Veracity (3 page)

Mary Louise lets out a squeal but is too excited to move.

Mr. Coombs snaps his fingers and motions for the girl to go stand by the door. "Hop to, Miss Pembroke."

With a few more squeals, Mary Louise does as ordered. As she passes my desk, I feel her giddy anticipation like a shower of sparks. As she walks past the girl two seats up--Servina Dobbs--the joy that's turned Mary Louise into a walking firework dissipates. She's too permeable. Too open to the influence of others, especially those who spend a good part of their day breeding the worst colors. Dark red seeded with bits of black. Deep mustard-brown edged in tones of ochre. I've watched Mary Louise's colors sour in the presence of pernicious energy. As she passes Servina Dobbs, Mary Louise turns the color of boiled lettuce.

Servina Dobbs has been poking her head into the aisle every time Sentient Baumfree passes. She smiles and laughs at nothing, does everything but raise her hand and ask to
be considered. I never liked Servina Dobbs. Even after she figured out I was sentient and might, therefore, one day be important.

Sentient Patrol began three or four years ago, nearly as soon as we all stepped foot in high school. Those students who passed their tests were plucked out of senior year and fast-tracked into the Monitoring Department. They were treated as valuable members of government and given the best apartments and largest cars. As soon as Servina Dobbs discovered my abilities, she wanted to know everything. How I saw what I saw. Which colors indicate which conditions. How she could learn to do the same. I explained to her that it was either a part of you or it wasn't and not something I could teach her. But to this day, if I so much as sneeze, she brings me a box of tissues.

Sentient Baumfree must see the way Servina's energies have affected Mary Louise. As soon as the quiet girl makes it to the edge of the room, the Sentient makes a beeline for Servina's desk.

"Is there something you want to say, young lady?" she asks.

"Servina Dobbs," Servina introduces herself with a large smile. "Yes, ma'am. I'd like to be tested. Please."

Sentient Baumfree's face is stone. I have no sense of what she's feeling. "How can you be certain you have abilities--"

"Oh, yes, ma'am, I have them!" Servina cuts in, and Mr. Coombs gasps.

"Servina!" he shouts, and the girl goes quiet.

Sentient Baumfree considers her with hooded eyes. "Do you know what happens to young ladies who pretend to be sentient but are not?"

"Yes, ma'am," Servina says, nodding. "I want to be tested."

"You know you don't have to be sentient to become a Monitor, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am. I still want to be tested."

Sentient Baumfree leans down to look Servina dead in the eye. "I'll ask again, are you aware of the punitives assigned to individuals who falsely claim to have sentient abilities?"

Servina's colors fade, but she holds on to her smile. "Yes, ma'am. I want to be tested."

Sentient Baumfree looks at the girl for a long time. Until Servina breaks off and points her eyes across the room at Mary Louise, who backs into the wall.

"Then line up."

Servina walks slowly, proud of what she believes is a victory. But I know different and retreat into my self-created somewhere-else by putting up the thickest wall of energy I can muster. It's dark, the color of wet earth, and, somehow, aqueous. The substance ripples with any wayward thoughts. I have to project myself away from the moment to keep it still. I think about the solitary years of my orphaned youth. About the wastelands, a place rumored to be toxic and the dwelling place of murderers but a place that somehow makes me calm, turns my energy from brown to gold.

I've cut myself off from the world and pray the world is, in kind, cut off from me. But sounds are coming from outside my shell. Voices. Sentient Baumfree is asking Mr. Coombs about the others. Then, about me.
Tell me about Miss Adams.

I think about the wastelands as they've been taught to us since childhood. Destitute and quiet. I think of the vast, wide parcels of toxic earth topped with clouds, thick and rotten with waste. The only people sanctioned to be in these rural parts of our country are farmers too old and sick to serve in the cities. Formerly valuable men left to wander around the cancerous earth, poking in seeds and then pulling up the resulting plants, which will require a regimen of cleaning before they're approved for anyone's table. We've been told that time spent in the wastelands can kill us, even short trips. And that the Blue Coats stationed there are the worst kind and worthy of a slow death. These wasteland police have carried
out punitives on citizens without having received the authorizing codes. They are men who've raped children or killed and eviscerated old ladies not because the slate directed them to, but because they were bored, or angry. The Blue Coats in the wastelands are supposed to be the worst of the worst--men more hazardous than the polluted earth.

"Miss Adams!" A loud voice punches through the oily slick of my cocoon, creating a hole.
"Miss Adams!"
It's Mr. Coombs's voice. He's slinging it at me from behind his desk. "Are you with us?"

Through a fish-eye view, I see Sentient Baumfree directly in front of me, her lower half bent at a gruesome angle. She's trying to see where I've been and if I've yet returned.

"No hiding from me, Miss Adams," Sentient Baumfree cautions, her voice low. She puts out a hand and, without thinking, I pull away. My fear changes her expression. Makes it soft. "There's nothing to be afraid of," she says, lifting a strand of my dark blonde hair from a shoulder.

I force myself not to jerk away as she leans closer and looks in my face. "Tell me about this one, Mr. Coombs. What's our Miss Adams been like in class?"

"Miss Adams is a good student," Mr. Coombs answers. "She gets good grades, doesn't make any trouble for the others . . ."

"That's not what I meant." Sentient Baumfree looks up. Studies something just above my head, something floating over the part in my hair. "Tell me about the other things."

Mr. Coombs clears his throat. "Yes." He chortles. "Of course. Well, this year we've had one or two . . . uh . . . pre-cognitive moments. I believe that's what you call them."

"Yes." Sentient Baumfree keeps her eyes on the air above and around my head. "That's correct. Can you tell me about these events?"

"Well, once she knew what assignment I was going to give before I had the opportunity to give it. And she knew that Angela Mullins's mother had died before the girl knew herself."

Two aisles over, Angela Mullins shifts in her seat.

"Did she come to you with this information?" the Monitor asks, her eyes still on my colors.

"Yes," Mr. Coombs grunts. "Harper wanted me to know that a Blue Coat was about to enter the classroom and announce it. She wanted me to pull Angela aside and tell her first."

To my surprise, Sentient Baumfree breaks her concentration on me and turns to look at Mr. Coombs. "Did you?"

"I'm sorry? Did I what?"

"Did you pull Angela Mullins aside to tell her that her mother had died before it was announced to her by a Blue Coat?"

Mr. Coombs's cheeks turn red. "Well, no. I mean, I didn't realize it was credible information--"

"Of course you did." Sentient Baumfree stands and walks to the front of the room. "Is there anything else you'd like to share about Miss Adams?"

Mr. Coombs nods ferociously, anxious to find his way back into Sentient Baumfree's good graces. The quick bobbing of his large head seems to knock free some blockage and a torrent of information spills out. "She sees colors. Almost all of the students have told me some story or another . . . it makes them nervous, understandably. I mean, it's understandable in that she's able to see something in them that they themselves aren't able to see . . ."

"Yes. What else?"

"She sees
traces
of things or people, if you follow. Once she thought there was a dead rat in the girls' bathroom but it had been removed days earlier . . . and did I mention that once she knew one of our boys was sick? Appendicitis. She was adamant. Wouldn't shut up about it until we were forced to take him to the nurse. I should also like to mention, he was treated in time." Mr. Coombs smiles, absently patting both arms. "We saved him. We did."

Sentient Baumfree nods at one of the Monitors, and without a word, the woman takes me by the hand and leads me to the line.

In fifteen minutes, Sentient Baumfree has chosen seven of us as candidates.
Potentials,
as we're called.

"All set, Sentient Baumfree?" Mr. Coombs has brought out his handkerchief and is collecting streams of sweat from his brow.

"Yes, Mr. Coombs."

We're gathered into the middle of the others, then marched out the door and down the hall, Sentient Baumfree at our head. I try to get a good look at her colors as she goes, but she's well veiled. Surrounded in a blue substance I can't breach.

"That's enough, Miss Adams," Sentient Baumfree calls from the front of the line. "None of that until we get to the testing room."

Outside, there are a dozen black vans lined up and waiting at the curb. Their doors slide back and two armed Blue Coats exit and stand on either side of the openings. We're loaded up and driven off. Spend thirty awkward moments trying not to fall off our seats as the vans veer in and out of traffic.

Once at our destination, the doors are again thrown open and we're unloaded into the dark corridors of an underground parking garage. There is an electricity in the air that makes my stomach turn. I look up and down the line created by all us Potentials and see there are others suffering from this barrage of charged atoms. Somewhere beyond the thick concrete walls, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of machines pulsing. I try to get a sense of where they're located but can't. It seems they're everywhere.

I'm in the Geddard Building.
The thought must plaster itself all over my body. Other students, the ones who've been watching me, go ashen. The Geddard Building is in downtown Wernthal, in the very heart of President's National House Square. It's home to thousands of Blue Coats and, beneath them, thousands of redactors. Redactors are the
machines that collect everything we say and everything we do. These computers talk directly to the slates implanted in our necks. They record everywhere we go and, via the Red word system, regulate our speech. Redactors keep a collective memory of us as individuals. One of these machines contains my entire life's history since age six.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Sentient Baumfree calls from the center point of our line. "I'll be taking you to a series of holding rooms where you will wait to be called. When it's your turn, you'll be taken to a testing room. Testing can take from five minutes to a few hours, depending on the Potential. If a Potential is able to demonstrate his or her ability adequately, he or she is moved directly into the Monitoring program. There will be no returning to school or going home. From this moment onward, there is no return to the life you once knew."

Sentient Baumfree pauses to let the sounds of alarm and surprise pass. None of us knew quite how this worked. Speaking about the Sentient Patrol has always been Red Listed. And since they only recruit from the twelfth grade and no interclass fraternization is allowed, we've never met a Potential personally. None of us. They've been like
The Book of Noah
to us. Known in name only. Revered.

Still, the idea that none of us will be returning from this place hits us like a fist. Our faces go pale. Plumes of frantic red explode up and down the line. Just as the panic is about to erupt in a more physical fashion, with vomiting or passing out, Sentient Baumfree puts two fingers to her mouth and whistles.

"Now that I have your attention, let me ask one final question!" She walks down the line and stops in front of Servina, who's shaking. "If there's anyone here who has misunderstood the nature of this exercise and would like to exit the line and return to class, please say so now . . ." She steps back and waits patiently for Servina to blink.

Christ.
I know Servina well enough to know she's not going
to back down. No matter how afraid she is, or maybe because of it.

I open my mouth to ask permission to speak and Sentient Baumfree aims a pointed finger my way. "No talking, Miss Adams!"

"I'm not leaving!" Servina shouts into the Sentient's turned ear.

The rest of us are riveted to our spots.

Sentient Baumfree pauses for just a few seconds, then makes a sweeping motion with her arm and the Blue Coats march us forward, hands dangling over their guns. It's rare for police to be armed. There's hardly a need given the government's hold on its citizens. These small cylinders of death don't seem like they're capable of killing anyone, though some of them have retained a unique energy from their utilization. Golden coils of spent friction float off the ones that have been fired. They make a strange trail of
O
's through which we're to walk.

After piling onto elevators and traveling up a few floors, we exit into an unmarked hall and are taken to the holding rooms. In mine, there are ten girls and two boys. Sentient Baumfree has disappeared and left us in the care of a young woman named Miss Chalk. Young and pretty, the blonde-haired twentysomething flirts with the boys while announcing the rules about time spent in the testing room.

"No talking. No eating. No drugs." Miss Chalk pauses to stare at Andrew Lindman, who turns bright red and begins fiddling with the frayed edge of his collar. "No asking when it's your turn. Your turn comes when Sentient Baumfree comes to collect you." This she says while smiling at Darnell Jones, who rises from his seat as she walks by.

Miss Chalk sachets slowly back to her desk, tossing the final mandates over a shoulder. "If you want to change seats, do so now, as you will be asked to stay in exactly the same ones for however long as soon as the first person is taken back. You won't be able to go to the bathroom without an
attendant watching, so you probably want to hold it if you can. Oh . . . and no drinks."