'Sister Katherine: Back to the future.'
Sister Katherine was worried about David; he was still sleeping in the chair, but his breathing was very shallow, and he looked awful, his face a deathly white. Random muscles in his face twitched spasmodically, but otherwise, he was very still, and so thin that the clothes hung off his body.
She had given him some hot soup the night before from a flask she had carried down the stairs from her flat above, and he had taken it without waking up. Now she forced some water through his lips, watching his throat contract as the liquid trickled down. His mouth opened instinctively, and she gently poured the water in, spilling a little on his chin. Taking care not to choke him, she slowly emptied almost a litre of water into his mouth, stopping only because she was frightened of making him sick and wondered again whether she should call a doctor.
David was no ordinary boy; he was her charge, and something special was going on now, something momentous, and she longed for a sign to show her what to do. She had always fulfilled her duty of care to David and his mother, Ann Marie, and she would not fail now by acting prematurely.
She assumed David was in some sort of trance, but it was not her place to ask questions. She wondered again if she should call for help on the emergency number, but she couldn't decide whether the situation qualified as an emergency or not, and, racked by indecision, did nothing.
Wiping David's face with a damp towel, she pulled his shoulders back to arrange the pillows and wedge him more securely into the chair. He would be better off on the bed she knew, but he was too big for her to manage. As she straightened his legs on the stool, he groaned a little, and Sister Katherine stepped back, startled. This was the first time he had made any sort of reaction. Tentatively, she touched his legs again; they were desperately thin as if he was wasting away, but this time he made no sound.
What if he died?
The consequences for her were too awful to contemplate, and she covered her face with her hands. She was getting too old for this job, she told herself, but the self-pity did not last for long, and she decided to make a meal for David, something full of goodness that she could liquidise. With nothing in his kitchen, she would have to prepare it in her flat upstairs, and with one last look at her charge, she left the flat, locking the door behind her.
In her kitchen, chopping fresh vegetables, a small chicken nearly cooked in the oven and potatoes on the boil, her mind drifted back to the day when Ann Marie had moved into the flat with her baby. The night before, she had hardly slept.
'What if she doesn't like the look of me?'
She had first thought of preparing dinner for Ann Marie to welcome her to her new home but then discarded the idea; she must not force herself on the girl. She wanted to win her trust, but she wasn't much of an actress, and the concern she showed would have to be genuine.
She had committed the file that she had been given at the final briefing to memory, staring at the photograph of Ann Marie for hours, trying to divine something of her character, and felt that she could come to love the girl and her child.
Mrs. Katherine was instructed to watch over Ann Marie and her precious infant, protecting them both from harm, but the life of the child must always take precedence over the life of the mother.
Every day, Sister. Katherine prayed for the strength to fulfil her duty.
They had given her a special phone, kept in a secure recess behind a panel in the bathroom. It had been installed on the first day of her tenancy, and the man they had sent had taken great care in the construction of the hiding place. When he had completed his work, the recess was undetectable, and the panel could only be opened by pressing her thumbprint in the place shown.
The engineer or whatever he was, he never gave her his name and had only spoken to her to explain how the phone worked, showing her the button she should press in an emergency. If she had time, she must leave a concise message explaining the situation, but help would arrive regardless. Once his job was completed, the man packed up and left, leaving no evidence of his visit. He didn't even say goodbye.
The priest made his last visit on the day before Ann Marie was to move in. Sister. Katherine was given her final instructions. Men would come if she called them and provide a password. She should not write the password down or repeat it to any other person and never divulge any details of her mission in any circumstances, no matter who the person might claim to be or under whose authority he claimed to be acting. Her protectors could pass freely wherever they wished and were not subject to any authority in the country.
None.
Once they had correctly identified themselves, she should obey their orders without question. Every night at the end of her prayers, Sister. Katherine would silently repeat the identifying password to herself. She was fearful that as she grew old, her memory might fade, but the words were now so ingrained in her mind that she would never forget them.
In the end, no emergency had ever arisen, and through the grace of God, she had developed a genuinely close bond with mother and child.
And so, the years had passed.
Mrs. Katherine paused in her work, chopping knife still in hand, and stood motionless in the kitchen, completely lost in thought. There had been hard times for Ann Marie, she knew, terrible, troubled times, and she had often feared for her mental health. Regardless of the circumstances, Sister. Katherine had always done her duty and given every possible help to her charges.
'I may even be judged to have succeeded,' she thought. 'David reached adulthood without coming to harm, but neither mother nor son was ever happy, and it is hard to see any good in any of it.'
She sighed, unsure what was going to happen now. She had never been officially discharged from her duties and still regarded David as under her care, although she saw little of him. Ann Marie had gone back to the country of her birth. Perhaps it was her way of starting again, forgetting everything that had happened in England, searching for her lost youth by going back in time to before all this started.
I wonder how much she knows.
There had been several times over the years when Sister. Katherine had been sorely tempted to probe a little and find out what Ann Marie made of the situation with David, but she had always resisted. It would be breaking her oath of secrecy to reveal what she knew, and Ann Marie might be under similar constraints.
Best left alone.
In not much than an hour, she had the meal prepared and liquidised into a nutritious broth, ready to be fed to David. It was like feeding a child, a spoonful at a time. He never became conscious, but once she got the first of the broth past his lips, he seemed to be able to taste it and took the rest greedily. She just had to make sure he didn't choke, and usually cradled his head in her arms as she fed him.
Putting the tray on the floor outside the door of his flat, she reached into her pocket and opened the door with the key she kept on a big ring to keep it safe, and holding the door open with her foot, she picked up the tray and went in sideways, letting the door slam behind her.
She turned into the room and screamed out in terror, sending the tray crashing to the floor.
David's head had fallen to one side at an unnatural angle, and dark blood was seeping out of several deep cuts in his neck, but of even more immediate danger was a pulsating wound in a ripped artery in his leg that spurted light red blood in time with the beat of his pulse. The room was unnaturally dark, and there was an overwhelming stench of death and decay hanging heavily in the air. Sister. Katherine felt as if hell itself had visited this place.
She staggered and almost fell. At seventy-eight years of age, this was too much for her to bear; she could no longer cope with the horror of the scene and felt herself slipping into unconsciousness. Like a woman drowning, she saw her life passing before her eyes and clung to an image of herself as a girl kneeling in church.
I wish I were there, back at the Convent.
That had been sixty years ago, but, in that instant, she longed to return, once more experience the peace and inner tranquillity she had felt as a girl of eighteen when she achieved her postulancy, the recognition that during her initial period in the convent she had shown the personal and spiritual qualities for the life of a nun.
She then had to undertake the novitiate, after which time she would be allowed to take her temporary profession. There were never any doubts; Katherine had a vocation, and as soon as the minimum qualifying time was reached, she petitioned to make her perpetual profession and took these solemn vows at the age of twenty-one.
But that was many years ago, and she was now on the point of collapse and worse. For the smallest fraction of a second, there was a balance held in her body between a conscious and unconscious state: a stand-off situation of perfect equilibrium, as the key functions within her body prepared to shut down, initially inducing a state of unconsciousness that would lead to cardiac arrest and death. The knife-edge moment cannot last, and given her age, the balance almost inevitably tilts downward; the Emperor's thumb has made a verdict known, and all seems lost.
But there came a last despairing thrust for life, and from somewhere deep within the core of her being came a chemical command that triggered a massive rush of adrenaline into her system. It was a highly dangerous move from the Tribus, and could have easily killed her, but it worked, and she instantly rallied.
I must keep David alive; I cannot fail him.
Sister Katherine has come through.