by Simon Ings
She trotted after him down the beach. The couch had not disintegrated: ‘I guess your mother didn’t get around to it,’ said Ajay.
‘Landing was fun,’ said Rosa.
‘Bundle of laughs,’ Ajay muttered.
‘It wasn’t good for you?’
‘Oh sure, landing’s never been so easy.’
‘You’ve done this before?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
He didn’t reply, just turned and pointed at the wooden sign. ‘It’s just we’ve landed on the wrong hemisphere, is all. The wrong fucking ocean.’
Rosa didn’t understand. She reach the sign: Waddell Beach.
‘A problem?’
‘Waddell Beach is Bay Area.’
‘Not Rio?’
‘SF. North America.’
‘How did we end up here?’
‘All being equal, I’d have said a lucky accident. A miracle we didn’t burn up, or land in the middle of an ocean someplace. But things aren’t equal. You saw the way those pods behaved—’ His eyes took on a haunted cast as he relived the experience. ‘It’s nothing like it’s supposed to be. They had minds of their own.’
‘Ma’s work.’
‘Surely.’
She remembered the cleistogam. ‘You think she brought us here?’
‘Perhaps. Why I don’t know. You’d think if this was meant, there’d be someone here to meet us.’
‘I heard voices.’
He shook his head. ‘Bystanders merely.’
‘They’ve gone?’
He glanced at her. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Here, give me a hand.’ They went round the couch picking up stray fragments of the pod. They threw them into the waves. Pod-bone dust blackened their hands.
Rosa tried pushing the couch out to sea, but it stuck in the sand.
‘Other way,’ said Ajay.
‘What?’
‘To the road.’
They staggered up the beach with it. Right under the road in a nest of dry scrub lay Ajay’s couch, upended. ‘Lay this one sideways on to it.’
Rosa helped Ajay tug the couch into place. Something in the scrub caught her eye.
A foot.
Not quite hidden: a foot, an ankle, a leg – quite hairless – and something drawn on it. A purple rose.
‘Ajay—’
‘What?’ He knew what she’d seen.
She said, ‘Nothing.’
‘Good.’
He went back to the pile of gear and started gathering it up in his arms.
‘You missed some,’ Rosa said.
‘I’m wearing it.’
Rosa peered into the gap between the couches. She saw another leg, paler and hairy, and a hand, smooth and black-skinned like Ajay. Last, another hand, wearing a black glove. In fluorescent turquoise round the wristband, there were words: ‘Bad Boy’. She remembered sea-fall, surf and breezes, people’s cries—
Ajay shoved the gear into the gap, on top of them.
‘Why?’
‘Worried?’
‘No. But—’
He turned to her, gripped her shoulders tight, to hurt: ‘Listen. We’re strangers here. We don’t belong. We show up easily. We grate. There are men – bad men – who will do anything to have Elle’s head and you. We’ll try to blend in, and when we can’t—’ He turned and nodded at the nest he’d made.
‘I understand.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’ll follow you.’
‘You’ll say nothing.’
‘I’ll do what you do.’
‘And you’ll stay with me.’
She nodded eagerly.
‘Okay.’
She hugged him, sighing, happy. A blissful second passed. He pulled her gently from him. ‘Shed the belt.’
She blinked at him.
‘Come on.’
‘They’re mine.’ She ran her hands across her trophies, her precious heads.
‘What did I just say?’
‘They’re prizes. I hunted them.’
‘Rosa.’
She bit her lip. ‘Okay.’
‘No one wears those things here.’
‘They don’t?’
‘No.’
‘They don’t hunt?’
‘They don’t carry heads round with them. Antlers on living room walls maybe, and they’re most often plastic.’
‘Plastic beasts?’
‘Just take the fucking thing off,’ Ajay snapped, exasperated. He emptied the pockets of his golden suit. Strange lozenges, plastic packets full of coloured fluids, needles, data beads. He dropped them all carelessly into the sand.
Reluctantly, Rosa unlaced the wire round her waist. She pulled it free of the belt loops and looked at it for the last time. Cats, rats, birds, one or two monkeys. All had hair like hers. All held valued memories. She sighed. Her cutting cloth hung from the middle of the wire. She glanced at Ajay. He was distracted, digging something out a deep and awkward pocket. She whipped the cloth off the belt and balled it up in her hands. She felt it harden, squeezed it tight.
‘Come on.’
She handed the belt over with her free hand, tucked the cloth into the back pocket of her jeans with the other. Ajay took the belt and dropped it into the gap between the couches.
‘Can’t I keep a head? Just one?’
‘No.’ Ajay shed the golden suit and bundled it into the gap, then put on the clothing he’d left behind for himself. He picked up a pair of black jeans and shook them out vigorously, wiped one foot free of sand, and hopped about, trying to get into them. Rosa giggled.
‘Well give me a hand, then,’ he muttered.
She trotted over to him. Her jeans slipped down over her hips. The right leg came unravelled. She trod on it and fell face forward in the sand.
Ajay laughed. She sat up, scowling, shaking the sand out her hair. ‘Not funny.’
He laughed harder. It was irresistible. She found herself smiling. He hauled his jeans on – they were far too tight, he could barely do up the zip – then came over and helped her up. He looked her over. Her jeans were so loose, the waistband had slipped down over her pubic bone, revealing a trace of red hair. ‘Here.’ He pulled the tan belt from his trousers and handed it to her. ‘No point me wearing this.’
She slipped it through the loops. He helped her with the buckle. There wasn’t a hole tight enough for her so he tied the belt with a knot. It dug into her stomach.
‘The wire was more comfortable.’
‘Don’t start.’ He slipped on a shirt, and over that a windbreaker – they were both too small for him – and gathered up the gear from his gold suit. He stuffed it in his pockets.
‘How come you get to keep your toys?’
‘I said, enough!’
She folded her arms over her chest. ‘Not fair.’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake—’
He reached into the gap between the couches and drew something out. Rosa held out her hands. He dropped something into them. Soft. Not a head. She looked at it, disappointed. It was a glove. Black. Round the wrist: ‘Bad Boy’.
She looked up at Ajay.
Ajay was grinning at her. She smiled back, to please him.
‘Put it on.’
She slipped it over her right hand. It was a perfect fit. She balled her fist. The material stretched and puckered like a second skin. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ajay finished stuffing the pockets of his windbreaker with the things from his suit.
‘You’ve left something.’
It was a black lozenge, one inch long. He picked it up, took hold of one end and twisted it. The top came off. He sized up the pyre, then put the lozenge up to his lips and whispered into it. He snapped the top back on and tossed the lozenge into the gap.
‘What does it do?’
He took Rosa’s arm and led her away, up the concrete bank into the car park.
Rosa stumbled. Her new shoes cut her feet. ‘Ajay.’
‘Keep movin
g.’
She glanced back at the scrub, the nest they’d made. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Get to the jeep.’ He pushed her ahead of him. ‘Hurry.’
She trotted to the vehicle on the other side of the deck and looked back. There was nothing to see, no flash, no smoke. Ajay took another device out his pocket – flat on one side, flanged on the other – and pressed the flat side to the windshield of the jeep. It stuck there, singing softly to itself.
A fly buzzed Rosa’s head. She swatted it away. It came again. She shook her head. The fly was inside her head. She stared at the device. It was the first minded thing she’d seen since leaving Ma.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘Locksmith. Tells alarm systems what they want to hear.’
She minded it.
The doors clunked open.
‘Get in,’ said Ajay unsurprised, thinking perhaps his toy had done it all.
Rosa scrambled into the cab. Ajay unsuckered the device and climbed up beside her. He pulled a flange of the Locksmith free – a flexible metal blade – and stuck it into the ignition.
Rosa made to mind it again but stopped herself, to see what the device could do on its own.
Nothing happened.
Smug, she minded it for him.
Still nothing happened.
She listened for the fly. It had gone.
Ajay jiggled the blade around in the slot. ‘Fucking thing.’
‘Ajay,’ said Rosa in a small voice.
‘What?’
‘Ajay, something’s happening to the sea.’
He looked up.
‘What is it, Ajay?’
‘Jesus fucking Christ.’
The sea was bulging. A huge shallow dome of grey water rose up before the beach. It stuck there, impossibly convex, like a gigantic lens. It started to froth. Within seconds, the whole distended arc had changed colour, from deep-sea green to palest yellow. Spume appeared from nowhere, webbing the domed water like blood vessels in an inflamed eye. At last the water slid away. In great long criss-crossing waves the huge lens came crashing down in roiling tongues of foam. The waves beat furiously at the shore, then rose as one and rushed, a single wall of green, upon the beach, high as a house.
Trapped by fear in the jeep, Ajay and Rosa stared appalled as the water wall curved over them and crashed, mere yards short of the car deck. Spray shot high into the air and fell like stones upon the roof. White water swirled around the car, higher and higher as smaller waves threw themselves up over the deck. The water rose around the car and, just as quickly, drew away. The jeep jerked and shifted. Rosa squealed. Ajay clenched the steering wheel like he’d snap it. But the waters were not high enough to drag them off the deck, and ran back harmlessly towards the thing which had displaced them.
Rosa gaped. ‘What is it?’
Barely a hundred yards out from the scoured beach an orange skin had risen like some great and alien shore, the tegument broken in places to reveal black steel plates. It had no eyes to speak of, but three huge dishes inset in its flank, rust-stained and barnacled. It had no mouth, but at regular intervals cilia the size of gantries frothed the water: giant gills perhaps, or outlandish mouthparts. The narrow channel between the behemoth and the beach was full of tendrils made of furry, fleshy stuff that broke off and joined up again at will, gathering in who knew what from the shallows. From further out to sea came strange lights and detonations. Maybe the thing had beached itself so violently that these were injuries; there was no way to tell.
Nervously, Rosa minded the behemoth.
Nothing.
Ajay snapped out of his paralysis and fought frantically with the Locksmith, shoving it in and out of the ignition slot. It was still dead.
The behemoth stirred.
‘Ajay, look!’
It was retreating, slipping back into the surf. The water eddied and foamed around it. Waves rushed in and battered it, beating it down. There were no tendrils now, no gantries weaving and flailing the sea. They were all beneath the surface now and sinking rapidly. At last the sea closed over it and everything was quiet.
Dayus Ram, sister (if that’s what you are: have I forgotten so much?), Sis, wait!
How can I catch?
My eyes are bleared, my fingers cramped—
How badly my saltwater years have treated me!
You’ve stayed young, afloat in space.
You’ve forgotten how harsh Earth is.
Damn! I dropped it. Told you so.
Such a pretty present, too—
It fell into the world, that grub-bucket.
So be it. I am not proud. I’ll open up my eyes, my mouth:
‘Little girl, where are you?
Come and be my friend!’
An age went by.
‘Fuck,’ Ajay said, distinctly.
‘Ajay, what was it?’
‘Presidio.’
‘Who?’
He fought the Locksmith deeper into the slot and left it hanging there. He rubbed his face with his hands.
‘A whale?’ Rosa asked, racking her screen-filled mind for images that matched the monstrous thing.
‘Yeah,’ Ajay replied, with a shallow laugh. ‘Some might say. Presidio’s a Massive, like Dayus Ram.’
‘Like my Ma?’
‘Tales I’ve heard from hereabouts, mermaids, missing surfers and the rest, but Jesus Christ, I never heard of anything like this . . .’ He sat there a while in silence, staring at the sea. He said, ‘It was supposed to take us.’
‘What?’
‘That’s why we landed here. We were Dayus Ram’s gift to Presidio.’
‘Like you’re taking me to Rio?’
‘Yeah.’ He double-took: ‘You, to Rio?’ He seemed about to say something, but let it drop. ‘Yeah,’ he said again. ‘I told you we were valuable.’
‘But it missed,’ she said. ‘All that effort – and it missed.’
Ajay said nothing.
‘It was very clumsy, wasn’t it?’
He nodded, thoughtful. ‘A mallet cracking nuts.’
‘How so?’
‘I mean it’s big. Maybe it finds it hard to think on human scale.’ He risked a laugh. ‘It fucked up. It won’t be happy with that.’
‘You think it will come back?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ajay, ‘it’ll come back, if it can figure out a way.’
‘Why’s it so hard for it? Because it’s big?’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps because it doesn’t talk.’
‘Like Ma, then,’ said Rosa, disappointed.
‘Worse than Ma: a cleistogam.’
Rosa started. The concept meant something to Ajay too, then. ‘Cleistogam?’
‘All inturned. Massives tend that way, thank God. There’s few big minds out there can be bothered with things other than themselves.’
She thought of the tiny cleistogam she knew, the merely human ball, so ugly, so apparently without purpose. ‘What are they for?’
‘They’re just themselves. Why they were made, and what went wrong to inturn them, you’d have to ask who built them.’
Rosa pointed out the window. The question was clear enough without words.
‘Presidio’s a military Massive,’ Ajay replied. ‘Snow made it when she was human, lacing people with datafat so together they made one giant mind. They fled into themselves years back and let the world go hang.’
Rosa thought of the tendrils, splitting, swimming and recombining – people? ‘People became – that?’
‘That and other things, I guess. And that’s not worst. Worst is what they left behind. The country’s full of old bombs, all cleistogammed themselves and ticking to a secret beat. Presidio’s not spoken in years. There’s a rumour when it does it’ll talk with tongues of flame, burn everything up.’
‘Burn what up?’
‘Everything. As said.’
She looked around her. ‘Why?’
‘By then it’ll have no need of real places, itself b
eing all to it.’ He chuckled. ‘Winter’s tales, relax.’
The engine fired. They yelled and jumped.
‘Oh fucking hell,’ Ajay gasped, gripping his chest. He snatched the Locksmith out the ignition and stuffed it into his pants pocket.
‘You okay?’
‘Another fucking year off my life is all.’ Bad-temperedly he shoved the car into gear, swung the wheel around and floored the gas.
Rosa clutched at her stomach. The jeep sped round the deck and out past the wooden sign onto the road. They turned right.
‘Use the belt.’
‘Belt?’
‘Webbing. Over your right shoulder.’
Rosa found the kevlar strip and pulled. It stuck. ‘It’s stuck,’ she said.
Ajay sighed. ‘Pull it slowly this time.’
Rosa tugged. The belt came free. ‘What now?’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Ajay sighed.
‘What?’ Rosa complained.
‘Nothing.’
‘What? What have I done?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’ He patted her knee, took the belt off her and clipped it into the fastener.
She sat there a while, bored, shaken, slewed around. The road wasn’t nearly as smooth as it looked.
‘I feel sick,’ she said.
He sighed.
‘Real sick.’
‘Open the door. Throw up on the road if you have to. We haven’t time to stop.’
She studied the door. ‘How do I open it?’
‘This is going to be a long fucking journey,’ Ajay muttered.
The road wove along the coast, cutting inland every so often to serve small towns and factories. They drove past churches, bars and vacant lots; Rosa asked the names of things, and Ajay, annoyed at first but then with better humour, answered her as best he could.
It was the things not made by men that shocked her most of all. So many hills, such plants, so many different shapes. How fecund Earth was! Such hugeness! Such variety! A galaxy of textures scratched at her retinas. Her headache built; she tried to sleep. But the nausea came back whenever she closed her eyes.
‘We need to stop,’ she begged him yet again.
This time he was kindly. ‘Another mile and then we ditch the car.’
She yawned. Her head felt heavy. Her mind was as confused as her senses. There was too much to take in. She had too many questions. She shivered. She was cold too, even under these clothes that would not let her rest, they were so stiff and scratchy. Ajay shucked his jacket and handed it to her. She draped it over herself. She sneezed.
