“I know,” Alice said. “He wanted to provoke me into doing something. Silly fucker.” The little girl walked over to the blanket bundle. “Is this her?”
“Yes,” said Rae.
Alice lifted a corner of the blanket. There was nothing underneath that resembled a human being. There was nothing but a mass of hands, linked together by short lengths of arm and wrist, writhing and spasming in constant motion, the fingers wiggling and opening and closing. Alice shook her head and said, “What a fucking mess.”
“Little girls shouldn’t swear,” Rae told her.
“Fuck off. I’m really pissed off about what you did to that nasty little fucker Eddy Colorado. I’ll reinitialise him in Belgium; he won’t remember any of this, but it’s a pain in the arse having to do it all the same. I should kick you both out and send you on your way.”
“The angel promised she’d be cured,” said Rae. “I don’t care what happens to me. Just so long as she’s cured. Whatever you are, if you can’t keep your promises you’re not worth my time.”
Alice dropped the blanket and snorted. “Piece of cake. Tell you what, you’ve got lots of questions. So you can have four questions, then I’ll fix her, then you go.”
“Why just four?”
“Because I make the fucking rules and I fucking say so,” Alice said irritably. “And that was your first question.”
“That’s not fair!”
“You don’t like the rules? Fuck off out of here, and take…” she nudged the mass of hands with the toe of a silver-buckled shoe, “…this with you.” She looked at Rae. “Three questions left. Ask me anything. Go on, take your best shot.”
Who are you? Am I real?
“What the hell has all this been about?”
“I’m interested in Pargeter,” said Alice. “I wanted to see what he’d do when he met you and the angel. Turns out he’s a bit of a bastard. That might come in handy. And no, I won’t tell you why. But I’ll save you a question and tell you that yes, I set up Eddy Colorado, and I set you up. It was up to Pargeter what he did with the situation. Call it an experiment in free will. Oh, and yes, I do enjoy being a deus ex machina thank you very much. Next?”
What happened? Has it really been one thousand seven hundred years? Are you where Mars was…?
Rae said, “Is Pete there?”
Alice regarded her levelly. “Yes,” she said. “He’s here.”
What are we here for? What do we do now? Will we be able to speak with you again…?
“Is he happy?”
Alice’s round face crinkled into a sad, beatific smile. “Yes, he is.” She looked at Rae for a moment longer, then she turned and walked away. “All fixed,” she said without looking back. “Now fuck off.”
There was a little girl lying on the blanket in front of Rae. She was about five years old and she had long auburn hair. She blinked at Rae. “Am I in heaven?” she asked.
Rae smiled at her through tears. “Could be,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name’s Rae.”
“I was in the sky,” Elżbieta said.
Rae wiped her eyes and looked for Alice, but she was nowhere to be seen. All the other lunatic avatars seemed to have gone, too. As she sat there, she felt a cool breeze brush her cheek, a breeze from the River blowing away the mad greenhouse air as the invisible shield over Hyde Park lifted away into nothing.
“I was in the sky,” Elżbieta said again. “And a beautiful lady was there.”
“I’m sure there was, my sweet.”
“Are you an angel?”
Rae laughed. “No. No, I’m not.” She stood and took Elżbieta’s hand and helped her to her feet. “But I met an angel once. Would you like me to tell you about it?”
The little girl nodded, a look of almost comical seriousness on her face. Rae draped the blanket over her shoulders and round her body and took her hand again. “It’s a long story,” she began, “and it started a very long time ago. Or perhaps it didn’t…”
They walked away, hand in hand, and as they walked tiny white flowers blossomed in their footsteps.
v
As with a lot of my stories the title came first, and the idea of nanotechnology which powers itself by metabolising blood sugar sort of popped up out of that. I’d always wanted to tackle a ‘cosy catastrophe’ story. It’s also the only story of mine, off the top of my head, that has a female protagonist. As a bit of an experiment, I self-published it as an ebook on Amazon along with another story, and eventually, after a couple of years, was rewarded with a cheque for twenty-five quid, which I regard as a bit of a win.
Dalí’s Clocks
I was living in Gdansk back then, in a newish block of flats overlooking the harbour just outside the Old Town. In the mornings I could sit on my balcony and eat breakfast while the fake pirate boats took tourists downriver to take photographs of the old fortifications at Westerplatte. Evenings, I could wander through Hanseatic splendour, take my pick of hundreds of remarkably fine restaurants, walk the short distance to the concert hall to attend a performance by the Baltic Philharmonic, visit art galleries, catch a film. Good times, and I took it all for granted.
These days, I don’t really live anywhere. Or rather, I seem to live everywhere. In every town I visit, every city, every one-horse hamlet, a welcome is waiting for me. Hotels throw their doors open to me, private citizens unroll the red carpet. I haven’t had to pay for a meal or a night’s lodging in almost eight years. The clothes I wear, the car I drive, the cigarettes I smoke and the beer I drink are all gifts, pressed on me by a populace either eager to curry favour or to express its gratitude. You’d think it would become wearying, but you’d be wrong; there is nothing in this world better than never having to pay for anything ever again. And trust me, having people hanging on your every word, your every opinion, never ever gets old.
On the other hand, I’m on the road all the time. I have no choice. If I didn’t go to them, they would come to me, and that would become wearying.
Back then, I had a little architects’ practice. The first wave of post-Communist rebuilding in Poland had crested, and a lot of ambitious, hungry little firms were following it up. There were a lot of neo-Hadid public buildings going up, and down in Kraków it seemed as if every other office block had been presided over by the spirit of Norman Foster.
In Gdansk we were, I thought, a little more original, although there was a fashion for Baltic Baroque, bits of architecture looted from up and down the coast. I’d designed some of those buildings myself, and been paid handsomely for them. And when I drove past them I knew those hungry, ambitious little firms were already planning for the next wave, because that was what I was doing too.
I don’t design buildings any more. The world is full of architects these days, most of them completely talentless but all of them supremely enthusiastic. And that… that does become wearying.
Ten years ago, on the morning that Marcin walked into my office and invited me to the party, I was working fourteen-hour and sometimes eighteen-hour days in order to get ahead and stay ahead. I was still young. I reasoned I could maintain this for a few years, build myself a healthy bank balance and a healthy reputation, then take my foot off the accelerator a little and enjoy my life.
It was ten to eight in the morning and I had already been in the office for more than an hour when I looked up from whatever it was that I was doing — I’ve forgotten what — and saw a familiar bulky figure with tousled sandy hair talking to Agnieszka, our receptionist.