“I know,” he said. “I like my job, too. I’m just thinking out loud.”
But I didn’t see how things would be any different in another country. Every place had been ravaged by the illnesses. Every place was the same.
When he was my age, however, Grandfather had traveled to many different countries. Back in those days, you could go anywhere you wanted, as long as you had the money. So, after he finished college, he got on an aeroplane and landed in Japan. From Japan, he traveled west, through Korea, across the People’s Republic of China, down through India, and over to Turkey, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Low Countries. For a few months he remained in Britain, staying with friends of a friend from college, and then he began moving again: Down one coast of Africa and back up the other; down one coast of South America and back up the other. He went to Australia and New Zealand; he went to Canada and Russia. In India he rode a camel across a desert; in Japan he hiked to the top of a mountain; in Greece he swam in water he said had been bluer than the sky. I had asked him why he didn’t just stay home, and he said that home was too small—he wanted to see how other people lived, what they ate, what they wore, what they wanted to do with their lives.
“I was from a very tiny island,” he said. “I knew that all around me were other kinds of people, doing things I would never be able to see if I just stayed. So I had to leave.”
“Was what they were doing better?” I asked.
“Not better,” he said. “But different. The more I saw, the less I felt I could ever go back to where I was from.” We spoke in whispers, even though Grandfather had turned on the radio so the music would obscure our conversation from the listening devices that were wired throughout the house.
But the rest of the world must have been better after all, because in Australia, Grandfather met another person from Hawai‘i, and they fell in love, and went back to Hawai‘i, where they had a son, my father. And then they moved to America and never returned to live at home again, not even before the illness of ’50. And then it was too late, because everyone in Hawai‘i had died, and by this point, all three of them were American citizens. And then, after the laws of ’67, no one was allowed to leave the country anyway. The only people who remembered other places were older, and they didn’t talk about those years.
After circling the track ten times, we decided to leave. But as we were walking outside, we heard the sounds of a dull thumping, and soon a flatbed truck pulled slowly into sight. In the back knelt three people. You couldn’t tell if they were men or women, because they wore those long white gowns and black hoods that covered their entire heads and which must have been very hot. Their hands were bound in front of them, and two guards stood behind them, wearing cooling suits with reflective helmets. Over the drumbeat, a voice was repeating over the speaker, “Thursday at 18:00. Thursday at 18:00.” They only announced Ceremonies like this when the convicted had been found guilty of treason, and usually only when they were of high rank, perhaps even state employees. Usually, state employees were punished this way if they had been caught trying to leave the country, which was illegal, or if they were trying to smuggle someone into the country, which was both unsafe and illegal, because it meant you could introduce a foreign microbe, or because they were trying to disseminate unauthorized information, usually via technology they weren’t allowed to use or possess. They were put on a truck and driven through all of the zones, so you could look at them and heckle them if you wanted. But I never did, and neither did David, though we both stood and watched as the vehicle drove past us, and then turned south on Seventh Avenue.
After the truck had disappeared, though, something strange happened: I looked over at David, and saw that he was staring after it, his mouth slightly open; and that he had tears in his eyes.
This was astonishing and also deeply dangerous—showing even the smallest sympathy for the accused could get you noticed by a Fly, which had been programmed to interpret human expressions. I quickly whispered his name, and he blinked, and turned to me. I looked around; I didn’t think anyone had seen us. But just in case, it was best to keep moving, to seem normal, and so I began walking east, back to Sixth Avenue, and after a moment, he followed me. I wanted to say something to David, but I didn’t know what. I was frightened, but I didn’t know why, and angry as well, at him for reacting in such a strange way.
As we were crossing Thirteenth Street, he said to me, in a low voice, “That was terrible.”
He was right—it was terrible—but it happened all the time. I didn’t like seeing the trucks go by, either; I didn’t like watching the Ceremonies, or listening to them on the radio. But it was the way things worked—you did something wrong and were punished, and there was no way to change any of it: not the wrongdoing, and not the punishment.
Yet David was acting as if he’d never seen one of the trucks before. He stared straight ahead, but he was silent, chewing on his lip. We usually didn’t wear our helmets on our walks together, but now he took his from his bag and put it on, and I was glad, because it wasn’t typical to show emotion in public, and doing so could draw attention to you.
At the northern edge of the Square, we stopped. It was the customary place we said goodbye, where he turned left to go to Little Eight, and I turned right to go home. For a while, we stood there in silence. Our departures were never awkward, because David always had something to say, and then he would wave goodbye and leave. But now he wasn’t saying anything, and through his helmet’s screen, I could see he was still upset.
I felt bad then for being so impatient with him, even if he was behaving recklessly. He was my friend, and friends were understanding of each other, even if it was confusing. I had not been understanding with David, and it was because of my guilt about this that I did something strange: I reached out my arms and put them around him.
It wasn’t easy to do, because both of our cooling suits were inflated to maximum capacity, and so I couldn’t so much embrace him as pet at his back. As I did so, I found myself pretending something odd: that we were married, and that he was my husband. It wasn’t typical to show someone, even your spouse, affection in public, but it wasn’t frowned upon, either; it was simply uncommon. Once, however, I had seen a couple kiss goodbye; the woman was standing in the doorway of their building, and the man, a tech, was leaving for the day. She was pregnant, and after they kissed, he pressed his palm to her stomach and they looked at each other and smiled. I had been on the shuttle, and I had turned in my seat to watch them, the man putting his hat on and walking away, the smile still on his face. I found myself imagining that David was my husband, and that we were a couple like that one, the kind that would embrace in public because we couldn’t stop ourselves from doing so; the kind with so much extra affection that it had to be expressed in gestures because we had run out of words.
I was thinking this when I realized that David wasn’t returning my gesture, that, beneath my arms, he was stiff and still, and I abruptly withdrew, stepping backward as I did.
Now I was very embarrassed. I could feel my face getting hot, and I quickly jammed my helmet on. I had done something very foolish. I had made a fool of myself. I needed to get away.