Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  Lenny studies me.

  ‘Do you even know what a running machine is?’ she asks me.

  ‘Yes! Sure! That’s why I want one!’

  ‘You’re leaning on one,’ says Lenny.

  I spin round. So . . . that’s a running machine?! I must have walked past it a thousand times! Walked past because it just doesn’t look like it’d be useful for anything . . . other than running, I suppose. And, really, why would you –

  ‘Great!’ I tell Lenny, shutting off my own ‘This thing is ridiculous’ thoughts.

  ‘You can’t have that one, it’s electrical,’ she says, twisting up her hair and tying it.

  ‘Electrical?!’ I am truly shocked; in what world would people use up electricity going for a run?

  ‘Mm-hm. The plug’s a bit of a giveaway, I’d have thought. Remind me, what is it you’re studying again?’

  I can feel myself burning up, to have been so flustered with the lying I didn’t even notice what’s plain to see.

  ‘There’s a mechanical one somewhere at the back there, so you’re going to have to help me shift all this stuff . . . if you’re not too unfit.’

  AAAAAAAAAARGH! That’s what my arms and my back and my legs have got to say about carrying the stupid weighs-a-ton running machine through the silent village night.

  My whole life I have been surrounded by empathy – that’s what Mumma calls it. To me, it’s just . . . life. You never get lost in yourself or your worries (or, for e.g., the screaming of your body in muscular pain) because you’d always tell someone – and usually, even before you find the words to tell, there’s always someone around who’ll see how it is – because that’s how life works, isn’t it?

  It still is. Sort of. When Lenny feels how I’m struggling – I am too flustered by the situation to speak – she takes more than her fair share of the weight of that thing.

  ‘Where do you want it?’ Lenny pants, looking grimly at the stairs; she knows my room is up there.

  ‘That’s OK!’ Kate says to her, handing her a Granmumma-baked cake. ‘Thank you so much!’

  Lenny looks at me; she knows something is going on.

  ‘Yes, thank you so much!’ I chirp. I feel extraordinarily bad.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ I tell Kate as she shuts the door.

  ‘Your Mumma will help get it upstairs.’

  ‘No, I mean I can’t do this. Lying to everyone.’

  ‘Oh yes, you can,’ says Kate. ‘It’s easy.’

  ‘It’s awful. It’s impossible.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she sighs at me.

  ‘It is!’

  She points that shaking finger into my face. ‘It’s not,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell you what’s awful and impossible. Awful and impossible is watching your family die around you. This boy? He’s our legacy – and our hope.’

  You can’t argue with that, can you? I mean, you wouldn’t even want to . . . but, not for the first time in my life, it quietly crosses my mind what the world will be like when the Granmummas have all gone, when the anguish and anger and sorrow of the past is no longer standing in front of you, pointing its shaking finger into your face.

  The boy was astonishingly unimpressed with the treadmill. He didn’t say anything – not to begin with – but even I could see the confusion and disappointment on his face.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Mason?’ Mumma asked, sweating from the effort of getting the thing upstairs.

  ‘No, sir,’ was all he said.

  Then, when Mumma had gone, Kate asked him again:

  ‘What’s wrong, dude?’

  ‘It’s like . . . where’s the screen?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You know, the screen – so you can see how you’re doing. So you can see where you’re runnin’. I run mountain routes mainly, but I do beaches too – only for the ocean views; the slope angle gets boring – you’re just on a steady up when you’re runnin’ on sand, ain’t you? Hey – how do you even adjust the angle on this machine?’

  ‘You don’t,’ said Kate.

  ‘And . . . heart rate?’ he said. ‘KM? Fat burn-off?’

  ‘If you’re sweating, you’re running,’ said Kate. ‘This is the best we’ve got.’

  And he looked at her – and it was such a look . . . I don’t know what the boy version of pity looks like, but I’m guessing that was it.

  ‘They said that,’ he murmured. ‘They said you wimmin was lost without us.’

  ‘Who said that?’ asked Kate – and I felt myself tense up; I know Kate and I know her tones and I know how she fires questions when she’s angry.

  ‘The Fathers,’ he said. ‘The Unit Fathers.’

  I watched Kate battle with herself – and make her decision: to remain calm, to not push it.

  ‘We are not lost,’ she said calmly. ‘We are running the world.’

  And then she left – before she could flip out, I suspect – and I left too, because I’d practically broken my back dragging that stupid machine into this house and I didn’t want to hear another word about anything.

  So Kate had been right about Hormones – in her own, antagonistic way. My periods aren’t regular enough yet for me to know how I am with them; Lenny most especially tells us how, yeah, they can be annoying if you get a lot of pain, but periods can also be very useful. She says you’ve got to learn to know them and to use them . . . and even in my limited, erratic experience of them, I can kind of see how that is right. Me? I’ve already noticed that I focus better before my period; that I design better – and that I get serious bursts of energy. Plat says she’s the opposite; she just wants to snuggle up and read. Last Men’s Week, Yukiko told us how XYs also have hormonal cycles, also governed by the Moon, but that – because they didn’t actually bleed – this was never really talked about in the once-was. I didn’t pay much attention – as usual . . . but that night, changing my sanitary pad, I thought about it. I thought . . . maybe Mason was at a particular stage in his cycle – and right on cue, he walked into the bathroom.

  I was on the toilet. I’d finished peeing. I’d just put a clean pad in my knickers. I’d dumped the used one by the sink. This was the incident:

  Mason, sweating from his first ‘best-we’ve-got’ treadmill run, walked in. We have no lock on the bathroom door – why would we? If the door is closed, the bathroom is occupied – i.e. someone is having a poo. Peeing is hardly private, is it? Pooing is another matter; no one else should be subjected to your smells. So the door wasn’t even closed; I was just changing my pad and having a pee.

  ‘Shoulda knocked?!’ he says, as I get up off the toilet, hauling up my combats. He doesn’t even close the door. (I don’t think doors mean much to him.)

  ‘Yes,’ I mutter, as loud as YES! Though my brain is jumbled and jangling; only Kate knows how you’re supposed to behave around XYs. Peeing probably counts as nudity.

  ‘Gotta go,’ he says awkwardly – but he doesn’t just go ahead and pee . . . so maybe Kate has talked to him as well?

  And that is when the incident happens:

  ‘Who got hurt?!’ he says, spotting my used sanitary pad. ‘They hurt you, kid? Did they?!’

  ‘No more than usual,’ I tell him, picking up the used pad. A couple of years ago we had a bit of a crisis with them; home manufacture of hemp pads broke down after the weather had an angry summer . . . the cotton producers, suffering because of the same meterological anger, could not supply – even if we had a trade to offer. All we had was . . . for nearly sixty years, there had been a mountain of clothes for men and boys. It was – of course – plundered by necessity. Clothes adapted, fabric cut free from design and re-sewn, but there was still a mountain – an almost untouched, weirdly ‘sacred’ mountain that had been kept, but had no purpose. Until there was one, to which the Granmummas agreed. The pad I had worn, the pad I had bled all over, is machine-washable. It is made from shredded dead-men’s clothes.

  His face; it’s all alarm.

  ‘I�
��m having a period,’ I tell him. I expect, to him, I am probably pulling a face he doesn’t understand either: pity . . . how could it be, I am thinking, that you could not know what a period is?

  Kate appears at the bathroom door; her face is ALARM MAX.

  ‘Get out!’ she tells me. A reversal of her usual ‘Get in!’

  I get out. I am not upset. I do not understand. I anticipate another chat.

  As I said, having a boy in your house is no fun at all.

  CHAPTER 16

  THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

  I wake, every morning, to THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

  I go to school. I get asked and asked and asked questions about the boy, even though he’s officially dead and gone. No one is supposed to do that, to go on about what happened, but everyone – except Plat – does.

  It’s easy for Plat not to. We are painfully, expertly avoiding each other.

  I come home, every evening, to THUMP, THUMP, THUMP.

  It starts almost as soon as I enter the house. The boy has been told – by Kate – that he cannot run when I am not home. So I’m thinking . . . he must be watching for me – from my window. No one seems to need to tell him I’m home.

  It stops, always, at 11 p.m. It starts, always, at 7 a.m. There is no break at the weekend; on Tuesdays and Wednesdays he runs the same as if they were just like any other days. The boy has no weekend.

  The only upside is I’ve hooked that machine up to generate electricity. Every THUMP is wired into the village grid.

  ‘He’s used to a routine,’ Kate – who hates routine – says.

  ‘This can’t go on,’ Mumma says.

  Joy. JOY. JOY.

  She’s home for dinner, has been quizzing Kate and hearing what I already know: i.e. THE ROUTINE. The boy gets up and does ‘gym’. THUMP, THUMP, THUMP. He showers (despite repeated offers he has yet to take a bath; Can’t swim, he told me), he has breakfast (toast; he claimed he’d never eaten it before, but now he just loves toast and jam or honey) and does whatever he does with a Game Box on the personal computer Kate managed to procure. Repeat that – gym – THUMP, THUMP, THUMP – shower, eat (toast), computer – three times over, and then he goes to bed. There’s never any hot water any more, and even the Granmummas, who are keeping us supplied with jam and honey, are starting to question the quantities involved. Soup has now been introduced to his diet, but it has to be puréed to oblivion; he’s suspicious of any lumps.

  It is ANNOYING, and it is BORING. I’d never have thought having a boy would be BORING.

  ‘But what is he doing on the computer?’ Mumma asks.

  ‘He’s gaming,’ Kate says. ‘

  ‘Gaming? What is that?’ says Mumma – clueless as me, I’d say.

  I stare hard at my plate.

  ‘Playing games.’

  ‘What kind of games?’

  ‘Shooting people – or aliens! Or enemies! You know! Killing stuff! Or blowing them up – or – I dunno – just generally zapping them,’ says Kate.

  Mumma’s jaw is hanging open – mine is too.

  ‘Look, there’s more to it than that,’ says Kate. ‘You had to be smart about it. You have to work out all kinds of things. And . . . it’s good for hand–eye coordination.’

  ‘Hand–eye coordination,’ says Mumma.

  ‘Sure.’ Kate laughs. ‘And fun! It was exciting! It was FUN.’

  Mumma’s jaw clamps shut. Mine stays hanging. Those ‘games’? I really want to see them. I’ve slacked off on my ‘I am the trusted one’ duty. I am ready and willing to step back up.

  ‘And that’s it?’ asks Mumma. ‘He plays games?’

  ‘Yup,’ says Kate.

  ‘And no studying?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘None at all?!’

  ‘Seeing as how your mouth’s open, why don’t you put some food in it?’ Kate says to me.

  I oblige, but it’s hard to chew and swallow when this is all so mind-bogglingly interesting.

  ‘He can’t read. He told us that. I don’t really think he’s ever done much in the way of studying. I don’t think they bothered with it much. I don’t think they bothered with anything much.’

  I hear anger and sorrow in Kate’s voice – there so plain Mumma hears it too.

  ‘Oh,’ says Mumma.

  THUMP, THUMP, THUMP is the boy’s contribution to this fascinating conversation.

  ‘Well . . .’ says Mumma, thinking – and that’s when she says it: ‘This can’t go on.’

  My brain snaps into here-and-now life: as fascinating as this whole ‘boy’ thing has become in the past few minutes, I want it done. BOY GONE. No more questions because NO MORE THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, AND NO MORE BOY. And Plat!! River and Plat!!!

  ‘He needs time to adjust, that’s all,’ says Kate. ‘Adjust’ is a very un-Kate word.

  ‘He needs to go to school,’ says Mumma.

  WHAT?! Wait just a second . . . !

  Kate lays down her knife and fork.

  ‘He does. They all do,’ says Kate.

  ‘I don’t know about the rest of the Sanctuaries,’ says Mumma. ‘I only know about this boy. But . . . even if we could somehow pass him off as . . . one of us, I don’t think he’s ready for that.’

  To my utter relief (and astonishment), Kate does not argue. ‘Zoe-River,’ she says, ‘I think this boy has been living in a bad way. And I don’t think it’s just him. It cannot be just him. You have to find out about it, you have to tell people about it, and you have to stop it.’

  My Mumma is staring straight at Kate. The THUMP, THUMP, THUMP stops.

  We all look at the ceiling.

  It’s not 11 p.m. It’s only 9.35 p.m., according to the kitchen clock. Always wrong – never this wrong.

  My Mumma looks at Kate. ‘I will try my best,’ she tells her.

  There is the sound – most alarming and unexpected – of feet padding down the stairs.

  ‘I invited Mason to join us for dinner,’ Kate says. ‘You know, so he can adjust.’

  ‘Perhaps you could have told us?’ Mumma whispers.

  ‘I didn’t think he’d come . . .’

  The kitchen door creaks open. The boy creature emerges, shuffling into the kitchen in trousers and a blouse that belong to Kate and his cloven-hoof shoes. He’s all red in the face and sweating, breath rasping louder than Kate’s like he’s still running.

  ‘I’m late,’ he pants.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kate – who’d screech at me for tardiness – says as she ladles out a delicious plateful of the insect stew, with fat chunks of super-fresh vegetables and brilliant dumplings; dollop of creamy root-mash; scoop of buttery greens, spiced with crushed juniper berries.

  ‘So . . . how are you feeling, Mason?’ Mumma asks.

  He clears his throat. ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t say what, say pardon,’ comes out of my mouth without a thought involved (it’s a standard instruction to Littler Ones).

  ‘River! Courtesy!’ says Mumma. ‘How are you, Mason?’

  ‘OK, I guess.’ He shovels up a spoonful of stew that’s destined never to reach his mouth. ‘I ain’t puked in days. Lost fitness though. Lost a lot of fitness.’

  ‘Ah . . . and how are you feeling?’

  I am beginning to think that the boy creature must be quite stupid because it looks to me as though this isn’t a question he understands. He shifts about in his seat, frowning.

  ‘You know, emotionally,’ Mumma persists, floundering.

  ‘For crying out loud, let the boy eat,’ says Kate. ‘Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about how he feels right now.’

  I’d expect Mumma to come right back at Kate (who’s a stranger to Courtesy of the verbal type), but she doesn’t. I’ve never seen Mumma look so lost and uncertain – and over this?! Mumma is the smartest person in our 150, but she’s never been brilliant at the feelings side of things . . . Nevertheless, she does try – when she remembers – and it’s a kindness to be accepted, isn’t it? It’s a kindness to be asked, sin
cerely, how you are feeling. The way this boy creature is acting is just . . . I don’t get it. He must be stupid. Look at him – now he’s staring at his spoon. (As though he’s never seen an insect before?)

  There’s this few minutes in which nobody says anything, but nobody is eating either – and it’s an awkward few minutes because you just know everyone (except the boy creature?) has a lot to say. Me, I don’t speak because I daren’t. It’s like there’s a fire in my head, huge lumps of anger, curiosity and revulsion being chucked on to it.

  In the silence, the pot of stew on the stove starts to bubble.

  Mumma’s phone rings. It’s Akesa on PicChat. We can all see that. Mumma picks the phone up.

  ‘I’ve got Mason’s test results!’ Akesa says – not in her normal doctor’s voice; she is very excited.

  ‘What test results?’ says Mason.

  ‘Ah, he’s there with you . . .’ says Akesa. ‘That’s good. I’ve got questions – well, just one, really.’

  ‘I’m-really-not-sure-this-is-such-a-good-idea,’ Kate gets in.

  ‘What test results? What tests? I never did no tests here.’

  ‘Zoe-River –’ Kate warns.

  ‘I never did no tests here. God Almighty! Did you steal my sperm already?’

  I should think if any of us were eating, we’d all choke – Mason included; he looks wild with . . . panic?

  ‘I ain’t been well,’ he gibbers.

  ‘Let me speak to the patient,’ I can see Akesa’s face asking, upside down across the table.

  ‘No one has stolen your sperm,’ Kate is saying.

  ‘What freaking tests?!’

  ‘LET ME SPEAK TO THE PATIENT!’

  Mason snatches the phone. ‘I ain’t been well. I’m getting fitness back. I need T, that’s all.’

  Mumma, flustered, gets up to put the kettle on.

  ‘Not that kind of tea,’ Kate bellows at her, and she sits back down.

  ‘You mean testosterone?’ Akesa asks.

  ‘What else would I mean?! I ain’t had an injection for a while. That’s all it’ll be. If I’ve flunked a sperm test it’s cos I need a T-jab! I ain’t been well!’