Black Diamond Fall

by Joseph Olshan

“Let’s just say that your Juliet wouldn’t be the first woman I’ve helped in this manner.”

  “Julia, not Juliet,” Julien corrected Bouthain automatically. The Agency had so many ways to spy on citizens: electronic tracking, digital surveillance, following any display transmissions or emissions of energy from a vehicle, for example. Yet Bouthain, whispering into Julien’s ear, seemed more concerned about the old-fashioned ways, the bugs in the room that could watch or listen to people’s conversations, planted under a desk or chair, or in a corner of a room.

  “Never mind. You young people don’t read enough. Shame. Medical education turns out good doctors but vastly uneducated human beings, sometimes. Not you, of course.”

  Was Bouthain crazy? In the midst of this most dangerous crisis, Bouthain was going on about Julien’s lack of education. “What about the effects on fertility? The miscarriages? She’s just been through surgery...”

  “Dr. Asfour, it will work. It’ll slow her heartbeat down to almost nothing, and to the whole world she’ll appear to have died. We’ll say that she died of the Virus. And then we’ll get her out of here to the crematorium for Virus victims, the one that’s just outside the border. From there, she can move on to safer territory.”

  Julien tried to compose himself. “So we manage to get her out of the hospital and take her all the way across Green City. Say she gets across the border. Then what happens to her?”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” Bouthain said. “You’ll have to go with her, too. The same way.”

  “Me?”

  Bouthain gazed at Julien with fatherly concern. “Do you really think Faro’s going to let you live out your life here, work peacefully for the rest of your days at Shifana after this?”

  “But...”

  “You’ll sleep for a good six or eight hours, then you’ll wake up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I added an extended-release ampakine in there; it’ll get you going, don’t you worry. It’s a bit of a brain-booster, actually. Good for memory, so you won’t have any amnesia. Too bad they didn’t have it when we were in medical school. You’ll wake up smarter than you were before.”

  “When do we do it?”

  “The sooner the better. We’ll need some help. Whom do you trust the most of the men who helped you?”

  “Mañalac,” said Julien automatically. “I’d trust him with my life. I already have.”

  Bouthain moved to a locked cabinet at the far corner of his office and opened it with a verbal command. Withdrawing two unlabeled vials, he took them over to a countertop, where he used a pipette to mix the contents of both in a third bottle. His hands moved surely, his eyes steady on the drops falling from the pipette like liquid diamonds.

  The Virus was a disease that only women could catch, but men could give it to them—a fact that nobody liked to discuss in Green City. Yet their hand in the decimation of the women made the Perpetuation Bureau defensive, the Leaders tight-lipped, ordinary men fearful enough to respect the boundaries of marriage. The Leaders made a border agreement with the adjoining territory of Semitia to allow the crematorium in a no-go zone between the two countries’ borders. If any woman died of the Virus, to safeguard the rest of the population her body had to be sent there to be burned and forgotten. Only a few hospitals were authorized to handle Virus victims: Shifana was one. The Virus, Bouthain found, became the perfect pretext through which to smuggle a woman here and there out of the City.

  While Bouthain worked, Julien looked down at the city through the panoramic window. He’d lived in Green City all his life, never contemplated leaving. Was it really as Bouthain had said: would Reuben Faro come for him when he found Sabine had gone? The red-purple bruise was already developing on Julien’s arm, where Faro had gripped him just above his elbow.

  He thought of his gentle parents, Johannes and Celine, tending to their balcony plants, setting out dishes of water for parched birds in the summer. Would Faro go after them if he couldn’t find Julien? He wouldn’t be able to say goodbye. He knew he would lose them to disease and death one day, but he’d taken comfort from the thought that he’d care for them in their last days.

  They lived in a small apartment in the poor eastern neighborhood of Keliki. They were not young anymore, his parents: Johannes grizzled and slightly stooped, Celine afflicted with osteoporosis over the last few years. She’d never passed the medical tests that all participants in the Perpetuation scheme had to take before being declared fit for remarriage; she’d suffered malnutrition as a child, and it affected her well into adulthood. That and pernicious anemia earned her a merciful exemption from the Bureau’s rules.

  The last time he’d gone home, Celine had greeted him at the door, leaning heavily on a cane. Julien quickly saw that she struggled to keep her balance; he was shocked at the sudden deterioration in her mobility. Instead of embracing her immediately, he hesitated, worried he would hurt her. Celine drew back, her pale blue eyes watching him with nervousness and reserve.

  “What’s this?” said Julien in a half joking tone, to cover up his disbelief. “Are you going to beat me with that if I don’t do the washing-up?”

  “I use this so I don’t fall. Who will look after your father if something happens to me?” Celine replied. “Come in, I’ve got dinner waiting for you.”

  Julien convinced Celine to go for a long-overdue body scan the next morning, which showed she’d been losing bone density for several years now. He squeezed her hand as she lay on the body scan table, wiped her tears when she got the poor results. In five years she’d be in a wheelchair; no science could reconstruct her weakened bones.

  If he left Green City for good, who would look after both of them? The Leaders claimed nobody ever suffered from neglect, hunger, or violence in Green City, but the fate of the elderly was less clear-cut. They were expected to fade away from sight when they were no longer able to care for themselves; they would go into a Green City institution from which they would not return.

  He wanted desperately to tell them what he was doing: fighting for a woman he had only just met but already loved. He wanted to ask them if in their thirty-year marriage they’d ever felt anything like this wave of certainty, the renewed sense of resolve, the determination to survive so strong for both of them that they’d go to the border of death to escape Green City’s wrath. If he and Sabine didn’t make it, his parents had to know how hard he’d tried. But how to tell them without alerting the Agency to his movements? It was an impossible situation. He had no idea what to do.

  Frustrated, he shifted his mind elsewhere: he wanted to know what exactly Bouthain would do after he’d put the drug into Julien’s veins, and Sabine’s. “What if Faro follows us all the way to the cremo? And makes sure they dispose of us while we’re still alive?”

  “He won’t be allowed in,” said Bouthain confidently. “Quarantine regulations. In fact, he shouldn’t even be allowed near your bodies. Of course, he’ll break the rules, but he’ll be too squeamish to get too close. Sex with a carrier is what infects the women, but there’s so much ignorance about it all. If you’ve even been in the same room as someone with the Virus, you have to go into quarantine. Faro won’t want to risk being quarantined himself. Once you’re at the border, Semitian rules apply; he won’t be able to circumvent those.”

  “Why do they call it the crematorium? I’ve never understood that,” said Julien, to distract himself from his fear. The method of getting rid of the bodies had nothing to do with fire: corpses were dipped in liquid nitrogen, then shaken to dissolve them into powder. The process took all of five minutes, prevented postdeath Virus transmission, saved space, was eminently respectful of ecology and the environment. And yet the idea of being irreversibly turned into powder made Julien shudder, even though it hardly mattered what happened to people’s corpses.

  “It’s historical,” Bouthain said. “War camps where thousands of
bodies were burned en masse. Everyone in Green City is so obsessed with wiping out the old traditions and names, replacing them with those that have no ties to anything that happened before the Final War, and the new regime. Maybe in Semitia they’re more sentimental about the old days and the old ways.”

  Seeing the vials in Bouthain’s hands, Julien was struck by a concern: “She was just under anesthesia three days ago. Will that affect her in any way?”

  “This drug affects different receptors in the brain than anesthesia. She’s young enough, and healthy otherwise. She’s recovered well so far, hasn’t she? Her bloods are all back up to normal range.”

  “You checked her records?”

  “Of course I did. Look, I can’t say how this is going to work out for either of you, Dr. Asfour. This drug of mine will probably affect you two in different ways.”

  “If we both appear to be dead, won’t it make Faro suspicious?”

  “Of what? That she died of complications and that you committed suicide because you didn’t want to be caught? Sounds reasonable to me. Look, here it is.” Bouthain crossed the room and held out his hand, showing Julien the final vial. The colorless liquid moved slowly inside the container, shiny as oil. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “What about my parents? Will he go after them?” Julien said desperately. “You know what they do to the families of criminals. How do I warn them?”

  “It’s not safe for you to leave now. But I’ll tell them, once you’re out of here. Reuben won’t bother them. They’re helpless. Harmless.”

  Julien considered this. Bouthain was right. There was nothing to be gained from hauling in a lonely old couple, torturing them to extract information they didn’t have. They’d live out their lives, lonelier and sadder than they’d anticipated, outwardly mourning the death of their only son. If they knew he’d disappeared, at least they’d have that secret to comfort them. It would be a life devoid of joy, but perhaps they would learn, in time, to accept it. He’d trust Bouthain to make it right somehow.

  Julien’s eye was caught by a tornado of several hundred black kites swirling around in a funnel cloud that went right up to the sky. Behind the birds, a backdrop of towering orange clouds moved in swiftly from the east. A storm was predicted for tomorrow evening; was it coming already? In answer, the wind began to whip up, sending dusty gusts barreling through the spaces between the high-rises. A canopy of sickly yellow wavered overhead, instead of the bright blue sky that always hung over Green City like an unremembered dream.

  “Sandstorm,” said Bouthain.

  “What!” said Julien. Summer sandstorms could be deadly, the northern winds sending debris and detritus flying through the air, blinding motorists, causing the giant digital billboards downtown to fall down and crush or decapitate passersby. The storms appeared several times a year without warning; nobody in the Environment Agency had discovered how to control or prevent them, and the death toll from the worst ones could be high. With no announcement yet, at least fifteen or twenty minutes still remained before Shifana Hospital would go into high alert in order to deal with the casualties.

  Bouthain murmured, “Let us proceed, Dr. Asfour.”

  Julien stared at Bouthain. “Now?”

  “Everyone will be too busy to notice,” said Bouthain mildly. “Do you want to wait until Faro arrives here to escort you to the Agency himself?”

  The growing sandstorm, the orange cloud approaching from the coast, was casting a baleful shadow on the cityscape. Bouthain was right: it had to be now. Reuben would be stuck in the Agency, the roads would be closed to all traffic but emergency vehicles and ambulances. Bouthain was already out the door.

  Julien chased after him down the emergency staircase. He cursed himself for having become flabby and unfit, for eating terribly, for not taking care of himself, but doctors weren’t supposed to be athletes. How the hell did Bouthain manage to move so quickly? Was he dosing himself with youth-preserving drugs that he’d designed for himself in his laboratory?

  Bouthain muttered terse instructions through clenched teeth as they rushed down the stairs. “Call your man. Tell him to get an ambulance ready. Tell him to have two stretchers ready at the service elevator in fifteen minutes. He’s going to have to drive a long way, so tell him to make sure he’s got his pass. It’s a Virus death, so quarantine rules apply: I want two sets of full gowns, masks.”

  “Two sets?”

  “What, did you think I’d let you do this on your own? Really, Dr. Asfour, after everything I’ve taught you. You do surprise me.”

  Sabine

  I lift my gown to look at my stomach, fascinated by the neat red incision that bisects the length of my stomach from navel to groin. The line is less angry than yesterday, and where I run my fingers up and down it, more firm, too, a zipper-like texture where my skin’s already joining together. The pain of the surgery is already receding.

  Hidden away in my hospital room high above Green City, the hum of traffic and the glare of the sun are both blocked out by the thick, tinted glass windows. I’m meant to feel nothing but restful calm. The climatized air ruffles my hair as if I’m at a lakeside somewhere in a cooler country, far away from Green City. But I’m not calm: over and over in an endless loop runs the thought that Julien has left me and he isn’t coming back.

  As the sun begins its climb across the early morning sky, my heart hurts so much that I imagine my ribcage bursting open and hundreds of black moths flying out of me, darkening the air and blinding me with their flapping wings, their desperate bodies beating against whatever light remains in my head.

  When I rise to go to the toilet, I feel steadier on my feet. Julien said I should try to move my bowels, the most important sign of a good recovery. By all accounts, I’m recovering well.

  I lie back down and close my eyes. How I miss my bed, my room, the chatter of the other girls, the stale food we cook, and the perfume of the Charbagh’s flowers. I long for it all so powerfully that I have to raise myself from the bed to rock back and forth like an abandoned child. I miss Lin’s smile that always starts from the corners of her mouth, and then spreads across her face. Her eyes light up last, like morning stars in a dawn sky. How I wish she could take me by the hand to lead me back where I belong.

  Other thoughts intrude: the memory of Julien’s body against mine, his hand twisted back on itself, pressed under his body as he slept. I straightened it carefully, trying not to wake him. And then I couldn’t resist slipping my fingers between his, entwining our hands. His hand was firm, his fingers long and finely shaped, the hair on the back of his hand soft, instead of the wiry threads I’d imagined. His nails were neatly trimmed, the nail beds slightly blue. I caressed each finger one by one and ran my thumb over his palm, feeling his lines with my fingertips.

  I told him things I’ve never shared with anyone, not even Lin. Even though I’d already told him my mother killed herself, I confessed that I actually feared the authorities had killed her for revolt. That’s a secret thought I’ve always guarded from everyone, even Lin. But with Julien, it slid out of me as easily as blood from my veins. He pulled me to him in a long, silent hug. I didn’t push him away. I simply collapsed there, limp, empty at last.

  Neither of us were the same people we’d been at the beginning of the night. Julien’s eyes changed; there was a tenderness to them when he glanced at me that I realize actually reflected the softness he saw in me.

  In the dark of that sleeping-not-sleeping, for the first time in my life I took comfort from a man’s presence, instead of being the one to provide it to him. Our presence together wasn’t a transaction to fill the Panah’s coffers or fulfill a Client’s ego. Nor was I tossing and turning in my bed alone at the Panah. To have someone keep vigil with me in those long hours, to spend the night in Julien’s embrace defined the physical boundaries of my body and the edges of my soul. At last I had weight and heft. I was real and I m
attered to someone other than myself. The comfort of his body, his closed eyes and sleeping breath, lulled me into a state of calm that was as close to real, natural sleep as I’d ever experienced.

  Through the window I see a demarcation between the clearer parts of the atmosphere, miles away out to sea, and a thicker, more pallid set of clouds racing in over the shoreline. The sky’s grown blurry and orange, as if the entire City is reeling from some kind of sickness that’s corroded it down to its bones. Birds are flying in confused circles just ahead of the storm, because that’s what it is, I suddenly realize—a huge sandstorm that’s traveled over the sea and come to bear down on Green City. They are terrifying enough to live through when we’re all safe in the Panah, with the wind howling and things banging and crashing above our heads. I’m ill prepared for its naked fury above ground.

  A huge gust of wind spatters what seems like barrels of sand at the window. I gasp and draw back, terrified the wind is strong enough to shatter the window and bring the storm straight into the room. The tightly fitted panes don’t rattle, but they can’t fully block out the high-pitched and angry howl of the wind as it rounds the corners of the hospital, seeking out any weakness in the walls. Below, the cars on the street have put on their high-vis beams and are moving slowly; the few people still outside scurry for cover in the buildings that line the street; they appear to sway like trees. I wonder if I should run to the door: maybe I can find cover deeper within the hospital building, in a windowless stairwell.

  The door to my room unlocks with a soft hiss, and three men enter: Julien first, followed by a white-haired man I’ve never seen before and then a small, lithe nurse, wearing a gown over his hospital uniform, gloves, and a surgical mask on his face that reveals only dark, almond-shaped eyes. The third man wheels in two hospital gurneys, one after the other. I back up against the wall, my fingernails scraping against the electrical board where the displays and other machines are plugged in.

  “We have to leave, Sabine,” says Julien, looking panicked. I haven’t seen him like this before.