Hotwire

by Simon Ings

  Rosa could see the thing grow huge behind his eyes, week by week. ‘A big glass tower!’ A ladder for him, so near death. A ladder, touching heaven.

  ‘Have a pill,’ said Rosa. She offered him a panacea. ‘Maybe you’ll get better.’

  Ajay snatched it off her. He shrugged: ‘Jeez, these kids.’

  ‘I’m going to die,’ the old man said firmly, as if the tablet were a cure and he would none of it. ‘I’m really going to die.’

  ‘He’s strange,’ said Rosa afterwards.

  ‘He’s scared,’ said Ajay. He shut the door. ‘He has no philosophy.’ He handed Rosa back the pill. ‘Don’t give away your medicines like that. No one wants them. Besides, you need them.’

  ‘I feel fine.’

  ‘T-cells sometimes forget their tricks. How many pills do you have left?’

  ‘Only two.’

  ‘You’ll sicken a while once you’ve done with them. But it won’t be so bad. I’m mostly mended. I can take care of you.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  He was very tired, unused to so much exercise. She led him into the bedroom and helped undress him. She said, ‘You know I would not leave you for the world.’

  He slipped under the covers. ‘One day you must. I can’t take you to Rio.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’

  ‘Because it’s true. I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And lead you to the lion’s den? As told, Rio’s hungry for heat, for ways to be made flesh. I’ll not lead you into danger of that sort.’

  ‘Then why not stay with me?’ she said, sitting beside him on the bed.

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Your sister?’

  ‘As I told you once.’

  ‘My sister’s head buys your sister a heart. Ajay, you’re so dutiful!’

  She sounded so like Lucia just then, coldness ran down his spine. ‘It’s a promise I made is all.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  He looked at her sharply, suspecting some irony. But he had misjudged her. Her gaze was as besotted as ever.

  Still, Lucia’s words hung over him: ‘Why be the gun another fires?’ Lucia, who’d betrayed him, and whose promises had been all lies. Yet her questions had laid bare unsightly truths; truths he’d never quite reburied and never quite forgotten.

  ‘I’m here for a while yet,’ he comforted her. ‘I can’t call Rio just like that. Massives listen in on the world’s wires, ears fine-tuned by paranoia, hunting for rival life to squash. They stifled Singapore that way, and Hanoi, and Hangzhou. Like drowning new-born puppies.’

  ‘They’d kill Rio?’

  ‘If they could. Sure as shot they’d spirit Elle and you away. We’ve got to contact Rio carefully, or else run the gamut of its rivals.’

  ‘No freedom, then, even on Earth?’ Ajay’s description of the world had reminded her of Ma: her watchful lenses and busy screens.

  ‘Earth itself is a sort of womb now. A womb shared out between a dozen jealous mothers: Haag, Presidio, and cities, Beijing, Paris, Delhi, Milan—’

  ‘And Rio?’

  ‘One day, perhaps.’

  Rosa tucked her head into the crook of Ajay’s shoulder. He put his arm round her. She sighed and closed her eyes. Her warmth startled him. He still thought of her as a built thing; it came as a surprise to register her breathing, the softness of her hair against his arm, the rise and fall—

  ‘Get up.’

  She stirred, sat up and blinked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You were falling asleep.’

  ‘It matters?’

  ‘Yes.’ He shook her off.

  He had to turn this round somehow. He had to get back in control. Of her. And of himself.

  That was the night Rosa ate her last pill.

  The next morning she was sick again, and the next morning, and the morning after that. In a few days she was sick in earnest, shivering and sweating. She returned to health soon afterwards, as Ajay said she would. The mornings remained difficult.

  Knowing how he fussed, and wanting not to worry him unduly, Rosa concealed her morning nausea as best she could. She took to waking early, so it would be all over by the time he rose.

  Both well, both marking time, and each uncertain what the other wanted or would do, they lived as best they could together in the rented house.

  It was bare but they made do. Ajay suggested Rosa have the smallest room as her private space, thinking she had been so long a solitary child, she would need to be on her own sometimes. She occupied the room, delighted with the idea, kissed Ajay and made such fuss, he might have built it for her with his bare hands. Flattered, he took it well when she refused to let him in. Still, he was curious. What did she find to do in there?

  Out of her lair, she cooked and cleaned and cared for him as though he were her lord. She found simple pleasure in domestic chores, and exhibited a femininity and meekness he had thought long extinct.

  What simple joy in work she has! thought Ajay, watching as his charge swabbed down the kitchen surfaces and waxed the floor. At first he’d say to her, ‘No need,’ but learned to change his tune, seeing how disappointed she became, deprived of means to serve. She longed to serve, not him exactly, but her notion of him as a sort of kindly judge. Never really parented, she longed for stricture, guidance, someone to obey. At first he tried to liberate her from her abject self-subordination. Eventually, he learned to let her be. It made her happy, after all, and kept her out of trouble. More to the point it kept her home. The many risks they ran in simply staying here incognito were preying on his mind. How long before the trail of falling stars, nanotechnicked death and card fraud led to their door?

  Afraid she would reveal her strangeness to the outside world, he tried to keep her all the time indoors. But there were limits to her submission and she would have none of it. Still, he tried to keep her from those places adults might frequent. He forbade her the café and did the shopping and the laundry himself. This left her the fair, the beach, the parks and shady avenues of the derelict campus: enough to content her in the few hours’ playtime she allowed between her daily chores.

  These modest restrictions on her freedom hurt her less than Ajay’s doing her chores. Shopping and laundry had been her duties, gladly done. He had stolen them from her. She waited at the door for him while he went to the store. The moment he came back she snatched the bags off him and put the food away herself. ‘It’s my job,’ she snapped at him. Then she’d usher him into the living room and pour him a drink from the gallon jug of iced frulatti she’d been making while he was out.

  It pleased Rosa to see him off to work (more fraud, the theft of papers, hacking on a public terminal); to leave each morning smartly dressed and eat a hearty meal on his return. A wifely cliché, swallowed whole. He looked in her for signs of growing up, discrimination, real self. He got instead daytime TV, shampooed carpets, polished lino, spotless surfaces. When the flattery wore off, he began to question her intelligence.

  She had a terror of leaving him. He was her first man, her rescuer, her angel. She longed for his trust and his passion. These were things she’d glimpsed so briefly; he hid them from her now, making out that they’d never existed. She longed for his love. She would not let him throw her over, not without a fight.

  She racked her brain for some stratagem, some way to keep them together. She decided to make herself indispensable to him. She wanted to be so much a part of his life, he’d never be able to do without her. It didn’t matter what he asked her to do, how boring or dull, she did it for him straight away, as best she knew how. Her obedience seemed to satisfy him, in a quiet way. It wasn’t enough, but what else could she do? She was afraid to impress him too much. If he guessed how strong she was becoming, he might decide she could handle the world, and then – who knew? – he might throw her out.

  Her morning nausea wore off at last, and in its place came a sensation of power she’d not experienced before. Something inside her, solid and powerfu
l, was giving her energy. Like a battery, she thought. A battery in her belly. She said nothing about it to Ajay. She didn’t want him to know how strong she was, how capable. She hid from him her growing competence with the world.

  Listening to the radio in her head, she was careful not to whistle the tunes.

  Watching films behind her eyes, she took care not to flinch or cheer during exciting moments.

  Setting the oven, she tried always to use the manual controls, never just mind them on.

  And it puzzled her, aware now of what he’d meant by competence, to watch Ajay himself. He did not react to the sounds and pictures all around them; she took that for sophistication. But, more oddly, he never seemed to reach out with his mind at all. Why was that? Why did he use the manual controls? Why did he never just mind things on and off?

  Why, for that matter – since this ‘competence’ he spoke of was presumably universal – did manufacturers put controls on things at all? What was the use of radios, TVs and all the rest, when the sounds and pictures were in the air for all to see and hear?

  She had so many questions, but no one who could answer them. She didn’t dare ask her beach friends, in case her ignorance brought trouble back to Ajay, as Ajay so often said it might. She didn’t dare ask Ajay, because then he would know how strong and clever she was getting.

  She felt very alone. She felt more alone in the days, now, than she did at night.

  By day, she was full of unanswerable questions, stifling secrets and duplicitous intentions.

  By night she was comforted by the warm, nameless power source in her belly. At night, listening to its hum, her questions melted away on a river of wonder.

  Whatever it was, whatever it was called, there was no doubt: inside her, something wonderful was happening.

  The days grew cooler, shorter. One day a fog rolled in, blearing the streets, deadening every sound, turning walls and sidewalks to a complex wash of green and grey. The streets were like long halls of thick sand-blasted mirrors. The sun was back next day but it was not the same; not as cheering.

  Rosa walked toward the harbour. An ersatz confection of tinted glass and wrought iron, it had been renovated only months before the Moonwolf War. For a few weeks one summer long ago, the young had acted out their more banal fantasies here, among marinas and red-tiled terraces and verandas where one could sit sipping microbrewed beer straight from the bottle.

  A smart-rock had put paid to most of it, and since the Moonwolf War the place had lain more or less derelict. Wild blue grasses grew out the riven pavements, and dwarf trees in black-stained tubs stood isolated among the glazed, half-melted ruins. What was left had little enough to offer: a single bar in a shack made of old sleepers, asbestos panels and corrugated metal sheeting, with tea chests for tables and kegs for stools.

  Rosa stopped there and bought a cup of espresso. She went back out to the veranda, took a seat at the trestle table and lifted the cup to her lips. She winced as the burnt syrup scoured her throat.

  From here she could see Santa Cruz gently eviscerating and reinventing itself. Among the broken-down sheds and the hulks of unrecognisable machinery lay countless tiny allotments with their asbestos-board outhouses and rusted water-butts. An overgrown muddle of weeds and canes and old fish netting, this communal garden expanded month by month, threading a green belt between the city and the harbour.

  A noise – persistent, it had been tapping just at the edge of her hearing for some minutes – made Rosa turn towards the water.

  It was the sound of a length of bamboo, tapping against the side of a metal cart.

  Rosa hadn’t heard this sound by the docks before. Suddenly hungry, she left the bar and ambled down the weedy, tilted red-brick steps towards the sound.

  She eventually traced it to a floating jetty some way up the inlet. The sound – its syncopation – was unmistakable. It was the sound of squid, as distinct from the sound of chicken or noodles or dog as one rhythm can be from another. A sound which was a word. But of the squid seller there was no sign.

  Puzzled, Rosa walked the length of the jetty. A fat, balding oriental man was sitting on the foredeck of a large yacht, taking handfuls of paper scraps from a box and stuffing them into a large cardboard tube he held braced between his knees. Now and again he leaned up straight and pressed his palms to the small of his back, blinking myopically into the sun.

  The sounds for squid seemed to be coming from the yacht itself. Now, so close, Rosa realised that she had been mistaken. The rhythm was exact but it was being generated, not by some street trader, but by a machine on board the yacht. A pump, perhaps, clearing bilge out of the vessel’s double hull.

  The idea of this yachtsman unconsciously advertising takeaways across the marina delighted Rosa so much she began laughing. The fat man reeled round and examined her, nervous.

  ‘Do you have any squid?’ Rosa asked him, to prove something she could not put into words.

  The fat man glared at her. For a while misunderstanding gathered them up in a cusp of perfect silence.

  She minded the engine. It was a simple machine, and while it lay idle she couldn’t tell precisely what it was. There weren’t enough live bits to go on—

  The man stood up straight suddenly. ‘Yes, Ma’am!’

  Rosa blinked.

  ‘Do you wish to come aboard?’

  ‘What?’

  The man was looking at her very oddly. It dawned on her that he was afraid.

  ‘I believe my papers are in order,’ he said. ‘What papers?’

  ‘It’s all been taken out. Everything’s returned. It’s empty, like I said.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘My head!’ He banged the side of his head. ‘My head. It’s empty. Honest.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They faced each other in silence.

  He said, ‘That’s what you’re here for, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A regular inspection? Or is there . . .’ He shot an uneasy glance at the cardboard tube at his feet. ‘Ma’am, the paper rocket’s for the Bay, you want to know. There’s no edict prevents me doing that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rosa. ‘I’m just here by accident. I don’t want to stop you doing anything.’

  But he wasn’t listening. ‘I could tell what you are, of course. That’s okay, isn’t it? I still have the conduction plate. They left me the plate. I’m on the reserve list for another eight years, you see.’

  Rosa puzzled over his words. What she was? ‘What am I?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, waving his hands before him, nervous, deprecating, ‘I can’t tell that. Just that you’re hotwired is all. I just see a flash. A sort of – pulse. Not light exactly. Interference. Hell, you know how difficult it is to describe these things.’ He laughed. There was a lot of fear in the sound and not much humour. She smiled, trying to reassure him.

  ‘You’re new, right?’ he said, afraid of her silence.

  Rosa shrugged. ‘I guess.’

  The putting sound stopped suddenly. Rosa minded the machine again but it was out of gas; she couldn’t start it for him.

  ‘There again,’ the fat man said. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’

  She shrugged, sensing trouble.

  ‘It’s a pump,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You can mind the whole boat if you want,’ he said. ‘It’s all just Paper Rocket stuff. Nothing contraband. No pirate wetware on this ship, no, Ma’am!’

  She looked blank.

  He gestured at the cabin of his boat. ‘In there. Go ahead. Can you see anything? Tell me!’

  She closed her eyes. Her head filled up with diagrams: a map. She recognized the inlet and, at the edges, the streets of Santa Cruz. She tried seeing round the corner of the map. Obediently, the graphic expanded for her. Now most of the town was visible. She kept looking off the edge of the map. The whole Californian coastline lay before her now. She kept going. The scale of the image got larger and larger, giving her the sense
that she was receding fast, rising into the air at unreal speed. The map became curved, resolving at last into a picture of the globe. She staggered.

  ‘You okay?’ he said, concerned. ‘What is it you’re seeing?’

  ‘Pictures,’ she said, shaking her mind free. ‘A map of some sort.’

  He laughed – a good-natured sound this time. ‘My navigation system!’ Something had reassured him. ‘Come aboard,’ he said. ‘What the hell. Don’t see many these days got discharged.’

  ‘Discharged?’

  ‘What unit you with?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Burned, eh?’ He held his hand out to her. ‘I could tell, you went so white just then. It’s pretty nauseous for a while, when they stop the EAS.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You’re too young to be a vet,’ he said, not listening. ‘Some special operations shit, I don’t wonder, with you burned out so soon.’ He shook his head. ‘There’s waste of human resources there, girl, no fucking gratis payment’ll ever buy.’

  ‘Payment?’

  He studied her and frowned. ‘You’re not Presidio?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Goddamn.’ He laughed. ‘I thought you were a veteran.’

  ‘And you? Are you Presidio?’ Rosa whispered, fearful.

  ‘Sure, one time back when like all of us.’

  ‘Like all of who?’

  ‘Hot-heads. Americanos.’

  ‘But I’m not American.’

  ‘You’re not?’

  She shook her head. ‘I guess I’ll go,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the talk.’

  ‘What did you come for then?’

  She said, ‘I heard your pump. It’s like the sound the vendors make, they’re selling squid.’

  He whistled. ‘Providence!’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘No! No wait. A moment. Please.’ He bent down and extended his hand. ‘Name’s Xu. Xu Chiang Lam.’

  Rosa hesitated a second, then touched his hand. She didn’t offer her name.

  Xu stood up. ‘I quit Presidio,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to be evolved. It’s safe. You can trust me. I am a neutral now. A civvy, making firecrackers.’ His tone was suddenly bitter. ‘That’s all I do these days. And you? Where are you from?’