2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  But Jayna refused the interruption. She was closing in but the match simply wasn’t good enough. There was nothing to flag up, as yet, for Benjamin. Definitely needed more variables. She could, at this stage, submit a bland sector summary on hydrogen, but anyone could do that. No, she wanted nothing less than a full investment strategy. Worth spending the extra time. She checked her own performance statistics. On average, over her six months’ service to date, she’d concluded three projects a week, quadruple the frequency of anyone else in the department. Yes, she could afford to spend more time on hydrogen.

  • • •

  Sitting in the park, as she always did after work on Monday, she threw crumbs to her left and right and occasionally ahead of her. Such simple creatures. Each time she flicked her wrist, she reckoned only one or two pigeons espied the flight of stale scraps. She tested her theory by throwing crumbs to her far right. One pigeon twisted around, reacting in the instant. Correct. The other pigeons followed as though a switch had been thrown in each of their tiny brains. Jayna threw to the far left. Again, a single cadger tracked the new trajectory. Leading one minute, subservient the next.

  Bother! Maybe she should have rewritten Tom’s report. She shook out the remaining crumbs from her paper bag. But she’d been right to consider her own productivity. It was all getting way out of hand. I know now what I should have done. She flattened the paper bag against her thigh and made quarter folds. From the outset I should have allocated the time I spent on his jobs to his timesheet, not mine, without asking him. He’d have thought twice, then, about asking for help.

  The birds were in a frenzy. Their heads jabbed, jabbing the air as they jerked along, jabbing at the crumbs on the ground. Jayna examined the evidence of their mishaps—empty eye sockets, stump feet, trailing feathers—and noticed that two of the birds were verging on obese.

  And as for Eloise and her father, she rolled her eyes to the treetops, I still get it wrong.

  • • •

  On the way to her residence in Granby Row, she stopped by the garish menu boards at the Jasmin Five Star Tandoori Restaurant and examined the names of the dishes: King Prawn Vindaloo, Aloo Methi, Bindi Bhaji, Baroa Mozaa. A waiter hovered in the doorway, so she turned away before he could begin his entreaties. No point wasting his time. And, rejoining the mid-afternoon crowds ambling in the hot spring breeze, she thought about her work colleagues who went back to their own kitchens in their own homes at the end of each day. She wondered if they, too, gave names to all their meals.

  The incessant street projections begged the city workers to delay their journeys home. They showed trailers for the latest films intercut with clips of star karaoke performers, all aimed at sucking the more impressionable commuters towards the downtown Entertainment Quarter and the Repertory Domes. As the crowds neared their metro stops, high-kick dancers were scorched across the city skyline in a last-ditch attempt to prevent anyone leaving. Jayna lowered her gaze and scrutinized the footwear worn by pedestrians who rushed towards her or cut across her path. Today, she looked for shoes that demanded attention; shoes that demanded she look up to see the wearer’s face. And in these faces she searched for any indication that they returned her curiosity. It didn’t happen. So she stared directly into the eyes of oncoming pedestrians but she failed again; she couldn’t force any connection.

  She entered her residence by the side door and climbed the scrubbed stairway to her single-room quarters on the second floor, just as she had done every working day for the previous twenty-six weeks. She changed into her loose clothes and hung her suit in the narrow, open-fronted wardrobe by the sink. Dropping onto her single bed, she closed her eyes. A difficult day. She assessed her options beyond the routine of taking a shower and dining with the other residents. She could (a) chat in the common room with her friends; (b) relax alone in her room until lights out; or (c) continue her private studies. She admitted that (b) and (c) amounted to pretty much the same thing.

  • • •

  “How rare is drowning at the age of thirty-four?” Jayna said as soon as Julie seated herself at the dining table. With Julie’s job at The Pensions Agency, she’d have the figures off the top of her head.

  “Confidential… but not as rare as you might think.”

  Harry and Lucas briefly looked up from their meals to acknowledge Julie’s remark. These four were the only diners. They ate one hour earlier than the rest of the residents at C7 because their working day was shorter by one hour. Jayna explained about Tom.

  “If you consider all accidental deaths between ages thirty and thirty-five,” Julie continued, “the figures are also far higher than anyone would guess. We’ve done a study. It seems people’s natural instincts on risk are very poor.”

  “Care to disassemble?” said Harry.

  “I’m talking historically… When primitive man lived on the savannah, the risk of accidental death was high but the types of risk were limited in number. Our intuition on certainty and uncertainty was formed then. Totally inadequate now. Life’s too complex.”

  “Is that a problem?” said Lucas. He was the new boy.

  “Yes and no. Obviously, if people underestimate certain risks they’ll make decisions with unfortunate outcomes. But—” she paused and looked around her friends “—if everyone could grasp their true exposure to negative events there’d be… ramifications. People have to get on with life as though the risks aren’t there. That’s why everyone anticipates an average lifespan. I assume you all caught the latest news from National Statistics—ninety-nine years.”

  “So, in theory, your colleague lost two-thirds his due,” said Lucas.

  “I didn’t understand the media’s reaction,” Jayna said. “What’s so special about living to one hundred rather than ninety-nine?”

  “Teasing failure from success,” said Harry.

  “Anyway, I don’t believe they should massage the figures to achieve an extra year,” said Julie. “They were even suggesting taking deaths through natural disasters out of the statistics. The facts are the facts.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing,” said Jayna. “I don’t think any massaging would keep Tom Blenkinsop out of the statistics.”

  The group of friends fell quiet. Jayna took a piece of bread from the platter at the center of the table and chased the remaining traces of a thin gravy from her plate. Her companions registered her eagerness and, in turn, they too reached towards the bread.

  • • •

  With barely two hours of her evening remaining, Jayna returned to her small room and, prompted by Julie’s remark about the savannah, she downloaded a wildlife program on the Serengeti. She turned to the cage on her bedside table. Hester had given her a branch of privet last week and it was now stripped almost bare. Observing her insects, as she always did in the evening, she jotted a note: Leaves are consumed by an insect that looks like a twig. So what is the difference between a leaf falling and a stick insect dying?

  Out on the Serengeti, a lioness pounced at the flanks of a bolting zebra. After having watched hundreds of similar murderous sequences over recent months, Jayna recognized that only a few animals were immune to the carnivorous advances of others. She decided to formalize this thought by writing an essay on food chain hierarchies and biomass diversity. There were plenty of learned treatises already on the subject but she wouldn’t consult them. She preferred to work it out for herself; it all came down to basic mathematics.

  The lights in her room dimmed and she prepared herself for a twelve-hour sleep. As she lay in bed she looked into her little wildlife park and, in the remaining half-light, could just discern her twiggy roommates from their twiggy habitat. She knew Hester would bring another privet branch from the suburbs. With family to take care of, she had plenty to think about other than stick insects. And she might be preoccupied over Tom’s death. But she simply wouldn’t forget.

  Drifting towards sleep, Jayna’s mind stubbornly refused a final release. She retraced her thoughts and pinpointed
a question that wandered, unresolved: how would the zebra’s experience of fear differ from Tom’s?

  Chapter 2

  BOUND TO BE MINUSES as well as pluses, Jayna thought, but she’d swap places for a day, if not a week. The street cleaner leaned towards the wall gripping his lance. Dirty brick… lunge… clean brick. Methodically, he chased the yellow paint, which followed an imprecise, splattery arc across the rest station’s front entrance.

  Julie dived through the sweeping haze of droplets and stood with Jayna looking back at the rest station wall.

  “What’s all this?” said Julie.

  “I asked him. He said someone’s thrown yellow paint across the wall.”

  “That’s obvious… I didn’t hear anything.”

  “No. I didn’t either… I wish I’d come out earlier.”

  “It probably happened during the night, Jayna.”

  “I meant, I like watching.” Julie threw her a glance.

  Jayna showed no inclination to leave.

  “Well, I have to go,” said Julie. “Talk later.” She headed off.

  Jayna half turned but kept her eyes on the lance. “Maybe we’ll find out later. Someone…” Julie was halfway across the road.

  The street cleaner had created a pristine scar across the dull hue of the weathered brickwork and pavement. Jayna hoped he knew what he was doing. Her right foot tapped. She transferred her weight to stop the tapping but thirty seconds later her left foot started to tap. Time to go.

  Sensitized by the bright yellow violation, Jayna found herself assaulted by color along her familiar route to work, as if the cones of her retinas craved opposing bursts to counter the rude effect of the yellow. She saw, as though for the first time, the bullying daubs of the city highway engineers, the viridian ironwork of the Palace Hotel, the lipstick-red steps to the Palace Theatre’s stage door, and the formless slithers and polygons of blue sky. Her attention shifted focus from colors to the surface imperfections across the U-shaped urban gorge (wall-pavement-gutter-road-gutter-pavement-wall), the misalignments, patched-in repairs. In her mind, she framed and reframed, stretched and cropped. She selected on the basis of color, selected on the basis of shape, selected on the basis of incongruity. Jayna mused to herself, I could spend a lifetime observing this one street…

  • • •

  Hester deposited a ribbon-handled, black-and-white striped, carrier bag at Jayna’s array.

  “Thanks, Hester. It’s good of you to remember.” As though someone prodded her in the back, she added, “What with Tom and all the upset.” Hester ignored the remark and removed white tissue paper covering the bag’s contents to reveal garden clippings, mainly privet. She lifted between finger and thumb a straggle of foliage from a climbing rose, and looked for approval.

  “Perfect,” said Jayna. And confidence renewed—she’d mentioned Tom without causing offence—she added, “Dave in Archives brings me greenery most weeks. He gets it from a park near the terminus. But he forgets sometimes.”

  “Well, what do you expect?” she said, as a throwaway.

  Jayna’s shoulders stiffened at the harshness embedded within the remark. “He’s normally reliable, Hester. He keeps asking for more challenging work.”

  “No chance.” Hester snorted. “There’s no way he could cope with anything more. There are enough complaints about him already. And—” she turned and headed towards her own corner of the office “—it would be too much hassle.”

  That’s curious, thought Jayna. She leaned back in her chair. Hester had made several objections to the idea of Dave’s promotion when one overriding reason would have been more persuasive. And, to her recollection, Hester—despite being capable of minor kindnesses vis-à-vis the garden clippings—was the only person she’d heard complain about Dave. Jayna still couldn’t grasp the concept behind Hester’s managerial style: abbreviated politeness when she dealt with equals, and she seemed to count Jayna in that category, stretching to mere pleasantries with the directors. The directors themselves regarded her default snappiness as somehow… endearing. As for the junior analysts, like Mark… Jayna watched him, now. He was walking the long way around the office just so he didn’t pass Hester’s array. Jayna was sure of it. Yet, Dave, the only menial Hester had to deal with, seemed immune to—Jayna searched for the right word—her angularity.

  She recalled a remark Hester made about Dave exactly seven weeks ago: “I swear I’ll have him out of here one day.” It had happened when Dave was organizing his latest sweepstake. “I don’t know why he does these silly things. It’s such a distraction.” An overreaction by Hester, Jayna felt on reflection. Seemed harmless to her: a sweepstake for the Grand National. A major cultural event, after all. Hester had waved Dave away but he’d persisted and teased: “Go on, Hester. You’ve got a great chance. No-one’s picked out the favorite, Sticky Wicket.”

  She’d simply bitten a reply at him: “No. Go.”

  Even then, Dave hadn’t given up. “Okay, I’ll make the same offer to Jayna, here. You’ll be sorry. Don’t say—”

  “She’s not allowed,” said Hester.

  And he’d come back at her yet again. “Now come on, Hester. Let’s not be a spoiler. You know you’ll feel all left out when the race begins. And why shouldn’t Jayna have—”

  “Out. Now.”

  “All right, all right. I’m history.” Which was his little joke, Jayna had subsequently learnt, coming as he did from Archives.

  It struck Jayna that Hester could barely bring herself to construct a whole sentence when dealing with Dave. I don’t take that attitude with Hester, she said to herself. I don’t think she’s aware… She wondered, as a corollary of sorts—she and Dave both being extremes, albeit on opposing sides of the bell curve—if her presence in the office sparked any debate, any dissent. Are there barbed remarks when I leave the office mid-afternoon? She turned to her array and pulled up Tom’s files. Anyway, it’s beyond doubt. They all know my value. I guarantee we meet targets. And there’s that proverb, one of Hester’s conversation stoppers: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. She’s good at that—abrupt endings.

  Late-morning, Eloise came over. “Olivia and Benjamin want to see you in the boardroom.” Jayna had clinched a new correlation last week and the final report had been dispatched on Thursday to the Metropolitan Police. She was due a few words of praise. It seemed to Jayna that Mayhew McCline’s directors congratulated their staff in a semi-formal setting as though executing some learned motivational strategy.

  • • •

  “Well, here’s a turn-up for the books. Those correlations for violent crime looked pretty robust until half an hour ago, Jayna,” said Olivia Westwood, Mayhew McCline’s vice-chairman. Jayna had detected a link at regional level between violent crimes, limited though these instances were, and mean wind direction. Strong north-easterlies were the ones to watch out for.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Whole family murdered out in Enclave S2.”

  Jayna felt her cheekbones burn. “It’s a westerly today.”

  Olivia smiled. “I know, I know.” Jayna had been reluctant to search for trends because the crime figures were so low. “I read your battery of provisos. Obviously, it’s a crime of passion. Can’t seem to stop those.”

  “I suggested a trend, with multiple caveats. It’s not a predictive tool.”

  “Well, don’t tell that to the client.”

  Olivia was a statistician herself, thought Jayna, so why did she talk like that?

  “Look, we’re still delighted with your conclusions and so are the police. They’re going to match staff rotas to the weather forecast,” said Olivia.

  “Come on. Don’t look so worried,” said Benjamin. “It’s good to make use of the crime stats. Have you seen the access costs? And after all the aggravation we had getting accreditation…”

  Jayna’s eyes were flicking between Benjamin and the image on the wall behind him, a large poster of Jesse Recumbent; a rare and monumental
oak sculpture from the medieval age, of immense significance according to Olivia. Jesse lent gravitas to the boardroom, Jayna thought, even though he was lying down. She wondered what he’d make of Mayhew McCline and its world of trend forecasting and economic modeling. Jayna changed the subject. “Any news about Tom?”

  “Not yet. How are his files?” said Benjamin.

  “I checked this morning. There are a couple of ideas he abandoned that should be revived.”

  “He tended to dump things he wasn’t interested in. What were they?”

  “One on the wine industry: production trends across western Europe.”

  “That figures; he was teetotal. Can you handle them?”

  “I don’t want any distraction at the moment, Benjamin. I think you should recruit.”

  Benjamin groaned. “We’ve only just laid off Ingrid.”

  “Can you bring her back?” asked Olivia.

  “Awkward,” he said. He bared his teeth. “Bit of a slanging match, to put it mildly. I think there’s something wrong there. She’s far too… Anyway, never mind that. I’ll find a freelance for now and brief the headhunters. Won’t be easy, though. I’ll have to offer more money.”

  “What? More than Tom was getting?” Olivia cast a glance at Jesse as if to say, Look at what I have to deal with. “Just do what you can,” she said. And, clearly trying to calm herself, she turned to her star analyst. “So, what are you working on at the moment, Jayna?”

  “Shifts in energy consumption patterns; looking at hydrogen. I’m aiming for an investment strategy report.” Olivia’s eyes widened. “There’s plenty of data available, almost too much. I’m filtering current research projects reported in journals and conference proceedings and I’m also acquiring industrial briefing papers through more… tortuous avenues—” Benjamin nodded his approval, realizing the implication “—sifting through it all, looking for key variables. It’s a big subject, so I’d rather not have any diversions.”