I’d read up on this. I knew what I had to do. Wait for Elwa to tell me I should walk down the hall and then through the door, out into the arena, where I would take my place on the raised platform. Images of me would play across screens, and the history of my work and success . . . whatever that might be . . . would be broadcast to anyone in the loop.
Since I was thirteenth, I would go out last.
Oscar, and the other heads of Houses, would follow just behind me.
The room was decorated in shades of gray, and while it wasn’t anywhere as luxurious as our hotel, it was still very nice. I made a cup of tea and moved the plush chairs to one side, so I could pace in front of the window while I watched the arena and crowd of people below me.
“Now,” Elwa’s no-nonsense voice chirped in my ear. “First there will be galvanized and you. Then the heads of House will walk the field and the great spectacle begins—each House declaring their new advancements, projects, and allegiances.
“They say House Blue, Water—the strongest of all—will announce a breakthrough in life expansion. They say Troi Blue has now genetically regressed to twenty years old, the youngest regression ever preformed. We shall see with our own eyes, won’t we?”
I’d read all this too, but it was nice to have Elwa’s voice reminding me of what I’d need to do.
I stood in front of the window that looked out over the coliseum and sipped the tea. Elwa’s voice was gone, replaced by a male and female voice that announced how excited the world was now that the gathering was here, and speculated on what new advancement each of the Houses might be bringing to the event.
The chime rang in my ear again, and the gathering began. The announcers switched over to historical bits about Foster First. A door opened on the field and Foster First walked through it. He stood while the cheering people gathered in the arena, chanted his name, and flashed yellow shirts and screens, and threw yellow ribbons.
He was grim and arresting, and no longer wore his long dark coat. A sleeveless vest the color of saffron covered his torso, spread open down the front. The huge screens around the arena flashed with images of him, his heavy scars knotted and twisted across his flesh, held together by thick yellow stitches across his chest, stomach, arms, neck, and face.
As he walked around the track to his platform, the screens lit up with older pictures of him, stitches in black, white, red, and brown, each adding new scars, new lines to his already monstrously scarred body.
The pictures flashed by: a smoke-covered battlefield, the dead spread out in a gruesome carpet of blood and bodies, with only one figure standing: Foster. Foster in a jungle, wielding a machete; leading men across a minefield; carrying a child out of a fallen building. Foster dragging a ship to shore with a cable slung over his shoulder. A lifetime—two—flashed past, until the pictures of Foster standing beside Welton Yellow paused on the screen, then faded.
The crowd cheered, and the camera swung to capture audience members with hair dyed white and styled like Foster’s. They even had fake pink eyes and fake yellow stitches on their faces, necks, and hands like Foster.
I scanned that crowd, looking for Quinten, but didn’t see him.
Foster took to his platform, which caught yellow light around him, bringing out the stony edges of his face and body and making his yellow stitching glow neon.
Before the cheering died down, another chant rose from the crowd: “Second.”
Dolores Second walked through the door, wearing a flowing green, sleeveless blouse and wide-legged forest green trousers, her hair pulled away from her face but falling in waves down her back. The crowd went wild. Green ribbons wrapped around leafy branches fluttered down through the stands, as green shirts, screens, and stitches stood up and cheered.
Where was Quinten? Reeves had said to look for him, but there were almost two hundred thousand people here.
Images from Dotty’s past flashed on the screen, her stitches in white, gray, blue, brown, and green as she shoulder-carried a man out of a fire, swung an ax to cut a ship free from the rocks, stacked boulders against a raging river that had burst its dam, and wielded a flamethrower to burn the plague-carrying crops. The announcers listed her accomplishments until she stood on her platform, lit in a green light.
The camera swooped through the crowd. Still no Quinten.
The introduction for the next galvanized, Clara Third, began.
Despite the fact that it was a spectacle that took place every year, the crowd hummed with excitement. It was a sportslike atmosphere as the crowd tried to outcheer each other when their favorite galvanized took the field.
Clara was serene and graceful in a sleeveless lavender dress that draped her lean body in gauzy Grecian gathers, lace cutting thin floral designs over the violet stitches on her legs and arms. Her history showed only violet stitches in her pale skin. There was one image of her on a battlefield, wearing the white band of House Medical on her arm as she tended a wounded woman while bullets fell all around her, but the rest of her images were of her helping the poor and rebuilding disaster-ravaged lands.
Purple scarves of every shade rained down out of the stands like soft petals.
Next up was Vance Fourth, who strode onto the grounds in a blue military-cut, short-sleeve shirt that accentuated his compact, muscular build and the blue stitches tacking his skin.
His history played out, stitches flashing brown, yellow, black, and silver as he piloted experimental jets, broke the land speed record, and manned an exploration vehicle through the ocean’s deepest trenches. Sprinkled between those deeds were images of him carrying wounded out of the ash-clogged streets of burning London, and the famous shot of him throwing himself without a parachute to catch and save the little girl nicknamed Rose Blue.
The crowd shouted even louder and tossed blue roses onto the field. He scooped up one rose and tucked it into the buttonhole of his breast pocket as the images stilled on him standing beside Troi Blue.
Wilhelmina Fifth strolled out next, her pale blue skirt and blouse all the colors of the ocean. Her hair had been braided back into ropes that looped up in intricate curls pinned in place with sapphire flowers. The soft blue of her stitches looked almost like feathers against her skin.
The crowd cheered and sent little folded paper cranes down upon the field.
Images of her history flashed across the immense space: Wila’s stitches in brown, gray, green, and red. Wila taking down the warlords in Africa, Wila pulling people out of the great oil-line explosion, Wila carrying food and medicine through the two-year blizzard, Wila overturning train cars in the bridge collapse of ’93.
