Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

So Michael put on his suit, and pulled on his shoes, and Nick ate slowly, sullenly, ignoring him. So Michael said again: 'Up to you, Nick. Oh. And don't presume. I am no saint, Nick. Do anything to hurt me, and how do you know I won't lose patience and send you back?'

Nick blinked at him.

'You don't,' said Michael.

Michael went to work and sat down in his office to look at reports.

He heard a peeping sound.

He nipped out of his office to the warm and darkened, red-lit chamber. It was full of chicks. He had a single moment of profound confusion. Michael stood in the circle of his own self, which is timeless. For a moment he thought that these were the last batch of chicks without quite understanding why he felt so shocked. Then he remembered: we killed them.

Michael gathered himself in, and feeling delicate walked into Ebru's office rocking like a table with uneven legs. 'Ebru. Why did we order more chicks?'

She looked up. 'I… ah. Sorry, Michael. I don't understand you.'

'When did we order more chicks?'

She looked at Emilio.

Michael could feel sweat on his upper lip. 'If we need them for more data, you should have asked me. We need to control expenditure.'

Ebru went very still. Her eyes widened and she looked worried, and she said extremely carefully, 'Michael. What are you talking about?'

'The darkroom is full of chicks, how did they get there?'

'Michael. I cleaned the darkroom out yesterday. There is nothing there now.'

'It's full of chicks. Come and see.'

Ebru rolled her eyes, but they stayed wide. She looked like someone whose boss has finally gone mad, and is beginning to wonder if she herself has not helped drive him over the edge.

The eyes got wider as she heard the sound, the sound of need driving new life: chicks peeping.

Ebru followed Michael through the double sets of doors, which stopped all light entering. The room was thick with the smells of straw and faeces. Ebru took her head into her hands, and saw in the red light. In their warmed cages were 24 chicks.

'This, this was empty, Michael. I did not do this. Maybe… No. No, I don't think anyone would do this without consulting.'

And Michael understood: I did this. I've restored them. He picked up one of the chicks and felt it shivering. I need, the shivering pleaded. I need food and warmth. I need to be held. I need my mother. I need to live.

I restored them because I love them. And that means the miracle is not for lust. It's for love as well.

Lust, love, driving life.

You were dead, Michael thought at the chick. We killed you. And so, I brought you back. He lifted the chick to his lips and kissed it. 'Angel,' he pronounced it. He looked at it in the red light. Murder undone. Restitution.

He came up with an explanation that would appear logical. 'We… probably ordered these some time ago, and they just arrived.'

'But who hatched them? Who put them in the cages? Who brought the cages back, Michael?'

Michael shrugged. 'Hmmm. Who knows? Somebody who was doing their job. But Ebru, I don't want these chicks killed, all right?'

'Absolutely not, Michael, certainly, certainly. No.' Ebru was fierce; something had gone wrong and she was mortified.

'Nobody is to blame, OK Ebru?'

'What will we do with them?'

'Feed them. We still have some feed left over, don't we?'

'Yes. I was going to throw it all out.' Ebru made a desperate gesture, with her hands in her hair.

'Don't worry, Ebru. It's fine. It's all fine.' Michael still cradled the little chick to his bosom.

Ebru stood still. Her cheeks were outlined in the red light, but he could not see her facial expression. After a moment she said, 'You love them, don't you Michael?'

He sighed. 'Yes. Yes I do.'

She chuckled, nervously. 'That is not a scientific attitude.'

'Oh, I don't know. It just depends on the kind of science you're talking about.' He thought of life, of how it extended to wherever Angels came from. And if you could make Angels out of chicks, what did that mean for humans?

She stepped forward and lightly touched his arm. 'When the project is over, we will talk, OK?'

He nodded.

'There is a mystery here, Michael.'

'Yes,' he said. 'There certainly is.' Ebru left, and alone in the dark, he began to think.

Dominion over the animals. Over the fish, over the fowl, over the cattle. We never knew what that meant.

Responsibility. We are responsible for them. They are our children too.

Michael sat on the floor of the darkroom, and held up the chicken to look at it.

'What shall I call you, eh?' he asked it. The beak was stretched wide open, hungry for everything. 'I could call you Ali, or Bottles. I could call you Johnny or Mark. Maybe I could even call you Nick.'

Michael stood up, and gently tipped the chick back onto straw. 'Learn,' he told it. And he went and turned on the lights. Light flooded the room. Experiment ruined. No reason to kill them a second time. He left the lights burning, to make the point.

Michael finished his day's work well. He was determined that the lives and deaths of the previous batches would not be wasted. They would be wasted if the evidence were not in order, or the results without meaning. He melted through the reports. He saw what the stains meant. The stains went into incredibly convoluted patterns.

Patterns, he saw, that were already there.

We are born with our potential.

Even chicks, their brains extend beyond this world back, forward, wherever it is we come from. Silent as settling snow, experience falls on prepared ground.

At the close of that day, the world made sense for Michael. He went into the offices and said good night to them, Ebru, Emilio, and they said good night back, as if pleased to have him return.

He walked back to Waterloo station, his feet crossing in front of each other again, but not from exhaustion, but from a kind of joy.

When Michael got home there was a mass of pink flesh mewling on the carpet. It looked a bit like an unshelled crayfish only it was the size of an Alsatian.

Nick leaned against the wall all sweaty, and pale and ill. 'I nearly did it,' Nick said. 'Not quite what the porn market demands right now. But I'll get better.'

Michael paused. 'That was meant to be a copy of me, wasn't it?'

'Yeah.' Nick's laugh was a shiver. 'Serve you bloody right mate, let you know what it's like.'

Gently, Michael waved it out of existence.

Nick's eyes. They were metallic, like the heads of drills that were somehow pointed inwards. 'I'll keep going. I'll keep going till I do it.'

Michael sighed. 'Not while I'm here, you won't.'

There was something in the air and in Michael's head at the same time. Something like a tentacle, or an arm… a member shall we say, and it rose up and tried to touch Michael or rather Michael's power. Michael grabbed hold of it, felt it twist and turn in the air, and he wrestled it to the ground, and pushed it back and down. Nick even, involuntarily, made a swallowing sound.

Nick was covered in sweat. 'I'll go cook dinner,' he said. He stumbled into the kitchen. He cut up an onion. He started to sing 'Zippity do dah!' He left the knife on the counter top. The onions sizzled. Michael sat down and took off his shoes. He had a corn on his right toe and it was twitching. 'I'll give you a hand,' he said, out of habit. He went to the kitchen counter. 'Can I do anything?' he asked. Nick turned and drove the knife into Michael's heart.

Michael didn't feel anything, except a kind of inconvenience in the chest. Breathing had become choked and unnecessarily difficult. The knife was lodged deeply, and blood was pouring down his shirt into his trousers. It'll be hell to clean up, Michael thought.

'So,' said Nick. 'I guess you won't be here then.'