I was glad to get back to the book, which shows how messed up my dream was. Forcing myself to go back a dozen pages, because I’d been so sleepy when I read them I could have missed something of importance, I went from page 120 right through to the finish. For the sake of thoroughness, I even scanned the index.
When I put the book down at 6.30 a.m. I was no further forward than when I’d picked it up eight hours earlier. I knew a little more about lichens and mosses than I’d ever expected to, but I still knew a whole lot less about what lay behind the death of Doug MacDougall than I wanted to. I shouldn’t have been disappointed, because there was no certainty that what he’d read had anything to do with why he was killed. Even if it did, there was no guarantee he’d read it in Lichens and Mosses of the World.
But alongside my disappointment was a frustration which spoke volumes, and what it said was that deep down, in the place where intuition and experience give birth to hunches that are right more often than not, I still believed I was holding the key to a murder mystery in my hands, rather than a boring book on plants.
The thought of re-reading that book in an attempt to spot something I’d been too weary to notice first time around wasn’t as appealing as the thought of getting Paula to pore over its pages and see if she spotted anything that had eluded me. Even more appealing than either of those thoughts was the thought of Paula. Since it was too early to get up for work, I lay there thinking about her and going over the events of the previous day. They would have seemed like figments of my overworked imagination if it hadn’t been for the tattered book lying on the bed beside me, tangible evidence I’d actually visited the library on the other side of the river. I replayed every expression I’d seen in Paula’s eyes, every word that betrayed an emotion I’d never believed she possessed…
And I wondered what it would be like when we met up in the station house an hour from now. Part of me couldn’t wait to see her again; part of me was scared of what would happen when I did. I envisaged three likely scenarios: she’d pretend the previous day never happened, and we’d go back to the way we’d been before; she’d overcompensate for having opened up to me, and act even colder than usual; or we’d pick up where we left off the previous evening, when we’d exchanged smiles in the airlock of Haven Nine. The smiles had given way to a heart-stopping moment when each of us briefly considered kissing the other. Then we’d laughed at our embarrassment, and after the laughter died away she’d said, “Thanks, Ben.”
“What for?” I’d asked.
“For giving me your last filter… And for a day like no other.”
Then came our long goodbye, the one that was short on words but big on meaningful looks.
And now it was a new day. I was hoping it would be like yesterday, but feared it might be more like all the other days.
The moment I walked into the station house, I knew my fears had been a whole lot closer to the mark than my hopes. I gave Paula a smile like the one I’d given her the night before, and in return got nothing more than a curt nod of acknowledgement. Maybe she was worried about compromising our professional relationship, or maybe she was scared of getting hurt on a more personal level. Wanting to reassure her on both counts, I said, “Paula, about yesterday—”
She cut me off in mid-sentence—the way Numbers infuriatingly do when they’re not interested in what you have to say—by asking, “Any progress?” She pointed to the copy of Lichens and Mosses of the World I carried under my arm.
I shook my head. Fixing her with my most deeply meaningful look, I said, “I suppose it was a long shot, and I feel a bit silly for thinking anything might have come of it.” I was talking about more than the book, and I’m sure she knew it. I waited for some sign: a softening of her expression, if not a reassuring word or two. But she went back to studying her screen as if she hadn’t heard.
“Do you want to let things drop?” I asked. Again I was talking about more than the MacDougall case.
Paula hesitated. I like to think the pause reflected some inner conflict between head and heart, but maybe that was wishful thinking.
“That might be for the best,” she said. “I don’t think it was going anywhere.”
Now I knew she was talking about more than the MacDougall case—and that she lacked conviction, because she didn’t look me in the eye when she spoke. It was as if she was afraid I’d see something in her expression that belied her words.
“I think it’d be a shame not to find out and always to be left wondering,” I said. “I think that’d be worse than trying and failing.”
Still not looking at me, Paula said, “Why don’t you do some door-to-door inquiries, and check out MacDougall’s shop?”
And now I could tell she was just talking about the case, and she’d chosen her words with the intention of getting me out of the station house because it was too awkward sharing it with me after what had happened yesterday.
Somewhere between the station house and The Plant Place I came up with a third possible explanation for Paula’s brush-off. It might not have anything to do with fear of compromising our professional relationship or getting hurt on a personal level; now the storm had broken and she was back in the clinically controlled environs of the community, maybe cold logic had taken over and led her to conclude Names were indeed too flawed to be worth getting close to, just like conventional Numbered wisdom said. Maybe now that the shock of seeing the remains of the old world first-hand had worn off, the fact that it was people like me who’d ruined it had hit home.
Or maybe the very thing that initially drew her to me—the depth of my feelings for Jen—had in the end convinced her that love was another name for desperate, pathetic need, and it was doomed in the same way as the old world. Maybe for those reasons, and others, the contempt she felt as a Number was so strong it was bound to overpower the emotional flaw that had let her relate to me for a little while as a Name—and led her to conclude that love was something to deny herself at all costs.
The choking tightness in my chest and emptiness in the pit of my stomach at the prospect of losing Paula almost as soon as I’d found her suggested she had a point…
And then I thought about all the great times I’d had with Jen, and was ashamed of myself for doubting love was real and mattered and meant something; that it was worth more than everything else in the world put together. It wasn’t the ability to love that doomed a person, I realized—it was losing that ability.
And suddenly I knew I wasn’t ready to give up on Paula, any more than I was ready to forget about Jen.
Or to give up on solving the riddle of Doug MacDougall. Suddenly I wanted more than ever to show Paula my instincts and hunches and all the other things that prevented me from seeing the world in black and white and interpreting what I saw with cold logic were traits to be admired, not viewed with a mix of pity and contempt. I wanted to show her logic alone wasn’t enough, that there were questions it couldn’t answer, mysteries it couldn’t unlock.
Okay, I admit it: I also wanted to show her what a clever boy I was. I wanted to impress the pants off her, and the best way of doing it was by solving a puzzle that had defied her logic, because that’s the one language Numbers understand above all others.
Showing Paula that simple logic could lead you to the wrong conclusions about a death might encourage her to make a leap of faith and accept that it could lead you to the wrong conclusions about life, and about love.
The shopkeepers on either side of The Plant Place weren’t any help. They did their best, which told me their affection for Doug was genuine, but they were obviously as baffled as me by his death.
I got back to the station house an hour before lunch-time. I could tell it had been a slow morning because Paula had managed to get halfway through Lichens and Mosses of the World.
“Spot anything that would have changed the way Doug MacDougall viewed the world?” I asked. I hadn’t meant it as a point-scoring challenge, but Paula took it as one and snottily answered me with,
“Find out anything that would explain who killed him, and why?”
I shook my head and said, “Mind if I take the book over to Annie MacDougall? I’d like to see if it means any more to her than it does to us.”
Paula handed me the yellowed old volume without saying a word. I’d meant to wait until my lunch break to take it to Annie, but the atmosphere in the station house was so awkward I decided to head down to the classroom now; I’d rather spend the next half hour listening to Annie MacDougall’s lecture than Perfect Paula’s deafening silence.
I paused outside the door of Annie’s classroom, stopped in my tracks by the arresting image on the wallscreen behind her. It was newsreel footage from the last of the Old Days, and showed a crowd throwing petrol bombs at a church. A minister came running out to stop them, but they hurled abuse at him.
And then someone in the crowd threw a petrol bomb at him.
Annie’s students were so taken up with the horrific footage I doubt if any of them noticed me entering the classroom. I know Annie didn’t because I was watching her, and she was watching the wallscreen. She was completely caught up in the events of another time and place, and the challenge of transporting her pupils back there and helping them understand what they were seeing.
Annie froze the wallscreen picture as I sat down at the nearest empty desk. The still image was one I recognized from a dozen photographic books I’d picked up in the ruins. It was an iconic picture, summing up the Last Days the way the photo of a napalm-burned Little Girl Running summed up the human cost of the Vietnam War. The photographer had clicked his shutter just as one of the burning bottles shattered on the step the minister was standing on. The man of god was looking down in disbelief and horror as the erupting flame set light to the hem of his cassock.
So powerful was the image that it helped Annie sum up a whole lot of profoundly important trends in a few words: “To begin with, people turned to prayer in the face of the worsening global crisis. Church attendance increased for the first time in decades, and a host of bizarre religious sects and cults took root and flourished.
“But, as a succession of environmental and then economic tipping points were reached and things got worse, not better, there was a widespread and profound loss of faith in religions and in God.
“It was matched by a loss of trust in conventional political systems. Unable to control the disorder on the streets, or the things that caused it, governments either dug in and hoped it would die out or reacted with draconian clamp-downs.”
Half a dozen pictures in quick succession showed running battles in the streets of cities around the world. The color of skin and uniform differed from picture to picture, but the subject matter was remarkably similar. Lines of police and soldiers in riot gear formed protective cordons around parliament buildings or charged through streets, wielding batons and scattering crowds of protesters before them, trampling placards and banners and people underfoot.
“While mainstream political parties saw their power base crumble away, the Green movement went from strength to strength until it was effectively setting the agenda. Conventional political parties began espousing measures which, a generation earlier, would have been electoral suicide.
“However it was far too little, and much too late. The problems people had feared but thought would be for other generations to face were suddenly upon them, and the consequences were more apocalyptic than they could have imagined: from superstorms and food shortages to intolerable pollution that caused chronic disease, declining fertility and an increase in the frequency and severity of birth defects.
“As it hit home that these dreadful things weren’t aberrations but rather the new norm, so it became apparent even the most radical mainstream party manifestoes were inadequate for tackling such profound difficulties; that national boundaries and vested interests would inevitably lead to a fragmented approach which couldn’t solve problems of a global nature. The feeling grew that existing economic and political systems were part of the problem and incapable of providing a solution.”
Now there were pictures of government buildings in flames: the Capitol in Washington, the Palace of Westminster in London, Holyrood in Edinburgh.
“Scientists and environmentalists who’d previously been derided as cranks and doom merchants became respected voices and gave birth to a new branch of science called ecologics, using computers to analyze the problems facing people and the planet—and to suggest solutions.
“Such an approach had been attempted in the past, but without success because even the most powerful computers lacked sufficient processing power to factor-in the multitude of complex, interacting variables which had to be considered. What made ecologics different was the development of software that linked terminals together in the biggest revolution since the Internet.
“All around the world—in homes as well as offices, in schools and universities—users were asked to make the new software their operating system. By doing so, not only did they increase the processing speed of their own terminal, they massively increased the overall computing power available to the scientific community. A similar approach had been tried once before, in the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, but the take-up was limited to interest groups—”
“People who believed in UFOs and little green men,” a Number chimed in with undisguised derision.
“That’s one way of putting it,” Annie said. “Anyway, now the uptake was on a truly global scale: a powerful indicator of the growing realization of impending catastrophe, and the widespread recognition that only by working together could it be averted; a reflection of people’s disgust at vested interests and international squabbles.
“As the increasingly dire ecological predictions started coming true, pressure mounted on governments around the world to pursue ecological solutions; solutions which all the individuals hooked up to the operating system felt they’d played a part in formulating.
“This pressure led to the formulation of a UN Special Commission on Ecologics.”
A view of the Hall of Lost Footsteps in the United Nations building in Geneva flashed across the wallscreen.
“A resolution was unanimously passed, formally recognizing both the extent of the crisis facing the peoples of the world and the role ecologics could play in averting or at least mitigating it.”
The next shot was of solemn-faced diplomats gathered in a General Assembly, each with a hand raised in assent.
“A new charter was drawn up, formalizing the imperatives that would guide what came to be known as the Ecosystem as it drew up the directives which would, in turn, guide us.” Annie turned from the screen to the class, and asked, “Can anyone tell me what the First Imperative was?”
The small boy I remembered from the previous day as Frankie raised his hand.
One of the Paretos started to answer, but Annie talked over him and said pointedly, “Yes, Frankie, would you like to tell the class.”
He nodded, and said, “The First Imperative is that The Common Good shall outweigh the interests of individuals, of…”
His voice tailed away. The silence was filled by snickering that told me where the Paretos were sitting.
If I’d been any closer to Frankie I’d have whispered the last few words of the answer to him. I could tell Annie wanted to give him every chance to remember.
The Pareto twins doubtless got bored at exactly the same moment as each other because, before Frankie could find the words or the teacher could help him, two identical voices completed the First Imperative in perfect harmony: “of companies and nations.”
Annie nodded. “That’s right.” The Paretos must have been sneering unbearably, because she added, “I hope you realize that remembering the words is meaningless unless you understand the spirit they were spoken in.”
I smiled. She was a match for them—but only just, and they were barely thirteen or fourteen years old. That thought wiped the smile off my face.
Annie, who’d paused to add w
eight to her words, carried on, “So, national governments came to be viewed as part of the problem, not the solution, and were gradually sidelined—”
“Didn’t they jealously guard their sovereignty?” a Number asked with obvious disdain for the people of the Old Days.
“Strangely enough, no,” Annie told him. “Everything suggests they were actually glad to be relieved of responsibility for a situation that was spiraling out of control. Besides, whereas governments had previously been under pressure from their citizens to stand up for national interests in international forums, now the opposite was true.”
“So national governments were content to be reduced to the role of civil services administering Ecosystem directives,” the Number said. I had to turn around and confirm with my own eyes that the speaker was only about fourteen years old, because the language and logic were so far removed from what I’d been capable of at a similar age.
I turned back to Annie in time to see her nodding. “Yes,” she said. “Nationalism had been completely discredited, replaced by a sense of the brotherhood of man. Borders were seen to be irrelevant in the face of global forces that didn’t recognize them; and the challenges of the future were so great that past differences were consigned to history as it dawned on people everywhere that co-operation was not only desirable but a matter of life and death.
“Even so, it’s quite remarkable that ecologics came to be trusted so implicitly. Can anyone offer explanations to account for this?”
I couldn’t resist a look around. The Numbers were separated from the Names almost as clearly by their expressions as their features: Frankie and friends were at a loss, while the Paretos and other Numbers had their usual knowing look. One after another they reeled off a list of reasons:
The Ecosystem can’t be physically controlled by any one interest group or individual as it has no single physical location.
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