Tamaruq (36 page)

So, somewhere south of the Alaskan circle, mid-continent, I assume. We’re deep into the uninhabitable zone. It’s a high-security compound, on a topographical rise in the landscape but extensively climate-reinforced. Walls and solar panels and a geodesic greenhouse – diamond, at a guess. African tech. The outbuildings and the zeppelin all use camo. Blink and you’d miss the place entirely. The majority of the facility, though, is an underground warren where they’ve burrowed into the hill.

I was shown my room and a private bathroom, and they brought dinner to me there. The food was cooked fresh, so the greenhouse and a good supply chain must meet their needs, despite being in the back of beyond. My induction’s tomorrow. I haven’t met any of my colleagues yet.

March 2392

I was right. It’s redfleur.

It had to be, really. What else would need such extensive secrecy and isolation controls? If you think about it rationally – as a casual observer, I mean, not as a scientist – the idea of cultivating these viruses borders on the insane. There’s no disease more dangerous in the world. But of course the precautions are suitably intensive.

They have excellent facilities. This part is a joy. The best laboratories I’ve ever seen, all funded by the knowledge banks. There’s a bit of everything – recovered Neon tech alongside state-of-the-art innovations from the past twenty years. The team of scientists is small but they are the best in the world – people whose findings I’ve read and admired and actually been sick with jealousy over. Biruk Oliyad is here, for god’s sake! I thought he was in Dakar. Even the lowest-level technicians are ridiculously qualified. The staff are thoroughly international – a few Alaskans, some from the Sino-Siberian Federation, Biruk representing the Solar Corp. I wanted to speak to him but he was standoffish with me, really quite arrogant. I hope my impressions are wrong: I want to get on with him. I want to work with him! I’m the only Veerdelander, but they all seem to make at least a token effort with languages and there’s the translation filters when we need them.

I’ve seen the labs and the computing facilities but there’s levels deeper down and they haven’t shown me those yet. I assume the testing labs are down there.

So far they’ve talked around the testing – my induction process has been very regimented and the staff have obviously been briefed not to mention the details – but the chimp gen-tech centre is established knowledge in our community, and it stands to reason that a good percentage of the crop is directed here.

April 2392

I’m settling in. I found the underground life difficult at first. It’s not advisable to go outside – the sandstorms can whip up out of nowhere, and despite our elevation the compound’s been buried in the past. But they do a lot to alleviate the mental strain of such a strange habitat – there’s a gym, a good immersive library, even a kind of garden where the technicians like to play at botany. Orchids are the latest project.

And I really think Biruk Oliyad is starting to like me. We have regular arguments, but they’re jovial, more like banter. I’m curious about Biruk. The Solar Corporation has always remained mysterious. A plutocracy built out of shattered countries. They’re cash rich and wading in energy but there’s barely any habitable territory. We have the Knowledge Banks but our land is poor, hard to cultivate. The Antarcticans have it all, and hoard it, greedy to the heart. None of them here, of course. They’ve never had to suffer the spectre of redfleur.

May 2392

Today I saw my first subject. The name tag read Luisa.

I wish they didn’t give them names because a name makes this area of my work that much more difficult to approach. The worst thing about handling a live subject is the eyes. Regardless of species. A snake has no voice, and no eyelids, but it feels pain like any other animal. However long you’ve been working on clinical trials, that part doesn’t change.

Luisa was sedated and her eyes, for the most part, were glazed. There was a moment when they weren’t – when they were quite conscious, blinking and moist with liquid. For the first time I’m grateful for the cumbersome hazard suit which offers some form of barrier between us and them. Otherwise—

But it’s pointless to complain. I knew this area of the work was coming and I knew what it would entail, or I thought I knew, and when I think about it, about the way everything has been handled – am I surprised by the specifics?

I’ll try and be clinical about it. That’s my job: that’s why I’m here.

The subject is a female adolescent without history of prior infection or exposure to the redfleur virus. State of health has been bolstered since time in the facility (they give them good care and nutrition before bringing them down to the lab) and the subject is currently in robust shape. We’ll be injecting the original strain of redfleur first, a Type 1 which we do have a cure for, and monitoring the period between infection and first symptoms. The team have been working on a new treatment which they hope will reverse the virus before it first presents.

May 2392

I tried to be rational in my last entry but the truth is, I almost lost my shit that day, when they presented me with Luisa – even while some compartment of my mind refused to be surprised. If I’m being honest I should say that. I mean – the Nuuk Treaty. I almost walked out of here and demanded to be sent back home.

Biruk talked me round. I was in the gym, pounding the treadmill. I’d called up an immersive and I was running over the surface of an asteroid, a bleak scene, the ground black-pitted, the stars going out one by one, but that wasn’t cataclysmic enough, so I switched to a landscape of molten lava, volcanic matter bubbling and exploding all around me, and then Biruk appeared, standing at the head of the treadmill. I thought he was going to tear a strip off me. But actually he just stood there, while I ran, the sweat flying off me, and after a while he asked how I was. I told him to fuck off. How did he think I was? He said he knew exactly how I felt.

He’s been here for two years. He laid out the arguments and although I had an answer for every one, in the end I acquiesced. I said I’d ride out the six months, and then I’d see.

May 2392

Today I was out in the courtyard for an illicit smoke and as I went back inside I noticed again the sign over the interior entrance. It hadn’t occurred to me before to think about where the name came from but seeing it there I found myself wondering.

I asked Biruk about it. Why Tamaruq? (I’ve learned since that the place is more commonly referred to as ‘The Sorting House’, or simply, ‘The House’. Unsurprisingly, the people who work here have that particularly dark breed of humour most commonly shared with doctors and pathologists.) Biruk wasn’t sure. I asked him if he knew anything about the history of my country and he said no. Then I told him that the name of the compound is close to another word which means wolf, in a language which was once spoken in my country.

Biruk liked this idea. He began expounding upon species characteristics (Biruk, of course, is a geneticist by trade, and in the way I have a casual interest in etymology, he has a casual interest in extinct wildlife). Wolves were exceptionally resilient creatures, he said. Beasts of extreme stamina, and capable of withstanding great pain. I said I thought they were vicious predators and Biruk corrected me, quite emphatically: wolves were sociable animals with a strong familial hierarchy, he said. They’ve been misunderstood, demonized. So of course we then had to have a full-on debate about wolves and the ownership of biological records and historical narrative in general. Biruk said we have a duty to the extinct, to tell their story as they no longer can. I said we have a duty to empirical science. Really, Biruk is too much of a romantic to be a geneticist. I’ve heard mathematicians wax lyrical over the beautiful solution, but he regards code as poetry.

But anyway, he said, no one really refers to this place by
that
name. I said I was aware of this. I didn’t mention the Sorting House. To do so feels… it’s an acknowledgement, I suppose. Which I’m not quite ready to make. I will, but not yet.

Still intrigued, I had a look into the records and after some digging I found the information I was after, which turned out to be more banal than I might have hoped. The major founding donor of this site was one Yulia Tamaruq, a Veerdeland philanthropist with substantial holdings in the knowledge banks and a passing interest in science. In particular: medicine.

For a while, every time I walked through the entrance on my way back from a smoke in the yard, I played a game with myself, trying to imagine what this Yulia might have been like. For example: a woman with an old Inuit-influenced name, genteel, interested in heritage and abstract concepts, pulling strings behind the scenes. Or a woman who wears her name like a badge, an armour, those strong syllables demanding attention whenever she takes to the podium. Or a woman who doesn’t care for rhythm, has no music in her soul at all – only a head for acquisition and investment. Or a dreamer, an idealist. A palaeontologist of wolves. Which woman was it who left their mark, Yulia? Who were you to fund such an enterprise? Did you even know, or care, what you were developing? And why does it matter to me, when I’m here and you’re not and for all I know you’re dead in the ground? You must be dead by now. Mustn’t you, Yulia, the reason I’m here?

Yulia Tamaruq. The money.

I like Biruk’s idea though. It’s nice to think that we could learn from those mythical, ill-fated creatures who once roamed the northerly plains of the Arctic circle, absorb something of their natures into our own.

June 2392

Eight days since Luisa was exposed to the virus. As yet the subject has shown no symptoms and remains in health. The team is excited – seven days is the previous record. I am cautiously optimistic.

June 2392

I lost Luisa.

It happened very fast.

She held out for a record ten days, but after the symptoms showed it was a matter of hours. During that time we pumped her with a number of treatments for Type 2 which are in very early-stage development, one after the other – she showed no response to anything. Then we gave her the Type 1 cure, but it was too late – she’d already relapsed into crisis. We have to keep them conscious for effective monitoring, but after three hours of this I insisted on an assisted exit. The lab technician offered to do it but the responsibility was mine. I administered the dosage myself and through my technician’s gloves I felt the moment where her pulse stopped.

Feeling very low tonight. Drunk a lot of vodka.

Once again I’m questioning whether I’ll be able to stick the job.

July 2392

I’m recording but now I’m here I find I’ve nothing to say.

Nothing I want to say, anyway.

I probably should say that a replacement batch has come through. Luisa was not the only casualty. Her unit now has a resident and so we begin again.

July 2392

I forgot to add – it seems that some of the others choose to spend time with the subjects before they are brought downstairs. They asked me if I wanted to do the same but I can’t bring myself to do that. It feels too much like deception.

I’m not looking forward to the next few days.

November 2392

I had another interesting talk with Biruk about the history of this place. Before redfleur appeared, it was used for something else. Something that had been going on for much longer.

It started with the Blackout. The polar communities were still young back then, and far more vulnerable than they are now. Even as we evolved with the climate the fear remained – fear we’d run out of space, fear there would never be enough room – squashed up like we were against the north pole. That’s where the House came in. Originally, Biruk tells me, it was used for geo-engineering. The intention was to develop the human immune system – make it tougher, hardier, more resistant. Capable of surviving in all of those plague-infested, barren places we could no longer populate.

The part I find intriguing is that there were a number of ancillary centres. One was over in Sino-Siberia. Something happened there, and they had to eradicate the site. Biruk didn’t offer any detail, but – well, it seems one of the experiments got out of control. I didn’t ask for more information. I can imagine the scenes.

There was another site in the South Atlantic sea city. It must have been the perfect place to conceal a renegade project like that, and the extremes of life at sea would have presented a whole other kind of challenge for the engineers (the way he talked about it I could tell Biruk had fantasized about life on the ocean). Biruk says that after the Great Storm, the House tried to make contact with the sea city… but to no avail. Whatever advances those pioneers might have made, the research has been lost to the waves forever.

The overarching Osiris Project – this whole geo-engineering initiative – was funded by the Osiris Knowledge Bank. Most things, when you look back far enough, lead to the knowledge banks.

I asked Biruk if any of the ancillaries were still going but he said everything north of the belt was abandoned years ago. The emergence of redfleur overtook events. It became the priority. Well, there’s not much point in engineering a superhuman when there’s a virus out there that can knock you dead in a week. I was secretly relieved. It’s like the back-room implant ops – it feels ethically wrong, too close to weaponry for my liking.

Now our focus is entirely upon Type 2 redfleur.

January 2393

I didn’t like to think about this when I started my work here and I confess to a slight anxiety even to record it in private – but these are the facts. A lot of my colleagues are dead in the outside world. I almost said ‘the real world’ for a moment there. Yoseph was actually reported as deceased. Others are retired, or have allegedly changed careers, or their presence has been erased in some other way. I wonder what they have said about me, to my team? I haven’t asked. Some things you don’t want to know.

Today I found myself thinking about Jeysson for the first time in a long time. It was a strange feeling, remembering the little jokes we used to have, teasing Saamik about changing his hair every two minutes, or just casual gossip about the latest immersives. I suppose they were the friends I never had, and yet I never identified them as such, I always said, ‘my colleagues’.