Christopher Priest: The Watched

Sometimes Jenessa was slow to leave in the mornings, reluctant to return to the frustrations of her job, and when she lingered in his house on these occasions Yvann Ordier had difficulty in concealing his impatience. This morning was one such, and he lurked outside the door of the shower cubicle while she bathed, fingering the smooth leather case of his binoculars. Ordier was alert to Jenessa’s every movement, each variation in sound giving him as clear a picture as there would be if the door were wide open and the plastic curtain held back: the spattering of droplets against the curtain as she raised an arm, the lowering in pitch of the hissing water as she bent to wash a leg, the fat drops plopping soapily on the tiled floor as she stood erect to shampoo her hair. He could visualize her glistening body in every detail, and thinking of their lovemaking during the night he felt a renewed lust for her. He knew he was standing too obviously by the door, too transparently waiting for her, so he put down the binoculars case and went into the kitchen and heated some coffee. He waited until it had percolated, then left it on the hot plate. Jenessa had still not finished her shower; Ordier paused by the door of the cubicle and knew by the sound of the water that she was rinsing her hair. He could imagine her with her face uptilted toward the spray, her long dark hair plastered flatly back above her ears. She often stood like this for several minutes, letting the water run into her open mouth before dribbling away, coursing down her body; twin streams of droplets would fall from her nipples, a tiny rivulet would snake through her pubic hair, a thin film would gloss her buttocks and thighs. Again torn between desire and impatience, Ordier went to his bureau, unlocked it, and took out his scintilla detector. He checked the batteries first; they were sound, but he knew they would have to be replaced soon. He made frequent use of the detector because he had discovered by chance a few weeks before that his house had become infested with several of the microscopic scintillas, and since then he had been searching for them every day. There was a signal the instant he turned on the detector, and he walked through the house listening for subtle changes in the pitch and volume of the electronic howl. He traced the scintilla to the bedroom, and by switching in the directional circuit and holding the instrument close to the floor, he found it a few moments later. It was in the carpet, near where Jenessa’s clothes were folded over a chair. Ordier parted the tufts of the carpet, and picked up the scintilla with a pair of tweezers. He took it through into his study. This was the third he had discovered this week, and although there was every chance it had been brought into the house on someone’s shoes, it was nevertheless unsettling to find one. He put it on a slide, then peered at it through his microscope. There was no serial number. Jenessa had left the shower, and was standing by the door of the study. “What are you doing?” she said.

“Another scintilla,” Ordier said. “In the bedroom.” “You’re always finding them. I thought they were supposed to be undetectable.” “I’ve got a gadget that locates them.” “You never told me.” Ordier straightened, and turned to face her. She was naked, with a turban of golden toweling around her hair. “I’ve made some coffee,” he said. “Let’s have it on the patio.” Jenessa walked away, her legs and back still moist from the shower. Ordier watched her, thinking of another girl, the Qataari girl in the valley, and wishing that his response to Jenessa could be less complicated. In the last few weeks she had become at once more immediate and more distant, because she aroused in him desires that could not be fulfilled by the Qataari girl. He turned back to the microscope and pulled the slide gently away. He tipped the scintilla into a quiet-case—a soundproof, lightproof box where twenty or more of the tiny lenses were already kept—then went to the kitchen. He collected the percolator and cups, and went outside to the heat and the rasping of cicadas. Jenessa sat in the sunlight of the patio, combing the tangles from her long, fine hair. As the sun played on her, the water dried, and she talked of her plans for the day. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” she said. “He’s coming to dinner this evening.” “Who is he?” Ordier said, disliking any interruption of his routine. “A colleague. He’s just arrived from the north.” Jenessa was sitting with the sun bright behind her, outlining her bronzed body. She was at ease when naked; beautiful and sexual and aware of it.

“What’s he here for?” “To try to observe the Qataari. He knows the difficulties, apparently, but he’s been given a research grant. I suppose he should be allowed to spend it.” “But why should I have to meet him?” Jenessa reached across, took his hand briefly. “You don’t have to… but I’d like him to meet you.” Ordier was stirring the sugar in the bowl, watching it heap and swirl like a viscid liquid. Each of the grains was larger than a scintilla, and a hundred of the tiny lenses scattered in the sugar would probably go unnoticed. How many scintillas were left in the dregs of coffee cups, how many were accidentally swallowed? Jenessa lay back across the lounger, and her breasts flattened across her chest. Her nipples were erect and she had raised a leg, knowing that he was admiring her. “You like to stare,” she said, giving him a shrewd look from her dark-set eyes, and she turned toward him on her side, so that her large breasts appeared to fill again. “But you don’t like being watched, do you?” “What do you mean?” “The scintillas. You’re very quiet whenever you find one.” “Am I?” Ordier said, not aware that Jenessa had been noticing. He always tried to make light of them. “There are so many around… all over the island. There’s no evidence anyone’s planting them.” “You don’t like finding them, though.” “Do you?” “I don’t look for them.” In common with most of the people who lived on the islands

of the Dream Archipelago, Ordier and Jenessa did not speak very often of their past lives. In the islands, past and future were effectively suspended by the Covenant of Neutrality. The future was sealed, as were the islands themselves, for until the conclusion of the war on the southern continent no one was permitted to leave the Archipelago; no one, that is, except the crews of ships and the troops of both combatant sides who constantly passed through. The future of the islands would be determined by the war, and the war was indeterminate; it had continued, without a break, for more than two centuries, and was as entrenched now as it had been fifty years before. With a sense of future removed, the past became irrelevant, and those who came to the Archipelago, choosing the permanence of neutrality, made a conscious decision to abandon their former lives. Yvann Ordier was one amongst thousands of such émigrés; he had never told Jenessa how he had made his fortune, how he had paid for his passage to the Archipelago. All he had told her was that he had been prodigiously successful in business, enabling him to take an early retirement. She, for her part, spoke little of her background, although Ordier realized this was a characteristic of native islanders, rather than a desire to forget a doubtful past. He knew she had been born on the island of Lanna, and that she was an anthropologist attempting, unsuccessfully, to study the refugee Qataari. What Ordier did not want to reveal to Jenessa was how he came to possess a scintilla detector. He did not want to speak of past nefariousness, nor of his role in the planned proliferation of the scintilla surveillance lenses.