After the Red Rain (8 page)

R
ose roams the empty streets. Curfew has fallen along with the sun, and no one dares go outside. Not that many went outside before the setting of the sun, either. The air is too poisonous, they claimed. It is safer inside, they claimed. There is no reason to be outside, they claimed.

Who needs a reason? Rose wonders.

It has been the same everywhere he’s been, in every Territory he crossed on his way here. The City is a fractal, the same in every direction, identical in every cut.

Except for one thing.

Deedra.

By paths and byways unavailable to most, Rose makes his silent and swift way to a specific housing unit. He does not ring the buzzer; that would automatically alert the DeeCees to the presence of someone outside after curfew. Instead, he climbs in the manner that is uniquely his, scaling the side of the building until he reaches the right window. It has been left open for him.

He slips inside. A cockroach skitters by and Rose picks it up, studying it. He marvels at the twitch of its antennae, tasting the world for food, for pathways, for danger. So efficient.

After a few moments of examining the cockroach—which sits patiently in his hand, jittering only a millimeter to and fro—Rose places it on the windowsill and goes into another room, where the occupant sits under roach netting.

“Well, good evening, Rose,” he says, looking up. “Something wrong?”

“Why do you ask that?”

With anyone else, the return question would be a delaying tactic, a way to avoid answering the question. But the man under the netting knows better, knows that Rose genuinely wants to know.

“Your expression,” he says. “The look on your face. You look troubled.”

“I see.”

“Are you troubled?”

“I’m not sure,” Rose admits.

“Well, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I think I’ve made a connection.”

“I see.”

“To a person.”

“A… girl? A boy?”

Rose cocks his head. “Is that relevant?”

“I suppose not. So you’ve made a connection.”

“Yes. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

The man shrugs and gives it a moment’s thought. Then he smiles broadly. “Well, we’ll just have to figure that out, won’t we?”

O
n Deedra’s vid the morning of her weekly optional workday, there were competing headlines. One said
POPULATION RISING FOR FIRST TIME SINCE RED RAIN
. The other said
SCIENTISTS AGREE: POPULATION CONTROL WORKING
.

She didn’t know which one to believe, and she wasn’t sure it mattered.

She had a little bandwidth, so she linked into the wikinets and looked up
rose
.

ROSES are mythical flowers described in literature. While old photographs purport to show them, these are conclusively determined to be falsified, since roses never existed. They were, instead, theoretical plants (see: plants) used in fiction. Roses “smelled good” and were “beautiful” to behold. Symbolically, the attractiveness of the rose was offset by the presence of its “thorns” (more accurately known as prickles), which were sharp enough to draw blood.

There was also an image.
Artist’s rendition
was written under it.

She stared at the picture. It was beautiful. Beautiful—maybe appropriately—as Rose himself was beautiful. He’d been named well.

Mythical flowers
, the wiki said.

Mythical.

Roses
, the wiki went on,
predate the Red Rain as a mythological construct
.

She frowned.

Any of them could be true. You have to decide which one you believe.
That’s what Caretaker Hullay had said to her.

And she had said that she didn’t want to
decide
what she believed; she wanted to
know
what was true.

And, she realized suddenly, she still did.

There was nothing she could do, though. Nowhere to turn. The wikinets were useless: She would accomplish nothing other than a massive headache and eyestrain from flicking through them. None of them jibed with any other one, and some of them—she knew from experience—would change in an instant, having been reedited or modified from what she’d seen just minutes earlier.

She sighed and gave up. It was nearing the end of the month, and her rations were running low again. Always. Every month, no matter how much she starved herself and no matter how parsimoniously she doled out her bandwidth, she hit the end of the month with two or three foodless days and little to no bandwidth.

Time to scavenge. She’d been lax all month and was now paying the price. Maybe she could find something to trade for someone’s excess ration. Maybe she could find a nonblue rat out there. Maybe…

She thought of those eggs from so long ago. Her mouth watered at the cruel perfection of her memory. She would never get
that
lucky again.

She slipped on her poncho and her mask, as well as her threadbare, old backpack, and headed out. Between factory shifts, the streets were nearly empty. She marveled at how the Territory could be so congested, so packed with people, yet appear desolate. Staying inside was the safer course, the easier course.

Making her way toward the Wreck, she was determined to climb the bridge today. This time nothing would stop her. And even if she found it to be picked over and barren, at least she could say she’d accomplished something.

But by the time she made it to the Wreck, she was surprised to find Rose there, as if waiting for her. He leaned against the turned-over hulk of an old car, the hem of his long green coat nearly touching the cracked, dusty asphalt. Maskless.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

“Just waiting.”

“No. I mean…” She broke off. She meant why was he here, waiting for her, but in that instant, she realized what she really wanted to know was something else, something more important. “Why are you
here
?” she asked. “In Ludo Territory. Why did you cross the river?”

He shrugged. “Should we talk while we walk?”

They began to thread their way through the Wreck. After many minutes of silence, she came to understand that he was not going to volunteer anything.

“Why did you come here?”

“It’s not why I came that matters,” he told her. “It’s why I stayed.”

She considered that. “So… are you a spy, then?”

“No.”

She laughed. “You would be a pretty bad spy if you answered
yes
to that.”

He paused and barked out a surprised laugh. “That’s true!” he said, as though he’d never considered it before. And something in the innocence of his answer made her believe him.

“How come you hardly ever touch people?” she asked. “Why do you always stand away from me, like now?”

At that, he nodded slowly, climbing atop the shell of a dead truck.
He towered over her, set off in relief from the backdrop of clouds above and behind him. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt people,” he said.

She offered him a hand. “Help me up.”

Hesitating at first, he reached down and took her hand. She didn’t need the hand up to climb something as prosaic as a truck, but she was making a point.

“Here I am,” she said, now standing next to him. “Not hurt.”

“Yes, well…” Suddenly self-conscious, he withdrew his hands and stuck them back in his pockets. The truck underfoot became fascinating, and he stared down at it.

There was something wounded and pained beneath him. “Have you done that?” she asked gently. His self-recrimination was etched in every angle of his face. “Have you hurt…” She thought. Yes, she had to ask. “Have you hurt someone?”

“I try not to.”

Which wasn’t a
no
. And still, the pain etched so clearly on his face.

“What about something more than hurting? Have you…” She stumbled over the word for an instant. “Have you killed?”

Rose became even more serious. “Many, many times. So have you. So have all of us. Every day, every single thing we do kills. There are bacteria on your skin that die when you wash. There are insects in the ground that die when you scavenge.”

“I don’t mean
things
. I mean have you killed
people
.”

For the first time with him, she felt like a child being scolded. “I don’t make that distinction,” he told her. “Everything that lives matters.”

She thought of the bird eggs she’d scavenged long ago from the nest out by the river. Those had been living things she’d eaten. Living things she’d
gobbled down
was more accurate. She gripped her pendant between her thumb and forefinger and raced it back and forth along
its chain. She’d never considered that the eggs were alive. That she was killing them by eating them. She’d just been…

So hungry…

Always hungry, it seemed.

“The world isn’t that simple,” she told him, unable to meet his eyes.

“The world is very simple.” His voice was gentle, but firm. “People make it complicated because it’s too difficult for them to live with simplicity.”

“So we’re all murderers? You? Me?”

“You’re doing what you have to do to survive. Just like me. Just like everyone. I’m not judging you. I just want you to think about it.”

Rose whistled as they walked, and partway into their journey, Deedra surprised them both by whistling along with him. Tentatively at first, fearing reproach for her poor skills, but then with more confidence. He smiled and nodded in time with her, pleased at her progress. Under her mask, the whistling echoed weirdly, so she risked taking it off. The air tasted acrid and smoky.

They managed to harmonize a little as they trekked out to the river. By the time they got there, she’d almost forgotten her desire to climb the bridge. The proximity of the river reminded her of that day she’d first met Rose, of what had happened since then. And it made her worry for him.

“You should just go back across the river,” she said. “You did it once. No one ever really crosses Territories, but you’re not from here originally anyway.”

“Why?” he asked, blinking in innocent confusion.

She blew out a breath in frustration. “Look, you’ve been lucky around here so far. But I’ve been selfish to want you to stay.”

“How so?”

“I felt safer with you around. Which is crazy, because I’ve never needed anyone to make me feel safe before. But Jaron’s not going to forget what happened on that rooftop.”

And as she said it, she realized that she wouldn’t forget, either. Couldn’t forget. She’d tricked herself into thinking she could just delete the memory, but it was impossible. She hadn’t thought of that day for a long time, but here it was now, as bright and as real as when it happened.

“It’s been a while. If he was going to do something, he would have by now.”

“Maybe. But…” She told him about the threat Hart had delivered on Rose’s first day at L-Twelve. “If he’s worried about what I might say, then he must be keeping an eye on you, too.”

“That’s fine. I don’t care.”

“I don’t think you understand what he’s capable of. He can seem nice, but—”

“I never thought he was nice,” he said, biting out the words.

She felt queasy all of a sudden, right there by the river, and the idea of climbing the bridge or doing anything else bled out of her along with her words.

“He’s up to something,” she said. “I don’t know what. I was an idiot to think he would just let it all go. He’s going to do something. To you. Or me. Or both of us.”

Rose’s expression did not change. “That won’t happen,” he said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I won’t let it happen.”

L
ater, Rose lies perfectly still on the table as the man inserts a needle into his lower arm with cool, methodical precision.

“Something’s on your mind again. You have that troubled look.”

“Do I?” Rose asks.

“Is it your ‘connection’ still?”

“No. It’s something else. I’ve been thinking about it.”

“We have time. Tell me.”

Rose stares at the ceiling as he speaks. The rough-hewn concrete sweats, and the pipes suspended in a crisscross pattern occasionally groan and gurgle. “I don’t fit in. As much as I try. I still stand out. I’m a freak.”

A derisive bark of laughter. “Oh, if only the world had more freaks like you! Trust me, Rose—humankind is not some sort of apotheosis to which to aspire. We are not to be admired. We are poor, hairless apes who’ve lost all our bananas. If there were any apes left after what happened in Africa, I could extract their DNA and show you how similar humans and apes are. Well, were, I suppose.”

“I understand,” says Rose. He continues staring at the ceiling. Water drips steadily for three seconds, then stops, the pattern broken. Chaos
theory, Rose knows. Or thinks he knows. There is so much information in the world and so little knowledge.

“You still seem disturbed.”

“I don’t think of you as apes,” Rose says. “More like worker bees, serving the queen.”

At the flick of a switch, the tube in Rose’s arm begins nursing. The man chuckles. “An apt description, I fear.”

“And I just wonder, I suppose… if you all are workers and your Magistrate is the queen… what does that make me? What am I?”

“That is what we are going to find out.”