Lust. Geoff Ryman
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an anxious parent trying to sound cool for his son’s friends.
Tony’s head jerked around almost in panic, and he glared at Michael, alarmed and hostile. With a snap, Tony mastered himself. He gave a brief and professional greeting. Michael’s ears felt numb and he didn’t hear it. Tony turned his back.
Fumbling slightly, Michael straddled himself onto an Exercycle. He pedalled for six minutes, and for six minutes he tried to catch Tony’s eye. Like a compass needle pointing north, somehow the broad back in its green shirt was always turned towards Michael. It was like stalking a rare marsh bird. Michael finished his aerobics.
‘Tony,’ Michael asked him. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘No, mate, no,’ said Tony, shaking his head.
‘You had a bad dream last night,’ said Michael. Tony’s face fell, gathering a line of pale tissue either side of his mouth. ‘So did I,’ said Michael.
Without another word, Tony turned and walked into his tiny office, and firmly closed the door.
The next day, the chicks hatched.
Ebru came into Michael’s room looking slightly blue and pinched around the cheeks. ‘I am hearing peeping from the darkroom.’
‘OK. Make sure nobody goes in.’
They weren’t set up yet. There was a small workroom with a sink, a draining board, and an interrogation lamp. Something that looked like it might be for stretching tyres over wheels was in fact a small centrifuge. There was a kitchen magimix. Setting out the instruments of the experiment brought home to their hearts and stomachs what they were about to do.
There were new garden secateurs, the blades a polished chrome. There was the cheese shave with its wire. There were the lined bins, with their black sacks wafting plastic odours.
Inside the darkroom, the new chicks were wet, warm, shivering. In the dull red light, their ancient heads looked outraged, as if they had been pulled back out of heaven after death. They demanded, mouths open.
Every other chick was lifted up and lowered into a trolley. They jolted with life in Michael’s hands as if attached to live wires. The trolley was wheeled through the double set of doors that cut off all light, and into the workroom.
‘OK, let’s have some light,’ said Michael. And as if the chicks were criminals, the workroom lamps were switched on, blazing.
For the first time in their lives, the chicks saw light. They blinked and squinted.
‘They look so small,’ said Ebru.
Michael knew he had to be first. He was the boss, he had designed the experiment, and he couldn’t ask them to do anything that he himself ducked. Come on Michael, they wouldn’t be here but for you; you have to take responsibility for their deaths as well.
Michael took a deep breath and picked up the first chick. It was no longer warm, but wet and chill and it went silent as he picked it up, and he knew it was because the chick was pre-programmed to treat large warm near objects as mothers.
He focussed, took the secateurs and as quickly as possible snipped into the little leathery skull, nosed in the secateurs, snipped quickly at the base of the brain.
‘Let’s start with the centrifuge,’ he said. Ebru touched his arm. ‘The trick is to do it quickly, so there’s no pain.’
The first chicken brain was rolled carefully by Ebru into the palm of her gloved hand, and then dropped into the magimix.
The second was laid out in the tray.
One half of the brains would be reduced to their chemical components, which would be analysed. The other half would be stained and then frozen immediately in the cold room for slicing. The results would be compared with the control groups, who would die without ever seeing any light whatsoever. The bodies were thrown limp into the bags, which were then sealed.
Michael ran with the tray towards the cold room. The Fridge was a big white box, and it shivered to the touch, like Michael’s slightly sick stomach. The tray was numbered and it was placed on a shelf space with a matching number.
When Michael returned, the centrifuge was humming, and the clean draining board was being dried, and the garbage bags were in hessian sacks stencilled with the words WATERLOO FEED COMPANY.
‘Well done, gang,’ he said. He had to go into his office and sit down.
Well, you knew it would be like this when you set up the experiment, Michael. The same fate awaits every hen in Britain at some point, even free-range ones.
But they, at least, have some kind of life.
Did it make any difference that they were trying to provide answers to some truly big questions? Michael loved science and he loved life somewhat less, and he had faith that in the end the two would support each other. But he still felt sick.
He felt compromised. This affected his self-esteem in other areas. He had to go for a walk in the park to clear his lungs. He sat on a bench and ate his sandwiches, which fortunately were cheese and not chicken. Nevertheless, he found the sweaty taste of animal fat unappetizing. He crunched his way through his apple.
You know, Michael, it is not everyone who can call up simulations of people from thin air. This … this miracle … arrives. And what do you use it for? You use it to turn tricks. Which is what you always do. You can turn tricks in Alaska Street. What if this isn’t about sex?
The more Michael thought, the more unlikely it seemed that the universe would change all its rules to keep him supplied with fancy men. Suppose I could clone Einstein and set him to work solving equations? What are the limits of this thing?
Michael wrote in his notebook.
Hypothesis: I can call up copies of people but I do not have to fancy them.
Method: Try to call up someone for whom you feel not a trace of lust and note the result.
Michael decided to call up Mother Theresa.
He admired her, he wanted to talk to her, perhaps about the morality of animal experimentation. And it was a certainty that he felt no lust whatsoever for her.
It was a brilliant diamond of a spring day. The light seemed to have edges and cut. Why not just do the show right here? What better church to call up Mother Theresa than Archbishop’s Park?
He felt the sun on his face. It was as if the light was reflecting off the daffodils. He called out. With his eyes closed, it seemed to him, he reached out into darkness hidden behind the light.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes. A football team from a local office, in mismatched T-shirts and shorts, loped towards the red-grit soccer pitch. Michael closed his eyes, and asked again. The bench next to him remained stubbornly empty.
He got out his notebook, feeling disappointment. Just to be sure, he looked over his shoulder, and called up the Cherub. There was the faintest wuffling sound as the air seemed to fold itself into a green and pink origami. The Cherub sat next to him on the bench.
‘Keep your clothes on,’ whispered Michael.
So, thought Michael. This is about sex. He felt a further degree or two of increased disappointment.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he whispered to the Cherub, ‘you know how this works?’
The Cherub stared ahead like a starship captain gazing at a far galaxy. Michael suddenly saw how the real Tony would look when he was older: solid, pale and a bit blank. ‘It goes all the way back,’ the Cherub said. Then he turned and looked at Michael with a sudden urgency. ‘The back of the head.’ And he jerked it behind him.
‘You