World Of Shell And Bone Read online

  “I’m sorry, Vika,” the doctor says. “I’m going to have to report you as failed.”

  I don’t reply. I don’t move.

  “But you still have one chance to get pregnant.”

  “Yes.” Avoiding her gaze, I stand and smooth my skirt down. With the sleeve of my uniform, I wipe my forehead and then tuck my shirt back in. My mind feels soft and formless, like a ball of warm dough. I wait for tears or fear, but neither come. I feel absolutely nothing. “I’ll be waiting outside. Could you let Shale know?”

  She nods.

  Outside, acid rain falls. I should head inside, but I don’t. I feel the stinging, searing needles of water hit my skin and slide off. I revel in the pain.

  “The doctor told me.” Shale’s voice is soft in my ear.

  I stare straight ahead. “How did you do?”

  “That’s not important.”

  I smile slightly. “You passed.”

  “Yes.”

  I nod. “That’s good.”

  “Vika… you’re going to get pregnant. This time.”

  I look at him. “And how do you know that, Shale? Can you see into the future?” I don’t give him a chance to answer. “The odds are against me. Maybe I’m infertile. Maybe you are. Will they let you go even if you can’t get me pregnant?”

  After a long pause, he nods. “My results were very good. They’re making exceptions for Husbands with high scores on the fitness test.”

  When I don’t say anything, Shale steps closer. “What is it?”

  I shrug. “Why you? Why are they letting Husbands go? Females are the foundation of our society. We’re the ones who worked hard to restore order after the War. And now I might have to give up my place on the ship to a Husband. It’s preposterous.” The words sound venomous and needlessly harsh even as I say them, but I can’t stop myself. Anger dots my vision, it clouds my every breath.

  Shale’s eyes are cold. “Perhaps they’ve realized that a female will never be as strong as a Husband. It’s biologically impossible. Maybe the Chinese government has realized it, too, that a female can’t perform all the tasks a man can.”

  “Biologically impossible? Do you dare suggest that a Husband is superior to a female? Have you lost your mind?” My heart hammers against my chest as I stare at him, willing him to deny his audacity. But he remains quiet. Finally, I shake my head to try and clear it. “I should return to work.”

  I go back inside, my hair plastered against my skull.

  Moon looks at me, her green eyebrows raised. “Didn’t go well?”

  I say nothing. I sit in my seat, sopping wet, and turn on my terminal.

  “Don’t worry.” She pats my hand, then pulls away as the rain stings her. “You have four more attempts, don’t you?”

  “One more.” I look at her, watch as she tries to reign in her mirth at this piece of news. “They’ve made it three total attempts now, because of the bottlenecking.”

  “Oh.” The tulip on her chin moves. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Yes, it is. They’re granting emigration vouchers to people who can pass the fitness tests with superior scores. I think you have a good chance of getting a seat on a ship.”

  Moon bites down on her lip in an attempt to contain a smile. “Really? Perhaps I should take it soon then.”

  I think about Moon, sly, predatory Moon, in a new country, getting a fresh start. I have never felt such rage, such a need for retribution. I clench my fists. Just when I think I cannot take anymore, a dull ache pounds into my lower abdomen, and I feel a gush of fluid between my legs.

  My late period, here to celebrate in my misery.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Clutching my stomach, I tell Moon I’m sick. I consider the fact that she might betray me by calling attention to the fact that I left in the middle of the day, but I’m not sure what else they could do to me as punishment. Not being allowed to emigrate is a death sentence. Even if they gas me, it will only expedite what is already coming.

  The acid rain is down to a sprinkle when I emerge from the bus and begin the short trek home. Nukeheads are clustered under awnings in the alley. They watch silently as I walk, a line of malformed, discontent dolls left out in the rain. I hurry into the shelter of my apartment building.

  I hear Shale moving around in the kitchen when I let myself in. I can’t bring myself to face him, so I go to the bedroom and stand looking down at the streets below. The rain pelts the concrete, each drop staining it a darker gray. There is no color in this world. If I jump, will I turn gray and melt into the cracked sidewalk?

  “Hi.”

  I startle and turn around to see Shale in the doorway, watching me. “Hi.”

  “You’re home early.”

  I don’t respond.

  “I want to apologize.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t report what you said.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He walks over so we’re no more than a few feet apart. “I can understand why you’re upset about the physical fitness test. And I’m sorry I said what I did.”

  I sigh and turn to look out the window again. “It’s quite alright. You’re more given to anger than I am. I shouldn’t have engaged you.”

  Shale shifts behind me. There’s hesitation in his voice when he speaks. “Do you always believe what you’re told?”

  I turn to look at him, surprised. If it wasn’t for his non-confrontational tone, I would be incensed. “What do you mean?”

  But he only shakes his head. “I’ll start some tea.”

  “Actually, I’m going out.” The need to leave the confines of the apartment is like a physical pain inside me. “I shall be back in time for dinner.”

  I walk quickly in the late afternoon heat, my boots pounding the broken pavement, strands of sweaty hair plastered to my face. People scurry to get out of my way as I charge ahead. I imagine I look like one of the Nukeheads—crazy, just waiting to be mowed down by a Maintenance worker. I see a bus pull up to a bus station and clamber on.

  As I sit there, rocking with the rhythms of the bus’s trundling passage, I glance about at the women around me. I don’t usually make a habit of looking other travelers in the eye, but today, I am desperate to know if I’m the only one who feels the world cracking in half. Life as I know it, as threatening and harsh as it has been, may be ending soon. The promises the government made me—that I’d get several attempts to get pregnant, that if I did my duty and was obedient, I’d be granted safe passage—have crumbled. Has anything ever been as it seemed? Has there been any truth in my life?

  I learned in school that before the War, back when the sky was clear, people could look up and see meteors shooting through space. The trick was to stare at one section of the sky, as intently as possible, all the while knowing that the meteors at the edges of your vision were the ones you’d see most clearly. In the dark, your eyes utilize peripheral sight to detect motion.

  I always thought it was sad, the idea of all those people staring so hard, waiting to see a piece of meteor out of the corner of their eyes. How could you ever be sure that you really saw what you thought you saw? It could be that you were staring at the interminable blackness, hoping for some beauty, however fleeting. It could be that when you didn’t get it, you conjured up what you so desperately needed to see. Perhaps that is what I have been doing all my life. Perhaps I have been too stupid to accept the utter blackness.

  By the time I knock on my mother’s door, I have calmed down considerably. I know she would not take kindly to any sort of hysteria and so I do my best to keep my features composed. When she answers her door, she is in her purple work clothes and still wearing her boots. She must have only just returned home.

  She stares at me for a long moment before stepping aside silently.

  Though I used to live in this house not that long ago, it is still like an alien planet to me. For one, my mother has not invited me back since I was assigned my own apartment. But that smell of vinegar, which she uses twice a day
to clean every hard surface, stings the soft tissue of my nostrils and fires up the neurons in my brain that remind me of the fundamental unsafe nature of this place. This is where Ceres was taken.

  If I stand motionless, I can see her out of the corner of my eyes. She is like a broken meteor, blazing from one corner of the room to another, her long hair trailing after her. She is the afterimage of my childhood.

  My mother clears her throat, and I slam back into the present. We are still standing by the door; she does not invite me to sit.

  “I’m not pregnant.” The words slip out without any planning.

  She looks down at the patterns and gouges in the concrete floor. “And do you still get four more chances?”

  So she knows things are changing. “No. And I failed the physical fitness test. I get one more try, and then they won’t let me emigrate.”

  She doesn’t respond.

  “Mica came by my house,” I say with an indignant anger I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. Why am I so keen for her to display emotion of some kind? “He asked me for a travel voucher. He said you wouldn’t help him.”

  A woman comes out of the bedroom and I guess it must be Orion, my mother’s partner. She smiles a bewildered smile at me, squinting through her thick glasses. I suppose she doesn’t understand how someone like me—someone so uncontrolled, so easily given to emotion—can be related to her staid and stoic, always-dignified Mathilde. When she realizes my mother and I are in a headlock of sorts, she turns around without a word and disappears.

  Mother is utterly still as she watches me. There’s a sort of wariness about her eyes, as if I’m a snake about to bite and she is the snake charmer, a bit out of practice. “Mica is a terrorist. He shouldn’t have run.”

  “Should he have waited for them to end his life? Is that what you think is best for him?”

  “It is what’s best for our country. It’s for the greater good. If you know where he is, you should inform the authorities.”

  I nod slowly, staring at her, this older version of me. Will I speak of my child like this one day? “And Ceres? Is it good that she’s in the Asylum?”

  “It helps advance science,” my mother says, the excuse I have heard countless times over the years. The excuse that I have accepted because it was easier to acquiesce than to fight, to draw the ire of those in power. “It is what Ceres would want.”

  “And how do you know that? Have you asked her?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” my mother spits. “You know I have no contact with her.”

  I watch her arms, crossed rigidly against her bony chest. If she was a woman given to emotion, she would grab me by the shoulders and shake me.

  “Mother,” I say quietly. “Who called the Escorts on Ceres?”

  She sighs, shakes her head, as if at a loss for what to do with me. But I see the corner of her mouth twitch. I see a flash of something behind her eyes. Nervousness? Guilt? “What do you mean?”

  “Ceres wasn’t in school yet. The only place she’d had her episodes was at home. Who called the Escorts? Was it you?” My head pulses with every heartbeat, the blood pounding so hard behind my eyes I can almost see it. The world shimmers.

  “These are questions with no satisfying answers,” my mother says. “Don’t you think you’ve enough to worry about in your own life?”

  I step in a little closer. We are almost of identical height, and yet, she has always seemed so much taller. “Why won’t you answer the question? Was it you? Did you betray Ceres?”

  “Get out.” My mother’s voice is low, her teeth bared. “Get out now.”

  I do.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When I near my apartment, the world looks as though a child ran by and smeared the colors with his hand. Everything is blurry. My eyes scrabble to find purchase, but each effort rams needles into my brain. I stumble in, too much in agony to wonder what my Husband will think of this display of weakness.

  “Are you alright?” Shale asks.

  I go to the kitchen, and he follows. It is when my headaches nestle their poison darts into my brain that I wish I could extinguish myself. I imagine a wet finger and thumb cradling me. A quiet sizzle, smoke and silence, and an exquisite absence of feeling.

  I tip sideways, feel Shale catch me. “Vika, do you need a doctor?”

  “No. Headache.” I fill a glass with water from the drum, pour the contents down my constricted throat.

  “Has this happened before?”

  I squint at him, at his concerned face. I wonder if he pretends to care because he has a role to fulfill. Like all the times my mother gave me or Ceres or Mica medication to bring down a fever, simply because it was what was expected. Clearly there was no further motivation for her having kept us safe while we were in her care. At the slightest sign of a defect, she gives us away.

  “Happens often.”

  I stagger out to the living room and collapse on the sofa. Ceres’s face flashes before me. What does she do when she has her fits now? What do they do to her?

  Shale walks by me to the bedroom. I hear him moving around and close my eyes. In this moment, the world doesn’t exist. The red dots swimming behind my eyelids are my only reality.

  “Take this.”

  I open my eyes, scattering the red dots. Shale holds out a tiny disc that looks like it’s made of pink ice. “What is it?”

  “Candy Glass.”

  A drug commonly bought and sold on le marché noir, Candy Glass lowers inhibitions and numbs physical pain and emotional torment. Taking it is also punishable by gassing. I stare at Shale a long moment. Is he not the slightest bit afraid that I will turn him in to the Escorts? “It’s illegal.”

  He turns and heads back into my bedroom. A moment later, he is back with another disc in his palm. “I’ll take one too. Then I’ll be equally culpable.” He sticks out the tip of his tongue, places one of the discs on it, and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, they are slightly unfocused. He holds the remaining disc out to me. “What do you have to lose?”

  I take it.

  Time melds into something warm and slick. My eyelids are heavy, but I force them open. Shale’s face seems to be sprinkled in star dust. I laugh, and the sound echoes in the tunnels in my brain.

  “What’s funny?” he asks, smiling too. I can’t seem to look away.

  My head lolls back against the arm of the sofa, completely pain-free now. I struggle to hold it upright. “Is life everything…” I lose my thread of thought and struggle to find it again. “Everything you thought it would b-be?”

  Shale lies down on the floor, completely still. After a moment, when I am almost asleep, he props himself up on his forearms. “Yes. Life’s a battle. I grew up believing that.”

  “I wish someone had told me that. I grew up believing that being dutiful means being chosen to start over. But none of us…none of us have been chosen.” I blink, trying to focus his weaving image.

  “None of you?”

  “Not me…not Mica…not Ceres.” I laugh without quite knowing why. My insides feel irrelevant, as if I am made of nothing but pink smoke. “May I ha—have another Candy G-Glass?”

  Shale looks at me a long moment. “Are you certain you want more?”

  I consider his question seriously. He’s right; it is a dangerous path to follow. Many who get addicted to the feeling of lightness, of absence of worry, don’t find their way back. Escape is too easy; like walking into the ocean with a pocket filled with rocks. But I realize I don’t much care. “Yes.”

  After it dissolves on my tongue, I let the fingers of sleep tug me under.

  When I open my eyes again, they’re dry and my vision is blurry. I blink rapidly and lift my face off the floor to look around. But I’m not in the living room anymore. I’m in my bed, under the covers. I sit up and look outside; still dark. Swinging my legs over the side, I smooth down my uniform skirt and make my way unsteadily to the living room to find Shale.

  The darkness is so complete it is
like being plunged into black, velvet water. Holding my arms in front of me, I find the candle on the side table and light it. I turn to the sofa to wake Shale, to tell him that anything I said under the influence of the Candy Glass should be discounted, but the room is empty.

  Shale is gone.

  The apartment has never felt more like a cage than it does at this moment, as I pace from front door to window and look outside for the seventh time. The streets are still empty except for the occasional Nukehead, wandering drunkenly, misshapen arms clasped around a too-narrow waist for warmth. Where is Shale? I dare not go outside and look for him at this hour. If any of the neighbors happen to be watching, they’ll see me and wonder what I am up to. I can’t risk that, not now when everything is already so precarious with emigration.

  There is nothing I want more than to have remained asleep until morning, when Shale will have returned. I want to un-see what I’ve seen, but I cannot. My heart pumps fast and furiously, and I know I won’t be able to fall asleep even if I try. Not without help.

  I go to the doorway of my bedroom and glance at my desk. Shale went in here to retrieve the Candy Glass. The only place he could be storing it is in my desk drawers. Not quite sure if I plan to go through with it, I stride toward my desk and open the top drawer. It is a mess in here; Shale was right. My desk functions as a catchall for papers and notices the government sends me. I haven’t actually sat down and gone through the mess in all the while I’ve been employed.

  I rummage quickly through the pell-mell stack of vouchers and receipts, but don’t spot a container where he might keep Candy Glass. I open the second drawer and perform the same quick search, and am just about to give up when my fingers strike the back of the drawer. The flimsy particle board shifts, and I feel something behind it where the wall should be.

  I pull the drawer out of its tracks and press on the particle board until it slides to the side. In the space behind it is a container about the size of a shoe box.