The Living (26 page)

As a consequence, I have a very serious request to make of my respected colleague Second (and I humbly ask that all members of the Council support my initiative). My request is that he should – in all seriousness – sacrifice himself on behalf of the
Living. I ask that Second, the moderator of the tranquillity of the Living in all layers, refuse his office immediately after the onset of the pause and hand the reins over to an heir.

The moderation of tranquillity (including the Service for Planetary Order, the Psychological Service for Assisting the Population, the system of Houses of Correction and much more) is the sort of area of government in which there must be no such ‘lapses’ at such a critical and unstable moment for the Living. For the post of Second I’m picturing an experienced young
professional
who is up to speed with all aspects of tranquillity and has already garnered invaluable experience as a moderator. I’m talking about the Servant of Order – the head of the SPO and the biological son of our present Second. He is the one who should take up his father’s place after the pause – which is, as tragic as this may be, according to the consulting physician, quite close at hand…

‘An excellent speech, I think,’ Second surmised with a look of contentment. ‘Turned out nicely, right?’

‘You want to refuse your post in the Council in favour of your son?’ the Wise One said dumbly.

‘For the good of the Living,’ Second nodded; for greater solemnity he opened his beetle-like eyes so vigorously and so wide that it looked like they would crawl out of his eye sockets any minute and fly away, buzzing and bobbing, into the Available Garden.

‘For the good of the Living,’ the Servant echoed, looking cheerily at his father and bending over in a clownish bow. ‘So how about it, Wise One? Will you read this speech?’

‘Of course not,’ the Wise One tried to laugh, but ended up with a sort of squeaky whimper.

‘Why, if I may ask?’ the moderator of tranquillity enquired with genuine interest.

‘Because I don’t think the threat is that great. Because I don’t agree with these harsh measures. And I don’t agree with such… such hypocrisy. You’ve got double standards. You live… here, in the Residence we all live like familials. You are both
antivectorites
. And you, Second, are an old-living too…’ The Wise One looked carefully at the old man out of the corner of his eye, expecting the next outburst of anger in response, but he listened carefully and even nodded in approval, as if agreeing. ‘
According
to your own logic,’ Zero continued, ‘for every one of these “crimes” you should be forced to undergo a pause with
subsequent
correction…’

Second snorted in approval – as if he was not averse to
sentencing
himself to eternal correction – and coughed briefly.

‘You’re almost right, Wise One,’ he said. ‘About everything except the most important thing…’

‘…The threat is great,’ the old man continued. ‘You have no idea how great. And as for our hypocrisy. I wouldn’t use such a harsh word. Yes, the members of the Council and their… heh-hem…Darlings live a little differently from everyone else. But the logic behind that is entirely practical…’

Second closed his eyes and dug around in the archive from his previous life. He used to have a fantastic recording there in his Favourites, on this very subject. But what was it called? Probably something completely nonsensical… come on,
remember
. The old man launched a key word search. He remembered the key words well: ‘bare ass’. The search promptly offered up a dozen ‘arses’ – for the most part photographs and only one document containing both elements. The document did indeed have an obscure name, completely unconnected to the context – ‘Jupiter and the Bull’ – probably some sort of code, but Second didn’t have time to figure it out.

‘You have to understand, sonny,’ he said to the Wise One and started reading expressively. ‘“The Living is like a giant organism, a single body made of different parts. You must realise that the head and arse cannot live in the same
conditions
. The head is in control – the arse takes orders from it. The head breathes, eats, drinks and thinks a lot and takes care of the well-being of the arse. The arse defecates regularly, and with gratitude, ridding the organism of waste products… If you give the arse oxygen, it’s still not going to learn to breathe. If you stick food up the arse, it’s not going to be able to chew it. All these benefits will just make the arse clog up, stop doing its job, get sick and then quickly poison the whole organism. Which is to say, equal rights would be very damaging for the arse and all the other parts of the body…” Do you follow my reasoning, sonny?’

Second broke off from his reading and focused his eyes in first layer.

The Servant of Order was dragging the Wise One from the conference hall, his hands thrust under his armpits.

The Wise One’s straight, unbending legs rustled quietly on the floor. The Wise One’s fingers were splayed wide, as if he was showing a deaf person the number ten. The Wise One’s eyes were white and covered in little red veins, as if his eyeballs had rolled over in their sockets, turning their blind side to the world. The Wise One was like a big plastic doll that had broken as soon as it was bought because someone didn’t play with it properly.

Second asked when the door closed behind the Servant and the Wise One.

the old man squirmed.

The sideways eight, the ancient sign of infinity, pulsed and gave off a panicked squeak somewhere in its centre:

‘Come on, little fellow…’ the Servant whispered tenderly, putting the white bakugan larva on the Wise One’s skin, ‘… over here, by the elbow, you’ll like it there… and there’s a nice big vein there…’

The little round white ball shuddered as it felt the warmth of the human body, then shyly plunged its tiny proboscis into the Wise One’s skin. It carefully injected its juice and, nearly overcome with thirst, waited for it to take effect, and only then drew the warm, magical blood into itself.

The Servant of Order adored bakugans – wonderfully useful little monsters, a miracle of insect selection. When they have had their fill of blood, they undergo an instantaneous metamorphosis, moving through the pupa stage in a couple of seconds…

…A two-headed, pinkish-available coloured, winged beetle started scurrying down the Wise One’s arm, heading from his elbow down towards his fist, gradually picking up speed for take-off. The Servant of Order caught him and crushed him: once transformed a bakugan is useless. There was blood, shot through with white bakugan juice, left on his fingers; the Servant licked it off: a natural vitamin… His chest got warmer and started thumping; the walls of the lobby became brighter and thicker, as if someone had increased the colour depth in first layer or put on a ‘feeling lucky’ filter; and after a couple of seconds or so his penis became engorged, like an insatiable bakugan larva – he got the urge to call for his new woman, right now… Now that’s what the natural product gives you – you don’t get that with vitacomplex. Vitacomplex is full of harmful impurities and all sorts of preservatives…

With a click Layla opened a window.

His desire disappeared immediately. Still, that bint must have some sort of animal instinct…

For some reason she closed her window and then immediately opened it back up again. Click. Click. Like being flicked on the nose. The Servant frowned: recently Layla had taken to getting hysterical within seconds, whether in first layer or on
socio
. ‘You’ve given her too much slack, way too much slack,’ the Servant thought with irritation. ‘Absolutely anything goes…’

Irritation mingled unpleasantly with pity and some strange wistful feeling, as if he hadn’t fed his pet in a long time…

Click.

Zero twitched.

…His consciousness was still there, it had never even gone away. He was just cold. So cold that he could not breathe, look or move. And it was very quiet, it was quiet in his chest, as if his heart was no longer beating.

It seemed to him: now he was made of ice. His eyes had rolled up into his head and frozen to his eyelids; his arms had gone stiff, his legs had gone stiff and stuck together.

It seemed to him: he was hard and icy, he could not be
broken
. But if you took his body out into the sun, it would melt and soak into the ground like watery lymph…

But there was no sun. Some warmth came from his left arm and spread through his arteries, veins and capillaries. He inhaled – his chest felt prickly and ticklish. As if a female mosquito had bitten him right on the heart… He tried to move his arm and heard a crack…
The ice has snapped,
he thought in a panic, …
a bit of me has snapped off
…

‘Careful there, Wise One,’ said the Servant. ‘Don’t make any sudden movements. First wait until your whole body has relaxed, and then stretch your muscles. And don’t jump up suddenly either: you’ll get dizzy… So, that feel better?’

‘Wht…hppn…m…’ The words stuck in his throat like shards of ice.

‘What happened to you? Oh, you made friends with a couple of my marvellous beetles! The black bakugan and the white bakugan. Those are ancient names, I don’t even know what they mean… But the pets themselves are the product of many centuries of insect selection. Have you seen “extract of white bakugan” on the list of ingredients on vitacomplex? Most
ordinary
people think that it’s some sort of plant… but no! it’s a beetle…’

Zero sat down, slowly, with difficulty – the walls of the lobby shifted and started swaying back and forth, like pieces of cardboard attached to a gigantic pendulum. The sofa
underneath
him started jiggling unpleasantly, trying awkwardly to adapt to his new pose, but it could not cope with its
sycophantic
task and sagged sadly, leaning over to one side.

‘…And have you seen “extract of black bakugan” on the list of ingredients for tranqvitamins?’ The Servant of Order peered at the Wise One and, not waiting for a reply, continued his lecture regardless. ‘In small doses the venom of the black bakugan larva calms you down and takes the edge off, so to
speak, and the venom of the white one perks you up. It sharpens the senses, the libido and everything else… But if you increase the dose a little… by which I mean, if, for instance, a black bakugan beetle releases its venom under someone’s skin, then that someone will be completely incapacitated, and will
temporarily
cease to exist after about an hour, and his pause will look entirely natural: paralysis of the muscles of the heart. That is, of course, if no one administers the anti-venom, which is the extract from the white bakugan. The white bakugan is good at neutralising the effect of the black one…’

‘So that’s what you did to the Diver,’ the Wise One
pronounced
severely. ‘Tranqvitamins… Extract of black bakugan… You stifled his free will, you made him a puppet… You kept putting those beetles on him… that’s why he can’t move at all in first layer… and in
socio
he just dumbly said everything you ordered him to say… I’m right, no? No?!’

For some reason the Servant of Order found this very funny and giggled ridiculously. His pupils were narrowing and
widening
, pulsing, like the hungry black bakugan larvae.

‘…And now he’s been poisoned with so much venom that soon he’s going to temporarily cease,’ the Wise One continued, wiggling his toes and noticing that warmth had, at last, got to the very bottom and was seemingly wrapping his calves and heels in prickly wool, ‘…and you want to turn me into a puppet like him…’

‘Smin, he can think logically!’ the Servant said excitedly; after a dose of white he was predisposed to being upbeat. ‘He can construct chains of logic, in first layer,
by himself
, without a
socio
-analyser or the Brain Storm program… He makes
conclusions
: sure, they’re wrong, but the logic!’

‘You’re talking nonsense, Wise One,’ the Servant replied
good-naturedly
. ‘Bakugans are valuable little beasts. How many would we have to produce to keep that poor bugger Diver quiet day after day? They are single-use, you know… The larva injects its
venom and that’s it, after the metamorphosis it doesn’t bite anymore.’

For the purposes of demonstration the Servant showed his interlocutor the crushed beetle.

‘But the Diver…’

‘But the Diver what?! Out there in the roboslums Divers are as common as flies on shit. They lie there, cretins, drooling and gawping at the heavens. You could pick any one of them, bring them into the Residence and make him the Wise One.’

‘So what, anyone can sit in twelfth layer?’

‘Now that is unlikely.’ The Servant burst into screeching, girly laughter, and then broke off on a high, tuneless note. ‘There’s no one there. No one gets to twelfth. There’s probably no such layer.’

The Wise One’s face went crimson with indignation. This Servant doesn’t even think he needs to lie properly! His thawed heart started jumping, as if it wanted to break through his ribcage. Barely holding back his hot rage, the Wise One said:

‘Do you take me for a dribbling idiot?! I have personally received a message from the Diver! That’s right, there’s no need to act so surprised, he wrote to me once. He promised me his support and he kept his word.’

‘What letter is that you’re talking about? It’s not this one is it by any chance…?’ The Servant rifled through his
sent
folder looking for what he needed. ‘“Don’t believe the lies. The Leo-Lot ray can shine in both directions, backward and
forward
, and it has revealed your great future, bla bla bla, but I will right the injustice.” That one, right? Sorry I sent it without signing it. We didn’t really know each other properly anyway…’

‘Why…?’ Zero whispered.

‘Well… To stop you probably going and doing something stupid to yourself, Wise One.’ The Servant found the file ‘psych 0’ in his memory. ‘The expert psychological analysis of your diary – the one you left in the House of Correction – had
some worrying outcomes. “The author of this text is
experiencing
considerable stress and suffers from manic depression. This text, judging by certain psycho-lexemes, was conceived as a decoy (most likely the author has not yet committed the
self-pause
he warns us about at the end), however, overall, the text is
genuine
. There is an 87.3% probability that the author of this text is capable of self-pause if his condition becomes more severe.” So we decided to cheer you up, so to speak… It would have been very upsetting to lose such a promising young man as yourself.’

‘So you knew from the very beginning that I had run away…?’

‘Come on, Wise One! I think you are underestimating your humble Servant.’ The Servant gave Zero a comedic bow. ‘Of course I knew.’

‘Then why didn’t you pick me up straightaway? Why did you let me go free?’

‘Well, I’d put it this way: we were waiting for the stars to align.’ The Servant of Order drew a sweeping smiley in the air with his index finger. ‘Our old friend Fifth, moderator of ents and ads, was a nasty old bugger. He would never have voted for you to join the Council and he would have talked the others out of it, he had quite a lot of authority… You would have been sentenced to a pause if we had “picked you up” earlier. Before Fifth’s pause. He was really in a bad way, poor fellow, so we decided to wait until he temporarily ceased. Plus it was
interesting
to watch you “in the wild”, so to speak… I was, by the way, happy with you by and large. That’s why in the Final Decree I mentioned your “wisdom of a child”, and I wasn’t lying. You have all the basic qualities of a real lead…’

‘You wrote the Final Decree?! You forced the Diver to give up his position as the Wise One?’

‘I told you’ – the Servant absent-mindedly scanned around looking for the caps lock so that he could put the next reply in capital letters, then remembered with irritation that in the monstrously impoverished surroundings of first layer there was no caps lock for conversations – ‘there is no Diver.’

The Wise One struggled up from the shapeless, nauseating sofa. The walls of the lobby started swaying even faster,
dragging
the floor along with them. It was like the Wise One was standing on the swings in the ancient attraction park. He
stumbled
, and was about to try and grab the back of the sofa but it ducked down like a traitor, sinking into the seat and turning the sofa into something like a lumpy bagel.

‘I told you not to stand up too quickly…’ The Servant of Order took Zero by the arm obligingly and sat him back down on the sofa. ‘None of the members of the Council can hold twelfth layer. No one, except Third, can even hold eleventh. They are just determined not to admit that they can’t hear what the Diver says… Once, when he was young, First said that he couldn’t see the Wise One. The rest almost tore him to pieces, like hornets round a lame grasshopper. They laughed, but they were all afraid. They could see a bit of themselves in First and were scared of being exposed and disgraced. Because the Council of Eight can see all twelve layers – so it is written in the Book of Life. No one dares question the Book, thus is it written, so that’s how it must be…’ The Servant of Order
absent-mindedly deleted unwanted icons from the desktop; he felt spent – he wasn’t used to giving such long speeches outside of
socio
. ‘…They say it actually was all like that before,’ he muttered. ‘Twelve layers and Divers, real ones…’

He hadn’t meant to say that: the words had somehow crept out of his mouth on their own. They had slipped from his lips, like wet, defenceless slugs. ‘Tiredness and nerves,’ the Servant thought, ‘first layer tension. As if being honest with this loser wasn’t enough. Bloody first layer! You can’t see what you are saying and you can’t concentrate properly so you end up
blabbering
away when you shouldn’t.’

‘But that’s all junk,’ the Servant summarized decisively. ‘There are no Divers and never have been. You shouldn’t interpret what’s in the Book literally. It’s just an allegory… As far as I understand it it’s about how any of the members of the Council can become the “Wise One”. You need to search around for the “Diver” inside yourself… Because you know what the most important thing is? The most important thing is to be the first to give a voice to the “will” of the Wise One; the rest will pretend that they were also there at his
consultation
in twelfth layer… My father realised that a long time ago. But he’s not the only one. Sixth has also bluffed us a few times. It took a lot of effort for father to force through the Final Decree. That slitty-eyed dung beetle knows there’s no Diver…’