Текст книги "UnSouled"

Автор книги: Neal Shusterman

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

54 • Force

The raid comes without warning, like a team of Juvie-rounders in the night. A real special-ops team—nothing like the playacting kids Starkey calls special ops. The invaders tranq the storks guarding the entrance to the mine before they can even raise their weapons and flood into the tunnels, tranq’ing anyone who comes into view. Their directive is simple: Get to Mason Starkey.

The commotion wakes kids deeper in the mine in time for them to scramble for weapons, which they’ve learned to use without hesitation and without fear. They bring several of the intruders down, but there are more behind them—and this force is armed with weapons the storks have never seen: squad machine guns that spray tiny tranq-tipped darts at such an alarming rate, they create an inescapable wall of unconsciousness before them. The layers of protection surrounding Starkey peel away until he’s exposed and vulnerable before the invading force.

Starkey swings his own weapon up, but fumbles with it just long enough for his attackers to grab it and grab him.

The entire operation is over in less than five minutes.

55 • Starkey

It was madness to believe he was untouchable. He knows that now. The storks’ hiding place was well concealed, but the Juvies are skilled at ferreting out the most resistant of AWOLs. Starkey struggles, but it’s no use—and his ruined hand is in such pain from the iron grip of his assailants that the rest of his body drains of strength, just as it had when Bam had grabbed him.

All around him in the tunnels are the unconscious bodies of his precious storks with tiny spots of blood dotting their clothes where the tranq darts embedded in their skin. No one’s fighting anymore. Anyone still conscious is on the run. The storks know they are outarmed and outclassed.

“Go deeper into the mine!” Starkey yells to them. “Deep as you can go. Don’t let them take you alive.”

Although he’s terrified, he holds in his heart the anger that he’s wielded so well and the knowledge that as a martyr he will live forever.

Wind whips the entrance of the mine, but it’s not a natural wind. A helicopter darker than the night descends from above, tumbleweeds exploding out from its landing spot, as if racing to escape its crushing weight. This time Starkey has no trick up his sleeve to escape capture, so he embraces it. I am important enough to be taken by helicopter, he thinks.

The door is opened, and he’s thrown inside, landing on all fours. His left hand feels like it will shatter all over again. Why don’t they tranq me? I can’t bear this. I want it over.

He feels the vertical acceleration of the helicopter lifting off, and when he looks up, he sees within this large industrial helicopter a sight he was not expecting. The space, rather than being filled with steel restraining chairs, is richly appointed. It’s a lavish sanctuary of leather, brass, and polished wood, more like the cabin of a yacht than the inside of a helicopter.

A man in dress slacks and a comfortable sweater sits in one of several plush chairs facing a television screen. He pauses the TV with a remote, swivels to face Starkey—and Starkey wonders, as nausea and disorientation fill him, if maybe he was tranq’d after all, and this is a momentary hallucination before he passes out entirely. But his vision holds; the scene before him is real, and his dizziness is nothing more than the motion of the helicopter.

“Mason Michael Starkey,” says the man. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

He has dark hair, graying at the temples. He speaks crisp English with no hint of any regional accent and diction so perfect, it’s unsettling.

“What’s going on?” Starkey asks, knowing he must, even if he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Not what you think,” the man tells him. “Come sit. We have things to discuss.” He points a remote at the TV, starting a paused recording. It’s a collection of news bytes, all featuring Starkey. “You’re an overnight sensation,” the man says.

Starkey rallies his fortitude and struggles to stand. The helicopter lists slightly starboard, and he has to hold the wall for balance. He moves no closer.

“Who are you?”

“A friend. That’s all you really need to know, isn’t it? As for my name, well, a name is a curious thing. Names can define us, and I do not wish to be defined. At least not in the current context.”

Starkey, however, overheard a name mentioned while he was being captured. In the turmoil, he hadn’t grasped it, but he does remember the first letter. “Your last name,” says Starkey in defiance of the man, “starts with a ‘D.’ ”

The man bristles, but only slightly. He pats the chair beside him. “Please sit, Mason. You never know when we’ll hit some unexpected turbulence.”

Reluctantly Starkey takes a seat. He figures this guy is going to try to offer him a deal—but what kind of deal could it possibly be? They’ve already captured him and the Stork Brigade. Perhaps they think he knows the whereabouts of Connor Lassiter—but even if he did, Starkey’s now a bigger prize for the Juvenile Authority. Why would they even negotiate?

“You’ve created quite a lot of consternation and confusion out there,” the man says. “People hate you; people love you—”

“I don’t care what people think,” Starkey snarls.

“Oh, you most certainly do,” the man says with such condescension, Starkey wants to strike out at him but knows that wouldn’t be wise. “We should all monitor our image in this world. Give it the proper spin to meet our best interests.”

He knows this man is toying with him, but toward what end? Starkey hates this sense of not being in control.

Finally the man turns off the TV and swivels his chair so that he’s fully facing Starkey. “I represent a movement that very much approves of your actions and the apparent madness of your methods because we know it’s not madness at all.”

Again, this is not what Starkey was expecting. “A movement?”

“I’d call it an organization, but just like a name, it would define us far more than would be prudent.”

“You still haven’t told me what you want.”

He smiles broadly. It is neither warm nor comforting. “We want the liberation of harvest camps, and more to the point, the punishment of those who run them. That’s something we’d very much like to see more of.”

This still feels like it must be a trick. “Why?”

“Our movement thrives on chaos because disruption brings about change.”

Starkey suspects he knows what the man is talking about, although he’s almost afraid to say the word aloud. “Clappers?”

He offers that cool smile again. “You’d be amazed how deep the roots of the movement go and how committed people are. We’d like you to join us, if you’re willing.”

Starkey shakes his head. “I will not become a clapper.”

The man actually laughs. “No, we’re not asking you to. What a waste that would be for everyone. We simply want to help you in your efforts in any way we can.”

“And what do you want in return?”

The man turns on the video again. On the screen is a shot looking down the long room of the girls’ dormitory at MoonCrater and the five lifeless workers lynched from ceiling fans. “More iconic images such as you’ve created here,” he says brightly. “Images that will haunt the souls of mankind for generations.”

Starkey considers the scope of the undertaking. The power it will bring for the storks. The notoriety it will bring him. “I can do that.”

“I hoped you would say that. We have a wealth of state-of-the-art weaponry and dedicated, if somewhat fanatical, followers willing to sacrifice themselves to create trigger points of mayhem.” Then he holds out his hand for Starkey to shake—but it’s his left hand held out, not his right. He’s done that intentionally. “Consider us your partner, Mason.” And although Starkey’s left hand is still throbbing with pain, he extends it and lets the man grasp it. He bites back the searing sting, because Starkey knows, when it comes to alliances, it’s the pain that seals the pact.

•   •   •

The helicopter flight is a journey to nowhere. It circles back when the conversation is over and the partnership has been struck, leaving Starkey off where he was picked up, near the entrance to the mine.

There is a heightened sense of reality to everything around Starkey now. A sense that he’s not so much walking but levitating a fraction of an inch above the ground. As he steps into the cavelike entrance of the mine, everything around him seems to be moving differently—not so much in slow motion, but a sort of lateral peeling, as if the world is parting for his presence. Kids in the mine are beginning to regain consciousness. The fast-acting tranq darts were also short-lived, for the purpose was not to catch the storks but to incapacitate them long enough to pull Starkey out for his summit meeting.

Kids who managed to avoid the darts are doing their best to revive the others. When they see Starkey, they stand in awe. It must be what the kids at Happy Jack felt when they saw Connor Lassiter walking out of the Chop Shop alive.

“He escaped!” they yell, relaying the good news down into the deeper tunnels of the mine. “Starkey escaped!”

Jeevan comes up to him. “What happened?” he asks. “How did you get away? Why didn’t they take us?”

“No one’s taking us anywhere,” Starkey tells him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do—but it can wait until morning.” He orders the unconscious to be covered with blankets and moves through the mine, calming fears and telling everyone to get a good night’s rest. “We have exciting days ahead.”

“Where did they take you?” a wide-eyed stork asks.

“Into the sky,” Starkey tells him. “And we have friends in very high places.”

56 • Hayden

Supplies come like manna from the heavens. The food is far superior to anything they’ve been subsisting on. Vacuum-packed roasts that need no refrigeration. Vegetables in such quantities they don’t need to ration. Hayden finds his inventory job becomes a full-time endeavor. But it’s the other things that these new “partners” bring that is deeply disturbing to Hayden. There are weapons coming in that are like nothing Hayden’s ever seen. Things like bazookas and what looks like handheld missile launchers that are heavier than the kids who are supposed to wield them. Starkey has said nothing about who these new benefactors are, and Hayden wonders who would be insane enough to arm angry teenagers with weapons that were clearly meant for armies. More terrifying, though, is how Starkey might use them.

Starkey doesn’t bother with Hayden anymore. As far as Starkey is concerned, Hayden’s a nonentity, too small to be concerned with but too dangerous to let go.

“Why haven’t you escaped yet?” Bam asks Hayden. “There were so many times you could have slipped away from that one inept guard.”

“And leave all you fine people?” Hayden says. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The fact is, as much as he wants to bolt from this nightmare and save himself, he can’t do it knowing that he’s leaving all these kids to burn in the furnace of Starkey’s ego. Yes, many of them worship the ground Starkey walks on, but only because they desperately need a hero. Hayden has no desire to be a hero. He just wants to survive and spread some of that survival around.

As Hayden feared, Starkey picks the Stork Brigade’s next target quickly. Jeevan has broken down and used his skills to get through the firewalls. Now they have all the information they need for an attack. This time it won’t be a subtle, secret attack, or even a mad dash at the gate. The storks will be going in with an iron fist. Hayden considers himself smart, crafty even, but he can’t figure out a way to stop Starkey short of putting a bullet in his head, which Hayden just can’t do.

Bam had asked Hayden to bend her ear and tell her what he thinks, as well as what he knows—and so as Starkey prepares his storks for the next attack, Hayden takes Bam to the computer room and shows her some of the things he’s been finding out there in the world.

He begins to pull up one political advertisement after another. “There have been more and more of these online and on TV. They’re blitzing the airwaves.” He shows her impassioned calls to rescind the Cap-17 law and allow older teens to be unwound again.

There are advertisements about measures, propositions, and initiatives on the ballots calling for the mandatory unwinding of teenaged “undesirables,” the further downsizing of state orphanages through unwinding, state bonds to build more harvest camps, and more.

Bam dismisses it. “So what? There are always a ton of those ads out there. There’s nothing new about that.”

“Yes, but look at this.” He shows her a graph depicting the frequency the ads have been appearing. “Look how the ads started to flood the airwaves right after the Cold Springs liberation—and then they almost doubled after MoonCrater.” Hayden takes a moment to look around to make sure they’re unobserved but speaks in a whisper anyway. “Everything the Stork Brigade does might be freeing kids from harvest camps, but people out there are getting scared, Bam—and all of these laws that didn’t have a hope in hell of passing a few months ago are now gaining more and more support. Starkey wants a war, right? But as soon as people see it as war, they’ll have to choose sides, and the more fear there is, the more people lean toward the side of the Juvenile Authority. Which means that if it turns into a war . . . we lose.”

Hayden can already imagine the results. Martial law would be declared against juveniles, just as it had during the teen uprising. Kids will be dragged from their homes and unwound for the slightest infractions, and the public will allow it to happen, out of fear.

“For every harvest camp we bring down, two more will pop up in its place.” He leans close to her, trying to drive the point home. “Starkey’s not stopping unwinding, Bam. All he’s doing is making sure it never, ever ends!”

He can see by the pale look on Bam’s face that she’s finally getting it. He continues. “These people funding Starkey’s war may want to mess with the system, but that kind of messing will only make the system stronger and give the Juvenile Authority more power.”

Then Bam says something that Hayden hasn’t even considered. “What if that’s what they want? What if the people funding Starkey want the Juvies to have more power?”

And Hayden shivers, because he realizes Bam may have just found a vein in this old mine that leads right to the mother lode.

57 • Lev

All is peaceful. All is calm. The oasis of the Arápache Rez hides the reality of what’s going on beyond its gates and walls. Calls to rescind Cap-17 and raise the legal age of unwinding back to eighteen and possibly beyond. Removing the brains of convicted criminals and unwinding the rest of their bodies. Allowing people to voluntarily submit themselves to unwinding for cash. It’s all looming on the horizon, and any or all of it might come to pass, and worse, if it’s not stopped. Like Connor, he knows he must do something.

“Throw a stone in a river, and it just sinks to the bottom,” Elina tells him, “Put a boulder in its path and the river just flows around. What happens will happen, no matter what you do.”

Elina has many fine qualities, but her passive, fatalistic view of the world is not one of them. Unfortunately, too many people on the rez share it.

“Enough boulders builds a dam,” Lev counters.

Elina opens her mouth to deliver another metaphoric salvo—perhaps about how dams burst, causing floods worse than a river—but she thinks better of it and instead says, “Have some breakfast; you’ll be less cranky.”

Lev complies, munching down on yam cakes that, according to Elina, used to be served with agave syrup, but since the agave extinction, they’ve had to make due with maple. Lev can’t deny that part of his choice to stay here was to be sheltered from the world, among people whom he genuinely cares for, and genuinely care for him, but there was a larger purpose for it.

There’s an expression among ChanceFolk. “As go the Arápache, so go the nations.” As the most financially successful, and arguably the most politically important ChanceFolk tribe, policy that’s put in place here often spreads to other tribes. While the Arápache are still the most isolationist, instituting borders that require passports, many other tribes—particularly the ones that don’t rely on tourism—have made their territory harder to access as well, taking their lead from the Arápache. On the outside, most people have no idea how many boulders are already in the river. If Lev can find a way to pull those boulders together, the course of history may very well change.

The problem is Wil Tashi’ne and what happened the first time Lev was here.

Like Una, the Arápache see Lev as a harbinger of doom. A victim of his own society perhaps, but like a bearer of the plague, he brings to them a taste of things they’d rather not know about. If he’s going to have any sway here, he’s going to have to win them over.

•   •   •

On Saturday he tells the Tashi’nes he’s going into town.

“There’s a band playing in Héétee Park,” he tells them. “I’d like to hear them.”

“Do you think it’s wise to be so visible?” Chal asks him. “The council is happy to look the other way as long as you keep a low profile, but the more visible you are, the more likely they are to take issue with your presence.”

“I can’t hide forever,” he tells him. He keeps to himself what he’s really planning.

Although Kele begs to come, he’s been grounded for cursing in Arápache—something he thought he could get away with, but didn’t. A good thing too. The last thing Lev wants is to put Kele in the middle of this. He needs to go alone.

•   •   •

The concert has already started when Lev arrives. There are maybe two hundred people spread out on blankets and lawn chairs picnicking and enjoying the warm August day. The band is good. They play a curious mix of traditional native music, pop, and oldies. Something for everyone.

Lev lingers, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, but he sees the occasional person spot him and whisper to the person beside them. Well, they’ll have plenty more to gossip about in a few minutes.

Lev makes his way toward the front, and as soon as the band finishes their first set, he pulls two pieces of paper from his pocket and climbs to the stage. He pulls the lead singer’s microphone down a few inches so he can speak without it blocking his face.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Excuse me, can I have your attention!” He’s startled by how loud and resonant his voice sounds. “My name is Levi Jedediah Garrity—but you probably know me as Lev Calder. I was a Mahpee taken in by the Tashi’ne family.”

“We know who you are,” someone shouts dismissively from the audience. “Now get off the stage.”

A smattering of agreement—some derisive laughter. He ignores it all. “I was there when Wil Tashi’ne offered himself to parts pirates in exchange for more than a dozen lives—including mine. Although one of the parts pirates died there, the two who lived took Wil, sold him to be unwound, and got away.”

“Yeah, tells us something we don’t know,” yells another heckler.

“I plan to,” Lev says. “Because I’ve found out their names, and I know where to find them.”

Then he holds out the two pieces of paper—each one featuring an enlarged image of a parts pirate. One with a missing ear, the other with a face like a goat.

Suddenly the entire crowd is silent.

“Chandler Hennessey and Morton Fretwell. They hunted AWOLs for a while in Denver, but now they’re trolling Minneapolis.” Then he puts the pictures down and gets as close to the microphone as he can. “I’m going to track them down and bring them back here to face justice.” And then, in perfect Arápache:

“Who will help me?”

The silence continues.

“I said, who will help me?”

For a long moment, Lev thinks no one will come forward, but then he hears a single voice—a woman’s voice—from the back of the crowd.

“I will,” she says in Arápache.

It’s Una. Lev hadn’t even seen her here. He’s both grateful and troubled. He was hoping to put together a good old-fashioned posse. If it’s just the two of them, what chance do they have of bringing in these pirates? What chance do they have of even surviving the attempt?

As Una moves through the crowd toward the stage, someone shouts, “C’mon! Clap for the clapper!”

People begin applauding. It starts slow, but it builds until the crowd is cheering by the time Una reaches the stage. Now any doubts he had are gone. His bid to win over the Arápache people has begun—and if he succeeds, he knows he’ll be able to pull them into the battle against unwinding. He’ll finally have his dam!

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, little brother?” Una asks him over the cheering crowd.

Lev smiles at her. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”