Donor 23 (8 page)

And she did.

Joan lay back in her bed and rubbed her eyes. The rest was a blur for her. Nox pulled the façade off the wall and uncovered the hiding place. Frank screamed, she recalled—a shriek full of fright—then he fell silent after being hit with a dart. Her mother rushed into the room. Nox ordered her arrest. They pulled out the handcuffs. Joan pleaded with Nox not to arrest her mother—begged him.

Weeping, “I’m sorry. Mom…please…I’m sorry.”

The expression on her mother’s face was not anger or even disappointment, “Joan, I understand. Remember you—”

Another dart and her mother fell silent.

Joan was alone again with Nox, on her knees before him. He held her chin and looked at her with…
compassion
.

“You didn’t break the law, 23,” he comforted her. “Your mother did. Don’t worry. I’m not arresting you. I didn’t find you here.”

Joan never spoke to her mother again. The Alliance hanged her the next day, in a public ceremony broadcast live from somewhere in the bowels of the TEO building. They forced Joan and her father to sit in on a podium and watch, as it was televised on a huge mega screen. As the authorities dragged her mother onto the scaffold, they announced her number over the loudspeaker. Joan’s father uttered her name under his breath, “Annika Lion.” The executioner placed the black hood over her head, but the tele-screen cut to Joan and her father, just before the trap under her feet sprung. The Alliance had a modicum of civility, and the actual moment of death was not telecast.

The Alliance rarely executed donors, even those guilty of state crimes. Instead, it imprisoned them in labor camps. After all, it was of paramount importance to the System that donors survive to be of use to their benefactors. But Joan’s mother was not technically a donor. Annika had been born and lived outside the Alliance walls for her early years and so never got injected with any citizen’s cord blood at birth.

The exact story of her youth was sketchy. In those years the Alliance kidnapped people living outside its walls in a futile attempt by the secretive nation to learn as much as it could about—and from—the rest of the world. The outsider would be interrogated and held prisoner for years, oftentimes appearing in the news to thank the Alliance for his or her “rescue” from the wilds of the Outside. The individual would bless the ones who saved him or her and affirm that the Outside was a horror—a wild place to be protected from. Eventually, as in
Annika’s case, they would be tattooed and released to live in the ghetto with the donors.

Annika, as with many of those released and most likely because she was so young when she was rescued, had a damaged memory of her previous life. She told Joan stories, usually at bedtime. Sometimes spontaneously she would regale them with an anecdote. Neither Joan nor her father knew what might have initiated the sudden memory recall. The tales were always disjointed, never connected to a larger story. Joan wasn’t sure whether her mother narrated something that happened to her or whether she recounted fairy tales from her childhood. Annika didn’t know, either.

Frank, the donor Annika tried to hide, had been a popular man in the ghetto. The story of the arrest spread rapidly through the ghetto. Everyone hailed Joan as a hero because she risked her life to help hide Frank and somehow escaped arrest.

Joan rolled over in the bed.
Some hero
, she thought. It made her sick to her stomach every time someone mentioned it. Unable to return to sleep, she walked into the kitchen for a glass of water.

She noticed her father on the balcony. She went out, and he motioned for her to join him on the chair. He slid over, and she squeezed in beside him. Putting his arm around her, he stroked her hair and forehead, as she laid her head on his chest. He held a drink in his other hand.

“Can’t sleep, honey?”

“Nightmare.”

She knew he suffered through them, too.

“Did I hear the landline phone ring earlier?” Joan queried, as she snuggled in closer to him.

Staffan paused a moment before answering her, “Oh, yeah. Jack called.” Another pause. “He wanted to make sure you
got the message about tomorrow. You didn’t tell me you were going in for medical tests.”

Joan rolled her eyes, “I’m going in for medical tests tomorrow, Dad. No big deal.” Then after a moment, “Why didn’t he call my wrist phone?”

Staffan interrupted her, changing the subject, “Stars are beautiful tonight.”

She looked up.

“Moon, too,” he gestured to the east of the sky.

Joan thought back to something Duncan told her about the moon. Last week at the Center, she was resting after running the hurdles, and he joined her on the grass. She had commented about how the moon shone, even though it was daytime. Duncan said, “You know, when I was a kid, my dad would go away on business a lot—to the Outside. This was before we had picture phones; in fact, most places didn’t even have any phone service at all. He told my mom that all we had to do was look at the moon at night, and he would look at it, too. It would be as if we were together because we’d be looking at the same thing at the same time. So before bed my mom would take us kids out to look at the moon each night, and we’d imagine our dad looking at it, too. It made us feel closer to him.” Joan wondered if Duncan gazed at the moon now.

Her father interrupted her thoughts, “Do you remember that song your mother used to sing you? About the drinking cup?”

“‘The Drinking Gourd?’” Joan corrected him. “Of course. She learned it from Zenobia, didn’t she? Mom was always getting the words wrong.”

The memory brought a smile to Joan’s face.

“Well, your mom didn’t grow up with it. My mother used to sing it to me, too.”

“Isn’t it an old nursery rhyme song?”

“Yes.”

“Dad, can you sing it to me?”

“Your mother had the voice, not me.” Joan didn’t say anything. “But I’ll try,” he said, giving her a kiss on her forehead.

“The white riverbank makes a very good road

The dead trees show you the way

To the right, to the right, travel on and

Follow the drinking gourd

When the sun comes back and the first quail calls

The drinking gourd is right

For the old man is waiting to carry you to freedom

If you follow the drinking gourd.”

After a few minutes, Joan gently chided him, “You have a good voice.”

“Do you know what the song is supposed to be about?” he asked softly.

“Just nonsense words like most nursery rhymes?”

“My mother told me—well that is they say—it describes a way to escape.”

“Escape? Escape to where?”

There were stories about donors escaping the Alliance, but usually when a donor evaded, he or she remained in hiding inside the Alliance for the simple reason that the Outside was scarier. The Alliance has been quite successful in convincing everyone—citizen and donor alike—of the dangers of the immediate Outside of the continent.

“Well, some say that outside the Alliance borders, the rest of the continent is not wild, not anarchy. There’s civilization.”

Joan sat up, “Dad, don’t tell me you believe those stories?! Don’t you watch the news?”

He shrugged and pulled her down. “I’m just repeating stories about nursery rhymes.”

After thinking a minute, Joan asked curiously, “So how does it describe this escape? I don’t get it.”

“It shows the direction—where to go.”

“What?”

“I was told the ‘drinking gourd’ is the constellation of the Big Dipper. See, it’s right there?” He pointed up to the northern sky. “I’d guess you follow the Big Dipper.”

“Follow it where?” she persisted. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, I would guess you keep it on your right. The song talks about it being on the ‘right’…and so on. If you kept the Big Dipper on your right, that would mean you would go west.”

“The West of the continent? The West is all wasteland, from the Impact. Any people living there are wild. Mom was lucky she got rescued from it. What about the rest of the song?”

Her father finished his whiskey, and the soporific effect was doing its work. “Who knows? I’m sure you’re right, and that it’s all nonsense, anyway.”

He kissed her forehead again.

“You know how I love you, don’t you? Now come on, we both should try to get some sleep.”

7

C
louds darkened the noon sky, threatening an early spring rain, as Joan walked up to the front entrance of the medical center, officially named the Alliance Center for Advanced Medical Research. The huge building towered before her. It was the largest, most expensive, and most lavish civilian building in the entire Alliance. Medicine was a booming business, made more so with organ donations that were critical to the economy of the Alliance.

Among the new nations and those rebuilding, the Alliance offered the best in medical care. From its trading partners, many people came willing to pay with desperately needed goods and materials for access to its medical services.

Medicine wasn’t the only service the Alliance had to offer. Many of its steel mills were up and running; a few oil refineries were in operation; and it had ample coal deposits, timber,
and an abundance of farm goods, too. But The Alliance possessed one other commodity. Recognizing the possible benefits derived from the large donor population, the Governor recently changed the tax laws to allow other nations access to the System—access to donors. For a hefty price, newborns of wealthy people from these other countries could now become benefactors. It was a stroke of genius on the Governor’s part, and further relegated donors to a commodity—a valuable national commodity.

Joan paused before the medical center’s massive front doors, which were a stunning combination of marble and glass. She glimpsed the main entry’s colossal crystal chandelier. Lines marked the floors with four colors of marble—a different color for each direction, east, west, and so on—because visitors often got lost in its vastness.

She wondered how many donors were being operated on at this very minute. This morning her co-donor, 85, had undergone the shoulder surgery, which meant Tegan recuperated in there as well.

Her gaze lingered at the third floor, or what should be the third floor. It was difficult to tell because the third floor had no windows. Donors scheduled for major donations were kept there—imprisoned—in the final days before the operation.

She turned her eyes away and contemplated the sky. With a burst of hope, she realized it was the first day of spring.
What would the new season—the season of rebirth—hold in store for her?

Once inside Joan walked over to the stairs. The power lifts were gorgeous and made of carved bronze, but Joan never took power lifts. If she had a chance to exercise, she did. Her destination was the ninth floor. She opened the stairwell door and walked in quickly, crashing into Duncan, who was just stepping up from a lower floor. He caught her in his arms, and her hand instinctively reached around his neck.

“Hey,” he said.

He didn’t let go. Neither did she—delighting in the feel of his neck, savoring the sensation. There was that tingling again, with her heart beating faster.

She broke away, embarrassed, “Sorry.”

They looked at each other and said in unison, “What are you doing here?”

They laughed.

“I’m here visiting,” he paused, “a friend.”

He held flowers.

He continued, “I was just coming up from the parking garage downstairs. The power lifts are too swarmed with photographers. What about you?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment. I usually take the stairs. I can always use the exercise.”

She wondered if he recognized her from the stands yesterday.
Did he realize she was a donor?
If so, she had to take care with what she said and did.

“Well, we can walk them together. I’m going to seven,” he said.

“Nin—” Joan caught herself and uttered instead, “Ten, I’m going to the tenth floor.” Donor auditions took place on the ninth floor.

“What’s the doctor’s appointment for?” he sounded concerned.

“Nothing important,” she replied, surprised at his tone.

She eyed the steps as they walked and talked. With the paint chipping and damaged, the stairs were a stark contrast to the luxury of the rest of the medical center. Citizens rarely took the stairs, so there was no need to make them look nice.

She shifted her sight to the flowers in Duncan’s hand. He saw.

“These are just for a friend.”

Joan pretended not to care. “Tegan Gates, your girlfriend? She’s here, isn’t she? That’s why all the news people and photographers are here.”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”

They rounded the landing to the third-floor door. The door appeared unlike the others, as it was reinforced with steel and bolted. A “No Entry” sign hung ominously. Joan unintentionally paused.
The sign should read “No Leaving,”
she thought. Duncan paused, too, seeming lost in thought while looking at the door. They continued.

“Hey, you know something funny?” he said. “You’ve never told me your name.”

It was true. Throughout the last year of their friendship at the Fitness Center, Joan deftly managed to withhold her name from him. The System forbade donors from using their names with citizens. She didn’t want to get him—or herself—in trouble.

“So, out with it. What’s your name?”

Joan once again scurried around the question, instead offering to him, “Race?”

Before he could reply, she rushed up the next two flights, two steps at a time. At the top of the landing, she stopped, and he bounded after her.

“Oh, you lost,” she joked, “a big strong man like you…”

“Losing to you is not an insult,” he said, not breathing hard. “Besides, I let you win.”

“Yeah, right.”

They both chuckled and walked the next few flights.

Abruptly, Duncan blurted out, “I’m going to be leaving soon. I turned eighteen two months ago, so I have to report for my draft.”