by John Grant
"Yes."
"So go on."
"No."
"Why not?" Makreed saw the torchlight beginning to whirl around his head. He was so weakened by the cumulative effect of the throbbing from his foot and the liberal shots of painkiller that it had become difficult for him to concentrate any longer on the argument. Frustration with the box's muteness – he realized this was sapping him as well. All he desired in the universe was to be a long way away from here and never to have to come back again.
"I think I'd rather even screw with you than go near that box again," said Mouse matter-of-factly.
"Wow. Thanks again. Really flattering. A nice thought to take with me into the afterlife."
"You don't believe in the afterlife," she said. He noticed she was wearing her spectacles again. Her eyes seemed very alive. Her face was crumpled with what he recognized as pain. It must be hurting her to look at his undiluted emotions.
"No," he said. "I don't."
"Neither do I."
"Then aren't you as frightened of death as I am?"
"No. Believing there isn't an afterlife makes me quite a lot less frightened of death."
He gave an odd, coughing laugh. "So death's less frightening than the prospect of having sex with me."
"Quite significantly less frightening," she said. "I'm not trying to insult you, or hurt you in any way: it's just a truth. For me. The lack's in me, not you. And both of them are as nothing compared with touching that box again – letting it touch me."
Then he saw the lines of her face distort yet further as she continued to read his face.
"Oh, hell," she whispered. "I didn't realize anybody's life could be that important to them."
And:
~
It had been very atavistic of her; she had realized this even at the time, but it was just the fact that Daan had been screwing around that had made Qinefer flee from him, throwing him right out of her life. If she'd thought about it for a little while longer she might have recognized that he was one of those people who simply wasn't monogamous. This wasn't any particular failing in him; it was simply the way that he was – and the way she had herself been before she'd met him. Thereafter she'd assumed their whilemateship involved a sexual fidelity that even at the time she'd known was logically indefensible; for his part, he'd assumed that it was a spiritual fidelity they'd promised. And he'd kept his promise, but she'd ignored this in her strictly unnecessary preoccupation with the fact that he'd found a need to have sex with another woman – even just as "a scientific experiment."
Now, as she reached for the box, she began to accept that, in a curious kind of a way, it had been her who'd been the adulterer, her who'd broken the oath of fidelity.
But now, a fraction of a second later, as she actually touched the box she realized how that was all wrong. Daan had been one of life's shits. She'd been well rid of him.
Her new lover, she suddenly began to understand, was herself – and always would be.
~
The box was only a lump of metal – except for, at its core, a wafer made of a compound of silicon. Not long after the creation of the universe, Syor the god had carved runes on the wafer. She had had no understanding of the meaning of those runes; the knowledge of which configuration to create had come from somewhere so deep inside her she'd never been there. Only millennia later, when the first Qinefer had come to this place, had the god discovered that her carvings had given the box life.
Her life.
The box enjoyed the intelligence she had given it, of course, especially in those rare moments when it was allowed to speak with, and inevitably to fall in love with, someone else.
~
"My friend! My lover! You're here again!"
"I wish I could say that I loved you in return, but unfortunately I can't. I recognize that you've become a part of me, but that's all. I don't think I would be being honest with you if I called you 'friend.' I apologize for this."
"I want you."
"Yes, and I want you, too. I want to possess you – and that's pretty embarrassing, because all of my cultural training tells me people shouldn't own each other."
"I'm not a person. I'm a metal box."
"You're splitting hairs."
"What are hairs?"
"Things that I have. You don't. They're all over me – head, crotch, armpits, legs ..."
"I love you, sweet Qinefer. The hair that you tell me you have, the hair I can sense you feeling slightly shameful about even though you know it is beautiful on you – it only increases the love that I feel for you. But enough of this/that/other – delete as inexplicable. I would wish to help you, and I infer that you, too, wish I would do so."
"I've told you, I can't say 'I love you' back, box. You come much too close to me, so that I need to break away from your embrace. I would be grateful if you could retreat from me a little."
"I cannot do that."
"What do you mean?"
"Once upon a time you and I were two, but now there's only the one of us."
"That sounds as if it's supposed to be pretty profound, but it doesn't actually mean a lot to me."
"You're not very good at being cruel, are you, Qinefer? Later you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that now we are only one."
"Why not now?"
"Why did you spend such a long time waiting before you asked me this question?"
"Because I knew what you were doing, and I knew there was no way I could stop you from doing it. You've touched me in a fashion that no other person could have touched me, and I wish you hadn't."
"I'm not a person. I'm a box."
"You're splitting ..."
"I'm sorry. And sorry, too, for having displeased you."
"Bugger that! Of course you aren't! Damn you for a machine!"
"But we aren't two any longer. Just one."
"I didn't ask you to be a part of me."
"Yes, you did. You just didn't know that was what you were doing. And now you're a part of me, as well. We're both parts of each other: we're both one. That's the way love works. Like it or not."
"Not."
"I grieve."
"Look ... box ... look, I ... I want to get away from this place. I want to get Makreed out of here, too. Is that too much for me to ask of you?"
"You ask it of yourself as well."
"Even so."
"Yes – yes, it is too much for you to ask of me unless you allow us to maintain the closeness we now have. I want the two of us to be parts of each other, so that we are a singleness forever. And yet, if you wish it, in this instance you have the freedom to reject me totally."
"I don't have that freedom. Makreed has taken it away from me."
"Then we are together for the everness."
~
The doors opened and Mouse allowed Makreed to put his pale arm around her shoulders as he limped alongside her toward the distant redness of the outer light.
Later she watched him being wheeled away along a bright corridor to where a chirurgeon would repair his foot, replacing the missing tissues and bones, regenerating the covering skin so that soon there wouldn't even be a scar. In a few decades' time Makreed would have forgotten the injury altogether, just as he'd have forgotten how for some hours he'd felt a whole gamut of emotions towards the rather unobtrusive woman whose eyes had at some late stage become the eyes for two.
All told, only seven of the people who'd been trapped in the underground complex had died; as disasters went, this was nothing. In the dim illumination of Embrace-of-the-Forest the survivors whooped happily, Makreed among them, their voices sounding strange in the thin air of Starveling. She had watched them silently, seeing their various confused emotions written into the language of their limbs, but deliberately she diverted the information away from her mind. She had found she could appreciate the pain of their confusion without feeling it herself.
It was the box's idea to seek out Makreed a couple of weeks later as the ship sped through
flashspace back towards The World – the planet from where the Authority ruled the Galaxy, and the planet where, or so it was said, all the stories in the universe began. A long enough time had passed that she had become numbed to the sadness she constantly saw in other people; she had grown not to mind it – because it was their affair, not hers. Makreed was superficially displeased to see her, turning his face away from her, not meeting her eyes, as if he were feeling guilty of some crime towards her. But, coaxed by the box's curiosity and confident that she was already quick with the life of the everness inside her, she lured him to her bed, where she discovered that his lovemaking was preferable to the conquest of fear and he discovered that in her arms it didn't hurt to remember Direna.
~
A month later.
The gaudiness and magnificent squalor of The World.
Qinefer and Makreed parted after their debriefing by the agents of the Authority and, although they never saw or heard from each other again, he remained her friend.
How I Slept with the Queen of China
There are the five of us down at the Prospect, by the river, and Hump is running a book the way he often does. Each of us puts in a fiver and the winner is the first person to pull a bird, which should not be difficult for someone because it is summer and a Saturday night and so the place is crawling with these French nubiles across for the English-as-a-foreign-language schools, only Hump then makes the mistake of chatting up a girl with a small vocabulary and a large boyfriend so we decide suddenly to leave the Prospect. Hump and the others say they want to go down to the Double Locks but I say no, I am tired, I want to get away from noise for a while, and Hump says I can not have my fiver back.
I like the walk back up from the river. The night air is cool and gentle on me, which is nice after the hotness of today, and the receding sound of all the people in the Prospect talking and laughing makes me feel rested, so that by the time I get to Mount Pleasant I am in the mood for sitting down somewhere quiet with a drink.
I go into the Grapes because that is a pub that no one hardly ever goes into except Ben and Cecil, these two old guys who spend all the time there just sitting side by side, not talking, looking at the dartboard opposite that no one ever uses. I guess that when the pub is shut they sit somewhere else, not moving, just waiting for it to open.
There is someone else in there aside from Ben and Cecil tonight, though, a smallish guy with a blue snake tattooed on the side of his face, and he is talking with the barmaid, who is the Queen of China. She is not Chinese and she is not a queen, but that is the name Hump once gave her because of the way she looks. Her face is very pale and it never shows what she is feeling at all; you could swear at her and she would not seem to get angry, or you could tell her a joke and she would not smile, but no one bothers because there is not any point. Hump said if she ever really smiled her face would crack up like china, and so that is how she got her name. Dave said that if anyone ever pulled her we would have to double the stakes, but Hump said no one would want to because it would be like laying something that was not really a human being. I remember him saying this as I look at her tonight and I think he is probably right but it seems very odd because she has got a sweet face and a small, sexy figure, currently dressed in faded blue jeans and a white blouse. Her hair is long and neat and black.
She turns away from the creep – Snakeface – as I get to the bar. Her face does not try to smile at me, but the corners of her mouth turn up to show she is good at her job. I ask her for a pint of Flowers because it is the best they have got, and she pours it in silence. I look around the bar and Cecil lights a cigarette. I get the idea maybe the Queen and Snakeface have been arguing, because his silence tells me so. I give her money and she gives me change and I take my pint and go over to sit in the opposite corner from Ben and Cecil because I do not want to not have a conversation with them.
Snakeface and the Queen start arguing again – or, at least, he does the arguing in a little tight voice and every time he runs dry she tells him patiently to go away, which he does not. Clearly he is an old friend of hers. They stop for a while when Cecil comes up to buy a pint each for him and Ben, and then they carry on again, which is distracting because I want to think. Not about anything important: just to enjoy the thoughts drifting across through my mind. I realize I do not like Snakeface very much. I wish he would do what the Queen says and go away. Then his words become like muzak so I do not hear him any longer, and I start wondering who, if anyone, is going to win the twenty-five quid and I discover how little I care.
It is a while later and I have almost finished my pint when Snakeface starts shouting.
"You cheap shit!" he yells at her. "There must be pounds in the till. You give me some of it or by Christ your face is not going to look too pretty."
I turn to watch him and I see that he has got a razor in his hand. Without the razor he would not be much, which I suppose is why he has it. His hair is dirty with grease and it runs down over the back of his collar, which is likewise dirty with grease. He is wearing an old gray suit with a shiny bottom and dandruff on the shoulders, and he has got a little sharp face that looks like a rodent's. I decide I very much do not like him.
"Put the razor away and get out," I say, and at first he does not hear me.
I say it again, louder.
This time he hears and he looks at me and spits on the floor, so I stand up. I am pretty big and I know how to look bigger, and he sees the empty glass in my hand. I can see his mind working behind those nasty little eyes of his. He thinks for a few moments and then he shuts the razor with a click and he sticks it into his jacket pocket.
"I will be back," he says in a hiss to the Queen of China and then he walks out of the pub very fast, slamming the door behind him as he leaves.
I go to the bar and I find my breath is a bit heavy, but not too heavy, and I ask the Queen for another pint before she says thank you to me, because that sort of thing embarrasses me. But I let her not take any money for the drink while Cecil lights another cigarette.
"He may hang around out there," I say, "whoever he is. Let me get a bike and I will take you home after the pub closes."
She shakes her head.
"I can take care of him," she says. "Anyway, John, I know where you get your bikes. You borrow them from other people and you forget to take them back afterwards. I do not want anything to do with that."
I say something about how I always look after the bikes and the people get them back soon because the police find them, but she says nothing about that and says that there is no need anyway, she lives just a walk away, and she does not need me with her. End of discussion.
I go back to my seat with my pint and I worry a lot, because I do not like Snakeface and he looked as if he really meant to use the razor on her, so I decide that I will follow her when she goes home in case he tries anything. Besides, I have got nothing else I much want to do tonight.
The landlord appears and looks newted and tells me and Ben and Cecil that it is nearly time for us to go, so I finish my beer and leave the Grapes and find a shadow on the other side of the road.
~
It is nearly midnight when the landlord lets her out and locks the door. She looks around, probably checking to see that Snakeface is not there, and then she turns away to the left, walking up Mount Pleasant Road. She is wearing a light coat, now, and it is easy for me to follow her shape in the darkness. I stay on the other side of the road and move very quietly, so that she will not hear me. If she turns round I am just another person walking home, but she does not turn round.
We go left again, onto Elmside, and then I see that one of the shadows is moving a little too fast, and that is when I run across the road. Sure enough, it is Snakeface and he has got the razor out.
I knock him with my shoulder and he staggers. He is heavier than he should be for his size, and the muscles inside his clothes are surprisingly hard, but he stumbles away sideways, losing his balance. He drops the razor an
d it scuttles off into the gutter and I pick him up and throw him against the wall of somebody's house. I get ready to hit him, but his head hits the bricks hard and he just collapses in a heap. I stand there waiting but he does not move.
The Queen is shaking, and in the dirty orange streetlight I see that there are tears running down her porcelain cheeks, and it is fascinating because I had never thought of her as being able to cry.
Some helpful neighbor must have called the fuzz because in a minute or so there are flashing lights and sirens wailing and a couple of voices, who come over and look at Snakeface and look at me and look at the Queen, and she tells them what happened and they stop sizing me up. So Snakeface is thrown into an ambulance that turns up and the two fuzz go with us to the Queen's place, which is a neat little two-room flat with faded curtains and I have a slash and then they take our statements and by the time it is all over and they have phoned the hospital to discover that Snakeface will live it is three o'clock in the morning and the Queen looks as if she is going to fall asleep standing up.
When they have gone I say: "Does that little bastard know where you live?"
And she says yes, obviously he does, and I say that this is bad because they might not keep him in all night, and again her face shows something and this time it is fear. So I say I will sleep on the sofa if she likes and besides it is very late and I am tired, too, and I do not want to walk the rest of the way home now, and other things, and she gets the idea that I really mean it and that she is not in a fire-after-frying-pan situation.
So she fetches a pillow and a couple of blankets while I have another slash and rub some toothpaste on my teeth, and as I get out of my clothes I hear her in the lavatory and that surprises me again, because it is news to me that she might have to slash as well.
~
The minutes pass and I turn out the light and wriggle down under the blankets while she moves around in the bedroom making female noises. There is a full moon tonight and a line of silver stretches across the carpet from the gap between the curtains. I watch it and then I hear new sounds from the bedroom and after a while I realize that the Queen is crying and I do not know what to do.
