LoveStar (11 page)

“I met Simon at lunchtime.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Simon said he let you know.”

“I didn't know anything. I'd have eaten at work.”

Indridi was going to tell her about the howler business. That he had become a howler and might start talking complete gibberish, but before he could say a word he began to sing “Yesterday” again.

“YESTERDAY, ALL MY TROUBLES SEEMED SO FAR AWAY!!!”

Indridi bit back the song, fled into the bathroom, and locked the door, but the song persisted. Sigrid stared after him.

“ARE YOU DRUNK?”

Indridi turned on the shower but could still be heard from the corridor: “NOW IT LOOKS AS THOUGH THEY'RE HERE TO STAY!”

Sigrid banged on the door. “WHAT'S GOING ON?”

“International song week next week, sing and be happy!” he burped through clenched teeth.

Indridi and Sigrid faced blows and pressure from all sides. Indridi was sent home from work for singing. Sigrid had to take ten night shifts due to staff “illness,” so they no longer had any time for word-synthesis. Sigrid came home tired in the morning and went to sleep just as Indridi woke up, foul-breathed and musty.

When Sigrid had been humming along to some unusually good tune on the night shift it was more often than not announced as “a request by Per Møller.” When she admired her favorite actor, a text bubble appeared saying: Per Møller's favorite actor. According to the information, Per had seen every single one of his films at least twice, and so had Sigrid.

Of course, Indridi saw nothing of this—the program was only visible to the eyes watching it. Sigrid had stopped mentioning the Møller ads aloud, as Indridi went berserk every time he heard Per Møller mentioned and she hardly recognized him in this mood. She spent quite some time checking out Per's information page at inLOVE because it had links to almost everything she was interested in. She didn't know that each time she visited his page, Indridi received a notification:

[sigrid is checking out information about per møller. heard it from a friend who's a systems manager. thought I should let you know. regards simon.]

Indridi felt as if he'd received a kick in the stomach, a dagger in his back, a needle under his fingernails. He writhed and suffered.

[she's still on the page. regards simon.]

To Sigrid it all seemed perfectly innocent, as she wasn't reading up about Per himself, nor could they get in touch with one another except through the mediation of inLOVE.

Indridi was on tenterhooks. Every time he opened his mouth, some nonsense might fly out. Every time he came home he was terrified that Sigrid would have gone north to have herself calculated.

“Sigrid, are you home?” he called.

“I'm here, Indridi.”

Indridi entered the flat to a wholesome smell of baking. Sigrid was in the kitchen and his heart leapt with relief. She was sitting there with her hair in a bun, newly bathed, and wearing an ugly old dress. She was braless and her hands were covered in flour. Indridi touched her hand gently and kissed her softly on the neck. She smiled, darted him a look, and had just puckered up her lips when he barked:

“PRETTY DRESS! YOU WERE SMART TO BUY SUCH A PRETTY DRESS!”

Sigrid looked at him strangely. “Are you making fun of me? You've seen it before. I wear it for baking and crafts.”

“Yes, now I remember,” said Indridi, smiling awkwardly.

The dress contained a chip the size of a butterfly brain with five howler compliments attached. They were all unused because Sigrid had never worn the dress in public. An hour later Indridi walked past the kitchen and called:

“PRETTY DRESS! YOU WERE SMART TO BUY SUCH A PRETTY DRESS!”

Sigrid jumped and gave him a dirty look but two hours later all was forgotten. They cooked supper and laughed at something ridiculous and the meal ended with a deep kiss. Indridi removed her dress and it fell to the floor. While she was pulling down his fly, Indridi accidentally trod on the dress and crushed the butterfly brain. He felt the announcement arrive with full weight. He locked his jaw, grew red in the face, and tears sprang to his eyes with the pressure. The announcement thrust upon his speech centers, harder and harder until his head was bursting and he yelled: “PRETTY! DRESS! YOU! WERE! SMART! TO! BUY! SUCH! A! PRETTY! DRESS!!!!”

The phone rang and Sigrid was called out on an extra shift. She left without saying good-bye. There were cracks in the defensive barriers that Indridi and Sigrid had raised around themselves and, though neither let on that they had noticed, they had been together for exactly five years and seven months.

I WOULD WITHER AWAY

“The seed is withering,” thought LoveStar. He looked around. His heart pounded in his chest. “The seed mustn't wither,” he thought but didn't dare move. He didn't dare breathe on the seed. He didn't dare stand up to fetch a drop of water. He looked at his hands, which were closed around the seed. They were old hands. The sky was bright with stars, but he covered the window so he didn't have to watch any more LoveDeath.

His body had rejected LoveDeath. So it was with most of his brainchildren; he wanted little to do with them once they had been born. As chairman he was the most senior official at LoveDeath, but in reality he hated it every time he was forced to give LoveDeath an additional moment. LoveDeath's gestation had taken five long years and during that period death had expanded inside his head until nothing else could get in. He roved around the world searching for experts and cheap, secondhand rockets. It was difficult to find governments willing or able to give away the technology. In underground vaults in the bowels of the Urals there were thousands of unused launchpads and long-range missiles left over from the Cold War. The nuclear cores were believed to have been destroyed, and many of them were in danger of dilapidation. They were fairly small rockets that could easily be converted to shoot up a deceased rock star.

In the Florida swamps rockets lay scattered like flotsam after a series of hurricanes, most of them overgrown with vegetation and probably inoperative, but they might provide spare parts for LoveDeath. Then there were rockets in storage that hadn't been used for decades, not since birdwaves did away with the satellite industry. This was one of the factors that made things difficult for LoveStar. He was hated by rocket engineers and space scientists. The LOVESTAR satellite constellation that twinkled behind LavaRock was the final humiliation in their eyes.

Of course, LoveStar attended to other business and the administration of the company as needed, followed up on the birdwaves and mankind's liberation from cords, gave speeches at conferences, promoted new technology and the company's future vision, but the same thing applied to these activities as to LoveDeath later on: his passion and greatest talent was for new ideas and that's where he wanted to stay, instead of wearing himself out on the daily grind of business. Every free moment was spent on LoveDeath, and sometimes he was abroad for months without coming home.

On the final day of the gestation, LoveStar had been on his way from Vladivostok to Los Angeles where he had a meeting booked with a plastic surgeon who wanted to run the first LoveDeath branch on the west coast of America. He had an hour to visit home, see the family, and fetch some data. The taxi stopped outside his villa. The boys were obviously home because their Mercedeses were in the drive—one of them badly bashed up in front and scratched all along the driver's side. The garden was a mass of weeds. The front door opened automatically.

“Helga?” he called as he went inside. “Boys! Helga? Is anyone home?” LoveStar had a look around. The house had changed. The sitting room had been painted in darker shades. The boys were nowhere to be seen. He went upstairs.

“Helga?”

Helga appeared on the bedroom landing. LoveStar hardly recognized her. She had grown so thin . . .

“Were you asleep?”

“No, I was dyeing my hair black,” she said.

“Where are the boys?”

“They're still in Croatia.”

“Still?”

“They sailed up the Adriatic, north of Greece, and past Albania to Croatia.”

“You mean they're not back from their world tour yet? Hasn't school started?”

“Don't you read the tabloids?” asked Helga.

LoveStar looked round as if he was still expecting to see the boys somewhere in the house. A sentence darted across his lens and disturbed him:

<
 
. . .
 
RESULTS OF APPLICATION FOR LOVEDEATH PATENT DUE WITHIN
5
MIN
 
. . .
 
>

His thoughts returned to LoveDeath. His heart pounded. He was making a mental review of the business plan that he intended to present to the plastic surgeon when Helga repeated the sentence:

“Don't you read the tabloids?”

“What?”

“Don't you read the papers?”

“Sorry, I've lost the thread. What papers?”

“The Ukrainian rocket engineers have destroyed our apartment in Copenhagen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A woman who was with them has accused them of rape.”

“THE BOYS?” asked LoveStar.

“No. The engineers.”

“I wasn't asking about them.”

“The television was found out in the garden,” said Helga.

“For God's sake, we were talking about the boys, not the company. They're all right, aren't they?”

“The boys have created havoc on the island of Murter. They beat up a bouncer. No one would accuse them of rape in Croatia. They're rich and the police are corrupt . . .”

LoveStar took a better look at the woman facing him and felt as if he had never seen her before. He couldn't grasp what was going on and was thrown completely off balance when a ribbon of text appeared on his lens:

< . . . LOVEDEATH PATENT AGREED WITH REFERENCE TO APPLICATION 12B. OPERATING LICENSE GRANTED ON FOUR CONDITIONS . . . MINIMUM DISTANCE FROM BUILDUP AREA . . . NOISE REDUCTION . . . >

“THE PATENT!” he shouted. “Helga! THE PATENT! LoveDeath is home free! Ivanov will . . .”

“You're leaving in half an hour,” she said dully.

“Didn't you hear? We've just got the patent.”

Helga smiled but the smile didn't reach her eyes. “Congratulations. Then perhaps you could look in on your daughter.”

“My daughter?”

“She's asleep in her crib.”

“Yes, right away. I just need to let Ivanov know.”

LoveStar prepared to call, but Helga grabbed both his hands. “You think about nothing but death,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

“What?”

“You think of nothing but death,” she repeated.

“No . . . well . . . I mean, sure. I think about lots of things.”

“You spend your life on death.”

“Don't be like that.”

“I mean it; you're surrounded by death.”

“Hey! You know what I'm like, it's just an idea. I won't be a free man until I get rid of it.”

“Yes, I read the book. ‘An idea is a dictator. When an idea calls, you put aside your horse and hound, neglect friends and family . . .'”

LoveStar lost the thread. The letters “IVANOV” flashed on his lens. Ivanov was clearly waiting for the news. He made to answer the phone, but Helga wouldn't let him past.

“Your father was asking after you.”

“What did he say?” asked LoveStar.

“He can't be reached any longer . . .”

“I'll try and visit him later this week.”

“Orvar, look at me!”

LoveStar looked at her. There weren't many people who called him Orvar. She was one of the very few who did so without hesitation. Old friends always stumbled over the name “LoveStar.”

“You've missed him. You could have reached him last week. The doctor doesn't think he'll wake up again.”

LoveStar stared at the floor.

“Do you understand what I mean now? You postpone life and devote yourself to death. Death can wait. Life can't.”

LoveStar was silent for a moment, then he looked at the clock.

“I must see him before I go to Los Angeles.”

“I was the last person to make contact. He asked after you. You've missed him, Orvar.”

LoveStar looked at her angrily. “They gave him several months! There was no need to fling this in my face! Do you think I have no feelings? Why didn't you let me know?”

“I tried,” whispered Helga, “but I couldn't get through. You would only talk about death. Sorry, I didn't mean to be cruel. Sorry.”

Her eyes filled with tears. She had become so sensitive. Too soft, his grandmother would have said. LoveStar tried to rearrange his view of the world. The house, Helga, his father, the boys, his daughter, but all the time “IVANOV” was flashing on his lens. He meant to ask more about his father, but his eyes were continually drawn to the flashing letters and LoveStar had major news for Ivanov. The LoveDeath license was home free. Construction could begin. He who is infected with an idea can't think normally. A strong idea attacks anything that threatens its existence; it has its own immune system. At this moment the idea was at the height of its power. LoveDeath was a hairbreadth from entering the world, the contractions were at their height, and LoveStar's head was ready to burst.

“Sorry, Orvar,” said Helga. “I didn't mean to be cruel.” She put her arms around him but LoveStar didn't feel her. His skin received the touch but his brain couldn't process the stimulus. LoveDeath closed down all transmission of neural messages from skin cells to brain and directed attention to “IVANOV,” which was still flashing on the lens.

Immediately after the phone call, LoveDeath could abandon its host and live an independent life out in the world where anyone could buy or sell it. Anyone could build up LoveDeath and make it grow and thrive while the host, who had been vital for the idea, would become like any other shareholder. LoveStar could be at most a temporary director, sadly superfluous in all likelihood. In the worst case, his offspring would cast him off. As soon as he had answered the telephone call and had completed his trip to LA, LoveDeath would be officially born. Ivanov would take over the baton; after a five-year gestation, LoveStar would be a free man. For half a second a battle was fought in his mind in which the idea wiped out all the worries that the man Orvar Arnason—original user of the brain in his body, original inhabitant of his body—felt about his dying father, his sleeping daughter, and his withering wife. Slowly but surely his mind became as clear and cold as a starlit November sky, which was only waiting for a blazing body to shoot through the darkness. LoveStar answered the phone call from Ivanov with LoveDeath on his brain.

“Great news, Ivanov! The patent's been approved. No one can take LoveDeath away from us!”

Helga let him go. For a moment she had believed that she had managed to retrieve her husband. He noticed neither the embrace nor when it ended. He carried on regardless.

“There's more! Elizabeth II is going to fall over Windsor Castle. And the Jaggers are going to fall over New York! It'll be sensational!”

Helga had stopped traveling with him. Formerly they had traveled around the world together, but then he began to add strange detours to their route. Not fun surprise detours for the boys or secret detours for her—instead he accepted invitations, coffee, or dinner with aged billionaires. Sooner or later, without fail, the conversation would turn to death. Again and again she sat in a grand room while Orvar listened patiently to some old man whining and complaining until the right opportunity came and the lure was cast: but death? What about death? Then she shuddered and wanted the earth to swallow her up, tried to withdraw herself, pretended to be excused. If the boys were there she would sneak outside with them, show them the ornamental gardens, swimming pools, statues, and sports cars. Sometimes the visits ended with a butler escorting LoveStar to the door and angrily ejecting them. But LoveStar didn't give up. He sought out all the more zealously those who stood closest to death, not in order to learn from their lives but to obtain a share in their deaths.

Finally his work and thoughts had borne fruit. The patent was home free and Ivanov was on the line.

“. . . The death rate in the West is almost ten in every thousand inhabitants. That's about twenty million people a year, nearly two million tons of bodies. That's like four times the national cod quota,” he said, inspired, to Ivanov. “Imagine the revenue. If people pay half a million for each body we're talking about an industry with a $10,000 billion annual revenue and even then I'm only talking about the West, and I have an idea for an advertisement! We'll film a beautiful young woman rotting underground. The world will turn against the old method. LoveDeath will be the only alternative.”

Helga felt sick.

“Which woman are you planning to use?” she asked.

“Sorry, Ivanov,” said LoveStar, turning to Helga.

She looked at him with eyes full of disgust and sorrow. “Who is going to donate her body for the advertisements? Who's going to rot for us?”

“It's the way everyone ends up anyway; there's no point hiding the fact! Can I finish my conversation with Ivanov?”

“You think about nothing but death.”

“Ivanov, I'll talk to you later . . .”

“You don't talk about terns and butterflies anymore. It's all worms and maggots now. You used to be interested in everything that lived; you were a specialist in life. You watched the boys and were amazed by how they played without words. You taught them to know their birds. You told them what the moors were like before the terns disappeared. You were preoccupied but you had a head full of butterflies.”

“I haven't changed. We're sorting out LoveDeath, then I'll have time.”

This was not true. It was not Orvar who spoke. LoveDeath was trying to kill the conversation. Orvar was seldom allowed to reach the surface. Orvar had been ill when they met. She fell in love with a man who had bird and butterfly waves on the brain. Now the vessel was the same but the content was LoveDeath. The birdwave invalid had been preoccupied and forgetful, creative, funny, and amusing. The LoveDeath invalid was hard and cynical, a pure businessman. The birdwaves and LoveDeath used the same body and same head, so perhaps it was only to be expected that Helga muddled them up.

“The boys call you LoveStar. What kind of name is that, anyway? They just say LoveStar, like the people who read about you in the papers, the man who freed mankind from cords . . .”