Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

All Michael said was, 'Hello old thing. Good to see you.'

They were in the car on the way to the clinic. Mark replied, cool and distant, 'Thank you.' Then he asked, askance, 'Why have you done this?'

Michael explained it to him, the miracle and what he thought it was for and why he needed Mark. It sounded so stark and self-interested that Michael apologized.

'Quite all right. I'm glad to be of use,' Mark replied. His attention seemed be distracted. His eye kept catching on shop signs or Evening Standard headlines talking about the Labour government.

'Can we stop?' he asked. 'There's just a few things I'd like.'

Of course, of course, Michael said, and pulled over. Mark bought an orange and a newspaper. He left both in the white paper bag.

Introductions over with.

Once inside the clinic and sitting down, Margaret explained to Mark what the test was for and how it worked. 'We're going to take some blood and analyse it here. I'll be back in about forty-five minutes with the result. I understand you want two tests?'

'Ask Michael,' said Mark, detached.

Margaret's head jerked a bit too quickly towards Michael. There was something fathomless in Mark's response that she couldn't read.

'Two tests. Yes, please,' said Michael.

Sometimes shy or worried people rely on others to speak for them. Was this such a case? Margaret gave them the benefit of any doubt. 'No trouble. It will be a bit of a wait for you though. There's television and coffee. You could come back tomorrow

Mark cut her off. 'No,' he said. 'Thank you. I only have this evening.'

So he and Michael sat in the waiting area, a circle of comfortable chairs, and watched the seven o'clock news on Channel Four. On the clinic walls were A4, hand-lettered notices for social groups, aromatherapy, or stress management. Mark sat absolutely still, hypnotized by the telly. Sports results. Michael realized: he wants to find out how rugby union is going.

'Is this hard for you?' Michael asked.

'Up to a point,' Mark replied and fell silent. The silence persisted all through the sports news.

'We all miss you. Terribly. Liz, Tom, Martin, we still get together and have pub crawls along the river. The Mark Memorial Pub Crawl. We have one in summer, one in winter.'

'That's comforting.'

'Liz can't stop talking about you whenever we have one. I think she was a bit in love with you.'

'I proposed marriage.'

'Oh.'

'I thought she needed to be able to stay in the country.' Mark's smile was knife-thin and hard to read.

There had been other news since Mark's departure. 'Do you know about Rodger?' Rodger was the banker.

Mark's eyes were still fixed on football. 'No, but I imagine he died too. I imagine there's not much left of the old Exchange.'

The Angel of Death had passed over some doors as if lintels were marked. 'Harry's still with us, though.' Harry was Rodger's boyfriend who used to be tied up and left to the mercies of men who had since died. Harry was negative.

Laugh? Mark almost smiled.

The conversation was a knot. Michael suddenly thought honesty might cut it. 'Is dying very hard?' he asked.

'It's tough,' Mark said in an even voice. 'Unbearable, in fact. It's the worst thing you can know. So you seem to view it from far away. And then you don't know anything at all.'

'Is it true what everyone tells you? You float outside your body, and there's a tunnel of light?'

Mark seemed to chew over his response as if it were a plug of tobacco. On television, the news had moved on to Camilla Parker Bowles showing up in public with Charles. Mark turned to look at Michael, and there was something broken and rugged about his face, like one of those cliff faces that look human in profile. The face like a tumble of rocks seemed to ask: You really want to know?

'That happens, yes. But it's just an illusion. You are psychologically distancing yourself from what is happening. The tunnel of light is just the optic nerve closing down.'

Mark had looked healthy up until the very end. A few days before he died, his hair went snowy white, and he finally told friends the truth. This was his second bout of pneumonia, and it was by now what they had all suspected.

Michael had to go away to a conference in America. All he could do was phone. 'I want you to know how much I've always respected you,' he said.

He didn't say: I loved you, once.

He didn't say: You see, Mark, I don't ask for things. I drift into things and let them hold me, instead of me taking a grip of them. Mark, something terrible happened to me that left me completely screwed up, which is why we were never lovers. And it makes me so angry that we never were, and now never will be. Would you have lived, if we had been lovers, Mark?

It was Phil not Michael who was with Mark when he died.

Now, in the waiting room, booming music announced the end of the news.

Mark said simply: 'The world moves on.'

He reached into his bag and pulled out the newspaper, and read it carefully, the paper crinkling like tin foil when he turned the pages.

Then he said, 'You miss everything.' Something terrible happened to his voice. It sounded like tape gone slurry from dirty tapeheads. 'You miss voices. You miss air. You try to breathe and there's no air. There's no taste, you're not hungry, you don't want to eat. You miss food. And colour. There's no colour. You miss having a life. You get so bored being yourself. A self just keeps asking: What do I think about next? What do I do next? And the answer always comes back: Nothing.'

They heard a door open. Margaret, Maggie came back. Michael could tell from her face: it was kept smooth and bland, but the smile was just a little fixed, and the eyes seemed to be saying no, not again, no not again, and they looked at Mark with sadness. Mark had tested positive. She would have done a T-cell count as well and would know: this is a dying man.

All she said was: 'All right, Mark, we're going to take the second sample now. Are you sure you want to go ahead?'

'I believe that is what Michael asked.'

Margaret glanced at Michael. 'Michael only wants to help you. Do you still want a second sample?'

'It's why I'm here,' replied Mark, detached.

You, commanded Michael to the Angel. You Mark are free from disease. You virus, commanded Michael, you the virus just seethe out of his blood.

I cast you out.

Maggie took Mark's arm as she led him to the cubicle, and her face was silently looking into his. Still everyone's mother, eh Bottles?

The telly battered on, booming about oven-ready chips. Jeez, thought Michael, all I want to do is sleep. What a leaden stupid unhelpful thought: life is strange.

Mark came back, and moved his chair away from Michael and the cushions made a squishy sound like a sigh. Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out an orange.

Mark's mouth lunged forward as he bit into the orange. Almost clear juice, with a bit of pulp, poured down his chin. Mark's eyes closed with pleasure.

Then he reached into a bag and pulled out a photograph. There hadn't been a photograph in the bag before.

It was an ordinary snap of a solid-looking middle-aged man with white hair.

'This is Robert,' Mark said. 'I never told you about him.' His thumb moved over the face. 'He was rather discreet. He was married, and a bit old-fashioned. RAF. When I got too ill, I told him I was fed up being his mistress.'

'Did he know you were HIV?'

There was a long pause. 'Yes.'

Michael looked at the face in the photo more closely. It was kindly, dignified, direct. That added up too.

Mark reached into the plastic bag and pulled out one of the very first Sony Walkmans, clunky and black, with the usual tangle of wires and earphones. Mark said nothing, but punched buttons.