A Box of Birds

by Charles Fernyhough

  ‘OK.’ I take the coal tongs Level Ten is offering me. ‘What you didn’t mention is that they’re doing roadworks on the bridge. The traffic lights are turning red, and the cars are stopping. That’s all it takes for someone to finally notice the distressed woman.’

  ‘Fuck me,’ Grandstand says. ‘She’s a natural.’

  ‘You can’t have traffic lights,’ Bridge complains, as Level Ten waves her quiet. ‘That’s a transgression...’

  ‘A man gets out of one of the stopped cars.’ It’s James, picking up on my opening. ‘He glances back at the red traffic light, and then cautiously approaches the railing. They both seem oblivious to the traffic piling up around them. She’s a thin woman, nothing on her, and for a moment it seems like she could just slip through the railings like a set of car keys...’

  Grandstand raises his thumb in approval. Bridge starts up a solitary applause.

  ‘David Overstrand, for it is he, has to lead her to the railing and guide her hands and feet up onto it. If you want to jump, you can jump, he says.’

  ‘The traffic lights turn green.’

  ‘The woman jumps.’

  ‘The lights stay red.’

  ‘The woman is saved.’

  We break for food. Kitchen sounds have been hinting at it for an hour or more, and now Grandstand and Bridge are trudging in and out of the back room with trays of Turkish pide and black bottles of beer. Level Ten is browsing on a tablet, looking through recordings of the first game. James is leafing back through his exercise book.

  ‘You started in a named location,’ Grandstand says. ‘That’s a violation of the assumptions of quantum entanglement.’

  James catches my expression. I need to talk to him about Gareth. But first I have to get him alone.

  ‘Quantum entanglement,’ he explains. ‘The ability of events in one universe to influence those going on millions of light-years away. It’s a genuine scientific phenomenon.’

  He climbs through the hole in the wall behind me and starts rooting around in the other room. He comes back with a pile of hardback notebooks. Grandstand and Level Ten get busy flicking through them, checking labels and turning pages.

  ‘And you shouldn’t have tried to take that short-cut along Summerhill,’ Bridge observes.

  ‘Why not?’ I say, eating like a god.

  ‘Because it’s a transgression. It’s an A-lapse.’

  ‘You mean your game has rules?’

  ‘Of course it has rules. You can’t have a game without rules.’

  ‘But what’s the point of it? Is it some sort of art project? Are you like art students or something?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Level Ten says, ‘what’s this one’s name again?’

  ‘Yvonne.’ It’s Bridge who answers. ‘She used to be Jim’s tutor. The scientist.’

  ‘I get it. You’re the ones who left all your data in the back of a taxi?’

  ‘They didn’t leave it in the back of a taxi. It got hacked. Jim says he knows the guy who did it.’

  A spliff goes round, and I wave it through. James watches me with an incipient smile. It seems he’s already jumped to his own conclusions about Gareth and the mapping data.

  ‘I thought you were all Conscience supporters,’ I say. ‘I assumed you’d be more, I don’t know, rooted in reality.’

  ‘Reality?’ Level Ten says. ‘The objective truth about the world that only science can deliver? Nice one, Yvonne: you just told a really good story.’

  ‘Reality is not a story. Science is not a story.’

  ‘It’s your story. It’s no better than anyone else’s.’

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ Bridge says. ‘The supposedly scientific arguments they use to justify the torture of animals. The myth that animals are not conscious in the way that humans are conscious. They’re stories, Yvonne, stories the vivisectionists tell themselves when they can’t get to sleep at night.’

  It’s not an accusation. It’s laced with vitriol, but that’s meant for all the other vivisectionists in the world.

  ‘Think of it as part of the protest.’ This is James now. ‘We’re sick of science being elevated above all other ways of knowing. We want to give people their truth back.’

  ‘I just don’t see how it fits with what you’re doing. If reality is just a story, why do you need to blockade biotech companies? Why do you have to dress up and spend all your weekends hassling security guards? Why don’t you just tell a story about the way you want the world to be?’

  ‘We take action,’ Bridge answers, ‘because they take action. They keep macaques in cages so small they end up ripping out clumps of their own fur. We’re just trying to reflect that horror back at people. I don’t see how you can have a problem with that. When you look at what your “truth” has given us. Your science and its ... atrocities.’

  I feel faint. The sugar rush has worn off, and so has the comfortable feeling that I’m among friends. It’s getting dark out there. I have the vague, dragging sense that I’m needed somewhere.

  ‘Well, my reality is more real than this.’ I flick a gesture at the piles of exercise books in front of me. ‘It’s more real than what you’re doing here. Creating myths about your favourite therapist? Telling stories around the fire?’

  ‘Stories are truth,’ Level Ten says. ‘Stories are the truest truth.’

  I feel their eyes on me, and hold the smile. They’ve been here before. A new face turns up in the gaming room and you spend a little time finding out about her, testing her, seeing what she’ll believe and what she won’t believe. I wonder how deeply you have to test me before you find out that I’m a vivisectionist; that, from their point of view, I have blood on my hands. I’m the worst you can get, and they invited me here. What happens when they find out? Am I still going to get my love story?

  It’s time to get back to Effi.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sleepwalking

  ◉

  His accent is bothering me. Most of the time he’s just another well-spoken beta, with that flat way of talking which is a sure sign that there’s something he’s trying to hide: a privileged background, a dad with a title, one of those bonuses of birth that do so much to smooth the transition into Lycee life. But then he’ll get excited and harden a vowel, and I’ll remember that he was born in a mining village in Cumbria— and then, seeing that I’ve noticed, he’ll do a snatch of the pub-talk for my benefit, and for some reason I’ll find that funny. ‘Actually,’ he’ll say, enjoying the slideshow of his blurring identities, ‘I grew up in Africa’— and then you’ll get him shouting abuse at some imaginary farm worker, just like Daddy used to do. After that he travelled: on a banana plantation in Queensland he picked up his fondness for the terminal rise, so that every sentence comes out like a question about your understanding of it, an affectation that usually makes me want to kill people. But he’s too gauche and playground-fresh, too certain that he’s already conquered the world, to pick a fight with. I love the way he’ll avoid making eye contact with you while you’re talking, and then, just as you have given up and are looking elsewhere, you’ll catch him staring straight at you, willing you to return his gaze, let the battle begin again.

  ‘You really believe this David Overstrand guy, don’t you? Everything comes back to him.’

  ‘David showed us the truth. He showed us what was really going on. We were all in trouble, in our different ways, and he got us through.’

  We’re in his room at the squat. James is sitting with his back to the window, lit by the deteriorating light from outside. There’s a silvery sheen to his hair, as if it were close to going grey. Watching him, I sometimes get a feeling that he’s been caught out of time, snagged on the past. He looks at you with a certainty that seems inherited, not learned. You could cut yourself on those blue eyes.

  ‘In trouble? In what way?’

  ‘David showed me that I was carrying this weight, and it was killing me. He said there was a way I could be free of it. He told me that I’ve go
t to understand Bankstown Underpass if I’m going to understand now.’

  ‘Bankstown Underpass? What happened at Bankstown Underpass?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘That sounds a bit dramatic.’

  He hasn’t forgotten how to smile. We spent the afternoon at an achingly fashionable arts pub on Westwood Road. Grandstand stood at the door and handed out photographs of naked people in cages. The others were playing their storytelling game. James spent most of the time quizzing me about the security breach at the Institute. Neither of us needed any convincing that it was Gareth who took the data, even if we couldn’t guess at his reasons for doing so. Now it’s getting dark, and we can hear the occasional bit of pre-pub shouting, a fore-wind of Friday night turbulence on the streets of Pelton.

  ‘So when’s David coming? When do I get to meet him?’

  ‘He’s not coming.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened to him?’

  He’s silent. I try to catch his gaze, but he’s unavailable, shut away in a place I’m not invited to. I suddenly feel quite drunk, and the fact that it’s twilight outside only makes it worse. I feel a crashing regret for all the hours I’ve spent in dingy bedsit rooms, waiting for the door to open and a new life to walk in. And then, when the thing turns up, it’s never quite the thing I was hoping for. All the times I thought I was equipped for the big surprise, when actually I was nowhere near.

  ‘You talk about him like he’s something from your past. Where is he now?’

  He gives a sad, defeated smile.

  ‘David was a prophet. He was a freedom fighter. In this world we’ve made, these people are vulnerable. They can’t survive.’

  ‘Are you saying he’s dead?’

  ‘He’s not dead. I don’t think. No one really knows. We just wait here, trying to fulfil our tasks, and hoping. He had to leave. He had to vanish. We don’t know where he is.’

  I think of the playlist on the soundpod.

  ‘He’s on his travels...That’s the idea? And one day he’ll return?’

  ‘David wanted us to carry on with the work he started. Keep up the pressure on the biotechs and everyone else who tries to impose their order on a beautiful world. Anyone who wants to claim a truth they don’t have.’

  ‘And you’re going to do that by telling stories?’

  ‘People have always fought for their freedom, Yvonne. Some use guns and hand grenades. We use truth.’

  He’s rolling again. If I smoke any more I’m going to be in trouble. I’m being stared at accusingly by an underwear mannequin in dark glasses and a white furry bra. She has her hand held out, like she’s just sung a song and now wants paying. James’ house-keys hang from one of her fingers. I didn’t know squats had house-keys. I thought people just came and went as they pleased.

  ‘How long has David been gone?’

  ‘Years. There’s a lot of people like us out there, spread across the planet. He moves among them. They protect him from the people who want to destroy him. He’s far away. Last I heard he was helping to stop a dam being built in India. But that could just have been a rumour.’

  ‘Why do people want to destroy him?’

  ‘Because of what he’s done. He tells things as he sees them. That’s made him a lot of enemies.’

  ‘So what’s he going to say when he comes back and finds a vivisectionist in his house?’

  ‘He’s not coming back, Yvonne. Not any time soon. We’ll get word. We’ll have time to get ready. I don’t know how, but we will.’

  ‘So it wasn’t him on that recording?’

  James takes a moment to make the connection. ‘That was Level Ten.’

  ‘And all the storytelling? The game by the fireside. Was that David’s thing?’

  ‘We talked about this already, Yvonne. You want to deny the truest truth about yourself. You can’t see how you’ve been shaped by the things that have happened to you. You want to deny your own story.’

  ‘That’s therapy bullshit, James.’

  ‘Sure, you think it’s all neurotransmitters and chemical imbalances. But what about your soul? Why do you do anything if you don’t have that truth at the heart of you? Where does your sense of morality come from, if you’re just a bundle of nerves? Why did you want to come here today, if you didn’t have a self to do your wanting with?’

  What about love? he once asked me. What about ecstasy? He knows about Mateus now, anyway. He’d bought me two pints of some medal-winning beer, and I was well past my irretrievable blab point. But today is not about the tragedy of me and Mateus. It’s about James and his humanity, his common touch, his endless capacity for listening. It’s about the voice that he’s deliberately pitching lower, his clear forced eye contact, even the slight trace of affected lisp he’s putting on, that extra sibilant polish that he puts on each word.

  ‘So do they hate me?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The others. Grandstand. Bridge. Level Ten.’

  ‘Why should they hate you?’

  ‘Because I’m a vivisectionist. I torture animals. I fuck up their brains and then appear surprised when they don’t behave normally. I’m one of the people that David Overstrand is trying to punish.’

  ‘They don’t know that. They want you to join us. They haven’t a clue what you do.’

  ‘Are they going to know?’ I ask.

  ‘Depends if you put your lab coat on.’

  ‘Be serious, James. This is serious. Our biggest rivals have got their hands on our most precious data. It’s probably my fault. I can’t tell you how much shit that has put me in.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Sansom won’t get the data. Gaz will want to hide it, and he’s had time to do a good job of it. He’ll have hacked into the website of some lads-and-dads soccer team in Malaysia and stashed it away there. No one, not even Sansom, is going to find this stuff unless Gaz tells them where it is.’

  ‘He said they’d already been in touch with him.’

  ‘He doesn’t want their money. If Sansom were able to get to him before, they won’t be able to get to him now. I told you. He’s a magician. He can make himself disappear.’

  He sways, or the room does. Next to the mannequin is a black data projector. It’s pointing at the blank wall above his bed, as though set in place for some kind of slideshow.

  ‘Do you know what he’s trying to do, James?’

  He shakes his head. ‘He won’t tell anyone. If he had told me, I wouldn’t have understood it. He’s obsessed with you. You’re the only person he would have given any clue to. That’s why it’s so important that you tell me everything he said. Everything you remember. No matter how trivial.’

  He finishes the spliff and sets it going. He’s sitting in the seat he’s made for himself in the window, with one bare foot up on the sill and the other resting on the desk below him. The light from his bedside lamp is gilding the arches of his insteps. I’m lying on his bed, his pillow fragrant against my cheek. Something is being asked of me, and I can’t deliver. The feeling is a hollow disappointment, like having to turn down a plea for help you could easily have afforded. If only Gareth could have made it clearer. Or if only I’d listened to him better.

  ‘He’s got some idea about stimulating the Lorenzo Circuit. For that, he needs a way of talking directly to the nervous system. Sansom have been working on a new kind of electrode. The kind of thing you could harness to stimulate memory. I don’t know what he’s trying to do. All I know is that he shares quite a few interests with Sansom.’

  ‘And that’s it? You really can’t remember anything more?’

  ‘I wish I could, James. Then we might have a chance of working out what he’s up to...’

  The door opens. Maybe it’s the fact that Bridge doesn’t bother knocking that irritates me. Or maybe it’s the way she’s started claiming James for herself before she’s even through the door.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, noticing me. ‘I didn’t realise you were here.’

  It’s a squat, I tell mysel
f. People come and go.

  ‘I need a hand to shift the photocopier,’ she says, waiting for the dimness to reveal my exact position on James’ bed. ‘But I can see you’re busy...’

  The door clicks shut again. Just being splashed by Bridge’s mermaid smile has sobered me up a little. There’s an intimacy here, a taking for granted, that I don’t want to think about.

  ‘Is she B.?’ I say, staring after her.

  ‘Who’s B.?’

  ‘On your door. In college.’

  He makes a show of trying to think. Like there are so many girls leaving notes on his door.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably.’

  ‘Bridge is short for Bridget, yeah?’

  I see him grappling with something, the aftermath of a confession he was never brave enough to make. Then, whatever it is, he stamps on it, and he’s acting again.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d packed in your degree?’

  He turns his eyes away and down, to the black street below the window.

  ‘College was getting me down. It was full of really safe people who just wanted the dream home and the dream holidays and the whole vacuous affluence deal. They thought having money would give them freedom to make choices. Yeah, choices between this kind of soulless shit and that kind of soulless shit. That medic guy you met, across the corridor from me. On the outside he seemed OK. Inside, he just wanted to get his consultant job and have the freedom to choose to spend his days on the golf course. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to use their education. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to think.’

  ‘So you just quit? Without telling anyone?’

  ‘It was complicated. Sponsorship and that. There’d have been questions.’

  ‘So why did you keep turning up to tutorials?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you.’

  Maybe I just wanted to hear him say it.