The Living (8 page)

‘Shut it!’

‘My monster must die…’

‘Shut up, Cracker! You, what, want to get locked up in solitary like him?’ I jabbed the glass with my finger. ‘That phrase is forbidden. Especially for you! That’s from the Frankenstein Message!’

‘The Frankenstein Message,’ Cracker whispered dreamily. ‘Someday I’ll finish it.’

He stuck his nose back against the Son’s chamber. To make the piggy snout. The Butcher’s Son stopped beating his head against the wall and froze.

‘I know it’s not your fault, little fellow,’ Cracker said, not taking his face from the see-through surface. ‘It was Him who made you do it. He took away your reason. And then locked you up here forever. But I’ll take care of you. Cracker will take care of everyone, right, little fellow…? I’m a piggy!’ Cracker wrinkled his nose and started grunting jokingly. ‘Look what a piggy I am!’

‘He must be twenty or so. Why do you keep calling him “little fellow”?’ I asked.

‘Because that’s what I called him when he was little. Last time. In my inc-letter it says he liked it. And this too: “I’m a piggy, I’m a piggy. Oink-oink!”’

The Butcher’s Son examined Cracker’s flattened face thoughtfully. And then smiled.

His smile was utterly childlike.

Our group was taken for the experiment a few days after the visit to the Farm. There were five of us: me, Cracker, two correctees I did not know (one pre-pauser and one from the middle group) and the Butcher’s Son. They brought him in literally chained to the chair, with metal cuffs on his legs and arms, which were attached to the arms of the chair by long shining chains. It was there in the white-tiled corridor that we first saw the Son so close up and not through glass. He smelled like an infant from the group of recently reproduced correctees: of milk, wet wipes and urine.

He played with his chains. He obviously liked them, the way they shone and especially the way they sounded, so he shook them with his arm and then his leg and froze in excitement, listening intently to the metallic sound. He was wearing a three-coloured
socio-maniac
suit and when he jerked his leg, his wide trouser legs hiked up a little, uncovering his ankles – incredibly thin, as if they belonged to someone who never walked anywhere. Cracker and I came to the conclusion then that the chains were mostly just a show for the lab workers. So that they could see that the terrifying monster had been tamed and was no longer a threat. So that they would not be afraid that it would suddenly take a turn for the worse like in an episode of The Eternal Murderer, that the Butcher’s Son would take advantage of the situation and run off. Cracker even asked the planetmen accompanying us (including Ef) about the chains, but they did not reply: they pretended that they were busy in deep layers and did not hear us. Anyway, we understood without any planetmen: the Son could not have run off anywhere on such hopeless thin legs.

Back then we did not know much about what the experiment was about or what it was for: all sorts of different rumours were doing the rounds. For instance, the pre-pauser who was
waiting his turn with us in the corridor kept assuring us that they were going to shine special ‘correcting ions’ on us to cure us. He was a little slow, this pre-pauser, the whole time he kept repeating that after treatment with the ray even in our next reproduction our PTC would be cut in half, then in half again, then again, and so on after every pause – our potential threat coefficient would be halved…

‘So, for instance, if my PTC is twelve, then in my next
reproduction
it’ll be six, then three, then…’ He suddenly wrinkled his brow, and his face started showing signs of intense mental work, then surprise, and then, finally, pure agony.

‘There will always be a half of a half left,’ he told us despondently.

The one from the middle group gave a nasty chuckle: ‘That can’t be. Count again.’

He himself held firmly to the opinion that they were
planning
to ‘roll out’ some experimental new features in
socio
on us. These ‘roll outs’ were indeed carried out regularly, but to Cracker and me it was entirely obvious that they would never have got either the Butcher’s Son or me to take part in that sort of experiment.

Cracker kept insisting that, whatever the goal of the
experiment
was, it would certainly put us all on pause.

I asked him where he got that idea from and he replied in his usual manner, ‘I had a quick look in the cell of that beardy, you know, professor, while he was taking us round that Farm. He’s researching the Five Seconds of Darkness… So draw your own conclusions.’

Cracker often mentioned, in passing somehow, that he’d ‘taken a quick look’ in someone’s cell. And it was absolutely impossible to tell by his blank face whether he was being serious or just messing around.

‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t have taken a look anywhere. They cut off everyone’s
socio
while we were at the Farm.’

‘But I am Cracker. And Cracker can break any password. Cracker can break through any defence…’

I think, before I continue, I should explain to you who Cracker is. You probably know full well anyway, but just in case you don’t, it will make more sense if I explain. It’ll make more sense for me. I have to understand everything. Cracker isn’t just any old correctee, you know. Cracker is a genius.

Cracker invented
socio
.

Well, not exactly in the form in which
socio
exists now – the first version was a lot more primitive – but it was Cracker who developed the program which allowed us to get rid of our bi-pads and cerebrons and set up a B2B
5
connection without using external transmitters. Cerebral installation.

Everyone was connected. Mass cerebral installation took place nine months before the Nativity of the Living.

He could have become a happy, decent part of the Living, my poor friend Cracker. After the Nativity, they invited him to join the Council of Eight with the eternal nickname ‘Founder’. After the Nativity he should have become the heart and soul of the Living, its apostle, its viceroy, its wise defender… But he refused. Cerebral installation coincided with the beginning of the Great Reduction – and this coincidence damaged Cracker’s judgment, ruined his life, changed his invector. The thing is that for some reason Cracker blamed himself. That’s right, he thought that he was the reason for all those wars, epidemics, murders, terrorist attacks… Cracker got it into his head that the cerebral installation developed by him – and applied across the world – had begun the Great Reduction. And led to the birth of the Living.

How are the Great Reduction and the birth of the Living linked? I guess if you’re already eight you must know: the Living is our Saviour. He came into the world to conquer death. With His birth he put an end to the Great Reduction… You also know that the secret of the birth of the Living is one
of the greatest mysteries in the universe. You know that we don’t need solutions or answers, all we have to do is believe that His birth is a life-giving miracle…

You know all this. Every living knows this… But Cracker – the genius, the creator of
socio
, the heretic and madman – this Cracker, he turned everything inside out. For him the link between the Reduction and the Birth was obvious – but obvious in a different way, not like it is for the rest of us. He did not think the Living was our saviour. He thought he was a monster. He supposed that the Great Reduction was a sort of gestation period. The period when the embryo is being formed… The embryo, in his opinion, came about as a result of the
fusion
, and the fusion – you’ve guessed it already – happened as a result of mass cerebral installation. That is to say, Cracker thought that his work had personally brought the Living to life.

And he also used to tell everyone that the Butcher’s Son was not to blame for his crimes, that the Butcher’s Son was obeying the will of the embryo, and that all his murders were just part of the Great Reduction.

Nonsense, right? Just absurd. Don’t give it a thought. I just want you to realise how stubborn Cracker was. Cracker carried all this – his absurd sense of guilt, his absurd theory about the Great Reduction, his lack of respect for the Living, his confidence in the correctness of his own ideas – through the centuries, through many pauses and reproductions, through many bodies… And brought it to me.

He shared his theory with me during therapy on the Available Terrace.

Have I not told you about the Available Terrace? It was our second secret place, besides the hall with the Son’s chamber in it. Officially it was called the Green Terrace, in the old style, but this magnificent name had not caught on among the correctees, so we just gave it an ordinary name. As silly as this
sounds, the Green Terrace wasn’t available-coloured (pink tiles with a black design on the floor, walls made of pinkish glass) – the name, as the warders explained to us, had survived from those distant times when the colours ‘available’ and ‘busy’ had additional symbolic meanings. ‘Busy’ was, for some reason, associated with physical drives (‘passion’) and ‘available’ with nature. In a word, the Terrace was called available because that’s where the terrariums with the pets were. Every correctee had two or three little friends each, which they looked after: the warders thought that insect-therapy helped with
correction
. We had to feed our pets, clean their cages, change their water, sand or earth (depending on the little friend’s habitat), and, as well as this, according to some sort of unwritten rule, it was customary to chat to them.

It wasn’t that there was some rule which said we had to talk to them, no, it was just that certain correctees who were genuinely attached to their little friends always got the urge to coo at them a bit; the rest thought that silence would be interpreted as indifference or hard-heartedness, whereas a tender word addressed to a dragonfly or a caterpillar could only be a plus… There was no sound recording on the Available Terrace and the warders only occasionally observed us through the glass walls, but we knew that if we didn’t communicate with our pets the warders would know about it. ‘Get corrected: tell your warder everything,’ ‘Get corrected: help a friend with his correction,’ ‘Correct yourself: don’t hide anything’ – Cracker said that these banners kept flashing up for all of them. Informing a warder about suspicious behaviour is natural. Every word said to a warder can only be a plus. But silence will be interpreted as complicity.

Basically, there were always correctees milling about on the Available Terrace and their voices – monotonously
encouraging
, breaking into a falsetto with tenderness, be it fake or genuine – merged with the buzzing, squeaking and chirping of
their pets. It was certainly impossible to cut oneself off or get some quiet, and that was why the terrace was our secret place. In the crowd where everyone was saying something to their pets Cracker and I could discuss pretty much anything we liked in a whisper without drawing any attention to ourselves or arousing any suspicion.

‘…It’s the history of our world,’ Cracker said, seemingly to the spider. Uninterested, the spider trampled over the half-worn little square of paper and wandered higher up Cracker’s arm, towards his elbow.

On the piece of paper there were a series of rough drawings linked by short curved arrows. I remember it all well. Several separate little men (the scrawled caption: ‘ancient man’) – arrow – a person’s head with a nasty dark dot in the region of the forehead (caption: ‘cer. installation’) – arrow – a small incomprehensible little doodle (‘the embryo starts to form’) –
arrow – something like an egg with busy-coloured lines inside (‘growth of embryo = great reduction’) – arrow – a funny many-headed, many-armed monster with a rattle in one of its hands (‘birth of the monster = number of livings becomes unchanging’).

‘Throw away that horrible piece of crap right now,’ I said quietly and sweetly, as I would if I were talking to my pet. ‘Get rid of that piece of paper, you poor idiot. Put it in with my termite, he’ll gobble it up in no time…’

…At first, when I had only just been put in the House of Correction, I looked after a mosquito and a fly. I didn’t like them. The fly annoyed me with her random movements, her inability to concentrate on any specific aims or make a choice. After I fed her her dry feed – little beige balls that had a rich, rotten smell – she circled the cage for a long time, unable to decide which of the little balls to start her lunch with… I didn’t know what to talk to her about, so I normally just told her I hoped she had a nice meal and said ‘no death’. She didn’t feel anything for me either and, unlike the other correctees’ flies, she never sat on the glass between us if I came over. The female mosquito behaved differently: when she saw me she always got notably more animated, she liked my blood and, probably, liked me too. I didn’t get any particular pleasure from contact with her, but I never refused her her pleasure and did what she craved so much: I pressed the back of my hand or my cheek to the side wall of the cage. She acted with tact and care and didn’t take more than two portions of blood at a time. After her therapy two little soft pink raised mounds would be left on the surface of my skin; I rubbed them with a special cream which the entomologist gave me and they barely itched at all and disappeared completely after about three hours.

After a year Ef said that he was glad that I was taking good care of my two pets. I had shown myself in a good light and
now I had earned some encouragement: he would let me choose a third pet myself. Any of the species offered on the Available Terrace, it was up to me.

Of all the pets on the terrace the only one I really liked was a stag beetle that was the little friend of one of the pre-pausers, and I wanted to ask Ef to bring me one like that or, perhaps, give me that one when his owner temporarily ceased to exist… But instead I announced that I wanted a termite. ‘One?’ Ef asked unpleasantly and I said, ‘Yes.’ I still don’t fully
understand
why I asked for a termite. Probably just out of curiosity. Or maybe to restore some justice.

The termite colony was considered the pride and glory of our House of Correction (these insects often did not take to life in captivity); there was a whole special room dedicated to their needs, next to the Available Terrace, weakly lit and full of the smell of plastic and rotten wood. There, in the half-light, in the huge terrarium made of darkened plastic, half-filled with earth, the termite mound rose up. It reminded me of a castle, ravaged by winds and battered by time, built before the Nativity of the Living and inhabited by invisible ancient spirits. To my great disappointment, it was not possible to see the architectural details of this castle through the murky plastic. As for the ‘spirits’ that lived there, the termites never emerged outside, they were always hiding behind the castle walls, and of all the correctees – and this is what I thought was unfair – I was the only one who was not able to see the way they lived. The termites were never looked after by anyone except the staff entomologist: he had installed a lot of mini-cameras inside the termite mound on all the levels and in every section, which were directly linked to the correctees’
socio
. So that they could always watch everything live in second layer. I didn’t have
socio
. Perhaps that’s why I wanted to have
my own
termite.