Harmony (46 page)

A single Security Green sat by an open door at the marbled entrance to the South Tower. She’d been laughing at some program on her portable vid, but she thumbed the volume down as she watched the inexplicable crowd swell in the plaza. She listened to the unnatural quiet, the murmurs and foot shuffling, the absence of laughter, got up and went in, dragging her folding chair with her.

“Putting in a call for reinforcements,” Cris gloated.

“Or asking what the hell to do,” said I.

“I don’t blame her.” In her first sign of anxiety in days, Jane was wringing her hands like Lady Macbeth.

Mark mounted the broad, curving stairs and gathered the apprentice representatives from the seven other villages, a boy and a girl from each dorm, wearing freshly laundered coveralls, brandishing their stacks of signed petitions like a precious but potentially dangerous object. Like I might carry a gun or Ule’s knife, I decided, grasping a handful of the BardClyffe stack. I gave some to Jane to keep her restless hands occupied.

Mark studied the irregular ranks still gathering below us, all those expectant faces, raised in a sea of well-worn blue relieved here and there with bits of the brighter civilian clothing. “Crowd estimate?”

“Four thousand, maybe forty-five,” said Cris.

“We’ll wait a bit longer.” He glanced to me for confirmation.

“ ‘Til curfew,” I agreed. “Like Mali said.” I looked for Mali in the crowd, but Sam had decreed a low profile for the Eye. “We’ll be there if you need us,” he’d said.

By nine, the ambers of sunset had muted to lavender and blue. Cris was confidently claiming upward of seven thousand, more than we had signatures. The streetlamps glared. The knot of twenty Greens now huddled in the South Tower lobby had turned them up to full. Somebody’s watch beeped, then another.

Mark smoothed his hair back, lifted his chin. “Okay, people. Let’s go.”

Petitions clutched to our chests, we mounted the white steps and approached the lobby doors. All had been turned off but one, where the Greens stood guard.

“What if they won’t let us in?” whispered Songh.

Mark had thought of that, or someone had. He stopped us a few paces from the door, then stepped forward himself, folded his arms, and waited. The Greens conferred behind the glass. One relayed messages from a terminal in the brightly painted tourist-information booth. They all looked young and worried. Their only experience with crowd control was shepherding tardy tourists through the Gates. Finally, one brave boy approached and let the door slide open. “You’re all in violation of curfew as of nine minutes ago.”

Mark raised his hand, signaled behind him without taking his eyes or his reassuring smile off the Green in the doorway. Songh moved up beside him. A SecondGen girl came up out of the crowd. Mark split his stack of petitions and placed them in their hands. “Not all of us.”

“What d’you want?” demanded the Green. He was dark and robust, probably a soccer player.

“We’ve a petition to deliver to Her Honor the Mayor.”

“Give it here and get home. You’re violating curfew.”

Mark smiled. “Are you going to arrest us all?”

The boy frowned. “I’ll take your damn message up to the mayor.”

Mark drew a folded paper out of his breast pocket. He walked up and handed it to the Green. “Here’s the text. The signatures we’ll deliver into her hands only.”

The Green scowled at the paper, and a wordless murmur rolled across the waiting crowd, like the wind Outside must sound, or like the growl and sigh of cargo passing through the Tubes underground. The front ranks shifted forward, mounted the first curved step.

“And we don’t intend to leave,” said Mark, “until we’ve done so.”

“What’s your name, fella?”

Mark reached to either side. Songh and the girl were there with the petitions. Mark took a stack in each hand and raised them high. The crowd surged onto the second step. “Our names are here.”

The Green backed away. The door hissed shut behind him.

Mark let his arms drop. With his back to the thronged plaza, he clenched his eyes shut and drew a ragged breath.

“You’re doing great,” I assured him.

“And that was the easy part,” he muttered.

“Keep this up, we’ll run
you
for mayor.”

He gave me a twisted smile. “If we’re around that long.”

Songh gathered the petitions into his arms. “What do we do now?”

“Play it by ear, Sam said.” Mark turned to face the plaza, standing tall. He looked surprised and gratified when the crowd hushed immediately. “Don’t know how long we’ll have to wait,” he called out. “We might as well relax.”

We hunkered down on the steps to set the example, and the crowd settled to the pavement in front and around us, whispering, comparing notes. Groups formed, people went visiting. Now there was laughter, relieved and quietly jubilant. Mark’s dialogue with the Green was recalled and repeated, passing already into apprentice myth. Even Jane was busy supplying Songh’s version with a more exact wording. Cris chatted up a pretty young citizen who reminded me of Tua, telling her what the Green should have said and done if he’d had half a brain.

Mark stared silently at the white marble between his feet.

I nudged him gently. “I know it’d be better if he were here with you, but this is a very major gesture in his memory.”

“You know what they said?” he murmured.

By now we knew that “they” always meant the Eye.

“They said maybe they could help me find him.”

“Find Bela?” I stared at him. “How?”

“They didn’t say. You know how they are.” Mark raised his eyes, imploring me to give him some reason to believe in this impossibility.

“Gosh,” I said.

Hands grasped Mark’s shoulders, shook him gently. “Good, kid, good, but remember to show yourself a little so they know you’re still here waiting with them.” Sam hunkered down between us. His “respectable” high-collared shirt and slacks made him the picture of a model citizen of Harmony, a recycling-plant manager or maybe the owner of a small boutique. I looked for Cris again. The “citizen” he was talking to probably was Tua.

“Get up near the streetlamps so that blond head of yours’ll catch the light,” Sam advised. “Use that lovely smile. Remember, it’s all about performance.”

“I’m no performer,” said Mark.

“Too late, kid, you’re all they’ve got. Not all elections are official, you know.” Sam grinned at him happily, practically ruffled his hair.
Geared up
, as Mali had said. “Go on, now. Give ’em a little touch of Harry.” He urged Mark to his feet, watching after him possessively.

“You’re really enjoying this,” I observed.

“This is the best,” he agreed. “This is the climb, where hope is your engine and everything’s in front of you, where you watch the potential for power rise like sap out of young people like Mark… and you.”

And eloquence from their organizer. “Sam, I don’t get it. It’s not even your issue.”

“Is it really so mysterious?” He regarded me with a certain distance. “As Mali says—I quote, so as not to sound pretentious—when you’re walking the Stations, you clean up whatever mess you come across. Every situation, even the world itself, has its own set of stations, after all.” He looked away, methodically scanning the crowd as it milled about the plaza, restless with waiting. “And we have this habit of resistance, you see. One you would do well to cultivate.” His eyes came back to me and he smiled, heavy lidded. “Except, of course, where I am concerned.”

I laughed. How could I do otherwise? On the step behind me, Songh squealed, “Here they come!”

The Greens were in motion. Lights flicked on, doors sighed open. Mark hurried up the steps from the plaza. Cris and Yolanda intercepted him. “What now?” Mark hesitated, casting a desperate glance over their shoulders for guidance from Sam.

“Talk to him,” Sam urged. “He needs your support.” I signaled both thumbs up. Songh raced up with the BardClyffe petitions. A group of citizens strode across the lobby, the mayor’s familiar strawberry curls bobbing among them. Mark took the petitions under his arm as Crispin’s impatience grabbed his attention momentarily.

“You’re on, lad,” Sam murmured. When I looked back, he’d gone.

The mayor was a tall, bony woman with a beleaguered, forthright manner and bangs of frizz framing three sides of a long face. The sleeves of her fashionable jumpsuit were bunched up in workmanlike rolls. I was surprised she’d come in person. It was an election year, to be sure, but her own term wasn’t up for another two.

She did not cower behind the glass. She strode through the door, gesturing the sixteen members of the Town Council to follow. Cora Lee, as always made less diminutive by her habitual green silk, came last of all. She offered us no sign of recognition.

The mayor halted in the open halfway to the steps. “Would someone care to tell me what the hell is going on out here?”

Our smaller group fell back as Mark stepped forward. This moment we had actually staged.

Mark offered up his old little-boy smile. When he spoke, I envied his steadiness. “Good evening, Your Honor. On behalf of the apprentice population of Harmony, as well as of many of her citizens, the undersigned request a frank and public discussion of the future of the Outside Adoption Policy, as well as of the future of those already participating in this program.”

He stepped back. One by one, he called the names of the eight villages. With each name, two of us came forward to add petitions to the pile already in his arms. When he held them all, he went to stand in front of the mayor like the people’s messenger boy.

“My, my,” said the mayor. She eyed the stack as if it were an unexpected civic award. “This looks very well organized. Perhaps I should put you to work in my office.”

Several members of the council tittered appreciatively.

“We’d like to know if and when this discussion will take place,” said Mark.

“Well, we’ll certainly look into the matter as soon as we can.” The mayor gestured. An aide hurried forward to take charge of the petitions.

Mark held them tight. “We’d like to know tonight.”

“Attaboy!” whispered Cris.

Now the titterers muttered disapproval. The rest studied our delegation, perhaps noting that it exactly matched theirs in number. A mixed lot, this council. One man, one woman elected from each village according to a complicated formula that required seating fifty percent ex-apprentices. Cora Lee elbowed her way to the front. “Under the circumstances, Your Honor, opening a discussion seems a reasonable request.”

The mayor smiled pleasantly. “Are these children friends of yours, Cora?”

“Some of them are known to me.”

Mark raised the petitions in front of him. “There are six thousand, one hundred and thirty-two signatures here, Your Honor. At least twelve hundred are from citizens.”

“My, my. That many.”

“The issue really should be put on this week’s Town Meeting agenda,” said Cora. Mali had coached her well.

“Outrageous!” complained a neat, balding man to the mayor’s right. SecondGen, Founder Family, I guessed, from the tight expensive cut of his clothes and the equally tight set of his mouth. “This is unprecendented!”

“With all respect, sir,” said Mark, “it is not.”

The mayor narrowed weary eyes at him. “Done your research, eh?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

She jerked her head familiarly at Cora. “I take it Ms. Lee is known to you?”

“She is, Your Honor.”

“Will you and your”—she waved a vague hand toward the plaza—“the rest of them trust Cora Lee to be your advocate in this matter before this council and the citizenry?”

Mark glanced at Cora. “If she is willing, we’d be honored.”

When Cora nodded, the mayor nodded, crossing this item off her never ending mental list. “Then Cora, my dear, we’ll let you carry all this impressive paperwork. Just punishment for opening your mouth, eh?” She fixed Mark with a school principal stare. “And you. Who’re you ‘prenticed to?”

When informed, the mayor looked mildly incredulous. “Theatre, is it? Well, if you’ve any interest in Administration, come see me in the morning. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a full calendar waiting upstairs and we’d all like to be home by a reasonable hour. You’re all on probation for breaking curfew, so hustle on back to your dorms.”

As she was turning away, Mark said loudly, “Excuse me, Your Honor, but when did you say this discussion would take place?”

She stopped and looked back. “I didn’t, did I?”

“No, ma’am. And there are a lot of people here who’d really like to know.”

“Now, Dunya,” muttered the balding man, “There’s no need to be ruled by the rabble.”

That seemed to decide her. The mayor, after all, had been an apprentice once. “Well, I see no point in postponing the inevitable. We’ll take it up at the next meeting, how’s that?”

“This week?” asked Mark.

“This Thursday night.”

His challenge met more fully than he’d expected, Mark looked as if all the possible consequences were racing through his brain at once. “That’s perfect, Your Honor. Would you like to tell them yourself?”

“So I can’t take it back, eh?”

Mark met her tired smile. “I thought, rather, so that you could have all the applause.”

The mayor made the announcement and she did get the applause, and cheering as well, the impulsive, disorganized sort that comes when an outcome is unexpected. Cora Lee twitched her green silk into place and smiled as Mark lowered the thick stack of paper into her arms. He looked relieved to have them out of his hands.

“Now the real fun begins,” Cora murmured.

When she’d followed the mayor back into the South Tower, we milled around a bit. We’d made no plan for celebration.

“Guess we should get back to the Ark,” I murmured. But Cris pounded Mark’s shoulder suddenly and yelled, “We got ’em!” He threw an arm around Mark, an arm around me as if there was nothing awkward between us, and I understood something interesting: as overbearing as Cris could be, he was uninterested in leadership. That sort of responsibility might cramp his freedom of expression as an artist.

But he could celebrate Mark’s leadership and his whooping set Songh dancing and broke the stall. The plaza erupted with cheers and excited babble. Mark’s co-organizers rushed up to mob him with congratulations. He took it with smiling grace but escaped with relief when they moved on to congratulating each other. He grabbed my sleeve. “C’mon. Our part’s done.” The blouse of his coverall was soaked through. “Oh god, I think I hate this.”