Matt Haig - The Humans

I took my hand away. ‘Sorry. Really. I thought I still had the ability to heal you.’

‘I know you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’ve seen you before.’

‘Yes. I know. I passed you, on my first day in Cambridge. You may remember. I was naked.’

He leant back, squinted, angled his head. ‘Nah. Nah. Wasn’t that. I saw you today.’

‘I don’t think you did. I’m pretty sure I would have recognised you.’

‘Nah. Definitely today. I’m good with faces, see.’

‘Was I with someone? A young woman? Red hair?’ He considered. ‘Nah. It was just you.’

‘Where was I?’

‘Oh, you were on, let me think, you’d have been on Newmarket Road.’

‘Newmarket Road?’ I knew the name of the street, because it was where Ari lived, but I hadn’t ever been on the street myself. Not today. Not ever. Though of course, it was very likely that Andrew Martin – the original Andrew Martin – had been down there many times. Yes, that must have been it. He was getting mixed up. ‘I think you might be confused.’

He shook his head. ‘It was you all right. This morning. Maybe midday. No word of a lie.’

And with that the man stood up and hobbled slowly away from me, leaving a trail of smoke and spilt alcohol.

A cloud passed across the sun. I looked up to the sky. I had a thought as dark as the shade. I stood up. I took the phone out of my pocket and called Ari. Eventually someone picked up. It was a woman. She was breathing heavily, sniffing up snot, struggling to turn noise into coherent words.

‘Hello, this is Andrew. I wondered if Ari was there.’

And then the words came, in morbid succession: ‘He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead .’

I ran.

I left the wine and I ran as fast as I could, across the park, along streets, over main roads, hardly thinking about traffic. It hurt, this running. It hurt my knees, my hips, my heart and my lungs. All those components, reminding me they would one day fail. It also, somehow, aggravated the various facial aches and pains I was suffering. But, mostly, it was my mind that was in turmoil.

This was my fault. This had nothing to do with the Riemann hypothesis and everything to do with the fact that I had told Ari the truth about where I was from. He hadn’t believed me, but that hadn’t been the point. I had been able to tell him, without getting an agonising violet-tainted warning. They had disconnected me, but they must still have been watching, and listening, which meant they could probably hear me now.

‘Don’t do it. Don’t hurt Isobel or Gulliver. They don’t know anything.’

I reached the house that, up until this morning, I had been living in with the people I had grown to love. I crunched my way up the gravel driveway. The car wasn’t there. I looked through the living-room window, but there was no sign of anyone. I had no key with me so I rang the doorbell.

I stood and waited, wondering what I could do. After a while, the door opened, but I still couldn’t see anyone. Whoever had opened the door clearly didn’t want to be seen.

I stepped into the house. I walked past the kitchen. Newton was asleep in his basket. I went over to him, shook him gently. ‘Newton! Newton!’ But he stayed asleep, breathing deeply, mysteriously unwakeable.

‘I’m in here,’ said a voice, coming from the living room.

So I followed it, that familiar voice, until I was there, looking at a man sitting on the purple sofa with one leg crossed over the other. He was instantly familiar to me – indeed, he could not have been more so – and yet, at the same time, the sight of him was terrifying.

For it was myself I was looking at.

His clothes were different (jeans instead of cords, a T-shirt instead of shirt, trainers in place of shoes) but it was definitely the form of Andrew Martin. The mid-brown hair, naturally parted. The tired eyes, and the same face except for the absence of bruises.

‘Snap!’ he said, smiling. ‘That is what they say here, isn’t it? You know, when they are playing card games. Snap! We are identical twins.’

‘Who are you?’

He frowned, as if I’d asked such a basic question it shouldn’t have been asked. ‘I’m your replacement.’

‘My replacement?’

‘That is what I said. I am here to do what you were unable to do.’

My heart was racing. ‘What do you mean?’

‘To destroy information.’

Fear and anger were sometimes the same thing. ‘You killed Ari?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why? He didn’t know the Riemann hypothesis had been proved.’

‘No. I know. I have been given broader instructions than you. I have been told to destroy anyone you have told about your’ – he considered the right word – ‘ origins .’

‘So they’ve been listening to me? They said I was disconnected.’

He pointed at my left hand, where the technology still evidently lived. ‘They took your powers away, but they didn’t take theirs. They listen sometimes. They check.’

I stared at it. At my hand. It looked, suddenly, like an enemy.

‘How long have you been here? On Earth, I mean.’

‘Not long.’

‘Someone broke into this house a few nights ago. They accessed Isobel’s computer.’

‘That was me.’

‘So why the delay? Why didn’t you finish the job that night?’

‘You were here. I did not want to hurt you. No Vonnadorian has killed another Vonnadorian. Not directly.’

‘Well, I’m not really a Vonnadorian. I am a human. The paradox is that I’m light years from home, and yet this feels like my home. That is a strange thing to feel. So, what have you been doing? Where have you been living?’

He hesitated, swallowed hard. ‘I have been living with a female.’

‘A female human? A woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Outside Cambridge. A village. She doesn’t know my name. She thinks I am called Jonathan Roper. I convinced her we were married.’

I laughed. The laugh seemed to surprise him. ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I don’t know. I have gained a sense of humour. That is one thing that happened when I lost the gifts.’

‘I am going to kill them, do you know that?’

‘No. Actually, I don’t. I told the hosts there is no point. That’s about the last thing I said to them. They seemed to understand me.’

‘I have been told to, and that is what I will do.’

‘But don’t you think it’s pointless, that there’s no real reason to do it?’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘No, I do not think that’, he said, in a voice which was mine but deeper, somehow, and flatter. ‘I do not see a separation. I have lived with a human for only a few days but I have seen the violence and hypocrisy that runs through this species.’

‘Yes, but there is good in them. A lot of good.’

‘No. I don’t see it. They can sit and watch dead human bodies on TV screens and feel nothing at all.’

‘That’s how I saw it at first, but—’

‘They can drive a car thirty miles every day and feel good about themselves for recycling a couple of empty jam jars. They can talk about peace being a good thing yet glorify war. They can despise the man who kills his wife in rage but worship the indifferent soldier who drops a bomb killing a hundred children.’

‘Yes, there is a bad logic here, I agree with you, yet I truly believe—’

He wasn’t listening. He stood up now, stared at me with determined eyes as he paced the room and delivered his speech. ‘They believe God is always on their side, even if their side is at odds with the rest of their species. They have no way of coming to terms with what are, biologically, the two most important events that happen to them – procreation and death. They pretend to know that money can’t buy them happiness, yet they would choose money every time. They celebrate mediocrity at every available opportunity and love to see others’ misfortune. They have lived on this planet for over a hundred thousand generations and yet they still have no idea about who they really are or how they should really live. In fact, they know less now than they once did.’