It is dark, a simulated moon hanging gibbous in the sky, but I can see people dashing across open spaces, diving for cover.
“What is this place?” I ask.
Lark looks at me with burning eyes. “Primal,” she says, and hands me a stylized gun.
For the next hour, we work as a team shooting laser beams at our opponents as we leap like mad monkeys through the underbrush. It’s a battle of man against man, but also of man against nature. The jungle doesn’t take sides. Simulated serpents strike our ankles, giving us electric shocks and deactivating our weapons for several minutes. Robotic jaguars knock us to the ground just as we’re about to score a point.
By the end, Lark is out of the game, and so is almost everyone else. It’s just me against a team of three, evidently experienced players in matching uniforms. Without Lark holding me back, I scale a tall tree and annihilate them from thirty feet up in the air.
I’m panting, sweating, exhausted . . . and utterly happy.
“Oh, Lark,” I say when I slither down the artificial tree. “This is perfect—just perfect! Thank you!”
She sways toward me for a second, then pulls away. “The night’s not over yet,” she says with her quirky smile. I can’t even imagine what might be in store for me next. Dancing? Racing? Fighting?
It is something completely different. And infinitely better.
An abandoned algae spire.
“It hasn’t worked for years,” Lark says. “My dad was fixing the pumping system, but they canceled the repairs before he could get it operational. I snatched his keycard.” The door clicks unlocked, and she pulls it open on creaking hinges.
Inside, it is pitch black. I hang back, but Lark pulls me into the darkness and shuts the door behind us. “The power has been cut,” she says, “but I know the way.” Her voice is like a beacon in the black. I fumble for her hand but she’s suddenly out of reach.
“Where are you?” I call, and her voice answers from too far away.
“Walk forward,” she instructs. She sounds farther away now. I have no idea of the size or shape of the room, what might be hiding in it.
“Where are you?” I call again. I feel lost, disoriented. “Wait for me!”
She laughs, low and rich. “You’re safe. Just walk.”
“But I can’t see!” What if there’s an obstacle, a chasm, a Greenshirt lurking in the dark. I feel paralyzed.
“Do you trust me?” Lark asks again.
I do trust her. I might not have much experience with people, but I know in my heart that Lark will never do me any harm. I take a deep breath, and step into the obsidian darkness.
My paces are shuffling, tentative, but eventually my outstretched hands meet Lark’s fingers. They intertwine like vines. I can’t see a thing, but I can almost feel her smiling.
“Now up!” she says, and guides my hands to the rungs of a ladder.
We climb forever, hundreds of feet. The journey is surreal. We don’t talk, but I hear her breathing just above me, hear the sounds of her feet hitting each slippery metal rung. Without any visual to orient myself I feel like I’m climbing in a dream. And Lark, above, is leading me deeper, higher, to someplace I never imagined.
Finally, an eternity of climbing later, I hear the scrape of a metal latch and suddenly Lark is illuminated from above by a faint glow of light. She climbs out of the narrow ladder shaft, and when I clamber after her I find myself looking down on all of Eden. The pale green concentric circles stretch out farther than I can see, away from the glittering eye of the Center. I feel like the EcoPanopticon itself, looking down on all that remains of mankind.
“How did you even find this place?” I ask her, then before she can answer I add, “and what’s an inner circle girl like you doing all the way out here in the boonies anyway?” We’re far from our home circle. Though the height and the darkness lend a glamour to the streets directly below us, I can still see the squalor, the run-down buildings, the furtive scurrying of the pedestrians.
“I used to live here.”
I gasp. I knew that Lark had relocated from another circle when she was about ten years old. When she came to the Kalahari school, Ash was selected to show her around. He told me about her that night, and every night since. But I’d assumed she’d moved from the next ring out. That, apparently, wasn’t too uncommon. Moving so far inward from one of the outer circles was unheard of.
I remember that her arrival in our elite circle caused a bit of a stir. Ash told me that some of her classmates wouldn’t invite her to birthday parties, and that her parents were shunned. Even my dad wondered aloud at dinner one evening whether Ash shouldn’t curtail his friendship with a girl of low origin, as he put it.
This wasn’t quite the outermost circle, but it was close, maybe two rings in from the slums of the farthest outer circle. I couldn’t imagine Lark living here.
She told me her story briefly while I tried to hide any trace of surprise or, Earth forbid, disgust, from my face. She came from a diligent, hardworking family who lived in a multistory tenement in this district. They scraped by for a living, and were happy. Sure, there were problems. Sometimes there were blackouts, or the water turned the color of rust. Sometimes Greenshirts hauled a neighbor away. Once she even found a dead body on the front stoop.
“But it wasn’t bad. You knew who your friends were. And everyone here could keep a secret.”
She told me how her father had discovered something while working on the water conduits deep under the spire. “He was a construction worker, basically, laying pipes and repairing valves. Then one day he . . . he found something.”
What? I naturally want to know.
She shrugs. “He wouldn’t say. Not even to his boss. But he managed to find a Center official, and told him what he found, and almost immediately afterward he got a Center job in the city planning division and we moved to the inner circle.”
“And you have no idea what he discovered?”
“No. He told us just enough that we’d understand why our fortunes suddenly changed. But he made it clear that his life depended on secrecy. And then . . .” Her brow crinkles. “I mentioned it a couple of years later, and it was like he didn’t remember it at all. He said he’d gotten promoted because he invented a new kind of automatic shutoff valve and the people at the Center were so impressed they elevated his status.”
“Maybe he was just really committed to the lie,” I suggest. “Maybe he was protecting you.”
“Maybe,” she says, then shakes her head so her lilac hair brushes her cheeks. “But let’s not talk about that. I brought you here for the view: Look up.”
I’ve been so focused on looking down at the city I’ve yearned for all my life that I haven’t looked skyward. I follow her gaze up to the heavens and gasp. The tip of the algae tower spirals to a sharp point above us, but beyond that . . . the universe!
My fingertips reach in my pocket to touch the ancient photo I’ve brought. The stars seem so much clearer here in the outer circle. From my courtyard I can only see the faintest pinpricks of light in the sky. Maybe because the city lights are so bright. The gaudy earthly glare is too much competition for those distant heavenly fires.
“It’s amazing,” I breathe, transfixed. The stars have patterns that I’ve never seen. I’ve read in ancient history lessons about how people have given clusters of stars names: the Bear, the Dragon, the Crab. I almost think I can see shapes in the random twinkling dots.
“That’s Orion, the hunter,” Lark says, pointing out the line of three bright stars marking his belt, and then showing me his starry sword. “And that’s the Big Dipper.” She settles on the cool, smooth ground, her hands behind her head as she gazes up. It feels natural to lie beside her, so I do, our flanks touching.
“My dad loves the stars,” she says. “He taught me every single one—their names, their patterns, their movements. It was the thing I missed most of all when we moved to the inner circle. I can only see a fraction of these from home. So I c
ome out here whenever I can, to look at the stars, and think, and dream.”
“What do you dream about?” I ask. I feel like I’m falling into a trance of happiness. Life couldn’t get any more sweet.
“Oh, lots of things. Getting out of Eden. Walking through a real forest. Having a government that doesn’t lie all the time . . .”
I turn to look at her, my breath brushing her cheek.
“Oh, forget I said that last one. We can talk about that tomorrow.” The word “tomorrow” makes me giddy. I want there to be a thousand tomorrows. Ten thousand tomorrows. “I do a few things, along with a few people in this circle. Things that make it convenient to have a good place like this to hide. But don’t worry about that now.”
I’m not inclined to worry about anything just now.
“What do you dream about?” she asks me.
“Finding someone,” I say immediately. “Someone who I can trust, someone who makes me complete.” I bite my lip, and my face flushes hot. “That’s stupid, I know. It’s just that I never had anybody, really. Not someone who I chose, or who chose me.”
Lark rolls toward me, propping herself up on her elbow. She looks into my eyes and says solemnly, “I chose you.”
Then, slowly, she bends until her lips touch mine. Her lilac hair tumbles over us, and through it I can see the stars shining. Oh Earth, they’re spinning! They’re dancing . . .
* * *
AT HOME IN bed that night—that morning—I lie awake and confused. I don’t know what to feel, and a hundred conflicting thoughts bombard me. I bounce from elation to concern to fear, and back to elation again. Always back to elation. Before we parted, I gave her my prized possession, my ancient image of a starscape over a vast chasm, an image captured just before the Ecofail. When she looked at it, I remember she frowned a bit.
“What is it?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. It reminds me of . . . something. I can’t quite place it. Let me think, and I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow.
Finally I fall asleep.
It can’t be an hour later when Mom is shaking me awake, hissing into my ear, “Get up! We have to leave. Now!”
ADRENALINE SURGING THROUGH me like lightning bolts, I’m on my feet before I’m even aware that I’m not dreaming. “No,” I mutter even as I move. Let me get back to my dream of happiness. My first thought—really my only thought in these hazy first moments of waking—is that I can’t let anything get in the way of meeting Lark again tonight. I don’t know what that kiss meant, to her or to me. I don’t know how I feel about it. But I need more time to find out.
It is a while before I realize that this isn’t just an acceleration of the plan, a blip that will keep me from Lark for the night, a delay of my hopes. This is the end of everything I’ve known.
“They’ve found out about us. About you,” Mom tells me as she starts to throw all my clothes into a trash bag.
I sit down hard on my bed. Oddly, the first thing that comes out of my mouth is “Why can’t I use a suitcase?”
“We have to burn your clothes. We have to get rid of everything that has anything to do with you. When you’re gone, we’ll sterilize the room, eliminate any prints, kill any DNA evidence of you . . .”
My brain is still fuzzy with sleep, and with Lark. “But Mom, what will I wear?” It seems like the most important question, somehow, in my sleep-addled confusion. When I fell asleep, I was planning my outfit for tonight with Lark, and now . . .
“It doesn’t matter—anything! Just throw something on.” She’s completely distraught. My clothes are flying, tumbling, balled up as she hurls them into the bags. “Hurry! Get dressed!” She tosses me a belted tunic in rich saffron-orange and a pair of shimmering gold pants from Ash’s school uniform.
Slowly, I pull on the pants and turn my back to strip off my nightshirt. The tunic top is made of the supple material that is supposed to mimic the softest doeskin. I haven’t worn it before. Mom picked it up only a week ago, and it still has the price tag on it. It cost an exorbitant fee.
I stand there, shirt poised to slip over my head, an idea almost clicking . . . but not quite.
“Hurry!” Mom barks again, and I realize she’s terrified. Whatever I was almost thinking is lost. I belt the tunic and turn, kneeling down beside her as she throws away my entire life.
“Mom, stop a second and tell me what’s happening.” I try to sound calm, soothing, but her naked fear is contagious. She takes a deep breath, then another, looking like she’s considering how much I should be allowed to know. “Tell me everything,” I insist.
“Our friend in the Center just tipped me off that they know about a second child. He didn’t have many details, so I don’t have any idea how they could possibly know, but now we’re all in terrible danger.”
Oh, great Earth! I’ve been so selfish! All this time I was only thinking of myself, of taking my life into my own hands and freeing myself from my captivity, of exploring the world, of making a friend for the first time in my life. I took pains not to be caught, but I was thinking only of me not being caught. It was a risk I was willing to take—for myself—and I trusted first in my own abilities, then in Lark, to keep me safe.
I never really thought about what it would do to my family if anyone found out about me. It was in the back of my mind, but only as a logical thread, not as a real conscious fear.
Now, looking into my mother’s frantic eyes, I realize what I might have done. To her, to Ash, to my father.
But how could they know about me? If a scanner or bot had detected me, I would have been swarmed with Greenshirts right away. They wouldn’t have given me a chance to go home. If I had been spotted and marked, I would have known. The reaction would have been immediate, and brutal.
Unless someone had turned me in. Someone who I’d shared my secret with. Someone I trusted.
I shake my head. No, not Lark. It can’t have been Lark. She would never do that. I think of the passion in her eyes when she talks about the problems of Eden, the inequality, the injustice. I remember the way she looks at me, soft and curious.
I won’t let myself think that, I decide. But I’d be a fool not to.
Right now, though, I need to calm Mom down and figure out more clearly exactly what is going on. “Do we really have to leave now?” I ask, my hand reassuringly on her arm. “Are they coming right this second?”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “No. Maybe. He just said that there’s a report of a second child who has been spotted in this circle.” She claps her fingers over my caressing hand. “You’ve been careful, haven’t you? I know you sometimes go to the top of the wall and peek out.”
I bow my head, ashamed. Oh Mom, I long to say, I’ve done so much more than that.
“I’ve thought about telling you not to do it,” Mom continues. “But I know how hard it’s been for you all these years. I didn’t want to begrudge you that little bit of freedom and exploration. It’s so inadequate compared to what you deserve.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I . . . I don’t think anyone spotted me.” Just a Greenshirt, and Lark, and maybe even other people, too. Oh, how could I have been so stupid, so selfish?
“I don’t think it was anything you did. It might not even be you. There are other second children in Eden. He didn’t think they’d zeroed in, but he knows that they’re tracking a second child in our circle. It’s only a matter of time before they figure it all out. When they come, every trace of you has to be gone. You have to be gone.”
I nod, understanding. It’s a shock, and I know that wherever I go I’ll have to lay low for a while, but when the hunt dies down, when they don’t find me, I’ll be able to see my family again. See Lark again. (Unless she . . . No, I can’t go down that road.)
“I’m sorry this is all so abrupt. I thought we’d have more time. There are things . . . But I’ll save that for later. I’m taking you to get your implants now, and then you’re going directly to your new foster home. Oh,
there’s so much I have to tell you!” She throws her arms around me and for a second I feel like a little kid again, small and utterly safe in her embrace.
“It’s okay,” I reassure her. “I know it might be a while, but when I come back, you can . . .”
Her look stops me, chilled. “Rowan, you can never come back.”
I feel as if I’m dangling from the top of a wall high as a mountain, clinging by a single hold that’s starting to slip. I grasp at anything. “You mean, not until it’s safe?”
“Oh my love, never. You can never come home. You can never see any of us again.”
My hand slips and I tumble into the abyss.
She tells me how long they’ve been working to arrange this foster family for me, a chance at a completely new life where I can be real, accepted, walk the streets of Eden as a free individual. I listen numbly as she explains how I can have a new family, which baffled me before. I thought someone would take me in for love, for commitment to a cause, for belief that all people deserve to live. But no, it turns out someone is just doing it for the money.
Just like the way my family hid me—the extra, living child—some families with an eye to profit hide the fact that their one legitimate child dies. Instead of reporting it to the Center, they do whatever possible to make it look like the child is still thriving. Maybe they say she moved to another circle to help her grandmother. Maybe she supposedly developed an illness and rarely leaves the house. They hold the spot of the missing child, and all the while work with black marketers to find some second child to replace the dead one. Of course the family is paid an exorbitant fee for taking the child. It’s enough to set up someone in a whole new circle, if they’re clever enough to hide the source of their windfall.
Needless to say, it’s mostly people in the outer circles who hide a child’s death and hope to profit from it. Mom tells me that the family I’ll be going with lives in the next-but-one outermost ring. The slums, even more decrepit than Lark’s old circle.