‘Did you say something?’ Sol asked, as they entered the bedroom.
‘No.’ Emma shook her head. She could feel herself lapsing into misery. He tucked her into bed.
‘One day, Sol, you and I…’
There would come a time when they would accept one another entirely. One day that time would come – it had to come.
‘When I’m a senile old lady.’
Sol laughed a little, then retreated into himself. In Meelians, night-time was characterized by a combination of psychological disengagement and sleep. When Sol spoke of his dreams, did he not in fact mean his waking fantasies?
Emma gave up thinking and closed her eyes. In the morning, she decided, she would go and see her friend who was studying pharmacology; she would get herself another pendant and a new supply of drugs. There was no way anyone could live in a world like this with a fully functioning mind. You only found yourself feeling angry from morning until night. If she ended up joining some kind of political movement as a result, her mother and father would be upset. Using drugs, she told herself, was her way of being a good daughter.
Sol turned over and wrapped his arms around her. She lay there, her eyes open, as the night wore on.
‘You shouldn’t do too much of this,’ Luana said as she handed Emma a small baggie. It was afternoon, and the two of them were sitting on the café terrace eating some odd-looking fruit imported from Meele.
‘Yeah, I know. Thanks.’
Emma put the baggie away inside a large bag made of fabric woven from tree bark. Earth relied on Meele for almost half of its agricultural produce, such as this bark; it been woven by Kamiroyans in a Martian factory.
‘I don’t think you understand. It’s fine by me if you get addicted. What I mean is, whatever way you look at it, this stuff has a devastating effect on your personality.’
Luana placed both her elbows on the table and leaned in towards Emma.
‘Keep it up for long and you’ll find your willpower weakening. You’ll be easily swayed by external suggestions and instructions. In that sense, it’s similar to Scopolamine. It makes you forget the passions and principles you once had.’ Luana had a deathly serious look to her.
‘Does it make you lose your memory?’ Emma narrowed her eyes. What Sol had said about forgetting had stuck with her.
‘No, it’s more like the vividness of your emotions fades. You start to feel like the you from the past was mistaken about all kinds of things. The past you becomes unrecognisable. Who benefits from that, I wonder?’
‘But the state is cracking down on it,’ Emma said, lowering her voice.
‘That’s only for show, though. I mean, it’s still popular, isn’t it? You know they’ve recently announced a drug that makes people less susceptible to fear.’ Luana was frowning, as she was prone to do.
‘Why, though?’ Emma asked stupidly.
The Mirinnian waiter approached, and the two fell silent. The waiter began to clear the table with two of his tentacles, keeping the other two hanging neatly by his sides.
‘Would you like anything else?’ he asked, although he already knew the answer.
‘No, we’re done.’ Luana stood up.
‘Mirinnians gross me out,’ Emma murmured once they’d paid and got out onto the street.
‘What about them? Their bodies?’
The pair began heading down towards the entrance to the Subterrail.
‘No, more like that you have absolutely no idea what they’re thinking. They’re so expressionless.’
‘Maybe they’re not thinking about anything. You know, a professor from ____ University tried to develop their telepathic abilities. But they were no help to him whatsoever. Apparently they could only pick up simple words.’
The platform was deserted. Emma leaned up against the wall and thought about where she should go next.
‘Where’s Sol?’ Luana pulled out a cigarette designed to help you quit smoking from her bag and put it to her lips.
‘I don’t know,’ Emma replied honestly.
‘My boyfriend will have cleaned the room, done three days’ worth of washing and will right about now be roasting us a chicken.’ Luana smiled with evident satisfaction. Emma pouted.
‘Don’t you think Sol might be with another woman? He’s quite a catch, after all.’ Luana contorted her lips as she asked this, suppressing a smile.
Emma had never even considered such a possibility. She’d been too caught up in her thoughts of herself. But come to think of it, Sol did sometimes stay out overnight.
‘Where can you get those tiny spy cameras? Would they let someone like me buy one?’ Just voicing the question made Emma blush.
‘For surveillance? You can buy them anywhere, and you don’t need a licence or anything. The buttonhole type is the most common. Although if the wearer undresses, all you’ll see is the ceiling.’
The shuttle compartment drew up to the platform.
‘Go ahead,’ Emma said. She’d given up on her plans to return home.
‘Okay then. Don’t get too het up about this though, okay?’ Luana opened the door and stepped inside, and Emma watched her press the button and speak her desired destination into the microphone. Emma waved. Once the compartment had disappeared, she took the escalator leading up to ground level.
Emma was looking at a small screen, which showed the face of a Meelian man.
‘That’s not true. People from our planet aren’t that immature,’ the man was saying. The voice, filtered as it was through the automatic translation device, was high and shaky. Naturally, the two men were talking in their native tongue.
‘You’re quite the optimist, aren’t you! How do you know there’s not going to be another Opium War?’ Sol’s low voice sounded close to the microphone.
‘Oh, I forgot you’d studied Terran history. Which country was it again that smuggled opium to China then tried to colonize it? But in any case, isn’t our conception of pleasure slightly different from those on Earth? It’s sex and drugs that does it for them. Or else, speed, thrills, suspense. In other words, that giddy feeling.’ There was a faint smile on Jebba’s face as he spoke.
‘That’s true. Whereas we can always disengage. That’s not pleasure, exactly – it’s something deeper,’ Sol said seriously.
‘So how are the Terran women?’ Jebba asked, teasingly. Emma readjusted her posture.
‘They’re good.’ Sol said, straight-faced.
‘What’s good about them?’
Sol must have moved, for now the camera showed only half of Jebba’s face. Where the other half had been, Emma could now see a curtained window. It was a shabby apartment somewhere.
‘Their race knows sadness, but it doesn’t come to the fore-front of their consciousness. We know sadness too. In fact, if anything our sense of sadness is better defined. But between the two of our races, it’s the Terrans who are the more tragic. They have limits in the form of decrepitude and death.’
‘Do you feel proud that death is something you have to choose?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even if that choice is occasioned through despair?’
‘Despair is an incredibly deep, clear emotion. In a way, it’s similar to the very peak of psychic disengagement. That’s why it’s not really accompanied by sadness.’
‘Your parents went half a year ago, right?’
Emma’s ears pricked up at Jebba’s words. What did he mean by ‘went’?
‘If I was a Terran, I’d have wailed and wept when it happened. Scholars from Earth are up in arms about the suicide rate on our planet. They don’t understand why we do it, when we could live for longer. Even some Meelians don’t understand despair. Then you end up like that person who lived for six hundred years.’