Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  I can see all of this.

  I can see them.

  I can’t hear them.

  All I can hear is my own breath – in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out-in-out. All I can hear is the terrified whoosh of blood in my ears.

  There is blood on my hands. The blood of another. On my hands, on my face, on my lips. I grabbed his head. I grabbed it, fastened my mouth on to his and tried to breathe life into his body. I pumped hard on his chest.

  I am covered – covered – in his blood.

  And I am still carrying the branch. Even when I knew for sure it was dead, I somehow couldn’t leave without that branch. Its bark is so smooth in my bloody hand. Ash, healthy ash. Fraxinus. Meaning spear. It’s a hard wood to work, I know from Kate. She also said that in the most ancient once-was, long before she was born, ash was thought to connect the entire world; roots in hell, branches in heaven. Stem of a trunk on Earth. People thought of that tree as a goddess.

  I do not believe in any such thing.

  It is a branch in my hand.

  Sound bursts in. There’s so much sound now. There’s so much activity. There’s so much rushing to help me. I hear cries of fright. I hear cries of ‘River?!’

  Oh, Plat, I even hear you.

  And my own voice, speaking to Kate.

  ‘You said they weren’t dangerous.’

  A DECISION

  CHAPTER 22

  TRADE

  I am vibrating with the deed.

  I have done it. I have done the thing they said men did. I have killed.

  I told them where the body was. I know Plat is up there now, in the rain, with the others, picking that dead man off the rocks. Carrying him down through the woods.

  I have refused to wash. I am not ready to wash. As I sit at our kitchen table I can feel the dead man’s blood drying on my skin, tightening it. My hands – my killer hands – rest either side of a cup of tea, but they cannot be warmed. There is a chill inside them so deep I expect they will be forever cold. I wish I could say they feel disconnected from my body. I wish I could say something like that. But my whole body, my whole mind – all of me – feels very, very connected . . . very connected and very cold: I have killed.

  There is only Mumma, Kate and me.

  And Mason, our secret.

  Only Mumma, Kate, Mason, me and the deed.

  I have told them everything. I have told it very clearly, from the airport to the impact, and without even a tremor in my voice. Only a warm person would falter, and I am a frozen person. I am a frozen person encased in a tightening skin of XY blood.

  ‘Is that where you ran from, the airport?’ Kate, grim-faced, asks Mason.

  He hasn’t said a word. His head is slumped forward.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, looking up. ‘If you’re going to Hell, you’re gonna die anyway, so I ran.’

  ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’ says Mumma.

  ‘Hell. That’s where they were sending me. The place where they dump the baddest of the bad. Unit Zero. Supposed to be some kind of prison, but there ain’t no rules at all there. You go, you die.’

  ‘There’s no such place,’ says Mumma.

  ‘There better hadn’t be,’ says Kate.

  ‘Stones bounce, huh?’ Mason says. ‘You tellin’ me I’ve been lied to about Hell too? What would you know?’

  ‘I think it’s really highly unlikely that such a place exists,’ says Mumma – more to Kate than Mason.

  ‘It does, and that’s where I was going.’

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ says Mumma, staring at the table.

  ‘Zoe-River . . .’ Kate says. ‘I asked you before. I asked you what you know about this.’

  ‘I didn’t know – before. I didn’t know.’

  ‘I raised your Mumma and I raised you. I’ve pretty much raised your daughter. I did not bring any of you up to sit at this table and lie to me.’

  ‘I didn’t know. And then I found out. About two weeks ago.’

  ‘Found. Out. What?’

  ‘It’s confidential information.’

  ‘Not at this table, it’s not.’

  My Mumma looks up at Kate.

  ‘He was being sent to China.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ whispers Kate.

  ‘There’s a trade deal in progress,’ says Mumma.

  ‘We’re exporting boys . . .’ Kate speaks into the silence.

  ‘Yes,’ says Mumma. ‘There was an outbreak of the virus in the Chinese Sanctuaries. They’re in desperate need of XYs. Desperate need.’

  Mason laughs – hard and angry: ‘Have to be totally desperate if they’d take a boy like me . . . Wait! I get it! I’ll bet you’re telling them Chinese wimmin they’re getting prime stock, ain’t you?’

  Mumma looks sick. ‘It doesn’t matter what they’re getting,’ she says. ‘We’re trading sperm, not personalities.’

  Kate – she laughs. She actually laughs. It’s not like Mason’s angry bark, it’s . . . bitter mirth. ‘Trading them for what?! Oh! No! Don’t tell me! What? Let me guess? Boys for . . . for what?! Insects?!’

  We have had a lot more imported insects over the past year. I’ve grown up eating them, but Kate – and even Mumma – took time to get used to the idea that they are an excellent, plentiful source of cheap protein. Cheap and plentiful in theory; though our techniques have improved, it’s so hard outside tropical zones to produce enough insects of a kind and a quality that people will eat. Insects need heat.

  I need heat. I need . . . to find a way to not be frozen.

  ‘The insects were a sweetener,’ Mumma says. ‘Negotiation gift.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘It’s confidential information.’ I know my Mumma well enough to know she means it this time – and Kate does too.

  Kate points at me, in my too-tight skin of blood. ‘This is your trade,’ she tells Mumma.

  ‘I never, ever thought that River would be . . . in any way involved.’

  ‘Too late now,’ says Kate.

  ‘We are world-leaders in IVF,’ says Mumma. ‘We have the most advanced IVF programme. We have nothing that the world needs – except a reliable, virus-proof supply of sperm.’

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ says Mason. ‘You ain’t got sperm. That’s all I’m good for to you, isn’t it? That’s all I’m good for.’

  There is a silence of a whole new kind. You could call it an imported silence, because it comes from so many different places. No one owns this silence. It doesn’t even belong to us: to Mumma, to Kate, to Mason, to me. It is bigger than all of us.

  ‘I am so tired,’ my Mumma says. She works day and night – long days and long nights – but I’ve never heard her say that before . . . not in the way she is saying it right now. ‘We have to make some decisions. There is no way this will not be investigated,’ she mumbles.

  ‘We could bury the body,’ Kate says, in a low, cold voice. A low, cold, desperate voice. ‘We could just bury it. Deny all knowledge.’

  ‘I want to wash now,’ I say out loud, scratching at my own skin. Flecks of dried blood peel off – ping off – in every direction. ‘I WANT TO WASH! I’VE GOT TO WASH!’

  I sit in the bath. Yes, I am having a bath because this is – is it not? – a special occasion. I feel like the water should be red, but it’s not – it’s just mud-grubby, with a terrible tinge of pink. My Mumma is washing me. My Mumma hasn’t washed me since I was a baby.

  ‘This is not your fault,’ my Mumma is saying, over and over. ‘None of this is your fault.’

  CHAPTER 23

  IT IS AGREED

  I don’t remember falling asleep.

  I don’t even remember going to bed. My mind and my body – finally, maybe, they did just disconnect.

  I do remember waking up. I remember waking up and creeping, not to my Mumma, or to Kate, or to go outside and breathe in the cold night and the Moon and the stars, but to Mason’s room. It feels as though it will never truly be my room again.<
br />
  I didn’t knock. I just went in. He was not in the bed, that I could see – I could see enough in the dark to know that the hunched shape on my window-seat was him. My window-seat, where I have liked to sit and watch the sky.

  I join him. I sit at the opposite end of the window-seat. I do not pull my legs up on to it as I have always liked to because there is not room for both of us. If I pulled my legs up, we would have to touch. By an XY, I do not want to be touched. Not ever again.

  We are silent, just looking out at the sky . . . though there is no sky to see: it is clouded. Hard to tell in such dark, but the clouds seem low and heavy.

  I don’t quite know why I have even come here. I think there are questions I want to ask, that’s true, but more than that . . . it’s the strangest feeling. It’s the violence. He has come from it. He has come from a place no one else around me knows . . . or could even begin to understand. Only Kate seems capable of imagining it, but as far as I know she has not – for instance – ever actually killed someone. I have.

  I am in an opposite world now. That’s how I feel. My world was love – and duty – and Courtesy. My world was kindness and help . . . and I didn’t even realise it, how kind and helpful it was. Why would I? It was my whole world. Now it has been split and here I am, seeking out the company of one who has lived on the other half of a divide I never even knew existed.

  Words will not come.

  ‘Can’t see no stars tonight,’ he says, after a time. ‘I like ’em. I had a window, back in U-Beta. Couldn’t see anything much out of it. We got walls – big walls – all around the place. But the sky? That I could see. I can tell you most every star in it. There’s shapes! There’d be the panther,’ he says, pointing at nothing but dark cloud. ‘That’s got a claw to it. And the lizard – that crawls almost flat on its belly; ’cept if you look hard enough, that lizard’s got legs. And the snake – got its head rearing up like it’s about to attack.’

  I am quiet. A strange, strange thought is happening in my head about how the stars got named, and by whom. I think I know what he is talking about: how the constellations we should be able to see would look if those clouds weren’t in our way.

  ‘You thought you were going to prison. To Hell? What for?’

  That’s what I say; I’m not even sure if I mean to say it, it’s just that I feel so bad right now – so deeply troubled – that I somehow need to know how a person could feel worse. I need to know what terribleness would take a person to a place where they would choose death over life.

  ‘I stabbed someone.’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘No. I ain’t a killer.’

  At those words, I slump.

  ‘Christ! Sorry, River –’

  ‘Did you want to kill him?’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I . . . wanted to stop him. I just wanted it to stop.’

  ‘That’s how it was for me too. I wanted to stop Lion, and it didn’t seem like there was any other way. Lion! Never met a boy that chose himself a more stupid name. You ain’t got no name otherwise ’cept “boy”, but, Lion?! Who’d choose that? That’s a name says “pick on me”. Only no one did because – hey – guess what? In Z-Beta the FU is called Killer. That’d be another stupid choice of name – but Killer he was. Father of the Unit?! He was the meanest of the mean . . . but, oh, Killer loved his Ii’l pet Lion.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’ I ask quietly. ‘Why did you stab that boy?’

  ‘Cos he was gonna stab Jed. Jed was my friend. Where I come from, you can’t have friends. You’d better not get to caring about a person. You’d better not let that kind of stuff show. All you’ve got is Code of Honour. And the Code . . . it ties you to whomever.’

  ‘Like you and me?’

  ‘S’pose. I don’t even know about that any more. I don’t know anything, do I?’

  He shifts about on the window-seat. ‘Reckon, after Jed, you are the closest thing to a friend I’ve got.’

  ‘What happened to them? What happened to these people?’

  ‘Well . . . I stabbed Lion, I did. Mess of blood like you’ve never seen . . .’

  He tails off. I have seen a mess of blood. I have been covered in it.

  ‘Lion got right up off his sick bed and did for Jed. End of. Jed . . . he’s killed. Dead and gone. Me? I got a one-way trip to Hell.’

  If he’d told me any of this sooner, I wouldn’t have believed such a nightmare of a world could be possible. Now I know . . . and I feel I am now part of this nightmare. And if he had told me, would it have stopped me from letting that man out of the container? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

  ‘You shouldn’t feel bad for what you did,’ he says. ‘I met plenty in them Units I’d have killed if I could. Not just ‘stopped’: killed. Plenty any boy would have killed. He even tell you his name, this one you did for?’

  ‘No.’

  I’ve killed a man with no name.

  We sit in silence for a moment, both staring at our invisible imaginary beasts in the sky.

  ‘He . . . had a beard, like you – only more of it,’ I say. That alone – the memory of that alone – makes me WAKE UP. Makes me feel SICK. I get up from my window-seat. ‘And he was older and . . .’

  On my own face, in the darkness I draw it; the slash of the scar from his lip to his cheek bone.

  Mason draws in a massive gulp of breath – ‘River!’ he breathes out, his voice too loud in the silence of the night.

  ‘Be quiet!’ I tell him. I cannot stand this. I cannot stand to think about that man. I truly can stand no more. Of any of this. I walk out.

  I leave the door open behind me. It’s his business to close it.

  I have no interest in closing doors or opening them. I have no interest.

  With this whole situation, I am done.

  I suppose I do manage to sleep again. It doesn’t feel like it, but when my eyes were last open it was still night and now . . . it is day. Plat is sitting on my creaky camp-bed, the house and the whole village quiet around us. The silence blasts. And me not even noticing it . . . at first. Just like I don’t even really notice how strange the light is.

  ‘Oh, Plat!‘

  We hug for a very long time.

  ‘I didn’t mean to do it, Plat. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I meant to – I meant to hit him – I meant to stop him. I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘Shh! I know. Everyone knows. It wasn’t your fault. It was self-defence.’

  ‘Self-defence . . . Plat, what is that? Is that a legal thing?’

  ‘You had no choice, did you? It’s not like you meant to kill him. You just wanted to stop him.’

  My hands – so cold, still – feel the memory of the deed. ‘Plat . . . when I hit him – I think I wanted to stop him so much –’

  ‘You could not possibly have known what would happen.’

  ‘No . . .’

  My voice, my whole being, is quaking. I feel faint. ‘I can’t breathe – open the window!’

  Plat jumps up, opens the window and helps me over to it. I suck in lungfuls of autumn chill – such a chill. This is why the light is strange: in the night, snow has come. Snow in October, falling on a world that just won’t be ready for it, so many plants and animals not prepared . . . but that’s how it is now. That’s how the once-was still is; they’d hoped the Earth would bounce back in no time . . . but it has been injured. Injuries take time to heal.

  A pink scar under a dark beard.

  ‘Shh!’ soothes Plat, stroking my back . . . the silence outside so deep I swear I can hear the swish of her hand on me so loud it’s deafening.

  The silence outside. It’s not just the first fall of snow.

  S-I-L-E-N-C-E.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I ask.

  Plat – she just carries on stroking.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ I say, as calmly as I can. ‘Where is everyone?’

  My words puff whiteness into the cool air; they are there, my words, and then gone. Too bad,
so sad –

  ‘What’s going on, Plat?’

  I’m facing her now. Feels like I’m facing some part of myself I don’t really want to look at. A part of myself I am not ready to see.

  ‘Where’s Mumma? Where’s Kate?’

  ‘They said you should stay here.’

  ‘Where are they?’ I’m pulling on clothes. My heart, pounding, already knows the answer. My brain wants to hear it spoken. ‘TELL ME.’

  ‘There’s a 150.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s a Court.’

  ‘About what?’ I ask – my heart knows. My breath? It’s short and sharp and hurting – like the outside is in here. Is in me.

  A Court? It can’t be about me, it can’t be anything to do with me, or else I’d have to be there. That’s what my brain argues.

  ‘About what?’ I ask Plat again. She won’t even look at me. This question will not be answered.

  ‘Oh, River, no – River, please,’ she says, following me as I crash down the stairs, as I shove sockless feet into my boots. No time to lace them. No time for a coat. ‘Don’t go!’

  I’m gone.

  Court normally happens in the Community Studies room at school. I run there, stumbling through the snow, Plat – I think – trying to plead with me . . . or was she just stumbling along with me? I’d stopped listening.

  The Community Studies room is empty – but for the Littler Ones, messing about when they should be studying. Messing about when at least some of them would normally be in Court too; too young to vote, but not too young to learn . . . I suppose it has been Agreed that whatever is going on in Court is not something they need to know. And as I am not there either, I suppose it has been Agreed that it is not something I need to know. But Plat? One look at her face tells me she knew the Court wasn’t here. She has let me run here. Playing for time, Kate would say.

  ‘So where are they? The Granmummas’ house?’ That’s next most likely, though we’ve had Courts and other Community Meetings in Lenny’s barn before – and even in the church, when the final Agreement was made to allow the building to fall.

  ‘I don’t want you to go there.’

  That’s all the answer I need – but: Plat. Plat wouldn’t miss a Court.