POISONED CHALICE
by
Ian Irvine
February 1999
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2: Fugitive
I don’t deserve to live.
I raised my head. I must have lain there all night, for a glass of milk had gone thick as yoghurt. My tea cup had a series of brown rings inside. I gulped what was left, drowned insects and all.
The fatal letter lay on the floor. The yellow envelope. I crawled over to it, staring at my name through its window.
Aislyn Athanor
62/12 Paradise Gardens
What a joke! I live in the ugliest suburb in the whole of Sydney, and Paradise Gardens is a cruel hoax. It is a cement rendered monstrosity built in the middle of the 20th Century. The ceilings are low, the stairways dark and stinking, the outside walls festering with concrete cancer. My one-room flat is the saddest hovel in the whole building.
I reached for the letter. It crumpled in my hand. I could not bring myself to open it. I lay on the floor again. My lost baby. My dear love. Murderer! Monster!
No, I felt her say. You did what was best, for both of us.
‘I did it for myself!’ I screamed. ‘I want to die too.’ I imagined running all the way to the Medical Inspector’s Office and exposing my disability in the foyer. The guilt was unbearable.
I want you to live , she sighed in my head. Open the letter.
I opened the letter.
Office of the Medical Inspectorate
32nd Floor
The
Aislyn Athanor
62/12
Dear Aislyn Athanor
Be advised that your Citizen’s Card will expire in seven days. You are hereby required to present yourself to the Assessments Office, 38th Floor, on April 26, for your Physical Examination, or to any regional office should you be unavoidably outside the city at that time.
Be warned that, under Section 31 (b), Subsection 19, Clause (e) of the Regulations to the Maintenance of Genetic Quality (Human) Act, 2006, (also known as the Genes Act) the Office is authorised to implement penalties, without trial, for breaches of the Act. Such penalties may, at the discretion of the Chief Medical Inspector, include fines, temporary deprivation of Citizen’s Card, permanent loss of Citizen’s Card, incarceration for periods up to life and, in the case of irretrievable genetic degradation, mandatory termination.
I remain
Your servant
Margaret Mulcted, MB BS Ph D (Human Genomes) Ph D (Biotech. Eng) M Publ. Admin.
Chief Medical Inspector
I dropped the letter, which fluttered to the floor, then snatched it up again. April 26! What was today’s date? I had no idea. Time had curled up into a ball over the past weeks. I couldn’t unravel it.
I pressed the button on the front of the NetScreen. It stayed dark. The power must be off again. I checked the box on the wall. The circuit breaker said ON.
They have ways of checking up on people. Maybe when the screen is off it’s watching me. The sudden panic felt like hands around my throat.
I couldn’t stay here, but where could I go? I had no friends, no relatives. Nobody cared if I lived or died.
My flat exposed the poverty of my existence. One chair, one fake wood table, one ragged mattress on the floor. One cup, one plate, one knife, fork and spoon. A cardboard box of second-hand clothes. Brush, toothbrush, caustic soap. But without this room I would be at the mercy of every thug and vagabond on the streets.
To stay meant to die, my daughter’s sacrifice for nothing. I slipped on the gold-plated chain my lover had given me. It was the cheapest of jewelry, the gold already wearing off in places, but I was sentimental about it. In my shoulder bag I packed a clean blouse, skirt, socks and knickers.
I have no bathroom. I stood in the sink to wash myself, then threw the bloodstained jeans and knickers in the corner. I dressed in my best, put on my only pair of boots, counted the money in my purse, thirty-one dollars, and abandoned my home.
I went randomly through the decaying streets. I had nowhere to go. I walked and walked, in the gentle rain. I didn’t care. I was a monster who deserved punishment. My breasts were so full of milk I thought they were going to burst. I hadn’t thought about that problem.
Going past a newsagent, I saw the date. April 25. I had until tomorrow. I thought about fleeing to the country, as my mother had done. There must be places to hide. But I could not. I owed it to my daughter to make something of my life.
That was another joke. If I did not turn up for the physical, my Citizen’s Card would be cancelled and a warrant would be on the Net within hours.
It was mid-afternoon and I had nowhere to sleep. My breasts hurt, my ankle too. I had not walked so long in all my life.
Limping under an iron bridge, high in a crevice I glimpsed someone staring at me, a shape living in a cardboard box. Would I be that lucky tonight? The NetScreen was full of propaganda about cardless people. Their life was brutal and brief, on the Screen.
I hurried away, thinking of my lover that I had spurned so cruelly. I had not spoken to him since I knew I was pregnant …
Swimming in those memories, I realised that I was outside his block of flats. Dare I ask him for help? My rejection had hurt him terribly. The shy boy had become an angry delinquent, then he’d disappeared from the packing factory, taking to petty crime and hanging around with street toughs.
I pressed the button for his apartment. After a long time a woman’s voice screamed, ‘Who is it?’ I almost gave up. No trace of kindness there.
‘Aislyn. May I speak to Jeffie, please?’
‘Jeffie!’ I heard her bellow. She must still have her finger on the button. ‘It’s that little slag from the box factory. Tell her to clear out!’
He came to the speaker. ‘What do you want, Aislyn?’ That hurt, though I knew I deserved it.
‘I need help. Can I … talk to you?’
The speaker went dead. I wanted to run away. I almost did. Then he was back, his voice distorted to a tinny whine.
‘Come up, but one minute only.’ He was still angry. Why wouldn’t he be?
I dragged myself up the stairs, lurching like the cripple I was. I pressed the button of his door. He jerked it open. The woman stood a couple of steps behind him, a big, red-faced trull about fifteen years older than he was. I imagined them in each other’s arms. I had to push the image away.
‘I need help, Jeffie,’ I whispered.
‘What’s she saying?’ the woman cried, trying to get past.
He held his arm out, blocking her way.
‘What’s the matter, Aislyn?’
‘I can’t … can we speak privately, Jeffie?’
‘No!’ he said roughly.
I turned away. All along I’d known it would be no use.
‘Hey!’ he said when I was at the top of the stairs.
I turned. He came outside, shutting the door in the woman’s face. ‘I heard you were pregnant.’ I saw some yearning in his eyes. He eyed my flat stomach, my distended breasts. ‘Is it mine?’
‘It was,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t I good enough for you? Would you rather our baby had no father, than me?’ There were tears in his eyes. Ah, how he wanted that baby.
‘I didn’t have a permit,’ I said, unable to face him. Then I lied. ‘I wanted to spare you that trouble.’
‘I didn’t ask you to! Where is my baby?’
I felt a surge and realised that the milk was flooding out, wetting my blouse.
‘She died, yesterday.’ My face had frozen like stone. ‘She only lived for a few hours.’
He stared at the spreading circles. Abruptly he threw his arms around me. ‘Aislyn, my love. Come inside. You must be—’
I couldn’t bear it, after what I had done to him, and to his daughter. I pushed him away. ‘I’m so sore,’ I said, but it could never be excuse enough.
We faced each other. The door wrenched open and the red-faced woman stood there, her hands on her hips. She read me in a single glance. ‘Get rid of her!’ she hissed.
‘You’d better go,’ Jeffie said.
‘Don’t come here again!’ the red-faced woman snapped.
I stumbled down the steps. I couldn’t blame him. There was none left after I’d finished with myself. If he really knew what I’d done …
On the streets the simplest things in life are incredibly difficult. Like washing. A few trips to the laundromat would exhaust my thirty-one dollars. Besides, everyone knew that such places were watched.
Every time I thought about the baby my breasts leaked. In a few hours I stank of sour milk. I washed my blouse in rainwater leaking from a bridge, but had to put it back on wet. Someone would steal it if I left it anywhere to dry. Before it was, I stank of milk again.
I bought the cheapest food I could find — a tin of condensed soup and a bag of carrots. I ate the soup cold, sitting under a concrete overpass, and knew that someone was watching me. I hurried on, always looking over my shoulder. It was nearly dark now. My ankle was giving out. I had to find somewhere safe to sleep.
I climbed through a fence, across railway tracks and caught sight of a partly overgrown tunnel abandoned years ago. I hobbled towards it. As I stood at the entrance, peering into the darkness, a woman stepped out in front of me. I jumped, for she was a good head taller, with shoulders as broad as any man’s. She folded brawny arms across her chest, waiting for me to speak.
‘I need somewhere to sleep,’ I said.
‘Find your own! We’re full.’
‘Please,’ I squeaked. I felt so small and insignificant.
She considered, or pretended to. ‘Twenty dollars for the night.’
‘Twenty!’ In my desperation I considered paying it. As I put my hand in my pocket, dark shapes moved in the tunnel behind her. If I went in there I wouldn’t come out again. There were worse things than the medical examination.
‘I don’t have it,’ I said, and turned away. I still had twenty-six dollars, as it happened. How long would that last, even if I slept for nothing? Less than a week.
Along a bit I came to an ancient railway bridge, supported underneath by a series of small arches built of iron. Distant street lamps emitted a feeble light. Between the arches I saw metal-clad valleys large enough to sleep in, if I could get up there.
It was a hard climb in the dark, and every surface was wet. I used to be afraid of heights, but not any more. Not after The Gap. It didn’t matter if I fell.
At the top I found a space between rusty iron beams. I pulled myself into it with a sigh of relief. Something glinted in the darkness in front of me. It moved and the street light caught a shining edge — a large knife. A pair of eyes appeared behind it.
‘I’m going!’ I ran along the girders in the darkness.
The second and third valleys were also occupied, the latter by a gaunt old man. I stood in front of him with my bag hanging from my hand.
‘Isn’t there anywhere?’ I cried.
‘Last one’s free.’ He spoke in a whispery croak. Then he laughed. ‘Free now, all right.’
Approaching the fourth, cautiously, I heard a baby crying. It set off a deluge of milk down my front. A man’s voice tried to calm it.
‘Where’s mummy?’ a child’s voice said fretfully.
‘She’s … gone away,’ said the man. He choked into silence.
I hurried on. Before I got to the last space I realised why it was unoccupied. It smelled awful — really disgusting. I had to ignore it. I couldn’t start again. I wedged myself into the entrance, where there was a bit of a breeze, and ate a carrot. I pillowed my head on my bag, did my best to block out the odour and tried to sleep.
It was an evil, haunted night. My poor little baby. I keep seeing her face as I held her out in front of me. Her wide eyes, so helpless.
I can’t bear to write about her.
It must have been nearly dawn when I got to sleep, but I did not sleep long. I was woken by an absolutely nauseating stench. The sun was out, shining directly down the iron valley, illuminating what I had been sleeping with. At the far end was the corpse of a middle aged man with a needle still stuck in his arm.
I went back to Jeffie’s place. It was eight in the morning by the time I got there. The time of my medical examination. I supposed I had a few hours before the warrant would go on the net.
I watched from across the street. In an hour or so the red-faced woman went out, dressed like an abattoir worker. I ran across the street and pressed the button for Jeffie’s apartment. He answered at once.
‘It’s Aislyn,’ I said.
‘Go away!’
‘Please, Jeffie. Please help me. You’re all I have in the world.’
‘Then you’ve got no one!’ he choked, but I heard the lock click. ‘Aargh! Come up.’
I undid two buttons of my blouse. I felt awful but I had no option. I’m not much to look at, but surely more than that hard-faced cow he lived with.
He ushered me inside as if afraid someone would see me. I had to convince him quickly. ‘I didn’t turn up for my Medical Examination.’
His face was unreadable. I leaned forward. His eyes slid down to my chest.
‘Why not?’
I hesitated. ‘I’m afraid.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?’
‘No, but my mother was … scared of the test. She had some kind of secret. I’m frightened.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ he said. ‘Just make another appointment.’
‘I’m really frightened.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘You know people. I want the name of a doctor I can trust.’
He looked at me suspiciously. ‘You can’t trust anyone, you know that. Not even me!’
‘Just a name,’ I begged.
‘I’ll ask.’ I knew he wouldn’t. He was looking out the window. He just wanted to get rid of me.
I walked all day, fed myself on condensed soup and raw carrot, and brooded. What was the point to my life? I would be better off dead. My mother should have done to me what I did to my daughter.
I cut across the old railway yards and the abandoned technology park. Crossing an elevated footbridge towards the University, I caught sight of the gleaming brass and wires of the Centre where my mother had worked. It was one of the few buildings that did not look run down.
I thought of her, hiding in that decaying shack up the north coast, grieving for all she had lost. Cyssa had been a brilliant researcher in Cultural Bio-Engineering. She had been working on the design of future societies, until I destroyed her life.
A hopeless longing woke in me, to finish her work, to design the perfect world. It was the only way to repay her, and perhaps atone for my terrible crime. I wanted to, more than anything, though I knew it was a dream.
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