A week or so before he died, Arjun’s grandfather, already confined to his sickbed, had indicated that he wished to pass on certain advice to his grandson. Arjun, who was only eight, was not normally allowed into Papaji’s room and his mother made a great performance of presenting him to the old man. Arjun was shy. He had liked Papaji, but now the smelly shape in the bed frightened him. Squirming, he was led up close so that the frail figure had only to turn its head to speak. From under the covers a thin arm extended. A quivering hand fluttered over his cheeks and forehead. ‘Beta,’ came the whisper, ‘God bless you. You are a good boy. I want you to remember two things. Always conserve your semen. It is your strength. And —’ Arjun never got to hear the second thing because his mother dragged him indignantly out of the room. ‘His mind is wandering,’ she snapped. ‘Go and play.’ When he sneaked back in, Papaji was asleep.
Denied half his bequest of ancestral wisdom, Arjun had always given particular weight to the half he had. He had rarely participated in competitive sport, but knew that if he ever did, he would be certain to practise abstinence on the night before a crucial game. He had almost always steered clear of Aamir’s dirty pictures and assumed that when the time came, his sexual partner (he never thought in the plural) would be chosen with meticulous care. Continence had always seemed like the proper thing; holding back from the vicious cycle of seminal accumulation and expenditure was the mark of a mature man. Yet now at the first opportunity he had fallen headlong into incontinence. What did that make him?
And what did it make her? He knew what his mother would say.
Set against that were other arguments: the blue snakes coiled around Chris’s arm, the sway of her breasts as she ground back and forth over his pubis.
It occurred to him that since Aamir would be jealous, it would be fun to write him an email. He started, then stopped. For the moment he wanted to keep his news to himself. That morning he could not concentrate on his projects and spent most of the time lying on his bed, drawing out the ‘afterwards’ feeling like wire. It was a clear day and the sunlight filtered through the leaves of the tree outside his window, warming his skin, keeping alive the sense of being touched. Once or twice he dialled Chris’s number, but it went straight to voicemail.
Chris spent the afternoon with Nic, huddled on the couch watching eighties teen movies on cable. The scale of the disaster was becoming clear. Though Nic was asking no questions, mired in his own hangover, she could still feel a tautness about him, a clenched thing he got whenever he suspected she had been with someone else. Inquisitions were against the rules, but all the same he was wondering. She snuggled furtively up to him, pulling the quilt tighter around her.
It had been such a mess. Arjun’s erection had come and gone: when she first touched it, when she rolled on the condom. As she finally lifted herself up and tucked his penis inside her, the gesture felt (of all things) motherly. Instantly she lost her bearings and a grim self-consciousness lit up their struggling like a flare. She rocked back and forward and the drugs made her feel that someone else, not her, was having sex in that bombsite of a room. By shutting her eyes she could block out Arjun’s ridiculous slack-jawed expression, but she could still hear his throttled yelps of surprise, feel his tentative hands on her. She looked back down and his face suddenly crumpled like a piece of brown paper. It was over. She felt more or less the same as before, except now there was nowhere else to go, no way to squeeze any further sensation out of her Saturday night, and she didn’t feel like a sexual adventurer, just limp and tired, a rag of a girl held up by the drugs like a damp shirt on a clothes hanger, forced to carry on with consciousness when all she wanted to do was throw the off-switch and fade to black.
Even if he had not been preoccupied that Monday morning, Arjun would not have noticed the atmosphere at the labs. To most other people the tension would have been obvious. He dived happily into his testing routines, unfazed by the way the senior analysts kept shutting themselves in the conference room to make phone calls or have hurried conversations. He knew Darryl had been called away to a meeting, but did not spot the doleful way his colleagues were staring at Darryl’s office door, at certain tech news and financial websites, at the floor. Concentrated stares. People looking at their future.
He sent mail to Chris, but she didn’t respond. Probably busy, he decided. At the end of the day he went home as usual and worked solidly on his projects until one in the morning. Usually he kept a chat client open on his desktop, but that night he wanted to concentrate, which was how he came to miss the storm of Virugenix-related discussion in the AV forums. Before he went to bed, he tried Chris’s number again, now concerned that she did not pick up. By Tuesday morning he was probably the only Virugenix employee still unaware that the company had issued a profits warning, the stock price had tanked, and the board had pledged to cut operating costs across all divisions. Everyone else, the whisperers and the starers, knew what that meant.
In times of tech-corporate crisis the normal rules of communication are reversed. Virugenix staffers knew that campus email and phone channels were insecure. Only face-to-face conversations were sure not to be monitored by the company. The cafeteria, usually half empty, was filled with groups of people picking at salads and speaking in lowered voices, people who in some cases had not ventured into a public space for years. Buying a chicken wrap to take back to his desk, Arjun walked past them, preoccupied with thoughts of Chris.
On Wednesday morning, as he cut across the parking lot past a line of people carrying cardboard boxes to their cars, he could think about only one thing: why had she not returned any of his messages?
He swiped his pass to get into the lab. Clay came up behind him and clapped him on the back.
‘I just want to say I’m sorry, man. You’re a good guy. It’s a shame.’
The door catch released with a click.
‘What’s a shame?’
Clay’s eyes widened. ‘Well, Darryl wants to see you, and so —’ He shrugged. ‘You know.’ Before Arjun could ask any more questions, Clay dived for cover.
Sure enough, when Arjun switched on his terminal there was a message from Darryl. A formal meeting: 4 p.m. There were several other messages, all asking him to contribute to leaving gifts for people he didn’t know. As he watched, another popped into his inbox, from Aamir.
bhai — Saw bad news on cnet U been such superstar an all Im sure it dont affect U see cute girl attached; — p a
The cute girl had been blocked by the company’s filtering software, but Arjun had other things to think about. Bad news? By the time he knocked on Darryl’s door, he had read the reports and watched three of his colleagues go into the office and walk out with set expressions. He felt dazed. It was not possible. Not this.
There were two people in there. Darryl and a woman. The woman was not part of the research division. You could tell because she was wearing a suit. The suit was well cut and charcoal-grey and accessorized with a businesslike pearl necklace. The face above it was alert and good-looking, its highly maintained skin framed by a neat blonde bob. The woman smiled at Arjun and looked over at Darryl, expecting him to make an introduction. Darryl did not look as if he would be able to do this. He was curled up into a kind of ball on his office chair, a Ghostbusters cap crammed down low on his head. Beneath it he was staring fixedly at his SETI belt buckle and swivelling himself to and fro by pushing his hands against the top of his desk.
The woman sighed. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Mehta,’ she said. ‘Thanks for your promptitude. My name is Jennifer Johanssen, and I’m a deputy director of personnel here at Virugenix. Head office asked me to come down and facilitate today’s employee encounters. Mr Gant here has briefed me on your performance. I know he rates your contribution to the anti-virus research team very highly.’ She paused and turned to Darryl, who clawed at his beard and swivelled faster.