Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

'If you'll tell me where you sent it, I could find it for you.'

'Well, I know roughly when and I know it was sent by ordinary post, so it'll be easier if I just scan for it.'

Her grey eyes rested on his, and then she shrugged, and then she passed the dispatch courier receipts in silence.

There were only three dispatches in August and none of them was for the Research Council.

Michael slowly closed the register and found that his limbs did not want to move.

There would have been no funding after September. They should have enough to finish the light learning experiment, but that wasn't the point. The point was to use the current study as a benchmark to see how other learning activities produced different results. They'd talked about it, the team expected it. Michael could not believe he had done it, that he had fucked up that badly, that he was so stupid, so incompetent. His flesh seemed to crawl nervously all over his bones. Part of him was trying to take action, or perhaps, escape himself.

He rang the Research Council. The conversation left his heart shrivelled with shame. The neurology contact was a man called Geoffrey Malterton; he was, as ever, pleased to hear from Michael. Geoffrey sounded ebullient and efficient – nothing out of place in his life, then. 'Whoa, you're weeks too late, months too late. It's all been snatched up, I'm afraid. I'm sorry, but you know how fierce the competition is for grants. What, is your project still unfinished?'

'No, no, not at all, it's just that we've had some new ideas.' Michael tried to sound bright and alert.

'Well, then you can always apply next year. The answer is no for this year's money, I'm afraid.'

Michael asked Emilio for the project accounts. He avoided asking Ebru. As soon as he saw the spreadsheet, their situation was so obvious that he wondered why the staff weren't talking about it. Simply there had been no income except interest since April 1. It was now late October.

Did they have enough to continue? Michael had supposed he would be able during the year to raise more money from other sources. They had roughly one month of money left. He recalculated their budget, remembering extras like stationery and an unpaid water bill, and had a moment's panic. Then he remembered: interest was compounded quarterly and that would be paid in at the end of November. He had to track their steadily decreasing principal and try to calculate the interest. It was all back-of-an-envelope stuff, but the interest made the difference. They would be OK. OK meant that there was enough money to give all the staff their contractually required one month's notice.

It could all be made to seem deliberate. They had enough basic data for this particular project. Michael could just ignore the idea they had of following it up. They should make sure that all the data were entered and correct and then run the reports. There would even be time and money if they needed one final trial, one more order of chicks, to fill any gaps in data or design.

There was always a problem with staff near the end of • research projects. You tell them the project will end just when their work must be at its most meticulous. Yes, they had known all along it would come to an end, but yes, they have living expenses, so they have to look for the next contract or post. They often leave before finishing, especially when the end of the project is unexpected and they have not been able to plan.

He went to the cold store. They had done a good job while he was going crazy. The slides were all in order and labelled. The salami wafers had all been stained and stored. With something numb and slow, part way between dread and relief, he saw: the project had been well done.

Michael went into the soft, dark, red-lit room. There were the chicks, his chicks, peeping out of need and hunger. They were warm and feathery in his hands, as light as dust, kicking and struggling for life. They would be the last batch to be killed.

And suddenly Michael saw them afresh; they were like his Angels, all his beautiful Angels alive and hungry and here for such a short time. He was surprised by a sudden welling up of tears. He loved them. He was going to lose them. He loved them and he didn't want to kill them. He stood transfixed by confusion, torn by irreconcilable emotions, for the chicks, for his research, for his old life with its mild addictions to science, order, and shots of whisky and of semen. He had no desire or idea of what to desire. Simply, he was unmanned, meaning he had lost a self. He could not answer the question, what do I do next? He stood in the dark, cradling a little chick, weeping for it, making peeping noises himself.

Please God, make it stop. Please God, just take it away! I'll be good. Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it.

The world is not to be seduced by words. The world stayed the same, waiting for him to act.

Michael remembered the first day they had moved into the arches. Ebru, Emilio, Hugh inspected their well-resourced lab, running around the cold room and the darkroom and the emergency generator like kids. Ebru had kept deferring to him: Michael, where do you want this? She had called him Hoja, which meant teacher or master in Turkish. She would never call him that again.

Michael took a deep breath. A parental voice from somewhere said, Do it, Mikey. Get it over with.

Shafiq was in his box. Ebru and Emilio were together in the front office. Hugh was hunched over the camera. Michael asked to see them in his office in fifteen minutes. He spent those fifteen minutes rehearsing what he was going to say, with his fingers spread out across the top of his desk as if they were roots drawing strength from it.

Their body language alone was enough to wrench his gut. Ebru slouched in, her arms crossed in front of her, her mouth pushed to one side with sour suspicion. Shafiq stood like Prince Charles, erect, his hands clasping each other behind his back as if to stop him hitting someone. His plump face was turned upwards as if absorbing a blow. Emilio looked bored, irritated, impatient. I spent so much time building them up into a kind of family, Michael thought. I've destroyed it.

'There's no good way to say this, so I'll be brief. We've collected enough data which thanks to all your efforts is in super shape, really, it's all recorded, the data entered, everything in cold store… well done… really.'

They were as frozen as the samples. They knew what was coming.

'Which means that the project is entering the home stretch. We still have some slides to photograph, which I see Hugh has well in hand. What we need to do now is just make sure we have enough data, all in order, and then try to turn it into some kind of information. Which I reckon we can do before the end of the calendar year.'

Ebru flicked hair out of her eyes.

'Um. That means the project will end and that I'll be giving you formal notice today. You've been a terrific team, and I wanted you to have the news as soon as I did.'

'You forgot to apply for the grant, didn't you, Michael?' Ebru said it.

'No. I uh took advice from the Research Council. They said it was probably best if we tried to wind the project up as a second grant was highly unlikely.' Michael wiped his mouth.

Was she going to call him a liar as well as incompetent? Ebru hovered for a moment like a hawk over a motorway bank. Then she shrugged and went silent. She couldn't be bothered.

'Any questions?'

There was a beat. Ebru shook her head and murmured, 'No.'

'Well, if you have any, just ask. Ebru, you and I will need to go over all the contracts and make the nuh-non-renewals official. Hugh, there is the photography to continue. Emilio, you and I will need to get going on the data processing.'

Silence.

'I uh, was wondering if people wouldn't like to get together today for a lunch. My treat?'