Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  The crab-robot returned from the sea out of a rising moon. It shook itself like a dog, then ran proudly up to us, a gleaming fish thrashing in each of its five claws. We both had an idea how to gut them, but we left the robot to get on with it, then rigged up a kind of spit from odds and ends in the well-stocked kitchen. We sat in the firelight and ate the meat with our fingers. It was steaming, pink, delicious.

  Meena lay back on the sand. I took her hand and licked away the juice and fish scales, worked my way up her arm, parted the buttons of her dress to kiss her breasts. Inch by inch, I eased the cotton from her flesh. The fire crackled, the logs sighed into glowing dust. She had a scarf in her hair. I reached to loosen it and throw it away.

  “No,” she said. She sat up in the soft white sand to tie it above her knee. “I feel more naked if I keep something on.”

  “You remember that?” I said.

  She lay back. “Yes,” she said. She parted her legs. She took hold of me. “That, I remember.”

  I didn’t show Meena the photograph, nor mention it. I simply put it back in her knicker drawer where I had found it. Anyway, I’d stared at it for long enough to see it without looking. Meena turning, smiling. There, in my head. Don’t. I didn’t recall the scene—and I was sure I hadn’t taken it—but I could tell that the photograph was a recent one from the soft lines around her eyes, from the slight hollowing of her cheeks, the things that age was starting to do to her. Just seeing it made me realise Meena hadn’t smiled at me in that warm, open way in years. Warm, open. Not that way in years. Probably not since we had had Robin, when we were in love.

  Meena came home midway through the evening, after I’d had time to get a little drunk. I grabbed hold of her in the narrow hall before she could push past, kissed her on the cheek, smelling her work clothes, feeling her work manner. My nerves were tingling. I was trying to detect some difference in her indifference, even though I knew that the only thing that had changed since the morning was me.

  I watched her in the bedroom as she undressed.

  “Good day?” she asked.

  “Six sales,” I said; I always added a few for luck. “You?”

  “Nothing special. You didn’t pick up Robin?”

  “No,” I said, feeling the usual pang of guilt.

  “We must spend time with him at the weekend. Um, hold on.” She hopped out of her tights. “I’ve arranged to see this client Saturday morning.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?”

  “Look, there’s big money in this one, darling.” She hated it when I queried anything about her work. She thought I didn’t take it seriously enough. “He wants to drown in a vat of malmsey.”

  “Happened to someone in Shakespeare.”

  “Marius, you can’t expect these people to be original. They want some point of reference that they can talk about at the party. I’ll have to lunch him, but I’ll be back early in the afternoon. And then we get Robin out of stasis, right? Take him to the funfair, give the kid a treat.”

  She padded into the bathroom and told the flat to turn on the shower, successfully killing any further conversation.

  I watched her through the streaming glass. The figure of a woman, no longer Meena. Like a painting by Seurat. A cypher, a stranger. Someone I might once have known.

  She came out in a cloud of soapy steam, fumbling for a towel, strands of wet hair clinging to the intricate bones of her neck.

  When I reached to touch her, she turned towards me.

  “Don’t,” she said, vaguely annoyed.

  A tropical morning. Meena asleep beside me. Sounds of the jungle through the open window beside our bed. I kissed her shoulder. She stirred and smiled, too beautiful to wake.

  The white curtains swelled. A light breeze cooled my body. Beyond the window, palm trees swayed. The whole jungle was alive. Movement, colour, light, a thousand different shades of shadow playing across the thick trunks of the palm trees, the dense labyrinth of ferns. A small monkey clung to the bark of the nearest tree. He swung up and along, hand over foot over hand, and hopped soundlessly onto the window ledge. He blinked. A tiny hand worried at his mouth. Everything about him was quick, shy, almost birdlike.

  I eased myself up slowly from the bed, expecting the monkey to vanish at any moment. But he froze to watch me. Blink, blink. His irises were silver, the pupils black as a camera lens. He was probably used to visitors—and he wanted food. I padded quickly to the kitchen. I rummaged for biscuits or crisps, but settled on the sultanas I found in a jar, which were probably more suitable anyway.

  Meena was awake when I came back, leaning on her elbows and smiling at the monkey on the window ledge. A step at a time, I crept towards him. Meena slid out of bed behind me. The monkey crouched motionless, watching us approach. Meena and I sat down on the sun-warmed pine beneath the window, looking up at him. His tiny pelt was immaculate, lustrous brown, flecked gold where the light caught it. I held out a sultana. The hand took it in a blur. Then another. Meena held out a third. He ate each sultana fastidiously, nibbling around the edges, his eyes flicking from Meena to me, taking everything in. He had a scholarly face, our monkey. Sitting crosslegged beneath the window ledge like naked penitents, it was hard not to feel that Meena and I were in the presence of wisdom.

  He didn’t run off when the sultana were finished. And I was sure now that he was gazing at us from curiosity rather than wariness or fear. The palm trees murmured. The warm air burnished the filaments of his fur, stirred Meena’s hair. It was a strange moment of equality between one species and another. I felt that he knew us. From the wild serenity amid the treetops, he had come down to consider these strange, sleepy creatures. To see our flesh, our bones, our dreams.

  I cancelled my first appointment of the morning so that I could leave the flat after Meena. I was tired, a little dazed. I half expected the photograph not to be there. But it was, and I tucked it into the flap of my briefcase.

  The Volvo hummed and harred about what music to play me. It finally settled on Martinu, an ethereal dance. Escape, the lips called after me from the hoarding as we pulled out from the estate, looming over the rain-rotted villas. Escape. Treat yourself to the one luxury that money can’t buy. Well, maybe only just...

  I visited my first prospect. After I’d done my usual spiel, he sat staring at the brochures I’d spread on the coffee table. He was old, with graveyard blotches on his hands, turkey wattles for cheeks. Almost old enough to be one of Meena’s clients.

  I’d played him this way and that, taken the objections and tossed them easily back. Of course, I agreed, security on your estate is excellent, but that only has to be the first barrier. Why only yesterday, there was that terrible thing on the news. Someone about your age. The kids from outside broke in when the electric fence shorted out, crucified the poor old guy for laughs on his kitchen table...

  The prospect risked a glance up at me. The loose flesh of his throat bobbed. Was he about to speak? But, no, he looked down again. His trembling fingers brushed the cover of the Grade A booklet. It was printed in red and deep green. They were Christmassy colours, the colours of apples and firelight, childhood and home. I knew, of course, that he ached for me to say something, to break the silence. But I could wait here all day, my friendly-but-serious expression locked into place.

  I was good at my job. But then, is there an easier thing to sell than security? Who wants to be without that? I mean, it was important, I was doing these people a favour. I’d explained that to Meena often enough. And although she denied it, Meena was in sales too—these days, who isn’t? Our two jobs even followed on. After security, death. What could be more natural? And when the time comes and the surgeons can do no more, why not go out with a bang? Attend your own funeral. Jump from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Shoot yourself with an antique Luger that Hitler once owned.

  At least, I thought, it’s unlikely that Meena met the person who took that photograph through her work. But the idea clicked inside me. I saw trembling, age-stained hands
clutching a camera. I saw it all. Someone with the greed and the money to get everything they want. And Meena comes to arrange their last needs. A glimpse of her knees as she spreads her quotes and folders. And why not go out with a bang? Why not indeed.

  “Have you ever thought about dying?” I asked my prospect, genuinely curious.

  “What?” The withered face looked up at me, then firmed into an expression of refusal.

  Dammit.

  We had breakfast. I wandered around our house. One storey, bare wood and big windows everywhere. Sunlight gleaming, and the smell of the sea. You almost felt as though you were out of doors. I paused at the entertainment box, remembering what Lin had said. I skimmed though a few book titles. The famous ones rang a bell, but I had no idea whether I’d ever read any of them. I mean, who ever reads anything now anyway? Billionaires on tropical islands, maybe.

  I asked the box to play me some music, just anything it thought I might like. I was curious to know how it would react, whether had some idea of my taste in these things—which was more than I had.

  The sound of a string quarter filled the room. Dvorak, the screen told me. The American Quartet. Opus 96. Beautiful stuff, and every note of it was new to me, as fresh as the day it had flowered in the mind of that emigreCzech stuck in some New York hotel. But at the same time, I felt a warmth towards the piece that I didn’t associate with unfamiliar music—as much, that is, as I could associate anything with anything. Yes, I decided, this a kind of memory, or at least a memory of a memory. It’s how I feel when I look into Meena’s eyes. Like the stranger you recognise without knowing.

  At lunchtime, I went out from the office to the repo shop opposite. There was a kid at the counter. He had acne, specks of blood on his suit collar. Don’t, Meena said to him when he turned her over in his hands. He asked me whether I knew if it was taken on a Canon or a Nikon. I told him, Just get the bloody thing done.

  Home early, I put Meena’s original photograph back in her knicker drawer with a feeling of relief. At least now that I had my own copy, I wouldn’t have the indignity of constantly having to steal hers.

  I sat down with the computer in the study, shoved the photograph into the drive.

  “—don’t-- ”

  Meena turned to me on the screen. I zoomed in on her smiling face as she turned. Then over her shoulder. Some kind of path. Rainbowed at the edge of the shot where the lens was weakest and the digits were thin, I could just make out the wire of a litter bin. The bough over Meena’s head was dipping in the breeze, freezing, dipping again. I worked my way through it leaf by leaf, saw flashes of blue sky, a caterpillar in close-up, then snatches of a glittering lake, and a old sign on the far shore. BOATS FOR HIRE, in peeling paint.

  Meena said, “—don’t-- ”

  I killed the sound of her voice, killed the picture, tumbled down a stairway of menus to maximise the rest of a sound. The murmur of open air. Agitated birdsong. Trees whispering. It was a warm spring day. Somewhere, not too far off, I could hear splashes, shouts. The unmistakable sound of kiddies in a paddling pool. I saw orange waterwings, the fanning blue water frozen forever.

  I silenced the birds, the trees, the splashes, the shouts. Then there was the murmur that lies at the back of sound in any open space, like the grinding of a huge machine. I killed all of that, too. Turned up the volume. Listened to what was left.

  Someone breathing. Whoever was holding the camera. Huh. Half an intake of breath. Huh.

  Huh. The sound was amazingly light, almost feminine. But not quite. My suspicions had moved on from a geriatric to something with pectorals and sweat. Maybe I’d have to rethink again. Huh. It was over so quickly, so hard to tell. Huh. I tried to visualise the hands that held the camera, that touched Meena, that parted the secrets of her flesh.

  “What the Hell are you doing, Marius?”

  Huh.

  Meena stood at the door of the tiny study. In her work clothes, her work face, laptop in hand.

  I turned, hit the Exit key. Huh. Do you really want to Quit? Huh. You bet.

  I said, “Just pissing around.”

  “That strange noise...like someone crying.” She shrugged. Marius. “Have you eaten?”

  “No,” I said, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “You didn’t pick Robin up?”

  “Did you?”

  Meena shook her head. “Marius, just how much time do you think I have these days?”

  Next morning, after the monkey had come again to the window ledge, Meena and I found our yacht at anchor around the headland. In a pirate cove, the water so clear that the yacht seemed to hang suspended above the blue-pink coral.

  We swam out towards her. As soon as we had climbed the rope ladder aboard, her ghostly crew set white sails to the fresh breeze.

  We dropped anchor out in blue nowhere, alone to the rim of the horizon. We swam. The water here was impossibly deep, inky blue all the way down to dreams of pirate wrecks, the fallen marble of lost civilisations. Lying beside Meena on the gleaming deck, I wondered at the person I had been. In some grey city. This is the tomorrow that never comes, I thought, trailing my hand down Meena’s belly, gently kissing her ear. This is the future.

  “How do you think they made the island?” Meena asked later.

  I was lying on her. Inside her. Breathing. The water was scudding at her shoulder. Brown flesh, brown wood, white foam. The yacht had filled her sails. The dolphins were leaping ahead of the prow. We were heading home.

  “The beaches can’t be natural,” she said. “There are no beaches left since the icecaps melted.”

  I lowered my head to her shoulder, licked down into the hollow. Climate change. Yes, the fact was there in my mind. Climate. Change. But the gleam of brass, the scent of her hair...

  “It’s an island,” I said. “Adrift from all the change.”

  She chuckled. The sound came though my spine. “So you think it’s floating?”

  I kissed her. Don’t all islands float, the proper islands that you dream about?

  She raised her arms. Then she pushed me back, rolled over on the warm deck, was astride me, caressing herself against my face, the sky pushing through. I thought of the island, our magical floating island. Anchored, drifting on the shadowed deep sea chains amid doublooned wrecks, the whispered bones of pirates.

  Next afternoon, after five unsuccessful prospect calls and some more sleuthing on the computer, the Volvo took me to pick up Robin from the stasis centre on my way to the park. I couldn’t remember asking it to. Perhaps the car was developing a conscience. Maybe it enjoyed having its back seat thrown-up over, little bits of broken toys wedged down between the upholstery. The Volvo parked in the plastic twilight beneath the stasis centre’s massive wigwam roof. Bright arrows beckoned me through the thickening smells of coffee and polythene towards Reception.

  Day on day, Robin’s stasis bill had mounted up like an old-fashioned library fine. Even the receptionist seemed to think it was a lot. I gave her my card, and stood waiting for the red Account Out Of Credit light to flash. But today whatever software God presided over the link to the bank was on my side. The receptionist dragged out a smile from the back recesses of her teeth. That’ll do nicely.

  When Meena and I had gone through the financial details necessary to have a Robin, the plan had been that she’d look after him most mornings, I’d have him afternoons. And unless we were going out, we would invariably let the little kid spend evenings in the flat, sleep with Mickey Mouse and Pluto in the little bedroom we’d had specially made. It all seemed fine when you looked at it on a spreadsheet. Stasis wasn’t that much cheaper than using a nursery, but the big advantage was that Junior experienced no elapsed time. Mummy or Daddy dropped you into the stasis centre in the morning. Five seconds later, they picked you up again. It could be five hours or—increasingly with us—five days. Still, there were no nannies, no Well Sarah Says I Can, nothing to conflict with the parent’s role. Robin was all ours—but the way things h
ad worked out, we had to keep him mostly in stasis so that we could earn the money to keep him there.

  Robin ran out to greet me. He gave me a hug.

  “What day is it now, Daddy?” he asked. That’s one thing they don’t tell you about in the brochures. Kids aren’t stupid.

  “Wednesday all day,” I said. “And Daddy’s going to take you to a park.”

  Robin was silent in the Volvo. Gazing out of the window at the sunless city, gazing at me.

  “You’ll be starting school soon,” I was saying. “You’ll have other kids to play with.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, pretending to be absorbed in a process I wasn’t even performing. We drove in hushed silence. I wished the Volvo would play one of its kiddy tunes. The Little Red Train. Or the one that went Scoop, Scoop at the end of every verse. But the car didn’t seem to think that music of any kind was appropriate, and Robin would be sure to notice if I did it manually. Green eyes under a blonde fringe watched me, the movement of my hands, the expression on my face. Blink, blink. Click, click. Meena had had Robin seven years before. He was now three and, oh...ten months, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the wisdom of those extra years hadn’t somehow seeped in.

  It was billed as autumn in the park. A big red sign flashed over the broken concrete outside the dome, endlessly scattering a neon tumble of falling leaves. It cost a fortune to get in. You got a free Nikon if you paid an extra 10%. Throw away the camera, keep the pics.

  There was a guy standing at the wicker gate that led into the smoky twilight. I’d seen him and his sort many times before. At the funfair, the Big Toys R Us that Robin was always wanting to go to, even outside the stasis centre. Quick as a pick-pocket in reverse, he tucked a card into my hand. Sweet kid you got there, the card whispered. Got a list of prospective parents long as your arm. Give a good price, and no fancy paperware, no questions asked. I tore the card up and threw into the nearest bin.