Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  ‘I’m fine. Hang on, you understood? How?’

  Callan shrugged. ‘Cryptophasia’s almost always just mispronounced words from the mother tongue, organised via a very basic syntax. Neither of those factors is much of a challenge for me. But kids usually ditch it young, or else they never learn normal language at all.’

  ‘Da says it was all Gwen and I spoke when they found us.’ Rhys found himself rubbing his free hand selfconsciously over his hair, and dropped it awkwardly. ‘We were only toddlers, so it took them a while to realise it wasn’t just babbling. We picked up regular speech okay, but we never completely stopped using it with each other. Sorry,’ he shrugged. ‘Bad habit.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Callan smiled at him. ‘I haven’t come across a new language in seven or eight years. At least. And the UN sends me bloody everything these days.’

  ‘Really?’ They had somehow fallen into step, moving idly away from Gwen and her group. Groupies. Rhys tried to shrug off the dregs of his irritation and thought of setting the glass down – he hadn’t really wanted the drink to begin with – then decided it gave him something to do with his hands. ‘I thought you just worked with half a dozen or so main languages.’

  ‘There aren’t even that many, not any more. The essential ones are English, Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish, and Spanish is starting to fade. But so many of the world’s texts have never been properly translated into any of them – even the best apps don’t get the nuances right. It takes a person fluent in both, and as the language pool shrinks there’re going to be fewer and fewer of us who are. If it isn’t done in the next couple of generations vast amounts of literature, history, journalism will just be lost.’

  ‘So you’re translating the literary heritage of the planet?’ Rhys blinked, and took a sip anyway.

  ‘Yes. Sounds grand, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sounds like something that’ll take way more than one lifetime.’

  Callan laughed. He had a rich, textured voice, just on the right side of resonant, and a warm chuckle of a laugh. ‘I don’t have it all to myself, fortunately. They’ve got a couple of others like me on the project, plus as many multilingual norms as they can scare up. But you’re right, there’s no way it’ll all get done in time.’

  ‘Still.’ Rhys was staggered by the enormity of it. ‘That entire legacy – whatever survives – will be filtered through just a few of you. You get to put your stamp on it. It must feel amazing, to know that what you do now is going to last for the whole of human history.’

  ‘It does.’ Callan’s gaze slipped inward, and his expression turned thoughtful. ‘It’s good to hear you put it like that, though. When I’m cooped up indoors on a sunny day, translating obscure Kurdish poetry, it’s easy to forget how lucky I am.’ He grinned at Rhys, present again and sparkling. ‘How about you, then? I have a feeling your sister is about to conquer the world through song; what are you going to be doing?’

  Rhys grinned back, wondering how much was safe to share. He had just decided on a compromise when he again felt the slight pressure, like a prickling in the back of his brain, that told him someone was coming up behind; and detected the vanishingly faint spiced-musk scent and rustle of sound that told him who.

  ‘I’ll fill you in,’ sidestepping away from him, ‘when we’re not about to be interrupted.’

  ‘When we’re what? Oh.’ Callan glanced round, startled, as Aryel came up between the two of them and tucked a small, strong hand inside an elbow of each.

  ‘Good, you haven’t left yet.’

  Rhys snorted. ‘When did Gwen find time to tell you I was going? What with the fan club and all.’

  For once she looked surprised. ‘You—? I didn’t mean you, I thought Callan was getting ready to slip out. And don’t be snarky about Gwen, she earned it.’ Aryel’s voice lowered and filled with concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, then.’ She cocked a reproving eyebrow at him. ‘Well, it’s about you anyway so I’m glad you’re together. Callan, are you around in the morning? I was going to take Rhys down to meet Herran, but I’ve just had a message. There’s somewhere else I need to be.’

  ‘You want me to introduce them? Sure.’ Nodding over her head to Rhys. ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He looked down at Aryel. ‘I still don’t understand why I can’t just knock on his door, though. It’s not like we don’t know each other. We’re not just stream-friends, we’re friend friends.’

  ‘Don’t I know it, after that stunt he pulled with the alarms.’ She sighed, and glanced at Callan. ‘It must seem unnecessary given how close you already are, but …’

  Callan was nodding agreement. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him,’ he told Rhys. ‘Herran interacts much more easily, more naturally, onstream than he does in person. There is a … pattern to communicating with him in the physical world that has to be followed. It can take him a long time to get comfortable with someone who’s standing next to him, and no time at all if they’re onstream. It shouldn’t be a problem for you, though, since you already have a relationship.’

  ‘Rhys will pick up his cues very fast,’ said Aryel. ‘I think it’ll take five minutes. But you still need a gatekeeper to get you started.’

  ‘It’s no problem. I was going to drop in and see him after breakfast anyway.’ Callan looked from Rhys to Aryel, the corner of his mouth twitching as though he might be about to break into that warm laugh again. He had been so reserved when he joined them at the concert, almost morose, and then there had been the flash of anger at the Reversionist antics. He had looked too stern to be handsome. But after the music and merriment and a couple of drinks his face had relaxed, was amused and open and very, very beautiful.

  He smiled down at Aryel. ‘And you’re right, as usual. I was about to head home, but then I ran into Rhys instead. So if you want to go soon,’ glancing back to Rhys, green eyes catching the light like emeralds, ‘I’m ready any time.’

  *

  Aryel watched them leave, keeping her own smile sedate, aware that too many onlookers might read too much into it. If his name cropped up in the river of gossip no doubt already flooding out of the evening and onto the streams, Rhys would be mortified. She turned briskly away from the entrance to find that Reginald stood next to her. His own grin was unabashed.

  ‘Well, that was quick.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Oh, please. They were checking each other out before we even got in here.’

  ‘They didn’t know they were. At least, I’m pretty sure Rhys didn’t. Maybe not Callan either. He’s been out of circulation for a long time.’

  ‘So? Stuff happens, whether you’re aware of it at the time or not. I’ll place a wager on them getting the circulation going’ – he waggled pantomime eyebrows at her – ‘before the week is out. Maybe before the evening’s out. What odds are you offering?’

  ‘They’re just two young men, walking home on a balmy, moonlit night.’ She could not help grinning back at him. ‘What could happen?’

  ‘With any luck, a great deal. He needs it.’ He appraised her, squinting down his nose. ‘I should see if I can’t find someone to see you home.’

  ‘What’ll you do, strap them to a kite?’

  ‘That’s a piss-poor excuse to spend your life alone, Aryel.’

  ‘Reginald. My dear Da. Can you imagine the uproar? What this … circus … would turn into?’ She refrained from waving at the room, instead letting her gaze slide absently around it, and back to him. ‘My life is complicated enough.’

  ‘He could deal with the complications. More importantly, he would.’

  ‘Who would?’

  ‘Don’t be coy, girl. You know who.’ The bushy eyebrows now arched in the direction of Eli Walker, on the far side of the marquee and listening with every appearance of interest to a commentator from one of the more breathless socialstreams. ‘Do you a world of good.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do him any.’ There was s
teel in her voice, and Reginald knew he had finally gone right up to the edge, and possibly slightly over it. ‘I’ve already asked a great deal of him, and I may have to ask more, but I’ll neither lie to him nor tell him the truth he wants to know. Not if I can possibly help it. I won’t risk the damage to us both.’

  DIVERGENCE

  There is a moment when she understands that she is different.

  She is still very, very small when she knows this, but she is already aware of disparity. She knows that the men and women who care for her, who feed her and bathe her and dress her in clothes poorly adapted for her awkward anatomy, who have gentle voices and kind eyes under brightly glowing hair, are not the same as the ones who instruct them, with their crisp tones and sharp glances. Those ones wear shiny white coats, and their hair does not glow.

  Under the coats their clothing varies, and she glimpses different iterations of skirt and suit and boot. Her carers all wear the same shapeless, grey-drab trousers and loose tops, much like her own. But the gap between the carers and the others is not a matter just of clothing or hair colour or even their roles as servants and served. There is something missing from the warmth of those gentle men and women, from the affection she longs for and looks forward to. There is a dullness about the eyes below that brilliant hair. The kindness is real but somehow empty, shallow. Their awareness seems far less acute than hers. They teach her to speak, simple words repeated over and over, and she knows, with a frustration that causes her sometimes to ball her little hands into fists and scream at them in her fury, that she could learn so much more, so much faster, than they are capable of teaching.

  The others watch.

  They have more words, those others, and she would like to learn them. Their gaze is as quick and inquisitive as her own, and there is a certainty about them, a confidence in the way they come and go and move and speak, that she is drawn to. But they are testers, not teachers, and they rarely smile or speak to her directly. Mostly they take her to the cold place, where everything is as shiny and flat as their coats, and she is undressed and measured and probed and scanned and twisted and spread and stretched. Some days it hurts, and when she cannot help but cry they call in one of the attendants, a large woman with hair called ‘orange’ or a thin man topped by ‘purple’ to comfort her.

  So she understands difference, but it takes a particular day for her to understand it in relation to herself. It is a day when they have detoured through the room where they keep the other children. There are four. (She knows this because the orange woman has recently taught her her numbers, first to five, then when she insisted on more, to ten. She could see them stretching on and on in her mind and she wanted to be given the names of all of them, but the orange woman seemed to know no more, and she grew angry and cried, and the orange woman cried, and there were no more numbers.)

  Two of the children seem to be asleep, eyes closed beneath the clear plastic hoods of their cots. One twitches and makes muffled mewling noises, through a mouth pinched into a strangely sharp projection. The skin of her back is distended, and beneath it things like cables seem to curl around and about each other in a tangled, terrifying mass. Some days her eyes are open, and then she is propped into a sitting position in her cot; but they are never aware. She has no arms.

  The other is still and silent, save for the muffled hiss from the tubes that go into his nose and mouth. His arms and legs are shrunken and twisted, curled into his chest; but his shoulder blades are massive, sharp edges pressing triangles through the skin. More tubes emerge from beneath the blanket that covers him to the waist. She has never seen him otherwise, and his eyes never open.

  The other children are awake and out of their cots. One has a sweet, vacant face. There are little flaps for arms this time, and a body that ends abruptly at the hips. She smiles without comprehension when she sees them. The fourth child does seem to understand something, though it is hard to be sure since the face is almost nonexistent. Round blue eyes stare at them over gaps that might be a nose and mouth. That one is able to walk, though his spine is painfully twisted, but they are both strapped into pushchairs for the short trip to the testing room, and the purple man and a white-coat woman are waiting to do the pushing.

  The senior white-coat who is taking her today stops and looks them over. His gaze travels across the hissing cots, and then he looks down at her and shakes his head.

  ‘What makes you so bloody special?’ he says, in that tone they sometimes use where they don’t really expect an answer. He squats down in front of her suddenly, eye to eye, frowning.

  She frowns back.

  ‘If it weren’t for you we could have shut the whole batch down by now.’ He sounds angry. ‘But no, we have to keep at it until we work out how the hell we came up with you. You are the fucking anomaly. We can’t even manage to fucking replicate you, so I don’t see the point.’

  ‘Ano-ma-lee,’ she says carefully, hoping he will explain. He blinks at her, a jolt of surprise crossing his face, and then he stands abruptly and they proceed along bright white corridors where sounds fall dull, and into the testing room. She turns what he said around and around, trying to grasp the meaning, trying to fill in the words she doesn’t understand with tone and gesture, trying to connect them to something she does understand.

  Things are beginning to shift. She can feel it, and it scares her. It scares her so much she wants nothing more than to give up and cry, but she knows that will not help. It will only confuse and exhaust her, and she senses a potential in the moment that should not be wasted. So she swallows it down, and waits until they have put the sensor pads in place all over her head and shoulders and back, and the white-coat is standing beside her starting to press buttons on the machine, and then she grabs his sleeve and tugs hard.

  ‘Dok-tor Ow-wen.’

  He turns and stares down at her, his face blank with astonishment. She hears the gasps and murmurs from the other white-coats, but she keeps her eyes fixed on him.

  ‘You.’ His face is still slack. ‘You know my name?’

  She lets go of his sleeve and points to the other children, hooked up as she is, waiting. She feels urgent, as though understanding is both close and crucial. As though everything depends on it.

  She asks a question to which she already, in that moment, knows the answer.

  ‘Wike dem?’ she says. ‘Awwel wike dem?’

  He squats down in front of her again then, and the customary distaste in his face and voice have been replaced by something else.

  ‘No, Aryel, you are not like them. You are not like anything.’

  PROPOSITION

  7

  The city wheeled below her. She could see pigeons flee for the safety of ledges as they sensed her shadow. Crows peeled up for a closer look, then decided that whatever she was, she posed no threat. This high up the cars and people on the teeming summer streets were no more than specks, and she could take in the tapestry of the city: a chaotic matrix of pale roads dividing the uneven grey of roofscapes from green strips of parkland, punctuated by glistening towers that thrust up into her domain. She glided lazily between them, riding a warm current of air, enjoying the heat that beat down on her barely moving wings. She held the glide for as long as she could before shifting regretfully into a slow, graceful bank that took her left towards an elegant spear of black glass. To her right the brooding steel spike of Newhope slipped behind and out of view.

  The bullet-shaped apex of the Bel’Natur building was blunted at the tip, a landing pad intended for the more brutal aerodynamic power of an executive helicopter. She beat hard for a moment to clear the currents that swirled around the tapering tower, then swept her wings back and dropped in from the top.

  There were only two in the greeting party, and she silently acknowledged the contradiction of being both pleased to be able to touch down without the usual gawking audience, and knowing it was more likely that staff had not been told of her visit, or were forbidden to witness it, than native uninterest.
One of the people waiting for her was a blocky, middle-aged man with lines deeply etched into his face, dressed in a discreet black uniform. His impassive expression slipped for just a moment as he watched her land, and then he flicked a sideways glance at his companion and pulled the mask of professional indifference back into place.

  The other was Zavcka Klist.

  She watched until Aryel had folded her wings and brushed back a stray strand of hair, as if waiting for confirmation that her visitor had given up the air and become earthbound once again. Then she stepped forward, hand out, crisp and formal.

  ‘Ms Morningstar. Thank you for coming.’

  Aryel met her eyes, a grey as dark as smoke. As she took the proffered hand she wondered fleetingly if Zavcka would indulge in the childish spite of squeezing too hard. Instead the handshake was as firm, brisk and brief as her own.

  ‘Ms Klist.’ She let the corner of her mouth kink up in time with an ironically raised eyebrow. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

  Zavcka’s face twitched in response, but she accepted the polite fiction gracefully. ‘Shall we go inside to talk? It’s a bit windy up here.’ She glanced at the silent man, standing a couple of paces back with hands clasped loosely behind him, and added, ‘For some of us. If you’d prefer to stay outside that’s fine.’

  ‘It’s windy for all of us. By all means let’s go in.’ She thought she caught a flicker of surprise, heard it confirmed in the guard’s grunt of approval. Perhaps they had expected her to insist on remaining in the open; if so he would have been unhappy at the thought of leaving his employer unprotected up here. So Zavcka had probably already made it clear that she would be speaking with Aryel Morningstar alone.

  As it was the man busied himself with a state-of-the-art identipad that combined finger and retinal scans, and a heavy steel door slid noiselessly back. It looked new, and she thought with amusement as Zavcka ushered her through that they might well have installed it specifically to keep her out.

  A short, plushly carpeted corridor led directly to the lift shaft that formed the spine of the building. The man, still unintroduced, stood back to let them enter and looked a question at his boss.