The Living (22 page)

The Servant kicked her withered, naked leg with the heel of his boot. He pressed the heel against her kneecap. Something crunched. The fortune teller howled.

‘I said, who am I?’

She reached a trembling hand towards the Servant and he bent over so it would be easier for her. He touched his forehead with a grubby finger, and the Servant contorted in disgust.

‘Fofs,’ the witch whispered, and frowning in pain, tried to kneel. ‘Forgive me poor sinner that I am, great Servant of Order.’

‘Our friend will be here any moment,’ the Servant responded with contempt, ‘a planetman, in a mirrored mask. We want you to give him a surprise. Tell his fortune and then switch him to sleep mode…’

‘Hypnosis?’ the fortune teller enquired. ‘I have to hypnotize him?’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Servant nodded irritatedly. ‘Do you know how?’

‘Of course.’ The witch shook her dirty-grey mane.

The Servant’s eyes smiled almost imperceptibly; they were glossy and black like the backs of African cockroaches.

…The witch actually did put the fake Ef in sleep mode.

After that the Servant of Order instructed Cerberus to drag her to the other side of the boxes and temporarily end her life.

While Cerberus pulled on his contact gloves, she whimpered quietly but ever so sadly, like an animal at the Farm. He started feeling weird.

‘No death,’ he said as he leaned over her.

The witch stopped whimpering and suddenly spat – the yellow glob hung on his mirrored face. ‘Sometimes you have to break the Codex,’ Cerberus wrote in his
socio
blog and snapped the witch’s neck. He could hear the groans of robots mating behind the rubbish skips.

They loaded the rat into the van and took him to the House of Correction. Cerberus beat him about the face, gasping with futile hatred. Where’s the justice? The vengeance? Living, you are too kind! You are full of love, you forgive your errant sons, you do not punish them, you only correct them. And you are sentencing this freak, who tormented my friend for thirteen days and nights, to a simple pause. You are sending him off into the darkness. And if he comes out of it, you will patiently correct him…

…On the way poor Ef’s agonies came to an end and he temporarily ceased to live and Cerberus felt better. Tiredness came – cosy and warm like a woollen scarf; it wound round his neck and shoulders. First layer shuddered pleasantly along with the car; in second Cerberus whacked on the soundtrack from The Eternal Murderer; in fifth – which was where he kept his illegal video (he could always say that he had just confiscated it) – he started playing an amazing battle between a scorpion and a stag beetle. He relaxed and started thinking about his Order of the Living. He wasn’t just going to hang it on his
desktop
.

He would make it his wallpaper, thanks very much… He wondered, would Eternal Memory save that setting…?

Cerberus actually doubted whether he should go to sleep, but his eyes were already closed. He didn’t see his senior officer aiming the gun at him.

In fifth layer the stag broke off the scorpion’s left claw. The scorpion tried to sting the beetle in the stomach…

…Cerberus dreamed that he was building a tower from cubes of ice.

The gun had a silencer.

The cubes quietly collapsed.

‘Gwanda! Gwanda gwan-da gwan-da…’ The youngest had only recently learned to talk, and she liked the sounds. ‘…dagwan dagwan da-gwa…’ She laughed and held up her hands to clap and reached up to his beard. She also really liked this thick crop of twisted white springs.

‘Second,’ her mother said didactically. ‘Granddad is Second.’ The youngest fell silent for a second, opening even wider her coffee-coloured eyes, which were perpetually amazed anyway, and then started gurgling away again:

‘Segun! Segun! Segun! Segun…!’

‘Bzhdvang! Dz! Dz!!’ Her five-year-old brother exploded in spit and sound as he played a no deather in second layer.

Second frowned wearily.

‘Sh-h-h.’ His mother put her finger to her lips. ‘Darling, don’t vocalise.’

The boy stared at her blindly, then squinted, aiming at
someone
in second layer; his right hand was clenched into a weak, shuddering little fist:

‘Bzdva-a-ang!!!’

‘Don’t vocalise, how many times do I have to tell you. Don’t vocalise the depths!’

…With an insidious bumble-bee buzz the Diver’s
wonder-chair
rolled into the hall. The youngest, screeching in delight, hurried off towards him on all fours. She liked the way that the Diver was always so docile and still. You could push his arm off the armrest of the chair and the arm would just stay hanging there. You could pinch him and tickle the soles of his feet, he was not afraid of tickling. You could even poke about in his mouth when no one was watching…

‘Wai!’ She tugged on the Diver’s trouser-leg. ‘Wai? Wai?’

‘Wise One,’ her mother reminded her with a smile. ‘Wuh-ize wuh-un. Say it.’

‘Wai wa… Wai wa!’

‘That’ll do!’ Groaning, Second leaned over and unhooked the youngest from the Diver’s trouser-leg. The youngest was furious and lay on the floor and started screaming loudly and stroppily, waiting for the tears to come.

‘Enough!’ Second turned impatiently to the Servant of Order. ‘Talk to your woman.’

‘Take the kids, Layla!’ The Servant examined the screaming Darlings strictly. ‘There’s only two minutes to go until the Conference.’

‘And what have the kids got to do with that?’ Layla snapped back. ‘They’re just sitting in first layer, they’re not bothering anyone…’

‘Idiot,’ the Servant said good-naturedly. ‘This is an Open Conference. It’s broadcast in first layer.’

Layla snorted sceptically, but she took the children away, wiggling her enormous behind.

‘She’s got fat,’ the Servant thought as she left. ‘And insolent. I have to take another one.’

‘That First is going to be the pause of me!’ Second grumbled restlessly and squirmed on the new sofa, trying to find a
comfortable
pose and somehow stick in it; the sofa was doing a good job of resisting. ‘I’m going to break my spine!’

Second hated the sofa. The sofa was from the latest ‘Feeling Lucky’ collection – bright, ridiculous and completely
shapeless
, like all of First’s design fantasies; but not sitting on it during the Conference would mean showing disrespect to his colleague’s work. And his colleague First took such things to heart.

Due to an excess of adolescent energy First got personally involved in creative projects. And the Association of Designers that he headed up (largely thanks to the efforts of their
thirteen
-year-old moderator; nevertheless, Second reckoned that
they were all a bit soft in the head), instead of making
attractive
and useful objects which might tempt people into using first layer, developed completely impractical clothes and
furniture
which no one could ever use, even if for some reason they wanted to, and adorned the streets with concretal sculptures of forks, eyeballs and clenched fists. Only people who never left
socio
could dream up stuff like that! And then they are surprised that the general populace wander round in
bedraggled
hand-me-downs and sleep on the floor. It’s a disgrace. I’d like to tell the idiot straight out that his sofa is nothing more than a pile of multi-coloured crap…!

‘Not today, father,’ the Servant replied quietly.

Second shuddered: he hadn’t even noticed that he was talking out loud. He nodded, and poked at the sofa’s
upholstery
with a trembling finger.

‘Yes, of course not today, Darling…’

The Servant of Order looked at his father – the bald skull, the white beard, the wrinkled skin covered in liver spots – and was quietly horrified. Fofs, he’s so old! The oldest person on the planet. A strange thought. Not so long ago Fifth had been the oldest…

Members of the Council of Eight normally live a long time. Until a natural pause: the experience gained in each
reproduction
is too valuable to just wipe it all out at sixty. And their natural pauses did not, as a rule, come until late. A ‘clean’ life: carefully checked, long-term partners (no doing the rounds with festival sluts), natural food from farms (even including protein!), medical treatment almost at ancient levels… But sooner or later the pause comes to everyone: Fifth temporarily ceased to exist at the age of eighty-seven, only just falling short of the sacred second eight; for two weeks now there had been a countdown on his cell, ticking down until the birth… So now the oldest is Second. His father. Eighty-two years old…

But his eyes are still lively and intelligent. Cunning. Black. The Servant concentrated on his father’s eyes. He said:

‘Don’t worry, everything’s going to go great…’ Who was he talking to: his father, or, more likely, himself? ‘…The most important thing is you’ve got to distribute the transcript
immediately
. Don’t lose the initiative…’

‘Gopz,’ Second barked. ‘Don’t tell your father what to do. And wipe the Wise One’s mouth, he’s drooling, it’s
embarrassing
when there are other people around.’

…In eighth layer an eight on its side started shining – the emblem of the Council, the ancient symbol for infinity. Time to start. Second connected himself and Diver.

The other participants were already waiting in the
conference
-zone, each in two forms: their
socio
avatar and direct connection from first layer in a separate window.

They started according to protocol.

said the Golden Horse and swished its tail stupidly.

First’s actual pimpled face nodded solemnly in the window.

‘Next you’ll be squeezing out manure, idiot,’ thought Second. ‘What’s with all these vulgar farmyard motifs…’ But out loud he said:

His Octopus intertwined his tentacles respectfully (you see he had used his brain when choosing a userpic: a mighty, eight-armed beast from the depths, very fitting).

Third’s avatar, a winged creature which had fangs, horns and a tail and was wearing armour, smiled absent-mindedly; it was clearly doing something else in shallower layers at the same time. Third’s sallow face twisted feebly in the first-layer window, trying, evidently, to smile like the Winged Beast. ‘Didn’t shave again,’ Second looked into the window with distaste, ‘and he’s dressed in rags, how can he let himself go like that. He’s gone to seed, got fat… Fofs, he’s still a young man, only forty-two. Plus, he can hardly claim to be any good at cell design or tech-support…’

A blue-eyed athlete, flexing his muscles, raised his right hand. The grey-haired, sharp-nosed woman in the live
broadcast
window maintained a contemptuous silence.

Second looked away. Recently members of the Council had tried not to look at Fourth: she aroused something like
superstitious
fear in them. She was responsible for farms, medical centres and festivals. All the mating and pausing. Previously, when she had been rosy-cheeked and busty, she had seemed to the Council to be a goddess of fertility. Now, with hollow cheeks and thinning locks, devoured by some worm of an illness, she seemed like an old woman with a scythe.

Sixth nodded rapidly, like a wooden bobble-head doll, from the window in first layer. His eyes, a little slanted, poured a meagre portion of unctuous bonhomie onto the members of the Council. The Dragon, his avatar, launched a volley of fire from its mouth.

A semi-transparent Duckles started vibrating and
disappeared
from the conference-zone.

The child’s face in the live broadcast window scowled discontentedly and also disappeared.

Eighth – the Wise One – said nothing, as usual. His face in first layer remained impassive. His avatar did not appear in the conference-zone.

His avatar resided in twelfth layer.

After the official greetings, they relaxed slightly, discussed the health of their Darlings, the last episode of Festival Passions (without Fifth the topic dried up), the design of the new
furniture
(everyone hypocritically lauded it; First, like an idiot, clopped his hoof proudly after every compliment), silly mistakes in programs (not to offend Third, but just for laughs). Then Second moved to the agenda.

‘We have gathered together here at the behest of the Wise One,’ he said, ‘to discuss the Zero problem. The Wise One would like to make an announcement… Gentlemen! I would like to request that we all now dive.’

Golden Horse, Octopus, Winged Beast, Dragon and the handsome blue-eyed athlete all disappeared from the
conference
-zone.

Octopus returned first, after a minute. The rest pulled
themselves
up after him.

‘I’m so embarrassed.’ Second wiped his damp brow with a ‘feeling lucky’ napkin; the octopus’s tentacles trembled nervily. ‘You all heard, gentlemen, what the Wise One was proposing…’

Third nodded his horns darkly; in first layer his pale face was also covered in perspiration.

Golden Horse neighed smugly, but in the live broadcast window the look on First’s face showed his dismay…

‘You didn’t hear anything, you fool,’ Second thought
spitefully
, ‘you struggle to even hold eighth layer, so what are you going to do with twelfth! And you can’t even control your facial expression in first layer. Totally pathetic.’

He had to hurry with distributing the transcript, but Second could not say no to a bit of fun. He asked First:

‘Did you hear everything clearly?’

The horse shook its radiant mane; First scowled, looking spiteful and harassed in the live broadcast window.

Well, isn’t that just marvellous.

‘So, dear colleagues,’ said Second, ‘for your convenience I have, nevertheless, produced a transcript of the Wise One’s announcement and sent round the document. I suggest that we move to a vote.’

In first layer First’s eyes bulged and his mouth gaped. He was taking a look at the document.

Second clicked yes in open mode. Everyone might as well see that he agreed. It’s bound to work, bound to! He was counting on a majority: everything was coming together nicely. First is definitely going to vote ‘for’, he has already blurted out that he agrees and he’s not going to want to lose face, unless he is a complete cretin. He would probably be a ‘yes’ anyway, just to save himself both from diving and from universal derision. At the age of twelve he had been stupid enough to admit that he could not find the Diver and he had been teased ever since… Seventh and Fifth don’t have a vote, which is lucky, Sixth and Third, most likely, will be against. But Fourth should agree – which means there are three of us. Against two. So it’s a majority. And maybe Dragon will agree. After all he’s a smart guy, Sixth, I don’t know why he’s having problems with
socio
marketing… And I’m in control of the SPO and the PSAP, the Houses of Correction and the looney bins, I can cause him problems… If he comes out against I’ll stop half the deliveries – it’s long
overdue, by the way. Or else everything at his factories, whether it’s pants, boots or toothbrushes – it’s all going to be made from the same stinking shit…