The Actuality Page 10

  As she turns the bottom corner, the stair creaks and he opens his eyes. He smiles up at her in the corner above him. ‘How’re you feeling?’ he asks.

  ‘Better,’ she says. ‘Much better.’

  A smell of cooking comes from the kitchen and, getting up creakily, he goes to tend it.

  ‘Did you go out for food?’

  ‘I didn’t have to,’ he says through the doorway. ‘There were some cans in the cupboard.’ The smell of heated tomatoes is pleasant but does not generate a sensation of hunger in her.

  Evie sits on the small sofa under the window. The backpack is on the floor beside the arm, with Daniels’s newsplastic folded beneath the flap. Not looking at such devices has been a sort of unwritten rule, originating from a desire to not ‘unsettle’ her with glimpses of the outside world. That lesson was learnt early on after her husband’s descriptions left her restlessly eager to explore and confused when he did not then take her out.

  She battles with her curiosity, glancing towards the kitchen door. Behind it, Daniels hums to himself as he stirs his saucepan. She reaches towards the newsplastic. It is as if her hand is guided by forces beyond her control. She watches her fingers fiddle with the strap. She is both desperate to know what she can learn but also terrified as to what that might be: that the device will hold news of the search for themselves. There is the sense, too, that she is breaking a long-held prohibition.

  As her hand lifts the loosened flap, she is distracted by the identity card Daniels took from the body in the garden poking from an exposed side pocket. She draws it out and opens it.

  The blood on the card has dried, obscuring the face, but the owner’s name is still quite readable – Troy Evans. Her chest rises and falls in rapid, jerky movements. It is like a little bit of the horror of earlier has found her, all the way out here.

  She folds the card up and slides it back as Daniels returns into the room with a bowl of soup cupped between his large hands.

  13

  Evie and Daniels leave the cottage through the gate in the yard and tramp along the edge of the field, keeping the drainage ditch to their right. The light this morning is dazzling and the sky unmarked, apart from the bright vapour trail from a hova that passed ten minutes before. What strikes Evie, without tall buildings to interrupt the view, is the size of the air above her head. Its span, without means of support.

  Her new boots make easy graft of the stiff grass and the slippery mud showing through. She wears her hood thrown back with the sun on her face. Her new coat, with its luminous sheen, casts a pink glow on the snow. She is like a different person. A new person.

  They reach the corner of the field and, clambering over a stile, cut diagonally across the next, following the indentation of a path up the hill towards a solitary oak.

  It is like the first day of the rest of her existence. ‘Do you think we’re really free now?’ she asks.

  ‘Do you mean will they come after us?’

  ‘Yes.’ She wasn’t thinking about it quite like that, but that is the crux.

  ‘They won’t give up easily. You’ve seen the lengths they’re prepared to go to.’ They had this same conversation yesterday. The answer remains as uncertain.

  She changes the subject. ‘What took place in “The Rebellion”?’ In the apartment, Daniels would never have allowed himself to be drawn on this sort of thing but now that he isn’t obliged to follow Matthew’s rules for her ‘wellbeing’, she’s determined to take advantage.

  ‘Rebellion was always a rather grand term for a quite small affair but it frightened enough people for a change in the law.’

  ‘The Protective Acts?’

  ‘Yeah, The Acts.’

  ‘What happened? What did they do?’

  ‘You mean, the Acts or the AABs?’

  ‘The Acts.’ Evie is conscious she is feeling her way into this, asking the easy questions first.

  ‘Well the Acts were merely a set of laws that banned the production and ownership of artificial entities with independent logic circuits, what we call AABs – Autonomous Artificial Beings. It was never intended to stop the development of lower-grade service models but its impact here in England was to kick the stuffing out of the whole industry.’

  ‘And the AABs themselves, what did they do?’ she asks cautiously.

  ‘Mainly they just grew restless but a few got mindlessly violent. But what really alarmed people was the small number that communicated with one another using the Heavenweb network and, it was claimed, tried to take over. Although what they were trying to take over was never too clear. It seemed more that they merely reached a shared understanding that they could improve things quicker if they made a few little changes. It was all trivial stuff, tweaks you’d call them, like the timing of railway signals, but the media presented it as a warning straight out of science fiction and that the superior intellect of these things viewed us poor stupid humans as a threat. I don’t think it was anything like that, but there were some unfortunate deaths. For instance when the life-support units in a couple of Birmingham hospitals got reclassified as low priority and had their power cut one night. That was enough to put the wind up the powers that be.’

  ‘What did they do to them, these . . . AABs?’

  ‘Switched the buggers off. Pronto. Every one of them, as soon as they could be found.’

  She catches her breath and blinks. Imagining them being hunted down, broken in upon in the middle of the night. ‘But not me? I wasn’t . . . switched off.’

  ‘No, of course not. You weren’t like them one bit. You were neither violent, nor had dreams of improving the public’s commuting times.’

  Not violent? Evie thinks. He has a short memory. What she did in the apartment garden is never far from her mind. There is another Evie inside the one she is familiar with, capable of killing. Is she some kind of Russian doll with hidden layers? What if there is another hidden within the killing one, capable of even worse?

  ‘They’d been invented after you,’ Daniels continues, ‘and were designed for commercial use. Also, they were never really more than machines. They may have come under the definition of possessing autonomous processing but they couldn’t properly think, not in the round, they just followed their programming to its logical conclusion – such as how best to run an efficient hospital. When it came down to it they were nothing more than clumsy computers with ill-defined goals. And that was what led to the train crash.’

  ‘Train crash?’

  ‘I mean, when it all started to go wrong. But there were literally a couple of real ones too, train crashes that is. No, Evie, you’re absolutely nothing like them. Even from the get-go it was apparent you had something special going on in that noddle of yours.’

  ‘Special?’ she repeats.

  He thinks for a second before answering. ‘I mean a moral compass – a conscience.’

  Evie remembers how sceptical Daniels had been of her at first, treating her with the same caution he would a new, overly complicated household appliance, but then within a few months had come completely around. The turning point had been when he’d found her crying in the corridor outside Matthew’s room. That had been when he’d started to look at her differently. As if she may actually be sort of human.

  For quite a while after arriving in the apartment, Evie had actually believed herself to indeed be human. To be a wife. To belong to a loving husband. She’d persisted in denying the truth even when the evidence had begun to stack and stack.

  ‘But under The Acts, I should at least have been registered,’ she says.

  Daniels looks at her with a puzzled expression, maybe wondering how she knows this. Why he’d be surprised is more the mystery; she’s had enough years to figure at least some things out from the plentiful snippets she’s overheard. ‘Yes,’ he says, finally. ‘Registered, that is correct – a first step in what was a bureaucratic solution.’

  ‘But I wasn’t . . . registered.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.
Matthew never did believe in following rules. He didn’t want much to do with the outside world. He took the view that the less anyone knew of you, the better. I think we can see now that he was right.’

  ‘But with these other AABs, why didn’t they just learn from what went wrong and design improved replacements. Less arrogant ones.’

  ‘Less arrogant ones!’ Daniels chortles. ‘Yeah, I like that. Somehow humanity did indeed transfer its own abundant arrogance into those wretched machines. But, in answer to your question, I think people assumed The Acts were only going to be temporary – a chance to draw breath – but in this country anyway, that’s not what happened. With the economy so trashed, it became more about trying to get the basics to run right. Along the way, all that hi-tech know-how, which this country was only ever on the periphery of anyway, was lost.’

  ‘What about elsewhere, outside England?’

  ‘Similar issues. In the States, it became a massive thing, with an amendment being passed to the constitution. But then they did have the most horrendous massacre in their Capitol building when fifty senators and a hundred visiting school children were gunned down by an AAB they’d made head of security.’

  ‘A hundred children killed!’ She is appalled.

  ‘It was the death of the fat old senators that actually spurred them to act.’

  ‘With everything that happened. Do you think we . . . they . . . were a good idea or not?’ she asks, not sure she really wants to hear his answer.

  ‘I don’t think they were half as brilliant as they thought they were, but they were still a clever idea. How can it be denied? I think you, however, were a totally great idea.’

  She blushes and twists her neck away towards the distant trees to hide her face. The thing about Daniels is that when he says this kind of thing, he is not doing it to get his way – like she might – but because he really means it. He just can’t help but wear his heart on his sleeve.

  ‘And the others – the ones unlike me – should they be brought back?’

  ‘Should they, or will they?’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘Yeah, they’ll be brought back. It was always going to happen at some point and it looks increasingly certain that that point is now. People recognise easily enough that independently minded artificial beings, however tame, however low their running costs, won’t improve their lives and would indeed more likely make them worse, but business is pressing hard for the opportunity, as they always will do where there’s money to be made.’

  A pair of sheep stand together in the sun, on a rise of ground twenty yards away. Curiosity draws her towards them. The snow muffles her tread and they are only conscious of her presence as she comes up alongside and reaches to touch them, when with a hop and skip they skitter away.

  Daniels laughs at her disappointment as she returns.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare them,’ she says.

  ‘I’m surprised they let you get that close. It must be because they couldn’t smell you. A human wouldn’t have been able to do that.’

  The sheep, now with their backs to the fence, observe them walk on, taking turns to lift their heads and baa aggressively.

  They reach the oak in the top corner of the field and pause to allow Daniels to draw breath. Looking back down the hill, their route is as clear as an arrow – morning shadows collecting in their footprints – and in the bottom of the valley smoke rises from the chimney of their cottage. Sunlight glints on the glass of her bedroom window.

  She can’t believe how much things have changed for her in just twenty-four hours and her present good fortune returns her guiltily to her husband, lying dead on his bed, like it was his funeral barge.

  ‘Thinking of Matthew?’ Daniels asks.

  She nods, wondering how he read what was in her mind, maybe because the same sad thoughts were in his. ‘I let him down.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘It was what he told me.’ She tries to keep any hint of bitterness from her tone. ‘The last thing he said was that by failing to imitate Evelyn closely enough, I had spoiled his memories of her.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ Daniels says firmly. ‘He wouldn’t have had a clue what he was saying. You didn’t let him down.’

  ‘I was never as good as Evelyn.’

  Daniels huffs and they stand together until he speaks again. ‘Evie, I met Evelyn a few times – maybe not enough to claim that I really knew her, but certainly enough to form a pretty good impression. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I can say truthfully that I found her hard to like. A right bossy, opinionated . . .’ He tries a reassuring smile but Evie is staring ahead, her eyes fixed on the distance. ‘And I don’t care what rubbish Matthew may have come out with, the fool was luckier with you than he was ever prepared to admit.’ He puts his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her against him. ‘I loved that man and miss him greatly, but boy, sometimes he could be infuriating.’

  The two descend the other side of the hill. To Evie’s left, a church tower pokes above the trees.

  They leave the field over another stile and step down into a road. Apart from the weaving tracks left by cartwheels, the snow lies deep and undisturbed.

  They walk fifty yards between the high hedges before these give way to a triangular stretch of common sloping down to a pond rimmed by frozen reeds. Rows of terraced cottages line two of the three sides. By the edge of the road, a boy builds a snowman. He has created the body and has inserted sticks for arms. This is the first child she has seen since they were ambushed on the canal. It’s still hard to get her head around the notion that with the decline in fertility from all the horrible poison in the food supply, small children are something of a rarity.

  ‘The shop’s just here,’ Daniels says, indicating the corner building. ‘I’ll go in alone to save you a load of unnecessary questions.’

  She stands outside, listening to him buy milk and bread. He makes a point of explaining that he is renting their cottage. The fact that it is being used after all these years will not long go unnoticed. People are suspicious of strangers and it is better to provide answers up front.

  The boy struggles to lift the head onto his snowman. He is small, probably seven or eight at most, and the head he has made is too ambitious. He raises it six inches and drops it. It is hot work and he pulls off his cap, freeing his hair. Reluctantly he starts to chip away at the ball of snow with his heel. She wonders about offering to help but before she can, he sees her watching, abandons his efforts and backs away, keeping his eyes on her warily until he is out of sight around the nearest house.

  She turns again to the shop, the familiar empty feeling, the one they could never have meant to give her, gnawing away.

  The window is filled with notices, including an advertisement for the Hawking Museum of Science. It grabs her attention because she remembers the name from the conversation between Matthew and Daniels the day the police came. It had been the first time she’d realised that she is possibly one of only two of her kind, at least in this country.

  ‘Morning, dear,’ an elderly lady says. ‘Enjoying the nice weather?’

  She was thinking so hard how to persuade Daniels to take her there, to this museum, she is caught off guard by the woman’s approach. ‘Yes?’ she says, not sure what the question was and whether she has given the right answer.

  The woman has a small dog and she takes its lead and wraps it around a post. ‘The poor thing is not allowed inside,’ she says. ‘Might run amok, they think.’

  The dog is straining towards Evie, perhaps being merely friendly or perhaps confused by her lack of a natural scent. It reaches up and licks the inside of her wrist and she hastily withdraws her hand.

  ‘Oh,’ the woman says, ‘you needn’t worry, dear, he doesn’t bite. His name is Toby.’

  Evie nervously touches the tiny dog’s head, which again uninvited licks at her hand, quickly retracting its tongue and snorting in what could have been disgust
. It’s as if they have both managed now to insult the other.

  ‘You’re not from around here, dear, are you?’ the woman says.

  ‘We’re renting a cottage over the hill,’ Evie says cautiously, trying to be consistent with what Daniels is telling people.

  ‘Oh, the old gatekeeper’s place. We saw the smoke last night and I said to Toby, it’s nice to see it occupied again. Are you on holiday?’

  ‘Holiday?’ Despite her nerves, Evie can’t help smiling. The association of the word with sand, sea and sunshine is too strongly ingrained from her picture books. ‘Yes, I think we are.’

  ‘I see you were looking at the attractions in the window display, were you thinking of visiting anything in particular?

  ‘Is the Hawking Museum near?’ she asks.

  ‘The Hawking Museum, why yes, it’s just in the town, on the river. I’ve never been but people say it’s interesting.’ She doesn’t sound convinced.

  ‘How would we get there?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy, there’s a bus that’ll take you right there, the stop is in the lane opposite the church. You buy your ticket from the driver. How long are you staying?’

  ‘A while, I hope,’ she says. ‘To be honest we’re not sure.’

  ‘Well if you’re going to be around, we should introduce ourselves. I’m Mrs Cooper and this is Toby and your name, dear, is?’

  ‘Evie,’ she replies, so carried away with thoughts of the museum and what she might find there that she is really not thinking of anything else. Her heart, which for a few minutes has been flying, plummets like a shot pheasant as she remembers that she’d agreed with Daniels not to give out her real name.

  That was clever, Simon mutters. Idiot!

  I was distracted, I wasn’t thinking, my defences were down.

  ‘Evie,’ the woman repeats, ‘Such a lovely name – rarely hear it these days – but it suits a pretty girl like you. Reminds me of someone I once knew. A long time ago. Oh, who was it? She used to come and visit with her young man. My silly old memory is not what it was!’