If Then

by Matthew de Abaitua

  “We could make a stretcher.”

  “Who in the village would help us?”

  “Mum,” said Agnes.

  She was still too young to accept the remorseless indifference of the way things are.

  “I should go and get the doctor from Lewes,” said Ruth.

  “You’re going to leave us?”

  Agnes threw open the bedroom window.

  She saw a rook flit through the air, and pointed at it. “I know you can see us. Help us, my brother is dying.”

  His forehead was papery and a dry salty rime formed around his lips. Ruth gave him water. His heartbeat was quick and fearful, like a bird caught in the hand. Oh God, must this happen? Her anguish was so great that she was tempted to abandon the children to their fate. She could walk away, pretend this was not happening, she did not have to suffer with them. She had chosen this suffering, as recompense for her behaviour during the eviction. But the suffering was too great, and the balancing of her moral scales seemed a nicety when faced with the prospect of Euan dying in her arms.

  How do we master ourselves at such moments, how is it that we do not merely cut and run? When her father was dying, she said goodbye to him at the hospital, that she would see him again soon, and he said, “You’ll probably never see me again.” He said it jokingly, in such a way that gave her permission to ignore it. She did see him again, when he was at home, and it was a terrible effort for him to maintain the normal routines and responses of the domestic life; her mother was already withdrawing from the unpleasantness, her consciousness sacrificing parts of itself rather than maintain contact with the pain. She made him some mushroom soup, his favourite. Food was a meagre token of love to offer up at such a critical time. They should have spoken more about it, but the various conspiracies that formed her family life forbade it.

  Euan must eat, she decided. Because she was not his parent, she had been too lax in letting him turn away his food. She went out into the garden, dug up a leek, some carrots, an onion, and made vegetable stock which she thickened with a potato. With Agnes holding her brother upright, she spooned the soup into him.

  Agnes found waterproofs and wellington boots and announced that she would fetch the doctor. Ruth was reluctant to let her go. The convoys of the evicted through the valley were remorseless and unpredictable. The unfinished horse she had encountered in the bush, the tree that grew before their eyes, these and other dangerous phenomena might lurk on the outer reaches of the battlefield. And leaving the farmhouse would only expose her to whatever illness Euan had contracted. No, Christopher was right; the Process had foreseen that they would stay in the farmhouse until the boy recovered. Or died. If he died, then her next course of action was obscure to her; likely, she would get Agnes to the Institute then she would give up on life altogether.

  In a cupboard under the stairs, Agnes found dolls, action figures and various board games. From these pieces, she made a grotto that represented all her hopes for life: a happy family, mother and father restored, and her brother treated in a hospital. From the eaves of the farmhouse, the rooks gazed down upon her play with malign austerity. She made a little perfect world upon the rockery, a microcosm in which everything was made alright again. The grotto seemed to Ruth to be a particularly feminine form of heroism.

  Once the guns ceased at sundown, the armour clanked into the farmyard. Christopher sat down at the kitchen table and she served vegetable soup and a hard flatbread. Agnes blew on a spoonful to cool it, and then carefully fed her little brother. His cheekbones were blue, and he could no longer speak. They were losing him steadily, first day by day, then hour by hour.

  Ruth wanted to persuade Christopher to help them.

  “Euan was born during the Process,” said Ruth, drinking her black tea. Outside the rain set in for another night.

  “You’re suggesting he was ordered up by the Process?” said Christopher.

  “It’s possible. His father’s behaviour manipulated in the run-up to conception to increase the likelihood of sperm production that would lead to a male child.”

  “Eminently possible.”

  “And you’re going to let him die?”

  “He’s been evicted. He’s not part of the Process anymore.”

  “Why create him only to evict him? Isn’t that an indication of malfunction?”

  “Conditions change. That is why it is a process and not a fixed plan. It is predictive and responsive.”

  “I see.” Ruth felt the warmth of the bread between her fingertips. “So we get war and the death of a child?”

  “Our leaders have always had to make choices that would be unacceptable to an everyman.”

  “You don’t question the Process?”

  “Our morality is limited in its perspective. Our understanding is riddled with bias and distortion. None of the issues facing us as a species could even be addressed, never mind solved, by the kind of egotistical questioning that my father specialized in.”

  “You believe in doing what you are told,” she said.

  “Isn’t that what you teach the children?”

  “We develop their capacity for independent thought.”

  Christopher snorted.

  “Your society was cobbled out of competing political ideologies, both of which – by the end – were mere alibis for a larger agenda. The collapse was not merely economic, it was also the end of the illusions surrounding democracy.”

  Ruth said, “It was the end of the world.”

  “And yet the world goes on. What will you do?”

  “Make soup. Care for a sick child.”

  She leant over to gather a spilt drop of soup from the boy’s lip.

  “Fascinating,” said Christopher. “If you do not get you what you want, then what will you do?”

  He turned his attention to Agnes.

  “I watched you make your grotto in the garden. You model the world as you want it to be and then, having built that world of desire and fantasy, hope to bring it to life through wishes.”

  “It makes me happy,” said Agnes.

  “How you will cope with what is about to happen?”

  “What is about to happen?”

  “We’re going to massacre the entire division of the evicted using artillery. In their final moments, they’ll be entirely aware of what is happening to them and they will suffer, and we will measure and tabulate that suffering to monitor how it affects the network of life.”

  “My parents!” cried Agnes.

  “Your parents run the estaminet. They are not part of the division. But you should prepare yourself for the fact that they are a low value resource to be deployed any way the Process sees fit.”

  Ruth’s hands quivered, but she would not let herself be intimidated.

  “What about my husband?”

  “You must stop thinking about him,” said Christopher. “Stop thinking about everyone in your past. Think about now. I could look after you all here. Be the man of the house. The grotto you made in the garden, that could be our lives. Your needs will score more highly with the Process if they are aligned to mine, you see, because I am important. If you sleep with me, then the boy will be allocated his medicine because that will make you happy, and that in turn will increase my quotient of happiness.”

  Agnes looked expectantly at Ruth. Christopher’s logic was alluring even if the scenario he suggested was not.

  “Help Euan,” Ruth said. “Help him. He’s a little boy. Do not attach conditions to your help. Help him unquestioningly. For the principle of helping him.”

  “I will not resort to principles.” He finished his soup and placed his spoon carefully on the edge of his bowl. “But watching you trying to do good is fascinating.”

  She tried another tack.

  “Why is Euan ill?”

  “The manufacturing processes utilized to create the war game produces pollutants which have an adverse effect, particularly on children. His immune system is depressed because of shock and the absence of
his parents. There’s no medical precedent for treating his exposure to these elements.”

  “So how do we help him?”

  “Trial and error would be our normal approach.”

  “What if you make an error?”

  “Error is highly likely. We will need a lot of sick boys if we are to discover a cure.”

  Christopher behaved as if the Process spoke through him. But he was merely aping what he imagined the Process to be. To him, the teenage son of a cynic, human relationships were unsentimental bargains. Although his words were studded with the markers of reason, they were as riddled with wish fulfilment as the grotto Agnes had fashioned in the garden.

  She cleared away the lunch and heated some rainwater for Euan. She would flush out his system. She told Christopher that if he wanted to help then he could go to Lewes and fetch the doctor. He took the remaining hot water to the bathroom, stripped naked to the waist, and shaved the bare isosceles triangle around his implant scar. He shouted for Ruth to come and see; when she entered, nonchalantly registering his torso, he gestured with the razor through the bathroom window toward the high ridge: black smoke was flowing over the ridge as if the war zone were a goblet of poison. The smoke and rain formed a dark whip that lashed the house and the wheat field in turn. A charred scrap of uniform was swirled up and pressed against the windowpane. Then the wind lashed it away.

  His torso was smooth and hairless, and he tensed his stomach to create a flattering array of tensions.

  “Will you go to Lewes for us?” she asked.

  “I have to wait until the armour wants me.”

  “You could just leave. Take the boy with you.”

  “So he can die in my arms instead of yours?”

  “Why are you here? What do you want from us?”

  He feigned hurt. Or maybe he really meant it. His emotions were so immature it made no difference to her either way.

  “I’m staying in the hope that the Process will use me to help you. I’m fascinated to discover if your kindness works.”

  “Walk to Lewes and fetch the doctor. That would help us.”

  He weighed up this suggestion.

  “The doctor only prescribes what the Process tells him to.”

  It was so maddening that there were people and technology around who could help, but would not.

  “Please, Christopher. Go and fetch the doctor. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “You don’t understand. It will all work out for the best if we just stick to our roles.”

  She thought twice about striking him but did not want to risk his temper; instead, she slammed the bathroom door behind her.

  * * *

  She sat up with Euan throughout the cold night, lifting his head now and again so that he could drink boiled rain water. The wind rattled the barbed wire coils against the floorboards, blew its dull music upon the chimney, and carried with it the smell of burning undergrowth fragranced with sage and thyme. She saw a lantern in the farmyard; Christopher was out monitoring the progress of the night convoys.

  She had never asked James what it was like to be connected to the Process; was it a voice in his head, or a series of urges, like the cravings that drew him to the armour? Christopher seemed so different from her husband, and this was what made her suspect that each man influenced how the Process changed them. James had resigned himself to it, and used the forgetfulness it induced in him as a way of avoiding the moral consequences of being the bailiff. Christopher’s engagement was more active, and less docile; a collaboration almost, with one eye remaining human and the other eye immersed in calculation.

  At Euan’s bedside, she drifted in and out of sleep, feeling her head nod loosely forward then jerking awake again. The lantern had vanished from the yard and there were footsteps on the landing. The children were already in her dreams; normally it took years for new friends or acquaintances to tunnel their way into the depths of her unconscious; such was the crisis of feeling around the children that they stood alongside James in her dream, all four of them trying to work out the right way home.

  She awoke, startled by the sense of being observed. She opened the bedroom door. Christopher moped on the landing, shirtless, his skin wet with rain.

  He looked frustrated. She knew that look.

  “You want to make love to me, but you don’t know how to ask.”

  “It’s what must happen,” he said.

  She put her hand on his chest.

  “Do you want me?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Because it will fulfil my role as the wife of the bailiff.”

  The sensation of her fingers against his skin stirred his lust. It was a risk, to arouse him like this; after the implant, James’ lust manifested as a violent indignation that sex had been hidden from him.

  Christopher said, “I want you because you are kind. And it might even help save the boy.”

  He moved close to her.

  She whispered, “We’re not going to bargain like in the old days.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not going to exchange sex for protection, do you understand?”

  “I thought you wanted this.”

  “If I wanted it, then I would ask for it.”

  “The Process knows what’s best for you.”

  “Would you rape me if the Process ordered you to?”

  “It wouldn’t be rape. The Process knows what will make us both happy. Even if we won’t admit it to ourselves.”

  “You’re not under the control of the Process, Christopher. The implant interferes with your sex drive and then all that suppressed energy breaks through at once. I want you to use that energy in a different way. To control the armour. James insisted he couldn’t. But you’re different. In some ways, stronger.”

  He pulled her roughly to him, his breath upon her lips.

  “No bargaining,” she said. “I don’t want to make love to you. We’re both still part of the Process. My happiness matters to it. You’re courting your own eviction.”

  “You’re asking me to want, but refusing to give me the one thing that I want.”

  “I want you to use the armour to take us through the convoys to Lewes. And then, I want you to break into the war zone and rescue my husband.”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Begin with your desire for me. Take all that suppressed longing. And use it to control the armour.”

  She left him on the landing, and went to check up on the children. They slept top to tail in a single bed. She unfolded a blanket upon the painted floorboards, and settled down alongside them.

  * * *

  The next morning, she was woken by the sound of the armour’s engines turning over. She moved to the window. The armour turned its back on the house, and walked steadily through the squalling rain, down into the valley floor and back toward Saddlescombe. She ran barefoot across the muddy yard after the armour. She would not give up. Running alongside its heavy tread, each step throwing off cascades of liquefied earth, she shouted up at Christopher, called him a coward and a killer, promised him she would love him, if only he would help her then she would do anything he asked: all of that and more, she offered to him. But he was lost to the Process. He had no choice over the matter. He had no control. Oh, how foolish she had been, to believe he could be persuaded and that together they could take control of their lives! A higher gear engaged, the armour accelerated and it ran over the ridge, directly into the war, and she slipped down the slope and onto her knees.

  What will you do?

  All her adult life, she had been unable to answer that question. Was it her fault, that no good course of action seemed open to her? Was it her flaw that she could not see what needed to be done?

  From over the ridge, the artillery resumed a steady bombardment. The valley side tremored. The rain seemed to flow uphill. And then, overhead, came the quick dark shape of a shell. She watched its trajectory in a terrible elongated second of apprehension. />
  The shell exploded in the farmyard. The windows of the farmhouse blew out as one, and black smoke poured steadily out of the hole.

  She ran back to the farmhouse, her bare legs entirely sheathed in mud. Another shell, another dreaded trajectory, this time through the roof of the barn so that one side of it burnt fiercely. Although her instincts could sense the imminence of the next shell, she did not slow her pace but ran directly into the house, up the stairs, to the children’s bedroom. It was empty. From overhead, she heard a whining spinning cry, a howl of intent, the last thing the prey hears before the predator is upon them.

  The floor and bed lifted up into the air. The ceiling plaster opened like a white mouth. She was suspended within the bedroom. The floorboards cracked and parted. The chimney stack withdrew. She found purchase, and pulled herself free of the cascade of masonry and dust, and ran back down the stairs with collapse at her heels. In the hallway, the coils of barbed wire lashed around, levered upward by the impact of the timber and bricks. The door to the cellar was open. She scampered on her hands and knees toward it, the barbed wire raking across her back, puncturing the skin, snagging her with pain. She would not give in. The cross beam of the ceiling splintered. She looked over her shoulder, yanked the barbs from her flesh. Screams from down below. The children were in the cellar. She had to be with them. It was all that mattered, at the end of the world, to give comfort. To mollify the brutality of creation.

  Ruth closed the cellar door behind her. Agnes sat at the bottom of the stairs holding Euan’s limp body to her. Good girl, she thought, and she had just enough time to put her arms around the children before another tier of the house gave way.

  * * *

  Having fought so hard to survive, she only wished she could live on with even half of that courage. The children tried to shift from under her. They both smelt strongly of fear. She could just reach Euan’s cheek with her fingertips. His head turned in response to her touch. How long had they been like this? She remembered being conscious of the pain in her back for a long time, but being unable to do anything about it.