Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  And yet their numbers appeared to shrink only slowly, if at all. It seemed to Eli that in an era of such turbulence, their call for a return to traditional values and ways of life had found a resonance unrelated to logic.

  He and Sharon strolled along the riverwalk, sidestepping other last-minute preparations as they headed towards the station. She glanced back as they passed workers making adjustments to a holo display, a shape-shifting cluster of light sculptures that swirled out Festival factoids, the images and text married to sound that insinuated itself softly into the earsets of those walking by. They caught a fragment of the list of events that formed part of the evening’s launch as the field radius was widened.

  ‘I’m still not sure what I think about this.’

  ‘The holo?’

  ‘No, the whole thing. A Festival of the Future. It sounds sort of … presumptuous.’

  Eli chuckled. ‘Tempting fate, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s just, you know. We may have come a long way in the last three or four years but it’s not like we’re in some state of perfect harmony and can go skipping off into the sunset. Things are tough still. I should know.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what it is we’re supposed to be celebrating, exactly.’

  ‘Possibility, I think. And the idea that events are being driven by a sense of vision, that it isn’t all just random.’ They clattered down the stairs into the ancient Underground station. ‘There was a fashion for a while in something similar, a couple or three centuries back. They called them world’s fairs, sort of international trade bazaars, where all the countries got together to show off how sophisticated and forward thinking they were.’

  Sharon snorted.

  ‘Yeah, well. They didn’t know then where it was all heading. But the point is they were consciously trying to focus on the future. To anticipate what was to come, instead of just reflecting on what had already happened. They may have got it wrong but I can understand the motivation. The government feels like they need to do something to push us into a next phase.’

  ‘Think it’ll work?’

  ‘Who knows?’ They paused at a junction, where a pair of corridors diverged towards their differing destinations. ‘What does Mikal think about it?’

  ‘That it’s an exercise in anticipatory self-congratulation.’

  They fell out laughing, but there was an edgy sense of truth to the remark that followed Eli onto the train and all the way home.

  *

  Home was a small flat in the Squats, the gem enclave on the east London riverbank that had been first a refuge for escapees, and then for those who had gained their freedom on a rising tide of public opinion. After the international edicts outlawing retrieval and indenture, the derelict buildings had become a haven for thousands of gems suddenly released into communities unprepared, ill-equipped and often unwilling to handle the influx. They had banded together under the leadership of the still unrevealed Aryel Morningstar, been marshalled and managed by a phalanx of lieutenants with Mikal at their head, and built themselves a sanctuary.

  A few norms had joined them since, including the eminent anthropologist Dr Eli Walker. He remembered the early mutterings that attended the genesis of the colony, about the creation of ghettoes and concentration of need, and his own surprise and unspoken glee when the gems turned their talents and training towards the repair of long-abandoned housing and the care of those of their number modified out of any hope of self-sufficiency. The gemtech claims of social inadequacy and limited potential had been effectively silenced.

  With legal normalisation had come economic opportunity, and something of a vogue in gem culture and enterprise. The spectacle of Aryel, sweeping in and out on the wing to the gasps of visitors and the casual indifference of residents, added to the growing sense of an appealing exoticism. The shabby, insular neighbourhood Eli had moved into was rapidly becoming chic.

  But integration brought its own challenges, he thought, not all of which could have been anticipated. He glanced into the groundfloor lounge as he went past, noting the increasing concentration of the disabled and malformed. Time was when their able-bodied and attractive neighbours would have been in there too, keeping them company. Now they were all out working, or simply elsewhere.

  An alert chimed softly in his earset as he pushed back the door to his tiny balcony, letting out a wave of stale, sticky air. Aryel’s tone. She must have picked up his message. He felt a quick little rush of pleasure, followed instantly by a spike of annoyance at himself. Over the years of their friendship he had never been able to pin down quite why it was that doing her even the smallest of favours made him feel so elevated. He had concluded only that it was a phenomenon widely shared, though rarely remarked upon.

  Her response was typically succinct, grateful and gently suggestive.

  I watched on tablet, but no comparison to the view from the room. Your impressions much appreciated. Similarly with this: and she’d inserted a link to an item on the Festival’s opening programme. Worth checking out I should think.

  Eli already knew he was going to go to whatever it was, even as he tapped up the link. The new information washed onto the screen, and he felt his eyebrows shoot up. It would have been worth checking out even if Aryel had not requested it.

  *

  Aryel herself was on the south bank of the river, close to where the airwalk Eli had observed outside City Hall terminated, this time at a staircase that dropped from the top of the embankment down to the foreshore. The tide was still coming in and the entry platform rose and extended smoothly, tread by tread, as gillungs swirled gracefully around it and made adjustments. She leaned against the rail, gazing down at them and politely ignoring the stares and whispers from her own level, the pointing fingers and surreptitious tablet flashes that accompanied her whenever she left the Squats.

  One of the gillungs pulled herself onto an unsubmerged stair, glanced up and saw Aryel. She grinned and raised a hand. Sunlight glinted off the translucent webbing between her fingers.

  ‘Hey! You going to stay up there and watch, or come down and get wet?’

  Aryel laughed, both amused by the suggestion and grateful for the woman’s easy informality. ‘You know that’s not my territory. I’d be about as useful as a cork.’

  Other gillung heads popped up, and there were more calls and splashed greetings. Aryel waved back as the woman who had spoken to her ran up the remaining steps to the top. Water dripped from the tight cuffs of her bodysuit, trickling onto broad, webbed feet. Aryel leaned over the safety barrier and into a damp embrace.

  ‘Graca, it’s so good to see you. D’you know where the rest of my lot have got to? I’m going straight into messages.’

  ‘There’s a concert hall here? Gwen wanted to see it. Hear it too, no doubt. You know what she’s like, probably made them switch their ’sets off.’

  ‘How’s Rhys?’

  A shadow crossed the other woman’s face. ‘He’s okay. Says he’s okay, anyway.’

  ‘You’re not convinced.’

  ‘Not completely, no.’

  ‘I better go find them.’

  Aryel left the quayside and headed into the cavernous interior, built long ago for another Festival and after a tumultuous history, returned to its original use. The attention went with her, murmurs rippling ahead and trailing behind like some strange existential wake. She had long since decided that the best course was generally to act as though it wasn’t there; to treat people as if they behaved better than they did, and hope that with time and familiarity the pretence would become truth.

  It was a careful and often, she thought, a hypocritical balance. She knew very well that the norm fascination with her – adulation even – was beyond the control, and usually even the awareness, of most of them. She also knew that she used it, gently and subtly, to keep herself and her people safe, to maintain their steady progress away from serfdom, and to counteract the very difficulties that celebrity created. It was a potent tool, and one that she sho
uld not, for purely practical reasons, wish to lose.

  Now, for instance, it took no more than a smile and a quiet few words to detail a security guard to help her swiftly negotiate the maze of corridors and locked doorways that led to the hall. Far from resenting the task, the man’s dazed look said he could not believe he would be able to boast to his friends that evening that he had acted as escort to Aryel Morningstar.

  Still, he seemed honour-bound to protest that their errand was likely to be fruitless.

  ‘It’s, umm, it’s locked, you can see,’ as he pressed fingers to an identipad. ‘There’s no access to the hall for the general public just now, and no rehearsals or anything … I’m afraid your party must have gone somewhere else …’

  She nodded and smiled and said, ‘Let’s just check.’

  And sure enough, as he swung the heavy old door back, voices washed up at them from the direction of the stage. The man’s jaw dropped. Aryel sighed and walked past him.

  Lights had been switched on, illuminating only the front few rows. The elevated rear of the room, where they had entered, remained in dense shadow, as did much of the stage down below. Three figures could dimly be seen against the black of the backdrop; two heads glowed a deep wine red, like embers in the darkness.

  Someone was singing, a clear, pure tone that rolled up the banks of seats and sent a shiver of pleasure up the guard’s spine. It stopped abruptly and an excited female voice said, ‘Just listen to it! The way the sound changes, it’s so … so round, and full …’

  ‘You do sound lovely, Gwen,’ said another voice: older, benevolent, amused. It came from the figure without any gemsign glow, and changed abruptly as he became aware of movement in the shadows above. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s Aryel,’ said the other two in unison. The third voice belonged to a younger male, who added, ‘We’re busted.’

  ‘You are indeed,’ she said. She was already halfway down the sloping chamber when the guard found the controls, and lights came up in the entire room.

  They picked out the two glow-haired gems, who both looked to be in their early twenties: a willowy, weary-looking youth, and a girl whose slender, athletic form and expressive face positively radiated well-being. It was the contrast between lassitude and fizzing energy, the guard realised as he hurried after Aryel, that was their least similar feature; otherwise the resemblance was remarkable. They were lean and long-limbed, and shared the same fine-boned, full-lipped features, along with flawless nut-brown skin and eyes so dark a blue they could almost be black.

  Their companion was a white-haired man, norm to all appearances, who looked to be enjoying a hearty old age. He paced to the front of the stage, hands clasped behind his back, and twinkled at Aryel as he boomed, ‘And why is that? This is the people’s hall, after all. We are here only to appreciate our inheritance.’

  ‘Appreciation is confined to specific times or with appropriate escorts, as you know very well,’ Aryel shot back, but there was no hiding the answering smile in her voice. The girl jumped down from the stage, a distance and depth few norms could have managed safely, and skipped up to meet her. She threw her arms around the winged woman.

  ‘Don’t be cross, Ari. I just wanted to hear how it sounded.’

  Aryel hugged her back, up on tiptoe in a vain attempt to match her height, wings billowing for balance. ‘I’m not. I can’t speak for this gentleman, though.’

  The guard was standing behind them, mouth still hanging open in astonishment. ‘I … but … how did you get in?’

  The other two had descended the stage by the more sedate route of the steps, and now came up to meet them. The younger man raised his hand sheepishly. ‘That was me. Sorry. Wasn’t my idea,’ shooting a glance at his fellow trespassers. ‘I did lock everything behind us though. And we haven’t touched anything.’

  ‘Except the lights,’ said Gwen helpfully.

  ‘Except the lights.’

  The guard looked from the beautiful girl to her brother – was he a brother? He thought gems didn’t have siblings, not really – to the old man, now enveloping Aryel in another embrace.

  ‘But the locks,’ he said helplessly. ‘And … and there’s alarms and stuff.’

  ‘Alarms?’ said the young man, with an air of polite disbelief. ‘Did we set off alarms? Sorry about that. Really. Didn’t look like they were on.’

  ‘Yes they were. I mean, no you didn’t. I mean I don’t think so. I’d have got a call.’ He tapped his earset, wondering how to handle the situation. They had obviously bypassed the security systems somehow, but no harm appeared to have been done and Aryel Morningstar clearly knew all about them. She shook her head ruefully.

  ‘Rhys has a way with comms systems, Gwen has a way with Rhys, and Reginald here,’ she cast a fond look over her shoulder at the old man, ‘has a way of indulging them. First trip to London, you see.’

  ‘Really?’ said the guard. His head was reeling. The names of Gwen and Rhys rang only the most distant of bells, but he recognised the reference to Reginald right away. It was a name he could connect with the trio’s appearance, and begin to make some sense of it all.

  The old man was dressed in the highly unfashionable, slightly shabby clothing characteristic of a Remnant. The two young people’s attire was not quite so outmoded, but neither was it of recent vintage. The full dimensions of the tale he could tell at the pub that night dawned on him.

  It would not be improved if he had to add that he had concluded the encounter by rousting Aryel Morningstar’s foster family.

  *

  Later that afternoon, Aryel left Reginald, Rhys and Gwen resting in her own cavernous flat and tapped on another door in a quiet first-floor corridor. It slid back to reveal a man with glowing flamecoloured hair, and an air of subdued tension that receded when he saw her.

  ‘Hey, Callan. Glad I caught you.’ He smiled a little and stood back so she could step inside. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine. Just hanging out with him a bit, making sure he eats something.’ He gestured towards the small open kitchen, where the debris of a meal was in the midst of being tidied away. ‘I’ve got to go in a minute, though. Got some extra work on this evening.’

  ‘Festival?’

  ‘Yeah. Translating for some of the newstreams.’

  ‘Will you be free to come to the show after?’

  The flame-haired man shrugged. ‘Should be. If I feel like it.’

  Aryel looked at him keenly. Although he was young, well shy of thirty, he gave an impression of greater age. It was perhaps that subtle quality in his demeanour, a slightly hunted watchfulness; or maybe just the faint traces of scarring on his handsome face, the shadow of some old injury which had been expertly repaired, but not quite completely erased.

  ‘Please come,’ she said quietly. ‘Lyriam’s only just got back, he hasn’t even made it home yet, but he messaged me to say how much he misses us. He’s hoping as many as can make it will be there. I think he’s got some new music up his sleeve.’

  ‘Really?’ He brightened a little. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘I’ll be looking for you.’

  She turned, finally, to the other occupant of the room.

  ‘Hello, Herran. Are you well?’

  The diminutive gem to whom she spoke had not looked around, or otherwise appeared to register her arrival or the conversation with Callan. He sat with his back to the door, before a bank of auxiliary screens that showed a dizzying array of stream feeds and code; most of it incomprehensible to Aryel. He rocked for a moment, as if processing the greeting, and then turned to look at her.

  His curly hair glowed the same orange-red as Callan’s. It was their only similarity. Herran had wide grey eyes and a face largely devoid of expression. Its most marked feature was a scar that ran between his nose and upper lip, old and pale but clearly mended with little care for the result.

  ‘Aryel.’ He nodded, lisping softly. She approached, holding out her hands. Herran touched them briefly, a
nd she settled onto a stool.

  ‘Good today,’ he said. He had already turned back to the screens, and the input tablet on its stand before him, but she knew him well enough to sense that his attention was more broadly focused. This, along with the brief, ritualised response to her question, told her he was still listening to her as well.

  ‘You keeping an eye on the Festival?’

  ‘Yes.’ He rocked a little. ‘Fun. Lots to see.’

  ‘I’m glad. There’ll be lots going on this whole month. Funny thing happened there today though.’

  Herran did not respond. The opening was too abstract, too lacking in specificity for him to engage with. Aryel knew this, but Callan had said they should keep lobbing innuendo at him occasionally, just in case.

  ‘The thing that happened,’ Aryel went on, ‘was that Rhys opened some doors that had locks and alarms on them, only he said the alarm circuits weren’t active when he went through. But they were supposed to be active, and when I went the same way a little later all of them were active. Like someone turned them off just for him, and then turned them back on again.’

  Herran’s rocking nod had become a little more emphatic. Though his expression did not change Aryel thought she detected a spark of something in the pale eyes.

  ‘Easier for Rhys. No alarms. Quick quick.’

  She sighed. ‘Yes, it was easier and quicker. Did you turn them off for him, Herran?’

  ‘Yes. Quick quick. Easy.’