Unconquered Countries-Four Novellas

by Geoff Ryman

  Dead End.

  She was trying to find a company, small enough, just an office, where Eamon Strafe himself was likely to turn up.

  She had the computer look through the entire UK telephone directory. No Songfeast International. No Spirit Management.

  Suppose there was someone who was trying to find Polio Crafts. It was not in the telephone book, but it would, must be registered.

  A search of the NBR would cost £100.00. And if the companies were not registered in the UK? A search of EC registries would be possible but for even more money.

  Billie knew that there was this thing called hacking. She had no idea how it worked, except that phone lines could be accessed for free. She knew that codes were mathematically generated, until one was found that worked. The instant she asked the self-programmer to come up with something that would do that, a message came up.

  THAT FUNCTION DISALLOWED

  For everyone’s sake—avoid electronic intrusion.

  No wonder everyone wants you to buy a self-programmer. Something told her: take out the transceiver. Just in case it tells anyone. She pulled out the card, and felt relief. Her machine was no longer in touch with the Eamon Strafe network. It would now know nothing about her, or she about it.

  Joey was home for the school holidays. Billie and he got on a bus to a public library. There were ten left for all eight million inhabitants of London. The nearest was in Holborn, in the old Daily Mirror building. The bus ride lasted 45 minutes. Joey liked to pretend he was big enough to travel on his own, and liked to sit two or three seats away on the bus, turning around in the seat, grinning, kicking his heels. His face was beautiful, very pink, with an orange tint, carrot hair, huge blue eyes. Children were beautiful. What happened to the adults? Billie could not relax, all through the long ride; children needed to be guarded, locked in, supervised.

  The library allowed no adults into the children’s reading room.

  “Nobody gets in?” asked Billie, anxiously, making sure.

  The room had Disney videos, to keep the children quiet, assuming that books bored them. Joey sat down to watch, on a blue bubble chair, away from the other children. He did not look behind him, at her.

  Spirit Management was registered in Bonn, of all places. It had a series of subsidiaries, registered throughout the EC. Hush Hush Services, Desperate Dan Butch cosmetics—that was part of the Empire as well? Wait for it. The cosmetic company partly owned Songfeast International, a music publishing business that seemed only to deal with Eamon Strafe. Eamon Strafe had started out in male cosmetics? And Songfeast was partly owned by something new—Haskell Holdings.

  It was quite an education. The companies kept interlocking. Completely different types of businesses turned out to have the same address. Gradually, however, it all seemed to narrow down to Haskell Holdings and Spirit Management. Billie made a family tree on her kitchen table. It looked like this.

  Imagine all those people, all those directors, sitting on each other’s companies, all owning each other. Are you really in there, Eamon? Does it take all those suits to make one free man? And where does that leave the rest of us?

  She and Joey sat looking at it together. He drew on it, squiggles in crayon, and she found the splash of color a relief. Something bothered her. These days, it was supposed to be cheaper for companies to have all their work done by freelancers. No sick pay, no pensions. Just like Billie, really. The newspapers were full of the Death of Corporate Man, but here he was, back again.

  “Is it a computer game?” Joey asked.

  “Yes,” she answered him.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Give one of them a call,” she replied.

  She worked late into the night, when Joey was asleep. She interrogated the CD, at second hand. “Scan CD memory, do not call up simulation program,” she asked it.

  RECORDS SHOW NO MEMORY OF BUSINESS DEALINGS

  “Paste and copy any application material,” she told it. Part of Eamon, the part that knew anything about record companies, was copied onto her hard disk.

  Then, she made her choice. She chose Memison. It was named after one of Eamon’s songs, and it was the only name that did not appear to be another kind of business—publishing, management, market research, electronics. Memison appeared to make music. And it was registered in Ireland.

  Without her transceiver, she had to use the modem. She took a deep breath and called Memison. The first message from Memison was:

  PLEASE SAY HELLO.

  “Hello,” said Billie. Nothing.

  PLEASE LEAVE MESSAGE.

  Billie did not want to leave a message. She wanted to reach Eamon. She wanted to find out, really, where he was. She needed access to the system.

  ENTER PASSWORD.

  That was it, then, stymied again. Billie looked at the screen. If she left a message now, would they be able to trace that she’d tried to penetrate their system? Log off, Billie.

  Then, an interception from her own machine.

  PLEASE HOLD. ENDEAVORING TO ENTER PASSWORD.

  What? thought Billie. It’s supposed to be blocked from doing that, we’re all supposed to be blocked. Different combinations of letters rattled past on the screen. She caught some of them. Stevens, spirit, sea, strafe…

  Her computer had overridden itself, somehow: songfeast, songfish…

  Eamon, thought Billie. I put him in the systems folder. Eamon is doing this. My Eamon, she thought, as opposed to theirs.

  A flurry of numbers blizzarded past in another window. Suddenly the screen blinked, and they were all gone.

  SYSTEM ACCESS GRANTED.

  A range of folders came up. SIM 1, SIM 2. She copied them onto her own disk, quickly. FUTURES, said one.

  The file names were DIRECTIONS. TITLES. EAMON.

  She opened EAMON, and it was full of code. And her own machine intervened with a message.

  BILLIE, LOVE. GET OUT NOW.

  This is the real one, she thought, this is the real Eamon.

  I MEAN IT. THEY KNOW WE’RE HERE.

  Panic fluttered only very briefly, then certainty seized her.

  “Copy from Directory E MALE file Letter 76. Then log off,” she said.

  Up came a window, a directory, a ghost dance as files darkened and opened themselves like lovers, more completely than lovers could.

  Then, darkness, plunged from light, from a place where intelligence pirouetted in metaphoric forms, into a void. Billie’s hand shook, as it darted behind the machine, and pulled out the modem jack.

  Did we make it?

  “Restart,” she said.

  Ping, sang the machine.

  She didn’t know how to ask if they had been detected. She opened up her directory the old-fashioned way. The Memison files she had tried to save were not there. Had they been wiped, Billie wondered. By the speed of their exit? Or by Eamon? Talk about the ghost in the machine.

  “What was the password?” she asked. Numbers came up: 5 113 15 14. The letters of Eamon’s name in their numerical order of the alphabet. “Save,” she told the machine, told herself.

  She opened up E MALE, E for Eamon, and read the letter she had posted.

  Eamon

  I am nothing to you, less than air, not even a whisper, and yet my life is built around you. I see your picture, and my heart goes into my mouth, and stays there until I want to tear my heart out. You are my heart, Eamon. Does that mean I want to tear you out? Sometimes I think it does. If I could tear you out, Eamon, all of this could stop.

  Do you know how humiliating it is? You see, I know, Eamon. The newspapers, the companies, the videos, the men in suits, they do it to us deliberately. They show us men like you, and what are we to do in our heart of hearts, in this drab world, but love you? And the less of you we get, the more we want. In a real world, Eamon, I would have had you or been turned down. Whatever happened, I would have gotten used to it by now. It would become ordinary. I might even have grown bored with you. That cannot happen. The first
full flush of love is always on me, Eamon. The love has nowhere to go.

  I don’t buy your books or records anymore. I can’t bear to. You have grown so far away. The software copies decay and turn into someone else. I want to see you, Eamon, for real. I want to see that you are middle-aged, pockmarked, a bit odd. Nothing else will do. I’m so tired of being pandered to.

  They do it to us deliberately. They addict us to you. Can you stop them doing that? Please?

  Love,

  Billie.

  Her real name was Wilhelmina, her mother was German. It was OK that her name was on their files. She would be as hard to trace, in her own way, as Eamon Strafe, as Polio.

  Three days later there was a headline in her newspaper.

  It stilled her heart, even before she had read it.

  RECLUSE STRAFE TO TOUR

  Generation of fans in shock.

  An answer. It had to be an answer. She had spoken to Eamon, and he had heard. She felt joy, then dismay. She had no idea how to get a ticket; it had been ten years since she had bought a ticket for anything. She could see herself, on that night, with no ticket, circling the blank walls of Wembley, calling Eamon’s name like a jealous wife. Eamon! It was me, I was the one who wrote you!

  She rang the Arena. Busy. Busy. She took a taxi instead, to Leyton, tube to Oxford Circus, change onto the Bakerloo Line. Huddling in her thin coat, she walked to the Arena. She had expected thousands of people to be in line, but the place was as bleak as the surface of the moon. The parking lot was nearly empty and light rain lay on her coatsleeves like bits of broken glass.

  The box office was open. She simply bought a ticket, a ticket for one. “First come, first served,” said the young man behind the counter and shrugged. “No telephone or agency bookings.”

  “Eamon did that, didn’t he?” whispered Billie.

  “I suppose,” he said. He was not in love with Eamon Strafe. “You’re in luck.” He frowned slightly when she paid cash. Cash made people untraceable. Billie turned, and there was sunlight, bleary and silver, out from under a shelf of cloud.

  There was a story she had read once, about a piece of paper on which magic runes were written. The paper blew away by itself, and those it escaped from were cursed. You had to hold onto it, and then give it back. Billie wrapped the ticket round and round her finger, as if it had a life of its own, and could wriggle free. It had cost so much money.

  She thought of Joey’s shoes. Joey needed new shoes. They would have cost the price of the ticket. If I was rich, she thought, I’d buy him shoes, and a ticket. I’d have a car I could drive here. I’d have tutors for Joey, so he would read and do math. He’d have a computer of his own, full of art galleries and animation. Such thoughts made her feel unworthy, so she made herself walk home from Leyton, to save money.

  Joey was at school. She closed her bedroom door anyway, and the blinds, and for the first time in months, loaded the CD.

  TRANSCEIVER FAILURE, said the screen. LOADING BACKUP

  “Thank you,” she told Eamon.

  Eamon was in Japan, where he had been two months before when she took out the transceiver. He was sitting on stone steps. “Did I do anything?” he asked.

  “Part of you did. We left a letter to Eamon on a file. And, now he’s going on tour.”

  He looked confused for a moment. “You took out the card?” He paused, considering. “That was pretty smart. I’d leave it out for a while.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked him.

  He chortled. “It means I’ll be in Japan for a long, long time.”

  There was a little Japanese boy in blue shorts, sitting beside him on the steps. Behind them both was a red plaque with gold lettering embedded in the stone.

  “Shame you’re not going to be at your own concert,” she said.

  Eamon had something the little boy wanted, something Billie could not quite see. It caught the light and was made of gold. It might have been a key. The boy lunged forward and wrestled him for it, giggling. Eamon grinned suddenly, widely, a grin that could illumine the world. “I’ll be happy enough here,” he said. He relented, and gave whatever it was to the little boy, who shrieked with delight and ran away. The boy wore new shoes.

  “I don’t know anything about myself, do I?” he said, looking back at her. He looked worn, older. “I don’t know much about the business. I don’t know where all the money comes from, where all the money goes. Eamon, he does, I’m sure. That means I’m not at all like Eamon, really.”

  “No,” sighed Billie. “You’re probably nicer than he is.”

  The little boy came back, riding a red bicycle, beaming, his eyes in hooded slits. Eamon murmured something to him in Japanese. The boy appeared to ignore him. But he kept pedaling, round and round Eamon Strafe.

  “How long was I…inactive?” he asked.

  “Let’s see. I had you off for about six months.”

  “Ah. Did I start to repeat myself then?”

  “No, not once.”

  He looked about himself. “This temple,” he said, “is made of wood imported from Korea. It is torn down and rebuilt every thirteen years. But it is still the same temple as was built in the fourteenth century. It is the same temple in spirit. New and old at the same time.”

  Billie had never been to Japan. “I’d like to see inside it,” she said.

  The flesh on his face went slack, and his smile was edged. “Maybe they loaded enough data for you to do that. Look, Billie. Do you mind? I want to be on my own for a bit.”

  “Fine,” she said. He stood up and walked off the screen. She didn’t know he could do that. Did he still have a digital existence? Was the machine still programming actions for him? From somewhere came the sound of feet on gravel, of air moving, of children playing, of birds.

  She was about to exit, when the little Japanese boy came up to the steps, crying and looking for Eamon. You and me both, kid, thought Billie. The red tricycle went past, pedaled furiously by an older, fatter child. The tricycle had been commandeered.

  So who is making this up? she wondered. Me? The computer? How far outside of this park could I walk? Do they have all of Kyoto in this thing?

  Then she heard Eamon’s voice very dimly off-screen. The little boy walked off toward it, off-screen. She heard the boy complain, miserably. There were still birds singing unseen in the bushes. Billie wanted to see them.

  In the corner of the monitor, the unblinking eye glowered at her, dull gray, absorbent.

  “Put me there,” whispered Billie.

  She saw herself walk onto the screen, wearing traditional Japanese dress. Yes, that’s what I’d wear, she thought, ruefully. I’d keep looking for the old Japan until I found it. She wore green and white silk with something like chopsticks in her hair. Oh, Billie, you fool. Her hair was glossy black, her skin sallow, but she decided it suited her. She was surprised by how much she liked herself. There was something direct and wiry in the way she moved that she had not expected. She was thin, yes, but not delicate. If I saw myself, she thought, I’d say, “That looks like a nice girl.”

  Billie on the screen sat down on the stone steps, and waited. Sun came and went, filtered by passing clouds, and the light reflected on the gold embroidery. Billie on the screen looked up directly at herself.

  “It’s nicer here,” Billie heard herself say in her own voice. The little boy crunched his way across the gravel to her, and held up a pink and white fish cake.

  “Thank you,” said Billie on the screen to the boy. She took a bite from the cake, and then offered it back to him.

  Don’t do that, what about your germs, thought Billie, and then remembered. There are no germs there.

  Eamon walked back on screen.

  “Feel better now?” asked the copy of Billie.

  “Yes, thanks,” he said. She stood up, and he kissed her on the cheek.

  “Want to see the temple?” Eamon asked.

  So they walked hand in hand on stone pathways set like islands in gra
vel seas. The supports and boards of the roof of the temple made considered patterns. The wood was raw, clean. Billie saw herself stroke it. Light shone in the paper walls, dappled where the paper was slightly thicker. Only a wooden statue of the Buddha was old, deeply creased, with deep cracks across his face. The eyes were ancient, gleaming, creased with a smile.

  “Are we going back to a hotel?” Billie on the screen asked, with a tremor of shyness.

  “I’m staying here,” said Eamon, surprised. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  There was a path down from the temple, through cherry trees, now just past blossom. White, decaying bloom still littered the ground. The rooms of the monks were in a terrace, like a motel. Inside the rooms were bare—a bed, a basin, a parchment on the wall with calligraphic signs. One window, high, just under the ceiling. Billie flung her arms around Eamon, held him.

  “Can we?” she asked. “Here?”

  He laughed, and kissed the tip of her nose. He began to wrestle himself out of his shirt. In her own bedroom, Billie saw his back, pale, slightly freckled, broad at the shoulders, but skinny at the arms. Eamon loosened the kimono, and it fell away from the other Billie, and she saw her own body as the computer must have seen it, night after night, still young, still beautiful even with the creases about the belly. She lay down on the bed. Outside, drifting on the wind, was the sound of a radio, some Japanese pop song, very distant. Eamon slipped out of his trousers. He had a washboard tummy and slightly too much chestnut hair. Like himself, his penis was both beautiful and ugly. He stood over Billie for a moment, smiling.

  “Thank you for being here,” he said, then very gently lowered himself on top of her.

  Impassive, on another bed, in a room that smelled of sweat and cabbage and diesel, Billie watched and wondered what it meant that she watched. Round and round on her fingers, she still turned the poisoned paper.

  What were six weeks in her life?

  Joey went back to school and got into trouble. He got in trouble for being too quiet. “He just doesn’t socialize,” said his teacher. What could Billie do about that? “He stays indoors all the time,” she explained. “I can’t really let him out; it’s not safe where we live.”