The Boundless Sublime (25 page)

Sometimes, Daddy would choose people for individual training missions. I was selected for Operation Hush-Hush. In order to learn the technic of covert infiltration, Daddy instructed me to sneak into nearby houses, in the dead of night. I was to quietly break in and achieve some arbitrary goal – moving furniture or turning books spine-in on their shelves – before leaving the house with no other evidence that I’d been there. I spent a week training beforehand, learning to walk silently and keep to the shadows. Daddy taught me how to behave if I was caught – I was to pretend to be sleepwalking, and ‘wake up’ all embarrassed and flustered.

‘But you won’t be caught, Heracleitus,’ Daddy said, turning the key in the lock that opened the ancient roller door
that separated the Institute from the rest of the world. ‘You are extraordinary.’

I stepped out into the night. It was the first time I’d been outside the Institute since I’d arrived. How long had it been? Months? I had no idea anymore. I couldn’t recognise the toxicant girl who had arrived here in the minivan, full of doubt and grief and tainted flesh. I’d thought I knew everything. But I’d been a puppet, a slave to my meat body, drugged and docile, an implement for the Quintus Septum to use like the lowliest of pawns.

I gazed up and down the dark street. It was like stepping through into Narnia, or Platform 9¾, except the other way. Going from the magical world back to the mundane everydayness of reality. I’d been blindfolded when we’d first arrived, so I had no idea where we were. From the outside, the Institute was just a grey concrete wall, with a large metal roller door in the centre like a gaping mouth. On one side there was a similar industrial facility – the sign on the front read SINGH & SMITH DISTRIBUTION.

The rest of the street was the same. On the corner there was a shabby block of flats with tattered curtains and broken windows, and a car park full of banged-up old cars and stolen shopping trolleys. I wondered how many toxicants lived in there. I imagined them cramped and miserable in their hovels, decaying from the inside, sleepwalking through life like zombies. Did they know how close they were to salvation? How all the avocations they didn’t know to look for were right under their noses? There was rubbish in the gutters, and the smell of engine grease and petrol in the air. It seemed a million miles from the tranquillity of the Institute, even though I’d only walked to the end of the block. No wonder Daddy didn’t want us to go out. The real world was awful.

‘Need some company?’

I started and whirled around. Fox was walking beside me, half a pace behind. He smiled at my shocked expression.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. ‘You’re not cleared for this mission.’

He shrugged. ‘I wanted to talk to you. Somewhere you couldn’t avoid me.’

His casual dismissal of Daddy chilled me. Didn’t he understand the danger he was in? What he was risking?

‘How did you get out?’ I asked.

‘Same way as you,’ said Fox.

‘But Daddy …’

‘Daddy went back to the Sanctum. Come on.’

He set off, and I followed him, a feeling of unease creeping over me. I’d barely spoken to Fox since Daddy had caught us, but I could tell he’d changed. Something was different, and it wasn’t good.

I’d expected the world outside the Institute to have altered in some way. For there to be an obvious military presence, signifying the Quintus Septum’s rise to power. But everything seemed totally ordinary. The warehouses and factories on the street were dark and silent. Television flickered in the occasional shabby apartment window, but otherwise all the toxicants seemed to be asleep. Streetlights burned orange overhead. Movement tickled the corners of my vision and I looked up, expecting drones or cruise missiles, but it was just a flock of fruit bats gliding silently into the night.

‘It’s beautiful out here,’ said Fox. ‘The sky is so much bigger.’

We headed up the hill. I felt alert, alive. The real world was dark and dangerous, but I could handle myself. The night air was cool on my cheeks and lips, and my body followed
every direction I gave it. I was in charge of my body. It didn’t rule me.

‘Wait!’ Fox was bending down, picking something up from the gutter.

It was a twenty-cent coin, dull and grimy. Fox peered at it, frowning.

‘Leave it,’ I told him. ‘It’s filthy.’

Fox weighed the coin in his hand. ‘Why is it here?’

‘Somebody dropped it.’

‘Won’t they miss it?’

‘It’s only twenty cents. It’s nothing.’

Fox turned the coin over, read the words inscribed on it. ‘It can’t be nothing,’ he said. ‘What can you buy with twenty cents?’

‘You can’t buy anything with twenty cents.’

‘Then why does it exist?’

I didn’t have time to explain it to him. ‘Because humans are idiots.’

‘You’re a human too.’

I wasn’t. Not like them, anyway. I was becoming something
more
. Something better.

‘How many of these would I need?’ Fox asked. ‘To buy something?’

‘Fox,
leave
it,’ I snapped, wheeling around on him. ‘Money is aphotic. It weighs us down. You
know
that. You’ve heard Welling talk about it. You’ve heard Daddy.’

Fox didn’t flinch away from my harsh tone. He pushed his hair back from his forehead and gazed at me, his expression untroubled.

‘But Daddy uses money,’ he said. ‘So does Welling. They use it to buy our food, and our supplements, and the water bottles. There’s other stuff too. Stuff they don’t want you to know about.’

‘They do it because they have to,’ I said. ‘It’s part of our mission. Once we are sublime, we won’t—’

‘Don’t you want to know where it comes from?’ Fox interrupted. ‘The money?’

I had, once. ‘No.’

Fox ignored me. ‘Mostly new sublimates,’ he said. ‘When people join, sometimes they bring money. When Newton arrived, she brought a lot of money. Daddy was really pleased. That was when he started doing the water bottles.’

I walked faster, trying to leave Fox and his voice behind me.

‘I know money can be bad,’ said Fox. ‘It can make the world very ugly. But surely it can also make the world beautiful. Money can help sick people get better. It can take you to new places. You can buy
books
with money.’

I stopped. ‘Please,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘Please stop. Please get rid of it.’

He nodded, his eyes not leaving mine for a second. I heard a tinkle as the coin hit the bitumen.

Fox followed silently as I walked a few blocks to a newish housing estate where the streets curved into each other like a barrel of plastic monkeys, each one featuring identical houses. It was all so fake, so totally devoid of anything real or true. I felt myself weaken – a feeling that intensified with every step I took away from the Institute and Daddy. It was because of Fox and his questions and his doubt, but it wasn’t just that. It was as if the chemicals in the air were leaching my strength from me, infecting my pores with powerful toxins.

But I would resist. I could control my body. I was strong.

I chose my house carefully, checking for signs of an alarm system or a dog.

‘Wait out here,’ I whispered to Fox.

‘Okay,’ he replied, not even bothering to lower his voice.

I glared at him, and stepped onto the concrete path that led up to the house. Another step. And another.

Suddenly I was spotlighted in blazing whiteness. I stopped dead, my heart pounding, waiting for voices or an alarm. My eyes searched for Fox, but all I could see was bright white bordered by darkness. I let my face go slack and my expression blank, ready to play the part of a confused sleepwalker. I waited. The light clicked off. I shuffled forwards once again. The light clicked back on. A security light. I’d forgotten that they existed. I squinted, locating the light, and smoothly moved out of its range. It clicked off again, and I waited, crouching by the smooth rendered wall of the house, listening for any signs of disturbance from within. Nothing. All I could hear were my own breaths, panting in rhythm with my pounding heart.

I gingerly tried the front doorknob, then slipped around the side of the house and tugged at the sliding door. It gave way and I slid it open silently. It seemed like an incredible stroke of luck, but Daddy would say there was no such thing as luck. Perhaps I had been able to sense the unlocked door all along. Perhaps my instincts had led me to this house, this door. I stepped into the house and slid the door closed behind me.

My feet sank into unexpectedly soft carpet, and for a moment I felt unsteady, so used to the comforting solidity of concrete and earth. The house was warm and smelled artificial and sweet, a sickly smell that I guessed was from a plug-in air freshener. I tried to take shallow breaths in order not to draw the scent too far into my lungs. Who knew what effect it would have on my mind?

My mission from Daddy was to unplug all the appliances in the kitchen of the house. I crossed the living room floor in
the half-light cast by the standby lights on the television and DVD player. I went into the kitchen area and unplugged the kettle, the toaster, the microwave and the sandwich press, then turned to head back into the living room. But something stopped me. I reached out and pulled open the pantry cupboard doors.

Shelf after shelf of neatly stacked and packaged foods. Tall canisters of rice and pasta. Tins of tomatoes and beans and corn and peaches. I saw brands and logos that I’d forgotten. Old El Paso taco shells. Barbecue Shapes. Indomie instant noodles. Tiny Teddies. Heinz Baked Beans.

‘You should eat something.’

I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from crying out.

‘Fox!’ I hissed. ‘You were supposed to stay outside.’

Fox shrugged, and pushed past me to peer into the cupboard. ‘What
is
all this?’ he asked. He picked up a bottle of tomato sauce and squeezed a small blob onto the tip of his finger, licking it experimentally. His eyebrows shot up. He replaced it and reached for a jar of peanut butter.

‘What are you doing?’ I whispered, trying to elbow him away from the pantry. We hadn’t been this physically close since that night in my room, but I couldn’t let him distract me. There was too much to lose.

‘What’s this?’ Fox asked, holding up a bottle. ‘It’s called Ice Magic. Is it really magic? It doesn’t feel cold like ice. Or is that part of the magic?’

‘Put it down,’ I said. ‘Please.’

Fox was slipping away. What we’d done together … it had changed him somehow. Daddy was right. It had been wrong. I knew that, but I hadn’t realised how serious it was. What would happen if Fox continued down this path? Poisoning his body? Who knew what effect it would have on his mind?

I knew that if I didn’t do something, I might lose Fox forever.

‘Come on,’ I told him. ‘Let’s go.’

Fox’s finger was in his mouth, and his eyes were wide. ‘It
is
magic.’

‘Fox,’ I said, plucking at his sleeve. ‘Please. Do this for me.’

He looked up and met my eyes, and I didn’t understand what I saw there. Longing. But something else. Something angry and untethered.

‘Okay, Ruby.’

I flinched. ‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Okay,’ Fox repeated. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. I promise. If you’ll do one thing for me.’

He held out the bottle of Ice Magic.

‘Taste this first. Then I’ll come back with you. I’ll do what Daddy says. I’ll be good.’

I stared at the plastic bottle. The thought of tasting it filled me with disgust. I couldn’t believe I’d ever put that sort of thing into my body. That I’d begged for it at the supermarket. That it used to be a treat or a reward. I remembered Easter eggs and Christmas pudding and pancakes slathered with butter and maple syrup, and I didn’t know the girl who had eaten them. It couldn’t have been me. How could I have polluted myself? Desecrated my own body with such mindless indulgence?

‘I can’t,’ I said at last.

Fox continued to hold the bottle out for a moment longer. Then his shoulders slumped and he turned to place the plastic bottle back on the pantry shelf.

‘Okay,’ he murmured, and slipped away into the darkness. I heard the soft scrape of the sliding door open, then close.

I stood there for a moment more, staring at the Ice Magic. Then I carefully closed the pantry door and left the kitchen.
I had to get back. Back to Daddy. My hand reached out to push the sliding door open. But something made me pause. A memory, rising unbidden from depths I thought I had buried.

A Saturday morning at home, back when everything had been normal. Back when my parents loved each other, and my little brother was a living, breathing human being. He’d woken me up at dawn, and we’d crept into the kitchen to make breakfast in bed for Mum and Dad. Waffles with ice-cream and strawberries and a chocolatey shell of Ice Magic, and a pot of tea. We’d put frangipani from the garden in a vase and arranged it all on a tray. Then we’d carried it proudly into their room, and climbed onto the bed. Dad had the tea, Mum had the strawberries, and Anton and I demolished the waffles and ice-cream. We’d talked about silly things – about how far it was to the moon, and whether dogs could remember their dreams. When breakfast was over, we’d snuggled in under the doona and made shapes from the cracks in the ceiling, telling stories about them until we drifted into a sticky, contented morning slumber, warm and safe and loved.

I let my hand fall, turned and padded silently up the corridor, past the bathroom and laundry to the master bedroom. The door was ajar, and the slightest touch from my hand was enough for it to swing gently open. I stepped inside.

She was curled up in a ball, as if she were trying to shield herself from something. He was spread out on his back, his mouth hanging open, a thin white crust forming at the corners of his lips. The debris of their lives littered their bedside tables – half-drunk glasses of water, dog-eared novels, smartphones plugged in to charge.

I thought about their bodies, rotting from the inside, grunting and squelching away, engines devoted only to
breaking down fats and acids, living compost heaps. No wonder they never really saw what was right in front of them. No wonder they slept through their lives. What else could they do?