‘What do you know about Ricky and Dee?’
‘Bye, bye, Dusty.’
Before he knows what’s happening, Dusty is compelled by a sudden instinct to leave the aero. But it’s not his instinct. By the time he has re-gathered himself in the street, the aero is gliding away, its door swinging shut.
He lost control of himself for a moment there, which can mean only one thing. Garbo has clearance to use Impulse Manipulation Software. It’s the first time Dusty has seen it deployed away from the field. Who is this man? He seems to know more about Dusty than Dusty does.
V
So, he’s in. The University of Rugby, London. They really liked the way he stood in a kind of wind tunnel, firing passes at various targets for hours on end. Ivon caught hundreds of balls from all angles with just about the perfect degree of traction between hand and rubber. His ball striking was unerring in its precision, powerful in its timing. Pace off the mark, searing; footwork, mesmeric; physical constitution, robust; fitness, tackling, concentration, blah, blah, blah. When can he just go out and play? Fuck.
It turns out he’s a cat-score genius. No idea what all those numbers they read back at him meant, but there were enough people called in to look at them for him to know they were good.
It’s been a week since he arrived in London. He’s spent most of that time performing stunts for people dressed in white. A lot of it he has spent awake on the most uncomfortable beds known to man. They’re sort of wavy in shape, designed to hold you in the perfect posture all night, but you have to sleep on your back, and Ivon has always slept on his front. Last night was his first in URL’s student quarter in a place called Shepherd’s Bush. Wasn’t a bush in sight, just glass and smoothness, outside and in, not a kink of personality anywhere.
And they don’t drink, the English. They don’t drink. They train, they eat, they rest, they spend hours on interactive video games (except they’re in 3D). And they play sport. Apparently. But they don’t drink. Fuck.
Still, no one said it was going to be easy. All they talk about here is maximising productivity. Drinking, he realises, is not going to help with that. Lightening up a bit might, though.
That’s why he’s so looking forward to this date with Alanis at her club. They won’t be drinking, he knows that. Although he could do with a jar, just to break the ice, loosen things up. The English go to their clubs for recreation, and Ivon looks forward to a break from all the seriousness. He imagines they play squash or indoor football or something. At least it’ll be sport.
The bike he’s on has no chain. Riding it started off as a sublime experience. No chain, no grinding of gears, everything is perfectly silent on the sky-blue, rubbery roads that cut between the glass and shininess of London and generate energy just from folk passing along them. He’s turning an intricate network of magnets in his bike, they tell him, which is why he feels as if he’s floating. Or at least, he did when he started the journey, but now he’s labouring. A nifty little screen on the handlebars is showing him the way. The NorthWest3 Club in Belsize Park. The climb from Shepherd’s Bush is tough, but if there was one aspect of his constitution that did not set the scientists fizzing with excitement it was his fitness. Not surprising really – everyone in London seems to be going faster than he is. Why don’t they just use cars?
When he arrives he is breathing heavily. He can feel a light sweat on his brow, but his body remains cool and dry, somehow regulated by these magic suits they’ve given him, light like a T-shirt, substantial like a wetsuit, tight yet accommodating. They talk to the little chip they’ve put in his neck and respond accordingly. Ivon pokes his chest, and the yellow material bends playfully round his finger, like a film of adoring coral. He shakes his head and enters the club.
It is mellower inside than any of the buildings he’s been in so far. The foyer gives off a blueish hue, softened by gentle curves in the smooth off-white walls, which seem to grow towards a cavernous ceiling several metres overhead. They are friendly at reception, and when he finds Alanis in the lounge her face lights up. He feels at home for the first time.
‘Ivon!’ she says, as she leaps to her feet from a chaise longue of lazy curves and warm, glowing redness.
She holds out her hand, the way they do here, which Ivon takes. When she pulls his hand into her, she presses it against her breasts. Is that normal, he wonders, or does she fancy him? On his turn, he is careful to pull her hand in tenderly. He wants to put his arm round her too, but resists.
‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘I’ve booked us a cot.’
‘A cot?’
‘A coition terminal. I’ll show you.’
Ivon follows her deeper into the complex, down corridors that continue the organic feel, curling overhead like living tunnels. There are doors at regular intervals, and Alanis starts to check each one’s number more carefully.
‘Here we are,’ she says, placing her hand over one of those little screens that open doors. ‘You have to scan yourself in, as well,’ she says over her shoulder. Ivon does as he is told. ‘It’s just to confirm that we’ve gone in together.’
The room glows into life. It is small, lit with that same blueishness he’d noticed in the foyer. He can see two showers to his left, and to his right is an alcove containing a curious chair, or is it a bench? He moves closer to inspect it. Like so much in London it appears to have the property of movement, flexibility, life. There is what looks like a display panel hanging over it.
‘Coitus,’ says Alanis behind him, ‘is how we enjoy ourselves.’
Coitus? The word is familiar to Ivon. Doesn’t it mean…?
He turns round to see Alanis naked before him in a crouching position, as if in the middle of a warm-up. She continues to speak matter-of-factly, before straightening up and slipping past him towards the chair/bench thing.
‘It’s also an important way to generate energy, because it’s not linked to sporting productivity. Although, of course, the more vigorous, lengthy and noisy the coitus, the more energy created.’ She turns and does not so much sit on the strange contraption as let it take her. This it does elegantly, bending, tilting and growing until it cradles her perfectly.
‘And there’s no better way to get to know people.’
Fucking hell. Even if Ivon knew where to look and found it to be somewhere else, it would be impossible to avoid staring at Alanis, blithely reclining with legs apart on her dais, which holds her out to him like a pearl in an oyster. So stare at her is what he does, amazed.
Then he laughs. He is a long way from home, and she is one hell of a woman, with strong thighs and a firm bosom. Here is the final confirmation. He reaches for the clasp in his collar and flicks it open. His suit falls away from him. Undressing is so much easier here than in Wales. What does that do for passion? No matter. She’s waiting. The passion is upon him.
He approaches the cot – for that is what he assumes this equipment to be. Are they really going to do this?
Still she waits. He places a hand beside her shoulder and a knee between her legs. It should be an awkward moment, beset with slip and fumble, but the cot responds to his arrival, morphing and shifting again until his position feels more natural and comfortable than any he has assumed with a woman before. A vision of Cerys flits lightly through his mind, but this won’t be the first time he’s been with another woman – and he wants to forget, oh God, how he wants to forget! When he joins Alanis, the cot, no, the entire alcove within which it is set, springs into life, humming and swaying in time with its lovers.
But it is the manner in which she bursts into life that makes the deepest impression on him. As coitus ensues, she lets go a long, rising shriek, like a ritual appeal to some goddess of energy, dissolving in Ivon any last vestige of self-consciousness. Her moans and cries fill the little cavern. She implores him to make more noise himself, to thrust harder. Ivon wants to please, more than he ever has. The passion is upon him, indeed. They yell together and sway together, the bed moves, yea, the very cocoo
n they play in is alive with their crescendo. What a woman! What a concept! What sex!
It is too much. Ivon slumps on top of her. The cot adjusts. She reaches up and pulls down the display that has all the while hovered above them.
‘Hmm,’ she says, as she studies the figures. ‘Not bad wattage, but we’re way short on time. We didn’t even make it to the first changeover.’
‘The what?’
‘The first changeover. After five minutes, the woman assumes responsibility for momentum.’
‘Oh.’
‘Still, it’s your first time. You’ll improve. Shall we try again on Thursday?’
Dusty and Sonya Trick collect their isotonics and amble into the recovery lounge. He is tingling. They’ve had quite a bout. For a pair of veterans, they are most productive. Dusty enjoyed it, which is a development, because, lately, coitus with anyone other than Alanis has felt a chore. It’s as if Alanis has fallen out of his life since Wales, as if her incompatibility with Wales means incompatibility with him. In her place have stepped Ivon, the brilliant new centrepiece of his preoccupations, and his growing fascination with the Past.
He watches Sonya sigh and stretch out on a recovery couch. Indulging his new taste for memory recall, he tries to think how long he must have practised coitus with her. They would have been cot partners before Alanis even emerged. It’s possible they learned it on each other. It also occurs to him that Sonya must have been a contemporary of Dee at the Academy all those years ago. He wants to ask her about that, but a recovery lounge is no place to spring suspicious questions about the Past. Dusty does not want to create a scene.
As Dusty prepares to settle on a couch himself, Ivon and Alanis come into the lounge. Ivon smiles warmly at the sight of him; Alanis freezes. Dusty’s first instinct is to dislike seeing them together. At first, he takes it as notice that his preoccupation with Alanis is still strong, but then he realises that it is Alanis herself he envies. Ivon is his discovery, his dream, his hope – his. Yet there must always be distance between them. He thinks of Ricky and Dee again. And Wales.
Alanis strides off towards the dispenser, but Ivon stays to talk. His smile has become a grin, wide and mischievous. His hair is wild and yellow-white, his cheeks glowing and the nose sharper and more impudent than ever. ‘Was that…?’ he says, gesturing towards the club’s interior. ‘Is that how we do it? Seriously?’
It takes Dusty a moment to appreciate what he is saying. He nods slowly.
‘I don’t know what to think. Wow.’
Ivon throws himself on the nearest couch, and Dusty takes up position on its twin. Ivon looks at him properly.
‘I tell you what, that business in there will help, don’t get me wrong, but, fuck, Dusty, I’m fizzing here! I’ve got to play. When can I play?’
‘You will. Just stay patient. You’ve been tested now. I know they’re impressed. They’ll give you a shift soon, I’m sure. It’s only university level, which at URL is tertiary standard. So it’ll be good rugby, but it’s not elite.’
‘When can I play elite?’
‘Just give it time.’
‘All this talking and sprinting and skill-isolation bollocks is doing my head in. It’s like the cricket thing. This isn’t rugby. It’s not even training. It’s just focusing in on something until it’s so microscopic you’ve lost track of what it’s a part of, or what it’s for. Which is rugby. I want to play rugby.’
‘It’ll happen.’
Ivon seems to accept this, but a new mood quickly comes over him. Suddenly, the sparkle dims a degree. ‘Listen, about Alanis. I… Are you two…?’ He shrugs and waggles his finger in the air. ‘You know, together?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, she was with you in Wales. I just wondered if you two were an item?’
Dusty smiles slowly. ‘Do you mean like Ricky and Dee are?’
‘Yeah. Like Ricky and Dee.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, good. Because, I tell you, she practically jumped on me. I wasn’t going to turn her down, obviously, but I just didn’t know the form, see. I’m fucking chuffed she’s not your girlfriend or anything.’
‘You’re talking about interpersonal love, aren’t you? It doesn’t work like that here. Coitus is practised freely between everyone.’ Dusty pauses to think of an analogy Ivon might understand. ‘It’s like drinking a lager with someone.’
‘So you go in for free love here. That’s what you’re saying?’
Dusty nods, but he is unsure.
‘Wow.’ Ivon puffs out his cheeks and rests his head on the couch. ‘Do you know how I can speak to my parents? Can I use this chip they put in my neck?’
Dusty stops himself from giving the answer, which is no – to both questions. ‘Why do you want to speak to them?’ he says instead.
‘Well, I’ve been here a week. It’s time I spoke to them, don’t you think? Just to let them know I’m OK.’
‘Right.’
Ivon runs his hand through his hair and holds it there. ‘My phone won’t work here. I want to talk to them. There must be phones in London.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
Dusty hadn’t anticipated this. The desire to return to Wales, yes; but the desire just to speak to people there…that is a curious compulsion. He trusts, for now, that its likely denial will not cause too much disquiet in the boy.
VI
At last. Some action. They want him to play. They want him to play tomorrow. The university fly-half has broken his arm in a freak bike accident and will miss the next match at least.
‘Do you always play on a Thursday?’ Ivon asked the coach, a bloke they refer to as Coach Davis, when he told him.
‘You play when you’re told.’
‘In Wales we play rugby on a Saturday, mainly.’
‘You’re not in Wales any more.’
He didn’t argue. No way. Some proper sport at last. They were throwing him straight in for the home game against the University of Aberdeen. It meant he had to cancel his date with Alanis at the club, but she didn’t seem to mind. They would rearrange.
He’s already walked round the outside of White City Arena. It was one of the first rituals he performed when they placed him at URL. Check out the ground. He’s always done it. Walking the pitch at Mumbles as a boy. Then peering through the railings at St Helen’s as a teenager. Dreaming. Or visualising. Engaging the imagination, at any rate, and the soul.
He couldn’t see the pitch at White City from the road. And he didn’t try to go in. It didn’t look as if he could. At ground level the stadium rose first into a forbidding, smooth black mound, impenetrable as far as he could tell. Wide walkways from the north, south, east and west swept up to the top of the first plateau, from which rose a further dome, shiny, glass and of swirling darknesses. He circled it twice that first time, but it yielded not a chink.
For the team run, he and his new teammates – although they keep calling themselves comrades – have been admitted through a modest aperture that has miraculously opened in the north wall. There are twenty-four such entrances around the ground, apparently, but Ivon can’t make out any of the others, the glass is so smooth. This one leads them down into a high-ceilinged changing room of no natural light, but a dispassionate flood of illumination, seemingly source-less, leaves not a shadow or nook unlit. Each player has a cubicle of his own, and when Ivon and his teammates gather in the courtyard at the centre of the changing room, on benches arranged in a circle, he is introduced without enthusiasm by Coach Davis.
His teammates are as glassy and cold as the city. The haircuts are of uniform length, which is little longer than a crop. Their studious air holds the changing room tightly. At first, the only hint of personality Ivon can detect is the conviction that his predecessor as fly-half has fallen foul of malpractice.
‘He thinks someone got at the transmission in his front wheel,’ says the tallest guy in the team, not to Ivon but loudly enough so that he could hear. ‘He says he
was cycling at high speed when he felt the magnets drift then lock.’
‘That’s not right. What could have caused that?’
‘Magnet misalignment, maybe. A foreign body. He’s not even sure there wasn’t a little explosion.’
‘Someone’s taken him out.’
‘What? Espionage? At tertiary level? Didn’t think Aberdeen had that in them.’
‘He’s touch and go for the UEA match as well.’
‘Well, there’s no way they did it.’
Suddenly, the intense flanker who has been sitting on a bench on the fringe of the group, flexing his hamstrings incessantly, turns his hollow eyes on Ivon. ‘What about Ivon?’ he says. ‘He’s the one who benefits in the first instance.’
The room falls silent. Ivon looks from empty face to empty face.
‘What?’ he says, plaintively.
There is no reply.
‘You think I fucked with his magnets?’
Not a muscle moves in the room, save the flanker’s hamstrings.
‘But I don’t even know how these bikes work! They’re a mystery to me. Like magic.’
The silence is broken by Coach Davis’s return to the room, and the players retreat to their cubicles. Ivon’s kit is waiting for him in his. He wants to rip off his day suit and fling it in the corner, but London clothing does not lend itself to fits of pique. Instead he flicks the clasp and waits as his suit unpeels itself from him. His rugby kit is similar, although he has to pull it up to his crotch before it climbs up and round him. Within seconds it has him in a firm embrace. The kit stops just short of his elbow and at the top of his thigh. It is black with red trim. The boots, when he steps into them, unravel up his calves, before tightening gently round his feet and muscles. The soles will respond, they tell him, to whatever surface they find themselves on and whichever split-second intention flits through the brain. For now, their electric lightness has an inspiring effect, and he flashes up the metal stairs to the pitch as if launching into flight.
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