New Worlds, Old Ways Read online

  She crawled back down. Step after step. Stopping when the terror of the ravaging wind and shaking turbine grew too much, starting when she pushed through the fear. At the bottom, she hurried to the lever and pulled it.

  The blades up above spun. In fits at first. Then going so fast she couldn’t make them out.

  “See?” She said to her doubt. She smiled, rested her hands on her small hips. “I get um wukking again! I do everyt’ing he want.”

  Something in her wanted to stay here. Perhaps head down the other side of the hill towards the shattered buildings half hidden in debris and sand. There were only so many pretty places in the magazine. Perhaps there were more behind the horizon of dust and ash and wind-eaten ruins that fenced this world in. It wasn’t like Father would miss her.

  But no.

  She would continue cooking, fixing, cleaning, looking pretty. He couldn’t stay silent forever.

  Ararimeh Aiyejina

  Past Imperfect

  Trinidad & Tobago

  She stared at the withered, mousy-looking husk of a man who stood outside the door to her new office. A pathetic, crooked shell of a human being, buried in layers of rags that looked too heavy for his frail frame. Even amongst the stubborn dregs of humanity, he seemed a hopeless case. If he was here looking for help she could offer no miracles.

  Then recognition dawned. She knew who her visitor must be. So this was the man who remembered everything. She honestly did not know what she had expected, but this was disheartening.

  “You’re the record keeper?” she asked. “The one with the photographic memory?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s that like . . . ? Your earliest memories, how vivid are they?”

  “Picture a face,” he told her. “One that you know well; one never far from your mind. A face that makes you feel at home, that makes you happy and, perhaps, at the same time sad. A distant face, distorted by years of longing and regret. Picture that face warm and smiling, a reminder of a life worth living. Imagine watching it shatter like porcelain, explode into a dozen pieces that . . .”

  He stopped. Cloudy eyes that had been staring through her seemed to refocus. “Sorry Doc,” he said, eyes suddenly fixed on the ground. “But how the hell was I supposed to respond?”

  She stared at him for several seconds. “You look like shit,” she declared.

  “And a pleasure to meet you too.” He gave a tip of the hat, tugging on the edge of his black, woollen cap. “Just to get it outta the way, have you any other prying questions to ask?”

  “None for now. Little afraid of what you’d say next.”

  A smiling, youthful visage briefly filled her thoughts, and she braced the barriers in her mind–dams that held back the torrent of bitter memories. If she let them crack now, the flood might overwhelm her.

  “Can’t be thin-skinned. Not if you’ve lasted this long . . . Thought myself unflappable by now. It was . . . interesting to be proven wrong.”

  “I try,” the decrepit man said with a sheepish grin, flashing a few rotten teeth and blackened gums.

  “Why?”

  He stared at her blankly. It was unsettling, but then he looked away, as if embarrassed.

  “No, really,” she insisted, observing the odd little tics in his face. “Why?”

  He shrugged weakly, an almost imperceptible movement. Even so, she got the impression that the effort caused him pain. The change in his expression was even more fleeting than the shrug. He hid it with a practised swiftness.

  “It’s my job, I suppose,” he said. “At least it is now. It was different in the beginning. Still remember details of purifying water with ozone, generated by electrolysis or electrical arcing apparatus. Just don’t ask me to build the damn things. That was never my job. And now . . . . Now I’m supposed to help people feel, remember. Or help them pretend . . . Pretend they’re someone else, someone not here. For whatever that’s worth.”

  He waved dismissively with his right hand, which he then flexed slowly.

  “Not in love with your job?” she asked, while eyeing the uneven way that his gloved fingers moved.

  “Doc,” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe doctorin’ is what you’ve always wanted to do since before the world went to shit. Great for you. But some of us just have roles. I do my part, and I get a chunk of petrified bread or a semi-edible rock every few days, and a little water that someone else made safe to drink.”

  His eyes darted from side to side as he spoke. She was reminded of a patient she had treated in another life. An autistic child with a broken wrist and a fretful, hovering mother. The entire time, the girl’s eyes had wandered like that.

  There had been a few others she knew who were on the spectrum. None had so closely matched that girl’s behaviour. Human connection had seemed much harder for the child to deal with than the pain of her injury. Perhaps this man was the same.

  How many years had it been since she had seen that girl–since she had seen any child?

  “Help people pretend, huh? Difficult in a world as poisoned and barren as this. Providing escape from reality sounds like quite a rewarding job, role, or whatever you want to call it.”

  The man’s roving eyes suddenly snapped to hers. He cocked his head to the side, seeming to focus on something at the back of her skull, seeming to listen to something in the distance, audible only to him.

  “It’s not my escape,” he said.

  She did not know what to make of him. She doubted that his capabilities matched what had been described. She doubted that he could touch his own toes. But he definitely piqued her interest.

  “You’re a curiosity,” she said. “Guess it’s a welcome change from the monotony slowly killing us all. But goddamn, you really do look like shit.”

  “You know what? You caught me on a bad day. I forgot to comb my hair this morning.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re bald under there.”

  “Huh? When did that happen?” He pushed his gloved fingers beneath his cap, raising it enough to reveal that the only thing underneath was more pale, wrinkled skin.

  “Then I guess you caught me on a bad decade.” His smile was far from warm or comforting.

  It was odd. He presented as socially challenged and introverted, but could also seem remarkably personable. This was her most involved conversation in years. His ghoulish appearance and attempts at humour were unsettling, but he also observed social niceties that had long since atrophied from most interactions.

  She looked past him to the armed guard standing in front of another metal door, further down the narrow hallway. He stared impassively at the grimy wall opposite him and barely even glanced in their direction.

  “Not to be too blunt, Doc . . .”

  She looked back at her visitor.

  “I’m playing my role, and you’re getting something outta that. Something that might be important to you.”

  He held up his gloved hands, contorted into claws. He looked at them with an expression of resignation.

  “But it won’t be long before it ends. My hands will go, and then I’ll starve.” His tone was matter-of-fact. “So, can you help me, Doc?”

  “You know, when your people told me about you, they neglected to mention that you were a crumbling human wreck with busted hands.”

  Of course they hadn’t. They’d wanted her to come with them willingly, after all.

  “That your professional diagnosis?”

  She gave him another once-over with her eyes.

  “Probably not far off.”

  He was right. There were no jobs anymore, no careers, no professions. There was just finding a place; doing whatever got you to tomorrow.

  “Tell you what . . . In the interest of professionalism, I’ll do a proper examination, and then make a determination. Maybe you’re not nearly in as bad a state as you look. Come in.”

  She stepped aside and pulled the door fully open for him, watching as he surveyed the room with eyes that were more active than be
fore. His gaze settled on the large metal desk that was its centrepiece. Boxes were stacked on one side of it, packed with books, papers, ancient and patched-together medical instruments, and other odds and ends–all relics of her previous home.

  She had lived in a small camp with few able hands, maybe two working guns, and even less ammunition. When strangers arrived with automatic rifles and stern expressions, they had faced no resistance. They had marched her out of the makeshift tent that had doubled as office and operating theatre, grabbing anything that looked useful on the way.

  It was funny in a sick sort of way. Her old group had only recently settled in this area, fleeing violent scavengers. The scavengers had known to stay clear. They had known that this place was home to a large and well-equipped colony, one that could take whatever–or whomever–it wanted from anyone in its territory.

  However, her abductors had promised recompense of sorts for her services as a physician. Recompense, but no choice. Not really. Now here she was in this rundown concrete fortress at the centre of the settlement with the man who was supposed to make good on those promises.

  They had put her in a building that had once been a community centre, but now bore the marks of several violent confrontations. Like the large hole in the wall which let the early morning gloom into her second-storey office. The man’s eyes lingered there as well, tracing the jagged edges of shattered stonework, then studying the rickety set of shelves on the wall that now held a few faded, old medical tomes.

  She closed the door behind him and hobbled over to the desk, wincing at the familiar pain in her hip. Carefully lowering herself into her chair, she motioned him to the one opposite. The two chairs and the desk were the only pieces of furniture that her new hosts had provided–two more pieces than she’d had in her old tent. Even with her fading sense of hearing, her visitor’s joints creaked audibly as he folded himself into the chair.

  “So what ails you, specifically?” she asked.

  There was little point to the question. But she supposed that it was procedure. At least it had been, once upon a time.

  “Well, Doc,” he sighed, holding his hands up in front of him. “As I said, my hands are in pretty bad shape. Loss of dexterity, hard to move my fingers, the joints click and grind; lots of pain.”

  “A problem given your work, I imagine.”

  “It’s not ideal.”

  He smiled wryly.

  “Remove the gloves. Let me take a look.”

  “It’s been a long time since I last saw these naked,” he said, flexing gloved fingers. “Easier to write with the gloves on than to let the cold touch them.”

  He struggled to remove the woollen coverings. She rose unsteadily and moved to his side of the desk, leaning over to examine his mangled hands. It was not a pretty sight. His joints were severely inflamed. There were several nodules on and around them, each over a centimetre wide and firm to the touch. Some of his fingers bent in unnatural ways.

  “Have difficulty getting up in the morning?” she asked, as she traced her fingers along his deformed joints.

  “Got my own place,” he replied, wincing as she bent one of his less mutilated digits. “Got a cot in the basement of a quaint little hovel a few blocks from here. What’s left of it. It’s mostly rubble now, really. Anyway, it gets cold down there. So I’m always really stiff and weak in the morning. Getting up the stairs is a real bitch. But, at least, I’m usually warmed up enough by the time I limp over here that the pain is easier to manage.”

  She suspected that the early morning fatigue and stiffness had little to do with the temperature of his dwelling place. They were common symptoms of certain types of arthritis.

  “Why live out there?” she asked, pressing her hand against his forehead. He recoiled from the unexpected contact.

  High temperature. She had expected as much.

  “Do you find that you’re often feverish?”

  “Comes and goes. When it hits me in the morning it’s almost impossible to get out of bed.”

  “So again, why so far? It’s a difficult trek over here. It’s probably dangerous to have no one around. Don’t most of your people sleep in the rooms downstairs?”

  She had seen many cots in one of the large meeting rooms on the ground floor. A few had still been occupied.

  “I . . . like the quiet.”

  It was hard for her to imagine that this place ever got particularly noisy. There were not that many people around, even compared to her old home, and people were quieter now, in general. Like that guard in the hallway. Resigned. No intensity or bluster.

  “You know,” he said, almost wistfully, “it used to be different. There used to be a lot more of us out there, in the town. It was safer in here, sure, but there were too many to fit in the building . . . Too many to sustain . . . We’re sitting in a tomb.” The wistfulness was gone. “Dead men, women and children in the hallways, on the stairs, on their makeshift beds; starved, frozen, or just simply expired. And yet here we are . . . chatting on their grave.”

  His voice was flat and low, almost a whisper.

  “Do you remember them?” she asked quietly, as she hobbled back to her seat.

  He had not inquired about her diagnosis yet. She imagined that there was little that she could tell him that he did not already suspect. Including how little she could do to help.

  “Do you remember the faces of everyone who died here?”

  “Of course,” he said with a dry chuckle. “It’s what I do, right? It’s my role, my gift.”

  Now he was beginning to look agitated.

  “To me the corpses are fresh; the blood stains not yet faded to grey–not everyone died of exposure, thirst, or hunger. I still see the spot out there where some kid got his skull caved in, probably because someone else thought he was hoarding crackers. See him every time I walk down that hall, along with the half dozen other corpses in the pile with him.”

  He glanced at the closed door before continuing.

  “But I’ve never been in here before. Can’t see whatever horrors once filled this space.”

  She recalled the way that he had scanned the room when he first entered.

  “I’d still like you to describe how your memory works,” she told him. “Preferably, without talk of exploding heads.”

  He stared at her intently for several seconds.

  “You got any good news for me, Doc?” he finally asked, looking down at the mangled claws that were his hands.

  “Honestly?”

  “Spent a long time facilitating fantasy and self-delusion. I find that those things have lost most sense of value for me.”

  “Then, no,” she told him, flatly. “You have arthritis. Physical indicators coupled with fever suggests rheumatoid. Could be psoriatic. It’s hard to see lesions with so little light on such mottled skin, and the fever could be caused by an unrelated infection. Those are certainly common enough these days.

  “Either way, I can’t help. Don’t even have ibuprofen for your inflammation, which is the most severe case that I’ve ever seen. Your hands will probably be unusable very soon. I’m surprised that they aren’t already. I’m guessing that you weren’t expecting better news.”

  He shrugged weakly.

  “Like I said, Doc, not really into self-delusion.”

  He glanced at the hole in the wall once more.

  “So . . .” he breathed out heavily, putting immense weight into the tiny word, “you want me to explain myself to you; how my mind works. And I assume that you still want me to use my gift for your benefit, while I still can. But there’s nothing you can do for me. Gotta say, this seems like a dismayingly one-way relationship.”

  “Feeling unmotivated?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Nothing personal.”

  The man looked smaller than ever, as if his fragile frame was about to crumple and collapse in on itself.

  “Look,” he said, forlornly. “I know that there’s a fast approaching expiration date on me. I bring one thing t
o the table that keeps me fed. And as soon as my hands go, or my eyes go, or my . . . I start going senile tomorrow, my rations would disappear and I’d starve. You can’t actually help me. So I might as well just get back to work while I still can. And, maybe, I’ll get to eat tomorrow. It was nice meeting you though, Doc. I confess succumbing to momentary self-delusion when I heard they’d brought you in. Let myself believe that you could help.”

  As he braced himself to stand, she found herself not wanting to see him leave. This was the longest conversation she’d had in many years. He was interesting. She was still curious about his “gift”.

  “Hold on,” she told him. “They can make me stay here, but they don’t want to make me stay.”

  He gave her a quizzical look.

  “I spoke to the guy in charge. Singh, I believe. From what he said it’s clear that he wants me to feel comfortable and safe. Otherwise, they could have just dragged me here at gunpoint, and would not have made a point of telling me about you. They want me to want to stay here. Guess it’s safer if the woman holding the scalpel likes you rather than fears you when you need her.”

  He nodded, furrowed his brow. “Thinking about it,” he said, “it’s terrifying, the power a surgeon holds. The power to save or kill someone at their most vulnerable.”

  “And, for the rest of you, it’d be hard to differentiate between the calculated use of one of those powers and an earnest, but failed attempt to exercise the other.”

  He smiled and narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Hope you’re not trying to threaten me, Doc.”

  “Of course not,” she said with a short chuckle. “Quite the opposite. I have a proposition.”

  “Go on.”

  “Look,” she tapped one of the boxes on her desk, “Singh wants me to do an inventory of anything with possible medical application amongst your foodstuffs and supplies. If I find any analgesics, anything that can help with the inflammation, I’ll put some aside for you.”

  “There you go,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “Giving me false hope again.”

  “You’re right,” she admitted. “Odds aren’t great that I’ll find a cabinet full of aspirin that everyone here thought was rat poison. But, even if I never find anything helpful, the people who control your rations are the same people who want me comfortable here. I can make sure they know that I’m happy to stay because of you. I can even insist they keep you around after your hands are useless.”