Bethany Hagen - Landry Park

“Oh, God,” she said, seeing me. “Not you.”

I gave a curtsy. “Good afternoon, Cara.”

She threw herself gracelessly into a nearby chair. The light caught the faded bruises on her neck and forehead; she hadn’t bothered to put any makeup over them. She still wore her riding boots but had changed into a proper afternoon dress, a light silk with an empire waistline and knee-length skirt, which was downright chaste by Cara’s standards. I noticed that the dress puckered slightly around her chest and waist, and wondered if she’d lost weight in the last week.

“Cara, it’s wonderful to see you,” Jamie said, inclining his head. “How are you feeling?” he asked as he sat.

“Like shit,” she answered. Jamie looked taken aback by her rudeness, but I just smiled. This was the Cara I knew.

A maid slipped in with a tea tray, and Cara deigned to pour us each a cup, though she pushed mine so roughly across the table that umber drops splattered on the tablecloth.

“Let’s get it over with,” she said to me.

“Cara—” Jamie said, shocked, but I ignored him and leaned forward.

“I know you lied to the police about who attacked you,” I told her.

“Madeline!” Jamie protested, but this time Cara and I both ignored him.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Prove it.”

“I don’t want to have to,” I said, knowing it was an empty threat. “I’m hoping that you’ll do what you know is right. What if an innocent person goes to jail because you wouldn’t tell the truth?”

“I did tell the truth.”

“Did you?”

She regarded me for a moment, and I could tell she was deciding how much to tell me. “I stepped out for a walk and got a little turned around in the grove. I couldn’t find my way out, and then I heard footsteps. It was dark and I couldn’t see who attacked me at first, but I could see the red light of the nuclear charge nearby. When he ran away, I could see his clothes. Tattered, filthy rags.”

She was doing it again. That thing where her eyes flicked almost imperceptibly around the room, and her voice raised half an octave.

“You’re still lying.”

Jamie reached out to touch my shoulder, but his tablet buzzed again. “Excuse me,” he sighed, and exited the room, activating the video screen on his tablet as he walked out.

I slid my chair closer to the table. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why do you care?” Cara hissed.

“You can’t get lost in the grove at night—I could see the lights of the house the whole time we were looking for you. And a walk, really? Without a coat? In that cold?”

Cara glanced at the door, but Jamie was nowhere near it. “It’s none of your business why I was out there.”

“You made it my business when you refused to tell the truth! My father thinks this is all part of some Rootless conspiracy to overthrow the gentry, and he’s ready to crush them. You and I are the only ones who know that he’s wrong.”

“We don’t know he’s wrong,” she said. “The Rootless could be plotting a revolt for all I know. If some conspiracy gets thwarted because of this, then no harm done. In fact, that means that I’ve done everyone a favor and helped unmask a threat to the gentry.”

“Do you even have a conscience?”

“Do you have a brain ?” She jabbed a finger at me. “If I wasn’t attacked by a Rootless or some poor person or a servant—if I was attacked by someone in the gentry—do you think I could go around announcing it to the police? To your father? Do you think anyone would believe me if I accused one of us? The gentry are supposed to defend each other at all costs. If I claimed one of our own attacked me, it would only hurt my reputation and any chance I have at a good marriage. Like it or not, Madeline, this is how our world works, and if you know what’s good for us, you’ll keep your head down and your mouth shut.”

“I kept my mouth shut when you condemned that servant boy and his family. I kept my mouth shut when you lied to your father and told him that I convinced you to run away. But I’m done keeping my head down. All your life, you’ve gotten away with everything! Everything! And it’s not fair!” I clapped my hand over my mouth, realizing how loud—and petulant—I’d sounded.

Cara smirked. “That’s it, isn’t it? You are jealous of me. Well, darling Madeline, no one is stopping you from stirring up some trouble yourself.”

“Is that what this is to you? Stirring up some trouble?”

Her eyes flashed. “I’m saving the people I care about, not to mention myself, from trouble.”

“And what about the Rootless? Are you saving them from trouble?”

“They’ll be fine,” she insisted. “If they haven’t done anything wrong, then they won’t be punished.” Her rising voice told me all I needed to know; the lie was there in plain sight, like a crooked chemise under a dress. She didn’t believe it was a Rootless who had hurt her, but she knew that they would suffer for it anyway.

“How?” I whispered. “How can you just sit there and not care?”

She pressed her lips together and looked away.

Jamie hurried through the door, pocketing his tablet and helping me to my feet. “My apologies, Cara, but I must leave. There’s been a police raid on the Rootless ghetto, and several men and women were badly beaten. At the moment, there are only a couple of frightened interns trying to manage by themselves.”

“They were probably looking for the person who hurt me,” Cara said woodenly.

Jamie reached for her hand and gave it a kiss. “Don’t be anxious. Soon your assailant will be arrested and you’ll be able to feel safe once more.”

At least Cara had the grace to look uncomfortable.

“We will talk again soon,” I promised her.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder, but didn’t reply.

Jamie took my arm and led me out the door. As we left, I heard the sudden crash of china, as if someone had thrown a cup against the wall.

The Public Hospital was a building of stone and stained glass, a relic from the 1800s perched on the bluffs overlooking the flat river bottoms. A gold-covered cupola rose above the nearby brownstones and millinery shops, with a bell inside that still rang across the city once an hour. It used to be a cathedral, back when people used such things, but had since been converted into a free hospital for the poor and for the Rootless, paid for by gentry donations garnered at elaborate fund-raisers and auctions. Arthur Lawrence himself paid the salaries for three physicians to run the hospital.

Not everyone felt so paternalistic, however. Some muttered that it was a waste to provide care for a people who were all dead by forty, tantamount to throwing medicine into the river.

Still, the donations paid for the ovaries and testes of the women and men of childbearing age to be routinely treated to protect against mutation, ensuring that any offspring they produced would be viable enough to carry on the work of managing the charges. Additionally, each fetus was inoculated against the radiation shortly after conception. After the vaccine did its work, making sure the child wasn’t born with any crippling deformities, it wore off quickly, usually around the third or fourth year. From there, every Rootless child grew steadily more ill until they finally erupted in sores and started coughing blood.

Some grew sicker than others, depending on what kind of work they did. The changers only changed the charges in the houses and carried the charges back to the Rootless ghetto. The strippers and sorters had to strip the cases from the fuel and sort them into piles according to size, but at least they had some slim protection to wear while they did so. But the packers not only had to load the charges on the train to Cape Canaveral for extraction, but they had to ride along with the charges, too, to make sure there were no accidents or spills along the way. They handled the fuel the most and they were around it the longest. Most of them didn’t make it past thirty.