The Freedom Race, page 48
Pike had begun calling Ji-ji SuperSeed One and Tulip SuperSeed Two as they’d sprinted along the race route. Presumably, Afarra was SuperSeed Three. Ji-ji knew that if anyone deserved the title of SuperSeed it was Big Pike. She stuttered out her thanks.
Tulip said she wished she could head back with them but she just couldn’t.
Ji-ji patted her arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “You did great back there. I won’t forget it. Let’s get through this toll and find Tiro.”
A special tollbooth had been set up for the runners. Above it flew the runner flag with the lone runner on a winding path. The tollbooth officer was shockingly friendly for a fairskin official. He seemed genuinely concerned about Simply and called ahead to the city to have medics on standby. “No medics allowed in Dream Corridor to tend to seeds,” he said. “Sorry. Mayor’s orders. Here’s some water. Looks like you need it. She step on a ant trap?”
“Yes,” Ji-ji said.
“Thought so, poor little thing.”
Ji-ji asked if the flyers were there yet.
“Flyer vans dropped ’em off for the sprint a few minutes ago. Probably two or three miles down the corridor by now.”
They’d almost given up finding Simply’s papers when Tulip spotted them tucked inside her underwear. The guard looked as relieved as they did. He stamped their papers, wished them luck, and raised the toll gate. The runners stepped onto Dream Corridor together, but Ji-ji had no time to savor the moment. “I gotta find Tiro,” Ji-ji said.
“Go for it,” Pike told her. “If you’re alone when you run back, I’ll follow soon as I can.”
The wide, deserted pedestrian sidewalk headed into the city. Next to it, separated by a concrete median and a mesh fence, a more populated path took folks back to the tollbooths. A steady stream of people shuffled along on the tragic side of the mesh. A few pounded the mesh and called out to Ji-ji when they saw her running toward the city. “Stop, seed! Petition for my little angel!” a woman implored, holding her son up to the fence. “See this poor seedling!” begged another, holding her infant up for Ji-ji to see. “He’s gonna die in NoVA without medicine!” Others called out their stories: they’d been living paperless in the city for years, not doing harm to no one; they’d been nabbed for jaywalking and expelled. “You fancy racers’ll be next!” a man cried, spitting at her as she ran past. “No dusky’s safe in the City of Dreams!”
Ji-ji pushed herself to run faster. Her back propelled her forward, almost as if fuel in her sproutings was being injected into her legs so she could fly. A few spectators lined the corridor’s right shoulder, adjacent to the inbound walkway. Tiro had told her that Districters got passes to come out and cheer the racers on. She worried about her back and checked to make sure her backpack was securely tied over her cape. Her sproutings had retracted fully, thank god, so no one had noticed them so far. Nothing she could do about it if they did.
It wasn’t long before Ji-ji passed a flyer bringing up the rear. Soon afterward, she passed a cluster of eight or nine more, then another and another. She heard one spectator chant, “My oh my, that seed can fly!” Others joined in. A fairskin spectator with a beard stepped into the walkway and waved a large Freedom Race flag over her head. “Whoo-whee! Fly, girl!” he shouted, as if “fly” and “girl” weren’t one hyphenated word but two separate words. Lucky had called Afarra that—a girl. Please don’t let her die, she prayed. I can’t lose another friend. Uncle Dreg, if you’re listening, look after her.
At last she spied them up ahead: Tiro, running with Marcus and Laughing Tree. Yes!
She called out Tiro’s name. He heard, turned, saw her, and ran back. The spectators went nuts. “The Wild Seed’s running the wrong way!” they cried.
A small group of reporters and cameramen who’d been following the famous Wild Seed fly-boy were soon at his heels. A few of the reporters rode on pedal bikes; most were on foot. As fast as she could, Ji-ji explained to Tiro what had happened. Tiro shouted to Marcus and Laughing Tree to join them. They came running.
“How many are there?” Tiro asked her.
“Three injureds,” she said. “Nymee’s bad off too. May need to carry her as well. An’ Afarra’ll need help too. Think you can help us? You can still get back in time. You sure your ankle’s okay?”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry ’bout that. We’ll help ’em, right Marcus?”
“Sure,” Marcus replied. “You’re our sister-seeds. We look after our own.”
“Tree—you in?” Tiro asked.
“Yeah, I’m in,” Laughing Tree said. “I can carry two. No problem.”
“Not if you’ve gotta run for miles,” Marcus pointed out. “Ideally, we need four flyers. Maybe more, so we can take turns. Where are they exactly? Hey, Ji-ji. Is that blood? You hurt?”
“It’s not my blood. An’ they’re off-road. I need to show you where they are.”
“No way,” Tiro told her. “You can’t do that run again. You won’t make it back in time.”
“You won’t find ’em if I don’t. If we stop talking and start running I can make it.”
One reporter was live-broadcasting what was going on: “Looks like Wild Seed Dregulahmo and his fly-boy buddies are heading out into the ant-infested Margins to rescue a bunch of female runners attacked by vicious mutants!” The reporters wanted a quote from the “poor seed who begged for help.” “Are you grateful, hon?” one of them asked. “Yes,” Ji-ji replied. “Very grateful. But we gotta head back now.”
Tiro and Marcus found half a dozen more flyers willing to make the journey back down the race path. Now they had nine altogether—even more than they needed. Four security guards jogged up to the flyers. One of them said they’d been sent courtesy of the Dreamfleet to accompany the flyers on their quest to save the seeds. Ji-ji turned around to see a spokesperson for the fleet telling City News Live that this selflessness proved what flyer recruits were made of.
“We got to go, Tiro,” Ji-ji urged. “We got to go now!”
Laughing Tree saw how anxious she was and made a path for them through the reporters.
The flyers ran the wrong way down the pedestrian walkway. They passed the other flyers first, and then they saw Tulip running alongside Big Pike, who carried Simply in her arms. Laughing Tree called out to Pike by name, asked her if she needed help. “I got it under control, Tree,” Pike replied. “Yep,” Laughing Tree called back, “I can see you do.” Tulip cheered when she saw the armed escort. “You did it, Ji-ji!” she cried. “I knew you’d find a way!”
Ji-ji prayed there was nothing in the Freedom Race rule book about being disqualified if you were carried to the gate. She prayed that the injureds still had their papers and that Afarra’s ability to speak to mutants would not be put to the test. Talking to a stallion, to Drol, or even to a domesticated striper wasn’t the same as talking to wild snarlcats. Did Afarra realize that?
Being on the way to rescue them made Ji-ji even more nervous than she’d been before. She remembered Fester’s letter and suspected the Dreamfleet guards would turn their weapons on them; she wondered whether the reporter-cyclist with his recording device, who insisted on accompanying them on the “rescue mission,” was a traitor; she was afraid that when they got back all the tollbooths would be closed. She was afraid, period. Because she’d left little Afarra to fight off a pride of snarlcats. What had she been thinking? Hold on, Afarra! Hold on!
They came upon the other uninjured runners heading toward the city. All of them were overjoyed when they saw Ji-ji’s entourage—all except Sookie, who refused to look at them.
Ji-ji and Tiro ran side by side most of the time. “Let me know if you need a ride on my back, Ji,” Tiro said. “I’m fresh as a daisy.”
“Me too,” she replied. He thought she was joking till she picked up the pace.
“You think they’re still alive!” the reporter shouted. “Hey! You think they got eaten?”
None of the racers deigned to respond.
* * *
Ji-ji began calling Afarra’s name when they were still on the race path. She told herself they were too far away from the road to hear her. She left the path and tore through the wilderness till she reached the place where she’d left them. She scanned the area. The runners were gone! Her heart was splitting in two. She couldn’t breathe. Her sproutings hammered at her back.
“Afarra!” she cried, sinking to the ground. “Afarra!”
The fly-boys and the guards were calling too. “Afarra! Afarra!”
Ji-ji called again: “Afarra! Nymee! Sara-May! Honeybun! Helen! Anyone!”
Ji-ji couldn’t breathe. She’d left Afarra to fend for herself. Unforgivable.
Tiro pointed to a cluster of trees in the distance: “Look, Ji!”
Off in the distance a thin, dark figure was running toward them with her arms wide open, listing like a drunk. There was only one person Ji-ji knew who ran like that.
“I am saying you will come! We are okay! We are safe in the trees! We are not being eaten!”
Tiro swept Afarra up in his arms like a sister and swung her around and around as the flyers and guards ran to help the others climb down from the trees.
Ji-ji herself was useless. All she could do was repeat two words over and over again to something invisible and merciful: “Thank you … thank you … thank you.…”
* * *
At the tollbooths they were waved through, even though two of the injured didn’t have paperwork. “Thank the Dreamfleet,” the toll guard said. “Got instructions from Wing Commander Corcoran. All the runners are to be admitted into the corridor—papers or no papers.”
There was still a way to go, but they could make it in time if they kept up the pace. Marcus told her not to sweat it. “Districters fancy themselves Freedom lovers,” he said. “They just wish their Freedom could be seedless. Makes things awkward when they gotta keep spitting us out. This won’t cost them much. All they need to do is let in a handful of desperate seeds an’ they can rerun their compassion for months.”
The closer they got to the city, the more spectators lined the shoulder. News had spread of the fly-boy heroes who’d risked everything to head out into The Margins and rescue the hapless female runners. There were also cheers from beyond the wall. Marcus, who’d gotten chummy with a guard, said the District had turned on the giant screens that lined the top of the walls so Novans could watch the race. “We’re a phenomenon on both sides of the wall,” Marcus said, as he ran beside Ji-ji with Sara-May clinging to him. “Makes your heart go all warm an’ fuzzy, don’t it?”
“Yes,” said Sara-May, blissfully unaware of the flyer’s sarcasm.
Marcus stripped all the sarcasm from his voice and said, “You okay, Sara-May? I’m not jostling you too much, am I, sweetie?”
“No, Marcus,” she said. “You’re amazing.” Sara-May wrapped her arms around the flyer’s strong neck and held on tight.
Traffic stopped as the runners and flyers made their way down the last mile of Dream Corridor. A few steaders glared down at them from the halted wagons, but they dared not comment too much when they spotted their armed escort. When they arrived at the city gates, First Monitor Schultz stood with Inquisitor Pious, surrounded by reporters and cameras. The two welcomed the flyers and runners. There had never been a race like it before, they said. There were eighteen minutes to spare, Inquisitor Pious told them, but who’s counting? All the runners who made it to the gate that day would be granted admittance. “Told you so,” Marcus whispered.
A Dreamfleet spokesman advertised the final segment of the race. The flyer-battler match in the new Dream Coop had been rescheduled for tomorrow night so the flyer heroes could recover.
With great fanfare, the forty-foot reinforced steel gates to the city opened; the fly-boys carried the injured and exhausted runners through the gates. Ji-ji and Afarra followed. A reporter who wasn’t able to get to the fly-boys because of the swarm of fans around them settled for runners instead. He shoved a mic into Ji-ji’s and Afarra’s faces.
“Johnny Sanderspool, City News Live. We’re live. What are your names, seeds?”
“I’m not a seed, I’m a girl. And this is my friend and sister. Another girl.”
Cheers came from somewhere. Ji-ji didn’t know where, or if it was in response to what she’d said. She didn’t care. All she wanted was to find out how Simply and the others were doing. Tiro pried himself away from the gaggle of reporters begging for interviews. He hurried over to Ji-ji and Afarra. “They’re taking the injureds to City Hospital,” he said. “Nineteen runners made it altogether. Make that twenty,” he said, looking over their heads toward the gate.
Sloppy, in racer’s shorts and T-shirt but without the runner’s cape she’d craved, hobbled into Dream City. A reporter rushed up to her and seemed to be asking for her story. She shoved him aside. Just then, a man grabbed Sloppy roughly from behind. He had a little dog tucked under his arm.
At last Ji-ji understood how Sloppy had done it. She must’ve ridden with Chaff Man and the pickers. Had she been in league with them the whole time? Ji-ji, too exhausted to be outraged, watched as Sloppy and her executioner friend disappeared into the crowd.
Tiro was swept up by reporters again. There was a Dreamfleeter among them; his yellow wing insignia identified him as a scout. He patted Tiro on the shoulder like a proud uncle.
Afarra turned to Ji-ji and declared, “You are not staying in this City of Dreams.”
Ji-ji smiled. “I won’t ask how you know that. I’ll rest up, get my kith-n-kin petitions filed, get you settled, and then head to the Madlands to find Charra, assuming my back cooperates.”
“Okay,” Afarra said. A flyer had carried her on his back most of the way, so she wasn’t winded at all. “You are watching the battle tomorrow night?”
“No,” Ji-ji said. “It’s a foregone conclusion. An’ if it’s not, I don’t want to see him get hurt.”
A small military jet rose into the air, taking off from the airport in the city.
“I fly south too,” Afarra stated. Again, it was not a question. “On your back.”
Ji-ji laughed. “If only,” she said, as they followed the plane’s steep, awe-inspiring rise.
A woman embraced Ji-ji so fast she didn’t have a chance to see who it was. “Ji-ji!” the woman cried. Ji-ji could tell she’d felt her sproutings. She was about to make some excuse about superfluous limbs when she pulled back and saw the woman’s face.
“Welcome to the city! I’ve been waiting to say that for a long time! Come quickly.”
“Wait! Afarra comes too!”
“Of course!” the woman said. “Hurry.” She lowered her voice. “It’s not safe for you here.” The woman grasped Ji-ji’s hand and Ji-ji grabbed Afarra’s.
“Where are we going?” Ji-ji asked, as they threaded through the crowd.
“Home, of course.”
Ji-ji didn’t ask where that was. All she knew was that Zyla Clobershay had a tight hold of her hand. Her teacher and mentor had felt the weird sproutings under her cape and still had no intention of letting go. Maybe they’d arrived in the City of Dreams after all.
26 SO THIS IS HOW IT ENDS
A few hours after her arrival, at a party in the home of her teacher to celebrate the runners’ success, Ji-ji fainted. The Friends’ chief physician, Dr. Narayanan, who happened to be a guest at the celebration, ordered her straight to bed. His diagnosis: she was suffering from exhaustion due to overexertion. Later, however, when they assumed she was sleeping, Ji-ji overheard the doctor whispering to Zyla about the seriousness of her condition. He uttered phrases Man Cryday had used: extracorporeal liberation and ingrown colonization. Though the doctor acknowledged these weren’t medical terms, he said ingrown colonization could, in a general way, characterize her condition. Ji-ji still wasn’t sure what the terms meant, but she knew how painful an ingrown toenail could be and braced herself for a continuation of the throbbing pain in her back.
Ji-ji and Afarra had fallen in love with Zyla’s modest two-bedroom apartment as soon as they’d stepped inside. In a rambling apartment building not far from the river, it had been repeatedly flooded before the new levee system had been built. Ben and Germaine had an apartment across the hall, and Miss Alice, the leader of the Friends, had the top floor all to herself. Surrounded by Friends of Freedom, Ji-ji felt safer than she had ever felt in her life.
Zyla Clobershay instructed Ji-ji and Afarra to call her by her first name. Initially it felt disrespectful to be on a first-name basis with her beloved teacher, but Ji-ji soon grew accustomed to it. For the first few days, Ji-ji and Afarra slept in the double bed in the guest room. Soon, however, Ji-ji’s back was so inflamed and the pain so intense that the risk of Afarra accidentally brushing against her became too great. Zyla told Afarra to sleep in her, Zyla’s, room. Afarra refused. “I am being with Elly all the time,” Afarra insisted. “So is he.” By “he,” Afarra meant Uncle Dreg, whose necklace she wore everywhere, even to bed. (She would have worn it in the bath too, if Zyla hadn’t convinced her soap stung the Eyes.) After a series of fairly heated arguments, Afarra wound up sleeping on a mat on the floor in Ji-ji’s room, though Zyla caught her half a dozen times curled up at the foot of Ji-ji’s bed.
During the race, the Friends had been hard at work in the city. Though the editors of the D.C. Independent decided not to publish Fester’s letter (or to admit they had a copy in their possession), they quoted “sources” outlining Territorial plans for a “cleansing” of Toteppi. They’d done their own investigations to supplement information in the Lord-Secretary’s disturbing letter and found documentary evidence of a plan to move against Toteppi throughout the Territories. The public outcry that ensued jeopardized the new trade talks, forcing the Supreme Council in Armistice to back off their plans. At the Dreamfleet, Commander Corcoran, whose son had been secretly detained in the Territories on trumped-up “espionage” charges, announced his son’s detention and spoke out forcefully against Territorial deception. Soon afterward, public pressure forced the Lord-Father of Lord-Fathers to release Corcoran’s son and claim it was all a misunderstanding. For now, Zyla said, the city and the Dreamfleet were safe.
