Corvus

  Laura squirmed to a sitting position and reached for her tea. She blew across the lip of the mug before drinking. 'You don't go any more.'

  'You know that's different. Anyway, it's not quite true.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I've been attending some lectures at university.' A diffident shrug which wouldn't have fooled a three-year-old. 'Some music and literature stuff. A philosophy class. And if there were a chance in hell of escaping Fulgur, I'd love to do a performing degree.'

  'A professional musician?'

  'Yeah, why not? If I'm going to dream, I may as well dream big.' His grin reminded her of a child's crayon drawing in which the mouth was lopsided, the colour smudged.

  Setting her tea aside, she bent forward and took Zach's mug from his hand, then parked it next to her own. She would never tire of his heartbeat, which always beat faster than her own, beat with passion, beat with pain, beat with a raffish syncopation, beat against the thin conduits of his veins, against the battens of his breast, beat against the traps and wings and secret catwalks of his life, against his velvety skin, beat right through the iron curtain of her shame, a lifebeat both wilful and terrifyingly fragile.

  'Getting up from bed this morning was one of the hardest things I've done,' he said, feeling along her chain for the seal, which he liked to play with; foreplay with, she thought with a private little giggle. She could feel his heartbeat quicken when she slid her hands under his jumper to the small of his back. 'Laura, they're preparing a new run. I have to be there.' But he didn't release her, and as her hands moved lower, his heart clapped wildly in its dark red plush-lined theatre just, it somehow seemed, just for her.

  As he dragged off his jumper, her eyes fell on his tattoo. 'What kind of run? When are you finally going to stop hiding what you do at Fulgur?'

  This time he drove recklessly, as though pursued. She couldn't help wondering if her questions had turned his lovemaking so feverish. 'I'm sorry,' he said, resting his head briefly on her shoulder. 'I was much too fast for you.'

  'I told you I wouldn't pretend.'

  He was quiet for a moment, then lifted himself away. Laura held her breath. Most lads—most people—prefer lies to an unwelcome truth; even Livs had never got full marks on this, Laura's own Secret Assessment Test.

  'Then I'll just have to learn, won't I?' Nobody had tweaked her hair like that since primary. 'Now come and shower. If we hurry'—a crooked smile—'if I help you wash the hard-to-reach spots, we'll have just enough time for some toast and coffee. And for me to tell you about my job.'

  *****

  Fabio waylaid Zach outside the laboratory. 'You're wanted upstairs.'

  'Now?' Zach checked his wristwatch, a gift from Josh originally belonging to his father. Watches were crack again this year, but mostly the plastic models that changed colour with your mood (and often contained illicit mood-altering components). 'I'm scheduled for a neuro prerun in a couple of minutes. They get pantsy if sequencing time is lost.'

  'They'll have to wait. It's the Big Boy himself.'

  'Randall?' Zach asked incredulously.

  'Comb your hair.'

  Eyes laughing, Zach applied his fingers so that his hair became even more flyaway. 'Not unless he's invited the Almighty to the party.'

  'Be careful what you wish for.' Fabio spoke grimly, without his usual air of amused tolerance. He gave Zach five minutes to inform, if not quite mollify Andy and his assistant, then hurried Zach through the corridors to the directors' lift.

  'Since when do you have this kind of clearance?' Zach asked.

  'Shut up, will you.'

  *****

  'I'll speak with him alone.'

  Fabio hesitated, unable to conceal his reluctance, but there was nothing he could do except send Zach a warning glance, nod suitably (deference not being part of his repertoire), and shut the door behind him. Randall indicated an austere leather sofa, before which stood a low, glass-topped table. Zach had expected a much more opulent office, not this white-on-white box, spacious of course, but bare of any decoration whatsoever, and perplexingly windowless. It reminded him of a marble or granite mausoleum, not a working space, and with a mausoleum's hush, except that the vaults of mighty princes were decidedly more ornate.

  Zach took a seat and crossed his legs, then stared at the tabletop. Intricate patterns formed, dispersed, and reformed within the glass, varicoloured patterns which seemed oddly familiar though he couldn't quite place them. After a few seconds he leaned forward with a soft exclamation. He'd spent some time fooling around with a recently developed program which mapped music in multidimensional space. Unless Fulgur were hacking into his computer, there was no way that the first movement of Laura's sonata could be simulated by accident.

  Randall came to stand on the opposite side of the table. 'Like my little toy?'

  'What is it?'

  'Think of your last fuck.'

  Though not easily flustered, Zach coloured and set his lips. The table, however, immediately produced a very tolerable image of his bedroom, his bed, and this morning's interlude; of Laura. He slammed a fist against the glass, damaging it not one whit.

  'How dare you spy on me! Where have you hidden the cameras?'

  'Do you really imagine we need to use such crude surveillance methods?'

  'Then how—?'

  'Cybil, let's give him another demonstration.' Randall waved a hand towards the far wall, which became a transparent obsidian pane, rain-spattered. There must be a fierce storm, for the droplets were immediately fleeing like a panicked herd across the glass, fleeing and merging so that all illusion of singularity was lost. In the extreme quiet of the room, which Zach had assumed was soundproofed, it was disconcerting to hear the wind shrieking, the rain stampeding against the window.

  The scene changed.

  Two figures stood in silhouette before an open but modest fire, so that the rest of the room remained in shadow, though Zach could make out the corner of a worn chesterfield which reminded him of the one in his childhood home—the same cracked brown leather, the same missing buttons. This time the glass was crizzled, as though the window had become pitted by the storm; the tableau slightly blurred like a memory. Not the voices, however.

  It's OK, I've arranged it, the man said.

  When will we be able to leave?

  Tomorrow after dark. We daren't wait any longer.

  And you're sure nobody knows? the woman asked.

  We have to trust her. The man threw something into the fire, which flared for an instant. There's no other way to keep them from taking Zach away from us.

  Zach cried out and rose to his feet, knocking his right shin sharply against the edge of the table. His eyes filled with tears. By the time he could see clearly again, the wall had reverted to the mute indifference of stone.

  'My parents,' Zach managed.

  Randall dressed conservatively, but there was always one element of attire which slyly proclaimed him to be above the dictates of corporate fashion. When he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair, Zach caught a glimpse of Ω embroidered in red on the lining; not even Randall was egomaniacal enough to pair it with an A.

  'We're not monsters, Zach. They were foolish and short-sighted, your mother and father. They tried to gamble with your life.'

  Zach strode to within a few centimetres of Randall's face.

  'What's going on?' His voice shook. 'Where the fuck did you get that from?'

  Randall hadn't risen to his position by cowering, nor by yielding to threats, implicit or otherwise. 'Sit down. Or this conversation is at an end.'

  Suppressing an urge to bounce Randall's head off his pristine wall, Zach moved back to the sofa but remained standing. He gazed down at the tabletop. For whatever reason, Randall didn't repeat his request for Zach to sit.

  'You'd like a dispensation, wouldn't you?'

  'I haven't thought about it.'

  'No? Well, she's not bad-looking, and with all that swimming I bet she'
s in terrific shape. Has she done any skiing, do you know?'

  Zach kept his eyes fixed on the table.

  'Or perhaps I should ask Edward's lad? Owen, I believe his name is. He doesn't seem to mind sharing.'

  'I hear there's even a club for it.'

  For a moment Randall looked disconcerted. 'That many?'

  'Auger baiting. The new executive sport.' Zach gave Randall a tight smile. 'Now what do you want in exchange for a permit?'

  Randall cocked a hand into a trouser pocket, his own smile bestowed like loose change on a busker. 'I'm relieved that it won't be necessary to give you a tedious lecture in microeconomics.'

  'You haven't answered my question.'

  'We know there are other simus like Cybil here. An enterprising lad like you ought to be able to find one or two of them for us.'

  On the surface of the table, somewhat to the left of centre, a splotch of red colour appeared—almost the shape of a familiar face—followed in seconds by others. Swiftly they spread and ran together, as if the glass were bleeding from a welter of internal ulcerations. Within a short time there was only redness. In the same way, an ugly thought rapidly haemorrhages from a pinprick suspicion into a full-fledged stroke of rage.

  'This thing'—Zach snatched a breath—'this toy, you called it, it's alive?'

  'A hybrid, using certain cognoscens neural structures.'

  'Whose?'

  'Someone you wouldn't have known, he died a while ago. A shame, really. Mateus was a promising lad, very promising indeed. In many ways you remind me of him.' A lightpad on Randall's desk flashed, but after a glance he ignored it. 'Except, of course, that you don't have his special talent. The ability to read minds is exceedingly rare. I hardly need tell you how valuable it would be—how appreciative we would be—if our neuros had the opportunity to work together with another such simu.'

  For all his finesse, Randall had a great deal in common with a simian like Tim. This man was running Fulgur?

  'Are you saying that Cybil reads my mind?'

  'To a certain extent. She's only a prototype, you see, and not as stable as we'd like, though quite good with infantile and repressed memories. With trauma. Which means that some of our current theories about the workings of episodic memory—both encoding and retrieval—are unsound, or at least incomplete. The clinical applications alone would be invaluable.'

  The table had reverted to pattern making, silvery hexagonal lattices rotating through a blue-tinged space. Zach circled it, grateful for the simple blocking techniques Max had taught him, but wary enough to keep an eye, surreptitiously he hoped, on any changes in the glass. If there were anything of Mateus left in this Cybil, she'd never betray a fellow simu.

  The lattices began to shift through the colours of the spectrum. He almost missed it, the swift subtle play of light beyond the sapiens range.

  'How did he die?' Zach asked. And thought, orange.

  All the lines became orange.

  'Who?'

  Violet, please. An indisputable display of violet appeared.

  'Don't play the fool,' Zach said, striving to keep a smile from his face. 'Mateus, of course.'

  With an athlete's speed Randall crossed the room. The slap cracked like thin ice under a skater's blades.

  'I see we need to tighten discipline at the Foundation,' he said.

  Zach held himself still, refusing even to lift a hand to his cheek. There would be no apology. Let the bastard throw him out, the dispensation was little more than a pretext anyway.

  Cybil, somehow I'll find a way to help you. But you mustn't tell them about Max. Promise me you won't. Promise me with green.

  'It was suicide, you know.' Randall flicked a glance at the tabletop, now displaying a spring meadow green with promise, and removed a coin from his pocket. He curled his hand into a loose fist, held the coin between his thumb and forefinger, and with a bland smile, walked it across the back of his hand along the first phalanx of his fingers. In an unbroken manoeuvre the coin travelled the underside of his hand and returned to the starting position. He repeated the trick several times, watching Zach the entire time. 'It takes a bit of practice. Care to try?'

  When Zach shook his head, Randall flipped the coin into the air, where it seemed to hang for a moment, winking like a miniature beacon, before beginning its descent into his outstretched palm. He caught it deftly and tucked it back into his pocket.

  'I've never heard of a simu killing himself,' Zach said. 'It must have been kept very quiet.'

  A metallic gleam lit Randall's eyes. 'Of course. Surely you understand the need for circumspection. Suicide is always distressing, particularly when the victim is young. Think how Laura's parents would feel under similar circumstances.' Nothing so boorish as a smile, but the gleam intensified. 'Still, if she succumbed to a rare virus like the recent one, her father, outstanding medical man that he is, would be racked just as much by guilt. Don't you agree?'

  *****

  In the lift Zach rested the back of his head against a wall panel and closed his eyes without keying in a destination. Ligeti's difficult, anguished second bagatelle. Lamentoso. Seven bars in, his inner voice ran down like a rusting clockwork mechanism. He straightened and stared at the touchpad. Music had been his home, and his refuge, as long as he could remember. Now it threatened to become an empty box, bereft of all but time's ratchet and clack.

  Unlike Randall, Zach didn't keep small change at the ready in his pocket. After entering the code for the lift to return him to the laboratory floor, he withdrew three coins from his wallet and amused himself with a simultaneous three-coin walk, first with his right hand, then with his left. Randall was right about one thing: like music, it required practice.

  *****

  The lift door slid shut before Zach realised that he'd got off at the wrong floor. Instead of the corridor which to the left led to a series of small offices for the neurotechs, a kitchen and conference room, a bioelectronics workshop, and Litchfield's own suite (his theatre and clean rooms, however, were in another wing), and to the right, the double security doors barricading the cognoscens interface unit, Zach found himself in a cramped, featureless vestibule. The walls were white, the floor covered in black coin-patterned PVC, and the air smelled faintly antiseptic, reminiscent of the chlorine which clung to Laura's hair when she rinsed it hastily after training. Oddest of all, another lift graced the opposite wall not two metres away. Despite his curiosity, he gave what amounted to an inner shrug and turned to summon his own lift again. After his session with Randall he had no desire to be caught wandering where he didn't belong, and in any case, Andy would be just about ready to vaporise a few billion of Zach's dendrites by now.

  At first he wasn't alarmed not to see a call button for the lift. The facility engineers were always installing some sort of new gadgetry. He passed his hand in front of the door, then along the metal surround, then up and down the adjacent walls. He stepped back and approached again. Nonplussed, he tried enunciating a command. Politely.

  'What the fuck?' he finally muttered.

  The security centre would know his whereabouts; everybody was tracked. Why weren't they responding? There were never fewer than three people on duty, despite near-perfect algorithms for authentication.

  The door behind him opened.

  'Right, mates,' he said. 'If you prefer the other one.'

  There was no operating panel. 'Third floor,' he said. The door shut almost noiselessly. Later he would berate himself for not being observant. And much later he would come to pinpoint this, albeit arbitrarily, as the moment when he left off expecting to disentangle the enigmatic—the utterly glorious—polyphony of life; when reason became counterpoint to the cantus firmus of his song of songs. No lift, whether at the Fulgur campus or elsewhere, lacked an alarm and emergency controls, and even a position indicator was required by city by-law. Almost at once, however, he noticed that the cab was descending. His luck, they'd stop at every sub-basement to hell, and every floor and mezzanine on
the way back up.

  'Listen, I'm late enough as it is. Can't you take me straight to CI?'

  The lift halted. 'You are about to enter a restricted zone. When the door opens, please remain still during the security check.'

  'There's some mistake. I want the third floor.' The situation was so singular, however, that he found his curiosity mounting. Randall would just have to make it good with Andy. Whatever the CEO had in store, it wasn't likely to be dangerous, not at this point, not till he got his money's worth.

  The door slid back to reveal an impervious blue light, dense and clouded at first like a wall of ice, then clearing for a moment so that the only barrier to the cave beyond, its pool and bats and glittering flowstone, was his fear.

  'Cybil?' he whispered.

  In response the lift door shut in his face. 'Entry denied at this time. Please see Dr Zhou for clearance.'

  'That's impossible.' he said. 'Zhou's dead.'

  He could feel the lift begin to ascend.

  'No, wait. Stop, please stop! Let me have one more look.'

  But there was no answer; no voice, except the lyre of his own disordered, yearning thoughts that wander through eternity to return, narrowly, to the lived moment.

  Chapter 40

  Pitched echoes descant above the sound of water. Zach follows the flight of two—no, three—small silvery bats, wondering how the course of history would have differed if humans had been able to comprehend the language of animals. Less bloodshed or more? Sapiens have always preferred to rid themselves of inconvenient voices.

  He studies the cave at length, then moves towards the pool. The light reminds him of l'heure bleue just before nightfall, a favourite of photographers and filmmakers. In summer it's the time when flowers release their heaviest opiate, but it's also an hour of uncertain visibility, particularly for simus whose aconal photoreceptors and subsidiary optic nerve play havoc with, temporarily, their superb eyesight; the hour in fact of his only motorbike accident, when he skidded to miss a girl on a bicycle, narrowly, dislocating a shoulder and breaking his collarbone. No one would have cared that her lights weren't working, himself least of all.