Matched (33 page)

Xander. If I leave him here, will another piece of my heart be torn away, too?

Of course it will.

A sign points to the Hall of Artifacts and I veer right, suddenly, wanting to see the display. Wanting to see where they put all those things they took. Perhaps I’ll see my compact, Xander’s cuff links, Bram’s watch. I could bring him here one more time before we leave for the Farmlands.

I stop in the middle of the hall, realizing that none of those things are here.

The other cases are still crammed with artifacts, but the new display is nothing but a long glass case, huge and empty. A sign in the middle of it, printed in lettered words that look so different from Ky’s cursive, reads: ADDITIONAL ARTIFACTS COMING SOON. A light from above illuminates the sign in its empty, cavernous case. That sign could last forever in this sealed and pristine environment. Like the scrap of my dress from the Match Banquet.

But I’ve already broken the glass; I’ve given the green away; I’ve made my choice. I’m already dying without Ky here and now I have to make sure I live to find him.

I realize that our artifacts will likely never make it into the case. The sign is the only display there may ever be. I don’t know what they’ve done with them.

Now I know for myself that there is nothing left.

I walk down the stairs into the basement. Where they keep the Glorious History of Oria Province, where I meant to go all along before the chance to glimpse what was lost distracted me from what must be found.

 

I stand close to the glass and look at the map of our Province with its city, farmlands, and rivers, listening to the footsteps on the marble floor behind me. A small, uniformed man comes to stand next to me. “Would you like me to tell you more about the history of Oria?” he asks.

Our eyes meet: mine searching, his sharp and bright.

I look at him and realize: I will not sell our poem. I am selfish. Besides the scrap of fabric, it is all I had to give Ky, and we are the last two people in the world who know the whole thing. Even this is a dead end, even this last idea of mine won’t work. I could trade the poem but it would gain me nothing. This isn’t something I can barter; it’s something I have to do.

“No, thank you,” I tell the man, even though I
would
like to know the true history of this place where I live. But I don’t think anyone knows it anymore.

Before I leave, I look once more at the geographic map of our Society. There, in the middle of the map, fat and happy, sit the large plump shapes of the Provinces. And around their edges are all the Outer Provinces, the lines dividing them into sections, but none of them named.

“Wait,” I call out to the man.

He turns and looks back at me expectantly. “Yes?”

“Does anyone know the names of the Outer Provinces?”

He waves his hand, uninterested now that he knows he isn’t going to get something worth trading from me. “That
is
their name,” he calls back. “The Outer Provinces.”

Those blank, divided Outer Provinces on the map hold my gaze. The map is thick with letters and information, and it’s hard to make out all the names. I scan them over, not really reading them, not sure what I’m looking for.

Then. Something stands out to me, one piece of information lodges in my sorting brain: Sisyphus River. It threads through some of the Western Provinces and then through two of the Outer Provinces and off into the void of the Other Countries.

Ky must be from one of those two Outer Provinces. And since that’s where the attack came when he was young, that could be where the trouble is now. I lean closer to the map to memorize the location of the two places that might be his.

I hear footsteps coming closer, again, and I turn. “Are you
sure
I can’t help you with anything?” the small man asks.

I don’t want to trade anything!
I almost exclaim to him, and then I realize that he seems to be sincere.

I point to the Sisyphus River on the map, one tiny black thread of hope running along the paper. “Do you know anything about this river?”

His voice hushes. “I heard a story about it once when I was younger. A long time ago the river turned toxic partway down and no one could live near its banks. But that’s all I’ve heard.”

“Thank you,” I tell him, because now I have an idea, thanks to what I’ve learned about the way our elderly die. Could our Society have poisoned the waters on their way down to the enemy country? But Ky and his family weren’t poisoned. Perhaps they lived farther up, in the higher of the two Provinces along that river.

“It’s only a story,” the man warns me. He must have seen the hope flash across my face.

“Isn’t everything?” I say.

I walk out of the Museum and I do not look back.

 

My Official waits for me in the greenspace outside the Museum. Wearing white, sitting on a white bench, backed by a white-yellow sun. It’s too much; I blink.

If I close my eyes a little I can pretend that this is the greenspace next to the game center, where I will meet my Official for the first time. I can pretend that she’s going to tell me that there’s a mistake with my Match. But this time things will take a different turn, go down a different path, one where Ky and I can be together and happy.

But there is no such path, not here in Oria.

She gestures for me to come and sit by her on her bench. It strikes me that she’s chosen a strange place to meet, right here next to the Museum doors. Then I remember that it’s a perfect place, still and empty. Ky was right. No one here is interested in the past.

The bench is carved of stone and feels solid and cool from the hours it spends in the shade of the Museum. I put my hand against the rock after I sit down, wondering where they quarried the stone. Wondering who had to move the rocks.

This time I speak first. “I made a mistake. You have to bring him back.”

“Ky Markham has already had one exception made for him. Most Aberrations don’t even have that,” she says. “You’re the one who sent him away. You’ve proven our point. People who let the data slide, who let emotions get involved, create a mess for themselves.”

“
You
did this,” I say. “You set up that sort.”

“But you performed it,” she says. “Perfectly, I might add. You might be upset; his family might be devastated, but it was the right decision, as far as his ability was concerned. You knew he was more than he pretended to be.”

“He should be the one who decides whether to go or stay. Not me. Not you. Let him choose.”

“If we did, everything would fall apart,” she says, patiently. “Why do you think we can guarantee such long life spans? How do you think we eradicated cancer? We Match for
everything
. Genes included.”

“You guarantee these long life spans but then you kill us at the end. I know about the poison in the food for people like Grandfather.”

“We can also guarantee a high quality of life up until the very last breath. Do you know how many miserable people in how many miserable societies across the years would have given almost anything for that? And the method of administering the—”

“Poison.”

“Poison,” she says, unflinching, “is unbelievably humane. Small doses, in the patient’s favorite foods.”

“So we eat to die.”

She dismisses my concern. “Everyone eats to die, regardless of what we do. Your problem is that you don’t respect the system and what it offers you, even now.”

This almost makes me want to laugh. The Official sees the twist of my lips and launches into a list of examples, of ways I’ve broken with the Society’s rules in the past two months—and she doesn’t even know the worst of them—but she doesn’t cite a single example from all the years before. If she had a way to track all my memories, she would see they are pure. That I truly wanted to fit in and be Matched and do everything the right way. That I truly believed.

That part of me still believes.

“It was time for this little experiment to end anyway,” the Official says, sounding regretful. “We don’t have the manpower to focus on it anymore. And, of course, situations being what they are—”

“What experiment?”

“The one with you and Ky.”

“I already know,” I say. “I know that you told him. And I know it was a bigger mistake than you led me to believe that first time we spoke. Ky was actually
in
the Matching pool.”

“It was no mistake,” she says.

And I am falling again, just when I thought I had hit the bottom.

“
We
decided to put Ky into the Matching pool,” she says. “Now and then we do that with an Aberration, simply to gather additional data and watch for variation. The general public doesn’t know about it; there’s no reason they should. What’s important for you to know was that
we
were in control of the experiment all along.”

“But the odds of him Matching with me—”

“Are virtually impossible,” the Official agrees. “So you can see why we were intrigued. Why we let you see Ky’s picture so that
you
would be curious. Why we made sure you were assigned to the same hiking group, and then to the same pairs. Why we had to follow it through, at least for a time.”

She smiles. “It was so intriguing; we could control so many variables. We even reduced your meal portions to see if that would make you more stressed, more likely to give up. But you didn’t. Of course, we were never cruel. You always had sufficient calories. And you’re strong. You never did take the green tablet.”

“Why does that matter?”

“It makes you more interesting,” she says. “A very intriguing subject, in fact. Ultimately predictable, but still unusual enough to want to watch. It would have been interesting to see your situation play out to the final predicted outcome.” She sighs, a sigh of genuine sadness. “I planned to write an article about it, available only to select Officials, of course. It would have been an unparalleled proof of the validity of Matching. That’s why I didn’t want you to lose your memory of what happened this morning at the air-train station. All my work would have been for nothing. Now, at least I can see you make your final choice while you still know what happened.”

The anger fills me so full that there is no room for thought or speech.
It would have been interesting to see it play out to the final predicted outcome.

It was all planned from the start.
Everything
.

“Unfortunately, my skills are needed elsewhere now.” She runs her hand along the datapod in front of her. “We simply don’t have the time to monitor the situation anymore, so we can’t extend it any longer.”

“Why tell me all of this?” I ask. “Why do you want me to know every last detail?”

She looks surprised. “Because we care about you, Cassia. No more or less than we care about all our citizens. As the subject of an experiment, you have the right to know what happened. The right to make the choice we know you’ll make now instead of waiting any longer.”

It’s so funny, her use of the word
choice
, so unintentionally hysterical that I would laugh if I didn’t think it would come out sounding like a cry. “Did you tell Xander?”

She looks offended. “Of course not. He’s still your Match. In order for the experiment to be controlled, he had to remain in the dark. He knows nothing about any of this.”

Except what I told him
, I think, and I realize that she doesn’t know.

There are things she doesn’t know.
With this realization, it is as though something has been given back to me. The knowledge drops into my anger and distills it into something pure and clear.
And one of the things she knows nothing about is love.

“Ky, however, was different,” she says. “We told him. We pretended we were warning him, but of course we were hoping to give him impetus to try to be with you. And that worked as well.” She smiles, smug, because she also thinks that I don’t know this part of the story. But, of course, I do.

“So you watched us all the time,” I say.

“Not all the time,” she answers. “We watched you enough to get an effective sample of what your interactions were like. We couldn’t watch all of your interactions on the Hill, for example, or even on the smaller hill. Officer Carter still had jurisdiction over that area and did not look kindly on our being there.”

I wait for her to ask; somehow I know she will. Even though she thinks she has an accurate sample, there is a part of her that has to know more.

“So what
did
happen between you and Ky?” she asks.

She doesn’t know about the kiss. That was not what sent him away. That moment on the Hill is still ours, mine and Ky’s.
Ours
. No one has touched it but the two of us.

This will be what I have to hold onto as I go forward. The kiss, and the poem, and the I love you’s we wrote and said.

“If you tell me, I can help you. I can recommend you for a work position in the City. You could stay here; you wouldn’t have to leave for the Farmlands with your family.” She leans closer. “Tell me what happened.”

I look away. In spite of everything, the offer
is
tempting. I’m a little afraid of leaving Oria; I don’t want to leave Xander and Em. I don’t want to leave the places that hold so many memories of Grandfather. And most of all I don’t want to leave this City and my Borough because they are where I found and loved Ky.

But he’s not here anymore. I have to find him somewhere else.

The prisoner’s dilemma
. Somewhere Ky keeps faith with me and I can do the same for him. I won’t give up.

“No,” I say clearly.

“I thought you’d say that,” she tells me, but I hear the disappointment in her tone and I suddenly want to laugh. I want to ask her if it ever gets tedious being right all the time. But I think I know what her answer would be.