Inkers (20 page)

“Singularities aren’t gods,” Hardwick said.

“As good as. Compared to us. We’re like ants to them. Listen, I know you don’t believe in this kind of thing, but I think it’s interesting that this technology has appeared, that you’ve found this technology, just at the moment when we need it the most. We humanity I mean, we the whole planet. So I had to try and convince you. Try to do my part. You should take it to ITSA. I’m sorry, I know I don’t normally advise you like this, but I had to try.”

Hardwick nodded, though Ross could not see it.

“No,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

“OK,” Ross said. “I’d better go. Think about it, at least, OK? You don’t have to tell me anything. And don’t worry, I haven’t mentioned anything to anyone, and I won’t. I couldn’t.”

The line went dead. Hardwick sat for a while, looking at the phone. Hardwick left VR, and left his office, and walked downstairs. Pressed his palm against the pad next to the heavy door to the basement. Went in. The door sealed shut behind him. Down into the conditioned air.

Lwazi was sat on the floor, cross–legged, messing with a black computer, a big bot sitting next to him, various soldering and measuring implements held out in its arms.

Lwazi looked up. “What is up?” he said, standing up, stretching.

“I want to hire Ret,” Hardwick said.

Lwazi shrugged. “OK,” he said.

“And once he’s done a couple of jobs, once we know we can trust him, I want to send him to Scotland.”

Lwazi frowned.

“To look,” Hardwick said. “To see what’s there.”

Lwazi nodded, still frowning. “There’s something you should know,” he said. “Come here,” he said, beckoning Hardwick over to the large screen.

“Zoom on Arran,” Lwazi said to the screen, and the island grew larger, with the mark on the small island next to it, the place where the massive signal was coming from.

“Do you see that dot there?” Lwazi said. He pointed at a tiny blue dot on Arran. He tapped on the screen and it zoomed in. The dot was slowly moving across the green–grey of the map.

“What is it?” Hardwick said.

“It’s a concentration of ink, small, mostly dead stuff. I think it’s an immune. She has been wandering all over Arran since I first saw her, a few days ago. I think she is looking for something.”

“Hmm,” Hardwick said. “Just one? Can you modify a watch to track her?”

“I could,” Lwazi said.

“Please do it,” Hardwick said. “Ret will have to kill her.”

Lying in the dark, she felt the
terror rising in her, the terror that overwhelmed her sometimes while she was just drifting off to sleep, mind wandering along the edge of what she knew. Sometimes it made her sit upright suddenly in wide–eyed panting horror. Lily knew of nothing that could counter the terror of existence except ink, and she had not had any ink since they had locked her in almost six months before. The craving was unbelievable.

The claustrophobia was worse than ever. And the fear for her baby and herself.

They had boarded up the skylight on the roof and at the bottom of the shaft. It was almost six weeks since her escape attempt. She felt huge and her muscles were wasting away from the lack of exercise. She tried to walk around the room as much as she could in the day, but her back hurt constantly now, weakened by lack of movement. It ached in her dreams. She still had the nightmare whenever she slept, but now it was even worse, because when she woke up she was still trapped in a dark room, trapped perhaps until Brian cut the baby out of her and killed her.

Annie came in to see her most days, bringing light, water, food. Lily had grown to detest her staying in the room to talk, but then missed it terribly when Annie didn’t stay: it was her only human contact. Annie refused to talk about what was happening on the island or what was happening to Lily. Instead she chattered about her work, Brian’s work, about the outside world, about anything far away, anything except the fact that they had imprisoned a pregnant seventeen–year old.

Today, before Annie could get into her flow, Lily interrupted.

“My clothes are falling apart.”

“Oh,” Annie said, looking at the rags Lily was wearing as if noticing the state of them for the first time. Annie took them away and washed them each week, but there was just one pair of pyjamas and one set of day clothes, and they were disintegrating. “I’d better ask Brian.”

“Please don’t,” Lily said. “Please just bring me some of my clothes, they’re all in my wardrobe. I’m so tired of wearing these every day. Please don’t ask Brian.”

“Oh,” Annie said. “Well,” she said, “I could.”

“Please,” Lily said, and the smile that lit up her face was genuine. It was so long since she had smiled. “Just something clean, something without holes.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Annie said, conspiratorially, winking glassily with her remaining eye. She left the room.

She did not come back that night. Early the next morning she came in bearing the usual bucket of hot water with a plate of food on top, but on her back was a rucksack. She emptied it onto the bed – there were several pairs of underwear, socks, t–shirts and two pairs of baggy jogging bottoms. Lily was so grateful she cried.

She let Annie chatter away while she washed and put the new clothes on. Then she sat down to listen. She wondered if she had somehow caught Annie at a weak point. If she could go further. Perhaps this would be her last chance.

She waited for a pause in Annie’s stream of talk about Scotland’s lacklustre response to the impending return of the GSE. Finally, as Annie busied herself collecting up the rags of Lily’s old clothes, stuffing them in her rucksack, the moment came.

“Annie,” Lily said softly, so that Annie had to lean closer to hear her. Lily was frightened but it was her only chance.

“I want to see outside. I haven’t seen sunlight in – a long time. I can’t sleep. Please just take me out, just for a few minutes. Don’t tell anyone, nobody has to know, we could do it really early one morning, or, or whenever, I just want to see some light.”

She became aware that she was shaking.

“Lily,” Annie said, “I know it’s hard, but you have to trust Brian. We all have to trust him. People like us, we can’t see him for what he really is, but we have to trust him and do what he says, because he’s going to save the world. He’s going to save it from the GSE and make it a good place.”

“No,” Lily said, putting her face in her hands. “No, no, no, he’s not…”

“It’s like there’s nobody left in the whole world who actually cares about human values, compassion to strangers, that sort of thing,” continued Annie, her voice rising. “The religious ones have all turned into zealots or money–grubbers, the atheists are just interested in their own pleasure, where are the leaders? The good people who are actually good, don’t just look good?”

Lily shook her head, tears starting to run down her face, but Annie carried on. Lily had never seen her like this. Annie looked half–mad.

“No, everyone’s a critic, nobody dares to create anything. Nobody’s got the —the balls to try and make something new, something better. But Brian’s trying. What he’s trying to do, he’s trying to save us, save the world. And you’re the vessel, you’re the greatest hope at the moment, what’s inside you is.”

“Please, you don’t know what it’s like, the pain in my back, I’m in the dark all the time…”

“Pain?” Annie said, stepping towards Lily, into the light from her lamp, illuminating her ruined face, the dark hole where her left eye had been. “They gave me a lot of blue, but I made them stop once I woke up. I didn’t want to end up an addict like you. So I healed this without anaesthetic.”

Lily just stared at her, the tears dripping off her chin.

“You know,” Annie said, “The only thing that really makes us different to rocks is pain. We’re built to be in pain, we’ve evolved that way. If we were satisfied and happy, we wouldn’t do anything, we’d just sit there content until we died. So we’re all broken like that. Everyone alive is broken, and that’s why we’re alive. If we fixed ourselves we would die.”

“I
am
going to die in here! The baby is going to die! Please help me! Where is Tom, why won’t he help me?”

Annie shook her head.

“Just be patient. And we’ll have you out quite soon, Brian’s just trying to – to figure out the logistics of it all.”

Lily couldn’t speak any more: she was crying too much. After a while, Annie left.

Sometime later, the door swung open again and Lily looked up and then shrank in fear. It was Brian. He had a grin on his face like a lunatic.

“I’ve been listening to your little chats with Annie,” he said. Lily could not keep the horror from her face.

“Yes,” he nodded. “Don’t think I’m stupid. I won’t let you jeopardise the baby again. I’ve got a couple of little drones in here. Listen to me. There is no way out. Annie won’t help you. And the baby will be ready soon. I’ll take it then, and you’ll be free of it. So just be patient. And don’t ask Annie to help you again.”

He shut her in the darkness, alone, and for the first time Lily started to scream before she was even asleep. Nobody came: they were all used to her nightmares. What difference was a waking one?

Once she had calmed herself down she just lay quietly on the bed. There was no point in screaming. There was no point in trying to sleep, although she was utterly exhausted and her body was crying out for it, because as soon as she dropped off she would be in the terrible nightmare of permanent imprisonment which only ever ended in screams of terror and pain. There was no point in trying to escape. Annie would not or could not help her. Tom was nowhere. He had given up on her. Maybe he was dead. The skylight was doubly closed to her now, not just by boards and nails, but by her body, which was now far too heavy and weak to climb. She was almost too weak to walk at all. And Brian and his drones would be watching all the time.

She could not find Tia. At certain times Lily thought she could sense her there in the darkest corner of the room. Sometimes she put her hand on her belly, but there was no movement. Sometimes she wondered if the baby was dead.

She was living in a nightmare from which she could not seem to wake.

She thought about the singularity that Brian was trying to build, the core fact of their life here that she had always accepted without question. She realised that she had never believed he would succeed, had been content to eat the food and take the ink, thinking it basically an impossible task. But if he succeeded, if there was the seed of a singularity inside her, what was it capable of? She knew something of what humans did to their environment; she had seen it in the asylums as a child, and here on the island. The more control they had over nature, the more whatever they were was manifested and magnified in reality. Any character flaws took shape in the environment. Brian’s search towards complete sentient control of reality, his search for immortality, search for power, search for a weapon to defeat the GSE, it was like he was actively trying to build hell. And she realised that she now had no doubt that, if nobody stopped him, he would succeed.

She wondered if she should die, find a way to kill herself, kill the baby if it still lived. She saw no other way out. She wondered vaguely if the universe would carry on without her. Would the sun really keep wheeling through the sky if she was no longer there? It was hard to believe.

Then, several hours later, on the edge of sleep, she felt something that she had not felt before. Something was moving inside her. She placed her hand on her bloated abdomen, and felt, for the first time, the kicking of her child, poking gently at her hand. Despite the darkness, despite the pain, she realised that she was not alone.

She knew then that she could not die. She could not allow them to take Tia from her. She could not let the baby die. Whatever it was inside her, she already loved it.

There was only one option. She would face her nightmare. She closed her exhausted eyes, felt sleep wash through her limbs and saw the pre–dream images of darkness and fear flicker behind her eyelids. She was immediately inside the room in her mind.

She was trapped forever. She could never leave. She ran to the walls, began to scrape with fingernails that stabbed with pain as she touched the concrete. She felt the scream building inside her, welling up unstoppably. She clawed harder, but the walls would never give. The scream was coming, the complete terror, the end of her mind, it would burst out, now, now, now – but she saw its path and for the first time in her life she stopped. She stood there, shocked. She lowered her hands, looked at the bloody marks on the walls. She was aware suddenly of how real it all seemed. She wondered for a moment if she was even dreaming. She looked at her bloodied hands. Tried to poke her palm with her other forefinger – it passed through. In a rush she remembered what she was trying to do. She spun to look at the empty black room. Felt the fear rise again in her at its terrible lack of orifice, lack of entrance or exit, the perfect permanent prison.