Lust. Geoff Ryman

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      ‘I don’t suppose,’ he whispered to the Cherub, ‘you know how this works?’

      The Cherub stared ahead like a starship captain gazing at a far galaxy. Michael suddenly saw how the real Tony would look when he was older: solid, pale and a bit blank. ‘It goes all the way back,’ the Cherub said. Then he turned and looked at Michael with a sudden urgency. ‘The back of the head.’ And he jerked it behind him.

      ‘You wouldn’t happen to know what part of the anatomy?’

      ‘So far back it goes outside.’

      Yes, well, it was possible that being copied induced mild brain damage. Michael gave him instructions. ‘Stand up and walk away towards the alley between the two brick walls. If there’s no one there, disappear.’

      The Cherub stood up and more tamely than a Labrador walked towards his own oblivion.

      Well Phil, Michael thought: there is one element you left out of pornography. Power. In pornography, you have the power to make people behave. Michael began to wonder how good this thing might be for what he still had to call his soul.

      Michael’s father had been a Marine. There was a plaque somewhere in Camp Pendleton that bore his name and a gravestone somewhere in Orange County that Michael had never seen. In America, everyone went to church, especially in the military. Every Sunday, he and his father would go to a bare and unvarnished Catholic church. Michael ate wafers, drank wine, and learned about sin, and then in the afternoon played touch football on the beach. The exposure was enough to make him feel regretful rather than indoctrinated.

      Michael watched Tony’s retreating back, wearing only a T-shirt on an icy spring day. The Cherub entered the funnel of brick between two high walls. There was a whisper in his head, and Michael knew the Cherub was gone.

      So, he thought. I’ve learned I can’t call up just anyone. It could be that I can’t call up women. Or maybe I can only call up copies of people I’ve actually met. He stood up to go.

      Or, it could be that they have to be alive. I’ll have to go on asking question after question.

      He left the green and the trees. Traffic and black brick made him feel English. God made him feel American. Michael would shift between American and English selves and accents without realizing it. His English self went back to work.

      His American self thought of his messengers, how they came and went. Angels, Michael decided. Until I know them better, I will call them Angels.

Can Angels be dead?

      When Michael was ten years old, he was sent to spend the summer with his father for the first time. He had cried alone in the airplane with his ticket pinned to his little grey dress jacket. He had to change in Chicago and everything looked like a Dirty Harry movie. Bleached blonde women wore denim suits and chewed gum and talked like gangsters’ molls.

      Michael knew his Dad was going to meet him at LA International. He arrived exhausted and trying not to cry and he looked at all the waiting people and he saw this huge man who looked like Burt Reynolds and wore a uniform. He carried a big sign with Michael’s name on it.

      ‘Hiya Mikey, howya doin’?’ the man said in a mingled mouthful of words and chewing gum. He wore mirror shades.

      Michael forgot to say anything. He gaped. This was his father? His father looked like something out of a movie too.

      He chuckled. ‘Come on, guy, we’ll get you home.’ Dad scooped up Michael’s bag and threw it over his shoulder. Michael dragged his feet, walking behind. His father chuckled again, leaned over, and simply picked Michael up whole. His big arm folded into a kind of chair and Michael fell asleep being carried, his face resting warm against his father’s chest.

      After that, every two years Michael lived for the summer near San Diego with his Dad.

      He loved it. Southern California is the perfect place in which to do nothing. Indeed, everything is so far apart, and it takes so long to drive anywhere, that it is very difficult to do anything other than nothing. You call it going to the beach.

      On the beach at twelve years old, Michael felt he was immortal. He would take the big green bus out of Camp Pendleton, past the Rialto cinema with its delectable range of kung fu and horror movies. He would reach the cliffside park and the earthen cliffs of Oceanside, California. Once there, he would throw himself in front of a few waves and call it body surfing. Then he could do nothing but lie on his back for three hours, toasting. This was before skin cancer was invented. He went from lobster-red to California-brown in less than two weeks. His bright grin beamed from his newly darkened face – he felt like something from an American situation comedy: the young teenager part.

      Resting on the beach, the idea came to him, that he could stay in America and become American. He could do it. After all, his father was American. He could stay in the sunshine with the movies and the skateboards and the long hikes in hills that Camp Pendleton protected from development.

      The thought made something inside him flutter with fear. The part of him that fluttered spoke with an all-purpose London accent that was another layer of self. His mother spoke with a Sheffield bluntness. Michael felt himself stretched. Michael felt himself in danger of being torn.

      ‘Whatcha do today?’ his Dad would ask. Dad was trying to get to know his son. He had abandoned England and his wife when Michael was three.

      ‘Went to the beach,’ Michael said proudly.

      ‘D’ja meet any girls?’

      Michael did not say: Dad, I’m only twelve and um … but I have noticed that I’m not even looking at girls yet.

      What he said was, ‘No, Dad.’ And he hung his head, feeling ashamed.

      ‘Listen, there’s a guy at work runs Little League. You wouldn’t want to try your hand at baseball, would you?’ His Dad looked hopeful, and made a swinging motion.

      His father would have been shocked to discover that Michael didn’t like sports. He didn’t know then that he had a son who did nothing except cram for exams, and who now more than anything else just wanted to luxuriate on the beach or watch American TV.

      American television was a miracle. There were about ten channels, so many that it made sense to flick round them until you found something you wanted.

      What Michael found, luxuriating at 5.30 every Saturday afternoon, were old Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmüller. In the very first, Tarzan tore off Jane’s clothes and threw her naked into a river. She swam deeper and deeper into the river, a glowing white against the darkness, shadows both covering and hinting at her nipples, her pubes.

      His father called, ‘Mike? Mikey? You wanna come outside and pitch a few balls?’ Both father and son were exercising their American accents as if they were stiff muscles before a game.

      Michael was staring bug-eyed at a naked woman.

      Part of the luxury of California was having a TV of your own, in your own bedroom, to do what you liked.

      ‘I can’t Dad, it’s time for the Tarzan movie.’

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