by A. A. Bell
‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
Van Danik’s frown darkened. ‘That depends on how you equate ideology and probability analysis with quantum mechanics and string theory, and whether or not you agree that the core strength of mathematics is precision, that of science is the freedom to speculate, and that of language is metaphoric ambiguity — all things that defined the universe long before humans intruded on the scene.’
‘Language? Are you serious? How can language exist without anyone to speak it?’
Van Danik sighed heavily, keeping his eyes on his task of joining fine extension wires between the desk tripod and the mutated polygraph. ‘Arrogant meathead. Every bird, tree and mammal — hell, the planet itself — has a language. Translation and understanding are both human hang-ups, which should also explain the mess of confusion and self-righteousness in the world. But by all means, use the blackboard if you’d like to share your own theories?’
Hawthorn chuckled again. ‘You first, Doc. I’m a born-again Christian — almost. Prove to me that God exists in a precise equation and I might begin to believe that life and language might also exist out there, on a planetary scale.’
Van Danik slammed down the wires. ‘You supercilious son of a bitch! You’d dare to limit God’s creativity to only one world, one universe?’ He spun around to the blackboard and used the thick white chalk there to scribble a formula in large letters across the wall: (A + Bn)/n = x
‘Hence God exists,’ he declared, drawing a box around it for emphasis. ‘One God; infinite permutations, multiple interpretations, now, then and forever within the full sphere of the timeline. Google it for yourself if you’ve evolved that far, but it’s remained unchallenged since 1766 when the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler proposed the same equation to the atheist Diderot in the court of Catherine the Great. Now it’s your turn, genius — exemplify your own theories.’
He offered the chalk to Hawthorn, but the sergeant declined to take it.
‘Perhaps you’d prefer to discuss the probability of God through quantum mechanics then? Or the formulae by which the improbable becomes probable via universal unification theory?’ He scratched another formula in chalk: Rμν — 1/2gμνR = 8μνGTμν
‘Also known as string theory, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, also cross-checks and predicts that all things become possible as time stretches towards infinity — even the miracle of you and me getting along in this universe or the next.’ The chalk snapped as he underlined the equation.
‘There’s no need to get so sweat-up about it, Doc.’ Hawthorn grinned and wandered to the window. ‘I’ve never met a research scientist who wasn’t a dancing bear for somebody, so I was just poking to see if you were a grizzly or koala.’
‘You do realise that a koala isn’t a bear; it’s a marsupial?’
‘The point I’m making is that despite your current leash to the military, everything you do seemsconspicuously intent on drawing attention to yourself. Your bike and driving technique, for example, and your attitude, not to mention your clothes and now also your irreverent jewellery. You’re a security risk, Doc. You might as well hang flashing lights around your neck and shout for a sniper.’
‘Rejoin reality,’ Van Danik warned. ‘You’re the ones on a leash. So why don’t you take a lesson from your kid commando over there and learn when to keep your mouth shut?’
‘Now there’s the road calling the tyre black,’ Zhou chuckled.
Lockman laughed too, but Hawthorn glared at him, forcing the smile off his face.
Zhou shook his head. ‘We won’t tell you again, Sergeant. If you’re not helping, you’re in the way.’
‘Amen!’ Van Danik agreed. ‘Extractum digitus anus — pull your finger out, and close those blinds for us as you go.’
Hawthorn stormed out, leaving Zhou to close the blinds himself.
At the window, he noticed the odd little old man on the lawn staring up at him. Their eyes locked for a long moment, until Zhou noticed a nearby commotion at the gate: a trio of white-coated staff running towards the guard, who was scuffling with a young blonde woman and a darker man in a wheelchair, both of them barefoot.
Matron Sanchez heard a noise and glanced up from the piles of paperwork on her desk. In the mirror beside her door she saw that her image remained a well-groomed portrait of deportment and authority, but the image blurred, as it always did in her mind’s eye lately. She turned away from the mirror and noticed a small leather whip coiled neatly on her spare desk. Beside it, her obsidian statuette of the Greek king Sisyphus had been shifted from one side of the desk to the other and laid down on its side so the condemned king was no longer struggling to push his boulder to the top of his hill in Hades. He could simply roll his burden sideways.
She picked up the statuette to set it right again beside her other statuette of Zeus, and realised the condemned king had been used as a paperweight to hide a handwritten note that said From Neville.
She smiled as she picked up the whip, and caressed the intricate pattern of ivy leaves stamped only lightly into the leather handle. Opened out, the miniature whip was barely as long as her shrivelled arm, but it looked like a real stockwhip, right down to the tiny twitch at the end.
Sanchez whispered a cowgirl’s cry, ‘Yeehar!', and flicked the air. A cute crack broadened her smile. She tried it again, this time striking the twitch against the bare skin of her leg and was punished by only a slight sting, no more than a mosquito bite. ‘Lovely!’
She glanced at the old photos and paintings on her wall — a set of five depicting the colonies on Likiba Isle through the centuries: one with lepers toiling to grow hemp and sugar cane between the mangroves and melaleuca swamps; another of a quarantine station for ships carrying typhus, measles or worse. The biggest frame, hanging out of order between the reconstruction images of a Catholic mission and the Benevolent Asylum, was a portrait showing a line of chain-gang prisoners being harassed by a guard on horseback with a whip. She compared her small whip to the one in the painting and her smile tightened. The detail was precise, virtually a replica, and yet.
A scream from the other end of the building seized her attention.
‘What now?’
Scuffling noises and raised voices sang the raucous tune of an argument. She checked her pockets for her whistle and watch and, still with the whip in hand, bulldozed into the hall and ducked a shortcut through a storeroom to intercept the fracas in the first-aid room.
Chaos inside. Two nurses, a male intern and a security guard were attempting to peel Mira Chambers off her newest social worker, who had somehow managed to land himself in a wheelchair with bleeding feet. Balancing his shoes in his lap, Ben was also trying to push away the intern who was attempting to bandage his wounds.
‘Stop fretting over me,’ he complained. ‘See if Mira’s hurt first!’
‘No!’ Mira wailed. ‘Only Ben!’
‘Enjoying your first day together?’ Sanchez asked, but her voice dissolved into the din.
She blew her whistle, attracting their attention, and tapped the mini-whip menacingly against the hem of her skirt. ‘Story time! Who wants to go first?’
Silence answered.
‘Well, come on! Or shall I let Mira —’
‘That girl belongs in higher security,’ snapped the guard. He pointed at Mira, who still clutched onto Ben’s shirt as though it were a life-preserver. ‘I caught her escaping again.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Ben argued. ‘You caught her coming back in.’
‘Back in?’ laughed the intern. ‘Matron, he’s delirious! Mira Chambers spends every waking second trying to get out of here. She’s not allowed anywhere near the front gate.’
‘I know, Sam,’ Sanchez replied. ‘I issued the staff notice myself. Do you have anything original to add, or were you simply called into this mess by someone else?’
Sam shrugged and pointed to the guard, an action which automatically dismissed him from the room.
‘Anyone el
se?’ The matron’s glare scraped across the remaining two nurses, who glanced at the guard, then fled silently.
‘Wait,’ Sanchez said, using the whip handle to stop the slowest nurse, a slim red-headed woman with her hair tied loosely in a bun. ‘Janet, take this over to basket-weaving in B-wing, please. Tell whoever’s in charge of the class today that Neville Kenny can teach them how to make a dozen more for the pantomime. They’ll make an impressive sound for the audience but won’t hurt the padded actors. Then find Neville for me and tell him I need to see him after his lunch break about that missing Braille typewriter.’
The nurse nodded and left with the whip.
Still in the wheelchair, Ben fiddled with his shoelace. Behind him, the guard tensed as if he knew what to expect. So she turned her attention to Mira, leaving them both to worry a little longer.
‘Where is your blindfold, Mira?’
Mira retrieved it from the waistband of her tracksuit pants and rested it over Ben’s shoulder, obviously careful to keep a tight grip on both him and the bandage.
‘She only seems to need it in strong light,’ Ben explained. ‘She took it off down at the bus stop where I had an accident. She brought me back in.’
‘Ridiculous!’ snapped the guard. ‘Mira Chambers isn’t allowed anywhere near —’
‘The front gate,’ Sanchez finished flatly. ‘Yes, we’ve established that.’ Her gaze remained levelled at Ben.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I missed that staff notice.’
‘Well, you’re aware of it now,’ Sanchez replied. ‘I want to know why she was outside at all in such damp weather.’
Ben coughed nervously. ‘Well, as you know, it’s our first day together — my first day in her ward without a supervisor — and to celebrate, I suggested that we do something special. We had a little time to kill before our first scheduled activities, so —’
‘Which, specifically?’
‘Appointments this morning with the VIPs. Mira was feeling a little nervous about it, and we had some time up our sleeve, so, like I said, we went out for a walk... to smell the daisies, you might say.’
‘In the rain?’
Sanchez glanced at Mira for her reaction to Ben’s story, but she wasn’t giving anything away; except that she wasn’t fighting or complaining about anything, which in itself was strange, especially considering how distressed she’d been getting before the incident with Freddie. She was just standing tensely behind Ben with her hands still clutched firmly onto his shoulder.
‘I could have bled to death out there,’ Ben continued, ‘if she hadn’t saved me.’
Sanchez glanced at his now-bandaged feet and knew he was exaggerating. ‘So you were outside the gate?’ she prompted. ‘In the rain? In your bare feet?’
‘I know it sounds odd, but —’
‘It’s downright bizarre!’ interrupted the guard. ‘No day pass. No record of leaving, yet there they were, on the wrong side of the gate, and him with his shoes still on the inside!’
‘I’m trying to explain that,’ Ben said. ‘First, you have to realise that if Mira wanted to escape, she could have. I cut my foot quite badly and passed out, so if she hadn’t brought me back, I’d still be down there. And please just think about that: she not only brought me back by choice, she did it alone, uphill, blind, barefoot and knowing there was broken glass on the path. Now I really need to check her feet to make sure she isn’t injured too.’
‘Don’t be such a drama king,’ complained the guard. ‘Her footprints are only bloody because she’s trodden in your mess.’
‘Matron?’ Ben pleaded, still hamming it up.
Sanchez nodded and moved to check Mira’s feet for herself. The girl shrank at the sound of her footsteps and Ben waved at her to stay back. Sanchez complied and watched, intrigued, as Ben swivelled the chair around and asked Mira for her left foot, which she silently and obligingly lifted for him.
‘Why don’t you let her sit?’ Sanchez asked as she handed Ben the first-aid kit.
‘She doesn’t like wheelchairs. There...’ He swabbed the girl’s seemingly uninjured foot to remove a dab of blood which didn’t seem to be associated with any wound. ‘Next, please, Mira?’
‘See?’ said the guard. ‘It was just your own mess.’
Again Mira obliged, wincing slightly as Ben extracted a small splinter of glass from her heel.
‘She could have got that from you too,’ argued the guard. ‘You were leaking glass all over the place.’
Ignoring him, Ben swabbed Mira’s wound clean and applied a small bandaid. ‘All done,’ he told her as he set down her foot. ‘You’ll be healed sooner than me, thank goodness.’
‘Drama king,’ muttered the guard again.
‘That’s quite enough, Tony, thank you,’ Sanchez said. ‘Please return to your post. I’ll be expecting a full written report before the end of your shift. That goes for you too, Bennet.’
At the sound of the guard’s retreating footsteps, Sanchez noticed Mira’s hands relax almost completely from Ben’s shirt.
‘Now it’s your turn, Mira,’ she said kindly. ‘Is there anything you wish to tell me?’
Mira shook her head.
Ben’s hands told a different story. Using Makaton, a sign language that all of Sanchez’s staff were required to learn for communicating with deaf clients, he swiftly explained what had happened, including a confession of the method he’d used to passively manipulate Mira into making her own decision to return, all the while taking care not to move his upper body in any way that might alert Mira to his covert signalling.
Finished, he shifted his weight in the chair as if he still wasn’t able to stand up comfortably. ‘Mira and I would like to work out a plan for new activities to help her become more self-sufficient.’
‘Okay, who’s this and what have you done with the real Mira?’ Sanchez said, deliberately antagonising the girl a little to see how deeply she was hiding her real feelings.
‘We’re serious, aren’t we, Mira?’ Ben said.
Mira nodded, still unusually quiet and cooperative.
‘Well, if that doesn’t swallow the whole cake! This is phenomenal progress in so little time. Did he sedate you, honey?’
‘No!’ Ben protested. ‘They were trying to do that as you came in.’
‘I’d rather hear what Mira has to say.’
‘What Ben said,’ she whispered. ‘They didn’t sedate me. I didn’t swallow my tablets at breakfast either.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I promised I’d be good.’ Her fingers twisted nervously into the material of Ben’s shirt again.
‘I can see that, and I’m very impressed with your honesty and behaviour.’
‘Are you the warden?’
Sanchez laughed. ‘Matron actually.’
‘But the others sounded so scared of you.’
‘I’ll let you in on a little secret. They’re scared of me because I can sack them if they don’t obey my new rules about treating clients with respect and dignity. Most of them don’t have anything to worry about, of course; but some are used to dealing with more dangerous clients and need reminders now and then to be a little more lenient. Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Who is the warden then?’
‘There’s only me. A warden is for jails, and this place hasn’t been a proper jail for nearly a century.’
‘But you decide who stays or goes with patients too, right?’
‘Clients, not patients, and yes, I do make a contribution to that decision. That’s still no reason to fear me, especially when you’re making such excellent progress with Ben. You do realise why you’re here at Serenity, don’t you?’
Mira nodded. ‘I’ve got Fragile X syndrome.’
‘Fragile X chromosomes, yes. And what else?’
‘Since I came here, I’ve also caught uveitis in my eyes and schizophrenia.’
‘Actually, we suspect you’ve had both for many years, but they’ve only been diagnose
d since coming here. There’s a difference. Don’t you see? These are more reasons why you can trust us. It’s my job to make sure we find and fix all of your ailments as best we can, and also teach you coping strategies for the ones we can’t fix or alleviate. Now Ben tells me that you wish to participate proactively? That’s the best news I’ve heard since I came here.’
Mira patted Ben’s head. ‘He’s going to teach me to be self-sufficient.’
‘You’ve already taken the first steps, I see. Keep it up for a whole day and you’ll definitely earn your first reward — let’s say this evening.’
‘A day pass?’ Mira chirped. ‘We need a day pass so Ben can take me home.’
‘Oh, well, er. I think we should start with something a little more appropriate; smaller perhaps, so we can work up. An extra dessert maybe, or restoration of one or two personal privileges?’
‘The day pass isn’t a one-way ticket,’ Ben argued. ‘It’s a reward that will also help her to visualise her goal of going home and to refocus on the intermediate steps of achieving self-sufficiency. Mira knows it will take a lot of work before she can move out permanently.’
‘I have to learn to look after myself and be safe,’ she said, sounding almost childlike.
‘And this is the first positive sign that it may be possible,’ Sanchez conceded. ‘Good for you, Mira. I must admit, I was beginning to worry.’
‘So you’ll give us a day pass?’ Mira asked.
‘It’s still too early to tell. Of course I’d like to, but I can’t promise anything until you’ve behaved really well for a whole day.’
‘Which means we still have to make it upstairs to our specialists’ appointment. Right, Mira?’
Mira nodded as Ben signed the words ‘Thank you'.
‘You still need me to push?’ Mira asked.
‘Sure, but there’s no need to break any more land-speed records. Let’s start with five big steps to reach the hall and then we’ll turn left...’
Sanchez watched them go, rubbing her chin with a prickling worry. It didn’t take much imagination to guess how violently Mira Chambers might react if she ever found out that her childhood home had just been sold to pay for her ongoing care. Still, as the girl’s legal guardian, it was Sanchez’s responsibility to ensure the best management of her assets as well as her living expenses — and without the sale of Mira’s property, the state government would have been unwilling to fund renovations to the room which Mira needed. Or worse, politicians may have been tempted to release the whole of Likiba Isle for commercial development, forcing the relocation of all residents to less marvellous amenities on the mainland. That wouldn’t be good for Mira or anyone else.
