The Civilization has recently received credible intelligence that a group of six young people, ranging between the ages of five and seventeen, have escaped from dusker imprisonment. Our agents have informed us that they are likely headed toward the Mission. Should they reach said destination, they are to be treated with the utmost care and hospitality. They are to board the very next train and be brought back to the Civilization. It is imperative that they return with “the Origin.”
Yours, the Civilization.
“We received that letter only a few weeks ago,” Krugman says. “That’s why we weren’t completely astonished when you appeared at our doorstep. We were expecting you, see.”
Sissy flips the paper over. It’s blank. She looks up at Krugman. “So we’ll be getting on this train tomorrow,” Sissy says, her voice edged with suspicion. “And you were going to tell us this, when?”
Krugman laughs, a cough of mirth. But inside that explosion of sound, I detect his irritation. “Why, when young Gene recovered. That’s when. We weren’t about to get your hopes up only to be forced to dash them if he wasn’t well enough to make the journey. Remember, he was barely hanging on just a couple of nights ago. But look now,” he says, looking at me, “he’s the very picture of health and vitality, isn’t he? So, you’ll be leaving us tomorrow with both our blessings and, no doubt, the fondest of memories.”
For a minute, the only sound is the tick-tock tick-tock of the grandfather clock.
“What about the Scientist?” I say. “Why wasn’t he sent back to the Civilization? You’d think he would have received the same treatment as us. Why wasn’t he fast-tracked?”
The air tenses. In the window’s reflection, I see Krugman’s henchmen—silent this whole time—stiffen. Krugman says, “The simple answer is: we never received a directive from the Civilization.”
“And the long answer is?” Sissy says.
Krugman laughs loudly, a guffaw. “The long answer is: it’s complicated.”
“Then give us the long answer,” I say. “Tell us everything. Tell us why he committed suicide.”
Krugman sniffs with irritation. “You have to understand something. When Elder Joseph returned, he wasn’t altogether in his right mind. He proved to be … uncooperative.”
“How so?”
“He clammed up. Refused to talk about his life among the duskers. No one had ever lived in the dusker metropolis and lived to tell the tale. He was there for over two decades; he should have been a storehouse of information. But he refused to talk about his time there. And very oddly, when it came time for him to return to the Civilization by train, he refused to go. Outright refused, locked himself in this lab, in fact. When pressed, all he would say was he had to wait for the Origin.”
“And what did he say about the Origin? Didn’t you think to ask?”
Krugman smiles ambiguously. “Of course we did. He only said that it was a cure. That in the years living with the duskers, he’d been able to gain daily access to laboratories and top-secret scientific documents. Posed as a janitor at the highest-security building in the metropolis, apparently. Anyway, with access to all that information and equipment, he’d been able to concoct a formula. For the Origin. The cure that would reverse the genetic effects on the duskers, completely retransform duskers back to humanity.”
“Reverse the effects?” I say.
“That’s what Elder Joseph said. If he’s to be believed.”
“This cure, the Origin,” Sissy whispers, just as overwhelmed as I am. “He didn’t have it on him, then?”
Krugman shakes his head. “He wasn’t able to bring it with him, but claimed it would one day surely arrive. He became like a raving prophet, every day prophesying with staff and rod about the coming of the young ones carrying the Origin. Blessed are the young feet of those who come bearing the Origin, he kept chanting. When he wasn’t working in the laboratory facility we have here, he was on the fortress wall, keeping watch through the night. Frankly, toward the end, he lost it. He had to be isolated in a cabin about half a day’s hike from here.”
I nod, remembering the cabin from a few days ago. “How long was he there?”
“Not long. A couple of months at the most. We’d check on him every few days. One afternoon, we found him hanging from the crossbeams.” Krugman gazes somberly at us. “You wanted to know. So there you have it, the unvarnished truth. Hurts, doesn’t it, truth?”
“But what drove him to kill himself?” I ask.
Krugman’s glassy eyes flash with sudden clarity. He gazes out the window; when he looks at me again, his face has tightened. “Have you noticed something?”
“What’s that?”
“This conversation. It’s been a little one-sided. Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of hearing the sound of my own voice. I’d like to do a little more listening now. And for you to do a little more talking.”
Sissy and I glance at each other, confused. “About what?” Sissy asks.
“The Origin.” He sniffs. “I’d thought Elder Joseph was completely off his rocker when ranting about it, but then you six suddenly appear quite out of the blue, just as he’d predicted. And then the Civilization apparently not only gets wind of this Origin theory but actually seems inclined to believe it. So. Tell me. What is it? And more importantly, where is it? I’d like to see it, please.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “We don’t know what it is. We don’t have it. And that’s the truth.”
Krugman smiles to himself. “I can understand why you’d want to be circumspect about it, even cagey, but I mean, we’re friends now, are we not? Even family, perhaps, no?”
“We don’t have it,” Sissy says. “We’re not being cagey.”
He pulls in his chin; the mole crowns. “Know what I also believe?” Krugman says, a drip of excitement enlivening his voice. “I believe in quid pro quo, in tit for tat. Do you understand what these terms mean?”
I shake my head.
“It means a fair exchange. I give you something, you give me something. I’ve given you information, answers to your questions. Now, in return, quid for my quo, you give me something. Understand? A little tit for my tat. See? I give you hospitality, now you give me the Origin.” His voice, growing more excited as he speaks, shakes with building emotion. “It is only fair—”
“We don’t have it,” Sissy interrupts, and Krugman’s body flinches. “We simply don’t have an inkling what it is, this Origin. We’d never heard of the thing until we arrived here.”
Krugman regards her for a long time. Then he gives the smallest of nods, and the two henchmen behind us move toward the door. “Very well, then. They will escort you back to your cottage.”
We turn to leave, Sissy in front of me. She stops. The door is still closed, the two henchmen standing directly in front of it. They are smiling, arms folded across their barrel chests.
“One more thing,” Krugman says, his voice jangling.
23
“A FAVOR I need to ask you,” Krugman says, inspecting then removing grime from under a fingernail.
“Go ahead,” Sissy says. “What is it?”
“Let me search you.”
Sissy’s arms go taut. “Come again?”
“Listen,” I say. “We already told you we don’t have the Origin.”
“I don’t believe you,” he says with clinical detachment. But his eyes, as they swing up to meet mine, are anything but detached. They are cauldrons of hurt pride and brimming anger. Something too long restrained is unleashing in him.
“Look here,” Sissy says. “Whether you believe us or not doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have the Origin. You could search us from head to toe, and you’d—”
“Really?” Krugman says, a sinister glint reflecting in his eyes. “How funny you should mention that. I was just about to suggest the very idea myself. From head to toe.”
Sissy’s brows knit together in confusion. She throws me a glance. What’s going on?
Behind us, the floorboards creak. One of the henchmen steps toward Sissy. “Remove your clothes. All of them. We need to examine your skin.”
I stare at the men, then at Krugman again. “Tell them to move away from the door, Krugman.”
“No,” he says softly. His eyes lilt over to Sissy, softly, with sickening tenderness. “We have reason to believe the Origin might be a typographic sort of clue, imprinted on your skin somewhere. Some kind of lettering. Perhaps an equation or a code of sorts. Take off your clothes.”
“I don’t think so,” I say before Sissy can respond. “We’ll be leaving now.”
“And you will,” the other henchman says with a low rumble. “You will. But she stays. She’s the only one we still need to search.” A faint smile touches his eyes. “We’ve already examined the four boys. And you, we checked you out while you were sick and out like a light. You’re all clean.” His eyes flick toward Sissy again. He starts reaching up to her.
“Don’t you touch me,” she says.
There’s no sound but the tick-tocking of the grandfather clock, now jarringly loud.
“See, that’s the thing with girls with big man-sized feet,” Krugman says from behind us, his voice a slithering coo. “When their feet haven’t been beautified, when the foot glands haven’t been broken. Left undestroyed, these glands secrete male hormones into a girl. Turn her from a princess into an opinionated ox. One who fails to understand her place in society, who mistakenly thinks she can walk like a male, talk like a male, have opinions like a male. Say no to a male. ‘Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a girl with big feet.’”
“Look at those gargantuan man feet,” one of the henchmen jeers. “Can we even be sure she’s really a girl?”
