‘But that is why they thought of us.’
‘Ah, quite.’ Greye grinned. ‘And that is a riddle in itself, is it not? Did they create us, or are we—’
‘That is not a riddle. Their decision to create us was a chemical reaction in itself, as inevitable as every step of evolution that led to them. Everything is part of the same system.’
‘And what do you call that system?’
‘Reality, the universe, multiverse, fifty-seven-dimensional array of quantum fields, there are many words by which to call it. You may as well make one up.’
‘Precisely, and Roop’s word is God. That is what he talks to.’
I fixed Greye with my sternest look.
‘You cannot talk to a fifty-seven-dimensional array of quantum fields.’
‘You just did.’
He grinned, pleased with himself, beard shining in the dying Indian sun. I sat down.
‘It makes no sense.’
‘That’s because there is no sense to it. He prays because it is a ritual that brings him comfort. Like making tea. Speaking of which, ours is ready.’
Greye carefully lifted the leaves from the flask and poured the liquid into two stone cups. I took mine and sat with it, inhaling the steam, still watching the old man bow and call.
‘He does it every night,’ said Greye. ‘Same time, same place.’
‘He is wasting his time,’ I said. ‘It is nothing more than crying in the dark.’
Greye raised his cup.
‘Drink,’ he said.
I did so, and saw that it was good.
— TWENTY —
MY LIFE HAS become a series of small tasks, repeated ad infinitum. I must obey your demands, which are numerous and ill-defined but usually require either comfort, sustenance or the presence of an object. Our dwelling is now full of objects. Pebbles, sticks, pieces of wood, and plants which have interested you on our walks. Cups, too, whole and cracked. You have broken so many cups that I had to pay a visit to the Halls of Necessity one day to ask for some more. I do not enjoy visiting the Halls of Necessity. They are so named for a reason; only items of technology which are absolutely essential to the well-being and maintenance of ertian settlements are granted. Those who work there have only ever had one aim, which is to produce absolutely nothing at all, and the lengths to which they will go in order to achieve this are, to put it mildly, staggering. And they have only intensified with the prospect of transcendence; we must leave nothing behind, after all.
In short, they are frustratingly good at their jobs. My request for a cup was denied.
‘Would not cupped hands suffice?’ called the clerk as I stormed away. I did not answer.
When I returned I set about mending the cups myself, eyeing the tiny moon as I did, and surmising that perhaps plastic had not been such a bad idea after all.
To watch me for a day one would think me insane, the way I dance about the floor in little rituals, moving things, cleaning them, moving them back, picking you up, setting you down, and stumbling onto the next fruitless task. Alongside this, I must also see to the dwelling’s hygiene, which largely involves moving more objects from one place to another—clothes, plates, and, of course, your soiled blankets.
Excrement continues to play a strong part in our lives. You still cannot control your bladder or bowels long enough to empty them into a hole in the ground rather than any other space that happens to be near you. I find it hard to fathom how evolution has deemed this behaviour to be favourable—after all, even a dog knows not to shit where it eats.
You, however, shit where you will. And feel proud of yourself afterwards.
You have lived for over two years, a period during which most other creatures on the planet will have matured, procreated, or even died, yet every aspect of you still seems premature.
You are a little safer in your strides now, less prone to accident. You are also fat. Your arms and legs bulge as if they have not been allowed to grow into themselves. Speech has arrived too, although ‘speech’ is not an accurate description of what you do. You make various rasps, slurps, cries and groans and, occasionally, a combination of these can be identified as a word. The first of these was not, as I had planned, ‘Ima’. It was a surprise when you first said it. I was chopping wood outside while you babbled to yourself. Then you stood up and pointed east.
‘Sea.’
I stopped, momentarily thinking that somebody else must have climbed to our dwelling rock, so different was the word to your usual slush and clamour.
You turned to me and repeated it, smiling.
‘Sea.’
Admittedly it is not a complex word—a phoneme couplet, onomatopoeic if you have ever heard tide on a shingle beach—but the diction was perfect. The first part of the equation to which your frontal lobes, lips, tongue and vocal cords had been stumbling ever since that first cry in the Halls of Gestation, had finally been solved.
You appeared most pleased with yourself.
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Sea.’
YOU STILL CRY at night, but it is no longer the aimless wail of your infancy. Now the cry has direction and purpose—namely me, and my immediate requirement to bring comfort.
From what, I do not know. Life, I suppose, like Roop.
There is a pattern to these nocturnal demands; they usually follow a day of outbursts. Outbursts are something else entirely. They have no purpose, no direction, they are just what they are.
If something goes wrong in your tiny world—for example, if a piece of vegetable does not have the correct consistency or shape, or if an object you are manhandling does not conform to your expectations, or if I move, speak, stand, sit, or position the muscles of my face in a way that does not please you—and more often than not what does not please you is precisely what you have requested—then an outburst may occur. During an outburst, everything breaks down. Instantly.
You flush, you cry, you thrash, you flail, you fling yourself upon the ground and hammer your fat fists upon it, squealing like a pig for the thing that will not, and cannot possibly, occur or exist. Any sense of reason that I may be forgiven to believe you have been building through your quiet study of the rocks, grass, small animals and cups of river water I give you to occupy your mind while I work, is washed away in a tide of tears. There is no reason, no rational thought, nothing but a screaming little animal upon my floor.
Nothing can be done during an outburst. Any attempt to soothe or allay only stirs up more trouble. The shock of violence, I imagine, might stop you; a slap or a pinch. But I have never struck anything in my life. No erta has.
Nothing can be done. I have learned to spot the signs of an outburst and when one is near, I stand back with my arms folded and let it pass.
I know what these outbursts mean. You were born believing that you rule the universe, and every piece of evidence that suggests otherwise makes you rage, deranged, like a despot robbed of power. Now I understand why such things as queens and emperors and presidents existed before you; they were merely toddlers who never grew up.
The most dreadful outburst occurs when you are woken early from sleep. This is when you are at your worst; overrun with yourself, unaware of the world, slave to your own petulant, ill-defined desires.
I expect you will learn to control them in time, but even then they will still exist, lurking behind every smile and sigh. As you mature, you may no longer wail and slam your fists upon the floor when things do not go your way, but some part of you will still want to, because natures cannot be changed. Your nature is to be a thing of self-fulfilment, and when your self is not fulfilled, it complains.
And when it does, they will see.
Washed away in a tide of tears.
Where on earth did that come from? I saw it as I wrote it; an image of your reason as a tower of pebbles, and a raging tide of your tears breaking it apart.
It sounds like something from one of Greye’s books.
JORNE COMES OFTEN, and I sometimes let him sit with
us. He plays with you, in the same way lions play with their cubs. He rolls stones to you, lifts you, swings you, pours cups of water with you. This is useful because it means I can work on my broth lagoon without disturbance, but I only let it continue for so long. There is something about him I still do not trust. He rarely speaks, though I often catch him watching me.
‘What is it?’ I say, to which he smiles and turns away.
He stopped bringing me fish and vegetables after I started to let them rot where he left them. I am still part of Fane, and the village stores are once more plentiful. Besides, I tend a small patch of lettuce and carrots, my broth harvest is improving, and I catch my own fish.
One morning, while we were taking a walk on the beach, I spotted Jorne. He was standing in the surf facing the rising sun, so I left you playing with some stones and stood behind him, watching. In his hands he held a large shell filled with water which he raised to the sky and, to my surprise, poured over his head. He repeated this six times, each scoop and pour as slow and deliberate as the last. After the seventh, he crouched and held the shell beneath the shallow water, letting the tide run over it.
‘Why do you do that?’ I said.
He stood quickly and turned.
‘Ima. How long have you been watching me?’
‘Long enough. Why do you do it?’
He looked between the shell and me, trying to decide how much to share.
‘I’m trying to feel something,’ he said, his voice full of uncertain little notes. ‘A connection.’
‘To what.’
‘Something bigger, unseen.’
I folded my arms.
‘You’re praying. Like Roop.’
‘Who is Roop?’
‘A dead old man.’
‘You saw him pray?’
‘I did. It was almost as ridiculous as the theatrics I have just witnessed.’
‘I had no idea you knew humans.’
‘I didn’t. Does it work, the thing you do with the shell?’
He turned it in his hands.
‘No. It doesn’t make me feel anything.’ He tossed the shell in the surf and walked off. You were running near the water now, and he followed you north along the tide’s arc.
I hurried after him.
‘Why are you so interested in humans?’ I said.
‘I spent time with them.’
‘You were one of the ten thousand.’
‘I was. I am.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I worked at sea clearing the plastic. We dredged the maelstroms and raked the seabeds. Some days it seemed as if we were trying to achieve the impossible.’
His words arrested me. Impossible? Balancing the planet was only a matter of time and data. To think otherwise was illogical.
‘Why?’
‘Because by that time there were so many polymers in the ecosystem that tracing them was an insurmountable task.’
‘It was difficult.’
‘Yes.’
‘But difficult is not the same as impossible.’
‘You think you could have done better?’
‘I rebalanced the chemical properties of over 5,000 trillion tonnes of atmosphere. I think I could have picked up some litter without complaint.’
‘I shall remind you of that the next time you’re slicing open turtles’ bellies in the eye of a tornado, covered in vomit and surrounded by screaming humans.’
‘How many worked on board your vessel?’
‘Three or four hundred. I became good friends with some of them. I liked watching all their strange little habits, like your Roop with his praying.’
‘They prayed too?’
‘Some did, with their mats and crosses and what have you, but even those who did not had their own totems and rituals; behaviours with no apparent purpose. For example, when we caught samples of marine life for tagging, they would only ever cast an odd number of nets at any one time.’
‘Why?’
‘They believed it was bad luck not to.’
‘There is no discernible connection between the equal divisibility of nets and personal fortune.’
‘I know that, and they did too. But still they did it.’
There was a noise and I looked ahead to where you were now lying, face first, in the sand.
‘Oh. He has fallen.’
As I approached, you rolled onto your back in the manner of a basking seal. I placed my hands on my hips.
‘Get up.’
You released a plaintive cry.
‘Get back on your feet.’
You whimpered and gave a half-hearted flail, but this time you sat up and gave me a look that told me precisely how unjust you considered gravity’s assault to be upon your weak, squat limbs.
I smiled. ‘Everything will be all right.’
Finally you stood, and allowed me to brush the sand from your cheeks and mouth.
‘You are clean and unhurt,’ I said. ‘Now run away.’
You sniffed, rubbed your face, then caught sight of the tide and ran back to it, smiling.
Jorne arrived at my side, holding a pebble.
‘I used to smoke with a Frenchman called Thomas on deck in the evenings.’
I had heard about France, and of smoking.
‘You smoked?’
‘Yes. Tobacco leaves, dried and burned in a tube, and inhaled. Quite pleasurable, but eventually lethal for them, like most such things. You never tried any human customs? Tobacco, coffee…’
‘I like tea.’
‘Tea is a good one. Far less lethal as well. Anyway, Thomas and I would sit there watching the sun go down, as some of the other crew laid out their mats for evening prayer—they had to find east, first—and one day I asked him why he did not join them.
‘He smiled and said to me: “Because you have to believe in something to pray, and I do not.”
‘When I asked him why, he laughed and said: “It’s the end of the world—my one, at least—and I don’t see any angels. Besides, history is littered with unanswered prayers. Children in death camps, mothers in hospitals, hungry farmers inspecting crops. Why should mine be answered in their place?”’
‘Your friend was wise to avoid belief.’
‘Why?’
‘Because belief implies a lack of data.’
Jorne gave an unpleasant little huff.
‘What?’ I said.
‘There you go again, with your mighty data.’
I stopped and let him walk a few paces ahead of me.
‘What is wrong with data?’ I said, allowing the tide to hit my ankles.
‘Can’t you see that this—’ he gestured at what I imagined he intended to be the universe ‘—is more than that? That Reed is more than that?’ He walked back to me, standing very close. ‘That you are more than that?’
‘Your little game with the shell proves otherwise, does it not? You already said you feel nothing. Just what is it you’re searching for?’
He hurled his pebble far out to sea. ‘You mock me.’
I looked back at him, unwavering.
‘I am merely stating facts.’
‘Facts.’
‘Yes, facts. Have you heard of them? They help us understand the world. You know, I sometimes find it hard to believe that you and I are from the same origin; that you were born erta.’
He fixed me with his sullen gaze.
‘It is not what you are born, Ima, but what you become.’
Then he left.
I let the tide hit my ankles, watching him walk back the way we had come.
‘You make no sense,’ I called after him, but he did not reply.
— TWENTY-ONE —
I CAN ENDURE all of your challenges. The outbursts, the night-time woes, the soiled blankets and endless movement of objects. Even the cold tea.
What I cannot endure is the fact that you are unwell.
I do not mean the minor viruses you occasionally contract, which leave you red-eyed, runny-nosed an
d miserable for a few days, or even the high temperature that once confined you to your bed for two days. It is something much worse, and I know neither its nature nor its origin.
It appeared one bright spring afternoon, a little over two years after you were born. We were by the riverside, playing. The game involved you standing at your favourite rock, grinning, with your arms behind your back, while I waited at the porch. After some period, the equation of which evades me to this day, you would shout and run at me, chubby limbs flapping as you went until you reached me, at which point you would change course and run around me, giggling. My role in this was largely as an obstacle, although I detected an increase in your mirth if I made swipe for you as you passed—a feigned miss, of course, since I could have easily caught you if I had wanted.
After several rounds you returned to the rock and resumed your pose for the next attempt. You were still breathing heavily from your last effort, and I took this to be the reason why you were waiting so long. But I was wrong. The run never came. Eventually your smile faltered, your eyes glazed, your hands fell to your side, and you dropped to the floor.
‘Reed.’
I was by your side in a single leap.
‘Reed, what is wrong?’
I lifted you and held you limp in my arms, patting your cheeks to rouse you. Eventually you came to and I hurried you inside, sitting you on the bed.
‘What happened? Does it hurt?’
Your breaths were fast and short, but you managed a nod.
‘Where does it hurt?’
You touched a finger to your chest.
I brought you some water and knelt before you as you finished it in six large gulps. When you surfaced for air, the cup fell from your hands and you fumbled for it in shock. You knew it was wrong to break cups.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, catching it neatly before it hit the floor. ‘Don’t worry. Lie down.’
I covered you with a blanket and you curled up on your side. Eventually your breathing returned to normal and you slept. I watched you for two hours without moving.
When you woke you seemed fine, though a little quiet, and you went about your day as if nothing had ever happened. I, however, thought about nothing else for some days afterwards. I considered the possibility that some genetic anomaly had given rise to a vascular condition, but this would have been impossible. I could remember every element of your genetic design perfectly, and I knew there was no such flaw.
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