by Jones, Raya
‘Could it be because those disasters actually happened in those other places?’
‘See? How come Cyboratics are immune?’
‘You tell me, Fred. You’re my mole in the Council of Nine.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing. It’s not Wye Stan’s doing.’
There was no sense or strategy in those events. Accidents happen all the time, although only the spectacular ones make the news. After an airbus crashed into a Phyfoamicals town, journalists started to talk about an epidemic of negligence sweeping Earth. When no evidence of negligence was found—only tragic coincidences that were nobody’s fault—newscasters invited statisticians to debate in layman terms the probability of such a streak of bad luck. There was no connection between any of those disasters. The only pattern was that they happened one after the other as if following the path of someone slowly circumnavigating the globe.
Meanwhile the adoption process was taking its course. The clan didn’t object since I signed a declaration of non-interest in OK. Fred concocted a cover story. I was kidnapped by the terrorists whose attack had caused Suzie’s death. They passed me on to tribal people, who called me Al and raised me as their own. I grew up in Ground Zero until I was thirteen, then travelled to Ronda with Ricardo, and worked for him until meeting Fred by chance. Struck by my likeness to Suzie, Fred discovered the truth about my birth, and decided to adopt me.
Now I had to meet the family.
It meant his sister, who lived alone and had no children.
‘It won’t work,’ I said over breakfast. ‘She’ll invite people to meet me. Hans Klaus knows me as Akira Kato. How are you going to keep him quiet?’
‘A solution springs to mind… Oh, alright, no assassins. You ask him. Be nice to him, sleep with him.’
‘Not on your Nellie!’
‘How else could you keep him quiet?’
‘I can’t. But Wye Stan can.’
‘Are you going to ask Version 7 to lean on Hans Klaus? Just like that? What makes you think he’ll oblige?’ Fred jumped to his feet, waving his finger at me, ‘No, no, no, you don’t negotiate with the motherless son of a bitch!’
He left the table in a huff, breakfast unfinished.
I followed him to the window. There was a blizzard outside, which meant he was going to be housebound and make my life a misery. ‘Hans listens to Surtr, Fred.’
‘And Surtr listens to you?’ Fred turned sharply towards me. ‘He’s Wye Stan, never forget it.’
‘Surtr owes me a favour. I’ve kept his sister’s suicide confidential.’
If Fred knew about Surtr’s visit to Earth, he didn’t let on. Surtr was already in transit. Cyboratics didn’t announce his trip.
Fred kept on insisting that I met the family. So I contacted Surtr.
Again we met face to face online. This time he wore a white Mu Tashi biosuit, and the camera captured the interior of a plush communication booth on his interstellar yacht. I told him that I had to go to Phoenix-3 and didn’t want Hans Klaus to reveal my CSG connection. ‘I’ll tell him to keep quiet,’ Surtr offered immediately. ‘But he has a big mouth. He’s already been telling tales about you and Freedom.’
‘It’s best if he continues to tell those tales.’
He grinned broadly. I smiled back, and decided to tell him that Fred was adopting me. Surtr exclaimed, ‘What! Do you want to be OK? I can offer you an excellent position in Cyboratics.’ I had no intention of joining any corporation, I told him. He implored me to read the small print of the adoption contract. ‘He’s stitching you up, Al. Can I call you Al?’ I nodded. ‘Freedom Cordova has an ulterior motive, Al.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘I will.’
In the dead of winter Fred and I travelled to Phoenix-3 to meet his sister Justice, nicknamed Jane. Since he always spoke badly of her, I was surprised to see them embrace warmly, genuinely happy to see each other, both laughing a lot and slipping into their father’s tongue. She greeted me warmly too. I took an instant liking to her. She was like a female version of Fred though older and without his dark side. She apologised for lapsing into Italian in my presence. ‘It’s because it feels like you’re a part of the family already,’ she laughed. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. I’m so glad you’re not one of his imaginary friends. I still remember some of them. Version 7 was by far your best invention,’ she told her brother.
I glanced at Fred, He was pokerfaced.
Fred asked Jane not to throw any parties on my behalf or to introduce me to people. She agreed reluctantly. ‘Fine, but people have seen you together. That 1Step man you got on so famously with has spread it about that you’ve picked up a cute nihonjin boy. His words, not mine,’ she hastened to tell me.
‘Hans Klaus?’ Fred inquired.
‘That’s the one. An odd little man. He was bending over backwards to socialise with us, but I swear that lately he’s just as anxious to avoid me.’ A thought occurred to her. She fixed her brother with a stern gaze. ‘Have you done something to him?’
‘Me? Wasn’t me! I didn’t do it. Al did it.’
‘Grow up, Fred, for Heaven’s sake,’ she admonished.
Jane felt that I ought to contact Suzie’s parents. They lived off-Venus in a resort popular with retired execs. Fred said evasively that there was plenty of time for that. His sister wasn’t fooled. ‘You’re hoping they’ll die and save you the embarrassment of having to face them again, eh? If you won’t do it I will. We’ll call them tomorrow.’
‘Not yet, please,’ I mumbled. I was nervous about it.
‘They have to know, Al. They are your genetic parents.’
Fred burst, ‘Stop meddling, for goodness’ sake! We’ll do it when he’s ready. We don’t even know what to call him yet. He’s turned his nose up at our traditional name Luigi.’
‘There’s no Luigi in our family.’
‘There must be a Luigi somewhere on the Rossi side. Just because there’s no proper family tree doesn’t mean there wasn’t a Luigi.’
Jane sighed, shaking her head, and turned to me, ‘How do you put up with him? Why don’t we continue to call you Al?’
Fred answered before I could say anything, ‘Use your head. If we put Al as his official name we’ll have to invent another nickname for him. Besides, it’s not Japanese.’
‘And Luigi is?’ she retorted. ‘Why not call him Pedro? There must be a Pedro somewhere on our Cordova side! The family tree goes back only two centuries.’
‘No. He’s a Rossi through and through.’
The brother and sister went on like that for two days. Fred was twisting every conversation into a confrontation so as to stop Jane from pursuing what she really wanted to know. She wanted to know what I was going to do with my life now that I had a chance to be a proper person. On the third day she managed to get a word in edgeways, and pointed out that my insider knowledge of the Edges could be invaluable for the Social Inclusion Initiative. She’d create a position for me in her organisation.
Fred became so quiet that Jane was instantly suspicious, ‘What’s the matter with you? It’s a good idea, no?’
He said nothing.
‘You scare me when you sit like that,’ she said.
When he wouldn’t respond, she told him, ‘I know about the trust fund you’ve created. I bet you did it to annoy me, but it’s not helping them at all. Al will tell you how misguided it is. Tell him, Al.’
I told her, ‘I’ve created the trust fund, Jane. It’s my money.’
‘How could you possibly have so much money to give away?’
‘I charge a lot for my specialist services,’ I said, aware that Fred was watching me with interest.
‘Good grief, I didn’t realise that the alternative economy is that lucrative,’ Jane frowned.
‘I’ve never been involved in black market. I’m a freelance tracker. I retrieve information.’
‘My goodness,’ Jane looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.
; Fred disclosed with paternal pride, ‘He’s extremely good. He’s legendary. All the big corporations hire him. I hired him to find out who’s blown up my home, and it took him no time at all to figure out it was me.’
‘You blew it up? My God, Fred, cousin Isabella wanted to sell it when the estate returned to her! Why did you do it? Perchè?’ she demanded in their father’s tongue for emphasis.
‘I didn’t like what she’s done with my apartment here.’
Jane sighed in exasperation and turned to me, ‘So what exactly do you do, Al?’
‘I find things that people don’t want to be found.’
‘You’re making as much sense as Fred.’ She glowered sideways at him as if it was his fault. ‘Surely people hire you to find things they want to be found. Well,’ she brightened up, ‘now we can set you up in business legally.’
‘I am on the Registrar. I do everything by the Code. But I don’t advertise it. Some clients pay more if they think they’re getting black market.’
She burst out laughing. ‘Fred’s right, you are a Rossi through and through. Did you really grow up in the Edges?’
‘Yes, until I was thirteen. That bit is true.’
‘So how did you learn your skills?’ she inquired, interested.
Fred burst before I could say anything, ‘They have education, I keep telling you!’
Jane shook her head sceptically. ‘Al will correct me if I’m wrong, but they don’t subscribe to any school networks. Did Fred tell you about our mother?’
Their mother was an anthropologist. She had made them learn Italian as part of her own rebellion against the Cordova clan. Now Fred protested that their mother’s fieldwork on tribalism in the Edges was at least fifty years out of date. Jane argued back that those people don’t change their ways. She showed us a documentary taken less than ten years ago. It seemed accurate to me.
Fred scoffed, ‘There’s a difference between an accurate report and the true story.’
‘It’s the same thing,’ Jane argued.
‘No, no, it’s not. I wasn’t a history professor for nothing. The true story gets rewritten all the time depending on who’s telling it even if the facts stay the same. ’
‘What’s the true story about living outside society, Al?’ Jane implored.
‘It’s no good asking him,’ Fred said before I could open my mouth. ‘True stories are about motives and reasons. He’s a facts-and-figures man.’
‘Shut up your mouth and let Al speak,’ she snapped. Fred shut up.
I spoke. ‘He’s right, I deal with facts. The fact is that outside corporate society things happen that nobody gets to know about. I want to show you something.’ I uploaded a pearl with the clip of the freight train tragedy. Fred looked away and I looked at my knees. We couldn’t bear to watch it. But nothing stopped the memory from replaying in my mind.
Jane left the room, too troubled to speak.
She came back red-eyed from crying, saying in a strained voice that she must copy it to Jim, her co-director in the Initiative.
‘Told you,’ Fred muttered when she left the room again, ‘all bleeding hearts. They’ll fuss over it for days and end up even more determined to make honest citizens out of those misguided throwbacks.’
When Jane calmed enough to join us again, she inquired how the clip came to be in my possession. I said that I was there. Fred chimed in solemnly, ‘We both were, don’t ask why. Al transmitted it to the CSG. But they can’t do anything. There was no breach of consumer rights. In this proper society of ours, there’s no concept of human rights. That’s the true story Al’s trying to tell you.’
It was a long-drawn debate between them. Jane said like reiterating, ‘It’s precisely the concept of human rights that motivates the Initiative, Fred. Al, everyone has a right to belong in a corporation that looks after their welfare. Those poor children and people on the train were born into a throwback lifestyle. They’re not aware of their right to a proper life. Do you know much about the pathfinders?’ Not waiting for an answer, she told me what I already knew. In the first generation after the Apocalypse, when the corporations started to repopulate the Earth, dropouts and misfits too ‘returned’ to the birthplace of humanity. The pathfinders hold a romantic notion about the essence of being human. They roam the Earth in small groups, and gather annually in Ground Zero to commemorate Apocalypse Day. They didn’t get in anyone’s way. Jane turned back to her brother, ‘It wasn’t our idea to ban the Gathering.’
It was the idea of a committee appointed by the Phoenix consortium. They declared the Gathering illegal and sent in the militia. There were no outright clashes but plenty of bad feelings. It explained Sven’s attitude on the train, I realised.
Fred told his sister, ‘You are always meddling. What gives you the right to impose your laws in the land of the lawless?’
‘It wasn’t us, I’ve told you a million times. If you have a sensible idea about how to resolve this situation, do tell. They’ll start arriving for this year’s Gathering soon.’
‘And this time they’ll be prepared for war,’ Fred prophesised darkly.
I asked Jane whether there was any documentation of the last Gathering.
There was plenty. Anticipating troubles, the militia collected intelligence about the pathfinders. But Jane had to apply for access, which might take a while. ‘You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. Are you sure you won’t stay longer?’
‘We are sure,’ Fred replied. ‘Don’t bother with the security access. It’s not important to Al.’
When we were back in his downtown apartment, I asked Fred how it was possible that his own sister didn’t know he was the head of OK’s secret service. ‘It won’t be secret if she knew,’ said he. His people immediately retrieved the documentation I wanted. We sat down to view it.
‘Why exactly are we watching this?’ he moaned as I fast-forwarded images of rugged people milling about. I had no interest in the pathfinders but felt compelled to scan those records. The surveillance was taken mostly from the air. Cameras zoomed in on congregations that appeared to be organised, and lingered on individuals who seemed to make speeches. Phoenix militia wanted to identify the leaders. By the day of the sandstorm—the day of the train tragedy—the crowd dwindled considerably. The storm made aerial surveillance impossible. Undercover agents mingled with the crowd, their cameras recording people at close range… ‘This is why,’ I answered Fred.
Mandy was dressed like a pathfinder. A floral scarf covered her head and a large red shawl was wrapped around her upper body. She didn’t seem frail or alone anymore. People were listening to her stream of consciousness: ‘Sven will die for what he did. He and his people will be crushed to death like garbage when the Angel of the Dark Sun finds them in the dazzling shadow.’
Mandy left Ground Zero with pathfinders who had land vehicles. They went east, where the rim is passable on land. From there they could go anywhere. There was no way of tracking her except by the trail of havoc. Minor clashes with pathfinders were reported near the location of each disaster prior to the mishap. I put it to Fred as a wild hypothesis that whenever someone pisses Mandy off, the sprite avenged out of proportion. Fred disputed that the hypothesis was wild.
I couldn’t get it out of my head that my presence on the train had caused what happened to Sven’s group. When I went on and on about it, Fred snapped, ‘Not everything is about you, sunshine. The Angel of the Dark Sun might not be you. I was there too, remember? Why are you shaking your head? Don’t I make a good evil angel?’
But the situation wasn’t a joking matter.
We returned home to the chalet by the seaside.
Spring arrived in Torquay, and Apocalypse Day neared. Fred wanted us to go back to Ground Zero in case Mandy returned there for the Gathering. I said it didn’t take two of us to wait on the off-chance. At last went on his own. His departure was well timed for Surtr’s arrival.
Surtr came alone, without even an android bodyguard, and landed an inc
onspicuous hired car in a meadow near the chalet. He stood tall in his white biosuit, its hood and veil up. Seeing that nobody else was around, he let the hood fold away, but glanced apprehensively at the chalet. When I told him that Fred was away, he relaxed. ‘Al, it’s so good to meet you again at last.’
I nodded and quickly turned around, heading to the chalet.
‘We’ll go to the beach first,’ he declared, catching up with me in large strides.
The tide was out. Surtr walked across the wide stretch of wet sand glistening in the afternoon sun, and stood at the water’s edge, gazing spellbound at the ocean. Then he explored the rock pools. I sat on a boulder watching him and wondered why I liked him. Perhaps because his sister talked about him so fondly, without ever letting on his true identity, in my mind he remained Fairweather’s little brother.
He came over and sat down next to me, his face flushed from the cold salty breeze. ‘You’ll have to tell me what the creatures in those pools are. I was hoping to see Fairweather’s frog.’
‘It doesn’t live in saltwater.’
‘I wish you fixed my biology homework too.’ We sat squashed side by side on the boulder. On impulse, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the lips. ‘Sleep with me.’
I froze, fighting the urge to push him away violently. The boulder was too small to put a physical distance between us, and I wasn’t going to be the one to budge. I blurted, ‘No way, hell’s bells, Surtr, no.’
‘Nobody has refused me before,’ he pointed out, taken aback, but let go.
‘Did you try it on people who don’t know who you are?’
‘I see your point. But you didn’t push me away.’
‘It took all my willpower not to hit you.’
He folded his arms and looked at me smilingly. ‘I’m really happy to see you. You’re so…so…’
‘Cute?’ I’d have punched him if he said that. But he grinned and said, ‘Cute doesn’t come into it. You are too scary. I was going to say untouchable.’
I looked away to hide my alarm, pretending to be distracted by a flock of seagulls. A large crow pecked perfunctorily amidst pebbles, then hopped to perch on a nearby boulder. If Surtr knows, Version 7 knows too. Perhaps he meant it literally, I tried to convince myself. But it occurred to me that his amorous advance was calculated to throw me off guard.