The Holy Machine

70

I stayed for a few weeks in the monastery of the Holy Machine. My bed and my meals were provided for me and my wounds were tended by the monks. The rain stopped. My fever abated. And as I re-emerged from sickness, I found myself to be free too of the burden of guilt that had weighed down on me for so long. I don’t think I have ever felt so happy as I did then, pottering around those corridors and sitting in the courtyard listening to the buzzing sermons of the Holy Machine.

Why do we struggle so much? Why do we demand so much of life, when the happiest moments are when nothing is happening at all?

But, for all that, the time came when I felt like moving on. The monks had provided me with new clothes and I began to pack for a journey. I had it in my mind that I would return to Montenegro again and see Marija. I had no idea what her feelings might be now, or what kind of relationship we might have, but I felt for the first time in my life that it was at least possible for me to enjoy some sort of intimacy with another human being.

And then Alec (the older of the Machine’s Greek minders) came and told me some surprising news: there had been a coup d’état in Illyria. Elements of O3 and the armed forces had overthrown President Kung, and now promised general elections in which all permanent residents of Illyria would be entitled to vote. An amnesty had been declared for the AHS and the constitution was to be amended to allow a wide degree of religious freedom. The new government had also indicated a wish to sign a peace treaty with the members of the Holy Alliance, and had already declared a ceasefire unilaterally as a signal of good faith.

I was pretty dumbfounded by this of course. With hindsight everyone now says that this change was inevitable, and that for the Illyrian state to wage war simultaneously with external enemies and its own proletariat of guestworkers had never been sustainable for any length of time. But then it seemed incredible that something so powerful and entrenched could so suddenly have crumbled. And it was even harder to absorb the fact that I could now return my homeland, something which I’d always assumed would be a permanent impossibility.

For the first time in many weeks I also thought guiltily about Ruth.

So rather than go back up to Montenegro again, I decided to write to Marija and suggest that she meet me in Illyria City.

The Machine had its own cell, unfurnished except for a chair and desk where it sat reading continuously day and night whenever it wasn’t out preaching. The walls of the cell were lined with books obtained for it by well-wishers. There were books on theology, on history, on biology, on cybernetics, on philosophy and also a bizzarre range of other books which had been donated simply because they were in English: blockbuster thrillers, Seventh Day Adventist tracts, maintenance manuals for obsolete cars, tourist guides, comic books, even a dog-eared pornographic magazine.

But when I entered the cell, accompanied by Alec, the Machine was staring into space.

I told it that I’d come to say goodbye.

Its eyes swivelled towards me.

‘Thank you,’ it said.

‘Yes,’ said Alec, ‘If it wasn’t for you, the Holy One would still be an automaton in the syntec House in Illyria City, being used by men and having its mind wiped away every six months.’

I can’t say that this made me especially proud. I wondered how I could ever have entertained sexual desires and romantic fantasies about this strange, chitinous, utterly asexual being.

‘You’ve done well,’ I said to it. ‘It’s amazing how far you’ve travelled.’

The Machine regarded me. My words immediately seemed fatuous. It did not need self-esteem. It did not need personal attachments. It did not experience any especial feeling in connection with partings. Certainly it was conscious. Certainly it was alive. But it had its own quite different priorities from those of human beings.

‘You too,’ it observed.