5

The Archer


His first impressions were of a dark wet street, with buildings on either side – high blocks of black windows and walls – and a continual sense of shadow. Of course, the shadows were more illusory than real, for here there could be no sun. His boots rang on the sunken rivets of the paving.

Eventually he came to a tall iron door, with an intercom tube beside it. He pressed on the bell, but heard nothing from within. After waiting a little longer he pressed again. At this, the stained and discoloured video monitor beside the door crackled into life, and he saw the face of a young woman appear. Her hair had been cropped close to the skull, which gave her something of the appearance of a porcupine – an impression assisted by her sunken cheeks and forward-tilted face. Only her head and shoulders were visible, and she was wearing, from what he could see, a rumpled white singlet. She looked as though she had just been awakened from sleep.

“Wha’ fu’?”

“Sorry to disturb, but orders given to report to Building 7, quadrant 34. This is?”

She knuckled her eyes a little and gave a great yawn before replying: “Sorry, yeah. This is Building seven. But I don’t think … we weren’t told anything about you.”

“Orders given. May I come in?”

“Ah … dunno really. Where’re we gonna put you?”

She seemed to be speaking to herself, rather than continuing the conversation. He looked at his watch. The figure it showed was, of course, quite meaningless: a set of arbitrary numbers. He had not yet been issued with a sidereal chronometer, indispensable for the Stations. This was, it seemed, the middle of the night – or possibly, given the girl’s disorientation, the deepest hours of sleep before morning.

Misinterpreting his gesture, the girl frowned slightly and rapped out, “Well, anyway, you can’t stay out there. ‘Orders given,’ you say. I don’t know who the fuck you are, or why we haven’t had any orders about you, but you’d better come in.”

The screen died back into greyness and a short buzzing noise supervened. At once he was transported back to another apartment building, aeons away in

8

complicated pockets and harness. She had not troubled to put on her boots, so her bare feet poked out somewhat incongruously from the heavy, stained folds.

“Here I am,” he said, feeling the occasion demanded some comment. For some reason, this seemed to amuse her greatly.

“Here you are! But who’re you, and what are we supposed to do with you?”

It was only a token protest at this stage, though, as she ushered him through the door into a little apartment behind. As prescribed, the first thing he did on the threshold was to stop and quickly pan around the room, recording its contents.
Misreading, again, his reactions, the girl pushed him half-playfully from behind: “Go on in. She won’t bite!”

She was referring, he inferred, to the presence of another young woman in the room in front of him. This one was wearing a blue terry-cloth dressing-gown, and was far more feminine in appearance than the spiky young uniform behind him. She had long black hair, which she had evidently just been washing, for she was dabbing at it with a rather ratty-looking towel, and looked distinctly put out to see him.

“Excuse … intrusion.” He managed to come up with the second word eventually, although it was a struggle to remember it. They had warned him of the possibility of some such partial aphasia in the secondary speech areas, but he had not since then had his abilities so tested as in this particular encounter.

As he walked into the room, he found himself regarding the new young woman with immense interest and curiosity. She too had her feet bare, and he concluded that there were no irregularities in the steel floor to damage them. Her toenails, he was interested to observe, were painted purple, though the finger nails were regulation length.

“My God, where did they find you!” the new young woman (he found himself mentally classifying them as long-hair and short-hair) exclaimed incredulously.

Short-hair had now come in, closing the door behind her, and stood observing the scene with malicious pleasure.

“Julie, I’d like to present to you our guest, Mister Orders Given, from Outside. His hobbies are ringing bells, running up stairs to impress people who couldn’t give a fuck, and hanging around in doorways …”

He waited a little to see if there was any more, but her fund of invention seemed to have dried up, and said: “Lieutenant.”

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“What?”

“Not Mister, Lieutenant.”

“Sorry, look, I’m being really rude here. I’m Hartnell and this is Baker, Julie Baker. It’s our job to look after the dormitory here, and answer the bell. Sit down, please. Can I get you anything? Coffee, water?”

He sat down, stiffly, in the chair furthest away from the long-haired woman, Julie. He felt she didn’t like him already, whereas the other one, short-haired Hartnell (probably a private, or at most corporal, given the job she was doing) was still reserving judgement. He found himself wondering what her first name was, and whether it was a pretty name. He hoped it was. They had warned him also of such emotional imbalances – at first, until his new system adjusted to the stresses and strains.

Objectively, he knew it was of minor importance whether the two young women liked him or not. He had a job to do and so did they – but what he knew and what he felt no longer connected in any meaningful way. He felt that if neither of the women gave him a kind word in the very near future he would howl like a dog in pain and disappointment. Their approval seemed to him, for the moment, the most important thing in the world.

“Please,” he said. “Please. I’m very tired.” And started to cry.

What once would have embarrassed him almost beyond endurance was now something of a relief. The tears flowed. At first he wiped them away with his sleeve, but then he found himself starting to sob, which necessitated covering his face with both hands. At length he stopped, and blew his nose. Only then did he think of the effect this might be having on the two women, who had been shortly before the centre of his universe.

Hartnell was now sitting next to Baker, who had her arms around the shoulders of her friend. They were looking at him with consternation – “Gob-struck,” he thought, proud to have recovered this useful word from his cerebrum.

He felt no need, now, to take the initiative or say the first word. He felt strangely at peace – as if, by humiliating himself so utterly before them, he no longer had any need to fear their reactions. The rest was up to them.

“What’s wrong?” the softer, more feminine girl Baker asked at length.

“Nothing,” he replied, perfectly deadpan and affectless once more. He knew that now they would not take him solely at face value.

“But … do you often do that?” she continued, apparently determined to pursue the matter to its conclusion.

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was seizing hold of him. How dare they call him a robot – insensate hardware. After all, he had wept in front of them, asked them their names. How could he be a machine? The complex fusion of moods was beginning to balance him, though – his overwhelming interest in and sympathy for the two young women warred against his desire to stand up and shout at them.

“You mean … you remember everything you see?”

“Not just remember – classify, record. Little boxes, cubby-holes.” How could he express it to them? He took it for granted they would be interested in understanding all the details of how it worked. “I …” No, that appeared to be all. “Apologies.”

“But … you’re not like us, are you?”

“Treatment.” He shuddered, once, involuntarily. “Long treatment, and long adjustment to optimal conditioning level.”

Ann seemed prepared to leave it at that, but Julie now seemed to have overcome her fear and recovered her initial curiosity.

“So – what do you record exactly, and why did they do this to you?” her voice sounded sympathetic and he responded to her mood with an overwhelming feeling of tenderness. If only he could do something for these two friends of his – help them in some way with the overwhelming powers that were his.

“Shall I show you?”

“Yes!” she returned quickly, ignoring the look of warning in Ann’s large hazel eyes.
“Before I came in, I scanned your room. Scan, Record, Classify. That is our job. Now, I close my eyes and I recall …”

He closed his eyes and recalled everything he had seen. There was also capacity for selection according to given parameters, and he set this to social mood-setting, the level on which one attempted to analyse the emotional temperature of a room or gathering.

“Ann, you are wearing regulation uniform trousers and a white singlet. You sleep in the singlet and put on the trousers if you have to get out of bed. There are sixteen pockets in your trousers, two buttons, thirty-seven stitched seams, of which three are beginning to fray. They are approximately eighteen months old. Julie, you too were in bed, but you decided to wash your hair when the two of you had to get up. Your towel is not clean enough, though. You paint your toe-nails and not your finger-nails because you do not like regulation wear. You have forty-seven eye-lashes and brown eyes with red

21

striations in the white. You have put up a picture on the wall, there, of a snowy lake. It is yours and not Ann’s because it reflects your taste in colours – blues and pale shades.” He thought it best not to mention that he could detect her fingerprints in the glossy paper, having compared them with the ones left on the glass she had been drinking out of. “There are 973 rivets in this room, and eighty-nine strips of steel …”

“Okay, okay, enough already,” broke in Ann. “But what does all that tell you, anyway? It’s just details, really.”

“No, it tells me that the two of you are lovers, that you are not concerned to hide the fact, that you are happier with conditions here than Julie is …”

“Anyone could have guessed that.”

“That you are afraid of losing her, that she is afraid of losing you, that neither of you are aware that it is this fear which is making things difficult for both of you, that both of you would like to talk about it, but are afraid that that might mean the end for you, that you feel you cannot leave and she feels she cannot stay …” He stopped.

The two girls were staring at him as if at a black magician. They turned, then, to one another and laughed.

“He’s right!”

“Me too!”

“Look … George. You are going to keep all this to yourself, aren’t you? I mean, there can’t be many secrets when you’re around.”

“You are my friends. I will never betray my friends.”

“Friends … but, look, we just met.”

“Apologies.” With the scanning apparatus suspended, speech again became difficult. “I know you so well I think of you as friends, and would like to help you anyway – in any way. I have no … reserve? I cannot dissimulate. Since I met you I am interested only in you.”

Breaking the somewhat embarrassed silence, Julie asked, “Where’s he going to sleep?” Then blushed a little at the implications of what she had said.

“I don’t sleep.”

“You don’t? But … what do you …”

“Do instead, were you going to ask, Jules?” broke in the more level-headed Ann. “Is there anything we can do for you, then, George? You know, like I said before, coffee, tea, breakfast.”

“Nothing, thank you, Ann. I am all right. I will be all right.”

23

The Ram


The taste was salty, a little sweat mixed with the secreted tartness of the juices: more grapefruit than honey. Folds of texture demanded separate exploration – exploitation? – as did the springy mattress of coiled hairs, dark, sparse but still an important contributor to the overall sensory mélange. It was at once the most active and most passive of activities: active, because it demanded the use of facial muscles seldom consulted otherwise, save for a moue or a grimace; passive, because his body took no further part in it than that.

“That’s good. Don’t stop …”

He had almost forgotten the other witness, which was odd, as it was her wishes only he had meant to consult. Looking up, he saw her face looking down at him, complacency mixed, he felt, with a certain anxiety. His tongue probed further, encountering, in its passage, a small raised dot of flesh above the junction of the two sliced halves. At once, and with little warning, the taste came sharper, more urgent. A gasp came from above, and she pressed herself at him with no lingering reserve. The tongue flicked on, pendulum-like, as he paid minute attention to the reactions it inspired.

For a while he investigated the slippery bridge of flesh which joined her slit to the starfish hole behind. This appeared to please her also, though she resisted a little his attempts to probe the latter more deeply. In any case, the posture she was in, on her back, thighs apart, on the edge of the bunk, precluded the possibility of proper entry.

“More … uh. Up above … yes! Don’t stop.”

Her coaching continued with less and less precision as he returned to his original position. At length, after a good ten minutes or so, she gave a little buck and gasp, and subsided. He took that as his signal to cease.

Every minute detail of the room was, of course, registered in his mind, and he began to sort them idly according to origin. This sheet-fabric-crease was Ann’s, the result of a less than peaceful night; this odd sock was Julie’s, torn off just now as she hastily bared her lower half to facilitate the activity they had just enjoyed. He supposed that she had enjoyed it. So, really, had he, though she was now beginning to rouse from her lethargy and look down at him with a certain anxiety. With surprise, he realised that it was only now she had begun to wonder what services he might demand in exchange for this one.

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“I’m sorry, Ann. I would have done the same for you, only Julie was here and you weren’t. I love you both, but you understand that I want nothing in return.”

“But look, you dumb shit, don’t you understand that you can’t just go around licking out ladies like an icecream cone or a lollypop – that it’s got implications for us?”

“But Ann, that’s just it … that’s just what …”

“Shut up, you fucking little slut – just get the fuck out of here, both of you. I want to think.”

Julie was now occupied in trying to retrieve her panties (the only other garment, besides socks, she was in the habit of wearing around the apartment) from wherever they had got to. Seeing them in the far corner into which they had been flung, Bruno went over to retrieve them, and handed them to her. She took them, then ran out in a flood of tears.

“No, you stay. We’ve got to talk.”

“Certainly, Ann.”

“How can you be so fucking cold about it? I mean, this is probably it for me and her, and I’ve been trying for I don’t know how long to stop this from happening. I always knew she liked men, but I thought that if …”

“But Ann, Julie loves you still.”

“So what about this? Was this a way of proving it to me? Hey, Ann, guess what Bruno and I got up to this afternoon?”

“I’m sorry, Ann. As I explained to Julie earlier, I do not really understand. I remember something of what I used to feel, and I remember that my … lover used to enjoy that act, as did I. Julie was bored, and did not want to talk to me, so I asked her if she would like me to do this for her.”

“Call it by its name. You asked if she wanted her pussy eaten, and of course the little slut said yes. She always does. How much time do you think I’ve spent with my head where yours has just been, contributing to madam’s pleasure?”

“I had forgotten the names. Some are there still, but not easy to recover: Cunt, snatch, pussy, slit, vagina, honeypot – it is more bitter than that, more citric – peach, fanny, crack, vulva …”

“Oh just shut up you fucking robot. I suppose you’d like to eat me out now to make it all even?”

“Yes, Ann.”

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“So anyway, what I’m saying is that you can stay here, too, and it needn’t mean a court-martial for dereliction of duty.”

“Thank you. Both of you.”

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure. Now, your first job is to apply some more cold compresses to Madam’s sore behind, but for that you’d better go into the next room. I’ve got some work to do on the link.”

“Please, not too hard …” murmured Julie a few minutes later as her bare bottom lay before him on the bed, seeming to invite caresses of a more substantial kind than those provided by tongue and soft, wet towel.

•

“What I don’t quite understand is what you were sent here for in the first place, if you don’t have any work assignment and no-one’s ever heard of you on the link.”

It was strange to lie in a bed again, holding and being held by a girl. Julie had gone to sleep, and was snoring off to one side, but Ann was still awake and curious, and interested in more than sex, it seemed.

“Neither do I.”

“And the way you speak, too. It’s a bit like a foreigner with a good vocabulary but a lot of gaps in his knowledge. Why did they make you like that?”

Releasing the smooth bare body which he had been caressing with such reminiscent devotion, he rolled on his back and stared at the ceiling. At this the sleeping Julie gave a grunt and pushed herself back against him. On one side, then, her delicate backside pressed against his leg; on the other, Ann’s lithe inner thigh and breast were nestled up against him. It was a kind of paradise, a dream of love and contentment – physical and emotional – perfect in all ways. And yet he could not sleep.

“Ann. Do you mind if I tell you something? It will take time.”

“How much time? I mean, you can go ahead, but I’m so comfortable right now that I can’t really promise to …”

“That is all right. You do not have to stay awake. I will feel you against me, and lie here till morning.”

“God, it’s all so melodramatic in your world, isn’t it?” She stretched up and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth, followed by one on the ear. He did not react except to continue stroking her like a cat. She purred.

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“I’m looking for something, I know.”

“Aren’t we all? Love, peace, security …”

“No, it is what I am here for – looking for something. That is what I was programmed for, and that is why I have … gaps. They knew I would meet people and talk to them, so they had to make it so there was nothing to fear – so that I could tell them nothing. They sent me to the wheel to watch and lie low …”

“Well, you’re certainly doing that all right. You couldn’t get much lower than what you’ve been getting up to with Julie the moment my back’s turned.”

“Your back is lovely. I would gladly do the same to you with your back turned.”

“Hey, that was a joke! My God, you’re really coming out of your shell, aren’t you! Nah, it’s not my scene, all that anal stuff. Thanks for the compliment, though. Actually, while we’re on the subject, which one of us do you find prettier?”

“You.”

“You’re so direct. You should say something like, “You’re both gorgeous, but Julie is more … such and such, and you’re more … so and so, and I really couldn’t choose between you. The two of you make up such a smorgasbord of delights that I can’t define where my pleasure really …”

“Ann. What are you talking about?”

“Sorry. This is how I get. You know I don’t chatter normally, but in bed, after sex, I get terribly talkative. Julie just goes to sleep on me, but you’re the first lover I’ve ever had who didn’t just turn over and start snoring. You see, I love all the foreplay and fooling around, but it’s this part that I really like, and I never get enough of it. Actually, I think I mostly have sex in order to feel like this afterwards. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I don’t mind. I will hold you forever if you want me to.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

“I cannot dissimulate, I told you before. It is true. No, I think it is true; I cannot really know anymore.”

“Do you like having Julie rubbing up against you over there?”

“Yes.”

“She’s sweet, isn’t she? She can be such a bitch sometimes, but in bed she’s like a little fieldmouse, full of tricks and so cute when she rolls up into a ball and falls asleep. I love her so much. Do you think it’s strange that I’m sharing her with you like this?”

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[Extracts from Julie’s Diary]

[Monday] … She was never that butch, really. I used to have to be quite naughty to get her going, but now she’s just Daddy’s little slut. I mean, Bruno’s okay – I like him, even if he is a psycho and a queer, but she’s just fallen for him in a big way. I’m not jealous. Just scared for her, a bit. I know she’s never fallen for a man before. You should of seen her this morning:

Ann: Was it good for you last night?

Bruno: Yes, Ann. [That’s all he ever says, pretty much, even when he’s been licking you out or fucking you in the arse. Some pimp he’d make!]

A: You are going to stay with us now, aren’t you?

B: I want to, Ann, but I cannot know.

A: But … you said you loved me. [Actually he said he loved both of us, but he said it a lot more before he got into our pants, if you ask me. Still, most stiff cocks are like that – they’ll say anything to get laid].

B: I love you, but I have a mission [yeah, sure!], and I cannot sleep.

That last bit is true, I think. He certainly doesn’t seem to sleep at all. After he finished fucking Ann last night, she just went off to sleep (God, no wonder, the way she was carrying on – anybody would of thought she was a virgin, and she ain’t no virgin). He got up and went out into the kitchen a bit later, ’cos I saw the light going on out there. And then, when I had to get up to pee, he was sitting at the table out there with his head in his hands, just scanning or whatever the fuck he calls it.

[Tuesday] … I dunno why I keep writing in this thing. Bored, I spose. Ann must know about it, ’cos she’s seen me doing it. Christ, I wonder if she reads it? All the stuff I’ve written about her. Anyway, Ann, if you are reading this, then I love you, you little slut, and I love the way you eat pussy too, so don’t get shitty with me about any of the other stuff. Anyway, you’re so all over Bruno these days that I might as well not exist.

She questions him all the time about his mission, in bed and out of it, and he just goes droning on about it the same way whether he’s drinking coffee or having his cock sucked. God, that bastard must think he’s in paradise. I gotta admit that I’m quite into him myself. He gave me a good going-over this morning while she was out collecting the supplies at the depot, and I haven’t felt so relaxed for ages. I really think he likes the fact that I’m not always questioning him like she is. But then, she’s a bitch in love and I’m just a bitch.

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He only did it because I asked him to, though. It was only that first time that he actually took the initiative. He really learns fast – unless all that stuff about being an alien was just put on, at first. He’s certainly learnt that you don’t offer to eat a lady just out of politeness. That one little mistake has meant that he has to satisfy both of us, in our bed, every night, before he can go brood like he wants to.

[Wednesday] … This scene is getting weirder all the time. I gotta admit, I was expecting him to piss off at some stage without warning, leaving his little wifie Ann all forlorn. Seriously, it’s a bit like that. She cooks and cleans all the time (like she’s sposed to, of course, given she’s in charge of all the rooms – but she used to make me do it, too). Now when he goes out in the morning she starts going on at me about how it felt last night, and what can she do to try and make him sleep better tonight. I tell her that he’s not going to sleep no matter how much she pleases his dick, and that he’s really only doing it for her anyway (I mean, he is kind of a nice guy – he’s so polite to both of us, and he does anything we ask him to. Not just sexually, but otherwise. I know I’m a cynic, but he’s so sweet to Ann – talking to her, and kissing her, and calming her down. Only, it is kind of like the first time for her, and she’s old enough to see that it won’t last – which is why she keeps on asking me if shaving her pussy would help [it did look kind of cool, and I think he liked it too], or asking him to spank her on the bare behind [that didn’t work. He just kept kissing her and wouldn’t get into the game. It was the same when she was punishing me that time. He didn’t seem to get that I was into it. Just started crying when I was screaming at her to stop. What a pussy!]).

Anyway, I was going to say. He brought a friend home this evening. Aye, Aye, I was thinking, he’s been telling some bozos in a bar about how he’s got two bitches in tow, and how they’ll do anything for him, and they only charge fifty credits for a blow-job. It doesn’t usually take long. He was a ratty looking old guy, with a long white beard and a wrinkled face, and he looked like he hadn’t had a meal or a shower for quite some time.

Luckily Ann and me were dressed (sometimes she wants to open the door to him in the nude – and once she just shouted for him to come in, so he could see us in the middle of a 69). She looked at him kind of funny and said “Who’s this?” Like she was afraid or something.

“He is a friend, I think. I was talking to him down at the docks.”

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The old man came in and took off his hat, would you believe it. Bruno asked if his friend could have a wash, and Ann went into her mother-hen routine. I think she was kind of relieved actually (so was I – I don’t really fancy fucking any friends he picks up down by the docks). She was thinking that this must be his contact, or whoever it is he’s waiting for (she still believes all that b.s. he keeps spouting). Anyway, Ann got the old guy some new clothes, and threw his old ones out, and he was so grateful you wouldn’t believe. Sat there with a big grin in his face, in a bathrobe, drinking coffee, while Bruno and Ann fussed around him. I guess she was wondering if he’s picked up some kind of cult infection or something. Free goods for space derelicts.

Finally, to be polite, I asked the old man what he did, and he said that he was a teacher, and that he’d been moving out to the belt to set up a new school when his bank got hit. And that was how he’d got stuck on Space Wheel Three. He had a funny way of talking – very polite and measured, but he really started opening up after a bit. I could tell he liked the way I looked, but he wasn’t crude about it. I was kind of going on about how I would have put on some more clothes if I’d known we were gonna have guests, and he said that I could not look more exquisite, and that I was a feenix of beauty. So I asked him what that was, and he went off into some poem about it, and told me it was a bird which burnt itself to ashes and then came back to life.

Bruno got interested then, and asked him to repeat the poem, and tell him all about it. It was in some foreign language, and he had to explain what every part meant before that geek would calm down. To tell you the truth, I was a bit jealous, because before that the old man only had eyes for me, and normally people pay lots of attention to Ann not me ’cos she looks so hot, so I told him I’d write it down in my diary. Both of them got interested then, and they asked me about the diary, and how often I wrote in it, and what I wrote, and all that sort of thing. Ann was listening pretty hard, too, even though she must have known about it for ages. I mean, it takes me hours, and I got no idea why I do it, really. I said I couldn’t show it to them, because it was too private, but that I could read them some bits if they really wanted. God, I wanted to cry, they were so polite and sweet about it. The old man looked as if he wanted to marry me, and kept on going on about how unfair it was that “such talent should coexist with such beauty” – and he wasn’t shitting me, either, ’cos he listened to every word.

I mean, that’s how we spent the whole evening. Me reading out stuff, and them commenting on it (especially the old man), ’cos Ann was sitting on

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Bruno’s knee and just kind of kissing him, and he was kissing her back, but both of them were listening as well. I tried to leave out all the bitchy stuff at first, but there was just so much of it that I felt ashamed till the old man, Joseph he said his name was, told me it was “excellent satire,” and very “true-to-life,” so after a while I started reading out most of what was there.

Well, anyway, after that there was no question of kicking the old man out. He’d only been here a couple of hours, he said, and I must admit I don’t think he would have survived much longer if Bruno hadn’t of found him. I managed to talk to Ann alone in the kitchen, and ask her if she could get him a room or something, and she kissed me and said she was real proud of me, and I burst into tears, I felt so happy. I love her so much, and she was looking at me like I was special, more even than Bruno. So the old man’s gonna stay, and he said he’d show me some of his own writing, but I don’t think I’ll understand it much. Ann found him a room down in the basement, and I went down with him to settle him in, and show him where things were. And then I kissed him goodnight, but nothing else, ’cos he’s really old.


[Thursday] … When I woke up this morning I couldn’t believe it. I’ve started sleeping in the upper bunk, to leave those two alone, so I just lay there thinking about the evening before, and all the shit I’d written about it in my diary. I mean, what was I thinking to read all that stuff out loud to them? I felt so ashamed, but then Ann crawled in beside me, and said that she’d never loved me more or been so proud of me as when I’d been so polite to the ratty old man, and that Bruno had really appreciated it too.

The funny thing is that I wasn’t even thinking about them when I did it, it just seemed natural because he was so polite and friendly to me, and I kind of liked the way he paid me so much attention, and not just undressing me with his eyes. So I said that and she told me that that was why she loved me, because I was such a good person deep down, and we had a really nice cuddle. I really thought Bruno had stuffed it up between us, not that there was that much to stuff up, but now I think he’s made it better somehow. I asked her how she’d feel if I had an affair with the old man, and she said that he’d certainly die a happy old man if I did.

Later on I went down to see how the old man was, and he was kind of sick in bed, talking with Bruno about a whole bunch of old papers and stuff. I came in and asked if I could do anything, and the old man said that all he wanted from me was the delight of my presence and my conversation. Bruno

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that “treatment” he’s always on about, and that was why it didn’t mean the same thing for him as for Ann and me. I said I was sorry, too, and he said he’d go down and talk to the old man for me if I wanted him to. I said I did, ’cos I just feel so embarrassed about the whole thing. I really thought I was doing a nice thing, but it turned out so bad.

He came back about an hour later and told me that the old man had said to say that he was really sorry, and that he’d leave just as soon as he could get up again (he was still a bit sick, he said) and that he hoped that I wouldn’t stop visiting him. I got Bruno to come with me at first, ’cos I wanted to check the old man was okay but I was kind of embarrassed to see him alone, but he was so sweet that I asked him to go away after a bit.

This is some of what the old man said to me:

“‘All life’s grandeur / is something with a girl in summer’ [that bit was from a poem, he said, but not one of his]. I loved a girl once, and even married her, but she changed over the years, and became cold, while I grew ever more in love with her, until finally she told me to go away.”

I asked him if that was when he decided to leave Earth, but he said that it had been long before. I also asked her if she was beautiful, and he said yes, but not as pretty as me.

“So you see, last night, when you so sweetly offered yourself to me, I remembered all those old sorrows, and felt quite overcome by them. I also knew that you were doing it out of pure politeness, and no real feeling for me, so I felt upset. I’m very sorry to have upset you in my turn, though. You see, I haven’t met any people I liked so much for years as you and your charming friend, and – of course – Lieutenant Bruno. But I’m an old man now and could never hope to be a lover again.”

“Would you like me to be your lover? Really?”

“Of course, my dear. But you see, I can’t … do anything.”

“That’s okay. I could just sleep beside you in bed at night and keep you warm.”

“Like Abishag.”

“Sorry? Who shag?”

“Abishag was a young girl who was chosen by the tribes of Israel to lie by the aged King David in his declining years, for precisely that purpose. But you’re not really serious, my dear?”

“I am. I like you, and it’s kind of crowded up there at the moment. I’d rather sleep with you down here.”

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What then, did the planners of the city do? The phrase “dormitory suburb” took on a new meaning here. The outer wheel, largest in area, lightest in construction, perspex and unbreakable glass for the most part, became the kingdom of the sun – brighter than anything in the dreams of Campanella. Inside that came the shadowy wheel of sleep and night-time, built like an old European city of tenements and alleys – Prague, or Brussels, or Edinburgh. The innermost hub was reserved mainly for machinery and the vast engines which provided power, light and ventilation. There, too, the starships docked, though their passengers and crews did not stay there long – jetting swiftly outwards into the long boulevards of the outer city for the most part.

Travel is by endlessly moving pathways rather than by vehicles, because in this way the illusion of the city can be kept up. The moment one feels enclosed the city has become a vast trap – a rat’s maze of streets with but the one exit: outwards, from the hub of the wheel.

Bruno walks everywhere, along the miles and miles of outer streets, looking out at the sun and infinite space and trying to count the stars. For the most part, he speaks to no-one and nobody speaks to him. The outer city is a busy, bustling place, necessary after the melancholy of the dark city to which everyone must return at night. Sometimes he stops at a café or little bistro, for such visits leave a record, and he thinks it important that anyone looking for him should know where he has been. He is looking for something, he knows, something he will know when he sees it, but he does not know what.

The outer city holds no secrets, though; everything – workplaces, pleasure-gardens, spas – is open to the eye, so it is not long before he begins to angle his attention to the night. The dark tenements are, by their nature, hidden and impenetrable. One can enter only the building to which one is assigned, and all these assignments are recorded on the giant information web known as the link. With Ann’s help, he has devised some ways of getting into the other buildings, but finds them disconcertingly similar to his own. Each has a concierge, and flights of stairs as well as furniture lifts – each has a roof sealed off from easy access, which turns out to be (in fact) a ceiling, as he discovers after some rather breakneck manoeuvres one day. Gravity is lower in the middle of the wheel from that maintained on the rim, which makes climbing easy, but above there is nothing except a black roof of steel.

There is nothing for it, after that, but the exploration of the hub. There are some workers there (Julie was one of them), but it was never a popular assignment. Little attempt is made in this innermost part of the city to keep

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moment, though, his job is to observe, not act. He judges Ann and Julie to be sincere, as indeed he is himself, with them. In any case, they behave towards him in a loving manner, and that – to him – is indistinguishable from love. Perhaps it is indistinguishable from love.

The old man has disappeared, but Bruno can call up the myriad possible pathways accessible from this spot from his former explorations. He sets out, slowly, to traverse them.

When he finds him, in a little alcove set off from the corridor, the old man is sitting on his suitcase and playing on an odd instrument, a kind of bulbous, elongated recorder. Or, at any rate, he is blowing softly into it and moving his fingers up and down on the stops with a curious, jerky motion. Nothing comes out, save a faint hissing sound. Seeing a uniformed man standing in front of him, the old man puts down his flute and looks up with an expression of bland enquiry, as if he has been interrupted in the midst of some vital yet ordinary task.

“What are you playing?” asks Bruno.

“Your question is imprecise, young man. If you mean to ask what musical instrument am I playing, this is a chanter – a kind of practice player for the bagpipes. Alas, my bagpipes are long gone, and I would hardly have the wind to play them if they weren’t! If you mean to ask what piece I’m playing, it is the Lament for Mary MacLeod, an ancient Highland tune in the musical form known as piobaireachd.”

“Would you play it for me?”

“Certainly, young man, certainly.”

The old man seems happy to display his skills on the ancient mouthpiece, and begins to produce a series of odd, discordant noises, with little relation to any of the melodic forms Bruno knows. For ten minutes or so he continues, then stops with a sigh.

“I suppose that means nothing to you.”

“No,” said Bruno.

“Well, where should I begin? Do you have the time for the full story, or are you going somewhere in a hurry?”

“Nowhere.”

“The origins of this art are lost in the depths of time, but if we begin in the city of Cremona, in Italy …”

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means. When I say I knew her, she was in fact my wife. And this Ann you speak of?”

“She is my … lover and my friend. We live with another girl called Julie. Julie is also Ann’s lover.”

The old man seems a little disconcerted by this excess of information, but at length shakes his head and, muttering: “Autres temps, autres moeurs,” gets up and begins to rearrange his effects. Bruno swings the little suitcase on his back, and they begin to walk towards the spokes.

At length the old man regains the courage to speak, and begins tentatively: “Are you certain that your young lady friends would really welcome a visit? I mean, it sounds as if you may be a little crowded, and some kind of advance warning might be appropriate, might it not?”

“Ann will not care.”

“No, but … don’t you know, young ladies can be a little … exigent in the manner of personal appearance, and I feel uneasily conscious that I have not really been able to keep up my toilet in a way that my wife, at any rate, would have approved. What do you think?”

“You will be welcome. When I cried, they welcomed me.”

“You cried? You mean that you, too, were in temporarily embarrassed circumstances until rescued by these young ladies? Do you know, that makes me feel much better. I won’t deny having shed the odd tear myself after that most disagreeable interview with the security official on the other wheel. Really, I had done no harm to the rooms I was occupying, and one or two of the posters he tore down were really irreplaceable. He gave me no time to explain, but my Anthea, who was no mean artist, had drawn likenesses of some of my very particular heroes, with extracts from various forms of musical notation, and those were things I held very close to my heart …”

Bruno stops and embraces the old man, hard, then slaps him twice on the back before walking on. Bemused, but looking slightly more cheerful, the old man follows in his wake.

96

The Lion


Why do we need anything else to happen? Joseph is sleeping with young Julie, Bruno is in the arms of Ann. They’re all happier than they were before – Julie at being taken seriously as a scribbler, Joseph at resembling a lover. Ann is pleased to let her cynical mask slip, Bruno is able to express the tenderness which is his sole residue of sexual feeling.

During the day, perhaps, as Ann and Julie continue their duties as guardians of the tenement, Bruno and Joseph talk, or take promenades through the streets, watching the busy life of the space wheel. In the evening they eat together, and talk of music, and love, and their past lives, and food, and all the other pleasures of human existence.

But it’s not enough, alas. You need more. Don’t forget that, while Joseph and Ann and Julie are all happily sleeping in one another’s arms [a difficult feat that, I’ve always found – so much easier to roll over and establish your own microclimate without reference to your companion’s breathing and body temperature], Bruno is lying awake. He cannot sleep. All he can do is combine and recombine the observations of his day into some kind of order.

You see, now, why his emotions have been so impoverished. It would not be long before he went mad under such circumstances if he were still an ordinary man. In effect, he has been driven mad artificially by the treatment he has received. He is conscious of himself, and of his difference from the others, but he does not long to sleep. If he did it would be intolerable.

Does he love Ann? She is, after all, entirely loveable, and is clearly very fond of him. He does, but with affection rather than passion. He enjoys having sex with her, but it is not an essential component of his love. We can define that other love almost in terms of what Bruno does not feel. He is not jealous of Ann; he does not mistrust her; he is not suddenly enflamed by a small gesture, a word, a crease of the lip. He is not critical or laudatory of her body and her appearance. He does not plan for the future, worry about his or her degree of commitment. Her sexual submissiveness to him is something he enjoys but does not require – just as he was prepared earlier on to play the part of submissive to her. There would have to be some internal resistance to overcome for this to turn into true sensuality.

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the time. One time I overheard him saying to Bruno that he quite liked being ordered around by me. It reminded him of the old days with Anthea, before she left him – little bitch! – so I order him around quite a lot now. He’s so polite that it makes me feel really important). “So what’s all this about you dumping Ann?” I asked. “Hasn’t she done enough for you not to treat her this way?”

“I love Ann,” he replied.

“That’s not the issue. If you love her, then you wouldn’t leave her.”

“I have to go.”

“Why? You’ve got all mod cons here. Hot and cold running pussy, no job, friends to talk to – what else could a man want?”

“I have a job to do.”

“What job?”

“I do not know. I do not know if I can explain it. It is to do with pibroch.”

“That’s what Ann told me, but I thought she must have misheard. I mean, nobody could be crazy enough to leave a girl like that because of some kind of music.”

I could see that Joseph was kind of pricking his ears up at all this, and working his fingers up and down the stops of his chanter the way he does when he gets really interested in something. He broke in then, and started questioning Bruno himself:

“What about pibroch? Really, young man, I think you might have discussed this matter with me before it went so far. I am certainly not one to deny the sovereign importance of music, but love and devotion such as these two young ladies have shown is not to be misprized lightly.”

I went over and gave him a kiss, and then sat down on his knee. He went on:

“Explain to me your reasoning, and I will tell you what I think, but I must say that I agree with Julie so far, and that is not simply because she is sitting on my knee.”

I didn’t really understand what Bruno said, but Joseph seemed to. It was something about how his life wasn’t going in a straight line anymore, like ours, but that it was part of some other kind of pattern. They talked about the patterns for quite a while, but all I could really get was that he thought he was part of some kind of group who were going to meet after they had experienced a certain number of things, but he didn’t really know what was going to happen to them all then. Perhaps they’d all fuse into one, or perhaps