Echo Boy (11 page)

‘It’s all right,’ Grandma said. ‘She’s not going to hurt me.’ And then to me, in a whisper: ‘They’re all second-hand.’

‘Grandma, are you going to be OK?’

She tapped the remaining everglows. ‘Yes, yes . . .’

‘Now, think, is there anything you wanted to tell me, Grandma? Anything I should know? About Dad and—’

Something began to happen to the room.

A darkness began to leak into the floor. One of the Echos disappeared, then another; the fake cactus was swallowed up too, and the cat, and then it was just Grandma, against nothing at all, and she was still talking.

‘Grandma! Grandma! I can’t hear you! I don’t know what’s happening! There must be something wrong with the connection.’

That was it.

Grandma’s kaftan and turquoise hair and fearful face melted away, like a dream or a nightmare dissolving into the dark of sleep, until it was just her silent mouth calling my name.

And then nothing.

Nothing except the darkness of the mind-reader.

I thought I could hear something. Outside the pod.

And then, when the pod door had opened, I realized there was no one in my room. But I still heard footsteps – out on the landing this time.

‘Hello?’

There was no answer. So I ran across to the door, and peered out to see Uncle Alex walking towards the vast elegant staircase.

‘Uncle Alex,’ I said.

He stopped. Turned. He was smiling, but looked confused. ‘Audrey? What’s the matter? How did it go with your grandma?’

‘I lost the connection.’

‘Oh, that’s weird. But it’s a brand-new pod. The most advanced there is. Let’s try again.’

Something.

Something right there.

The way he said it. I wouldn’t have noticed with the neuropads on, but without them, yes, there was a trace of something in his voice – I don’t know what exactly – but something that sharpened my suspicion.

We tried again. Just blackness.

‘Teething problems,’ he said. I thought:
There are a lot of teething problems around here
. ‘Don’t worry. It will right itself in a while. Do you want to try a different pod?’

I thought of the Echos, and of Grandma, acting crazy on her ever-glows. ‘No. No. It’s . . . it’s OK.’

I felt sorry for Grandma, but I didn’t think it would ever be possible for me to live on the moon. I had hardly been able to cope with it as a hologram.

It was here or nowhere.

Later that evening Iago came in to ask if he could use my immersion pod. Apparently mine accessed different hologames or something, and was more up to date.

But before he went in, he looked at some of my books from home which Madara had placed in neat piles on the table. They sat directly under the Matisse painting. He picked them up, one by one. They were mostly ancient (except for my Neo Maxis holo-book), and this – combined with the fact that they were, well,
books
– made him treat them as if they were weird objects from some alien planet. ‘
Withering . . . Wuthering Heights . . . The Catcher in the Rye . . . Romeo and Juliet . . . Frankenstein . . . Twenty-First-Century Philosophy . . . Jane Ey-re . . .
’ He dropped them on the table in a haphazard fashion, making no attempt to put them back in a pile.

Dad had once written that,
The more dependent we get on Echos, the more uncivilized we will become
.

Dad, I love you. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.

I was calmer. My neuropads were on. So I decided to try and start a proper conversation. I mean, this was the first time I had been
properly alone with Iago, so I thought I might as well take advantage of the fact.

It wasn’t easy. But I felt that if I was to understand a bit more about Uncle Alex, and the Echos in this house, I could do worse than to start with Iago.

‘So, Iago
 . . .
you like chess?’

Nothing. Just a slight twitch of an eyebrow.

‘You don’t go to school, do you? I mean, not even pod kind of school. The Echos teach you. How’s that working out?’

He looked at me with his dopey eyes. ‘Fine.’

‘Good. Great. I was Echo-taught too. Bit of Mum, bit of pod, then bit of Echo. Well, towards the . . . towards the end.’

I had a flashback to Alissa teaching me in the spare room, with her perfect, impassive face giving me nothing but information. My stomach felt like it was falling. But the neuropads still worked enough to suppress the memory.

Iago looked unhappy. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me. When he answered, it was a mumble that hardly required the movement of his lips.

‘What is your favourite subject?’

‘Business.’

‘That’s an unusual choice for a ten-year-old.’

He looked at me directly. With eyes full of hatred. ‘Don’t patronize me.’

‘I’m not. I wasn’t. I’m sorry it came across like that. I’m an unusual fifteen-year-old, to be honest. I liked philosophy and reading old books.’ I noticed I was using the past tense. I wondered if I would ever actively like anything again. The present wasn’t just a tense, I realized, but a decision. Something you had to decide to accept.

‘What’s philosophy?’ he asked dismissively, but I took it as a serious question.

‘It’s about why we are here.’

‘You mean religion.’

‘They overlap. The only difference is that religion has answers and philosophy mainly has questions. You know, like, is there a point to it all? What is good and what is evil? How should we live our lives? What does it mean to be a human?’

‘Sounds boring.’

‘It’s not really,’ I said. But I could no longer remember why it wasn’t. Maybe if I took the pads off, but I didn’t want to do that. It started to come back to me. ‘It’s pretty damn cool, actually. Because it’s just thinking. And that’s what makes us special, isn’t it, as humans. You know, compared to Echos. We think about stuff. We don’t just do stuff. That’s why books and paintings and stuff exists. To try and work ourselves out.’ My words had no impact so I came to the point. ‘Hey, do you like the Echos here?’

He shrugged. Or did the facial equivalent of a shrug. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’ There was a little pause. ‘Most of them.’

Most of them.

‘What do you mean by that?’

Iago yawned and didn’t cover his mouth.

‘The new Echo is a bit weird,’ he said.

‘Which is the new one?’ Though I already knew what he was going to say.

‘Daniel.’

‘The teenager?’ I said, playing dumb.

Iago laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. ‘Teenager? He’s only two months old.’

Of course, I knew that Echos were designed to look different ages, and to stay looking that age for as long as they were operational. But sometimes you couldn’t help but think of them as they looked.

Teenager. Old man. Thirty-year-old woman.

This was for two reasons. First, if all Echos looked the same, then you would never know which was which. Second, different Echos were often used for different jobs. So in the British Museum the tour guides are all elderly-looking Echos, to suggest wisdom; while in physical clothes shops and gene-therapy centres the Echos are always young and good-looking.

‘Why don’t you like him?’ I asked. ‘Because he beat you at chess?’

Another shrug. ‘He’s been weird from day one.’

‘Weird how?’

‘I dunno,’ he said. He had quite a deep voice for a ten-year-old. ‘He’s just weird. The day he first got here he didn’t speak. Dad asked him stuff and he didn’t say anything. Dad told him that if he didn’t speak soon, he’d have to take him back to be terminated. And then he spoke! Dad got cross ’cause Daniel was meant to be the best one we’ve ever had. He was meant to be the most advanced Echo ever made.’ Iago looked out of the window and smiled to himself. It was a strange smile, full of trouble. ‘But he’s an Echo, so he obeys orders, and that is fun sometimes. Or
was
fun until he got too clever. But he’s a freak.’

The most advanced Echo ever made.

I was going to ask him more, but he opened up the pod. ‘What do you do in there?’ I asked.

‘Kill things,’ he said, before disappearing inside.

That night I slept again, but there was another interruption.

Just after three in the morning I woke to hear a noise. A floorboard creaking outside my door. I sat up in bed.

‘Light,’ I said.

With the light on I saw that my door was slightly open. ‘Hello? Is anybody there?’

Actual fear was impossible as I was wearing the neuropads, but I still realized I should get out of bed to see what was going on. So I stood up, walked across the room, past the figures huddled together in the painting, looking scared as they listened to music.

But then, just before I opened the door, I heard someone shouting. It was Uncle Alex. ‘Get to your quarters!’ he bellowed. Then I opened the door just enough to see him on the landing. He was standing there in a black silk dressing gown, with the trees on the animated wallpaper swaying behind him, as if matching his anger. His face was red and there was a demonic fury in his eyes.

Then I opened the door fully and stepped out, just in time to see
the back of a male fair-haired Echo head for the end of the landing and disappear downstairs.

Uncle Alex saw me, and his tanned face switched from utter fury to warm sorrow faster than I had imagined possible. ‘Audrey, I am so sorry about that.’

‘It was him again,’ I said. ‘Daniel. The chess player.’

‘Yes,’ he said, fiddling with his rings. ‘Yes. There are always a few issues with the most advanced ones. It’s nothing to worry about, Audrey. This is the safest place you could possibly be. Well, since the attempted break-in, anyway. I doubt you could find a more safe and secure house in the whole of London.’

‘Attempted break-in?’

Uncle Alex nodded. ‘Protestors. Anarchists. Thugs. Last October a group of them tried to scale the wall. They very nearly got over too, but one of the Echos saw them and raised the alarm, and – lucky for us – the police were on to these guys already. But it was a close call. Since then, I’ve stepped up the security. Because they’ll try again. They’re nothing if not persistent, I can tell you. But listen, there is really nothing to concern you now.’

‘OK,’ I said, which obviously I wouldn’t have said if I hadn’t been wearing reasonably new neuropads. But then a small sense of anxiety slowly began to break through.

‘You get back to bed, Audrey. I’m going too. I’ve got Paris tomorrow. There is nothing to worry about.’

‘I want to go with you to Paris.’

‘But I told you, I’m going to a place full of Echos. Hundreds of them. You said you didn’t want to come.’

I swallowed. ‘I know, but I think I might have changed my mind.’

I was close enough to see that Uncle Alex was wearing info-lenses.
They were active. Tiny lights flashed across his eyes. Words he’d be able to read but which I couldn’t.

‘No,’ he said, closing his eyes, shaking his head. ‘It’s work, and I don’t think it would be good for you. It’s not
Paris
Paris. It’s just a warehouse full of assembly-line Echos. It’s out of town. It’s hardly, I don’t know, the Louvre. I don’t think it would be your cup of tea.’

He was correct, of course. It didn’t sound like my cup of tea. It sounded like my cup of nightmare, to be honest, but I was thinking two things. First thing: I did not want to stay in the house with Iago and Daniel and all the prototypes. Second thing: I wanted information. The neuropads had dulled that impulse for a while. But it had worked its way to the surface again. I wanted to find out what had happened to my parents. I wanted to find out why Alissa – who was not a prototype, but a standard assembly-line Echo – had done what she did. And yes, true, she was a Sempura Echo and we were not going to a Sempura Echo factory, but I wouldn’t be able to get access to a Sempura factory.

‘I think it would help me. You know, Mrs Matsumoto said I should try and—’

His eyes opened. He looked at me with tired sympathy, but his answer was firmer. ‘No. I’m sorry, Audrey. It’s a no. There is no way you are coming with me tomorrow. That’s the end of the matter. Now, let’s get some sleep.’ And then he went back to bed.

So did I, only it took me a while to get to sleep again. I was just thinking that my uncle’s answer had been a little too firm. Then questions. What had he got to hide? What was in Paris that he didn’t want me to see?

Paranoia
, I told myself.
I mean, Cloudville . . .
He had saved my life. And he had taken me in and let me live here, in probably the best house in London. He had been kind to me.

But still, the more determined he was that I shouldn’t go to Paris, the more determined I was to go there.

Eventually I fell asleep.

Another dream. This one not a nightmare. Not a complete one, anyway.

It was Daniel, and he was crying. An Echo crying tears! And I was holding him and he was trembling in my arms, his strong body rendered suddenly weak from emotion. And he was telling me something in a quiet voice.

‘Don’t worry about me. I am just an Echo . . .’

And I stroked his hair and kept on telling him, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right . . .’

Then I woke up again. And I had a thought. It was still the middle of the night, but I got out of bed and put in my info-lenses.

‘Night-vision mode,’ I said. And in less than a second, it was as though a light had been switched on. OK, so it was a light that turned everything green, but that was night vision for you.

As quietly as I could, I went along the hallway to Iago’s room. He slept with the door slightly open. To let the light in, I supposed. He may have been a hundred other things, but he was also still a young boy who was probably scared of the dark.

Anyway, I pushed the door open and snuck inside his room. I crept across his floor, which was a plush and soundless carpet. I was walking towards his wardrobe. I knew what I was after, and I knew that, if I found it, the journey back out of the room would be a lot safer than the journey in.

I carried on. I saw Iago asleep in his bed. He was curled up on top of the blankets with a thumb in his mouth. I thought of how much he would hate me seeing him like that. It made me smile, just for a
moment, seeing the little boy lying there, but I gasped in horror when I turned and saw a soldier with a gun pointing straight at me. By the time I realized it was just a holo-sculpture, Iago was rolling over, borderline awake. I stayed still and didn’t breathe for about thirty seconds, and he seemed to fall asleep again.