Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  He had her open a spreadsheet similar to what he had been working on before. The room fell to silence as she became absorbed in the numbers. The figures began to appear familiar, as she had processed many of them. The noise from the cage fell away. She barely noticed when Gregory entered the room through the back door and Dr. M appeared at her side. It could have been minutes later, or an hour.

  29. Before: Nineveh

  “I want to see my brother,” Dinah said to Dr. M. It had been weeks since his seizure. He was never in the library, and he couldn’t be working nonstop. That left one other possible location: the hospital.

  Dr. M sat behind his desk with his fingers steepled, his tablet on which he had taken notes during their session on his lap. He seemed unusually distracted. He had let her get away with vague non-answers for the entire hour, answers he would have normally hounded her on until she became more forthcoming.

  He straightened in his chair.

  “I know he’s sick. I want to see how he’s doing.”

  “That’s not possible, Dinah. I’m afraid his condition is very fragile right now. We can’t risk him acquiring an infection or getting worn out. I’m sorry.”

  “But he might need me. I can wear a mask. I’ll hold my breath. I won’t even stay long.”

  Dr. Mephisto just shook his head. “It’s out of the question. Once he regains some of his strength, we’ll bring him to you.”

  “And when’s that going to be? What if he doesn’t get better?”

  “Let’s pray that’s not the case for all of our sakes. But I must end our session.”

  She was shown the door. He didn’t notice the anger on her face, or her newfound resolve.

  ***

  She decided to leverage the lockpick with the safe combo. Kelly would get both the next day if she could get him to agree to the deal. If he didn’t, she would just have to keep the lockpick.

  Kelly, Addis, and most of their class were in the gym after lunch, up in their spot in the far bleachers. Yet even as Dinah approached, she could tell something was wrong. They sat around looking tired, and none of them spoke. The cards weren’t out. Even when she mustered the courage to climb the bleachers, she got little more than a nod from Kelly. His eyes were bleary and red with lines underneath them.

  “Addis,” Dinah said. She sat down in front of Addis and tried to make eye contact. Dinah gave the best smile she could muster. It was met with sullen disinterest. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Addis looked pallid. She was breathing through her mouth, like Dinah would do just before throwing up.

  “More tests?” Dinah asked.

  Addis leaned close. When she spoke, Dinah had a hard time hearing her. “They’re drugging us,” Addis whispered. “I don’t know why or how. I’ve stopped eating for the past four days. Nothing has worked. I don’t know how it’s getting into my body, but I can feel it inside of me. My lips are numb. I’m barely awake, but I can’t sleep.”

  “Let me go get you some water. You look dehydrated.”

  Addis put a hand on Dinah’s wrist. “Whatever they’re doing to us, they’ll do it to you too. They’ll do it to all of us. If not now, then next week. Or in a month. You ever wonder why there’s no older kids in the redoubt? No teenagers much older than us?”

  The answers Dinah had been taught popped into her head. Population controls. Tiered family planning. Low fertility rates. Non-viable conceptions. Ruben would have blamed radiation. Or giant robots. But she kept her mouth shut.

  Dinah took Addis’s hand. It was limp and moist. “You need to eat something. Anything. You look sick.”

  “I feel sick. But they’ll see you. They’ll know. They’re probably watching and listening. They’re moving their project forward.”

  “Maybe it’s just the flu,” Dinah said, not believing her own words.

  She understood that the doctors and staff kept a careful eye on them. It was part of life in Nineveh, an accepted fact that could only be circumvented with guile and general sneakiness. She wished that she could say that Addis was being paranoid.

  Addis suddenly squeezed Dinah’s wrist. It hurt. She leaned close and tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t want to die.”

  Dinah trembled and fought the urge to pull away. She checked if anyone was watching or listening. Only Kelly stared at them, but there was nothing left behind his dull eyes.

  Soon enough, Addis’s grip slackened. Dinah drew her close and hugged her. Some of Dinah’s classmates down on the gym floor saw and pointed up at them, but she didn’t care.

  “Tell me how I can help you,” Dinah said.

  But Addis didn’t have an answer. She leaned against Dinah for a long moment. Eventually the chimes sounded, signaling the start of their afternoon programs.

  One of the older kids’ teachers entered and shouted, “Let’s go!”

  It was Addis who broke off their embrace. She wouldn’t look at Dinah as she got up and clambered down the bleachers one careful step at a time. Kelly and the others followed, leaving Dinah alone. The rest of her own class had already left.

  Dr. Hel appeared at the far side of the gym. She had to shout Dinah’s name a few times before Dinah registered who she was calling for.

  30. Blood Relatives

  The monster in the cage wasn’t Dinah’s mother as Ruben had teased. But the Wally was human and female, and the program had flagged several hundred genetic tweaks within her, charted on a series of tables that Dinah didn’t have time to examine in detail. Was the Wally a failed experiment? Some new subspecies set out to eat people? Some twisted object lesson to demonstrate that predation was a missing key to human prosperity? Dinah didn’t know enough. She had no facts. No history. Just data.

  Eventually Dr. M escorted her back to her cell. She was exhausted. Her brother had let her read until she had started to nod off. She dropped onto her cot and tried to sleep, but she couldn’t. Her mind raced.

  So many numbers. She tried to remember that was what all the data was or could be, nothing more, nothing less. Just numbers. They had to line up. They always did. But here was a puzzle so large she couldn’t even see its edges. The width and breadth of it eluded her. She needed a bigger brain. She wanted her morning session to come so she could be plugged into her network, to share the memorized fields of data with her nodes so she could understand it all.

  “What’s going on?” the vent in the ceiling said. When Dinah didn’t respond, Rosalyn hissed, “Hey!”

  Dinah stood up on the cot.

  “I saw numbers.”

  “And? You stole my lockpicks, and that’s all you have to show for it? What about the monster in the cage? I heard it going nuts.”

  “It’s just like us.”

  After a pause, Rosalyn asked, “What do you mean?”

  “It’s stuck in here and wants to get out.”

  Dinah lay back down and tried to sleep.

  ***

  The next morning, Rosalyn ate faster than Dinah did without making conversation, even though Dr. M had opened their cells and left them alone to finish breakfast. Rosalyn got up from the table before she’d even finished half of her bowl of mush. Then she grabbed Dinah by her hair. She pulled her off the chair and threw her down to the floor.

  Dinah screamed, tried to say Rosalyn’s name, but before she could get anything out Rosalyn was on top of her. Rosalyn knew how to punch. Each blow felt like Dinah was being beaten with a club. She tried to ward off Rosalyn’s fists, but her stepsister easily got past the meager defense. Rosalyn’s hands were a flurry of motion. The room about Dinah swam as pain exploded from her nose and mouth. Her lips split. She saw red spattered on Rosalyn’s hands. She tried to wriggle free, to grab at her, but she couldn’t find purchase on her attacker’s slick jumpsuit.

  She’s going to kill me.

  “Please…”

  Rosalyn was now knocking her head from side to side. Dinah’s ears made a crunching pop. She saw flashes and darkness. Blood was in her eyes and pouring down
the back of her throat. If she threw up, she would choke. With Rosalyn’s weight on her she couldn’t catch her breath. Her head kept striking the hard floor.

  By the time it stopped, Dinah was floating. Soon enough someone picked her up off the floor and put her on a rolling gurney. She was moved. Attending hands placed ice packs on her face. No one spoke, or maybe they did and she couldn’t hear them. She saw lights beyond a curtain of red. A needle pricked her arm, and things got comfortable.

  Someone stripped her of her clothes and wiped her down. She felt damp and cold. Soon the pain from her face caught up with and eclipsed whatever drug they had given her. Even the ice packs felt as if they were heating up. She focused on breathing and began to count.

  She made it to 619.

  Voices carried through the stuffiness and ringing in her ears. It was as if her head were underwater and their words were devoid of hard consonants. First she heard Dr. M speak, and next her brother. Her teeth ached. She didn’t move. Soon the lights went out and she slept a little. When the drugs ebbed completely, she woke up.

  She moaned. A tooth felt loose, and she made the mistake of pushing at it with a finger. Ouch. She wasn’t in her cell. The overhead lights were out, but a soft fluorescent behind the bed lit the room in a cool glow. Both eyes could still see. She felt congested. Breathing took effort. Her throat was raw, and she wanted water. A plastic pitcher and cup waited at the side of the bed and her hands trembled as she reached for them. She knocked both over, the top of the pitcher coming off and the water spilling onto the floor. She took a moment to absorb this.

  The room had an attached bathroom. There would be a sink in there, but making it that far would be a miracle. She closed her eyes and tried not to think of sand and deserts and bowls of dust being crammed down her throat.

  Her thrashing only got her one day off. A dentist came and sealed a cracked premolar. She received some pain pills and was returned to her cell the following evening. She put the pills down the toilet.

  The next morning, she was again inside the network. Her prior zeal for getting back to work had vanished. She was too fuzzy to even remember what she wanted to do. She processed numbers without thought, finding some comfort in the routine with the autopilot off and the streams sorted at her every gesture.

  “So what are we doing?” Rosalyn asked. Her words arrived as a simple cipher, one to twenty-six equaling A to Z. A drop in the bucket in the center of the torrent.

  When Rosalyn repeated the question, Dinah realized she had forgotten that they were even connected. She had guessed that after the attack they would be kept separate.

  “I’m working.”

  “You can program a routine so it gets done for you. I’m sure you figured it out.”

  “I did. Did you?”

  “Of course.”

  Dinah activated her switches, putting everything on autopilot. For a moment, she stepped back and watched the numbers go by. She tried to find some beauty in it, but they were just values with no color, sound, or smell. But they have purpose, she reminded herself.

  “What do you want, Rosalyn? I’m sorry I took your lockpick. You didn’t have to beat me up.”

  “I needed to get your attention.”

  Okay …

  Dinah kept silent.

  “You’re sneaking around and doing stuff inside the network that I can’t do. Where are you going that I can’t? It’s like you’re sometimes missing. Maybe you can do all those things because you’re smarter. Maybe it’s just where Ruben placed you in the network. I’m not working for you. And you tell me nothing. I want to know if you’re actually helping your brother. Is that it? Are you on his side, and you’re cooperating now?”

  Dinah considered her words carefully. “I know I haven’t told you everything. I’m trying to figure out what he’s doing. What’s actually behind him and the raids and all the death. This network has something to do with human genetics and the Wallys.”

  “How does our work fit in?”

  “I don’t know yet. But the Wallys are people. Maybe Ruben’s trying to cure them, but I doubt it. Maybe he wants to make more. Maybe he’s trying to make himself better in the process.”

  A pause from Rosalyn. “I’ll help you.”

  This was Rosalyn, the sister who laughed when Dinah fell into a mud puddle or down the stairs. Rosalyn, tormentor of goats. Rosalyn, who had beat Dinah’s face to a pulp.

  “What do mean you’ll help?”

  “Forget how to speak English? I. Will. Help. You. But you have to tell me exactly what it is you’re up to. You don’t get to leave me out of the loop for any part of this. No more getting me sent to the infirmary while you go into my room and steal my things. You share your plans.”

  This was the sister Dinah wanted to hug. But she knew what it was like to get bitten by a treacherous goat.

  “How do I know this isn’t a trick and you’re not working with Dr. Hel or Dr. M? Or my brother?”

  “Because I’m not. Because I’m doing what I can to survive, just like you. Because your son of a bitch brother killed Uma.”

  Dinah tasted Rosalyn’s words with her fingers and her brain. Savored them. However Rosalyn felt about Uma, it wasn’t all hate.

  Dinah knew could keep doing this all alone and keep failing. She also might succeed without Rosalyn’s help. She had allies just a few floors up that only needed rescuing, and Dr. M was sometimes pliant to her wishes. Did she even dare imagine Rosalyn would be a true ally? But had she ever dreamed that Karl would be capable of working with people like the hunters?

  “Okay,” Dinah said. “But did you have to hit me so many times?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I broke two fingers in my hand.”

  That did make Dinah feel better, at least a little.

  Talking in real life proved more difficult than in their shared virtual workspace. She no longer had gauze in her mouth, but her jaw hurt every time she spoke. In addition, their mealtimes were now closely supervised.

  Dr. Hel sat in a chair in the corner of their rec room and watched, and not in Dr. M’s usual distracted style. Rosalyn’s eyes said it all: they couldn’t speak freely with their chaperone present. Dinah stirred what turned out to be chicken soup.

  “Not like Uma’s, is it?” Rosalyn said. She wore a metal-and-foam splint on her right hand, but she held her spoon with that hand anyway.

  Dinah shook her head. The broth was saltier than usual. It stung the inside of her already sore mouth.

  “Uma simmered the bones and meat scraps with the tailings from the vegetables all day long,” Rosalyn continued. She raised her spoon and let the thin broth dribble back down into her bowl. Strange orange bubbles frothed on the surface. “Fresh herbs were the key.”

  “Fennel and garlic,” Dinah said. “And stuff we picked from the meadows.”

  Rosalyn looked at her for a moment as if she were trying to figure out what she said. Then she nodded. “And the right amount of salt. Unlike this.”

  “And then all you had to do was stir it regewlewrrly.”

  “What?”

  “Regularly,” Dinah repeated with effort. She put her own spoon down and looked at Rosalyn. “Why did you have such a hard time with that job?”

  “It was boring.”

  Dinah waited, not satisfied with the answer.

  “I’d get distracted.”

  She tried her best still-not-buying-it face. Ouch.

  “Okay. Uma knew that you were done with your chores, and she would have me keep working. Always.”

  “I’d finish faster than you is all.”

  “She’d let you play because you were an ass-kisser.”

  Dinah sipped her soup. Then she offered a lopsided grin that hurt more than it was worth. “Maybe you should have puckered up and given that a try. You fought with her every step of the way. Daily, it seemed. Was it always like that, or only after I arrived?”

  “Uma was always hard on me. You were her precious angel who could do no wrong.
”

  “Hardly. But it wasn’t my fault Uma treated us differently. Maybe we’ll never know why. Maybe Karl knows. Maybe it’s like this with all sisters, and mothers do it to torment their daughters.”

  “She wasn’t my mother, or yours either.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  ***

  In one of his tales, Ruben had told Dinah about hackers and how they could break into any computer and make the things connected to a compromised network do anything from stealing data to launching missiles. In one of his iterations of How It All Ended, warring factions of pimply-faced computer nerds in colored hats that designated their factions used the world’s nuclear arsenal to target each other’s home towns, resulting in a neutron-bomb holocaust that wiped out most of Earth’s human population. The winner became the king (or queen, depending on which version he told) of the silicon slag heap, and the hemisphere-wide cloud of radiation soon engulfed the winner in a final denouement of lung tissue–searing glory.

  She’d never liked that story.

  She certainly wasn’t having any luck with her own hacking. She wasn’t able to discover any new access that her liberty within the network gained her. She went up and down her Z axis and headed out in every direction possible. The area beyond her virtual cell was just another, larger space devoid of content. It reminded her of being alone inside the gym in the redoubt. Sure, it was bigger than her room, but she was still in a restricted space. Even if she could fly, she would just hit the ceiling.

  At least Rosalyn now kept her company. Her experience testing the boundaries of the network mirrored Dinah’s. They kept their chatting down to a minimum as they explored what they could do. In the evenings and at mealtimes they sat together, not talking about much, until finally Dr. Hel began to leave them alone, apparently satisfied that they wouldn’t resume brawling.