AFTER A COUPLE of hours at Mack’s place, being actively taught by another human being for the first time in years, I decide to go to God’s city via the proper entrance. I won’t go inside—I can’t from this direction—but I want to embed some of the details he showed me via the projector and an immersive gaming platform adapted for that purpose.
I walk through the eastern gate, one I usually avoid, and follow the only path that crosses the boundary out of the colony. The crystal is laid right up to the outer edge of God’s city. The path stops about three meters away from where the first tendrils of the city rise up from the ground. Its end point is just in front of the city’s natural entrance through the outer perimeter, formed by the space between two of the thickest tendrils, which make an organic pointed archway.
I still pause, even after all these years and the twenty-odd times I’ve been forced to parade into here with everyone else for the annual circus. Those times within the crowd, among their excitement and anticipation, haven’t been enough to scrub away the very first time we walked through this alien archway.
I retrace the steps I took then. This time I’m not looking up at God’s city with wonder and apprehension; instead I’m mapping what Mack showed me onto the structure looming ahead of me and reinforcing the route I’ll need to take tonight. It helps to look at it this way. It distances me from that time before.
I cross the central courtyard—a grand name for nothing more than an area of compacted earth between the archway in and the entrance to the main city. I avoid looking at that as long as I can. It always makes me feel sick and I don’t want to engage with the people on duty today unless I have to.
I’m used to them being there now. At first I hated it and voted against the motion to post people at the entrance, when it was debated in the early months of the colony. Once people had got the essentials of colony life in place, they had time to think about Suh’s return. Nick was worried she would emerge from God’s city and think no one cared about her return if she wasn’t greeted immediately. I argued that she wouldn’t mind, but this wasn’t good enough and Mack spotted an opportunity to start growing the mythos that fed into the seed ceremony. He backed the people who wanted to maintain a vigil around the clock. A senseless waste of time and energy, but the majority worked its magic again and now no one wants to be the one to say it was a mistake.
This is why I don’t come here. It always makes me bad-tempered.
The courtyard is large enough for us all to fit in, standing room only, and it’s a bit of a crush toward the front. In only four days we’ll all be packed in here, staring at Marco as he climbs the slope to the entrance. It’s the time I feel the most lonely.
“Hello, Ren!” Pasha calls from his post near the entrance. I try to hide my reluctance to engage as he jumps down from the platform that holds him level with the door without touching God’s city.
I wave and mumble a greeting as the other person on duty—Dr. Lincoln, as my luck would have it—complains to Pasha for abandoning his post.
Pasha ignores him. “This is a nice surprise,” he says, enveloping me in one of his giant, loving embraces that even the most surly of citizens are subjected to on a regular basis. Even the doctor will have had one at the start of their shift.
“Just wanted to make sure everything was in order before the ceremony,” I say, having prepared the lie beforehand. “I was thinking about the rain we had last week and the ground here . . .”
“It’s all good,” he says, tugging gently at his thick black beard as he looks around the courtyard with me. “It’s so sheltered and the ground is so compacted it would take a lot more than that to cause any problems.” He tilts his head. “Anxious?”
I shrug and he smiles.
“Dear Ren,” he says, sucking me back into his bear hug. “Always worrying for everyone else.” He kisses the top of my head as I return the embrace. His size and bulk make me feel childlike again, held in the security of a paternal hug.
The silk of his salwar kameez feels as soft as its shade of peach and he smells faintly of cinnamon. “Has Neela been baking?” My voice is muffled, but he can still hear me.
“Cinnamon rolls,” he says and I hear his stomach rumble at the thought of them. “She’s a true artist.”
I wish I could be more like them. They are so . . . light and easily contented. They laugh and work together, are dependent on each other but not dangerously so. Could I have something like that with Kay, if I tried?
Dr. Lincoln is calling him back and Pasha releases me. “I’d better go back. He’d have my head if the Pathfinder chose this moment to come back and not be greeted properly.” He starts off, then turns to face me, walking backward. “And come for dinner, for goodness’ sake—you look like you need a good meal.”
“Soon,” I say. Perhaps when all this is over, that would be good. They’re both excellent cooks and good company, when I’m in a state to handle that.
I watch him climb back up onto the platform and stand with his chest puffed out. His long black hair is being teased away from his shoulders by the breeze coming through the archway. I have to stop myself from going over and saying, “You should go home; there’s no point in your being here.” I can’t allow myself to give in to that need to tell the truth. It’s one of the pillars that supports Mack’s elaborate ruse. If I destroyed it, the rest would come crashing down and we’d be crushed beneath it.
• • •
I spend the rest of the day making Sung-Soo’s projector. It’s just absorbing enough to put the last task of the day out of my mind. If only everything else could be as straightforward as this.
I check whether anyone else is at his place when it’s ready. No one with their location settings set to public is there at the moment, so there’s a risk, but I decide to take it. If someone else is there, I can just drop it off and leave.
Cradling the unit in my arms, I leave the communal workshop and make my way over. The sun is setting behind God’s city, creating long shadows across the path. Now that I’m not building, I’m worrying again, so I walk faster.
I press the sensor beside his door and cast my critical eye over the exterior of the house. It looks good: the lower portion of the dome running around the bottom edge is made of shiny black solar cells; then there’s a layer of aquarium windows with the rest of the dome covered by partially reflective plasglass windows. They’re less harsh on the eyes than a mirrored surface and just as good at maintaining privacy.
The door opens and he grins at me. “I was hoping you’d come,” he says, beckoning me in.
The room is warm and there’s a fire in the pit at the center of it. He invites me to take off my shoes and I do so, seeing that he’s barefoot. The new moss has a superb springy softness to it.
The room feels completely different from the last time I was here just after completion. It has a homeyness to it and a cozy, inviting security as well. There are several pieces of furniture and I recognize a couple of Neela’s pieces displayed in pride of place against one of the walls. There’s a circular sofa, which Pasha probably made or at least contributed to, that reaches most of the way around the fire pit.
“What do you think?” he asks.
“It’s lovely.”
“Really?”
“Yes! I made you a projector. I’ll hook it up to the network if you want?”
“Thank you. And yes, please; I’d like that.”
I unroll my tool wrap and get to work. He stands nearby, curious as always, but I think it’s also a reluctance to relax while I work.
“It feels strange,” he says after a couple of minutes of silent industry. “Like it’s someone else’s home.”
“You’ll settle in.”
“And it will stay here and not be moved. That’s strange too.”
“It’ll be fine,” I say and realize I’m trotting out the same old shit that people say without thinking. I put down the screwdriver and look at him properly for the first time since I arrived. “I can only imagine how weird it must be. But don’t worry. If there’s one thing human beings are good at, it’s adaptation.”
I don’t think I’m very good at reassuring people. His expression doesn’t change anyway. I go back to what I am good at.
“Have you ever been to Korea?” he asks.
“No.”
“My father says that’s where my family came from.”
“A fair way back,” I reply. “Your great-grandparents were born there, but they left when they were pretty young. Suh only went there once, when she was a teenager, and she hated it.”
“Why?”
I smile. “The humidity, mostly. She said it was okay to visit, but she couldn’t live there. It was too different from what she was used to.”
“Father said it was a wonderful place.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t think he ever went there.”
“Then why say that?”
I shrug. I stop myself from saying the first thing that comes to mind: that he was probably half mad with grief and nostalgia when he said it. “Well . . . it was a wonderful place. But he was just as European as Suh and I were.” I’ve lost him again. “On Earth, people often lived a long way from where they were born, or their parents or grandparents. Lots of places couldn’t cope with the number of people there and the demand for water. So people moved on.”
“Like I used to?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But on a much bigger scale. Sometimes it was because of war; sometimes it was to find work or avoid persecution. It was pretty chaotic there.”
He seems interested. “Go on.”
“My dad’s family came from Ghana and we lived there a while. My mum came from England, but she lived in France. So did my dad, for a few years, but he moved all over the place because of his job. So I ended up speaking different languages and feeling part of lots of places, rather than just one. That was the same for Suh. She spoke Korean at home but English and French everywhere else. She used to laugh that I liked Korean food more than she did when we both went to visit her parents.”
“Do you miss Earth?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can you go back?”
“It’s complicated.” I don’t want to go into the details; none of it will make sense and it will only confuse him and make me miserable. It would take years of preparation and the efforts of the entire colony, there would be risk—and what would we return to? Would there even be anything recognizable left?
It hits me that everyone I knew on Earth will be dead now. And not only the people I knew, but the music and the games and all the other transient cultural references that used to make the world familiar. Technology would have evolved along different routes; the omnipresent threat of war might have finally been realized. It would be like going back to an alien planet, in many ways.
“This is home now,” I say, hearing Suh’s echo.
The conversation ebbs as I focus on connecting the projector to the network and testing its interface with the dozens of sensors embedded in his home. He laughs as I ask him to stand in different places and try to hit a virtual ball so I can calibrate it.
When it’s done, I slide the tools back into their places and roll the container up.
“Ren,” he says, coming over. “I know you don’t want to talk about your house, but I think we should.”
Just when I thought it was going to be glossed over for the sake of least resistance, he brings it up. I clutch the tool roll to my chest.
“There’s no need.” I head toward the door.
“But don’t you want to be able to live somewhere like this?” I don’t reply. “It just doesn’t seem right for me to be somewhere so nice—that you made for me—and for you to go back to that . . . place.”
I make it to the door and open it. “It’s all fine,” I say, too stupid with panic to think of anything more intelligent. The only thing that stops me from losing it completely is the fact that he doesn’t follow me out.