Skylark Page 4

  It had a barely perceptible curve, making it impossible to see what lay at the end of it. As I watched, a section of the lights flickered and went dark for a brief second. Just a malfunction of some kind. I started to turn away again when the panels overhead went dead with a sudden, blessed cessation of the awful buzzing of the lights. Before my eyes could adjust, they came on again with a blaze of painful magical backlash, leaving me gasping. It was dark now a few steps down the path, and I staggered into it to escape the sound of buzzing Resource slicing into my brain. The lights went out just ahead of me again. A ripple of darkness continued on down, lights going out and coming on one by one, around the curve and out of sight.

  I took another step, and the patch shifted one bar of lights. It was responding to my movements. It was leading me.

  I hesitated. I knew I had to head back to the rotunda, pretend I’d seen nothing I wasn’t supposed to see. I shouldn’t draw any more attention to myself than I already had. I should forget everything I’d seen.

  Slipping my hand into my pocket and curling my fingers around Basil’s paper bird, I followed the lights.

  The corridor stretched for what felt like miles. I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to have a slight slope as well as a curve, a gradual downward spiral. In the distance, a door came into view at the end of the corridor. I stopped dead for a second and the lights went still. As I stood there, they shifted once in the direction I’d been going, then ceased again.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, glancing up at the dark lightbulbs overhead.

  The door swung open soundlessly at my touch.

  The space behind the door lay shrouded in darkness at its edges, although the impression was of a huge spherical cavern of a room. At its center hung a blindingly bright mass, with streamers of light connecting it to the most complex machinery I’d ever seen, hanging above and around it. The noises of meshing gears were only rivaled by the sound of magic mated with machine twanging in my mind.

  On the other side of the door began a metal walkway that spiraled down toward the light. My feet took me down of their own accord.

  As I got closer, the light powering the machines became more distinct. It was long and slender, with the faintest suggestion at the top of something like a head. . . .

  It was a person. Though it wore no clothing, the light was too bright at this distance to make out any features or its gender. Glass filaments seemed to plug directly into its skin, stretching up into the mechanisms overhead and carrying the Resource away from it. Just as iron was an insulator of magic, glass was the best conductor of all.

  The room vibrated. Although I had never felt the Resource in such quantities, there was an undertone to it that I recognized from Basil, from my own ill-advised experiment. Barely detectable beneath the harshness of the harnessed energy rang the pure, sweet notes of raw magic. Light dazzled my eyes.

  I stopped walking and leaned closer over the railing of the catwalk, gazing at the creature. My breath stopped, and I stood transfixed, horrified.

  There was no doubt it was a living person. I could see the face more clearly now, my eyes accustomed to the light. White skin, closed eyes, wasted, delicate features, lips set in a strange, hollow O.

  While I stared, the eyes opened. I shrieked and fell backward, banging hard into the opposite railing.

  The pain brought me to my senses. I could still feel that overpowering need to run, but there was a part of me that was detached, freed from it. With a shocking clarity I realized that the need to flee was not coming from me.

  Sucking in a deep breath, I got to my feet and turned toward the gleaming-white creature suspended by glass. She—I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I was certain now it was a woman—was looking directly at me. Her irises were as white as the rest of her, the black pinpoints of her pupils fixing on mine.She opened her mouth, lips cracking. A viscous, brownish-gray liquid spilled onto her chin.

  “Run,” she gasped.

  Chapter 4

  My thin shoes clanged painfully against the metal as I sprinted away, lungs heaving.

  I barely made it through the door before I slammed into what seemed like a red wall. I would have ricocheted back onto the walkway, except that the wall extended hands to catch me.

  Reeling backward, I saw that it was the Administrator. I’d never seen her so close. Her, short, black hair curled inward under her double chin, with a fringe cropped straight across just above her perfectly tweezed brows. Around the high collar of her red coat coiled a thick copper wire, on which hung the insignia of the architects: an ornamental drafting compass, its sharp point gleaming in the light. For an instant she gaped at me, thin lips parted in surprise, small eyes narrowing. Like she was examining me.

  Then the expression cleared. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “You look like you’ve just had a fright!” Her round face gleamed with a faint sheen of perspiration, as if she’d just been hurrying somewhere.

  “There’s a—” I gasped, unable to articulate anything for my trembling. “And she looked at me, and— and—”

  “Heavens,” she said. “Come along, poor gosling. We’ve had quite enough delay for one morning, don’t you think? We’ll get you through the Machine and on to your feast, and all the lovely things we’ve got planned for you. Won’t that be nice? You’ll love all the delicious food we’ve cooked up.”

  With a mixture of cheery cajoling and brute force, the Administrator ushered me through the corridor. She took the second door we came to, sliding a badge into a slot beside the doorknob until there was an audible click. I barely noticed where we were going until we reached a set of tall doors that slid open sideways with a faint whirring of gears.

  She led me into a tiny room, and the doors hissed closed behind us.

  “But what was that—” I began, before the floor rushed up to meet me with a scream of grinding machinery.

  I flung my hands out to catch myself, and realized that the entire room was moving. There were no windows, but I could feel it rushing upward. The Administrator bent down to help me up. “I’m sorry, duck,” she said, beaming at me. “Elevators can be quite the ride if you’re not used to them. Don’t worry, it’s quite safe.

  “This will all be over in no time at all,” she added as the room stopped and the doors hissed open. “The Machine’s just up ahead.”

  I had a fleeting image of myself in place of the light creature, with glass wires protruding from my veins. I nearly threw up all over the Administrator’s vast red coat.

  She propelled me into a grey room containing a single low bench against one wall. The Administrator gave me a cheerful little wave before bustling back out through the doors again. “Just relax, and we’ll be done before you know it,” she said, as the doors whizzed closed. The unique mechanical sound of the Institute was quickly becoming familiar.

  There was no sign of any machine in the room, only a dim gray light from a panel overhead. The room had only the one door, and after a few seconds I crossed over to it, to ask if there’d been some mistake. I nearly walked into it, when it failed to slide open the way it had for the Administrator. A bubble of panic rose in my throat. Maybe they were punishing me after all.

  I was about to bang on the door when the dim lights wavered overhead. A strangely tinny voice coming from all around me said, “Please remove your clothing and leave it on the bench.”

  I moved toward the bench and then hesitated. Most girls who came through here were eleven or twelve at the oldest. I was sixteen. The thought of being naked was intolerable. No one had told me about this part. But then, no one had told me much of anything about what it was like to be harvested, other than that it was great.

  “Um,” I called, directing my voice upward in the hope that someone would hear. “Can I just—”

  “Please remove your clothing and leave it on the bench.”

  The voice spoke in an identical tone. This time I heard it catch in places, unnatural brief clicks in the voice. A machine’s voice.

&n
bsp; I shuddered and pulled off my shirt and pants, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the bench. I kicked off my shoes and nudged them underneath. When I straightened up again, the voice came a third time, repeating its message. Someone, somehow, was watching me. Even in the dim lighting, whoever it was would be able to see everything. Shivering, miserable, I took off my underwear, too, tucking it under my pants. As soon as I did so machinery clanked and whirred, and a second door appeared opposite the first. It had fit so seamlessly into the wall that I’d missed it before.

  Why had no one prepared me for this?

  I swallowed the humiliation and confusion, watching the new door as it slid aside. Beyond I saw a lighted pathway leading into darkness. At least it was darker in there—I hurried through the doorway, eager for a little more concealment.

  As soon as I was through, the door clanked shut behind me. Suddenly I remembered the paper bird folded in my pocket, and what I had done. What if they could sense the magic on it? I turned and pressed my hands against the door, trying to find some way of opening it—but found only smooth metal.

  The lighted pathway brightened a little, leading to a chair ahead of me. A voice coming from all around me said, “Please be seated in the chair. Once you have been seated, please remain motionless.” The same voice, the same metallic hollowness.

  I headed for the chair, which was lit with its own light. My bare feet made sharp sticky noises, echoing strangely, as though the room was an odd shape. I couldn’t see beyond the pool of light ahead of me.

  The light pulsed, emanating from glass panels in the chair. I could feel a faint ache beginning in my temples, and knew that if the lights got any brighter my headache would return with a vengeance.

  Suddenly I realized that this was the Machine the Administrator had mentioned. I saw no glass wires waiting to trap me. I listened to the tinny voice repeat its command two more times before I climbed gingerly into the chair.

  It was warm. My skin crawled, trying to shrink away from it. My body blocked out most of the lights in the chair as I settled in. A band swung down from the top of the chair to encircle my forehead, touching lightly at either temple.

  Don’t panic, I commanded myself, closing my eyes and trying to breathe normally. I tried to imagine Basil’s voice chastising me for being silly and scared, but even that failed me. Basil, I thought, would be afraid, too.

  When I opened my eyes, there was still faint light coming from the chair beneath me. I tried to see the shape of the room around me, but the dimness of the light only played tricks on me. I got the impression of other machines, shrouded in shadow, my eyes picking out the faintest edges of metal just beyond the pool of muddy light. I waited, my skin prickling, for something to happen—for the chair to come alive, or the voice to give me my next order. But nothing happened.

  In school, the harvest was always spoken of as a transition. It was the rite of passage into adulthood, the process by which our childish pools of Resource were drained away and we were ushered into the roles that would be ours for the rest of our adult lives. We grew up being told how wonderful a feeling it was to contribute our Resource to the city. People spoke of the feast, of the joy of becoming a functioning piece of the larger clockwork, of the satisfaction of leaving childhood behind. But no one had ever spoken about what the harvest was. I’d looked forward to the feast, and to moving on, getting out of limbo. Why had I never asked what they’d actually do to me here? Why hadn’t I asked if having my magic stripped from me would hurt?

  The waiting was agony enough by itself, every inch of me twitching against the sticky warmth of the chair, which still hadn’t adjusted to my own body temperature. Every involuntary spasm of my nervous muscles made the light from beneath me jump and shiver in the dim air. I couldn’t lift my head. A flash of memory—the sewer tunnel, being unable to move. I struggled for breath.

  Without warning the lights in the chair went out. The blood rushed past my eardrums as vertigo swept through me, leaving me fuzzy-headed and dry-mouthed. My skin tingled as all the hairs on my arms stood to attention. I tried to lift a hand to scratch at my elbow, but found I could not move.

  My lungs constricted, panic gripping me. The darkness closed in around me, and no matter how I pulled, I couldn’t unstick my body from the chair. It was as if I was made of metal and some giant magnet had collected me.

  My dizziness swelled as a sound, the same dissonant humming I’d heard from the lighted panels in the hallways, started from the chair itself. This time I could feel it through my bones, and after only a few seconds it began to feel as if I would shake apart. Every molecule of my body was vibrating.

  I tried to cry out to whoever was operating the Machine, get them to stop, but something had paralyzed my vocal cords. No one had ever told me their harvest had hurt like this. Something had gone horribly wrong.

  Unless they had found out. Perhaps this was my punishment.

  Just when I was certain I’d disintegrate from the throbbing vibrations, searing pain lanced through my back. Something jabbed into my skin, slicing deep along my spine. In front of my eyes flashed a vision of the glass wires piercing the creature I had seen.

  I opened my mouth and screamed soundlessly until the darkness smothered me.

  Chapter 5

  I became dimly aware that someone was helping me out of the chair. My back ached and my legs shook, but the person I clung to was steady.

  “There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” A round, cheerful face swam into focus.

  “No,” I croaked, my mind still a blank. “Not . . . bad.”

  The lights had come on again at some point, a soothing glow all around me. The round-faced person helped me into a tunic and ushered me along, her hands under my elbows. We went through a door that opened up in front of us and then clicked shut again.

  “You must be hungry now. The harvest process always has that effect. We can go directly to your feast, get you some of that delicious food. Would you like that?”

  I was hungry—ravenous, in fact. “Yes,” I said, my voice sounding much more normal now. I was rapidly becoming steadier on my feet. What had I been so upset about? No matter, there was a feast awaiting me.

  “Fabulous,” exclaimed the round-faced person. I remembered her now—the Administrator.

  And I remembered—something. There was a fading image of a glowing chair, a vague notion that something had touched my back. And something else, too. A person made of light, eyes that sought and held mine. And glass. I remembered glass....

  “Right over here, darling!” said the Administrator, putting her hand between my shoulder blades and shoving me into a tiny, strangely familiar room.

  “Hang on when the elevator starts,” she said, squeezing her larger body into the box after me. “You’re in for a treat!”

  With a lurch, the ground rose underneath us. My legs buckled, but I kept my balance. The sensation was hauntingly familiar.

  It wasn’t a very long ride, barely enough time to grow accustomed to the sensation of movement inside the box. The doors hissed open.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” said the Administrator, laughing. “Right this way, duckling—please have a seat.

  In front of us was a long hall dominated by a huge wooden table. It was more solid wood than I’d seen in one place. The table was clearly meant for dozens of people, and I chose a seat near the end of it. The chair was strangely cold against my back, as if the skin there had been recently irritated.

  The Administrator moved to stand at my elbow. The entire space was done up in the style of an old-fashioned dining room, with lush carpet covering the floor and soft lights overhead. I had the strangest feeling that the lights should have made my head ache. They didn’t. A fireplace complete with the mechanical illusion of flames adorned one end of the room. A mechanimal dog lay dormant on the rug in front of it. I’d never seen mechanimals outside the museum trips we took every few years in school. I stared at the dog, willing it to move, until the Administrator jogg
led my elbow to catch my attention.

  “Let me introduce myself properly,” said the Administrator, beaming at me. Something about her saccharine smile and sing-song voice made me shift uneasily in my seat. “I am the Harvest and Power Administrator here at the Institute, but you can call me Gloriette. My entire purpose is to help you make the best out of your time here, and I hope you’ll think of me like a substitute mom for the next few days. I really just want to make this a wonderful time for you.”

  As she spoke, a young woman in the blue coat of an assistant came out from another room bearing a napkin and silverware, which she laid in front of me. My stomach began to growl noisily. I’d tolerate a room full of people talking down to me, for the chance to eat my fill for once.

  “Normally we have four or five children here all together,” said Administrator Gloriette, as I tried to ignore the sting of being described as a child.

  “Over the next two days, you’ll be interviewed and tested. The job assigned here will be yours for the next five years. At the end of this period you’ll be allowed to petition for a reassignment, or in the case of poor performance,” and she gave a sad little smile, “you’ll be reviewed for Adjustment.” I’d noticed the Administrator had a habit of sliding a fingernail along the wire that held her architect’s compass on her collar. She did this now as she let the word “Adjustment” hang in the air. Fiddling with the ornamental tool wasn’t just a nervous habit. It was a subtle but definite reminder of her rank. Somehow, despite her sad tone, I couldn’t imagine her shedding a tear when she ordered an Adjustment.

  “When you’ve finished eating, please come find one of the assistants up here and they’ll help you to your room.” She inclined her head, round face gleaming slightly with perspiration. It was warm in the dining hall, and Gloriette’s body bulged with a lot more insulation than mine.