By Light Alone

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Good,’ said George.

  That word seemed to free Baldwin from his odd behaviour. ‘Excellent,’ he said, in a brisk return of his usual manner. ‘I’ve passed dietary requirements, a comprehensive calendar, to the girl’s carer, copying you in of course. Soups to start, but within a week she’ll be eating like any other eleven-year-old. I’ve taken genomic samples. There’s always the possibility of unusual viruses, but we have machines to combat pretty much anything nowadays. Even exotic bugs.’

  Now that his manner had returned to normal, George felt some obscure gush of relief inside him, as if the impending catastrophic asteroid strike had been luckily averted. But none of it made sense, not his feelings, nor the doctor’s manner. It was good to put the oddity behind him.

  The two men went back through to find Leah, with decently short-cropped hair now, sucking on a flavoured stick and staring into space. The great Seylon was gathering her things and preparing to go.

  Baldwin, stopping in the doorway and turning back to them, suggested as a parting shot that they employ somebody to check Leah’s level of in-system Whites. ‘They’re designed to be self-sustaining,’ he said, ‘but it’s possible they’ve been . . .’ and he considered the right word for a long moment: ‘depleted,’ he concluded, ‘by her experiences.’ So George called a consultant from GēnUp. She was, when she came, a smile-faced young woman, her features possessing that slightly too symmetrical over-perfection that cheaper treatments can give you. She had some trouble getting Leah to sit still whilst she took a sample; but then, as she crouched over her equipment, the smile withered away and her face became something it had not been designed to be – chill, unfriendly, a mask. ‘I must apologize in the most humble terms,’ she said, stiffly, to George. ‘My equipment is malfunctioning. A GēnUp technician will be here within the quarter hour with a replacement—’

  George was not in the least incommoded by this news. But then he felt a familiar creeping anxiety that, judging by her grovelling reaction, he ought to be incommoded. Ought, perhaps, to have raged and spouted. But he tried to live his life by one of the core assertivist tenets – being assertive was not the same thing as being aggressive, angry or bullying. So he wagged his head in a deliberately vague way, and left her to it.

  The technician came with the replacement equipment in five minutes, not fifteen; and the consultant repeated the test. But now her face looked not blank with professional embarrassment but, rather, puzzled. Odd-looking creases twanged into existence, like impressions from guitar strings, from below her ear to the corners of her eyes. ‘I don’t understand. She seems to have nothing in her blood at all.’

  ‘Check your records?’ George offered, vaguely.

  ‘But the records aren’t . . . there’s no problem in the records. I understand, Mr Denoone, that she has experienced an unfortunate, ah, event. But to lose all her coverage! It’s unprecedented.’ Her eyes looked in all four corners of the room as she (George assumed) calculated the relative professional risks of a lawsuit, a countersuit, the balance of contractual responsibilities. ‘This is a very serious situation,’ she said, pulling herself to her full height. ‘She has been medically examined?’

  ‘Fully,’ said George. ‘By her regular physician. There’s nothing – wrong with her,’ he added, ‘according to our professional medical advice.’ He meant, in his awkwardly expressed way, to reassure the woman that, whatever lapses there might have been in her company’s coverage, Leah was not actually ill. But the technician looked much more sourly at this news than George might have expected her to.

  ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘this state is unprecedented in the professional administration of GēnUp antipathogens. Now, now. Provided it be understood that doing so in no way constitutes a legal admission of any kind, GēnUp will provide a full complement of basic antipathogen coverage.’

  ‘Premier coverage,’ said George; not aggressively, but simply because that was what Leah had had in her system before her kidnapping.

  ‘Basic coverage Mr Denoone,’ said the consultant, ‘in the first instance. Future upgrades to be negotiated as and when – but we cannot load her system with the premier package straight off the pitch. No gWhites in her system at all.’

  ‘But,’ George insisted with a stubbornness born of indolence and unimagination, rather than negotiatory canniness. ‘She had the full premier coverage eleven months ago.’

  ‘These things cannot be dumped into the body all at once, Mr Denoone.’

  ‘I’m telling you she carried that load for years. Years and years – until, that is, eleven months ago.’

  ‘In that case,’ the consultant said, warily, ‘she ought to be able to assimilate the premier load. But Mr Denoone: my caution proceeds from the knowledge that to load the full complement into a person with no somatic history of Whites would be medically very dangerous.’

  Irritated that things weren’t being sorted out with the frictionless efficiency to which he was used, George raised his podgy right hand and flapped it. ‘Look, I’m happy with your professional judgement. The regular load if you think that more advisable.’

  The expression of relief on the consultant’s taut little face seemed to George disproportionate. She proposed a complicated step-up package of regular loading, stepping up over a year to premier coverage. When she left, George felt unaccountably exhausted.

  19

  Although the psychological health expert came very highly recommended, she made little progress with Leah. At first, Leah refused even to acknowledge her questions. When pressed, she spoke double-dutch in a low, breathy voice, and when that failed to have any effect she clammed up again. She preferred sitting in the square of light cast by her bedroom’s west-facing window, even though her hair was now cut. The assertivist doctor, Wu, spent an hour with her, but all Leah did was fidget in her chair, following the sliding rectangle of brightness with her eyes.

  It was a few days before the full severity of matters became clear. Therapist Wu submitted a report in which (behind all the usual legal disclaimer boilerplate and after a wearisomely reiterated insistence that insufficient diagnostic data had been accumulated) he offered the opinion that Leah’s trauma was much more deeply rooted than had first been apparent. His judgement was that it might take a long time for her previous personality to reassert itself. Marie was not discouraged, at first: ‘She lived the life of the village for eleven months,’ she said. ‘At her age, eleven months is eternity.’

  ‘As a proportion of her life, it’s,’ George agreed, making a half-hearted attempt at mental calculation before concluding, weakly, ‘it’s a lot.’

  Not everything went badly. True, for the whole of the day following her haircut, Leah was in a doleful withdrawn and despondent mood. But as she was fed little squashy bulbs of sugary water, or more substantial pods of soup, her mood brightened. Three days after returning to NY she was eating with avidity everything she was given; and if she sometimes afterwards lay on the floor and stroked her little globed stomach moaningly, she nevertheless looked forward to meals with unmistakable excitement. And she quickly regained a comfortable intimacy with her parents; her initial wariness went away, and she accepted the cuddles of mother and even of father; smiled in return to their smiles.

  But there were downsides too, reminders of the deep-set nature of her trauma. For instance she had apparently regressed to a pre-potty-trained state. To be precise: although Wilson had little difficulty in persuading her to urinate in her bathroom’s toilet, one night, about a week after her return, she shat in her own bed. This distressed her as much as it upset her parents, although presumably for different reasons. Wilson cleaned everything up, and patiently explained to her that she needed to use the same special bathroom seat for solid waste as liquid; and Leah watched her carefully as she spoke, and seemed to understand. But two days later she filled her pocket-strides with faeces, and three days after that she stripped naked and shat on the carpet in the middle of her room.

  In th
e second week, when Leah’s English showed no signs of reappearing, Marie’s resilience began to sag. ‘She does speak though,’ George pointed out.

  ‘Occasional phrases,’ said Marie. ‘And always in Arab.’

  ‘Farsi,’ said George.

  ‘As if you know!’

  Piqued, George used some language software to try and turn his English to Farsi for Leah’s benefit, and to process his daughter’s Farsi into English. But the program made no headway with Leah’s infrequent utterances. Accordingly Marie brought in a human translator: Ana, a small, m-shouldered woman with dark, lustreless eyes. The three of them sat with Leah in her room, as the girl watched book after book on her screen. Ana probed her gently with questions, but although Leah occasionally looked sharply at her interlocutor she did not respond. Finally, as one book finished, and as her forefinger hesitated between a choice of sequels on the screenlist, Leah said something. Ana replied briefly, and Leah repeated her statement, before returning her attention to her book.

  ‘Your daughter is not speaking Farsi,’ said Ana, adding with muted asperity, ‘although this is what your husband informed me she spoke.’

  ‘What language, then?’

  ‘It is neither Farsi, nor Turkish. I believe it to be Kurdish.’

  ‘Oh! So can you please tell her—’

  Ana put up her hand. ‘I do not speak Kurdish. It is not permitted.’

  ‘Not permitted?’ repeated a surprised Marie.

  ‘I apologize. I cannot help you.’

  After this lady left, Marie embraced her daughter, whilst George played to them both, or read out, elements of articles about Kurdish, and the Kurds, from various Wikis and encyclopedias. Playing a common phrases program, so that a sepulchral voice chimed out of the Fwn with hello and how is your health? in Kurdish, made Leah laugh and pick up the device like a monkey, as if to try and get a glimpse of the tiny man inside, as a toddler might.

  Matters were worse than they expected. The assertivist had suggested the possibility that Leah’s English was merely suppressed, by the trauma of her abduction, beneath a superficial layer of acquired native phrases. But after a Kurdish translator was located (with some difficulty) and brought in, it became apparent that more than suppression was at work. Leah appeared to have forgotten all her English. The trauma of her kidnapping and separation from her parents had thoroughly disordered her conscious mind.

  Therapist Wu returned for a new session and spent some time with Leah and the translator. ‘Things are clearer now,’ he announced, taking tea with George and Marie after the consult. The scalding sherry-coloured water, in its semicircular glass cups, gleamed in the daylight, its surface iridescence fizzing as sugar was added. ‘She is suffering from a hysterical personality fragmentation. It is not unheard of – at ten, as I believe she was when she was abducted, the human psyche has not coalesced with sufficient integrity. Human children pass through a phase in which the natural assertiveness of the originary infant is contaminated and diluted – it is present at two, but often by four has become pathologically corroded. The best thing for a child growing is to—’

  Marie, despite never having had so much as a half-hour session of assertiveness therapy in her life, broke in here with her own, impressive simulacrum of assertiveness: ‘No lectures, please, Mr Wu.’

  Wu smoothly shifted discursive gear. ‘The best thing,’ he said, ‘and my advice to you, would be to tutor her in English as if in a foreign language. She is young enough to learn quickly – to relearn, that is. Also, I recommend the company of peers. I understand that you feel a natural desire to protect your daughter, of course you do. But I recommend she be allowed to interact with children her own age as a means of re-socializing her.’

  They did this, and Wu’s judgement was swiftly vindicated. The old Leah started coming back with gratifying rapidity, not only concrete aspects such as language, but authentic glimpses of her hidden personality, the real Leah.

  Life thawed and returned to them all.

  George found his daily routine settling into a pleasantly inflexible timetable. It happened incrementally, and only acquired the look of inevitability in retrospect. It began with coffee, ablutions, and a quarter-hour with Leah and Wilson. Ezra, rattling around on his chubby legs like a miniaturized military Duopod, seemed perfectly able to do without him; but there was tenderness in Leah’s clasping little embrace, and fifteen minutes was exactly enough time for George to get his hit of childish affection. Then an hour in the company of Rodion, the owner of the other half of their building – a mild-mannered, elderly man. They took coffee together, and played Reversi, and talked. Most of their conversations concerned the news, a passion they shared. They picked up stories and followed them the way ordinary people followed the instalments of their favourite books, finding a particular pleasure in tracing rises and falls of news profiles. So, for instance, both were interested in the goings on in Triunion, even though, after the previous year’s high-casualty strategic blast, reports from that unhappy country had been superseded by news from other parts of the world – Tierra del Fuego, predominantly, but also southern Australia. Nevertheless George would ferret out information, or Rodion would, and the two of them would discuss it diffidently.

  Then a stroll, or ride, about town; and a look in the shops; or, some days, he might go swimming. He particularly liked swimming, because it involved a good deal of what actors call business: undressing, redressing in his gear, immersion, the shower, drying himself in the big walk-through arch, redressing himself, arranging his hair and person. He always left feeling he had achieved something. Then he would return and spend half an hour on his collection: an assemblage of podvigs, ferreted out of obscure sites and feeds. Then lunch, solus, in Sun Hall, with whatever nibbles were most fashionable that week. And of course a glass of white wine. Afterwards a sleep, and then an hour of physical exercise in the home gym, or else, if the weather was agreeable, on the roof. Then the day’s second shower, and afterwards a book; then a little time playing V, followed by some more time with the children, and a second snack before whatever public event, gallery, balletic performance, musical shug or party was arranged for the evening. He would encounter Marie, usually, only for this last item. Almost always he had little idea how she spent her day. Neither party would quiz the other.

  By the summer, Leah’s English had come wholly back to her – as if the inner trauma-block had finally been dissolved – and she was fluent again, her talk as fluent as could be desired, and as contaminated by catchphrases from books and Kids Feed, as any kid’s. George began to experience a new sort of durable joy, a kind of warmth inside his body. It manifested itself largely in terms of its contrast with what had gone before, but that didn’t diminish it. On the contrary. And whilst it was mostly an ambient sensation, there were times when it intruded with joyous sharpness upon his mind. And he would ask himself: could it be that he had spent so many decades of affluent living having everything except this experience of somatic happiness? Had he really just been making do? Taking his life, and his daughter, for granted? Had he not even known that there was a better mode of being? Joy, he saw now, was precisely not a pure emotion. It was stronger, an alloy of recognizable childish happiness on the one hand, and the pungent and mournful knowledges of adulthood on the other. Consciousness of the time wasted, previously; of the present imperfection, and of future risks. The lack of harmonious emotional balance in his life – a deteriorating situation with Marie, for instance – did not cancel out the happiness he felt at the restoration of Leah. On the contrary, it somehow deepened it, made it more mellow and complex. More, anxiousness at what the future might bring (which, of course, he very often experienced) did not cancel out his present contentment, because that very contentment was bound up with his child, and a child is the living embodiment of what the future holds. He felt that something awaited him in his future, and that the something was important.

  He stole odd moments from his daily routine to be with his daughter:
slipping quietly into the room to observe her being schooled, for instance; or simply to sit with her later in the afternoon, to embrace her and ask her how her day was going. Before the kidnapping her evening visits to him, just before her bedtime, had been perfunctory. Now he went to her willingly, joyfully even, and drew out the time. More like a playmate than a father, they might sit and gossip cheerily with one another about their day, the people they had met and so on – for tens of minutes. It was a wholly new experience in his life. It would not overstate matters to say: it mesmerized him. He stood on the roof one hot August afternoon, performing his Lithi Ka. When he shut his eyes to the bright world, the sunlight was still visible, filtered pinkly through his eyelids. And this seemed to him profound, somehow, as if the light was so greatly a feature of the universe’s goodness that it could not be blocked out.

  20

  Leah took almost a year to recover her original self. That is to say, it took her that long to recover it all, including all her memories of everything pre-Ararat. But the majority of the restitution happened much more rapidly than that. She fell back into most of her usual ways within the month – endless books, screen games, lolling about and so on. Her English came back to her within six weeks. She spoke, perhaps, in a way that subtly differed from the way she had spoken before, the metaphorical tattoo of her experiences still visible upon the body of her speech. It was not a matter of vocabulary, or accent, or content; and, indeed, after a little while George grew so used to it that the memory of how she had spoken previously became in effect the memory of a memory. But there was a period of a month or so when, every time George spoke to his daughter, he detected a niggling something in her voice. She sounded like her – of course, since she was her. But there was nonetheless some sort of crack, or gap, between the like and the was. It was something to do with the way she leant on her sibilances just a fraction more heavily than sounded quite right. Or something to do with her diphthongs. But, see, that was exactly it: because as soon as George tried to pin it down, his diagnosis was revealed as absurd: her pronunciation was exactly what it had always been. Still, the sense of superfine wrongness persisted.