Living Next Door to the God of Love

by Justina Robson

  As soon as my new partial was ready, I left.

  When Theo had gone I picked up the Stuff cube and threw it against the window as hard as I could. There was a sharp sound but nothing broke. It rolled away behind the sequoia trough. I tore off my clothing and kicked it away from me. In the shower, once the water was hot and I’d gone through one washing I activated my Tab and called Pat’s number, voice only. It rang awhile and I rested my hands on the tiles, letting the water run over my back.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Rita.”

  “Hey, Rita.” He sounded pleased to hear from me.

  “Hey. Are you very busy?”

  “It depends,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m going out tonight,” I said. “Why don’t we meet?”

  “I’d like that.”

  I sent him the details and hung up. I called Rupes and explained that I had business to attend to out of town. Fuck Theo and his orders for me to watch him constantly in case the humans figured out the slightest thing about using the Sankhara Stuffies. Fuck him.

  Meanwhile there were other things to fill the hours until night. I went into the beauty salon and told them to fix everything.

  35 / Greg

  I woke up and found myself lying in my own bed, the light on. It was warm. Jalaeka was sitting in the chair beside the bed, his feet next to me, playing some net game on my Abacand.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He pushed two blue vials at me. “Take these. We’ll talk when your head’s clear.”

  I stared towards the windows. A bleak white light came through them, which I belatedly recognized as the kind of light you only get reflecting from snow under clouded skies. Most of the Parkland had vanished beneath a thick coat of evergreen forest, itself coated with a powdery soft outline of white. The mountains reared and bulked no more than twenty klicks away from us, vast glaciers visible between their ridges.

  The light and movement made pain shoot through my skull. I took the vials and bit them open meekly, lying with my eyes shut until they fast-tracked me to normality. He handed me the requisite two litres of water that the process required in plastic bottles and watched me drink it.

  Halfway through I paused for breath. “You should be with Francine.”

  “I am with Francine,” he said shortly and explained to me what he’d done.

  My head fogged briefly with the activity of the decontamination agents and I had to rest. When it started to abate I said, “I’ve thought a lot about you and it, your story and . . . you shouldn’t be doing this.” I meant it too.

  “Drink it all,” he said and nudged me with his foot. He wouldn’t listen until I’d finished. I put the cap back on the second bottle and threw it at him. He caught it.

  “I mean it,” I said sincerely. “You shouldn’t do what it does. No partials. No duplications. It will erode you. I know it. You know it. Everything will change. You most of all. That’s just how it is.”

  “I can’t leave you alone here.”

  “You can and you will. I’ve had it and Francine—I don’t know—if you’re right, she can’t die.”

  He narrowed his eyes and flipped the bottle back at me. It hit me in the chest. “You’re really not thinking this through from Theo’s end of things, sweetheart.”

  “Maybe not. But I know that you should stop this now. What’s the point of any of it, any of what you ever did, if you become Unity again?”

  “I have to do something,” he said. “He’ll come the moment she’s alone. Maybe for you too.”

  “Then you come back. You can come back instantly. Francine can tell you when.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “To do whatever you have to do.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “And you call yourself an intellectual. Is this some geek idea of a pep talk suited to persons of lower intelligence?”

  “You have to keep making decisions. You have to. You. You’re the only one. You could have passed this all on to Francine, you know, if you’d let her have all the power you have. I know that’s what it means. You keep her from it.”

  “It’s a stupid power,” he said. “And anyone who wants it is a moron.”

  “Which is why you have to keep it.” We shared a second of a grin. “You’ve had it so long. You won’t . . .”

  “Won’t what?” he asked. “Use it for evil? Try to conquer the world? Bend everyone to my will? Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war?”

  “Well, no, frankly. I don’t think you will. And you have to keep it from her because otherwise she’ll know your guilty secret.”

  He looked at me a long, lonely time. “I liked it better when we fought.”

  “Me too.”

  He stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To work on getting you the hell out of Unity.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Tell it to Tinkerbell,” he said wearily. “And look after Francie. If things go bad, I’ll come for you.”

  “Don’t be late.” When he’d gone I lay back and closed my eyes. Under the fingers of my left hand I could feel rucks and troughs in the bedsheet. Their texture, warmth and feel spoke directly to my skin—they said the unpronounceable name of a demon.

  So, the gods come through sound, but demons are tactile.

  I fought to keep working whenever my mind tried to search itself for signs of occupation. I called in sick and stayed in the Palace. I had no faith that he could prevail over Unity, but if anyone was going to, it would be he. He was so very, very strange.

  I went back to reading his file and wondered, for the first time, if I was all wrong about him. The more I read the less likely I thought it could be that Francine had simply made him up. If he was made up at all, he was made up by other people before she had a hand in it.

  I called Damien. “Did you put Francine in Jalaeka’s way? Did you know?”

  “No,” he said innocently. But he was lying of course.

  “Damien, did you sacrifice us for something? Me and Francie? Tell me how it worked. Come on, we’re already in for the course of the war. Tell me what you did . . .”

  “It’s not like that . . .” he said. “You understand now, don’t you? It’s the only chance of a way out.”

  I hung up on him.

  36 / Francine

  Did I ask for it? Did I? Did I? I don’t know.

  I’d been thinking this through since last night, when I couldn’t think because Jalaeka was there and I felt like he’d know. He’s been gone several hours now, on the second day since it happened. He promised to return—I only have to want him to. I didn’t ask what he was going to do. I don’t want to know.

  I sat in the big chair, big enough for two, the spaces stuffed with comforter, and looked out at the Engine’s workings. The mountains were larger and much closer. The Palace was in their foothills now. The garden, what was left of it, had become open moorland and stood bare to the stars. The new hills stared at me and had nothing to say, not a damn thing. The wolves had gone into Sankhara and east, to the zoo republic of Faraway, but Hyperion was still here, Greg said, somewhere, among the rocks and the gullies. I once went to Haworth on a school trip, to see where the Brontë sisters lived, and the land was like this. I saw the couch where Emily died. It was so small and—ordinary.

  I couldn’t hear anything, but I didn’t believe Greg could be asleep. —To think that you are not yourself, that invisibly and undetectably something watches you, from the inside, and is consuming you with inexorable progress no matter how slowly . . . search and search and search again you can’t find it or see it or feel it in any way, then you wonder—did I imagine it, am I hallucinating the entire thing? And your tongue feels too big for your mouth and your body scrunches in on itself, looking everywhere for the intruder, but it can’t find something which is itself, so it must look for the traitors in its midst, those cells, those molecules that have gone over, those thoughts an
d impulses that are no longer truly its own. And there are none of those. It’s all you. All of it. Even the fear and the doubt and you wonder. Did I ask for it?

  Oh. I did. But here I am. Still exactly the same as ever. It wasn’t what I wished for at all. Jalaeka refused me. He said, “You’re perfect as you are. You don’t need me. What you want you have to take. I can’t give it to you. You have to become it. I can’t help you. You can’t be me, and if you were, you wouldn’t be anything at all.”

  After Theo it was unbearable. The way Jalaeka was with me. It was unbearable. I made him do it. And so I’m guilty, as Theo’s guilty. I used him.

  I couldn’t sit there another second. I ran to the door and into Greg’s apartment.

  He was hunched up in bed. “Francine? What’s the matter? What time is it?” It looked to me like he might have been trying to conceal the fact he’d been crying.

  “I was . . . wondering if you were all right.”

  He stared at me, then shook his head slightly. “Don’t worry about me. Listen, I’m not good company. Why don’t you go home and I’ll see you in the morning?”

  Oh god. This was such a bad idea and now he’s cross and really wishing he was alone and I should go. Of course I should. I started to apologize but he interrupted me.

  “No, no. I’m sorry. I’m not very . . . really I’ll be better in the . . .” Greg was staring through me. I could see the depth of his exhaustion—his eyes were heavily shadowed and his face was lined and old-looking. Matted hair stuck to his forehead and he tried to stand straight self-consciously, without great success. “If you’re frightened, you can stay until he gets back, but I have to rest.”

  “Okay.”

  He curled up with his hands pushed between his thighs and was still.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, barely able to see him. Only the glow from a single weak night-light gave me any shapes to see. Everything was blocks, open spaces a shade lighter than solid things. It was hard to witness him like this. He’d always been so competent and, ordinary.

  “Nothing. I need to rest. I had a bad day.”

  I waited some more but he didn’t speak again. I had to content myself with the fact he was still breathing, and went out into the living room.

  He had two big sofas facing each other. One had a throw on the back of it that stood out, black on white. I pulled it off and took it into the bedroom and spread it over him. He didn’t move, so I went back and lay on the other sofa with its back to the wall, but it was opposite the door and I didn’t like that, so I went into the windowed room facing Verkhoyansk. Its windows had floor-length vertical blinds and curtains. Both were drawn shut. There was also a strange little corner made by one sofa and a low table with a beanbag and some cushions stored in it. I sat in the corner and put the beanbag in front of me with the cushions on top, except for one that I held in my arms and rested my head on.

  I thought I could hear groaning, like trees being bent until they were at breaking point, but I might have imagined that. The weather was terrible.

  I hadn’t been there that long when I heard Greg get up. I saw the lights come on and all the colours sprang out, red and gold on the furniture, bronze and copper and really pretty things on the walls; a bigger than life-size portrait of a girl in a green dress, a Ming Dynasty vase standing tall on its own, a long recliner that faced the wall of crimson velvet that shut out the night. Greg shuffled about in the kitchen, which, like ours, was where a dressing room used to take up acres of space. I heard him run the taps, open cupboards, rustle packets. I thought he probably wanted to be alone still, so I stayed put but he came to the door in a minute and leant on the frame.

  “Francine?”

  “I’m here,” I said and pushed the cushions away—now I could see they were really lovely ones, gypsy materials all stitched together in clever ways, covered in tapestry storybook pictures. I stood up and he tried to smile at me, looking regretful.

  “D’you want tea?” He’d changed out of the wet clothes into soft blue clothing he sometimes wore around the place when he had no plans to go out that day. I thought they were old yoga clothes but I couldn’t imagine Greg doing yoga.

  I nodded and climbed out of my hiding place. He waited until I was free and clear, then turned back to the kitchen.

  He made tea in two big mugs and pushed one to me across the table. Walnut veneer. Don’t spill anything. He pulled a slice of bread from a packet, spread a huge wodge of jam on it straight from the jar, rolled it into a sausage shape and put one end of the roll into his mouth. He pushed the whole lot—bread, jam, knife—towards me a few inches and I took my own slice and made a roll like he had. White bread. Raspberry jam.

  After he’d eaten the first one he sat opposite me and we took turns making rolls. After the second one he looked up for the first time.

  “So, how are you?”

  “Been better,” I admitted, halfway through a mouthful. “I suppose Jalaeka told you about Translating me.”

  He looked at me, then glanced down.

  “Did he tell you?” he asked quietly. He licked jam off his fingers and went through the motions of prepping another slice.

  I swallowed and watched him digging in the jar. He was angry. “I asked him to do it.”

  He paused, then carried on and carefully pushed the jam right out to the crusts on all sides before passing me the knife. As I took it he glanced up at me. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  I straightened up the slice of bread I’d just taken, making its edge parallel with the edge of the work-top.

  The world weighed a billion billion tons. Fortunately, the jam was beginning to kick in. “Yeah.”

  Greg had stopped chewing to listen. Now he started again. “Unless it’s him too. Unless he is Unity. Did you think about that?”

  I picked up the jam and tried to do it as neatly as he had. I gave him that slice.

  “Thank you.” He took it, held it and sighed. “Anyway, I realized this morning that I haven’t got anyone I want to tell about what’s happening to me.” He worked on finishing that piece of bread, then drank the rest of his tea even though it was still extremely hot. “Except you and him but—you already know.”

  “Jalaeka’s not like Theo.”

  “I noticed.” He put the knife down on the jam lid. Looking at it he said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t here when . . .”

  “Don’t,” I said quickly, putting my hand on his arm. “I’m fine.”

  “How can you be?” He looked up at me, his eyes filled with tears.

  “Because,” I said, “I am.” I willed him to understand. Of course that didn’t work.

  “Yeah, me too.” He swallowed nervously and brushed his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater. “Do you trust him? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Damien?”

  “Yes.”

  “He put you two together. He knew about Jalaeka, from before. Like Hyperion. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  The food in my mouth got stuck there. I couldn’t answer.

  He stood up and rubbed his arms through the sweater. “I’ll never sleep now. Want to watch TV?”

  37 / Valkyrie

  There was nothing to find in Dr. Saxton’s office, and his colleagues variously expressed concern, shock and disappointment when he didn’t return to the department, although Valkyrie wasn’t surprised. She completed her searches of the faculty laboratories and her interviews and returned to the Aerials with a full report of very little. Confident that her assessment of his infection as accidental must be correct, she conferred briefly with Belshazzar.

  “I don’t like it,” the Hive Queen said. “Why should it happen to him when he’s out here in nowhere with this splinter?”

  “Why not?” she countered. “He’s been in that hot spot a long time.”

  “It smells all wrong.”

  Valkyrie didn’t like it either. She went to see Saxton’s ex, Katy, but she was busy, as everyone seemed to be packi
ng in a great hurry. Many of the humans had decided to leave Sankhara for good after the quarantine order.

  “He’s probably at work,” Katy said defensively. “Have you tried there?”

  “Mn,” Valkyrie said. “And do you know where his friends are?”

  “Francine? Are you looking for her?”

  “Not exactly,” Valkyrie said. She didn’t like the woman’s resentful air and added, “I’m not with Immigration. I don’t care who’s here.”

  “Is she in trouble? It’s about the other night, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Then, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Valkyrie returned to the Palace. In frustration she set out towards the forest herself, following what she thought looked like new footprints in the snowfall that had blanketed the garden and the land beyond in the last forty-eight hours. Footprints went east and soon left the garden through a gap in one of its rough beech hedges a half mile from the house. They crossed rolling ground and took her into the disorienting uniformity of the taiga.

  The morning’s clear skies became the noon’s darkening clouds. The snow, so crisp and frost-skimmed, became soft. She came over a small summit after trailing along a log-strewn irrigation gully and saw a clearing where bad ground had given no purchase for trees. There stood Greg Saxton, in a long coat, shivering, talking closely with the ugly, warped figure of her peculiar Forge-brother, Hyperion.

  Valkyrie hid quickly. She didn’t feel the cold at these temperatures and the snow was nothing to her. She lay flat in it at full length, most of her body down in the gully. Fortunately, the sun had not been out to flash off her armour. Now she let her metal skin take on the white, grey and brown of the things beside her and vanished into the land. Adjusting her sensory pickup, she listened to their conversation.

  “. . . Metropolis by another ’Jack. Gone now,” Hyperion said, via radio.

  “Belshazzar doesn’t know about you, then?”

  “It’s a fair assumption.” Hyperion’s long jackal ears twitched and he glanced Valkyrie’s way. “But like many of those, possibly quite wrong.”