Descent (24 page)

‘So why isn’t this common knowledge?’

‘Like I said – the can of worms thing: race and all that rubbish. And of course for quite a lot of people it doesn’t matter because they don’t want to have kids anyway.’

Now she’d brought it back to where I didn’t want to go. Back where she’d started, in fact. Our problem is that we’re different species …

‘But it matters to you.’

‘Yes.’ She paused and added, ‘It matters to us.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ I said. I refilled our glasses. ‘You know what our real problem is?’

‘Drinking too much?’ said Gabrielle, raising her glass.

‘There’s that,’ I allowed. ‘But no. That’s a symptom. Our real problem, our problem, right, is that’ – I drew a deep, ragged breath – ‘you’re too focused on having kids, when really we have so much else.’

‘Like what?’

‘Each other. Our jobs.’ I waved around at the room. ‘This.’

‘Yes,
this
,’ she said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re a lazy bugger.’

‘What? I work hard, I do my share in the flat.’

‘
You
work hard? Hah! You’re coasting. Riding the up wave. Recycling press releases for any company whose new shiny you’ve spotted on your morning trawl. Hell, you don’t even need to trawl, you have spider apps to do that for you.’

‘Who cares?’ I cried, stung. ‘It brings in the dosh.’

‘Yeah, for now. And enough for a cosy little couple flat. That’s what I mean by lazy. If you worked at something where you actually used your abilities, we could afford a proper house.’

‘Meaning,’ I said, ‘one big enough to have kids?’

‘Yes, dammit! Yes! I sometimes think you don’t want us to have kids. You certainly don’t act like you’re expecting to have to cope with having kids any time soon.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’

‘And meanwhile, I’m working my arse off for my PhD, and scraping a bit on teaching and side jobs, all so I can earn more in the future, whereas you’re just tarting your knack for glib writing around every high-tech fly-by-night cowboy company that needs its Japanese-robot-written hype turned into proper English. How long can you keep doing that?’

‘As long as it takes,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Gabrielle. ‘You’re a hack, and a flack, and there’ll always be younger and hungrier hacks after that sort of job. You’re stuck in a fucking comfort zone where you think because right now you earn more than me, and that’s enough to furnish a wee poky flat in fucking Leith, that’s enough to be going on with. Well as far as I’m concerned it fucking isn’t.’

‘Is that what this is about?’ I said. ‘Money? Location, location, location?’

‘No, it isn’t. It’s not just that. You’re not contributing all you could.’

‘All I could to what? All my money goes on this place and on us.’

‘I’m not talking about contributing
money
. You’re not contributing to the
cause
.’

‘The cause?’ I was puzzled, then I remembered. ‘Oh, science.’

‘Yes, science! The war of knowledge against ignorance, all that, remember?’

‘Yes, I remember,’ I said. ‘And I’m right in it. OK, it’s a war and you’re a soldier on the front line.’ I spread my arms. ‘And yes, I admit it, I put my hands up to that one, I’m just a hack propagandist, a war correspondent at best. But come on, be fair. We can’t all be scientists, just like we can’t all be soldiers. Us hacks and flacks have their place, keeping up morale, entertaining the troops—’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s you, all right. You’re like those big-mouthed pro-war singers and actors who enlisted – oh, how brave of them, knowing full well they’d get sent straight to the rear.’

‘That’s so fucking unfair,’ I said. ‘I’m doing what I do best.’ I shrugged. ‘Sorry that’s not good enough.’

‘Oh, take your self-pity and stuff it up your arse! Nobody’s
asking
you to be a scientist—’

‘I thought you just had.’

‘That’s because you weren’t listening. What I’m saying is, you’re not using the abilities you
do
have. I know fine well they don’t run to doing actual science, though to be honest I’m not sure that isn’t another of your lazy excuses for not doing the work when you were at school. OK, so you ended up doing English. You weren’t even willing to break out a bit and do Divinity as an open atheist. Now that would have been smart, that would have been a unique selling point in the fucking intellectual labour market. But OK, you get English first-class honours, whoop-de-doo and bully for you. You know where most people with that kind of degree are working? In business and in government, that’s where, not in some fucking ivory tower and especially not in fucking dead-end freelance hackwork that any junior reporter could do if they’d paid attention in science class.’

‘Well, exactly,’ I said. ‘They didn’t and I did, and that’s what gives me an edge, that’s what gets me commissions.’

‘Yeah, dribs and drabs, which add up to more than I get at the moment but three or four times less than what other people your age with degrees are getting, and five times less than what I’ll earn when I get my PhD.’

‘Well, I don’t see myself doing well in
management
.’

‘Don’t say it like it’s beneath you, your dad’s in management and so’s mine.’

‘A lot of good that did them in the depression!’

‘Yes, as it happens it did do them a lot of good! They kept their jobs! The point is, you won’t be earning any more in five years, ten years than you’re earning now, if you’re lucky enough to earn that.’

‘Hey, come on, I’m building up a good rep in science journalism.’

‘Don’t you see?’ she said. ‘That’s only a seller’s market at the start of a boom with lots of new tech coming on stream. What about when all that shit is routine?’

She mimed covering a yawn, which set me off on a real one and wishing I could just go to bed.

‘Christ, by the time that happens I’ll have written a fucking book. Stop worrying.’

‘I can’t stop worrying. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the worry that’s making it difficult for me to conceive.’

‘Oh, so all that stuff about separate species was just bullshit, was it?’

‘No, it fucking wasn’t, but the worry and the tension aren’t helping at all, and neither is your attitude.’

‘
My
attitude? Fuck’s sake, if I’d known—’

‘Known what?’

I didn’t heed the warning in her voice. ‘Known that you’re so obsessed with money.’

‘I’m not obsessed with money,’ Gabrielle said, ‘and I know what you were about to say. Well, if I’d known you were so lazy and inconsiderate, I might not have either.’

‘It’s not just money,’ I said, plunging on. ‘It’s this thing about kids. I mean, can’t we just accept that maybe it’s not going to happen for us, at least not without—’

‘I am
so
not going through IVF.’

‘Oh, me neither, that was my point, but look, what I mean is can’t we just accept it then? That there’s more to life than having kids? What I said, before we got off on this about money – and you’re right, I could look for something more stable and secure, sure, there’s loads of jobs. I could find a better job. I’m happy to do that now I know it’s worrying you. I’m sorry I was so dismissive about it just now, yeah, I mean I take your point. But the other thing I said, I meant it. We have each other. We
love
each other. Isn’t that what matters?’

As I said that I leaned towards her, and reached out a hand. She swiped it aside. The gesture seemed to me far more contemptuous and dismissive than Gabrielle perhaps intended. Looking back at it, replaying it in slow motion again and again, all I see is a moment of irritation. It also stung my hand quite hard. In another moment I’ve revisited many times more than is good for me, I drew that hand sharply back, above my shoulder, poised to swing and hit.

Gabrielle’s hand shot forward like a striking snake, grabbing my wrist as she jumped to her feet. Off balance, I rocked back on the sofa. My foot, in helpless reflex, jerked forward, fortunately missing her but kicking the coffee table. Glasses fell and rolled. There was a reek of spilled whisky.

Gabrielle, still gripping my wrist, glared down at me, her face filled with shock and fury.

‘You were going to
hit
me!’ she cried, as if she could hardly believe it. ‘You tried to kick me!’

‘No, no,’ I pleaded. ‘I was just – I pulled my hand back.’

‘You raised your hand to me,’ she said, in a duller voice, as if coming to terms with something terrible. ‘And then you lashed out with your foot.’

‘That was just—’

‘Oh, I know what happened.’ She let go of my wrist, and stepped back, and away. Her eyes welled up.

‘I used to love you
so much
,’ she said.

She wrenched the ring off and dropped it on the table, where it came to rest in a puddle of whisky.

In the morning we had a tearful reconciliation. It was like an inverted image of the morning after our handfasting in the tent on Orkney. We couldn’t believe that it all hadn’t been a nightmare; that we had said such wounding things to each other. She surprised me by slipping her ring back on. I had such an epic hangover that I felt my relief and pleasure and renewal of hope only as a diminution of misery, still below zero on the felicific calculus.

That night wasn’t what ended it. What ended it was all the other nights like that, before and after. One day in October I came home mid-evening from a trek around the syn bio labs of Aberdeen to find her gone. She had taken all her stuff except some opened scent bottles, seldom-worn jewellery, and used cosmetics from the top of the dressing-table; and below it half a drawer’s worth of short nighties which she’d seemed delighted with when I’d bought them for her.

‘Whole thing sounds like a total bummer,’ said Calum, after I’d given him my side of the story a couple of weekends later, over Sunday lunchtime drinks in a quiet corner of a Greenock pub. ‘Jeez, man. She seemed so nice.’

‘She is nice,’ I said. ‘More than nice. She’s lovely. I’m still in love with her.’

‘Yeah, man, I understand. Fuck’s sake, man. So what are you doing about it?’

‘Apart from trying to contact her so often she’s fucking blocked me? And then knocking on her folks’ door and getting a severe warning from her old man about the legal penalties for harassment and assault?’

‘Assault?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That incident I told you about …’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t actually—’

‘I was very firmly told that lifting your hand to someone counts as assault. Following through with it and connecting is battery.’

‘So she told her da about …?’

‘Aye. No doubt her account is a bit more graphic than mine, and no doubt that’ll grow in the telling. Plus, her dad’s … well, he’s never been exactly hostile but I can bet he’s willing to believe anything bad about me. But honest, Calum, whatever you hear on the family grapevine, I never hit her or even really or intentionally threatened her.’

He closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I believe you, Sinky. Fuck. I just cannae believe I’m hearing you saying that. That things could get so fucking awful between you and Gabrielle that the question even comes up.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘I can hardly believe it myself.’

I hadn’t said anything to him about Gabrielle’s speciation hypothesis, partly because (despite having found it well supported in the literature, if you knew what to look for and where to look) I didn’t accept that it might be applicable to us, and partly because mentioning it would re-open the matter of his tall tale, over which I still felt aggrieved for reasons not then entirely clear to myself. Apart from that I’d told him everything, omitting only some of Gabrielle’s more hurtful accusations.

Calum puffed thoughtfully on his electric meerschaum, then gave me a sympathetic look and a clap on the shoulder and got up to order another couple of pints. The pub wasn’t one we’d been in before. It was new and so achingly cool it didn’t have a television screen (it being taken as read that anyone sophisticated enough to drink there would have a phone and/or iGlasses). Blatantly artificial shapes and colours made it likewise obvious that every piece of wooden furnishing – the wall panels, the tables, the chairs and stools, the bar – was of synthetic wood, and every advertising poster changed every few minutes to make perfectly clear it wasn’t paper although was designed to look like paper. In content and style the posters would have reminded my grandparents of TV ads from their youth in the Atomic Age: miracle clothes that didn’t need washing; miracle detergents for clothes that did need washing; streamlined electric cars; pipes and cigarettes cool as a mountain stream and healthy as swimming in one; happy families tucking into a fragrant, tasty joint of roast beef that had cooked in ten minutes and had never been part of a cow; longer-lasting batteries demonstrated by genuine footage of dogged little robots marching across the floor of a crater on the Moon … Sometimes the anti-irony aesthetic of New Modern or New Serious or whatever the fad calls itself at the moment becomes so self-conscious it flips over into irony, occasioning much self-conscious soul-searching among its more (or less) self-aware practitioners. But then it was all new and exciting, like the pub.

Calum returned with the beers. ‘Do you want to talk any more about it?’

‘Nah,’ I said. I shrugged. ‘What more can you say?’

Calum nodded. ‘Fair enough. Any time you want to talk some more, just call.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. We both knew perfectly well that I wouldn’t. ‘How’s work?’

‘Great,’ said Calum. ‘Put your glasses on and I’ll show you.’

He put his own glasses on, and conjured space in the space between us: a four-sided wedge of vacuum and atmosphere, wide at the top in low Earth orbit and narrowing to a point at the ground.

‘At StrathSat we’re developing what amounts to real-time Google Earth – well, maybe no exactly, but that’s the pitch. It’s called SkEye.’ (He spelled it out, wincing.) ‘There’s already enough microsats up there tae give near continuous coverage – orbit’s ninety minutes, after all, and there’s swarms ae the wee fuckers now. Sae far, sae standard, but the clever bit is integrating and updating the satellite pics wi coverage fae the other swarm we’re seeing mair and mair ae, the drones. Micro and nano copters. The idea is, we combine that wi micro and what you might call nano payments – we pay the drone owners a wee slice ae dosh for every minute or second ae info we skim fae them, and our customers pay us for what they see, and a wee bit mair tae take control ae a drone – and a lot mair but still affordable now and then tae an ordinary punter tae take control ae a satellite – and integrate it all together and with existing maps and plans and augments and so on, and we sell it as an eye in the sky for everyone.’