“At first there was a slip-up in reporting that she was missing. Most missing persons cases clear themselves up in due course. The authorities figured this one was no different.” Blanchefleur paused and let her eyes sweep the room. With a sigh, she continued, “I spoke to the palace manager. She remembered Minn as a kind but troubled young woman. Apparently she had developed an unhealthy attachment to one of the donors. The manager was relieved when Minn stayed away from work.”
“Are you saying that Minn had an inappropriate relationship with an
outsider
?” Gloria asked incredulously.
“Minn had been repeatedly warned to maintain the proper decorum and dignity when dealing with her donors,” Blanchefleur explained. “She was informed that her tendencies were being noticed and that she was at risk. I cannot confirm that she had illicit relations with an outsider, but the signs seem to indicate that this is the case. I repeat: the real danger, the danger of temptation, still exists within certain of us.”
“That's ridiculous!” snapped a red-faced Gloria. “We have a dead body on our doorstep and you expect us to sit here listening to nonsense about the weaknesses of the victim?”
“As I said,” Blanchefleur's voice cut through the air like ice-hardened steel, “it is likely that Minn got herself pregnant in the Palace of the Temple Donors. If she jumped from the wall, it is probable that she did so after giving birth to a child outside of the gender determination. No child has been found. She may have jumped with the baby in her arms, which would mean that somehow the child is now somewhere in the wild, or she may
have left it behind in Aahimsa. Either way, we have no way of
knowing whether the baby is alive.”
“And what would possess her to leave her baby?” Gloria spat sarcastically. “After what she'd done to keep it?”
“Minn could have asked permission to keep the child,” Blanchefleur said reluctantly. “She would have been punished for insubordination, but her wishes would have been granted. It has happened before. Unless⦔
“Unless what?”
“Unless the newborn child was an outsider.”
The chamber fell silent as a tomb. The councillors looked from one to the other in shock.
“One outsider baby is not a danger in itself,” Blanchefleur continued soberly. “However, if it exists, this unauthorized child could furnish the spark needed to ignite some very real danger to the future of this world.”
“And that's why all outsiders should be terminated!” Gloria shouted. Her face was bright red and her dark eyes flashed. “This is
your
fault, Blanchefleur! It's you who pose the greatest danger to all of us. You still won't acknowledge the danger inherent in your refusal to accede to the demands of the World Federation.”
“That's enough, Gloria,” Blanchefleur interjected, shooting daggers from her icy blue eyes. “This event occurred because the primal instinct to pair with the outsiders still clearly exists within us. We have been assured by our scientists that Mother Nature will eventually extinguish this deep-seated urge, the vestige of an earlier age. With lack of use, the theory goes, it will, like the appendix, shrink and eventually disappear. And once it does, the advantages of controlling the outsider workforce will far outweigh the risks we've taken to secure it. It's taken several generations, but we've almost completely overcome our primal instincts, and we've come much too far to give in on our stance toward outsider labour now. However, I can't caution enough that these urges, and the oppression that results from them, could return in a very short time if we let down our guard.” She scanned the room, meeting every councillor in the eyes before continuing. “Babies have more power over us than we could ever imagine. That child must be found and destroyed. It is the only way that we can sleep in safety.”
She picked up the stack of paper in front of her and cracked the edges on the desk to bring them in line. “This meeting is adjourned.”
Alice clicked a button on the control panel and the screen faded to black. She turned around to face Nora, who was cradling the sleeping outsider baby in her arms. The blood had drained from her face, and there was a look of sheer panic in her eyes.
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“They'll kill him, won't they?” Nora said, her hazel eyes squinting like a cat's. The answer was obvious.
“Of course,” Alice said, noticing the tears welling up in Nora's eyes. She held her arms out, took the sleeping baby, and looked down at his peaceful face. “It's hard to believe he'd grow as ugly and dangerous as the rest of them.”
“The rest of who?”
“Whom,” said Alice. “Outsiders, of course.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Nora asked, blinking back a tear.
“
Do
with him?” Alice asked. “We're not going to
do
anything with him. My mother and everyone else in the council know all about him. They'll be searching for him all over Aahimsa, and on the outside. They won't stop looking until they find him, one way or the other. The security group will want to find evidence as soon as possible because the pressure will be intense. We'll have to get rid of him.”
Alice handed the baby back to Nora, who took him in her arms and wrapped the blanket around him a little tighter.
“Look, Nora,” Alice said, putting a hand on her arm, “I know how you feel. I'm caught up in this whole thing, too. But think of the future. Soon we can have our own babies. Babies no one can take away. I'll be eighteen in a few days, and you only have a few months before you're of age. You know that this baby shouldn't be alive anyway. He wasn't authorized. He doesn't officially exist. Security will deliver him to the terminators and he'll be dealt with humanely.”
Nora drew the baby closely against her. “How long can we keep him?”
“The sooner we get him out of here, the better. If they find him here my mother will be furious. We won't say anything. We'll take him somewhere close, but off the property. We'll call in an anonymous report.”
“All right,” said Nora, fighting to hide her turmoil. The baby squirmed against her breast in response. She rocked him gently in a way that was already second nature to her, and she sang to him inside her head as she breathed in the citrus of his hair and skin. “But let me do it. I need some time alone to say goodbye to him before I give him up.”
“Fine,” said Alice. “But be careful. If the one of the search parties catches you out there with himâ”
“They won't,” Nora cut in. She looked down at the baby again and wiped a smudge of dirt from his face. “You want to hold him before I leave?”
“No, thanks,” Alice said. “From now on, he's all yours. I've held him as much as I want to. I know when it's time to say good-bye. You should, too. Some things you just have to do.” She rose up and swept from the room.
Nora bundled the baby up in his blanket and then placed him in the wicker basket she'd used to pick the berries. She placed another small blanket over the basket so no one would be able to see inside if she were stopped. She lifted the basket carefully and went to the window to peer outside. When she was satisfied that no one was out there, she grabbed a flashlight and slipped out the door into the warm evening air.
The sun was starting to set, and the sky was a brilliant pink. Nora would normally have stopped to admire it, but tonight there was no time. She scurried into the trees near the house, careful not to shake the basket too much as she ran, and followed a path down to pond. It was darker under the canopy of trees, and she had to take care not to trip over their roots as she walked. When she reached the water she stopped and put the basket down among the reeds, then looked around furtively. When she was convinced there was no one else around, she sat down on a rock, pulled the packet she had found inside the baby's diaper out of her pocket, and opened it. Inside she found a note scribbled in a shaky hand. She lifted it up and tried catch enough light from the dying sun to read it.
Dear Friend,
I pray you are a kind person. I don't know who you are, or what you'll do with my lovely child. But, whatever you decide, try not to be cruel.
I want you to know who deserted this boy and why. My name is Minn and I am his mother. I conceived this child the way our ancestors did. I was in love with the outsider who put the life in my belly. I could not save him from being terminated once he was no longer deemed of use to the Palace of the Temple Donors, but I swore to myself that I would do everything I could to save his unborn baby.
When I was a child, my grandmother used to tell me about how life was lived in the olden times, stories she had heard at her grandmother's knee. Stories that were forbidden to tell, but that had survived and been passed down nonetheless.
It was very long ago that I first contemplated love as it was in the days of our ancestors. It was when my grandmother told me a story from one of the forbidden books. A story from long before insiders and outsiders. A story about a first woman and a first man. The woman was Eve, and the man was Adam.
My grandmother said that perhaps someday there would be another first man. Well, I want you to meet Adam.
If you find this note, then I am likely dead. I have jumped from the wall to see if I can find a way to smuggle Adam out of Aahimsa, some secret door or passage that can only be found from the outside. I know the fall from the wall will almost certainly kill me, but I have no other option. I've tried everything I can to find a way out of Aahimsa, but all of the exits are monitored by security details and the wall extends too deep into the ground to dig under. I couldn't bear to bring Adam with me over the wall for fear that I would have to watch him die. I pray that if I do not make my way back to him, someone will find him alive and take pity on him.
If you have found Adam, I beg you to take care of him, and to try to do what I couldn't. Take him, hide him, raise him as your own, keep him safe. He is our last chance to return the world to the way it was meant to be, to the ways of our ancestors.
There is a hiding place nearby that you can stay in if you need to, the basement of an old church that has been buried underground since the uprising. My grandmother took me there once as a child. It is where I have lived these past few months, and where Adam was born. There are supplies there, and infant nutrifier for Adam. I've enclosed a map to the entrance with this letter.
I know you will probably give my baby to the authorities to be terminated. But I pray to the Goddess that you are merciful. If there is any way you can find it in your heart to take pity on him, you
must
get him out of Aahimsa.
Please, please,
Minn
Nora sighed as she unfolded a stained bit of paper that had been fastened to Minn's note by a small paper clip. A crude map was drawn on it in blue ink. She immediately recognized the landmarks from an area very near the mayor's summer house. A rush of adrenaline pushed her racing heart rate higher.
She lifted the blanket from over the basket and looked down at the child inside. He opened his eyes and gazed straight up into hers, as if he were staring right into her soul. Nora admired him for a long time before he stirred lightly and made a quiet mewling sound. “Adam,” she said aloud. He was so small and fragile. How could anyone fear him?
Nora didn't know what to do. She knew she couldn't keep Adam, no matter what his mother's letter said. But she also couldn't bear the idea of leaving him all alone under the darkening sky for the authorities to find. And what would happen to him when they did was simply unthinkable. She sat there for a long time, looking down at Adam and trying to figure out what she could do next.
“You must be getting hungry again,” she said finally. As if on cue, Adam started to whimper. Nora picked up the baby and rocked him in her arms. “I suppose I can't leave you here without feeding you first,” Nora said. “You could die of starvation before someone found you.”
Nora knew what she had to do.
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Nora placed Adam back in his basket, then unfolded the map once again. This time, she studied it more closely. When she was satisfied she knew the direction she needed to head in, she picked up Adam's basket and hurried along as quietly as possible through the fading dusk. She felt bright and warm, and the prospect of matching the map to the geography cheered her mightily.
Nora knew the surrounding landscape well. She had walked through most of it with Alice. But even though she was very familiar with the large, wooded area that had once served as a public park, in the twilight it looked like a different place. She was relieved when she recognized the dense grove surrounded by relics of long-abandoned public buildings where she and Alice had found Adam only a few hours ago.
The air in the grove was charged with the perfume of wild flowers and sweet grass and the damp of the evening dew. “Can you smell how fresh it is?” Nora whispered to Adam as she once again followed the narrow path that led toward the weeping willow where Minn had hidden him. Nora checked the map again, then walked past the willow and followed the path toward an area near the wall. She carried Adam's basket through another opening in the trees and they were suddenly on a narrower path that led into a lush, green field.
She and Alice had walked here once, and she remembered that in one corner of the field they had noticed a huge slab of worn concrete, which jutted up from the ground like an irregular obelisk. Here and there, rusted rods of steel protruded from the concrete like unkempt whiskers.
Nora had intended to ask Alice about that erratic hunk of rock the first time she'd seen it, but the excitement of being there with her new and powerful companion had pushed the question from her mind. But now, as she and Adam approached it in the fading pink light, she was positive she was looking at the landmark indicated on Minn's map.
“Come on, Adam,” Nora said, stopping to adjust the blanket over his basket. “Let's go see if we can find you something to eat.” She switched on the flashlight and picked the basket back up. As she approached the huge rock, Nora saw signs of recent traffic. The grass was worn and bent, creating a narrow path that seemed to dip and disappear up ahead.
She followed the path as it twisted and turned around the concrete behemoth. When she noticed a narrow slit in the soft earth at its base that could possibly lead below ground, she set the basket down and moved as much of the dirt away as she could to uncover a small opening. With a bit more work, the hole had been widened just enough for her to fit through, though it would be a very tight squeeze. “Your mother filled this in well,” Nora said to Adam as she brushed her dirty hands off on her jeans. “She must have wanted to keep it hidden in case she ever needed to come back.”
Nora looked around the meadow furtively in case Alice or someone else had followed her. When she was satisfied that she and Adam were quite alone, she wiggled as quickly as possible through the narrow opening.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness as she shone her flashlight around the dingy room. The air was dank and musty, but the space looked safe enough, so she squeezed back up through the hole and returned, pushing Adam's basket through ahead of her. Now she'd be able to have a proper look around.
The room was sparsely furnished. A small cot was set up along the wall beside the entrance, there was a shelf with some supplies on it on one wall, and a table and two chairs stood in the middle of the small room. On top of the table sat a glass lamp half-filled with rank-smelling fuel. Nora had used lamps like this a few times before, during the rare interruptions of electric power to Aahimsa from the distant wind farms of the manufacturing homelands. Beside the lamp sat a small metal box. Nora lifted Adam up out of the basket and placed him down gently on the narrow cot, then walked back to the table and picked up the small tin box. She struggled for a few moments with its tight-fitting lid before she got it open. Inside she found several dozen waterproof wooden matches.
She wondered if the matches would still light in this damp, stagnant room. She put her flashlight down on the table, then struck a match along the side of the metal box. The blue head exploded with fire. Nora touched it to the darkened edge of the lamp wick and watched as a smoky yellow flame began to dance across it. She adjusted the wick and replaced the glass globe. The flame brightened. It gave off a pleasant, warm light and lit up the room enough for her to see the room's unpainted walls. She guessed by the discoloured cinder blocks that she was in the sub-basement of a church from the previous civilization.
Nora walked back over to the bed and checked on Adam, who seemed contented with his place on the cot and had fallen asleep. On a small table beside the cot she discovered several pairs of shoes and a neat pile of clothing. She picked up one of the shoes and held it against her foot. It looked like it might fit her. She unfolded a dress from the top of the pile of clothes and held it up to her chest. It, too, looked to be about her size, though maybe a bit snug. On a shelf above the table she found a stack of tubes with labels that read “Infant Nutrifier.”
Above the cot, a yellowing calendar displayed the page for December 2055. In its faded picture, a bearded outsider in a flowing crimson and beige robe stood high on a hill addressing a large assembly of similarly dressed outsiders.
Beside the cot, an open door led somewhere deeper in the basement. Nora found a second glass lamp in a corner, wiped its globe clean, lit it, and stepped through the open doorway and into a long corridor. She could see more open doors up ahead to her left and right.
Before exploring further she stepped back to check on Adam. She knew she should rouse him so she could feed him, but he was sleeping so peacefully that she couldn't bear to wake him.
Nora didn't really want to venture farther into the dark corridor, but she knew she wouldn't have another chance to look around and, although she couldn't admit it to herself yet, a dangerous plan was forming in her mind, a plan that would require her to get to know this place. For the moment, she told herself it was only a brief adventure. She was free of Alice for a little while and could roam wherever her heart desired. In a short time she'd have to be back at the summer house, and that would be the end of exploring.
As Nora made her way through the shadowy hallway, she passed half a dozen open doors. At the end of the corridor, another door opened into a second hallway, which came to a sudden dead end to the right, but continued on into the distance to the left. She followed it for a few feet, until she came up against a pile of broken concrete and dirt that sat beside a crude hole in the floor. Perhaps this was Minn's attempted tunnel to the outside. Nora set the lamp down and climbed into the hole. It was deeper than she had expected. It was much too dark down in the hole to see clearly, but with her hands she could feel solid concrete along the side of the shaft. The wall. Nora imagined how frustrated and disappointed the Minn must have been when she'd found out how deep it went.
Nora lifted herself up out of the hole, picked up the lamp, and cocked her ears, listening for sounds from the child. Satisfied that Adam was content, she headed back toward the first hallway, passed through the door, and entered the first room on her right. A dusty table sat against the wall. Tiny chairs circled it in anticipation of five small bottoms that would never arrive. A shelf along one wall held several tins of wax crayons and a sheaf of yellow wooden pencils of various lengths. It must be some sort of schoolroom within the church, Nora thought. There was a stack of red hardcover books, all identical, beside the pencils. Nora picked one up and read the words emblazoned in gold letters on the front: “Holy Bible.” She opened the cover and read the inscription: “High Park Presbyterian Church.” Must be some old religious text, she thought to herself. She slipped the book back on the shelf and left the room.
She entered another small room, which was empty aside from a coat rack hung with metal hangers, one of which held a miniature blue blazer. She removed it from the hanger and inspected it. It looked strange to her. At first she didn't know why, but then she noticed that the buttons were on the wrong side. She had never seen a coat with buttons like that. She looked at the label inside. “Frisky Fellows: clothes for active boys.” So this had been the jacket of an outsider child. That meant this church must have been wrecked sometime before the uprising, when outsiders still lived among the insiders. The building had probably been covered over and forgotten, or perhaps used as an underground classroom after the transformation.
Perhaps the jacket had belonged to a young outsider who had been born too late. Nora wondered what had happened to him. Was he killed following the transformation? Did he live to see the world improve, go from violence and hatred to a place of peace and contentment? Had he become a slave to the insiders after they had successfully wrested the earth from the muscled arms of his forefathers?
Suddenly a shrill cry pierced the air. Adam had woken up. Nora ran down the hallway to the main room and shut the door to the corridor tightly behind her.
Adam settled in against her body when she picked him up, his tiny pink tongue bobbing in and out of his mouth.
“You must be hungry again,” Nora said, shifting him to one arm and grabbing a tube of nutrifier with the other. She removed the cap and held the nipple up to Adam's mouth. He sucked at it greedily. Nora rocked him back and forth and sang to him as he fed. Holding him close felt good, and she was disappointed when he dropped off to sleep again.
She set him back on the cot and watched him breathe under the orange glow of the oil lamp. She didn't know how long she'd sat like that, but she suddenly started awake, realizing that she'd been gone from the summer house for hours and she ought to get going. Alice would be starting to panic by now. But she didn't want to wake Adam up, and she knew she probably wouldn't get another chance to explore the basement.
The cot squeaked and moved under Adam as she rose. He stirred, but stayed asleep. Nora picked up the lamp and hurried back up the length of the hall and into the room opposite the one she'd been in earlier. Its ceiling had partially collapsed onto a huge metal tank of some kind, perhaps a boiler for some sort of a heating system. She looked around. Against one wall ran a wooden workbench. From a panel above it hung a variety of carpenter's tools. Under the bench sat a rusted lawn mower. Nothing much of interest here.
A storage room next door held dusty stacks of tables and chairs, pitted with rust where the paint had cracked and peeled away. The next room proved more interesting. Its walls were lined with books. This is a room she could spend some time in â but for now she wanted to explore as much of the underground hideaway as possible.
The next room was stocked with gardening tools and equipment: hoes, shovels, and forks, trowels and clippers. Rows of tin boxes with faded pictures of flowers, fruits and vegetables were lined up along shelves on the walls. She pried open the cover of one and found that it was still full of seeds. She wondered if they would grow after all this time. She squeezed a few of the seeds between her fingertips. They seemed firm. She closed the tin tightly and placed it back on the shelf carefully.
Nora decided to return to the long, narrow service corridor where Minn's hole was. As she entered the hallway, she felt a sudden chill breeze, which seemed to originate from somewhere farther down the corridor. She took a few steps past Minn's hole, then stumbled as her foot landed on something hard. She held the lamp down in front of her and shone its light on the floor to see what it was. The moment her eyes focused enough to discern what had tripped her, she let out an involuntary cry and almost dropped the lamp.
The unmistakable form of a human skeleton was propped against the wall in front of her. Nora had never seen a dead body, let alone a skeleton, and the sight of it terrified her. But something about it was strangely intriguing, as well, and she couldn't help but take another peek down at the sad pile of bones beneath her feet. A discoloured paper notepad lay on the floor next to the skeleton. Nora steeled herself, then bent down picked up the pad, trying her best not to look at the skeleton. She fanned the dust off the pad, then tucked it into the waistband of her jeans.
The fresh breeze felt a bit stronger here. Nora wondered where it was coming from. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment, then inhaled deeply and leapt over the skeleton. She ran the rest of the way down the corridor, until she reached a pile of concrete boulders, metal pipes, steel girders, and debris that reached from the floor up to the ceiling. A cave-in.
Nora spent a few moments looking over the damage, trying to see if there was a way over the pile. It didn't look like it, but she decided to climb up and see if she could shift some of the debris out of the way. I wonder if Minn tried this, too, she thought to herself. Probably. She would have done anything to find a way out of here.
Nora tried putting the lamp down on the ground so she'd have both hands to climb, but its glow didn't reach far enough for her to climb very high before she would be in complete darkness. She'd have to bring it with her. She picked the lantern up with her left hand and steadied herself against the pile with her right, then shifted her left leg up onto a boulder and shimmied up on top of it. Her knee scraped against the concrete and she winced as she felt the burn from where the rough boulder had scraped off the skin. She'd have to be more careful. With considerable effort, she managed to climb almost to the top of the pile without hurting herself again. She was just about to try shifting some of the boulders out of the way when a sudden gust of strong wind blew out her lamp, leaving her in complete darkness.