There is a long, savage gash along the woman’s belly, thick and scarring to purple. It has been sewn together with black stitches but there is a greenish tinge around the edge of the wound and it’s starting to give off a dank smell. Infection.
Alix does what she can to clean the wound and then carefully redresses it. She sends Miri to get painkillers and any available antibiotics. Although there are plenty of the first, she can find none of the second. When she tells Alix, she merely gives a knowing tut.
“Maybe just as well,” Alix says. “There are very few strains that are still effective on the London population. It’s just like with the Marburg – not enough was done to develop critical medications while we still had the chance. It wasn’t seen as profitable. Now we all reap the benefits.”
She gives the woman a dose of painkillers and then makes a detailed record of the wound. Without any medication to fight the infection, the woman will need to be checked frequently.
Once they have done all they can, they move on. Only when they are safely out of earshot does Alix explain to Miri what was written in the woman’s notes – that she told her boyfriend she missed her period and he, fearing she was pregnant and desperate to avoid the Offset at all costs, tried to cut out her womb.
The next person they attend is also female, but at least twice the age of the girl with the rotting gash in her belly. This woman is sitting up, propped against the wall, and her little boy sits in her lap. Although she chats animatedly to her son, singing nursery rhymes and stroking his soft, dark hair, she is obviously not in a good way. Her face is badly bruised; her lip is split on one side and one eye is swollen shut. She holds her right arm awkwardly across her chest. It’s obvious from the strange angle of the wrist that she’s broken a bone.
“I tripped,” she croaks when Alix asks what happened. “Fell down the stairs.”
Her little boy shakes his head. The motion is slight but definite. No one sees but Miri.
Alix raises an eyebrow but says nothing until she’s finished conducting her examination. There are bruises on the woman’s throat, too, ones that Miri fancies line up exactly with the fingers of a gripping hand. When Alix points this out to the woman, she starts to shake violently but continues to insist that she only fell down the stairs. Adopting a soothing tone, Alix calms her down and then busies herself seeing to her injuries, setting the broken bone as best she can with a splint and then smearing a thick, yellow ointment across the swollen eye. When she’s done, she rips off a scrap of paper and writes down the address of a refuge, which the woman takes and hastily stuffs into her pocket.
“Do you think she’ll take your advice?” asks Miri as they head over to the next patient.
“No,” says Alix. “Probably not.”
Miri nods. The woman’s situation is hardly unique and she’s heard several variations of it before. From the look of the woman’s injuries, her husband tried to kill her and Miri is certain she knows why. If one parent dies before the Offset, then the survivor is pardoned for their crime of procreation. There are all too many families where this exemption acts as an incentive for murder. In heterosexual couples, that parent is nearly always the father. Sometimes it is the children who are beaten into submission instead of their mothers. Sometimes it’s both. The victims vary but the motivation is always the same: survival at the expense of all else.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth patient they attend, they are interrupted by panicked shouts and the heavy stomp of boots racing on concrete. Miri’s head snaps up, searching for the source of the noise. A bearded man is sprinting through the lower ward, a small bundle cradled in his arms. With a squeeze to Alix’s shoulder to tell her she’ll be back in a moment, Miri heads over to find out what’s going on. By the time she reaches the man, he is already pleading with the Medic.
“You must save her,” he says, thrusting forward the bundle. It is a baby, so small that it must be a newborn. It doesn’t so much as squirm within its swaddling of rags. When Miri leans forward to get a better look, she sees that the infant’s lips are blue. She knows at once that it is dead.
The Medic knows it, too, but the man is still screaming at xem in his desperation, begging xem to do something. Somehow, xe manages to prise the bundle away from him. As soon as xe does, the man collapses to the floor, sitting down in a low squat and rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands clasping his head.
Exchanging a look with the Medic, Miri squats down beside the man, doing her best to adopt the calm, friendly tone she’s seen Alix use on the other patients, distracting him while the Medic deals with the corpse. As she talks to him, he becomes less and less agitated.
“It’s not mine,” he says at last. “I would never… please, you have to believe me–”
“It’s alright,” says Miri. “What happened?”
“I– I was out looking for scrap. Something to sell, you know? There’s not much to be had in these parts, but in the wealthier districts… well. Anyway, I found this skip. It was tucked away down a side street and all covered in rust, hadn’t moved in years. Didn’t look like there was much to be had out of it either, but I went to see all the same and… there she was.” His voice breaks. “Half-buried beneath a rotting wooden beam. Don’t know how long she was there for. I dug her out and… this was the only place I could think to bring her.”
“You did the right thing.”
He nods, settling again after the second wave of shock. “I did, didn’t I?” Then he frowns and glances nervously around the ward. “Where is she?” he asks, meaning the baby. “I won’t have to take her, will I?”
Miri has to fight down the sudden and overwhelming urge to tell him the baby is already dead. In the grand scheme of things, is he any better in his reluctance to take responsibility for his actions than the breeders that brought the baby into the world and then left it to die?
“No,” she says flatly. “You’re done here. You can leave.”
She watches him go with a stab of loathing for not taking the responsibility that fate had handed him.
When she returns to Alix, she finds her mother tending to a teenager just a few years younger than herself. He is laid out on his front with the sheets pulled down to the waist, his bare back gleaming with a criss-cross pattern of red cuts. Every time Alix touches a disinfectant-doused cotton swab to one of the cuts, he winces and cries out.
Miri checks his notes. She sees that he stumbled in three days ago after his mother whipped him to within an inch of his life. Clearly she had tried to beat into him what the right decision would be when it was time for the Offset.
“I can’t believe it,” says Alix when the Medic next passes by. “We never saw half as many of these kinds of cases in Ormond Street.” She gestures out towards the ward, to the patients curled and broken in their bays.
“Of course not,” xe says. “It’s government-run. And you know what the official view is on ReproViolence. It doesn’t exist, remember?”
Alix nods sadly.
It is a commonly held belief that the Offset is a matter of balance. The parent creates life and, in so doing, renders their own in forfeit. The omnipotence of the parent-creator wanes until finally, as the child enters adulthood, it deserts them entirely, taking a new form and a new master: the child-destroyer. The old make way for the young. Life is met with death, creation with destruction, age with youth. The selfishness of procreation is pitted against the altruism of self-sacrifice and, in that way, a precarious balance is maintained. So it goes.
Miri knows that there are other, more rational reasons why the Offset – originally introduced as a public health initiative – is allowed to continue as a cultural practice: critically, it provides a much-needed check against the human want to procreate when the planet is suffering from overpopulation. In that way, it’s not so different from any other adaptive social behaviour.
When there was still an African savannah, the wildebeest adapted to grazing in large herds because it reduced the risk
of any individual wildebeest being attacked and eaten by a predator. Even though this reduced the quality of the grazing site, the behaviour was advantageous in helping the species survive. So too with the Offset; reducing the strain the human species places on the environment is more advantageous for survival than unlimited reproduction.
Despite knowing these things rationally, the Offset is still deeply ingrained, occupying a place in her mind beyond conscious thought. It is a truth, a fact. Children are born and parents die. That is the price. That is how it has been for longer than anyone can remember and that is how it will always be.
At least, that is what she has believed for most of her life. Since she started coming to the clinic, she’s had ample opportunity to see that this is not always the case.
At some point in between patients, the Medic draws Miri aside, beckoning her over to where the supplies are kept – which is about as private as it gets on the lower ward.
“Everything OK?” Miri asks.
“Yeah,” xe says. “I actually just wanted to check in with you while I had ten seconds. How are you getting on? Last time I saw you, you were in a real state.”
Xe is, Miri thinks, putting it lightly. Miri came into the clinic a couple of months ago with pneumonia. Although the ReproViolence Clinic specialises in treating injuries related to the Offset, Miri begged the Celt and the Medic to take her in so that she wouldn’t have to go to Ormond Street and face her mother – not knowing, of course, that Alix was already retired. It wasn’t the first time she’d been ill, but it was the most serious. It was the only time that Miri had caved in and sought medical attention. By all accounts, she nearly died. Would have died, if it wasn’t for the Medic and the rest of the volunteers.
Although she appreciates that xe is taking the time to ask, Miri can’t help but feel that xyr concern is needless. She is in better health than she has been for a long time. She tells the Medic as much.
Xe nods. “I figured. Well, whatever you’re doing, keep at it. It’s working.”
She wants to say that she hasn’t been doing anything at all, but then she thinks of the healthy meals she’s eaten, and the invigorating shower. Of being cared for by her mother. Perhaps she needs Alix more than she has been willing to admit.
Before she can contemplate this any further, Miri realises with a jolt that it’s time for her appointment. The Celt is waiting for her upstairs.
As soon as she is sure that Alix is sufficiently occupied, she slips away and heads up the spiralling ramp that leads her to the next storey. Like the floor below, this has been converted into a kind of ward, but one that houses longer-term patients. There are not many of these – with the limited resources available, critical patients mostly either recover or die. Some, though, hold on fast and keep fighting, even though all the odds are stacked against them. They have sustained injuries that will never go away. Brain damage, paralysis, blindness. And there are those, too, suffering from the poison that wells deep within the mind, the traumas that permeate every thought, every sense, every moment of their lives.
These people are kept away from the lower ward, in part because it’s easier for the volunteers to manage and in part because it gives them more room to spread out. Each patient has a few bays to themselves and many of them have sought to turn their small patches of concrete into something approximating home, decorating the walls and floors with anything they can get their hands on – paints, foil wrappers, scraps of brightly coloured fabric.
Miri nods at the upper ward’s occupants as she passes through, making a beeline for the set of bays at the far end, which belong not to a patient but the woman who founded and runs the clinic. Compared to the others nearby, these bays are meticulously neat, the floor swept clean, the bed made. The only decoration is a large Alban flag stretched across the wall, the white saltire bright in the gloom.
Sitting at the end of the mattress with her back against the wall is the Celt. She has on a hard-wearing flannel shirt and a pair of jeans that have been cropped and stapled together over the two short stumps that project forward from her hips. She is thickset and strong, the muscles and sinews of her powerful arms and shoulders evident beneath her shirt. Every so often, the patients cast furtive looks in her direction according to some unknowable, internal rhythm. Their glances are frequent and nervous, like rabbits gathered around a sleeping fox. But the Celt, seemingly unaware of the effect she has on the patients, keeps her eyes focused, trained on the page of the book she is reading. The whole thing is falling apart: the front cover has been torn off and the glue of the spine has melted so that the pages, dog-eared and yellow with age, sit loosely together, a collection of disordered leaflets. Whatever its contents, they appear completely absorbing.
The Celt doesn’t look up even when Miri comes to stand next to her bay, close enough to see the dark speckles of stubble on the dome of her shaven head.
“I wasn’t sure you would come, given the circumstances,” she says at last, not looking up from her book.
Miri falters, uncertain of what to say. Somehow, she’s already on the back foot.
“Not many would seek the company of a mere stranger so soon before their Offset.”
“A… a stranger?” Miri stammers, her mouth paper-dry.
For the first time, the Celt looks up. Her eyes are round and wild, the irises so dark as to be almost black. After a long moment, she invites Miri to sit down. Miri does so, perching on the edge of the thin mattress. At first she stretches her legs out across the floor and then, self-conscious of the stark difference between her and the Celt, quickly draws them back into a right angle. She has to sit half-turned in order to keep the Celt in view, and it’s an awkward position, but she says nothing.
Miri has only met the woman a handful of times before and she thinks she’s still a long way from understanding her. There’s something about the Celt that Miri finds deeply unnerving, something that strikes her through every time she is subjected to the woman’s powerful gaze. It is as intoxicating as the way she moves when she walks on her strong hands; with more fluid grace than most can manage on their feet. Sometimes she talks to Miri with an intense intimacy, like there’s no one else in the whole world but them. But at others, it’s like she’s not even aware of her existence.
“The colour suits you,” says the Celt.
Blushing furiously, Miri looks down and picks at the front of her steel-blue jumper. With all the distraction of the clinic, she had forgotten how different she must look to the last time she saw the Celt. Apart from the neat clothes, Miri wonders how she comes across now and what else the Celt has noticed: the lack of dirt griming the creases and folds of her skin. When she ran into the Thief, she wanted to pretend that nothing had changed. Now, her only hope is that the Celt approves of the alteration.
“Why did you want to see me?”
“It’s my Offset, tomorrow…” Miri begins.
“And you were hoping I would tell you who you must nominate? I see from your expression that I’m right.” As Miri struggles for a response, the Celt turns back to her book and idly neatens the loose pages. “It’s your decision to make, Miri,” she says quietly. “No one else’s.”
“It’s not that,” says Miri. “I’ve made my decision. I have. It’s just–”
“You want me to reassure you it’s the right one?”
Yes, she thinks. “Not exactly,” she says. “I just need to… talk to someone. There isn’t anyone else. I mean, not really.” She thinks of all the times she and Alix have spoken about the upcoming Offset without ever truly discussing it. How could she talk to Alix when her mother had already decided what Miri should do?
The Celt nods. “Then talk,” she says. “And I will listen.”
Miri’s leg begins to tingle beneath her weight; she shifts a little in her awkward position and then settles, hands in her lap, eyes downcast. It takes a moment before she has her thoughts in order, but the Celt does not interrupt, nor does she urge her to hasten.
&nbs
p; At last, she is ready.
“If Jac dies…” says Miri. Her voice wavers and she has to start again. “If Jac dies, there’s a real possibility that Project Salix will fail. At least, that’s what everyone keeps telling me. And I thought… you told me before that, if something like that ever happened, it would destabilise… well, everything. Critical resources will stop being diverted to the project and there’ll be a chance for real progress.”
The Celt inclines her shaven head. “Perhaps,” she says. “And perhaps not. There would be unrest, certainly. Violence, even. Many of those who are already worse off will suffer.”
“But you said… you said before now that Project Salix is precisely what keeps everyone in their place. That it’s why nothing changes.”
“I stand by my words. For as long as the people cling to their hope for a better world – a world that has been promised to them by the laboratories while remaining a distant possibility – nothing will change. If Jac Boltanski dies, there is a chance for progress. But I cannot pretend that, if change does come from that destruction, it won’t be with an extraordinary cost.”
Miri waits for her to continue, to draw some final conclusion, but the Celt has come to the end of her speech.
“So what should I do?” Miri asks. “What would you do if you were in my position?”
“I am not in your position,” she says, not unkindly. “The burden upon you is great, Miri. I will not add to it further by dictating what you should or should not do. You are free to choose however you think best. That you must remember above all else. Do you understand?”
“No,” says Miri stubbornly, disappointment crashing over her. It’s as though the walls of a dam have been broken. For the first time, Miri realises how much she has been relying on this, on this moment, on believing that the Celt would finally tell her what she most needs to hear.
The Offset Page 18