Крис Бекетт - The Holy Machine

‘Shameless!’ I heard someone spit among the onlookers.

‘No. Don’t do it to me either, Lucy. Just be yourself, remember, be yourself!’

Her face at once became blank and dead. There was a sudden silence among our observers.

‘She’s mad,’ they muttered, ‘She’s an idiot of some sort…’

And they started to turn uncomfortably away.

‘Drink up your lemon,’ I said to her, draining my tiny cup of coffee. ‘Let’s get our business sorted out quickly and leave.’

Suddenly a large hand descended on my shoulder.

O3!

I froze, then squirmed round and looked up into a broad, thickly moustachioed face.

‘I remember you my City friend. A merry dance you and your friends led me. I thought I was going to get lynched.’

It was the taxi-driver Manolis. He took a spare chair, turned it round and straddled it between Lucy and I, leaning forward to examine us, a cigarette smouldering between his lips.

‘George, isn’t it?’ he said to me, ‘I remember. A good Greek name! Well, no harm was done, as it turned out, and now we’re friends again aren’t we? Epiros and the City, the Archbishop and the Chinaman with robot legs!’

He lifted his hand from the chair-back to reach out and shake mine: a rather magnificent gesture, managing to combine generosity and nonchalance.

‘And this is… your wife perhaps?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Yes, my wife. Lucy. Lucia in Greek…’

He turned to Lucy, smiling.

‘Just a little smile, Lucy,’ I coached her in English, ‘Just a little smile, that’s it, now be yourself again…’

As her face composed itself back into blankness, the Greek’s eyes momentarily narrowed. Then he extended his hand again with the same grand and lazy gesture, a little medallion of a saint dangling from a gold chain at his wrist.

‘Pleased to make your aquaintance, kyria .’

‘Take his hand, Lucy, that’s it, smile, and now let go. Say good morning, remember how I told you? Say good morning in Greek.’

‘ Kalimera ,’ Lucy intoned.

‘Very good! Very good!’ the taxi driver grinned.

I smiled apologetically. ‘It’s all the Greek she has.’

‘Well, no doubt she’ll soon be speaking it like one of us. Please tell her from me that she is very beautiful.’

‘Lucy. Smile. Look shy and pleased. That’s enough.’

The taxi-driver looked at me and back at Lucy. Again his eyes narrowed slightly. Suddenly he leaned back and reached into the pocket of his jacket.

‘Pistachio nuts,’ he said, producing a small paper bag and offering it to Lucy. ‘I can’t resist them. Will you have one?’

A boy jeered. ‘You’ll have to pay her in more than nuts!’

Manolis turned, reddening angrily.

‘Hey!’ he thundered at the group that had gathered again to stare. ‘Some respect please! Do you think these people are animals in a cage?’

Lucy was still staring down at the bag of nuts. She had no idea what they were or why they were being proffered.

‘Won’t you have one?’ asked the taxi driver.

‘Smile at him and say something!’ I told her, adding to Manolis: ‘My wife isn’t very fond of nuts.’

But Lucy took the whole bag. It tore. Nuts fell out over the table. Lucy stared at them.

‘Smile and say something,’ I hissed, ‘and put it down!’

She smiled, not at Manolis but at a man sitting at another table.

‘I do love you,’ she said to the man in English, dropping the bag of nuts.

Then she seemed to realize that she had entered the wrong territory and turned to Manolis: ‘I am a machine,’ she added.

This really scared me, even though Manolis spoke no English.

‘ Never say that out here, Lucy!’ I hissed, ‘Never, never say that!’

I turned back with an effort and a very strained smile to Manolis, who’d been watching all this closely but without comment. Now he winked at me.

‘I will never understand that City of yours. Never.’

I must have looked flustered. He politely busied himself with lighting a new cigarette, then turned back to me.

‘Now tell me my friend, is there anything I can assist you with? You must have come here for a reason.’

I hesitated, then decided to trust him. I did actually need his help.

‘Documents,’ I said, ‘you showed me a place where I could get documents, and I’ve been looking but I’m not sure exactly where it is.’

He laughed triumphantly, exhaling quantities of acrid smoke.

‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say you would need it one day?’

Lucy didn’t eat. She took everything she needed in liquid form: sugar for energy, lemon and egg-white to feed her living skin. So I ate alone that night in a small, dusty hotel in a village some twenty or thirty kilometres outside Ioannina.

It was good to get away from the city and the crowds. There were still plans to be made, but they could wait. I had enough money to live comfortably for several years in the Outlands. I could afford to relax over my casserole of lamb and my bottle of wine, knowing that my beautiful Lucy was waiting for me upstairs, and that she would hold me and give herself to me all night if I wanted, and all the next night and all the next…

Things were not so bad after all. It was just in Ioannina that it had got difficult, but we’d finished our business there now: paying money into various Greek banks and acquiring for Lucy, with the help of Manolis’ counterfeiter friend, a fake British passport to match her accent. (Illyrian passports, it seemed, were too high-tech for the counterfeiter’s skill.)

‘So you are from Illyria?’ enquired our host, a small, rotund ingratiating man, as I wiped the rich juices from my plate with a chunk of bread.

‘That’s right. From Illyria, but I’ve decided that I don’t like the place. Now Epiros, Greece, that is another thing.’

He smiled.

‘My wife is actually British,’ I went on, for no especial reason except to try out how it sounded to say it.

‘British!’ exclaimed the hotelier. ‘My sister-in-law is British. She only lives in the next village. She would love to meet your wife I’m sure, if you are staying here for a while.’

‘That would be nice,’ I said, vaguely. I wasn’t planning to stop long, anyway, and the man had just given me a very good reason for leaving first thing in the morning.

I finished my wine, wished him goodnight and went upstairs.

Lucy was lying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. She smiled when I came in, reached up to me. I laughed, throwing off my clothes and diving happily into her arms.

‘Oh Lucy, this is good, this is good… Are you glad to be free? I am. I am so glad!’

After sex, we lay companionably side by side, while I enthused at length over the life that lay ahead of us. I felt so optimistic, so proud, so fond of Lucy.

‘Listen Lucy,’ I said to her, ‘I want to say this, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. Yes I know you are a machine, but why should that make a difference? I am a machine too really, so are we all. It’s just that I’m a machine made of flesh and bone…’

Yes, and if someone cut me open they’d find components inside me: a liver, lungs, kidneys, a spleen, a brain that was a mess of grey jelly… strange things, things I’d never seen, which were just as alien to me and to my conception of myself as any components that Lucy might contain.

‘It makes no difference, Lucy. It makes no difference to me at all. I love you just the same.’

‘I love you too, George. I love you so much!’

I knew quite well that these words were just part of her programmed routines, but they still excited me. I pulled her to me again.