Skyler had a distinct recollection of the time long ago — more than ten years now — when he'd first become restless. He'd been fourteen years old at the time. Like so many of his memories, this one was bound up with his best friend, Johnny Ray, or Raisin, as Skyler himself had named him.
It had begun to happen on a summer day after the science lesson in the lecture hall, a one-room wooden structure set high on cinder blocks. Even with windows on two sides propped open, the hot, thick air barely moved. Above the blackboard was a customized couplet, printed in handsome script:
In unison they had recited Rincon's First Law, named after the Lab's founder, Dr. Rincon, who did not live on the island and was known to them only through his teachings and his research: "Human life alone is sacred; its preservation and extension is our mission." Scientific facts were drummed into them, learned by incantations and memorization. They learned the periodic table of elements, the name of every part of the body, the biological kingdoms and phyla, all the known planets of all the known solar systems, even the four-letter coded DNA sequences surrounding a hundred and twenty disease genes. On this particular day they received back papers they had written, most with high marks. Outside the lecture hall, Raisin pulled Skyler aside.
"It's phony, you know — this whole thing."
"What is?"
"Writing papers, getting grades. They don't even read them."
"How do you know?"
"I tested them. After the first two paragraphs I made it up. I wrote complete gibberish."
He showed his paper and the grade he had gotten, scrawled at the end: VERY GOOD.
"I don't think they care whether we learn or not — you ever get that feeling?"
In fact, Skyler realized, he did have that feeling sometimes, but he had never put it into words.
"But then why would they teach us?"
Raisin shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe to keep us busy."
For days afterward, Raisin kept up a tirade. He harped on the restrictions that circumscribed their lives: the books in the library that they could not read because they were "not fit," TV shows that they saw advertised but were not permitted to watch, games of roughhouse they could not play, questions the Physician Teachers never answered.
One hot afternoon, through the open windows, they heard, as they sometimes did, distant cries carried by the wind — the sounds of younger children at play at the Nursery. The Nursery was a small adjacent island — it could be reached across a narrow sandbar at low tide — but the Jimminies were not allowed to go there. Nor were the toddlers ever brought onto the mainland.
"Did you ever wonder," Raisin asked later, "why we never see them? What would be the harm in it?"
There was another group with whom the Jimminies were permitted no contact — the Gullah, a tiny community of black people. Skyler and Raisin had heard — from where they did not remember — that these were descendants of slaves, and that many years ago scores of them had inhabited the southern half of the island. Now there were only a dozen or so, mostly fishermen living in shacks on the western shore. A few brought fish to the Big House, and they were objects of fascination to the Jimminies, mysterious silent beings who walked on the paths, carrying glistening trout and yellowtail on long fronds ripped from the fan-shaped palmettos.
"They have boats," said Raisin. "Why don't we have any boats? Why is the only boat in the Lab locked up inside the boathouse?"
Skyler finally turned on Raisin, demanding that he stop posing his stupid, troublesome questions. "Why are you doing this?" he shouted.
Raisin smiled. "Asking questions is supposed to be part of science" he replied. "It's called the scientific method. Remember?"
And then gradually a strange thing happened: Skyler began asking questions, too — to himself — little ones first and then bigger ones.
One Sunday morning, he gazed up at Baptiste during Dogma and had a remarkable sensation. Not so very long ago he had been enthralled by Dogma. The services had given structure to his week, in the same way that science gave meaning to his life. Even before he understood the full meanings of the words, he loved to hear Baptiste roll them out, starting softly and then raising his voice gradually until, gripping the lectern with both hands, he was practically yelling. Skyler would sit there spellbound.
But this day he felt nothing. He looked at the symbol upon the wall, the twin-headed snake coiled around a staff. He looked at the blown-up photograph of Dr. Rincon in his white coat, gazing off confidently as if he were surveying a future in which Reason and Science had triumphed. And he looked at Baptiste, whose coal black hair was pulled tightly around his head, accentuating a skull that seemed as narrow as an ax blade. And he felt nothing.
The Chief Elder Physician spoke.
He spoke about the "beauty of reason and organization over the chaos of superstition and religion." What did he mean? He spoke about "the pendulum of the historical-cultural cycle swinging to our side." The words sounded hollow. It used to make Skyler feel privileged, all this talk of how they were so special, raised by the Lab as acolytes of science. A chosen tribe—stronger, healthier, purer, longer-living. How they were kept away from "the other side" to avoid contamination from the "modern-day Babylon" of the United States. But now he didn't know what to feel — he didn't feel much of anything.
How strange it was. Baptiste kept speaking, but Skyler blocked out the words. He stared at this man who had been the magnetic force at the center of his life for as long as he could remember. And it was then that the remarkable sensation happened: slowly, as he looked, Baptiste began to appear smaller, frail, aging with specks of gray in his hair and crow's feet around his eyes. He even seemed — was it possible? — slightly ludicrous.
Skyler leaned forward and turned slightly to catch a glimpse of Raisin. He could tell by his posture, hunched in on himself as if in concealment, that he was undergoing the same epiphany. They locked eyes, and Skyler saw an ember of defiance burning there. At that moment the two exchanged an unspoken, unspeakable secret — apostasy.
The next year the restlessness got worse. The questions wouldn't go away. Odd things kept happening. A girl named Jenny disappeared into the surgical ward for six days, and when she returned, they were told her left eye had been diseased; in its place she wore one made of glass. A boy was taken away in the middle of the day, held in the ward for two days, and then just as mysteriously released — the attending physician said his illness had been successfully treated.
Raisin, tall and gangly with his hair sticking out in all directions like animal fur, was turning strange. He had always been different. For one thing, he was an epileptic, subject to sudden fainting spells. Though it was never stated outright, both he and Skyler knew that the illness was troubling to the Elder Physicians — anything less than perfect health was deemed a failure.
For another, Raisin had stopped taking the daily pill handed out to all the Jimminies at evening meal. He insisted the pill robbed him of energy. Proudly, he showed Skyler how he concealed it under his tongue when the Orderly passed, saving it for a collection stashed in a tin can under his bed. Wherever he went, he secretly carried a child's toy, a wooden soldier four inches tall, so bruised and knocked about that its blue and red paint was largely gone; even when they went on forced marches around the Campus, he kept it in his pocket, and sometimes at night when the others were sleeping, he would take it out and play with it and show it only to Skyler.