Ascension Read online

  Isis stomps up to my workstation and demands an explanation. ‘That bitch is going to work with Odysseus? Over my dead body she is!’

  She doesn’t believe me when I tell her I’m just as surprised as she is by Sati’s appointment.

  ‘Really? And you and Ra such buddies. How could you not know?’

  Ra and I are far from being buddies. If I give that impression it is simply to consolidate my position as head of C55. ‘I assure you I didn’t know, but I can see it makes sense. Your decision to leave the histo-lab created a vacancy. Ra has filled it.’

  ‘You knew all right. It was your idea. You did it to pay me back, you vindictive snake.’

  An unfortunate choice of words. My precious pets streamline their bodies and lash out at her with needle tongues. She takes a step back.

  Pay her back for what? I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I am aware that the entire compu-centre is listening to our exchange. Not good for discipline. Pity Ra didn’t keep his word and fire her on the day of reckoning. She continues raging and I stand up and try to steer her towards the caffeine dispenser. A couple of tabs might calm her. She shoves me away her arms flailing, bursts into tears and stumbles off through the sliding wall. Colleagues exchange glances. The male mutant humanoids are not happy about Sati’s move to the histo-lab either and are interested in my response. I glower at them. They drop their heads and continue working as I follow Isis into the RR.

  She’s curled up on one of the body-shapers, sniffing and snuffling. She looks up at me, her round eyes pink at the edges. ‘How could Odysseus do that to me?’ she sniffs. ‘How could he replace me with that bimbo? I only moved to the compu-centre to scare the shit out of him, to teach him a lesson. I never intended to leave the histo-lab permanently.’

  I squat down beside her. Maybe I’ll find out if Odysseus really did make a pass at her, but she sits up straight and starts to rave at me again, waving her half-pint third arm like a crazy person. ‘You must have told Ra, told him I wanted to give up histo-data.’

  I shake my head. ‘I didn’t need to tell him. There’s not much Ra doesn’t know about us. He must be aware you’ve been working exclusively in the centre for the last couple of weeks.’

  She thinks about that. ‘It’s like we’re always being watched. Frightening.’ She looks at her nails that are covered in little crescent moons and stars and waves them in my face. ‘Artistic or what?’ she asks. ‘Ody encouraged my make-up projects, called them ultra-mod art.’

  I’m surprised she speaks so naturally about Odysseus, even using his pet name.

  ‘I wouldn’t have stayed away forever, but I was that upset. To do what he did was unforgivable.’

  No comment. In my experience of power management, people are far more likely to confide in you if you keep quiet. No point forcing the issue. My ruse works, but what she tells me is not what I expect.

  ‘What a bastard, to fire him like that. Out of bloody jealousy. Just because he found us bonking on the histo-lab floor he got rid of him, turned him out to die in the wilderness.’

  It takes me a minute to realise what she’s talking about. Then it hits me. Heracles. She’s talking about Heracles. She thinks Odysseus sacked Heracles because he found them having sex! Heracles and Isis? I can hardly believe it. What would someone as intelligent and – well, let’s face it – as hot as Heracles, be doing with this moonfaced girl? Unless of course, he succumbed to her when someone else turned him down. My head is spinning. I shake my head free of the image of the two of them together.

  At any rate, the stupid girl has got it wrong. Odysseus didn’t sack Heracles out of jealousy, but because Ra told him to.

  I explain the situation to Isis. ‘Odysseus doesn’t have the power to fire anyone. Not even I can do that. Not without Ra’s permission. In this case, it was Ra who asked Odysseus to dismiss Heracles.’

  Isis opens her eyes wide. ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘The day Ra came to Compound 55, his objective was to reduce the staff by half. Odysseus had two assistants. Ra told him he could only keep one. Odysseus chose you. That’s why he fired Heracles.’

  ‘Ody chose me over Heracles?’

  ‘Incredible as it seems, yes. Think about it. Ra sent you off into the wilderness, but whisked you back. Why do you think that was?’

  ‘I never really gave it much thought.’

  ‘Because Odysseus asked Ra to bring you back and he agreed, but in exchange Heracles had to go.’

  ‘Oh Zeus, what have I done? I thought…. I so must go and see Ody before that bitch gets her hands on him.’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘But I so have to apologise. You don’t the half of it. I called him all the names under the sun, told him I hated his guts and that if he ever laid a finger on me I’d squeeze his balls to pulp. That’s totally bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Totally.’ I feel my mouth twitching but know I mustn’t laugh.

  ‘You must let me go to him, Kali, before it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s already too late. Ra has sent Sati as a replacement and there’s nothing we can do about it.’

  Isis narrows her eyes. ‘I know about you and Heracles.’

  ‘What? Nothing to know.’

  ‘You wanted him, but I got him. You can’t forgive me for that. You brought that female mutant here to pay me back.’

  Unbelievable. Somehow I keep my cool, but can’t resist a dig. ‘You are misinformed. I didn’t want Heracles. He wanted me. When I turned him down, I guess he had to make do with you.’

  ‘Liar! Heracles loved me.’

  ‘Love? What do you know about love?’

  ‘Odysseus showed me all those old movies. “Love Story,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Romeo and Juliet” and lots more….’

  ‘They’re not real, Isis.’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that? Nothing’s real what we do. Looking at a screen all day, doing research, being creative. What’s it all for? We don’t have a life. We’re mutant slaves. That’s what we are. What I shared with Heracles was different. That was real. Where is he now? Wandering about in that foul-smelling wilderness or lying dead in the scrub. What a waste. To tell the truth I don’t care if you do turn me out. I’ve been in half a mind to follow him anyway. I’d have been gone by now if I could have opened that bloody door, but we’re locked in. Prisoners – that’s what we are. Mutant-slave-prisoners. That’s the truth.’

  Her eyes are blazing. She rants on, ‘You can threaten me with what you like. I don’t care. It’s dreadful out there, cold and there’s a bitter wind, but nothing is worse than being stuck in here with no histo-lab, no Ody and no Heracles. Nothing left to make my life worth living. Only words and pictures. And you nagging us to meet those fucking targets.’

  That’s probably the longest speech moonfaced Isis has ever made. Her brain’s scrambled, of course, yet a lot of what she says has a kind of logic. Mutant slaves. Prisoners. Her words ring in my ears.

  I tell Isis that she must pull herself together. ‘I don’t know what the future holds for you, Isis, but I will give the matter some thought.’

  She rolls her eyes upward. ‘Think what you like, say what you like, it makes no difference to me.’

  My snakes raise their heads and spit. ‘Enough. Return to your workstation. Now.’

  She gets to her feet and ambles across the RR in her slapdash way.

  I call after her. ‘No more tantrums.’

  She turns, gives me a mocking look, rolls up her eyeballs, swings round again and strolls through the sliding wall.

  Chapter Four

  Dilemma

  (according to Kali)

  I lean back, put my feet up, my whole body sinking into the double shaper. A pleasant sensation. It’s a long time since I’ve taken the opportunity to relax. I spend my entire life working and motivating my team. I think of what Isis said about the monotony of our existence, shut up here. Mutant slaves in a prison. Compound 55 is
my past, my present and my future. Every day is the same. There is nothing worth remembering and nothing to look forward to. One thing is certain. It’s no good fretting about it, making myself sick with despair. Change will not come from the outside. No chance of that. There is only one person who can bring about change in this sectoid and that is me: Kali, the black-earth-mother, Kali, the all-powerful.

  I think about the facilities in C99 that Sati described and begin to consider how we could convert this compound to include similar leisure zones. If we knocked down the walls between those unused dormo-cubes there would be plenty of room for a gym or some sort of exercise area. More space could also be created by cutting down the size of the compu-centre and the RR, both too big for our depleted workforce. I’ll hold a competition to redesign the compound and the points earned by the winners will go towards our monthly targets for Worldwideculture. Nothing like a new project to liven things up. Great. I feel better already.

  I close my eyes and visualise the finished conversion. A gym, a dining room and here, in the RR, a disco.

  A slow number. Couples dance up close and personal. Heracles approaches, his massive body on his three powerful legs rolls towards me. He asks me to dance. I shake my head. I mustn’t dance with him. One thing could lead to another. He is muscular, good looking and clever but I am not willing to put at risk my position as head of this sectoid by indulging in intimacy with a member of my workforce. I must keep control. Power is my aphrodisiac, not a male mutant humanoid, however handsome. My precious pets raise their heads and give my skin a nip, but, as Heracles leans over and takes my hand in his, I feel myself losing ground, falling into an abyss….

  ‘Kali, Kali, wake up!’ Someone is shaking me.

  I jolt awake. The music and the flashing lights disappear and so does Heracles. I’m back in the original RR. It’s Mercury trying to grab my attention.

  I close my eyes again and drift back in time. Four-year-old Mercury stands by my bunku and wakes me up. ‘Bad dream,’ he says, his eyes wide with fear, tears rolling down his cheeks, and I take him in my arms and comfort him and, after a bit, he calms down and curls up to my back and falls into a peaceful sleep.

  ‘Kali, Kali, don’t go back to sleep.’ His voice is as insistent now as when he was a child..

  I sigh and shift my body on the shaper. ‘What’s the matter? Why can’t you leave me alone when I’ve having a little rest for a change?’

  ‘Kali. Something terrible is happening. You must come quickly.’

  His little face is bright red and he doesn’t know what to say, how to tell me. ‘Come and see for yourself,’ he says and grips my hand to pull me up. My snakes make no attempt to stop him. Sometimes I think they’re fonder of Mercury than of me.

  ‘OK, OK, keep your hair on. I’m coming.’ As I stride across the room, Mercury at my heels, Hugo puffs himself up eager to see what’s going on, and his siblings – Hugh and Hannah, Henry and Henrietta – give my wrists a squeeze, their dagger-tongues sliding in and out.

  The wall slips open and I step into the compu-centre. I pull up short. What I see is beyond belief.

  The entire place is in uproar. Sati sits astride Apollo and gyrates her hips as she bounces up and down, a rider on a bucking bull at a rodeo. A circle of male onlookers shout out the number of Sati’s bounces and presumably of Apollo’s thrusts: thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five.

  A group of females stand by the caffeine dispenser comforting Apollo’s erstwhile partner, Serena.

  I stand transfixed, unable to believe my three eyes. I suspected that Sati would be trouble, but I’d not imagined she would go as far as to organise such a public display, an orgy no less, in the compu-centre. Outrageous.

  Mercury gabbles in my ear. I pull him back into the RR to hear what he’s saying.

  ‘Kali, she sent a message by intercom-net to males and females alike, with a list of names attached. It said, “You are the chosen ones who will participate in love-sex with me. Attached please find the order of operations.” We’d hardly had time to open the attachment before Sati skipped into the compu-centre, swinging her hips, fluttering her eyelashes, a wide smile on each of her faces. She made straight for Jason, number one on her list, pushed him over his desk, began to adjust his trousers and take out his….’

  ‘No need to go on. I’ve got the picture. What number on the list is Apollo?’

  ‘Number two. You wouldn’t believe it, Kali, she just pushed Jason away when she’d finished with him, sailed over to Apollo and….’

  ‘Enough. Are you on the list, Mercury?’

  ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t dream of….’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Second from last.’

  ‘Who is last?’

  ‘You’re not going to like this, Kali.’ Mercury takes a deep breath. ‘The last name on the list is yours.’

  ‘Fifty!’ sing out the chorus as with a hop, a skip and a jump, I leap into the middle of the compu-centre.

  ‘Stop!’ I roar. My precious pets hiss and lash out their tongues.

  Silence, but Sati continues to move up and down.

  ‘Stop this at once!’ I say again.

  Sati shoots me an insolent look. ‘That’s a bit mean. Apollo hasn’t reached his climax yet.’

  A burst of laughter.

  I must keep control, must show them I’m in charge. I rarely use violence. The posturing of my snakes is usually enough, but this is anarchy. Something drastic is called for.

  I approach Sati. The snakes thrash about, desperate to attack. The onlookers step back. I lean over Sati’s pretty neck. Hugo’s tongue strikes deep.

  ‘That hurt!’ Sati cries, holding her neck as she kicks one leg high over Apollo’s three thighs and climbs off.

  ‘It will hurt even more later,’ I have pleasure in informing her, ‘when the poison begins to take effect.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says, but the look in her eyes tells me she’s scared all right.

  I smile. ‘You don’t have to believe me. In ten minutes you’ll find out for yourself just how much venom is implanted in your neck. It will take a few hours to infiltrate the blood stream before you….’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she says. ‘Ra sent me here. You can’t kill me.’

  ‘It’s not me who is killing you. It’s Hugo. Ra will understand. Accidents happen from time to time. Especially with snakes.’

  Both her faces turn ash-white.

  ‘Come,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to die in public.’

  I swing round and say in my most authoritative voice. ‘Back to work everybody. I don’t want to hear another word from any of you.’

  She teeters and nearly topples over, but I catch her in my four arms, lift her up and hold her tight. She squirms and squeals but stands no chance. Everyone watches, amazed at my strength as I carry the wriggling Sati along the silver cylinder to Man1.

  I plonk her down on a single shaper. ‘Now, Sati, we need to have a serious talk.’

  Sati pouts. ‘I don’t understand. What did I do wrong? Those men all wanted me.’

  ‘Dormo-cubes are the place for sex, not the compu-centre.’

  ‘For Zeus’s sake, it’s so boring here. That tedious old man – he calls himself my mentor and never stops talking. I just had to get away for a while. I thought a bit of communal sex might liven things up a bit.’

  ‘You didn’t think about your female colleagues, many of them sex-partners of the males you intended to fuck.’

  ‘Not fuck,’ she corrects me. ‘That’s an ugly word. I only do beautiful things. I make love-sex. I give a little bit of love to all my sex-partners. I’ve never had any complaints. As for the females, quite a few of them have come on to me too. Some of them are on my list.’

  ‘Well – you won’t have time to “make love-sex” to any of them now. Your time is running out.’

  ‘Oh Kali, come on, you can’t really mean to let me die. You must have an antidote you can give me.’

&nbs
p; ‘Even if I have, what makes you think I’d give it to you?’

  ‘What if I promise to be a good girl in the future?’ Her four eyes look up at me. Does she really think I’m susceptible to her charms?

  ‘A good girl? A good female mutant humanoid, you mean.’

  ‘You know I’m less mutant than most.’

  ‘I know you’re very arrogant and sure of yourself, but I am immune to your charms. That reminds me, how dare you put me on your list? What impudence.’

  ‘On the contrary, I thought you’d feel insulted if you were left out.’

  What impertinence! At that moment I see a flicker of pain pass over her faces. The poison is beginning to work.

  ‘I think you’d better lie down,’ I tell her, directing her to the treble-shaper in the corner of the office. ‘The pain is going to get worse.’

  ‘You’re not really going to let me die,’ she says, as she lurches across the room, but I hear the panic in her voice. She has no idea how far I will go to maintain control of my sectoid. As she sinks into the treble-shaper, her eyes narrow. ‘You do realise that I’m Ra’s favourite.’

  ‘Are you indeed? No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for that bitch Athene, I’d still be in C99 now, but- make no mistake – Ra still adores me. I can’t imagine what he’d do if anything happened to me.’

  I give Sati a contemptuous smile, stride out of Man 1 and lock the door behind me.

  Back in the compu-centre, all is quiet. Only the tapping of keyboards breaks the silence.

  Serena has calmed down but I note that Hermione, Jason’s ex-squeeze, has moved to the workstation next to hers. Adversity has drawn them closer together. A false calm reigns. Another storm is bound to come but, for the moment, I am grateful for the respite.

  I’m just about to settle at my multi-compu when I realise that Isis is missing. My first thought is that she has found out how to unlock the outside door and that the silly mutant has gone out into the wilderness, but my second thought is more logical. She has taken advantage of Sati’s appalling conduct to slip down to the basement to see Odysseus. I switch on the surveillance camera and the multi-screens pop up. I click on the histo-lab and there she is. The chief chronicler and his former assistant are sitting close together. Her three hands are enclosed in his two. They have clearly resolved their difficulties. This leaves me with a dilemma.