Lust

by Geoff Ryman

  Michael was caught off guard. ‘That would cost a fortune.’

  Nick lolled his head on Michael’s chest. ‘Not as much as you think. You see, normally you got to pay a living wage. I mean, your staff have to eat, right? Wrong.’ Nick groaned to himself with genuine pleasure. ‘We wouldn’t even have to feed them. Angels don’t need to eat. Did you know that?’

  Michael looked blank.

  ‘You haven’t been watching. I’ve been going without food. I don’t even feel hungry. I don’t even need to wash. Haven’t you noticed I stopped doing that? But I still smell of roses. I don’t need to buy clothes. I just call up one of my old suits. Naw. We just keep ’em, hundreds of them, as long as we want them. In basements until we get going.’

  Michael didn’t have to think. He just said, ‘It sounds like hell.’

  ‘Well, not once we get enough dosh to fix the places up.’

  Michael was certain of one thing. ‘I’m not going to do this.’

  Nick fell coldly back onto the bed. ‘Well. What are we going to do then?’ He looked back at Michael. Perhaps he saw something gather in Michael’s eyes. His own went soft and begging.

  ‘Please don’t kill me, Michael. All right, I’m inconvenient. I didn’t ask to be born. You brought me here in case I was a good fuck. And I was. I don’t like being fucked, Michael. But I let myself be fucked, because the alternative was not being here at all. And that is why I say, what are we going to do about this? Hmm? You have to be part of the solution, Michael. You got to take some responsibility.’

  Michael was cold all over, and sweaty. He ran a hand over his forehead. This was always coming, he realized. Sooner or later I would call something like this up.

  I either kill him or I let him live.

  I’ve never stood for anything in my life; I never marched in protest, I never turned down a job because it was immoral. I guess I thought I was a good person because I paid my bills and hadn’t actually killed anyone. And that so far is the meaning of my life. No harm done.

  ‘I don’t like…’ Nick bit his lip and looked pained. He shrugged his eyebrows as if to say, it’s best to use the honest word: ‘… blackmailing people. But this could get really nasty. I can be nasty sometimes, I just can’t help it, there’s too much gone on in the past. Look, I was on the game for a while, all right? I got kicked out of the house, and my house was a house of professional thieves. I was too much even for them. There’s nothing I haven’t done. I don’t trust myself staying here with you. I advise you to get rid of me. Strongly. So, that’s why I’m asking now … what alternatives do we have?’

  That was exactly what Michael was thinking. I could give you money, but that would mean I would always be giving you money. I could get rid of you, and tell myself you were never real. But unfortunately, you are right. You are a thinking, feeling being and I do not have the right to destroy you. And I could let you do what you want to do, which … which I think is some kind of betrayal of what all of this is about.

  Nick pressed his advantage. ‘You could give me money to make a film. That might do it. Do you have a spare fifty k? Or, I suppose, I could go and talk to my opposite number. By which I mean, Nick. I suppose I call him Nick.’

  The Guard gave a little wave with his fingertips and mimed a cute embarrassed hello. ‘Do you think he’d be pleased to see me, Michael? It might take some explaining. But it would also prove that I wasn’t lying about the man in Camden Town who can call up Angels. And at the end of it I think he might be just as interested as me in the commercial possibilities. Only, the real Nick Dodder wouldn’t be in your thrall, would he? And that Nick isn’t one bit nicer than this one.’

  Michael thought: I’m being threatened. He still held Nick in his arms.

  ‘Or we maybe could go ahead with my takeaway idea. You provide the cheap, raw materials and I do the rest. If you were smart, Michael, that’s what you’d do. Because if you did that you would be rich.’

  It was as if the crumpled bed were a plain. They were looking down on it in the dark, in a Camden bedroom, and they could see an entire world. It was a world in which mankind finally had what it wanted: an inexhaustible supply of whores who were, at last, actually subhuman. Torture, bondage, snuff, all of it. And no harm done.

  Nick chuckled. ‘We could mix and match. You know, build the perfect man. A bit of Brad there, a bit of a buck porn star where it counts. Pretty little boys with holes just above their cocks, so you could fuck them frontwise. People could pay to sleep with Elvis Presley or President Kennedy. Or Marilyn just after she snuffed it. We could offer hot or cold running Marilyn.’

  Trying it on, it’s called. You step just a little over the line, to see what you can get away with.

  ‘It’d be a public service. We could get the serial killers in. Lovely little things they could do to our Angels, and in the end, no harm done. It would save real lives, that would, Michael. The Dennis Nilsens of this world could cut young men in half and leave the drains unblocked.’ Nick chuckled.

  You try it on and if nothing stops you, you go on until you destroy the world. Or rather sell it until nothing worth having exists.

  ‘No? Naw?’ Nick’s cuddle became a little shake. ‘Naw. You got everything you want don’t you, Michael? You’ve got no ambition, you know that? No ambition except … you just want to be left alone. Hmmm? OK, then here’s something else we could do that would leave you alone.’

  The King James Version of the Bible calls them the little foxes. It’s a mistranslation. It really should read the little fruitbats. The little fruitbats land so lightly, and nibble at the edges, leaving toothmark scrapes on the skin of the pears. You can’t believe anything so small could become such a threat so quickly.

  Love starts small too, a pleasant smile over drinks that grows into a lifetime of care. This was the opposite of love and it starts out with a quick fuck.

  Nick kissed Michael on the cheeks.

  ‘You’d never see me again, I promise.’ He smiled. ‘All you have to do is … give me the power to make Angels.’

  Michael was quick. ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Hmm? You can give me different clothes. Have you tried to give someone else the power? You haven’t, have you? So you don’t know.’

  Michael understood something and went cold. ‘You’ve already tried to call them up by yourself.’

  Nick chuckled. ‘Of course I have. You don’t think I’d just sit around all day by myself, surely? Go on, give it a go. See if you can.’

  ‘I’m sure that I can’t.’

  ‘You mean you’re sure you won’t. You don’t think you’re being just the slightest bit territorial here, Michael? It’s like: “I have the power, nobody else is going to get it.”’

  ‘It’s not mine to give.’

  ‘Bullshit. Whose is it then? God’s? I wasn’t aware that you scientists had proof that God exists. You don’t know what this is for, Michael, or where it comes from.’ He imitated Michael, sounding nerdish and American. ‘It’s not mine to give.’

  ‘Well. It’s plainly not yours to take. Is it?’ At last Michael had said something undeniable.

  Nick sighed. ‘No. It’s not. Look, we’re both tired, let’s just sleep on it. Maybe we can find a way for you to help me make my film. That’s all I want, Michael. Just find a way to make a bit of dosh. All right? Good night.’

  After all, making dosh was what was really valued. Making dosh was good. Nick kissed him on the cheek, turned around, and was soon asleep.

  He left Michael turning and twisting, staring into the darkness. I’m a prisoner, he realized. He’s got me. This little horrible turd has got me stitched up. He thinks.

  Michael sat up, and looked at Nick in the dark. He listened to Nick breathe.

  He is alive, Michael thought, but it’s a different kind of life. It’s a life I can control, and because it comes from me, perhaps I can see what is always there more clearly. Like the extraordinary circumstance of breathing, just of breathing by itsel
f.

  Oxygen invades the blood, carried by blood cells which feed the mitochondria the element they need to spark fuel into energy, to maintain the slow-burning fire that is life.

  The brain doesn’t even need to think about it. It is delegated. The brain puts together sound and images. It harvests the world, and gives it shape, sounds, smells.

  And then it can think about it all, creating ever-growing forests of abstraction. Invisible codes: names, equations, rules for handling the world. And desire. Desire, perhaps the biggest miracle of all. Desire the imperative, without source or logic or cause. Desire, simply there in the bones, the brains. Desire that sets the priorities for the self and all its processes. I need this; what do I do to get it? Now I need that, and move to get that too.

  Nick looked so harmless, asleep. His face in the light from the window looked young and without blemish. His breath smelt of innocence.

  Is this what a parent feels? To see in someone else so clearly just how extraordinary the puzzle is? Breath, blood, food, sweat, bones, teeth, eyes – how they all fit together, a million miracles, more miracles than you can count. All boiled down to one particular miracle, the one that you fed at your breast, the one whose face looks like its father’s, the one you named.

  Parents love like God. They say my son is a murderer, but I don’t stop loving him. My daughter is on drugs and calls me bitch and whore, but I don’t leave her. Desire makes life and life makes responsibility, which sounds so dull and wearying. But it’s the goal of lust; it is what lust strives to produce: responsibility.

  OK, my little vicious Angel. All you can see is greed, and you are far too old for me to change that; and you’re driven by all the men who fucked you when you didn’t want it, because … because you didn’t know you were a miracle.

  I could get inside your head and try to cure it forcefully. Who would I turn you into, Nick? I could make you into oh, someone who wants to do good in the world. You could go and work for an Aids charity. And all I would have to do is completely reconstruct your personality. And do I know how to do that? Can I give you a happy childhood in say, Slough, with weekends in the country? And if I could, would that be enough to make you kind and good? I would need to invent parents who believed there was more than money and conflict and status. So whose parents would I give you? I’d need to give you their loving genes as well, since I don’t know enough about the mix of inheritance and upbringing. And that would mean you would have a different face.

  In other words, I could replace you with an entirely different person. And how would that be one jot different from killing you?

  I don’t know enough, my Angel, to stir that little head of yours around as if it were soup.

  I have to remember, however clever you are, that you are a poor, powerless creature. You want to make hell, but you can’t do it without me. So you won’t do it. You will, however, do whatever else it is in your nature to do.

  Michael knew then what he was to do. He felt calm. He even liked himself. He gave the sleeping Nick a kiss on the cheek, and covered Nick’s bare cold arm with his own.

  In the morning, Michael was up first. It was he who cooked breakfast. Nick stumbled out, scowling with sleepiness, surprise and turned tables.

  ‘My turn to cook, this time,’ said Michael.

  ‘What are you so bloody cheerful about?’ Nick slumped into the chair.

  ‘Life,’ said Michael. He presented a plate of bacon and eggs to him. ‘And, I’ve decided what I’m going to do about you.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ sniffed Nick, smelling of sleep and trying to sound unconcerned. ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’ Michael smiled.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Yeah. There’s nobody responsible for you mate, but you. So go ahead. You want to stay in this world? Be my guest. Like everything else, human or Angel, you’ll have to decide what to do next. How you’re going to live, where, how. Go ahead. Decide. That’s life.’

  Nick’s jaws worked. ‘You’ll never get rid of me that way.’

  ‘Who says I need to?’

  Nick coughed. ‘Suppose I smash the place up.’

  Michael chuckled. ‘Does it look like I care about this place?’

  Nick was waking up. ‘Suppose I go to the real Nick Dodder?’

  ‘Go ahead. I don’t suppose the real Nick Dodder gives a flying fuck about anybody, does he? What’s he going to do, give you half his income? Say move in with my wife? Listen mate, Nick Dodder is a shit. He gets a certain perverse satisfaction pandering porn. He wants to hurt as many people, human or Angel, as he can. He’s a real nasty piece of work, who cheats on his wife, and who, if the world let him, would poison it. But you. You are no longer Nick Dodder. You have an opportunity, mate. You can become different. You could become a nice person if you put your mind to it. But in the end, it’s all up to you. Even if I were your Dad, or Lord God Almighty, it would still be up to you and not me.’

  So Michael put on his suit, and pulled on his shoes, and Nick ate slowly, sullenly, ignoring him. So Michael said again: ‘Up to you, Nick. Oh. And don’t presume. I am no saint, Nick. Do anything to hurt me, and how do you know I won’t lose patience and send you back?’

  Nick blinked at him.

  ‘You don’t,’ said Michael.

  Michael went to work and sat down in his office to look at reports.

  He heard a peeping sound.

  He nipped out of his office to the warm and darkened, red-lit chamber. It was full of chicks. He had a single moment of profound confusion. Michael stood in the circle of his own self, which is timeless. For a moment he thought that these were the last batch of chicks without quite understanding why he felt so shocked. Then he remembered: we killed them.

  Michael gathered himself in, and feeling delicate walked into Ebru’s office rocking like a table with uneven legs. ‘Ebru. Why did we order more chicks?’

  She looked up. ‘I … ah. Sorry, Michael. I don’t understand you.’

  ‘When did we order more chicks?’

  She looked at Emilio.

  Michael could feel sweat on his upper lip. ‘If we need them for more data, you should have asked me. We need to control expenditure.’

  Ebru went very still. Her eyes widened and she looked worried, and she said extremely carefully, ‘Michael. What are you talking about?’

  ‘The darkroom is full of chicks, how did they get there?’

  ‘Michael. I cleaned the darkroom out yesterday. There is nothing there now.’

  ‘It’s full of chicks. Come and see.’

  Ebru rolled her eyes, but they stayed wide. She looked like someone whose boss has finally gone mad, and is beginning to wonder if she herself has not helped drive him over the edge.

  The eyes got wider as she heard the sound, the sound of need driving new life: chicks peeping.

  Ebru followed Michael through the double sets of doors, which stopped all light entering. The room was thick with the smells of straw and faeces. Ebru took her head into her hands, and saw in the red light. In their warmed cages were 24 chicks.

  ‘This, this was empty, Michael. I did not do this. Maybe … No. No, I don’t think anyone would do this without consulting.’

  And Michael understood: I did this. I’ve restored them. He picked up one of the chicks and felt it shivering. I need, the shivering pleaded. I need food and warmth. I need to be held. I need my mother. I need to live.

  I restored them because I love them. And that means the miracle is not for lust. It’s for love as well.

  Lust, love, driving life.

  You were dead, Michael thought at the chick. We killed you. And so, I brought you back. He lifted the chick to his lips and kissed it. ‘Angel,’ he pronounced it. He looked at it in the red light. Murder undone. Restitution.

  He came up with an explanation that would appear logical. ‘We … probably ordered these some time ago, and they just arrived.’

  ‘But who hatched them? Who put them in th
e cages? Who brought the cages back, Michael?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘Hmmm. Who knows? Somebody who was doing their job. But Ebru, I don’t want these chicks killed, all right?’

  ‘Absolutely not, Michael, certainly, certainly. No.’ Ebru was fierce; something had gone wrong and she was mortified.

  ‘Nobody is to blame, OK Ebru?’

  ‘What will we do with them?’

  ‘Feed them. We still have some feed left over, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes. I was going to throw it all out.’ Ebru made a desperate gesture, with her hands in her hair.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ebru. It’s fine. It’s all fine.’ Michael still cradled the little chick to his bosom.

  Ebru stood still. Her cheeks were outlined in the red light, but he could not see her facial expression. After a moment she said, ‘You love them, don’t you Michael?’

  He sighed. ‘Yes. Yes I do.’

  She chuckled, nervously. ‘That is not a scientific attitude.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It just depends on the kind of science you’re talking about.’ He thought of life, of how it extended to wherever Angels came from. And if you could make Angels out of chicks, what did that mean for humans?

  She stepped forward and lightly touched his arm. ‘When the project is over, we will talk, OK?’

  He nodded.

  ‘There is a mystery here, Michael.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There certainly is.’ Ebru left, and alone in the dark, he began to think.

  Dominion over the animals. Over the fish, over the fowl, over the cattle. We never knew what that meant.