Veracity (22 page)

Lazarus extends a malformed hand. "Hello, Harper. Lazarus Cobb." I take it, squeeze gently. Down here he hasn't had adequate care. In this moist hell with no sun.

"Hello," I say. "So nice to meet you."

Lazarus smiles, allows me to shake his hand long past the collapse of social grace. "You're exactly as I'd imagined."

I drop my hand. Gaze down at my feet. In addition to being a man of some presence, Lazarus is still handsome. I find myself flustered. "Harper Adams," I say again. Everyone laughs. Lazarus smiles.

He must be seventy years old. His skin is pale brown and
freckled across the nose and upper cheeks. He has a mustache and beard. Has gray and white hair tufted around his head. His eyes are dark and sharp. They watch everything I do and betray nothing, not his thoughts, not the tremendous pain the rest of his body is much quicker to impart. For my sake, he is pleasantly comfortable. Infinitely kind.

Lazarus turns to Lilly and puts a hand on her shoulder. "I've requisitioned the guest room for her training." He looks over at Noam, who blushes.

"I never got around to telling her."

"I'm not doing it!" Lilly shouts. "I have to digitize the entire library, Lazarus! The entire thing! And I've got what? A month until the war?"

A month. Christ, help me.
I feel myself falling. Put out a hand.

Noam catches it. Gives it a squeeze. "Sorry we're so unorganized. It's the war." He hasn't noticed the sweat on my forehead. I nod. Wipe it quickly away.

Lilly is pacing back and forth. "We should have been making copies years ago! Why can't we just do it the way they're doing it on the West Coast? Their retention rates are acceptable! They're able to train
hundreds
of people with that electronic course!"

"Because we're the government. The source from which all information will flow. We know what happens when the source is polluted." Lazarus leans closer to Lilly, whispers, "People will find a way to give up everything for another car in the driveway and a little less thinking to tax their minds. The code must be kept, Lilly."

She shakes her head. "I can't cram thirty years' worth of data into someone's brain in a month, and that's assuming she'll actually stay! It's a waste of time that I don't have! Not now! Not with those goddamned programs ready to go live any moment!"

Lazarus nods. "I understand. But it's necessary."

"You don't understand!" Lilly pushes her huge frames
farther back on her nose. Sniffling, she launches into a long explanation about the difficulties of teaching language, not to mention all the topics that come thereafter. So much work for so little return. The majority of recruits bolt, can't handle the barren quarters, the lack of light, personal items, personal space, bad food, bad plumbing, the constant threat of being discovered. More.

Noam turns me away from his wife's cracking voice and her litany of reasons to leave. Quietly, he gives me something else to listen to. "Core training usually takes twelve weeks. It includes about a dozen topics: critical thinking skills first, then politics, history, technology, linguistics, psychology, art. You don't know half of those words yet so that's the first thing we'll cover. Language, so you can keep up." Noam continues but I can't concentrate. Lilly's drawing my attention with her plaintive voice.

"There's no time! I'm not doing it!"

"There's time, Lilly. We don't even know when our crew in Wernthal will be ready."

"They'd better be ready!" Shaking, Lilly points at the stairs leading to the house above us. To the sky beyond. "It's the end of summer, Lazarus! You can't put us through another year down here!"

I take Noam's hand. "What happens in Wernthal?"

Noam turns me around. Away from the other two. "We have to get into the Geddard Building. That's where the redactors are stored. The network is daisy-chained in such a way we don't know which one is the master. Thousands of slaves are linked to that one. We take out the master and the others follow. But which one . . . ?" He smiles lightly. Shrugs.
No big deal.

But I know how big a deal it is. Noam's talking about the Geddard Building. The one three city blocks long constantly venting hot air. They have yet to find a way in. Then the bigger job of finding the right redactor and turning it off, all before getting caught.

They don't know how to take down the slates.
To a Monitor, the need is obvious. This is how we win the war. If the slates aren't turned off, there's no chance. No way to teach others to follow us. I think of my dream. In it, Veracity believes we've successfully taken down the slates. She'll try to speak a Red Listed word sometime after we go to battle and that show of faith will kill her. All because we don't know which big black processor to turn off first.

Behind us, Lazarus is trying to put his arms around Lilly. "You're right. I misspoke," he says.

I turn and catch her shouldering him away. "Any more than four weeks and it will turn cold! We could get another blizzard and then we won't be able to move! And what about that goddamned SKEYE program? If we don't move out before the satellite goes live, we'll be trapped here!"

With a quick glance over at me, Lazarus interrupts. "I'll do the training." He sees me, pale and sweating. Misunderstands my fear. "We'll get you trained. No worries, young lady."

"I don't know," Lilly says to no one, and everyone. She expected something else. Maybe to be pushed into my training. Or maybe she's still thinking about frozen earth. "This isn't going to work. Is it?" She looks up.

Lazarus steps closer. Answers low, so the others won't so easily hear. "We're going to war, Lilly. Before these programs go live and with or without the slates having come down. We're going to war. Don't you worry."

Lilly thinks about this for a moment, then turns and leaves, shouting over her shoulder, "I have vaccinations to give. Then I'll be in the library." She sways under the weight of such a heavy thought.
Another year without sun or sky
.

I want to find the aluminum chair and sit down. But someone's already moved it.

"You okay?" Lazarus is looking at me. He shifts his weight and for a tortured second, his mask of calm slips. His face goes slack, eyes all but roll up in his head.

Noam strides quickly across the room and retrieves a bag
from a hook on the wall. "When was your last pill?" he asks.

"Two hours ago."

Noam rifles through the bag's contents and pulls out a large amber vial.

"Next one isn't scheduled for two more hours," Lazarus protests.

"Let's say we don't worry about that." Noam twists off the vial's top and holds out a long white tablet. "Pain is not our friend today, Lazarus. And Davies isn't going anywhere. He'll be there tomorrow and the next day and next week for our med run. And then, yes, even after we win this war, he'll
still
be there. You're covered, Lazarus. Take the pill."

Lazarus pauses, then swallows the capsule without the aid of water.

Noam turns to me. "Davies is our pharmacist. Once a month we arrange a transfer. Davies gets us the medicines we need in exchange for banned items. Books mostly. Movies. A thing you're not familiar with called music." He yanks a thumb toward the bag he's put back on its hook. "Without those medications, Lazarus is bedbound. Same's true for about a quarter of us."

I peek around at the people who are covertly looking back at me. Most of them are older than the average citizen. I don't know how they've done it, living with nothing and doing it underground. Suffering their bodies for the cause.

"We're an old collective," Noam says, following my eyes. "We have people with diabetes, emphysema, arthritis . . . worse. Davies is as important as our contacts for food, water, and intelligence. He's our ambassador to tolerable living, if you will."

The number of words I haven't understood since I've been down here could fill the bunker. There's no good time to start asking for definitions so I choose now. "What does ambassador mean?"

"Ambassador?" Noam looks surprised. "What other words haven't you understood?"

There are so many. "I know what courage means." It's meant to be funny but both men frown.

"Come on, Harper. We better get started now." Lazarus disappears into the mouth of a hallway leading toward the back. I hurry and follow.

"Rest when you can, Lazarus," Noam calls after us.

I follow Lazarus's voice past the first few rooms, through a canvas door that's been marked with a large
X.
"I'll rest after we've won," he calls back.

The room is nearly empty with just a round table, two high-backed chairs, and a tall stack of books in the corner. They're one atop another, a rickety ladder that leads up and up.

Lazarus begins speaking before we sit down. "Never less than the whole will be told, regardless of how it might serve or hinder our purpose. The same information will be made available to everyone at all times. Last and most important, critical thinking is mandatory. This is the code." He collapses into a chair. Sighs. "This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about who goes up and who stays down. Not to be late for meals, to keep track of the one blanket you'll be provided. To sign out your toothpaste and your toilet paper. Why we'll be coming up out of the ground and how we're going to win the war. Not with bullets, but with something greater.

"I could tell you all these things, Harper. But I'm going to ask you for one more sacrifice. I'm going to ask that you trust me. We go to war as soon as time and nature allow. It could be a few short weeks. It could be longer. But too much talk about how to live down here puts the focus on exactly that. And I need you focused elsewhere."

He's rolling me over with those big knowing eyes. Is seeing my dilated pupils blinking an SOS.

"I know how you like control, Harper. But there is method to what might appear to you as madness. A fancy way of saying you're going to have to trust me."

It's humiliating. To walk into a group of people who know
every aspect of my life. All my mistakes and defects of character. I nod. "Okay."

Lazarus is amused by my pink cheeks. He crosses his arms and leans back in his seat. "You know what I enjoyed the most, watching you all these years?"

I shake my head no and catch sight of a crack in the ceiling. Immediately I'm wondering if chunks of it occasionally fall down and knock people in the head. If at any moment, we'll be sandwiched between it and the floor.

"You never became addicted to comfort. The niceties, the security. You never fell for their usual tricks. You were motivated by other things entirely."

I look away from the ceiling to Lazarus, who's restoring my mood with his words and the integrity of the structure with his gentle tone.

"You okay now? The claustrophobia pass?"

I nod, my cheeks pink.
Breathing in, breathing out
. "Yes."

"Think of Veracity when you get afraid. Think of what you're doing. To give your child,
any
child, a world better than the one you came into . . . there is no greater gift. You're showing her what courage is. Inspiring her to be the same. Incorruptible. A woman of honor."

I know I should nod, smile and agree. But I can't imagine this for my child. A life beyond the sun. A world made up of mud and straw.

apostasy

discriminate

ego

fossil

kindred

obstreperous

offline

veracity

I'm in the tenth grade. In a medium-size school that houses first through twelfth. We are a dozen to a class, if that, and have one teacher for all subjects as there aren't enough of us for them to specialize.

Our teacher, Mr. Mitchell, is young. He has a thick head of dark oily hair and a forehead full of pimples that show beneath long bangs. He's angry about his height, his hairless chin, and slight muscles. Doesn't know what to do with a class of taller, stronger teenage kids.

"Today's test will be oral," Mr. Mitchell says, and the room goes cold.

Each one of us turns inward, stampedes toward the knowledge tucked hastily in the backs of our minds. We repeat them out loud, sounding like a swarm of buzzing insects,
the answers, the answers, the answers
. Memorized last night in our beds, in the bathrooms just before class. We're fifteen years old now. Expected to perform or considerable punishments will apply.

"I'm going to give you five minutes," Mr. Mitchell says.

The girl in front of me turns around. "Help me," she whispers, a piece of hair clamped between her teeth.

Her name is Lucille. People think she's not smart but her problem isn't that. She's sentient, like me. Gets her realities confused. I both like Lucille and resent her. Somewhere along the way she became my problem; I'm supposed to protect her from people like Mr. Mitchell. From herself.
Someday, when Lucille doesn't have someone to help keep her on track, something will come out reeking of too much truth in too public a place and the Confederation will kill her for it.

I pull the strand of hair from her mouth. Whisper harshly, "Stop that!" Mr. Mitchell has a corner of the room reserved specifically for hair-eating Lucille.

She leans over the back of her chair. Whispers, "Help me, Harper!" through huge pink lips that are forever chapped. She sucks them into her mouth when nervous. Dries them out with her voracious fear.

"We studied last night," I say. "Don't worry so much."

"I can't remember any of it!" Lucille's fear is making her spit. Little droplets spray across the corner of my desk and for a moment, I hate her.
What did she expect?
Eating her hair. Walking around with bright red, cracked lips. She does this one thing right, excels at making herself a target.