IVON

by Michael Aylwin

  He looks about at the tools of their business. The quaint strips that illuminate the Shed are tucked out of sight, above architraves and beneath surfaces, but they are clear sources of light that might not look out of place in Wales. All around him are labelled shelves, drawers and containers neatly cataloguing equipment for the handling of suspended assets, some of it still in use, most of it obsolete now the systems have been automated – trolleys, magnetic handles, rope, cleaning agents, cylinders, valves, handsaws. But it is the item in his hand that holds his attention – a chip-pull. Dusty turns it over. He holds it to the webbing between his forefinger and middle finger, as if about to perform the procedure. His finger hovers over the trigger. Could he do it? Would he do it if the moment came? Will he. When.

  It’ll sting, most probably, but that’s the least of the issues. A puncture of the skin, followed by the drawing up of his identity chip through the flesh, to be presented at the end of the needle as a grain of metal. From puncture to retraction, 53 milliseconds, from integration to isolation, a citizen to an outcast.

  The device is smooth and black, light and innocuous. Ergonomic in the right hand, ergonomic at the aperture, the nozzle fitting perfectly between fingers. It would be impossible to miss its target, or to bend this device to any other use. He pictures himself on an aqua-trainer with Ivon, well out to sea. Punch, and he’s off the Grid; lean over to Ivon and, punch, so’s he. Then onward, onward to Wales. What a rare opportunity – to work in ReSure and be of a mind to desert. Without the latter he would never have thought to remove his identity chip; without the former, he would never have known it to be possible. Perpetual citizens are claimed at birth, a grain of metal in their hand and a set of values in their soul. Few pause to consider either. None know of a life without them. To remove all that…

  ‘I wouldn’t do it if I were you.’

  Dusty is jolted from his reverie. There at the doorway, face dripping from that aquiline nose, is Syracuse Garbo.

  ‘I think you might find that the final straw,’ he says. ‘The file on you is building. Nothing decisive yet, but becoming the first animate asset in Perpetual history to take himself off the Grid – that would certainly clinch it.’ Garbo takes a few steps into the room. ‘Surely, if you were serious about this, you would perform the procedure somewhere they couldn’t swoop on you within minutes.’ He idly pulls open a drawer marked drill bits. ‘In Wales, for example.’

  Dusty stares at the chip-pull, frozen in his hand. He considers making an emergency show of good citizenship, but why bother? Garbo probably knew about his plans before Dusty had even dreamed them up.

  ‘Do you really think they’d just let you go? Dusty Noble, the batsman of a generation.’ He leans over and taps Dusty on the forehead with a drill bit. ‘There’s too much they want in here. And it is theirs, of course.’

  With an irritable swipe of his hand, Dusty brushes the drill bit away. ‘They,’ he sneers. ‘Them. Why do you always try to act the neutral? You are one of them.’

  ‘If I were one of them, you’d have been taken to the IC a long time ago. If they knew what I do. Or rather, if they could make the connections that I am in a position to; if they could apprehend the broader picture of what has happened to you. I don’t suppose even you have quite worked it out.’

  ‘I know I’ve been corrupted by Lapsed Era sensibilities. Like Dee, like Ricky and the others.’ Dusty snaps to his feet. ‘In fact, no! Not corrupted! Enhanced! Empowered! To see colours and shades, cracks, quirks and opportunities! To see the Past. I want to join Ricky and Dee. I want to go.’

  ‘They’d come for you.’

  ‘Not if I had immunity.’

  ‘If. But, even then, England would go to sport over you. Imagine it, Dusty! You batting for Wales in one glorious final stand for independence from the very country that created you – against the very country that created you! The poetry of it! That would be something to tickle your Lapsed Era sensibility! You’d lose, of course.’

  ‘You think?’

  Garbo roars with laughter. ‘You and a rabble of Welshmen against the latest generation of English cricketers? Of course I think!’

  ‘It would be cricket the Welsh way, remember, on a Welsh field. Eleven-a-side, people having to bat and bowl. A team fired by passion and a love for sport versus one custom made for it. With humans officiating. I’m not so sure we would lose.’ And if I ever make it to Wales, he wants to say, Ivon will have come, too.

  With a smirk, Garbo replaces the drill bit in its drawer. ‘Freak results have been known to happen, I suppose. But by definition they are one-offs. Order is always restored in time.’

  ‘One win is all we’d need.’

  The smirk broadens into another smile. ‘There’s just one small problem. You’ll have to do it all without Ivon.’

  For as long as the details evaded him of what befell Ivon at Headingley yesterday, Dusty could stumble on in hope. But hope is a baseless ephemeron. It is lack of achievement made animate, inspiration for those with no points on the board. There is no place for hope in England. It’s why he hoped so to make it to Wales. Why he dreamed of a life elsewhere, his identity cut out from the webbing between his fingers.

  Now, though, he squares up to the truth. He squares up to the old man who smiles and is frail, as airy and insubstantial as hope itself. ‘What’s happened?’ he says.

  ‘Ivon was taken to the Institute of Correction yesterday. There was nothing I could do, I’m afraid. My people managed to step in when he entered the girl’s home, but when he defied an on-field instruction in the service of London Rugby it was out of my hands. He was removed from the field in the eleventh minute and transferred in a secure van to the IC. There he underwent third-degree Assimilation last night. The procedure was a success. Early indications are that London – and no doubt England – are set to benefit from a fully conditioned new asset of considerable productivity. There are many in the scientific community who are already excited by his addition to our armoury – and, accordingly, by the loss of the Welshman. As you know, I rue the passing of an opportunity to assess the merits or otherwise of another way of life. But I am old, and the exigencies of the Next Match are considered more pressing than my speculations. It is a loss from a scientific point of view – and I suspect, for you, a personal blow. I regret it.’

  ‘Let me see him,’ says Dusty, but it is softly, as if lost, in a daze.

  As soon as Dusty sees him, he knows. Ivon is a bona fide elite at last, a Perpetual citizen, a sportsman perfected. He is gone.

  The projection on the teletable is scaled down in thirds, but the definition is precise, so much so that it enhances the impression, which Dusty knows is being made flesh in a skills tunnel somewhere in the same building, that Ivon has been transformed. There he stands in miniature, lean, still and intensely necessary. Gone is the constant movement. The energy that spewed from him, as if from a loose length of hosing, is nowhere to be seen, turned off, or more likely turned inwards, harnessed and contained. Could it even be that the accent has been smoothed out? Difficult to tell – he’s not saying much. Certainly, the wild, brilliant hair has been removed, leaving skin stretched aerodynamically across the skull, as smooth and focused as the walls of the skill tunnel, as smooth and focused as the man.

  A member of the IC’s coaching panel is with him. Together they are working through a kicking drill. ‘So, try to make the next one kick up after twelve rotations,’ he says to Ivon.

  Ivon takes the ball and stares at it. He seems to be thinking things through. With a brief intake of breath, he drops the ball and brings his foot sharply down upon it. It turns end over end along the skills tunnel, jumping up a few metres away before bobbling to a standstill.

  ‘Not bad,’ says the coach, consulting a tablet. ‘But that was after eight. Here, have a look at this.’ The two of them gather round the tablet. ‘This is a snapshot of your boot striking the ball when you demonstrated the skill to us a few weeks ago. This is the same just now
. Notice how the vector quantity applied by your boot to the ball this time is 18.43 newtons lighter than it was before and 0.97 of a degree shallower in its angle of attack. Try again.’

  Ivon nods solemnly and takes up another ball. He goes through the same routine. The ball turns across the ground for a little longer this time before kicking up.

  ‘Excellent!’ says the coach. ‘That was on the twelfth. Do you feel you’re mastering it?’

  Ivon nods.

  ‘Now, this is nothing you couldn’t do before,’ continues the coach. ‘You were the one who alerted us to the skill, after all. But you were unable to explain how you did it then, and for a Perpetual citizen, as you are now, that is an intolerable situation. What we have done is to capture the skill, analyse it and return it to you fully anatomised. The aim is for you to perform it without relying on instinct, which may desert you on a bad day. In other words, you own the skill, rather than the other way round.’

  Dusty looks away from the projection and up at Syracuse Garbo. The old man continues to watch the teletable, like a troubled god.

  ‘He’s gone,’ says Dusty. ‘That’s not Ivon.’

  Garbo doesn’t look up. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘What have we all done.’

  A great weight pulls on Dusty. It is the weight of things that have happened to him. The effect is heightened by the sight of the old man looking downwards, the tug of gravity on his drooping face a perfect expression of what Dusty feels. The sabotage that was perpetrated on Garbo’s watch all those years ago – an injection of the Lapsed Era, the spirit of this man Gower, into a world that has no place for it – has worked its way through to this terrible end.

  ‘Give me exile,’ says Dusty. ‘You could do it. Let me be the last from 2111 to leave.’

  Finally, Garbo looks up from the tableau in front of them. He studies Dusty with a kind of sympathetic indifference. ‘Where would you go?’

  ‘Wales.’

  Garbo winces. ‘Really? Do you think you’d be welcome?’

  He’s right. Dusty has always known it – no Ivon, no Wales – but he resents being told, especially by the man responsible for it all. And he cannot bear to accept it. Or afford to.

  ‘I could find Ricky and Dee. Explain everything to them. We could plot. Maybe gather a team, challenge England to return Ivon to Wales. Do something.’ Garbo mocks him with an incredulous grin. ‘Please. I cannot stay here.’

  ‘And suppose you could persuade Ricky and Dee even to listen to you, let alone accept you as a friend, or just refrain from making a pariah of you among the Welsh. Suppose you manage all that, then raise a team and persuade the English to accept your challenge. Suppose you then manage to defeat the English – and this time it would be cricket the Perpetual way, officiated by computer – what will you do with Ivon himself? He is, as you say, gone. Wales is anathema to him. Ricky and Dee repulsive. You can be sure they will have turned him against you too, the man who wants to take him back there. Assimilation in the mid-twenty-second century, it is irreversible. This was the danger. This was where we were heading all along. You’ve always known it.’

  ‘They’ve never tried it on a Welshman,’ Dusty murmurs, a last spasm of hope, but it is with no conviction. His horizon, so briefly extended during this heady, reckless flirtation with the Lapsed Era, is closing in on him again, tighter even than it was during his days in service, when at least he had a boundary to aim at, gaps in the field and a throbbing corridor down which the ball would fly. Now he can see nothing.

  He glances down at the teletable. It lies empty. Ivon has left the skills tunnel. Dusty turns and flees the pod, out into the stark corridor, along its tunnel to the IC’s central stairwell, down which the light floods from the day outside, many flights above. He pounds up the staircase in search of the exit. The ground floor is five storeys higher. On he plunges towards the foyer.

  Two figures walk ahead of him, tall and shaven-headed. As he passes them, he is taken by an impulse to look in their direction. He stops in his tracks. There is no mistaking the taller of the two men, even without the brilliant shock of hair, even with the bruising across his swollen nose.

  ‘Ivon!’ he gasps.

  Ivon’s face is blank and remains so.

  Dusty is short of breath, but he no longer cares about social embarrassment. ‘Ivon! It’s not too late! Come with me, back to Wales!’ He pauses to catch his breath, his breast heaving as Ivon’s gaze remains steady. ‘For Ricky and Dee, if nothing else. Please!’

  There is not a flicker across Ivon’s face, or in his eyes.

  The coach from the IC steps forward. ‘He’s going nowhere. He’s just been assimilated.’

  Dusty remains focused on the son – that word again – of his old friends. ‘Ivon!’ he insists.

  The boy – the man – slowly shakes his head.

  His companion interjects again. ‘I’m sorry, brother. He has to go for his next round of hormone supplements.’ And sharply he leads Ivon away.

  ‘Hormone supplements? Ivon, you wouldn’t!’

  Ivon stops. He turns round, so slowly that Dusty has time to regulate his breathing. The gaze settles on him and is steady throughout. ‘They will make me a more productive asset. Why wouldn’t I take them?’

  ‘You swore you wouldn’t!’

  ‘That was when I was playing,’ Ivon replies with deliberation, his accent painstakingly neutral. ‘Just playing.’

  He looks off to the left for an instant, at what Dusty does not know. Then he turns and hastens away with his companion down the corridor. Dusty watches him go, his chest rising and falling, his past deserting him as surely as his future.

  By the sound of it, London are having a good day. The thunder from Lord’s has been almost constant since he arrived. Dusty is glad of it. Those guys in the London cricket team, he’s seen service with them all, some for many years – and of the younger ones, quite a few, it turns out, are his sons. He wishes them all well. Their shared past history means something to him at least, if nothing to them.

  It had to be this way. Dusty and The Cricketer. Alone. The great, steel statue rises directly from the paving that surrounds Lord’s. Access to it is unrestricted. No barriers, no plinth. How sad, he thinks, that he should leave it until now to make his first proper approach and inspection of it. He has never had cause to break from the thoroughfares and walk up to it, nor has he ever thought to. He wonders if anyone ever has. How typically English! How Perpetual!

  With the match underway, Dusty can begin without fear of interruption. He is excited. Gone is his despair. The solution he has struck upon for his predicament is quite brilliant – creative, Lapsed Era, Welsh.

  He puts down the magnetic handles he has borrowed from the Shed at ReSure and sizes up the right heel of The Cricketer and the lower leg that runs roughly parallel to the ground, just above chest height, towards the bent knee. Dusty runs his hands over the upturned surface of the calf muscle, as if planning where to build his home. The expanse of it is broad and matt, but not quite smooth. From this close, he is able to note the undulations and ridges in the brushed surface that run across the statue’s entirety and ought to offer assistance. He takes up the magnetic handles, presses them against the statue and pulls the switch on each, pleased to note that their grip on the metal seems as sure as it was on the pods they were designed to lift. Using the handles as purchase, Dusty swings his legs up and onto the upturned calf, the first base of his ascent.

  Once up, he gathers the handles and walks towards the back of the right thigh, which presents itself as an almost sheer incline. The left buttock bulges beyond the vertical, but the right is more or less flat, up to the bend forward at the waist. He places the handles on the buttock and heaves himself up, his feet and knees scrambling for purchase. The micro-magnets in his shoes offer extra grip against the ridges in the steel, and he is able to release the magnet in the right handle and swing it higher up, before following with the left.


  As he scales The Cricketer’s back, a broad 18 foot slope, falling away to the right, he exults at his ingenuity. No Perpetual citizen has ever thought of this! By merely dreaming of it, Dusty proves how far he has come. It is not for Perpetual citizens, the property of their commune and nation, to decide what they do with themselves. But Dusty… Dusty is showing how he is free at last! He is showing that there is freedom at all!

  Just behind the left armpit, he swings his feet round to find purchase in the crook of the neck and left shoulder. He takes a moment to regroup, then hauls himself up on to the top of the head by the magnetic handles. That these devices should once have conveyed assets to and from stasis. And now they bear him here.

  A vague giddiness he hadn’t bargained for wobbles the edges of his consciousness – he has never found himself so high and free – but it only enhances in him the rarity of what he is doing. Steadying himself, he rises to his feet, leaving the handles behind, their purpose served. The stadium, which he turns away from now, continues with its thundering. He is presented with the left forearm of The Cricketer, running along from the raised elbow, waist high to him and parallel to the ground some 40 feet below. He is able to lean forward, swing his left leg over so that he is straddling it. Here he is, at the very top of the statue that has towered over them all for so long, inspiring awe – a concession, was it, to the spirituality of the Lapsed Era, which no citizen thought or dared to approach, still less touch, less climb. But this is not his journey’s end. He is bound for the bat at the end of the forearm, towards which he inches now.

  He cannot, quite, banish thoughts of Ivon from his mind. The cold eyes, the focus, the containment. It is as the wild-haired spirit that he should remember him, but that too conjures sickening feelings, those of loss and remembrance of Wales, of Ricky, of Dee. He had hoped to join them, how he’d hoped. There can be no Wales for him now. Oh, Lapsed Era, are you any less cruel than your monochrome successor? To breed unregulated impulses, encourage such hope for how things could be – and to deny it all!