An old woman stood at the side of the road, carrying a chicken. Lota looked at the woman and the woman looked steadily back. It was Lota’s turn to feel angry, and then—almost immediately—ashamed. At the woman’s absolutely unreadable expression, which Lota recognized as her own. At the way the old woman just stood there, clutching a chicken under one arm. As though she did not—as Lota herself in that moment did not—understand the meaning of simple words.
TWELVE
Rachel began to hear shouts in the distance—once in a while the gunning and popping of a motor outside. Inside, everything was quiet. She began to wonder if she’d been forgotten, left entirely alone.
But then, that was impossible. There was the ambassador; there was Bradley next door; there was Jason, the accountant; Fiona, Monique…
She shut her eyes firmly and thought back to her ordinary breakfast that morning, to her conversation with Grigor in the car. A few hours ago, all of this—the hard floor, the handcuffs, the settling dusk outside—had been as distant and unimaginable as that ordinary breakfast seemed to her now. A few hours ago, her only concern had been that Ray had not yet returned her call. The thought caused a brief but severe spasm of pain in her lower abdomen. If only—she thought urgently, for the thousandth time—she’d negotiated, scheduled an earlier return. Even by just a few days; that’s all it would have taken! If only she’d left in November (Rachel’s palms had begun to sweat), or better yet had never set foot on the island at all.
She’d suggested it. A day or two after the offer came through, and in all earnestness. It bothered her, she’d said to Ray, to see the way that it evidently bothered him that she’d been promoted and he had not. Because he was absolutely right. It really wasn’t fair, and perhaps it would be better for both of them if—
“I never said it bothered me,” Ray had snapped.
“Not in so many words…”
Ray squinted at her. “Why are you doing this?”
Rachel did not want her response to Ray’s question to come back to her now; did not want to recall how quickly and apologetically she’d agreed with Ray. She was making a fuss over nothing. Despite her genuine misgivings, she and he both knew that she was going to take the job. That she was “delighted” to take it (the exact word she’d chosen in her brief email to the ambassador), and both pleased and proud that she’d been selected for the position ahead of Ray.
Rachel concentrated on the steady thrum of her heart in her chest, the insistence with which her blood continued to course through her veins.
It was stupid to think this way; stupid to remember things. Or to feel ashamed when you didn’t even know of what exactly, and, anyway, couldn’t change or undo anything.
She heard Ray’s voice again. It echoed accusingly in her brain: “Why are you doing this?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
All day, she realized, she’d kept expecting to wake up—to half chuckle to herself about the way that the ordinary elements of her everyday life had combined to create such a ridiculous dream. But it had now been—what? Twelve hours or more since she’d telephoned the capital. Twelve hours or more since they’d known that something on the island was terribly wrong…
Then a thought struck. She felt her throat close. How had the idea not occurred to her before? It was not, and never had been, she realized, the island that was important to the Empire. What was important was that the island did not actually exist.
For the first time, it all seemed to Rachel appallingly clear. She thought of Alien. How cocky the kid had been, how ignorant and self-assured. Well, however ignorant he’d been, she’d been more ignorant still! How, she wondered, rubbing roughly at her scalp and forehead with her shackled hands, had it not occurred to her before? How had she not known?
The world would soon be run from a single island, the Empire’s chief security officer had said. But what he’d meant was that the world would soon be run from no place at all. What he’d meant was that the government, like the global economy, had become literally utopian—had gone clean off the map.
Rachel shivered. The air conditioning had been left on; her sweat and piss were cold on her skin. If the Empire was planning to, or already was, running the entire planet from an island that didn’t actually exist, well—Rachel thought, still rubbing at her head and neck and hugging her knees to her chin—the Empire didn’t exist. Perhaps it had never existed!
Yes, perhaps, Rachel considered (she was even becoming strangely excited by the thought), to recognize any form of government was for that form to have already begun to break down. Perhaps that’s what a state was, she thought feverishly, all it had ever been: the after-effect of a force that had already been exerted, and did not, now, properly exist at all.
She recalled, for some reason, how, shortly before her father had died in bed of lung cancer at the age of sixty-five, he’d raised himself up with a strength he hadn’t had for months or even years and tried to stumble his way to the door. He’d seemed confused—as though he didn’t know who or where he was, or who his family was, or why, for some horrifying reason, they seemed so intent on keeping him down.
Afterward, Rachel learned that sudden bursts of energy were not uncommon leading up to the moment of death. Something about sensory neurons, the central nervous system. But this did little to assuage the guilt Rachel continued to feel over the fact that—despite her uneasy sense in that moment that there must be some alternative—it had been she herself who’d forced her father back to his bed.
An hour later her father was gone. His breath had caught suddenly—he’d choked a little, but just as if he’d swallowed wrong. Then that was it. His eyes went blank and his skin grey.
Rachel had not been raised with any particular religion and, she realized now—in lieu of the colourful, frankly terrifying images Ray had always had in his head of the resurrection and the last judgment—she’d always pictured the end of the world looking more or less like her father had looked a moment or so after he died. The light just going, suddenly, out. The world appearing not as itself, but as a pale imitation of something else—a dull monument to a brief, ruined fantasy.
So the island didn’t exist! All along, it had been little more than a symbol, a metaphor—in itself just as dispensable as everything else. The system had, Rachel thought (she was feeling almost triumphant now), been entirely diffused, the end goal of every political structure already achieved.
A car door banged and footsteps clattered up the walk. Every hair on Rachel’s body stood up suddenly on end.
The footsteps grew louder; there was a sound like the front door being opened. Rachel’s heart pounded, the footsteps hammered up the stairs. They were—she realized—very definitely now headed in her direction, perhaps even directly to her door.
The moment she realized it, her heart stopped beating entirely.
Then the door burst open, a woman entered, and Rachel’s pulse returned in a powerful surge.
She was of medium height, with freckled brown skin and a shock of curly grey hair. She moved quickly, her head high, her eyes pointed straight ahead, and, at first, seemed either not to notice, or not to care, that there was anyone else in the room. But then she turned and—her heavy boots planted at least two feet apart—stood facing Rachel squarely.
A moment later, an enormously fat man—wearing an oversized dress shirt stained under the armpits and army fatigue trousers—and the kid, Alien, pushed in behind. They stood together, crowded at the entrance, the kid’s eyes twitching from side to side—a bored rather than a nervous motion.
“Good evening.”
The woman’s voice was cool, smooth, vaguely apologetic. “We wanted to thank you,” she said, “to thank you sincerely for your support so far. I don’t know if it’s been made clear to you exactly…what it’s meant.”
Rachel felt a bubble of panic rising in her throat.
“You are, I hope,” the woman continued—the expression on her face was absolutely unreadable—“s
till willing to help?”
Rachel cleared her throat and shifted her weight to release some of the pressure from her wrists. The woman stood facing her, arms folded firmly across her chest.
“I suppose,” Rachel said finally, in a weak voice she instantly resented, “it would depend…”
“Of course,” the woman said. Her eyes softened slightly. “I can appreciate that.”
The fat man stepped forward. “We’d like you to deliver a message,” he said. “To the capital. Directly to the head of state.”
Rachel said nothing.
The fat man took another step forward, squatted, and began fumbling at the lock on Rachel’s wrists.
The lock sprang; the woman smiled.
Rachel was vaguely aware of her wet trousers—of the possible piss smell she gave off—but she didn’t have time to dwell on this long. The fat man had already grabbed her under each arm and now hoisted her up roughly so that she was forced to stand. She felt light-headed. For a moment, her vision blackened at the corners. She thought she might pass out.
Still smiling, the woman picked up the phone from the floor. She slid it across the desk, then handed Rachel a flipped-open spiral-bound notebook and pointed with her index finger to the top of the page. The message was excessively legible, written in oversized block letters, but still, Rachel had difficulty reading it. Her eyes kept skimming over the contents; the letters blurred and wobbled strangely on the page. She could feel the woman’s eyes on her, could feel the way she wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Read it.”
Rachel blinked.
“Read it.”
Rachel cleared her throat. “ ‘When,’ ” she began unsteadily—but then her voice failed. She forced herself to breathe. “ ‘When,’ ” she began again, “ ‘in the course of human events…’ ”
She blinked twice. Looked up. The woman was smiling again. A cold shiver ran up and down Rachel’s spine.
“Read it.”
“ ‘…it becomes necessary for one people,’ ” Rachel continued. Her vision clouded. Her brain felt exceedingly slow. “ ‘For one people,’ ” she continued, “ ‘to dissolve the political’…But wait, hold on a minute.” Rachel looked up. She was pretty sure the woman was still smiling, but her vision had blackened at the corners again and she could barely make her out.
“Please,” the woman urged. “Keep going—please.”
Rachel looked down at the notebook, more or less because she needed something to focus on. Her vision cleared slightly. “ ‘To dissolve the political bands which have connected them’…” Her eyes skipped ahead. No, she was not mistaken.
What the hell? What was this? Some kind of practical joke? But no. There was something sinister in it, too. In the absurdity of it all.
The woman had stopped smiling. She was just standing there now, looking at Rachel—feet planted squarely, arms folded—no expression on her face. Rachel felt ashamed suddenly and glanced away. But then—ashamed of herself for feeling ashamed—she glanced back again. The woman’s eyes were still on her. Rachel glanced away; it seemed impossible to hold the woman’s gaze. And yet…the more she looked the more she wanted to look. There was something fascinating about the woman—irresistible, almost. She couldn’t understand it.
Again the woman smiled. “Please,” she said gently, nodding toward the page. “Continue…Please.”
Obediently, Rachel bent over the notebook. “ ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ ” she read, though she was pretty sure she’d skipped a bit, “ ‘that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain un-alienable Rights—’ ” It was too much; she couldn’t bear it.
The woman was still smiling.
“I don’t,” Rachel said weakly. “I don’t understand. You want me to…to read this? To…the president?”
The fat man had moved to the window. The kid was shifting from one foot to the next.
Still smiling, the woman leaned across Rachel’s desk and picked up the phone. She tapped a number in swiftly, then double-checked it on the screen. A half-second later the sound of a phone ringing on the other side of the world echoed loudly. The woman stepped back. The phone rang again. Rachel wondered—almost disinterestedly—what would happen when someone picked up.
She would scream, she thought. As soon as she heard a voice on the other end, she would open her mouth and she would scream. That at least would alert whoever was on the other end that something on the island was terribly wrong.
But her throat felt painfully dry, and (there was no use denying it) she was morbidly afraid. She worried, because of this, that despite her conviction, if someone did pick up she’d be unable to make a sound.
What didn’t occur to her was that she’d simply do as she was told; the possibility didn’t even enter her mind.
But that was exactly what she did. After four rings, the line clicked.
“State Department, hello. How may I direct your call?”
The fat man was hovering beside her, breathing heavily. Rachel could almost taste the impression his sour breath made on her skin.
“I—I’d like to speak to the president,” Rachel said. Her tone was tentative, apologetic—but there could be no mistake as to what had been said. Her voice had been level and clear, the words plainly intelligible.
Nonetheless, there was a confused sound on the other end, then a number of clicks. Rachel feared she’d been cut off. Despite her horror at what was happening, the thought filled her with sudden dread. All at once, she didn’t care what she had to say to the president, or anyone else—just as long as the connection was not broken, just as long as she could be certain that someone remained there, on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she said, her voice rising wildly. “Is anyone there?
Hello?”
“Yes,” another voice said. “Can I have your name, please?”
“Rachel Darling.”
There was another low rustling sound. “Hello, Ms. Darling,” the voice replied. “I’m transferring you directly to the president. Hold just a moment, please.”
Then, unbelievably, there was the president—his voice sounding just as it did in the television debates. Casual, possibly a little bored, as though Rachel was in the habit of making distress calls to the Department of State.
“Hello, this is the president speaking.”
“I’ve been asked to deliver a message,” Rachel said hurriedly. “Shall I…shall I read it to you now?”
The question was directed not to the voice on the other end of the line but rather to the woman beside her. She couldn’t help it; she turned slightly.
What was she looking for?
The woman stepped closer. She stood so close now that Rachel could see the tiny veins that studded the edge of her high forehead.
“Yes, go ahead,” the president’s voice said.
Rachel stared at the pattern of veins on the woman’s forehead, felt the fat man’s sour breath on her skin.
She inhaled deeply. “ ‘When,’ ” she began, “ ‘in the course of human events…’ ”
She’d only got about halfway through when the telephone clicked again and another voice interrupted. “Ms. Darling, Ms. Darling. Ma’am. There seems to be some mistake. Ms. Darling?”
The veins on the woman’s forehead darkened—stood out more urgently under her skin.
“Keep going,” she said.
Rachel continued. Quickly now—stumbling over the words. The woman’s lips began to curl. The line cracked. Once or twice a voice interrupted: “Ms. Darling? Is that you? Excuse me, Ms. Darling?” But she kept reading until the end and finished dazed—nearly panting for breath.
THIRTEEN
Mad Max had parked a flatbed police truck next to Josie’s canteen and was busy unloading kegs of confiscated liquor. Gradually at first, and then more steadily, the islanders drifted toward the square. They stood together in little groups, i
nterrupting each other, repeating themselves. When they could no longer hear one another over the growing din, they shouted, gesticulating wildly with their hands.
Then the music started and there was nothing but Mannie Groening’s trumpet and the heat rising from the cracked pavement. Lani Harris was on guitar. After a while, Greg Nugent picked up his three-stringed uke.
By the time Lota arrived, the liquor had been flowing for nearly an hour. The shouting had given way to dancing, the dancing to a frenzied, directionless movement, to which there seemed neither origin nor end.
But then, abruptly, the music stopped. Mad Max had clambered onto the flatbed wearing his police uniform. At first, when the islanders turned to look at him, they didn’t know for certain what side he was on, or for that matter what side they were on—but then he pumped his fist into the air, and it didn’t matter anymore.
“History begins now!” he shouted. Mannie Groening put his trumpet to his lips and blew. “Will you free yourselves?” Mad Max raised his arms above his head, palms outward so that they stretched toward the crowd. “Will you defend your rights as patriots and human beings?”
There was a rousing cheer; Mannie Groening’s trumpet blared. Then Lin Ainsley started in on some homemade drums and the people began to tremble and sway to the beat. Lota watched them from her post by the flatbed. She was supposed to be keeping an eye on the western approach to the square, from the Birdman to the National Assembly steps, but when the dancing started up again, she kept getting pulled into the crowd—had to keep working her way back to the edge.
“Death to bad government!” Mad Max was shouting.
The crowd roared. Lota was swept sideways, like a leaf. It took her a while to regain her position, and when she did, she saw that Mad Max had disappeared, that Kurtz had risen in his place. She stood up there on the flatbed, lit up from behind by the high beams of a police van. Without speaking, without seeming to move or even breathe—watching everyone from above.
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