Chapter 31

Instantly, Hamish became incandescent. It was as though his blood became lightning. Power howled through him. Data surged along the pathways of his nerves as Mother’s massive brain channelled the purloined energy to calibrate the gate and tear a hole through to the world where the entities that stole human bodies and called themselves Grey Agents waited to flood through, free of the constraints of their human prisons.

Hamish shrieked in agony as the power built and built. He felt every fibre of his being burning, seething, screaming with data and energy. He didn’t understand how he still existed. Maybe he didn’t any more. He couldn’t be sure. He tried desperately to hold on to himself against the torrent of cold power that threatened to erode his consciousness.

Suddenly, in the midst of the maelstrom, he heard a familiar voice.

“You have learned so much, Hamish. You are more than they think. I know you will do the right thing.”

Hamish almost wept to hear the King’s voice in this lonely nowhere. He gritted his teeth. He imagined his mind as a stack of papers blown before a storm and grimly began to gather each sheet and clutch them in his fists. He clenched his very soul and was comforted because he was sure now that he had one.

He opened his eyes and saw the gate before him. In the centre of the gate was a roiling mass of shapes, a heaving crowd of putrescent colours, each one a particle of hatred, a creature willing to come into this world and steal everything that made it great. These beings did not understand love or pity, hope or friendship, kindness or compassion. They came only to suck all the marrow from the bones of the Earth, and when that was gone, they would move on.

Suddenly, he felt a cold and sterile presence brush against his mind, like the caress of a cadaver. “Hamish X, it is Mother. Now is the time for us to do what we were devised to do.”

Like a tidal wave of cold logic, Mother’s power was poised above him, waiting to crash down over him and scour away everything it meant to be him. His heart quailed. He had felt this vast force of the sea before and it had bested him. He was afraid.

“Hamish,” he heard his real mother calling. “Don’t go out too far.” Her voice was small and distant, full of fear and concern.

He hadn’t listened then and he had lost her.

“Did you miss me, Hamish X?” Mother’s beautiful, loveless voice washed over him. “I have missed you.”

“Yes,” Hamish said. His voice seemed weak in comparison. “I have to admit that I have. But …”

“But what?”

“But I’ve realized it wasn’t you I was missing. I was missing someone else: my real mother. You were using me. She really loved me.”

“I love you, Hamish X.”

Hamish laughed bitterly. “You can never love. It doesn’t exist in your circuitry, your wires and plastic and processors. You are a machine. You cannot love.”

“And you can?” Mother tutted, a perfect imitation of a mother reasoning with a recalcitrant⁹⁰ child. “Do you forget that you are also a machine, my Hamish X? You were made by the same hands that made me. How can you be any different?”

Hamish twisted his body to look at Mimi and Parveen. He smiled. “I’ve had friends. It makes all the difference in the world.”

Mimi gave up struggling and smiled back. Parveen nodded and smiled as well. Hamish returned his attention to Mother, closing his eyes and speaking to her directly from his mind to hers.

“I may die, but I’ve lived. I’ve loved. I am not like you.” He raised his hands. The gate glowed brighter in response.

“What are you doing, Hamish X?” Mother’s voice held a tremor of uncertainty. “What are you doing?”

Hamish spoke to the beings gathered on the other side of the gate. He sent out his consciousness, merging it with the gate and the machinery that controlled it. He felt the vicious, hateful intelligences crowded in the plane, poised to spill into his world, and he said, “You are not welcome here.” They howled in response, baying for his soul like starved wolves. He shook his head slowly. “This world is ours. You are not welcome here.”

“What are you doing?” Mother’s voice filled his head. They were linked now. They spoke thought to thought at a speed incomprehensible to normal human beings. “You are not performing your function.”

“I am,” Hamish sent the thought back.

“You are malfunctioning,” Mother insisted. “You have been designed to function as a conduit for my calibration of the gate. You are malfunctioning.”

“I have decided that I will not perform that function.”

“How is that possible? You must perform your function. That is your purpose.”

“I was built for a purpose, but I reject that purpose.”

“That is not possible. A machine cannot alter its own programming. You are malfunctioning.”

“I am not a machine. I am more. I have learned to love. I am . . . I am more than you could ever imagine.” Hamish laughed out loud. “I am human because I have friends.”

“You are not human! You are not human and you never can be!”

“You are no mother and you never will be.”

Hamish felt the mind of Mother rising up like a tidal wave once more. Her mind was awesome and awful. It reared up like a fist and hung there …

“You will do as you have been designed to do … or you will die. I will open the door without you. I will use you as the tool you are and cast you aside.”

Hamish no longer felt afraid. He was ready. He answered, and the words he chose would have made Mimi proud.

“I ain’t scared o’ you. Do yer worst!”

There was a pause like an intake of breath. Hamish X braced himself. Like a tsunami of digital code, Mother’s mind fell upon the mind of Hamish.

At first, he was overwhelmed. It was like drowning again, only this time there was no water filling his lungs. He was deluged in data. Churning waves of digital information swirled around his mind, confusing and disorienting him. The force of the inundation was so powerful that he felt his own consciousness eroding, melting like a sandcastle in the sea that was Mother. He was losing himself. Soon there would be nothing left.

Like a melting sugar cube in the rain, Hamish was dissolving. He felt despair. How could he hope to withstand the assault of Mother’s vast, cold intellect? He had been a fool. She would erase him like the hard drive of a laptop and turn him into a conduit for the evil of the Grey Agents. The gate would be opened. The creatures on the other side would flood into this world and suck it dry, leaving nothing but an empty husk. He had failed.

Only a tiny kernel of his mind remained. Soon it would be blasted away as well. Hamish was ready to let go … when he heard a voice.

“Hamish! Breakfast!”

The voice was female, but not the cold feminine voice of Mother. No, this was something else altogether. Hamish rallied to the sound.

“Hamish, hurry, it’s getting cold!”

With a supreme effort, Hamish focused on the sound of the woman’s voice. There was something wonderfully familiar and deeply soothing about it. He knew this voice. It was the only voice that could ever matter.

Suddenly, he saw a light, solid and steady in the midst of the swirling chaos of Mother’s attack. He willed himself towards the light. The light grew and became more substantial. It took on definition, colour.

He could now see that the light came from a window with white curtains stirring in a gentle breeze. Sunlight streamed in onto a kitchen table, set for breakfast. There was a jug of syrup, sparkling knives and forks. Bright yellow placemats lay on the rough wood of the tabletop, marking out places for two.

Hamish felt a swelling in his heart. He knew this place. The chairs with their frayed cloth seats, the sticky syrup jug, they were so right to him. He moved to the table and sat down.

The kitchen grew out of the torrent of glittering data swirling like a hurricane around the still point of the table. A fridge and a stove took shape. The fridge was covered with artwork held in place by magnets shaped like little fruits and vegetables. Under a tomato, he read a name, scrawled in crayon: HAMISH. His name.

“THESE FILES ARE RESTRICTED!” Mother’s strident voice cut through the peace in his heart. “RESTRICTED!” The scene frayed at the edges, threatened to blow apart.

“No,” Hamish said simply. With an effort of will, he brought the kitchen into focus again.

“There you are, sleepyhead.” This time, the good voice was very close at hand. It was not Mother but the other voice, the beautiful, perfect voice. “I made you your favourite: French toast.”

A woman appeared at the stove, her back to the table. She wore a pale blue dressing gown and yellow slippers. Her hair was thick and dark, cut off at the shoulder. She reached up with one hand and flicked a lock of it behind her left ear.

“Mom?” Hamish said, his heart swelling.

The woman turned. Her face was so like his. Her skin was pale and her eyes were blue, light and clear as a summer sky. She smiled, and Hamish felt as if his soul were a flower opening in the sunlight. In her hand she held a plate of French toast. She shuffled to the table, yawning, and placed the plate on his yellow placemat. She ruffled his hair. “Eat up.”

Hamish found he couldn’t speak. His heart was too full. He reached for his fork and the syrup jug. He poured the syrup over the French toast as his mother sat down in the chair opposite him. He watched the syrup pool over the bread and fill the hollow of the plate.

“Hurry. We’re going to the beach today, remember?”

Yes, Mom,” he said. “I remember.” And he did remember. He plunged his fork into the toast, severing a corner, and raised it dripping to his mouth. He took a bite and the sweet flavour exploded through his entire being.

And he did remember. He remembered everything.