She bites her lip and swal ows her tears. She can no longer hold and kiss her own mother so she hugs and strokes the mother-goat, Kassandra, who knows to draw near.
The name of the girl, in this life time, is Leila.
Leila Muhic.
And she is 19 years old.
She knows, from her grandmother, that the dreams of her black mother, Fatima Muhic, had turned to nightmares. Leila’s mother and father were peasant farmers in a mountain vil age called Liplje. They had very little but somehow survived the freezing winter of 1994-95 as the Bosnian War raged around them.
Their spirits brightened when Fatima fell pregnant for the first time —with the girl.
But hope died when they were made prisoners—as their vil age was turned into a modern-day concentration camp.
Leila’s father was executed in cold blood. Fatima was system-atically raped—even though pregnant with Leila.
As spring became summer—and despite the atrocities—Leila grew inside her mother’s womb, and the concentration camp was liberated.
The hard sun softened, the mountains cooled and shaded, the earth entered the sign of Libra: the Scales of Justice, and the girl was born.
When she came into the world, Fatima said only three words:
‘ Moj mali čudo. [My little miracle.]’
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President Bill Clinton’s Dayton Accord, her grandmother had explained, brought an end to the rape and kil ing. But the murderers had won their hiding game. There was a blank on the map of Europe. The Bosniac vil age was no more.
Grandmother, Fatima and Leila got as far from Zvornik District as they could.
Although left alive, Fatima was also gone—gone in spirit.
She accepted guidance, ate, slept and went to the toilet, but she didn’t smile or speak. Her eyes were vacant and, except for a constant anxiety that only found voice at night in sudden fits, she was lost to the world.
‘If only she would scream,’ Grandmother said. ‘Maybe she could talk once more. Maybe she could somehow return to herself.’
When the girl was 14, Fatima was diagnosed with antibiotic-resistant TB that was too far gone to cure.
After Grandmother died, Leila bravely nursed her silent mother alone.
With the final il ness came a new animation in Fatima’s eyes as if to say—this I can fight, this wil destroy me, but I can fight it. On her death bed, she gripped Leila’s hand, and uttered a few faltering words.
The girl was on her own, without even the money for a bus fare.
In school her science teacher said she showed great potential, if only she came more often. But Leila was fierce only in her determination to learn about the world.
‘The world of goodness beyond the mountains of fear,’ she naively cal ed it.
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She would leave the Balkans and go to her only relative, her mother’s brother in Berlin, Germany; or to America, maybe to the Dayton, Ohio her grandmother had talked about.
The moon, setting in the mountains towards Croatia, marked the way. The girl had come of age.
Kneeling at her mother’s grave, Leila announces:
‘ Tamo, to je gotovo.’
Then, switching from Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian to practice her English, ‘There, that’s done.’
Her possessions are her two goats, the few things packed in a knapsack for her long journey on foot, and her encyclopaedic knowledge of rock songs.
The girl wipes the earth from her long brown fingers onto a rag, and puts the rag in the pocket of her worn-out yel ow dress.
She prays the final part of the Salāt al-Janāzah for pardon of the deceased, and the Muslim words for parting.
She chants, ‘ Allah Akbar,’ and gets up.
‘I hope to meet you again in heaven,’ she says to her dead mother. ‘ Onda ćemo razgovarati. We wil talk then. Inshallah.’
Leila takes a tealight candle, lights a match, shades it from the wind, and lights the candle—then places it in a glass jar beside the wild flowers she put on the grave.
Final y, she takes a book from her knapsack, opens it at the beginning, and reads from it in English.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
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Turning to the mother-goat and kid—nicknamed by her Kassie and Naughty—Leila unties them, and tilts her head quizzical y.
‘ Idemo. Come on then.’
She takes Kassie’s tether, slings the book in the knapsack, and the knapsack over her shoulder—and sets off up a trail.
The Easter bel s are ringing tirelessly now.
In a meadow of buttercups high above the graveyard, Leila stops and surveys her old life below.
The goats look too, and nuzzle her. She sinks down into the wild flowers, opens the knapsack, and takes out Bosniac sweet bread for herself, and some horse chestnuts for the goats.
After their snack, the goats watch as Leila rol s through the buttercups, smiling as the petals caress her face—covering it and the skin of her bare legs in yel ow pol en. Naughty capers around her excitedly, and a harmonica tumbles from the girl’s pocket, a birthday gift from her uncle.
A Canadian forces chaplain had taught her to play Neil Young’s Heart of Gold on it. She’d learnt every track from his 1971 album, Harvest, and she blew an instrumental version of Heart of Gold now.
Rising from the buttercups, she looks at her legs and—for the first time in months— laughs.
She twirls around, arms raised high to the sky, laughing at the top of her voice.
Naughty gambols around her, bleating. Kassie looks relieved when Leila at last fal s over.
Crawling to the knapsack, Leila powers up her Noa phone, opens the Maps Pro app, and checks her route through the lime-
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stone mountains.
She clears the harmonica (a Hohner in the key of G), removes the tether from Kassie, and marches north along a footpath into the pine forest.
When the goats look up expectantly, she raises a finger and speaks to them in good English.
‘Here’s a little song I know.’
She puts the Hohner to her lips, and starts blowing and singing an Elton John track: Where To Now St. Peter?
The lyrics echo around her, as Leila climbs away from her old life.
Dirty was the daybreak
Sudden was the change
In such a silent place as this
Beyond the rifle range.
Cupping her hands, the girl shouts to the mountains:
‘Rock ’n’ rol wil never die.’
The words, ‘Never die,’ echo back.
Suddenly giddy again, she dances around her goats, then turns and yel s at the top of her voice.
‘My name’s Leila. Leila Muhic of Bosnia. World—do you hear what my name is?’
‘My name is… is…’ comes back the echo.
C H A P T E R 8 ≥ 153
I Have My Orphans
Genghis Khan’s army physically slaughtered forty million people, but his Crimean invasion should be recognized as the most spectacular incident of germ warfare in history
—with the Black Death as its disastrous consequence.
World population did not recover to pre-plague levels for over three hundred years.
U.S.CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL -
EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES, VOLUME 8, NO.9
3 weeks earlier.
Saturday, March 14. 6:40 a.m.
Great Britain. South London.
Felicity’s house in Balham.
T he sun rose over the rooftops of London, casting its light on the contented face of Felicity La Bombe. As an OhZone woman-AI hybrid, she could run as fast as Usain Bolt but, so early on a Saturday morning, few noticed her great turn of speed.
It was three miles back from Emmanuel Park to her suburban s
emi-detached house. Having taken an OhZone oxygen tablet, she was hardly out of breath. As she ran past a dumpster, she
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reminded herself, ‘Battery out,’ and casual y discarded the battery from her Nokia burner phone.
As she jogged in her gate and slowed to a halt to unlock the door, she thought of the one human being who made her feel loved—who was worth running six miles at six in the morning for. As she crossed the hal , she took the Nokia burner from her jogger pants, and looked down at a Turkish rug on the wood block floor.
So many secrets, she whispered to Hebe conspiratorial y.
Yes, Hebe replied. You are the woman of secrets.
She knelt down at the fireplace in the lounge, and opened the door of the fashionable wood burner. She shovel ed in a few pieces of coal, then set the cel phone on top of the flaming pyre, and closed the door.
Her head submerged under the bathwater in her claw leg high-sided enamelled bath (identical to one Johnny Depp had, the man in the vintage store told her), Felicity opened her eyes at exactly 9:14 a.m. and looked up through the water at her ornate Victorian ceiling, and 100 twinkling tea lights, each in its own little glass.
She raised her head, let out an enormous breath, felt the water gush from her long brown hair,and fil ed her lungs with oxygen. She loved fire and heat—and oxygen fed the fires.
Her iPhone (the same gold-color model as Nearby’s) lay on a marble pedestal beside her. She didn’t need to set the timer, but it was a habit.
The clock in her head turned 09:14:58 and her left arm reached out to dismiss the alarm as it rang. Her Genghis tattoo glistened under the drops of bathwater, and the smal black swastika shone; there were also tell-tale signs of other tattoos, expensively removed by laser surgery.
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She selected a red bath bomb, dropped it into the water, and turned on the tap. The steaming water tumbled, the bath bomb fizzed wildly, and she purred—she was once again the Cheshire cat.
Then she slapped the smile off her face.
‘Don’t think of that Alice shit, sick bitch.’
And toyed with one of her nipples, arousing herself and picturing the person she had phoned at 6 a.m.
The OhZone AI added to her brain hadn’t changed her, but it made her emotions stronger and more precise. She loved and hated more clearly; wanted the same things more fiercely.
What would he think, the man who loved her so deeply, now that she was the stronger one?
On the dark side of the world, in Brazil, Francesco—her priest and lover—would be on the little ferry back to his island home.
She shook her head, and told Hebe: It’s weak to miss him.
You have Cloud Nine, the AI replied. And a booty cal with Arms.
If she denied C again, Arms would be the first person she shagged since becoming OhZone.
What will sex be like these days? she thought. I am part machine. Wil you be having sex too, Hebe, when I am?
I am not sure, La Bombe, Hebe replied, in her German accent. May I ask, wil you be kissing Arms like you kissed Bio?
I wil be kissing him, but not necessarily in the same way.
I have data from you on kissing, but no data on sex. I believe I enjoyed it when you kissed Bio. She is very petite isn’t she?
Yes, she is.
I am quite sure the training with depleted uranium rounds wil be a useful new tool for us, said the AI, and then went quiet.
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Felicity’s eyes fell on her bra and panties lying on the floor.
People, Arms included, called Cloud Nine (the MI6 bar) Wonder Bar in reference to Wonderbra and Wonderland.
If I’m the Cheshire cat, she asked Hebe, testing her, who is Alice?
She expected the usual, Insufficient data. But there was no reply.
‘Don’t tel me you’re scared of Wonderland,’ Felicity laughed.
There are three, two Alices, said Hebe, hesitantly. Alice of the story, and Alice Liddel . To which do you refer?
You said three. Who’s the third Alice?
My creator joked about Alice coming to sweep out the rabbit holes of Wonderland—MI6 headquarters that is.
I know what it is! snapped Felicity. When? Was he referring to a specific person?
Insufficient data, came the reply.
‘Perhaps I’l shag this Alice,’ Felicity said.
Then she shuddered sightly; she didn’t like Lewis Carrol ’s fantasy world, it was too ful of shifting shapes to control.
To feel better, she poured herself Earl Grey tea from a Victorian silver teapot, and sipped it.
As she leaned back, her main tattoo emerged from the frothy red water. It stretched not over one D-cup breast but over both.
It was a detailed 1325 A.D. map—of the world as conquered by Genghis Khan.
She lifted her foot, which sported perfect painted toenails—
in the same pink-red as her new lip gloss—and switched off the tap with her big toe. Submerging herself again, the tattooed breasts sank through the steam and the map disappeared. But her prominent nipples remained—like submarine conning towers, she thought, twin towers, alert to al comers.
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An hour later, Felicity pulled out the bath plug and stood up.
The water cascaded down her long legs and, following its course, she looked down her dark landing strip at her vagina.
She touched it, casual y, and—with her AI vision—examined herself internal y, confirming that there was no sign of the period that she was expecting.
Since becoming a purple-blood she’d had just one; in Paris during the training and, indeed, her menstrual flow had been purple.
She knew, being an OhZone, she should be able to self regulate or stop her cycles at wil ; but her pride prevented her asking Drox, or either of the women OhZones, exactly how to do it.Wil it come next week? she mused.
Insufficient data, the hormone edit is not installed, said Hebe.
Felicity wrapped a bath robe around herself, and walked downstairs. In the hal , she rol ed up a rug, revealing a trap door in the wood block floor. She unlocked it, and lifted up the door, revealing steps down to a cel ar.
The wood creaked as her 270lbs Ohzone body descended into an eerie twilight lit only by emergency lighting. The cel ar was expensively decorated, like a high-budget porn den, complete with bar and thick fur rug on the floor. The wal s were covered from floor to ceiling with color photographs of sets of eyes, hundreds of pairs of eyes.
A heavy-duty safe sat in one corner. Next to it was an old-fashioned filing cabinet, with drawers labelled alphabeti-cal y, and a wardrobe. Felicity opened the wardrobe, took out her white wedding dress, and examined it.
As she poked her finger through the scorched hole in the
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veil, Hebe reminded her:
The nasty gift from Sokol the Slav. Before you and I merged.
Felicity hung the dress in the wardrobe, and removed another piece of clothing—a stunning, crimson, crepe wedding dress.
She slipped her bathrobe from her wet body, pul ed the red dress over her head, and arranged it on herself.
You look quite exquisite, said Hebe.
‘It’s for Francesco and I,’ Felicity said aloud, twirling around and admiring her body in the mirror.
You are the red queen! exclaimed Hebe.
‘Yes, as for al the others,’ Felicity said. ‘Off with their heads.’
Felicity had recently become the youngest trustee for the London Christian Orphans Society, and it was her job to cut the ribbon and open the annual fête.
‘Blanka has her animals; I have my orphans,’ she told Bio and C.
Shortly after one, Felicity rode pillion on C’s Triumph Speedmaster motorcycle as they passed Chestnut Picture Gal ery, with the bagatel e on the rack behind them. The gal ery was close to her Victorian h
ouse although, much to her annoyance, it was on the wrong side of London’s A24 trunk road. Now that she had Jude’s salary to play with she could move, if she wanted to.
The snow had melted, the fog had lifted, and the weak sun (so foreign to Britain in March) struggled to shine through the cloud on to the London suburb immortalized on the radio, at the end of World War Two, by The Goon Show—as ‘Bal-Ham,
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Gateway to the South. ’
Felicity’s liking for Balham had more to do with where they were headed; Emmanuel Park and the Bethlem Orphanage. As they turned off the road, Felicity looked up at the huge iron sign that spanned the ornate metal gates of the former Bethlem workhouse. The sign read:
Work Sets You Free
An immense cluster of balloons hung from it. When they reached the staff car park, the elderly president of the Society approached. The woman greeted Felicity warmly, but squinted at C, unable to make him out in his motorcycle gear. He was left to amuse himself while the president showed Felicity into the building.
The colorful y bedecked grounds were crowded with local families, coming along to enjoy the fun fair and games, and would-be benefactors who believed that a new generation of institutional care stood a better chance of imparting suitable values than fostering.
As Felicity cut the ribbon on the three-legged race event that opened the sports, she smiled her biggest smile.
This is where it begins, she told Hebe. People are taking my ideas seriously. Maybe not C and Bio, but others are.
You deserve to be taken seriously, replied Hebe.
Later Felicity, sporting a huge bunch of helium-filled balloons in all the colors of the rainbow, walked through the crowd.
Whenever she passed a child or a teenager she handed them a
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balloon and studied their eyes.
Other trustees acknowledged her proudly.
‘That’s what we need,’ the president said to her husband,
‘more fresh blood like Mrs Robinson. And she’s an orphan herself.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Is that her husband running the bagatel e?’
‘No, he has to work. That’s her uncle.’
Felicity went from one stal to another, spending money at each and chatting amiably to the stal holders. At the American Candy Stal she bought four sticks of candyfloss, two for her and C, and one each for her favourite boys, the brothers Jimmy and Brian. She looked for them among the crowd.
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 13