The Offset

by Calder Szewczak

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Well, then.” The Archivist picks out two rolled-up coveralls from a tray and thrusts one at Jac. It is pastel green with elasticated wrists. “Put this on.”

  She takes the coverall and slings her bag onto the bench. Knowing he will expect her to turn around for modesty’s sake, she does exactly the opposite. She kicks off her shoes, pulls off her jacket and starts unbuttoning her shirt, all the while holding his gaze levelly until he blushes and turns away, muttering something about putting on his own coveralls. It’s a petty victory and one she cannot truly savour, not with the Archivist’s accusation ringing in her ears.

  He’s wrong, she thinks. I’ve always ensured my Alban staff are treated fairly, just like anyone else. But she cannot ignore the nagging sense of doubt. Loath as she is to admit it, her Alban staff do get a raw deal. Despite relying so heavily upon the work done here in Inbhir Nis, the glory, celebrity and power of Project Salix sits firmly in London. And though she tries to reassure herself that the Alban team are well-compensated for the literally life-risking work they undertake handling the radioactive tree cores – their wages are certainly higher than the local average – she knows it’s nothing compared with the perks of working in St Pancras.

  With a rush of shame, she thinks of the various petitions her Alban team have presented her with over the years, demanding the Borlaug’s headquarters be relocated to Inbhir Nis. She had turned them down every time, arguing that it wasn’t possible, that it was too expensive. Now, she reluctantly acknowledges to herself that this was not entirely true. The patents revenue alone could have covered the cost of moving, and there are plenty of world-class researchers and potential collaborators in Alba to make such an action desirable. The fact of the matter was that she simply did not want to leave her comfortable life in London; she would never have traded it out for this, no matter how good the air was here. She really hadn’t spared her Alban staff a second thought.

  Jac turns to face the wall at last, pulling off her shirt and trousers, which she hangs from one of the empty hooks. Then she tugs the coveralls on over her black underwear, tucking the bottom of the legs into her woollen socks. As an afterthought, she takes off her gold wedding ring – the only item of jewellery she wears – and slips it into an inside pocket of her bag. Better to leave it here than have it confiscated for decontamination on the way out.

  When she turns back, she catches the familiar look of loathing on the Archivist’s face, the one that reminds her so much of Miri.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he says quickly. Before she can challenge him further, he turns to the hazmat suits and picks one out. “This looks like the right size,” he says. “Have you worn one of these before?”

  “Not for a long time,” she admits.

  “You need to check all the components for tears and abrasions. Pay particular attention to the seams. Then I’ll show you how to check the air level and the breathing apparatus.”

  The Archivist’s assured, methodical approach is as familiar to Jac as his antagonism. For all his faults, he never was careless in his work. That is part of what made him so frustrating as a team member; knowing his potential and seeing it stifled time and again in the pursuit of his own personal vendettas. If he had kept his head down in London, he could have gone on to distinguish himself in his work. But he always was his own worst enemy.

  “Alright,” he says when they finish checking the suit. “Sit down and put your feet in.”

  She takes a seat on the bench and pulls her legs into the suit. When she stands, she lifts it up around her and holds it while he adjusts the internal belt that cinches in place around her waist to secure the suit.

  “Let’s set up your comms.” He straps a throat mic around her neck and helps her secure the earpieces that are connected to the suit’s radio. “The mic is voice-activated,” he tells her. “Though if there’s a failure and it stops working, you can hit the button on the front of your suit to activate the radio.”

  “Got it.”

  “Now take this.” He hands her a facepiece, the clear lens cased in black plastic and foam with a bulky valve at the bottom that is attached to a rigid hose which loops around to the suit’s air canister. “Slide it on… yes, just like that. Now, dip your head for me and I’ll tighten the straps.” She can feel the facepiece’s harness against her skull, and the light pressure of it is strangely comforting.

  “Look up,” says the Archivist. He checks the fit of the nose cup around the lower half of her face. “And the air’s coming through?”

  She nods. Once he is satisfied that everything is working properly, he helps her with the top half of the suit. “Slide your arms into the sleeves. Good. Now I’m going to pull the zip up over your head.” In the next moment, she is completely encased, her head and facepiece shielded by a capacious hood that has a wide, tinted visor set into its front. The silence is abrupt and all encompassing. She watches as the Archivist sets up his own throat mic and earpiece.

  “Alright in there?” he asks, his voice tinny on her radio.

  “All good.”

  He fiddles with the Velcro strip that covers the zip of her suit and runs Jac through a few more tests. Then he hands her a pair of heavy steel-capped boots and kneels to pull the cuff of the suit legs down over the boot shafts. Finally, he attaches a dosimeter badge to the front of the suit.

  “If it beeps once, you have to leave immediately,” he says over the radio. “You won’t be allowed back into the annexe for somewhere between one week and two months, depending on post-incident analysis. Not that we’d expect another visit from you so soon, of course,” he adds, lapsing back into his earlier tone of disdain. “I know how you like to leave these things for years at a time.”

  Jac’s eyes narrow behind her visor. “What a shame,” she says in mock pity. “You were doing so well there, for a moment. It was almost like talking to an adult.”

  “Look, this is no joking matter,” he says, becoming solemn again. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, I can refuse to accompany you into the annexe. Doesn’t matter if you’re the Director or not.”

  Furious with herself for rising to his bait, Jac resists the urge to snarl a retort. The Archivist – satisfied with her silence – continues.

  “Now, if the dosimeter beeps twice, that means you’ll have received your yearly dose of radiation.”

  Unbidden, an image flashes into her head of a white stone edifice and a set of cracked steps leading up to a glass-fronted booth. The Gallery. She blinks and the image disappears.

  “And if it beeps three times?”

  He looks stern. “There is no third beep.”

  They both know this is not quite true. Thinking of the worker who broke in and the amount of exposure he would have endured, Jac raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

  Now it’s the Archivist’s turn to suit up, starting the laborious process again from the top. Following his instructions, Jac helps him run through the same set of tests and checks.

  “I still don’t understand why we need hazmat suits,” he says. “We already use glove boxes and shielded containers in the annexe. Provided everyone followed protocol, we could use a much simpler scrub. It would be far cheaper.”

  The comment is meant as criticism, however obliquely. Jac seizes upon it, delighted to be able to prove there is at least one aspect of the hazmat suits she knows more about than the Archivist. “I’m afraid the project wouldn’t have got off the ground without them. Given the Kvanefjeld disaster, we had to demonstrate that we would take every possible precaution when it came to handling radioactive material. In this case, it meant developing suits that could hypothetically protect you from even the radiation levels of the ARZ itself. For a short period, at least. Not that any human will ever get the chance to test it.”

  “Still seems like overkill to me. Here,” he adds, handing a pair of heavy-duty silver gloves to Jac.

  She pulls them on. “Is th
at everything?”

  “That’s everything. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  She follows the Archivist into the airlock on the far side of the room and patiently watches the slow rise and fall of the shutterlike steel doors. At long last, they step out into a cavernous room, harshly lit by caged bulbs that glare white from the recessed ceiling far above. The concrete walls are lined with sturdy metal shelves, each one bearing a series of identical wooden crates. A row of long work benches runs down the centre of the room and Jac can see a door in the corner that she guesses leads through to the other chambers of the complex.

  Once the door of the airlock has sealed shut behind them, the Archivist turns to her expectantly, with the unmistakable air of a scavenger trailing behind an injured beast. “What do you want to see first?”

  Wishing that she were alone, or that anyone else had been selected as her escort, Jac thinks fleetingly of the minutes ticking by. The last train is in six hours. If she wants to get home as soon as possible – to see Miri again, to hold her wife in her arms and say goodbye – there’s no time to lose. She’ll just have to work with what she’s got, even if the circumstances are less than ideal. She takes a deep breath that makes her microphone crackle. Then, in calm and level tones, she slowly explains to the Archivist what she needs him to do.

  12

  Miri stands in Jac’s study, finger and thumb of her right hand braceleted around her left wrist. Hanging on one wall is the antique enamel sign that, long years hence, used to grace the front of the house: a red ring with a blue bar across its centre. Stamped upon it in thin white letters are the words “Warren Street Station”, a name the house still bears although it is simply referred to as “the Warren”.

  Beneath the sign stands a glass case with a few books laid open at relevant pages, ones that chart the history of the house. Versions of her home stare back at Miri from beneath the glass – architectural plans, photographic plates, sketches – each one showing a different guise the house has worn throughout the ages: underground station, theatre, depot, overspill for the nearby hospital. That was long before it was turned into residential accommodation. From what Miri understands, it has been in her family ever since and, one day, it will be hers – a fact which Jac never missed an opportunity to remind her. “I inherited it from my parents, too. It’s only fair,” she would say, as though it were adequate compensation for Miri’s existence, as though she had the right to hand down a piece of public history as easily as she might a set of cast-offs.

  A colour photograph shows the Warren as it is now, a sprawling urban mansion well-deserving of its familiar name. Four floors of industrial brick jut up above an imperious stone front that curves outward like a great domed belly. Its oversized double front door opens directly onto the street and is painted a deep, forest green. There’s no escaping its vast scale: the Warren is far larger than any of the squats she’s stayed in, and bigger even than the clinic on Peter Street where she will later meet the Celt. When Miri was younger, she had often been embarrassed by living somewhere so ostentatious. Now, looking at the pristine photograph, she supposes for the first time that there’s a sort of brutal honesty about the place. It’s not like the expansive, richly decorated houses of family friends that feign modesty behind the uniformity of neat terraced facades. At least the Warren embraces its own excess.

  Miri drops into the chair behind the desk where a few moments before she set down the empty plastic tub that now holds the rat, a few holes pierced in the lid. It seems unkind, keeping it cooped up like that, but at least this way it won’t be able to cause any damage to the house or get lost. She rifles absently through the desk drawers but there’s not much to find: old textbooks, a few stray paperclips, a neat line of velvet boxes holding the medals for the various prizes and honours that Jac has been awarded over the course of her illustrious career.

  In the bottom drawer, however, is an enticingly fat manila envelope. Miri lifts the unstuck flap and tips out the contents, causing a startling array of letters, cards and notes to spill out across the desk. From what she can see, no two are written in the same hand and some don’t even appear to be written in English. The postmarks, where still intact, seem to come from all over the Federated Counties and even beyond: Baile Átha Cliath, Versailles, Den Haag, The Maghreb, each one as improbable and far-fetched to her as Atlantis.

  Before she can look more closely, Alix appears in the door of the study, glasses dangling about her neck. “There you are.”

  “Everything alright?”

  “Yes. I wanted to ask – have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  Miri’s eyes narrow. “I already told you.”

  Alix shakes her head. “No, I mean, are you going to stay here? Until the Offset, that is?”

  The directness of this question takes Miri off guard. She isn’t used to having to account for herself, or having to plan more than one step ahead at a time. It takes her immediately back to the uncomfortable dependency of her adolescence.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you come to the Borlaug with me?” asks Alix.

  This is so unexpected a proposition that Miri does not know immediately how to respond, but the quiet desperation on her mother’s face is more than she can bear. “Please,” Alix continues. “I want you to see it one last time before you make your decision.”

  “I told you. I’ve already made my decision.”

  “Do it for my sake then. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

  Miri presses her lips together in a tight scowl. She has no desire to return to the laboratory where Jac works. Besides, she’s meeting the Celt at seven.

  “I have somewhere to be, actually.”

  Alix says nothing for a moment and then, seeming to notice the letters strewn across the desk for the first time, comes to stand at Miri’s shoulder. She lifts her glasses to her nose then reaches out and begins to sift through the pile. “From your mother’s admirers,” she says by way of explanation. “Back before cross-border communications collapsed. Look, here’s one that might interest you.” She picks out a letter written on thick cream card and hands it over. Miri catches sight of her own name in amongst the ornate calligraphy.

  “It’s from the Director of the Global Monitoring Division,” Alix explains. Then, reading aloud: “Congratulations on the birth of your daughter, Miriam. I trust she will be a light to you and your wife in the years ahead. There can be no doubt that she will be the best of breeds.”

  Flinching at the implicit reference to the slogan of the elite, Miri turns to Alix. “I don’t think much of your friends.”

  “No,” says Alix, blinking rapidly. “No, I see that. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. That wasn’t why I wanted to show you. It’s just… we got hundreds of these, Miri. More than we could possibly keep. Everyone was so excited to welcome you to the world. It was a very special time.”

  “Yeah, but even so…” Miri trails off.

  Alix is staring into the distance, a fond smile playing across her lips. “You were such a beautiful baby,” she murmurs.

  Miri’s anger drains away as suddenly as it arose. Deflated, she drops the letter back onto the pile and stands, knocking the chair away as she does. The action startles Alix back into the present.

  “OK. I’ll come,” Miri says.

  For a moment Alix looks as though she doesn’t understand. Then she reaches out a hand to grasp hers. “Thank you, Miri.”

  Miri smiles weakly and squeezes her mother’s hand in return but her heart flutters uneasily. Despite Alix’s best efforts, Miri knows that seeing the Borlaug will not change her mind. But perhaps it will be enough, for now, to go along with it. To let Alix believe it is possible, to give her this small piece of happiness.

  13

  “You want me to walk you through the handling process,” says the Archivist flatly. Even behind the visor, there’s no mistaking the suspicion in his eyes.

  “That’s right.”

 
“Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to. It’s my prerogative to run a spot check of any procedure I so wish. Or perhaps you’re not familiar with how an inspection works?”

  “Come on, Boltanski, I think we both know you didn’t come all this way to run a few little spot checks. Isn’t your Offset in a few days?”

  “It’s tomorrow,” she says, her voice tight.

  “And yet here you are instead of at home with your wife and child. Your show of dedication is certainly impressive. It must be nice, knowing that you won’t be the one nominated.”

  So that’s what he thinks. Well, he clearly doesn’t know the first thing about Miri, and she’s not about to enlighten him. “Kindly keep your opinions about me and my family to yourself,” she says. “Frankly, it’s none of your business. Not only that, but you are wilfully obstructing the work of a superior. If you do not do as you are told, I shall report your conduct to HR and they’ll take it from there.”

  The Archivist is unmoved. “Yeah, I don’t doubt it.”

  Jac says nothing, pressing her lips together into a tight line, waiting for him to back down. It’s not like he has a choice. Whatever his feelings about Jac, he knows all too well that she can make life difficult for him, even if she can’t dismiss him. He has already suffered the indignity of one pay cut, something about which his friends in the scientific community weren’t hugely sympathetic, given their lower Alban wages. Jac’s stern expression is all that is needed to remind the Archivist of this fact, her silence puncturing his ballooning ego. She can almost see him deflate. And when he next speaks, his tone is more guarded than before.

  “Did it occur to you that if you just tell me what you’re looking for, I might be able to help you find it?” Then, before Jac can laugh in his face, he adds, “The sooner you find it, the sooner you’re out of my hair. And I know this place far better than you do. I’m pretty good at my job, too, you know, despite what you may think.”