2184

by Martin Parish

  Three weeks later I walked over to Hackney in the late afternoon. I got there roundabout three.

  I had the address and I knew roughly where I was headed, but I wasn't sure about the specific streets. Perhaps I'd passed the right road; perhaps it was off of Well Street? Across the lane a fellow with dark hair and coffee-coloured skin carried a synthetic leather bag full of tools. His attention was fixed on the second-floor window of a terrace.

  "Hi there," I called out. "Can you tell me - I'm looking for a street."

  "Which street?" he said as he spun around.

  "Never mind. Think I found it," I said. It was Kamal.

  "How're you doing?" he said. A wicked grin suffused his brown eyes. He was in an enthusiastic mood. "I was wondering. What's happened? Where's that beautiful girlfriend of yours?"

  “Hoping you wouldn't ask that. Bit of a surprise, really," I said. "She left before I got back. Moved in with a friend of mine. A former friend.”

  He raised his eyebrows. "Are you kidding? You were only gone - what, four and a half months?"

  "I know," I said. "But - there it is. I mean, I could go kill the bastard, but you know – there's no point. Some things just aren't worth it. There's some things you just have to let go.”

  "Sorry to hear that," he said.

  "No, don't worry about it," I replied. “I'm over it now.” It wasn't true, but I wanted it to be true, which isn't always the same thing.

  “Well, if she won't wait that long, you're better off without her,” Kamal jibed.

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe it's a good thing. Like deleting what I was going to do. You remember.” I didn't mention Marengo and neither did he; he knew what I meant.

  "I just can't believe you ran my feet off racing all the way back here just so you could find out she'd -”

  "Like I said," I added, "I think it's a good thing."

  "And the really crazy thing is - You want to know how much I know? You know I came back and Raja was still here?"

  "He was?" I said, a little surprised.

  "Yes. Believe it or not. I don't know how he survived, but I came back and the next day he was scratching at the door. Somebody fed him.”

  "Just goes to show," I remarked. "You can always tell about people. With cats you never know."

  "I think cats are more intelligent than we give them credit for. But there's another thing. Remember I told you about my bike? Believe it or not, that was still here too."

  I laughed, struck by the peculiar irony. Everything he'd expected to lose still awaited him when he returned; I, on the other hand, lost everything I'd expected to find. "See, so much for all that pessimism. I wish I'd bet you money on that. I could collect right now."

  "Let's pretend you did. I've been lucky lately, I got - oh, I'll tell you about it. Here, come on, I'll buy you a coffee, there's a place round the corner that makes this - I don't know, it's some kind of synthetic coffee but they put something else in it, it's really good. It's this other additive, I don't know what it's called."

  "Weren't you going somewhere?" I asked.

  "Someone who can wait," he said with an indifferent shrug. "They're in no hurry. It's a long story. But so did you find another job? I'm guessing you don't work at their fuel plant. I mean, I don't know, they've probably got your biometrics on file.”

  "No, I don't," I said. "I've found work. But I really want to leave London, that's the thing. I just can't stand grovelling in front of these Mods after I – I mean, I did more for the stupid gits than anyone else. And they're never even going to know.”

  He nodded. “I know. That's the strange thing about it, isn't it. That's how things always are. You help people and they kick you in the teeth. But you can't control that, you can only do so much.”

  “I suppose.”

  “So where do you think you'll go?”

  "Don't know. Haven't made up my mind.”

  “You could go – you remember that fellow with the cricket farm? He said there was a village down the road and they always need more people. You could go back there.”

  I was startled. His words reacted with some slumbering instinct in my mind to create an entirely new idea, the way two chemicals, colourless by themselves, burst into vivid fire when combined. I thought of Maggie blushing in the dark, her crazy pet clinging to her shoulder. But it was a strange idea and at first glance it repelled me. “That's a thought,” I said. “I'll think about it.”

  “It's a shame you want to leave, though,” he said. “I was thinking I could get you to join us.”

  “Us? You mean your church cult.”

  “Yes. A little like that.” He grinned and I laughed.

  “You can forget that,” I said. “Don't think you've got a convert just because of what happened a few weeks ago. I don't understand your religion. I mean, there's two possibilities. Either your God is imaginary or they're an absolute bastard. But I don't see any point praying to them either way.”

  Kamal seemed puzzled. “I suppose you could look at it like that.” He had persuaded me to take the most significant decision of my life, and yet his motives remained as obscure and unintelligible to me as the Mods themselves. I could think what I liked about his God or his faith, but at the moment of decision they'd won: my scepticism, indifferent to the outcome, had bowed to his determined faith, and yet my scepticism remained unconvinced. We spoke different languages, we each had our own answers; neither of us would ever understand.

  “Yes,” I said; “that's how I look at it.”

  “Fair enough. But it's just a thought,” he added. “Come on. Let's get some coffee.”

  Two weeks later, for want of any better options, I left London and moved to a village near the outskirts of Reading. I fled the past and yet I carried it with me even as I sought to escape. I went there undecided, beset by a tangle of conflicting hopes and fears, still uncertain how long I would stay or what I hoped I'd find.

  The cricket farmer, naturally, was surprised to see me again. I explained I'd found London worse off than I'd left it, that rumour had it a government-orchestrated genocide was imminent; and the cricket farmer nodded sagely. “I could've told you there wasn't any point in going back. It's their city now, it's not ours. It's not as if there's anything left for us there.” He was kind enough to lend me a hand when I needed it, however, and offered me any amount of advice on farming crickets and biotech algae: valuable advice, when he wasn't drunk.

  And Maggie Anderson – well, Maggie I grew to know even better still. So well, in fact, that when five years later I left the village near Reading to go West, she came with me as my wife.

  From Reading we travelled towards the mighty Severn, crossing it by the abandoned motor way bridge. The villages and towns of south Wales were few and seldom visited by the Mods in those days, surviving outposts of Mongrel independence in what was once Great Britain; the countryside wears an idle beauty like summer daydreams. We've lived here ever since, comfortably remote, at a safe distance from the cities that have been several times wracked by viral epidemics(there are those who believe the epidemics were planned, although only the Mods truly know). The years have passed steadily, one following another into the past like mileposts through the window of a train, the people I know vanishing with them.

  Often when I am alone the old riddle taunts me, the great unsolved question in my mind. What if I had done my part? Could Marengo really have delayed evolution and won equality for us? Am I the Judas who sold his own species?

  I see that we are slowly fading into extinction, but that doesn't trouble me in itself; all species become extinct, homo sapiens too must perish in its turn. For my part I'm content with the end of our history. But I can't escape the occasional pang of regret, the ephemeral wish that things might have been otherwise. If I hadn't stopped to listen to Audrey that night - if I hadn't shared Shelley's plan with Kamal - if I hadn't listened to him -

  At times I blame myself for my failure and wish I could go back. I imagine the world as it was in the ag
e of humans, when like a god in our innocence we wrought offspring that renounced us. I harbour hatred like poison and resent the Mods for all the things they inherited from us, the ungrateful heirs of our crumbling civilization.

  And yet at other es I see them differently.

  When I watch their space flights soaring through the clouds, the useless hatred dissipates like red mist and awe takes its place. For a moment I feel proud of the Mods as if they were my own children. Surely it's natural that they take their turn and push us aside. Age yields to youth, the child buries the parent, even the universe itself must die. It's better that we accept the end, knowing at least that in our final years we created something greater than ourselves. Jealousy and hatred are both futile alike: in spite of their superiority, the children of humans will someday share our fate. They, like us, are only prisoners of time.