Rachel yanked angrily against the drawer, but it was already extended as far as it would go. The metal cuffs cut sharply into her skin.
“All right?” The kid was watching her curiously, head cocked, pen poised above his ten-cent pad. Cool. Casual. Rachel thought: He has no fucking idea what’s coming to him.
But then again, neither did anyone. Neither did she.
Stay calm, she instructed herself.
The kid continued to watch her, one of his legs propped up on a knee. There was an impassiveness in the kid’s stare that Rachel recognized. She’d noticed it before among the island men, and it had always disturbed her. It was like being looked at from under a rock.
The thought made Rachel feel instantly guilty. But she couldn’t help it. That dull expression, the blank, glazed stare. She couldn’t help but feel that there was—though surely not an inherent, inherited—at least a “cultural” stupidity to the island people. Something about growing up there in such isolation, and without any sense of the ultimate connectivity she’d always been able at some level to take for granted, that resulted in a certain irremediable stubbornness of spirit and intellect—a general lack of curiosity and ambition.
There was something almost—Rachel shuddered even to think it, but there it was—inhuman about the way the kid was looking at her now. She shrugged the idea from her mind. She didn’t actually believe it, of course. And she could hardly be blamed, could she? Given the circumstances. For whatever unfair thoughts were occurring to her now…
“So you telephoned the capital,” the kid was saying, twirling his pen in the air and smoothing his notebook on his propped-up knee. “Good. Fine. We telephoned them, too—a couple of hours ago. I’m sure it’s a bit of a surprise, of course—changes in plans always are. But they can’t be too put out, can they?” He grinned at Rachel. “After all, it’s our island!”
Here the kid looked blandly through the wide glass windows before returning his gaze thoughtfully to Rachel. “Do you know that we’re sinking?” he asked. He’d read about it, he said, the way that sea levels were rising. It was a natural process. Sooner or later, the kid said, all the little volcanic islands and atolls were bound to crumble and disappear. But now that the ice caps were melting, with all the pollution from China and everywhere else, what was “natural” was happening a whole lot quicker than it otherwise would have, and even within his own lifetime, the kid said, the island might be completely submerged.
Rachel shifted uncomfortably. She was still thirsty and now she needed to pee, too—hadn’t in…what? She didn’t want to guess how many hours. She’d need to ask the kid about it. The thought disturbed her. She changed position slightly in an effort to relieve some of the pressure.
“I agree with you about the ice caps,” she said in as offhand a voice as she could manage. “But if you think this sort of…change in plans, as it were, won’t make a difference to the capital, you’re wrong! Everything’s—everything’s connected, you know. There are a lot of people…invested, believe me. In various ways. It’s difficult to explain…” She felt ridiculous, but she also felt a kind of obligation to the kid. It was difficult, yes, but it was also quite necessary for someone to explain a few things—set the kid straight. Perhaps (she went so far as to think, smugly) if someone had bothered to do so a bit earlier, they all could have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble. “There’s a lot of history on this island,” Rachel continued in her most carefully diplomatic tone, “a lot of alliances, agreements, old ties.”
“So we start again,” the kid said, looking at her with the same bland expression he’d had when he’d looked out the window. “We start from zero. We do things our way this time.”
Rachel shook her head. “But you just can’t do that,” she said. She felt impatient, then angry again—could no longer sustain her measured tone. “You can’t just pretend the past doesn’t exist. That all things are equal. History’s taught us that—again and again!”
Involuntarily this time, Rachel yanked against the desk, then swore out loud. She felt desperate all of a sudden—as if the fate of the island, the embassy, and her own personal safety rested on the possibility of her, finally, with this kid, getting through. But there was no way, especially under these conditions, to properly explain it. “You just can’t do it!” she repeated. “You can’t start from zero! You just can’t!”
“Anyway,” the kid said. “I didn’t come here to talk about history.”
Rachel tried adjusting her position again.
“We need your help,” the kid said. “And we’re wasting time.”
“I need—” Rachel paused. “I need to use the bathroom. I need to…pee.”
The kid grinned. “Help us first,” he said. “Then we’ll help you.”
“I need to pee,” Rachel said louder.
“Maps,” the kid said. “We’re looking for the most up-to-date maps you have of the seafloor between here and the capital.”
Rachel shook her head. “Look, I just need to take a piss,” she said. “You’re talking to the wrong person.”
“Not according to your friend,” the kid said slowly. “Not according to Phil.”
Rachel tugged violently against the desk. The pain shot down both arms. She had the sense of the room sort of folding in on itself—of things being literally upside down. So the kid knew who she was, after all.
“I need to piss!” she yelled.
“It’s really quite easy,” the kid was saying. “Just tell us where the maps are. We’ll deal with everything else ourselves.”
Rachel took a deep breath. She tried to calm down. “Look,” she said. “I don’t know what Phil told you, but it isn’t true. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t—have access—don’t have any—”
“I’m sure,” the kid interrupted, “you’d rather make it easy on yourself, wouldn’t you? Rather deal with me, right? Over some of my friends.”
Rachel tried to take another deep breath, but something caught in her throat.
“Or maybe you want to help us with something else,” the kid said thoughtfully. “We were told you might also be able to show us some even more sensitive documents.”
Rachel could smell her own fear; there was no doubt that the kid, smiling calmly at her, could smell it too.
“There’s been some activity at the Ø Com station Phil claims to know nothing about.” The kid’s eyes—trained steadily on Rachel—gleamed. “He told us you’d know.”
The skin on Rachel’s upper thigh became suddenly warm and wet. It was a beautiful relief. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“What’s that?” the kid asked. “I can barely hear you. Can you speak up a little? I’m talking about some sensitive documents. Maps, as well as a few other items pertaining to some extraordinary renditions.”
Rachel’s pant leg was beginning to cool. The piss irritated her skin. She shook her head at the kid, attempted to swallow.
“Yes, that’s right, Rachel,” the kid said. “Extraordinary renditions. To be specific, I’m talking about the abduction and retention of prisoners who haven’t been given the right to a proper trial.”
Again Rachel shook her head; again she attempted to swallow.
“To be even more specific, I’m talking about torture, Rachel,” the kid said, leaning in and wagging his face in front of Rachel’s own. “But don’t tell me—I can already guess. You’d no idea, did you?” The kid opened his mouth. He must have swallowed the gum because it was nowhere in sight. He began to laugh loudly. “Don’t tell me,” he repeated, still laughing. “You’d no idea. You didn’t know!”
NINE
The whole way back to town, bouncing along in the van, beside Kurtz, who drove, Lota couldn’t stop thinking: What if it’s true?
But then, before she could even fully register what the question meant, or why she was asking it, another occurred to her: Even if it is, what does it matter?
She glanced sideways. Kurtz�
��s face was perfectly smooth. Her posture, always straight, seemed somehow even straighter. She almost seemed suspended—to float a little.
In any case, Lota thought firmly, it didn’t matter what the ghost said. It wasn’t the past that concerned her, or any of them, now. She looked at Kurtz and she knew this—and yet, somehow, she still didn’t feel it, exactly. She wished desperately that she could feel it. The way she had, very briefly, as she’d charged into the embassy behind Verbal only a few hours before.
She closed her eyes but felt only the peeling seat leather underneath her palms; her own blood thrumming through her veins. It occurred to her that she’d done the visualization exercises all wrong from the beginning. That instead of letting herself be actually transported—like Kurtz and the rest—she’d only ever been imagining things; was therefore no closer to the future now than she’d ever been.
Or was it possible, she mused, that the future had already come and gone? That it had occurred in the brief moment just as she’d crossed the threshold of the embassy building. A sort of bursting feeling, like a gunshot: all things occurring at once.
There was nothing to do now but go through the motions. Follow Kurtz, Baby Jane. There was nothing to do but view everything as if from outside, or above. To note (as she did now) that things were proceeding, more or less, exactly as planned.
But it was as if—as if she’d been left behind. Nothing seemed to be moving anymore, either toward or away from any particular goal. How easy it was after all for everything to grind suddenly to a halt.
She saw clearly: Verbal’s bewildered step back. The sudden buckle at the waist, the knee. The body’s sudden confusion at the logic by which it had so far been arranged.
The van bumped to a stop.
(So, there was the possibility, still—Lota thought—of arrival.)
The van door rolled back. Baby Jane jumped out and Lota followed. She moved instinctually, without thinking. The body simply obeyed.
But what, or whom?
Kurtz moved steadily, like the figure at the prow of a ship.
(So, there was direction still…)
Lota felt for her gun. In the weeks and months leading up to this day, she’d often worn it as she’d paced around her rented room—back and forth from the bed to the sink, glancing at herself in the chipped mirror. More than see it (the mirror was not large enough to reflect her whole image), she could sense the difference it made in the way she moved.
Yes, there was no doubt she was more beautiful when she was wearing the gun. She became not just another island girl, but someone else—someone from television, or out of a book. She’d paced back and forth in front of the tiny mirror and felt the way her life existed outside her, in brief refractions. How everything she did, or would do, had already been reduced to a series of disconnected gestures she could hardly consider her own.
She moved—following Baby Jane this time—toward the embassy doors. If she couldn’t feel as she had this morning—as if she’d entered, or was just about to enter, the future itself—she might at least, she thought, focus on the here and now. Forget Verbal and everything else. Be just: the girl in the mirror, the girl whose life now, and now only, took up the whole screen.
For a moment, it worked. She felt lighter, stood straighter. For a moment—as the embassy doors opened and she stepped across its threshold for the second time that day—she felt almost suspended, as Kurtz had seemed. She seemed—yes—very nearly to float through the entryway, to drift across the short hall and up the first flight of stairs.
But it didn’t last. She felt the wall of heat behind her and became aware of air as something one was expected to move through—of her own body as a thing to be moved. She’d never thought about the weight of her own body before, and now—when she did—it seemed very heavy and strange. Maybe, after all, she thought, there was no way forward—no way out. Maybe Kurtz’s future was no different from anybody else’s—that it ended only in the repetition of single moments, each one almost exactly like the last.
Kurtz and Baby Jane were ahead of her, still mounting the stairs. Lota merely had to follow. The pattern of sweat that had drenched Verbal’s shirt earlier in the day flashed—a reverse hourglass.
What, she wondered vaguely, had they done with his body?
She continued to move forward, despite the heavy feeling in her legs and feet, the sudden resistance of the air. Her footsteps echoed loudly on the steps, behind Kurtz’s and Baby Jane’s.
What was past was past, she reminded herself. There was only the present—and the future—to think about now. They needed maps. And any other government documents they could find—particularly those relating to the outer station. Kurtz had gotten almost nowhere with the guards, even with Norma’s help, and Hal’s, but then less than an hour ago Alien had called in. The maps, he said, had been filed on the embassy’s third floor: the first secretary herself had informed him.
And that was not all. A range of other materials, pointing more or less directly to the Empire’s involvement in the forced rendition of illegally held prisoners, could also be found there. Due to the persistent threat of leaks and cyberattacks, the secretary had explained, the information had been kept primarily in hard copy, rather than stored electronically.
Just as Kurtz had suspected: everything they wanted was right under their noses. They only had to look.
By the time Lota reached the second-floor landing her breath was coming in gasps.
What, she wondered again, had they done with Verbal’s body? Her eyes burned with the effort it took not to look back.
No, she shouldn’t look, she told herself. She could only move—now—in one direction. She couldn’t go back—couldn’t undo anything or choose another path. Couldn’t take Kurtz’s advice or heed the warning she’d been given (what was it? nearly four years ago now?) as Kurtz had attempted to breeze past her in front of the school.
She could’ve simply gone home then, stuck her head in a book. Just as Kurtz had intuited, she’d stood a reasonable chance, then, of landing a scholarship to study overseas.
But no…Lota tried to shake the thought from her mind. There was only one way. She could only move steadily forward now.
Despite her efforts, Auntie G’s voice came floating back. “You’re smart. This island could use a smart girl like you.”
Auntie G was treasurer of the island’s chapter of Nuclear Free and Independent Futures, a group that campaigned locally and sometimes internationally for political autonomy and nuclear disarmament. For years, Auntie G, like almost every other islander, had mocked Vollman almost to his face and railed against the rest of the government. “They think they can stick a puppet like him on a string, wave him about at us once in a while, and call us decolonized?”
But so far as Lota could tell, her aunt’s protests—over tea in her mother’s kitchen, or in front of the National Assembly building in the main square—had yielded next to nothing. Admittedly, there’d been a couple of victories. Ten years ago, for example, the Japanese had agreed to refrain from dumping radioactive waste in nearby waters. Six years ago, the French had finally signed a treaty agreeing to forgo any missile testing within a hundred-mile range. But the progress was excruciatingly slow; Auntie G was the first to admit it.
“Impotence!” Auntie G would sneer, baring her yellowed teeth and pushing back a strand of stringy grey hair. “Bloody impotence!”
Listening to her used to make Lota actually physically ill. Her neck and head would begin to throb and she wouldn’t know who she despised more in those moments: Vollman, the Empire, or Auntie G.
Even though she knew it was unfair. Even though, in truth, she was proud of her auntie, had accompanied her to more than one rally at the National Assembly, and had felt—standing beside her and holding up the homemade sign she’d made—significant, perhaps for the first time in her life.
Still—she couldn’t help it. Every time Auntie G spat out the word “impotent,” praised Jesus, and sucked on he
r tea, Lota would begin to ache with resentment.
The scene repeated itself all through her childhood, and all the while the only thing that changed was that Auntie G’s teeth became yellower, her hair more and more streaked with grey. Lota had made at least several solemn vows that she was not going to get like that herself: bitter and old. Was not going to spend her life merely railing against a system she seemed to take actual pleasure in believing would never, and could never, change.
On the other hand, she’d always been equally suspicious of violence, and rage. She’d despised Norma, for example, whenever she’d stood up to Kurtz, yet she’d also admired her, had even been strangely attracted to her—as though to something beautiful and inevitable, a moth to a flame.
But no, rage was too easy in the end, too accessible. Its trajectory too limited and familiar.
It was better, Lota thought, to be like her mother. To simply throw up her hands. It was better to be like Marcus, her brother, who (though to the Empire he was nothing more than a tool and it might take him a lifetime to get past “petty officer”) actually did something—rather than merely erupting with anger or waving a sign. It was better to be like Lota’s best friend Violet, even, who’d surprised everyone by getting pregnant in the tenth grade and dropping out of school.
It wasn’t at all unusual, of course, for an island girl either to get pregnant or to drop out of school, and if Violet had been anyone else no one would have blinked. But Violet had been smart—the smartest girl in the grade, probably in the whole school. Now she had a kid, and another on the way. It was difficult for Lota to tell if she was happy, exactly—but then again, it always had been.
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