‘You’ve out-geeked me there.’
‘Let me summarise. I am from the future.’
She rolled her eyes. The conversation had just jumped the shark. ‘No way are you from the future.’
The bedside phone rang. She picked it up.
‘Way,’ said a tinny voice.
‘Proves nothing.’ She put the phone down. ‘If you’re from the future, when do I die?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Against the laws of robotics or something?’
‘Coincidentally, my reason for withholding this information does indeed conflict with Asimov’s Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law, the First Law being: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. The First Law was later modified–’
‘Jesus, you’re boring. Fancy subjugating mankind with your silicon brethren?’
‘No, thank you.’
Jem spread some honey over her bread and chewed it.
‘All this banter just convinces me that you’re an actor and the card is no more than glorified speaker. OK, you sound like a computer, but I can feel your wit. There’s a humanity behind your words. A dash of pride; a pinch of frustration.’
‘Get me a glass of water.’
Jem swallowed and walked to the bathroom. She could not imagine what Ego would want with the water and expected the task to be a ruse that took her out of the room for a moment. When she returned, she looked at the door and the window. Nothing had changed. Likewise, the breakfast platter was untouched.
‘Here it is. Now what?’
‘Drop me in.’
‘I don’t want to void your warranty this early in our relationship.’
‘I cannot be damaged by the water.’
‘Well, here you go. Consider yourself dumped.’
Jem plopped Ego in the water. Part of her wanted to hear its voice bubbling from the surface. Instead, the card changed colour from white to black. ‘Seen that before,’ she said. ‘Unimpressed.’
The water seemed to shrink. Jem frowned and leaned forward. Its level was dropping. She lifted the glass and passed her hand underneath. No holes. When the glass was empty, she said, ‘I’m prepared to exchange my ‘unimpressed’ for a ‘wow’.’
‘My capacitor is recharged.’
‘You’re water-powered?’
‘Today.’
‘But there was more water in the glass than could fit inside you. Where did it really go?’
‘I now possess the water in a denser form.’
‘Gotcha,’ Jem said. She felt pleased to have spotted a mistake in the reasoning of the card, or whoever was controlling him. ‘That isn’t physically possible. Liquid is the densest form of water. Ice is less dense, and so is steam. Am I right?’
‘Is there a second option?’
Jem tipped her head to one side. ‘Funny.’
There was something frustratingly teacher-pupil about their exchange. She took Ego from the glass and rubbed a thumb along one side. It was dry. Her companion had an attractive, alien quality. She was conscious that it reminded her of Saskia.
‘Ego, what can you actually do for me that doesn’t involve posing as a credit card, infiltrating envelopes, and so forth?’
‘I can advise on a safe location for you to meet Danny. He will help us find Saskia.’
Jem was not prepared to hear her brother’s name. It had an unpleasant resonance, like a rhyme. The fun left her.
‘Why would we—I—do that?’
‘Saskia’s system never leaves her person. You want it, don’t you?’
She thought of the hipster jeans she had persuaded Saskia to buy. They would be charred now, torn, lost in a wasteland of wreckage.
‘What about Cory?’
‘Given that his attempt at social engineering has failed, he will be occupied with gaining entry to the secure room in Saskia’s apartment.’
‘Social engineering? You mean me?’
‘Yes.’
She walked to the window and ate the rest of her breakfast in silence.
Chapter Twelve
The Fernsehturm, Berlin’s TV and radio tower, rose from Alexanderplatz to a height that seemed unsupportable given its thin spire. The pavilion at the base always reminded Jem of those jagged bubbles in comics that appear when the hero punches the baddie. Pow! Up goes the tower. Almost at the top was a glittering mirror ball. Very disco. Inside the ball was an observation deck and restaurant. Above it was a thick ring of antennas and, higher still, a long shaft coloured red and white like a barber’s pole. Long ago, Danny had told her what the colours meant; what barbers had once done to people.
For a while, she waited on Gontardstrasse beneath one of the huge trees and watched people entering and leaving Alexanderplatz Station. It was cold. She had bought a scarf on the way and its edges flicked now and then as if shooing something off her shoulder. Jem shrugged inside her duffle coat. There were too many people, trams, and taxis. If someone was following her—someone like Cory—she might never know.
She approached the tower and entered the glass-walled pavilion. She added herself to the tourists queueing for the lifts. The atrium was uninspiring. It felt like a departure lounge to nowhere. That, and the connecting thought to aeroplanes, put more wood on the fire of her anxiety. Jem hugged herself. The truth of it was that Danny scared her more than Cory, more than the police, more than the half-heard revs-up, revs-down of failing jet engines on an aeroplane going down, down, down. There were so many words between her and her twin brother that needed to be unsaid. Jem needed a reversal, the mother of all undo buttons.
‘You see, there’s an anxiety in the background.’
The therapist has smelled something. Her blood is up.
‘Yes?’
The blood going down. The TV tower. Danny, what did the barbers do once upon a time?
‘It’s like the hiss of a TV tuned to a dead channel.’
Oh, how analogue. (TVs don’t do that anymore. No tuning. No snow. Those snows are gone.)
The therapist leans forward. Her MiniDisc recorder spins, swallowing their words byte by byte.
‘This hiss actually comes from the music box, doesn’t it?’
Jem looks at her. The therapist thinks she has made a discovery. There, in her eye: the mote of triumph. The self-congratulation and validation. I am a good therapist. Breathe. I am a good therapist.
Jem will hear that sentence one more time—I am a good therapist—when she confronts the woman on her doorstep, months after this conversation. ‘Is this real? Did I misremember what we said?’
‘How did you know about the music box?’
The therapist smiles. Her baggy, friendly face is close to Jem’s. Anything that Jem says will now be added to that growing edifice of certainty.
The MiniDisc recorder spins. The blood spirals down.
‘You mentioned the music box yesterday, when you were under. Do you remember the tune?’
The tune.
Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ.
Danny was waiting for her on the observation deck of the tower, unmistakable against the ashy sky. He was taller and broader than most—rowing, rugby—and dressed as if he was new money, which he was. His eyes were narrowed by habit and darkened by his pronounced brow. His blonde hair was thinning. He kept it short. As he noticed Jem and moved towards her, his long coat billowed. She felt a flush of privilege and fear as though he were a hawk coming to her arm. His swoop ended in an embrace. She pressed her cheek to his chest. He was squeezing too hard, but no less than she deserved.