The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

  She was allocated her role in the struggle for the survival of the species. Though the Protectors wish in their virtue to give you a reasoned hearing, we cannot permit these rambling digressions. Correct for the record instances of ‘children’ and ‘mothers’ in the appropriate way. Prisoner 730004, you were telling us of a supplier of sexual release, Birgitta, who believed she was pregnant.

  At the time she did not believe it. She was very frightened and didn’t know what was wrong. Then she went to her mother and she lifted Birgitta’s top garment and saw the swollen belly, and she said, ‘My daughter, this is no disease, no sickness of the body, you are pregnant.’

  Correct for the record ‘mother’ and ‘daughter’ as before. How very unfortunate that this poor woman should be so deluded.

  That is what everyone said. When Birgitta finally – reluctantly and in great fear – went to the Corporeal Scientists they said she was having a phantom pregnancy, that she was sick in her mind, that she must cure her mind and the body would follow, because as the Protectors tell us the body is mere matter, to be controlled by the faculty of reason, with a little help from our technologies …

  You are digressing again. Please explain clearly what happened to this woman Birgitta and why her delusions are linked to the selfish anti-species activities of your group.

  Even when she could feel the movements within her, the little flutters and tentative kicks which were once called quickening, even when it was clear that there was something alive, they told Birgitta it was just her imagination, that her mind was – they told her – confused by the unbridled urges of her body. Not a single Corporeal Scientist thought it was even worth scanning her: they knew from her records that she had been harvested and purged and closed and so they were entirely convinced that it was a mental deficiency, taking over the body. Indeed they explained to her that for her own good – for her protection – she must be committed to an Institution for the Improvement of the Reason. Which in the old days we would have called a lunatic asylum.

  Prisoner 730004, you are once more mistaken in your reasoning. You must not simplify everything and draw it into your mythical and non-scientific worldview. The Institutions for the Improvement of the Reason are a necessary element in the protection of the species. The Protectors are wise and just. Now continue with your account.

  It was then that we acted.

  At this point you were already in a state of delusion about the nature of Birgitta’s illness?

  I already knew that she was pregnant, yes.

  So how did you ‘act’?

  A group of us decided to leave Darwin C and take Birgitta with us. At the time she had not realised her power. She was just a very distressed person. She was still in a state – induced by her upbringing – of self-fear. She feared the bulging of her body. She feared being cast out from the confines of the Collective, from the world she had known all her life. She felt freakish and wanted to hide or to be cured. Indeed she basically accepted that she should go to an Institution for the Improvement of the Reason and it was only because of us that she did not. It is in a sense fortunate that none of the Corporeal Scientists would believe that she was really pregnant, otherwise she would – I think – have been easily convinced to have a termination. If you have been constantly told that something is true, that a particular reality is true, if you have grown up in a society which has disposed of the natural function of the female body, then it is quite understandable that you would regard pregnancy as a sickness. And Birgitta also felt that whether her illness was a sickness of the mind as the Corporeal Scientists told her or the ordinary symptoms of pregnancy, she was alone. Either she was mad or she was the only pregnant woman in Darwin C. And Birgitta was in such a state of self-fear that she thought either state was undesirable and terrifying.

  You are digressing again, Prisoner 730004. Please explain precisely what happened. Though the Protectors seek to understand you, they are in truth less concerned with your vague musings about reality as you see it than they are with the plain facts of the case.

  I am sorry. Lacking the analytical brilliance of the Protectors I find it hard to disentangle actions and thoughts.

  We are talking of the circumstances of your departure from Darwin C.

  Yes I understand, though in my weakness I can only perceive the circumstances of my departure as bound up with my gradual disaffection with the mores of our civilisation and my mounting sense of unease at the prospect of further years spent in the nurture grounds of Darwin C. In a sense I could not have physically departed from Darwin C had I not already become detached in my mind from the place. I came to realise that I could no longer accept my allotted role in the so-called war against nature and I therefore had to desert.

  You accept then that your actions constitute a dereliction of your duties?

  By the terms of our civilisation, as you call it, by the standards of the life in Darwin C, by the standards of the Protectors, then yes, I see I shall be punished.

  You will be allocated a new role in the struggle for the survival of the species. Now Prisoner 730004, please return to the circumstances of your desertion of Darwin C.

  It was very sudden. We never planned it, we just realised we had to leave.

  Can you clarify at this point who ‘we’ is?

  No, I’m afraid I can’t.

  Why not?

  Because I made a promise not to reveal the identities of my friends.

  Prisoner, the Protectors, through us, assure you that it is categorically in your interest to co-operate fully with this process. Indeed a failure to do so will make things even more difficult for you and your co-conspirators.

  I am grateful to the Protectors for their kind reminder. However, we swore an oath of secrecy and allegiance and I am afraid I cannot break it. In case some of my friends are still out there.

  Out in the Restricted Area?

  Yes.

  You do not know where they are?

  I have had no contact with anyone since the army came to our village.

  Correction, Protection Agents. So you made no arrangements for reconvening if your camp was dispersed?

  No such arrangements at all. Things weren’t like that. We felt free. We were among mountains and the sea. Infinite rocks and water. We felt as if our lives were peaceful and blessed. We certainly never imagined our village would be set upon and destroyed, that our huts would be burned, that they would beat and coerce us and that I would be sitting here in prison, being interrogated.

  You are not being interrogated. The Protectors merely seek to understand your actions so they can better protect our Collective. The actions of the Protection Agents are always proportionate to the magnitude of the threat represented by the activities against which they are deployed. We cannot afford to be sentimental in our dealings with exceptional cases such as yours, lest we imperil the majority. This is a question of billions of lives.

  I understand that humanity has destroyed the planet.

  Nature has declared war on humanity and we must evolve and use all the technology at our disposal, or be vanquished.

  You are more knowledgeable than I am.

  Prisoner 730004, you are claiming that you have no idea of the whereabouts of your co-conspirators?

  I do not know where my friends have gone, those that are still living.

  You are aware, Prisoner 730004, that while the Protectors seek to understand you, the better to protect the Collective, they also insist on honesty as a central value of our civilisation. They cannot protect us unless we confide in them. So why will you not tell us, and thereby the Protectors, precisely who else was living in the Restricted Area?

  I would like to be as honest as possible, and have no desire to hide our activities where my explanations can harm no one. Yet in this instance I have made a promise. You can torture me or threaten me with the mass-scale farms but I will not break it.

  Prisoner 730004, your remarks have been noted. They will sadden the Protectors. Ca
n we now return to the precise nature of your departure from Darwin C?

  It was very exciting. I had never gone beyond the two sectors – the one in which I lived and the one in which I worked. In Darwin C I had the view from my space and that was as I said nothing but towers and by night there were red lights flashing from the tops of the highest towers. As far as I could see, there were towers. And the small figures passing beneath, all in their little dark smocks. And always the whirr of the air processing, I had never been anywhere without this constant whirr. I went from this constant mechanised whirr to the sound of waves. The cries of birds. The wind in the trees.

  Can you tell us the precise chronology of your departure?

  We met at the base of a tower. We had discovered there were supply trains running to and from the Arctic. Birgitta’s brother …

  Correction, DNA relative …

  … worked on one of them. He is gone now, as is Birgitta’s mother, so I can tell you that they helped us. Birgitta’s mother came with us, though she perished later. But the joy she felt at returning was so immense, so wonderful to behold, so I think it was a good thing she came, even though it killed her. I am certain it hastened her death. Conditions at first were very hard.

  Correct ‘mother’ for the record as before. Prisoner 730004, we ask you to apply yourself only to the question of how you departed from Darwin C.

  Yes, of course. Birgitta’s brother told us we must be at the loading bay at 3 a.m. He said he would load us into his section of the train. He was the porter for that section and so he could put us in a crate and say the crate contained special equipment going up to the mass-scale farms. He told us the passengers on that train were a desperate horde: those judged mentally unwell, former workers in the Centres for Sexual Release who were too old to attract people any more, or others who had exceeded their usefulness and could no longer be housed in Darwin C. They were all going to the mass-scale farms of course. We couldn’t see them but the worst thing was that we couldn’t hear them either. They were silent and I thought of them the whole journey, lined up in rows and knowing where they were going and that they would die there. They had been discarded. They were the discarded rubbish of our so-called civilisation. Stripped of any sense of individuality, or worth. They were merely being thrown away.

  Such remarks cannot be permitted, constituting as they do a grave threat to our species. Correct ‘brother’ for the record as before. Please continue with the basic facts of your story, Prisoner 730004.

  Then there were the so-called Protection Agents and we were very frightened of them. Every time their footsteps thumped towards our crate we expected to be discovered. We were in there for three days. We had some water and a little food and we couldn’t sleep at all. Birgitta was halfway through her pregnancy then, and the claustrophobia and the stale air made her sick. It was a terrible journey. In some ways I can’t remember much of it, because I was so stricken by fear and horror. For myself and Birgitta but also for all those doomed souls beyond our crate.

  Prisoner 730004, must we remind you again?

  I am sorry, I keep forgetting about the restrictions upon me.

  They are for your protection and for the protection of the species. What happened when you arrived at your destination?

  By the time we arrived our limbs were locked, our bones aching. The crate stank of vomit and urine. It was a descent into the body, being stewed in fluids for two days like that. The Protectors would doubtless have judged us mad or in need of mental readjustment.

  The Protectors do not judge, they only protect.

  Yet there was something cathartic about the process. We who had been bred in sterilised sparkling machines, in the pristine technocratic sanctuary of the Genetix, we who had lived our days in perfect towers coated in shining solar shields, so everything was always glittering in the dangerous sunshine, suddenly we were dirtied, reborn into viscera and filth.

  Once more on behalf of the Protectors we must emphasise that such digressions are not relevant to your case or suitable in your circumstances.

  I am sorry.

  Please continue with your account, taking care to adhere to the facts.

  I will try. Let me think. The facts of our arrival. I am not sure. I think that we were all afraid. And uncertain. Perhaps this is not a fact. We were unsure about what we had done. Birgitta’s brother dragged us out. I think he was also afraid. Again I am not entirely sure of this. I was disoriented by fatigue and nerves. I do not remember who was there, beyond the members of our group and Birgitta’s brother. Others were there, though: I felt hands on my shoulder, on my arm, guiding me along what I think was a dark passageway but could equally have been a tunnel. Perhaps someone wept. Perhaps we all did. But this is not a fact, or not one I believe would be useful. Birgitta’s brother disappeared before we could thank him – I never saw him again and now I strongly believe he is dead. Though I do not know this for a fact I am almost certain it is the case.

  Correct all instances of ‘brother’ for the record. Prisoner 730004, why do you believe that Birgitta’s DNA relative is dead?

  We were told later that they discovered our urine and vomit in the crate. Only traces but it was enough to condemn him. I believe, though I am not sure, that it is considered a grave threat to the species to assist fugitives, so he was sent to the mass-scale farms. There the average survival span is six months, I have heard, though I am aware this would not qualify as a fact.

  It is a myth, a foolish unscientific myth.

  Of course. I am sorry. I have no clear understanding of our world. Just impressions, emotions. I believe, intuitively, that he is dead. And if not dead, then his condition cannot be worsened and I imagine death might even be a blessing to him. I have heard – again you will not regard this as a fact – that life on the mass-scale farms is so dreadful that some there stop eating even their scanty portions of food, to die more swiftly.

  This is another irrelevant digression and a blatant untruth.

  Of course, I understand.

  Please continue with your account, Prisoner 730004.

  We went along the tunnel which may not have been a tunnel for what seemed like hours. I had no clear notion of time as it was dark and I was also unsure if we were outside or inside. There was a heated wind gusting at my body. My arms and back were doused in sweat. I think I felt very hopeless then, as if I had made a mistake. We didn’t speak, I am sure of that. Our unknown guides led us at a relentless pace, and we needed all our energy to control our stiffened limbs. Birgitta was very hungry, though we had given her most of our food. In thrall as we are to the demands of the body, it is a fact that we were ravenously hungry. We walked and walked and I thought I was too weak and weary to continue, but always the guides encouraged us along, and finally when my mood had sunk close to despair, we came to a boat. To the water. The sea. I had never seen the sea before and it was such a beautiful sight, such a vision of infinite vastness and natural power – though I knew the waters were polluted beyond redemption – that for a moment I was mesmerised and forgot everything else. It was dawn. The sea reflected the orange morning sun. The waves surged and rose, became full and white at their crests, foamed brilliantly and then crashed against the rocks. The water bubbled and churned. There was a deep roar, a sound I never thought I would hear on this planet. The air was full of the smell of salt and the wind made me breathless, as if my lungs could not hold much of this unprocessed air. And under the sound of the waves I could hear Birgitta’s mother weeping. Our guides were moving quickly, leading us onto a boat which rocked on the swell. I had naturally never been in a boat before and I remember feeling an acute sense – as we moved away from the shore – of the fragility of our vessel and the relentless force of the waves surging around us. The boat was just a small wooden fishing boat and one of our guides told us the summer was stormy and the seas unpredictable. ‘Ill-tempered,’ he called the ocean, I remember. Birgitta was very sick. A few of us were also leaning over the side to spill bil
e into the water. I do not know how long the journey took. I remember Birgitta’s mother holding her daughter, cradling Birgitta’s head and saying, ‘Peace my beautiful girl, peace my love,’ and I felt a great tearing pain and grief for the parents I had lost and the child I would never comfort in this way and I felt …

  Prisoner 730004 on behalf of the Protectors I must remind you that such remarks are not required and you must confine your account to the basic details. Correct ‘parents’, ‘mother’, ‘daughter’ and ‘child’ as usual for the record. Continue, Prisoner 730004.

  After a stormy crossing we arrived. The boat was dragged onto a sandy stony beach with mountains rising all above. There was grass on the lower slopes, and trees. Then the upper slopes were purplish, ancient rock, like something I had seen only in dreams. Our guides turned back as soon as they had unloaded our supplies. We had some basic food resources and some guns and ammunition. We had some fishing rods and some seed. It looked to me as if we would die quite quickly. I had no sense of how we could possibly survive.

  How long ago was it that you came to this place?

  I think it was some years ago. I measure it only by the passing of the seasons. And as you know the seasons are less clear now than in former days.

  Prisoner 730004, the Protectors are curious about how precisely you built your community?

  Through grave hardship and loss. The island was much changed. We had hoped we might live by fishing as our predecessors had done but the few fish remaining in the sea were gravely polluted and made us ill. Birgitta we thought must not eat them.

  The myth of her pregnancy had continued among you?

  Birgitta was burgeoning by the day. Her belly was an object of wonder for us, even devotion. She was always tired, because there was so little food at first. We were about to starve when we learned how to take eggs from nests. That was a great advance. At least then Birgitta could get nourishment. That was how we thought during the summer. We thought if Birgitta and a couple of others survived then that would be an achievement. We ate the poisoned fish simply to quell hunger pains, but then we were sick – it was like fighting an addiction, ignoring the desperate promptings of our stomachs. We found abandoned houses and tried to repair them. We were fortunate in that respect – the houses had been fashioned to withstand the old Arctic winters, and though these severe temperatures have become a thing of the past, perhaps never to return, the houses were sturdy and we were comfortable in them. It was just the food. We were not short of water – the summers had become very warm and wet and we gathered rainwater and drank our fill. We were not thirsty. But hunger sapped our strength and nearly broke our morale. It ate our flesh until we were gaunt and ill. A diet of eggs and grasses, poisoned fish and rainwater is not enough to sustain the body. Gradually we learned to shoot and then sometimes we killed birds. On a few glorious occasions we shot a fox or two. But our fortunes only really changed once we had developed our farm.