Jeanne DuPrau - The City of Ember

Text copyright 2003 by Jeanne DuPrau.

Map by Chris Riely.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Childrens Books,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.randomhouse.com/kids

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

DuPrau, Jeanne.

The city of Ember / by Jeanne DuPrau.

p. cm.

SUMMARY: In the year 241, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day

to be a messenger, to run to new places in her beloved but decaying city,

perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.

[1. Fantasy.] I. Title. PZ7.D927 Ci 2003 [Fic]dc21 2002010239

RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89080-2

v3.0

CHAPTER 20

The Last Message

Friday

They tell us we leave tonight. I knew it would be soonthe training has been over for nearly a month nowbut still it feels sudden, it feels like a shock. Why did I agree to do this? I am an old woman, too tired to take up a new life. I wish now that Id said no when they asked me.

I have put everything I can into my one suitcaseclothes, shoes, a good wind-up clock, some soap, an extra pair of glasses. Bring no books, they said, and no photographs. We have been told to say nothing, ever again, about the world we come from. But I am going to take this notebook anyhow. I am determined to write down what happens. Someday, someone may need to know.

Saturday

I went to the train station yesterday evening, as they told me to, and got on the train they told me to take. It took us through Spring Valley, and I gazed out the window at the fields and houses of the place I was saying goodbye tomy home, and my familys home for generations. I rode for two hours, until the train reached a station in the hills. When I arrived, they met methree men in suitsand drove me to a large building, where they led me down a corridor and into a big room full of other peopleall with suitcases, most with gray or white hair. Here we have been waiting now for more than an hour.

They have spent years and years making this plan. Its supposed to ensure that, no matter what happens, people wont disappear from the earth. Some say that will never happen anyhow. Im not so sure. Disaster seems very close. Everything will be all right, they tell us, but only a few people believe them. Why, if its going to be all right, do we see it getting worse every day?

And of course this plan is proof that they think the world is doomed. All the best scientists and engineers have been pulled in to work on it. Extraordinary efforts have been madeefforts that would have done more good elsewhere. I think its the wrong answer. But they asked me if I would goI suppose because Ive spent my life on a farm and I know about growing food. In spite of my doubts, I said yes. Im not sure why.

There are a hundred of us, fifty men and fifty women. We are all at least sixty years old. There will be a hundred babies, tootwo babies for each pair of parents. I dont know yet which one of these gentlemen Ill be matched with. We are all strangers to one another. They planned it that way; they said there would be fewer memories between us. They want us to forget everything about the lives weve led and the places weve lived. The babies must grow up with no knowledge of a world outside, so that they feel no sorrow for what they have lost.

I hear some noises across the room. I think its the babies arriving.... Yes, here they come, each being carried by one of those gray-suited men. So many of them! So small! Little scrunched-up faces, tiny fists waving. I must stop for now. Theyre going to pass them out.

Later

Were traveling again, on a bus this time. It is night, I think, though its hard to be sure because they have boarded up the windows of the bus from the outside. They dont want us to know where were going.

I have a baby on my lapa girl. She has a bright pink face and no hair at all. Stanley, who sits next to me, holds a boy baby, with brown skin and a few tufts of black hair. Stanley and I are the keepers of these children. Our task is to raise them in this new place were going to. By the time they are twenty or so, well be gone. Theyll be on their own, making a new world.

Stanley and I have named these children Star and Forest.

Sunday

The buses have stopped, but they have not allowed us to get out yet. I can hear crickets singing, and smell the grass, so we must be in the country, and it must be night. I am very tired.