The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (53 page)

Dad was chattering on as he often did. Trying hard not to be a bore, or talk down to me, but not really succeeding… You see, Martha, the work I do on the mind, the brain, the whole strange business of human consciousness, is just the very beginning. The crystals I persuade to grow inside peoples' skulls are almost as primitive as wooden legs. Real, living neurons use quantum effects – it isn't just electricity and chemistry. The mind, the entirety of the things we call thought and memory and consciousness, is really the sum of a shimmer of uncertainties. It mirrors the universe, and perhaps even calls it into existence. But even that's not the most wonderful thing about us, Martha. You see, we all think we're alone, don't we? You imagine you're somewhere inside your skull and I'm somewhere inside mine, that we're like separate islands? But we're not looking at it from enough dimensions. It's like us sitting on this beach, and looking out over those waves toward the horizon, and seeing a scatter of islands. No, no, I'm not saying there
are
real islands out there, Martha because there obviously aren't. But just stay with me for a moment my dear and try to imagine. We'd think of those islands as alone and separate, wouldn't we? But they're not. Not if you look at the world sideways. Beneath the sea, under the waves, all the islands are joined. It's just that we can't properly see it, or feel it. Not yet, anyway…

The day moved on, and Dad stood at the driftwood wicket like any good Englishman, or Indian, and soon got bowled out. Then he fielded, and dropped an easy catch from Damien as I crunched my way through the last of the sandy samosas. Then the wind blew colder, and the kites and the Frisbees and the dogs fled the beach, and the last thing I can remember is my lost Dad holding hands with lost brother Damien as he wandered with his trousers rolled at the edge of the roaring sea.

M
artha drives out toward the edge of the motorway system that still encircles this old city. The big trucks are out in force now; great, ponderous leviathans that grumble along the rubbled concrete out of a greyness that threatens more snow. Dwarfed by their wheels, she parks her Mini at a transport stop, and stomps up to the glass and plastic counter. It's a regular old-fashioned greasy spoon. The windows are steamed, and baked beans are still on the menu, and the coffee here is moderately strong. Always a difficult dance, getting through a busy space when people's backs are turned, but she clatters her tray to give warning, and they soon share the sense of her oddity and decide not to stare. Mindblind coming through.

She likes it here. The people who do this travelling kind of work far from their communes are still surprisingly solitary by nature. A few are sharing tables and chatting in low voices or quietly touching, but most sit on their own and appear to be occupied with little but their own thoughts. In places like this it's possible to soak up a companionship of loneliness that she can imagine she shares. Sometimes, one of them comes over to talk. Sometimes, but more rarely, and after all the usual over-polite questions, the conversation moves on, and some old signs of sexual availability, which to them must seem arcane as smoke signals, waft into view.

There are some rooms at the back of this place which anyone who needs them is free to use. Piled mattresses and cushions. Showers for afterwards – or during. Sex with Martha Chauhan must be something lonely and oddly exotic, and perhaps a little filthy, as far as the entangled are concerned. A weird kind of masturbation with someone else in the room. There's an odd emptiness in their eyes as they and the gestalt study her when, and if, she comes. But Martha's getting older. Mindblind or not, they probably find her repulsive, and whatever urgency she once felt to be with someone in that way has gone.

She pushes aside her plate and swirl the dregs of her coffee. Blinks away the fizzing arrival of her father's reproachful smile. After all, what has she done wrong? But the empty truth is there's nothing she needs to do this afternoon. She could go back to her room in Baldwin Towers and try to sleep. She could go tobogganing, although being with other people having fun is one of the loneliest things of all. This day, the whole of whatever is left of her life, looms blank as these steamy, snow-whitened windows. She could give up. She could stop taking her tablets. Instead, though, she rummages in her carpetbag and studies the list she was given this morning, and sees that name again, Shara of the Widney Commune, and remembers the face of that striking little girl.

I
first bumped into Karl Yann during one of my many afternoons of disgruntled teenage wandering. Dad, or course, was full of
You must be carefuls
and
Do watch outs
. Well, fuck that for a start, I thought as I tried without success to slam the second of the heavy sets of gates which guarded our estate. Looking back through the shockwire-topped fence at the big, neat houses with their postage stamp lawns, panic rooms and preposterous names, it was easy to think of prisons. Then, reaching into my coat pocket, hooking the transmitter buds around my ears and turning on my seashell, my head filled with beats, smells, swirls and other sensations, and it was easy not to think of anything at all. Hunching off along the glass and dogshit pavements past the boarded-up shops, dead lampposts and abandoned cars, there was a knack that I'd mastered to keeping my device set so I remained aware enough to avoid walking into things. Until, that was, I found my way blocked by a large, laughing presence that was already reaching into my pocket and taking out, and then turning off, my precious seashell.

The city was supposedly full of piratical presences, at least according to my father, but this guy actually
looked
like a pirate. That, or, with his bushy red beard, twinkling blue eyes, wildly curly hair, be-ribboned coat and pixie boots, like some counter-cultural Father Christmas.

"Give that back!"

He grinned, still cupping my seashell in a big, paint-grained palm. "This is a pretty cool device, you know. Basically, it's mimicking your brainwaves so it can mess around with your thoughts…"

My father had said something similar, but this man's tone was admiring rather than concerned. At least, he seemed a man to me; I figured out later that Karl was barely into his twenties.

"I said –"

"Here. Don't want to get yourself tangled…" Almost impossibly gently, he was reaching to unpick the buds from around my ears, and already I was hooked. He was asking me questions. He seemed interested in my head-down city wanderings, and where I was from, and what I'd been playing on my seashell, and what I thought about things, and even in my Indian background, although I did have to make most of that up.

"This is the place. Don't snag yourself…"

Now, he was holding the wire of the fence that surrounded one of those half-finished developments that the dying economy had never finished. Maybe shops or offices or housing, but basically just a shrouded, rustyscaffolded concrete frame. A few floors up, though, and in this place he called "the waystation" was a different world. In many ways, it was a glimpse of what was to come.

People stirred and said hi. The waystation's inner walls were painted, or hung with random bits of stuff, or fizzed with projections that drifted to and fro in the city haze. Old vehicles, bits of construction material, expensive drapes, blankets and rugs that looked more as if they had come from gated estate communities such as my own, had all been cleverly reused to shape an exotic maze. Everything here had been transformed and recycled, and it was plain to me already that Karl was an artist of some talent, and at the heart of whatever was going on.

T
he Widney Commune is based around a grand old house, with icicled gates leaning before a winding drive. Some long-dead Midlands industrialist's idea of fine living. Shara and the other commune youngsters will still be down at the schoolhouse, and most of the adults will be out. This place could almost be deserted, Martha tells herself as she edges her Mini up the drive and clambers out. The main door lies up a half-circle of uncleared steps, with an old bellpull beside. Something tinkles deep within the house when she gives it an experimental tug.

Even with all the indignities which have been inflicted on it – the warty vents and pipings, the tumbling add-ons – this is still a fine old sort of a place to live. Especially when you compare it to Baldwin Towers. No fifteen floors to ascend. Nor any concrete stalactites, or rusting pipes, or a useless flat roof. The entangled might claim that they can see the wrongness of things, and feel disappointment and envy. But they clearly don't.

Martha starts when snow scatters her shoulders.

"Hello there," she shouts up with all her usual yes-I-really-am-here cheeriness. "Just trying to see if there's anyone at home."

"Oh…" A pause as the head at the window above registers that she's not some odd garden statue. "…I'm sorry. The front door's been stuck for years. If you can come around to the side…"

This pathway's been cleared, as even a mindblind moron should have noticed, leading to a side entrance which opens into what was once, and still mostly is, a very great hall.

The space goes all the way up and there are galleries around it and a wide set of stairs. Live ivy grows up over the beams and there's a hutch in the corner where fat-eared rabbits lollop, and it's plain that the woman who's sashaying over to greet Martha is the source of at least half of Shara's good looks.

"I'm Freya…" After a small hesitation, she holds out a hand. It's crusty with flour, as are her bare arms. Her shoulders are bare, too, and so are her feet. Which, like the tip of her nose, are also dusted white. She's wearing holed dungarees that show off a great deal of her lithe, slim figure. Dirty blonde hair done up in a kind of knot. "…you're…?" Confused by the difficulties of introduction with someone of Martha's disability, she hesitates with a pout.

"Martha Chauhan." Martha lets her hand, which by now is floury as well, slip from Freya's. "I'm guessing you're Shara's birth mother?"

"That's right." Freya squints hard. "You were testing Shara? Today? At school?"

Martha nods. "Not that there's any cause for concern."

"That's good." She smiles. Hugs herself.

"But I, ah…" Martha looks around again, wondering if this is how social workers once felt. "Sometimes just like to call in on a few communes. Just to… Well…"

"Of course," Freya nods. "I understand."

Somehow, she does, even if Martha doesn't. The entangled live in a sea of trust.

"Most people are out, either working or enjoying the day. But I've just finished baking… so what can I show you?"

The entangled are relentlessly proud of their communes. They'll argue and josh about who breeds the fluffiest sheep, puts on the cheeriest festival or grows the best crop of beets. As always, there's the deep, sweet, monkeyhouse reek of massed and rarely washed humanity, but it's mingled here with different odours of yeast, and the herbs that seem to be hanging everywhere to dry, and yet more of those rabbits. Each commune has its own specialities which it uses to exchange for things it doesn't make, and this one turns out to be rabbits which are raised to make warm blankets and coats from their skins, as well as for their meat. This commune's bread is something they're particularly proud of, as well. Down in the hot kitchen, Freya tears some with her hands, takes a bite, then offers Martha the rest, dewy with spit. She doesn't have to lie when she says she isn't hungry.

Many of the rooms look like the scenes of some perpetual sleepover. The entangled mostly sleep like puppies, curling up wherever they fancy, although Freya's slightly more coy about one or two other spaces, which reek of sex. Another smell, sourer this time, comes from some leaking chairs and sofas set around a big fire where the old ones cluster, basking like lizards, tremulous hands joined and rheumy eyes gazing into the tumbled memories at a past forever gone.

"And this is where Shara sleeps with the rest of the under-tens…"

Another charming, fetid mess, although this one's scattered with toys. There's a spinning top. There are rugs and papier mache stars. There's a one-eyed, one-armed teddy bear. A few story books and piles of paper, as well, along with newer, stranger devices that make no sense to Martha at all.

"Shara's your only birth child?"

Freya nods. She looks at least as proud of that as she does of most things, even if parenting is shared in a loose kind of way that involves the whole commune and no one gets too possessive. Knowing exactly who the father is can be difficult. In this era of trust, mothers are surprisingly coy about who they've fucked. Women often wander out to visit other communes – driven either by biological imperative or the simple curiosities of lust – and births are often followed by versions of the
he's got Uncle Eric's nose
conversations that must have gone on throughout human history.

Freya's showing drawings and scraps of writing that Shara's done, then lifting up pretty bits of clothing she's resewn herself for all the kids to use and share.

"No new babies at the moment," she adds. "Although we're planning, of course… Soon as the commune has the resources. And Shara's been such a joy to us all… That I'm rather hoping…" As she puts the things back, her hands move unconsciously to her breasts.

"And Shara's father? Somehow, I'm guessing he's a fair bit older than you are…?"

"Oh? That's right." Freya smiles, not remotely insulted or surprised. "Karl's hoping, as well. We all are. Would you like to see the studio where he works?"

Martha blinks, swallows, nods. A falling feeling as she follows Freya down a long corridor then through a doorway into what's clearly an artist's studio. Rich smells of oil and varnish. Linseed oil squeezed out over a press. Pigments from the hedgerow, or wherever it is that pigments come from. Half-finished canvases lean against the walls. The room is a kind of atrium, lit from windows on all sides and high up. The colours and the shadows roar out to her even on a day as wintry as this.