By Light Alone

by Adam Roberts

  She got out her Fwn. She had begged Daddy not to get her a Fwn. Fwns were so over. But he had got it for her anyway, with that vague expression on his face that was so completely him. There was a small burden of shame involved in speaking to Marthe on a Fwn, knowing that Marthe was speaking to her on a Helio. ‘So, Marthe, you know strawberries?’

  ‘You’re damaged,’ Marthe replied. ‘Of course I know strawberries.’

  ‘Red, yeeah?’

  ‘Your brain is the strawberry.’

  ‘Odd they’re called straw, though? Straw not being red.’

  ‘Your brain is red,’ Marthe said.

  ‘Later.’

  ‘Can’t wait-a.’

  She tucked the Fwn away, and pulled the mighty door open. How smoothly it swung, how perfectly poised on its heavy hinges! Well hi-hello there piped the genie. Long time no see.

  He wasn’t tall, not especially, Wally wasn’t. So how-ow-ow did he get to the top shelves? There must be a command to pull down a ladder, or something, but Leah couldn’t make that happen. She asked the fridge for a staircase but it did its I’m only a dumb machine thing, in a squeaky voice. And who knew how long Wally would be at Trotters? So she used some initiative. She clambered up using the shelves as ladder-steps. It went OK for the first few, although she put her left foot in something squishy. But her hand on a high shelf she tried to lever herself up, and the fabric of the thing refused to take her weight. The shelf lurched. It didn’t break, it slid towards her, and before she could think what to do she was falling. Everything came down in an avalanche of things – the whole shelf came free and flew, wing-like, over her head.

  She landed on her b.t.m. and banged the back of her head too on the hard floor – it was pretty sore. But more alarming than the impact was the sound she produced. The liberated shelf struck the floor just behind her and rang with a great gong noise, and then bounced, and then hit again with enough force to boom throughout the whole house. And all around her, and on to her also, food and pots and plastic moulds and scoops and fruit and everything rained down. And the fridge itself didn’t help matters: ‘Ow ow ow!’ it called, ‘you’re ripping my guts out!’ it shrilled. What good did that do?

  Leah got herself up and brushed as much of the food off her front as she could. Then, scowling at the sharpness of her aches she tried to pick the shelf off the floor. But it was too heavy for a kid to lift one-handed. She only succeeded in raising it high enough to mean that dropping it again made a violent racket.

  So she retreated to the corner of the kitchen and surveyed the mess – the really pretty impressive mess – that she had made. There was no way of avoiding responsibility for it, she could see. Even if she could somehow get the shelf back in the fridge, and stuff all the spilled food back inside, many of the viands were all scuffed or squashed. And who knows what system Wally had. Perhaps the thing to do would be to persuade Wally to take the blame? ‘Wax’, Mummy called him. Why, though?

  She got out her Fwn. ‘Marthe?’

  ‘Hello, girl with a red-red strawberry for a brain.’

  ‘I think I broke my parents’ fridge.’

  ‘Nohow!’

  ‘True. How can I get Wally to take the blame for it?’

  ‘Who’s Wally?’

  ‘He’s the kitchen guy. He’s the food dude.’

  ‘Tell him he’s gotta take the blame, or you’ll shave his head and kick him out.’ This was Marthe’s joke at Leah’s expense, and went way back to a conversation they had had, like, months ago, about the other country. Marthe wouldn’t let it go, she wouldn’t. She thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. But the more Leah pointed out that it wasn’t funny, the more Marthe went on and on.

  ‘You’re, one, a help, or two, no help at all.’

  ‘One.’

  ‘Two, Ma-ma-Marthe. Later.’

  ‘Can’t wait-a.’ said Marthe.

  ‘It’s our fate-a.’

  ‘It’ll be great-a.’

  There was nothing for it; so she made her way upstairs to confess everything to her father. She had to ask the house where he was, because he wasn’t where he’d been the last time they spoke. Blue room, the house said. And when she went into the blue room she could tell that something big was up. Instead of his usual sweetly dopey face, which Leah rebuked him for as molasses, though she thought, secretly, it was pretty sweet, actually, instead of that Daddy had the eyebrow-scrunched expression he got when he was feeling sorry for himself. Leah’s stomach writhed with he knows and uh-ohs. She let her arms dangle. The house told him, maybe; or Wally saw and rushed straight up to tittle and tattle. So she came into the room expecting – not knowing what to expect, actually. But instead of anger, her daddy started bla-a-athering something about separation. Then he asked her if she knew what the word meant – as if she didn’t do words, hundreds of them every week, meaning and spelling. The word was ‘separation’.

  ‘It means being cut up,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, gravely. ‘It means that your mother and I will live in different houses.’ Cottoning on a little late – which, as Marthe said, was Leah’s extra special talent, the thing with which Providence or Genes or God had gifted her – she realized that Daddy and Mummy were divorcing. Exactly like Kelley’s parents! Except that Kelley’s parents had taken her on a special holiday, just to break the news to her, and Kelley said it was strange because although it was a superspecial resort, in one of the Antarctic bubbles, with tunnels and slides going on for kilometres, and although they’d deliberately taken her there – nevertheless her parents grew cross when she had fun. They had told her the news in that place to stop her being too sad, but when she wasn’t sad they got huffy. ‘You will spend some time with me, and some time with your mother,’ Leah’s daddy was saying, now; but that was pure chaff. He had to say that of course.

  Then it struck her. He would never say so right out, of course; to spare her feelings, so she wouldn’t blame herself. But it was the fridge. Of course. She turned her eyes like Vision-Man, as if she could see right through the walls and the floor to where the contents of the fridge were scattered over the floor. ‘I see.’

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ he said, in a when-you’ve-cleared-it-all-up sort of voice.

  ‘So you’ll get back together afterwards?’

  He shook his head, with that bitter little trembly way he sometimes had. Leah knew it wasn’t the fridge, of course. She wasn’t an idiot. She wasn’t one of those Hance-Men souped up on neurogenes that walked around with the weird expression on their faces like they were normal people when everybody knew they weren’t normal people at all. But still, the fridge had something to do with it. It was an allegory. It was an icon. It was an emblem. That was the way of it. Something had yawned open and smashed in her parents’ relationship. What could it be, if not her? What did it go down to, if not her greed for food?

  ‘I’m going to sit down, now, my love,’ Dad said.

  She had to tell Marthe; but she couldn’t do that directly in front of Dad. So she said goodbye and ran – really ran, full pelt – through the hall and up the curly-stair to her room. She didn’t know why, but she felt crammed full of energy, all of a sudden. She was ready to burst! She couldn’t sit still. ‘Marthe?’

  ‘Whaddaya whaddaya?’

  ‘You’ll never guess what my parents are getting a divorce and that’s for real!’ She was breathing so fast she sounded like a flitter about to take off.

  ‘You are lying to me with your mouth!’ squealed Marthe.

  ‘Not.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘No no-way.’

  ‘No no-no-way.’

  ‘It’s true, my dad just told me, they’re going to live in separate houses, and I’ll tell you something nobody else knows.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re doing it because I broke the fridge!’

  ‘You told me you broke the fridge!’ Marthe yelled.

  ‘I did tell you I broke the fridge!’

  ‘
You were on the Helio, like, seconds ago!’ This was a little dig, because although Marthe had a Helio, since day-before-yesterday, Leah only had a Fwn, and Marthe knew it. But she was so excited she let it go.

  ‘I know!’

  ‘A nailed-up fish on the cross,’ cried Marthe. ‘I can’t believe that’s why they’re getting divorced! That’s the deekiest reason to get divorced!’

  ‘Well,’ said Leah, the shine of excitement coming off her mood a little. ‘I guess it’s not just the fridge. I mean, maybe the fridge is like, you know that phrase, about breaking the back? Last strawberry.’

  ‘Last straw, crazy-o,’ hooted Marthe. ‘Strawberry! I’d say you have grass for brains!’

  ‘Straw’s what I said!’ said Leah, growing cross; because, after all, Marthe wasn’t being very supportive for her in this, her time of trouble. ‘I said straw.’

  ‘Shall we just run that past the All Seeing Eye?’ said Marthe. That was the catchphrase from the new Q&A prize show, Quoz.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go,’ said Leah, darkly. ‘The whole world is coming to an end here.’

  For a while she lounged and flailed languidly about on her GelBag and watched a book. Her excitement was all disappearing. It was all vanishing through whatever spacetimeportal governed Mood, and only leaving her the beginnings of despondency. The poverty equivalent of feelings. Hateful, that. A hatful of hateful. She watched another book, but despite super 4D explosions and a lead with eyes the size of shields her attention kept wandering. ‘This is it,’ she told herself. ‘It’s happened, it’s over.’ But these words didn’t really connect either. If it were over, how come she was still breathing, blinking, thinking?

  She thought about who else she could tell. Marthe was no good. Marthe had only made friends with her from pity. She had said so. Really she had. You were kidnapped, Marthe told her. You were stolen by poor people, and they infected you with the poor people bug. Leah squealed at this, and said not fair, but it was nothing but the truth. Her hair was different to normal people’s hair. She could rub her hand over Marthe’s trimmed hair and feel how soft it was, like moonlight, or magic, so soft. Her own was stiff as bristles. ‘You had proper soft hair once,’ Leah informed her. ‘Then the poor people grabbed you and fed you the Bug, and now you’ve got leaves for hair.’ This wasn’t right; leaves would have been gross-o the most-o. But the thrust of it was spot-on. She wasn’t normal. Marthe really only made friends with her because she had the weird religion, which she had because her parents had the weird religion, and other kids made fun of her for it. But having a weird religion wasn’t the same thing as having the Bug. Once, Leah had asked her dad – but tentatively, because it had been drilled into her, in her time in the village, that losing her special hair was tantamount to death – whether they couldn’t take the Bug out. She knew (she wasn’t a Pretard) that ‘Bug’ meant millions of fantastically small machines all up and down her strawberry-coloured blood, and all inside her pale lymph, and clinging to the threads of her nerves. But she couldn’t quite shake the sense that it was one squat Bug, living somewhere in the rose-tinged darkness of her insides, with goggles for eyes and cutlery mouthparts and two laptop covers snicked shut over its curved back. Exuding evil. Put a hand in there and pull it out. I’m afraid not, honey, Dad said. Can’t be got out. But it doesn’t do you harm, it just means your hair has this—’tever, Dad, she had interrupted him, and dashed off somewhere else. The Bug was stuck inside her like the fruit in the rhyme:

  There was a young woman who swallowed a fruit

  She didn’t want to, a snake made her do’it.

  The fruit changed her spirit from goody to bad:

  And sun that set happy rose up again sad.

  What was snake? Her Fwn told her: a legless reptilian creature common in desertified scrub and parchlands. She looked at the pictures. They looked horrid.

  No, she couldn’t chat with Marthe about this right now. Who else? There was always Rodion. It was a little apocalyptic, having a friend as old as Rodion, but he was good to talk to. She remembered her first proper conversation with him, in the park. He had introduced himself to her, gravely, as if communicating something very important. ‘Good afternoon, my name is Rodion,’ with an accent you only heard in books. ‘You’re the other person who lives in our building,’ she had said. And Marthe had said: ‘You’re older than some dead people.’ He had laughed at this. Rodion had offered to buy them ice cream. ‘Strawberry,’ Leah had demanded.

  So they had strolled to one of the vendors, and sat themselves at a round table. The vendor came out with a giant bullfighter’s cape and flourished it ostentatiously in the air to let it settle over the tabletop. For a moment it lay plumped on its cushion of air, and then the air came through the weave and gravity sucked it tight about the underlying shape. Rodion ordered three bowls, and they were all strawberry. All strawberry all the time.

  ‘I will tell you something interesting about strawberries,’ Rodion announced. The girls hunkered down, eating the creamy chill paste with their tongues only, it seemed: for nothing seemed to go into their stomachs. ‘People think that the fruit eaten in the garden of Eden, eaten by Adam and Eve, was an apple. But not so!’

  And Marthe was already bored. Nothing is so boring as the stuff you don’t comprehend. ‘What’s Eden?’

  ‘Oh don’t you know anything?’ Leah asked, who at least knew this.

  ‘I know Adam’s the dude in the Deep Sea Battle books,’ Marthe replied, defiantly.

  ‘Did you never hear the story of the Garden of Eden?’ the old man, Rodion, asked, in a mild voice.

  ‘Never did never will,’ replied Marthe, leaping up. ‘Later, oldster.’ And she was off.

  ‘I’ve heard of the Garden of Eden – and the apple,’ Leah assured Rodion.

  ‘But that’s exactly it,’ said Rodion, looking about him with a vaguely baffled air. ‘It was no apple. It was a strawberry. It says so, in the Bible.’

  ‘Strawberry in the Bible, got it,’ said Leah, hopping to her feet. ‘Got to find my friend now.’ And she ran after Leah, singing with delight.

  ‘In the heeb,’ Rodion hooted mournfully at their retreating figures. ‘Rue!’

  Whatever street that was. But Rodion was all right, and what’s more he was always there: the same bland, blithe friendliness, the same distractedly cheerful manner. He offered Leah another strawberry ice cream the next time she was in the park – just her, this time, and her new carer, Josephina. ‘Are you one of those pie-doughs we’re warned about?’ she asked him.

  ‘Gracious no.’ He looked actually shocked.

  ‘A pie-dough would say no, though.’

  ‘But so would an honest man.’

  Of course, that was true. ‘They say in school that pie-doughs are everywhere, and want to get their grubby hands on little children. Little girls especially.’

  ‘Not I. And anyway, your carer is right there.’

  ‘Oh her? She’s a sullen beast. She doesn’t like being a carer at all. I don’t know why she doesn’t go off and do something else with her lifestyle and being-in-the-world.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s nothing else for her to do? Perhaps she has no choice?’

  ‘Well I don’t know, do I?’ Leah retorted.

  ‘You could ask her?’

  Leah considered this. ‘If she were proper poor, I could talk to her. Or if she were rich, obviously I could. But she’s a kind of inbetween, and I don’t talk to those.’

  ‘What do you mean, proper poor?’

  ‘I mean like the people in my village.’

  ‘Interesting that you call it your village!’ Rodion smiled at her.

  ‘It’s not like I’m pretending I own it,’ Leah said. ‘Anyway, it hardly matters. Daddy came and pulled me out of there. Where’s my ice cream, though?’

  They went to get the ice cream.

  Leah could hardly go tell Oldion Rodion that her parents were splitting up. That would be sadder than the saddest.

  And i
n the event, the break-up was smoother than smooth. Dad moved into a stony flat in the Seawall apartment building overlooking the Hudson, and Ma moved to a house on First Street, and – well, Leah had no idea what happened to the old house. Maybe they sold it, or maybe it just sat in darkness, the windows turned to black, the carpet bots making curlicues in the dust, and at the heart of it all the fridge, the enormous fridge – still (though this made no sense) packed with every kind of food, and murmuring to itself all day and all night with its voice like a housefly’s buzz. The god of the house’s peculiar, New World plenitude of silence. The Fri. The Idge.

  At any rate, Leah never went back to that house.

  Her time, now, was divided between Ma and Dad. Schooling went on – though Marthe’s parents moved to one of the New Zealand islands (the one with the big siege wall all about it, like one of those collars with which they neck sick dogs – can’t remember the name of the island right now). They still stayed in touch, of course. Most everybody had Lance, now; it wasn’t just for special occasions. And Leah made other friends, like Freda and Lucy, and she kept on seeing old Rodion. She and Rodion had an ice-cream date every fortnight, in the park, and never missed it. Dividing her life between Ma and Dad became the larger rhythm of her life, and soon felt as natural as day-night or the swap of seasons.