The Refuge Song (23 page)

“I know,” I said. “I'm not saying they were good people. I'm just try
ing to show you what happened—how things went wrong down there. More and more of them started to go mad, I think, from being underground for so long. Listen:

Sector F now sealed, to contain those patients whose instability can no longer be managed, and who presented an acute security risk to the rest of the Ark population. The quadrant has been stripped of all weapons, but the Interim Govt. has generously outfitted the quadrant with food, and the water supplies remain connected. Electricity (excluding ventilation) has been disconnected, to prioritize the needs of the rest of the population.

Surface release was considered but was not a viable option, given security concerns should they interact with Topside survivors.

All doors and hatches have been permanently sealed. Given the acute nature of their condition, it is not expected that their containment will be prolonged.

“They hide everything in this language, don't they,” I said. ­“
Residents
—prisoners, that's what they mean.
Not expected that their
containment will be prolonged
. They'll all be dead soon, that means—they were expecting the mad ones to kill themselves, or one another.”

“You think they're the only ones who hide stuff behind soft language?” Piper said. “They still do it today, the Alphas. Think of the r
efuges
.”

It's not just the Alphas, I thought, remembering all the times I'd taken shelter in the gap between word and thing. I'd done it when I told Piper and Zoe about Kip's death.
He's gone
, I'd said
.
Those words contained nothing of the truth of that moment, or of his death. They were clean, neat. There'd been nothing neat about how he'd lain on the
concrete floor, his body broken as irrevocably as an egg. Words were bloodless symbols we relied on to keep the world at bay. When Simon's scouts had ridden out to muster troops for the battle at New Hobart, they would have carried a message: battle; freedom; uprising. Nothing about swords swiping at guts, or piles of bodies half-charred in the snow.

“We're nothing like the Ark people,” Zoe said. “They buried these people alive, the ones they locked in Section F. Either they ripped one another to pieces, or they starved, if they survived long enough.”

“They were all buried alive,” I said. “Not just the mad ones who they locked up. Everyone in the Ark, in the end: trapped underground. Running out of light, then food.”

“It still would have been better than being on the surface,” Piper said. “The survivors there didn't just have the blast to cope with. They had the Long Winter, and all the bleak years afterward.”

He was right. And because there was no Ark for those people, and no records, we would never know what it was like for them, in those first decades on the surface. Over the years, I'd heard bards sing a handful of songs of the Long Winter. They'd sung of radiation that scrambled babies in the womb. There were stories of infants born without nostrils or a mouth, unable to breathe, meeting their death at the moment of their birth. Children who were melted masses of flesh and half-formed bones. The body as a puzzle that couldn't be solved. But we would never know the full horror of that time. Even the stories that came down to us were as twisted as the babies who'd been born in those years.

“Why did they stay down in the Ark so long?” Simon said. “More than fifty years, if those dates are right. After a few decades the radiation wasn't so bad. Their own reports say so. I'm not saying it was a picnic up here, but things were growing again. The survivors were managing to breed. Those people could've come out.”

“It wasn't the world on the surface they were frightened of,” said Piper. “It wasn't even the radiation. It was us.” He looked at his own left shoulder, from which no arm grew. “You've heard what the Alphas call us, and they're used to us.”

I'd heard the catcalls, even within the walls of New Hobart in the last few weeks. They were familiar to any Omega:
Freak. Dead end
.

“You read it yourself,” Piper went on. “You've seen how the people in the Ark argued about whether it's even worth fixing the twinning. They thought a race of people with mutations, people like us, might not be worth saving. Might be worse than the whole race dying out. That's why they stayed down there. They were hiding from us,” he said. “And from the risk of becoming like us.”

chapter 27

I returned to the pile of papers covered by Professor Heaton's distinctive scrawl.

“Not everyone in the Ark had given up on the surface survivors. Hea­ton kept writing about the untwinning, and arguing for it. He wasn't the only one.” I showed them the appeal written in Year 20, which made it clear that there was no prospect of the Ark residents continuing to breed and survive underground, and that at least some of them wanted to help the Topside survivors.

“This man,” Zoe said. “Professor. He wrote—”

“That's not his name. Lots of the people in the Ark are professors. It's some kind of title—like Councilor, I suppose. He's Professor Heaton.”

“And he wrote all this?” she gestured at the masses of paper bearing his crabbed handwriting.

“Yes.”

I guided them through my rough classification system. A big bun
dle of the papers in Joe's trunk had been Professor Heaton's. Another large collection was nothing but diagrams, blue lines intricately inked, to form shapes and designs that I could not decipher. The largest grouping of papers, though, contained only numbers: column after column, zeroes in rows like blind eyes staring back at me. A few of the columns were labeled, but the words meant nothing to me:
Curie (Ci); Roentgen (R); Radiation Absorbed Dose (RAD)
. I remembered how the Confessor had spoken about the machines, using words that I'd never heard before.
Generators. Algorithms
. She had managed to become fluent in the language of the machines. To the rest of us, these words were just strings of letters.

“These don't tell us anything,” Piper said, throwing down another page of impenetrable numbers.

“They do,” I said. “They confirm that the people in the Ark could do things that we can't. We know they were capable of preventing the twinning, even if they chose not to do it. If we could find the Ark, piece together more information, and get our best people working on this, we could do it. It could take years and years. Generations, maybe. But think of what Zach and the Council have been able to do, with the tanks.”

“You think that's something to aspire to?” The Ringmaster's words were like a whip, snapping at the air between us.

“You're deliberately misinterpreting me,” I said. “You know what I meant. The tanks are hellish—but they show that we can do things with machines that we couldn't even imagine.”

“We don't need to imagine it,” said Piper. “We have to live with it.”

“The machines have done terrible things,” I said, my voice rising. “But we've lived in fear of them for so long, we haven't considered the possibility that they could also do amazing things.”

“You're sounding more and more like your brother,” the Ringmaster said.

“You know me better than that,” I said. “The technology from the Ark can fix the twinning. If we find it, then we could change everything.”

“But can we? Find it, I mean,” Piper said. “None of this counts for anything if we can't do that. If you're right, and the Council's found it, then your brother's probably been there. He could be there now, for all we know. Can't that help to lead you there?”

I exhaled heavily. “Not so far. I've looked and looked, and there's nothing like a map, or even the names of any locations. And I've tried and tried to feel it.”

They were all watching me.

“You found your way to the island—even from hundreds of miles away,” the Ringmaster said.

“I know,” I snapped. “But I'm not a machine. I'd been hearing about the island all my life, and dreaming about it for years. I'd never even imagined this Ark.”

There had been moments, during those long days and nights among the papers, that I'd thought I could start to feel something—some kind of pull toward the Ark. But to my erratic seer visions, the Ark was nothing more than a scent carried to me on the wind—enough to make me raise my head and sniff, but not enough to draw me in a specific direction. “Being a seer doesn't work the way you want it to,” I said to the Ringmaster. “It never has. Do you think, if I could control it, I'd be waking up screaming every day from the visions of the blast?”

I was grateful when Zoe changed the subject. “Xander said he'd heard noises in the Ark. You haven't found anything to suggest that those people could have bred and survived?”

I shook my head. “Not for four hundred years, down there.” The last document that I'd found was dated Year 58. By then, things were already falling apart. In whole sections of the Ark the Electric had broken. They were living in darkness and damp. Almost all of them were old,
and the madness had been spreading like the damp. “They couldn't have clung on much longer. Xander said it used to feel quiet, and now that's changed.
People rattling the bones
. The original Ark dwellers didn't survive. If Xander says he can feel people again in the Ark, it's more proof that the Council's found it.”

“Then why haven't they acted on it?” Simon said. “If the Council knows it's possible to end the twinning, and probably know how, why aren't they doing it? They hate being bonded to us, even more than we do to them. They tried experiments and breeding programs for decades—Sally and the other infiltrators confirmed that, when they were working inside the Council. And that was decades ago. Why try so hard to end it, for so long, and then not act on the solution, if they discovered it?”

“Because the Ark hasn't given them the perfect solution they were after,” I said, gesturing at the papers. “Even assuming that they were able to replicate what the people in the Ark could do, that doesn't end the mutations—only the twinning. Everyone would have mutations, not just Omegas. They mightn't be as severe as the mutations we have now, but there'd be no flawless Alphas, either.”

“You really think they'd rather be bound to Omegas, than see all their children with mutations?” Piper said. Next to him, Zoe's arms were folded across her chest.

“That's not the choice they have to make anymore,” I said. “The tanks have changed everything. Now, they think they have a different choice. They can end the twinning, and everyone has to bear the burden of the mutations. Or keep the fatal bond, and tank the Omegas, so they have the best of both worlds. All the benefits of their strong, perfect Alpha bodies, risk-free, their Omega twins safely tanked.”

Piper exhaled heavily. “They're not so different from the Ark people, are they,” he said. “All those centuries ago, they had the chance to end the twinning, and they didn't take it, either.”

Zoe's eyes were hard. “I don't feel bad that they all died down there, in the rathole they'd created.”

“Not all of them.” I lifted one more document. It was one of the crosshatched papers. The handwritten words were slotted in the gaps between printed rows of numbers, headed
Radiation readings: Surface Expedition 11.

“This is the last thing I could find of Heaton's. It doesn't have his name, but it's his writing, I'm sure.”

I read it out aloud.

Yr. 52, July 19.

Attn: Interim Government

Due to your continued failure to assist survivors Topside, despite repeated requests (both from me, and from others who have undertaken the increasingly rare surface expeditions), my role in the Ark is no longer reconcilable with either the oath I took as a doctor, or my personal conscience. In accepting a position in the Ark, I believed I was becoming part of a historic project necessary for the survival of our species. However, given the refusal of the government to assist those left Topside, let alone to implement the treatment that could stop the twinning, to remain in the Ark would be an act of selfishness. Now that surface expeditions have effectively been discontinued, there is no longer even any pretense that the Ark exists for the broader benefit of those

I therefore resign my post with immediate effect. By the time you find this, I will have left the Ark. I do not expect to survive long, Topside. I entered the Ark as a young man and now I am old, and in poor health. But I hope nevertheless to be of some use to those survivors I encounter in the time I have remaining.

I have no illusions that I will be much missed in the Ark. In recent years I have been increasingly ostracized, and have been characterized as an “agitator” or “dissident,” and even had my mental health impugned, as a result of my objections
to the continued prioritization of the Pandora Project, when those resources could better be used to ease the suffering of the Topside population, and to  . . .

Heaton's words disappeared into a blur of copper-green mold. The springs of the bed squeaked as I bent and placed the page carefully back on the pile.

“He was one person,” Zoe said. “One old man, who finally left. How much could he really have helped them, on the surface?”

“Perhaps not much,” I said. “But I'm glad he tried, at least. I wish I knew what had happened to him.”

There was no time to indulge in speculation. Piper was already on his knees and beginning to rifle through the papers laid out near him. “This
Pandora Project
comes up again and again,” he said. “Aren't there any more details about it?”

I shook my head. “Only the mentions that I've already shown you. It comes up often enough to show that it was important to them. Even when things were falling apart, they were protecting it, keeping it going.”

“Then that's what we need to find,” Piper said.

Ω

For the rest of the day, and well into the night, the four of them worked their way through the papers that I'd sorted. I left them to it, and helped Elsa strip away a patch on the courtyard wall, where fire had charred the plaster. After the weeks of hunching over the documents, squatting on the floor of the dormitory, it felt good to throw myself into more
physical work again. Although it left me with plaster dust in my hair, and hands grayed with dirt, it was a cleaner kind of work than grubbing through the papers of the long dead.

It was dark when I returned to the dormitory. Zoe and Simon had gone, and Piper was by the window, bundling together a small pile of papers to take with him. The Ringmaster was alone at the far end of the dormitory. He stood when I entered.

“I wanted to show you this, before I go,” he said.

He passed me a sheet that he had put aside. I scanned it briefly. It was one of the technical reports that I'd read already, and stacked alongside the others. Column after column of numbers, as meaningless to me as the diagrams.

“You missed something.” He pointed to the bottom half of the sheet, where the mildew was so thick that the paper wore a layer of fuzz. “There's a handwritten bit. You can hardly make it out, but it's there.”

I bridled. “Have you been waiting here, just to give me a hard time because I missed something? You've seen how many papers I've had to wade through.”

“I'm not trying to criticize you,” he said. “I thought you'd want to see this.”

I took the sheet from him and read the pale heading of the handwritten section:
Disciplinary Hearings (Yr. 52, Sept. 10).

“I did read this,” I said. “There's a few pages like that—it's the list of their crimes and punishments. Like the record of hearings before a Councilman.”

Underneath the heading was a list of names, annotated.

Upcher, J.

Theft of supplies from mess hall. Convicted. Restricted rations, 6 months; relocated to Section D, where extended electrical curfew is in effect.

Hawker, R.

Using electricity in curfew hours. Convicted. Restricted rations, 3 months.

Anderson, H.

Manslaughter. Acquitted. Convicted of lesser charge: Excessive use of force. Transferred to unarmed duties, 6 months.

I looked up at him. “I told you—I read these already.”

He shook his head. “Look more closely.” He pointed to the margin and turned the page so that it was horizontal. Then I saw it, scrawled sideways in the margin, the faded ink hard to differentiate from the mildew. It was barely visible, and I had to hold the paper close to the lamp to make it out.

Given that any unauthorized departures pose a clear security threat to the entire Ark, Anderson's actions were found to fall within his remit as security officer. However, he has been sanctioned for shooting to kill, without making any other attempt to subdue Heaton when he encountered H. attempting to enter the principal ventilation shaft. The disciplinary committee accepted that Anderson had verbally warned H., but it was found that . . .

The rest was illegible.

“Heaton never got out of the Ark,” the Ringmaster said, taking back the page. “We should've known they'd try to stop him. He knew the location; he knew how to get in and out. They must have been terrified that he'd unleash a torrent of survivors from Topside.”

“You sound like you agree with what they did. Killing him.”

“I never said that. But I can see what they were thinking.” He moved toward the door. “Anyway, I thought you'd want to see it.”

“I wish you hadn't shown me,” I called after him.

He turned in the doorway. “Even if he'd made it out of the Ark alive—what do you think would have happened to him, on the surface? You've seen the reports. It was a wasteland. The survivors were barely clinging on. Heaton wouldn't have survived up there. He was old, already. He'd have gotten sick, or starved. At least this way he probably had a quicker death. Their weapons would have been efficient.”

He discussed death so casually. It was simply part of his vocabulary, as everyday as patrols or weather.

“I know he probably wouldn't have survived up here,” I said. “The thing is, he knew that, too. And he went anyway.” I was thinking of what Piper had said to me before the battle, when we thought we could not win.
That's
hope
, he'd said.