UnWholly (Unwind Dystology #2)(26)
On the main aisle, kids are already lounging beneath the recreation jet, watching TV, or playing video games. Still more have begun their shifts, dismantling or rebuilding aircraft parts, as per the orders coming in from the front office. Sometimes it’s easier for Connor to think that it’s all going on in spite of him, rather than because of him.
As soon as Connor is spotted on the main aisle, the barrage begins.
“Hey, Connor,” says a kid running up to him, “not to complain, but, like, can we get some better food here? I mean, I know beggars can’t be choosers and all, but if I gotta eat beef-flavored stew with no actual beef in it one more time, I think I’m gonna hurl.”
“Yeah, you and everyone else,” Connor tells him.
“Mr. Akron,” says a girl, fourteen or so—he can’t get over the fact that so many of the kids, particularly the younger ones, are not only ridiculously respectful, but think that Akron is somehow part of his name—“I don’t know if you know this, but the fans in Crash Mama ain’t working no more, and it’s way too hot at night.”
“I’ll send someone to fix them,” Connor tells her. Then a third kid comes up complaining that there’s too much trash, and can’t he do something about it.
“I swear, half the time I feel like a janitor,” he tells Trace. “I need a dozen more hands just to keep this place afloat.”
“You do have a dozen hands,” Trace reminds him. “But you’ve got to be willing to use them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Connor, having heard it before. He shouldn’t be mad at Trace for pointing these things out—after all, that’s why he keeps Trace so close: to advise him on how to be in charge. Connor has already accepted the odd reality that he’s some sort of leader, but, as the Admiral pointed out, it’s a pretty thankless job.
After the Admiral left him in charge, Connor had set up a power structure: an inner circle, an outer circle, and everyone else. Those in his inner circle are supposed to make sure things like food supplies and sanitation are being taken care of, because Connor has much more pressing things to deal with. Things like keeping them all in one piece.
“I’ll call a meeting after I meet with the rep from the resistance,” Connor tells Trace. “And I’ll make sure tasks are being delegated.”
“Maybe,” says Trace, “you need to take a look at who you’re delegating to.”
Connor never knew he could handle this kind of responsibility, but now that he knows, he wishes he could go back to just being responsible for himself. There are so many things he feels he still needs to do. Thanks to Lev, and his misguided clapper cell, Connor avoided being unwound, but he still doesn’t feel entirely whole.
6 ? Risa
There is only one permanently disabled resident of the Graveyard. Since the disabled are a protected class, they’re never at risk for being unwound, so they never turn up at the Graveyard with all the other kids who ran from their unwind order. It’s a testimony to the swiss-cheese nature of public compassion. Lucky for those to whom grace is extended, but unlucky for those who wind up in the holes.
Risa is disabled by choice. That is to say, she refused surgery that would repair her severed spine, because it involved giving her the spine of an unwound kid. It used to be that spinal damage was irreversible, and if that was the card you were dealt, you spent the rest of your days with it. She wonders if it’s harder to live like that, or to live knowing you can be fixed but choose not to.
Now she lives in an old McDonnel Douglas MD-11, for which they built a wooden switchback ramp to the main hatch. The plane has been aptly named Accessible Mac, or AcMac for short. There are about ten kids with sprained ankles or other temporary conditions who currently share AcMac with Risa, each in sections divided by curtains, providing the illusion of personal space. Risa has the old first-class cabin of the jet, which is forward of the hatch. It gives her a larger living area, but she can’t stand the fact that it singles her out. The whole lousy jet singles her out—and although her shattered spine is a well-earned war wound, it doesn’t change the fact that she is constantly condemned to receive special treatment.
The only other plane with a ramp is the infirmary jet, where she works. It leaves Risa with a very limited choice of interior spaces, so she spends her free time outside when she can stand the heat.
Every day at five o’clock, Risa waits for Connor beneath a stealth bomber they’ve nicknamed Hush Puppy. Every day, Connor is late.
The bomber’s expansive black wings create a huge wedge of shade, and its radar-resistant skin wicks heat right out of the air. It’s one of the coolest spots in the Graveyard, in more ways than one.
She finally sees him approaching: a figure in blue camo that sets him apart from anyone else in the Graveyard. “I thought you weren’t coming,” Risa says as he reaches the shade of Hush Puppy.
“I was supervising an engine dismantling.”
“Yeah,” says Risa with a grin. “That’s what they all say.”
Connor brings his tension with him to these daily encounters with her. He says being with her is the only time he gets to feel normal, but he never truly relaxes. In fact, since she first met him, she’s never known him to relax. It doesn’t help to know that their legends are out there, living lives of their own. Stories of Connor and Risa have already grown deep roots in modern folklore, for few things are more compelling than an outlaw romance. They are Bonnie and Clyde for a new era; the subjects of bumper stickers and T-shirts.