Life (33 page)

She drew in ballpoint, on a festive paper napkin, using her knees for a desk. “Okay, what happens is that you get these things, a special class of enzymes, called regulatory proteins. The simplest is like a little thermostat: it starts off a reaction and then stops the reaction when the end product reaches a certain concentration. Then you get one where the presence of one of the end-products of a reaction will start that reaction off again; and there’s another kind where the chemical product of one process activates a different process, which in turn produces something that triggers the first, so they work in parallel… And then there’s a couple more. Of course, they don’t just work one at a time. Are you following this, at all?”

“I am more than following it,” said Spence, most intrigued. “I am recognizing it.”

He took up the napkin, and gazed at Anna’s little hieroglyphs.

“Well whadd’ya know. This is Boolean Algebra. These are logic gates!”

He swiftly labeled Anna’s series: NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR.

“Oh,” said Anna. “Well, yes, they’re control mechanisms, like circuits in a computer. I should have said. But you recognized them, from my bumbling explanation?”

“I sure did. How smart am I? Hahaha! Far out. Boolean Algebra, the Latin of the twenty-first century. I knew the dead language of the classic age of computers would stand me in good stead, one day. Hey, who’d a’ thought it! Molecular Biology has logic gates!”

“Computers have regulatory proteins!”

They laughed, and toasted each other.

“Well anyway, I was telling you—” said Anna, unable to leave an idea unfinished. “We’ve found regulatory proteins in TY cultures, which means transcription is happening, some way, even though these aren’t coding sequences… This proves that the TY viroid
does something;
it doesn’t just sit there like a scrap of biochemical litter—”

She sighed. “I wish I could get Clare to talk to me. I’m on the brink of proving, maybe, that her theory is right. She won’t. I’ve had her opinions on TY relayed back to me by other people. She thinks it’s a Darwinist rip-off of her big idea: because, in my version the virosphere and the other organisms are not co-operating for the common good. The whole, beautiful homeostasis thing just growed like Topsy. It isn’t
for
anything, It just is… That’s not good enough for Clare. She’s been pushed around for too long; she doesn’t want a compromise; she wants the peace and co-operation theory to ANNIHILATE those planet-wrecking Stupid Darwinism bastards. Just wipe them off the face of the earth. Ironic, huh?”

Phosphorescent foam gleamed along the shore—

“Oh, it’s a battlefield Spence. One side says everything’s connected; the other side says no, no, every organism for itself. If I’m not careful, poor Transferred Y is going to get caught in the crossfire. I’m certainly not going to use Suri’s latest findings. Not in any form. I’m not going to tell anyone about that. You mustn’t, either.”

“My lips are sealed. But why not, honey?”

Fleetingly, she wondered what Spence’s own karyotype would reveal… She didn’t want to know. Spence was Spence.

“Because it’s about sex, and that means trouble. Worse than Continuous Creation, even. There are significant people in life science who would react very poorly, although they’d never admit they were personally upset about the daft ‘death of the male chromosome’ aspect. I’m going to have to tiptoe around them.” Suddenly she laughed. “God! Listen to me! Worrying about how the great and the good will react to my world-changing publication! Anna Senoz, the babypharm office manager… Pinch me someone, wake me up.”

“You’re not dreaming,” said Spence tenderly. “You hit the jackpot. And you deserve it.”

There was a burst of activity at the main lodge. Jeeps were being summoned to carry departing guests to the helipad. They both looked over in that direction.

“What are the bosses all doing here, anyway?”

“Dunno. I’d like to think they were sorting out the clingfilm crisis. As Wolfgang says, IVF is like drug running. Without a supply of decent clingfilm, what can you do? Where can you
put
things? …Fat chance. I suspect they might be discussing a withdrawal from Sungai. There’s no shortage of customers, but political unrest is a spook. The company doesn’t like it.”

“Hope nothing happens before the end of your job.”

The Gaegler party left; Budi’s party left. Spence and Anna had Pasir Pancang to themselves. There was native black rice pudding and banana for breakfast, instead of platters of eggs, bacon, fruit, and pastries; fried potatoes and chili greens with a few prawns at other meals. The beer supply ran out, which was sad, but the staff became much more human. Hassan the gatekeeper regaled them with stories about the pirates: unromantic pirates who visited these isolated bays to rob and rape and murder with little fear of reprisal. The cook’s baby played with Spence, while her mother sat on the hut’s verandah and gossiped with Anna.

On New Year’s Eve Spence revealed a secret treat. “Want to do some Class A tonight?”

“You haven’t got any.”

“Oh yes I have.”

“Where on earth—?”

Revealing the secret involved a slightly awkward confession.

“From Daz. She’s already in town. She dropped by last Thursday while you were at work. Brought us a Christmas present.”

“Why’dn’t you tell me Daz was here!”

“Because I wanted to have you to myself,” he said—with a look so candid and vulnerable that it frightened her. She couldn’t stand much of this mood. Yet while it lasted she would never be able to say no, enough, let’s get back down to earth. They swallowed the pills in their hut, after they’d eaten their chips and greens, and went to walk by the sea. It was an extraordinarily still evening, overcast and soft-aired. Anna kept watching the horizon. “I hope the pirates don’t arrive.”

“They won’t. Is it coming up on you?”

“It’s coming up. Let’s go back to our room and have a drink.”

“There’s no beer.”

“We have some whisky.”

“Hassan took our glasses away.” Spence felt that he was in charge and didn’t want to be too drugged if he had to deal with anything, such as pirates or the unexpected return of Anna’s boss. They went back to the hut and drank a little whisky. Spence changed into his pajamas.

“You really like them, don’t you.”

“I want to be buried in them.”

Anna laid the shells that she had collected over the week in curving lines across their bed.

“It’s a very beautiful bedspread this, isn’t it.”

They looked at it together. What a beautiful color, the color of blood and wine. And the coarse weave of the fabric made a very good impression. They examined it minutely, admiring the way the threads lay over each other so neatly and companionably, such a simple idea and such a fine one. “I wish we could take it with us,” said Anna.

“No, better leave it here. It belongs here.”

“It’s like our friend.”

“A holiday acquaintance. We’ll exchange Christmas cards.”

“Maybe we’ll meet it again one day. I like getting to know people for a
short
time.”

“I know what you mean. Pass on by.”

“Because you can’t trust everyone, not completely, and if you can’t trust someone it gets boring to be with them after a while. So why bother?”

They walked on the beach again, to the end of the bay and back. There wasn’t a sound except for the soft, dark lapping of the tide. Spence had brought a torch, but he switched it off and their eyes became preternaturally sensitive. The sand was so pale, the edge of the water so mildly bright, the forest so dark and solid on their right hand side, there was no chance of getting lost. Someone had put the deck chairs away, but Anna tracked them down, stacked at the back of one of the empty huts. They could not identify their two friends with certainty, but hoped for the best.

They settled themselves where they’d had the TY conversation.

“When I was at Primary school,” said Anna. “When I was five and six and seven and eight, the other children had already decided I was weird, they didn’t want to play with me, and they called me a boff. I… Peer pressure is supposed to be what forms you, more than anything, I never had enough. Except negatively. I’ve always thought, well if you don’t need me then I surely don’t need you. That partly explains how I am.”

She drifted again into no-time. She’d decided not to sit in her deck chair but on the sand by Spence’s knee. The coolness of the sand caressed her. She was so happy to be alone with Spence and the night.

“Before that, I was in love with my mother. I was really, romantically in love with her. I’ve been thinking about that: remembering. I used to bring her things, little presents; I used to follow her around. She didn’t have time for it. I don’t mean that nastily, I mean
she didn’t have time.
It wasn’t only Maggie. I didn’t want her to give up any of the things she was doing. It still broke my heart to lose her. That’s why I didn’t want to fall in love with anyone ever again, not even you. I know it happens to everyone, but…”

“Not to me,” said Spence, after some thought. “Guess I was the one who left Mom; she didn’t want me to go. But I know what you mean. It’s like the love of God. You can’t be first. You have to share God with all these other people, beings. Several billion humans, all the other living things, all those damn beetles, before you even start on the stars and the galaxies and the deck chairs and the bedspreads. Sometimes knowing everybody gets the same whole love, no matter how many of us there are, does not cut it.”

“No…and so we have to be unsatisfied. It’s for the best. If I loved you the way I love my work, you wouldn’t like it, Spence. You think you would, but you wouldn’t. It would be too much. When I think about Mummy deserting me, now, I think yeah, don’t blame you. I know myself, I know what I’m like. I’m a ton of bricks.”

Spence felt that he was in charge and ought to be DJing this better; it was going downhill. He seemed to recall there was something they had to do, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was. “We don’t have to think about sad things. Let’s go for another walk.”

“Hey, don’t worry.” She turned and smiled at him, the smile dim in her face but warm in her voice. “This is okay, this is fine. I’m happy. I like telling you my troubles.”

“Everybody has troubles.”

“They’re part of us. They’re our friends.”

“Like good works. They will go with us and be our guide.”

They slipped into no-time together, for a while.

“You know Anna, I know the kind of silk-pajamas sex doesn’t come naturally to you.”

“Mmm.” She bowed her head, embarrassed.

“No, don’t curl up into your shell. I wanted you to know that I know, and I appreciate the Christmas present. I wanted to say, there is something more important than sex or romance, or any of that man-woman, male-female stuff, between you and me.” He drew a breath, relaxing into it: the only knowledge. “What’s important is that we know, you and I. Other people don’t know, but we do, because of Lily Rose. Rich or poor, failure or success, travel or stay at home,
we know
what is waiting at the end of all this…and the love of God makes no difference because there’s nothing says the love of God doesn’t end in nothingness. It can do whatever it likes, it owes us nothing. But I’m sure of this.”

He leaned down and took Anna’s face in his hands. “If you go first, I will be there to close your eyes: if I’m the one, then I know that you will be there. That’s what matters.”

“Yes.”

They walked again, along the shore.

“Shall we go skinny-dipping.”

Spence considered the idea. “No. We might swim in the wrong direction.”

“Or meet a shark, or forget where we left our clothes. Let’s stay where we are. Walk a little, sit and talk a little, walk a little. I like this. It’s quiet, but I like it.”

A while later they returned to their friends the chairs. Anna sat gazing, completely separate from Spence but shielded by his presence, earthed, except that earth was altogether too temporal a word for the state of resolution that he provided, always within reach no matter how distantly and through what convolutions her thoughts roamed, no matter what extraordinary ephemeral palaces, their details unresolved and liable to crumble and dissolve if you paid them too much attention; so that thought, the idea of investigating something and coming to a conclusion, was revealed as a pretext, a plausible explanation for this activity, whereas in fact the activity itself was…