Карин Тидбек - Amatka

Nina shook her head. “Then that’s what we’ll let them do. We’re not going to run off and do something stupid. Are we, Vanja?”

Vanja avoided her eyes. “No,” she mumbled. “It was silly of me.”

“I know what a procedure is,” Ivar said loudly. “They drill into your head and stir your brains around.”

Nina tried to soothe him. “No one’s going to drill into your head, Ivar.”

“Technically,” Ulla said, “they don’t actually stir your brains around. They sever the connections to the prefrontal cortex.”

Ivar burst into tears.

Nina glared at Ulla. “Thanks for that.”

“We all know there’s a risk,” Ulla said. “Even if you won’t admit it. Even if these… ruins… have been here since before.”

“Excuse me,” Nina said, and went upstairs.

Ulla gave Vanja an amused grin. “I think we both know what’s what,” she said. “I think you should go look.”

“Do you know something?” Vanja said.

“What are tunnels for?”

“What do you mean?”

“What does one use tunnels for?”

Vanja shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“Travel,” Ulla said. “One uses them to travel.”

Later, when Vanja lay with Nina’s arms around her, her breath in tickling gusts against the back of her head, it was hard to tell which was worse. That she’d lied to Nina when she’d promised her she wouldn’t go out there. Or that Nina might be right, and that by going out there, Vanja would make things worse.

It was still dark outside. The office wouldn’t open for another couple of hours yet. Nina was fast asleep. Vanja stole out of bed and brought her clothes downstairs to the bathroom, where she got dressed. She didn’t bother with food.

A few workers were out in the streets, pale and drawn from a long shift at work or too little sleep at home, staring blindly at the ground or out into space with bloodshot eyes. Following Ivar’s description, Vanja walked straight west, past the station and across the railway tracks. After that, there was just the grass and the sky.

The grass rustled in the soft breeze. Vanja’s boots splashed into little puddles that dotted the steppe, invisible in the gloom. She walked on until she came to the foot of a small rise. Something stuck out of the ground on the other side. It was too dark to make it out clearly. For a brief moment it was like standing on the hillock outside Essre, and she was sure of what she’d find on the other side: the silhouettes of asymmetrical buildings, little shapes moving between them. Then she reached the top and looked down the other side.

It wasn’t just the one pipe but several, visible as dark shadows against the gray sky. Some were straight, some curved at a right angle at the top. A sudden cone of light hit one of the pipes, revealing a yellow surface with riveted joints. Its angled opening was torn, as if something had burst out of it with great force. The light moved on. Someone was walking around among the pipes. More figures joined the first, bringing more light. Vanja flattened herself against the ground. Cones of light swept across green protective suits. The shortest pipe ended at head height; some of the others were twice as tall. All of them looked easily wide enough to crawl into. The people in overalls didn’t make any attempts, though. They took measurements, made notes, and talked among themselves. One of them opened up a canister and started to paint letters on the pipes. Two others began picking their way up the slope. Vanja crawled backward until she reached flat ground, then ran north at a crouch. If those people were going anywhere, it was probably back to Amatka. She looked back to see the beam of a flashlight sweeping across the rise. She lay down on her stomach again and waited. She hadn’t run like that for a long time; it was hard to breathe without making noise. She pressed her mouth into the grass. The scent of wet vegetation and cold filled her nostrils. More silhouettes carrying flashlights arrived at the top of the rise. They were walking very slowly. One of the beams swung her way and then back again. The sky was growing lighter; they would be able spot her any moment now. She rose into a crouch and ran farther north.

If she hadn’t banged her shin on its edge, she would have run right past the low pipe in the semidarkness. She toppled over and for a moment could do nothing but hold her leg and whimper. When the pain had subsided somewhat, she sat up and peered down. The opening was perhaps three feet across. On the inside, right below the edge, she could glimpse the rungs of a ladder. She leaned closer to the opening to listen. At first, there was only the pounding of her pulse in her ears, the wind rushing across the edge of the opening, the echo of her breathing. Then, something like distant music, a snatch of notes forever repeating. She listened for a long moment but couldn’t decide if it really was music or her own head trying to create order from chaos.

It occurred to her that more rungs in the pipe had become visible. She looked up at the gray expanse of the sky, which was ever so slowly growing brighter. In the old world, the sky had been full of light. Lars had said so: that the sky was blue in the daytime and black at night, and that glowing lights traversed the sky, and one could follow their paths with one’s eyes. That it was sometimes overcast, but that was only vapor; the sky was still there behind it. That there was something beyond the clouds, something that moved. This was always followed by Vanja’s inevitable question: Is there something behind the gray of our sky?

We don’t know , Lars had said. Maybe, maybe not.

The inhabitants of Colony Five had thought there was. They missed the skies of the old world. They longed for light. They talked about it so much that something finally appeared: a sun, a white-hot sphere that broke through the sky and burned the colony to a cinder. Such is the world in which we live, Teacher Jonas said. The words need guarding. A citizen who doesn’t guard their words could destroy their commune.

Vanja arrived at the office just before eight. Today’s first batch of forms was already on the reception desk, together with a handwritten note:

Anders is off sick today. Kindly tend to his tasks when you have completed your own. —Sec.

She took the note and walked upstairs to the long corridor of small offices on the first floor. The first office belonged to the head secretary, a graying woman in her fifties dressed in a rumpled green shirt. She was hunched over a ledger but looked up with a benevolent smile when Vanja opened the door. “Anders is off sick,” Vanja said.

“Yes.” The secretary nodded and continued to write in the ledger, with a dry, scratching noise.

“I don’t know what Anders’s tasks are.”

The secretary firmly underlined something. “Oh. You haven’t watched him work?”

Vanja considered this. “I suppose I haven’t,” she replied. “I’ve been very busy.”

Moving with deliberate slowness, the secretary put her pen down and looked up at Vanja. There were dark circles under her eyes. She gave Vanja another smile. “Sort incoming reports, write a summary, file or dispose of reports as needed. There’s a marking schedule on the notice board. And a manual under the reception desk.”

“I see,” Vanja replied. “I’ll go do that, then.”

The secretary nodded slowly. “Very good.” She turned back to her ledger.

Vanja returned to the reception and looked for the manual. The space behind the desk was filled with carefully sorted rubber stamps, blank forms, notepads, sharpened pencils in a small cup, stackable letter trays.