If Then Read online

  The old man’s laugh sounded like kernels being sieved.

  “It is from Sunny Wu that the Process acquired the design of a manufactured body.”

  “But their minds?”

  “Yes!” Omega John raised an index finger. “How to forge a mind? Impossible!”

  Alex demurred. “We’ve simulated people before.”

  “Using digital technology.” His pronunciation picked apart the bones of that phrase, leaving only his contempt for it. “Digital was a diversion, a distraction from the real work at hand.”

  A thought occurred to him, and his hand fluttered for James to come closer.

  “How to communicate an experience directly, you see, from mind to mind – that is my life’s work.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “We’ve always known it’s possible, bailiff. The Institute has had many successes in that area. The problem was how. The brain is not a transmitter. Simple as. And yet nonetheless the phenomenon exists. Observe. Alex, serve the bailiff some tea.”

  From a blue teapot, Alex poured him a cup of white tea, the prized first picking of the leaf, she explained, too subtle for his palette until the aftertaste of jasmine, and then, after another sip, he discerned the initial stages of the flavour, experienced it retrospectively.

  Omega John worked his thin lips as if he too were savouring the tea, eyes closed, those long fingers playing the sound of the flavour upon the air.

  “Yes, jasmine. I can tune into your implant so that your sensations are communicated directly from you to me.”

  James was sceptical. “Can you read my mind?”

  “No. Vivid sensations, strong emotions, a powerful image. The implant puts you and I in harmony. Try something more personal.”

  He remembered Ruth, sobbing, the kitchen knife in her hand. She had reopened the library to chair a meeting about the potential for change offered by the crisis. Invited community leaders, turned her face to mankind and spoke with optimism against the turmoil. The meeting was broken up by the new police. A gangster policeman swaggered up onto the stage and took the microphone from her, feedback flooding the sound system. James fought his way through the crowd toward his wife. She was arguing with the gangster policeman; he did not bother to respond. From the stage he pointed out the cameras monitoring the crowd, reminded them of sanctions against illegal behaviour and ordered them to disperse. Later, in an argument over the worth of resistance, her shirt off, in her bra and skirt, Ruth picked up the knife to demonstrate the seriousness of her commitment, and the gesture was so futile, he realized that her anger was so heavy, it would crush her.

  Omega John gazed at James, and then awoke from his reverie to the dryness of his mouth, the stiff numbness in his fingers.

  “A powerful image of the humbling of a woman,” he whispered. “Your wife, Ruth. Ripe with emotional content. Alex also has an implant. If you wished, you and Alex could share the same dream through me. Would you like that?”

  Alex was gazing sideways at him, interested in his reaction.

  “My implant is there solely so that I can perform my role as bailiff.”

  Omega John laughed. “Of course! Letting you dream would be letting a hammer design a house!”

  At his request, they moved their tea party out to his garden, the orderlies carrying the table, chairs and tea set. The grounds of the old house were expansive; junctions were marked with sculptures, curved evocations of natural shapes in iron and wood, and there was a maze and a secret grove strung with lanterns. The lawn turned downhill toward a tidal estuary, the waters flowing back toward the house like a cat coming in at night, bringing a brackish air of mud and life’s fresh rot. Omega John’s garden consisted of terraces of vegetable beds, a winding path of Moroccan multicoloured tiles, and a Victorian hothouse containing an outsized biomass of rubber and banana trees, steam curling around their little party, water dripping from above. Omega John stopped at the fruit trees; with a short sharp knife, he cropped starfruit and mango, the former tart and sour, the latter sweet, for the party to pass among them. He did not eat himself, pleading “a quite impossible digestive system”, but insisted that James and Alex sample the fruit so that he could taste it by proxy.

  They left the hothouse through a covered passage and came into the high netting of an aviary.

  “The beginning of my collection,” he said. A tall tree rose to the top of the aviary, its branches smooth as carbon rods, their configurations unnatural in the way they bent back toward the trunk.

  “A tree router. You may remember at the beginning of the Process that we planted one of these next to the school.”

  James sidled next to Alex, “Is this your work?”

  “A collaboration between my employers and the Institute.”

  With two strong wing beats, a large rook settled on a near branch, its black eyes registering their appearance.

  “He sees you,” said Omega John. “The stripe stores that impression, and then it is carried through the router tree to the computational matter.”

  “Where is that kept?”

  Omega John shrugged.

  “Here and there. We dispersed it to ensure redundancy. Alex is the expert on that.”

  “Distributed computing. There’s no centralization in nature, either. We’re exploring correlations between the digital and biological. Some of them are merely analogous but significant findings indicate that, operationally, we can move data from one to the other. My employers tasked me with safeguarding their proprietorial algorithms in the event of failure and noise in the digital network. The Seizure was that event. I’d been tracking the work of the Institute for a long time; they always seemed close to finding a way of running algorithms on a biological substrate, but they had a number of setbacks.”

  Omega John snorted humourlessly at this veiled reference.

  “But it’s more than a backup. Shifting our intellectual property into the biosphere has accelerated its evolution. Biofeedback is so much more granular than user behaviour.”

  The rook, having measured them with its regal gaze, gnawed briefly at the smooth rod of the branch, then flew up to a higher vantage point.

  “We’ve restored the algorithm to its native habitat.” Omega John’s lips were dry, and he held an empty hand up into which an orderly placed a drink carton. “Biological processes are inherently algorithmic, designed by nature to solve computational problems across all levels of life: molecular, cellular and at the level of the organism; you, the rook, and then a group of organisms, your town.” He could not puncture the carton with the sharp end of the white straw. The orderly performed this tiny act for him. Omega John took a single sip, shook his head, and handed it back. The fluid leaked out of the corner of his mouth, and had to be dabbed away.

  “Nature uses algorithms to model the cost of behaviour in terms of energy. The biological sphere of our world is designed to compute. In nature, the mass behaviour of organism is an equation designed to arrive at optimal use of resources.”

  Their discussion became too technical for James; he knew it was for his benefit, that they hoped to impart some understanding of his situation so that he could perform his role within it. In all his visits to the Institute, all the way back to his convalescence when he was first fitted with the implant, he had never been to this part of the grounds. He pointed this out. Omega John sighed.

  “The appearance of Hector is – as Alex used to so tiresomely say – a game changer.” His contempt for the idiom of digital business was the closest he came to humour.

  Alex said, “Making soldiers is not an optimal use of resources. It’s more like a peacock’s tail, a display of redundancy to advertise fitness to potential mates.”

  “Like art or war,” explained Omega John. “We need to study the Process further, to catch up, as it has exceeded the limits of our understanding. That is where you come in.”

  “We want you to understand the importance of our work,” said Alex. “In terms of the future.”
/>   He had long since lost interest in the future.

  The path ended in a low white picket gate and fence, beyond which there was a single apple tree, a wicker chaise longue and a rusty hookah.

  “My private garden. My sanctuary,” said Omega John. His orderlies helped him to his feet. He bent over and knocked the gate off its latch, and shuffled in his sleeping bag to the chaise longue. “My work with the Process does not afford me as much time to think as I would like. I’ve been dallying with Paracelsus, a hero of mine. He was an independent thinker, a wanderer and iconoclast. He moved through colleges, dissatisfied by them all. He served as an army surgeon. A noble position to take, the healer amidst the war.”

  He beckoned to James, and then pointed out a small trowel to the bailiff.

  “Dig,” he commanded. “Dig here.”

  James ran his fingers across the soil, and finding earth with some give, he dug into it with the trowel, then set aside a section of soil.

  “You’ll have to reach inside,” said Omega John. “Do you feel it?”

  James slid his fingers into the mulch and, finding nothing other than soil and leaf matter, he set himself to lean deeper into the ground. His fingertips brushed against something smooth and dreadfully organic.

  “That’s it,” said Omega John. “Careful now, reach in with both hands and bring it to the surface.”

  He dug in with his other hand, and grasped both edges of the thing, and it sagged in the middle as he lifted it up. Brushing aside the soil, it was a large organ of some sort, too large for a human, he guessed. He passed it over to Omega John, who located a stitched seam; he untied a knot, and unlaced the catgut so that the organ parted neatly, revealing a massy bloody interior. The smell of something fetid and fungal.

  “Closer, look.”

  He felt thoughts reach out from his implant, the god stuff, the wisdom that came from without. Omega John was still talking about Paracelsus, how true wisdom lay in the discovery of the latent forces of Nature, but what he was showing James, what James saw wriggling in the horse’s womb was a private vision: he saw tiny white homunculi, seven of them mewling with foetal features, their feet fused in a lazy tail; nestled in blood, the sperm of Omega John growing in his garden.

  4

  Hector stood naked and at ease in the bathroom. James washed him by candlelight, dressed him in a pair of homemade pyjamas, then led Hector to the cellar and lay him down to bed. In the weeks since they took him in, Hector’s hair had grown out into dark curls, his haunted gaze relaxing into a casual tired regard.

  Market day was bright and cool. The moss on the brickwork was white with frost. The stalls set up around the war monument ran along the connecting thoroughfares of Market Lane and School Hill. He stood behind his front door, at the bottom of the stairs, and listened to the town go about its business; everyone was so polite, almost reverentially so. The subtle nod of recognition that passed between the folk. A talent for forgetting is necessary to maintain civility. James stepped out of his house and into the throng, with Hector following dutifully behind.

  The sounds of market day: hooves skittering cautiously upon cobblestones; the to-and-fro of barter echoing under the brickwork arches of the bell tower; the creak of burdened cart wheels. Produce was laid out on the pavement, root vegetables on upturned palettes attended to by the Dutch farmer from Welsummer. He couldn’t remember her name. She was gnomish in three layers of woollens and a blue woollen beanie, black trousers tapering to sturdy boots. Three times outsiders had squatted at Welsummer, and twice he had chased them away with appeals to their good sense, only for the squatters to return in greater numbers. When the Process selected them for a third eviction, he went back in the armour and that was that. They were outsiders and one of them died under his iron tread. The farmer did not speak to him when he passed her by; her rough hands paused in their task of sorting bundles of rosemary and her gaze, rustic in duration, followed Hector.

  Not all of the stalls were useful. Some townsfolk were there just to be part of something – the old men with broken suitcases full of foraged toys and bruised apples, the grey-haired women selling the surplus of their communes: old Coke bottles of bitter cider, hand-printed pamphlets, nettle jam and circuit boards. He sought out Piper’s lad and his wares of dressed pheasant, squirrels and skinned rabbits. James bought two brace from the boy, noting his swollen fingers, bloodied from gutting, as they whiffled through the livid green notes of local currency. At the end of the transaction, James touched his heart to indicate his satisfaction and the lad did the same.

  He walked the orderly line of repairmen with individual placards detailing skills offered and services required. This was residual behaviour, rendered unnecessary by the Process. Their skills and availability would be sorted algorithmically and bartered accordingly with other townspeople and their labour; that was how the Process generated the core work schedule for the town, and gave meaning to labour that had become meaningless. But the market had a role to play that was more than trade. It was a social occasion, a chance to get out, to see and be seen. The metrics of happiness required old rituals, old ways of doing things, and so time was set aside within the work schedule for the townspeople to make their own trades.

  A repairman, bald and heavy, his stripe glistening with sweat, risked an ingratiating stoop before him.

  “Do you have any little jobs you need doing around the place? I’m up this street next week repairing the roof of the town hall. It’d be no trouble.” And then the bald man whispered, “It’s free to the bailiff.”

  James ignored the offer, and went over to where Ruth stood in line with the other seamstresses. Her samples were slung over her arm: dresses, children’s clothes, shirts and hair ribbons. He touched her hand, noting the callouses upon her fingertips, how they seemed so much older than her face; her hands were aged by all the midnights she spent at a table under the sash window, working her hand-turned sewing machine by candlelight. When the machine was hot with work, it gave off the frazzled lint and tobacco ghosts of its previous owner. She kissed him and then steered him away. His presence intimidated potential customers and she was intent upon securing a trade on market day.

  At the war memorial, he pulled Hector to him so that they could read the names of local casualties of sundry wars. The longest entry was from the First World War.

  “Here are the names of the dead, from your time.”

  Hector’s pale grey eyes gazed obediently at the lettering and the numbers.

  “Do you remember the war?”

  Hector was close to finding his voice, his throat and mouth worked in anticipation of speaking.

  “Do you remember anything? Why are you here?”

  No answers to his questions, not yet.

  They were interrupted by a woman in stout boots and a long brightly-coloured felt coat, of similar stature to James and therefore considerably taller than the stretcher bearer. This was Councillor Edith Von Pallandt.

  “Is this him?” asked Edith, putting her hand upon Hector’s clavicle so that she could appraise him. She gestured to her husband to come out of the crowd so that he too could examine the manufactured man. Baron Von Pallandt had shaved his grey hair close to the scalp to accentuate the raised central ridge of his stripe.

  “What is your opinion of the stretcher bearer?” she asked her husband rhetorically.

  “Not good, Edith.”

  “We need to talk about your soldier,” she announced.

  “He does not belong to me,” said James.

  “He lives in your house. He eats your food. He does eat, doesn’t he?” For a vegetarian, her smile was distinctly carnivorous. “You are responsible for him. We live in a very delicate state of balance.” Edith held both hands out palms flat, weighing out invisible forces. “When you consider who we have lost, we must be very careful as to who we gain. Have you found more of these soldiers on your patrols?”

  “I have not been out since. The Institute told me to monitor Hector so
I keep him with me at all times. I am afraid that if I take him back to the Downs, the Process will come on too quickly and we will lose him without learning anything.”

  “What do you hope to learn?”

  “I am only doing as the Institute requested.”

  “Their request makes sense. You are our most qualified individual when it comes to the inhuman.”

  She didn’t expect him to respond to her sarcasm and instead put her hand upon his arm by way of coercion.

  “We are due another list of evictions.” Her fingers pinched at her necklace for comfort.

  “Already?”

  “Yes. We thought we had reached a stable state but it seems not.”

  “We believe your soldier is the cause,” said the Baron. “He is the new element.”

  The market day crowd pushed between them and against them. Edith put her hand up to indicate that they would speak no more of it in public, and he agreed to visit the council soon.

  All the people of Lewes came into town for allocation day, keen to discover what the Process had in mind for their future. Would there be a box allocated to Hector too? If there was, did that mean the Process had intended all along for him to become a member of the folk? If Edith was right, and Hector was the cause of the increase in the number of evictions, then surely reason would dictate that Hector’s name would be on the next eviction list. He shivered at the prospect of receiving the list; as Edith hinted, the dictation of the list was one of those moments when he was inhuman.

  As noon approached, the people gathered down School Hill. James found Ruth among them. She shared her gains with him – a gallon of barley wine in exchange for two smocks, an agreement to unblock the waste pipe in return for running repairs to a family’s clothes – and then, anxious for the allocation, they fell in step with the quickly moving crowd. Hector walked between them and Ruth took the soldier’s hand.