New Worlds

by Edited By David Garnett

  Sweater-clad, Miranda quickly got on with homework, using my screen in the work-nook to help with the maths which she less than loved. Maths might have seemed to loathe her too, were it not for the interactive program she could access at a modest cost, conducted by ever-patient, ever-friendly ‘Uncle Albert.’

  When Paul got home, he was fascinated to hear about the interview with Denise Stuart. It wasn’t till after our meal of soy and veg, nicely spiced, that he confided modestly how he hoped to clinch a deal with a Chinese client for a top-of-the-range XJ5000, pending a final test drive through the Rough the next morning. The sale would mean several hundred in commission.

  “Not a motorway sprint, but Rough driving—”

  “He’s probably a Triad boss,” I joked. “Needs to deliver stuff to dodgy destinations.” Miranda ought to know about such aspects of life, at least in the abstract.

  “Probably is,” Paul agreed. “Sam Henson says he heard how a drugs boss guested an undercover Chinese taxman into the head of a monkey a couple of months ago.”

  Miranda shuddered to hear this. “That’s impossible, isn’t it?”

  “Totally,” I assured her. “Your Dad’s boss is a bit of a racist.”

  Our daughter grinned. “Is that why he sells fast cars?”

  Miranda was streetwise enough—or so she imagined herself. Of course she was sheltered by living in the Smooth. No drugs or gangs or vice at her school. At least we hoped not.

  “If that could become possible,” said Miranda, “you know, I think I’d quite like to share, say, a dolphin’s day—”

  For the swimming, oh yes.

  “—just so long as I could pop back into my own body afterwards. Like Grandad will pop back into yours, Mum.” And out gushed: “Are you going somewhere special tomorrow?”

  “Just to the park. To the orchid-house. To be on my own for a while.”

  “You deserve it,” Paul said.

  Miranda might worry that something could happen to me—a car skidding, say, and Mum dying. Then she would be saddled with Grandad for the rest of her life. Unless, of course, Grandad nobly insisted on evacuation, or Paul petitioned. That would be traumatic for Miranda.

  I usually knew when she had something special to tell me, and finally she got round to it.

  “Mum, there’s a girl in the first grade called Jenny O’Brien. Her mother has had a new baby, and it’s sick with leukemia. It’s going to die. She’s applying to guest the baby.”

  “The girl is?” asked Paul, incredulous.

  “No, Dad, her mother is! Mrs O’Brien wants to rear the baby inside her head. Teach it. Let it have a chance. She’s a Catholic, you see.”

  “Good God,” said Paul.

  I was stunned as well.

  To host an unformed mind... What sort of mind would that be? Full of infantile appetites, few of which could be catered for. Would it be able to learn to see through its mother’s eyes, or learn to talk?

  Like a latter-day Helen Keller. At least Helen Keller had a body of her own, even if she was born blind, deaf, and dumb.

  “It’s meant to be a secret, Mum, but Jenny O’Brien’s very upset. I was thinking I could introduce her to Grandad tomorrow. Show her that her mother won’t be totally occupied with the baby.”

  This was so thoughtful that I almost felt ashamed of the purpose for which I was asking Miranda to look after Dad. You might say that Miranda could afford to be considerate, living here in the Smooth. On the other hand, she could have grown up snooty and selfish, with false expectations. No doubt the chill of our house in winter and the stifling heat in summer curbed any affectations and made her realistic.

  “Your Denise Stuart would be interested to hear about this,” Paul hinted.

  “Oh no, Dad, it’s private!”

  “Mrs O’Brien might need publicity if she’s to have any hope of persuading the guesting office. A campaign in her support.”

  “If that’s so,” I said, “she’d probably rather start any campaign herself.”

  Paul persevered. “This hasn’t happened before, has it? There would have been publicity. It sounds like a fascinating experiment. Maybe Denise Stuart might know.”

  “Maybe Sam Henson might know!” I hoped I didn’t sound brusque. 1 felt protective of Miranda’s confidence in us. I didn’t wish her to be at all upset this evening, nor tomorrow morning either.

  Miranda sought to change the subject. “That was a lovely meal, Mum—”

  “Was Uncle Albert helpful?”

  She grimaced comically. “Just a bit.”

  When Paul and I went to bed early to keep warm, he kissed me, then he quickly turned over, lying flat upon his belly, as if otherwise I might make some physical demand upon him. My idea of an ambiguous reward for his wooing of the Triad boss.

  Probably I would be deeply disappointed tomorrow, and disgusted with myself. My German paramour mightn’t be courteous at all. How could he have any idea what significance his pawings and thrustings would have for me, in my imagination?

  Ah, but to do something which was utterly impossible while Dad was in me! Something from which he inhibited me, as surely as he inhibited Paul!

  ~ * ~

  Before breakfast next morning Miranda and I made the exchange.

  We sat face to face, our knees interlocked. Both of us steadied the ‘binoculars,’ as the transfer apparatus—domestic variety—inevitably was nicknamed.

  It was a spin-off from the technology of pilots’ helmets, lite hypersonic warplane pilots. Cocooned in gel in constrictor suits to massage their blood circulation and minimise blacking out while maneuvering, pilots couldn’t move a finger to control their planes. They flew by thought and imagery.

  Smart protoplasmic cords of mega data capacity were twinned with the pilots’ optic cords—just as with myself now, and with Miranda. Fitting our own cords, thin white threadlike worms, had involved only the most minor intrusion into my eye sockets, and hers. Once inserted, the cords found their own way, establishing their own retinal and neuronal connections.

  None of this would have happened if a certain hyperjet hadn’t crash-landed at its base in Nevada six years ago. If the pilot’s father, a Colonel Patterson, hadn’t been base commander. If his critically injured son hadn’t been jammed in the crumpled cockpit in a particular position. If the Colonel himself hadn’t been fitted for fly-by-thought. If for love of his son he hadn’t risked an imminent inferno to say farewell. If he hadn’t stared into the optics of his dying son’s helmet...and suddenly received his son’s mind into his own head.

  Or his son’s soul, as the Colonel phrased it.

  Islamic countries banned guesting. Buddhists embraced it. In Britain there were tens of thousands of people in my position.

  I stared into the lenses. From her side, Miranda stared. I pressed the power button. Mandalas flooded my vision, a receding tunnel of intricate light, which quickly shrank to a vanishing point as Miranda uttered a soft gasp, a sigh, nothing arduous.

  Power off. Put the binoculars away in their padded case.

  “Hi, Grandad,” she greeted him.

  If there ever were a way to transfer a mind into a machine I suppose we would have living tombstones to visit. Or to fail to visit. And people would have a sort of immortality.

  “Maybe he’d like to see the news.” Reluctant to share the start of his day with Dad, Paul switched on the TV.

  The war in the Philippines, the abandonment of flooded Polynesia, a cyclone in New Zealand, minus-ninety in Alaska, a riot in the Dundee Rough, torching homes on a bitter night to keep warm...

  I was thinking about my assignation (for want of a better word), and no doubt Miranda was thinking about Jenny O’Brien and an act of charity.

  Maybe our daughter was a saint, an angel.

  The tunnel-visions described by people pulled back from the brink of death were quite like what I and Miranda saw in the binoculars during transfer, receding in my case, approaching in hers. A couple of years ago Colonel Patter
son had committed suicide. Righteous evangelists had exploited him. He’d come to believe that he’d stopped his son from going to heaven and must rectify this.

  “Don’t worry about the news, Grandad,” exclaimed Miranda. “Everything’ll be all right. Life carries on!”

  ~ * ~

  We sell ourselves, is the truth of it. Lucky ones sell high, unlucky ones sell low. It seemed only logical that I should sell myself this afternoon—gratuitously and gladly—as a stage in this process. And to satisfy a burning willful curiosity.

  After I’d called a couple of businesses, I messaged Denise Stuart at TV-NET. I loathed the woman in her lux job-niche, bothering anybody she cared to in the country from her superior position.

  Denise came back to me presently, wearing a black kimono a-twinkle with light-emitting diodes. Long pendant crystal earrings resembled icicles.

  “Ah, the spokesfemme of Omega! So we didn’t have the dernier mot after all?”

  “Denise,” I said calmly, “hypothetical question. What would you say about a woman wanting to guest her dying baby? Pre-speech, precrawling.”

  Suddenly so alert. So acquisitive. “Is this true? I’d say a thousand as a finder’s fee. Exclusive.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you!” I replied. I would sell myself in quite a different fashion, though not for nearly as much. I blanked off, and instructed my screen to reject any future calls from TV-NET.

  I felt a surge of satisfaction at snubbing Denise.

  ~ * ~

  The bus from our wire-fenced ville crossed a large stretch of Rough on its way to the ville where the Meridian was.

  Through the window grilles of the bus I gazed at the shanties and tents, almost as medieval as those Breughel scenes back home in the toilet. Yet oddly picturesque, too. The bright patchwork clothes. The ragged children. The mongrel dogs being led about on strings—a stringless mutt would soon end up barbecued. Shebeens and bonfires. Derelict cars and vans, converted into homes. Pickers at a refuse tip hopping about like crows. A steel band playing by the roadside as if coins might spill from passing vehicles.

  Decorative! A frilly, filthy collar around the neck of most villes. Suggestive of some sort of self-expressive freedom. Freedom from finance. Freedom to shiver and become slim (or grossly fat) on government-issue diet packs.

  A truckload of soldiers followed our bus part of the way. The men had those multi-guns which can fire either explosive shells or humane rubber bullets or gag-gas, laugh-yourself-sick.

  Then we were in semi-open country. Electric-fenced sheep pastures and pig wallows, muddy as a Somme. Fenced forestry plantations. A huge shallow lake full of trout, a watchtower upon a tiny island in the middle. By night infrared motion detectors would switch on floodlights if anything larger than a fox approached the water’s edge.

  Soon we entered another Rough. A solitary girl with stringy hair and a tattered false-fur coat and mitts and one of those Russian-look hats hailed us, holding up her fare and ID for the driver to see. A satchel over her shoulder.

  As she made her way to the back of the bus, she tore open her coat so that she wouldn’t overheat.

  She smelled of patchouli, to mask body odour which the warmth of the bus quickly liberated. She grinned at me. Opened her satchel.

  Bracelets and necklaces of intricately hammered tin, really quite exquisite work, I thought. If Dad had been here with me, would he have praised her? He might have enjoyed this excursion.

  “Only twenty each,” she said to me, meaning ten.

  “Honestly I can’t afford any,” I told her. “Insurance, mortgage, you know.”

  She didn’t know; though at the same time maybe she did. I was a ghost to her, of once-upon-a-time, of a maybe-world her parents may once have inhabited.

  “Don’t worry,” she consoled me. “Women worry; men spend.”

  This seemed untrue, yet at least it served as a handy excuse. I hoped she wouldn’t disembark at the Meridian to wander its car park hawking her craftwork to foreign businessmen. Ethnic English art, mein Herr? Monsieur? Danasama?

  “Don’t fret yourself, Smooth Lady.”

  I’d dressed confidently for my upcoming encounter. Under my thick scarf and padded coat was a high-collared side-slit shimmer-dress, revealing glittery spider-web leggings. Black pixie boots on my feet. Elbow-length black lace gloves. All of which had been packed away for years in a drawer. I’d also glamoured myself with a couple of sultry bruise-look blushers from years gone by, which hadn’t dried up, having been sealed in a bag.

  We soon reached the ville-fence and checkpoint. Suburbs glistened with frost which still hadn’t melted, the houses like neat displays of cakes in some enormous shop. The cars cruising about seemed such shiny toys after the derelicts in the Rough.

  Blind people could never become guests. Thanks be that Dad never lost his sight—that molten metal never splashed into his eye while he could still wield a welding torch!

  The Rough girl stayed on the bus when I rose to leave. She would be aiming for the shopping mall—or at least for the outside of it, where the security personnel wouldn’t bother her. Maybe they would even let her inside, her ID must be so clean.

  When I stepped out of the bus, from the airport beyond the trade centre a silver dart was lifting into the sky, going to some place I would never go to. Dragged along at Mach 4 by its own shockwave, the hyperliner could reach the lands of orchids almost before Paul would be back from work. Its foreign destination might be abominable, crowded with beggars and refugees. Even so, a powerful airborne serenity seemed to stay with me.

  ~ * ~

  The bronzed glass of much of the Meridian Hotel had discoloured so that oily pools seemed to float vertically.

  In the spacious mock-marble lobby a group of Chinese or Koreans in creaseproof smart-suits were conferring with some British counterparts who looked crumpled and cheap, even though they were the dudes of the local Smooth. This was the fault of the Brits’ faces, so blotchy and irregular compared with the smooth creamy features of the Asians. My compatriots’ hair, even styled, was so haystacky next to wiry, trim black oriental hair.

  I lingered by the menu board outside the restaurant, pretending interest, waiting for my watch display to edge closer to two. At the top of the menu a salmon leapt up a frothing spillway of fractal water to escape from the claws of a lobster, fell back, leapt up again. Liquid-crystal prices flickered as if unable to believe themselves.

  When I took off my scarf and padded coat, a couple of the Asians gazed at my vamp-Vietnamese outfit appreciatively, even anti-cipatively, as though I might be the clincher of a deal.

  Keeping my coat with me, out of a sneaking fear that it might be stolen if I left it on the rack by the porter’s desk, I headed for the elevator to ascend.

  ~ * ~

  Room 323. I buzzed. The lock clicked open. It would be programmed to admit one visitor, then secure itself. I pushed, and stepped into a dim bedroom. Closed curtains leaked wintry daylight. Most of the light came from the illuminated bathroom.

  A short tubby man with curly black hair rose from the single armchair, barefoot, dressed only in shirt and trousers. Even in the mellow light he didn’t look much like the German I’d imagined.

  “Herr Schmidt?”

  “That is I, dear lady.” Nor did his accent have the perfection of most Germans speaking English.

  I must have looked bewildered, for he proceeded to explain himself, quite proudly. His parents had been Turkish guest-workers, but he was German and had changed his name accordingly. He had prospered; he was his parents’ success story, a full European. Manfred Schmidt, who might once have been Mustafa.

  ~ * ~

  When not in Germany he could allow himself to be somewhat Turkish in a playful fashion. This took the form of jokes about harems and slave-girls—of whom I was now an honorary embodiment for an hour—and silly proverbs.

  “A woman possesses a precious candlestick,” I learned, “but the man has the candle!” And Manfred-Mustaf
a’s candle needed attention.

  In fact he was quite sweet and gentle—”A lion does not harm a lady”—though I wouldn’t have wished to be married to him.

  “Open up for me like a marrow flower,” he commanded.

  I imagined myself as an orchid instead—a soft, lush, velvety orchid being assaulted for nectar by a magically hovering hyperliner, wings fluttering as fast as his heartbeat, and soon my own heartbeat too.

  I even experienced shockwaves, which surprised him.

  “A hen cannot live without a cock,” was his opinion. By then his candle was quenched.

  “A man has one desire,” he confided sadly, “yet a woman has nine.”