To Paradise (64 page)

Peter, I never ask you for these favors. But will you find out what you can, whatever you can? I’m sorry to ask. I really am. I wouldn’t unless I had to.

I know I can’t stop him. But maybe I can help him. I have to try. Don’t I?

All my love. Charles

Dear Peter,
July 7, 2062

This is going to be a brief one, because I have to be down in Washington in six hours. But I wanted to write while I had a few minutes.

It’s unbearably hot here.

The new state will be announced today at four p.m. eastern time. The original plan was to announce on July 3, but everyone agreed that people should be allowed to celebrate a final Independence Day. The thinking was that if we announced now, at the end of the day, it would be easier to lock down certain parts of the country before the weekend begins, and then give everyone a couple of days for the shock to wear off before the markets reopen on Monday. By the time you read this, it’ll already have happened.

Thank you for your counsel over these past months, dear Peter. In the end, I took your advice and turned down a ministry position: I’ll remain behind the scenes after all, and what I give up in influence I gain in safety. Anyway, I have enough influence regardless—I’ve asked Intelligence to put a tracker on David now that The Light has become so problematic, and there are plainclothes guards stationed outside Aubrey’s house to protect him and Nathaniel just in case the rioting gets as bad as they fear. Aubrey isn’t doing well at all—the cancer’s metastasized to his liver, and Nathaniel says Aubrey’s doctor thinks he only has another six to nine months.

I’ll call you on your secure line tonight my time, early tomorrow yours. Wish me luck. Love to you and Olivier—

Charles

In the weeks following our initial meeting, we met more and more. At first it was just a coincidence: The Sunday after we met at the storyteller’s session, I was walking around the Square when I became aware of someone behind me. Of course, there were many people behind me, and ahead of me, too—I was walking in the center of the group—but this presence felt different, and when I turned, there he was again, smiling at me.

“Hello, Charlie,” he said, smiling.

The smiling made me nervous. Back when Grandfather was my age, everyone smiled all the time. Grandfather said that was something Americans were known for: smiling. He wasn’t an American himself, although he became one. But I didn’t smile very often, and neither did anyone I know.

“Hello,” I said.

He joined me, and we walked together. I had been worried he would try to have a conversation, but he didn’t, and we made three laps around the Square. Then he said it had been nice to see me, and maybe he’d see me at the next story session, and then he smiled again and walked west before I even had a chance to figure out what to say in response.

The following Saturday, I returned to the storyteller. I hadn’t thought I was hoping to see him, but when I did, sitting in the same spot in the back row where we’d sat on the day we met, a funny feeling came over me, and I hurried the last few feet, in case someone should take my place. Then I stopped. What if he didn’t want to see me? But then he turned and saw me and smiled and waved me over,
patting the ground next to him with his hand. “Hello, Charlie,” he said, as I approached him.

“Hello,” I said.

His name was David. He had told me that the first time we met. “Oh,” I had said, “my father’s name was David.”

“Oh, really?” he had asked. “So was mine.”

“Oh,” I’d said. It seemed like there was something else I should say, and finally I said, “That’s a lot of Davids,” and then he smiled, very wide, and even laughed a little. “That’s true,” he said, “that
is
a lot of Davids. You’re funny, aren’t you, Charlie?”—which was one of those questions I knew wasn’t really a question, and besides, wasn’t even true. No one had ever told me I was funny before.

This time, I had brought some tofu skin that I had skimmed and dried myself and cut into triangles, and a container of nutritional yeast to dip them into. As the storyteller was settling into his folding chair, I held out the bag to David. “You can have some,” I said, and then I was worried I sounded too gruff, too unfriendly, when really I was just nervous. “If you want,” I added.

He looked into the bag, and I was afraid he’d laugh at me and my snack. But he just took out a chip, and dipped it into the yeast, and crunched it. “Thanks,” he whispered, as the storyteller began, “these are good.”

In that day’s story, the husband and wife and their two children wake one morning to discover a bird in their apartment. This wasn’t very realistic either, as birds were rare, but the storyteller did a good job of describing how the bird kept frustrating their attempts to catch it, and how father and son and mother and daughter kept crashing into one another as they ran about the house with a pillowcase. Finally, the bird is caught, and the son suggests they eat it, but the daughter knows better, and the whole family takes the bird to the local animal center, just as they’re supposed to, and later they’re rewarded with three extra protein coupons, which the mother uses to buy some protein patties.

After the story was over, we walked to the northern end of the Square. “What did you think?” David asked, and I didn’t say anything, because I was embarrassed to admit that I had felt betrayed by
the story. I had thought that the husband and wife were just husband and wife, like my husband and me, and yet suddenly they had two children, a boy and a girl, which meant they weren’t like my husband and me after all. They weren’t just a man and a woman: They were a father and a mother.

But it was silly to say any of this, so instead I said, “It was okay.”

“I thought it was dumb,” David said, and I looked up at him. “Whose apartment is that big that they can run around in it? Who’s such a goody-goody that they’d actually take the bird into the center?”

This was thrilling to hear, but also alarming. I looked down at my shoes. “But it’s the law.”

“Of course it’s the law, but he’s a storyteller,” David said. “Does he really expect us to believe that, if a big, plump, juicy pigeon flew into any of our windows, we wouldn’t just kill it, pluck it, and put it straight into the oven?” I looked up then, and saw that he was looking back at me with a crooked little smile.

I didn’t know what to say. “Well, it’s just a story,” I said.

“That’s exactly my point,” he said, like I had agreed with him, and then he gave me a little salute. “Bye, Charlie. Thanks for the snack and company.” And then he left, walking westward, back to Little Eight.

He hadn’t said he would see me next week, but when I returned the following Saturday, there he was again, standing outside the storyteller’s tent, and again, I got that same strange feeling in my stomach.

“I thought we’d take a walk instead, if that’s okay,” he said, even though it was very hot, so hot I’d had to wear my cooling suit. He, however, was in his same gray shirt and pants, his same gray cap, and didn’t look hot at all. He spoke as if we had made plans to meet here, as if we had an arrangement that he was now changing.

As we walked, I remembered to ask him the question I’d been wondering about all week. “I don’t see you at the shuttle stop anymore,” I said.

“That’s true,” he said. “My shift changed. I catch the 07:30 now.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I said, “My husband catches the 07:30, too.”

“Really,” David said. “Where does he work?”

“The Pond,” I said.

“Ah,” said David. “I work at the Farm.”

It wasn’t worth asking if they knew each other, because the Farm was the biggest state project in the prefecture, with dozens of scientists and hundreds of techs, and what’s more, Pond employees stayed isolated in the Pond, and rarely had any reason to encounter anyone who worked in the larger enterprise.

“I’m a bromeliad specialist,” said David, although I hadn’t asked, because asking someone what they did wasn’t done. “That’s what it’s called, but really, I’m just a gardener.” This was unusual, too: both to describe your work but also to make it sound less important than it was. “I help crossbreed the specimens we have, but mostly, I’m just there to take care of the plants.” His voice was cheerful as he said this, matter-of-fact, but I suddenly felt the need to defend his own job to him.

“That’s important work,” I said. “We need all the research from the Farm we can get.”

“I suppose,” he said. “Not that I’m doing any of the actual research myself. But I do love the plants, as silly as that sounds.”

“I love the pinkies, too,” I said, and as I did, I realized that it was true. I
did
love the pinkies. They were so fragile and their lives had been so short; they were poor, unformed things, and had been created only to die and be pulled apart and examined, and then they were incinerated and forgotten.

“The pinkies?” he asked. “What are those?”

So I explained a little about what I did, and how I prepared them, and how the scientists got impatient when I didn’t deliver them on time, which made him laugh, and his laughter made me flustered, because I didn’t want him to think I was complaining about the scientists, or making fun of them, because they did essential work, and I said so. “No, I don’t think that you’re disparaging them,” he said. “It’s just—they’re such important people, but really, they’re people, you know? They get impatient and in bad moods, just like the rest of us.” I had never thought about the scientists like that before, as people, and so I didn’t say anything.

“How long have you been married?” David asked.

This was a very forward question, and for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked,” he said, looking at me. “You have to forgive me. Where I come from, people talk much more openly.”

“Oh,” I said. “Where are you from?”

He was from Prefecture Five, one of the southern prefectures, but he didn’t have an accent. Sometimes people transferred prefectures, but they usually did so only when they had unusual or in-demand skills. This made me wonder whether David was actually more important than he was saying; it would explain why he was here, not only in Prefecture Two but in Zone Eight.

“I’ve been married almost six years,” I said, and then, because I knew what he was going to ask next, I added, “We’re sterile.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he said. His voice was gentle, but it wasn’t pitying, and, unlike some people, he didn’t turn away from me, as if my sterility were something contagious. “Was it an illness?” he asked.

This too was very forward, but I was getting used to him, and I wasn’t as shocked as I would have been had someone else asked me. “Yes, of ’70,” I said.

“And your husband—the same reason?”

“Yes,” I said, though that wasn’t true. And then I was truly done with the topic, which was really not something to be discussed with strangers, or casual acquaintances, or with anyone, really. The state had worked hard to decrease the stigmatization of sterility. It was now illegal to refuse to rent to a sterile couple, but most of us clustered together anyway, because it was just easier that way: No one looked at you oddly, and moreover, you didn’t have to be confronted by other people’s babies and children, daily reminders of your own inadequacy. Our building, for example, was almost wholly occupied by sterile couples. The previous year, the state made it legal for a sterile person of either sex to marry a fertile person, but as far as I knew, no one actually had, because if you were fertile there was no point in ruining your life like that.

I must have looked strange then, because David touched my
shoulder, and I flinched and moved away, but he didn’t seem offended. “I’ve upset you, Charlie,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” He sighed. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, though.”

And then, before I could think of how to respond, he turned and left, giving me another of his salutes. “I’ll see you next week,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, and I stood and watched him walk west until he had disappeared from sight completely.

I saw David every Saturday after that, and soon it was April and becoming even warmer, so warm that we’d no longer be able to take our walks, and I was trying not to think about what would happen then.

One evening, about a month after I started meeting with David, my husband looked at me at dinner and said, “You seem different.”

“Do I?” I asked. Earlier, David had been telling me stories about growing up in Prefecture Five, and how he and his friends used to climb pecan trees and eat so many nuts they’d get sick. I asked him if he wasn’t scared to pick the nuts, because, legally, all fruiting trees belonged to the state, but he said the state was more relaxed in Prefecture Five. “They really only care about Prefecture Two, because that’s where all the money and power is,” he said. He announced these things comfortably, for anyone to hear, but when I asked him to lower his voice, he looked confused. “Why?” he asked. “I’m not saying anything treasonous,” and I had had to think about it. He wasn’t, it was true, but something about the way he said it made me feel like he was. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“No,” my husband said. “It’s nothing to apologize for. You just look”—and here he studied me, closely, looking at me for much longer than he maybe ever had, so long that I began to feel anxious—“healthy. Content. I’m glad to see it.”

“Thank you,” I finally said, and my husband, whose head was once again bent over his tofu patty, nodded.

That night, as I lay in bed, I realized that it had been weeks now
since I had wondered how my husband was spending his free nights. I hadn’t even thought to look in the box for more notes. As I was thinking this, I suddenly saw the house on Bethune Street, and my husband slipping past the half-open door, the man’s voice saying, “You’re late tonight,” as he did, and to distract myself, I thought instead about David, how he had smiled and said I was funny.

Later that night, I woke from a dream. I rarely dreamed, but this one had been so vivid that I was momentarily disoriented when I opened my eyes. I had been walking through the Square with David, and we were standing at the northern entrance, where the Square met Fifth Avenue, when he had put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. Frustratingly, I couldn’t remember the actual sensation of it, but I knew it had felt good, and that I had enjoyed it. Then I had woken up.

Over the next nights, I dreamed of David kissing me again and again. I felt different things in the dreams: I was scared, but mostly I was excited, and I was also relieved—I had never been kissed before, and I had learned to accept that I never would be. But now here I was, being kissed after all.

Two Saturdays after the kissing dream began, I was once again in the Square with David. It was now the third week of April and therefore unbearably hot, and even David had begun wearing his cooling suit. Cooling suits were effective, but because they were so puffy, they made you walk strangely, and we had to move slowly, both because the suits were bulky and because you didn’t want to overexert yourself.

We were making our second lap around the Square, David telling me more stories about growing up in Prefecture Five, when, all of a sudden, I saw my husband moving in our direction.

I stopped walking. “Charlie?” asked David, looking at me. But I didn’t answer.

By that point, my husband had seen me, and he came toward us. He was alone, and also wearing his cooling suit, and he raised his hand in greeting as he approached us.

“Hello,” he said, as he drew near.

“Hello,” David said.

I introduced them to each other, and they both bowed. They exchanged a few sentences about the weather—effortlessly, as so many people seemed to be able to do. And then my husband continued on his way, heading north, and David and I, west.