by A. Wendeberg
Nothing moves. The yck yyck yyyyyyck of a woodpecker sounds from afar. When I was little — maybe three or four years old — I ran my tongue over resins from all kinds of trees, but the word “woodpecker” always tastes of pine resin only.
I inhale sharply to whisk away the pine flavour from my nostrils and focus on the problem. The small hairs on both my arms stand straight up. The sight of the control cabinet reminds me that anyone can flick the switch when I’m inside the duct. What a fine mess that would be! It would take days to scrape my intestines out of the bearings.
I march to the cabinet, remove two relays, and slip them into my pocket.
‘Try to fix that in an hour, asshat!’ I shout, sticking both my middle fingers high up in the air. Then I squeeze myself into the gap between metal blades, support arms, and duct structure.
My knife is sharp enough to quickly slice through the wet hemp. I stick two handfuls in my back pockets, soaking my pants. Maybe I can find out to whom it belongs. The stuff looks smooth and well-retted, not like the cheap sealing hemp. I throw armfuls of it out through the hatch. The fibres that sneaked into the bearing have to be picked one by one. The air is growing hot and stuffy in here, and sweat itches on my eyebrows. My heart bangs against my ribs when I hear footsteps above me.
‘Hey Micka. You down there?’
Ralph, the idiot: son of the dean and sitting right behind me in school (I correct myself: used to sit right behind me). A perfect position to pull my braids, until I cut them off. Since then, I look like a boy and I’m treated like one. He was the first to give me a black eye. I returned it two seconds later.
‘I’m busy.’
‘What’s the matter?’
He sounds genuinely clueless, but I don’t trust him.
‘Hey! I asked you what’s the matter?’
‘And I said I’m busy!’ I’m upgrading my fine-picking from forceps-fiddling to needle-poking now. The torch flickers. I whack it against my thigh until it provides a steady light. One last thorough examination of the bearing and the shaft, a good dollop of grease on all moving parts, and I can pack up my tools and climb up through the hatch. But not before checking where Ralph is and whether he’s wielding a stick to slap me over the head.
He looks oddly harmless, though. Not that I would trust that, either.
I lock the hatch, replace the relays, and flick the main switch. BLAM! WHRRRRR.
Perfect.
Wiping my greasy hands on my shirt, I turn to Ralph. ‘So, why did you do that?’
‘What? Do what?’
‘Wrap hemp around the turbine shaft.’
‘The…what?’ He blinks, then spreads his hands in front of him. ‘I did no such thing!’
Something tells me he’s innocent. Or might be innocent. But something else tells me that he’s behaving really weirdly today. Maybe he’s nervous. But why?
Anyway. I have no time for smalltalk. Even if I had the time, I wouldn’t waste my energy on an attempt at a conversation with Ralph — a boy who solves all conflicts with muscles instead of his central nervous system (although I’m not sure he has one).
‘Good. Go home, then.’ I switch the torch back on and point its light at the ground. Whoever did this must have left footprints.
‘Um…Micka?’
‘What?’
‘I was wondering… Now that school’s over, I was wondering if…you would go with me?’
‘All you need to do is follow the markings of the pipe,’ I mutter while searching for traces of suspicious human activity.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
I stare at the circle of light when realisation hits me like a well-aimed kick to the stomach. The boy has smiled at me today. And yesterday. And the day before. I believed he was sick, but now I know he’s love-sick. Or something.
The thought that someone might actually like me feels…unreal. In a good way though, even if it’s brutal Ralph liking me.
‘Why?’ I ask.
He taps his foot. ‘Don’t know. Um…you’re…nice. I guess.’
I guess? What’s that supposed to mean?
‘I’m busy,’ I repeat and get back to my search thing.
Behind me, he mutters, ‘I’m not good with words.’
‘No, you are good with your fists.’ The soil is a bit muddier close to the reservoir and I clearly see my own footprints from earlier today.
‘I’m sorry!’ cries Ralph. ‘Can I kiss you?’
I’m thunderstruck. Is that how adults get together? Scream “CAN I KISS YOU” at each other? I hope not. I’ve never been kissed by anyone. I wonder how it might feel. The taste…
‘Okay, Ralph. One kiss. No tongue. Then you go home.’
‘Okay,’ says Ralph, wilting a little.
I walk up to him so he’s not stepping into my footprint search area. He has his hands in his pockets; I have the fingers of my right hand tightly wrapped around the torch handle, the other around my bundle of tools.
He bends forward and places a kiss on my cheek. Fuzz tickles my skin and I think of fly legs.
Ralph quickly extracts his hands from his pockets, grabs my waist, and pulls me into him. His big wet mouth sucks on mine. He tastes of… Blah! I don’t even want to think about it!
I struggle to break free, but his grip is too strong. I calculate my chances of success when applying various approaches of self defence, then decide for the most straightforward one.
My knee hits his balls. He lets go at once.
‘Fuck, Micka!’ he squeaks, as soon as he has his voice back. ‘It just started to feel nice.’
‘Fuck yourself!’ Scraping Ralph’s spittle off my mouth and tongue, I stomp away and let him stand in the dark. I don’t give a shit whether he finds his way back home or not. That boy hasn’t brushed his teeth in years, if ever. What a foul-tasting rag of a tongue!
I come to a halt. The sooner he’s gone, the better. ‘Pipe, Ralph.’
‘I’m not an idiot! But you are.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Blah blah blah.’ I press my tools tighter to my chest, trying not to retch. How did humanity reach an astonishing number of ten billion?
Ralph’s stomping and muttering grows fainter while he walks in one direction, and I the other.
I’ve almost reached the turbine when I spot a partial footprint in the lamplight; half a heel, merely, and no other prints in a radius of two metres. Someone has been careful.
Someone clears his throat. Someone male. Adult. I jump in shock.
‘Micka,’ a stranger says, sounding as if he’s announcing the time.
I press my mouth shut. The fingers of my left hand slowly probe for the large wrench inside my tool bundle. It’s there, right where the tip of my thumb is. I squeeze it harder.
He takes two steps towards the edge of the turbine housing and jumps down, not twenty centimetres from where I stand. I can feel the air pulsating. His fast and fluid move scares me shitless. My heart chokes and my arms decide before I can form the trace of a thought.
My right hand swings forward, burying the torch handle in his stomach. His right shoulder twitches — he wants to bring up his arm to block the attack — a familiar reaction. If I had the time, I’d be grateful for the many fistfights I had with Ralph. My left hand is already flying and crack! the bundle of tools makes contact with the man’s skull. He freezes, his upper body tipping forward a fraction. He grunts and his knees buckle.
I don’t wait for him to hit the ground. I bolt. Hissing and grunting, I run past Ralph, who looks at me as if he’s encountered a ghost.
———
I’m barely able to breathe when I reach our house. Mother stands in the corridor as though she’s waiting for me. She looks at my sweat-covered face, then over my shoulder and into the dark outside.
‘Where is he?’
‘What? Who? Ralph?’
‘No, Mickaela! The new Sequencer!’
‘The…’ The word gets stuck in my throat. On his last visit in spring, the old Seq
uencer told us that he’d be retiring and another would take over some time during summer.
She grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me until my jaws rattle. ‘What happened, Mickaela? What happened?’
I can see where this is going.
‘Someone sabotaged the upper turbine. I found the man and hit him on the head because I thought he was about to attack me. He’s unconscious.’ I press my fist against my stomach. ‘Or worse. If he’s the new Sequencer, I’m fucked.’
‘We are not…’ she slaps me across my cheek. ‘…speaking such language in our house…’ and a slap for the other cheek. Her eyes are dark green and watery, her face pale. She hates me.
I want to disappear. Like a magician, maybe, and leave a white bunny in my stead. She could have a less irritating and more loveable daughter. Saltwater presses against my eyes; I don’t want her to see it. I push past her towards the bathroom.
With my face stinging and my eyes blurry, I yank off my clothes and hop under the shower.
The Sequencer. The title alone opens doors. These men and women have the power to move entire cities with a single word: Cholera. Strangely, the word doesn’t taste of decomposition. It’s more like…the raspy, cold, dry, and almost salty taste of a piece of jagged rock.
When the Great Pandemic hit, it was the water that killed almost ten billion people; the water in rivers, in the ground, in lakes. It was everywhere. The few handfuls of people who survived moved away from the poisoned lowlands, high up in the mountains, if they didn’t already live there.
Sequencers have been around since…well, since long before I was born. They are safeguarding the remnants of humanity. When a Sequencer visits your village, you treat him or her with the greatest respect. And never, under no circumstances, do you hit a Sequencer over the head.
My stomach rolls at the thought of the crack I felt when the wrench made contact with his skull. There’s even a little blood on the tools’ linen wrapper; I saw it when I dropped the bundle in the corridor.
I slide down the cold wet wall, grab two handfuls of hair, and pull hard. I want to turn back time so badly, so very badly.
Understanding snaps me upright. If he’s dead, I’ll be lynched. Problem is, the village might turn against my parents when they realise I’m not available for lynching tomorrow morning. The soap jumps from my hands when Father enters the bathroom. There are no locks and no privacy in this house.
‘Shame on you!’ A bellow that penetrates the window and travels along the streets into every neighbours’ home. ‘You! You!’ He pokes an angry index finger at me. Silently, I turn around, showing him my bare back, daring him to finish what he began. He doesn’t speak another word. The door slams shut. I know what he wanted to shout at me. I wish you were dead and your brother alive. As if I didn’t know that already.
I scrub my skin until it burns. Then I scrub some more, making sure it’ll feel raw for hours. I rinse the bloody wad of wool and squeeze out the water. Where does Mother keep a supply of dry ones? She never talks about “women’s issues.” Maybe I’ll just pinch my legs together for now; I’ll make a bloody mess soon anyway. But leaking from my privates is so gross, I decide to rip my worn-out shirt in four, fold one of the quarters, and stuff it into my panties.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. The day is almost over; my life will be over with soon. Yet, I gaze at the bathroom door, unable to step out into the corridor. My knees are clacking against each other. My control is slipping. I dig my nails into my thighs until the pain stops the rising panic. What have you done, Micka? My only comforting thought is that of my knife on my skin.
By now, Father will be up at the reservoir, seeing to the Sequencer. Soon, I’ll know if the man’s dead or only injured.
Shivering, I pull a nightshirt over my head and leave for my room. A stranger’s voice brings me to a stop; it mingles with my mother’s anxious voice and my father’s usual grumbling.
It’s not the worst, it’s not the worst, my mind cries when I step into the kitchen.
His shoulder-length black hair contrasts with the white bandage Mother is wrapping around his forehead. A hint of blood shines through the gauze. Underneath is a pair of black eyes, farther down, a compressed mouth. His skin is different from anyone’s I’ve ever seen. Darker; almost like barley roasted halfway, or the coffee we make of it mixed with lots of cream from Lampit’s goats.
He sets his eyes on me and his look of annoyance changes to…I don’t know what. A dangerous flicker, some getting-ready-for-a-fight kind of expression, maybe.
‘I’d like to talk to your daughter in private.’
My legs already have the consistency of jelly, but his request makes them all watery-wobbly and I need to sit or I’ll fall over. I walk to the kitchen table and plop down, unbidden. My face feels hot. My hands are quivering fists, each crowned by a row of white knuckles.
Mother asks if she can do anything else for him, but he shakes his head. His eyebrows are drawn together. He’s blinking often, slightly turning his face away from the kitchen lamp. He must be in pain and his eyes overly sensitive to light. I take Mother’s yellow summer shawl from the chair and drape it over the lamp.
My parents leave the room and the air acquires a flavour of quiet terror — taut and astringent.
When the door falls into its frame, my heart hollers for help.
‘Excellent reflexes. You did well.’
At first, my brain doesn’t register this information. I repeat the words in my mind. Roll them over, sort them back to front and front to back. It must be a joke; although the man’s stern expression doesn’t change.
‘Does your head hurt?’ I whisper, because nothing else would voluntarily form in my brain.
He ignores my question. ‘This was a test.’
My mind clicks and begins to race. The blocked turbine, the carefully placed footprint. My mother asking for the Sequencer when I arrived, my father having a mysterious fever — they’ve known about this. A test, once complete, almost always has a result and a conclusion. Although I can guess what it is, I feel like I ought to ask for the sake of politeness. ‘What’s the outcome?’
‘You decide that. I hear you want to go into composting. A useful occupation.’
I stare at him, wondering why he drags it out, why he doesn’t give me the verdict at once. Something like, “You are a disgrace to our species; dig yourself a hole and rot.” Maybe he likes to play with his prey before he eats it.
Unmoved by my silence, he continues. ‘Would you consider an apprenticeship as a Sequencer?’
Is it possible to get a puke-reflex from too massive a bewilderment? Because that’s precisely how I feel right now. My hand claps over my mouth. Who knows what could slip out?
A muffled squeal sounds from behind the kitchen door. I’m mortified, but he doesn’t even look in that direction.
‘You are of age. It’s your decision, not your parents’.’
Impossible. Impossible! ‘I have a lot of questions,’ I croak, while my useless brain echoes nothing but impossible.
‘Good. I do, too.’
This man is a liar. I know it. No one in his right mind would offer me an apprenticeship in anything. ‘Did you send the physician and the nurse?’
‘I asked them to come, yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Dr. Volkov is a friend and I trust her judgement.’
‘What judgement?’
‘That you are healthy enough to go on extended hikes.’
I nod, mostly to stretch my tense neck muscles and to give myself time to think. So he wants me to go with him to some place far away. My parents trust him. Or do they?
He lowers his voice to a whisper. ‘And you cut yourself, and have a sense of humour even when humiliated in front of others.’
I feel warm blood leaking on my makeshift shirt-pad. ‘You asked her to humiliate me,’ I manage to say.
‘Yes.’
His honesty is unexpected. I open my mouth and snap it shut.
‘I wished to know how you’d react. You remained calm. You seem to be used to humiliation.’
I feel trapped, manipulated, and ready to run away. I want to slap his face, or better, hit him over his head again, this time, with more force. But I all I do is hold on to my hands, place them in my lap, and stare at the wall.
‘There will be more tests,’ he continues. ‘Not like the ones at school, more like the one I did today. But no more humiliations.’
When my gaze slips up to his bandage, he says, ‘There might be more of that, though.’
‘What did she say?’ I ask, not sure if I should be surprised that no one questioned the doctor’s identity. Zula might have said something, but still, he allowed her to do the final physical exams. Why?
‘Dr. Volkov?’
‘Yes. I want to know every word she said about me.’ My molars are grinding against each other, and I give the man the coldest stare I have in my repertoire. Having my secret exposed to a stranger is tough enough. But two strangers in the same day — one of which I might meet again — is too much for me to stomach.
‘What I said already. Why is it important?’ He seems irritated.
‘It is important to me. What precisely did she say?’
‘She said, “Micka is a quiet girl, she’s very healthy, she has a number of scars of which several are evidently self-inflicted, and she’s a late developer.”’
‘Why is it important that I’m a late developer?’
‘It’s not important.’
‘Why did she say it then?’
‘It might be relevant later. If you pass and become an apprentice, you’ll need a contraceptive implant. You want to avoid pregnancy, because you cannot be a Sequencer and a mother.’
Like I ever want to have sex with anyone. ‘Is that all she said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘An implant? Of course I do. Why is that important?’
I wave his question away, lean back, and feel the heat drain from my face. She didn’t tell him what she saw on my back. ‘What happens if I say yes?’ I drag you into the forest and have you for breakfast.
‘You’ll live with your parents for another six months. During that time, we’ll meet regularly. Once in a while, we’ll travel. This will be your probation period, and whatever I teach you during this time mustn’t be shared with anyone.’
