The Living (14 page)

The first time it was Foxcub. A year before the fire. He came up to me on the Available Terrace and looked at me damply for a long time with eyes the colour of rotten potato. Until I realised that he was trying to talk to me in second layer and stopped giving him the cold shoulder:

‘It’s not going to work. I am completely
asocial
.’

I turned away from him and set off walking alongside the rows of pets, but for some reason Foxcub shambled after me. I changed direction a few times but he just meandered around after me, like a fly following a slop-bucket, so I turned round to face him again:

‘What do you want, Fox?’

His expression was so blank, even for him, that I had to grab him by the shoulder and shake him.

‘Hey, Fox! What are you after? Say it out loud!’

‘Hi. It. Is. Me,’ Foxcub announced slowly, with evident effort.

‘I know it’s you. Fox, are you sick or something?’

‘No. I. Am. Not. Fox.’

‘Wait, I’m going to call a warder…’

‘No. No. No. No.’

‘Hey, calm down…’

By the way, he seemed absolutely calm. Too calm even.

‘Just in silence. Follow him.’

‘Who?!’

‘Foxcub,’ said Foxcub.

‘Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?’

‘About myself,’ Foxcub whispered barely audibly and set off towards the exit from the Available Terrace.

His movements were slow and strangely fluid, as if he were walking underwater. It all looked so crazy that I followed him. In silence.

We floated unhurriedly down the corridor, went out into the yard, crossed it and entered the Special Unit. We were searched at the entrance; the guard took a gnawed pencil from
somewhere
under Foxcub’s clothes and shook it in front of his nose:

‘Writing implement: what’s this for?’

‘What for,’ Foxcub fixed his potato eyes on the writing implement and froze.

He stood motionless for a little while, blinking, his mouth slightly open, entirely immersed in observation. It seemed like he was carefully studying the tooth marks on the wooden surface in order to attempt to comprehend its deep pencilly essence, its destiny and meaning.

‘What’s up with him: is he one-layered?’ The guard nodded at Foxcub. ‘Retarded, like you?’

‘Alternatively gifted,’ I replied. ‘Like me. He loves drawing.’

‘You can’t take writing implements into the Special Unit. It’s…’ – the guard shook the pencil in the air, and Foxcub’s pupils darted from side to side obediently – ‘it’s a violation. Who’ve you come to see?’

‘To minus two,’ Foxcub reported unexpectedly brightly. ‘To visit Cracker he’s probably really lonely there our friend let us through please.’

‘Your mate Cracker’s been a vegetable for a while now – he’s not bored. And you are breaking the rules. You have a writing implement. I will let you through if you…’ – the guard jabs Foxcub with his finger – ‘sing me a song. On camera. And I’ll put it up on FreakTube. My rating’s started to go down… So, sing.’

‘What should I sing?’

‘Something from Festival Passions, goon.’

‘Festival Passions is blocked for us,’ Foxcub replied after thinking a bit.

‘Oh yeah. Then something from The Eternal Murderer.’

‘While you are laid in bed at night, who keeps you safe from harm? It’s the planetmen! Who shows what is wrong and right,
the Living’s strong right arm? It’s the planetmen! And who will always be right there to rescue you and me-e-e? It’s the planetmen! Whose eyes are everywhe-e-ere and who is always the-e-ere, protecting stability and harmon-ee-ee…’

On the final ‘harmoneeee’ Foxcub squeaked and his voice wavered. The guard started applauding warmly.

‘Good lad, nice job. Now tell us who you are and how old you are. The FreakTube viewers will want to know.’

‘I’m Foxcub. I am twenty-eight. I live in a House of
Correction
. I used to be a criminal, but now I’ve got a low PTC, so soon I’ll be corrected.’

‘And tell us how many layers can you hold simultaneously?’

‘One,’ Foxcub explained. ‘Sometimes one and a half.’

‘Brilliant!’ The guard gave a broad grin. ‘You can go through. I will give you back the writing implement when you come out.’

Slowly, as if he were afraid to stumble, Foxcub walked towards the lift.

Cracker was lying still with his eyes closed, as usual. He had been lying like that for a long time now. Three times a day a nurse fed him and changed his nappy. Twice a day she turned him over. Once a day, before he went to sleep, she wiped his face and crotch with moist sanitary wipes. He was given a bath once a week.

The rest of the time he just lay there.

Sixteen years ago, when Cracker stopped moving entirely and his diagnosis was changed from ‘apathetic stupor’ to ‘first-degree coma’, the question of an artificial pause had arisen all by itself. After several consultations, the House administration decided to carry out a pause on Cracker as soon as his basic reflexes disappeared and he lost the ability to breathe and take food naturally. Until that time, as long as he did not burden the staff any more than the infant correctees, he would be looked after. Liquid food, nappies and sanitary wipes. Nothing
more. No check-ups, no medicine, no life-support machines. No additional actions. Nothing more than what he would have got after a natural pause.

They had not counted on him lasting so long. They gave him between one and six months. After no more than half a year, they said, correctee Cracker will forget how to swallow and how to breathe. After no more than half a year, correctee Cracker will temporarily cease to exist.

But the years passed and he continued to exist. Quietly and unassumingly, like a pet in its cocoon.

He was thirteen when they put him on the Blacklist and transferred him to the Special Unit. He was sixteen when he turned his head and looked at me through the glass for the last time; after that Cracker went into total stupor and I stopped visiting him. He was thirty-two when Foxcub sang the song about the planetmen and took me back to minus two.

During the first year he spent in the chamber under the
correcting
light, Cracker dried out, turned yellow and curled up, like an unliving little friend fixed to a piece of card with a pin and placed under glass as a memento. Old age had eaten into his child’s body like a poisonous fungus, not giving his organism the chance to go through the appointed cycle of transformations: age, maturity… When I visited him for the last time, when he was sixteen, he looked like both an old man and a teenager simultaneously. He reminded me of one of those optical illusions which the psychologists used to shove under my nose when I was a kid (look: it looks like a beautiful woman with a hat with a feather… And then – ta-da! – it’s a witch with a long nose!).

Back then the nurse, I remember, called him her little pupa. And I started calling him that too. To myself.

He was a broken, sick little pupa which would never hatch into a winged being.

When Fox and I arrived, Cracker was lying still with his eyes shut. He had barely changed.

The same sleeping pupa.

Foxcub went right up to Cracker’s chamber and pressed his face against the glass. He stood there for about half a minute and then turned to me, pulled himself up to his full height and opened his mouth, as if he was about to start singing again.

For sixteen years I hadn’t been to minus two. In that time the Butcher’s Son had lived up to the pause and been
reproduced
and had learned to crawl and even stand up on his little legs, holding on to the glass sides of the chamber with his hands. When he spotted us he did this little trick, and then stood there, swaying slightly in his natty ‘feeling lucky’
trousers
and sucking a yellow dummy, and looked carefully at me and Foxcub in turn. I pressed my finger up against the tip of my nose, like before, but he didn’t even smile. After the pause, he must have forgotten that the ‘piggy’ is funny. Or perhaps he just couldnt’t smile – probably no one had ever shown him how to make this face. Why go looking for trouble? A Blacklister’s smile is a very bad omen… I let go of my nose and stretched my lips out in the kindliest grin possible. The little fellow recoiled from the glass, fell down and hunched over, weeping without a sound.

I was sorry I came.

‘Hey, Fox. What have you dragged me here for?’

‘I am not Fox I already said,’ Foxcub droned; his pupils spread out like spots of mould on the skin of a potato. ‘I missed you so I summoned you. You haven’t come for so long. No death. Friend.’

‘No dea…’ I started and choked on the words.

Something – maybe my gag reflex, maybe my tear reflex – was preventing me from talking; my throat went tight.
Something
– maybe happiness, maybe fatigue – swelled up inside me and made me very heavy. I felt an overwhelming desire to sit down on the floor and lean against the see-through wall.
There, behind the wall, lay my friend, motionless, hunched over; my friend who I had not seen for so long.

‘Is that you…’ I whispered through my spasm, through the soundproof glass, ‘you, Cracker?’

‘Of course, me, who else?’ Foxcub replied flatly. ‘Who, apart from Cracker, can break any password, get through any defence? I am pleased to see you. Friend. Although you look stupid. Ha. Ha.’

Foxcub licked his dry lips and continued, painstakingly
articulating
himself: ‘Hee. Ho. Ho. Like I’m laughing. Shame can’t manage. To make this idiot laugh naturally.’

‘How did you… But Foxcub… What have you done with him?’

‘Nothing special. I just broke into his cell. His defences were totally weak.’

‘But you… I mean he… he is you…’

‘Hee. Ha. You’re still funny,’ Foxcub said indifferently. ‘He is him. I am just in him. I’ve just played about a bit. Turned off some things he didn’t need. Installed a new “outloud” mode. Set up some simple algorithms. Where to go. Intermediary points. The final destination. It’s only for a while. I’ll let him go. I’ll wipe everything. He’ll forget.’

‘It’s impossible,’ I thought. ‘Impossible. Impossible. No way.’

‘It is possible,’ Cracker replied with Foxcub’s lips, as if he had read my mind. ‘It’s nothing. You can’t even imagine. The things I’ve learned to do now.’

‘Can you hear what I’m thinking?!’

‘Of course not, but it’s not hard to guess. Your face is very expressive. Ho. He. Hee. Come on, Foxcub, laugh normally you bastard.’

Foxcub hiccoughed. His face was empty and tired. As if he was struggling to remember a dream but couldn’t. I looked at Cracker. A dried-up, motionless pupa.

‘Open your eyes,’ I asked. ‘Look at me.’

‘I am looking at you,’ Foxcub replied obligingly.

‘Not like that. Yourself.’

‘No.’

‘You can’t?’

‘Unnecessary action. Takes a lot of energy. And memory. Will lose control over him. I no longer overload my brain with pointless commands.’

I became sad and wistful.

‘Please!’

‘No. Stupid. We do not have much time. Soon the cameras are going to come back on.’

‘Are there cameras here? In our secret place?’

‘There are cameras everywhere. But I’ve switched them off for a while.’

‘You’ve switched them off?’ I looked over from Foxcub to the motionless Cracker and then back again. ‘You?!’

‘It was nothing,’ Foxcub said again. ‘Compared to what I can do now.’

The Butcher’s Son – I had completely forgotten about him – unexpectedly collapsed on his back and started twitching all his limbs excitedly.

‘I have downloaded the first season of Baby Bubbles for him,’ Foxcub reported wearily. ‘The creeps hooked up the four hundredth straightaway. Without the backstory he is not going to understand anything.’

‘And with the backstory he will?!’

‘Yes. Now he’s going to understand everything. I am training him. He will see a lot of layers.’

‘Teach him to smile,’ I asked.

‘No. It is a bad omen.’

‘Do you really believe in omens?’

‘Me no. Them yes. Do not want. Them to see him as threat.’

Foxcub fell silent for a long time; his face became still and dark, like a used wonder-sunshine. Cracker just stayed lying
there not moving. For a fraction of a second it seemed to me like the corners of his lips tensed slightly into the promise of a smile, but it was a trick of the light, or Cracker did not keep his promise; a trick in either case.

The Butcher’s Son opened his mouth and drooled and starts gawking at me. Then he waved, not at me, but at someone sitting in my stomach. I wanted to wave to him too but then it hit me. He can’t even see me. He’s in second layer. With the baby Bubbles and Livvles. He’s watching the first episode.

I remember that episode, they showed it to me in the natural development group. It was called ‘Getting to Know Everyone’.

The Butcher’s Son pointed at himself and waved again.

The Butcher’s Son reached out his hands to his invisible new friends and started spinning around his axis. I knew what this meant. He had to become a part of the ball. A part of Livvles. But something went wrong. Something happened. Something bad, something evil: the Butcher’s Son jerked to the right, fell down as if pushed, covered his eyes with his hands, trying to block out something I couldn’t see, threw his mouth wide open and wept.

‘I fixed a little something,’ Foxcub started talking
unexpectedly
. The Butcher’s Son crawled off to the far wall of his chamber, lay on the floor and pulled his knees up to his chin; he was shivering violently.

‘I changed the way Livvles looks. Livvles is a monster.’

‘That’s cruel!’ I went up to the Son’s chamber; he looked at me with pained, moist eyes. ‘That’s cruel, Cracker! Look at him, he’s terrified! Why do you have to torture the poor child?’