Daughter of Bad Times

by Rohan Wilson

  ‘Come,’ I say. ‘Follow. I know where she is.’

  The men’s fury and despair at watching our rebellion collapse, and the suffering of hunger and thirst now reach a new, heightened state. Hassan and I enter the wide centre aisle and we’re surrounded by the expression of it. Everyone is breaking the machinery. They tear down the monitors, they shatter the tools. They overturn the racks of finished TabaPets and the little things start buzzing around, talking, singing, shaking hands with each other, cycling through dance routines, playing chase, telling jokes. One man is smashing them with a hammer while another crushes them under his heel. With this petty vengeance for all we’ve suffered, we keep the promise of free men.

  I kick a TabaPet into the far aisles.

  Even before we reach the loading bay we hear a deep and regular crack that reverberates around the cavity of the building. It’s not a sound that calms the nerves and, because of this, because we’re unsure, we approach the loading bay with caution. The bay is the main entry point of the facility where automated trucks deliver parts, and it’s full of components stacked in crates and barrels. Hassan and I have never been this far into the building. We don’t know what’s here. CYC keeps it well controlled, in case we might escape. The cracking sound is louder and, passing a pile of boxed TabaPets, we see what’s causing it—a group of BAU men with an axe. They’re breaking into the guardroom. Howland stands close by, giving direction.

  ‘Daniel,’ I call through my hands.

  He keeps his eyes ahead. ‘I know she’s in there,’ he says.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘She’ll come out here,’ he says, ‘and face us.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Mate, understanding is the only thing I was ever good at.’

  Hassan is squeezing my hand. It means stop. It means danger.

  ‘No parasites,’ Howland says. ‘This is Eaglehawk Nation. No criminals like Rin Sakurai either. We are the best of humanity. Let the people see the best of themselves in us.’

  ‘If that’s true, if you mean it, then let her leave.’

  ‘I can do better, mate. I can administer justice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s going to answer our charges. Spreading market ideology, corporate association, and grievous anti-humanism. And then she’s going to swing.’

  Hassan squeezes my hand. He points.

  There’s a perspex viewing pane along the wall and from the bottom corner peeks the pale fringe and dark eyes of Rin Braden. She’s checking her situation. I would tell her that her situation is ugly, but I suppose that’s plain enough from the axe blows. The door, as with all the doors in the facility, is made of vandal-proof plastics and it will not break easily. Not easily, no, but chunks of it fly at every hit. They’ll be through in minutes. Hassan and I look at each other. There are five men near the guardhouse and each of them is armed variously with plasers and other bits of jumble—bars, chains, anything. I’m wondering if these BAU men would use these bars and chains on Rin Braden. From the sharp frown he wears, Hassan seems to be wondering the same thing. The size of the problem leaves us paralysed.

  I draw the weapon from my belt and cycle up the power. The whining capacitors tell Hassan what I intend and a moment of strain passes between us as he communicates with his eyes that we don’t have the gifts to fight six men and I communicate with gritted teeth that, for better or worse, I have to make them rethink their plan for Rin. He grips my arm when I start towards the guardhouse but then lets it go. It seems he’ll let me try alone. As much as this worries me, I keep myself outwardly stern. I’m watching Howland, I’m watching the men with the axe. My best hope is surprise. I conceal the plaser behind my back and approach with my head down. Surprise them, and perhaps I can dose Howland before the other men react.

  Hassan grabs my arm. ‘Wait,’ he says.

  From the uprightness of his shoulders, I know he’s made a decision. Before a word swaps between us he’s crossing the loading bay among the stacked pallets of components and the powered-down lift-loaders. Crossing, I realise, towards the men with the axe. These men aren’t weaklings. They smile when they see Hassan coming. A couple step out to meet him, spreading their hands as if to ask ‘Are you crazy?’

  No, he’s not crazy. His little sortie takes Howland’s attention.

  I’m able to cut across, breaking line of sight behind pallets and lift-loaders, creeping, sneaking, and Howland does not see me come about behind. There’s a moment where the red point of the sight jitters on his back as I tug the trigger and I’m tugging and tugging and nothing happens. He must hear my grunt of frustration. He swivels. I’m punching buttons and hitting the plaser with the heel of my palm, suddenly aware that I should have listened to Rin’s operating instructions. His face shows a gentle disappointment. He gives a sigh and lifts his rifle to let me have a long dose of electricity.

  The first time you’re hit by a plaser burst, the total experience of pain is a surprise. You don’t imagine, in your normal, painless life that a total experience—a whole body experience—is possible. Pain is local, it’s specific. My hand hurts. My knee hurts. But the experience of the plaser is a lesson in your wholeness. You’re just nerves and wet meat after all and the plaser teaches you that a bag of nerves and wet meat like you will cry and beg and promise anything to stop the totality of the pain. By the third or fourth burst, I’ve given up trying to drag myself away. I’m lying on the concrete screaming at him, ‘No no no no.’

  Howland stops only when the rifle is empty of charge.

  ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ he says.

  My eyes are full of tears. I can smell my burnt clothes.

  ‘That must have hurt like a bastard.’

  I can only nod.

  ‘Well, I’m fucking well sorry, mate. But you made me do it.’

  He’s about to add something else but he lifts his head and stiffens.

  ‘Come on now,’ he says. ‘Put that away.’

  He’s talking to someone else. I tilt over to see.

  Shadi Thoriq stands stoically quiet in the shadows of the assembly line. His left eye is swollen closed from where Rin zapped him. The plaser in his hand shakes slightly. With his hair and beard gone, and the burn mark on his forehead, I can’t find anything familiar about him. He simply gives the impression of animality. The facility has reduced us all to animals but it may be that Shadi fell further than anyone.

  ‘What’s happened to you, Sobe?’ he says.

  I don’t know if he’s talking about my present state or more generally about my history. When I try to speak it comes out as a burst of tearful blabber. Strings of snot and tears hang from my chin. He lowers the plaser. In his other hand is a metal bar. He looks ready for war.

  All I can do is point.

  I point at the viewing pane and Shadi follows my hand. He stands for a moment, frowning, the bar trembling in his fingers. For all that you might say about Shadi, for his incuriosity, his volatile temper, his wrongheaded loyalty, it’s also true that he took care of me as a kid, because I was family and because we needed each other. From the viewing pane of the guardhouse, Rin is watching us. Shadi takes this in, he takes in the men with the axe, he takes in Howland. He takes in all of this and the change in his demeanour is hard to pick. No one else would notice the narrowing of his good eye. No one else but family.

  When the change comes, he’s unable to control himself. He fires at Howland with a grunt of fury and I close my eyes but I hear the thunder crack, I hear the shouting, and I hear the bodies falling. I wobble to my feet. The BAU men are dragging themselves like wounded dogs across the floor, away from Shadi, away from the blazing light of his plaser, yet he keeps firing with no mercy. He strikes one with the bar, he kicks another. It’s a show of old mutaween viciousness.

  ‘Come on now,’ Howland says. ‘Hey. We’re on the same side.’ For Howland, he reserves a special aggression. The last dose he sends out is a long, bright streak of lightning that casts
distorted shadows in the welder’s flash of its glare. After that, Howland moves no more. He lays in the snake pit of his braided hair, soundly unconscious.

  Unsteady, and with a strange twitch in my muscles, I stumble to the guardhouse. There are two BAU men rolling on the concrete, suffering the after-effects of electricity. I zap them again to be safe and, to be honest, for the small sense of vengeance. Then I hammer the butt of the pistol on the chewed-up door.

  ‘Rin. It’s me.’

  It swings in and she’s positioned in the doorway, a coldly wild look on her face and her plaser whining and blinking. She stamps past me and out among the fallen men. In a rage, she makes for Howland. He’s out of it—flat on his back, mouth gaping open. She starts kicking his ribs with the sharp point of her shoe. It jolts him awake but Rin is having none of it. She doses him extravagantly on a high setting and from the way he planks out flat you can tell it hurts a good deal. She kicks him some more, kicks him in the ear, big kicks off a step or two, and then stamps back and straight into my arms.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she says.

  I smooth down her hair.

  ‘I hate this place,’ she says.

  ‘You make your own hell, just like you make your own heaven.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a line from, well … never mind.’

  We stand with each other for a time. There’s screaming and shouting elsewhere in the manufactory. From the way she presses into my chest, she seems to wish to block it out. We can block out a lot, the two of us, if we each have the other. I almost don’t feel the agony in my cheek or the burn welts on my chest. The plain scent of her peach and vanilla can block out a lot more than you would think. Still, the screaming and shouting cuts through our microcosm, it breaks into our brief peace.

  ‘Is he cool?’ she says.

  She’s talking about Shadi. He’s standing by a piled hill of old adhesive casks, watching us.

  ‘Are you cool?’ she calls.

  He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t speak English, which is probably why he doesn’t respond. I’m about as certain as I can be that he’s not cool. I venture a look in his direction and see that at least he’s dropped the metal bar somewhere. Everything feels faintly unreal to me, as if the whole place sits behind fogged glass, but there’s something perhaps slightly different about him. I shake my head to clear it. Yes, something different. He squats and rests his arms on his knees.

  ‘You should take better care of her,’ he says.

  I look away. A million points of light—the universe of our past—run through my mind. I see us in the market as boys waiting for the vendor to husk our coconuts on the upright spear he used; I see us with coconuts and straws on the steps by Republic Square, drinking the water in sips to make it last. I hear the squeak of the sand beneath our feet as we chase a football. I taste the heavy tar of Shadi’s clove cigarettes. I feel the breeze on the back of his bike as we ride the circuit around and around Hulhumalé in the shade of the sea wall, hoping the girls will notice us, hoping they’ll wave. We’re boys and diving for starfish. We’re young men and working the poles on a fishing boat. We’re teenagers and looking awkwardly at naked pictures of women. The days and days of another place where we still loved each other. What runs through my mind is how Shadi detonated all of this, blew it to smoking pieces, for the sake of a fraudster like Dr Nazeem. What is love if not what we had? What use is an idea that splits brothers apart? My prime regret is my lack of any means to send this message through his obtuse skull.

  So I look away.

  Standing with Rin in my arms I almost don’t notice the noise. I’m pressing my cheek into her hair, breathing, knowing that soon we’ll be separated, finally and forever. This small moment of her is the last I’ll have and so I’m holding her with hunger. I almost don’t notice the noise and shouting elsewhere in the manufactory, the fiercer pitch, the building volume of it. Far away, somewhere in the low numbered aisles, there’s the red glow of fire and a blooming, darkish smoke. It isn’t until Hassan comes bursting from the assembly line at a full sprint that I understand something’s wrong. He’s pumping his arms and pumping his cheeks and he’s looking over his shoulder like a bag snatcher. He comes straight for us.

  ‘Go,’ he shouts.

  There’s nowhere to go.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he says. ‘All of them.’

  Rin drags me by the hand. ‘The guardhouse.’

  I’m not sure what’s happening.

  ‘This part’s going to be rough,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t lose me. We’ve got to stay together.’

  We arrange the broken guardhouse door so it stands in place while Rin locks it from the inside. Hassan and I look at each other. I know what he’s going to say—he’s going to say I’m a mess. My cheek’s bleeding, my t-shirt’s charred. He’s going to say ‘You’re as beaten as the face of a cricket bat’ exactly the way Anand says it in Fifth Tuesday of June. He doesn’t get the chance to say anything though. Before he can take a breath a thousand men wash out of the many aisles of the factory line and drain into the loading bay. A thousand? Two thousand? Enough that we feel the thunder of their running through the floor. Enough that I’m left astounded. The spiral trails of tear gas grenades curve in high vaulted space above the crowd and fall and the bleach-white clouds send the men stumbling in every direction.

  ‘Rin,’ I say.

  ‘Just—I need a second. Give me a second.’ She’s swiping around the controls on the touch screen. ‘It’s here somewhere.’

  Through the viewing port we watch as the loading bay floods with men. Many of them are half naked as they cover their mouths with their t-shirts to keep out the gas. It doesn’t help. Mostly they’re blinded and some double over coughing and some collapse. Others see our light in the plexiglass and press their faces to it. When they spot us inside, they start calling. Hey. Open up. Let us in. Let us in.

  ‘Rin.’

  ‘I need a second.’

  They kick the door. Hey. Help us. Let us in. We can’t breathe.

  ‘Is that Rasheed?’ Hassan says.

  It is Rasheed. He’s cupped his hands to the window to look inside. His eyes are red and watering. His nose runs.

  ‘We should let them in,’ Hassan says.

  ‘Don’t you open that goddamn door,’ Rin says. ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’

  I wave to Rasheed. He blinks and wipes his eyes and then he sees me. He points behind him, not pointing at anything certain, it seems, but pointing instead at the whole facility and the awful calamity of it. No, wait … he is pointing at something. The gas hides the sight of them but the pulsing of red and blue lights gives them an outline in the mist. They tower over the assembly lines, brutish, hulking shadow shapes coming along the aisles in formation. The squeal of the leg actuators and hiss of pneumatic cannons is louder than the crying out of the protestors.

  The drones herd everyone towards the end of the facility, towards the bay. Is it because of the space? There’s room here to corral us all. Perhaps the police think it best to pen us here while they take back the facility. When the gas clears we see how the drones have deployed in a defensive line that cuts off any route to the compounds. With algorithmic precision, they begin hosing anyone who moves with a pink foam gel that sets into a restraining solid.

  ‘That’s it,’ Rin says. ‘I’ve got it.’

  A whooping siren fills the manufactory and the amber security beacons spin up. With a creak and a shudder, the loading bay doors ascend. The crowd all turn to see it. As the doors rise, sunlight roars around their legs, light made dense and white with the gas in the air. The men give a cheer of surprise. Outside is Tasmania. Tasmania, with its thin and cold southern daylight. They can smell the eucalypts and mouldering bark of the bush that skirts the facility. They can feel the dampness. Before the rollers have risen past knee height, men are bellying out into the Tasmanian air.

  Hassan grabs me by the shoulders. �
��How long could you live in a coconut palm?’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Yammy—how long? A boy like my boy, he could live for months. Say it.’

  ‘There’s no time for this,’ I say.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘He could live for months.’

  ‘Months. Yes. My boy—he’s out there somewhere.’

  ‘He’s dead. They’re all dead.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘It actually is the point.’

  ‘Listen,’ Hassan says. ‘What if your father is out there?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘I made it out of Maafushi prison. Maybe he made it out too.’

  ‘You made it out,’ I say. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Don’t give up,’ Hassan says. ‘Keep the hope.’

  Rin tugs at my t-shirt. ‘Let’s go,’ she says. ‘Stay close.’

  ‘Don’t give up,’ Hassan says again but he’s talking to himself.

  As we clear the guardhouse, it dawns on me what Rin has done. There’s merely a flimsy sort of wire fence around the loading bay, not even an electric fence, an everyday fence, and it’s already half torn down by the thousands tumbling over it. We run among the pallets of components and the TabaPet parts and we lift men to their feet, the ones blinded by pepper, the ones breathing too much gas. It’s not only the pepper—many of them are helplessly cocooned in pink gunk and bound to the floor. One of these men is Dr Nazeem. The restraining foam has caused him to fall and he’s jerking about in a frustrated sort of seizure.

  ‘Get me up,’ he calls. ‘God help me. Get me up.’

  Hassan has that reactive reflex, the urge to help. He can’t ignore it.