“Ruth I'm so glad you could come. And this is Kali? Oh isn't she beautiful! May I hold her?"
Ruth handed Kali over. “You're looking well, Frances."
“Thank you."
“Hello Ruth,” said the PsyTri woman.
“Hello.” Ruth had forgotten her name, if she'd ever learnt it.
“Was the journey okay?” the woman wanted to know.
“Yeah, fine. Yes, thanks, yeah."
“That's good."
“How old is she?” Frances seemed a bit stiff, a bit awkward with babies. She kissed Kali's forehead. “Three months?"
Ruth nodded. She could sense an atmosphere, a tension; the air was thick with it. There was something going on, something very peculiar, the feel of which she didn't like at all.
* * * *
Paulie stood by the window in their room and watched Ruth, sitting on the bed, quietly feeding Kali, for whom, on Frances's instructions, a cot had been obtained and made ready.
How could he explain it to Ruth? When should he start? Should he even try? She would only think him insane, or, worse still, see it as some kind of roundabout way of saying he was getting back together with Frances.
He stood there full of revulsion at the cunning of this ersatz environment. These pretend people. They seemed so solid, these phantoms before him. This BoxRuth and little BoxKali.
He said, “It's a nice house, isn't it?"
“Gorgeous.” Ruth took Kali from her breast, sat her up and winded her. “Look, you'd better tell me what's going on."
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You know full fucking well what I mean."
All right, then, Paulie thought. He said, “You know when I use the Dreambox? You know what I mean when I talk about boxworld as opposed to Groundworld, the real world?"
Ruth nodded her head, her jaws clenched grimly; she must have anticipated some crap of this order.
His heart pounding, Paulie said, “This isn't the real world."
Ruth said nothing.
“It's a boxworld, either mine or someone else's.” Paulie hit back at the wall with the heel of his hand. The solid, unyielding, yet phony, irreal adobe. “Strange things have been happening. Bewildering things. Not just to me. And there's this word, ‘ontotech.’ Short for ontotechnology. Does it ring any bells?"
“Should it?” she muttered indifferently.
But he had noticed a shiver; he had registered her distaste. She had, for some reason, an aversion to the word. As had all those other Ruths, those BoxRuths. A sudden impluse had him looking now for the word in that tattoo on her shoulder, but he could not find it; the elaborate pattern remained stubbornly abstract.
He had asked his mobe about ontotechnology. To the best of the mobe's Netknowledge, there was no meaning attached to the word in either full of abbreviated form. No mention of the term could even be found in any known work of fiction.
And Frances had been unable to recall her odd response to his utterance of the word, nor, indeed, that whole creepy little episode during the meal yesterday, with all that stuff about transcendence, about dying, about angels.
He said to her, “Something's going on. I can't understand what it is, but there's something that's not at all right. The only way it makes any sense is if you assume that this is not the real world, and that we're not...” He gave up. What was the use?
The crushing effect of his words was all but visible; Ruth now knew, beyond doubt, that he was a hopeless box junkie, a lost cause. And here she was, right out here, being brought face-to-face with it, no longer able to set it aside.
Paulie's eyes filled with tears.
Even if he were right, and this wasn't BoxRuth, were not the principles, dynamics, the emotions authentic and valid, still? Who was he to say humiliants couldn't feel? For all he knew, he was one himself, an illusory entity, but what he was feeling now was real enough to hurt, and hurt like hell.
Dreamboxes send you mad, he thought.
And then he realized, If I were a true paranoiac, I should have convinced myself that all of this is an elaborate plot to get me to believe, for some sinister reason, that this world is less than real. Maybe Frances wants to drive me and Ruth round the bend so she can have us declared unfit parents and thus get her hands on Kali. Maybe it's all a big act, she did used to be an actress, and the word ontotech doesn't really mean anything to her. For how could it, unless...
Unless this was still his own boxworld. Or, unless ontotechnology was not truly his own personal invention, was more than a figment of his imagination. But how could that be?
He glanced at Ruth. She still sat there on the bed, absolutely silent, like she'd drawn herself up into herself. She was confining her attention to Kali, patting her on the back, and not once looking in his direction. Kali brought up some milk. Ruth wiped the baby's mouth on her Little Sunshine bib.
There came, from somewhere down below, a sudden thud, followed immediately by a loud, protracted moan, as though from a woman in childbirth.
Ruth looked up at him.
Paulie went out onto the landing and looked over. Immediately below him, Frances lay writhing on the tiled floor of the garden court. Nearby, a potted fern, knocked over on its side, rolled through a short arc then came to rest.
Xabier was in there immediately, scooping her up.
“Paul!” Her voice, though weak, carried clearly.
Paulie descended the steps with a measured briskness that he knew to be a ludicrous compromise between concern for his ex-love and loyalty to her successor.
Xabier was administering the Socratosine, shooting her with the hypo. Frances was laughing, squirming in his arms. Paulie had never seen her laugh with such a lack of inhibition. And then he saw that she wasn't laughing at all. She was crying.
Xabier attempted to comfort her. Frances wrested free of his grip, staggered as she tried to stand unsupported.
Paulie sensed a presence just behind him. He glanced round. Sesha Roffey, looking pale, looking out of her depth.
“Paul...” Frances had thrown back her head and was staring up at something. “Paul it's not your world, it's not Processia's, nor mine, it's...” She raised a trembling arm and, like one of those Greek tragic heroines Paulie had seen her portray on the stage so many years ago, before they were married, pointed heavenward. “TELL THEM THE TRUTH!"
Paulie looked up to find Ruth watching them from above.
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* * *
Chapter 18
Stepping into a pleasant little eatery on the Avenida de la Constitucion, close by the Cathedral, Sesha Roffey ordered a cafe con leche. She'd had to get out of that house, get some air. She felt beleaguered, surrounded by madness. Paul Rayle was deranged. Frances was decidedly unwell. And now here was Ruth, surly and prickly, and no kind of ally in the sanity camp. About the only soundness to be found was in the cool, together heads of Xabier, the other guy, and the two pretty Spanish girls who made up Frances's staff. Xabier was gorg. He would make an excellent bedboy; did Frances ever employ him in that capacity? What a waste, if she didn't.
Poor Frances.
Sesha was finding it unbearable, having to watch her boss deteriorate. Frances's fugue had terminated in another dead faint, leaving her with no memory of the way she had screamed up at Ruth. How many more of these AS attacks were there to be?
Sesha had received a call from Ajit but had divulged very little. She didn't dare imagine his reaction on finding out that Frances had offered her the succession. Ajit had been with the Institute seven years to her seven months; he had worked for Frances almost from the outset. And there were others, plenty of others way ahead of her in the pecking order. A score of noses would be put out of joint, enemies instantly made.
She thought, This doesn't feel real.
She wasn't even sure that she wanted the job. Conventional wisdom screamed Carpe diem! Common sense called upon her to grab with both hands the biggest break that would ever come her w
ay. And yet, her instincts weren't nearly so hot on the prospect. Was she really that ambitious?
But then, Sesha reasoned, Frances must have fed all of her emp records through whatever gizmo took care of these things, and, incredibly, the name Processia Roffey had been the answer. Was it not possible that the computer knew her better than she knew herself, could claim a superior grasp of her capabilities? Might she be a secret wonderwoman?
What I need, Sesha decided, is to talk it over with someone. But who? About the only person to whom she felt able to turn was Indie, her best friend from her Uni days. She asked her mobe to see if Indie was available. The call was answered by the sweet soulbrother voice of Indie's mobe. Indie was at present incommunicado, on stress retreat in Ireland. Sesha didn't bother leaving a message.
For the desperate and friendless there were always the AC lines: SympathEar, McMother, Uncle Walt, dozens more. Artificial Caring was big business. But intimad scouts were ready to pounce on anyone rash enough to pour out their problems; your insecurities would be noted, traded and mercilessly milked in a series of personalized sales campaigns. And anyway, Sesha was frucked if she would be reduced to confiding in chips, the first sign of sadness.
“Hola."
The word was grated out by a painfully cheapskate vocpat module.
Sesha had noticed and been deeply unnerved by the himp with the supermercado carrier-bag. Pestering his way through the ultrasmart clientele, he was ignored, waved on and cold-shouldered by turn, leaving a trail of palpable embarrassment. Guilt had forced Sesha to remain seated, defying a desperate urge to flee. Sooner or later, she knew, the himp would arrive at her table, and now here he was. From the carrier-bag he produced a Dreambox, held it up in front of her. Inside the sagging, bulging, split and taped-up bag he had another half-dozen of the things: Philips, Shintube, Hitachi, Toshiba. All were obviously counterfeit, most probably Chinese; heaven knew how they would fry your mind. And, if they were any good, why wasn't the himp hooking up, dreaming a better world for himself rather than hawking and peddling the boxes with what must have been scant success? The himp's body odour was noxious, and Sesha shook her head resolutely in the face of a fusillade of poorly-synthesized, barely decipherable words.
“Francais? Deutsch? English?” rasped the tinny cut-price voicebox, the large brown eyes holding her like tractor beams.
Sesha had never before met a himp, not in genuine physprox. She had seen them on NeTV, of course, and, like everyone else, was aghast that they existed. The himps were not the abomination, it was the humans who had created them.
This, Sesha told herself, is the result of your vanity, your greedy desire for a means of rewriting your genestory.
Shame engulfed her.
How many of them were there, these chimpanzees given the so-called ‘IQ genes’ by researchers into Genetellectual Enhancement, or whatever they'd called it? The most notorious legal battle of the early twenty-first century had finally resulted in the recognition of full human rights with respect to these creatures, although the question of financial compensation was still pending. In the meantime, the himps’ attempts to adjust to sapient society were generally said to be on a par with the efforts of severe schizophrenics to stay in step with the common herd. It seemed that help had been proffered from various quarters, and reactions from the himps had varied wildly, some submitting themselves as patients to be ministered to, others shunning the company of humans, preferring their own, and still others deciding that their visible presence in society was the most powerful weapon they could wield.
The himp still stood there with his shoddy copy of a quality Dreambox. Sesha handed over all of her cash. The himp made to leave the Dreambox on her table. She pushed it away, gestured for him to keep it.
“Gracias,” the sub-par voicebox croaked, the word all but lost under the crackle and hum of sonic malfunction.
Her shame unabated, Sesha watched the himp weave his agile way out through the crowded tables and onto the street, where he immediately began accosting passers-by. From nowhere, two armed policemen appeared. One grabbed hold of the himp, and his fellow officer literally pulled the creature's head off.
Sesha's shock was audibly shared by others in the cafe who had witnessed the incident.
The himp was now a himp with the head of a human female, a petite, hard-faced, black-haired woman of indeterminate age. The two policemen led away the wearer of the chimpanzee suit, the counterfeit himp with her counterfeit Dreamboxes.
* * * *
“She says she doesn't remember. I wouldn't take it personally.” Holding Kali's legs up out of the way, Paulie cleaned his baby daughter with a wetwipe. When was the last time he had changed her, seen to any of those parently chores?
“Well I'm sure you'd take it personally if she pointed straight at you and started screaming. ‘Tell them the truth.’ What fucking truth? What's she talking about? Look get out of the way. She's a baby, you've got to be gentle with her, you're not sandpapering a bit of fucking wood.” Ruth pushed him aside and took over. “I can't handle this, not someone in that state. I don't know why I came here. I want to go home."
Dejectedly, Paulie thought, You would be loving it here, under normal conditions.
Outside their window, somewhere down below, he heard a laugh, loud and male and hearty and raucous. The evening air had a scent to it, blossom-rich, blending grotesquely with the dirty-nappy smell. Were all such details faithfully reproduced in the travel industry's VR pseudodestinations? There had been accusations of skimping due to rushed programming, particularly in the field of synaesthetic olfaction, making the simvacation even more of an attenuated experience. It was, Paulie reflected, another technofix rendered obsolete by the Dreambox, only to linger on regardless with a myriad other outdated things, thanks to the great grey blanket of inertia.
His mind was wandering, scrabbling desperately for an escape, like a wildcat in a locked room. He handed Ruth the Sudocrem. Kali squirmed and cried out as it was applied; she had a rash, poor little thing.
“I was thinking,” he said, “that the problem might be those Crowning Glory pills."
“What?” Ruth's voice was full of dread and anger. “Look Paulie, I don't want to know. If it's not one kind of shit then it's another. That's all I ever get from you. Well, I've fucking had enough. I'm not staying here. I should never've come."
“People sometimes have allergic reactions.” From the pocket on his rucksack Paulie took out the CG carton. “Look what it says on here. ‘The user may experience side effects such as headache, mouth ulcers and inflammation of the mouth, stomach upset, skin rashes, itching, blurring of vision, effects on behaviour or mood, or hallucinatory ...’ And with the Vitamin C as well ... I mean who knows? What I do know is, I'm not taking them any more, I'm not using the box any more, I've finished with it. No more dreaming. I'm going to work. I'm going to help you. Isn't that what you want?"
Ruth's elbow smashed against his breastbone; Paulie staggered back, gasping, agonized.
Kali screamed out in fear.
Ruth was looking at him, ashen, appalled with herself. Never before had she physically attacked him.
“Don't ... worry,” Paulie gasped. “It's ... my own ... fault."
Ruth shook her head numbly.
Kali was shrieking, crimson-faced, clenching and unclenching her little fat fists.
“It was never meant to,” his voice cracked, “be like this."
Ruth had picked up Kali, now, and was cuddling her, right up close to her face. Tears were streaming down Ruth's cheeks. Paulie put out his arm. After a moment she stepped forward, allowed him to touch her, to pull her toward him. He held her, kissed her. Ruth nuzzled against him. Her shoulder pressed into his chest, right in the centre, right where it felt as though she had whacked him with a pickaxe.
“Do we have to stay?” she asked him plaintively. “I mean, what can you do for her, for Frances?"
But his clutching at straws, his hopeless attempt at reassurance, at
wrapping up Ruth and himself in one nice, big blanket delusion, his convenient allergy fantasy was already coming unglued like a cheap sticking plaster. He had no way of setting Ruth's world back to rights.
But, if this was still his own boxworld, why was this particular GroundRuth so intractable, so unsympathetic to his existential crisis? Other GroundRuths were at least prepared to entertain his hypotheses. Even BoxRuth. But this one, although ultimately a part of him and not an independent entity, nevertheless persisted in exhibiting a degree of quasautonomy the inevitable result of which was misery for them both. He had done too good a job, made her too real. If this were the highest level of boxlife he had yet attained, then he had finally, incredibly, performed the Hegelian feat of bringing otherness out of sameness. But this very otherness was now opening up a deeper divide than he had ever before known. What had become of the patient, supportive Ruth of old?
And if his worst fears were justified, if they were both humiliants stored in someone else's Dreambox, bit-players in some box junkie's private universe, then worldcopying was wrong, it should not be allowed. For humiliants were, to all intents and purposes, the equals of their Groundworldly human counterparts. He knew that now from the inside.
We live, he thought. We feel. We suffer.
But then, who was to say that this wasn't a boxworld, and his mind had got fucked by too much dethan? Bad luck knew no limits.
He still held Ruth in his arms, Ruth and Kali. The baby was sleeping, now, lightly, her tiny lips parted. He watched the faint, lazy, rhythmic undulation of her little pale throat.
“Can't we just go?” Ruth whispered.
But Paulie didn't want to go; that was the straightforward truth. He wanted to be there when it happened to Frances, whatever it was, whatever impended.
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