Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

I told him, “She’s not the only one. There are others. She picked it up from them.”

It’s funny, when I saw her do it back home, I took it really hard. When Rauden thought something was wrong with it, I had excuses. “She’s not the only one who gets lost! She’s not the only one who cannot tie her shoes or sit in chairs!”

It did seem to bother Rauden though. He said we ought to get her tested. She could have some anomaly.

I said no. I didn’t want her to be tested any more. She already had all the tests she will need for her whole life. I wanted her to be different from me. I was tested all the time. That was what Subjects did. I don’t want her to be a Subject. I want her to be like anyone.

Oh, man. I’m crying again.

Rauden just waited till I’m done. Then he said anyone could take a test.

I shook my head. If she tests wrong, they might take her away.

I could see Rauden thinking about that, like, maybe they would. He went to his screen for a long time punching keys and when he came back out, he said he had a tester in mind who won’t take her away. This guy won’t even tell anyone, no matter what he finds.

The tester’s name was Suresh, and it took a week to get him down from Ithaca. He was very nice. He was like a nurse, except he looked, I don’t know, soft. He had wet eyes. He asked Ani, “Do you have a special way of walking?”

So Ani nodded hard and got up. But she just walked the regular way.

So Suresh waited awhile, then said, “Very good.” Then he said, “Do you have a regular way of walking Myrtle Avenueot Beon?”

So Ani nodded hard. But she just walked the regular way again.

Suresh said, “Very good.”

Everything she did, he said, “Very good.” Which Ani enjoyed. She began to think she was very good. Every time Suresh came down from Ithaca, she walked the regular way and said, see my special way of walking. Forward, backward — she didn’t know the difference. She didn’t walk backward again the whole time we were there.

If Rauden hadn’t seen it, maybe we could of gotten away with it.

Anyhow, I guess Suresh found other, you know, anomalies, because he determined, she might have Special Needs. He wasn’t sure exactly what it meant in her case. It could mean what they call LD. It could even just mean City Line kid.

The good part was, this is some sort of hard Proof, she was not me. I didn’t have Special Needs. That I heard.

The bad part was, if Rauden plans to market any other viables, this is not exactly going to help sales. It’s true she survived Mumbai but she cannot tie her shoes or sit in chairs or find her way out of a room. So that could be a problem. What kind of price could he get for a child with Needs like that, hardy or not? Between you and me, I thought why not find a country where they go barefoot and sit on the ground and maybe don’t even have rooms for her to find her way out of, but I suppose they also would not pay the best rates, so I kept this to myself.

And I mean, nobody said this to me but I got the idea Ani’s Special Needs are not all that great even for her.

Henry thought maybe he could invent a special block to keep the thing out of Ani’s ID, but Suresh thought, do not be hasty. If things still worked the way he heard they used to, she can use this to her advantage. It can give her access to Special Resources she might not be able to access another way. That is, if things still worked that way. None of them really knew how any of this stuff worked now or if it even did. Rauden wasn’t even sure where the whole B of E came from now. He thought it could be some anomaly in the system that kept turning out Resource, funds, rules, whatever, even if no one was at the other end.

But Suresh said, well whatever was true now, it is always true that you have to what they call work the system, to get the Resource. Well to get anything in the B of E. Needs was as good a way as any to do that.

And everyone agreed but me. I said no. No. “I want her to be a regular kid. I want her to go to school with regular kids.”

Suresh went back to Ithaca. Rauden drove him to the Terminal.

When he came back, Ani was asleep in our room. Rauden sat down with me on the orange sofa and said, “I, a lot of things can go wrong with a child. Even regular kids sometimes have problems. This Mill Rock thing might work for her. It might help her.”

I just hung tough. No, no, no. I did not want to call attention. They might find out what is really wrong with her.

Rauden didn’t say anything more about it. He just went and did some Box Room work. So I’m heading for bed later but saw him standing by the freezers where the viables are stored. He had his hand up on one freezer door. I don’t know who they were, and if they were ever born.

But whoever they were, or were going to be, Rauden had his hand over their freezers and really looked sad. I got the idea he is thinking, what is the goddamn point? We always thought these will be very special kids but not this way. If they are just going to walk backward or to Hunter’s Point of the togetheron get lost or cannot tie their shoes or sit in goddamn chairs, hardy or not, why should they even be born?

Well, I want to say something about those viables, or some of them. They are the reasons they were born.

Because, look, if something is wrong with Ani, Rauden’s not going to kill her. It’s ok Ani was born, because she is. But they’re not. If it’s not ok for them to be born, they won’t.

But if it’s not ok for them to be born, and they’re so similar to Ani — this is what I’m saying. Then it’s not really ok for her. Even if she is. Born.

I really wanted it to be ok for her to be born. What else did she have?

And then I thought, well, no one will goddamn take that from her. I’m going to intervene. Work the system? I will do that. Take another test? Whatever. I’m going back to Queens and make it my Project to get Ani fixed. And when she is fixed, it’s going to be ok for the whole goddamn lot to be born.

So I told Rauden, and he told Suresh. I am ready to do this. Suresh checked Mill Rock out and said it is ok. So that’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to do what we must to make this work.

Henry cleans up our swipes. He updates our codes. And remember, he says, if there is ever a problem, like a pure code Reader could read her as me? Punch some keys he shows me. It will crash the system. Someone could bring it up again, but this will buy time.

Before we left, Rauden brought me down in the basement to look at some new tank he was tinkering with, while Janet Delize took Ani off somewhere to look at rabbits.

The new tank could convert to a mini strap-on unit, which was a great idea because these days most hardy sales are overseas and Transport is an issue. You still couldn’t bring live children across borders without papers, so it had to be viables, like the Santa Sofya ones, and you had to smuggle them, so this mini unit will get strapped to the Courier’s belly, like she is a Host. Make the unit from soft plexi so it won’t set off alarms, and come on, who’s going to go poking around there? If Ani’s anomalies get fixed, and they work out some details, there could be some serious Transport here. If they got any calls. Which so far, they didn’t.

It’s funny, remember how when I declined to come back I was afraid to even talk to Rauden, because I worried he would make me come back to the Farm and do the work? I wanted to do it now. I didn’t want to leave.

It wasn’t only that I wanted to do the work again and try the new tank. The truth is, when Henry took Ani on the wheelchair for a ride? It was the first time in more than four years she had been out of my sight, even at the City Line school. I felt like I been holding my breath for five years. With Henry and Janet to pitch in, I could sometimes take a break. And then, they all understood our real situation, even Janet. They were the only ones in the world who did. Besides me.