The Offset

by Calder Szewczak

  The silver needle flashes in and out of the net. For a long while, Alix says nothing, keeping her eyes firmly on her work, but then tries a new tack: “How about if I put some fruit out for you? You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to, but at least then it’ll be there and ready if you decide that you do.”

  Miri can’t find the words to argue with this, so she watches in helpless silence while Alix crosses to the fridge to retrieve two tubs, one white plastic, the other glasslock. She snaps off the lid of the glasslock and then, taking a small ceramic bowl from one of the cupboards, doles out a few spoonfuls of chopped fruit. Then she adds a dollop of strained natural yoghurt from the plastic tub. As Alix returns to the fridge and opens the door, from her position, Miri catches sight of a single magnet on its surface. It is a souvenir from the Borlaug, an image of the Pancras building towering over the Institute’s slogan: Breed fewer. Breed better.

  The door closes and the magnet disappears from view. Alix sets the bowl out on the breakfast counter in front of Miri and then hastily turns back to her darning, as though trying to demonstrate indifference to whether Miri eats or not.

  Yeah, right, says the voice in Miri’s head.

  She stares at the bowl. Beyond the occasional mealy apple, fruit is hard to come by for most Londoners. The pineberries, pluots and blood limes that furnish the bowl in front of her all come from the complex of greenhouses at St Pancras. Only certain lab members have access to the in-house market stall where the fruit is sold, and Jac is one such person. Miri pushes the bowl away.

  At the sound of ceramic sliding across the surface of the breakfast bar, Alix hopefully glances around and then her face falls. She sighs, then stops what she’s doing to mop away the sweat from her brow with a nearby tea towel.

  “Mind if I turn the ceiling fan on?”

  Miri shrugs, leg still bouncing. “It’s your house.”

  Alix pulls the cord and then stands beneath the fan with her arms stretched wide as the blades begin to spin. “This is the only one in the house that works now,” she says. “The pigsuits took the motors out of the rest.”

  When she has cooled down a little, she takes up her needle once more and returns to the net. “That’s better,” she says, weaving the thread deftly in and out of the delicate mesh. “These hot flushes are driving me mad. Half the time I can’t tell if it’s me or the room that’s too hot. Are you alright?”

  Miri is clutching her arms to her chest, huddling against the sudden chill of the fan. “Fine,” she lies, tucking her fingers into her armpits once more and staring about the kitchen. Now Alix has mentioned the pigsuits taking the fan motors, she notices that other things are missing, too. The front of the oven has been ripped away and the grills and heating element have been removed from its blackened interior. The metal handles have been taken from some of the cupboard doors, half of the shelves are bare and, where once there stood a dishwasher, there is nothing but a gaping hole.

  Perhaps this should be no surprise. London has been gripped by a shortage of supplies and skills for years now, ever since the fall of the final trading bloc. Miri has come up against the hard end of it often enough in her time since leaving home and the evidence of it is everywhere, from the decaying appearance of the pigsuits to the automasons being decommissioned. But Miri wasn’t aware before now that materials were being seized from citizens and it’s strange to think that even her mothers are affected. If anyone is too important to be made to wash dishes by hand, it’s Jac. In the past, when droughts or blight or infestations drove parts of the city into famine, they’d always been able to carry on as if nothing had happened. They would perhaps wear grim expressions and speak in hushed tones of the terrible circumstances, but they always had plenty to spare. If the shortages were finally having an impact on them, things must be far worse than she thought.

  “Is Jac here?”

  Hearing Miri refer to her mother by her first name, Alix stiffens but does not reprimand her. “Away on work,” she says, making a final stitch that she ties off with a knot before cutting the trailing thread with her teeth. She holds up the net to inspect her handiwork in the light. Satisfied, she places the net back on the counter, rethreads her needle and starts on the next hole.

  For a moment, Miri’s leg stops bouncing. She sits perfectly still, her spine arched against the back of the stool, her eyes fixed on Alix; a cat intent on its prey. Under the intensity of her gaze, Alix shifts uncomfortably.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that. Your mother would be here if she could.”

  Miri laughs softly, thinking of the great many things Jac missed “because of work”. The school recitals, the birthday parties, the Sunday afternoons that should have been theirs. A flash of annoyance crosses Alix’s face. “Your mother works very hard. She always has. You know how important it is. And with so little time left…”

  Silence lapses between them. They have lasted this long without talking about the Offset, but she supposes they have to deal with it sooner or later. Miri’s birthday is tomorrow, after all. They are running out of time. Not that she ever imagined she would have to confront either of her mothers again before making her nomination.

  “Have you decided?” Alix asks quietly.

  An image springs into Miri’s head of the dead woman from the day before, thrashing and convulsing against the constraints of the electric chair.

  “You know I have.”

  Alix turns away from the net and leans back against the counter to face Miri, her arms folded across her chest and her eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “I wish you would speak to me first.”

  Miri’s leg starts to bounce again, heel pumping up and down against the footrest of the stool. “I don’t need your advice.”

  “But you don’t understand–”

  Before Alix can finish, Miri snatches up the bowl and hurls it at her.

  Alix manages to duck just in time. The bowl smashes into the cupboard at head height right behind her. There’s a loud crash as the bowl shatters, covering the countertop in jagged shards of ceramic. Smears of white yoghurt and fruit pulp spatter the walls and bleed dark juice into Alix’s carefully darned net, now ruined.

  Miri’s conscious mind is two beats behind her instinct. As soon as it catches up, a horrified gasp tears itself from her lips. She begins to shake violently and her hands jerk in her lap, automatically lacing together. Finger, thumb, finger, thumb.

  Alix straightens, her face completely drained of colour. She looks over the tops of her glasses at the destruction that litters the countertop and then across to where her daughter sits trembling and twitching. Then, taking out a new bowl, she goes to the fridge and doles out a second serving of fruit and yoghurt. She places it down firmly in front of Miri.

  “Eat,” she says, face set, jaw jutting forward.

  This time Miri does as she is told, the spoon in her hand clattering noisily against the bowl as she scoops food into her mouth. She whimpers as she does, hating the way the wet flesh of the fruit turns to pulp on her tongue, struggling to choke it down, every mouthful a painful atonement.

  Alix watches sternly over her while she eats, not moving until Miri has emptied the bowl. Then, at last, she goes to clear up the mess on the countertop, folding the broken bowl and fruit up into the net and then sweeping the whole lot into the bin. When she is done, she goes to the sink to wash the sticky residue from her hands and wrings them dry with a tea towel.

  “There,” she says, returning to take Miri’s empty bowl. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  Still trembling on her stool, Miri says nothing. In her lap, her hands move frantically like a dynamo: finger, thumb, finger, thumb. It isn’t helping.

  07

  That morning, Jac dresses with care, packs her bag and checks out of the boarding house beside the station while the sun has barely crested the horizon. There is a different girl behind the reception desk, much to Jac’s relief.

  “Where c
an I hire a rickshaw?”

  “There’s a rank by the old cemetery. It’s a few minutes’ walk from here. Just follow the road north. You can’t miss it.”

  Stepping out into the cool of the morning, it strikes Jac for the first time since arriving how much cleaner the air is in Inbhir Nis compared to London. The thick smog that hangs over so much of the city is entirely absent here. Far off, she sees a white mist settling on the hills but the sky is otherwise clear. When she inhales she can nearly taste the salt-tang of the nearby sea.

  The buildings she passes as she leaves the vicinity of the station are in much better condition than she would have expected, based on the strength of evidence provided by the shabby boarding house in which she spent the night. They stand tall and majestic, imposing facades of pale stone that look barely weathered at all despite their age. Further along, though, these give way to squat buildings of crumbling brick, plasterboard and pebbledash, all in varying states of disrepair. Most of the windows she passes are boarded up. A legacy, she guesses, of the violent storms that are said to roll in from the sea. As if confirming her suspicions, she comes to a stretch of pavement littered with broken glass. The splintered fragments catch the weak light of the rising sun and scatter it out in a bright array of rainbow colours, making the pavement glitter like crystal. The window of the nearest house is empty, nothing but a few jagged shards clinging to the frame: an eerie smile of broken teeth. The room beyond is pitch black. Were it not for the Alban flag hanging above the door – its white saltire and blue field are faded and look a little worse for wear – Jac would think the place deserted. The streets are quiet, too – since leaving the boarding house, she hasn’t so much as glimpsed another living soul.

  When she has walked just long enough to start thinking that she must have come in the wrong direction, she finally reaches the old cemetery that the girl mentioned. Beyond a low wall stand rows and rows of grey tombstones, many of which are partially hidden behind tall growths of nettles, the occasional crimson-red fronds of filterweed instantly recognisable within the thickets. Here, at least, the evident neglect is familiar from the London cemeteries; these days, most corpses are sent to a composting facility within a few days of death. The old religious traditions of burial and cremation are now only practised in a handful of places. Though, on closer inspection, she thinks that Inbhir Nis may be one such. Not all of the graves, she notices, have been given over to ruin. There are several that appear well maintained – the weeds cut back and the headstones scrubbed clean of lichen.

  Not far from the cemetery’s boundary wall she spies a freshly dug grave, the turned earth starkly brown against the surrounding green of the nettles. Atop the mound lies a simple doll made from a scrap of grey cloth. It has black buttons for eyes and they glare reproachfully at Jac as she passes. She doesn’t need to read the headstone to know that it is the grave of a child. She finds herself wondering where the parents are and if, somewhere in the depths of their grief, they aren’t secretly relieved. So went the logic: no child, no Offset. It was something Miri had accused her of; wishing that Miri had never been born, of wishing that she and Alix would not have to face the Offset. Jac had treated it like a joke, arguing that it was a bit rich coming from a girl who spent the rest of her time railing against her misfortune for existing at all. Now she wonders if Miri had a point, if she had perhaps picked up on some primordial fear of mortality that Jac herself had not been able to acknowledge. Not that she has ever regretted Miri’s birth; not once, not even on the worst days, not even on the day Miri left home. But, certainly, she has wished the world were different from what it is. Who’s to say that the girl had not observed that resentment and assimilated it, assuming herself to be the cause?

  Before she can consider the matter further, she reaches the rickshaw rank, marked by a wooden sign with a crude image of one of the three-wheeled vehicles daubed onto it with a thick, tar-like paint. At this early hour there is only a single rickshaw parked beside the pavement; a simple cart attached to a rusting bicycle. The rider looks half-starved and she can’t help but notice the bruises on his arms and the long, red scratches on his face. They might have been caused by anything – or anyone – but from the way he eyes Jac warily as she approaches the rickshaw, she feels sure that the injuries have been inflicted by some of his customers.

  “You want to go to the Borlaug?” he asks, before she has even had the chance to say anything.

  “Yes,” she replies, her sense of unease increasing. Jac supposes it must be evident enough from her face and clothes that she isn’t from around here; in her experience, County dwellers and Albans alike can spot a Londoner from several paces. And in a small township such as this, it would be reasonable to assume that the testing facility is the main draw for foreigners. What she cannot square away so easily, though, is how the rider flinches away from her as she climbs into the cart. All at once, she is convinced she knows exactly the kind of customer responsible for his dark bruises, and the realisation makes her stomach turn.

  As soon as she’s in the cart, the rider sets off, pedalling at a furious pace that seems quite at odds with his emaciated figure. He follows the old tarmac road north. Before long, the dilapidated houses fall away. The grey expanse of the River Nis stretches out to the left, swollen to the highest part of its banks, and the road becomes uneven, pitted and cracked. When the sky blackens and fat raindrops begin to drum thunderously down on the roof of the cart, the rider merely whips out an umbrella that was strapped to the bicycle frame, opens it single-handed and keeps going at breakneck speed, swerving dangerously around the large potholes that appear here and there in the tarmac. Whenever he does, the cart rocks dangerously on its chassis, threatening to send Jac flying. Groaning, she closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. The sway of the cart is making her lightheaded and she can feel the bile rising at the back of her throat. Suddenly, she is uncomfortably warm despite the rain, and she’s not sure if she should attribute it to the motion sickness or if she is experiencing another hot flush. Alix started getting them a couple of years back, but they are still relatively new to Jac. Whatever the cause, there’s little she can do but wait it out.

  Jac only opens her eyes again when the rickshaw finally comes to an abrupt halt.

  “We’re here.”

  She peers around. They seem to have reached the very edge of the land. A vast body of water stretches out before them, dark and turbulent in the rain. This inlet is the start of the North Sea. For a moment she struggles to dredge up the name and then she has it: An Cuan Moireach. This close, the strong smell of brine is undercut with something danker – the rotting stench of decomposing marine life: seaweed, molluscs, fish bloated with plastic. Peering back around the headland, she sees the ruin of a collapsed bridge half-submerged in the middle where the road has buckled. A few limp suspension cables hang from a listing tower. It is in the process of being reclaimed by the sea, its rusting metal skeleton furred over with algae and red dulse, both strains well-adapted to the acidity of the water.

  She snatches her attention back inland to where a tall chain-link fence lines the road; coils of barbed wire run along the top. Laminated signs rendered in bold colours and stark fonts have been attached to the fence at regular intervals. Jac casts her eyes across them. Danger: Unauthorised personnel keep out. Caution: Radiation controlled area. The same signs are displayed in Gaelic nearby. They all bear an identical symbol, a black trefoil with a single circle in the middle and three thick blades radiating out from it.

  A broad-shouldered guard stands sentry by the gate and eyes the rickshaw with undisguised suspicion from beneath his red beret. Across his body, he holds an automatic rifle, the muzzle pointed down at the ground, a few clips of ammo visible at his belt. There is no sign to say that this is the Borlaug Testing Facility, but there can be no doubt that they have arrived.

  A little shaky after the rough ride, Jac leans forward to pay the rider.

  “Thank you,” she says, giving hi
m a generous tip as though that will in some way compensate him for the suffering she suspects he has endured at the hands of the testing facility workers. Her staff.

  The rider takes the money with a dull grunt. Then Jac steps down from the cart and into the rain, setting her face into a determined frown as she approaches the armed guard.

  08

  The fruit sits heavy in Miri’s stomach. As a wave of nausea crashes over her, she runs to the bathroom, where she falls to her knees on the tiled floor. Reaching up to the sink, she turns the tap in the hope that the running water will conceal the tell-tale sounds of dry-heaving if Alix comes to listen at the door. Then she leans over the toilet bowl. It smells faintly of bleach. Her mouth slickens at once with saliva, and the vomit comes in the next moment; two mouthfuls of curdled yoghurt spatter against the white porcelain. But though the nausea does not abate, that is all she can manage. She retches heartily and digs her fists into her stomach, desperate to get every last morsel out of her system. Nothing more comes. Stopping just short of sticking her fingers into her throat, she lies on her side, curled on the hard tiles around the base of the toilet, and waits for the sensation to pass. She ignores Alix when she comes knocking on the door, glad that she had the foresight to turn the lock.

  At last, the intense discomfort begins to subside. When it does, she slowly pushes herself to her feet and then peels the clothes away from her body before going to stand in the shower. She jabs the on button with her thumb and gasps when the hot water crashes down over her head and shoulders. She notes with detached interest how the water trickling from her and into the shower tray is black and scummy with dirt; she grabs a bar of soap from the hanging wire rack and works it into a foam, lathering it methodically over her body. Then she massages the soap into her scalp, working her fingers through her wet, knotted hair. Some of the red dye bleeds out onto her skin and into the shower, but it quickly rinses away. She turns the dials to increase the water pressure and temperature as high as they will go. Soon the entire bathroom is clouded with steam. It is the first time in months that she has felt truly warm.