The Boundless Sublime (15 page)

I listened, confused. Wasn’t gold almost as heavy as lead?

‘My children,’ he said. ‘Today is an important day. A great day. Today we welcome a new sublimate into our family.’

Zosimon turned his head towards me and smiled, holding out his hand to me as he raised to his feet.

‘Come,’ he said. ‘Join me up here.’

‘Great job, kiddo,’ Stan whispered.

I stood up, my joints creaking, my bottom and thighs completely numb. I stumbled up onto the platform, and Zosimon took my hand.

‘This young woman …’ He trailed off, shaking his head with a smile. ‘I tell you. You’re going to love her. She’s the real deal. The whole package. She’s brave. She’s strong. She is young, but she’s already overcome so many obstacles. So many challenges. And she’s aced it all. I’m so glad she’s found us.’

The crowd were nodding. I heard someone shout out the word
yes
.

‘You know when something happens, and you realise that you had been lacking something? That a little part of your life, a piece of your puzzle had been missing or lost. But then you have an avocation, and everything clicks into place, and whatever you thought contentment was before, now it’s entirely redefined. Entirely reshaped. You’re more whole than you ever knew you could be. You know that feeling?’

The crowd murmured agreement.

‘Well, that’s how I felt when I met her.’ Zosimon put his arm around my shoulder. ‘She belongs here. With us.’

Even though I didn’t really believe him, tears sprang to my eyes. It had been a long time since I had belonged anywhere. I saw Lib and Stan and Welling beaming at me. Maggie gave me a covert thumbs up. Even Val was smiling.

And Fox.

Fox was up the back, his hair in his eyes, his cheeks wet with tears, and the biggest, happiest smile I’d ever seen on his face. It took every scrap of my willpower to not leap off the platform and push through the crowd to him.

Lib stepped up on the platform, slightly behind us. She was holding a silver goblet, which she passed to Zosimon, ducking her head in a kind of bow as she did so. Zosimon drew me gently to him, his body behind mine, his arm reaching around me so he could place his hand over my eyes. He smelled of cinnamon.

‘I elutriate the lead in you,’ he said, solemnly. ‘May your actuality burn bright with fire. May you shine with gold. May you banish poisons and toxins from your mind. May you float free and boundless in your true body. Your sublime body.’

I felt the trickle of liquid on my head, as Zosimon poured the cup of water over me. It ran in rivulets down my face, splashing into my mouth and drizzling into my collar. It was the same warm, sour, eggy water that I’d drunk in the Inner Sanctum.

‘You are a part of this family. You are loved. You are safe. You are extraordinary.’

Zosimon withdrew his hand and stepped away from me. I turned to look at him.

‘Everyone,’ he said, his face glowing with pride and pleasure. ‘I want to introduce you to my daughter – your newest sister. This is Heracleitus. Heracleitus, welcome to the Institute of the Boundless Sublime.’

I blinked at the sound of my new name. Heracleitus. It was a bit of a mouthful.

The crowd broke into applause, and everyone rose to their feet. People came forward and embraced me, welcoming me to the Institute. People I’d never met before, crying happy tears and telling me that they loved me. I thanked them, confused and oddly touched.

Then they all melted away, because Fox was there, standing before me, his eyes shining. I drank in the sight of him, feeling peace spread throughout my body. This was why I was here. He gathered me into his arms and held me tight. I felt cocooned and safe, and turned my face into his chest so I could breathe him in. Fox. My Fox.

‘Now we can be together,’ he said. ‘I’ll never let you go.’

A lump rose in my throat and tears started to slide down my cheeks. He was here. Solid and real and loving me. My
hunger and exhaustion and uncertainty melted away. I didn’t care that people were probably staring at us. I was never going to let him out of my sight again.

Someone cleared their throat behind us, and Fox’s embrace slackened. I turned my head to see Zosimon, smiling indulgently at us.

‘How lovely,’ he said, ‘to see a reunion between such good friends. I wish we could all show this much affection to our fellow human beings.’

Fox pulled away from me. ‘Thank you, Daddy,’ he said, bowing his head. ‘Thank you for bringing Rub— for bringing Heracleitus here.’

It was an odd thing to say, I thought. After all, it wasn’t Zosimon who had brought me to the Institute. I’d decided to come of my own accord. For Fox. If anything, Zosimon should be thanking Fox for convincing me to come. I also realised with a shock that Zosimon was the Daddy that Fox had been referring to. Zosimon was Fox’s father.

‘It breaks my heart to do this,’ said Zosimon with a rueful twist of his mouth. ‘But I must steal Furicius away. There is something very important he must attend to. A matter of extreme urgency.’

Fox hesitated, looking at me, his expression torn.

‘Come along now, Furicius,’ said Zosimon gently. ‘I have a special task for you, and you alone.’

Fox brushed my cheek with a finger. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ he promised.

I nodded, trying to gather as much of his face as I could into my mind, so I could savour it until the next time we were together.

‘Enjoy your first day with us, Heracleitus,’ said Zosimon. ‘Libavius will show you around after breakfast.’

He took Fox gently by the arm and began to lead him away.

‘Zosimon?’ Maybe it was the exhaustion, or the hunger, or the excitement of being reunited with Fox, but the name felt magical on my tongue. He turned around. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘Please,’ he said, his dry face rearranging itself into a warm smile. ‘Call me Daddy.’

9

I followed everyone into the mess hall for breakfast. It looked as if it had once been an open-plan office space – the floor was tiled with dark grey carpet squares, and the low ceiling striped with fluorescent lights. Tables and chairs were arranged in rows. I hung back to see how it all worked, joining a queue before a servery station where a woman stood in front of a large pot with a ladle. When I reached the front of the queue, she slopped something white and gluey into a bowl and handed it to me, along with a glass of cloudy water.

I remembered the lavish vegetable dishes at the Red House and looked around to see if there was anything else on offer, but it seemed that the porridge was all there was.

There didn’t seem to be any particular seating arrangement, so I took my bowl and glass to one of the long trestles and sat down. A somewhat horsey girl sitting opposite me glanced up and smiled. She looked a bit older than me – nineteen, maybe twenty – with long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail.

‘Welcome, Heracleitus,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I replied, touched that she’d remembered my new name.

‘I’m Pippa – Agrippa,’ she said. ‘I know you’re going to be
happy here. There is nowhere like this in the world. We’re so lucky.’

I nodded politely – I would have felt more lucky with a fruit salad or a smoothie – and spooned up a mouthful of porridge. Looking at it closely, I realised it was quinoa. I put the spoonful into my mouth.

And nearly spat it out again.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Pippa.

‘Salty …’ I choked, trying to force the mouthful down.

Pippa nodded. ‘It took me a few days to get used to the sodium too, when I was a sublimate. Soon you won’t notice it. Sodium is a cardinal element.’

I took another mouthful of porridge and my mouth puckered. It was like eating pure salt. I reached for my water glass, but that was worse. The water was warm, and tasted of rotten eggs, like the glassful that Zosimon had made me drink earlier. I gagged and turned my eyes back to Pippa.

‘Water is full of poisons,’ she explained. ‘Even the rainwater that we drink. It has to be purified with sulphur. Sulphur is a cardinal element too.’

‘What’s a cardinal element?’

Pippa scrunched up her nose. ‘Daddy will explain everything when you’re ready. Just trust him. Daddy knows best.’

I realised with a start that everyone must call Zosimon ‘Daddy’ – which probably meant he wasn’t Fox’s father at all.

I left my breakfast untouched, hoping there’d be something more palatable at morning tea or lunch. Pippa shook her head sympathetically and touched me gently on the arm.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’ll all make sense soon.’

She scraped her bowl clean and beamed at me.

After breakfast we lined up again at a different trestle where Welling was handing out pills.

Pills? Were we being drugged?

Maybe this
was
one of those cults where everyone was given LSD and told that aliens were waiting for them on another planet.

When I got to the front of the line, Welling nodded at me.

‘Hey, Ruby,’ he said, and then corrected himself with a smile. ‘Heracleitus.’

‘What are the pills for?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Welling, his eyes meeting mine and his expression frank. ‘We’re not drugging you. These are your vitamin supplements. They’ll speed up the elutriation process. You don’t have to take them if you don’t want to.’

He passed me a small handful of coloured capsules, and a glass of the warm water.

‘Vitamins?’ I asked.

‘It’s the standard dose for sublimates. Once you’ve been elutriated, we can tailor your supplements to your particular needs.’

‘I’ve been eating at the Red House for two weeks,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t had any meat or dairy at all.’

‘That’s great, you’ve been doing a great job. But dietary changes are only the beginning. You have been drinking water laden with chemicals, eating vegetables grown in tainted soil. Here, everything is pure. It’ll take your body a while to get used to it. You have too much mercury and lead running in your veins – I can see it in the colour of your skin, the limpness of your hair. You need iron and sodium to purge those toxic elements. Magnesium to keep your will strong. Zinc to help you see the truth.’

I looked at the capsules. It sounded like nonsense to me, but what harm could it do? Surely it was no worse than taking a multivitamin.

I tossed them back with a mouthful of warm eggy water.

‘See?’ said Welling. ‘You already fit right in.’

The mess cleared quickly as everyone took their supplements and headed out to do … whatever it was they did all day. I helped Lib pack up the supplement bottles while she explained how the daily routine worked at the Institute.

‘We wake at dawn,’ she said. ‘A bell rings to get everyone up, but you’ll soon start to wake when it gets light. Make your way directly to the bathroom – the quicker you are, the shorter the queue will be. Wash your face, under your arms and between your legs. Cold water only, of course. Once a week we fill a bath to wash properly. No soap, no shampoo, no deodorant. The unpleasant odours and smells that come from a toxicant body aren’t natural. They’re your body purging yourself of toxins, and after you’ve been here for a while, you will be elutriated and won’t smell anymore.’

That made sense. If you weren’t putting anything unpleasant into your body, nothing unpleasant would leak out.

‘What about toothpaste?’ I asked. ‘Toothbrushes?’

Lib shook her head. ‘Unnecessary for the diet we eat.’

She led me into the concrete courtyard that we’d assembled in earlier. A group of young girls were strolling past. There were about eight of them; the oldest was maybe twelve, and the youngest seemed to be around four. They were all chattering and giggling happily. Some were holding hands. They seemed a totally ordinary bunch of kids, except for the fact that they were all dressed in identical white tunics, and their hair was shaved down to stubble. I looked closer, and realised that they weren’t all girls, either. Some were definitely boys, and some I couldn’t tell. Had I seen just one girl, in the toilets and in the corridor outside my room? Or had it been two different children?

‘Who are they?’ I asked Lib.

‘The Monkeys.’

‘The who?’

One of the children said something which caused the others to shriek with laughter. Then they all scampered away around a corner, disappearing from view. Lib frowned and didn’t answer my question.

‘After you’ve washed, you come here for Daddy’s Hour. Daddy will lead us in meditation, then speak to us on the topic of his choosing, as you saw this morning. Then breakfast.’

‘Is breakfast always so salty?’

Lib nodded. ‘Sodium is a cardinal element.’

There was that phrase again.
Cardinal element.

‘I wasn’t expecting the food rules to be so … strict,’ I said. ‘The food at the Red House was so delicious.’

‘Breakfast is a simple meal – quinoa or buckwheat. But don’t worry – lunch and dinner are just like at the Red House. There’s plenty of variety.’

I nodded obediently.

‘There are six work teams,’ Lib explained. ‘You’ll start off in Domestic. You prep and serve the meals, and do the laundry and cleaning.’

That sounded boring. ‘What are the other teams?’

‘Cultivation works the earth, growing the vegetables we eat. Reconstruction maintains and develops our buildings – clearing out the old offices for more living space, and breaking up the concrete in the car park to make more garden beds.’

‘What team are you in?’

‘I’m in Sanctify, the only permanent team. The others rotate. We work with Daddy, creating the work teams and the daily schedule, as well as bottling and packing the water we hand out on the streets. And of course looking after Daddy, making sure he is comfortable and has everything he needs.’

‘That’s only four teams,’ I said. ‘What are the other two?’

‘Outreach,’ said Lib. ‘They go to the Red House and hand out the water. And Procurement, which is currently on hiatus.’

‘What about Fox?’ I asked. ‘Which team is Fox in?’

Lib paused for a moment, then turned away from me. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to the kitchen.’