The Best British Fantasy 2013
Page 7
As years passed, I began to see how Botoni might, one day, be beautiful. As the old world gassed itself to death, this place might become what Earth had been. It would take thousands of years. I was a part of it, willing or not. In the earth surrounding the complex we cultivated spindly plants from Earth seedlings. I planted a sapling. Every evening I went to water it. Year by year I watched it grow, and each day of its survival was a tiny miracle. I collected the leaves it dropped and hoarded them like jewels.
There were moments I stood on the edge of the complex and gazed deep into the desert, aware of a curious feeling in my chest: something like guardianship.
The nights here are quiet. I leave the window open. Sometimes I sit on the windowsill and look at the foreign constellations. My roommate sleeps like the dead. In the early days, the sheer weight of the things I missed would make me want to fall. I knew it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone if I did. The paperwork is easy enough – failure to acclimatize, they would say. Other times I wondered what it was I did miss, and occasionally, the pan emptiness of the sky convinced me that none of it existed at all. On those nights I whispered to myself: I must be going mad, I must have gone mad. I am not here. I am not anywhere.
Sometimes the colonists pass by. Their vehicles glide on silver tracks that coil away into the dunes, towards other New Cities. They cannot be so far away, the Cities. When they pass we pause whatever we are doing and watch them silently. With their free, roving eyes, they are aliens.
Convicts do not run away, unless madness takes them. We are tagged of course, but that is not why. There is nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. Violence when it comes is sudden; vicious and specific. I saw a woman twist a screwdriver in the eye socket of an eighteen year-old boy. She got up and there was blood all over her face, on her lips, her nose. She had been a lawyer in her old life. After that they put her in a white cell. White walls, white floor and ceiling and door. Soon enough, her mind was whitewashed too.
I am not the only one going back to Earth. We are twenty or so. A week before the ship is due, the Warden briefs us. I look around the room. The other faces reveal a spectrum of emotion from suppressed hope to genuine excitement. I have been here the longest.
The Warden clears his throat, and I wonder idly how far the dust has advanced with him. Some lucky people are immune – I say lucky, but those are the ones they take away to experiment on.
‘As on the way out, you will be placed in abeyance for the duration of the journey. When you reach Earth, an officer will meet you. They will help you join your family.’
Amidst the ripple of anticipation, a lone voice calls out.
‘What if we got no family? What if they’re all dead?’
‘Earth has a tried and tested system for briefing convict families. In the instance of the line expiring, a friend or acquaintance will have been named as your Rehabilitator. They will be alerted when the ship nears Earth.’
The man who spoke sneers but the Warden ignores him. The Warden will follow the line. He tells us that our families will help us re-enter Earth society. We will get jobs. We will pay rent. We will have free time. A couple of people nod: yes, yes! Some look dazed. Gradually they begin to talk amongst themselves, exchanging ideas. One woman is going to learn the guitar. Another wishes to study, physics she says. Even the sneerer admits he has a plan: he is going to build his own house in Greenland.
There is one man, older like me, who stares at the wall with eyes as vacant as the dunes. He knows, I think. He knows. After the briefing I notice him around the complex. In the dinner line. In the yard. Always the same, vacant stare.
I go back to the Pod and call up an old letter – I know them all by heart. I play Shu’s voice.
Today I told my daughter about you. She had a lot of questions about Aunty Yun. What does she look like? Where does she live? I said you lived in the sky. Can I go there? No, I explained. Aunty Yun will come back to us, but it might not be for a very long time.
One day I will have to tell her the truth, register her as your Rehabilitator after me, tell her to pass these instructions to her daughter and perhaps her daughter’s daughter, for who knows which of us will be living when you return? It struck me, after talking to her, that it is most likely I will never see you again. Of course I have considered this before, but never with such certainty. With each year and each failed application for your early release, the odds are stacked against our reunion. Perhaps I should be glad that my children’s children will have a chance to know you, Yun? It is difficult to be glad.
In this last week I am not sleeping and my breath is more constricted than ever. One night I see a sand cloud. It rolls along the horizon, changing its shape, stretching and retracting, breath like a dragon’s. It is a sign, it must be a sign. I tap my tongue to the back of my front teeth, three times. Ward it off, whatever it is. Keep it from me, keep me safe. Keep me here. There is nothing good on Earth except for Shu, and Shu will be gone. At least if I stay here, her letters will keep coming.
She was always too good for me. I was a troubled child anyway, angry at the world I had inherited, angry at the restraints and the quarantines, the adults who had created such a scale of catastrophe that they chose to pretend it was not there. Instead they peered around the mess, around Earth and up and out into the stratosphere. The planet was a toy they had broken; now they wanted a better one.
We didn’t have a bad start, my mother and my sister and I, until the Depression reached Antarctica. Shu was the conscientious one. Shu took jobs outside school when our mother started imbibing and her eyes turned dull. Shu dealt with the bailiffs. She found us a one-bed flat when we lost the house.
While my sister tried to save us, I went pick-pocketing with my co-conspirator T, a childhood friend who had grown up into a reckless and beautiful young man, and the only one who had stayed loyal through the bad times. I adored him. With T, I could make squalor a game. A dangerous game, because the law was harsh and prison penalties high, but a game nonetheless. I was fifteen, and as far as I could see I had nothing to live for but the excitement of breaking the law.
I still dream about him. T and I, running down the long white Antarctic beaches. T and I, paddling in the coral reef graveyards, collecting fish scales, shells, plastic bottles and Cocarola cans. T finding a sea horse skeleton held together by fragments of skin. When he scooped it up in his net, the bones crumbled to dust.
T and I, out on the city streets. T and I, watching for ripe targets to exit the sex clubs and the holomas. We worked as a team. Old perverts were the best. I’d distract them, rub onion in my eyes to make me cry, hike my skirt. I’m lost, I’d say. I’ve got no money to get home. When they put their hands between my legs, T would push the barrel of his gun into the back of their necks and they’d freeze and I’d knee their erection and take everything they had and then we ran. T kept the gun unloaded but they never knew that. T and I, criminal masterminds. T and I, doomed from day one.
The night it happened – it could have been any night, but it was a Tuesday, a dark February night. Our victim fought back, feistier than usual. T was on the floor and somehow the gun ended up in my hand. The guy was hitting T. I pointed the gun as T had shown me and pulled back the safety catch. I warned the man: I’ll shoot! T was making awful grunting noises. I said it again. The man swivelled and kicked my legs from under me. I couldn’t fire so I went for the next best thing, hitting out with the heavy barrel. When the shot exploded in my ears and the man jerked and went still I lay in shock, his blood soaking into my clothes. And I realized I had known all along. Of course the gun was loaded. Of course T would not be so stupid as to carry an empty weapon, even if he had told me otherwise.
‘We just have to lie low,’ said T.
But I knew we would be caught. We had left too much evidence, our fear was all over the scene. That night, I went to the police station and confessed. I wrote a full statement. I felt triumpha
nt as I signed my name: I had done something noble. Because of me, T would be safe. Even after, in the difficult bit where I was allowed visitors, Shu, and when T came, I felt the strangest calm. I knew that I was strong enough to maintain my story.
‘You can do some good in the world,’ I told T, savouring my martyrdom, as I suppose I thought of it. ‘You could be something. A doctor. An astronaut.’
T said he wanted to punch me. He said we should have sat tight. He said they’d send me to the convict planet. I didn’t believe him.
‘There’s a new law. They can get people from fourteen now. Twelve if you’re a boy.’
I was fifteen. They gave me forty years.
T never wrote. Over the years it was Shu’s letters that I came to wait for, Shu’s news that I craved. I came to know the woman better than I ever knew the girl.
Back on Earth, Shu goes to university and studies law. She promises to fight for my release and I know, even then, she will never succeed but I love her for trying. I become an aunt. The baby’s name is Shui, for water, but she is known as Shell. The child’s father is absent; Shu lives with her boyfriend who teaches scuba diving in the summer months. Shell gets bigger. A batch of photographs: Shell’s first birthday cake, Shell’s first day at school, Shell touching a turtle, Shell’s nose pressed behind a diving mask, Shell with eyeliner and dyed blue hair. I gobble each titbit of news. I hug Shu’s words to myself in the night, repeating them to my friend Gill in the day, happy that Shu is happy.
She writes steadily, steadfastly. I hope I’m not boring you, she says once, and I speak my response immediately, even knowing my letters are unlikely to arrive until she is elderly or worse, No, please, tell me everything, terrified of losing even a word. Shu and Gill are all I have. Had.
Day turns into night turns into day. Now there is grey in my hair. Now my lungs are clogged and I watch sand clouds roll on the horizon and dream about those who go mad.
In the morning over breakfast Al tells me there has been a suicide. I do not need to look around to know who is missing. It is the man with the vacant stare from the briefing room.
‘How did he do it?’ I ask Al. I ask because Al wants to talk about it; he’s distressed and curious at the same time, but I barely listen to the response. I think of how I found Gill crouched in the bathroom with a razor, days before her own ship came. I remember the scratch on her inner wrist, not deep enough to draw blood, but a precise line along the veins. I remember the horror and relief in her eyes when I snatched the razor away.
‘They’re going to send me into space, Yun. I’ll never make it to Earth, none of us will. Not dead, not alive, not dead. I should end it now. You should let me!’
Her shoulders shook when I held her.
‘You’re going back to Earth,’ I said firmly. ‘And when my sentence is up, I’ll find you.’
‘Promise me?’
‘Promise.’
‘Because fuck knows there’s nothing else for me there.’
They allowed me to be with Gill when they put her to sleep. She was shaking and sweating. I knew she was terrified. The doctors must have known too. I held her hand, feeling like a traitor. I watched the needle slip under her skin. Then they took her away to freeze.
In her last years Gill had talked a lot about Earth.
‘They didn’t always send us back, you know. We were never meant to. I mean, would you ask a spider back into your house, even if it was all used up and looked harmless?’
‘Where did we go then?’
Gill shrugged. ‘The New Cities. We must have worked for someone. Must have died here. But those smug cunts in their pavilions by the sea don’t want us either. They were the ones chose to start shipping us back.’
‘I remember,’ I said.
‘What do you remember? You’re just a kid.’ Gill spoke with rough affection; she liked to say I’d been snatched from the cradle. But it was true. I did remember. I remembered images on the news, aged figures with ochre tinged skin disembarking from a spaceship. Placards and slogans.
Send them back! Send them back!
No room, no convicts!
Earth sent them to the moon colony. Them. Us. This, too, I remember, and Shu’s letters confirm it is the case, at least in her lifetime.
They send us back because we are a civilized race. But it is not civil, not civil at all, and Gill knew it, and this man who has ended his life today knew it. Eventually, there will be no sending back. They will work us until we die or lose our minds. And that seems, to me, not illogical. Not unkind.
The ship is late. I ask the Warden if there has been a decision about me. He says they will let me know when the ship arrives. At night I dream that they force me into the silver coffin, stuff a tube down my throat and turn on the gas. I start to freeze from the inside out. Everything freezes except my mind, and all I can feel is cold cold cold. Endless awareness, endless cold. I want to scream, I want to thrash but I cannot move. Then the lid comes down, and it is dark.
I wake drenched in sweat, and I bend over the edge of the bed, my chest so tight I can barely inhale, convinced I will suffocate here and now. Slowly I regain control of my lungs and the panic subsides. But I am too scared to sleep. What if they come for me in the night? What if they decide to freeze me when I am unconscious, when I cannot struggle?
A month passes and still there is no ship. Hope flutters. Respite. In the kitchen, I assist the chef. At night I water my tree. I listen to Shu’s letters. But it cannot last and it does not last. The day arrives. I come downstairs to breakfast and Al rushes up to me, breathless.
‘Yun, the ship’s coming down.’
Despite the heat I feel cold. I accompany Al to the front of the complex, where a small crowd has gathered. We watch as the atmosphere shimmers, as a glint becomes a silver colossus descending from the sky.
Sweat leaks over my body like an oil slick.
Now I can see the shape of the ship, squat and round. It moves ponderously downwards, landing wings and undercarriage extending, the air turning blue as its thrusters power towards the ground. I can hear it roaring. The sound is colossal. A horrible pressure builds against my eardrums. I don’t remember the landings being this loud. The air around me seems to hiss as the ship touches down. Small vehicles are driving towards it, bouncing over the uneven ground. I hear a guard shout: ‘Alright, get back to work!’ I sense the crowd dispersing around me but my legs have become liquid and I am melting into the red dust, a part of it, taken.
I come to in the canteen, coughing up red mucus. A guard takes me back to my room. Lying on the narrow bed, I feel frail. I feel as though the planet has crept inside me, and is feasting.
Nine o’clock. Hum of the air conditioner pumping air through the complex, but it’s still hot, always hot. The three of them face me.
‘I’m afraid your request has been declined.’ The Warden raises both hands. ‘We put in a word for you. But protocol must be observed. We cannot make an exception.’
‘I’m sorry, Yun,’ says Karrow. She looks sorry. Maybe she even is. They know what they are sending me back to.
After my hearing I go and stand outside in the terrible heat. I peer at the scorched horizon, searching for movement there. In a few days they will put something in my veins to make me sleep. Then they will freeze me.
Back on Earth, Gill is waiting. But perhaps she has made her own life by now, and will want nothing to do with me. Perhaps she was right to be afraid, perhaps they don’t take us back at all, but eject us somewhere into the deep emptiness of space. I imagine how this place might look from out there: a huge sphere marbled with pink and brown, the occasional gleam of a shallow sea. Then I imagine Earth. Small and grey, cloaked in pollution.
For the rest of the day I speak to no one.
When the lights flicker off at night and the complex falls dark and silent, I lie on my bed and close my ey
es. The breathing of my roommate lengthens, regulates. Once or twice she coughs, but does not wake. I get up and slip into my outdoor clothes. In the bathroom I hack up a compound of mucus, saliva, and red dust. I fill a bottle with water.
The corridors of the complex are deserted and lit with pale blue light. I walk outside. Nobody stops me. Why would they? My actions are insanity. I don’t know how far it is to the nearest New City and there will be nowhere to shelter in the blazing heat of day.
I start to walk. The air is pleasantly warm and I remove my cotton shirt to feel it brush against my arms. I walk through the cultivated earth that surrounds the complex. When the ground softens and ripples underfoot, I know I have crossed the boundary into the dunes. I keep walking. After an hour or so the ground begins to slope upward and my breath shortens. I have to stop every few minutes, bent double and panting.
At the crest of the hill I turn and look back and see the faint blue glow of the complex in the valley below. If I turned around now, I could be back in my bed before dawn and no one would know I had been gone.
There is no wind up here. There is no sound except for my own slender breathing. I sit for a minute, burying my hands in the sand, letting it trickle through and over my fingers, burying them again. One day this will be soil. It will be rich in nutrients and yield Earth-born crops and the people that eat them will never think about those who came before. I have an impulse to press myself into the ground, leave some mark or impression.
I turn away from the complex and start down the hill, slipping and sliding in the sand. The sky is enormous and full of piercingly bright stars. I am covered in stars, wreathed in them. They stay with me until the night begins to fade. The world lightens, the world is huge. Now I can see nothing but white sky and rust dunes.