LIGHT

by M. John Harrison

  'Do you like someone as big as me?' she would ask him. 'Everyone you've fucked, they were small and nice.'

  This made him angry, but he didn't know how to tell her.

  'You're OK,' he said. 'You're beautiful.'

  She laughed and looked away.

  'I have to keep the room empty,' she said, 'in case I break things.'

  She was always gone in the morning. Ed woke late, ate breakfast at the Cafe Surf on the maritime strip, where he also got the news. War came closer every day. The Nastic were killing women and children off civilian ships. Who knew why? Space wrecks filled the holograms. Somewhere out near Eridani IV, children's clothes and domestic artifacts drifted slowly around in the vacuum as if they had been stirred. Some meaningless ambush, three freighters and an armed yawl, La Vie Fuerique, destroyed. Crews and passengers, gas in eighty nanoseconds. You couldn't make anything of it. After he'd eaten, Ed combed the circus for work. He talked to a lot of people. They were well disposed, but: none of them could help.

  'It's important you meet Madam Shen first,' they said.

  Looking for her became a game with him. Every day he picked someone new to represent her, some figure seen at a distance, sexually ambiguous, half-visible in the violent uplight from the concrete. In the evening he would pressure Annie Glyph with, 'Is she here today?' and Annie Glyph would only laugh.

  'Ed, she's always busy.'

  'But is she here today?'

  'She has things to do. She's working on behalf of others. You'll meet her soon.'

  'So, OK, look: is that her, over there?'

  Annie was delighted.

  'That's a man!'

  'Well, is that her?'

  'Ed, that's a dog!'

  Ed enjoyed the bustle of the circus, but he couldn't understand the exhibits. He stood in front of 'Brian Tate and Michael Kearney' and felt only confused by the manic gleam in Kearney's eye as he stared at the monitor over his friend's shoulder, the oddness of Tate's gesture as he looked up and back, the beginnings of understanding dawning on his harassed features. Their clothes were interesting.

  He did little better with the aliens. The huge bronze pressure tanks or mortsafes floating three or four feet offthe ground with a kind of oily resilience-so that if you touched one of them, however lightly, you could feel it respond in a simple, massively Newtonian fashion-filled him with a kind of anxiety. He was afraid of their circuitry inlays, and the baroque ribs that might as easily have been decoration as machinery. He was afraid of the way they followed their keepers across the site in the distance in the deceptive sea-light at noon. In the end, he could rarely bring himself to look in the tiny armoured-glass window that enabled you to see the MicroHotep or Azul or Hysperon they were supposed to contain. They hummed silently, or gave off barely visible flashes of ionising radiation. He imagined that looking into them was like looking into some kind of telescope. They reminded him of the twink-tank. He was afraid of seeing himself.

  When he admitted this to Annie Glyph, she laughed.

  'You twinks are always afraid of seeing yourselves,' she said.

  'Hey, I looked once,' he said. 'Once was enough. It was like there was a kitten in there, some kind of black kitten.'

  Annie smiled ahead of herself at something invisible.

  'You looked at yourself and saw a kitten?' she said.

  He stared at her. 'What I mean,' he explained patiently, 'I looked into one of those brass things.'

  'Still: a kitten, Ed. That's real cute.'

  He shrugged.

  'You could barely see anything at all,' he said. 'It could have been anything.'

  Madam Shen was a daily no-show. Nevertheless Ed believed he could sense her out there: she would come in her own good time, and he would have employment. In the meantime he rose late, drank Black Heart from the bottle, and crouched with the old men on the floor of the bar at the Dunes Motel, listening to them talk their desultory talk as the dice tumbled and fell. Ed won more than he lost. Since he left home he was lucky that way. But he kept throwing the Twins and the Horse and in consequence his dreams became as unsettled as Annie's. The two of them sweated, thrashed, woke, took the only route they could out of there. 'Fuck me, Ed. Fuck me as hard as you like.' Ed was hooked on Annie by then. She was his bulwark against the world.

  'Hey, concentrate. Or you playing catch-up now,' the old men told him gleefully.

  If Annie worked late, he played that shift too. The old men never switched on the light in their empty bar. The neon glow of the Tract, seeping in through the open door, was light enough for them. Ed thought they were beyond most things younger people needed. He was shaking the dice one night about ten when a shadow fell across the game. He looked up. It was the receptionist. Tonight she wore a fringed, soft-washed denim skirt. Her hair was up, and she had that fishtank-looking terminal of hers clutched under one arm like some white goods item she just that moment bought. She looked down at the money on the blanket.

  'Call yourselves gamblers?' she challenged the old men.

  'Yes, we do!' was their unison reply.

  'Well I don't,' she said. 'Give me those dice, I'll show you how to gamble.'

  She took the bone in one small hand, flexed her wrist and threw it. Double Horses.

  'You think that's something?'

  She threw again. And again. Two Horses, six in a row.

  'Well now,' she admitted. 'That's on the way to being something.'

  This trick, clearly familiar, made the old men more animated than Ed had ever seen them. They laughed and blew on their fingers to indicate scorching. They nudged each other, they grinned at Ed.

  'You'll see something now,' they promised.

  But the receptionist shook her head. 'I haven't come to play,' she said. They were upset, she could see. 'It's just,' she explained, looking meaningfully at Ed, 'I've got other things to do tonight.' They nodded their heads as if they understood, then looked at their feet to hide their disappointment. 'But, hey,' she said, 'it's Black Heart rum at the Long Bar too, and you know how you like the girls down there. What do you say?'

  The old men winked and grinned. They could be interested by that, they allowed, and filed out.

  'Why you old goats!' the receptionist chided them.

  'I'll come too,' Ed said. He didn't feel like being alone with her.

  'You'll stay,' she advised him quietly. 'If you know what's good for you.'

  After the old men had gone the room seemed to get darker. Ed stared at the receptionist and she stared back at him. Faint glimmers in the fishtank under her arm. She patted her hair. 'What sort of music do you like?' she said. Ed didn't answer. 'I listen to a lot of Oort Country,' she said, 'as you can probably tell. I like its grown-up themes.' They stood in silence again. Ed looked away, pretended to study the broken old bar furniture, the slatted shutters. A breeze came up off the dunes outside, fingered the objects in the room as if trying to decide what to do with them. After a minute or two, the receptionist said softly:

  'If you want to meet her, she's here now.'

  Ed felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He kept himself firmly facing away.

  'I just need a job,' he said.

  'And we have one for you,' said a different voice.

  Tiny lights began to pour into the room from somewhere behind Ed. He knew where they must be coming from. Nothing would be gained by admitting it, though: an admission like that could fuck up everything. I've seen a lot, Ed told himself, but I don't want the shadow operators in my life. The receptionist had put the fishtank down on the floor. White motes were pouring from her nostrils, from her mouth and eyes. Something pulled Ed's head round so that like it or not he had to witness this event: give it form by recognising it. The lights were like foam and diamonds. They had some kind of music with them, like the sound of the algorithm itself. Soon enough there was no receptionist, only the operator that had been running her, now busily reassembling itself as the little oriental woman he had already shot on Yulgrave Street. The
exchange was denim for slit cheongsam, Oort Country drawl for fiercely plucked eyebrows and the faintest delicate swallowing of consonants. After the transition was complete, her face shifted in and out of its own shadows, old then young, young then old. Strange then perfect. She had the charisma of some unreal alien thing, more powerful than sex though you felt it like that.

  'Things here are truly fucked up,' Ed whispered. 'Lucky I can just run away.'

  Sandra Shen smiled up at him.

  'I'm afraid not, Ed,' she said. 'This isn't a tank parlour. There are consequences out here. Do you want the job or don't you?' Before he could answer this, she went on: 'If not, Bella Cray would like a word.'

  'Hey, that's a threat.'

  She shook her head fractionally. Ed looked down at her, trying to see what colour her eyes were. She smiled at his anxiety.

  'Let me tell you something about yourself,' she suggested.

  'Oh ho. Now we get to it. How you know all about me though you never saw me before?' He grinned. 'What's in the fishtank?' he said, trying to see past her to where it lay on the floor. 'I've wondered about that.'

  'First things first. Ed, I'll tell you a secret about yourself. You're easily bored.'

  Ed blew on his fingers to indicate scorching.

  'Wow,' he said. 'That's something I never once thought of.'

  'No,' she said. 'Not that boredom. Not the boredom you manage from a dipship or a twink-tank. You've been hiding the real boredom behind that your whole life.' Ed shrugged a little, tried to look away, but now her eyes held his somehow, and he couldn't. 'You have a bored soul, Ed; they handed it to you before you were born. Enjoy sex, Ed? It's to fill that hole. Enjoy the tank? It fills the hole. Prefer things edgy? You aren't whole, Ed: it's to fill you up, that's the story of it. Another thing anyone can see about you, even Annie Glyph: you have a piece missing.'

  Ed had heard this more often than she thought, though usually in different circumstances he had to admit.

  'So?' he said.

  She stepped to one side.

  'So now you can look in the fishtank.'

  Ed opened his mouth. He closed it again. Suckered in some way he didn't follow. He knew he would do it, out of that very boredom she mentioned. He looked sideways in the light leaking through the open door. Kefahuchi light, which made Sandra Shen harder, not easier, to see. He opened his mouth to say something, but she got there first. 'The show needs a prophet, Ed.' She started to turn away. 'That's the opening. That's the deal. And you know, Annie could do with a little more cash. There's not much left after she scores the cafй йlectrique.'

  Ed swallowed.

  Sea shushing behind the dunes. An empty bar full of dust and Tract-light. A man kneels with his head inside some kind of fishtank, unable to pull himself free, as if whatever smoky yet gelid substance that fills it has clutched him and is already trying to digest him. His hands tug at the tank, his arm muscles bulge. Sweat pours off him in the shitty light, his feet kick and rattle against the floorboards, and-under the impression that he is screaming- he produces a faint, very high-pitched whining noise.

  After some minutes this activity declines. The oriental woman lights an unfiltered cigarette, watching him intently. She smokes for a while, removes a shred of tobacco from her lip, then prompts him:

  'What do you see?'

  'Eels. Like eels swimming away from me.'

  A pause. His feet drum the floor again. Then he says thickly: 'Too many things can happen. You know?'

  The woman blows out smoke, shakes her head.

  'It won't do for an audience, Ed. Try again.' She makes a complex gesture with her cigarette. 'All the things it might be,' she reminds him, as if she has reminded him before: 'the one thing it is.'

  'But the pain.'

  She doesn't seem to care about the pain. 'Go ahead.'

  'Too many things can happen,' he repeats. 'You know.'

  'I do know,' she says, in a more sympathetic voice. She bends down to touch his knotted shoulders briefly and absent-mindedly, like someone calming an animal. It's a kind of animal she knows very well, one with which she has considerable experience. Her voice is full of the sexual charisma of old, alien, made-up things. 'I do know, Ed, honestly. But try to see in more dimensions. Because this is circus, baby. Do you understand? It's entertainment. We've got to give them something.'

  When Ed Chianese came to, it was three in the morning. Sprawled face down on the oceanside at the back of the Dunes Motel, he gently felt his face. It wasn't as sticky as he had expected: though the skin seemed smoother than usual and slightly sore, as if he had used cheap exfoliant before a night out. He was tired, but everything-the dunes, the tidewrack, the surf-looked and smelled and sounded very sharp. At first he thought he was alone. But there was Madam Shen, standing over him, her little black shoes sinking into the soft sand, the Tract burning up the night sky behind her.

  Ed groaned. He closed his eyes. Vertigo was on him instantly, an after-image of the Tract pinwheeling against the nothing blackness.

  'Why are you doing this to me?' he whispered.

  Sandra Shen seemed to shrug. 'It's the job,' she said.

  Ed tried to laugh. 'No wonder you can't fill it.'

  He rubbed his face again, felt in his hair. Nothing. At the same time knew he would never get rid of the sensation of that stuff, sucking at him. And this was the thing about it: it wasn't actually in the tank. Or if it was it was somewhere else as well…

  'What did I say? Did I say I'd seen anything?'

  'You did well for your first lesson.'

  'What is that stuff? Is it still on me? What's it done to me?'

  She knelt briefly beside him, stroking his hair back from his forehead. 'Poor Ed,' she said. He felt her breath on his face. 'Prophecy!' she said. 'It's a black art yet, and you're at the forefront of it. But try and see it like this: everyone's lost. Ordinary people, they walk down the street, they've all had bad directions: everyone has to find their way. It's not so hard. They do it on a daily basis.'

  For a moment it looked as if she might say something more. Then she patted him on the back, picked up the fishtank and trudged off with it under her arm, up over the dunes and back to the circus. Ed crawled away through the marram grass to where he could throw up quietly. He had bitten his tongue, he discovered, while he was trying to lever the fishtank off his head.

  He had already made up his mind to try and forget the stuff he saw in there. That stuff made tank withdrawal seem like fun.

  NINETEEN

  Chimes of Freedom

  After he left the laboratory, Michael Kearney was afraid to stop moving.

  It began to rain. It got dark. Everything seemed to be surrounded by the pre-epileptic corona, a flicker like bad neon. A metallic taste filled his mouth. At first he ran around the streets, reeling with nausea, clutching park railings as he passed.

  Then he blundered into Russell Square station, and thereafter took tube trains at random. The evening rush had just begun. Commuters turned to watch him squat in the crook of a dirty tiled passage or the corner of a platform, his shoulders hunched over protectively as he shook the Shrander's dice in the basket of his clasped hands; turned away quickly again when they saw his face or smelled the vomit on his clothes. After two hours in the Underground system his panic diminished: he found it hard to stop moving, but at least his heart rate had decreased and he could begin to think. On a swing back through the centre, he had a drink at the Lymph Club, kept it down, ordered a meal he couldn't eat. After that he walked a little more, then caught a Jubilee Line train to Kilburn, where Valentine Sprake lived at the end of a long street of inexpressive three-storey Victorian stock-brick houses, the rubbish-choked basement areas and boarded-up windows of which attracted a floating population of drug dealers, art students, economic refugees from the former Yugoslavia.

  Political posters clung to the lamp-posts. None of the stained and rusty cars half up on the pavement among the wastepaper and dogshit were less than ten years old
. Kearney knocked at Sprake's door, once, twice, then a third time. He stepped back and with the rain falling into his eyes called up at the front of the building. 'Sprake? Valentine?' His voice echoed off down the street. After a minute something drew his attention to one of the top floor windows. He craned his neck to look, but all he could see was a piece of grey net curtain and the reflection of the streetlight on the dirty glass.

  Kearney put his hand out to the door. It swung inward, as if in response. Kearney stepped back suddenly.

  'Jesus!' he said. 'Jesus!'

  For a moment he had thought he saw a face peering round the door at him. It was smeared with streetlight, lower than you would expect to see a face, as if quite a young child had been sent to answer his knock.

  Inside, nothing had changed. Nothing had changed since the 1970s, and nothing ever would. The walls were papered a yellowish colour like the soles of feet. Low wattage bulbs on timers allowed you twenty seconds of light before they plunged the stairs back into darkness. There was a smell of gas outside the bathroom, stale boiled food from the second floor rooms. Then aniseed everywhere, coating the membranes of the nose. Near the top of the stairwell a skylight let in the angry orange glare of the London night.

  Valentine Sprake lay under a wash of fluorescent light, inside a chalk circle drawn on the bare floorboards of one of the upper rooms. He was sprawled up against an armchair, his head thrown back and to one side, as if he was at that moment being shot. He was naked, and he seemed to have covered himself with some sort of oil. It glistened in the sparse ginger hair between his legs. His mouth had fallen open, and the expression on his face was at once pained and restful. He was dead. His sister Alice sat on a broken sofa outside the circle, her legs out in front of her. Kearney remembered her in adolescence, slow-moving and vague. She had grown into a tall woman of thirty or so, with black hair, very white skin, and a faint downy moustache. Her skirt was drawn up to reveal white, fleshy thighs, and she was staring across Sprake's head at a picture on the opposite wall. From this strange cheap piece of religious art, a Gethsemane rendered stereoscopically in greens and bluish greys, the face and upper body of Christ yearned out into the room in a wrenched but determined gesture of embrace.