Provocation Page 10

  The houses fan out from the water, two score of them, all bigger and in better condition than our cabin. But the construction’s the same—clapboards sawn from local timber at the mill outside of town. Some have a small addition or a lean-to on one end. Most feature a front porch for sitting. All of them have turned silver and mossy, weathering to match the shoreline.

  We aim our steps toward the school, located in the residential neighborhood. It’s the biggest building in town, aside from the cannery, and built of dull yellow brick. It doubles as a town hall and houses every public event that can’t take place outdoors. But I turn off before we reach it. The others go on as I climb the steps to the only other brick building in town—a large house that was once grand, with tall pillars supporting the portico roof and a commanding view of the harbor—and knock on the door.

  Mrs. Sweeny answers, all pinch-faced and scowling. “What do you want?”

  I hold up the basket. “Opal asked me to deliver this.”

  She takes it without a word and shuts the door in my face.

  Why does she have to be so unpleasant, I ask myself as I descend the steps to the street. She’s like a paper wasp nest, dry, brittle, and full of venom. No wonder half the kids in town are frightened of her.

  I enter the school and head straight for the library. Miss Whaley is already there, dusting the shelves and setting a fresh bouquet of wildflowers on her desk. She’s youngish, mid-thirties, and wearing a lavender dress of some gauzy material. Her smile radiates warmth. After the wasp nest, entering the library is like stumbling onto a clover field buzzing with honeybees.

  “Good morning, Jack. How is the wilderness this morning?”

  Miss Whaley always asks. I think she wishes she lived on the fringe instead of in the center of town. She always likes it when I share details of my walk to school. She calls the morning recital my canvas, as if I’m painting her a picture. I always take pains to make it a good one. “The beach roses are in bloom, both pinks and whites. Their scent lingers in the stillness before the wind kicks up. I spotted a tiger swallowtail butterfly, and there were two sea lions lounging on the rocks outside of town.”

  “Beautiful.” She sighs.

  “You know, you could walk out for a visit anytime and see it for yourself.”

  She nods. “I think I’d like that.”

  She never will. The invitation is a daily exchange, as well. She always accepts but never actually leaves town.

  “What can I help you with this morning, Jack?” Miss Whaley asks.

  I set my books down on one of the tables and study the cover of the top one, History of the World. “You know I take the Examination tomorrow,” I begin.

  She nods. “You’re well-prepared.”

  “I guess I’m just wondering if you have any last-minute advice.”

  The librarian’s smile falters, so slightly I almost miss it. She thinks for several seconds before she speaks. “Yes, I do: Remember your audience.”

  “My audience?”

  She steps nearer and sinks into the chair beside my books. Her voice drops, as well. “I mean, think about who’s administering this test. Who will be grading it.”

  That’s easy enough. The government.

  “Write exactly what they want to hear.”

  Except for being pitched low, her words are inflected normally. Her smile is the same. But the intensity with which she holds my eyes signifies some kind of warning.

  “What they want to hear,” I repeat.

  “Exactly. Don’t deviate. Don’t convey your own opinions. Simply spit back at them what they have been teaching you all these years.”

  Now I catch her meaning.

  Our library doesn’t have many books. Partly because we’re a small settlement without a lot of funding, but mostly because, after the Provocation, education was placed under strict governmental control. All curricula is government issue, and literature in particular has been heavily censored. Only books deemed safe are allowed. It was Miss Whaley who helped me recognize that “safe” is usually code for dusty and dull.

  Four years ago, when the Examination first began to trouble my thoughts, I asked Miss Whaley for help in preparing for it. We arranged irregular meetings at her office after school, and her ability to dig up information proved invaluable. But after a time, she began introducing me to books that didn’t appear on the school shelves.

  I remember the first time she placed one in my hand. It was a beautifully illustrated copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I’d never seen a book printed in color, and the images flew off the page at me like the dragonflies that congregate by the stream, all shiny and iridescent. Dragons, fairies, castles, talking animals, and men and women in beautiful and ridiculous clothing… I was mesmerized.

  “This must be our secret. You can never let anyone know I have this,” Miss Whaley had said.

  “Why?” It seemed to me a marvelous thing that should be shared.

  “There is a penalty for owning it.”

  Again I could not understand. “But…why?”

  She explained about censorship, but I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I simply kept her secret and she rewarded me with more stories—The Iliad, Romeo and Juliet, To Kill a Mockingbird, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, Charlotte’s Web, David Copperfield, Moby Dick, Lord of the Rings, Arabian Nights, and so many, many more. Now, however, I understood the distinction she was referring to. I must continue to keep our secret and avoid any mention of the ideas these stories have generated.

  “The Examination isn’t a test of individuality,” Miss Whaley tells me. “As you formulate your answers tomorrow, you’ll have to disregard your own heart and think within the box from which you’ve been taught. I pray I’ve taught you to recognize the difference.”

  I leave the library, my mind vaguely troubled by her implications.

  The entire day has a strange, detached feel. I can’t quite believe that after tomorrow, I won’t be coming back to this place where I’ve spent so much of my life. At least not as a student. I plod through each class, taking finals and handing in completed assignments, feeling as if I’m stuck on the closing chords of a song I’ll never sing again. When classes are done and I’ve said my good-byes, those final strains thin out, grow distorted, and hum into nothing.

  ***

  After dinner that evening, I grab my schoolbooks and head over to Will’s. He’s waiting for me at the kitchen table, along with a plate of honey-roasted hickory nuts his mother Elise left for us. Will’s been released from evening chores to study, and we make a good attempt at it, reading through the last week’s worth of material that Mr. Douglass assigned. But after two hours, I feel like we’ve only sifted through a few grains of sand with the entire shoreline spread before us. If we haven’t filed this information into our heads by now, we never will.

  I close the cover of my book and fling it onto the pile. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  Will looks up in perplexity. “This is our last chance to study.”

  “This could be our last night together.”

  As I say it, I’m hammered with the realization that time is short, that I haven’t cherished it as it flowed through my fingers. Now I’m left with only a handful. I don’t want to waste another minute of it with my nose pressed to a book.

  “Please?”

  Military service requires a twenty-year commitment and holds to stringent regulations that allow for no contact outside Military caste apart from immediate family for the duration. Marriage is allowed after the term expires, when soldiers are retired from active duty and funneled into desk jobs among the Military and Upper castes. The only exception to this rule is that Bluecoats are free to marry other Bluecoats. It’s encouraged, actually, based on the belief that two perfect specimens will combine to form more soldiers for Capernica. The woman, of course, is resigned from active service to raise children.

  More than half the women accepted into Military eventually go this route, making the caste even more he
avily dominated by men. I don’t know if I’d ever consider such a step. I don’t know if Will would even ask me to. But I do know I can’t wait twenty years to see him again.

  Will weighs my request for a dozen heartbeats then gently sets his book aside. “I found a new patch of blackberries,” he says. “Bigger than the old one.”

  We take a pail with us, and Will leads the way up the road and into a stand of hardwoods. About half a mile through the woods, the trees open into a meadow inundated with sunlight. I suspect that’s where he’s leading me. Food grows there aplenty, but the most direct route to the meadow passes through a cemetery. The newest grave is over a century old, and the wilderness has grown up around it, reclaiming the ground for its own. The granite headstones have been swallowed by vines and moss and underbrush, so you don’t even know you’re in a boneyard until you’re stepping on graves.

  I stop dead on the path.

  Will turns around. “It’s just a few hundred feet farther.”

  I shake my head and refuse to move.

  He looks at me curiously. “Are you still scared of the haints? I thought by now you’d outgrown that fear.”

  I haven’t. But it’s not the haints that frighten me. I’ve never shared the real reason I avoid the graveyard. Not with Will. Not even with Opal. That secret remains locked up tight, far too painful to loosen.

  Will sighs. “All right. We’ll go around.” It’s the same patient tone he uses when the milk cow gets ornery.

  I let him lead me in a wide circle, and then we’re in the meadow with the westering sun pouring down gold into its jewel-bright circle. Purple meadow sage, black-eyed Susans, and the white spears of pokeweed all lift their heads at us. So much color, surrounded by an emerald ring of trees.

  Will’s right. The berry patch is thick and sweet. We fill the pail and, as the shadows grow long and a cool mist begins to rise from the ground, we climb the ridge until the world we know spreads out before us. The cove, the settlement, the edge of Will’s great big ocean. We stuff our bellies and watch dusk infiltrate the meadow and edge out the colors. Here in the wilderness, we don’t have to worry about curfew or Greencoats. There’s only us.

  My old fear strikes from a new angle. “Will, you are going to take the physical portion of the Exam, aren’t you?”

  The written half is required, the data used for analysis by the government. On occasion, someone with a crazy high score might also get picked up by the private sector, provided all the permissions work out. But the physical half is optional. What if I pass but Will doesn’t? Achieving Military status has never ranked as highly with him as it does with me. What if he doesn’t even bother to take the test?

  The scenario leaves me breathless. If only one of us makes it, regardless of which one, we will still spend the next two decades apart.

  “Yeah, I’m taking it.”

  “And aiming to pass?” He could fudge it.

  His gaze focuses far out to sea. “I’ll pass.”

  If he’s intentional, I have no doubt of it. His answer lays that fear to rest.

  I begin to shiver in the twilight, as much from the great black gulf of the future as from the cooling night air. Will throws an arm around my shoulder and I lean into the warmth of his body. He smells of pine and wood smoke and the faint muskiness that is Will. The fit is right, the feel safe and familiar.

  If this is to be my last night in Settlement 56, this is exactly how I want to spend it.

  THREE

  Everything has changed. I can sense it as soon as I enter the school the next day. Will and I have walked here together. Alone. I grabbed his hand early on and haven’t let go. It gives us the illusion that we’re in this together, but we both know it isn’t so. We each have an individual battle to fight this morning, and this time neither of us can help the other.

  Even the school has transformed since yesterday. The walls are stripped, hallways are bare, and classroom doors are locked. Only graduating students congregate inside. We find the testing location in the gymnasium. Twenty-three desks have been placed in rigid rows before a table of stern-looking officials—five men and one woman wearing black, blue-sleeved Military uniforms and fully armed with intimidation. There will be no cheating on this test. Will and I slip into the back row.

  Within a few minutes, every desk fills up. At precisely eight o’clock, one of the men at the table stands and addresses us. “Good morning, students. My name is Colonel Paxton, and I will be administering the Examination this morning.”

  Another of the men begins passing out pencils and booklets—thick stacks of paper fastened together and placed upside down on each desk. Low tech, but holoware simply isn’t available in 56.

  “You will be given exactly four hours to complete the written portion of the Examination. When you finish, bring it to the table at the front of the gymnasium. At that time, those of you who do not wish to attempt the physical half will be dismissed. Those who intend to continue must report back to the table before two o’clock. At that time, registration for the physical portion will be closed. You may break as needed between events, but all testing must be concluded by five o’clock.”

  I shoot a look at Will. Almost everyone will be taking the physical exam, even those with no chance at passing, because it is the one hope that has been held out to us since childhood. Even a slim chance at improving life within 56 is a chance worth taking.

  Colonel Paxton raises his holoband and watches several seconds tick off. “You may begin.”

  Will throws me a wink and a half smile and we pick up our pencils.

  I page through the entire test booklet before starting. The math, science, logic, and economics sections look fairly straightforward. Most of the questions are fact-based, leading to only one correct answer. Simple deduction or memory. Easy. I’ll finish those later. My early energy I’ll put toward the history essays, which are far more subjective. Keeping in mind Miss Whaley’s advice, I tackle the first topic: What was the Provocation?

  Even the youngest children in Capernica could answer this one. It is the singular event that changed North America forever. One that cost countless lives in the past and still haunts our future. Because it always begs the question: Could it happen again?

  I begin writing:

  The Provocation is still a great mystery. Forty-seven years ago, the North American Republic suffered the loss of tens of thousands of men, women, and children. They simply vanished, with no explanation and no trace. The disappearances included a broad spectrum of the population, but the most influential sectors of society took the greatest hit—university graduates, the heads of companies, politicians, celebrities—the wealthiest, smartest, and most prominent individuals in the culture.

  This discrepancy has given rise to a great deal of speculation as to the cause and method of the disappearances, from logical to outrageous. Some experts claim the Provocation was the plot of a sophisticated terrorist organization. Others believe it could have been aliens or some kind of flesh-eating virus. Others claim it was instigated by foreign powers, either economic or military. Still others blame the former governmental system, claiming it turned against its own people in clandestine homeland operations. My own personal speculations run in this direction. But due to a lack of hard evidence—bodies, weapons, motives, or perpetrators—answers remain inconclusive.

  The second essay follows on the first: Explain the Recompense and the rise of Capernica. Again, I could probably answer in my sleep, but I take a great deal of care to answer as Miss Whaley advised, with plenty of credit going to those currently in charge. My answer is almost sycophantic.

  Capernica arose out of the chaos that followed the Provocation. Within months of the disappearances, the economy collapsed. Commerce came to a standstill. Public health care imploded. And in the months that followed, countless more lives were lost due to disease, food shortages, and unsanitary conditions. Those who survived lived at a subsistence level.

  The waning Continental Government
proved shamefully ineffective in the face of such widespread tragedy. This inability justified the Recompense. In a desperate bid for survival, a small group of patriots led by Governor Andromeda Macron seized power in a nearly bloodless revolution. The last North American president, Ichabod Dempsey, was arrested, tried, and executed for complicity in the Provocation. His administration was disbanded and the Capernican Council, under the direction of Governor Macron, established in its place. But one could argue that the Recompense is still ongoing, that the revolution was only the first phase. That the restructuring of Capernican society using a new caste system was a necessary extension of establishing order. And that to this day, the Macron government continues the work of the Recompense, remaining vigilant and leading the way in reforms aimed at a permanent solution against further attacks.

  The new system isn’t perfect, with its long list of rules, restrictions, and reorganization. I’ll be the first to admit that. But even I, who can’t wait to leave Settlement 56, grant that it’s better than the alternative. I’ve heard the stories from the old ones, from those who survived the devastation. I’ve seen their fear that it might be repeated. I understand why the system is in place. I’m just doing my best to work its single leniency to my advantage.

  The rest of the essays follow this same vein, asking for a solid understanding of Capernican organization, law, penal system, and so forth. It’s easier than I thought it would be. We’ve been drilled in this stuff for years, not to mention my own personal experiences. After the essays, I whip through the other subjects without much trouble. A glance at Will shows him in deep concentration, but he knows this material too. We’ve studied it by the hour, pulling high marks in school. I’ve no doubt we’ll both pass. I rise, turn in my packet, and let myself focus on the next half of the Examination.