Debatable Space (45 page)

It’s just another ruse on my part. You’re really just a crabby old whore.

Don’t backtrack, I know what you really think now.

Some of it. Not all. Oh, look! Some more of your memories for me to plunder!

Stop it, Flanagan! No! I forbid you to do that.

First time you had sex – mmm, that didn’t last long. Holiday in the Caribbean – very nice. You and that other little girl.
Clara is it? The Queendom of Alchemy! How embarrassingly twee.

Not in the least.

I rather like freckles.

Stop it. Stop dabbling in me.

You’ve got your dad’s nose you know. Or at least, back then you did, before the plastic surgeries.

Leave me alone! This is tantamount to rape!

I’m not touching you. Oh my God! That’s a nasty one.

What? What is it?

That memory there, slightly to the left of the Inter-Rail holiday in Europe. What you thought when your mother died. You were
glad
, weren’t you?

Of course not!

You felt a surge of joy. “Stupid, bullying, undermining old bitch. I’m glad she’s dead!” That’s what you thought, isn’t it?

That’s not true!

Of course it’s true, I just explored the memory.

I loved her! I loved my mother. But… she was a difficult woman. And the news came as a terrible surprise. And we all
have bad thoughts. We can’t help them, can we? And I didn’t mean it. I didn’t . . .

You’ve spent your life feeling guilty for that one bad thought.

Yes.

You shouldn’t.

Yes I should.

Well, do what you fucking like.

You’re a bastard for doing this.

And finally, he sees my darkest thought, my greatest pain.

Lena, the son you loved no longer exists. (I feel Flanagan’s warmth, his sympathy, and I recoil.) You’re doing the right thing.
Trust me.

You’ve seen my memories of Peter? You’ve seen me suckle him?

You never suckled him.

Whatever. Now it’s my turn. To rummage and delve in the something whatchmacall of your soul.

Mmm, almost a nice metaphor, that.

Fuck off. Ah, now we’ve come to it. Your memories of me! This is my first appearance. This is me smashing up your face. And
– oh dear, oh dear. Ouch!

It serves you right for looking.

I’d no idea that thing of mine annoyed you so much. Oooh, and you didn’t like
that
. And I didn’t think anyone thought
that
about me. And… stop it, Flanagan! Stop doing it back, stop looking inside me . . .

What
is
this? This thought you’re trying to hide?

Leave it, Flanagan. It’s private. It’s…

You… actually really do love me?

Yes.

Fucking hell. Lena… I…

You what? You love me too?

No way. Look as deep as you like, you’ll find no such thought, no such memory.

That’s because you’re in denial. But I can sense it. I can feel it. You love me.

Bollocks.

I can’t blame you. I deserve to be loved.

Ah, away to fuck you… Oof!

Pain distorts his face. “Jesus!”

“Aaargh!” I hear a scream – it’s me. I try to stand up, but I fall straight back down again.

Time to start moving.

Jesus, Flanagan, my legs hurt, I’m in fucking agony, what happened?!?

It wasn’t the best of landings.

I realise with horror that both my legs are broken and my spine has snapped, because of the terrific impact when we hit the
ground. Flanagan is just as badly hurt. But the DRs are resilient, so we quickly get up. We set our cyberorganisms to “Repair”
Mode and wait.

Flanagan DR looks strangely unlike the real Flanagan, because of the haircut and lack of beard. And – this’ll be a nice surprise
for him – I made the computer build him a two-inch penis.

He looks at me, and I look at him.

“I was wrong,” he says humbly. “I had no right to… pillage your mind.”

“It’s typical of your approach.”

“And I had no idea you… had such feelings about me.”

“How? How could you have no idea? We’ve been lovers for some time.”

“That’s just sex.”

“Not for me. There’s no ‘just’ anything.”

A silence lingers. He looks sheepish, almost ashamed.

“So, how about it?” I say.

“Robot sex? I think not. We have a mission.”

And, also, two inches of plastic cock is hardly the way to a girl’s heart. I grin, smugly. Flanagan looks flustered at my
odd expression.

After an hour, my broken legs are healed. We start walking.

“Where’s the magnetic railway?”

“No railway, Flanagan. No roads either. There’s a subterranean Metro system.”

“Christ, that must have cost a fortune.”

“When I was a girl,” I tell him, “we had non-computerised tarmac roads called motorways. The cars moved with wheels on the
ground, they were manually operated, they often crashed. You had to drive on sheer adrenalin. And large areas of countryside
were covered with these roads or cluttered with towers they called pylons, for transmitting electricity.”

“It’s looking pretty uncluttered now.”

Green meadows stretch out as far as the eye can see. Some deer are grazing nearby. I see a stag with huge antlers.

“How do we get to this Metro?”

I thump on the trunk of an oak tree. The earth beneath me starts to sink. Flanagan is standing next to me, and we both descend
on a clump of moving grass.

We enter the underworld. “London,” I murmur, and we are transferred to a pod. We take our seats and look around.

“Nice room,” says Flanagan, and my ears pop, and then we’re there.

The Metro opens out into St James’s Park. When I was young, this was bounded by the Mall, a wide road which led on to Buckingham
Palace, the private residence of the monarch. Now the park spills into the Mall and occupies all of Buckingham Palace, which
has become a fantastic theme park. We admire the views, as our stepping stones effortlessly glide us along.

“Are any of your brothers and sisters still alive, Flanagan?”

“They all died.”

“Under the imperial yoke?”

“That kind of thing, yeah. You?”

“My brother was an accountant. He lived in Basingstoke. He had a heart attack when he was sixty-six. My sister wanted to be
a ballerina, but she never made the grade. She ended up teaching ballet to six year-olds. She lived to a ripe old age, she
was nearly ninety when she died. Oh and there was the other sister too, she died in her forties.”

“All a long time ago, huh?”

“I’ve got the memories on RAM. Hey, that’s a leopard.”

“Cheetah.”

“Leopard. Cheetahs are leaner and have different spots.”

It’s a cheetah.

“Ah, shit, you’re ganging up on me.”

Lions, tigers, elephants and cheetahs roam freely past us. Giraffes chew the high leaves on the palm trees that line the Mall.

“Are the animals microchipped?”

“Don’t know.”

Yes. They’re equipped with Whedon chips, they are incapable of hurting humans.

“Apparently, yes.”

“I went to Tarzan once. Do you know that planet? It’s seeded entirely with African fauna and flora. Whole planet is a jungle,
the people wear loincloths. The gorillas are genetically enhanced, they run the labs and the factories.”

“Sounds weird.”

“I wrestled a crocodile. It was an icebreaking thing.”

“I’d love to be a Dolph. That’s my secret dream. Swim the oceans. You never have to wash.”

“Do Dolphs shampoo their hair?”

Yes.

“Yes they do.”

“I always wanted to fly.”

“We did fly.”

“True. But I always wanted to be, you know, a seagull.”

“A seagull?”

“Yeah. I like the sea. You get to fly. You crap on people.”

“Good lifestyle.”

“I always thought so. Which way?”

“Under the Arch, then turn right.”

We go under Admiralty Arch and into Trafalgar Square. Nelson’s Column stands proud, a memorial to Nelson, whose actual battles
I now no longer remember.

Admiral Horatio Nelson. Fought the expansionist French Emperor Napoleon in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century
AD at a series of major battles, culminating in the battle of Waterloo in . . .

Whatever. I am impressed to see that the National Gallery now has an extra storey, built with transparent floors and walls.
People and paintings seem to hang in mid-air, above the classical dome of the original gallery.

“Is this what they call classical architecture?”

“Neoclassical. Classical is Greeks and Romans. This is more, like, what you’d call, Palladian.”

Very good.

I do love to be patronised by my own brain. We walk on. Towards Whitehall, which is now a torrential, surging river bounded
by paths on each side. Instead of using the paths, we cockily use a river stone to make our way down – a flat disc that takes
our weight and hops us lightly along the frothing, foaming waters.

“Watch out for the Cenotaph!”

“What a stupid fucking place to put a statue.”

At the end of this road are the old Houses of Parliament, which are now home to the Galactic Corporation. I marvel at Big
Ben, an old clocktower which is now controlled by a nuclear clock and until a few days ago, set Earth Time for the entire
inhabited Universe. And I drink in the complex shapes and architectural rhythms of the Parliament building itself, now modified
by the shimmer of the hardglass towers that soar high above Webb and Pugin’s original architecture.

The Cheo has his offices in the adjoining Westminster Abbey, above the swimming pools and private bars. With room after room
of vidscreens and computer sim consoles, he was able to see and hear and physically perceive any event or any person, anywhere
in the Universe. Until, of course, a few days ago, when he blew up all the Beacons.

“Do you think my son will be angry with me?”

“Bet on it.”

“You can’t blame me for loving him, you know. And when he was a baby, he was so damned cute.”

“Babies frighten me.”

“I don’t think I can go through with this.”

“You have to. It’s your duty. It’s your mission. You’re a hero, now, Lena. People will write songs about it.”

“Not fucking dirgey blues songs, I hope.”

“
Dirgey
?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You don’t like my songs.”

“They make me, you know. Depressed.”

“That’s why they call it the blues!”

“Well they should just call it the Fucking Groany Depressing!”

Please, can we have a bit less bickering.

“My remote computer says it wants a bit less bickering.”

“Tell your computer to fuck off.”

“Computer, fuck off.”

I’m sulking now.

Ah, I love you really.

Really?

Not really. Keep focused, tinbrain. We’re about to have a fight on our hands.

At the end of Whitehall, DR Security Guards quietly assess our presence. Our images are transmitted to the Corporation Main
Brain computer bank which, as it happens, is also my remote computer. We come up as “No Threat” and are allowed through into
Parliament Square.

We stand and look around.

That’s Winston Churchill.

I know.

He was a famous wartime leader in the mid-twentieth century. He was also a writer and artist and…

I know, I know! I do have
some
long-term recall you know. I’ve seen films about Churchill. My grandfather went to his funeral.

“Are you ready?” Flanagan asks.

A firefly twinkles in the air above his head. I blink.

“I’m ready.”

We open our duffel bags. We have equipped ourselves with weapons from the armoury in the space station. Bombs, laser guns
and, of course, swords. Because the DRs who protect the Cheo are Energy Absorbers and can shrug off any direct attack by laser,
explosive or bullet. They effectively
drink up
the energy from any energy-based weapon. But swords confound their defences; and if you chop off their heads, they’re in
trouble.

“Let’s fight!”

An elephant roars with horror as our first bombs explode. We run forward shooting with our laser guns – which are computer-targeted
on the DRs’ own guns, allowing us to disarm dozens of them in the first few seconds of our assault.

Then Three DRs run in front of me, and I unsheath my sword and sweep off their heads.

Flanagan throws a flare bomb and the square vanishes in a blinding light. With our eyes closed we run towards the Abbey, guided
by the faithful voice in my head.

Lena, run directly forward, take a kink to the left, Flanagan keep closer to her, keep your hand on her shoulder, DRs on your
right, missile incoming duck and run . . .

We hurl a bomb at the doors of the Abbey and run inside. Our swords snick and shear and robot bodies die all around us Then
I strike off a head and, shockingly, blood spurts. We’ve reached the human defences; we are killing men and women now.

Our robot bodies are abnormally strong and fast; and our human reflexes are honed and refined in battle. We carve a bloody
path through the Abbey and run up the stairs. Door after door falls to our bombs and flares. Robots and humans lie thickly
dead on the marble floors.

We breach the Cheo’s inner sanctum. The Cheo is waiting for us, with an entourage of his fellow directors, and an army of
DR bodyguards.

“Lena?” he says, in a voice of bewilderment. I feel a momentary stab of satisfaction. We have caught him offguard. We . .
.

Then I see a familiar look in his eyes. Triumph. Contempt. He’s played me for a fool. He’s killed the next-door cat and fed
it in portions to the rats in the meadow. He’s put dog turd in a little girl’s lunchbox. He’s raped a girl and fooled me into
thinking he is innocent. It is all there, in his stare.
He knew we were coming
.

Flanagan begans shooting at the DRs and the company directors, leaping and diving out of the way of the returning fire. But
I stand still, in horror, for I see that my son is surrounded by a force field of a type I do not recognise, which is causing
the air around him to shimmer and distort. And his skin is pale, with the texture of plastic… he is
wearing
the armoured skin of a Doppelganger Robot. With the combination of the armour and the force field he is, I realise, invulnerable.