The blackness began to ease, as if the parrot’s circling were the day’s energy source. On the reconstituted-plastic wall opposite the bed, the image of a tropical garden slowly appeared: glistening deep-green fronds, rustling in a gentle breeze. Impossible. It began to rain, but only on the image on the wall. Gentle but persistent strands of water ran from the ceiling to the floor.
Between them, the plastic parrot and the fake rain woke Walker. That’s how it was every morning, now that he wasn’t capable of rousing himself at 4.00 am, ready to save the world for another day. He lay face down on the huge, hard bed: he dared not sleep on a mattress he might sink into, unable to get up. His naked body was indistinct beneath a cotton-like plastic sheet. He muttered gibberish, his words up-ended, as the parrot continued to loop the room. Finally, he raised his head groggily, let out a deep sigh — of exasperation and pain, to begin with, and then of resignation — and hauled himself off the bed. When his left foot touched the floor, he winced. When his right foot touched the floor, he cried out. As he stood, crooked, the parrot accelerated and flew straight at the wall above the bed. A small compartment opened for it, then closed, killing the birdsong. The rain eased. The wall of plants became a panoramic window, allowing Walker to survey the city-state of Rise, built on the shell of a city from the Old Time.
He stood dead still, his profile a thin, wasted frame — sunken chest, raw nipples, grandstanding windpipe — staring at his city. His creation. His eyes were lost in their sockets and bloodshot, his cheeks pockmarked, his skin flaky and riddled with sores. Like a cruel joke, his gut was distended and hard. The private Walker was a devastating, inexplicable, pitiable sight.
But as he woke fully, a task he found harder each day, he rallied. His features rearranged themselves into a look that conveyed eminence and calm. Yes, his nakedness told an undeniable, untellable truth. Yes, he was desperately sick. Yes, he was hungrier than he had ever been in his life, hungrier than he thought possible. And yes, he had dry-coughed through yet another night of half-sleep. But too bad. He had responsibilities, the first of which was keeping up appearances. It was no small thing. Step one of the day, he told himself this morning and every morning, was to get himself under control before anyone saw him. His mind as well as his appearance. What other choice did he have? He was Walker: everything depended on him. Well, him and Barton. He never forgot that the survival of the human race was so much her achievement, even if the people of Rise tended to downplay her role and tended, in a friendly but emphatic way, to look down on her city-state of Shine.
Two more deep, searing breaths and his mind was ready. But he couldn’t fix his body by himself.
‘Enter,’ he said, speaking into his wearable, a thin silver-coloured band on his wrist.
A door whirred open and four people scurried into the room. A woman and a man approached Walker first, each of them holding dry cloths. They did not greet him: Walker preferred silence first thing in the morning, because he wasn’t yet ready; because this routine was, he felt, a dirty secret; because until these people had done their work, he didn’t consider himself to be Walker.
He forced himself to keep his eyes open. Although he didn’t enjoy them working up close, putting their hands all over him, it seemed disrespectful to their honest and necessary work not to watch and appreciate it. He lifted his arms perpendicular to his body. The woman wiped the skin of his right side with a cloth, starting at his head and working down. The man started at his left foot, then right foot, left ankle, then right ankle, and worked his way up the legs. The woman and the man cleaned in silence, briefly nodding in solidarity to one another when they met at Walker’s midriff. Walker noticed, and it occurred to him for the first time that they might be seeing each other outside of work. What a way to meet a partner, he thought to himself: while anointing a shell of a man.
Once the woman and the man were done, a nurse began dressing the sores and scabs on Walker’s body. Walker had a team of health professionals on call, a necessity he found self-indulgent and in contempt of everything he’d fought for in his life. They were led by Curtin, who now hunched close to Walker, attempting to replace the worn-out patch on his chest so that she could check his vital signs. As the Chief Medical Officer, Curtin kept the whole of Rise alive. If at all possible, she kept them healthy and kept them from worrying too much about themselves. She presided over the system that kept in check the tumours the population all had, she watched illness and muscle-pain trends, she monitored grief levels, she examined the causes each time a citizen of Rise died. But these days, she spent more and more of her time with one patient. Walker hated that this was so. He did not want a personal doctor. Curtin had more important things to be doing, so far as he was concerned. Yet Curtin was clear: ‘Now is not,’ she told him often, ‘a good time for you to die.’
She found a piece of Walker’s skin that was healthy enough to accept a new patch. But Walker raised a hand to hold her back.
‘Not today,’ he said. ‘Please.’
There was no quaver in Walker’s voice when he spoke, Curtin noted, in contrast to his sleep-time voice, which was full of moans and mutterings. Even in his current state of disarray, Walker’s waking voice sounded like a choir from the Old Time. He sang the song of reassurance, of ‘we’ll get through this’. Curtin felt a surge of admiration for her old friend. But she wasn’t taken in.
‘Sorry,’ she said, pushing the patch onto his skin just south of his right nipple. ‘Got to be done.’
Curtin stepped back a pace and watched the nurse continue to dress the sores. She doubted that Walker could last much longer: she knew more about the passage of this top-secret illness than anyone else in Rise. She worried that he would die — that she would fail to keep him alive — but she worried just as much that he would live on, his mind a fog, his delirium messing with his legacy. She knew she had to do what she could — just as Walker was always pushing on — and help him in whatever ways she could for as long as she could.
‘Must you hover?’ Walker asked her.
‘I must,’ Curtin said.
‘Couldn’t you leave me in peace for a few minutes, if you’ve finished poking and prodding?’
‘I’ll go when I’m ready. A couple of those sores are showing signs of infection.’
Walker sighed, but he was more irritated at himself than at Curtin. He had broken his own rule by speaking during this distasteful ordeal. How could he ask for discipline and forbearance from others, his ever-patient inner circle, if he couldn’t manage it himself?
The nurse glanced back at Curtin, a worried look on his face. The two of them crouched down next to Walker’s groin, examining a particularly nasty sore, murmuring to each other about infections and pus and dust. Walker, despite his best efforts at serenity, or at least neutrality, began to tap his foot.
‘Stand still, please,’ Curtin said.
‘That’s easy for you to say: you’re not being examined. What are you grinning at?’