Veracity (36 page)

I started to circle the room, thinking. For some reason, it wasn't enough that I was locked in my quarters, defenceless and beaten. No, they wanted more. They wanted a guarantee, some kind of assurance that I would never be able to carry out what I had been trained to do. Which could only mean that Mikkel had done some talking.

I had always known that Mikkel wasn't 'ideologically fit', as he had called it, but I was never really sure as to what degree he was 'unfit'. But now I knew. He had been biting his tongue, biding his time, privately holding onto his ridiculous notions of sparing our foul race from the only thing we had rightfully earned. He probably told the crew about Anu and Siri, and about the possibility of there being other people in the world like them, who, provided they were found before the members of the expedition grew too old to search for them, could be educated and protected from other third phase expeditions; could be saved. Which, of course, was an idea that the crew would have bought into without a moment's hesitation. In fact, they already had (and, ironically, it was the Elders who had sold them on it).

Which would explain their wanting to throw the mixtures overboard; it would be the first definitive step they could take to safeguarding people from The Goal. Even if, in reality, sinking the cases to the bottom of the ocean wasn't really doing much, seeing as the knowledge of how to make the mixtures was still safely guarded in my head. And I wondered if this had already occurred to them - because if it had, it had undoubtedly raised a few questions. Like: Could they really release me out into the world, wave a hearty farewell as I disappeared into the shadows of the trees, the whole time believing that I was heading out to do exactly what they wanted to prevent? Could they just cross their fingers and hope that
they
would be the ones who might be blunderingly lucky enough to come across a tiny group of people during their lives, and not me?

I started to think about how they'd been acting that morning: Mikkel's involvement in taking the cases from my room, the crew's pursed lips as they pulled them from the shelves, and the fact that Knut and Toivo were given the charge of holding me at knifepoint in the first place. Something was weighing heavily on their minds, and it wasn't the vials of murky liquid in the cases. And the more I thought about it, the more I could almost feel it in the air around me, could hear it in the footsteps throughout the ship, in the way that people were opening cupboards and closing doors - the argument for allowing me to live was growing thinner.

For the next little while, I could hear a lot of movement on the deck, along with some loud but indecipherable words being exchanged, which were followed by a long silence. And once, at the end of that long silence, I felt the ship veer abruptly to port, which wasn't done for reasons of tacking, because, judging by the ripples on the sea's surface, the wind was still directly at our backs. The only reason for the quick change of direction that I could think of was that, perhaps, whoever was supposed to be manning the helm at the time, had been involved in the intense discussion, and felt the need to abandon it to make a point, or to listen to one, and then had to correct the course later on. The loud voices, the silences, the neglecting of important duties, to me, they all pointed to the same thing: they were discussing whether to kill me or not. Though, thankfully, it also seemed like they were having a hard time coming up with a consensus.

One thing was certain: Mikkel had quite the balancing act to perform. After all, one of the only things the crew had learned since we left the island was that a mutiny was easier to accomplish than they'd ever imagined; and Mikkel wasn't standing on very solid ground himself, after having known about The Goal since he'd Come of Age, and only divulging it for the very first time the day before. The crew might have been a little suspicious of him, or at least would be for a few days. Emotions would be running high in the debate, and there was the danger of alliances forming, of canyons being carved between those who were in favour of my death, and those who weren't.

After the conversation was finished, I could hear people going back to their chores and duties, moving throughout the ship. No one was saying a word. I pressed my ear against the walls as people passed, trying to catch a phrase or two that might explain a bit about what had been said, but there was nothing to hear.

Then, at one point during the morning, a few people gathered into the room next to mine, their mumbled voices and sneering laughter humming through the veneer as soon as they closed the door. This continued for a little while, until there was a sharp thud against the wall, a few quick steps, and then the grainy sounds of a knife being worked out of the paneling. A muffled voice came from the other side, accompanied with cold giggles beneath it. "Hey - is that bothering you?" Knut pounded a quick fist against the wall, "Hey! Can you hear me in there? ...Because - uh... if it's upsetting at all, just let us know, okay? I mean - we want you to be comfortable in there. We want you to be having a nice time." The last part of this sentence didn't have much volume to it, as his back was turned while he was walking to the other side of the room to throw the knife again. It clunked against the wall. There were more giggles. "So if you need anything, don't be afraid to ask. Because we'll get right on it. Promise."

The throwing of knives against my wall continued until its novelty must have begun to wane, and eventually, they settled down on the bunks to talk. Knut must have sat with his back to my wall, because someone continued to stab at the wood with constant prods. But they were mechanical and lacked in violence or intent, and I think were just done in an attempt to annoy me. Soon enough though, even the jabs slowed, and then finally stopped.

For the first time, I could press my ear against the wall without being deafened by the knocks on the wood, but when I did; I found that I couldn't really pick any words out of the steady murmuring. Then, at one point, the tones became more subdued, more secretive, and Knut suddenly moved away from the wall and to the centre of the room, where their voices gave way to concentrated whispering; which was almost impossible to distinguish as whispering, let alone understand.

I took a few quiet steps away from the wall and looked around for something that would help me hear. I remembered the plastic cup that Onni had placed in my water bucket and tried pressing it up against the wall to listen. I found, to my surprise that I could almost make out words; but it wasn't enough. I stepped back again and inspected the wall. I noticed a black knot in the wood, which was close to the floor and had a tiny section missing near its centre, and I lay down on my stomach to try it there. I covered the knot with the cup, and, after listening for a long time and not understanding a thing, someone raised his voice above a whisper, getting caught up in what seemed to be a counterargument of some kind. "...ya... tha... bah ... No. No. Not if the life raft is gone too." There was the sound of someone being slapped - maybe on the leg, maybe across the face - it was hard to say. Then there was a stiff silence, after which the whispers died down into nothing more than breath that must have formed words. Every now and then I could make out the broken shape of the letter S, but that was all. Though, I continued to listen anyway; until, after an incredibly long pause where there were no sounds whatsoever, I heard everyone stand and leave the room, dispersing to other parts of the ship. It sounded like there were three of them walking away, but I couldn't be certain.

When I was sure they were gone, I let myself fall onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, letting the cup roll out of my hand and onto the floor, where it arced in small circles at my side, being dragged in different directions by the flux of the ship. True, for all my eavesdropping, I hadn't heard much, but it was enough to know what they were talking about. Knut, along with one or two others, was busy planning my murder. And what was more, I understood both the plan, and the fact that it would probably work. A few of them would come into my quarters in the middle of the night, take me by knifepoint in complete silence to the upper deck, and then throw me overboard, maybe stabbing me first so that I couldn't wake anyone by yelling once I was in the water, and afterwards, toss the life raft in with my body. Then they would break open my door first thing in the morning, where the sounds of the splintering doorframe would be masked by their screams of alarm as they 'discovered' that I had cunningly escaped during the night.

It's interesting that after realizing this, while lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling, the cup still drawing plastic circles beside me, I didn't really feel afraid - it was more a kind of pragmatic detachment. I was just taken over with the need to come up with a plan of my own. That was all.

The first thing I thought to do was slam a fist against my door and demand to speak to Mikkel. But I knew that he would only shake his head and speak to me in a soothing voice from the gangway, using the word 'paranoid' as many times as he could in one sentence; if, indeed, he would see me at all. I'm sure, as he was probably one of the few people who wanted to spare my life, that he had tensions of his own to deal with, and that he would be incredibly wary of appearing to back me any more than he already had.

The next thing I thought about was Onni; wondering if I could use his vague offer to help in some way, but couldn't think of anything. Onni didn't have an aggressive bone in his body, which, I imagined - in this case anyway - made him of little use to me.

Then I thought about what I could do on my own. I knew that my murder, if they had wanted it to be covert, would have to be done at night; and, as I doubted they would risk being so obvious as to kill me only hours after they'd had a group discussion where the overall decision was against it, I assumed that they would try the following night, or the night after that. If we were still making progress as I'd calculated, then we should have been in sight of land within a day or two, where perhaps Mikkel planned on finding an island to leave me behind on (where I would be alive, but also in a place where I couldn't do any harm). Which meant that, when they finally tried to kill me, we would probably be in sight of the spiny peninsula. And so long as I was ready for them, and could catch them by surprise when the door edged open - and then scream, punch, yell, scratch, break bones, and maybe even rip a knife from one of their hands and cut some skin - I could cause such a scene that everyone would wake and come running, only to realize that some of their fellow shipmates had taken it upon themselves to remake a decision that had already been made. And, provided I was still breathing after all was said and done, they would almost certainly find themselves looking over their shoulders at the land in the distance, and have no choice but to feel some kind of twisted obligation to let me go.

That was my plan. And I was convinced it was a good one, even in the case that I didn't survive; because, I rationalized, this way, I would have won to some degree. I would have at least
tried
to save myself. And it just happened that, in the process, I would also hold them more accountable for their actions. I would take the power out of their hands, and no longer would it be as easy as turning their heads away from my bobbing shape in the water to appease themselves. No, they would be forced to deal with the blood that they had spilled, to clean it up, to see the ugliness of what they'd caused; and I was sure that the bright red of it would be burned into their minds for the rest of their lives.

I grinned at the ceiling, then stood up, and began pacing around the room, clenching my jaw, my fingers wrapped tight. For some reason, it all seemed rather clever to me at the time, this idea of leaving them with a lasting imprint, with a voice that would echo through the years. I was certain that, provided I screamed loud enough, the sound of their wrongs would surface again, maybe come back to them in the form of some blurry whisper, a scratching message through chattering branches on a cloudy afternoon, a distant hum sticking to the walls of their conscience that would become louder once they were alone.

That's what I would leave them with.

28

A few hours later, I heard people go into the galley to cook the midday meal, and within minutes the same familiar smells that had seeped into my room before were again slipping through the cracks. My stomach stung anew, and I listened obsessively to the sounds they were making, everyone gathering beside the stove to serve themselves, the thick clay plates being set onto the table, the utensils clanking together before they ate. While everyone sat forking food into their mouths, I noticed that the usual conversation between the crew was restrained, quiet, which, to me, only served to illustrate how divergent their opinions had become. After they had finished, and plates were being scraped and cleaned, I listened for the footsteps that might remember me, hoping, wishing that if something was actually sent to my room, that it wouldn't be stolen again and eaten greedily outside my door.

And those footsteps came; two people were walking down the gangway toward my room. I backed away from the door, swallowing. While I was waiting for them, I recalled an odd tradition that I'd once read about in an unassigned section of a book that Mitra gave me (a sea epic that I was supposed to be studying for its technical details). In this tradition, the very people who were about to put a man to death would give him one final and extravagant meal, supply him with a bounty of nutrients that his body would never use. At the time, I'd wondered if the custom had sprung out of a need to try and console the dying man. But now I'm pretty sure that it was just to console the part of the executioners that would die with him, the part of their conscience that needed some mollifying nourishment; a little act of charity to help convince themselves that they were acting out of necessity and nothing else. Though, whether this same perverse concept was at play that afternoon or not, I didn't really care. I just wanted food.