That’s morbid. I mean, arrangements for its… for its eventual disposition… in the event that…
I mean to say, I must find a final resting place for this book, since I will have no say about the resting place of anything else.
November 23
One last-ditch recruiting speech.
I said: I want to try to make a world that is not like this in some way, any way. Maybe we will kill enough of Them that They will return to Their world. Maybe They will jail us, torture and kill us, no one will know. Maybe They will catch us and make us agents, and our fingers will bleed instead of our faces. But that too will be a different world.
I said, Isn’t it worth trying? Are you not already tired of two years under Their reign? They are, you know, the shittiest possible rulers. We should be overthrowing Them just on general principles. But since we cannot, we should at least steal from Them. Aren’t you tired?
K. said, Oh God. I am so tired. Yes. Of course I am. But if any agents hear us…
And V’s head turned as if it were attached to a string. Of course. I was thinking the same thing. We were among people we know, neighbourhood people. No agents at all. Why was he thinking of them?
If K. is, by some baffling circumstance, not an agent, he is ripe for being turned. Absolutely ripe. Indeed, he would make a good agent, I thought helplessly as he turned away from us. They would not need to break him; he would agree, he would hold out his hand for Their cruel badge, all angles and shivering protrusions. He’d justify it to himself as being for the greater good. No effort would be needed.
He said, The world with Them in it can be survived. What do you think we’re doing? People can still have children; who says they can’t? I am just saying, you are not being… brave, or noble, or even very clever. You are throwing your lives away like garbage.
No we’re not, P. hissed.
We all stared into the fire, and watched our shadows dance on the opposite wall; I waited for horns to sprout on K.’s shadow.
It may be, I think, writhing in agony in my darkest hours, it may be that we cannot get everyone out. It is clear that once we have stolen from Them we cannot stay in the city to await Their punishment. So then we will have to choose. Get only the children out? Or still try for everyone? There is no one I want to leave behind, no one. (Maybe K.) And if it comes down to it (oh, these dark, dark words), I think that no one would volunteer to be left behind.
Please, God, let it not come down to it. Let us all get out.
Maybe the whole world has been overrun with monsters and gods. Maybe we will flee into their very maws. But please, give us the chance to try and to see. Don’t let us die here. Don’t let us die here.
A. tells me that he can get the train going again. Really, I said. And then paused: Really. Can he? My God, it’s like the clouds part, and a single ray of sun shines upon us. If anyone is still wavering, maybe this will push them to one side of the fence or the other. I said, Are you sure?
He shrugged. I was a chemical engineer, he said. Not mechanical. But they did not exactly make it for geniuses to run.
I laughed a little, uncertainly.
I said, The sentinels will all attack the train when it gets running, you know that.
He said, pleased, Yes, of course they will.
I couldn’t think of what else to say. This is our last chance to change our minds. We need the river and the lake to be frozen absolutely solid, I just… and now he comes to me, he says this. I had no words. Even now, I have no words.
The dusky whisper in the dark: My name is Olga.
She didn’t say: Don’t leave us.
I STUDY MY own hand, hoping to see a map like Eva’s. Supposedly they’re all different, these lines on our palms, but the reality is, everyone’s looks virtually the same.
Couldn’t she have given me a street name? I exhaust myself trudging back and forth along the river and the train tracks till I find the train at last, farther along, much farther, than I would have expected to find it. Catching my breath, I photograph it and throw a pilfered drone into the sky for better images, hearing the click in my shoulders. I am dehydrated, I should have taken more water with me. Nothing seems to matter now.
Because there it died, the monstrous locomotive, which must have been ancient even then (our people, Eva said, throw nothing away), still surrounded by the scattered biscuits of coal even now, exploded into a tangle of pipes like tentacles or branches, rusted bright red, covered in claw marks and bubbled with peeled, burned paint.
It’s my last moment of happiness. Darian and Winnie find me, and drag me back to the pod for water and cooling packs. “Heat exhaustion,” Winnie says. “Couldn’t you have stayed in the shade?”
“It’s our last day.”
“We still have half of tomorrow.”
“Our last full day,” I repeat, and stare up at her, kaleidoscoped from the water beaded on my eyelashes; the cold pack burns my neck, and I fight away from it, trying to sit up on my cot. “Why were you in my files?”
Winnie blinks; Darian glares.
“I wasn’t,” he says, when it seems clear that Winnie will say nothing.
“You were,” I tell him.
“She’s delirious.”
“Don’t lie!” I shout, and sit up, and swat the cold pack against the wall. “Why do you even bother? I set up my station so I could see when other people log in—”
“We all log into each other’s workstations all the time, Emerson.”
“—and I added a tracer to my files to see if any of them were being accessed,” I snarl, and reach to seize a fistful of his shirt. He bats my hand effortlessly away. “Or changed. Or deleted. And you, not Winnie, not Victor, did all of the above. With the files about the journal I found. The journal that tells the story of the end of this city. The train. The seminary. The tunnel. Even that SOS sign we saw before we came here. Well, joke’s on you, pal. Those were fake files you modified. Meant for you to find them. I hid the real ones far down in my private directory.”
Winnie does not gasp; but her breath catches. Darian slowly turns purple. Outside, shyly, in the gravel, Victor’s shoes scuffle as he waits to come in; I think he probably won’t.
“I’ve got a record,” I pant at last. “I’ve got proof. Isn’t that what you’re always looking for? Hard evidence? Something you could make into a graph? Because you don’t want to think They’re gods, do you? That’s what bothers you, isn’t it?”
“You should get some rest,” he says, and tugs Winnie out of my room. As they leave, he says, “She really got some sun out there, didn’t she?”
I am furious, I want to chase after him, but I slowly pick up my cold pack again and lie down on the cot, and put it on my chest.
You come back here, I want to scream. I want there to be a fight, a showdown. I want there to be a winner and a loser; I want the others to see that you are wrong and I am right, and that you have been sabotaging my research from the start. I bet if I checked your files I’d find that armoury, wouldn’t I. I bet I’d see a yes to all the no’s you gave me.
But life isn’t like that, and the next day I’m silent as we pack up and board the hover to go home.
November 25
We risked one last visit, scoping, measuring, pacing everything out, and as always, P. shoved a packet of food through the fist-sized hole in the concrete—cooked potatoes, mostly, wrapped in cabbage. I wish we could have done better. Found something sweet for them. But it’s either the last of the cold garden, or slop from a goddamned can again, till next spring.