Wonders of a Godless World (15 page)

But how was she to use this new love?

The orphan considered the question as she worked through the morning. If there was no one for her but the foreigner now, then what was she to do in the long hours when he was away from her? How was she to use all this new devotion, and all this new energy? She had so much of both!

Certainly her chores weren’t the answer. She stuck it out as long as she could—mopping, carting trays, lugging piles of dirty sheets—but by noon her patience was at an end. She couldn’t believe that she had ever been satisfied with such things, or that she had ever thought she belonged there in the wards amid the nurses and patients. She saw now how truly apart from them she was, forever locked out of their conversations and their games and their arguments. Forever isolated.

And worse, some of the nurses seemed to be covertly watching her. The orphan suspected that the old doctor had said something. She caught looks from them similar to his—concerned, but also coolly evaluating. At lunchtime two of the older nurses—smiling
and friendly, but resolute—cornered her in the kitchen and made her sit down in front of a bowl of soup. Alarmed, and not in the least hungry, the orphan forced down spoonfuls until the judgement went out of their eyes.

By mid-afternoon she was loitering in the most deserted area she could find, a far corner of the grounds, bare and treeless. It was baking out there, but anything was better than the presence of people. She waited for the foreigner to appear in her head. Why wouldn’t he wake up? And what to do until he did?

She stared at the sky, longing for a tempest of some kind to come and suck her up into its depths. But there was nothing, only a thickening haze about the sun as the afternoon lengthened, and she understood enough to know that there was no point merely wishing for something to happen, that there was no consciousness in the sky waiting to respond. The foreigner had shown her—the weather was a matter only of systems, of complicated processes that ruled the behaviour of the air. Not wishes.

But she wondered—could those systems be influenced? It had seemed sometimes that the foreigner could do just that. And yet, while he had taken her to wondrous places and displayed amazing phenomena to her, she could not remember that he had actually
created
any of those places or phenomena. He could explore a storm, yes, if it was already raging, but did he have the power to conjure a storm of his own, here and now, out of the blue sky? Did anyone have the power? Did
she?

She decided to try.

Oh, she didn’t intend to conjure a whole storm—she knew that would be impossible. But what about a cooling breeze? Surely that could not be too hard. And it would be lovely. The day was so dreary and oppressive.

But she would need height, a prospect from which to command the winds. She ducked through the hole in the back fence, and climbed the path through the jungle to the lookout. Yes, this would do. There was little for the casual eye to discern—the view was too hazy, the jungle and the town dozing in the heat, the ocean a distant blur—but the orphan gazed out with her other senses, far more penetrating, and saw.

How intriguing. The air masses weren’t as motionless as they seemed. There was movement around her. She couldn’t grasp the pattern of it at first, but then…yes, suddenly she had it, as clearly as if the foreigner had been there to instruct her. It was so simple. The air above the island was being heated by the sun more than was the air above the sea, and thus the air over the island was slowly rising while, just as slowly, the slightly cooler sea air was drifting in to replace it.

Why, it was almost a breeze already, if only the whole process wasn’t so sluggish. All she had to do was speed things up!

She moved to the edge of the lookout and set herself facing the ocean, her legs spread solidly, arms stiff at her sides. She summoned the power within her mind. It was a matter, she knew, of
pushing
the air above. Of making it warmer and lighter. And it was a matter of
pulling
on the dense, cool, salty air out to sea.

She strove. Working by the merest guess, she made herself into a fulcrum and willed the air to move away from her, and towards her, and through her. And it seemed that indeed her mind had engaged with something of enormous inertia, that she strove
against
something. The effort was almost frightening, and yet it was exhilarating too—to feel her own strength, her own resources, extended to full capacity.

And was it working? Was the air above her lifting faster now? Was the sea air, curling so lazily before, rolling in with more
purpose? The orphan laughed, despite the strain. She felt that she was shining with energy. She felt lithe and fierce and full of health. Yes, yes she was certain of it. The sea air was coming to her call. It was tumbling over the coast now, and beginning to climb the mountain, like a slow wave breaking over a steep beach. And yet it was so reluctant to climb the hill. And the warmer air above was so reluctant to rise out of the way.

The orphan groaned. Just one touch of the cooler air, that’s all she wanted. It was so close. She pushed, and pulled, her arms and legs quivering, her teeth clenched. And just below her, surely, the jungle was beginning to sway…

Then her will snapped. She fell to her knees, lungs heaving, and there was no cooling breeze. The jungle below her hung motionless. She had failed.

But when she recovered, and looked out again with her special sight, she wasn’t so sure. The air above the island was definitely rising more steadily now, and the sea air was feeling its way more confidently over the coastline. The only question was—had
she
caused it? Or was it a natural thing? The longer the sun shone, after all, the more the land would heat the air, and the stronger the wind from the ocean would become. Whether anyone helped it or not, the sea breeze was in fact inevitable.

So maybe she had done nothing at all. Still, she waited and watched—oddly humbled by the world—until the cool change finally arrived. And then she stayed even longer, watching as the sun slid towards the misty horizon, knowing all the while that it was not the sun that moved, but the earth that was spinning. And when darkness folded over the island and the sea, still she sat there, studying the sky and the air, observing the sea breeze die as the land cooled and the atmosphere calmed.

The night grew deeper. Around her the grass and the jungle came alive with stealthy noises. Creatures moved in the shadows, but she wasn’t afraid. What was there to fear in the jungle? It was an insignificant thing, night creatures included, compared to the great movements of the air above and of the earth below.

He
had taught her this.

She sighed. If only he had been there today. At the very least, she wanted him to know what she had done, or attempted to do. She wanted to show him what she had learnt. Her gift to him, out of love. She rose and walked back down the hill, stepping lightly along the track despite the darkness. She crept through the fence and across the grounds, into the back wards. No one was about, and when she came to the crematorium dayroom, there was no television flickering, no virgin camped on the floor, no archangel bent over his book. A single bulb burnt dimly.

The hour must be very late indeed, if everyone was asleep.

She opened the door to the foreigner’s room, and saw him there upon the bed. And then her heart leapt, for the prone figure stirred, sat up, and in one fluid motion climbed to its feet to stand before her. He had risen! He had been waiting all along in the darkness to show her this miracle. He was properly alive at last!

But then the figure turned in the half-light coming from the dayroom, and she saw that it wasn’t the foreigner, and had never been the foreigner.

It was only the night nurse.

Heart pounding, the orphan stared at the empty bed, and all around the room. Then she turned to the night nurse, her face set hard and questioning. Where was he? What had they done with him? But in fact the night nurse was already speaking. His words were incomprehensible, but the tone of them was very strange. He
seemed—if the orphan could have believed it—to be apologising to her in some fashion.

He held out a hand. She stared at it, confused. Something lay in his palm, wrapped in paper. A present? From the night nurse? Surely not. It must be some sort of trick. He had played them on her before. But he
looked
sincere.

She took the package. The paper was a plain white page, a little grubby with fingerprints. She unwrapped it. Inside was a brooch. A plastic flower, with a pin at the back. She had seen the same sort of thing in the stores in town. They were very inexpensive. Whatever was he giving it to her for?

He was talking again. Smiling now. Not mockingly, but in a friendly fashion. And then, just for an instant, she caught his meaning. It was about the other night. He was saying he was sorry for making a mess of her room.

She shook her head. She didn’t care about any of that! She wanted to know who had taken the foreigner away, and why. Had something happened? Had he been moved to another ward? Had he—and the shock of the thought was like a thump to her chest—been moved out of the hospital altogether?

The night nurse had stopped talking. Now he was just standing there with that peculiar smile on his face. What had he been doing here anyway, lying in the foreigner’s bed? Had he been waiting especially for her? And then, more baffling still, he stepped around her and shut the cell door. What was this now? She had to go, she had to search the hospital, she had to find out what had happened. She went to push past him and open the door, but he remained bizarrely immobile, blocking her.

Idiot boy. She glared up at him. But then his hands were on her shoulders, and he was pushing her backwards. The orphan was so dumbstruck she didn’t know what to do. The night nurse had
never touched her before. Not like this. In moments she was on the bed, and he was on top of her.

What
was
this? Another game of his, some form of punishment? She couldn’t indulge his foolishness now, she had to get out and find the foreigner. But the night nurse was tugging at her clothes. He was pulling them
off
her. Her top, and then her pants, and still the sheer strangeness of the situation prevented her from doing a thing to stop him. She was reduced to underwear now, her top wrapped around one arm, her pants around one leg. He had a hand beneath her bra, squeezing and rubbing, and the other, she realised, was tugging his own pants down.

His penis sprang free, erect. And at last she understood.

That
. He was going to do
that.

She was so amazed by the idea that she simply could not make up her mind, right then, whether to resist or not. After all, she had always wondered about it. Not with the night nurse, of course, but if she put aside her basic dislike of him, and the fact that she didn’t have the time for this now, the actual physical sensations weren’t unpleasant. His palm rasped interestingly across her nipples—he had torn her bra down—and his erection was prodding warmly against her hip. His other hand, meanwhile, had worked its way between her legs.

Spellbound, the orphan let him push her legs open. His fingers slipped in and began to prod and stroke. They were awkward fingers, and it felt nowhere near as nice as when she did it herself, but still, the fact that it was someone else’s fingers, there was no denying it made a difference. Warmth and wetness were growing inside her, and if all he wanted to do was give her pleasure, then perhaps there was no harm…

But then she opened her eyes—not even realising she had closed them—and saw his face low over hers in the darkness. It was an
ugly, pallid face, even more so with his fleshy lips open and his breath panting, but that wasn’t what bothered her. Ugliness was no terrible thing. Rather, it was that she could read something mean in his eyes. They were open but they were glazed, unseeing. He was not, in fact, aware of her at all, she could tell. Oh, her breasts, yes, and her cunt too, but not
her.

This was nothing to do with giving her pleasure. Having barely started, his fingers had already moved away from between her legs, and now he was lowering his hips, the tip of his erection leaving a wet track along the inside of her thigh.

Yuck! The orphan gave a grunt of disgust and, the energy flooding back into her, she heaved the night nurse off her. He yelped in surprise, his head cracking against the wall. She slithered away from under him, until she was crouching on the floor, her bra around her waist and the rest of her clothes in a tangle.

He came up swearing, enraged, but she was ready for him now, and he was far too weedy to overpower her if she was unwilling. Besides, as he struggled to his feet, his legs got caught up in his pants. His erection bobbled in front of her face while he fought for balance, and the orphan couldn’t stop herself—laughter burst out of her. He looked so silly, his thing waving about in mid-air.

The night nurse bore the ridicule for a moment or two, leaning over her, his hands clenched into futile fists. But then, spitting out some last hateful word, he turned, flung open the door, and stalked out.

Other laughter, not her own, rang in the orphan’s head.

Oh, that showed him!

Relief pulsed through her so intensely it was almost as if the night nurse had indeed managed to bring her to orgasm. The foreigner’s voice was clear and strong. Wherever they had taken him, it wasn’t far.

No, my orphan. Only to the front wards, that’s all.

But he had been silent so long! He’d left her alone all day! Why hadn’t he told her? The sight of his empty bed…

Regret.
I’m sorry
.

But there was another emotion in him too, heavily repressed. It was a kind of excited triumph. And an image leaked inadvertently from his mind. He
had
been somewhere else, his ghost self at least, somewhere entirely away. The orphan saw a vast and cold darkness. Something was lost in that darkness, or hidden, and the foreigner was searching for it. And then, far off, there was—not a light, but a thing that was less black. It was rushing forward, it was of immense size, and he opened his arms to it in welcome.