Rebel Sisters Page 12

  “I don’t remember being a child.” He squints at the kids skating on water. One of them splashes a large wave on a little boy whose hair is the color of wheat grain. “I know that before, I am little, and I am reaching up to take things from kitchen table. And I am standing on my toes to do it. But I am not remembering it.”

  Ify wants to tell him this is because he’s a synth and those memories weren’t his to begin with. But she restrains herself. Let him speak. Maybe this is part of his therapy.

  “I am singing song that I am hearing long long ago. But I am not remembering I am singing it. The only reason I know I’ve sung that song is that my sponsor recorded me singing it when I was newly adopted. It was soon after I’d arrived here. When I was in bed, I am hearing my own voice. It is Paige playing back my recorded voice. I am not remembering singing it. I am not remembering those words. But I know I sang them, because there is that recording.” His speech patterns are changing. Maybe more evidence of trauma exerting itself. Is he reverting?

  Ify watches him lift one arm and consider his wrist.

  “I know I was in the hospital, because Paige and Amy told me. And they’ve been taking care of me more than usual. And my body feels it. My body is telling me that I have been lying down for long long time.” He shakes his head. “But I am not remembering any of it.”

  Something niggles at the back of Ify’s brain. A hypothesis. A light shining a path to an answer. “Do you remember . . . do you remember being captured? And . . .” She heaves a large, nervous sigh. “And tortured?”

  He inclines his head toward Ify. “Did that happen to me?”

  She breaks his gaze and focuses on the teenagers playing on the water. “I . . . I don’t know.” An idea occurs to her. “Do you remember ever holding a gun?”

  He furrows his brow in concentration. “No.”

  “Do you remember my name?”

  When he looks up at her again, tears well in his eyes. “No.” His bottom lip quivers. He turns his gaze to his lap. “I am remembering that my name is Peter because that is what they are calling me.” He gestures with his head at Paige and Amy, still chatting with their neighbors. “But I don’t remember who is calling me that first. Who is giving me that name.” He sniffles. “I will never remember.” Something shifts in his jaw, and he stops crying. Tear streaks glisten on his cheeks. He looks at the teenagers laughing and playing. “I will not remember this either.”

  Ify wants to ask him about the girl in the refugee ward, whether he remembers connecting with her. She wants to ask if they were having a silent conversation, about food and family and where they came from.

  Whatever you downloaded is likely the source of the virus, she thinks.

  It might try to connect on its own.

  Breath catches in Ify’s throat. An entire ward filled with children. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, any number of whom could be cyberized. Any number of whom might even be synths. Any number of whom might have the entirety of their memories wiped away.

  CHAPTER

  18

  It is not difficult for me to be finding hole in fence that is surrounding junkyard. There is footprint of many many people going through here so that when I am seeing it, it is looking like single groove in ground like mark made by tire.

  I am slipping through and everything is smelling bad, like humans doing all of their living here. It is smelling like under Falomo Bridge but worse. And I am wondering if people are dying here too and they are being buried under metal.

  Some things are tall tall above me and are blocking out light from moon, but I am still seeing everything. And some pieces of metal are crunching beneath my feet and I am thinking these are maybe small computers or hard drives, and then I am seeing on the ground and hanging from windows sometimes arm or leg, and they are metal like mine are when I am peeling back the skin.

  I am searching and searching and I am hearing beep in my brain and I am seeing with camera in my mind certain pieces of metal and other pieces of metal and I am knowing what they are made of, what alloy they are being and what is their previous use. I am knowing this is being part of carbine rifle and I am knowing make and model and I am knowing this is part of undercarriage of spider mech and I am knowing this is piece of Bonder and this is arm and this is leg and this is broken braincase and—

  I freeze. It is like root from tree is coming from ground and wrapping around my ankles, then my legs and my whole body.

  I see it. It is being guarded by four soldier, and I am knowing their pattern of walking, and I am knowing how far each is going in each direction and where they are looking, and cone of light is forming in front of their face and I am knowing that this is their range of vision. I am thinking that I am knowing these thing because I am soldier once. But they are standing with their back to it, and even though it is night and even though moon is not shining on it, I am seeing it like it is daytime.

  Xifeng’s trailer.

  I am seeing the trailer and the four soldier guarding it, then my mind is emptying, and when I am waking up again, I am waking up covered in blood, and arm and leg and head is covering the grass like rubbish. I am not taking time to think about what happen or why I am covered in blood and there are no more soldier just pieces of them. I am just breaking the lock to the trailer with my elbow and hurrying inside and feeling the fresh cool air of the inside and closing my eyes because it is like feeling Xifeng whenever she is holding me during my epileptic shaking.

  I am sitting on metal floor and hugging my knees to my chest and blood is on my face and my fingers and covering my knees, and my fingers are slipping on my pants where they are holding them but I am sitting and rocking back and forth and closing my eyes and thinking of Xifeng and thinking it is being long long time since I am hearing her voice.

  When I am opening my eyes again, I am seeing around me stack and stack of hard drives.

  I am not sure how I am knowing but I am knowing that police or soldier or both is going to destroy all of this and I must save it. So I am taking cord from my neck and putting it in hard drive after hard drive and downloading the rememberings so that they are pouring like water into my brain. My brain is never filling, but I am sometime hearing voice many voice and sometime if I am closing my eye I am feeling sand between my toes or I am feeling big leaf SWISH SWISH on my face or I am putting my lips to lips of other girl or I am riding on the shoulder of man I am calling father.

  My eyes are opening fast fast when I hear voice outside.

  There is window and I am wiping it but it is making blood on it so I am using shirt and wiping blood and dust off window, and I am seeing far away soldier bringing out children who is looking like me and making them to fall on their knee and is lining them up. And these children are having collar around their neck and having restraint over their hands and their forearm. And I am looking closely and my mind is scanning them without me telling it to and I am seeing that they are having outlet like me at the back of their neck. And I am seeing under their skin that their bones glow blue like mine when I am looking inside myself sometime.

  Soldier behind them is raising their gun at the back of the child head and not waiting a moment or even speaking before pulling trigger and all of the child are falling dead.

  Then soldier are standing around and facing each other and joking behind their helmet and I am pressing my ear to window to hear them, and I am hearing them tell about child they are executing and calling them Ceasefire Children, then they are calling them synth and saying they are rubbish and I am hearing that they are looking for more of them. I am hearing them say extermination and Biafra and memory.

  And then, they are seeing me.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The Medical Committee sits before Ify like judges at a tribunal. The vaulted ceilings are painted with depictions from the Bible of moments of healing. Lazarus raised from the dead, someone’s hand reaching
out to touch the hem of the Christ’s garment, even the beginnings of the universe. The floor’s tiles glisten as though, every second, nanobots are hard at work giving them their extra sheen. The benches behind Ify are largely unoccupied, which seems odd to her, given what is at stake. If there were any sense of justice or concern beyond the very clinical, the committee members would have allowed the families of those affected by the widespread coma epidemic to this hearing. They would have publicized it. They would have distributed the reports—report after report—written by scientists, medical professionals, and political thinkers on why, all of a sudden, thousands of children have suddenly become unresponsive to treatment and seem to have cast themselves to death’s edge.

  But no. In the benches behind her sit Grace and a few other medical professionals, most of them Ify’s contemporaries and subordinates. Many of them are native Alabastrines, scattered fallen snowflakes amid the steel pews with wood overlay. And some of them, Ify knows, have resented her rise, how she has surpassed them in rank, how she already has assistant director in her title. How people are already calling her Doctor even though she has yet to take her licensing exam.

  The man at the center of the five committee members has the face of a stately middle-aged white man. He could pass for a legislator. Remove a few of the wrinkles from around his mouth and he could be any billionaire whose name is stamped on the side of a small Colony. This is the hospital director, Dr. Jacob Towne. Perhaps the only administrator who has ever looked favorably on Ify’s career. Ify replays her interactions with him in her head, him noticing her high marks early on, as well as her aptitude for science and technology, noting the fact that she spent her extracurricular time away from those kids who played around or got in trouble neglecting their studies and instead worked on ways to make computers smaller and smaller while maintaining their processing power and then integrating them into larger systems of computing, something that could revolutionize the medical industry. Then, armed with Towne’s letters of recommendation, there were the internships, the formal mentorship, then her choosing the medical track in school with his guidance.

  But, looking at him now, he has the demeanor of neither a mentor nor a father figure. He has the look of a judge willing to hand down a life sentence for what one would call a crime but others would call a mistake.

  One of the judges to the left of Towne, a man the lower half of whose face is swallowed by a gray beard, leans forward. His information pops up on Ify’s retinal display. Dr. Mar, head of neurology. “So. Internist Diallo. I’m sure you have read through the reports.” He makes a face like he is scrolling through them himself. And scrolling. And scrolling. “All of them.”

  “Yes, Dr. Mar.”

  “Any initial conclusions you’d like to share with the rest of the class?” The slight joking in his voice grates on Ify.

  She pulls up the report she prepared for this hearing. “We began our treatment by tracking down the earliest case of a patient displaying these symptoms.” She transmits a video file to the committee members, all of whom are cyberized. “Six years ago, a patient with these symptoms was deported to the island nation of Vanuatu.” At the raised eyebrows of several members in the committee, Ify continues. “At the time of that patient’s deportation, there was no island to go back to.”

  “So, what then? What happened?” Dr. Mar asks. “Did we just drop the patient in the ocean?”

  “There is no record of the patient after they left Alabastrine jurisdiction. Their whereabouts are unknown.”

  “Hmm.” Dr. Mar strokes his chin.

  A committee member to Director Towne’s right, whose face is fashioned to look unreasonably young, taps a stylus against the wooden bench in front of him. Dr. Langrishe, head of genetics. “I assume you have studied the country-of-origin data with regard to the affected patients? Is there any correlation between falling into a coma and your country no longer existing?”

  Ify does her best to maintain an even temper. What a basic question. Of course, this was one of the first questions she researched. “The initial outbreak of the disease seemed indiscriminate with regard to country of origin. One commonality regarding country of origin is that all of the affected seem to have come from countries that have experienced political turmoil within the past five years. War, violent change in leadership, government-sponsored repression, or some other sort of violent upheaval. Many of those countries of origin are still, in fact, experiencing these upheavals.”

  The one man not wearing a medical doctor’s uniform and instead wearing a boxy suit jacket leans back in his plush chair. With the fingernail of his pinky, he scratches the side of his nose. “Well, that’s rather the point of their being refugees, isn’t it.”

  Ify can’t tell if the comment is addressed to her or to Dr. Langrishe.

  “People tend not to swim for shore if their boat isn’t sinking.” He leans on his elbows. “Tell me, Internist.” An accent. French? “Do you believe that political turmoil in the countries of origin is the cause of this medical epidemic?”

  “I believe it is a proximate cause, yes. But not the trigger.”

  The man—he must be some sort of academic—raises his eyebrows. “Oh? Do continue.”

  “While there have been sporadic cases over the past five years, the epidemic started in earnest a month ago with the announcement of the government’s changed stance on migrants. Immediately following announcement of the policy, a number of families—many of whom had long been residents of Alabast—received notices of deportation. It is at this time that the disease became more widespread.”

  “Is this a hunger strike, then?”

  There are too many missing pieces for Ify to call it that or even something akin to that. How to tell this group of old white men that many among the population—an unknown number, in fact—might be synths and not human beings at all? How to tell them that many of the children in her care are not even subject to a single human rights protection under Alabastrine law? And where does the virus affecting Peter and the girl he connected to come into play?

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  The academic glances at the others, as though to finally include them in the dialogue. “Do we know if this is a virus? It seems contagious, does it not?”

  “Well,” says Dr. Langrishe. “We’ve all been in Alabast for how long now? I see no reason to suspect we haven’t been inoculated against whatever disease has taken these people.”

  Ify nearly sneers at the racism she hears in his words. Her fists clench at her side. “Among the patients are several from the icelands of the Caucasus on Old Earth. They are white as well.”

  Langrishe turns in his chair to look at Ify, one eyebrow raised, like he has just witnessed a dog trying to assemble a watch. “I was referring, Internist Diallo, to the palliative powers of citizenship.”

  Of course you were, Ify says to herself. “With your permission, sirs, I would like to continue treatment of the patients while investigating a potential solution to the epidemic. Before it spreads even further.”

  “I have some ideas on that front.” Towne’s voice doesn’t boom, but it reverberates throughout the entire room. Everyone hears it. Ify senses Grace startle behind her. “From my own research, I have noticed a preponderance of cases among recent African migrants. Specifically Nigerians.” His gaze grows sharp, as though he knows Ify is holding within her a secret to mysteries he wishes he could unlock. “There was war in your home country, yes?”

  Ify struggles not to show any emotion, any indication that the invocation of where she came from has as much effect on her as it does. “The war has ended, Director Towne.”

  “Indeed. But you know as well as I that wounds persist.”

  “Psychological trauma does necessitate treatment following the advent of the initial traumatic incident. And untreated, it can result in grave psychological and physiological harm to the patient. Yes, Dir
ector. I know this.”

  “And I am sure you can imagine the trauma of growing up during war, coming of age during a ceasefire, then having your life adversely impacted when that ceasefire ends.”

  Adversely impacted. Director Towne would go for such understatement. Ify knows, however, that there’s no malice in it. Still, resentment builds in her that the director has so directly confronted her about her past. But it takes her a moment to realize his point. When she does, her breath catches. The ceasefire. The ceasefire that Ify played a direct role in ending. The ceasefire she broke by—

  “Internist!” This from Langrishe.

  Ify snaps out of her trance. “Yes. Yes, sorry. Um.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. Get it together, get it together. Think about what’s in front of you. She raises her head, her eyes cleared, her heart rate slowed. “Yes, Director. I . . . it’s still rather fresh for me. My homeland.” Play into his stereotypes and the racism he thinks is so subtle, she tells herself. “Please. Continue.”

  “Well,” continues Langrishe. “What Director Towne was saying was that you would be the perfect candidate for such a mission.”

  “Mission?”

  Langrishe sighs loudly.

  Director Towne silently rebukes him, then turns to Ify. “Many of the afflicted refugees have come from Nigeria or the area immediately surrounding it. What we’re suggesting is a fact-finding mission. If the disease is coming from Nigeria—”

  “Director Towne,” she growls. Regret swims through her. The rest of the committee leans back in their chairs. Towne pauses. There isn’t the slightest hint of a smile on his face, no recognition of Ify’s moment of courage, no approval. But then he doesn’t look affronted either. Sheer expressionlessness.