When King David learned that his son had been killed in battle, he lamented, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33) “Absalom’s Mother” was first published in the anthology Futureshocks, edited by Lou Anders for Roc.
absalom’s mother
the dome is dark above my head as I trot down the narrow lane toward the storage depot. The air chills my neck. I’m a few minutes late, and I don’t want the others to think my courage failed. It took all my strength to leave the peace of my home, my bed, my partner’s warmth beside me, to rouse Carly with a whispered warning, to pretend to be calm.
As I round the last corner, I see through the gloom that the others are already gathered in the red-brick plaza beneath the steps of the storage depot. I slow my steps to pass through the line of women, counting. They are all there. Everyone is shivering with cold and with dread, as I am. Some of them speak in low, uneasy voices. Several speak my name in hushed tones. One or two faces are streaked with tears. I stop near the front, hugging my jacket around me.
I have not slept at all. Jem and I wept together last night, long into the darkness. We clung together, grieving, but even when I felt his tears on my shoulder I did not tell him what we planned. When he finally fell asleep, gripping my hand in his, I lay staring at the low ceiling of our residence cabin until it was time.
Keisha, by tacit agreement the leader of this—this—thing that we’re doing, that we’re attempting, Keisha jumps up to stand on the edge of a foamcast planter. She holds up one hand, pale in the gloom, and calls in a quiet, commanding voice, “This is it, my friends. Remember, we stand together, that’s the important thing. The only thing. No one flinches, no one runs.”
“Right, Keisha,” someone calls. I turn and see Maria at the back, her arm around Jasmine. Jasmine keeps her face turned into Maria’s shoulder.
“That’s right,” someone else drawls. I turn the other way, and see Ebony, tall and black and strong. My own skin is an indeterminate brown, but Ebony’s skin is the true satiny black of an earlier age. I asked her once how she came by such pure blood, and she only shrugged, and said, “Lucky.” Ebony looks like a soldier.
I don’t look like a soldier at all. I’m small. My arms and shoulders are thin, and the shade of my skin comes from ethnicities nobody remembers now. But I’m as determined as Keisha is. As we all are. We have to be.
Unity is our only weapon.
Keisha gestures to me. “Come up here, will you, Vivi?”
“Okay.” I move into the fourth position. My legs feel weak, and I’m shaking inside my jacket. I thrust my hands in the pockets so no one will see them tremble.
Keisha is second in line, and Ebony is right behind her. We determined all this, working in the communal kitchens, speaking out of the sides of our mouths as if we were prisoners. In a way, we are prisoners. Every community, even tiny poor ones like ours, is subject to the power of Central Council. Central controls the air, the water, the clothes and food we import, the fabricated materials we export. It all comes from Central, along with Directives, and Rulings, and Resolutions, and Policies. And Recruitment Orders, which bring us here on this cold, dark morning.
First in our shivering line is Avery. Avery, among us all, does not seem to be afraid. But then, Avery has a cabinet full of powerful drugs, pain relievers, tranquilizers, narcotics. The medics give her anything and everything they can think of, because they can’t do anything else for her.
We all treat Avery with reverence. She volunteered to be first. When we all said, No, Avery, you’re too ill, she insisted.
She said, when the Orders came from Central and we began to talk about this rebellion, she said, “I want my death to count for something.”
Keisha said at the time, “Avery, they shouldn’t take Johnny anyway, not with you so sick. We should tell them—tell them about you.”
And Avery, in a faint voice, said, “They called them all, Keisha. They won’t care. They don’t care about us.”
I look up again, to the very top of the dome. The light has reached it at last, a silvery, hesitant glimmer. The panels will pick it up, and the streets and squares of 78th Grange will brighten. By the time everyone comes out of their cabins to begin work, the dome will be warm. I wonder where we—all of us gathered here—where will we be by then?
Avery leans against one of the tall planters with her eyes closed. I look past her, up the steps to the doors of the storage depot. Silos and bolt rooms and parts storage facilities fill its two floors. At one side of the small lobby is a desk, with a wallscreen behind it. This is called the Extension Office, and it’s usually empty. Central sends someone to sit behind the desk only when they’ve made a Ruling or issued a Directive. 78th Grange is so small, and produces so little, that we have no Councilor of our own. We have a proxy, but only one-half vote.
The storage depot is built into the curve of the dome right by the two northern access locks. The main lock opens directly into the monorail. The other lock, leading outside, is for the people who repair the dome or the rails or the silo feeders, or inspect the vacuum-growth filaments. From my position, fourth in line behind Avery, I can see the cabinets beside the locks, where the vacuum suits are stored. I can’t read the signs from here, but I know what they say. I grew up in 78th Grange, and all of us memorized those warning messages before we learned to read. No one is to step into the outside lock without a suit on, and the suit has to be thoroughly checked by someone qualified, someone who knows how to be certain all the seals are sealed and the slender oxygen cylinders properly adjusted and connected. Thinking of the locks, and the instructions I’ve known since babyhood, makes my heart pound. I look away.
Keisha has left her place, and is working down the line, arranging us in descending order of courage, as she sees it. The most fearful will be at the end, probably Jasmine. Jasmine is terrified of everything, but she can’t help it. A lot of terrible things have happened to her. She says this is the worst.
Avery moans, and I hurry up the steps to stand beside her. “Avery, are you okay?”
Her eyelids flutter, and she rolls her head a little against the foamcast.
“Avery,” I say. “You could sit down for now. Until—until they come.”
She lifts her eyelids, and I see that her pupils are expanded so much the brown irises are almost swallowed up. She laughs. “Oh, Vivi,” breathlessly, “am I still here? I thought—I’m so stoned, I thought I was already gone.”
“Are you in pain, Avery?”
She shakes her head, and her dark hair catches on the trailing vine in the planter. “No pain,” she murmurs, and gives a high, breathy laugh. “No, no pain at all.”
I stay by her until Keisha returns, and then I move down two steps to my place in line. I look out over the cramped square and see that Keisha has put everyone in order. I count, to be certain they are all there.
Everyone is. Thirteen women. Mothers.
Central made a gross error, of course. If they had only called a few of our children, or even half of them, this would probably not have happened. Those whose children were safe would not risk themselves. Those who managed to have their children’s names left off the list through influence, or bribery, or threats, or any of the things wealthy and educated and powerful people come up with, would never have come out to stand exposed in the square in the early morning. They would have no need.
But this is 78th Grange, and there is no power or wealth here. Central called all of them, every child of 78th Grange who was recruitment age. My own Carly had just reached it. We celebrated her eleventh birthday two months ago.
When the Order came down, flashed from Central to the Extension Office, Keisha had come around to read it to us. “In this time of crisis,” she read, her voice tight with anger, “all citizens share the burden of maintaining the peace.”
“What peace?” Ebony growled. We were all at work in the kitchens, stirring the great vats of soup, shredding the salad greens for dinner, stacking bowls and plates to be laid on the long tables. Only Avery was missing. She was too sick to work.
Keisha’s eyes flashed at Ebony, and she kept reading. “Quotas will be met by all communities. The lowering of the age of induction, mandated by the Council to reduce frivolous deferments, will make it possible to maintain the current levels in the workforce while supplying the manpower needs of the militia for the foreseeable future . . .”
Her voice went on, reading the entire Order, but I could no longer hear her. My heart pounded in my ears, and my knees turned to jelly. In fact, I think I collapsed, but I don’t remember exactly. The next thing I remember clearly is Ebony holding me up with her long, hard arms and saying, “No. No. Don’t worry, Vivi. They can’t do this.”
But they can do this. When the age of induction was lowered again, we heard there were demonstrations everywhere, people marching, people shouting their views on street corners, people chaining themselves to things or destroying government offices. Central Council responded by saturating the news with tales of dictators, torture, labor camps, shattered domes, poisoned water. There is always an enemy, there always has been. Enemies are as interchangeable as—well, as Councilors.
Carly was six, then, and I was busy with my work in the kitchen, where everyone has to take a turn, and the school, where I helped teach the little ones to learn fabrication techniques suited to their small hands. I let the news swirl around me, and prayed it would all pass.
Now I know you can’t do that. It doesn’t pass. It never passes. I don’t know if all those horrible stories Central put about were true or not, but I do know that old people in power always send young, powerless people out to fight their battles for them. It has been true for millennia, and it doesn’t change.
Until now. Until today, here in 78th Grange.
Because we agreed, we thirteen mothers. Because we have no dissenters.
The biggest problem was where to hide the children.
78th Grange has few hiding places. We live in nested cabins, crowded beneath the dome, with narrow streets too tight for anything but walking or cycling. And we decided not to consult the fathers, because we doubted there would be unity. Some would agree, no doubt, but some would not. Some people think Recruitment is a good idea. They agree that every community has to make sacrifices.
We were simply lucky that the thirteen of us, at this particular time, were of one mind. There were no arguments, that day in the kitchen, or the days following, when we whispered our questions, our ideas, and our plans.
The children are waiting, this morning, in the maternity area. 78th Grange has no doctor, of course. Letha is our midwife, and her Mark is one of the children on Central’s list. There are no pregnancies in 78th Grange at the moment. No one goes in the maternity area unless they’re delivering a baby. We worry about the children being unsupervised, but we are more worried about them being loaded onto the monorail and taken away from us.
We know how inducted children change. Militia training turns gentle, soft-eyed young people into weapons. It teaches them not to care, not to feel. To follow orders. Not to think.
Lowering the induction age, we are told, helps the children. They get an early start. They get an education. They learn to be independent, to rely on themselves. To be strong. But we know the truth.
First Central lowered the induction age to seventeen, a small change. Then they lowered it to fifteen, and then to thirteen. Finally, they dropped it to eleven. An eleven-year-old can’t get a college deferment, or a marriage or pregnancy or essential function deferment. Few eleven-year-olds have suffered injuries that can interfere with their service. They are, according to Central Council, perfect.
And so, as we stirred the soup vats, we decided we would not comply. We don’t want our children twisted, molded into something fierce and hard. We didn’t suffer through pregnancy and childbirth, the nurturing, exhausting years of babyhood, the worries of early childhood, to supply Central with weapons to fight its countless and unending wars. This is not a “current” crisis. This is a perpetual crisis.
And now as I look up at Avery, I see she has sunk to the cold concrete of the steps. Her forehead rests on her knees. Daylight begins to brighten the dome. Soon partners will be rising, wondering why the mothers have left their cabins so early. People will go to the kitchens, and there will be a buzz when they don’t find us there. The citizens are expecting to come to the Extension Office to say goodbye to the recruits. When they come into the plaza, they will see us standing here, a line of women, waiting for the delegate from Central, but no children.
Jem, Carly’s father, will understand immediately what we’re doing. I dread seeing his fear, and the look of hurt on his face because I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jem would stand with me, if I gave him the chance. But we can’t take the chance, we thirteen mothers. Our only power is in our unity.
Inside the dome, we don’t hear the hum of the monorail’s powerpack as it approaches, but we can feel the vibration through our feet. I whirl, and watch it fly toward 78th Grange on its shining rail. It doesn’t slow until the last moment, always looking as if it’s about to plow right through the fused silica of the dome. The monorail is pulling five cars, and one of them—the middle one—is a passenger car. The lead car slides swiftly and neatly into the lock. We hear the snick and hiss of the seals as they secure themselves, and the lock opens. Keisha lifts Avery to her feet. Avery leans against her, her head falling back, her lips slack and her eyes rolling. Avery, at least, will feel nothing. Briefly, I envy her.
Every citizen of 78th Grange knows what exposure does to an oxygen-breathing being. There are pictures, and we’ve all seen them, hideous, terrifying pictures.
I am terrified now.
I stand stiffly, my arms folded. Jem will be along soon. I have to stand with the others, tell him nothing, and hope that later he will forgive me. If there is a later.
I am relieved to have the waiting be over, though my legs tremble so I’m afraid I might fall. The sun is up now, gleaming on the red bricks of the plaza, the gray cement of the steps and the foamcast of the planters, the varicolored cabin roofs. The delegate from Central emerges from the lock just as the first curious citizens, our partners, come up the narrow lane from the kitchens. I can hear a few voices, calling our names: “Ebony?” “ Jasmine?” “Keisha?” And then, Jem’s sweet voice, dry with worry: “Vivi! Oh, Vivi. What are you all doing out here? Where’s Carly?”
I turn briefly to Jem, kiss my fingers to him, and then turn forward again, facing the delegate. I drop my arms to my sides, and try to stand like a soldier.
I’ll go, if they’ll take me. If they’ll give me a chance. I don’t think they’ll take me, or take any of us, but if they will, I’ll do it. What I won’t do is stand here, in the cramped plaza of 78th Grange, and watch Carly leave without me.
The delegate is a woman. She’s not much taller than I am, but her body is square and strong-looking. She wears the militia uniform, green and brown, and a cap with a hard visor. She stares down at the line of thirteen women for a long moment, and we stare back.
“What’s going on here?” she asks. Her voice is clear and carrying. She has a rather pleasant face. She’s frowning, but she seems more confused than angry. “Where are my recruits?”
Avery, in front, is too far gone to answer.
Keisha speaks for her. Her voice is a little rough, and I know she’s afraid, too. “We’re right here,” she says loudly. I hear a couple of the partners, standing in the lane watching us, draw noisy breaths.
The delegate looks at Keisha, and then at the rest of us, not understanding. “What are you talking about? Who are you?” She puts her fists on her hips, and for the first time, she really looks like a soldier. I think she must be about my own age.
Keisha says, “We’re your recruits, Sergeant.” I wouldn’t have known she was a sergeant. It’s the sort of thing Keisha knows. “We’re the recruits from 78th Grange.”
The sergeant’s chin juts at us. “Ridiculous. Where’s your proxy?” She pauses, and takes a comm from her pocket to glance at it. “James, right? Joletta James. Where is she?”
We left Joletta in the maternity area, with the children. We slipped her one of Avery’s drugs, last night at dinner. Letha thinks she’ll be out for another six hours.
Ebony shrugs. “She musta gone out for the day.”
“I don’t think so.” Now the sergeant’s spine stiffens. “Who’s in charge here?”
“We are.” This is Ebony again. She stands at her full height, which is impressive, and looks down her nose at the delegate. “We told you, Sergeant, we’re your recruits.”
The sergeant takes a step forward. “Look, folks.”
Behind me I can hear the fathers calling out to us. “Maria! What’s happening?” And Avery’s husband, with tears in his voice, “Oh, God, Avery, what are you doing? You need to be in bed.”
A toddler, held in one of the fathers’ arms, wails for its mother. I hear a muffled sob from somewhere behind me, Carrie or Tamlen or maybe Pat. I don’t dare look. If I meet Jem’s eyes, fixed on me, I’m afraid I, too, will weep.
“Look,” the sergeant says again. “78th Grange has thirteen fine young recruits on the list for induction. Let’s bring ’em out here, okay? And load ’em on the monorail. We’ll process ’em at Central.”
I feel Carrie press close against my back, and I know the line is tightening, pushing forward. This is good, it feels good. I feel stronger because of it.
Keisha says, “We’re all you get today, Sergeant. Take us, or leave.”
The sergeant’s voice drops to a growl. “Look, ma’am, I’m not leaving without my recruits. I have the list right here —” She brandishes her comm. “Central will send support if I need it, but that shouldn’t be necessary.” She puts the comm in her pocket, and pulls her jacket away from her weapon. “Come on, now, citizens.” She glances past our line to the others standing below us in the square, staring, muttering among themselves.
Maria’s partner shouts up at her. “Hey! Maria! For chrissakes, where’s Matty? I’ll go get him now, if you’ll just tell me . . .”
Jasmine whimpers, and Maria tightens her arm around her. I can see Maria’s lips press hard together. I know her partner to be a hard man. And a militia veteran.
“Come on, Maria. I served, why shouldn’t he? What the hell are you doing?”
Suddenly Maria turns on her heel, making Jasmine stumble backward. “What am I doing?” Maria shouts, her voice shrill with tension. “I’m stopping my son from turning into you, that’s what the hell I’m doing!”
Her partner stares at her, his jaw dropping. The men and women around him step a little away, as if he might explode. Jasmine sobs, and Maria gathers her into her arms again, patting her shoulder.
“Look,” the sergeant calls now, loudly enough to reach everyone in the square. “Look, some of you people out there go find my recruits, and we’ll just let this go. I understand this is an emotional moment, but you can all be proud, doing your duty, being patriotic.”
Some of the workers turn and look at each other. Maria’s partner growls something to the man next to him, who steps even further away. Jem’s eyes are wide, his head lifted to meet my gaze. I shake my head, just slightly, and he nods in return. I can feel his pain from where I stand. I will him to understand why I couldn’t tell him about this, why we had to do this alone.
The sergeant’s face has gone red. She pulls out her comm again. “Okay, people,” she says in a rough voice. “You leave me no choice.”
We know what will happen when she calls Central. They have all sorts of ways to force compliance. They can cut off services, shut down transportation, stop the imports we depend on. But all that takes time. She’s more likely to call for the militia, who will come with more weapons than she carries, and who will search the whole dome. That takes time, too, time that we will use. Time is part of our plan.
Keisha helps Avery to her feet. She speaks in a low tone, but I am so close, I hear her perfectly. “Avery,” she says. My heart twists in my chest. “Avery, sweetheart, it’s time.”
Avery’s head droops, and her eyes are almost closed. “Now?” she whispers.
“Now.”
The sergeant turns toward Keisha and Avery, taking a stiff step forward.
Keisha says, “This is it.”
“Help me,” Avery says. I can’t breathe. I stare at her, and she seems to glow with purpose.
Keisha says, “I will.” She loops Avery’s arm around her neck. It’s only a few steps to the access lock, but their progress is slow, Avery’s legs rubbery, her steps uncertain. We press into a tight line, as disciplined as any militia platoon.
Tears burn in my throat, and I grip my hands together so hard the fingers hurt.
“Hey!” the sergeant calls. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Keisha says over her shoulder, flatly, “Central. To be inducted.”
Just as Keisha and Ebony said she would, the sergeant moves ahead of us, trotting, although we’re moving at Avery’s glacial pace. The sergeant blocks the monorail access lock with her body. Just as we expected.
Keisha leads Avery right up to it, as if she might shove the sergeant aside, or dare her weapon. The sergeant plants her feet, and seems, oddly, to grow taller as Keisha approaches.
Avery straightens her neck with a huge effort. Keisha steps behind her, her strong hands supporting Avery’s back. We hold our breaths to hear what Avery says.
“Militia,” she says, her voice thin and quavering. “Me. Not my child.”
“Yeah,” the sergeant says scornfully. “You’d make some soldier, ma’am.”
Avery takes another step, her face right in the sergeant’s.
The sergeant puts up a hand, and shoves Avery backward, so that Keisha has to catch her with both arms. My throat closes tight. I know what will happen next. We all know.
The sergeant has the monorail access blocked. The other lock, the one beside the cabinets full of pressure suits, is to our left, the sergeant’s right. It leads outside into near-vacuum, low oxygen, high carbon dioxide. Seven millibars of atmosphere. A person could survive perhaps half a minute. If the person held her breath. If the person didn’t freeze before someone dragged her inside.
I tremble with last-minute doubts. We all have them, of course. But we swore to each other, in secret, passionately, sharing our strength in our weakest moments. And Avery—our first martyr—chose this.
She staggers to her left, pulls on the lever to open the hatch of the access lock.
It doesn’t open. She hasn’t enough strength. I hear, among the women, the intake of anguished breath.
Keisha, with a muttered oath, has to step up beside Avery to help her. The sergeant shouts something at them, something wordless, but she can’t leave the lock she’s guarding. Someone from the square shouts, too. It may be Avery’s partner, I don’t know. There’s a little commotion, as if someone is trying to push forward, to get to her. I feel Carrie press even closer against my back, as if the crowd is pushing at our line. I brace my feet, try not to shove Ebony.
Avery is in the lock now, and as Keisha shuts the inner hatch, Avery puts all her body weight on the lever for the outer hatch. This one rotates smoothly. The hatch opens.
The sergeant, in a surprisingly feminine gesture, covers her mouth with both hands. Her weapon hangs at an odd angle before her face, dangling from her fingers.
I barely register this. I watch Avery, numb with shock and horror. It doesn’t matter, now, how often we talked about how this would be, how we would feel. My stomach turns, and my throat closes.
Avery stumbles out of the hatch, casting one tragic look backward so that we see her face flood with color as the blood vessels blossom and break. She squeezes her eyes shut, and turns her face away.
I hear the anguished cry of Avery’s partner just as Avery releases her held breath. As she exhales, the precious air from her lungs freezes almost into a crystalline fog around her head. There will be no indrawn breath. There is nothing to breathe.
Twenty to twenty-five seconds. That’s the time we have to suffer with Avery, the time we’ve been told it takes for a person to lose consciousness after exposure, if the person is not pulled back into the hatch, given oxygen, wrapped in thermal blankets. Avery’s partner is sobbing, loudly, desperately, behind me. I can’t look at him. I stare, transfixed, at Keisha’s tall figure. She turns her back to the access lock, making it clear no one can pass her. Her courage stuns me.
And now everyone, including the sergeant from Central, falls silent, as Avery’s body slips slowly to the icy ground beyond the curving wall of the dome. She sits, and then collapses to one side, a huddle of uninhabited flesh. Her partner cries, hopeless and helpless. With deliberation, Keisha turns her face to the sergeant.
“One,” she says, biting off the word. She folds her arms across her chest.
“What the hell . . .?” The sergeant stares at her, turns to stare at all of us. “What have you done? Why did she . . .I mean, my God!”
There is a long, awful silence, broken only by the weeping of Avery’s partner. The sergeant waits for one of us to say something, to do something. We look back at her. My eyes burn, wanting to cry, to mourn Avery’s passing. But we are not yet finished here.
The sergeant has her comm in one hand, her weapon in the other. She speaks swiftly, in an undertone, and listens to an answer, then speaks again. We know she is asking for orders, desperately asking for someone to tell her what to do. When she puts the comm away, she levels the weapon at Keisha. “No one else moves,” she says. Tension makes her voice high and tight. “Central is sending the militia. You can’t get away with this kind of crap.”
“Crap?” Ebony cries. “Recruit us! We’re ready to go!”
The sergeant doesn’t lower her weapon, but her eyes swivel to Ebony. “I have my orders. I’m not leaving 78th Grange without the ch—without the inductees.”
“You still have twelve of them, right here,” Ebony says. “Take us, or go away.”
“Can’t do that, and you know it.” The sergeant turns her eyes back to Keisha, whose hands are now on the hatch lever. “Don’t move,” she says. “That’s an order.”
Keisha, incredibly, manages. “What are you going to do, Sergeant?” she asks. “Kill me?” And she turns on her heel, deliberately, and reaches for the lever to open the lock again.
“Stop!” the sergeant orders. Her hand tightens on the little black weapon. Keisha sneers at her over her shoulder, and pushes the lever.
The sergeant’s hand wavers, and her face crumples with indecision.
From the crowd behind our line, another shout rises, this time from Keisha’s partners. Only Keisha, of all of us, could manage two partners. “No! Keisha, no!” they shout. She casts them a glance full of sorrow, shaking her head, and then steps into the access lock.
The sergeant discharges her weapon just as the hatch door closes. The narrowly focused beam flashes uselessly, glimmering on the silica surface. Keisha pressees on the lever for the outer hatch, and wails arise from the crowd. I sense it pushing forward, men and women running to their partners, seizing their arms. Jem is beside me, his hands on my shoulders. I close my eyes, and shrug him off. What I want to do is throw myself into his arms, run back to our cabin, return to our life. But it will not be our life without Carly. And Avery has made her sacrifice, the ultimate gesture. How can any of us dishonor that by giving in now?
“Vivi,” Jem says urgently. “You’re not going to . . . you wouldn’t . . .” I can’t look at him. I’m watching Keisha.
The sergeant has left the monorail access, and taken the three long steps to the other lock. She puts her hand on the lever for the inner hatch, but she is too late. The outer one is lifting up and out of its housing now, and the inner one won’t open.
It takes much longer for Keisha, our friend and our leader, to die. She is so much stronger than Avery, and she’s not ill. She turns to face us—no, to glare at the sergeant, who falls back a step, her mouth dropped in horror. We watch Keisha’s eyes glaze, her face darken. She grimaces with the involuntary effort to hold her breath. It seems an eternity before, at last, her breath escapes her. Her mouth opens, and works, like a fish out of water. Her knees give way. Still facing us, she collapses, her forehead braced against the outer wall of the dome. I press the heels of my hands to my burning eyes. When I take them down, Keisha has toppled beside Avery, her eyes open, frozen, staring.
Behind me someone is speaking in a high, clear voice. As I watch the cloud of Keisha’s last breath dissipate, I listen with disbelief as Jasmine, quiet, anxious Jasmine, orders the citizens of 78th Grange to step back, to leave us alone. Keisha’s partners, who have run forward to the dome, slump against it now, just opposite where she has gone down. The sergeant, her hands hanging, her weapon pointed at the ground, stares dumbly at the two bodies outside.
Ebony steps to the top of the stairs, and the rest of us take a step forward too. There is a steady rush of sound around us, some sobs, some curses. Most of our citizens are shocked into silence. Ebony shouts, “Two! How many more, Sergeant?”
When the sergeant turns to face her, I feel a spasm of sympathy. The woman’s eyes are huge, her face gray with shock. She must have expected an entirely different job today, a monorail trip with thirteen frightened children. She was unprepared to watch two women commit deliberate suicide. “Look,” she says, her voice breaking. She has to clear her throat and try again. “Look, this doesn’t do any good. I’m nobody, I’m just following orders, and no one will believe —” She breaks off, and makes a shaky gesture that includes the bodies outside, Keisha’s two partners, weeping on each other’s shoulders. “Who would believe you’d do this? Please, citizens . . . no more! Please!”
At that very moment I become aware that Jem, my Jem, is recording everything. He’s standing on the edge of the planter, where Keisha stood to call us to order, and he’s running the little recorder we use when there are events to report to Central. It’s kept in the proxy’s office, usually. I don’t know how, or when, Jem got hold of it, but everything it records is automatically received at Central. I wonder if anyone is watching.
The sergeant looks up at Jem. She turns, if possible, even paler than before. “Give me that,” she says hoarsely. Once again, she lifts her weapon, though her hand is shaking so badly I doubt she can aim it.
“Jem,” I warn, but he gives me one of those dark, close looks I know so well.
He has the recorder balanced against the foamcast of the pillar, snugged between his shoulder and his jaw. “You have to let me do this, Vivi,” he says. “Carly is mine, too.”
The sergeant is clearly confused. Ebony has already taken a step toward the access lock, and the weapon swings toward her, and then, wavering wildly, back to Jem. “Stop,” she croaks. “Please, give me that. You’ll ruin me.”
I cry, without meaning to, “No!”
Several other men step forward, as if to follow Jem’s example, but Ebony throws up her arm, and it is her turn to shout, “No!”
Jem’s eyes flicker at the weapon. I can see the amber flash, then the green, as it fastens on him. The sergeant’s hand shakes, and the light turns amber again as she loses her target.
Ebony takes another step. The noise from the square intensifies, cries and calls, and our line of mothers is swallowed up by citizens pressing forward, trying to interfere, to stop us, to stop the sergeant. My heart flutters. It is all just as Keisha said it would be, noisy and confused and frightening. She had predicted all of it.
Except for Jem.
The sergeant sees Ebony approaching, and her thoughts are as plain as if they were written across her face. Two women dead already. Another about to commit suicide. And one man, a recorder on his shoulder, sending it all to Central.
“Jem! Stop! Come down!” I cry. He refuses, a short, sharp shake of the head. And I know why.
I am fourth in line. If Ebony succeeds in following Avery and Keisha, if the sergeant doesn’t give in, I will be next.
The sergeant demands, “What is it you want? What do you want me to do?” Her voice has gone shrill.
Ebony stops where she is. “Take us as your recruits, or go away,” she says.
“I can’t!” the sergeant wails. “If I go away, they’ll just send someone else, you know that! The Recruitment Order . . .”
“You can’t have them.” I am startled to hear my own voice, usually rather soft, ring out across the square. “We decided, all of us together. You can’t have our children.”
“But I can’t take you!” the sergeant cries. She waves the weapon around, at me, at Jem, at Ebony.
Ebony takes another step, right into the sergeant’s face. Ebony is a head taller, her shoulders broader, her arms longer. She stiff-arms the sergeant to one side, and reaches for the hatch lever.
The sergeant points her little weapon at Ebony, but Ebony only laughs, a bitter sound that grates on my bones. I ache with tension. Ebony leans on the lever.
Jem shouts, from his perch, “How many more, Sergeant?”
As the hatch opens, the sergeant falls back a step. She shakes her head, a little wordless sound escaping her as Ebony steps into the lock and the hatch closes behind her. Someone screams, “No! Stop her!” The sergeant shakes her head again, and groans.
Jem shouts again. “How many?”
The sergeant whirls, pointing her weapon at him. The recorder hums, pointing back at her. Her hand on the weapon steadies, and the amber light goes red.
“Jem!”
She fires.
They trained her for this. I suppose she was an inductee, too, though she may have volunteered. There are those who volunteer for the militia, and I have never understood why. Perhaps they simply want to get away from their homes, travel, live more exciting lives than they can in the granges. Or perhaps they like to use weapons, to play war games . . . to kill.
Jem freezes, and the recorder falls from his shoulder. His face goes white, and then slack. Slowly, slowly, he crumples, and tumbles from the planter’s edge to fall on the cement with a great sigh. The sergeant, his killer, whimpers as she lowers her weapon.
Bedlam erupts around me.
“Jem!” I scream. My voice is lost in the tumult that rises from the plaza. Men rush forward, and some women. Ebony’s partner pulls open the inner hatch door before she can push the lever on the outer one, and he drags her over the sill and out of the access lock. Two strong men lift Jem’s nerveless body from the cement, and carry him past me down the steps. I almost fall, but someone, one of the other women, holds me with her arms around my waist We try, all of us, to hold our line, but we are buffeted by the rest of the 78th Grange citizens, everyone shouting, crying. I want to go after Jem, but I hold my place. I know it’s useless, in any case. Those weapons—the ones they expect our children to use—deal certain death.
I want to weep for my partner, my best friend, but there is no time.
Ebony leaps up to the planter where Jem had stood before. She has the recorder in her hands. She lifts it to her shoulder. Bit by bit, the square falls silent.
The sergeant spreads her hands. “Listen to me! I’m only following orders! These are my orders!”
“Go home, Sergeant.” This is Maria, I know her deep voice. “Go back to Central and tell them we refused.”
“You can’t refuse!” the sergeant whines. Her face is a mask of shock and revulsion. “No more, please! My god, three people are dead here!”
“How many of our children would be dead?” Maria shouts.
“Go home,” Ebony repeats, and the rest of the citizens shout it, too. “Go home! Tell them! Go home!”
The crowd bulges, surges toward the sergeant, past our diminished line of women. She cowers back against the curving wall of the dome, her weapon wavering around, trying to choose a target. I think, this could have been Carly, firing at her own people, and I experience a spasm of sympathy for the sergeant.
Our citizens stop short of her position. She stares at them, white-faced, one hand at her neck. Then, with a hopeless cry, she thrusts her weapon into its holster, and backs into the access lock to the monorail. The hatch closes behind her. For a long moment she stares out at us, and then she throws a switch, and the monorail cars, in reverse, begin to move.
Ebony is still recording. Sooner or later someone at Central will see these images. What will they do? Can we resist the next wave that will come, and the next? We don’t know. But our citizens gather around us, stand by us. We stand together, we remaining eleven, with our partners and friends, and we watch the monorail cars disappear over the horizon. Ebony records until it is gone, and then switches off the machine.
And then we hear a new sound, the sound of running feet on the bricks. They’re coming, released at last from the maternity center, dashing up the narrow lane with the strength and energy of youth. Our children.
The mothers turn with cries of gladness. Ebony commands, “Don’t let them see!” Several men hurry into vacuum suits, to go out to retrieve the bodies.
I see Carly, dark hair flying, eyes wide and dark with fear, and I rush to her.
The militia will return, of course, in force. Central can’t let 78th Grange defy the Recruitment Order. More soldiers will come next time, and they’ll be ready. No element of surprise.
I look above Carly’s head and see Ebony with the recorder cradled in her arms. Jem’s last gift to us is the record of what happened here this morning.
Ebony’s eyes meet mine, and she nods as if we have already spoken of what to do, how to disseminate the recording, to spread the word of what thirteen mothers did in 78th Grange. Thirteen mothers, and one father, who refused to give up their children.
Central will punish 78th Grange, we know that. They will find a way. But something has changed here today, something that can never change back. A precedent has been set. Obedience will no longer be automatic.
I squeeze Carly tight, and we cry together. I hope she will understand, someday, why we did what we did. And I hope she will forgive me for being the one who’s still here.