Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (3 page)

“I had this weird feeling last night,” she said softly, the memory of the blacked-out Dome hovering in her mind. “Like I didn't want the sweep to happen.”

“What do you mean?” Jeffrey asked. “You wanted the lives of the Tribespeople prolonged?”

“Yes, I guess so.” She looked at him pleadingly. “It just feels so empty now, the place where they were all alive yesterday. I don't know how to describe it. It leaves a gap in my stomach. It makes me feel bad.”

“You remember how they looked,” Jeffrey urged. “Like corpses, practically.”

“I know, I know.” She could see them in her mind's eye: the skeletal faces, the backbones curved at awkward, uncomfortable angles as the women and old men shuffled through the sand, the babies who writhed and then went still from sheer lack of energy. They had been watching the Cranes for nearly a month now—from mid-June until this morning, the twelfth of July—watching their bodies shrink and their faces grow long and hollow.

“It's better now,” Jeffrey said. “Better nonexistence than pain.”

But it wasn't helping. Natasha was willing herself not to cry.

“What did they look like,” she asked, to change the subject, “when they realized the men were alive?”

Jeffrey hesitated. “They were . . . overjoyed.”

“And did they eat the deer?”

“No, we swept them while the first chunks of meat were still cooking.”

“Oh.”

Natasha could not help but feel disappointed. She and Jeffrey had been on shift together when the Crane hunters and the second group of young men had reunited and made the kills. They had watched the hunt play out on the sensors and it had given Natasha such a thrill to see it, she had almost forgotten to pity the deer.

“We couldn't have let it go a second longer, Natasha,” Jeffrey said, as if reading her thoughts. “Besides, the food wouldn't have brought them as much enjoyment as you'd think. They probably would have gorged themselves. Their bodies wouldn't have been able to handle that much protein at once. They would have eaten too fast. It would have made them sick. In this case, anticipation of the meal was much preferable to the fulfillment itself. The smells, the sight. It shouldn't matter, ethically speaking, but the Cranes did leave existence at the moment of highest pleasure.”

“I wish I could have been there for it,” Natasha said. “Maybe seeing the sweep would have made it feel different.”

“There's still the Pines.”

“Yeah, right. We'll never get them. I bet they cross the southern perimeter by the end of the week and we never see them again.”

The computer beeped and Natasha turned to enter her username and password: NWiley, Waverider4. She could feel Jeffrey's attention on her, a different kind of attention from what he'd showed her when she'd first walked in, and an attention that made her just slightly uncomfortable. Sometimes Min-he interrogated Natasha about Jeffrey, insisting that Jeffrey had lustful and maybe even fully empathetic and loving feelings for her, but Natasha would vehemently deny it. She and Jeffrey shared an interest in the Outside, she would tell Min-he. They worked on the same four-person team, and that was all. Privately, of course, if Natasha was being completely honest with herself, she did often feel something between her and Jeffrey: an attraction at once bodily and also deeply rooted in the mind, which Natasha had not experienced with any of her past Epsilon boyfriends when stealing kisses or sneaking quick embraces under the covers in their old dormitory. And yet, as all the citizens did with their feelings from time to time, Natasha forced her attraction to Jeffrey behind a Wall.

Even if Min-he was right, Natasha knew, even if Jeffrey
did
like her, he would never act on those feelings, not in the real world. Another man would have, perhaps, but not Jeffrey, who was always striving for a purely depersonalized, universal perspective, and who would never consciously allow the pursuit of his own happiness to interfere with the chance of living a fully ethical life. Because what were the fleeting highs of romance and love (Natasha could almost imagine him saying) compared with the exaltation of creating a pain-free and carefully maintained paradise here on Earth? What was an obsessive commitment to one individual compared with committing oneself to the whole of humankind? Jeffrey also took very seriously the Alphas' boast that all emotional and physical needs could be met within the bounds of a person's everyday work and leisure activities. For companionship, the citizens should find fulfillment among the members of their own generation and the people they worked with. For physical pleasure, they had the Pretends.

Of course, the majority of citizens did not follow the Alpha guidelines too strictly. People often met up for covert encounters with various favorites, and Natasha herself had never found such acts detrimental to a capacity for ethical thinking. Not that her opinion was based on any very recent experiences. For the last couple of years, Natasha had been slowly straying from these kinds of brief partnerings—with the exception of what she did in the Pretends. She attributed this change in herself to moving out of the old Epsilon living quarters and focusing on her career. And not, as Min-he would have done, to a preoccupation with a certain unobtainable coworker. As for actually romantically committing herself to one single person one day, even Natasha felt that was a long shot. Some people did it. There was an entire hallway of couples' sleeprooms on level one, with double-sized mattresses and bed frames and a table and lamp on each side. In general, though, those sleeprooms were never in high demand. Solitude was hard to come by in America-Five, and the citizens didn't relinquish it easily. The single rooms, for instance, had a waiting list of nine years.

At last, Natasha finished uploading the necessary coordinates and found the three Pine men whom she would track for the day. She could not get a good visual—only a limb here or there, the foliage was too dense—so she chose the infrared (or “IR”) option. Three red streaks jumped out against the muted background. For now, at least, the men appeared to be stationary.

“You know,” Jeffrey said, “as soon as we take care of the Pines, there's going to be a Crane Recovery mission. Arthur's put me in charge. I'm on my way to meet with the Alphas about it right now. They want me to assemble a team within the next few days. The mission can't happen for a while, of course, not with the Pines crawling all over the field . . .”

He trailed off as Natasha turned expectantly toward him. Could he be saying what she thought he was saying?

“I was planning to bring up your name at the meeting. The Alphas have the final say, but I can do my best to get you on the team. If you're interested.”

“Are you serious?”

“Would you want that? This sweep has been hard on you.” He paused, his brow wrinkled. “Maybe it's too much.”

“But Jeffrey, you know,” she could hardly get the words out. “You know I've been dying to see the Outside all my life!”

“Don't use that word.” Jeffrey's face had turned as pink as the scars on his scalp. “Don't say you've been
dying
.”

“Sorry, sorry, I'm just so excited.”

“Well, don't get too excited. Remember, most people have ten years in the Office before they get assigned to a mission. I only wanted to tell you that I'd give it a try.”

“Yeah, but it's different if you recommend me.”

On the screen, the three red streaks billowed up and drifted like angry little clouds out of view.

“Mother,” Natasha cursed. She quickly drew up the four sensors clustered in that area: MD19, MD20, MC19, and MC20. She found the Pines in the southeast corner of sensor MC20 and zeroed in on their location.

She turned the sensor to visual feed to confirm that the red streaks were indeed the men, a protocol move during sensor transfers ever since one now infamous Office of Mercy worker had inadvertently switched from tracking people to tracking a herd of wild cows. Through a triangular window in the spidery branches and vine, Natasha caught sight of a thickly muscled, bent human arm passing steadily through the forest. She was about to return to IR when a second movement caught her eye: appearing in the same spot, framed by a halo of jagged leaves, came the sudden and shocking profile of a man with a sharp nose and high, square cheeks. His thick mass of hair reached his shoulders and, as Natasha watched, he tucked one strand behind his ear. A beautiful man, Natasha thought, yes,
beautiful
was the only word to describe him. He took a step forward and, as he did, he carefully pushed aside a draping frond, almost as if he did not want the delicate thing to tickle his flesh. Maybe it was the lingering effect of having tracked the listless, withered Cranes for the last several weeks, but Natasha found herself stunned by this image of sensitivity and self-command and full-faced, full-muscled health.

“You should probably switch back to IR,” Jeffrey said.

“Oh, right,” said Natasha, flustered. She quickly changed the setting so that the three Pines transformed to red heat on the screen.

“Anyway, I should get going,” said Jeffrey. “I wouldn't want to keep the Alphas waiting.”

Jeffrey stood, pushing his chair away and stretching his elbows over his head. It was a marker of Jeffrey's status in the settlement that he did not appear a bit nervous. Anyone else on their way to meet the Alphas would be pacing trenches into the floor, or at least sweating under the arms a little. Jeffrey, however, wore the same cool expression as always. Of course, Natasha thought, as she had thought on many occasions, even the Alphas must respect his intelligence. Jeffrey had simply accomplished too much in the Office of Mercy—developed the new IR sensor technology when the Department of Research had failed, anticipated the mass Tribal migration of Year 278, and swept more Tribespeople than any individual in the settlement—not to be highly esteemed.

“Keep your eyes on those Pines, champ,” Jeffrey said, touching Natasha's shoulder lightly as he passed behind her. “If they stumble on that Crane sweep site, no one's going anywhere.”

2

T
he three Pines meandered through the lifeless gray background of the IR map, and Natasha—forgoing all previous avowals to stay focused on her work—allowed the dull screen to erupt into a world of colorful possibility: she and a team of citizens venturing to the Outside. If anything could distract her from her mixed feelings about the Crane sweep, or rather, if anything could further
complicate
those emotions, it was this. If Jeffrey could get her a spot on the team, if Natasha got to see the Outside, it would be the most amazing thing to ever happen to her—yes, she decided, even more amazing than receiving her position in the Office of Mercy. She imagined suiting up in a real, custom-fit biosuit, not the stiff, mass-produced versions they wore during alarms. She imagined passing through the airlock in the Office of Exit, the only passageway into or out of the settlement. All that
green
. All that
sky.
And miles and miles of fresh, Post-Storm wilderness to explore, and land that melted away into water, and the ocean that curved to infinity. There would be bumpy, gnarly forest ground beneath her feet, not marble; and wildly growing trees and wild animals and gusts of wind that did not come from a fan. Maybe a bluebird would come and land on her shoulder like they sometimes did in the Pretends. She would get to hike along the beach; sand intrigued her, how it was so soft and loose but sturdy too, when piled up; and waves, her heart fluttered at the thought of ocean waves, those little mountains rising up and disappearing indefatigably, with a calm vigor that put the monstrous backup generator on level nine to shame.

And Jeffrey would be there; Jeffrey would be leading the team. He was the only one in the settlement who talked openly about what the wilderness was like, and Natasha could never get enough of his stories. He had even been to the ocean once, on a sensor repair mission some time before the Epsilon birth, and he had told her (this was years ago, but Natasha remembered it well) that the waves made a sound like pulsing static on a dead sensor feed. He also said—not to be repeated to anyone from the Office of Recreation Engineering—that the Pretends were no substitution for the real sound and sight and full-flesh experience of the Outside.

For the chance to leave the settlement once, only once, and to live that dream with Jeffrey, Natasha was ready to trade two decades of cleanup duty in the Dining Hall. One mission, she was sure, would provide enough wonderment to replace the stuff of her nightmares for years.

Because there was another draw too; another facet of Natasha's desire to see the Outside that she revealed to no one, often including her own conscious self. Natasha believed—it made no logical sense but still she had believed ever since she was a small child in her upper bunk in the old Epsilon dormitory—that some burning curiosity within her might find relief if she could only get to the Outside. She could not explain
why
the Outside should have this effect or
what
exactly was so unsatisfactory about life lived entirely within the settlement. All Natasha could name was a vague feeling that despite the wisdom of the Alphas there yet remained some realm of being that they chose not to access, some ancient truth (
There is no truth but the truth that the human mind bestows,
the Alphas would say); no, no, but still some inchoate, natural understanding that only the wind could whisper in the listening ear, that only the leaves could describe in their rustling or the ocean waves convey in their white crash and backward swirl.

It was a ridiculous idea. People in ancient times had occasionally thought this way, had put their faith and hope in the natural world, and they had not arrived at any satisfactory method for living, and certainly nothing that rivaled the Ethical Code. Plus, what was of a more practical concern, if anyone knew that Natasha indulged such outrageous fantasies, they would never allow her to work in the Office of Mercy. Natasha, therefore, took care not to reveal the full depth of her unease—except occasionally to Jeffrey. She had extra reason to be glad about her caution now, if she wanted the Alphas to approve her for the mission. Especially (as Natasha thought, with a tinge of regret) given that there was enough in her permanent file working against her already.

Natasha felt confident, proud even, of the work she had done in the last six years in the Office of Mercy. Two awards had come her way, one group award for best four-person team, and one solo award for her work in mapping the migratory patterns of large game animals using data from the satellite sensors. But there were other things, incidents from Natasha's childhood that signaled a dangerous tendency for unethical thinking. From the ages of six through eleven—before she was old enough to hide it—Natasha had exhibited an overwhelming, even obsessive interest in the Outside; so much so that some of her fellow Epsilons still teased her about it when they got together in the Dining Hall to reminisce about old times.

It was normal, of course, for children to be curious about the Tribes, but Natasha had openly expressed empathetic feelings for them in a way that—in the words of her monthly school reports—completely disregarded historical contextualization, and disregarded the distinctions between her modes of thinking and theirs.

“Were the Tribes very frightened when the Storm came?” Natasha remembered asking in their Garden schoolroom, her knees tucked under her chin and her girls' uniform of pink shirt and white coveralls baggy around her waist.

“Most people did not have time to be afraid,” Teacher Penelope answered. “Just like with the sweeps today, the Storm came too fast for anyone to realize what was happening. They saw the black clouds approaching, and that was it. There were survivors, of course, the ancestors of the people who make up the Tribes today. But even they could not have comprehended the enormity of what was happening. The survivors must have been in hiding already, most likely up in the mountains somewhere. Under no circumstances could they have perceived the full impact of the Storm on the world. But remember, everyone,” Teacher Penelope told them firmly, “survivors of the Storm were a very, very rare exception. For the vast majority of people, the Storm was an instantaneous end to a lifetime of suffering. Really, to a whole history of suffering.”

Teacher Penelope paused and looked down from her chair at the little Epsilons sprawled before her in the grass.

“There are some things, children, that even adults cannot imagine. I am a Beta and I cannot imagine it. In the dark times, when the Alphas were your age, before the Storm, there were fifty-nine billion living, breathing human beings inhabiting this tiny Earth.”

“How did they fit in the Dining Halls?” Caroline Churchill whispered.

“There were no Dining Halls. There was not even food or clean water for many, many people. In order to have those things, you needed money. And some people had no money at all.”

“What's money?” Preston King asked.

“Pieces of paper with faces drawn on them,” Teacher Penelope said. “If you collected enough of them, you could own for yourself—for your own self and nobody else—anything in the world.”

The children had laughed at this idea, but Natasha had not laughed. She was still imagining the black clouds covering the Earth during the Storm and the thought of it had made her cry right there in the middle of the lesson. Teacher Penelope had scolded her and sent her away from the group, and Natasha had sat alone on a bench under the largest oak tree until she could calm down.

Surely Teacher Penelope's report of that day had found its way to the Alphas, and other incidents too: how Natasha used to have nightmares long after the other children had learned to banish strange visions from their unconscious mind, and how she used to draw pictures not of the beautiful, future Day of Expansion like most children did, but rather of wild animals and long-fanged monsters that positioned themselves just outside the settlement doors.

But even those were nothing compared with Natasha's worst transgression—the only thing she had ever done to seriously anger her elders. It had happened just weeks before the Epsilons' tenth birthday. The clock on the maincomputer read a few minutes past the twenty-third hour, and Natasha was being dragged by the elbow toward the Department of Health, on account of a bloody nose. Teacher Robyn was angry; she thought Natasha was guilty of “dirty picking,” which Natasha should know better than to do at her age. Natasha, meanwhile, was holding a handkerchief to her face and doing her best not to fall. Teacher Robyn had not waited long enough for Natasha to find her rubber leisure shoes, and Natasha's socks kept slipping on the Dome's marble floor. Natasha would never have seen what she saw (or
thought
she saw) if not for two things. First, due to the presence of Tribes in the northern mountain ridge, the white floodlights were off in the Dome; leaving only the low, red floorlights to guide their way, and making the Dome windows transparent to the Outside. Second, in order to slow the drip of blood, Natasha had tilted her head way back, causing her to look not at the double doors to which she was headed, but at the first row of honeycomb windows just above the Dome's circular base.

She and Teacher Robyn were about twenty paces from the Department of Health when Natasha saw them: three ghostly faces peering through the glass, two men and a woman, their pale heads floating like impossible little moons, swags of dirty fabric wrapped around their necks, and their eyes fixed directly on her. Natasha screamed. She screamed and threw her weight back, making Teacher Robyn trip to her knees and cry out in surprise. Blood poured over Natasha's lips and hotly to the bib of her nightgown. The faces disappeared but she screamed and thrashed to get away, back to the elephant, and eventually it took three full-grown Gamma men to restrain her.

In the following days, certain Betas and Gammas had given Natasha many logical explanations for the faces: that she, Natasha, had been semiconscious, still dreaming; that holding her head back too far had overstrained her windpipe, reducing the flow of oxygen into her bloodstream and making her brain go just a little foggy. They sat her down in the Archives and showed her surveillance images of the green inner lawn on that night. Nothing. No one. But Natasha would not change her story, and her elders went from being sympathetic to being annoyed. They suspended her for three days from her Epsilon group on account of her promoting illogic, and her teachers told her how disappointed they were until Natasha's anger had transformed to a dull ache in her chest.

Eight years later, when Natasha applied to work in the Office of Mercy, her past came back to haunt her. The Department of Government had held her application five days past the usual timeline, despite Natasha's ranking third in her class and scoring a 97 percent on the Office of Mercy entrance exam. She could not be sure, but she believed that Jeffrey had vouched for her. He had visited their Epsilon group a few times as a volunteer teacher, and he had always paid a little extra attention to her. Not overtly, nothing that the other children would notice, but in the way he stood still and listened to her when she gave an answer and how once, when she was very little, he had put his hand on top of her head and kept it there, as if to say,
Out of all the sixty-two Epsilons, you are special.

•   •   •

The metallic clang of a chair leg striking the cubicle announced the arrival of Natasha's fellow Epsilon team member—twelve minutes late for his afternoonshift. As a conciliatory gesture, he had brought Natasha a mug of coffee, which he set down beside the feeler-cube in which Natasha's fingers danced, controlling the computer.

“You should see it out there in the Dome,” Eric said, looping his audioset around his neck and rolling back in his chair. “The Alphas finally posted the sweep. Everyone's cheering around the maincomputer. Hey, you weren't in the Office for it, were you?”

“Nope,” said Natasha, taking a break to sip the hot coffee. “Wave One Defense in the Dome. Jeffrey did the sweep himself.”

“Well, that's still better than me. I was on ammo support with your roommate.”

“We're back to tracking Pines, did you check your instructions yet?”

“I am right now. Mother, I was hoping to monitor the Crane sweep site.”

“Claudia's team got the assignment, I think,” said Natasha, savoring a few more sips, then setting the mug aside. “But Arthur says it's clean. There's nothing to see.”

“Exactly,” said Eric, letting forth a mighty yawn. “By the way, I was browsing the America Boards this morning. Did you know we're ahead of America-Forty-seven now? Way ahead of America-Six.”

“Are we really?”

Natasha flicked her pinky finger in the feeler cube, drawing up the Extra-Settlement connection. This was the single feed used for communication with the other American settlements, the 158 Dome-capped structures stretching from ocean to ocean, all along latitude 39 degrees North. Besides weather warnings and announcements of new generations, the America Boards served almost exclusively to keep track of the sweeps. One of the programmers in a central settlement had set up a ranking system, where settlements could self-report the number of Tribespeople swept. Officially, the Alphas in America-Five did not approve of this program—though they had never made a rule against it either. America-Five usually ranked very high, in part because they were the easternmost settlement (Americas One through Four had been tragically lost during the Storm, when the ocean surged miles inland, in defiance of all computer models and calculations). America-Five, therefore, intercepted most of the fishing Tribes traveling down the coast. Tribes, in other words, like the Cranes.

The top rankings on the board read as follows: