A Calculated Life (13 page)

Taking his cup to the sink, he lowered his voice: “Bit of a risk coming here.”

“I think I’m covered for today. I’ve got approval from Benjamin to visit Mayhew McCline staff and his conditions were woolly. He didn’t rule anything out, though…Dave, I don’t think you’d get into any trouble.”

“I started it anyway.”

She smiled, reluctantly. “I suppose.”

“Look, you know, Jayna, don’t you? You may not be able to do this again. It could be too risky.”

“Don’t say that.”

He stood before her in his well-worn bleached out clothes and she couldn’t help wondering if he was a shade underweight. How would he look if he upped his calories? Or was this his natural state? Maybe his parents had handed him a strong metabolism along with the suspect genes. She noted a sensation she’d felt two days ago when Lucas spilt the news of a second recall. She’d felt tense then, but this was stronger. She could feel her stomach muscles tensing and then relaxing and then tensing again. And she needed to swallow.

“Don’t talk about risk,” she said firmly. “I want to come here again.” He didn’t need further prompting. He leant down and kissed her cheek. She turned her face towards his and their mouths met.

His eyes closed; her eyes stayed open.

She laid her palm against his chest as if confirming their connection; a heartbeat. The forefingers of her other hand found the belt loops of his jeans. She tugged a little.
A fair start
, she thought,
but what happens next?
Dave’s arms were around her. He didn’t seem to be hurrying. They were still kissing; for how much longer?
I must be getting it all wrong. What else…?
She tried to unbutton his shirt and instantly felt the uncanniness of performing a familiar task with extraordinary clumsiness; she felt uncoordinated, realizing she’d never looked at how a button escaped its stupid buttonhole. He let go, stood back a step, and finished unfastening his buttons. He shrugged the shirt off his back. There seemed only one option—she’d simply copy him. She took off her shirt. He took off the rest of his clothes and chucked them aside. So she did the same. He laughed and she smiled. “Is this right?” she said.

“Absolutely.” And for the next thirty-five minutes she explored the near-flawless body of this organic man, as he explored the perfect average-ness of this simulant woman. She trusted her earlier instinct and simply aped as many of Dave’s actions as her physiology allowed. No need to think, she decided, this was purely physical. In time, it seemed her vigor as much as his impelled them through a cycle of gentleness followed by greed, followed by gentleness. And she felt safe.

A bee buzzed intermittently
at the shutter slats, preventing Dave and Jayna from slipping into sleep. They lay on their sides facing one another, their skin catching the faint breeze that barely disturbed the solid heat of the room. Their eyes flicked open at random intervals.

There was something attractive, she mused, about Dave’s mouth but she couldn’t work out what it was. She traced the edge of his lips
with her forefinger. It seemed to be a stone mouth, sculpted. His lips hardly broke the plane of his face. The mouth of a stoic, maybe.

She realized she was no longer tuned into the buzzing bee. Instead, she’d registered and was now following the blurred sounds of a conversation downstairs: a man and a woman. Their windows must be open, too, she thought. His voice, then her voice. His voice again, and her voice, higher and louder. Then a shout. “What’s going on, Dave?”

He opened his eyes and kissed her. “They’re just warming up. Picked a great time.”

“What?”

“Every other weekend. They slowly wind one another up and then let rip. The record is three weeks without a blow-up.” The two voices started to overlap.

“Don’t you complain?”

“Not worth it. They’ll wear themselves out.” He kissed her again. “Try to ignore it.” But she couldn’t.

A child cried. “Oh Christ! The baby’s joining in now,” he said, exasperated.

Jayna sat bolt upright. “Why’s the baby crying?”

“Just frightened. Doesn’t like the shouting.” The child’s cry cranked to a warbling scream. Dave rolled onto his back.

“We must do something, Dave. Make them stop.”

“It’s okay. When
they
stop, the
baby
stops.”

“I think they’re hurting it.”

“No. They’re not. It sounds worse than it is. Babies always cry like that…no sliding scale.”

“I don’t believe…just listen.” It was stomach churning.

“We can’t do anything, Jayna.”

She jumped up, hands over her ears. “It’s horrible. I can’t bear it.” She turned to him. “We must go down and stop them, now.” She grabbed her clothes from the floor. Before she could attempt to dress he took hold of her. The shouting and screeching ran up the
walls, surrounding them. And something smashed. The woman’s voice stretched to an even higher pitch, competing with the child’s. “Dave?”

“It’s okay. It will stop. I promise.”

She pushed away from him. Her nails caught his shoulder, leaving two red slashes. “I’m going downstairs.” But as she pulled on her shirt, the shouting ended. And a minute later the child stopped crying, just as Dave had said it would. He took her hand. She strained to hear.

Eventually she spoke: “How can you bear it, knowing it’s going to happen again?” She moved aimlessly about the room. She found herself at the sink and leaned over, turned on the tap, and rinsed her face. He followed and placed his hand on her shoulder. But her thoughts were roaming far away. “Tom’s children must be crying like that,” she said with her face in her hands.

“Not like that, Jayna. It’s not the same.”

They dressed. She put on Dave’s top shirt once again as he waited by the door. She hesitated, reluctant to step outside. “Time to go,” she said, as if to herself.

He followed her down the first flight of steps and, as she turned for the second flight, the door opened to the downstairs flat. The couple stepped out. He was holding the child—asleep against his chest. Jayna froze.

“Hi, Dave. Going to introduce us?” said the woman.

He ignored the question. “Hi there. Where are you all off to?”

“Going for a stroll. It’s blazing hot in there.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

And the couple laughed.

“How could you make a joke of it?” Jayna walked faster than necessary.

“Come on. Don’t let them spoil things.”

“The baby was screaming and now you’re all laughing.”

“There’s no real harm done.”

“You can’t possibly know that.”

They walked behind a wide-backed man who led a young boy by the hand. The boy could barely keep up; he progressed with a choppy mix of short walking and running steps. The boy tripped but the man kept him upright by pulling his arm upwards. Jayna heard the boy complain. The man gave a nasty, gratuitous yank to the child’s arm.

“Why do you pretend it’s all right?” she said.

They continued to the station without speaking. When the shuttle came within earshot, she removed the top shirt and handed it back to Dave. “We can’t talk at work. You know that, don’t you? And no messages either.”

“So can we meet again?”

“I don’t know. I have to think…”

Dave gently touched her arm but the sound of the fast-approaching shuttle obliged her to turn away.

He waved as the shuttle slid from the station. She didn’t wave back. On the distant edge of the overgrown car park she caught a glimpse of two dogs—a male mounting a seemingly passive bitch. Different for people, she thought.

And now, she pushed all her confusion aside and reflected on the swirl of information that, earlier in the afternoon, over coffee, had set her a new challenge—one that, rightly or wrongly, she had taken up:

The sense of smell in mammals, including humans, is linked with the sex drive. Genetic dysfunction in the olfactory system can lead to sexual dysfunction among uninitiated adults. However, in adult
mice, this dysfunction has been shown to spontaneously reverse once the mice have been introduced to sexual activity.

She was clear on the essentials even if the detail eluded her: the first simulants, the Franks and Fredas, were genetically manipulated to exhibit total anosmia, a complete loss of smell—one step, she guessed, in a complex strategy to disrupt the hypothalamic-pituitary axis—the aim being to destroy procreational instincts. More to the point, in advanced simulants such as herself, the degree of anosmia had been lessened to allow a greater degree of emotional development.
Hence, we
fit in
better at work
. But now she had a hunch: the Constructor had failed to optimize the degree of anosmia. Just like the lab mice, once the virgin simulant had experimented with sex, the sexual urge received a kick-start.

The enclave disappeared from view and her thoughts drifted.
Could I drop out? Should I run to the hills?
But, for once in her calculated life, she could divine no answer.

CHAPTER 8

O
n Sunday morning, Jayna made her breakthrough
with the energy studies seemingly by accident. After days of effort, she found it oddly dissatisfying that her insight was precipitated during a momentary loss of focus. It occurred as she withdrew from the construct, as she floated back to the ocean’s surface, when she had almost given up. A bit disappointing, she thought. Though it didn’t really matter how she got there.

If everything stacked up, Benjamin and Olivia would be euphoric. And the timing was perfect—Mayhew McCline could push out the report just before the half-yearly staff appraisals. Jayna mapped out the next ten days:

Monday
: request extended database searches.

Tuesday
: complete extended research.

Wednesday
: submit research findings to Benjamin in a Draft Energy Report for circulation and comment by board members.

Thursday
: compile the responses.

Friday
: submit Final Energy Report to Benjamin and Olivia for approval.

Monday next
: report goes to production.

Tuesday next
: check press releases.

Wednesday next
: release the report, An Energy Investment Strategy, or some such.

On the basis of the data currently available, and as a result of Mayhew McCline’s pronouncement on the subject next week, she reckoned that sales of in-vehicle hydrogen conversion systems would increase by between 10 and 15 per cent (a conservative range of values). Share prices for the makers of these complex systems would rocket. Somebody, somewhere, was going to make a great deal of money, she thought.

Pulling herself out of her recliner, she experienced a heaviness in her body, an ache in her back. She knew she must steady her pace, get plenty of sleep, stay alert. But she couldn’t ease up too much. Standing by her window, she looked out towards Granby Row. Her east-facing room had lost its morning luminescence and Jayna felt the gaucheness of being indoors when the sun beat down just meters away. She assessed her next moves and assiduously re-ordered her research priorities:

One
: Obviously, tidy up the energy research.