The XY

by Virginia Bergin

  The plane of my dreams, the plane I really, really need to see, is just sitting right there on the asphalt.

  “No admittance.”

  I wheel my bike around the perimeter fence. I know where to go and ask for fuel. There’s a depot. Mariam’s cousin Laila-Jewel works there—we know each other. We know each other enough for her to immediately see how upset I am.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks as we shake hands and kiss. “Ah! I don’t even have to ask that, do I?”

  “How’s Jewel?”

  “She’s great! Running rings around the granmummas and doing so well at school—better than Mariam,” she whispers, then laughs, “Better than me, at any rate!”

  From out of the back of the depot, I can see the object of my desire, and in my bones, still rattling from the ride and aching from the push, I can feel my wasted journey hurting.

  “What is this no-admittance thing?” I ask.

  “I do not know,” she says. “NO ADMITTANCE! Infuriating, isn’t it? The Dreambird’s in, and no one’s allowed to go and see except…”

  I tear my eyes off the plane to look at her.

  “I’ve got to refuel it. 8:00 p.m.”

  That’s so late. That so doesn’t matter. I’d wait for a week to see this. A week? I’d wait for months.

  “I expect you need to go to the workshops,” she says, “before you come back and assist.”

  My smile is a thousand miles wide.

  My smile is so wide I daren’t even visit the workshops. All everyone will want to talk about is the Dreambird anyway, and all I’ll do is end up telling everyone I’m going to get to see it up close, because to do otherwise would be not just withholding knowledge, but a further lie on top of a mountain of lies I’m sick of telling.

  So I go to the museum hangars instead. They’re open 24/7 and the granmumma pilot and the engineer who are on hand to explain anything you might need to know have seen me so many times before they leave me be—though from their smiles alone I know they know exactly why I’m here, and I know they’re as desperate as me to see the Dreambird.

  “No admittance, eh?” is all the engineer says as she and the pilot offer me cup after cup after cup of tea, which I sip, stern faced, over my notebook as I examine plane after plane after plane, the specs of which I already know by heart. And when they have gone, I climb into the cockpit of the Fairey Delta. It’s my favorite. It always has been, and I think it always will be. I knew about it long before I knew anything about the Dreambird. It was flown by the granmummas’ daddies’ daddies’ daddies. Just being inside that ancient, little, blue beast of a dream of a bird makes me happy. Makes me feel connected to generations of people like me who just wanted to know: What can we do?

  I sit in the cockpit, in the dark, and I beam. In my imagination, I am not just flying that Fairey, I am at the controls of its daughter’s daughter’s daughter’s daughter: the Dreambird. And I will see her.

  At 7:30 p.m., still beaming with joy, I go to find Laila-Jewel.

  • • •

  I remember very clearly the first time I saw a BIG plane up close. Not the Concorde in the museum, which littler-one me found cozy as a playhouse inside—and packed with too many kilos of seriously once-was electronics—but an Airbus. Inside, that was an incredible sight: nearly a whole plane full of seats from the time when people thought nothing of burning millions of gallons of irreplaceable fossil fuels, going to places they had no need to go to. Though if you ask Kate, she’ll tell you she really did need to go to Ibiza with her cousins Cheyenne and Bianca.

  And on the outside? I just remember how tiny I felt, how amazed I was that this enormous beast of a bird could ever even leave the ground.

  I feel tiny again now. I am in awe. Laila-Jewel knows it—she understands just what this means to me.

  “It’s quite something, isn’t it?” she whispers to me as I stand there, in a borrowed blue fueling jumpsuit, dumbstruck because, even in the darkness lit by floodlights, I can see how truly extraordinary the Dreambird is.

  I am now, I know, going to study extra, extra hard. I am going to ACE every single subject I have to ace—because I want to be part of the team that builds aircraft like this. And if we can do this, surely it is possible that, in my lifetime, we could go back into space.

  It’s genius. Weight challenges maneuverability at lower speeds. Deltas demand long runways. This one won’t.

  The wing is exquisite. It curves divinely! A curve more complex than a Concorde’s twisting ogee. Seamless riveting, but I can see there’re hydraulics. It must have lift—superlift!—smooth, smooth cruise (I’m visualizing this subtly complex wing being tested in a smoke tunnel, how it’d just grab any speed of headwind you could throw at it and glide on through), AND deceleration capacity. Hydraulic maneuverability.

  It’s got it all.

  Delta paradise.

  I study online with students in India. I can’t wait to see them again. I can’t wait to tell them, Congratulations! You did it.

  This bird is amazing, and it is beautiful. And I would love, love, love to see inside. I want to know about the engines. I want to see inside the flight deck—and there are lights on in there. I can see the pilots doing preflight checks, and I know, in my bones, that no amount of “no admittance” is going to stop me.

  “Amazing, eh? Amazing,” Laila-Jewel says, winding the fuel hose back in.

  It’s Laila-Jewel who will stop me. She helped me. I cannot abuse her kindness. I’ve been useless to her. I try to help wind in.

  “I’ve got it,” she says.

  “Why would they do this?” I ask her, my heart torn apart because I am seeing my own true love right in front of me, and yet, it’s forbidden. “Why would they fly this in and then not let anyone see it?”

  “Not let you see it, you mean,” she says, climbing into the cab of the fuel tanker.

  I run around to the other side and get up into the cab.

  “They’ve been showing it off all day, but only to the invited,” she says, swinging the truck around to avoid numerous containers as we circle the plane to put fuel into the tank on the other wing. “So we’ve just had to invite ourselves, haven’t we?”

  We pull up and get out.

  “And how am I supposed to work in this light?” Laila-Jewel says.

  It’s not that bad. Once you’ve got your dark-adapted eye in, you can see the Dreambird fairly well. I could just climb up to the flight deck, and even if they threw me out immediately, I’d get to have at least one glance at the panels. The trim controls must be utterly brilliant. The calibration on the hydraulics… I want to see the precision. I want to see. Laila-Jewel would understand if I just climbed those steps and dared to say hi. And, really, how much trouble could there be? Maybe they wouldn’t tell me to go away. Every pilot I have ever met—and most especially Mariam—would never tell a keen person to go away. Mariam has shown me every last feature of the Explorer, even though helicopters aren’t really my thing.

  But…my life is complicated right now, and that complication complicatedly involves other people. Kate, Mumma. The granmummas. And the boy. The damn boy. This mess at home—I feel snarled up in its many tentacles. I want to be bold, but I do not feel free to be bold. This boy mess is holding me back.

  I back off into the darkness, and I calm myself. I check my feelings. I’ve seen the Dreambird. I don’t want to get Laila-Jewel into any kind of trouble. I am just grateful I got to see this amazingness.

  I need to record it. That’s what I need to do.

  I pull my notebook out of my backpack. I set it to camera/night. I click, click, click on those incredible wings. I back off to get a long shot. I look at the shot—No! I want the WHOLE THING. I back off farther. I take more shots. I look at them.

  They’re the best that I can do in crummy light—Kate word—with a crummy notebook camera
.

  It’s the Dreambird. When—how—will I get to see it again? I switch on the flash. One shot with flash.

  I take it.

  No one, not even Laila-Jewel, seems to have noticed.

  I look at the shot. Got it! I study the shot. This is it—you can even see the awesome complex wing curve, and… What is that?

  On the picture, my eye is drawn to a small, white thing. A small, white thing sticking out from one of the containers. A small, white thing almost like a little flag…or a hand?

  I stare at the containers. No flag. No hand. I look back at my pic. It does look like a hand. I enlarge the pic. It’s blurry, but it looks like a hand…

  I approach the containers. A row of them, ready to be loaded onto the plane. They’re not regular containers, the kind we get coming in on ships at Plymouth and Avonmouth. They’re smaller, perhaps about the size of my new utility-room bedroom, a few cubic yards only. Vents in them. Barred vents.

  I walk up to the last one in the row. I breathe, sucking came-from-nowhere bad feelings in and out of my lungs. I speak.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Hello and goodbye,” a slurry voice says back.

  I lean in closer. I put my hand up to the barred vent and—SNATCH! A hand grabs mine.

  “Get me out of here,” the voice slurs.

  A face appears, presses sideways against the bars as the body it belongs to, gripping my hand, hauls itself up.

  It is a face I am now almost immediately certain is an XY’s face, but older than Mason. It’s harder looking, leaner and much, much hairier…and odd. This face seems odd. For a moment, I think I am looking at a huge grin, but as he turns his head, I see the smile is not a smile at all. It exists on only one side of his face. A bald, pink-fleshed scar cuts through his beard from his mouth to his cheekbone. His eyes are rolling like he’s about to faint or fall asleep.

  “Oh shit. You’re one of them, ain’t you?”

  He laughs, hard and bitter.

  “I caught myself a woman. Take it that is what you’re supposed to be?”

  “No. Name’s Mason,” I tell him. He tightens its grip; I think my wrist might be about to break. “Code of Honor.”

  “Code of Honor my ass! You ain’t Mason,” he slurs.

  I don’t say anything. My mind is in free fall. A jolt of bone-breaking pain in my wrist reminds my body I am on Earth.

  “Let me out.”

  There’s just one bolt, way down low on the door to the container. Down too low for any hand from inside the container to reach.

  “In God’s name, please!” he hisses, and my wrist truly does feel as though it’s about to snap. “All I want is to die free!”

  I have, instantly, in my head: Mason. How desperate he was when I found him. How he thought he would die. How he behaved. His tears. How it seemed as though he was nothing but a scary creature, how I now understand—I think—that he was just scared. How fear makes people behave. How fear made me behave.

  I unbolt the container, my wrist immediately released as he shoves the door open. His eyes roll in his head as he breathes in deeply—so deep it’s as though he were sucking in the whole of the night sky—the stars, the moon, all of it.

  “Death, I am so in love with you,” he says.

  Someone did this for Mason, I’m thinking. This is where he ran from. This is where he ran from not even knowing that—

  “Hey!” a voice is calling. “Hey!”

  It’s H&R.

  “HEY!”

  I am the kind of person who needs time and space to work things out—quietly, on my own, with no interruptions. I have seconds.

  “I can get you out of here,” I tell him. “I’ve got a motorbike.” I point. From under the wings of the Dreambird, my bike is plain to see: outside the fuel hangar, parked by the pumps. I do not know whether Laila-Jewel will have fueled her already, but I don’t even know what I’m doing right now.

  “Hey!”

  We run. That is to say, I do. The XY I’ve liberated struggles to get to the hangar. I have to turn around and grab him by the hand to pull him to my bike. I leap on her. No time for helmet, boots, gloves, to change clothes. I fire her up, and she does fire up. Laila-Jewel has fueled her. I kick back that stand.

  “HEY! HEY! HEY! STOP!” shouts the H&R person coming after us.

  “RIVER!” Laila-Jewel is shouting, running for the hangar too.

  The XY seems to have lost whatever fierceness he had. He’s staggering all over the place from the run. I grab him—“Get on!”—then grab his arms and wrap them around me—“Hold on!”—and I fire on out of there.

  Chapter 21

  Harvest

  I rev my bike harder than I’ve ever revved any machine before, while my collapsed brain tries to quietly examine the wreckage of the situation. What have I done?!

  It gets harder and harder to think straight as my whole body freezes. My hands are ice numb with cold almost immediately; my feet soon join them. My brain, with no helmet to shield my skull, feels at one with my face: stiff with cold. Even my eyeballs feel frozen. The XY is slumped against my back—slumped but somehow managing to cling on. Every time I feel those arms slip, I catch myself wondering, Should I just let him fall? What if I just let him fall?

  He’d be hurt. I could go to get help, and someone else would have to make the decisions.

  But every time those arms slip, before I can even make that dreadful choice, those arms wake up. Those arms grip like a vise.

  They grip tighter when it becomes apparent that someone is coming after us. That’s what it feels like—like those arms know what I don’t even know myself…not at first, not for sure. I just catch weird, subtle shifts of light in the darkness. It comes and goes. Comes and goes. No side mirrors on a scrambler, so I have to glance back—there is nothing, and nothing, and nothing. Until we hit a run of straight road. I glance back—we are being followed. Headlights blast across the dark land. A car, far behind us, but coming for us.

  When it comes to a choice between the main road and the sorry wreck of road where I first found Mason, I buzz past, then screech to a halt.

  His arms grip tighter than ever as I reverse.

  I’m going with option B: shortcut through the woods.

  We hit the first stretch of rotten road, bike bouncing as I weave to avoid the places where the trees have bucked up the asphalt.

  I can do this. I know this road.

  Twenty miles on, I’m regretting it. My brain has completely stopped thinking. That doesn’t matter too much right now, but my body is so freezing cold I can hardly control the bike. I cannot feel my own hands. Twice, I can’t brake hard enough and quick enough to control the bike. Twice, I somehow get away with it—her suspension is superb; she hits the branches of storm-fallen trees, leaps, and bounces on.

  Third time…not so lucky.

  Luck. What is that? A thing Kate believes in.

  I hit not a branch, but a whole tree, fallen. Hands too numb to brake in time. I hit it, and my bike stops where she is; we flip.

  I lie on the once-was road dazed, confused, and feeling lucky—I can move every part of me. I pick myself up.

  The XY man-boy is also lying on the road.

  My bike is lying on her side, still growling power.

  Can’t waste a second of fuel.

  I clamber over the tree, and I switch her off.

  I clamber back over the tree to see the man-boy.

  I think he might be dead…but he opens his eyes.

  “You fucking idiot,” he says.

  I catch my breath. I’ve just got to get home—that’s the only thought I have. Mumma will know what to do. And that’s when I hear it: the low rumble of yet another autumn storm coming, and another rumble—higher, more variable, and yet more constant. The car.

  It’s got to
be a four-wheel drive, the speed it’s doing, the way the beams of its headlights are bumping around like that. Bam! Bam! Bam! Its headlights come flashing through the woods.

  Bam. Its beams blast us.

  I clamber back over the tree, and I fire up my bike. There’s only one way past the obstruction: down, into the woods, then back up again.

  And as I come back up onto the once-was road, my frozen brain grabs on to the thought: Perhaps I should ditch him…

  I hesitate when I should not have hesitated; he pounces onto the back of the bike and the grip clamps.

  I outrun the car for a good ten miles more. It had to back off and consider how to get around that tree, but get around the tree it did. I don’t even have to look back to know it’s there, bouncing and revving behind me. When the road through the woods forks, I choose my direction: I am not going home.

  I do not want to lead this trouble to my home—that’s what I think.

  But this trouble? It takes fuel.

  I push my scrambler hard up the other side of the valley. I’m critically low on fuel. The shortcut, even with this detour, is a shortcut, mile-wise, but it has guzzled what was in the tank. I’m ahead of that car, but it is still coming. My frozen brain manages one thought: We’re going to have to run for it. I kiss my frozen hand, and I pat my bike goodbye. Then I spot my opportunity, grab it, and veer off the road.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” the XY behind me shouts as we bump up into the woods.

  My opportunity was not such a great one. I thought it might be a path, but it’s a dead end—an end that dies just yards from the road. I brake before the woods brake for me, as they are suddenly impenetrable. I switch off and kill my lights.

  “We’re going to run out of fuel,” I tell him, getting off the bike. “We’ll go on foot.”

  “Go on foot to where?!”

  “The village. It’s just over the hill.” Ah, I hear that car engine! “We need to hide the bike! Help me! Hurry!”

  I have ahold of the handlebars. He’s still on the bike. Headlight beams blast through the trees.

  “Hurry!” I urge him. “Quick! Get off!”