Behind him the lift doors suddenly rolled shut and the lift began to descend. It required no great stretch of the imagination to deduce that the funereal orderly had raised the alarm. Joey realised he must move quickly now.
His gaze alighted on the nearest crane, which was parked a few yards along from where he was standing, its cherry-picker stationed adjacent to the gantry railing. A sign on the railing said:
STACKS 300-350
The next thing Joey knew, he was standing in the cherry-picker and examining its control panel. The On switch was easy to find, and once the small display lit up, operating the crane was simply a matter of following the onscreen prompts as they appeared. He tapped in the location of his mother's stack and drawer, then pressed Enter. The crane obediently began to move. First it extended forwards until Joey was within arm's reach of the wall. Then it began to glide horizontally past the drawers, heading for Stack 339. Joey noted that each drawer was fitted with an access panel and a rotating handle that was marked off by a hazard-striped circle. So much more convenient than digging through dirt, he thought. A twist and turn of the handle, and the drawer would slide smoothly open, and there she would be.
A shout from the gantry brought his head snapping round.
"You! What the hell do you think you're doing?" It was an orderly with an electronic clipboard. He was standing wide-legged on the gantry, with a look of outrage and incredulity on his face. "You're not qualified to operate that!"
"I'm going to see my mother," Joey replied straightforwardly.
Just then the lift arrived to disgorge another three orderlies, including the funereal one.
"There he is!" the funereal one shouted. His pale cheeks were flushed. Two pinks circles glowed unhealthily against his pure white complexion.
"Come back here at once," said the orderly with the clipboard, striding along the gantry now, keeping pace with the progress of the cherry-picker.
"I pay to keep her here," Joey said to him. "I break my back to make enough fucking money to keep her here. So I'll fucking well see her if I fucking well want to."
"But you don't understand," said the orderly. "The seal. If you break the cryogenic seal, the shock to her physiology could kill her."
Joey shook his head calmly. "I just want to take a look at her. It'll only be for a moment. She'll be fine." He turned back to face the wall. The crane halted abruptly, and for a few heart-deadening, hope-dashing seconds Joey thought it had broken down - either that, or the orderlies had a means of overriding its controls. Then the cherry-picker began to move again, this time vertically. He had reached Stack 339 and was rising.
"Somebody go and fetch Mr Lazarus," the clipboard orderly said, and there was the sound of running feet clanging on metal.
"Mr Delgado?" said the funereal orderly. He was pleading now. "Please come back down. I don't think you have any idea what you're doing."
Ignoring him, Joey gazed upwards.
"I'm coming, Mum," he said. "I'm coming to see you."
Gordon Lazarus was there when they finally managed to bring the crane back down from near the top of Stack 339. And it was Lazarus who first stepped into the cherry-picker, in which Joey was sitting hunched, his legs drawn up to his chest, his hands fisted beneath his chin, his gaze fixed somewhere on eternity.
"Joseph?"
Recognising the voice of the founder and proprietor of the House of Lazarus, Joey stirred.
"Come with me."
Meekly Joey stood up and allowed himself to be taken by the hand and led back on to the gantry, through the crowd of a dozen or so orderlies that had gathered, into the lift and up to Administration. All the while Lazarus talked soothingly, encouragingly, reassuringly to him. In the commercial, Lazarus had come across as cold and vaguely insincere, but in the flesh he seemed genuinely caring. His dark suit stood out in sharp contrast to all the eye-watering whiteness. Joey found it strangely restful to look at that suit, when everything else was so painfully white.
Lazarus sat Joey down in his office - not the office shown on television. This was an altogether more functional place, rather like mission control for a space flight, fitted out with the very latest in communications technology. The chairs were comfortable but not extravagantly so. The desk was broad and spacious, but skeletally constructed from plastic and steel, not wood. There were no pictures on the walls and no windows.
Lazarus asked Joey if he would like a drink, and when Joey didn't reply, poured him one anyway. The chunky tumbler, quarter full of whisky, sat heavily in Joey's unfeeling fingers. Lazarus poured himself a drink, too, and then sat on the edge of the desk and began talking. Explaining things. First he talked about faith. The transfiguring power of faith, the absolute necessity of faith when all else fails. Then he started talking about the unfeasibility of cryogenics, how it was impossible for complex organic systems to survive prolonged exposure to sub-zero conditions, and how for this reason cryogenics would always remain an unrealisable dream. Joey didn't quite understand what Lazarus was saying. Wasn't that the entire principle on which the House of Lazarus was based - keeping the dead alive on ice? So what was the deal here? Then Lazarus started using phrases such as "connectionist networks" and "subcognitive modules", "rule-based symbol manipulation" and "Gödel's theorems about enclosed formal systems". None of these would have meant anything to Joey even if he had been thinking straight, but when Lazarus said the words "artificial intelligence", Joey remembered what he had discovered in the drawer that was supposed to contain his mother's body, and things began to fall into place.
After he had talked some more, Lazarus fell silent, obviously expecting a reply. When none came, he spoke again: "Well, Joseph. I've said all I've got to say. I've been as honest as I can. The question now is, what are you going to do?"
Joey made several hoarse false starts before finally finding his voice. "I don't know."
"Are you going to go to the police with this information? The media? I have to know, Joseph. It determines how I ... deal with you."
"She was just wires and chipboards and a hard drive and -"
"But she's real, isn't she, Joseph?" Lazarus said, with a glint in his eye. "She's real to you. That's what counts."
Joey couldn't deny the truth of that statement. "What did you do with the body?" he asked.
"We gave her a proper send-off."
Joey looked at Lazarus doubtfully.
"I swear," said Lazarus. "We employ a multi-denominational priest full-time at our private crematorium. I'm not a monster, Joseph. I have a healthy respect for the dead. After all, one day I'm going to join that club myself. But you still haven't answered my question."
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Joey said finally. "I need some time to think."
"I can't give you time, Joseph," said Lazarus, glancing at his wristwatch as if considering whether it might not actually be conceivable for him to shave off a portion of the universe's relentless tick-tock and hand it to Joey. "Time is the one thing I do not have. If you are prepared to be reasonable with me, however, I can make you an offer."
"An offer?" said Joey.
"A very generous offer. As I said, I'm no monster."
And Lazarus explained.
"Mr Delgado. How good to see you again."
Joey was such a regular these days, perhaps the receptionist's smiling familiarity wasn't feigned after all. And now that he had privileged-customer status and was entitled to talk to his mother for however long he wanted, free, her smile seemed less patronising, more deferential.
"Go on through."
Into the chamber of gleaming steel drawers. Into the mechanical exhalation of thousands of fans, chilling the skin, bringing a tincture of winter to the air - a marvellously bogus touch, the confirmation of a mass preconception, like a stage magician's top hat and wand.
Stack 339. Drawer 41.
"Mum?"
And telling her everything he had done that day, everything he was doing tomorrow.
"I'm thinking
of moving. I've applied to the Council for a transfer. They say the chances are good."
Building up a life for himself. For her.
"Still looking for a new job, but there's enough left from the money Dad left us to tide me over."
Some of it false, but most of it real, and the real encroaching on the false day by day.
"I've found someone. You'd like her. I'll bring her along some time so you can meet her."
Because all along, without his realising it, he had needed his mother just as much as he had believed she had needed him.
"I'm happy now, Mum."
Because he hadn't wanted her to die any more than she herself had wanted to die.
"Honestly I am."
And because sometimes an illusion is so enchanting, so alluring, so life-enhancing, it is infinitely preferable to the truth.
"And I'm glad that you are, too."
Isn't that so?
"Very glad."
Isn't it?
The Driftling
The morning after the storm, Jane/208 set off down the beach to see what the ocean had surrendered overnight. Flotsam was always more plentiful in the aftermath of a storm. It was as though the sea was trying to make up for having battered and buffeted the island all night long by offering up gifts, compensation for the dark, roaring hours of fear and sleeplessness.
The sky was ragged and torn, and an onshore wind gusted at Jane/208, forcing her to lean into it in order to keep her footing on the shingles, but the sun flared intermittently through gaps in the clouds, promising warmth to come. In its rays, the foam that flecked the wavetops was shot through with miniature rainbows.
Jane/208 passed clusters of seagulls squabbling over stranded fish and wave-crushed crabs. She was not looking for food. Others would be doing that, taking advantage of the harvest, scavenging above the tideline where the pickings were rich. Nor was she looking for fresh driftwood, though there was plenty of it about.
Sometimes, after storms, the ocean gave up something special; reached deep into its pockets and dug out something that been lying there for a long time, something precious and rare that only guilt and the desire to atone could have persuaded it to part with.
Jane/208 was searching for a gift for Jane/202. A piece of glass that had been smoothed and polished by the tide would, when hung on a braided length of sun-dried kelp, make a fine pendant. A mother-of-pearl shell could be transformed by a craftswoman into a comb to hold up Jane/202's beautiful hair. A shark's tooth would make for a brooch if Jane/208 took it to be scrimshawed; perhaps she could have her likeness engraved into it as a keepsake for her lover.
But what she was really hoping to come across was something made of metal. Gold, preferably, but since gold washed up once in a blue moon, she would happily settle for one of the duller, greyer varieties of metal. Any kind of metal, in fact, so long as it could be wrought into a ring.
Jane/208 had made up her mind to ask Jane/202 to be her sharer. They already lived together, had done so for seven bleedings, so it seemed the next logical step to solemnise their union with the ritual of exchanging gifts. And a ring, as Jane/208 saw it, was the ideal gift, representing as it did the beach that banded the island, the annular strip of shingle that shaped and limited the lives of the Parthenai.
Of course, it was by no means certain that Jane/202 would accept the ring and consent to become Jane/208's sharer. In fact, Jane/208 had a pretty good idea what Jane/202 would say when she asked. Why ruin what we have? We love each other, we're committed to each other... What difference will a couple of gifts and a ceremony make?
No difference at all, and yet every difference in the world. Rituals and symbols meant a lot to Jane/208. Emotions, like the sea, were apt to change. A symbol gave permanence to a feeling. A ritual pegged a moment in memory, meaning it was less likely to be forgotten. Though Jane/208 was sure of her love for Jane/202, and almost as sure of Jane/202's love for her, still she wanted something tangible that would show Jane/202 how she felt and allow Jane/202 to demonstrate that she felt the same. That wasn't a lot to ask, was it?
As a matter of fact, knowing Jane/202, it probably was. But Jane/208 was none the less determined to go through with the ordeal of getting down on her knees before her and uttering the formal declaration of sharing - You are my sister, my lover, my reflection, my matching half, the fullness of my moon - even though there was a chance that Jane/202 would decline, even though it might conceivably mean the end of their relationship. Frightened though she was of rejection, Jane/208 was more frightened still of insecurity.
Soon the huddle of driftwood shelters was out of sight, and the beach stretched ahead of Jane/208 and the beach reached behind her, a curved, narrowing strip of grey in both directions, bounded by the sea on one side and on the other by a wall of black cliff spattered with streaks of bright white guano. What lay beyond the top of the cliff no one knew, since its sides were unclimbably smooth and sheer, but it was generally assumed that the island was a flat-topped plateau of granite encircled by beach. Only the seagulls had any idea if this assumption was true or not, and they weren't telling.
Jane/208's hardened feet scarcely felt the pebbles beneath them. Even the sharp edges of shells were unable to penetrate the thick calluses on her soles. She crunched along, scanning the ground in front of her, stopping every so often when a glint caught her eye. Though she had long ago learned to distinguish between the gleam of a fish's scales and any other shiny object, this morning she made a point of not passing anything by, just in case, just on the off-chance.
She had been foraging unsuccessfully for as long as it took the tide to go out two body-lengths when she spied the congregation of seagulls up ahead. Instead of the usual three or four, dozens of them had gathered in one spot, and they were strutting and squawking and feuding the way they usually did when there was good food to be had, but none of them was actually eating anything. Which meant that whatever it was that had drawn them was not dead.
Immediately Jane/208 thought, Dolphin. And with that thought came a twinge of annoyance. If it was a beached dolphin, she was obliged to go back to the village and report it, so that a team of volunteers could come with sledges and knives to slaughter the creature and flense it of its meat and hide. As the dolphin's finder, Jane/208 would have to be a part of that team, and this meant that, basically, the rest of the day was no longer hers.
She toyed with the idea of ignoring the dolphin, strolling past as if it wasn't there, but her sense of duty was too strong, her loyalty to the tribe too deeply ingrained. Cursing her luck, she dragged her unwilling feet forwards to where the seagulls were flocking.
The birds saw her coming and grudgingly cleared a path for her. Those that didn't waddle out of the way quickly enough she motivated with a kick. They closed ranks behind her, until she was standing at the centre of a ragged circle of white wings and grey-feathered backs and tossing yellow beaks and jet eyes.
It was not a dolphin.
It was a woman, lying face down on the shingles, the waves seething around her legs.
Not just a woman, either. At least, she was like no woman Jane/208 had laid eyes on before. The contours of her legs and back were wrong. Her buttocks were covered in matted hair; so were her shoulders. And there was something down there, down between her thighs. Some kind of growth or goitre, such as sometimes developed on the bodies of older Parthenai.
Jane/208 could hardly bring herself to touch this strange being, but she had to make sure she was alive.
The woman had been in the water for quite some while. Her skin was cold, white and wrinkled. But in the flesh beneath, there was warmth. In the big vein at her neck, a flutter.
"Bad luck, my friends," Jane/208 told the seagulls, and bent to drag the woman up the beach where she would be beyond the reach of the sea when it came thundering back in.
The sun had broken up the clouds, reducing them to a few tattered wisps of white, when Jane/208 returned with Jane/197, Jane/211 and Jane/211's daught
er, Jane/243. It was just past the peak of the day, and the black cliff gleamed so fiercely it was almost painful to look at.
Jane/197 had scoffed at Jane/208's excited claims about discovering a woman, saying that the sea only produced fish and things, not people. Never mind that Jane/208 insisted that she had actually touched the woman, had pulled her up the beach; Jane/197 considered Jane/208 a dreamy sort whose imagination too often got the better of her. Nonetheless, she had agreed to come because she thought that what Jane/208 had taken for a near-drowned woman was a seal or a manatee, and she fancied the idea of a new fur tunic or a new pair of boots. Hence she was equipped with two kinds of knife - one with a whelk-shell blade for paring, the other with a clam-shell blade for hacking, both fitted with bone handles - and Jane/211 and Jane/243 were pushing a sledge.
The seagulls were still there, more of them than before, but Jane/208 saw to her relief that they were keeping a respectful distance from the woman. The seagulls, in common with most creatures whose diet consisted mainly of carrion, were as cowardly as they were patient. They could wait for ever for a meal to die but none of them was bold enough to hasten the process along.
Their cries turned raucous and angry as the four Parthenai beat a path through them to the body.
"Jane/208," said Jane/197 stiffly, "please accept my humble apologies." She stared down at the woman. "Well, this is news. No boots or tunic for me today, but a driftling thing to show the rest of the tribe, that's for sure."
Jane/243 knelt and ran a cautious hand over the woman's hairy shoulders. "It's soft," she said. "Like fledgling down."
"Will we be able to get her into the sledge?" Jane/211 wanted to know.
"I did suggest we built a stretcher," said Jane/208, "like we do when we have to take someone to Mother Cave who's too sick to walk."
"Never mind that," said Jane/197. "We'll have to make do with what we've got. Each of you take a leg, Jane/208 and Jane/211. Jane/243 and I will both take an arm."
Imagined Slights Page 8