After the Red Rain (7 page)

Sounded convincing to Deedra.

“How do you know that?” Rose asked quietly.

“Everyone knows that.”

“So maybe that’s it,” Deedra said. “And then, yeah, there’s nothing we can do about it, so why worry about it?”

“What if it’s not aliens, though?” Rose asked.

“You mean what if it’s God?” Deedra barked a laugh. “Well, we can’t do anything about that, either. And what if it’s just the world? That’s another one I’ve heard. That it was the world itself, scrubbing people off the planet the way you would sweep away roaches. There were too many people, so the planet itself just wiped away half of them.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Why do you care what I believe?”

“Don’t
you
care what you believe?”

“No, because it doesn’t matter what I believe!” she exploded at him. Why was he goading her like this? “It happened. And now it’s over. And it’ll either happen again or it won’t, but either way, there’s nothing
I can do about it. I try to focus on things I can do something about.” A thought occurred to her. “If you’re so interested, what do
you
think it was?”

Rose took a half second to abandon his work, gazing at her. Then, without even looking back down at the belt, he nimbly assembled the fan housing.

“I don’t know what it was,” he admitted, “but I know what it
wasn’t
. It wasn’t aliens. Or God. Or the planet itself. It was something else. I’ve seen a lot in this world, and I’m sure of this: It was something else entirely. There’s no shame in admitting we don’t know—it’s the only way to learn.”

You have to decide which one you believe.

How? How was she supposed to do that?

“And let me tell you something else,” Rose said. “I don’t think we’re building air scrubbers.”

Clong!

Hart was right behind her; she not only heard the bang of his pipe but also felt it vibrate her entire body, starting with the soles of her feet.

“Does Rose have the hang of it? Good. Then get him over to the other end of the line and get back to work. You don’t get rations for standing around.”

Rose went where he was directed to go, and Deedra took up her spot on the line again just as Dr. Dimbali’s perambulations brought him close to her station, shouting about valences and electron shells and the weak nuclear force.

“And Jaron has a message for you,” Hart continued.

“For me?” Deedra asked.

“Yeah. He said to tell you that when nothing happens, nothing
will
happen. Got it?”

“What does that mean?”

“He just told me to tell you. Now get back on the line.”

Next to her, Lissa whispered, “What’s going on?”

Deedra knew, though she couldn’t tell Lissa. It was about the rooftop. What had happened and almost happened and not happened. Jaron must have been worried about the drone. If its video feed came to light, he would probably get some very uncomfortable questions, questions he wouldn’t want to answer. Questions that would make him look bad. The video itself would be inconclusive, but if they asked
her
what had happened… A factory supervisor accused of forcing himself on a subordinate would be one thing. Add in that it’s the son of the Magistrate…

And so, a threat. So that she would keep her mouth shut. Well, fine. She’d half-expected some kind of punishment from Jaron today, but he’d done nothing. She could say nothing for a very, very long time if it meant keeping the peace.

She fumbled through the rest of the day, constantly looking up at Rose. As if he could tell when she was looking, he glanced up at her each time. And smiled.

A part of her was angry. So angry. Why had he pushed her about the Red Rain? Why did it matter anymore? Who cared?

But she had to admit: A part of her had been glad he’d done it. He’d made her think. In fact, she spent the rest of the day thinking about everything she’d heard about the Red Rain, the theories, the notions, the people who were so certain they were right.

Rose was right: There was no shame in saying, “I don’t know.” At least she was thinking about it.

But there was one thing she had to know. And only Rose could tell her.

When the second shift came in, Deedra caught up to Rose as they left L-Twelve. “What are you doing here?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

“Working,” he said plainly.

“No kidding. You’re not from around here, right? So you don’t have to work. Especially for nothing.”

“Nothing?” He took a step away from her as they walked, keeping a bit of distance between them. She closed the distance again so that no one could overhear.

“Yeah, nothing. You didn’t let them scan you, so you don’t get a ration for what you did today. It’s free labor for them. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

“I don’t mind. I don’t want anything from them.”

“Then why are you here? And what happened up in Jaron’s office?”

“Not much,” he said in a tone that revealed that quite a bit had happened. “He wanted to know why I was here. He’d never seen me around the factory before.”

“Did you tell him you’re not from around here?”

Rose hesitated. “I may have neglected to mention that. There are so many people in the Territory, he can’t know all of them. It seemed wise.”

“Good call.”

“So then he told me I was the worst kind of citizen, one who didn’t contribute.”

Deedra winced.

“He said, ‘We all contribute. What are you contributing, you freak?’” Even though it had happened hours ago, the insult still stung, Deedra could tell. Rose’s whole demeanor changed when he said the word
freak
. He stiffened and squared his shoulders and crammed his fists into his pockets. “I told him I wanted to work. I said I could contribute twice as much as anyone else.”

“And what did he say to that?”

Rose’s lips quirked into a smile. “‘We’ll see.’”

He stopped and she wondered why, then she realized they had reached her building. “Good night,” he said, and walked off before she could respond.

She was already inside and nuking a block of turkey steak when she realized that she had originally asked him two questions. And one of them—“Why are you here?”—he had never answered.

S
unday.

That was the name given to this day of the week.
Sunday.

Rose peers up at the sky and tries to imagine why the day has been named so. There is no sun on this day. Nor did the sun shine for more than five minutes at a time on any other day, but the name
Sunday
seems to demand sunshine, and it inevitably disappoints.

Still, he convinces himself that if he only waits long enough, the sun will break through the clouds. And so he stands. And waits.

Rain showers greet him instead. Gray, not red. Dirty rain from a dirty sky the color of old bruises.

When the rain ends, he sighs and thinks for a moment of the girl—
Deeee-draaa
—and then he continues in his labors, in his secret work, the task he has set for himself.

The task of changing everything.

T
he arrival of Rose, the mystery of him, should have marked something of a change, she thought. After a lifetime under an oppressive cloak of sameness, something had changed, radically. But all too quickly that same cloak was dragged over her days again.

Days became weeks, a month, then more. She kept her mouth shut, and there were no more threats from Jaron. No communication from him at all, actually. In some part of her mind, she began the process of erasing the memory of that day on the rooftop.

Rose was just a part of her life now. On the days when they shared a shift, he met her to walk to work together, waiting on that patch of denuded dirt outside her building. She came to realize that his expertise at dodging questions trumped her obstinacy in repeating them. So often he whistled as they walked, and she discovered that the walk to work seemed shorter and more pleasant when he did so.

He tried to teach her how to whistle, puckering his lips to lead by example. She couldn’t make her mouth contort like his, so he reluctantly took her face in his hands, pinching her mouth into an unfamiliar oval.

“Now blow.”

She blew, spraying him with spittle. Far from being annoyed or angry or offended, he burst into laughter, high and uncontrollable. And that just set her off, and soon the two of them were convulsed with laughter as Territory citizens jostled past them on the way to L-Twelve, staring at them with confusion or muttering about their lunacy. She didn’t care.

“I think I’m probably hopeless when it comes to whistling,” she confided in him when the giggles subsided.

But he didn’t give up. Their walks to work—sometimes with Lissa, sometimes without—became tutorials on whistling, even though Deedra was certain she would never figure it out.

Jaron kept Rose moving. He changed his shifts at the last minute, moved him from station to station with a frequency that would have made anyone else’s productivity suffer. But Rose just took it, bore down, and soon had mastered every aspect of the production line. Routinely, the Bang Boys would hassle him about his coat, insisting he remove it, pointing out that it was a “safety hazard,” that it could get caught in the belt. Rose nodded and agreed with them, but every day he came to work with the coat on. And left it on.

Life at L-Twelve otherwise had returned to something like normal. Jaron never came down from his perch, so Deedra had to see him only on vid, and even that was rare. The Bang Boys were his influence on the floor, his appendages. For a time she feared their dragging her up to the office and to Jaron, but as the days passed, she came to fear them only as much as she always had.

Dr. Dimbali began hovering around Rose early on. Unlike every other person at L-Twelve—or in the Territory, for that matter—Rose did not ignore Dr. Dimbali. In fact, he almost seemed to enjoy the crazy old coot’s rants and raves. One day, when Rose had been stationed next to her, she suffered three solid hours of the two of them discussing something to do with blood flow and veins and heart muscle. She couldn’t
imagine anything more boring than that; just being in proximity of the talk made her want her ears to explode so she wouldn’t have to listen any longer. But Rose seemed to enjoy it, even thanking Dr. Dimbali enthusiastically when the man moved on to harass someone else, shouting, “Hearken! Hearken! Mankind descended from the now-extinct apes! Will we follow in their path? This is fundamental! This is truth!”

That was one weird thing about Rose. There were others.

Like this: Every day, she noticed, his lips would not move when they all recited the Patriot Oath.

No one had noticed except her. She knew this because if anyone else had noticed, the Bang Boys would have “persuaded” Rose in their own inimitable way to recite the oath.

She asked him about it one day, quietly, not wanting anyone to overhear. And he said the strangest thing she’d ever heard:

“I work hard. Why does it matter what I say?”

She’d never thought of it that way before. Ever. And now, every day…

Every day, she still recited the oath. But every day, she thought about what he’d said while she did so.

Every day, she wondered.

And every night, she looked at the “flower” Rose had given her on the rooftop and wondered anew. Why was he here?

She could think of only one reason. It was as plain as her vid, which brought her news every morning and every night.

ANTARCTIC WAR: NORTHERN FORCES ON THE MOVE!

And the next day:
NORTHERN FORCES ROUTED IN ANTARCTICA!

And the next:
MAGISTRATE LUDO WARNS OF POSSIBLE TERRITORIAL WAR!

And the same, over and over. War was the constant on her vid. The war in Antarctica, which had always been going on. And the war
between Territories, which had been threatened as long as she could remember. Territories served the Cities, of course, but as long as there was some kind of order, the City didn’t care who was keeping it.

I can make it better,
Jaron had said to her that day.

Meet your quotas, meet your quotas.

Was there going to be a war? Dalcord Territory had been threatening to encroach on Ludo for years and years now. That was one reason for the curfews, for the occasional shelter-in-place orders. Dalcord was responsible for the gridhacks.

Was Ludo preparing for war?

Was Rose a spy?

Had he come here to learn about Ludo’s manufacturing? To sabotage it?

What better way to figure out Magistrate Ludo’s plans than by infiltrating his son’s operations?

And I brought him here. I rescued him from the river.

No. It couldn’t be. Rose was kind and sweet. He was teaching her how to
whistle
! What kind of spy did that?

Was he fearless? Yes. Resolute? Yes. But dangerous? No. Not at all.

She tossed and turned. After a certain hour, lights were disconnected to conserve power, so she had no choice but to lie in bed, sleepless and confused, questioning herself, Rose, Jaron, everything she knew.

She risked a hand out under the netting. A roach scrambled over it, then climbed up the outside of the netting. She was used to it. During the day the roaches were quiet, hibernating, perhaps. But at night they scurried forth from their hidden nests and commandeered the dark Territory.

Finding by touch what she’d been seeking, she pulled her hand back into the netting. A single roach managed to sneak in before she could affix the edge of the net, so she crushed it and brushed its remains
onto the floor. She sat up, holding the metal flower Rose had given her on the rooftop.

He’d saved her from Jaron. Or from the need to kill Jaron, if she could have gone through with it.

He’d risked himself to bring her this bizarre and disquietingly beautiful gift.

He’d come
back
.

She didn’t know why.

The not knowing kept her from sleep for a long, long time as she turned the flower over and over in her hands, memorizing the touch and the curve and the shape of it in the dark.

After a while, she realized—much to her surprise—that she was whistling.