by Karen Healey
“Oh, no reason,” I said blithely. “Abdi and I were just having a philosophical discussion.”
“It seems a brutal topic of conversation,” she said disapprovingly. “Do you not wish to simply enjoy God’s bounty this evening? Why must you consider these awful things and destroy your peace of mind?”
For a moment, I experienced a point of double vision, looking at her and seeing myself. I’d never been quite as oblivious as Rachel was, but I didn’t have her excuse of being raised in isolation. Given my own way, I’d have happily ignored everything that was going on around me and pursued my own goals, both in the past and in the future. But Alex had dragged me with her to protests, and Dalmar had talked passionately about justice and change. Bethari wanted to destroy the No Migrant policy, and Abdi and Joph had taken real risks to fight murderous pharmaceutical practices.
Thinking about and fighting some of the world’s multiple horrors had made my life more painful. But it was a much larger life than I would have lived otherwise.
“I’m really glad I know you,” I told Abdi.
He looked puzzled, but I turned to Rachel before he could make any reply. “I’d better go back and help serve,” I said, and smiled. Her frown cleared, and she smiled back.
The Inheritors of the Earth were divorced from reality, perhaps even more than people like Soren, who had wrapped himself in a blanket of willful ignorance so he wouldn’t have to deal with the truth. Most of the people in this community were deliberately kept away from even being able to investigate for themselves.
But some of them knew that refugees were being stuffed into cryocontainers and frozen in huge warehouses all over the country and, for whatever reason, had chosen not to make that horror public.
Abdi and I needed to escape for bigger reasons than either of us.
So what did it hurt if Rachel spent the night thinking I was being obedient and submissive? We’d be gone in the morning.
The first part of the escape went off without a hitch. I stayed awake very easily after my afternoon nap, singing the Revolver album to myself three times after lights-out. It was hard to coordinate an escape without any way to tell the time, but during our “study session” Abdi and I had decided on that as a reasonable method that would give the Inheritors plenty of time to go to sleep. When it was time, I dressed by feel and climbed down one-handed from my bunk, with the stolen food crammed into my pillowcase and the knife tucked into my pocket. I held my breath, but Rachel didn’t even turn over, and no one woke up as I wafted out the door. They worked hard, those girls.
It was beautiful outside, the half-moon making everything shades of silver and gray. I went down the slope very carefully—I’d wrapped the knife in a strip of sheet so it wouldn’t cut my leg, but falling over a loose rock with it in my pocket was probably still not a great idea. Abdi was waiting by the entrance to the underground bunker. He must have sung faster than I did. He was shivering again, and I thrust my nightie at him.
“Here,” I whispered.
He took it, but didn’t put it on. “It’s white,” he whispered back. “Later.”
I could see his point. A moving white figure would stand out on that moonlit night.
But no one was watching. There wasn’t a single light in a single window.
We went toward the dock, and, glory of glories, there were two boats there. Abdi pointed to the farther one, and we crept toward it, lowering ourselves down the side of the pier. My shortness proved a problem, and Abdi had to help me, his long hands cool at my hips.
I picked the lock on the cabin door with my last hairpins and some swearing. Abdi looked at the banks of navigation equipment and nodded in satisfaction. “I can work this,” he said.
In retrospect, our biggest mistake was thinking that because the Inheritors were mostly trusting and nice and religiously minded, they were also stupid.
The second Abdi put his hands on the equipment, all hell broke loose.
It was even worse than the time my computer had blared advertising at me. The advertisers had been after my attention, after all. It had been noisy and disorienting, but they hadn’t wanted to hurt me. The burglar alarm was a blast of sound so loud, I thought someone had shot me with a sonic gun. But where a sonic gun would have deafened me immediately, this noise went on and on.
Abdi grabbed my arm and yelled something, but I couldn’t make it out. I yanked away from him, cringing down with my palms pressed to my ears. He bent down, hands outstretched, eyes intent on mine.
And then the light bombs went off.
We were both blind after that, me because I hadn’t known to close my eyes, and Abdi because he’d tried to cover my eyes instead of protecting himself. Sobbing with the pain of it, I curled in on myself. Nothing had ever hurt like that before.
And that was how they found us, crunched in tight balls of misery in the cabin of their boat. I was so grateful that the noise had stopped that I was almost happy about the strange hands that picked me up and hoisted me over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
My vision returned quickly, though my head still throbbed. Abdi was being dragged behind me, an Inheritor holding each arm as he stumbled along. I nodded, trying to convey the message that I was okay.
But I wasn’t so sure. My hearing still hadn’t come back.
The man carrying me stopped and swung me down, taking my arm in a firm grip. We were near the milking sheds, and I had a nasty suspicion that was quickly confirmed, as we were marched down the stairs into the storm bunker.
Conrad was one of the men with Abdi. He said something to Abdi, who shook his head and motioned at his ears. Conrad sighed and spoke to the other men, who set up two camp beds on opposite sides of the room. Conrad pointed Abdi to one and me to the other. Apparently the gender-separation rules could be bent but not broken for abductees who tried to run away.
Then they left. The heavy door closed behind them; I felt it more than heard it, the vibrations moving through the concrete floor. I stared at Abdi from across the room, seeing my own uncertainty reflected in his face.
The lights went out.
I shot to my feet, moving in Abdi’s direction. I was locked up in the silent darkness; we’d lost our best and probably final chance to escape, and I couldn’t stand it alone.
I was barely halfway there when I bumped into a warm body and flung my arms around him. He hugged me back, tight and strong, and I clung to him, almost grateful for the dark that hid my weakness. I couldn’t see or hear, but I could feel and smell. Abdi smelled like dirt and cheap soap and something that might have been the garlic from the pasta at dinner. His hands trembled as he smoothed them down my back. He rested his chin against my forehead and said something; I couldn’t hear it, but I felt his lips move against my hair.
I reached up to stroke his face and felt light stubble prick my fingers. He stilled, and I felt him shudder against me.
When he kissed me, it was desperate and hungry and very, very sweet.
I clutched at his back with fierce fingers, thrilling at the way he held me so tight. Abdi Taalib didn’t think of me as the Living Dead Girl, or a lost soul, or some sort of figurehead to be pitied, celebrated, or despised. He wanted Tegan Oglietti; he wanted her to kiss him.
A cynical part of me said that it was just because we were sense-deprived and scared. I told that part to shut up, and concentrated on the rest of me, which was very happy indeed.
Sometime later, as we sat on the bare stone floor, Abdi kissing a line of little explosions down the back of my neck, I realized that sound had come back to me. He was murmuring my name between each kiss.
“Abdi?” I said.
I could feel his response even before he answered. “Yes?”
“Oh, thank god, I thought the hearing loss might be permanent.”
“No. The burglar alarms are designed for temporary sense deprivation.” He hesitated. “I’m so sorry, Tegan. I didn’t think.”
“Neither did I,” I said reasonably. “We were bo
th stupid to think it’d be that easy.”
“I should have checked for an alarm. I knew better.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Of course. It’s common tech. What, did you think I grew up rubbing sticks together to make fire?”
“No. I didn’t really think about it,” I said half truthfully.
“Hm,” he said, exploring down my sides. His hands hesitated. “What’s this?”
“My knife!” I’d completely forgotten about it, too miserable during the alarm assault, and then too thrilled in the dark. “Lucky they didn’t search us.”
“They searched me,” Abdi said. “I think they don’t take you seriously.”
“Idiots,” I grumbled.
He laughed softly. “Well, look at you. You’re short and delicate. You’ve got pale skin that looks like it might tear in a strong wind and big, dark, innocent eyes. I bet they think you’re breakable.”
“Hey, I have muscles!”
“Oh, I know,” he said, and I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. “But these are people who are so certain of how things must be that they don’t pay any attention to how they really are.”
It was a good point. “I keep thinking about it,” I said softly. “It’s hard to believe that people this nice can’t see that it’s wrong to want me to kill myself.”
I felt his shrug. “Religious fanatics.”
“It’s not the religious part that worries me. The God I believe in wouldn’t want me dead, but I don’t know if I can convince them of that. I wish I could figure out how they even knew about the Ark Project.”
Abdi’s voice was genuinely horrified, and not for the reason I would have suspected. “You really believe in God?” he said.
“Well, yeah. I don’t know why you’re so surprised. Most people believe in a higher power of some sort.”
“Fifty-four percent is hardly most.”
“Of course it is. More than fifty percent. Most. And anyway, I read it was more like seventy percent.”
“It doesn’t count if you don’t attend services,” he said.
I poked him in the ribs, hard. “It definitely counts. Anyway, wait, you saw my interview. I said I was Roman Catholic right there!”
“I thought that was for the audience,” he said.
“I thought most people in Djibouti were Sunni.”
“Well, I’m an atheist, like my father,” he said, looking stubborn. “And I thought you were smarter.”
“Um, gross,” I said, and then had to explain the meaning of gross, though I’d thought it was pretty clear from context.
The rest of the argument went as these arguments tend to go, from “You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist” to “If there’s no positive proof, there’s no reason behind faith” to “Religion is an amazing force for good in the world” to “Do you know what forced Islamic and Christian conversion did to Africa?”
Once you start talking about gay people being executed, and female genital mutilation—not an actual Islamic practice, I’m just saying—and missionaries deliberately impeding measures to prevent the spread of HIV, there aren’t many ways for the conversation to get good again, especially when neither of you can finish it by walking away. We edged away from each other, sulking silently, and occasionally saying, “If you’d just—” or “If you’d think about—” and then stopping before we finished the sentence.
It was lonely, there in the dark.
“Hey,” I said finally. “Are you awake?”
“Yes,” he said guardedly.
“How did you grow up?”
There was a pause and some shuffling sounds, and then a long body lowered itself beside mine. “I’m the third of four children,” he began.
We talked for a long time, sitting on that bare floor, wrapped in each other’s arms. We talked about our families, our home lives, what we’d done in the past and dreamed of for the future.
And, of course, we talked about the Beatles. Abdi had become a fan when he’d heard a sample from “Blackbird” on an ad for shoes. He’d chased down the reference and discovered it was from a song over a hundred and fifty years old. There were more songs, by the same people. He’d streamed pirated versions, then paid for the legal downloads. He made his younger sister listen, and she became a fan, too.
“They always meant hope to me,” I confessed. “It’s stupid but—”
His fingers were tracing a pattern down my arms. “I think I see. I feel that way about La Belle Nuit—do you know them?”
“No.”
“They live in Scotland. Their singer is Djiboutian. She sings mostly in French, but some Arabic, some Somali. Very beautiful songs, and she’s a wonderful vocalist.”
“I don’t understand any of those languages,” I said, embarrassed. “Well, a few words of Somali.”
“From your boyfriend.” It wasn’t a question, and his hands went still on my arms.
“My ex-boyfriend,” I said, and twisted around to face him. Not that I could see him any better that way, but it seemed appropriate. “I loved Dalmar. But I’m here, with you.” It was true, I realized as I said it. My love for Dalmar had been real, and beautiful. And it was still there, partly. I didn’t think it would ever completely disappear. But it had diminished under the stresses of the last weeks and months, like a shore eroding under the constant pressure of the waves.
I wasn’t ready to put words to my feelings for Abdi yet, but they were there, warm and bright, like a new flame. Only time could tell if the fire would burn too hot and fast, or die for lack of fuel, or be steady and strong. But I wanted to have the time to find out.
“You’re here with me because we got kidnapped by cultists while running from the army with footage that could blow open a government conspiracy,” he pointed out, but the tension in his body had eased.
“Details,” I said.
Abdi laughed. “Well, I can teach you some French and Arabic, if you would like.”
“I would like. What’s Arabic for ‘nose’?”
“It might depend on the dialect. I would say anf.”
I touched his nose with my fingertips. “And what’s the word for ‘mouth’?”
“Fam.”
I traced the outline of his lips, feeling the corners stretch and curl as he smiled. “And what’s the translation for ‘kiss me’?”
“Boseeni,” he replied, his breath warm against my skin. It seemed a shame not to close that gap.
After that, I discovered that language lessons held less interest than the other things Abdi could teach me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Across the Universe
We woke up when the lights flickered back on, squinting painfully at each other through the glare. At some point during that long night, we’d found our way to Abdi’s bed and dragged it back over to mine. Lying on the camp beds wasn’t the most comfortable thing ever, but it beat the heck out of sitting on concrete.
And, okay, not that it’s any of your business, but no, we did not go all the way. Neither of us had any form of protection handy, and the whole thing was so weird and new. We weren’t ready.
Besides. As much as I liked the touching and the kissing, it was the talking that was most important that night; it gave us the most comfort and support. We talked about everything, until Abdi couldn’t even mumble replies to my slurred questions, and I followed him into sleep.
Everything, that is, except what we were going to do in the morning.
But morning, or its artificial equivalent, had come, and we had to deal with our situation.
“I should move the bed back,” Abdi said quietly. “I don’t want them to separate us.”
I nodded and combed my fingers through my hair, trying to get it in order while he shifted the evidence of our nighttime tryst.
The Inheritors of the Earth came in, five of them, all men, Conrad leading them. He eyed us both.
“Can you hear me?” he said, slow and loud.
“Yes,” I told him, an
d he nodded, looking relieved.
“Food and water will be brought to you,” he said. “In the meantime, if you need to relieve yourselves, come with me.”
You’ve probably never been escorted to a toilet, with one guard waiting outside the door and another outside the tiny window—I know, because I climbed up to check. I can tell you, it’s not much fun. It was good to see daylight and breathe fresh air, but other than my escorts, I didn’t see another living soul; they must have warned everyone else to stay inside. Here and there, bumblebees swam lazily through the air.
I would have liked them, but they reminded me of the flock of bumblecams that had haunted me, which, in turn, made me think about Bethari filming the ranks of frozen refugees. I was desperately afraid for her and Joph, and was pinning all my hopes on Zaneisha having the ability and inclination to do something to help them. Abdi and I couldn’t do a thing unless we escaped, and I was running low on ideas of how to accomplish that.
There was a chemical toilet set up for us behind a privacy screen when we got back to the cellar. I guessed that it might be a while before we got to go outside again.
Rachel brought food down to us on a tray. Cold roast beef sandwiches, a couple of apples, a pitcher of water.
“How long are we going to be down here?” I asked.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she said, and then blushed, looking stricken.
“We won’t tell,” Abdi said, giving her his small, careful smile. I bristled a little bit, then hauled myself back.
Rachel was looking troubled. “Those children,” she said. “Those murdered children. Are they real?”
“Yes,” I said softly. “They’re real, and they’re secret. The Father knows, but he hasn’t told. We want to make sure the secret is known, Rachel. That’s why Abdi has to escape. I can stay. It’s me you need.”
She jerked away and joined the men at the other end of the room.
“Too far,” Abdi said critically.
“Worth a shot,” I told him, and bit into my sandwich.
When Rachel came back to collect our plates, she was biting her lip. “The Father is back,” she whispered. “I heard Joseph tell Mrs. McClung that he wants to see you after you’ve eaten.”
