Текст книги "UnWholly"
Автор книги: Neal Shusterman
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
“Go on in,” Bam growls at him. “He’s firing you.”
• • •
That night Connor finds Starkey doing close-up magic for a bunch of Whollies beneath the recreation jet.
“How does he do that?” kids ask as he makes bracelets disappear from wrists and appear in other people’s pockets. When he’s done, Connor approaches him.
“You’re pretty good. But as the guy in charge, I should ask you to tell me how it’s done.”
Starkey only smiles. “A magician never reveals his secrets, not even to the guy in charge.”
“Listen,” says Connor, cutting to the chase, “there’s something I want to talk to you about. I’ve decided to shake things up in the Holy of Whollies.”
“A change for the better, I hope,” Starkey says, gripping his stomach. Connor chuckles because he already knows Starkey sees where this is going, but that’s okay.
“How would you like to be in charge of food?”
“I love food,” Starkey says. “And I’m not just saying that.”
“Do you think you can handle a team of thirty and get food on the tables three times a day for everyone else?”
Starkey waves his hand and makes an egg appear out of thin air, then hands it to Connor. He saw the egg trick a few minutes earlier, but now its relevance makes it even more entertaining.
“Great,” says Connor. “Now conjure up seven hundred more for breakfast.” And he walks away, chuckling to himself, knowing that Starkey does have what it takes to make things happen, and make them happen right.
For once Connor’s sure he’s made the right decision.
8 • Risa
In the early evenings, when the desert begins to cool, Risa plays piano beneath the left wing of Air Force One. She plays pieces that she knows by heart and pieces from sheet music that have found their way into the Graveyard.
As for the piano itself, it’s a black baby grand Hyundai—which made her laugh when she first saw it. She didn’t think Hyundai made pianos—but then, why should that surprise her? Multinationals can make anything they want if people will buy it. She once read that Mercedes-Benz had gotten heavy into artificial hearts before the Unwind Accord made such technology pointless. “The Pulsar Omega,” the advertisement went. “Take luxury to heart.” They invested a fortune in the product, only to lose every penny once unwinding began, and artificial hearts went the way of pagers and CDs.
Tonight she plays a forceful yet subtle Chopin sonata. It pours out like a ground fog, echoing within the hollow fuse-lages where the Whollies live. She knows it comforts them. Even those kids who claim to despise classical music have come asking her why she isn’t playing when she’s skipped a night. So she plays for them, but not really, because it’s herself that she’s playing for. Sometimes she has an audience sitting before her in the dust. Other times, like tonight, it’s just her. Sometimes Connor comes. He’ll sit beside her, yet somehow be distant, as if afraid to invade her musical space. The times Connor comes are her favorite, but he does not come often enough.
“He’s got too much on his mind,” Hayden has told her, making the excuses that Connor should make for himself. “He’s a man of the people.” Then he added with a smirk, “Or at least of two people.”
Hayden never passes up a chance to throw a verbal barb about Connor’s uninvited appendage. It ticks her off, because some things are no laughing matter. Sometimes she catches Connor looking at the arm with an expression that is so opaque, it frightens her. Like maybe he’s going to pull out an ax and chop the thing off right in front of everyone. Even though he also bears a replacement eye, the match is perfect, and the source unknown. It holds no power over him . . . but Roland’s arm is different, holding heavy emotional baggage in its powerful grasp.
“Are you wondering if it’ll bite you?” she once asked as he gazed at that shark. Startled, Connor went a little bit red, as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Then he just shrugged it off. “Nah, I was just wondering when and why Roland got this stupid tattoo. If I ever come across the person who got that particular brain cell, maybe I’ll ask.” Then he walked away from her, ending the conversation.
If it weren’t for those daily leg massages, Risa would think that Connor has forgotten about her completely. But even those massages aren’t the same. They feel perfunctory now. Like the only reason he’s there is because he made a promise to himself that he would be—not because he truly wants to be.
Thinking about Connor makes her miss a chord—the same damn chord she missed at her life-or-death recital that left her on a bus, speeding her off to be unwound. She growls, then takes her fingers off the keys and draws a deep breath. Her music carries, which means her frustration is being broadcast just as clearly as Radio Free Hayden.
What bothers her most is that she cares. Risa was always able to take care of herself, both physically and emotionally. At the state home, either you developed several layers of personal armor or you were eaten alive. When had that changed? Was it when she was forced to play music as kids were led into the building beneath her to be unwound? Was it when she made the choice to accept a shattered spine, rather than having it replaced by the healthy spine of an Unwind? Or maybe it was before that, when she realized that, against all sense and reason, she had fallen in love with Connor Lassiter?
Risa finishes the sonata, because no matter how she’s feeling, she cannot leave a piece of music uncompleted. Then, when she’s done, she fights the dry, craggy terrain beneath her wheels and rolls toward a certain private jet.
9 • Connor
Connor dozes in a chair that’s too comfortable to remain fully awake in, but not comfortable enough to be fully asleep. He’s jarred alert by a thud against the side of his jet. By the time the second one comes, he realizes it’s off to his left. By the time the third one hits, he realizes someone is throwing things at his plane.
He looks out of a window, but in the darkness he sees only his own reflection. Another thud. He cups his hands over his eyes, pressing his face against the glass. The first thing he sees are the curved blue streaks reflecting moonlight. A wheelchair. Then he sees Risa hurling another rock, which hits right above the window.
“What the hell?”
He opens the hatch, hoping she’ll stop the barrage. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I was just trying to get your attention.”
He chuckles, not yet getting her frame of mind. “There are better ways.”
“Not lately.”
She moves forward and backward a bit in her chair, crushing a dirt clod that had her tilted at a slight angle. “Not going to invite me in?”
“You’re invited. You’re always invited.”
“Well, then maybe you should have put up a ramp.”
And although he knows he’s going to regret saying it, he says it anyway. “Maybe you should let someone carry you.”
She rolls a bit closer but not enough to close the space between them—just enough to make it painfully awkward. “I’m not an idiot. I know what’s going on.”
Risa might want this talk right now, but Connor is in no mood. After firing Bam and John, he just wants to end this day and find dreamless sleep until whatever fresh hell awaits in the morning.
“What’s going on is that I’m trying to keep us all alive,” he says with a little too much irritation in his voice, “and I don’t see that as a problem.”
“Yes, you’re so busy keeping us alive. Even when you’re not busy, you’re busy—and when you do actually talk to me, it’s all about the ADR, and how hard it is for you, and the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Risa, you are not the kind of fragile girl who needs a guy’s attention to feel whole.”
Then the moon comes out from behind a cloud again, and he can see tears glistening on her face. “There’s a difference between needing attention and being intentionally ignored.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but his brain fails him. He could talk about their daily circulation massages, but she has already pointed out that even then, he’s mentally checked out.
“It’s the wheelchair, isn’t it?”
“No!” he tells her. “It has nothing to do with that.”
“So you admit there’s a reason.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What then?”
He steps down from the jet. Three steps that separate his world from Risa’s. He kneels before her, trying to look into her eyes, but now they’re hidden in shadow. “Risa, I care about you as much as I ever did. You know that.”
“Care about me?”
“Love you, okay? I love you.” The words don’t come easy for Connor. They wouldn’t come at all if they weren’t true, so that’s how he knows they are. He does love her deeply—that’s not the problem. And the wheelchair isn’t the problem, and neither is his job of running the Graveyard.
“You don’t behave like a boy when he’s in love.”
“Maybe because I’m not a boy,” he tells her. “I haven’t been for a good long time now.”
She thinks about that, and quietly says, “Then show me how you feel the way a man does. And make me believe it.”
The challenge hangs heavy in the air. For a moment he imagines himself lifting her out of the chair and carrying her into his jet, all the way to his room at the back, and gently laying her down on his bed, being for her the man he claims to be.
But Risa will not be carried. Under any circumstances. Ever. And he wonders if maybe this is not entirely his fault. Maybe she’s partially to blame for this invisible rift between them.
With no other way to prove his feelings, he reaches forward with his own hand, pushes the hair back from her face, then leans in, giving her a powerful kiss. He puts the whole weight of their relationship and all their built-up frustration into that single superheroic kiss. It should be enough to say everything he can’t . . . but when he pulls away, he feels her tears on his cheek, and she says:
“If you wanted me with you, you would have built a ramp.”
• • •
Back inside, Connor lies on his bed in the dark, the moonlight painting cold bars of light across his bed. He’s angry. Not at Risa, because she’s right. It would have been nothing to build a ramp to his jet. He could have done it in half a day.
But what if he had?
What if Risa really could be with him in every possible way—and what if the shark on his arm truly did have a mind of its own? Roland attacked her—he tried to force himself on her, and she must have been looking at that damned shark when he did it. She said it didn’t bother her, but it bothers Connor enough to keep him awake night after night. Because what if when they were alone together, in the heat of that passionate moment they both wanted—what if he lost control? What if that hand held her too tight, tugged her too hard—what if it hit her, and hit her again, and again, and wouldn’t stop? And how could he ever truly be there with her if all he could think about were all the things that arm had done, and all the things it still might do?
Better not to let it happen.
Better to make sure she’s never that close.
So you don’t build a ramp. You don’t visit her in her jet, and when you do have physical contact, it’s out in the open where it’s safe. And when she rolls away from you in tears, you let her go, thinking whatever she wants to think, because that’s better than admitting to her that you’re too weak to feel safe with your own arm. Then, alone in the dark of a private jet, you smash your fist furiously against a wall until your knuckles are raw and bloody, but you don’t care, because even though you can feel the pain, you know they’re not your knuckles at all.
10 • Starkey
Starkey spends his days working his particular brand of magic—and he knows that the best magic tricks take practice, patience, and very careful misdirection. Undetectable sleight of hand. For more than a month he has not betrayed his ambitions. To have done so would have made Connor suspicious. Instead he networked among the Whollies, studying the alliances, the friendships, and the power structure—and at last, through careful planning, Starkey has inserted himself in the right place at the right time to gain Connor’s favor without him ever knowing that it was all part of Starkey’s long-term plan.
Now he’s in the highest echelon of the Graveyard, and although it’s only food service, it keeps him in direct contact with all seven hundred kids. He has more power, more access, and he begins to do things that previously might be thought of as suspicious, but now come with the territory of being one of the Holy of Whollies.
One afternoon Starkey wanders innocently into the Com-Bom, the Graveyard’s computer and communications center, which Hayden runs. Its radio equipment was initially designed to pull in and decode enemy frequencies—which it still does, although now the enemy is the National Juvenile Authority. At any given time it’s manned by half a dozen Whollies, who have been handpicked by Hayden for their computer skills.
“I’m not the tech geek everyone makes me out to be,” Hayden tells him. “I’m just very good at taking credit for other people’s work. I think I get it from my father—he was uniquely skilled at stomping on fingers as he climbed the corporate ladder.” Hayden studies Starkey for a moment, and Starkey just smiles back.
“Something wrong?”
“No,” Hayden says. “I was just wondering if you’re thinking of stealing my position. Not that I care. I wouldn’t mind working food service for a while, but it would help me to know what your intentions are.”
“I just want to know how stuff works around here, that’s all.”
“Oh,” says Hayden, “you’re one of those.” Starkey doesn’t know what kind of “those” he’s talking about, but he doesn’t care as long as Hayden tells him what he wants to know.
“I have an ethnically diverse team here,” Hayden tells him proudly, going around the room. “Tad is Japanese, Hailey is umber, Jeevan is Indian—and Esme is half-Hispanic. I think her other half must be extraterrestrial, because she’s too damn smart to be all human.” Esme preens proudly for a moment, then gets back to work cracking coded communications. “We have Nasim, who’s Muslim, working side by side with Lizbeth, who’s Jewish, and guess what? They’re in love.”
“Bite me,” says Nasim, then Lizbeth punches him just hard enough to make it clear that it’s true.
Hayden points out the various monitoring consoles. “There’s a communications monitoring program running on this one. It can pull keywords out of anything from e-mails to phone conversations. It can warn us if the Juvey-cops are up to something major. Kind of an early warning system originally developed to fight terrorism, but isn’t it nice to know we can now use it for civilian purposes?”
“So what do we do if it says things are getting dangerous?”
“Damned if I know,” Hayden says. “That’s Connor’s department.”
There’s a console from which Hayden creates playlists and runs interviews for his Radio Free Hayden show.
“You realize that it doesn’t broadcast any farther than you can shout,” Starkey tells him with a smirk.
“Of course not,” Hayden says. “If it did, then the Juvies could pick it up.”
“If no one is listening, then who’s it for?”
“First off,” says Hayden, “your assumption that no one is listening is incorrect. I estimate I have at least five or six listeners at any given time.”
“Yes,” says Tad. “He means us.”
“And second,” Hayden says, not denying it, “it’s preparing me for a career in broadcasting, which I plan to pursue once I turn seventeen and get out of this place.”
“Not hanging around to help Connor, huh?”
“My loyalty has the half-life of unpasteurized milk,” Hayden tells him. “I’d take a bullet for Connor, and he knows it. But only until I’m seventeen.” It all seems pretty straightforward until Esme says, “I thought you already were seventeen.”
Hayden shifts his shoulders uncomfortably. “Last year didn’t count.”
Next to Jeevan is a printout. A list of names, addresses, and dates. Starkey picks it up. “What’s this?”
“Our good man Jeeves here is responsible for getting us a list of all the kids slated for unwinding from here all the way to Phoenix.”
“These are the kids for your rescue missions?”
“Not all of them,” Hayden says. “We pick and choose. We can’t save everyone, but we do what we can.” He points out the highlighted names—the ones chosen for rescue—and as Starkey looks over the list, he starts to get angry. There’s information about each kid, including birth dates—except for the ones who don’t have a birth date. Instead a stork date is listed. None of the storked kids are highlighted.
“So you and Connor don’t like saving storked kids?” Starkey asks, not even attempting to hide the chill in his voice.
Hayden looks genuinely perplexed and takes the list to look at it. “Hmm, I hadn’t noticed. Anyway, it’s not part of our criteria. We look for only-children in dimly lit suburban neighborhoods. It means fewer people to squeal on us, and less of a chance of being seen. See, brothers and sisters can’t keep their mouths shut, no matter what we threaten them with. I guess mothers who stork babies mostly give them to people who are parents already. Hard to find a storked only child.”
“Well,” says Starkey, “maybe we need to change the criteria.”
Hayden shrugs like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t really matter, and it just makes Starkey angrier. “Take it up with Connor,” he says, then goes on with his grand tour of the communications center, but Starkey’s not listening anymore.
• • •
The revelation in the ComBom gives Starkey a game-changing idea. One by one he singles out all the storked kids in the Graveyard. It’s not an easy task, because most storks want to keep their storking a shameful secret. Starkey, however, makes no secret of his own doorstep arrival, and soon the storked kids begin to seek him out, seeing him as their champion.
As it turns out, a full fourth of the Graveyard population are storks. He keeps that information to himself.
The girl named Bam, who at first hated him because he took her place in the Holy of Whollies, warms to him quickly because she’s a stork as well. “If you want your revenge on Connor, be patient,” he tells her. “It will come.” She reluctantly takes his word for it.
One day Starkey catches Connor when he’s busy supervising the dismantling of an engine.
“Is there a buyer for it, or are they gonna put it up for sale?” Starkey asks pleasantly.
“They asked for it in the front office, that’s all I know.”
“The engine says Rolls-Royce—I thought they only made cars.”
“Nope.”
Starkey keeps chatting about pointless stuff, until he’s sure that Connor is irritated at having to divide his attention between the engine and Starkey. That’s when Starkey pulls out what he’s been hiding up his sleeve.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking . . . you know I was storked, right? And well, you know, it’s nothing big, but I thought it might be nice to make some special reserved time just for storked kids at the Rec Jet. Just to show them they won’t be discriminated against anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Connor says, as he stares at the engine, happy to be ending the conversation. He never even realizes what he’s just given away.
Starkey calls his little group the Stork Club and stakes out the hour between seven and eight every evening. While everyone’s looking somewhere else, a new class distinction rises within the Graveyard. The Stork Club is the only minority with special members-only time at the Rec Jet. It’s a taste of privilege that these kids have never had before—and Starkey wants them to gobble it up. He wants them to get used to it. He wants them all to expect it—and to know that Starkey can deliver.
Since Starkey runs food services, members of the Stork Club start replacing others in serving positions, and dole out larger servings to other storks with a wink. In the Holy of Whollies, the only ones who seem wise to these little creeping alliances are Ashley, whose job it is to root out social flare points, and that obnoxious Sherman kid who replaced John as head of waste and sanitation. It turns out Ralphy was easily bribed to look the other way, and as for Ashley, Starkey pretty much has it under control.
“What if giving storks special treatment creates resentment in the general population?” Ashley asks him as he supervises dinner one night.
“Well,” Starkey tells her with a mildly seductive smile, “the general population can kiss my ass.”
It makes Ashley blush just a little bit. “Just try to keep a low profile, okay?”
Still beaming charm, he says, “It’s what I do best,” and serves her a nice heaping portion, all the while calculating how she might secretly play into his plans.
“You’re a hard guy to read,” she tells him. “I’d really like to get inside your head.”
To which he responds, “The feeling’s mutual.”
• • •
Each night, during “the stork hour” at the Rec Jet, Starkey plants tiny seeds of discontent over games of pool and Ping-Pong. Nothing so blatant as fomenting a revolution, just innocent suggestions to encourage certain directions of thought.
“I think Connor’s done a good job for a guy who’s not all that smart,” he tells them offhandedly. Or, “I really like Connor. He’s not much of a leader, but isn’t he a great guy?”
Starkey never shows any open defiance; that would be counterproductive. It’s not about tearing Connor down, it’s about rotting out his roots. He won’t even suggest that he should be the one taking Connor’s place. That suggestion will eventually come from other storks—and all on their own, without any prompting from him. He knows it will happen, because he knows that every storked kid, deep down, dreams of a world where they’re not considered second-class citizens. That makes Starkey more than just the leader of a club. It makes him the hope for storked salvation.
