He swallowed back more tea. “There were mirrors everywhere. All the rooms had a wall that was a big mirror, but it was one way glass so they could see us. Sometimes you could see them a bit, like shadows.” The Soo public, gawping at the last Pu survivors.
“But not every room?”
“No. The bedrooms and washrooms and toilets were private. Except for the cameras, but that was just the staff watching.”
“Did they keep you inside all the time?”
“No, there was a garden as well. That had really high walls. The first thing I did…” He trailed off for a second, but found his track again. “The first thing I did was try and climb the walls, but I couldn’t make it. They had to get a ladder to bring me down.”
“You tried to escape?”
“They must have thought I was a little animal, trying to get out. The Soo thought I was an animal anyway.”
“Had you ever seen any Soo before?” Pew shook his head. “What did they seem like, to you?”
He struggled for an answer. “I don’t know, I… spirits, maybe. They were like spirits. They were different.” He didn’t elaborate. The two species had followed separate courses of evolution for a long time, and even looked different: the Soo had lost their hair and had a very different nasal structure that set them apart from the Pu.
“How did they treat you?” I asked.
“They put me in the zoo with the others and let them look after me. To begin with.”
“And what were they like, the other Pu?”
He took a gulp of his tea.
“They were all old. They weren’t like me. They got old fast and they were stupid.” Pew’s ancestors had avoided the Soo for thousands of years, but the rest of the species had not been so lucky. Generation by generation, they had been bred to slavery and physical strength. Those who showed signs of rebelliousness or too much intelligence were denied the right to breed.
“Did you get on with them?”
“They looked after me.”
“Was it anything like being in the tribe?”
“No, it… well, yes, they tried to teach me things. Like looking after clothes. Household maintenance. Basic accountancy. Magic tricks, for entertainment. And singing, but I wasn’t any good at that. I suppose… when I was in the tribe, they taught me things so I could survive, like hunting, making tents, fishing. In the zoo they did the same thing. They taught me how to survive as a slave.”
There was a bitterness in his voice. “How do you feel about them now?”
He thought about it, then sighed. “They didn’t know any better. They were all dead a few years later.” The domesticated Pu were almost extinct by then. Most of them had been replaced by machines long since and the species allowed to dwindle to a race of servants and entertainers, before maltreatment and disease reduced their numbers almost to nothing.
“And there was nobody else?”
“No.”
“Not even anybody else from the Arctic?”
All the warmth fled from his face. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
He picked up his tea, but the cup was empty. He put it back down again. “Qaliul came a couple of years later.”
I checked my notes. “I don’t have any record of… was this a man or woman?”
“Woman. Girl. She was fifteen. She was like me — they found her in the Arctic, only she survived longer on her own.” He smiled, a little proud. “Her whole tribe died of the sickness and she was immune like me, but she stayed free. She figured out they were using body heat to find us and made a cloak of beluga skin she could hide in. But they still found her. She didn’t know about satellites.”
“Her name’s different to all the others…”
“It was a Pu name. Her real name. They tried to call her Leu’la but she never answered to it.”
“What was your Pu name? Do you remember?”
He looked sad. “Atkariaq.”
“Would you rather we called you by that name?”
“No.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m not him anymore.”
I nodded. “What happened to Qaliul?”
“They took her away for the breeding programme. I heard she killed herself.”
“I’m sorry.”
I reached out a hand to comfort him, but he flinched and tensed up — his fear of physical contact coming out. I withdrew and he relaxed.
“Pew, you’re safe here. No one’s going to take you away. We’re only here for your therapy. That’s all we need to work on.”
He looked suspicious, but it was crumbling. “You’re like Shan’oui.”
A name I’d been hoping to get onto. “Gan Shan’oui? Your guardian?”
“Yeah. Guardian.” Was that an edge of sarcasm?
“Can you tell me about her?”
For a moment, he could not. And then a tear started in his eye and he wiped it away, ashamed to be crying.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
But he wanted to. “She looked after us. She was in charge of all the Pu at the zoo. It wasn’t her fault. She did everything she could, she tried to protect us, she tried to help, she couldn’t stop them when they came, and they put me in the programme, she, she—”
“Pew, slow down. It’s okay. We’ve got time.” He nodded. “Let’s start with something small. Just tell me what you remember from when you first got to the zoo.” He nodded. “Was she there from the start?”
“Yes.”
“What happened when you first met her?”
“I bit her.” He smiled a little. “Right on the hand. She was trying to pat me on the head and I bit her. Then I ran out and tried to escape. Once they brought me back, they sat me in her office and I don’t know what she said, I didn’t understand the language, but… I don’t know. She was nice. Most Soo weren’t.”
“She won your trust.”
“Yeah. She was good at that. She was… she was like people here. On Hub.” I smiled at the compliment. If it was a compliment.
“What else did she do?”
“She taught me, when I was older. I mean proper teaching, the same curriculum the Soo got. She was keen on education, especially for the ones who came from the Arctic. We weren’t like the others.”
“Is there anything you remember in particular?”
He thought about it. “She gave me a telescope. She showed me the stars, and the planets. Venus and Mars. Jupiter and Saturn. Mercury. She said someday the Pu would be free and maybe it would be out there when we all learned to fly in space…” He trailed off again. His eyes turned to sadness. “She was lying.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“She was just being kind. There’s nothing out there for anyone. There’s no freedom in the stars. You can’t even get there. You can’t go past lightspeed…”
“Did she tell you about us? About other universes?”
“Not then. I was only little. I think she just wanted me to have some hope.” He shook his head.
“How do you feel about that now?”
“It wasn’t her fault. She tried to protect us. It wasn’t her fault we all died.”
“There’s one other person I’d like to ask about.” He looked back, waiting for the question. “Do you remember Ley’ang?” The last female Pu. Brought to him in the last gasp of the breeding programme. One last attempt to show the IU that it could have worked, if they’d been luckier. “Pew? Do you remember?”
His answer was strangulated. “Yes.”
“Can you talk about her?”
“No.”
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
He stayed silent. He wasn’t going to go any further today.
“Okay, Pew, I’m sorry. Let’s leave it there for now.”
6. Olivia