TWICE

by Susanna Kleeman

  Were there any other creatures in that massive blank place?

  Cuffed together, we unwrapped our black cloths in turn and folded them as pillows, forced teamwork we’d got good at. I smelt his sweat, saw his shaved head, like my shaved head, the stubble growing from his inner minerals, his healing mouth and face. His stump, the dip in his head. His twinkling fixed eyes.

  We lay tied together under the quilt and blankets on our bed under the Milky Way, floating together on a planet in space. The white moon reigned now, the moon that had looked black when it bit the sun.

  We lay next to each other under the moving sky. We slept.

  I woke. It was still night, he was asleep. I lay there watching the sky, feeling him breathe next to me. I was thirsty, I reached for the water bottle behind his head.

  He opened his eyes.

  It was dark but the moon was big and its brightness lit his whites. His eyes, that were the same as Chris’s eyes, with the same scar under—had he done that to himself to fool me? The eyes he’d gouged out to spite Don, that Don had fixed out of love and spite, to use him, to get him to drive my boat, he’d said. We watched each other, from behind our eyes. We stared into each other. We held the great wrong gaze.

  And then he shook his head and closed his eyes and turned away to sleep, or seemed to.

  And left me reeling there.

  The stupid fuck. How could I have let myself fall into that trap? How smug he’d be. Outplayed, is how it felt, a petty feeling. But he’d won, or would feel like he’d won, in our contest, which was a contest, I realised. What had I done? Shown him something I didn’t even feel, didn’t think I felt. Though maybe he was right: Chris, my triggers, what we’d been through, that powerful place, our bed under the sky. And he’d done it too. But he’d pulled back first. No excuses—had I lost my mind, making eyes at that lying violent thing? And he’d played me, made sure, turned me down, he’d feel. What fun for him tomorrow. Him and Chris, the fucking pair. Going there again.

  When I woke he was gone.

  I still wore my cuff but his dangled off me, open and empty. He’d slithered out somehow, was over by the rekindled fire with the men, laughing, drinking coffee, his black wrap back on and covering his face except for the eyes. He saw me up, waved me over, brought me over a glass of coffee when I didn’t budge, said good morning like nothing had happened, explained they’d freed him cos I snored, we were all trusted friends now, unlocking my cuff with a key.

  Free at last. The tug of that thing off my healing wrist. I stepped in bare feet on the cold dawn sand, he went back over to the men to chatter on in their language. And chattered to them over breakfast and pack-up and in the jeep and for the whole day.

  I sat in the back watching more shadeless blank. The talking men, powerless me in my thoughts going mad—were we driving in circles? How could I know, especially when the sun was up high? I didn’t know anything and found it hard to breathe, desperate for any way out, to crush my head that maybe was Alan’s jar of secrets that they were all after or not.

  Just cos he’s turned you down.

  The eye.

  Then I felt better, put everything back in its box. Keep your head. Is all you’ve got.

  The same rigmarole at the end of the day: new camp, fire, food, team, me sitting solo, the setting up of the camp bed, the motioning of me onto it. Except we weren’t cuffed. He wasn’t tired yet, he said. He wanted to sit out by the dying fire, think a bit. He might sleep out by the fire alone, he said, face hidden in the black wrap.

  Whatever, love.

  I lay alone on the camp bed under the big sky, trying to keep my thoughts small.

  I woke. It was still night. He was asleep under the quilt with me, his face uncovered, his eyes closed.

  I raised myself up and looked at him.

  He opened his eyes.

  He smiled up at me. I closed my eyes, tried to lie down quick.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘We need to talk. It’s OK. I feel it too. This place. What we’ve been through. Who I look like, who you are. Wanting comfort. It’s natural. But it can’t happen.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  He laughed.

  ‘I thought you were sleeping by the fire,’ I said.

  ‘It’s cold. And I like sleeping with you. I feel it too. Kind of. I always did. Even before. It wasn’t all bullshit, the Uber. Boning up on you while I still had access—I kind of fell for you, across the ether. From afar. Your data. You’re our type. Kind of.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He laughed. ‘But. It’s wrong. For a whole bunch of reasons. Taking advantage.’

  ‘As if.’

  ‘You can’t lie.’

  ‘Because you can smell me.’

  ‘Because they trained me from my tube. Is why I know so much more than your Chris.’

  ‘Not my Chris.’

  ‘We both got someone else. Had someone else.’

  I looked at him. I didn’t understand.

  ‘Mine’s dead,’ he said. ‘Don killed her.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. That felt weird. A big blank between us, me having to recast him. If it was true. His lies and games.

  He saw me thinking that. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I know some things.’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘What should I know?’

  ‘Not much.’ He lay facing the sky. ‘I loved someone. Don killed her. Those feelings are done for me. But I’m here because of her. To honour her. You’re…great. But you’re not her.’

  ‘OK.’

  His whole other life that I knew nothing about. That he might be more than I’d thought. That he might be upset. That I might care. What secret story had I been spinning for us in the middle of this shitstorm? Get a grip. Maybe he was letting me down gently. His excuse. But when I looked at his face it felt real. How weird.

  ‘This is what all this is about for me,’ he said slowly, ‘in the end. You should know. My trigger. So that’s how it is. You and me: sister-brother warriors. Fighting the fight, avenging the dead. Warriors for the cause.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Why did Don…kill her?’

  ‘She was against him. Turning me—I wanted to be turned.’

  ‘She was from Tibet?’

  ‘Some other place. She got me deep. I wanted to be got.’

  ‘I thought Tibet got you.’

  ‘Her first. Don killed her. Tibet mopped me up. She was…it’s hard to explain to someone like you.’

  ‘Cos I’m dumb?’

  ‘Because you’re a dumb realm woman. Truly dumb. Sold a pup. No offence.’

  I laughed. ‘Wow.’

  ‘No offence. Not your fault. And you’re definitely…one of the best of them. And sometimes you remind me of her. Kind of.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘But.’

  ‘Why are realm women truly dumb?’

  He watched me. ‘Modern realm women. Because they don’t even know. What they are. Who they were. Once. What got ripped out, by the Dons.’

  ‘You’re explaining the patriarchy to me?’

  ‘More words he’s put into your mouth. Manufactured outrage, steer your pain so you don’t look deeper. Protest marches: “Dear Dons, please let us work as our own jailers.”’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I know.’ We lay there. ‘What is Don’s world?’ he said after a while. ‘The cities and money and machines. What is it really? An equal-opportunity scheme for men. Built by men with our machine brains as our attempt at defence against women. Your magic bodies that birth and bewitch us. Your brains. If you can do everything then what are we? It isn’t equal, it isn’t fair. You don’t need us like we need you. It doesn’t work the other way. Everything we got, all the logic, all the cities, all the dirty work we do? Pfft,’ he flicked his hand, ‘gone in a moment, compared to what you got. Or what you once had. And don’t think you didn’t abuse it. So we cut it out of you, reared you our way. And didn’t we do well? What you
don’t know about your bodies and natures.’

  ‘What don’t we know?’

  He smiled. ‘Men and women, we deserve each other. As bad as each other. And hidden far away some of you still are.’

  ‘But not me. Letting me down gently cos I’m not bad enough?’

  He laughed. ‘Put it that way. Plus other stuff. Poor men. “Please escape us from this prison we built for you and trapped ourselves in. Be our way out of our too-successful project.” Poor busy dumb modern realm women, picking up the crumbs, trying to be good, trying to be equal, staying faithful, earning their money, weeping over men. Meagre gruel, to your kind once. Even a hundred years ago women knew the score. At least they were real in their kitchens and arranged marriages, not vying for their equal day’s pay in the death camps.’

  ‘Thanks so much for the teaching.’

  ‘Any day.’

  We laughed on our camp bed.

  ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ I said, lying down, turning away from him, making sure I was first to.

  ‘No I’m going to sleep,’ he said, doing the same.

  Sunrise, fire, coffee, dates, jeep, nodding at him. Brother-sister warriors riding on in silence towards whatever to save the world maybe and avenge our dead. But a couple of hours in we saw something in the distance through the front windscreen. Mountains, far away, coming closer—so strange to see anything. And then something else coming into view at the foot of the mountains: a building, that looked like a palace, but was a fort, he said: a ‘redoubt’, long and low, the same gold as the desert. A building out there in the middle of absolute nothing.

  ‘French, once, I guess. “A”’s fort now. They say.’ He chatted to the men.

  I felt scared.

  ‘Throw it away,’ he said. ‘He isn’t even there yet, they’re saying. They’ll drop us off. That’s their instructions. He’ll meet us here in a day or so.’

  We got to the fort, the jeep stopped outside. The men nodded to us, talked to him, motioned us out.

  We all got out, stood facing the gold fort and the grey mountains far behind. We were at the lip of a change in the terrain: immediately beyond lay pure desert, fine gold sand, not shingle, vast crescent dunes stretching out from where we stood towards the mountains, a gold sea no jeep could drive over. Sand everywhere, reaching up the sides of the fort in some places, reaching into the windows of the long low building which was single-storey except for one tower at the back right-hand side, facing the mountains. The building was a crenulated quad, built round an open square you could see through the central arch facing us. Set off to the far right was a separate structure: a tiny domed brick building.

  They handed him a small sack, put in water gourds, dry bread and dates, motioned for us to enter through the arch. They bowed to us, we bowed to them. He spoke to them, we all bowed again. Grandpa touched his black-wrapped forehead with two fingers. They got back into the jeep, closed the doors, revved the engine, smiled and waved, bowed one last time, drove away from us back the way we’d come.

  We watched their long tracks in the sand. Our pals, becoming a dot, leaving us there alone, maybe. For how long? In such a remote place, no phones. What would we do about food, water? There wasn’t much in the sack.

  And how did we know there was no one else there?

  He shrugged, told me there’d be provisions, not to worry. We stood at the gateway to the fort with nothing but our clothes and the sack, in the middle of nowhere, at the start of dunes and mountains. We entered under the shade of the arch.

  We called out, no one answered. We stood in the sandy square. A courtyard, doors all around us, some covered by banks of sand. All closed except the one directly facing us, the one belonging to the tower at the mountain side. We walked over, went in, climbed the spiral stairs up to a small room. A bed and fresh white bedding. Water, fruit and bread laid out on a wooden table. In the next room were fresh white towels, new clothes, a silver tub full of warm water.

  I held out my hand to him. He joined me. We stayed there together three days.

  42

  On the fourth day we took an early-morning walk across the dunes as the sun rose behind the mountains. Dawn was the only time to walk there, before the frazzle. The dunes, as seen from our tower window, were identical croissant-shaped fractals, fixed waves. Hard work to trudge up but fun to bomb down, crisp knife-edges at their crest, us their only disturbance.

  It seemed. We crouched and saw insects collecting beads of dew from sand grains, the tracks of snakes and small rodents hiding from us underground in cool burrows. The haze began to lift, heat was coming. We turned, to walk back to our tower. In front of us, at the crest of another dune half-way between us and the fort, stood five black-wrapped men with mirrored shades, machine gun straps across their chests.

  I gripped Sean’s hand. The old gang, plus reinforcements? A moment of fear, for me. To see masked men with guns. To see anyone else at all. Ahmed? Chris and Don plus clone extras?

  I had kind of forgotten that business.

  We faced them on the sand.

  One of the men nodded. Sean kissed me, told me not to worry. He walked me slowly up and down to them. Everybody bowed.

  Me and Sean plus five tall men. I felt them watch me. The one who’d nodded stepped forwards and shook hands with us, took off his sunglasses and hugged Sean, talked to him in the language. Green eyes, behind the sunglasses, a mouth I felt I knew—from the jeep? One of our guard-drivers, but with different gait now: wide-legged with power, flanked by his fellows, hands on their triggers.

  ‘We know him,’ I said. ‘From the jeep.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sean said. ‘One of the crew. Ahmed.’ The man smiled and nodded. ‘Checking us out. We passed, I guess.’

  Sly bastard, like they all were.

  ‘Have they been here the whole time?’ I said. ‘Watching us?’ Watching us together.

  Sean shook his head.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘They’ve come for us. We’re heading off now.’

  He squeezed my hand. This again. Our stay over. No time to go back to our room, smooth our sheets, grab our stuff.

  But we had no stuff and perhaps it was better like this. ‘Where they taking us?’

  ‘Barrow. In the end. Right now I don’t know.’

  They started walking us towards the fort. He held my hand and talked to Ahmed in the language while I tried to work out which one Ahmed had been from the jeep. The one sitting next to me when we set out? The main driver? Not Gramps, no Gramps with us now as far as I could tell. Scabbling round for any clue or hint about Ahmed from before, how old he was, what he was like. If some of his guards were also jeep pals, if Gramps was back at the fort rustling up something tasty.

  If they might murder us.

  As we got closer they started edging us away from the fort towards the small domed brick building at the side which Sean had told me must be a well, source of the sweet water that flowed through the bath taps in our fort tower, that we’d drunk from.

  ‘Why here? Where’s their jeep?’

  ‘No jeep,’ Ahmed said. ‘We got other transport.’ Native English, East End London accent. For a moment it didn’t register.

  Sean laughed and nodded. I didn’t laugh. It was more scary, if Ahmed came from London and had become this. I had a picture of such people. A Don-made picture, perhaps, but one that was hard to junk. What might East End Ahmed have overheard in the jeep? Ancient history, mainly. Kudos to Sean, only really talking when we were far from them, far from anything.

  IS FINE, Sean pinched into my palm.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Ahmed said, still having his fun, sly bastard into whose power we’d fallen. So useful, those black robes, burkas. Flit you round so no one knows.

  It was hot by the time we got to the small building. One of the men got a big key from a chain round his waist and opened the wooden door. We entered a small square brick room lit by three glass oil lamps on the floor. In the middle of the room was a large wal
led brick rectangle like a sarcophagus, with a wooden gallows at one end, rope hanging down. Horrible to see but Sean led me to the rectangle’s lip and showed me worse inside: a deep hole, something at the bottom glinting up at us. A creature, for fuck’s sake, the whites of its eyes.

  The real Cwyd, I thought, gripping Sean’s hand. But when they dangled a lamp over the edge we saw it was a dark man down there in dirty white robes and a dirty white turban, bobbing in something white.

  ‘A boat?’ Down there, under the desert.

  ‘Yes,’ Ahmed said.

  Their other transport. A boat in water under the desert.

  ‘For real?’ I asked Sean.

  ‘Qanats,’ he said. ‘Man-made canals, cut into bedrock under deserts from the water table. Very old irrigation. That’s how wells work in deserts, right? Wells are all made, right? Built connected underground networks—how did you think wells worked? No cams. I guess they use them.’

  ‘We do,’ Ahmed said. ‘Go down.’

  Man-made canals under deserts plied by boatmen. If they said so, while things ticked on in Archway. We climbed into the rectangle and down into the gloom. Inset bricks made spiral steps, a scary descent into dank. Gripping bricks, finding the next foothold, men above and below, swaying lamplight. If I fell I’d land on the boatman or splash into water, who knew how deep?

  He climbed behind me.

  At the end the shaft widened and we stepped onto a hewn rock platform, like a faintly rotting tube station, except under the Sahara and next to water, a man-made channel stretching off on either side into blackness, with boats and boatmen to row us back to Barrow. We stood there: me and Sean in the new chill. Next to us was Ahmed and two of his men, the other two still high above us, dangling lamps down from the rectangle, their guns outlined behind them.

  ‘In,’ Ahmed said, nodding at the boat.

  It was white, old, plastic, with an outboard motor and tiller at the back, fairly scuzzy, rimmed with slime and weeds. A rope knotted to a ring set into the rock tethered it to the platform. The boatman crouched by the motor, lit by our lamps. He was old and toothless with pale eyes and brown weathered hands twisting what looked like a rosary.