“We’re not all half blind, you know,” he said, rather smugly. Berger, despite being almost three decades my senior, had perfect vision, something he would happily remind me, or indeed anyone else, on the thinnest of pretexts.
That was very strange. The identification of bodies always took place in the morgue, which was three stories belowground level (“two inches above hell” as the saying went). So why instead was I being told to bring Lily Xirau to the third floor, when that would mean carting Paulo Xirau’s cadaver up six stories through StaSec, past agents and secretaries who were just about to go on lunch, to a nonrefrigerated room so that she could identify her husband, who would then be carted back down six stories past agents and secretaries who had no doubt decided that they might just skip lunch today? It was grotesque, illogical and made not a lick of sense. Someone clearly made a mistake here, but, seeing as I was reasonably sure that it wasn’t me, I decided not to question it anymore.
I gestured brusquely for Lily to follow me, and we headed to the elevator.
“You’re to be very nice to Mrs. Xirau, South, do you hear me?” Berger called cheerfully after us.
I did not reply.
Room 15 turned out to be quite large, reminiscent of nothing so much as a jury room with a long table stretching from end to end and two iron chairs with splintery wooden seats. Save those scant furnishing and some blinds on the windows, the room was antiseptic in its bareness. There was another door to the right, which led to a tiny bathroom and a utilities room, where tools were kept for the less genteel interrogations.
“Please, sit down,” I gestured to the nearest chair, and she did without a word.
“We appear to be early,” I said. “It’ll just be a few minutes.”
She nodded, saying nothing.
What was she playing at?
If her goal was to turn me to her cause, she was playing very coy. I would have expected her to be making small talk, turning on the charm, learning what made Nikolai South tick and what buttons to press to get him to tock. Instead, she sat at the table, staring ahead, trying not to make eye contact and looking like she wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else.
We waited.
What better time to start a conversation without seeming suspicious? And yet she said nothing.
The silence became so excruciating that I, against all good sense, was the first to speak.
“Did you have a pleasant flight?” I asked, like an ass.
She stared at me, almost in shock. I didn’t blame her. I had been giving her icy silence since we had left the airport and now I was making banal small talk.
“Not really,” she said.
“First time flying?” I asked.
“A few days ago, it was my first time walking,” she replied.
“You don’t walk where you’re from?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I live in an ocean,” she said quietly. There was an unmistakable pang of homesickness in her voice.
“Must be bewildering,” I said. “To be on dry land.”
“Yes,” she said. “The real world takes a lot of getting used to.”
Madam, you know not the half of it.
There was a knock at the door. I opened it and a thin, thoroughly disreputable-looking StaSec porter stood outside holding a clipboard. He was in his twenties and wore a filthy pair of overalls and had the kind of face that would have you instinctively reaching for your wallet to be sure it was still there.
“Agent South?” he said, in a way that made my name sound like a vulgarity.
“Yes?” I said.
“Identification of Paulo…”
“Paulo Xirau, yes. What took you so long?” I said tersely.
The porter was having none of it. “Don’t blame me. The van was late from another job and then the traffic getting here was…”
It was a lie and in any case I could not have cared less.
“Fine. Fine. Just bring him in,” I snapped.
The porter turned and called down the corridor, and to my shock six more porters barged into the room, each carrying several large cardboard boxes, which they left on the table, building a wall that completely closed off Lily from my view. They then departed as quickly as they had entered, leaving only the first porter, who shoved a clipboard and pen into my face and instructed me to sign.
“What’s all this?” I asked incredulously.
“What do you mean, ‘what’s all this?’” the pup inquired.
I had had just about enough.
“Young man,” I said, in a voice like iron, “let me explain something to you. I am here to oversee the identification of the remains of a Mr. Paulo Xirau.”
I gestured to the twelve boxes that had been deposited on the table. “And unless Mr. Xirau’s death was far, far more violent than I was given to understand, I doubt that is what you have brought me. Look, here!”
I took my itinerary and practically fed it to him.
“There! See? ‘Remains of Paulo Xirau’!”
“Effects.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t say ‘remains,’” said the porter patiently, as if explaining to a doddering relative which grandchild was which.
“‘Effects of Paulo Xirau,’” he read aloud.
I snatched the paper back. He was right, curse him. In the indoor lighting I could finally make out the words clearly.
“These are from his lodgings. We were told to pack them up and bring them here.”
“These … what are these?” I spluttered.
The porter shrugged. “Books mostly. Pamphlets. Newspapers. Few letters.”
“Who is your supervisor?” I asked, going for the jugular.
“Now, now, there’s no need for that,” the porter stammered, no doubt realizing that the situation had escalated and that he was now in too deep.
“Who is your supervisor, please?” I said, as cold as death. “I need to have a word with them right this instant.…”
“Agent South?” said one of the boxes.
I leaned my head behind the box. Lily looked up at me with a helpful smile.
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” she explained calmly. “I’m not here to view my husband’s body. I never saw his body. Didn’t they tell you?”
I felt like an idiot. Of course, if Lily and Paulo had lived together in a virtual state, she would never have seen the body that he downloaded himself into when he immigrated to Caspian.
“No. They didn’t tell me,” I sighed wearily. “Might I ask how you intend to identify him as your husband?”
“That’s what all this is for,” she said, gesturing to the boxes. “I’m to go through his books and writings. I’m identifying his mind, not his body. And once I’m convinced that the man all this belonged to was my husband, I’ll say so.”
“But that could take days,” I said.
Yes, South. It could. Which is why she’s staying for three. Fool.
“I’m very sorry. I thought you knew,” she said, apologetically, as if it were all her fault.
I shook my head and turned back to the porter.
“So … we’re good?” he asked warily.
With a weary nod, I signed for the boxes and he tipped his hat to us both and turned to leave. On a whim, I called after him.
“Give my regards to Chernov.”
He froze, and then tried to pretend like he hadn’t heard me, his shoulders hunched almost to his ears. I followed him out and called suggestions to him jovially as he tried to walk briskly but nonchalantly down the long corridor: “‘Who’s Chernov?’ ‘I don’t know who that is.’ ‘Never heard of him, Brother!’ ‘What are you talking about?’ You could at least make an effort!”
Once again, I had bluffed and they had folded. If a man could arrange a high-stakes poker game with a dozen of ParSec’s best, by morning he could retire on his winnings.
“Who is Chernov?” Lily asked, as I stepped back into the room.
Ah, time to gather data?
“Believe me when I say he is of absolutely no consequence,” I replied. “Now, how exactly is this supposed to work?”
“Good question,” she murmured, as if to herself, looking quite daunted at the massive wall of boxes. She chewed her lower lip pensively. That broke the spell, a little. Olesya was always a model of poise. Lily may have looked identical to her but was making no effort to mimic her body language or affect. Maybe she thought that would be too obvious, maybe she didn’t think of it. Too often, in counterintelligence, the trick is figuring out whether your target is very stupid or very clever.
“Right,” she said, and looked straight at me. “Do you believe you have a soul, Agent South?”
It’s trying to make you angry, the Good Brother advised me. Don’t let it.
I wanted to answer, Yes. Of course I have a soul. That’s why I’m here. That’s why this nation is here. Because we believe that we have souls and you do not.
But I restrained myself to a cold, curt: “Yes.”
“You do,” she agreed. “Everyone does.”
I almost admired the audacity. I imagined she would have considerable bragging rights when she returned home to the Machine world, telling her friends as to how, in the very center of Ellulgrad, she had proudly championed Digital Equality to the very face of a StaSec agent. I felt the same feeling of envy I had when I saw the graffiti on Saint Basil’s. All politics aside, it must be wonderful to be that fearless.
Her resemblance to Olesya was like an autostereogram, those images that children stare at until a hidden picture leaps out at them. I couldn’t be sure what I was looking at. At certain moments, she resembled perfectly the girl I had met off Koslova Square all those years ago, so much that I could even smell her perfume wafting over the decades. But at other times Lily Xirau’s personality shone through so strongly that any resemblance to Olesya was washed away like a message in the sand. This was one of those moments.
“Everyone’s soul is unique,” she continued. “And just as your body is built with the protein and calcium and iron you consume every day, your soul is built with words. The words you read, and the words you hear. The soul consumes words, and then it expresses itself through them in a way that is unique to that soul.”
I sat down across from her.
“You are here,” I said, trying and failing to come up with a formula of words that did not make me feel ridiculous, “to identify your husband’s soul?”
“Yes,” she said. “Or at least, I hope to. First, I’ll read what he read. We haven’t been together for twenty years and people change. I need to understand his influences, what was shaping his thinking. The bricks that he was building his soul with.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Then I have to read what he was writing. Then it’s a case of simple arithmetic. Does the Paulo I knew, plus these books, equal these writings?”
A small but sharp pin of nausea pierced my stomach and the Good Brother shuddered. That was the Machine. We were talking about words, but really we were talking about numbers. The Machine reduced everything to numbers. Even souls.
“And this is just something you can do?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I had myself reprogrammed to include a writing analysis tool.”
I said nothing. The Good Brother did not wish that I should speak.
She sat there, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, she nodded to herself wearily.
“Does that bother you?” she asked me, plainly.
“Yes,” I replied. I could not have lied convincingly.
“Well,” she said, “I can’t help that.”
I could tell that no good could come of proceeding down this path, so I changed the subject.
“So. If I understand you correctly, after you have read everything on this table, you will tell me whether or not you believe that the man we knew as Paulo Xirau was your husband?”
“Yes.”
“And I suppose I must simply take you at your word?” I asked. I didn’t actually intend it to sound insulting, but my intentions have rarely counted for much. If she was offended, she gave no sign.
“And if there was a body here in front of me and I said, ‘That’s him,’ wouldn’t you have to take me at my word?” she asked serenely.
“I suppose I would,” I admitted. “It just seems a little ephemeral.”
“Well, I’m an ephemeral girl,” she said shortly.
Oh there. There was Olesya. A brusque dismissal wielded like a scalpel.
“What?” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re looking at me strangely,” she said.
Oh, as if you didn’t know.
“Am I?” I said, darkly.
“Yes,” she replied. And there was a hint of threat there. That was Olesya, too.
“Am I looking at you?” I persisted. “Is that your body?”
“No,” she said, slowly.
“Where did you get it?” I asked it like I had found a gun on her person. Or something precious that had been stolen. Where did you get it?
“I’m renting it from a clinic in Tehran,” she said.
Of course. Persia was a world leader in cloneflesh.
“Where did they get it?” I asked. “Whose was it, before it was yours?”
Confess. Confess now.
“No one’s,” said Lily slowly and calmly, as if she had known she would need to make this speech and had rehearsed it well. “They grow them. It was never alive. It was never a person.”
That was the official story. But there were urban legends. Some said the Persians would buy bodies from poor Caspians in the countryside, smuggle them past the navy to the southern shore and pass them off as clones. Some of the more lurid tales claimed the Persians didn’t always buy these corpses, but made their own.
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
Confess.
She stood up and faced me. We were almost equal in height.
“Look,” she said, “I understand. You don’t like me. You don’t like what I am. Or the questions I raise in your mind. Or how they make you feel. And I am sorry for your problem. Which, and let me be very, very clear on this, is your problem. And not mine. So why don’t you pass me some of those books so we can get started, so that I can go home, and we can go on being untroubled by each other’s existence?”
It was a challenge. Either expose her and let the chips fall where they would, or back down. I desperately wanted to confront her, to demand how she had stolen my wife’s face, but I couldn’t. Because I could very well be playing into her hands. Perhaps she was the sacrificial lamb, designed to be exposed and executed so that the Triumvirate could wipe us off the map without so much as a murmur of disapproval from their drowsy human chattel.
Without a word, I turned away and began rifling through the nearest box of books.
Mrs. Xirau had bluffed, and I had folded.
Paulo Xirau’s books could have served as a reading list for any aspiring status climber in the party. There was, of course, Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society. Here, too, Lewis’s The Abolition of Man. And there, nestling among them like an old friend, was the big red K. A History of the Caspian Republic by Ignatius Kasamarin. It was a large, crimson hardback that one would find in virtually any home in the Caspian Republic, in Russian or English. I had one myself, and had spent many a happy hour leafing through it.
“I’d start with this,” I said, passing it to her.
“Oh?” she said, turning it over curiously in her hands. Any hint of anger and resentment had vanished. That was Olesya, too. She was always turning over a new page. Even the most blazing rows would pass over her without leaving so much as a trace.
“I like history,” she said.
“Kasamarin is excellent,” I told her.
“Really?”
“Yes. He writes very movingly about the early days of the revolution. The seizing of Baku. The Founding.
He was a true believer but clear-eyed nonetheless. If you want to understand the Caspian Republic, that’s the book.”
“Well,” she said with a smile, “don’t tell me how it ends.”
I watched her reading in silence, and wondered if she already knew.
11
Last week I attended the trial of a Needle Man.
He may have been the most repellent, morally filthy creature I have ever laid eyes on. As the judge read out his long list of abominable crimes, I studied this animal, looking for a hint of shame, a flicker that might suggest that he understood how truly fallen he was. I found none.
After he was taken out and shot, I asked a Brother in the party why we even bother with a trial. “You looking to lose weight?” he asked. “You think we need even tougher sanctions?”
I asked if there were any other areas of policy where we deferred to the wishes of the Machine?
He made his excuses, and left the courtroom.
—From “There are ordinary criminals, and there are Needle Men,” Paulo Xirau, The Caspian Truth, 03 March 2208
Lily read ravenously. Whole pages of text burned before her gaze, and before long there was a stack of volumes beside her seven or eight books high. She did not talk like a machine, but she certainly read like one.
As there is only so long you can watch someone read before it becomes uncomfortable for both parties, I turned my gaze out the window to the street below and tried to find Chernov’s man. It took me all of five minutes. I then studied the building across from us, trying to find the room where Chernov and his team would most likely have set up their base. The entire floor seemed abandoned, with charcoal-colored blinds pulled down until a space of around half a foot was left clear, a good space for a camera. But which one was he hiding behind?
“Anything interesting?” I heard a voice say behind me.
I turned to look at her. She was peeping at me over the cover of a large biography of Koslova.
“Not particularly,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just curious,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be watching me. You seem to be watching everything and everyone but me.”
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