The Boundless Sublime (18 page)

When Family Time was over, Fox walked me to my room, his fingers brushing mine as we bade each other goodnight. His touch was thrilling, made all the more so with the knowledge that it was forbidden. We stared at each other for as long as we dared, our eyes doing all the things that our bodies couldn’t. Then Fox drifted down the corridor to his own room, and I was on my own.

I climbed onto my bed and pulled the damp-smelling blanket up around my chin. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. The warm, clear feeling I’d had at Family Time slowly leached out of me, until I was left alone and empty.

‘Ruby!’ said Anton’s voice, and I sat up in bed, staring around wildly at the darkness. My heart pounded and my jaw clicked, ready to clench. I wanted to press it away – the memory of his face, his voice. Bite down until everything went white. I thought of Zosimon that morning, breathing and swaying, and me, breathing and swaying along with him.
And I didn’t bite down. I took a deep breath and imagined Fox’s face. His eyes. His smile. The touch of his hand.

And I let it come.

Anton, waking me up at five o’clock on Christmas morning. Anton, laughing so hard at one of my terrible jokes that he could barely breathe. Anton, scowling because Mum wouldn’t let him stay up to watch the Olympic diving. Anton, crying after another kid had pushed him over at school. Anton, forcing Mum and Dad to sit and watch him shout raucous nonsense songs while I accompanied him on the piano.

Eventually, the memories stopped coming, and I slipped into sleep.

The days slipped by. I worked hard in the kitchen with Newton. I ate my oversalted food. I listened to Zosimon’s lectures with a sceptical ear. I drank the eggy water. I sat with Fox at meals and Family Time, occasionally letting my hand brush his. Everyone was a bit vague as to when the current rotation was to end, but I was confident it would be soon. And then Fox and I could spend every day together. I had so much to tell him, to ask him, but I wanted to wait until we had some privacy.

Each night I lay awake in bed, reliving every moment, every conversation that Anton and I had ever had. I’d been afraid I’d lost him completely, but he was still there, vivid and solid in my memory. I let him laugh into the silence of my room. I fought with him over who got to sit in the front seat of the car. I gave him a hug when we heard Mum and Dad fighting and told him that everything would be okay.

Then, with the sound of his voice still ringing in the darkness, I would relive the day he died. Flirting with Ali. The bitter sting of cigarette smoke in my throat. The missed
calls on my phone. Eventually listening to my messages, hearing my mother’s voice turn from irritated to angry to hysterical. Arriving at the hospital only to be told I was too late. Feeling like an actor in a medical drama – not sure if I should cry or scream or faint. Sitting with Mum in the special room they put aside for people like us and feeling suddenly, overwhelmingly ravenous, but not knowing how to ask Mum for money for the vending machine. Realising, after hours, that Dad wasn’t there, and asking Mum where he was.

I went over the funeral again and again. It was just us – a small, grey, numb affair. We didn’t want a big fuss. Dad was allowed to come, but he stood off to the side and didn’t look at us. Tears ran down his cheeks, and occasionally I heard a broken, choked sob. Mum and I were silent. Cold, blank. Empty. Anything else hurt too much.

Other memories came too. Seeing Dad’s face on the news. A reporter coming to our door to ask for a comment. A social worker helping me through a website that let Mum get welfare payments until she was ready to go back to work.

But mostly I just saw Anton. I imagined the accident. The smile on his face when he saw Dad’s car. A slight frown or widening of the eyes when the wheels skidded on the gravel. The
thunk
of his little body hitting the bonnet. The silence left behind after his heart stopped beating.

I lay awake in the darkness night after night, seeing it all over and over again. But it wasn’t like before. It wasn’t painful. It was sad, and intense, but it felt
right
. Methodical. Like washing a wound until it ran clear.

After two weeks at the Institute, I fell asleep minutes after climbing into bed and slept for a solid eight hours, for the first time in months. On waking the next morning I felt as though I was finally whole again.

10

‘And so there I was, being chased out of the Imperial Harem by fifty albino eunuchs, while the poor Ottoman Sultan was howling for the Grand Vizier. Little did he know that the Vizier had run off with the Queen Mother with all the gold they’d embezzled together.’

Everyone laughed heartily. Zosimon’s laugh was the loudest – tears sprang to his eyes.

‘That was a long day,’ he said, and got to his feet. ‘This has been a long day too. You’ve all worked hard, and have earned a restful night.’ He turned his head. ‘Pippa, please join me in the Sanctum.’

I saw Pippa’s cheeks turn pink, and her eyes widen. Lib’s face flashed with … jealousy? But the expression was quickly replaced with a smile that showed too many teeth. ‘Well done,’ she whispered.

Zosimon exited the warehouse with Pippa following, as everyone murmured
Goodnight, Daddy.
I wondered why he’d asked Pippa to go with him. Surely it wasn’t to share his bed. Zosimon was old enough to be Pippa’s grandfather.

We stayed there for a while longer, chatting and singing, until people started to drift off to bed. As we stood up, Fox brushed deliberately against me. ‘I need to see you,’ he whispered. ‘Please.’

I smiled at him and said goodnight, hoping he would read a different message in my eyes.

He did. I waited in my room for half an hour, shivering in my nightgown under the thin blanket. Then there was a soft tap at my door, and Fox was there. We threw our arms around each other and stood there for a moment, holding on tightly. I felt him breathing, his heartbeat against my chest. It calmed my doubts, my worries.

Eventually we broke apart, and Fox sat on the bed, his knees drawn up to his chest.

‘We have to be quiet,’ he said, his voice whisper soft. ‘I needed to see you. I miss you.’

I grabbed his hands. ‘I miss you too. But we’re going to spend more time together. I asked Zosimon and he said we can be on the same team at the next rotation.’

I imagined long summer afternoons, Fox and me, working side by side in the garden. We’d work the soil with our hands, coaxing sustenance from the bare earth. We’d talk for hours, the sun warm on our backs and in our hearts. Everything would be perfect. Then I realised I’d never seen Fox working in the garden.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What team are you on?’

Fox was staring at me, his eyes wide. ‘You asked Daddy?’

‘He said it was fine.’

‘Are you sure? What exactly did he say?’

I shrugged. ‘He said he could see we were important to each other, and that we should have been on the same team from the beginning. It was no big deal.’

Fox’s expression said that it
was a
big deal.

‘Everyone seems scared of Zosimon,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why. He seems nice.’

Fox blinked, confused. ‘Not
scared
,’ he said. ‘It’s about respect. Daddy is … special.’

‘How so?’

‘He is sublime.’ Fox’s face was very serious. ‘He has lived for thousands of years. He doesn’t eat or drink. He only needs sunlight to sustain him.’

‘But you don’t really
believe
that,’ I said. ‘It’s … a metaphor. A parable.’

Fox shook his head. ‘No, it’s true. It’s all true.’

I felt a bit sick. Did Fox really believe it? Was he truly that naive?

‘So he’s not your real father,’ I said.

‘He’s the only father I’ve ever had.’

That wasn’t an answer. ‘What about Pippa?’ I asked. ‘Why did Zosimon ask her to join him in the Sanctum tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fox, looking uncomfortable. ‘I – I asked Lib, once. She told me it was a secret, and I didn’t have clearance to know.’

‘So it’s happened before? He asks people to join him at night?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it always women?’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Fox said. ‘But Daddy wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t feel that way. He doesn’t feel the … pull of bodies.’

Fox’s voice had grown husky, and he looked away, his cheeks pink. His words hung in the air, and I knew we were both feeling the same thing. The same pull.

What made him so sure? Fox had so many questions about the outside world, how did he not have any about life inside the Institute? I had seen the doubt on his face when I’d asked him if he’d really wanted to come back here. What wasn’t he telling me? Or was it something he wasn’t telling himself?

‘I brought this,’ said Fox, clearing his throat and showing me a battered paperback copy of
Les Miserables
. It had been
read so many times it looked as though a strong breeze would cause it to crumble to dust. Fox handled it as if it were a precious relic.

I flipped through it, feeling the thinness of the paper under my fingers. Familiar names rose from the pages, and snatches of music echoed in my ears as I remembered going to see the musical with my parents when I was little, when Anton was still a baby.

A photograph slipped from the pages and fell to the floor. Fox made a grab for it, but I was closer and picked it up first.

It was an old black and white photo, creased and faded on soft, thin paper. A woman held a baby. She had long dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail. She was kissing the baby’s temple, and her expression seemed sad, her eyes downcast.

I turned the photo over to see if there was a name or a date on it, and saw a few lines written in awkward pale grey pencil.

‘Give it back.’ Fox’s face was white, his lips clamped into a thin line.

‘Who are they?’ I asked.

Fox met my eyes. His gaze was cool and blank. ‘I don’t have a mother,’ he said. ‘Only Daddy. Daddy rescued me from darkness.’ It was as if he was reciting something.

I looked back down at the photo. ‘You … you think this is your mother?’

It was too old. But … people at the Institute did dress very simply. Maybe it
was
Fox’s mother.

‘Fox, did your mother die?’

Fox hesitated, then nodded.

‘How?’

A shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

I looked at the words on the back of the photo. Guesses? Hypotheses? It seemed … bleak and hysterical. No ordinary death for Fox’s mother. Nothing as banal as a car accident outside a junior soccer club.

I looked at the baby, and thought I recognised something – the softness of the mouth, the intensity of the eyes.

‘This is you?’

Fox tucked his hair behind his ears and bobbed his head in a nod.

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Sometimes I think I do,’ he said. ‘Other times I think it’s just wishing.’

‘What’s the first thing you remember?’ I asked.

‘Daddy.’

So Fox had been here since he was a baby? What about his father? Grandparents? Aunts and uncles? Surely someone had cared about him.

‘What about the other children?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘The children. You know. The terrifying identical children.’

‘Oh,’ said Fox, his brow clearing as he cheered up a bit. ‘The Monkeys.’

‘Pretty sure they’re human children.’

‘We call them the Monkeys,’ said Fox. ‘It’s short for
Homunculi
, but also because they play and chatter a lot, like real monkeys.’

‘They don’t have names?’

Fox shook his head. ‘Not until they’re older. Daddy says
you don’t become a whole person until a spark lands on you. It happens when you’re about thirteen, I think. That was when I became a person, anyway.’

‘You were a Monkey?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where do they all come from?’

‘C Block. The building at the back, by the wall, behind Daddy’s laboratory.’

So that was why Lib called it the Monkey House.

‘But where do they
originally
come from?’ I asked. ‘Where are their parents?’

‘We have no parents. We didn’t exist before Daddy. Daddy made us into people.’

‘That makes no sense,’ I said, frustrated. ‘What about when you were little? You told me Lib used to bring you books.’

‘I’m the oldest, so it was different for me. I grew up at the Red House – we didn’t move here to the Institute until I was …’ He paused and shrugged. ‘Maybe five? That’s when the other children started to come too. It was nice to have other kids to play with, but other things changed. That was when we became Monkeys.’

‘So you just … stopped being a person?’

Fox shook his head, frustrated that I wasn’t getting it. ‘People are like plants. You have to look after them when they’re little sprouts, but they don’t mean anything yet. The Monkeys are like that. When they get their spark, their actuality, then Daddy will give them a name, and they’ll join the Institute properly.’

‘You didn’t have a
name
until you were thirteen?’