Respect for the Dead
by Steven Pemberton
Part Two
© 1996-2002
This book is split into three parts, mostly to save on bandwidth. This file is part 2. Parts 1 and 3 are at http://www.pembers.net/fiction/respect.html and http://www.pembers.net/fiction/respect3.html, respectively. The three parts form a single story; if you haven’t already read part 1, I’d suggest you read it before reading this part.
Respect for the Dead is a free book. You can read it without having to pay money to the author or anyone else. You can give copies to other people, as long as you don’t charge them money for it. (This is a brief statement of what you can and can’t do with this book. See the Licence Agreement below for a more detailed version.) The book is some 68,000 words long, or about 100 pages of A4 or letter-size paper.
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With that necessary unpleasantness out of the way, let’s get back to the story...
After Thander had left him, Matthew spent a while accessing the base’s encyclopaedia through room’s communicator. He tried to find out whether she and Hamesh were behaving in an acceptable manner, by today’s standards. He had no idea, though, what he would do if they weren’t.
The main problem with descriptions of the state of a society is that they are usually written by people who live in that society, who tend to assume that the reader has spent as much time in the society as they have. This limits their usefulness to outsiders, who are generally the very people who need to read such descriptions.
Fortunately, whoever had written Serendipity Base’s encyclopaedia had been well aware that most of its readers would be exhumees, who were outsiders almost by definition. The encyclopaedia had a “reference year” control. It assumed that the reader had been first alive in about that year, and adjusted its descriptions accordingly. Unfortunately for Matthew, its knowledge of world history went back only as far as Earth Year 0, some two and a half centuries after he had died. The world of that era seemed even further removed from his own time than the present day. Some years before that point, there had evidently been a war, widespread, bloody and prolonged. The peace that followed had been uneasy, verging on paranoid, and fragile at the best of times. Near the start of this version of the encyclopaedia, he read:
It is no longer necessary to wear a respirator or armour outdoors. Nor is it necessary to check that windows and doors are airtight.
He wondered briefly what had happened between his time and then. He recalled Thander’s words when they first met: “Many people between 1990 and 2010 thought that it was inevitable that the world would come to be dominated by large corporations.” What had occurred in 2010--only two years after his death--to change the accepted view? Perhaps it was just a convenient shorthand; people liked to stereotype history in decades and centuries: one decade was like this, the next like that, even though it had not seemed nearly so simple to the people who had lived through them. Then again, the fact that people had stopped talking about a perceived threat need not mean that the threat had been averted. It might mean that it had come to pass, and people were now resigned to it.
Then, too, events of the early 21st century that had seemed world-shaking at the time were probably not of much everyday relevance now. How much of what had happened in the 13th century was important to people living in AD 2000? Some events still mattered, of course: Magna Carta was one that came to mind, but how many of Matthew’s contemporaries had known or cared whether John or Stephen or Edward had been the king who signed it? It was only because Matthew had narrowly missed experiencing AD 2010 himself that he was so interested in it. It was not pertinent to the question he was currently trying to answer.
After a little while, Matthew gave up on the reference year feature and read the text as it had been written. He concluded--although only through finding no mention of it--that there was no such thing as marriage anymore. Certainly, two or more people could decide that they would enter into a kind of partnership, very much like a marriage had been in his day, but these partnerships appeared to have no legal recognition. Were Thander and Hamesh in such a partnership? Certainly not according to her.
Another thing he noticed was that people’s attitudes towards sex had become very casual. Having sex with someone did not imply any emotional attachment to them. Perhaps more to the point, it did not imply any lessening in your emotional attachment to anyone else. People who were in a partnership could, and often did, have sex with people outside it, without needing to be secretive about it, and without weakening the partnership in any way. Indeed, they would often continue to have sex with the same outside person over a period of months or even years. Not everyone behaved like this, but enough did that nobody thought it was worth passing comment on. It appeared that society had only recently come round to this way of thinking:
Nowadays, people do not feel it necessary to select only one person with whom to share romantic love or sexual favours, excluding all others. In former eras, many societies took the view that all the different needs one has that can be satisfied by other people could be satisfied by just one other person. Equally, one could satisfy all the different needs of that other person. To us, this view borders on the perverse. At the very least, we see it as unrealistically optimistic.
He was unsure of whether Thander had been proposing a partnership or just sex. If she was just offering sex, then by today’s standards, she had done nothing wrong, and he would have done nothing wrong had he accepted. His marriage to Debbie was irrelevant. By today’s standards.
But she must have known that Matthew’s instinct would be to judge her proposal by the standards of his own time. Did she know what those standards were, though? Her questioning had mainly been about computers--sometimes technical details of their construction and operation, but more their effect on individuals and society. Occasionally, there was a question about Debbie. For instance, he had mentioned that his work at the University had required him to work late sometimes, usually one or two days a week. Thander had asked how Debbie felt about that. He replied that she had accepted it; her own job had similar requirements.
She had told him that exhumees from his era were rare, and so it seemed to Matthew that she ought to be asking him about every aspect of life in that period. Perhaps, though, the historians already knew everything they wanted to know about sex and relationships in the early 21st century. Perhaps the research was directed centrally, and other historians were investigating the subject. Or perhaps no-one was interested in it.
And then, what of Hamesh? Although Thander denied the existence of any kind of attachment between them, the doctor certainly seemed to think there was one. Was he suffering from some kind of delusion? Had they been together at some time, with Hamesh clinging to the memory of that? Or had Thander simply rejected him outright?
Matthew realised that he had not yet read anything about what you were supposed to do if a person wanted to have sex with you, but you did not. Perhaps more to the point in this case, what were their partners and sexual acquaintances supposed to do?
The encyclopaedia was maddeningly silent on the subject. Matthew guessed he had run into a cultural axiom--something so obvious, so taken for granted, that no-one had thought to write it down. He tried altering the reference year in intervals of five decades, but his searches still turned up nothing. He wondered if the matter had been left out because no-one thought exhumees were likely to form partnerships or have sex with people outside their own era. Or was it customary to accept any offer of sex, whether you wanted to or not? That would explain Hamesh’s behaviour, if he had wanted to have sex with Thander, and she had refused.
But why then did the encyclopaedia say nothing? Surely people had not been accepting any and every offer of sex for the last few decades? On the other hand, he realised that even if it was significant to him that no-one ever rejected an offer of sex these days, in any culture there were infinitely many things that never happened, and an encyclopaedia could hardly be expected to mention them all. Did that paragraph have some idiomatic meaning that his limited experience in Athic was causing him to miss?
Then he recalled the English-Athic dictionary that Thander had shown him shortly after he started learning the new language. He hadn’t used it much, as the base’s computer had taught him nearly all the vocabulary he’d needed for everyday conversation. Feeling something like the mixture of delight and shame that he’d known when looking up swearwords as a youngster, he asked it for the Athic equivalent of the English verb rape.
The dictionary did not give an Athic translation. Instead, there was a definition:
rape, transitive verb (archaic)
To force (a person) to have any form of sexual intercourse without consent.
The absence of a direct translation, plus the fact that the word was described as archaic, indicated that the concept was no longer a common one. Did that mean that it was socially unacceptable? That it was somehow impossible? Or merely that it was no longer seen as a crime?
Feeling stiff, he stood up and stretched. The communicator’s clock informed him it was after one o’clock in the morning. He decided that he would get no further with his questions tonight and, having closed the encyclopaedia, went to bed.
It took Hamesh quite some time to get used to the idea that he had finally qualified as a doctor. Whenever somebody introduced him to another member of staff at the hospital, he had to resist an impulse to look around to see who it was who had the same, rather rare, name as him.
He had access to a mediscan, which he resolved to use on himself at the earliest opportunity. He was held back, though, by concern that whatever he discovered would be visible to others. The mediscan was connected to the hospital computer, and would not work without it. Then he recalled that the hospital computer was not connected to the city computers. There had been some disagreement over this a few years ago, which had not yet been reconciled. The staff had to register citizens manually with the hospital computer, which caused no small amount of discontent among staff and citizens alike. Hamesh realised that he could exploit this to create an identity for a citizen that existed only in the hospital computer. It would have no way of checking whether this citizen existed in the city’s computers. Then, when he used the mediscan on himself, he would tell the computer that he was scanning this fictitious citizen.
When he performed the scan, it told him that there was nothing remarkable about him physically. He had expected as much, but the DNA sequence revealed something extraordinary. Nearly all of his DNA was within acceptable tolerances, but in five places, there were regions of about 1,000 bases that were so far outside normal that the mediscan’s controller thought that he had somehow mixed in DNA from a non-human organism. Disbelieving, he ran a second scan, and then a third. The results were identical each time. He wondered if the machine’s reference copy of a normal human sequence had somehow become corrupted. It seemed unlikely: he had used this machine himself to sequence several patients and had never seen a result like this. Nevertheless, he found the DNA sequences of four recently-scanned patients and compared the anomalous regions of his own with them. He was not surprised to find that he had scarcely a single base the same.
Then, not sure if he really wanted to know, he looked up the function of each region in the hospital’s encyclopaedia. Its description of the purpose of each region was terse, but it told him enough. Near or at the position where each of his anomalous regions started was one word: “regulator.”
He searched the rest of the encyclopaedia for references to the regulator, and found about 20 altogether. He rechecked these regions of his genome with the mediscan, and found them normal. Evidently then, he did have a regulator, but it was missing some component that was necessary for its correct functioning--as though a technician had built a fully working mediscan, but had not provided any means of switching it on.
It was probably inevitable that someone would discover the fictitious citizen. By this time, he was in charge of a small team, and it was one of them, a woman named Parath, a year or two his junior, who noticed the oddity. He knew he should have deleted the record once it had served its purpose, but that was beyond his authority. It was a clear breach of regulations, which she should have reported immediately, but she didn’t.
He thought at first that she was somewhat in awe of him; even then, he was an exceptionally skilled doctor. Then, when they talked a little more about it, it became clear that that wasn’t the reason. She knew some people (she never said who they were, and he didn’t ask) who wanted to obtain certain supplies from the hospital’s stores without, as she put it, “going through official channels.” She was going to get hold of the supplies: she wanted him to cover her tracks by editing the stores’ records.
Of course, Hamesh should have reported this, but he didn’t. It was partly that he felt indebted to Parath for not reporting him, and partly that he thought he might be able to gain some advantage from her. As she had presented it, the deal offered nothing to him. She offered to share in the supplies. He smiled politely and pointed out that they were for treating sick people. If he ever needed them himself, someone else would requisition them for him. She smiled back and said that wasn’t the only thing they were good for. She declined to elaborate on that statement.
He asked for a few minutes to think about what he wanted from her in return for his co-operation, and she agreed. It was quite difficult to think of something that she could give him that he couldn’t get anyway, legitimately.
After a long silence, an idea came to him. Parath’s resemblance to the girl who had rejected him when they were teenagers was slight, but definite. He smiled again and said: “I want to have sex with you.”
Clearly puzzled, she replied: “You could have that anyway. It hardly seems like a fair reward for the risk you’d be taking.”
“I think it will be.” He hesitated. “There is one condition, though.”
“What?”
“You must never refuse me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t believe you’d like the answer to that question.” Hamesh grinned as he said that. Noticing her discomfort, he added: “Remember that you haven’t been particularly forthcoming about ‘who’ and ‘why’ yourself.”
Parath nodded, reluctantly conceding the point. “But when you say ‘never,’ do you mean you’re planning to drag me away from my post when I’m on duty?”
He smiled again, this time at the absurd images that her question suggested to him. “I’ll see to it that we move to the same shift.”
“OK...” She hesitated. “But only for as long as you’re helping me with the supplies.”
“Of course,” he replied. Then he added: “Do we have an agreement, then?”
“It would seem so.”
He put a hand, palm up, on the small table that separated them. A moment later, she placed her hand in his. She leaned forward, and their lips met. Hamesh felt her other hand on the back of his head, sensuously tousling his thick short hair, and he returned the gesture.
When Hamesh finally pulled away from the kiss, Parath had a dreamy, satisfied expression--almost exactly like the other girl. They stood up and she led him to her quarters. She locked the door and they began to undress. It was to prove to be the biggest mistake that Parath would make in her short career.
The Second World State, from whose founding our present calendar counts, was singularly unsuccessful in achieving its stated aims. Superficially, it was remarkable for two reasons. The first is the brevity of its existence: a mere 29 years and 51 days, making it one of the shortest-lived democracies of the last millennium. The second is the unique nature of its demise. It was not conquered--by definition, no outside state could exist to conquer it. It did not succumb to civil war or revolution, nor did it disintegrate as provinces seceded or were granted independence. Instead, it ceased to exist because a great majority of its citizens and politicians realised that it was not working and, in all probability, it could never be made to work. On the 21st of Two, Earth Year 29, the Second World State dissolved itself, and, with a few minor differences, political boundaries reverted to those in force immediately before its formation.
This is not to say that the State was a failure; rather, its legacy was one of unexpected bonuses. The most important of these is undoubtedly that the State had distributed wealth in all its forms much more evenly than individual nations had managed to. This persisted after its dissolution. Many historians cite this as the single most important reason for the general freedom from large-scale war in the five centuries since that time.
The second bonus was the introduction of democracy to every nation. Democracy is, of course, by no means a perfect system of government, but as one commentator has remarked, it is “the least unworkable in such large and complex societies as today’s.”
Another benefit is that Athic has become a nearly universal language. This has greatly simplified international commerce and increased understanding between different cultures. Computers were sufficiently advanced even then to allow real-time translation, but there is a natural human tendency to regard someone who has to use such technology as, somehow, a lesser person than oneself. As well as this, it was seen as an artificial barrier to communication, much the same as a screen today. Athic removed both of those problems. The founders of the Second World State were not so foolish as to try to force the language on the whole of humanity. They merely required everybody who held public office to be fluent in it, and passed a law that allowed any party involved in political, commercial or legal negotiations to require them to be carried out in Athic. What they did not expect was that once those people had been convinced of the advantages of a single language, the rest of the population would join in without coercion.
Lastly, even before the State was founded, many larger nations had given responsibility for their day-to-day administration to sophisticated computers. Humans still made the important decisions, but it was the job of the machines to execute them. When the State was formed, these computers had their policies and protocols aligned, so that they would act in concert for the benefit of humanity as a whole. When the State was dissolved, the computers retained their communication links to each other. When a government has to make a decision, its computers can present information on how that will affect the rest of the world. The government can ignore this, of course, but even the most insensitive politician does not like to appear to be disregarding advice. The computers and their sharing of information have also largely ended the deceptions that governments prior to the Second World State routinely practiced against each other, and even against their own citizens.
An unfamiliar symbol appeared in a corner of the communicator screen. Matthew looked up from the encyclopaedia article to see that the door of his room was open. Why had the communicator not signalled? Was that what the symbol meant? Three people stood in the doorway. One was Doctor Hamesh. Behind him were a man and a woman whom Matthew had not seen before.
The doctor stepped into the room and stood to one side of the door, to allow the two newcomers to enter. They were young, but their faces spoke of bitter experiences that had made them tough and uncompromising. Those faces were disconcertingly similar to one another, making Matthew wonder if they were some sort of clone. They wore dark blue uniforms, unadorned except for a white flash on each shoulder, and black boots. Each had a small, oblong object hanging from a hook at the belt--a radio, perhaps?
“Good morning, Prentice,” said the doctor. There was something in his tone that suggested he intended Matthew’s morning to be anything but good. He smiled and, indicating the two others, said: “You have some visitors.”
The man and the woman led Matthew to the garage, where he and Thander had taken the car from a few days earlier. On the way there, he noticed that their uniforms had name tags. According to these, the woman was Guard Holeth, and the man was Guard Kaselan. He wondered whom or what they were supposed to guard, and whom or what they were supposed to protect them from.
Their car was parked near to the exit. It was larger than the vehicle he and Thander had used, and rather more boxy; it seemed to have been designed for strength, rather than speed or agility. It was blue, a similar shade to the uniforms. On the front was written, in a lighter blue: “Camp Fidelity D-8.” The windows were dark.
When they got into the car, Matthew discovered that the windows were dark on the inside as well. Not just tinted down, but, as far as he could tell, actually opaque. Were they agoraphobic? Or did they just not want him to see where they were going?
“Where are you taking me?” he asked as the car began to move.
Holeth and Kaselan looked oddly at one another. Neither of them said anything for a second or two. Then Holeth replied: “We’re taking you where it says on the front of the car.”
“Camp Fidelity D-8?”
“Just ‘Camp Fidelity.’ D-8 is the car’s number.”
“What’s going to happen to me there?”
“The same as happens to everyone else.”
“And what’s that?”
Holeth turned to look at him, her expression a mixture of annoyance and puzzlement. “They should’ve told you back there,” she said, gesturing with her thumb over her shoulder, in the approximate direction of Serendipity Base.
“Yes, well, they didn’t tell me,” explained Matthew patiently. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
Holeth looked more puzzled still. “There must be a reason for that,” she said. She shrugged and concluded: “Not our responsibility to tell you.” She fell silent.
Matthew sensed that he would get nothing further out of either of them. Answers would have to wait until they reached Camp Fidelity--whatever that turned out to be.
Thander walked along a corridor in the exhumee section of Serendipity Base. She found herself thinking of it as that now; somehow Matthew’s English name for the base seemed more appropriate than the Athic one. As she drew near to Matthew’s room, worry, or possibly guilt, began to nag at her. It was hard to tell the two apart these days. But what could be wrong? She had every right to be here at this time. It was 09:30, time for her to collect Matthew and take him to another “historical research” interview.
There was no answer to her signal at Matthew’s door. After some hesitation, she tapped out her override code on the door’s lock, and pressed her palm to the panel above it, to confirm her authority. It was impolite, but she was entitled to do it, and she had asked him to let her in first.
The room was deserted.
No, stupid, he’s not going to be hiding under the bed, is he? she told herself, even as she went to look there. His night clothes were neatly folded on the bed. He had to be somewhere nearby. Where could he have gone, though? Most of Serendipity Base was off-limits to exhumees, or at least to unaccompanied exhumees. She hoped he didn’t run into anyone from Security. They weren’t noted for having a sympathetic attitude to exhumees whom they found wandering around the base alone.
“Mandarin!” she called to the air.
The persona of the central computer melted into apparent existence before her. “Good morning, Historian Thander,” it said. “How may I assist?” It flickered once or twice, and there was a slight buzzing in its voice, which told her that once again, the technicians had not properly serviced the projectors in this corridor.
“Can you locate an exhumee for me, please,” she replied, “Matthew Adrian Prentice?”
“I regret that I cannot.” Its voice normally lacked emotion, but it seemed apologetic.
What? Hamesh couldn’t interfere with the computer’s monitoring functions--it would affect too many other things, too many people would notice--
“He left Serendipity Base at 08:32 today, and has not returned since,” the persona explained.
Well, that was a relief, in a way. But-- “How did he get out without an escort?”
“He was escorted, by two people who identified themselves as Guard Holeth and Guard Kaselan, of Camp Fidelity.”
“Camp Fidelity?” gasped Thander. Oh, shit. “But--but--he’s an artificial intelligence expert--he’s going to Project Five...”
“That is incorrect,” Mandarin said politely. “Perhaps you are confusing this exhumee with another? My records show that the individual known as ‘Matthew Adrian Prentice’ is a painter by profession. Your questioning of him did not reveal that he has any skills or knowledge that are needed by current Projects. Therefore he has been requisitioned by Camp Fidelity.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” she snapped. “Someone’s changed your records.”
“That is incorrect,” it replied. “No-one apart from you has changed this record since it was created, 24 days ago. In the last 20 days, you have made no changes to the data concerning Matthew Adrian Prentice’s skills and profession, or his planned destination.”
That was no more than she expected. Any person who could edit Matthew’s records without Thander being informed of it and then make Mandarin assert that they had always been that way would be very careful not to leave any trail. There was only one question left to ask--and only one answer that was at all likely.
“Who authorised the requisition?”
“Doctor Hamesh,” said the persona.
She was right, then. She was not surprised: just very, very angry. “Dismiss,” she said, banishing Mandarin with a wave of her hand. She went back into the corridor, locked the door, and set off in the direction of Hamesh’s office.
Once, when he was about 12, a psychiatrist had asked Hamesh what his earliest memory was. Even then, he realised it was in his best interests to lie in response to questions like that. It was a single incident, out of context, bright but incomplete, like a shard of a broken mirror. He was two years old, in the nursery with about six other children. They had been playing some sort of game, and he had accidentally hit one of the others. (At least, he had convinced himself later that it had been an accident.) The adult in charge had stopped the game and had done her best to comfort and reassure them--Hamesh as much as the other child, because even at that age, his regulator would have been chastising him for harming another. Except that it didn’t.
Later, there were lessons on the eugenics and morality conditioning, which tried to explain their effects on individuals and society. The teacher was one of those with a personality, something that Hamesh had found irritating even then. Computers shouldn’t be friendly; they were tools for getting a job done. He recalled, though, that the principles it was trying to put across to the class seemed good and sensible.
“Hit the desk in front of you,” it said, “as hard as you can.” There was a chorus of obedient thuds and a few gasps of unexpected pain. Hamesh kneaded his hand with the other--one of the gasps had been his--and wondered what the point was.
“That was easy, wasn’t it?” said the teacher.
“No it wasn’t,” muttered someone to Hamesh’s right.
“At least, it was easy to form the intention and then act on it, which is the point of this exercise. Now, each of you turn to face the person sitting next to you.” The class did this, with a little help from the teacher to ensure that everyone was facing someone. “Take a good look at them.
“Now hit them.”
No-one moved.
After what felt like a very long time, Tekath, generally considered to be the brightest in the class, raised her hand and asked: “Teacher, why would anyone want to do such a thing?”
“You’ll understand soon. Please--just try.”
The class tried. A lot of pain was felt, but not one fist was raised. The boy facing Hamesh yelped and pitched forward. Concerned, Hamesh moved over to him and helped him up. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so. I’m never going to do that again.” The look of shock on the boy’s face was still vivid in Hamesh’s memory years later, even though he could no longer recall the child’s name.
“I’m sorry that was so unpleasant for you,” the teacher was saying, “but you won’t believe it unless you experience it for yourself. The effects will soon wear off. Now, can anyone--Hamesh?”
“Yes, Teacher?”
“You seem quite untroubled. Did you try to hit him?”
Hamesh hesitated before replying: “No, Teacher.”
“Then would you try now, please.”
The two boys turned back to each other. The other still looked unwell; evidently, now knowing that Hamesh would fail to hit him was no comfort to him.
Hamesh clenched his fist and raised it a fraction. Then he cried out and slumped in his chair. He heard a few giggles from the back of the class, which stopped abruptly. Opening his eyes, he saw the other boy leaning over him, looking worried. “Are you all right?”
He smiled and nodded weakly. “I was going to do it, but I was so surprised when you fell over that I stopped.” The boy nodded and sat down again.
“Good,” said the teacher. It said a great deal more after that, but Hamesh wasn’t listening. Nothing in his own head had stopped him from hitting the desk, and he was certain that nothing in his head would have stopped him from hitting the boy.
The journey from Serendipity Base to Camp Fidelity took three hours or so. Assuming the same speed as Matthew’s little excursion with Thander, that meant they had travelled about 200 kilometres. Some five minutes before the end of the journey, there was a faint rumbling from somewhere behind them, and the car began to vibrate slightly. Matthew looked around, worried. “Rockets,” Holeth said matter-of-factly. Matthew didn’t understand at first. Were they under attack? Why did Holeth and Kaselan look so calm, then? Then he felt the car tilt upwards, and he was pushed back in his seat. He realised that the rockets were in the car itself. Thander had said something about the cars having a ceiling of only 500 metres, so perhaps Camp Fidelity was on a hilltop.
Matthew sensed that they were slowing down, and the rockets shut off. There was the jolt of a short, but alarming, drop. Kaselan grinned briefly at Holeth; it was the only emotion Matthew had seen him show since meeting him. Holeth stood up and pressed the button that opened the door. As they stepped out, Matthew saw a vast swathe of sky with a few puffs of cloud.
The sun glittered on a number of mushroom-shaped structures away to Matthew’s left. They were mainly light grey, with some beige mottling. One of the domes had a large, ragged hole near the top, with thin, twisted girders poking out of the edge. Within were the remains of floors and walls, making up perhaps 30 different levels. Perhaps as many again were within the part of the structure that was still intact. The bases of the mushroom’s “stems” were darker than the rest of them, as if something in the earth had soaked into them. On each dome was a large blue number. The digits were Arabic, one of the few things in this world that was familiar to Matthew. Even they were not completely unchanged, though: 7 had rotated clockwise, so that it was now like a V, and 9 had flipped horizontally, perhaps so that it could no longer be mistaken for 6 when it was upside down.
Despite the bright sun, Matthew felt quite cold. Looking down a little, he saw that most of the cloud deck was below them, clustering a little way below domes of the the mushrooms. That meant they must be at least a couple of kilometres above the ground. He took a deep breath, feeling the sharp, clean air cut at him.
The region around the mushrooms seemed to be semi-desert: mostly bare rock with just a few patches of green. Snow lingered in some of the higher places. The ground was very uneven, with many sheer drops of a hundred metres or more exposing numerous strata. Matthew could see no roads joining the bases of the mushrooms, and he supposed that when people needed to move between them, they went by air. Beyond the mushrooms was a broad plateau, almost as high as them. The top of this seemed to have more vegetation than the ground below, although the distance and the cloud cover made it hard to be sure.
The surface that he was standing on was something like metal and something like stone: smooth and hard, slightly reflective, and dark grey in colour, with randomly-oriented flecks of orange and brown. It formed a broad, flat strip, perhaps a hundred metres wide, which curved away to the right in front of him. To his right was a high grey wall, which followed the curve of the ground. He realised that it must be the dome of another mushroom. Looking again at the others, he saw that these too had a lip at the base of the dome--narrow in comparison to their overall size, but ample landing space for a car.
“Come on,” said Holeth, heavily placing a hand on his shoulder, “there’s no time to admire the scenery. You’ve got an appointment to keep.” (picture - also used as the cover image)
They took Matthew through a nearby door, along a short section of corridor, and into a large, low-ceilinged room. This was filled with all manner of equipment, whose purpose Matthew could scarcely begin to guess. In the centre of the room was a hollow cylinder, about four metres long and two across. Standing next to the cylinder was a man, presumably the machine’s operator, dressed in the same uniform as Holeth and Kaselan. He was a little older, but was otherwise hard to distinguish from them. He beckoned Matthew, who stepped forward, hesitantly, and indicated that Matthew should walk through the cylinder. Matthew complied, presuming that it must be some sort of detector. He wondered what it was supposed to detect, and what the consequences would be for him if it did detect it. After he had stepped from the end, though, the operator nodded to Holeth, and she led him out of the room.
Holeth and Kaselan then took him along a sequence of corridors, long and straight, with frequent intersections. Most were well-lit, but there were patches of gloom every now and again, where the lights in the ceiling had failed. There were doors every ten or 15 metres, nearly all of them closed. In the air was a faint smell, vaguely oily, which Matthew couldn’t identify. Once, they passed another man in uniform going in the opposite direction. He saw them, but didn’t acknowledge them. They seemed not even to have noticed him.
They stopped outside a door which had “G-417” written on it in large blue lettering. Holeth pressed the panel to the right of the door. A second or so later, the panel flashed green and the door opened.
On the other side of the door was a room about three metres by four. There was a man sitting behind a desk at the far end of the room, reading from a communicator screen. He wore a uniform like Holeth and Kaselan, but with pale blue flashes on the shoulders instead of white. His name tag was a little crumpled; all that Matthew could see was that he was a sergeant and his name began with M. He was a heavily-built man, about 40, with close-shaven brown hair.
Eventually, the sergeant looked up at them.
Holeth and Kaselan stood to attention and placed their right hands over their left collar bones, in what Matthew supposed was some kind of salute. “New arrival for your inspection, Sir,” said Holeth crisply.
The sergeant beckoned Matthew. Unsure of whether it was wise, Matthew stepped forward, stopping about half a metre in front of the desk. Holeth and Kaselan followed. Wearily, the sergeant pushed himself out of his chair. Matthew was able to read his name tag properly now: Sergeant Mard. Mard walked around to them and stood behind Matthew, who turned around to see what he was doing. He saw Mard unhook something from his belt, a grey, flattened cylinder about 20 centimetres long, with several buttons on it. Mard brought it close to Matthew’s head, and Matthew shied away.
“I need to get at your implant, ex,” Mard said, placing a large, heavy hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. This won’t hurt.” The tone of his voice suggested that he wished it would. There was a beep from the device that the sergeant was holding. The sergeant went back behind his desk and sat down. He looked for a second at the screen of his communicator, and then turned it around so that Matthew could see it. “Is this correct?” he asked Matthew, tapping the screen. The screen showed a recent picture of Matthew, together with his name and dates of birth and death, and some identification numbers. His name and the dates were accurate, but he had no idea about the numbers.
“You can read, can’t you, ex?” asked Mard. Matthew looked at him, surprised. “Yes, I’m talking to you, ex,” Mard continued. “They did teach you Athic at Serendipity Base, didn’t they?”
“Yes, I can speak and read Athic,” Matthew replied stiffly. “The information on the screen is correct.”
Mard turned the screen back to face himself and pressed a couple of buttons. “You’re assigned to gang Beta 14,” he said. “They’re on shift zero for the next 22 days--that’s midnight to 0800 hours. Holeth will take you to their quarters.” He returned to whatever he had been doing when they entered. Holeth stepped forward, ready to lead Matthew away.
“Er, just a minute--” said Matthew uncomfortably.
Mard looked up at him. He spoke calmly and quietly, but his voice held a threat of violence. “You address me as ‘Sir,’ ex.”
Matthew felt annoyed by this, but guessed he would be unwise to show it. “Well, Sir,” he said, “may I ask about my wife?”
“No,” replied Mard, “you may not. There’s just two things you need to know here. Do as you’re told, and don’t even think about causing trouble.” He stood up and looked Matthew straight in the eye. Quieter still, he said: “You’re not going to cause me any trouble, are you, ex?”
Matthew shook his head slightly, and answered timidly: “No, Sir.”
A little smirk of contempt appeared on the sergeant’s face. Still looking at Matthew, he said: “Holeth--”
“Sir,” acknowledged Holeth. She took Matthew by the arm and led him out of the room.
“My dear Thander,” protested Hamesh, “you’re over-reacting. I merely followed procedures.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she snapped. “Matthew should’ve gone to Project Five, but you changed his records so he’d go to a labour camp. Because you were jealous of him! How could you be so selfish?”
He sat back in his chair and looked her in the eye. She tried not to show that that was as distressing as if he had unexpectedly touched her. “Leaving aside for a moment the reasons why I might have done such a thing,” he said calmly, “and leaving aside also the question of how I might have been able to overcome the numerous safeguards that are in place to prevent people outside your department from doing such a thing, that is a very serious accusation. I think you know the penalties for a malicious allegation of wrongdoing.” He paused to let her think about that. “Now how do you intend to prove it?”
He shouldn’t have smiled when he said that.
She stormed over to where he was sitting. She grabbed a handful of his shirt in each fist and hauled him to his feet. He was too shocked to put up any resistance. Her face almost touched his as she breathed: “Listen, you repulsive little pervert, either you get Matthew back from Camp Fidelity and onto Project Five right now or I go to the Director with my interviews and tell her you’ve been fucking about with the base’s records. I’ll also go to the Project and tell them you’ve thrown away someone they need. You’ll go to the freezer for it, I’ll make damn sure of that. Clear?”
Without waiting for an answer, she pushed him from her, disgusted that she had allowed herself to be so close to him. He hit the edge of the chair, which went spinning away. Thander was pleased to see him wince as he landed on his elbow. She would gladly have kicked him in the head or the groin, or shot him, or bludgeoned him until his body was unrecognisable. There was no act of violence she could imagine that she would not eagerly have committed against him, but for two things. The first was that her regulator would have had her on her hands and knees, retching, before she could so much as slap him across the face. The second was that he was the only one who could reverse what he had done. She remained where she was as he struggled back to his feet. She scarcely noticed the regulator chafing at her for not helping another human being when he was in distress.
Clearly, Hamesh wanted to sit down and rest, but felt that he could not afford such a display of weakness. Thander tried not to smile at the sight of him clutching his elbow. His lips formed a word that looked like “bitch.” Aloud, he said raggedly: “You’re in no position to threaten me. Just remember why you’re here, Historian Thander.”
--long taut minutes and seconds when she mustn’t scream mustn’t so much as whimper or he would hurt her even more--
That was her purpose now. But that wasn’t what he meant.
“Because you edited my records as well, so I’d stay here instead of going to a camp.” There was weariness in those words, a thin crust of weariness lying over hot, poisonous hate. “And I’m supposed to be grateful for that, am I? How often must I tell you, I don’t love you, or find you attractive.” She spat out “attractive” as though it was a swearword. She could barely remember what normal, healthy sexual desire felt like, but even if Hamesh had not repeatedly raped and tortured and violated her in both body and mind, even if he had not tried to erase her humanity and make her a mere receptacle to empty his foul lusts into, even if he was just another ordinary colleague with whom she had an ordinary professional working relationship, she would not have felt in the least attracted to him. “I despise you,” she told him. “I’d gladly do my time in Fidelity if it meant being away from you.”
He breathed out heavily, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. Smiling through the pain, he said: “Ah, my dear Thander... the ones who put up a fight are always the best... By being here, you’ve evaded punishment for your crime, which is itself a crime. So if you were discovered now, you’d go to a prison camp, not a labour camp.” Again, he paused, to let her consider what that would mean. His voice returning to its familiar threatening softness, he asked: “And you don’t despise me that much, do you?”
He held his arms out to her, as though inviting her to embrace him. She stayed where she was. Resisting her compulsion to turn and run was one of the bravest things she had ever done. She ached to punch him or kick him or stab him--anything that would take that terrifying smile off his face. You may not cause injury to a human. This is the worst crime possible.
“It hurts me to hear you say that you despise me,” he told her, his face contorting into a mock frown.
Good, she thought, though she doubted that her words could ever hurt him even one tenth as much as the mere touch of his hot, sweaty hand on her bare skin hurt her.
“But I know it’s only a shallow, superficial morality that makes you say things like that,” he continued. “You submit to me. You obey me. In spite of that morality. But submission and obedience aren’t enough. You must love me. You must desire me, to the exclusion of everyone and everything else. Deep inside is a part of you that’s like that already. It loves the sensual thrill of agony. It longs to please me. Listen to it for a moment. Even now it lusts for me.” He paused, as though expecting her to listen as he ordered. All she heard was the regulator telling her that it was wrong to want to hold him face down for five minutes in a bath of strong acid.
“We must find that part of you, my dear. Find it and set it free, so that it can become the whole.”
“What you really mean is that you want to destroy every other part of me.”
He gave a little shrug. “It amounts to the same thing.”
She tried to sneer as she spoke, but her voice was trembling. “Well, Doctor Hamesh, if you ever achieve that, you will find that there is nothing left of me.” She turned and walked towards the door. Her instincts told her that she should get out as quickly as possible, but she moved slowly, in as dignified a manner as she could. Her ears were alert for the slightest sound of movement from Hamesh. That might be a warning that she was about to feel his hand on her shoulder or around her throat. But she reached the door without hindrance.
In the corridor, she broke into a run. She barely managed to stop herself from screaming. Her head clamoured with the possibility that what Hamesh had said about love and desire for him might yet prove to be right.
Holeth took Matthew along several more corridors. The numbers on the doors were different, but apart from that, Matthew could see nothing to distinguish these corridors from those he had passed along a few minutes before.
They stopped outside a door that had “B-14” written on it in green. That, perhaps, was the “Beta 14” that Mard had mentioned. Holeth pressed the panel by the door. When it went green, she uttered: “Guard Holeth.” Evidently, this door checked voice prints as well as palm prints.
The door opened, revealing a section of corridor beyond it, about two metres long. At the end of it was another door. Holeth motioned Matthew in.
He went through the door and heard it slide shut behind him. Panicked, he spun round. Holeth wasn’t there. What was on the other side of this second door, that Holeth couldn’t or wouldn’t face? He felt angry with himself for having been trapped so easily.
“Don’t worry, Prentice.” Holeth’s voice came from somewhere above him. “These are Beta 14’s sleeping quarters. You’ll be spending quite a lot of time here from now on.”
The second door slid open.
The room beyond was gloomy. Matthew couldn’t tell for sure how big it was, but it was larger than any he had seen since his exhumation. The oily smell he had noticed earlier was stronger here. There were other smells beneath that: mud, crumbling rust, fresh sweat, stale urine. From above, a slight breeze tried, unsuccessfully, to carry away the worst of the smells. The room was cooler than the corridors, though not so much as to be uncomfortable.
As his eyes adjusted to the low light, Matthew saw that the room was full of people, dressed in shapeless, sombre-coloured clothing. There were some sitting, some standing, and some lying on rough beds, apparently asleep. None of them moved. A few were looking at him. Their faces were neither friendly nor hostile; merely weary and incapable of any kind of interest in anything new. Matthew knew with a cold certainty that weariness was not a rare thing for them. These were people who were so accustomed to exhaustion that they could remember no other existence, would not have believed anyone who told them that there were other possibilities.
Matthew knew that these people were exhumees like himself. He knew that he had now started the new life which Historian Thander had mentioned to him. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he was indistinguishable from everybody else in this room.
From the corner of his eye, Matthew noticed a movement. He turned to see one of the exhumees about 10 metres away, walking towards him. This was a man with thick dark hair. He looked to be about 50, although Matthew guessed that if he had been here for any length of time, he would appear some years older than he actually was. He seemed to have a slight limp, although it was hard to be sure, since his clothes obscured most of his body. The man had a friendly, welcoming smile, which Matthew decided to interpret as a good sign.
“Hello,” said the man, stopping a couple of metres away from Matthew. “Are you new here?”
“Yes,” replied Matthew, “I’ve just arrived.”
“My name’s Milner. I’m gang leader of Beta 14.” Milner raised his right hand, the palm facing Matthew, with the fingers spread slightly. Matthew had learned that this was a gesture of greeting and friendship, and he self-consciously copied it.
“I’m Matthew.” Milner led Matthew back to where he had come from. They walked past 20 or 30 sleeping people who, to judge from their awkward postures, had simply allowed themselves to fall down in the first convenient place.
“So... what’s going on here?” Matthew asked. “Why is everyone so tired?”
“Well, we lost several people in a cave-in on South 12 about a week ago,” said Milner. “Holeth’s been pushing us hard to meet our quotas.”
Matthew said nothing, but looked blankly at Milner.
“Ah,” said Milner. “I see she’s being her usual helpful self.” He stopped and sat down on a mattress, which was covered with a single blanket. There was a bag at one end of it, which might have been a pillow. He motioned Matthew to sit down next to him. Seeing the look on Matthew’s face, he added: “It’s clean. Relatively.” Hesitantly, Matthew seated himself on the edge of the mattress, drawing his knees up under his chin.
“Camp Fidelity,” Milner began, “is a kind of factory. We--” with a sweep of his arm he indicated the other exhumees “--are the machinery. We’re mining metal ore, amongst other things. The only problem is, the land’s contaminated with one of those slow poisons from the Genetic Wars.”
“What Genetic Wars?” Matthew asked. From the way Milner said it, Matthew guessed that the wars had happened many decades ago, but still cast a long shadow over the world. He wondered if these were the wars whose occurence he had inferred from Serendipity Base’s encyclopaedia.
Milner looked at him strangely. “When did you die?” he asked.
“2008 in the Anno Domini calendar. That’s about... Earth Year minus 260.”
Milner nodded. “Well, the Genetic Wars lasted from minus 51 to minus 43. Consider yourself lucky you weren’t around for them. I lived in the latter half of the second century, and large parts of the world were still recovering from the wars then. Anyway, that’s a story for another time. Exhumees are ideal for a place like this. We’re expendable. We’re considered too stupid and primitive for any other work, and we’ve got no legal rights.”
Matthew was not particularly surprised by that. After all, it was unlikely that people would willingly work so hard that they just collapsed when they had finished for the day. “The guards,” he asked, “are they copies?” He didn’t know the Athic word for “clone.”
“Copies? Of what?”
Matthew shrugged. “Each other.”
“No.” The gang leader’s face showed that he thought the idea absurd. “Why do you ask?”
“Holeth and Kaselan look very much like each other.”
“Ah. I take it you’re from a period that didn’t hold the biological family in very high regard.” Milner smiled in a manner that Matthew found rather patronising. “The reason they look alike is because they’re cousins.”
Matthew tried not to show the embarrassment that flared within him. “Actually,” Milner continued, “it’s worth pointing out that they’re all fairly closely related. If you take any pair of them, you don’t have to go back more than about three generations to find a common ancestor.”
“Why’s that?” It implied that travel for the guards was difficult or expensive, and yet two of them had come a long way to somewhere that there were plenty of other people just to collect him. Was there some law or taboo against interbreeding?
“The regulator,” replied Milner, as if that should explain everything. Noting Matthew’s look of incomprehension, he elaborated. “The guards don’t have one. Legally, we’re not human, but we look like humans, and we move like humans, so as far as the regulator’s concerned, we are human, right? Except that we’re here to do work that we’d really rather not do, so the guards need to be able to persuade us. And they can’t do that if a little voice in their head has them on their knees, retching, every time they think about making an example of one of us.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Matthew said sheepishly. “What’s a regulator?”
Milner looked at him askance. “The standard of education among the living has definitely declined in the last few centuries. The regulator is a kind of mechanism within the brain that prevents you from hurting other people.”
“I can see the attraction for a government, but it would only work if everybody had one.”
“Yes. The transition was painful, I don’t mind telling you. It was almost complete when someone figured out a way to revive all those corpses that we’d salted away during the Wars. We decided to put them to work rebuilding what they’d destroyed two and a half centuries earlier. It felt appropriate, somehow.” He paused and looked around. “Our desire for revenge has evidently broadened since then. Still, these new workers needed somebody to give orders and make sure they obeyed them, so we selected about ten thousand citizens who showed the sort of traits we wanted and told them to have as many children as possible. Those children and their descendants became the guards we all know and love today.”
“Why are they hereditary?” asked Matthew.
“Because the regulator is genetic,” said the other, as if it should have been obvious. “OK, it needs conditioning in the first year of life to fine-tune it, but the foundation is there in the DNA of almost everybody who’s been born in the last four hundred years or so.”
“Do you have one?”
“I do, but it’s not fully functional. I was born not long after it became compulsory, and they hadn’t got it completely right then. I can’t start a fight, although Buddha knows I’ve wanted to often enough. I can usually defend myself when I’m attacked, though, and if I’m careful about it, I can usually provoke a person into trying to hit me without the regulator realising what I’m doing.”
“Charming.” Milner appeared not to recognise the sarcasm, and Matthew continued: “Would I have a regulator, do you think?”
“How would I know?” A scowl darted across Milner’s face, as though he thought it was a stupid question. “It’s highly unlikely, though. The gene splicing is trivial, of course, but the changes to your brain chemistry apparently aren’t. The conditioning is designed for infants, so it probably wouldn’t work on adults. Even if it could be done, the changes are so radical that you’d probably be insane within a month.”
Matthew was unconvinced. The biological changes could easily have been performed as part of the exhumation process. As for the conditioning, sleep-learning had been known about even in the twentieth century. He had no idea how much time had passed between his removal from the mausoleum and his return to self-awareness, but it was easy to suppose that it had been long enough for the conditioning to sink in. Milner’s remarks implied that Camp Fidelity was a violent place, and if he had a regulator, he would not be able to fight even in self-defence. Perhaps whoever had overseen his exhumation had not known he would be coming here. Surely they had known it was a possibility, though, and in that case, giving him a regulator went beyond incompetence into the realm of sadism.
Milner suggested: “If you don’t believe me, try to hit me.”
Matthew hesitated for a moment and then, reasoning that he had very little to lose, swung his fist at Milner’s head. The gang leader dodged the blow easily, and one of his hands flicked out to grab Matthew’s other wrist. He jerked Matthew towards him. “You’re clean. If you had a regulator, you wouldn’t have gotten any further than clenching your fist. But if you want to pick fights, I’d suggest a little more practice.” He looked down, and Matthew’s eyes followed his. Milner’s other fist was poised a few centimetres from Matthew’s groin.
Once Milner had let go, Matthew massaged his wrist for a few moments: the gang leader’s grip was surprisingly strong. “Tell me,” he said, “have you seen my wife? A woman called Debbie Prentice?”
“The name’s not familiar. What does she look like?”
In answer, Matthew showed him the photograph of himself and Debbie that he had brought with him in his sarcophagus. Milner studied it, and then shook his head ruefully. “Can’t say I recognise her. But this is a big place. I don’t know everybody. It wouldn’t do to get your hopes up, though.” Milner looked at the photo again, and pointed to something in the background of it. “Is that an old computer?” he asked.
“Yes. I used to work with computers, in...” Matthew dug around for the Athic phrase, which came out awkwardly. “...artificial intelligence research.”
“Oh,” said Milner softly. “I’d keep quiet about that, if I was you.”
“Why?”
“Well, since the Genetic Wars--mainly because of them, in fact--the world has been controlled by a group of computers.”
“Ah...” Matthew’s eyes widened. What was it Thander had said when he first met her? “...how humanity is ruled now...” He had been right to think that she wouldn’t have phrased it like that if people were still in charge. Why then had nobody told him that? Was it supposed to be a secret?
“But they’re programmed to do what’s best for humanity as a whole,” Milner continued. “Individuals often get treated quite severely. These camps are a result of the computers’ policies. But the thing is, some of the most recent exhumees have been saying that the computers are breaking down.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It seems the computers can’t fix this problem themselves, and nor can anybody who’s alive today.”
“Which leaves the dead...” mused Matthew. “That’s why Thander was asking me so many questions about computing. They must be looking for exhumees who might be able to save them. So... why am I here?”
Milner gave him a dubious look. “You can’t argue with them,” he shrugged.
Almost before Milner had finished speaking, Matthew walked back to the door of the room. He tried to open it, but found there was no handle or access panel on this side. Matthew began to bang on the door. “Hey! Somebody!” he shouted. “Open this door!”
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Milner trying to pull him back. “Don’t bother,” said Milner. “You’re wasting your time.”
Matthew brushed his hand away and continued to bang on the door. After a few seconds, he heard a voice from above, which might have been Holeth’s. “What do you want?” she demanded.
Matthew looked up. “Let me out!” he called. “I shouldn’t be at this camp!”
From the speaker came the sound of somebody moving things around, possibly looking through a set of manuals for instructions on what to do in this situation. Then the speaker went dead.
Was that it? Matthew wondered. Were there no instructions for this scenario? Or did the instructions say something like: “Make a note of the fact on the exhumee’s file and ignore the request”? He turned around and leaned against the door. Milner was standing about a metre away, evidently wondering what to do. “Don’t say: ‘I told you so,’” said Matthew. Milner just shrugged.
“This is Sergeant Mard. Identify yourself, ex.”
Surprised, Matthew turned back to the door and said: “I’m Matthew Adrian Prentice. I shouldn’t be at this camp.” Just in time, he added: “Sir.”
“I might’ve known it’d be you.” The Sergeant didn’t try to hide his contempt. “So you want to appeal against your term of labour?”
“Yes,” replied Matthew, startled. “Yes, I do.”
“All right. Stay where you are.” The speaker went dead again. Matthew couldn’t help smiling at Mard’s last remark. Where did Mard think he was going to go?
“What should I say to him when he arrives?” he asked Milner.
Milner shrugged again. “Tell him the truth, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Well, I’ve never known anyone appeal against their term of labour.” His tone implied that he thought the very idea was a contradiction in terms.
“Why not?”
“Well,” said Milner, as if it should have been obvious, “everybody knows they’re coming here, and that’s the end of it.”
“How do they know?” asked Matthew. “Who tells them?”
“I don’t know. Is it important?”
“It might be. No-one told me I was coming here. The first I knew was when Holeth arrived at Serendipity Base this morning and bundled me into a car. She refused to say where she was taking me. She said someone at the base should’ve told me that, and it wasn’t her problem if no-one had. I had no idea what I was getting into, but I certainly never expected anything like this.” Matthew swept an arm about him to indicate the room and its occupants.
“Interesting,” mused Milner. A moment later, he added: “But probably irrelevant. I’d be surprised if Mard upholds your appeal. After all, if you were needed to save the computers, you wouldn’t have been sent here in the first place, would you?”
The bleak midwinter sky promised rain, but could not deliver it. The last decade had seen five of the driest years in over three centuries. Matthew looked out of the window again, over the rooftops. He was not an imaginative man, but it seemed to him that the desiccated climate was a kind of metaphor for his present situation.
“The prognosis is good,” the doctors had said. “Ten years ago, her chances would’ve been 50-50 at best. But treatment for cancer has come a long way in that time.” He hadn’t realised then that they had been saying this almost since treatments for cancer had first been devised. People whose job was saving lives didn’t like to admit that some illnesses were still getting the better of them. The cure was still almost as bad as the disease.
It was the 24th of January, 2005. Debbie was going to die today. The hospice staff had told him this with some authority. They had shared one last hug and kiss, and then she had been sedated into unconsciousness. Neither of them had really wanted that, but at least Debbie was now free of the pain and the hallucinations. Both of those had been getting worse lately. Sometimes, the pain was bad enough to blot out some of Debbie’s memories, and even her sense of identity. Once, she had woken up crying in the middle of the night, as she often did, and hadn’t recognised him, even after he had switched the light on.
He turned around to look at Debbie. She bore little resemblance to the woman whose photograph he carried in his wallet. Her hair was only just beginning to grow back after the last bout of chemotherapy. These were carefully scheduled, in an attempt to cause minimum damage to anything that wasn’t a tumour cell, but it was still like... what was the comparison one of the nurses had made? “Like trying to remove graffiti from an oil painting with a bottle of turps and a paint roller.” Baldness was the least of her problems. Her weight had dropped from around 60 kilograms to nearer 40. She didn’t have much appetite these days, partly because what little she could bring herself to eat often didn’t stay down for very long.
Her skin was pale, a sign of anaemia: the drugs also killed red blood cells. At least the researchers had recently found ways not to hurt the immune system quite so much. Until a few years ago, diseases like the common cold had been a major threat to cancer patients.
Debbie was going to die today. He wished that it was over, and immediately hated himself for wishing it. He didn’t want her to die. He just wanted her to be free of the pain, the fear, the wretchedness. Debbie’s face as she looked up from being sick again was the most pitiable thing he had ever seen. It made him feel so helpless. All he could do was put his arms around her, try to comfort her, tell her how much he loved her... It was like trying to put out a forest fire by emptying teacups onto it.
Debbie was going to die today. For about the thousandth time, Matthew asked himself: Why? For about the thousandth time, he had to admit that he had no answer--or at least, nothing that the scientist in him would call an answer. There was plenty of literature on the subject, full of words like “oncogene” and “carcinogen” and “sarcoma.” But that just explained how.
He wondered if there actually was an answer. In mathematics, there were certain statements called “axioms,” which could not be proven to be true: you simply had to assume that they were true if anything else was to work. Maybe it was like that in life. Death and sickness could not be proven. They had no explanations. They were among the axioms of existence. Without those, nothing else worked.
Even the most deeply religious people with whom he had spoken offered nothing better than: “Because God wills it.” They had put it more eloquently than that, of course, but that was what it amounted to. That, of course, led on to the other unanswerable question. Why Debbie? What has she done to deserve this? What have I done to deserve it? Why Debbie, when there are so many bastards in this world, who never have a day’s ill-health in their lives?
She had done nothing, of course, certainly not in the time that he had known her. Maybe that was the whole point. There were things that you could do or avoid to reduce the risk, of course, but for all that anybody really understood the causes, the victims of cancer might as well have been selected at random. As well to ask why this leaf and not that one was the first to fall from a tree in autumn, or why this person and not that one was killed in a terrorist attack.
Over the last eight months, during the long days and nights of trying to comfort Debbie as she vomited yet another meal, as she cried with pain, as she fell exhausted at last into fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep, Matthew had at least answered one question. There was no God. No God who was worthy of the name would permit such suffering. He knew that the standard answer to that was that suffering was in some sense necessary, maybe even good for the soul, making a person more complete, but he couldn’t help feeling that answers like that were a symptom of suffering, not a reason for it.
Debbie was going to die today. In a few hours, a team from the cryogenics company would arrive, and put into action the first phase of their plan for defeating cancer and death. Soon, Matthew would follow her, down into a darkness colder than the grave. Decades or maybe centuries later, they would awaken. Debbie would be cleansed of the sickness that had gnawed at her.
“And they both lived happily ever after,” he muttered. It seemed a reasonable enough wish. They had been married for five years and three months, and had known each other for a little over a year before that. In defiance of the divorce statistics, they were still deeply in love. He looked again at his wedding ring, as though it was proof of that. Surely nobody could blame them for wanting more time together. Why then did Matthew feel sick with worry? Why did he feel certain that something was going to go wrong?
Mainly, of course, it was that he was going to have to live without Debbie for... well, he didn’t really want to think about how long that was likely to be. Certainly long enough to earn the money to make a deposit on the cost of having himself frozen. Freezing Debbie had already accounted for most of their savings.
But beyond the immediate problem of how he was going to cope with being alone again, he was worried about what would happen afterwards. He still wasn’t sure that there would even be an afterwards. Despite recent successes in freezing and reviving simple organisms (mainly while they were still alive), most scientists and doctors believed that reviving an organism as complex as a human would prove to be impossible. Even among the minority of dissenters were some who said that the current freezing process was likely to damage the body irreparably.
If he and Debbie were never revived, what of it? They would have worked hard for no reward, but at least they would never know that.
Supposing that revival became possible, what if only one of them was revived? What if the doctors of the future could revive him, but not Debbie? Or worse, what if they could revive her, but she was still so ill that she died again soon after? The canister inside which Debbie was to be frozen would bear a message in eight languages, to the effect that she had died of cancer and was not to be revived unless there was at least a 95% chance that she would be completely cured. The company had agreed to leave the space next to Debbie empty for Matthew. His canister would bear the message that he was not to be revived unless it was also possible to revive Debbie. They would just have to hope that when the time came, there would be somebody around who could read at least one of those eight languages, and that the doctors knew their limitations.
He told himself that there was no point in worrying. If something was going to go wrong, it would go wrong, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The matter was out of his hands now. Indeed, it had been out of his hands ever since Doctor Farrell had said to him: “I’m afraid that the most likely diagnosis at the moment is that Debbie has cancer.”
There was a knock at the door. Matthew looked up. “Come in,” he said, hesitantly.
One of the nurses entered, a short, red-haired man by the name of Daniel. “Matthew?” he said. “The team from Eternity Cryogenics are here.”
Matthew looked at Daniel, and then back to Debbie. Ordinarily, he would have been shocked, but he was too worn down for that. He shook his head.
Daniel sighed and looked down slightly. After a moment, he came over to Matthew and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Matthew,” he said softly. “She passed away about half an hour ago.”
Eventually, Mard arrived and allowed Matthew out of the sleeping quarters. He realised now why there were two doors: to give the guards control over who entered and left the room.
Mard and Holeth were waiting in the corridor outside. The look on Mard’s face suggested that he didn’t plan to spend much time on this matter. Matthew stepped into the corridor, and the outer door closed behind him.
“So, Matthew Adrian Prentice,” said Mard. “On what grounds do you appeal against your term of labour at Camp Fidelity?”
“Sir, why are you holding my appeal here?” Matthew asked.
“This is as good a place as any other.”
“Who will decide my appeal, Sir?”
“I will. That’s one of my duties. If I decide in your favour, you’ll be released immediately and returned to Serendipity Base for reassessment. Now--what are your grounds for appealing?”
“Well, Sir,” replied Matthew, “I was--I am--a researcher in computing.”
Mard looked blankly at Matthew for a moment, and then at Holeth. Holeth said nothing, but raised her eyebrows. Matthew realised that Holeth had been looking at Mard all this time.
“You’ll have to try harder than that,” said Mard. He gave Matthew a sneer, and continued: “You’re a painter, Prentice.”
“What--?”
Mard shook his head, as if he had seen this reaction many times before. “Don’t try to act surprised. That information came from Serendipity Base. It’s only what you told them. You said your speciality was decorative arts, specifically two-dimensional pictures, skill level three. In short, a painter. And not exactly the most gifted the world has ever seen, either. There’s no point in changing your mind now because you’ve decided the work here is too rough and dirty for you.”
“Sir,” said Matthew, exasperated and more than a little frightened, “that information is wrong. I don’t belong here. The computers that run the world are failing. I can help to repair them--”
“Who told you that?” demanded Mard, cutting him off angrily.
Shocked, Matthew said nothing. He realised that he might have made a very serious mistake.
Mard stepped closer. “You shouldn’t believe everything that people tell you, ex.” The threat of violence had returned to his voice. “That’s just a malicious rumour. An exhumee can get himself into serious trouble by spreading lies like that.” He paused, and then went on: “I don’t care who or what you were before you were buried. It’s what you are now that matters. You’re a body. You’re here to work, and meet quotas. What’s up here--” he tapped the side of Matthew’s head “--is irrelevant.”
Matthew spoke as carefully as the anger inside him would allow. “What if I refuse to work? Sir?”
The Sergeant smirked and told him: “You don’t.” From his belt, he unhooked the device which he had earlier used to read Matthew’s identity from his implant. He pointed it at Matthew and pressed one of the buttons on it.
Pain stabbed into Matthew, paralysing him with sudden shock. His skin felt as though someone had drenched him in boiling water, and many of his muscles were locked in cramp. Deep inside, a scream began to fight its way upwards. Debbie--
--as abruptly as it had begun, the pain ceased.
“And that’s one of the reasons why,” he heard someone say. It must have been Mard, but the man’s voice sounded very distant. “I just gave you five seconds of level two. You see the level control on this transmitter goes up to ten?” Mard held something in front of Matthew’s face. He couldn’t make his eyes focus on it. He just nodded. Mard slapped a hand on his shoulder. “I said, you see the level control on this transmitter goes up to ten?”
“Yes, Sir,” he said, as clearly as he could, hoping that was what the Sergeant wanted.
“Most exs can take 30 seconds of level eight before they pass out. But if I press this button here, the transmitter keeps you awake. And if you cause real trouble, there are transmitters in the prison wing that go up to 25.”
“Fucking bastard,” Matthew muttered in English.
“I can guess what that means,” said Mard. “I’m not a sadist, Prentice. Sadists don’t get promoted in these camps.” He stressed the word “these” slightly, as if to imply that there were other camps where sadism was part of the job description, and that he could easily arrange to have Matthew sent to such a place, if he thought it necessary. “There are rules about when I can and can’t use this--” he waved the transmitter “--and I stick to them.”
“What are the rules? Sir?”
“The only ones you need to worry about are do as you’re told, meet your quotas, and don’t cause trouble.” Mard uttered the last three words clearly and distinctly, as if they formed the most important rule of all.
“And what counts as causing trouble, Sir?”
“Enough stupid questions!” Mard snapped. “Milner will tell you that.” He stepped back. “Your appeal against your term of labour is rejected. Go back to your quarters and get some sleep. Your shift starts in six hours.”
Holeth was still looking at Mard. She was smiling ambiguously, perhaps because she had enjoyed seeing Matthew suffer, perhaps because she admired Mard’s show of authority. She turned at last to Matthew to open the door, and the smile vanished.
It was probably inevitable that someone would discover the thefts sooner or later. Hamesh had let Parath think that he was covering her tracks, but all that he had really done was to disable the alarms that would normally have been triggered by the unauthorised removal of supplies. All the evidence was there in the hospital’s records, for anyone who cared to examine them. Eventually, of course, someone did, and Parath was arrested. He was arrested shortly afterwards. It didn’t surprise him to learn that she had implicated him. He imagined that he would have done the same, had the roles been reversed.
He never saw Parath again, nor did he find out what had happened to her. They were tried separately, as was usual. His trial was very short. They didn’t ask to whom Parath had been passing the supplies, or why these people had wanted them. They did ask who had done what, but seemingly only to cross-check Parath’s story. Hamesh later recalled that he didn’t think that particularly unusual at the time.
He was found guilty, of course: the evidence of the computer logs was quite damning, and he knew better than to try to argue against it. His punishment was to be sent to work at an exhumee processing centre. There was something about a demotion as well, but he barely heard the judge say that. He knew that when he arrived at Serendipity Base, his career would be effectively over. For the first time he could remember, he found himself crying.
Matthew gradually awoke to realise that someone was shaking him. He had been dreaming of Debbie, a confused montage of vivid fragments of their life together, interspersed with events that had never happened, places they had never visited, children who had never even been conceived. Would they start a family when they were reunited? Would that even be possible?
“Zahar a-Matyu. Zahar.”
What was going on? The words meant nothing. Then his understanding of Athic clicked back into place. “Wake up, Matthew,” the man had said. “Wake up.” He opened his eyes to see Milner crouching next to him. “Shift’s about to start,” said Milner. “I saved you some food.” He offered Matthew a bowl, a little too big to hold comfortably in one hand.
Matthew bullied his limbs into raising him into a sitting position, and accepted the bowl and a spoon. The bowl was filled with a pale green mushy substance. Figuring that he had very little to lose, Matthew stuck the spoon into the bowl and took a mouthful. The texture and consistency was something like porridge. “It’s got no taste,” he remarked once he had swallowed.
“That’s all we eat,” Milner explained. “It’s got everything your body needs to function. You’d soon get bored of any one taste.” A few mouthfuls later, he added: “Sometimes in the winter, it’s heated up,” as if that somehow compensated for the monotony of their diet.
Matthew had eaten about half of the bowl when Holeth said loudly from above them: “Attention. Shift start. Line up.” Milner took the bowl back from him. The exhumees began lining up to go through the door. Matthew was somewhere near the back. Looking ahead, he guessed there were about 100 people in the gang. Milner walked from the end of the line up to the door, and then back again, counting them.
“Gang leader speaking,” Milner called into the gloom. “Gang all present, Sir.” The door opened and a number of exhumees filed through. The door closed again. Puzzled, Matthew turned to look at Milner. “The guards take their own roll call,” said Milner. He grinned and added: “You don’t really think they’d trust me to count this many people, do you?” About 20 seconds passed. The door opened again and some more exhumees went through.
The seconds dragged into minutes. Matthew felt his eyelids drooping. He hadn’t slept very well, and six hours wouldn’t have been enough for him anyway, even if it had been undisturbed. He tried to recapture some part of his dream that had been vaguely pleasant. Debbie...
“I bet you’ll kiss me before I count to... ten,” Matthew said.
“OK,” said Debbie. This was another of their silly little games. “Start counting, then.” To count slowly or in fractions was a smacking offence, but both of them did it, quite shamelessly.
“One... two... three... four... fi--what did I--tell--you?” Whichever of them was counting almost always won the bet.
“Hey, watch where you’re going!” Matthew exclaimed automatically as someone pushed past him into the short length of corridor between the two doors. The interloper had a large, baggy hood over his head. This was in contrast to most of the exhumees, who were bare-headed. The door closed in front of him. He raised his fist in exasperation, and then lowered it and turned to look at Milner. The gang leader was shaking his head, a look of worry on his face.
In the corridor outside the sleeping quarters, Holeth checked off each of the exhumees with a small tablet connected to the transmitter that hung at her belt. She and Milner grouped them into a ragged formation, five abreast, that slowly shuffled along the corridor towards their workplace.
They had gone a few hundred metres along the mostly featureless corridor when someone tripped Matthew up from behind. He collided with two of the exhumees in front of him, nearly knocking them over. He muttered an apology and turned to see who had tripped him. Behind him was a person dressed in a robe with a large hood, deep enough to obscure his or her face. That was too much of a coincidence. The person pushed forward, elbowing the man next to Matthew out of the way.
“New boys always clumsy,” came a voice from within the hood. The remark, apparently directed to the gang in general, was delivered in a hard, disjointed voice, as though the speaker was having to break apart old sentences and jam the pieces together to make new ones. The speaker turned to Matthew and demanded of him: “How long you been dead?”
Matthew, unsure of whether it was wise, replied: “Uh, about 800 years.”
Without any warning, the exhumee grabbed the front of Matthew’s shirt and punched him in the face. Matthew stumbled backwards, but the other kept a grip on him. “Murderer!” he yelled. “Poisoner! You killed us all!” He threw back his hood. Matthew saw a misshapen face, lop-sided as if one half had no bones underneath it. There was a dark hole where his nose should have been, and the boneless side of his face had a patch of skin instead of an eye. His cheeks and jaw had many small scars--wounds, or failed surgery? Matthew tried to look away, even though part of him knew that was the last thing he should do. “Look at me!” the exhumee demanded. “I am your child! Your own genes! Born this way! How could you do this to me?” He raised his fist to hit Matthew again. Matthew saw the blow coming, tried to ward it off and then suddenly found his legs pulled from under him. He landed awkwardly on the hard floor. Moments later, his assailant was on top of him, punching him furiously. Matthew did his best to fight back, but the other exhumee was stronger and heavier and was rapidly getting the better of him.
A new pain struck Matthew, adding to his difficulties. A scream from his opponent indicated that he felt it too. Then he froze in position, his fist halfway towards Matthew. He remained there for perhaps a second, and then overbalanced and fell, with slow inevitability, onto Matthew.
Matthew realised that he couldn’t move, not even the parts of him that were not underneath his attacker. He could scarcely breathe; whatever had stopped the other exhumee was evidently affecting him as well. People trapped by an earthquake must feel like this, he thought. Then, very clearly and calmly: This is a ridiculous way to die.
And then strong arms lifted the weight off him and the paralysis and the pain melted away and someone stood over him and said: “I might’ve known you’d be involved.”
Another voice, further away, pointed out: “Sir, it was Genes who started the fight.”
“No-one asked for your opinion, Milner,” snapped the first speaker. Matthew recognised the voice as Sergeant Mard’s. “Holeth, take them to the prison wing. Five days each. And you’d better get a technician to look at this one.”
After she had taken Genes and Matthew to the prison wing, Holeth made her way to the control station, from where the guards monitored the activities of the exhumees in the mines. Mard was there already; Beta 14 had finally started its shift about 10 minutes ago. The exhumees seemed more subdued than usual, probably as a result of seeing the fight broken up so quickly and efficiently. She reported her actions to Mard, who acknowledged with a weary nod.
“Milner asked me to move Genes to another gang,” said Mard after a few minutes.
“I’d have thought he’d know better by now, Sir,” she answered.
“So would I. Evidently he doesn’t.”
Some moments passed. Then Holeth remarked: “By the way, Sir--Prentice denied starting the fight.”
“I thought he would,” replied Mard. “He hasn’t been here long enough to know we’re not interested in why they were fighting.”
“I told him that, Sir.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing, Sir, although he seemed surprised.”
“The older exs are often like that,” Mard commented. “They thought their lives were wonderful, and they expected that to continue after they were exhumed.”
“It must be a severe shock,” said Holeth.
“No doubt it is,” shrugged Mard, “but it’s not our problem. The processing centres are supposed to prepare them for this work before they send them here.”
“Strange you should mention that, Sir. When Kaselan and I fetched Prentice from Serendipity Base, he claimed they hadn’t told him anything about what was going to happen after he’d left there.”
“So he’s not just a troublemaker, he’s a liar as well,” Mard sighed. He’d seen all of this before. “We’ll have to keep a close eye on that one, Holeth. A very close eye indeed.”
Serendipity Base was barely 20 years old and seemed to have been falling apart since before it was opened. The joke among workers was that it stayed standing because every part that wanted to fall down was leaning against some other part that wanted to fall in the opposite direction. Take away one piece and the whole thing would collapse.
The base, a large, rambling collection of arbitrary, haphazard structures, was bigger than the hospital, but it was completely dwarfed by the two mausolea that stood beside it. These pyramid-shaped edifices each occupied almost as much ground as a district of the city, but it was all in one building. Most of the workers were not allowed inside them, but there were pictures and cutaway holograms of the interiors. Even these conveyed a sense of tremendous bulk and solidity. The nameless ancestors who had constructed the mausolea had built for the ages. At the time of their completion, the secret of simple and reliable exhumation was still three hundred years in the future. To the builders, it would not have mattered if the delay had been three million years. It was sometimes said that if ever Earth was destroyed, its hundred mausolea would remain hanging in space as a monument to the planet, a scattering of jewels from a broken necklace. (picture)
An archaeologist had recently discovered a hologram of the older of the two buildings, taken in 348, nearly two centuries previously. After some months of careful comparison, he had announced that there was no measurable difference between that hologram and one taken a year ago. The secret of the pyramids’ durability was just one of the countless things that had been lost during the Genetic Wars and the anarchy that followed them. Presumably, the builders themselves were interred somewhere in one of those great structures, waiting to be reawakened in vindication of their vision, but no-one had ever exhumed anybody who claimed to be one of them. No-one had ever seen a recognisable power source anywhere near a mausoleum, either.
Hamesh had been at Serendipity Base about two months when a man whom he had not seen before approached him during a meal break and asked if they could talk. Hamesh agreed. The man asked to meet him on corridor W20 in half an hour.
Figuring that he had little to lose, he met the man as agreed. “Doctor Hamesh,” the man said, raising a hand in greeting.
Hamesh returned the gesture. “You neglected to tell me your name,” he noted.
The man smiled and replied: “You can call me Alith.”
“That’s not your real name, is it?”
Still smiling, “Alith” shook his head.
“You don’t work here, do you?”
Alith shook his head again. “Nice deduction. How’d you figure that out?”
“I don’t think I need to tell you that. But you need to tell me what you’re doing here, and why I shouldn’t call Security right now and have them lock you up for trespassing.”
“Oh, that’s quite simple.” Alith was still smiling, which Hamesh was already beginning to find irritating. “I’m here because I know you don’t have a regulator.”
Hamesh tried not to look shocked. “That’s absurd,” he managed to say.
“Try again,” replied Alith. “I’ve seen your DNA scan. The exons that code for the regulator in everyone else are just gibberish.” That wasn’t quite what Hamesh had discovered, but it was close enough to the truth to be very dangerous.
Hamesh found that his mouth had suddenly become dry. He could no longer meet Alith’s steady gaze. The smile had gone, he noticed. “What do you want from me?”
“Your co-operation.”
“In what way?”
“Firstly by not calling Security.”
“Ah,” said Hamesh, moistening his lips. “Do you think they might not believe you?”
“Probably they won’t. At least, not at first. After all, everyone has a regulator. But can you afford to take the risk that someone will order a DNA or psych scan?”
Hamesh did not reply to that. He knew he couldn’t risk that, not so soon after his conviction. Instead he asked: “What other kind of co-operation do you want?”
Alith seemed uncertain for a moment. Then: “How would you react if I said that you’re not the only person who doesn’t have a regulator?”
Hamesh considered the question. “It would depend,” he said after a few seconds, “on what sort of evidence you presented.”
Alith shrugged and made a sudden movement. Hamesh felt brightness before his eyes, a rush of air from behind him, an abrupt discomfort in his right elbow--
--he opened his eyes to see what looked like the ceiling in front of him. This feeling was confirmed when he saw Alith standing over him. “Are you all right?” Alith’s voice sounded very distant. Hamesh opened his mouth to speak and felt a sharp pain on the left side of his jaw. Alith helped Hamesh back to his feet. The doctor carefully felt the side of his face. It seemed to be undamaged, but he would have to use a mediscan at the first opportunity.
Glowering at Alith, he demanded: “Why the fuck did you do that?”
Alith shrugged again. “You wanted evidence. That was the most convincing I could provide on short notice.”
“I’m convinced,” he growled. He was trying to appear angry, but he somehow knew that he ought to be very afraid of this man. While he knew that he, Hamesh, was theoretically capable of violence (he had restrained Parath more than once, and had caused her to cry out, on one occasion, apparently in pain, but had never actually hit her), Alith had just proven himself capable. In fact--
“Yes,” Alith said calmly, “I could have killed you. I know about a dozen ways using my bare hands, and at least 50 more that involve weapons.”
“So... are you going to do it?” Hamesh was at once fascinated and repelled by the idea. On the one hand, it offered a simple way out of the mess he was in (which, he had to admit, was largely of his own making). On the other, there was the attraction of new knowledge, of learning from someone who was like him in some fundamental way, of perhaps even being understood... He felt there was an important opportunity here, which he didn’t want to just throw away.
“Of course not,” Alith replied. “I’d gain nothing from your death.”
Nevertheless, Hamesh found himself thinking very hard about how far it was to the nearest junction and the nearest door that he could lock, how likely it was that he could run fast enough and long enough to get there... how likely it was that Alith could overpower him and kill him before he had taken more than a few steps. He had mentioned weapons... did he have one? His clothing was baggy enough to conceal something like a scalpel, which Hamesh supposed could wound or kill if you knew how.
“Now,” said Alith, “I’ve presented you with some fairly direct evidence that you’re not the only person without a regulator. What’s your reaction?”
“I... I honestly don’t know,” said Hamesh. “Confusion... Most of my life I’ve felt I was... different. Later I realised I was unique... at least I thought I was. How many others are there without... like us?”
“Hundreds. A few thousand, maybe. I don’t know the exact number.”
“Why have I never come across anyone like this before?”
“Well--have you ever told anybody about your condition?”
Hamesh shook his head, cautiously.
“Why not?”
“I... I wasn’t sure of how they’d react.”
Alith smiled again. “More than that. You were afraid of how they’d react.” He looked at Hamesh expectantly. “Mm?”
Hamesh hesitated. “Yes,” he said weakly.
“And why is that?”
“Because,” said Hamesh carefully, “the regulator is what ensures our safety, so somebody without one must be a threat to that safety.”
“Precisely,” replied Alith. “The regulator is a wonderful idea, but it only works properly if everybody has one.” There was a note of sarcasm in his voice as he said “wonderful.” “The rule is ‘harm no-one,’ not ‘harm no-one who has a regulator.’ So anyone who doesn’t have a regulator can cause great harm to anyone who does, because that other person can’t defend themselves.”
“Why don’t we do that, then?” asked Hamesh.
“I think you can answer that question for yourself. Why didn’t you attack anybody and everybody once you’d worked out what was different about you?”
“I couldn’t see that it would give me any advantage.”
Alith shook his head. “Lack of ambition,” he sighed. “The curse of our age. And you were afraid that there were other people without regulators, and that someone you attacked could be one of them--or know someone who was--and that you’d come off worse.” Alith looked at him quizzically.
“Something like that did occur to me,” the doctor replied, a little indistinctly.
“Most of us realise that we ought to keep quiet about it, roughly five minutes after we realise what’s different about us. For what it’s worth, when I realised I didn’t have a regulator, for about six months afterwards, I thought that no-one did, and that it was all some grand conspiracy that everybody except me was involved in.”
Hamesh managed a weak smile in response to that.
“So,” said Alith after a small pause, “I expect you’re wondering exactly what I mean when I say I want your co-operation”. Hamesh nodded, and Alith continued: “I represent an organisation of people without regulators.”
Since Alith had mentioned the number of such people, Hamesh had suspected that an organisation like that might exist, but it was still something of a surprise to have it confirmed.
“We want you to join us.”
“Why?”
“We’ve been trying for some time to recruit someone in an exhumee processing centre.”
“I’m quite new here,” Hamesh pointed out. “I might not be of much use.”
“But much more useful than no-one at all, which is what we have at present.”
Hamesh decided that was meant as a compliment, although it didn’t sound like one. “What do you want me to do, anyway?”
“Do you have influence over who is selected for exhumation?”
“In theory, yes, in that I can refuse to exhume someone whom I believe is too sick or too unfit to be worth the cost of doing it. In practice, the historians or a senior doctor would probably overrule me.”
Alith frowned. “What information can you get about exhumees?”
“Basic facts--physical appearance, general state of health, that sort of thing.”
“Can you find out names? Professions? Dates of death?”
“Probably.”
“That should be enough to start with. We’re especially interested in anybody born before about 120.”
“Wasn’t that when the regulator became mandatory?” asked Hamesh.
“You catch on quickly, don’t you? I’ll teach you a code for making your reports. We’ll call you at irregular intervals. Don’t attempt to call us, because the originator ID on our calls is usually forged. You must assume that all your conversations with us are being monitored by someone whom you would rather didn’t understand what you were saying.”
“Slow down,” said Hamesh, raising a hand. “I haven’t said that I’ll join you yet.”
“You weren’t thinking of refusing, were you?”
“You don’t seem to have given me any good reasons for it yet,” Hamesh observed.
Alith raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t keeping quiet about this enough for you?” he asked, tapping the side of his head.
The doctor scowled. “I said reasons, not threats.”
“The regulator is compulsory, remember. It seems to me that reporting someone who didn’t have one would be no more than my civic duty.” He paused again. “You don’t seem very convinced. We can give you certain advantages that will make your life here... well, a little more pleasant, if not actually easier.”
“Could you get me out of here?”
“I thought you’d ask that. I’m afraid we can’t. We can pull strings--or we know people who can pull them for us--but yours have very heavy weights on them. And no disrespect, but at the moment, you’re more useful to us here than anywhere else.”
Hamesh wondered if that perceived usefulness was the reason that they couldn’t--or wouldn’t--pull the strings, but he said nothing.
“This base has a Mandarin-class computer, doesn’t it?” Alith asked. Hamesh nodded. “We know quite a lot about them. For instance, we know about their security protocols, and how to side-step them.”
“And what good would that do me?” asked Hamesh, trying to look disinterested.
“Access to the monitoring system, for one. You’d be amazed what people do when they think no-one’s watching them. And when you tell them what you know, you’d be amazed at what they’ll agree to do for you, if only you’ll promise not to tell anyone else.”
“You surely know Mandarin has very strict auditing,” Hamesh observed. “If I ever did use the monitoring system to spy on someone, Security would know about it before they did.”
“We can step around that as well,” replied Alith.
“I already know a lot about computers,” said Hamesh. “What makes you think I need your help?”
“I think it would be more accurate to say,” Alith smirked, “that you know enough about computers to get yourself into some real trouble when someone notices what you’ve been up to, but not enough to make sure that no-one notices in the first place.”
Hamesh sighed. Alith was clearly too well-informed for bluffing to be anything more than an exercise in humiliation. “All right,” he said. “What do I have to do for you to tell me about Mandarin?”
“Show us that we can trust you.”
“And how do I do that?”
“By following our orders.”
“OK,” said Hamesh. “I’ll join.” He didn’t feel that he had any other choice.
The cell was about two and a half metres by one and a half and just tall enough to stand up in. It was gloomy, damp and cold, though not unbearably so. There was a mattress against one wall, with a blanket over it, and a small, low table next to it. Overall, it was not as unpleasant as Matthew had feared. It was essentially a smaller version of Beta 14’s sleeping quarters.
Matthew lay on his back on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. A bowl of the green mush (he refused to think of it as food) stood untouched on the table, slowly congealing. Next to the bowl was the photograph of himself and Debbie which, to his mild surprise, he had been allowed to keep. His ribs were still sore from when the exhumee had fallen on him. His face felt as though someone had pulled it off and stuck it back on again at the wrong angle. The technician had told him he would be fine in a couple of days, but he had found that it was best not to move unless he had to.
He wondered what he was going to do for the 105 hours that remained of his sentence. He knew that he wouldn’t be allowed out of the cell in that time. He couldn’t spend more than about 50 hours asleep, so that left him with at least 55 hours to fill. Apart from the photograph, there was nothing in the cell that threatened to occupy his attention for more than about a minute. The room had no windows, although there was a black square in the door that might have been transparent from the outside.
He was already eight hours behind on his quota. On the way here, Holeth had told him, with some relish, that when Matthew’s sentence finished, he would be expected to catch up on the work he had missed. It made sense in a way, Matthew supposed. After all, he was here to work, not primarily as a punishment, but because the work was useful to somebody. Punishing exhumees by taking them away from that work was therefore counterproductive. A lazy exhumee could easily avoid work by constantly behaving in a way which warranted imprisonment.
LIke everyone else, Matthew was expected to work eight hours a day. Consequently, in the five days of his sentence, he would fall 40 hours behind. The rules allowed an exhumee to work for up to nine and a half hours a day, so it would take him, at the very minimum, 27 days to make good the deficit. In reality it was likely to take twice that.
“And all for a few minutes of thoughtless violence,” Holeth had commented.
“I didn’t start the fucking fight,” Matthew retorted.
“I don’t care who started it,” she told him. “Exhumees are very valuable. If you damage one, you have to be punished, no matter why you did it.”
Matthew closed his eyes. Debbie...
They were sitting on the sofa, each with an arm around the other. About 20 minutes ago, they had finished a big argument. Debbie had stormed out of the living room into the kitchen, and Matthew had gone to the bedroom. They had come back into the living room almost at the same time, both looking very apologetic. Debbie smiled timidly and held out her arms to him. Matthew stepped forward and embraced her, surprised at how good it felt after all the shouting. Wordlessly, they went over to the sofa and sat down.
“Do you hate me, then?” Matthew asked.
Debbie hugged him more closely and said: “No, love, I could never hate you. But I’m very angry with you. I love you more than anything, but you can be so infuriating at times.”
“I feel much the same about you.”
“Which? You don’t hate me, you’re angry with me, you love me, I’m infuriating?”
“All of the above. I’m sorry if I hurt you or upset you.”
“You did, but I forgive you,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“Do you forgive me?”
“Of course.” A pause. “Are we friends again now, then?”
Debbie frowned in mock concentration, as though considering a difficult engineering question. She looked sidelong at him and said dismissively: “Yeah, all right then.”
“Oh, good,” he said, imitating her tone. “It’s much nicer being friends, isn’t it?”
“Yeah...” she murmured, gently rubbing her nose against his. “I do love you, you know.”
“I know. I love you, too.” Another pause. “D’you know, I can’t remember what we were arguing about now.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, it was nothing important.”
“That was one hell of a fight over nothing important.”
“Yes, but we agree about all the important things, don’t we, pet? Or at least, we’re prepared to compromise.”
“I guess so,” he nodded.
“So all we’ve got left to fight about are the trivial things. That only seemed like a big row because we’ve never fought about anything important. I had far worse fights than that with some of my ex-boyfriends, and far more often too.” True, it had been about five months since the last argument that had ended with both of them leaving the room.
“So which of us won, then?” he asked. “Not that I’m keeping score, but it would be nice to know.”
“Ah, we never got that far,” she said. “But it’s really quite simple. I’m right, you’re wrong, and that’s the end of it.”
“Minx!” Matthew exclaimed. “Kiss me now, before I disagree with you!”
She grimaced and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. Matthew pulled her closer and pressed his lips firmly to hers. This second kiss was quite aggressive to start with, but it soon mellowed. Debbie took his free hand in hers. Matthew offered no resistance as he felt himself slipping easily into that familiar serene timelessness that came over him so often when they kissed.
Debbie sighed as she resurfaced. She looked into his eyes and asked: “What are we going to do about us, eh, pet?”
To which Matthew replied: “Nothing. We’re doing fine.”
Matthew’s eyes flicked open. Someone was standing over him, blocking what little light there was. He tried to sit up. The figure put a hand over his mouth and, without trouble, pushed him back down. Then the intruder took his hand away and crouched by the mattress.
“Hello, Matthew.”
“Milner!” Matthew hadn’t recognised him until he spoke.
“Sshh,” hissed Milner, wincing. Matthew attempted to sit up again. Milner helped him to prop himself up against the wall.
“How did you get in here?” Matthew asked.
“Well,” Milner answered, looking a little embarrassed, “let’s just say that one of the guards on this wing has slightly, ah, unorthodox tastes, and is sometimes willing to ignore the fact that I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be in return for the opportunity to indulge them.” He paused for a second or two, and Matthew sensed that he wasn’t going to say anything more on the subject. Even so, it was oddly reassuring that more than a millennium after the start of the Industrial Revolution, systems based on sophisticated technology could still be subverted by an appeal to human weaknesses.
Milner sat down next to Matthew. “Eat up!” he said, pointing to the bowl on the table. “Your dinner’s going cold.”
“I... I’m not hungry, really,” said Matthew.
“You should be. It’s not nice being force-fed.”
Reluctantly, Matthew pushed himself towards the table. Milner passed the bowl to him. “Thanks,” he mumbled. He began to eat, slowly, chewing over each mouthful as though wanting to be sure there were no bones in it.
“I’ve tried to get Genes moved to another gang,” Milner told him, “but I’ve had no luck.”
“Genes?” Matthew asked.
“The one who attacked you this morning,” Milner explained. “We call him that because he uses the word so much. ‘Look at me! Your own genes!’ No-one knows what his real name is. He’s attacked people before, and we just keep moving him around, so he doesn’t become too much of a nuisance to any one gang. We can’t move him too often, though--otherwise he gets frightened by all the changes, and he becomes even more violent. The guards have agreed to keep a closer eye on him, though. Not a good idea to tell him you’re minus third century. He hates anybody who was alive before him.” He paused thoughtfully. “Well, actually, he hates everybody, but he hates his predecessors more than most.”
“Why?”
“Well, I think he blames them for the way he is. He’s a victim of the Genetic Wars. The genetic defects that he’s got wouldn’t normally be too serious, but he was born with them, so there’s no healthy DNA for the doctors to work back to. You’ve seen his face, of course. Did you notice his fingers are fused together, so he usually has to use both hands to pick something up?”
“I didn’t have much time to study them, Milner,” Matthew pointed out sarcastically.
“From the way he walks, I think one of his knees doesn’t bend. Whoever had him frozen probably thought they were doing him a favour.”
“Did anyone do themselves a favour by being frozen?” Matthew asked sourly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I always thought the world I came back to would be... I don’t know, better, somehow. This is slavery.”
Milner nodded. “A great many people have said similar things to me. And what I always say to them is: Did it never occur to you to stay alive and try to make the world a better place yourself, instead of abandoning your problems and leaving them for your children and grandchildren to try to sort out?” He paused, but before Matthew could reply, he continued: “The answer is almost always no.”
“That would be my answer too,” said Matthew carefully. “Except it wasn’t really like that in my case.” He looked over to the table, where the photograph was, and then down at his left hand. “I didn’t decide to be frozen to avoid the world’s problems, or even my own problems,” he said absently. As usual, the ring had slipped around so that the gem was on the palm side of his hand. He pushed it back and forth on his finger, a little worried that it moved easily past the knuckle when the finger was straight. It wasn’t just that it meant he was still nowhere near his normal weight: it was more that it would be too easy to lose the ring without realising. It would be much safer in a pocket, except that his clothes didn’t have any. Could he hide it under his pillow? If anyone stole it, he would probably never get it back. Why would anyone steal it? Because it looked valuable? Because its loss would hurt him? He wondered if he could tear off a small piece of his clothing to wedge between metal and skin. Damaging the camp’s property like that might be against the rules, but at this stage, he didn’t really care. Besides, who would notice? From what Milner had said about the work here, his clothes were likely to get torn and dirty anyway.
He raised his right hand a little to see if the shirt cuff would be suitable for what he had in mind, and his eyes met Milner’s. The gang leader was looking expectantly at him. “Well if it wasn’t to avoid problems, why were you frozen?”
Matthew blinked, ashamed to realise that he had momentarily forgotten what they were talking about. “There might have been a bit of that,” he said, pursing his lips. “But it wasn’t the main reason. Mostly it was so I could be with my wife again.”
“Ah, yes,” said Milner uncomfortably, “thanks for reminding me.” He didn’t sound as though he meant it. “If you like, I’ll make a few discreet enquiries about her, to find out for sure whether she is at this camp or not.”
Matthew turned to look at him. “Would you? Please?” he said eagerly. “I don’t know how I could repay you, but I’d be very grateful if you could do that.”
“You can repay me by not getting into fights with people who want to kill you.”
“Well thank you! It wasn’t my fault--how was I supposed to know he was a psychopath?”
Milner hesitated for a moment, and then replied: “Matthew, there are a few things you ought to understand. As gang leader, I’m responsible for the amount and the quality of the work you do. I’m not responsible for your personal safety. You are. If you take unjustifiable risks, you’re the one who’ll be punished, not me. Two things that are classed as unjustifiable risks are fighting with another exhumee, and intervening in a fight between exhumees. There’s no reason for us to try to stop a fight when every guard has a transmitter that can paralyse the fighters from a distance.
“Now it seems to me that this morning, Genes decided that he wanted to kill you. If Mard and Holeth hadn’t been around, the rest of us would have let him do it. Think about that while I’m chasing Debbie for you.”
“You, my dear, have become an embarrassment to me.”
“That’s putting it very mildly. I can destroy you if I choose.”
Thander and Hamesh stood in Hamesh’s office, facing each other, their faces a few centimetres apart.
“And I can destroy you,” said Hamesh. “That possibility has always been there. It’s been an essential part of the bond between us. You’ve always known that if you ever moved against me, I’d drag you down with me.”
“Likewise if you moved against me,” replied Thander.
“Indeed. But now that balance has shifted. You know it’s not enough for one of us just to accuse the other of a crime. There has to be evidence. There’s no longer any evidence against me. I saw to that some time ago. But there’s still evidence against you. Not much. But enough.”
“How much?” she asked weakly. If he was telling the truth, he had managed to deprive her of her only defence against him.
“Enough to prove that you’ve been here illegally for the last five years, but probably not enough to connect you with your original crime. Or in other words, enough to send you to a labour camp for a good many decades, but not enough to send you to a prison camp for evading your original punishment. The evidence will shortly come to the attention of somebody in Security. You will be arrested and, soon after that, you will be sent to a labour camp.”
Thander stepped back a little. “You’ve threatened me with prison often enough. Where’s that evidence gone? Or did it never exist in the first place?”
“I’ve seen to it that it’ll be... overlooked. Security will question you, but unless you’re particularly careless, they won’t suspect that they’ve missed anything. I suggest you tell them as little as possible. In particular, you must tell them absolutely nothing about our relationship. If I even think that you’re trying to drag me down with you, the evidence which Security have overlooked will mysteriously come to light again. And don’t forget that there isn’t any evidence against me anymore, so no-one would believe any accusation you might make. All you’d achieve would be to make your punishment worse, for trying to implicate an innocent man.”
“Why have you suddenly changed your mind about where I’m going?”
“I haven’t,” he replied. “I said that if you tried to move against me, I’d see to it that you’d go to prison.” This wasn’t true, but Thander didn’t think it was worth arguing about. “You haven’t done that, so you’re going to a labour camp instead. And besides, you don’t deserve prison. It wasn’t you who decided you should stay here. Even though you wanted to, I was the one who made the decision.” He looked down for a moment, and then back at her. “Most of all,” he said clumsily, “I do still love you.” “Love” was evidently an unfamiliar word to him. Certainly, she hadn’t heard him say it very often. “That’s not something I can easily put aside. I don’t want you to suffer any more than is absolutely necessary.”
You never loved me, she thought. And you have your own interpretation of when suffering is “absolutely necessary.” “Mercy?” she s