Ken MacLeod - Intrusion

‘You still haven’t said why.’

Hugh licked his lips. ‘My father gave it to me, when I was thirteen or so.’

‘You could have left it with him,’ she said. ‘Come on.’

‘Well, you know how it is.’

‘No, I fucking don’t know how it is!’ She put her hand across her mouth, with the vague idea that no one who looked at the camera recording could use it to lip-read. ‘It’s illegal! You could get us both arrested!’

Hugh shifted again on the couch. He sighed and stretched out a hand to the whisky bottle, and looked at her.

‘Do you mind?’ he said.

‘Go right ahead,’ said Hope, with a flourish of her hand like a waiter showing someone to a table. ‘I was thinking of having a dram myself.’

His hand jerked back. ‘No, sorry.’

‘Only joking,’ said Hope. ‘Have a dram. I don’t mind.’

Hugh poured himself a costly measure and added a splash of water. He leaned forward, hand wrapped around the glass. He took a sip and closed his eyes, inhaling.

‘Ah, that’s good,’ he said.

‘Don’t rub it in,’ said Hope.

Hugh scratched the back of his head. ‘All right. Think of it as medicinal. Or as a truth drug.’

‘OK,’ said Hope, leaning back with her arms folded. ‘Talk.’

‘All right,’ said Hugh. ‘Um, why. Well.’ He took a longer sip. ‘I thought I might need it, some day, if…’ He twisted his lower lip against the edges of his upper teeth. Sniffed. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

Oh fuck , thought Hope, fearing the worst and unable to imagine what it could be.

When he finally got it out, and when she finally understood what he was getting at, it was such a relief that she had trouble not laughing.

‘You thought… you might find yourself… in the past ?’

‘Yes,’ said Hugh, nodding vigorously. ‘Or that someone might come for me, out of the past, and… you know, I might need some…’

His voice trailed off, as if he found what he was saying ridiculous.

Hope closed her eyes. ‘Oh, Jesus.’ She opened them again. ‘But you said yourself, it’s just sight.’

‘No,’ said Hugh, his voice heavy. ‘Some of it is, the people. But no – it’s smell too. And that land I saw, I felt I could have climbed through to it. I felt the wind on my face. I could smell the smoke. And I heard the footsteps behind me.’

Hope felt the tiny hairs on her cheeks and the back of her neck prickle.

‘Smells and sounds can be hallucinations too,’ she pointed out.

‘I know that! Don’t I know that! But I’m telling you, that was what made it seem more real. I was terrified. I had nightmares. That’s why I asked my dad for the… for the thing.’

‘And you’re telling me you still have that fear you had then?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Hugh. ‘It’s just that… it’s like superstition. Like you might come to think of something as lucky, because it seemed to work once or twice, and, you know, better safe than sorry. So I keep it like a… a talisman. And anyway, like I said, I still see them sometimes. The barbarians. And hear and smell them, for that matter.’

‘But they’ve never threatened you at all?’

‘Just that one in the culvert. He… I suppose it was he… really did seem to be coming after me.’

‘But apart from that?’

Hugh shook his head. ‘No, no, never.’ He smiled, as if clouds had broken for a moment. ‘And the first was Voxy, and she seemed to grow into you.’

‘Yes, you told me that, thank you,’ Hope said, with some asperity. She hadn’t felt exactly flattered by his account of how he’d fallen for her. It was as if she had fitted a previous fantasy image. As quickly as the thought recurred, a more reassuring interpretation occurred to her, and it cheered her up immensely. All of a sudden things made sense again.

‘But I think I understand,’ she went on. ‘Let’s leave aside your second-sight theory, OK? I don’t know anything about that, and it doesn’t seem likely to me. Look at what we get if we assume it’s all psychological, it’s all in your head.’ Hugh looked poised to interrupt. She raised a hand. ‘No, wait, hear me out. Lots of people, far more people than ever admit it, see people who aren’t there. It’s quite common in kids. Take your case. You start off with an imaginary friend, OK? And then you become embarrassed by her, and she disappears. As you get older, you see others, but just when you’re at or near puberty and feeling all sorts of stresses you don’t understand and can’t process, you have a really quite disturbing and scary vision, hallucination, whatever. You start having nightmares. So you ask your dad for something that reassures you, that you feel keeps the bad thing at bay. And it does. After that… right up to now, right up to your most recent encounter, sort of thing, the visions become much more benign. The one you saw when you met me, it was a kind of blessing on us, wasn’t it? It was saying I was the ideal girl for you, an ideal you’d begun to form when you were quite small – just becoming aware of the difference between boys and girls, and how that had something to do with how your parents loved each other, and at the same time you were just a little bit ashamed of the warm and tender feelings you had towards these, yuck, girls – and that grew with you. You see?’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ said Hugh.

‘These visions you have aren’t something bad. They aren’t something to be ashamed of. They’re one part of your brain telling you things about yourself. Mostly good things, apart from that one scary episode. You’re all right, Hugh. You’re all right. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Hugh, with a wry smile.

‘And you don’t need that thing in the box any more.’

Hugh looked dubious, almost stubborn.

‘Maybe not, but I don’t want to risk it. I don’t mean risk what I thought might happen when I was thirteen. I mean risk doing something to what’s keeping me stable, right? Even if what you say is how it is, and I hope so, maybe the thing in the box is important to me psychologically. Like a symbol, you know? If it’s all in my subconscious – well, the subconscious has a thing about symbols. I don’t want to disturb that.’

‘You’re a grown man now,’ Hope said. ‘You don’t need a security blanket.’

For a moment Hugh’s expression didn’t look very grown-up at all.

‘I might find I needed more of the drink, instead.’ He poured himself another generous slug. ‘It’s funny. My private name for the box was “the suicide box”.’

‘You weren’t feeling suicidal ?’ she asked, shocked.

‘No, no,’ said Hugh. ‘Not for one second. It was just a wee private joke to myself. You know, about the old ruling-class tradition of what to give someone when they’ve really fucked up and need to make a graceful retirement from the scene? Doesn’t mean anything more than that.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Hope.

There was an uncomfortable silence. On the screen, strange organisms were extrapolated from faint exoplanetary atmospheric traces of organic molecules that hinted at a different genetic code.

‘Are you sure you were just joking,’ said Hugh, awkwardly, ‘about having a dram yourself?’

‘Not entirely.’

His cheek twitched. He rubbed his chin just under the mouth. ‘Were you really considering taking the fix?’

‘Damn right I was,’ said Hope. ‘I’d decided. The only reason I didn’t was that I’d hidden this box’ – she flicked it with a fingernail – ‘beside yours.’

‘Why?’

‘Fiona – the health visitor – gave me it, and I didn’t want to think about it, so I put it somewhere—’