Binary

by Stephanie Saulter

  Herran poked a finger into the upholstery. ‘Comfy.’

  ‘Yes, everyone thinks so. We’ve all taken a turn. Part of setting up the baseline.’

  Herran inspected the arms and footrest of the chairs. Callan smiled grimly, as though he knew what was coming.

  ‘No straps.’

  Sevi looked genuinely horrified. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Good. Straps bad.’ He looked up at Eli, rock-nodding. ‘New chairs.’

  ‘I should think so. Looks okay to you, Herran?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Excellent. I wonder,’ glancing first at Callan, then at Zavcka, ‘if I could have a quick word with Ms Klist? There are a few things we should clear up.’

  If she was annoyed there was no sign of it. They left Khan hovering around the edges of the group as Herran hopped up into one of the chairs and pulled out his tablet, and Callan settled down to discuss the details of the next few days with Sevi and the rest of her team. Zavcka led the way to one of the huge parabolic windows that made up the skin of the building. There was the same relaxed scattering of low furniture that appeared to be ubiquitous throughout these floors, and the falling away of external sound as they stepped inside another damper field. She folded elegantly into a chair, watching as he lowered himself to one opposite.

  ‘We haven’t yet discussed my role here. The others must know I’m going to be doing more than taking care of Herran.’

  ‘Your broader remit has been made clear to them. I admit I wasn’t thrilled at first—’

  ‘I imagine not.’

  ‘—but I’ve revised my opinion. You and I did not part as friends, Dr Walker, and as much as anything that was down to your absolute willingness to speak your mind, regardless of the consequences.’ She frowned. ‘Aryel – Ms Morningstar – says she wants you to assess the ethical framework we now abide by and see if it stacks up, with the understanding that if you think it doesn’t, or if there are steps you recommend that we’re not willing to take, Herran will pull out immediately. That’s only a threat to us if we haven’t done as well as we think, and aren’t willing to try to do better. Well, we have and we are. I’ve decided to think of you as a sort of external auditor. You’ll have access to all the personnel and files you need. All I ask is that you look at where we are now, not where we were four or five or ten years ago.’

  ‘That’s what Aryel specified as well.’

  ‘And that if you do conclude we’re on the right track you allow us to quote you.’

  He sat back and regarded her. The charm offensive of the past hour, the deference of the past ten days, began to make sense.

  ‘That’s a big if. And if you misquote me, or take me out of context, I’ll embarrass you. Badly.’

  ‘I understand. I’ve had my fill of underestimating you, Dr Walker.’ She smiled thinly and gathered her legs beneath her to rise, the dismissiveness of the gesture a subtle counterpoint. ‘Sevi is in charge of the science, of course, but I’ll stay in close contact …’

  ‘I am not at all sure that’s a good idea.’

  She was arrested in mid-motion, comically startled.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Sit down, Ms Klist. We’re not done yet.’

  She sank back onto the chair, casting a quick glance towards the suite where the others could be seen but not heard, having what looked like a sober but perfectly amicable discussion. No one was paying attention to them, and the face she turned to Eli was hard. He gave her no opportunity to speak.

  ‘I know that you and Aryel have had candid conversations, and I suggest you and I continue in that vein. Bel’Natur might indeed be a changed institution these days, with staff who had either no or very limited responsibility for the abuses it committed. I can’t deny that Sevi and Khan have a fresh new look about them. But you are not peripheral, Ms Klist, and Callan knows that as well as Aryel or Herran. Or me.’

  She licked her lips. He found the involuntary gesture immensely satisfying.

  ‘Does Callan think I was responsible for … he must know how distressed I was …’

  ‘Your distress then was as much a public relations stunt as the one you’re hoping to pull off this time, with me. Callan is no more an idiot than I am. He knows the part you played in what happened to him. What happened to the others, after.’

  ‘I never meant—’

  ‘I can believe you never meant for it to go as far as it did, considering how close it came to destroying you. If the outcome had been different I seriously doubt we would be seeing any of this remorse from you now.’

  She stood, then, swivelling sharply to face the window, her fingers gripping the sill.

  He rose more slowly, turning to look out as well, as though they were enjoying the view. ‘Callan is here,’ he went on evenly, ‘because Herran needs him to be. Herran is here because he has made a rational decision to earn as much help as he can for those who need it, in the only way that is available to him. I am here to make sure that the assurances you’ve given are genuine and the promises you’ve made are kept. I am not certain any of that can withstand your ongoing, personal hypocrisy.’

  Her face had gone white as marble, lips compressed into a thin line. Two red spots shone on her cheeks, and her eyes were black and dead as coal. Her hands, he noticed, were trembling and she clasped them together tightly. They stood side by side, as she had stood next to Callan earlier, and gazed out of the window. He felt strangely peaceful. He could hear her take one shuddering breath after another as they watched birds swoop past.

  ‘Khan will act as liaison,’ she said finally. She managed to keep her voice level, but there was a raggedness to it he had never heard before.

  He nodded thoughtfully at the faint outline of their reflections against the glass. ‘I think that would be best.’

  There was no reply except for the sound of her heels, clicking rapidly away.

  REVOLVING

  She learns to remake herself.

  It is a necessity of her condition. It is, by its nature, conspicuous; not immediately, often not for a considerable while, but over time, inevitably, those around her begin to notice, to question, to wonder. To whisper behind hands and cast eyes askance. She discovers that no landscape can long endure her presence. She resists the signs, always, not wanting to leave behind what she has built, exhausted by the thought of having to start again. Again.

  She develops a weary fortitude, and strategies for coping. She teaches herself the skills she needs to create a shred of continuity in this unanchored existence, a framework that will allow her to maintain some sense of identity as she steps out of one life and into the next. She notices herself shift, subtly, with every incarnation, into someone who is a little bit more like the person she must now be; and she forgoes resentment in favour of sanity.

  She learns that she can lengthen the intervals between her own reinvention, reinsertion, by minimising those with whom she must share space and time. Relationships become shorter, more perfunctory, easily discarded and eventually dispensed with altogether.

  This is not loneliness. This is survival. This is what she tells herself.

  But she finds complete seclusion beyond even her powers. It does not take long for her to feel herself again locked away, a precious princess imprisoned in a tower, looking at the swirl of life outside the windows. She descends, engages, forms connections, attracts attention. Time passes. The whispers start.

  She leaves before they begin to suspect.

  18

  Callan left Herran at home, settled comfortably back in front of his own screens with Aryel for company. He trudged up three flights of stairs, ignoring the lift in favour of the mindlessness of movement, thumbed open the door of his own flat, and walked straight into Rhys’ arms. It was like falling out of a rain of knives and biting cold into warmth and gentleness and comfort. He held him close and did not speak until he could trust himself not to weep. As they stood there wrapped together in silence he detected the faintest
tremor in Rhys’ limbs, and in the fingers buried in his hair. It occurred to Callan that the younger man might well have reasons of his own for distress.

  He relaxed his grip, pressing his cheek and then his lips against the side of Rhys’ face, and felt himself blinking back the traces of his own upset as he pulled away enough to look at him.

  ‘Sweetness.’ He forced a smile. ‘So how was your day?’

  ‘Not any more fun than yours.’ Rhys’ face was wan, his answering smile just as tentative. ‘Lots of poking and prodding.’

  ‘Really? I could do that. Better.’

  That got him a chuckle, and a bit of sparkle back into the indigo eyes. ‘You definitely could.’ Rhys shook his head. ‘Never mind. Tell me. Was it horrible?’

  ‘Yes. Well, not entirely. It was weird.’ Callan had turned his own micro-balcony into an oversized, opulent window seat and he flopped onto it, tugging Rhys down with him, noticing with unease how carefully the other man lowered and arranged himself, his sigh of relief as he settled into the cushions. ‘You could tell they’d been briefed to be nice to us, but they were really nice. Bending over backwards. The people, the place, they weren’t anything like I remember.’

  ‘You’d been there before?’

  ‘Once, when I was about fourteen, I guess. They were shopping me around for my first indenture and they brought me in to demonstrate to a client. Some Asian conglomerate. In through the service entrance, up in the goods lift, speak only when spoken to. The rest of the time they talked about me like I wasn’t in the room. I’m pretty sure where I was taken to then was on the same floor as today.’

  ‘Oh, Callan.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I mean it’s not, but, you know.’ He frowned. ‘It was completely changed, and I don’t just mean the space. The difference … it wasn’t only the fancy car and going in through the front door and being spoken to like a real person. I was all set for that to be window-dressing. But remember I told you about Sevi? How she seemed all right? Well, she was pretty typical.’

  ‘So why did your message sound so pissed off? And you looked wrecked when you came in.’

  ‘Because this entire symphony of reconciliation was being conducted by Zavcka Klist. In person.’ He rubbed a weary hand across his face. ‘What those men did to me … I don’t think about it most of the time. I’ve learned to put it away, I had to. But it’s there, Rhys, and she was behind it. I’m sure of that, even if she didn’t issue the instructions herself, or target me in particular. To be expected to stroll along, politely chatting about how times have changed … as though it had nothing much to do with either of us …’

  Rhys was aghast. ‘She spoke to you? She had the nerve?’

  ‘You’d think we were old friends, the way she spoke to me. You should have seen her, Rhys, touring us around, showing off her shiny revamped company like some sort of badge. It’s like she thinks if she surrounds herself with sincere people her own insincerity won’t matter.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Held it together, just. Eli finally sent her packing.’

  ‘He did? In her own place?’ Rhys grinned in appreciation, though it still looked like an effort. ‘I like him.’

  ‘Yeah, Eli’s good people. He told her if she wanted us to be able to stomach working there she’d have to shove off, and she did. Which was another piece of weirdness, come to think of it, but a good one.’ He patted Rhys’ knee, now propped comfortably against his own. ‘Your turn. What happened?’

  ‘Oh, you know. More tests.’

  ‘What sort of tests?’

  ‘Nerves. Reflexes. It’s not important.’

  ‘Yes it is, sweetie. You’re moving like you’re hurt. Are you in pain?’

  ‘A little …’ Rhys’ eyes slid away from Callan’s face. ‘I shouldn’t load any more of this on you. Not with everything else you have to deal with.’

  ‘Rhys, don’t. Don’t you dare.’ He leaned forward, cupped a hand against Rhys’ cheek. ‘Dealing with you is the best thing in my life at the moment. The best thing for a long time. I want to know what’s going on.’

  Rhys looked back at him, blinked hard and swallowed, and gazed away again across the sunset-streaked city. His fingers crept up to press Callan’s hand to his face.

  ‘I’ve been really well since I got here and they needed to see what an attack does to my muscles and the control centres in my brain, so they gave me some stuff today to try and trigger some of the symptoms. It worked. It’s wearing off now but everything sort of aches. It’s hard to describe.’ He shifted against the cushions. ‘It’s like every muscle has been strained, not a lot, just a little. Just enough. I feel bruised.’

  He looked back at Callan, managed a smile, kissed the cradling palm and pulled the hand away from his face with a pretence at briskness. ‘It’ll probably be completely gone in a couple of hours, and at least it didn’t mess my head up as well. I’ve been working on Sharon’s problem and I’m finally getting somewhere. Want to hear my theory?’

  ‘I want to know why you look so scared.’

  Rhys stared down at Callan’s hand, still clasped in his lap. Callan tickled his palm lightly, urging, feeling a tremor of fear hum along his own nerves.

  ‘They’re worried that whatever I have looks like it’s degenerative.’ Rhys spoke to the tangle of fingers. ‘They … they’re not completely sure yet. But the pattern of the attacks and the test results they’re getting … and what they did today to switch it on, it all sort of confirms …’

  Callan felt the tremor turn into a shiver, a hard humming like a frozen spear through his guts.

  ‘They think it’s going to get worse? How much worse?’

  ‘We don’t know for certain. They might come up with a treatment. I might find better ways to control it. It might stabilise on its own.’ His voice was shaking now. Callan tried to keep the terror he heard there from echoing in his own.

  ‘And if they don’t and you don’t and it doesn’t?’

  Rhys looked up at him then, finally. His eyes pooled and spilled over. ‘Then they think it’ll kill me.’

  *

  Aryel Morningstar perched on a stool in Herran’s small, tidy kitchen and watched him eat. They sat across from each other over a worktop that doubled as a dining surface. Herran mostly used his fingers, moving them with metronomic regularity from dish to mouth, pausing every now and then to clean them fastidiously with a biowipe before returning to chase down every morsel of the meal she had prepared. From time to time Aryel stabbed a fork at the contents of her own plate, without enthusiasm.

  Herran’s pale eyes flicked up at her, observing. He rocked a little. ‘Not hungry?’

  ‘Not very much today, no. Is it good?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Well, that’s Bal’s teaching for you. Want some more?’

  Herran pushed the empty plate ceremoniously towards her and gave his fingers another wipe. ‘More.’

  It pleased her greatly that he had learned to enjoy food, instead of treating it as no more than a tedious refuelling that took him away from his tablet and screens. They had formed an instinctive, unspoken rota back in the beginning of the Squats, making sure he had a tasty meal and company to eat it with every day if they could; prising him gently offstream and into the more visceral interactions of meat and bread and touch and speech. She had watched him change over those lunches and suppers, bit by infinitesimal bit, could almost map each new word or glimmer of expression that he gained against a taste or texture that gave him pause, and fired a new, old pattern into the altered web of his brain. Some deeply buried instinct for humanity had stirred with every bite.

  Now he watched her spoon seconds onto the plate and again spoke without prompting. ‘Problem?’

  ‘I’m worried about Rhys. And a little bit about Gwen, but mostly Rhys.’ She put the plate back in front of him. ‘And you, of course. I’m worried it will be too hard for you.’

  The fingers plunged in. ‘Not hard. Only time.’
>
  ‘It might take a long time, Herran. You might be there a while.’

  She had to wait while he chewed and swallowed and blinked at her.

  ‘Not long,’ he said with certainty, as he picked up the wipe again. ‘Setup okay. I do testing, Callan does talking, Eli asks questions. All together. Quick quick.’

  ‘If you say so. What did you think of Zavcka?’

  ‘Scared.’

  ‘That’s not good. That’s not good at all. Will she be a problem for you?’

  ‘No. Maybe. No.’

  ‘Herran …’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And you’re sure it will be okay with Sevi?’

  ‘Sure. New chairs. No straps.’ He was rock-nodding again, with the subtle emphasis that she knew signalled satisfaction; although she could not be certain whether his contentment had to do with the Bel’Natur arrangements, or the meal.

  *

  Dinner was in the early stages of preparation a few floors away, in a larger and less orderly apartment. Like Aryel’s, this flat had also been altered to accommodate a gem with a need for more than the average amount of headroom. In Mikal’s case it had meant raising the ceiling by close on three feet, salvaging extra-tall doors from derelict public buildings and constructing extra-large furniture.

  On her first visit Sharon had felt like a doll propped onto a grownup chair, and had laughed about it with him. On her second she was disoriented to find, when he sat down, that his face was almost on a level with hers and his legs, stretched out under the table, emerged on the other side.

  She had poked her head down to look, observed that his chair legs had been cut away almost to nothing, got to her feet and shoved him unceremoniously off the seat. He’d sat on the floor and watched as she manhandled the mangled chair into a corner, replaced it with a properly giant-sized one, and with a flourish invited him to reseat himself.

  ‘I think,’ he’d said from the floor, ‘that I might be in love with you.’

  ‘Good. I love you too. Don’t ever do that again.’