by Laurie Penny
She was working on her generic, and Alex knew she must be getting somewhere, because Daisy didn’t talk to anyone about it, didn’t even let anyone in.
One morning, Alex came down to head to the job center, which he still had to do to keep up the impression of not having a job. Parker would hand him a clean, crisp packet of pound notes every time they met—not much, but enough to make Alex feel dirty inside. It was always better to get to the center before the lines started forming around the corner at six or seven, so it was barely light when Alex found Daisy fallen asleep on the sofa.
Daisy sighed in her sleep, rhythmic little whale noises. Alex wondered what you’d dream about if you’d lived that long. Already at twenty-eight, he was beginning to be amazed by the accretion of memory, time building up in drifts behind your eyelids.
Alex was already in the kitchen when Margo came in, rubbing her eyes. She was the sort of woman that Alex normally found intimidating, all short hair and biceps and easy laughter. She could be one of the boys, but she was too much woman, with her broad hips and way of engaging you in conversation about menstrual cycles no matter the hour or whether or not you were eating a sandwich. But she liked Alex, and Alex had always been a sucker for a woman who actually liked him as a person.
Scratch that, for anyone who liked him as a person.
Margo coughed and cursed. “The walls are trying to have sex with my face again,” she announced. “This is in no way consensual.”
Alex laughed, like he was supposed to, just as Nina came in.
“Right,” said Margo. “House meeting time, then. I’ll get the kettle on.”
“Don’t wanna have a house meeting,” said Nina, slithering into place behind the table. “I’ve met the house. The house is a bastard and it’s trying to kill us.”
“We haven’t had a house meeting in two months. It’s important to keep things running.”
Fidget was the last down. Everyone went a little quiet when he shuffled in, taking his time making tea.
Fidget was Fidget’s real, legal name and always had been—he hadn’t had to change it when he came out as a boy. His parents were hippies and so was he, albeit in a sensible way he never liked to make a fuss about. He dressed like a programmer and only occasionally invoked the help of his personal muse to beat the next level in Halo 17.
He was also the subject of the meeting.
“We’re not saying you can’t,” said Nina, “I’m saying you really should have cleared it with us.”
“I’m saying he can’t,” said Jasper, running a hand through his ratty dreadlocks. “We’ve got a potentially explosive illegal laboratory here and previous warrants out for two of us, maybe more. We can’t just be trooping random posh kids in and out of the house. This is a working political organization.”
“It’s also our home,” said Margo, “and it’s a safe space for people to express their sexuality however they want.”
Fidget cradled his mug like an egg in his narrow, callused hands and said nothing.
“Exactly,” said Jasper, “a safe space. And I for one feel far less than fucking safe when I come down to breakfast and there’s a fucking Tory boy in nothing but a pair of silk boxers and a shit-eating grin, helping himself to my coffee.”
“His name is Milo,” said Fidget, “and if you prefer, we can get a different box of coffee so you don’t get contaminated by the queer.”
“That,” said Jasper, “was a low blow. This isn’t the fucking twentieth century; I don’t care what you’ve got in your boxers. I don’t care what you do with it. I care if you fuck Tory scum in our fucking house.”
Fidget stood up without a word and stalked toward the greenhouse.
Nina called his name and went to fetch him back. Alex watched her leave, feeling the white-hot thread tug under his rib cage.
“Anyway. Item two,” said Jasper.
“There was a mouse in the sink yesterday,” said Margo. “Just splashing about in there, having a grand old time. That must have been where Margo’s nice shampoo’s been going.”
“Mice don’t use shampoo,” said Fidget. “They’re filthy little beasts.”
“Maybe they eat it.”
“And how do they get the cap off the bottle? With their dinky little hands?”
“I don’t think we should use poison again,” said Alex. “Last time, it just made them ill. You could hear them coughing in the walls.”
“Daisy, what do you think?” Nina asked.
Daisy looked up in surprise. This was the first time anyone had asked her opinion as part of the house.
“I don’t think I can comment, really,” she said. “Most of my job used to be finding interesting ways to torture and murder mice. In the lab, I mean. For science.”
Fidget dropped the sugar spoon on the table. It made a hollow clank. “Didn’t you mind?” he asked.
“Not really,” said Daisy. “Most of them are raised specially for that. And they have pretty good lives before they get used in tests.”
“How horrible,” said Margo, pouring the tea. “Before we get lost in theory, though, we still need to do something to at least discourage the actual mice in our actual house.”
“We could just get a cat,” said Alex.
“We’ve got you,” said Nina, ruffling his hair.
And suddenly, Daisy saw it.
“I’m going back to the lab,” she said, standing up so fast, she knocked over two plates. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ll clean that up later.”
“Are you okay?” asked Margo, looking at her strangely.
“Yes. Yes, I am. I really, really am.”
Which was, when you got down to it, almost as good as eureka.
* * *
Magdalen Bridge was narrow and ancient and already bristling with people at five in the morning. Alex stood with Nina and Fidget and Margo and Jasper to one side of the crowd to smoke. Not because they were worried the bridge might collapse again this year, although that was definitely a possibility. They were trying to stay inconspicuous.
“Times like this,” said Nina, “you can’t even tell who’s dying and who isn’t.” She was right. Red-eyed and shuffling in their hasty morning clothes, trading tumblers of coffee and excited whispers, the crowd all had the same face, as if they were going to their graves together, tired and happy.
Nina slipped her small, hot hand into the crook of Alex’s elbow, nuzzling into his hoodie.
Above them, Magdalen College was a great marble hand curling its fingers toward the sky. It was almost dawn.
The crowd echoed with the five AM hush, and Magdalen Bridge groaned over the Isis, just as it had for centuries, just as it would do for centuries. Together, they waited for the May Day chorus.
Time works its insulting wizardry on everything that breathes, fixed or free, but Oxford never changes.
A hush fell over Magdalen Bridge.
Everyone craned up at the bell tower.
Then the music threaded up toward the sky, twenty voices trained all year for this moment, words in a dead language falling hard on the pure and savage drum skin of the mind.
The Hymnus Eucharisticus rose to greet the dawn.
Alex lit another cigarette and took a long draw, and the rush set his senses spinning as the song rose higher.
“Who wants coffee?” he said. “My treat.”
“Sure,” said Nina, “I’ll help carry.”
“No need,” said Alex. “You girls just enjoy the show. I’ll be back in five.”
Alex disappeared into the crowd.
Parker was waiting for him near the coffee stand, as agreed, munching on a candy apple the size of his head. In his oversized college hoodie, he looked even more like a kid. How old had he been when he started fixing? Eighteen, nineteen? Parker was clearly one of those men who, in normal circumstances, would have been baby-faced until he hit his mid-twenties, with those bright blue eyes and long, long lashes that Alex’s mother would have described as “wasted on a boy.”
Alex nodded, slid the tiny chip out from under his fingernail, wincing—it always hurt, digging it out—and palmed it across. A nod was all the thanks he was going to get.
“I need you to do something,” said Parker.
“What now?”
“There’s a logical conclusion to Craver’s research. We’ve been watching her private work for some time, and it all points in one direction. Your job is simply to observe, and to let matters progress in that direction.”
“You’re not concerned about the generic?”
“I’m interested in all aspects of the research.”
“This is a serious step up from handing out free fix from a food truck. You don’t want to stop them?”
“What I want is not your concern right now.”
“You’re talking about encouraging them to break the law.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” said Parker. “Of course we don’t want to encourage anyone to break the law. Nobody’s going to prison if they don’t deserve to.”
“You remember what you promised me?” said Alex.
“The terms of your contract are quite clear.”
“Yeah, well. I have some extra conditions.”
“That won’t be possible.”
“If you want me to do this for you, take a look.”
He handed Parker a scrap of paper no bigger than a chocolate wrapper.
Parker opened it, read it and raised his eyebrows. Then he smiled.
“My, my,” he said. “You really have gone native, haven’t you?” He put the paper in his pocket. “I’ll have to talk to my superior, but I doubt this’ll pose a problem. Of course, I’ll expect your full cooperation. Regular updates.”
“Understood.”
“Now, I suggest you get back to your—friends. Here,” said Parker.
He handed Alex a three-hundred-euro note.
“For the coffee. Every little helps.”
Parker pulled his hoodie back up and closed his eyes against the dawn light.
* * *
Daisy worked like she hadn’t worked in years. She remembered to eat when Margo brought her a plate of something, which happened about every four hours. Daisy was used to living on candy and chocolate, anything hermetically sealed and sweet, but here they cooked whatever they could make out of food they rescued from the back of distribution warehouses, padded out with vegetables from the kitchen garden.
It made sense. It all made more sense now.
Cells work together like groups, she wrote, but groups don’t work like machines. People get upset and problems happen but that doesn’t mean they’re broken. People find a way to compromise and work together, and that’s what makes the difference.
The people here weren’t like the people who delivered Daisy’s patents. They dealt, in their own way, with stories, which meant they dealt in lies. Justice and its meaning. Money and its machinations. Money and justice are all about whose lies are the strongest. But these stories worked together like a lattice.
Science wasn’t like that. Science was a truth constantly updating itself. Science was a story without a moral where terror was the prospect of a final page, a final answer. And now the pages were turning in Daisy’s mind, chattering and rustling and drawing her through the dark.
And what Daisy knew now was that she could not make the generic, not in the way they wanted it, not with the materials she had. The base material was insufficient. What she could make was something else. Something orders of magnitude more beautiful and terrible.
The forms of genes had always danced for Daisy. She just had to click her fingers and they twisted into new shapes. She didn’t need the lab, not for work like this. She could make do with a basic simulation program on a sixty-year-old PC. She remembered when this model came out, its heft and sleek matte surface designed for easy graphic rendering. It was enough. Enough to update the logic of cellular codependency she’d been working on for so many years.
But behind that logic was another, entirely more dreadful pattern.
Daisy found that once she had the steps worked out and the compounds at hand, she could synthesize the new equation quite easily from the stock she’d requisitioned from the lab, where she was still showing up occasionally. They were used to her coming and going as she pleased.
She made a handful of experimental pills, because—because she could, and because it would solve an immediate problem.
She crushed the new substance into powder, sprinkled it on moldy bread and left it scattered behind the wheezing fridge, where the mice whispered and snickered.
And after a few days, the mice weren’t a problem anymore.
She stained the rest of the new compound pink to distinguish it from the generic fix she was still working on, and labeled it NOT FOOD.
Then she went upstairs.
There was something about Alex that made Daisy uncomfortable. It was probably just personal prejudice—over seven decades of dealing with their bullshit, she had found it simplest to mistrust every cocky white guy she met. She had probably missed out on some great friendships in the process, but overall it saved time: cocky and insecure all at once, always needing their egos stroked, blind to their own power, white boys were always going to let you down or fuck you over. And if Daisy was being honest—if she was being truly honest, which she found herself wanting to be more and more since she came there—they scared her. Alex scared her.
That was why she waited till he had gone out to the distribution truck before knocking softly on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” called Nina, her husky voice muffled by blankets.
Nina was sprawled on the bed in nothing but knickers and a filthy neon T-shirt. The room pounded with music and smelled of incense and old food and, not unpleasantly, female sweat.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Fine, um,” said Daisy, searching for somewhere safe to put her gaze. “I need someone to help me move the equipment around in the small lab while I, um, titrate the—are you busy?”
Nina absently scratched her lush armpit hair. She did not look busy. “Sure,” she said. She yawned and stretched and the outline of her nipples briefly appeared through the taut T-shirt.
“You’ll need to wash,” said Daisy, still not looking at Nina.
“The hot water’s out again. Will a cold shower do?”
Daisy could have done with a cold shower herself at that precise moment. “Should be okay,” she said, “if you put on fresh clothes and scrub your hands.”
“Do we have to start right now?”
“I suppose not.”
“Come here, then.” Nina patted the bed beside her.
Daisy froze.
“Don’t worry. I just want to listen to this song with you. We’ve hardly talked.”
Daisy sat down on the bed and fidgeted in the hissing silence before the song began.
It came in clear and pure over a spare, deep bass line that seemed to strip away your skin layer by layer, right down to the red and angry core. There was something in that incantatory beat that held your broken, bloody parts up to the light.
It made Daisy want to drink and dance.
“It’s the Future Executioners,” said Nina. “Lars Lafferty sings on this one. He’s brilliant. They lost their front man halfway through making the first album, and he just stepped up, even though he can’t sing.”
His voice was perfect for the piece, a biting, sardonic sing-speech, tremulous and cocksure; no, he couldn’t hold a tune in both hands, but somehow it worked, like early Bob Dylan, like Lou Reed with all the veins exposed.
“They’re playing Cowley next week,” said Nina. “Free gig. They’re completely crowdfunded; they still live on their fans’ sofas.”
The music came in relentlessly—malevolent pop, catchy as an intimate rash.
“The Future Executioners are all about the effect of
the fix on the human spirit,” said Nina. She seemed truly excited. “They believe that all art is a confrontation with mortality, and if you take that away or delay it, it cheapens the whole thing. Poisons it. If you’re going to be young forever, what’s the point of writing a book that outlasts you? Or a poem, or a song?”
“I like it,” said Daisy. She thought about it. “But what about all the people who’ve had thirty extra years to develop their work?”
“Mostly dull rich kids.”
“Not all. There are the sponsored kids, the scholarship funds. Some people just don’t want to see good art die.”
“Good art always dies. That’s its nature. Listen to the music.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about love. About how love is more powerful than time.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
Daisy put her hands to her mouth as if to cram the words back in.
“What do you mean?”
Nina looked stricken, somehow. As if Daisy had taken a precious heirloom and smashed it on the ground for no reason.
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Please. Did something happen?”
Daisy stood up and left her there on the bed. Left the room without a sound. Went back to the lab to bury the memories in work.
She remembered his hands, even though she couldn’t quite remember his face.
Saladin had had long slim hands that fluttered when he spoke, when he got excited. He had been a professor in Daisy’s department, such a long, long time ago now, before the institute had become entirely sponsored, like all the others.
Half a century gone now.
They were both working on the fix, and they were both quiet, sad people who would rather stay late in the lab than go out to the bar. They seemed to have the same work patterns: days of breakneck, frantic endeavor followed by periods of blank recuperation and remembering to go to the canteen and eat a damn sandwich as cell colonies divided and results compiled. It was only natural that they should become friends.
Saladin was a man of faith and principle. Like Daisy, he had been uneasy when TeamThreeHundred bought the institute and all its patents, but it was a necessary horror—with so much money diverted to defense, how else were they going to secure funding to push the project forward?