by Adam Roberts
‘So when did he have contact with them?’
‘He was a suspect, and was brought out to the camp for interrogation. But he broke free and ran out on the ice, and that’s where they contacted him. After that, he was a transmitter-receiver. That’s how he styled himself, anyhow. We flew him out to the advance point to try and use him to communicate with them, but it seems clear that our transmitter-receiver was flawed. He was full of hate.’
‘He’s a hero of the New World now,’ said Crow. ‘We better get used to thinking of him as a hero.’
‘Because he had a heart attack he’s the hero?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘A death that, whilst in contact with them, has changed their behaviour. It has ended the war. When we break it to the people, I mean the stuff about aliens and the snow, we’ll pitch his act as a heroic self-sacrifice. His one death means that the whole of the new world of humanity will survive. You know what? The Others are growing plants for us.’
‘Plants?’
‘A number of different kinds, actually,’ said the other guy. But he was more interested in his own theories about the aliens. ‘Do you know what I think? I think they’ve arranged the snow in differing zones of pressure, because that’s what a city is to them.’
‘Bacteria building cities,’ said Crow, scoffingly.
‘So, why not? And you can’t hardly call them bacteria anyway, that’s not accurate.’
‘Those maps from geotherm, they don’t show any symmetry, any balance in the areas of hyper- or hypocompression in the snow.’
‘Maybe it’s symmetry to them,’ persisted the other guy. ‘Anyway, the point is this. We kept sinking shafts down through the snow, snow-mines, food-mines. What if our mining disturbed them? What if we were pushing mineshafts right through their cities, their equivalents to town halls and shopping malls and stuff? What then?’
‘It’s pretty far-fetched,’ said Crow.
‘But then maybe they were defending themselves, and it just happened to coincide with the terrorist bombs. Maybe they were defending themselves against our attack. Don’t you reckon?’
Crow shrugged.
‘So now everything’s dandy?’ I said, incredulous. ‘All because [Name deleted] had a heart attack?’ I couldn’t believe this.
‘Not just because of that,’ Crow conceded. ‘But people need heroes.’
‘And what about me?’ I asked. I meant aren’t I a hero too? But Crow looked sombre.
‘You’ll have to stay in quarantine for some time. It might be possible to fly you back to Liberty, where your quarantine will be more comfortable. But it could be, I can’t lie to you, Tira, it could be years.’
‘We don’t know how many years,’ said the other guy.
‘I’m afraid we don’t know,’ confirmed Crow.
‘Could be never,’ said the other guy. He shrugged.
I felt disgust. It seemed to me that I had spent all my life sitting in the corner of a room whilst two old men chatted amiably with one another, ignoring me. As if I were a little girl. ‘Fuck you,’ I said. ‘Fuck you both.’
Crow looked very startled at this profanity of mine, his eyes like polo mints in his long, pendulous face. The other guy seemed amused.
‘Don’t be like that, Tira,’ said Crow, petulant.
I leant forward, and they both flinched, which gave me a small pleasure – to think that my contagiousness could be intimidating. ‘You’re going to peddle [Name deleted] to the people as a hero. A lie, a lie.’
‘People need heroes,’ said Crow, again, fingering his mask nervously.
‘What about the Sidewinder memo?’
They looked baffled.
‘[Name deleted] told me about it,’ I snapped. ‘The Sydenham, the Sicklehammer, I don’t know the name.’
‘Seidensticker,’ hazarded the other guy.
‘That’s the one. You leaked that, so that people would blame this guy for the snow. You were covering up the existence of aliens, weren’t you? You can’t help yourself, can’t stop yourself lying to the people. That’s like a reflex for you.’
The two men spoke at once. ‘You can’t underestimate the culture shock inherent in alien encounter …’ said the other guy. ‘Seidensticker’s a real guy, the stuff in that memo is true, he’s just …’ said Crow.
They stopped, looked at each other.
‘Seidensticker’s a real guy,’ said Crow, carefully. ‘The stuff in that memo is all true. He’s just wrong about being responsible for the snow – but he genuinely thought he was. We never leaked the memo, not on purpose. You’re unfair to us Tira.’ He paused, hummed and hoomed. Then he said, ‘Government’s gotta govern. It wouldn’t be much of a government otherwise. Would it, now.’
‘Have you actually seen that memo?’ said the other guy.
‘You lie to the people,’ I said. ‘I’m so sick of sitting quietly here whilst old men yak away and yak away. You lie all the time. It’s instinctive. You just don’t know anything else. [Name deleted] was right – that memo, passing [Name deleted] off as a hero of the people, leaking that, drip-feeding that.’ But the fire had gone out of me. I slumped back. ‘[Name deleted] was right about you, right about you all along.’
‘I think you’re being unfair, Tira,’ said Crow again, in a hurt tone. ‘Seidensticker developed these electromagnetic sheaths, much more friable than he realized, but—’
‘Sir,’ said the other guy, more sharply. ‘Does she have clearance for this?’
I no longer cared. I felt hugely tired, that’s all. I wanted to sleep again. I lay down, and turned my back to the two of them.
I heard them get up and leave, and when the door clicked shut I shuffled myself onto my back. Almost at once the door opened again. Crow re-entered, this time solus.
‘Tira?’ he asked.
‘What is it?’
He sat in the same chair he had occupied before. Then he stood up, pulled the chair a little closer to my bed, put it down and sat again. He was silent for a while.
‘What is it?’ I asked again, turning my horizontal head to look at him.
‘I wanted to talk,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk with you, alone.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘Talk.’
But he was silent for another stretch of time.
With a gasp of irritation, I pulled myself upright and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. ‘You don’t seem to be doing much talking,’ I said.
‘I don’t know how to do it,’ he replied, simply. I detected sadness in his voice, and almost despite myself I was conscious of a degree of pity.
‘Just come straight out with it,’ I suggested.
He shook his head, but then said, ‘I love you,’ in a strained voice. My stomach clenched, like on a rollercoaster ride at the lip of the highest peak. I felt very uncomfortable. I could see that Crow was crying. Actual tears, warm as his body, dripping over his hunger-sculpted cheekbones and falling through the air. Actual tears. I had never before seen him cry. It was as shocking a thing as I could imagine. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I love you, I love you so much, I love you, ah!’ This last word was a sharply indrawn breath, a sob, and then he put his hands to his face. [Name deleted] had used to do that from time to time with me, but with him it was always just play-acting, amateur dramatics, one of his many look-at-me! strategies. But with Crow it was different. It was really quite upsetting. For all my problems with Crow over the years I had always thought of him as strong. I had never seen him cry. This, however, seemed like a breakage.
‘OK,’ I said. I didn’t know what to say. I hazarded, ‘Hey,’ and then, ‘don’t cry,’ but it sounded false, so I shut up.
‘Jesus,’ said Crow, the most extreme expletive I ever heard him use. ‘I’m sorry, Tira, I’m sorry.’
‘It’s alright,’ I said.
‘It’s all so – messed up,’ he said, wiping his eyes with the blades of his hands. ‘Oh Jesus, what’s wrong with me?’
‘It’s alright,’ I said, again.
> He sniffed. ‘But of course it’s not,’ he said. ‘Not alright.’ There was a large inward breath, and a shuddery exhalation. ‘I’m making a fool of myself.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I know it’s foolish, I can’t help it. But I ask myself over and over, How did it go wrong? I always ask myself, what did I do wrong? I guess it’s sentimental of me, but I always figured – you know,’ he was shuffling in his chair, uncomfortable with this sort of emotional talk, ‘I always figured, love would be enough. But however much I loved you, you just didn’t,’ and his voice wobbled. He coughed. ‘You just didn’t,’ he concluded, more sternly, ‘love me. So I guess, maybe it wouldn’t ever work out.’
‘Well,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t quite like that, was it?’
He looked straight at me with rheumy, baffled eyes. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well,’ I said, starting feeling uncomfortable. ‘You know what it was that put the – distance between us. We both know what it was.’
‘What?’
‘Come on, don’t play games.’
‘Tira,’ he said, leaning towards me a little, ‘no, seriously. What?’
‘Well if you want me to be brutal, it was when you found out I was – you know what.’
‘What?’
A spurt of remembered anger carried me over the hump of embarrassment. ‘You do remember the conversation we had about me being Indian, don’t you? You do – you must. Don’t pretend you don’t remember that, don’t rewrite history. You thought I was a white girl, and when you found out otherwise you couldn’t hack it.’
Crow just looked confused. ‘I couldn’t – do what?’
‘Couldn’t hack it, couldn’t – cope with it, couldn’t deal with it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
This fired me up. ‘Don’t play these games. I was there. Don’t you remember, you thought I was called London, but I told you that was only the city where I came from? Don’t you remember that?’
He nodded very slowly, and then fiddled with his mask as if it were irritating the skin around his mouth. ‘I do remember that. That was funny! I thought maybe you were related to Jack London, the writer! What a doofus I was!’
‘I’m glad,’ I said, furious, ‘that the memory amuses you, arsehole.’
‘That had nothing to do with – us becoming – estranged,’ he said, haltingly. ‘Is that why you think we grew apart? That’s crazy. That had nothing to do with it.’
‘OK,’ I said, in disgust and fury. ‘If you want to rewrite history – no, I can’t believe you could just—’
‘Hey!’ he said, his voice loud and hard for this first time in the conversation. ‘Give me some credit, for crying out – what? What are you saying? You’re saying,’ as if the idea was dawning on him for the first time, ‘that I turned against you because of your skin colour? How could you think that? How could you think that matters to me at all?’
‘How could I think? When I told you,’ I said, jabbing with my finger to emphasize my points, ‘that I was Indian, you got all upset.’
He looked baffled. ‘Upset? No, no. I guess it took a moment to adjust to it. I’d thought you were Irish, so I guess it was a shock to find out you were Indian. But it was just an adjustment thing. It only took a moment. Hey, you’d be the same if the positions were reversed.’
‘Adjustment?’ I said fiercely. ‘You insisted on separate fucking beds.’
‘Don’t swear, Tira,’ he said. His brows had contracted, and now he looked angry.
‘I’ll swear if I want,’ I said. But I didn’t swear again.
‘The separate beds thing—’ he started to say.
‘You’re going to tell me that wasn’t your idea. You’re going to tell me it had nothing to do with finding out I was Indian.’
‘It was my idea, the separate beds thing,’ he said. There was a fury of his own in his words now, a compression of his lips and a controlled emphasis of diction. ‘It had nothing to do with you being – coloured. I can’t believe you’d throw that accusation at me! We’re still married. Did I ask for a divorce? Did I refuse to have anything to do with you? Sure,’ searching his mental Rolodex, ‘sure you’d sometimes call me a racist, but you called me lots of things when you were angry, including a homosexual. That was just how you were when you were angry, all passion – that was one of the things that drew me to you. You didn’t really think I was a homosexual, and you didn’t really think I was a racist. How can you think that? That’s so insulting.’ And the anger in his words mutated sloppily into self-pity again. ‘How could you? I love you! I’ve always loved you!’
‘Jesus, just spare me the rhetoric,’ I said, slumping back. ‘You’re living a life of pure self-delusion. It’ll serve you well as a politician. Jesus, I don’t believe this.’
‘Believe it or not,’ he said. ‘I love you, despite everything. We’re married.’
‘So why did you insist on separate beds?’
‘Do you really need to ask?’
‘It seems,’ I said, sarcastic, ‘that I do. Yes, apparently I do need to ask.’
‘I can’t believe,’ he said, ‘that you need to ask.’
‘If it’s not your revulsion at—’ I started to say.
‘You were,’ he cried, ‘committing adultery with another man!’ There was a pause. ‘That was the reason,’ he added, in a lower voice. ‘Jesus, Tira, I’m only human. I try to forgive, to turn the other cheek, as Christ commands us, but there’s only so much I can do. There was only so much I could bear.’
‘That,’ I said, slowly, ‘was afterwards—’
But Crow was in the middle of a spiel now. ‘I loved you, and I still love you. But did you ever think of me? We were married, and I tried to do well by you, to do the right things by you as a husband should. But when we were – intimate, in the marital bed, it was always me. Wasn’t it? It was always me that – initiated it. Just once, just one time, I’d have liked it to have been you, you coming on to me. If you want me to put it in those terms, those vulgar terms. But it never was, was it? Was it, though?’
‘I thought,’ I mumbled, ‘that was how you liked it.’
‘Of course not. Of course I wanted to feel that you wanted to do – that as much as I did. I wanted it to be a mutual thing, a loving thing. So I stopped making my advances to you, and waited to see how long it would be before you—’ He was having real difficulty with finding the form of expression for this. ‘How long before you initiated intimacy with me. It was a long wait, though, Tira, wasn’t it?’
‘This was all after you’d exploded at me for being Indian,’ I said.
‘I did not explode,’ he said, firmly. ‘It makes no difference to me, your skin colour. It made no difference back then, and it doesn’t now.’
‘Well,’ I said, casting my mind back. ‘Maybe not exploded. But you were upset, I remember that. And I remember you insisting we have separate beds not long after that.’
‘I wanted separate beds after you started your affair with – Oh, Jesus, you know who. Are you surprised I wanted separate beds when I found out about that?’
‘It was the other way about,’ I said. ‘I started seeing [Name deleted] after you insisted on separate beds.’
‘Your memory is wrong,’ he said, simple as that. And the plain confidence with which he spoke unsettled my thoughts. Was I wrong? Had I misremembered the sequence of events? Because it is easy to do that, isn’t it: to think A happened before B when in fact it happened after.
The last thing Crow said to me was: ‘It can’t be, it breaks my heart. If only you’d come to me when you first arrived! If only you’d never been contaminated by the Others! Then we could rebuild. But not now – it breaks my heart, it breaks my heart, because I love you.’ And he started bawling again, starting crying so the tears dribbled, giving his hollowed cheeks a melted wax look. Then he screeched, ‘We could have been happy, you could have come to Newny with me as my wi
fe, my consort, my partner – but you decided you needed this other man. Jesus! It broke my dignity, it broke my self-respect, Jesus it broke my heart.’ He stopped, he seemed to get a grip on himself. ‘It’s too late now, anyway. If you’d have come straight to me, we could have patched things over. But it’s out of my hands now. You’ve been, I’m sorry, infected. I’d better say goodbye, I’d better.’
Then he left the room.
This evening, after writing that last passage, as I put the light out in my little room, I heard somebody singing in the street outside. My little window, with the graph-paper grid of wire lines running through the glass, allows sight out over a stretch of road, a little yard opposite. Tonight was a full moon, shining on the snow, and the voice I heard was either a woman’s or perhaps a high-pitched man’s, maybe a boy. The army is full of boys. He was standing at the corner of the street, and because there was only moonlight and starlight outside I couldn’t quite see him. This is what he sang:
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Seated in a silver chair:
Hesperus entreat your light
Goddess excellently bright
You who make a day of night
I think I’ve put the words down right. I thought they were lovely, so I scribbled them down there and then. It sounds like a hymn, but it is obviously addressed to the moon.
That same moon, up there: I can see her as I write.
The prevailing winds across the frozen Atlantic are west to east.
Crow went to New NY, and has been IP for four years now, and I am still here. I am still officially quarantined, but I am not confined to this room. I can wander the streets of Liberty, although I must not leave the city. The activity of the Others was close to this city, apparently confined to over-UK and not in the over-US (as we must not now call it). The Senate seems to think that the whole of Liberty has been compromised in some way. So I can go about the city. I can be with the woman I call, when others are around, my friend. There is a new puritanism in the new new-world that frowns at certain sorts of relationship. I mentioned her before. We don’t live together. She was divorced by her husband, and has a room in a women’s block, and she works in a stationery supplier that supplies the military, working with stock and catalogue. I call her my girlfriend, which is a nicely ambiguous phrase. We spend time together, from time to time.
