Everywhere: Volume I of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  “Then you won’t be visiting Bill and Meg for a while?”

  She bangs out more food “There’s plenty of time. We’ll get there eventually. And I wish we’d talked more here, Papa, to be honest. There are so many things I want to ask.”

  “About Grandma?” I ask. Making an easy guess.

  “You too, Papa. All those years after she died. I mean, between then and now. You’ll have to tell me what happened.”

  I open my mouth, hoping it will fill up with some comment. But nothing comes out. All those years: how could I have lived through so many without even noticing? My life is divided as geologists divide up the rock crust of Earth’s time: those huge empty spaces of rock without life, and a narrow band which seems to contain everything. And Saul and Agatha are leaving and time—that most precious commodity of all—has passed me by. Again.

  Agatha sits down on a stool and leans forward, brown arms resting on her brown thighs. For a moment, I think that she’s not going to press the point. But she says, “Do tell me about Grandma, Papa. It’s one of those things Dad won’t talk about.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I know this is awkward, but... How did she die?”

  “Bill’s never told you?”

  “We figured that perhaps he was too young at the time to know. But he wasn’t, was he? We worked that out.”

  “Bill was eleven when your Gran died.” I say. I know why she’s asking me this now: she’s getting Papa’s story before it’s too late. But I’m not offended. She has a right to know. “We tried to keep a lot of the stuff about Hannah’s death away from Bill. Perhaps that was a mistake, but that was what we both decided.”

  “It was a disease called cancer, wasn’t it?”

  So she does know at something after all. Perhaps Bill’s told her more than she’s admitting. Perhaps she’s checking up, comparing versions. But, seeing her innocent, questioning face, I know that the thought is unjust.

  “Yes,” I say, “it was cancer. They could cure a great many forms of the disease even then. They could probably have cured Hannah if she’d gone and had the tests a few months earlier.”

  “I’m sorry Papa.”

  “It must have been awful.”

  I stare at my lovely granddaughter. Another new century will soon be turning, and I’m deep into the future; further than I’d ever imagined. Has Agatha ever even known anyone who’s died? And pain, what does she know about pain? And who am I, like the last bloody guest at the Masque of the Red Death, to reveal it to her now?

  What does she want to know, anyway—how good or bad would she like me to make it? Does she want me to tell her that, six months after the first diagnosis, Hannah was dead? Or that she spent her last days in hospital even though she’d have liked to have passed away at home—but the sight of her in her final stages distressed little Bill too much? It distressed me, too. It distressed her. Her skin was covered in ulcers from the treatment that doctors had insisted on giving, stretched tight over bone and fluid-distended tissue.

  “It was all over with fairly quickly,” I say. “And it was long ago.”

  My ears catch a noise behind me. I turn. Saul’s standing leaning in the kitchen doorway, his arms folded, his head bowed. He’s been listening, too. And both my grandchildren look sad, almost as if they’ve heard all the things I haven’t been able to tell them.

  Now Saul comes puts his arm around my shoulder. “Poor Papa.” Agatha comes over too. I bury my face into them, trembling a little. But life must go on, and I pull away. I don’t want to spoil their visit by crying. But I cry anyway. And they draw me back into their warmth, and the tears come sweet as rain.

  Then we sit together, and eat breakfast. I feel shaky and clean. For a few moments, the present seems as real as the past.

  “That car of yours,” Saul says, waving his fork, swapping subjects with the ease of youth. “I was thinking, Papa, do you know if there’s any way of getting another one?”

  I’m almost tempted to let him have the Ford. But then, what would that leave me with? “There used to be huge dumps of them everywhere,” I say.

  “Then I’ll come back here to the island and get all that incredible stuff you’ve had done in that workshop down in the port. I mean,” he chuckled, “I don’t want to have to stop for petrol.”

  Petrol. When did I last buy petrol? Years ago, for sure. Yet the old Ford still rattles along.

  “Anyway,” Agatha says, standing up, her plate empty although I’ve hardly even started on mine. “I’ll finish packing.”

  I sit with Saul as he finishes his food, feeling hugely un-hungry, yet envying his gusto. He pushes the plate back, glances around for some kitchen machine that isn’t there to take it, then pulls a face.

  “Papa, I nearly forgot. I said I’d fix that console of yours.”

  I nod. The engaged flag that prevented him and Agatha getting through to me before they arrived must still be on: the thing that stops people from ringing.

  But Saul’s as good as his word. As Agatha sings some wordless melody in their room, he goes through some of the simpler options on the console with me. I nod, trying hard to concentrate. And Hannah holds her knees and smiles down at us from the photo on the wall. Saul doesn’t seem to notice her gaze. I’m tempted to ask for his help with other things in the house. Ways to reprogramme the mec-gardener and the hoover, ways to make the place feel more like my own. But I know that I’ll never remember his instructions. All I really want is for him to stay talking to me for a few moments longer.

  “So you’re okay about that, Papa?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He turns away and shouts, “Hey, Ag!”

  After that, everything takes only a moment. Suddenly, they’re standing together in the hall, their bags packed. Venice. Paris. New York. The Sea Of Tranquillity. Ready to go.

  “We thought we’d walk down to the port, Papa. Just catch whatever ferry is going. It’s such a lovely day.”

  “And thanks, Papa. Thanks for everything.”

  “Yes.”

  I’m hugged first by one, then the other. After the tears before breakfast, I now feel astonishingly dry-eyed.

  “Well...”

  “Yes...”

  I gaze at Saul and Agatha, my beautiful grandchildren. Still trying to take them in. The future stretches before us and between us.

  They open the door. They head off hand in hand down the cypressed road.

  “Bye, Papa. We love you.”

  I stand there, feeling the sunlight on my face. Watching them go. My front door starts to bleep. I ignore it. In the shadow of my house, beside my old Ford, I see there’s a limp-winged flyer; Saul and Agatha must have used it last night to get me home. I don’t know how to work these things. I have no idea how I’ll get rid of it.

  Saul and Agatha turn again and wave before they vanish around the curve in the road. I wave back.

  Then I’m inside. The door is closed. The house is silent.

  I head for Saul and Agatha’s room.

  They’ve stripped the beds and made a reasonable attempt at clearing up, but still I can almost feel my hoover itching to get in and finish the job. Agatha’s left the dressing gown she borrowed on the bed. I lift up it to my face. Soap and sea salt—a deeper undertow like forest thyme. Her scent will last a few hours, and after that I suppose I’ll still have the memory of her every time I put it on. The vase that Hannah bought all those years ago still sits on top of the dressing table: they never did get around to telling me that they broke the thing. I lift it up, turning the glazed weight in my hands to inspect the damage. But the cracks, the shards, have vanished. The vase is whole and perfect again—as perfect, at least, as it ever was. In a panic, almost dropping the thing, I gaze around the room, wondering what else I’ve forgotten or imagined. But it’s still all there, the fading sense of my grandchildren’s presence. A forgotten sock, torn pages of the shuttle magazine. I put the vase gently down again. When so many other things are
possible, I suppose there’s bound to be a cheaply available gadget that heals china.

  Feeling oddly expectant, I look under the beds. There’s dust that the hoover will soon clear away. The greased blue inner wrapper of something I don’t understand. A few crumpled tissues. And, of course, Saul’s taken the metacam with him. He would; it’s his favourite toy. The wonderful promise of those controls, and the green menus that floated like pond-lilies on the screen. REVISE. CREATE. EDIT. CHANGE. And Agatha turning. CHANGE. Agatha standing still. REVISE. Ghost-petals drifting up from her hands, and a white yacht floating with the stars on the horizon. If you could change the past, if you could alter, if you could amend...

  But I’d always known in my heart that the dream is just a dream, and that a toy is still just a toy. Perhaps one day, it’ll be possible to revisit the pharaohs, or return to the hot sweet sheets of first love. But that lies far ahead, much further even than the nearest stars that the first big ships will soon be reaching. Far beyond my own lifetime.

  The broken VR machine sticks out from the top of the wastebin by the window. I take it out, wrapping the wires around the case, still wondering if there is any way to fix it. Once upon a time, VR was seen as a way out from the troubles of the world. But nobody bothers much with it any longer. It was my generation that couldn’t do anything without recording it on whatever new medium the Japanese had come up with. Saul and Agatha aren’t like that. They’re not afraid of losing the past. They’re not afraid of living in the present. They’re not afraid of finding the future.

  I stand for a moment, clawing at the sensation of their fading presence, dragging in breath after breath. Then the console starts to bleep along the corridor in my bedroom, and the front doorbell sounds. I stumble towards it, light-headed with joy. They’re back! They’ve changed their minds! There isn’t a ferry until tomorrow! I can’t believe...

  The door flashes USER NOT RECOGNISED at me. Eventually, I manage to get it open.

  “You are in. I thought...”

  I stand there, momentarily dumbstruck. The pretty, grey haired woman from yesterday evening at the cafe gazes at me.

  “They’re gone,” I say.

  “Who? Oh, your grandchildren. They’re taking a ferry this morning, aren’t they? Off to Brazil or someplace.” She smiles and shakes her head. The wildnesses of youth. “Anyway,” she points, “that’s my flyer. Rather than try to call it in, I thought I’d walk over here and collect it.” She glances back at the blue sea, the blue sky, this gorgeous island. She breathes it all in deeply. “Such a lovely day.”

  “Would you like to come in?”

  “Well, just for a moment.”

  “I’m afraid I was a little drunk last night...”

  “Don’t worry about it. I had a fine time.”

  I glance over, looking for sarcasm. But of course she means it. People always do.

  I burrow into my hugely overstocked fridge. When I emerge with a tray, she’s sitting gazing at the blank screen of my old TV.

  “You know,” she says, “I haven’t seen one of those in years. We didn’t have one at home, of course. But my grandparents did.”

  I put down the tray and rummage in my pocket. “This,” I say, waving the broken VR machine in my knarled hand. “Is it possible to get it fixed?”

  “Let me see.” She takes it from me, lifts the cracked lid. “Oh, I should think so, unless the coil’s been broken. Of course, it would be cheaper to go out and buy a new one, but I take it that you’ve memories in here that you’d like to keep?”

  I pocket the VR machine like some dirty secret, and pour out the coffee. I sit down. We look at each other, this woman and I. How old is she, anyway? These days, it’s often to hard to tell. Somewhere between Bill and the Euthons, I suppose, which makes her thirty or even forty years younger than me. And, even if she were more like Hannah, she isn’t the way Hannah would be if she were alive. Hannah would be like me, staggering on ancient limbs, confused, trying to communicate through senses that are no longer her own, dragged ever-forward into the unheeding future, scrabbling desperately to get back to the past, clawing at those bright rare days when the grandchildren come to visit, feeling the golden grit of precious moments slipping though her fingers even before they are gone.

  And time doesn’t matter to this woman; or to anyone under a hundred. That’s one of the reasons it’s so hard for me to keep track. The seasons on this island change, but people just gaze and admire. They pick the fruit as it falls. They breath the salt wind from off the grey winter ocean and shiver happily, knowing they’ll sit eating toast by the fire as soon as they get home.

  “I don’t live that far from here,” the woman says eventually. “I mean, if there’s anything that you’d like help with. If there’s anything that needs doing.”

  I gaze back at her, trying not to feel offended. I know, after all, that I probably do need help of some kind or other. I just can’t think of what it is.

  “Or we could just talk,” she adds hopefully.

  “Do you remember fast food? Mcdonalds?”

  She shakes her head.

  “ET? Pee-Wee Herman? Global warming? Ethnic cleansing? Dan Quale?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m sorry...”

  She lifts her coffee from the table, drinking it quickly.

  The silence falls between us like snow.

  I stand in my doorway, watching as her flyer rises and turns, its tiny wings flashing in sunlight. A final wave, and I close the door, knowing that Saul and Agatha will probably be on a ferry now. Off this island.

  I head towards my bedroom. Assuming it’s time for my morning rest, my bedhelper clicks out its arms expectantly. I glare at it, but of course it doesn’t understand, and I’ve already forgotten the trick Saul showed me you did to disable it. The house is already be back to its old ways, taking charge, cleaning up Saul and Agatha’s room, getting rid of every sign of life.

  But I did at least make an effort with the console, and I do know now how to make sure the engaged flag isn’t showing. Child’s play really—and I always knew how to call up my son Bill’s number. Which is what I do now.

  Of all places, Bill’s in London. The precise location shows up on the console before he appears; it was just a question of making the right demand, of touching the right key. Then there’s a pause.

  I have to wait.

  It’s almost as if the console is testing my resolve, although I know that Bill’s probably having to put someone else on hold so he can speak to me. And that he’ll imagine there’s a minor crisis brewing—otherwise, why would Papa bother to ring?

  But I wait anyway, and as I do so, I rehearse the words I’ll have to say, although I know that they’ll come out differently. But while there’s still time, I’ll do my best to bridge the years.

  At least, I’ll start to try.

  Afterword

  There was an age, and it was well within my own lifetime, when you could claim to be the master of most of the machines and devices you used, owned or otherwise dealt with. Sure, you might not be able describe exactly what was going on when you turned a dial on your television, pressed a button in a lift, or flicked a switch in your car, but you had a pretty good idea what functions the few dials, buttons and switches that were on offer actually performed. A bus was simply a bus and a typewriter was a typewriter and a car was a car. They did the job they were supposed to do, and you got someone in to fix them they didn’t. That, or you have a go at fixing them yourself, or at least could imagine that such a thing was possible. Yes, there jet engines and Moon-shots and rooms filled with computers, but domestically and day-to-day our lives might have changed in many amazing ways from the ones our grandparents lived, but they weren’t so complex that we didn’t understand what was supposed to be happening.

  Then, and I’d say it began some time in the 1980s, things began to shift. Computers, of course, were at the heart of this transformation both at home and in the workplace, and I, for one, welcomed it. Back in
those days when I still worked in the arthritic and hierarchical British Civil Service, I particularly liked the way these new machines stubbornly refused to do what some aged and pompous high-up wanted, but would respond, with a few properly aimed key-taps, to will of a much younger, underling. Being a wannabe writer, not to mention an underling, I was even a bit of a trail-blazer in replacing my electric typewriter (a mechanically complicated but essentially simple instrument) with an early home PC/word-processor. Then along came mobile phones. I can still remember how my daughter was already ahead of me at the age of about ten as we unboxed our first purchase. She knew about simcards and what SMS meant, and I didn’t. It was the same with Bluetooth. A sign of the times, and of one generation passing on the technological baton to the next, and also of a new world where a particular device may be working perfectly, apart from the fact that we, because of our own ignorance, can’t get it to do what we want it to do.

  I’m still pretty determined when it comes to dealing with new gadgets. I like the things, and try to make sure I know how they work, and that I can get the best out of them. But I’ve been aware for several decades that the time will come when my grasp of these objects will start to slip. In fact, that time has probably already started, and the only real difference between me and Papa is that he isn’t in denial, and I still am.

  FROST ON GLASS

  On the clearest days, the edge of the mainland was plainly visible from the island’s north beach. In that last summer, Boult often went to the stretch of sand and rock which lay near his cottage and around the headland from the village and the harbour. He would stand there for hours, just gazing across the glittering water.

  Sometimes, there were pink clouds over the mainland hills. Sometimes, when the sun pricked his neck and the air was clear, there were flashes he took to be the opening of windows or even the passage of cars along the quay of the small town which faced the island: semaphore signals from ordinary life. On other days, and without the slightest hint of fog, the mainland simply vanished. Perhaps the place was afloat and drifting away to warmer climes, happier circumstances, better times. Boult would smile to himself as the waves lapped his ragged canvas shoes. A few years before—more, now, if he was honest—he’d have got at least a poem out of such a conceit.