UnWholly

Page 30

“This way.” Cavenaugh leads him deeper into the ruined building, down a dim hallway in equally awful condition. The smell of mildew makes the air feel gelatinous. Lev is about to conclude that Cavenaugh is a madman and run in the other direction when the man unlocks a heavy door in front of them, swinging it open to reveal a grand dining hall.
“We’ve restored the north wing. For now it’s all we need. Of course, we’ve had to board all the windows—lights at night in an abandoned ruin would be way too conspicuous.”
The place is nowhere near in the condition it must have once been in. There’s still peeling paint, and water stains on the roof, but it’s far more livable than the rest of the sprawling estate. The dining hall has two mismatched chandeliers that were probably salvaged from other areas of the mansion. Three long tables and benches suggest that a lot of people are served their meals here.
At the far end of the room is a huge fireplace, and above it a full-length portrait, larger than life. At first Lev takes it to be a painting of one of the Cavenaughs as a boy, until he looks more closely.
“Wait—is that . . . me?”
Cavenaugh smiles. “A good likeness, isn’t it?”
As he crosses toward it, Lev can see how good a likeness it really is. Or at least a fine rendering of how he looked a year ago. In the portrait, he’s wearing a yellow shirt that seems to glow like gold. In fact, the portrait is painted so that his skin gives off a sort of divine radiance. The expression on his painted face speaks of wisdom and peace—the kind of peace Lev has yet to find in life—and at the base of the portrait are tithing whites metaphorically trampled beneath his feet.
His first reaction is to laugh. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s about the cause you fought for, Lev. I’m pleased to say we’ve picked up where you left off.”
On the mantel just below the portrait are everything from flowers to handwritten notes, to bits of jewelry and other trinkets.
“These things spontaneously began to appear after we put up the portrait,” Cavenaugh explains. “We didn’t expect it, but maybe we should have.”
Lev still struggles to process this. Again, all he can do is giggle. “You’re joking, right?”
Then off to his right, at a doorway to an adjacent hallway, a woman calls out to them. “Mr. Cavenaugh, the natives are getting restless. Can I let them in?”
Lev can see kids craning to see around the rather heavyset woman.
“Give us a moment, please,” Cavenaugh tells her, then smiles at Lev. “As you can imagine, they’re very excited to meet you.”
“Who?”
“The tithes, of course. We held a contest, and seven were chosen to personally greet you.”
Cavenaugh talks like these are all things Lev should already know. It’s all too much for him to wrap his mind around. “Tithes?”
“Ex-tithes, actually. Rescued before their arrival at their respective harvest camps.”
Then something clicks, and it dawns on Lev how this is possible. “Parts pirates—the ones who target tithes!”
“Oh, there are certainly parts pirates,” Cavenaugh says, “but to the best of my knowledge, none of them have taken any tithes. It’s a good cover story, though. Keeps the Juvenile Authority barking up the wrong tree.”
The idea that tithes are being rescued rather than sold on the black market is something that has never occurred to Lev.
“Are you ready to meet our little squad of ambassadors?”
“Sure, why not.”
Cavenaugh signals the woman to let them in, and they enter in an orderly procession that doesn’t hide the high-voltage excitement in their step. They’re all dressed in bright colors—intentionally so. Not a bit of white in the whole bunch. Lev just stands there dazed as they greet him one by one. A couple of them just stare and nod their heads, too starstruck to say anything. Another shakes his hand so forcefully Lev’s shoulder has to absorb the shock. One boy is so nervous, he stumbles and nearly falls at Lev’s feet, then goes beet red as he steps away.
“Your hair is different,” one girl says, then panics like she’s gravely insulted him. “But it’s good! I like it! I like it long!”
“I know everything about you,” another kid announces. “Seriously, ask me anything.”
And although Lev is a bit creeped out by the thought, he says, “Okay, what’s my favorite ice cream?”
“Cherry Garcia!” the kid says without the slightest hesitation. The answer is, of course, correct. Lev’s not quite sure how to feel about it.
“So . . . you were all tithes?”
“Yes,” says a girl in bright green, “until we were rescued. We know how wrong tithing is now.”
“Yeah,” says another. “We learned to see the way you see!”
Lev finds himself giddy and caught up in their adoration. Not since his days as a tithe has he felt “golden.” After Happy Jack, everyone saw him either as a victim to be pitied or a monster to be punished. But these kids revere him as a hero. He can’t deny that after all he’s been through, it feels good. Really good.
A girl in screaming violet can’t contain herself and throws her arms around him. “I love you, Lev Calder!” she cries.
One of the other kids pulls her off. “Sorry, she’s a little intense.”
“It’s okay,” Lev says, “but my name’s not Calder anymore. It’s Garrity.”
“After Pastor Daniel Garrity!” the know-it-all kid blurts. “The one who died in the clapper blast two weeks ago.” The kid is so proud that he has all the information down, he doesn’t realize how raw Dan’s death still is for Lev. “How’s your broken eardrum, by the way?”
“Getting better.”
Cavenaugh, who has been standing back, now steps in to gather them and send them on their way. “That’s enough for now,” he tells them. “But you’ll all get your chance to have a personal audience with Lev.”
“Audience?” Lev says, chuckling at the thought. “Who am I, the pope?” But no one else is laughing—and it occurs to him that his inside joke with Pastor Dan has actually become a reality. All these kids are Leviathan.
- - -
Sixty-four. That’s how many ex-tithes are being sheltered and given sanctuary in the Cavenaugh mansion. It gives Lev a hope he hasn’t felt since the passage of the Cap-17 law, which turned out to be as many steps backward as it was forward.
“Eventually we’ll give them new identities and place them with families we trust to kept their secret,” Cavenaugh tells Lev. “We call it the Wholeness Relocation Program.”
Cavenaugh gives Lev the grand tour of the reclaimed north wing. On the walls are framed photos and news clippings about Lev. A banner in one hallway proclaims they should all LIVE LIKE LEV! His giddiness begins to turn to butterflies in his stomach. How can he live up to all this buildup? Should he even try?
“Don’t you think it’s kind of . . . overkill?” he asks Cavenaugh.
“We’ve come to realize that by pulling these kids from their tithing, we’ve removed from them the focus of their lives; the one immutable thing they believed in. We needed to fill that space, at least temporarily. You were the natural candidate.”
Stenciled on the walls are quotes and expressions attributed to Lev. Things like “To celebrate an undivided life is the finest goal of all,” and “Your future is ‘wholly’ yours.” They are sentiments he agrees with, but they never came out of his mouth.
“It must feel strange to be the focus of such lofty attention,” Cavenaugh says to him. “I hope you approve of how we’ve used your image to help these children.”
Lev finds himself in no position to approve, or disapprove, or even to judge the wisdom of it. How do you judge the brightness of a light when you’re the source? A spotlight can never see the shadows it casts. All he can do is go with it, and take his place as some sort of spiritual figure. There are worse things. Having experienced several of them, there is no question that this is better.
On his second day there, they begin to arrange his personal audiences with the ex-tithes—just a few a day so as not to overwhelm him. Lev listens to their life stories and tries to give advice, much the same way he did for the incarcerated “divisional risk” kids he used to visit on Sundays with Pastor Dan. For these kids, though, no matter what Lev says, they take it as divinely inspired. He could say the sky is pink, and they would find some mystical, symbolic meaning to it.
“All they want is validation,” Cavenaugh tells him, “and validation from you is the greatest gift they could hope for.”
By the end of the first week, Lev has settled into the rhythm of the place. Meals don’t begin until he arrives. He’s usually called on to say a nondenominational grace. His mornings are spent in audiences, and in the afternoon, he’s allowed time to himself. He’s encouraged by Cavenaugh and the staff to write his memoirs, which feels like an absurd request of a fourteen-year-old, but they’re completely serious. Even his bedroom is absurd—a kingly chamber far too large for him, and one of the few that has an actual window to the outside that isn’t boarded over. His room is larger than life, his image larger than life and death combined, and yet all these things only serve to make him feel increasingly small.
And to make it worse, at each meal he is faced by that portrait. The Lev they believe he is. He can fill that role for sure, but the eyes of that portrait, which follow him through the room, carry an accusation. You are not me, those eyes say. You never were, you never will be. But still flowers and notes and tributes appear on the mantel beneath the painting, and Lev comes to realize that it isn’t just a portrait . . . it’s an altar.
- - -
During his second week, he’s called in to greet new arrivals—the first since his own arrival. They’re fresh off the hijacked van, and all they know is that they’ve been kidnapped and tranq’d. They do not yet know by whom.
“It would be our wish,” Cavenaugh tells him, “that you be the first thing they see upon their unveiling.”
“Why? So they can imprint on me like ducklings?”
Cavenaugh exhales in mild exasperation. “Hardly. To the best of their knowledge, you are the only one who escaped being tithed. You don’t realize the visceral effect your presence has on another child slated for that same fate.”
Lev is directed to the ballroom, which remains in a sorry state and is probably beyond salvation. He is sure there is some researched psychological reason for greeting the kids here, but he doesn’t really want to ask.
When he gets there, the two new arrivals are already there. A boy and a girl. They’ve been tied to chairs and blindfolded, making it clear what Cavenaugh means by “unveiling.” The man is way too theatrical.
The boy sobs, and the girl tries to calm him. “It’s all right, Timothy,” she says. “Whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay.”