Grim had a faint glimmer of insight that not everything about Orkish folk songs was really all that simple, and it would be worthwhile finding out who wrote them, and how – although, he thought immediately, why bother finding out, when everything’s clear anyway … And the same went for Orkish folk dances too.

  The only thing they got exactly right, though, was the way he had thought about the bloody documents – but in the original it had been expressed less forcefully. And he had absolutely no idea where the last line with the word ‘vamoose’ had been taken from. There hadn’t been anything like that in Grim’s drafts. Perhaps that thought could have occurred to him, but he would certainly have had the wits not to put it down on paper.

  But the main thing, of course, was something else.

  Even if Grim had written this poem in precisely this form, not for anything in the world would he have recited it into the cold lenses of a Byzantine optical system, publicly renouncing his own monstrous tribe. He would have died of shame first. But his on-screen double had managed it easily and spontaneously, as if all he had ever done since he was born was suffer through an endless series of catharses in front of a camera, narrating them on the spot for live broadcast.

  ‘The only thing I don’t understand is why they left in the bit about world cinema,’ Damilola said pensively. ‘They must have been in a rush.’

  Grim was totally embarrassed, because the quatrain about world cinema was practically the only thing that had survived untouched.

  ‘Yes, they definitely rushed it,’ Damilola went on. ‘Bernard-Henri once got smashed on M-vitamins and growled something about an Orkish piggery – “stinking like the liberative discourse”. And they let that through too – there was a deadline … How did you like it, Kaya?’

  At this point Grim noticed that Kaya was gazing at him fixedly with wide, round eyes filled with admiration.

  ‘An excellent poem!’ she said. ‘Very powerful! No one knows how to do that anymore. Everyone’s afraid. You’re a genuine poet, Grim! I love you!’

  And then something strange happened to Grim.

  All the contradictory feelings that had been raging in his heart only a second ago suddenly disappeared and in a blinding flash their place was taken by a new emotion – sudden, fresh, intoxicating and entirely unfamiliar. He realised that for these words and that glance he would sell his Orkish homeland three times over – if, of course, anyone wanted that much of it.

  Chloe didn’t say anything, but she looked at Kaya with such physically palpable hatred that the electricity rippled through the room. Damilola felt it too.

  ‘Uh-oh!’ he said, ‘I see we’re getting really serious here.’

  He stood up and walked quickly to the happiness room.

  Kaya looked at Grim one last time and smiled sadly and closed her eyes.

  Something happened to her. An instant ago she was alive – and now she had frozen without even the slightest sign of movement, in a way that no living person could. The change was inexplicable and terrifying.

  ‘Kaya!’ Grim called. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘She’s all right,’ said Damilola as he came out of the happiness room. ‘I switched her off.’

  ‘What do you mean, switched her off?’

  ‘From the master console,’ said Damilola, sitting down at the table. ‘She can be put on pause from there. Only you have to know the password. It’s so that she won’t shut herself down. Suras like doing that.’

  ‘Suras?’ Grim repeated in bewilderment.

  ‘What, didn’t you realise?’ Damilola chuckled. ‘I’m a pupo. Like Trig. Only with wider opportunities.’

  ‘Are you telling me …?’

  ‘You mean you really didn’t realise? You thought she was alive?’

  Grim shook his head disbelievingly.

  Everything around him suddenly fell into place – now he could see why Kaya hadn’t eaten anything in London, or today. And why Damilola had brought her to the opening of the memorial.

  And he suddenly felt so bitter that this new, exhilarating feeling that had just pierced his very soul had turned out to be the same kind of deception as everything else in life.

  ‘Pupo Trig – My heart jig-a-jig,’ he murmured.

  Chloe laughed.

  ‘I thought as much,’ she said. ‘A live girl is never that well-groomed. She hadn’t got a single little pimple or scar, or even a little vein in her eye. And a real woman wouldn’t try to hit on someone else’s man in front of her own. Because she’d get her head smacked.’

  Damilola nodded.

  ‘How sensitive a woman’s heart is,’ he said. ‘But I tuned her like that myself. I’m a pilot after all. And a pilot’s sura always has a streak of madness about her – it’s a tradition of ours. You get tired after a flight. And apart from that, you get to see so much of the dark side of life through the sights in one day that you’re not in the mood for sweet lovey-doveing. It makes it hard to get me stirred up. The point at which another man goes insane is the lower threshold of sensitivity for a pilot. So Kaya has seduction and all sorts of other parameters set to maximum. She’s always being provocative and flirting, that’s the way her programme is. Don’t take it to heart.’

  Grim realised that he had been silent too long – he had to say something.

  ‘How much does one like that cost?’

  Damilola roared with laughter.

  ‘Now you want one too, do you? But what for, when you’ve got Chloe?’

  ‘And do many men have that kind?’

  ‘Those who can afford it. Almost anyone who’s rich. Who needs the hassle of live people these days? There are those who like to polish skulls, of course, but they come to a sticky end … He he, I didn’t mean it that way. Although, in principle, that way too …’

  He squinted at Chloe’s glum face and put on a guilty expression.

  ‘Only don’t you youngsters take me the wrong way. It’s a question of upbringing and what you’re used to. Our cultural stereotypes seem laughable to you, I think. Or on the contrary, disagreeable in some ways. But …’

  He realised that he had turned the conversation in the wrong direction and stopped.

  Grim tried to get away from the slippery subject as quickly as possible.

  ‘And how is her character tuned?’

  ‘You can do it yourself. Or you can use a factory setting. You can even call in a tuner – there are professionals like that. A good job, by the way, although it’s nerve-wracking. But a genuine connoisseur does all the tuning himself. The idea is that you should set the tuning once, and then never touch it again. Then it will be exactly like with a live person.’

  ‘And are there men like that?’ asked Chloe.

  Damilola laughed again – he found his visitors distinctly amusing.

  ‘Yes, there are. And no living man can compete with them. Only they’re expensive. And haven’t learned yet how to earn any money themselves, ha ha!’

  Grim looked at Kaya. She was sitting there with her closed, self-absorbed expression – like a thousand-year-old statue, waiting for the vainly bustling, disposable people to leave her chosen space and crumble into dust, so that she can awaken again.

  With an Orkish girl’s typical practicality, Chloe moved the cold mantow from Kaya’s plate across to her own.

  ‘She doesn’t want them anyway,’ she said.

  Damilola nodded benevolently.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Grim?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s one thing I can’t understand,’ Grim said. ‘If you can make copies of living people like that … And you can show me without me even being involved … And even read the poems that I was only going to write in my own voice … Then why do you need these wars on Orkish Slava? You could film everything a hundred times better without us. About love and about war. And there’s no need to kill anyone.’

  ‘But it would be an untruth,’ said Damilola. ‘It was that way before. They filmed what wasn’t true, and no one believed in it. The disbelief led to hate. And the result was that the whole world collapsed.’

  ‘My poem before battle is an untruth too.’

  ‘That’s what the entertainment package is for.’

  ‘But why can’t they show snuffs in the entertainment package?’

  ‘Because snuffs aren’t entertainment,’ Damilola said seriously. ‘They’re a sacred mystery. And they’re the truth. Not simply the truth, but its very essence … Although, of course, there is invention in them too, to be strictly accurate. A plot, costumes, period details … But that’s like the wrapper of a sweet. And the sweet itself is made of absolutely pure truth. A snuff simply can’t be anything else. That’s why it’s the foundation on which everything else can be built.’

  ‘And what’s she – truth or untruth?’ Grim asked, pointing to Kaya.

  ‘For me – the truth,’ said Damilola. ‘Especially where it concerns the terms of loan payments. But what she is for you, only you know. There are things that are a truth for some and an untruth for others. Those are the things, by the way, that cause hate between people.’

  ‘But what are snuffs needed for anyway?’

  ‘That’s not a question that’s asked in our society.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean it literally. The roots all go way back into philosophy and religion. But we haven’t thought about it for a long time. It’s not a question that concerns people, Grim. Take me, for instance. When I’m shooting on celluloid, it’s for eternity and Manitou. And I can’t say I don’t believe in it – I do. But I don’t want to go into it in depth. It didn’t start with me, and it won’t end with me. Let the priests deal with it. My head’s not elastic, after all. I’ve only got enough strength for my job, and also …’ – Damilola nodded towards the enigmatically silent Kaya. ‘So if you’re really interested, go to the temple.’

  ‘The temple?’

  ‘The House of Manitou.’

  ‘But will they let me in there?’

  Damilola laughed.

  ‘Everyone else stopped going to them a long time ago, Grim. Of course they’ll let you in. I’ll have a word with Alena-Libertina – I think she’ll want to explain everything in person. The old woman will be glad that someone’s still interested. Only don’t tell I called her an old woman, Chloe. Or else the old woman will get offended. And not with me, he he, but with you. You understand?’

  CHAPTER 18

  When I took Kaya off pause after our guests had left, the first thing she said was:

  ‘Forget the resonance, fat arse. Consensual sex in factory mode, and that’s it. Lock yourself in this happiness room of yours and make me soft-hearted. Got that?’

  ‘Got it,’ I answered, putting on a false air of resignation. ‘What am I going to do now, eh?’

  She looked at me with sullen distrust – as if sensing that I had my next move all ready.

  My sweetheart wasn’t mistaken. And it had been ready for a long time.

  When it became clear that she seriously intended to blackmail me, slamming shut in my face the door to the happiness that had only just been shown to me, I realised that I needed a weapon of retaliation. If it was blackmail she wanted, she could have it. I think it will be a long time yet before any algorithm can compare with an aggrieved and enraged human being in that area.

  For the first few days I tried to frighten her by saying, as if I was joking, that I would explain to Grim who she really was. It helped at first. But things couldn’t go on like that for long – one way or another, Grim would have guessed for himself. And if it came to that, Chloe would have noticed. So I wasn’t particularly concerned when that particular trump card fell out of the pack.

  I had another one ready and waiting.

  Kaya had simulated interest in Grim for so long that she couldn’t easily abandon this mode of behaviour. One way or another, all her demands and requests now concerned my symbolic rival, and she was obliged to simulate not only unflagging interest in him, but also concern for his welfare.

  And that was exactly what I intended to exploit.

  ‘Come here,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you something.’

  She pulled a face meant to show that she wasn’t interested in the least. I walked through into my battle cockpit and installed myself at my work station.

  ‘It’s about Grim,’ I muttered almost inaudibly under my breath.

  She can hear like a cat.

  Less than a minute later she appeared beside me and quietly sat down on the couchette in front of the control manitou. Still with that expression suggesting that she was afraid of defiling herself with the air that I breathe.

  I switched on the recording.

  It was a standard control track for my Orkland patrol from Hannelore’s black box. The basement of the house appeared on the manitou, filmed through the sights with the hyperoptics engaged.

  Three figures were visible – just outlines filled with glimmering twinkles. One little figure was sitting by the wall, with another one standing beside it. The third little figure was holding some long, thin object in its hands. It swung it and hit the figure sitting on the floor. The second figure tried to intervene, but it wasn’t fast enough.

  I switched on the sound and a gradually fading scream became audible.

  ‘I’ve seen this,’ said Kaya.

  ‘But you haven’t seen this,’ I replied and pressed the ‘Full HUD info’ button.

  A whole ocean of information immediately appeared on the manitou – including the wind speed and direction, long- and short-range radar readings, and even the phases of the moon at the time of recording. In the upper left-hand corner there were a couple of complicated graphs that even I didn’t understand. Simultaneously with all this splendour, the Orks’ individual tracking numbers popped up: 1 3505 00 148 41 0 and 1 3598 47 660 12 2. That was Grim and Chloe’s data. I was sure that Kaya remembered the numbers by heart.

  I stopped the recording and asked:

  ‘Do you remember how it all began? You asked me to save him. And I did. Committing, by the way, a serious breach of service regulations. I concealed the circumstances from my superiors.’

  I knew there was absolutely no way she could check what I said.

  ‘Now think for a moment,’ I went on. ‘What will happen to your Grim if I pass this recording on through the right channels?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘You don’t know?’ I asked. ‘To be quite honest, I don’t know either. But I think it would all end fairly painlessly for him. We are a humane society, after all.’

  ‘Painlessly in what sense?’ she asked.

  The look of alarm suited her delicate face very well.

  ‘In the sense that most likely it would be a lethal injection. Or the gas chamber. It would all be over quickly.’

  ‘But what will happen to you?’ she asked uncertainly. ‘You … You committed an offence too, didn’t you?’

  ‘I know you don’t give a damn for me,’ I said bitterly. ‘You’d be only too glad if they dispatched me to the next world after that little Orkish cur. But I have to disappoint you. In the very worst case they would give me an official warning. But most likely they would just fine me.’

  ‘You told me you were risking everything,’ she said.

  I laughed.

  ‘And how can I deal with you any other way? I have to get everything out of you by cunning. But in fact I can only be guilty of negligence. I didn’t disobey a single direct order.’

  That was absolutely true. I had carried out all my orders.

  She thinks incredibly fast – for such a tiny fraction of a second that not every chronometer could register it. But since she has to imitate human behaviour, she pretends to be thinking for a long time afterwards. And because she’s operating at a high level of bitchiness, she pulls all sorts of offensive faces during this time – she looks at me as if I’m suffering from elephantiasis and have just demonstrated my little secret to her, or wrinkles up her face as if I’m feeding her rotten fish oil with a spoon.

  But this time she surpassed herself.

  The way it looked was as if she’d realised that the life of someone very dear to her depended on how she behaved – and had immediately forgotten her bitchiness completely.

  In actual fact, of course, she never forgets anything. That’s why it’s more correct to say that the previous algorithm was instantly superseded by a process with a higher priority.

  ‘You won’t do it, though, will you? Honestly?’ she asked pitifully, and her eyebrows lifted up slightly at the bridge of her nose.

  I started trembling inside – that was a sure sign that a drop or two of happiness was about to spill over into my parched mouth. As long as I didn’t mess everything up myself – that happened too, sometimes.

  ‘Everything will depend on you, my dear,’ I said. ‘If you go on offending me every day …’

  She twirled her hand, as if she was fast-forwarding through my next few phrases. But then again, she really did know them.

  ‘But I’ll be able to see Grim like before?’ she asked. ‘You’ll continue taking me out with you?’

  And then I made a dumb move.

  I could have haggled and won any conditions for myself, because I was holding the strongest card of all. And then everything would probably have turned out differently.

  But haggling required time and also, possibly, more nervous stress. I already knew how a discussion of the terms would end anyway. And impatience got the better of me.

  ‘Pilots don’t go back on their word,’ I said proudly. ‘We’ve already decided that question.’