Stone Gods (6 page)

I have my own radio show, Martin —
Prime Time Parking (cheering)
— where listeners can phone in with news of spaces and places, spots and slots. Without a doubt, parking is the number-one issue facing the world today — not for politicians, I admit, but for ordinary people like you and me. The first thing on our minds when we wake up is, Where am I going to park without getting a ticket? (
Audience stomps and drums
.)

Vote Tim if you want your own parking space on Planet Blue. Next guest.

My name is Nomad, and I represent all the people who don't know why we're here. (
Audience silence
.)

So, Nomad, if you don't know why you're here, why have you come? (
Audience laughter
.)

I'm frightened that the world is ending. I don't want to die.

Thanks, Nomad, thanks for your views.
(Nomad is escorted off stage.)
I think we had a little hiccup there — but let's move on. Celine ...

Hi! HiHiHi! MynameisCeline. IrunaSpeedDatingService.

Ispeakfast. It'sahabitofthejob. TheremightbepeopleonPlanetBlue (
cough
) needingtomeetyou. (
Applause, laughter
.)

Celine, you said that we should get a dating service going as soon as we can — before we get any homes or roads or even retail—is that right?

'SrightMartin! Lovecomesfirst! (
Audience whoops
.)

Vote Celine if you think that love comes first . . .

Manfred switched the wall-screen blank. 'Brilliant promotion. That will push the whole relocation to a new level.'

'I thought we were starting with a Science Station?'

'We are — but who cares about that? We need real people to keep the interest going. Scientists aren't interesting.'

'Thanks.'

'It's not personal.'

'So when is this next mission, complete with Reality TV winner?'

'Soon. No thanks to the attempted sabotage — but I suppose you don't know about that either? The Resistance is back.'

'Perhaps it never went away.'

Manfred said nothing for a moment. Then he said, 'Perhaps knowledge is selective — what we know, what we don't know. What we say we don't know.'

'Billie .. .' It was Spike interrupting. 'Thank you for the interview.'

She was speaking to break the moment. I smiled at her; she nodded.

Manfred got up and motioned me towards the door. We walked in silence through the corridors. As we stood waiting for the elevator, he said, 'Billie, take a few days' holiday. I would if I were you.'

'Are you trying to tell me something?'

'This is a sensitive time. If anything goes wrong, I don't want it to go wrong from my department.'

'Are you saying that I am the Wrong that should go?'

'I'm saying take a few days' holiday.'

The elevator doors opened. GOING UP. Manfred stepped inside. The doors closed.

I waited. LIGHT. PING. GOING DOWN.

On the streets everyone was wearing their pollution filters. Everyone had the glassy-eyed, good-looking look that is normal nowdays. Even in an air-mask people are concerned to look good. The State gives out masks on demand, but the smart people have their own designer versions.

There was a woman in front of me, fumbling with her mask, coughing. I went to help her, and she grabbed my hand, 'Getting old,' she said, and I wondered if I had misheard because we don't use those words any more. We don't need to use them: they are irrelevant to our experience.

'Getting old,' she said again. Then she pulled off her mask. Her eyes were bright and glittering, but her face was lined, worn, weathered, battered, purple-veined and liver-spotted, with a slot for a mouth, garishly coated with red lipstick.

I recoiled. I had never seen a living person look like this. I had seen archive footage of how we used to age, and I had seen some of the results of medical experiments, but in front of me, now, was a thing with skin like a lizard's, like a stand-up handbag.

'I am what you will become,' she said. 'I know you haven't been Fixed.'

'You don't know anything!' I said, angry, frightened.

She laughed. 'Look at me. When I was your age, was I planning to wind up like this? No. I was political, like you. I thought we should take a stand, like you. And for the last twenty years I have only been able to go out on pollution days so that no one can see my face. If you saw my body, you'd throw up.'

She pulled back the sleeve of her coat. Her arm was bones and stretched flesh — brown, thin skin pulled over bluish, visible tendons. I looked away. One of the smart buildings was flashing one of the usual feel-good advertisements sponsored by MORE-
Life
. Kids, their parents and grandparents, all identically handsome, wearing the same dirt-free nano-clothes, picnicking in the State Park —
Best Days of Your Life
—
For as Long as Your Life
.

The old woman was laughing. She had no teeth.

I forced myself to look at her calmly. 'Why are you talking to me like this?'

'They know about you.'

'Who knows about me?'

'They know you faked your records.'

'That's not true!'

'I'm telling you now. They know who you are.'

The woman pulled down her full-face mask and moved slowly away.

I stood quite still, like an animal that fears a predator. The red dust was blowing through the empty street.

As I stood, not knowing what to do, my phone started flashing Manfred's code. I didn't want to speak to him, but he can tell via satellite recognition exactly where I am. I have a personal co-ordinate, like everyone else, and anyone with the access code can access me, whether or not I would prefer to hide.

I take his call. His voice is rammed with anger. 'The Robo
sapiens
has escaped!'

'She's not a Great Ape. What do you mean, escaped?'

'You heard me. Did she give you any clues?'

'No, of course not. I thought you were dismantling her.'

'The techies went for a break, and when they came back she'd disappeared. She might contact you.'

'She won't contact me — why would she contact me?'

'Her data shows that she has formed a connection with you.'

'Well, I haven't formed a connection with her. Manfred, I do not know what has happened to Spike.'

'If she comes to you —'

'She won't come to me — she doesn't know where to find me. She couldn't access my data-chip while she was draining, she told me that herself.'

There is a pause. He knows this is true. He had a theory, now he's not sure. I take my chance. 'She'll go to the Border. She must be defecting.'

'Robots can't defect. They aren't made to think for themselves.'

'This one was.'

Another pause. 'The Border? You think so? Are you telling me something?'

'I'm not telling you anything, Manfred. I have nothing to tell.'

As the phone clicked off I felt calm again, with the calm of knowing that whatever happened next, in some strange way, I'd had to come to this place. A point of no return. This place ... real and imaginary. Actual and about to be.

I drove home along the sea road. The shining white towers of the city to the left of me were just beginning to soften, as they do every night, in response to the evening light.

On my right, the ocean front, strong and straight and beautiful, pulled the city towards it, as if this was our only dream, and we would never wake up but we would walk under the palm trees and up through the beautiful buildings, hand in hand, free and new.

In truth the city sprawls back and back, blank and bored, but here, where it is how it was meant to be, it feels possible and true.

And it feels like it will go on for ever.

I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything.

The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but, but, we're here, we're alive, we're the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note — it is a record of our survival.

Look, the sun is setting on the level bar of the ocean, and whatever I say, whatever I feel, this is home, and I am going home.

I pulled off the road to the bottom of the track that leads to the farm.

On my left is the broad, active stream with watercress growing in the fast part, and flag iris on the bank, and a willow bending over the water, and a foam of frog spawn, and a moorhen sailing the current.

The track rises steeply. It's getting dark. Ahead of me is the compact stone house, water-barrel by the front door, apple tree at the gate.
Go in
, I say to myself,
go in
.

And I slept that night, long and deep, like someone who does not dream because she is dreaming already.

Morning. The next day.

The man at the door had a face like a pickaxe. His job was to make a big hole in my life. 'Your name Crusoe?'

'I'm the one.'

'This place Cast Out Farm?'

'No, it's the Library of Congress.'

Sensing trouble — that is, daring to taunt an Enforcement Officer —the moribund CanCop riding the back of the bike jerked to life.

'Why d'you bring the soup tin with you? There's only me here — what's the problem?'

The Enforcement guy said nothing. His eyes ran over the cut stone house with its big wide dented doors and its moss-slated roof. My dog Rufus was growling in his spot by the front gate. The horses in the field looked up from their grazing. It was an ordinary day, unlike any other. 'Might be all kinds of types here,' he said.

The CanCop got off the bike and started taking snaps of the place with his built-in head camera.

'This place isn't a tourist attraction,' I said. 'It's private land. Tell the tin monkey to behave itself.'

The Arm of the Law ignored me. 'This is your Court Order.' He flicked the screen on the windshield of his HoverBike, and there were all my details: name, address, age, occupation, money owed, money owed, money, money.

'I don't owe this money.'

'You gotta tell that to the Court.'

'You're a human being, aren't you?'

'Mostly.' He shuffled on the seat of the bike. He had refit legs, the kind that never get tired of chasing criminals, like me.

'I wasn't talking about your legs. Your brain is human. Your heart is human. All of these fines have been contested and cleared. Every single one.'

He flicked through the notes on his screen. His notes are not words, they are numbers. 'Coder says all fines still outstanding.'

'How much do I owe?'

'Says here three million dollars.'

'But these are parking fines!'

'That's right. One year's worth of parking fines, add Orders, add Enforcement, add costs of Contesting, add Interest. That's right, dollars three million.'

'Just a minute - if there are Contesting costs there, then the Coder knows I have contested. There is just one single massive error — I know I've been systematically cleared, and the Coder doesn't. This isn't a judgement, it's a software problem.'

'Nothing I can do about it. I don't make the rules.'

(Don't you want to kill every moron who says that?)

I tried to be patient. I tried a new line. 'You work for Enforcement, right?'

He nodded. They like simple sentences.

'OK, and I work for Enhancement. Now, I can't enhance anybody's life unless I can get into their house and see what the problem is. I can't get into the house unless I can park outside, which is why Enhancement Officers — me — have Exemption Permits, like Enforcement Officers — you.'

'Permits aren't my job.'

'Here is my permit.'

In answer, he pushed back his bike and jabbed a code on to his windshield. 'I'm putting here that you refuse the Judgement.'

'I have been trying for one whole year to speak to a human being in Enforcement. I want a human being to look at my permit and tell me why it is not valid, although it is active and in date, and I want a human being to tell me why I owe the Central Power three million dollars.'

He was jabbing his Coder again.

'What are you doing now?' I said.

'I am coding your response.'

'Don't code my response! Give me the name of someone I can talk. to.'

'Your number is 116SS,' he said. 'I've sent it to your screen and I've sent it back to base. You got one week to pay up or we take the farm.'

Rufus was howling. 'You should take him in and get him Fixed,' said Pickaxe.

'He's a real dog — even his legs are real. I can't get him Fixed. He's a real dog.'

Pickaxe showed his first flicker of interest. 'No kidding? Like the ones at the Zooeum?'