by Simon Ings
Not even that, is your guess.
Every weapon the Earth wields weighs a ton. On the Moon, you can just lift a rock and hurl it. The Bund can throw rocks down Earth’s gravity well till it run out of rocks. This is not going to be an ordinary war. This will be total. A fight to the finish.
Of course, you say nothing of this to Stella. What would be the point?
You look around the commander’s office. A white desk, a Trimphone, a potted plant, a padded white chair and a large wall-mounted abstract that, come episode seven, turns out to conceal an escape route in the event of alien attack.
‘I think I’ll stay here,’ Stella says. ‘I’m near the Bundist half of the city. Why would they bomb their own buildings? Why would they destroy their own work? You should stay here with me. We’re deep underground here. I can’t imagine many places safer than this one.’
The truth is, the physical basements of the Barbican Centre are not nearly as protective, for Stella, as the psychic protections afforded by DARE, that far more removed world of her own devising. If these are to be her last days, she intends to spend them in a different, better world. A world without the Gurwitsch ray. A world unfractured by runaway speciation. A world of gold cars and skintight uniforms, glamour, secrecy and rigid, simple lines of authority.
Though, for some reason, her world is still – isn’t it? – menaced by aliens. Have you noticed that? It is almost as if aliens are necessary.
She won’t be budged.
But then, neither will you. ‘I have to go back home. Dad has no one. I have to go.’
‘Factories like Bob’s will be their first target!’ Stella protests.
And she’s not wrong. But there is no dissuading you.
She says, ‘You know, war is mostly about lying. I don’t believe the scare stories. I think we’re going to be all right.’
‘I’ll come and find you,’ you tell her.
She smiles a brave little smile, and leans back in her commander’s chair, and reaches into a drawer of her desk, and brings out a paper bag. ‘Have these.’
You take the package from her hand, mystified. ‘What is it?’
‘Sausage rolls.’
‘Sausage . . . ?’
‘For the journey. They’re fresh today. Go on. I’ve got plenty.’
Why this absurd exchange, at the very last minute, should have such an effect on you, you do not know, but your eyes are filling with tears as you pick your way blindly through the prop shop.
What will Stella do when the rocks start to explode in Earth’s atmosphere and the hydrostatic shock brings London down to rubble? You imagine her dispatching interceptors. You see her in close conference with DARE’s forward stations at exotic beachfront locations across the globe. You hear her delivering inspirational speeches over the Tannoy system to the men and women of her secret subterranean headquarters, hidden under a film studio in Shepperton.
If you are not all right, if the Bund’s threats turn out to be real and the destruction total, then this is how you will choose to remember your Aunt Stella.
Why should there only be one future, anyway?
* * *
You weave through the length of the prop shop, past the stuff from which the first season of DARE was made. A single line of workaday fluorescent strips lights this narrow space, robbing items of the solidity they would acquire under properly filtered film lighting. Here are the pilot’s and copilot’s seats for the Moon-based interceptor, itself dismantled into its constituent flats. These have been stacked carefully behind the chroma key-green cockpit hood of a submarine-launched fighter plane.
On the bridge of DARE’s hunter-killer submarine, a raised ring of metal grilles forms a walkway for the operator of the periscope: a black, white and gold contraption that looks like (indeed, is) the barrel of a model rocket. Banks of switches and nested pipework (seconds, bought from Bob’s factory) and consoles of no obvious utility, each console fitted with its integral plastic bucket chair, fill the narrow space. This can be accessed either through a small circular hatch or, when the cameras aren’t running, through a cunningly concealed gap between two banks of controls, one armed with dangerous-looking red levers, the other dominated by a large, Perspex-covered Mercator projection of the world. The continents are white silhouettes while the ocean floors are shown in exquisite blue-and-brown topographical detail.
You edge around a table covered with scale-model trees and, beyond it, a tank of brackish green water. DARE’s big models, the vehicles, are packed in boxes full of wood shavings to protect their delicate parts: aerials and flip-up weapons arrays, wing mirrors, door handles. Fel’s submarine, on the other hand, lives permanently submerged in its tank. Too heavy, too delicate and too waterlogged to lift out of the water, it would break in half if you tried. You hunker down, peering at it through the murk. You stir the water with your fingers – abruptly snatch them out. There’s something moving in there. Something living.
It’s emerging from one of the torpedo tubes. A white grub, much bigger than a fly larva. A tadpole-like thing. You stare at it, aghast. How is this even possible? How does it live? What does it eat? It wriggles free from the tube and as it swims, it acquires form. Arms and legs. At first transparent, it acquires pigment, texture. It is wearing a sturdy silver one-piece uniform. It is recognisably human.
Recognisably female.
Recognisably Fel.
She grips the edge of the tank and falls, panting and dripping, into your lap. She has been holding her breath a long time. You remember concrete walls and pipework; a floor with a drain. Water welling, and her unconcerned stare as the water rose to cover her face. You cry out. Blue as a berry, she laughs and reaches up and kisses you, hard, pressing her teeth against your teeth. You wrap your arms around her, run your fingers through her hair. Is it possible? Can it be that she has been returned to you?
Of course not. This is something else. Her hair comes away, leaving only glass. Her skull trembles and rings in your hands. There’s something thrashing around in there. You close your eyes, afraid to look.
‘Too late.’ She laughs into your ear, and licks your ear. ‘Too late!’
Now what this all portends – Fel here and on the Moon at the same time; Fel small one moment, big the next and hot and in your arms; Fel returned and Fel naysaying her return, Too late! Too late! – you may suppose is my game. But you’d be wrong. This is none of my doing. This is something unexpected, and for that reason, frightening. This demands action, fast.
Flats topple. Boxes fall and lamps shatter. There’s someone new entering this scene: you look up, wondering what on earth the next cruel surprise might be—
And here I am – ta-da! – arrived in the nick of time by the looks of things, all dolled up in red fishnets and glitter, a studded dog collar round my neck.
Fel lets go of you and turns. (If it is Fel. Of course it is Fel. You only have to look at her. You only have to hold her. But Fel, it appears, is multiple now.) What she intends, I can’t imagine, and I’m not taking any chances, neither. I do my best to melt into the background, the way I disappeared in that train carriage the day you got hit in the face with that rock. But the trick that fooled you is having no effect on her. Fel’s looking at me. She’s smiling at me! She’s not what she was, that’s for sure. She’s changed. She’s something new and powerful and she’s having none of my blarney.
For a horrible moment, I think she’s about to go for me. Her being a new type, I have no idea what would happen if she did.
Happily, neither does she. Discretion wins the day: laughing, she climbs off your lap, topples back into the water, shrinking as she falls so that when she hits the scummy surface, she’s become no bigger than the toy Jim I fashioned for you; she makes hardly a splash.
I come over to the tank and together we stare into the mucky water. There she is: translucent, shedding limbs, retiring to her submarine. Grublike. Gummy. Gone. How does she do that?
I fix you with big, bottomless
black eyes, reading you frantically. What did I interrupt? What did I miss? What did she want? What has she done to you?
She’s put something inside you!
Keep still, let me see! What is it? A weapon? A bomb?
KEEP STILL!
It’s a delicate business, moving around inside a mind, dancing inside another’s dance, it is so easy to . . .
(10) Oh, bless my heart, (9) what have I done?
(8) I’ve tripped it! (7) Triggered it! (6) What can I do?
(5) Nothing. (4) The damage is done. (3) This thing she’s put inside your mind, it’s about to . . . (2) what?
(1) The sets of DARE shift and reassemble to form—
* * *
A small apartment.
I am standing in the middle of a small apartment.
Well, this is new.
I can see a kitchen through a screen of beads. The bedroom’s to the right. The only other door is behind me and has a slot for letters. So this, I suppose, is it: a single room. Its furnishings are modest. Rugs. Pencil sketches in frames. Candlesticks over the fireplace. A bed, a bookshelf. The room’s big, though. Well-lit. There are windows floor to ceiling all along one side, and wooden shutters. A narrow balcony beyond. Beyond that, woods roll down to the sea.
There’s even a piano in here. A grand. In gold leaf above the lid, catching the light: ‘Bösendorfer’. A modest apartment. Not a cheap one. I wonder where (THE HELL!) I am?
Odessa, maybe? Is that the Black Sea down there? I suppose it could be Falmouth. Hell, it could be anywhere.
Or nowhere.
A modest apartment. Not cheap. Not tidy, neither: there are toys and baby books lying around on the floor. A toy xylophone with a missing bar. A panda. Some plastic building bricks. I wonder where our child is. (and all the while I’m thinking, WHAT CHILD? What is this? And why am I here? What am I supposed to do here? Who am I supposed to be?)
I peer around the room. Oh for goodness’ sake what am I doing? Do I imagine this mythical infant might be hiding under the floorboards, perhaps, or behind the lamps?
And then I freeze, utterly transfixed. Because it has suddenly dawned on me, where I am.
Do you recognise this place? This place she’s put inside you? You should.
This is the life you could have had.
Do you see? Fel, and a child. This is the future that you threw away.
Soon enough it is evening. Time is relative here, I’ve realised. So is space. The room wobbles. The room has been changing as I’ve been moving through it. The windows are glassless now with wooden screens closed over them, carved into arabesques. The air outside is hot and spiced. In truth the flat’s not changed much – the rugs are different, the sofa’s vanished, there are cushions, and candles everywhere – but the real change lies outside. Which city is that out there? Tangiers? Istanbul? Some harmless, unquestionably patronising oriental fantasy.
And so to bed.
The Moon is out, and at an angle to send its radiance spilling over our room. We lie watching lines of pale light crawl across her floor like living things. We move against each other, softly, shh, don’t wake the baby, and sometime in the heat of it all I murmur her name. ‘Oh, Fel . . .’
Well. It must have been something I said. Because all of a sudden this dream, or vision, or whatever you would call it: it is done with me. It spits me out and
* * *
(0) here I am again, among the toppled props of DARE. I hunker down beside you, squatting over a tank of brackish water, and lying on the bottom, the plastic model of a futuristic TV submarine.
It is not often I am at a loss for words. But if this transformed Fel is representative of what the Bund is becoming, I reckon I had better get used to this dumbfounded feeling. Logic dictates that there must always be a greater and a lesser than oneself, but Jesus, how did Fel do all that? How was she even here, never mind in that slippy, big/small form? And how did she leave that inside you? That dream? That room? That world?
It’s no good; even if I wanted to, I couldn’t rip her gift out of you. It’s indelible; it’s practically somatic. If you ever do have kids, they’ll probably end up dreaming that very dream themselves.
‘What are you talking about?’
It takes me a moment, bowled over as I am by what’s just happened, to realise that you are speaking. Ah, so you are awake! And staring at me, what’s more, as though I was the phenomenon that needed explaining! (What a joke.)
‘What?’
My God, you remember none of it, do you?
‘Do you want something?’
Not Fel in your arms. Not her mouth against yours. Not her heat in the bed. Not the room. Not the Moon. Not the music. None of it. Poor purblind boy, kneeling there, quite unaware that there are Gods going to war over you!
I imagine you will never really know her gift is there inside you. I imagine it will only ever visit you in dreams. I imagine that is why it is there: to sustain you. To remind you that the world is bigger than you are, and that love is possible.
For that gift to make you conscious of what you lost – no, that would be too cruel.
‘What do you want?’
You cannot see how much people love you, can you? (Echoes of you and your mother, there.)
All right, then. One second. Deep breath. Regroup. Set Fel aside, and all these latest miracles: why am I here?
Oh yes. Idiot. Why do you think I’m here? I thought your silly life needed saving.
We stand and move away from the tank. I back off. For a while, we watch each other. It is not a hostile moment. Eventually you buck up the courage to approach me. I’m short enough that you can look down on the top of my head. I’m going a little bald, do you see?
Now listen: if I were you – best guess – don’t worry too much about your Aunt Stella. She’s well underground where she is, and art centres will not be among the Bund’s primary targets. Your instincts are right: look after your dad.
‘You can talk.’
No, I can’t. Look closely. My mouth is simply hanging open in a parody of speech. Is my mouth moving? It is not.
You gesture at me, then at your own neck. ‘Do you want me to remove that thing?’
Well. I run a finger around my collar. Obviously not.
I realise this probably seems a bit trivial to you right now, but the grease is working its way through that paper bag of yours at quite a rate. In fact, I reckon it’s going to tear any second – and I could kill for a sausage roll.
‘Oh.’ You open the bag and pull out a pastry and, timidly, remembering perhaps Wilkes’s savaged face, you throw it at my feet.
Charming.
‘What?’
Is this your idea of a serving suggestion?
‘Sorry.’
But what the hell. I pick the roll up with my foot and, standing on one leg, lift it from my foot to my opposing hand to my mouth, into which the roll disappears in a single gulp.
‘Taaaaaaa.’
(This much a chickie can vocalise.)
I have something for you, too. Since one good turn should always beget another.
Hold out your hands.
There.
It is a dolly.
Not much, by today’s standards. Not much, compared to a selkie’s gift of sustaining dreams. (And do I feel upstaged by Fel? I surely do. And does it rankle? Yes, it bloody does!)
But here: it is your dolly. I have refreshed it. I have cleaned and mended it. I have slipped ribbons through the torso at points to create the suggestion of arms, pressed to the sides of the figure as though it were standing at attention, like a soldier. Do you like it?
Really?
Your tears say you do, and this is good.
Now. Take my hand. That’s it. And let’s see if you can get it right this time.
‘I knew you loved me,’ you begin. The words are hard. The words are inadequate. Never mind. You are saying something, finally (and anyway, I can read your heart).
‘I knew you l
oved me. I knew you meant the dolly for me. That it was a present. A love token? Is love even the right word?’
Yes. Love is the right word.
‘I was so young. I didn’t understand. If I ever could have understood. If I understand even now. What chickies seem to mean by love: it is so strange. Abject and—’
Go on. I can take it.
‘Your love is terrible, somehow.’
There. Yes. You’ve understood something. It is.
‘Funny and horrific and savage and self-destructive, all at once.’
Yes. Terrible. Terrible.
‘Too much for me. I was afraid of it. Ashamed of it. And I so wanted to be like James. And James so wanted to be like his friends. And his friends so wanted to be like . . . I don’t know. Like men they’d heard of, tough men, army men, maybe not real men at all, just the stories of men. Images of men. Men on a poster somewhere, or in the lyrics of a barracks-room song. So yes, I led them to that place on the moors. Where I found your doll. That earthen table. That knoll. Beered up and staggering, but I knew what it was. Those concealed holes. Your warren. I knew you were there. I brought them to that place, your home, so we could all be men together, rough and violent and to hell with the consequences. And, yes, it was me who struck the first match.’
There.
‘It was me.’
Yes. It was you.
‘Are you satisfied?’
Satisfied?
‘Is this what you want? To hear that I’m sorry?’
Well—
‘Is this why you haunt me? Oh, I know you. I see you. When you go, I forget. Then I see you again, and I remember. And I am so tired of it all. The game. A mouse being played with by a cat. That’s what I am. And I am so very tired.’
Poor love.
‘And I am sorry. I am sorry for what I did. But what difference does that make? My being sorry?’
Difference?
‘The match has never gone out. Has it? You’ve never let it go out. Have you? Now I understand. Smoke over the valley. The dolly always in my hand. You’ll never let me go. You never will.’
Shush.
