Scarecrow

Okafor gave us the beam.

Of course she did. She’d looked at the ceiling while we walked out, and she’d sat in the rain on the next bench, and she’d never said a word to either of us about any of it. And then at breakfast the next morning she stopped at the end of the Squad Eight table and said, without looking at me:

”Dask. Leaving an assembly without permission. A week on the beam. Five o’clock.” A pause. ”Friese has the other end.”

And walked on.

Liam put his spoon down.

”The other end,” he said. ”She’s putting you on the same beam. With Friese. For a week.” He looked at me with something like awe. ”That’s not a punishment. That’s an experiment.”

”It’s both,” said Luna, without looking up from her porridge.

The beam was a log.

A real one. The only real tree trunk in the whole cave, as far as I knew. Pine, Okafor said, from before the war, from somewhere up in the mountains where there used to be forests. Twelve feet long and as thick as my waist, with the bark long gone and the wood worn smooth and gray by six intakes of cadets’ shoulders. It lived at the end of field one, on two trestles, and when you ran the beam you picked it up, and put it on your shoulder, and ran round the track with it until Okafor said stop.

With two people, one at each end, it was heavy.

With two people who didn’t like each other, Liam said, it was heavier.

Sigmund was already there when I got to the end of field one at ten to five. Standing beside the trestles, very straight, in his training clothes, with his hands behind his back. The lamps were still at night blue. The track was empty.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

”Front or back?” he said.

”I don’t mind.”

”I’ll take the front,” said Sigmund. ”I’m faster.”

”You’re not, actually.”

He looked at me for a second.

”I’ll take the front,” he said again, ”because I’d rather not look at the back of your head for a week.”

That was fair. I went to the back.

The first morning, we didn’t say anything.

We picked up the beam. Sigmund at the front, me at the back, the log on our right shoulders, twelve feet of gray pine between us. And we ran.

It was terrible.

Not because of the weight. The weight was all right. It was because Sigmund ran the way he did everything: fast, precise, exactly the same length of stride every time, like a clock. And I ran the way I’d learned to run in a valley, on uneven ground, a bit loose, a bit long. And the beam was rigid. Twelve feet of solid wood. It didn’t bend. It didn’t care. Every time his stride and mine didn’t match, it jolted. Down into my shoulder. Back into his. A hard, jarring knock that went right through the bones.

By the end of the first lap, my shoulder was raw.

By the end of the fifth, I could feel his annoyance coming back down the beam at me. Not with my page. With my shoulder. Every jolt.

”Your stride’s wrong,” said Sigmund. Not turning round.

”It’s not wrong. It’s different.”

”It’s different from mine. Which is correct.”

”How is yours correct?”

”Because I measured it,” said Sigmund Friese.

I nearly laughed. I didn’t. I didn’t think he’d meant it to be funny.

Okafor stood at the edge of the track with her arms folded and watched us go round. She didn’t say anything. At six o’clock she said, ”Stop.” And we put the beam back on the trestles. And Sigmund walked off toward the barracks without a word, rubbing his right shoulder.

The second morning was the same.

The third morning, about lap eleven, I changed my stride.

I didn’t decide to. Not exactly. I’d been watching his back for two days. And I’d started to see it. Not with my page. With my ordinary eyes. The rhythm. The exact length. Left, right, left, right, like the tick of the coin in the link.

So I matched it.

It took a lap. Maybe two. Shortening mine a little. Tightening it. Keeping to his clock. And the jolts got smaller. And smaller. And then, somewhere on the far side of the track, by the sand pit, they stopped.

The beam just went. Smooth. Steady. Twelve feet of pine riding on two shoulders, going round, like it was being carried by one person with very long arms.

Sigmund noticed.

I saw the back of his neck change. Just slightly. He didn’t turn round. He didn’t say anything. But for the next three laps, he ran very slightly slower. Very slightly looser. Not much. Not enough that anyone watching would see.

Enough that the beam would know.

He talked on the fourth morning.

We’d been going about forty minutes. The lamps had just started to turn from blue to gray, the way they did before the day came on. The track was still empty. Okafor was a shape at the edge of it, very still. Our breath was going white in front of us.

”She’s walking,” said Sigmund. To the track ahead of him. Not to me.

I didn’t say anything. I knew who he meant.

”Osei. I went to see her. Last night. Halloway let me in for ten minutes.” His stride didn’t change. ”She walked from the bed to the window. On her own. With one hand on the wall. Eight steps.” A pause. ”She counted them out loud. It took her a long time to say eight. She was very pleased.”

”Good.”

”She said Risa reads to her. In the evenings. From one of Risa’s books. Something with a lot of horses in it.” Another pause. ”Risa hates horses.”

I didn’t say anything.

”Risa went to Halloway,” said Sigmund. ”At three in the morning. Before the chamber.” His voice was very level. ”Halloway told me. I asked her why my sister had been at the infirmary at three in the morning. The duty log. I read the duty log.” He ran another twenty yards. ”She didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me she was going, and she didn’t tell me after.”

”She thought you’d stop her.”

”I would have,” said Sigmund. ”Regulation eight. Training incidents to go through the chain of command.” The beam rode on our shoulders. ”I would have told her to go to her squad leader. And her squad leader would have told Crane’s office. And Crane’s office would have sent down a note at half past seven.”

He was quiet for a whole lap.

”I would have stopped her,” said Sigmund. ”And Osei would be dead.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time.

I thought about the corridor. Months ago. The fern-shaped burn on Risa’s arm, and me saying you burn her in front of forty cadets before I’d looked. I thought about how wrong I’d been, that day. And how he’d stood there and said you didn’t look.

I thought about how he’d said it like a fact. Not an insult. Like it’s raining.

”I didn’t tell either,” I said.

The beam didn’t jolt. But I felt him listening.

”I knew. Ten days before Risa went. I saw it. I measured it. She asked me not to, and I didn’t.” I watched the back of his head. ”If Risa hadn’t gone, I’d have been in the gallery watching her die with a column of numbers in my pocket.”

Sigmund ran.

”Then we’re both wrong,” he said finally. ”In different directions.”

”Yes.”

”I’d have followed the rules and killed her. You’d have broken them and killed her.”

”Yes.”

”And my sister,” said Sigmund Friese, ”did the only right thing anybody did. In her nightgown. At three in the morning.” He breathed out. Hard. White in the cold air. ”She’s going to be unbearable about it.”

”She’s not said a word.”

”That’s how she’s unbearable,” said Sigmund.

On the fifth morning, the letter came.

I didn’t see it come. I saw it on the trestle when I got there. A long cream envelope with a red seal broken across the back, lying on the end of the beam where Sigmund’s shoulder would go. And Sigmund standing beside it in the gray light, very straight, with his hands behind his back, not looking at it.

”Front,” he said, when he saw me.

We picked up the beam. The envelope slid off the end and fell on the gravel. Sigmund didn’t look down. We ran.

Two laps. Three. The beam riding smooth now, every morning. Our strides matched without either of us thinking about it.

On the fourth lap, as we passed the trestles, he said:

”You have embarrassed the committee.”

I didn’t say anything.

”That’s how it starts. The letter. You have embarrassed the committee in front of the Director and the Council’s representative. You have embarrassed this family. Under-Secretary Marlowe was obliged to report your conduct. Your mother is distressed.” He said it flatly, in order, the way Okafor read reports. ”My mother is never distressed. My mother grows orchids.”

”I know. Risa told me.”

He ran a few more yards.

”And then it says: I have always known you to be a liability. I had hoped the program would correct it.”

The beam rode on our shoulders.

”Liability,” said Sigmund. ”That’s his word. He’s always used it. Since I was nine.”

He told me on the sixth lap. And the seventh. And the eighth. To the track in front of him, in his level, precise, Okafor-report voice. With the gray pine on his shoulder and his breath going white, and never once turning round.

He’d been nine. At a dinner. In the big flat on the upper floors, with the long table and the silver and Council people in good clothes. His first time allowed at the grown-up table. He’d been so careful. He’d practiced the forks for a week.

And somebody had dropped a tray in the kitchen, very loudly, behind the door. A crash. And he’d jumped. And it had come out of him. The first time. Before he even knew it was in there. A long blue crack of lightning, out of his hand, across the table, into the curtains.

The curtains had gone up. The whole window. Somebody had put it out with a jug of water, and a soldier had come in, and everyone had been very calm and very polite and gone home early.

”And I was standing in the doorway,” said Sigmund, ”in my pajamas, after. Because I’d been sent to bed and I couldn’t sleep. And he was in the hall. Saying goodbye to the last guest. A man from the health committee. And the man said something. Quite kindly. I didn’t hear what. And my father said—”

He stopped.

”He said, The boy’s a liability. We’ll have to see what can be done.”

The beam went round the far bend. Past the sand pit.

”I was nine,” said Sigmund. ”I didn’t know what liability meant. I looked it up. In the big dictionary in his study. In the dark, with a candle, so nobody would know.” He breathed out, white. ”A thing for which one is responsible, especially a debt. A person whose presence is likely to cause trouble.”

I didn’t say anything.

”So I made a list,” said Sigmund. ”That night. In the back of a schoolbook. Things that are not a liability. And the first thing on it was be useful. And the second was be fast. And the third was don’t spark.” The beam rode on. ”And when the program came, when I was eleven, and they said there’d be a training class, and a ship, and a new world, and that everyone in it would be necessary, I thought—”

He stopped again.

”I thought that’s the opposite,” he said. ”That’s the opposite word. Necessary. If I could get onto that ship, he’d have to use the opposite word.”

We ran a whole lap without saying anything.

Okafor stood at the edge of the track. She hadn’t moved. She was too far away to hear. I think she knew exactly what was being said anyway.

”And you?” said Sigmund.

I didn’t understand.

”Why are you here,” said Sigmund. ”You’re a farm boy from the flats. Your father walked out. Your mother was exiled. You didn’t need to be necessary to anybody. You could have stayed in your valley and grown wheat.” He ran. ”Everyone says Crane came and got you. Nobody says why you came.”

So I told him.

I told him about the day Crane came to the valley. Mother in bed with her hands shaking too hard to hold the cup. The slate on the bench between us. Your sisters carry what your parents carried. Without treatment, twenty-five years. Perhaps thirty. The vials. Three a day, delivered on Mondays. The sixtieth floor. Garnet’s lemon tree in the bath. Genny’s chemistry set, which Crane had approved personally.

”I’m here so they live,” I said. ”That’s all. That’s the only reason. If I go, they get treatment. If I go, Mother gets her vials. If I don’t—” I stopped. ”There’s no if I don’t. I worked that out on the bench, the day he came. There’s only if I go.”

Sigmund ran for a long time.

”So you’re on a leash too,” he said finally.

He’d heard it. In the doorway of the little side room at the gala. All of it. A long, comfortable leash. With a good view.

”Yes.”

”His leash.”

”Your father’s. Crane’s. The Council’s.” I watched the back of his head. ”It’s all the same leash. They just pass the end of it round.”

”Mine’s longer,” said Sigmund.

”Mine’s got my sisters on the other end.”

He didn’t answer that.

On the last lap, Okafor said, ”Stop.”

We put the beam back on the trestles. The lamps had gone white. The day had come on. Somewhere across the cave, the breakfast bell was going.

The letter was still on the gravel where it had fallen. The red seal broken across the back. Sigmund looked at it for a long time.

Then he bent down and picked it up. He didn’t open it. He turned it over in his hands. And I saw him think about it. Saw the blue start, very faint, between his fingers, the way it had on the bench.

He didn’t burn it.

He folded it in half. And put it in the inside pocket of his training jacket. Next to the other thing he kept there. A small black notebook, very worn at the corners.

He saw me looking.

He took the notebook out. Held it for a second. And then, very precisely, he opened it to the first page, and turned it round so I could see.

A heading. In a nine-year-old’s careful writing, gone brown with age.

Things that are not a liability.

There was a line through it. A new one. Clean black ink. Done very recently. Done, I think, on the bench at the edge of field one, in the rain, after I’d gone.

And underneath, in the same black ink. In his handwriting now. Narrow and precise and sixteen years old.

Things that are true.

There was only one thing on the list so far.

1. Risa was right.

He closed the notebook. He put it back in his pocket, beside his father’s letter.

”I still can’t stand you, Dask,” said Sigmund Friese.

”I know.”

”Your stride’s still wrong. You’ve just learned to hide it.” He rubbed his right shoulder. ”And you do that thing with your face. When you’re about to say something kind. You do it before you say it. You go all—” He made a small, precise gesture by his own face that meant nothing at all. ”It’s insufferable.”

”I’ll work on it.”

”Don’t,” said Sigmund. ”It’s useful. It means I’ve got about two seconds to leave.”

He started walking toward the barracks. Then he stopped, about ten yards away. He didn’t turn round.

”Dask.”

”Friese.”

”The committee,” he said. To the field. ”Level 62. The pharmaceutical works. Your mother’s vials.” A pause. ”He keeps the committee papers at home. In the study. In the desk with the green top. Third drawer. There’s a key.” Another pause. ”I’ve known where the key is since I was nine. I used to go in at night to look up words.”

I didn’t say anything.

”I’m not offering anything,” said Sigmund. ”I’m stating a fact. I’m making a list of true things. That’s one of them.”

”Noted,” I said.

He went very still.

Then he turned his head. Just slightly. Just enough that I could see the side of his face. And for the first time in seven months, I saw Sigmund Friese’s mouth do something that was very, very nearly a smile.

”That’s mine,” he said. ”Get your own.”

And he walked off to breakfast.

Liam asked me about it that night. Of course he did.

”Well?” he said. In the dark. From his bed. ”A whole week. On the same beam. With Friese.” I could hear him grinning. ”Are you friends now? Do I have to be nice to him? Because I’m not going to be nice to him. I’ve decided. On principle.”

I thought about it.

”No,” I said. ”We’re not friends.”

”Oh, good.”

”I don’t like him any better,” I said. ”He’s still exactly as annoying as he was. More, probably. He measured his stride.”

”He what?”

”But it’s different,” I said. I tried to find the words. ”Before, I didn’t like him because of what he was. A Friese. His father’s son. The boy who burned his sister.” I looked at the dark ceiling. ”Now I don’t like him because of who he is. Because he’s precise and stubborn and he thinks he’s always right and he makes lists.” I paused. ”That’s a different kind of not liking someone.”

Liam was quiet for a long time.

”Mate,” he said finally. ”That’s what Sera says about me.”

From the bed on the other side, very quietly, in the dark, Toby laughed.

Day 216. The beam.

Sigmund’s word was ”liability.” Since he was nine. He joined to make his father use the opposite word.

I joined so the girls live.

Both on the same leash. They pass the end round.

He’s started a new list. ”Things that are true.” One thing on it so far.

Third drawer. Green-topped desk. A key.

I still don’t like him. It’s a different kind now.

His stride is correct. I measured it.