14
Things swung into action. Due to the assault on the garden, our food was heavily rationed. We had to subsist on a few handfuls of soaked grains or beans each day. This wasn’t an issue for me – I’d got used to surviving entirely on a few mouthfuls of rusty water and the occasional scrap from Val, so even a spoonful of salted quinoa was like a feast. We rarely saw the Monkeys anymore – they only left C Block for a few minutes each day, under escort, and we weren’t allowed to go anywhere near the building without Daddy’s express permission.
I threw myself into the preparations, so I wouldn’t have to think about Fox. He watched me, wherever I went. A few times he tried to catch me alone, but I managed to slip away. I didn’t want to face him. I didn’t know if I was strong enough.
During Daddy’s Hour, we learnt more about the Quintus Septum. They were a sinister group of sorcerers, Daddy said, representing the five most powerful institutions in the world – politics, religion, science, business and celebrity. The US President was a member. So was the Pope, along with Oprah, Madonna, Jay-Z and a bunch of other famous people.
‘They control everything,’ hissed Daddy.
He explained to us that we would need to be prepared for when the Quintus Septum came after us. We would be trained in new technics, to be fit and alert and sneaky. We might need to infiltrate enemy bases, and Daddy wanted us to be sure we were ready. We abandoned our usual work units in favour of survival technics, doing hundreds of push-ups and sit-ups, or commando-crawling through obstacle courses that Stan and Val assembled on the bare earth where the kitchen garden had once been. We learnt how to coax fire from dry twigs, and to use mud and leaves to camouflage ourselves from sight.
It was exciting. My days melted into scenes from a movie training montage. What we were doing was important. I imagined sneaking into hidden compounds, stealing secret weapons and plans from right under the enemy’s noses. I imagined returning to the Institute a hero, presenting a locked briefcase to Daddy amid thunderous applause. Daddy would smile at me. He wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t need to. The look of approval and love in his eyes was all I needed.
Fox seemed to understand, too. He stopped trying to talk to me. But he still watched. I felt his eyes on me constantly, and, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t ignore him. But that just made me determined to train harder.
I shed the aphotic weakness I’d developed in my cell, and my body grew hard and strong with exercise and work. I could easily subsist on only a few mouthfuls a day. My mind was clear and my body was transforming. It was working. I was becoming sublime.
One morning, Daddy called Fox, Pippa, Welling and me into the draughty old warehouse, where he’d set up a table and chairs in the corner.
‘Welling and I have been working on a top secret technic,’ Daddy explained. ‘It is dangerous and complex, but we have selected you three to join us, due to your proven tenacity and intelligence.’
Daddy laced his fingers behind his back, and raised his eyes to the ceiling thoughtfully. ‘The universe is composed of elements,’ he said. ‘The Quintus Septum would have you believe that this planet’s elements are all discovered. That they can be contained in a table and are constricted by rigid categories like atomic weight and protons and isotopes. This, of course, is all a ruse, designed to prevent us from avocation.’
‘I have a question,’ said Fox.
Daddy frowned at him. ‘Later, Furicius. In my lifelong search for the Scintilla, I have made many discoveries. I have uncovered many secrets. Secrets that have been buried deep for many thousands of years. But these secrets often uncover yet more mysteries. One of those mysteries is the secret of aether.’
Fox shifted uncomfortably, and I saw him glance up at the rafters and girders above us.
‘We talk about being boundless, about becoming sublime,’ Daddy went on. ‘Well, aether is the ultimate in boundlessness. It is what is formed when all the chemical elements are perfectly balanced – or sublimated. It is perfect lightness and harmony. It will help us to reach our goal. It will help us summon the Scintilla.’
Fox still wasn’t paying attention. But I was. I sat up straighter in my chair, and pushed thoughts of Fox from my mind.
‘This technic can be very dangerous. If handled incorrectly, these elements can transform into unstable radioisotopes. One single gram of such a substance could be as deadly as a nuclear bomb.’
Fox looked back at Daddy. I could sense his restlessness, the flood of questions that threatened to pour forth from him, like water from a burst dam. But he stayed silent.
‘This kind of experiment requires practice. I have been working with chemistry for many centuries, but you are all novices. This is why I have instructed Welling to drill you in the basic sublimation technic first, before I expose you to any of the harmful chemicals I keep in my laboratory.’
Daddy produced a cloth bag and drew from it a handful of wooden tokens, spreading them out onto the table between us. Each one had a blackened symbol on it, as if they had been branded with something burning hot. Some of the symbols were recognisable letters: He, O, F, Li, Be. Other symbols were unfamiliar – arcane squiggles, all curves and angles.
Daddy pointed at the letters. ‘Does anyone recognise these?’
‘Are they … elements?’ asked Pippa. ‘From the periodic table?’
Daddy beamed at her, and I felt a stab of jealousy. I suddenly wished I’d paid more attention in science class. Then Daddy might be smiling at me now.
‘You are one hundred per cent correct, Agrippa. These are first elements of the periodic table.’ Daddy lined them up one by one and pointed. ‘Helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and fluorine. The astute among you’ – here he glanced at Pippa and twitched the corner of his mouth in a smile – ‘will have noticed that the very first element, hydrogen, is missing. This is because hydrogen, having only one proton, cannot bring about sublimation in other elements. It is a non-reactive element, and therefore it does not concern us. It is the number of protons that determines an element’s atomic number. Helium is the second element because it has two protons. Lithium has three. Beryllium has four, and so on. This is simplistic stuff that some of you will remember from childhood. And your toxicant schoolmasters were correct, for those first few elements. After that, things get a little more complex. This technic works with those first elements, excluding hydrogen, as well as the Sovereign Four.’
‘The Sovereign Four?’ asked Pippa. ‘I don’t remember that from school.’
Daddy chuckled. ‘For good reason, Agrippa. The Sovereign Four are the hidden elements. The ones that people don’t want you to know about. Ask a chemist out there, and they will tell you that these elements don’t exist, that they’re compounds of other things. But that’s just what the Quintus Septum want you to think.’
He pointed to each of the curly symbols. ‘Calx. Galena. Nix Alba. Bismuth. These are the Sovereign Four. They are considered to be special because, unlike other elements, they share the same number of protons: ten.’
Pippa was frowning, her lips moving silently as if she were reciting something in her head. ‘Neon!’ she said at last. ‘Isn’t neon the tenth element? Doesn’t that mean it has ten protons?’
Daddy glanced at Welling, and they both laughed. ‘I’m sure that’s what the toxicants told you,’ said Daddy, rolling his eyes.
Pippa blushed.
‘What’s that one?’ asked Fox, pointing to the last tile, which had a small black dot in the centre.
‘I’m glad you asked, Furicius,’ said Daddy, with a nod. ‘This one is quicksilver, or mercury, and it is the most dangerous of all the elements. Its atomic number is unstable, and can change. Sometimes it disguises itself as hydrogen, with only one proton. Sometimes it has eleven. You must be extremely careful when working with it, making sure that you are sure which atomic number it has at that precise moment.’
I saw Pippa open her mouth to ask a question, a frown crinkling her
forehead. But she shut her mouth again and said nothing.
Daddy looked down at the wooden tokens, and then back at us. ‘Welling will be teaching you an ancient technic for balancing these elements – what we refer to as the process of sublimation – in order to produce aether.’ He nodded to Welling. ‘I’ll leave them in your most capable hands.’
‘Right,’ said Welling, after Daddy had left. ‘So the sublimation technic is very simple, and it involves keeping a mental tally. When you see the elements helium, lithium, beryllium, boron and calcium, you add one to your count.’
‘You mean carbon,’ said Pippa. ‘Not calcium.’
‘Carbon, my apologies,’ said Welling, flashing Pippa a quick smile. ‘So then for nitrogen, oxygen and fluorine, you do nothing. For the Royal Four plus mercury, you minus one from your tally.’
‘The Sovereign Four,’ said Fox.
‘What?’
‘You said the Royal Four. Aren’t they called the Sovereign Four?’
Welling looked irritated. ‘Yeah, the Sovereign Four. What difference does it make?’
‘How did you learn so much about chemistry?’ asked Fox. ‘You said you worked with money before you came here. Not elements.’
‘I have studied with Daddy,’ said Welling smoothly. ‘We’ve been working together on this for quite some time. I’ve had many avocations about the process.’
‘But I thought—’
‘Enough questions, Fox,’ said Welling, his voice firm.
Fox stared at him for a moment, and I got the feeling that there was a kind of unspoken battle going on. A test. Eventually, Fox looked away, and slouched down in his chair.
Welling swept the tiles back into the bag, and shook it to mix them around. Then he pulled out one tile at a time, laying it on the table and instructing us to keep count. There were around a hundred tiles in total, and it was difficult to remember which element was which.
‘What number do you have?’ asked Welling, as he put down the last tile.
‘Two,’ said Fox.
‘Minus one,’ said Pippa.
‘Zero,’ I said.
Welling flicked me an approving glance. ‘We will train like this for an hour every morning after breakfast, before you resume your rostered duties or training. Now let’s try again.’
He swept the tokens back into the bag.
Sometimes, Daddy would choose people for individual training missions. I was selected for Operation Hush-Hush. In order to learn the technic of covert infiltration, Daddy instructed me to sneak into nearby houses, in the dead of night. I was to quietly break in and achieve some arbitrary goal – moving furniture or turning books spine-in on their shelves – before leaving the house with no other evidence that I’d been there. I spent a week training beforehand, learning to walk silently and keep to the shadows. Daddy taught me how to behave if I was caught – I was to pretend to be sleepwalking, and ‘wake up’ all embarrassed and flustered.
‘But you won’t be caught, Heracleitus,’ Daddy said, turning the key in the lock that opened the ancient roller door that separated the Institute from the rest of the world. ‘You are extraordinary.’
I stepped out into the night. It was the first time I’d been outside the Institute since I’d arrived. How long had it been? Months? I had no idea anymore. I couldn’t recognise the toxicant girl who had arrived here in the minivan, full of doubt and grief and tainted flesh. I’d thought I knew everything. But I’d been a puppet, a slave to my meat body, drugged and docile, an implement for the Quintus Septum to use like the lowliest of pawns.
I gazed up and down the dark street. It was like stepping through into Narnia, or Platform 9¾, except the other way. Going from the magical world back to the mundane everydayness of reality. I’d been blindfolded when we’d first arrived, so I had no idea where we were. From the outside, the Institute was just a grey concrete wall, with a large metal roller door in the centre like a gaping mouth. On one side there was a similar industrial facility – the sign on the front read SINGH & SMITH DISTRIBUTION.
The rest of the street was the same. On the corner there was a shabby block of flats with tattered curtains and broken windows, and a car park full of banged-up old cars and stolen shopping trolleys. I wondered how many toxicants lived in there. I imagined them cramped and miserable in their hovels, decaying from the inside, sleepwalking through life like zombies. Did they know how close they were to salvation? How all the avocations they didn’t know to look for were right under their noses? There was rubbish in the gutters, and the smell of engine grease and petrol in the air. It seemed a million miles from the tranquillity of the Institute, even though I’d only walked to the end of the block. No wonder Daddy didn’t want us to go out. The real world was awful.
‘Need some company?’
I started and whirled around. Fox was walking beside me, half a pace behind. He smiled at my shocked expression.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘You’re not cleared for this mission.’
He shrugged. ‘I wanted to talk to you. Somewhere you couldn’t avoid me.’
His casual dismissal of Daddy chilled me. Didn’t he understand the danger he was in? What he was risking?
‘How did you get out?’ I asked.
‘Same way as you,’ said Fox.
‘But Daddy …’
‘Daddy went back to the Sanctum. Come on.’
He set off, and I followed him, a feeling of unease creeping over me. I’d barely spoken to Fox since Daddy had caught us, but I could tell he’d changed. Something was different, and it wasn’t good.
I’d expected the world outside the Institute to have altered in some way. For there to be an obvious military presence, signifying the Quintus Septum’s rise to power. But everything seemed totally ordinary. The warehouses and factories on the street were dark and silent. Television flickered in the occasional shabby apartment window, but otherwise all the toxicants seemed to be asleep. Streetlights burned orange overhead. Movement tickled the corners of my vision and I looked up, expecting drones or cruise missiles, but it was just a flock of fruit bats gliding silently into the night.
‘It’s beautiful out here,’ said Fox. ‘The sky is so much bigger.’
We headed up the hill. I felt alert, alive. The real world was dark and dangerous, but I could handle myself. The night air was cool on my cheeks and lips, and my body followed every direction I gave it. I was in charge of my body. It didn’t rule me.
‘Wait!’ Fox was bending down, picking something up from the gutter.
It was a twenty-cent coin, dull and grimy. Fox peered at it, frowning.
‘Leave it,’ I told him. ‘It’s filthy.’
Fox weighed the coin in his hand. ‘Why is it here?’
‘Somebody dropped it.’
‘Won’t they miss it?’
‘It’s only twenty cents. It’s nothing.’
Fox turned the coin over, read the words inscribed on it. ‘It can’t be nothing,’ he said. ‘What can you buy with twenty cents?’
‘You can’t buy anything with twenty cents.’
‘Then why does it exist?’
I didn’t have time to explain it to him. ‘Because humans are idiots.’
‘You’re a human too.’
I wasn’t. Not like them, anyway. I was becoming something more. Something better.
‘How many of these would I need?’ Fox asked. ‘To buy something?’
‘Fox, leave it,’ I snapped, wheeling around on him. ‘Money is aphotic. It weighs us down. You know that. You’ve heard Welling talk about it. You’ve heard Daddy.’
Fox didn’t flinch away from my harsh tone. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and gazed at me, his expression untroubled.
‘But Daddy uses money,’ he said. ‘So does Welling. They use it to buy our food, and our supplements, and the water bottles. There’s other stuff too. Stuff they don’t want you to know about.’
‘They do it because they have to,’ I said. ‘
It’s part of our mission. Once we are sublime, we won’t—’
‘Don’t you want to know where it comes from?’ Fox interrupted. ‘The money?’
I had, once. ‘No.’
Fox ignored me. ‘Mostly new sublimates,’ he said. ‘When people join, sometimes they bring money. When Newton arrived, she brought a lot of money. Daddy was really pleased. That was when he started doing the water bottles.’
I walked faster, trying to leave Fox and his voice behind me.
‘I know money can be bad,’ said Fox. ‘It can make the world very ugly. But surely it can also make the world beautiful. Money can help sick people get better. It can take you to new places. You can buy books with money.’
I stopped. ‘Please,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘Please stop. Please get rid of it.’
He nodded, his eyes not leaving mine for a second. I heard a tinkle as the coin hit the bitumen.
Fox followed silently as I walked a few blocks to a newish housing estate where the streets curved into each other like a barrel of plastic monkeys, each one featuring identical houses. It was all so fake, so totally devoid of anything real or true. I felt myself weaken – a feeling that intensified with every step I took away from the Institute and Daddy. It was because of Fox and his questions and his doubt, but it wasn’t just that. It was as if the chemicals in the air were leaching my strength from me, infecting my pores with powerful toxins.
But I would resist. I could control my body. I was strong.
I chose my house carefully, checking for signs of an alarm system or a dog.
‘Wait out here,’ I whispered to Fox.
‘Okay,’ he replied, not even bothering to lower his voice.
I glared at him, and stepped onto the concrete path that led up to the house. Another step. And another.
Suddenly I was spotlighted in blazing whiteness. I stopped dead, my heart pounding, waiting for voices or an alarm. My eyes searched for Fox, but all I could see was bright white bordered by darkness. I let my face go slack and my expression blank, ready to play the part of a confused sleepwalker. I waited. The light clicked off. I shuffled forwards once again. The light clicked back on. A security light. I’d forgotten that they existed. I squinted, locating the light, and smoothly moved out of its range. It clicked off again, and I waited, crouching by the smooth rendered wall of the house, listening for any signs of disturbance from within. Nothing. All I could hear were my own breaths, panting in rhythm with my pounding heart.
The Boundless Sublime Page 17
