New Worlds 4

by Edited By David Garnett

  Len was strong enough to lift Becky and often gave in to her babyish demands. ‘Oh, well, if it makes her happy,’ he’d say, and Renate didn’t argue. She felt guilty because she’d never been able to hold Becky as a baby should be held. She wondered what that lack would do to Becky psychologically. Probably that earlier deprivation was why she was being so difficult just now. ‘Just don’t put your back out,’ she’d say to Len, and then she’d get on with some housework while he cuddled their daughter.

  It was during this phase, Becky’s fourth year as a child, that the company Len worked for went out of business and he was left without a job. He was still some years away from his pension, but he was effectively unemployable. He made a few token efforts to find work, but they both knew it wouldn’t come to anything, and so, when she was offered the chance to increase her hours of work, to go full-time, she took it. They needed the money, and Len didn’t mind looking after Becky. Despite his initial resistance, he had become very fond of their foster-child.

  Life wasn’t too bad. Becky could be demanding, but she was a sweetheart, really, and Renate was glad to have her. She didn’t hate her new job, Len wasn’t really sorry to be in early retirement, they had just enough money to get by, they had each other, they were happy.

  Then one day she took ill at work - the machines she had to work with sometimes made her queasy, but this was different, she was vomiting and feverish, probably she’d picked up some virus - and had to go home in the early afternoon. She was hoping that Becky would still be at school, she was in no mood to cope with the demands of a vivacious schoolgirl, but as soon as she entered the flat she could hear the girl’s voice, raised in a cry of delight. Obviously she was playing some game with her father, but what game came as a rude shock when she opened the bedroom door and saw them there together on the bed, both of them naked.

  If she had not seen it with her own eyes, she would never have believed her Len capable of such an abomination.

  When Renate started screaming, Becky ran out.

  ‘Your own daughter! How could you!’

  ‘She’s not my own daughter, she’s not even my adopted daughter. You just brought her home one day, and—’

  ‘But she’s a child!’

  ‘She’s not a child.’

  ‘She’s eight years old!’

  ‘Only to you,’ said Len. He’d started out looking guilty but now was grim and stubborn. ‘Face it, she’s a grown woman as everyone but you is well aware.’

  ‘That’s only her body! Inside her head she’s only eight years old - and you know that as well as I do. How could you abuse that child—’

  ‘It was not abuse! She wanted it! Christ, she’s been after me for weeks! I can’t believe you didn’t notice. All that kissing and cuddling and fondling, climbing on to my lap ... I got tired of running away. I got tired of fighting it. She’s a very attractive woman and she got me aroused and ... I’m sorry.’

  Later she wished she had accepted his apology, had been willing to be reasonable, but in the heat of the moment she was all outraged maternal energy. Becky was her child, and Len was nothing more than the man who had wronged her. His thoughtless lust had destroyed their marriage.

  Len did not recognize what she felt, any more than she understood what he had done. He went on trying to reason with her, pointing out that it was only once, stressing that he had been seduced, reminding her that once before, during a rocky patch in their marriage, they each had strayed, survived the experience, forgiven it—

  ‘That was different. We were all adults. This was a child you abused, a child in our care. My care. I won’t risk it happening again; I can’t. I won’t have her taken away from me, and I won’t have her destroyed by you.’

  ‘Destroyed by me? Are you kidding? Look, OK, it was wrong, I admit it, I’m sorry. We’ll explain to Becky that it was wrong, that she mustn’t try to seduce Daddy ever again, and that’ll be an end to it—’

  ‘I wish that could be an end to it. But what you’ve done to her - you’ve destroyed her childhood, don’t you realize that?’

  ‘What childhood? This is a grown woman we’re talking about - a woman considerably older than I am, chronologically. OK, so she’s having a second childhood, she got her memories erased and went back to a blank state - so they say. I’m not so sure. They think they’re immortal, they think they can do anything. And they play all kinds of perverse games. No, listen to me. You think you know Becky, but you’re fooling yourself. She’s not your daughter. She’s a sick old woman pretending to be an innocent child. Innocent! The things her body remembers ... I’m sorry. I’m sorry. But I didn’t destroy her childhood, I played right into her hands. Don’t you realize that at least half the reason those people go back for a second childhood in their own grown-up bodies is so they can have sex with their new Mummy or Daddy? That’s what it’s all about.’

  She refused to listen. Becky was her daughter now, her sweet little girl, and Len was only digging his grave deeper, trying to save his skin by pretending that it was all Becky’s fault. She wouldn’t have accepted such a line from anyone. It sickened her to hear it coming from Len, the man she’d thought she’d known, the man she’d thought she loved for so long. She threw him out.

  She missed him dreadfully, almost immediately. So did Becky. Naturally blaming each other for his loss, they were of no comfort to each other. She tried not to blame the child, but after what had happened, after such knowledge, Becky had become sexualized, her woman’s body all too obvious, no longer something that could be seen past or through to the child within.

  Becky had changed, not just in the eyes of her mother. Always a difficult child, she now became impossible. Instead of playing sick or begging to stay home, she would go off to school in the morning and simply never arrive. If Renate went with her or put her on the peoplemover in the care of another mother, her safe arrival could be counted on, but more often than not she would simply walk out of the school sometime during the morning. Where she went, how she spent her time, was something no one but Becky knew.

  Renate was in despair. She quit her job and took on part-time work to fit in around her daughter’s school hours, but still could not control her. They were back in the old poverty trap, she was tired all the time and there was no money for treats, baby-sitters, or the child psychologist that Becky’s teacher had recommended.

  Eventually she went to Len and asked him to come back. He spoke gently, he swore he loved her now and always, but he would not return unless she got rid of Becky. She could not consider it. Becky was now as much a part of her life as if she’d given birth to her. What mother ever gave up her natural child for the qualified love of a man?

  But Becky was not her child, not a natural child at all in the eyes of anyone but Renate. Even her friends thought she was crazy to let a good man go so she could continue to care for an uncaring creature. But Renate knew that no matter how old Becky was physically, she was still just a child inside, out of control, needing all the love, guidance and protection her parents could give.

  When Becky was arrested for soliciting, Renate blamed herself.

  At first she couldn’t believe it, she was sure there’d been some misunderstanding. So a member of the Vice Squad - human, unlike the peacekeepers she’d previously encountered - showed her the tapes they had made of her girl in action. It was sickening, the things she did and the way she did them, with strangers. The incident with Len had been bad enough, but that had been informed by affection and innocence. This, though—

  ‘Why? Why would she do such things?’

  ‘For the money,’ said the officer. ‘She needed the money. She’s Becky Valpariso - she used to be fabulously wealthy - God only knows what happened to wipe her out.’

  ‘You know her name,’ said Renate, stunned. ‘Her old name - who she really was—’

  ‘Sure, we had to ID her - she was perpetrating a crime. Contacted her husband, but it turns out he’d divorced her for desertion a couple of years
ago. All their property was jointly owned, and he had to sell off a lot of it to pay off her bad debts. She was a very rich woman. Now - doing the skinny lick street-side for donuts.’ He laughed, coarsely. Renate almost wished she’d been assigned to an ordinary Artificial peacekeeper.

  ‘So how - why - did you get in touch with me?’

  ‘Perp’s request.’ He played the rest of the tape. There was Becky in a holding cell, flanked by two peacekeepers and one human officer-in-charge. She was half-naked and red in the face with rage, screaming, ‘I’m not a grownup! I’m not! Liar, liar, house on fire! You’re making it all up! My name is Becky Jones, you call my mum and ask her who I am, she’ll tell you! Call her, go on, it’s Renate Jones, S-22-000-8974-8. Call her right now and tell her to come and get me out!’

  ‘Perps got rights, too,’ said the officer. ‘Besides, there was nobody else to pay the fine. So: you going to pay it, and spring her, or do we lock her up for three months?’

  Renate paid, of course - she had spent years of her life paying for Becky and wasn’t ready to stop. As usual, her kindness awoke no gratitude in the child, who began shouting at her as soon as she saw her.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me who I was? Why did you lie to me, let me think I was your daughter?’

  ‘I tried,’ said Renate, weakly, knowing she had never tried very hard. She had always intended to answer the child’s questions truthfully, as they arose, but the questions never came. Unlike a real child, she displayed no curiosity about where she had come from, and never seemed to find it odd that she was so much larger than the children she went to school with. She took her own size and shape so much for granted that she never asked about it, and assumed that the difference in other children meant there was something wrong with them. Renate had told her the story of finding her, but either Becky had not taken it in, or had assumed that was how parents always got their children.

  They went home, and life went on, a nightmare. Becky seemed determined to punish Renate, who continued, helplessly, to care for her. There were more brushes with the law, and more fines, but somehow it was never enough to require that Becky should be taken into care. The girl ran away once, and when she turned up a few weeks later, hungry and bruised-looking, Renate was both relieved to see her still alive and appalled that the whole cycle would now begin again.

  It went on like that, for what seemed an endless time, until Becky grew up.

  ~ * ~

  She grew up all in a minute. One moment she was in a heavy fog of helpless rage and confusion, the next she was herself again. She remembered. Some memory blocks were still in place, and she knew she would need professional help to dissolve them, but she remembered the important things, like the numbers and identity codes for her secret bank accounts, and details of various properties and titles she’d kept hidden from Steve, just in case.

  She was no longer a nobody, no longer a child, no longer helpless and, most importantly, no longer poor. She could do what she wanted.

  She got up, got dressed, and went out without a word to the woman who had been her foster-mother for the duration of her second childhood. She didn’t speak because she couldn’t bring herself to be polite. Knowing that poor old Renate had done the best she could didn’t make her like her any better. Her best, quite frankly, had never been good enough. She had deserved a better mother, and Renate was going to have to pay for her shortcomings.

  Not as much as Steve was going to have to pay, though. She had trusted Steve, who had claimed to love her, and he had betrayed her, taken her money, and dumped her out in the cold, cruel world to die. Steve was going to suffer as he’d made her suffer.

  And as for Len—

  Tears came to her eyes as she thought of Len, and she had to pause for a while until her vision cleared and she could cross the street. She had loved Len with all her childish heart and soul, truly loved him. It was the kind of love that, as a jaded adult, she had practically forgotten could exist, and that experience alone had made her second childhood worthwhile. If only Len had been worthy of her!

  She’d been only eight years old, she’d had no defences, no understanding of men. He’d been not only her father but the first man she’d loved, her first lover. She had given herself to him completely - and he had rejected her. It was something she would never forgive, could never forget, how she had run away from home and managed to find him, and the cold, contemptuous look in his eyes as he met her on the doorstep and refused to let her in. How could he treat her like that, as if her love had meant nothing?

  He’d soon know better. She decided there and then to take care of Len first. She began to feel happier just thinking about it. She didn’t mind that money couldn’t buy love; it wasn’t love she wanted now, and she had more than enough money to satisfy her hate.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Legitimate Targets

  Ian McDonald

  At thirteen minutes past ten, Johnny Considine, aged twenty-three years, realized that the future course of his life would be dictated by television news. It came in the last story before the break, immediately after an item on a possible United Nations embassy to the Shi’an motherworld sixty light years away.

  Police today in Belfast...

  ‘I don’t think anyone really believes they’re from another planet,’ said Orlaith, his girlfriend of three weeks, heaving another scuttle-load of mixed coal and empty cigarette packets on to the fire. Johnny craned past her, mesmerized by the images on the screen.

  ...shot dead. A man and a woman arrested ...

  The body, half-covered with a green wax jacket. So little blood, really. The feet, oddly splayed. Thirteen-hole Docs.

  ‘... their shit luck to have ended up on this of all worlds. You know, I’ll bet you they smell funny.’

  Policemen. SS. RUC. Black bastards, standing around cradling their big guns like babies.

  ... Castlereagh holding centre. They are believed to be ...

  ‘Hey, Orlaith, could you move your fat ass? I’m trying to watch this.’

  God-awful Photo-me mugshots. Make anyone look like a terrorist. Aoife Brennan. Charlie Fitzpatrick. No question of ‘belief’ about it, Mr Newsreader. It’s who they are.

  ‘They could solve all our problems, you know, if they’d shipped the lot of them over here,’ Orlaith said. ‘All eight million of them. Everyone’s a minority then, Taeg and Prod. Had the chance with the Hong Kong Chinese and they blew it; blew it again with the Sheenies

  ‘Shi’an. It’s pronounced Shi’an. Something to do with the dual aspects of their sexuality.’

  ...members of the IRA computer-terrorism squad responsible for the Brown Wednesday Stock Market mini-crash and the Northern Bank collapse ...

  ‘Listen to the Sheenie expert, would you? I’m putting the kettle on. Fancy a cup?’

  ‘What? Yes. Thanks. Black ...’

  ‘No sugar. I’m learning.’

  ... a fourth member of the gang escaped and is still at large, though police are confident of a quick arrest. In part two ...

  The swelling thunder of the jug-kettle. Some boffin once proved a kettle generates as many perceived decibels as a back-throttling Boeing.

  ‘All right if I use your phone?’ Johnny shouted to Orlaith.

  ‘You know where it is.’

  It was a yellow payphone, greedy of fifty pees and much scrawled with the numbers of taxi firms and pizza delivery companies. He picked up the receiver and it hit him, the nauseating panic that burned through the pit of his stomach. He reached for the bannister to keep from falling. His balls felt as tender and vulnerable as two skinned apricots. Ring ring. Be in, you bastard. Ring ring. Answer, you bastard. Ring ring. Ring ring. Ring—

  ‘Eugene. Listen. Just listen. They’ve lifted Aoife and Charlie. Joey’s dead. He’s dead, Eugene. They shot him.’

  ‘Jesus, Johnny. Oh Jesus

  ‘Listen. Mikey got away. I don’t know how, I don’t know where the fuck he’s gone. You know I never trusted th
e peelers; with Mikey out there, I trust them even less. So get what you have and go.’

  ‘Johnny. Fuck, Johnny ... ‘

  ‘Johnny?’ The voice called from the living room with its warm fire and posters of women tennis players scratching their bums and old furniture friendly and mangey as an alcoholic’s dog. Another world, Johnny. Another planet. ‘Coffee!’