Benighted

by Kit Whitfield

  No one talks about the creches. Lycos know little about them; to a lyco, the word means a plastic box full of toys and some young woman looking out over a floor full of crawling children. The mommy comes around in her suit and picks up whichever child is hers, saying, hello darling, have you been good? Sunlight comes through the windows.

  My first night in a creche, I was two weeks old. My last night, I was a few counted days short of eighteen years and admittance to basic duties in DORLA. They try to break up the age groups, but can’t spare the staff to do it properly.

  The babies scream. Under cheap bulbs, the light on those nights is synthetic, tainted like the world seen through a fever. Often they’re faulty, and strobe and buzz till our eyeballs burn, the cracks in the paint leap and shake. Little cots muster along the walls, plastic-sheeted mattresses for the older ones. There are blinds on the windows and broken toys no one plays with. Toddlers sometimes pound the infants. Teenagers huddle under blankets in the corners.

  There were nights when I let no one near me, when I knew that the boys who came to try their luck were just taking an opportunity, and I’d fight them, kick and scratch in a silent battle under the harsh fabric coverings. There were nights when I hadn’t the strength to fight and would reach down, moving my hands fast to get the encounter over with as quickly as I could. There were nights when I’d lie unresisting and close my eyes, slipping my fingers under boys’ clothing in case I might find succor there. Sometimes the young ones would watch the stirring blankets; sometimes I watched, when I was young. There were nights when the supervisors could stop any of this happening, and nights when they couldn’t, and nights when they didn’t. Sometimes the children would play, and sometimes attack each other, and mostly everyone lay or sat speechless. In eighteen years, I cannot remember a night where there was more than an hour free from the sound of babies crying.

  They thought it would be traumatic to stay at home and listen to our parents moan and snarl. Until we were old enough to work, we had to be taken away. Some children would ask to be taken home, the very young ones, the ones who had just learned how to speak. Whatever adult was asked would usually stiffen and ignore them. If they were young enough to ask, they were too young to understand. How do you explain to an eighteen-month-old child, If your mommy saw you tonight, she’d kill you.

  Until I was eighteen years old, I never saw a lune.

  The day I signed the lease on my apartment and walked into my own place, I sat down, leaned my head against the door and cried with relief.

  Few friendships come out of the creches. We do too much to one another within them. Sometimes you recognize a face, but there are no reunions. We have nothing to say to each other.

  Ally and I are friends more in spite of meeting in the creches than because of it. Once upon a time I would pull myself up to the cots, heave a crying baby out and sit down with it on my lap, trying to sing to it. Red skin and knotted flesh, a baby more intent on screaming than breathing. Ally would rattle the cots, shouting for them to be quiet. We didn’t talk. Later, I stopped singing, and Ally stopped shouting. I knew by the time I was six that I would never sleep in a creche. I experimented. Reading didn’t work: it meant sitting still, holding the pages steady, and unless I could move there was nothing to stop me flying apart altogether. I couldn’t bring in a toy I liked better than the creche ones: things got broken in there. Cat’s cradle; solitaire, the cards lined up in rows and complicated shuffles that took me months to learn; jacks on the grimy linoleum. On my eighth birthday Becca gave me a craft book she’d found about origami. I never asked if she’d seen me looping string and shuffling decks, rehearsing, improving on ways of wasting time. She gave it cautiously and stood away from me when I opened it.

  Paper: light and easy, if a foot comes down on your work you start again, with nothing lost but the time you were trying to fold down into small pieces in the first place. Pleasant colors, and sharp, precise edges. I couldn’t tell her what it meant, not without telling her how jagged the nights were away from home, but over a few months I made her a whole houseful of paper dolls, paper cats and dogs for their pets, paper rooms to put them in.

  Ally was building with matches then; many of us have some habit or other that we learned to fill the hours. He wanted me to teach him how to make airplanes. I wasn’t kind, but there was so much time to compress. Given something to think about, I devised Spitfires, Concordes, tanks. We didn’t talk much, but we knew we’d found something to keep our eyes off the dark-edged windows and the wailing babies in the dazed, hectic light. When we were older he would sometimes creep under my blanket and reach into my shirt, but I didn’t know how to resent it. We all wanted some consolation. Sometimes he let me kick and bite him, sometimes I let him clutch paltry handfuls of my flesh. We were in our twenties before we were able to mention it. We seldom talk about it, only a passing joke here and there, never for more than a few seconds. He never laid a finger on me outside the creches. None of the boys did. I never laid a finger on or raised a hand against them. More often, we’d cut our eyes away from each other. I couldn’t feel wronged by them, didn’t have any sense of how to begrudge what was done. I might not have wanted it—as much as you ever know what you want when you’re fourteen—but we all knew it wasn’t personal. Even looking back, I don’t know what I wanted. Except to be some other girl that things like this didn’t happen to.

  Ally’s the only one I know from the creches that I’m in much contact with, and we don’t talk about any of it.

  Ally and I first met as adults when we were training. He came in a few months after I did, but was well ahead of me in dogcatching skills before the year was out. He’s a technical boy. I never understand why people want to go into Weapons, but Ally loves it. He gets a big kick out of the fact that they have to put up with his unmilitary appearance because he’s so good at it. Every now and again someone tells him to get his hair cut. He reminds them of his bet with me—that he’ll shave his head when a lawyer manages not to mention public opinion or the word “majority” within ten minutes of arriving. Though now I come to think of it, Franklin hasn’t said any of those words, not once.

  I pick up a pair of scissors and head down to Weapons.

  Ally’s sitting resting his feet against the stockroom wall, his head buried in Sleepers Monthly. I knock on the door as I go in. The fluorescent lighting makes the sleeper guns and silver guns stand out from their racks like cardboard cut-outs. Without searching my memory, I know it’s an unhealthy light. “How can you not get a headache in here?” I say.

  “Mm? Oh, hi, Lo.” Ally takes his feet off the wall and kicks another chair toward me. “God, you should see this. They’ve got a new design coming out, they say you can sight up to four hundred yards with it.” He pushes an article under my nose.

  “Fat lot of good that’ll be sighting in the dark, is what I think, but then I’m just a girl.” I stand against the wall, a few feet away.

  Ally takes his magazine away so I can’t insult it, ignores the second part of what I’ve said. He opens his mouth to explain why I ought to take this new technological advance seriously, but if I wanted to know about beauty in design then I’d look at pictures.

  “You,” I interrupt, “owe me a haircut. I had a lawyer in here who didn’t mention public opinion once.”

  “Who’s that?” Ally’s hand makes a protective pass by his head.

  “Adnan Franklin. He didn’t mention the majority of citizens at all.”

  “Shit. What did he say?”

  I shrug, holding the scissors. They’re a pleasant shape in my hand. “That I’d contravened my client’s human rights and broken national and international humanitarian treaties, and let civilization down.”

  “That doesn’t count.” Ally leans forward and snatches the scissors. “He talked about civilization. That’s public opinion. He just used bigger words.”

  “Bullshit. Where did you learn philosophy?”

  “He said most people wouldn’t li
ke you. Same deal, I reckon.”

  “No…” Franklin didn’t say that. That wouldn’t have been—“I think he did like me.”

  “Did he now?” Ally isn’t a particular gossip, but he likes to hear something first. He likes his information pristine. “What’s going on there, then?”

  I sit down. “No, Ally. Work. Nothing going on. Anyway, I’m seeing someone.”

  “Hey.” He sits up, alert. “Who?”

  I wave my hand. I wasn’t planning on telling him. “Just some social worker I met.”

  “A lyco? God, Lo, you don’t date lycos.” Ally considers that he has the goods on my love life, that he knows about me. I don’t want to know about his.

  “I don’t date, Ally.”

  He gestures with the magazine. “You think they just believe what people say about bareback girls.”

  People say that bareback girls are sluts. Or that bareback women are frigid. Fucking a cripple. “I’m no girl, Ally. And nobody worth listening to says it. Listen, I wanted to ask you about a shelter case you had.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  He’s right, nons do usually date each other. He’s way too curious. I won’t have this. “The case, Ally, or I’m walking out the door.”

  Ally rolls up the magazine and slaps it against his palm. “Which case?”

  “And don’t tell anyone I said I was seeing anyone. If Bride Reilly finds out I didn’t tell her, she’ll put salt in my coffee jar.”

  He shrugs. “Whatever. What’s the case?”

  “Moon night before last. Someone brought in a bad lune, he’d mauled the first catcher. Johnny Marcos.”

  Ally doesn’t like to sit still. He doesn’t fidget or twitch, and he’s fit, smooth-jointed, but he’s always on the move, like liquid in an unstable container. His shoulders stop in mid-roll when I say Johnny’s name, and he settles in his chair. “That’s the Ellaway case.” His voice is flat. “I heard you were doing that.”

  “I am. I need to know about what happened in the shelter.”

  He exhales a deep breath, pushes a hand through his hair. “Johnny came in mauled, the bastard who bit him was tranked.” He tugs at his lip. “We had a real medic, so they took him in the back and patched him up. There was blood all over the floor.”

  I raise my hand fast, like a reflex. “I’m not asking about Johnny, Ally, I need to know about Ellaway.”

  He glances at me, starts to say something and changes his mind. “The trank didn’t last long. He came around after a couple of hours. Didn’t settle him down.”

  I shrug. “He’s a user, cocaine, probably other stuff. Smoker. Probably takes sleeping pills. His resistance is way up there.”

  “Well, whatever.” Ally leans forward, bounces his hands off his knees. “Kept coming at the bars. Kept at it, right up until sunrise.” Most lunes slow down a little as the morning gets near.

  “How was he when he ricked?”

  “Swearing. Angry at the pain, you know the type?”

  “Bad lune.”

  “Yeah. Started swearing before most of the others started crying, though. They were still just making noises, but he was right there, knew what was going on. Cussing as soon as he had a daytime tongue. Wouldn’t lie still for the cramps, either—he was pacing around, crouching down, hitting the wall. Guy doesn’t like hurting.”

  “You were watching?”

  “Yeah, he was making a noise. Threatened to get a shock prod if he didn’t shut up.” Ally’s eyes are dark, each pupil hidden in a black iris, and shadowed even when he’s rested. Strands of shaggy russet hair hang over his face, and his expression doesn’t change when he says this.

  “Did he?”

  He shrugs, rubs his hands together. “Demanded a telephone. Said it was his right, he wanted a phone.”

  “Yeah, I can hear him saying that.” It’s cold in here. I tuck my hands into my jacket sleeves. “Did you give him one?”

  “Yeah.” Ally sighs. “Yeah, I did.”

  “How come?”

  “Couldn’t face hearing him argue. He was a determined one, I could tell, I mean he was demanding a phone before he’d even put the overalls on. You ever try arguing with a naked man?”

  “Well—” No. I’m making no jokes about that one. “He hadn’t even dressed?”

  “Guess he didn’t think the overalls suited his style. And,” Ally puts a hand to his face, “and there was a juvenile in another cell, fourteen-year-old crying her eyes out. I just gave him a phone and went to try and get her to put some clothes on. I mean, she was just sitting crying for her grandma without a stitch on her. Kind of hard to work with a naked girl sitting around.”

  “Jesus, Ally, a fourteen-year-old?” My hands tighten around my wrists.

  “No.” He looks away from me, bites his lip and glances back. “For God’s sake. Just hard to know where to look, that’s all. You’ve got a sick mind, Lola.”

  “I have?” I remember what I looked like at fourteen.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “So, so—” I reach out my hand to pull the conversation back to the point, “you weren’t listening to Ellaway when he made his call?”

  “No.” Ally pulls a face. “Sorry, Lo. I don’t know who he called. Someone came to pick him up, though.”

  “Who?”

  “A man.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t—He signed himself out. And, and the hospital hadn’t come around, the ambulance wasn’t there yet, and Johnny was still in the shelter. I didn’t get a name.”

  “What did he look like?” I fire the question to blot the word Johnny out of my mind.

  Ally spreads his hands out, shaking his head, turning from one palm to the other as if they might hold an answer. “I don’t know. Dark hair, fair skin, tallish. I don’t know. I don’t do faces. I can’t tell you anything that wouldn’t have you questioning every other man in town. I wasn’t looking.”

  He sounds helpless, but this doesn’t relax me. “How could you not look? He’d just mauled one of us. Why weren’t you looking?”

  Ally stands up, fends me off and paces around the back of his chair. “Lay off, okay? I thought it was clear-cut. I thought your department would handle it. I didn’t stare because I wasn’t in the mood, it was seven thirty in the morning and I’d been up all night, and there was blood all over the floor. Just lay off.” He slumps back down and rubs his knees.

  I say nothing.

  Ally speaks first. “Look, the number will be on the shelter’s phone bill. You can run it through the police and find out who he called if you want to know. It’ll just take a few weeks, that’s all.” He sounds like he’s trying to make amends.

  “Yeah. Look, I’m sorry.” He’s right. A policeman once told me to my face that we’re less of a priority when our suspects can’t re-offend for a whole month. Still, I can get it started. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not your fault. And it’s probably not important, anyway. Thanks, Ally.”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. No sweat.”

  “That’s everything, right? I mean, nothing else happened with Ellaway?” I rub my forehead, remember something else. “Hang on, you got a look at him before he ricked. Was he clean?”

  “Clean?” Ally blinks at me.

  “Yeah, I mean did he look like he’d been rolling in the mud or anything? You know, he says he was trying to find a shelter when he started furring up. Says he broke down near Foundling, so he probably would have gone straight there, and there’s records of what the plants are in different parks. If there were brambles in the hair he shed or anything, it’d back his story up. I don’t suppose anyone saved it when they swept the floor?”

  “No.” He presses his hands together between his legs. “No, the blood. A sweeper came in, disinfected the place, incinerated stuff. Don’t you remember? It’s a new reg.”

  “What new reg?”

  Ally screws his face up. “God bless our government. You know the one. If a catcher is bleeding, everything has to be sterilized. You remember it, last year someone got A
IDS from the guy who collared her?”

  I frown, shade my eyes. I think I do remember it. Someone had forgotten to put overalls in the cell. The woman was halfway through ricking when the attendant went in to put some out for her. Figured he’d be safe if she was halfway there. She sank her teeth into him, his blood got onto her half-changed gums. He lost a piece out of his arm, and she’s dying. Voters were outraged or terrified; it was a scandal. Another notch tightened on protocol, more discipline promised for us. Now HIV-positive nons can’t dogcatch or do shelter work at all. They man the switchboards, I guess, earn that little bit less money to spend on medicine. I noticed they’d introduced blood tests along with the shrink evaluations, but it’s a while since I’ve done shelter. I’m clean, I won’t let a man touch me without a condom or a test, ever. But I guess it’s all come through now, more paperwork, more examinations, more promises to the public that we are their servants. If they tear our flesh from our bones, we won’t presume to bleed on them.

  My back aches, and my voice is hoarse. “Johnny didn’t have AIDS.”

  “I guess not.” Ally speaks softly, his eyes on the ground. “But they made us burn everything anyway.”

  “God.” I want to go home. “So there’s nothing?”

  Ally shakes his head. “I—There was a mark on his shoulder. A couple.”

  “Marks?”

  “I don’t know. They could have been old scars playing up, I guess.” He looks down. “Or maybe someone scored him with the catching pole.”

  That would make sense. Smaller cuts heal when they rick; it’s a bad injury that doesn’t at least half close. Apart from silver, the terrible allergy that makes even a small cut swell and fester, that makes them wake with open necrotic wounds instead of pink new scars. Looking away from Ally, I make myself think it: if Johnny injured him during the collar, then that might have pushed him to attack. I could claim self-defense, or provocation…I could say it was Johnny’s fault. “I—I’ll have to look into it.”

  “Sure.” Ally makes no sound as he sits in the chair.