Veracity (28 page)

Before I can ask what
censorship
means, Lazarus disappears through the door in his ruined shoes.

Lilly's been waiting her turn on the first floor. She motions me toward a chair with worn armrests, above which is a computer with a screen as wide as the table on which it sits. Immediately, she begins pointing out the buttons I'm to push and the notes I'm to take on what I hear and see. I'm to listen and watch for developments. For mentions of BodySpeak and SKEYE. Anything having to do with us.

We're referred to by a number of terms.
Members of the resistance. Terrorists. Recruiters of the young and innocent
. If any television or radio feed says there have been
developments,
I'm to find Lilly and Noam. Then they'll go alert Lazarus.

I watch Lilly's skinny arms poke and jab as they connect three pairs of headphones to my terminal. Somehow, I'm supposed to listen to all three media feeds at the same time. Lilly flips a switch and the television screen lights up.

"Watch now!" She jabs me in the arm. "They shouldn't be broadcasting them this late, but just in case you see any Red Listed words come round, you write them down, then come find us fast." Lilly turns and pads off on blue footies. Doesn't ask if I have any questions.

Hours later, a young woman taps me softly on the back. She's young with bright blue eyes. "I'm the night shift," she says, scooping up my notes. "Let's take these to Gene."

My first shift has been uneventful and there are only two pages. Daily updates provided by Tracking and Data regarding their progress on the SKEYE and BodySpeak programs. But nothing we didn't already know. Nothing that sends up any red flags.

The girl walks me around the room to Gene, my pass-off partner. He'll type up my notes and enter them into the system, checking them as he goes. Like the young lady, this
young man looks fresh. They must sleep all day to work all night. Down here, it doesn't make much difference.

I go back to my station and clean up an empty package that contained cookies someone brought me earlier in the night. Retrieve a mug containing the sludge of my last cup of coffee.

The night-shift girl has followed me. "I can take care of those." She pulls the mug out of my hand. Even the garbage I was about to tuck inside a pocket.

"Thank you." I turn and start toward my shoes. "Good night."

I'm halfway there when she stops me.

"Harper!" she calls nervously.

I wait as she jogs across the room, her moonshine eyes as big as stars.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Her chin wobbles some. It dimples her white cheeks. "Are you really . . ." She can't think of the word. Is hoping I know it.

"What?"

The girl looks around at the others who're watching from behind their desks. "Are you our Sentient?" she asks. All big eyes and quivering lips. "You know . . . the one here to help us?"

I have no idea what she's talking about. "What?"

The girl smiles up at me, unfazed by my confusion. She leans closer, whispers, "I think you are." Then says good-bye and goes back to her station.

I nod my farewell and go to my room. Hold up the ceiling for a few hours with a concentrated stare, ruined for sleep.

The cot I've been given is lumpy. I turn from side to side but a comfortable position eludes me. So I get up and pace around the edges of the room.
I'll walk myself into tired,
I think. But
just a couple laps passing the canvas door, and I'm pushing through it. Out into the hallway that's lit exactly like it was this afternoon, even though now it's deep night. It's an expectation I've brought down with me, that the light will change. But it won't. Come morning, it will be as dark as it is now.

There appears to be no one else up so I take a turn around the front hall, letting my outer shoulder drag against the wood planks that have been put up on the north and south walls. I pause. Look more closely at these odd vertical beams. They're grooved, thick as my hand. Starting at my knees, they run up the walls six feet, all the way to the top. There are seven on this side and another seven on its opposite. Fourteen total. They are our tables. Built to be tucked away inside the walls when not in use.

I reach down, trace the worn strip of plastic at its base, and accidentally press. There is a loud metallic click, then release. The beams come snapping out bottom ends first, a zigzag of boards and hinges that straighten as they're lowered.
Click, click
. Too loudly, aluminum rods pop out of the far ends to catch their fall.
Boom!
They land, silver legs shaking.

I duck behind my hands as if this action will stop the noise from leaking into the ears of my underground comrades, who are all fast asleep. No such luck. I hear them before I see them. The canvas doors come open and the people behind them, tired and sullen, spill out.

"Harper!" Noam is running down the hall. I can see his bald head fading in and out beneath the lights. Other people are following. Lilly, Rita, Ben Dean, and his pregnant wife, Mary. A dozen others with names I don't remember. Lazarus brings up the end of this wave. All of them are peaked and frowning. They probably thought it was an alarm of some kind. A bust.

"I'm sorry." I'm whispering. As if there's anyone left to wake.

Noam makes it to me first. He puts one hand on my
shoulder, the other on the table. "What are you doing?" He's not quite awake. Keeps looking from the table to my face as if there's any sense to be made of us.

"I'm sorry," I say to no one in particular and everyone in general. "Sorry!" I repeat to Lilly, who marches up next. Again to Lazarus, who's trying very hard not to look mad. He'd obviously just gotten to sleep, having finally found a position to quiet his bones. "I barely touched it." I point at the place on the wall where the lever should be. Where now there's a dull brown table in the way.

Lilly turns and waves her arms at the people still coming up the hall. "False alarm! Harper put down a table!" I cringe at the sound of my name bouncing off the walls.

Noam pats me on the back. "I'll put this up in the morning." He follows the others down the hall and off to their rooms.

Lazarus takes me by the hand. "Follow me."

I'm escorted past the stairs that lead up to Lilly's house and on to a solid brick wall original to the foundation. The door leading through it isn't made of canvas. It's black velvet, or velour, and heavy, as if its base has been hemmed with sand.

"It's weighted," Lazarus confirms, stopping to show me a thick quilted backing. "Noise absorption." He looks up. Points at the acoustic tiles that run down a wide main hall. "Helps keep the generator noise from leaking out."

I roll the material between my fingers. "Why not use regular doors down here?"

"Two reasons." He turns and looks down at me. "The noise. And because people become interested in locking them."

Lazarus motions me into the kitchen, padding his way across its dark floor. There's the soft issue of a pulled string and then light. Just one bulb's worth, but it's enough to illuminate the small space. There's a refrigerator packed into the corner and a sad, squat microwave atop the round table in its center. The kitchen is barely larger than my room.

Lazarus opens an overhead cabinet and I see columns of
silver cans and thick, wide-handled mugs stacked neatly inside. I'm given the rules Noam already provided as he boils some water.

"Never use a plate when you can eat directly from the container. Eat all of whatever you open. Don't use too much water. And don't leave on any unnecessary lights. Too many people and places have been taken down by utilities disproportionate to the number of citizens on file." Thus this hidden generator. The single-bulb, low-wattage lights.

"We have cocoa if you don't mind a mix." Lazarus positions a package over my coffee mug and I bob my head enthusiastically.

"Yes, please."

"Any questions I can answer?"

I didn't think such an offer would be extended. Try not to sound surprised. "When it's time, how will we be moving out?"

Lazarus looks up from his stirring. The mug in his hand looks like it's full of muddy water with a twirling island of dirt in its center. "We have a contact in Antioch. When it's time to move out, we have T-Units lined up to take us to a rendezvous point." He hands me the drink handle-side out, so he's the one touching the hot part.

T-Units
. Huge buslike vehicles with wings off the front. These manned vehicles are used by the Confederation to mobilize large numbers of Blue Coats. They're partially armored and carry gunner stations off a T-beam that rides above the vehicle. Each T-Unit carries fifty people and there are only forty-eight of us. "Do we need more than one?"

"We will by then. We're the central spoke in our region. Other groups will gather here in waves a few days before the war. We'll mobilize together."

Lazarus shouldn't have asked if I had questions. I'm like a plugged-up hose, finally sprouted a hole.
How are we going to get people to join us? What freedoms do we have to show them? If
the SKEYE program goes up, we'll be seen in those T-Units. How will we get anywhere?

Lazarus smiles. "Then I guess we'll walk."

I look down at the floor. "Veracity . . ."

"Is safe. Candace knew what she was getting herself into. And Hannah . . . what happened to Hannah is exactly why it's time to go to war." Lazarus's voice is as sad as I've ever heard it. I won't come near these questions with him again. "Now." He claps his hands. "It's time for bed. We have a big day tomorrow."

I watch as he sets his empty mug in the sink.

"Lazarus, people are thinking of me as being way more important than I am."

His hand goes still on the faucet but he says nothing.

So I ask, "What does it mean?"

Lazarus turns the knob. Pours out enough water to rinse the basin. "How many people have been referring to you this way?"

"A couple of people. My relief in the library."

"Christine." He turns around. "She doesn't mean to gossip. She's just young."

I look down at my muddy cocoa. Most of the mix is still floating on the surface, clumped together. Doesn't matter as I'm no longer thirsty. "What does she mean?"

"Nothing. It's just superstitious hope to get us through the days."

"She thinks I'm some kind of savior, Lazarus. I don't want anybody being misled." The stress of it rushes up on me. The fear I've been cultivating is a black mass in my chest. It keeps me from breathing. Melts my shirt against the hot skin beneath.

"We're all somebody's savior." Lazarus is unaware of my spinning, can't see past my still body. "I'm asking you to trust me, Harper."

"I need this one answer, Lazarus."

"You need something you can control." He takes my full mug and frowns down into its middle. "You didn't like it?"

I take hold of his hand. Squeeze until he can surely feel my pulse racing along beneath my skin. "I wasn't thirsty."

Lazarus sighs. Sets my mug on the kitchen table, where it's fair game for whoever comes in next. "Lucille told us about you, your friend from Mr. Mitchell's class. She said she recognized you." He's talking about hair-eating, lip-sucking Lucille who got thrown out of class. The needy girl who grew up to be so much more than me. Lucille, whom I watched die through an interrogation room window.

"Lucille was a part of this group?"

"Came down here at age sixteen." Lazarus nods. "She was one of our best runners."

I pause before asking, "What did she say about me?"

"That we should keep our eye on you, bring you down when it was time. She believed that, someday, you'd be the one to save us."

"Lucille . . ." I have a hard time telling Lazarus. He's going to be so hurt. "Lucille was confused."

Lazarus looks fatigued. He goes back to the table. Pours himself into a seat. "Why does it bother you? Lucille believing you're the one."

I turn my head, dabbing at my eyes with a sleeve. "Because I know why she thought it."

"You're talking about the time you stood up for her." Lazarus laughs, strong and hard. Both voices buckle and snap until he starts to cough and I have to bring him some water. "It wasn't that, Harper. It was something she
saw
in you. You're not the only Sentient in the world. Yes?"

I sit down across from him. Glum. "I didn't save her."

"What do you mean, you didn't save her? You saved her not once, but twice. And in the most important way a person can be saved. From hopelessness." He reaches across the table and taps a finger on my palm. "It may not seem like much to you. But it's everything to us. Hope is how any war is won. It
makes us fight better. Makes us stronger. I know in my heart that you're going to get us what we need to take down that one redactor when the time comes. But what you need to hear is something different."

Lazarus repositions, scooting onto one hip. "With or without the master, we've already won, you see? Because, for the first time in years, there is the feeling that we just might. Let people believe in you, Harper. Maybe some of it will start to rub off. Deal?"

I nod, pensive. "Deal."

Lazarus picks up a towel and dabs at my moist head and flushed face. "This is why I didn't want to tell you. You think you need that worry and pain. You think it serves you. You think it
saves
you, but it doesn't. Try keeping those walls in place with a little faith for a while. Now." He slaps his knee.

"It's late."

Lazarus gets up from the table and leads me back to the main hall. He says we could both use the next five hours' sleep. I'm to go straight back to my room and lie down. Ezra will be waiting for me in the morning, six o'clock sharp.