Exodia (17 page)

* * *

I drive down the hill with my foot on
the brake, staying in the middle of the curving road until it
straightens out. We pass several turnoffs, dirt roads and crumbling
paved ones, but I’m careful to follow the map. The way is pretty
clear and we start to see people. Not close up, of course, except
when an old car chugs past in the opposite direction and the people
inside stare hard at me. But we see people out in fields or walking
along the road or pulling carts. Some look at us with curiosity,
others turn their backs. A couple of kids point their un-tattooed
elbows our way. I’ve seen this challenge before when I sat in a
high passenger seat in government cars.

I hear a loud rumbling before I see the
heavy construction equipment that looks out of place in the early
morning peace. We are close to the interstate highway that is
marked on the map. There are several canvassed trucks carrying men
to a work site. Reluctant laborers. Slaves, really. Reds who are
whipped into working on the disintegrating system, moving mags from
secondary roads and burying them where the Exodian government
demands. We follow one of the trucks, staying far enough behind, I
hope. The guard in the back waves an intimidating rifle. I power
down our little Beast and let the trucks get further ahead. I turn
right on the next road as if I know where I’m going, as if we
belong on this road. And then left again, hoping to keep parallel
to the other road, but out of sight of the soldiers.

We pass a farm and the terrain gets
rough and hilly again. There are no more crossroads so we continue
this way for quite a while.

We might be lost. The map doesn’t help.
Finally we come to a gravel turnoff and I take it, hoping it runs
toward the interstate. For the second time Kassandra asks me if
we’re lost and for the second time I shake my head.

The road rises, twists, turns and
climbs higher. I suspect that we’re not going to find the highway
up here, but I’m committed to this direction and something about
the sun shining and the power indicator reaching a hundred percent
and the baby sleeping makes me feel that I’m on the right path.
That we are safe.

And then I see the road
block.

I slow the car more quickly than I
should and Kassandra clutches back Gresham. He gives a teeny purr,
but Kassandra makes a louder whine.

“
Why would someone leave
that there?” she says.

“
I’ll move it.” I stop
completely and press the park button which I finally noticed. I
have my door partly open when a truck pulls out of nowhere behind
us and blocks us in.

“
Bluezools.” Kassandra
breathes the word out with a mixture of surprise and fear. I close
my door. She fumbles with the pack at her knees and I briefly
picture her using dirty diapers to fight off Blue bandits. “I have
your nano-gun,” she says.

Now I’m the one to react with surprise
and fear. I look toward the blockage in the road. It wouldn’t be
hard to ram it aside and race on. I don’t want to use the
gun.

I look back at the truck. Both doors
begin to open. If they have weapons I’ll have to use the
gun.

“
The money,” I say,
remembering what I had hidden in the bag. One or two coins should
buy our way past them.

A tall man jumps out of the truck,
slamming the door closed. From the other side a woman emerges; she
walks to the front of the truck to join the man. Slowly, and with
perfect synchronization, they bend their left arms and tap their
elbows. I can hear their voices softly singing. These aren’t
bandits.

They just stand there waiting, silent
now, staring at us, so I open my door again. I ignore the gun that
Kassandra is wiggling by my knee.

As I rise to my full height
and face these two they nod a greeting and the woman sings the last
line of the song again. She sounds like my nanny. The words are
clearer:
at the birth of Bram O’Shea. Bram
O’Shea.

Bram O’Shea. It echoes in my
memory the way my nanny sang it to me. I remember Lydia’s voice,
too, when she sang so softly I only caught
mo-shay
. I move a step closer.
Kassandra’s harsh whispers come from the car. She warns me of
something. I’m vaguely aware that I’m now standing within arm’s
reach of the man who seems to be my double, but a few years older.
The woman is perhaps thirty, a younger version of my
nanny.

“
Jacky?” It can’t be her,
but there’s such a familiar feeling here. “Nanny Jacky? You look
like someone I know.”

“
Our mother,” the woman
says, fingering a golden locket at her throat.

The man grins. He doesn’t hold out his
elbow for a bump, but instead spreads his arms like he wants to
embrace me.

My feet don’t move. He shouts, “I can’t
believe it.” His voice is comforting, baritone or maybe deeper. He
lowers his arms. “Man, I can’t believe we’re finally reunited. I’m
Harmon, your brother and she’s Mira, our sister. You can’t remember
it, but you were saved from the Culling Mandate when our mother
gave you to Battista’s daughter to raise.”

I recognize them now. From the house
nanny and I visited. The house with the crying man.

Maybe deep down I always knew the
truth.

* * *

We sit around their campfire. Their
truck and our car are hidden well away on this deserted mountain.
They’ve been here several hours waiting for me. They’ve explained
it several times and yet I still ask the same questions. I insist
on being called Dalton and not Bram.

Kassandra has told them some
of the anagrams that her sister has made from the name I’ve used
for as long as I can remember. She wants to know my real full name.
They tell her
Bram Colm O’Shea
and I mumble, “A lamb’s moocher.”

My sister Mira laughs and says, “Labor
aches mom.” And I see that one, too, how it fits. And then Mira
tells me how my real mother, nanny Jacky, gave me to the only woman
who could insure that I would not be killed when the Culling
Mandate took effect. She hired on to nurse me and helped raise me
until Mother sent her away.

“
Why did my grandfather, I
mean Bryer Battista, allow his daughter to keep me? Wasn’t he
suspicious that I was a Red?”

Mira answers, “He didn’t know. Olivia
Battista used to visit the old birthing clinic in the Red slum.
That’s where she met mom. They were both expecting at the same
time. Bryer found out that she wasn’t seeing the capitol doctor and
forbade her to go back to the clinic. When her own son was
stillborn she sent for mother and begged her to switch
babies.”

“
So it wasn’t so much to
save me as to replace her own child.” There were so many times my
mother, that is, Olivia, was less than maternal.

Mira nods and goes on with the story,
“I went to the capitol with mom, carrying you in a bread basket,
swinging you along like you were nothing important so the guards
wouldn’t suspect. Luckily you didn’t make a peep or you’d have been
… culled.” She glances at Gresham. “It was awful carrying away the
dead baby. He got put in the mass grave with all the little Red
bodies.” Her voice trails off, but then she clears her throat and
says, “And mom got to work at the capitol and take care of
you.”

I rub my elbow and say, “You must have
missed her … all those years she lived with me.”

Mira nods but Harmon bites back his
response, then shakes his head, “We had a tight family, good times
after she came back, until they sent her and dad to work at the
Suppression Border. They never came back.” He looks straight
through me and says, “Bram Colm O’Shea. Bro came,
shalom.”

Kassandra smiles. She’s been quiet
through the serious stuff as if it means nothing. “Shalom,” she
repeats. “I like that word. It means peace, doesn’t it?” She steals
the focus of the conversation but it gives me a chance to think
about my real parents, to take this painful revelation and glaze it
with a little hope that they’re still alive.

“
Yes,” Mira reaches for the
baby, her nephew. “That’s why we’re here. Bram, I mean Dalton, is
the only one who can inspire all the people to unite against the
Blues.”

“
Why me?” I force myself
back into the discussion.

“
I don’t know,” Mira says.
“That’s what Ronel says and we believe him.”

“
Why?”

She puts my son on her shoulder and
shrugs at the same time making Gresham’s head bobble. “I don’t
know. We just do. He’s always right. He knew where we’d find you
today.”

We talk until late. I tell them all
about the burning house and they explain how there are several set
up around the country to mimic the early century parsonage
burnings, the beginning of the bans, or the Suppression uprisings.
The fires keep Blues away, but there are transmission receivers and
listening devices hidden inside and usually two people to man the
station, Ronel’s agents, who covertly help the cause.

I repeat Ronel’s command that Harmon is
to speak in my place. He frowns at that, but doesn’t protest as I’d
done.

Chapter 10 Blood

From the fourth page of the
Ledger:

When he saw the blood on the
child he cried out. Then he did to his wife what she had done to
his son. For he was noble.

MIRA AND KASSANDRA slept in the bed of
the truck with the baby between them while the men camped on the
ground. Twice during the night Kassandra fed and changed Gresham.
Mira helped and each time the two women spent a half an hour
whispering back and forth.

Kassandra was happy to have a
sister-in-law. She liked Mira, fell into an easy confidence with
her, and enjoyed being the younger sister for the first time. At
Gresham’s second feeding she confided some concerns.

“
What do you think I should
do?” she asked.

Mira stretched out and rested her head
on her hand. “In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to mark your
precious baby and permanently brand him to a life of slavery,
poverty, and oppression. But if you try to hide who he is, sooner
or later the truth comes out.”

“
Like Dalton,” Kassandra
said. “He really wants to tattoo Gresham, but I wasn’t raised that
way.”

“
Let me tell you something
that may change your mind. Executive President Truslow has passed a
new amendment to the immigration law and it extends to every single
person, Blue or Red.”

“
What is it?” Kassandra
frowned in the darkness.

“
Death to all who are not
tattooed. Babies included. You have until the baby is eight days
old.”

Kassandra shivered. “He’s twice that.”
She thought about it for a while and became conscious that they
were both missing something important. “Mira …?” But Mira had
fallen back to sleep. Kassandra mulled it over some more. If Dalton
was the supposed great liberator of the Reds, why should they
continue to submit to the Blues? The greatest resistance would be
to ignore such a mandate and leave Gresham, and herself,
untattooed.

Yet it seemed that Mira was encouraging
her to resign herself to subjugation.