Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

are faster. So with this one, we’re just copying in the outside. There won’t be any devices inside this.’

‘Okay, good.’

‘Yes, good. Sorry for the screed. I just get – excited.’

‘No, you should. It’s pretty cool. What do you think will be inside our copy?’

‘Well, it can’t do working machinery that well from just scanning. You have to upload a programme for that, with full outlines for moving parts.’

‘So no wifi. What will it have then?’

‘The best estimate of the machine,’ I said.

In Silence

Tom wandered off to look at the empty shelves. I monitored the progress of the scanner. Technically I wasn’t allowed to leave the room while it was scanning, but technically I wasn’t even allowed to be there, wasting materials like this – I would write it off as another dud though, I had decided, having earlier made a mistake in overestimating duds, it would be easy enough.

‘There’s a coffee machine just outside the kitchen,’ I said.

‘Replicant coffee?’

But he went anyway, leaving the doors open so he could let himself back in. In the silence, I stared at the machine. It began beeping. I had expected this. It frequently hit up against a materials issue and now it was beeping, but even the beep I enjoyed, pitched as it was, a low pleasant noise, something akin to bleeps from old space films; the only small reprove I would give it was the lack of colourful pastel lighty-upness from the console. The codes described a need for a particular filler and some liquid plastic. I had to refill the trays, and walked to the concealed cupboard in the wood-effect wall, tapped the pad embedded in the door, which always gave me a small thrill: the future here, right here, at my fingertips, even if the wooden look was more something from a seventies den room. I walked into the cupboard and stared at the grey bins of stuff. I was thinking that my favourite was the wool, my least favourite, the leather, which came also in a liquid form for the jets, and sloshed about, ominous, stinking. I was thinking, perhaps I don’t hate the smell of it, if I think of it every time I come in here, obsessed with its disgusting potency perhaps. All was still.

Epiphany of the Copied Good

Tom appeared at the doorway of the cupboard, holding two cups.

‘I got you milk in yours.’

‘Cheers, thanks.’ Not moving, staring, as Tom filled the entranceway, positively dewy, interested, wondered, turning his head around to take it all in, but also – discomforted, perhaps by the narrow space of the cupboard, or the closeness between them, or my darting eyes, their avoidance, which I knew annoyed some people, and couldn’t help, especially this close. I leaned over and dragged out the trays, and merrily said, ‘Needs a refill . . .’ and Tom and I moved some ballet of clumsy feet and coffee – thankfully unsloshed – and trays lifted and fitted one by one, and somehow we were both back in the cupboard again, with the pretext of – showing the trays, and their contents.

I took off the lid on the leather refill to display it, and Tom winced and covered his nose.

‘Smells like a dead hamburger. You know what I mean.’

‘There’s also the gilt bottle, up there, smaller. Real gold. There’s an idea that we might make a dirt bottle too one of these days, refilled to correct environmental sources for each object.’

‘That way you’d be really able to fool people.’

‘No, that’s not it at all,’ I said. ‘Well, now you’ve said it. Maybe. Okay. But it’s more – verisimilitude. And excessive pushing at the limit of what we can do, how far we can go.’

‘Dirt would convince. Get the right patina on it, and it’s like, why even have the real thing?’

‘You’re testing me, Tom.’

Tom leaned in to read the label on a proprietary ink, ‘Kells blue 0004. That Kells?’

‘That Kells,’ I said. ‘You don’t really think this is—’

‘No, no, sorry. I think it’s amazing. Just, has to be in the right hands. Otherwise the world would be overrun with fakes.’

‘It’s still hideously expensive to do, and there’s a lot of paperwork around to prevent forging.’

‘Unlicensed forging.’

‘I just want to keep the old things safe, Tom, that’s all I want to do. And I get to do that here, in a very regulated environment where everyone is working incredibly hard to do it, together. To save the past, but let people in. To touch it. To understand. To be allowed closer – to never let it be lost. No more things lost through human carelessness. Everything right here, on these shelves, and out in the world, and the originals kept in the perfect preserving conditions.’

‘I don’t think it can possibly do what you want it to do, Daniel,’ said Tom.

And I felt my heart lurch, felt dizzy almost, at the tender reproachfulness in the other man’s voice, Tom’s hair shining in the soft light. And I thought, I thought to myself, small urgent ideas of movement, of rushing up and taking him by the shoulders and kissing him softly at first and then harder, more hungry – but I hesitated, and ran my finger along the trays, making a hollow sound. Not that I cared if Tom did not want me, that I might be rejected – but Tom might want; there was a charge in the air, no falsifying that, either Tom’s great dislike of the whole mission of this place, its solemnness, made him want something else, escape, a fight, or, or, and I looked for his eyes, as if that would help, Tom having, I saw now, more to him than was visible, smooth and bold like a ship with half of it passing beneath the waves – something else then. Stopping me. Órla? Regretfully no, I was not so considerate, and anyway what, just over a month together, I wouldn’t be the wronging one, I thought, but an early disruption for what might