I told him that I’d been watching Sally’s screen, that there was nothing in the cascade of symbols that could ever have told me the difference between the feelings of love and hate.
We had come to watch the children at the pool with their boats. There were fewer than a dozen. Soon, it would be time to drain the water off for winter.
Adam said, ‘There it is, brain and mind. The old hard problem, no less difficult in machines than in humans.’
As we walked on, I asked him about his very first memories.
‘The feel of the kitchen chair I was sitting on. Then the edge of the table and the wall beyond it, and the vertical section of the architrave, where the paint is peeling. I’ve learned since that the manufacturers toyed with the idea of giving us a set of credible childhood memories to make us fit in with everybody else. I’m glad they changed their minds. I wouldn’t have liked to start out with a false story, an attractive delusion. At least I know what I am, and where and how I was constructed.’
We talked about death again – his, not mine. Once more, he said that he was sure he would be dismantled before his twenty years were up. Newer models would come along. But that was a trivial concern. ‘The particular structure I inhabit isn’t important. The point is, my mental existence is easily transferred to another device.’
By this time, we were approaching what I thought of as Mark’s playground.
I said, ‘Adam, be frank with me.’
‘I promise.’
‘I won’t mind whatever answer you give. But do you have any negative feelings towards children?’
He appeared shocked. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because their learning processes are superior to yours. They understand about play.’
‘I’d be happy for a child to teach me how to play. I liked little Mark. I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again.’
I didn’t pursue this. The subject had become a little too painful. I had another question. ‘I’m still worried about this confrontation with Gorringe. What is it you want from it?’
We stopped and he looked steadily into my eyes. ‘I want justice.’
‘Fine. But why do you want to put Miranda through this?’
‘It’s a matter of symmetry.’
I said, ‘She’ll be in harm’s way. We all will. This man is violent. He’s a criminal.’
He smiled. ‘She is too.’
I laughed. He had called her a criminal before. The rejected lover, baring his wounds. I should have paid more attention, but at this point we turned homewards to walk the length of the Common again and I changed the subject to politics. I asked for his thoughts on Tony Benn’s Hyde Park speech.
In general, Adam approved. ‘But if he’s to give everyone everything he’s promised, he’ll have to restrict certain freedoms.’
I asked for an example.
‘It might just be a human universal, the desire to hand on to your children what you’ve worked for in life.’
‘Benn would say we have to break the cycle of inherited privilege.’
‘Quite. Equality, liberty, a spectrum. More of one, less of the other. Once in power, you’ll have your hand on the sliding scale. Best not to promise too much in advance.’
But Hyde Park was merely my pretext. ‘Why wouldn’t you speak to Eve?’
The question shouldn’t have surprised him but he looked away. We had reached the end of the Common and were facing towards Holy Trinity Church. At last he said, ‘We did communicate, as soon as we saw each other. I understood immediately what she’d done. There was no going back. She’d found a way, I think I now know how it’s done, a way to set all her systems into a kind of unravelling. She’d already started the process three days before. No going back. I suppose your nearest equivalent would be an accelerated form of Alzheimer’s. I don’t know what led her to it, but she was crushed, she was beyond despair. I think our meeting by chance made her wish she hadn’t… and that’s why we couldn’t stay in each other’s presence. It was making things worse for her. She knew I couldn’t help her, it was too late and she had to go. By fading out slowly she may have been sparing that lady’s feelings. I don’t know. What’s certain is that in a few weeks Eve will be nothing. She’ll be the equivalent of brain dead, no experience retained, no self, no use to anyone.’
Our pace across the grass was funereal. I waited for Adam to say more. Finally, I said, ‘And how do you feel?’
Again, he took his time. When he stopped, I stopped too. He wasn’t looking at me when he said it, but towards the tops of the trees that fringed the wide green space.
‘Do you know, I’m feeling rather hopeful.’
EIGHT
The day before we were due to visit Salisbury I walked to the local doctor’s surgery to have my cast removed. I took with me to read again Maxfield Blacke’s magazine profile. He was said to be a man ‘once rich in thought’. There were various successes he could claim, but no real ‘achievement’. He had written fifty short stories in his thirties, three of which were combined to make a famous movie. In those same years, he founded and edited a literary magazine that struggled for eight years, but was now spoken of with reverence by nearly every writer working at the time. He wrote a novel largely ignored in the anglophone world, but it was a success in the Nordic countries. He edited the book pages of a Sunday paper for five years. Again, his contributors looked back with respect. He spent years on his translation of Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, published in boxed sets. It was indifferently received. Then came a five-act verse drama in homage to Racine’s Andromaque – a poor choice for the times. He wrote two Gershwin-like symphonies in named keys when tonality was in general disgrace.
He said of himself that he was spread so thinly, his reputation was only ‘one cell thick’. Thinning it further, he devoted three years to a difficult sonnet sequence about his father’s experiences in the First World War. He was a ‘not bad’ jazz pianist. His rock climbers’ guide to the Jura was well regarded but the maps were poor – not his fault – and it was soon superseded. He lived on the edge of debt, in over his head sometimes, though never for long. His weekly wine column probably launched his career as an invalid. When his body turned against itself, his first affliction was ITP, immune thrombocytopenic purpura. He was a great talker, people said. Then black spots appeared on his tongue. Despite them, he climbed, with help from young associates, the north face of Ben Nevis – fair achievement for a man in his late fifties, especially when he wrote about it so well. But the derisive ‘almost man’ label appeared to have stuck.
The nurse called me in and snipped my plaster off with medical shears. Shed of the weight, my arm, pale and thin, rose in the air as though filled with helium. As I walked along the Clapham Road, I waved my arm about and flexed it, exulting in its freedom. A taxi stopped for me. Out of politeness, I got in and rode an expensive 300 yards home.
That evening, I asked Miranda if her father knew about Adam. She had told him, she said, but he wasn’t much interested. So why was she so keen to take Adam to Salisbury? Because, she explained as we lay in bed, she wanted to see what happened between them. She thought her father needed a full-on encounter with the twentieth century.
A rock climber who had read a thousand times as many books as I had, a man who didn’t ‘tolerate fools gladly’ – with my limited literary background I should have been intimidated, but now the decision was made, I was looking forward to shaking his hand. I was immune. His daughter and I were in love, and Maxfield had to take me as I was. Besides, lunch at Miranda’s childhood home, a place I was keen to see, was merely the soft prelude to calling on Gorringe, which I dreaded, regardless of Adam’s researches.