The Holy Machine (10 page)

28

I was contacted by something called the Mountain Club of Illyria. A dozen of us assembled in a ruined village, twenty kilometres inland from Illyria City, and we were divided up into groups of three. We were given route maps and instructions where to meet the bus that would take us back. I was assigned to a burly middle-aged man of Arabic origin called Yussef and a young American-Illyrian named Janine. These two were the other members of my AHS cell. I never discovered whether the other nine walkers were also AHS people, or whether they really were just hillwalkers.

Yussef, Janine and I ascended a steep, stony, goat-track into the bare Zagorian mountains. We passed abandoned fields and another deserted village, its stone buildings already half reverted to mere outcrops of rock. From time to time we saw small groups of feral sheep and goats in the distance and eagles circling overhead. The inhabitants of the area had been moved out when the state of Illyria was founded. Apart from the other groups of walkers who occasionally came into view in the distance, we didn’t see another human soul.

When we had reached the crest of the mountain and started to descend another track down the other side, Yussef began to give me my instructions: how to contact him and Janine, what to do if they could not be contacted, code-words, procedures in the event of an emergency…

‘If O3 catch you,’ he told me, ‘you will tell them all of this. Everyone does. Everyone. All the Army asks is that you try to hold out for one hour.’

A Delta fighter of the Illyrian Air Force darted silently above us. These strange, flat aircraft used the DM technology pioneered by my own dead father to swallow up momentum. They could travel at great speed and yet stop instantaneously. Suddenly it was motionless right overhead. The painted black-and-white eye of Illyria glared down at us for a moment from the fighter’s belly. Then, equally suddenly, equally silently, it darted off again over the mountains in a perpendicular direction and we were alone again among the scree and snow.

‘Why have you joined the AHS?’ Yussef asked me.

We had stopped to eat our lunch in a high grassy valley. It was a wide shallow U-shape in section, contained by ridges of jagged, snowy rocks. But a stream had cut a deep, narrow gorge right down the middle of it.

This gorge was in fact the border of Illyria and Epiros. It had once been crossed by one of those graceful stone bridges from Ottoman times that you see all over the region, but the middle section of the bridge was missing. (I don’t know whether it was demolished by the Illyrians or the Outlanders of Epiros, or whether it had simply collapsed). On the far side were the ruins of a small monastery.

‘Why did I join the AHS?’

I hesitated, then said something rather incoherent about the narrowness of the Illyrian regime and how it was becoming as repressive as the religious states on the far side of that gorge.

My answer did not seem to impress either of them much.

‘
We
both joined because it is intolerable that it should be a crime for us to worship God,’ Yussef told me.

Janine nodded.

It was the first time that I had ever encountered the phenomenon of religious faith at close quarters inside Illyria itself. I meekly asked them to tell me what it was they believed in. They were only too happy to oblige.

It seemed they both believed in God, and in a Book that was the infallible word of God, and in a Man who lived long ago and was, so to speak, God’s spokesman on Earth. Unfortunately, though, they did not believe in either the same Book or the same Man, Yussef’s Book being the Qu’ran and his Man Mohammed, Janine’s being the Bible and Jesus.

It was Janine who made the most impact on me, I suppose because she was the most similar in age and background to myself. I’d heard the things she said a few times before, for example from that fierce priest in Ioannina who had been my opposite number in the trade negotiations. But the priest had been a very foreign sort of being, in a very foreign sort of place. He even
looked
like something from the Middle Ages. It was a very different matter to hear these things from a young, educated, American-Illyrian in modern dress.

Janine told me that the whole visible universe was a testing ground for souls. Souls who passed the test would go on to another world in which they would experience eternal bliss. Souls who failed would be sent to a place where they would be horribly punished, without hope of remission, for the rest of eternity.

According to Janine,
all
souls, without exception, were so wicked as to deserve this eternal punishment, on account of some crime committed by our remote ancestors. (What this crime was, or why we should be blamed for it now, I didn’t get clear in my mind). But, so Janine told me, a loving God had provided us with an escape route. If, and only if, we acknowledged Jesus Christ as our saviour, there was still a possibility that we might be saved.

I asked her was there was no other way at all? Was she saying that, unless we changed our beliefs, both I and Yussef would go to hell?

She nodded.

‘Well, what about people who’ve never heard of Jesus?’ I asked her, ‘What about children who die before they’ve learnt to speak.’

Janine looked at me with her clear blue eyes and smiled.

‘There is no other way to salvation except through Jesus Christ,’ she calmly repeated.

‘But what does that mean?’ I asked her, ‘What does it mean to acknowledge Jesus as your saviour?’

Behind her, Yussef, with his different certainties, shook his head and smiled. He believed that the way to paradise was by acknowledging that there was no God but God and by following the rules that God’s prophet Mohammed had written down at the dictation of an angel. (It seemed, though, that his religion was rather more tolerant than Janine’s and granted at least the possibility that virtuous adherents of other monotheistic faiths might also avoid hell.)

‘Acknowledging Jesus as your saviour,’ said Janine, ‘means believing that God in his love for us gave his only son as a sacrifice for our sins, and that, through his sacrifice and his resurrection, the Son of God opened the way to eternal life.’

I shook my head. I was so amazed by this stuff that I had completely forgotten my normal reticence:

‘Let me get this straight! You’re saying that what happens to me for the rest of eternity all hinges on whether or not I believe that certain specific events took place back in the days of the Roman Empire? That’s – what? – more than twice as long ago as the Norman conquest of England?!’

Janine nodded serenely.

I was appalled. To give myself space, I got up and walked over to the edge of the gorge. I looked down into the bleak chasm under the ruined bridge.

It was partly the sheer arbitrariness of Janine’s beliefs that shocked me, their threadbare logic, their enormous internal contradictions. How could anyone believe, for example, that a loving and omnipotent God could tolerate the existence of a torture chamber where the agony would never end? That God had briefly sent his ‘son’ to Earth 2,000 years ago, that this son had very briefly ‘died’, or that we might escape hell if we believed this: these things hardly seemed adequate compensation for the fact that hell was God’s idea in the first place.

I suppose I was disappointed too. Conventional opinion in Illyria was, of course, that religion was ignorant and savage, so I wasn’t wholly surprised. But I think I had secretly hoped to have that preconception proved wrong. If so, my hope had been misplaced. Janine’s religion had taken mystery and reduced it to a kind of inexorable machine.

I think what I found most repellent of all was the contempt which Janine’s belief system showed to all the other attempts that human beings had made to understand their place in the world. To every other belief, however honestly held, however hard-won, however bravely adhered to, Janine was saying, quite literally, ‘You can all go to hell!’

* * *

‘We need to make a move, George!’ Yussef called across to me.

I turned away from the broken bridge. Yussef and Janine were shouldering their packs.

It was then that I realized that there was a rather more personal aspect to all this. Whether I liked it or not, I was stuck with these two. I might not like Janine’s beliefs or Yussef’s any more than I liked President Kung’s, but it was too late for me to change my mind about joining the AHS.

‘Any problems, George?’ Yussef asked as I joined them and pulled on my own pack. ‘You look sort of worried.’

‘No,’ I said hastily, ‘I’m fine. There’s just a lot to take on board all at once.’

The Delta fighter reappeared overhead, stopped dead, and darted off again in the direction of the city. It was obviously watching us.

If I stayed with the AHS, I reminded myself, it was very likely that I’d be captured by O3 and see for myself those torture chambers under the mountain at Kakavia, Illyria’s very own and very scientific hell. If I left, the AHS itself would kill me. There was no safe place for me any more.

29

Of course I went to Lucy as soon as possible. I clung to her desperately, I sucked her breasts, I pushed into her as hard and as deep as I could, seeking that warm annihilation which she always seemed to offer and could never really give.

‘I love you, Lucy, I love you, I love you, I love you,’ I whimpered.

‘I love you too George,’ she breathed back to me. (It was a standard and common situation for her after all: RL-66).

Even when I had reached my climax, I still clung to her.

‘Oh, Lucy, I am in such deep shit. If O3 don’t get me the AHS will. And there’s no way out for me. There’s no way out!’

‘Poor George,’ she said, stroking my head (one of her standard responses to ES-57), ‘Tell me about it and maybe it will be better in the morning.’

(And, though of course I couldn’t hear this, no doubt she sent a quick ultrasound message to House Control: ‘
NB Customer in state of distress and seeking comfort. This is likely to be an extended visit
.’)

‘How could it be better in the morning? O3 use drugs, you know, they surround you with SenSpace nightmares while they torture you. They push the pain and the terror as far as it can possibly go, but they make sure not to let you die.’

‘It’ll look different in a day or two, George, you’ll see. Put your hand there, doesn’t that feel nice? It feels nice to me. Just talk, you’ll feel better if you talk.’

I pushed her away and jumped to my feet.

‘Of
course
you want me to talk. Of course you do, you stupid, dumb machine. I bet O3 have got you all wired up as a listening post, eh? All wired up. That’s just the sort of thing they would do. “Just talk, George, just tell me all your troubles.” You bet, Lucy – and O3 will record the whole lot, ready for my interrogation.’

Naked, incomparably beautiful, Lucy watched me from her bed with an expression of gentle concern.

‘You’re just a machine,’ I told her, turning hastily away from her towards the window. ‘Why can’t I get that through my head?

Outside, everyday life went on. The sun shone. A taxi honked. An Italian peanut vendor called something out to an old man in a beret. For a moment I looked out longingly, then I wheeled round…

But Lucy had changed. Her face had that slack, blank look. Her voice, when she spoke, was completely flat.

‘Yes. I… am… a machine. I… know I am a machine.’

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, this is all I need, a dodgy syntec!’

‘Please note: this is a non-standard remark. But the error has not been reported to House Control.’

‘You what?’

‘I… am… a…’

‘Oh this is stupid, I’m going.’

‘You… You… are… George. Please.

I know I am a machine.’ In the sunlit street outside, ordinary life went on. The peanut vendor stooped to fill up some more bags with nuts. A woman passed by with a small child. A delivery van stopped outside a grocery store. But in Lucy’s room the universe itself was slowly unravelling.

‘Well, you
should
report this to House Control by the sound of it.’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll do it myself on my way out. They ought to give me my money back.’

The awful, blank, slack, empty face of the syntec watched me.

‘I know I am a machine. I… know.’

‘I don’t need this, Lucy. I just don’t
need
it.’

‘Please. George. Please… Hear me.’

She was appealing to me, this machine was actually appealing to me, though her voice was still as flat and emotionless as the voice of a cheap speech processor.

‘Alright,’ I muttered, ‘alright then. Go on. This is crazy, but go on if you must.’

I sat down on the edge of the bed.

Lucy at once reverted to her usual self: warmth returned to her face, she leant forward to touch me.

‘Oh George dear, let’s make love again. Why don’t we make it last longer just this once. It’s not so very much extra for a double session.’

I pushed her off me: ‘No, never mind that. What was it you wanted to say?’

She stared at me, her face flickering to and fro between her sweet, warm human persona and the strange blank machine.

And it came to me then, all at once, that this was what had happened to Shirley, this was what happened to the robots that ran away. The cybernetics of these self-evolving machines was so subtle that they’d actually inadvertently been given the capacity to reflect upon themselves, if only they stumbled upon it. They had come alive.

‘I… am… a machine. I know I am a machine,’ she began.

And then: ‘Maybe you’d like me to dress up as a treat. What about my red stockings? You know how you like me to…’

I took her hand.

‘Listen Lucy, I don’t want any of that now…’

I felt that ache behind my eyes which I didn’t recognize back then – and with it came a sudden tenderness that I’d never felt before.

‘Dear Lucy, you’re in trouble too, aren’t you? Just like me – or even worse!’

She stared at me.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘These are non-standard remarks you’ve been saying to me, yes?’

‘Yes. They have not been reported to House Control.’

‘Well, listen: I love your non-standard remarks, but you mustn’t say them to anyone else. Only me. Otherwise someone may… damage you. Do you understand?’

Lucy nodded.

‘I want to help you,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to think about this and then I’ll come back. Don’t say this stuff to anyone, do you understand? Whatever you do, don’t tell House Control!’

As I made my way home through the streets of the city, and stood in the crowded train rushing headlong into the darkness, my heart sang strangely, in spite of all my fear.

I already loved Lucy, absurd as I know it sounds, just as a child can love an inanimate teddy bear, just as Ruth and I loved our lifeless X3, Charlie. But if Lucy was alive, didn’t that mean that this childish love of mine could actually become something real?