Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

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

  ‘GO ON!’ she shouts at me, as I hesitate. ‘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 on to the bed.

  ‘Cover him!’ she says, searching frantically for the mobile 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 there’s nothing ‘interesting’ online. ‘Go get Akesa on your thing!’

  ‘It’s at school!’

  My thing – a notebook which 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 favour 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 these 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 re-think 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 out.

  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 on to 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, diarrhoea. 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 – but 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 it 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 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 –’r />
  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.

  ‘Bigshot, we’ve got a situation here,’ says Kate.

  I cringe. ‘Bigshot’ 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 dialling 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, dialling 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 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 not sure I am in the room. I feel . . . it’s like I’m floating, tens, hundreds, thousands of kilometres 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 PJ top, sits down heavily on the edge of the bed, and wipes at its face – even as I wipe away tears I can’t make much sense of at the moment.

  ‘I can’t go through this again,’ she’s muttering to herself, and I see her wipe away a rare, lone tear. 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 euthanise, even if it is requested.

  Kate bangs the phone against her head in disbelief.

  Mumma continues calmly delivering instructions: Kate should send me 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. ‘Our world is deadly to him. Sanctuary food is irradiated. Water is purified. This . . . boy has never been outside.’

  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 super-bugs. 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 euthanise.’

  ‘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.

  ‘Correct,’ says Akesa. ‘But maybe you hung up before I could say that.’

  ‘Damn right,’ says Kate, and ends the call.

  The XY is having a shaking fit so massive its whole body convulses. And when it stops, a strange whimpering sound escapes from its lips and its eyes roll open again – just for a second.

  I understand what Akesa just said. We can help it to die.

  ‘I’ll get the pack,’ I tell Kate.

  It’s hard not to slip on the hundreds and hundreds of spilt apples as I run out in the lane – where there’s no sign of Milpy, but the apple trail tells me she’s lumbered off home, as cross as a horse can be.

  I’ve never had to do this before, I’ve only ever seen it done. The pack we need – the death pack – is kept at the house of the Granmummas. There is a heart-start, and there is a pack containing the medical tools to maintain life – and there is a death pack: to end life, peacefully and painlessly.

  My heart is pounding as I open the front door to the Granmummas’ huge house, not so much from the exertion of running, but from dread. I don’t know how to handle this – coming to get death – and I don’t know how to handle the Granmummas.

  There is crazy noise, as usual, coming from inside as I barge through the hall that’s rammed with coats and boots and Casey’s walking frame and Yaz’s wheelchair – and fling open the door to the Granmummas’ vast k
itchen, a toasty paradise of sofas, tables, chairs and comfort. And pumping music.

  It is not like anyone else’s kitchen – not just because of its size, but because of how the Granmummas like to use it. Card games are being played. Even in the din, books are being read. Manicures and pedicures and makeovers are being administered. Hair is being dyed. Smoke hangs heavy in the air. The rest of the harvest might be a bit of a joke, but the Granmummas somehow manage to grow a superb crop of marijuana – not all of which gets traded. They also excel at the production of alcohol from pretty much every fruit, herb and plant there is; Willow’s horseradish and potato vodka is currently being considered for export trade – though local consumption is high; there are mugs and fancy cups everywhere, few of which will contain tea.

  It is their Sanctuary; a small, hard-won handful of happiness – that I am about to destroy.

  They all – instantly – know something is wrong. The music is killed.

  ‘We need the pack,’ I tell them.

  Courtesy telling. I’m first- and last-aid trained and so I could just take it, but I guess the look on my face tells them something else too: it’s the death pack I’ve come for.

  ‘Oh no – no, no, no! Is it Kate?!’ cries Willow, as Yukiko flings open the cupboard and shoves the death pack into my arms, grabbing the heart-start and the life pack – and flinging the general first-aid pack at Rosie, who grabs it and hugs it to her chest. At the same time, the rest of the Granmummas – all those who are fit and able, and some who really aren’t – are on their feet immediately, rushing to grab coats, to come and assist. Yaz grabbing at everything in her path – walls, cupboards, tables, people – to get to her wheelchair in the hall.

  ‘Who is it?!’ Yukiko shouts at me.

  ‘It’s a boy.’

  The word explodes. A wave of shock breaks across the room. I’ve seen footage of the weapons people used to have. The word ‘boy’ is an atomic bomb.

  CHAPTER 4

  PROTOCOL

  The Granmummas descend on our house en masse, and in a frenzy of grief and anguish.

  When I look around the room in which the boy lies dying, I see so clearly what I have always somehow known about the Granmummas but never witnessed. Fury is not a strong enough word for it. There is an unimaginable sorrow that seeps and bleeds and bubbles beneath their toughness, beneath their wild love of fun. Beneath that? There is phenomenal anger. An ancient, complex rage that is beyond my comprehension – yet I feel it.