Chapter Text
Here’s a little secret about Eva Stratt: She’s picky about her food.
Hard to imagine her like that, eh?
But it’s true. She generally blames it on growing up with state brands; there’s a way, a particular way that things are supposed to taste and feel, and when they don’t, it’s like a little itch in her brain. A minor annoyance, usually. But in truth she was a particular eater as a child, too; she’s done a lot to get over it as an adult, but there are still some foods she just can’t stomach. It’s just one of the many things that makes moving through the world as herself an experience of low-level but constant irritation.
It’s not that she has a narrow pallet, mind; having traveled as much as she has, she’s come to like most of the cuisines she’s been lucky enough to try, or at least knows one or two safe dishes in each, something she can grab from an airport deli at two a.m. between flights in any corner of the globe. She’s got a particular fondness for Indonesian food, and Leclerc is a wonderful French cook. Li has introduced her to some excellent authentic Chinese food whenever they happen to be in the same city and have a chance to grab dinner. And Komorov is slowly bringing her around on Russian cuisine. But there are some foods, across any culture, that she just can’t stand.
Pork is one example. She doesn’t mind the taste, but she can’t tolerate the texture. There are a few exceptions—bacon cooked to a crisp is fine, and shredded or ground pork is acceptable under the right conditions—but Korean pork belly makes her queasy, and American pork chops make her shudder, and German cured ham is so vile she’s refused to eat it ever since she was a child. The briney taste and the feeling of the little fat bubbles bursting between her teeth is too much to stand. The worst of them all is frühstücksfleisch, “breakfast meat”—what her American coworkers call spam. The first time she saw a can of the gelatinous meat cube as a little girl, she had such a visceral reaction that she told her father, out loud and unprompted, that she would not be eating that.
Her parents heard that protestation quite a bit from her, actually. There was a whole host of foods she refused to eat, which prompted in return a whole host of responses from her concerned caregivers, from pleading to bribing to cajoling, to even threatening some parenting tactics that would definitely not be considered in vogue these days. Eva doesn’t blame her parents for that—they were understandably worried about their only child wasting away, and it was a different era—but the body holds grudges even if the mind forgives, and to this day she dodges giving explanations to people on why she’s not hungry for whatever’s in the cafeteria or canteen that day.
Considering her job these last few years, it’s been easy to subside on carbs and caffeine without drawing too many questions. She’s a busy woman and no one notices if her eating habits reflect that; Grace was the only one who ever seemed to worry about her poor diet, and although he grumbled well-meaningly about her meal choices, so long as she eventually caved and asked the ship’s cooks to make her something with protein and vitamins, he was satisfied. Thank god, he never told anyone. It would have been humiliating if people had known she thought she was too good for the mess hall food like the rest of them.
But she’s not on the Vat anymore. These days she’s living in Paris, alone, and she cooks for herself. These days, she has no one to lie to but herself as she picks up the groceries from the delivery man at the door of her high-security government apartment, and sets it down on the counter, and looks with growing apprehension down at the contents.
Here’s a little secret about rationing plans: They don’t give a damn about your culinary preferences.
From the regulator’s perspective, the UN’s global rationing system is a living beast, a monstrous multi-headed ouroboros that feeds back in on itself, surrounding the whole world with its tail in its mouth. Supply chains merge and diverge like the circulatory system of a body powered by multiple hearts, the world’s breadbaskets pumping vital nutrients into the arteries of a whole planet. Every ounce of food they lay away today, stored up in national strategic reserves of canned and shelf-sable foodstuffs, is another mouth fed a decade from now. But most people lack foresight; they want food, now, they want to eat as they always have, with all their luxuries and trimmings, and riots are bad for efficiency, and so little allowances are made. For a few more years the people will have their chocolate, their coffee, their alcohol to numb the terror as everyone tries to forget the world is cooling.
The beast’s every spasm is tracked by endless paperwork, reports hundreds of pages long and snapped together by massive binder clips piling on her desk like an avalanche, spreadsheets nested within spreadsheets with links and formulas that always seem to end their calculations in the red. When Eva closes her eyes at night the numbers pace restlessly behind her eyelids, groaning like Joseph’s seven fat and seven skinny cows, as she tries to eke out another million lives from the margins, tries to balance the needs of the weak against the wants of those powerful enough to walk away, tries to stretch a can of beans to feed eight billion mouths.
That’s the top-down view. From the consumer’s perspective, here’s how the ration system works:
Once per week, everyone—every man, woman and child in France, with similar schemes in every country across the globe—receives an updated ration card. For people with cell phones, this functions as a government app tied to the owner’s ID; for people without, they receive a coupon book in the mail at the start of each month, with the stamps designated by week. There are multiple categories of stamps: bread, meat, dairy, luxury goods. Stamps cannot be traded or bought; detached from the physical book they’re invalid, and there’s no exchange option in the apps. By these measures, every single ounce of food consumed on Planet Earth is being tracked and accounted for, or at least the vast majority; black markets remain a scourge, but that’s humanity for you.
To avoid as much as possible the horrifically long queues of the past century, the update days are staggered as best as can be, coordinating with people’s days off when possible, and the app shows what is and isn’t still in stock at nearby shops. When you check out at the register or online, stamps are deducted from your weekly total, limiting how much food you can buy in each category. Food still costs money, of course, but there are fixed prices to avoid rapid inflation and to ensure that everyone, regardless of class, gets to eat. Restaurants, on the other hand, require no stamps from the diners but are restricted in how much they can buy from their wholesale suppliers; and for the people who fall through the cracks, as there always are, the French government has opened free canteens in every city to ensure everyone can have three small but square meals a day.
This is not a new system, but rather a modernization and globalization of the same rationing schemes that saw multiple nations through the first and second world wars. Here in the early days, there’s even some room for personal preference worked in; someone might choose to buy sourdough instead of rye with their bread ticket; someone else might choose apples over oranges for their fruit ration. But what you can get depends on what’s in the store. If it’s winter, there won’t be fresh fruit, just canned; if you get to the bakery too late for your preference, tough luck, it’s chewy brown bread for you for the next week.
Meat, however, is more rigidly regulated because of the difference in cuts. Eva and her colleagues on the Food and Energy Security Commission have made damned sure that, as far as it was within their ability, this is not going to be a world of the rich eating steak and the poor eating gristle. The meat ration is divided according to the quality of the cut; have more money than you need to buy all the good steaks on the grocery store shelf? Good for you, go spend it at a restaurant and support the local economy. Your ration book will allow you one nice cut of meat every four weeks and you’ll say “Thank you, Ms. Stratt,” for it.
The cheaper the cut of meat, the more stamps available. At the bottom of the list is canned processed meat. Each person is allotted three whole tins every week, roughly a day and a half’s worth of meals. A godsend of proteins and fat and salt as other, better sources dwindle. It’s efficient, too, using scraps of meat that ordinarily would be discarded; humanity needs to make use of every single calorie it can save, and pâté de jambon, spam, frühstücksfleisch, whatever you call it, ensures that nothing goes to waste.
In this new, dying world, waste is unacceptable. Waste is the cardinal sin. Waste is a crime against humanity itself.
Eva should be used to committing crimes against humanity at this point.
As it turns out, she isn’t.
For the first few weeks after the ration is implemented, she gets by through ordering take-in. But for “Dictator of Planet Earth,” as Lokken has called her on more than one occasion (the woman has apparently taken over Grace’s roll of calling her on her bullshit), she pulls only a typical paycheck for a government employee—less, actually, given that her housing is provided for. The project has basically unlimited funds, but that’s not her money. She can’t just order pizza on PHM’s dime because she doesn’t like her ration food.
When her spare cash for takeout runs out at the end of the third week, however, she does strongly consider giving herself a raise.
She doesn’t, because of course she doesn’t. And by the end of the fourth week, the cans of breakfast meat are stacked three-deep on her counter. She could swear they’re staring at her.
Eleven cans. Eleven cans of tinned pork jello.
And she has nothing else in the fridge or pantry to eat.
Skipping dinner is plainly not an option; frankly, she’s starving. She barely ate anything at all last night, when she tried cooking one of the cans of breakfast meat into something, but she’s never been all that good in the kitchen and she could still tell it was in there, nearly ruining what remained of her more palatable rations alongside it. She barely picked at that meal and hasn’t eaten at all today, either, ignoring hunger in favor of work. But now she’s at home and, while there’s always more work to do waiting on her laptop, hunger has gone from being a polite houseguest waiting for her to take notice to a nightmare roommate demanding her attention.
Someone else in her position might go to one of the government canteens; they require no stamps and always serve a full meal to anyone who comes to their doors, no questions asked. It’s actually reduced food insecurity pretty effectively among the unhoused population of Paris. But in her circumstances it would simply be too dangerous; the attempt on her life in Washington proved that. Aside from the office, these days she rarely leaves the apartment. Even her groceries are ordered in. Futilely, she checks her app. Yes, she is still out of ration stamps for the week. Son of a bitch.
Eva stares at the cans for a long time. Then, shuddering with every slice of the knife, she cuts one up and fries it. She sits down with her sorry plate of hot meat slices and a glass of water, and her stomach growls at the smell. Her mouth waters, which she counts as a good sign. She cuts a chunk, spears it on a fork and puts it in her mouth.
The taste is…good, actually. Much better than she expected. Salty and greasy and delicious. Or maybe she’s just that hungry.
But then she bites down on the slice, crispy on the outside, rubbery on the inside, and her stomach heaves.
She spits it out into her napkin and suppresses the gag reflex, gulping for air and then chugging water; throwing up on an empty stomach is going to hurt a lot worse than a full one. When she’s gotten herself under control, she looks down at the plate, and finds the sad little slices of meat looking back at her, rejected.
She tries again. She manages to choke down a bite with more water. Alright, progress. The thought of a whole meal of this is daunting, but she has never not risen to the occasion.
Then she tries for a second piece, and something under her molar wobbles. This time she actually does vomit, staggering to the bathroom and puking up the water she just gorged herself on.
The nausea staves off the hunger pangs for no more than half an hour, and then she’s left staring at the plate again. Now the meat is cold, which experience warns her will not be an improvement. To her humiliation, tears are starting to burn in her eyes. She’s so hungry. So hungry. But she just can’t do it.
Good god, she was such a bitch to Grace. Animal instinct is a hell of a thing. Who was she to call him a coward for not being able to commit suicide, when she can’t even make herself follow her own damn rationing directives?
Eva steadies herself, looks at the stove clock and inhales through her nose. Nine p.m. She only needs to make it another twenty-seven hours until midnight on Sunday, when her app will reset and she’ll have another week’s worth of stamps. Surely, somewhere will be open at that time. She grabs the plate and dumps it in the trash, loathing herself for the waste when the world has nothing to spare. Twenty-seven hours. She can make it.
She’s going to have to.
Okay, she decides at half past midnight on Sunday morning, as she tries to restrain herself from stuffing her face with bread and accidentally making herself sick again. New plan. She’s got her next week of groceries, and she’s got a better idea of what to do now.
She’s going to ration her rations.
It’s a simple concept. She just needs to reduce her daily meals to get to the end of the week without running out of foods she can tolerate. Shouldn’t be hard; the tinned meat accounts for only one-and-a-half days of food, so she only needs to reduce her intake of the rest of her meals by about twenty-five percent.
Never mind that the rations are already a severe restriction from a typical Northern European diet. Never mind that after only a week, the feeling of being always a little hungry is starting to wear at her like a rock in her shoe or a tag on a cheap shirt. Never mind that she’s short-tempered with her team at the Project and making stupid mistakes by the end of each work day as her brain screams at her to stop answering emails and feed it some goddamned calories. She tells herself that this is only the beginning of rationing and she’s just getting ahead of the curve, that the food situation is only going to get bleaker so she may as well get used to it now. Her body will adjust. She just needs to weather the storm.
She’s done harder things, after all.
She can do this too.
Twice when she’s particularly hungry, she tries again. The first time it works, even if it leaves her queasy afterwards. The second time she loses both her dinner and what’s left in her stomach of her lunch. Experiment decidedly unsuccessful. From that point on, every Monday morning after her weekend grocery delivery, she hands the cans to her assistant and tells her to drop them off at the Refettorio at St. Madeleine’s, avoiding the girl’s eyes. If she sees that look of intimidated admiration one more time, as if this were a noble gesture, she is going to snap like a strained rubber band.
She always assumed she would be stronger than this. That if it actually came down to it, if she was really starving, then she would be able to set her personal preferences aside on this as she’s done on so many other things. But she’s weak and she’s a hypocrite; all day long, her stomach twists with hunger, and day long she ignores it, eating her three-quarters portion of lunch alone in her office, trying not to wolf it down, regretting how quickly it’s gone. Deep in her heart she suspects it’s not enough. But trying to choke down the food she needs to get her daily recommended nutrients is like trying to swallow the sound of nails on a chalkboard. The hunger is just frankly, physically, preferable. No amount of distraction or dissociation or self-castigation has helped so far.
It’s futile to try. She just can’t talk herself into it.
It only takes about three months for this poorly-conceived asceticism to catch up to her. She’s in the middle of a discussion with Redell and Lokken on the status of the astrophage plants when she stands up too quickly, feels the world spin and blacks out. It’s only for a minute, but when she comes to everyone is clucking over her like a bunch of mother hens.
“I’m fine,” she tries to tell them, annoyed. “Fine. Just a little hungry.”
But apparently she has not been hiding her worsening physical and mental state as well as she’d thought, because before she knows it she has been undiplomatically frog-marched several floors down to Lamai’s office. Since the launch the doctor has become the primary physician for most of the PHM senior staff, given the risks that visiting a doctor’s office open to the public could pose for people as famous (and infamous) as them, in exchange for a private lab to continue her coma-therapy research. Usually, it’s convenient to have her in the same building. Right now, however, Eva wishes that the woman worked somewhere else in the city.
Lamai clearly isn’t happy with her bloodwork, frowning over the results on her tablet. “Your iron levels are dangerously low. You’re anemic, and you’ve lost weight since your last appointment; have you been eating enough?”
“Of course,” Eva snaps. Lamai looks up. Verdomme, too much; a simple “yes” would have done the trick, but now Lamai looks suspicious.
“Are you sure?”
She can salvage this. She has proof. Eva takes out her phone and shows Lamai the rationing app, but the doctor doesn’t seem convinced, just squinting up at her. Lamai is usually a mousey woman and easy to boss around, but when it comes to the health of her patients, she’s as stubborn as Eva. A stalemate develops as the two women stare each other down.
“Why are you lying to me,” the doctor says at last.
“Who says I’m lying.”
“Your tests do.”
Eva exhales, short and irritable. “Alright, fine. I’ve been…donating, some of my meat rations.”
“Those rations are precisely enough calories and nutrients for your daily needs. You know that, you helped write the plans. And you’ve been donating part of it on the regular?”
“I’m fine.”
“You passed out,” the doctor insists.
Eva crosses her arms, feeling harried and not a little henpecked; it’s not as endearing coming from Lamai as from Grace. “I don’t need to have this conversation with you. My choices are my own; if I don’t want to eat something, I don’t have to.” Oh good god, she sounds like such a petulant child. She can’t even meet Lamai’s eyes, this is humiliating.
“What part of your ration aren’t you eating and why?” the doctor insists, and then adds: “Is it the taste or the texture?”
Eva looks up, surprised at this frankly uncanny insight. Lamai…doesn’t seem to be surprised. Or suspicious. In fact she looks like this is all making sense, which is odd, because it doesn’t make any sense to Eva.
“...Texture,” she says slowly, before admitting: “The canned meat is…not very appealing.”
Lamai nods. “That tracks; it’s not uncommon for people with your condition. I wonder if there’s a way to make it more palatable for you…” She trails off, rubbing her chin and apparently not noticing that her patient is frowning.
“My condition?”
Lamai glances over, and then stops. Her eyes go wide, and color rushes to her cheeks. “Oh– I-I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have– but– aren’t you–?”
She breaks off and the two women stare at each other. Lamai looks like she wants to be having any other conversation. Eva doesn’t know what conversation they’re having, and that’s annoying her. “Aren’t I what?” she demands, and Lamai startles, before quickly pulling up something on her tablet. She scrolls through the screen, looks surprised, bites her lip, and then looks up at Eva again, before seeming to make a decision.
“Okay. I might be out of bounds for saying this, but I’d like you to go speak to a psychiatrist.”
“What?” That feels like a massive overreaction. “Why? So I don’t like frühstücksfleisch, that doesn’t make me crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were crazy. Oh, dear.” Lamai sighs, rubbing her forehead. “This shouldn’t be coming from me. I’m not qualified to give a diagnosis, it’s not my field.”
“Are you going to explain what the hell is going on here or not,” Eva says frostily.
Lamai bites her lip again, and then sighs. She pulls some thick medical book off her shelf and flips through the pages before looking up at Eva.
“Would you say that you have persistent hardships in communicating with others? Are social interactions difficult for you?”
Eva frowns, confused. “What does this have to do with–”
“Please just answer the question.”
“I…yes, obviously,” she says, thinking of a conversation she once had with Grace on the Gansu, about a party she wasn’t attending and friendships she wasn’t making. “I’m not a social person, since when is that a crime?”
Lamai ignores the barb. “Would you say that, compared to other people, you demonstrate persistently restricted, repetitive and inflexible patterns of behaviour, interests and sensory preferences?”
“I–” She huffs, “Alright, yes, I’m ‘inflexible,’ but so? If I’m not inflexible on my demands then everyone on the planet dies.”
“You prefer routines? To an unusual degree, compared with others?”
“I’m organized, yes.”
“And it causes significant distress when something interferes with those routines? Even trivially?”
She represses a guilty squirm as she recalls a morning when Grace brought her an egg-and-ham breakfast sandwich from the mess on the Gansu instead of her usual muffin, and how unreasonably chilly she has treated him the whole day, even though it wasn’t his fault the kitchen had run out. Somehow that had never happened again; she suspiciously wonders if maybe Grace had scared the cooks into making sure her favorites were always available. “My calendar is booked solid,” she says instead of admitting that, “forgive me if I get annoyed when someone throws a wrench in it.”
“And sensory preferences?” Lamai pushes. “Grace mentioned to me once that you hate those pantsuits and heels you have to wear.”
“Everyone hates wearing pantsuits and heels. I didn’t invent the patriarchy, Doctor, I just live in it.”
“Would you say that these patterns of behavior have been part of your life for a long time? Since childhood?”
“I’m not even sure what that question means. Could we please get to the point? Why am I being given the third degree?”
Lamai turns the book around. Eva stares.
“I’m not a psychiatrist,” the doctor says quietly. “But I’ve known you a long time, Eva. It might be worth going in for a screening.”
Eva doesn’t respond, just gapes at the subheading in the book. That’s– no, that’s incorrect. Why would Lamai think that she’s–? Unwanted, her mind bounces back some forty-odd years, to a state mental hospital she had visited when she was about eight years old, on some charity work her mother brought her along for. She’d…she’d seen people with this diagnosis, rocking back and forth, gnawing at their fingers. Her mother had had no fear of them or anyone else she met in that place, speaking gently and patiently as if nothing was out of the ordinary—but Eva had been frightened and had refused to go back the next week, opting to stay home and reread her father’s pilot training manuals instead, repressing shudders and guilt every time she thought about the people at the hospital she should have been helping.
Back in the present, the doctor picks up her scrip pad and writes something out, then hands it to her. “Take that to the address I’ve written on top and ask for a screening. I’m prescribing you iron pills and vitamins as well, and you need protein.” She signs and hands her another piece of paper; it looks like temporary stamps for medical necessity, probably one of the infinite tiny details that people lower down the ladder than Eva have worked out. “Have somebody bring this to your store and get you an extra half-crate of eggs for the week. And go home for the day, get some rest. Doctor’s orders,” she says firmly, as if she thinks Eva might object. She’s wrong; to do that, her patient would need to not be speechless.
Eva leaves Lamai’s office with her relief at the possibility of extra eggs vastly outweighed by her shock, disbelief—and growing anger. She’s not– she’s not that, she thinks as she walks down the stairs towards the lobby, barely aware of where she’s going. That’s ridiculous; what in God’s name was Lamai thinking? Alright, she’s a modern woman, she knows it’s not always so severe—a number of her scientists have a diagnosis buried in their medical files, which she’s always thought strange but not her business unless it interfered with the project—but even so, her mind remains temporally locked in a state asylum in 1988, and rebels: This might be acceptable for other people, but it is not acceptable for her. It simply does not apply.
She wants to storm back into the physician’s office and demand a retraction, but instead she shoves the prescriptions in her overcoat pocket and heads out the doors towards the waiting car. Lamai is wrong. End of story. She’s just picky and needs to get over it. She can do this. She just needs a little more willpower.
And if there’s one thing Eva Stratt does have in abundance, it’s willpower.
She never goes to see the psychiatrist. She doesn’t need to. If they’re going to tell her more bullshit psychology like Lamai, then what’s the point? She’s too busy to waste that kind of time.
Instead, she forces the canned meat down her throat at least one meal a week. Food is becoming a special kind of hell for her. She always goes through the things she likes too fast at the beginning of the week, no matter how she tries to pace herself, then the ones she can tolerate, then the ones she hates but which aren’t at immediate risk of making her vomit.
On Saturday nights she sits down to begin the gauntlet of the foods she hates most, the breakfast meat included, and forces herself to clean her plate and not puke it back up. When she feels like she can’t choke down another bite, she pictures Grace, sitting across the table from her in his black sweater and beanie, refusing to go on the mission. Sometimes she eats to spite him, to prove that she’s stronger than he was. Sometimes she eats to do penance for him, for what hell she’s put and will be putting him through.
Waste is unacceptable. Waste is an insult to the people who are giving their lives to save humanity, with or against their consent. They and she and so many others have done harder things to stave off global starvation, and Eva refuses to falter here.
Her work pays off. A month later she’s back in Lamai’s office for her yearly physical, and her bloodwork reads as normal, even if she’s still slightly underweight. But what should be her victory lap only results in Lamai scolding her for her iron will and not going to see the damn shrink. “I can’t condone this. You’re torturing yourself for no reason.”
“The world is running out of food. We can’t afford any waste. I wouldn’t call that no reason.”
“You don’t need to do this. I’ve looked into it and I can get you a special exemption from the ration, but only if you have a diagnosis,” Lamai insists. Eva’s whole face floods with heat. Special exemption from the ration?
The whole world is starving. The planet is dying. And she’s somehow convinced Lamai that she, Eva, should be breaking her own rules and taking more than her fair share, because she is acting like a spoiled brat.
“I ate the food, what more do you want,” she snaps before she can stop herself. Lamai blinks.
“That’s not what I–”
“This is ridiculous. I have work to do.”
“Eva, wait–!”
She ignores the doctor storms out of the office, face crimson with anger and other emotions she doesn’t want to name. She is not a child, she has done her duty, she doesn’t need coddling or special privileges!
“You okay?” Carl asks as she gets in the car and slams the door shut.
“Fine. Why does everyone want to know about me, hm? Can’t I have any privacy?” she snaps. The man lifts his hand in surrender and pulls away from the curb without another word.
She watches the buildings pass by in the fading sunlight; it’s only six at night, but the dark is closing in as winter descends on Paris. It’s going to be a long, cold, brutal several months until spring here in the northern hemisphere. She can already see the prediction spreadsheets in her mind, the dwindling of resources as her half of the planet goes into hibernation. More canned fruit, canned vegetables. She’s sick to death already of canned foods. She’s sick to death of all of this. A personal interest, an academic intrigue, hah. She’d been so smug, so fascinated by it all. The charm and glamor of survival under dramatic and terrible circumstances. Ignorant little girl.
Carl drops her off at her apartment and sees her to the door; she gives him a curt nod as a goodbye, and he apparently takes the hint and clocks off for the night without another word. Thank god, it’s Sunday; her grocery delivery will be arriving soon, and she’ll be able to eat something for dinner that doesn’t make her hate herself even more.
She washes up and turns on a light in the living room, just one. Then she stares at the bulb for a moment, thinking of how the energy flowing through the filament came from somewhere far away in Africa, where astrophage has collected precious energy from the dying sun to power the homes and factories and streetlights and greenhouses of humanity. People far north of her, in Norway and Siberia, are relying on that same energy just to keep their homes a livable temperature for another few years. They’ve paved the Sahara with blackpanels, and yet here she is, carefully conserving power to try to stave off the inevitable mass migrations from the far north just a little longer.
She sits on the sofa and works for a while until the apartment buzzer rings, and she heads downstairs. The usual delivery boy hands her the bags and makes small talk to the building security guard, who is killing time on his phone, and then disappears again without a word to her. She turns to go upstairs, wondering whether she’s supposed to make conversation with the guard or delivery driver—is that appropriate? Expected? She’s never done so before—and then decides that she doesn’t have the energy right now to care. Her mind is already on supper and the promise of a full belly, if only for tonight.
Just as she reaches the stairs there’s another knock on the door—a pounding, really—and she turns back. Did the delivery driver forget something? Trying not to sound irritated, Eva heads back and opens the door. “Yes–?”
She sees the man. Then she sees the knife. Her brain locks that snapshot in a split second before a supernova of pain slashes down her arm. Eva stumbles back, still raising a hand to defend herself, but this time the knife swings upwards and there’s another starburst of excruciating pain in her side, knocking the wind out of her. The man is screaming at her in French as she staggers back and falls heavily on the stairs, gasping for breath as a smell like raw meat fills her nose.
The security guard finally intervenes as her vision blurs, and when it comes into focus again he’s wrestling the knife away from the man and pinning him to the ground. She stares at the fight as if it’s something from a movie, shaking, heartbeat loud in her ears. Her eyes flick from the scuffle to the knife and spilled groceries on the floor, then down towards her torso where a red stain is slowly spreading across her sweater, and finally at the line of smeared blood on the tile floor, ending at her feet.
Oh, she thinks, in what feels like a perfectly reasonable thought. It’s a Petrova Line.
And then she passes out.
Time expands and compresses like it’s flickering at the edges of a black hole, and whenever her consciousness semi-surfaces she is floating somewhere in a drugged haze. Sometimes she dreams of things that don’t make sense, or of people she once knew but doesn’t anymore. For a moment she is six and standing in a queue with her father outside a shop on a cold winter day. Or she is eight and avoiding her mother’s good works out of a fear she can’t explain. Or she’s twenty-six and tracking shipping data on a spreadsheet, the logistics of whole industries’ worth of resources reduced to numbers on a screen. She’s hungry. Is she hungry? Of course she’s hungry, she’s always hungry.
“You need to eat something other than coffee and prepackaged muffins, Stratt, come on.”
She turns her head and looks over. Grace is standing next to her desk. Ocean sunlight pours in from the window, glittering off his hair and glasses, off the cream threads of his favorite fox sweater.
“I’m not hungry,” she lies.
“That’s bullcrap and you know it.”
She tries to turn an icy glare on him, but she’s so tired. Grace leans down and presses his mouth to hers, warm and filling. That seems strange, somehow, but she ignores it. It’s so nice to have someone care about her, for once. “For me,” his voice insists in her head. “Please.”
“...Fine. For you.”
…She opens her eyes, and finds herself in a hospital room.
Oh. She was dreaming, that makes sense. She tries to raise a hand to touch her lips, but her arm feels too heavy, and she leaves it where it’s lying.
Then she realizes she’s not hungry.
Her eyes drift up to an IV line above her, and then flick to the door as it opens. Lamai comes in and then stops. “You’re awake.”
“What…?”
Lamai closes the door behind her. “You were stabbed. Not fatally, but there was a lot of bleeding and some damage to your liver, and you’re not in the best of health to begin with.” She lets that linger in the air for a beat and then continues, “You’d be in a lot of pain if not for the drugs you’re on right now. We’ve had you sedated for a few days, I’m surprised you woke up.”
That explains why she feels so tired. “...Recovery time?”
Lamai gives her a firm look. “As much as you need.”
“Lamai.” It sounds more like a tired sigh than a snap, but the doctor softens.
“A few weeks, at least. You need to take it easy.” Clearly she’s not going to have a choice, so Eva manages a nod. “They arrested the man responsible.”
Right. She was stabbed. There’s a couple of pretty important questions she’s forgotten to ask. “Why– Who…?”
Thankfully Lamai seems to know what she means. “The police say his name is Jean Bechard. He’s just an ordinary civilian, not a professional assassin, not connected with any particular government or industry. Apparently he lost his ration book and hadn’t eaten for several days, and that set him off; they don’t know yet how he figured out where you live or why he didn’t just go to the canteens for food. I heard your lawyers say they’re considering trying to get it charged as an act of terrorism–”
“No.”
Lamai blinks at her, surprised. “What?”
“No.” It’s taking all her willpower to stay awake against the siren song of the morphine and a full belly. “I don’t want to press charges.”
“Eva, he tried to kill you.”
“He was desperate. Not thinking clearly.” The irony is not lost on her that her own words are slurring; talking in English is so hard. “People do stupid things when they’re hungry.”
Lamai comes over and adjusts her bedding. “You need rest. You can talk the lawyers about it in a few days when you’re feeling better.”
She wants to fight, but she can’t. Her eyes are drifting shut. “...I don’t…”
Lamai pats her hand. “Sleep. For me, if not for yourself.”
For me. She tries to answer, but the morphine sings her to sleep like a lullaby and a warm cup of milk, and she drifts off.
It takes four whole weeks to recover enough from the attempted stabbing for Lamai to let the hospital discharge her. She works as much as she can from her bed and laptop, in spite of the doctor’s insistence that she should be resting more—but her body is apparently demanding remuneration for the toll she’s taken on it these last few months, forcing her to sleep more than usual and reluctantly let her team handle the more intense parts of her job.
While recovering, she learns more about her would-be assassin from her lawyers and is confirmed in her decision not to put him through the stress of a court trial; apparently the man has a history of psychological difficulties, and has agreed to in-patent care at Sainte-Anne’s. She does some nervous research into the facility, and is somehow surprised to find it a far cry from what was available in the GDR. It…looks like a nice place. There’s even a lovely garden. Just to be sure, however, she sends quiet word that the man is to be treated well and given whatever he wants to eat, with the bill forwarded on to Project Hail Mary. Then she sends a memo to Li about the situation and suggests he bring psychology and social work consultants on at the FESC, to develop policies for ensuring the ration doesn’t disproportionately affect those with similar difficulties.
The food at her hospital, at any rate, is delicious. Eva orders from a little menu, stamp-free, and as much as she wants. By the time she’s discharged, she can see that her face has gotten fuller again. She hadn’t even realized just how hollowed-out her eyes and cheeks had started to become. She’s nervous about returning to a rationed existence after her discharge, but she’s got some cash saved up again from during her hospital stint, and afterwards… well, she’ll find away to manage it, somehow. She always does.
At the end of her first week back at the office, however, an unexpected appointment appears on her calendar, last thing Friday afternoon. It’s labeled as a medical appointment, but located at what a quick search tells her is a small cafe in a quiet area of the city. She considers rejecting it, but then sees that Lamai has added a small note in the details section: “Coffee is on me.”
Well, every woman has her price. Eva sighs and texts Carl the change of plans, strongly suspecting that she’s about to be ambushed.
It’s cold, so she shows up to the cafe in her heavy black overcoat with her hair tucked under an unfortunately-acquired black beanie. She’d rather not be wearing Grace’s clothes, let alone that specific article, but she’s found that for some reason being a redhead is the thing that gets her recognized in public and it’s the only winter hat she has that she can pile her hair into. Luckily the inside of the cafe is chilly, so she has an excuse to keep the coat and hat on. Apparently she’s the only one who feels that way, though, as she spots Lamai having already shed her puffy winter coat where she’s sitting at a table near the back—as have the woman and child with her. Ah. So this is an ambush, then.
Eva approaches the table, giving Lamai an unimpressed look. “You didn’t have to trick me.”
“I think we both know I did,” the doctor replies, passing her a coffee. Eva takes it with suspicion, sitting down and grudgingly trying a sip. It’s not bad. “Eva, this is Panit and her son, Somchai; they’re my upstairs neighbors. They don’t speak English, so I’ll be translating for them.”
Eva nods to the woman briefly and then looks at the boy. He looks like he’s about seven and is reading a book in Thai; it appears to be a children’s encyclopedia of astronomy, and despite herself she has to repress a smile. Lamai says something to the woman, who replies quickly, looks halfway between haggard and hopeful. “She says she’s very happy to meet you.”
“And why does she think she’s meeting me?” Eva asks dryly.
“Panit’s been trying to get her son’s meat rations increased. He’s…particular, about his food,” Lamai says lightly.
The woman says something in Thai, causing Lamai to pause and then translate: “Panit says they’ve been trying to get him a diagnosis that would let their family doctor apply for a ration exception, but since they don’t speak French, it’s been difficult to find a psychiatrist who will work with them.”
“Doctor Lamai,” she says coolly, using the woman’s full title even though work officially ended thirty minutes ago, “what exactly did you tell her.”
“All I said is that a good friend of mine isn’t fond of canned meat and would be willing to trade hers away in exchange for some eggs, which, as it happens, Somchai won’t eat,” the doctor says firmly.
All of a sudden things become clear. It’s touching, in its way. It’s also embarrassing. “I– you didn’t have to do this,” she says uneasily. “I don’t–”
“Are you really going to turn down a hungry child?” Lamai says simply. Well, no, of course she’s not; this must show on her face, because Lamai gives a brisk nod. “So you see, it’s simple; on Mondays you can bring in your cans and I’ll bring in her eggs, and we’ll trade. Easy.”
Eva looks back at the boy’s mother. The woman is studying her face with a thinly-veiled plea, and she feels something in her chest loosen. “...Well,” she says with a small nod, and the woman damn near melts with relief. “I guess that’s that, then.”
With business concluded, the conversation turns to lighter matters, with Lamai serving as interpreter—how long ago they all came to Paris, the quirks of French culture that bewilder the trio of foreigners, and where to find the best Thai food in the city, which apparently is a point of disagreement between Panit and Lamai. Not wanting to be rude, Eva asks Somchai about his book, about which the child is only to eager to launch into an explanation in very rapid Thai that Lamai struggles to keep up with. For such a young child he knows a lot about astronomy, and he’s delighted to find that Eva knows an unusual amount about space exploration herself.
Eventually the small family has to get home for dinner, and the two women bid them farewell with the promise of a ration trade on Monday morning. Eva watches the doors close behind them, letting in a gust of icy winter chill, and then side-eyes Lamai as the other woman finishes her now-cold coffee. Even if the physician didn’t technically reveal any of her medical information, this still feels like some sort of breach of doctor-patient confidentiality. “You could have lost your license for that, you know,” she warns.
“You’re our global overlord, if you were actually angry you could do a lot worse than get my license revoked.”
Eva rolls her eyes. “You’ve been spending too much time with Lokken.”
“You refused to get a diagnosis and let me change your rations,” Lamai says quietly. “You didn’t see yourself in that emergency room, Eva; I wasn’t sure your body was going to pull through for you. What was I supposed to do, just let you keep starving yourself?”
“I can eat food I don’t like. We’re all making sacrifices,” Eva murmurs, looking down at her empty cup.
“And how many sacrifices have you already made?” Lamai insists. “When are you going to stop punishing yourself for what happened? Do you think Dr. Grace would want that?”
“I do, ja. He had an angry streak. But this isn’t about Grace.” Well, not more than everything already always is. “It’s about…everything else. The work. The Project. All of it. The world is going to go through hell and we are only at the start, I don’t need extra accommodations. Or anyone’s pity. Everyone is suffering, I don’t want special treatment.”
“Is that why you don’t want a diagnosis? You don’t want people to pity you?”
She half-shrugs, glancing out the window. “I don’t want one because it doesn’t matter either way. I know I make people uncomfortable, I always have. I’ve made my peace with it. Having some doctor tell me why doesn’t change anything.”
“Well, I don’t pity you. Frankly I think you’re terrifying, but taking care of you is my job,” Lamai points out. “And even if it wasn’t, you’re my friend. I don’t like seeing you suffer.” Eva bites her lip, and the doctor insists: “You said it yourself, the next two decades are going to be hard on everyone, including you; there’s no shame in making it a little easier for yourself. I would recommend the same to any of my patients.”
Of course Lamai would. To be partial to her patients, to advocate for them to have access scarce resources, is her job. Just as it is Eva’s job to never be partial to anyone, ever, especially not herself. But then she thinks of the mistakes she’s been making at the office, of her short temper towards the team she’s tasked with saving the whole world, of how many precious minutes and hours were lost to her slow recovery. Is her pride and sense of fair play actually serving the cause? Or is she just putting a noble coat of paint on her shame at discovering in herself an unexpected weakness, where she had thought she would find only strength?
The two women watch the people hurry by outside the cafe window for a long while as Eva ponders this. At last she exhales through her nose and shakes her head. “I see your point, but no. Not everyone is as…forward-thinking, as you. If the public ever found out it could be disastrous for the Project, and the FESC’s work too.” So much relies on the myth of her infallibility; leaving any trace of evidence to the contrary in something as hackable as a medical record is just too dangerous.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Mission first. Besides, you’ve found a workaround.” She looks back at Lamai. “But if the situation changes, I will…consider your advice.” The doctor still seems displeased, and she adds as an olive branch: “Thank you for the coffee.”
At last Lamai smiles back. “...Happy to. We should do it more often.”
On Monday night she goes home from the office two cans lighter and with a little treasure trove of six fresh eggs, the carton carried carefully in hand.
For dinner she treats herself and fries two of the eggs, served along with toast and jam. For the first time in many months her kitchen feels warm and homey, instead of isolated and cold. She thinks of cups of coffee, and Lamai’s obvious relief as she handed her the little carton, and the way her team had welcomed her back from the hospital a week before with a surprise cake they must have pooled no small amount of money to buy.
Food. It does really all come down to food. How it’s distributed, how it’s shared, how it’s passed from human hand to human hand in unbroken lines of trust and mutual care. It’s nice, she thinks as she dips her toast into the sunny yellow yolk—it’s so nice, to finally have people to share it with.