by Jinn, Bo
Saul had been hoping the same thing from the moment he had shut the doors on the body box in Fort Gen and the truck carried her away, a hostage to fortune. She coughed wildly and he pressed her face gently against his shoulder to muffle the noise. She was cold as death, and shook terribly as the warmth settled in. Any longer and she would have succumbed to hypothermia.
Duke sighed again and shook his head. “Yeh cannae be comin’ round th’ mess nae more,” he said. “No ava lad.”
“I know.”
“Ah don’ know yeh n’more,” said the ex-patriot severely. “Not after this.”
“I understand.”
Duke fell silent. His eyes were wide and his breath was heavy. “Aye… aye,” he said, nodding his head. He then turned his attention back to the girl, who meanwhile appeared to have fallen into a slumber. He came closer and gawped as one would at some incomparably precious object. “Where the ‘ell d’yeh find ‘er?” he gasped.
“I do not remember.”
Duke looked back into the truck. The open crate was about the size of a small refrigerator, with very little discernible cracks or seams for light or air to seep through. “Ne’r seen a crate li’ tha’ before.”
“It is a body box,” said Saul. “They use them to transport corpses and body parts from the warzones for strip-down. It was the only way to get her through the scans in customs.”
“How lang she bin in tha’ thing?”
“Two days.”
“Shiite…”
The girl coughed and shivered, holding the blanket close to her chin. Her eyelids were heavy, but the cold denied her sleep.
“Puir lass must be sair hungert … Hold a minute, I mightae ‘ave summat.”
Duke hobbled to the front of the truck and disappeared for about a minute. In the meantime, Saul crammed one of the brown bundles into his only vacant pocket. When Duke returned, he was holding half a large bar of dark chocolate. He held the chocolate bar out in the air and when the little head rose, the big, pearlescent eyes widened ravenously.
“Take it.”
As soon as he gave the word, the girl snatched the bar, tore off the wrapping and assailed the contents, gasping and munching intermittently. He stretched his right hand to reach into his left pocket and drew a small pile of banknotes and held the money out to Duke.
“You have done more than I deserve,” he said. “I may not see you again.”
“Yeh got a mouth teh feed yerself now, lad,” said Duke. “Dinnae ye worry ‘bout us n’ more.”
The old soldier was set in his ways. Saul tucked the money back into his pockets and the two men stood staring at one another. When he raised an open hand, Duke caught it immediately and held tight.
“I never told you my name.”
Old Duke chuckled. “Dinnae ask, dinnae tell,” he replied, and let go of his hand. “Fare thee well, Martial… Guid luck.”
He turned, punched the switch on the side of the truck and limped away as the shutter came down. The driver’s door screeched shut, the engine griped to a start and gurgled. He pulled out of the alley and trundled on into the hoary night. The girl fell asleep in his arms.
“…Wake up.”
Little Naomi’s eyelids prized open as he lowered her gently to the floor.
They stood before a large double-door at the tower’s peak and he brought the right side of his face up to the circular recess on the door’s side. There was a bright flash and the door unlocked and opened.
Confronted with a wall of darkness, he instinctively held the girl back and edged through the doorway. The moment he crossed the threshold, lights occurred from the deep, one after the other. The light illuminated a palatial foyer ending at a towering wall of crystal-clear glass, and the space between was decked with mosaics of parquetry, walled with stone as radiant as alabaster and furnished with velvet, and a spiral staircase joined two floors.
At the far end of the foyer, a big screen switched on by itself and began broadcasting the latest news from the global media. A blue flame swayed and danced in a crystal firebox. The clouds passed and the rim of a waxing crescent moon glimpsed through the skylight.
Daunted by the opulence of the place, he stood back from the threshold. Meanwhile, little Naomi, beckoned by the warmth, drifted in and leaned her forehead sleepily against his leg. She could barely stand
“Can I sleep now?” she yawned.
“Not yet,” he said.
She was covered in filth from the journey, her wounds were discoloured and the bindings were loose.
“I have to clean you,” he said.
“Clean… you,” the girl parroted him with a yawn.
He lifted her up and cradled her.
As he walked about the house, he noticed a full ashtray on the table-top in front of the big holoscreen and a crystal glass with a dribble of scotch at the bottom. The satin of the drapery and upholstery radiated the smell of tobacco and the carpet was ruffled and folded over. Similar signs of habitation were scattered all around. And whilst he had no memory of the place, his legs seemed to know where to take him: The adjoining corridor, second door on the left.
He opened the bathroom door and turned on the light, swept away a piece of walker’s lingerie and a bloody towel and sat the girl down gently on the basin counter. The cold surface sent a waking shiver through her. He unravelled the gauze from the pauper-like hands and assessed her wounds with a single glance.
The deep cut on her upper arm would surely leave a scar. The abrasion on her face had browned, as did the scalding on her hands. The rest was mild bruising. He laid one of Duke’s brown packages on the counter, opened it, and inside, he found a box of saline, cotton swabs, wound-sealer, gauze, antiseptic, dermal repair and antibiotics. After looking over each item, he took the antiseptic and regarded her with some diffidence.
“This may hurt a little,” he said, excusing himself in advance.
Little Naomi was quiet with submission and looked away with a cringe, braced for pain. Her tiny fingers juddered as he swabbed away at the deep cut with saline, dabbing off the dried blood and dirt. He shook with her every wince and sudden breath, her pain seeming to amplify in vicariousness.
“You must wash before I can treat them,” he said, then paused, as though waiting for her approval.
When the girl remained silent, he looked away uneasily and lifted her off the counter.
The bathtub was a deep depression in an altar of white stone large enough for two adults, and he laid her down in the middle. He took the shower nozzle from the wall and when she tried to handle it, her burned hands recoiled in pain and the nozzle fell and rattled in the tub.
“S-sorry,” she stuttered
He picked the nozzle up from the tub with a sigh.
“I will do it…”
With strange discomfort he removed the soiled, baggy shirt from the little frame, and he could see the large, moonstone eyes seeming to judge him the whole time and as he did his utmost to avert his own eyes. He noticed, for the first time, a silver necklace and a large gold pendant hanging by the girl’s neck.
His hand rose to remove it and as soon as she detected his intention, the girl snatched the pendant in both of her hands and held it away from him.
He stopped and gazed at her silently.
“It is alright,” he assured. “… I will give it back.”
The little hands shook around the pendant as she looked, for a moment, as though she were about to cry again. She slowly and reluctantly let go.
He undid the clasp and the necklace dropped into his hands with the pendant. He set the water temperature to 70 degrees and lowered the pressure, and when he looked up at the girl again, he froze.
An odd hesitancy came over him as to what he was about to do, and he felt suddenly… unfit -- overcome by a deep, distraught sense of contemptibility unlike anything he had ever felt before.
“Saul.”
He was finally drawn in to her eyes. The dread arrested him and his pulse escalated. He shook off his
trance.
“Saul…”
“Hold out your arms.”
His voice rose to a sudden pitch of hostility and the girl raised her arms out in the air at once. He waited for the rush of passion to pass, then slowly poured the water over her head.
The grime slipped off her in streams of brown. He lathered up the sponge to apply the soap carefully around the wounds: daubing, rinsing, daubing.
“Turn.”
And she turned, puffin-like, still holding her little arms in the air.
After she was cleaned, her wounds covered and her hand bound with fresh gauze, he put a cotton sweater over her head, the only suitable item of clothing he could find. The oversized sweater hung over her left shoulder and draped down to her ankles. He carried a bundled blanket in one hand and led her by the other. The big screen switched off just as the latest announcements from the First Region Senior Commission began.
“You can sleep here,” he said.
The girl looked down at the sofa, then all around the towering space surrounding her, settling on the blue flame dancing in the glass box beside them, the long sleeves swaying at her sides. Finally, her large and troubled eyes turned on Saul.
“Where will you sleep?” she asked.
“In the room at the end.”
She turned to look at where he indicated, and then turned back again.
“OK,” she said.
She looked to be concealing a kernel of angst behind the shell of innocence.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
The little head shook.
“I’m OK,” she said.
“… OK.”
She remained with her head tilted all the way back, gazing up at him, seeming to deliberate something. Then, next moment, the girl zipped forward and put her arms around him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and let go of her embrace a moment later, leaving him fixed to the spot as though shot through the core.
She tried to hop over the edge of the long settee with little snorts of struggle: one hop, two hop, three. When she botched her third attempt, he gave her bottom a little nudge and she rolled deep into the couch, curling up like a woodlouse and shivering relief. He laid the blanket over her and, almost instantly, she fell asleep. The little snuffles got lower and lower the further he receded to the other side of the house, keeping his eyes fixed on her until she was out of sight.
His knees gave way under him and he collapsed into a chair at the kitchen table, breathing deep breaths and cringing with agony. His sinews were sandpaper, grating his bones. His heartbeats were little bombs exploding in his head, but it did not matter. He had done it. He had saved a life – the ultimate act of rebellion. But, in the twilight of that brief reprieve, all the quandaries he had suppressed up until that point began to surface. What now? A civilian – in martial boarders. A civilian child… Possibly the only child in the martial world.
He took out all the contents of his coat pockets -- first, the second brown bundle Duke had given him, then the second stack of notes and then his cell. He laid them all on the table. Finally, he took one last item out of his inner pockets and removed his coat.
He held the last item between his thumb and index finger, and set it down on the table directly in front of him. He kept his eyes fixed on the empty, black neural canister as he unwrapped the brown package and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, lit a cigarette, puffed, pulled the ash tray toward him and leaned back in his seat, eyes glaring like an interrogator’s.
He tipped the canister over and the little silver tablets rolled out over the table. An eel of anxiety squirmed in his gut…
He was disturbed momentarily by the girl, coughing from across the room: croaky, hoarse coughs. She would need medicine. She was bound to need many things unprocurable in a martial city. He stood up and checked all of the kitchen cupboards and the pantry. After probing every nook and cranny and disposing of what was rotten, he had come upon enough food for maybe four days at the most. She would need clothes too. And that raised the fresh question as to where he was going to find clothes for a child. As the list of necessities continued to lengthen, it immediately became apparent that he would need Duke’s help again at some point in spite of his earlier promise. He took the last draw of his cigarette and sat back down, picked up his cell, scrolled through the short list of IDs in his contacts and, rather un-optimistically, typed the message:
“I know you have done me enough favours. I know you do not want to see me. I need something. You are the only one who can help. I will pay any price. “The Grove”, 4th Street, Orion Avenue, Haven District. Penthouse floor. I will wait for you.”
He edited and re-edited the message four times before aversely pushing the “send” button.
All he could do now was wait…
C. 5: Day 470
He gazed through the glazed roof into the red sky as he lay in his bed, cadaver-like. Six hours and not a wink of sleep, the sheets were barely ruffled. The room was enlarged by bareness and the sunlight was dim through the photochromic walls. He sat up with a low growl. The pain in his limbs had migrated to his core.
He stroked away the ache in his abdomen, brought his legs over the side of the bed and rose with a stretch, and his sinews pried from his bones like Velcro. He had eaten very little in the last week, and found himself slowly working his way back to insomnia. It did not take long for the suspicion to form that the Commission may have been keeping his home under surveillance, and there were a good many more causes over which to lose sleep, not least among which were the nightmares, which had gotten even worse than before.
The en suite was as large and lavish as every other room in the house with walls of chalcedony and jasper. Every first 20 minutes after waking (from what little sleep his body could muster) he spent standing stone still under running water.
The water poured over his hung head and neck, dripping off the tangled locks. He lifted his head up; eyes shut, and let the warm stream wash over his face.
He dried off, stepped out of the bath, and came up to the wash basin, looking up at the mirror. It was the first time since Nova Crimea that he could remember looking at himself. He scarcely recognised the man in the reflection. The corporal reconstruction had erased about two decades, but the marks of trauma were still prominent. He ran his fingers from his crown to his chin, down the thin scars that ran around the dents of his orbitals and all along the left side of his body, across the deep sinews of his chest the bold signets. His left pupil glowed red in the light from above the mirror. Then his fingers strayed over the collarbone, where the martial seal of the UMC had been restored.
He scowled at the seal in the reflection, took a blade up off the counter, and pressed the edge against the seal…
Silence was broken.
He flinched when the noise echoed down the corridors through the open doors and a trickle of blood began from his collarbone. He stopped. He listened.
It was a voice, too indistinct for the words to be made out.
He gently pushed the door of his room open and sidled, barefoot, over the threshold, into the corridor. His right hand glided over the open door, blade clutched and ready in his left. The voice became more distinct: “I really like green … the hills are so green here … not like back home…”
His hand tightened around the blade and as he approached the end of the corridor.
“… I’d like to go with Saul someday…”
He peered over the corner and saw Naomi on her knees, looking out through the glazed wall, talking, as it were, to someone and no one.
“Saul doesn’t talk a lot,” she said, quietly. “Daddy was the same…”
He laid the blade quietly aside and approached her from behind, across the soundless carpet.
“…No, I don’t mind,” she continued, casually. A gay smile unfurled on the corners of her sun-kissed cheeks. “Maybe he’s just shy. Mummy used to say that boys are shy with girls sometimes and…” When she saw his reflection in
the glass wall, she spun around with a gasp and a muddle of strawberry blond hair over her eyes.
“Hi, Saul,” she greeted, in a sing-song like the chirrup of a cuckoo. Light circles of rouge formed on her cheeks.
“Good morning.” He peered warily about.
Naomi giggled, bright-eyed.
“It’s not morning,” she said. “It’s sunset. See?”
She turned around and pointed at the westward view: to the hills and ridges of green and heather violet, and evergreen trees poking out like pikestaffs. The sun set over the faraway valley.
“So it is,” he said, gazing out.
The setting sun lit his eyes like flames. Night was falling.
He looked down at the girl and the great moonstones looked back up.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked.
“A – oh…” The girl’s eyes were suddenly timid. “Umm … just… someone,” she hesitated.
“Does this someone have a name?”
She hummed pensively. “I d’know,” she said, turning her head from side to side. “But, I think he knows Mummy and Daddy.”
“… He?”
“Umm…”
A loud squelching rumble suddenly sounded from her and she gasped and threw her hands over her belly. “Saul,” she murmured. “I’m hungry…”
He walked over to the other side of the room and turned on the big screen. He had managed to find a nature channel the previous night, after an hour of filtering through all the global media networks, political broadcasts, war zone bulletins, pornography and everything else he deemed unsuitable for a child. The display came alive with a high-definition holographic rendering of the African Savannah.
The girl turned and her gaping orbs brightened.
“Lions!”
She scurried to her feet and sprung off the floor twice and onto the settee.
“You… like animals,” he noted.
The little head bobbled. “I like to draw animals.”
He nodded slowly and unsurely. The girl’s eyes filled with delight when it seemed, for a moment, like he would sit with her, but the smile wilted when he walked on past and over to the freight chute. The green light over the conveyor doors signaled that freight was loaded. Inside was a fresh supply of vacuum-sealed and dehydrated food, the extent of his gastronomy. He poured a portion of rolled oats in a bowl and mixed in some lukewarm water and sugar.