Skinner Luce Read online

  “Anesh ay?”

  The thin cry is pitiful, and shocking to the arrival himself, who gapes at her. Where am I: the first thing usually out of their mouths.

  “Alee,” Lucy says. “Alee. Alee.”

  It’s O.K., one of her rudimentary stock of Nafikh phrases. It’s pointless, of course. He’s going into a panic. Lucy grabs his arms, pinning him, but this makes it worse. “Alee!” She barks, and the arrival flails harder.

  “Nafikh ay? Nafikh ay?” the arrival wails. Where are the Nafikh?

  “Osh Nafikh,” she utters through clenched teeth, her strength consumed by keeping him still. No Nafikh.

  Julian crosses the room to help, pinning the legs down. She grabs the syringe, taps up the air bubbles and makes the jab. The arrival goes rigid, then slackens. His face looks tiny, dominated by the limpid, uncomprehending blue eyes brimming with tears. He stares up at her, lost.

  “Alee,” Lucy mutters.

  She hates doing this job. She has to process three or four arrivals a season. The older ones present challenges, being way stronger and prone to fits of rage, but she’ll take that any day over this pitiful, teary-eyed kid. She can’t help thinking if he’d gone with Margot, he’d be in a clean bed, transported by cutting-edge narcotics that speed compression. When he woke, he’d be taught to speak. He’d learn basic reading and writing, how to ride the T from here to there, how to use cutlery. From what she’s heard of kid bunks, he might even see a playground now and then, in between Services, if he made it.

  “You got a problem, Luce?”

  “No, I do not.”

  She drags the arrival into the crate, arranges him on his side in case he throws up. She draws the latch, gets to her feet, trying to keep her expression neutral, but no such luck Julian will drop it.

  “You wish he’d gone with her,” he accuses. “Isn’t that right? Maybe he’d make quota, get himself a nice little real-people life, go to school with his happy people friends?”

  “Julian, come on.”

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it.”

  She clamps her mouth shut. She throws her suitcase onto the stand and unzips it.

  “Thing is,” he says, “those kid-bunks aren’t all that. Even with cut quotas they barely get a 1.5% starting rate, and that’s being generous.”

  “It’s still better than the regular kid rate.”

  He shrugs that off. “You know what those numbers mean on the ground. You really think that twig would make it?”

  She can’t help glancing at the crate: no meat on him, no muscle. Why did the Nafikh even bother creating him? “I heard their quotas can be cut up to half.”

  “So what? They still hardly ever get out.”

  “I wasn’t the one bringing this up,” she snaps.

  “And you better not.”

  He slouches down in his chair with an air of having scored, what she doesn’t know, but at least he’s finally finished with the topic. She lays her suitcase on the rack and unzips it. She’s brought food, coffee, whiskey, cigarettes, a sleeping bag, which is an extravagance she indulged in so she doesn’t have to sleep on the hotel bedding. She gets two shot glasses from the bar and fills them with whiskey, per their routine, though all she wants is for Julian to leave now. She chugs hers right away, desperate to dull the pain in her chest. It’ll take a lot more than that, but she doesn’t want to keep sharing with him. She waits at the opposite end of the table while he drinks and smokes, scrolling through emails on his phone, punching out replies.

  A memory flits up of her bedroom in Charlestown, the sheets tangled around their legs. Open window, pale blue sky with wisps of cloud. Springtime, years ago, when everything was just beginning.

  He looks up, says, “There’s one thing you have to remember, that’s all.”

  “What’s that,” she obliges.

  “At least what Theo does, it doesn’t hurt. They just arrive, they float around a bit, then it’s over.”

  “Sure,” she nods. “I know.”

  “So quit torturing yourself.” His cigarette makes a hiss when it falls into the shot glass. He shrugs his coat back on. At the door, he turns to warn, “Don’t screw up the recording again.”

  Then he’s gone. Without him, the room feels wide and empty. Except for the creature breathing heavily in the crate.

  LUCY PILES THE FEW clothes she brought in a drawer, then lays out her toiletries on the tiny bathroom counter, rinsing out the cup before putting in her toothbrush and toothpaste. She rezips the suitcase and stashes it in the closet. She checks the burner Julian left on the table, makes sure it’s on in case he feels the need to harass her about some detail. She digs through her purse, pulls out her personal cell. No messages, which is a relief. If the temp agency calls, she’ll have to turn down whatever they offer, because there’s no way she can leave this room even for a few hours. It sucks, because every time she says no, which happens a lot during Service season, it’s a black mark against her. But she’s got no choice. At least the Service cell won’t ring, as Bernie’s got her blocked. It’s the only positive of having to do this awful job.

  She makes sure the digital recorder is working, sets it on the desk, and directs the microphone towards the crate. The arrival’s sound asleep now, and will stay this way for a few hours at least, but she starts recording anyway, because last time she didn’t and her pay got docked.

  The Source feels like a smoldering ember revolving in place, shedding hot razors through her body. She pours another shot, downs it. Her temperature is way up—nowhere near what it must have been when her screaming infant self dropped into this world, but still, it feels like being boiled alive. She leans out the window into the frigid air, jams her fists hard against her ribs, taking deep breaths. She remains in this pose for several moments until the pain starts to abate. All servs are used to the subtle tugs alerting them to each other’s presence, but an arrival is a whole other ball game; it’s almost as bad as being near the Nafikh Themselves.

  She sinks down at the desk. Her body sags with exhaustion. She’s been coiled with tension ever since Julian’s call earlier in the evening. She should take this chance to nap: the next two days will be brutal. The moaning, the nonsensical begging, the weeping. The ferocious violence turned against the naked, helpless body. For all the grief she’s ever gotten for having arrived an infant, she’s still glad she can’t remember what it was like. She gets enough of a taste during these jobs.

  She drinks methodically, one shot after another. Her bleary gaze falls on the notepad under the brass lamp, emblazoned with the words HOTEL PARADISE. It’s a relic from another era. Early on, she used to record falling temps on these pads, then phone in. These days, she just texts the readings as she takes them.

  His temp is 137, coming down a touch faster than usual. She uses the burner to text the three digits to yet another burner that Julian, or someone, is monitoring. Even though the Gate will never check, Theo has a system everyone has to follow. The reply comes in: O.K. When the number hovers around 120, that’s when they’ll get interested.

  She stares at the boy’s curled-up form, the arms flopped over each other, hands slack and open. His skin looks so soft, sprinkled with freckles. His chest moves up and down rapidly, the breaths still coming fast.

  She won’t sleep, she knows it. She sits shivering in the bitter cold breeze blowing through the open window, staring out at the dawn sky, listening to the traffic starting up.

  A THUMPING SOUND. OVER and over. And something else. A voice.

  Darkness. The ache in her shoulder.

  She becomes aware, so slowly, of her cheek mashed on the table, drool seeping from her mouth. Her first attempt to sit up results in pain shooting down her back, so she tenses, breathing. She registers that it’s still dark out, though the snowstorm’s abated. The bedside clock informs her that she’s slept more than an hour, with her back to the arrival, completely vulnerable. Her breaths turn harsh with anxiety. She whips around in her chair, hands up in self-defens
e.

  There is no one there.

  He’s still locked up, she realizes, awash in relief. Last season, one of them got out. Nothing she wants to see happen ever again.

  The insistent thumping that woke her resumes.

  “Oh, Christ,” she mutters. She grabs the ziplock bag and creeps forward, each step tense, slow, toe to heel. Stands rooted, aghast.

  I can’t deal with this, an inner voice wails. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

  The arrival’s backed up against the crate bars, shoving at the bunched-up comforter with his feet, over and over. That’s the noise that woke her, his heels thumping the plastic crate pan. She has no idea why he’s freaking out about the comforter. He’s ravaged himself. Blood speckles his white skin, his mouth is a wet red gash. His crazy eyes flick-flick-flick constantly. There’s a ragged wound in his thigh. He chewed it, she understands, making the connection with his stained mouth. Like an animal trying to free itself from a trap.

  He opens his mouth wide, lets out a high-pitched wail.

  There’s the pain of arriving, and then of the body being hurt for the first time: it is an absolute shock. His hands hover over the ugly wound, the blue eyes stricken.

  “Alee, alee!” she says. She averts her eyes from the contorted face, unpacking the syringe. “This will help,” she continues in English, her Nafikh too limited. “You must try and control yourself. Don’t do this again.”

  She talks even though he can’t understand. Her voice has a soothing effect. She unlocks the crate, murmuring softly, mindful of the rage that might whip up and smash into her. He squirms and jerks, lets out a howl. His body goes rigid, a bony, scrawny plank, the abdomen sucked all the way in so every rib stands up. Lucy stabs him with the needle, backs away on her knees. He’s fading fast. Stilled by the drugs, he’s no more than a sad little boy again, black hair falling over his heart-breaker deep blue eyes, the lids heavy, almost closing then darting open as he tries to focus on her. Misery leaches from his gaze, reaching towards her in mute appeal.

  “Alee,” she tells him.

  He passes out. His breaths shorten, then he exhales a deep sigh.

  If he’d gone with Margot—

  She shuts off the thought, gets up off the floor, her knees aching from crouching for so long. So what if Margot had taken him. He’d still have to Serve. And if he fell afoul of her bunk’s rules, he’d end up on the street, shunted around, preyed upon, sold as a dupe or prostitute. She’s seen it. She’d never wish it on him, on any of them.

  The truth is, no one wants to deal with the kids. Even do-gooders like Margot, even with their fat stipend, they can crack and give up. We arrive perfectly made, is how the saying goes, and kids fuss and whine, they blubber and freak out. They just can’t cope.

  It’s a gift, what Theo does. Painless and fast. That’s the reality she has to hang onto, whenever this shit job feels like too much to bear.

  She slides the pocket door almost shut, sits at the desk and pours herself another drink. She checks the recorder. In a few hours, the arrival will be able to talk.

  SHE CROUCHES IN FRONT of him with the recorder. “Safreen am ay?” What do you remember?

  His eyes flick. Strands of dried spit hang between his slack lips. There’s a gurgle in his throat, then he coughs, his small frame racked violently. She hurries to the bathroom, fills the small paper cup, comes back and holds it to his lips. He slobbers and drinks, eyes wide with surprise at this first, pathetic pleasure.

  “Safreen am ay?” she repeats loudly, to make sure Theo hears her putting in the effort.

  He’s got his hands on his mouth, like he’s looking for the water he just swallowed. He looks like a little bird perched inside a bird cage. She closes her eyes.

  “Dabaar,” he whispers. “Dabaar.”

  Ice.

  One down, two to go. Why Theo imagines he’ll ever hear anything more than ice, endless, and dark, she’ll never know, other than he’s a relentless son of a bitch, and even after the umpteen years he’s been at this, he won’t give up looking for details about Before. He believes servs were once Nafikh, that they’ve been condemned to this mortal existence. So he wants to hear why, he wants to hear how.

  But as far as Lucy can tell, he can keep asking till every arrival drops dead and he’ll never hear anything more than this. If servs were indeed once Nafikh, then that’s all their memories boil down to and all that remains: the abiding sensation that all servs share, deep inside, of an empty, eternal, freezing darkness.

  Given the evidence, it could be argued this world is better. Maybe that’s why They come here all the time.

  “Safreen am ay?” she repeats, checking the recorder.

  The arrival holds himself, a tightly meshed mess of knobby arms and legs. Tears pop out his giant eyes and he begs, “Nafikh ay?”

  Lucy draws in her breath, forcing patience. It’s going to take hours till the meds wear off and he gets sucked back into the maelstrom of pain. In that time, he’ll eat, probably vomit, defecate, urinate, and beg for the Nafikh again and again. He’ll also eventually answer her question with endless and dark. And then finally, he’ll crack, get a massive dose, and she’ll get some sleep.

  She drags herself backwards, leans against the wall. His sobbing fills the room. She lifts the bottle to her lips, takes an obliteratingly deep drink.

  “Safreen am ay?” she asks again, during a lull.

  LUCY’S HEART IS BEATING so hard it feels like her ribs will explode. She gasps for air, fighting the tunnel that sucks her straight back in a whoosh to her own infantile cries, Aah, aah, aah, drenched in sweat, crushed by a boiling heat that threatens to make her mind explode—

  She wakes. She’s on the bed, in the hotel, the sleeping bag rumpled around her legs. It was the nightmare, she has it all the time.

  She focuses on her short, harsh breaths in the dark, trying to calm herself. The nightmare’s always so real, so immediate, she can’t help thinking it’s not just a dream. She feels it in her body, that acute, physical rush of recovered memory, the sensation of being trapped within a tiny blob of skin and fat, crooned at and swaddled and stroked, and the stench of her diaper, the putrid taste of the bottled milk, the body’s hideous, cloying need—it has to be real. Though like a dream, it’s already receding, fading out of body and mind, wisps of nothing.

  Gone.

  She turns onto her side, chewing on her knuckles, staring into the dark. She can’t hear the arrival. She should check on him, but she’s so damn exhausted. She presses backwards in her mind, striving to remember. She’s heard the stories so many times it’s like she does. She screamed and did not stop screaming, and her adoptive parents Frank and Eva bobbed their baby girl on their forearms, bouncing and humming, all their efforts doomed. The overseer who left her in the Children’s Hospital parking lot must have been out of his mind: how the hell were humans supposed to care for an infant serv? Lucy screamed until she vomited, then screamed again, and her clueless parents bounced and cooed to no avail.

  You were a colicky baby, Eva likes to reminisce.

  Lucy grew into an introverted, awkward kid who didn’t fit in no matter what. She did try, she really did. But she was who she was. Blurting out weird stuff, driving everyone away. Skinny, pale, tall, wispy-haired freak, scurrying along the walls like a cockroach, trailed by mean laughter. Ghost-girl, they called her, because she was so pale. Eva’s nephew Sean, technically Lucy’s cousin, ended up in detention for getting in scrapes over her: Family sticks together, he said.

  And there was the pain: the steady, boiling hurt inside her chest. Her temperature always hovering around 100, no matter what. It hurts, she wept to Eva. The doctors listened to her heart, they administered EKGs, they tested her for every disease they could think of to explain the temperature. They found nothing. Stress, they said, and so began the parade of shrinks and meds that did nothing to help. At night Lucy curled up tight, she dug her nails into the hurting place, she wept.

  The day she le
arned the truth of what she was, she was skipping pebbles on the unfrozen part of an inlet out in Hull, where she grew up. She was nine years old. Her chest seized, she felt like she was choking. A decrepit grizzled guy in a tweed coat and rubber boots crossed the ice-encrusted beach, peering at her hard.

  Well, lookey what I found! he said, gripping her chin and turning her face this way and that. You’re the Hennessey girl, ain’t that right?

  Get away from me!

  This amused him greatly: he chortled, the noise carrying on the still winter air. Lucy wished Sean was with her. She looked around frantically, but their only company was some seagulls standing on the ice formed from the frozen wavelets. To her horror, the old guy grabbed her by the arm, bent down, and started pulling at her jeans.

  Aaah! she screamed, emitting just a puff of air, she was so terrified.

  But all he did was push up the jeans past her ankle, then he let her go. I’ll be damned, he said in amazement. You ain’t been tagged.

  If you do anything my da will kill you! she blurted.

  Oh, yeah? Frank Hennessey up and left this past summer, I heard. Probably all because of you.

  This was about as close to the truth as a stranger could get. Lucy’s eyes smarted and she blinked fiercely, ready to fight with all her strength, the way Sean had taught her: fists like windmills.

  Do you even know what you are? You’re not one of them real people. You’re a serv.

  I’m gonna tell my ma about you, Lucy threatened.

  He guffawed. Ain’t no serv ever had a ma!

  I do so have a ma!

  You’re a serv, you twit. You can’t have family. You can’t be loved: it ain’t your lot.

  Those words flew into her like bullets. They exploded inside her, leaving black jagged wounds that never healed.

  Drunk Pete was all twisted up and rotten in the heart, no different than many of the old-timer servs she’s worked with since. If you survive so far as to make quota, it’s surely not on qualities of kindness and empathy. He got so hung up on her not being tagged that he called in an overseer from Boston. She had to make the appointment, he told her, or she’d be killed.