Black Diamond Fall

by Joseph Olshan

  I use my hands to pull my legs over the side of the pod. When I try to stand in the narrow confines of the ambulance, I tumble over. I push back up to a low crouch, shivering, and reach out to the compact shelves lining the ambulance walls stacked with medications and bandages. My scrabbling fingers find a packet of cooling gel for burns: I tear it open and pour it all over my face and neck. Only when the searing sensation under my skin has calmed down do I realize that the ambulance isn’t moving anymore.

  “Dr. Bouthain? Mañalac?” I call out. My voice quavers. There’s no answer. A glance at their empty seats in the front of the ambulance confirms my fears. Julien and I are alone.

  I drag myself over to Julien. He’s lying motionless in his pod, face slack, skin a strange, other-worldly tint of blue. I try to shake him awake, but he’s unresponsive.

  The back doors of the ambulance are hanging open, letting in gentle light and a cool, sweet breeze filled with the clean scent of mountain air and the dry, fine dust of a wadi somewhere in a valley. The gray and brown cliffs in the near distance tell me that we’re in one of the rocky passes on the way to the border. I don’t know which one; I’ve never left Green City before today. When I look beyond the edge of the road, I see a long drop to what I recognize from screen images: a dry creek bed below.

  I ease myself out of the ambulance. There are footprints on the ground, a lot of them. Where are Bouthain and Mañalac: what’s happened to them? How could they abandon us here? Maybe the engine stalled and they went to look for help. But wouldn’t one of them stay behind to watch over us? There’s nobody around us now, not even their ghosts.

  I look down and shudder when I see drops of blood in the dust, and a trail of more blood leading a few feet away. Something terrible has happened. There’s no other explanation for their disappearance. There’s nobody else here, except for the mountains and the sky and the clouds ringing the tops of the mountains.

  I press my forehead against the door, letting its coolness soothe the aching in my head. I need time to resurface, to make sense of everything. My thoughts are skittering around like marbles in my head. And the fear is still there, even though I know I’m fully awake.

  When Bouthain injected me with the drug, I kept waiting for the dying to begin, as if it was an event that would somehow announce itself to me, with darkness or light, heaviness or a feeling of becoming lighter than air. I kept guessing what death would look like. Would death be ugly like Reuben Faro? Or kind and benevolent, like Bouthain? Or would my mind conjure up my mother’s lovely face up for me as my brain began to go out in phases?

  I barely remember lying in the pod, cool and dark, the case lined with a soft, downy material that moved and whispered all around me, as if I were floating on water. I was safely hidden away, a fetus nestling in the womb, my twin Julien in the pod next to me. With Bouthain and Mañalac in charge, there was nothing more to need, to strive for, to desire.

  Then I sank into those hours of death-not-death, and the howling wind, shaking and shifting us around as we lay dead to the world. I was aware of snippets of muffled conversation, voices I couldn’t quite recognize. But it was nothing like sleep.

  I look at Julien’s still face, wondering if was easier for him to surrender to Bouthain’s drug? Or could he actually be dead, the result of too much of the drug?

  Sabine, are you awake? It’s a refrain that won’t leave my mind now. That deep growl that spoke to me in my stupor has embedded itself in my brain.

  Out here, I’m the only woman left in the world.

  When I’ve regained some of the strength in my arms and legs, I lean on the back door of the ambulance to close it. It’s not likely that anyone will pass us by on this deserted patch of road, but I don’t want them to see the pods with one of the lids lifted open. The buzzing in my head grows with each step and my legs groan and complain as if every blood vessel in them has burst, but at least I’m out of the prison of the pod. The cocoon couldn’t shield me from what I have to face now.

  I walk around the ambulance, examining it in its entirety, a sleek yellow bullet checkered with green and black squares and the logo of Shifana Hospital. How long will it be before an air patrol drone spots us and sends an Agency car to check: before or after we die of dehydration and starvation? We didn’t take any food or water with us, we were in too much of a hurry to leave, and we were hoping to be across the border today, even with the sandstorm.

  The billowing orange cloud hangs over the skyline of the City, the sandstorm still relentlessly battering the streets and buildings of the place I’ve always called my home. But from this distance—a hundred miles, at least—it’s a phenomenon I’m observing on a distant planet through a powerful telescope. I can’t believe we actually drove through that. I’m glad I was unconscious for most of it.

  It’s actually better to be in the Panah when there’s a sandstorm of such magnitude. Sometimes I see the start of it when I’m coming back from a Client, the dust blowing in low clouds that I’d mistake for mist or fog if I didn’t hear the eerie hissing as it scratches against the roads. When we’re safely back home, we cluster together in frightened twos and threes, listening as the wind moans overhead and the warehouse creaks and complains like an old ship forced against an ocean gale it can’t withstand. We always expect to emerge from the Panah and see that the warehouse has been blown away, but somehow, it’s still standing, all but buried in dust and debris.

  My mother was always terrified of the sandstorms but my father would laugh them off with a bravado that thrilled me when I was small. “Come on, Sabine, let’s go chase it!” he’d exclaim, as soon as news came through that a sandstorm was gathering at the edge of Green City. My mother would scream at him that he was mad, but I’d already be at his side, running for the car. We’d get in and rush towards the outer suburbs to watch the storm approach.

  We’d stop at the side of the road and get out of the car, bandanas tied around our faces. I couldn’t believe anything could be that big. The sandstorm was bigger than a building, than an airplane, than an entire shopping mall. It seemed to have no beginning and no end, it seemed to have always existed. A towering yellow mass of boiling sand and dust, turning in on itself over and over again, heavy with its own momentum and orbit. The storm stretched from one end of the horizon to the other, and went on as far as the eye could see. And the deafening noise: the hooves of a thousand angry horses striking the ground at the same time.

  The winds preceding its arrival rose and fell in pitch, whipping our clothes around our bodies and nearly choking us with dust. Still, we were rooted to the ground; we’d stand there and hold hands, fascinated by its fury, bigger and more overwhelming than any human force. We’d turn around and rush home just in time before the roads closed and the curfew alarms sounded, exhilarated by our daring, ignoring my mother’s angry shouts when we returned.

  As I examine the bleak landscape and the road Julien and I have already traveled, I strain to feel some of that old exhilaration, that distant feeling that nothing could touch me as long as I was holding my father’s hand. A slim stretch of road disappears around a blind curve a hundred yards away—the path we’ve yet to take. How far are we from the border? Or are we hopelessly lost? I tighten my grip on the ambulance’s door. I call out again for Bouthain and for Mañalac. I know something has happened to them, and I have no other choice. “I’m going to get us out of here, Julien,” I say out loud.

  My hand slowly pulls open the door wide enough for me to get inside. The seat is high; I have to climb up to get into it. I pull myself up and awkwardly heft myself into the cab, hips first, then one foot, then the other. Leaning over, I pull the passenger side’s door closed. The jerking wrenches the incision on my stomach, but the pain’s overshadowed by a mixture of nervousness and daring at what I’m about to do.

  I close my own door, then stare down at the controls, wondering which switch turns the engine on. I’ve never
driven a car before; I’ve always been driven from the Panah to Clients’ houses, floating inside my head on a cloud of fatigue and relief that the night’s over and I can be taken home in peace and solitude. How hard can it be, though? Even cars drive themselves. I reach out and press a button. A loud horn sounds, making me jump in my seat. That isn’t right.

  Are you awake, Sabine? Again the words, but the voice sounds different, an older echo this time.

  Shut up, I tell myself. I won’t be distracted by shadows now. I press every button on the dashboard in front of me, wave my hands in front of panels, look frantically above and below for pedals or a stick, anything that might give me control of the ambulance.

  A closer examination of the steering wheel reveals what I’m looking for: grooves in the back of the wheel that I can fit my fingers into, one for the accelerator and the other for the brake. At last the ambulance wakes up, its engines coughing and spitting, then roaring into life. I stare, astonished, at the panels lighting up; a raw, raucous laugh escapes my lips.

  The control buttons are very sensitive to my touch: the slightest pressure makes the ambulance lurch out of its tracks and move forward with a jolt, or stop so suddenly that I’m thrown forward in my seat, nearly banging my head on the wheel. Julien’s pod slides back and forth noisily behind me. “Sorry, sorry,” I call out, even though I presume he can’t hear me.

  I ease the ambulance out onto the road, following the blind curve, which leads to a steady downhill slope. It takes me only a few minutes to get used to driving the car: it’s easy to direct it down the empty road. A gentle nudge of the navigator steers us to the left or right, and as my fingers press down in the grooves, I begin to enjoy the scenery going past, the dun-colored mountain walls, little ledges dotted with small trees and scrub brush, an occasional gecko dashing across the road. Here and there the ambulance skids clumsily, and I have to hold the wheel tight to negotiate between the accelerator and the brake.

  We climb down for about fifteen or twenty minutes. Soon the road levels out, and we’re in desert flatlands once more. The porcelain blue sky meets the horizon in a line as straight as a ruler. The sandstorm is far behind us, and so is Green City. I’ll have to drive for I don’t know how long to reach the border. I have no way of knowing distances, and the ambulance’s navigation system is still a mystery to me.

  To pass the time, I imagine conversations with all the women of the Panah: Rupa, Diyah, Su-Yin, Mariya, Aleyna. How would I tell them everything that’s happened to me? They’d be amazed, horrified, curious. They’d tease me about Julien; their hearts would thrill at how we lay together that night in the hospital. They’d cry with me, for me, for the assault on my body and the loss of the pregnancy, no matter how unformed and unknown the clump of cells. They’d hate my attacker, whoever he was, applaud my courage at taking Bouthain’s drug and using death to cheat Reuben Faro.

  Maybe they wouldn’t understand how I could trust an unknown man and his untested medicine. I’d tell them that I’d trusted Bouthain because of his regard for Julien. I know Bouthain wouldn’t voluntarily leave either of us until we’re safe. I know he did all of this for his star pupil. You’d have to be blind not to recognize, in Bouthain’s loyalty, the finest of love, the purest of compassion, wrapped up in his grouchy exterior.

  As I keep my finger on the accelerator, driving down the never-ending tunnel of sand, I long to hear Bouthain’s raspy voice one more time. His dedication to his job gives shelter to anyone who suffers. What he did for me goes far beyond the extent of any job. I wonder if Bouthain and Mañalac are still alive. They are probably dead by now. Or will be soon. There is no mercy in Green City.

  But when it comes to imagining how I’d explain things to Lin, my imagination comes to a stop. A mixture of guilt, shame, and fear rises in me as I picture her listening to my tale. I’ve ruined everything by exposing the Panah to Reuben Faro’s wrath. What was it Julien said to me back in the hospital? That Reuben loves Lin like a madman, and he’ll do anything to protect her—even eliminate me.

  I stop thinking for a while and concentrate on the road. I drive for so long that I’m no longer sure whether I’m asleep or awake. “Julien, please wake up,” I say, turning my head a little to the side so that the words can reach him. “Please. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

  My mind drifts back to a moment with Joseph, a half-memory, a flash of something. Instead of darkness, I can see the gray of an early morning, the streets of Green City, the faint light and a soft drizzle lathering the sky through a bedroom window.

  All of a sudden I’m back in the bed with the black silk sheets, the black champagne glass on the side table. If I turn my head to the side, I can see the fizzy bubbles breaking on the surface of the liquid. Sabine? Are you awake?

  It’s Joseph’s voice. Joseph’s hands. Joseph’s body bearing down on mine. I suddenly remember it all: his weight and pressure, my subdued acquiescence. The fear underneath all the grogginess.

  The desert is a sea in front of me; the mountains behind are a wall between past and present that I’ve just traveled through. I could dismiss all of this as fantasies, as nightmares, as vivid imaginings. But insomnia is not what caused those blank spaces in my mind. The soreness in my belly and my thighs I’d felt in the Panah were not just cramps or an upset stomach. I was violated, on the first night Joseph gave me the black champagne, six weeks ago.

  Sabine? Are you awake? is what Joseph whispered to me before he began to touch me, while I was unconscious in his bed. He was the father of that unborn, unwanted child, nothing more than an embryo, nothing less than an earthquake in my life.

  It’s too much. I let go of the steering wheel, which sounds a violent alarm as we go spinning off the road and bounce onto the soft shoulder. Julien’s pod knocks against the ambulance walls, shifting violently from one side to the other. I bang my head on the door. The ambulance comes to a stop at a disjointed angle, half off and half on the road. The engine is still running erratically, a loud ticking sound filling the cab. I press my fingers to my head and they come away sticky with blood.

  As we sit there, I begin to shake. I put my arms onto the steering wheel and lean my head against them. I want to cry, to fill the air with apologies. To my parents. To Lin. To the Panah. To Bouthain and Mañalac. And to Julien. I want my last word to be sorry. I have broken every rule, transgressed every limit. Maybe this is what I deserve. Maybe I should just die right here.

  But as my trembling subsides and the sobs dry up, as the sun starts its descent towards the horizon, I ask myself why I should die for Green City. It’s stolen everything from me: my parents, my home, my future. My body, my sanctity, my friends from the Panah. Lin. Why should I give it the last thing I have left: my life?

  I slot my fingers into the steering wheel, turn the ambulance back on. Push the accelerator button and carefully, slowly, back up on the road. Now straighten it out. Switch on the lights, it’s starting to get dark. That’s it. That’s good. Now drive, Sabine. There will be time, later, to take account of everything, to reconcile what I know with what I’ve learned. But now, I have to drive for my life.

  And we’re off, the engine growling. I’m leaning forward in my seat, pushing the steering wheel as if I can make the ambulance move faster with physical effort. The sun begins to disappear and twilight spreads from the east, the moon a full yellow circle above me. Soon in the distance I can make out the border fence: a crooked horizontal line that glimmers with a low-voltage electric charge. The closer we get, the more defined it becomes, like the bars of a cage. I lower my head and clench my teeth, and step hard on the accelerator. I’ve had enough of cages.

  There’s a roar and a bang as we crash into the fence, larger and stronger than I imagined, a steel alloy, designed for resistance. But the ambulance tears a bullet-shaped hole into it and we pierce through it to the other side.

  We skid to a halt twenty yards after t
he fence; the ambulance gears whir and grind, but the wheels won’t obey anymore. I hear rapid footsteps and cries of alarm all around me. I stay in my seat, breathing hard, as they open the doors, both front and back. Gentle hands tug at my shoulder. A man and a woman in the olive green uniforms of the Semitia Border Guards peer at me, in shock and concern. There’s astonished curiosity all over their faces, as if I’ve dropped in from another planet. But no guns. There are no guns pointed at me.

  “Are you all right?” says the woman. She’s young, my age. Maybe even younger. Red-haired, hazel-eyed, and sharp-faced, she looks just a bit like Lin. Surprise shines in her eyes, as if she’s practiced for this moment but never really expected it to happen. Am I the first woman from Green City that she’s ever seen?

  She squares her jaw, smoothes her features into an expression that’s professional and reassuring. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’re safe now.” She’s probably been trained to say it; it’s exactly what I need to hear. I lean to the side, rest my head on the door of the ambulance, and exhale slowly. I didn’t even know I was holding my breath.

  And then, from the back, a thin voice, like the first cry of a child entering the world.

  “What’s happening? Sabine, where are you?”

  “Julien, I say, “I’m right here.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you:

  Simon Kristensen published the short story on which Before She Sleeps’s first chapter is based and invited me to Copenhagen to read it out loud. Warsan Shire heard me there and told me to turn it into a novel; I’ve written this book expressly on her urging. Claire Chambers, who has always been a friend and huge source of encouragement, introduced me to the work of Susan Watkins, who gave generous feedback on an early draft of the book and information about the vast field of dystopian feminist fiction. Sunny Hundal’s India Dishonoured: Behind a Nation’s War on Women helped me gain a deep understanding of the devastating effects of gender selection on Indian society. Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road helped me figure out a contemporary-sounding voice for a futuristic tale. Shandana Minhas shared her impressive knowledge of science fiction and cheered me on when I was ready to give up. Wellesley friends Susan Gies Conley, Edris Goolsby, and Anna Balogh kept urging me to persist, reminding me that if I could survive four years at W, then I could write this book. Writer friends Christopher Merrill, Aamer Hussein, Rachel McCormack, and Peter Fogtdal offered support as I sweated through months of writing and rewriting. Rick Slettenhaar was a brother-in-arms and a shoulder to lean on during the terrible time after Sabeen Mahmud’s death. Syma Khalid and Alina Hasanain Shah helped me with the medical and scientific aspects of Julien’s work and research. MacGregor Rucker offered me helpful feedback on crucial scenes in the book. The music of Chilly Gonzales, especially the song “Gentle Threat,” helped me develop the noir atmosphere of Green City.