'No!' Hurriedly he covered her mouth with the flat of his hand. 'Don't say it.'
She twisted away. 'Why? Why don't you want to hear?'
'Words scare me. They're so potent . . . so loud. Mock if you like, but somehow I feel the universe is listening, just waiting for a chance to fuck us over.' He couldn't be that superstitious, could he? With all the girls he'd slept with, candyfloss declarations probably sickened him by now. Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because he added, 'Isn't it enough to know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you?'
And then, here in this cold and dark and dreary little church, it was suddenly easy, and the chancel floor served them very well, and no words could have been as articulate as the promise of this double concerto. Laura lost all sense of the dark backward and abysm of time once Zach was, at long last, inside her. A consummate musician, he understood the fierce and tender emotive depth of a lento movement rather than the dazzling flourish of vivace.
Afterwards they lay quietly together, wrapped in their shared warmth, until the chill from the stones beneath the threadbare carpet raised gooseflesh. Laura kissed his tattoo before getting up to dress.
'You didn't pretend?' he asked.
'No.' She thought of Owen. 'And I never will.'
'Only music comes close to this kind of ecstasy.'
* * *
Laura awoke from a place so flooded in light that her eyes were swimming with tears, and they continued to tear as she squeezed them shut in order to sink back into dream. She'd been hang gliding towards a yolky sun low on the horizon, its rich, almost oily colour spreading across the griddled sea beneath her. Ten minutes. Or even five of that wondrous flight, before the shell of sleep cracked open on the blunt edge of morning, on greasy dishwater light, and school.
'Tea?' Zach said, a mug in each hand.
Fully dressed in cords and black jumper, though barefoot, he sat down on the bed, then set the mugs on the bedside cupboard when he saw the moisture on her cheeks.
'A bad dream?' he asked, his fingers gentle. She could hear the misgiving in his voice; the unvoiced question.
'No regrets,' she said.
He picked up his mug and sipped, then watched her through the rising steam.
'Tears of happiness,' she said. He said nothing, his lengthy silence drawing the words up like water from a deep well-cold, clean, unadulterated. 'I'm so afraid, Zach. I don't deserve to be this happy.'
'That's your uncle's voice.' He kissed her forehead, his hair falling forward to tickle her. Still damp, it smelled of the fruity shampoo she preferred to his usual sort. 'Do you want some breakfast? I've got to leave soon.'
'What time is it?'
'Just gone six.'
'Why so early?'
'After breakfast, I'll drop you off at school.'
Laura closed her eyes. 'I don't know . . .'
'It won't get any easier. And you promised your dad.'
Laura squirmed to a sitting position and reached for her tea. She blew across the lip of the mug before drinking. 'You don't go any more.'
'You know that's different. Anyway, it's not quite true.'
'What do you mean?'
'I've been attending some lectures at university.' A diffident shrug which wouldn't have fooled a three-year-old. 'Some music and literature stuff. A philosophy class. And if there were a chance in hell of escaping Fulgur, I'd love to do a performing degree.'
'A professional musician?'
'Yeah, why not? If I'm going to dream, I may as well dream big.' His grin reminded her of a child's crayon drawing in which the mouth was lopsided, the colour smudged.
Setting her tea aside, she bent forward and took Zach's mug from his hand, then parked it next to her own. She would never tire of his heartbeat, which always beat faster than her own, beat with passion, beat with pain, beat with a raffish syncopation, beat against the thin conduits of his veins, against the battens of his breast, beat against the traps and wings and secret catwalks of his life, against his velvety skin, beat right through the iron curtain of her shame, a lifebeat both wilful and terrifyingly fragile.
'Getting up from bed this morning was one of the hardest things I've done,' he said, feeling along her chain for the seal, which he liked to play with; foreplay with, she thought with a private little giggle. She could feel his heartbeat quicken when she slid her hands under his jumper to the small of his back. 'Laura, they're preparing a new run. I have to be there.' But he didn't release her, and as her hands moved lower, his heart clapped wildly in its dark red plush-lined theatre just, it somehow seemed, just for her.
As he dragged off his jumper, her eyes fell on his tattoo. 'What kind of run? When are you finally going to stop hiding what you do at Fulgur?'
This time he drove recklessly, as though pursued. She couldn't help wondering if her questions had turned his lovemaking so feverish. 'I'm sorry,' he said, resting his head briefly on her shoulder. 'I was much too fast for you.'
'I told you I wouldn't pretend.'
He was quiet for a moment, then lifted himself away. Laura held her breath. Most lads-most people-prefer lies to an unwelcome truth; even Livs had never got full marks on this, Laura's own Secret Assessment Test.
'Then I'll just have to learn, won't I?' Nobody had tweaked her hair like that since primary. 'Now come and shower. If we hurry'-a crooked smile-'if I help you wash the hard-to-reach spots, we'll have just enough time for some toast and coffee. And for me to tell you about my job.'
* * *
Fabio waylaid Zach outside the laboratory. 'You're wanted upstairs.'
'Now?' Zach checked his wristwatch, a gift from Josh originally belonging to his father. Watches were crack again this year, but mostly the plastic models that changed colour with your mood (and often contained illicit mood-altering components). 'I'm scheduled for a neuro prerun in a couple of minutes. They get pantsy if sequencing time is lost.'
'They'll have to wait. It's the Big Boy himself.'
'Randall?' Zach asked incredulously.
'Comb your hair.'
Eyes laughing, Zach applied his fingers so that his hair became even more flyaway. 'Not unless he's invited the Almighty to the party.'
'Be careful what you wish for.' Fabio spoke grimly, without his usual air of amused tolerance. He gave Zach five minutes to inform, if not quite mollify Andy and his assistant, then hurried Zach through the corridors to the directors' lift.
'Since when do you have this kind of clearance?' Zach asked.
'Shut up, will you.'
* * *
'I'll speak with him alone.'
Fabio hesitated, unable to conceal his reluctance, but there was nothing he could do except send Zach a warning glance, nod suitably (deference not being part of his repertoire), and shut the door behind him. Randall indicated an austere leather sofa, before which stood a low, glass-topped table. Zach had expected a much more opulent office, not this white-on-white box, spacious of course, but bare of any decoration whatsoever, and perplexingly windowless. It reminded him of a marble or granite mausoleum, not a working space, and with a mausoleum's hush, except that the vaults of mighty princes were decidedly more ornate.
Zach took a seat and crossed his legs, then stared at the tabletop. Intricate patterns formed, dispersed, and reformed within the glass, varicoloured patterns which seemed oddly familiar though he couldn't quite place them. After a few seconds he leaned forward with a soft exclamation. He'd spent some time fooling around with a recently developed program which mapped music in multidimensional space. Unless Fulgur were hacking into his computer, there was no way that the first movement of Laura's sonata could be simulated by accident.
Randall came to stand on the opposite side of the table. 'Like my little toy?'
'What is it?'
'Think of your last fuck.'
Though not easily flustered, Zach coloured and set his lips. The table, however, immediately produced a very tolerable image of his bedroom, his bed, and this morning's interlude; of Laura. He slammed a fist against the glass, damaging it not one whit.
'How dare you spy on me! Where have you hidden the cameras?'
'Do you really imagine we need to use such crude surveillance methods?'
'Then how-?'
'Cybil, let's give him another demonstration.' Randall waved a hand towards the far wall, which became a transparent obsidian pane, rain-spattered. There must be a fierce storm, for the droplets were immediately fleeing like a panicked herd across the glass, fleeing and merging so that all illusion of singularity was lost. In the extreme quiet of the room, which Zach had assumed was soundproofed, it was disconcerting to hear the wind shrieking, the rain stampeding against the window.
The scene changed.
Two figures stood in silhouette before an open but modest fire, so that the rest of the room remained in shadow, though Zach could make out the corner of a worn chesterfield which reminded him of the one in his childhood home-the same cracked brown leather, the same missing buttons. This time the glass was crizzled, as though the window had become pitted by the storm; the tableau slightly blurred like a memory. Not the voices, however.
It's OK, I've arranged it, the man said.
When will we be able to leave?
Tomorrow after dark. We daren't wait any longer.
And you're sure nobody knows? the woman asked.
We have to trust her. The man threw something into the fire, which flared for an instant. There's no other way to keep them from taking Zach away from us.
Zach cried out and rose to his feet, knocking his right shin sharply against the edge of the table. His eyes filled with tears. By the time he could see clearly again, the wall had reverted to the mute indifference of stone.
'My parents,' Zach managed.
Randall dressed conservatively, but there was always one element of attire which slyly proclaimed him to be above the dictates of corporate fashion. When he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto a nearby chair, Zach caught a glimpse of embroidered in red on the lining; not even Randall was egomaniacal enough to pair it with an A.
'We're not monsters, Zach. They were foolish and short-sighted, your mother and father. They tried to gamble with your life.'
Zach strode to within a few centimetres of Randall's face.
'What's going on?' His voice shook. 'Where the fuck did you get that from?'
Randall hadn't risen to his position by cowering, nor by yielding to threats, implicit or otherwise. 'Sit down. Or this conversation is at an end.'
Suppressing an urge to bounce Randall's head off his pristine wall, Zach moved back to the sofa but remained standing. He gazed down at the tabletop. For whatever reason, Randall didn't repeat his request for Zach to sit.
'You'd like a dispensation, wouldn't you?'
'I haven't thought about it.'
'No? Well, she's not bad-looking, and with all that swimming I bet she's in terrific shape. Has she done any skiing, do you know?'
Zach kept his eyes fixed on the table.
'Or perhaps I should ask Edward's lad? Owen, I believe his name is. He doesn't seem to mind sharing.'
'I hear there's even a club for it.'
For a moment Randall looked disconcerted. 'That many?'
'Auger baiting. The new executive sport.' Zach gave Randall a tight smile. 'Now what do you want in exchange for a permit?'
Randall cocked a hand into a trouser pocket, his own smile bestowed like loose change on a busker. 'I'm relieved that it won't be necessary to give you a tedious lecture in microeconomics.'
'You haven't answered my question.'
'We know there are other simus like Cybil here. An enterprising lad like you ought to be able to find one or two of them for us.'
On the surface of the table, somewhat to the left of centre, a splotch of red colour appeared-almost the shape of a familiar face-followed in seconds by others. Swiftly they spread and ran together, as if the glass were bleeding from a welter of internal ulcerations. Within a short time there was only redness. In the same way, an ugly thought rapidly haemorrhages from a pinprick suspicion into a full-fledged stroke of rage.
'This thing'-Zach snatched a breath-'this toy, you called it, it's alive?'
'A hybrid, using certain cognoscens neural structures.'
'Whose?'
'Someone you wouldn't have known, he died a while ago. A shame, really. Mateus was a promising lad, very promising indeed. In many ways you remind me of him.' A lightpad on Randall's desk flashed, but after a glance he ignored it. 'Except, of course, that you don't have his special talent. The ability to read minds is exceedingly rare. I hardly need tell you how valuable it would be-how appreciative we would be-if our neuros had the opportunity to work together with another such simu.'
For all his finesse, Randall had a great deal in common with a simian like Tim. This man was running Fulgur?
'Are you saying that Cybil reads my mind?'
'To a certain extent. She's only a prototype, you see, and not as stable as we'd like, though quite good with infantile and repressed memories. With trauma. Which means that some of our current theories about the workings of episodic memory-both encoding and retrieval-are unsound, or at least incomplete. The clinical applications alone would be invaluable.'
The table had reverted to pattern making, silvery hexagonal lattices rotating through a blue-tinged space. Zach circled it, grateful for the simple blocking techniques Max had taught him, but wary enough to keep an eye, surreptitiously he hoped, on any changes in the glass. If there were anything of Mateus left in this Cybil, she'd never betray a fellow simu.
