Nekropolis (23 page)

“There’s no record of them,” Alem says.

“No record,” Carlos agrees. I’m thinking that he has an accent, maybe. A little bit.

“All right then,” Alem says and stands up. He puts his hands together. “A pleasure,” he says.

Carlos looks at him as if he doesn’t know what to make of this man in his djellaba. “The same,” he says.

Alem walks out the door and stands on the street for a second, looking up at the sky. Then he turns left, away from the hotel and toward the water, and walks. Where’s he going?

I’ll probably never see him again. Or Ayesha, or my mother or my brothers and sister.

Carlos watches him, too, then shakes his head. “All right then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

I’m still shaky from being sick, but once I’ve stood up a moment, I’m all right. Akhmim is right there. It’s wonderful how reassuring he is. It’s wonderful to feel his hand on my elbow, just the way Alem held it, but different because it’s Akhmim, who’s part of me now. Since I’m not jessed anymore, I feel different in my head, as if part of me weren’t there. I haven’t told anyone, but I think maybe I’m damaged in my brain. Or maybe it’s just like wearing a cast. You wear it so long it feels like part of you and then when you take it off, you feel too light.

I keep watching for Alem when we walk down to the water, but I don’t see him. The Mediterranean is bright, bright blue. I never knew it was as blue as this. And it goes on out of sight, huge and full of water and air. I lift my face to the breeze.

Carlos takes us down to the docks, which are full of tar and dirt that clings to the hem of my gown, but I’m getting so tired I don’t care. He takes us up on his ship and shows us a place where we can wait. “I need your thumbprint on the manifest,” he says.

“Alem said I wasn’t supposed to sign anything.”

“It’s just a manifest,” he says. “No one looks at a manifest.”

“I can’t,” I say.

There is a tremor all through the ship as if something deep inside had awakened.

“We’re about to cast off,” he says. “I can’t land at Málaga if you aren’t on the manifest. Nobody ever pays any attention to it.” He shows me a slate, all electronic, with long forms and lists. “They’re automatic and no one ever reads them. Sign it or I’ll have to put you both off.”

I look at Akhmim. We’ve already spent 900, if he throws us off, I don’t know where else we can go. I press my thumb to the manifest.

Carlos says, “Sign for the
harni,
too.”

I press my thumb next to his name.

“Okay,” he says, “I need the rest of the money.”

Akhmim hands him the other 900. Is he going to throw us off now? Are the police waiting onboard?

“Okay,” he says, “we make landfall in about eleven hours, traffic allowing.”

He leaves us in this little place, sitting on the bed. It’s a small room with a bed that swings down out of the wall and a sink. It doesn’t even have a window. The ship is alive and moving, I can feel it. I’m nervous. I put my arms around Akhmim’s neck and lean against him and he puts his arms around my waist. I have forgotten the slightly musky smell of him.

The ship sails on the crayon-blue Mediterranean Sea , and no one bothers us at all.

* * *

We get to Málaga at three in the morning and someone other than Carlos comes and gets us. “Off,” he says. I have been asleep and I can’t figure out where I am or why everything smells like plastic and metal. The coverlet on the bed has a rough weave and it’s imprinted on my cheek.

“Can’t we wait until dawn?” Akhmim asks.

“Customs is here,” the man says. He has a strong accent.

I stumble out of the bunk, feeling stained and dirty in the clothes I slept in. “What do we do?” I ask.

“Claim asylum,” the man says.

He takes us up on deck. There’s not much room to really stand, most of the deck is like a bunch of boxy buildings and ladders and antennae whipping around searching for signals, but there’s a narrow place to walk, just wide enough across for one person. Akhmim follows me.

There are two men in uniform, and my heart starts beating too fast. I feel Akhmim, behind me, touch my shoulder. The ship stinks and the wind off the harbor smells like oil and garbage. I feel faint.

One of the men in uniform says something to me. The man who has taken us up on deck says from behind Akhmim, “He wants to know if you speak Spanish.”

“No, sir,” I say.

He says something to the man in the uniform-the customs official. The customs official frowns. He has a smooth face like a young man, but I think he isn’t really young. He beckons us to follow him. We climb down a ladder. My knees are shaking and I have to go very slow, but the customs man just waits. Then we walk down another narrow walkway to the gangway, and from there onto the dock. The ship never felt as if it were on the water, it always felt stable, but somehow I can still feel the difference in the dock. At least it doesn’t have the feeling of being alive. The ship’s huge in the darkness beside us.

I turn around and look at the city. It’s all lights, as if it were nine at night instead of three in the morning. There’s a big sign near us all lit up with an image of a woman drinking something the color of pale tea and full of light and bubbles. “Akhmim!” I say.

“What?” he says. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing,” I say.

The woman in the sign is drinking
beer
.

I knew they drank in the E.C.U., but I never thought they would be so…so public about it.

We go down to the end of the docks to an office. It’s too bright. Everything in it looks so new. A woman is there with a spidery little headset, talking in Spanish, and a man looks up as we come in. The man bringing us in says something that sounds disapproving and this man frowns. He says something to us in Spanish and the first man says something in Spanish and they frown even more. This man points to two chairs, dark red and padded on the seat and back, and Akhmim and I sit down.

There we wait. People work all around us, but no one talks to us, of course. They’re all Spanish people, although one of the men looks a little as if he might be Berber.

Akhmim holds my hand. I’m so tired and sleepy. I try to lean my head against his shoulder, but I can’t get comfortable.

It’s nearly dawn when the man who brought us from the ship comes back to the office. He talks with the man and woman there, and the woman says something that makes everyone laugh. Then finally he looks at us and beckons, and we follow him outside to a little gray bubble car that really only has room in the back for one, but Akhmim and I both squeeze in. Three people are too much for the little car and every time we hit a bump, the bottom scrapes against the road and I grip Akhmim’s arm, but he just keeps saying softly, “It’s all right.”

It’s not all right. This is where we’re going to live and already I don’t like it. It will never be all right again. But I smile every time he says it.

There’re cars in the street, lots of little bubble cars and some sedans and even some lorries, although not any like Ayesha’s husband Alem directs. These lorries all have human drivers. There are people on the sidewalks and they all have a lot of skin showing-legs and arms and women’s faces. It’s like the mistress used to watch. Somehow, until I actually see it, I guess I haven’t believed it, not really, not in my heart.

You can never go back, says the voice in my head.

I can’t dress like these women. I can’t.

“Where is he taking us?” I ask Akhmim.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Maybe they are taking us to a hotel, or someplace where we can sleep?” It occurs to me they might take us to jail, and I would be separated from Akhmim.

The city is hilly. There are old buildings on the tops of some of the hills and they are grand, lit from outside like monuments. They have steeples or towers. Down on the streets, though, everything is a mix of old and modern.

We drive into a narrow alley and park behind a big foamstone office. It’s nicer than the foamstone buildings at home, it has wavering balconies and it’s got little decorations like stalactites. The building is yellow and the decorations are red and blue. It looks as if a child made the building. I think it can’t possibly be a jail.

The man takes us in a back door and up some stairs. Akhmim holds my elbow. We fall behind because I get tired so easily and can’t go so fast yet, but he waits at the door to an office when we get to the second floor.

The office isn’t anything like the outside of the building. Where the building is playful, the office is full of desks and information consoles. There are a dozen people at the desks. Some are talking into headsets. At least they aren’t wearing uniforms.

A woman takes off her headset. “Hello,” she says in Moroccan. “I’m Miss Katrina.” She has on a sand-brown dress with sleeves that come to between her wrist and elbow and a skirt falls to a few inches above her ankles, but she’s not naked-looking like the women on the street.

“I’m Hariba,” I say, “and this is Akhmim. He’s a
harni
.”

She has us sit down and she takes my whole name and where I used to live. I give my aunt Zehra’s address.

“Does the chimera belong to you?” she asks.

I don’t know quite what she means. “Do you mean Akhmim?”

“I’m sorry.” She smiles. “We don’t say
harni
. We call biological constructs “chimera.”
Harni
is something of an insulting name.” She has a Spanish accent, but she’s easy to understand. I don’t know why they don’t use the word
“harni,”
though.

“There are more like Akhmim here?” I say.

“Not so many like Akhmim. There aren’t many places where it’s legal to make people like that. But there are a pretty fair number of different kinds of chimera here. And there’s a little community of chimera that were made to be slaves. Do you own Akhmim?”

“No,” I say.

“Who owned you?” she asks Akhmim.

He gives her Mbarek’s name and address. “Do I have to go back?”

She shakes her head. “We don’t recognize ownership of people or chimera in Spain , or anywhere in the E.C.U. Do you want to go back? Have you been brought here against your will?”

He shakes his head. “No, Hariba brought me, but I don’t want to go back.”

“Are you impressed on Hariba?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says.

I’m tired and nervous. The questions they’re asking make me even more scared. “We love each other,” I say.

This woman, Miss Katrina, nods her head. “All right.”

She runs her fingers across the unfamiliar letters on the touch pad. She asks me some more questions: Do I have any family in the E.C.U.? Do I speak any languages other than Moroccan? Did I work in Morocco ? What kind of work did I do?”

“I was a house manager,” I say. “I was jessed.”

She stops and says, “How long since you left?”

“About twelve hours,” Akhmim says.

“All right, we need to get you medical help. You should have told me. Hold on.” She puts her headset back on and starts speaking in Spanish. After a moment, she says, “Do you have a headache? Feel sick?”

“A little headache,” I say, “but I’m not jessed anymore. I ran away over a month ago.”

She covers her mouth with one hand. “What did you do? Did you get help?”

“Akhmim took care of me,” I say, “and then my family did. My mother found a horse doctor who gave me some patches.”

She talks in Spanish for a moment. “We’re going to take you to the hospital anyway,” she says. “The doctor wants to assess you.”

“Can Akhmim come?” I ask.

“I’ll take care of Akhmim, and then I’ll bring him to see you in a few hours.”

“Akhmim needs to go with me,” I say. “He shouldn’t be by himself.”

“He’ll be all right,” Miss Katrina says, “and so will you. We’ll take good care of you.”

“Are you going to take him from me?”

“No, no,” she soothes. But I don’t believe her.

“I should go with her,” Akhmim says. He knows how afraid I am.

“I’m afraid you would just be in the doctor’s way.”

I’m so tired I start to cry.

“Let me get you a cup of tea,” Miss Katrina says. She gets up.

I watch her walk away and think, We should run. But run where? There isn’t any Nekropolis here. I wouldn’t even be able to ask for help. “They can’t take you from me,” I say to Akhmim.

He holds my hand. Miss Katrina brings black tea.

“We don’t have any mint tea, I’m afraid,” she says.

It is bitter but hot. The room is cold. I sip the tea and shiver.

People aren’t looking at us, at least. Evidently in this office they’re used to women crying. MISS KATRINA takes a card out of her desk drawer. “This is my card,” she says. “It’s a smart card, so open it up and it’s a phone.” She shows me. “I’m your facilitator. Let me write my name in Arabic for you.” She writes MISS KATRINA in round, childish script. I can read the numbers but none of the other writing on the card, which is all in Spanish, of course.

A man and a woman in blue come in the door. They are carrying cases. Katrina waves to them. “These are the medics,” she says. “They’ll take care of you and take you to the hospital. They don’t speak Moroccan, but they are good people and they’ll be gentle with you.” Then she talks to them in Spanish.

The woman kneels on one knee in front of me and smiles. Carefully, she takes my hand and turns it palm up, then she shows me a strip of plastic and puts it around my wrist. She takes some sort of slate off her belt, and shows me the numbers flashing on it. I think I recognize blood pressure.

Miss Katrina hands me a tissue and I take it in the hand the medic isn’t holding.

Akhmim watches gravely. After a minute, he takes the tissue from my hand and wipes my face with it.

* * *

The hospital building is different. It’s a long complex of dun-colored stone buildings with galleried arcades between some of the buildings. The truck with the medics and me stops at wide doors. The woman holds my arm as I climb down out of the truck. The back of the truck had made me nervous-it had a kind of huge black coffin. But the man had sat in the back with me while the woman drove. We’d sat in seats that he showed me could become a bed. He had pulled a belt across my shoulder and waist gently, as if he were a father and I were a child. Then he’d pointed to me and said, “Hariba.”