“She was quite enterprising,” Rasida says. “She hid in one of the great arteries running along the corridor outside the cortex. If we hadn’t noticed the fluid leak, we may never have found her. What do you think of my gift?”
“Lovely,” I say. I let tears fall. She need not know why I shed them. Of all the women Rasida could bring to me, it is Sabita, the woman who hated what I did to Zan more than anyone else on Katazyrna, because she had foolishly taken Zan into her arms and comforted her after she came back up from being recycled, before Zan lost her memory. What had they spoken of, in those few hours before Zan left again for the Mokshi, never again to regain her memory? I would never know, but I knew Sabita had come to care for her these many cycles, nursing her back to health after every assault.
I make a small sign to Sabita without raising my hands. The Bhavajas shouldn’t know our signing language, but it’s best to be discreet with a paranoid woman like Rasida in the room.
Sabita glances at my fingers but makes no response. I wonder if it will be worse with her here. Will she murder me in my bed? But she may be the last Katazyrna besides myself who still lives. There is something to be said for the power of blood. She may know something of life on Katazyrna, something that will help me.
“Thank you, Rasida,” I say. “You are . . . kind.”
Rasida kisses my forehead. She takes my face in her hands and searches my expression. For what, I am uncertain, but I press my mouth to hers, lightly. I try to imagine Zan doing that, after all that Rasida has done, and cannot. Zan would murder her, and forget the plan, and throw her down a recycling chute.
“Good, you see,” Rasida says. “You are just lonely.”
“I am,” I say. “I know you are very busy. I appreciate this gift.”
Rasida escorts Sabita into my rooms and putters about, pointing out where Sabita should sleep, here on the floor beside me, instructing the girls to treat her as my handmaiden. Sabita wanders through all of this with a dull-eyed stare. I wonder what it must have been like all this time, hiding in one of the arteries above the cortex, covered in the world’s blood, subsisting on blood and whatever she could peel off and choke down from the fleshy walls.
When Rasida leaves us and the girls go off to retrieve our refreshments, Sabita and I stand weary before one another. Do I look as defeated as she does?
Finally, Sabita signs at me, “I know where you got that womb. It’s not yours. You bought your freedom with it, though. You traitor. Zan told me that much.”
I sign, “You have no idea what you’re talking about. Be pleased you’re alive and Anat didn’t recycle you. You always tell Zan too much, and she goes mad, doesn’t she?”
“Mad with grief,” Sabita signs. “She would never tell me, but I suspect her grief had to do with you. Something you did. It always does. You bring us all nothing but grief. When I spoke to her of the past, she remembered that grief, and it destroyed her every time. That’s not my fault. It’s yours.”
“You don’t know what Zan and I—”
“You’re monstrous,” Sabita signs, and turns her back to me.
I want to tell Sabita everything, but it occurs to me that that’s exactly what Rasida might have hoped. Perhaps she rescued Sabita so I’d open up to her. Betrayals within betrayals. I resisted Nashatra, and that may have saved me from a far worse fate. I have not seen Nashatra since the day Aditva was recycled. Sabita is the first face I have seen that is not Rasida’s or the girls’ in some time.
Yet seeing her makes me angry. It makes me angry because no matter how hard I try, I cannot forget what I’ve done to get here. Zan is able to forget. I’m not. How can I pity her when she gets to start over? It’s me who has to feel what happened. It’s me who carries the burden. It’s me who carries on while she flails about like an empty-headed child driven to one purpose. I have to feel because I can shutter it away, box it up like something that happened to someone else. She can’t. She never could.
When you understand what the world is, you have two choices: Become a part of that world and perpetuate that system forever and ever, unto the next generation. Or fight it, and break it, and build something new.
The former is safer, and easier. The latter is scarier, because who is to say what you build will be any better?
But living in servitude is not living. Slavery ensures one’s existence, but there is no future in it.
Zan and I believed in the future.
“Help me,” I say aloud, and Sabita turns and grimaces.
“I see she’s hobbled you,” Sabita signs, “or did you do that to yourself, to garner pity? I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Don’t pretend to know me,” I say out loud, and I remember the girls could walk in at any moment, so I switch back to signing. “Do you know how far the hangar is from here?”
“Planning escape? If you’d wanted to escape, I’d think you’d have done it by now.”
“And go where?” I sign. “Tell me of Katazyrna.”
“It’s at war,” Sabita signs. “If she tells you she’s routed it, she’s lying. Half of the people she brought there sided with us when they saw how rich the world was. They’re trying to push out her people. She has a civil war over there. I couldn’t believe I didn’t see any signs of it here. There is a whole faction over there trying to separate itself from Bhavaja.”
“Her family has turned on her here,” I sign. “I didn’t know it was out of control over there, though.”
“I was holding out with three of her own people,” Sabita signs. “She killed them and took me. I thought I was dead for sure. Where are Neith and Gavatra?”
“Dead with the rest,” I sign. “I think so, anyway. We were separated before the joining.”
“What a fucking disaster,” Sabita signs. “You sure got what you wanted, though, didn’t you?”
“What do you know about what I want?”
“Zan told me once, early on, that you two wanted to get you into Bhavaja hands. I don’t know why. But I hope it’s working out for you.”
“Rasida is smart,” I sign.
“Rasida’s a fucking madwoman.”
I have nothing to add to that. I just nod, and the girls come back in with refreshments. I wave them off into another room, and sit down to eat with Sabita at a small table at the end of my bed.
If Rasida turned Sabita before bringing her here, she’s done a very good job. Still, I hedge my bets. It’s my distrust that has kept me alive so far. I can’t let it go, not yet.
We say nothing as we eat. Sabita gorges on the protein gel and greens. There are sour, soft-skin fruits as well, and she eats them greedily.
When she is done, she signs, “How are we getting out of here, then?”
“We’re not,” I sign.
She leans toward me. “You are the smartest of the Katazyrnas,” she signs. “You conquered whole worlds. You can conquer one crazy woman.”
“Soon,” I sign. “I need to find something.”