The New Girl (Downside) (31 page)

She hurries out, so overcome with relief that she sags against the wall, barely able to believe that she’s made it. She hears the lift door shut behind her, then makes herself walk
forward.

The passageway ends at a grey door, a rusty metal sign on it reading: ‘Trespassers will be corrected.’

Ignore the signs
.

She pushes through it, emerges at the bottom of a stairwell, the kind of dusty, piss-stinking space found in parking lots. Her muscles scream as she ascends the stairs, but she ignores the
agony, keeps on going, loses count of the number of flights, is hyperventilating when she reaches a door at the top. Thank God. She’s expecting to step out into sunlight, but instead she
emerges into a low, brick-walled tunnel.

She’s now so worn out that she doesn’t even attempt to wipe away the exhausted tears and mucus soaking her face. She crawls through it, reaches yet another door. Scrambles to her
feet, grabs a slippery brass handle, turns it, and stumbles out into a room.

This can’t be.

She knows this room. Recognises the row of jars containing desiccated insects – the rat skeleton that’s now swathed in a shroud of black ants. But... How can she be here? No.
No
. The last of her strength ebbs out of her legs.
This is it
, she thinks, as she collapses to her knees. She hears – but doesn’t feel – the dull clunk of her
head hitting the floor.

It’s time.

Penter acknowledges the Terminal Ward drone’s respectful greeting and walks towards the harvesting room. She looks through the round window behind which Father is strapped into the
recycling chair, stabilising fluid pumping from a drip into his arm.

She touches the node at the back of her own head. The clinic has still not taken her for her penetration renewal. She has missed three cycles now, and the shunt hole is even beginning to seal
over. When she woke today, she had a message from Cardineal Phelgm which informed her that she is to return upside; perhaps this is why a renewal is not deemed necessary for her. Penter takes it as
a vote of confidence by senior Administration. They trust her enough to discharge her duties upside for extended periods and remain in regard even without the shunt.

Who knows? Perhaps she will not undergo another penetration renewal until she is recycled. Her new role as Head of Upside Scouting and Reconnaissance is a permanent position, now that the pilot
phase has proved a success. Clone projects will be rolled out in several nodes and she will oversee the many family units that will be assigned to precincts in nodes all over the upside. Her
fingers ache pleasurably from the hours she’s spent initialling and signing the requisite documents and contracts, and every nerve ending in her skull is crackling with a new emotion:
excitement.

She didn’t hesitate when Cardineal Phelgm offered her the position, and somehow managed to hide her felicitation and surprise. As she stood to attention in front of his desk all thoughts
of the troubling aspects of upside life – SKY, the concrete, the bloodletting, the dangerous vehicles – were forgotten. All she could think about was the taste of fresh ready beans on
her tongue. She had not expected this – did not think that after Father was caught playing she would have been considered for another upside position, especially not a primo promotion!
Perhaps it is because she dealt with that brown educator with such alacrity. Perhaps it is because she dealt with Father’s indiscretions so efficiently.

As she requested, Jane has been assigned to her unit. She knows she can depend on Jane. She is a calm and adaptable halfpint, proven most recently by her primo relations with the damaged brown.
If anyone can keep her composure for an extended period in the field without the aid of shunts and calming medications, it is Jane.

She has only one matter to conclude before she searches out a new precinct.

One final decision to make.

Father’s eyes are shut, but as she gazes at him, they open and stare straight into hers. Something sighs deep inside her; she has forgotten how scenic he is. Blissful love, she thinks.
According to the browns, it makes the world rotate.

Father has agreed to a corrective penetration which will smother his disregardful urges. But for how long? When it wears off, will he still want to play? Will he still want to collect facsimiles
of brown carcasses? She is not sure. Why is it that even without a penetration renewal, she feels no need to play, to meddle, to collect unauthorised upside artefacts? Is playing a predisposition a
person is vatted with? Some say that Players are rotten, that they are vatted suboptimally, with an irreparable urge to disrupt order. If this is true, then it is no wonder that Father was so
enamoured with the upside and his karking collection. If Players were allowed their way, the world would become just like the upside, like a show on SKY.

She personally delivered his collection to the incinerator.

She steps into the harvesting room and approaches Father’s recycling chair. If she wanted, she could reach out and stroke his skin.

‘Father,’ she says.

His gaze does not waver. ‘Mother.’

‘I am not Mother,’ Penter says, remembering their first disregardful encounter in the television room back at the precinct. It feels far away, as if it happened many periods ago.
‘Here, my name is Penter Ulliel, Head of Upside Scouting and Reconnaissance.’

He smiles. She is not sure if it is tender or mocking. ‘Apologies, Penter Ulliel. Here,
I
am Varder Batiss.’

‘Why did you collect those artefacts?’ Penter blurts. She knows that her features betray her ongoing thought-seep.

He closes his eyes, shivers as a shot of fluid floods down the drip tube. When he opens them again, they are cool, distant. ‘I was curious, Penter Ulliel. The anatomical fakery and...
birth interested me.’

Penter’s not satisfied. Curiosity is not an answer. She recalls the educator’s words. ‘Were you looking for... for an outlet, Varder Batiss?’

He barks a laugh. ‘An outlet, Penter Ulliel? An outlet for what?’

Love, she thinks, but doesn’t say. She turns away. She wonders how she would feel if he had said that it
was
love that he was searching for. That the facsimiles he collected were
an outlet for this emotion, like that meddling educator had suggested.

She wonders how she would feel if he had asked
her
to be an outlet.

She wonders if she will listen to the ache in her chest, which is at war with her intellect.

If she relents, he will be Father again. Cardineal Phelgm made this clear. If she chooses to include him in the new project unit then he will be Father and she will be Mother. They’ll be a
nucleated family again.

And if she does not relent, he will be recycled.

It is up to her.

It is time to make her choice.

Ryan wakes up to a familiar sound: canned laughter and a tinny line of upbeat music. It’s an American sitcom and for a moment he thinks he’s back home. Really home,
with Alice and Karin, and that time has somehow bounced backwards again to before the whole mess started.

But the potato-sack smell of the sheets and the dull artificial lighting hit him at the same time as the pain in the back of his head. He can’t remember how long it’s been since
he’s seen the sun. He’s a Johannesburger, bred on sunlight, and anything more than two days of rain sends him into a deep depression. It’s been longer than that down here.

The positivity and peace of the last few days – however long he’s been here; what they call ‘periods’ down here, to avoid the natural, light-related connotations of
circadian rhythms – have deserted him, he realises as he hauls his body over the edge of the bed. Then he remembers what has happened to him. He puts his hands to his devastated crotch and
tries to shake himself awake from the nightmare, but he’s already awake. He’s sitting at the side of a bed in a room that’s not his.

He begins to scream, and there’s something satisfying about the rip in his body, and he screams some more.

A little girl comes through the bedroom door. She tilts her head and curls her lips at him. She doesn’t pause, just comes straight up and presses something against his neck.

Ryan is eating porridge at the breakfast nook. His body feels a little bruised, his bones ache. He tries to stretch himself straight.

‘Are you optimal, Mr Ryan?’ Jane asks.

‘I felt uncomfortable in the night. I didn’t sleep well.’

‘You had memories this morning,’ she says.

‘Really?’ Ryan asks. ‘About what? Did I tell you?’

‘No, but you were shouting. I sedated you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You are due for a penetration renewal today. That will solve your discomfort.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘How do I arrange that?’

‘Just go to the on-shift clinic at the Academy. Level H.’

‘Okay.’

Ryan has the sense that something should be worrying him, but he can’t place what it might be. Why look for things to worry about? he asks himself. If I’m feeling peaceful, why
question it?

‘Happy dispatch, Mr Ryan!’ Jane announces. ‘Penter Ulliel has invited me onto a new upside project. We will be repeating the Encounters operation in a new school. Penter Ulliel
admired my role in the pilot project and has asked me to reprise it.’

She’s as happy as Ryan’s ever seen her and it warms him. ‘Great. Well done,’ he says. ‘You’ll have the chance to get fresh fruit and vegetables again.
I’m sure you’ll enjoy that.’

‘Yes, and to look at the sky and the creatures,’ she bubbles. Ryan can tell she’s imagining a future full of travel. He feels proud.

But then her face falls.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I will regret you, Mr Ryan. If I am to join the unit permanently, I will not see you.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ he says. ‘You must do what makes you happy. I’m not going to stand in your way. I’ll be here when you come back... I suppose.’

‘We can amble to the Academy together this shift,’ Jane says, working up her cheer again. She gets up and goes to the bathroom and, as she walks away, something discomforting nudges
at his mind. He looks at the shape of her body in the Academy uniform and the nudge pushes him harder.

He looks back down at his porridge, and then an older memory surfaces. Alice used to love instant oats, the peach-flavoured ones. The bits of fruit in it were actually flakes of dried apple
saturated with peach flavour and dyed salmon pink. He didn’t tell her.

He was dreaming about Alice last night, wasn’t he? He misses her. Perhaps that memory is trying to talk to him. Maybe that’s what this sense of dread is trying to communicate. The
penetration renewal might make him peaceful, but what if it also makes him forget? He’s willing to forget a lot, but not Alice.

‘I’m not sure exactly how it works around here,’ he starts when Jane returns, ‘but what if...’ He knows he’s manipulating her, and he feels bad. He knows what
she wants and he’s going to use her needs to suit his own purposes. It comes so naturally to him. Is this who he’s always been?

‘Yes, Mr Ryan?’

‘What if... Do I have to pay off my debt by tutoring? What if I came to work with Penter Ulliel. And you? Would that discharge my debt?’

‘Mr Ryan! What a primo notion. I will ask her at our next meeting. She may be able to talk to the bond administrator.’

The poor girl doesn’t realise that he’s cheating her. Her friendship is his best chance – likely his only chance – of getting upside again. Once he’s there,
he’ll just disappear. He’ll go back to Alice, and they will never find him. Doesn’t he teach that about the ethos of Upside Relations? They avoid conflict and detection at all
costs.

The shunt hole in the back of his head is throbbing weakly, sending short sparks into his brain as he thinks this. It’s nothing worse than the zaps he’s had every time he’s
quit his mood-stabilising drugs. But he knows that whatever they’ve implanted there is trying to assert its control and is trying to reach in and shut down these seditious thoughts of his.
It’s essential not to get the penetration renewed: it’s only because it’s due that he’s managed to conceive of this plan and, peace or no peace, he intends to see it
through. He is going to return to his daughter.

When they get to the lifts, Jane scans them open. There are no buttons in this lift; it just takes them where they’re scheduled to go. Which, for Ryan, is Level H.

‘Felicitous renewal, Mr Ryan, and enjoy your shift,’ Jane says. She waves in her tentative way, lifting her palm halfway and wriggling her fingers, like she’s learning a
foreign code. She is. People don’t wave here, Ryan’s noticed; it’s an upside affectation.

The doors slide closed in front of her and Ryan gets the sudden sense that he’s alone, that he’s beyond help. The walls of the corridor seem to compress in on him and the lights seem
to dim.

It’s all in his head, he thinks, and the only answer is the grin of the ubiquitous institutional clown on the sign opposite the lift. ‘Level H’ is all the sign says. The
corridor’s carpet has a disorienting pattern of honeycombed hexagons in orange against burgundy, and Ryan is mesmerised as he watches the pattern writhe off like an optical illusion along the
span. Again, he gets the discomforting feeling that this whole place is a stage set hurriedly slapped together just for his benefit. There’s no listing of offices or departments, but still
it’s evident where Ryan is supposed to go. The clown points a bulbous gloved finger along the long corridor to Ryan’s left, and unadorned arrows punctuate the wall as it disappears to
the vanishing point.

If that’s where he’s going to get a drill stuck into his head and false thoughts loaded into it and his memories erased, that’s the direction he won’t be going, thank you
very much. He scans his gel tag over the lift’s call button, but it answers by glowing red and emitting a bloop of failure. An ‘E’ flashes briefly on the display in the middle of
the button.