Ectopia (7 page)

 

Dust is the future. It's lying to be kicked. We take it in turns to run at the front. From up there our soles are the first to spit the dust. For forty paces we stare into burnt sky. The dust is on the ground and not in the air, our lungs are clear. Then two from the back peel round the sides and take their place at the front.

The pace is steady, and teensquad is trained up to it. No-one's too slow to spurt from back to front and lead the way for a time. Slipping back through the running body of teensquad is running to the sound of tread. Sun leaks through to light the runner in front but nothing else is seen. You're held and running inside teensquad's dustbody, running inside the skin of a cloud, coasting inside run's thunder.

Roads from the city are great places for dust, thick coats of it blowing off fields. I'm at the rear, Malik at my side, seven runbeats short of sliding round the side and to the front.

- Twelve.

The shout goes up from the front and starts its step back toward us, a pace at a time.

- Eleven.

- Ten.

We slow by fractions at each shout, shortening the pace.

- Two, the pair in front of us shouts out.

- One, shout Malik and me with the next step.

And we stop.

The dust drops around us. Sweat starts to streak our bodies clean. A view appears. Malik moves left, I move right, till teensquad's stretched as one line along an asphalt road. Dust is thinner here. This is the perimeter track round Cromozone. The fence of the complex is in front of us.

The outer fence is studded with camera posts. Motors whir as the cameras scan us. Beyond that fence is dust as neat and crazed as any gardening by Dad. Two rows of tank traps throw crisp shadows from their concrete spurs. Razor wire is coiled between each trap, and the dust around and between em lies smooth and even. No-one rakes here. Gardens like this are kept smooth by blowers. Dad would wet himself for a smooth dust garden as fine as this. Smooth dust gardens are mined just a fingernail's depth beneath the surface. A rabbit's paw would set em off if rabbits still existed. Now the only thing that lives here is insects. A scorpion squats on the dust just outside the tank trap's shadow. It's a piece of overkill thrown into the mix by nature. No-one's going to tread as far as its sting.

Cameras keep on whirring and teensquad catches breath. We start to hear sounds beyond the camera motors. Big ones first. Technosheds hulk near the center of the complex and solarpumps thrash and echo from powerhuts to their sides. I trace a different sound that's closer. It's the buzz of an AC that sticks through the wall of the security hut just beyond the secondary fence. It drops moisture that splashes on dust, magicking up a patch of mud where two pumpkins swell.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The sound of water on dust tunes us in. We hear smaller sounds behind em, distant and thin.

A squawk. A squeal. A grunt.

We played a game in undertow once. We read out the words for the sounds that animals used to make, then tried to make em ourselves. First we tried for a grunt, then we tried for a squeal, then we mixed our grunt and our squeal to make a squawk.

It was just playing, just guessing. Nothing squawks now. Well Runt maybe but no real animal. That's what we thought, only now we hear a grunt, a squeal, then a squawk.

- Animals, Malik says from the far left – You hear em, Bender? You see em? It's the animals they speak of. They're cloning em.

I look around the fence for electric speakers but don't find em. The sounds come from further off. The technosheds have blank walls with no windows, but the nearest one has skylights with solar flaps drawn high to catch the sun. Wind plays sound through dead trees but no dead trees stand here. The air is still. The sounds we hear are floating out from inside the technoshed.

- A cow, I tell the rest of teensquad. One of my jobs as empath and mainbrain and now scribe is putting stuff into words that don't make sense without em. Teensquad's ears are keen for the news. I talk in my normal voice and we all draw an image in our minds, a picture that matches the word and sound of cow as close as we can get.

I carry on, naming sounds.

- A calf. They've cloned a calf. And chicken. That was a chicken. A pig. Piglets. And that one? That sound there? It's a lamb.

I don't see em. I don't see animals. I see the future when it hits me but I don't see through walls. Instead I conjure pictures from scraps of sound that float across the dust, and fill em out as words. I make up a story. Teensquad's stopped, we're breathless, we need a story. A story's something to run for.

- The stories are true. They've cloned em. Cloned animals. They've opened the skylights to show the animals the sun. The sun naturalizes em, it gives em a sense of day and night. Cromozone is conditioning its clones for release. Out here we're doing the business for em. Our teensquad's running the world clean. Clean enough for clone release.

We listen harder.

- Hear that?

Fuck knows what's really going on inside the sheds. New machines I'll never see grind different noises I'll never make out. Inside the sheds is their world, the world of Cromozone. This is our world, the world of the streets. We kick dust into the shape of clouds. That's what we have to work on. We make up the rest as we go along.

- A song, I say. I'm making it up, I don't hear a song, but lying's alright when you mean it as a treat – Do you hear it now? Do you hear who's singing it? Five little girls are singing a song. La la la la la la la. They've done it. Cromozone's cloned us some little singing girls.

I close my eyes to concentrate and hum the girls' tune. Others along the line pick it up from my voice, their eyes closed and pictures forming. I lead the hum through a final verse and then we go silent. We've each formed a picture of girls in our head and now I guess we're watching what they do.

My own girls look like infant Karens and stand there doing nothing. I've not got much imagination when it comes to girls. Girls aren't my fantasy. I open my eyes and look right.

Furbo's into it. His favorite street-talk tells of girlcloning in Cromozone. Street-talk calls Cromozone the cloning ground for all species on Earth. Everything female will stem from here, and from that we'll all be reborn. Furbo's brain is running hot. It flashes him his dreamgirls, strips em to bare flesh and makes em stretch while his tongue licks the dryness from his lips.

- You hear that? Dome asks. He's near shouting with excitement. His question chases out all pictures and sounds from teensquad heads. The others open their eyes.

- It's fish, Dome says – I hear em. I hear fish. They're cloning fish.

Water drips from the AC onto the pumpkins. The drip's affected Dome's brain, leading it from water to river to fish. We laugh. The laugh shakes our bodies loose. That's enough of standing. We're ready to run again.

- Perimeter duty, Malik says – Teensquad divides. We go two ways, one left, one right. We'll circle the compound and reunite here for homerun.

One strategy on qual is to surround any strangeness and feel our way inside it. Malik's idea's a good one. It's fitting qual strategy to our running. We'll divide in two but we'll still be one body running. By circling Cromozone, we can come to know it.

It's so good an idea we've no need to discuss it. We head off. Malik leads left, I lead right. The teensquad whole is now two halves. Two halves running as one.

 

Each of the technosheds is thirty strides wide, and I guess ten times that long. None have windows but solar skylights reach up from pitched roofs. Twenty technosheds form spokes in one vast wheel that fills the compound. Some stories tell of these sheds acting as vents for multilevels of subterranean activity, while the hub of the complex provides an aerial platform. That hub consists of three buildings, each with three sides, each of em 23 storeys high. These are the Towers. The Stacks. The Towers are the parts that go up while the Stacks go underground.

These Stacks'll be Mom's home from tomorrow.

I doubt Mom'll get a window. They say new arrivals are lodged in vaults. Women are hoisted up to viewing floors for a glimpse of the sky once a day. It helps keeps em natural, clocking the sun like that. To turn full natural and breed girls again, women have got to stay on a natural track. That's what they say.

Mom'll come and be a vegetable here.

You don't get more natural than a vegetable.

I hear the thud of Malik's half of teensquad hitting the asphalt. Their tread's in exact timing with our own. Two halves, one whole.
We keep to fence-side, Malik's half takes dust side, and we pass. We're halfway round and keep on running. This outer road's like a racetrack with nothing to give pause.

Few tracks cross the dust of Cromozone. Heat's driven the main passage of traffic into ventilated shafts below ground. This outer asphalt track of our patrol is matched by a rail on the inner boundary. A black-screened squadcar distorts us in reflection as it passes then comes to a halt at the base of a sentry point. Eight towers mark the perimeter, eight sets of faces look out from behind the reflective glass of the capsules that crown each one. That's as close as Cromozone comes to showing us a human side. Any relief details that have arrived in the squadcar wait till we've run past before showing themselves.

Cromozone's strange. We surround it to know it. As mainbrain and empath I look for the words as my legs stretch round its perimeter. Cromozone's creeping up on me. I'm coming to know it like I come to know a lie. They sell Cromozone as hope. Hope's a lie. Hope's a jerkoff. Here's what Cromohope is. It's like spunk jerked off in a dark room. One of a billion sperm lights up. It wags its tail and jets after life. It's on the high road to big time. Watch me now, the jerked sperm squeals. The future's here and it's mine.

Then the spunk lands on a towel. It lands on dust. It dries to crust.

That's how Cromozone feels inside. Cromozone's not about hope. It's a billion billion to one chance of hope. We won't survive on hope like that.

We don't do hope. We run.

We keep on running. We keep steady, no slacking. The tread of the teensquad's counter-circles is still in time when we meet at the junction of our road. We merge two abreast, kicking up the thicker dust, counting to forty in our share of the lead till two run in from the rear and Malik and me drop back to run inside teensquad's dustbody. The cloud we kick up smothers Cromozone behind us. I snort at the dust and breathe easier.

 

- You got any qual? I ask Malik, as we slip uniforms to the floor.

- You want to do our qualrun? he asks back.

Sweat coats him. He smells good. Halfway rancid halfway sweet. His black hair's slick against his skull. The light in the depot's old neon, left over from when it was a dried food store, as flat and dull as light gets, but even that drops shadows over his muscles and bones. Malik naked. I see him like this, and life looks good for a minute. It's got potential.

A qualrun starts on streets, then zeroes in on skin. I want to zero in on Malik's skin.

- Tomorrow, I say – I get my own tabs tomorrow. We can do our qualrun tomorrow night. I'll be ready tomorrow, Mal. I'll need you then. Tonight I just need two tabs. Home use.

He tilts his head. It's a question.

- Cromozone, I tell him – We explored it today. Mom's off there tomorrow. I'll explore her as she goes. If she takes a tab and I take a tab, we'll be sharing one mind. As she goes inside, we go inside. Deep inside Cromozone.

He pulls on his shorts, reaches into the back pocket, and brings out two tabs. They lay on his palm, then he closes em into a fist.

- I'll keep em, he says – We'll drop em at nine. See you in the garden of that burnout near you.

I tilt my head. It's a question, the way he's just taught me.

- Inside Cromozone. Inside your Mom. That's not deep, Bender, he says - That's a black hole. You need practice to run out of a hole like that.

He leans forward and licks his tongue across my throat, collecting the taste of me. It's the way best friends say goodbye.

I lick him back.

His salt on my tongue.

I won't eat. Not till the qual.

My hunger tastes too good.

0.12

It's hard to keep this in order.

I'll go back to last night and tell it as it happens.

 

9pm

I jumped the wall into the burnout's garden and met Malik.

His Dad's a doctor. Mal's picked up the doctor's bedside manner.

- Qualrun, he says – It's a bond. We don't run. Qual does the running. You get that?

I nod. It's that bedside manner thing he puts on. Those long lashes, those brown eyes fixed on mine, the voice gone soft and smooth. He can play doctor all he likes, I'll play patient.

- So no hiding, he says – Qual can't take us where we don't want to go. We don't run if we resist. We'll just go round and round. Just like every fucking day, Bender. Round and round and round and round. Qual's our way out of the everyday. That what you want?

I nod again.

- Me too, he says – The two of us, Bender, we can make this great. You know how?

I don't bother to think. The patient role's fine by me. I shake my head.

- Solo qualruns? he says – We do em. They're fun, but they're fantasy. Mass qualruns, it's tribal dancing, you get excited, you jump up and down, you think you're ripping through to something new, the dance ends, and where are you? Nowhere. Round and round and round and round. Two of us running though, two like us, that's what qual was made for. We can't spin off into fantasy. We've got to check in. Check the other one's coming with us. Check he's not got somewhere better to go. We're checking, adjusting, all the time. Neither of us goes where he would have gone alone. We both get to go somewhere new. You see that?

- We take it in turns to lead, I say.

He pushes his hands back through his hair and shakes his head. It seems I'm wrong.

- It's more side by side, I try again – Joined at the hip. Two pairs of legs but only one way to go. It's qual that leads us, qual decides. No-one leads, no-one follows. It's wild, we share it. It's a thrill, we share it. Black white light dark fast slow loud quiet we share it. Shitscared or heavens open we share it.

- That's it! Mal joins in – Qual opens us up, opens us right up so we've nothing left to hide. That's everything we can be, everywhere we can go. That's our potential, Bender. Put yours and mine together, that's wild. You see how wild that is? We've got some real running to do to explore all of that.

The doctor patient game's been dropped. We're both just grinning.

He takes out the tabs and hands one over. We open our mouths. He places his tab on my tongue. I place mine on his. We sit a moment, then both stand up. Already we're working together without words. We climb the wall and drop down into the street.

It's the best way to start a qualrun. You run with the body till the qualrun turns inside.

We run blocks side by side, stride for stride till that first tremble of perception near the roof of the skull. Qual is sneaking into effect.

We climb back over the wall and lie still.

 

Pattern on entry … the cosmos arranged as points of light. Red green orange purple blue against black sky. Join up the dots for a picture of existence.

Then whoosh. Every point bursts and scatters into a cosmos of further points. And again. And again. All lights fuse into one dazzle of silver light that flies against us.

We hear its rush.

It's not the roar of wind. It's the emptying of vacuum.

I see nothing of Mal, just light to both sides, but I turn my head
and we're there. Not our bodies but the spangle of two shadows. I feel him turn in step with me and we pounce, leap with hands held high to dive upon the shadows. They tail behind us as we stream into silence, riding as one with the speed of light, floating as wide as space.

No bodies now, just a memory of bodies. A memory of Mal and me stretching limbs around the block, lungs breathing in rhythm, looking ahead with two pairs of eyes. We float as space with the memory of body, our four eyes set to see all things at once.

One way jungle. We fly as a swarm through a swelter of leaves.

One way sea. It scatters as bubbles as we race beneath the surface.

One way city. Our passing sends trash spiraling round highrises.

One way … Sound returns as the distant beat of a vast drum. All ways are this way now, the swallowing of light in a crimson black, space confined by a narrow tube that jets us round smooth corners.

Pulsing.

Pulsing.

 

- Bender

He speaks it soft and the name's like a breeze, coating my body as it shapes me.

I move a finger. It meets a hair growing on Malik's wrist. The hair's as wide as a trunk. I stroke the width and height of its bark, smooth as blood, then travel down to where it plunges its roots into the earth of his skin.

- Bender. End it Bender. Come back. Come back now.

He strokes his hands through my hair, across my face, down my body, bringing me back.

 

- You scared me, he says.

Night's passed. Mal's on his back, looking up to where daylight smudges the sky.

My head is on his chest, my ear pressed to the flesh above his heart. The heart pumps steady. I feel the tremble of his voice as he speaks.

- What do they give you, Bender? It's not qual. Qual like I know it's what I gave you just now. You went wild on it, like a little kid. That was your first time. You've never been in qualspace before. You were out there. Way out there. Way out of control. I couldn't break it. Snap. Flash. You kept to no line. You were all places at once. Then you got stuck. Dark, warm, wet. Where was that?

- Blood, I tell him – We were one cell two cells who knows same thing. We were what blood feels as it shifts round the bloodstream.

- What bloodstream? he asks.

It's a no sense question. Like asking which Bender am I.

- There's only one, I tell him.

I move my head so it's flat on his stomach, and look up at the sky. I love the soft round of his stomach. Colors are seeping in with the daylight now. The full drab display of daytime.

- I've got to go, I say – They'll be preparing Mom for the off.

- You think you'll miss her? he asks.

- Like pickled onions miss vinegar. We'll bump against each other more when she's gone. Bruise more easily.

- You don't have to stay, he says – Leave. Bring Karen. Bring her here. Run off.

- Go outlaw? I ask.

- Not outlaw, he says – Outlaw's their word. Leave their system, fuck their words.

- Who needs Karen? I ask.

- The system'll get her if we don't, Mal says.

- It's welcome, I say.

I sit up. There's no point staying for talk about Karen.

- You got a qual for Mom? I ask.

- You still want to do that? Your Mom goes into orbit like you, she'll blot out the sun.

I hold out my hand. He sits up and hands me a tab.

- It's my last, he says – You get yours this morning. Bring em straight round when your Mom's gone. I'll be here.

- You want another qualrun? Straight off?

- It won't happen, he says – Whatever they give you it's not qual. You don't handle it, Bender. It smashes you. If I hadn't pulled you back you'd still be out there. No, they're giving you something special. Something different. I want to try it.

His skin's the same oriental brown as ever but the sheen's gone out of it. He looks pale beneath.

- I'll bring you food, I say.

- No need. Just a tab. Wake me when you get here.

He lies on his side and curls himself ready for sleep. I lick my tongue across his throat in goodbye.

 

Mom's lodged on the sofa when I get home. Karen's worked on her already, brushed her hair and tied it back in a red ribbon. Mom's eyes are open and they blink, as she sweats. Those are the signs of life in the woman.

Dad shouts at me when I step into the room.

- Been peddling your ass? he says – Your mother's last night in the family home and you spend it fagging around those streets of yours. She's been here all night. Sitting up. Waiting. Worrying herself sick. Did you give her a thought? Just one thought of your mother while you were parting those cheeks of yours? Like hell you did. Come to bed, Alison, I told her, he's not worth it. Would she budge? Would she hell. Look at her. See what you've done, Steven.

He stares right into Mom's eyes.

- Look Alison, he says, pointing a finger across the room at me – He's home. You can snap out of it now.

Karen comes through from the kitchen with a plateful of toast.

- Dad's lying, she says – Mom's not waiting for you Steven. No-one is. None of us gives a shit what you get up to. It's you she hates, Dad. It's you who's throwing her out of home. Isn't that right, Mom? You didn't go to bed because you can't bear to spend another minute with this creep of a husband of yours?

She leans forward and looks close into Mom's eyes the way Dad's just done.

- That's right, Karen says – I can read Mom through her eyes like a book. She despises you for what you've done to her.

- Keep on like this, Karen, Dad says - and I'll have statesquad haul you both off in the same van.

He steps close so Karen flinches, but all he does is swipe two slices of toast from her plate.

Paul breaks away from his monitor in the corner for a slice of his own and takes it back to his console.

I take some too. Mom says it's not the same without the proper butter you got from cows but the smell of toast like the smell of fried onions is one thing can't have changed much.

Dad swallows his mouthful before speaking – he's got a hangup about manners. He waves his remaining toast at a picture of Mom in a frame above the fireplace. He must have put it up in the night. It's a printout of the one by the sea, the one where she looks like Karen.

- Funny thing, he says – when your mother was young she ate like a horse and looked like that. A great body. Not skinny but firm. Now she scarce eats a thing. It's like every breath she takes just gathers inside her and balloons her up.

He turns to Mom.

- Perhaps they'll deflate you, love, he says – Deflate you and send you back home.

No-one thinks to offer her toast. Eyes open, mouth shut, she sits and waits.

Three of us chewing, Mom staring.

It's a shame there's no photo. We'll never do better for a family show of togetherness.

 

Mom's allowed to take one bag with her. One small bag, personal items, no change of clothes. They have her size and will drape her with something new.

Karen's done the packing. She opens the bag so we can check it out.

A mirror and brush, both made out of pale yellow plastic, shaped like seashells.

A white mug from six years ago, with a picture of us three kids in fuzzy dots on its side.

A jar of odd buttons.

A small biscuit tin with a bird's nest inside.

Five pale lengths of ribbon, yellow blue pink lilac green, plus a white and a red one.

A dog-eared paperback called Women Might Fly.

A small china dish with a pattern of red roses.

A silver brooch of a flying seagull.

A pair of wraparound sunglasses.

A plastic bottle of rosewater.

A framed picture of dried flowers.

A hologram globe of tropical fish.

- We're sending your mother to be cared for, Dad says – not tossing out the garbage. You've packed nothing but crap.

- It's all the things she cares for, Karen flashes back – The sum of her twenty years living with you. That's why it's crap. Crap's what you've been good for.

Dad picks up the case. I think he's going to fling it, but he just flaps the top shut and zips it tight.

- I've given her memories, he says – Some to be proud of. What about you, my girl? What memories of you will make your mother happy?

He says it as a challenge, then turns his head to include Paul and me.

- She's given you life. All three of you. What have you given her in return? You might start thinking of that now it's too late. Start thinking whether you made your mother's life lighter or heavier.

Karen goes off to the kitchen. Paul taps away at his console. I leave the house. We've all learned life's better when we don't take Dad's suggestions.

I've got time to run to teensquad depot for my qual supply.

I can send Mom out on a surf of memories if that's what she's looking for.

 

My qual and Malik's look the same, transparent capsules with powder inside. Even so I decide to give Malik's version of qual to Mom. I know it works.

I'm just in time. 11.20. They're due to collect her at 11.51. You don't keep statesquad waiting. It's time to get Mom to her feet and roll her down the front path.

Karen's crying. Not the loud sobbing stuff she also does well. This is just tears and a screwed up face.

- Paul! Dad shouts - Leave that damn computer alone for a moment and come and say goodbye to your mother.

- Bye Mom, Paul calls across. He's on a roll. It takes sustained bursts of computer drive to reach the highest percentage points. He's deep inside the system and on track.

Dad wants him to do well. He doesn't insist.

- You, Steven, he says instead – You can spare ten minutes for your mother's farewell, or is your streetscum waiting outside?

- I ran to get back, I tell him – I'm sweaty. Just let me get a towel and dry myself off.

I run up, wipe myself down with a few strokes, and grab a clean towel off the bathroom shelf for Mom. It's the one idea I've had of slipping the qual into Mom under the beam of Dad's eyes.

- What you doing? Dad asks.

- Mom was sweating too. I'm drying her.