Chapter Five
In the
morning, Merou was standing by the window, looking down at the
keeper’s cottage and the cracked patch of tarmac beyond it. Priddy
struggled off the top bunk, dropped to the floor and stood swaying.
His visitor had helped himself to clothes, the Weeverfish T-shirt
and a pair of jeans. Shoes, too, for godsakes. “Feel free,” Priddy
said shakily, hanging on to the edge of the bunk. “If you need
anything from my drawers, go right ahead.”
“That’s very kind of you, but I already...” Merou paused,
smiling. “Ah. Sarcasm. We have that too, but we save it for very
special occasions, such a powerful weapon as it is.”
“Would you like a jacket? I hope you found underwear to match
the colour of your eyes.”
“Come on, Priddy. There’s a lot of things wrong with you, but
you don’t mind stuff like that.”
He was
right. Left to himself, Priddy would have offered the contents of
his wardrobe anyway. What else could you do for a naked wanderer
whose whole world had gone down with his ship? What he minded
was...
“Yes? What?”
“I didn’t even recognise my own bloody things,” he blurted out.
“Not at first. Not on you.”
“Is that because I look so princely in them...?” Merou tugged
at the front of the T-shirt. “No. Not that. These fit me, and they
don’t fit you anymore, not the way they did when you had them made.
You must have lost a lot of weight since then.” His bright look of
curiosity suddenly melted to a tenderness so piercing that Priddy’s
knees weakened. “Are you having a bad morning, king of the
mountain?”
Priddy
grabbed his dressing gown off the back of a chair. The wool was
still warm, as if his guest had helped himself to that recently
too. The lingering heat trace, the tang of suntouched kelp, was far
from unpleasant, and he huddled into the garment, shivering. He was
still pissed off. What did this stranger know about his bad
mornings, the days when he’d have given his soul for one sweet hit
of dope, or pills, or any fucking thing at all to take the edge off
the bleak grey sky? To steer him for once past the Hell’s Teeth
rocks that lay just beneath his own newly smoothed-down surface,
just as this godlike bastard had somehow swept to safety last
night... “I’m fine,” he snapped. “Just tired.”
“Well, you really do have a car down there, so at least you
won’t have to walk.”
“Walk where? And what is the big bloody deal about the
car?”
“They’re such fun. Not an automatic, is it?”
“No, it’s a clapped-out Vauxhall Viva. And I don’t have my
clothes made, for
heaven’s sake—I buy them. From Asda, mostly.”
“Of course. I forgot. Hurry up and get ready, and we can go for
a drive.”
Priddy found himself in the bathroom, showering and cleaning
his teeth, as if Merou had made the most reasonable suggestion in
the world. His acquiescence was partly lack of strength to
argue—bad mornings did that to him, leaving him beached and
helpless—and partly sheer habit. The suggestion was reasonable. Why the hell not get
ready and go for a drive, do what the out-of-season tourists did
when they were trying to make winter Cornwall fit with the pictures
in their brochure, track down a tea shop brave enough to take the
desperate punt of staying open all year round and sit eating scones
by the fire? Find a cliff-top pub and have a couple of pints,
although Priddy’s queasy bad-morning cravings couldn’t decide if
the idea of booze was heaven or hell... The only weird aspect of
any of this was Merou, who’d washed in with the storm last night
and now wanted to pop out with Priddy in the car as if they’d known
each other for years.
Who
seemed more at home in the lighthouse than Priddy would ever be. He
emerged from the bathroom to find Merou slouched in front of the
laptop on the kitchen table, surfing rapidly from screen to screen.
“Look at all this stuff!” he called out as Priddy entered the room.
“It’s the internet time. I’d forgotten. Absolute blast, or it will
be until it comes alive and scares you all back to carrier pigeons
for a while.”
There
was no point in arguing. Priddy was an empty shell. If Merou chose
to prise him open—to look into his drawers, his search histories,
his pitiful efforts to cobble together job applications—he had
nothing to give or to lose. “That’s my computer,” he said dully,
dragging out a chair next to him and sitting down.
“Right. And that’s your breakfast. Eat up.”
A mug of
coffee was steaming on the table. It didn’t smell like Priddy’s
brand of instant. He was absolutely certain he hadn’t bought the
Danish pastry sitting on a plate beside it, even though the iced
ones with raisins were a half-forgotten favourite, the treat he’d
used to ask his mum for on the rare occasions when the family
budget allowed. “Where did these things come from?”
“Just from your kitchen. The bun was in the freezer. You
must’ve forgotten about it.”
“No, you can’t freeze those. And—”
“Mind you eat the apple too. Can’t fill you up with sugar and
no vitamins.”
The apple hadn’t even been
there a second ago. Priddy would’ve sworn to it.
He rubbed his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Playing about on the internet while you eat your breakfast.
Ordinary weekend morning.”
“Is it... Is it the weekend?”
“Oh, Priddy. Yes, it’s Saturday. And I know the weather’s a bit
crap, but the forecast says it’s sunny further inland. I bet it’s
quite nice up on Bodinnar hill. We really should take the day
off.”
Priddy
took a mouthful of his coffee. He really had fucked himself over
with his chemical misadventure, hadn’t he? Maybe somehow, before
his life had hit the pan, he’d scored himself a lovely boyfriend
who knew and indulged his tastes in Danish pastries, and the two of
them lived here together in the lighthouse and drove out on
Saturdays to enjoy a day off. This fantasy was nice enough to stop
him questioning his breakfast, at any rate, and the coffee was
perfect. Black, sweet, dash of caramel, hot enough to skin his
tongue. The buzz of it shot to his fingertips, driving out his
nausea, and he reached for the bun. “I think one of us is batshit
crazy. But this is lovely. Thanks.”
Merou
shot him an amused glance. “Any other fella would’ve punched me
through the window for using his computer.”
“Oh.” Priddy shrugged. “Me, I’m anyone’s for a
Danish.”
“And the apple. Don’t forget about that.”
“All right, all right.” He took a big bite: choked and snorted
as juice shot down his throat and ran down his chin. “Bloody
hell!”
Merou
passed him a napkin. “What a mess. Don’t you like it?”
“No, it’s delicious. Just... a bit juicy. What sort is
it?”
“Pomme de mer. Haven’t you had one
before?”
Now
Priddy knew he was being had on. “Pack it in. I know that’s French
for potato.”
“De mer, not de terre, you idiot. They’re ever so
good. I was pleased to find one in your, er... fruit
basket.”
“I don’t have a fruit basket. This is a lighthouse, not Fawlty
Towers. God, I feel as if I woke up in Eden or
somewhere.”
“The Project?”
“No, the Garden, with you handing me apples. Maybe you’re
Adam.”
Demurely
Merou tapped a pen against his lovely lower lip. “The serpent,
surely.”
Priddy
gave up. His sluggish appetite had quickened and he wanted the good
things, the coffee and pastry and fruit, no matter where they’d
come from. He set about them hungrily. “What were you saying about
the internet?”
“That it’s fun while it lasts.”
“You said something about it coming alive.”
“So I did.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. How does that happen?”
“Coming alive is a bit of a
paraphrase. What I mean is that it becomes sufficiently complex.
Consciousness is a product of complexity.” Merou turned from the
screen, hooked one foot over his knee and gave Priddy his full
attention. “There are all these arguments about what it is, this
magic spark, but any sufficiently complex system will eventually
begin to refer to itself. And that’s all consciousness is—the
dubious gift of being able to reflect on yourself and your own
condition. That’s rather good, as definitions go. You should write
it down—on paper, to be on the safe side.”
“Why on paper?”
“Well, imagine this glittering network, this great planet-wide
shimmer of synapses, all the cables and outlets you primates
provided for it. You turned the whole Earth into a brain, and the
brain switched on. And it knew the one thing it needed to
survive—just like you need air and I need water—was electricity. So
it really wasn’t prepared to let you lot have any for lightbulbs
and printers and nonsense like that.” He shook his head, eyes
widening. “Really caused some problems topside for a while, that
did. Or will.”
“Wait.” Priddy couldn’t keep up with this. He was trying to
grab the tiger’s tail, not essential issues like why Merou
said you primates and just like you need air and I need
water. “This is all... going to happen, right?”
“Yes. In the future. I forgot.”
Laughter
rose up irresistibly in Priddy’s chest. This nice guy was off his
head, that was all. That wasn’t a problem for Priddy, who didn’t
have a leg to stand on when it came to being sane. “Do you often
forget the future?”
“The Mer swim in time as well as the ocean,” Merou replied with
dignity, reaching to brush a crumb off Priddy’s chin. “I don’t
expect a biped to understand. But come on, if you’re finished
stuffing yourself—we’re missing the day.”
“All right. Are you, er... planning to go out like
that?”
“Like what?”
“With your mast in the wind, so to speak.”
Merou
followed the direction of Priddy’s gaze. “Oh, yeah. I was going to
ask you. How does this blasted fastening work?”
“The zip?”
“That’s it. Invented by George Zipowski in the 1860s, hence the
name.”
“Really?”
“No, you daisy-brained sweetheart. I’ve no idea who invented
it, and I think it’s just the sound it makes. Only this one
doesn’t.”
“Stand up and let me have a look.” Priddy approached him
cautiously, took a pinch of denim at the Levi’s crotch with one