The Living (23 page)

He wound a rusty lock of hair around his finger.

‘I’m going to dye it,’ she said. ‘Black.’

‘Why?!’

Cleo pulled the towel down to her face.

‘Layla says that I don’t look after myself. That in the Residence women have to take care of their appearance and comply with globaloid standards. And my hair looks like a
rundown
anthill in the woods. She promised she’d give me some black dye.’

‘Your hair is like flowing honey.’ He stroked her auburn crown. ‘Layla’s just jealous. No one has hair like this anymore.’

‘Exactly. On the whole the Living has dark hair. I should look like everyone else.’

‘I don’t want you to look like everyone else. Anyway it wouldn’t work.’

He carefully pulled the towel from her face. Such white skin. And under her eyes and on her nose, like the grains of sand on Golden Mean Square…

He ran his hand along her cheek and neck. With effort he pushed his hand under the towel – she had wrapped it tightly around her like a cocoon – and then pulled it away.

‘You’ve got that on again?’

‘It’s a different suit…’ Cleo hurriedly uncovered herself to convince him. ‘It’s not the same as yesterday. Skin-tight,
ultrathin
, for the sensation of body contact. You’ll like it… I mean… well, it really is properly, properly thin. And almost
see-through
.’

Eighth ran his finger along the cool surface of the sucs
6
. Thicker, thinner – what’s the difference… He didn’t like that smooth film. Which was heat-resistant and impenetrable to odour or moisture. Which made nipples and pelvis feel the same. Which kept their bodies apart.

Which let them touch properly, skin to skin, only at the genitals.

He lay down next to her, but not touching her.

‘What’s the suit for? What, am I physically unappealing?’

‘Fofs, you know that I find you very physically attractive! Before you I had never felt pleasure in first layer at all.’

‘I’ve just taken a shower. I’m not sticky, not contagious, not dirty. I don’t have any skin diseases. You’re clean and healthy too. I don’t understand why you’ve put this sucs on.’

‘Every time with you it’s…’

‘Every time I don’t understand!’

‘I put the sucs on because… for example, I might sweat.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘It’s an unpleasant physiological smell.’

‘I like the way you smell.’

‘Your temperature goes up during the act. Your skin gets hotter.’

‘I like it when you’re hot.’

‘Listen!’ she sat up, suddenly happy about something: she pulled her knees, wrapped in the sucs, up to her chin. ‘I
specially
asked Layla. Just now. She says that she and the Servant always wear contact suits too. Everyone does. For hygiene and psychological comfort. It’s… It’s just nice. So, Darling…’

He shuddered: when Cleo called him that he would instantly remember Hanna.

‘…so, let’s try it in this one! They did this one for me
specially
. If you like it, Dragon will put it into production…’

‘Dragon? Sixth?’

She nodded.

‘What’s Dragon got to do with anything?!’

‘Well, he said that what with your predilections… I mean, seeing as how you like tactile contact… there’s probably loads of people like you. Dragon said that it could become a massive trend at festivals – ultra-thin, see-through sucs… And Fifth’s
deputy promised to launch some ads on
socio
– only, of course, if you really do like this sucs…’

‘Fofs…’ the Wise One covered his face in his hands. ‘Layla, Sixth, Fifth… Looks like you’ve managed to discuss our sex life with everyone already?!’

‘Not with everyone. Only with my
socio
friends… And so what?’

‘You really don’t understand?’

‘Smin.’ She shook her honey-coloured hair irritatedly. ‘
Obviously
I don’t understand.’

She really didn’t understand. Something about him didn’t add up: this hypertrophic shyness of his, his pathological secrecy (as if the
act
were some sort of dirty secret), and this unbelievable, unnatural, shameless willingness to touch someone else’s body. In
luxury
you can be a hot, stinking animal – and despite all that still
create
an incredible
act
. But not here in first layer! It’s like he did not feel any difference… She peered across at him – he was lying on his side, his knees clasped to his stomach,
bare-skinned
, ridiculous, with no clothes, no sucs – and her irritation was suddenly replaced by pity.

‘He’s not connected,’ she said to herself. ‘He is alone,
completely
alone in his body, I have to remember that. He’s not used to sharing things with friends because he’s got no one in his friend list. He doesn’t even have a friend list. An
unbearable
emptiness. I have to be patient with him…’

She ruffled his hair with her hand, which was sheathed in contact film. The thinnest sucs. She could almost feel the warmth of his skin… Why get annoyed? She should explain everything to him tenderly and calmly:

‘It’s totally normal to discuss these things with friends. The
act
isn’t something intimate. You do it at festivals and in
luxury
. You do it in front of everyone. And with everyone…’

‘I don’t want you to do it with everyone,’ the Wise One said. ‘Promise that you won’t.’

‘I won’t,’ she struggled to keep smiling.

He was like a moody child. He poked her and whined: ‘Mine’…

Well, as for first layer, that makes sense: members of the Council have to have long-term partners for ‘personal use’. At first this shocked her a little, but then she had to admit that it really was more hygienic and convenient this way… It would never have crossed her mind to take another partner even if she had wanted to…

Eighth understood this and wasn’t too worried about first layer. He was worried about third. He was jealous of
luxury
mode. He even asked her not to have
acts
with anyone there…

It was stupid. Absurd. A neurosis. Demanding that she
restrain
herself in the
garden of delights
!

Demanding that she observe certain rules in this space of absolute freedom.

Having failed to convince him of the ridiculousness of these requests, she started making promises. It was funny – he had no way of checking, but it calmed him down…

He always noticed when she was
there
. By her face in first layer. Her face always looked as if she was in pain. As if she was shouting without a sound or was about to cry. She did not deny that she went into
luxury
but she obediently lied about the
act
. She said that she didn’t do the
act
with anyone. That she was visiting her wolf cubs…

Eight was still lying on his side. She embraced him from behind, pressing her stomach and breasts against his back.

‘So then, are we going to try out the sucs? If you like it…’

‘I won’t like it, Cleo.’

‘But…’

‘I liked how it was then. The first time. Without any sucs…’ He still called that
act
‘the first time’.

They were both silent for a little while. From down below, in the garden, came snatches of a slanging match. It was Layla
talking in first layer to the Servant of Order’s new, additional woman, who he had taken a month ago. Layla’s voice, which was angry but still somehow frightened, broke into a shriek. The new one’s voice sounded quiet, but fairly assured. As well as Layla, Layla’s kids were shrieking too.

‘Tell me that you love me,’ Eighth asked suddenly.

‘The Living is full of love…’

‘No, not like that!’

‘How then?’

‘Tell me that you love only me.’

‘But it’s not like that…’

She felt his shoulders shaking.

‘Are you feeling alright?’

‘If you can, don’t press that film up against me. It’s making me cold.’

She moved away.

A memory flickered, half-decayed, fragile, like the wing of a dead butterfly in the wind. Once – she was only fifteen – she had given birth to a Darling. The infant was ill and temporarily ceased to exist after a few months. But the whole time he was with her she looked after him using the My Little Living program: she changed his clothes, fed him, bathed him, gave him massages and so on. For every procedure, she used
single-use
contact gloves like you’re supposed to. When she had touched him, completely naked, with her gloved hands, he had shaken exactly like that…
Don’t press that film up against me
.… As if he was cold. Perhaps she even took the gloves off a few times so that the little fellow would calm down. She probably did. But she couldn’t remember exactly. That’s always the way with first-layer memories: they crumble like
yesterday
’s dreams. And she had deleted the file ‘Darling’ from her memory a long time ago, on the advice of a psychologist. As soon as he temporarily ceased living. ‘Send psychically
traumatic
files to trash.’ Everything disappeared: photographs,
videos, diary entries. Everything was forgotten – his face and eyes, his crying and groaning. All that was left were vague memories of his body… The way he used to shake. And the warmth of his lips as they gripped her swollen nipple.

…Cleo slowly took off the sucs and pressed her bare skin against his bare skin. He turned to her and embraced her, strong and commanding. Hot panic flooded her stomach. She felt like a snail that had been ripped from its shell. He touched her nipple with his tongue. She shuddered and closed her eyes. Calm. Calm. It’s only him after all. Her mate, the father of her dead children. The one she had been pining for all this time.

In third layer she dived with a jerk into
luxury
. She opened the forest and the den which were saved in her personal settings.

She sneaks through the wet grass, weaving her way and making occasional sharp turns to one side to cover her tracks. At last she comes up to the den and pokes her head inside. It smells of decay, soil, fungus and her own musty fur. It does not smell of him. The white-eyed wolf, born of the same mother as her, has not come here without her…

…She has not been here for a long time herself. Not since they brought her to the Residence and she realised that he would never come back to their shared home.

But while hope still remained she came here often. She waited for him day after day, hunting and insulating the den, listening to the beating of four new hearts in her body. Then the time came, but something went wrong – she could not give them life. The cubs were born dead, although
luxury
promised all its users the fulfilment of their wildest fantasies. She gnawed through their slippery umbilical cords and went to dig a hole in the
frozen earth. Then she dragged each of the four stiff, furry bodies there in turn. The bitter taste of carrion lingered on her teeth.

Then she
created
a putrid yellow moon, nibbled on the right side, and howled loudly. She hoped that he would still come. At least now. To weep for their children.

But he still did not appear and in despair she brought different partners from her list to the den a few times. None of them could give her the
act
the way he had given it to her then. When she took the form of a she-wolf, it got them going, but their fantasies were pathetic. They were limited to
role-playing
‘hunter and hunted’ with a touch of S&M: some would turn themselves into idiotic mice or hares and throw
themselves
into her jaws, others would grab a gun… She would break off the
act
, return to the hole and give a long, protracted howl.

She missed him. She was his mate. He had
created
her that way.

Perhaps that was why she had agreed to live with him in the Residence. Because of that
act
, and not because of all the privileges there like the lab and
socio
-money.

…She
creates
the day at dawn, and the fiery sun, and the birds singing in the gleaming crowns of the trees. She
creates
sheaves of multi-coloured foliage and rolls around in them on her back. She lets herself hear human groans from first layer. Her own and those of the one who never comes to see her here.

When she is close to finishing, when her tongue is lolling out, and she is breathing rapidly, arching her back and stiffening her tail, when all her eight nipples are hard, she suddenly hears footsteps and sees someone’s long shadow next to her.

She lifts her eyes.

The guest’s face is smeared with a layer of paint and powder, like a festival clown. The Servant of Order. He has access even here. He muscles in on her fantasy, insolently, as if he owns the place, as if it were his own cell.

She lifts her upper lip, baring her front teeth, and growls quietly and flatly.