The Runaways
by Phillip C. Jennings
Illustration by Jason C. Exchardt
Shadows stretched across the fields, and the sun plummeted. Sunset. Darkness blanketed Hidalgo.
Peder had never been aware of the clock-calendar glowing on his bedroom wall, not like now. Numbers blinked—09 changed to 10.
10 1021 08. After all those lessons it finally meant something! It was the 10th day of the 1021st trift of year 8. Peder had memorized his numbers and letters, but now they possessed a power. They weren't just sounds in a chant. They represented concepts like the passage of time.
Nurse Carmen smiled at Peder. He saw curiosity in her brown eyes, and hope. “Do you remember coming here? It was late last trift, just after free time.”
Peder’s voice was rough. He talked seldom and his tongue wasn’t honed for speech. “I was bad. I went to the fence. We were running in the fields, and I went to the fence.”
“Yes. Never do that. It’s too close to the Higgs generator. I had to fetch you.”
“Sorry. I don’t remember after that.” Peder looked around.
Carmen touched his forehead. Her hand was cool. “Doctor Moeller gave you a new medicine. You’ll remember everything, not just special times and traumas. You’ll have a different life from now on.”
It was already different for Peder. Looking at Carmen, he got an erection.
Erections came when—what was her name?—played the rubbing game with Peder, and afterward Doctor Moeller yelled at them, and the nurses got angry and took them apart. But this time all Peder did was look at Carmen’s front.
Carmen put up her hand. “That’s not polite. You shouldn’t stare at women like that.”
Her voice dropped. “It’s going to be hard work. You have to learn everything, all at once.”
“Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry.” Outside the window, the skies were black. Peder made himself turn and look east, waiting for the colors of approaching dawn.
“I hope we did the right thing,” Carmen said after a contemplative pause. “In the long run you’ll be happier. You’ll live a more useful life. Hidalgo might become a colony, not just an institute.”
Sunrise. Long shadows. High winds rippled the buckylayer. Day 10 grew bright, and shadows fled the sweeping light. Peder watched them shrink and separate. “Is today a meal day?” he asked.
“Today we’ll see how well you learn to dress yourself. First thing tomorrow we’ll eat in the commissary,” Carmen said.
“Will there be lots of women?” Peder asked miserably. He cast his thoughts into the future, like he’d never done before. Lots of fronts. More erections. “Will they yell at me?”
Carmen sorted among answers. “Yes,” she said finally. “Call it ‘yelling’ if you want. A better word is ‘teaching.’ Here are your clothes.”
Clothes had always been tricky for Peder. All those sleeves and legs, and what was inside and what was outside, and getting the stickies lined up right. He wanted the fun of having Carmen dress him, but somehow he could tell—not today. Today he did the work of figuring out which was tunic and which was pants, and the inside-outside business didn’t seem like a problem at all. He got the stickies on his tunic wrong, but he could tell they were wrong. He fixed them so everything lined up straight.
Peder managed his socks and shoes. He felt proud. It wasn’t even sunset. Carmen smiled. “Let’s go eat.”
“Wait! That’s me!” Peder just now saw himself in the mirror. He was like the numbers on the clock-calendar, because there was more meaning in his face than he’d ever noticed before. He fingered his tousled blond hair, and studied his looks: curiosity, a smile, a frown, a blink, tongue out-and-in.
The room grew dark. Day 10 was in decline. Carmen opened the hallway door, and led the way. Peder watched her move. He sang the A-B-C song to make his new erection go away. They reached the commissary.
It was like being thrown in water to learn how to swim. Peder saw meanings everywhere, in how the institute staff looked and helped, putting on special faces to take care of—them? Who were they? Strange and chaotic and deformed, but not Peder. Grunts for words, but not Peder.
Peder went down the line to get a bowl of porridge. Carmen led him to a table. Doctor Moeller was there. So were some others. Peder had played with them, running in the fields, but he didn’t know their names. Now they looked at him the same way he looked at them. They were amazed, and fearful.
Doctor Moeller smiled. Perfect white teeth flashed in her dark face. “Trift 1021! The first trift of your new lives! Welcome. Peder, you know Michiko and Hakim and Sanjay here.” She put her hand on Sanjay’s shoulder. “We’re expecting Olga. After breakfast we’ll start you in special classes. You’ve all satisfied the requirements for Cra 103, which is how they’re naming medications nowadays, so you should all be having similar experiences. You’re in the same boat.”
“Like brothers and sisters,” Carmen explained.
“Will we keep together?” Sanjay asked.
“Yes. You have a strong need for the familiar. We’ve made a schedule for you. Things will happen by the clock.”
In another part of the room a patient started yelling at the top of his voice: “Bad boy! Bad boy!” Institute staff gathered to soothe him. He was heavy and squat and noisy, and they almost got him quiet. He yelled less frequently, anyhow. They persuaded him to lumber out of the room. Peder noticed that the people at his table looked like him. The people at another table sat in wheelchairs, and had to be fed.
People came in categories. Some categories were worse than others. Michiko and Peder and the others at this table—here came Olga to join them—were a special type. They made Doctor Moeller and Carmen happy. Nobody else in the commissary looked like people on TV, not even the staff, but Peder’s group did. They were young and trim, and there wasn’t anything physically wrong with them.
Among this select group Peder was tallest, strong and broad across the shoulders. Now he was smart, too. “Cra 103,” Peder repeated. He remembered the name. He remembered Sanjay’s name, and Michiko’s. Hakim was the black kid at the end of the table. Peder smiled. He remembered everything! He could put things together, and figure things out!
After breakfast the group went on a walk. It was dawn again, shadows and ripples and the usual strong wind. The red of the sky faded to orange as the sun climbed. The wind at their backs gave length to their strides. Carmen drove them hard, so that Michiko asked “Why so fast? We’re almost running.”
“Some of you have too much energy,” Carmen explained. “We don’t want a bunch of pregnancies.”
She’d been dressed in a white nurse’s uniform. Now she wore a wind-breaker and hiking shoes, and Peder sensed a freshness about her. They passed the eastern grainfields, and climbed Gopo Hill. From this spot they could see much of Hidalgo. The north pole blinked off at a slant to their distant right. Carmen pointed out the fence she called the equator to their far left, but Peder didn’t know where to look among the ridges and trees and pylons. They were so high that the ripples gusting across the buckylayer would have been visible, but they were visible anyhow, because it was sunset.
Carmen flicked on her flashlight. They followed her lead, huffing breathlessly around Persian Hole. After this came dawn and day in the wildlands, with the winds whistling through the young trees, and then sunset and night. Dawn came again in the western grainfields, where the Higgs generator was hidden behind its fence, except they were way north of that. The skies brightened and the sun shone on the buildings of the institute. They were far enough north that the circumference of Hidalgo was a mere two-and-a-half day hike.