‘Sometimes the shadows in my mind, sometimes the voices in my mind …’ She began to cry. ‘I’m not always sure who I am or what I am.’
‘That makes two of us.’ I hugged her and I felt her arms tighten round me as she rubbed her cheek against mine. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘hug me – it feels right. For however long we’ve got.’
‘Why do you say that, Katya? What do you know that I don’t know.’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t know what I know. Don’t talk – make it be here and now, nothing and nobody else.’
I kissed her for the second time and this time there was no mistaking her response. I stroked her shining hair, it smelled like sun-warm fields in a country I’d never seen, a country that had no existence except in my mind and the touch and smell of her hair. I didn’t know what time it was, it felt like the middle of the night; the Ziggurat would be glowing purple in the darkness, the yellow flashers and the red and green lights winking, the newsflash going its endless round; the corpses on the plaza would be rotting in the purple light while ships and cargoes from seven galaxies flickered invisibly overhead. ‘I don’t always have a whole picture in my eyes,’ I said.
‘Let me be the picture in your eyes for now.’
I undid her various zips and she came out of her clothes in the red-lit dimness of the room. When she was naked she stood up before me quite still and hieratic with both hands on her belly. She glimmered in the redness and seemed to increase, to become great and goddesslike. I was entranced by the mystery and dim red magic of her nakedness, by the numen and the treasure of it, by how precious it was to me even though the picture in my eyes swarmed with circles of bright emptiness.
*
Afterwards, lying entwined with Katya in the primordial redness of our night-within-the-day, I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to break the membrane of our well-being. Never before had I felt so easy, so tranquil, so just this side of madness. We hadn’t talked fragic at all – there hadn’t been any need for it, or indeed any time. The whole thing seemed almost to have left me behind.
‘I’m glad we did it here,’ said Katya. ‘I’m glad this is where we had our first time.’
‘So am I. Even though Thinksec probably had a fibre optic up my bum while we did it. What time is it?’
‘Thirteen forty-nine. Why?’
‘I don’t know, I thought it was the middle of the night.’
‘You’ve had some day – between Pythia and me you must be exhausted. What really happened with her?’
‘I don’t want to think about that right now, I want to think about you. When do you get off?’
‘Eighteen hundred. Will you meet me at my place at half past? I’d give you a key so you could go there now but it’s a thumbprint lock.’
‘That’s OK; I’ve got to find my downtime and settle in so I’ll do that now.’ She gave me her address and I put on my clothes and went back to reception. There I looked for Mojo and High John but they were gone. Nina Marlowe handed me a little flickerpost packet. ‘This came for you,’ she said. I recognised Caroline’s handwriting and quickly put the packet in a pocket of my jacket while my head sang a little packet-pocket-jacket song. Nina Marlowe gave me a set of flat keys, a yellow card, a stunner and a permit.
‘I see they’re giving me one of the better neighbourhoods,’ I said as I looked at the Oldtown address. Deep-spacing had made me a bleakness freak and I hadn’t had a flat of my own for years: as well as sleazy hotels and Q-BO SLEEPS and empty spaceports in the middle of the night I liked the dismalness of downtimes where the only permanent items were the locker that arrived ahead of me and the bottle I brought with me. These DSC flats achieve a classic squalor that cannot simply have happened by itself – there must be a Corporation designer who does this sort of thing. The finishing touch is always the one or two tattered copies of Consenting Adults and the print on the wall which is either Womb of the Cosmos III by Lamia Quick or Fractal Disjunctions I by Hermione Testa. I have not yet encountered Womb of the Cosmos I and II or Fractal Disjunctions II and III.
‘Give me a wrist,’ said Nina. I stuck out the right one and she locked on a wristphone. I felt a tiny pin-prick as she did it. ‘Ever have a DNA-LOK phone on you before?’
‘No.’
‘There’s a constant signal that tells us where you are and the bracelet has sampled your blood and locked on to your DNA, so if you take if off or put it on someone else an alarm goes off here and things get ugly. You’re on your own now.’
‘How come?’
‘Maybe they think the taxpayers have spent enough on you.’
Were the circles of bright emptiness getting bigger? Was there a roaring in my ears? Maybe not. The yellow card said:
ON CALL – 1ST NAV FREMDER GORN
AUTHORISED FOR ZIGGURAT ENTRY AS REQUIRED
The keys were for a DSC downtime in Oldtown West 81. I wanted to get there as soon as possible so that I could be alone with my thoughts of Katya.
‘They’ve got the HAZRAD partly down now so you can take the wirecar,’ said Nina.
When you leave Pythia level at the Ziggurat either you go up to the flight pad if authorised – nothing travels over the Ziggurat except Red-Card aircraft – or you go ten levels down to the wirecar stop just above the barrier screen that shields the upper levels from noise and anything else coming up from below. It was still raining when I came out at the wirecar stop but instead of a freshness in the air there was a stench that almost knocked me over. The barrier screen is a transparent field so I went to the edge of the platform and looked down.
The bodies I’d seen from the hopper were heaped all over the plaza five levels down. I made out a banner with SHORTIS & CLOUNS painted on it and a placard that said, FUCKIN CAWPRASHUN GISSMOR FUN CREDS. Some of the adult bodies appeared to be male clones from a number of different reject batches, identifiable by visible defects; others looked like originals, all of them naked except for penis sheaths. Their war paint was still vivid but the corpses, glistening in the rain, were turning grey and green and purple as they bloated and rotted where the terminator beam had caught them. In the purple light of the Ziggurat they looked nightmarishly at one with their surroundings. With the full-grown warriors lay the bodies of a Shorty point squad, none of them older than ten. One of them was visible only as a pair of legs sticking out of a ventilator intake.
There were two other men at the wirecar stop. One of them was talking into a throatphone: ‘John? Albert this, Code Zed Two Seven – re ufax oh one twenty this, firm wipe Prog Two, firm slot Alter B up estim CHS cuts rev privasec due newdata. Instant T, OK? Tsit.’ He sighed a little as if it was lucky for everybody that he was around to take care of things. Then he noticed that I was looking at something and came over to see what it was. ‘My X!’ he said. ‘Why don’t they tidy them away?’
‘Maintenance strike,’ said the other man.
‘Technology!’ said Albert. ‘They can flicker from here to the Hawking Threshold Instant T but they can’t sweep a plaza.’
Something about this Albert fellow was beginning to seem familiar, and for the third time in my life I heard the voice of my mind, NOISE, it said. ALWAYS MORE NOISE.
Albert Stiggs! That’s who it was – the grown-up Albert who used to bully me back at The Cauldron until I broke his nose. Both of us were wearing breathers that masked our faces but his adult voice and speech recalled the boy Albert enough for me to recognise him. He’d been bigger and heavier than I then and he was bigger and heavier now but I closed my eyes and saw once more the vibrant purple-blue that I’d seen that long-ago day at The Cauldron. Then there flared up again the craziness of many colours and I felt ready.
‘No one cares about the public any more,’ said the second man.
‘And yet,…’ I said. My mind was open, it was easy, it was singsonging to itself in the heart of the maze, in the heart of the maze where the eyes of becoming were always becoming, the spirals were always unwinding, the power was always enabling the anc
ient, the huge and the tiny in the billions, in the trillions of me. Strong, very strong, the ancient animal of it. Strong, very strong, the mighty fortress and the dark boat of the everything-fear. ‘And yet,…’ I said again.
Both men turned to look at me. Albert was wearing MedExec insignia and had clearly become someone of importance. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and yet what?’
‘And yet, you know, that plaza looks as if it was meant to be covered with naked corpses; it looks so natural like that.’
Albert hadn’t recognised me and he hadn’t come close enough to read my name tag but the Latin on my shoulder patch was legible from where he stood. ‘“Semper longius”!’ he read. ‘You don’t look all that long to me, flickerhead. Where do they find you lot?’
‘They send out feeler squads to feel around till they find people with balls. Those are the ones they train for Deep Space Command. The ones with no balls go into Exec’
‘Do you believe this spaceturd?’ Albert said to his companion. He came closer and read my name tag. ‘Aha!’ he said. ‘I might have known it – The famous Fremder Gorn, late of Clever Daughter! The lucky chap who had a return ticket when everyone else had a single. One of the chosen, he is – in fact the only one chosen. You must have some very special connections, clipcock.’ His voice was deep (although he might have had an enhancer in his Novexec breather) but perhaps there was just the slightest quaver in it.
‘Be careful, pussy,’ I heard myself say, ‘you’re in over your head.’
‘Oh yes? Maybe you’re not in good touch with reality, Gorn. Too much flicker. This isn’t that time back at The Cauldron, this is now.’
‘You wearing bio?’
‘Oh, dear, getting aggressive, are we? Yes, little man, I’m wearing bio.’
‘So try me, noballs.’
‘OK, spaceturd, I’m trying,’ and he went into his threat posture.
‘Pathetic,’ I said, and went into mine.
‘Right, hotso, let’s see your feedback.’
I showed him my indicator and he showed me his. His read: Entropy 7:04, Action Potential 12:02. Mine read: Entropy 1.08, Action Potential 16.24, and I could feel that I had plenty more where that came from. ‘Satisfied, Albert Noballs Stiggs?’ I said.
‘You probably rigged your indicator.’ But he was walking small as he turned away and the wirecar came rattling into the stop.
‘Don’t cheapmouth me,’ I said, ‘I’ll rig your fucking arse. Want to have a go?’
He made himself even smaller and crept into the wirecar.
‘OK?’ I said. ‘Tsit.’ I got in, found a seat, pushed the button for OW 81, and sank back while my mind replayed the incident. Almost it seemed as if Albert had been given to me this time as a present, as a confidence-builder. Evidently the memory of my long-ago success with him had reactivated the circuitry in me that hooked me up with the mind-animal. I tried to remember what my thoughts had been when at the age of eight I jumped on Albert and gave him a thrashing. Ravens, Elijah; Elijah being fed by the black.
Tell me about sorrow and rage, I said to my mind. Tell me about love and happiness.
No answer.
What I did with Albert, why haven’t I been able to do it more often? And what happened with you and Pythia?
No answer. A riffling of images: the owl; the face of Isodor Gorn stretched wide across the reaches of space; the spirals and circles of the B-Z; the mantis shrimp in a sea of purple-blue.
Please, I said, talk to me. Are you going to be with me from now on?
No answer.
The car lurched into motion, I settled back in my seat, closed my eyes, and saw Katya. No, I thought, opening my eyes, save that for when you’re alone. The vuescreen on the seatback in front of me was doing an ad for Second Galaxy Ecodomes in which children without breathers were enjoying a kickabout on emerald-green grass. ‘Clean air and safe streets at low, low interest rates,’ burbled the minty-fresh female voice as I put on the headphones. ‘It’s goodbye to earthly cares when you find tomorrow today on Galaxy Two!’ Then the Galaxy Four Interfun Cruiser appeared with a seductively smiling Eurasian fly-me in mini-harness who murmured, ‘After you’ve done your business at the Straits, let us take you off the narrow into new zones of excitement. Haute cuisine and Yin-Yang massage with our Intergals and Interguys are only the beginning of an experience that will send you home refreshed and satisfied. All tastes are catered for when you book Corporation Interfun Exec’ Next was a stunning blonde in the briefest of business gear. ‘Athena Parthenogen have been serving the executive community since 2012,’ she said in tones of silk and money. ‘We supply fresh new personal assistants to your specifications – Al office staff guaranteed to meet your personal requirements. By appointment only. Athena Parthenogen is a division of Corporation Personnel Services.’
As I took off the headphones the woman exec in front of me said to the woman exec beside her, ‘I met that little Athena presenter at a multishuffle the other night.’
‘Any ooh-ooh?’
‘She said she only goes with Top Exec.’
‘You shouldn’t have told her you were Middle; with those upmobile frozen pizzas it’s better to come on as a wild card.’
‘How wild?’
‘Stop by for a drink and we’ll talk about it.’
We’d cleared the Corporation checkpoint and the Inner Executive Circle, where Stiggs and his friend got off. Shortly after Outer Executive we were over Oldtown Central. Down at ground level there were figures dancing in the rain in the rubbish and wreckage-choked streets around the burnt-out shells of Shopperama and the Credit Tower.
‘Prongs and Arseholes tonight,’ said the woman who’d been unsuccessful with the Athena presenter. ‘You betting?’
‘What’s to bet?’ said her friend. ‘Arseholes have been winning as long as I can remember.’ They both got out at the next stop, one of the newly executised parts of Oldtown.
The passengers in the car were mostly Corporation employees under forty-five. I was looking idly round as one does when I noticed a scruffy-looking man of seventy or so with a Ziggurat Maintenace shoulder patch on his jacket sitting opposite me one row back. He was holding a newsfax but not really reading it, and as our eyes met I thought he might be about to start a conversation with me. I hoped not. He was a failed-looking sort of man with dirty fingernails, the type who sits down next to you in a bar and has a long life-story to tell.
The short November day was almost gone and it was still raining as the wirecar approached the tower block where my downtime was. It was close to a Fungames complex in a neighbourhood catering for those minded to drink inexpensive wine and spirits, vomit on the pavement (no walkways here), see a porn film, contract a venereal disease, get tattooed, buy a flick knife, pawn a faxophone, and be mugged. My stop flashed, and as I left the wirecar the maintenance man was right behind me and followed me into the lift.
I hadn’t yet provided myself with a bottle wherewith to furnish the flat I was going to, so when I got into the lift I pushed STREET. The maintenance man and I were the only passengers and I avoided eye contact as we shook and rattled slowly down – I didn’t want to hear any long stories, not even my own. Several times he seemed about to speak but didn’t. When we got out at street level he followed me at a distance for a while, then I lost sight of him.
With one hand on the stunner in my pocket I went cautiously through streets glittering with broken glass, islanded with excrement, and odorous with nitrates. There were few people about and those few were all accompanied by large xenophagous-looking dogs, often in pairs. Eventually I saw a man with an introspectve-looking Irish wolfhound. When I approached to ask where I could find an off-licence the dog licked my hand and its master offered me his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘take it – I haven’t got a watch or jewelry or anything like that.’
‘I don’t want your money,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for an off-licence.’
‘Down there,’ he said pointing while the dog sniffed my crotch.
As I thanked him and walked away he said to the dog, ‘You don’t have to lick everybody’s goddam hand.’
After a while I found a Corporation off-licence and bought a bottle with a label that said WHISKY and nothing else. Being simply a MAN who was going to DRINK in a ROOM I liked that.
I went to the thirty-third floor of the crumbling tower block Deep Space Command had assigned me to, where I wandered for a while in dimly-lit urine-scented hallways with leprous walls and graffiti until I came to the number that was the same as the one on my key. From the door of the flat to the left of mine came screams and shouts and the sound of scuffling punctuated by thuds, thumps, and breaking glass.
As I unlocked my door I felt that little rush of despair that always hits me when I walk into a downtime and breathe in the pong of emptiness and the last occupant. It was a classically existential short-stay dwelling – even the dim grey dusk in it seemed to have been used by too many people. The walls were of course paper-thin, and from next door the sounds of discussion continued.
Without turning on the lights or looking at anything in the room I switched on the air cleaner, set it to HIGH, went to the viewbubble, sat down, and looked out into the rain and the twilight. I wanted to be very careful with the twilight, I wanted to be deep and silvery in it, wanted to hover quietly in the pinky-purple and the dove-grey of it, wanted to drink the Chopin of it and the yearning. The holes of bright emptiness grew small and twinkled in my vision like distant stars; if I held my head right I could lose them in the lights of Oldtown West 81 below me, its glimmers and its colours that flickered in the rainy dusk.
Holding the twilight in my mind I went back into the room. My locker had been delivered by DSC Speed One and was standing just outside the door; I opened it and took out the hologram box and the audio beam. I set up the hologram and keyed in Plate 77, GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, JOHANNES VERMEER (1632 – 1675). ‘Thank you,’ I said as she ghosted into being on the insubstantial air. I was about to put on Chopin Mazurkas (Complete), the Ilse Bak recording made shortly before she died in 2032, the same one that Katya had, but I changed my mind and opened the little packet from Caroline. It was an audio crystal: Dédales – Reconnaissances pour Orgue (Labyrinths – Recognitions for Organ) by Honoré Gislebertin, a contemporary composer I’d heard of but never paid much attention to. The work, performed by the composer on the organ of the church of St Lazarus at Autun, was in four parts: Les Pierres de la Nuit (The Stones of Night); La Terreur de Devenir (The Terror of Becoming); La Voie Obscure (The Dark Way); Le Jour Se Lève (The Dawn). Gislebertin, said the inlay, was born in 2032, four hundred years after Vermeer came into the world. There was no note from Caroline. I put Dédales on the audio beam, took the bottle to the viewbubble, sat down, and got some whisky inside me as the organ of St Lazarus came out of far, far away and the stones of night, came out of the frequencies of silence and the flicker at the heart of things where the Vermeer girl lived.