by Jeff Kamen
To find her likeness standing before her as though in a blazing mirror. A swarthy and long-haired young woman in breathing gear. A woman clad in a survivor’s outfit.
what’s the name what’s the name what’s the name ...
Clad like someone she knew. That she knew from ...
‘What?’ she whispered, panicking.
what’s the name what’s the name what’s the name ...
She stared as though in grief at the grey-clad figure, feeling her heart thud. Another shake of the head, the eyes above the mask widening.
How, she thought, how ...?
How could she have seen such a likeness before?
She kept still a moment; then on an impulse put a hand out to the reflection, palm touching chill palm, her eyes and those of the living image tunnelling messages back and forth. Messages she could not fully unravel, messages held hostage by aching gulfs of time, projected towards her by that distant and elusive other. That far earlier, older ... self.
‘You,’ she whispered, ‘I know you, you were ...’ and then slowly, irresistibly, within her mind’s many halls, she found herself travelling towards an exit. She stared fixedly ahead.
Outside, a smoky wind was blowing. The dim howl of sirens across a dusty landscape. A wall of menacing towers. Crowds running in the haze.
She looked long into the hot, troubled day.
Walking outside in spite of the noise and turmoil. Hearing a deep concussive thump in the distance. Going out towards a long and sand-swept road. Beside it a flaking roadsign. Nearby, a stack of burning corpses, the black smoke rolling endlessly.
Somewhere in the dust the faint jink, jink of desert bells. The sight of a dim figure weeping over a body.
habibi ... o, o, habibi ... habibi ...
As the heat rose around her, she thought, no, knew — knew — that this was where it had all begun. This place and no other. This sand, those dark tomblike buildings, that deep entranceway. She pushed at the door’s reflection, trying to pass through it body and soul, finding herself growing breathless as her mind journeyed on.
Eventually, she did not know exactly when, she managed to alight upon a scene with a dark little girl who wore a pigtail down her back, living at the desert borderlands. A girl who kept a handful of camel bells in a little varnished box; who fed her kitten goatmilk, with bits of chopped mice that her father caught ... or maybe her brothers, perhaps her cousins … the edges of it all, the feel of it too faded ...
She stood there unable to move, her thoughts journeying on and away. Part of her feared she might suffer doing it, might even die, but even so she could not abandon the girl, could not turn away and leave her.
A girl she found herself watching over a period of many years ... years in which the girl began to change. Becoming withdrawn, quieter in some ways. She thought she understood her. A bookish girl watching her people suffer as she grew. Brown and lean and getting leaner and the sands encroaching and the desert margins growing every year. A girl who wept and screamed as her friends behind the fence were dragged off along with all the others who thought, ate, dressed a different way ...
More years passed, and in following her, she observed how the girl grew up to become a leader, strong and celebrated, steeped in the skills of her age. Becoming a woman of great command on a day that would always end in running, heading towards a vault-like metal door …
So many figures running ... running ...
Just then, a strange voice arose from the deeps. Powerful. Godlike. A voice controlling all that she was, drilling through layer after layer after layer ...
She winced.
Now go to her ...
You must go to her. Understand me?
Then go ...
Then a flash, a jolt, a wakening. And like something thawing out of ice, she slowly moved her head again, her hands, watching the reflection’s identical stiff, mechanical motions. She spoke to it hurried words in the girl’s language as they came into her head, then everything was gone.
She stood gasping in the near dark.
Alone and trembling. Staring emptily over the mask.
Listening to the generators wheezing outside and the distant roar of engines.
She was back again.
Yet somehow everything had changed.
She must go to her. Yes, go.
~O~
Nina, when she told her about it, was unimpressed, and had only warnings for her. She told her very directly not to lose herself again, to focus on the world around her, the people she knew in the flesh.
They argued about it, Nina struggling at times to speak as she wished. Like most people recovering from the treatment she spoke breathlessly and with a survivor’s zeal, and it was between fits of coughing that she did what she could to persuade Jaala to forget about it, to put it aside as a dream, however interesting, however strong the lure it held, however real it had felt and tasted.
Their arguments grew heated, with Jaala accusing her of overlooking the encounter’s significance, the force of it, its true and tangible detail; during one particular exchange, she ran out slamming the door behind her and for a few days avoided Nina altogether.
It took a medical emergency to bring them into contact again, and following it, Nina cornered her in the room, accusing her of taking dangerous risks through obstinancy — something which, upon reflection, Jaala was forced at least partially to admit to.
They spoke at length, and after some persuading, she agreed to let Nina run some tests on her, to check that nothing serious had occurred to prompt the episode. Anxious at the thought that, in allowing Grethà to bring her the cure, she’d undone herself in some way, she agreed to meet up that same evening. Once there, she sat beside the counter quietly, contritely, doing as she was asked while Nina checked her eyes and blood and pulse rate; sat without a word as the injection was forced into the smooth hide of her arm. When she was under the drug’s influence, Nina asked her questions whilst referencing her earlier notes, and when the drug’s effects had worn off, Nina brought her around again and questioned her once more.
At the end of the session they sat facing each other, she sitting with an anxious expression and Nina with her arms crossed, the light blank in one irregular lens as she studied her patient.
‘Well,’ Nina said eventually.
‘Well,’ she said back, and Nina fractionally smiled.
‘No damage, apparently. Your anger seems to have a natural origin. I suppose I ought to be pleased, but I ... don’t quite feel that way.’
‘You sound like Annie.’
Nina coughed. Then coughed again, long and bronchially. Then sat a moment. When she looked up she said, ‘What good do you think you’re doing, digging away like this?’
‘You know why. I want the truth. My truth.’
‘You know it already. Someone once took a woman away and did something to change her. And in changing her, they changed you. The question is, what good can it do ... knowing any more than that?’
Jaala sighed. ‘But that’s what I want to find out, Nina. You’d do the same.’
‘Would I?’
‘If someone did that to you — made you so different you couldn’t even die, just kept being reborn without any explanation for it — wouldn’t you be curious?’
‘But you’re the only one of them who has the memories. You said the others didn’t know. Not really, not like you. They lived their lives and died, like everyone else.’
‘Yes. I’m the only one. And because I have the memories, I can go back and find out what it was for. The reason for it.’
‘But, Jaala ... isn’t that what caused your illness? This kind of behaviour?’
‘I’m talking about —’
‘You’re trying to kill yourself, isn’t that it? Trying to get rid of everything? Everything that hurts? Everything they made? You want to take your revenge, don’t you, one way or another?’
Jaala sank back in her seat, a taut figure clad in loose grey garbs th
at shrouded her. ‘Of course not,’ she said.
‘Is it because you feel guilty? Because your friends died in the fighting?’
‘Honestly, it’s not connected. I want to live. You keep telling me to bring good into my life, and I want that too. I’ve wanted it for years. I ... I wanted it with Sandor, but didn’t get it. Maybe this way I can get it by being free. By knowing where I came from.’
Nina coughed wheezily and pulled out a handkerchief. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. You can’t ... go back in time just by going to a place. You can’t make life ... match up, be perfect. You’ll ruin your mind, Jaala, ruin it forever.’
‘But I don’t agree. The girl, I see her almost whenever I want to, without effort. No pain at all.’ She threw up a hand. ‘Look, it’s where my name’s from. I know the land and I know where she lived. That’s where it started and that’s where I’ll find out who she was. And hopefully what happened to her.’
‘How do you know you will? How do you know?’
‘It’s ... it’s what I believe.’
‘But where is it? Thousands of miles away? This is insane, how could you even get there?’
Jaala sat forward. ‘It’s not insane,’ she said. ‘Look at yourself. Look. You can breathe now. You’re free to leave the bubble. Walk for a day and you’ll be several miles from here. Do it for longer and you’ll come to the sea. Think of that, Nina. Think of seeing the water. The only difference is I’m going to cross it, go back to where I’m from.’
Nina smothered her mouth and sat coughing, then eventually spat and wiped her lips.
‘... You okay?’
Nina sat back folding the handkerchief. Then she looked down. ‘Sheisse,’ she said.
‘Let me get some water.’
‘You don’t need to challenge me, Jaala,’ she wheezed. ‘This is challenging enough. I never even dreamt I’d be alive up here.’
‘Wait. Water first.’
Nina nodded, and when Jaala returned with a glass, she pointed to a bag lying on a tabletop. ‘In there,’ she said, and sat drinking as Jaala went across to it.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘The tin.’
‘This?’
‘Bring ... bring it here.’
When she had it, Nina prised it open and showed her the tiny orange pills it contained. Jaala took one out, pinching it between finger and thumb. The letters MC were etched on the surface in miniature print, barely visible to the eye. ‘What are they?’ she said dubiously.
Nina wiped her lips again. ‘They’ll calm you. If you fall sick again.’
‘But I ... I won’t need them, will I?’
Nina gave her a look and said, ‘You’re set on a course. It’s obvious. I’ve tried talking you out of it but you’re not interested. So who knows if you’ll be sick or not.’
‘That’s not fair, I ...’
‘Fair won’t count if the sickness returns. This is to protect you when you’ve gone. It’s for back up, emergencies, not for ordinary use.’
Jaala put the pill back in with the others and Nina replaced the lid. ‘What’ll they do?’ she said, and sat waiting quietly as Nina drank again.
When she was fit to speak, Nina explained that the pills would give her a chance to adjust herself, to focus on establishing her balance. She said that the immediate effect would be to calm her, as the injections had done, although this might hold dangers of its own, should it prove difficult to leave such a feeling of comfort. ‘Dependency,’ she said, ‘that’s the problem.’
When Jaala asked what else could happen, Nina said that little was known about any longer term effects, other than that the pills had been developed as part of the genome programme. ‘We know they’ll cause changes,’ she said, ‘but we don’t know exactly what kind. What we do know is it might benefit lung development. We’re considering using them for babies. Another one’s due soon.’
‘... Why?’
‘Why?’
‘Why give them to babies?’
‘To help them breathe. No newborn could survive the fungus, the bleeding. It’s been difficult enough with the kids.’ Nina coughed, wincing, then added, ‘We need to research it properly ... ensure they can breathe upon birth. Not just now, but in times ahead. If our O2 stocks have gone by then, these pills might be the only thing to make it possible.’
With that, she passed the tin across. Jaala poured them both some water and they continued talking.
~O~
Lütt-Ebbins, when she told him of her plans, was more sympathetic. Talk of places far from those draughty foothills seemed to kindle something in him, and he spoke of wanting to continue the Nassgrube adventure far beyond their immediate confines. He said he hoped that distant journeys might one day be commonplace for them, not a cause of derision or fear.
The two of them no longer sat together in formal meetings, preferring instead to go out to the hills, or on long walks around the salvage works, or even into the wilderness, although the dusty atmosphere would often prove stifling for him. They talked of many things at these times, of friends they’d lost and of that dark run of years during which Lütt-Ebbins had lived as a spy peering out through a turret, observing cynically a landscape he thought he’d never set foot upon.
He spoke to her of the need for a new community, a new way of doing things, expressing the hope that eventually his people might thrive once more, no longer separated from the world they’d been dragged bleeding back to. They spoke for hours at a time. She enjoyed it, enjoyed his company. He had a hunger for knowledge she’d rarely come across. She taught him the names of stars and constellations as the Naagli perceived them, the names of the mountains and regions surrounding all that part of the great Ridge, where, he’d told her, in time he wished to go roaming as once his ancestors had done. He often asked about her culture’s poetry and stories, and of their origins as well. One night as they sat outside the bubble along with Nina and a few others, watching a stack of pallets burn, he asked again.
Obliging him, she continued a story she’d started once before. In her mind as she addressed her small audience, sitting with her eyes narrowed against the smoke, she saw Staš writing at a large plain desk lit by a number of lanterns, some on shelves, some strung from dark beams overhead. They cast a series of shadows around the headman as he looked at her. She returned the headman’s nod, and following his gesture, took a seat across from him. As he lifted his pen, she glanced towards his book collection, housed in a little recess. The one thing she envied him for. Her mind roved on. She told them that each wall of the chamber was highly decorated: there were hides and bows and antlers strung up on hooks, crossed spears, a few bronze shields, a straight sword inside its embossed sheath. And that behind him, nailed to the wall like an animal skin, was a large faded tapestry, one frequently copied and hung throughout the camp.
She told them it was woven with the story of their collective past, the people who’d united two separate clans to found the current tribe. It depicted the arrival from across the wastes of the Naagli travellers and musicians, colourful nomads who’d discovered the mountain just in time to rescue the native Ansthaltans from illness and inbreeding and starvation; from the clutches of bony Death itself ...
‘Did the tapestry survive the fire?’ a man asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘They took weapons and money and that was all. The rest ... it’s gone.’
She described this and many other things to them, talking affectionately of her times with Anya, and of her old friend’s wisdom and words; afterwards, the Nassgrube party shared with her various tales and histories of their own. When she asked about the Ostgrenzers, in particular the people who’d died on the bridge, Lütt-Ebbins crossed his long legs and looked at his comrades a moment and then told her what he knew. He spoke of various secret works and programmes developed with the aim of enslaving the ordinary people, and perhaps her own people too, had they been successful. She thought of the colossi that he and Stoeckl had described to her at d
ifferent times, and when others there asked him to recount the events of that dreadful night, her thoughts once again returned to the mountain ... and to the people who’d lived there ... the days so cold and bright and clear ...
Thinking of the rolling clouds she’d often looked upon ... the broad and ashen landscape retreating below. The dances and songs and her lips greasy with cooked squab and Sandor smiling, his eyes flickering warmly beneath his hanging hair ... lives and lives and lives ... the smoky pallets burning as the group sat listening to Lütt-Ebbins ... the flames merging with the fire in the woodlands that night ... before it had all begun, when disquiet and voices were the only hell she lived with, and the world with Sandor in it still held such sweetness, so much promise ...
‘Eighteen centuries we lived down there,’ he said, and she noticed Nina watching him intently. ‘Think of it,’ he added. ‘And all it led to was them. Those things. Why?’
She tried to focus on him, a tall figure set strangely before the seamed and rippling dome. His voice seemed far away to her. Eighteen centuries, she thought. So that was how old she was. All those years ... all those women ... all that waste.
As the conversation moved on, a few of the group asked about her plans. She told them what she could, adding, in response to a few questioning glances, that she’d be taking no risk greater than the Nassgruben were taking in leaving their old society behind.
