The phone, a big, fixed, old-fashioned one with only a piddly little screen, was on the wall in the kitchen, which didn't give you much privacy with Robin in there with you making the tea. Paulie's face was on the screen.
“What's wrong?” Ruth asked him, uncomfortably aware that she was acting like a bear with sore bits, but knowing from experience that she couldn't do that much about it, that it would pass, it wasn't her real self.
“Would you like to come over, you and Kali?"
“To Spain?” If only she could have gone and left herself behind; she didn't want to have to inflict her mood on anybody else. Automatically, she answered, “No, that's all right, we're all right here."
“I'd like you to come."
“Would you now?"
Robin Richly, she noticed, was doing his best to pretend he was deaf. Why did he always have to make tea? She didn't want a cup of tea. He could keep his tea, he could stick it.
Paulie said, “You'd love it here. And I'm talking about the real Seville, not the virtual one."
Ruth knew full well that, normally, it would cost the earth to be allowed into the genuine city. But she didn't want to have Frances to thank for it.
She pointed out, “I've got Kali to look after."
“It wouldn't hurt Kali to fly ... Frances said she'll pay. Her people'll make the arrangements, send a car to pick you up."
I am not, Ruth thought, going to end up obliged to that woman. Frances Rayle can stuff her money.
“Ruth? Come on. Please. I'm missing you."
What if, Ruth suddenly thought, it's all a load of shit, a big giant bluff? What if the very last thing Paulie wanted was for her and Kali to turn up and spoil his cosy tryst with Frances? What if they knew full fucking well she wouldn't go, and that was why they felt safe to invite her? Did they think she was born yesterday?
“Oh come on over ... please, Ru...” His face went all nasty. “What do young people think about old people? We think they're disgusting. Especially the ones who..."
Ruth muted him. It was one of those horrible puppet programs that seized control of people's screen images. She'd heard it before, the one that tried to get old people to kill themselves. It was sick. It made her ashamed to be young. This wasn't the kind of world she wanted Kali to grow up in.
“Come on, filters!” Robin sighed. “Sorry about this."
“It's not your fault.” Ruth felt embarrassed, and she hoped that Robin Richly didn't think she was in sympathy, even the tiniest bit, with these sickos.
Robin said some word she didn't catch.
“You what?” She tempered her gruffness. “I mean, I'm sorry?"
“Gerontocidalists."
He pronounced it really slowly, like it was a really interesting word. To Ruth, the word was horrible, and she would have preferred him not to have dignified it with use.
“DO US A FAVOUR AND DIE.” Paulie screamed that bit so loudly the mute failed to muffle it. He looked completely mental, like no Paulie Rayle she had ever known or wanted to know.
“Charming,” Robin commented. “Would you believe there was a time when puppets were just things you stuck your hand up, and computers filled up rooms and cost a bomb, and you could count your TV channels on the fingers of one hand?"
Ruth smiled politely in response to his ramblings. She found it hard, putting on fronts; she wasn't good at humouring people.
“Oh, take no notice of me, Ruth."
He opened a cupboard door of painted MDF. Ruth hated Medium Density Fibreboard. It had no texture, no soul, summed up so much of what was wrong with the world. But without it, would there have been enough real wood to go round?
“Where are you, bloody useless bloody filters?” Robin took down a packet of teabags. “Come on, for heavensake!"
They had to wait ages for the phone to regain control of Paulie's image. When it did, and the real Paulie was finally back, Ruth told him yes, all right, she would fly over with Kali to Spain.
Paulie looked like he was really, honestly glad, like he wasn't secretly horrified, and Ruth told herself she was a stupid cow, getting all these mad ideas in her head, getting paranoid.
* * * *
The meal, served in the garden court, was scrumptious; though Sesha would have enjoyed it even more had she not been over-hungry, so prone to wolf down the food, skimp on savouring it. Frances's appetite, she observed, was encouragingly healthy. Paul Rayle, however, had scarcely eaten at all. He sat there nursing a glass of Rioja and looking abstracted.
“It's unfortunate that you didn't all fly over together.” Frances picked up her napkin. “I never meant for Ruth to feel excluded."
The situation, Sesha knew, was a delicate one. Ruth's arrival was bound to generate tension. Sesha couldn't make up her mind as to whether or not she actively disliked Ruth. It was so hard to separate out loyalty to Frances. And some mischievous part of her was relishing the prospect of the chalk-and-cheese encounter; so far as she knew, Ruth and Frances had never met. As for the baby, Kali, she was a sweet little thing, if genetically unfiltered and thus doomed to a low-tier life in tomorrow's world. Sesha had so often wished that prenatal filtering had been available at the time of her own gestation, and that steps had been taken to try and increase the size of her eyes relative to her face, and the width of her mouth, and decrease her foot size, among other adjustments, since genetic remoulding of adults remained out of reach of present-day medtech.
“Big Boy?"
The voice, emanating from nowhere, caused Sesha to start and drop her fork on the tiles.
“What is it?” Paul Rayle asked his hand, and Sesha saw that he was wearing a wrist mobe. He nodded apologies to the table.
“Big Boy, you were inquiring about Sick Nick copycat violence? WelI I've just caught a newsburst that may be of interest. There are reports of a yacht being found in the Aegean Sea with all personnel aboard murdered and mutilated in a manner ominously reminiscent of the modus operandi of the notorious cyberspook. According to another, unconfirmed report, the yacht's owner, the entrepreneur Bertrand Laurel, is among the dead. A third report, likewise not yet confirmed, has it that a mayday message sent out actually mentioned the words Sick Nick. How about that, Big Boy ... Is that of any use to you? Do you wish to hear further reports as I receive them?"
“No,” said Paul Rayle, deep in thought. “Don't disturb me again."
“Very well, but can I just remark once more upon the curious mismatch between your name and mobe demeanour choice?"
Over and above the horrified amazement she was feeling at this news about the famous billionaire, Sesha found it worse than distasteful that Paul Rayle should let his mobe intrude upon their meal in so cavalier a fashion, that he should subject other people, herself and, particularly, Frances, to his insalubrious interest in Sick Nick.
Sesha turned to Frances in the expectation that her boss would be sharing her displeasure.
Yet Frances's reaction was undiluted shock. “Bertrand ... Laurel....?” she murmured disbelievingly.
“You knew him?” Paul Rayle asked her.
“Bertrand Laurel?” Frances repeated, still stunned.
Sesha exchanged a glance with Paul Rayle. Not a friendly one on her own part; she felt anger at his having upset Frances so needlessly. And that ‘Big Boy’ thing wasn't funny, either, merely puerile.
Frances said quietly, “I just can't believe it."
“Piracy,” Paul Rayle said. “There's a lot of piracy on the high seas, these days."
Something in the glib way he came out with the comment, the Long John Silveriness of the phrase ‘high seas', convinced Sesha that this was really far too flippant an explanation for a mind so seriously frucked-up as Paul Rayle's.
“Bertrand Laurel isn't ... wasn't ... the nicest person in the world.” Frances was shaking her head, still coming to terms with it. “Do you know, he had designs on the Institute?"
“Really?” It was news to Sesha. “And you weren't interested?"
�
��No,” said Frances firmly.
“Look forgive me, I should never have...” Paul Rayle's apologies were interrupted by Xabier, hurrying down the stairway.
“Senora?"
Frances looked up. “Yes, Xabier? What is it?"
With a sense of discretion that put Paul Rayle to shame, Xabier whispered something in Frances's ear.
“I see. Gracias, Xabier. Thankyou very much for letting me know."
“You've a very efficient little news-gatherer there.” Frances indicated the mobe on Paul Rayle's wrist. Xabier must, Sesha guessed, have been relaying the same inf.
“It's not mine,” Paul Rayle told her. “Xabier very kindly lent it to me."
Sesha bridled; did the man have to keep up this little undertone of sarcasm? Having started out, years ago, as Frances's domestic, was he jealous of her current factotum?
Well, all right, Sesha grudgingly allowed; Frances would have heard the news from Xabier and been upset anyway. Also, to be scrupulously fair, she herself had frequently succumbed to a morbid fascination with matters Sick Nickian. Still, she thought, Paul Rayle's table manners left a lot to be desired.
“Who,” asked Frances suddenly, “is Sick Nick?"
Sesha was astonished; hadn't everyone heard of Sick Nick? Or maybe not, up here in life's rarefied heights.
Paul Rayle said, “It's an outlaw computer program that shows up on screens in the shape of a devil, attacking and murdering other screen images ... not real people, just their images. He can find his way into films and mess them up by killing off the characters, or he might appear to murder someone on a vidphone screen. It's all just simulated. A lot of people find him entertaining."
“Sounds absolutely dreadful.” Frances ran a hand through her consummately Congruent hair. “But what has this to do with Bertrand Laurel?"
Paul Rayle considered a moment, then replied, “It looks as though someone out there has started imitating Sick Nick, but committing real murders."
Frances's face showed revulsion. “Really, Paul, it doesn't seem at all like you to take an interest in such..."
“It's a long story.” He shrugged. “It doesn't matter; it's not important. Sorry about the interruption."
Frances looked at him as if to say she was willing to listen, she wanted to be of assistance to him in any way whatever. But Paul Rayle said nothing more.
And then it came together, all at once, in Sesha's mind: realization of what the stupid man must have been thinking. He saw, in this news report, further proof that this world was not the real world but a boxworld. Poor nutty Paul Rayle believed that Bertrand Laurel had been murdered, actually, physically murdered, not by some Sick Nick copycat member of a seagoing pirate gang, but by Sick Nick himself. According to Paul Rayle's twisted reasoning, if this was a boxworld, then Sick Nick was no less real than they themselves were, and liable to turn up anywhere and kill any of them at any time.
Well at least Paul Rayle was considerate enough not to burden Frances, to keep his crackpottery to himself. Sesha remembered that, back in her room, he had even put forward the ludicrous theory that she, Sesha Roffey, was the one in control of this world, the Big Box User. And all of this on the basis of Frances's job offer, made during a private conversation upon which he had seen fit to eavesdrop. Send out for a straitjacket, someone.
Granted, it had occurred to Sesha that the nomination should not, in view of Frances's condition, be regarded as valid. And even though Frances had anticipated her concerns and repeated the offer prior to Paul's joining them at the table, Sesha had thought it prudent to let the whole thing hang in limbo for the present.
“You should take a walk around,” Frances suggested, addressing the both of them, Sesha and Paul. “The Alcazar gardens are beautiful. You've visited the gardens, haven't you, Paul, when we came here together?"
He nodded distractedly.
“I'm sure Ruth will find so much to enjoy here.” Frances sipped at her wine. “The English winters are dreadful, even though they're not so cold as they used..."
“Ontotech,” said Paul Rayle, cutting in rudely. “Have you ever heard that word? O-N-T-O-T-E-C-H?"
It was outrageous, his discourtesy, and Sesha was about to admonish him with another sharp look when she was brought up short by the weirdest reaction from Frances. Her boss was sitting there staring into space as though posthypnotically transfixed.
“That last word spoken by those people with Angel Syndrome.” Paul Rayle's voice was dangerously brittle. “It wasn't ‘undertake'."
“Ontotech,” Frances murmured.
“What's going on?” He was almost in tears. “I just don't understand."
A chill ran down Sesha's spine. She didn't know what the fruck they were talking about, but their solemnity scared her.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Chapter 17
The flight attendants, each one plasticky-perfect, wore uniforms of a special material which, if you put on the glasses from the pocket at the side of your seat, became transparent. Pink glasses to view the stewardesses, blue for the stewards. Some passengers, nearly all of them male, had put on their glasses, all but two the pink pair. A stewardess whose eyes left all the smiling duties to her mouth was running flatly through the safety spiel:
“This Corporate Class section of the aircraft will automatically seal off into a self-contained, pressurized capsule and eject from the main fuselage in the unlikely event of an emergency. Many thanks for your kind attention. Enjoy your flight."
Too bad, Ruth thought sourly, for poor peasants who can only afford Economy. Like me, ordinarily.
The business execs all around her, those who weren't asleep, or using the Dreamboxes built into their seats, must have decided that she had been put in there by mistake, this pleb with the crying kid. She'd lost count of the pissed-off looks. They weren't all of them snots, though; she did get the odd friendly smile. The seat was nice, adjusting to your shape, even giving a massage if you asked for one. She wasn't mad about the way it continually scanned your thought-patterns for evidence of fanatical fixations; although, with the world as it was, all these security measures were understandable enough. The food was the best airline food Ruth had ever tasted—which didn't mean brilliant, just edible, for once—and they even offered a choice of wines. She didn't finish her little bottle, alcohol not being a good idea while breastfeeding. Although the steward didn't show it, she couldn't help wondering if he thought her unworthy of his polished attendance—even if all she needed to do to cut him down to size was put on her blue glasses. She didn't feel comfortable, being fussed over, with Frances footing the bill.
Paulie was waiting at the airport. He looked terrible, burdened with worry, but seemed genuinely glad to see her. His face was bruised and scratched; she hadn't noticed on the phone.
“Thanks for coming.” He hugged her, kissed her, hugged and kissed Kali. A man with him, a Spanish man, took their bags.
“How was the flight?” Paulie asked her.
“Fine ... nice ... not too bad.” She put her fingers to his cheek, where it was bruised. “What happened? Somebody hit you?"
He just shook his head, and Ruth thought, Well, stuff you if you want to be secretive about it.
He said, “How's Kali been?"
“She's been a good little girl. She needs a change now, though ... can't you smell her?"
Paulie waited outside while Ruth changed Kali in the women's toilets. The soap dispenser started talking to her in Spanish, wanting to know, so far as Ruth could make out, whether she'd bought travel insurance. Then it tried again in English, and she found she had translated correctly.
“Piss off,” she told it.
She rejoined Paulie. He was still looking worried.
“What's the matter?” she asked him.
But he wouldn't tell her.
He led her out to a waiting car, and a few seconds later they were whizzing down the highway. Giant moving posters, at least half of them adver
tising Dreamboxes, flashed by on either side. Ruth wondered if that was it: had Paulie been hooking up to his box again, trying to dream up his perfect world and make it more real than this one? Was it a bad thing to have done, to have played along with his fantasy—for what else was it? Should she never have let him draw her in, until she sort of half-believed in what he was trying to do? She'd woken up, now, at last, and could see it for what it was. She wished she'd never got him the box. The stupid things did no one any good. People were getting addicted left, right, and centre. It was a wonder Dreamboxes weren't banned.
Paulie sat there holding Kali and staring out, lost to the world as the Spanish man drove them at speed to Frances's place.
The trouble with Paulie was, he couldn't handle life. He'd always run away from it. He was a dreamer, and would always be a dreamer, and if she and Kali wanted any sort of life beyond hanging on forever, waiting and waiting for his dreams to come true, then they would have to start thinking about going their own way, making a new and more real life for themselves.
Ruth felt sick.
The sun was blazing down; you wouldn't know it was February. The driver took them through lots of ugly industrial build-up that could have been anywhere before finally getting to the older, more picturesque part of Seville. The houses were lovely. The streets were barely wide enough for the car to squeeze through, and tourists kept getting in the way. These, Ruth knew, were people with enough money to visit for real, rather than having to take a tour round the very much cheaper, computerized version. Normally, she and Paulie could never have afforded to come here.
Frances's house was tall and whitewashed, very discreet from outside, and Ruth caught a glimpse of a beautiful tiled patio behind ornate iron gates before a pair of big heavy wooden double doors opened automatically and the car crept in and down into the basement. They stepped into a lift, the driver taking the bags again, and came out on the patio.
Frances was there waiting for them with that skinny black-haired woman, the one who'd come out to the village in the flying car.
“Ruth."
Smiling, Frances held out her hand. She was fantastic-looking, really amazing for her age, if not so tall as Ruth had expected. All wild, grey-streaked hair and the sort of face that could take all the years life threw at it and make them work in its favour. You couldn't tell that she had an illness. She wore black, a silky sleeveless top and slacks, and bangles, and lots of rings on her fingers, and in some ways she even seemed younger than Paulie, so careworn did he look.
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