by Geoff Ryman
They heard a door open. Margaret, Maggie came back. Michael could tell from her face: it was kept smooth and bland, but the smile was just a little fixed, and the eyes seemed to be saying no, not again, no not again, and they looked at Mark with sadness. Mark had tested positive. She would have done a T-cell count as well and would know: this is a dying man.
All she said was: ‘All right, Mark, we’re going to take the second sample now. Are you sure you want to go ahead?’
‘I believe that is what Michael asked.’
Margaret glanced at Michael. ‘Michael only wants to help you. Do you still want a second sample?’
‘It’s why I’m here,’ replied Mark, detached.
You, commanded Michael to the Angel. You Mark are free from disease. You virus, commanded Michael, you the virus just seethe out of his blood.
I cast you out.
Maggie took Mark’s arm as she led him to the cubicle, and her face was silently looking into his. Still everyone’s mother, eh Bottles?
The telly battered on, booming about oven-ready chips. Jeez, thought Michael, all I want to do is sleep. What a leaden stupid unhelpful thought: life is strange.
Mark came back, and moved his chair away from Michael and the cushions made a squishy sound like a sigh. Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out an orange.
Mark’s mouth lunged forward as he bit into the orange. Almost clear juice, with a bit of pulp, poured down his chin. Mark’s eyes closed with pleasure.
Then he reached into a bag and pulled out a photograph. There hadn’t been a photograph in the bag before.
It was an ordinary snap of a solid-looking middle-aged man with white hair.
‘This is Robert,’ Mark said. ‘I never told you about him.’ His thumb moved over the face. ‘He was rather discreet. He was married, and a bit old-fashioned. RAF. When I got too ill, I told him I was fed up being his mistress.’
‘Did he know you were HIV?’
There was a long pause. ‘Yes.’
Michael looked at the face in the photo more closely. It was kindly, dignified, direct. That added up too.
Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out one of the very first Sony Walkmans, clunky and black, with the usual tangle of wires and earphones. Mark said nothing, but punched buttons.
From the distanced high singing, Michael knew. Mark’s favourite opera: Der Rosenkavalier. Mark closed his eyes and ruminated on another section of orange.
Time passed. The cassette finished with a click.
Mark asked, ‘Do I have to stay for the second result?’
Michael was surprised and slightly hurt that Mark didn’t want to know. ‘I’m afraid so. If you go, the samples will disappear.’
Mark rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, God! That means she’ll come out all worried and want to counsel me. And if the result is different then she’ll want to take a third sample.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I’ve been through all this once before and that I never, ever wanted to go through it again?’
Mark’s eyes glared up at him from under the bushy eyebrows. In life, Mark had never been this angry with Michael.
‘It didn’t really, no, I’m sorry.’
‘If you want to have a fuckfest, you’ll just have to take a few risks like everyone else, except that you never had the stomach for risk.’
Michael didn’t know what to say. Mark turned the cassette over and went on listening to opera.
Finally, Margaret came back. Michael noticed that she had tiny feet. They gave her a delicate, slightly Chinese walk. Her face had gone splotchy. As she approached, she placed her hands either side of her mouth, as if to hold her face in place. ‘Mark. I hardly know what to say.’
Mark stood up and began to wind the earphones around the Walkman. The opera kept playing.
Margaret reached out towards him and gripped his arm. ‘Michael told me you are worried about inconsistent results. I’m afraid that the first test was positive and the second is negative. It’s not usual, but it does happen. I’m so sorry. I’m afraid we’ll need to take the test again.’
‘That won’t be necessary. That is all the result we need, thank you very much.’ He jammed the singing Walkman into the bag.
‘Mark, you can come in tomorrow, if you like.’
The tumble of rocks looked back at her. ‘That won’t happen. I am very, very sorry that Michael put you to all this trouble. I’m going to ask you not to worry me, or to try to rectify the situation. Thank you for your concern.’ He turned and strode away on long legs.
Margaret followed. ‘We might prove there is nothing wrong! There are treatments now, treatments that work!’
‘Thank you!’ bellowed Mark and let the door fall shut after him.
Michael stood up to go, sick at heart.
Maggie intercepted him. ‘Michael, the first test showed almost no T-cells at all. He is already very sick. Michael, I don’t know what your relationship is, excuse me, but should you have the test too?’
‘No,’ said Michael, suddenly bitter. ‘I never slept with him.’
He died and I was in America. Michael’s face crumpled and his eyes went bleary, and to escape he pushed the door open with his bum.
‘Oh love,’ said Margaret.
You think I’m a good person. You think I’m someone who’s done all he can to help someone else.
‘Give me a call! Tell him we can help him!’
That’s the last Michael saw of her, in her Chinese shirt, reflecting in several directions as the door of her clinic swung shut. How is it that you care, Maggie? How is it than anyone cares?
Mark was two streets away, waiting by the car. He was staring up at the sky and listening to his Walkman. It still wheedled out Rosenkavalier. Shrill distant women’s voices sang their farewells. Just for once, in London, there were stars.
‘Can you send me back now?’ Mark asked, without looking at Michael. He was quite calm, angry no longer, but his cheeks and mouth were covered with an even, glossy coating of tears.
‘You could stay,’ offered Michael.
Mark turned and looked at him with determined eyes. ‘This is unbearable,’ he said.
‘Look Mark, I’m sorry for all of this; I shouldn’t have done it this way. But if you stay, you could listen to music, you could go back to Robert, you could live.’
‘It’s unbearable, because once you’re there,’ Mark flung a hand up towards the sky, ‘you don’t really want to come back. You had no business bringing me back.’
‘Just try, for a day or two?’
‘I died Michael. I made them withhold treatment. Dying took hours, and I couldn’t move or even see, but I could still think, and I had to think my way through dying. I had to work at it, it was an achievement. Can you please send me back now?’
‘All right,’ sighed Michael.
Mark made to put Robert’s photograph into his pocket and then seemed to remember he could not take it with him. He put it back into the plastic Sainsbury’s bag.
The great stone face turned once more to Michael. ‘Don’t do this to anyone else,’ Mark said.
‘Get ready then.’
‘I am ready.’
‘Goodbye, then.’
God, this was awful, it was like killing someone.
‘Goodbye,’ whispered Mark, his expression softening. His cheeks were pink and freckled and he reminded Michael of how he had looked at Sussex.
The singing of the Walkman stopped. Air closed over Mark like a lake and he was gone.
Michael was alone. Inside the bag, there was only the newspaper, and the orange, whole and uneaten.
The next day, Michael telephoned Margaret.
‘Hello Margaret,’ he began. ‘This is Michael. I just wanted to say thanks for last night. Are you OK?’
‘I’m sorry?’ Margaret laughed indulgently, as if she were still Bottles. ‘I’m a bit slow this morning. Michael who?’
‘Michael Blasco, from scho
ol, I came round to the clinic.’
‘Michael? Michael, hello!’ Margaret was surprised and delighted. ‘It’s funny, I was thinking about you just the other day. How are you, long time no see!’
The backs of Michael’s arms pricked up as if there were a cold wind. ‘I’m fine. I, uh, I came round to the clinic Wednesday night.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Margaret laughed at herself. ‘Did you? I’ve got a head like a sieve. I’m so sorry, I guess I just didn’t recognize you. I mean, did you say “Hi, I’m Michael from school?”’
Michael considered. ‘No. Not really. I popped in to get some information for a friend.’
Her voice modulated carefully downwards. ‘Was it all right?’
‘Yeah, yeah, he came in to the clinic and had the test. And it was negative. He’s OK. I just wanted to say thank you for the work you do. It’s good work.’
Michael ended the conversation quickly. He had learned one last thing.
If you were part of their story, you could be forgotten too. Oh, people could meet you both, shake your hands, they could tell you your friend was handsome and that they wanted to meet up again. And then they would forget. Not right away, but gently so everything healed shut. They’d forget everything, and if you were part of everything, then they’d forget you too.
Angels came, Angels were here, they could talk, and when they went, they were forgotten as quickly as dreams. And the stories they made were forgotten too.
Michael would be forever alone with his memories. Maybe we’re surrounded by miracles, he thought. Maybe there’re miracles every day, only we’re programmed not to remember them. He opened up his notebook and read.
A physical copy
someone I know (later: also someone I don’t know!)
in train, tube and 2 x in my flat, 1 x in office (location has no effect)
Can call up at will and banish (I may not know I’ve done it!)
other people appear to interact
His behaviour, my behaviour both sexual
the real person is straight (can be!)
copy says real person dreams what happens
Can’t call up people without sexual element (sexual element can be love)
Can call up dead
Can control behaviour
They have free will until I override it
they can be male or female
they think they go somewhere (fiction continues elsewhere?)
they are a kind of fiction in flesh
they can change nothing
they are never really here
Then Michael wrote in the notebook, Knowing does no good. And then he closed it.
Part II
What’s so painful about love?
Henry came to stay with them. He had nowhere else to go, unless it was a burrow under the route of a planned bypass. He slept in the sitting room, on the sofa bed, and kept all his clothes rolled up in a backpack in the corner. The clothes were always neat and uncreased; Henry had a knack of packing clothes so tightly that they stayed pressed. The whole room smelled of him, a pleasant slightly earthy odour, like field mushrooms.
Michael assumed that Philip and Henry had sex by day on that sofa bed while he was at the lab. Throughout the night, Philip still cradled Michael in their big double bed, out of affection and habit. Michael was grateful to be held. He found he was scared.
So he made both of them breakfast and brought it out on a tray, and laid it out on the table in the bay window of the sitting room. Henry’s arms were lean and pale and smooth as he pulled on his socks. His skin had a kind of silver sheen in the morning sun. He gave Michael a dozy morning grin under the thicket of his hair.
It was summer now, and dust danced in warm sunlight. Mild air drifted in through the open window; blackbirds made surprisingly beautiful sounds: Michael always expected them to caw like crows. He was lulled.
Michael needed wisdom; he needed advice and reassurance. He needed to talk. The song of birds, the clatter of cups and plates, Henry’s smile all gave him courage. Phil came in, looking like someone who was late for work, and even that somehow reassured Michael.
‘Something very strange has happened,’ he announced, his hands occupied with cutlery. ‘I suddenly find that I can make copies of people, people I want to have sex with. I just ask for them, and there they are. They can be male, female, alive or dead, but they can’t be photographed and they can change nothing in the real world.’
Michael picked up the coffee-pot and it began to chatter as if it were cold and its teeth were clicking. He couldn’t quite hold it or think what to do with it. ‘I find the whole thing disturbing, to tell you the truth.’
Phil kept his head down. ‘They do say it runs in families,’ he murmured and spooned jam on his toast.
Henry very gently took the coffee-pot out of Michael’s grasp. ‘Some people might find that hard to believe. They would probably say you were making it up.’
‘Oh, oh there is definitely something physically here. I can touch them. It’s just after they’ve gone nothing they’ve done gets left behind.’
‘That’s why people might not believe you.’ Henry had soft, brown, trusting eyes. But they could be firm and trusting at the same time.
‘Well, I can fix that! I can show them to you. Who do you fancy?’ Michael was feeling boisterous. He could feel his curly hair bounce and his voice boom. He tried to think of musicians who might be trendy among 26-year-olds and could only come up with the Labour Party theme ‘D. Ream?’ Michael suggested, surprised he remembered the singer’s name. Henry appeared unmoved. ‘Liam Gallagher? How about the Castro brothers from Out Our Way? Here, look.’
The air wavered and parted like curtains.
Out Our Way was an established soap opera about the East End. It had turned two bald, burly actors into unlikely sex symbols.
Suddenly two bald and burly actors stood looking dazed by sunlight in a hundred-year-old sitting room in WC1.
‘Holy Jesus!’ cried Phil, and pushed back his chair, which dragged on the carpet then gave a low crack and nearly pitched him backwards out of the window.
‘Wha’?’ said one of the actors, his brow knitting together.
Michael explained like a tour guide. ‘The trouble with actors is that they usually show up in character. You get Valentino as the Sheikh, not Valentino.’
‘What are these posh geezers doin’ ’ere then?’
‘The dialogue is always terrible,’ said Michael, his face giving a series of nervous sideways jerks that were meant to convey that the whole thing was mischievous fun.
Henry had gone very still and watchful, like a cat crowded into a corner. He fixed the brothers with an adult eye and asked them, ‘What do you know?’
‘About what?’
‘Why you are here.’
Michael, ebullient, intervened. ‘It’s for sex. Drop ’em, lads.’
The Castro brothers looked dazed and obedient, and they lowered their trousers. One of them was wearing no underwear under his jeans. Two perfectly average, plump sets of genitalia soaked up the sun.
Michael felt merry. He felt as if he were no longer alone. He reached across the table and pushed the tip of Phil’s nose. ‘You wanted to do a show called Lust. Now you really can.’ Philip tossed his head as if an insect annoyed him. ‘You want to have sex with someone, you can. We all can, all of us.’ Michael suddenly felt familial; the gesture included Henry.
Henry blinked, hair in his eyes. ‘We don’t fancy them, Michael. You do. It’s OK. We believe you.’
‘You won’t as soon as they go. You’ll forget.’ Michael began to feel afraid again, afraid to be alone. To encourage them to stay, he passed one of the Castros a cup of coffee.
‘That’s how it works. They’re forgotten hours after they go.’
Henry said calmly, ‘Everybody gets forgotten, Michael. It just happens faster to some of us.’
‘Listen,’ said one of the Castros, with studied politeness. ‘We don’t want to i
ntrude or anything, you know?’
Michael protested. ‘No, no, stay. They’ll believe as long as you stay.’
Henry stood up and took the cup of coffee back from one of the Castros. He spoke to them as an equal. ‘It’s tough being temporary. Nothing you do matters.’
Philip looked up again in anguish at Henry. ‘I can’t deal with this,’ Philip said. ‘I … just … can’t … deal with this too.’ Henry put the coffee cup down on the table and took Philip’s hand.
Shame-faced, the Castro brothers pulled up their trousers. Henry turned and looked at Michael with his round puppy-dog eyes and said, irresistibly, ‘Michael, you’ve made your point.’
Michael closed his eyes and nodded. The Castro brothers faded like an afterthought.
Phil placed both his hands flat on the table as if to steady it and said, ‘I don’t know what it is we just saw.’ His face was prim, closed, determined. ‘I don’t want to know. Henry and I have been hanging on because we could see you were in some kind of trouble, and I don’t want to kick you while you’re down, but honestly…’
Phil turned back to Henry, and he was pleading now. ‘I just can’t keep this up any longer.’
Henry lowered his eyes and said, ‘OK.’
‘We can stay at the Club,’ Phil said, again to Henry. He turned to Michael. ‘I’ll do the washing-up.’
‘No, that’s OK,’ said Michael. The person who made the meal always did the washing-up. It was the family rule.
Phil got insistent, a bit panicky. ‘Have you heard me, Michael?’
Michael blinked. There was something he did not understand. ‘I just said I’d do the washing-up.’ He held out his hands to say: that’s all I said, is there anything wrong?
Phil swayed as if under a burden, and he said to Henry, ‘I’m sorry. You cope with this.’ His hands rattling like the china, Phil began to clear the plates. The eggcups were his family silver, spindly on a single slender leg, and one of them toppled. Henry stood up and with Zen-like calm began to pack his shoulder bag. Philip gave up trying to get everything on the tray at once, and bustled away.