Living Next Door to the God of Love

by Justina Robson

  29 / Francine

  When Jalaeka left to take Greg to get his infection verified at the Port Authority, I locked the door carefully. I wished I’d gone with them but it was out of the question. Their equipment would immediately have identified me as Guideless and they would have arrested me. I rubbed the back of my hand where I’d removed the Tab.

  A thin, distant howl sounded over the lilt of the music the Foundation were playing—9:00 P.M., happy hour. I went to the curtains and gently moved one aside. Its lead weights slid over my foot and the cold air it had been keeping at bay washed my face. My breath misted on the glass behind the rain. There were no shutters on this bay and usually there was a superb view across the gardens and the estate but tonight it was so dark that the only thing I could see was a long yellow lozenge on the lawn where light from the Gaudi ballroom shone out. Probably Mandy was there, or some of the Love people dancing on its perfectly sprung floor.

  The howl sounded again. It wasn’t very near, but it wasn’t a wolf either. There were two packs of lean, grey and black beasts and I knew all their voices—I’d even seen them now and again, trotting fast across paths in the gardens on moonlit nights. This howl was like a wolf’s; it asked a question and made a statement. But it was too human to be one. Greg always said we were lucky nothing worse had come out of the woods. He thought it was only a matter of time.

  He had a theory that Anadyr Park was where the Engine put the most hidden and most unfaceable pieces of its human psychology—down in the backwoods, in the old forests on the mountain, in the wintertime. It suited his theory of archetypes, even though the Sankhara Engine rarely fitted any theory and would as soon spit out a ghast into a shop window display of women’s lingerie. Probably do it more readily, which gives some indication of what people’s minds are really up to on the sly. At least when you attempt to go and live in a fairy-tale palace you think you have an idea of what you’re up against, if you’ve done the reading.

  I felt conspicuous.

  I closed the curtain carefully and went to sit by the fire with my borrowed books. The empty symbols danced in front of my eyes. I kept thinking of Greg’s astonished, horrified face and the way he’d looked at me as he realized what Jalaeka had seen. He wanted to be saved. I wanted to save him.

  I put the books away and cleared the desk. Thunder rumbled and the wind picked up again. They’d be soaked to the bone out there.

  I played some music of my own, quietly. I didn’t want to blot out other sounds. Time crawled. I took the Abacand Jalaeka had bought me out of its wrapper and entered the activation code from the instruction leaflet. It was a beautiful thing—a flexible silver band that could fit like a bracelet or fold up into a coin-sized square to sit in a pocket. I said the numbers cautiously though. It was a long time since I’d had one and never one as advanced as this. I didn’t know what they could do now.

  It lay on the palm of my hand and reflected the firelight like a vanity mirror.

  “Please supply your name and identification number,” it said. “I cannot locate your Guide.”

  “I’m stateless,” I told it. “My name’s Francine.”

  “Please state your preference for my interactive personality.” Its voice was pleasantly androgyne, rather warm and comforting.

  “I like you the way you are,” I said. “You can start there.”

  “Is there anything I can help you with now, Francine?”

  “What can you tell me about Unity Translation rates? And don’t use my name all the time, I hate that. And never tell the Guide where you are.”

  “Without Guide authentication I will have to rely on black-market bands and entry ports in the Forged underground networks. This will require funds. Do you have an account?”

  I turned the leaflet over and read from Jalaeka’s handwriting on the back of it. The codes opened his account with the Forged Independence bank in Uluru. When I’d asked him how much was in it he’d grinned. “Enough to get you into the best college on Earth, set you up in a nice life on Earth and let you live out a lot of years in style. Just try to clean me out, baby.”

  I had no idea how much, or whether it was the right thing to do, but it was exciting to have so much power suddenly in my hands, after so long with nothing. The Abacand spoke:

  “The latest tracked rates of Unity Translation vary according to the degree of interaction between the person concerned and the Stuff object or person they are communicating with. This is a nonstandard definition of communication. It assumes the voluntary participation of the observing person and the receptive operation of the Stuff object. The lowest Translation speed on record for complete immersion is two years and twenty-eight days, thirteen hours fifty-seven minutes and eight seconds. The fastest recorded Translation speed is two hours and one second. This data is not considered a representative sample. Theoretically, the upper-limit Translation time is one Planck time. There is no anticipated lower limit. More information?”

  “How much did that cost?” I asked, thinking in terms of what I spent on food during an average week, maybe ten, fifteen bucks or something like that.

  “Two thousand and forty-eight credits.”

  I almost had a heart attack. All the blood rushed somewhere not useful. “Stop! Stop.”

  “The transaction has already concluded.”

  Two thousand credits. I felt physically sick. That was more money than I had earned cleaning rooms in six months. What would he say? How could I tell him I asked that stupid a question for so much money when Greg would probably find out for nothing?

  I pulled at my hair and took a deep breath. “How much is left?”

  “That information is currently off-line . . .”

  “You have five million two hundred thousand two hundred and ninety-one available credits,” said a cool and amused voice from the bed.

  I turned my head so fast that I felt the muscles in my neck tear.

  A tanned, blond and handsome man was lying back on the rucked covers, his long legs stretched out and feet crossed as though he’d been there for some time and was enjoying a good spectacle. He was beautifully dressed; white shirt, suede jeans, loafers; completely dry; entertained by my surprise and fear and happy to let me know it.

  “Don’t you want to know how I know?” he asked, leaning up on his elbows, “or are you wondering how it is that your fancy go-go-dancing whore of a boyfriend has so much money he never told you about?”

  My fingers closed tightly on the machine in my hand and its edges cut into my skin. I hurt. Every bit of me was rigid with fear. How had he got in? It was Engine Time. Was he part of something like that? Wasn’t it against the rules or something to have this kind of thing? But in my heart I knew who it had to be. Like Greg, I didn’t want to believe it. I willed it unreal.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he asked and lay back down and laughed. He picked up one of the cushions and hugged it, rolled over and lay facing me with it underneath his chest, resting his chin on it.

  I made myself speak before I lost the ability. There was a kind of other me running things now, on instinct. My thoughts were behind it, like smoke and shadows, useless. “Who . . . who are you?”

  “Ah, the classics.” He smiled and showed me his perfectly white teeth. “Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?” He waved his feet in a perfect imitation of my own habit. “Get up and come here. I’ve come to see you. I feel like we’re old friends who’ve never met.” His eyes shone with feral intent.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t have anyway. There was a buzzing sensation in my head, like trapped flies. “Go away.”

  “Five million credits,” he said, luxuriating over every syllable of the words. “Five mill-ion. Five million. Now what could anybody do that’s worth that kind of money? Hmm, I wonder. Perhaps it’s bond trading? Perhaps it’s drug running? Perhaps illegal Tek or psychosurgery? I hear he’s very good at that. Isn’t that right, Francine? Sorry, Francie.” He gave me a coy look as he made a sharp intake of breath a
t his pretended mistake and bit the cushion. Then he moaned in a series of short, rising tones. “Or maybe he does something else. But not with you. Why is that?”

  He rolled off the bed and stepped down from its dais, graceful and strong. He paused at the desk and looked at the books stacked on it. “A lot of reading for someone as magically incurious as you are. Do you know what I think? Well, I’m not going to wait for an answer as I don’t suppose I’ll get one. I think he’s waiting for you to ask him because he feels guilty. Do you know what that might be about?”

  I looked at the door. I looked at the windows. Too far. Too heavy. Too locked. I hadn’t put any information in the Abacand, there were no hot keys. I slid my thumb over it, trying to access call mode.

  “I’m talking about before.” He casually pushed the books off the desk and swept his hand over the polished wood. “Before you, darling. But he hasn’t told you about that, just like he hasn’t told you about darshan and what, down at the Well, they like to call the holy fuck. And seeing as how I know we’re such good friends I felt I had to tell you.”

  “I know everything,” I said, sliding away to the edge of the sofa. “Angel Five. Metropolis. I already know.” The Abacand bleeped as I pressed the wrong thing on it.

  “Angel Five?” He walked around the desk and straight up to me. His hands were cool as he threaded his fingers through my hair and took hold of my head with the pressure of a vise. My ears pounded. He held me there and then slowly dragged me to my feet and turned my chin up so that I had to look into his face or stare sideways.

  I tried to do that, and to stop shaking, but it was too frightening not to be able to see what might be coming. He had blue eyes. His long fringe flopped elegantly across them so that he had to flick it away with a jerk of his head. As he spoke he released the pressure on my skull and his hands slid slowly down my neck and became gentle, exploratory. “The last in a very long line of . . . well, I don’t like to say. But I will. Dead girlfriends and boyfriends. Let’s see how many; oh, at least ten. And in terms of casualties who were not so privileged, darling, there are simply millions. Millions of dead people. I wanted you to know so that you had a choice about it.”

  “What choice?” My voice was barely a whisper. He looked down at my shoulders as he touched them, then he began to undo my clothing.

  “The informed choice,” he said, in stockbroker tones. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? A choice. Always a choice. Look or not look. Touch or not touch.” He took his hands away and glanced at my face and put them back on my breasts. “Make or not make.”

  “Get off me.” Talking was better. It made me stronger. I knocked his hands away with my forearms.

  “That’s what she said.” He stepped forward and kissed the top of my head, then stepped away and turned to lean on the mantelpiece and look into the fire. “She said, ‘Get off me,’ just like that.”

  “I’m not listening to you,” I told him, quickly taking hold of the two halves of my shirt and pulling them closed over myself. I was shaking so hard, my hands trembling, I couldn’t fasten them shut. I kept my arms across my front. The Abacand was still in my hand, locked there. I felt its resistance and flex inside my palm. I lifted it towards my mouth to call Jalaeka.

  Theo’s hand caught mine before I’d had time to finish taking breath. He smiled and with both his hands opened my fingers and took out the silver square. “Oh look,” he said, “I’m frightening you. You’re bleeding.” Where the Abacand had cut my palm and fingers he took my hand to his mouth and licked across the wounds. The machine fell to the carpet, silently.

  Jalaeka once licked a cut of mine like that.

  “So, where were we?” He kept my hand and turned it in his own. I tried to pull it away but he was too strong. I clawed at him with the other hand but he ignored me completely. “Oh, yes, your line is ‘Get off me.’ I’ll be him.” He waited, looking down at me with amused disdain as my nails tore his skin open. “Say it?”

  I clenched my teeth together and pulled on my arm with all my strength. When it didn’t move I tried to kick him but he sidestepped. With my free hand I hit him in the face and saw him have to turn aside, a scratch opening across his cheek.

  “That’s it,” he said, grabbing my wrist and forcing it down. “Now you’re getting the hang of it. No line. Still, we know how it went.” He bent close and whispered tauntingly, “Get off me.” He stood up and shrugged. “And he did this.”

  He picked me up easily and in a few strides crossed the room and flung me back onto the bed. With both hands he grabbed my shirt front and tore the whole thing in two.

  I screamed at the top of my lungs and he slapped his hand over my mouth and ground my head back into the mattress. “That’s right,” he said. “She screamed too. Maybe he did tell you this story.”

  I tried to bite the thick flesh of his palm but he ignored me and pushed down harder while his other hand bound my wrists together with the torn shirt. He was very deft and wound it incredibly tight. He sat back on my legs at the knee, tore a piece off the end of one of the bindings and balled it up carefully, using his own teeth to help. I tried to kick or wriggle away and he let go of my mouth and slapped me. My head rang and tears flooded my eyes and nose. I felt him jam the cloth between my teeth.

  “This will have to do, I’m afraid,” he said in his pleasant, businesslike voice. He sounded almost sympathetic. “She was held down by other people of course. He likes an audience. But we have to improv.”

  He retied my hands to the bedposts.

  Nothing he was saying made any sense to me. I hit him with my hands clubbed together. It was a weak blow that barely grazed his chin and he laughed and stood back to take off the rest of my clothes. “Nice shoes,” he said, letting them drop to the floor one at a time. “He always liked pretty things. So. Five million credits.” He pulled my jeans off from the ankle, then my socks.

  I drew my legs up and kicked him. My right foot caught him on the arm and spun him half away. I tried again. He treated me like an annoyance and caught my ankles in his hands. He was incredibly strong; like a machine he put me where he wanted me and my legs burned as I resisted but they went anyway. He lay down between my legs with his face over my crotch, my thighs pinned under his arms. I managed to dig my heel into his spine but he didn’t seem to feel it.

  “Five,” he said, smiling at me winningly. He ran his tongue along the line of my knickers at the top.

  There must be a way out of this. There must be. But I can’t think of it.

  “Million,” he said, and as he said it licked the fabric crotch. “What beautiful underwear,” he added. “Silk. So thoughtful. Oh, but I’m forgetting my directions. Anyway, no point lingering over it all too long. Five million credits buys the grace of god about three times a night, which is pretty fucking saintly, less the club cut of forty percent of course. But that was only because you asked so nicely to know how much. And it has a lasting effect, kind of like an afterglow sort of thing—I’m even starting to sound like you, aren’t I?—which I understand has a complete transforming power on experiences ever after, so probably quite cheap considering. But you, his lovely, juicy, gorgeous, untouched, underage girl, get nothing at all. Or do you?”

  I tried to get free of him again, to scream. Mentally I begged for Greg to come back for some stupid thing, to ask me to another boring meeting in the department, for Damien to call, but even though it was Engine Time, wishing was no good.

  He waited until I was too tired to carry on.

  “Are you done?” Keeping my legs pinned under one of his own he leant on one side and unfastened his trousers. I wished I could have laughed at him or done anything to him. I pulled on the knots at my wrists and they tightened up. My hands started to hurt and swell. I thought I might throw up. I tried to but only coughed.

  He slid my knickers off, giving me every chance, and I kicked him hard as we struggled.

  “Get off me,” he sang to me softly, grunting with the blows I landed
but showing no sign of pain. “Get off me.” He forced my knees apart and pushed himself between them. His face hung close above mine and he made our noses touch. “She was so desperate to escape. Boy, she hated him. She wanted to kill him. She wanted him to die. And the rest of them. All of them. But she knew there was no hope at all. None. Nobody coming and nothing to be done about it. So she gave up and shouted . . .” He waited for me to speak. I stared my hate into his blue, blue eyes. “You’re not much fun, Francine, it has to be said,” he told me. “Just like her. Something has to be done about that. And they all thought so too. So Jalaeka did this.”

  He put his face between my legs and licked me. He kept a strong hold on my legs just above the knee and pushed hard on them so I couldn’t close them. I shut my mind off from the sensation and heard that howl again outside. It was much closer now. I clung to the sound and focused all my attention on it.

  He was very gentle. He kissed me. When he finished and brought his wet face back to mine he said quietly, “Never believe you’re not as sweet as any woman alive.”

  The howl made him pause to listen. He licked my lips around the wad of cloth. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to pull off the same trick for you,” he said. “She wasn’t immune to the other charms of my kind like you are. The ghost in the head. She was ecstatic by then. And he took her that way. Like this.”

  He did it in one, fast, hard motion. He smiled at me. I shut my eyes and turned my head away from him. I tried to think of anything I could do. My face burned. He kissed my neck and made that moaning sound he’d made before, pretending. “You could at least fake it for me,” he said. “So I could know what it’s like to be him, because I know for certain there’s nothing he’d rather be or do than be right here doing you.”

  I turned my aching head back and glared at him. I wished he could take the cloth out so I could tell him to shut the hell up and get on with it. I was already moving beyond the end in my mind, wondering what I could do to him and how I could find him and make him pay.