The Past has him now. He thought he had developed an unhealthy relationship with it since his decommission, but now he recognises that as nothing more than the flirtatious dance it was. This is what it means to lose yourself in it. A projection merely 12 inches high was all that was needed.
Dusty stares at the image of Daniel Attention that has appeared on his desk back at ReSure. Of course he knew him. Now that he can look into that face again, rendered just as it was thirty years ago, when the young man left them, a swirling cloud of sounds, smells and feelings descends – the sweet, dull whiff of the old willow bats, the pads and guards, the bark of the Academy coach (Dreyfuss was his name, wasn’t it). An existence long forgotten materialises as vividly as the little figure in front of him. It startles and bewitches him equally. That such memories exist; that they can have survived a life spent forever looking forward in disciplined devotion to the Next Match, the next bout, the next joule, the next day; that they should have lain all the while neglected in a remote corner of his brain, never to be accessed or even acknowledged. Until now, and the innocuous trigger of a face from his past.
Young men on the brink of achievement. Dusty can feel again the happy buzz of excitement that coursed through him daily back then. Focusing on what came next was natural in those days, without the weight of a long personal history to turn away from, to keep suppressed. He’d tripped lightly towards his life’s centre of gravity, which pulled him ever onwards to the next opportunity for excellence, each one presenting itself just ahead, a constant renewal of his raison d’être. When did that dynamic start to lose its momentum? Even when his past grew weightier than his future, he’d stepped steadily onwards. The Next Match occupied him entirely until he competed in his last. That certainty about what is to come has wavered since decommission, but now, confronted with the face of Daniel Attention, he feels his past seeping into his consciousness, squeezing out concern for the future, like a rising flood.
It is disabling. Apathy, nostalgia, weariness. These are his new companions. He can feel them feed off each other.
Daniel Attention. He was like that. At least, he was listless, reluctant to engage in the training that was demonstrably a prerequisite of excellence. Dusty found his apathy inexplicable. Why would anyone shy away from a simple decision whose virtues were unquestioned, self-evident even? And the decision to extend yourself in training was as simple as any they faced back then. Take it, and you had a shot at excellence; refrain, and you did not. No one so much as considered the latter.
Apart from Daniel, who hated training and constantly grumbled about the monotony of his existence. Dusty remembers feeling…feeling something for Daniel, who was in evident turmoil. But Daniel was alone. His plight went unrecognised, and if Dusty felt something for him, somewhere under layer after layer of conditioning and breeding, he never once stopped to consider what or why it was.
He feels for Daniel now, though. There was something squirming away deep inside Dusty all those years ago, and now it is raw and close to the surface. He still doesn’t understand it, but his relationship with Ivon is illuminating. In Ivon’s simple desire to play he detects an echo of Daniel’s anguish.
The day they took him away, Daniel had challenged their tutor yet again on the wisdom of another morning in the multigym. This time he refused to take part and sat in the corner singing gently to himself, while Dusty and the others worked out. That was the session they came for him. Dusty pictures it clearly now, that image of the boy on his desk precipitating the memory of the last time they saw him. There was no complaint from Daniel, or comment from any of the other batsmen in the Academy. One minute Daniel was there, the next he was not. Otherwise, life continued, unchanged.
Dusty wants to reach out to the young man now, to ease him through his pain, but the distance of the years renders that impulse useless and painful. It helps to be able to put a date on it, though, and here it is, in the body text of Daniel’s file.
16 Feb 2114 [a month before his nineteenth birthday], 09.17: Taken in, Academy of Cricket, Kennington. Defect: Exaggerated Peripheral Sensitivity. Prognosis: Irreversible. 16.23: Departs.
But did he depart? The files of Ricky and Dee no doubt say the same – he will check them shortly – but Dusty knows what fate befell them. Maybe Daniel Attention lives on. He could be in Wales, too. Or in any of the other corners of the globe unreceptive to the Perpetual Era. Iceland, the Falkland Islands, Australia…
The file on Daniel is absorbing. Dusty loses himself in it, recognising in the progress of a fledgling cricketer’s life the same sort of landmarks that delineate his own. Daniel emerged on 15 March 2095 at 17.41 in the London Generation Centre of Bat and Ball Resources, the progeny of Cuthbert Dorrigo, elite, left-hand bat, and Faith Dury, elite, left-hand bat. His names were conferred two days later, and on 22 March he was placed in the Clapham Bat and Ball Nursery. His cat scores from the age of eighteen months were consistently exceptional, earning him provisional tertiary status at the age of four and provisional elite at seven. He was accepted at the Academy of Cricket at the age of nine. Daniel, Ricky and Dusty were the leading left-handers of the ’95 batch throughout their time at the Academy. Dusty studies the progression of Daniel’s cat scores with pride, knowing that his were much the same – or, actually, always that crucial fraction better. Ricky struggled to accept his lot as Dusty’s inferior when the cat scores came through, regularly losing his temper in the early years, or becoming carried away with himself on those occasions he won out. The Academy worked him hard on his temperament. But Daniel was more phlegmatic. Dusty smiles at the memory of his easy-going shrug. ‘The next score’s the one that counts,’ he used to say.
It was after their TMS therapy, on 1 April 2111, that Daniel seems to have become unwell. Dusty is stopped by one entry in his file:
21 September 2111: Surveillance initiated, following irregularity in behaviour of Enrico Tribute, fellow participant in suspended Transmigration of the Skill therapy programme.
Uneasily but in haste, Dusty calls up Ricky’s file. He finds the following entry:
15 September 2111, 23.46: Intercepted, Armoury Way, Wandsworth. Irregularity: On bike during sleeping hours. Diagnosis: Impaired Modulation Facility. Prognosis: Manageable.
17 September: Surveillance initiated.
He calls up the files for Dee, Angela Hunter and Leanda Wellington. They were all placed under surveillance on 21 September 2111, as was Chad Meninga, a batsman from the ’96 batch. This means Dusty, too, must have been subjected to state scrutiny, as the seventh participant in the TMS therapy programme. He wonders if the file on him at the Institute of Improvement might contain any further information.
What was it about that TMS therapy programme that rendered them all of such interest to the state?
In each case, bar Dusty’s, the state’s suspicions were borne out, because all six of his co-participants were taken out of the system eventually. Daniel’s condition deteriorated the most rapidly, and his indolence was considered too subversive a delinquency to be tolerated. He was taken in for two degrees of Assimilation in October 2112, aged seventeen, with mixed results. In May 2113, he was subjected to all three degrees. There was an initial improvement in behaviour, but by the end of 2113 Daniel was openly contemptuous of his existence as an elite cricketer and, by extension, of everyone else’s. It was clear he could not continue.
Time is getting on, but Dusty runs his eye over Ricky’s file. If Daniel’s problem lay in rousing himself, Ricky’s was one of control. Today they would know precisely which areas of the nervous system to target for the Assimilation of such deviants, but things would have been different in those days, Assimilation a clumsier treatment, less readily resorted to. For Ricky, it was a case of management. He seems to have responded well. He made his elite debut for London on 16 July 2114, and he’d achieved it by managing his own temperament without intervention from the state.
But by 2118 he was starting to attract attention for the irregular na
ture of his relationship with Dee. Illicit rendezvous are recorded in his file, coitus in the field. Dusty smiles at the idea of off-grid coitus, coitus for its own sake – one thing to practise it in Wales, as he and Alanis did only the other week; another to do so in London, where coition terminals connected to the Grid are never more than a few minutes away. Such wanton and useless expenditure of energy amuses the new Dusty.
If only the state had felt that way. Clear evidence of Misalignment.
But another entry disturbs Dusty among those tracking Ricky’s relationship with Dee:
Mitigation recognised as participant in suspended Transmigration of the Skill therapy programme of 2111.
It seems grace was extended towards Ricky and Dee. All the more so when Dusty considers they were allowed to take exile in the end, rather than face Assimilation or shutdown.
Consistent with what Ricky told him in Wales, he and Dee applied for a procreation certificate on 22 April 2119. They were denied. Thereafter, the entries for Ricky’s erratic behaviour increase and culminate in that fateful innings Dusty remembers against the North West, the last time he’d seen Ricky before Wales, when he left the crease railing against the decision of the match computer. That was on 22 June, it says here. They came for him in the changing room. By the time Dusty had returned from his innings, Ricky had gone.
Defect: Impaired Modulation Facility. Prognosis: Irreversible. 21.33: Departs.
There is not time to study the files of Dee and the others, but Dusty has seen enough to know the sort of tale they will likely tell. High-flying batsmen in the Academy of Cricket, all subjected to a fateful programme of TMS therapy in 2111, all of them in some way or another derailed. All but Dusty.
The progeny of two of them, though, has returned, and London is about to tap into their genotype again. In an hour, Ivon makes his debut for URL. Dusty hurries across town to be there for it.
The rock is heavy in Ivon’s hands. It is solid, immutable, of the Earth, Welsh. He holds it on his lap, like a captain might hold a rugby ball for the team photo. This rock is roughly the shape of a rugby ball. That’s why they chose it. And on it there are four faded letters, crudely etched, the letters that name him: IVON.
Dad had carved each one, on the same day Ivon and he found the loose rock on Devil’s Bridge, out Rhossili way. How he’d clutched it as they picked their way urgently over the rocks from Worm’s Head, just before the tide reclaimed the last of the passage home. It was dangerous. The wind was up, and the water frothed menacingly between the last despairing fingers of dry rock. If they’d left it any longer, they would have been cut off from the mainland. That would have meant another eight hours out on the blasted headland, until the next ebbing of the tide, long after nightfall. They were not dressed for a night braced against wind and wildlife. Worse still, Dad would have had to explain himself again at home. They had to make it across, but they laughed all the way as they clambered along the edges to safety.
The letters are worn now, but still there. One bold stroke for I, two for V, and, before the three for N, four pinched scratches to make up the O, which hangs slightly out of line from the others, an arrow head, a diamond, a rugby ball.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, allowing the nervousness to percolate through him, clutching the rock to his chest. It is a ritual he has performed before every rugby match he has played since. This is the first time he has performed it outside Wales. The rock feels weightier here somehow. Through it he can commune with his parents, his friends, the rocks and fields of Gower.
He misses them. On the eve of a game, he would have talked Dad through his vision of the perfect 80 minutes for that match. Then, on the day, Dad would have talked him through his, a bundle of nervous energy on the other side of the kitchen table. A hug from Mum, and he would be out the door, picked up by Dai Rees and whisked off to be among a simmering throng of friends to die for, on the cusp of game-time.
Now is his calling to be strong. He’s doing this for them. To hold himself high, like the outermost point of Worm’s Head, which rises proudly against stormy seas. This is for Wales, sneered at and dismissed by the soulless. This is for Mum and Dad, expelled by the same. This is for Ivon, a reject before he was born. So much is converging upon him, the lightning rod. In Ivon are gathering the energies. In Ivon must the chemistry ignite.
The changing room throbs. Out there, above their heads, the arena is live and oppressive. The crowd are assuming position and working their levers and pedals. It is a metallic, ugly sound they make, and menacing too, like an army on the horizon. Deep beneath the pounding feet, an expectant call to arms is transmitted to those in the changing rooms. It fills the air with tension and omen.
Ivon’s head is bowed as he sits alone in his cubicle, cradling his rock, summoning the spirits of his homeland. He is sick with nerves and shakes his head as if to rid himself of them. Why must he suffer like this? He knows he’s good. In Wales, it was the pats on the back that affirmed his talent, the bar-side chats with old men who had seen them all, the looks from teammates when the game was there to be won or lost; and in England, within a few days, they’d supplied the stats to quantify his prowess. Ivon can play rugby. There is nothing to fear. He’s played hundreds of matches.
But never the next one. No matter his achievements, no matter the intellectual reasons for confidence, the fear of what is to come will always prevail. Ivon remembers his first game for Mumbles Youth, when Dad railed at him for not eating his lunch. And then on the morning of his Swansea debut he’d climbed into the ground and sat in the stand for two hours, staring at the pitch.
This time there are no superstitions to ease his fear, bar this communion with the smuggled rock of Ivon. London does not allow superstition. Here he has no father, no mentor, no friends, no cracks in the match-day routine to fill with impromptu séances. His teammates are lifeless and distant. Even Tim the scrum-half seemed vacant until they went out onto the pitch to warm up. They have retreated to their own cubicles now to make final preparations and adjustments. He is alone in his. When can it start?
The opaqueness of his little cell twists his mind, with its smooth walls and still, shadowless light. Ivon can bear it no longer. He heads for the door. It swishes open, and he tumbles into the courtyard. Tim is there already. They exchange a look but no words. A horn sounds close by. Tim starts at it and assumes a position outside his cubicle. Simultaneously, each player steps out to stand in file, before the climb up to the arena. The tall lock forward, whom Ivon knows now as Moby Trent, waits until all are ready. Silently, he leads the troop out of the changing room and up the steps to pitchside.
Ivon climbs with head down. The pounding of the stadium is muffled but reverberates thoroughly, as if they were underwater. With each step the noise sharpens and intensifies. Come the final few, the clarity is overwhelming. Ivon and his teammates break through the surface into a new world, which exists only for this, a bubble inaccessible to the outside and not governed by the same laws, into which the chosen few can pass only via that purgatory beneath the stands.
Ivon raises his head. First, he sees the opposition come out in time with them from an entrance on the other side of the pitch. Then, he takes in the great canopy above their heads and the walls around them of countless levers flashing to the rhythm of their operatives, the space swollen with the hard-edged din. The noise begins to abate as they walk towards the centre of the field, until a perfect hush descends, which might have thrown him had it registered. But Ivon’s focus has tightened.
Now his nervousness, so crippling underground, begins its transformation into the electric fluidity of being ready. It happens quickly, and by the time he stands over the halfway line with the ball in his hands, the agony of the preceding hours is purged and forgotten. His senses and reflexes are heightened, his field of reference narrow. He is a renewed animal, poised between this moment and the next, purely active, perfectly existent. This is what he is for.
Anonymity is not a conv
ention that comes naturally to Ivon. From up here, high among the 33 000 comps in the White City Arena, Dusty can see clearly which of the contestants below is different from the others. The luminescence of the hair marks out the London fly-half, even before his facility with the ball does.
This university match was not on Dusty’s comping schedule, but he managed to arrange a swap with one of the vets at ReSure. A swap to attend Ivon’s first match for London! The Welshman he has introduced into society! His presence here will not be viewed as a coincidence. Excessive Interest In Another. Dusty has built up much credit over the years, but credit will run out for even the most respected. The prospect no longer alarms him.
It is not the first time he has comped at a rugby match, but it is the first time he’s actually watched what happens on the field. As on the crude stone steps in Swansea, from which he first saw Ivon, he cannot take his eyes off the blond fly-half. Ivon’s every touch seems to reek of potential. The thrill of what might happen. Dusty suspects this new spirit moving him is Welsh. How much more ethereal it is, more life-giving, than the preoccupation with what is actual, the achievement, the points on the board.
Now Ivon has his first chance to convert some of the potential into actual. The stadium computer sounds its siren to signal a penalty for London. While Ivon lines up the shot at goal, Dusty prepares with everyone else to begin working the pumps. It’s a straightforward kick. But what’s this? The waterbot is bringing out not a regular kicking tee, but a bucket of sand! Ivon takes a scoop and pours it onto the glowing patch of turf that marks the point of offence. He seems to be constructing a platform of his own from which to launch the ball! How delightfully, delightfully…different! London really do want to make the boy feel at home. Dusty is impressed. He laughs and turns to the comp sitting next to him, eager to point out the idiosyncrasy, but thinks better of it. Besides, his neighbour is concentrating too much on his pumping position to be concerned with what’s happening on the pitch.
IVON Page 11