Текст книги "UnWholly"
Автор книги: Neal Shusterman
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
34 • Lev
Lev doesn’t pay much attention to the driver. He’s just glad to be out of the storm and to have transportation away from his gilded cage. He has lied to Miracolina. He has no intention of letting her turn herself in to the Juvenile Authority. He knows he might not be able to stop her, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try.
A gust of wind almost pushes the van off the road as they drive, and the driver fights it with both hands on the wheel. “Some storm, huh?” The man says as he glances at Lev in the rearview mirror. Lev averts his gaze. The last thing he wants is to be recognized as “that clapper kid.”
“Comfy back there?” the man asks. He hasn’t asked them where they’re headed yet. Lev runs though his mind the names of towns he knows in the area for when the question is inevitably asked.
Outside the rain slices at the windshield at such a violent angle, the wipers are defeated, and they have to pull over. The man turns to them.
“Tornado watch, you say? Do you suppose we’ll be taken to Oz?” He seems far too jovial under the circumstances.
“The sooner we all get home the better,” Miracolina offers.
“Yes, but you’re not headed home,” he says, the same happy tone to his voice. “We all know that, don’t we?”
Miracolina throws Lev a worried glance. The man has locked his gaze on Lev, and only now does Lev see how very mismatched his eyes are. The sight gives him a chill that has nothing to do with the storm.
“I know you don’t remember me, Mr. Calder, because you were unconscious at our last encounter. But I certainly remember you.”
Lev reaches for the van door, but it’s locked, with no visible way to unlock it.
“Lev!” shouts Miracolina, and when he looks back, he sees the man has pulled out a tranq pistol, which looks extremely large and nasty in such close quarters. Heavy hail begins to pummel the van, and the man must shout to be heard over it.
“The first time I shot you, it was an accident,” he says. “This time it’s not.” Then he tranqs both of them before they can say a word. Lev catches sight of Miracolina’s eyes rolling back and her slumping in the seat before he begins to drown in his own tranquilizer cocktail, spinning down, down, down, while outside the sound of hail gives way to a roar like a freight train barreling through hell.
35 • Nelson
In a flash of lightning, he sees a glimpse of the tornado. It tears out trees from the side of the road not a hundred yards ahead of him. It tears up the road itself—chunks of asphalt flying into the sky. Something—a piece of road or a tree limb—puts a dent in the roof like the angry stomp of a giant. A side window shatters, and the van is dragged sideways from the shoulder and into the middle of the road.
Nelson feels no fear, only awe. The van begins to lean to the left. He feels the entire vehicle straining in a tug-of-war between the wind and gravity. Finally gravity wins, and the car remains a heavy, earthbound object instead of a two-ton airborne projectile. Then in a moment the tornado is gone, tearing a jagged line toward someone else’s misery. The roar fades, and it’s just a torrential downpour once more.
This, Nelson knows, is his second great defining moment. The first was the tranq bullet that stole his life. But now his life has been spared. Not just spared, but validated, all in the same moment. The capture of Lev Calder is no accident. Nelson has never believed in divine providence, but he is open to the idea of balance, that there is somehow justice in the grand scheme of things. If that’s true, then justice will be visiting him very soon, delivering Connor Lassiter into his waiting hands.
Part Five
Matters of Necessity
From the
Independent
, a UK news journal:
“HOODIES, LOUTS, SCUM”:
HOW MEDIA DEMONISES TEENAGERS
By Richard Garner, Education Editor, Friday, 13 March 2009
The portrayal of teenage boys as “yobs” in the media has made the boys wary of other teenagers, according to new research.
Figures show more than half of the stories about teenage boys in national and regional newspapers in the past year (4,374 out of 8,629) were about crime. The word most commonly used to describe them was “yobs” (591 times), followed by “thugs” (254 times), “sick” (119 times) and “feral” (96 times). Other terms often used included “hoodie,” “louts,” “heartless,” “evil,” “frightening,” “scum,” “monsters,” “inhuman” and “threatening.”
The research—commissioned by Women in Journalism—showed the best chance a teenager had of receiving sympathetic coverage was if they died.
“We found some news coverage where teen boys were described in glowing terms—‘model student,’ ‘angel,’ ‘altar boy’ or ‘every mother’s perfect son,’ ” the research concluded, “but sadly these were reserved for teenage boys who met a violent and untimely death.”
The full article can be found at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hoodieslouts-scum-how-media-demonises-teenagers-1643964.html
36 • Connor
Connor takes out his aggression on the punching bag at least twice a day. He has to. If he doesn’t, he might take it out on someone’s face. The lazy kid who won’t clean the latrines. The moronic girl who smuggled in a cell phone so she could call her friends and tell them where she is. And the kid who makes jokes after every clapper bombing. Connor hits the bag so hard, and so much, it’s a wonder the thing doesn’t burst.
Risa is gone.
It’s been almost a month now. For all he knows she’s dead at the hands of the Juvenile Authority, or Proactive Citizenry, or whoever has their clutches on her. It doesn’t matter that she’s seventeen and disabled—unable to be unwound. The all-seeing government can be very nearsighted when it comes to scrutinizing the actions of its own appendages.
Connor is not the same as he was.
He feels his old patterns and habits returning. The same ones that earned him an Unwind Order to begin with. He thinks back to the days before he was AWOL—when he was just a problem kid. He’s back in that place again, only now he’s a problem kid responsible for hundreds of other problem kids. He can’t help but think that it’s not all him. His anger always seems to settle in Roland’s hand.
“If you want out, no one would blame you,” Starkey tells him over a game of pool one evening. “You should go and try to find Risa. There are others who could take over this place. Trace could do it. Even Ashley or Hayden.” He leaves himself out, far too conspicuously. “Maybe we could put it to a vote, once you’re gone. Make the whole thing democratic.”
“And you’re already guaranteed at least a quarter of the vote, aren’t you?” says Connor, charging through the bush Starkey keeps beating around.
Starkey doesn’t break his gaze, nor does he deny it. “I could run this place if I had to.” Then he sinks the eight ball too soon and loses the game. “Damn, you win again.”
Connor takes a good look at Starkey, who from the beginning always appeared straightforward and honest. But then, so did Trace. Only now does Connor begin to suspect that Starkey’s motives might be more like designs.
“You’re good at getting food on the table, and you gave the storks some self-respect,” Connor tells Starkey, “but don’t think that makes you God’s gift to Unwinds.”
“No,” says Starkey. “I guess that spot’s reserved for you.” Then he puts down his cue stick and leaves.
Connor mentally smacks himself for being so paranoid. The truth is, he might actually want to groom Starkey to replace him someday—but who is he to be grooming anybody for anything?
Used to be he could share his private insecurities with Risa. She was good at shoring him up by putting Band-Aids on his questionable sense of character long enough for him to heal and get the job done. He could try to confide in Hayden, but Hayden makes a joke out of everything. Connor knows it’s a defense mechanism, but still it makes it hard to talk to him about some things. Now his only real confidant is Trace. Connor hates that Trace remains his closest ally, even after revealing himself as a traitor to both sides. But if Risa was a Band-Aid, then Trace is alcohol on an open wound.
“We’ve all lost people one way or another, and Risa is no different, so stop your bellyaching and do your job.”
“I’m not a boeuf,” Connor tells him. “I wasn’t trained to have no feelings.”
“It’s not that we don’t have feelings, we just know how to harness them and direct them toward specific goals.”
Which Connor might be able to do if he had a goal, but life at the Graveyard feels more and more directionless. A treadmill that hurls kids off when they turn seventeen.
Someone—Connor suspects it’s Hayden—alerts the Admiral that he’s not taking Risa’s capture well, so the Admiral pays a surprise visit.
He arrives at the Graveyard in a black limo waxed to such a smooth sheen it doesn’t collect the dust it kicks up. Connor barely recognizes him when he steps out. The Admiral’s thin. Not just thin but gaunt. His skin, once bronzed from his years in the Graveyard sun, has gotten pale, and he’s dressed not in his medal-covered uniform, but in slacks and a plaid shirt, like he’s out for a round of golf. He still stands tall, though, and has the unmistakable bearing of a commanding officer.
Connor expects the Admiral will tear him a new one, giving him a reprimand more severe than he himself gave Starkey—but as always, the Admiral’s strategy cannot be predicted.
“You’ve put on some muscle since I last saw you,” the Admiral tells him. “I hope to God you’re not shooting up those damn military steroids they have the boeufs on; they shrink your testicles down to peanuts.”
“No sir.”
“Good. Because your genes might actually be worth passing on.”
He invites Connor to join him in his plush, air-conditioned limo, and they sit idling on the runway like the thing could sprout wings and take off at any given moment.
They make small talk just a bit. The Admiral tells him of the Great Harlan Reunion: a huge party with all the people who had received his son’s parts.
“I’ll swear till the day I die that Harlan was there, alive in that garden, and no one can prove he wasn’t.”
He tells Connor how, when all the “parts” went their separate ways, Emby, his asthmatic friend, had nowhere to go, so the Admiral kept him on and is now raising him like a grandson.
“Not the shiniest Easter egg on the lawn,” the Admiral says, “but he’s very sincere.”
He also tells Connor that due to his damaged heart, the Admiral was given six months to live.
“Of course, that was almost a year ago. Doctors are mostly imbeciles.”
Connor suspects that the Admiral will be alive and kicking for years to come.
Finally he gets down to the real reason for his visit. “I hear that this thing with Risa is getting to you,” the Admiral says, then holds his silence, knowing Connor will eventually feel compelled to break it, which he does.
“What do you want me to do? Just go on like it never happened? Like she never existed?”
The Admiral holds a steady demeanor, in spite of Connor’s frustration. “I hadn’t pegged you as the kind of young man who wastes his time feeling sorry for himself.”
“I’m not feeling sorry! I’m angry!”
“Anger is only our friend when we know its caliber and how to aim it.”
That makes Connor give out a sudden guffaw that’s loud enough for the driver to glance back. “Good one! Someone oughta quote you.”
“Someone did. It’s on page ninety-three of the Military Academy Freshman Ordinance Manual, fifth edition.” The Admiral turns to look out of the tinted windows at the activity of the Graveyard. “The problem with all you AWOLs is that you use your anger like a grenade, half the time blowing off your own hands.” Then he looks at Connor’s arm. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
But now that the Admiral’s attention has been drawn to the arm, he looks at it more closely. “Do I know that tattoo?” Then he snaps his fingers. “Roland. Wasn’t that his name? A real pain in the ass.”
“That’s the one.”
The admiral ponders the shark a moment more. “I don’t suppose it was your choice to get his arm.”
“It wasn’t my choice to get any unwound arm,” Connor tells him. “If I had a choice, I would have refused it, the same way you refused an unwound heart. The same way Risa refused a new spine.” Connor feels goose bumps rise on the arm from the near-arctic chill of the air conditioner. “But now I’ve got it, and it’s not like I’m gonna hack it off.”
“And well you should keep it!” the Admiral says. “Roland may have been a miscreant, but he was a human miscreant, and deserved better. I’m sure he’d be satisfied to know that his arm is ruling the Graveyard with an iron fist.”
Connor has to laugh. Leave it to the Admiral to make sense of the senseless. Then the man gets quiet. Serious. “Listen here,” he says. “This business about Risa—for everyone’s sake, you’ve got to let it go.”
But there are some things Connor just can’t let go. “I should never have let her make that trip to the hospital.”
“If she hadn’t, from what I understand an innocent boy would have been unwound.”
“So? Let him be unwound!”
The Admiral quietly bristles. “I’m going to forget you said that.”
Connor sighs. “You should never have put me in charge. You wanted the Akron AWOL running this place, but he doesn’t exist. He never did. He’s just a legend.”
“I stand behind my decision. You see yourself as failing—but that’s not what I see. Sure, when you’re in the midst of your own suffering, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re no good—but we are all tested in this life, Connor. The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.”
Connor lets his words sink in, wondering when this particular “test” will be over and how many undiscovered layers it might still have. It makes him think about all the things Trace has told him.
“Admiral, have you heard of something called Proactive Citizenry?”
The Admiral thinks about it. “Sounds somewhat familiar. Don’t they fund some of those blasted pro-unwinding advertisements?” He shakes his head in disgust. “They remind me of the old ‘terror generation’ ads.”
That catches Connor like a barbed hook. “Terror generation?”
“You know—the Teen Uprisings? The Feral Flash riots?”
“I’m drawing a total blank.”
The Admiral looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Good God—don’t they teach you anything in those poor excuses for schools anymore?” Then he calms down, but only a little. “No, I suppose they wouldn’t. History is written by the victors—and when there are no victors, it all winds up in corporate shredders.” He looks out the window with the sad resignation of a man who knows he’s too old to change the world.
“You must educate yourself, Mr. Lassiter,” he says. “They may not teach it, but they can’t blot it out entirely. It’s the very reason why people were so willing to accept the Unwind Accord. The very reason for our twisted way of life.”
“Sorry to be so ignorant,” Connor says.
“Don’t be sorry. Just do something about it. And if you’re curious about this Proactive Citizenry, educate yourself on that, too. What is it you’ve heard about them?”
Connor considers telling him everything he learned from Trace but realizes it couldn’t be good for the man’s heart. The Admiral is retired, and while he can be called on to give Connor a swift and necessary boot, it would be wrong of Connor to involve him in things now.
“Nothing,” Connor tells him. “Rumors.”
“Then leave it to those who have nothing better to do than gossip,” the Admiral tells him. “Now man up, get the hell out of my limo, and save these kids’ lives.”
• • •
Once the Admiral is gone, Trace respectfully requests a private meeting with Connor. In spite of his admission that he’s working for the Juvies and Proactive Citizenry, he still treats Connor with the full respect of a commanding officer. Connor doesn’t know what to make of this. He can’t tell whether it’s a scam or if Trace is being sincere. Although Connor can’t stomach being a pawn for the Juvies by maintaining their vault of Unwinds, he can’t deny that receiving privileged information from Trace makes him feel that he’s the one pulling the wool over the eyes of the Juvenile Authority, and not the other way around. The truth hasn’t set Connor free, as Trace has suggested, but at least it has given him a sense of power over his captors.
They ride down one of the eastern aisles, past rows of fighter jets so dusty the cockpit windows don’t even look like glass. They’re far enough away from any activity in the Graveyard that their meeting is very private.
“You need to know that things are brewing,” Trace tells him.
“What kinds of things?”
“From what intelligence I’ve been able to gather, there’s dissent in the Juvenile Authority. There are some who want to take this place out—they just need a reason.”
“If they want to take us out, the fact that we’re here is reason enough.”
“I said some want to take us out. The suits I work for don’t—and as long as everything stays smooth here, they can keep the Juvies muzzled. I’ve been a good little stool pigeon and continue to tell them that Elvis Robert Mullard is running a tight ship.”
Connor laughs. “They still have no clue that Elvis has left the building?”
“None whatsoever—and I’ve given them no reason to doubt my word.” Trace pauses for a moment. “Did you tell the Admiral about me?”
“No,” Connor tells him. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“Good. A leader should know things no one else does, and spoon out information on a need-to-know basis.”
“Spare me the military classroom,” Connor tells him. “So is that all you wanted to talk about?”
“There’s more.”
They reach the end of the aisle, and Trace stops before turning into the next one. He pulls out a slip of paper from his pocket and hands it to Connor. There’s a name on it, scrawled by hand. Janson Rheinschild.
“Is this someone I’m supposed to know?” Connor asks.
“No. He’s someone nobody’s supposed to know.”
Connor has little patience for this. “Don’t waste my time with riddles.”
“That’s the point,” Trace says. “He is a riddle.” He puts the Jeep in gear, and they turn down the next aisle.
“Do you remember the other week when I went up to Phoenix to get components for the Dreamliner’s electrical system?”
“You didn’t go to Phoenix,” Connor says. “You went to meet with your bosses at Proactive Citizenry. Don’t you think I know that?”
Trace seems a bit surprised, then a bit pleased. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know whether you trusted me.”
“I don’t.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, it was different this time. They didn’t just meet with me, they flew me out to their main headquarters in Chicago. They had me give a full report to a packed conference room. Of course I left out some key things, like our escape plan. I told them the Dreamliner is a new dormitory jet, and that the cockpit was dismantled and sold.”
“Oh, so it’s not just me that you lie to?”
“They’re not lies. It’s disinformation,” Trace says. “After the meeting, I did some snooping. There was a marble wall in the lobby commemorating former presidents of the organization—some names you’d probably recognize—giants of business both before and after the war . . . but there was one name missing. It had been gouged right out of the marble, with no attempt to patch it up. And then again, out in the garden there was a sculpture of the founders. Five of them, but clearly the pedestal was built for six. There were still rust stains from where that sixth statue had once been.”
“Janson what’s-his-face?”
“Rheinschild.”
Connor tries to work it out but can’t. “It doesn’t make sense. If they wanted to disappear him, why not patch the marble? Why not get a smaller pedestal?”
“Because,” says Trace. “They didn’t just want to disappear him . . . they wanted to make sure their members never forgot that they disappeared him.”
Connor gets a chill in spite of the desert heat. “So what does all this have to do with us?”
“Before they flew me back, a couple of the friendlier suits took me to their private club—a place that served the kind of alcohol you can’t even get on the black market. Real Russian vodka. Tequila from before the agave extinction. Stuff that must cost thousands of dollars a shot, and they were guzzling it like water. When they were fairly wasted, I asked about the missing statue. One of them blurted out the name Janson Rheinschild, then became worried that he had said it. After that, they changed the subject, and I thought it was over. . . .” Then Trace stops the Jeep so he can look Connor dead in the eye as he speaks. “But then, as I was leaving, one of them said something to me that I still haven’t been able to get out of my mind. He clapped me on the shoulder, called me his ‘friend,’ and told me that unwinding is more than just a medical process, it’s at the very core of our way of life. ‘Proactive Citizenry is dedicated to protecting that way of life,’ he said, ‘and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget you ever heard his name.’ ”
