The Power

by Naomi Alderman

  Tatiana is followed into the room by two well-built men in fitted clothing: black T-shirts so tight you can see the outline of their nipples, skinny trousers with noticeable crotch bulges. When she sits – in a high-backed chair on a dais – they sit beside her, on somewhat lower stools. The trappings of power, the rewards of success. She rises to greet Mother Eve with a kiss on each cheek.

  ‘Praise be to Our Lady,’ says Tatiana.

  ‘Glory in the highest,’ says Mother Eve, without a trace of Allie’s sardonic smile.

  ‘They’ve found twelve more traitors; captured in a raid on the North,’ mutters Tatiana.

  ‘With God’s help, they will all be found,’ says Mother Eve.

  There are infinite numbers of people to meet. Ambassadors and local dignitaries, business owners and leaders of new movements. This party – coming so soon after their defeat in the Battle of the Dniester – is meant to shore up support for Tatiana both at home and abroad. And the presence of Mother Eve is part of that. Tatiana gives a speech about the heart-rending cruelty done by the regimes of the North and the freedom she and her people are fighting for. They listen to the stories of women who join together in small bands to seek Our Lady’s vengeance on those who have escaped human justice.

  Tatiana is moved almost to tears. She asks one of the smartly dressed young men standing behind her to bring drinks for these brave women. He nods, backs away, almost tripping over his feet, and heads upstairs. While they wait, Tatiana tells one of her long-winded jokes. It is about a woman who wishes she could combine her favourite three men into one man, and then a good witch comes to visit her –

  The young blond man bounds in front of her with the bottle.

  ‘Was it this one, Madam?’

  Tatiana looks at him. She tips her head to one side.

  The young man swallows. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘Did I tell you to speak?’ she says.

  He drops his eyes to the floor.

  ‘Just like a man,’ she says. ‘Does not know how to be silent, thinks we always want to hear what he has to say, always talking talking talking, interrupting his betters.’

  The young man looks like he’s about to say something, but thinks better of it.

  ‘Needs to be taught some manners,’ says one of the women standing behind Allie, one of those who run the group seeking justice for old crimes.

  Tatiana plucks the bottle of brandy from the young man’s hands. Holds it in front of his face. The liquid sloshing inside is dark amber, oily like caramel.

  ‘This bottle is worth more than you,’ she says. ‘A glass of this is worth more than you.’

  She holds the bottle in one hand by the neck. Swirls the liquid around once, twice, three times.

  She drops it on to the floor. The glass smashes. The liquid starts to soak into the wood, staining it darker. The smell is strong and sweet.

  ‘Lick it up,’ she says.

  The young man looks down at the shattered bottle. There are glass fragments among the brandy. He looks round at the watching faces. He kneels down and begins to tongue the floor, delicately, working his way around the pieces of glass.

  One of the older women calls out, ‘Get your face into it!’

  Allie watches in silence.

  The voice says: What. The fuck.

  Allie says in her heart: She is actually crazy. Should I say something?

  The voice says: Anything you say will diminish your power here.

  Allie says: So what, then? What is any of my power worth if I can’t use it here?

  The voice says: Remember what Tatiana says. We don’t have to ask what they’d do if they were in control. We’ve seen it already. It’s worse than this.

  Allie clears her throat.

  The young man’s mouth has blood at the lip.

  Tatiana starts to laugh. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ she says. ‘Get a broom and mop it up. You’re repulsive.’

  The young man scrabbles to his feet. The crystal glasses are filled with champagne again. The music can once more be heard.

  ‘Can you believe he did it?’ says Tatiana after he’s run off to fetch a broom.

  Roxy

  It’s a boring fucking party is what it is. And it’s not that she doesn’t like Tatiana, she does. Tatiana’s let them get on with business over the past year since she took over from Bernie, and anyone who lets you get on with business is all right by Roxy.

  Still, you’d think she could throw a better party than this. Someone had told her that Tatiana Moskalev went around this castle with her own blooming pet leopard on a chain. That’s the disappointment Roxy can’t really get over. Plenty of nice glasses, fine; plenty of gold chairs, all right. No blooming leopard anywhere.

  The President seems to have only the dimmest understanding of who Roxy is at all. She goes and does the line-up to shake hands, the woman with the heavy mascara and the green-and-gold eyes says hello and you are one of the fine businesspeople who is making this country the greatest on earth and the most free, without a shadow of recognition crossing her face. Roxy thinks she’s drunk. She wants to go: Don’t you know, I’m the woman shifting five hundred kilos across your borders every day? Every day. I’m the one who’s got you in trouble with the UN, although we all know they won’t do a fucking thing, just send some more observing forces or whatnot. Don’t you know?

  Roxy necks some more of the champagne. She has a look out of the windows at the darkening mountains. She doesn’t even hear Mother Eve approaching her until the woman is at her elbow. Eve’s spooky like that – tiny and wiry and so quiet she could walk across a room and stick a knife between your ribs before you even knew it.

  Mother Eve says: ‘The defeat in the North has made Tatiana … unpredictable.’

  ‘Yeah? It’s made it bloody unpredictable for me, too, I can tell you. Suppliers are nervy as fuck. Five of my drivers have quit. They’re all saying the war’s going to push south.’

  ‘Do you remember what we did at the convent? With the waterfall?’

  Roxy smiles and gives a little laugh. That’s a good memory. Simpler, happier times. ‘That’s teamwork,’ she says.

  ‘I think we could do it again,’ says Mother Eve, ‘on a larger scale.’

  ‘How d’ you mean?’

  ‘My … influence. Your undeniable strength. I’ve always felt that there were great things ahead of you, Roxanne.’

  ‘Am I really pissed,’ says Roxy, ‘or are you making even less sense than usual?’

  ‘We can’t talk here.’ Mother Eve lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘But I think that Tatiana Moskalev will soon have outlived her usefulness. To the Holy Mother.’

  Ohhhhhhhh. Oh.

  ‘You kidding?’

  Mother Eve shakes her head minutely. ‘She’s unstable. I think in a few months’ time the country will be ready for a new leadership. And the people here trust me. If I were to say that you are the right woman for the job …’

  Roxy almost hoots with laughter at that. ‘Me? You’ve met me, haven’t you, Evie?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened,’ says Mother Eve. ‘You’re already a leader of a great multitude. Come and see me tomorrow. We’ll talk it through.’

  ‘It’s your funeral,’ says Roxy.

  She doesn’t stay long after that, just long enough to be seen to be having a good time and press the flesh of a couple of Tatiana’s other disreputable cronies. She’s taken with what Mother Eve’s said. It’s a nice thought. A very nice thought. She does like this country.

  She stays out of the way of the reporters circling the room; you can always tell a fucking reporter from the hungry look on their faces. Even though there’s one she’s seen on the internet who she fancies like she could lick his flesh straight off his bones, there’s always more blokes where he came from; they’re ten a penny. Especially if she were President. She mutters it under her breath. ‘President Monke.’ And then laughs at herself for it. Still. Could work.

  In any case, she can
’t think about it too hard tonight. She’s got business to do this evening; non-party, non-diplomatic, non-pressing-the-flesh business. One of them UN soldiers or special representatives or whatever wants to meet up with her somewhere quiet, so they can work out how to circumvent the blockade in the North and keep product moving. Darrell’s set it up; he’s been doing operations here for months, keeping his head down like a good boy, making contacts, keeping the factory running smoothly even during the war. Sometimes a bloke is better at that than a woman – less threatening; they’re better at diplomacy. Still, to finish the deal it has to be Roxy herself.

  The roads are winding and dark. The headlights are the only pools of light in the black world; no streetlights here, not even a little village with lit windows. Bloody hell, it’s only just gone eleven; you’d think it was four o’clock in the morning. It’s more than ninety minutes out of the city, but Darrell’s sent her good instructions. She finds the turn-off easily enough, drives down an unlit track, parks the car in front of another one of these spiky castles. All the windows are dark. No sign of life.

  She looks at the message Darrell sent her. Green-painted door will be open. She makes a spark from her own palm to light her way, and there’s the green door, paint flaking off, at the side of the stable block.

  She can smell formaldehyde. And antiseptic. Another corridor, and there’s a metal door with a round handle. Light is seeping in around the frame. Right. This is it. She’ll bloody tell them next time not to have a fucking meeting somewhere unlit in the middle of nowhere; she could have tripped over and broken her neck. She turns the handle. And there’s something weird, just enough to put a frown between her eyes. She can taste blood in the air. Blood and chemicals and there’s a feeling like … she tries to pin it down. It’s a feeling like there’s been a fight. Like there’s always just been a fight.

  She opens the door. There’s a room lined with plastic, and there are tables and medical equipment, and she’s thinking that someone didn’t tell Darrell the whole story, and she has just enough time to be afraid when someone grabs her arms and someone else pulls a sack over her head.

  She gets off a huge blast – she knows she’s hurt someone badly, could feel them crumble and she hears the scream – and she’s ready for another go, she’s wheeling round and trying to get the bag off her head, and she’s spinning and letting off jolts wildly into the air. She shouts out, ‘Don’t you fucking touch me!’ and pulls at the thing on her head. And blood and iron bloom at the back of her skull because someone’s hit her as hard as she’s ever been hit and her last thought is ‘A leopard, as a pet’ as she goes down into night.

  She knows, even in her half-sleep, that they’re cutting her. She’s strong, she’s always been strong, she’s always been a fighter and she’s wrestling with the sleep like a heavy, sodden blanket. She keeps dreaming that her fists are clenched and that she’s trying to open them, and she knows that if she could only make her hands move in the real world she would wake up and then she would bring down such blood upon them, she would make the pain fall from the sky, she would open up a hole in the heavens and tumble the fires on to the earth. Something bad is happening to her. Something worse than she can imagine. Wake up, you fucker. Wake the fuck up. Now.

  She surfaces. She’s strapped down. She can see metal above her, can feel metal under her fingertips and she thinks, Stupid fuckers. She goes to set the whole bed humming because no fucker’s coming near her.

  But she can’t. She goes for it, and her accustomed tool is not in its place. A voice very far away says, ‘It’s working.’

  But it’s not working, that’s the whole point, it is definitely not working.

  She tries to send a little echo along her collarbone. Her power’s there, it’s weak, struggling, but it’s there. She’s never felt so grateful to her own body.

  Another voice. She recognizes it, but where, where, whose is that voice? Has she kept a leopard as a pet, what is going on? Stupid fucking leopard padding through her dreams, fuck off, you’re not real.

  ‘She’s trying to break through. Watch her, she’s strong.’

  Someone laughs. Someone says, ‘With what we’ve given her?’

  ‘I haven’t come all this way,’ says the voice she knows, ‘I didn’t sort this all out, to have you fuck it up. She’s stronger than any of the others you’ve ever taken it from. Watch her.’

  ‘Fine. Mind out of the way.’

  Someone comes near her again. They’re going to hurt her and she can’t let them do that. She talks to her own skein, saying: You and me, mate, we’re on the same side. You need to give me just a little bit more. The last little bit, I know you’ve got it. Come on. This is our life we’re talking about.

  A hand touches her right hand.

  ‘Fuck!’ someone shouts and falls and breathes heavily.

  She’s done it. She can feel it now, coursing more evenly through her, not like she’d been drained, like there’d been a block somewhere and now it’s clearing like debris in a stream. Oh she is going to make them pay for this.

  ‘Up the dose! Up the dose!’

  ‘We can’t give any more, we’ll damage the skein.’

  ‘LOOK at her. Fucking do it now, or I’ll do it myself.’

  She’s building up a great charge now. She’s going to bring this ceiling down on them.

  ‘Just look at what she’s doing.’

  Whose is that voice? It’s on the tip of her tongue, once she’s out of these restraints she’ll turn around and see and somewhere in her heart she already knows who and what she’ll see.

  There’s a loud elongated mechanical beep.

  ‘Red zone,’ says someone. ‘Automatic warning. We’ve given her too much.’

  ‘Keep it coming.’

  As suddenly as the power had built up in her, it went. Like someone had flipped a switch.

  She wants to scream. She can’t make that come either.

  She goes down for a moment into the black mud, and when she fights her way back up again they’re cutting into her so carefully it feels like a compliment. She’s numbed, and it doesn’t hurt, but she can feel the knife going in, along her collarbone. And then they touch her skein. Even through the numbness and paralysis and dreamy half-sleep the pain sounds like a fire alarm through her body. It’s clean, white pain, like they’re slicing very carefully through her eyeballs, shaving off layer after layer of flesh. It’s a minute of screaming before she realizes what they’re doing. They have lifted up the string of striated muscle across her collarbone and they are sawing at it, separating it strand by strand from her.

  Very far away, someone says, ‘Should she be screaming?’

  Someone else says, ‘Just get on with it.’

  She knows those voices. She doesn’t want to know them. The things you don’t want to know, Roxy, those are the things that’ll get you in the end.

  There’s a twang all through her body when they cut through the final strand on the right-hand side of her collarbone. It hurts, but the emptiness that comes after is worse. It’s like she’s died, but she’s still too alive to notice.

  Her eyelids flutter as they lift the thing out of her. She knows she’s seeing now, not just imagining. She sees it in front of her, the strand of meat that was the thing that made her work. It’s jumping and squirming because it wants to get back inside her. She wants it there too. Her own self.

  There’s a voice to her left.

  The leopard says, ‘Just get on with it.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want to be under?’

  ‘They said you’d get better results if I could tell you whether it’s working.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then get on with it.’

  And even though her head is in a vice and her neck is full of grinding gears, she turns her head so that just one eye can see what she’s looking for. A single glance is enough. The man lying prepped for the implantation operation next to her is Darrell, and sitting beside him in a chair is her dad,
Bernie.

  There’s the fucking leopard, says a tinny, chattering part of her brain. Didn’t I tell you there was a fucking leopard somewhere here. You tried to keep a leopard as a pet, didn’t you, you fucking idiot, and you know what happens then. Teeth at the throat, blood everywhere, got what you deserved, messing with a leopard. They don’t change their spots, Roxy, or is that cheetahs, either way.

  Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutupshutup, she says to her brain, I’ve got to think.

  They’re ignoring her now. They’re working on him. They’ve sewed her up – just to be neat maybe, or surgeons can’t make themselves not sew up a wound they’ve made. Maybe her dad told them to. There he is. Her own dad. She should have fucking known that even not killing him wouldn’t be enough. Everything’s got its vengeance. A wound for a wound. A bruise for a bruise. A humiliation for a humiliation.

  She’s trying not to cry but she knows she is: leaking from the eyes. She wants to mash them into the ground. The feeling’s coming back into her arms and legs and fingers and toes, there’s a tingling and an emptiness and an ache and she’s got one chance now because there’s no reason at all for Darrell not to kill her, he might think she’s dead already, with any luck. Fucking snake in the grass, fucking shit-stain on the earth, fucking fucking Darrell.

  Bernie says, ‘How’s it looking?’

  One of the doctors says, ‘It’s good. Excellent tissue match.’

  There’s a whining sound from the drill as they start to bore little holes in Darrell’s collarbone. It’s loud. She drifts in and out of time a bit, the clock on the wall is moving faster than it should, she can feel her whole body again, fucking hell, they left her clothes on, that’s shoddy, and it’s good, and she can work with it. On the next whine of the drill she wriggles her right hand out of the soft fabric restraint.

  She looks around with one half-open eye. She moves slowly. Left hand out of the restraints, still no one notices what she’s doing, they’re so intent on the body of her brother. Left foot. Right foot. She reaches out to the tray next to her, grabs a couple of scalpels and some bandages.