A Crack in the Sky (28 page)

Hours later—or was it minutes?—he felt strong enough to leave the bed. He slipped across the room and banged on the
wall, demanding to speak with someone about going home. This worked about as well as it had the first time. Within seconds the Guardians were back with another hypodermic needle and Eli found himself on the bed again, drifting out of consciousness.

After a while the days started to blend together. Representative Tinker seemed always in good spirits, always sympathetic to his concerns. But now Eli knew better than to demand to speak with anyone. He would have to go along with whatever was happening here until he found some other opportunity to send out a message. In the meantime all he could do was try to avoid gazing into the sphere, which was always there, glowing over his head. This one didn’t seem to hold quite the grip on his mind that the powerful one in the gray room had, but he could feel that its pull was still stronger than what he was used to. He didn’t want to look at it, but despite himself he sometimes did. There wasn’t much else to do. That, and sleep. He slept a lot.

Every day he woke up feeling a little less troubled, a little more resigned to reality.

One morning Representative Tinker came into Eli’s room with an orange uniform in her hands.

“It’s time,” she said. “I believe you’re ready for the next step. Why don’t you put this on, and I’ll take you to your new classroom?”

Eli took the uniform. Lately he’d found that everything was easier when he just did what he was told. And besides, he didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. He felt light-headed, as if his thoughts were so weightless they floated away as soon
as he thought them. He slipped on the uniform like he was drifting through a dream.

“This tower used to be a giant oil rig,” Representative Tinker explained as she led him down a series of narrow stairways. “We still pump oil here, of course—at least for now—but there isn’t much left under the seabed anymore. The pump team takes up only half a floor now, which is good news for us, because the company converted all the extra space just for the Waywards.”

There were windows in the stairwell. Eli could at last see the sea. It looked reddish, but maybe that was a trick of the light. Perhaps two hundred yards away, his view was blocked by a curved wall of glowing blue that started above the edge of his vision and fell at a sharp angle. The tower had its own little dome. Unlike the sturdy domes over the cities, though, this one seemed less substantial, with an arc that ended before it reached the water and a sky so thin that Eli could make out the metal grid that formed the dome’s outer shell.

“Where are we going?” he asked, still trudging behind her.

“You’ll see!” When she smiled back at him, Eli felt his face flush. He couldn’t help it. She was like an angel.

At last they came to a door with a sign that read Learning Floor 9-B. Representative Tinker opened it and led him into a long, dismal room with exposed steel girders and ancient blowers. Along the length of the floor ran wooden tables where rows and rows of kids, maybe as many as a hundred of them, sat working, some sitting at antique sewing machines, others digging through what looked like piles of cloth.

“What is this place?”

“A textile-assembly team!” Representative Tinker said with a sweep of her hand. “This is where you’ll learn to be a productive member of the company, Eli. You’re going to help in our garment-manufacturing process!”

Eli peered into the gloom, trying to take it all in. Except for a handful of CloudNet spheres floating overhead, the room seemed to have few modern devices. There were no robots in sight—Eli hadn’t seen any since he’d been in this strange place—and despite the blowers the air felt stale and muggy and smelled of sweat. The only breeze seemed to come from a few metal fans that squeaked as they pivoted back and forth. On the walls hung a few sad arrangements of plastic flowers, thick with dust, and from the girders flaked grayish paint that might once have been purple. It was as if somebody long ago had tried to cheer the place up a little but had failed miserably.

It occurred to Eli that maybe he should run. He couldn’t, though, he realized. If he tried, he would only end up getting another hypodermic needle stuck in his arm.

Besides, where could he go?

He felt Representative Tinker’s hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be nervous. It’s going to be fine. It’s normal to have a little case of the jitters on your first day, but you’ll get in the swing of things in no time—you’ll see.”

A square-jawed employee in a drab green uniform approached them. She wore a sweatband around her head, and her blond hair swooped up and over like a water fountain. “Welcome to Learning Floor Nine B, Representative Papadopoulos. I’m Representative Dowd, one of the Productivity Facilitators here. Come. I’ll show you to your Contribution Team.”

Representative Tinker whispered into Eli’s ear, “I’m so
proud of you!” She gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Have a productive day!”

Representative Dowd led him deeper into the room. Eli scanned the long tables, where the kids worked diligently at their tasks. He guessed they ranged in age from perhaps twelve to eighteen years old. He couldn’t help noticing how quiet the place was. Other than the squeak of the fans and the soft echo of their footsteps, the room was silent.

“Unnecessary discussion is discouraged,” Representative Dowd explained, her voice low. “It distracts from efficiency. All the workers are Waywards, just like you, so everyone learns that meeting the daily production quota is the best way of making amends for the indiscretions they’ve committed against the company.”

On a sign on the far wall was the same message Eli had seen posted everywhere he went: Forgiveness through Productivity, Contentment through Trust.

Wandering between the tables were several other kids in drab green uniforms like the one Representative Dowd wore. Eli watched them look over the laborers’ shoulders, apparently checking their work. The Productivity Facilitators seemed to be the supervisors here. More intimidating, though, were the white-uniformed Guardians standing sentry along the walls like prison security. Unlike Representative Tinker, these were all large, flat-headed kids with impassive expressions. Eli didn’t like the look of them.

Representative Dowd walked him to the only empty seat, at the end of one of the tables. “This is Representative Papadopoulos,” she announced.

The nearby workers, all of them kids about his own age,
looked up from the piles of shirt parts they were working on. Everybody smiled, glassy-eyed. No one seemed overly moved at hearing his famous last name.

“Hello, Representative Papadopoulos,” they responded in chorus.

Representative Dowd gave a quick demonstration of what Eli was supposed to do. His job title would be Matcher. The work was simple enough: he would sort through piles of shirt parts—sleeves, collars, fronts, and backs—and match sizes together. Completed sets were then passed down the table to the Rippers, who removed numbered tags from the material. Next the sets were passed to the Operators, who sat at antique sewing machines and stitched the different parts together, and finally to the Packers, who packed them in crates.

Representative Dowd left, and soon Eli was struggling to keep up with the others. He sifted through his mound of shirt parts, making occasional surreptitious glances at the other kids at the table. They were all working fast. Nobody ever seemed to look up. The boy to Eli’s left was pencil thin, with short black hair, freckles, and eyes so big that he looked a little like a bug. He seemed about the same age as Eli. The beefy girl to Eli’s right was ghostly pale, with mousey brown hair and drooping eyelids. She looked older, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Even though she appeared half-asleep, her hands seemed to have energy of their own as they sifted through her pile. Eli worked up the courage to speak to them both.

“Hi,” he whispered, “I’m Eli. What are your names?”

Instead of answering, the girl glanced over, curled her lip, and growled at him. Then she turned back to her pile. Her hands never stopped moving. Eli wanted to sink into his chair.

The boy seemed a little friendlier. He looked nervously around, perhaps to see if any of the Productivity Facilitators were nearby, and then, with his eyes on his work again, he whispered, “I’m Clarence. She’s Geraldine.”

Eli decided to ignore the strange tension. “It’s nice to meet you, Clarence. Why are you here? What did you do wrong?” After a moment Clarence looked over as if he were going to answer, but then his face went red and he dropped his gaze once more.

Eli felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Maybe you didn’t understand when I told you about the no-unnecessary-talking rule?” He turned. Representative Dowd didn’t seem angry. Her expression and tone of voice were like those of a patient parent reasoning with a disruptive toddler. “It’s not surprising. You’re new. But we have a quota to meet, three hundred seventy crates by the end of the day, which means each Matcher will need to process over nine hundred shirts. Reaching our goal will take everybody’s full attention. Please concentrate on your task, Representative Papadopoulos. You of all people should understand that everybody’s work is vital to the well-being of the organization.”

Eli wanted to argue with what seemed like an unreasonable rule, but he decided against it, for now. Geraldine was giving him the evil eye and Eli could feel his face burning. Soon everyone went back to work. For a long time Eli didn’t look up at all. He kept his mouth shut.

Lunch was served in shifts in a spacious cafeteria with tables and an area where Waywards could stand and stretch their legs if they wanted to. The moment the hungry workers stepped
into the room and lined up for their meals, the place filled with loud conversation. Talking, it seemed, was okay here.

Eli found an empty table near the back and set his tray down. He was starving. He examined his lunch: lumpy meat loaf, green mush, and some kind of yellow desserty thing that looked like it had sat out in the sun for a while. Just as he was working up the courage to test the meat loaf, somebody spoke just behind him.

“I stopped working.”

Eli turned. The freckled boy from the worktable was standing there with his tray.

“You asked what I did wrong to end up here, and that’s the answer. One day I told my boss at the tanning salon that I wasn’t showing up to work anymore, and that was that. I meant it too. For days and days I didn’t go back. People kept coming up to my room and knocking on my door to tell me I had to report to my job, but I just stayed in bed.”

“Why did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just felt … sad. I had this terrible, empty feeling all the time. So I stayed in my room. I didn’t go to parties, I didn’t do
anything
. Eventually they sent me here.” He set his tray next to Eli’s and sat down. “I know. It was a stupid thing to do. I guess I was so wrapped up in my self-absorbed wrong thinking that I didn’t consider the consequences. No worries, though. I’m better now.” He held out his hand. “Sorry we couldn’t talk earlier. Let’s start again. I’m Clarence.”

“Eli.” He shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Clarence picked up the grayish pizza from his tray and took a bite. He covered his mouth as he spoke. “Listen, I know
what you’re going through. The first day is always the hardest. I see it all the time. Everybody here remembers what it was like to be a newbie.”

“Thanks. What’s up with that no-talking rule, anyway?”

“Yeah, they can be kind of a pain about it,” he said with a half smile. “But you can get away with talking if you learn how not to get caught. Like I said, don’t sweat it. You’ll get with the program soon enough. I bet it’ll only take a few days before you learn to like it here.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” he admitted, glancing at the line of Guardians watching from along the far wall. Eli couldn’t help feeling grateful to this kid, who was obviously going out of his way to be nice. Now that he saw him away from the frantic pace of the work line, he seemed normal, like any regular boy Eli might have passed on the street at home. Not somebody he would have pictured working in some faraway dungeon on the sea. “How long have you been here?”

“Eight months. More than some kids, not as long as others.” He nodded in the direction of a table where the big, pale girl from the work line sat alone, her expression vacant and her mouth moving as if she were talking to herself. Everybody else seemed to steer clear of her. “Geraldine was here long before I started.”

“What’s her problem? The way she looked at me, I thought she was going to bite my head off.”

“Oh, she’s harmless. Just stay out of her way and you’ll be fine.”

“No, really. There’s something wrong with her. What is it?”

Clarence was quiet a moment. “Well,” he said, “most kids
get with the program pretty quickly, but the ones who
dont …
” He shrugged. “They sometimes end up like her. Kind of freaky and quiet.” He leaned in close and dropped his voice. “Geraldine was a
Resister
.”

Eli could only blink at him.

“A holdout,” he explained. “An unrepentant Wayward who clings to wrong thinking and refuses to get it that we’re all on the same company team. It’s a shame. After a while just about everybody comes around on their own, but every now and then we get somebody who doesn’t. When I first got here, Geraldine was kind of scary and violent. People got hurt. She went to Solitary Instruction a few times, but even that didn’t work. Finally they brought her up to the fifteenth floor. That’s what fixed her.”

“The fifteenth floor?”

Clarence nodded. “The Special Training area. When Geraldine came back, she forgot all about resisting. Now she’s one of our most productive teammates.”

“What the heck is Special Training? What did they do to her?”

“Nobody knows, but whatever it was, it sure fixed her head up quick.”

Eli recalled the powerful sphere he’d faced for a short time in the gray room and how it had played with his mind. He shuddered at the memory. “I think I may have already seen the Special Training area,” he said. “As soon as I get the chance, I’m going to stop my cousin Spider from doing this to people. When my grandfather finds out about this place, he’s going to shut it down.” When Clarence didn’t react he added, “My
grandfather is
the
Grandfather. The man who saved humanity? I’m Eli
Papadopoulos.”