The Living (2 page)

There is no one on the street. It has not yet got dark, but the golden glow of the little lights built into the paving slabs already illuminate the evening mist and the delicate pink surface and fine white veins of the marble.

Ef’s boots leave black tracks of grime on the marble; an electronic wonder-cleaner, who stands frozen by the pavement wearing a bikini and rubber gloves, turns herself on with a quiet click, gets down on all fours and sets to work wiping off the marks. She crawls after them quickly, thrusting her rear in the air and making quiet, monotonous groaning noises. Clearly ones like her are meant to arouse a desire in passers-by to procreate and multiply.

Cerberus turns around and spits on the pink marble with relish. The cleaner dutifully drags herself towards his spittle with a cloth.

‘Get lost!’ Cerberus laughs and gives her a slight kick to the face with his sharp-toed boot. The cleaner freezes and, not unclenching her plastic lips, makes a sultry ‘mmmmhhh’: that is how she has been programmed to react when touched.

‘They’ve got decent beer at that place on the corner with Harmony Avenue,’ Cerberus says out loud. ‘What, you offline
or something?’

They turn left. Harmony Avenue is empty; the concretal sculpture – an enormous bronze-coloured palm – looks lonely, as if waiting for a handshake that it will never receive… Only half-mad Matthew, a tall, scrawny old man, is there, wandering around at the base of the concretion, shaking his little bell and crying determinedly: ‘He died for us! He died for our sins! Died for us!’

‘Do we have a violation here?’ Cerberus snaps at him. ‘Are we using certain words?’

‘Oh, he is the beginning and the end,’ Matthew howls. ‘And his name is… Zero! He died for us! He was burned in the sacred fire…!’

‘He died, died for us!’

‘Silence!’ barks Ef. ‘You’re lucky I want a beer. If not I’d have had you straight off to Correction!’

‘You, you blood-soaked hounds of hell! Acolytes of the devil! Men with mirror faces! Men without faces! Men without voices! Tremble, for he cometh! And his kingdom cometh! And his will will be done! Thus is thine twine swine! For you shall be cast down! And you shall be cast out! For he died for us! For he is the Saviour! And his name is…Zero…!’

…The beer has a hint of iron about it. It’s either the beer itself or the mask that’s stuck to his nose and lips that gives the drink this metallic taste. Ef runs the tip of his tongue around the inside of his cheek. No, it’s not the mask. His cheek, smashed from the inside against his teeth, is bleeding, that’s what it is.

Cerberus returns with a second mug of beer, falls heavily into the chair opposite, sucks up a third of his beer in one go and goes back to staring at him with the soft blank ovals of his mirror eyes. These eyes reflect Ef’s mirror eyes, which reflect those eyes which reflect… Ef starts to feel queasy, as if he were seasick; he lowers his head and looks into his glass. The foamy surface of the beer does not reflect anything.

Cerberus looks at the empty tables around them and moves closer just in case.

‘Don’t talk like that, Ef!’ Cerberus has clearly got nervous. He is so nervous that even the measured buzzing that the chatterbox makes from his voice sounds a tone higher. ‘Don’t talk about death. There is no death.’ Cerberus nods pointedly
at the chatterbox under the table and points at his temple as if to say, ‘You idiot, everything’s being recorded.’

‘There was death for him,’ Ef says wearily. ‘For Zero. You know very well he was born without an incode. And yesterday he died. He blew up a wonder-sunshine and died. There will be no more “voids”, Cerberus. He won’t be continued – it’s been confirmed by all the population control centres. It wasn’t a pause. It was death.’

Cerberus stretches his mirrored lips, still wet from the beer, into a smile and buzzes evenly: ‘The number of the Living is unchanging. The Living is three billion livings, neither by one shall it be diminished, nor by one shall it be increased…’

‘Yes,’ Ef says. ‘Very happy. It’s just I’m awfully tired. And my hands hurt.’ He struggles to waggle his bandaged fingers.

‘It burned you pretty bad?’

‘All the skin’s come off.’

‘Er, your face. And you keep touching your cheek. Maybe you’re burned all over. Take off your mask, I’ll have a look.’

Ef jumps out of his seat. Then sits back down.

‘OK, OK, what did you jump up like a flea for? It was just a little test. A joke!’ Cerberus buzzes apologetically.

‘So was it a test or a joke?’

Ef examines his reflection in Cerberus’s mirrored features and feels another wave of nausea. He knocks back some beer. Closes his eyes. It gets worse.

Darkness does not come, instead of darkness there is
structure
. It’s as if he was nestling his face in a squidgy termite mound… Hundreds of tiny rounded boxes, a mobile, porous mass. Most of the boxes are dripping with light – busy or
available
– and pulsing gently. The rest, murky-grey and immobile,
seem abandoned. Cerberus’s box also gives the impression of being uninhabited…

One of the available boxes swells up and bursts open, as if transformed into a greedy mouth.

He opens his eyes. Cerberus’s mirrored mask reflects his own mirrored mask which reflects Cerberus’s mirrored mask… His jaw drops and his tongue lolls out. He jumps up.

‘You what?’

‘I am going to be sick.’

‘So, has it passed?’ Cerberus asks with heartfelt interest. ‘Another beer maybe?’

‘I am overtired,’ says Ef. ‘I need to sleep. Alcohol is not recommended. Fresh air is recommended… No death!’ He goes towards the exit.

‘No death,’ Cerberus replies and belches carefully, covering his mirrored lips with his hand. The chatterbox turns his belch into a brief despondent howl.

Ef marks it as spam, though there’s no point: ‘the letter of joy’ has already been sent to a dozen friends from his address. It’s impossible to stop the process. He already knows that.

At that moment a new message comes:

Ef reads the letter to the end and notices that there is another layer between his face and the mask – a cold film of sweat. He marks the letter as spam, then deletes it, but memorizes every word. His heart beats in his fingertips, in his ears, under his Adam’s apple, as if it has burst into a hundred miniature hearts and his blood has scattered them through his body.

– the autodoctor chirps up.

Perhaps. But that’s none of your business.

When Ef turns on to Harmony it starts to rain – suddenly, without any warning splashes, as if an automatic disinfection shower had been turned on to full power.

The pale pink marble is soaked and turns the colour of raw liver. In the light of the pavement’s built-in lamps the raindrops look like clouds of golden insects swarming together at the scent of blood.

The raindrops tickle the naked plastic bodies of the electronic cleaners, and the cleaners groan dutifully. The raindrops drum softly against Ef’s mirror mask, bringing no relief. Bringing no freshness. If only he could take it off. If only he could take it off and feel the cool moisture…

‘Tremble, for he cometh… Tremble, for he cometh… Tremble, for he cometh…’ Lanky Matthew shuffles from one bare foot to another right on top of a lamp, in a golden column of light. Streams of gold pour down his face, his long grey matted hair and neck.

‘Men without voices!’ The old man comes to life when he sees Ef. ‘Men with mirror faces!’

Ef slows down.

‘No death, Matthew. You’re all wet. Go home.’

He would like the words to sound soft, but the chatterbox chews them up and spits them out as an order.

Matthew opens wide his misty blue eyes and bursts out in squeaky laughter, revealing his teeth, which are long and rotten like a horse’s. Then he whimpers and squats down. He trails a bony finger across the wet shiny marble:

‘Do you see what colour the ground
really
is? Do you see what colour it really is?’

‘Go home,’ Ef says again. The he turns off his chatterbox and adds, ‘I see.’

‘There are voices inside you,’ Matthew whispers, and his gaze clears up for a moment. ‘Other people’s voices, right?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘They are demons!’ Matthew clasps his knees in his arms and sways from side to side. ‘They are demons. Disconnect. Demons. Disconnect. Demons. Disconnect…’