D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

Mostly it felt marvelous. I was, after all, a reporter. I had suffered under the exigencies of camera and lighting crews all my professional life. The presence of a camera takes people in different ways — some people are good and some are bad, the best are careful and the worst are carefully uncareful. Scientists claim that the very act of observation alters in some subtle way the nature of the phenomenon being observed. When the phenomenon is people and the observer is the grasping lens of a camera the ways aren’t all that subtle. To be free of all that was marvelous.

Also it felt important. I was important. I had been thought important enough for a fifteen-thousand-pound investment of company money. And a whole lot of insurance. With a three-year contract that would keep me in luxury the rest of my life. And a guaranteed renewal if I wanted it. Which I would.

I was, after all, a reporter. Like Reuter, with his carrier pigeons. I was presented with the most staggering tool for truthful reportage the world had ever known. Of course I would renew. The price was high, but so were the satisfactions. Three years would see me just beginning. Not in terms of fame, for that would follow instantly on the first press release, but in terms of technique. In terms of (though I was shy of the word), in terms of artistry. The death of Katherine Mortenhoe, no matter how challenging, was only a start.

Then again, it felt outrageous. I was a surgical monstrosity. A cyborg. I had been violated. I had offered myself willingly for obscene experimentation. I had given up myself, given up a right even to the ultimate privacy of my senses. I was a public man. What I saw, every voyeuristic hack by the receiving monitor would see. My tapes could be played back for the cheap delectation of office boys. My finest moments were common property. And those less fine. If I glanced down at my pecker while I pissed, that image too could be taken down and used in evidence against me. ‘The man was patently a libertine, m’lud. He squeezed his pecker sensuously while he pissed…’ And if I closed my eyes or stayed in complete darkness for any length of time, the implanted retinal micro-circuits would overload, and pain would force my consciousness into light again.

That then was the price, and that the satisfaction. I was public property, and utterly alone. (For who could trust me with secrets, either of body or mind?) And I had within my head the possibility of greatness.

Vincent brought me a beer, and a tomato juice for himself. He was going on, he said. I didn’t need to ask where.

She nearly told the woman beside her on the travelator. ‘I’ve only got four weeks to live,’ she nearly said. The woman on the travelator would have replied, ‘Now that’s a funny thing, ‘cause so have I.’ And with so much in common, they’d have struck up a conversation.

But the woman on the travelator was watching the advertisements, and Katherine didn’t care to interrupt her. So her secret went unshared all the way back to Computabook. Or Peregrine Publications, as they presented themselves to the public. (In promotional circles computers were a dirty word.)

Peter was waiting for her. In one of his tizzies.

‘There’s been a flap on. Babs suddenly rang up spare capacity, love, so I had to send Queen’s Mate on down. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t think I know a book called Queen’s Mate.’

‘Of course you do. It was one of Barbara’s early tries at the Wentworth. You circled it so I knew it couldn’t be too bad.’

She sat down at once at the teleprinter. ‘My dear boy, I’d circled it as a particularly crass example of what’s getting past the banality scanners these days.’ Her fingers twitched, ready to start typing a rerun. ‘How long’s it been going?’

‘Soon after you left. I’d say an hour at least.’

She forgot what she was supposed to be doing, and put her fingers away. ‘I don’t expect it matters,’ she said.

Peter stared at her. He discarded his tizzy, pulled up a chair, sat down beside her.

‘You’re my best my dearest Katie-Mo.’ He put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘And I’m a selfish pig. I should have asked you first of all what happened at the hospital.’

‘It wasn’t a hospital.’

‘The Medical Center, then. The place you’ve just been.’

He was kind, and handsome, and a bit silly, and he loved her very much in his homosexual way, and it would have been so pleasant to tell him, to have another little cry, this time into his hanky, and then to go home early to her own dear Harry. Except that she couldn’t. A Celia Wentworth heroine would think things weren’t really real if they weren’t talked about.

‘Happened, Peter? What do you think happened? I talked, and the doctor said ho and hum, and I came away. He thinks I’m a foolish old woman.’

‘Then why are you so upset?’

She didn’t deny it. ‘I… don’t like being thought a foolish old woman.’

‘Pull the other one.’

‘I mean it.’

‘The other one’s got bells on.’

She looked into his face, very close. He cared, and she couldn’t bear it. ‘I wonder why your sort likes to paw older women,’ she said.

He still didn’t move. ‘Probably because we’re still a bit like children.’ He gave her arm a final squeeze, then got up. ‘But with a bit more tact.’

He went softly to the door.

‘If you were to take some time off, Katie-Mo, I promise I wouldn’t let Babs do anything too terrible. I’m not really a very crass person.’

For as long as he was there by the door she could only think how remarkably uncrass a person he was, and wish that she could find the words to say so. But as soon as he was gone she forgot him completely.

She must be practical. She had only four weeks. She must resign at once from Peregrine. She had four weeks into which to pack the next fifty years of living. She must check the banality scanners in Barbara’s titling phase. Probably a whole-book scanning operation would be necessary. Fifty years of needs and satisfactions, of love and attainment, of power and sex. Fifty years of love — put that way it sounded ridiculous. And there was dignity. She must tell Harry. With only four weeks, perhaps dignity was all that mattered. Or didn’t matter at all. And she must tell Harry. Also her book. She must tell her book, her immortality. But first of all she must resign from Peregrine. And tell Harry. And put to bed at least one more Pargeter and Paladine and Wentworth. And tell Harry. And tell Harry.

She buzzed Peter on the intercom. He answered at once.

‘Katie-Mo?’

‘Queen’s Mate cover picture?’

‘Barbara suggested the house in long-shot. From page seventy. Crown in foreground, lying on the grass.’

‘Simple composite?’

‘Both in stock, according to info, and not too recent. But I’ve rung down color changes, just in case.’

‘I’ll see a proof?’

‘Natch.’

‘Good… Keep you off sunsets and oil refineries and you’re a doll. Not crass at all.’

She flicked the switch before he could answer. A doll? The only times she’d heard the word used like that was from her first, her American, stepmother. She was a ragbag of styles, none of them her own. The American stepmother had wanted to please. The successor, bringing a family of her own, had believed in children finding their own level. When her father had moved on, a new career, a new life, Katherine had stuck to that family briefly, like a burr. But her new father, unrecognizable in his new career and his new life, had asked for her and for the continuity he then couldn’t allow her to represent. So another style was added. Schools, universities, jobs, bosses… and now she was forty-four.