Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  Out of his fear she dredges up the reserves of her strength.

  ‘In,’ she says coldly.

  She swipes the pass. The light turns green and she pushes him through and follows after him.

  They are standing in a long room with a series of large glass windows running down each side. Instinct, soft and cruel, tells her this is the place.

  ‘Why don’t you look first?’ suggests Ramona. ‘I think you should look.’

  The hostage shakes his head. He is close to tears. She nudges him with the rifle. He walks to the first window.

  ‘Look,’ she says.

  He looks and a shudder runs through him. He stumbles away.

  Equally unwillingly, Ramona approaches the first window.

  On the other side of the glass a man lies on a bed. His body is perforated with wires and tubes, feeding in translucent liquids, or transporting blood in and out of his veins. It is impossible to tell whether he is young or old, or anything about his features, because his skin is infested with redfleur.

  It’s in the most advanced stages. He is hairless. The head and neck are a tessellation of raw and seeping ruptures. The man’s eyes are closed, or gone, it’s impossible to tell. An oxygen mask covers his mouth. It looks like it is glued there; to take it away would take the man’s flesh, his mouth, with it. The only indication of life is the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and every minute or so, his torso beneath a plastic sheet, twitching in a sudden violent convulsion. If it weren’t for his feet sticking out the end of the plastic sheet, the soles weeping, you couldn’t say for certain that she was looking at a human being.

  Ramona stares at the man for a long time. Distantly she is aware of the hostage, who is sat hunched over on the floor in the centre of the room, perhaps hoping if he pretends he isn’t here she will forget about him. As she stares at the diseased man in the glass unit, a creeping numbness invades her body, her thoughts seeming to slow to absolute stillness, because to let anything take form, any thought, emotion, acknowledgement, will be catastrophic. She will not survive it. She lifts her hand to the glass, pressing her fingertips gently against it. Gradually, she registers the nervous breathing of the hostage. She ignores him.

  The woman in the next unit is naked and completely encased by a glass dome. The skin on the left side of her head has been peeled back and a section of the skull the size of Ramona’s palm removed so that the brain is exposed, grey and slick. Her face beneath the intrusion is intact, but Ramona can see bubbles of the virus swelling under the skin all over her body, ripe to burst. Every few seconds a nozzle pumps a misty gas into the dome. Ramona sees the woman’s chest expand in a shallow breath, and realizes with a shock that she is still alive. As she watches, the white-clad, gloved arm of a scientist comes into view, reaching down through an opening into the glass dome.

  Ramona jerks backwards, but the scientist gives no sign of having seen her. The glass must permit onlookers to see in, but not for the experiments to see out. The scientist, who is fully suited, adjusts a wire curling around the woman’s head. The woman twitches.

  She makes her way down the row. At each window she stops, and looks inside. Each room is the same. Securely sealed. Bufferglass dividers. A southerner – she has no doubt they are all southerners – on a bed. They are in various stages of redfleur. Some display no symptoms that Ramona can see, but they are already hooked up and sedated. One woman is conscious, but clearly disorientated. She looks confusedly about her, scanning each corner of her prison, poking at the sheets, coming up close to tap at the glass. Then she returns to the bed and rolls to her side, hands pushed against her belly, kneading, as though trying to alleviate acute pain.

  Ramona tries the handle of the door.

  ‘You can’t go in,’ says her hostage. ‘They’re contagious. They have the Type 9 strain of redfleur. We’d both be infected.’

  The door is locked, in any case. Ramona looks at the foetal figure of the woman. She doesn’t look Patagonian. Her face bears Asian heritage.

  She turns back to the hostage, who speaks many languages, who is the welcome. She thinks about opening the door and pushing him inside and sealing it.

  The last few units are empty.

  Each contains a bed with immaculate white sheets. A pillow. Medical machines standing still and silent. Ramona pauses by the last empty unit. She looks at the bed. She thinks of her mother in her faded red shirt, with the jinn lodged inside her, eating away at her immune system, ready to deal a fatal blow at the first whisper of an infection. She feels like her heart has been torn out of her chest.

  They exit the opposite end of the laboratory through a second airlock and find themselves in front of a lift. Ramona calls it. Her vision is not quite right. She blinks and it steadies itself.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’

  The hostage’s face is greyish in colour and damp with sweat.

  ‘D-Davida Kvest is senior.’

  ‘Let’s find Davida.’

  The doors slide open and a tall, silver-haired man in a laboratory suit steps out. He stops in surprise.

  ‘You don’t have clearance to be down here—’

  He sees Ramona. In the instant alarm enters his face her hand goes to the dartgun, then releases it. She lifts the rifle, levels it, and pulls the trigger. The gun, a Boreal gun, shoots soundlessly, but at such close range it blasts a hole into the man’s chest. He is thrown back a metre before he falls. Blood begins to spread from the wound in his chest, soaking into the grey carpet of the exterior corridor. Ramona advances. She shoots him a second time, then a third. The body jerks with each shot. Only the thought of the others in the building stops her from pulling the trigger on repeat. She needs to conserve her ammunition.

  The hostage drops to his knees by the silver-haired man, moaning in horror.

  ‘My god, that’s Yoseph, what the hell are you doing—’

  ‘Davida,’ she says.

  ‘Why should I take you to her? You’ll kill me anyway – you’ll kill her too.’

  ‘Which floor?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, I can’t—’

  She rests her boot on his shoulder and jabs the gun into his chest.

  ‘Which floor?’

  ‘Lower ground one—’

  This time, as the gun jerks in her arms, she feels nothing at all.

  The lift doors close on the two dead men and the lift begins to move smoothly upwards. Ramona cradles the rifle. She can feel blood spattered over her face, Yoseph’s and the hostage’s, and she knows if she sees anyone else, she will not be able to walk away. Not now. She wishes they would all come, that the lift doors would open and the lot of them line up in front of her so she can dispense the justice they deserve. Except it wouldn’t be justice. Not a clean death. Not even close to justice.

  As the lift reaches each floor she holds her breath, preparing. But it continues without stopping to lower ground one. She steps out, and checks up and down the corridor. No one. This level of the compound is devoted to offices. Like everywhere else, the doors are neatly signed. How long has she got until someone discovers the bodies downstairs, or the cleaners blocking the other lift? She walks briskly down the corridor, checking each door until she finds the one she is looking for.

  Dr Davida Akycha Kvest.

  She knocks on the door. A voice calls impatiently in Boreal English.

  ‘Not now, not now.’

  Ramona opens the door and steps inside.

  A woman in a baggy sweater and trousers is gazing intently into a luminous swirl of digits. Letters and numbers are strung together in cryptic combinations, hovering at head-height, and the codes seem to swarm in the air about her like a horde of fireflies. Her face is lit by the projection, her eyes are open, blinking, taking in information. She has grey hair, pulled up into a knot at the back of her head. Socks but no shoes. As Ramona closes the door she turns in irritation.

  ‘I said not now—’

  Her face shifts. After the initial shock her expre
ssion alters again, rippling through emotions. The surprise remains, but there is something else present too. A kind of recognition. As though she has been expecting a visitor like Ramona for some time now.

  She swipes a hand and the projection disappears, leaving a small woman the age of Ramona’s mother, or older.

  ‘Who are you?’ she says.

  Ramona understands the question, but does not have the words to respond. The scientist studies her for a moment.

  ‘Hindī? Español? Afrikaans?’

  ‘Español,’ she answers. ‘You speak many languages too, I suppose?’

  ‘I’ve had the time to learn,’ replies the scientist. ‘And I find it helps, to hear a language that is familiar.’

  Ramona understands that she must mean the batch. The people down there in Unit 4. The man with no skin. When she next speaks, it feels like she is tearing the words from her throat.

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘I can guess. But I don’t want to be right. I want you to tell me I’m mistaken.’

  The scientist massages the back of her neck with one hand, her face wrinkled with discomfort.

  ‘I could do that. I could tell you anything, seeing as you have a gun to my head.’ She shrugs. ‘It might not be the truth.’

  ‘You’re very calm, considering the position you’re in.’

  ‘If I lose my calm I’m more likely to be dead, don’t you think?’

  Ramona feels the trigger of the gun, warm beneath her finger. The need to do damage is at the front of her brain, but she has to have answers. She came here for answers.

  ‘What is this place?’ she repeats.

  ‘It’s a medical development centre.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means we are trying to find a cure for redfleur,’ says the scientist. ‘Type 9 redfleur, at the moment, which as I assume you know is fatal.’

  ‘You’re infecting these people.’

  ‘That’s part of the process.’

  ‘You’re killing them.’

  ‘Some of them die, yes.’ The scientist looks at her steadily. ‘Most of them, it’s true. Most of them do die.’

  There is a howl of fury building inside her, a rage which wipes out all other thoughts. All the years of anger and resentment towards the Boreal States, the knowledge of her country’s exploitation, her frustration at its reliance, and now this – this inconceivable abuse – have found a channel through this one woman in her sweater and socks. Never has Ramona wanted to hurt someone more. She wants to maim, tear the scientist into pieces and slather her face in the blood.

  If Ramona’s emotion shows in her face, the Boreal gives no sign that it affects her. This is a cold one, thinks Ramona. Cold as an unmarked grave.

  She slides her finger back from the trigger. Answers. She must have answers. She owes that to her mother, to everyone inside the plane and everyone who has died here.

  ‘There is a law,’ she says. Her voice sounds wrong, tight and high, but she cannot right it. ‘An international law. What you’re doing is illegal.’

  ‘Yes. Technically, it is.’

  ‘Technically?’

  ‘The Nuuk Treaty bans the experimentation of medical drugs on non-consenting humans, yes. And what humans would consent to be infected with redfleur? You’re right – volunteers would be hard to come by.’

  ‘Do the Boreals know you’re doing this?’

  ‘They believe we use chimpanzees.’

  The scientist’s expression remains quite calm. Perhaps she is only waiting for backup. How long has Ramona been standing here? How long until the dead and unconscious are discovered?

  ‘The people in the basement.’ She sees the woman under the dome. The man with the ruptured face. ‘You take them from my country?’

  ‘Yours and others. Southerners aren’t counted in any census.’

  ‘We’re easy,’ says Ramona softly.

  ‘You’re untraceable,’ the scientist says.

  ‘You’re a monster.’

  ‘Some might call me that. I might call myself that. Unfortunately the world needs monsters. Let me ask you something. How old are you?’

  Ramona stares at her.

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘But you’re here, you’ve come all this way, so hear me out. How old are you?’

  ‘I’m thirty-six.’

  ‘Redfleur first appeared around the time you were born. Your entire life, it’s been a part of this world. A spectre following you about, year on year, outbreak after outbreak. Strain after strain. Every time we think we have beaten it, another version evolves. I don’t suppose you have ever thought about how these viruses are overcome?’ The scientist pauses. ‘How it is that you are still alive?’

  Cold. Cold as snow. Cold as nitrogen.

  ‘You can say whatever you want but you won’t make me tell you that this is necessary. Not this. Not those people down there.’

  The scientist rests her hand on the back of a chair. ‘You don’t mind if I—? I have very low blood pressure. Can’t stand for too long.’

  Ramona nods and the scientist sits, her hands in her lap. Neatly clasped, no rings, the knuckles very slightly swollen with what might be arthritis. For a moment she is still, lost in contemplation. When she begins to speak her voice is quiet, almost musical, and the words come slowly.

  ‘It’s funny. I shouldn’t even be here. I was meant to retire. I always thought I’d get a place in Veerdeland. That’s home. If the place where you are born means home. But I’m here still, in the middle of the desert, thousands of kilometres from civilization. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. As if you’re my conscience. My confessor. Probably because you’re going to kill me. You are going to kill me, aren’t you?’

  Ramona looks at her for a long time. Cold, she reminds herself. You’d have to be so very cold. But even through the haze of her fury, the tapestry of the other woman’s thoughts is discernible – the regrets and fears, the days of doubt and those of belief, and other things – memories – the ones that make Davida Kvest laugh or smile or cry.

  No, that can’t be right. There wouldn’t be tears. A person who cried could not do this.

  She raises the rifle and slides her finger forwards to the trigger. She is shaking.

  The scientist lifts her head.

  ‘I’d like to make a final request, before my execution.’

  Ramona does not trust herself to speak. She nods.

  ‘I’ve kept a diary. I’d like you to hear it.’

  ‘You don’t deserve that.’

  ‘Deserve it or not, it’s my request, and you’ll honour it, because you’re the one that came. We don’t always get to choose our burdens. It’s in the drawer. I can get it, or you can.’

  ‘Where?’

  I’ll take it, she thinks. I don’t have to hear it, whatever it is. And I won’t understand it anyway. She’s a Boreal.

  The scientist points. Ramona crosses the room, keeping the rifle trained on her. She opens the drawer.

  ‘You’ll find a small device in a blue and white case.’

  Ramona extracts the diary cautiously. She places it in her pocket.

  ‘Thank you. I can see you’re a woman of your word. I know you’ll listen to it.’

  Ramona does not move.

  Long seconds pass. She has to act.

  ‘You are not really a killer, are you?’ says the scientist. ‘But if you don’t shoot me, I will have to press the alarm. If that helps.’

  She stands, reaching towards a set of controls on the wall.

  With a gasp, Ramona squeezes the trigger.

  The scientist flops back into the chair, clutching at her shoulder. Blood spreads between her fingers and begins to soak into the sweater.

  ‘Up,’ orders Ramona.

  The scientist gets clumsily to her feet. Her face is sweating.

  Ramona grabs the scientist’s unhurt shoulder an
d marches the woman in front of her. All at once she is intensely aware of time.

  ‘We’re going outside.’

  As they proceed down the corridor a man puts his head out of another of the offices.

  ‘Davida, I was after you—’

  He sees Davida, bleeding, Ramona behind her, the gun.

  ‘Fuck—’

  Ramona shoots. The shot ricochets. The man scrambles back into his office. Ramona moves faster, pushing the scientist ahead of her. Time, accelerating. Moments later she hears the alarm reverberating throughout the building. The hiss of doors sealing. She calls the lift, cursing with every moment she has to wait. A woman in a white coat appears, running down the corridor towards them. She sees Davida.

  ‘Don’t move or I’ll kill her!’ Ramona yells.

  The woman stops in her tracks, a look of horror etched onto her face.

  The lift arrives. Ramona backs into it and jabs the button for the ground floor.

  ‘Come on, come on!’

  ‘They’ll lock down my pass,’ says the scientist. ‘You won’t be able to get out.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  She still has the welcome woman’s pass.

  At last the lift begins to rise. It seems to take an infinite amount of time to move between the two floors. Ramona tenses, her grip on the scientist’s shoulder tightening. Ground level. The doors slide open.

  Three overalled technicians block the way between Ramona and the exit doors. Two of them are holding guns.

  ‘Move aside or I’ll shoot her!’

  She is shouting in Spanish but she has no doubt that they take her meaning. The technicians hesitate.

  The scientist begins to speak in her own language.

  ‘Shut up! Don’t say another word!’

  The scientist continues to speak, delivering instructions quickly and incomprehensibly. Ramona lowers the gun and shoots her in the leg. The scientist yelps and doubles over in pain. Ramona hauls her back up. The technicians stare, indecisive, a naivety suddenly clear in their faces. They’ve never had to deal with an attack, she thinks. She pushes the gun against the scientist’s head.

  ‘Move! That way, all of you!’

  They move. She hustles the injured scientist forwards, keeping her body as a shield between herself and the pair with guns. She swipes the welcome woman’s pass against the door. Nothing happens. She grabs the scientist’s pass and swipes that but it too displays a red light.