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Authors: Anthony Trevelyan

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Agtech is not yet available for purchase. It will be soon, though. And anyway, we all know how it works, more or less. Or at least, we’ve all been able to find out, since on the day of the press conference the CERN team published the essence of their research online and distributed those several hundred prototypes of their device to colleagues round the world. Yes, certain individuals and bodies made efforts to have the team’s work taken offline, citing reasons of public safety and whatnot (conjuring up images of unwise teens soldering together agdevices and levitating themselves into the wide blue yonder), but none of it came to anything. The schematics are still there for all to see. You can log on and have a look at them right now. And besides, you’ll own a unit yourself soon enough.

In the meantime those ads are everywhere. Every time I step outside there seems to be another one – or, rather, another copy of the same one, a banner of an ideally attractive young Indian couple gazing into each other’s eyes as they float together
through the orange urban dusk, the sun dimmed and blurred behind them, the Queen’s Necklace spread like expensive fire beneath their dangling beautiful bare feet.

 

One morning I go to Ess’s room and he’s not there. The bed is empty, the sheets are on the floor, and he’s not there.

I search the flat, every room, every wardrobe, of which it turns out there are many, though Ess is not in any of them. I try the back door, find it unlocked: not open, at least, but unlocked. Is it always unlocked? I can’t remember. I call Harry but he doesn’t answer. I call Alice but she doesn’t answer either. I go back to the front door and stand looking up and down the street. But the dusty glare in each direction holds no sign of him. I wonder who I should call now. Doctor Sharma? The police?

I search the streets in the immediate vicinity of Harry’s flat. Then I begin to search more widely, leaving the broad pavements of the familiar tourist circuits for quieter, narrower streets, alleyways that terminate against walls of clammy brick or the caged refuse of shops or tearooms. In desperation I head back to the causeway and mill backwards and forwards in the sluggish crowd, in the hopeless mash of humanity. But it’s no use. Even if he were here I would have no way of seeing him, of distinguishing him from so many of his brothers and sisters. I buy a bottle of water at a stall and drink it in one go, standing by a wall full of huge and beautiful cracks. I try Harry again. I try Alice again.

Then my phone rings in my hand and it’s Harry. ‘He’s here.’

‘Where’s here?’

It’s almost midday by the time I arrive at the building site. Only it’s not a building site any more but a school, with freshly painted white walls and wooden shutters and orange tiles glowing on the wide and sloped roof. On the bright, clayey ground in
front of the school several dozen tiny children – the first intake of pupils – are sitting in circles or pools. Harry is there, with his boyfriend Doctor Sharma. And Alice is there too. And Ess is there too.

‘It’s fine,’ Harry calls out to me, ‘I’ve talked to the teachers, they say there’s no problem.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Seems he just came in this morning. Walked right in, started making friends with people.’

I go up to him, up to Ess. He’s sitting on the ground with a couple of the teachers, and with Alice, a little way away from the circles of children. Still, he keeps calling across to the kids, pulling faces, waving his arms.

I sit on the ground in front of him. It takes him a while to realise there’s anyone there. Then he looks at me, and squints and smiles.

‘Hello,’ he says.

‘Hello, Ess,’ I say.

Weeks indoors have left him pale, his skin almost blue, almost translucent, under the dark splashes of forehead freckles I’ve barely noticed before. His eyes are watery, dazzling, shapeless, only just contained by the cup-like lines of their crinkles, into which it seems they may at any instant flow, and flow, and finally drain away.

‘We’ve been learning songs,’ Ess says.

‘Yes,’ I say.

He leans forward confidentially, and I lean forward also, so he can pour his secret directly into my ear. ‘We learn them, then we sing them. It’s a terribly good system.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘You should try it. We’ll be doing another one in a minute. Give it a try. If you’ve got time, and you can stay.’

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I can stay.’

He smiles, then goes back to pulling faces and waving his arms at the children, who shriek and clutch each other delightedly.

He’s right. Soon one of the teachers stands and begins to explain the rudiments of a song: a song about rings of roses, about falling down, about fishes in the water, fishes in the sea… Ess listens entranced, eager to learn, desperate to start. I watch him for a while then I look up and I see a flight of birds passing overhead, graceful, effortless, gliding towards the sun, beginning to blur, to melt, to break up, like specks on a ceiling, things imagined in air.

I am grateful to Priya Bradshaw and Eddie Moore, who gave me the best possible introduction to Mumbai and to India.

Thanks also to my agent, Emma Herdman, and to Alice Lutyens, Sophie Harris and everyone at Curtis Brown who supported this book.

Also to Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar of Galley Beggar Press: exemplary readers, editors, publishers.

To my mum, and my sister, and my brothers.

And to Gemma.

Galley Beggar Press would like to thank the following individuals, without the generous support of whom our books would not be possible:

 

Christine Waddington

Lucy Beresford

Bianca Winter

Angie Creed

Gavrielle Groves-Gidney

Jeremy Biggin

Karen and Kat

Karim Rashad

Ashley Tame

Anthony Trevelyan

Steve Finbow

Michael Spoor

Rachel de Moravia

Lauren Razavi

Rosie Morgan

James Miller

Joy Molyneaux

Diana Jordison

Luke Scott

David Hebblethwaite

Emma Strong

Stephen Walker

Philip O’Donoghue

Polly Randall

Max Cairnduff

Tory Young

Max Cairnduff

Catherine O’Sullivan

Colleen Toomey

Chris Wadsworth

All rights reserved, © Anthony Trevelyan, 2015

The right of Anthony Trevelyan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, so please don’t re-sell it or give it away to other people. We want to be able to pay our writers! If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, please visit
http://www.galleybeggar.co.uk
and buy your own edition, or send a donation to make up for the money we and our author would otherwise lose. Thank you for understanding that we are a small publisher dependent on each copy we sell for our survival – and most of all, thank you for respecting the hard work of our author and ensuring we are able to reward him for his labours.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-910296-60-8

Original Text designed and typeset by Kerrypress Ltd, Luton, Bedfordshire

BOOK: The Weightless World
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