Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

the sides of the
valley increased in frequency to a cluster behind the beach,
beyond which were the lights of ships. As the road levelled out
the driver turned left, then right through a big iron gate which
opened for them. Concrete walls topped with coils of razor wire,
a short gravelled drive. She stepped out and looked around. She
could see a swimming-pool with a bar, and multilevel apartments.
The driver handed her luggage to a couple of lads in jeans and
polo-shirts. She tipped the driver, checked in, followed the guys
to her room, dumped her gear, tipped the lads and made her way
down the stairs and over slippery tiles to the bar, where she
ordered a Pils. She sank it in seconds. After the air-conditioned
interior of the car the heat was horrendous.
    She was on to her third lager and fourth cigarette when a
small, dark woman in a white lab-coat strolled over to her.
    ‘Madame Davidova?’ She stuck out a hand.
‘Dr. Selina Masoud.’
    ‘Hi. Pleased to meet you. You’re looking after
me?’
    ‘Yes.’ Dr. Masoud clicked a tablet out of a
dispensary. ‘Swallow this. Wash it down with –
’
    Myra swallowed. Dr. Masoud smiled. She had curly hair and
pretty white teeth. ‘Something non-alcoholic, I was going
to say. But it’s all right – it’ll just make
you sleepy, now, that’s all.’
    Tine,’ said Myra, covering a yawn. ‘I’m
tired already. Smoke?’
    Thank you.’ The doctor took her cigarette and flipped a
gold lighter, slipped it back into her pocket, inhaled
gratefully. ‘Ah… I needed that.’ She sat up on
the stool beside Myra, ordered a Coke.
    ‘So when do I go for treatment?’ Myra asked.
    Dr. Masoud flashed her brows. ‘That was your
treatment,’ she said. ‘You stay a week in case there
are any complications, any bad reactions. There won’t be.
Slightly feverish is normal.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Myra. It seemed something of an
anticlimax. ‘So what should I do?’
    ‘Relax. Drink a lot – mainly non-alcoholic, to
avoid dehydration. If you want to help the process along, smoke
and sunbathe as much as you can. Both are carcinogenic, and they
denature collagen too, you know – ’
    She said it as though relaying a recent and controversial
discovery.
    ‘Yes,’ said Myra. ‘And?’
    ‘They catalyse the telomerase reactions.’
    She smiled, downed the Coke, hopped off the tall seat.
‘I must go. Enjoy your stay.’
     
    The muezzin’s taped cock-crow cry from the
minaret’s tannoy woke her before eight. She lay for a while
enjoying the coolness of the room, and the fast-growing light.
The room was, compared with her own, refreshingly uncluttered:
painted and furnished in shades of white, the crisp straight
lines of the decor and fabrics jiggled here and there with a
twiddle of eyelet or a tuft of lace, as though thewhite ambience
wavered between clinical and bridal, undecided whether it
signified a hospital or a hotel. Not a bad honeymoon destination,
Myra guessed – she’d noticed plenty of young, loud
couples at the bar the previous evening, though she
couldn’t help wondering if the implications of staying
together for ever might not strike home a litde too hard,
too soon, in a place like this.
    By the pool she sat on a lounger and rubbed sun-cream on her
limbs and torso. Her hands were as claw-like (but supple), her
muscles as stringy (but strong), her skin as mottled (but taut)
as they had all been for forty years.
    On her left, behind the clinic’s main buildings, the
ground rose as a farmed foothill to a high, barren cliff. Across
the kilometre or so of valley bottom, it faced a lower cliff,
which sprouted scrub and trees. Overhead, the sky was deep blue.
Paragliders, their canopies shaped like brighdy coloured
nail-parings, drifted by, from a higher range far behind the high
cliff, to the beach a mile or so distant. Cicadas whirred like
small electrical devices. The rest of the people here seemed to
be either young, getting their fix, or old like her, getting
their rewind.
    For two days, it was great. The sun rose above the cliff on
the left, set behind the cliff on the right, regular as
clockwork. In the evenings the barren cliffs looked red and
martian, and the clinic like a Moon colony, a little artificial
environment over which the gravity-defying paragliders swooped.
Myra spent her days in sunshine and swimming and not dying. It
was better than heaven. She rolled over and let the sun bake her