Oddly Enough, page 28
“Are you sure there aren’t any cameras here?” the other woman asked, and he felt her hands under his armpits. It was uncomfortably intimate.
“There won’t be any,” his wife said. “He’s too careful. Aren’t you, dear?”
He wanted to ask her why she was acting so oddly, wanted to explain that he hadn’t come out here to cheat on her, not at all. He’d never cheated on her, not once.
The women hefted him into the air with matching grunts of effort. For a moment he felt the smooth wood of the railing under his back, digging into his buttocks, and it confused him. What were they doing? He was hurt, they should be calling a doctor, or putting him on a sun lounger at least—
He was falling. There was no countdown, no signal. They just let go, and then he was plunging past the sheer sides of the cruise ship, suddenly much taller than it had seemed before, their faces rapidly receding white ovals peering down at him. He had time to glimpse the walking stick falling after him, and to have the sudden panicked thought that it might hit him, then he slammed into the water and was swallowed by it entirely. All was roaring confusion, with no sense of which way was up, and the powerful throb of the ship’s engines boomed through his bones, and he discovered that the walking stick really was the least of his worries.
He stopped doggy-paddling and tried floating again. Paddling was starting to feel like hard work, and his head was still pounding insistently. He touched it, finding a large, tender lump. She could have cracked his skull, he thought, outraged. He could have concussion!
He stared at the smooth flanks of the swells, wondering if he was still bleeding. Sharks could smell blood from a mile away, he’d heard. Or read, he wasn’t sure. A sneaky little wavelet slapped his face, and he spat salt water, his heart suddenly painful in his chest.
The temporary cleaner at the office had only done one evening, the evening before he’d thought things had been out of place. It had been a sudden sickness that called the usual one away, a migraine or something. He hadn’t paid attention.
The temporary cleaner had been in the office the evening his wife had gone to her sister’s because … what had she said? He couldn’t remember. It hadn’t seemed important. Women’s stuff.
The mugs had been in the wrong order, but his souvenirs hadn’t been out of place, had they? The rug might have been moved, his chair not pushed back properly, but the floorboards had been firmly in place. The folder had been nestled safely in the recess.
The locks of hair in their individual sleeves, soft and lovingly labelled, had glowed in the light just as before, untouched and only for him.
Hadn’t they?
It was impossible. She wasn’t that smart. He was smart. He’d have known something was wrong.
She wouldn’t have been able to keep this secret.
Would she?
A memorable cruise, she’d said, and handed him the brochure, smiling in her small, neat way. The trip of our lives, perhaps.
The sea rolled smoothly around him, and his nose dipped below the surface. He pushed himself back up, spluttering, a cold hard pain digging into his ribs as he tried to lift himself clear of the water. His heart felt tight and small.
He sucked in as much air as he could.
“Help!” he screamed. “Help!”
The ocean didn’t return so much as an echo.
Stay Tidy
Sometimes, I can point at something – a picture, a tweet, a story half-lived or half-heard, and say, “There. That’s where this idea came from.”
Other times? Well, let me put it this way: I wouldn’t go into my subconscious without a guide (and if you find one, let me know, because I don’t mean me), some breadcrumbs, a whole lot of rope, three escape plans, and possibly some weaponry.
It’s a strange place in there.
The door was locked.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. It had never happened in the practice runs.
Del tugged at the handle, as if by denying its locked-ness he could change it. The door didn’t budge, just stood there looking bored and featureless. A whimper caught in the back of his throat, and he scuttled back down the steps, sprinting for the house across the street.
Locked.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, not all of them. They can’t be.” He jumped off the step into the flowerbed beneath the window and tried to squint through a gap in the curtains, but the early morning was dark and the room behind was darker still.
Which was why it should’ve been safe. They couldn’t range far without solar or a docking station to top up their charge. He should have had time, but he’d just had to go further, hadn’t he? Had to try this one last street, even though his dad had told him when he left, Don’t get creative, Del. Follow the plan. And now he was too late to get back to the pickup point on the river before they started stirring.
He knocked on the window lightly, flinching at the hollow, demanding sound of it echoing across the empty street. No birds, of course. He remembered them, in a vague sort of way. He hadn’t paid much attention when they’d been around. Pigeons in town, mostly. Fat things with the self-satisfied strut of a well-fed cat. They’d lasted longer in the cities and towns than the sparrows and other birds, partly because they were big and partly because they were even more stubborn than the humans had been, slower to leave their familiar, trusted spaces and tuck themselves away in desolate pockets of the countryside. Now all the birds were scarce and scared, and you counted yourself lucky if you could get your hands on a scrawny grouse – or anything else. They’d been too messy to survive.
No movement beyond the window, not that he’d really expected it. It had been a knock of desperation, not hope. The pigeons weren’t the only ones that couldn’t survive in the cities anymore. Too many of them. Del ran back to the road, heading for the next door along the row of terraced houses as the sky steadily lightened above him, streaks of orange and rose blushing the clouds. His breath coiled in the chilly air ahead of him as he hurried up the steps, his trainers all but soundless. If he couldn’t get in here, he’d head to the end of the row, find a way into a back garden and hope there was an empty shed or something he could hole up in. He had to get off the street. Had to.
The door was locked, as he’d half-expected, given the rest of the row. Some people had done that, had turned off the power and water and locked up their houses like they thought they’d be back again in a month, when Someone Sorted Things Out. The government, maybe, but they’d been among the first to go. Too many of them roaming the halls and the streets, stolidly doing their duty, keeping things clean and tidy. It had been a statement, Del’s dad said, for them to be introduced in the capitals and the seats of power before anywhere else. Prove they were safe and show everyone the way forward. Well, they’d done the second bit, for sure.
Del abandoned the door-knocking and sprinted for the end of the row, the tiny paved patios in front of the terraced houses immaculately clean, not a weed or drift of leaves decorating the corners. His rucksack bounced on his back, mournfully empty. It was why he’d gone further – he’d found almost nothing worth taking in the houses he’d been allocated to check. A long-expired tube of antiseptic cream and a half-used packet of paracetamol in one, a bag of sticky miniature shampoo bottles in another. Nothing much useful at all. They’d all been cleared out ages ago.
A high brick wall ran down the side of the last house in the row, then turned sharply onto a path of clean tarmac with neatly trimmed edging. Wooden gates gave onto the alley from the terraces on both sides, and Del peered through the small gap at the side of the first one. No good – the grass was trimmed perfectly, the flowerbeds taken down to a flattened, uniform size. He ran to the next. This one was partly paved, the stone flags immaculate and a small garden gnome by the shed polished until it was all but colourless. His head was starting to swim, and his breathing had gone all ragged at the edges. He could feel a sick sweat soaking through his T-shirt, too. He couldn’t stay out here. He was going to have to risk trying a gate.
The gnome gave him the creeps, so he chose the next gate along, scrambling up the wall next to it when the latch wouldn’t lift. He balanced on the top for a moment, aware of the strengthening light around him, the sky lifting blue and broad far above and the clouds already losing their flush. But rushing was what got you caught, so he stayed where he was a little longer, his hands braced on the top of the wall and his trainers pressed into the red brick. The garden was all grass and ruthlessly trimmed flowerbeds, the heads of the flowers lopped off to keep all the plants at the same height. A small fishpond was fish-less and clear enough to drink from. Del swallowed hard, his throat clicking, then boosted himself up and over the wall, dropping as softly as he could to the cropped grass. He stayed where he was, eyes on the door of the garden shed. It was slightly ajar, the crack a glimpse into a bottomless dark.
He hurried to the house, keeping to the grass and avoiding a little gravel path that snaked from the gate to the door. He put his hand on the handle, took a deep, steadying breath, and turned it.
Well, tried to. It didn’t move, and he had to bite down on his lip to stop himself crying out. He went to the window, testing it, his hands shaking. It was full light now. The window didn’t move, and he strained to hear beyond the confines of the garden. Nothing. He was still safe.
Not for long, though.
Even as he rushed to the window on the other side of the back step a gate or wooden door clanged open further down the row. There was a breath of silence, and for one irrationally hopeful instant he wondered if the still day had found a breeze somewhere, then the smooth mmmmphhhrrrrr of blades on short grass started up.
A sob was building up at the back of his throat, and he threw a panicked look over his shoulder at the shed. No movement, not yet. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. If he smashed a window they’d be on him in an instant. Stay quiet. Stay tidy. He looked back at the shed. The roof. If he were quiet … the drones probably wouldn’t patrol somewhere like this, somewhere so obviously under full compliance. Or not too much, anyway.
Don’t run, don’t run. He started back across the grass, keeping his steps soft, tremors racing through him, eyes fixed on the door. He couldn’t see the opening from this angle, couldn’t tell if anything was waking up in the depths. Stay calm.
He was almost there, two metres to go, maybe three, when the door started to swing open. He stopped, a rangy boy in old, clean clothes that mostly fit him, head freshly shaved so he couldn’t drop any hairs, frozen in the act of stepping forward. He watched the shed door inch its way slowly wider, heard the soft whisper of oiled hinges, and thought, well. That’s that, then.
Not that it’d be able to deal with him itself, of course, but the signal would go out, and backup would be here in no time. Others would come from the neighbouring houses. Maybe a sweeper, if there was one close. Even if he ran, they’d be on him before the morning was over. The drones would spot him if he was outside. Listening ears and prying eyes would find him inside. He was too untidy to be ignored, with his breathing and his sweat and his soft, continual shedding of skin cells and hair and scent. They’d cleaned up every city in the world, just as they’d been designed to. Every town, every village. Only the furthest places were safe from them, the places where the mobile signals didn’t work and the terrain was rough and jagged. Up high or down deep, that was where humans lived now. On the edges, with the last of the animals and birds and insects and other untidy life.
Del wondered how he should finish this. Just sit down, maybe. Take the rough sandwich his dad had given him last night and sit on the grass to eat it, flinging scraps at the thing to keep it occupied for a bit, perhaps. It was better than spending his last hours running for no good reason.
He was already unclipping his pack when there was a soft pop from behind him, and multicoloured streamers shot past his shoulder, almost reaching the gate before they drifted softly to the ground. A second pop, and more streamers, landing closer to the shed door this time, and a third, a fourth, until the area between the shed and the gate was an exuberant tangle of flimsy paper strips and scraps, an eyesore of disorder in the perfect garden.
Del froze, watching with wide eyes as a flat black disc emerged from the shed. It nosed toward the paper, not even turning to check the rest of the garden, and a low, busy hum rose in the still morning as its cutting blades started to turn. It ran over the first lot of streamers, tearing them to pieces and scattering the scraps, sending them raining down around it. Without pausing, it turned to try again. And again. And again. Every attack on the streamers only created more mess, and the disc ran back and forth more frantically with each pass, its business-like hum rising to an infuriated buzz.
A hand grabbed Del’s arm, and he almost screamed. He jerked around to find a young woman glaring at him. She tipped the bare dome of her head at the house, and ran softly to the front door. For a moment he couldn’t move, his heart too loud in his ears and tears pressing at the back of his eyes, then the whine of another machine started up in the garden next door and he lurched into motion.
He sprinted after her as she ducked through the front door, pausing to take her shoes off on the hard floor inside. He pushed the door softly shut behind him and copied her, then followed as she led the way through another door to the left. He closed and locked that one behind him, too – not that it’d help. They couldn’t use door handles, but if they wanted to they could get through doors just fine, locked or not.
There were stairs leading down, and a warm light shone faintly below, enough to see by. He trailed after the woman to the smooth floor of the cellar, passing a wide desk stacked with electronics below glass windows that looked into a small room. She headed into the room, its sides panelled with grey foam, and pushed the door shut once he was in. The door was covered with foam on the inside too, and she threw her shoes down next to it and said, “That was close.”
“Shh,” he hissed. “What if the house hears us?”
She shook her head. “This whole room’s soundproof, and all the electrics are gone.” She waved at the paraffin lamp on the table. “No smart speakers, no smart lighting, nothing.”
Del looked around warily. He hadn’t even known you could get rid of them. To hear his dad tell it, the smart electronics had been as wound into the buildings as his veins were into his body, spying on you through the very walls. “Are you sure?” he asked.
She nodded, dropping onto a bean bag in the corner. “I wouldn’t still be here otherwise.”
“How long have you been here?”
She shrugged. “Since The Cleaning.”
“You stayed?”
“Didn’t know what else to do.”
He hadn’t thought anyone who stayed had survived. His dad had walked in one night when Del was nine and told him to pack up. There had been a whole group of them, families and couples and singles, all heading for the remote valleys and high hills of Scotland. They’d gone before it happened, leaving the cities and towns to what was to come.
It had been inevitable, his dad said. It had started with bins that knew when you mixed the recycling, with fridges that scolded you for wasting food. Heating that ran on the best setting for the environment (so mostly off), and TVs that only played documentaries tailored to your personal sins. Then cars that had to be told where you were going, and refused to start if you could walk it instead. Litter drones that obediently picked up after everyone, then suddenly started tracking litterers. The software engineers said it was just a glitch, but tell that to the people finding their litter returned to their front doors. Which everyone (except those embarrassed individuals) thought was actually a great idea, so the engineers didn’t bother fixing it. Technology would save us, everyone said. It was for our own good. Humans couldn’t be trusted.
By the time the machines had decided how to fix litter and pollution for good, it was too late for the engineers to do anything. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Del sat down on the floor and opened his bag. He took out his sandwich and passed half to the young woman, who looked at it in surprise, then accepted it. She took a can from a box on the floor and handed it to him.
He stared at the red can with its flowing white writing, and thought he could almost remember the taste.
“To the batteries running out,” the young woman said, raising her own can.
“To being out of warranty,” Del agreed, and cracked the can open. It was a little warm, but sweet and still slightly fizzy and almost exactly as he’d expected.
They ate in companionable silence, while above them the city purred with electrical life, with ovens cleaning and streets being swept, carpets cleaned and tiles polished. Drones flicked through the streets, empty except for the trundling automatic disinfectors, and plucked leaves from gutters, noting repeat offenders for destruction. Bird-repellers and cat-deterrents screamed their shrill tunes, and in the garden of the little terraced house the automatic lawnmower ran desperately through the tattered, drifting remnants of the paper streamers, over and over again.
A Risk of Sexy Armour
This story was not meant to be in here. But I sat down to start editing the stories I had, and it just sort of turned up.
And it seemed a very appropriate story to end a collection with, so I let it stay. Because we never know where stories go. We may know where they start, but that’s always a little nebulous, too. Sometimes they just are.
Just like life.
Howard adjusted his robes a little, trying to get the pleats to flow a little more subtly over his stomach. Robes shouldn’t really have pleats, of course. It brought to mind the practical but ridiculous-looking metal skirts favoured by a certain kind of well-proportioned soldier, and which were almost entirely out of fashion now. However, decent robes were expensive, and there was plenty of wear in these ones yet. It seemed rather wasteful to replace them simply due to a little personal expansion.
