Destiny's Children - Coalescent. Part 4

Eventually I drifted into testing, the one place where you aresupposed to be rigorous. For a while I prospered. The fas.h.i.+on was for development methods that were, if not formal, at least structured and so open to inspection. I would draw up my test plans covering every conceivable condition the software could take, with predictions of how it should react. I turned up errors at every level from typos in the code to compilation into machine code to fundamental design flaws-but that was okay; that was the job, and it wa.s.satisfying to make things better.

But there was a constant pressure to cut costs on testing, which higher-level managers could never quite figure the benefit of, and endless turf wars between competing teams of developers and the testers come to rip to pieces "their" code. I started to be bypa.s.sed by development managers who could boast they were delivering something of direct benefit to the end user-and who, unlike me, had significant budgets and teams to run.

Not only that, they were all tall men. It's always tall men who get on in management hierarchies, no doubt some deep primate thing. I'm a man but was never that tall, so was stuffed from the start. My trace of a Manchester accent didn't help, either.

And then, in the nineties, a new wave of software development techniques came along. The new languages were much lower level than some of those in the past: that is, closer to the machine. As a developer you could deliver all sorts of fancy miracles. But your code would be dense and highly interconnected: difficult for an outsider to read, hard to test, all but impossible to maintain. In the wine bars and pubs of post-yuppie London I would rage against this retreat from the mathematical high ground to a kind of medieval craftsmans.h.i.+p, and the lower standards it would bring. But the tide was against me, even as giant applications in the stock exchange and the health service crashed and burned, even as every user of PC software howled with rage at errors so fundamental they should never have gotten past the most elementary level of inspection.

Long before I was out of my thirties my career was stalling. I still had choices, even stable employment of a sort. Testing was never going to be fas.h.i.+onable, but you could hardly run a respectable software development shop with no testing effort at all.

And so here I was at Hyf. I was aware that I was really a kind of totem, a personalized embodiment of the company's illusory commitment to "high-quality deliverables." But I'd stayed there, for three years already. Whatever I thought of the job I had bills to pay and a pension to build up. And, just sometimes, I managed to get some work done that satisfied my need to carve order from chaos-a need, as I was going to find out, that went deep in me and my family, indeed.

If I sat up in my chair I could see the end wall of the office, a slab of Victorian brickwork capped by the curving roof of the old station structure. I was struck now how good the brickwork was compared to my father's house. A station clock maybe six feet across was set into the wall, a translucent disc marked with big Roman numerals and two spearlike hands. The back was faced over with gla.s.s that revealed the works, which still operated. Sales types would use it to impress clients. I stared at the big minute hand long enough to see it wobble its way through two, three, four minutes. It was a relic of vanished days, I thought, days of heroic engineering. There have always been engineers in my family.

It struck me suddenly howyoung everybody was here-everybody but me, that is. None of them was interested in the brickwork.

The big station clock reached eleven-thirty, and I hadn't done a d.a.m.n thing all morning. In the afternoon, I told myself, I would resume the good fight. For now, I shut down the computer, gathered my jacket, and walked out for an early and long lunch.

It was a gray day, unseasonably cold for mid-September. I bought a small orange juice and an avocado and bacon sandwich from a Pret A Manger. I walked as far as Saint Katherine's Dock before settling to a bench and eating.

Then, restless, cold, reluctant to go back to work, I walked toward Liverpool Street.

On impulse I stopped into a cybercafe. It was half empty, despite the time of day, and the customers were either eating or chatting rather than logging on. I bought my time credits and a tall latte, and sat at an empty terminal, placing myself as far from anybody else as possible.

I logged onto my home email account, got into a search engine, and typed "Mary Queen Virgins" into the query line.

Of course I could have done this at work; most people would, I suppose. But my strict but useless sense of what was right tripped me up. I had always felt uncomfortable purloining the firm's resources, from computer time to paper clips, always aware that in the end somebody somewhere would have to work a little harder to make up for my petty theft. Or perhaps it was just that I wanted to keep my private affairs out of the office.

Most of the results were dross: straightforward crank sites put up by religious nuts of one kind or another, a remarkably large number of churches with similar names, and the usual irritating clutter from the high schools and colleges that have developed the antisocial habit of placing the entire contents of their course materials on the public Internet, thus baffling every search engine yet devised. I skimmed past most of this stuff. I felt confident I could discard anything from outside Europe-in fact from outside the single-currency Euro zone, since I knew my father had once used euros.

At last I hit on a major-looking site. "THE PUISSANT ORDER OF HOLY MARY QUEEN OF VIRGINS-About Us-Information-Contact Us-Site Map-Genealogy Resources . . ." The URL showed it was based in Italy.

I dug into the link, and found myself facing aWELCOME screen. The wallpaper behind the lettering and icons was the face of the Madonna, taken from a medieval painting I didn't recognize, a beautiful, sad, impossibly young visage. Beside her was a kind of corporate logo, a twist of chrome: it might have been an extended infinity symbol, or an outline of two fish face to face. The background colors were pale blue and white, colors I had always a.s.sociated with my mother's statues of the Virgin, and, just looking at the screen I felt oddly rested, oddly at home. As did, no doubt, every other Catholic boy logging on from around the world.

I poked around in the site. There were plenty of smiling female faces and beautiful old buildings. It was a busy design, I thought with my software professional's eye, but it seemed to be comprehensive, with language options in English (the default), Italian, Spanish, French, German, and even j.a.panese, Chinese, and some Arabic tongues.

The order, it seemed, was an ancient Catholic grouping based in Rome itself. They were making money by offering a subscription genealogy service-something like the famous Mormon site, to which they had links, but if anything more comprehensive. Since I was calling from a UK address I was offered a range of British-focused resources, including a deeds database spanning from 1400 to 1900, five hundred maps of the UK, Ireland, and Europe, a charter of baronial pedigrees that went as deep as the thirteenth century, and information from censuses up to the end of the twentieth century. There was even at.i.tanic pa.s.senger list. They had 350 million names indexed and cross-referenced over five hundred years, boasted the pop-ups.

I skimmed through most of this stuff, wondering what it had to do with my father. As far as I know he had never been much interested in family trees-and certainly, if he had been paying a thousand quid a month for these services, he hadn't had anything to show for it.

But then my eye was caught by a user ID in the contact line: casella24. My mother's maiden name had been Casella.

I fired off a quick email, telling casella24 of my father's death, and asking for details of his contacts with the order. Always a.s.suming I had the right place.

I finished my coffee, logged off, and made my way back to work.

At the end of the afternoon Vivian took me out for the drink she had promised.

We made our way to a bar just off Liverpool Street. Called the Sphinx, the place had been made over several times during my working life in London. Now it was done out in faux brickwork painted a dull yellow, and specialized in acrid Egyptian coffee. It actually had loose sand scattered on the floor. But somehow the atmosphere worked.

Over the long bar was a series of TV screens. Most of them were tuned to music and sports, and somewhere a tinkling pop song was playing. But one screen carried a news channel. The newsreader was a girl with an achingly beautiful face, and over her shoulder was an image I recognized: it was the glistening tetrahedron that had been found in the Kuiper Belt. Evidently the Anomaly was still news, even days after my conversation with Peter. I felt vaguely surprised to see it again. The a.s.sociation brought back unwelcome memories of Manchester.

Vivian ordered a gla.s.s of house white and sipped it slowly. She asked me about the funeral. I tried to tell her something of my feelings of dislocation.

"Midlife crisis," she said immediately. "Welcome to the twenty-first century."

"I always looked forward to the twenty-first century. I just didn't plan on beingold in it. I mean, look at these a.r.s.eholes . . ."

The gathering in the bar was a typical London noncommunity. There were some small groups at the tables scattered over the sandy floor, but an awful lot of people were alone, at the tables or the bar or walking across the floor-alone, that is, save for their cell phones, which they worked persistently.

"So young, and so f.u.c.king arrogant, as if they own the place. They walk around as if London were built yesterday, a playground just for them. And look at the way they thumb away at those d.a.m.n phones." I mimicked texting. "Another few years and kids will be born that are all giant thumbs and no brains, hopping around on knuckle joints."

"You're ranting, George," Vivian said with her usual even good humor. "Maybe you're right about the phones, though. It is an odd way to live, isn't it, to ignore the people physically with you while contacting friends who might be hundreds of miles away? You'd think the new technology would bring us together. Instead it seems to be pus.h.i.+ng us apart."

That was why I'd always liked talking to Vivian. I didn't know anybody else who would make such observations.

She was a solid-framed woman who wore business suits that were crumpled enough to show she didn't take herself too seriously. She looked healthy; I knew she used a gym, and as a mother of two small daughters her home life must be active enough. Her hair was close-cropped over a broad face, with a small flattish nose and pale brown eyes. She had no cheeks, no chin, and would never have been called beautiful save by a lover, but in the frankness and humor of her gaze I had always known I was in the presence of a solid, grounded personality. To put it another way she was one of the few human beings to have slipped through Hyf's recruitment filter.

I said, "My father never had a cell phone. Didn't need one, he said, even though I tried to give him one for emergencies. You know, in case he fell . . . Didn't have a computer, either. Enjoyed his DVD, though."

"He wasn't a Luddite like you, then," she said.

"No. He was just selective."

She sloshed her wine around her gla.s.s. "My parents died a few years back. Ten years ago, actually."

"How?"

"Car accident. It was a mess to sort out, as they'd gone together. Their wills were out of date . . . Well. I think I know how your sister feels. I wanted to just run from the whole thing. But oddly, it wasn't such a bad time in the end. People come together, you know."

I tapped my thumbnail against the bottle's foil label. "You're not counseling me, are you, Viv?"

"No. Just telling you how I felt."

"But it was different. You were younger. I feel-s.h.i.+t, I suddenly feel old. It's as if nowhe's gone, the lid is off my generation, antiquity-wise. Do you know what I mean?"

She laughed. "So what do you want to do?"

I snorted. "What can I do? I'm trapped."

"By what?"

"By my routine. The choices I've made, good or bad, that have landed me here. By the way I've slowed down." I slapped my belly. "By this. The way I get out of breath, and ache in the mornings. Even the way I get p.i.s.sed on a couple of bottles of beer at lunchtime. I'm trapped by myself."

"There are always choices, George." She put her gla.s.s down on the table and leaned toward me, rumpled, kindly, earnest. "I wasn't counseling you before, but I am now. I think you need to reconnect. I went back to face what had happened to Mum and Dad."

"I did go back."

"Well, I think you need more. Take some time off. I bet you're owed some vacation. And you wouldn't be missed for a while," she said dryly. "Maybe you ought to talk to-uh-"

"Linda?" My ex-wife. We'd divorced before I'd come to work for Hyf; Vivian had never met her.

"Don't think so."

"She's going to know you better than anybody else. Or go see your sister in Texas."

"Florida."

"Wherever. Spoil your nephews a little." She snapped her fingers. "Why don't you follow up this business of your missing sister?" I'd told her about that. "A little mystery to solve to occupy that a.n.a.lytical brain of yours-and nice deep family connections to soothe your heart . . ."

I felt uncomfortable. "There's probably nothing. Maybe she was adopted."

"Why would that have happened?"

"Or maybe she died," I said brutally. "And they wanted to spare me."

"Well, even if so," she said gently, "you surely want to know."

"I wouldn't know where to start."

"Ask your sister in Florida," she said. "She's, what, ten years older? She ought to know something. And if this kid was three or four in the photo, maybe she'll have been to school somewhere. A prep school maybe."

"But which one?"

"I'd start with the one your older sister went to.Du-uh. " She rattled her fingernails on the table. "Come on, George, snap out of it; get that brain working again."

"But it's all a mess, Viv. Christ, families. They all lied to me throughout my life. Even Gina!"

"Unresolved issues," she said. "So resolve them. Reconnect with the past." There was an edge to her voice now.You've had as much sympathy from the world as you're going to get, George; stop whining.

"You know, that's pretty much what Peter said. That I should 'reclaim the past.' "

She frowned. "Who's Peter?"

At that moment I found myself looking at the TV carrying the news channel. The pretty newsreader had gone, but the image of the Kuiper Anomaly remained. And there, beside it, was a chunky, high-browed face, talking rapidly. It was Peter McLachlan.

I pointed. "Him," I said.

Chapter 5.

Regina, her hand firmly clasped by Cartumandua, was allowed to attend the anointing of her father's body.

Jovian touched the dead man's eyes, formally closing them. Jovian was her uncle, her father's brother, from Durnovaria. He was a big, doleful man, a bronze worker, with big hands scarred by splashes of liquid metal, and he wore a Phrygian cap, just as her father had done. As the body was washed and anointed, Jovian stood over it, singing a soft Latin lament. The air was filled with powerful scents, like very strong perfume. But Regina knew that somebody had already cleaned up her father's body, for there was not a trace of all the blood she had seen before.

When the cleansing was done, Marcus was dressed in his toga. It took several men to lift him as the woolen sheet was draped over him, for his body was stiff, his limbs like bits of wood.

After that the funerary procession formed up. Eight men carried Marcus on a kind of litter. Musicians went before him. They played double pipes and acornu , a kind of curved trumpet with a sweet, sad voice. Everybody else, including Regina, had to follow on behind. Lit up by candles and lanterns, the procession filed out of the grounds of the villa and over a hardened track through the fields.

As they walked, Regina glimpsed her mother for the first time that day. With her hair coiffed and her dress immaculate, Julia looked as elegant as ever, but she kept her face hidden behind scented cloth.

Regina wanted to run to her, but Carta kept a firm hold of her hand.

They came to the mausoleum. This was a little stone building, like a temple. There were only three tombstones here, marking the deaths of Regina's grandfather and grandmother, her father's parents- and one small, poignant plate that marked the infant death of a little girl, born to Marcus and Julia some years before Regina's own birth, taken by a coughing sickness in her first month. She had been the "sweetest child," according to her stone. Regina wondered if any toys had been put in the ground for her to play with in the afterlife.

A coffin had already been placed in the ground, ready for Marcus. It was a lead box, its walls elaborately molded with scallops, an oceanic motif to symbolize the crossing to the afterlife.

Carta murmured soothing nonsense words. But Regina didn't feel distressed. This little scene, the lanterns and musicians and mourners gathered around a hole in the ground, was too strange to be upsetting. And besides, the awkward thing on the litter didn't seem to have any connection to her father.

Jovian placed a coin, a whole solidus, in his brother's mouth, payment for the ferryman. Then the body was lowered, a little clumsily, into the coffin. Marcus was wearing his best shoes, Regina noticed. Well, you couldn't go into the afterlife without shoes. Under Aetius's orders, Marcus was placed facedown.

One by one the mourners came up and dropped tokens into the coffin. There were remembrances of Marcus's life, like farming tools, and even a handful of tesserae from an unfinished mosaic; and there were objects to ease the pa.s.sage to the afterlife, a vial of wine, a haunch of pork, some candles, a little bell to ward off evil.

Regina got a little upset now, for she had brought nothing to give her father. "n.o.bodytold me!" she hissed to Carta, only to be admonished for making a noise.

She pulled away from Carta and looked around the mausoleum. In gra.s.sy corners she found some mayweed, poppy, and knapweed. The petals were closed and heavy with dew, for it was night. Still, she picked the wildflowers and dropped them into the grave. Perhaps they would open in the afterlife, where it was surely light all the time.

A load of chalk, pale in the starlight, was dumped into the coffin, to preserve the body. Finally the coffin lid was lowered and the heaps of earth beside the open grave briskly returned. The soil smelled damp and rich. A simple tombstone was placed over the fresh earth-smaller than her grandfather's, for, as she had been told, such things were very expensive nowadays. She bent to read its inscription, but the writing was fine and in Latin, and it was too dark.

At the end of the burial, the mourners departed for the funerary banquet back at the villa. Regina looked for her mother. She couldn't see her.

But Aetius was here. He got to his haunches and faced Regina. He had something in his hand that he hid from her; she wondered if it was a toy, a present. But his broad face was dark.

"Little one, you have to understand what has happened here. Do you know why your father died?"

"I saw the blood."

"Yes. You saw the blood. Regina, Marcus followed a G.o.ddess called Cybele."

"Cybele and Atys. Yes."

"It's a strange business. On Cybele's birthday you drench yourself in the blood of sacrificed bulls, and dance yourself into a frenzy." His hard soldier's face told her what he thought of such foolishness. "But the most significant thing the priests of Cybele do is castration." He had to explain what that meant.

"They do it to themselves. They have special forceps that stanch the blood flow. It is an act of remembrance of Atys, who castrated himself as punishment for a moment of unfaithfulness."

She tried to work all this out. "My father-"

"He castrated himself. Just like Atys. But he didn't have any priests' forceps," Aetius said grimly.

"Why did he do that? Was he unfaithful?"

"Yes, he was." Aetius kept his eyes on Regina's face.

Regina was aware of the stiffness of Cartumandua beside her, and she knew there was much she did not yet understand.