Eutopia - A novel of terrible optimism

by David Nickle

  The sounds mingled and bent, and slowly, the room filled up with a cool light. Andrew looked to its source, and saw: the two tall doors were opening.

  §

  Two things dwelt there.

  One was luminous: a tall, slender man in robes, flesh of buffed mahogany, his brow unfurrowed and gaze open and loving.

  A Dauphin.

  He stood in a great glass dome, as high as a cathedral. His head nearly reached the apex; doves flew about him, and settled on his shoulders.

  When he spoke, he sang, and the doves joined him in harmony. It was a song of forgiveness and welcoming; its lyric spoke straight at Andrew Waggoner.

  Come on to Heaven, said the man, raising his hand to touch the glass over his head, and bringing rays of gold where his fingertips tarried. Looking up through there, Andrew felt certain: the shades of Loo Tavish, Maryanne Leonard, might never reach him from this exalted place.

  And then there was the other. That one was harder to see—Andrew had to work at it. He took his bad hand in his good, and twisted—and he saw the Dauphin’s head loll to the left, and that fine brow grew quill-thick hairs, and the colour fled and it was the pale white of a fresh-dug grub. Andrew bit down hard on his tongue—and the dome vanished, replaced with weathered beams and cracked roofing, through which rainwater fell and pooled on the packed-earth floor—and high, filthy windows that let in the damp light, to cast upon a shape that was like a shoulder but bent as a wrist. He jammed his elbow against the corner of an old cabinet, and the gentle gaze of the Dauphin became the idiot stare of the Juke, two great black eyes, sunk in folds of mottled flesh, which shifted and faded, into the dark eyes of the Dauphin . . . which opened up into an infinity that Andrew had glimpsed once before.

  And the Dauphin whispered . . .

  Andrew smashed his arm into the corner of the cabinet. The things that leaped and capered at Mister Juke’s side shifted from dove and angel, into small dark things that scurried through the shadows—and back, to beauty.

  Love Me.

  “No.” Andrew drew back.

  Spread My word.

  “No,” he said again, and allowing himself one last glimpse of Heaven, drove his head into the corner of the cabinet.

  §

  “Dead?”

  “No.”

  “Oracular?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Need to know.”

  “There be only one way to.”

  “Leave him to it?”

  “With the rest.”

  §

  And so, higher Andrew Waggoner fell.

  Not so high as Heaven, though. Not so high as that.

  §

  “The Negro wakes.”

  Cool water on the forehead, a damp cloth mopping it up. “Annie?” The sound of water wrung from cloth into pan. A laugh.

  “Oh, no. Not her.”

  Andrew blinked in the light. He was on his back, on a soft-mattressed bed, staring up at a high plank ceiling.

  “Mrs. Frost?” said Andrew. He pushed himself up in the bed. Annie Rowe might’ve stopped him, but Germaine Frost kept her distance. She sat on a metal stool near his bed. On the right side of her forehead, someone had taped a thick pad of gauze. The reddish-brown of dried blood frosted its edges.

  She sat with hands folded, and nodded. “You’re not addled, Dr. Waggoner,” she said. “That’s good.”

  “I’m addled,” he said, looking around. They were in a ward room that he’d never seen before. He wasn’t alone. The room was filled with beds—and patients. Beside him, a woman stirred underneath her sheet, pulled it to her chin.

  “You must be in great pain,” said Germaine.

  “I am,” said Andrew, and he wasn’t lying.

  “Yet you don’t flinch.” She nodded, slow. “You are really a fine specimen.”

  He looked at her levelly. “I’m not a specimen, Mrs. Frost.”

  “Of course you’re not. It’s just this—place. And I meant it kindly, in any case. You’re a man of resource, Doctor. I can see why Mr. Harper selected you.”

  “Mr. Harper is dead.”

  She pursed her lips, stood and dipped the cloth into the pan of water. Wrung it out, and examined it an instant before handing it to Andrew. “Hold it to your forehead,” she said. “You’ve taken a trauma there.” Andrew took the cloth and pressed it there, and Mrs. Frost sat back on her stool. “Dead, you say? Well, given the march of events these past few days, I shouldn’t be surprised. Yet I am. He was a visionary.”

  “The march of events.” Andrew snorted humourlessly. “I take it we’re in the quarantine—one of the wards.” She nodded. “Who are those women?” he asked, indicating the other beds.

  “I don’t know them,” said Mrs. Frost. “They were present when I woke up here; and they’re not so conversational as you, so I couldn’t learn as much of them as I’m sure I can of you. But to be honest, I don’t care to interrogate you, Dr. Waggoner. I presume you came here much as I did—beaten by some sheet-wearing thug into unconsciousness. Although I daresay you look as though you put up more of a fight.” Her mouth twitched into a tiny and, to Andrew’s eye, thoroughly unpleasant smile. “You would think that the people here would have more gratitude, for the society that we—that Mr. Harper—provided them.”

  We. “You work for the Eugenics Records Office,” said Andrew. “Your people had more than a hand in this town, didn’t they?”

  “Not in a way that we like to advertise,” said Mrs. Frost, “but yes. The ERO watched this place with interest. We even helped it along. Do you know that Eliada means ‘watched over by God’?”

  “Really.”

  “It’s a fine statement of the middle of our aim,” said Germaine, “to make a perfect society of strong-backed men and their wives, who would never stray far from the healthful path; of children, who were disposed to be healthful by dint of their inheritance. But we were foolish in its application. I hope you won’t take great offence if I tell you that your hiring here was a matter of some controversy at the office.”

  “You had a hand in my hiring?”

  “Not I. But if I had known and been placed to intercede, I like to think that I would have been one of those who advocated on your behalf. As matters stood, the ERO was in the main opposed to the hiring of a nigg—a Negro doctor. It was Garrison Harper’s intercession, I gather, that brought you here. He believed that excellence in a man is not dictated by race or creed—but by the strength of the lineage. Great men come from all corners of the Earth. It is a belief a few of us share.”

  Andrew tried not to laugh. “I’m flattered you—or at least Mr. Harper—thought so highly of me,” he said.

  “You ought to be,” she said, and: “Oh. Hush.”

  The door from the ward room swung open as Mrs. Frost lifted the cloth.”Lie back,” she said. Andrew reclined, but he watched as the small figure stepped through. It was a girl—very young, this one—with long dark hair tied into an off-centre braid. She wore a grey frock, and a serious and wide-eyed expression as she went to the bedside of one of the women at the far end of the room. She delicately put her hands on the woman’s belly, rubbed them in circles, and began to sing.

  She’s singing to Jukes, Andrew thought. Because all these women are carrying Jukes. Just like Maryanne Leonard, and Loo Tavish.

  The woman responded to the child’s song, the circling touch—writhing obscenely beneath the sheet, stretching as though waking from a long and restful sleep. The woman didn’t wake, but she did join in—and the strange, wordless song became a duet.

  Mrs. Frost set the cloth on his forehead again. She drew it across his brow, down his cheek. The damp tip of it stopped at the corner of his mouth. She leaned over him.

  “You ought to be flattered,” she said softly, her breath sour as the night. “You are a fine, strong, smart Negro. I know they didn’t appreciate that in Paris—in New York, when you tried to find internships there. They look at skin, and they think—inferior, by d
int of darkness.” She huffed, and spat: “Prejudice.”

  Andrew reached up and took her hand. Her eyes widened, and she snatched the cloth away, and for barely an instant, she looked quite fierce.

  “They can scarcely tell,” she said, “when Gods walk among them.”

  Gods. Andrew thought about that. Gods were what these people thought they were making: people like Bergstrom, like Harper . . . like the people who worked with Mrs. Frost. How susceptible they all must have been, to the alluring lie of the Juke, which put worms into the wombs of virgins to make saviours; into the flesh of men, to make prophets of them. . . .

  Did any of them ever mark the day, he wondered, when they fell from reason into madness?

  And then he wondered: Did I?

  “Mrs. Frost,” Andrew said, “I must find your nephew. Jason Thistledown. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “My nephew,” she said thoughtfully. “Jason. You need to find him, you say?”

  The little girl had moved on to a second patient, three beds away from them. Germaine Frost glanced over her shoulder, as she bunched the cloth up into a ball in her fist, then back at him.

  “To what end?” she asked.

  Andrew lowered his voice. “The boy is in as much danger as any of us here,” he said. “I don’t know where he might be—I’ve come back looking for him, but had no luck. But he’s your nephew, Mrs. Frost. If you’re hiding him from these people—these Feegers—you don’t need to hide him from me. He may be with Miss Harper.”

  Mrs. Frost looked back over her shoulder. The little girl was making circles on the new woman’s belly, same as before, singing a song with a slightly different cadence. She regarded Andrew with a twitch of a smile.

  “I don’t know where he is,” she said, “but I can guess. He’s an intelligent boy—a fine boy—and he will have known where to go. There is not much that gets past a boy of Jason Thistledown’s stock.”

  “Where, Mrs. Frost?”

  “We would have to go together.”

  “All right.” Andrew glanced at the little girl. She had moved around so as to face away from them. “She can’t be the only one here. Are there others waiting outside?”

  “Who can say? I saw two men bring you in. And the last time she was here, she didn’t come in by herself. She was with a man who was so tall. Practically a giant. But now—”

  “Well, that’s a problem,” said Andrew. “I’m in no shape to deal with someone like that and you—”

  He didn’t get the opportunity to finish. Germaine Frost spun a quarter turn on her stool and in three large steps moved past the foot of two beds. The girl stopped singing at the commotion, and lifted her hands off the woman’s belly as Germaine Frost stepped nimbly as a spider between the beds.

  She took hold of the girl by the hair and tugged, but the child didn’t cry out: Mrs. Frost had already jammed the wadded-up cloth into her mouth, and with her first and middle finger, pushed the soaking wet cloth into her nostrils. The girl took hold of Germaine’s wrist with both hands and tried to pry the hands away. Mrs. Frost set her mouth and held fast. The girl soon gave up on wrist, and tried to claw at Mrs. Frost’s eyes. She got close enough to knock Mrs. Frost’s glasses from one ear, so they dangled over the bridge of her nose. Mrs. Frost responded by bearing down on the child, and pushing her to the floor between the beds.

  Andrew rolled off the bed, and nearly fell as his feet hit the bare wooden floor. He clutched Mrs. Frost’s stool like a walking stick and, bent like an old man, moved from that to the foot of the bed beside him, and the bed beside that.

  He managed to stay upright as he looked down on Germaine Frost and the child. All he could see of Germaine were her shoulders, wide and round enough to nearly fill the space between the bed. They worked and shifted as though she were kneading dough.

  Her skirts were hiked past the knee, her stockings torn to reveal long ovals of pallid flesh. All he could see of the child were her feet. They were pinned beneath Mrs. Frost’s crossed ankles, so she couldn’t kick or make noise on the wooden floor. She could not make any noise at all by now. She was barely struggling.

  Andrew reached down with his good hand and grabbed Mrs. Frost’s shoulder. She shifted her weight, and smashed his fingers between her arm and the bed next to it. Andrew gasped. She spared him a glance over her shoulder, catching his eye.

  “Don’t interfere,” she whispered. Andrew tried to lay hold of her again, but it was impossible—the space between the beds allowed him no room to get in and stop it.

  Soon—too soon—the feet stopped moving, and Germaine Frost was able to stand, and brush herself off, and turn to Andrew Waggoner and, as though nothing had transpired between them, say: “We have to go now.”

  §

  All Andrew could do was go. A small part of him wanted to strike Germaine Frost down, raise an alarm—shout murderer! But if he did so . . . what would become of Jason? Germaine Frost was his only thread through this maze.

  The girl was dead. Lips blue, no heartbeat, wide eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Germaine bent and rolled her beneath the bed, and took hold of Andrew and led him to the door. It wasn’t locked. Beyond was a hallway, and they followed it, and climbed down some steps, and finally came upon a bright room: a small surgery, with a skylight, which was badly cracked. Water rained down in a small torrent onto the bare wooden operating table, in turn dribbling down to the floor. Opposite them was another door, and when they went through this, they stepped outside.

  They stood next to a stand of tamarack—not far off was the fallen log where Jason Thistledown had given Andrew Waggoner a pack of meagre supplies and sent him into the wilderness alone.

  “What luck!” she exclaimed. “Not a single one! What luck!”

  Not a single one. There was one, thought Andrew. “She was a child,” he said. He was shaking. “A silly child who they’d let in on her own. You—”

  “She would have raised an alarm,” said Mrs. Frost.

  “Perhaps,” said Andrew. “But there might have been another way. There must have been another way. And how did you know she was alone? That her guard wasn’t waiting for her outside?”

  Mrs. Frost shrugged. “They are degenerates,” she said. “Inferior. They have not the wit. Now tell me, Doctor—do you want to meet my nephew or do you want to question good fortune until pneumonia sets in?”

  Andrew didn’t answer that, but Mrs. Frost evidently took silence as its own response. “Then come along,” she said. “Come along.”

  Andrew followed her around the corner of the building, and the hospital was in sight, rendered grey and deathly through the driving rain—a silhouette, almost, among . . . other shapes.

  They both stopped and stared, at one of those shapes. It might have been a tree, but it would not stay still—it bent low and climbed higher than the eaves, as though it were in the clutches of some cyclonic wind. As they watched, it moved past the hospital, and then further along, toward the town. It moaned, a deep, bassoon-like sound, and accompanying it came a song, in clear and high voices. It might be that all of Eliada rose up in song, as the thing—as Mister Juke—roiled and crawled and strode toward the docks, and the town and those many, who had watched and prayed as the Feegers hauled Andrew Waggoner to the quarantine, now awaited their God, as the Feegers led Him to them.

  And so it was that unmolested, unnoticed by God or Man, the two of them made their way to the shelter of the hospital’s unguarded back entrance and slipped inside.

  28 - The Old Man

  “How do you know where he is?” asked Andrew as they skulked down the corridor that ran the spine of the hospital’s basement.

  “I cannot be certain,” said Mrs. Frost. “But I do know this: against all my advice, the boy took more than a passing fancy to Mr. Harper’s daughter Ruth.”

  Andrew waited for her to continue, then prompted: “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Miss Harper,” said Mrs. Frost, “was engaged in a t
est when Jason left me. If he is half as clever as we both know him to be, he will have joined her.”

  “A test?”

  “The test of her life,” she said. They hurried past the dispensary and two of the examination rooms, and rounded a corner. “Hush,” she said. “We are almost there.”

  Andrew had a sick feeling, as it became obvious where they were heading: the autopsy. Mrs. Frost stopped short, and looked at Andrew significantly.

  “Here we are,” she said, and beckoned him to open the door.

  Andrew’s skin prickled at the base of his neck, and he shook his head. It was as though . . .

  . . . as though something larger were guiding him, warning him.

  Andrew shook off the feeling. It was a reasonable instinct.

  Germaine Frost had murdered a little girl. She might argue the tactic was an effective one—here they were, after all, out of the quarantine that had been overrun with Feegers. The girl was one of them. But Mrs. Frost had murdered a little girl. And they were standing on the doorway of the autopsy, where a week ago, he and Jason Thistledown had examined the cut-up remains of Maryanne Leonard.

  This, the place where another girl was undergoing what—a test? The test of her life?

  Andrew Waggoner’s skin prickled, for good, worldly reason.

  “I’m not going in there until you tell me about this test.”

  “Oh,” she said, grinning, “it’s nothing you should worry about. If I’m half as right about you as I was about young Jason—I’m certain it won’t be even the tiniest problem for you.”

  “For me?” Andrew stepped back. “What is this?”

  Germaine Frost looked down, and smiling, shook her head. She looked up again. Her eyes sparkled in the dark. With madness, with inspiration.

  Her hand pressed against the door to the autopsy. Andrew thought he saw a sliver of Nils Bergstrom in her then—he remembered seeing her, coming out of the quarantine with him that morning.

  “It is the only way to see,” she said. “If you’re worthy. If you are a true hero—”