5
Mere hundred-and-eight-acre state or not, Antonio was nowhere to be found. The apology for the missing hen would have to wait. I galloped back to the hospital to clean up—I’d told the staff I’d do it. Everington was back on the bed, lying on his side as usual, his hands tucked up in front of his face as though he were hiding behind them from the world, a broken chicken bone clasped in one. He must’ve been sucking on it when he fell asleep—getting the marrow out?
But the room…was spotlessly clean.
I went back out, where Snail informed me that no one else had been in, “Non, nul,” enjoying my astonishment.
Interesting. The man had always been very neat. Was he tidying his environment in unthinking reflex, or was there proper thought behind it? Well, it’d saved me a job. I raced homewards.
I’d actually reached our corridor when Unicorn appeared from the stairwell, saw me and let out a relieved breath.
“Margo, I was hoping to find you.” His upper class British voice sounded grim.
“Is something wrong?”
“Jon’s had some rather bad news. You know how with the moratorium all the Underground’s communications are flowing a bit easier and all sorts of updates are trickling in? Well, it just trickled in that…his sister was executed in Lincoln two years ago.”
“Oh no!” Jon’s sister had joined the Anchoresses of Our Lord, also known as the Prayer Warrioresses, who were an enclosed order that established convents behind enemy lines, as it were. Trouble was, sooner or later someone tended to figure out that there were more people living in a particular house than just the couple of lay sisters who came and went for groceries. So not a surprise, exactly, but still…
“I’ve got to relieve Snail,” Unicorn went on. “Jon’s gone to St. Peter’s…”
“I’ll go and see how he is.”
Unicorn made a speedy escape, and I hurried off to the basilica, heavy-hearted. Jon was in the pews near the dove-shaped tabernacle where it hung over the high altar. I sat beside him and touched his shoulder gently, making him raise his head. Beneath his sightless eyes his cheeks were damp.
“Jon?”
“Oh, hi Margo. You heard, then?”
“Unicorn just told me.”
“Oh. Right.” He wrapped his arms more tightly around himself. “I don’t know why I feel like this. I knew when she left we’d never meet again. In this life. Knew I’d never know when… Well, I thought I’d mourned for her already. I suppose…knowing… And now I’ve actually got to forgive them for what they…did.” His voice wobbled.
I put my arms around him and hugged him tightly. The mere fact that his sister was a nun would have made her guilty in the eyes of the EuroGov not merely of ‘Practicing Superstition,’ but of ‘Inciting and Promoting Superstition’. And that carried the highest penalty of all: Conscious Dismantlement. Like Uncle Peter, whose death I’d witnessed in its every last, agonizing detail. My heart ached in sympathy for her.
Anger flared too. How could they do this to people? No, Margo. I pushed the anger down. Remember Uncle Peter. He forgave them. And what had I told that journalist?
I had to let this go, like Jon.
“Where have you been?” snarled Bane, as soon as I’d shut the door. “You just ran off without a word! Been gone for hours! I could’ve been lying dead on the floor for all you care!”
“Why on earth would you be lying dead on the floor? You’re in perfectly good health.”
A book whacked into the wall five meters away.
“Perfectly good health?” Bane poked his fingers into his empty sockets and waggled them grotesquely. “This is your idea of perfectly good health?”
“Bane!” I went to retrieve the book. “You almost hit the plant! I wasn’t making light of your loss, for pity’s sake! I just meant, as far as falling down dead is concerned—”
“Like I’d care. And where the heck have you been?”
“Bane, calm down, I’m sorry I rushed off like that, it was stupid. But I’d have been back sooner if it wasn’t for… Well, Jon’s had some bad news.”
“You’ve been with Jon?”
“For a little while, yes. He just heard his sister was executed. Two years back.”
Bane frowned and was silent for a moment. “That’s a shame.”
“Well,” I tried to be positive, “She’s a martyr. In fact” —my positivity flagged—“it would have been…the worst…”
“Evil rats,” spat Bane, so fiercely I couldn’t help adding,
“Jon’s already trying to forgive them.”
“Huh. Well, if anyone can manage it, he can. Though I reckon you all need to get practicing. Decades and decades worth of forgiveness coming up, if we win. Like that reporter said. Do you really think it’s going to happen?”
If we managed to end injustice through a simple, democratic vote, we’d be following a path too little travelled. We must not allow ourselves to stray off that path into hatred and revenge.
“It has to happen,” I said firmly. Which meant I had to forgive the murderers of Anne Revan, Jon’s sister. Right here, right now. Surely I could do that? I mean, for all my empathy with her fate, I’d never even met her.
“So Jon’s sister is now a statistic,” said Bane bitterly, flopping limply back onto the sofa. His voice came, muffled by cushions. “This day officially sucks.”
“Bane.” I went around the table; knelt and put a hand on his shoulder. “Bane, I am sorry I went off like that. I was kicking myself afterwards. But I figured it out, you see. Mr. Everington’s been eating whatever he can catch raw; that’s how he survived.”
“Yay for him,” said Bane blackly. “Tells me where I stand in the scheme of things, doesn’t it? Blogging, church, Mr. Everington, Jon, Bane. So glad you can fit me in somewhere.”
“Bane, don’t be silly—”
“Am I?”
“Yes! Look…” I checked my watch. “I’m sorry, but we need to hurry up—we’ve got to go to the cafeteria for dinner. I have to own up to stealing a chicken.”
Bane twisted over to scowl in my direction, curiosity getting the better of him. “What’d you want with a chicken?”
“Fed it to the Ma…to Mr. Everington.”
“Raw?”
So he had been listening. “And with feathers on. Catch your own.”
“Bet the hospital staff loved that.”
“Poppy fainted.”
“She would.” He’d had plenty of time to get acquainted with all of them.
“Yeah, well, it was all rather, um, feral.”
“Gory, you mean. Well, that’s nature, isn’t it? Look, go to the cafeteria, I’m not hungry.”
“Bane—”
“Oh, clear off!”
I stood up abruptly. So much for the chicken story having calmed him down. “Look, I’ll go and see if Antonio’s there, then I’ll come back and cook us something nice.”
“I said, I don’t want anything. You going to force-feed me?”
I turned and marched out of the apartment again.
Antonio was just finishing his meal when I entered the cafeteria. “One of your hens has been eaten by a hospital patient,” I told him, well past mincing my words by now. “So you haven’t lost one. I’d have asked but I couldn’t find you, and the guy’s really ill, so it couldn’t really wait.”
Antonio, gaping at me, muttered something about egg-layers and, to my horror, began to run through a list of names, with descriptions.
“Antonio, I’m really sorry.” He seemed so distressed, I felt bad about it, despite my foul mood. “I honestly didn’t know they had names. But, uh, I don’t know, so, perhaps you should go and look for yourself…?”
Phew! Antonio rushed off, presumably to do just that.
“You could’ve put that more tactfully.” Eduardo came up beside me.
“You’re telling me about tact?”
“It’s a first, I know.”
“I really didn’t mean to hurt his feelings. I never imagined… He’s got about a hundred hens! I didn’t want to take one of Father Mario’s doves.”
“I’m not saying it wasn’t a rational choice, Margaret. Anyway, is Jon all right?”
“I think so. I mean, he’s upset, of course.”
“Umm. Bane?”
“Fine.”
“Uh-huh? Well. See you around.” He headed off, and Sister Krayj and Sister Mari, an African friend, came to sit with me.
“Is it true?” Sister Krayj’s eyes glinted with amusement. “You really fed a live chicken to the Major?”
So…actually, I’d spent the day trying to figure out how to feed a man who’d spent his life keeping reAssignees imprisoned ready for the dismantlers’ blade, to say nothing of keeping the Facility secure and operational for all those executions of people like Uncle Peter…and Jon’s sister. Huh.
I focused on telling them the story, which amused Sister Krayj mightily, former Resistance commander that she was, and rather shocked Sister Mari.
“Are you two going to night prayer later?” I said as soon as I’d finished, wanting to change the subject. “I think I’ll go tonight, I only need one more token, and I can get my first Office book.” There were four Divine Office books and to get your own physical copies, you collected a token at every office you attended until you had the required number. Stopped short-term residents carrying the books away with them. One could also collect Mass tokens for a missal or put either kind of token towards a physical copy of the Holy Scriptures—but to my guilty delight Pope Cornelius had already given me a Bible to help with the blog.
Sister Mari smiled. “Yes, we’re going, but don’t you want to get back to Bane?”
“He was having a lie down when I left.” Besides, I really did need some prayer time.
2 months, 10 days
Thinking about what will happen if we lose the vote is something I’m trying not to do. But you should. All of you. Especially all you pro-Sorting bloggers. Think about things going on as they are, on and on, for the rest of your lives, your children’s lives, their children’s lives, with every reAssigned child’s blood on your hands.
Of course, if I were you, I imagine I’d be trying not to think about that either.
Margaret Verrall—blog post, The Impatient Gardener’
“Look, we’ve found out what he’ll eat,” I told Doctor Frederick the next day, “I don’t see that I need to keep coming. I’ve hardly had a meal with Bane for a week.”
I’d just delivered Mr. Everington’s dinner, and he was quite obviously eating on his own now. Out of danger. My job was done, and thank goodness for that.
Doctor Frederick frowned. “Margaret, I can understand how you feel, but the fact remains that the patient only responds to you.”
“Responds!” I snorted. “Big response!”
Food eaten, he just lay there, eyes closed to a thin slit, not responding to anything I said. But watching me.
“It is, comparatively. Look, every psychologist and counselor in the state has gone in there and tried to get him to speak to them—or give even the slightest sign they exist—but nothing. Someone else can take him his meals but in my capacity as his doctor I must ask that you continue to visit him, at least once a day. You really are our best chance of getting through to him.”
He was right, I could see that. With a sigh, I nodded and headed for Jon’s apartment. But, passing a crucifix set into a niche in the wall, my frustration suddenly boiled over. I dropped onto the kneeler in front of it, clenching my hands together in something of a death grip.
“Why, Lord?” The words slipped through my gritted teeth. “I mean, which part of can’t deal with what I’ve got on my plate already was so unclear?”
I seethed in silence for a moment, as though waiting for Him to answer the question there and then. But as I slowly focused on the crucifix—on the Man in agony there—my anger died. I wasn’t being asked to hang on a cross. I wasn’t lying on a gurney. I wasn’t blind or a widow. Lucas Everington was a fellow human being in more than usual need. Our Lord had died for him as well. What was I complaining about?
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Your will, Lord.” I pressed a kiss to the carved feet and went on my way.
Jon and Bane were the only ones in the sitting room when I reached Jon’s apartment.
“Hi, Bane; hi, Jon. How’s your morning been?” They were poring over a book that contained no words but seemed to have a terrible case of measles.
“Hi, Margo. Bane’s been helping me translate this book. I think we’ve nearly cracked it.”
“Oh, that’s the Braille book, right?” I ran my fingers over the little dots. “Gosh, that looks difficult.”
“Oh, not really. You’ve just got to learn what each letter feels like and then it’s no different to the normal alphabet. Right, Bane?”
Bane nodded half-heartedly. “It’s really not that bad.”
“Well, I’ve got a new book too! My first Office book,” I waved it proudly—but pointlessly—at them. “Finally. And they even had one with English on the facing side.” They both made polite we’re happy for you noises. Fair enough; it didn’t mean much to them. “So have you eaten yet?” I asked.
“There’s something in the oven,” said Jon. “The Major behave himself?”
“Ate his raw chicken cold, thank goodness. We could hardly chuck live animals in there all the time.”
“The press would just love that, wouldn’t they?” Jon’s smile was only slightly subdued. He picked up his stick, stood and headed for the kitchenette, stopping to bang on Unicorn’s door. “Lunchtime, U, wakey-wakey.” Unicorn must’ve been on a night shift.
I almost got up to help, but Bane was sitting there so quietly. I sat in Jon’s vacated seat and tried to drape my arm casually around his shoulders rather than grabbing like a limpet. “I’m not going to have to take Everington his food anymore, so I’ll be able to eat with you again.” I tried to put how happy this made me into my voice.
Bane just frowned faintly. “Oh. Good.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
Bane rubbed irritably at a glass eye, as U came out in his dressing-gown, neatly folded clothes under his arm, smiled a greeting and disappeared into the bathroom.
“I am pleased, Margo.” Bane slipped his arm around me in return and gave me a quick squeeze. “I am pleased.”
My heart lifted, but only a little. Was there no way I could raise his spirits anymore?
We were all finishing a tasty home-cooked meal when there was a knock at the door. Unicorn went to answer it. “Oh, hello, sir. Do you need me?”
“No, Jack. I’m here to see Margaret.”
No, is Margaret here? My location was tracked on the security cameras these days.
“Hi, Eduardo.” Always incredibly hard to read, but he looked…excited? But a little tense. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all.” He held up a piece of paper, rather triumphantly. “This is an invitation for you to speak at a rally in Monaco.”
My heart went thunk in my chest.
Monaco. Clinging to the very edges of the EuroBloc itself.