Mappa Mundi (51 page)

“You can change all the ideas in the world and all the feelings, but you can't move beyond the limits of your vision. If you do, you end up like my meditation man—the lights are all on, but nothing's at home. You can't ever be free of meaning and every time you choose one it's a step in the dark.”

“You're speaking from experience?” Guskov demanded.

“No, but I am,” Ian said. “Get on with it, will you? I'm tired.”

Mikhail and Natalie walked away together. Ian heard him say, “That doesn't mean that this project is futile. Far from it. Think about the possibilities beyond the simple use of control. Even control of the Selfplex. Think about what we could learn of ourselves.”

“I was never arguing with that,” Natalie replied as they passed the door into the control suite, watched by the others. “I'm arguing with the bit of you that can't give up on its dream of perfection. We aren't a perfectible race. We're better left trying to understand in our own ways than having it foisted on us by you.”

“I think that a push in the right direction …”

The argument circled on. Ian could see both sides. He couldn't say he hadn't benefited from some of the systems. He couldn't say he'd have wanted it, either. But for the sake of stopping a war or saving a life, maybe it was worth changing a few minds, banging a few heads together. If they all had to change, maybe it wouldn't be for the worse.

He became aware of the two other women, Khan and Desanto, watching him as they got up to follow Guskov into the observation area, where whatever he was going to do wouldn't touch them. Their gaze was suspicious, fearful, and pitying.

Ian closed his eyes and waited for the word. The old him would have been sentimental. He would have missed this world. But now he looked forward to reunification with the free elements. The human
desires meant nothing any more, only his debt to Natalie, and the rest he didn't want to remember. Burdened with this kind of slow, primate mind he was also stuck with never finding a way to comprehend the fullness of what it was he knew and saw. Even now, what had he said that began to explain? Nothing.

“Okay,” said a voice from outside.

Ian opened his eyes. “What should I do?” Already he'd decided this would be the last time. No more trying. He was going to give up and go with the flow. They were already in a hell worse than anything he could achieve.

“Go,” Natalie said.

He made eye contact with her through the partition and knew she understood his intention. Her eyes were full of tears. She was just below the threshold where he had started to reach into the deeper levels of the material world. Briefly, he wondered if people like them must always die this way, or if it was only him and his own reactions, built out of the man he'd used to be, Ian Detteridge, father of one, husband, ordinary man, not made for such a task.

“Go,” she said.

He lifted his hand and waved to her.

“'Bye.”

He let go.

Natalie read the message from Jude for the third time:

“Gov version of virus
not
the same as from Atlanta. Biological only. NP complete. Have got caught up this end in WH investigation. Stay cool.”

At this distance, she had no extra insights into what was meant between the lines, if anything. She had to guess it, or make it up. She decided not to bother. She was in no position to help him, he was in no position to do more for her than this. And it was quite a bit.

It was eleven at night. She'd just woken up to the Pad's soft incoming-message chime after two hours' sleep. Since Ian's dissolution that morning the day had been a round of interrogations, analyses, and inquiries and she'd collapsed without eating when they'd finally reached a lull. Hungry, thirsty, and with a headache that seemed to occupy the entire space inside her skull, she washed her face and hands, then dragged herself along to the medical unit.

It was closed, but the room activated when she blinked into the retinal scanner on the access. To her right as she turned the vague, blue shapes of the gurney and lights in the operating theatre loomed, boxy and alien, from the shadows. She shuddered at the idea of someone collapsing in here. Their medical skills combined didn't add up to one good surgeon.

In the pharmacy several gunmetal-grey racks held the stores on
auto-count and as she took down her aspirin the monitor in the corner recorded her transaction. It flashed, offering her some kind of US military emergency diagnostic programme. As she swallowed the tablets she peered down at the inventory next to it. She wasn't the first to visit for basic analgesics. By the looks of it Kropotkin had some kind of stomach ulcer, Khan was diabetic, and her father—she paused and blinked at the readout. Could that be right? That was more codeine than would kill a cat.

She was puzzled and still standing there when she heard a stealthy footstep outside. Just in time she turned and saw Lucy Desanto enter the room. Both of them were surprised but Lucy shrugged first and reached for the antacids. “Long day,” she said.

Natalie held out her empty foils from the aspirin as evidence. “Too long.”

“Want some coffee?”

“On top of those?”

“Just milk for me,” Desanto said, but although she was making an effort to be friendly now that they were off duty Natalie was aware that Lucy's interest here wasn't really on the indigestion tablets or on her. She'd come to look for something else.

“Where's the bin?” Natalie made a show of looking for somewhere to put the packet.

“You'll have to take it with you.” Lucy nodded at the door, expecting Natalie to go out first. She started chewing on the antacids.

Natalie passed her, close because of
the restricted space betwen the racking, and saw her glance down with an involuntary eye-flick to a grey case on the bottom shelf. This, Natalie knew from her own use of other BSL-
₄
facilities contained the Micromedica Universal Vaccine, an injectable nanyte suspension that was capable of killing any virus, bacteria, or parasite infection within hours. It was restricted to emergency use because of the extreme cost involved in its production—over a hundred thousand dollars a shot. Here it was a requirement because of the risk of NervePath infection, although its record against other nanytes was unproven. She'd automatically discounted it in her calculations concerning the dispersion of NervePath through the wider population because, although it might prevent infection or even clear a human system, there was never going to be enough of it in existence to make any difference on that scale.

But then, despite the pounding in her head, she realized that if Jude was right about Guskov, then his private version of Deliverance was capable of handling MUV. With just one dose of Deliverance you could vaccinate entire populations—meaning that on its own the system could save billions of lives and dollars. As she thought through the implications she carried on listening.

Behind her in the corridor Lucy was saying, “For what it's worth, I think you were right this morning, letting Bobby go.”

“Ian,” Natalie murmured, but turned around to smile at the older woman. “Pissed off Gusky and Kropotkin no end, not to mention my dad. Don't think they'll ever forgive me.”

“It was the right thing to do,” Lucy repeated. “We were using him. That was wrong. All the data we needed we'd got by doing the initial scan. He wasn't a freak-show act.”

“Tell that to the others.”

They arrived in the kitchen and its more cheerful lights came on as they walked in. Natalie found a kettle and began to heat some water before looking through the cupboards.

“I've never seen anything like that,” Lucy said and then laughed at herself. “That's stupid. I've never even
imagined
anything like this.”

Lucy was deeply uncomfortable with the explanations, Natalie thought, and trying to get some reference points, some comfort. “If it's any consolation, neither did I a couple of weeks ago.” There were some crackers, which probably meant there was some cheese somewhere. She started eating a cracker. They didn't taste like the ones at home—too salty.

“Is he dead now?”

Natalie swallowed and tried to think. “Don't know,” she said finally. “But he won't be back. Maybe there are bits of his information hanging around somewhere, but not enough to stick together and call a name.”

“But what about, you know, the rest of it?” Lucy said. “Don't you believe in God? What about that? Did he ever say anything about it?”

“Not to me.” Natalie began to see where this was going. In the refrigerator she found a lump of something that might be cheese and started to wrestle it out of its tough plastic packaging. She could feel the yawning hunger of Lucy's need for reassurance dragging her in, and knew that if she turned and was caught in it she was going to see that dead boy again. She began to hack at the plastic with a knife, trying to be patient despite her growling stomach, the headache, and the fact that she'd rather Jude was here than this awkward woman and the existential terror just under her surface.

“Please.” Lucy was suddenly holding on to Natalie's sleeve. “You're like him. You must be. Halfway, at least. Don't you know?”

“Know what?”

“What's beyond this world. Spirit. It's never been proven or disproven, never even been linked with consciousness studies in most of the liberal universities. I mean, there must be more to it than just—”

“If there is—” Natalie stayed diplomatic “—I haven't seen it. I haven't felt it. There. That's all I know.” She found herself clutching the plastic pack in one hand and the knife hilt in the other, resting both on the countertop. It was all she could do not to stab the other woman in the gut. “I know plenty of dead people. They've never come back. Not even a postcard.” She hated the sound of her own flippant rebuff as she stabbed the pack, piercing it this time. Why couldn't Dan have been here? She'd have swapped him for the lot of them.

“Well.” Lucy was reluctantly withdrawing now, seeing she wasn't going to get what she wanted. “If you do, you know, hear from him again …”

“He's gone. Why can't you accept that? It's perfectly simple,” Natalie said, sticking bits of cheese onto biscuits, like a factory production line.

“Because I can't.” Lucy's voice was tight and close to crying.

Natalie closed her eyes but it didn't prevent her view of the boy in the road, his left leg bent in the wrong way, his head on the tarmac, sightless, finished. She wanted Desanto off her back and out of her mind. She decided to lie.

“He's gone,” she said, in her quiet, clinician's voice. “It was very quick. There was no pain.”

She waited, holding on to the counter, for Lucy's own Catholic faith to take what she'd said and filter out of it a confirmation of her hopes.

“Thank you,” Lucy whispered after a moment had passed. Again she held on to Natalie's arm, this time with a grateful clutch. “Thank you so much. I knew you could see. I knew it was going to be all right.”

Natalie glanced back out of curiosity as Lucy was preparing to leave. She saw that Lucy understood her to have meant that her son had passed over and they would meet again, in some unidentifiable, bodiless way, in a beyond that was free of cares and lasted for eternity. Lucy believed that Natalie could say this for sure, as no other person in the history of Earth could have said it—except Jesus.

She felt bad suddenly and wondered which one of them was wrong. Could she prove Lucy's belief was wrong? What was so inspiring about thinking of Dan—good, happy, stupid, helpless, idiot Dan—as annihilated forever, without a single thing left behind except her thoughts of him? Lucy was comforted by her delusion. Natalie's bleaker view might be no more than a delusion, too.

As she hesitated, Lucy was walking backwards, smiling, thankful, then gone to be alone for a few moments, full up with tears and snot and sentimental visions of reunions and apologies and the ultimate forgiveness for her mistakes that Natalie was never, ever going to receive.

She felt the keen terror and rage at Charlotte's abandonment as if
for the first time. And now Dad, what was he on? And this mad scheme she was caught in, captive of her own ideas … Dan gone, yes, gone, they were all bloody gone. Ian had simply faded away, blended atom by atom into the air. She would, too. They all would.

“I hate this!” Natalie bent forward and with one sweep of her arm sent the plate and crackers flying across the room. They crashed into the stainless-steel side of the cooker and the crackers scattered all over the floor. The plate didn't even break, because it was specially made not to. It spun around in a circle and then settled down with a few rings against the tiles before stopping.

Natalie picked up the block of cheese and bit the corner off it. It was rubbery, but okay. She looked down at the mess and sighed. Lucy's hopes were vain and that was all there was to it. She, Natalie, had lost nothing more than she'd already lost. And she was still standing, just about. She chewed reflectively as she located the dustpan and brush and cleaned up the spilled crackers. She was prodding a tea bag in its cup and drinking a glass of water at the same time when Guskov himself came walking in, wearing an ancient-looking tracksuit and thick socks. He reminded her of someone else's grandad.

“Mmn,” he grunted, smiling and passing by her to take a can of vegetable-juice cocktail from the refrigerator. “What did she want?”

He was talking about Lucy, whom he'd met in the corridors.

“Comfort,” Natalie said. “You know, that thing you think we'd all be better off without.”

“Ah, na, na.” Guskov popped the seal on his can after shaking it. “You're wrong. I want everyone to be able to have comforts that are real, not imaginary.”

“You never did answer me when I asked you what ‘real' was.” Natalie took out the tea bag and flicked it into the wastebin. “What I really wonder is why you think you have an exclusive view on it.”

He sat down heavily in one of the metal frame chairs. “But today you talked with Ian. You saw him dissolve into his component molecules.
You heard him speak at length about the structure and nature of the physical world. He said nothing that leads me to believe that we as a species would not be better off recognizing the facts of our lives and rejecting the fantasies that make us behave with such degrading consequences.”

“Yes. That's what I saw. But Lucy saw a miraculous event. Alicia saw a confirmation of her belief in a poetic final union with the rest of creation. Isidore saw a man disappear. My father saw a horrific vision of a person flying apart and disintegrating because of the weakness of his mind. We see it through the lens of ourselves. I still don't understand what it is you want to achieve with Mappa. Do you want us all to be the same? How could that ever happen, unless you impose closure, make minds run forever in the same tracks so they can't think of new ideas?”

“That is
not
the goal of the Free State!” he almost bellowed and smacked the end of his can on the table for emphasis.

“Then what
is
the program you're going to issue, after you achieve global NervePath infection by using your Deliverance technology?”

Natalie watched as his face showed shock for a moment before his expression changed gradually to a smile.

“That in itself would be a remarkable achievement. I don't anticipate complete coverage. Only about sixty percent, initially.” His eyes sparkled with that essential fire that had always marked him out among others as brighter, tougher, and smarter. “As for the program …” He sighed and shook his head, pretending to read the can label. “I've thought of many things. First of all I was going to get rid of religions. When I was a boy they seemed like evil incarnate: arbitrary, judgemental, cruel, repressive. Then I found Communism, Socialism, Democracy and I saw that it wasn't the supernatural element at all that was causing this plague of memes that mark out divisions and give different values to human beings. It was in the way we saw ourselves as castes and tribes, the in-group and the out-group.