It had been strange for you to see Neme written by one who speaks it—written, not typed. The handwriting was cursive, yet urgent. Where there should have been curved lines, there were sharp points. You found some dim humour in how a language so coldly efficient in its spoken form could look so slapdash and erratic when written.
But here you are: 51.515, -0.132. Soho Square. It’s lucky that numbers are universal.
You resist the urge to have a cigarette. Addiction implies Ralaine.
Sebastian Wren finishes talking. You think just for a second that the other man is going to shake his hand, but of course this would be folly (Neme does not allow for pleasantries), and he resists. They appear to have finished their business. But as Wren leaves, the other man says something. Wren doesn’t notice, but you do, and you know why immediately: because he said it silently, and to you.
“Have truth,” he mouths, and a minute twitch of his head is all you need.
Wren doesn’t see this silent exchange. The other man follows him, and they are soon side-by-side. You follow cautiously.
They head south, down what used to be Greek Street. How appropriate, you think. They don’t talk, or don’t appear to.
Shaftesbury Avenue. Leicester Square. People mill about, and you know the place is quiet because no-one’s lips move. All you hear is the dull, familiar ringing you’ve heard since your deafening, and again that yearning to listen invades your thoughts. What you wouldn’t give to hear the shoe-soles slapping flatly against the concrete, to hear a human voice. You can’t even remember the sound of your own, or Esther’s. (There are few positives in your situation, but your love for her is precious to you, the way you communicate with each other in your own special sign language, and sometimes you don’t even need to sign. Just a look from her says all she needs to.) Oddly, sadly, you remember your mother’s voice, but not your father’s.
What used to be the National Gallery is on your right. For some arcane reason, they’ve kept the building as it was, now closed and still.
Rumour has it books are stored here, in Ralaine, English, Arabic, French; vestiges of linguistic freedom. You wonder why they’re stored at all, and not destroyed. You and your companions keep a whole host of books hidden back home, in a dark room on the top floor: Bibles, Torahs, a dusty, handwritten Qur’an; famous works of fiction, slipped through the fingers of Neme’s relentless inquisition.
Whitehall stretches out before you. Shock sets in quickly, but really you knew the moment you left Greek Street where he was taking you.
New Parliament.
You try to conceal the emotions rising in you. Just the look of it, even in pictures, makes you feel sick to your stomach. It reminds of you of your parents. It reminds you of the countless souls you’d never know, culled and silenced forever for the crime of speaking of a language that was not Neme.
When you were younger, you watched the images of Neme’s exponential spread from brain to brain, machine to machine, mouth to mouth. In some countries, non-speakers were killed in the streets, with neither dignity nor trial. The deaf were first–their nanotech rendered them unable to learn this new language. The handicapped came after. They were superfluous. They couldn’t understand, could not be understood, and therefore were the enemy.
In Newer England, there was less ceremony. People simply disappeared in the night. People like your parents.
Language, it seemed, was no longer an expression of the self. We were an expression of it. Of Neme.
You’re quickly aware your face might betray what you are feeling, and snap out of it; emotion implies Ralaine.
And now, looking up at that ghastly block of grey featureless concrete, you have so many questions. But you know you’ll never have them heard, much less answered. And you’re scared. You chance a second to check your reflection in the next window, careful to keep it brief. Vanity implies Ralaine.
Soon you’re in the shadow of it. Its façade stretches square and mightily into the grey sky, its northern flank standing monolithic over the concrete flats of Parliament Square. Taken in by its melancholic might, you realise you’ve lost your targets. Your eyes dart left and right, but everybody is wearing suits, like Wren and your apparent informant, and just as dread pitches your stomach and you think of how close you are to losing everything, you spot him, the man you don’t know. Relief implies Ralaine, but you can’t help but feel it—laced with dread, but relief all the same.
You see him see you. He seems to be checking you’re still there, and a hint of satisfaction appears on his face, ephemeral, discreet. You are, as a speaker of Ralaine, adept at reading faces as well as lips. Any emotion, no matter how slight, is easy to see when emotion itself is almost non-existent.
Wren is gone. You can’t see him anywhere. It is just you and your informant now, ten metres apart and uncomfortably aware of each other, like estranged lovers on a train. Your mind goes to the note again, and wonder what truth this man could possibly reveal to you, or whether he was lying in his written note. (But that is impossible. Speakers of Neme cannot lie, for that would be saying something contrary to what is meant.)
There is a single guard at the entrance to Parliament, armed. His belt bristles with crude weapons, but you and your target slip by unchecked. You’re still reluctant to think you could be being led into a trap. Perhaps the Government have operatives that still speak Ralaine, charged with hunting non-communicators, finding their strongholds. You think of home, Kilburn—although to these people it would be a series of coordinates, or just another quadrant of London’s grid.
The turbine hall of New Parliament bustles with people walking perversely single-file, autonomous. The people all around you are speaking in Neme. For a moment, you recall the pain of your deafening, and you’re thankful for it.
Your quarry has slipped into one of these lines. You quickly follow suit. You feel exposed and naked, wondering if anyone here can sense your lack of Neme—after all, if so many millions could be hunted down and killed in such a wide-reaching, global campaign of such deadly efficiency, surely one girl in a room full of the enemy was easy pickings.
The next minute is a tense and frightening slideshow of corridors, each as dull and identical as the last, and the people filter away as they find their places of work.
Then it really is just you and him. Your only exit is back the way you came. He turns to face you. You don’t know what to say, but he’s not going to start a conversation, so you do.
“Who are you?” you mouth to him. Your heart beats a tattoo in your chest.
“That’s not important,” he mouths back, and immediately you know he’s speaking Ralaine, and although you can’t hear it, can’t hear the timbre of his voice, you could fling your arms around him in relief. But there’s still something untoward going on here: he evidently knows you’re deaf, and you find that troubling somehow, because he couldn’t have.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he says.
You think for a moment.
“To have truth,” you say finally.
He takes something out of his pocket.
“Alexandra,” he says, and you’re instantly terrified he knows your name. “Lex. Would you like me to show you the truth?”
“How do you … ” you begin, but you give up. There are more important questions. “How do you still know Ralaine?”
“Dear girl. Tell me. Do you speak Ralaine?”
“Yes,” you say immediately, petulantly, because you know. You teach Ralaine.
“How can you be so sure?”
And the question knocks you sideways. You remind yourself of your inner voice, which you know is Ralaine, the language of your birth. You are sure of it.
“When was the last time you heard Ralaine, Lex?”
And you can’t remember. They deafened you with pins so you weren’t infected with Neme. You were seven years old, and all you knew was hiding, how to stay hidden, how to not listen. You were saved by your deafening, but was it enough? Did the machines hear even if your ears didn’t? Was Neme that insidious?
