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

by Ian R. MacLeod

  Quickly bending down to kiss her cheek before she could lean away, I felt a brief pang of loss. But I pushed it away. Onward, onward...

  “You’ll learn,” I said, “that everything takes time. Think how long it’s taken us to get to the stars.”

  I waved to her, and to the silent group with their sweet little kid. Then I jogged down the hot stone steps to my bike.

  Back at the office there was a note stuffed through the letterbox and the phone was ringing. The phone sounded oddly sad and insistent, but by the time I’d read Odette Sweetney’s message cancelling her afternoon appointment of account of what she called This Starship Thing it had clanged back into silence.

  I decided to clear the flat upstairs. The doorway led off from reception with a heavy bolt to make it look unused—to keep up the charade with Hannah. I’d sometimes go on to her about how difficult it was to find a trusty tenant, and she’d just nod. I’d really given up worrying about whether she believed me.

  The gable room was intolerably hot. I opened the windows, then set about removing the signs of Erica’s habitation. I pulled off the sheets. I shook out the pillows. I picked up the old straw sunhat that lay beneath the wicker chair. For the life of me, I couldn’t ever remember Erica ever wearing such a thing. Perhaps it had belonged to Chloe, who’d been the previous John; straw hats were more her kind of thing. But had it really sat there all these months, something for Erica to stare at as we made love? It was all so thoughtlessly uncharacteristic of me. Under the bed, I found several of blonde hairs, and a few chewed-off bits of fingernail.

  I re-bolted the door and went back into the surgery. I turned on the PC and re-scheduled Odette Sweetney’s appointment. Then I gazed at the phone, somehow knowing that it was going to ring again. The sound it made was grating, at odds with the dusty placidly of my surgery, the sleepy white town and the sea beyond the window. I lifted the receiver, then let it drop. Ah, silence. Today, everything could wait. For all I knew, we’d all be better tomorrow. Miraculously happy and healed.

  I locked the door and climbed onto my bicycle. I was determined to make the most of my rare free afternoon—no John, no patients—but time already stretched ahead of me like this steep white road. It’s a problem I’ve always had, what to do when I’m on my own. The one part of my work at the surgery that invariably piques my interest is when my patients talk about solitude. I’m still curious to know what other people do when they’re alone, leaning forward in my chair to ask questions like a spectator trying to fathom the rules of some puzzling new game. But for the second half of my marriage with Hannah, I’d found it much easier to keep busy. In the days I work, or I screw and chase Johns. In the evenings we go to dinners and parties. The prospect of solitude—of empty space with nothing to react to except your own thoughts—always leaves me feeling scared. So much better to be good old Owen in company, so much easier to walk or talk of drink or sulk or screw with some kind of audience to respond to.

  I cycled on. The kids were playing, the cats were lazing on the walls. People were getting drunk in the cafes and the yachts were gathering to race around the bay. Our house lies east of the town, nesting with the other white villas above the sea. I found Hannah sitting alone in the shadowed lounge, fresh mint and ice chattering in the glass she was holding, her cello propped unplayed beside the music stand in the far corner. When I come home unexpectedly, I like it best of all when she’s actually playing. Sometimes, I’ll just hang around quietly and unannounced in some other part of the house or sit down under the fig tree in the garden listening to that dark sound drifting out through the windows, knowing that she doesn’t realise she has an audience—that I’m home. She’s a fine player, is Hannah, but she plays best unaccompanied, when she doesn’t realise anyone is listening. Sometimes, on days when there’s a rare fog over the island and the hills are lost in grey, the house will start to sing too, the wind-chimes to tinkle, the floorboards to creak in rhythm, the cold radiators to hum. The whole of her heart and the whole of our marriage is in that sound. I sit listening in the damp garden or in another room, wishing I could finally reach through it to the words and the feelings that must surely lie beyond.

  “You should be outside,” I said, briskly throwing off my jacket, lifting the phone off its hook. “A day like this. The yacht race is about to start.”

  “Sussh...” She was watching TV. Two experts, I saw, were talking. Behind them was an old picture of the fabled starship.

  “You haven’t been watching this crap all day?”

  “It’s interesting,” she said.

  The picture changed to a fuzzy video shot of old Earth. People everywhere, more cars in the streets than you’d have thought possible. Then other shots of starving people with flies crawling around their eyes. Most of them seemed to be black, young, female.

  “I guess we’ve come a long way,” I said, getting a long glass from the marble-topped corner cabinet and filling it with the stuff that Hannah had made up in a jug. It tasted suspiciously non-alcoholic, but I decided to stick with it for now, and to sit down on the sofa beside her and try, as the grey-haired expert on the screen might have put it, to make contact.

  Hannah looked at me briefly when I laid my hand on her thigh, but then she re-crossed her legs and turned away. No chance of getting her into bed then, either. The TV presenter was explaining that many of the people on the starship had left relatives behind. And here, he said, smiling his presenter’s smile, is one of them. The camera panned to an old lady. Her Dad, it seemed, was one of the travellers up there. Now, she was ancient. She nodded and trembled like a dry leaf. Some bloody father, I thought. I wonder what excuse he’ll give tonight, leaving his daughter as a baby, then next saying hello across light years to a lisping hag.

  Oh, Jesus...

  “What’s the matter?” Hannah asked.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head.

  “Did you have an okay morning?”

  “It was fine. I thought I’d come back early, today being today.”

  “That’s nice. You’ve eaten?”

  “I’ve had lunch.”

  I stood up and wandered back over to the cabinet, topping my drink up to the rim with vodka. Outside in the bay, the gun went off to signify the start of the yacht race. I stood on the patio and watched the white sails turn on a warm soft wind that bowed the heavy red blooms in our garden and set the swing down the steps by the empty sandpit creaking on its rusted hinges.

  I went back inside.

  Hannah said, “You’re not planning on getting drunk, are you?”

  I shrugged and sat down again. The fact was, I’d reached a reasonable equilibrium. The clear day outside and this shadowed room felt smooth and easy on my eyes and skin. I’d managed to put that ridiculous scene with Erica behind me, and the retsina, and now the vodka, were seeing to it that nothing much else took its place. Eventually, the TV experts ran out of things to say and the studio faded abruptly and gave way to an old film. I soon lost the plot and fell asleep. And I dreamed, thankfully and gratefully, about nothing. Of deep, endless, starless dark.

  We dressed later and drove through Danous towards in the opentop towards Jay Dax’s villa up in the hills. All the shops were open after the long siesta. Music and heat and light poured across the herringboned cobbles and the trinket stalls were full of replicas of the starship. You could take you pick of earrings, keyrings, lucky charms, models on marble stands with rubies for rockets, kiddies toys. I added to the general mayhem by barping the horn and revving the engine to get through the crowds. And I found myself checking the lamplit faces, wondering if Erica was here, or where else she might be. But all I could imagine were giggles and sweaty embraces. Erica was a bitch—always was, always would be. Now, some other girl, some child who, these fifteen years on, would be almost her build, her age...

  Then, suddenly—as we finally made it out of town—we saw the stars. They’d all come out tonight, a shimmering veil over the grey-dark mountains.

  “
I been thinking this afternoon,” Hannah said, so suddenly that I knew she must have been playing the words over in her head. “That we need to find time for ourselves.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Trouble is, when you do what I do for a living...”

  “You get sick of hearing about problems? You don’t want to know about your own?”

  Her voice was clear and sweet over the sound of the engine and the whispering night air. I glanced across and saw from the glint of her eyes that she meant what she was saying. I accelerated over the brow of a hill into the trapped sweetness of the valley beyond, wishing that I hadn’t drunk the retsina and the vodka, wishing I’d answered that phone in the surgery, fighting back a gathering sense of unease.

  I said, “We haven’t really got much to complain about have we? One tragedy in our whole lives, and at least that left a few happy memories. Anyone should be able to cope with that. And time—do you really think we’re short of time?”

  She folded her arms. After all, she’d been the one who’d gone to pieces. I’d been the source of strength. Good old Owen who—all things considered—took it so well. And after everything, after all the Johns and the warm and pretty years in this warm and pretty location and with business at the surgery still going well, how could I reasonably complain?

  Soon there were other cars ahead of us, other guests heading for parties in the big villas. And there was a campfire off to the right, people dancing and flickering like ghosts through the bars of the forest. We passed through the wrought iron gates and Jay Dax’s white villa floated into view along the pines, surrounded tonight by a lake of polished coachwork. We climbed out. All the doors were open, all the windows were bright. A waltz was playing. People were milling everywhere.

  I took Hannah’s hand. We climbed the marble steps to the main doorway and wandered in beneath a cavernous pink ceilings. The Gillsons and the Albarets were there. Andre Prilui was there too, puffed up with champagne after a good showing in the starship day yacht race. Why, if only Spindrift hadn’t tacked across his bows on the way around the eastern buoy... And look, here comes Owen, Good Old Owen with his pretty cello-playing wife Hannah.

  “Hey!”

  It was Rajii, husband of Hannah’s sister Bernice. He took us both by the arm, steering us along a gilded corridor.

  “Come on, the garden’s where everything’s happening.”

  I asked, “Have you seen Sal?”

  “Sal?” Rajii said, pushing back a lock of his black hair, “Sal Mohammed?” Already vague with drink and excitement. “No, now you mention it. Not a sign...”

  This was a big party even by Jay Dax’s standards. The lanterns strung along the huge redwoods that bordered the lawns enclosed marquees, an orchestra, swingboats, mountainous buffets. No matter what news came through on the tachyon burst from the starship, it already had the look of a great success.

  Bernice came up to us. She kissed Hannah and then me, her breath smelling of wine as she put an arm round my waist, her lips seeking mine. We were standing on the second of the big terraces leading down from the house. “Well,” Rajii said, “What’s your guess then? About this thing from the stars.”

  Ah yes, this thing from the stars. But predictions this close to the signal were dangerous; I mean, who wanted to be remembered as the clown who got it outrageously wrong?

  “I think,” Hannah said, “That the planet they find will be green. I mean, the Earth’s blue, Mars is red, Venus is white. It’s about time we had a green planet.”

  “What about you, Owen?”

  “What’s the point in guessing?” I said.

  I pushed my way off down the steps, touching shoulders at random, asking people if they’d seen Sal. At the far end of the main lawn, surrounded by scaffolding, a massive screen reached over the treetops, ready to receive the starship’s transmission. Presently, it was black; the deepest colour of a night sky without stars, like the open mouth of God preparing to speak. But my face already felt numb from the drink and the smiling. I could feel a headache coming on.

  I passed through an archway into a walled garden and sat down on a bench. Overhead now, fireworks were crackling and banging like some battlefield of old. I reached beside me for the drink I’d forgotten to bring, and slumped back, breathing in the vibrant night scents of the flowers. These days, people were getting used to me disappearing, Owen walking out of rooms just when everyone was laughing, Owen vanishing at dances just as the music was starting up. Owen going off in a vague huff and sitting somewhere, never quite out of earshot, never quite feeling alone. People don’t mind—oh, that’s Owen—they assume I’m playing some amusing private game. But really, I hate silence, space, solitude, any sense of waiting. Hate and fear it as other people might fear thunder or some insect. Hate it, and therefore have to keep peeking. Even in even those brief years when Hannah and I weren’t alone and our lives seemed filled, I could still feel the empty dark waiting. The black beyond the blue of these warm summer skies.

  Somewhere over the wall, a man and a woman were laughing. I imagined Bernice coming to find me, following when I walked off I was sure she was bound to do soon. The way she’d kissed me tonight had been a confirmation, and Rajii was a fool—so who could blame her? Not that Bernice would be like Erica, but right now that was an advantage. A different kind of John was just what I needed. Bernice would be old and wise and knowing, and the fact that she was Hannah’s sister—that alone would spice things up for a while.

  I thought again of the day I’d been through: scenes and faces clicking by. Hannah half asleep in bed this morning; Mrs Edwards in the surgery; hopeless Sal Mohammed; young and hopeful Erica; then Hannah again and the dullness of the drink and all the people here at this party, the pointless endless cascade; and the starship, the starship, the starship, and the phone ringing unanswered in the surgery and me taking it off the hook there and doing so again when I got home. And no sign of Sal this evening, although he’d told me he was going to come.

  I walked back out of the rose garden just as the fog of the fireworks was fading and the big screen was coming on. I checked my watch. Not long now, but still I climbed the steps and went back though the nearly empty house and found the car. I started it up and drove off down the drive, suddenly and genuinely worried about Sal, although mostly just thinking how tedious and typical of me this was becoming, buggering off at the most crucial moment on this most crucial of nights.

  But it was actually good to be out on the clean night road with the air washing by me. No other cars about now, everybody had got somewhere and was doing something. Everybody was waiting. And I could feel the stars pressing down, all those constellations with names I could ever remember. Sal Mohammed’s house was on the cliffs to the west of the town, and so I didn’t have to drive through Danous to get there. I cut the engine outside and sat for a moment listening to the beat of the sea, and faintly, off through the hedges and the gorse and the myrtle, the thump of music from some neighbour’s party. I climbed out, remembering days in the past. Sal standing in a white suit on the front porch, beckoning us all in for those amazing meals he then used to cook. Sal with that slight sense of camp that he always held in check, Sal with his marvellous, marvellous way with a story. Tonight, all the front windows were dark and the paint, as it will in this coastal environment if you have don’t have it seen to regularly, was peeling.

  I tried the bell and banged the front door. I walked around the house, peering in at each of the windows. At the back, the porch doors were open and I went inside, turning on lights, finding the usual bachelor wreckage. I could hear a low murmur a TV coming from Sal’s bedroom. Heavy with premonition, I pushed open the door, and saw the coloured light playing merely over glasses and bottles on a rucked and empty bed. I closed the door and leaned back, breathless with relief, then half-ducked as a shadow swept over me. Sal Mohammed was hanging from the ceiling.

  I dialled the police from the phone by the bed. It took several beats for them to answer and I wondered as
I waited who would be doing their job tonight. But the voice that answered was smooth, mechanical, unsurprised. Yes, they’d be along. Right away. I put down the phone and gazed at Sal hanging there in the shifting TV light, wondering if I should cut the flex he’d used, or pick up the chair. Wondering whether I’d be interfering with evidence. The way he was hanging and the smell in the room told me it didn’t matter. He’d done a good job, had Sal; it even looked, from the broken tilt of his head, that he’d made sure it ended quickly. But Sal—although he was incapable of admitting it to himself—was bright and reliable and competent in almost everything he did. I opened a window, then sat back down on the bed, drawn despite myself towards the scene that the TV in the corner was now playing.

  The announcer had finally finished spinning things out and the ancient photo of the starship in pre-launch orbit above the Moon had been pulled out to fill the screen. It fuzzed, and the screen darkened for a moment. Then there was another picture, in motion this time, and at least as clear as the last one, taken from one of the service pods that drifted like flies around the main body of the starship. In the harsh white light of a new sun, the starship looked old. Torn gantries, loose pipes, black flecks of meteorite craters. Still, the systems must be functioning, otherwise we wouldn’t be seeing this at all. And of course it looked weary—what else was there to expect?

  The screen flickered. Another view around the spaceship, and the white flaring of that alien sun, and then, clumsily edited, another. Then inside. Those long grey tunnels, dimly and spasmodically lit, floorless and windowless, that were filled by the long tubes of a thousand living coffins. The sleepers. Then outside again, back amid the circling drones, and those views, soon to become tedious, of the great starship drifting against a flaring sun.

  As I watched, my hand rummaged amid the glasses and the bottles that Sal had left on the bed. But they were all empty. And I thought of Erica, how she was spending these moments, and of all the other people at the gatherings and parties. I, at least, would be able to give an original answer if I was asked, in all the following years—Owen, what were you doing when we first heard from the stars?