But still nothing human.
Has something happened to the Anomalies?
The stream grows larger the farther into the canyon we go. I keep us walking on the rounded, smoothed-out rocks next to it. If we step on them we don’t leave as many footprints for someone to find. In the summer, I use a walking stick and go right in the river itself, my father told me.
But the water’s too cold to walk in now. Sheets of ice edge the banks. I look around and wonder what my father would have seen in the summertime. Scrubby small trees that are barren now would be full-leaved, or as full-leaved as anything gets in the desert. The sun would beat down hot, and the cool water would feel good on his feet. Fish would swim away when they felt him coming.
On the third morning we find the ground covered in frost. I haven’t seen any chert to start a fire with. We’d have frozen without our coats.
Eli speaks, echoing my thoughts. “At least the Society gave us these,” he says. “I’ve never had a coat that works this well. ”
Vick agrees. “They’re almost military grade,” he says. “I wonder why the Society wasted them on us?”
Hearing them talk makes me realize what’s been bothering me at the back of my mind: Something’s wrong with this, too.
I pull my coat from my back and the wind makes me want to shudder, but I keep my hands steady as I pull out a sharp piece of agate.
“What are you doing?” Vick asks.
“Cutting up my coat. ”
“You going to tell me why?”
“I’ll show you. ” I spread out the coat like the carcass of an animal and make an incision. “The Society doesn’t like to waste things,” I say. “So there’s a reason we have these. ” I peel back the upper layer of material.
Waterproof wires—some blue, some red—wind like veins through the padding inside.
Vick swears and moves to rip off his coat. I put up my hand to stop him. “Wait a minute. We don’t know what they do yet. ”
“They’re probably tracking us,” Vick says. “The Society could know where we are. ”
“That’s true, but you might as well stay warm while I look. ” I pull the wires, remembering how my father used to do this. “There’s a warming mechanism inside the coats,” I say. “I recognize the wiring. That’s why they work so well. ”
“And what else?” Vick asks. “Why’d they want to keep us warm?”
“So we’ll keep the coats on,” I say. I look at a neat web of blue wiring that t
races along with the red wiring of the warming mechanism. The blue threads from the collar of the coat down the arms to the wrists. The web covers the back and front and sides and underneath the arms. In a place near the heart there’s a tiny silver disk about the size of a microcard.
“Why?” Eli asks.
I start to laugh. I reach inside and unhook the blue wires from the disk, carefully weaving them in and out of the red ones. I don’t want to alter the warming mechanism. It works fine as it is. “Because,” I tell Eli, “they don’t care about us, but they love data. ” Once the silver disk is free, I hold it up. “I bet this records things like our pulse rates, our hydration levels, our moment of death. And anything else they’ve thought up that they want to know about while we’re out in the villages. They’re not using these to track us constantly. But they gather our data after we die. ”
“The coats don’t always burn,” Vick says.
“And even if they do, the disks are fireproof,” I say. Then I start to grin. “We’ve been making it hard for them,” I tell Vick. “All those people we buried. ” My grin fades as I think of the Officers dragging the bodies back out of the dirt just to strip them of their coats.
“That first boy in the water,” Vick remembers. “They made us take off his coat before we got rid of him. ”
“But if they don’t care about us, why would they care about our data?” Eli asks.
“Death,” I say. “It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it. ”
“We die, they learn how not to,” Eli says. His voice sounds distant, as though he isn’t only thinking of the coats but of something else too.
“I wonder why they didn’t stop us,” Vick says. “We’ve been burying for weeks. ”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe they wondered how long we could keep it up. ”
None of us speak for a moment. I wind the blue wires and leave them—the Society’s entrails—under a rock. “Do either of you want me to fix yours?” I ask. “It won’t take long. ”
Vick hands his over. Now that I know where the blue wires are, I can be more careful with my incisions. I make only a few small holes and pull the blue wires out. One of the holes is in the spot over his heart so I can extract the disk.
“How are you going to get yours back together?” Vick asks, shrugging into his coat.
“I’ll have to wear it like this and find a way to fix it later,” I say. One of the trees near us is pinyon pine and it weeps sap. I pull some off and use it to stick the cut edges of my coat back together in a few places. The sap’s smell, sharp and earthy, makes me think of the taller pines on the Hill. “I’ll probably still be warm enough as long as I’m careful about the red wires. ”
I reach for Eli’s coat but he holds it back. “No,” he says. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. ”
“All right,” I say, surprised, and then I think I understand. The tiny disk is the closest any of us might come to immortality. It’s not as good as the stored tissue samples that ideal Citizens get—a chance at living again someday when the Society has the technology.