Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  “Of course it did,” I snap. “How else do you think I got all of this?” Unfortunately, my gesture encompasses not only this kitchen, this view, and the late-period Jackson Pollack on the wall, but Luke as well.

  “Just asking.” His hand trembles slightly as he pours my coffee and juice. He’s so delicate, so gentle, so sensitive, despite the pecs, the abs, the cock. It was what I used to like about him so much. No, I correct myself, still like.

  “Sorry, Luke. It may not seem like much. But, in its way, it’s hard work.”

  He smiles. “I’m sure it is.”

  “No. Come on. I know there are people starving, babies dying, as we speak. But it’s commerce, and it’s what I do, and I take a pride in it, and it leaves me drained.”

  He leans over. Brushes his fingers across the stubble of my throat. Then down. I shiver. I can’t help myself. But it isn’t his touch. And it isn’t the group, either. It’s something more. Something else…

  I’m still considering what that something might be as I shower while Luke sees to the dogs, and the puzzle lingers even as we set out on a long, brisk hike to make the most of this time before the fine autumn weather runs out. The yelps of Joe, Adolph and Mao ring along the canyon as they bound ahead. Luke calls and whistles after them. The air is brutally bright and cold.

  People might wonder what someone as effortlessly rich and successful as I am actually does to fill up their days. I sometimes wonder about it myself, at least in an abstract sense, but hour by hour, and lover by lover, and city by city, and acquisition by acquisition, it’s never been a problem. The truth is that great wealth, at least if you have a modicum of intelligence, looks and health—which can all usually be bought—never grows stale. At least, it hasn’t for me. And there’s always the group, my smartcube, the thrill of the trading floor. And there are days like this with Luke and the dogs, as well.

  We climb to a high ridge with a fine drop from a platform of rock looking down and across an arrangement of forest and mountain I don’t think I’ve ever seen this way before. Luke unfolds his backpack and lays out a rug, then delicious, steaming, combinations of hearty yet delicate food. The Araujo Syrah, of course, matches it perfectly; he knows my cellar by now far better than I do myself. The dogs vanish for a while, but then they come racing up, shaggy and wet, with blood bearding their grinning muzzles. They must have tracked and killed a deer, somewhere down there in the forest, and the thought strikes me that Joe, Adolph and Mao make up a kind of gestalt of their own, they’re so instinctively and effortlessly good at what they do. They run off again after Luke has thrown them a few scraps. Then he packs things away, but leaves out the rug, and touches my thigh, my arm, in quiet invitation, but I shiver again, and shake my head, and gaze out across the vast, shaded drop.

  That feeling. It was there, or at least somewhere, back on the trading floor and in my smartcube as the rest of the group were withdrawing into their separate lives. A chilly sense, to use a very old-fashioned phrase, as if someone was walking over my grave. I smile. Shake my head. This is so blatantly ridiculous, I could almost share it with Luke. But of course I can’t.

  The sun is already setting by the time we get back to the house, which looks like some strange fractal lantern on its promontory high above the river. Inside, though, all is warmth, and Luke and I kiss and snuggle to make up for my earlier coldness as we eat toast beside the fire, and I call up some Monteverdi and he pours out a couple of glasses of ice-cool Imana Soave while the dogs loll around us and I page absently through today’s feeds.

  All the usual stuff. Society scandals and political fudges. Atrocities and wars. That, and floods and all the other natural disasters we don’t think of as natural any more. It’s important that I keep up with this kind of stuff, but also that I try not to engage or develop any kind of conscious expertise. Or, heaven forbid, search out market tips and trends. Still, I’m almost expecting some kind of story to be emerging from the Congo, perhaps a big new mining strike, but nothing comes. Soon, I’m simply drowsing in the heat of the fire and the soothing presence of Luke and the dogs. My group. Our group. Far away from those fizzing figures on the trading floor. When Luke finally nudges me, I jump.

  “Hey…” My spine seems to crawl as he kisses my mouth, my ear. “Weren’t we supposed to be going down to the city tonight to see that friend of yours on her yacht?”

  About time we took the Maserati out on a run, and it’s Luke’s turn to drive. Which he does well. He’s a sportsman, I think, at heart; he’s certainly built like one. Except, as he confessed when we first met back in Bruges two years ago, he’s only really world class at one particular, and generally non-competitive, physical activity. Seemed a neat come-on at the time, but now it feels rather sad. Dressed as he is now in that new tux I got for him last winter when we were staying at the Four Seasons in New York, and driving this car as expertly as he does, he could be the new James Bond. But all he does is hang out with me, and work out, and fuck. That, and I suppose he sees to the dogs, stocks my cellar, keep an eye on the house, and cooks all those excellent meals. Quite a lot, really, come to think of it, and he certainly knows how to charm. But I still feel rather sorry for him as the glow of the Maserati’s displays show off his noble profile to such good effect. And I know that feeling sorry for whoever I’m with is generally a bad sign. I should nurture him more. Get him to develop fresh interests, friends, skills…

  “Penny for them.”

  “For what?”

  “Your thoughts.”

  “Sure,” I say. Then add, although I hate myself even before the words have come out. “Although they’re worth a great deal more than that.”

  The forest falls away as the road winds down toward the glow of Seattle and the glitter of Puget Sound.

  There’s a motorised skiff, if that’s the right term, to bear us across the water to Bea Comyn’s yacht. More of a tall ship, really, a vast white clipper blown in from days of yore which she uses as a base to roam the world, although tonight it’s all hands on deck to dish out canapés and the champagne. A band is playing. Some beards-and-beads combination of North African and Celtic. Bea probably owns them, inasmuch as it’s possible to own people. She’s a collector, a connoisseur, an acquisitor. We all are.

  I mingle, listen, talk. An investor, yes, in the world markets, and it still surprises me how people don’t greet that statement with more distaste. After all, it’s basically just gambling. Or it would be, if our group didn’t do what we do. Instead, they ask me if I’ve got any hot tips, and I waggle my smile at them, and shrug. Better just to drift, wander, absorb. Be me. Whatever and whoever that is.

  I linger at the fringes of an argument over some upcoming cage fight where both participants are so enhanced they can scarcely be thought of as human, so what does it matter if one of them dies? I indulge in a flirtations conversation with a woman in a green dress that shows off the pink tops of her nipples to good effect about the best lobster restaurant in Pike Place. Uptown highrise Seattle is bathed, ghostly as tombstones, in the light of the moon.

  No sign yet of Bea, and I can’t find Luke, either. Then I see him at the deck’s far end—what do you call it? upship? forecastle?—engaging in surprisingly animated conversation with a tall, bald, muscular, black-skinned man in colourful clothes. Good looking, as well. I feel a little envious. When did Luke have something to say to me that mattered as much as whatever he’s saying to this guy? But a voice calls my name just as I wonder whether I should barge in.

  I turn, and it’s Bea Comyn, wearing the sort of tweedy two-piece that used to be favoured by the old Queen of England and Angela Merkel. She doesn’t care about looks. She flaunts her jowls, and hasn’t even get rid of the grey in her short, brittle hair. But Bea loves beauty. I mean, look at this scene, and everything else she does and owns. She draws me away with a firm but wrinkled hand, and I notice Luke noticing our departure as we turn. But it’s okay that Bea and I are seen together. We have several legitimate, above-board,
connections. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here at all.

  Now, we’re in a cabin, and she calls up some music—it’s even more of an ethnic mishmash than what’s playing outside—as she closes the door. It’s all varnish and portholes down here. Briskly, elegantly, shipshape, with dark old whaling paintings on the panelled walls. It seems only appropriate that she should pour us both a Mount Gay rum, although I refuse the offered cigar. She shakes her head as if I’ve made a deeply unwise decision, and clips one for herself. The cloud of aromatic smoke she exhales takes me to her campus office in Edinburgh, when she was a mere professor of Psychology and Psychometrics, and I was just a humble postgrad, and it still feels a little that way as we sit down on opposite leather chairs and I find, when I try to adjust my position, that they’re screwed down. Then the ship, perhaps caught by nothing more than the waves of a passing ferry, seems to stir. Whatever it is, I get that brief, cold tingle again. Here in this maritime setting, it feels more the harbinger of a vast, approaching storm.

  Bea’s a methodical sort, and whatever it is she really wants to share with me is prefaced by a chat about our mutual interest in racehorses. If nothing else, it’s a useful and tax efficient way of throwing excess money down the drain. But it’s also engaging, and fun. He’s such a handsome beast, she says at one point about a yearling we’ve invested in as a prospect for the Longines Hong Kong Mile, and I’m reminded that she once said the same thing about my Luke, and wish she’d cut to the chase.

  “I’ve been speaking directly to other members of our group,” she says through the haze of cigar smoke and our second tot of rum. “I mean, since we convened in our smartcubes on the trading floor this morning, western seaboard time.”

  “Oh,” I say. And add, before I can bite it off, “Is anything wrong?”

  “I thought I’d save you until this evening, Samuel, seeing as I knew you’d be here at my little soirée.”

  Meaning she’s already spoken to everyone else.

  “The question is…” She leans forward. Looks up at me through her uneven fringe with bruised oyster eyes. “Did you notice anything?”

  “Well, the extra investment in the Congo did seem a little leftfield.”

  “But that’s what we do, isn’t it? We see above and beyond the normal tides of the market. That’s what our group is for.”

  I nod, feeling more that even as if I’m back at university, and I’ve made some schoolboy error in my thesis.

  “In fact,” she puts down the stub of her cigar and waves up a screen from the low table between us, “some fresh reports were coming in just as this party started. There’s a warlord called Learnmore Wallace—I know, these African names—who’s said to be making a move to secure the Canco copper seam. This guy…” She calls up the image of an angry-looking man in khaki and military boots standing in the unlikely setting of the lobby of an upmarket hotel. “Is said to be pragmatic, consensual, business-friendly… Which, of course, means he simply wants power and money once he’s finished slitting the throats of his rivals and raping their wives. But at least it’s better than all that Lord’s Resistance Army apocalyptic nonsense. And, of course, the world is screaming out for all that copper that’s still stuck in the ground.”

  “You think that maybe the Chinese, the Russians, or the CIA might—”

  She waves my words and the screen away. “Doesn’t matter. The main thing about all of this from our point of view is that we’re ahead of the curve.”

  “A result.”

  “Or it will be,” she corrects me, “when confidence actually starts to go up. But meanwhile, and until his forces actually make their move, our friend Learnmore simply amounts to more instability. Hard though you might find it to believe, and despite all our recent buying activity, share prices in Canco have actually headed down.”

  “But nevertheless—”

  “Yes, Samuel, nevertheless. But didn’t you notice anything else?”

  “About what?”

  “About this morning. About how the gestalt de-convergence went.”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “So I’ll take that as a yes, shall I? That, at least, was how all the rest of us felt.”

  “If you mean, just as the link was phasing out?”

  “How would you describe it?”

  “I’m not sure I could. It just felt a little odd, a little wrong. A little…” Ominous, or something like it, is the kind of word I’m trying hard not to use.

  “Of course,” she concedes, leaning back a little, as if to give me some room, “the underlying science is still desperately short of terms. But I’ve looked at the waveforms, I’ve studied the graphs of individual response, and I can confirm there was definitely an anomaly in the usual wave patterns of communion across the group. And it was something I don’t think we’ve see before.”

  “That’s… interesting.”

  “Is, isn’t it? And the other thing, the thing which both the data and the reported experiences of the group are clearly telling me, is that the response, the anomaly, whatever you choose to call it, originated from you.”

  “Maybe the equipment—”

  “—that was the first thing I checked.”

  “Or we’ve been hacked?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Which leaves, in your opinion.”

  She sighs. Pings her glass with a ragged fingernail. “I really don’t know.”

  “At least it’s out there now.”

  “Indeed.” She leans forward. Pours me more rum. “And there’s still a chance it could be nothing. It’s outside our established dataset, for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s telling us anything meaningful. The science of the gestalt is still so new, and it remains ours alone—at least, as far as we know. And, of course, we want to keep it that way. I sincerely hope that absolute secrecy’s the one thing we can all agree on, in or out of the wisdom of the group…”

  When we re-emerge, the party is still going, and the Space Needle looks as if it’s just about ready to blast off. I could do with some drugs, or at least something, to combat this day and Bea’s rum, but I know myself well enough to know I’m better off with nothing at all. So I find Luke, who’s dancing with a group of mutual admirers with his tuxedo off and his frilled shirt wide open to show off his torso, although there’s no sign of the African guy. I join in for a while, manage a few grinds and whoops, but my heart isn’t in it, and I decide I want to go home.

  “It’s barely two in the morning!” Luke laughs, until he realises I’m serious. Drink and tiredness, or maybe it’s my advancing years, make the business of getting from yacht to motorised skiff and then back to dry land a little less elegant than I’d have liked. But I’m the one with the keys to the Maserati, and it’s definitely my turn to drive.

  “Shouldn’t you at least put it on autoguide?” Luke asks as he belts up.

  “I thought I was the one who was supposed to be the killjoy?” I floor the accelerator. The tyres squeal.

  I feel exhilarated at first as I take the roads out of Seattle. I’m enjoying how the car handles, and the way Luke is clinging to the edges of his seat.

  “Who was he?”

  “Who was who?”

  “That bald, good-looking black guy you were talking to.”

  “He was just some fellow who happened to be at the party, just as we were. But he had some interesting opinions.”

  “Interesting. Right. And aren’t you going to ask me what I was up to, seeing as we scarcely saw each other all night.”

  “That’s exactly what parties are for. We can speak to each other yesterday, tomorrow, right now. But you were with the host, weren’t you? That Comyn woman who owns the yacht. You have horses together, or something, don’t you?”

  “Fact is…” I ease up on the accelerator. I’m feeling slightly queasy. “She used to be one of my professors, back when I was at university in Edinburgh.”

  “And then she got seriously rich?”

  “Yeah.”
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  “And you did as well.”

  “Isn’t that what higher education’s supposed to be about?”

  Luke laughs. As I recall, he studied something sensible and practical in Brussels; a skill that had been supplanted by algorithms and bots by the time he needed work. But why did I have to mention my connection with Bea going so far back, when I’ve never said anything about it before? It already feels like a loose thread in the weave I’ve woven to protect myself from the world. And why, when I glance over at him, does he look so smug and unsurprised? But I decide that it’s my cautious driving that’s letting me down far more than my big mouth. That, and I should be acting much more drunk. So I push the accelerator. Swallow hard. After all, if I was going to die tonight, tumble off this hairpin and dissolve in a ball of flame, wouldn’t I already know?

  The house glows out from the dark, and Joe, Adolph and Mao greet us with yelps, grins, thrashing tails. I drink some electrolytes, and massage my scalp as the shower runs hot, then ball-tingling minty cold. Luke’s already out for the count, sprawled and snoring, by the time I’ve dried myself and called off the lights. I lie there beside him and count my heartbeats, the fading seconds of my life, as I stare up at the dark and sleep cackles from the from the furthest corner of my consciousness like a demented, tropic bird. After all, what do I know or care about copper mining in the Congo? Something slides, a long, cold anaconda of doubt—although I’m almost sure anacondas are from the jungles of South American—through my ribs. But then the dripping fronds part, and I’m in a bland, concrete corridor, and there’s a smell of laser toner and cheap coffee. And, faintly, of cigars. Not that Professor Comyn ever smokes them on campus, but they’re part of her aura. She looks up when I enter her office. Tells me to close the door and does that thing with her mouth which passes for a smile. She has a fearsome reputation which belies her dumpy appearance, and I’m fully expecting some kind of reprimand. But no. This is, very much, something else.