Mr Nietzburger found a crate and climbed atop it, his head held up and his back erect, just as Thornton had stood in the centre of the Socialisation Room a few days before. Those Thought-Makers who remembered Mr Nietzburger noticed the change in his colours. The thin black outline that had marked him so definitively had misted out to a charcoal haze more than half a metre from his body.
Sophie walked into the camp just as Mr Nietzburger began to speak. His suit pants were rolled up to reveal the curling hairs on his thin legs. He wore no shoes. His jacket, once a symbol of all he stood for, was in tatters. Most of the missing shreds had become the padded handles of glass-daggers. His crew-cut was streaked with rivulets of sweat and his thin drawn face was alive with passion.
Sophie did not recognize the invader of her haven, the man that had been the instrument of her return. There was very little to recognize in him. But her indifference might have been due to the fact that she now believed it was Mariella who had brought them here – not her defeat or another’s spite. There was a subtle orchestration behind this whole spectacle, and it was that now provoking recognition.
The girl she had named ‘Dove’ took her to the doorway of one of the larger tents. It was dim inside, but after a little while her eyes picked out the bent figures of men on stools. She looked again and saw that it was the colourful left-hand gloves they were painstakingly stitching.
‘These gloves are all being made for those who cannot make their own, or cannot see enough of the truth to want to,’ Dove said proudly. ‘We who believe donate our clothes so that these can be made, bringing to the people what they need.’
Sophie turned from the cave-like factory and came face to face with an old woman. The woman’s head was lowered and she did not look up at Sophie as she stepped to avoid her and walked over to a large box at the entrance to the tent. She slowly eased herself out of her heavy winter coat and left it in a bundle in the box. The old woman, now covered by only a thin dirty shift, walked away without looking at either Dove or Sophie. Although she clasped her arms to her sides, she could not help the trembling that shivered through her body under the cold touch of wind.
Sophie was then told how The Others, to keep the truth foremost in their minds, came together three times a day to nod their heads in synchronicity. It was presided over by Thornton himself.
As Sophie walked around the camp, learning more of The Others’ way of life, she felt a flutter of excitement in her chest. These Rules were enticing. They reeled Sophie’s mind in with a slow and steady hand. They were straightforward and explicit, unlike the Rules of the Anonym.
But Sophie had learned something in the darkness. When she had lain, at the end of everything, collapsed on the floor of her apartment-home, she had left herself, and then returned again. She had been shown a kind of emptiness. Every fibre of her being told her that this is what would bring her back to Mariella. So again and again, no matter what she was shown or told, Sophie brought herself back to this emptiness. Those around her seemed not to notice. Part of this was because even as Sophie remained on the edges, not investing herself in the beliefs that made this real for the others, she felt no derision for them. She did not see them as lower, or less than herself. She felt, towards all those around her, compassion. This compassion was unlike pity. She did not believe herself to be more, or higher, or better. In fact, she observed those around her closely, seeing and feeling all the connections between them and herself. She saw the pain she had also known, she saw the same struggles towards answers, towards freedom. She reached out where before she had shunned. And now not only her colours, but her heart, began to grow and grow.
A bell rang out.
‘Oh, come, it must be head-nodding time,’ said Dove, tugging on her sleeve. ‘You must share this with us.’
The big green tent that was the temple looked like the shell of an animal, a shell worn out after a long and rough journey. As Sophie walked through the doors pulled back, she could not help feeling like a hermit invading a discarded home. It was shadowy inside here too, the only light filtering through the rough seams that held the tent together. Dozens of people covered the floor, their legs crossed and their eyes trained on the centre of the dome, where Thornton waited quietly atop the same stool from which he had first spoken. Dove and Sophie found an empty patch of dirt. The neatly manicured grass had long ago been trodden into mud.
Thornton’s head was bowed, his hands behind his back. He waited like this until the very last rustle of movement had been stilled, the last child’s voice muffled, the last cough choked back. Then he began to speak.
‘My friends, you have been unlearning well. There has been so much which we have been taught, the only purpose of which was to keep us bound. I am here to free you. I will lead you to purity.’
The faces illuminated by the few lines of sunlight melted with gratitude and reverence. No one dared to make a sound. They hardly dared to breathe.
‘As you know, the world that was created for us was created for consuming. Consumption was used as the salve for our unease, as the intoxication for our hungry minds. You have moved forward admirably my friends. I see the discipline with which you have been ready to give up salt, and pasta on Tuesdays. I feel that you are ready for the next truth I have to share with you. In the world we have all known, we ate food with greed and abandon. We gave no thought to the hows, whens or wheres of our consumption. Here we are, searching for purity, for the truth, and we eat when we feel hunger, in any place we choose, in a disgusting varieties of manner and substance, with whom ever may be present. This carelessness is no longer something we can tolerate for ourselves. Food is an elemental and sacred need. It is our sustenance. It should not be an object of wanton indulgence.’ Thornton stopped, and lowered his head to his chest once again. There was complete silence in the tent.
After a few minutes, Thornton raised his head and said, ‘My friends, do you wish to unlearn the evil of our past?’
As one, the people nodded. ‘Yes, Thornton. Tell us how.’
‘This is a subject to which I have given much thought. It will not be easy to transform from the consumers we once were. It is something difficult to do on one’s own, and at the same time very susceptible to the temptations presented by the diversity of our appetites. Therefore, I believe the way to the truth is to select one partner with whom to eat for the rest of your life. This partnership shall be a sanctified bond, consecrated by myself. You shall permit no others to eat with you, nor see you eating. A range of tastes and appetites must be controlled, therefore women must choose a man, and men a woman to help them along this path. It is also absolutely necessary to choose a partner of a different race and hair colour from oneself. This choice, of the person you will eat with for the rest of your life, the only person you will eat with for the rest of your life, is gravely important. I ask of each of you that you consider this question carefully. In a moment we will commence nodding our heads, after which we will pick our partners. Thank you for your attention.’
Thornton climbed down from his stool. A slender woman stood up and walked ahead of him out the tent, clearing a path through the congregation.
Notes of song began to wheedle through the tarpaulin, cloth and plastic of the tent walls. Sophie’s lips parted slightly in surprise as she recognized the melodies she had heard all her life. They followed a safe, reassuring pattern. The lyrics, repeated again and again, were hard to decipher and not provoking of thought when heard. They resembled nothing so much as the tunes proliferated by the Anonym. All around the room, those seated on the ground began nodding their heads in time to the music. Most of them had their eyes closed, and Sophie noticed a sense of security building like a wall in the cluttered space. She noted too that it was a feeling she did not share.
Something about the scene drew her mind back, to the minutes she had spent in front of a red traffic light, blinking eternally at her. She remembered the exact feeling that seared through her at the sound of music she had never he
ard, that followed no rules except its own, that stepped out of what was comforting and contained. She remembered how she had stamped in fury at her accelerator, how she had run through the supermarket aisles, and finally how she had defiled her home and self.
Sophie looked around. We are all fighting, we are all struggling, she thought. Against whom do we fight? Against whom do we struggle? Who has made this world if not us?
The people in the temple continued to nod their heads in perfect, steady unison.
Chapter 22
Mr Nietzburger had always received his directives from the Head Office of Regulation. He had never asked how or why the regulations were made – he had worked, as they say, in the field. He had therefore only ever seen the Head Office from the outside. But this was the place which drew his anger. It circled the Head Office, pulled in by its very presence, like a sinkhole of mud. This was who he had worked for, this was who had betrayed him. This was who he would attack and maim and kill.
He told himself that he was working for his freedom, and that when he found it, he would have secured freedom from his past, freedom for his future, and freedom for all those around him. He repeated the word again and again to himself as the cold seeped into his thin suit pants from the ground where he knelt. Freedom. Freedom. It was his talisman and his fuel.
Spread before him was an expanse of paper, where he had sketched a rough floor plan of the Head Office of Regulation. He was ready. He would take them by surprise, his betrayers knowing nothing of the war they had declared until they were conquered.
Mr Nietzburger gathered his young fighters, about twenty of them, and left the gates of the Institute with his head held high, his chin tilted defiantly upwards.
As they wound away from the gates and deeper into the city, those that had gathered on the outskirts of the camp could not fail to notice them. They walked with faces tight and hard. They looked as if no matter what happened, they would take what they needed. They clutched their weapons fiercely. The sun, taking no notice, danced over their blades and barrels, throwing sparks of light to whoever wanted to see them. But it was not the habit of people of the city to take note of the dance of the sun. They saw instead the will burning in the fighters’ faces. They saw that they had a goal and somewhere to go. This was what was real to them. In fact, the sense of purpose in the group was so palpable to those that saw them that they reached their fingers forward as they passed.
A few of these, those whose need to believe was most urgent, joined the edges of the group. They had spent years, most of their lives, running from things to know and so it did not pose a problem that they only learnt of the target as they closed upon it. By walking with Mr Nietzburger they did not need to walk alone, and they did not need to know where it was they were walking.
The bigger the group became the quicker it grew. The fighters filled the width of the street and trailed down the block. Idle steps became a march. Their feet beat the ground with a steady synchronized violence. They would have what they wanted. They would take it.
The furious beat of steps filled his ears. This was not what Mr Nietzburger wanted. What he wanted was a quick silent stab into the heart of the Anonym, to rip into their core as they had torn into his world. He had not yet let himself know that he was not angry at the world that they had created, but that they had let him pierce the illusion of it.
They were still a few streets from the headquarters of the enemy. He could put a stop to this. Just ahead of him he saw an empty parking lot covered over with the shimmering of hot air. This movement of the invisible was part of Mariella’s world, but this was not what he saw. He saw an opportunity.
Mr Nietzburger was the leader of this herd of need, so when he veered to the left, off the road, and through the broken hanging gates, no-one missed a step. At a discreet movement of his fingers, one of his group rolled over an old tire and placed it on its side in front of him. When he climbed on the rubbery tube he was not raised much higher, but it was enough to gain instant silence throughout the crowd.
In a low and clipped voice that was nevertheless unmistakably audible to everyone, he explained that they could not all join him in seeking vengeance, that he planned to attack by stealth.
‘When we are ready, we will come for you. Then we will lay our victory at your feet.’
One of Mr Nietzburger’s group was a young boy, hardly out of Class, only a year or two of Training behind him. His face was soft and undefined by struggles or experience. Mr Nietzburger had wondered if he was too young to bring along, but his passion had marked him apart. Who needs freedom more than he? Mr Nietzburger thought. Let him fight for it.
Wellington marched in the crowd, the beat of angry steps filling his ears. He had found a leader and he had found a cause. What better to fill the bleeding hole left by his absent treasure?
Using Mr Nietzburger’s access key, the small group of fighters entered through the back gate, down into the underpass that led to the underground parking. The Head Office was a sleek office block, not ostentatiously large. In fact, its six-floor height was dwarfed by the buildings beside it. Its imposing qualities came from the severity of its lines and the implacability of its blank windows. It was a place so sure of its own power that it had not bothered with superfluities like security guards or cameras. It was surprisingly easy to infiltrate.
From the dim dungeons of the parking, filled with expensive shiny cars, Mr Nietzburger’s fighters made their way carefully up the stairs. The stairs were narrow and dusty. Their existence was owed only to the faint possibility of a fire, or electrical breakdown. The machinations of nature were not considered in the normal routine of the Head Office. Here, shiny silver boxes carried people up and down, ensuring they would never walk more than a few steps at a time. Mr Nietzburger was confident they would not meet anyone unexpectedly.
As they ascended, he deposited three of his fighters at the landing of each floor. At his signal, they would attack the whole building in one swoop.
At the sixth and final floor, he lifted his gun to the ready. Every muscle in his body was tensed and ready for action.
On the other side of the city, in the gloom of the green tented temple, Sophie’s head stopped nodding. The quiet that she had been carrying inside her, the force that had been pushing away her desire to know and obey these new rules, expanded outwards from its place in her belly. It moved to encompass the limbs of her body and up to the top of her head. The quiet grew until it filled all the space around her, leaving no room for the wheedling, whining music. Within all that cleared space, both in and outside of her, a vision appeared.
It came with gentleness. It was not blinding. Its advent did not shake and shudder the earth. It was simple, and very real.
She could See, at some point in the future, some point where time did not matter, this very temple, overrun by weeds and wild things. Its makers, its deities, would have crumbled back to nothing, leaving only memories to drift through the air.
She saw this place as Mariella had seen the Placement facility. She saw it for the smoke and shadows it was.
On every floor of the Head Office, from the dim and fetid air of the disused stairs, fighters burst out. A full round of bullets sprayed from them before they had time to open their fear-clenched eyes. The cacophony of those small lead torpedoes blasting into windows, cracking computer screens and ricocheting off the steel frames of cubicle walls was the first thing to assault their senses.
The second was silence.
Mr Nietzburger was the first to recover from the shock of the scene. He walked up and down the spaces between the desks, kicking over wastebins, pushing over filing cabinets. With all his motion and the violence of his will, he hoped to undo the truth of what was there.
What there was was nothing. Not a single person. The plush carpets were untrod, the ergonomically designed chairs unoccupied. The frustration of Mr Nietzburger’s search resounded unnaturally through the eerie quiet.
There was no-one there. Had
there ever been?
Wellington stood the closest to Mr Nietzburger and the violence of his leader’s emotion made his own body quiver. Anticipation had grown inside him almost to the point of bursting. His finger trembled on the lethal weapon that had somehow become his. In a different time, in a different life, Wellington might have felt unsettled by the weight of the gun. Now it was a comfort. He had accepted it the same way he had accepted his defeat by the Rules. Without question.
All of a sudden there was a movement over by the window, a human face. When Wellington saw the flash of eyes and skin and hands at the glass, a streak of being in the emptiness that gaped before them, he fired.
Sophie held the vision for a moment of time. Right inside its being, she did not know if it was long or short. She did not know anything, except that which was before her. When it passed, in its way, she saw again the shadows of people bent around her, their heads moving up and down. She saw the faint gleam of their gloves, patched together from remnants of their world.
Deep in the centre of her, an urge was born, as it had been on the day that the seed of Mariella had stretched out life in her belly. Sophie stood up, quietly, and walked out of the temple.
She continued walking, without pause, through the camp. Since most of The Others were at the head-nodding, only a few stragglers remained outside. They were those who could not choose Thornton’s Rules or Mr Nietzburger’s battle. They had made the process of decision their own kind of occupation, with its own rewards and sacrifices. Sophie did not look at them. She was drawn by a light both inside her and before her eyes.
Mariella Page 8