UnDivided (20 page)

“Toward what end?” asks a woman to his right. He turns to
see a council member about Elina's age but with more worry lines in her forehead. “If we open our gates to AWOLs officially, we'll be inundated. It will be a nightmare!”

“No,” says Lev, happy for the unintentional setup. “
This
is the nightmare.” Then he reaches into his backpack and pulls out sets of bound printouts. Reams and reams of paper as heavy as phone books. He quickly hands them out to Chief Quanah and the council members all around him. “The names of the unwound are public record, so I was able to access them. In these pages are the names of everyone subjected to ‘summary division' since the Unwind Accord was signed. You can't look at all of those names and not feel something.”

“We never signed the Unwind Accord, and never will,” says one of the elders. “Our consciences are clear—which is more than I can say for you.” He points a crooked finger. “We took you in two years ago, and then what did you do? You became a clapper!”

“Only after this council cast me out!” Lev reminds him. It gives everyone pause for thought. Some of the council members leaf through the pages, shaking their hands sadly at the sheer volume of names. Others won't even look.

To his credit, the chief takes some time to flip through the pages before he says, “The tragedy of unwinding is beyond this council's control. And our relations with Washington are already strained, isn't that true, Chal?” The chief looks up to the gallery.

Chal stands to respond. “Tense, not strained,” he offers.

“So why add even more tension by throwing down a gauntlet to the Juvenile Authority?”

And then from a councilman behind Lev, “If we do, other tribes might follow.”

“And they might not,” says the chief with a finality that leaves no room for contradiction.

“There are plenty of people who are against unwinding,” Lev tells the council, no longer addressing just the chief
as he was instructed, but turning a slow pirouette, making sure to make eye contact with every council member around him. “But a lot of people won't speak out because they're afraid to. What they need is something to rally behind. If the Arápache make a stand against unwinding by giving official sanctuary to AWOLs, you'll be amazed the friends you'll find out there.”

“We're not looking for friends,” shouts one of the elders, angry to the point of spraying spittle as he speaks. “After generations of being abused, all we want is to be left alone!”

“Enough!” shouts Chief Quanah. “We'll put it to a vote and end this once and for all.”

“No!” Lev shouts. He knows this is too soon for a vote, but the chief, offended by this show of disrespect, leans forward and locks eyes with him.

“It is being put to a vote, and you shall abide by the result, boy. Is that understood?”

Lev casts his eyes downward, humbling himself, giving the chief the respect due him. “Yes, sir.”

The chief raises his voice to a commanding volume. “All in favor of adopting the petition to publicly and officially open the reservation to all Unwinds seeking asylum, affirm with a show of hands.”

Three hands go up. Then a fourth.

“All those opposed?”

Eight hands rise in opposition. And just like that, AWOL hope among the Arápache is lost.

“The petition fails,” the chief says. “However, in light of extenuating circumstances, I move that we officially and publicly accept Levi Jedediah Calder-Garrity as a full-fledged child of the Arápache Nation.”

“That's not what I asked for, sir.”

“But it's what you've received, so be thankful for it.”

Lev is admitted to the tribe by a unanimous show of hands. Then Chief Quanah instructs the council members to return the books of Unwind names to Lev.

“No, keep them,” Lev says. “When the Cap-17 law falls, and when the Juvenile Authority starts unwinding kids without their parents' permission, you can add the new names by hand.”

“We will do no such thing,” says the chief, insisting on the last word, “because those things will never happen.” Then he calls for the next petitioner.

•  •  •

The walls of Lev's room are undecorated. The furniture is well crafted but understated. The bedroom is just as it was when Lev came to the Tashi'ne home the first time, the same as when he returned six weeks ago. He now knows why he feels so at home here: His soul is a lot like these Spartan walls. He tried to fill the emptiness with the angry graffiti of the clapper, but it washed clean. He accepted being a shining god for the ex-tithes in the Cavenaugh mansion, but that chalky portrait wiped away. He tried to draw himself a hero by saving Connor's life, but even after he succeeded, he felt no glory, no sense of honorable completion. And he curses his parents for raising him to be a tithe—for no matter how he runs from that destiny, it is imprinted so deep in his psyche that he will never be free of it. He will never feel complete, for there will always be that unwanted, uncomprehending part of himself that can only be completed in his demise. Far worse than his parents disowning him was that: raising him to only find satisfaction in the negation of his own existence.

On the evening of the day Lev fails to change the world in council, Elina comes to his room. She rarely does that, for she is a woman who respects privacy and contemplative solitude. She finds him lying on his stomach atop his tightly made bed. His pillow is on the floor because he doesn't care enough to pick it up.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “You ate very little at dinner.”

“I just want to sleep tonight,” he tells her. “I'll eat tomorrow.”

She lingers, sitting down in the desk chair. She picks up the pillow and puts it on the bed, and he turns to face the wall, hoping she'll just go away, but she doesn't.

“There were four votes for your petition,” Elina reminds him. “A single vote would have been surprising, considering the council's resistance to taking a stand on unwinding. You may not realize it, but four votes is a veritable coup!”

“It doesn't change a thing. The petition failed. Period.”

Elina sighs. “You're not yet fifteen, Lev, and you came within three votes of changing tribal policy. Surely that counts for something.”

He turns to look at her now. “Horseshoes and hand grenades.” And off her confused expression, he explains, “It's something Pastor Dan used to say. Those are the only two situations where being close counts.”

She chuckles her understanding, and Lev turns away from her again.

“Perhaps in the morning you can go out with Pivane, and he can teach you to hunt. Or maybe you could help Una in the shop. If you asked, I'm sure she'd let you work with her to build her instruments.”

“Is that it for me then? I go out hunting, or I become a luthier's apprentice?”

Now Elina's voice becomes chastising, and a little cold. “You came here because you longed for a simpler, safer way of living. Now you resent us for giving it to you?”

“I don't resent anyone . . . I just feel . . . I don't know . . . unfulfilled.”

“Welcome to the human race,” she tells him with a bit of rueful condescension. “You should learn to relish the hunger more than the feast, lest you become a glutton.”

Lev groans, not having the strength or even the desire to parse the poignancy from yet another of Elina's pithy Arápache metaphors.

“A great man knows not only when he's called upon, but also when he's not,” says Elina. “The truly great know how to accept and embrace a common life, just as much as the call to duty.”

“Then I will never be great, will I?”

“Listen to you! You posture like a man, but you pout like a child.” It's a scolding, but she says it with such warmth in her voice that Lev both appreciates it and finds it embarrassing.

“I've never been a child,” he tells her with a sadness no one but he will ever truly understand. “I've been a tithe, a clapper, and a fugitive, but never a child.”

“Then be one now, because you deserve it. Be a child, if only for one night.”

The last person to suggest such a thing was Pastor Dan. The night before he was killed by an explosion that was meant for Lev.

Neither of them speak for a moment. If Elina is uncomfortable with the silence, she doesn't show it. Then she begins to gently rub his back and sing to him in Arápache. Her voice is sweet, if not entirely on key. Lev has learned enough of the language to know what the song is about. It's a lullaby, perhaps one she used to sing to Wil when he was very little. It speaks of the moon and the mountain. How the mountain pushes forth from the earth, reaching ever skyward in a vain attempt to grab the moon, but the mischievous moon keeps slipping behind the mountain's peak to hide, remaining forever unattainable. Lev thinks of the challenge of his animal spirit—to bring down the moon—and he wonders if Elina even realizes what she's singing. Not a lullaby, but a lament.

When she's done, Lev's eyes are closed, and he's slowed
his breathing to a gentle snuffle. Elina leaves, probably thinking he's asleep, but he's not. Lev will not sleep well tonight, if he sleeps at all. As much as he thought he wanted it, he is immune to a normal life and is addicted to a life of dangerous sway. He
must
make a difference out there. He
must
satisfy the hunger, elbowing himself a place at the feast.

The council dismissed his petition out of hand. Perhaps petitions are too tame an approach. Perhaps what Lev needs is a method that's more extreme. He's seen extreme. He's lived it. He knows how to play with fire. Perhaps this time he can use what he knows to serve his own ends, not someone else's.

He shares none of this with Elina, or Una, or with anyone else on the reservation. But silently and alone, he begins to plan.

Today he failed to change the world.

As for tomorrow, who can tell?

Security at the Molokai complex is state-of-the-art and extreme. No one gets into the compound who doesn't belong there. The outside fences are electrified and tranq-charged. The gates boast scanners that can sniff you and decode your DNA just as easily as tell your brand of deodorant. Only the best for Proactive Citizenry's bioresearch facility. Unfortunately, all security systems are flawed and limited by the arrogance of whoever designed it. In this case, the designers were arrogant enough to think that they only needed to secure the place from people on the outside. No one counts on a fox that's already inside the fence.

Newly tweaked and effectively remotivated, Camus Comprix is, for all intents and purposes, glitch-free. True, there may still be
some issues, but in a few short days Cam will be the problem of the US military, and his issues will go with him. General Bodeker has not only purchased his physical self, but his emotional self as well. Not just his presence but his problems, whatever they turn out to be.

Cam goes for a daily run on the expansive grounds of the compound, where sugarcane and taro root still grow right up to the edge of cliffs overlooking the sea. It's all still harvested and sold—Proactive Citizenry is all about employing local residents and paying them higher-than-standard wages to satisfy the organization's need to feel they are Forward-Thinking for Humanity®. Roberta, and everyone else who is a part of Proactive Citizenry, seem to believe in the good work they're doing. They also believe in getting extremely rich while doing it.

Cam doesn't run alone. He's not allowed. One of the guards, a particularly bouef one, always joins him. Safety in numbers. They weave along the path that runs at the edge of the fields that grow year round, harvested in staggered intervals. Some patches are clear-cut, others still green. As they move from a clear-cut area and into tall cane, Cam bursts into a sudden sprint, catching his jogging partner off guard. The path curves left, and as soon as he's out of the guard's view, Cam turns sharply, disappearing into the cane.

“Mr. Comprix!” he hears the guard shout. They all call him “Mister” here. Cam pushes on, knowing exactly where he's going, trying to keep from knocking down the cane and creating an obvious path. The stiff leaves whip at his face as he barrels through, stinging, but he doesn't care. For a moment he wonders if he's miscalculated, and if he'll come from the field into an unexpected ocean inlet, where he'd go flying off the edge of a cliff to his doom.

“Mr. Comprix!” No doubt his jogging companion is now talking into his ear piece, spreading the word that Cam is AWOL.

He comes to another path, a wider one, but crosses over it, into a thick copse of bamboo that grows much higher than the cane. The bamboo is dense and hard to push through. It's there for one reason—to create an environmentally aesthetic façade for the facility behind it. In other words, to hide it. The place doesn't appear on maps. It doesn't even show up in satellite photos, at least not the ones available to the public. From the outside it appears to be just a warehouse—the way a movie studio soundstage is a warehouse: a large hollow building that can be redesigned on the inside to be whatever is needed at the time.

There's no telling what Proactive Citizenry has tinkered and toyed with here. Perhaps this is where they began the great agave extinction by genetically engineering the agave-specific Cyan Snout weevil, but only after buying up massive quantities of tequila that now goes for thousands of dollars a bottle. Or maybe this is where they grafted new faces on people in the Witness Relocation Program—a lucrative government contract that they had for eight years until the program's budget was cut, making it no longer worthwhile. Or maybe this is where they did all that intensive research that brought about the cure for muscular dystrophy. While the third one was something Proactive Citizenry widely publicized, the first two Cam found unexpectedly while hacking their computer system.