The New Girl (Downside) (17 page)

‘Browns disappear all the time, Mother. They are not like us. They wander, they scope. As a default, they hold their family units and other browns in disregard. You have seen
this?’

She has. Not only on SKY, but in the movies that Jane likes. ‘Which one is the primary viable?’

‘We have two options.’

He zooms in on a corpulent halfpint with a mess of yellow hair. ‘Ugh,’ she says. Then she realises that she has seen it before. It’s the brown that came to the precinct with
the educator. The disregardful one. She is not surprised it has been chosen. The other one is female, not as odious, but also in need of urgent modification to make it less unsightly.

‘This is good work, Father,’ she says.

Father looks down at his gelphone and frowns. ‘Thanks you.’

‘Why did you show this to me?’

He doesn’t answer, only stands up and says, ‘I must conclude some business.’

Without another word, he leaves the room. She gets up quietly and follows, not sure what she’s looking for. As always, he’s locked his study door behind him, but she squats down and
peers through the keyhole, aware of the risk she’s taking.

Father’s drafting a message on his gelphone. He can’t be conversing with the Ministry – they require only daily reports. She looks at his naturally primo features in the
glancing sunlight and feels a cramping in her stomach. Remembers the words from the computer. Is this fear? She isn’t sure. Could it be love? No. It doesn’t feel blissful, more as if
she is about to projectile. She watches him place his gelphone in his pocket, then hurries down the stairs and into the hallway, hearing Father’s footsteps behind her.

Unwilling to let Father see her face, she opens the front door, stares out into the grounds. Danish is approaching, moving faster than usual. She can’t decipher his expression – he
may have been modified, but he is still a brown. He hobbles up to the door and hands a piece of paper to Father. Sometimes she wonders what the Ministry was thinking providing them with a tame
brown who cannot speak, however admirable his oral modification work may be.

Father reads it, then turns to look at her. ‘There is an unauthorised brown in the precinct.’

Penter blinks. Tries to remember the correct protocol. ‘Shall I report?’

‘No. I have... an idea,’ Father says. ‘Perhaps it could be of service.’

Penter is shocked. ‘But that is not in our purview.’ She’s heard rumours that treasonous Players have been scouting browns unlawfully for the Modification Ward and that the
Ministry is displeased. Unlawful scouting is a terminal offence. Is Father a Player after all? Is this what he was doing with his gelphone? As a Node Liaison it would be her duty to report him.

Jane shuffles past her and enters the kitchen, distracting her from these confusing thoughts. Which is the greater disregard: treasonous thoughts against Father, or a wariness about doing her
duty to the Ministry? At this moment, confronted by the mute tame brown, an intruder, Father’s secret messages and Jane’s peculiar needs, Penter longs for nothing more than a renewal.
All the questions trouble her and she longs for the quietness of clear direction. How do the browns exist without order?

She follows Jane into the kitchen, hands her a bowl and pours the colourful nuggets of dry sugar that have become the halfpint’s favourite breakfast. She distributes a similar bowlful to
Danish and he limps into the corner of the room to enjoy them.

She joins Father at the door. ‘If we attempt to recruit the intruder without authorisation,’ she whispers, ‘will we not be in disregard?’

‘We have an open-ended brief when we are in the field, Mother. It does take time to acclimatise to the freedom. In this case, I am secure that the Ministry will be felicitous if we scout a
rogue brown beyond the specified purview of the project. How does the advertisement say it?
We go the extra mile
.’ He waves a hand in Danish’s direction. ‘It will not be
long before that will depreciate. We may need a replacement. This project has been a success and there will be others, I’m sure.’ Father smiles at her, places a hand on her shoulder;
it’s the first time he has ever touched her. She feels a sharp tug in her chest, something that hurts more, is more blissful, than regard. When he removes his hand, she thinks she can still
sense the weight of it pressing down on her.

He cannot be a Player. It would be impossible for her to have such regard for him if he were.

‘You are correct about Danish, Father,’ she says, returning his smile. She notices that Jane is watching them both carefully as she spoons sugar from the bowl into her mouth. And,
she thinks, Jane did say she wanted a pet.

There’s a grinding sound in his right ear. The cold smell of wet clay and concrete. A monster is looming over him, a spider-woman, all arms and breasts, knives and
malicious smiling. Something else is cutting over him, like a laser, burning into his skin.

It’s a sliver of early sunlight. Ryan props himself up on an elbow and tries to rub life into his face. There’s fine sand all over his cheek, on his brow. He brings his hand into
range in front of his eyes and sees the earth-red of clay, not blood. His body is so stiff he can only haul it over and up like a carcass. His knees crackle and burn, the nerve bundles down his
spine object.

The spider-woman with the knives leers and he remembers that she’s made of concrete. He’s been sleeping in the back corner of this half-built McPalace’s eight-car garage. He
sits up cross-legged and chases the cobwebs away. The grinding is still vibrating through the ground, as if there are major earthworks happening deep below him. He listens intently in the dead
still of dawn and fancies he can hear a high-pitched whining beneath that grinding, a keening sound.

There’s a swirl of faces listing through his head: Karin, Julie, Tess, Alice, but most of all the new girl, her polar face superimposed over all the rest. She’s somewhere near, he
remembers, and the lurch that this causes in his system is a different sort of lurch to the knots of fear and regret the faces of Tess and Alice cause. As for Julie and Karin, those pathetic old
hags, they leave him cold.

After hearing the kid screaming yesterday, Ryan had ducked under the portico out of sight and waited. A minute later, the library volunteer woman came out, dragging her snot-faced son down the
driveway. The kid was pale, tear-streaked, but oddly passive, quiet – shocked. Ryan realised that it was that boy who’d been screaming, not the girl, and he felt a wash of relief. Dusk
was falling by then and Ryan knew that this was as good a shelter as any, better than many. He’d be able to hide out in the back of this half-constructed shell and make more plans tomorrow.
He’d have to go hungry tonight, but he’d been hungry often enough before. An almost-full bottle of whisky would give him all the fuel he needed.

At some stage in the evening he called Ziggy, begged him for Alice’s phone number, but of course Ziggy laughed him off. He also tried Karin, but she didn’t answer. He can’t
leave things like that, Alice hating him. Is his only option to stake out Bedford Centre again on the next take-away Wednesday? He can’t allow her disappointment in him to fester and
crystallise into loathing. He’s got to get in touch with her and make things right. He did nothing wrong, it was all her bitch mother’s fault. He never hurt her.

The sunlight’s slanting in more powerfully now, but Ryan still doesn’t feel elastic enough to move. He imagines the sun’s rays warming his muscles and joints and cleansing him.
The grinding below has stopped, he notices, and he hears birdsong in the trees of the garden. He should be hearing cars on the road – it’s not that far away, but the gate and the wall
are high and thick enough, he supposes, to block out the sound. Ryan’s never been rich, even when he was a salaried and productive member of society, and he’s always had to live with
other people’s sounds and smells, but this silence and seclusion, this is why people rate being wealthy. You can buy your own private world.

Who lives here? he wonders. Can that pale girl really belong to a rich family, the type that would have eight cars to park? Or is she the daughter of a servant who lives on the property? When
she’s looked at him he’s been branded by her wordless appeal – for help? For rescue? For attention, care, love? Something in that girl’s gaze cries out with need.

The slice of light falling on his body flickers off and then on again. Someone has passed the mouth of the garage. It flickers again as the figure returns and stands staring at him. It’s
just a silhouette. The broad shoulders and round middle make Ryan suspect it’s a man. The head seems too big for the rest of the body and he appears to be leaning on a cane. Ryan thinks of a
drawing Alice once made, which he hung on his office partition all those years ago; this shadow is like that child’s drawing come to life.

Ryan draws himself up straighter but doesn’t stand. Let the man come to him. Ryan concentrates on exuding confidence, like he belongs here. If the man’s tacitly asking what the hell
Ryan’s doing in his garage, Ryan counters it with a wave of what the hell are you looking at.

The shadow man stands there looking for a minute more, then passes by again in the direction of the main house.

The spell is broken and Ryan packs his bag, readying to leave.

He’s slung his satchel over his shoulder and is on his way towards the gate when he’s confronted by a woman. She’s a peculiar woman, with curves in all the wrong places –
sort of... knobbly. But that doesn’t stop her from wearing a form-fitting lacy body suit, almost as if she’s a member of one of those I’m-a-freak-and-proud-of-it brigades. The
first thing that goes through his mind is that he can probably beat her in a fight. She’s tall, but probably quite light. He hopes that it doesn’t come to that; the fact is he
doesn’t want to touch her.

When she speaks, he’s surprised by her friendly tone. ‘Good morning, mister,’ she says in an unplaceable accent, but given her odd get-up, he assumes she’s a recent
import from Eastern Europe. It all suddenly fits into place: the semi-constructed house, the nouveau-riche tastelessness. She must be the wife of one of those gangsters on the run from the former
Yugoslavia who’ve set up shop in South Africa. People like that don’t get house bonds or building loans: all their transactions are strictly cash. That explains the bizarre decor, and
the fact that work seems to have halted.

Ryan doesn’t want to be caught squatting in a Serbian gangster’s house-in-progress.

‘Oh, hi. I’ve just been admiring your... art.’ He waves a hand at the freakish statues. ‘I didn’t mean to trespass, I’ll be on my way now.’ He offers
her his smile, which bounces off her unnoticed – her gaze remains one of open curiosity.

It’s as if she hasn’t heard him or understood him. She reaches out her hand. ‘My name is Mother,’ she says. ‘Danish reported you were here. You are one of those
browns – uh, upside citizens – who has no home? It is charming to meet you.’

Ryan can do nothing other than take her hand and shake. She has an unsettling handshake, crimping her fingers and holding them straight and rigid, and it’s cold and clammy at the same
time, almost like one of those hook-tentacled statues. Perhaps she’s palsied or something. He had better stop being so judgemental, Ryan thinks, if he’s going to survive on the road.
From this woman’s perspective he’s the freak here – homeless and dirty-brown, it’s true. He’d better start being nice.

‘Hello, um, ma’am,’ he says. ‘Yes, you’re right. I actually don’t have a home at the moment. But I’m used to living on the road. I’ll be fine.
Thank you.’ He turns to go.

‘But we have an ample home. We have extent for twenty... upsiders, maybe thirty if they are small and we load them correctly.’

Ryan laughs. ‘I don’t think your... family... would be so happy if you started taking in homeless people. I don’t know where you come from, but that’s not the way things
work here.’ But the thought of family brings back the image of the girl. Is she this woman’s daughter? That would explain a lot – a recent immigrant with no friends and out of
touch with local customs.

‘My family’ – the word clunks out of her mouth like a stone – ‘would be felicitous. You see, as we are organised according to documented periurban kinship
configurations to this node cluster, I am the executive manager of the domestic precinct, while Father is the family’s financial procurement manager. We have Jane, whose organisational role
is to acquire project-specific knowledge and liaise with local halfpints, and of course, Danish, our tame brown. He guides us through the node.’

Ryan just nods. This woman is evidently insane.

Mother – if that’s what she wants to be called, like she comes from an Appalachian farm, so be it – rests a hand on one of the lumpy bits on her side and continues.
‘There is a tradition of accommodating operatives within a precinct, is there not?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘There is a tradition of accommodating operatives within a precinct, is there not?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘Oh, please. My apology. I’m learning to speak more clearly for upside citizens,’ she says, more to herself than to Ryan, and when her voice drops that false public cheer, Ryan
can see how this woman might be taken very seriously. She clears her throat. ‘You. Work. You. Stay. Here?’

‘Work here?’ he answers.

‘You clean? You lift?’ she says, as if addressing a child. Or, in Ryan’s experience, the way employers address their manual labourers.

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘You will be remunerated and stay on the precinct. That’s “the way things work here”, yes?’

‘Yes. Yes, it is. But how much... remuneration... are we talking?’

Mother’s long hand dips into the neckline of her bodysuit and emerges with a fold of blue notes. She flicks off a wodge as if at random. ‘This? Per one week?’

Ryan takes the money and stuffs it in his back pocket. ‘You’ve got a deal.’ He extends his hand.