The Race (30 page)

I tell Dodie I have letters to write, and we agree to meet again for supper, in the saloon.

I return to my cabin, where I try to write to Maud and find I cannot. Too much has happened already, too many new things that she will never see and never know about.

Already our lives are diverging, irrevocably.

Already she is like a figure in a dream.

~*~

The programme’s main facility in Kontessa was originally set up by the military. Everyone assumed it was a centre for espionage, which it was, at least for a while, but once the war was over that all changed. The programme remained in Kontessa because it was easier to maintain privacy. The programme’s ongoing series of experiments into human and alt-human language systems is the most complex and far reaching work in applied linguistics ever undertaken. That’s what Kay told us, anyway.

Kay always insisted that without people like us – Caine and Sarah and Garland and me – the programme would no longer exist. It would have been shut down in the aftermath of the war, along with all the other spy stations and radar communications centres and underground munitions facilities that were part of the machinery that kept the war running. Kay is one of those people who tend to talk about the war a great deal. Not that she is old enough to remember anything – it was over twenty years before she was born.

Peter Crumb, the Croft’s programme administrator, has a Thalian mother. Kay used to have sex with Peter sometimes, up in his study on the second floor – I know because I heard them. As Peter Crumb’s room was directly above our bedroom it was sometimes hard not to. The idea of dried up Peter Crumb exercising his cock used to make me feel queasy, but I found it interesting to imagine Kay with her legs apart, gritting her teeth and seizing her pleasure like a dog tearing at a piece of gristle. It cut her down to size, somehow.

Maud used to listen to them quite openly, even placing a glass against the ceiling so she could hear better.

“Can you even bear to think of it?” she would say. “The two of them rutting away like pigs in a mud bath?” She would make this token protest then dissolve into giggles. I think Maud might have had a crush on Peter Crumb for a while, God knows why. He was attractive in a way I suppose, with his high cheekbones and silver hair, kind of haunted-looking, but for me there was always something a bit creepy about him.

Once, while we were doing it, I told Maud she should imagine that I was Peter. I thought she’d squeal with disgust or burst out laughing but she came instead, almost at once, just like that.

~*~

Everyone knows that the smartdogs were first developed in Crimond, but it was in Thalia, at the facility in Kontessa, that scientists began to do detailed research into how smartdogs think. The original experiments all involved Petronella del Toro. She was already in her twenties when they discovered her, a lab technician working at the facility and the first of what the scientists liked to refer to as a new race of natural empaths. Petronella was able to communicate with smartdogs without the aid of an implant. The scientists recognise the value of the work they did with Petronella but nowadays they generally prefer to work with children. They say a child’s ability is the purest, because it’s instinctive rather than learned. Also, a child is easier to nurture and to train in the ways of the programme.

I cannot remember a time
before
I spoke with smartdogs – that’s why I was recruited into the programme. I’ve known about the programme since I was eight. Kay says we’re working to improve the world and I’ve never found any reason not to believe her.

Wolfe thought that Kay and Peter Crumb and the rest of them were all lying to us, which I guess is why he ran away. None of us knew what he was planning, not even Caine, who loved Wolfe like a brother. After Wolfe left, Caine changed. I don’t mean he changed towards the rest of us – he was always the kindest, least selfish person you can imagine – but he became more turned in on himself and less happy. He began asking questions about the programme, about the Kontessa facility and what it might really be for.

“It’s not just about the smartdogs,” he said once to me and Garland and Sarah. “There has to be more to it, or why all this secrecy?”

This was the summer before he went, he and Sarah. The nights were very warm, and throughout June until the middle of August it never quite got dark. I would wait until Maud was asleep, then sneak outside and join Sarah and Caine and Garland on the roof of the coal store. We’d take blankets up there, and cushions. Sometimes Sarah and Garland would smoke cigarettes they’d bought secretly in Asterwych. They were careful always to gather up the butts and hide them until they could dispose of them in a waste bin on their next trip to town. They knew Kay would go crazy if she found out.

Caine didn’t smoke. He talked to us about his ideas instead. We liked to listen to him because he was Caine, but I don’t think any of the three of us took what he said all that seriously. Somehow, Caine had got hold of the idea that what the programme was really about was the analysis and decoding of alien language systems.

The first time Caine used the word alien Sarah burst out laughing. When she saw he wasn’t joking, she turned the laugh into a cough, then quickly stubbed out her cigarette against the roof tiles.

“I’m not talking about little green men,” Caine explained patiently. “I mean alien as in different from us. AI is an alien language, so is computer code, so is anything non-human or even alt-human. We have no idea what else is out there and neither have the scientists. We’re all in the dark here – but we’re even more in the dark than they are, because they’re not telling us the whole story. They say we’re a new race and that they have a duty to protect us, but that doesn’t give them the right to treat us like children. Without us, there’d be no programme. Surely we have the right to know what all this is for?”

Caine was the eldest of our group. I’d also say he was the most gifted. He could speak three different languages fluently and knew the rudiments of half a dozen others. He never boasted about it though, or about anything. His parents were both killed in a house fire. I was stupidly in love with him for a while. I’m sure he knew, but he never said anything because he knew how terribly it would embarrass me. Caine would never hurt a soul. He was Caine.

“But even if what you say about the alien languages is true,” Garland said. “What’s so bad about that?”

“Nothing, necessarily,” Caine said. “It’s the secrecy that’s bad. If there’s nothing to hide, why not tell us the truth?”

“What’s the point of them, anyway?” I said. “What are we expected to do with these alien languages once we’ve translated them?”

I listened to the sound of my words, rising up through the August twilight like coloured balloons. Caine once told me that sound goes on forever, even when we can’t hear it any more. Every word that every person ever uttered is still out there somewhere, floating around in space, travelling onward forever. What if aliens really are out there somewhere, listening in to all our stupid conversations and wondering what in God’s name we’re on about?

“Language is power,” Caine said. “If you know what someone’s thinking, you’re already one step ahead of them.”

Two months later, at the end of September, Caine and Sarah were driven to Inverness, where they were put on a hopper flight to Thalia. I went off by myself, into the hills above the Croft, where I could cry without anyone knowing. When Maud asked me later where I’d been I tried to look blank.

“Just around,” I said, trying to make out it didn’t matter where I’d been, that it was just a day like any other. She looked at me strangely but left it at that, which was unusual for her – normally she’d go on and on until I was either forced to tell her or make something up. The one thing Maud hates most is feeling left out.

I know it’s hard for her, being Kay’s daughter and living at the Croft and being so close to us all but not really one of us. I would hate it, I think. I sometimes think that Maud was stronger than the lot of us put together.

Sarah promised she would write to me from Thalia but she never did. I never received a letter from her, anyway.

Kay said we shouldn’t feel hurt, that they’d be busy with work, and that we’d all be together again soon enough.

I wonder about that. Now more than ever.

Am I anxious about what I’ll discover?

Not really. Not yet.

~*~

When I told Dodie I didn’t remember my parents, that was the truth. It’s not the whole truth, though. I do remember some people who used to look after me, a woman especially. When I asked Kay about them she told me they were house-parents at the foster home where I was placed after my parents died. I came to live at the Croft when I was four. When I was six years old, Kay explained to me that my own mother and father were both killed in a massive tramway accident.

“There were fifty-six fatalities,” she said. Fifty-six, she repeated, as if knowing how many people died somehow acts as a proof that the crash really happened. I’ve searched many times for more information about the accident – in the library at Asterwych where there was free internet, in the microfiche files Peter Crumb hoards in his study – but I’ve never been able to find anything that matches up with what Kay told me.

When I finally confide my doubts to Maud she just shrugs and says my parents were probably politicals.

“Or perhaps they just sold you,” she adds. “Like with Sarah’s mother.” Her face goes slack and stolid, the way it always does when she knows someone is displeased with her.

She knows we never talk like that about Sarah. It’s almost a rule.

I change the subject because it’s easier than starting an argument. But I go on looking for information about the tramway crash and not finding it. And then, not long before her departure, Sarah tells me about my arrival at the Croft.

“You were so quiet,” she says. “You wouldn’t speak for ages, not to anyone. I remember you kept wetting the bed. Kay went mental.”

Sarah giggles at that, and so do I. This was all so long ago and I remember none of it. It might as well have happened to another person. Sarah’s mother runs a coffee shop in Asterwych. She set up the business with the money donated to her by the programme for giving up Sarah. Sarah used to go for supper with her, once a month. Sarah was an experiment, the only one of us who had an implant. Mostly we never thought about it. Caine was always trying to reassure her, telling her she’d have been the same as us anyway, which was something that felt true even if it wasn’t.

No one knows who Sarah’s father is, or was. I guess Sarah’s mother needed money very badly. Caine used to say you should never judge people for what they do, because most of the time they can’t help it. At least Sarah’s mother knows where Sarah is, and that she’s safe.

~*~

I do remember Limlasker, who was a smartdog, huge and white, with a black marking across his hindquarters, like a handprint.

Limlasker was taller than I was. He filled my world.

I used to hug his neck and listen to him thinking, his faraway, secret thoughts, like soft poems, like the special private words of a lost brother.

I never ask anyone about Limlasker, because when it comes to Lim I couldn’t bear to be lied to. I don’t want anyone to tell me he never existed.

~*~

At half-past six I make my way to the saloon. Dodie Taborow is already there, sitting at a corner table with Alec Maclane.

“Maree!” she calls. “Over here.” She raises a hand and waves, flashing her rings. Alec Maclane’s presence seems to have reinvigorated her. I notice also that she has changed for dinner. I wonder briefly if my own jeans and blouse are now out of place.

Alec Maclane regards me solemnly. His eyes are grey and rather beautiful. His formal way of dressing and general courtliness made me assume they were of an age, but now that I see him close to, I realise Maclane is quite a lot younger than Dodie, perhaps by as much as twenty years. This discovery disturbs me, though I would have thought Dodie more than able to take care of herself. Maclane has changed for dinner also – he’s dressed elegantly in a flamboyant paisley shirt and velvet trousers. He looks a little tired around the eyes, but certainly not ill. This so-called fatal disease of his is still a mystery.

“We’ve been talking about getting together a four for Quest,” Dodie says excitedly. “Alec is a county champion. Do you play cards at all, Maree? We’d love you to join us.”

“
Was
a county champion,” says Alec Maclane, gently correcting her. “That was ten years ago.” He looks down at his hands, which are plump and white and beautifully cared for. I am reminded of the hands of a conjuror we were taken to see once, in Asterwych, and for a moment the image of the conjuror seems to cancel out the image of Alec Maclane, to replace him somehow. It’s as if time has slipped backwards for an instant. It makes me feel dizzy.

In answer to Dodie’s question, I shake my head. “Only whist, and gin rummy,” I say. I do my best to smile. “I’m no good at those, either.”

Dodie looks disappointed for a second but soon brightens up again. “I’ve heard the Carola sisters play,” she says. “I shall have to look into it.”

I presume the Carola sisters must be the two elderly Thalian women. We eat supper, which is snapper baked in sea salt. I quickly become accustomed Maclane’s presence. He seems to exert a calming influence on everything around him. When the meal is over I excuse myself and go up on the passenger deck. I watch as the sky turns first to mauve and then to charcoal. The moon rises. I hear two crewmen talking quietly together on the deck above. I do not recognise their language – possibly it is Glasier. In a day’s time we will reach the Channel, the narrow strip of sea that separates Crimond from Farris. After a brief stopover at Charlemagne, Farris’s most westerly port, we will call at the Espinol port of Lilyat. After that we begin our journey across the Atlantic.

Between Lilyat and Thalia there is nothing but ocean. I lean upon the guard rail, looking down. When you stare at it for long enough, the ocean appears to become a unified body, greater even than itself, a massive single-celled organism with its own consciousness and will and desires. Perhaps it even has a language of its own, one of Caine’s alien language systems, something we might ascertain but not comprehend.