Terra Nova

by Shane Arbuthnott

  “What?” Molly said.

  “Move to the bed,” he said, voice raised to carry through the glass.

  “Oh, um…” Molly thought about refusing but found she didn’t have the energy for resistance. She walked back to the bed and sat. The man watched her until she was still, then used a key that hung around his neck to open her door and slipped inside. He was holding a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “Before we begin,” he said in a smooth, uninflected voice, “let me make something clear to you. This is a secure facility, with staff trained to subdue unruly patients. If you choose to attack me, you will be put down, most likely painfully, and you will face ongoing repercussions for your behavior. There are multiple reinforced, locked doors between here and the outside, so even should you escape this room, you will have nowhere to go. There is no use fighting. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

  “Uh, yeah. Yes.” She frowned. “I’m not going to attack you.” Who do you think I am? she thought, until the image of her own face on a Wanted poster appeared in her head. “I don’t usually attack people.”

  “Hmm,” the man said, flipping over a sheet of paper. He didn’t move from his place near the door. “I am Dr. Van Orden, and this is the Twillingate Sanatorium. You are to be a resident here in perpetuity, and you will undergo treatment for your condition until such time as I deem you either cured or incurable.” During all of this he did not look at Molly once.

  “My condition?”

  Van Orden shuffled some of the papers. “Pernicious influence of spiritual entities. You are spirit-touched, yes?” He looked at her. Molly said nothing. “Yes. Now.” Here he finally stopped looking down at the papers and took a few steps into the room, looking Molly straight in the eye. “What I would like to know is, will you be a problem?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I have no interest in fighting with you. If you pose a problem I will simply confine you to your room. Will that be necessary, or will you behave yourself?” The doctor stared down at her, his face devoid of emotion, waiting for her answer.

  “What kind of problem can I be? I don’t have any weapons, and you guys have me locked in an iron vest.”

  “I grant that you appear harmless, but the past year would suggest that you can be a very big problem indeed.”

  Molly sighed, weariness rolling through her. “I won’t be a problem.” I did that. I’m done with that.

  “Good. On to medical questions then.” He raised his papers and brought out a pen from a pocket. “Your nose was broken, but we were able to set it. How does it feel?”

  “Fine. Sore.”

  “And your arrhythmia. Is that a previous condition?”

  “My what?”

  “Your heart beats irregularly. Not dangerously so, but it is something to watch.”

  “Oh. No, I didn’t know about that. I never really saw doctors before.” Couldn’t afford them, she thought but didn’t say.

  “Can you think of a reason for it? A history of heart conditions in your family?” She shook her head. “Electrocution from your prior work with spiritual machines, perhaps?”

  “I got hit by lightning.”

  His eyebrows rose, which was the first real expression Molly had seen on his face. “When was this?”

  “Just before they caught me. I don’t know how long ago that was.”

  He stopped writing and tapped his pen against the paper. “I see. Is that when you got the burn on your shoulder?”

  “Yeah.” Molly reached up to touch it. The skin still felt raw and tender, but she couldn’t feel any more blisters.

  “Hmm. That is all I need from you. One of the orderlies will be along to show you how things run here.”

  He rapped once on the door, it was opened, and he swept out. Molly thought momentarily about racing after him, trying to catch the door before it closed—some part of her felt like she should, even if it was pointless—but she stayed where she was.

  She looked up at the single light set in the ceiling, a shaded glass globe with an igneous spirit skittering around inside it like a moth against a window. The spirit’s frantic movements gave the light a flickering quality that Molly found slightly nauseating. Subconsciously she reached for Legerdemain, for the comfort of his connection. But it wasn’t there.

  It’s over.

  Molly waited for a long time before a young man with messy hair arrived to show her the way. He looked rougher than she thought a nurse or orderly should. But then, Van Orden had said the staff were trained to subdue patients, so this young man was probably more prison guard than orderly. He escorted her from her room and took her down the hall, past the other doors and windows. The rooms were mostly empty, but a few held pallid patients sitting on beds or slowly circling the small rooms.

  “If you’re not on confinement, we unlock your door in the morning, and you have access to the common area for a few hours. You can eat breakfast and lunch with the other patients. The doctors see people in the afternoons, and supper is in your room.”

  “Only a few hours outside our rooms?”

  The orderly glanced back at her but didn’t stop walking. “Sleep is good for healing.”

  They emerged into a large common room filled with small round tables and aluminum chairs. Everything was bolted to the floor. A few other patients, each in the same loose, white pants and shirt as Molly, were scattered around the room. Three were clustered near the far end, looking up at a small window.

  “Code of conduct,” the orderly went on. “You can talk to the other patients, but no touching. Any touching or shouting, we put you on confinement for the rest of the day. Do it to the staff and it’ll be a week. Toilet’s there,” he said, pointing to a corner of the room where a low toilet and a sink sat. Molly had never lived anywhere that had working plumbing before. The head on the Legerdemain had just been a bucket, which could be dumped when they weren’t over populated areas. But at least there had been a door.

  “Isn’t it a little open?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if I need to go at night?”

  “Knock on your door. We’ll come if we can.”

  Molly’s lip curled. The orderly walked her past the other patients to an opening in the left wall. Through it she could see a kitchen with two people buzzing around inside. The opening was blocked by heavy wire mesh, save for a small slot at the bottom.

  “You’ll get breakfast and lunch here, at seven and twelve. No extra portions. Dishes and scraps back to the kitchen.” He gestured at a closed door to the right. “Medical offices. The doctors will take you through there when they want you. It’s always locked.”

  “I guessed.”

  The orderly pulled his watch from his pocket. “Lunch is in a few minutes. You can stay here or go back to your room.”

  “Umm…” Molly looked around. Several of the patients were watching her silently, though their eyes were strangely unfocused. “I’ll stay.”

  The orderly turned without a word and went back down the hallway. Molly took a deep breath and sat in the nearest chair. She looked at the other patients. There were five women and three men in the large room. Most looked to be in their twenties or thirties, though there was one woman who looked considerably older. She had gray hair that contrasted with her dark skin. Her sharp eyes made Molly nervous.

  She was also the only one not staring at Molly. No one was talking. Molly met some of the patients’ eyes, but their vacant gazes were unsettling.

  “Hi,” she said to a black-haired man near her. He didn’t reply.

  “Won’t get much from them,” the gray-haired woman said without looking up. She had a small cup of water, and she took a sip.

  “Oh. Why? Are they sick?” She turned back to the man. “Are you sick?”

  “No more than they want us to be,” the woman said. “It’s the drugs.”

  “The what?”

  The woman looked at her. “The white pills?” Molly shook her head. �
�Huh,” said the woman. Her gaze was clear and curious. “That’s interesting. And you’ve got a harness too.”

  Molly rose and moved to her table. “They put it on me while I was sleeping. The harness, I mean.”

  The gray-haired woman sat forward. “What’s it for?”

  “The iron harness? You don’t know?”

  “I’ve only seen one other patient with one like it, and he’s not very forthcoming.”

  “Someone else here has a harness like this?” Molly looked around but saw only blank white tunics.

  “He doesn’t come out of his room,” the woman said. “And even if he did, he wouldn’t talk. Don’t think he speaks English.”

  Molly tried to adjust her harness so it wasn’t digging into her hips, but with little success.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” the woman said. “But we can leave that for now. My name’s Theresa.”

  “Molly. Stout.” She waited for a reaction, but there was none. She held out her hand to shake.

  “No touching,” Theresa said, gesturing to the cooks in the kitchen, one of whom was watching them.

  Molly dropped her hand. “You don’t know my name?”

  “Well, Stout is familiar. Any relation to Haviland?”

  “Some.”

  She chuckled—a dry, crackling sound, like a wood fire. “A Stout, spirit-touched. I bet Arkwright and his crew are trying to keep a lid on that news.”

  “They don’t tell you anything about what’s going on outside? No newspapers or anything?”

  The woman’s sharp eyes fixed on her. “This is exile, sweetie. They send you here specifically to cut you off from the rest of the world. Why? Have I missed something interesting?”

  “A few things.” Molly wrapped her hands around her upper arms and tried to shrink lower in her chair. The others were still watching her. “Why are they all just staring at me like that? You said they give them drugs?”

  “Give us drugs. Everyone here, usually before they even give the tour. Makes us placid.”

  She looked around at the others. I guess that explains it. “You don’t seem placid.”

  The woman chuckled again. “Well, maybe once you get to know me.”

  A loud bell rang, and Molly jumped halfway out of her chair. The other patients, meanwhile, finally pulled their eyes away from Molly and turned to the kitchen. They shuffled toward the window. Theresa rose slowly, watching Molly with a slight smirk, and joined the line for food. “Don’t want to miss out,” she said.

  The first patient returned to a table with a battered tin tray. On it were a pasty white bun, a small pile of beans drowning in sauce, a wilted carrot and a paper cup of water. Molly grimaced, but her stomach grumbled. She joined the line just behind Theresa.

  Once Theresa had her food, she stepped aside but didn’t return to her table. Molly was handed a tray like the others. Theresa leaned in close to look at Molly’s food.

  “Huh,” she said. “That’s interesting.”

  Molly looked down at their food trays. “What is?” And then she saw it. On Theresa’s tray, a thick white pill rested next to the cup. Molly’s didn’t have a pill.

  Theresa took her food back to her table. Molly sat at the table next to hers and began crunching on her carrot as she watched the older woman surreptitiously crush her pill with her spoon and mix the powder into some of the sauce, smearing it across the tray until it was unrecognizable. She looked up and saw Molly watching her.

  “You really should eat,” she said, taking a spoonful of beans. “Being hungry doesn’t help anything.”

  Molly followed her example and ate every last horrible bean on her tray.

  They didn’t turn the lights off at night. After she’d eaten her supper in her room and passed the tray back to the orderly, she’d been locked in, with nothing to do but lie on her bed waiting for darkness. But it didn’t come. Molly closed her eyes and stared at the dull red of the back of her eyelids. She missed the dark of the open sky, far from city lights. She missed the sway of the ship as Legerdemain swam them through the air. With no sun to mark the passing hours, and no clocks anywhere, she couldn’t even tell what time it was.

  Still, no one’s trying to kill me, and I’m not dragging my family into another fight with Disposal. Not promising another spirit help I can’t give. I can get used to it. She slept in fits and starts, and in between she paced her room, just to be moving.

  When the orderlies came along the hallway unlocking doors in the morning, Molly rose from her bed to leave, but Van Orden bustled into her room before she could even get to the door, holding gauze and tape in his hands. “Sit back on your bed, please,” he said without looking at her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, I guess. Didn’t sleep well.”

  “Hrrm. I’m here to look at your nose.” He came to her bedside. “Hold still, please.” She did, and she closed her eyes as he pulled away the bandages over her nose, making her face ache anew. Van Orden spent a minute prodding and pulling at her nose. It hurt, but Molly didn’t complain.

  When he was done his examination, he took a piece of gauze—smaller this time—and applied it to her nose with tape.

  “It’s healing,” he said. Without another word, he walked out of the room.

  Molly stood and rubbed her cheeks vigorously. Her nose still hurt, but it was nice to have the large bandage off. Her skin was oily though. It had been several days since she’d bathed. The orderly hadn’t mentioned showers, but since she hadn’t noticed any odor on the other patients, she figured there must be a way to get herself clean. But just seeing the sky would be even better.

  She hurried to the small window in the common room, hooked her fingertips on the sill and pulled herself up. She could see a bright blue sky and the branch of an evergreen sitting somewhere close to the building. Pale yellow winds rippled across the skies far above. Molly watched them reshaping the gossamer clouds, breaking them apart and pulling them back together like sculptors working clay.

  “Hey, get down from there!” she heard behind her. She dropped down and turned to see one of the cooks glaring at her through the iron mesh.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Just trying to see the sun.”

  “No climbing.”

  “Okay.” She looked up at the window. A few other patients were edging in around her, their wide eyes flicking between her and the glass. Their pupils looked odd, she realized. Too wide for the bright light. “Looks like a nice day out there,” she said to the woman next to her.

  “Blue,” the woman said. Just the one word. Molly nodded and stepped back out of the way, letting the woman get closer to the window. The meal bell sounded, and Molly joined the line at the kitchen window. A few moments later she had a tray bearing a slice of cheese, half a sausage and a biscuit half soaked in the sausage’s oil. Her supper the night before hadn’t been any bigger.

  “That’s all?”

  The cook on the other side of the mesh looked at her with scorn and said nothing. Molly took her tray and sat down. She picked up the sausage.

  “It’s mostly salt,” Theresa said, taking a seat next to her. “Just to warn you.”

  Molly was too hungry to care. She took a bite, chewed a few times and swallowed before she could think better of it. Theresa watched her eat while picking slowly at her own biscuit. Molly’s breakfast was gone in moments.

  “Still no pills?” Theresa asked.

  Molly shook her head. “Do they ever feed you more than this?” she asked.

  “Less, sometimes. Once I got Julian talking to me—he’s the cook with the birthmark over his eye—and he told me it was bad harvests. Food’s too expensive to waste on the likes of us.”

  Molly nodded. “Because of the fonts.”

  Theresa frowned. “I don’t follow.”

  “The fonts. Haviland Industries has been breaking them, and the more they break, the worse things get. Less wind, less fertile soil, longer winters. That’s what my friend says.”

 
“Breaking the fonts? That’s news to me.”

  “They started using harvesters that pass through the fonts and pull spirits directly from the other side, and it destroys the fonts in the process. I thought the only one was on the Gloria Mundi, but they’re—”

  “Extractors,” Theresa said. “They were just a theory last I knew.”

  “You know about them?”

  The woman nodded. “I’m Theresa Walker. Former public relations director of Haviland Industries.”

  “You…you worked for them?”

  “Thirteen years. Five of them at Tyler Arkwright’s right hand. And now you’re looking at me like I just grew horns.”

  “Sorry.” Molly dropped her eyes. “How did you go from there to here?”

  “My boss, Tyler Arkwright, was the supposed president of the company, but you can only spend so much time with him before you realize he couldn’t tie his own shoes without help. And then you start asking questions, and eventually you ask the wrong questions, and open the wrong doors, and you end up in here.” She gestured around her.

  “You found out who was really in charge? That Tyler Arkwright was just an actor playing the part?”

  Theresa’s eyes fixed on her, and Molly felt again how sharp they were. “You know about that?”

  Molly nodded. “Yeah, I know Charles Arkwright was still running things.”

  “Not many do.”

  “Even in here?”

  “In here?” Theresa chuckled. “Try telling these people anything. They don’t even hear you half the time. But step back a moment. What do you mean, was running things?”

  “Well, I think Charles Arkwright is dead, so—”

  Theresa sat forward. “Dead? How?”

  Molly squirmed. “That’s a long story.”

  “And you have somewhere else to be? It’s your turn. What have I missed?”

  Molly glanced around. Some of the other patients were watching her, but she was getting used to that. And if I can’t tell my story here, where can I tell it? Her harness dug into her spine every time she hunched down in her chair, so she sat up straighter. “Umm, okay. How long have you been in here?”