The Living (30 page)

The Wise One pressed the touchpad with his finger, gently, almost tenderly. The Wise One’s face froze on the screen in a triumphant, slightly twisted grin.

‘So what do you think?’

He loved it when Cleo rewatched the show with him on the Crystal W.

‘You’re always faultless,’ she said drily. ‘Cruel, but just and artistic.’

‘…And more and more cruel with every episode,’ she thought to herself. ‘If you watch Who Still Does Not Agree in second layer for some reason it doesn’t seem so obvious. But the Crystal… The Crystal, with its flat picture, is cruder and more honest. It strips everything bare somehow…’ Cleo looked at the motionless, self-satisfied face on the screen and then looked away. ‘That cold, emotionless way he talks to them – for some reason this indifference seems like justice to the viewers; the calmer he is, the more “likes” the show gets… And that smile of his is unexpectedly touching, somehow childlike, when he just stands to one side and watches the Dissidents being put into the Chamber of Shame. Even Second once said that that smile gave him the creeps…’

But the viewers liked it. ‘The Wise One’s smile gives us livings hope and belief,’ they muttered in the comments after every episode. ‘Hope for the correction of those who have lost their way…’ ‘Belief in the complete extermination of the Dissidents…’

They all like it.

But personally she preferred the way he had acted in the beginning. A year ago. When his voice would tremble and crack during the interrogations. When he was afraid to look the Dissidents in the eye. When he didn’t dare smile when he was carrying out the verdict…

‘No, I’m talking about the machine!’ the Wise One said. ‘How do you like my new CW?’ Zero stroked the reflective body of the Crystal W. The latest model. An even more sophisticated design. Even more three-dimensional picture. Even thinner screen. Even more user-friendly interface. Even more sound and colour
settings
. The Crystal Wise One. Exclusive equipment especially for him. Better and better every time. And he rejoiced in every new model like a kid with a toy. How could you explain to him that there was no particular difference between the toys? That they were all crude, ugly, slow, clumsy imitations. Prosthetics for an invalid. Specially made for an invalid with no
socio
…

‘The main thing is that you like it,’ she said. It sounded false, but Zero didn’t notice.

‘I do.’

He laughed suddenly, abrupt and rattling, as if he were
scattering
a handful of pebbles on a marble floor. His crazed pupils swelled and narrowed in his chocolate eyes.

‘Again?’ she asked.

He said nothing.

With two fingers, Cleo carefully lifted the edge of his
multi-coloured
sleeve and pulled it up, baring his skin. An inflamed puncture trail of bites stretched from his palm to the joint of his elbow. Two bakugans were stuck to his wrist, a BW. She shuddered in disgust and let go of the sleeve.

‘You’re killing yourself,’ she said. ‘Which BW is this for today?’

‘I haven’t been counting,’ Zero said amiably and closed his eyes.

‘But I have! One BW in the morning. One before the show. And another one just now!’

‘Er, not just one…’

‘On the other arm too?!’ she said in horror.

‘So what. It’s all under control, little one. I’ve got it under control.’

‘You don’t even know how many of these creatures you are plugging into yourself a day and it’s under control?’

‘Gopz,’ he shrugged his shoulder irritatedly. She got up.

‘OK, sorry Cleo, sorry little one,’ he grabbed her by the arm and sat her back down next to him. ‘Sit with me for a bit. It’s just… don’t bust my carousel right now, OK? Now, now…’ he shoved his face against her shoulder and started breathing rapidly. ‘Now, yeah…’

She hugged him tight, the way he liked. He shivered, then  said:

‘I’m flying… We’re flying together…’

Zero invented the BW himself – an intravenous cocktail of black and white venom. ‘The whole thing about it is that the bites are at the same time,’ he said. ‘If one larva is even a tiny bit late – it’s already wrong, see, the high is broken. So you’ve got to pick larvae that are the same size and roughly the same age. Then they both release the juice at the same second and give you a carousel.’
Carousel
is what Zero called the effect of the BW – the fluctuating feeling of soaring and falling. And lots of other sensations which he couldn’t explain. He suggested that she try it, but she felt sick when she so much as looked at those slugs digging into bare flesh.

At first he only took a BW before the beginning of the show, for courage.

‘For indifference, more like,’ he said. ‘When I’m on the
carousel
, I couldn’t care less about these Dissidents.’ Then he started doubling the dose – one BW on each arm… then he started using every day, although he presented the show only once a week… And then that dreamy child’s smile appeared – and he really couldn’t care less about ‘those Dissidents’. But it was still a lot of BWs. More and more all the time – now it was up to five or six doses a day. Even Second says he is overdoing it. It’s bad for the heart and the brain.

‘You’re shaking. I’m going to put the blanket over you,’ said Cleo. He always got cold after a carousel.

‘Let’s have a Darling,’ said Zero. After a carousel he would become sentimental.

‘But then when he turns seven are we going to send him away? Are you going to put us on your Who Still Does Not Agree programme…?’

She immediately regretted what she had said: it had come out rude and mean. He started shaking even more violently and covered his face with his hands as if he’d been slapped.

‘Sorry.’ She hugged him again. ‘I’m sure, of course, that you would never touch your own Darling…’

‘These people…’ the Wise One droned into his hands. ‘These Darlings… Familials… What, do you think I don’t feel sorry for them?’

‘I don’t think you do,’ she said honestly. ‘Before – probably. But not anymore.’

He was not going to argue. He took his hands from his face and said:

‘Maybe you’re right.’

He reached over to the touchpad on his Crystal and went onto his docked network.

‘…But whether I feel sorry for them or not, my show is saving the Living. Saving it, you understand? It’s like shock therapy. Look at the System.’ He opened up his little man made of numbers. ‘Good progress, you see? After every Who Still Does Not Agree the number of scraps goes down. Then, by the next week, the scraps have appeared again, but every time there’s fewer of them…’

‘Scraps?’ Cleo didn’t understand.

‘That’s what Second calls the reproductions that have stalled… Like now, look, after the show there is only one, and half an hour ago there were dozens of them! Fewer dissidents means fewer stalled reproductions, you see! I don’t know how it works, but it works.’

The Wise One stared sadly at one ‘scrap’. A tiny unavailable little spiral flashing in the very centre of the System. He scraped his finger across the touchpad – then unwound the little spiral out into a ten-figure entry, stroked it with the black arrow of the cursor, like a pet which needs to be roused from sleep.
What are you doing, Cracker, my friend…? Why don’t you come back to me, little scrap?

But Cracker could not. Or would not. For more than a year now he hadn’t wanted to come back. The first woman who carried him after the pause gave birth to him dead: he had choked on his umbilical cord. The second woman to get
pregnant
after that couldn’t carry him for the full term: bleeding and a miscarriage in the twelfth week. And he dragged her down with him – she had lost so much blood that she
temporarily
ceased. And then he stalled. Went and stalled in the
darkness
, stubborn little scrap.

For nine days correctee Cracker had quite simply not been reproduced.

For nine days he had just been a collection of flashing  figures.

For nine days he had simply not existed in the world…

Zero wound the little scrap, ‘Cracker’, back into a spiral, placed his head on the knees of his long-term woman and closed his eyes.

‘I want a Darling with you,’ he murmured sleepily and
capriciously
. ‘I promise that I won’t put you on the show. We will live together with our Darling like in ancient times. Like Second lives with his children… And then my Darling will become the Wise One in my place.’

‘And are you going to take a second woman too, like Second?’

‘No,’ the Wise One frowned. ‘I can’t stand women getting hysterical.’

…Ever since Bagheera, the moderator of tranquillity’s second long-term partner, had borne him his Darling not a day had gone by in the Residence without Layla shrieking and weeping.
She was terribly, monstrously jealous of Second and Bagheera and their new Darling…

‘What, do you think I’d behave like Layla if you took another woman?’

‘No… of course not. But I don’t want anyone else anyway. I want you – and a Darling. By the way, I’ve already hired some first-layer designers to decorate a nursery.’

‘Why do we need designers?’ Cleo said mutedly.

‘Because we need something special – I don’t want him growing up in the standard feeling-lucky with anti-shock
covering
and hanging about on
socio
morning, noon and night. My Darling should know his way around in first layer – one day he’s going to become the Wise…’

‘Why do we need designers
now
? I haven’t conceived yet…’

‘So what? When are you ovulating?’

She grudgingly dug about in her memory:

‘In three days.’

‘So that means the designers have started work three days ahead of schedule…’

‘Stop it!’ she almost screeched, and it came out nasty and shrill, almost like Layla. ‘Stop it…’ she repeated more calmly this time; what annoyed her more than anything was when he pretended that everything was absolutely fine with her. ‘You know… it’s not going to work for me.’

‘It’ll all work out!’ The Wise One waved it away. ‘You’ll see in three days. Smin, have faith, I’ve got a feeling! Everything’s going to be alright.’

‘Don’t say “everything’s going to be alright”!’ Cleo snapped. ‘That’s what people say before the pause. If you want a Darling find yourself another woman. Something’s wrong with me…’

‘Rubbish. You’re just not getting enough sleep. You spend your whole time in the lab…’

He stubbornly refused to believe. Every month the whole thing repeated itself: when are you ovulating – smin, this time
it’s definitely all going to work… And again – nothing.
Something
was wrong with the ovaries or the womb, that much was clear…

…as clear as day. In her whole life she had only got pregnant once…

…and she had given birth to a Darling which was sick and which temporarily ceased shortly afterwards. And since then there had been hundreds of couplings at the festival, dozens of matings with Zero, but with no result. Infertility. An empty, barren uterus…

…not like
there
.

But he doesn’t want to believe it. He doesn’t even want to hear about illness, about infertility.

The Wise One wants an heir. The Wise One is putting too much pressure on her, it’s his own fault. Yes, his own fault. If he hadn’t put her in this state of constant stress, if he wasn’t
insisting
on a Darling, if he didn’t force her to copulate with him naked, without a sucs, then she, probably, wouldn’t have gone off so
far
into her fantasies in
luxury
. She wouldn’t have started using a pseudonym, she wouldn’t have become this Queen, covered in a layer of contact grease. She wouldn’t have turned her woodland den into a termite mound, the Queendom. And she wouldn’t be laying several thousand eggs in a day – in the world where she could produce offspring. Where all fantasies come true and delight you…