Free The Chromosome Game by Christopher Hodder-Williams Page B

have evaporated. Trell’s routine in the Ablutions area is no different from before in terms of what he does and how he does it. The difference — insofar as he is truly aware of the difference — lies in the thoughts that go along with the actions.
    For this time he is not imagining that really the Ablutions area is a section of a Space Ship, or an underground cave garnished with ancient carvings, or a gigantic Complex of buildings such as the air terminals at Kennedy that he’s seen on the films.
    Instead, he is wondering where he really is. He sees the hygienic wash-hand basins and electric dryers and urinals not in some fantasized rhapsody of technological complexity — as if these everyday objects are all part of some science lab in which a tremendous experiment is being carried out — but as a static arrangement of cleansing facilities … necessary adjuncts of his twice-daily routine; stainless steel fixtures and fittings that do not, at his will, transmute themselves into features of some overlaid mental ramble through Toyland.
    In this he totally differs from Eagle-100, who is in there with him.
    To Trell, Eagle is different but — curiously — not odd. Why is this?
    To the ghosts from a past civilisation who notionally prowl around this tightly-packed environment, Eagle bears a personality-hallmark that strikes no more of a sour note than does Trell. At first it is extremely hard — allowing for ordinary differences in personality — to fine-down to what makes Eagle appear somewhat closer to the Twentieth Century family than does Trell. Ghosts don’t guess. It isn’t their job. They can, if they wish, put a question or two to the gods of the universe — but not if they cannot even couch the phrase. Even gods expect enquiries to be finite. They do not answer a question that has never been asked.
    The furrows on the brows of puzzled history-folk do, however, betray less crinkled contours when they vaguely spot the key: Eagle reminds them of when they were parents. It seems to be the difference from watching a schoolboy at play, as seen from the window, as opposed to the tactile, skin-scented offspring with whom you directly play handball in the garden or narrate an oft-told bedside story when it is time for bed. There is the lean, young smell of junior’s breath … you’re so used to it that you don’t exactly notice, but it’s there. So is the exact way he turns and smiles when his head touches the pillow, pretending he’s far too advanced in years — at the age of ten — to need your affection, yet at the time living off it, reassured by it, pretending it Doesn’t Count. What he says, on turning in for the night, has more to do with tomorrow’s football match, or the intuitively contrived structure he has made from bits of a model building-kit; and he responds to your goodnight kiss with a playful punch. ‘I’m a Boy,’ he reminds you, ‘and at bedtime I’m going to pretend that your cuddle is neither necessary nor appropriate.’ (Yet if you don’t ease me into sleep tomorrow night I shall feel restless and unloved.)
    So, where Trell-484 feels independent and pushing manhood and is — possibly — sensing some kind of leadership role yet to come, Eagle-100 is not tempted to be precocious: he does not feel the need. Instead, he elects to grow up in his own good time, mixing-in with everybody and learning, through the relaxed process of elimination, what sort of person he’s finally going to be.
    He likes Trell and he admires him. Eagle thinks, ‘This washroom is really a Pumping Station by a lake; the whine from the electric dryer is a turbine; the temperature gauge on the wall indicates the water pressure that serves a huge community. I’m glad to note that it reads satisfactorily.’
    And when Eagle has finished brushing his teeth he says to Trell, ‘The twins have got a new game.’
    ‘Oh? What are they up to?’
    ‘You can never tell what girls are up to.’
    Trell finishes