The Scorpion Rules (9 page)

Anyone who thinks goats are less destructive than lions on fire does not know goats well.

In any case. We inside the dairy shed knew nothing of it until the shouting started. It turned out the nanny goats had nosed the gate open and were heading for the melon patch. Now, among the Children of Peace, melons are almost everyone's favorite, because of the way they have to be eaten as fast as they come in. There is no rationing of sweetness in melon season. So everyone who was out was keen to protect the patch. They were shouting and shooing. The cohort of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, who'd been waging war with the quackweed in the newly planted kale beds, picked up their hoes and headed over at the quick march, as orderly as a Roman legion.

Unfortunately for the might of Rome, it was at that point that Bonnie Prince Charlie, the school's lone and indescribably smelly billy goat, up in his pen by the induction spire, got it into his head to join his harem.

Even Rome never conquered Scotland, and there is no stopping Charlie when he's motivated. The nannies were out, the melons were waiting, people were shouting—what was a billy to do? He butted at the old gate until it splintered, and then he scrambled over the wreck and loped down the hill toward us.

And then—

It was hard to keep track. The billy goat came down like a wolf on the fold. Elián dashed sideways to the melon patch to cut him off. He scooped up a green watermelon that must have weighed as much as a cannon ball, hoisted it over his head, and, with a wild rebel yell, threw it at Bonnie Prince Charlie. The projectile had deadly accuracy and speeds approaching escape velocity. It hit Charlie between the eyes. The goat made a rude
blart
, paused to consider the matter, and then keeled over.

Cheers erupted. One of the fourteen-year-olds threw an overripe cantaloupe at a nanny goat. There was an orange splat.

At that point things started to get out of hand.

Someone—several someones—began throwing melons at the nannies. Charlie staggered to his feet, and a dozen more melons, two zucchini, and a tomato converged on him.

The tomato, it turned out, was from Elián. He'd moved through the melons and was standing in the patchy shade of the tomato trellises, where late-season tomatoes were falling from the vines faster than we could harvest them. I saw him pick one up, juices dripping down his white sleeves. I saw him aim it at me. I saw him throw.

If I had pigtails, he'd probably pull them,
I thought, instead of ducking. The tomato splatted into my ear.

There came, then, a moment like a hinge.

It was not that a hush fell. There was plenty of chaos, and plenty of noise from the goats. Elián himself was holding on to one of the trellis uprights, bent over with what I hoped was laughter, and not pain. Nevertheless I was aware of eyes on me. Aware, though I hardly had time to think it, that I was being asked by my colleagues to make a decision.

Da-Xia caught my eye—the goddess of the mountain, spreading joy and destruction, was hefting a zucchini. She threw it at me. I threw up a hand, shouting, “Xie!” And the zucchini hit my hand and broke into pieces, which rained down all over me. By instinct I grabbed a hunk and threw it back at her.

And with that, the famous dignity of the Children of Peace broke like a gate before goats. I chucked a bit of zucchini at Elián. It hit him between the eyes, and I laughed and laughed.

Is there any point in describing a food fight? We fought, using food. It was like the War Storms: intense small battles that deteriorated into hand-to-hand grappling, or spread into massive strategic engagements that took up half our population, most of our ammunition, and all of our dignity. I myself led the assault on the dairy, a doomed glory of a military set piece that would have done my Stuart ancestors proud. After all, they are more famous for losing battles than winning them.

In the end, though, none of it mattered. As they had during the War Storms, the machine intelligences decided it was time to save us from ourselves. The proctors came out.

We turned on them, pitching fruit and stones at them as if playing at pins. Someone even bowled over the big scorpion proctor with a butternut squash.

But the fun had gone out of things. A few shocks, distributed at random; the knowledge that we were watched; the fact that we had been raised better (or if not better, at least differently)—these overcame us. The Children of Peace could not easily be silly, and our silliness fell apart.

The evening found us bruised and quiet, spread out in groups or pairs on the spattered grass, eating our former ammunition—chunks of watermelon and muskmelon warmed by the bronze sun. Even this was unlike us—unstructured, unrationed eating, outdoors. But we could not waste so much food. We scattered up and down the garden terraces; we lay in the goat-cropped grass and were happy.

For my part I claimed one of the best places in the Precepture—leaning up against the wall of the toolshed, hidden from the Panopticon's view. The grass there was less scorched. It was a sweeter, fresher place, a little oasis with a scent of wild clover. I was sitting cross-legged by myself when Elián came and flopped down beside me. He helped himself to one of the broken melons I'd gathered, and reclined on one elbow to eat it, like a Roman emperor. “Thanks,” he said.

“There's plenty—though one might ask.”

“Nah, I mean for letting that happen.” He grinned up from his cantaloupe. “It's been a while since I had that much fun.” Indeed he looked like a different person. His eyes were not guarded but gold-brown; his body was not hunched but held ready.

“I think a food fight falls under the heading of ‘unavoidable low-intensity conflict,' ” I said, then annotated: “That's an allusion. From the Utterances. ‘There's a certain level of unavoidable low-intensity conflict about which I simply can't be bothered.' ”

“ ‘But don't bloody push it,' ” said Elián, startling me by quoting the rest of the verse. My surprise must have shown, because Elián looked at me sourly. “I'm not actually an idiot, you know. If I got stuck on a desert island, my one book would definitely be
Why I Stuck You on This Desert Island, Signed, Your Insane Robot Overlord
. Of course I read Talis's damn book.”

Our eyes caught each other's then, braced, fearful—but the proctors didn't shock him. They might technically have been intelligent, but they weren't sentient: they weren't people. They were bad with sarcasm.

I let out my breath. “I don't think it's Talis's book, exactly. He's merely quotable.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, taking a big bite of melon. “For sure ‘quotable' is the word that springs to mind.”

I tried again: “I only meant, you don't have to thank me. The food fight—you started it.”

“The
goat
started it,” he said. “But you, Greta—you could have stopped it.”

“I don't know about that. It seemed to have quite a bit of momentum.”

“Seriously?” Elián wiped the melon juice off his chin with the back of his hand. “You study power and you don't know who's got it around here? Let me clue you in, Princess. It's you.”

And
there
was the electric shock. After getting away with the crack about Talis, Elián must have lowered his guard, because the pain surprised him. He jerked, his elbow slipped, and he fell backward. I dropped my watermelon and grabbed him in time to keep him from braining himself on a stone. I had no leverage to hold him, though. I laid him out on his back. “Elián?”

He didn't answer me. He let his head roll farther back, pointing his chin at the sky, baring his throat, letting his eyes drift closed, black lashes tangled. If the fetal position had an opposite, here it was. He was defenseless, utterly. I could see the pulse in the soft places of his throat.

It made something wring, twist like a damp cloth deep inside me.

All my life I had been so careful, so protected, so
braced
, and here he was, open and . . . and . . .

I could not think what the “and” was. For once, it was not “foolish.”

“Well, fiddle,” he said. “Couldn't they have let that last?”

Another twist inside me, because I agreed. I agreed with him.

“Was it you, who bowled down the big proctor?” I said. “I—I hope it was you.”

Elián didn't answer. Perhaps he did not understand how much it meant for me to say that, to side with disorder. He picked up a piece of melon and lifted it in both hands, studying its peaks and watersheds. “All this fuss over me.” He rolled his head farther back and gave me an upside-down smile. “I swear, back home I was nobody.”

“Come now. Wilma Armenteros's grandson, a nobody? The woman is a legend in sensible shoes.”

“Yeah, but my mom kept me way clear of all that. I stuck pretty close to
nobody
.”

“And you were no trouble to anyone, I'm sure.” I scooted around so he wouldn't have to hurt his neck to talk to me.

“Weeeeell,” he drawled, drawing it out and rolling open a sly smile to match. “Maybe a spot of trouble. Here and there.”

“Here and there,” I said, trying for prim, and missing it. I sat looking down at him.

He rested the melon on his belly and examined me. His eyes were guarded again, and I knew—just
knew
—that he was about to do something deeply inadvisable. “What about you? You ever . . . run off? Get into trouble?”

“Rarely.” I hit prim that time. I hit it squarely.

“Would you?”

“Would I what?”

His eyes were serious. Even frightened. But his voice came out sweet as peaches. “Run off with me.”

“Elián, away from this place I am a duchess. Any outing we planned would involve protocol officers.”

He laughed—a fake laugh?—and glanced sideways.

He was checking the sight lines.

I knew those lines far better than he did. I knew that the Panopticon was hidden behind the wall of the shed. It could not see our faces. I did not need to turn and look to be sure, and yet, out of pure nerves, I turned and did just that. Because I suddenly knew what Elián was up to. He wasn't flirting with me at all. Or maybe he was, but also, this talk of running away . . .

He had learned to speak in Precepture code. He was speaking in it now. And he was proposing an escape.

The Panopticon couldn't see him, couldn't read his lips. The little spiders in his clothes could hear him, but they couldn't peel away his layers of meaning.

“We've got that one date coming up, though,” he said. “With a . . . protocol officer.”

With a Swan Rider. With sick tightness I remembered her: a gentle white woman with a chickadee cap of dark hair. She would walk into our classroom. She would say both our names. . . .

“When?” I said—because this was what I'd wondered from the first instant I'd seen him. Did he know he was going to die, or only guess it? Did he know
when
?

The word had torn out of me with too much raw power. I saw a proctor in the squash bed swivel round and scan us. I smiled politely for it, for Elián, as if flattered. My cheeks trembled in the smile. “We do,” I said. “We have a date.”

“It's coming up fast, you know.”

“Is it?”

Did he know?

My hands were sticky with watermelon juice. I rubbed them against the rough linen of my work pants.

Elián reached up and took one of my wrists, stopping the motion, looking me up and down. I'm sure he was trying for
as a man looks at a woman
, but it came off rather more
as an engineer looks at a bridge pylon
. How much fear would it take for Elián's flirt to go wrong like that? A lot, I thought.

Terrified. He's terrified.

“So, what d'ya think?” he said. “Up for . . . a spot of trouble?”

Escape. Will you come with me?

I took a breath and said: “No.”

He looked blankly shocked, even betrayed.

But surely he must realize—the Preceptures were inescapable. We were isolated, outgunned, overwhelmed. Surely he must realize what happened to people who challenged Talis.

“No,” I said. “Elián, we can't. You can't.”

“No?” he said, in a voice more stones than peaches. “Just watch me.”

Instead of answering I tightened my hand around his. He squeezed back. And then—awkwardly, because of our joined hands—I lowered myself to lie down in the clover next to him.

We lay there as evening folded in around us.

We did not speak.

I
t is perhaps a strange thing that the children of kings and presidents should concern themselves with the sex lives of a herd of milch goats, but come the end of August, it was time to do just that.

If one had to sum up the Precepture in two words, they might be “hands on.” (One might also consider “academic rigor,” or perhaps “ritual murder.”) The whole world is more hands-on than once it was. On the whole, we humans have learned the hard way that we must become a permanent culture, a zero-carbon culture, and live on the earth without damaging it. (
About time, people,
said the Utterances.
I can't save the world by myself, you know.
) Even so, things do vary by class. My royal cousins—those little countesses and wee marquesses in their royal pleats and tartans—probably can't put up their own pickles.