Breakfast with the Borgias

DBC Pierre

 

 

Also by DBC Pierre

Vernon God Little

Ludmila’s Broken English

Lights Out in Wonderland

Petit Mal

About the Book

The setting: a faded, lonely guesthouse on the Suffolk coast. Outside, it’s dark and very foggy. Inside, there’s no phone or internet reception, no hope of connectivity with the outside world.

Enter Ariel Panek, a promising young academic en route from the USA to a convention in Amsterdam. With his plane grounded at Stansted, he has been booked in for the night at the guesthouse.

Discombobulated and jetlagged, he falls in with a family who appear to be commemorating an event.

But this is no ordinary commemoration. And this is no ordinary family.

As evening becomes night, Panek realises that he has become caught in an insidious web of other people’s secrets and lies, a Sartrian hell from which there may be for him no escape . . .

About the Author

DBC Pierre has worked as a designer and cartoonist, and currently lives in Ireland. His first novel, Vernon God Little, won the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award, the 2003 Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, and the 2003 Man Booker Prize, and is sold in 43 countries.

His relationship with Hammer stretches back to earliest childhood. He describes never having been so chilled and intrigued as with the supernatural Hammer films he grew up with. Their effect was so great that he spent many schooldays drawing replica storyboards on cash register rolls, and holding showings for classmates on a shoebox cinema.

1

TECHNOLOGY IS THE way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the light except through it. Algorithms are the new DNA, and just as well: because today the race is to the swift, the battle is to the strong, and time and chance happeneth not to them.

But the clock over platform four was analogue. Its second hand was red. On the tip a disc juddered like a wrecking ball smacking granite. As if time didn’t want to pass. Still, it did crumble past until finally, at nine forty-eight this November eve, Zeva Neely had four minutes left for her phone to ring; or something was badly wrong.

She held it like a prayer book in her small gloved hands. It looked as if it had never rung before. Despite this lack of news it kissed her face with light, and that promise alone was enough to fix her to the screen. Perhaps because underneath lived anything important she had ever said or heard, she flicked through that history looking for clues about today. They were in a month-long conversation that had ended abruptly yesterday. Her chat was green and his was white, on a wallpaper of hearts and dynamite:

ARI: If you trust me what’s the problem?

ZEV: Oh now it’s date rape, thanks.

ARI: You said you would like it too.

ZEV: Don’t tell me what I said, Ariel.

She shivered. Bruxelles-Midi station was glacial. If the device didn’t ring or flash a message before her train arrived she would shatter inside. She shouldn’t even board. She started to wish the train had struck a bridge. Stiff as a mouse among pigeons, peering through her fringe at this wrong place to be, wrong people teeming, a horse-yard of breath lit by screens, she was tugged at by every one of the three thousand, four hundred and seventy miles she was from home. She knew the distance exactly, having looked it up on her computer, confirmed it on her tablet, double-checked it with GPS, and sent the data to her phone to use against him.

The screen’s radiance lured her back:

ARI: I don’t get it. It’s not like you.

ZEV: Don’t pull my damned strings.

ARI: But what is the exact problem?

ZEV: Someone will recognise me.

ARI: Dress different. They won’t expect undergrads.

ZEV: Now you’re saying I’m ordinary.

She quickly rebooted the phone in case messages had jammed between countries. The screen died and shone again, but nothing new arrived.

She returned to her message history:

ARI: Calculate how much risk this is.

ZEV: That’s what I’m saying, duh.

ARI: I mean the risk is all mine. An undergrad with a faculty member has no problem. A professor with an undergrad has a problem.

ZEV: Uh-huh, you’re the adult and I’m the child.

ARI: Zeva. Let’s do this, come on – but elegantly.

The platform jangled. Three minutes to hope the train had broken down. If only he would call, send a message, she would leap aboard before it even stopped. But the list of bad omens inflated fast. She clung to only one of them – that she should have worn a hoodie. A hoodie isn’t a garment but a cabin that you wear. And this meatspace was no place to be exposed. She ducked under echoes and hunched into her coat. Usually she wore earphones; now they were too scary, her favourite tunes were as taunting as lullabies played to a murder. All because something was wrong.

ZEV: It’s mid semester. I don’t even have a passport. And you give Intro to Algorithms the week you say we’re in Europe. It’s crazy.

ARI: One of our tickets is paid. Let’s not waste it. The conference is easy, you be a tourist in the day, and we meet at night. Then later – us alone. More freedom than here.

ZEV: Here will be taking multiple-choice to decide if I went as your student, assistant or sex slave. And what do I tell my folks?

ARI: That you’re twenty-three.

ZEV: Bye, Pa, dirty week in Europe with the associate professor. My grades need it.

ARI: If you mean am I serious, I am serious. I want to be with you.

She pictured him, brooding falcon of a man under the hood of his duffel coat. They were a couple of the future, of the mind alone, untethered to cumbersome flesh. After meeting in an online tutorial, the page of her life had merged with his.

Ariel Panek. Wunderkind. Sophomore magnet. Barely thirty.

He had something. Vision. Correct thinking given that the entire human race would fit into a grape if you sucked the space out of its atoms. It fell to them to aim for that shimmer and run there. It was a pact. The future. And she did head that way, spontaneously, unquestioningly. They had found each other headed there.

Together into post-human times.

Two minutes to hope the train was derailed. She glanced up the platform. Mist iced the distance into smoke. Wires and tracks cut skate marks to infinity.

ZEV: Isn’t it just tacky? Like the manager and his cashier at some motel?

ARI: It’s an adventure.

ZEV: Two adventures. It’s one adventure if we travel together.

ARI: We fly back together. The Cloud Servers team and some of the AI lab will be at the conference. I got a later flight, I think alone, but we still can’t risk the airport together, delegates will be everywhere. Later the world can be ours.

ZEV: Yours maybe, you’re the European. I never went further than Chicago and that was stressful as hell.

ARI: I want to give you the world. Want you to eat it. Watch it function. Human systems, remember it’s also research. And your room in Brussels can be at the airport, the train is right there. I’ll meet you next night at the station in Amsterdam.

ZEV: And if the flights get messed up? Or the train? Or if I don’t find you?

ARI: Come on – in the new world? How many ways do we have to be in touch? Seven? Eight? I’ll let you know the second I land, or you don’t have to get on the train. And to find me is easy – the one in the hood.

Ariel understood the hoodie. They had it in common. His almost never came down, even indoors, even in summer. He knew that earphones made it a bedroom and the passing world a movie. With shades it was a party where the only guest was you. And it wasn’t just taste. He had an ethic. The hoodie wasn’t fashion but a way forward in our time. Whatever made outside more virtual made inside more real; and for him the real was under his hood in his head, running clean.

She loved this. Believed in it. Clean running.

One minute to pray the train had hit a cow. She cuddled the screen to her chest, cocking from side to side to keep her breath from frosting it.

ARI: This is one hard honeymoon to sell.

ZEV: Honeymoon? You skipped Vegas.

ARI: You know what I mean. Why are you so hard to convince?

ZEV: Why are you so determined to convince me?

A man approached Zeva and spoke in a rasping language. She flinched and moved to a lonely space at the end of the platform. Suddenly she was the foreign one, too shiny with her coat, her brooch, her matching luggage. She was a beacon that flashed America, that hollered Jacqueline Kennedy lost her hat. Zeva was a girl who hid at parties if she went at all. Now she was a cake in a window. In clothes she didn’t like or understand, waiting to know if someone who couldn’t match socks was going to show.

Her fatal flaw: romance. No scale of algorithm could fix it.

Unlike the dead whose bodies get lighter when they’re gone, her screen grew heavier the more she stared at it. With adrenalin and pain. With messages from all the Zevas before this one. The young dumb one.

She wiped a sleeve across her face. Glanced up at the clock. It was nine fifty-two. Departure time. If she boarded she would have to blame her tears on the chill. Anyway, her features were of a dewy type, already shiny at the edges, red-nosed in the cold.

Loudspeakers boomed: ‘Amsterdam.’ Headlights gleamed down the line.

A breeze flew up. Tracks began to hum.

Her message timeline reached yesterday:

ARI: Wait until Amsterdam. First night in a suite. I want you to feel like Princess Leia. A butler can take our picture.

ZEV: Butler? Should’ve packed a tennis skirt. Listen, buddy, you better be at that station. It’s an old war movie already. Seriously promise me.

ARI: I promise. Don’t worry. I’m a few hours behind you.

She clung to that message. Kept it open on her screen.

After all, they were in a pact. Only they would be standing at the end of the story. The new world wasn’t fashion, it was survival. Clean algorithms were its alchemy.

Ariel Panek was her code. The algorithmist.

The train slid past like a burrowing worm, growling, hissing, peeing fluids, making sounds of unstoppable mass, to her those forces had their sounds.

She clasped her stomach as it clanked to a stop.

2

THE SOUND OF slowing turbines still whistled under Ariel’s hood – and now their sinking whine described his day. ‘I think we should turn back.’ He pulled a bag on to his lap. ‘I don’t have a good feeling. Better to wait at the airport. If things get worse I could be stuck out here.’ He checked the time. It was eight fifty-two in the evening.

That meant nine fifty-two in Brussels. Zeva would be boarding her train.

‘If things get any worse,’ said the driver, ‘we’ll be kipping in the car. Never seen anything like it. Global warming, they say. Well, I wouldn’t bloody mind if it actually got any warmer. My godfathers, look at it! Never mind diverting planes, at least they’ve got instruments. I can barely see the bonnet of me bloody car.’

Like crabs and carcasses tossed up in a sea storm, Ariel’s essences flashed into view. For one thing, you could see he was a swimmer. His forte was butterfly stroke, he defaulted to that power unconsciously. Because as the last street lamp fell behind them, his arms rose to his shoulders and floated there, ready to thresh.

Puttering around a bend there came a thump from outside.

‘Welcome to Suffolk,’ said the driver. ‘Bloody typical.’

‘Wo! Did we kill him?’ Ariel pressed his nose to the window.

‘Put it this way: he will have felt better.’ The man threw his head back to laugh, a bray that was starting to irritate. ‘Ma-a-a-a.’

‘Seriously: let’s go back. I can pay. I mean, we’re starting to hit wildlife. I didn’t think it would be so far. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Not unusual, pheasants on these little roads.’ The driver peered back through the mirror. ‘They don’t fly high enough. And they’re slow off the ground.’

Ariel pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. Still no signal. He should have tried at the airport, but the time between the flight and now had somehow been a blur, almost something dreamt rather than lived. Such was his excitement, he supposed. Such was his stress. It had seemed logical to wait ten minutes for privacy and quiet.

He should have stayed there. With networks, reason and roasted coffee.

The screen lit his scowl like a crystal ball. He opened a crack in the window, wincing through a blast of cold with a stench of rotting leaves. Scanning the night air with the phone barely made the signal quiver for an instant, and then die.

‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘We need to turn back.’

‘Ordinarily, sir, the world’d be your oyster – but the A road’s shut behind us now, remember all those flashing lights? We were lucky to get this far, God knows what’s gone on. Must be an accident back near the airport. Listen to my radio, there’s no other cabs about. I’ll drop you then crawl home meself.’

Ariel slumped in his seat. Now the seat covers irritated him. The pine deodoriser, the hiss of the radio, the snack debris. In fact the car must have been forty years old if it was a day. He couldn’t understand how it could still be a licensed taxi. All this added to his discomfort. His skin felt coated in a traveller’s gel, part congealed sweat, part static electricity. He could smell himself.

And outside was grey and deadly still. When he gazed into the fog all it showed was a universe made of particles, and tonight they had frosted to a halt.

Ariel flicked through all his social pages, his messaging, mail and chat; but they were rooms after a party, flotsam from an alien mood and time.

Happening upon yesterday’s chat, his brow fell:

ARI: Wait until Amsterdam. First night in a suite. I want you to feel like Princess Leia. A butler can take our picture.

ZEV: Butler? Should’ve packed a tennis skirt. Listen, buddy, you better be at that station. It’s an old war movie already. Seriously promise me.

ARI: I promise. Don’t worry. I’m a few hours behind you.

Ariel caught the driver’s eye. ‘Could we at least stop while I try to make a call? I’m seriously losing connectivity.’

‘Connectivity,’ mused the driver. ‘There’s a word for you. When I was a nipper it would’ve meant Lego. Ma-a-a. But honestly, I can’t even see the verge. In these conditions your best bet’s the hotel. Not too far now.’

‘But if you see a place? I would really thank you.’

The car hummed on. Each twig and pebble it touched, every roll of its wheels echoed crackling off the mist like a beast’s first footfall on earth.

The phone jangled to life on the incline of a hill. Ariel snatched it up.

The line was dead before it reached his hood.

He redialled twice in vain before reaching to squeeze the driver’s shoulder: ‘What was that last big town? Can we just go there? I could connect, find something to eat – I didn’t even take out any local currency. You could just leave me there, in fact.’

‘Ipswich? Far behind us I’m afraid. I mean, not so far as the crow flies. But there won’t be any crows up tonight. You sit tight, sir – from what I recall it’s a seaside resort they’ve booked you. You’ll soon be in your jacuzzi, all connected up like a Christmas tree.’

The phone switched from Emergency Calls Only to No Network as they coasted downhill. It still threw up a halo, made him a virtual saint in its glow; but the glow was empty. A moment later it fell dark. Ariel looked around at twenty kilograms of modern luggage – two laptops, a tablet, three kilos of cables and drives, and an Android device.

Each contained nothing less than his life.

All were precisely useless.

For some reason it invoked his mother’s voice: Like you were even going to call, she said in that tone of hers, as flat as a vaudeville comedian. Like I mean something to you.

His gaze drifted to a snapshot clipped to the dashboard. In it the driver wore a crooked smile and rested one fat arm around a lanky girl of about ten. Her hair was cut like a boy’s, she wore dirty dungarees; and a fish dangled at the end of a rod beside her runaway grin. The picture made her a son the driver never had. It stirred something in Ariel, scooped a bone from somewhere in his bubbling stock of stress and fatigue. The feeling wasn’t warm. To the contrary, it brought a chill. Somehow he realised that his depths had nothing to do with circuits or algorithms. His fatal weakness was people. In all their crooked, runaway, fat-armed wonder.

‘Someone expecting you?’ asked the driver.

‘Not out here. I’m going to a conference. My girlfriend’s already there.’

‘Oh? Congratulations. Nice little perk, dragging the missus along. Not that I’d want mine around, if you know what I mean. Ma-a-a.’

‘We’re in the same field.’

‘And what field might that be, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘AI,’ said Ariel. ‘I mean – computer science.’

‘AI? Don’t tell me – the “I” must stand for international. Well, not much of a clue, I can hear you’re from overseas.’

‘Artificial intelligence.’ Ariel let his head fall back. He closed his eyes, trying to warm himself with positive thoughts. For one thing, according to the driver he was at least bound for a major hotel. There he would seize back the day. There, over a burger and fries, with a coffee and some Wi-Fi, he would wrest back control.

His arms fell limp at his sides.

‘Artificial intelligence? What we at the rugby club call beer. Ma-a-a-a. Mind you, doesn’t work on everyone.’

Ariel sunk lower. He stared ahead into a furnace of boiling frost thrown by the headlights. Plans raced through his mind for the hotel: find nearby airports, braver taxis, send supper, flowers, champagne to her room.

‘Still, that’s interesting,’ the driver went on. ‘So I mean, in your expert opinion – will computers really ever replace human beings?’

‘Not a question of replacing. More of joining.’

‘No, no, I know – but do you think they’ll ever match, you know, the way we think and so forth? Like what we call our humanity?’

‘Why not? The brain is a processor, after all.’

‘But how can I put it: life’s rich tapestry and all that. Like just now you said, “I don’t have a good feeling” – they won’t ever get that far?’

‘Oh sure. Instinct is just a scan of previous outcomes. Not such a big deal. Up to now our only real obstacle has been processing power.’

‘Is that all we are? Processing power? Blimey.’

‘We don’t need more. In the end we’re all the same, we just learn to chase the good.’

The car crunched over gravel, slowing as the driver checked his bearings. ‘Well.’ He craned over the dashboard. ‘This is supposed to be the place.’

Ariel gazed out into empty gloom. Nothing was there.

He tapped his phone.

No network.

‘Although,’ the driver rubbed his head, ‘might not be the one I was thinking of.’

3

‘DON’T MIND THE cat.’ The distracted grey presence fumbled under the counter for a form. He was probably only in his fifties but a lifetime of disappointment seemed to hang under his eyes and drip from the end of his words. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ He swept the ginger tail from under his nose.

The Cliffs Hotel smelt faintly of lavender over dead cabbage. It called to Ariel’s mind the elderly covering bad hygiene. An old transistor radio in a brown leather case crackled wistfully behind the counter, playing some chestnut of long ago. The receptionist turned to switch it off. Silence gripped the hall like a mildew.

‘Will you be wanting a cooked breakfast?’ he asked.

Through streaks of condensation on the glass, Ariel watched his taxi crawl down the long drive. One red fog lamp died away like an ember in the mist. He turned from the window with his phone in his hand. ‘What I urgently need is some Wi-Fi.’

‘I’m sorry?’ the receptionist quizzed.

‘An Internet connection.’

‘Oh? You’re the first person to ask.’ He laid down his pen. ‘I’m afraid management tends to avoid things that might detract from a break at the seaside, you see. Or actually, between us, anything that might be open to abuse. I personally don’t see why – but in the end it’s not up to me.’

‘Is there ever a phone signal?’

‘Patchy at the best of times, I’m led to understand. And in this fog – well. Though I did hear from one youngster that the higher rooms are better. Room sixteen, the attic room, might be best, if you point the thing out to sea.’

A stair creaked nearby. The receptionist stiffened.

‘Then give me that room, yes?’ Ariel made a lightning rod of one leg, jiggling to release stress into the floor. The rest of him was motionless save for a twitch on each cheek as his teeth ground inside.

Footsteps gave way to another man. He came bowling into the hall with the air of the house’s master, patting down his last strands of hair. ‘Ah! Our late arrival.’ He was a curious man, pale and nervy, with a voice as hollow as an oboe. He looked Ariel over, lingering on his hood. ‘We’ve stopped serving food, I’m afraid. But Rob might be able to rustle up some crisps?’

‘Crisps?’ quizzed Ariel.

‘Potato chips.’

Laughter chimed up the hall behind the man.

Ariel cocked an ear. ‘You have a bar?’

‘No, no,’ said the man. ‘Nuts if you prefer.’

‘He’s asked for sixteen,’ said Rob. ‘I could take him something up.’

‘Nightmare.’ The man found a registration card. ‘And they were saying it isn’t flying that’s usually the problem in fog. Apparently most planes can take off and land perfectly well, and get about on their instruments – they just can’t see to keep them apart on the ground. Nightmare, nightmare. Sixteen?’

‘Excuse me?’ Ariel was lost in a handwritten sign behind the counter that read: You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. ‘Please, if it has a signal.’

‘Well, that’s the thing.’ The man looked up. ‘Because we’re in a bit of a dead spot. I can’t guarantee how it’ll work, especially today.’

‘It’s never been this bad, you see.’ Rob leant around. ‘Well, you’ll know after the ordeal you’ve had. It’s all over the news.’

‘I guess it would be,’ said Ariel. ‘Flying from Boston to Amsterdam I didn’t expect to end up on a beach vacation in the UK.’

‘Oh yes, and it’s a lot of passengers whose plans have changed, just like that. Even before you, they were diverting all day. I suppose the rest have filled the airport hotels, or gone down to London. We must be sort of a last resort,’ he smiled ruefully.

‘I beg your pardon,’ sniffed the boss. ‘We’re certainly not a last resort, compared to some sterile airport hotel.’

Ariel shook his head. ‘It’s like travelling back in time.’

‘Ironic too.’ Rob pointed at the door. ‘Holland’s just over the way. A decent boat would’ve had you there in a few hours.’

‘Then call it,’ Ariel muttered. ‘Please.’

‘Well, you can’t even see the road,’ said the boss. ‘So let’s be sensible. Nobody’s going anywhere tonight. If you want the room, we have it.’

‘Sixteen, he wanted,’ said Rob. ‘For his phone.’

‘Yes, I know he wanted sixteen.’

Ariel shook his head. ‘I really can’t spend the night disconnected, there are people waiting for me. Maybe I can use your phone?’

‘Of course. If you give me a local number I’ll connect you. For overseas calls you’ll find the payphone beside the cloakrooms.’ The boss flicked a gaze at Rob. ‘We had the landline blocked after some guests abused the service.’

‘Oh yes, there was an issue,’ tutted Rob. ‘The Canadians.’

‘Then can you change some currency? I came direct from the plane. Or better – can you just call me a cab?’

‘You won’t get a cab out in this. It’d be breaking the law.’

‘I just came in one. He’s probably still on your road.’

‘Well, I’m afraid there’s a serious travel advisory in force.’

Laughter rolled up the hall as if in response. The boss frowned after it.

It was a zero-sum game. Ariel had two hours to get word to Zeva. The place seemed to be the only option for miles around. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a credit card and tossed it on to the counter.

‘That won’t be necessary.’ The boss pushed it back.

‘Really? Not even for identification?’