‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ said Milena.
He pulled on a sealskin coat. He caught something in Milena’s mind,
‘Real seals weren’t killed making it,’ he said. He paused. ‘And yes, I’m still defensive.’
The room chuckled warmly. They all understand, Milena realised, they all hear what I’m thinking, they all know. I feel naked. Do I mind?
The room chuckled some more. The faces were ordinary, rough, but not unkind.
‘Would you mind being a strand?’ one of the empath women asked Milena. Milena didn’t understand.
The woman’s face was suddenly crossed with concern. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’re just asking if you want to be part of the tapestry. We all like you.’ The woman looked at one particular man. ‘You have to tell them or else they don’t know,’ she said. She looked back at Milena with pity. ‘Do you, love?’
‘Salt and wool,’ said another dancer. She also was smiling. She wore a Postperson’s headscarf. There was a murmur of assent from the other empaths.
Al the Snide thumped down the slope of the floor, in black boots, smartly pulling on gloves. He looked at Milena with expectation. Then he smiled and closed his eyes for a moment, as if embarrassed.
‘Sorry,’ he suddenly said. ‘I keep forgetting you can’t hear me. Do you mind going for a walk? We can talk then.’ His pale, pale face was even leaner, but the eyes were less faraway, less self-concerned than they once had been.
Outside, the air seemed to have daggers of ice in it. In bare branches a community of crows had gathered, cawing and croaking to each other in smoky mist. Al helped Milena down the gypsy steps.
‘The problem is to get him alone,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’ Milena was completely taken aback.
‘Max. I will need to be alone with him.’
‘You already know what the problem is?’
He nodded, and kept speaking.
‘So going to a concert or something is out. Too much mind noise. It would be best just to visit him. And tell him what you are doing. Why you think it’s best to try and trick him, I don’t know.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not used to this,’ said Milena.
‘I know,’ he said darkly.
You want this over with quickly, she realised.
‘I suppose I do, yes,’ he said aloud, and looked back up at her, his lips drawn thin.
And Milena found herself thinking: I wonder what he feels about Heather? She thought it, and he looked away.
‘I treated you badly once. So I feel I owe you something,’ he said. ‘I won’t charge you for this.’
‘Thank you,’ murmured Milena. But she thought: I never mentioned money; it never even crossed my mind.
He was trying to keep things businesslike. ‘We need to tell Max openly what we are doing. Our approach is that I’m simply helping him to remember. Arrange an appointment to meet. It’s always easier if people co-operate.’
It still rankled Milena that he had mentioned money. ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ she said.
He punched the palm of his gloved hand. ‘I wish you people could hear!’ he exclaimed. It was so indelicate, having to speak.
‘Look. You are Heather. At least half of Heather was you. Maybe most of her.’
He still loves her, thought Milena. Oh, poor man.
He sighed, and ran a hand over the top of his head. ‘She’s buried deep now, isn’t she?’
He looked at the top of Milena’s head, as if to see Heather there.
‘You already know that,’ said Milena. ‘Why ask?’
Al shrugged. ‘You don’t hate me any more. That’s something.’
‘I did something far worse to Rolfa in the end. Far worse than anything you did.’
‘Ssssh,’ he said, and held up his hands. ‘I know. I know.’ And there was more than pity in his eyes. There was comprehension. ‘The bastards with their bloody Readings,’ he said. ‘It’s all about control. They don’t care what they kill in the process. I’m sorry.’
And Milena knew there was no answering comprehension in her. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me. How have you been? What you’ve been doing?’
He looked suddenly, coltishly pleased that she wanted to know. He made an awkward, embracing gesture back towards his boite. ‘I make my tapestries. As I told you before. I make patterns out of all the people I see. The personalities are like colours. I make them and hang them in the air for the other Snides. There’s enough of us now. We work in ordinary jobs. Don’t let on, most of the time. So I make them tapestries and they buy them.’
‘Take them home and hang them on the wall?’
‘They remember them,’ he said, correcting her, shyly. More viral memory.
‘But you hate viruses.’
‘I hate their viruses. I love the ones people make for themselves.’ He looked at her face, searching it. ‘If only you could read,’ he said. ‘You’d know all that.’
They walked on. ‘Until you’re Snide, it’s hard to believe how complex people are. Like a whole universe. There’s all this chattering going on in their heads. Mist we call it, like the inside of clouds. It fogs everything, stops people seeing. Most people function by shutting almost everything out. Below that, there’s the Web. That’s the memory. That’s where everything is stored, and the Web is a real mess. You can get tangled up in it. A very complex personality is actually difficult to get out of. It can be very scary. Underneath that is the Fire, and that just burns. That’s where the heart is.’
‘How tangled am I?’ Milena asked.
‘You…’ he paused, eyes narrow. ‘You’re very neat, very tidy. But you’re in compartments. There’s parts of you that don’t communicate with each other. So you surprise yourself all the time. It’s an ordered mind. You’ve got an amazing capacity for detail, you’re good at organising. But you could do a lot more than that.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’d make one hell of a Snide, you could take it all in.’
He was being kind. He likes me, thought Milena, seeing him smile.
‘Yes,’ he said, gently.
He loves me. I’m still Heather for him.
He must have heard her, but the smile stayed steady, and the eyes were still full of comprehension.
‘They’ve paid for their tapestry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go back and finish it. Then we’ll go and meet this Max of yours.’
As they walked back towards the boite, Milena thought: the clouds have cleared for him. She had never seen a change like that, when someone comes whole.
‘Not entirely,’ he said, looking back casually. ‘I’m still a criminal. But I don’t hurt people any more.’ He stopped in front of his door, looking back behind him on the steps. ‘The thing about being a Snide is, if you hurt people, you feel the pain too. So you end up hurting yourself.’ He smiled again, and pulled the door open, and stepped smartly inside.
He sat still again, weaving patterns. There was a warm, approving chuckle.
‘There she is,’ said the Postwoman. ‘There she is, our thread of wool.’
‘Undyed,’ said the dim-eyed man. ‘The kind that holds the whole thing together.’
It was dark, night, when they got back to the Zoo. They found Max rehearsing the orchestra for Wozzeck. He saw Al and Milena slip into seats in the theatre, and gave them one of his long, unblinking stares.
Then he turned, and nodded, and the music began.
‘Hoo boy!’ Al exclaimed. ‘Oh, poor baby.’
‘What? What can you Read?’ Milena asked.
‘Sssh,’ said Al.
The music began. It sidled forwards, uncomfortable, disjointed, angular, expressing alienation. Max conducted, making flowing, muscular gestures. Al’s face seemed to freeze, fixed on him, watching him, as if he were a flickering light.