Black Diamond Fall
Page 43
My hands go instinctively to my stomach, but my fingers only find gauze, not the reassuring feel of my own flesh. “That’s impossible! I don’t understand. What are you telling me?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Faro...” He reaches out and holds my wrists away from my body. “Don’t, Mrs.... Please. You’ll hurt yourself. I don’t want you to feel worse than you already do.”
I struggle, resisting his hands for a moment, then go limp in his grip.
“Didn’t you know?” he says, gently. His eyes widen with dismay when he sees my face crumple.
Mortified, I begin to weep. He releases my wrists and sits forward on his seat, watching me cry. He doesn’t move or make a sound.
The racking sobs hurt my stomach too much, so I push them under the surface again. No words, no thoughts, just silent despair. How could I possibly be pregnant?
The small lights shine overhead, some switching on, others off, changing the constellation above our heads. The hospital around us continues to hum, although we seemed to be shielded from the sounds of activity outside the door of this room.
He waits. He’s patient. Perhaps ten minutes pass until I let out a deep sigh. He interprets it correctly: I’ve prevailed over my private misery, for the moment.
“I can see what a shock all of this is for you. I’m sorry.”
I’m beginning to notice some of the things that they—he—has done to me. I don’t understand what’s really happened, but the feeling of a wound in my lower stomach, the pulse monitor attached to my finger, and the soreness in my throat mean he can’t be lying.
“So, Mrs. Faro. Let me explain what happened to you. If you don’t understand something, please just ask me.”
Someone else has baptized me with a fake name, Faro. I haven’t chosen to come to this hospital, to have things cut out of me. Was I really pregnant? It might all be a lie, designed to get me to confess who I really am, and where I’ve come from. There’s a name tag around his neck that confirms Dr. Julien Asfour is a member of staff at Shifana.
I know I’m not thinking straight, but in a moment of sullen irritation, I mutter, “Call me Julia.”
He looks down; he knows I’m not telling him my real name.
“All right, Julia. So. An ectopic pregnancy is when a fertilized egg gets stuck somewhere it shouldn’t be. Usually it travels down to the uterus, where it implants itself in the uterine wall.”
I have a vague idea of all the things he’s telling me, from my classes in school. Still, everyone uses devices when talking about medical procedures, giving directions, holding a lecture. This Julien Asfour has no device anywhere on his person. How odd, I think. Am I really in a hospital after all? Or am I dreaming and I’ll wake up in my bed at the Panah now? Maybe I’m dead and have yet to realize it.
Lin’s face flashes across my mind. How will I get in touch with her? How will I tell her what’s happened when I don’t even understand it myself?
The room starts to spin around me. Julien is still talking, oblivious to my state of mind.
“But in your case, the egg implanted in your fallopian tube, and from there, it began to grow bigger. And we think it was there for about five weeks, before it got too big. Then the tube burst. You began to lose blood and you went into shock. I had to operate on you right away. We couldn’t wait to obtain the consent of your Husbands...”
He glances at me, but I stay mute.
“So we had to perform an emergency procedure to remove the embryo and your ruptured fallopian tube. And we gave you blood transfusions. You’re out of danger now.
“The good news is, it was just the left side. Your right tube is unharmed. You can have children in the future... What is it, Mrs.—Julia?” He leans closer to me with new concern. “Are you in pain?”
I shake my head, but my face tells the truth. Julien leans across the few inches between us, and puts his hand on my shoulder. The palm of his hand feels warm to my skin, as if he’s transmitting safety and security, or perhaps friendship, in the only way he knows how. The physical contact, made without demand, merely meant to comfort me, draws fresh tears to my eyes. I turn my head aside and give in to them.
“You’re very tired. You should get some more rest. We can talk more when you’re feeling up to it.”
He’s looking at the monitor now, tapping on the display. I hear a beep, then a fresh wave of drugs enters my system, killing the pain and pushing me backward again.
I’m asleep before he finishes speaking. I close my eyes just as I see the blush spread across his face when he withdraws his hand from my shoulder, and his fingers are wet with my tears.
Reuben
The coordinates of Sabine’s location were buzzing in Reuben’s device, his cup of tea still cooling on the bench in his garden as he drove his car fast into the City. Far safer for him to go than to send someone; in matters of discretion, he trusted only himself. And nobody would question where he went, or why.
It would take him twenty minutes to get to the side of Green City where Joseph lived. Reuben wasn’t worried that his car would show up on the Agency registers at the electronic checkpoints. Reuben could stop traffic anywhere in Green City, shut down any of its elevated roads or underground intersections. He’d never be questioned by an impertinent young man in a uniform, brandishing a weapon that Reuben was most likely responsible for issuing him. The Agency watched everyone, but its higher-ups insisted on complete privacy, autonomy, and impunity for themselves. Their unlimited freedom kept everyone else in line: they need absolute power to guarantee absolute civic order.
He hoped Lin had obeyed him and gone back to the Panah. She was not one for obedience; yet it was he who obeyed her plea and was making this mad dash to save Sabine from whatever danger she was in.
Oh, Lin. What could he say about Lin that he hadn’t told himself a thousand times before? He couldn’t refuse her. He never could. Since they’d begun their affair, she’d ruled him, and he’d enjoyed it. She conquered his body with a skill or a magic that had taken him prisoner from their very first night together.
Green City survived on hierarchies: the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak. And high above them all, the Leaders, watchful hawks circling over a society in crisis. Reuben wasn’t religious, but sometimes he wondered what force had overseen his meteoric rise to power. Which god ensured that he stay at the top, eluding his enemies, gaining more strength year after year?
Maybe it was the god of war he had to thank. Reuben had always been fascinated by the idea of war. He paid close attention in school to the lessons of how the first leaders of the new Green City took power swiftly, stepping into the vacuum brought about by the chaos of the Final War.
The phrase “Final War” was a misnomer; it referred not to just one conflict but to a series of wars across Asia, from the former Levant all the way to the former subcontinent. From Sham and Iraq to the old Religious territories along the sea to the monarchists in the new Religious territories along the northern coast of Africa: the history texts chronicled the desperate days of mass migration, the dissolution of old boundaries, the bloody unseating of old kings and dictators.
In university, Reuben studied the War carefully, making special note of how the seemingly unshakeable structures of power crumbled under multiple heavy forces, both from within and without. These forces came under what the historians called the three waves, knocking the foundations of society down not all at once but over decades of slow collapse.
In Green City, the first wave came from the east. The middle of the twenty-first century saw devastating climate change in South Asia, bringing floods and unprecedented torrential rain for months on end. Mudslides and avalanches in the northern territories damaged so much infrastructure that the locations of certain nuclear facilities became compromised. Militants took hold of the weapons and launched them at each other, destroying much of the subcontinent.
Every student knew what the third wave was, hearing about it straight from the mouths of their parents and grandparents, when the women of Green City began to die, and Green City started to sink into anarchy. Groups of young men roamed the city’s streets in packs, committing violent crimes—robbery, destruction of private property, assault, and rape. Murder rates climbed. Common custom in the City was to leave one’s front gates wide open, denoting a welcome to anyone who needed shelter. Reuben’s father told him he knew Green City had changed forever when he drove down its streets and beheld one locked gate after another.
Reuben’s father was never invited to join the Agency, or the Perpetuation Bureau, or any of the Leaders, when they declared the Emergency over Green City. The security directives came to him like everyone else; he had to obey the 7 p.m. curfew designed to keep the men off the streets, even though he was never one of the criminals.
Throughout his childhood, watching his father obey notifications and fear the Agency, Reuben grew hyperaware of who was powerful, who was weak, and who was so insignificant that they never mattered to anyone. His father belonged in the second category; Reuben swore to never join any but the first. Not for him the humiliation that his father endured. Reuben decided to never marry, but to concentrate on his upward trajectory into the elite. He had a vision of what his life would look like when he was rich and powerful; he obsessed over its contours and details with a focus that other boys around him gave to their toys and games. When they were playing, he was reading the works of the Leaders and memorizing their famous speeches. When they beat him on the playing field or in exams, he doubled down on his practice or his studies and eventually showed them up. He had the discipline and stamina of an adult, a man’s control over his emotions when he was a boy, and his friends were only children squabbling in the playground.
Nobody had ever seen Reuben Faro cry.
Over the years, Reuben excelled in his studies and cultivated friendships with classmates who had powerful fathers. Reuben addressed those fathers as “uncle,” speaking to them respectfully but with confidence. They didn’t mind the familiarity; on the contrary, they seemed to relish it, found it surprising. Their own sons never exhibited any sort of interest in their work. Yet here was this new boy, tall and handsome, a star on the sports field, fascinated by every aspect of their professions. Over time they began to regard him as the son they wished they’d had instead of their own short, thin, socially awkward goslings. They described their jobs, hinting at official secrets they were privy to, which tantalized Reuben.
Reuben studied his uncles keenly, looking for blueprints of the man he wanted to be, not the father he had in his own life—quiet, subservient, the spirit and drive drained from him like an exsanguinated corpse. He openly admired those uncles’ lives as important and thrilling, their power such a contrast to his own father’s weakness.
Reuben’s uncles kept track of him when he went to university. They sent gifts and messages of congratulations when he completed his degrees. One of them, tipped to become a Leader of Green City, arranged an internship at the Agency under his direct tutelage—the one whose son dropped out of school and joined the Army the same year Reuben graduated with honors. That young man was killed in a small skirmish with a group of militants from the north, who still fought for control of the Levant decades after the wars had begun.
The uncle grieved for his son for an appropriate amount of time, then dedicated his life to lavishing on Reuben Faro whatever hopes and ambitions he had nurtured for his offspring. Through his uncle’s patronage Reuben joined the Agency the day after he graduated from university.
He racked up triumph after triumph. In his first few years he’d smashed a huge smuggling ring, stopped the trafficking of brides out of the territories, cracked a scam involving gold-backed digital tokens in which the principals didn’t have any gold to speak of. Within five years he was promoted, then made a division chief.
His success had become the Agency’s legend.
He used his new cachet to assemble a loyal circle: bureaucrats and junior officers in the Agency or the Bureau. He gathered them in weekly councils and they came faithfully, week after week, hoping that his proximity would inflate them like balloons and they too would float up through the hierarchy. One day one of these small men might succeed him. Who would it be? Sulayman, with his habit of siphoning off crumbs from the Treasury? Behrani, whose military service and the loss of one eye in combat made him think he’d gained in intelligence what he’d lost in vision? Zimmer, whose Levantine connections bought him his place in the Agency? It was too far off in the future—probably after Reuben’s own death—for him to care much who among them would rise when his sun finally set.
Discovering the Panah had not been part of Reuben’s plan. Five years ago, his daily intelligence reports uncovered a woman who was using outlawed cryptocurrency to buy food from stockpiles meant for hospitals. Reuben investigated the companies that supplied food to Green City’s institutions and found that one of their delivery services was making random trips outside the City, miles away from any of its hospitals, universities, or prisons.
The owner of the delivery service was brought in for questioning. Simply mentioning the Agency was usually enough to frighten most Green City citizens into obedience; the man broke almost as soon as Reuben entered the interrogation room. He confessed that he was being paid a large amount of illegal currency to deliver pulses, rice, and dried vegetables twice a month at a warehouse in the desert south of Green City.
“Who are you dealing with? Who’s the buyer?” asked Reuben. He sat in a chair, gazing pleasantly at the merchant who stood before him in a sweat-stained vest and trousers. They hadn’t even begun to beat him—the oldest methods worked the best, surprisingly—yet the man was already squeezing out a jumbled-up stream of tears and words, pleading for forgiveness between hiccups of fear.
“I don’t know her name. I just drop the goods where she tells me to leave them. I’ve never met her.”
“A woman?” This made Reuben sit up straight.
The man swallowed his tears and lifted his head. ”I think she runs a brothel or something. What else would a woman be doing, buying so much food? Please, can I go now?”
Reuben examined him from head to toe. Anyone could fake a slumped posture and a tremulous voice in order to portray abject submission. But the man’s bare feet twisting nervously into the floor, the fleeting, imploring glances that met Reuben’s eyes and then quickly flicked away betrayed his honesty. Still, the merchant had to be embellishing his confession so he’d be released sooner.
“After you’ve given me the coordinates of the location. And your communication codes.”
The man complied, but Reuben threw him in jail for five years anyway, and forgot about him.
The location trace turned up one thing. Decades ago a pair of scientists had applied for a research permit to find out how much radiation the land just outside Green City had absorbed from the nuclear explosions of the Final War, twenty years after it had ended. The application bore two names: F. Dastani and I. Serfati. Ilona Serfati had worked for the Perpetuation Bureau; she was the original author of the Female Citizens’ Handbook. And both of them had disappeared not long after the date mentioned on the permit.
Reuben made a note of the name Serfati and ran it through the Perpetuation Bureau records. It brought up an unsolved case of a girl who had been kidnapped from a quiet street in a well-to-do neighborhood, in the wake of her mother’s death. This couldn’t be Ilona: the years didn’t match. But the girl, Lin Serfati, would be around forty years old now
.
Serfati... Reuben made a note of the name and wrote down next to it, disappearing women and disappearing girls...
He found a picture of the child and aged it digitally; within seconds the infant turned into a child, then a teenager, and then a woman. Was she the secret buyer, this woman on his display? There were no brothels of real women in Green City, but for whom was she buying so much food? Was she alone, or did she have accomplices? Was she working with the rebels active along the southern border of Green City?
As he studied her photograph, his eyes narrowed. This Lin Serfati was a woman with a composed face, and confident, cool eyes. Yet there was a warm femininity in her curved lips and cheeks. It occurred to him that she would be his first female capture. But first, he had to find her.
He used the merchant’s communication code to send out a signal to the mystery woman across the uncontrollable, unsurveilable Deep Web. Any citizen in Green City caught using it would be severely punished, but it came in handy for the Agency’s covert activities. Disguised as the incarcerated merchant, Reuben told her he wanted to change some of the terms and conditions of their agreement. Could they meet in person? He was careful to use the same language and phrases that the merchant employed in their communications so she wouldn’t grow suspicious.
“That isn’t possible,” she responded, a full twenty-four hours after his query. “Neither the changes nor the meeting. Our contract was binding for a full year. We’ll renegotiate when it’s time.”
Reuben couldn’t help scoffing aloud at her tone. An illegal acting like a queen. Queen of what, a band of insurgents? He had no proof of anything, he knew that. She was probably just a petty criminal, a black-marketeer. Or even more brazen than that. What if she and a group of others were providing unsanctioned sexual services to the men of Green City? Why hadn’t he known about this? If the woman was really a whore, he wanted to see what she had on offer.