Cronix (16 page)

"She must be crazy. We should call the police."

"No. There was something she said.” He shook his head. “We can't."

Shushay and Cindy were looking at him expectantly. "Sorry, it's something ... I can't tell you." He nodded his head at the screen. "She said she'd kill me."

"But honey, that's all the more reason ..." Shushay started, but Glenn shook his head no again.

"Come on, let's get on to Holsten."

***

Oriente stood transfixed, his mouth agape. All around him, the vast stone pillars of the Temple of the Apex rushed heavenwards, suffused in the dreamy light of a thousand stain-glass windows. The soaring columns were carved to resemble enormous trees bursting through the lofty roof. Climbing down the pillars – or was it up? – were carved hominids, descending from the trees to evolve into men, or perhaps climbing towards humanity’s distant future. One of the ape-men hung precariously by an arm from an overhanging branch, while others clung to the trunks and peered down, as if scanning the savannahs they and their children would have to traverse so that their descendants could one day reach the safety of the Orbiters.

Across the marble flagstones, a family group of Australopithecines –mother, father and child – timidly ventured into the open space of the temple, adventurers in the great game of evolution, frozen in time as they scouted the hall for unseen predators.

Lola nudged Oriente and pointed at the carving. “That’s why the locals call this the Temple of the Ex-Ape.”

Oriente smiled. At the far end, where an altar might have stood in a real temple, sat the godlike, bearded figure of Darwin himself, chin tilted in contemplation.

“It’s beautiful,” Oriente whispered. “Utterly stunning.”

“You don’t have to whisper sweetie,” she said. “This place is a celebration of life. If there’s anything to worship here, it’s us. Or them,” she said, nodding to a group of young locals smoking in a corner, joking and flirting. One of the boys started a mock fight with another, the girls studiously ignoring their antics. Beyond them, by the door, stood Oriente’s bored minder.

“It is a place of contemplation though,” said Oriente. “That is the purpose of art, and this place is a wonderful work of art.”

“They do a lot of stuff in here, and not all of it might be classified as art” said Lola, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “They have lectures here, trying to convince the locals of the benefits of post-humanity. But most of these kids just come here to make out in the recesses. Hell, I’ve come here for sex on more than one occasion. Sometimes you get these group sessions going…”

It was fitting, Oriente guessed, that a temple dedicated to evolution should be used for copulation, but still he felt slightly embarrassed by Lola’s utterly forthright attitude to sex. He wondered if this outing might possibly be construed as a date. She had offered to bring him here after he had his operation. “Always good to see a place through a fresh pair of eyes,” she said. “And nobody’s got eyes fresher than you, sweetie.”

Lola was smiling, apparently at the memory of good times in the temple. “Of course, if you want to get really kinky, you can go down to the stews of Deptford. They’ve got some really wild stuff going on down there. Cronixes and shit. Maybe we’ll add that to your tourist itinerary when you’re feeling stronger,” she said, flashing him a look that could have been either playfully innocent or deeply lascivious. That was, he had discovered, the wonder of Lola. It struck him he’d been out in the woods way too long, with the decent, dull people of Dorking.

***

The house was on a small rise in what had once been wheat fields, now reverted to pasture. The walls were fresh-painted white clapboard, with a grey shingle roof. A front porch reached out to welcome the visitor, reminding Glenn of the painting in his hospital room in Holsten City. It could have been this very house when it was still run by the old grain farmers whose children had opted for jobs in the city.

There was a brand new barn on the right of the house, and a recently built brick garage on the other side. The road from the turnpike was pitted by icy puddles that cracked beneath the wheels of Glenn's car.

He pulled up in a muddy yard with space for a half dozen vehicles. There was no sign of life, save a crow cawing. Glenn was both relieved and disappointed. According to his map, this was the house Shushay had told him about: he just wasn’t sure he wanted it to be the right one.

He gave the iron knocker on the door a tentative rap. There was a bell too, which made an old fashioned chime deep inside the house. He peered through the glass strip on the front door, at a parquet hallway and wooden staircase. There was nothing to indicate this might be the place she lived. And nobody was home, that much was clear.

"Hello," he shouted, just to make sure. No answer. He walked round the side of the house, by the barn. It was a long, high structure that could easily have accommodated a minor industrial enterprise. Glenn wrapped his knuckles on the aluminum siding. Out in the endless fields, a kite warbled over some doomed rodent. At the back of the house, the shades were drawn, even though it was daytime. In the chinks between the cloth he could see sparsely furnished rooms, bookshelves and an occasional couch or easy chair: modern, but comfortable.

Glenn wandered from window to window: a spacious kitchen at the back, refitted and shiny, a single wineglass on counter by the sink, its bottom ringed with the dregs of a red and a faint lipstick smear on the rim. A study at the side of the house, with a leather-topped desk covered in files, a computer monitor staring blankly at bookshelves stacked with periodicals. Glenn tried not to cloud the window with his warm breath.

He emerged again at the front of the house. He had no idea what to do. Leaving seemed such an anti-climax, yet what else was there to do. There was a sense of relief too, that she had not been here after all and he could forget the whole unpleasant incident. He strolled back to his car, telling himself to just put it behind him. Let it slide.

It was then that he noticed he had a flat on the driver's rear side.

“Goddammit,” he hissed. He hated any form of car maintenance, and his lame hands made the prospect of even a simple task like changing a wheel a Herculean labor. He fumbled the jack out of the trunk, painfully unscrewed the spare from its bracket. As he fitted the jack, he saw the front tire was also flat. He stared at it, frozen, feeling suddenly exposed.

He straightened up, looked all around him. Nothing moved, just the kite making its high-pitched peeping sounds over the long grass. Very slowly, he moved to the other side of the car. Both tires there were flat too. He wanted to run, but his legs seemed to be made of some unstable element that could be muscle or might just as easily be melting ice.

Just walk away, he told himself. Like a dangerous animal, just walk away slowly and hope it'll leave you the fuck alone. He started to move, peering over his shoulder. The road ahead seemed monumentally long. He'd never get anywhere by foot, especially not in this cold. He remembered what the doctor had said about not exposing his hands to extreme temperatures. Another run-in and he'd lose his fingers.

"Fuck," he said out loud. He stopped walking, turned around. Make contact. Human contact, he told himself. He walked back towards the porch.

"Hello?" he hollered, trying to control the tremor in his voice. “Anybody there?”

***

It had been a long day of talking, and the last thing Oriente felt like doing was going to Poincaffrey’s house for dinner. But the professor had invited him, as well as Lola and Swaincroft, and it was an honor he was hardly in a position to decline. Several other academics had been invited. To his relief their host warned them, as he served sherry and aperitifs, that Oriente had talked quite enough, and the evening was a purely social occasion.

The food was excellent, and a variety of wines were served by the professor’s butler, an elderly mortal with a fixed morose expression. As the dinner table conversation progressed, Oriente felt a little like a lost child among these Eternals, with their enhanced memories and tales of the fabulous worlds they'd inhabited. He wondered if Quin, who really
was
little more than a child in their eyes, felt the same. If so, he did not show it. And Poincaffrey proved an affable host, steering the conversation to subjects of general interest and prompting his other guests to regale Oriente with stories of their own.

“Dean Wattiki, you were in an expedition to the Zone a few years back, weren’t you? Didn’t you find a community that used to kill themselves in the mistaken belief that they would go to heaven in the Orbiters?”

The Dean nodded, resting his knife and fork on his plate. “Indeed we did, professor. A most unusual and, I have to say, tragic case, even by the standards of the Zone. It was way down south, near the canal…”

“You went to the Zone?” cut in Lola. Oriente had noticed her trying to play footsie under the table with her embarrassed beau, who was doing his best to ignore her and hold up his end in the conversation. Oriente, who often had trouble taking his eyes off her beautiful face, hadn’t thought she’d been listening.

“That was very brave of you,” she said.

Dean Wattiki smiled, and held up a cautionary finger. “Not so brave, my dear Lola. Scientific expeditions have special permits to travel with a soul pole in tow. And of course, a well-armed escort, to ensure we don’t actually have to use it.

“Our project destination was in a plateau largely cut off jungles and the canal. These indigenous tribes were relatively recent arrivals, descended from a criminal gang expelled from the Orbiters perhaps a few hundred years ago. It seems these exiles left no written culture and their descendants quickly lost any clear idea of where they hailed from. However, they had retained one crucial collective memory, namely of the Orbiters, and the idea that death would free them from this physical realm and transport them magically to paradise. It had become a central tenet of their faith.”

Swaincroft was nodding sagely, no doubt having read Dean Wattiki’s paper on the subject: he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Lola, however, was frowning.

“So they killed themselves? But that’s awful.”

“As I said, it was in many respects a tragic case,” nodded the Dean. “But also a fascinating culture to study.”

“What, you mean you didn’t
stop
them?” Swaincroft shot her a reproachful look but she took no notice.

“We were there in a purely scientific capacity, to observe and record. To have alerted them to the central fallacy of their belief system would have destroyed an entire culture that was hundreds of years old.”

“It would have been a grave breach of professional ethics,” agreed Poincaffrey. “Harsh as that may sound.”

“And of course they would have died anyway,” chipped in Porter, taking a slug of beer and smacking his lips. “There are no chips or priests in the Zone. And at least they died believing they were going to paradise. If they never find out that it’s not true, then it may as well be, as far as they are concerned.”

“But…you could have told them, you could have helped them understand. Maybe once you’d explained to them what it really meant, the authorities could have arranged to get them chipped, so they could leave the Zone. Aren’t they human beings too?”

“
Too?”
said Porter. “You seem to have forgotten the Tarpan-Winkowitz Act, Lola. Technically, we ceased being
human beings long ago, before their ancestors were expelled from paradise. Certainly we are closely related, but then they are closely related to chimpanzees too.”

Lola let out an angry growl. “Maybe we think we are more than human. I think we can be
less
than human at times. What we lost on the way was empathy.”

Swaincroft looked positively embarrassed by now, but Poincaffrey stepped in, trying to resume a comfortable academic tone.

“Empathy arose largely from the knowledge of a shared fate,” he said. “It is only natural when one does not share another’s fate, then that sense of commonality declines.”

“You mean people just don’t give a shit if they’re up there in heaven and everyone else is down here on Earth?” said Lola. In ensuing silence, Swaincroft studied his empty plate.

Poincaffrey nodded his head and raised his glass to Lola. “Touché, my dear, you hit the nail exactly on the head, I fear.”

Afterwards, riding back to the clinic in Swaincroft’s car, Lola was still fuming. “Goddam snobs. I mean, where do they get off laughing about the quaint habits of the locals?”

Swaincroft glanced at her nervously. “They didn’t mean it like that. Don’t be so aggressive. They’re good people.”

“Oh, sorry, did I embarrass you in front of your friends, Quinn? You of all people should be angry with them.”

Oriente could tell she was drunk. He sat quietly in the dark of the back seat as they rehashed an argument they'd clearly had before, and which arose not out of any particular disagreement but from deep differences of character. She was fiery and emotional, while Swaincroft was cerebral and muted, having retained, somehow, an essential Englishness despite the fact that England bore so little resemblance to what it had once been. Ironic, Oriente thought, that the immortal Lola should be so downright earthy, while Quinn, who'd spent all of his short life here, should be so abstract.