“And with them I can pass as an official citizen, a firstborn?”
She nods. “These will be a huge step up from the black market lenses criminals use. They can’t access all of the technology. Some things, like the filter for the altered sun rays, and the identity chip, work okay on the cheap, removable lenses. But there are deeper layers that no one has been able to suss out . . . until we found someone brilliant. Normally, the lenses are manufactured in a factory, and then sent to the Center for further modification by EcoPan. The cybersurgeon we found managed to hack into the Center to get the exact specifications. You don’t have to worry. They’ll work perfectly. Lots of other second children aren’t as lucky as you.”
“Lots?” I repeat. This is the first I’ve ever heard of other second children. What a day for revelations.
“A few, yes, but others use the cheap, removable lenses too. My sources don’t talk much, as you might imagine. But from what I gather there are criminals using lower-quality fake lenses, rebels, cheating husbands and wives . . .”
So I’m in great company. But back to the second children. “How many of us are there?” I ask.
She presses her lips together briefly. “Not many. According to my source, perhaps twenty still walking the streets.”
“Oh, that’s . . . Wait, what do you mean still?”
“Oh, honey, you’ll be just fine. We found a real genius to make your lens implants, bought the most secure identity, bribed all the right people . . .”
“What are you saying?”
She bites her lip. “My source told me that the survival rate for second children trying to integrate into society . . . isn’t as high as we’d like.”
“You mean, we die?”
“No, no,” she hastily begins, then amends it to “Well . . . a few are captured. But there are a lot who simply . . . disappear.”
A chill tickles my spine.
“Don’t worry, honey, it won’t happen to you. We’ve taken every precaution.” She shakes her head as if tossing away the unpleasant thoughts.
I’m haunted by the image of second children disappearing. The way Mom said it, it sounded like they just evaporate, turn into mist and drift away. It must be the Center, though, capturing second children. They must be dragged away into the night and fog, and no one ever knows what happened to them.
Mom won’t talk about it anymore, no matter how much I press. Not long afterward Ash comes home, and with a quick mutual glance Mom and I agree not to discuss anything serious or worrying in front of him. Stress aggravates his condition. I also want to ask where I’ll be going. Will it be to a childless couple? Will I be posing as an orphan, adopted by a kind relative? I might even have a brother or sister. Will I like them?
My new family must be kind, though, if they’re taking the risk of welcoming in a secret second child. They’ll be generous and loving and patient and caring, and they’ll help ease my way into the world. I know they will, because only that sort of person would defy all Eden to help a child.
How can I worry too much when I have Lark’s company to look forward to? Dinner passes insufferably slowly. I know I should be savoring every moment with my family before it all changes, but my thoughts keep straying to tonight.
Before I go to bed, I look at my strange, multicolored eyes. What will I feel like when my eyes are flat and dull like everyone else’s? I won’t be me anymore.
Even though everyone I’ve really seen in my life (all four of them, aside from passersby last night) has these flat lifeless eyes, it shocks me to imagine seeing them staring blankly out of my face. Those flat eyes are unnatural, wrong, in a way I never appreciated before, until it became personal. All the light and variation of my irises will be crushed. They’ll be a dull gray-blue. I’ll look like a blind girl, though my vision will be unchanged.
Mom ducks her head into the bathroom, and I blink to hide the moisture gathering in my eyes. “Your dad and I are taking the day off of work tomorrow to be with you, and Ash is staying home. We’ll have a real family party then. All your favorite foods. And we’ll have a chance to talk about . . . ,” she breaks off, “some important things you need to know.”
Whatever they are, why did she wait until my final days to tell me?
Soon afterward, everyone is in bed. I pretend to sleep, too, but under my bed is a bag containing the clothes I plan to wear. I breathe slowly, quietly, listening to the sounds of the house: Ash turning in his sleep, the soft settling sound the walls make when the temperature drops at night. When I’m sure everyone is deeply asleep, I grab my bag and slip out to the courtyard.
Right on the other side is the world. And Lark. My fingers tremble as I strip off my nightclothes and stand almost naked in the dark. Above me the stars twinkle dimly, and I tilt my head back to let their muted light fall on me. I know almost nothing about the stars, not their names or the science behind them. But I love looking at their glowing patterns because they remind me that there’s a world outside of my courtyard, outside of Eden even. And they make me think of my most treasured possession: the ancient, faded, crumbling photo from before the Ecofail that Mom smuggled out of the archives. I’ve brought it to share with Lark. She can keep secrets.
I thought more about what to wear than I did about leaving home. The fact embarrasses me, but I know that if I didn’t have the distraction of Lark and sneaking out, I’d be going crazy with what’s happening in the rest of my life.
After long consideration and much pawing through my meager wardrobe (mostly made up of duplicates of Ash’s school uniforms and casual clothes), I settled on one of my few feminine pieces: a deep red skirt that flares to my mid-thigh. The material is imbued with subtle sparkles that flash when the light hits them just so.
For the rest I chose black, partly from limited choice, partly from an instinct that tells me I may need to blend into the night if anything goes wrong. I tuck my black leggings into my soft ankle boots, and adjust the shoulders of a snug synthwool sweater knitted in an open weave. I know I’ll look dull alongside the lurid magenta and ultramarine and canary colors favored by the residents of Eden. But the shock of red at my hips is a rare treat for me. I hope Lark likes it.
I don’t want to risk triggering the alarm on the front door, so I scale the wall—now I remember why I rarely wear skirts—and sit at the top, hunkered low to reduce my profile, looking for Lark. For one terrible moment I don’t see her. Then she emerges from the shadows, starlight on lilac, and the entire world seems to settle into place.
I remember most of the tricky holds for the way down, and scale the wall easily, leaping down the last four feet just to show off.
“You’re amazing!” Lark cries as she runs up to me. “How do you do that? When you climb you look like a squirrel, or . . . a gecko!”
“And you look like a flower,” I blurt out before I can stop myself.
She lowers her head for a second, but when she raises it her eyes are shining.
“Here,” she says, and hands me a pair of glasses. I unfold them, and see that the lenses are in a faceted kaleidoscope of pink and sky blue and lilac. Lark slips on a pair of her own. “Dragonfly glasses,” she tells me. “Aren’t they beautiful? Lots of people are wearing them, even at night, so no one will even think about your eyes.”
I put them on. Despite the facets on the lenses, when I look through them my vision isn’t fractured. The only difference is that a pink-purple glow is cast over the world. Eden has gone rosy tonight.
Lark takes my hand. “Come on! I want to run!” And then we’re off, down the road, our linked arms swinging, laughing, careless of who might hear us. We’re just two girls enjoying life. Why would anyone look twice?
It isn’t long before she’s panting, though I’m only just warming up. I feel like I could run forever.
“I can’t run like you,” she gasps out. “How did you get so fast and so strong?”
“There’s not much else for me to do, except run and climb and stretch and exercise,
” I explain.
She regards me in what I think is admiration. “You’re so . . .” She breaks off, shaking her head. “Do you know what you could do with speed like that? No one could ever catch you. The Greenshirts are soft compared to you. Why, I bet you could even outrun a securitybot. And climbing could be pretty useful to someone who . . .” She stops herself again. “But we shouldn’t talk about that now. Not until we get there.”
“Where’s there?” I ask.
She gives me her quirky up-and-down smile. “That’s for me to know . . . and you to find out.” She crooks her elbow in mine and we head to the nearest autoloop station.
PANIC HITS ME as soon as we slide through the turnstile. Walking through a crowd on a public street where everyone goes about their own business is one thing. But here there is an actual checkpoint of sorts, where passengers have to pay for their ticket. I try to back up, but my thighs hit the turnstile’s padded bar.
“One way,” Lark says, catching my arm. More loudly she adds for the benefit of those behind us annoyed at the holdup, “Don’t worry, the bathroom is over this way.”
“What if they . . . ,” I begin, but she shushes me with a squeeze.
“You’ll be fine. I’ll put the fare on my chip. Just act normal.”
Bikk! Money! I hadn’t even thought about that. There are so many little things that could catch me out. I don’t have any funds, of course, nor do I know how to use them or what anything costs.
Lark goes first to show me how it’s done. It’s simple. There’s what looks like a mirror at the entrance to the autoloop platform. She lifts her glasses and smiles into it, adjusting her flower-colored hair coquettishly, and says brightly, “Two please!” The mirror quickly dims and brightens again as it reads her eye implants. Her currency has been transferred, and two small chits roll out from a slot under the mirror. She heads through the corridor leading to the station platform. There are people in uniform everywhere. Only one is a Greenshirt, lounging against the wall at the far end of the station, chewing at a hangnail. But even the station attendants alarm me in their crisp, official-looking costumes. They have the bull’s-eye insignia of the Center on their lapels, and even if they’re low-level functionaries, they still represent the establishment that is my natural enemy . . . whose lair I’m attempting to infiltrate.
Ash was wrong about me. I am afraid.
But I hold myself steady, and even force a playful sidelong smile for the ticket-taker. A smile that pretends to openness, but actually hides my eyes just in case he can glimpse anything from the side of the glasses. He takes my ticket and lets me pass.
I feel elated with that simple success! I was afraid, but I did it anyway. Maybe, I think, that’s what it means to be brave. Maybe Ash was right about me after all.
Holding my head as high as any firstborn, I follow Lark onto the platform. Within a few minutes the autoloop pulls into the station and we step aboard. When the pneumatic doors slide breathily shut, I flinch. I’m trapped! My speed and agility won’t do a thing for me if there’s trouble in here. But Lark sits on a molded lime-green seat and slouches down so her knees press against the fuchsia seat in front of her. I slide in beside her, mimicking her position as the autoloop lurches forward. It gains speed rapidly, accelerating on a monorail that coils in a spiral around Eden, from the Center to the outer circles.
“Where . . . ?” I try again, but she shushes me.
“Just look around. This is your first view of the rest of Eden. I’m curious to know what you think.” She stands and wiggles until we’ve switched seats and I’m by the window.
And I look, at scenery more vivid than a datablock, streaming past me so fast that it almost blurs. Whenever I catch sight of something interesting—an oddly shaped building, the swirling green inside an algae spire—I have to whip my head around to follow it. Everything slips behind me. My body, and my life, are moving forward faster than I ever dared dream.
The quality of the neighborhoods changes quickly. As I watch the gaudy lights of the inner circles dim to muted pastels, the chic evening clothes turn to darker, perfunctory casual garments, I realize we were on an express route to the outer circles.
After what feels like a long time later, we slow our headlong rush and descend to ground level. Figures become once again people, not blurs.
When I was in my own entertainment circle, people traveled mostly in pairs, sometimes in loose, casual formations. It seemed as if everyone knew one another, like no matter their age they were all basically part of the same crowd. People flowed from one group to another. Without exception they were smiling, laughing—happy.
Here, in this dingy outer circle, people either move through the streets in tight packs or completely alone. The packs look uniform and tough. They don’t wear the same clothes, exactly, but each group seems to have a common theme. There is one pack in black, with tight shining clothes and flashes of metal. I can’t tell if they are studs or armor or even weapons. Another group seems to be made up of people like the fascinating snake man I saw in the Rain Forest Club. Like some peaceable (and at the same time savage) kingdom, they flock together, birds with cats, wolves with sheep.
Moving among them are people utterly alone. Most are hunched and introverted, eyes on the ground, taking care to avoid contact with anyone else.
But a few are different. Here and there, as the autoloop cruises into the final station, I see solitary men, and one woman, who look as if they’d be a match for even the black-clad group. They are upright, swaggering, arrogant in their bearing. They walk as if they owned the Earth.
The autoloop has almost stopped when I see him, a young man not much older than me, with bright chestnut hair and a face set in hard lines. He isn’t as big as some of the other loners, but in a glance I can tell that he doesn’t care, that he has absolute confidence that he can handle anything the world might throw at him. For a second his face turns, and I catch sight of a crescent-shaped scar from the corner of his left eye to just below his cheekbone. I pull my head back so he doesn’t see me. But he was only glancing at the train. The next second we’ve pulled into the covered station.
Lark jumps to her feet, looking excited. “Come on!” she says, pulling me after her and lunging for the door. Only a couple of other people rise along with us. Some of the inner circle travelers seem to be tourists. “That’s the Deadnight gang, I do believe,” one woman says in cultured tones to her chic friend. “And do you see that splendid specimen? That’s the Jaguar. They say she once killed five men in one night.”
“I heard it was four men, a woman, and a child,” her companion says, shivering deliciously. They giggle softly behind their hands.
The boisterously civilized inner rings were one thing, but Lark actually expects me to go out into this maelstrom of danger and strange humanity?
“Do you trust me?” Lark asks when she sees the naked uncertainty on my face.
I only pause for a second. In that instant, an image of Mom flashes through my mind. Don’t trust anyone except family, she would tell me. Your very life is at stake.
“I trust you completely,” I say firmly.
Lark smiles, and takes me into the outer circles.
What can I say about that night? To say it was like nothing I’d ever experienced would be pointless. I’ve never experienced anything. Like nothing I’d ever imagined? I didn’t even know enough of the world, and people, and pleasure, to begin to imagine anything like it.
“A girl who keeps her wits about her isn’t in any danger,” Lark tells me as we saunter through the dim streets. “They’re not bad people. Just poor, that’s all. Most would never dream of hurting anyone. As long as you don’t make any mistakes.”
Apparently, there are a lot of potential mistakes I might make. One gang, she says, would attack me if I spit within their sight. No worry about that. Even if I wasn’t too polite, my mouth is far too dry. Another gang insists that anyone they pass should immediately stop and turn their backs on them. “For
them, keeping an eye on them is a sign of mistrust, and a grave insult. If you turn your back, though, you’re showing you trust them and so they’ll leave you alone.”
I would be lost without her. Again.
She takes me to a club, a place both calm and wild at the same time. No one is dancing. There are booths and tables, and recessed nooks hidden by curtains. People drink bitter black coffee (or as near as we can get, synthetic caffeine in a liquid suspension) and listen to someone on stage say perplexing, deep things that sound seditious. I don’t quite understand him, but he speaks about freedom and autonomy and endless open spaces in a way that makes my heart soar. We take a booth and listen to the conversations all around us. Everyone has an opinion. Voices rise. The mood turns agitated. Someone throws a chair across the room, shouting, “Better to be killed than lied to!” There is a quick brawl, before large bouncers tattooed all over in fern fronds haul out the offenders, and everyone else goes back to arguing about everything under the sun.
It is wonderful.
My skin is positively tingling with excitement, or maybe caffeine, when Lark pays the tab and leads me out. “But I like it so much here!” I protest. It was just right for me—an exciting spectacle I could enjoy without directly participating in. No one cared that I didn’t make eye contact or engage in debate. They were too intent on their own points, too in love with the sound of their own voices, to bother with me. It was like a classroom for me, a lesson in social behavior.
“But there’s more, even better. Now that we’re properly twitchy we have to work it off.”
I don’t know what she means, but I soon find out when we enter a warehouse tricked out like a jungle. It is almost entirely unlike the Rain Forest Club. I can see the difference now. That was all about décor and style, about creating an impression. This place is as close to real as our dead planet can get. They seem to have ripped up a chunk of actual primordial forest from before the Ecofail, complete with deep earthy, mossy smells, vines with wicked thorns, and shrieking beasts that swipe at my ankles. It seems thrillingly dangerous, utterly genuine.