Tongues of flesh wrapped themselves around Milena to hold her in place. Milena felt the Bulge gather and clench for the blast. She felt in a line down her head like a collar that pulled a weight.
I am not a Party Member, she thought, but they treat me like one. I still have not been Read, and they know it. I have not been Read, but they have made me Terminal. They need me for something. In a line down her head, she felt another weight, something vast and tangled and the size of planet. It was the Consensus. It was present by its absence too. It was watching, through her eyes, listening through her ears. It used her hands to do its work. Milena closed her eyes and waited.
There was dull roar in the bowels of the vehicle below, and the walls trembled, soft and slightly crinkled like chamois leather.
How, Milena wondered, thinking of her life, how did I end up here?
Then she sat back and surrendered to the roar.
After Rolfa had gone, Milena had tried to find her. She remembered wandering through the Shell, through the Zoo, along the walkways between them, asking everyone: where is Rolfa? Where is Rolfa?
Milena asked the little girls who worked at the desks of the Zoo. They giggled at each other’s jokes and were slow to pay attention to her. She stood hopping up and down inside herself, trying to keep her hands still.
‘Rolfa. Rolfa Patel. She has probably just joined the Zoo as a trainee Tech. You must have heard something about her.’
‘No,’ said the child, her pink cheeks swollen with a smile, no trace of doubt or fear. ‘Nothing.’
‘Well, you’ve heard nothing. Maybe the others have?’ Milena looked at the other two children. They were bargaining in low voices, arms folded, something about shoes.
‘Have you heard anything?’ Milena demanded of them.
‘We’re all linked,’ explained the first child. ‘Terminal. One of us knows something, all of us knows it. There’s been no Rolfa Patel.’
Rolfa had disappeared.
Milena looked for her in the Graveyard. She took a candle with her. In the golden light she saw that the dust of the floor had been undisturbed. It lay thick on the shoulders of the mouldering clothes that still smelled of sweat.
Rolfa’s nest was empty. The desk was there, with a few spare pieces of paper still scattered about the floor, and a few dry pens still in the drawers. Milena stood in the place where this particular story seemed to have begun. The place produced a very slight sensation of sadness, a kind of lowering in the stomach, as if accelerating upwards at high speed, but it would have been an exaggeration to say the place was haunted for her. It had already become just another place. Milena wrote with her finger in the dust on the desk.
Where is Rolfa?
I still have your things
Milena
She didn’t sign it ‘Love, Milena’. She thought that might frighten Rolfa away.
Milena left the Graveyard, and went to the Zoo Keeper. She asked his assistant, the sleek young man, if Rolfa had been there. Had there been any news?
‘No,’ said the sleek young man. ‘Hoi. Can a Polar Bear become an Animal?’
His name was Milton, and he was given to bad jokes.
‘Tell the Minister, I would like to be told when she reappears. It may be a joke to you, but she has no money, and she has to eat!’
Milton was not used to high emotion of any sort. His face went blank and slack as Milena marched away.
She went to the Zoo Cafe. She talked to the plump and surly woman who washed all the cups and filled them with tea. Had she seen a very tall woman? Milena asked her. Had anyone come in begging for food, someone perhaps who needed a shave? The woman looked at Milena through swollen, puffy eyes and shook her head.
Milena visited all the pubs, all the kaffs on the South Bank, up along the Cut and back towards the Elephant. Had they seen a very tall woman, not Rhodopsin? The Tykes behind the bars looked surprised. ‘I think we would have remembered,’ they said. Milena crossed the bridges and tried the north. She went to the Comedy Restaurant. Rolfa had been in none of the shops, none of the stalls. She wasn’t drinking. She wasn’t eating.
Milena went back to her room, and found Cilia waiting for her.
‘Well?’ Cilia asked. Milena slumped down next to her on the bed.
‘Nothing. Oh Cill, there’s nothing!’ Exhausted, Milena lay down, the back of her head on Cilia’s lap. Cilia began to stroke her hair.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Cilia. ‘She’s just working it all out. Don’t you remember after you were Read? All those new viruses hitting you on the head all at once? It takes a while to sort through the new filing system.’
No, Milena did not remember.
‘She hasn’t come out to eat, Cill! She’s not like us, she’s not Rhodopsin. She hasn’t eaten in six days.’
Then Milena had a thought. ‘Oh Marx and Lenin.’ She sat up and turned around. ‘Bears hibernate. It’s a response to stress. They go to sleep and hibernate.’
‘Then that’s fine, she’ll sort things out that way.’
‘No, no. They have to build up reserves of fat first. If they go under while they’re hungry, they starve to death in their sleep. I mean she hadn’t eaten properly for weeks when she left.’
‘Oops,’ said Cilia, who had recently looked into Rolfa’s famished eyes. ‘You think she’ll the.’ There was a pause, a stillness in the air between them. ‘I’ll go upstairs and get my coat,’ said Cilia. ‘I’ve got some oats for porridge, I can bring those, and I think some soy sausages.’
‘I don’t have anything,’ said Milena, and raised her hands and let them fall.
‘Where would she go to sleep?’
‘Anywhere quiet and dark.’
They got help and candles. Berowne, the Princess, the King, all of the players. They went to all of the unoccupied rooms of the Shell, where people had recently died. They all went out together, and looked in every corner of the Graveyard, between the racks. ‘What a place!’ they all exclaimed. The King, particularly liked it. ‘A good place to hide,’ he said. He had put on one of the sequined jackets. Milena thanked them all and said goodnight to them, hugged them with gratitude. She and Cilia kept on looking.
They went to the night market, that Rolfa had always visited. The stallowners were still singing songs and piling up mounds of spice-paste or feather cushions. No, the stallowners said, they hadn’t seen the big one. They knew who Milena meant, but no, she had not been around for the last few days. The stallowners were moving mountains of fur, covered against the autumn chill and Milena kept thinking they were Rolfa. Finally she and Cilia rested in a kaff. They ate hot spicy chicken and warmed their hands around mugs of tea.
‘We’ll find her,’ promised Cilia. ‘All of us. We’ll do it.’ She kept nodding yes, to the steamy cafe windows. They walked back arm in arm to the Shell.
‘You get some sleep, love,’ Milena said to Cilia.
Then Milena turned and walked across the Hungerford, across town. She went to South Ken, to the house of the Family.
You do not have to like me, Milena thought, as she knocked once again on the door of Rolfa’s house. I don’t have to like you, either. You only need to tell me if Rolfa is with you — or help me find her.
The door opened, as if by itself. Behind it, a huge old Polar woman stood on crutches. Her fur was white and smoky yellow and hung in satiny strands.