Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  For a while, every time I walked through the entrance on my way back from a smoke in the yard, I played a game with myself, trying to imagine what this Yulia might have been like. For example: a woman with an old Inuit-influenced name, genteel, interested in heritage and abstract concepts, pulling strings behind the scenes. Or a woman who wears her name like a badge, an armour, those strong syllables demanding attention whenever she takes to the podium. Or a woman who doesn’t care for rhythm, has no music in her soul at all – only a head for acquisition and investment. Or a dreamer, an idealist. A palaeontologist of wolves. Which woman was it who left their mark, Yulia? Who were you to fund such an enterprise? Did you even know, or care, what you were developing? And why does it matter to me, when I’m here and you’re not and for all I know you’re dead in the ground? You must be dead by now. Mustn’t you, Yulia, the reason I’m here?

  Yulia Tamaruq. The money.

  I like Biruk’s idea though. It’s nice to think that we could learn from those mythical, ill-fated creatures who once roamed the northerly plains of the Arctic circle, absorb something of their natures into our own.

  June 2392

  Eight days since Luisa was exposed to the virus. As yet the subject has shown no symptoms and remains in health. The team is excited – seven days is the previous record. I am cautiously optimistic.

  June 2392

  I lost Luisa.

  It happened very fast.

  She held out for a record ten days, but after the symptoms showed it was a matter of hours. During that time we pumped her with a number of treatments for Type 2 which are in very early-stage development, one after the other – she showed no response to anything. Then we gave her the Type 1 cure, but it was too late – she’d already relapsed into crisis. We have to keep them conscious for effective monitoring, but after three hours of this I insisted on an assisted exit. The lab technician offered to do it but the responsibility was mine. I administered the dosage myself and through my technician’s gloves I felt the moment where her pulse stopped.

  Feeling very low tonight. Drunk a lot of vodka.

  Once again I’m questioning whether I’ll be able to stick the job.

  July 2392

  I’m recording but now I’m here I find I’ve nothing to say.

  Nothing I want to say, anyway.

  I probably should say that a replacement batch has come through. Luisa was not the only casualty. Her unit now has a resident and so we begin again.

  July 2392

  I forgot to add – it seems that some of the others choose to spend time with the subjects before they are brought downstairs. They asked me if I wanted to do the same but I can’t bring myself to do that. It feels too much like deception.

  I’m not looking forward to the next few days.

  November 2392

  I had another interesting talk with Biruk about the history of this place. Before redfleur appeared, it was used for something else. Something that had been going on for much longer.

  It started with the Blackout. The polar communities were still young back then, and far more vulnerable than they are now. Even as we evolved with the climate the fear remained – fear we’d run out of space, fear there would never be enough room – squashed up like we were against the north pole. That’s where the House came in. Originally, Biruk tells me, it was used for geo-engineering. The intention was to develop the human immune system – make it tougher, hardier, more resistant. Capable of surviving in all of those plague-infested, barren places we could no longer populate.

  The part I find intriguing is that there were a number of ancillary centres. One was over in Sino-Siberia. Something happened there, and they had to eradicate the site. Biruk didn’t offer any detail, but – well, it seems one of the experiments got out of control. I didn’t ask for more information. I can imagine the scenes.

  There was another site in the South Atlantic sea city. It must have been the perfect place to conceal a renegade project like that, and the extremes of life at sea would have presented a whole other kind of challenge for the engineers (the way he talked about it I could tell Biruk had fantasized about life on the ocean). Biruk says that after the Great Storm, the House tried to make contact with the sea city… but to no avail. Whatever advances those pioneers might have made, the research has been lost to the waves forever.

  The overarching Osiris Project – this whole geo-engineering initiative – was funded by the Osiris Knowledge Bank. Most things, when you look back far enough, lead to the knowledge banks.

  I asked Biruk if any of the ancillaries were still going but he said everything north of the belt was abandoned years ago. The emergence of redfleur overtook events. It became the priority. Well, there’s not much point in engineering a superhuman when there’s a virus out there that can knock you dead in a week. I was secretly relieved. It’s like the back-room implant ops – it feels ethically wrong, too close to weaponry for my liking.

  Now our focus is entirely upon Type 2 redfleur.

  January 2393

  I didn’t like to think about this when I started my work here and I confess to a slight anxiety even to record it in private – but these are the facts. A lot of my colleagues are dead in the outside world. I almost said ‘the real world’ for a moment there. Yoseph was actually reported as deceased. Others are retired, or have allegedly changed careers, or their presence has been erased in some other way. I wonder what they have said about me, to my team? I haven’t asked. Some things you don’t want to know.

  Today I found myself thinking about Jeysson for the first time in a long time. It was a strange feeling, remembering the little jokes we used to have, teasing Saamik about changing his hair every two minutes, or just casual gossip about the latest immersives. I suppose they were the friends I never had, and yet I never identified them as such, I always said, ‘my colleagues’.

  I had a dream that I tried to explain to them what we do here, and as I talked, my tongue twisted around on itself – my tongue had grown as long as my arm – and the more I talked, the more it twisted, like a plait of hair, like a worm. And they sat there and stared at me and didn’t say anything at all.

  February 2393

  We are so close to a cure. So damned close! I can hardly speak for the excitement. Biruk is making final adjustments to the treatment now. I told him today that he’s an extraordinary scientist and it’s a privilege to work with him. He said he felt the same. A neatly mutual circle of appreciation.

  April 2393

  Today is a historic day.

  Today, a subject has survived.

  Further trials in the next week – if all goes well we begin mass production of the treatment as soon as possible.

  Today, everything we do is worthwhile.

  January 2394

  We’ve received reports of a new strain. The treatment has been out six months. We’d refined it, we’d just begun working on a vaccination.

  Six goddamn months.

  I don’t know what to say. What is there to say?

  What?

  July 2399

  I’ve been remiss with these updates. Five years remiss, by the looks of it.

  I see, listening back, that this was meant to be a truthful and honest account.

  The truth is, the person who stepped into that zeppelin back in ninety-two is not the same person who is speaking now.

  I’ve left the compound twice in the past seven years. Vacation. They insist on us taking them, but next time I will refuse.

  Out there, life continues, innocent and undisturbed.

  I went to a resort on the north British islands. I spoke to a young waiter – she couldn’t have been twenty, all fresh skin and sparkling eyes and ambition – she wanted to be a marine biologist and she’d taken this coastal job, god help her, to be close to the sea. I looked into that face and I saw the dreams I’d had and I felt a rush of – of everything – hope and despair and bitterness and rage and a horrible, sneering condescension that I can’t exp
lain, and instead of congratulating her on her ambition I wanted to say to her, you do not understand the world. You have no idea what keeps you alive, and if you knew, you would never sleep again.

  You’re a fucking idiot.

  That’s what I wanted to say.

  That is what I said. I said it not even realizing I’d spoken aloud, until I saw the young waiter staring at me like I’d slapped her in the face.

  It seems I can’t be around people. Not those people, those innocents, not on the outside.

  There are the staff here and there are the subjects and they, from hereon, are the focus of my life. I used to want acclaim. I dreamed about honourable mentions, prizes, an international platform, but I don’t care about that any more. I don’t care about anything but redfleur.

  In the past seven years we’ve beaten it twice and twice it’s evolved. We run through subjects. I used to keep track of their names but I can’t remember any longer, even with the name tags, I’m blind to them. Every couple of months or so we get a new batch.

  But I won’t give up hope. I know more now than I ever did before. I know more about redfleur than anyone on the planet, except Biruk Oliyad, and I don’t begrudge him that particular accolade.

  I won’t give up.

  January 2400

  So here we are in twenty-four hundred. A new year, a new century.

  The last night of twenty-three ninety-nine was a turbulent evening with the threat of sandstorms to come. Despite the wind speed the four of us – myself, Biruk, Sara, and Yoseph – sat in the yard in our desert robes drinking vodka and listening to music. There’s no exterior lights of course – nothing to give away our location (like anyone would ever think to look here – it’s ridiculous, really). We might be lost in time, for all I know. In the dark I could hear the sand moving. The wind getting up, whistling and thumping against the solar panels and the domes. Grit was making my eyes water and I kept the vodka lid screwed on tight between sips. I could imagine the storm building in the distance, the way you see them in the day sometimes – dust devils whirling across the horizon, banks of sand raised up like it’s alive. Makes you realize how alone we are out here.

  Except we’re not alone, are we? We’re never alone. The subjects are here too, locked in their wards, in the ether realm of semi-consciousness, deep below ground. They’re always with me, whatever I’m doing, from taking a piss to dropping into an immersive in outer space.

  A security guard came to get us – said it was too dangerous out here – but it was quarter to midnight and we insisted on waiting. I’ve noticed there are fewer security than there were when I first arrived, and I swear the kids get younger. Well, it’s not like we need security. The funding’s better spent elsewhere, and so Biruk told them. Anyway, I couldn’t bear to go back inside. Even though there was no light, only the touch of Sara’s hand, next to mine, the glass of the bottle against my palm.

  As everyone was in a relaxed mood I took the opportunity to quiz Biruk about the Corporation’s space programme. Is it true they’re planning to go off-world? Biruk humoured me for a while, yes of course, he says, the Corporation currently occupy one of the most uninhabitable places on Earth, why wouldn’t they want to decamp to an even more hostile location? But when I pressed him he wouldn’t be drawn, and when I think back on the conversation I can’t say for sure what might or might not be true of it. None of us feel much of a tie to our homes any more, but in some ways, Biruk is African through and through. I swear the Corporation encourage all those old tales of witchcraft and alchemy; it’s a self-perpetuating smokescreen.

  When Yoseph’s antique watch beeped we gave a sort of halfhearted cheer and Biruk said, ‘To the downfall of redfleur,’ and we all repeated it together, and then we went back in.

  Happy fucking twenty-four hundred.

  July 2405

  Last night I got drawn into a conversation about ethics with Biruk and a newcomer, Malina. Knew I shouldn’t have responded but I couldn’t help myself. A new batch had just come in – that’s what’s triggered it. We’re starting to pinpoint what we ask for now – factors like age and race and so on, see if that makes any difference. I think secretly we’re all hoping for a natural immune, however implausible that may be. What I can’t stand is the way Malina’s acting like no one’s ever made these points before, as if we haven’t all battled with our own consciences a thousand-fold. There she sat, quoting Nuuk at us like it was our first day in medical school.

  ‘You’re meant to be using chimpanzees,’ she says, sanctimonious as they come.

  Yes, there was a time when I too believed the myth about the chimp farm, but I know better now. All that was lost in the Blackout. What remains is a useful cover story. Now, every time there’s a new advance, medical science thanks the lab chimps, and no one complains. They were extinct already, so why should anyone care about their survival now?

  In addition to the blanket ethics, Malina also has issues with where we get the subjects.

  I let Biruk explain things to her, and as he sat there, speaking very calmly, his words very measured, the way he always does, I heard him delivering the exact same speech to me all those years ago.

  The fact is, southerners aren’t censused. And yes, of course we have people north of the belt who fall out of the system. Just because we’re the most advanced nation on the globe doesn’t mean there aren’t holes in society. Five years ago there were movements petitioning to use criminals – it might be a speedier solution, people said. But that would directly contravene the Nuuk Treaty, wouldn’t it, Malina? And once you’re a Boreal citizen, there’s always a way of tracking you, always. Southerners, on the other hand…

  Southerners are untraceable.

  The first case of redfleur was documented twenty-three years ago. That’s most of Malina’s life (she’s a prodigy, if you didn’t guess, and an insufferable one at that). Year on year, outbreak after outbreak. Strain after strain. Every time we think we’ve beaten it, another version evolves. Maybe we get six months’ grace. Sometimes it’s a couple of years. But there’s one thing you can promise about redfleur: it always comes back.

  For every person who dies here, thousands have been saved. I know the moral arguments. I know the value of one life should be incalculable. Maybe somewhere in the universe there’s a perfect world where that’s true but, Malina, this is not one of them.

  April 2408

  Biruk, Biruk, my old friend.

  What have you done?

  What were you thinking?

  I can hardly bear to record this. But he deserves the truth.

  On the twenty-first of April Biruk Oliyad injected himself with an enhanced superstrain of Type 6 redfleur. He did it in the lab, under sterile conditions – exemplary to the end. He sealed himself in there and insisted that we observe him.

  Even when we’d broken in he refused the morphine. His eyes were wild and the vessels had already burst. I could see the pain he was suffering and I knew – with all the expertise of the last sixteen years at my disposal, I knew exactly what was happening to his body. His neural pathways. God help him, his nerve endings.

  I lost my control then. I took hold of his shoulders and I shook him like a misbehaving child.

  ‘What the fuck have you done, Biruk?’

  I didn’t know it at the time but I was screaming. They said afterwards it was frightening. I was frightening. But this was my friend, my ally, my counsellor. Yoseph was holding me back, or I might have ended it there and then. I would have snapped Biruk’s neck. It would have been kinder.

  Biruk grabbed my arm. I could feel the strength of his grip through the suit, that last surge of adrenaline – and he looked into my eyes with what was left of his. I thought of Luisa. I couldn’t help it, I thought of her, that young girl. My first subject. A teenager. Maybe he was thinking of his first. He spoke so only I could hear.

  ‘Davida, I couldn’t live with myself any longer.’

  We had to strap him down to administer the dru
gs. Malina said he’d gone crazy and we should accede to his wish, but I couldn’t let him die like that. Not Biruk. Not my colleague, my friend.

  I am not that much of a monster.

  June 2408

  We burned Biruk like we burned the rest of them. His ashes were driven out to the desert and buried there. I’ve spent so much time wondering what pushed him, what little thing sent him over the line. It’s always a little thing. Some word or gesture or twist of expression or formation of clouds or message in the night or dream or just a name that has a significance entirely unimaginable to anyone else. That is known only to the individual psyche. What was Biruk’s monster? I have no answer and I think I may spend the rest of my life asking this question.

  What is my monster?

  The ability to forget.

  Names, they all have names. So many names. I try but I can’t remember any of them. To me, every one is a Luisa, and that’s what I call them, as I administer our experimental cocktails into their veins and I smile and say, ‘It will be all right, Luisa. It will be all right. It will be.’

  Sometimes I feel like they gave this place the wrong name. They should have called it after qalupalik, the sea creature who stole away children. Sometimes I feel like I am qalupalik. I am the terrible thing in the story, the monster who has a name but nothing else, no other characteristics worth noting, who is the purest distillation of evil. Sometimes I think about a different life. What it might be if I had made other choices. If I had stayed with my team. Ignored the call of Tamaruq. I try to imagine a woman without this great burden. I have an image, an idea, but it’s shapeless. There are no details, or the details seem blandly generic, an idea of an idea, an idealist’s idea of what a life should be. Would I have partnered? Considered adoption? These are only details – facts – in and of themselves they tell me nothing about this other, fictional, Davida. The moment I release her she slips away easily. No doubt glad not to be me.