White Queen (10 page)

She was covered with vermin, and grossly unselfconscious about dealing with them. Which gave him an insight into the nitty-gritty of starship life, and made her seem more human, not less; cabin boy on the Santa Maria. Except that there was no Santa Maria. There were three landing parties (Brae had the facts right); there was no mothership. “Agnès” became evasive when he asked to see the vessel in which she and her companions had arrived. Eventually, she admitted that it had vanished. It would rematerialize when it was needed again. She seemed to say that the journey from the home planet had taken a matter of hours. She couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell him more. People in the other parties could possibly provide the tec-spec: “Agnès” was in constant contact with them, but not by any means that Johnny could share. Sometimes she’d stop, “break transmission,” and get that inward look; and he’d know she was communing with her friends.

He asked her to point in the direction of her native star in the sky. Could she show it to him, if they met on a clear night? That was a trick question. Johnny knew the state of play on habitable planets. He knew that this teenage cabin girl had made an unimaginable journey.

“Agnès” laughed.

He had a feeling that anything she said in his mind could be taken at absolute face value. So maybe the star she hailed from was further even than he’d suspected, out of reach of any form of detection, beyond the light-cone. It could be taken for granted that they had faster than light drive. Wormholes, some way of tying knots in the galactic spaghetti. This was no surprise. It was a truism that the aliens who landed, whoever they were,
had to be superior.
Or else we’d be visiting them.

On the playback, he tried to see his alien with innocent eyes. It was bizarre to see how her lips didn’t move; at the time, the experience of
talking to her
was so natural he didn’t notice. It made him feel queasy. The global audience had better not react the way he had done first time.

He pondered over how they’d get past the initial barrier of disbelief. One cannot prove telepathy on television. Tissue samples would be the real proof, but that suggestion ran slap into what he’d have called a
taboo,
if she hadn’t seemed far above such human twitches. But everything would be fine, so long as she agreed to let them use the tapes. She’d almost promised that it would be okay very soon. Very soon, Agnès the alien would make her first tv appearance.

He and Braemar played with the hoax option, using it against each other. But he knew that she knew that he knew, that what they had here was Johnny’s life, his freedom. His hands would start to shake whenever he thought of the value of those interviews. Without Braemar he couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t afford to buy even a flat-lens camcorder on his pension, and there was no market for antique books in Fo. If there had been, he’d been too sunk in misery, before Braemar arrived, to take any practical steps at all…. He owed her.

But Johnny was the one who had the contact.

The Welcome Sight had suffered an influx of Polish construction workers and become rather rowdy. It was early morning, but the muted roar of an all night party was still coming in from the compound. He sat up and reached for his bumbag, smoothed out the crumples and stared at the picture of Bella. His own face looked back. Izzy was there too, and all the generations, but he saw mostly Johnny—in the set of those unfortunately rather teeny black eyes, the width of her brow, the shape of her mouth. The natural timidity, which he had bullied into an eejay’s bravado. That ineradicable look of sweet-natured honesty, which was going to be a lifelong trial to her; and a decided asset. In his heart he revisited Upper West Side: a quiet wintry street, swept and neat, below the partition’s windows. He held a sobbing baby in his arms, in the purple light of a snowy afternoon. Bella’s been poking her fingers through the shoji screens again, a cute but infuriating trick. Every time he yelled at her it hurt like hell: but comforting her was so exquisite. My God, this is addictive. Here is where it starts, the feedback system, the whole pain and pleasure loop.

I’m doing this for you, baby.

The skin of his mind crept. He could stand the bugs in her hair, the gap in her face. But the other stuff! He could amuse himself with pseudo-scientific notions of how telepathy might work but nothing made sense. He was like some ancient chemist, rambling in the wilds of unknown toxicity. Like Marie Curie, catching herself a cancer along with a Nobel prize. The alien used his own manner and tone to speak without words: used phrases that had no place in her flat, formal English. She was in his head, what was she doing there? And
why Johnny?
Possible developments occurred to him: none pleasant.

He lay back on the grey sheets that smelled of Braemar—vanilla and roses, and the musk of sex. Repetition had blunted his sense of her astonishing generosity. She liked to live dangerously, that was all. She was a wicked woman. She didn’t understand that to handle that miserable cam, after what he had been, hurt something deep inside him. She was teaching him to live with his disability; to accept that he was never going to get better. He could hate her for that. But her preferred means of intimate protection, sliding over him, so cool. Her sex, closing around him: pump, pump, explode. Now that was totally unproblematic.

To talk dirty and live chastely had been natural to Johnny. It was the image: I act tough because I do a tough job, but you can invite me into your home, America. Johnny buried his face in the pillow, groaning with delight. He was supposed to be taking her out for breakfast. She was late.

Her phone lay on the bed, where she had dropped it. Braemar sat looking at the inhabited shell. The almost-living thing in there was a computer. A thing that accepted information, processed it and pumped it out. This version, which was not animal, vegetable or mineral despite its nicknames, was no advance on the best of etched crystal in its capacity for fuzzy logic and human-like connections. But it was fast and robust; untroubled by power surges, dust, magnetic storms or solar flares. Best of all, it could rebuild itself if strange data came along that needed different pathways.
Incompatible
was a word that had no meaning for the Blue Clay. Braemar didn’t care about coralin’s wondrous properties. She had none of Johnny’s reverence for Machines, big or small. But she wasn’t immune to superstition. Inexplicable things happened. A phone could deliver messages twenty years old, tell you on its own account that your mother had just died. The global network could be haunted.

It’s alive. It bit me.

Alas, no randomness. The news was real.

She chose the red dress. He had accused her of bringing these outfits to Fo just to drive him wild. It was true, of course. He might as well get the benefit. She applied makeup. As she leaned to the glass she saw her scarlet breasts lifted and offered like parted, inflamed buttocks. So cheap, all these pretty clothes and things, so lovely and cheap. A sensible female executive tries not to think about where it all comes from, the Poor South; the giant live-in sweatshops in her own back yard. But fear nags, and female fear has its remedy, older than humanity. When in doubt: present.

If those Eve-riots continue to escalate, she thought, young Johnny’s going to have trouble keeping his trousers fastened, on the streets of London or Paris or Strasbourg.

The clamor of Fo rose up through her open balcony doors. No air-con before noon: L’Iceberg conceded so far to the idols of the times. She stood in front of the mirror. One more time. It had been no trouble, none at all, to keep him thrilled to the core. Poor Johnny! A mixture of guilt, contempt and remorseful affection stared her in the face. She usually had herself in better control. She altered the surface, without further recourse to paint, until there was nothing left but a costume and a mask. The costumed clownette will save the world. If no other reason makes sense then for your sake, you idiotic child.

Now to return the young animal to the wild, none the worse for his adventure.

She met David Mungea in the street. He was due at a Development Meeting with Ex-Mitsubishi (Civil Engineering), he was bound for Fo’s conference studio. She walked beside him, edgy as always when alone with any man except an acknowledged lover.

“What shall I bring back for you from Flanders? A wreath of poppies?”

“I’d prefer chocolate.” Her eyes flirted for her. “And make sure it’s cocoa, none of this “nature identical” rubbish they try to sell me in Fo. What will you tell them this time?”

David was Johnny Guglioli’s ally over environmental issues. When he was very drunk he tried to convince Johnny of this, with little success. Yet it was true. In the Asaba of the future, if David had his way, people would travel by foot, a few by tilt-rotor. Non-freight traffic would go down the light lines. Freight to remote areas would be by airdrop,
faute de mieux.
What could be more virtuous, in this less-is-better world?

“I’ll think of something. We Africans must be pragmatic. To save our future we must use what we have, not what we don’t have. And one thing we have plenty of—”

“Is bribery and corruption. David, you are shameless.”

“Yes! However, there are no more roads into what’s left of the forest.”

She laughed. The Minister ogled her high fashion, in purely friendly appreciation.

“How about your ‘business’ my dear. Is the therapy working?”

“It’s working fine.”

Johnny sat on his bed, barefoot. His face fell.

“Hi, David.”

“I must go,” said the Minister, bowing theatrically over Braemar’s hand.

“That dress is disgusting,” said Johnny affectionately. “I’m surprised Mungea didn’t tear it off you in the street.”

“I’ll be frank with you, so am I. I’m amazed at the stunts I get away with.”

“You’re late.”

“Someone called me.”

She shut the door. The room was sticky and ugly. The staff at the St Maurice were more tolerant than Johnny would credit. He was misled by the catch-all paranoia of the poor. L’Iceberg wouldn’t have thrown out a paying guest’s
homme libre,
even if there was a slight risk of his leaving marks on the electronic furniture. But Johnny was more comfortable here.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “You tear it off.”

It was magic sex. It had been magic from the start, and it only improved: this time more than ever a headlong, seamless passage from intense arousal to explosive completion. He was getting better at lasting her out, too. When the fun was over he lay exhausted, her cheek in the hollow of his collarbone. Overhead, the sleepy drumming of the rain. The works social was quiet at last. He missed his net. He had liked to stare up into it. But she said it stifled her, had insisted on an electronic bug killer. She simply could not understand how he felt
about buy nothing that you don’t need:
no more than she could understand how he felt about quarantine.

Replete, as always he became uneasy. It was surely only abstinence (and innocence!) that made sex with her seem so great. She was too old, too cynical, too conservative. She had never properly explained what she was doing with a deadly weapon. She was only interested in the aliens as a route to big money. They each held tape copies of the interviews, but the maker was hers. Braemar’s position was immeasurably stronger. He’d be a fool to trust her, and he didn’t.

“Braemar, we need to talk.”

She propped herself on one elbow, her face appearing softened by loose hair, makeup prettier for being a little blurred. He was so glad she was there that his base suspicions vanished. “I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m truly scared. A voice on a phone proves nothing. Maybe they
do
have Bella. And I don’t know what “Agnès” is doing to me: how she’s changing me.”

Braemar tucked a fold of the sheet between his sticky body and her own. “Johnny, trust me. You are
not
becoming a mind-reader.”

The tone, motherly and jeering, instantly flipped him back to hostility.

“Okay Ms. Wilson. Let’s be nasty. I’m starting to feel pretty strange about this partnership. We fuck, but are we even friends? You don’t believe anything I tell you: and I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me—”

Running feet came pelting down the dirt floored alley to Johnny’s door. The door flew open. Two ten year old boys, half the hotel’s junior management team, burst in. They yelled with laughter and leapt backwards, covering their faces. Behind the kids was David Mungea.

“David,” Braemar adjusted her sheet, with composure. “You’re back soon. Where’s my chocolate?”

He spread his hands, looked into the empty palms with surprise. “It seems I left it in dreamland. Gone in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. My friends, I didn’t mean to disturb you so dramatically. I was passing, and I thought of two people I knew who were not near a tv. The aliens have landed. We are no longer alone with God in this universe. They are in Krung Thep, at the Eve-riots Conference for some curious reason. Better still, my dear newshounds, some of them are also in Fo.”

He was very amused.

“So now I know how the milk got into the coconut, eh? You should hurry to the studio. But you won’t be alone!”