Sandpaper Kiss

by Angel Wedge

  “Pal Maitobo up there!” I called, remembering the word Amba had taught me to describe a false priest, “I need to save Lucy!” The tribesmen were already angry, and mentioning that word could easily have pushed some of them over the edge. Not all of them knew the name of their revived goddess, but enough of them would throw caution to the wind as soon as they heard she was in danger. Without even planning, I’d found the perfect speech to get them to throw their lives away and charge the American guards, regardless of the odds against them. But at the same time, the foreign soldiers who didn’t know who Lucy was were just as reluctant to let an innocent go unsaved on their watch. One man turned and stuck his head up the staircase into the Observation Room above, there was a frantic debate, and half the defending troops were running upwards.

  “Don’t shoot!” I yelled, not noticing or caring how much danger I was throwing myself into, “Let me through!” I ran past the tribesmen, my fear fully focused on the Americans at that point. But I was still an American to them, and some raised their weapons. I guess the soldiers saw a white man under attack by natives, and reflexively tried to open a path to safety for me. It was probably a bad reflex from a military perspective, allowing me through the barricade without any rational justification. Some detached part of me wondered if they were supposed to be trained against those treacherous, humanitarian instincts. I heard shots fired, both to either side of me and in the room above. The tribesmen dropped back momentarily; I remember blaming myself for the Americans opening fire, and hoping that it had only been warning shots to clear the warriors out of my path. I didn’t want to think anyone had died from my recklessness.

  The Lucretia Falls Oversight Committee was all there, whether in person or by satellite link. The world was watching too, representatives of UNESCO looking in from Paris, the Security Council from New York, representatives of other governments on a few monitors. It was entirely possible Marcos had already connected the feed to the Satellite News Network and other major media organisations, so the world could easily be watching us.

  The delegates here in person were either lying on the floor in panic or screaming like headless chickens. Soldiers stood on both sides of the room, weapons drawn and pointing past the scientists to the centre. Uvi had been shot, and for once I saw an injured man without any feelings of revulsion for the system that had caused it. In war, I always had some sympathy for injured men, even if they were nominally the bad guys, because they’d usually been following orders or doing what they thought was right. But this man was fighting for purely selfish reasons, and he’d hurt Lucy.

  He was lying on his side, a pool of blood spilling from his shoulder, but cursing profusely. I kicked his blade out of reach as I came closer, ignoring everything except Lucy. She was bleeding too, and my fists clenched when I saw white fur stained with blood. Barishkov was shouting something from behind his desk. I caught the words “monster”, and “threat”, I saw a couple of soldiers raising their rifles.

  “No!” I screamed, and threw myself across her. If I’d had time to think, maybe I could have found a better plan. But there wasn’t time to think, and the soldiers wouldn’t risk shooting me to get her until they’d wondered who I was. I knew it was crazy, that I’d spent virtually all of my life trying to help as much as I could without putting myself in the firing line. But in that moment all I could think of was that I needed to protect her. The room froze, scientists and soldiers waiting to see what I would do.

  I lifted her up and checked her pulse. Her eyes flickered open and one hand scratched weakly at my shoulder. I ignored the pain and held her close, babbling “please, please be okay,” until she recognised me. “Please say something.”

  Barishkov shouted orders to the troops, calling me a saboteur, calling on the need to kill the monster. He knew that if she spoke to anyone, the Americans would find out about the lies he’d told them, and he was desperate now. I didn’t catch what he was accusing me of, but I was relieved to find that the military wasn’t too enthusiastic about shooting an unarmed man.

  “Someone help!” I shouted angrily at the soldiers in front of me, “There must at least be a first aid kit here!” The soldiers ignored me, but Dr Corliss grabbed a green box from a locker beside the stairs and slid it across the floor towards me. He wanted to help, he knew Lucy probably as well as I did, but he wasn’t going to put himself in the firing line.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Paul’s irate voice came over the speakers. It was probably the first time in years he’d shouted without a team of spin doctors thinking about it in advance to find the tone that would generate the most public sympathy.

  “I couldn’t risk…” I tried to speak, but I didn’t really know how to explain myself, “I thought they might shoot her, I don’t know what deal you made with Barishkov, I didn’t want to think…” There was a pause, I just didn’t know what to say. Maybe it was a time for diplomacy, but throwing myself in the line of fire had been the only way it seemed sure Lucy would be safe. Even now, I was holding her close in the hope some trigger-happy soldier wouldn’t risk taking a shot while I bandaged the spear wound in her side. She said something, but in all the excitement I wasn’t thinking clearly enough to understand.

  “You’d put yourself at risk for that animal?” Paul spat, and even with the tension I wondered just how much he was going to regret that later.

  “Yes,” I spoke clearly at last, even if it was only to say the stupidest thing that came to mind through the intoxicating haze as the adrenaline rush dropped me: “I think I love her.”

  “Wǒ yěài nǐ,” Lucy whispered, and smiled through the pain. For just a second, the gunmen and scientists and international politicians didn’t matter. It took me a second to decipher the foreign syllables, but the meaning was clear from her smile, her eyes.

  If only she could speak in a language more commonly understood, I thought, there wouldn’t be this debate about whether she’s an animal or a monster. Then I looked up at the monitors, the people watching us as representatives of the United Nations, and I managed to pick out a Chinese representative in the crowd. He was already staring in surprise; Lucy’s anatomy imposed a thick accent on her, but the meaning in her words would still be obvious to someone who’d grown up with the language.

  “The girl said that she is human, and that is clear enough for me,” as soon as he’d spoken, both of the conference rooms at the end of the satellite were in uproar. “In addition, says that your feelings are returned.”

  Chapter 30 — One Last Trick

  Now, at last, I can look back on everything that has happened and relax. I slump back in my comfortable seat and stare blankly into space. A few weeks after the conference, the whole thing is starting to feel like a dream. It’s always like this after a completed report, the emotional deluge of seeing so many people in the direst situations fading into numbness as soon as I’m out of the thick of it. I’ve done what I came to do, although in this case I haven’t yet finished my article. I’m not even sure if I need to, now: the story broke on its own when Marcos connected the satellite link to a major news network. While I was in the infirmary, one of the staff told me that my adrenaline-drunk declaration of love had been watched live by six million viewers tuned in to the evening news.

  Things moved amazingly quickly, for the world of international politics. There isn’t a decision of which country Lucretia Falls is part of yet, but the UN Security Council has promised decisive action against any of the three neighbours who dare to launch an attack. The tribes are united in their worship of Lucy, though nobody can predict whether this attitude will survive once they understand a little more of where she came from. The prevailing attitude, or so Amba told me, is that a miracle is a miracle even if you can use science to explain it. Science has been able to describe the sound of a newborn baby’s first cry for years, but that doesn’t stop every single one being a gift from the gods. I’ve never been particularly religious myself, but I have to admire
their pragmatism.

  The international community can’t decide about Lucy’s legal status, either. She’s part human, part animal. But once a suddenly-mobilised team of computer hackers dissected Barishkov’s labyrinth of passwords, it was no longer in question that she was also a clone of the original Lucretia; an issue with a set of moral questions all of its own. There are three other questionably-human children hidden in other parts of the lab; another Lucretia and two early experiments into the cloning process. Lucy is the only one who has shown any real level of intelligence, but maybe the others will grow up at a more human rate. Or maybe they’ll die from Keppler-Monroe, or from complications of their unusual birth like all of their siblings.

  For now, the people in power all seem to think that Lucy is legally an animal, and she certainly isn’t free to go where she wants. Her higher intelligence and obvious emotional maturity wasn’t enough to put her in a class separate from Barishkov’s leopard and the non-human triumphs of the lab.

  The increased compliment of soldiers quickly turned Lucretia Falls into more of an army camp than a scientific establishment. I didn’t know if I could think of them as allies or not. They were ordered to keep the ‘hybrids’ alive, but also keep them prisoner. After the sudden change in the tide of opinion, Lucy was an honoured guest, and everybody wanted to talk to her over the video link. Everybody had their own questions, but it was like some old slapstick show with a logjam in the doorway; they vetoed each other’s questions in case some other research would interfere their own. You couldn’t ask about what she knew in case that biased research into how she thought. You couldn’t talk about her family in case some scientists had been trying to feed her the right answers to fake self-awareness. The door to her room – the dormitory she’d spent most of her childhood in – was probably guarded as heavily as the President’s outer office. It was only through fear of the now united tribes that nobody dared to order a constant guard in the room with her. They didn’t want to be the one who’d treated her as an experiment when the primitive people wanted her to be some kind of messiah.

  But even when all the evidence pointed in one direction, even if there were as many voices screaming ‘human’ as ‘monster’ in the vast discord of public opinion, there seemed to be very few people who could actually consider her to be a person. She might be genetically human, but she would never be any more than a curiosity. There was no chance that Lucy would be a citizen of any nation, or would be accorded any rights except as a token gesture in search of political approval. Her humanity would never be real.

  My wounds were at least two weeks old by then, and had already been treated by field medics in Sante Benedicté. They still confined me to the infirmary for a week so they could make sure I wasn’t going to have any longer term problems. Paul phoned me while I was recuperating in between tests, so that we could tell each other what had happened. Barishkov and some people loyal to him had been taken into custody by American troops. The United Nations was just about managing to establish some semblance of order.

  Paul asked my advice on choosing a new committee to run the place until something more stable could be established. He wanted a group the public could trust to keep the human and nonhuman hybrids comfortable, because it looked like people worldwide had a lot of sympathy for Lucy whether she turned out to be an abused child or an abused cute animal. I recommended putting Corliss at the head of the table, because he got on well with the tribes and Lucy trusted him as well, and just like that Corliss was in charge.

  Now the world’s eyes are on us again, and this time they actually know what’s been going on, so no government can push the situation too hard. We earned a respite from the little wars of the region, civil and otherwise. Maybe the hybrids will find a new home, or maybe Dr Corliss can follow through on John’s plans. If he can convert the building into a hospital for the Benedictean people, maybe the tribes would help to feed the staff here, and Lucretia Falls can inspire cooperation between two groups of natives as easily as it engendered a small war. I won’t try to predict the future, because I’ve travelled the world enough to be healthily cynical. But somewhere at heart I still have a sliver of romanticism, and I want to believe people will do the right thing if given a chance.

  This morning, they told me I was heading back to the States. There was going to be a flight chartered by one of the corporate limbs of Paul’s political machine, evacuating all the tourists and visitors from the area just in case the revolution turns bloody again. For now, the armies in olive and black each hold half of the city, while the amerikanjie have taken over the airport. I asked the infirmary staff if I could say goodbye to Lucy before I have to go; they’d agreed, knowing that the guards wouldn’t let me in to that dorm. No doubt they were packing up all my possessions while I was walking the base, and briefing someone to drag me to the plane when I refused to go.

  I didn’t go straight down to the labs, though. I took a turn off one landing near the bottom of the cliffside levels, and went to stand on a balcony overlooking the grounds. The giant ‘Lucretia Falls’ sign had been cleaned up now, so I’d never get to see the tangle of vines Lucy had described here. The staff hadn’t quite got around to reconnecting the strips of lights, but the sign needed no illumination with the sun peering over the edge of the canopy. It was amazing how much had been changed in just 4 days. An improvised swing, something a child might play on if they liked hanging over a vertiginous drop to the ground below, still dangled by one rope from the sign’s letter C. I reached up to cut the rope with a pocket knife, and after a few moments of hacking threw the piece of junk down to the garden below.

  * * *

  I shake my head to clear away the recollections, and settle back into my seat. I need to stop dwelling on the past now, and think about where the future might lead. I can forget all about Lucretia Falls as soon as I’ve finished writing out this story.

  My flight out is first class, and Paul has managed to afford a jet much more well appointed than the one that brought me here. Though as an evacuation flight, half the passengers don’t have tickets and the flight attendants left us to find whatever seats we could. It was probably one of them recognising me, rather than anything planned, that got me the most comfortable ride. I turn to the young woman sitting down beside me and smile, not quite sure what to say. She smiles back, and silently takes my hand. At least I won’t be alone for the duration of the flight. I think new experiences are always better than memories, as long as you don’t repeat your past mistakes.

  That swing had been a memory for Lucy, a nostalgia of a childhood only a few years past. Of course, she’d recognised it instantly when it hit the patio area outside her childhood dormitory. I’d only been able to carve a few rough letters into the old wood, but it was enough to let her know I was there. I wonder, if all of her stories had been in the diary, whether the militia would have read it, and if they would have managed to anticipate my one last trick. But the stories weren’t there, and many of Lucy’s early entries in that book would be barely legible even to someone who knew the language. Only Nurse Chǎ and the scientists who’d monitored Lucy back when she was still Lucretia 17 knew how easy she found it to slip out of that room and explore the grounds.

  She’d appeared almost out of nowhere, pulling herself up onto the balcony with both hands. I couldn’t see any platform below that she could have jumped from, but that didn’t surprise me. Though the balcony was clear of vines, there were still enough crawling up the building and clinging on to every cranny in the cliff face. We talked quickly, it was so much easier to communicate now that my phone had a signal again and I could make use of all kinds of Internet translation apps. Then I headed downstairs for a token attempt at getting into the lab to see her. As I’d expected, the stoic soldiers wouldn’t even open the door, insisting that their charge would be sleeping so early in the day. So I rushed back upstairs to catch the bus they’d laid on to Sante Benedicté Regional Airport.

  She squeezes my ha
nd tightly. I can still feel claws pricking my skin, and I know she’ll never be quite like everyone else. Somehow, I find that reassuring. But with a loose shawl around her head, dark glasses entirely appropriate to the sun, and the fur carefully shaved from her face and hands, she passed for human well enough to get on board.

  “Thanks, Paul,” I muttered to myself, a little chuckle as I realised that this was one promise he’d kept without ever intending to.

  Benedictean Phrase Book

  Over the past century, Sante Benedicté has found itself on both sides of a constantly moving national boundary, as well as being claimed by and annexed from several different empires. Therefore the language spoken there isn’t shared with the rest of the country, but is a hybrid of English and Dutch with just a few home-grown words derived from the languages traditionally spoken by the jungle tribes. Here are some phrases it may help you to know:

  Amerikanjie: Foreigners, especially people coming from a country that has never conquered Sante Benedicté.

  Barraette!: Help!

  Biestut: Authorized personnel.

  Bisse: Thankyou.

  Bosjivé: Fake, confidence trickster.

  Enflagra: Fire!

  Kempada: Wait, rest.

  Pam’barra: Don’t worry.

  Somete: Privileged, special, restricted.

  Somete biestute: Staff only.

  Ye-kempe: Stop!

  Lamadite Tribal Language

  The tribes around the River Lama havee traditionally been isolationists, refusing to allow outsiders to study their language. However, the esteemed Dr Corliss has been attempting to construct a dictionary of common terms. He has found a surprising number of words that are used in both the tribal and Benedictean tongues, although the meanings are not always the same. Here is a sample of what he has discovered so far: