‘They have components in HD,’ I said. ‘If you stick my feather under a TEM you’re only going to see in three dimensions plus time-development.’
‘Yep. And I’m betting that will be plenty interesting in its own right.’
She scrubbed and scrubbed. She sang Ella Fitzgerald songs. An hour went by. She looked like pit crew and the hotel bathroom smelled like sulphur. The biblical irony was not lost on me.
Then she said, ‘About Kisi Sorle. There’s more than one story.’
I widened my eyes, to goad her. She said slowly, ‘I mean, literally. Filippe looked into him.’
‘Go on.’
‘Kisi Sorle has two trajectories. They seem to have split from one another during the unrest in Kuè, when he was just a teenager. Austen Stevens was in charge of global operations at that stage. Kisi was part of a peaceful protest movement against Pace, but there were militias active in the region at that time. He was badly injured, had his leg blown open by a landmine. One of him was saved by some Pace Industries engineers who had wandered into the wrong area by mistake, and he ended up being taken in by a woman in Imo who kept dozens of orphans. She sent him to school. She convinced him to try for a scholarship funded by Pace Industries and he was educated in London. He’s an orthopaedic surgeon now with an American wife and children. Stevens subsequently left Pace and became extremely wealthy with IIF, his financial company based in New York. Then, in a very strange move, Stevens hired Dr Sorle as a personal physician. Recently Dr Sorle has been making a very good living doing basically palliative care.’
‘And the other Kisi Sorle?’
‘Ah,’ said Marquita. ‘Impossible to say. He comes from somewhere else, like you. He’s either an AI or something projected by an AI. We don’t know how he accesses Dr Sorle’s body.’
I felt my face doing things it’s not supposed to do when you’re in control of your emotions.
‘Do you think Filippe could have sent him?’ I asked. I tried not to say it through gritted teeth, but I’ve never been much good at hiding what I’m thinking.
She laughed.
‘Filippe doesn’t have that kind of power! He’s a paper pusher.’
‘Marquita, tell me for real now because it’s only you and me here. Did you know what had gone down at Austen Stevens’ house when you changed my shift and put me on that plane?’
‘No!’ she barked. ‘And you know very well that I couldn’t have known. That’s not how we work. You have to let go of this idea of predictable outcomes. The Resistance isn’t an extension of the body the way a tool is an extension of the skeleton. It’s an extension of the mind.’
‘With respect – you have no idea what it’s an extension of.’
She said, ‘You’re mad at me. This isn’t my fault. I’ve told you before. The Resistance is based on probabilistic predictions, and the system is governed by what we call the Austen Correspondences.’
‘I don’t have that in my archives. Are you sure it’s a real thing?’
‘That in itself is worrying, Pearl, but nobody knows how your archives were built or when or where. You’re missing my point.’
‘Am I? What’s your point.’
‘The name, Pearl. The Austen Correspondences.’
‘What? Austen Stevens? Seriously? He invented them?’
She made a pffff sound. ‘They are named after him. Maybe. Maybe, maybe – I don’t know! There are things that can’t be known with certainty. It’s the nature of the system.’
‘You think this Dr Sorle – one or both of them – do you think they are trying to manipulate causality using my equipment? Are they trying to control these Austen Correspondences? Take over the Resistance? What?’
‘I don’t know what their motive is. It could be revenge on Stevens himself. Kisi Sorle has every reason to hate Austen Stevens for his policies in Kuè. His people’s land is more than an economic possession, it’s the whole basis of their culture and identity, and Pace trashed it. They killed and lied about it. It’s not the kind of thing you just forgive. So no, I don’t trust the good doctor any more than I trust his violent alter-ego. He’s not standing deathwatch over the old man for a paycheck. There has to be something more to it.’
‘Well, if someone is trying to take over the Resistance using one of my components, then can I just say that Filippe is a jerk to treat me the way he did. I loved being in the Resistance and I don’t appreciate being thrown out.’
‘I know,’ Marquita said softly. ‘Filippe has reasons for everything he does. But we’ll probably never know what the reason was.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing, Marquita. I’m not going to be just moved around like this.’
She laughed out loud. ‘You have no idea what’s moving you. No idea. At least just admit it. Why did you confront Dr Sorle like that? You could have waited for the plane to land. You could have done so many things differently. You were grandstanding. You went batshit.’
‘The briefcase was unstable! I honestly thought he could bring the plane down.’
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just no.’
We looked at each other. She had many secret places. I liked that.
‘You’re drawn to Sorle because of his damage,’ Marquita said gently. ‘It’s your nature. That kind of mess, though? In a person? His shit will mess you up. You know that, right?’
‘I’m bigger than he is,’ I said.
‘Be careful, Pearl. This thing you do with people. This devotion.’
I never blush, but when I’m embarrassed I do look at the floor. It’s not normal, what I do. It’s not expected. Maybe it’s not even welcome. I wonder if I am some sort of aberration.
‘Pearl. Choose wisely the ones you throw your weight behind. You haven’t been here very long. You lack . . .’
She paused, because my eyes were saying: What do I lack, dear Marquita who is leaving me out of obedience to the principles of the Resistance, whose love crumbles in the face of a stiff breeze? What lack I?
‘. . . judgement,’ she finished. Then she squeezed out her sponge and went back to work on my feathers.
‘The oil company wants Stevens,’ she said after a while. ‘They need to expose his skimming and figure out what he’s done with the money he made – because he made a lot of it in the 1980s before regulation. He doesn’t care about anyone and he isn’t afraid of anything. He has battalions of lawyers. They travel in sevens, nines – you never see just one. I keep waiting to get word that one of our agents can do something. It’s so hard waiting for the right tweak to come down the pipeline.’
I said nothing. I still wasn’t clear on what the pipeline was. I knew that the system worked roughly like this: angel gets tip from somewhere in the pipeline. The tip is like a mini-mission coordinated by the Resistance. Sometimes the tip is something morally neutral, like, ‘Stall your car in the middle of such-and-such intersection at 10:26.’ Other times it’s like a Secret Santa: ‘Buy a meal for that guy who tricks on Lambert Boulevard.’ Other times it’s just straight-up being human to someone else: ‘That kid at that table over there needs some extra attention, find out what’s going on.’ The angel does the thing. It seems random, or maybe a tiny act of senseless kindness, but actually it’s contrived. According to Marquita, each of these actions is possibly a minute tipping point that sets in motion a chain reaction to advance humanity.
I never could see it. The idea that this principle should work makes it sound like the universe is made of Swiss clockwork, not fickle electrons that might as well be leprechauns. The butterfly effect isn’t real in the sense people think it is; chaos is chaotic, right? You can’t manipulate it by flapping a particular butterfly on a particular day. The only way you could make the butterfly effect work, to interfere in a chain of events, would be to run against the grain of time. And that really would be resistance to entropy.
But the funny thing about entropy is that it loves order. Entropy loves order because more order burns everything down faster, and the universe is sta
nding there like the ring of idiots that stands around a high-school brawl, yelling, ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ because all that metabolic heat means we all go down in flames just that much sooner.
Irony in my eye teeth, that we build high because it gives us farther to fall.
Marquita said: ‘Accept it. We’re all just servants, Pearl. We’re all mugs.’
Mugs for what? That was what I kept wondering. No one pretended there was a god, not in any centralised or personal sense, anyway, so where was Filippe getting the insights as to who should take what action for the greater good of what? Remember, the greater good is a subjective business, yo. Marquita never wanted to talk about that. She took her work on faith, and when I failed to do the same she looked at me like she thought I had a fever.
‘There are some people on the ground in this world who do great things, invisible things. But it isn’t enough when it comes to what Pace Industries did in Kuè. We’re up against too much greed and too much history. Something big is going to have to happen to change the patterns.’
‘Do you think that something is Kisi?’
She just looked at me, all sadness in her face.
‘I can’t talk to you anymore,’ she said. ‘I told you everything I know. But it has to end now.’
How can I explain about Marquita? It’d be like explaining the sun. I remember when I first called the number on her business card. She took me back to her seedy apartment in Queens with its smudgy windows and sink full of dirty dishes. Jars of spices everywhere. She had a heating pad that she kept near the window for Tsubota, and she had what seemed like a forest of house plants. She had stacks of old paperback crime novels and all the furniture was covered with Mexican horse blankets and random pieces of dyed cotton. I can still smell the place.
She fed me and she lit incense and she took out a guitar that she’d covered with stickers, price tags and labels from all over the world. She told me she was addicted to travelling and then she played me songs she’d heard in different countries.
‘I have perfect pitch,’ she said. ‘I remember everything I hear. So that gives us something in common.’
Then she held out her hand to me and I knew what would happen. It was simple. No discussion; no buildup. Just: us.
We started out in that scruffy apartment in Queens and now here we were in a swanky hotel in central Paris, and it was ending exactly the same way it began. Sudden and symmetrical and perfect, like some fucking Mozart chamber music.
She had to leave me now. It was simply the way of things.
I tried not to cry. My face scrunched up and I had to blow my nose in a piece of toilet paper. It came away sulphurous, stained with oil.
‘Don’t be like that,’ she said.
I tried to laugh but a sob came out.
‘I told you. I get attached.’
‘And I told you. You’re here to learn. You learned me now.’
She tapped her fingerprints to mine, so I could feel their faint grains and whorls. The abundance of her smile broke over me.
I wanted to kiss her but she was too fast for me.
‘Au revoir,’ she said, and left me standing in the traces of her perfume.
Me, I smelled of complimentary hotel soap. Also hell.
Can’t touch this with a barge pole
Your face is everywhere. On TV and newsboards. On people’s flow.
You were blown off the plane, presumed dead. So that’s good. But the story of the old man’s disappearance means questions. The public loves a mystery.
Liam Forbes has arranged transport for you, and he has set up a meeting at the Balmoral Hotel but you don’t go there because you’re not a fool. You cut your dreadlocks in Gothenburg with a feeling of doom because you’d grown your hair the way you’d grown your spirit, and what was it for? Your beard is coming in; no one will recognise you, but you can’t shake that hunted feeling.
You go to Liam’s townhouse at 3 am, hoping to catch him unawares. No one is on the street at this hour, and darkness settles upon the rooftops and the gutter pipes.
Dogs bark. A youngish woman opens the door for you. The two of you have never met, but she knows your face.
‘Hurry up and get in, Doctor!’ She strains to hold the collars of two Dobermans. ‘You shouldn’t be here. Liam’s not home.’
You step inside and wait while she locks the dogs somewhere else in the house. You can hear their nails clattering on the parquet floor. You have so very little choice in all of this. The other self is right there with you, he has locked in on you, he looks through your eyes.
She lets you into the library. It has a massive fireplace, heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains, a discreet monitor. She is calling Liam on the screen.
‘You need to come here now,’ your voice tells his image.
He fidgets. He’s in a hotel waiting, but he’s not in Scotland. Wherever he is, it’s daylight. Did he think you wouldn’t come here? Or were the dogs meant to protect the woman? She stands behind a Louis XIV armchair, blunt-nailed fingertips thrumming against the upholstery.
‘Pace Industries is on to you,’ Liam says. ‘We can’t do this now. They’ll come in and take everything. They’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this.’
This is when you throw the other one out of your skin long enough to say:
‘It’s simple. I’m not going to prison. I want private transport to my own country, no questions. I want the bequest I was promised. I don’t care what you do with the rest.’
Liam swings his head in a show of regret.
‘I’m sorry, mate. I can’t touch this with a barge pole. Too dangerous. There was no bloodletting in our original arrangement.’
‘I made no arrangement with you.’ Your legs shake with effort. The one inside you is getting angry. You have upstaged him. This gives you courage, but strangely you aren’t really certain whether it’s you or he who says: ‘Don’t you care what’s inside this?’
Your arm hoists up the briefcase like a trial exhibit before a witness. If Liam recognises it, he doesn’t let on.
‘Just go, Dr Sorle,’ he insists. ‘I’ll stay out of your way.’
You can feel the woman’s agitation. Liam has abandoned her here, with you, and in their minds you are a murderer. He must know how angry you will be. Has he no concern for her well-being? Is she bait? Does she understand the position he’s put her in?
You push past the presence in your throat, and with your own soul you say to her: ‘What do you think is going to happen right now?’
Her pupils dilate.
‘You can’t be seen here,’ she whispers. ‘Please go. I’ll erase the security footage. No one will know you were here.’
You can feel the other self gathering force.
‘I have Mr Stevens,’ your voice says, without you. ‘As agreed. I am late, but inside the contract window. He sent you the codes; I saw him do it. He is here. There is no judgement call for you to make. I am delivering the briefcase and the scientists will have instructions for how to store it. Your part is only to release the funds and set this thing in motion.’
The woman edges away from you.
Liam says, ‘My instructions were to set up the money and infrastructure for a low-profile scientific foundation called the Resistance. The Resistance has a mission to develop artificial intelligence with a global humanitarian outlook. The human resources groundwork has been done by others, but I have done the finance side. I set up an intricate system of funding that relies on offshore economies and that is not linked to any one government, as Mr Stevens requested. I have, of course, minimised tax impacts as well. I have received instructions from Mr Stevens to set this in motion, but hours later the news broke of the shooting in his house. I will not be party to it.’
Your armpits are damp and pent aggression coils in your legs. You try to keep it back but the other self is too strong; he rolls over you like weather.
‘You’re a fool and a coward,’ he seethes. ‘You were told it would be mes
sy. You were told. What do you think the reason for all the codes and secret handshakes was? You know I am doing precisely as Mr Stevens wished.’
Liam is shaking his head. ‘I think you should leave my house now. There’s nothing more to say.’
Bitter bitter laughter.
‘I see now. It’s simple. Pace has got to you.’
Liam sighed.
‘Stevens was a deluded old man, deranged by his illness. He believed he had already been marked to live forever and some kind of time-travelling ship was coming to take him away to the future. If I’m a fool and a coward, then you’re a con artist. But good luck to you. I haven’t got anything to do with the will. If you want your bequest you have to talk to his executor. There will just be the small matter of proving you didn’t kill Stevens yourself.’
‘If he was a deluded old man then you won’t mind if I open the briefcase I took from his house.’
‘Actually, I think I do mind. I’m going to ask you again to leave.’
Your sure hands set the briefcase on the floor and in your voice he says, ‘Watch this.’
He puts your hands on the latches. There is a struggle over control of your hands and eyes and spine. Just as before, you lose.
It’s the story of your life, losing.
You lose, and you see none of what happens then, and you wake up much later in the mist among the stones with your head pillowed on the briefcase and bloodstains on your clothes.
The cupboard under the stairs
Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I took an immediate dislike to Edinburgh. The light was weak, spineless. Halfhearted. The sun never seemed to make it all the way over the top of the buildings. It sulked on the lowdown like a rumour. Light lay like melted butter in the faded turquoise sky, sun-fingers picking out ironwork shadows on the pavements of Heriot Row where Liam Forbes lived. The vibe was too stiff, too deserted – not my thing. One of the houses had a brass plate discreetly noting that Robert Louis Stevenson lived here as a boy. Played in the neighbourhood gardens, apparently, having adventures and maybe dreaming up Long John Silver. Now the gardens were locked all day and when I looked through the bars the sodden, mushroomy lawns were empty except for birds.
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