The Living (32 page)

‘…I am happy to report that no violations or abuses of power were discovered in the work of the SPO,’ Healer repeated for the third time. ‘The investigation revealed that the Instruction Number Two’s which staff at our Centre for Population Control were receiving on the official channel, seemingly from Order Service officers, did not actually originate with the Order Service…’

‘Stop!’ The Wise One was furious. ‘That’s not the question! My question is: how did you feel when you were following Instruction Number Two?!’

Healer looked at Zero politely and slightly quizzically, then looked at the assistant, sighed dejectedly and stared at the floor. He tugged at his grey, greasy fringe with his fingers.

‘Is he really so thick?’ Zero thought. ‘Or is he just shy? Or not used to first layer… No, that’s not it. This is the man who produced the Open Letter. Last time he was with us at the Residence he could keep a conversation going fine. Maybe he’s making fun of me? Some strange type of protest, or dissidence or something…’

‘Would you like to be on my show?’ he asked Healer
ingratiatingly
.

Healer nodded.

‘Then answer my question clearly and precisely. What did you feel when you were following Instruction Number Two and terminating those pregnancies?’

‘A great honour and a great responsibility?’ Healer suggested hesitantly and looked up at Zero hopefully. ‘Gratitude to the Council of Eight and the Service for Planetary Order?’

The Wise One shook his head darkly.

‘The instructions were the product of a harmful virus…’ Healer bleated quietly. ‘Erm, I don’t know… Which line? Which line should I choose?’

‘Leave it, Wise One,’ Zero’s assistant whispered in his ear. ‘Can’t you see that he’s a troll? He’s not capable of keeping a conversation going, he just shuffles through a set selection of phrases recorded in his memory.’

‘Are you a troll?’ the Wise One asked loudly.

Healer sighed in relief and replied without even the slightest hesitation:

‘Not a troll. Trolling is forbidden on
socio
. Trolling in first layer is impossible.’

‘Do you remember writing the Open Letter?’

Healer tensed up again – the question was not precisely phrased. For a similar question – ‘Did you write the Open Letter?’ – there was a clear and unequivocal answer – ‘Yes I did write it and I am grateful to the Council of Eight for their swift and timely reaction to my alarm signal’… But that ‘do you remember’ – it had confused everything somehow. It was a
reference
to something to which he no longer had access. To
something
murky, evil and terrifying, that happened before… before what? Before birth? Before the operation? Before what
operation
, now you mention it…?

‘It happened before the operation,’ came out all by itself somehow; he didn’t understand the meaning of his own words, but he immediately understood that those words were
forbidden
because
punishment
burst in his head like a piercing pain.

‘Before what operation?’ the Wise One asked barely audibly.

Healer sank silently against the back of the chair and closed his eyes, waiting for the pain of punishment to pass.

‘It’s obvious what operation.’ The assistant leaned over Healer, snapped on a contact glove and in a business-like fashion brushed the greasy grey locks from Healer’s forehead. – ‘Here, take a look, Wise One…’

Zero saw a vertical pale-pink scar on Healer’s forehead. Neat and very small – like a slender earthworm was sticking out of his hair.
Skin and bones, he cuts it all open
. ‘Who did this…’ Zero touched the worm with his finger, ‘who did this to him?’

‘Ooh, what are you doing, Wise One?’ His assistant started fussing. ‘Why are you touching it with your bare hand, here, take a glove, what is that, skin to skin, it’s enough to make you sick…’

‘Put that away,’ Zero rejected the proffered contact glove; he actually did feel a bit sick, not from touching someone else’s skin but from the awful feeling that on his own forehead, if he touched it, he would feel exactly the same scar.

‘Who did this to you?’ the Wise One asked, grasping Healer’s hot face in his hands.

‘Did what?’ Healer frowned in disgust and broke free from Zero’s arms.

‘The operation. The scar.’

‘What, a scar?’ Healer absent-mindedly touched his
forehead
with his fingers. ‘I hadn’t even noticed… When I was a kid probably, I had a bad fall…’

‘Uh-huh, you fell.’ For some reason the assistant was
overjoyed
and whispered, tripping over his words, into the Wise One’s ear: ‘They say they do it in the clinics at Psychological Assistance… An experimental technique… Personally I’ve never come across it before in first layer, but I read, I read that… hang on I’ll find it in my bookmarks… Aha, right. An operation to streamline the
socio
slot and partially erase
pathological
memory clusters, in conjunction with the pinpointed superimposition of false memories, can give fantastic results in the case of severe dementia, manic depressive psychoses and schiz…’

‘Gopz!’ Zero interrupted him halfway through the word. ‘You can both gopz! In my show… there won’t be…’

He wanted to say something else, maybe about trolling, which was unacceptable, about talking puppets which he would not tolerate on his show, but a wave of nausea rolled up to his throat, gluing all his words into a bitter, stinking lump. The Wise One tore the microphone off with wooden fingers and rushed out of the studio.

‘No death,’ Healer said politely to his back. ‘I’m glad that you invited me here. I hope the viewers will like the show…’

Zero groaned and bent over the bath again in a dry, pointless spasm. There was nothing in him, not even foamy yellow bile, and he dry-heaved. When it had passed, the Wise One splashed his face with cold water. Then he pushed his whole head under the stream of water and started using his nails to scratch his inflamed skin, which was covered in painful
goosebumps
– but carefully, only on the top of his head and behind his ears, so the larvae wouldn’t be washed off from the inside of his elbows… He tensed up again and it was as if his tongue had swollen up in his throat, but this time the urge was not as strong. The Wise One gave a deep sigh. Now it’s going to get much better.
It’s going to pass any minute now, I
’
ve taken a good dose… Three white ones on the left and three black ones on the right, a triple BW
… It really was getting better. Not straightening up, feeling about with his hand, he ripped the towel from the hook. He rinsed his hair and wound the towel around his forehead right down by his eyebrows. He looked at himself in the mirror, which was smeared with cloudy splashes.

‘Hi, you nobody, no death!’ he said to his reflection. ‘Well, go on, what have you got there, show us. Let’s have a look at what you’ve got there under that towel?’

‘No, don’t look…’

So what? It would all be so simple, yes, it would explain everything. A tiny little scar on the forehead – it would explain the last year. It would explain all the ready-made phrases rolling off his tongue on Who Still Does Not Agree, it would explain

It would explain

It would explain

It would explain

That little pink worm would explain the Wise One’s
childlike
smile.

The wisdom of the Wise One.

The intransigence of the Wise One.

The cruelty of the Wise One.

It would explain the Wise One’s success as a showman.

It would explain how they made the Wise One into a puppet. Into a miraculous troll, swinging in a murky, forgetful mirage on his carousel…

All it takes is an operation to streamline the
socio
slot… hang on a minute… hang on a minute! But I’m not connected…! really? ‘Is that what you think?’ – his double swayed drunkenly there in the mirror – ‘But maybe you just don’t remember? Because, you know, trolls often don’t remember important things… Partially erase pathological memory clusters plus false memories… Think, is it really possible that the Wise One would not be connected?’

‘I am connected but through an external
socio
slot and only in second layer…’

‘Yes, of course, through the Crystal. But what if that is
self-deception
…?’

False memories and false perception…

‘…Where are you getting this idea from that the Crystal is not inside, but outside…?’

Nonsense, nonsense… That’s all just the venom, the bakugan haze, too big a hit…

‘What’s that, Wise One, you have to love the bakugans, the bakugans are our friends! Look how they are swaying you right now, taking pity on you, keeping you warm…’

The walls suddenly shifted, the BW cradle started rocking.

‘Let’s fly, troll.’ His pale double held out his hands to him. ‘Let’s you and I take a breather, die, suffocate… A triple dose! I’ve never flown like this before…!’

In the emptiness a sort of shadow hurried towards him. It crept up close, gave him a sniff and said:

‘No death, my friend.’

‘No death,’ Zero replied. ‘What, have I temporarily ceased?’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because I can see you.’

‘No, neither of us has ceased yet… Although you, it seems, are really trying.’ Cracker shook his fluffy yellow head in disapproval.

Actually, Cracker didn’t look exactly like Cracker. He had too many limbs, mouths and an extra eye on the back of his head. But the Wise One knew somehow that it was definitely him…

‘What is this place?’ Zero asked.

‘Let’s put it this way,’ the Cracker-like being scratched its big round belly thoughtfully. ‘It’s my personal inviz.’

‘Are you not going to be born anymore?’ Zero asked. ‘Are you not going to come back to me in first layer?’

‘Sorry,’ his friend said. ‘Maybe someday. But not right now.’

‘Why?’

‘You see, having a separate body only gets in my way. All that crap just takes up too much energy: digestion,
respiration
, excretion… A parasitic embryonic body is much more convenient, but even that is a burden at the end of the day: a heartbeat, this and that… But this stalled mode lets you preserve energy for action in
socio
. You can’t even imagine what I am capable of, now I don’t have a physical… By the way I broke into
Isoptera
today in
luxury
. Screwed the queen ten times in a row, without queuing… And at the same time I found out who she is in first layer. Do you want to know?’

‘Not particularly,’ the Wise One said honestly. ‘I saw the advert. I think it’s horrible.’

‘Well you’re right. What do you need with the queen, when you’ve got a wife like that… By the way, talking of horrible – you should be a bit more careful with those creatures. Six larvae at once – that could be a pausal dose! Though I’m glad you overdosed today. Otherwise we wouldn’t have met. But still, you can’t carry on like this…’

‘Tell me, Cracker,’ the Wise One touched the wet towel, which was still clinging to his forehead. ‘Tell me honestly: am I a troll?’

Cracker doubled over and started shaking slightly, covering his little round mouths with his many-fingered hands.

‘In a certain sense you are a troll,’ he said, once he had finished laughing. ‘Not in the sense you think, but in a technical sense… By the way, I can tell you as a specialist: a technical troll is not even capable of understanding or even having the idea that he is a troll. By default he has no doubt function.’

‘So I wasn’t given an operation?’

‘You weren’t my friend. And you don’t have an internal
socio
slot…’

‘Then why do I feel like a puppet?’

‘Because you are a puppet?’ his friend suggested and tittered into his hands again. ‘Alright, alright, don’t get annoyed. I will help you expose these puppet-masters. And fight the Monster…’

‘The Living is not a Monster. I don’t want to fight Him.’

‘Am I asking the puppet what it wants?’ the Cracker-like thing said in surprise. ‘Go back right now, take off that stupid towel and turn on your Crystal. And, you know what, I want you to pray.’

‘I don’t know how to pray!’

‘Give it a try, Wise One.’