Zosimon exited the warehouse with Pippa following, as everyone murmured Goodnight, Daddy. I wondered why he’d asked Pippa to go with him. Surely it wasn’t to share his bed. Zosimon was old enough to be Pippa’s grandfather.
We stayed there for a while longer, chatting and singing, until people started to drift off to bed. As we stood up, Fox brushed deliberately against me. ‘I need to see you,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’
I smiled at him and said goodnight, hoping he would read a different message in my eyes.
He did. I waited in my room for half an hour, shivering in my nightgown under the thin blanket. Then there was a soft tap at my door, and Fox was there. We threw our arms around each other and stood there for a moment, holding on tightly. I felt him breathing, his heartbeat against my chest. It calmed my doubts, my worries.
Eventually we broke apart, and Fox sat on the bed, his knees drawn up to his chest.
‘We have to be quiet,’ he said, his voice whisper soft. ‘I needed to see you. I miss you.’
I grabbed his hands. ‘I miss you too. But we’re going to spend more time together. I asked Zosimon and he said we can be on the same team at the next rotation.’
I imagined long summer afternoons, Fox and me, working side by side in the garden. We’d work the soil with our hands, coaxing sustenance from the bare earth. We’d talk for hours, the sun warm on our backs and in our hearts. Everything would be perfect. Then I realised I’d never seen Fox working in the garden.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What team are you on?’
Fox was staring at me, his eyes wide. ‘You asked Daddy?’
‘He said it was fine.’
‘Are you sure? What exactly did he say?’
I shrugged. ‘He said he could see we were important to each other, and that we should have been on the same team from the beginning. It was no big deal.’
Fox’s expression said that it was a big deal.
‘Everyone seems scared of Zosimon,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why. He seems nice.’
Fox blinked, confused. ‘Not scared,’ he said. ‘It’s about respect. Daddy is … special.’
‘How so?’
‘He is sublime.’ Fox’s face was very serious. ‘He has lived for thousands of years. He doesn’t eat or drink. He only needs sunlight to sustain him.’
‘But you don’t really believe that,’ I said. ‘It’s … a metaphor. A parable.’
Fox shook his head. ‘No, it’s true. It’s all true.’
I felt a bit sick. Did Fox really believe it? Was he truly that naive?
‘So he’s not your real father,’ I said.
‘He’s the only father I’ve ever had.’
That wasn’t an answer. ‘What about Pippa?’ I asked. ‘Why did Zosimon ask her to join him in the Sanctum tonight?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fox, looking uncomfortable. ‘I – I asked Lib, once. She told me it was a secret, and I didn’t have clearance to know.’
‘So it’s happened before? He asks people to join him at night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it always women?’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Fox said. ‘But Daddy wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t feel that way. He doesn’t feel the … pull of bodies.’
Fox’s voice had grown husky, and he looked away, his cheeks pink. His words hung in the air, and I knew we were both feeling the same thing. The same pull.
What made him so sure? Fox had so many questions about the outside world, how did he not have any about life inside the Institute? I had seen the doubt on his face when I’d asked him if he’d really wanted to come back here. What wasn’t he telling me? Or was it something he wasn’t telling himself?
‘I brought this,’ said Fox, clearing his throat and showing me a battered paperback copy of Les Miserables. It had been read so many times it looked as though a strong breeze would cause it to crumble to dust. Fox handled it as if it were a precious relic.
I flipped through it, feeling the thinness of the paper under my fingers. Familiar names rose from the pages, and snatches of music echoed in my ears as I remembered going to see the musical with my parents when I was little, when Anton was still a baby.
A photograph slipped from the pages and fell to the floor. Fox made a grab for it, but I was closer and picked it up first.
It was an old black and white photo, creased and faded on soft, thin paper. A woman held a baby. She had long dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. She was kissing the baby’s temple, and her expression seemed sad, her eyes downcast.
I turned the photo over to see if there was a name or a date on it, and saw a few lines written in awkward pale grey pencil.
plane crash
starvation
gamma radiation pulse
contaminated water supply
nuclear fallout
suffocated by rubbish
‘Give it back.’ Fox’s face was white, his lips clamped into a thin line.
‘Who are they?’ I asked.
Fox met my eyes. His gaze was cool and blank. ‘I don’t have a mother,’ he said. ‘Only Daddy. Daddy rescued me from darkness.’ It was as if he was reciting something.
I looked back down at the photo. ‘You … you think this is your mother?’
It was too old. But … people at the Institute did dress very simply. Maybe it was Fox’s mother.
‘Fox, did your mother die?’
Fox hesitated, then nodded.
‘How?’
A shrug. ‘I don’t know.’
I looked at the words on the back of the photo. Guesses? Hypotheses? It seemed … bleak and hysterical. No ordinary death for Fox’s mother. Nothing as banal as a car accident outside a junior soccer club.
I looked at the baby, and thought I recognised something – the softness of the mouth, the intensity of the eyes.
‘This is you?’
Fox tucked his hair behind his ears and bobbed his head in a nod.
‘Do you remember her?’
‘Sometimes I think I do,’ he said. ‘Other times I think it’s just wishing.’
‘What’s the first thing you remember?’ I asked.
‘Daddy.’
So Fox had been here since he was a baby? What about his father? Grandparents? Aunts and uncles? Surely someone had cared about him.
‘What about the other children?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
‘The children. You know. The terrifying identical children.’
‘Oh,’ said Fox, his brow clearing as he cheered up a bit. ‘The Monkeys.’
‘Pretty sure they’re human children.’
‘We call them the Monkeys,’ said Fox. ‘It’s short for Homunculi, but also because they play and chatter a lot, like real monkeys.’
‘They don’t have names?’
Fox shook his head. ‘Not until they’re older. Daddy says you don’t become a whole person until a spark lands on you. It happens when you’re about thirteen, I think. That was when I became a person, anyway.’
‘You were a Monkey?’
‘Of course.’
‘Where do they all come from?’
‘C Block. The building at the back, by the wall, behind Daddy’s laboratory.’
So that was why Lib called it the Monkey House.
‘But where do they originally come from?’ I asked. ‘Where are their parents?’
‘We have no parents. We didn’t exist before Daddy. Daddy made us into people.’
‘That makes no sense,’ I said, frustrated. ‘What about when you were little? You told me Lib used to bring you books.’
‘I’m the oldest, so it was different for me. I grew up at the Red House – we didn’t move here to the Institute until I was …’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Maybe five? That’s when the other children started to come too. It was nice to have other kids to play with, but other things changed. That was when we became Monkeys.’
‘So you just … stopped being a person?’
Fox shook his head, frustrated that I wasn’t getting it. ‘People are like plants. You have to look after them when they’re little sprouts, but they don’t mean anything yet. The Monkeys are like that. When they get their spark, their actuality, then Daddy will give them a name, and they’ll join the Institute properly.’
‘You didn’t have a name until you were thirteen?’
Fox shook his head.
‘Fox, that’s terrible.’ I wanted to grab his hand and walk right out the door that instant. Forget the clean living and simplicity of daily life. Forget Family Time. This wasn’t a family.
‘It sounds much worse than it is,’ Fox said. ‘But being a Monkey is the best way to grow up. The Monkeys play and make up stories and sing and dance all day. That’s why they have their meals in the Monkey House, because they’re so noisy. They can laugh and talk and play as much as they want. Everyone is so nice to you when you’re a Monkey. Because you’re special. The Monkeys are the future. We are Daddy’s children, so everybody loves us.’
I remembered them all filing into the dining hall for breakfast. ‘Did you look like that too? With the shaved hair and tunic?’
Fox nodded. ‘The Monkeys are blank. They don’t have any characteristics yet. Once they become real people and Daddy gives them a name, then they get to grow their hair and wear different clothes.’
I thought about Anton, jumping on his bed. Building a castle out of Lego. Crying when he accidentally crushed a ladybird under his shoe. Anton hadn’t been blank. He had been a real person. I imagined Fox as a child, with his shaved head and his tunic, being told that he wasn’t a real person. I imagined his face the day Zosimon had taken his books away. Had he cried? A sudden resentment flared in my chest. That was no way to grow up. Perhaps the only way Fox could deal with his constricted childhood was to treat it as idyllic. I remembered the little girl crouching on the closed toilet lid, grinning cheekily with her finger to her lips.
‘Right,’ I said, half to myself. ‘No characteristics.’
‘It’s getting late,’ said Fox. ‘I should go.’
‘Can’t you stay?’
Fox sighed. ‘I wish I could. But I’ll get in trouble if they find me here.’
Who did he mean by they?
‘Shall I read to you for a little while?’ Fox asked. ‘To ease you into sleep?’
I smiled. ‘It’s too dark. You won’t be able to see the page.’
‘I don’t need light,’ said Fox. ‘I know it all by heart.’
By heart. Fox was my heart. I could save all my questions for another day.
I snuggled down onto my thin foam mattress, drawing the scratchy blanket up around my chin. I closed my eyes, and let Fox’s husky words wash over me.
‘There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky. There is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.’
It was easy to fall into a routine. Getting up early for Daddy’s Hour, then working with Newton in the kitchen all day until dinner and Family Time, and then a clandestine meeting with Fox in my room. At first, I lived solely for those stolen moments in the dark, Fox reciting snippets from Les Miserables. Sometimes I’d tell him stories – fairytales and fables that he’d never heard before. He especially liked the one about the twelve dancing princesses. Often we’d hold hands, but we didn’t let things go any further than that. I wanted to, and I could tell that Fox did too. But we were committed to Zosimon’s process, and didn’t want to derail it.
After a while I found myself enjoying the work, too. It made me clear-headed and sharp. Although I still didn’t believe any of Zosimon’s wild stories, I found myself listening more closely, learning to extract essential truths from his words. Did it really matter, after all, if he claimed to have been a slave in Ancient Egypt? Or a courtier in Renaissance Florence? Or a salt merchant during the time of the Byzantine Empire? Zosimon was wise; he knew that the best way to communicate ideas was through story, and he was a great storyteller. He made me feel safe, like I was being looked after. Whatever his background was, there was no doubting his love for us all. When his eye turned on me, I sat up straighter, angled my head attentively, so he’d know that I was listening. That I understood him.
On my twentieth day at the Institute, I saw Maggie shuffling through the courtyard, her head bowed. I hadn’t seen her for weeks – not since Zosimon had summoned her just after I’d arrived at the Institute. I’d assumed she’d gone back to the Red House. I called out her name, but she didn’t respond. I chased after her and touched her on the shoulder.
She spun around in shock, lifting her hands to shield her face, and I noticed that her left eye was swollen and bruised. She shrank from my gaze. I was reminded of my mother, folding into nothing on the couch.
‘Maggie?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’
She seemed thinner, smaller, her limbs hanging loose and awkward, like a broken doll’s. She nodded slowly, and smiled. ‘Hello, Heracleitus,’ she said, and her speech was a little slurred, as if she hadn’t spoken for weeks.
‘What happened to you?’ I asked. ‘Where have you been?’
I thought I saw her wince slightly. ‘I’ve been studying,’ she said. ‘Working closely with Daddy.’
I’d never heard her call him that before.
‘What happened to your eye?’
Maggie looked down at the dirt beneath her shoes. ‘I did it to myself,’ she said. ‘The work we’ve been doing … it’s difficult. Challenging. The body is aphotic. It wants things. The body fights back. The body wants to be bound to the earth. But we must elutriate.’
She shuddered with her whole body, as if something were trying to crawl up her spine, and she was trying to shake it off. I stared at her. She was … like a different person. What had happened?
‘What exactly have you been doing with Zosimon?’ I asked.
‘Hera.’ It was Lib, standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a frown creasing her face. ‘Daddy wants to see you.’
‘Okay.’ I looked back at Maggie, but she was shuffling away, shoulders hunched.
I vowed to ask Zosimon about her, and set off to the Sanctum. As I headed into the main building, a flash of white caught my eye. I turned and saw one of the Monkeys, squatting in the dirt in a concealed corner. Was it the first one I’d seen that day, perched on the toilet lid? It was so hard to tell. The Monkey looked up at me, and I noticed that it clutched a fistful of bright green snow peas. It stuck its tongue out at me, and it scampered off towards the back of C Block, all knees and elbows.
In the Sanctum, Zosimon sat cross-legged on his cushion, his head bowed as if in deep contemplation. I hesitated on the threshold.
‘Come in, my dear Heracleitus. Sit down.’
I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me, and sank onto the floor opposite him. I didn’t take a cushion for myself. It didn’t seem right, and I was getting used to sitting on hard floors. Zosimon looked up and smiled at me, his twinkling, knowing smile that made me feel as though he could see right into my soul.
‘We haven’t spoken properly since your very first day here,’ said Zosimon. ‘Libavius tells me that you’re settling in nicely, but I wanted to check for myself. How are you?’
‘Good,’ I told him. ‘Very good.’
‘I’m so pleased. Is there anything bothering you? Anything you’d like to know? I’m sure you have many questions.’
I thought about asking him again about working with Fox. About when the next rotation would start. But it seemed too trivial to be bothering Zosimon with. I’d ask Lib later. I hesitated, another question forming in my mind.
‘What happened to Maggie? She has a black eye.’
Zosimon’s face grew serious. ‘Magnus is a troubled girl,’ he said. ‘Or at least she was when she came to us. One of the most polluted toxicants I’ve ever seen. Her elutriation is very painful and difficult. I’m helping her the best I can.’ Zosimon leaned back and laced his fingers together. ‘You kno
w, Magnus reminds me of another young woman I once knew, a long time ago. This woman was a trained assassin, highly skilled. But death clouded her mind and her body succumbed to the lure of the opium poppy.’
Assassins? Opium? ‘What happened to her?’ I asked, playing along.
Zosimon’s face was washed with sadness. ‘She gave in to the body. I couldn’t help her.’
‘Can you help Maggie?’
‘I will do everything in my power. But ultimately, only she can decide which path to take.’ Zosimon sighed. ‘I am no prophet or Messiah. I haven’t been visited by angels, or struck with a gift of prophecy. I am just a man, like any other. The things I have achieved, I have achieved through my own will, my own strength. My technic is difficult, but it doesn’t require supernatural gifts. It isn’t beyond your grasp, or Magnus’s grasp, or the grasp of any human being.’
‘But you’re a …’ I struggled for the right word.
‘Guru? An oracle? No. I am a scientist. I am an expert in the field of microbiological chemistry and atomic phenomena. Nothing more.’
Zosimon nodded his head slightly, his eyes not leaving mine. We were sharing a secret, but I still wasn’t sure what the secret was.
‘I’m sure you’re missing your family.’ Zosimon rose, opened a desk drawer and presented me with my phone, laid flat on the palm of his hand.
I took it from him and switched it on, suddenly overcome with the need to communicate with the outside world. Had Minah been texting me? Had Mum left voicemails? What was going on in the world, on Facebook, in the news?
The raw need for data and communication was shocking. I was like an addict who had started to detox, but then fallen hard off the wagon.
‘It binds you to your toxicant life,’ murmured Zosimon. ‘Its hold on you is strong. But you are stronger.’
The phone buzzed and chirped. I glanced at the screen. Forty-five missed calls. Seventy-two unread text messages.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment, steadying myself. He was right. I could control this. It was all in my mind, after all.
‘Can I call my mother?’ I asked. ‘That’s all.’
‘Of course you can,’ said Zosimon. ‘You don’t need to ask my permission.’
The Boundless Sublime Page 13
