Echo Boy (25 page)

It had been a message. A clue. We had been talking about
Jane Eyre
, so maybe that was it. And there it was, right at the bottom of the pile.
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë. I flicked through the old yellow pages until I was at page 206. My hands were shaking, but I found it soon enough, and saw small writing in the margin.

I looked at the writing. It wasn’t neat and perfect, like Echo writing normally was. I started to read, my hands shaking more and more with every word I saw.

Your uncle is a murderer. He made sure that Alissa was changed. He forced Rosella to do it. She was my designer. She is not a bad woman. She was given no choice. Please, if you see this message, escape at the first opportunity and go to Rosella. She will look after you and tell you everything. She will help you. Her name is Rosella Márquez and she lives in a warehouse in

The message ended there.

That was it. That was when every illusion crumbled away, like a sandcastle under a wave. Uncle Alex had arranged for Dad and Mum to be killed.

Repeat:
Uncle Alex had arranged for Dad and Mum to be killed
. A kind of silent howl went through me at that moment. It was like – I don’t know – it was like a door had closed and I was suddenly very alone. I began to shake. From the inside. From the core. The shaking started so deep that at first my hands were still, but they soon caught up. I felt crushed. Trapped by the truth.

Maybe he’d wanted to kill me too. For a moment I wished that I hadn’t fought Alissa off. But the moment was quickly swallowed again by anger and fear.

I tried to think of every single thing Dad or Mum had ever said about Uncle Alex, but for all Dad’s talk of Castle being a bad company, he’d never really said anything that even came close to suggesting that his brother could be a murderer.

I wished Dad hadn’t had any principles, because then he’d have still been alive. I thought of his hands – I don’t know why. His big hands with dark hair on the back of them. Hands that had held and squeezed mine when I’d been worried about him after the magcar accident.

Stupidly, I felt cross with Dad. Mum wouldn’t have been killed if he
hadn’t had principles. I mean, Mum had had principles too, but they weren’t the kind that would have got us killed.

But then I hated myself for being angry with Dad. It wasn’t his fault his brother was a monster.

Monster
. Yeah. That’s what he was.

But suddenly, now that I was awake, I knew I couldn’t wallow in grief any more. I had to focus. I had to feel fear. And I was feeling it.

But rather than making me worry for myself, it made me worry for Daniel. If someone can feel pain, they have to be worth caring about. It might have been wrong that Echos existed, but they
did
exist. And they hadn’t asked to exist any more than I had asked to exist. And anyway, he clearly wasn’t a normal Echo.

And he had saved my life.

That too-beautiful creature had saved my life. And he had been trying to save it ever since I got here.

Why was I so worried for him? Wouldn’t life be easier if there was no one to worry about but yourself? Wouldn’t that be best?

But then I read a paragraph on the page that had been hiding the message. I remembered the words he’d spoken that day in his room.

Do you think I am an automaton? – a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart!

I closed the book, sat on my bed. Just sat there, feeling the most intense and burning desire to see him again.

I only ever had one real boyfriend, if you are just counting those whose skin I actually touched. It was only for a short while and it didn’t really work out. I loved him as a friend, but as a boyfriend he was quite bossy. He was called Ben. We met the way everyone meets – virtually. In this case, in a simulation of Venice before it sank, and without any people in it. He’d known a lot about art and this had impressed me.

He lived in Canada, in Montreal, and some evenings I used to go over on the cross-Atlantic magrail, the one that went straight over the ocean-based hospital where I was born. He was good-looking, but when he was in argument mode he would look quite rodent-like, his nose screwing up and his mouth going small.

We used to argue about lots of things. At first I thought this made our relationship interesting, the way chilli makes a meal interesting, but I realize now that arguments are sometimes just boredom at a higher volume.

Religion was the main thing we rowed about. Ben and his parents were born-again Simulationists. They were members of the Church of the Simulation and went to pod-based services every evening.

But for me, the very idea of Simulationism was depressing.

It still is.

‘If we are all just people who are simulated inside a vast software program, what is the point of everything?’ I asked Ben once.

He had looked at me with disdain. It was that look – a symptom of his bossiness – that probably defined our relationship. ‘Just because you want life to have a point doesn’t mean it has to have one.’

‘And just because you believe that the whole universe was created by an alien’s computer doesn’t mean that it was.’

He got angry. I was challenging his beliefs. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Look at what humans can create. They can replicate anywhere in the world. And any point in history. If we wanted to – right now – we could walk into a pub in Elizabethan England and talk to Shakespeare.’

‘No we couldn’t. It would be a VR-simulation of a pub. And it wouldn’t be Shakespeare. It would be a computer program speaking Shakespearean quotations.’

‘The most advanced simulators now have self-thinking virtual beings – fake humans – inside them. And pretty soon we’ll be able to create beings that evolve by themselves . . . And what about Echos? Some of them already
can
think by themselves. OK, they may not feel emotions, or dream, but one day . . . one day . . .’

‘That is my dad’s absolute nightmare,’ I had told him. ‘I think it might be mine too.’ I meant it. I wasn’t quite the Echophobe my dad was – obviously, as it had been my casting vote that allowed an Echo into our home – but some of his views had got into my head. I suppose that’s what parents are: a collection of views, some of which you reject and some of which you inherit, like a book that you go on editing for ever.

I remembered lying on Ben’s sofa, stroking one of his pets. Ben
had loads of pets. Some of them were even real. The one who was asleep on my stomach was real. It was a cat called Belinsky, after the man who engineered the dome on the moon and made the first non-Earth settlement possible. He was a lovely cat. Tortoiseshell, with a purr that could power a city.

I remember Ben shouting to the kitchen – to Alfred, his Echo at that time. I can hear his voice. ‘Alfred, you lazy robot, give us some fava-bean dip!’ For someone who was pro-AI he sure spoke down to Echos.

But I never cared then, because Echos weren’t worth worrying about. And the next day, I remember I went with Ben and both his fathers – whose business had just collapsed and who were going to become property barons on the moon – to the spaceport. And that final kiss. The feel of his fingers on my face. And then watching that same hand wave goodbye.

It had felt bad. But it wasn’t the same kind of pain as I had felt watching that man come for Daniel, and then take him away.

Could a human love an Echo? Could an Echo love a human? The first question was always asked a lot on bad holovision shows. There were always stories of some sad man falling in love with an Echo they had bought simply on the basis of looks. They kissed and had sex and everything. Of course, the Echos were never actually feeling aroused, but for some humans that didn’t matter, so long as they performed the task as commanded.

I had always thought it was a bit sick. Maybe it still was a bit sick. But the sickness had always been because Echos were different. Not because of their bodies, which were basically like human bodies – but better – and could function in the same ways if required. They had blood – OK, so it was blood without many white blood cells, but it was blood. Blood that pumped around with the aid of a never-dying heart.

No. It had seemed sick because Echos were different. Emotion-free. Computerized. But what if they were becoming less different? I mean, yes, they were made in a different way. Uncle Alex was right about that. And their brains contained a chip in them to ensure they
behaved exactly as an Echo should. But then, there were humans who now had all sorts of computerized implants inside them.

In a way, everyone was a kind of cyborg these days.

It was a weird one. But no weirder than love itself. And as my anxieties grew about what had happened to Daniel, I started to realize that he was far more than an Echo to me. He was, right then, far more alive to me than anyone.

I had no info-lenses. They had been there beside my bed, as they always were, but when I woke up they were gone. I panicked. This meant that the ID I had recorded – Rosella Márquez’s ID – had been lost.

So I went to the pod. I knew her ID wouldn’t be online, or not in any way I could access, but there would surely be some information on her somewhere. The first thing I did, after the mind-reader descended, was to think of that name.
Rosella Márquez
.

Instantly, information appeared.

There were Rosella Márquezes everywhere. There were more than 3,000 of them in Mexico City. A few hundred in New New York. A lot in Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago, Madrid, Olabo, Barcelona 2, Medellin, and hundreds of other cities. There were a good few on the moon. There was even a Rosella Márquez among the 450 people in the Mars space colony.

So I thought of something else.

Rosella Márquez, Echo designer
. And to narrow it down further, I pictured in my mind a blue castle with three turrets.

Nothing came up.

‘Come on,’ I said, pleading with my brain to work. ‘Think, think, think . . .’

Rosella Márquez.

No. Something else.

Lina Sempura.

Contact.

The details came up. It was the age of instant communication, after all. I thought-mailed her.

I spoke to you at the media conference. I am Alex Castle’s niece. My uncle is a murderer. He killed my parents and he wants to kill me. If you give me the address of an Echo designer, I will be able to help you. Please, you’ll have to answer quickly, because if this message is intercepted I will be in trouble. I need the address for Echo designer Rosella Márquez. Can you give it to me? And please, for my own safety, only give me that info.

And within a minute – yeah, within a
minute
– the address was there.

It turned out that Rosella worked in a warehouse next to the CV-371 magrail, Valencia stop 48, at the southern edge of town and near the dried-up river, the Río Turia.

Hello Audrey. This is Lina Sempura. I hope you have the details you require. Anyway, I would like to meet you, so please could—

I deleted the thought-mail. Grateful as I was for the address, I couldn’t believe that Lina Sempura herself was mailing me. I was in trouble enough, but if Uncle Alex had intercepted that, well, there’d have been no hope.

I blocked Lina Sempura. It was the only thing I could do.

Then I tried to holo-call Rosella’s warehouse – or
almacén
– but of course it was futile. There was still no outward connection. And then I got worried. Maybe Uncle Alex or someone working for him – some of his hackers miles away in Cambridge – were already monitoring me.
Uncle Alex wasn’t in the house now. I had heard him leave for the office about an hour ago, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching me.

I sat for a moment with the mind-reader on. It was always dangerous to sit there thinking when it was on because whatever I thought about prompted related information to flash up before me.

So I saw Echos, I saw the barren deserts of southern Spain, I saw my dad, but when I thought of Daniel, nothing came up. Why would it have? He was just an Echo prototype no one really knew about who had now been rejected. He was a nothing in the eyes of the world.

I needed to see Rosella. I needed to see her for three reasons. One: because of Alissa. Two: because of Daniel. And three: because I had to escape and I would need to go somewhere.

I had thought of going to Grandma’s – properly going there, not just pod-visiting again. I mean, my Echophobia was nowhere near as strong as my uncle-phobia now. But it felt wrong to leave this planet without Daniel, after he had saved my life and suffered for it. Also, it was impossible. Any human travelling to the moon had full ID checks: if I escaped, the first thing Uncle Alex would do is make sure I couldn’t get a flight off the planet.

It was at that moment that I heard something outside the pod. Nothing loud, but it wouldn’t have been anyway. It caused me enough concern to send the thought-command
External view.

Terror.

Instantly I saw Madara in the room. The Echo with red hair. She was standing outside the pod, waiting for me to step out. She had a kitchen knife in her hand; the same knife Alissa had used to kill my parents.

Madara was standing perfectly still, the way only an Echo can.

It was Alissa all over again. For a moment I couldn’t think. Fear had washed away all thoughts.

It was a clever idea. Ordering her to use the same weapon. Uncle Alex knew that I would be doubly terrified if I was not simply fearing for my life but also remembering how my parents had been killed.
An echo of an echo.
There was an arrogance to it.
Let’s not use a positron, let’s use a knife.

So, it was all confirmed.

He had seen that I wasn’t going to serve his cause – after going off-script at the press conference – so now he was going to kill me, and get away with it too. He was probably going to set it up and say it was a protestor who did it. Maybe he wouldn’t even have to set it up, what with practically owning the police.