It is Casey who is most distraught. Casey is pretty much a national legend. In the early days of the in-vitro fertilisation programme, when virus outbreaks in the Sanctuaries threatened to kill the few remaining XYs, there was fear for the very survival of the human race. Casey volunteered for IVF again and again – and again. Three live-born sons, she had. Three baby boys. No daughter. All three baby boys delivered by caesarean section in a super-sterile IVF clinic right outside the Sanctuary – and, once tested to be virus-free, immediately handed over into the care of the Sanctuary, as every baby boy must be.
Their mothers are never allowed to hold them. Not even for one second. In the early days, a photograph of the baby was taken and continued virtual contact was allowed – reports of the baby’s development, more photographs, then, as the child grew, direct virtual contact. Exchanges of emails, exchanges of photographs and videos. When the consequences of that became apparent – boys would run and die – contact between mothers and sons was shut down. It is still an option to have a photograph of the new-born, but Granmummas tend to counsel against it. They advise that it is better for the mother not to dwell on it. It is better, they say, to forget. They say this, the generation who cannot and will not forget.
I can hardly look into Casey’s eyes, so great is the pain in them.
They have sedated the boy, and administered immediate pain relief. Sweat is still oozing off him; the still-rapid rise and fall of his chest shows his lungs are struggling. Shows his dying-mouse heart is still beating fast enough to burst.
They have to release him. They know it.
The Granmummas wordlessly comfort each other; with shared, sorrowful looks and hands reaching to touch hands – but, oh, that anger burns.
‘He might live!’ Heloise breathes, willing it all to be a lie: the now and the past.
Dora, her sister, puts her arm around Heloise.
‘He won’t,’ she says.
‘He might!’
‘He won’t,’ says Yukiko.
‘You know it,’ says Dora, holding Heloise close.
She does. They do: all of them know.
‘It might have changed. The virus might have . . . gone away,’ whispers Casey – then shudders with tears. Granmummas reach out hands to pat and soothe her. Rosie softly whispers, ‘Your boys will be grown men now. Your boys are safe.’
‘And this one is a goner,’ says Kate.
‘And this one is a goner.’ From anyone younger than a Granmumma this would sound despicably insensitive – but she lived the sickness. She was fifteen years old when she gently lifted her youngest brother, baby Jaylen, from the arms of her sleeping mother – the mother who did not want to let him go, thought she could somehow keep him safe from the dying all around. The baby was wrapped in a scarf and held tight – by Kate – on the back of her boyfriend’s motorbike – all the way to the airport. One of the last flights to leave. Crowds and chaos. Kate holding up Jaylen shouting, He’s not sick! He’s not sick! Please take him! Take him! Please!
And a stranger, taking him . . .
And Jaylen gone.
And Kate only realising when he had gone – watching that plane take off to who-knows-where . . . that she still held the bag of his favourite toys, and his bottles, and nappies, and his little clothes . . . and the letter that said who he was, and when he was born, and where he came from. The letter that told who his family was. The letter that told who loved him, and to whom he should be returned.
Only he never did return. None of the babies or the boys or the men who survived ever came back.
‘We need to do the right thing,’ says Yaz. ‘You all know it. You all know how it was: no boy or man who caught the virus ever survived for more than twenty-four hours.’
I know (Global Agreement No. 7) Everyone has the right to be listened to, but I’ve always found it fairly (very) terrifying to speak in public. I’m OK at home – with Kate in the house you either toughen up or shut up – but in front of other people . . . I get tongue-tied. But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s factual errors. My life is maths. My future will be NO ERRORS. Errors in engineering KILL. If there is one thing that can actually make me talk when I’d rather not, it’s an error. Errors . . . must be corrected.
‘Five days,’ I speak out.
For a moment, it’s as though they have not heard me over the din of their own thoughts – but they have.
‘What?’ says Yukiko.
‘Five days,’ I say – and I shrug, from nerves. ‘That’s what it said, that it had been running for five days.’
‘You . . . spoke to him?’ says Kate.
‘Yes . . .’
‘Why . . . didn’t . . . you . . . say?’
‘There wasn’t time.’ Fact.
Silence. Horrified silence.
It feels like a 150 – like a Community Meeting. No, it feels like a 150 Court – an event, rare, when the one hundred and fifty voting members of our Community meet to decide restorative justice. It’s set, very strictly, at 150, because it is thought that is the maximum number of human relationships one person is able to handle in any kind of meaningful way. That’s how any kind of organisation works, how industry works – how the whole of democracy works: from community to national level. It’s a gigantic, upside-down pyramid of communication, from the village to the area to the region to the nation to the ever-changing chair of the Global Council . . . and I avoid contact with it as much as I can.
I’m only having to deal with a tiny – minuscule! – percentage of the world. I’m only having to deal with the Granmummas who could make it here . . . yet I feel as though I am on trial.
All I have done is to be too scared to assist death. I can’t be the first. I won’t – I’m sure – be the last.
‘There wasn’t time . . .’ Yaz says, encouraging me to speak.
‘There wasn’t! And it . . . what it said . . . didn’t seem relevant. I mean . . . I didn’t really understand what it was saying anyway.’
Kate groans.
‘I didn’t! I was scared!’
A roomful of muttering. Kate takes a hit on her inhaler – heading for a serious overdose. I go to take it from her and she bats me away. ‘Bats’: it sounds gentle. Kate smacks me in the face with the back of her seventy-five-year-old hand. The force is not deliberate, and she’s too distraught to even notice it. ‘We need antibiotics – and everything else you’ve got: anything! Everything! All of it! Go get the meds!’ Kate shouts at the room.
I’m clutching my face thinking (OW! and) meds? Medication?! The Granmummas have medication when no one, to my knowledge, ever has anything more than the basics?
‘Outside,’ Kate barks at me.
Outside. It’s one of our jokes that I really don’t quite get because I can’t quite imagine it. It’s only the sense of it I get. It is, apparently, what a man would say to another man when he wanted to fight him . . . Kate just says it to me for fun when I complain about something I know I shouldn’t complain about, such as there being too many inedible crunchy bits in the cockroach stew she’s made.
‘He spoke to you . . .’ Kate is saying to me as Granmummas rush past us.
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘I didn’t understand most of it.’
I can see Kate is in full KATE mode, teetering on the brink of flipping out – a brink from which she pulls herself back.
‘What I want you to do,’ she says, her hands resting, with only slight clawing pressure from fingers, on my shoulders, ‘is to write down what he said. Every word that you can remember.’
‘But I didn’t –’
‘Every word, whether you understood it or not. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
Not for the first time in my life, I wish my Mumma was here. I love Kate’s love; she’s gruff but understands some things my Mumma doesn’t. Things to do with how you feel about people. But my Mumma . . . she’s my Mumma.
I sit down at the kitchen table and I
write every word I can remember of what happened.
I’m writing it out as the Granmummas return almost immediately, depositing drugs on the kitchen table. No one else gets called upon, because these people . . . they’ve seen it all. Dealt with every situation you could think of. They attend the birth of every girl (and always get absolutely sozzled when a child is born healthy); they are on it when anyone falls sick or is injured (if it’s serious; they are scathingly dismissive of minor hurts); but it is death, most in particular, that is their speciality.
Thanks to the dying of the XYs, they have seen pretty much every kind of death there is. Even medics like Akesa will consult with Granmummas in the event of an illness that is unusual or potentially fatal . . . and nothing gets more unusual than this: a dead boy they refuse to let die.
A huge sorting-out of the drugs happens. Our kitchen table is heaped with boxes and bottles of all kinds of pills and potions. A secret stockpile. It’s confirmation of the Granmummas’ spectacular naughtiness, and of their will to survive. Not their own survival, no, but children’s and grandchildren’s. Relatively few of the Granmummas had children of their own. Every child is our child is their favourite among the Global Agreements. Without it, there would be no future – and it’s that, a future, the very survival of the human race, that they have spent their lives fighting for.
Where normally the Granmummas bicker about every single thing – and seem to enjoy it – tonight they are quieter and more efficient than any Mumma. Even my own.
They fill the house with their activity.
Drugs are chosen, ground up in the pestle and mortar. Mixed with water. A spoon is sterilised to feed the solution into the boy’s mouth. A drip, from the ‘life’ pack, is set up – hanging from our coat-stand it feeds water laced with salt, sugar and a touch of death-pack liquid morphine into the XY’s vein. Its body is stripped of its weird clothes. It is washed, dried and tucked up in clean sheets and blankets. Two of the Granmummas scuttle off to the Community washing machines with the soiled linen, then come scuttling back with fresh reserve bedding from their own supply.
My account of the XY’s ramblings written, I now feel useless and helpless. I can only watch, peering round the door to Kate’s room, wincing, stomach churning, as Dora sews up the wound on the arm. Dora, with the best, amazingly neat, needlework skills, elected without dispute to perform the task. Me, not wanting to look but unable to stop myself. I watch her needle puncture flesh. Mid-stitch, mid-thread drawing skin together; the sound of Akesa’s helicopter.
‘So listen up,’ Kate tells them all. ‘There’s a protocol. There’s a no-treatment protocol for boys.’
I see that needle-hand momentarily pause, hold itself steady, then continue. Casey softly places a calming hand on Dora’s back.
‘Since when?’ Yukiko says.
‘Since I-don’t-know-when – but that’s what Akesa said.’
‘We’ll call Zoe-River,’ says Rosie.
Yes, yes, yes! I think at the mention of my Mumma’s name.
‘Bigshot said the same,’ says Kate.
‘Well, no one’s going to Agree with that, are they?’ says Casey.
There is a terrible, fraught silence – while outside I can hear the helicopter carrying Akesa landing on the designated spot outside the Granmummas’ house; a once-was heated outdoor swimming pool that has been filled in with rubble.
I . . . do Agree. I can completely understand the idea of the protocol (because it WILL die anyway), but I find I cannot speak up.
‘I’ll head them off,’ says Yukiko, leaving – and everyone knows what she means: Akesa is one thing, but ‘them’ – the whole of the rest of the village – is another. Yukiko is not going to stop Akesa, but to stop our Community. And I don’t think it’s just because the fuss would escalate if the Mummas came – and the Teens (even the Littler Ones). It’s because everyone else in the village would understand the protocol like I do. Because the protocol makes sense. The XY is going to die, because that’s what happens to an XY who leaves a Sanctuary. The XY should not be treated, so that doctors can learn from its death. What difference could five days make?! It’s doomed.
Everything about this night, this long night, is happening too fast. And too slow. And too weirdly. All at the same time.
I’m pushed further into the hall by a surge of Granmummas. Outside, in the lane, I can hear Yukiko shouting to concerned neighbours, ‘It’s fine! Everything’s fine! It was Kate! Kate’s fine! Please tell everyone! It’s fine! Kate’s fine!’ as Rosie lets Akesa and the pilot, Mariam, into the house.
‘You keep your mouth shut, kid; this is not for you to have an opinion about,’ Kate hisses at me. It’s not unusual for her to speak harshly to me – so many of the Granmummas are almost as blunt – but normally it’s to encourage me to speak up, not shut up.
Mariam, who knows me – and knows how much I LOVE aircraft – shakes hands and kisses a special ‘Hello, how’s it going?’ on my cheek even as Akesa faces Kate.
‘Hello, Doctor,’ says Kate – wheezes Kate, because the stress and the sudden flood of damp, wet cold from the open front door and the general goings-on of it all really are playing heavy on her chest. I detect a battle tone in her voice.
Yukiko comes in and shuts the door behind her. ‘Everyone is glad Kate is well and sends their best wishes,’ she announces – i.e. neighbourhood invasion averted; mission accomplished.
‘Where is he?’ Akesa asks.
‘Dying,’ Kate says, staring her down.
‘Let me see him,’ says Akesa.
‘Why? He’s dying. That’s all you need to know, isn’t it? Protocol,’ says Kate.
‘Let me see him.’
It’s Casey who calls it. No one stops her – or even tries to. She opens the door to Kate’s room – and it’s as though she and the other Granmummas inside that room knew that was going to happen. There they all are: posed in defiance. Standing or sitting around the bed. There it is: arm stitched so neatly, drip in hand on other arm, sweat – endless sweat – pouring. Those closed eyes? Not even twitching any more. That flat, flat chest no longer rising and falling quite so hard or so quickly. Breath . . . steady. Faster than it should be still, but steady.
‘You’ve given him treatment,’ says Akesa.
‘Yes,’ says Kate. ‘And he’s responding.’
The room crackles with it, with the sorrow and the rage. All I can think is, They’ve seen this before. Each and every one of them saw this happen dozens, hundreds, thousands of times in the year the males were almost wiped out. You’d think all that would be left – all that could be left – would be sorrow. But the anger, the anger of the WHY and the anger of the NO, has never, ever been forgotten.
Our whole world was built on this, on the angry suffering of the Granmummas – most just Teens, like me, when the world that they knew died with the males. No more war. That was the first thing. That was sorted before the Agreements even happened. That was sorted in the very year the males died. And it wasn’t even because there were no more males to fire guns or explode bombs. Anyone can pick up a gun and fire it. Anyone can explode a bomb. No training or skill required. Only hate, anger or fear. All wars ended overnight because it didn’t seem to matter much who had killed whom in the past, or over what. Everyone’s sons, fathers, brothers, were dead. War ended because women had no interest in war whatsoever.
Nearly half the population of the Earth had died. Human beings faced extinction. All disagreements, all old wounds seemed . . . It was all just totally freaking irrelevant, Kate says.
Religions crumbled. Governments? Dead mainly, because for some strange reason there was a disproportionately high number of XYs in politics – the same with armies. In the UK, the once-was army, air force and navy collapsed and merged. They are now one: H&R. Help and Rescue.
Akesa . . . she’s Mumma-age, born in the time when the males had long gone. Born – like my own Mumma – in the generation that came after; the generation that started ove
r. So few of them to begin with, but then – as IVF techniques became safer and girls could be selected – more and more. Not enough to stop the population nose-diving, but enough – eventually – with the grit and determination to rebuild . . . in a new way. A new world, with new Global Agreements, and all of this done, all of this built, on the aching backs and hearts of the Granmummas. The Mummas grew up with incredible support. They rose because the Granmummas, so deeply wounded by sorrow and anger, decided: they wanted the world to be different.
All this once-was . . . it’s just stuff I hear. It is not my world. My world is now. The past . . . my understanding of it is hazy.
The reality of the sick, sick, sick creature lies before me – and before Akesa.
‘Let me examine him,’ she says.
The Granmummas don’t answer, but – in unison – they shift just a little to allow Akesa to get closer to the bed.
‘What have you given him?’ she asks, taking its pulse.
‘How do we know we can trust you?’ says Kate.
Akesa looks down at that sick thing. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she says.
‘What about the protocol?’
‘Tell me what you’ve given him and we’ll work out how to proceed from there.’
‘We know how we want to proceed,’ says Heloise.
‘We want you to continue treating him,’ says Kate.
Akesa looks up sharply at Kate. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You have placed me in an impossible position. He’s responded to whatever on Earth you’ve given him – but you know there is no hope. You people of all people know this! They do not survive!’
‘This one has,’ says Dora.
‘So far –’
‘Five days,’ says Kate. ‘He’s been alive outside a Sanctuary for five days.’
‘That’s not possible.’
Who Runs the World? Page 4