Living Next Door to the God of Love

by Justina Robson

  The smell of decay was almost unbearable. “Can we please leave here?” I demanded, though I wouldn’t have moved if they did not.

  “I need to think about it,” Greg said stiffly. He turned and walked out, head down. Francine waited.

  “Me too,” I said and moved across to her. She slid her arm around my waist as I reached her and leant into me as we left. I closed the door behind us—an ordinary Palace door, and, as my first truly unshielded act since I entered Sankhara, I fused it shut to the frame.

  Greg was already halfway back to the corridor’s end. Francine held me still where we stood. She slid her hands under my clothing.

  “I trust you,” she said.

  “Not you I’m worried about,” I replied. “Lower. Lower. There.”

  26 / Greg

  I considered Jalaeka’s offer. I did nothing else, though I continued the motions of going in to work, checking my mail, making small talk with the other staff, holding seminars and tutorials, dishing out notes, having lunch with colleagues, writing papers and preparing a report for Belshazzar which, as time went on, I realized I had no intention of sending. Friends I’d been ignoring lately asked after me with concern. I replied to their posts and made myself accept coffee appointments with them, reassured them, though probably without a great deal of conviction. They assumed I was pining for Katy, and I let them.

  I finished very late, working until my eyes were sore and no amount of uppers could help me make sense. After I had closed down my Guide links and was ready to leave I sat, thinking about his offer. One old acquaintance, Sheena Daley, a visiting professor from Dublin, stopped by to see me and we got talking about Translation as we shared a cup of tea.

  “I don’t know if it’s true that you have to make the Stuff into a thing. Any kind of intention would probably do in a pinch. We get used to thinking of big dramas because of the way Isol picked up Stuff, because she had to have it or die, but some of the accidental cases I came across recently have been with people who were trying to use the Stuff for personal gain,” Sheen said. “You know the kind of thing. More successful, better in business, better in bed, blah blah.” She pulled the basket of quartz objects that sat on my desk towards her. They came almost routinely now as joke presents, mostly from grad students of mine.

  Sheen looked through them and laughed. “I have my own selection. Yours are nicer I think. They must like you better. Ooh look. You have hearts. Six of them.”

  “Five,” I said, taking the basket back from her and tipping them out onto the table. I put the rough stones and other shapes aside. She was right. Six hearts. Four rose ones and two grey-brown Cairngorm smokies.

  “The smokies are my favourites,” she said, picking those two up. “I always think of them as unrequited loves.”

  I held the four rose hearts. “I could have sworn I only had three.”

  “Maybe you have a secret admirer.” She smiled at me and put the dark ones back.

  “That’ll be the day. I think this must be the first time I looked at them in a year, come to think of it.” It unsettled me, but we were soon discussing a joint paper we planned to write about fiction and fairy-tale Stuffies of Sankhara and I forgot about it, as usual, wafted away on a whirlwind of ideas, the stones clicking gently in my hands as I turned them like worry beads, over and over.

  Finally, “You look tired,” Sheen said. “And it’s time I went. Still living out in the middle of nowhere down Verkhoyansk way? We miss you in the old Montecathedral markets, you know.”

  “I’ll be leaving soon,” I said, thinking that would definitely be the case, one way or another. I put all the stones back in the basket, and went home.

  The next day, the day I started to hear the gods, was a Wednesday. Fitting enough I suppose—I’ve never associated Wotan with fun. His wasn’t the name that came first, but I consider it his fault. Odin. Whatever.

  It was also the day of the Metropolis Report. It was issued from the Solargov Central Office and it stated rather flatly that Metropolis was officially Missing. All residents were presumed alive, but separated, possibly permanently, from Solar space. An hour after I received this whitewash I got a visit from a Forged agent, a Salmagundi called Bob Clovitz, who told me in no uncertain terms that the Securitat was watching me closely and would be much obliged if I said nothing, either about Metropolis itself, or about any suspicions I might be harbouring concerning Unity activities in other Sidebars, particularly Sankhara. His visit rattled me badly, so much so that I left work early, but it was nothing compared to what happened in the pub later in the afternoon.

  The evening was wet and dreary for late summer, the sky overcast with the simmering unease of two major weather systems colliding. The moment of the first name was nothing special, qua moments. I was raising my glass and planning on ordering another. I was glad the place was busy and that hockey was on the TV; Sankhara Tigers vs. Blackpool Belles always guaranteed a lot of viewers, a lot of distraction and a good excuse to sit alone and not talk to anyone. I was brooding over Jalaeka’s offer of Translation yet again, trying to separate my feelings about him from my feelings about the situation more widely and also from Francine, and I was having the usual success rate—zero.

  The first name was unpronounceable: most of them are, I found later. It was hidden in the bony clack of pool balls striking one another as a Herculean smashed the cue ball into the pack. I heard the name of the god of all gods, and all the names of the gods counted in those few clicks; the balls became an abacus tallying divine power in an unknown base.

  The clicks bypassed language. They spoke directly to me. It’s hard to explain this but think of it the same way that a simple gesture, like a hand touching your hand, can convey all the comfort in the world. The clicks spoke like that, but they weren’t comforting. They said: listen to this very special number, this integer of unknown magnitude. Here’s everything you need to know about anything. Here is god, speaking to you, Greg. To you.

  I tried to shake it off, but that image of the balls being used to convey a private message lingered. I swallowed the last of my beer and put the glass down. I glanced at my Abacand but it wasn’t Engine Time, when the world turned on strange wheels—wouldn’t be for another two hours and twenty minutes. The words of the Report: accidental closure . . . space-time discontinuity . . . unknown permanency . . . kept weaselling their way into my thoughts, then found the gods talking and stopped, and rushed off in another direction, trying to get out of my head.

  A cold, nasty feeling, not unlike being immersed slowly in a sucking bog, spread across my back and into my guts. I thought of the Stuff back at the lab; the fragments alone in their jackets of lead, concrete, glass, metal, wood, stone and all the other insulating materials known to man; those dangerous pieces hidden from all sight. I remembered the rose heart and saw Sheena saying, “I like the smokies . . .” Queasy, I pushed my empty glass away.

  I got another beer and I put the gods down to anger; at my reaction to Solargov’s marvellously spun cover-up over the fate of Metropolis; at the way it had fallen under the persuasive jackboot of bloody Unity and its emissary Theodore, god’s gift (he was well named, I’ll give them that). They came up with the lame explanation that Metropolis’s space-time collapsed due to unforeseen tidal interference from the “nearby” black hole in RX J1242-11.

  As if some bit of dust like that black hole would have affected anything Unity wanted to survive.

  I checked my call list. I’d been so besieged by media calls for quotes and comments that I’d told my Abacand to disregard anything other than personal calls. Ever after it had been very quiet.

  I thought about Jalaeka, Damien and the mermaid, the Bone Room. I couldn’t call Francie. I wouldn’t call Katy. Nobody else knew enough. I called Jalaeka.

  “Hey, Greg,” he said, giving me the second half of a smile from another conversation he’d just ended. By the background of where he was, I thought he and Francie must have gone out into Sankhara. “What’s new?”
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  I got out of my seat, left the table and walked into the street before I could tell him. It was dark and it was raining. I huddled in the entryway.

  His smile changed to a look of concern. “Are you all right?”

  “The Metropolis Inquiry published this morning,” I said, because he never kept up with current affairs. “It was just like I thought it would be. I hoped . . .”

  “You hoped that there would be some justice or honesty, but there isn’t.”

  “Of course not.” And there was the other raft of things I didn’t say but which he knew about—the fact that he had told me what happened to Metropolis and how he knew. I had the strangest feeling, like I was shifting over the ground though I wasn’t moving.

  “Greg, I can hear you thinking from here. Did something else happen? Want me to meet you?” He sounded worried now, and that almost tipped me over into panic.

  “No,” I said and took a gamble with myself. “Could you . . . I mean, could you tell? If I had Unity exposure?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Listen, stay there. I’m coming right now.”

  “Not here. I’m going home. You don’t have to. I’m fine. I’m sure it was nothing.”

  “I’ll see you there.” He cut the call off.

  I leant against the wall for a second and pushed off it and out into the rain. He met me just inside Anadyr Park on Verkhoyansk Boulevard’s slick black paving and held an umbrella up over me. After we fought through the gateway we put our heads down against thick sleet and ran for the Palace door.

  “Couldn’t manage anything more godlike?” I said—and there I was, the full arse, back again, covering all my fear with stupid lines.

  “Technically, it was just easier to use this.” He shook the umbrella and put it in the stand.

  “What I said. I don’t think . . .”

  He caught hold of my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Don’t look back.”

  “What?” But his strange command had distracted me for the essential moment, as it was no doubt meant to do.

  Jalaeka’s hands squeezed hard, crushing my muscles against my bones. His face was completely sad.

  I couldn’t help thinking that this shouldn’t have happened to me, though at the same instant I was aware of how unholy bloody ironic it was too. How could it? How could it be true?

  “Oh,” Francine said with relief when she saw us at the door. “It’s you. Come in.” She stuck the pencil she was holding behind her ear.

  I stepped into the grand bedroom, cold and in a strange mental state where all my ordinary thoughts had been bypassed. I noticed things without seeing connections. I operated according to a new self who must have been in me all the time, relentlessly practical. Go in, it said. Be polite. Act normal.

  The drapes on all the windows were shut. In the colossal marble fireplace a fire burned hungrily. Her desk—a beautiful piece of furniture stolen from elsewhere—was covered in books and a brand-new and unopened Abacand in its foil packing sat among them, its instruction note open and face-down. He had bought it for her.

  “What’s that you’re reading?”

  “Mmn.” She looked at the spine of her book. “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.” She grinned at me.

  “How’s it going?” This was tutor-me in action. I sat on the other end of the couch. I was always surprised by how fast and how well she learned. In spite of being surrounded by students in my seminars who had been engineered from the same Genie block bases as she had been, she was faster, and sharper.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be any good at the maths side of Unity studies,” she said airily, pushing the book to one side. “I prefer your end of things. Social and psychological. I’m hoping my experience of helping you log the Palace will count when I . . .” She hesitated and smiled shyly. “. . . apply.”

  This was such unexpected good news, but I could only manage to say, “So, when did you decide this?”

  “Oh, dunno. I was thinking about it for a while.” She glanced down and then, in one of her rapid but accurate ways, slid across the couch, kissed my cheek and got up. “D’you want a drink or something?” Still not making eye contact. Then making it. “What’s wrong?”

  The wind rattled the shutters with sudden ferocity and made us both jump.

  There was a moment of complete hunger, sleepless restless immoderate vital absolute savage longing. As with the names of the gods, it was gone before I knew what I felt, but it had the same quality of revealed knowledge about it. My automatic self replied to her question simply, “Unity got me. Tag. I’m it.”

  She gasped and dropped the things in her hands. She touched my face and her eyes filled with tears. She threw her arms around me. I stood motionless and looked over her shoulder at the flames dancing on the logs.

  27 / Theodore

  Well, little Miss Blond IQ, what did you do to him? Let’s find out.

  28 / Valkyrie: Sankhara

  Water dripped steadily from the leak in the roof and the room shook with the force of the wind as Valkyrie looked out over the city from the shelter of her lodgings high in the Aerials. She looked to the north, to the windward side. Crystals of ice smashed an inch from her face, done to death on the toughened safety glass that was all that stood between her and a tumble of some five hundred metres.

  Valkyrie shivered. She didn’t like those moments of Engine Time when things like that happened—conscious things, small things, as you watched. It meant the Engine’s attention was restive and struggling against the Regulator, trying to burst forth and engage with waking minds. Valkyrie reached up and took down the fetishes of horse bones and tiny stone rings her highly superstitious landlord had hung up to prevent any mishaps of that nature. Their constant tinkle and rattle was making her nervous.

  She watched the city lights and the movements of the traffic as she swapped out her power packs for ones carrying full charge, checking and calibrating the speed of connections, working over her Tek element with methodical care. At nine she ate a ration of supplement from a standard-issue pack—free at all Forged PickMeUp outlets, nineteen spectacular flavours including Original. She could never read the label without hearing Elinor make the cringe-worthy old joke based on the name of Unity’s homeworld, Origin: Original—tastes like alien planets.

  Valkyrie was picking wads of it out of her teeth with a fingernail when an alert message from the office presented itself for her attention. She was glad of the interruption and read it quickly. Belshazzar had forwarded it. It was a Black Spot Order or, in formal terms, a Port Authority standard notification of Contamination & Translation and it had been served on Dr. Greg Saxton, Unity Studies Faculty, University of Sankhara, ten minutes ago on site at Authority West. Exposure date was reckoned within the last week. Voluntary or forced quarantine notice to be exacted in October. Valkyrie stopped chewing.

  She’d followed Saxton around for months, along with Bob Clovitz, who was on him anyway, because he looked like he might cause trouble when the Metropolis Inquiry reported. He and Valkyrie had often had to sort out their differences of opinion over who got jurisdiction on the Unity Studies Faculty and Greg in particular, due to his political leanings. Valkyrie was an employee of Solargov, part of its official military security shadow. Bob was Secret Service. Today had been Metropolis Paper Day. Bob was on duty and Valkyrie, after months of very little noteworthy activity on Saxton’s part, had left him to it. He’d agreed—although she didn’t think he was reliable—to call her if anything kicked off.

  Instructions were appended.

  Belshazzar wanted her to find out where and how the exposure had happened. Valkyrie must ascertain if Greg had been careless with the Faculty’s Stuff Fragments or not.

  Valkyrie, who had never got her head around the difference between the Stuff that scientists experiment on and the Stuff that most of Sankhara was made of, snorted. She could hear Belshazzar patiently repeating, The intention guides the function, but the words didn’t connect to anything in
her head. Not that it mattered. Her job was not to find out how it worked nor why, only to carry out orders and protect the human populations. That was straightforward enough and she felt pleasure in reminding herself of it.

  A sheet of lightning startled her from the mild trance she had been in as she paid attention to the incoming call. Other flashes tore silently across higher skies and made the clouds leap out into great bulwarks above. Were-light and smoke rose here and there among the buildings downtown. Shift Sirens wailed, just audible above the wind. There was a hell of a lot of Engine activity out there.

  Valkyrie decided that Saxton would probably head back home, and would be in shock no doubt. Bob would be trailing him and would almost certainly know about the Black Spot. Saxton would be able to think about nothing other than what had happened, always supposing it was not deliberate. The best way would be to talk to him while he was most off-balance, and least likely to be able to hide the truth.

  Relieved at having something to do other than sit around watching and listening, she was almost cheerful as she got her wings and rocket pack from their places on the wall. The bubble house swung from side to side and she stood for a moment, balancing, as she fixed her helm visor and switched her primary sensory systems over to temperature, radar and alternate spectrum channels, the storm being too savage to see through with simple eyes.

  It gave her a statutory five seconds and a gong warning to give her the chance to get off, then opened. Her wings were already opening as she passed through, falling straight down. She angled them and brought herself into a fast glide, facing into the wind. As she cleared the Aerials and reached free air, she ignited her rockets and felt the sudden surge of power in her back as they gave her forward speed. The wobbles and wrenching of the winds stabilized. She held her arms close to her sides and flew low between the spires of the Aelf, avoiding the turbulent air pockets on their leeward sides as she headed for the Anadyr Park gateway.