It wasn’t long before the words flowed together. “Pencil-pencil-pencil-pen-cilpen-cilpen-cilpen-cilpen-cilpen—”
The last pencil in the row shuddered. As Vanja bent closer to look, the shiny yellow surface whitened and buckled. Then, suddenly and soundlessly, it collapsed into a pencil-shaped strip of gloop. Vanja instinctively shrank back. Her stomach turned. She had done it. She had said the wrong name, and the pencil had lost its shape. It shouldn’t have happened that quickly. She extended a finger and let it hover just above the surface of the transparent sludge. Then she slowly lowered it.
The substance was tepid, warm almost, and made her finger tingle. It was slightly springy to the touch. It felt much like touching a mucous membrane, as though life surged just beneath the surface. When she removed her finger, the surface kept an imprint of her fingertip for a few seconds before springing back up. This was the one thing everyone feared. But it didn’t feel dangerous. She touched it again. She’d always imagined that it must be cold and slimy, but the surface felt just like skin. Like a living creature.
Anders’s footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs. He was singing an old love song, a waltz they’d played in the leisure center last Sevenday: “Pia, my pioneer, please say you hold me dear, say that you’ll let me adooore youuu…”
“Pencil,” Vanja hissed at the gloop. “Pencil. Pencil. Pencil.”
Nothing happened. “Pencil,” Vanja whispered in desperation. With a faint snapping noise, the gloop contracted into an oblong shape. It almost looked like a pencil. The surface had cooled, but was still soft. “Pencil.” The material hardened slightly.
“…tralala, no other giiirl for meee!” Anders exclaimed, and slammed the archive door shut. “How’s it coming?”
“Just fine.” Vanja closed her hand around the unfinished pencil and continued marking office supplies with her back to him.
“Good. This is important work we’re doing! Important!” He patted Vanja’s shoulder so hard it hurt.
At ten minutes to five, Vanja’s throat was dry and her tongue felt stiff. “I’m done,” she told Anders. “I can leave, right?”
Anders threw a thin stack of forms onto the counter next to her. “You need to file these.”
They were forms Vanja had copied to fresh mycopaper earlier that morning.
“Go ahead,” Anders urged.
Vanja swallowed her annoyance and went down to the archive. Anders remained at the counter, stamping something with those hard little thuds of his. Vanja pulled out drawers, filing papers at top speed so she would finally be allowed to leave. Her gaze fell on the secure archive. She’d only be given access with a commission of some sort. Or if she got hold of a key. Vanja fingered the object in her pocket. Or if she made a key. Before she could follow her train of thought, Anders called down the stairs that it was five o’clock.
—
Evgen sidled up next to her as she exited the building. “Is there somewhere we can talk? We can’t go to the library.”
“Why not?”
“We’ll discuss it later. Is there somewhere? Your place?”
Vanja shook her head. Evgen pulled his hat further down his forehead and let out something between a whimper and a sigh. “What’s going on with you?” Vanja asked.
“Meet me by Plant House Seven. Don’t take the same route as me.” Evgen turned south.
Vanja walked west, curving slowly toward the southwest and Plant House Seven. The plant houses began to glow in the gathering darkness as the growers inside switched their lamps on. The cold deepened noticeably with the fading light. At first, Vanja couldn’t find Evgen anywhere. Then he stuck his head out from behind a stack of manure barrels at the far end of the plant house. In the nook between the barrels and the opaque gable wall, they were almost completely hidden from sight from all angles. Vanja huddled close to Evgen, who took his gloves off, wrung them, and put them on again.
“Listen,” Vanja said before Evgen spoke. “I can confirm the whole story about Berols’ Anna.”
Evgen blinked. “How? Where? In the archives?”
“No. Nina. She was part of the rescue team.”
Vanja recounted all she could remember of Nina’s story. Evgen listened, all the while gazing out toward the horizon and fiddling with his gloves. When Vanja fell silent, he didn’t speak at first. Finally, he nodded to himself.
“ ‘We will come to your aid soon,’ was that it?”
“Yes.” Vanja rubbed her mittens together. “What if they’re already here?”
Evgen hummed. “My thought exactly.”
“The tunnels. Ivar heard voices under the farm.”
“You’re thinking that they made the tunnels.”
“That, or they’ve used them to travel here.”
“And there’s the machine.”
Vanja shuddered at the thought. “Any thoughts on what it does?”
“No,” Evgen said.
“I dreamed that it started moving.”
“One should go down there to check,” Evgen said.
“There’s no way I’m going down there again,” Vanja said. “I can’t believe we did it last time.”
“You’re right,” Evgen said. “They’re probably there.”
“But why is this happening now?”
“Maybe they couldn’t do it before. Maybe it’s become easier. Because there are fewer of us, or because more people are thinking along the same lines as you and I. We can’t be the only ones.”
“It is easier now.” Vanja pulled her mitten off and took the pencil-thing out of her pocket.
Evgen leaned forward and squinted at it. “I dissolved it. And put it back together,” Vanja said.
“Really?” Evgen’s hand hovered over the pencil. Then he withdrew.
“Really.”
“It’s all happening at once.” Evgen rubbed his forehead. “I brought you here to tell you that the papers are gone.”
“What papers?”
“What papers? What do you think? In old Amatka. Someone took them.”
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean, am I sure!” Evgen’s whisper went up an octave. He took a deep breath. “Of course I’m sure. I’ve kept them in exactly the same spot since I started collecting them. And now they’re not there anymore, so someone must have taken them. Please tell me it was you.”
“No. I haven’t been back since the time you took me there.”
Evgen breathed out through his nose in one short snort. Beads of moisture had formed on Vanja’s eyelashes. Annoyed, she wiped them away and broke the silence. “What are you going to do?”
Evgen let out a shrill giggle. “It’s just a matter of time. Either they know who I am, and they followed me there. Or they’ll figure it out. Not a lot of people have access to those kinds of documents. It’s over, Vanja.” He pulled his coat tighter around him. “I’m going to be arrested. They’ll probably do a procedure on me, too. Do you know what they do with people after? They dump them in a secret camp and leave them to die.”
“I’ve seen it,” Vanja said.
Evgen seemed not to hear her. When she met his gaze, his eyes were blank and feverish. “The question is what I can do before they take me in. We have to act before…Look, it’s time. We have to do something, tonight. I have a plan. Follow me.” He held out his hand.
“What’s the plan, Evgen?”
“You won’t like it,” he said. “But if someone’s down there, I think we should talk to them.”
Vanja froze. “No,” she said.
“They’re coming to help us,” Evgen said. “Remember?”
“Evgen, wait,” Vanja said. “I have to go home to Nina, she needs me. And if I don’t come home…she’ll be suspicious. Could we just wait until a little later tonight?”
“It’s now or never, Vanja,” Evgen said.
“Just give me a few hours.”
“Fine. One o’clock.”
Evgen turned around and walked into Amatka, shoulders pulled up to hi
s ears. He looked small against the plant-house wall.
—
Nina came down into the kitchen and ate the fried porridge Vanja served. She moved slowly as though she were in pain, but at least she ate. They didn’t talk. When Nina had managed a little more than half of her portion, she got up and put the plate in the fridge. Then she kissed the top of Vanja’s head and went upstairs. When Vanja came up a while later, she’d gone back to bed. Her own, this time.
Vanja went into her own room, closed the door, and sat down at her desk. She took the thing that had been a pencil out of her pocket and studied it. It still had the same approximate shape she’d managed to impose on it earlier. The whitish surface was cool and a little rough. She rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. “Spoon,” she whispered. “Spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon.”
A tiny shudder went through the material. Her marking pen lay next to the typewriter. She uncorked it and wrote SPOON. The tip of her pen punched through the surface in a couple of spots; it felt a lot like sticking a fork in a mushroom. Vanja leaned forward over the table. She closed her eyes and tried to make herself do that thing with her mind, that shameful thing, to truly imagine that a thing was something other than it was. “Spoon,” she breathed. “Spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon, spoon-spoon-spoon-spoon-spoon-spoon—”
She was close enough to hear the wet noise of the substance shifting, and she opened her eyes. One of the ends had flattened into a concave disc. It looked like a spoon, sort of. She took a deep breath and tried again.
After an hour and a half, she had managed to create something that actually looked like a real spoon, albeit transparent, rough, and a little dented. The effort had made her head feel empty. Still, she had found the way that seemed to work best: to use speech, writing, and thought to describe in detail something that didn’t exist, to make it come into existence. At first it had made her nauseous, but then the pit of her stomach had begun to tingle.
Vanja resisted the temptation to try to create something bigger. She wrapped the spoon in a sock and stuffed it into the pocket of her anorak. It was late. She got undressed, went into Nina’s room, and crawled into bed. Nina wrapped an arm around her. She would just lie here until Nina was deep asleep, then go to meet Evgen.
She fell asleep instantly.
THIRDAY
Vanja woke with a start to the breaking of the ice. How long had Evgen waited for her? Was he angry? Had he gone without her? There was no way for her to check until after work.
Nina was frying root vegetables in the kitchen. Her eyes were swollen but she was dressed and had made an attempt to untangle her curls. Vanja wrapped her arms around her and rested her cheek against her back, listening to the air rushing in and out of her lungs.
“Slept okay?” Nina’s voice vibrated against her cheek.
“Fine. And you?”
“Great. Hey, would you check if Ulla wants breakfast?”
Vanja frowned. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“I thought you knew.”
Vanja let go of Nina. “Not since…not for days.”
“Why haven’t we…”
They started for the stairs as one.
—
There was no reply when Nina knocked on Ulla’s door. She pushed the handle down, but the door wouldn’t budge. She ran up to her own room to get the spare key. Vanja put her ear to the door, but couldn’t hear anything on the other side. When Nina finally found the spare key and got the door open, they were met by silence. Nina went inside and shrunk back from something before Vanja had time to see what it was. She backed into the door on the right.
Now that Nina wasn’t blocking the view, Vanja could see into the room straight ahead, Ulla’s room. The door was wide open. In the light falling in through the window, the substance flowing out of the room shimmered yellow. Nina let out a breath that sounded more like a groan, turned around, and opened the door behind her. Then she crossed the corridor on stiff legs and opened the door to the left. After looking inside, she turned to the first room and leaned over to see inside. She turned back to Vanja. Her face had taken on a greenish hue.
“Ulla isn’t here. I’ll go get cleaners.” She pushed past Vanja and ran down the stairs three steps at a time.
Vanja stayed in the doorway. The mess before her no longer inspired the same terror. She walked over to it, crouched down, and gingerly put a hand on its gelatinous surface. It was warm, body temperature, and buzzed under her hand, twitching almost. She rose and craned her neck to look inside the room. Ulla wasn’t there. Neither was the furniture. But on top of a quivering, transparent mound rested a box she recognized. The last time she’d seen it was in Evgen’s hands, in old Amatka. The outer and inner lids had been removed. The box was still brimming with papers—the letters, the logs that told the true story of Amatka’s past. Ulla must have shadowed Vanja and Evgen to old Amatka and taken them.
The other rooms were empty. Vanja returned to the corridor and for a moment considered wading into the mess and grabbing as many papers as she could. If she took her boots off, she might be able to do it. She was unlacing one of them when she caught the sound of Nina coming back up the stairs. Vanja hastily retreated to the hallway.
“They’re on their way,” Nina said from the landing. “They’re coming. Shut the door.”
She bent over, panting, her hands on her knees. She didn’t seem to notice Vanja’s unlaced boot.
“Ulla isn’t there,” Vanja said, pointlessly.
Nina nodded. “Nope. We’ll have to report her missing.”
“I will,” Vanja replied.
She pulled her anorak on and left. The papers would have to stay where they were. There was no way she could sneak them past Nina.
Outside, an acrid stink filled the air. A pillar of grayish-black smoke rose toward the sky to the north. There were residential houses in northern Amatka, plant houses. And the library. The closer Vanja came to the pillar of smoke, the more citizens hurried down the street, all heading north.
When Vanja finally arrived, there was no doubt about it: the library was on fire. There were no flames, just thick black smoke billowing out through the broken windows. Part of the crowd had gathered around an old man leaning on a walker. He was holding forth in a deep and penetrating voice.
“…fetched the librarian,” he said as Vanja came closer. “I saw the whole thing. He came running out of the library and then it was on fire. And he lay down in the street and coughed. And laughed! He was laughing! Then the rescue workers came and took him. I told them what I’d seen. He started the fire himself, I’m telling you.”
His audience was mumbling to one another. “What happened?” someone at the back asked. “The librarian set it on fire!” someone else replied.
The old man started over. “I saw the whole thing,” he intoned. “It’s all ablaze. Nothing left in there.”
“Did he say anything?” Vanja asked.
“What?” The man turned his head.
“Did he say anything,” Vanja repeated.
“Oh, yes, but it was just nonsense,” the man said. “He said, ‘We’ll all be free.’ ”
Vanja turned around and forced herself to walk to the office at a normal pace. She breathed in, counted to three, breathed out, counted to three, breathed in. It didn’t help much.
—
The reception was crowded. Several couriers were heading out; at the reception desk, Anders was deep in intense conversation with what looked like two high-ranking administrators. One of them followed him in behind the counter and into the archive.
“What’s going on?” Vanja asked the administrator who had stayed at the counter and was drumming his fingers against the gray surface.
The administrator studied Vanja. “What’s your security level?”
“I’m not sure. I’m the reception assistant,” Vanja replied hesitantly.
“If you don’t know what your security level is, it’s not high enough.” The administrator graced
her with a tight-lipped smile and resumed drumming on the desk. “Don’t you have work to do?”
—
On the third floor, in the department of civil affairs, there was an air of subdued but frantic activity. When Vanja came in to report Ulla’s disappearance, she was handed a stack of blank forms. The bloated clerk kept fiddling with his beard and glowered at Vanja across his desk when she couldn’t say how long Ulla had been missing, even though they lived in the same household. He shook his head and flipped through a binder, looking for yet another form.
“I’ll have to make a separate report of this,” he said, and took out a pencil. “Neglect of housemate. Names of the other occupants?”
“Neglect of housemate?” Vanja put her pencil down. “I don’t understand.”
“Here, in Amatka,” the clerk intoned, “whoever has a housemate with special needs, be it physical or mental, must ascertain daily that said housemate is in good health and having their needs met.” He looked at Vanja, his upper lip curling into a sneer. “Maybe you don’t do that in Essre, but here we take solidarity very seriously. It is your responsibility to acquaint yourself with the rules.”
“My apologies,” Vanja said. “There were circumstances. One of our other housemates died.”
“Were you close?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you have the presence of mind to visit poor Ulla?”
Vanja squirmed. “I forgot. I was taking care of Nina. A housemate. She was close to him.”
“Close to whom?”
“To Ivar. The man who died.”
“That’s all very well.” The clerk started filling out his own form. “There will be an investigation.”
When Vanja had completed her forms, the clerk skimmed through them, nodded, and sent her to the office next door. Next door, they took the forms for registration and forwarding to the police department. Vanja was told to return to work and go about her business as usual. They made her file a copy of her own report.
—
The rest of the day dragged. The buzzing noise, which until now had mostly felt like a vibration, came within her range of hearing as a deep bass note resonating in the background. If anyone else heard it, they didn’t mention it.
Amatka Page 15
