The Actuality Read online

  ‘What is it of ?’ Evie asks.

  ‘Old men eating,’ the woman replies, uninterested.

  ‘It ees “The Last Supper”,’ Sola says. ‘That eees sweet Jesus in le middle and le one that looks like Pompie ees Judas. Hees going to betray poor Jesus but he not know it yet.’

  ‘Where did you learn that from?’ David asks sceptically, as if she’s just made the story up.

  She huffs. ‘Moi know stuff,’ crossing her arms and turning her shoulder away.

  Along the centre of one long wall is a stone fireplace with a busy fire, although from it they can feel no heat and the air is as damp and chilly as it was on the street. The only furniture is a pair of deep-backed sofas positioned either side of a thick rug.

  Three large circular windows provide a view of the city.

  Yuliya strokes the top of Sola’s head but she squirms to the side, making a face like she’s been touched by a toad, and clambers up against the nearest window. Her feet sink through the surface of the sill as if it is carved from meringue.

  Observing her immersed up to her ankles in the wood, David places his hand against the wall and the panel reforms around it. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he says. ‘In Seoul. It’s a form of photon projection.’

  ‘You correct,’ Yuliya says. ‘It’s part of architect’s design. Very expensive and exclusive. Boris like everything of his that way.’ As she speaks, the walls are in the process of transforming: the tapestry fading, the fire fizzing out, and the cream and gold panels developing vertical bars of shadow. A blue evening light glimmers into being, delineating the trunks of trees, their dark branches appearing to reach several feet into the room.

  Sola squeals and strides around the perimeter, finding the room’s vanished corners and running her fingers through the leaves and ferns which tremble to her touch. A night moth flutters up from under her feet and dizzily circles her head. Then a bat shoots the length of the ceiling. They all glance up, but it has passed in a flash, almost too quick to be seen.

  The cleverness of the technology is undeniable and the result is as enchanting as a midnight dream. But Evie still feels disillusionment over being tricked. Right now, she just wants something she can rely on. ‘Is the view outside real?’ she asks, dubiously, crossing the cement floor to the nearest window.

  ‘Yes, all real,’ Yuliya answers.

  Evie stares out over the broad flooded river. In the distance, the dark roofless shell of Notre Dame balances on a pinnacle of high ground.

  Despite what has happened to the walls, the sofas have not changed, but nevertheless Sola gingerly touches the back of one, just to make sure she will not fall through, before throwing herself down, the plump cushions puffing out fine dust.

  ‘You safe here,’ Yuliya announces, ‘now you can make your questions.’

  ‘Where are we?’ Evie asks.

  ‘This where I live. This my home.’

  ‘Why are you helping us?’

  Yuliya smiles and nods. ‘Still can’t you tell? We the same. Don’t you guess it? I know it immediately I see you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ A wave of exhaustion has been catching up with Evie since they arrived and, suddenly weak, she sits heavily on the other sofa to Sola.

  Yuliya takes the opposite end, crossing her legs gracefully at the ankles. Her striking corn-gold hair, pressed back from her face by the high collar of her coat, exposes pink cheeks and small, delicate ears – intricately formed shells pierced by gold pins.

  ‘I mean I made by humans, like you,’ she says, prompting David and Evie to look at one another in surprise. ‘I spot you at Sacré-Coeur. That place magnet for lost souls. I follow you down steps and after think I lose you, I see you again just now outside hotel. I think – lucky you.’ She flashes them a flawless smile.

  ‘Yes, I think I saw you up there,’ Evie says. ‘But I still don’t know why you’ve helped?’

  David, who has an attention span not much longer than Sola’s, goes to sit with the child.

  ‘We same range. You and me, we Elektras. There not many of us made. Even less I think now left. I came across another in Putinsburg but that the only time, and she not in good shape. We made very pretty like butterfly but sad not to last. We must look out for each other, no?’

  Evie is still puzzled but she is also now curious. She gazes into Yuliya’s large round eyes, as blue as a baby’s and straight from the catalogue. ‘How do you live alone?’

  ‘Oh, I been here long time. My owner, Boris, he once great captain of industry. He family in Moscow . . . wife with big bunch of big kids, all big boys like him and he like to keep me here, a treat for himself when he get weekend away from pressure of work. He grown up as boy with dirt of Steppes under his nails and as man he always demand beautiful, perfect things.

  ‘But work make him enemies and one day he put in prison. In Siberia, I think. He write to me once from that place, saying it very cold and that food shit, but that I not to worry. He missing his perfect things, I think. I not hear since. That ten year ago. I have to be realistic, I do not think I see him again.’

  ‘So, you just stay on here and no one minds.’

  Yuliya nods, ‘I try not draw attention. And people not see what they don’t expect to see.’

  ‘Don’t you get lonely? Don’t you miss him?’ She is thinking of Matthew and her friend Daniels. She would not have been able to live on her own for very long.

  ‘He man. He always like stuff his way. But he kind to me and much generous and I am sorry for what happened and sad that I not seeing him again.’

  The conversation has reached as far as it can run and they watch David and Sola play cards, seated on the rug with legs crossed, bonding, like infants, through play. The game is one that Sola knows from The Dolls’ House and involves a complex system of bids and lightning-fast trades followed by the theatrical slapping down of trumps. The requirement for bluff and deceit leaves David all at sea, the buttons Sola gave him at the start transferring themselves inexorably back like magic beans to form a pool in her lap.

  ‘He very handsome,’ Yuliya says. ‘You lucky girl.’

  ‘I’m not sure I really am,’ Evie replies, uncertain what Yuliya means by lucky – that maybe she is not attractive enough to deserve him? ‘He is not mine.’

  ‘But you friends?’

  Evie shrugs. After the misunderstanding of the day before, she is not even sure of that.

  ‘Boris said that we robot – he not so good at political correct – are to be perfection of human form, or we not worth bloody effort.’ Yuliya smiles to herself and gazes into the distance, a self-satisfied narcissistic glaze to her eyes. Then she suddenly stands. ‘I will leave you now all to rest.’ She crosses the room, the movement of her slender legs so smooth, her walk is more of a glide.

  Reaching the doorway, Yuliya hesitates, half-turning back as if she is experiencing second thoughts. Her expression becomes strained, the smile morphing into a grimace. ‘Yes, they nice,’ she murmurs irritably. Her head tilts as if she is listening hard, then she resumes in a low, angry voice. ‘Yes, and you right, risk for us too, but this gifted horse.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Evie asks across the room, but Yuliya is already through the door, which closes crisply behind her. Only then does it dawn that she must have a ‘Simon’ of her own and, amused by the thought that she isn’t the only one to have spent her life being badgered and nagged, Evie allows the oddness of her parting words, that were not intended for her, to slip past.

  Instead she thinks of their conversation. Of Yuliya’s vision of AABs which are admired rather than persecuted. The problem is that, rather than raising new gods, where AABs have been permitted to exist, such as here in Europe, humans have engineered a delta under-class. Even Yuliya’s Boris, however much she wants to believe in his adoration, was clearly using her as little more than an object of escape and gratification. At best a concubine, at worst a slave.

  Evie recalls something that Matthew once
told her about Ancient Greece: that even in Athens, the home of democracy and founded on the premise of all men being equal, there were many thousands of slaves. It was the only way to ensure a comfortable life for its cultured citizens. He had gone onto observe, wryly, that the love of equal rights had been the preserve of men and had not extended to women. She’d applied this last idea to her own situation, her rights not as an AAB but as the lone female in their domestic establishment. True, she had little say on anything that mattered, but however she twisted it, Matthew had never treated her as a slave. The closest thing to a slave had actually been her uncomplaining human and male friend, Daniels.

  She turns again to watch David and Sola. The child is rolling her button winnings across the concrete where they wobble and fall flat in the dark undergrowth around the edges of the room.

  Suddenly inspired, Sola rises to her feet and takes mincing steps around the rug, her nose tilted upwards. ‘Me perfect, me beautiful,’ she says, caressing the air with her outstretched fingers. ‘Admire me nails! Boris he love me. Me great big dolly,’ batting her lashes and making Evie and David laugh and, for the first time in a while, forget themselves.

  Performance over, Sola curtsies and, lifting her skirts, plonks herself down next to David again. She leans against him and closes her eyes. From being so active a moment before, it is as though she has an on/off switch.

  Evie indicates to David that her head is slipping and he scoops her up, carries her to the other sofa and lays her on the cushions. He then crouches down and lifts the whole thing up by its sturdy frame, smoothly revolving it in the air, the child sleeping undisturbed, and sets it down in reverse, facing away from them towards the wall.

  He joins Evie on the other. They haven’t spoken properly since their failed intimacy in the hotel and his proximity, with no other distractions, makes her nervous. They sit a yard apart, looking away from each other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he eventually says. ‘Yesterday I made you feel bad when . . . You were trying to be nice.’

  ‘No, it was my fault,’ she replies, blushing, wishing they weren’t having this conversation. ‘I had no idea, about any of the things you’ve . . .’

  The pressure of the last twenty-four hours has taken its toll on them both. But now they are here in a safe place and as the tension slips away, her tears well up. She closes her eyes to hold them in but they bulge under her lids.

  The sofa shifts as he slides along the cushions. Uninvited, he places his arm around her and draws her against him and there is nothing that she can do but let him hold her and let the tears flow.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘I don’t like to see you cry.’ His simple way of expressing himself, which had at first seemed childish, now seems refreshingly honest.

  ‘It is better to be able to,’ she says. ‘To let out what you feel.’

  ‘I want you to be happy.’

  ‘I think I am,’ she says.

  When her swollen vision clears, Evie points at the wall. ‘Look.’ The scene in the woods around where Sola sleeps has changed. A cottage has appeared among the trees and a group of bearded dwarves are emerging from it to stand around in a circle gazing down at her.

  Evie lays her head on David’s chest. ‘You know, with the three of us here, I feel properly safe for the first time since we set out. It’s a bit like re-finding paradise. Being allowed back in. Is that possible?’

  ‘When you’ve done the right thing,’ he replies, ‘I think it should be. You saved me and you saved the little girl.’

  Evie nods, blinking, memories – real memories, not ones she was given but ones created by her – flooding her. ‘When I lived in London, we had a garden surrounded by a wall. I wish you could have seen it. It was a beautiful place, something in it for each season – apple blossom for spring, camellias in bloom in June, leaves on the paths crackling underfoot in autumn and as the year ended, icicles on the branches that twinkled in the sun. I was content there. No, more than content – happy. It was tended by my friend. He did all the work but he’d tease me anyway by calling it “The Garden of Evie”.’

  ‘Your friend sounds like a nice man,’ David says, his mouth so close that his breath ruffles her hair, setting off a tingle in her lobe.

  ‘He was,’ she says and her eyes fill again.

  As she speaks, the surrounding woods retreat, and in their place bright green lawns roll themselves out, cut through by little paths, overhung by trees weighted with blossom, all of it sheltered by rose-covered brickwork basking in the noon sun. It is not her garden, how could it be? But it is enough to transport her back. And she lifts her cheek from his neck, now wet with her tears, and gazes around.

  Bam . . . Bam . . . Bam . . . Bam . . .

  The transition is as sudden as that. One moment she is asleep and the next shouting and flashing lights fill the air.

  David is being wrenched to his feet.

  Rolling off the sofa, Evie lands on the floor on her hands and knees, and slips sideways beneath it.

  Torchlight criss-crosses the room, intersecting the green beams of energy rifles.

  A half-dozen black-jacketed figures circle the rug. They’ve identified David as their main threat, maybe their primary goal, and are doing their best to restrain him. For now, she and Sola are overlooked.

  The video walls are going berserk. The garden scene, which during the hours of darkness had been steadily embellishing itself with a sundial, a gazebo, a greenhouse, a pond and even something that resembles her swing, flickers and flashes as it struggles to adapt to what has become a war zone. It starts to sleet soot and snow.

  Sola is sitting upright, staring about her, her eyes large with terror.

  Evie, risking leaving her hiding place, crawls across the rug, and, without being seen, takes the child and pulls her down with her, so that they are hidden from view behind the other sofa.

  The attackers struggle to subdue David. A couple of them lie on the floor, with smashed skulls. But they are tasering him now, the little blue filaments tangling around his arms, constraining him in a web. He tries to free himself, ripping at the skein of humming wire, stumbling backwards, his face in agony.

  He glances in her direction and, despite the pain, mouths to her to go.

  The video projection returns to the image of a forest at night. Rain beats down and the branches of the trees bend and scrape with a nightmarish zeal. The dwarves’ cottage has returned too. The door to it is open and a yellow light shines from within.

  Sola frees herself from Evie’s grasp and, followed by the dog, creeps the few yards to the wall where the projection of the little door glows invitingly. Evie watches helplessly as her head and shoulders disappear.

  Before a second later re-emerging. She glances behind her and Evie follows her over.

  They find themselves at the top of a narrow staircase.

  The door swings closed behind. The projection of the dwarves’ door corresponded to an actual hidden door – the room has showed them the way to get out. She can only think that Boris had anticipated the merit of an escape hatch.

  They hurry down the stairs, not looking behind them, and at the bottom, with minimal pressure, the heavy external door swings outward.

  They emerge onto a steel walkway built above the bloated river. Their attention is drawn to the building behind as one of the circular windows forty feet above explodes, scattering glass, David’s body smashing through, tangled with wire weaving false wings between his arms and shoulders. He briefly flies, propelled through the winter air by the power of his death-leap, before plummeting Icarus-like, striking the hard, grey, swollen, icy surface of the river at full pelt.

  PART 5

  The Actuality

  32

  Evie gazes across the lake. Spring is in the air here already, despite it being only January. The snow has retreated into the highest valleys and the white peaks reflect in the surface, disturbed only by ripples. It is as if they left winter behind in Pari
s. A sailboat swings around in a tight semicircle, and then, shedding the wind, comes to an abrupt halt, causing a kerfuffle on deck as the sail flaps and folds back on itself. It reminds her of her own memory of sailing: one moment in full flow with a mother holding her close and then the next . . . cut off.

  The house is across the water. His house. Her ‘father’s’ house. The house of Maier. Although to call it a house fails to do it justice: it is half medieval fantasy and half a collection of glass rectangles. Futuristic and old-fashioned at the same time, not unlike herself.

  Evie looks down at the little girl kneeling in the grass, building a wigwam from sticks, the light in her hair, the tip of her nose prodding the air, her pink lips parted in concentration.

  The escape from Paris was as fraught as anything she’s been through. After eluding their would-be captors, they’d tramped beside the river, arriving an hour later at Gare de Lyon, and from there’d taken the night-train south. It was almost too much to believe that they’d got away, albeit an escape clouded by David’s horrible end. An event she is struggling hard not to think about. And what of Yuliya’s shocking readiness to betray her own kind – that it was her, Evie can have no doubt – using her own self to bait the trap, for what?

  It could only have been for the bounty money. Wealth that would allow her to continue to exist in lonely isolation for a few years longer. There was nothing to distinguish her behaviour from the lowest of what humans do to one another. Such ugliness masked by such beauty could compete with the very worst the animal kingdom could put up. Evie had just not seen it coming; Yuliya had seemed more pampered pet than ruthless survivor.

  Evie kneels behind the child and strokes her hair, smoothing it and separating it into bunches, before starting to plait. Her fingers move expertly. When finished, with no ribbon to hand, she uses shrivelled stalks to tie little bows. Evie could never have imagined a few days ago the level of trust they now have between them.