what Fanny might see in her face.
Head down, Honor followed Mrs. Edwards to the front and sat between her and Eglantine as the Bakery Guide announced, “This is the end of our tour, and we have saved the best for last. The Central Bakery cake-decorating department finishes over one thousand special-occasion cakes each week. The process begins on your far left with orderlies spreading white icing on plain sheet cakes. Once the cakes are iced and smoothed, they move on to the decorating tables.”
Honor leaned forward in her chair. She was quite close now. She could see every detail of work on the tables below. The orderlies were almost near enough to touch, almost, but a little too far down, and they worked with their backs toward the viewers in the gallery. They were trained to ignore visitors.
The cake decorators were highly skilled orderlies. Most orderlies could use one tool, but these used many beautifully. They put on a show with their brushes and sprinkles, their knives and spatulas and tubes of frosting in every color. Above the orderlies on a metal pot rack hung pink slips of paper with orders for special cakes. The orderlies glanced at each slip and then, in their hands, each plain cake became a painting and a little work of art. One cake became a garden. An orderly painted the cake in a wash of green for grass and then piped darker green stems for flowers. The blossoms were perfect roses and tulips and daisies in tints of lavender, pink, and pale yellow. The orderly left a blank space in the garden and scribed the cake’s message in perfect script: Happy Birthday, Laetitia. Another cake turned into a mass of butterflies, some iced on the surface and some that seemed about to fly away on painted cookie wings. All the cakes were so beautiful and clever it was hard to believe these were orderlies at the tables. Lower-level orderlies stood ready to box the cakes, and a pair of regular supervisors checked the orderlies’ work. What if she’s here? Honor thought. She tried to recognize her mother from the back. She tried to make out some flower or some butterfly or even some word in her mother’s handwriting. If she’s on the bakery floor, she will be here.