He gazes at her in mute incomprehension, and she feels dumb for apologizing. He’s an arrival, still compressing; he can’t experience shame yet, or any complex thoughts or feelings at all, not until he’s fully realized.
She guides him to the bathroom and into the tub, holding him by the armpits as he steps over the rim. He’s so small. She cautiously lets him go. His arms come up to keep his balance. She removes his filthy tee shirt. His bumpy little spine runs down his narrow back to clenched buttocks, wobbling legs. She grips his arm to steady him, leans over and turns on the water, holding her hand in the stream till she feels it go lukewarm. There’s no way he can do hot yet. She detaches the hand shower and pulls it free. The first spray of water jolts him; she knew it would and has a firm grip on his shoulder. It is like washing a mouse. She turns him in place, sprays the water down his front. His little penis and balls are retracted, his bony knees pressed together. The water drives the mess down his legs into the water rushing to the drain, and she turns him around, making sure he’s completely rinsed. Back when these jobs first started, she’d use soap and shampoo. What’s the point? Julian would say, and it got to where she couldn’t stomach that truth, so she stopped.
She lifts the arrival out and wraps a bath towel around him. When she turns from rinsing the filth from the tub, he’s shrugged it off. Too warm. He prods his belly, swaying. He’s weak from hunger. He’s in that dead zone, too exhausted and souped up on meds to feel the pain, and in this lull becoming conscious of the body and its needs. If he doesn’t eat, he will weaken with alarming rapidity, upsetting the carefully calculated rate of compression Theo relies on. His body needs fuel to cope with the shock of its own existence, and soon.
She says, “Badel een.” Wait here.
She sucks in her breath, holds it, and leaves the bathroom. She stuffs the soiled mat into a garbage bag, ties it tight, then stuffs that one into another. She grabs the Lysol and paper towels, cleans the floor and the crate tray. All the while, the boy peers at her from his perch on the toilet. He watches without any sign he comprehends what he is seeing, eyes wide, hands on his knobby knees, big eyes following her every motion. His toes poke at the tile floor.
She digs through the bag of spare clothes, pulls out a tee shirt. She guides his head through the opening, then each arm. The tee shirt falls to his knees. With some effort, she manages to force his feet into the leg holes of a fresh diaper, drag it all the way up over his bottom. He prods the front with his forefinger. He looks pale and he’s clenching up again, lips pressed white as the pain sweeps back in waves.
“Come on. You need to eat. Then I can dose you again.”
SHE SETS ABOUT UNWRAPPING the sandwich Bernie left at the door. The arrival wobbles over to the window, stares at the buildings and winking lights and a few stars sprinkled across the dawn sky. She hunts around for a napkin. A cold breeze wafts over her. She looks up to find the window open and the boy clambering onto the sill.
“Osh! Osh! You can’t do that!” she cries, tugging him inside. He stumbles, his numbed feet tripping over each other. She grabs the blanket from the stroller and wraps it around him. When he resists, she grips him and gives him a hard shake. “Gedneh.” Sit.
He obeys. She rubs his feet with a kitchen towel.
“Ah,” the boy says softly.
She looks up. His lips are parted, damp hair falling over his eyes. His nose is running a little. He touches the snot with his fingers, then pushes his finger up his nose.
“Osh,” she says automatically.
He looks at her for a second before lowering his hand, index finger stuck out.
She brings him his sandwich. He devours the food savagely, unable to perform the simple motions required, his body moving in fits and jerks. Food gobs fall down his front. Lucy opens the baggie for his next dose. He goes still, eyes darting greedily, seeking the syringe. It’s amazing how fast they become addicts.
His temperature is down to 126, so she sends a text, then settles him back in the crate. Once he’s asleep, she takes a shower, spraying down the tub with Lysol first. She leans against the tile wall, her face turned up into the weak waterfall, trying to wash away the image of the boy in here a few hours earlier.
Afterwards, wrapped in a towel, she wipes down the mirror with the heel of her hand, combs her hair. In adulthood she’s parlayed her strange looks into a kind of otherworldly attractiveness, but as a child she was a complete freak with that skin so pale and translucent. Ghost-girl, the other kids mocked. The Nafikh prefer extremes, stark contrasts, intensity of color and light, and those needs sometimes get reflected in the servs They create. Lucy has the palest blue eyes, pale lashes and almost invisible eyebrows, and her hair never lost the white-blonde hue of childhood. As for her smile, other kids in school got braces, but Eva couldn’t afford them, so Lucy spent her youth with her lips clamped tight, till Julian ran his fingertip over her crooked teeth and called them charming. In bars men sidle up and ask where she’s from. She enjoys turning the full force of her strangeness upon them, her face utterly still and eyes drained of emotion, so that they shrink away: Hey, man, no need to be a freak, I was just asking.
But I am a freak, sir. More than you’ll ever imagine.
Her veins are a network of dark blue threads in her white forearms. They were easy to find. She turns her wrists this way and that, examining them. The scars never faded, thick brown slashes crisscrossing her skin. At work she wears wide bracelets to conceal them.
You be a good girl, Theo used to say, and maybe one day those will vanish.
The promise mystified her, as he himself did with his rich accent and smooth groove, the way he rolled cigarettes between his stocky fingers, how he pushed back his hair and chuckled at things she said like she was special. My Lucy-goosie, he called her, stroking her braids. How magical those first months were. Summer evenings on the porch at sunset, the meadows blazing orange. Getting stoned and playing tag, causing the brown horse to prance and snort along the fence. Theo told her that the Source was the remnant of their true selves, from when they had been Nafikh, that it was the key to their salvation. And just as it burnt out, so could it be fanned to life. And it must be. They had the right to live as they were meant to, as they once had. Why should they submit to mortal incarceration? It was their duty to resist, to survive, and then to help others break the chains of servitude.
They didn’t tell her everything, of course, not right away. Not until she started Serving, got a real taste. After those first calls, she curled tight on the floor, banged up and bleeding, her body shaking so hard her bones rapped the wood. You will be rewarded one day, I promise, Julian soothed, cleaning her up with alcohol swabs, wrapping her in gauze. She couldn’t imagine any reward that could make up for having to Serve Nafikh, though in hindsight, she didn’t have it too bad in the beginning. After all, back then she still benefited from the high-end stuff to get through. Julian slipped the needle in, stroked her forehead, and off she went into heavenly numbness. When she visited Ayer, everyone coddled and encouraged her in the warm safety of the house, the snow whirling white past the windows. My brave little firecracker, Theo would say, stroking her cheek, promising it would be over soon.
And then, one Sunday, Julian held up a tiny vial in front of her eyes. The others smiled, and the room brimmed with a queer excitement. She stared at the silvery substance inside the vial. It seemed to be moving, like mist, and something glinted in its center. Julian said it was a grab, a portion of a Source, and if she carried on doing so well, eventually, she would receive this gift, and then again, and again.
How old do you think I am? Theo joked, leaning forward and stroking his own cheek.
He’d arrived over eighty years before, it turned out. Alita and Soren, around forty years. Ernesto and Julian were the most recent and hadn’t been taking grabs for too long, but Julian explained his scars used to be way worse.
Lucy asked, But how does the serv live, if you take some of his Source?
&
nbsp; If she were to go back and find the moment things started to go sour, that was probably it. The question was innocent enough, and she was too shocked to protest when it was explained that, in fact, the serv does not live; but nor did she conceal her distress. Julian put away the vial, and no more was said that day. But what she’d found out agitated her ceaselessly, and she kept bringing it up even though she sensed she shouldn’t.
How many have you killed?
Does it hurt when you do it?
How do you choose? How can you choose?
You need to drop it, you’re pissing Theo off, Ernesto warned one night, taking her outside where they could be alone. Why can’t you understand? It’s natural selection. We only take the ones who can’t make it. They’re weak, useless. They’re a danger to everyone else in Service.
It’s not natural selection if there’s no breeding, Lucy argued, a dog with a bone. The Nafikh will just make more like them, right? It’s not like anything changes. So it’s not natural selection.
The ones who can’t tolerate Service get mangled or killed, Ernesto insisted. What Theo does is a gift to everyone. It’s a painless, gentle exit from an existence they can’t hack, and it protects the servs they’d otherwise endanger. And at the same time, they provide for the resistance. They help us to be strong enough to help those who deserve it.
He made a good argument, solid, reasonable. Except for the playing God part.
She wonders how they justify Theo taking arrivals, which he does now as often as he can, probably hoping they’ll turn him back into a Nafikh faster; arrival Sources are a thousand times more potent. As sick as it makes her, Lucy can’t deny that for the kids, yes, it’s a gift. But the older ones should at least get a chance, shouldn’t they?
You think you’re special, Julian would chastise her, the irony lost on him. You think you’re better than us.
Theo put it another way. Your problem, Lucy-goosie, he said, is you lived too long with people.
THE NEXT FEW HOURS, while the arrival sleeps in his crate, she ties up the garbage bag and sends it down in the elevator for Bernie to collect. She wipes the desk, washes the floor around the crate more thoroughly, adding bleach. Also the bathtub, the sink, the toilet. It’s always like this. As the time approaches, she starts to clean. So she won’t think about it. Like it never happened.
While she cleans, she dreams. She’s going to save up, make a break for it. She gets email alerts from travel sites, and flights are super cheap in the off season. Dublin is way cheap right now. Southern Ireland is one of the havens, where the Nafikh don’t go much. The closest Gate is in London, and it’s not a Nafikh magnet by any means; They like snow and ice, not rain. The fantasies spin into a frenzy and she scrubs and wipes and scours. She’s on the plane, then on a bus looking out at green rolling hills dotted with sheep. The country itself reminds her of flight, of freedom, the way the land pours away westward like streaming hair. She grew up staring at that map in Eva’s kitchen, a red pin marking her ancestral village near Galway. Now she’ll go, she really will. She’ll send Eva a card.
Then, as they always do, the images break up into pieces. Even if she could scrape together the travel costs, the rest of it is beyond her—obtaining fake papers, getting a job with no references, finding affordable housing. Never mind her tag.
Anyway, there’s Eva, alone in her house at the edge of the bay, phoning to ask when will you come see me again, as if Lucy wasn’t just there. She can’t just abandon Eva.
Sometimes she wonders, if in fact there was a Before, did she have a mother. Or if she was a mother herself. If there are mothers there at all. All servs are barren and sterile, so maybe the Nafikh are, too. She’s heard it said the Nafikh always were and always will be, that They weren’t created, They just are. Whether or not that’s so, a bottom-feeder serv like Lucy will never know.
Lucy takes her place at the desk, smoking. It’s so quiet she can hear the minute hand click forward on the bedside clock. She can see the arrival’s feet from here, drooping to one side. Gradually, the slate-gray morning darkens and shifts, and within moments the sky is filled with swirling snow. It’s a sight that always gets to her, it’s so beautiful and wild. She peeks around the partition, but his eyes are closed.
She slides the shot glass over, spins the cap on the Jack.
THE BUZZER SOUNDS ON her phone, indicating Julian’s almost here. She guides the boy out of the crate. He clings to her as she helps him onto the couch, propping a pillow behind his back. His head lolls on his skinny neck. His frame jerks with shudders, and he clutches his elbows, hunching over.
“Here,” she says, handing him some saltines.
He munches, crumbs falling everywhere. Then he doubles over. He sobs, clawing at his chest.
His Source is spitting fiery pain at Julian’s approach, just as hers is. You get used to it, she almost says. But he won’t.
The key turns loudly in the two locks, then Julian steps in carrying a large duffel bag. He tosses it on the floor, takes off his gloves. “What’s going on here? He’s a mess.”
“He’s fine.”
“Yeah? What’s his temp now?”
“One-seventeen.”
He looks towards the couch, nods. “O.K. Dose him, then go.”
Julian unzips the duffel, hands Lucy a syringe, the contents formulated to halt compression. Lucy approaches the boy. He looks up openmouthed, a wet gob of cracker on his lip.
“Alee,” she says, but her throat’s packed tight and hard, and the word comes out a strangled croak. He’s oblivious. He’s noticed the syringe, and his eyes fix on it, hawk-like, shining with need. She pumps it in. He collapses sideways, and she catches him on her forearm, lowers him back onto the pillow.
As she pulls on her coat, she watches Julian unload the duffel: I.V. drip, oxygen mask, blankets. The drip keeps the compression process stalled. Something to do with tricking the body into maintaining a higher temp. Julian will stabilize him, then transport him to wherever Theo’s set up this time.
Lucy’s never seen the procedure. All she knows is a passageway is opened up to the heart, and the Source is released. With an arrival, the Source is still roiling with the potency of creation. It’s a thousand times hotter, can throw off sparks that can burn a hole right through you. Lucy pictures a fireball roaring out from the boy’s puny, narrow chest. Julian swears the procedure doesn’t hurt. They go under sedation and never come back, is all.
Julian counts out $150 into her hand. She folds the bills, stuffs them into her pocket. She takes one last look at the couch.
“Quit it, Lucy.” Julian snaps his fingers in front of her face, breaking her gaze. He leads her to the door, bending close to her ear, hot breath of spearmint and cigarettes. “Go home. Take a bath, have a drink, and think how you helped spare him a life of hell. It’s that simple.”
He goes back inside and closes the door. She stands there a moment, listening, but all she hears is the metallic slamming of the heating pipes in the walls and the faint rumble of traffic outside.
Lucy turns around and walks away, dragging the suitcase behind her.
Lucy Belle Hennessey
Arrival: 1983
*Dropped/tag: 2002
Stat: 29y 5’9” bl blu
Serv: 177/303
Loc: Eternity 02:23
“YOU WANT TO TAKE it again?” the sentry jokes, flipping the tablet so she can see.
“Ha, ha.” The picture looks like a drunk and disorderly mug shot. What the fuck do they want at two a.m. Lucy digs in her bag for a compact.
“I’ll never cease to be amazed,” he comments, scanning the rest of her info to make sure it’s all up to date, “that you weren’t tagged for so long.”
“Gabriel, I exist to amaze you.”
“Always, baby,” he flirts in his sexy British accent, uncapping the syringe. He’s a scarred, hard mountain of muscle and impatience, but he’s got a thing for her, and she can’t say she minds. He arrived in London originally. He�
��s dark with hooded eyes, lush lips. Indian, she’s speculated, is what the Nafikh were aiming for. She’s grateful every time he’s on her call because he always slips in a little extra to make it all go easier. She holds out her arm for the jab, smooth lovely cocktail of goodbye-pain, and soon she’s separating from herself like oil blobbing through water. She floats up and away, the searing chunk of hurt in her chest diminishing to a spec of nothing. The relief is a cosmic dose of joy. Truly, this is the only good thing about calls. Her eyes drift shut, insulating her from the dark, freezing alley, sleet whipping her bare arms. There are only two of them, waiting to go down into Club Eternity. It’s not one of her favorite locations, but the call started way earlier, so their part will probably be brief. Last-minute replacing of servs who fucked up and got themselves killed, most likely. Who knows why, it makes no difference. Things don’t develop one from another with the Nafikh. Shit just happens. It’s all about getting through.
Just make it out: her mantra.
Her 176th was a cakewalk, a late-night stroll through the Gardner Museum, way after hours, no people to corral and protect. The two Nafikh had visited so many times already that They had more nuanced needs from this world: it was a choice call, the sort every serv longs for, all of two hours long and a total nonevent. The Nafikh skipped along in white dresses They might have seen in a painting and wanted to emulate. They had champagne in the garden. They ate fruits and sandwiches. They were merry as kids on shrooms, oohing over every swirl of marble. Then the sentries picked a few servs and whooshed off with Them in limos, leaving the remaining servs fucked with finding their own way back home because the location didn’t qualify for a lift in a van.
She’d take walking the miles back to Somerville any day over limo duty, though. Even seasoned Nafikh can turn on a dime. Once, Lucy got called to an art auction. She had to sit with the Nafikh during the bidding. It didn’t matter that Lucy didn’t know what to do, she just had to play the part of the merry socialite excited about this object or that. The Nafikh sat very still, taking in the scene with Her weird, dark eyes. Later, Lucy rode in the limo with another serv, a young guy whose name she can’t recall. He coughed. The Nafikh leaned over, took him by the neck, and squeezed. His eyes bulged, he turned all dark and puffy. He tried really hard not to struggle, so maybe She’d let go. Lucy should have done something. Clinked a glass, switched on the TV. But she was too terrified. She just froze. I’m sorry, she screamed inside her head. When the limo stopped in an alley off Harrison Ave, the Nafikh was led away on Her next adventure. A sentry pulled the dead serv out onto the sidewalk where he was bagged and loaded into a van, and Lucy walked in the freezing cold to the bus stop to get home.
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