“You fainted,” he said. “At work. They called me and I came to get you and brought you home.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I remembered, but only somewhat, as if it were a story that Grandfather had told me long ago. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” my husband said. “I’m glad you’re better.”
He stood, then, and came toward me, and for a second, I thought he was going to touch me, maybe even kiss me, and I didn’t know how I felt about that, but he only looked down into my face, and put his palm briefly on my forehead: His hand was cool and dry, and I suddenly wanted to grab his fingers, but I didn’t, because we don’t touch each other like that.
And then he left the room, closing the door behind him. I lay awake for a long time, listening for his footfall, or the sound of the main-room lamp turning on. But I heard nothing. He spent the night in the main room, in the dark, not doing anything, not going anywhere, but not in the same room as I was.
That night I thought of Grandfather. I thought about him often, but that night I thought about him especially hard: I repeated to myself all the nice things he had said to me that I could remember, and I thought of how, when I had done something good, he would grab me and squeeze me, and although I hadn’t liked it, I had liked it, too. I thought of how he called me his little cat, and how, when I was scared, I would go to him and he would take me back to my bed and sit there next to me, holding my hand, until I fell asleep again. I tried not to think of the last time I saw him, when he was being led away, and he turned back and I saw his eyes scanning the crowd, looking for me, and how I had tried to scream out to him but hadn’t been able to, I was so frightened, and how I had just stood there, my husband, whom I had just married, beside me, watching Grandfather’s eyes track back and forth, back and forth, until, finally, as he was being led up the stairs to the stage, he had called out, “I love you, little cat,” and I still wasn’t able to say anything.
“Do you hear me, little cat?” he shouted, and he was still looking for me, but he wasn’t looking in the right direction, he was shouting to the mass of people, and they were jeering at him, and the man on the stage was stepping forward with the black cloth in his hands. “I love you, little cat, never forget that. No matter what.”
I lay in bed and rocked myself and talked to Grandfather. “I won’t forget,” I said aloud. “I won’t forget.” But although I hadn’t forgotten, I had forgotten what being loved felt like: Once, I had understood it, and now I no longer did.
* * *
A few weeks after the raid, I was listening to the morning broadcast and learned that the air-conditioning system at RU had malfunctioned and everyone was being told not to come to work that day.
There were four daily morning bulletins—one at 05:00, one at 06:00, one at 07:00, and one at 08:00—and you had to listen to one of them, because they might have information that you needed. Sometimes, for example, the shuttle would be rerouted because of an incident, and the man or woman would tell you which areas were affected and where you should wait instead. Sometimes there was an announcement about the air quality, and you knew you should wear your mask, or about the sun index, and then you would wear your shroud, or the heat index, so you knew to wear your cooling suit. Sometimes there was news about a Ceremony or a trial, and you’d know to adjust your schedule accordingly. If you worked for one of the big state projects or institutions, like my husband and I did, there would also be information about any closures or strange circumstances affecting them. Last year, for example, there had been another hurricane, and while RU had been closed completely, my husband and other technical staff had still had to go to the Farm to feed and clean up after the animals and double-check the measurements of the water salinity in the classified tanks and do all the things the computers couldn’t. A special shuttle, one that wound through all the zones, instead of just certain ones, came and picked my husband up and then dropped him off again, right in front of our building, just as the skies turned black.
When I began working at RU, six years ago, there were never air-conditioning malfunctions. But in the past year, there had been four. The buildings were never completely without power, of course: There were five large generators that were programmed to compensate for any loss of electricity almost immediately. But after the last blackout, in May, we were told not to come in if there was another, because the generators were running at full capacity just to keep the refrigerators at the proper temperature, and our collective body heat would tax the system further.
Even though I didn’t have to go to work that day, I did everything I normally did. I had my oatmeal, I brushed my teeth, I cleaned myself with some hygiene wipes, I made my bed. Then I was done with everything I could do: I could only go to the grocery store during my allotted hours, and even if I had wanted to do the laundry, I could only do that on our extra-water day, which wasn’t until next week. Finally, I got the broom out of the closet and swept the apartment, which I usually do on Wednesdays and Sundays. This didn’t take up very much time, as it was Thursday and I had just swept the day before and the floors were still clean. Then I reread the monthly Zone Eight bulletin, which was distributed to every household and listed any upcoming repairs to streets in our area, as well as updates about the new trees that were being planted on Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and new items that the grocery store would likely be stocking, and when they’d arrive and how many coupons each would cost. The bulletin also always featured a recipe from a Zone Eight resident, which I usually tried to make. This time, the recipe was for broiled raccoon with lovage and grits, which was especially interesting because I disliked cooking with raccoon and was always trying to find ways to improve the flavor. I cut this one out and put it in a kitchen drawer. Every few months or so, I submitted a recipe that I had invented, but mine were never chosen for publication.
After that, I sat on the sofa and listened to the radio. They played music between 08:30 and 17:00, when there would be three evening bulletins, and more music between 18:30 and 23:59. Then the station stopped broadcasting until 04:00, both so it could air encrypted messages for military personnel, which we heard as a long, low buzzing noise, and to encourage everyone to sleep, because the state wanted us to live healthily, which is also why the electricity grids halved their capacity during those same hours. I didn’t know the name of the music, but it was nice, and it made me feel calm, and as I listened, I thought of the mouse embryos drifting in their saline pools, with their paws that hadn’t yet developed completely and still looked like very tiny human hands. They didn’t have tails yet, either, just slight elongations of the spine, and if you hadn’t known what they were, you wouldn’t be able to tell they were mouse embryos at all. They could be cats, or dogs, or monkeys, or humans. The scientists called them pinkies.
I worried about the embryos, though that was silly; the generators would keep them cold, and anyway, they were dead. What they were was what they would remain—they would never transform into anything else, they would never get bigger, their eyes would never open, and they would never grow white fur. And yet the embryos were why the air-conditioning was broken. This was because there were different groups of people who didn’t like RU. Some people thought that the scientists there weren’t working hard enough—that if they worked faster, then the sicknesses would be cured and things would become better, and maybe even go back to how they had been, back when Grandfather was my age. Some people thought that the scientists were working on the wrong solutions. Then there were some people who thought the scientists were creating the sicknesses in our labs, because they wanted to eliminate certain kinds of people or because they wanted to help the state maintain control of the country, and those were the most dangerous people of all.