Clone City

Inwardly, Ord sensed it was over. There was no going back to the Hub or anything else that had once seemed normal. He decided to cross the perimeter again. This would be the fifth time. True, he had hesitated to go back. He felt guilty. If he didn’t go back, he thought they might ask him to come back to work. But when he’d been told to remain within certain districts, he knew it would only be a matter of time before they came and took him to the Encrypt.

As he slipped his jerkin on, he supposed the Watchers must know. Maybe they’d be waiting this time. But he could not stay in his room all day. It was torture. He’d called Eva countless times, but she wasn’t answering. He had a rough idea why. Last time they met he had told her what he had seen on the Outside. It scared her.

It all seemed so clear now. Wasn’t it always like that? Understanding too late. Eva was tired that day, dog-tired. A child could have seen that. Her eyes had no sparkle...but she had come through the rain to meet him. They were downcast...but they’d looked up at him appealingly. And what had he done? Yap. He couldn’t hold it in – what he’d done, what he’d seen, where he’d been, it was all so important and she’d listened, given him her Carer heart until she could bear it no longer. She’d got up, made some excuse and left, leaving him with all his words dangling. So many words, he thought bitterly, and none worth a single act of kindness. She had come to ask something. Why couldn’t he have realized it? Why couldn’t he have seen that she needed him to listen, that the world did not revolve around him, that her world was as real, important, and as punishingly harsh as his. ‘Fool, fool,’ he said, slamming the door.

He glanced at his locator. The Watchers must know, he told himself. So why hadn’t they come? He looked up and down the corridor. It was quiet. The thought that one day they will come made him quicken his step.

An hour or so later, he was walking the same path through the forest. Once again, he felt the same sense of wonder. Just to see how the light filtered through the trees creating a patchwork of shifting shades at his feet lightened his spirits. In Joypolis, all colours were primary and most shapes uniform. Today, the boughs were creaking in the wind and the leaves shaken so hard they roared. How different it all is, he thought. Most Joypolitan sounds were electronic – beeps and bleeps, the humming of one machine to another. There was music, almost everywhere you went, but something he had noticed recently was how often there was more than one tune being piped in the background. The result was noise. But here, all sounds were living. Natural, he supposed, was the word for it.

He walked on, puzzling over why Joypolitans had never ventured out. Perhaps they were wrong: perhaps the Outside was not the forbidding place they had been led to believe. He felt his head twinge, as if a light had fused inside. Looking around, not only did it seem safe, but it looked like a garden of unparalleled beauty. Thinking such thoughts, it suddenly struck him how much he had changed. Here he was thinking thoughts that a year ago would have been unthinkable. He looked back to see if he could see the Tower. At first, he couldn’t, but then he spotted its pinnacle appearing and disappearing like a trick of light. He realized there could be no real going back. Not now. Not as Ord the Packer.

He walked on, saddened and yet consoled. He wondered where these new thoughts came from. They were not from the slogans. If he continued to change at this rate, he wondered what he would be like in, say, another year. He had no idea and wandered on feeling lights popping in his head.

When he reached the small brook, he decided not to follow it but to cross straightaway. He climbed the opposite bank and saw the same mound with the solitary tree beside it beyond an open stretch of tall, waving grass. He wondered why he felt apprehensive about crossing the space. Reassuring himself that there was nothing to fear, he began to walk toward the mound.

The grass reached up to his waist and it took a few minutes to reach the spot. Even as he approached, he realized it had once been a building. When the grass gave way to ferns, he became aware of rubble beneath his feet. Getting down, he could see slabs that had once had a regular shape. When he reached the edge of the pile, he pulled the ferns aside to see what was beneath. It did not look to be much, but here and there he noticed shards of rusted iron. He walked around till he reached what must have formed the entrance. He could see why this part still stood – it was solid iron embedded in a concrete base. The doors had long since rotted and the solitary tree that stood nearby seemed to stand guard over the humped remains. He went over to it.

Seeing marks on the bark, he examined them. They looked as if they had been gouged out. He followed their shapes with his finger, believing they were symbols. He thought there were four. They were unlike any writing he’d ever seen. But he read them as he would pronounce the most similar in Joypolis’ script. ‘Bora’. It must be a name, he thought.

He ran his hand over the surface of the tree but, unable to discover any more clear markings, he stepped over its large roots to get to the other side. As he did so, he looked up and stopped in his tracks. There was a carving of a face. Stepping back from the tree, he viewed it head on. It was carved on a bulge. Ord stepped closer and admired the life-like image. The eyes seemed to stare out of the tree. He raised his hand to touch it. He felt the low bridge of the nose, the wide spread of lips and the grooves of teeth. He wondered if it had moved upward as the tree had grown. If it had not moved, then the person who had carved it must have worked from a platform. Strangely beautiful, he thought.

After a while, he went back to the mound and began to forage around, trying to see if he could find anything of interest. He fairly jumped out of his skin when his locator beeped. Time had flown by. He could hardly believe he had spent so much time in this place. It was time to go. He did not want to spend the night out here. Yet, as he walked back, for the first time, he didn’t feel like going back.