The Offset

by Calder Szewczak

  “Ssh,” Jac hisses, looking around to make sure they aren’t being overheard.

  “Just take the plans and publish it,” the Engineer whispers back, waving over a waiter who’s passing by with a silver ice-bucket. “Now shut up about work and drink.”

  And they do. They carry on drinking and talking until late into the night. As the wine and conversation flows, Jac feels confident the two of them will part as newly reinstated friends. Then, in an unguarded moment, Jac opens her wallet and takes out a photograph – Alix’s twenty-week scan – which she slides across the table towards the Engineer with a sheepish grin.

  Leaning over to inspect it and then straightening up fast, the Engineer’s expression clouds at once. “Why?” she asks. “Because you have a death wish?”

  “Quite the opposite,” says Jac, hastily pulling the photograph back towards her. Her hands are shaking. She grips them tightly together and wills the tremor to stop.

  The Engineer lifts her glass to her lips and takes a long slug of wine. Then, with a frown: “You never told me you wanted a baby.”

  “It never came up.”

  The Engineer is disbelieving. “The issue of reproduction definitely came up.” After a brief pause, she presses her point: “What happened, Jac? What changed?”

  Jac glances away. How can she possibly answer the Engineer without hurting her? For the truth is simple: what happened was that Jac had changed her mind. It was meeting Alix that did it, it was falling in love: like switching on a light she didn’t even know was there. It illuminated everything, made her see how much she needed for her and Alix to have a child, to create a life that would embody and entomb their love. When Alix, more ambivalent at first, had asked what would happen if the world ended, Jac had responded with a new and startling clarity: So what if it does? Yes, she would devote her life’s work to preventing it, but they couldn’t let the threat of annihilation suffocate them forever. To do so was unconscionable: the very antithesis of their love, which strained away from their ailing planet and out towards the stars. Jac wanted to catch something of that feeling and give it form. She wanted proof of their love – to hold its revelation in her hands.

  Love before Alix had never felt like that, had never simultaneously sharpened and neutralised the threat of death. All their past fears persisted still, but now they had the antidote, too: new life. A child, the genetic product of both her and Alix. An artificial sperm had been crafted from Jac’s DNA and used to fertilise one of Alix’s eggs. Because neither of them had a Y chromosome, neither would their offspring. She would be assigned female at birth, just like them. They already have a name for her: Miriam Ford-Boltanski. Their little Miri, their love made flesh. For whoever dies first – whoever is Offset – she will remain. She will outlive them both.

  How can Jac explain any of this to the Engineer? How can she tell her ex-girlfriend that it never even occurred to her to think of their love as eternal? That her love for Alix was more than the stuff of bodies and minds: it was more, even, than the life and death of the world? But the silence between them conveys the Engineer’s deep need for an answer and Jac cannot deny that an answer is owed, that the burden is on her to try and explain. Finally, choosing to speak in a language they both understand, she says, “I wanted to make the world a better place.”

  As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she hears how feeble they sound, how insulting. For a moment, the Engineer is very still. Then, with no explanation needed, she rises unsteadily to her feet and announces that she’s leaving. Jac tries to persuade her to stay but it’s no use. When she’s gone, Jac remains where she is for a long time after that, looking at the scan of her baby on the table, replaying the conversation in her head over and over again.

  Late the next morning, Jac wakes up in the Warren with a splitting headache. Getting a glass of water, she enters the study – her morning ritual – to check her inbox. Amongst the usual work communications there is an email from the Engineer, sent only an hour before. Jac opens it quickly, but finds it empty. Confused, she sits back in her chair, wondering at the meaning of this, before she notices an attachment. It’s the Engineer’s half of the UVD plans.

  Jac hastily replies with copious thanks and a hopeful “Let’s keep in touch?” but she never hears anything back. Although the Engineer has closed a door on their friendship, she has opened another for Jac’s career.

  Immediately after her publication of the paper on the UVD, Jac is offered the Borlaug directorship. She takes it and never looks back.

  18

  Once they leave the muggy closeness of the greenhouse, Miri quickly pulls her jumper back on but Alix leaves her blouse knotted around her waist. The Personal Assistant, his original geniality now all but eroded away into impatience, escorts them back to the lobby and bids them a brusque farewell. Alix asks Miri if she’ll be alright to wait by herself for a few minutes while she runs to the bathroom. Miri raises an eyebrow. After two years fending for herself a few minutes alone hardly troubles her, but she does not say this to Alix, merely nodding and promising to wait. It is only then that Miri realises she left the tub lying in the greenhouse where she dropped it. Reluctant to return, she lets the rat nestle in the crook of her arm as she crosses the lobby to step through the Borlaug’s revolving glass door. As she leaves the building, she catches sight of the slogan engraved above the door, the letters gilded: Breed fewer. Breed better.

  It is mid-afternoon but, apart from the heat, there’s little to distinguish it from any other time of the day. When Miri looks skyward, the hazy smog is so thick overhead that she can barely even discern the position of the sun. Saving the occasional employee darting in and out of the Borlaug’s sprawling complex of buildings, the plaza is quiet. Not far off is a broad block of grey stone, a recess cut out of the near side to create a low bench. A solitary figure with short bleach-blond hair sits on top of the block, feet jiggling against the flat of the bench. In this refined setting, he looks distinctly out of place. Even across the square, she can see that he is whippet thin; his sallow skin pitted, his eyes bloodshot. He rolls his neck so that his head makes a weaving motion and it is so instantly familiar that Miri doesn’t understand how she missed it before: the boy is someone she knows. They met nearly two years ago when she was staying in a shelter out by the mud flats of St James’s. She woke one night to find him forcefully trying to tug the boots from her feet and instinctively kicked the rubber soles of her size sevens hard into his chest, sending him flying across the room. He smacked into the wall and then crumpled to the floor in a broken heap. She hurried over, muttering a string of curses as she turned him over to check if he was alright. He was badly winded and it looked like he was going to have a nasty bruise on his chest. She helped him sit up and waited for him to get his breath back before telling him how sorry she was. As soon as she did, he let out a loud bark of laughter, his head weaving uncontrollably.

  “I try to steal your shoes and you apologise to me?”

  The Thief became one of her few friends after that, the sort of friend you never get as far as sharing a surname with. Miri is quite certain that he has no idea who her parents are and she was careful never to tell him, a lie of omission made easier by the fact that he always had little interest in following the news feeds. Although they can go for long intervals without seeing or even thinking of one another, Miri is always glad to run into the Thief. They’d spent a few memorable evenings together; at least one smashing in all the ground-floor windows of a row of townhouses and several more in the company of a bottle of stolen liquor. Even now, when she is struggling to reconcile his presence with the austere grandeur of the Borlaug, there is a bubble of happy anticipation in her stomach.

  She approaches. The bleach in his hair is new, but otherwise he looks much the same as ever. Up close, she can see the yellow grime of stale sweat at the neck of his t-shirt, the cold sores that blister the skin around his chapped lips, the peeling scab across the sunken bridge of his nose. Once again, there�
��s that spasmodic rolling movement that sets his head weaving.

  She watches him for a full minute but the Thief doesn’t look up. Finally, she clears her throat. Now his head snaps up, his mouth drawing into a scowl, his pupils narrowing to hostile slits beneath his monolids.

  “Fuck off.”

  As the words leave his mouth, something clicks into place and he identifies the face peering down at him. The aggression that clouds his eyes lifts at once. His head once again weaves from side to side.

  “Miri?” he says. “I didn’t recognise you. You look different.”

  She self-consciously plucks the sleeve of her steel-blue jumper, unsure of what to say.

  “Not in a bad way,” he adds. “Just, I dunno. Clean.”

  “Yeah, well, I used soap and everything. Mind if I sit?”

  He shrugs and Miri clambers up on the bench beside him. As she does, the white rat scampers up her arm, its clever claws threading into the weave as it crosses the front of her jumper. Seeing the ear curving out of its back, the Thief gives a shout of alarm.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “Just a rat,” she says, grabbing the creature with one hand and pulling it off her jumper. One of its claws catches in the wool and yanks out a few loops into a messy snag. Ignoring this, Miri offers the rat to the Thief. “Want to hold it?”

  “Not a chance.” Though he wrinkles his nose in disgust, he is barely able to tear his eyes away from the rat as it slowly clambers down from Miri’s sleeve and settles onto the arm of the bench beside him. “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know,” says Miri. “Escaped from a lab, I guess.”

  He glances around the plaza. Another jerky weave of the head. “One of these labs?”

  “Probably not,” she says. “I found it down by the Gallery. Doubt it could have got that far by itself.”

  “Bet these labs have things like that though,” he says. He arches a knowing brow and takes a canvas pouch from his pocket that he pinches open and tilts towards her. “They do all sorts here.”

  Miri peers into the gaping mouth of the pouch. It contains a few handfuls of dried, shredded leaf. The smell is unmistakable. Tobacco.

  “You got that here?”

  He taps the side of his nose. “That’s for me to know. Want some?” he asks, head swaying from side to side as he pulls out a paper no longer than his thumb and so thin as to be practically transparent.

  “Go on then.”

  She watches as he sprinkles some of the dried leaf into the paper and pinches the long edges together; shaping, adjusting. The paper twists and curls almost of its own accord, reminding Miri of the filterweed she saw in the holding cell and how the leaf wrapped up around the struggling aphid to make a funnel-like pitcher. Once the paper is rolled tight, he moistens the trailing edge with the tip of his tongue and then presses it down. He inspects his handiwork for a moment, giving it a brisk tap on his knee. Then he snatches it up and swings both hands behind his back before holding out his fists for Miri to inspect; knuckles up, thumbs tucked in. It’s impossible to tell which one holds the cigarette.

  “Left or right?” he asks Miri, a faint smile playing across his lips.

  “Right,” she says.

  “Eliminating the right,” he confirms, letting the hand drop to his side. When Miri taps his left fist, he twists it up and opens his fingers out like the petals of a budding flower. The cigarette lies across his palm. Miri laughs and picks it up, placing one end in her lips as the Thief strikes a match. Ducking towards the flame, she inhales deeply, sucking on the end of the cigarette until the tip glows orange. The smoke billows from her mouth and hangs in the air, darkly visible even against the smog. She takes another puff and passes the cigarette to the Thief.

  “Hey!” shouts a voice. “You’re not allowed to do that here.”

  Miri looks up. It’s the Student from the Borlaug. She’s standing across the plaza, her face thunderous. Miri thinks that if they ignore her she’ll probably leave them alone, but the Thief is already playing up to it, cupping his hand to his ear and pretending like he can’t make out what she said. It’s enough to spur the Student into action and she storms across the plaza. By the time she reaches them, she is breathing heavily.

  “I said you’re not allowed to do that here.”

  Miri conjures up an innocent expression and makes a show of looking around. “I don’t see any signs prohibiting it,” she says.

  The Student is not impressed. “You can’t burn anything out in a public space. It’s bad for the environment. I’d expect you of all people to know that.”

  The Thief’s head snaps up. “Why?” he asks. “Who’s she of all people?”

  Before Miri can stop her, the Student tells him her full name. He lets out a low whistle, turning back to give Miri a reappraising look. “Fucking hell. Boltanski? Like Jac Boltanski?”

  There’s no use denying it now. Under the watchful eyes of the Student, she gives a short nod. The Thief flicks her arm. “You never fucking told me that. But if you’re her daughter, then what…” he trails off, confused. Miri knows why. There’s no way he can reconcile the famous, glamorous Jac Boltanski with the scrawny girl he considers his friend. From his view, the worlds they inhabit are entirely separate and distinct, only ever brushing together in the course of an occasional blackmarket trade. His eyes flit back round the plaza, re-examining the grand facade of the gothic palace and considering it anew. Up until now he has, perhaps, believed that Miri was here for much the same reason as him – some underhand deal with one of the lab workers – but now she can see that he’s reassessing it as the world from which she comes. “Fuck,” he says again and takes a deep drag on the cigarette.

  With a click of frustration, the Student goes to snatch it out of his hand but he pulls it back out of reach. “Alright, alright,” he says, head weaving. “I’m putting it out, OK?”

  Then, before Miri can stop him, he jabs the smouldering end of the cigarette at the white rat, stubbing out the smoking ash at the base of the ear that rises from its back. The rat squeals and writhes, bucking ferociously and squirming to get away, but the Thief keeps it pinned down until the end of the cigarette stops smouldering. When he lets the rat up, there’s an angry red welt on the cartilage where the skin has burnt and blistered. The whole incident takes no more than a few seconds, but it feels like a lifetime to Miri sitting as motionless as if she were back in the holding cell, numb and limp under the influence of the tranquiliser. Whimpering, the rat scrambles over to Miri and cowers, shaking, in a fold of her jumper.

  The Student stands open-mouthed in horror. “You monster,” she hisses.

  The Thief shrugs. “You were the one who wanted me to put it out.”

  At that, the Student turns on her heel and marches back across the plaza. Scooping up the shivering rat, Miri shoots the Thief a reproachful glare and then hurries after her.

  “Hey, stop,” she shouts. The Student ignores her. It’s a few moments before Miri catches her up. “What are you going to do?” she asks, panting.

  “Call the pigsuits,” says the Student, her face set firmly forward.

  “Please don’t,” says Miri. “I know what he did and how it seems and everything… but it’s not worth calling the pigsuits over. Please. He has a record. If they catch him, he’ll be thrown in the Eye. And that’ll be the end for him.”

  “Maybe he should have thought about that first,” says the Student. Although her tone is officious, she slows her pace a little and doesn’t tell Miri to leave her alone.

  “Are you honestly telling me you’ve never gone cat baiting before?” asks Miri.

  The Student rolls her eyes; she’s heard this from people like Miri a million times before. “That’s completely different and you know it.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course. Everyone does it. Besides, it’s a humane way to control a swelling population that would otherwise be left unchecked.”

  Miri snorts, unconvinced.
If the city ever was overrun by felines – the feral ancestors of once domesticated breeds – those days are long gone. The creatures now hunted by London school kids are bred for the purpose; she’s seen the stinking catteries out in the southern wastes. Besides, there’s nothing remotely humane about the way a captured cat is traditionally skinned and boiled alive.

  “You’re just as bad as he is,” she says hotly. “You think what he did was wrong because of how he lives and what he looks like, but what people like you do is fine because–”

  “People like me?” interrupts the Student, eyebrows raised. “People like us, you mean.”

  Miri’s face reddens and she blunders quickly on. “Please don’t call the pigsuits. He didn’t mean it.” She stops. It’s not quite right. She thinks fleetingly of earlier that morning when she hurled the fruit bowl at her mother’s head. She had meant that, and that was part of what made it so horrifying – the regret for wanting to do the thing was just as shattering as the regret for doing it. But she had also been in a bad way. Out of control. She’d acted out against something unexpected and difficult in the only way she could come up with in the pressure of the moment. Perhaps that was what happened with the Thief, too.

  Taking a deep breath, she keeps pace with the Student and tries again to explain. “Do you know how hard it is to plan for the future when you’re surviving from one moment to the next?”

  The Student stops in her tracks but says nothing.

  “I know how it seems. He didn’t have to smoke or be rude to you or stub his cigarette out on a harmless animal. Those were his choices and he should suffer the consequences. But you’re thinking like someone who’s in a position to carefully weigh up the outcomes of their actions. Like someone who can take the next hour, the next day, for granted. It’s not like that for him. He probably doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep tonight or where his next meal is coming from. Half the time he’s just working out how to solve that problem, over and over. The rest of the time, he has to wander around, waiting it out, never allowed to stay in one place for long before someone turfs him out or beats him up. There’s nowhere he can go where he can safely exist and be himself. Until he becomes someone’s problem, he’s completely invisible. That can get to a person. Make you do things you can’t always control.”