Unworthy: Marked to die. Raised to survive. (3 page)

For the rest of the hub, the arrival of a baby is cause for celebration, but I’ve learned not to get carried away. It’s simply too soon. I try not to imagine what Chloe is feeling right now. The nano-patch will have been applied at birth, her child receiving its life-giving vaccine as soon as possible, but the vaccine is no guarantee. So many of our children are simply not born strong enough to survive in a world so rife with infection, and although the Polis immunologists are working to improve the vaccine, many of our babies continue to contract postnatal diseases.

I imagine that Chloe will be beside herself with worry, wondering if her newborn will pass inspection, or whether it will fail and be marked. I shudder. Suddenly the chill in the water seems to be sinking into my bones. I can’t help it; whenever a new baby is born I can’t help thinking of my mother. What did she feel? Did she have any inkling of the results? What were there the clues that told her that I would not pass? That I would be found unworthy of life? And how could she take me out that night to the ring of stones to die?

Chapter Three

After the swim I feel lighter, but the fresh breeze on my wet skin is distinctly uncomfortable. The feeling of discomfort reminds of the ordeal ahead of me tonight. I sigh, and reluctantly head for home.

Our pod is exactly the same as all the others. Four circular structures, bubbling out from a shared stem in the centre, where the pod’s ablution block is. From the air, each pod must look like a metal four-leaf clover, and our hub a great grey cluster of them, sprouting out on the hillside along the coast and following the gentle curve of the bay. Our hub has no name. The Polis calls our region “Sector Four”, and the hub is the Sector Four Hub. This is far too nameless, so over the years it has slowly become known as Greytown. Not very imaginative, I know, but it’s a perfect name for the collection of dull pods which gather around a central grey market square, along with a few other grey stone buildings. The Polis sure likes grey.

There are many hubs, but ours was one of the first. The purpose of the hubs is to offer security to the people, with the central building being a garrison, and Polis soldiers always in residence. In return for peace, the residents of the hub provide the Polis with the fruits of their labours. It can be anything – fruit, meat, wheat, milk, honey, nuts, wool, clothing – as long as it fulfils each individual’s quota. There are ten hubs in operation, and they all contain houses exactly the same as our pods, although I haven’t seen them. I’ve never been outside my sector, and except for a few precious day trips, have rarely left the hub.

Before the hubs, it was chaos.

Small bands of people were barely surviving on their own. Some settled in one location and tried farming for survival, but many more roved from place to place, robbing from those who stayed put - the easy targets. Violence, disease and starvation were rife. The population which had escaped the Sweeping Sickness through enforced isolation, was turning in on itself, and our numbers were down to less than a fifth within a decade.

From this mess emerged the Polis. A group of ex-military types with the manpower and technology to unify our broken society and bring peace to the entire country.

The official story; the one we are taught in school, is that the Polis saved us. The kids my age and younger accept it without question and follow the laws without hesitation. It’s just as well because reprimands are usually immediate and always painful. The price for our security is our acceptance. But I keep my ears open, and some of my older neighbours are less than careful with their words. I know that there are other stories, with other points of view.

We can leave at any time, and some do. We can return to the bush and a more basic way of life, giving up our right to the peace and stability which the Polis provides for us at the hubs. However, most don’t. Life is easy here.

The structures we live in were constructed over one hundred years ago, when the Polis began its mission to bring peace to our country. They are purposely utilitarian. They provide shelter from the weather and that is it. They were designed for function and not form, but I have always found them strangely beautiful. Their curves call to my mind the curves of the landscape around me, and they seem in tune with their surroundings - the sweeping bay and the rolling hills – in a way that the other Polis buildings, squat and square and bland, are not. When I was little I imagined that the multitude of round little pods was a harvest of some kind of new grey fungus, fat with life and ready to be plucked from its stem.

Each pod of four units is basically self-sufficient. We catch our own rainwater on the roof, which is stored in large tanks and feeds the ablution block and the units’ kitchen areas. Also on the roof are large solar panels which daily recharge communal power cells, providing us with electricity for lighting, heating and cooking.

It all sounds ideal. Food, electricity, education, warmth, peace, security, and community. Who would want to leave? I asked Grandad this very question, when a small group of four – two teenaged kids and their parents – left a month or so back. “A gilded cage is still a cage,” was his answer. Which really told me very little, but I think I understood his point, and it gave me something to consider.

Approaching the pod, I can see Grandad working in his veggie garden. I use my pass key and am about to enter our unit when I hear a shout behind me.

“Arcadia!” I recognise the voice before I see him, and my heart immediately leaps.

“Bastian! I didn’t know you were home!” He folds me in his arms, then easily picks me up and swings me round in a full circle. I let out an undignified whoop. There is no-one in the world like Bastian. He’s sort of my cousin, being Auntie Marama’s son, but since Auntie Marama isn’t really my auntie either, we’re not blood relatives.

While he holds me up, I plant a quick affectionate kiss on his cheek. I could never do this from the ground. His reaction surprises me. His face immediately turns beetroot red and he puts me down. His eyes don’t meet mine, but he’s beaming from ear to ear. I’ve known him since I was born, and we’ve grown up together. I’ve never gotten that reaction before though, and I can’t help but like it. Maybe he has finally noticed that I’m a woman now.

We pull apart, and I comment on his size. “Do they inject something into the Polis food? You need to stop growing, or you won’t fit through the door.” He just grins down at me.

It’s true though. He’s always been bigger than the other boys his age, a head and shoulders over the rest of his class, but now that he’s eighteen he’s filled out too. It’s like hugging a bear. Bastian is the eldest in his family, and since the eldest spends half the year working for the Polis, I haven’t seen him for six months. It’s been like this since he turned thirteen, and I miss him every day he’s away. Although hard to tell from his military haircut, his hair is a pale shade of brown. By the time his six month reprieve is up it will fall in a thick shock over his eyes and he’ll be forever pushing it back.

“It’s good to see you, Arcadia,” I hear his voice rumbling in his chest while he squeezes me against him.

“How’s Chloe?” The newest mother in our hub is Bastian’s sister, and the same age as me.

Bastian shakes his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her yet.” I notice for the first time that he’s still in khakis and has dropped a duffel bag at his feet. I realise that he came straight to me, which warms me from the inside out.

We go around to the back where Grandad and Bastian greet each other. He has some canes that need putting up for beans and snow peas, so we set to work setting them out for him, and he heads inside to make tea. It’s good to have something to do, because I can turn my face away from Bastian. An inane grin has stapled itself in place and I don’t want him to see it.

“So, what did they teach you this time? How to make daisy chains?”

He knows I’m laughing at him. “I’ll have you know, making a good daisy chain is pretty technically difficult. It takes months to master. And it has many military uses.”

“You could use it to trip up your enemy.”

“Or to spring shut like a trap.”

I shake my head, but I’m smiling.

Calling the time spent by hubbites in the Polis as “military training” is something of a joke. Essentially, there are two types of armies in the Polis, both trained completely differently. One is for the Polis citizens – all their kids go through it from thirteen to eighteen. They concentrate on combat training and a host of other useful defence and survival skills - although for the rest of us this is a bit of a guess. The other army is made up of teens from the hubs; the eldest child of every family, who go to train in the Polis for six months of every year, like Bastian. When they graduate from their training at eighteen, they continue to serve the Polis for their half year, the rest spent on Reprieve back in their home towns. This Polis service continues until they are forty.

“Polisborn and Firstborn,” I mutter, as the smile slips. “Not that I
mind
you learning about daisies…”

“I know, Arcadia.”

“But they take you away for half a year and they don’t even teach you anything interesting.”

He’s become more serious too, matching my tone, but he’s defensive also. This is a familiar subject for us. “
I
think it’s interesting. You should see the kind of trucks they’ve got up there. And the two-wheelers, trail bikes, fuel tankers, ATVs, the tanks… I’ve even gotten to work on a helicopter. They’re really cool, Dia.
Interesting
.”

Although he’s in the army, Bastian’s military training is just the basics. It seems to be marching, running about, shining boots, and standing in a straight line come rain, wind or snow. I think it’s all about learning to follow orders. Maybe there’s some self-defence and Polis history. The army part ends there, and the skill specific training begins. For some, it’s medical. For others, clerical, electrical, or construction. Bastian has been put into the automotive section, which basically means he’s a mechanic.
That
part, he loves.

Firstborn are given privileges and treated a bit better than the average hubbite, which I guess is the Polis’ way of trying to make up for the fact that they’re like unpaid labour for the city. They’re certainly not classed as Polis citizens, but they do get more opportunities and are given a little respect by the Polisborn.

“Any new strays?” I ask, and he laughs. Bastian can’t help himself, he always fights for the underdog. I guess you could say it’s his weakness. I tease him that he collects waifs and strays.

“There might be a few,” is his reply. I sigh. I really don’t mind him looking after others but it’s when he stands up for them that he gets himself into trouble. The first time he was home it took him a week to even come out of his room, and another before he could speak about it. I’d been so excited to hear about what he’d been up to, it felt like an eternity for a twelve year old.
That year was the first time I’d been to the Spring Festival without him and it wasn’t the same.

“What about the big kids? Did you play nice with the other children?” My light tone hides the importance of the question.

He shrugs, looping a piece of green string around the top of a cane. “I always play nice. But they don’t bother me anymore.” I’m grateful for his size. You’d have to be nuts to take him on. They used to, though. The Polisborn captains used to take particular delight in finding and exploiting any of their young charges’ weaknesses, from fear of the dark, to spiders and the most common of all, pain. I mean, who isn’t afraid of pain, right? Reading between the lines of Bastian’s hesitant stories, I got the feeling that his weakness gave them the most pleasure of all - by putting one of his friends through their own personal hell, they got two for the price of one, so to speak.

“Any new rules?”

“Let’s see… don’t nark. Don’t show weakness, fear or pain. Don’t get caught out of bounds. Don’t answer back to a Polis. Don’t get caught stealing.”

That last one’s new. I straighten up from the seeds I’m laying out. “Don’t get
caught
stealing? Not, don’t steal?”

“Nope, it’s that simple. Stealing’s fine. Just don’t get caught.”

I’m flabbergasted, but I know I shouldn’t be. I’ve never understood the Polis way of life. “How did you learn that one?”

He shakes his head. “It wasn’t me.” Of late he’s got less and less to report when he’s on reprieve, so I suppose he must be learning to toe the line. “And it’s not a story you want to hear.”

This is most likely true. Stories of Polis cruelty are not ones I enjoy listening to. They just make me feel frustrated and trapped. I get the feeling he’s been toning them down the last couple of Reprieves, either selecting carefully what to tell me, or keeping himself out of trouble.

Whatever the cause, he seems calmer, and for that I’m grateful.

He follows me to Grandad’s shed, where I climb up on an old ladder to reach some pots on the highest shelf.

“Hey, watch yourself! Let me do that,” he puts a hand on my leg to make sure I’m steady.

“I’m fine, Bastian,” I laugh. “How do you suppose I cope for half the year without you?”

Climbing back down and once again safely on the ground, I pass him half the pots. “Well, I’m here now,” he points out. “You should be more careful. What if you fell?”