by Otter Lieffe
No-one spoke.
“It's kind of the same as a universal language, one that everyone can speak and use for trade and commerce. Well, the State figured they would present this new universal language to the world, the other states would stop freezing them out and there would be trade again.”
“And did it work?”
“Not at all.” Elias scratched his grey beard thoughtfully. “Well, partly. They co-opted RS, renamed it USL and enforced a strict education programme until everyone under State control had learned it. That part was a huge success. I remember that, within a few years, almost everyone could sign. It was a really impressive transformation.”
“So you didn't always sign USL, Mr E?”
“Not at all. Anyway, in 2024, amidst great pomp and ceremony, the State announced USL to the world and—”
H was waving her hand around again.
“Yes, H?”
“But, didn't everyone already speak English? Wasn't that already the, erm…lingua franco?”
“Franca,” Elias corrected. “Yes, precisely. USL wasn't really anything new. English was already the global language. And in fact, there was already a Universal Sign Language, only the State hadn't heard of it.”
“And then what happened?”
Of all the possible questions about history, Elias always dreaded this one. Sometimes he felt like he was just a glorified story-teller. As if history, his history, was just a series of events, one after the other to be recounted in order.
These aren't stories for me though, they're memories.
“Well,” he continued as patiently as he could. “The State looked pretty stupid and their big plan to restore diplomatic ties didn't work. They retreated back inside the City walls and a year later the crash hit…”
“Tell us! Tell us!”
From outside the tent, the lunch bell rang, and Elias sighed loudly with relief.
“That's for tomorrow, I think.”
I've spoken more than enough words for one day.
Chapter thirty-two
As usual, Kit had a full schedule that afternoon. Self-defence class at the warehouse followed by a special emergency resistance meeting called to discuss the forest raids. Danny went over to pick her up from her house so they could go together. He found self-defence class too emotionally intense so he avoided it when he could. He had conveniently booked himself in for a few dances at the bar just a block away from the warehouse and planned to meet Kit again later for the meeting.
“Hey, darling!” she said loudly as she opened the door. She grabbed Danny and ruffled his hair. “It's been ages. How've you been?”
“I'm good. I—ow!” he said as she rubbed her knuckles against his head.
“Let's go?”
“Do you have anything to eat?” he asked peering over her shoulder towards the kitchen.
“I packed us a little something something,” she said patting her shiny leather handbag.
Danny saw she was wearing only leather today—knee high boots, a leather jacket, a short skirt.
How does she even get away with it?
They both knew that following the Femme Riots, the State had imposed strict rules on appearance. But like many of the sex workers, Kit, lived under protection and was happy to flaunt that fact in the face of ever trooper who dared to stop her.
Also, as she'd pointed out to him more than once:
“Society is profoundly racist. If you change your clothes, people see your white face and you won't get profiled. I don't have that luxury, so I might as well look totally fabulous and bad ass.”
Danny could see her point.
“Kit, I have something exciting to tell you!” Danny signed in case the neighbours were listening. Even with protection, they were always careful when discussing politics.“I got some really interesting information out of my client the other night. I really want to tell you about it.”
“I'll hear it at the meeting tonight. Come on, I'll be late for my class.”
“But—”
“Let's go already!”
Danny knew there was no point arguing.
“Going, going…” he agreed obediently, and they headed down the stairs. “But can we eat on the way? I'm starving.”
* * *
“This food is truly awful,” Ash complained. “Who could mess up nettle soup?”
“Ssssh!” Pinar switched to USL. “Maybe you should cook next time.”
“Maybe I should.”
A tall black woman with tight braids came over to where Ash and Pinar were sitting by the fire.
“Hey, I'm V—or Vicki—one of the runners,” she announced and they both stood to give her four formal cheek kisses. Ash always tried to avoid the four kisses when she could—she had never enjoyed such close proximity to total strangers—but there were some social obligations that just couldn't be escaped.
“I've heard about you ladies,” said Vicki as she brought herself a log to sit on. “Ash and Pinar from the Femme Riots, right?”
“The same,” said Pinar.
“You're quite the superstars of the resistance, you know!”
Ash squirmed.
“I heard you came because of Jason. Are you friends of his?”
“Something like that,” said Pinar with an edge in her voice.
“Ah, ok. Have you been debriefed yet?”
“Not really—”
“Let me get some soup and I'll catch you up.”
As Vicki explained over dinner, Jason wasn't the only fighter who had been abducted. Six from their camp alone had been caught out in the forest that night and taken to the City, presumably to jail.
“There are signs that the State's beginning some kind of wider crackdown on the resistance shoals,” Vicki said between mouthfuls. “Without their protection, the communities are also going to be under threat pretty soon.”
Ash thought about the Sett. Neither she nor Pinar had been back in years, but they still had good friends there.
“Tonight, we'll break camp and head to the City,” Vicki continued. “We're meeting the rest of the resistance and the other shoals there. By the time we arrive, there should already be some kind of plan in place to free the prisoners.”
“What would that look like exactly?” asked Pinar.
“It's not clear yet—even after all this time, the resistance is still pretty disorganised. Either way though, we'd be honoured to have you along with us.”
Vicki got up and stretched.
“This soup is kind of awful isn't it?”
Ash smiled. She was beginning to like this person.
“We should reach the City wall by tomorrow night. We'll avoid the East Gate as it's guarded round the clock these days and we'll take the tunnels to get inside.”
Ash and Pinar knew about the tunnels. They were practically a resistance urban legend—a system so vast they formed a city under the City all centred around what used to be an underground shopping mall. With electricity so limited, the mall and tunnels had been left dark and the State had stopped using them. For the resistance though, they were a lifeline to the outside world.
“We'll approach the walls from the south west, quite near the sea, where there's a few tunnel entrances close together. Then we'll head into town.”
Vicki picked up her bowl and looked ready to leave the conversation.
“We'll be moving out in a couple of hours—if you're not too tired?”
Despite her complaining, Ash was already eating another bowl of soup.
“No problem for me,” she said with her mouth full. “Pin?”
Pinar nodded her consent and looked out into the forest with a serious expression.
I know that look, thought Ash.
She had seen it before in the countless demonstrations, meetings, and actions they'd organised together over the years. Nothing in this world will stop her now.
* * *
After class, Elias es
caped the school tent and headed for the river. It had been a long day and a dip in the water—what was left of it—seemed very inviting. He walked through Central Square and paused, as he always did, at the Memory Board.
The Board had been at the very heart of the Sett from the beginning. Now though, it looked more neglected with each passing season. A vertical wooden notice board sheltered from the weather by a wide sloping roof, it was covered in photos, hand-written accounts, and the detritus of people's former lives.
This was their collective history, a reminder, when it was needed, of what had happened to bring them here, and that it could always happen again.
Elias noticed a newspaper clipping had fallen onto the ground below the board and he slowly bent down to pick it up. It was from 2033, just before the expulsions had begun, and was so faded and covered in dirt that it was barely readable. Sadly and carefully, he pinned it back onto the board.
“No-one gives a damn about history anymore,” he grumbled. “They'd all much rather just forget.”
“What's that Mr E?” asked H, appearing from the other side of the board.
“Oh…hello, H. I, ah, didn't see you there. I was just thinking to myself that the Memory Board doesn't seem as important to us as it used to be. We're forgetting about our history, about how we got here.”
“Well I think it's important,” she replied. “If we forget history then it repeats itself. We make all the same mistakes again.”
“Well yes, well said, H. How are old are you again?”
“I'm nine, Mr E. You know that. I was three when my mum brought us here. Just after the Improvement.”
“Yes, of course.”
“When did you arrive, Mr E? What did you do before the Improvement?”
Elias cleared his throat and leaned against the Memory Board.
Well maybe I have one more story left in me today.
“I was one of the first to arrive here, you know…”
H sat down cross legged in the grass and settled in to listen.
“I was here before there were boats or tents, back when it was nothing but pine trees and the river and the mountains. After we escaped, after we became exiliadas, we walked for weeks. I remember being so hungry I couldn't see straight. We walked and walked and thought we'd never find a place safe enough. Nowhere that the State hadn't already destroyed.”
“Who were you with Mr E?”
“My friends Ash, Pinar, and Oscar. We escaped the City with nothing but the shirts on our backs and Oscar used a wheelchair, so we took turns pushing him. I remember how hard it was for him, how the chair kept getting stuck in the dirt.”
Elias stared off into the distance for a while.
“Anyway, eventually we came here and found others like us. Luckily we found the wells within the first week and for a while we survived on food the others had brought from the City—”
“It sounds hard, Mr E.”
“It was the hardest thing I ever did. News got round pretty quickly though and suddenly we were some kind of a community. Your mum arrived with you in tow a while after. We built our homes, grew our food and stole what we could from the State—”
“—Like the houseboats?”
“Precisely. Years after we came here, one of the scouts found them abandoned downstream, a few miles from the City. They still had fuel and everything, though there's not much of that left anymore.”
“And what did you do before, Mr E? When you lived in the City?”
“Well, I worked of course and lived the best I could with the resistance. It wasn't an easy time for me.”
Lost in his thoughts, Elias ran a wrinkled finger over another of the curled and faded photos pinned to the board. It showed a smiling white family playing in a city park. He vaguely recalled being in that park with his own family, before they were hunted down. Before he'd lost them all.
“No wonder we try so hard to forget,” he said quietly to himself and H nodded sadly.
After a while, Elias looked down at his student. She still sat patiently waiting for him to continue.
“Ahem. Where was I?”
“The Improvement.”
“Yes. Well, to be honest none of it surprised me very much. My family immigrated here when I was four and I grew up surrounded by racism and hatred. The Improvement was really just the same thing on a bigger scale. As you say, history always repeats itself.”
“And are you happier now, Mr E? Now that you live in the Sett?”
“Happy is a big word, H. I miss my friends. Ash and Oscar. You're too young to remember either of them, I guess. Oscar died a year after we arrived here. And Ash just woke up one day and sailed her boat downstream.”
“Why?”
“She'd had enough of collective living. She lives near Pinar, I heard, out there now—” He pointed vaguely into the forest. “I miss them sometimes. They always looked after me.”
H stood up and suddenly grabbed Elias around the middle in a hug. “I'll look after you Mr E!”
Elias was too surprised to speak. He rarely touched anyone. He patted her head instead and silently blinked back a tear.
Chapter thirty-three
Kit's eyes were burning with sweat. Her black hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was punching and kicking as hard as she could. She yelled and cursed and, when she finally stopped, she heard applause.
She was teaching self-defence class.
“Okay, she said, stepping away from the home-made punch bag suspended from the warehouse roof. “Who's next?”
Three women stepped eagerly forward.
“One, two, three.” Kit put them in order. “Five minute each without stopping, please, while the other two give feedback.” She turned to the other twenty people in the class and said “The rest of you practise the grabs and releases from last week. Remember to check consent from your partner before you do anything, especially the grabs.” Nods all around. “And…if your partner forgets to check, I give you permission to punch them in the nose.”
Kit's students laughed and paired up to practise. She was only partly kidding: Kit couldn't count the number of times she'd been grabbed in a class by some overzealous guy without proper consent or discussion. Luckily she was really, really good at defending herself.
She circulated amongst the pairs, but they were well trained and didn't need much correction. After a few minutes, she went to rest against a wall for a while and watch her students. Watching them practising and taking care of each other, she couldn't help but smile.
The door at the far end of the warehouse opened and Kit saw someone come in. She recognised Nathalie’s skinny hips, expensive haircut, and nervous walk instantly. Kit noticed she was wearing tennis shorts and a tight top.
Much sexier than her work gear.
“Hi…erm…K,” Nathalie arrived and stood awkwardly with a gym bag full of her work clothes on her shoulder. Kit put her arm around her and pulled her in for a kiss.
“I’m glad you could make it, Nathalie.”
“Thanks, me too. I’m glad to be here.”
“Any problems with security?”
“No, the person at the door said you’d told her I’d be coming.”
“Yeah, cool. Hold on a sec; let me introduce you.”
“Nice work everyone,” Kit announced to the class, “Gather round please, I’d like to introduce my friend, Nathalie. She's new to the resistance which is why you won't have seen her in meetings yet.”
Nathalie went round the group giving cheek kisses to each and every one of Kit's students.
She's still so formal, Kit reflected, watching her. but I kind of like it. And her legs look amazing. She should wear shorts every day.
Although this was her first self-defence class, Nathalie had already been to a few introductory meetings that week through Kit’s connections and Nathalie’s promise to bring the resistance anything interesting she might come across at work. She had been given acces
s to the lowest security level spaces. The evening after next she was already signed up to volunteer at one of the soup kitchens and Kit couldn’t have been prouder.
Kit had the class gather closer together in a circle and sit down.
“The physical techniques are really coming on well. It all looks great. This afternoon I'd like to come back to the vocal work some of you started a few weeks ago. Using our voice as a weapon and learning to keep it strong even in scary situations. Who would like to present to the group what we lear—”
Kit saw someone else had come into the warehouse and stood quietly near the door.
“Come on in!” said Kit. “Don't be shy.”
“Hi,” said the person so quietly Kit could barely hear. “I was wondering if I could join the class…Sorry, I know you're in the middle.”
“No problem. Tuesdays and Thursdays are a closed group, but today you're more than welcome to join us.”
The person came over and joined the circle. Kit didn't recognise them; they had short brown hair and wore tight jeans and glasses.
“Thanks,” they said. “My name's Rhona and…”
One of Kit's students, a fiery young woman called Alex stood up. She looked furious.
“Alex?” asked Kit. “Everything okay?”
“We're allowing men into the class now?” she blurted out.
“I'm trans…” said Rhona softly. “I'm a woma—”
“You're a man.” Alex was shaking. “We've heard it all before, you know? Putting on a nice dress doesn't make you a woman. It makes you a man trying to colonise our spaces.”
Rhona sat in silence. Her arms had unconsciously wrapped around her knees for protection.
“I…don't—” she began, but her voice broke and she couldn't continue.
Kit stood up and met Alex's glare.
“Alex, I think you need to shut up now.”
“Fuck you!” Alex shouted back. “I'm not going to stand here and be told to shut up for protecting this space.” She glared at the group still seated around her that she had been training with for months. They glared back at her. She felt suddenly exposed until two of her friends stood up and came over to join her.