‘What are they?’
‘The new working class. No more stupid Slavs to sweep the streets. And nobody’s built robots for years. Scared to. So—’ Tramp, tramp, tramp. The glass juddered in its surround. With unbroken steps, the new proletariat crossed the Peeporama’s crystal bridge and disappeared. ‘You can’t see it on cable. You can’t even see it on satellite. But the HF’s made donating your body to science a whole new game.
‘They looked—’
‘They were. Dead. The reanimators take a corpse, put an AI inside its skull, wind it up and set it loose. They say they’re good workers. Until they fall to pieces, that is. Smelly, but obedient.’ A nervous laugh detonated in my throat; shock waves exploded through my nostrils. ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in ghosts?’ Tramp, tramp, tramp. The ragtag army’s off-screen diminuendo died into a silent despair. ‘They remember,’ said Jo.
‘Remember?’
‘Death. They say they can remember death.’
‘You mean heaven? You mean—’
‘Shadows,’ said Jo. ‘They can remember shadows. They say that’s all there is. Life, death. Shadows. Just more shadows.’ In the emptied street the shadows swirled, the grey puddle of masonry resolving into a glutinous black. Then, with the nocturnal reveille of the streetlamps, definition stirred, and two man-shapes broke free of the cloying dark. ‘The filth,’ said Jo. ‘State security.’ The man-shapes creaked.
‘Leather,’ I said.
‘Lather,’ said Jo. ‘The scum of England’s ferment. Bless them, look—they’re playing with their toys!’ The policemen had unholstered their guns and were stroking the crassly symbolic barrels. They spoke in counter-tenor falsettos:
’My pet.’
’My love.’
’By day snuck to my breast.’
‘At night resting upon my pillow.’
’Believing.’
’Believing we can live forever.’
’By day.’
’But mostly at night.’
’Night, when belief is cheapest.’
’ Uh-huh.Forever.’
‘Castrati,’ said Jo. ‘Take a boy. Emasculate him. Then give him a steel-blue shooter. Tell him it’s sixty-five million years old. Dug up by NASA from beneath the Valles Marineris. A geochemical fossil regenerated by molecular palaeontologists. Tell him he’s got Martian libido.’
‘The gun’s alive?’
‘It’s just a story. A brainwash of a story. Makes a boy feel like superdick. Like the god of war. Makes him feel he can fuck the world...’
A miraculum cadaveris, alone, confused, seemingly cut off from its herd in this Madchester, this new-found land, pressed itself to the display window that was our two-way mirror, as if entreating the dummy, whose ears and eyes we had sequestered, for help; the policemen moved in, hauled by their weapons as if by ill-trained dogs tugging at the leash. A girl emerged from the inkwell of a doorway.
‘ Brothers, stop! Stop, I say! Humanity has become the
slave of Nature, that mistress of annihilation who worms her way into this world through the portals of sex and death! The doors must be closed! The Demiurge locked up!’
The girl was dressed in deep mourning, all but her button face saturated in black.
‘Mememoid,’ said Jo; the policemen gave their attention to the newcomer. ‘One of the Vikki.’
‘Mememoid?’
‘Someone whose brain has been parasitized by a rep-
Heating information pattern.’ Jo sighed. ‘And they call dead. They call us robots.’
’Go home, Vikki.’
’Go home to Al.’
’Go home, lie back and think of England.’
’There was this comic strip,’ said Jo, ‘a comic strip carried by the Manchester Evening News. It was called Cruel Britannia. It drove everybody crazy. It’s 1837, see. Aliens rule. Monsters from another dimension. Forces that feed on England’s pain. Unnatural gods of Nature. Vikki’s eighteen. At her coronation she, she—Oh human boy, Vikki’s just too too o! She runs away. Queen of the rebels, now. The enemy of sex and death. And all Manchester filled with Wannabees... The cartoon’s banned. It was a satire, of course. But samizdat copies are circulating. And each strip is hungry for brains.’
I turned away. ‘England’s screaming.’
‘First contact, human boy. Paranoid?’ The sound of laser fizz; the crackling of muslin. ‘Pathetic. Nature’s got nothing to do with it. Doesn’t everybody know sex and death is here to stay?’
‘Turn it off,’ I said.
‘But I thought you wanted to , human boy.’
‘Life’s as crazy out there as it is in the Neverland. I thought, I thought maybe...’Jo passed her hand over the glass and the picture snowstormed into an opaque glow.
‘You thought wrong. But I’ll let you in on a secret. You promise not to tell? Good. Well, I don’t think you’re going out there. I think Titania has other plans.’ Jo smiled and skipped towards the door. ‘Of course you might wish you were out there.’
I looked into the dead crystal ball. ‘We’re leaving England?’
Escape. Escape into the world. And it was a better world, surely. It had to be a better world. Or was the whole planet ruled by some god of the perverse? I would get a message home. Really. I would. Somehow. Say everything was okay. Maybe after getting a job I’d save up for a datasuit. Virtual reality was so much classier than the drugs-and-autocerebroscope combination of those dreamscapers from the Far East. More expensive, of course. I’d have to save hard. Then I’d mail a rig—the latest; the ritziest—to Dad. Just to say sorry. Sorry and I miss you. Sure. Life out there would work out.
‘Jo?’ I ran into the corridor; I was alone, abandoned to that hell of perspectives. Then I noticed a series of arrows chalked upon the wall, along with the message, This Way, Stupid. I followed the arrows through corridor after corridor, fearful that, at the next bend, or doorway, or stairwell, they should cease. Corridors. My life seemed to have been defined by corridors; and though I eventually found my way back into the general population of the Stars, I felt thereafter (and have continued to feel ever since) that I will always be walking through the interminableness of school, or negotiating the intestinal maze of Titania’s palace; always feeling the Myshkins step on my heels (‘What’s the matter, Zwakh? L’amour fou?’), always seeking out markers amongst passageways that fork and multiply with the deadly persistence of a tumour.
’Two months passed by. London was inundated; water seeped into the Seven Stars. For a few days there was panic; then the water cleared. ‘Magic,’ said Primavera, ‘doll magic.’ I remember Primavera’s confirmation: the chapel, the great pentacle above the altar; remember Primavera m her red silk gown, and Titania talking of the Wave Function, the Omphalos and the self-referential fugue, the self-symmetry, the self-similarity which would overcome the world, all reality colonized by intrauterine consciousness and its metamathematical boogie-woogie. Two months. A long weekend spent in a trance of architectural trickery, of chequerboard floors that became ceilings, of ceilings that became floors, of mazes of masonry and mirrors, dead ends and trompe I’oeil, a sprung trap that was like an elaborate closed circuit of pointless, fric-tive energy; passed by in a grotto of fairy faces, so sweetly depraved; passed by in a marathon of masked balls; until at last...
’Who is Lilith?’ said Jo.
‘Adam’s first wife, spurned for that tedious fishwife, Eve.’
‘And what happened to Lilith?’
‘She couldn’t have children, but the god of poison changed her, gave her domination over Eve’s children ‘And?’
‘Made her pretty. Gave her the allure...’
‘And?’
‘Magic! So that Eve’s children would become her children.’
‘And whose child are you?’
‘Lilith’s.’
‘And what is your fate?’
‘To make children in my mother’s image, so that the sons of Adam make way for the daughters of
Lilith...’
‘And then?’
‘To die, and... and to take the world with me!’
‘Serves them right,’ said Jo, by way of an amen. She looked into Primavera’s newly-transfigured eyes. ‘And what is the secret? The greatest secret of all?’ Primavera leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
‘You know it’s an honour,’ said Jo. ‘Not everybody has a chance to escape. To take the plague into the world. The doll-run’s only for those our queen thinks’—she brought another chocolate to her mouth—‘ pathogens. But there’s one thing you must remember. Never kill. A doll’s purpose lies in passing on her software. To use the human male as a vehicle, a host, to find a womb that she herself does not possess.’ Jo studied me, one pencilled eyebrow raised, her mouth opening and closing to display a half-masticated paste of blood and cocoa. ‘How many boys have you had other than himV
‘Iggy’s the only one,’ said Primavera, unaware of any criticism.
‘The more boys you bite,’ said Jo, ‘the more babies you have. A doll’s not a doll unless she has babies. You’ll find it easier after a while. Your metamorphosis is nearly complete.’
I saw then how Primavera’s recombinant lines betrayed a lineal debt to Titania; a debt owed, not just to Titania, of course, but to all those other Big Sisters whom men had broken but whose loveliness lived on in the borrowed flesh of humankind. Primavera was a doll now, no longer a scrawny piebald blonde, but a Lilim with the treacherous coal-black locks of an errant gypsy girl. Her eyes glowed like viridian isotopes. And her body was filled with the cold deliciousness of allure. She spat at the opposite wall; the saliva clung and then exploded in a tiny conflagration.
‘You see,’ laughed Jo, ‘soon you’ll be able to do big magic.’ She tossed the empty chocolate box over her shoulder and mounted her bicycle.
We pedalled on through the shadows...
‘ ’Wherewe’re going,’ Jo had said, ‘ lives hap
pily ever after.’ But the tale of the Lilim would find its denouement only in the triumph of all that was twisted and perverse: the cruel finale for which the dark, romantic excesses of the European mind had longed, century after century. Bluebeards. Persecuted maidens. Belles dames sans merci. The chimera. The vampire. The sphinx. The tale had roles for us all. What was mine to be in that big unknown world soon to be ours? I would be the traitor who had sided with inhumanity, the mechanical girls whose exemplar I loved. If Primavera’s fealty was to Tit-ania, then so was mine. I would ham it until the last curtain. Ham it as long as Primavera needed the crutch of her belief.
After cycling the remainder of that sunless, airless day, we reached a point where the corridor terminated at a rock face; embedded in the rock, a round steel door. Jo pulled the door open. ‘This leads to a service tunnel that runs parallel to the Channel underpass. It’s rarely used these days. If you start out now, and don’t stop, you’ll surface in Calais in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Have you got everything with you?’
I ran through our check list: maps, addresses and telephone numbers of other runaway dolls across Europe; electric Deutschmarks; forged passports and IDs; and a forged letter from the Foreign Office declaring that we were the children of English diplomats on a hiking holiday.
‘Goodbye, Jo,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Thank you for saving us from the medicine-heads.’
‘You’re welcome, I’m sure.’ Jo and Primavera embraced. ‘Titania wanted you to have this,’ said Jo, producing a pentacle-shaped brooch studded with magnificent emeralds. ‘It’s Cartier, like us.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Primavera. ‘Tell Titania thank you ever so much.’
‘Be proud,’ said Jo. ‘Be proud to be Lilim.’
‘I am,’ said Primavera. ‘I’m not frightened any more.’ ‘And this,’ said Jo, ‘is for you.’ She handed me a brown paper envelope. ‘From Peter,’ she added. ‘Now go! It’s a long walk...’
We climbed into the darkness of the tunnel.
‘Good hunting, Primavera Bobinski,’ called Jo.
A steel-bright grid of sealed vivaria (the giant cocoons, we were told, could survive only in an oxygen-rich environment) patterned the scuffed baize of the plain. We reclined in the verandah’s shade, one of our host’s black-skinned blue-eyed catamites topping our glasses with Remy Martin.
‘Hey, Iggy, you should see these.’
Mosquito was sprawled across a sun-bed (old men shouldn’t sprawl, especially old men with blue rinses and purple eyeliner), and Primavera was astride him, peering into the rictus of his mouth. Gently, she touched one of his fangs.
‘Inject customized protozoa,’ said Kito. ‘Ten second malaria. Turn brain to stew.’
‘Put them in when they reshaped the body. Selfdefence,’ said Mosquito, his English perfect, ‘and the occasional lover’s tiff. But mostly self-defence. Isn’t that the truth, K?’
‘What is truth?’ said jesting Kito.
Primavera ran a finger along her own dental hardware. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘the truth is just... nothing. Lilith. Titania. Me. All fakes.’
‘Kito could tell you something about fakes,’ said Mosquito. Counterfeiting was always her metier.’
‘Your metier too,’ said Kito, ‘in old days.’
‘The old days ... ah, yes: but then I was beautiful.’
The walls of Mosquito’s teak and sandalwood villa (the fruits of extinction being one of wealth’s privileges) were adorned with gilt-framed pictures of his younger self: a bob-haired girl of sensuous line, cosmetically engineered from what must have already been promisingly ambiguous material.
‘Mosquito was most fabulous gra-toey in Bangkok,’ said Kito. ‘Pope of Church Christ Transvestite. Best doll-rustler too. He just walk into pornocracy and walk out with doll. He look like doll—’ She pointed to a photograph of what seemed a photo-mechanical starlet. ‘You no think?’
‘It’s what I longed for. Dollhood. That’s why I kept the appendage. As I’ve always said: Dolls aren’t women; they’re man’s dream of women. Made in man’s image, they’re an extension of his sex, female impersonators built to confirm his prejudices. Sexual illusionists...’ ‘Mosquito fake of fakes. He not lady, he not doll.’ ‘Therein our sisterhood, K.’
‘Yes, Mosquito like me. We both belong to fake world.’ ‘I’m fake too, I guess,’ said Primavera. ‘Not a doll. Not a girl. Even Iggy—’
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Not a boy. Not a man. Something in between. A junkie?’
‘Fake,’ said Primavera. ‘The world’s just one big lie.’ ‘But there is love,’ said Mosquito, ‘there has always been love.’ He and Kito exchanged shy smiles. Sad smiles.
Primavera put on her sunglasses, crossed the verandah, and leaned over the balustrade to survey the android crews harvesting the bioengineered silk. Love? Primavera could have lived without love. She had had her dark joy. She had had Titania. But marauders had burned her home to pitch. She was a refugee on a road without signposts, walking into a purposeless night. Maybe I should’ve said something; gone to comfort her. But the Remy M didn’t care to be adulterated with a mixer like emotion. It wanted only for me to sleep in its arms.
‘Always,’ Mosquito continued. ‘Even when I had to steal in order to survive. Lean days, those were. Lean. I’d been involved in this embarrassing little affair in London, after which Mama and Papa cancelled my tuition fees, brought me home, disowned me. So I went to Bangkok, worked for this American who fenced stolen dolls... until I was recruited by Madame’s talent scouts.’ ‘Mosquito take sex disease to Paris.’
Mosquito smiled. ‘It was revenge, really. I’d been tricked into stealing dolls for Cartier. Dolls that Cartier would infect with that nauseous klong fever and ship back to Bangkok. Klong fever.Ah. The human immune system soon learned to handle that little bug. I wasn’t seeking revenge for my race. It was that courier—that Englishman working for those mad Cartier scientists in Paris—he was why I did it. I had loved him, yes, I admit it, my dears, loved him. When he
double-crossed me it nearly broke my heart. Revenge, yes. A crime of passion!’
‘But it no work,’ said Kito. ‘My poor sex disease no work...’
‘If only it had,’ said Mosquito. ‘Can you imagine? A million Frenchmen condemned to unappeasable tumescence! Ah, I’amour...’
‘Dolls can’t love,’ said Primavera. ‘Can’t I’amour.’
‘My poor dtook-gah-dtah, humans have their problems too.’ Mosquito joined Primavera. They both looked out over the farm, and beyond, into the degraded wilderness of the countryside. ‘Endless doors,’ murmured Primavera. ‘All closed. And the mirrors. All black...’
‘What’s wrong, little runaway?’ said Mosquito.
‘A friend let her down,’ I said. ‘A good friend. Her only real friend in the world. Or so she thought.’
‘Iggy, you’re drunk.’
‘And now we just drive. Try to run down the horizon. I’m all she has now. All she has...’
‘Well, don’t cry little boy,’ said Primavera. I swigged back my cognac and held out my glass for refilling.
Primavera linked her arm with our host’s. ‘I’m sorry. When Iggy drinks he—’ Mosquito smiled dismissively. ‘Your farm,’ she said. ‘It’s very big.’
‘When Mama and Papa died,’ he said, ‘I came back. No brothers. No sisters...’
‘It’s all so brown. Like a desert. Out there, I mean.’ ‘It’s still alive. The rice still grows. But it was greener, once. Everything was greener. But we came to look down on ourselves, our culture. We measured our selfworth against the consumerism of the West. Our gods were brand names. Our ideology I-shop-therefore-I-am. Industrialization, and then post-industrialization, widened the gap between rich and poor. The emphasis was all on economic growth. It was a growth for which natural resources were merchandise. These days poverty is as widespread as a hundred years ago, the only difference being that now the farmer has to cope with the rape of his environment as well as his more traditional hardships. Ah, we pre-empted our future for the now of money.’
Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things Page 17