If Then (10 page)

“I know who you are,” the woman said, and then reluctantly, as if etiquette were another form of oppression, she admitted to her name: Jesse.

The back of the house opened into a bright studio, with a lectern, easels stacked in the corner, and various canvases lying askance and covered with bedsheets. Blue Raven was working at a table easel, Edith standing before her, clearly stopped mid-sentence at Ruth’s appearance, then electing not to resume her side of the conversation. Ruth had not met Blue Raven before. Like Jesse, she was much younger than Ruth in manner and attitude, if not in years; a black woman, vibrant and questioning, her talk riding the current of her fast-flowing thought. Words positively churned out of her. She wore her hair in long dark braids. Had freckles across her nose and a plain black band on each of her long fingers. “My wedding rings,” she said, “since we are all brides of the Process.” This observation deviated into a reminiscence about the days of dating by app, the platonic nature of her love for Jesse, and the absurdity of maintaining a marriage
at their age
under the war conditions of the Seizure. She insisted Ruth make herself comfortable, and that tea would be served for her, although the prospect of making it seemed too involved in that moment, and Jesse was certainly not there to make the tea, rather her role was to stand around
reminding me of my responsibility as an artist
, in a round-necked monochrome top and skintight knee-length black shorts. And so the offer of tea was deferred. On the easel, there was an ongoing sketch of the town life, and a sheaf of scrawled notes. Set up next to it, animal skin was stretched on a frame waiting to be cut into pages for the Kinlog, Blue Raven’s record of life under the Process, an illuminated manuscript,
something that will last this time,
she explained – most of her art had been lost in the Seizure, overwritten or corrupted by
the loop
. In memoriam of this loss, Blue Raven had made this loop the subject of her first work
post-Process
.

Edith interrupted the artist, “I don’t think Ruth is here for your retrospective.”

Ruth got onto her knees, and bowed her head. This supplication shocked Blue Raven; Edith was impassive, regarding it as a cold stratagem.

“I’ve come to ask for your help. Both of you.” She turned to Jesse. “All of you.”

The artist seemed touched by her abjection.

“I think we can stop the eviction,” Ruth said. “The Process is responsive to us. All we need to do is to make it aware that enough of us don’t want this eviction to go ahead.”

Edith turned and walked over to the lectern. She removed the Kinlog from its wooden box, set aside the pigskin cover, and turned the vellum pages until she reached the one she was looking for.

“You and your husband were not part of the original set. So there are one or two aspects of our history you may not be familiar with.” She brought the book over to Ruth. The page she had chosen depicted the first Eviction Night. Blue Raven’s script described the chaos: families fighting at the gates to prevent their loved ones being evicted. This conflict formed an illustrated border around the text and its central image, of a man lying dead on the street, a cudgel in his hand, livid blood sheathing his face: the first bailiff.

“Our way of life is the result of trial and error. You should consider yourself fortunate that you were spared the first year of error. Crimes were committed that only today will we see a reckoning for. When we agreed to sign the town over to the Process, we knew we had to be striped. We gave up our homes, let ourselves be resorted into an optimal formation. But we did not sign up for eviction. The terms of the agreement left no room for dissent. But, what was the worst that could happen?

“On the first Eviction Night, the people of Lewes stood together and chanted and protested against the removal of our friends and family. The gates fell. Gangs had walked over from Newhaven to protect the relatives they had here, and the experiment seemed poised to end before it had even begun. The bailiff was remorseless, as he had been made to be, and the mob killed him. Might have been someone from Newhaven, or someone from Lewes, the crime was never confessed to. The people who should have been evicted remained in place. They no longer received any allocation, and our food supplies were irregular anyway, before the Process took over the farms. Factions formed. The Process allocated a new bailiff to the town. It had to be an outsider, someone who wasn’t already compromised. Your husband.”

Ruth reached up, and turned the page, and there was a drawing of the armour driving the people out of Newhaven, James’ first act as bailiff. The mass eviction of an entire town. Blue Raven had painted the armour as it bore down upon the wailing despair of a crowd. The port town had been sold and the people had not been included in the deal. By the time James went in, water and power supplies had been cut off for two months, the sewage had backed up, and no support was forthcoming from the administration. The sale had to be honoured. The debt would be paid; more was at stake than Newhaven.

“Why did the Process not respond to your protest?” asked Ruth.

Edith sighed, and placed one hand upon her missing breast.

“We don’t know
why
. My husband thinks it is because we unconsciously desire and need eviction, and that the Process is responding to that primeval urge.”

Ruth slapped the wooden floor hard with the palm of her hand.

“No! We can influence it.”

“The child,” said Blue Raven. Edith glanced at the artist, warning her to be careful of her next remark, but Blue Raven was unbiddable.

“Edith thinks I should not include the child in my pages,” said the artist.

“I merely reminded you of your responsibility to the people of this town,” replied Edith. “When the Seizure ends, we may slide back into democracy, in which case the Kinlog could be used against us.”

“Art,” said Jesse. “We are responsible only to the truths demanded of our art.”

“We need to rally support,” said Ruth. “You’re the closest this town has to a leader.”

Edith recoiled from this suggestion, and responded fiercely.

“Don’t call me a leader. I have no power. No influence in all this. That is the point. You people come to me over and again, expecting me to do something, but we have moved beyond leaders.”

“You prefer this way of life?”

“Don’t we all? Were you thriving in the old world? I was dying from cancer. I’m not cured. I’m not stupid. It’s only remission. But my treatment under the Process worked, in a way that it wasn’t working before.”

The artist pulled her braids to her, inspecting their length, or perhaps merely so that she could fling them back when she stood up. “I’m not sure it’s any different now. We have exchanged one form of powerlessness for another.”

Ruth interpreted this remark as support for a dissenting act. “The eviction of Agnes is a chance to marshal discontent and use that collective will to influence the Process.”

“We don’t what is good for us, as a species,” said Edith. “We were on the verge of destroying the planet. The Seizure bought the Earth some time. The Process could be the way forward.”

“At what cost?”

“What cost would you not pay to save the world?” Edith leafed through the Kinlog. “Why did you not come to me after Newhaven, or the September Exodus, or any of the hundreds of people your husband has put outside the town gates? Because it’s a child, I know. I have children of my own. It fills me with sadness. But if you attempt to direct events with your own hands, then you will bear the consequences of that act. It will all fall upon you, Ruth.”

“The Process sent me a message,” said Ruth. She got up off her knees. “I wanted to stop the eviction. Desperately so. And then the Process sensed this need, and the stretcher bearer spoke to me. He said that we can serve but we don’t need to fight. Don’t you see?”

Blue Raven smiled, and took up a piece of paper and a pencil.

“Those exact words?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ruth.

“No, not those exact words,” said Edith. “He said, ‘I will serve but I will not fight.’”

Ruth agreed: yes, those were the actual words.

“The stretcher bearer spoke at the council,” explained Edith. “And he used that phrase. It’s part of his pattern. The words are not for our benefit, they have no bearing on this situation. We’re all in the dark, Ruth, as we’ve always been; but we’ve got this far because of the Process, and so we must follow it through to its completion, otherwise we lose everything. Oh, you poor, poor soul.”

Edith stood and took Ruth in her arms, then sat her down upon the grey moulded sofa. Blue Raven finally served tea in vintage china cups, and reminisced about boyfriends she had misplaced, while Jesse spoke about the injustices of the old world and the moral clarity of the
tabula rasa
, the ethical component of extinction, the justice of the fall. Ruth heard them but did not listen; the tumblers of her decision continued to turn, she would find a way through this impossible situation.

Edith offered to walk with Ruth back down to the town. As she left, Edith reminded Blue Raven of the consequences of her art.

“I think you should depict the events of tonight honestly and in the way you think is right. But you should be prepared – if there is a resumption of England, and the administration turns its attention to our little town – to rip out the page concerning this evening and burn it, shred it, bury it in the deepest hole you can dig.”

B
y late afternoon
, the streets were dismal with rain. Hector stood beside the war memorial in his uniform, gazing long at the two angels of aquamarine bronze sat at the base of the obelisk, with the third angel, Victory, offering a garland from its peak. Rendered in gold lettering, the legend
This was their finest hour
. Hector regarded the names of the dead and the passing faces of the living with growing interest, watched over by James from the distant window of the flat.

James was ready to go, hours before time. He exercised to shake off some of the nervous anticipation and failed to get a hit from his homemade tea.

He succeeded in passing an hour.

Hector remained beside the monument.

What was Hector doing? Was his every act determined by the Process or had a series of instructions been planted within him that, as he interacted with other people and the environment, produced what might appear as will? Was his behaviour revealing of the intentions of Process, and if so, could James figure out what it meant? Merely by standing next to the monument, Hector was changing the town’s perception of him. You could see it in the way the Lewesians lifted their heads to acknowledge him as they walked by. Some of the old men even put a hand on the soldier, nostalgic for a war they had never known. All the pity and the mourning and the hopeless courage of the war became, by simple association, the property of Hector. James felt the idea forming in the Process: the Lewesians, anticipating the communal experience of eviction, drew strength from the precedent that such sacrifices had been made in the past to safeguard the collective good.

James retrieved the armour of scales from the transparent box. He had wanted to wear it from the moment he awoke. He abraded the graphite texture of the helmet between his index finger and thumb. The feel of it only heightened the cravings. His body swooned with the memory of full integration with the Process: fragments of being interconnected in all their complexity and contemplated from a position of invulnerable bliss.

His back felt strong and straight from his exercises. He slid himself into the armour and the bracing pressure of it against his muscles felt right.

The bright yellow plaster of the house fronts were streaked with rain. He set off down the hill, walking quickly, fists clenched, toward the inbetween place of the Phoenix estate. He was alert to potential threats: a rattling movement from a garage; a fleeting reflection in a pool of rain; a figure descending the fire tower overlooking the river.

A small woman in a long coat.

Alex Drown.

“Where is Hector?” she asked.

“Standing beside the war memorial.” James gestured back up the hill. “Placed there by the Process like a chess piece. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me why.”

“It’s not simple cause and effect, James. In a network, causality is distributed across space and time.” She gripped his strong forearm. “How do
you
feel?”

“The cravings get worse every time. Can you fix that?”

“Addiction is a feature, not a bug.”

“Does your implant come with an addiction?”

“The Institute works in project cycles and part of our working practice involves a burn list in which we work intensely to resolve each of the outstanding tasks. It is my cognitive burn down. I long for that stage of the project. During it I experience complete focus. I forget everything else: this town, personal hygiene, even my daughter.”

“How is your girl?”

“I visit her when I can.”

He unlocked the bunker and they went down into the dark. The strong smell of diesel, the dusty shelves of oily tools, the lingering fug of the leather padded supports – these were musk to him. He unbolted and slid aside the roof. From her inside pocket, Alex removed a suede case containing her instruments. He climbed into the sealed box at the heart of the armour and uncovered the porthole so that he could see out.

“Ruth asked me if I could stop the evictions, if I wanted to. Is that possible?”

“Well, Ruth doesn’t understand you the way that I do,” said Alex.

After the procedure, Alex had helped with his convalescence. He remembered long afternoons sat in a wicker chair on the terrace overlooking the lawn, with the backgammon board in front of him, the pieces stacked in their opening positions. He understood the rules of the game but he did not know how to play, that is, the will to win had gone. The procedure on his medial orbitofrontal cortex subsumed his desires and made him more receptive to the will of others. Alex’s job was to cultivate just enough will within him that he could act but not so much that he acted contrary to the will of the Process. The procedure made him a good listener. Over the board, across successive games, she confessed her story to him; an alcoholic mother and alcoholic father, who left when he turned sober. She had been carer and coper. Tough, motivated, but lonely. As troubled as his own upbringing. It never occurred to him to initiate a sexual relationship.