Greg Chivers - The Crying Machine

‘I understand. I’m just saying things can change, that’s all.’

‘I hope we understand each other.’

‘Yeah, whatever, now do your thing.’

Clementine gestures the light model into being and it resumes its rotation between them, white lines of the wireframe scrolling across their faces like moving scars. Levi points as he talks.

‘It’s a warehouse – the main storage facility for the state Museum of Antiquities. It’s split between three floors, each corresponding to a different level of security – A, B, and C, but the order is all messed up. C is the low-level stuff you might just dig up if you get lucky – coins, pottery. It’s on the ground floor – not heavy security but there’s only one door in, and there’s a guard on it 24/7. I’m guessing some pressure sensors and beams – nothing crazy.’

He watches for any trace of a reaction. Clementine stays silent, mentally cross-referencing what he’s telling her with data already absorbed from the tablets, searching for inconsistencies. There are none. As far as she can tell, the picture they have is not false, merely incomplete, but that could be equally deadly.

‘The floor above C is A. I told you it was messed up. A is the really valuable stuff – this kind of thing, it’s either on the cover of the museum brochure, or they deny its existence, or maybe both, I don’t know. B is our destination, the top floor.’

‘Why aren’t we going for the valuable stuff?’

‘Because this is a real job. We’re getting what the client wants. That’s it.’

‘Who’s the client?’

Disbelief flattens Levi’s voice. ‘You don’t know. You’re never going to know, so don’t ask.’

‘Fine, you’re right. I don’t need to know the backstory, but I can’t work with these gaps in information. A single unexpected camera or sensor could turn any plan I make into a very bad idea. These are problems I can solve, but I need to take a look and make some guesses at what we’re dealing with.’

‘Now?’ He looks uncertain, the brittle pride of a few moments ago cracked in the heat of practicalities. A good sign.

‘No, daylight’s better. We’ve got time, haven’t we?’

‘Yeah, time is one thing we got. Do what you need to do.’

‘OK. Give me a couple of days to work things out, then I’ll meet you back here after lunch. I’ve got to serve breakfast at the Mission and clear up.’

‘For those bums?’

‘For those bums.’ She owes that much, and more, for the kindness she’s been shown. This is already enough of a betrayal, and they have problems of their own. Before she left to come here tonight, Hilda had been worried about something: one of the elders, a man she called a prophet, had been arrested.

Levi’s nose wrinkles as if he can smell the urine tang of the Mission gatehouse. ‘I could, like, advance you a little money – you get yourself a proper room somewhere.’ He hunches back into that jacket and it swallows him. All his edges are blunted but he still looks nervous about something, smoking with no hands while he fingers the tablet. The tip of the straggly cigarette glows to the sound of a sharp inhalation. Is he trying to make nice after the confrontation, or is this some convoluted attempt at a pass? No, he’s smarter than that. Then the realization hits her; she’s become an asset worth looking after, and even this utilitarian kindness fits him about as well as that jacket. It’s not comfortable.

‘See you soon, Levi.’

A red light flashes, urgent but ignored at the corner of the desk. For almost twenty-two delicious minutes he has sat, transported by the magic of the screen, but as the play nears its end, its analgesic comfort starts to fade, and the pressures of an endless day loom as a faint ache at the edge of perceptible sensation, a warning of what is still to come. That pitiless light will be someone else wanting something, imagining their desires correlate with his priorities. For a few more stolen moments, he pushes the unwelcome thoughts away, focusing his full attention on the scene unfolding before him.

It is the culmination of an arc unfolding over six episodes. The alcalde, an unremittingly villainous official in charge of a generic rural settlement that could be anywhere from Panama to Peru, is about to reveal to the lovely Consuelo that she sacrificed her virtue for nothing. Her beau, Pablo – the man she hoped to save – is already dead. The denouement can take different forms but it is always an exquisite variation on the theme of moral compromise. For those too depraved to appreciate the melodrama, the Lat-Am import soaps offer two choices: alternative streams present the same storylines rendered as pornography of varying hideousness. The work must be wearing for the actors, but it creates a perfect product, a culturally pliable opiate for the worn workers of the Sino-Soviet bloc or their bourgeois counterparts in the West, perhaps even for the demi-human elite, although it’s hard to imagine what currents of emotion circulate in the hormone-regulated soup beneath their metal shells. The episode ends with a lingering close-up of Consuelo, her delicate jaw quivering with grief and shame. Silas leans back into the punched leather comfort of his chair to savour the image for a moment before allowing work to intrude.

‘Sybil.’

Unusually, his assistant fails to respond to the summons.

He lifts his feet from the desk, squares them on the floor in preparation to stand, pushing back the niggling urge to snap at her. There will be some good reason for her silence, and displays of hostility should be saved for the moments when they can serve some purpose. He pokes his head through the doorway separating their domains.

The spectacle of Sybil, with her artless mousy hair and dull, faintly bovine eyes, often provokes disappointment in visitors who come here. But in truth, she’s an asset infinitely more valuable than any office decoration. Sybil treads the razor line between blind obedience and initiative like no other. This quality requires a total absence of self – no guiding principles, no emotional attachments – an ability to make critical judgements, coupled with the capacity for selective blindness necessary for ruthless action. The trust he places in her is near total.

‘Sybil dear, when’s the diplomatic pouch from São Paulo due?’

She nods acknowledgement of the question but does not instantly respond, enmeshed in an incomprehensible array of tasks, all no doubt urgent and essential for the furtherance of his agenda. For more than a minute, information flows through her, sucked in through fingers jabbing and stroking at the floating arcs of data, outputted through clipped voice and text. Her effortless, natural manipulation of unseen lives exhibits a level of technical and managerial competence he could never attain, yet, he reflects, it is Sybil who performs his bidding, not her his. Proof, if it were needed, of the myth of meritocracy. Or to look at it another way, he possesses merit of a different kind he suspects Sybil will never own; he simply does not care that she is better.

‘Sorry about that, I thought I had a few minutes. I can never get my head around how short those episodes are with the commercials cut out. What’s Consuelo up to?’ The data arcs floating in front of her dim and become transparent.

‘She just found out Pablo’s dead. She’s taking it pretty hard. I don’t suppose the next month’s instalment is in yet?’

‘I’m afraid not. Two or three days would be my best guess.’

‘Oh well, work it is then. What was that light about? The Cult again?’

‘Actually, no. It was Vasily Tchernikov.’

‘Vasily? What does he want?’ Like anyone worth knowing, Vasily Tchernikov wears more than one face. Publicly, he serves as the cultural attaché within the embassy of the Sino-Soviet Republic of Humanity, but the niceties conceal a more demanding role as station chief for their intelligence operation within in the city. Until recently, someone like him would have regarded Jerusalem as a dead-end posting, but of late the Republic has been making an effort to cultivate client states outside of the Machine sphere of influence; this makes him an asset worth maintaining.