Nona the Ninth, page 1
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for pT
♦
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
GUEST LIST
(as transcribed by C. Hect.)
Dogs to invite to birthday party
Brown one by the fish shop, average sized, four legs
Stop It, name assumed, lies under counter at dairy, red colour, big sized, four legs
White-and-black one seen once in the park, average sized, tail curled twice, three legs
Noodle, king of dogs in secret, white-adjacent, small sized, six legs
Spotted beach dog, often on beach, large sized, huge ginger eyebrows, three legs
Members of gang to invite to birthday party
Hot Sauce
Honesty
Born in the Morning
Beautiful Ruby
Kevin
Teachers
The Angel?
Blood of Eden
Crown Him with Many Crowns (No.—C.)
The Captain, maybe (Not possible.—C.)
Cell Commander We Suffer and We Suffer, although actually she might be Wing Commander, I don’t know which it is (It’s both, and no.—C.)
And you three (Good to know.—C.)
One for the Emperor, first of us all;
One for his Lyctors, who answered the call;
One for his Saints, who were chosen of old;
One for his Hands, and the swords that they hold.
Two is for discipline, heedless of trial;
Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile;
Four for fidelity, facing ahead;
Five for tradition and debts to the dead;
Six for the truth over solace in lies;
Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies;
Eight for salvation no matter the cost;
Nine for the Tomb, and for all that was lost.
You told me, Sleep, I’ll wake you in the morning.
I asked, What is morning? and you said,
When everyone who fucked with me is dead.
When everyone we loved has gone or fled,
That’s morning. Empty’s just another word for clean.
Let’s put this first-draft dream of mine to bed.
In the appointed hour
I’ll pull up your sheets. I’ll kill the light,
Lie down beside you; die; and sleep the night.
This time will be the time we get it right:
Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long;
Our graves will be less deep, our lies less true.
You held aloft the sword.
I still love y
JOHN 20:8
IN THE DREAM, he told her the words about where he took his degrees, his postdoc, his research fellowship. They were his noise and not really for consumption. More like meditation; like even his mouth knew the pointlessness of it, and just wanted to recite. Dilworth. Otago. Auckland. Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.) Then another year abroad, where he got the grant and met the men who would make things happen. Special pleading with the New Zealand government and Asia-Pacific Environmental, at his suggestion, then back to the facility outside Greytown. They mocked it up to look like a freezing works. We all thought that was funny, he said.
He said: We just wanted to save you. You were so sick.
He said, It was me and A— and M— at the start. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the money for a bigger team; we were simply the only ones capable of what they were asking. M— for medical, A— because he was the glycerol-6 genius. He could’ve gone anywhere but he stuck with me … and thank God for that, because he handled all the shareholders. I was there for everything, but those meetings were like dying. I’ll never love meetings. C— was brought on by the oversight execs for contracts, you know, checks and balances, but look where that ended up, she was on our side before the first year was over …
He said: You have to understand that right up until that last year we believed they were going to see it through. We knew the plan could work. The Mark-R cryo cans had room for eleven billion people, easy. We’d got the procedure down to five hours per person with a trained team of four. Assuming an existing medical degree, that training could take as little as weeks, manpower wasn’t an issue if we started now. Sure, the maternity stuff wasn’t totally ironed out, but we were nearly there, and the packing was perfect. Of course they bitched about the timeline, and they bitched about the money, but they were always going to bitch about the money. Our rule was, nobody knowingly left behind.
He said: Even when they were constructing the other ships we got told straight-up that it was nothing, they were being sent off to the Kuiper installation to be on point for the full-population evac. IAF were involved, Pan-Euro Astronautics gave it their blessing, it was all so benign. We even lent them G— at the time because they wanted to talk about coating. M— said that she didn’t like it, she smelled a rat, and you know what I said? You know what I told her? I said, Don’t let it get to you and I said, Don’t get paranoid! I fucking looked her in the eye and said, This is the way we’re getting out, and you know that the moment half a dozen trillionaires realise it, they’re going where the oxygen is. That’s what I always told her. They’re going where the oxygen is. Wealthy men head for the exit.
He said: When they called me up and said the cryo project was over she looked at me and she just said, There they go, John.
In the dream they were sitting on the beach. He had made a fire from damp driftwood. The smoke made a black mark where it touched the tarpaulin, at the top, where it was stretched over their heads. The ash was still falling. It made them sick, but only ever for a little while. Anything that hurt them only ever hurt them for a little while.
In the dream, she was sat next to a bundle of meat he’d cut, thighs mostly, for when they felt hungry, which happened rarely and always simultaneously. When it did happen they would be side by side, eating until their stomachs were sore. They would drink from the sea like dogs.
He said after a pause: You know the worst part? She cried. She and A— both cried. In each other’s arms, like babies. They were so fucking scared. And I was right there, and I couldn’t do piss. Everything I was and everything I had done, and I couldn’t do a damned thing.
He was quiet for a long time. The sea ate at the sand. The waves glowed a little even though there was no sunshine, only thick yellow cloud.
She prompted: So what did you do?
He said: A damned thing, didn’t I.
She said: When is the part where you hurt me?
He said: Soon. It’s coming up.
She said: I still love you.
And in the dream he rubbed his temple with his thumb and said: “You always say that, Harrowhark.”
DAY ONE
REGARDING NONA—HOT SAUCE IS WATCHFUL—THE CITY HAS A BAD DAY—NONA GETS A BEDTIME STORY—FIVE DAYS UNTIL THE TOMB OPENS.
1
LATE IN THE YEAR of nobody she really thought about that much in particular, the person who looked after her pushed the button on the recorder and said, “Start.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and began in a practised hurry:
“The painted face is on top of me. I’m in the safe water—I’m lying down, I think. Something’s pushing at me. The water goes over my head and it’s in my mouth. It goes up my nose.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“How do you feel?”
“I like it. I like the water, I like her hands.”
“Her hands?”
“They’re the things around me—maybe they’re my hands.”
The pencil scratched loudly on the paper. “How about the face?”
“It’s the picture face.” The sketch they’d made for her, the one locked in the secret drawer where they put all the really interesting things, like cigarettes and the fake identification cards and all the money they said wasn’t legal tender and couldn’t be used. The pencil obligingly scribbled its way across the page. It was hard not to open her eyes and look at the person opposite, so she amused herself by imagining what she would see: tanned sure hands on the notebook, head bent over it, the fringe pinned up waiting for haircut day. Imagining was better than looking anyway, because the battery lamp wasn’t switched on.
She said, “What are you writing?” because the pencil was still going. Most of the time the writing was interesting, but some of the time it was just boring descriptions of how her face was changing when she talked, like 0.24—Smiled.
“Incidentals. Keep going, you woke up late.”
“Can you change the alarm song? I can sleep through ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ now.”
“Sure. I’ll drop a wet sponge on your face instead. Keep thinking.”
She kept thinking.
“The arms go really tight around me. They’re her arms, definitely.”
“Is she familiar?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“How do you know they’re ‘her’?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happens after that?”
“Don’t know.”
A long pause. “Anything else?”
“No. It’s gone already. Sorry, Camilla.”
“Not a problem.”
Camilla Hect depressed the button with a bright and final plastic clack. This was the cue, so she exploded into action. The rule was that she had to lie still and concentrate as hard as she could from the time that the button went down to the time when the button went up. When it went up, pyjamas came off; under the pale, wavering light of the tiny torch taped to Cam’s clipboard, she undressed and dressed herself at the same time, which required a lot of contortions. She wrestled out of her nightshirt with her arms and stretched on her trousers using her ankles, in the move that Camilla called worm with problems.
Being the worm with problems did not worry her. Just being able to dress herself was charming. In the bad old days she used to have to be helped even with the nightshirt, because she couldn’t be trusted not to get stuck with it halfway over her head and get all hot and upset from claustrophobia. It was incredibly important that she not get upset like that again. She had only ever had two tantrums in her life, but it would be humiliating to have a third. Her fingers fumbled a little with the vest, but she was fine pulling on the UV sand shirt, even with arranging the cuffs, which could be complicated and if you got it wrong you had to stand in the bath to take it off again in showers of yellow dirt. The canvas jacket with the toggle closers didn’t slow her down at all. When she finished Cam said, “Good. Quick,” and she was so exhausted from the praise she collapsed back on the mattress.
“I’m doing my stretches now,” she announced hastily, before she could be told to do anything else. She swung her legs upward until her feet were pointed flat at the ceiling, and as she’d been taught, rotated her toes from that angle to circle around the water stains she could see on the plaster. The winter wet was over, but the huge patch of black damp in the corner hadn’t dried up yet. She had told everyone that she should really talk to the landlord, but it had been communicated to her that if she could even find the landlord she would get a gold medal.
Camilla had not said anything in approval or censure, so she said more emphatically, “My legs are really tight today,” in the immortal hope that Cam would take her ankles in her hands and walk them forward. Cam would do this until her knees were touching her chest and her hamstrings were stretched so taut she was convinced they were about to go ping and snap. It was the best thing in the world. If she was really lucky Camilla would rub her calves, which were always sore from walking, or even sometimes her back, though that was usually after practise. But Camilla was busy writing and did not take the bait no matter how much she wiggled her toes. She even repeated herself, and added, “Wow, very tight, goodness gracious,” in a slightly louder voice.
Cam said, not looking, “Walk it off.”
“I think I might have a cramp. I think I can’t move.”
“Guess you can’t go to school, then.”
She knew when she was beaten. “I’m up, I’m up.”
To prove how up she was, she arched her back and rocked up to stand, having only pushed herself up a little bit with her arms: she’d been practising, and when she straightened up with only the slightest wobble she was delighted. But all Camilla said was, “Don’t hyperextend,” crushingly, and worse, “Go see if Pyrrha needs help with breakfast.”
“Okay. She’s probably done though, we took forever. Maybe the food went cold,” she added, misty with desire.
Camilla briefly looked up from the notebook with a critical eye at her bedhead, which had not been improved with stretches or jumping, and she added: “Get her to do your hair. I’m going to talk.”
“Oh, good! I’ll time.”
“I’ve got a clockwork.”
“Cam, that sounds strange, nobody here calls it a clockwork, they say watch.”
“Good to know. Stop trying to miss breakfast.”
She hedged cunningly. “At least please can you write down, I love you, Palamedes, please, from me? At least write, I love you, Palamedes, from Nona.”
This Camilla Hect did unblushingly, though Nona had to take it on trust. When she squatted down on her haunches, following the strokes the pencil made, she could not make out a single word. She could not even make out a letter, not of any alphabet she’d ever been shown, which interested everyone except herself. But you could always trust Cam. When the pencil stopped and the message was obviously discharged Nona leant into her and said, “Thanks. I love you too, Camilla,” and: “Do you know who I am yet?”
“Someone who’s late for breakfast,” said Camilla.
But as Nona straightened, she turned and smiled her rare brief smile, the one like the sun catching the glitter of a car on the motorway. Cam smiled so seldom now that Nona immediately felt it was going to be a good day.
It wasn’t any lighter in the kitchen. There was thin blue light coming through the joins in the curtains, and an orange glow from the worn-out hot plate mostly blocked by the other person she lived with. There was a baby wailing in morning-related outrage a few apartments away, so Nona walked on the balls of her feet to not add to the noise. The people underneath hated it if you walked loudly, and Pyrrha said they had militia links and not to piss them off because they were also hungover ninety percent of the time. This was unfair, because the person above them never took their shoes off inside, which surely meant they were allowed to complain about that. But Pyrrha said they shouldn’t piss them off because they were a cop. Pyrrha called it the shit sandwich. Pyrrha always seemed to know everything about everybody.
“All done? Good timing,” said Pyrrha, without turning around.
Pyrrha was holding a can of spray-on oil whose nozzle she directed neatly into the pan, where she wiped the pale froth around with a spatula. She was wearing pyjama pants and a string vest and no shirt, so the orange glow of the hot plate ring lit up all the scars on her wiry arms. She was feeling around for the breakfast things in the cupboard with her other hand, so Nona came and took the mesh basket and started counting out plates for her. “Is that pikelet mix?” she said.
“Get bowls. It’s eggs,” said Pyrrha.
Up close Nona could smell the spray-on oil and watch Pyrrha agitate a fork in a beaker of violently orange liquid, radioactively orange even in the dark, before tipping it into the pan to sizzle. Yellow lacework immediately formed where it splashed against the hot edge. Nona replaced the plates with two chipped bowls, and Pyrrha said, “Doesn’t that school of yours teach counting?”
“Oh, but Pyrrha, it’s so hot. Can’t I have something cold?”
“Sure. Leave them to get cold.”
“Yuck, that’s not what I meant.”
“The eggs aren’t optional, kiddie. How’s the dreams?”
“Same as normal,” said Nona, reluctantly taking another bowl. “I wish I could dream something different for once. Do you dream, Pyrrha?”
“Sure. Just last night I dreamed I had to give a briefing, but I wasn’t wearing pants and my backside was hanging out,” said Pyrrha, hacking the shocking orange curds into clumps with the edge of the spatula. During a pause in Nona’s gurgles of mirth, she added solemnly, “It was no fun, my child. I knew I’d be okay so long as I was hiding behind the podium, but I didn’t know what I’d do once I had to sit down again. Die, I guess.”
“Are you being serious or joking with me?” Nona demanded, once this fresh pleasure had subsided.
“Deadly serious. But go put another mark under ass joke anyway.”
Nona was happy enough to get up from the table and cross to the big sheet of brown paper tacked up on the wall; to take the pencil and wait for Pyrrha to say, “One higher, one left, stop right there,” so she could make a blobby tally mark.
