Joseph let go of her arm and urged her ahead of him on the stairs. When she looked back at him with a questioning look, he winked and said, “I know this is harder for you. You work with your brain, not your legs. You set the pace.”
She flushed, both embarrassed and edified at his understanding and his kind acceptance. She glanced back at Sela, who smiled too, and then turned her eyes toward the upward path. Marina realized she was far worse at hiding things from her family than she thought and her thoughts went automatically back to the image and note she had hidden under a loose tile in her workroom. She would either need to become a much more skilled fabricator of moods and words or she would surely be caught out.
She had realized, long before she tucked those two small bits of paper, now wrapped in thin plastic for protection, under the loose tile that what she was doing…what she had already done…would probably mean a lifetime of remediation if she was caught. It wouldn’t matter if every other facet of her life was tenet perfect. This wasn’t just asking too many questions about outside or breaking tenets.
No, this was far more severe. She had hidden proof of a past that didn’t match silo history and she had done it without going to the Historians. She possessed it and she meant to keep it if she could.
Marina didn’t want to be sent to remediation. She just wanted to know and the moment she thought there might be someone who would find out her secret, she would burn those relics of the past and be done with it. She wanted to know but not bad enough to lose her position and her family when it came right down to it. No, definitely not enough for that. Still, even the thought of destroying them made her stomach roil and feel queasy.
If she did go to remediation, she would have to stay there until she was back to normal, talking about her feelings with strangers. Who knew how long that would take? Or she would be released a changed person like those vacant people one occasionally heard about that required the most drastic form of remediation. She didn’t feel like she was going crazy or being dangerous. Well, that last wasn’t quite true because it probably was dangerous to possess what she had found.
As they climbed up, she tried to lose herself in her thoughts as the burn returned to her legs. Something that Mother Patrick had said to Sela when she explained how the Animal Farms worked came back to her and it kept prickling in the recesses of her mind. It reminded her of something from childhood that she couldn’t quite bring into focus.
Mother Patrick had explained to Sela that animals followed very strict schedules of light and dark and that they were like humans in many respects. Just like we needed to ensure we spent some time each day under the special lights of the landings to stay healthy, the animals needed the same. That is why so many of those special lights were placed around the ceilings of the pens. They also needed a period of darkness, or near darkness, every single day or else they got sick. For that reason the red lights used after lights out in residential areas were also used in the Animal Farm.
As she thought about that, and why humans and animals should both be like that and have those requirements, it came to her like a slap on the face. The memory was an old one but it returned as clear and bright as the lights of the landing ahead of her. She had been young. She didn’t know how young but it must have been very young because both of her parents were alive in the memory. It was from before she was orphaned by the accident that claimed the parents of three other children as well as her own.
She remembered the feel of her father, sweeping her up in an arc and into the crook of his arm as he carried her up the stairs. He had pointed at different things on the Up-Top screen and named them for her. She remembered that as she had watched the screen, a fierce red glow burned at the edge and she had asked what it was.
He had explained that it was the sun and that it rotated around the land each day, disappearing at the end and leaving it dark until it came up again somewhere off the screen the next day. She remembered being fascinated by the idea of a light rotating around like that.
Now it clicked together for her. Was that why both humans and animals needed both light and dark? Was it because outside the sun rotated around and was hidden each day, creating a regular period of darkness so that we had gotten used to it? Perhaps the animals and the humans had come to need it over time and still did even here, under the ground.
Those thoughts were interrupted by another strong and sudden memory. She had a clear memory of her mother, the expression on her face one that had frightened her. Her mother crushed her small frame in a hug and whispered, “Remember that I love you.”
Then she was pushed away, other children crying around her, and into a dark space. As she had been shut in she remembered the tear stained face of her mother through the narrowing band of light and the door slamming the darkness all the way home.
Marina didn’t realize she had stopped climbing until her husband’s voice broke through the haze. “Marina? Honey? Are you alright?” His face swam into focus just below her. He stood on the step below her own, his hand lifted to touch to her cheek.
She shook her head to clear the fog and saw the faces of all the people behind them who had also been stopped. She blurted out, “Oh, I’m so sorry!”
She faced upward again and started climbing, this time counting the steps to be sure to maintain pace. A few people, mostly young ones or porters with express packages, called out “Passing Up!” and rushed past her. Most of the people she had caused to stop were not in such a hurry. Eventually they spread out again, a few steps between groups as people began to peel off from the traffic.
A small group left them on Level 61 and that opened up a good area around the family. Marina glanced back now and again. Each time she met her husband’s eyes, his were looking steadily up at her with a worried expression. Great, she thought. Now he’s watching me and he knows something is wrong.
Her mind’s eye, now that this old memory had surfaced, kept trying to replay it and expand it for her. Each time she found herself remembering she pushed it away and focused on counting the steps. A good climb might seem like a good time to think, but only if one is capable of thinking and climbing at the same time. That was something the woman who had raised her and the three other orphans used to say to her charges when they dawdled on the stairs.
Now she used the same trick she did then to avoid daydreaming. She counted stairs. No matter what she did or how studiously she counted, the image of the fear filled face of her mother whispering that she loved her kept flashing in front of her eyes. It was a harder climb that she had ever imagined any climb could be.
Chapter Six
Joseph stopped the family briefly at Level 56 to do a little shopping, returning quickly to the place Marina and Sela sat on the landing. He stuffed a parcel that smelled of herbs, sweet peppers and tangy tomatoes into the top of Sela’s backpack. He patted her shoulder after he tied off the top and urged her to be gentle with it.
She laughed and asked if he thought she was looking to wear a jacket made of tomato goo. Her cheeky laugh cut through the thoughtful silence Marina had fallen into while she sat, not having steps to count and keep it at bay. She stood and shook the tightness out her legs, trying not to think too carefully about anything. She smiled at the easy banter between the two just as she would normally do, but it felt stiff and unnatural on her face. At her husband’s inquiry she assured him she was well before once again taking the lead for the final six floors to the hotel.
Those last stairs flew by as they dodged the increasing traffic. The first of the staggered early shift personnel were getting relieved and the second wave of those coming on duty took to the stairs. Families urged along children dragging their feet and protesting that they wanted to be carried. Workers attired in coveralls of every color wove around slower walkers or simply trudged up at the pace of the traffic depending on their schedules.