Fremder

16

Katya’s place was on the fortieth floor of the Tech 7 residence complex between the Outer Executive Circle and the non-Corporation parts of Oldtown. She didn’t turn on any lamps when she opened the door; in the night beyond the viewbubble the Outer Executive Circle newsboard was insistent: ‘GAY ROBOT NOT A ROBOT’: TOP EXEC; SNG INVESTIGATION SCHEDULED — CORPORATION: NEW CUTS TO IMPROVE LOCAL SERVICES; DUSTMEN: ‘LOAD OF RUBBISH’. The light from outside picked shapes out of the dimness of the tiny room; the interior darkness annexed the night and the red glow in the sky to make the flat seem bigger than it was.

The place was dense with clutter: books, pictures, baskets of stones and bones and seashells, several teddy bears and a cloth frog in a condition of terminal belovedness, an MM/PN 800 Omnicom, various stacks and leafpiles of paper, and a hologram table over which glowed the image that was No. 69 in my catalogue, BELOUSOV-ZHABOTINSKY REACTION; CHEMICAL SCROLL WAVES.

‘You were listening to the Pythia session,’ I said. ‘Did I say anything about the B-Z then?’

‘No.’

‘Odd, that you should have it on the hologram just now. When did you put it on?’

‘This morning before going on duty. Why?’

‘I wondered what made you think of it.’

‘I read the Level 4 from Hubble Straits and I saw the flicker-break video. I can’t understand how you could have seen that in deep space. And yet it seems to belong there, like the signature of Creation. Has it got any significance for you? That’s a stupid question — it must, or it wouldn’t have been on the flicker-break transmission.’

‘I wrote it up for P-Level Chemistry. Dr Stillwell was the Chemistry prof and he helped me with it. He was a strange man, a little hunchback with a gnostic manner and he wore his hunch as if it had some practical function, like a radar dome on an aircraft. We darkened the lab and we had the Petri dish sitting on a light box. The wavelines were bluish-white in the pink liquid and they formed single concentric circles and groups of concentric circles concentrically outlined. All of the circular formations were expanding and where they collided they mutually annihilated. Those that hit the edge of the dish didn’t stop or bounce back, they vanished as if they’d passed through the glass to an invisible existence beyond the Petri dish where the expansion continued.

‘Dr Stillwell said, “Interesting, isn’t it? They had no place to go but they found some place to go.” The year after that he killed himself.’

‘You found some place to go and you’re still alive.’

‘Funny thing to say.’

‘When you said that about passing through the glass it reminded me of you and Clever Daughter. You certainly passed through something, some kind of mortal barrier. Four minutes in 3 Kelvin with no space suit and no oxygen! It said in the report that you arrived at Hubble Straits in a state of suspended animation and when you came out of it three days later you sat up and asked for orange juice, coffee, two eggs over easy, chips, bacon, and sausages. When you’d finished you asked for the same again: three times.’

‘I was hungry.’

‘There was something about an owl in the report as well.’

‘I don’t remember. At the beginning of those Level 4 sessions I wasn’t altogether there.’

‘I can believe that.’ She changed the hologram to Vermeer’s GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING.

The sequence of hologram plates that I described earlier was not part of a packaged series; each of the plates had been individually selected from a museum catalogue. ‘This much coincidence is a little difficult for me to believe,’ I said. ‘Somebody’s trying something on here — is it Pythia or Thinksec or what?’

‘Why does someone have to be trying something on? Can’t you accept things for what they are? If we both have the same favourite mazurka why shouldn’t we have some of the same holograms? I put the Vermeer on because the B-Z eyes are looking out of her eyes.’

She was standing close enough for me to smell her fragrance, and as she moved into my arms my scepticism vanished: anyone who smelled that right couldn’t be doubted. ‘Her face is like your face,’ I said. ‘Her eyes are like yours.’ I took her face in my hands and looked into her blue eyes that darkened as the pupils dilated. I felt that our souls were joined but I didn’t know who or what was looking out of her eyes or mine. ‘Is it possible that you and I thought each other up?’ I said.

‘Yes, I think we did — it needed to happen so it happened.’ She went over to her audio beam. ‘My name is Mazur and I like mazurkas.’ She put on the Ilse Bak recording and No. 1 in F Sharp Minor, Opus 6, No. 1, bodying itself out of half-lights and shadows, became the space and time around us, became all the years inside us, became all there was.

*

I’ve always considered sleep after lovemaking more intimate than the lovemaking: getting through the night together, lying embraced until an arm becomes numb, then lying like two spoons until sleep doesn’t come that way, then turning backs and reverting to aloneness together and the snores, farts, and sighs of the passage from darkness to morning. Katya in her sleep seemed to have no rest: she mumbled, laughed, cursed, muttered strings of numbers, hummed a variety of tunes, and quoted from the Bible, sometimes in a voice that seemed different from her own. I recognised Loewe’s ‘Herr Oluf, snatches of Isaiah, First and Second Kings, and Psalm 137:

How shall we sing the Lord’s song

In a foreign land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

Let my right hand forget her cunning.

In the morning I was worn out but Katya seemed quite refreshed. Looking at her face that was considerably brighter than the new day I was impressed by how well she carried the tonnage of her mental traffic. Her head like mine was evidently an attic full of obsolete gear, childhood toys, faded letters, inexplicably preserved papers and cuttings, photos of forgotten people and places, and dustballs. I looked at her with new respect and found myself taking her more seriously as a partner than I had before. This is the real thing, I thought. The circles of bright emptiness had been there all through the lovemaking and they were still there but I supposed in time I’d get used to them. We had coffee and croissants and looked out of the fortieth-floor viewbubble at the smog and the world was more or less ours. I was overwhelmed by the feeling that this woman was my woman. ‘Katya,’ I said, ‘do you know that you hum and sing and talk in your sleep?’

She blushed. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Lots. Your head seems to have about the same amount of rubbish in it as mine.’

‘Should it have less? Are women meant to have tidier heads than men?’

‘Not at all. I only mentioned it because we seem to be alike in that way and it pleased me.’

‘If I were you I shouldn’t take too much alikeness for granted.’

‘I’m sorry I spoke. Could we rewind to where we were before I opened my mouth?’

She put her hand on mine. ‘I don’t mean to sound that way — it’s just that the idea of your listening makes me uncomfortable. What I say in my sleep isn’t always mine and I hate not belonging to myself that way.’

‘Not yours. Whose is it then?’

‘I have an implant in my brain the same as you do.’ The way she said it she might have been admitting to an artificial leg.

‘What kind of implant?’

‘It’s a synaptic relay.’

‘From where, from whom?’

‘Pythia. You have to have one of those to be a Pythia T/7. Sometimes there’s overspill and I offload it in my sleep.’

‘“Overspill”? “Offload?” Are you saying that a computer is using you as a buffer, as a receptacle?’

‘What are you getting so excited about?’

‘What do you think I’m getting excited about, for God’s sake? Next you’ll be telling me that you take the overspill from all the guys that come to the Wank Parlour as well.’

‘That’s not fair and you know it. Anyhow, look who’s talking — you’ve got a thing in your brain that turns you into some kind of radio waves. For all I know, the next time we make love I’ll have to wear headphones to receive you.’

We both laughed then and hugged and kissed and got butter and marmalade on each other and felt a lot better. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘tell me about this implant. What’s it for?’

‘What you said: I’m a buffer, a receptacle for storing data and response so that Pythia can handle input and access database as fast as she needs to.’

‘That means she’s both transmitting to and receiving from you.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Great. I hope she’s been enjoying your broadcasts when we make love.’

‘We keep saying “she”. Try to remember that she’s an it.’

‘That’s even worse: an it listening to what we do in bed.’

‘She … It says it only accesses its own output.’

‘Pull the other one.’

‘This one?’

‘Don’t distract me. If Pythia needs a buffer why don’t they just lay on a few billion more photoneurons? Why do they have to crawl into your brain?’

‘What do I know about photoneurons? Bear in mind that this was my first job; Pythia duty is the top T/7 spot and I beat out a lot of other applicants for the post.’

‘I’m thinking about yesterday when Pythia went deep with me and you fainted. Why didn’t you tell me what it was in the after-session room?’

‘The first time we made love I didn’t want you thinking of me as someone whose head was bugged. Do you blame me?’

‘How can I blame you for anything, Katya? I love you.’

She kissed me. ‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘That’s good because there’s no knowing how much time we’ve got and I don’t want you to be sorry later.’

‘What do you know that I don’t about how much time we’ve got?’

‘Nothing, but it was easy enough to see from that session that Pythia isn’t through with you yet; that means that Top Exec wants something more from you; and that means we should make the most of today which is my day off. Let’s have a picnic on the Red Mountain.’ She opened the fridge. ‘I’ve got a tin of sardines, half a French bread, and a bottle of red.’

‘Maybe we could do a little shopping on the way.’

‘Let’s just go, let’s give ourselves some memories before something happens.’

‘Don’t say that, it’s unlucky.’

‘Sorry. I never expect anything good to last.’

‘Try not to think that way; expectation is part of the reality envelope — you’re transmitting event configurations that are searching for receptors.’

‘Don’t tell me any more, I don’t want to know about the reality envelope; life is hard enough.’

We wired to the Ziggurat, went up to the flight pad, got a Red Zone day pass on Katya’s ID, and signed out a microhopper. Then we flew out to Red Mountain Park. The mountain stood up before us roseate and golden with rust and green with copper oxides like something in a Max Ernst painting, a scanty matting of grass covering the compacted wreckage of ancient roaders, choppers, hovers, skimmers, tankers, bombers, fighters, freighters, and other vehicles arrested in a state of romantic ruin and kept from further decay by many coatings of permalin. A bronze plaque said:

THIS MOUNTAIN OF DEAD NOISE IS DEDICATED

BY THE SHEELA-NA-GIG TO THE USES OF TRANQUILLITY.

1 April 2010

The electronic sign below it said:

TODAY’S AIR IS RED 3 — OZONE IS RED 2

BREATHERS AND U-V PROTEX MUST BE WORN!

Our pass got us on to the top level and we had it to ourselves except for a young Exec couple with a small son named Bert. This child had a toy terminator beam that emitted a nasty little whine every time he pulled the trigger. Bert terminated us many times, each time yelling, ‘You’re terminated!’

‘Stop that, Bert! Stop bothering those people,’ shouted his smiling parents. Whatever noise there was below us was muffled by the barrier screen and the polariser cut off visibility so that the mountaintop we sat on had no apparent bottom. Beyond the quivering air that marked the limit of the screen London lay sweltering under its grey November sky through which circles of bright emptiness looked out at me. Wirecars and microhoppers buzzed like flies in the heavy air. The Ziggurat stood glowing its dull purple against the grey with circlings of crows marking the plaza where the dead still lay.

We put some distance between Bert and us and ate our sardines and bread and drank our wine while the dreary shouts of Prongs and Arseholes came up small and quiet through the barrier screen. I hadn’t thought about happiness for a long time but suddenly I recognised it and in the same moment tried not to — I didn’t want to be caught out in the open with it on that junkyard mountain. My wristphone was heavy with silence and the grey sky seemed full of menace. I wanted twilight and shadowy rooms and mazurkas. We were loading a memory into our heads and I wondered how long I’d be around to remember it.

Katya squeezed my hand. ‘Worrying won’t help,’ she said. ‘All we can do is try to be ready for anything.’

‘Are you ready for anything?’

She rubbed her hair against my face and said nothing for a while, then, ‘Look at this grass we’re sitting on.’

‘What about it?’

‘Look how it’s growing on this old iron, how it found a way to do it. It started with moss growing on the wreckage, the spores found a way of penetrating the permalin so they could feed on the rust and break down the metal and make moss to catch the dust from the wind until it made earth out of iron for the grass to grow on. Wasn’t that clever of the moss? It didn’t know that it couldn’t do it so it did it.’

‘Yes, that was clever of the moss.’ We took off our breathers and goggles long enough to kiss sardinefully. ‘You think we can do it?’ I said.

‘Yes, I think we can.’

‘Do what, though? That’s the question.’

‘It doesn’t matter what the question is — we’re the answer. Look at me.’

I looked.

‘Remember how it was when you first saw me?’

‘Yes, I remember it.’

‘When I was walking ahead of you I could feel your eyes on my bum. I could feel your eyes lighting up like a neon sign that spelled out THIS IS THE ONE. Tell me I’m wrong.’

‘You’re not wrong.’

‘And am I the one?’

‘Yes, Katya, you are the one.’

‘Very good. And I’m very superstitious, so I won’t use the H word…’

‘What’s the H word?’

‘It’s the opposite of sad. I won’t use that word but right now you’re not utterly miserable, are you?’

‘Not utterly, no.’

‘And nobody can take that away from us, can they?’

‘No, they can’t.’

‘Well, there you are then.’

I was looking over her shoulder when she said that and I saw a tawny owl cruising low over the mountain. I didn’t believe it at first but I turned Katya around and we saw it together. She was going to speak but I put my finger over her breather mesh and we kept the owl in us unspoken then and in the hopper and the wirecar going back.

We bought a bottle of gin and back at Katya’s place in the violet dusk we sat in the viewbubble drinking it and listening to Ilse Bak playing Chopin nocturnes. Katya had put on a hologram of a relief carving of Perseus killing the Gorgon; DETAIL OF METOPE FROM SELINUS, PALERMO MUSEUM, said the label. Of Perseus, only the left hand gripping Medusa’s hair was visible, and under her chin, held by his right hand, the blade that was decapitating her. The Gorgon’s head was the conventionalised one with the round face, mad grin, vampire-like canine teeth, and loosely hanging tongue, here broken off short. It was a plate that was in my collection as well and it was a face that was often in my thoughts — this was not a human Medusa but rather the mask worn by something not to be named. There’s a second plate of that metope that shows the full figures of both Perseus and Medusa and includes the winged horse Pegasus that was born of Medusa’s blood. Again Katya hadn’t switched on any lamps; in the darkening room the stone rictus of the Gorgon’s head seemed to quiver, seemed urgent with misery and message. ‘That’s an interesting sequence,’ I said: ‘B-Z to Vermeer girl to Gorgon’s head.’

‘They’re all looking out of one another’s eyes.’

I looked into her eyes, dark in the dimness of the room. At that moment we were hearing the Nocturne in B Flat Minor, Op. 9, No. 1. The first time I heard that music it was the same recording, played by one of those philosophising late-night disc jockeys; with that nocturne behind him he’d read something — I don’t remember what but I remember that it had a Proustian flavour — about an orange grove. Ever since then when I hear that nocturne I think of an orange grove by moonlight, the scent of the silvered oranges. ‘Are the B-Z and the Vermeer girl and the Gorgon’s head looking out of your eyes as well?’ I said.

‘Mine as well.’

‘Are you a mystery?’

‘Yes. Have you been looking for one?’

‘Yes.’

The Outer Executive Circle newsboard riffled its lights as new stories came in, then flashed: FINANCE EXEC: ‘CREDIT DEVALUED, INFLATION BEATEN’ — MAINTENANCE STRIKE CONTINUES; ELECTRICIANS THREATEN STOPPAGE — OPPOSITION: ‘STOP CLEVER DAUGHTER COVER-UP’ …

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘if only we knew who’s covering up what.’

There was nothing more about Clever Daughter; the news-board went on with: PRONG LEADER’S CANNIBAL COOK BOOK DISCOVERED — TOP EXEC: ‘GAY FAKE ROBOT IS FOREIGN AGENT’ — WIRECAR DISASTER ENQUIRY: TRANSPORT EXEC CLEARED — FINANCE EXEC …

‘What’s going to happen?’ said Katya.

‘I don’t know but I think Pythia knows a lot more than she’s told me.’

‘I saw the Thinksec printouts from your session. Pythia had some wild-looking peaks when she saw Izzy on the pixels.’

‘Thinksec does printouts of Pythia sessions?’

‘Sure, that’s why they’re called Thinksec — their little minds are busy all the time. Did you know they’re part of Top Exec?’

‘I thought they were under the SNG.’

‘The Sheela-Na-Gig is under them although the civilians don’t know it. Top Exec is where the action is.’

‘And how come a T/7 gets to see Thinksec printouts?’

‘I’ve got my sources. The people on top might run things but the hired help always know what’s going down.’

‘She’s a strange one, that 23.7 billion photoneuron Data Evaluator. Who’d have thought she’d crash like that when she went deep with me?’

‘Who’d have thought I’d crash? That never happened to me before.’

‘I like a woman who knows when to faint,’ I said. Then we moved on to other matters and there was no more shoptalk for some time.