The Harvest (24 page)

“How are you?” he asks at last. She shrugs, looks around. We locked her in the most modest room in Kanaan's house. It was the only one without broad windows to the outside. Even so, the room is nicer than many flats in Okaria, with polished wood furniture, bright walls—though the paint is peeling in places—and elegant metal fixtures.

“Her expressions change every few seconds,” Demeter says. “Nothing is constant. I can only read so far based on microexpressions alone.” I nod, prompting her for as much information as she can give me. The camera we installed has a fish-eye lens, so the Demeter's view will be slightly distorted. I hate the idea of monitoring Moriana, remembering all too well when Demeter had to do this for Remy and Soren. “Lack of strong focus in the eyes indicates emotional distance. Possible nostalgia, reminiscence, or just a defense mechanism against another perceived act of hostility. Tight brow and jaw also indicate defensiveness. Perception of a threat, preparation for a verbal response. But her body language is weak and open. Slumped shoulders and open hands
indicate acceptance, comfort, possibly even guilt.”

“Fine,” Moriana says after a long silence, “considering the circumstances.”

“Did you know that Soren Skaarsgard and Remy Alexander were once taken prisoner by your friend Vale,” Rhinehouse glances back at me, “and kept as prisoners in the capital?”

She looks at me. “He told me, but I didn't know how much to believe.” Regret weighs on me. How different would everything have turned out if Miah and I had been honest with Moriana from the beginning?

“All of it. Your former classmates were tied to a pole for twenty-four hours before they were given so much as a drink of water.” Rhinehouse's voice is casual, as if giving a lecture at the SRI. Moriana stares at him, her face blank. “Soren was beaten. Mostly by soldiers, but General Aulion wasn't above throwing a few punches himself. They were both drugged and interrogated. Remy was tortured by electric shocks. Soren was waterboarded.” As Rhinehouse lists this information as matter-of-factly as if he was describing one of the plants in Kanaan's greenhouse, Moriana's face grows pale. She's not alone. My stomach churns as the weight of these crimes press into me, digging into my shoulders. “Fortunately for you, the people you are, as you say, now in opposition to, do not ascribe to such methods. Torture is the Sector's stock in trade. Not the Resistance's.”

“Torture isn't legal,” Moriana says. “It's in the Articles of Incorporation.” Rhinehouse is silent for a long moment, watching, waiting. Finally she speaks again. “There must be some mistake.”

“Do you believe I am lying to you now? Why do you suppose those of us in the Resistance left our comfortable lives, our friends, our homes? As a fellow scientist, what do you believe would drive someone like me to abandon my colleagues, my position, my livelihood, and my research to live on the run in the Wilds?”

She shakes her head as if trying not to hear his words. “I don't know.”

“Or can you imagine the possibility that Philip and Corine might have broken Sector law?”

“I … I don't—” she stutters. “I don't know what to believe. Philip and Corine would never hurt anyone.”

“They would and they have,” I interject. “Many times. I told you she gave the order to kill everyone in that classroom. And I heard her give the order to have Remy and Soren assassinated. She ordered the attack on the Resistance that killed Brinn, that killed so many more.”

“And Round Barn,” Miah says quietly.

Rhinehouse nods. “Did Vale tell you OAC forces shot your cousin at Round Barn?”

Moriana's eyes glisten. “But he said Jahnu was okay.”

“He's made a remarkable recovery,” Rhinehouse says, glancing at Miah. “Probably because the woman he loves has taken such good care of him. And now that he has so much more to live for—”

Moriana's forehead wrinkles in confusion. “More to live for?”

“Jahnu and Kenzie. They're going to be parents.”

Moriana rears back. “What? Kenzie Oban?”

“Being surrounded by people who care about you is good medicine. But having hope for the future is the best medicine of all.” Rhinehouse walks across the small room to stand beside Miah's chair. “Moriana, you were one of the finest students I ever mentored in my lab, and I respect your intellect immensely. But let me tell you what else I respect. I have lived and worked alongside Soren, Eli, Jahnu, and Remy for over two years and on my honor they are among the finest people I have ever met. Now that I've met Jeremiah and have come to know Vale, I must add them to that list. I trust them with my life. They are the future of the Okarian Sector. My question is, do you want to be part of the future or will you cast your lot with the past?”

“The future is what we're concerned about!” Moriana shouts in frustration.

“A future in which citizens are no more free to choose their destinies than you are to leave this room. Is that what you believe in?”

“Citizen modifications are for the benefit of the whole Sector. We're doing what's best for everyone. Not just the privileged few. Everyone will know their place and be perfectly suited for their position. It's the ideal society, a society that works like a well-designed machine.”

A groan escapes from Miah's throat and his face contorts as if he's in pain. “Remember when Corine didn't think I was good enough for you and Vale? Would you have me relegated to live my whole life as an engineering drone in some Factory town?”

“It's not the same, Miah,” she says, her hands squeezing the bedcover as if she's trying to keep her temper under control. “You made it to the Academy precisely because you have merit. The modifications would only lock those in, enhance them. Like they did for Vale.”

“Don't you think every individual should get to decide if they want to be genetically modified or not?” Miah's voice is laced with pleading. “You're stacking the deck for or against future generations.”

“The deck's already stacked!” She jumps off the bed and begins pacing in the small space. “That's what genetics is all about, don't you get it? You think you have a choice now? Nature isn't self-directed, Miah. You can't decide who you're born to be. It's not survival of the fittest, it's survival of the most adaptable. We're just making sure every individual has the tools to survive in his or her own environmental niche.”

After a long silence in which I have to bite back my retorts, Rhinehouse finally speaks. “So you and Corine have decided to take on the role of Mother Nature for yourselves. If you get your way, it won't be survival of the most adaptable, it will be survival of the chosen.”

“No, everyone will—”

He doesn't let her finish. “You understand that Corine Orleán, backed by the OAC, is disseminating false information to the citizens of the Sector regarding the origin of the parasitic outbreak and the nature of the cure?”

“Yes.” Her voice so quiet I have to strain to hear it.

“You have willingly helped Corine develop the pathogenic parasite that is sickening thousands of citizens?”

“I have.”

“You have no issue with the OAC disseminating a cure to the parasitic disease that also contains targeted genomic alterations to each and every citizen without their knowledge?”

“No,” she whispers.

“And you believe the mission to make alterations to the DNA of every citizen of the Sector, permanently encoding the strengths and weaknesses given to them by their MealPaks into their genetic makeup, is the right thing to do?”
His voice creaks at the end, the way an old tree does when it finally falls.

Moriana hesitates for the first time. She sinks back onto the bed. “Yes,” she says, her brows drawn together so tight it almost gives me a headache. “No. I don't know!” My heart leaps into my throat.

“If you can't answer definitively, you
know
in your heart something's not right.” Miah's voice is thick with the urgency of hope.

“Perhaps there is a place for genetic modifications. Voluntary modifications done with an individual's permission. We can discuss the moral ambiguities of that another time. But right now, we don't have time. People are sick. Suffering. I'm asking for your help,” Rhinehouse says. “I need you to help cure those infected with the parasite and to help derail Corine's plan to modify citizens' genomes without permission. Will you tell me what you know?”

She draws in a deep, shuddering breath, and for a moment I think she might cry. She shuts her eyes, squeezing them tight, her fists clenched against
her legs.

“Please, Moriana.” Miah crosses the room in two swift steps to kneel before her, taking her hands in his. “You know what they're doing is wrong.”

The look on Miah's face and the ache in his voice weighs on me like anchors. I know what it's like to have the truth staring you in the face and to turn away. “Moriana, every single one of us has been in your position at some point. Every one of us has had to accept the truth.”

She opens her eyes and looks at Miah. For a moment there's a flash of resentment. A cold anger. It vanishes quickly, replaced by tenderness. Kindness. The lines around her eyes soften and her whole face relaxes into the Moriana I used to know. The Moriana I want so desperately to believe in. I haven't seen her so unguarded since the night of the Solstice ball.

“Okay.” Her voice breaks. “I'll help you.” She looks up at Rhinehouse. “I'll tell you everything you need to know.”

Jeremiah sighs and drops his head into her lap, pressing her clasped hands to his cheek.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice so low I can barely hear it. Even as Rhinehouse smiles, a rare sliver of sunlight through a stone-faced edifice, a dark voice wells up inside me.
Don't
, it says.
Don't trust her
. But I quiet the voice and push it away. Without her, we've already lost.

21 - REMY

Summer 2,
Sector Annum
106, 17h13

Gregorian Calendar:
June 22

I run my hands across a strange plant that looks like a mix between a pin cushion and a cactus. It grows in little groups and sits snug in the soil. A few have bluish green or yellowish green shoots and seem to be a bit wooly in the middle, with little white hairs sprouting around the top like an old man's beard. I shake my head in amazement at how many shapes plants can take. I bend down to examine the stalk, look for signs of seeds or other ways of propagation, and note how dry the soil is at its roots. I have no idea what it could be, or even what kind of plant it is. As widely as Kanaan and Gold traveled, who knows where they dug this one up, but one thing's for sure: I've never seen anything like it before.

We've been spending every free moment exploring the greenhouse trying to identify the plants. I recognized one right away my mother used—a tamarind tree growing in a corner of the room that's since exploded to the point of pushing up against the ceiling.

“Maybe it can help relieve the symptoms from Corine's parasite,” Saara said, taking notes frantically as I explained it has antipyretic properties. “If it's a fever reducer, I can try it out on a couple of the workers I've met while going with Zeke on his supply runs.”

With high hopes for what else we might find, we kept looking. Some of the plants have neat handwritten identification signs stuck in the soil at their roots, but not all of them. And Kanaan's computers have a wealth of information on them, but some is written in a code we have yet to figure out. With Demeter's help, we've been able to identify many we'd never seen before, but some remain complete mysteries, and Demeter can't find anything that resembles them in her database. It's a strange feeling, realizing we've discovered—or rather, rediscovered—what is essentially a whole new dimension of botany. A dimension we barely understand. And everything we learn—or as Chan-Yu says, everything we think we know—seems so bizarre it's hard to believe. Take the acorn pendants. Chan-Yu disappeared for a full day, taking all the pendants and Osprey's astrolabe with him. When he returned, he walked around the garden, studied the tree, spent hours in the greenhouse, and then disappeared into the woods only to come back shaking his head, a look of wonderment written across his face. He'd been visiting his sister, Soo-Sun, and together they'd come to a conclusion. The Outsiders had long known that the astrolabes acted as tracking devices with the pendants as beacons signaling their location. The Wayfarers had been using them that way for years. But how did they work? No one knew. No one except my grandfather and maybe Gold. And now Chan-Yu and Soo-Sun. I can't begin to understand it; the idea of plants using chemical signals transmitted through the common mycorrhizal networks to communicate just seems too other worldly.

“Anyone found anything interesting?” Vale calls out from several rows over.

“Plenty,” Soren replies from the other side of the greenhouse.

“I've got a weird one here,” I say. “Where's Rhinehouse and Osprey when you need them?”

“Rhinehouse is still with Moriana and Miah,” Soren says. “And Osprey will be down soon.”

“Still wish Demeter could magically ID the whole lot of 'em,” Vale says, coming into view from behind a large palm frond. My heart pauses, lagging for a moment behind its regular beat. He stops and touches his hand to his cheek. “Where did those come from?”

“What?”

He steps close and draws his thumb over my cheek bone. “You've got purple smudged on your cheek.”

“Oh, that. I found some purple berries over there that stained my fingers when I crushed them.” He slips a hand around my back to pull me to him and instead fishes the paintbrush out of my back pocket.

He holds it up. “Where'd you find this?”

“I used to paint here, when I was little. So I did a little searching and found a box with old brushes.”

“And you painted something with the purple berries?”

“Do you want to see?”

He nods. “Of course.”

Hand in hand, we duck through the rows to near the far end of the greenhouse, where, on the polished white wall, I painted a rough but distinct watercolor-style portrait of Tai. “Purple was always her favorite color,” I say
softly.

“You did this with a few berries?” He sounds astonished.

“With a few brushstrokes. It didn't take much.”

“This is amazing.”

I nudge him with my shoulder. “You say that every time you see my work.”

“And it's true every time.” He pulls me to him, closing the space between us. His body feels as if it was cut out of the contours of my own.

“That's how I used to feel listening to you play the piano,” I whisper.

He opens his mouth to respond, but pauses and looks away. “I try not to think about how much I miss my music.”

“One day,” I say. “One day this will be over, and you can play all day long if you want.” He looks down at me.

“That's the first time you've talked about what happens after this is behind us.”

I put my hands on his chest, stand on tiptoes, and brush my lips against his. He wraps his arms around me and I feel his heart thud against my palms. A moment later, my body is pressed between his and the wall, and—

“Where are—?” Soren interrupts, rounding the corner. I push Vale away, embarrassed, but Soren waves dismissively. “I've found something I want Rhinehouse and Osprey to look at. You want to see?”

We follow him down one of the long corridors.

Soren points to a series of strange plants growing in a shallow pool of water. “Watch this.” He pokes at one of them and it opens up like a mouth with long spiny teeth. “Ever seen anything like that?” He pokes at another and the same thing happens. “I brushed against it and it opened wide like it was going to bite me.”

“A plant with teeth? Is it carnivorous?” I stick my finger toward it, but Vale grabs my wrist.

“Watch it. I don't want to pull one of those teeth from the end of your finger.”

“And how about this one?” Soren points to a short tree in a separate pot with small, bright green oval fruits hanging on its slim branches. Ever seen one of these?

“It's a lime,” Osprey says, appearing out of nowhere. “They grow in the southwest, where it's drier. Okarians don't cultivate them, but Chan-Yu goes wild over them. Squeezes them over his food and puts slices in his drinks.”

“Where is Chan-Yu?” I ask.

“Disappeared again. He'll be back.” Osprey waves her hand as if Chan-Yu's sudden appearances and disappearances are no big deal. But I feel much better when he's around.

“You know all about rosemary, of course?” she says to us, moving down the row of plants. Soren and Vale nod dutifully—rosemary is not my favorite herb, but Rhinehouse seems to think it's a seasoning on par with salt and pepper. “This is a cousin of rosemary. It's called salvia. You might know it as sage.”

Soren nods. “I've seen it growing wild. And I think I remember it in the urban farms in Okaria.”

Osprey gives him an appreciative smile. “This is desert sage, though. More fragrant than its woodland cousins.” She cocks her head my way. “Your granddad was apparently very interested in plants from climates outside of Okaria. Many of these don't grow naturally at this latitude.”

“Do you know what this one is?” I ask, back at the plant I was studying earlier.

Osprey bends down for a closer look. She runs her fingers over the fuzzy hairs, and looks up. “I don't believe it. I wonder if Kanaan and Gold used this.”

“What is it?” Vale asks.

“It's called peyote,” she responds.

“What it's for?” I ask, intrigued.

“Magic.”

“Vale?” I say. Stretched out on the bed reading one of the books he found on twenty-first century composers, he looks up. “You know when you used to play the piano, and everything else faded away and it was just you and the music?”

“Yeah. I miss that.”

“It's like me and my art. When I'm in the zone creating, it's only me and the colors, the forms, the shapes. It's like nothing else exists but the flow.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“I told you Soren taught me some breathing and relaxation techniques after my mom died. I want to use those with you to create that same kind of flow.”

“What are you thinking?” he asks, setting the book down and leaning forward.

“We've got all these plants in the greenhouse, and we don't know what to do with any of them. Like the peyote. Osprey says it's supposed to open the inner eye to the truth, or to new dimensions of the truth. How can we use that? How can it help us? Meditation is supposed to help you empty your mind so you can be open to the universe, open to new ideas.”

I sit cross-legged on the floor and hold my hand out to him. The moonlight filters in through the windows, and the low light from our biolantern creates an undeniably romantic glow, but I set those thoughts aside. We've got all night for that.

“Corine has outmaneuvered us repeatedly. We're boxed in, so we need to think outside the box.” I take his hands in mine and rub my fingertips over his knuckles. He sighs. “We're going to breathe together.”

I get comfortable and glance out the window. “Now, we need to take in the energy from the moonlight. Let's channel Tai, my mom, Soren's parents, Meera, Professor Hawthorne, all the teachers and mentors and friends we've known and lost. And those who are still with us.” I close my eyes and pause, thinking of everyone I've ever loved, everyone I've ever cared about. “Let's imagine we can gather all their energy and intelligence right here between us. Breathe in, breathe out. Empty our minds of everything we know about our situation. Just feel their energy. Imagine they are connected to us, sharing their gifts.” I pause and breathe in and out slowly for several minutes. Then I go on. “Now, let's consider our goals. How do we want all this to end?”

Vale's breathing is steady, comforting.

“I picture you and me together.” Vale's voice is soft but firm. “I imagine us surrounded by friends, with music and art and laughter filling our days. How do we get there?”

“No more violence.” I close my eyes.

I remember something from my days at the Academy.
Professor Lark, Architectural Foundations: A building is nothing without its foundation. Remove the support beams and the building topples. A strong building is resilient to many types of pressures, but every one has its weak spots.

“You know your parents best, Vale. You know our strengths and weaknesses and you know theirs.”

“Their strength lies in controlling the reins of government, their ability to speak directly to the citizens, their willingness to violate the law and wield military power against us.”

“And their weaknesses?”

There's a long silence. I can feel him thinking. His fingers tighten against mine, his breath thrums in the quiet air, and his index finger involuntarily twitches, as if a thought is preparing to spring forth. Finally he croaks. “Me. They love me.”

What would Meera say if she were here with me now?
There are few people in this world immune to love, Remy.

I squeeze Vale's hand, imagining the pain he's suffered all these months since discovering the truth about his parents. “Loving you is no weakness, Vale. But it is a vulnerability.”

The Director: We must analyze their weak spots, hit them where it hurts.

“This might be a reach, but—” Vale begins, hesitance in the small quaver of his voice.

“Go on.”

“You're right that we need to think outside the box. We also can't win with one strategy alone. We need to combine the full force of our power, not just yours and mine, but everyone in the Resistance, in a way they would never expect.”

“Bear's march,” I whisper. “It's the perfect moment.”

“We can use it. We can use their energy, their momentum.” He sighs, shifting gears. “However much I repress it now, there's still a part of me that loves my mother. I've been denying that feeling to convince myself—and others—that I am fully with the Resistance. But she's my mother. She's lost touch with the things that used to motivate her, the things she taught me to believe in so fervently, but they must still be there. Buried.” He pauses. “Osprey said the peyote was ‘magic.' Rhinehouse said its hallucinogenic effects have been used for thousands of years to enhance spiritual rituals.”

I don't know where he's going yet, but I can sense his excitement. “He said ancient peoples used to go on Ghost Dances where they'd use it to go into a trance. They thought they were reuniting the living with the dead, and before a battle, they'd ask the spirits to join them or to fight on their behalf.”

I think back to when Bear and I traveled to the Farms. When we used the dreamweed to trick that guard into opening the doors to the Dietician's lab so that I could disable the MealPak formulas.
You've got stars in your eyes
, he'd said to me.