The Living (18 page)

Lot dashed about his cell excitedly, randomly poking about in some files, opening and copying nameless documents,
loading
and deleting
socio
updates… All the time he was squinting at the distant sun and saying that he was tired of Leo giving him freebies. Of Leo being generous. Of Leo looking down on him.

And I begged him: calm down.

I kept saying: no, you’ve got it all confused.

I kept saying: it’s just because of your illness, because of your terrible illness, that’s why you think that you remember, but it’s a false memory. Mistaken memories.

I kept saying: you and I were friends.

I kept saying: what do you mean looking down on you, what freebies, I have my letters from Renaissance. Letters which I have read and you are mentioned in them all the time, and there’s not a bad word about you in there…

And he would reply: how like Leo. How worthy. How noble. No bad words.

He said that he was always in his shadow, the shadow of the master Leo. The master would think something up and all he would do was encourage him and help him realise it…

I chose the first cake I saw – chocolate with raspberry cream – and in my haste I forgot to regulate the brightness of the candles. They came on at maximum level, flooding the cell with a poisonous glow.

‘Is it Zero?’ I asked. ‘Was there something incurable about him? Come on, remember!!’

He squinted at the birthday candles; their light made his skin seem pale, like an ant’s egg.

Lot’s lowly blew out the candles.

…At first his face disappeared. The mischievous, young face with narrowed eyes froze for a second and then seemed to
be sprinkled with glimmering dust; after his face his body and then his clothes crumbled into tiny fragments… For a moment a different userpic was revealed behind these fragments: a primitive anime face, probably from the early settings, but this too disappeared very quickly, leaving behind just the
shade
.

Then the cell started to change. The fields faded to
black-and
-white and then his
wonder-chess
disappeared completely. The photo albums, diaries, books and folders went pale and dissolved…

I stood by the
exit
and watched as the drowsy demon
devoured
everything that Lot had
created
in the day. His cell was stripped bare, turning into a standard inviz cocoon.

His
shade
flew towards me, trying to block off the exit.

I managed to say ‘no death’, but I didn’t manage to leave. I stayed there.

I saw how his
shade
bent over and broke into two pieces. How these pieces crawled off in different directions like two halves of an earthworm.

I felt the cocoon of his cell pulsing and getting smaller, squeezing in and out around me, whistling like a punctured lung.

I heard him wheezing – not here, but
there
, in first layer.

Then everything froze – on a half-wheeze, half-breath – and the cocoon became dry and silent.

I crawled through the darkness. I had no mouth and no eyes…

I crawled through the darkness. I was the darkness. I smelled of unliving pets.

‘A-a-ay, cross my cell with gold, mister planetman mister boss man…!’

A wide-hipped woman, like an elderly wonder-cleaner come to life, crawls over to me on all fours, dragging one leg behind her. She’s wearing a bikini and a puffy brown nipple pokes out from one of the cups of the top; she has some baubles from Megalopolis round her neck and grey-black hair held back with a red ribbon.

‘A-a-ay, I’ll tell your fortune, you won’t go wrong with me, you’ll learn what was, what is and what will be…’ She has a hoarse voice with a whining tone, and her mouth stinks of over-fermented cologne; it’s the same smell that the pre-pauser Matthew had. ‘…I see beyond the pause, I see before, I tell all, of that you can be sure… I also remove curses and correct defects in your…’ – she gives a long belch – ‘in your invector.’

‘Is there some kind of violation going on here?’ I bark
officiously
. ‘Conning people are we?’

‘My inner eye can never lie, every word is true…’

Slum witches. Normally I only see glimpses of them: fortune tellers and palm readers, naturally, avoid me, a man in a mirror mask. But this one is shameless and drunk enough to go up to an SPO officer.

‘…Every word is true, I will help you…’

…Their activities are considered illegal, but forgivable nonetheless. For the fights between mantises, stag beetles, centipedes, scorpions and hornets you might end up with a pause with subsequent correction. But they don’t normally punish the witches so strictly. Only occasionally, as a
warning
. In theory they’re innocent enough, they don’t do anyone any harm.

For the most part they are visited by their own kind – robots from the slums. People who have no other entertainment, no other prospects. The witches give them something different – ten minutes of excitement and romance and some hope for the future. Hope that after the pause they will be able to watch Festival Passions, have fun playing no deathers and live in crystal houses. For all that they don’t mind parting with a little
socio
-money. They don’t mind transferring the witch their monthly disability benefit…

But sometimes the witches are visited by clients from
well-off
areas. They are visited by naive little girls, dreaming of becoming the ‘voice’ of Festival Passions, the one who sings the title song. They are visited by unattractive women planning on casting a spell on the pedigree festival studs. They are visited by old failures who have dragged out their empty, boring lives pause after pause, so that they can finally get some comfort from an upcoming ‘turn in their invector’. They are visited by the curious. And those looking for adventure. And the simply gullible.

‘…what was, what is and what will be! Sterile procedure! I tell your future in contact gloves…!’

‘Ah, get lost. And stop violating,’ I grumble through my chatterbox, then put it on pause and ask: ‘How much?’

‘Only ten unics! Cheap…’

It really is cheap.

She beckons me with a finger and crawls off somewhere behind a heap of boxes, dragging her leg behind her.

‘Sit down,’ she points to a dirty blanket on the floor. I sit down.

‘Money up front.’

She gives me a number and I transfer ten unics to her
socio
account.

The witch sits down opposite me, rummages around the blanket and pulls out an open box of contact gloves, which have clearly been used more than once; she pulls some on.

‘Take off the mask.’ Along with words the sepulchral smell of rotting flowers seeps from her mouth.

‘No.’

The witch looks at me with a long, completely empty gaze, then nods.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘What happened before the pause. And what will happen afterwards.’

‘Clients rarely take an interest in what has already happened. What, did you not leave yourself a letter in Renaissance?’

‘You ask too many questions for a fortune-teller. Go on, do your job. Or give me back the money.’

She sniffs, offended, and stretches out a hand in a contact glove towards me. The glove smells of damp and earthy.

‘I’ll tell your future you won’t go wrong with me… I will count to three… One, two…’

She places her index finger on my mirrored forehead – in about the place where normal people have a
socio
slot – and freezes, her eyes puffing out like a prawn.

‘Right, let’s go again… For some reason I can’t see your past…’

‘…You just relax, my little planetman friend, don’t tense up… The main thing is to relax,’ she hurriedly paws my
forehead
in different places. ‘How about I sing you a song…? Sleeping are the calves and lambs, oo-oo-ooh… Sleeping are the newts, the rams, oo-oo-ooh…’

‘…Dreams of waters dark and slow, oo-oo-ooh… Dreams of bitter, future woe, oo-oo-ooh… So, right, now I’m going to count to three… When I get to three you and I will discover everything… One, two… three! Right, I see… You have no past. And no present. Hey, you are not even alive…’

The witch pulls her hand away sharply and shakes it in the air, as if she had burned herself on my mask.

‘Who is he?!’ she screeches in my face, then twists her neck awkwardly and shouts into the emptiness behind her. ‘He’s no planetman! He was not, he is not! Who is he…?’

This witch has lost it. I should never have followed her…

‘…Take your hands off me! Let me go, bastard!’

She starts jerking and tumbling about on the blanket, fighting off invisible demons. Then she rips off her top, screams and collapses on her back. She whines thinly and quietly:

‘He is the one we have been waiting for. The one we have been waiting for. The one we have been waiting for…’

I would really, really like to get up and leave, but for some reason I can’t feel my legs.

I crawl, I crawl slowly on my hands, dragging my numb legs over the dirty blanket.

The fortune-teller gives a hoarse, gurgling sigh as if she is drawing water into her lungs and says:

‘He has risen again.’

I died and rose again, in accordance with a precise plan.