The XY

by Virginia Bergin

  In the middle of the nightmare of that night, it rains.

  It would have been easier and better to have mercifully killed it.

  • • •

  Teeth chattering, soaked to the skin. Exhausted.

  That’s my body. My brain? It stopped working hours ago.

  A creature, a horse, darkness, and rain. Vomit. Diarrhea. Delirium.

  Hours of it.

  But I am home.

  I drag open the never-much-used big gate. Milpy refuses to enter.

  Kate comes out of the house. Kate worries when I come home late. (Old habits die hard.) No one else in the village worries like Kate worries. Maybe the rest of the granmummas would, but they mostly all live together these days and don’t know anything about daughters and granddaughters who come home late. And…what is there to worry about?

  “Where the hell do you think you’ve been?” she asks, battered umbrella over her head and no coat on. Kate’s breathing is atrocious. It’s going to kill her if she’s not careful, Mumma says. That and that she should never have smoked. Kate says Pah! and blames it on once-was air pollution. She says it’s her heart that’ll kill her, same as everyone else. (When it stops, you stop.) (Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.)

  “Nowhere” is what I’d usually say, with a huge grin, and Kate would smile and roll her eyes, because that’s what she used to say to her mumma, back in the days when a girl late home was apparently a truly scary thing.

  Nowhere. That’s what I’d usually say, and then I’d tell Kate all about whatever me and Plat had been up to.

  Tonight, I have no more words.

  “What’s happened?” Kate snaps, instantly detecting the not-rightness.

  The rain is coming down so hard.

  “Is Mumma home?” I ask, shivering.

  I know she won’t be, but I wish she were.

  “Get in!” says Kate.

  That’s usually a private joke from the once-was too—“Get in!”—but tonight it doesn’t feel funny at all.

  “Kate…”

  I don’t have the words to explain. All I can manage to do is stand back and point at the cart.

  It fell quiet ages ago. It stopped moving.

  Kate eyeballs me. It is a sign of how quickly she has understood the not-rightness of the situation that she doesn’t even say, This had better be good. She walks straight past me to see for herself.

  She sees. Even in the darkness, she sees.

  She clutches her throat. “Dear God…”

  Before she can even start gasping, I run for the house, turning over everything on the kitchen table, searching, then running and flinging open Kate’s bedroom door, instantly deciding a hunt through her mess is a BAD IDEA, and running to grab an emergency inhaler—the last—from the drawer in Mumma’s study. And running back outside and handing Kate the inhaler—and she shakes it and shoots…and breathes.

  “I think it’s an XY! I found it in the woods!”

  “SHIFT!” Kate shouts at Milpy and thwacks her rump.

  Kate is not so strong these days. She is seventy-five. But—

  For a split second, Milpy considers this unexpected event; she has been shouted at all night, she has had her head pulled around, she has—as far as she is concerned—escaped the wolves, she has had a wrong-smelling, wrong-sounding thing right behind her, and now: SOMEONE JUST HIT HER!

  She rears. The cart bolts bust open as the weight of the apples heaves backward, and the creature and a ton of apples tumble out.

  Milpy, having made her point, goes back to still and stubborn and wet and furious. She lifts her tail, farts tremendously, and deposits a seriously runny pile of angry, tired, anxious poo.

  “Christ!” says Kate, stuffing the inhaler in her pocket and chucking the umbrella aside. “Get his arms!”

  I hesitate.

  “GO ON!” she shouts at me. “GRAB HIM!”

  I clamber over apples slippery with rain and best-not-think-about-what and grab it by the armpits. Stooped, shaking, rained on, freezing… Knowing Kate, who has its knees, has so little strength, I take the weight of its body, and I make my arms, legs, and feet work.

  “Where—in—the—hell—did—you—come—from?” Kate puffs at its body as we carry it in out of the rain.

  A strange time to notice a strange thing yet again: the way that the creature and Kate speak. It’s so similar, the questions that need no answers, the swearing, and the rudeness.

  • • •

  In Kate’s room—a dining room once-was—we heave and dump it onto the bed.

  “Cover him!” she says, searching frantically for the phone she’s supposed to keep with her at all times in case of an asthma attack. It’s buried under a ton of stuff on her dressing table. It is plugged in, but the socket is switched off. The phone is dead.

  “Useless!” says Kate, flicking the socket on. She grew up with more tech than any of us but can’t be bothered with any of it now that there’s nothing “interesting” online. “Go get Akesa on your thing!”

  “It’s at school!”

  My thing—a notebook that isn’t mine at all—is being assessed and upgraded.

  “Then get the other phone!” Kate shouts at my back. I’m already running for it: the only working device left in the house.

  Mumma’s old mobile is in the emergency items drawer in her study—and charged (of course it’s charged!)—but I’m just not used to phones, so my fumbling, panicky fingers are still trying to figure out how to get PicChat up as I blunder back into Kate’s room, where she is taking its pulse at the neck.

  “Gimme that,” she says, snatching the phone and expertly flicking to PicChat. Her fingers and thumbs have never forgotten.

  I dare to speak up: “But…wouldn’t it be quicker and kinder if we killed it ourselves?”

  For a second, she looks at me in utter horror.

  “I’m just saying…I mean…it’s going to die, isn’t it?”

  “It isn’t an it.”

  “An XY. A man.”

  “It’s a boy,” says Kate, and jabs—viciously—at Dial.

  Chapter 3

  Boy

  Boy.

  That’s not a word I often hear.

  I hear it even less than I hear the word man, which is what I thought it was.

  Boy.

  I thought they’d be smaller.

  And less hairy.

  Boy.

  I can’t find a place in my head where that fits.

  We sometimes get told stuff about men in community studies, and every year, we have “men’s week.” It used to be a whole month, but it was Agreed—even by the granmummas—that it took up too much important study time. And I am all in favor of the mummas’ suggestion that there should just be an “International Men’s Day,” because it’s not like it’s all that important or anything. I mean, obviously it is important; there would be no aeronautical engineering for me to study if once-was men hadn’t been around. So I kind of get it, I do. And I love all that old stuff: the Bernoulli brothers and the Wright brothers—although not as much as I like reading about Valentina Tereshkova and Wally Funk. Once-was people: women and men. In a once-was world that seemed to bother about that—women and men—A LOT. I understand—of course I do!—that reproduction has to happen…but other than that, it’s baffling to me why being a woman or a man was such a big deal—when I even think about it. Mostly, I don’t.

  So about boys…what do I know? For me, they exist only as words on the pages of books, words I have spent my whole life…ignoring, I suppose. I can remember Plat pointing out to me that some of the characters in Twilight (we were rehearsing it as a play to put on for the granmummas because they loved it so when they were our age) were supposed to be XYs (as well as vampires and werewolves?!) and me going back to the book and trying to understand that the
se weren’t just people (Or vampires! Or werewolves!), but they were supposed to be…male as well as female.

  I hadn’t seen he/him/his. I didn’t get it. And honestly? Even when Plat showed me how it was there in black and white on the page…I couldn’t seem to rethink that or any other once-was story. It didn’t seem important at all: who was male, who was female. The people in the stories behaved in all kinds of ways that seemed strange to me, so what difference did biology make?!

  It felt as though it would be a wasted effort to even begin to fathom it.

  • • •

  The phone in Kate’s hand rings. The second Akesa’s face pops up, I catch a glimpse of just the slightest “unprofessional” frown flicker across it: our doctor knows Kate.

  “Hello, Kate,” says Akesa. “How can I—”

  Kate jabs her onto speakerphone. “You need to get here,” she shouts at Akesa’s face and points the phone at the body so Akesa can see.

  “Pulse is one-six-five,” says Kate, tracking the phone over its body.

  One hundred and sixty-five beats per minute. That’s so high its heart must be about to explode.

  “Vomiting, diarrhea. Don’t know temperature yet—but HOT. Don’t know cause, so don’t ask. Been like this for…” Kate glances at me. “How long?!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Roughly!”

  “At least three hours.” It’s got to have taken me at least that long to get home—but there was vomit on the road too, so it was sick before I found it. “Longer.”

  Me, Kate, and Akesa—via the phone—stare at it. Between short, sharp bouts of violent shaking (in which its eyes, freakily, roll open and clamp shut), it lies motionless except for that flat, flat chest that’s rising-falling-rising-falling—rapid, tiny movements like a terrified, small creature—while torrents of sweat pour.

  “I’m on my way,” says Akesa. Sound of her grabbing stuff. Sound stops. “Wait—let me see that arm.”

  Kate shoves the phone at its arm. It’s horrible, the jagged mess of a cut on it.

  “And the body…show me the body again.”

  “For crying out loud,” mutters Kate, pulling the phone back, panning.

  For one long and strange moment, all you can hear is breathing: Kate’s (rasping), mine (gulping, trying not to cry from sheer exhaustion), Akesa’s (alert: battering down the line like a storm)…and another: its. Soft, rapid, tiny. A dying mouse.

  “It’s a MAN?!” Akesa’s disembodied voice says. Shock bouncing.

  “A boy,” says Kate, turning the phone so Akesa faces her.

  “A BOY?!”

  “YES!”

  Breathing. There’s just breathing. All the kinds of breathing.

  “I…I’ve seen one before,” Akesa says. “The arm… It’s… There was a testosterone implant he’d tried to cut out. Looks like this one has succeeded—”

  “You need to get here!”

  “I don’t know what to do!”

  “HELLO!” Kate screams. “They-pretty-much-work-the-same-as-us, DOCTOR!”

  I fling myself at Kate, grab the inhaler from her pocket, shake it, and shove it into her mouth—and she breathes deep on the shot of medicine, but her eyes are wild. She shoves my hand away, and we both stare at Akesa.

  “There’s a protocol,” Akesa says, her normally calm doctor’s voice so shaky. She clicks about on her notebook. “I have to consult. Before I can attend, I have to—”

  Kate grabs my hand and takes another shot from the inhaler.

  “A protocol?!” she wheezes. Fury. “How can there be a protocol?! What the hell are you talking about?! He’s sick and you’ve got to come here now!”

  “I HAVE TO CONSULT. I’ll call you back—”

  Kate’s furious fingers cut Akesa off before she can hang up.

  “A protocol?!” she says—not to me, but at me. Then her eyes narrow. She speed swipes at the phone, and Mumma’s worried face appears, thinking there’s something wrong.

  And there is. There is something very wrong.

  “Big shot, we’ve got a situation here,” says Kate.

  I cringe. “Big shot” is what Kate has taken to calling Mumma since she got elected to represent the region at the National Council. Mumma hates it. Kate knows it. Kate turns the phone so Mumma can see the body.

  My Mumma gasps. “Have you called Akesa?” she says immediately. I can hear her dialing PicChat on her notebook without waiting for an answer, and I know what she must be thinking: Why would we be calling her when we should just be calling our doctor? “Do you know what’s wrong?” she’s asking as I hear the result of her dial; Akesa’s line is engaged. Mumma cutting the call, dialing again, now demanding again of us, “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”

  “It’s a boy,” says Kate.

  Like me, Mumma has never seen a bio-born male. Like me, she’d struggle with the word boy. And she wouldn’t think in a million years that this creature is one.

  “It’s an XY!” I chip in.

  Mumma is silent as Akesa’s line comes back as busy again.

  Kate flips the phone around so she can stare Mumma down: “Your daughter found this boy in the woods—you ARE hearing me right—and he’s sick as hell. Now we’ve got a doctor talking protocols, so how about you talking to the doctor?”

  “Oh my God…” Mumma whispers. My mumma never says that.

  “Call Akesa!” yells Kate, and she hangs up.

  For a moment, it’s like Kate doesn’t even know I’m there in the room—and the way I’m feeling, I’m not even sure I am in the room. I feel… It’s like I’m floating tens, hundreds, thousands of miles away from myself. Crying, apparently—

  “Quit blubbing,” Kate says.

  That’s what it said.

  Crying is normal. Crying is complex. Crying conveys. No one ever tells anyone to…quit blubbing.

  Kate grabs her pajama top, sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, and mops its face—even as I mop at my own, wiping away tears I can’t make much sense of at the moment.

  “I can’t go through this again,” she’s muttering to herself, a rare, lone teardrop escaping. I don’t know what that tear means either. The granmummas cried so much they now cry so rarely. Their tears have turned acid with emotion. Too much, too many, feelings…in too few drops.

  “I can’t do this again. I can’t,” she whispers, stroking its sweat-sodden hair.

  When the phone rings seconds later, she’s on it like lightning. Listens, dead faced, to Mumma’s words—speakerphone-loud words I don’t want to hear:

  • • •

  There is a protocol. That’s what Mumma says. The protocol says there is no permission to treat the boy, only to administer pain relief. And not to euthanize, even if it is requested.

  Kate bangs the phone against her head in disbelief.

  Mumma continues calmly delivering instructions: Kate should send me away to Lenny’s—to Lenny’s, not the granmummas, because it’ll cause less fuss. I mustn’t see this. It wouldn’t be fair or right for me to see this. It would cause unnecessary trauma to me. (Kate manages to nod at this.) The boy’s body will be collected in the morning.

  There is a silence from Kate. She smooths the boy’s hair. Another acid tear falls.

  “He won’t live. You know that,” Mumma says.

  Kate does not reply.

  “And perhaps it’s best not to say anything to anyone else. It will only cause…distress.”

  Best not to say anything? But everyone always discusses everything. Open discussion: that’s how everyone and everything works. Distress?

  Distress is life. Distress is distress. It might be painful. It might be difficult. But it can be shared. It can be talked about. It can be worked out—always. Can’t it?

  I look at Kate. Yes, this is already causing distress
.

  “Katherine-Thea, are you listening to me?” Mumma asks. “Is River still there with you? Kate, are you listening?”

  “Nope,” says Kate, and hangs up on her.

  She breathes, lungs wheezing. She chews at her lip. She dials. Gets Akesa. Stares her down.

  “What you’re seeing right now is a massive reaction to bacteria his body has never encountered before,” Akesa says. “He comes from a sealed environment. Sanctuary food is irradiated. Water is purified. This…boy has never been outside. Our world is deadly to him.”

  An apple. Bread. Water. Honey. A finger in my mouth. The same finger in his mouth. BACTERIA. Have I killed a boy?

  “So we need to give him antibiotics,” says Kate.

  Antibiotics?! In the once-was, they were handed out like cake on a birthday. Even I know the consequences of that: resistant superbugs. These days, they are hardly ever prescribed. And in a hopeless case like this…

  “Even if he responded, all we would do would be to prolong his suffering. He’ll already be infected with the virus by now. It will be attacking his immune system. There is only one way this ends. I’m so, so sorry, Kate. I know how hard this must be for you.” She swallows. “Permission to treat is refused. Pain relief only. They’ll learn more from the body if he…fights to the last. He could help other XYs. He could help all of us.”

  Finally, Kate speaks: “But we can’t help him…”

  “There is no permission to euthanize.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “It’s the protocol,” says Akesa grimly. This must be almost impossible for her; no doctor would allow such a cruel thing. “I am so sorry. I’ll come as soon as I can. I will make sure he suffers as little as possible.”

  “We can’t even help him to die?”

  It comes out mangled by anger and pain, but Kate speaks in uptalk—a sure sign of her utter desperation. It is a hundred years old, but it still carries weight. People all over the world still speak it; it wasn’t a language in itself, but it was a way of speaking—an aural question mark at the end of a sentence, indicating that although the speaker is fairly sure of what she is saying, the listener is free to disagree. Women pioneered it, back in the once-was—and Kate hates it. She says if you’ve got something to say, you should just say it…but occasionally, uptalk just bursts out of her. Usually in moments of rage—when, actually, she really couldn’t care less what someone else thinks. From Kate’s lips, uptalk is a devastating, angry weapon.