The old concrete arcade along one side of the Cut had been demolished. A rhinocerous hump of Coral was growing out of it, amid the stalks of dead nettles. Milena saw a sheet of black resin. There were Bees huddled under it, kneeling as if in prayer. They had lifted up a paving stone and were looking at the earth underneath it, and jittering in place with the cold.
‘Oyster trails,’ one of them whispered, scooping sand and snow aside with his hands..
‘Old cigarettes,’ said a woman’s voice.
‘Cold earthworms!’ they all suddenly yelped together and laughed.
One of them was wearing a sequined jacket, and other Bees licked his ears and murmured to his soft blonde hair. He was the King, the King from Love’s Labour’s Lost.
The Bees flinched as Milena approached. They ducked and almost but not quite looked at her out of the corners of their eyes.
‘Hello, Billy,’ said Milena, gently. ‘Billy, remember me? I’m Milena. Constable Dull, an’t shall please you?’
‘Lo, Ma,’ he said, smiling vaguely, not looking at her. The others clustered more closely about him.
The Bees protected themselves by staying in groups and focusing their attention all together on the same things. They protected themselves from life, too much life all at once. If a horse, a huge and muscled, sweating and snorting beast, passed the Bees and they were unprepared, they could faint. Milena had once seen that happen, a nest of Bees collapsing in unison. She had seen Bees kissing the cobbles where a pigeon had been crushed by the wheels of a cart.
‘What’s it like, Billy?’ Milena asked him.
‘It’s in lines,’ he said, still without looking at her. ‘All in lines.’ He looked up, as if at the stars, snow-flakes on his eyelashes.
An empathy virus had mutated. It stimulated sympathetic imagination. Nurses, Health Visitors, Social Hygienists and, most particularly, actors — they had all bought the virus from apothecaries. The new 2B strain created an almost unbearable oneness with anything that was alive — or had been alive. The Bees could Read the living. They could Read whatever reaction patterns that were in the remains of living things, in the soil, in the stone, in the air.
‘And the lines,’ said Milena. ‘They touch the stars, don’t they?’ They go down into the Earth. They shiver when someone thinks.’
Billy turned to her, looked at her, and gave her a bleary smile. ‘Are you Bee?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Milena. ‘But I know about the lines.’
Gravity was thought. Gravity was life. Gravity twisted nothingness into a leaf that had been alive. The skeleton of the leaf still sang, wistfully, silently, of its life on the tree. It had been blown by gusts of wind until it sighed down from the tree to the earth. The earth sang of the leaves it once had been. It sang of peanut shells and orange peel, dog shit and leather shoes, old clothes and the sweat of the people who had worn them. The dead sang to the Bees, out of gravity.
‘The food weeps,’ said the King. ‘Torn away. Burnt. Boiled.’
Much of the food in this new age had been cut from hybridomas. It was still alive when sold, still alive when cooked or eaten raw. The Bees would scream as people ate. They could not bear to wear most clothing, the strands of cotton or spider web or silkworm threads. Clothes sung to them. The sun sang to them, and they tried to sing back.
Live on Rhodopsin, they told people, when they could bear being near people, for the blasts of thought from living people were too harsh for them to bear alone. They could bear it only groups, for a short time, before scampering off like timid monkeys.
It’s stopped snowing, Milena realised. Everything went still and cold.
‘Coffee!’ cried the vendor. ‘Coffee for health!’ Steam from his boiler caught the light and hovered golden in the air.
‘The coffee screams,’ said the King. The apothecary viruses had been derived from herpes, and like herpes, they ruptured when bathed in coffee.
‘And the viruses,’ the King said in pity. ‘The viruses break apart.’ Most hateful of all to this new age, the Bees loved the viruses, too.
A woman staggered towards the coffee vendor with a jug to fill. She shook like a rickety old cart on a bumpy road, juddering with cold and caffeine overdose. Her eyes were evil. She glared at Milena. The hatred in the look stilled Milena’s heart. It was like a beam that passed through her. It struck the Bees, and they folded up into a tight knot around each other.
‘Billy?’ Milena said. He didn’t answer. She knelt down and lightly stroked his disordered hair. You were the most beautiful man, she thought, and all the girls wanted to hold you and love you because you were beautiful but not aware of it. And you had a voice like honey and on stage you took command lightly, as if by right, and you made me believe that people could speak as Shakespeare wrote.
‘Billy, you’re cold,’ she said. ‘Where do you live?’
‘The Graveyard,’ he whispered.
Milena paused. That place again. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘Let’s get you back inside.’ She stood up, and all the Bees stood with her, as if pulled by wires. They shuffled behind her, up the Cut wearing shaggy, artificial furs or plastic boots.
While all of this was happening, Milena thought, I was sending down flowers from space. It’s as if there are many Earths and I came back down to the wrong one.
‘Those are Bees you’re talking to!’ shouted the woman who was buying coffee.
Milena held up a hand for the Bees to be still, and walked towards her.
As Milena approached both the woman and the coffee vendor slipped back behind the metal tureen. They think it’s a magic charm that will protect them, thought Milena. She saw herself reflected in the orange light on its misty metal surface. She saw the future there. The future was metal once more. The future was machinery.
‘I know one of them. He is a friend of mine,’ Milena tried to explain. ‘They’re human too,’ she said.
The woman shuddered, and pulled up her face mask. ‘Used to be human, you mean. Look at them.’ Her shaking hands struggled with gloves. The gloves were soaked in coffee, too. Steam rose up from her. ‘They’re deliberately spreading these diseases, don’t you know that? Where have you been?’
‘In orbit,’ replied Milena, in innocence. ‘I’m an astronaut.’
Without another word, the woman flung a cup of coffee across Milena’s face. Like disoriented beetles, her scampering hands fought to seize her jug of coffee, give money to the vendor, and leave, all at the same time. She was evidently holding her breath. She turned and tried to run, taking long, low, sloping strides.
Milena stood appalled as the coffee chilled on her face. She felt like someone in a comedy, to whom absurd things happen. ‘Why did she do that?’ Milena asked. She looked down at her coat. It was ruined by coffee.
‘Perhaps she thought you were sick,’ said the vendor. He threw the coins the woman had given him into a resin tray full of coffee. Coins spread infection too.
‘You’re the ones who are sick!’ said Milena and walked angrily back to the Bees. ‘Come on, she told them. ‘Keep walking. They’re frightened of you, too.’ She led the Bees past the coffee vendor.
Milena turned left, past the fountain outside of Leake Street. Bolts of metal had been screwed into the mouth of the fountain, and its rows of drinking cups were gone. Up the ramp that led to Waterloo, people were scurrying, huddled in terror. They stepped over something, a bundle perhaps in the snow. The bundle moved. The bundle, she saw, was a man.