Tomorrow’s World (18 page)

I nodded.

I looked out of the window, not knowing how much of the misting was on the glass and how much was in my eyes. “She didn't make it past her second trimester,” I said. “I should never have let her try. I feel like I'm to blame for—”

My words were interrupted by the scraping of a chair. The next thing I knew Paula was sitting next to me and her arm was around me and my head was on her shoulder.

That wasn't the way it was supposed to happen.

That wasn't the way it was supposed to happen at all.

I
SEARCHED
P
AULA'S EYES FOR ANY SIGN OF MOCKERY
as we moved apart, but found none. I'd never opened up to anyone like that. I hadn't thought I ever would. Especially not to a Number. Especially not to Paula. What she did next surprised me as much as what I'd done; she gave my hand a gentle, reassuring squeeze. In a strange way, it was harder to deal with than mockery.

Then Paula pushed her chair back and walked over to the window. The rain was hammering off the glass hard enough to break it if it hadn't been broken already. Paula watched the rain coming down, and I watched Paula.

“If it doesn't let up soon we'll have to make a run for it,” she said.

I prayed for the rain to go off, because trying to keep up with Paula on a six-kilometer run would be almost as embarrassing for me as the way I'd just opened up to her. Fit as I am, I'm no match for a Number over that distance. I moved my chair back, meaning to join her at the window to see if there was any sign the storm was passing, but something jagged the back of my thigh and jogged my memory.

The diary.

I took it out, opened the cover, and fell headlong into another world. It was a world on the brink of collapse, a society on the point of imploding.

The first page read:

DECEMBER 26, 2024

I've never had the slightest urge to keep a diary, but Mike looked so happy when he gave me this I know I should at least make an effort to fill its pages. Besides, there's so much going on that's worth writing down. Not in my life, but in the world around me.

Take the other day, for example; there was a bit on the news about how it's the first time no one in Britain has placed a bet on there being a White Christmas.

As for Christmas itself, it was as melancholy a day for Mike as it was for me. He tries to hide it, but I know he feels it as much as I do. There are little give-aways, like his face when he hears the neighbors' kids screaming with delight as they open their presents. It's like a knife in the heart for Mike when he hears those sounds, and for me when I look at him as he listens to them. Our house is filled with love, but it's not filled with laughter and fun. This Christmas I think we both came to accept it never will be, that all the books of scientific advice for how to improve your chances of conception, all the following of old wives' tales and all the money spent on IVF has been for nothing. Mike was quieter than usual, and I'm sure that was why.

All day I had the feeling there was something he wanted to say. Sure enough, after a Christmas dinner of forced smiles and hollow laughter and more than a few drinks, he said he'd understand if I wanted to go to a sperm bank. There's as big a run on that kind of bank as there was on the other kind during the Wall Street crash ten years back
—
it seems more men than not have a critically low sperm count these days, so it's a classic case of demand increasing as supply declines, and price escalating as a result. It would mean remortgaging the house, but that isn't why I don't want to do it; I don't just want
a
baby, I want
his
baby. I didn't tell him that. I didn't have to. I just thanked him and shook my head, and he knew. And then, on the rug in front of the fireplace, we…

Well, that's not for a diary, even one that probably no one will ever read. Let's just say it was pretty special because there was a massive storm outside while we were… Anyway, the wind was so strong I thought it was going to tear off the new storm shutters Mike fitted after the last time the glass blew in. At one point there was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder directly overhead and the whole house shook. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, because it happened right as we…

Well, we laughed and laughed. And then suddenly we weren't laughing any more and I knew that, for all the talks we have when we console each other with the notion our lack of luck is for the best because of the way the world is going, we both hoped with all our hearts the thunder and lightning might be some sort of sign
—

I was about to turn to the next page when I was aware Paula had joined me at the table. Like me, she was caught up in those elegantly written words on the yellowed paper. Numbers read the printed word much more quickly than Names do, but they struggle with handwriting, so I asked, “I'm not going too fast for you, am I?”

She shook her head distractedly, reading the last few lines. A tear formed in the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. I brushed it away gently with the back of a finger, and when she looked at me I smiled.

She seemed bewildered by my expression, so I explained it to her: “You're beginning to imagine, Paula, and to wonder.”

And then she smiled, like a little girl, and did something I'd never seen a Number do. She blushed.

I think we both felt we were getting closer in more than a physical sense, and knew that whatever was happening between us was a fragile thing that might shatter if we tried to express it in words, or if we even looked at each other. So, instead, we looked at the yellowed pages of the diary and let someone else's words bring us together; a stranger who'd probably died before we were born.

DECEMBER 27

We ended up spending most of the day in bed. I'd like to say it was a purely romantic thing, but there was more to it than that
—
another power cut because of the storm. It was still windy outside, and too dark inside to read without straining your eyes, so there wasn't much to do except… Well, you know.

At first it was all very cozy
—
spending the day in bed, eating by candlelight. But it's the sort of thing that grows old quite quickly, and you can't help wishing you could flick a switch and the lights and videoscreen and computer would come on and you'd get your life back. It's all a bit spooky. I mean, you only used to get storms like this once every five or ten years, but now it seems there's never more than a few weeks between them.

We agreed to limit ourselves to one candle because they're getting so hard to come by. I'm writing by its flickering flame, watching the wax melt. There's not much left, so I better stop now.

Paula coughed beside me, and at the same time a catch at the back of my throat told me my own filtermask was spent. I spat it out in my hand and put on another one while Paula did the same. She got up to check on the weather. My filter had softened enough to let me speak by the time she came back. “Any sign of it clearing?” I asked.

She shook her head. She didn't look all that sorry, even though we were in danger of using up our filtermasks before we got back to the community.

The next few entries in the diary dealt with mundane things—friends coming over to dinner, a New Year party—so I flicked through the pages until something caught my attention. It was under the date
JANUARY 15:

Mike came home late again and in a truly foul mood. He'd forgotten his phone, so I'd no way of contacting him to find out what had happened. I have to confess I was torn between being worried and wondering if he's seeing someone else.

When he finally arrived I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that, because there was no faking his temper and frustration. It turned out he'd been running short of petrol and, knowing what the queues are like, he'd been putting off going for more. But by tonight he couldn't put it off any longer. He waited for over an hour in the queue and then, when he was within three cars of the pump, the station ran out.

I've got to admit he was in such a bad mood he was getting on my nerves, going on about how the US should have known after what happened in the wake of the Second Gulf War that starting a third one wasn't the way to end to all the petrol price rises and shortages. He's got a point, but I suppose nobody could have guessed just how catastrophic the backlash from the war would be. They're calling it the ‘Hydrocarbon Holocaust,' and some scientists are saying it's at least partly to blame for the way the weather's going nuts. One expert said it was the straw that broke the camel's back, which I suppose was appropriate given the Middle Eastern connection.

I flicked through some more pages, stopping at
FEBRUARY 7:

It's official: going outside is bad for your health. At last a government minister admitted that the mix of car exhaust fumes and the fallout from all the environmental terrorism in the Middle East has made the air dangerous to breathe. He said there was no cause to panic, because it only slightly increases your chance of illness. But the moment he said there was no need to panic, I knew we were in trouble. Lots of other people must feel like me, because after the government minister they interviewed a professor who predicted there would be a run on facemasks and those new domestic air-conditioning units that are supposed to purify the air as well as regulate its temperature.

This is a horribly selfish thing to say given the global nature of the problems, but I'm worried about my job in the camping shop. I mean, who wants to buy tents and hiking gear after hearing stuff like that?

FEBRUARY 11

Dear Diary, I'M PREGNANT!!!! I'll write more tomorrow, once it's sunk in. For now, I still can't believe it. I'm shaking, I'm laughing, I'm crying. I keep on picking up the phone to call Mike, and then putting it down again because I want to actually see his face when I give him the news. I never believed in God or magic or fate or anything until now, but I keep thinking it was Christmas night, and that the lightning had something to do with it.

FEBRUARY 12

I had it all planned: I was going to keep calm, let Mike get in and take off his jacket and shoes, then give him a welcome-home hug as usual and whisper the good news in his ear. But the instant he opened the door he knew something was going on (I suspect the fact I was standing at the far end of the hall, like I'd been waiting there for the last hour for him to appear, had something to do with it). He took one look at me and said, “What's wrong?” and there was so much concern on his face and so much excitement inside me that I just shouted at the top of my voice: “I'M PREGNANT!”

I've never seen ANYONE, let alone Mike, look so stunned.

And I've never seen anyone look so happy as he did in the moments that followed. I didn't have to walk down the hall to hug him because he ran down the hall to hug me. He hugged me so hard it hurt. And then he drew back in alarm. I knew it was the start of him wrapping me up in tissue paper and that it'll soon get wearing, but I don't mind. I don't mind at all.

There was a wistful sigh of the kind I'm used to hearing, but for once it didn't come from me. It came from Paula. I was more sure than ever that her emotional flaw was related to love in some way, and began to suspect it came bundled with a maternal instinct. Watching her, I got the impression she was seeing more than words on the pages of a diary. She was seeing a man and a woman, maybe even imagining what it was like to be the woman. It was only then I understood how big a cross her emotional flaw must be to bear. She'd feel apart from her fellow Numbers, aware she was profoundly different from them in some way—and yet she'd also feel apart from people like me, bewildered by our lack of logic, by our ability to dream and to feel a sense of wonder. I understood why she'd built a shell around herself and tried to be the archetypal ice maiden. And I understood why it would be almost impossible to keep the act up all the time, why she could maybe manage in public, but not in private as well. The need to love and be loved isn't superficial, is it? It defines your soul, which might be why Numbers appear so soulless.

Then again, I might have been reading too much into a single sigh.

I turned some more pages. The next couple of dozen entries described the hopes, fears and indulgences of any expectant mother at the start of her pregnancy. I turned those pages quickly, because so many of the words on them echoed things Jen had said. Each time I broke off from the pages to steal a look at Paula I saw things in her eyes that looked like what I felt in my heart when the pregnant woman's words chimed with Jen's.

The next entry I stopped at was for
MARCH 7:

I was right about my job. The boss said he has to let me go. I can't say I'm surprised. Between the winter storms and summer heat, air that's not good to breathe and water that's not safe to drink, who wants to go camping any more? Since the outdoors is increasingly being seen as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, he's going to go in for a new line of products altogether: face masks and protective rainwear, things like that. He needs to cut his overheads to a minimum and, since I was last in, I can't bitch about being first out.

The timing sucks, though. I suppose you need all your money at the best of times when you're expecting, and these are far from the best of times. Prices are going through the roof. Take food; they say there's less of it because of the bad weather, and it costs more to transport because of the fuel crisis. Mike said not to worry about money, but I can see
he's
worried.

The following entries were reviews of movies and books, a petty argument and a passionate kiss and make up. And then: