Veracity (5 page)

"How many more ways are there to educate those who don't want to be educated?" Press Secretary Johnson shouted. "Should we have taken these people's tongues? Should we have taken the frontal lobes of their brains? Think about what's happening here today not as a punitive sentence for
the sinners standing here, but, rather, as the final warning for those of you watching! Loose talk of the man who created the slate, through which we learned the fine art of peace, will not be tolerated!" Press Secretary Johnson shakes his bald head in disgust and his loose jowls shook.

I didn't watch the execution. I'd pulled my colors over my eyes and gone away. And now Sentient Baumfree is pulling my hands away from my ears, telling me I'm supposed to be a part of this system.

"Harper, you've passed the tests already. Do you understand?"

"No," I answer. Despite myself, a tear has slipped free. "I don't understand."

"You're a Monitor now. You'll begin as a novice with a heightened clearance, but one of these days, I predict you'll be one of our top Monitors. It will take years, maybe even decades of development, but one day, I think you're going to become something quite unique." Sentient Baumfree smiles and leans in to whisper, "You just might change the world, Harper, if you don't let the world change you first."

When I wake up, it's early night. The moon is low in the sky, sitting atop the corn like a single head on a thousand scarecrows. It highlights the smooth edges of the far wall, travels up toward the ceiling, crosses the room, and falls on me, still on the closet floor. I grab hold of the doorknob and pull myself up. It's not the moon. Headlights are coming quick down the drive. Wheels are turning up loose gravel and making gritty, barking sounds that hurt my head. The room twists and bends and I have to lie back down again. Only when I lie flat does my stomach stop pitching.

A car door slams shut. Another car door after.
Two of them.
And me laid out flat, unable to move. They didn't mention this part. I wonder how many of us are caught almost as soon as we've broken just because we have to lie still. If I'd known how incapacitated I'd be, I'd have screamed myself free down by the creek.

"Tore the sign down . . ." It's a man's voice, a Blue Coat. He's standing at the front door, looking at the strips of tape where the notice used to be.

I put my hands up on the closet walls and push myself into the room. The effort makes my head spin.

"You want me to go in?" His voice is shrill in its excitement. He's thinking about a few moments from now when they'll find me. About what numbers he'll get to call and what things he'll get to do. So many Blue Coats are like this.
Deranged. All their humanity lost. Mr. Weigland calls it a hazard of the job, as if there's nothing to be done about it. As if these men aren't responsible for their actions.

"No. You go check out her car." The second man's voice sounds bored. There is no sense of urgency, nothing to tell me he relishes this part of his job.

I use my legs to push myself toward the bed. If I can stand the motion and keep from throwing up, I might be able to make it under the box springs, under the oversize comforter exactly like the one my grandmother let me pick out.

"Come on, Gage. You got the last one."

"Fuck you," the bored man says. He's standing at the screen door. I can hear the whine of the hinge, the squeak it makes when pulled open too quickly.

The men's feet are heavy on the wood floor. Each clunk of their hard-soled shoes, loud. They swallow up the sounds I'm making as I scoot toward the space beneath the old bed. Every exertion brings bile up into my throat, but by the time their feet stop in the kitchen, I'm halfway there.

"Skinner, if I have to tell you to go out to the car one more time . . ."

"What? What are you going to do?" The Blue Coat named Skinner is walking around in circles. "You're not my superior."

"Am until October."

"Fuck October!"

The other man doesn't respond. I imagine him to be tall with a face set in a permanent frown. He scares me more than the petulant one. The quiet ones are usually worse.

Skinner's stomping feet conjure an image of a narrow man with a pointy goatee and an upturned jaw. "You know that was a bullshit call!"

"Doesn't matter." The quiet man is pacing back and forth. I can't tell which way he's going. Maybe into the room above the kitchen, the one hiding behind a door and a set of corner stairs, or maybe toward me.

I lift my head and feel the room tilt violently. I throw up
into my mouth, press my hands to my lips. They're only two rooms away.

"Goddamnit, Gage!" Skinner is yelling up the corner stairwell. "Let me at least check out the bedrooms!"

I can barely make out Gage's response. "You really think she's going to be waiting for you in the bedroom?"

"Oh, she's waiting." Skinner laughs but there's nothing like humor in it.

I stop listening. With great effort, I kick out a leg and wag it back and forth, clearing off as much of the dust as I can before pushing myself under the bed. It's a wasted effort. I've left them a direct trail.

"She's not going to be in the house!" Gage has come down from the room above the kitchen. His voice is much closer, much stronger. "Now get out there and check her goddamned car!" For a big man, he's light on his feet. He's already all the way across the first floor, just outside my door.

"If she's not here, why are we checking the house?" Skinner has moved up next to him. "She broke three hours ago!"

"Exactly my point."

"Exactly
my
point. It was three hours ago, John!
Just
three hours ago!" Skinner is right in front of Gage. I can see the man's shoes from under the bed, five feet beyond my own. As I'd imagined, he has short, narrow feet. "Nobody breaks slate and runs that fast!"

Gage grunts and pushes the man away. "She was a Monitor, Jingo. You think she wouldn't know what's coming?"

"From what I've heard, running isn't high on their priority list for at least twenty-four hours."

Gage's voice shifts, affects disdain. "Why are you so hot for this? What's going on with you?"

Skinner shifts from one foot to the other. Takes a cautious breath. "You think I need help. Don't you? You think I need fucking help!"

"I think all of us need help. It's the nature of the job."

Softer and with the hesitation of embarrassment, Skinner
continues. "I think about it all the time," he says, stepping left foot right, right foot left. "501A. 501B. 458. 482. Christ, man." Skinner is on the verge of crying.
Shift, shift, shift.
I imagine one of his fists knotted up and stuck in his mouth. "I dream about it, even. I wake up and all I want to do is go out and bust somebody just so I can call a number on them, you know?"

"You want my opinion, you were doing exactly what you were supposed to do to that girl. It was a
Book of Noah
infraction, for Christ's sake! What if that kind of talk started up again?" Gage's voice gets louder as his indignation grows. "You were
charged by the Confederation of the Willing
to deliver those numbers! It's what we do to keep the peace! Think about it! What would it be like if the average citizen got the idea that that kind of talk was a possibility? It would be chaos! If bullshit like what happened with that girl didn't happen once in a while . . ." He stops. Shrugs. I can see his trouser cuffs lift. "Who knows?"

Skinner exhales. "Yeah."

"Now, you get what I'm saying?"

"Yeah." Skinner clears his throat. "But how can we do these things during the day and then go home at night and, I don't know . . . be
normal
? You know? How do you turn it off?"

"You get the hell out when you're told. That's how. You listen to the cop on patrol with you." Gage's tone has changed. It's become almost soothing. "Go see that girl you like. Ezra."

"I don't know . . ."

"I got this. Go."

Skinner hovers quietly for a moment, then pushes through the squeaky front door and starts his car. But he doesn't drive away. Instead, he turns off his car and sits there inside. I wonder if the Blue Coat named Gage has even noticed. I doubt it. He's just come into the room.

I can see the toes of the man's shoes ten inches from my hand. Wet bits of mud are caked around the heels. The leather's been scarred in the latticework pattern of someone who
climbs through ditches to run people down. He walks toward the closet and stops. He's looking at my daughter's picture taped under the doorframe, has had to bend his knees.

The light begins to flicker. Gage's shoes become black blobs that float toward me from the closet. My foggy mind wants to stretch out a finger and find the curled loop of his shoestring and pull him to me. Maybe he would hold me first before he raped and then killed me. Maybe I'd find it in myself to keep from begging for mercy. The thought of a few seconds of shared humanity is enticing. Maybe for a moment the two of us will remember that we'll be held accountable for each other's welfare when we get to Heaven or wherever it is I'll find God waiting.

The black shoelaces unravel and out slips a long leather tongue. Then the tongue rescinds and a single hand is placed flat on the floor, then the other. Down comes a face. It's in frame and then out.

Time drifts a little. A new face is looking at me. The lips open and deliver a squeaky voice that confirms my suspicion.

"Who do we have here?"

It is not the deep-voiced Blue Coat named Gage anymore. It's his partner. The one with the narrow feet and the trembling voice. Something about him wakes me up, and puts me on edge. He's feral. Reminds me of a fox. His hair is short, a reddish brown, and his fair skin is reddened by thoughts of what he'll be able to do to me. The numbers he'll be able to call. He can use his fists, his teeth, his sex. If he's been granted a Special Use permit, his weapons. A knife. Maybe even a gun.

"Gage!" he shouts, smiling. "We caught her!"

This Blue Coat is anxious. Before he can get to me with his body, his colors crawl beneath the bed and fill up every square inch of space. This man's aura is a cloud of noxious gray and pulsating red. It even has a scent of mold. Of rotting fruit.

"Move out of the way, Junior Partner." Gage kneels down
and the other man's smelly gray cloud rescinds, and, with it, the smelly Blue Coat.

The two argue for a moment about who has dibs. The Blue Coat named Gage appears to be the other's superior and, as such, has rights to me. He reminds the other Blue Coat named Skinner that they share a district and will therefore have to work it out. Or one of them will go to a far worse place, if that can be imagined.

"And it ain't going to be me, partner," Gage says.

They continue to debate in louder voices and then Blue Coat Gage appears under the bed.

There is the stubbled chin and the taut lips. The wide-set dark eyes the color of moist earth. The slightly long, wavy hair.

Oh, Christ, help me.
It's the man who killed my best friend.

Gage's face rolls in and out of focus, like a tide. But, even so, I'm sure it's him. He smells the same as I remember from my office. Of musk. Of exertion and fatigue. Even without the scent and the eyes and the too-long hair, I'm doomed to know him forever. Even when he's a corpse, all bones and empty sockets. It's the man who killed Candace. The Blue Coat who shot her a few feet from Mr. Weigland's office on the Murdon Building's hundredth floor.

Gage stares into my wide eyes, and for a moment, there is no discernible expression on his face. Nothing other than the mildest look of surprise. And then, without warning, I'm yanked out from under the bed. Lifted off the floor and slammed against a wall.

"Leave her in one piece, man," Skinner says glibly, not meaning it.

I can't see this man. My face has been taken between Gage's hard fingers. He's turning my head from side to side, studying me. Grunting. He's just another bitter Blue Coat so bored with the gruesome trivialities of his job, he resents the effort it will require to rape and dismember me. As fatigued
as I am by my break, I refuse to give in so easily. With all I have left in me, I draw up my knee quickly and catch Gage in the crotch.

"Jesus Christ!" he howls, but doesn't let go.

Success boosts my energy, so I kick at Gage's Achilles' heels according to the instructions provided in one of my recruitment letters. While he's jumping from one foot to the other, I use the blade edge of my hand on his neck.

"You want me to jump in there?" Skinner is laughing from somewhere behind his partner.

Gage shoves me hard against the wall. "She's my collar! My punitives!"

Skinner stops laughing and walks into my peripheral vision. I catch a glimpse of his sharp, darting eyes. "Hey, man!
I
found her! That means you're sharing numbers, goddamnit, and I'm going first!" He walks closer and puts a hand on Gage's shoulder. "I'm not kidding, John! You know good and goddamned well I don't do seconds!"

John Gage is holding my wrists so hard, my hands have gone numb. I turn my head and catch his angry retort in my left ear. "I'm the Senior Officer here, Skinner! That makes her my collar! Deal with sloppy seconds or get the fuck out of here!"

For just a pause, Gage loosens his grip and I'm somehow able to slip away. I make it to the living room and almost to the kitchen. At the threshold, I'm spun around. Caught with his outstretched hand and hung out on the end of his arm the whole way back to the bedroom.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Skinner follows us as we move. Once we're back where we started, he stands at the end of the bed, complaining as I'm pushed down on top of the yellow comforter. "She's my fucking collar! I have rights!"