He should be going from here to meet Alanis.
Physical pain is all he recognises in this parody of the post-match ritual. He may have played only 20 minutes, but he feels as sore as if it had been 80. These English are fearsome specimens, and they hit hard. His body is rattled. And the inside of his head aches, as the last of his hangover is purged.
Ivon looks around at his teammates with despair. They are sober and earnest. He knows how they feel – he almost prefers losing to the irresolution of a draw – but why does he get the feeling that this is his new team in celebration? They shake hands and murmur to each other. Now the head coach breaks it up and sends them all to the benches along the walls of the room, where Ivon is already sitting. He is pleased. They have avoided defeat. He talks them through the statistics of the match, drawing attention every now and then to a notable performer. The accolades – if that’s what they can be called, for they are no more than the recital of dry numbers – are received in silence, no discernible pride in the recipient, no approval voiced by his teammates.
In time, Coach White looks straight at Ivon. ‘And, finally, when the commune needed him to, Ivon converted the penalty that earned us the draw.’
For the first time, Ivon has the attention of his teammates. He does not return the gaze of any of them, but looks instead at Coach White with a hangdog, sullen air, his elbows resting on his knees. Ivon is ashamed of his performance. They should have won. He could have won it for them. He would have without that computer in his head.
Coach White looks down at his tablet. It’s almost as if he is reading from it when he says: ‘That was an impressive debut. For an athlete new to elite sport, without the enhancements provided by genetic modifiers and hormonal supplements, without even the benefit of an Academy education, a PST quotient of 77.9 is encouraging.’
‘What does that even mean? PST?’
‘Purity of Skill Transmission.’
Ivon sits back and leans against the wall. He looks up at the ceiling, searching the featureless white for something, anything, a fleck of peeling paint, a smear of condensation. ‘And what does that mean?’
‘ProzoneX measures the end result of each skill as executed by an athlete against the intention as transmitted to the athlete by ProzoneX. The weight and direction of every pass, the force and angle of every tackle, and so on. A figure is generated for each athlete as a percentage of the ideal. More detailed breakdowns will be made available. Your PST for passing today was 87.3, which is…’ Coach White hesitates, as if something were caught in his throat, and looks down at his tablet, ‘exceptional. Although it was only for 20 minutes.’
Ivon is now slouching against the wall. ‘That wasn’t rugby,’ he says.
And there is silence.
‘You think I was good? I was shit. That’s the worst I’ve ever played.’
Laughter breaks out among a few of his teammates. Ivon ignores it, though it surprises him.
‘We should have won that game, boys! Instead, we let a computer take it away from us.’
Those that had laughed now begin to murmur. Coach White speaks out across them. ‘This is Misalignment, Ivon. You continue to speak as a Welshman. It was explained to you on the field why you were to kick for goal.’
‘That wasn’t an explanation. That was a maths lesson. Look! I know when a team is broken. Any player knows it. They were broken. We just had to win the line-out and keep our composure.’ Ivon looks around at some of the forwards. ‘You must have realised that,’ he implores them.
Ivon is confronted by hard, unmoving faces. Not one looks of a mind to reply, and Coach White speaks before any can.
‘The probability of scoring the try was 23.2 per cent.’
Ivon scoffs. ‘We would have scored! I know it!’
‘ProzoneX computes data from every match that has ever been contested. It has a precise, statistical measure of how we are faring against our opposition not only in any given eighty-minute match but across any given five minutes of any match. It knows. And, when it issues a directive based on a precisely calculated balance of probabilities, it is right that we follow that directive and not the emotion-led hunch of a Lapsed Era Welshman.’
‘Ha! You’re right! I work on intuition, not data. I should have taken control myself. Kicked for the corner. Forced you all to do the right thing.’
‘There would have been profound repercussions for you if you had.’
Ivon flushes.
‘There is no need for this,’ Coach White continues. ‘Why would you rebel against a consciousness that can hold and appraise far more information about the match than you, as a human, ever could, and can make decisions based on it far quicker? You did as ProzoneX instructed today, and you put in a shift that was really, really…good.’
Suddenly, there is a bellow of exasperation from the other side of the room. ‘Oh, come on!’ cries one of the players. Ivon looks to see which one. It is Mike Bulstrode, who glares at him aggressively with mighty arm outstretched. ‘Why are we bothering with this Lapsed Era rhetoric? “Really good”, “exceptional”, “encouraging”, “impressive”. Idling hell! Let’s just assimilate him! He can do a job for us. He can kick, pass, run – anything ProzoneX wants. Let’s make sure he does it.’
The room settles into silence once more, its natural state. Ivon can’t remember how he came in, can’t see where he goes out. The four walls of the square are lined with men he barely knows, men he can barely tell apart. Dead, sourceless light fills the room.
Coach White rises to his feet. ‘Let’s end it there.’
XII
Dusty has decided to take steps. For two days, Ivon has not been receiving comms. And he didn’t show up at the club this afternoon for a bout with Adriana Platt. If Ivon is ever to see his homeland again, Dusty must act now. He has left messages, but he can’t be sure Ivon knows how to pick them up. He closes his eyes to study the address he has taken from the Resources database. Ivon is currently living at 23 43rd West, Richmond.
Dusty is resolved to seek him there. Can he do it? After his recent trips to Wales, the idea of entering another’s home no longer appals him – indeed, he warms to it as an affirmation of his new-found Welshness, his affinity for the Lapsed Era. And yet…
He has not left his own home. He paces through it, he presses his hands against the glass, he fizzes intolerably. But he has not left his own home. Social norms are powerful, even to those who no longer want to be governed by them.
He is being ridiculous. He can leave his home, at least. Go for a cycle. Head south, follow the river west. Find himself in Richmond. Who would ask questions or interfere? He is Dusty Noble. He wears the green of elite. He has walked with managers, scored 95 000 runs. Why must he keep reminding himself of these things?
Olympus Dan.
Ivon opens the message sent to the whole squad by Coach White. Their ‘Next Match’ is on Wednesday against Yorkshire, the league leaders. It’s a four-day turnaround from the last one, their shortest of the year, and there is an injury crisis at fly-half. Coach White is fielding a new team. Ivon is to start.
‘Olympus Dan is the first DGF athlete to break through in elite rugby,’ the message reads. ‘He is nineteen years of age and, at 6 feet 8 inches, the tallest man in England. View his file. The scientific community is pleased with the successful application of DGF technology and with this contestant in particular, who best represents it. He is the league’s most productive athlete and a significant factor in Yorkshire’s success this year.’
Ivon opens the file. His eyes are closed. The vision of a formidable man fills his head. He looks years beyond his stated age. His bare forearms, folded across his chest, seem to come at Ivon, rude slabs of muscle and twisting vein. They look in no way elongated. None of him does. Isolated in Ivon’s brain, this man’s height is impossible to gauge, but he is in perfect proportion. If he really is 6 feet 8 inches, he is bigger than any man Ivon has ever seen. There is a look of amusement on Dan’s face, sneeri
ng, impregnable amusement, the look of a creature at the top of the food chain. His forehead is heavy, his jaw clean and wide, the eyes large and pinched in each corner, as if Oriental genes had been among those deliberately fused in this man.
A column of stats runs down the side of his image. They mean nothing to Ivon, a jumble of numbers and ‘g’s and ‘m/s’s and all that. Ivon plays the footage that accompanies the file. Olympus Dan bursts from the base of a scrum. The footage pauses, and a series of arrows and numbers and ‘g’s appear. The viewing angle swoops round him, isolating him, magnifying him. Glorifying him, thinks Ivon. Then the film runs on to show Dan’s lowered shoulder crunch into an opposition flanker who has gone too high on him. The footage pauses again, as the flanker’s jaw breaks away from his head, a finger of blood just beginning to spew. More arrows, more numbers more ‘g’s.
Ivon stops the footage and opens his eyes. He thinks again, for the umpteenth time in the last 48 hours, of that moment in Saturday’s game, when he saw the defender’s eyes leave him, when he felt in that instant, that precious, vital instant, the certainty that he could break the first line, create havoc in a regimented defence. You have to act in those moments. No one is better than he is at acting in those moments. But he didn’t. He let it go. He let the computer invade his head and change him, make him a worse player. He could have overruled it, he knows he could.
This Olympus Dan. He’s a human, isn’t he? He follows orders, plays to the rhythms of a dead computer, like the rest of them. Ivon can take him. He leaps from out of the naked white corner he’d been crouching in and runs in tight circles round his house. A pulse, lither than electricity, tingles through his body as he shimmies off his right foot, then another sends him off his left. He ducks into the simulator, grabs a rugby ball and fires another punt into the simu-wall. Sixty-nine metres. Bosh! He is manic again. He wants to beat people. He suspends his mania as best he can, trying to programme his chip to present him with the biggest, ugliest rugby players known to science. Can he ask for Olympus Dan himself? His mind is racing, so that he fumbles the controls, as if operating them with tremulous fingers. He closes his eyes and forces himself to be still, breathing deeply, flitting more accurately through the options in his head. No Olympus Dan is available, but there are others. Soon he is dashing lightly past a succession of muscular clones in his head, occasionally scragged by one of them, as represented by the morphing droids in the simulator. The droids are quick, they are strong. Why don’t they just do away with players altogether? Set up a game between London’s computer and Yorkshire’s, transmitted through the droids. Because Ivon is quicker, Ivon is stronger. He is alive. Another beaten. And another. Then, bang! He mistimes a shimmy and is knocked off his feet. He lands on his back on the yielding surface of the simulator and looks up at an iron-faced athlete leering over him, its shoulder bonier and more sinewy than whatever it was that just hit him then.
He flicks off the simulation. The ceiling above him is like any other in this sugar-free world. It is white. Not white the adjective; White the noun. A distillation of what it is to be White. Whiteness personified. Any ceiling-ness a subsidiary property, easily overlooked. They should have won on Saturday. He should have won it for them. He sees the eyes flit across to the next man along. He feels the ethereal flicker of opportunity rise up in him. And the sick horror of its passing without action. He is nothing without the facility to act.
The ache of longing now takes a turn on him. And where there’s longing there is Alanis. How he wishes he could see her face light up at the news of another vital win, a win inspired by him. How he wishes he could see her face. He received a message from the club yesterday. She had pulled out of their date in the sex cot today and someone else was stepping in to replace her. Just like that. No explanation, no consultation. The only comfort that had helped him through the agony of yesterday was the prospect of seeing Alanis, and even that was removed at 17.58 when the message came through. ‘Alanis Fountin is unable to fulfil…’ The message appears in his vision again – there, floating against the Whiteness, the letters, the numbers, commonplace and inoffensive, yet arranged in such a way as to devastate him. Get them away! He shakes his head, furiously trying to rid it of the words, then holds his breath to calm himself and take the steps to delete them.
Maybe it was the result. The draw. His failure. Would she have cancelled if London had won the match the day before? If he had stayed true to himself?
But he hadn’t. He missed his moment. Which others went with it?
Seize every opportunity. Act. Mum used to tell him that. All she ever told him, really. It was her thing. Quiet, insistent, pertinent, amid all the other stuff from Dad.
Mum. Dad.
Alanis.
Home.
He will not yield. He will not take no for an answer. Not from Alanis, not from ProzoneX, not from Olympus Dan.
He will impose himself. There is something in him. He is Ivon.
It is getting late. Dusty has done away with the original plan to approach this great taboo by a circuitous route of no suspicion. The river can wait for another day. He has charged headlong at his destination, instead. South-westwards through Maida Vale, Ladbroke Grove and Shepherd’s Bush, joining the Great Western Arcade at Hammersmith, pedalling through its airy pavilions, on to Kew, and thence south across the river through the Kew Arboretum and Deer Park to the foot of Richmond Hill. He climbs it now, engaging his hybrid navigator. A bold red line leads him onwards up the blue road, through neatly arranged formations of south-facing homes, curved to follow the sun.
Ivon’s home is on the next street but one on the left, just below the brow of the hill. For the first time, Dusty slackens his pace. Is he really going to attempt this? This is Ivon’s home, his sanctuary, for him alone. What right does he have to violate the sacred haven of another? He slows again, as he turns the corner. And there, just 77 metres away, the red line halts, rearing up into a beacon outside 23.
He stops. A lifetime’s immersion in the Perpetual Era. ‘A home of your own, for you alone’. How would he feel, even now, if someone invaded his? ‘I’d be fine,’ he thinks. ‘Of course. I welcome it. It is the Welsh way.’
Enough. He faces more urgent issues than to fuss over questions like this. Besides, Ivon is Welsh. To him, it would mean nothing. Dusty must see him. And then devise a way to take him back to Ricky and Dee.
He rides on. Ivon’s home lies on the westward side of Richmond Hill. It sits, like those nearby, on an embankment, in order to retain its southerly aspect. The entrance is set into the side of the house. Dusty must ride past the sweep of its up-tilted window wall to seek access. As he stops to dismount, he wonders how he might get in. There is little chance of Ivon answering his comm all of a sudden, but he prepares to try him. Otherwise, he will see if he can catch his attention from outside.
‘Dusty Noble!’
Dusty is startled. It is a powerful voice, and it rings inside his head. The shock of an unexpected direct comm alarms him. Out here, it can only have come from a security officer. He looks around, and on the road a few steps behind stands a man dressed in the black of the security class.
‘Dusty Noble!’ he says again, this time voiced, as he strides slowly in Dusty’s direction. ‘Veteran elite cricketer. Archivist at the Repository of Suspended Resources. Resident of the Veteran Elite Quarter for London Cricket. Hampstead.’
Dusty’s chest rises at the introduction. His heart is fast, but boldness gathers within it, as it did when he stood strong in the cause of commune and country.
‘What brings you here?’ says a new voice to his right.
Another security officer is approaching in the same manner from further down the road.
‘I’m on a ride. I fancied a trip south of the river. Lactic acid levels were medium-low, I have joules to burn this week, so I decided on some repeats on Richmond Hill.’
The first officer smiles and looks to his comrade. He moves in closer to Dusty, while the other co
ntinues his approach.
‘You know whose home this is, don’t you…’
The enquiry is pitched halfway between question and statement.
‘Do you?’ says Dusty.
The officer smiles again curtly.
Dusty races through scenarios. His first thought is that these officers have been detailed to shadow Ivon. For what? To watch him? To protect him? Ivon’s an asset, but not yet so important that he be a target for that level of espionage. Dusty doesn’t know where these officers came from – perhaps a concealed aero, perhaps nearby homes – but he is sure they were here already.
He considers remounting his bike and pushing on without explanation. They know who he is, so they must have called up his file. They will know from it that he is a veteran of high standing. But the higher the better, as far as some security officers are concerned. He doesn’t want to risk the indignity of an immobiliser to his central chip. Or the pain.
Dusty decides to stand his ground and come clean. He can see no reason why he shouldn’t be here. It’s not as if he has crossed any threshold yet.
‘I’ve been trying to get hold of the man whose home this is. He has been off-comms for two days now. I came to try to effect a meeting with him. Out here, of course.’
‘What is your business with Ivon?’ says the second officer.
They are shadowing him.
‘Ivon is a unique athlete,’ says Dusty, stalling for time as he gathers his thoughts. ‘He is of great interest to the scientific community.’ Dusty thinks of Syracuse Garbo. ‘There’s a scientist I need to speak to. He’s an Exempt, but Ivon knows how to contact him.’
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