‘No but —’ I thought it over quickly. ‘The matter has to do with cancer.’
‘Your name is Amati?’
‘No. Montenero. Cesare Montenero.’
‘You’ll have to wait. It could be some time.’
It was as if she was about to transfer me but the line went dead. Absolutely dead.
When I tried the number again the bitch didn’t reply. Every hour thereafter it rang out. No local or international operator service could or would tell me who or what the number related to. The only unassailable fact was that the code prefixes placed the number in Shanghai.
By the next day the number wasn’t even ringing. There was only the heavy burr of a dead and disconnected line.
The spread and effect of the disease was cruel, the treatments worse, and after only a little time the doctors were saying the best they could offer Celeste was increased doses of medication to mask the pain. They remarked on her ability to deal with what in other people would have been unbearable agony. Imagining this my eyes were often shut, closing out the sights, the words, the terrors. In effect I could almost make myself insensate as a stone. Maybe this response was something ingrained into me: a way for soldiers in hopeless situations to deal with the inevitability of what came next. I had no way of knowing.
When Celeste returned home she was thin yet always exquisite. She wanted to make love, so we did. She slept a lot then passed away two days later, on a Tuesday, a nothing day, at a nothing time, just before eleven a.m. She was forty years of age. The sun was shining, and in the intense summer heat insects were legion. The dogs played but mostly they found shade and cool water to drink while the surrounding lands were in a state of fecund prosperity. I held Celeste’s hand. It weighed nothing. She was in our bed and her eyes were closed and her mouth was a little open. I kissed her lips, which hadn’t yet lost their warmth. Her skin was parched and her soft cheeks had hollowed. The way she lay there resembled a beautiful dress laid out on a bed, waiting to be filled. That was my Celeste, what was left of her.
‘Where have you gone?’ I asked, and a vision came to me.
Celeste was by the open French doors. She let her yellow dress fall, revealing her firm small breasts and her lithe body. She turned to show me her glorious ass but she had wings too, long, gorgeous wings, and she was about to leave.
‘You have to take me with you. You can’t leave without me.’
‘Not this time,’ she smiled, the devilment of old in her eyes, ‘but come here and give me a kiss.’
I went to her and she wrapped me in her arms. She kissed my neck and I kissed her forehead.
‘Don’t be sad,’ she said, her Italian always accented by her French. ‘We’re far from alone.’
She struggled a little against me because I wouldn’t let her fly, then I had to give in, and I and the faceless man standing beside me both saw she was gone.
A nurse was downstairs, having arrived to perform her daily assessment of Celeste’s vital signs and to help with her intake of nutrients and fluids. Before I called her up to the bedroom, I cut a large lock of Celeste’s hair from layers underneath so it wouldn’t be too noticeable.
What else?
I used the scissors to cut her toenails and stored them with the curl of hair in a small plastic container she’d used to hold her spare buttons.
And then?
Just a pinprick. I had to squeeze drops from her fingertip, all the while telling her I was sorry for doing this to her. I used a clean glass vial and stoppered it tightly.
Hair, toenails and a few drops of blood. The last of her and everything of her in the past and the now and in the future.
The literal meaning of words is always contentious, what their real intent is, what they’re meant to say. You’ll have to wait. It could be some time. That woman in Shanghai could have mentioned just how long the wait would be.
Several weeks after the cremation, my telephone rang and some premonition told me it wouldn’t be a neighbour, or a real estate agent promising what price he could get me for my landholding.
‘You know me as Kristof Vliegan, though I don’t often use that name, but Kristof Vliegan is who I am,’ the voice said in Italian. Then he added with some humour, ‘the third’.
I could hear the crackle and echo of an international telephone line.
‘It must be seven in the morning where you are? Not too early?’ he asked.
I assured him it wasn’t.
‘Here it’s late and the end of another long day, but we don’t stick to nine-to-five in this line of work.’
I suggested that there’d be no way I could know what the line of work he referred to might be.
‘It’s all right, Cesare, we can speak freely. This line is unencumbered. Of course I couldn’t speak to you on that number you used. We have to be so careful. There’s political espionage as well as industrial. Both, to be frank, stink to high heaven.’
I could hear the combined amusement and seriousness in his voice. This was a happy and motivated individual, a man in love with the world and his place in it, no doubt about it.
‘You knew the previous version of me very well. I’m sure you remember. You also destroyed that poor beast he’d pinned some impossible hopes upon. Still, you never know what can happen. My originating Vliegan-self took his own life, but technology has marched on. Thankfully I’ve come back in a thoroughly better manner. This present incarnation is really very good.’
It couldn’t have been more obvious exactly how good. ‘You remember who you were?’ I asked.
‘Not at all. So I’m constantly reading about myself. The funny thing is, the first me was little more than a middle-level medical functionary, but I’ve moved myself quite a way up the ladder. You could even say I’ve become responsible for some significant tranches of our research and production. But let’s not concern ourselves with any of that right now, we can discuss it one day when we meet.’
‘We won’t meet.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t have any interest in this part of my life. Or yours.’
‘We-ell,’ Vliegan hummed, ‘it would be a mistake to get too far ahead of ourselves. Now. I don’t know anything about you other than what I’ve researched in the files and been briefed about. But this question of memory you brought up a moment ago is important. In fact, it’s the next wave. We’re working on ways to move memory and consciousness on, into future generations of new people. It may not be all that far away.’
‘And then it’ll be like living forever.’
‘Absolutely. We don’t care about the warring any more. We care about Life. That’s where the market trended. But the raw material’s got to be good or it all goes wrong. Take me as an example: fabulous as I might be right now, soon enough I will succumb to Vliegan’s cancer, and probably at a highly accelerated rate. I can’t tell you what general aches and pains do to my psyche, I’m aways expecting the worst.’
‘Then what do you want?’
‘Well, first things first. How are you, Cesare Montenero? Strong?’
‘Strong enough.’
‘And never ill?’
‘I had hayfever for a couple of seasons, but that went away.’
There was silence. Maybe he was noting that down. Then Vliegan’s voice returned, crackling over the line.
‘Let me get to the point. Celeste Auger died of cancer, correct? Consumed by it. I’ve had the records.’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘And it was her cancer that caused you to want to make contact?’
‘Yes.’
‘We couldn’t have saved her, Cesare. That would have been an absolute impossibility.’
‘So why are you calling?’
‘We can’t use her as a base for a future line, which – I know, I k
now – is a terrible pity. I’ve seen photographs and heard reports. An extraordinary woman. May I offer you our condolences, even so late in the day?’
He waited for a reply that never came.
‘But, Cesare, I can offer something a little better too. And hence one reason for my call. We could bring her back for another short span. Maybe you can have her in a virtual sense. You agree to give us what we need of you, and maybe one day a future Cesare and a future Celeste can get together.’
‘But I’m healthy and she wasn’t.’
‘Yes, it’ll always be a tragedy in the making.’
‘Could I have her now?’
‘What do you mean, as a baby? A child? You’re a little too old to take on the role of a single father, and, em, to be clear, we would never agree to place a child into a situation where she might be . . . vulnerable. We’re not the monsters who started this research. Nowadays we stick to scrupulous ethics.’
‘But —’
‘But,’ he interrupted me, forming an idea that might always have been in his head, ‘we could introduce you to her one day, that’s true . . . when she’s old enough, and, of course, if you’re still alive. We do think you might go on some significant time.’
‘She won’t know me?’
‘That’s correct. The technology’s not there yet. She’d be a young woman approaching her prime, and you, well, you’d be much, much older. I think you understand what the situation would be.’
‘Then she’ll die?’
‘General humanity has to run on death as much as it does on life so she’ll be no different to anyone else, really, but yes – like me, she’ll succumb to what went before. And possibly with an even worse process, I’m afraid to say.’
We were quiet. Then this ‘Vliegan the Third’ spoke for me.
‘I suppose you wouldn’t want to subject her to that again, though of course by the time that came it’s highly likely you wouldn’t be around. We’re working on solutions to many, many unforeseen problems but this one, well, it’s always going to be the toughest nut to crack.’
‘Then leave her. Please leave her be.’
I felt myself breaking. No hope, all loss. No point from the start of my life to its very end. Born alone and bred to die alone. All my chances had come and gone and none were going to reappear. I had to be thankful for the span I’d been allowed with my Celeste, brief as it felt.
‘I’ll give you anything you want, Vliegan, if you’ll just leave her be. That’s my wish. Let Celeste sleep.’
‘Well, we don’t need much from you. There’s no need to upset yourself.’
He wanted to discuss further details, but I wasn’t interested in the plans and the failures. Or the hopes, for that matter. Kristof Vliegan knew he had to cut to the chase.
‘So we’d like to use you as the basis of a new family tree. If one day we can get this issue of memory right, to pass from one incarnation to the next, then we’re home. The next versions of you won’t have any recollection of the Cesare Montenero of today, but there should come a time when your strand’s later generations will start to know the one that went before. Memory and being, that’s our Grail. We’ll call that eternal life, or close enough. This will happen beyond your time and mine, unfortunately, but what are we if we don’t pass all that’s good on to our future children?’
It was almost amusing how he chose the word ‘children’ when neither he nor I would ever procreate – but I understood his meaning.
‘One last question, then I’ll ring off. I can send a representative to your home within the week, but it really would be so much more helpful if you’d come visit us. He can make the arrangements and accompany you. Flying’s quite pleasant these days.’
‘No, I won’t travel. I won’t come to China.’
‘Oh, we’re nowhere near China. Shanghai simply provides us with a clearing-space for telecommunications. Impossible to track and trace. We’re not in Italy any more either, if that’s what’s bothering you. My particular branch is located outside Basle, and it’s quite beautiful this time of year. Or you could choose from one of our facilities in Japan’s San’in-San’yō region, or near Leningrad . . .’
‘I don’t want any part of it.’
‘The records in front of me suggest that’s exactly what you would say. You would refuse. Well, we’ve certainly got your personality right, haven’t we?’ He waited a moment. ‘Are you really so certain?’
‘You can have what you want and then that’s done and over and you leave me alone.’
‘Our code of ethics requires me to accept your final answer . . .’
‘And there’s something I want to be certain about.’
‘Yes?’
‘You said no part of this serves a war machine. Is that the truth?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Your code of ethics won’t let you lie to me?’
‘Well, given fundamental parameters of secrecy,’ Vliegan said, sounding genuine. ‘The militaristic aspects of research died almost immediately, relatively speaking. Our forebears came to the conclusion that soldiering was never going to work. You probably know more about that from your own experience of your life, Cesare, than I ever will. The new men simply wouldn’t operate the way that had been hoped. Yes, there were predispositions toward extraordinary bravery, and warring, and an almost complete rejection of social needs, but it was all so wrong that everyone gave up hope. The entire project shifted a long time ago. We’re on the people’s wavelength now. Everything these days is health and youth and longevity, and that’s what we’re looking to provide.’
‘If that’s what people really want.’
‘Take it from me, they do. No one wants to be outlived by anything anymore. I more than anyone here can understand that. It’s easier to face the prospect of simply going on forever than to contemplate terminal oblivion.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Cesare, you could make your years, your entire life in fact, more worthwhile by coming here and helping our research. Your experience of being. There’s so much we could learn from you. Unfortunately, you’re rather the last of your kind.’
‘Good.’
‘And there might still be changes ahead. The project might not have quite played itself out in you. The future, so to speak, isn’t quite written yet.’
‘It is. I’m done.’
‘I’m not so sure. But as you wish,’ he sighed. ‘I must reiterate, we’re not criminals or standover merchants. No one’s going to force you into anything you don’t want. However, there is one last thing I would like to ask.’
‘Silence? You’re more than guaranteed that.’
‘No.’
‘Money?’
‘Unless you have access to a few billion US dollars. No, what I want to ask is that you remember the philosophy we’ve adopted these days.’
‘What is it? “Fill the world with useless egoists who’ll never die”?’
‘Our motto: From this hand to the next.’
That sat uncomfortably with me; in Vliegan’s context it was a bastardised variation on what Domenico had believed.
I told him, ‘It should be: This hand is the next.’
Kristof Vliegan laughed a little. ‘I’ll pass it on to the troops, that’s very funny.’
‘It wasn’t meant to be.’
‘You know, the temperament you display is something of the tenor of things we’ve worked very hard to rid our new people of.’
‘Then you should be very careful what you do with what you take from me.’
He laughed a little more. ‘It’s an idea, at that. But we’re somewhat contrapuntal here, for want of a better term. We usually learn by doing the opposite of what’s come before.’
There was a silence. It was the longest conversation I could remember having in entire decades.
‘I want to ask you something, Cesare. One of the biggest problems we’ve always had to deal with is that of strange visions or fantasies brought on by pressure and tension. Have you experienced that?’
‘Sometimes, but not enough to worry me. My friend Domenico suffered with it much more. He saw flying women.’
‘Naked, I’ll wager. That would be repressed sexuality, of course.’
‘And a faceless milk-skinned man.’
‘Really? How incredibly literal. The clay he was moulded from pushing its way to the fore.’ The line was silent as Vliegan seemed to think about it. ‘Well, what I wanted to say is, take care you don’t let yourself come to believe in such things, Cesare. Their origins are simple. And we think it starts with the Amatis being not quite right.’
‘Was Celeste from that family?’
‘Oh, I don’t know that and I wouldn’t want to tell you if I did. I suspect, though, she was much later.’
Again there was silence. The time for talk was over. All I felt was an even greater loss; I couldn’t help wishing that Celeste was still with me.
‘You’re still there, Cesare?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you take comfort from the fact that you’ve had a hand in giving the world a future that’s never been brighter.’
‘Goodbye, Doctor Vliegan. I’d prefer not to hear from you again.’
There was a momentary pause, a held breath. It was like the shroud of disappointment that had covered me so long ago, when I’d been the small rejected boy named Sette.
Then Kristof Vliegan said, ‘Godspeed, Cesare,’ and the line started to burr.
I could have made moved anywhere, of course, travelled far and wide, but what I decided to do was to stay where I was. My objective was to minimise human contact, hurt no one and forget everything and anything about my antecedents, not to mention entrepreneurial do-gooders like the new Kristof Vliegan.
As the doctor promised, a man came to visit me within a week of that telephone conversation. He was surprisingly young and arrived at the house without fanfare.
‘Blackmore,’ he introduced himself. ‘Justin Blackmore. So pleased to meet you, sir.’
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