The cubic root of 912,673
After a while, my wife came to visit. Isobel Martin, in person. Author of The Dark Ages. I wanted to be repulsed by her, as that would make everything easier. I wanted to be horrified and, of course, I was, because the whole species was horrific to me. On that first encounter I thought she was hideous. I was frightened of her. I was frightened of everything here, now. It was an undeniable truth. To be on Earth was to be frightened. I was even frightened by the sight of my own hands. But anyway, Isobel. When I first saw her I saw nothing but a few trillion poorly arranged, mediocre cells. She had a pale face and tired eyes and a narrow, but still protruding nose. There was something very poised and upright about her, something very contained. She seemed, even more than most, to be holding something back. My mouth dried just looking at her. I suppose if there was a challenge with this particular human it was that I was meant to know her very well, and also that I was going to be spending more time with her, to glean the information I needed, before doing what I had to do.
She came to see me in my room, while a nurse watched. It was, of course, another test. Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.
I was dreading her hugging me, or kissing me, or blowing air into my ear or any of those other human things the magazine had told me about, but she didn’t. She didn’t even seem to want to do that. What she wanted to do was sit there and stare at me, as if I were the cubic root of 912,673 and she was trying to work me out. And indeed, I tried very hard to act as harmoniously as that. The indestructible ninety-seven. My favourite prime.
Isobel smiled and nodded at the nurse, but when she sat down and faced me I realised she was exhibiting a few universal signs of fear – tight facial muscles, dilated pupils, fast breathing. I paid special attention to her hair now. She had dark hair growing out of the top and rear of her head which extended to just above her shoulders where it halted abruptly to form a straight horizontal line. This was known as a ‘bob’. She sat tall in her chair with a straight back, and her neck was long, as if her head had fallen out with her body and wanted nothing more to do with it. I would later discover that she was forty-one and had an appearance which passed for beautiful, or at least plainly beautiful, on this planet. But right then she had just another human face. And human faces were the last of the human codes that I would learn.
She inhaled. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t remember a lot of things. My mind is a little bit scrambled, especially about this morning. Listen, has anyone been to my office? Since yesterday?’
This confused her. ‘I don’t know. How would I know that? I doubt very much they’ll be in at the weekend. And anyway you’re the only one who has the keys. Please, Andrew, what happened? Have you suffered an accident? Have they tested you for amnesia? Why were you out of the house at that time? Tell me what you were doing. I woke up and you weren’t there.’
‘I just needed to get out. That is all. I needed to be outside.’
She was agitated now. ‘I was thinking all sorts of things. I checked the whole house, but there was no sign of you. And the car was still there, and your bike, and you weren’t picking up your phone, and it was three in the morning, Andrew. Three in the morning.’
I nodded. She wanted answers, but I only had questions, ‘Where is our son? Gulliver? Why is he not with you?’
This answer confused her even more. ‘He’s at my mother’s,’ she said. ‘I could hardly bring him here. He’s very upset. After everything else this is, you know, hard for him.’
Nothing she was telling me was information I needed. So I decided to be more direct. ‘Do you know what I did yesterday? Do you know what I achieved while I was at work?’
I knew that however she answered this, the truth remained the same. I would have to kill her. Not then. Not there. But somewhere, and soon. Still I had to know what she knew. Or what she might have said to others.
The nurse wrote something down at this point.
Isobel ignored my question and leant in closer towards me, lowering her voice. ‘They think you have suffered a mental breakdown. They don’t call it that, of course. But that is what they think. I’ve been asked lots of questions. It was like facing the Grand Inquisitor.’
‘That’s all there is around here, isn’t it? Questions.’
I braved another glance at her face and gave her more questions. ‘Why did we get married? What is the point of it? What are the rules involved?’
Certain enquiries, even on a planet designed for questions, go unheard.
‘Andrew, I’ve been telling you for weeks – months – that you need to slow down. You’ve been overdoing it. Your hours have been ridiculous. You’ve been truly burning the candle. Something had to give. But even so, this was so sudden. There were no warning signs. I just want to know what triggered it all. Was it me? What was it? I’m worried about you.’
I tried to come up with a valid explanation. ‘I suppose I just must have forgotten the importance of wearing clothes. That is, the importance of acting the way I was supposed to act. I don’t know. I must have just forgotten how to be a human. It can happen, can’t it? Things can be forgotten sometimes?’
Isobel held my hand. The glabrous under-portion of her thumb stroked my skin. This unnerved me even more. I wondered why she was touching me. A policeman grips an arm to take you somewhere, but why does a wife stroke your hand? What was the purpose? Did it have something to do with love? I stared at the small glistening diamond on her ring.
‘It’s going to be all right, Andrew. This is just a blip. I promise you. You’ll be right as rain soon.’
‘As rain?’ I asked, the worry adding a quiver to my voice.
I tried to read her facial expressions, but it was difficult. She wasn’t terrified any more, but what was she? Was she sad? Confused? Angry? Disappointed? I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t. She left me, after a hundred more words of the conversation. Words, words, words. There was a brief kiss on my cheek, and a hug, and I tried not to flinch or tighten up, hard as that was for me. And then she turned away and wiped something from her eye, which had leaked. I felt like I was expected to do something, say something, feel something, but I didn’t know what. ‘I saw your book,’ I said. ‘In the shop. Next to mine.’
‘Some of you still remains then,’ she said. The tone was soft, but slightly scornful, or I think it was. ‘Andrew, just be careful. Do everything they say and it will be all right. Everything will be all right.’
And then she was gone.
Dead cows
I was told to go to the dining hall to eat. This was a terrible experience. For one thing, it was the first time I had been confronted with so many of their species in an enclosed area. Second, the smell. Of boiled carrot. Of pea. Of dead cow.
A cow is an Earth-dwelling animal, a domesticated and multipurpose ungulate, which humans treat as a one-stop shop for food, liquid refreshment, fertiliser and designer footwear. The humans farm it and cut its throat and then cut it up and package it and refrigerate it and sell it and cook it. By doing this, apparently they have earned the right to change its name to beef, which is the monosyllable furthest away from cow, because the last thing a human wants to think about when eating cow is an actual cow.
I didn’t care about cows. If it had been my assignment to kill a cow then I would have happily done so. But there was a leap to be made from not caring about someone to wanting to eat them. So I ate the vegetables. Or rather, I ate a single slice of boiled carrot. Nothing, I realised, could make you feel quite so homesick as eating disgusting, unfamiliar food. One slice was enough. More than enough. It was, in fact, far too much and it took me all my strength and concentration to battle that gag reflex and not throw up.
I