Jackie was quiet and though she looked to be calculating an answer, she must already have prepared it. ‘I’d give us about a month. It depends when the American satellites pick us up, if they haven’t already. That won’t take long. Once they know who they’re dealing with.’ She paused and nodded, then went on. ‘We’re in a good position here, hard to get at. It’s to our advantage in a ground assault. But we’d be on our back foot. And they could wipe us out with a single air strike if they wanted.’
‘Be serious!’ Chloe cried out. She laughed incredulously, but her laughter quickly died in her throat when she saw the face of her opponent. Nothing in its aspect was light. ‘You think we’re a small operation, Sister?’ Jackie asked quietly. ‘You think we’re not consequential enough for those in charge to worry about, tucked away as we are? Do you know what grading we have? We are category-one insurgents. All of us, on the same hand. Finger through to thumb.’ Her right arm was raised, the digits on it spread wide apart. She let the words hang in the air. ‘No, Chloe. I’m not going to waste ammunition on a bolt-hole. The only real chance we have is to go out and disable the Authority’s mechanism in Rith, rally the people there. And that is exactly what we are going to do.’
There was another swell of noise. From the back of the room someone swore loudly, and charged her with glory hunting, trying to write her name into the history books. ‘You’re not fucking Mao, Jackie!’ She did not answer to this, but she stared down her accuser with formidable patience.
‘Oh come on! Rally who?’ Chloe persisted, running her hands through her hair. ‘Those idiots down there who have been walked all over for the last ten years? And because a bunch of women from the hills tell them to? I don’t think so.’ Lillian backed her up. ‘Chloe’s right. People are too afraid now. They won’t put themselves at risk. Why would they break the only system keeping them alive? If we start attacking the town we’ll just come across as bloody bandits. It’s too late, Jackie, it’s all too late! That’s why we’re up here, isn’t it! Because everything else is a mess. And we don’t want to be part of it.’
There were murmurs of agreement. It was remarked with biterness that the idea was impossible; that life below in the towns was not Carhullan’s problem, not Carhullan’s responsibility. Jackie looked around the room, her eyes tracking over the faces. For a second or two she stared at me, then she came over, reached down, took hold of my arm and lifted me onto my feet. ‘Stand up, Sister. Stand up. Tell them. Tell them why you came here. Tell them you have it in you, and that you’re not so different from women down there. Tell them you’re willing to fight.’
All eyes in the room turned on me. She had taken me by surprise. My guard was down. My face flamed red and I was speechless, mortified to have been singled out by her at such a time. Then I felt a cold trickle of horror in my gut as I realised what she intended, what she was asking of me, the choice I had to make. Of all the women, I would be the first to make it, publicly and under pressure. She was affording me no luxury in the decision. But she knew exactly what she was doing. As ever, her timing was perfect. Jackie knew I was a guaranteed recruit. She knew what I wanted. It was why she had turned me down when I offered to train, why she had kept me waiting in the wings during the past few months. I was a sleeper agent.
I almost hated her for it, hated her for marking me out, and using me, as if I were a piece in a game she was playing. But I could not hate her. And this was not a game. There was some deep part of me she had reached, some purpose to me she had foreseen. Her words had always clarified my thoughts. And her voice was the one I had always been listening for inside my own head. Whatever her methods, whatever her strategy, I knew that I was on her side. ‘Tell them, Sister’, she urged me.
From the corner of my eye I could see Shruti, sitting cross-legged and calm, as she had done on the wall of the croft; as she always did. She was waiting for me to speak, giving me the benefit of the doubt. I wanted the room to empty, or to be able to whisper to her, and tell her what she meant to me, that I was sorry. I wanted to say I loved the goodness of her, the mild pepper of her skin in my mouth, the way she could forgive all those who had injured her, including herself. I knew that I would have to give her up.
I don’t remember what I said. The words were lost to me even as I spoke them. I felt Jackie’s arm on my shoulder, acknowledging my allegiance, binding me to her. I felt the flow of energy leaving her frame and filling mine, circulating with my own blood through the vessels of my body. She had always understood what my potential was, the apparatus she could work with. She had known from the beginning, when the old photograph taken of her and Veronique standing at the door of Carhullan was handed to her from my tin box. After I had spoken she thanked me. It was the first and last time that she would.
In the kitchen the women became sedated, and I knew their anger had diffused. Standing before them, I had become their conscience, their empathy, a walk-in who had arrived long after anyone else was expected, long after Carhullan had locked itself down and disconnected from the collapsing world. They could no more send me away than they could their old selves. They were not so far apart from the ones left behind and they knew it. I was the best argument Jackie Nixon could make for solidarity, for intervention, and for hope among the people. She had made a soldier out of me without even giving me back my father’s gun.
She took hold of my face and kissed me, like the others had done when I first came down the stairs, and I sat back down. I was glowing, and the heat in me radiated outwards. I felt as if bellows had been placed between the bars of my ribcage and the coals of me blown into full flame. Nobody touched me or said anything. Not even Shruti.
Ruthie busied herself with the meal. A group went out to the dairy and half an hour later brought in a quantity of fresh strained milk. After the sago was ladled, and the women were all fed, the distress in the room seemed lessened. Jackie talked more of her plan, and the women listened. Perhaps it had begun to dawn on them that she was their best chance of survival now. Once they might have thought her grandiose and eccentric, pessimistic in her visions. Once they might have believed her to be malfunctioning. In the dormitories and within my work group I had heard talk of her aggression and paranoia, her obsessions, the chronic symptoms of military damage. And I had seen for myself her blue flinty eyes glinting with too much intensity when she spoke about combat.
But now she did not seem so touched by mania. I could tell those listening were less dismissive of her ideas than they might usually have been. She had revealed herself to be the realist, and the sceptics had been proved wrong. If the rest of us felt weary and wrung-out, the night’s events had served only to invigorate and embolden her. It was not that she was wired from lack of sleep and exhaustive discussion, from the adrenalin of emergency. She was simply confident. There was now something commensurate to her capabilities, something which she was truly qualified to tackle.
I will not forget that morning. It was the morning of her annunciation, her arrival. In the squalor of the terrace quarters, missionaries had often gone from door to door, preaching, and some people had turned once again to religion for escape. If they could not be lifted from the ruins by those in charge, then they would be rescued by God, by his rapture. There were faith cards tacked to every lamppost and pushed through every letterbox; American-sponsored leaflets were distributed at the factory and the clinic, and every shipment of food was bound with prayers. Others went to the dealers, slipped God into their veins, cracked open ampoules of bliss, and left the world behind for a time. People wanted to believe. People wanted to be exalted.