Cronix (13 page)

"Listen, there's a car coming," she said, her voice even but strained.

She was staring into the darkness, back along the road he'd traveled on. He couldn't see or hear anything in the darkness and the snow.

"Now listen to me, Glenn. I'm going to move my pick-up, just in case this person for any reason decides to pull in here. If he stops, then I guess you're off the hook. But you listen to me -- if you say anything about what happened here tonight, anything, you are condemning my brother to death. You understand me? You'll be killing him as surely as if you put this gun to his head and pulled the trigger. And I can't let anyone do that to my kid brother. I risked too much already and I love him too much. You breathe a word to anyone about this and you're dead. And I can have you killed, just like that. Do I make myself clear?"

"Where's the car?" said Glenn, struggling to take in her words. She lifted the gun to his head.

"Did you understand anything I just said to you?"

"Yeah," he mumbled, head spinning, whether from the cold or the shocking anticipation of a bullet he couldn't tell.

"What did I say?"

"You said ... you'd kill me if I told anyone."

"Good. Now bear that in mind if you wake up in Holsten General tomorrow morning."

She slipped the gun back into her coat pocket hurried to her car. She didn't turn her lights on but he heard the engine kick into life. She slowly trundled across the loose snow, out of sight behind the gas station, somewhere across the frozen prairie. The night swallowed her in seconds.

Glenn felt huge hot tears building up under his eyes, and he was blubbering like a baby as a fresh set of headlights cut across the forecourt from the main road and bathed him in their cold light.

***

The professors busied themselves round the coffee pot, chatting as they poured milk and clattered spoons. Porter guffawed at one of his own jokes and Swaincroft loiteried to one side, by the door, avoiding the attention of his distinguished colleagues. Oriente skirted the group and snuck up behind the doctoral student.

“Could I have a word please?”

Swaincroft swiveled around, almost spilling his coffee.

“With me? Why, sure. Of course…” he said, noting the curious, semi-resentful stares from the older academics.

Oriente noted the attention too. “Maybe we could step outside for a minute?”

“Sure, sure. Whatever suits you, Mr Oriente,” the young man replied, already fumbling the door handle.

Outside, Oriente smiled awkwardly.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you, Quintus. Lola has been a very good friend to me these past few weeks. In fact, my only friend here, and she speaks very highly of you.”

Swaincroft shuffled uneasily, slurped his coffee to cover his fading smile. “Yes, she’s great, isn’t she? Absolute diamond. I was lucky to run into her.” He paused, then added. “And please, call me Quin. Nobody calls me Quintus, except my mother.”

“Okay, Quin it is.” Oriente took the young man in with a frank stare: late twenties, slightly built, little on the short side. By the standards of the indigenous population, he was a good-looking man, clean cut and with a direct, confident gaze. What he lacked in the stunning beauty of the Eternals, he made up for in the fresh, original play of his features. Clearly he was embarrassed at this unexpected foray into his private life by a man he knew almost nothing about, and who was supposed the object of 
his 
study.

Oriente coughed into his hand, nodded. “She seems very much in love with you. You’re a lucky man.”

A feeble smile. Swaincroft clearly wished they could return to the safe subject of history.

“Which is why I wanted to meet you, obviously. Any friend of Lola’s is a friend of mine,” he said and patted the younger man on the shoulder. “And of course, I guessed this whole piece of theatre could be …well, interesting to you.”

“Oh god yes, you wouldn’t believe how fascinating this is,” babbled Swaincroft, relieved to be in neutral territory. Behind them, the door to the lecture room swung open. Poincaffrey headed to the bathroom with a curious glance.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be getting involved in this,” Oriente said. “So tell me to back off if I get too…personal. But you know, Lola’s a beautiful, funny and actually very smart woman. But she’s worried you might not be…” he searched for the right word. “Really interested? Just thought I’d ask, as a friend, if there’s anything I can help out with. If there’s anything you…you know, wanted to talk about. In confidence, obviously.”

Swaincroft looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. “Well, it’s uh…it’s a complicated thing to explain,” he stuttered, running his fingers through his hair.

“She told me you were worried about having a kid with her. Worried that with her expensive genetic upgrades the kid might be…I don’t know, too perfect. You know, a beautiful genius, but…not quite natural. It’s not an uncommon fear, in the circumstances.”

Swaincroft nodded. “Well, yeah, that’s part of it, sure. You know how it is…there’s always a slight tension between us indigenes and, er, them. It’s not always easy. I once dated this air-sider, a few years back, just after I’d moved to London as a student. Anyway, she was utterly beautiful, of course, and I asked her out for a drink. She wasn’t too bright, but I was young and, you know, excitable, and I knew the air-siders have this reputation…” He grinned sheepishly. Oriente smiled and nodded at him to go on.

“Anyway, we had a few drinks. Turns out she hadn’t realized I wasn’t chipped, and had never been air-side. You know what she said?”

Oriente shrugged, guessing it was unlikely to be good.

“She just looked at me and said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that shades just give me the creeps.’ Then she walked out.”

“Bitch.” Oriente shook his head. “But you can’t judge Lola for that. They’re not all like that. Look at your colleagues here, they’re all Eternals.”

“No, no, that’s true, a lot of them are very warm, empathetic people.” Swaincroft worried a fingernail with his teeth.

“Then what’s the problem? I mean, it’s not really my place to be probing you, with us not having really met before…I know she probably comes on a bit strong about kids, but that’s just her way. That’s what she came back for, it’s her dream. I know some of these broody air-siders can come across like they’re just looking for a sperm donor, but Lola’s not gonna steal your genetics. She really loves you, I believe. And there’s no real pressure right now, surely…”

“She didn’t tell you, did she?” said Swaincroft. “About who she really is?”

“Oh that? That she was a taxi driver in the Philippines back in the day…”

“A 
male 
taxi driver,” stressed the younger man.

Oriente had not known that, but was not entirely surprised. “I know, I know, they have different attitudes towards gender issues from us. But you shouldn’t let that…”

Swaincroft held up his hand. “Okay, I admit I once slept with a girl I knew had…been a man in a previous incarnation, and it did freak me out just a little bit.”

“It just takes a little getting used to,” said Oriente. “The old Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde syndrome. Common enough though, and you do get there in the end. Hell, it can give the whole thing a certain frisson.”

“But that’s not it, either” said Swaincroft.

“Oh.” The older man folded his arms. Over Swaincroft’s shoulder, he saw Poincaffrey return. He pointed to his watch, smiled politely, and ducked into the conference room. Oriente nodded and turned back to Swaincroft. “So what is it?”

The young academic rubbed his face. “I’m not sure I should be the one to tell you this, but since you are her friend, maybe you should know. The thing is, the taxi driver…he wasn’t just a normal man.” He peered nervously at Oriente, who stared at him impassively. “He suffered from what’s known as a dissociative identity disorder.”

“You mean – he had a split personality?
”



“Exactly. He managed to live with it, and quite effectively hide it, while he was still here on Earth, but he had a pretty rough time. I mean, all the attendant symptoms, the depression, confusion, not to mention the amnesia. He was twenty three when the Exodus began. He signed up as fast as he could, hoping he could escape all his troubles. The problem was, there wasn’t much consideration given to these things back at that time, given the rushed way it played out in so much of the Third World, and he’d never been properly diagnosed.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, he went air side, and the DPP detected the presence of what they assessed to be a fully-fledged, secondary personality – a female -- embedded within the assigned avatar. They didn’t know whether to assign him one or two avatars, so they were held in a basic entry level until a decision could be taken. One DPP counselor advised that pending a decision, the secondary personality should be assigned its own skin. A lawyer was appointed, just in case the taxi driver was concerned that some fundamental part of his own identity was being infringed. Of course, once the problem had been explained to him, he was quite happy to shuck off this unwanted double who'd been making him worry he was mad, and gay to boot. And so Lola was born, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

Oriente stared out of the window into the courtyard. “Well, she’s still a real person, Quin. Real as you or I,” he said.

There was a silence from the younger man. To both their relief, Poincaffrey reappeared.

“Gentlemen, I hate to intrude, but time is running on…” The two men gratefully allowed the professor to usher them back into the room.

***

The light was soft when Glenn opened his eyes. His gaze drifted over the white ceiling. The sedative in his blood lent the wintry sun an unseasonable warmth. He turned his head: he was alone. Door closed. Next to the bed was a night table, on the wall a soothing watercolor of a whiteboard house in a field of summer wheat. An institutional room. The word seemed to carry some obscure importance to his half-waking mind. 
Institution
: he tried to focus his thoughts. 
Institution.
Hospital. Holsten General.

If you tell anyone about this I'll kill you.

Glenn sat upright in the bed.

Both his hands were swathed in bandages, his left with a splint poking out. He was in hospital. But she wasn't here. He was alive, and warm. He had survived. He'd won. She'd lost.

He could hear traffic, a distant car horn honking, a bird twittering. Everyday town sounds. He went to the window and fumbled open the shades. Mid-morning filtered in through the tinted glass. He peered down at the street, five floors below, and across flat rooftops bare but for a few patches of lingering snow. The sky was clear, the storm had dumped its snow and passed. People walked by, heads down, bodies swaddled in coats and scarves. Holsten City was going about its usual business on the first day of snow.

He was safe. But was she was out there somewhere, beyond the city limits, maybe even inside Holsten. Was she watching to see if he talked?

He stared out at the skyline of a small city he'd never even known existed. He luxuriated in the thought that he was safe, not being washed down by a morgue assistant in the building's basement.

A nurse came in.

"Hi there," she said, all professional chirpiness. "We're awake. How're we feeling today?"

"Okay," said Glenn, looking down at his bandaged hands. "What happened to my hands? Is it serious?"

"Nope, just a little frostbite. You were lucky that farmer came by last night. You coulda been out there all night," she said. "I'll tell the doctor you're up. He wants a little word with you. Meantime, you want some breakfast?"

The doctor came in about twenty minutes later, just as Glenn was chasing a greasy mushroom round the plate with his unwieldy flippers. He had suffered tissue damage to all his fingers, the doctors said, but was lucky: mild hypothermia, and he hadn't had to amputate any digits, as he could easily have done -- especially the two broken ones on his left hand. He would merely need to wear protective gloves for a few weeks until the skin healed. His hands would always be susceptible to the cold, though.

"No mountain climbing this winter," he cautioned. "Otherwise you could seriously lose some fingers."

Next came the burly officer from the sheriff's department to file the accident report. He ambled in with a polite "Mornin'," introduced himself as Larry something-Polish and pulled up a plastic chair.

Glenn recounted how he had become enmeshed with the absurd machine, the desperate time in the snow. He tried to not even think of the satanic female who had emerged from the darkness to bargain for his life. Had she even been real, or a hallucination induced by cold and fear? As he cut her out of his account, he felt his only chance of revenge slipping away. The cop scribbled away, oblivious. He had no reason to be suspicious. The farmer who had spotted Glenn's car from the road hadn't bothered to look for the tracks of a second vehicle. He had been too busy bundling the frozen young man into his own pick-up and rushing him to emergency.

The cop paused as Glenn wound up his story. The last thing he remembered clearly was the vehicle arriving, he said, and being half-carried, half-dragged through the snow. He couldn't even recall what his savior looked like. The policeman stared at his notebook, flicked back a couple of pages, and drawled "Uh-huuh." The bandages on Glenn's hands mercifully stopped him from fidgeting.