“I told you, Ivan, I have met the Watcher.”
“So you said.”
“I told you, it is intelligent. Much more intelligent than you or me. It sees everything, it manipulates people. They obey its wishes but believe they are following their own. It has a course for this world laid out for centuries into the future. It now controls our destinies.”
“So I have heard.”
Eva gave a sigh. She hadn’t wanted to say this. “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Ivan?”
“What?”
“You turning up here?”
He deliberately misunderstood her. “Social Care sends lots of people like me into the RFS. It does not neglect its duty. Are you saying that you do not like me?”
Eva shook her head. “You know that I’m not. Ivan. You know I like you. I think I love you.” She slammed down her coffee cup. “Damn, I know I love you! That’s what I mean. I love you.”
She glared at him. He was blushing. He was embarrassed. But he was a strong man. He was strong enough to say it.
“I love you too, Eva.”
There was a big round stone in her stomach, cold and hard. She couldn’t believe he had ever admitted it. She felt as if she were walking in concrete boots, lurching along, jerking her whole body just to move forward. She felt her nose begin to run. It was either that or cry.
“And that’s just it, isn’t it? You were chosen just because of that. You were cast into here to hook me, so the Watcher could reel you back in with me in your arms.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Eva. Maybe—”
“It’s the Watcher, Ivan. It says it wants to do good! But I hate to think what that means. Look what it’s done to us! It honestly believes it is doing what is right, trying to snatch me back.”
Ivan waved a big hand in a dismissive gesture.
“I do not care. Whether it is real or constructed. I love you. So come with me.”
“I want to, but I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I will help you.”
“Against the Watcher? It is on a different plane to you or me. Beyond our grasp.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Ivan, I don’t think it even sees reality as we do.”
Something flickered in Ivan’s eyes, as if Eva’s comment had struck home.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said Ivan slowly.
“What?” Eva followed his gaze. He was staring at the screen. “What aren’t you telling me, Ivan? I saw the way you and Alexandr were looking at each other earlier. Those people we met the other day on the road here—the ones from Saolim—the way they spoke of this Narkomfin. What is it about this place, Ivan?”
“I promised I would not tell you, Eva.”
“Promised who?”
“Social Care.”
“When?”
“Before I came here. I didn’t know what they were talking about then. I just signed a contract, promising not to disclose information regarding the VNMs and venumbs of this region.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The VNMs below this building. The ones that climb the walls. The ones that you are so frightened of.”
“What about them?”
“I found out where they came from. Well, Alexandr did.”
“Where did they come from?”
“I’ll show you.”
Ivan fetched a featureless grey metal box and an induction screwdriver from one of the silver packing cases. He connected the box to the screen with a heavy cable.
“Shielded,” he said, and began fiddling at the box with his screwdriver. “This way no one but me can activate it,” he explained. On the screen a picture came to flickering life.
“This is not too far from here,” Ivan said. “This building sits practically on top of these caves.”
Eva guessed that the caves weren’t entirely natural. The Kamchatka peninsula, where the Narkomfin was located, was a region of volcanic activity. Still, the view on the screen appeared just too regular to be natural formation. Eva wondered if the underground flows of lava had been redirected by the Watcher, just as humans redirected watercourses by using dams. Had the magma table been lowered so that these glassy, shiny caves could float free? Had machinery been at work under here, boring and shaping the walls? Eva thought she could make out the circular patterns of sanders and drill bits evident on the glittering walls. But that was irrelevant: she was distracting herself, trying not to look at the things that filled the caves.
“Are they alive?” she asked Ivan.
“Alive? What is
life
? Look closer.” Ivan did something with his induction screwdriver, and the picture zoomed in. Now Eva could see what it was that was creeping and crawling on the floors of the caves.
“VNMs!” she exclaimed. “But what’s the matter with them?”
All of the machines were obviously disabled in some way. Maybe the legs down one side hadn’t grown properly; maybe the sense cluster located on the head section was missing. Eva watched as one rusty creature moving painfully across the rippled stone floor; she could almost hear the metallic squeaking of its unlubricated joints.
“It’s in pain,” she whispered, but her attention was then caught by a deformed spider, its body and legs all way too long, tip-toeing fragilely amongst the squirming mass of metal creatures.
“But what are they all doing down there?” she asked.
“I think it is someone’s idea of a joke,” Ivan said coldly. “This building houses the handicapped above ground. So where better to send all the hurt and lame machines but underneath it?”
“But that’s not funny at all.” Eva felt something cold grip her heart. The Watcher. Would he do this?
“I don’t know,” Ivan said, guessing her thoughts. “But this is not all. Look here. And here.”
He fiddled with his screwdriver again, zooming back out. Eva saw a robot feeling its way along the cave floor. Then another one. And another. A trailing crowd of orange robots, roughly humanoid, all shuffling in the same direction.
“They are searching for the next power mast,” said Ivan. “You see them, painted yellow? They are turned on in sequence according to a regular period.” Eva saw the masts, dwarf versions of old-fashioned pylons.
“Why do they move so slowly?” asked Eva.
“Look.” He zoomed in on one robot.
“What’s wrong with its eyes?” asked Eva, noticing the cloudy lenses set in the smooth orange head.
“The glass was deliberately contaminated during manufacture. That robot is almost blind. Look at this one here.”
“It seems normal. Why is it moving like that?”
“Faulty connection between the processor and the body. Its brain cannot properly control its limbs.”
The camera ran along the trailing line of orange robots, and Eva saw they had all been tampered with in some way. Their limbs would be stiff and inflexible, or one would be shorter than the other, or they would appear perfectly sound but unable to move properly. The robots shuffled and stumbled and twitched and dragged themselves along a channel in the rippled stone floor, heading for the skeletal metal shape of the yellow pylon.
“They can only hold an hour’s worth of charge,” explained Ivan. “Those that don’t make it to the pylon in time die.”
“What happens to them?”
Wordlessly, Ivan directed the view to the motionless orange body of a robot. It was slowly and inexpertly being taken apart by a group of rusty VNMs.
“But that’s horrible,” said Eva.
“I know. Look at that.”
One of the robots had now reached the pylon. Several black rubber cables hung there, a heavy male socket at the end of each. The robot unhooked the cable with its too short arms and stood, waiting.
“What’s the matter with it?” asked Eva. “Oh, I see.” The robot’s charging socket was located low down, where its navel would have been if it were human. The robot’s arms would not reach that far.
“It’s waiting for another robot to come and help it,” said Ivan.
Do you know what recursion is, Judy? It is when something causes itself to happen. A function that calls itself. Eva and Ivan aren’t real; they’re your dreams, Judy. Your life calls theirs into existence. Is someone calling
you,
Judy? The FE, perhaps? Are you merely another subroutine that is being run by a higher intelligence?
“Is everything in that cave handicapped in some way?”
“I think so.”
Eva felt dizzy and nauseated from peering at the stream of orange figures, the glassy smoothness of the cave walls. She looked away from the screen into the yellow evening sunlit room.
“That is happening right now, somewhere beneath our feet?”
“Yes—or something like that. This is a recording.”
“Does anyone from this Narkomfin know about it?”
“Some do, but they’re not telling anyone what they know.”
“Why not?”
“Let me show you.”
The picture on the screen jumped several times. Ivan was searching for something. A dark, distorted pyramid appeared on the screen, a tumbled mound of earth. The picture rewound quickly, stopped, gained clarity, and Eva realized what she was looking at. She gasped, placed one hand to her mouth.
“That’s Stephen,” she whispered. The dark pyramid was revealed to be Stephen Kerry slumped in his wheelchair, drool running from one corner of his mouth to soak the sleeve of his black jacket. “He lives on the floor just below.”
Silver and grey and rust-colored VNMs could be seen gathering around the wheels of Stephen’s chair. They were looking up at him. Stephen was staring back in horror. In the background of the image, orange shapes shuffled ever onwards to the next pylon.
“How did he get down there?” asked Eva.
“There are shafts hidden throughout this whole building,” said Ivan. “This building itself is an outpost of the world below. Every night, the handicapped are carried down to live in the world below.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Who can second-guess the Watcher?”
“So it is the Watcher doing this!”
“I don’t know for sure! But who else?”
“But
why
?”
“I can only guess. But I have often wondered. What if a handicapped person was raised in a world of the handicapped? Would he be normal?”
“Normal? What do you mean by normal?”
Ivan laid his hand on her forehead.
“You’re burning up. I think you have had too much to drink, Eva.”
Eva felt the coolness of his hand. She was having trouble speaking without slurring. Slowly she formed a sentence: “I think you’re right, Ivan. I think we should go outside.”
“Good idea.”
“I’m sorry. After you went to all this trouble preparing the meal.”
“No trouble.”
“It was delicious. But I feel sick. Too much cream in my coffee.”
“Drink some pepper vodka.”
“No. That will curdle it. Let’s go outside. Take a walk.”
She took one last look at the screen, doing her best not to think about what she had witnessed there.
Ivan took her hand and led her to the door.
Eva looked up through the tunnels in the clouds to the darkening sky above.
“Do you feel better?” asked Ivan.
“Every time we look up, it is the opening or closing parenthesis on a recursive block,” declared Eva, swaying.
“I don’t understand.”
“Look up there. Clouds rising higher and higher like a stack of pennies thrown into the sky, and beyond them the first stars are appearing. Up there I see the contrails of the airplanes from the outside world. The Watcher is closing in on us, Ivan. The Free States won’t last much longer.”
“So come with me when I return home.”
“No. While I stay here I am safe.”
“Safe here? With what you have seen lies beneath your feet?”
Eva swayed a little. How far down, she wondered? How far down to those caves?
If they were real, of course. No—she shunted the treacherous thought to one side—Ivan wouldn’t lie to her. Would he?
They heard the chatter of approaching voices. Five people in wheelchairs approached, two of them being pushed by others. She studied them carefully. Stephen Kerry was not amongst them. What would she have done if he were?
“Hello, Eva. Hello, Ivan.”
Eva held on to Ivan as she greeted the newcomers in return. She still felt sick and dizzy, and she felt the stiffness in his body as she clung and realized why when she saw who was walking behind the party. The priest, the man who annoyed Ivan so.
“Hello, Pobyedov,” she called. “Say hello, Ivan,” she muttered.
One of the young men in the wheelchairs began to laugh. “Here we go again,” he called. “Listen, we’re out for an evening stroll. We don’t want to hear you two arguing!”
“I wasn’t going to argue,” said Ivan.
“Nor was I, Wilson,” said Pobyedov. He knelt down by the young man in the wheelchair and offered him a drink from a little silver hip flask. Wilson took a nip, gave a satisfied gasp, and then offered the flask to Eva and Ivan.
“No, thank you,” said Eva. “I’ve had enough.” She squeezed Ivan’s arm, urging him to be polite and accept the offered drink. Reluctantly he did so.
“Whisky,” he said. “But why is it sweet? This is like a child’s drink, Wilson.”
Wilson laughed again. He was a big man, with strong arms and a broad chest. Only his legs were thin and useless.
“It is, it is!” he said delightedly. “Which fool thought of putting vanilla in whisky? And yet you drink black currant vodka and are happy, Ivan. Pobyedov, I like this stuff!”
There was a gentle thumping sound. One of the group had started to spasm, one arm beating regularly against her head. Long strands of drool ran down onto her chest. Her father leaned down and spoke to her softly.
“We’re going to go inside now,” said Wilson, pretending not to notice the woman’s behavior. “We thought we might go to Manny’s bar later on. Maybe see you there?”
“Maybe,” said Eva.
They pushed their chairs on down the uneven concrete slabs of the road. Pobyedov stayed with them, and Eva wished that he hadn’t. Not tonight of all nights. She felt too nauseated for an argument.
“I hear you are going back home in two days,” said Pobyedov.
“I am,” said Ivan.
“I am grateful to you for coming here,” said Pobyedov. “You’ve made a big difference to the residents. The heating would not be working but for you and Alexandr.”