I was staggered. So he intended to foil Shelley's plan all along. The real enemy had been beside me the entire time.
“Why?”
His dark brows creased into a frown. “I don't remember Shelley in the camp, so I don't know what you saw. All I remember is the look in her eyes on the train. She was insane. It's not my place to judge, but I think out of all the people in that work camp,” he said slowly, “if anyone deserved to be there it was her.”
“Jesus Christ. I wondered why you wanted to help me out even after you told me – I should've known. And here you kept on talking about these Ascension cults like you hated them. This church of yours is one of them, isn't it.”
He smiled. His expression was inscrutable. “We don't call it that. But I suppose some people do.”
I ascended the stairs with Kamal following me. Marengo was as dead now as if it had never existed. I felt dazed by the enormity of what I'd done: like throwing a rock through a window and watching an entire building collapse under the impact. We'd surrendered the future of our own species.
And yet the sedate by-lanes and high street remained outwardly unaltered as if nothing had happened.
“Just out of passing curiosity here,” I asked Kamal. “What would you have done if I'd still been hellbent on doing this?”
“No, don't worry, I wouldn't have turned you in,” he said. We both spoke in undertones for fear we'd be overheard. “I'd never have done anything like that. But I'd have found a way to stop you. God would have given me a way. One way or another. Same if we'd met Shelley's husband.”
“Kamal,” I said again. I shook my head. How could Shelley have known when she confided in me that I would destroy her work? that her worst mistake was the one right before her death? “I just don't believe it. You kept quiet about that all that time and you were planning to try to stop me.”
“I didn't think I'd have to stop you.” Kamal interrupted me. “You didn't really want to unleash something like that. In the name of what. Revenge? There's nothing as useless as revenge.”
“For something so useless it's very satisfying.”
“Maybe. But it's not a good reason to start Armageddon. It wasn't you that wanted to do it, it was Shelley, she persuaded you. People like Shelley are what created the Mods to begin with. People who wanted control. You're not one of those. All you really wanted to do was to get back to this girlfriend of yours and leave London. You told me about her then you told me about Marengo – you remember that day in the train station – and I could see which one you cared about. So I thought, He's making a mistake.”
“So you decided to help me out.”
“It's like I said,” he added. “I owed you one.”
“What a way to pay me back.” In terms of what we believed Kamal and I were polar opposites; his cult doctrines seemed so absurd they didn't need refuting. But even a zealot can sometimes turn out to be a decent human being in spite of their ideas. And Kamal's motives were disinterested, however irrational they might be. “I don't know, it's strange to think that we destroyed it,” I said. “Just like that.”
“The less said about it, the better.” It would be only too ironic to be arrested for Marengo now. I wavered between disappointment and relief. Disappointment, because for a few short weeks I'd begun to believe we could actually rid ourselves of the Mods; relief, because I'd been spared the cataclysm I knew would follow the attack. And I could be certain I'd see Becky again. That alone was enough to outweigh my disappointment.
“Yes. You're right,” I said. “Less said, the better.”
“So, I suppose I'll walk over to Hackney,” Kamal said with a sigh. “Go scare my sister-in-law. See if I can find my cat and my bike. And I suppose you're going to – You don't really know where she went, right?”
“No, I don't,” I said flatly. “There's a couple friends of ours I can ask that might know. Other than that I don't have any idea.” Without any directories, searching for a single individual across all of South London was like looking for a drop lost in the ocean. I had to hope that she was safe and unharmed, that someone knew where she was. At least I knew who I'd ask first. Audrey might know; or perhaps Abel. Abel would be at work at this hour, but Audrey would be at home. I could ask her, and if she didn't know – I'd have to think of something else.
Kamal and I parted company near Angel, where the City Road intersects with Upper Street – he to go east and I south.
"It's been what, four and a half months since we left,” I said.
"For me, four or five. But yes, something like that."
“I can't believe it.”
"But listen," he said with an impish grin, "it's been fun.”
“Like hell it has.”
“Come see me sometime. And make sure you bring this beautiful girlfriend of yours with you. I want to meet her."
"I'll come," I said. "I'll bring Becky if she'll walk that far."
Kamal raised his eyebrows and his brown eyes lit with amusement. "What does she think is far? Tell her you walked halfway across England and see what she says. No, even better. Tell her you walked halfway across England because you had to see her again. She'll like that."
"You bet." He gave me his address and I – lacking a pen - committed it to memory. The last I saw of him he was a retreating figure making his way down the City Road, just half a mile from the place where I'd been arrested months before.
From Angel I walked south across Central London. By daylight it seemed safe and demure, and I saw a number of other pedestrians and cyclists, mostly people headed to the Mod buildings off the Strand. I crossed the Thames via Tower Bridge and traced a circuitous route towards the Elephant and Castle district. The same queasy fear that harassed me the night before hounded me again. What had happened to her?
I felt that if I thought for long enough I could guess the answer – but that it wasn't one I wanted to hear. And now I had to know. Because I'd given up the future of humankind for my own future. For her.
And she was everything I had left.
I knocked twice after I arrived at Audrey's doorstep and waited, my shirt clinging to the sweat on my chest. Her jaw dropped half an inch as she ushered me inside. “It's Mark? Mark! Where on earth have you been?”
“I went on a little jaunt with some friends out to the West Country,” I said. “They didn't really want me to come back, so I had to stay a while.”
“I don't understand. I- Here, come inside. Some friends? What do you mean?” She seemed visibly embarrassed, as if I were an unwelcome visitor.
“I mean I was arrested,” I said quietly as she closed the door behind me. “I got deported to a work camp. I escaped after about four months and it's taken me all this time to get back.”
“You escaped. You escaped? I can't – well.” She frowned at the curtains, thinking through all the ramifications. “And so of course you come here. Next thing you know they'll come here and raid my house. Are they looking for you?”
“No,” I said. “Course not. I don't think I'm important enough to be worth chasing down.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I'm back, aren't I?” I shrugged.
“That's really incredible,” she said. She didn't ask me to sit down; my unexpected arrival startled her out of her usual politeness. But I couldn't wait for her to recover. My impatience prodded me past the point of no return.
“Something I want to ask you,” I said. “Have you seen Becky.”
“Becky?” Her eyes met mine for an instant then darted away, evasive like prey scurrying for cover. I had no reason to mistrust her, but that movement made me suspicious. She knows something. Why wouldn't she tell me? “Yes, Becky.”
“What is it? What happened to her?” I watched her, my anxiety mounting like a thermometer rising in the heat. In a second I made another decision: I wouldn't leave until Audrey told me what she knew. Whatever that was.
“Nothing's happened to her, she's fine.”
“Then where is s
he?”
Audrey hesitated visibly. “You know, I don't – What are you asking me for?” ighaid defensively.
Now I felt certain. “Because you know.”
She furrowed her brows. “You've been gone four and a half months, I don't know what you expect when you come back. I don't know why you think everything's going to be just the same when you do come back. Do you think the world freezes until you're here again?”
If you get back and she's still waiting for you, it'll be a miracle. I felt dizzy, the room seemed to sway around me. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Who – where is she?”
“I just can't believe you'd come and ask me in that accusatory kind of tone,” she said stiffly. “As if I did anything. It's not my fault.”
“Where is she?” I asked. “I'm not accusing you of anything. I don't understand.”
“She's with Abel now,” Audrey said, as if admitting it against her will. “He moved out. Like I said, it's not my fault. I didn't have anything to do with it. Abel didn't really either. It was her that started it. It was all on her side. You can't expect the poor girl to wait for you forever, you were gone four and a half months after all. If you really loved her all that much you should've been more careful, then you wouldn't've been arrested.”
I stood motionless, the pressure buzzing in my ears.
“And now you come back and ask me-”
“Shut up,” I spat at her. “Just shut up.”
“There's no point being rude. It's not my fault. I always said she was too good for you anyway.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said stupidly, “I don't believe it. I don't believe it. You don't understand. You have no idea what I just did. This morning. What I just threw away.”
“I'm sorry,” Audrey said huffily. “But you shouldn't swear. It's not my fault.”
No, it wasn't her fault. In my folly, I'd introduced Abel and Becky a year before. She told me at the time that she liked Abel, she couldn't understand how he put up with his “bitchy old mum”, she thought he was sweet. And she must have thought I'd never come back. So why would she wait? Life is short.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“I'm not telling you where to find them,” Audrey said. “Not in the state you're in right now t. You need to go and calm down and then you'll see things the right way, instead of trying to blame everything on other people. No one asked you to go and cross Central London after dark. I tried to stop you, don't tell me I didn't. I told you you shouldn't. And now you blame me. Of course, that's always how it is, isn't it.” I was no longer listening.
Becky, I said to myself. I was only gone four or five months. Don't tell me I wasn't even worth that. Now that I saw what had happened, now that I imagined it in my mind's eye, my pain made a coward of me. I didn't dare to confront her just yet, didn't want to hear her explain what she'd been thinking.
“Listen. I – I'm leaving.”
“What? Where? Now don't you bother them, they don't need-” But I didn't wait to hear more. I edged past her to the door. I ran without any idea where I was running or why, heedless like the little kid racing into the street, searching for a family that was already dead.
The world had grown older but nothing else had changed.
After a while my pace slackened to a walk. I chose streets at random; I didn't know where I wanted to go. My head swam and my skin tingled as if I had a high fever. My thoughts lurched drunkenly from one idea to the next, and at first only searing pain wove like a burning thread through all of them. I argued with her, reasoned with her, talked to her in my mind.
Becky. I don't understand, Becky. It was only four months. Wasn't I worth even that, Becky?
No; you weren't. You're worth crap, you stupid fool. There was no point in trying to con myself, I might as well admit it.
I'd just fled from my duty like a soldier deserting his platoon; well, this was the reward I deserved. I'd rather have remained imprisoned in the work camp or been murdered by the cannibals than return to this. How many times had I escaped death, and why? Even as I'd lain dreaming of her in the camp, she'd lain in another man's arms.
At that thought I clutched the knife in my pocket. If I'd seen Abel in that moment I'd have ripped his guts out.
So much for love, I told myself; so much for intuition and fate and a kind and caring God and all the stupid fantasies we create to cocoon ourselves from the bleak cruelty of chance. Each new realization led to another crescendo of pain. Here I thought I knew what I cared about, and it vanished when I tried to grasp it, like a mirage that lures a traveller into an empty desert.
What was she thinking? I asked myself. I could imagine her turning it over in her mind. No use waiting for a fellow who's been shipped off to a work camp, she'd tell herself. He's not coming back. She was always very practical. I should've known she would do this. But I didn't love her in spite of who she was, I loved her as she was. I'd never expected her to do anything for me. Except perhaps to wait; yes, I expected that. God only knows why.
And the worst thing of all was that I wanted more than anything else in the world just then to hear her voice, touch her lips, to kiss her. But I knew with an inexplicable certainty I'd never hold her in my arms again.
From Elephant and Castle to the Thames is a long walk, and as I walked my anger gradually cooled into sadness, like volcanic lava solidifying into rock.
I don't really blame them, I thought bitterly. I wasn't worth very much anyway. But Becky. I just can't believe it. I can't believe it.
I would find the two of them, Abel and Becky, however I had to do it, and then – I didn't know what would happen. Perhaps at the sight of them together I'd lose my temper and hurt them in a way I'd regret; or perhaps I'd make some awkward remarks and creep away ashamed. I couldn't tell. I'd go find them later. I wasn't up to it just then.
Would I have deleted the Marengo file if I'd known that Becky had moved on? Possibly; I don't know. We're less careful with our own lives when we have nothing left to lose. Either way I'd made a devil's bargain. In retrospect Kamal's arguments seemed hollow like political speeches – magnificent, reassuring and empty.
I walked along the south bank for about a quarter mile before I sank onto a bench, my mind clouded with shock; some birds squabbled on the cracked and filthy sidewalk. A single thought crystallized out of the incoherent tangle in my brain. In deleting the code for the virus, I might have done the right thing or I might not, but the reason why I'd done it no longer existed. I'd betrayed the entire human race for the sake of a girl who no longer wanted me. For nothing. That was the simple fact, and I would have to live with it for the rest of my life. I stared at the inexorable current flowing out to sea. Regret haunted me even then – as it has ever since.
Chapter 14
And that was how, in the spring of 2184, I tried to barter one hope for another and forfeited both. Along the way I ensured victory for the new kind of humans and an end for the old. I could try to justify myself; I could invent arguments in my own defence; I could tell you I only confirmed the inevitable, that I wanted to avoid useless bloodshed; but all these are merely excuses. There's no point trying to colour the facts. The past is final as a judgement - twist it however you like, it doesn't change.
A couple days later I visited Becky and Abel. I wanted to see her again, even though I knew it would destroy the few illusions I had left; perhaps I perversely welcomed the pain, like a penitent eager for the punishment that will cleanse him of his crime. At first Becky squinted at me, embarrassed and afraid like a girl meeting an unpleasant ex. Afraid! The irony stung me like a whip. I couldn't help recalling how often I'd longed to see her again.
“Becky. It's me, Mark.” Against my will my face melted into a smile. I couldn't help it, she was just as I'd remembered her, that freckled skin and haughty mouth I loved to kissps
“Oh my God, it is Mark. It's good to see you. We didn't know what'd happened to you. But of course, should've thought you'd come back,” she said, assuming a s
uperficially friendly tone, and at that point I knew - she'd moved on. If she adopted a pretence, hid behind insincerity, how could I puncture her counterfeit politeness? ask her the questions that really mattered? A conversation like a river has a current of its own, and she was determined to divert it away from anything that might make her uncomfortable. I wanted to take her in my arms and implore her Becky, why didn't you? Couldn't we?
Of course I did nothing like that – nor could I, not with Abel standing there watching me. Instead I told Becky and Abel about the work camp and my escape(omitting Marengo) and the three of us laughed and joked about mutual acquaintances, awkward like a couple after a breakup. She wanted to know where I was staying because “Abel and I can help you out if you need anything,” and those words embittered me more than anything else. Abel and I, I said to myself, and after I left I walked down the street, tears blurring my vision. It wasn't their fault; they were happy together. I had no right to intrude. Until that morning they'd thought I was dead; now I was only an unwanted spectre from the past.
After that morning, I spent several weeks battling a state of chronic indecision. I stayed with a friend and did some odd-jobs work to stay afloat. I kept clear of Central London and anyplace I thought I might run into a government patrol. I didn't know what I wanted to do; like a pilot flying blind through a fog, the future opaque in every direction.
I wanted to leave London more than anything else. It was a dying city slowly crumbling into ruin, and for me a place tainted by memory and by loss. Moreover, I wanted to get as far away from the cities dominated by the Mods as I could. It was too galling to think that I'd have to bow and grovel to the same Mods that owed me everything. They'd never know I'd saved them from a brutal war; my only reward would be their ingratitude. To them I would always remain a Mongrel, a lesser human.
As much as I wanted to leave London, however, I faced a single insurmountable problem: I really had no idea where to go. I turned from one alternative to another like a broken compass wandering between different poles, remaining undecided for days at a time. Perhaps I couldn't yet bring myself to believe what had happened. Perhaps I still secretly hoped that if I refused to believe it, if I refused to accept it, the stubborn reality would dissolve and leave everything as it was before, like daylight after a dream.
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