The Living (25 page)

‘…from a lack of love. Even though we say that the Living is full of love and every part of him loves every other, in practice it is not like that at all… so then… there is no point in supp… what’s this word? I can’t make it out… ah! in suppressing the instinctive attachment… Hey, lad, give me that magnifying glass!… that biological Darlings have for each other… love between a man and a woman… revive ancient family values… institution of marriage… hmm!… bla bla bla… and fofs! reform of the Houses of Correction… responsibility for
pre-pause
crimes seems…heh-hem!… doubtful…’ Second put down the magnifying glass and the piece of paper covered in the Wise One’s writing. ‘I haven’t read in first layer for a hundred years, goodness me, my eyesight has really gone… Well, what can I say? It’s fantastic!’

Second flopped back in his chair and was about to burst out laughing, but instead launched into a wet and crunchy cough – as if inside his chest someone was kneading half-melted snow covered in a brown crust. ‘He’s so old,’ Zero thought, ‘
unnaturally
old; the body of the Living shouldn’t have to support guys as old as him, and definitely not in the leadership, in the, “brains”, so to speak…’ But out loud he said:

‘So, do you like my speech?’

‘Of course I like it!’ Second pressed a napkin to his beard and hawked up the remnants of laughter and coughing. ‘It reads like a treatment for a fantasy show…’

The Wise One was seeing the old man for the third time in his life. Their first meeting had taken place a month ago, on the day Zero had been brought to the Residence. Back then he had been shocked by how incredibly dilapidated the old man’s body was (Second did not just look old, he looked
unliving
) in comparison with how absolutely sharp his mind was. Second was gentle with him, like a father, and congratulated him
sincerely on his appointment and even extended his freckled and wrinkled hand in its contact glove, which was lined with swollen veins, in order to perform the ancient rite of the
handshake
. When he heard that the Wise One liked the scent of
first-layer
flowers and herbs, Second immediately arranged for him to be given apartments with windows facing the garden… You couldn’t really call the second meeting a meeting – after a few days the old man had collapsed with pneumonia and Zero had gone round to visit him – Second was lying with his eyes wide open and whistling and squawking as he breathed; he didn’t notice his guest – he was probably resting from his suffering in deep layers… ‘He’s not going to come out of it,’ Zero thought then. ‘It’s cruel to torture him like this, he should be given a mercy pause…’

But the old man was stubborn. And today, on the day of the conference of the Council of Eight, he had found the strength to get up and go through to the conference hall. However, his thoughts were obviously getting confused this time:

‘…If you like, I’ll send this text to Fifth’s deputy so that he can forward it to his guy in the Association of Screenwriters, it’s a brilliant idea, they should take it up, they’re going through a bit of a drought over there…’

‘He’s just blathering away,’ Zero realised with sadness. ‘Old age has, finally, taken its toll. Or perhaps he’s delirious from his fever.
Like Ef, back in the zoo
…’ The Wise One frowned and chased the thought away. He had died and risen again. The planetman, raving in his orang-utan cage, was from another,
previous
life. Now everything was different. He has died and risen again. He is a member of the Council of Eight. He is as a child, and all has been forgiven…

‘What have screenwriters got to do with anything…?’ Zero looked meaningfully at the Servant of Order, as if to say, it’s not looking good.

The Servant was silent. Somehow strangely silent.

‘I think there is something you have not quite understood,’ the Wise One tried to speak loudly and clearly, so that his words would break through the crust of senile confusion. ‘This is not an idea for a show. This is the text for my first speech at the conference of the Council of Eight. It’s starting in fifteen minutes. With a live feed from here, from the first-layer
conference
…’

‘Gopz,’ Second said sharply; behind his white beard his face went crimson with coughing and fury. ‘I know what is starting and where and when. But there is something which you have really not understood, sonny. This thing here…’ – Second grabbed the piece of paper with the Wise One’s speech on it from the table and shook it in the air – ‘…there’s only one thing the members of the Council of Eight might need this for: wiping their behinds. Now listen to me very carefully. Listen carefully…’ Second suddenly realised that he had lost his train of thought. ‘Listen up and memorize this in that first-layer brain of yours…’

‘Father!’ The Servant of Order shook his head reproachfully.

Second closed his eyes a little – his short grey eyelashes drowned in his swollen eyelids – and created a new document on his
desktop
. It is easier to formulate your thoughts in
socio
than straightaway out loud. He saved the document under the name ‘0’ and punched in there, point by point, everything that he wanted to say to this idiot. Then he read out loud:

‘Right then, number one. You will never be connected to
socio
. You have been brought in as a professional first-layerer – and you will stay a first-layerer forever. So please don’t go pestering either the sysadmins or the members of the Council.
You will use an external
socio
slot with a monitor through which you will be able to send and receive certain messages. That will suffice. Number two. You have not been brought in to share your crazy ideas with members of the Council. Seeing as it is now…’ – Second jabbed Zero’s speech in irritation – ‘… absolutely clear to me that you are not capable of offering anything practical, henceforth at conferences of the Council of Eight you will read out the text I give you…’

‘With all due respect… what are you… how dare you?!’ The Wise One physically sensed the anger flood into his head and face in hot, pulsing waves, and then subside along with his seething blood, leaving behind only a sonorous silence.

‘The Diver appointed me to the Council of Eight,’ Zero said with white lips. ‘Second, you have no right either to take that tone with me or to lord it over me. I am the Wise One. My ideas…’

‘You are a big fat nothing!’ Second started coughing,
whooping
like a crow.

‘I outrank you, you have to treat me with respect,’ Zero mumbled and shuddered with self-disgust. His voice sounded
quiet and somehow begging, as if he were scrounging seconds of lunch in the House dining hall.

Second grunted – something between a cough and a laugh – but said nothing.

‘I am Eighth and the Wise One,’ Zero tried to give his voice a hardness. ‘I was appointed by the Diver. To take his place.’

‘…And your job is to be a puppet, just like him.’

‘Father, you have a fever,’ the Servant said out loud. ‘You are insulting the Wise One and the Diver. You don’t know what you are saying. I am afraid it’s not worth you participating in the conference today.’

‘What does that mean, “puppet”? What is he trying to say?’ the Wise One asked in an alien, somehow mosquito-like voice. ‘I will make what you have said public at the conference of the Council…’

Second opened his mouth slightly – a small dark hole in the grey curls of his beard – and broke down in a coughing fit. His whitish tongue would poke out for a moment, like a curious worm from its hole, and then hide back inside.

‘He’s just delirious.’ The Servant of Order patted Second on the back sympathetically. ‘He’s still not well, I shouldn’t have got him out of bed…’

‘Gopz,’ the old man jerked his shoulders in disgust to make the Servant take his hand away.

The coughing fit passed, but Second was breathing heavily. The pinkish-white worm crawled out of its hole again and rubbed up against the old man’s parched lips, leaving a sticky, slimy trail on them.

‘Hey, sonny…’ Second looked at Zero, and the Wise One noticed that his eyes had cleared. ‘It was wrong of me to be so rude to you. Forgive an old man. Sickness and worry are eating me up from the inside, like unfed pets. That’s why I lose control sometimes and can be slightly… out of sorts. So… can I count on your magnanimous forgiveness, Wise One?’

‘Of course,’ Zero replied crisply and without colour. Like a puppet.
Like a mechanical talking puppet…

With great effort the old man pulled himself up and extended a shaking, bony hand towards Zero. ‘Just like that, no glove. Very touching,’ Zero thought, just as mechanically, and shook the proffered hand. It was dry and hot.

Overcoming his disgust, Second held the Wise One’s icy hand in his. His son was right. Rude, but right. There was no need to lose his temper.

‘Well, no harm done,’ he said. ‘Now take this.’ Second opened a desk drawer and pulled out a dirty, well-thumbed piece of paper, covered on both sides in crooked scribbles. ‘Sorry about the handwriting,’ the old man hunched over apologetically. ‘I don’t get any practice in first layer… Not like you, Wise One.’

‘What is this?’ the Wise One asked for some reason, even though he knew perfectly well
what
.

‘It’s my version of your First Speech,’ Second replied.

‘I’m not planning on…’

‘I’m begging you…’ The old man raised his hand in
conciliation
. ‘First just read it. If you don’t agree with my version, well then, propose yours to the Council of Eight. Although, in my opinion, that would be a huge mistake.’

‘Alright.’ Zero picked up the paper and ran his eyes over the text crossly.

‘Eighth, the Wise One, welcomes all members of the Council. Friends! I am very worried and will get straight down to
business
…’

‘Out loud if possible,’ the Servant asked and rocked back in his chair, crossing his arms comfily across his stomach and half-closing his eyes, as if getting ready to hear his nightly lullaby. ‘I’d also like to find out what’s in there.’

…The Dissidents present a direct first-layer threat to the Living. It is our sacred duty to fight this attack in all its forms.
Practically
all categories of dissident are extremely dangerous:

Antivectorites
(who disagree with the dictates of their
invector
) threaten the Living’s principle of professional continuity.

Old-Livings
(who disagree with age limits for each specific reproduction) threaten the Living’s health and youth.

Precautioners
(women who disagree with the necessity for compulsory conception after copulation) – perhaps the most dangerous category, they threaten the very principle of the Living’s reproduction.

Familials, group A
(who disagree with the need to be
separated
from their Darlings) threaten the Living’s intellect, mental health and progress. These people (primarily women) see their ‘continuation’ in their Darlings, and not in themselves. In so doing they drive society into the primordial savagery based on grievous perversions and animal instincts.

Familials, group B
(‘couples’ who do not agree with the necessity for regular changes in partner and remain ‘faithful’, as it is known, to each other) threaten the Living’s freedom of choice, imposing artificial and harmful proprietorial
instincts
on him.

Tritheists
(who disagree with the fact that there is no god but the Living, who is one in three billion) threaten the cultural heritage of the Living with their absurd belief in a hideous god with three heads (the head of the father, the head of the son, the
head of the bird) and strive to sabotage belief in the sacred text of the Book of Life.

The ‘Available World’ society
(who disagree with the absence of contact between the Living and Our Little Brothers) are perhaps the only ones who do not present a threat. The Living is actually very interested both in establishing contact with
animals
and in domesticating them.

Dear friends! To aid us in the battle against first-layer threats I propose the following:

1. Introduce tougher penalties for Dissidents. Compulsory pause with subsequent correction in the relevant institutions seems to me to be an adequate and sensible measure.

2. Increase accordingly the number of Houses of Correction (at least double).

3. Introduce a State of Emergency. I will tell you about that last point separately.

Until now it has only been the Wise One who has, before every pause or final immersion, chosen a new Diver to replace him (this time he appointed me). However, the State of
Emergency
makes it possible for all members of the Council to pass down power not on the basis of invector, but by appointing a successor. This radical measure is designed to help us, in these difficult days for the Living, avoid so-called ‘memory lapses’ – the long and inevitable periods during the reproduction of members of the Council (gestation, infancy, and childhood until eight years old) when it is impossible to access their cell in Renaissance Bank. My friends! At such a critical moment as this, such lengthy losses of memory – and, consequently, of experience and know-how – for several members of the Council is unacceptable.