Veracity (42 page)

I follow the collected information as it flows out of this machine and is swept, along with the others', into a rising tide. With the gentlest shift in perception, I'm able to see this ghostlike river of green data flowing around and through me. It surges toward the one redactor near the corner of the room, then disappears into it. The humming black box throbs a toxic brown-gray with the consumption of each incoming wave. Then it switches colors, becoming an incandescent red, and the flow is reversed. The river comes back. I watch as its glowing waters approach and take a deep breath just before it rushes through me.

I sputter to the surface. This Red List is thousands of words long. It's an attempt by the Confederation not just to drown the resistance but to starve the wanting soul with silence--the ultimate isolation. It's a last-ditch effort in which they're trying to turn us all mute. They're betting everything on me not getting the right redactor. Helen Rumney. President and his Cabinet. They knew something, maybe not about the war. Certainly not about John's job here, but they knew about us and how close we were--how close we
are
--to retrieving our lost vocabulary and all the ideas and freedoms therein.

I look around for John and find his blue light a few hundred feet away. Hurry toward him before Noam can call me back.

John is kneeling between two redactors. His head is bent over a black machine tucked in the palm of his hand. I touch him gently on the arm and the contact throws up a pearlescent spark. He turns toward the aisle and frowns at the place where I'm standing. I back away so as not to distract him.

"Noam? Is she here?" John speaks into the device, his other hand held like a cup just beyond it to keep his voice from traveling.

"She's there." Noam's voice comes back softly, but I can't tell from where. Either the black machine in his hand or the small round receiver inside the whorl of John's ear. "I'm calling her back now and we'll have the identity for you right away."

John reaches out across the aisle and puts his fingers where my thigh would be, were I here in body. The pink of my aura there is turned violet as he passes through me.
John . . .

He looks up, right where my face would be.

My right hand suddenly hurts. I look down and see the tips of my fingers disappearing.

Quickly, I kneel down next to John and lean in until the rose-colored aura floating off his face is a warmth on my own.
I love you,
I say.

"Harper?" John asks.

It's like being shot from a cannon backward. I land in my body with a grunt. Open my eyes to see Noam right in front of me, frowning.

"Goddamned time!" he shouts, reaching down to remove
my hand from the cup of ice into which it's been thrust. "Now, where is it?"

I give Noam the counts. From where John sits, he's to walk east to the second, then third aisle. Next, he's to turn north and go one, two, three, four, five redactors down. It's the one on the right side with a small silver triangle hidden on its base. He'll have to look hard. The emblem is no larger than the tip of my pinky.

Noam repeats these directions into his transmitter, talking John to the main redactor, then waiting nervously as the deed is done. It is two minutes--120 seconds--before John's voice comes back over the line, informing us that the task is completed. And with no alarms having been tripped. We wait until John is safely out of the basement before signing off. He gives us the one word that means he's alive and well out of harm's way--
Clear
--then the line goes dead and it's just me and Noam sitting behind a tarp in the middle of a field. Smiling.

When I go to stand, my forehead becomes moist and the horizon dips. I barely get to a clump of weeds before throwing up last night's dinner.

Noam helps me up and leads me to Ezra's body, where Lazarus and Lilly are saying their good-byes. I kneel down next to her. After sliding my hands beneath Ezra's shoulders, I pull her body into a sitting position.

"Harper," Lazarus says from behind me. "We have to leave her here."

"No." I yank Ezra with all my strength, but she's heavier than I'd anticipated. Doesn't come along so easily on the uneven turf.

"We'll come back for her after--"

But I can't move her an inch. Sobbing, I lower her back to the ground.

"Harper, Harper . . ." Lazarus whispers softly. He takes one of my arms and pulls me away. "We'll come back for her. If we're going to win this war, we have to go now."

Bond is a half mile ahead. We see it as a normal line of brick houses with open windows showing the slightest bit of curtain. From here, there is no sign of damage.

We walk alongside the road, not daring to put our weight on the asphalt that's grown warm in the early sun. Lazarus doesn't know how far up our people have seeded it with bombs. I stay close to Lazarus as Noam and Lilly and the others rush ahead. There are preparations for our broadcast needing to be handled. We only have seven or eight minutes to verify the larger things that should have already happened. By now, a comrade in Wernthal has already climbed out onto a hill high atop the city's outer perimeter and taken over a station. When Lazarus takes the stage, we'll have wrestled away control of the airwaves so people will be able to watch and listen. We've taken down the slates so people can follow.

Ahead of us, Lilly has rounded the corner that opens up to the square. She puts her hands to her face. Even without her glasses, she can see something awful. "Lazarus!" she shouts. "They've ruined it!
They've ruined it!"

Lazarus and I walk faster up the slight rise. The square that will be our theater is a hundred yards off. The path between us is covered with bodies. There's been serious fighting here. Our dead have been laid out on their backs and stare up at the blue morning sky. Those that are Blue Coats have been turned facedown, their noses ground into the road.

This has just happened. A few of our people are making the rounds. Identifying the dead, collecting ID patches and any items people might have tucked into their pockets or the underlining of their caps.

A woman just ahead is flipping over a Blue Coat. She looks up and sees us collected on the hill. Points with a shaking
finger. "They're here! They're here!" she shouts to the others, who stop what they're doing and look.

Dozens of people begin to shout. Some run toward us, others run back to a group of people sitting heavily around the concrete center of the square. They're revived by the news. Jump up and hug one another. Run into the surrounding buildings and gather up others who've taken cover. Out comes a line of our fellow resisters that doesn't end. There are thousands of us here. They flow out into the roads and spill onto the side street we're using to approach. A young woman with jet-black hair and topaz skin bursts through the crowd's perimeter. Her uniform is striped like Ezra's.

She motions to Lazarus with a flattened hand. "Lieutenant Emerson reporting, sir!"

Lazarus repeats the movement and the woman puts both hands behind her back. "What's happened here?" he asks.

The woman can't wipe the smile from her face. "Forgive me, sir. We didn't think you'd survived."

Lazarus looks around. The damage is tremendous. "We have to begin broadcasting in five minutes, Lieutenant. Tell me, what's happened?"

The Lieutenant's face dims. "We lost approximately six hundred troops. But we're nine thousand strong. And we're ready, sir."

"What's the report from Wernthal?"

"We have over twenty thousand troops just in Wernthal proper alone, sir. Thirteen thousand of those are in National House Square, and at the Geddard Building, another ten. Thousand, that is, sir. We've taken seventy-eight percent of our targets . . ."

"How clear is the path between here and Wernthal?"

"We've secured all but Danville up in Kibner, sir, but we have a workaround that won't take the teams more than two hundred miles out of their way. The transport vans will be here tomorrow morning, sir. And Air Force One will be here in two hours, sir."

I lean in to ask Lazarus, "What's Air Force One?"

"My ride to the capital. President's plane. You, Noam, and Lilly are taking the slow road to Washington, as you'll be stopping to assess conditions in a few key locales between here and there. You, darling, will be taking a van." He turns his attention again to the officer. "Did we take the Hub?" he asks her. Lazarus is referring to the center from which all media in the Confederation flows. If we've acquired access, we'll be able to project our message into the homes of every man, woman, and child in the country. It's critical.

The woman takes a deep breath. "We think so, but we don't know for sure. We won't know, sir, until it's time to broadcast."

The woman and Lazarus discuss the details of our efforts all the way to the edge of the square, where we stop to observe the destruction. Main street, the two side streets, the west side avenue, they all look like what they are: a war zone. And this from only three T-Units. These black hulking beasts, the most elite of Blue Coat transports, have been stopped with armor-piercing artillery, their bellies emptied onto the bloodied cement. Hundreds of dead Blue Coats ring each one. The State must not have known about us for very long or they would have mobilized a vastly larger assault.

"What are we going to do?" Lilly is whimpering into Lazarus's ear and pointing at the square. "Look at it!"

The buildings' facades have crumbled or fallen off. Tree limbs litter the cracked roads. The grass has been trampled by the dragging away of bodies. The square itself has received the most damage. Grenades and the hammer of heavy artillery have pockmarked the cement, the exact place where Lazarus was going to stand and say,
Come out of your homes, we've already done the fighting. See how easy it will be.
People were to have been given a pristine look at war. We were going to produce for them a safe, easy passage to freedom. Play down the associated costs.

Lazarus nods at a tall metal structure standing on the far side of the square, shouts, "Follow me!" and begins through the growing crowd toward it.

People part for Lazarus as he makes his way toward a tall seat at the structure's tip, now occupied by a man in a short-billed hat. Noam runs ahead, climbing the lower rungs of the metal contraption to shout up at the man. "Lyle?"

"Hello, Noam!" He turns and nods at a woman standing on the sidewalk beneath him. In her arms is the largest camera I've ever seen off a tripod. "We're ready when you are." He looks back over at Lazarus, who's pulling thoughtfully at his white beard. "I know it's not what we expected."

"Our director, ladies and gentlemen," Lazarus says, stopping a few feet out so he won't have to tilt up his neck. "I think it's better. What do you think, Lyle?"

"Do we have the book?"

"Yes." Lazarus motions to me and I hold up the velvet pouch.

"Then I'd say we have four minutes." Our director smiles.

Lazarus has already begun across the broken asphalt toward the square.

Lyle has to yell after him, "Anywhere you don't want us to shoot?"

Lazarus shakes his head. "Nope. Shoot it all."

The crowd has been grouped into equal quarters around the square. Lazarus has been cleaned up and is positioned in its broken center. Noam is holding
The Book of Noah
and Lilly is in charge of the radio. In just a couple of moments, we'll learn if our troops in Wernthal have taken over the airwaves. I'm the only one without something left to do.

"Lazarus?" Lyle's assistant calls.

"Yes?"

"We have two minutes, sir."

"We'll be ready."

The woman turns and runs back to our director, who's mumbling to a half dozen people. Things about lighting and shots he wants to make sure they get in.

Lilly is up on the square with Lazarus. She fiddles with the
dial on our transistor radio as Lazarus raises up his arms. Everyone goes still.

"My friends! We're going to do what we came here to do!" he shouts. "We're going to show the citizens of the Confederation of the Willing the true face of courage! The Blue Coats knew we were coming. And even so . . .
we won
!"

A roar goes up from the crowd. Lazarus waves his arms again and they're silenced.

"In one moment, we're going to find out if our men and women in Wernthal have been successful. If our people have indeed taken over the Confederation media, we'll be receiving a transmission." He motions to the black box that's been placed next to him. Lilly is working the dial, running it up and down the numbers until a bit of static sounds. She leaves the knob where the feedback is loudest, then steps off the cement podium.

"When we receive the go-ahead from Wernthal, we'll immediately begin broadcasting an invitation to our sisters and brothers in the Confederation. For the first time in three decades, they'll have a voice uniquely and inviolably their own. And a choice to make. Freedom or false security. Pursue their own happiness, express their own beliefs, live according to the mandates of their own hearts, or continue on with that which they currently know. Our people stationed in the Geddard Building have been successful. The slates have been taken down."

Again, the crowd roars.