Eric Brown - Downtime in the MKCR

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Downtime in the MKCR

By Eric Brown.

First published in Interzone 83, May '94.

Sinclair left his villa and walked down the hill to the taverna. As ever, this early in the

morning, his usual table was free. He sat down in the shade and stared out across the bay. The

quayside was without its picturesque line of fishing boats; they would arrive back, in ones and

twos, around mid-day. The water was blindingly blue - almost too perfectly aquamarine to be true.

Directly opposite the taverna, the village of Mirthios climbed the hillside, a collection of

square, whitewashed buildings among the hazy green olive groves.

The proprietor - an ancient, bewhiskered woman dressed in traditional black - shuffled out with

his regular breakfast: a small pot of coffee and a bowl of yoghurt.

He thanked her. Despite the situation, he was determined to convey the usual courtesies to the

locals. Last night he had met a group of fellow tourists whose pragmatism had almost made him

ashamed of his old-fashioned manners.

He'd complimented the proprietor on his meal.

He became aware of the four young men across the table, staring at him as if he were mad.

"You don't for a minute think that it matters, do you?" one of the men - Eddie, a computer

programmer from Watford - asked him.

Sinclair blushed. "Perhaps not... but that's no reason to be rude."

Eddie had turned to one of the others and laughed.

Sinclair finished his ouzo and left. Their muttered comments had followed him back along the

quayside.

One of the young men - the quiet one, who had not stared or laughed at him - had made some excuse,

left the others and caught up with Sinclair.

"I'm sorry about all that. I know what you mean. It's quite natural to be civil - in fact, I think

they make an effort not to be. Anyway... good night."

And the boy, whose name Sinclair had not caught - did his eyes linger, his smile widen in

invitation? - sketched a wave and ran back to his drinking companions.

This morning, Sinclair had awoken to an immediate and aching regret: he should have said

something, invited the boy back for a nightcap.

Here on New Crete, he knew, he was free of the constraints that inhibited him back in London. He

wondered how long it might be before he convinced himself of this fact, before he could let go and

enjoy himself. Five years of living with death, of turning his mind away from the needs of his

flesh, had made him insular, inadequate.

He looked up from his coffee, sure he had seen something flashing on the horizon. If it was the

reflection from a boat in the morning sun, it had passed, and even the boat was not visible.

Then it flashed again. It was no boat. The corona exploded on the ocean's horizon, expanded east

and west in two long, thin pincers, then vanished. He would have put it down to some natural

effect - unknown to him - had he not experienced a similar effect, or anomaly, yesterday afternoon

while swimming. Wading in from the shallows, the gentle tug of the undertow retarding his

progress, he thought he had seen a patch of sand, up the beach beside his rattan mat, begin to

swirl, the individual grains crawl in a neatly patterned spiral. As he approached the phenomenon,

it had ceased. He had thought nothing more of it, putting the effect down to a trick of the

sunlight and too much ouzo the night before.

Now, he began to wonder.

"You start early."

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"Oh." He looked up. "Excuse me. Miles away."

"Andrew. Andy. We met last night-" This with some hesitation, as if afraid that Sinclair might not

recognise him. As if!

"Of course. Nice to see you again. Won't you join me? Coffee?" He was talking too much. He was

quite unused to such meetings, the possibilities that such meetings promised.

Andy wore shorts manufactured from cut-down jeans, a white tee-shirt that showed off his tanned

biceps. A pair of sun-glasses were clipped by an arm to the neck of his shirt.

They exchanged meaningless smalltalk for a while, Sinclair's unease rising as he realised that he

really liked the boy, was not merely infatuated by his physicality.

Andy had a gentle, unassuming manner and a sense of humour. Sinclair told himself that holiday

romances never worked. And especially not here.

"For the past few years I've been directing a few things in the provinces," Sinclair found himself

saying. "If I were honest, I'd admit that I was never a very good actor. But have you ever heard

an actor admit as much? It's always that the lines were crap anyway, or the directions bad, or a

hundred and one other things. So I moved into directing..."

Andy seemed interested. "What have you directed recently? Anything I might have seen?"

The last thing he'd been involved with had been a Christmas pantomime at Bognor, and that had been

four years ago.

"Othello, Stratford - last summer," he heard himself saying, and hated himself for the lie.

"Anyway, enough of me. What about you?"

Andy Lincoln was a quantity surveyor from Bristol, was unbelievably beautiful whichever way you

looked at him, and was, Sinclair had convinced himself by now, as bent as a nine ecu note - or I'm

not a dying queen.

"Staying nearby? Andy asked now.

Sinclair pointed to the villa on the headland. "I've got that place for a month. Perhaps, if

you're not doing anything... That is - I'd like to show you around."

"Great. I'd like that."

Oh, Jesus... Sinclair had forgotten how it was, that sudden inner exquisite throb of lust mixed

with the ridiculously romantic notion that, this time, it just might be love.

He wanted to tell Andy the truth, but that would destroy everything.

As they left the taverna side by side, Sinclair recalled the words of his tour operative. "Enjoy!"

he'd said. "Remember, Mr Sinclair, where you're going there are no risks - and that's guaranteed."

They made love on the double bed which for the past three nights had mocked Sinclair's isolation.

Later, he pulled on his shorts and stepped out onto the balcony. He stared out at the bay, the

fishing boats returning through the gap between the thumb and finger of the headlands. A few

tourists promenaded along the quayside before the taverna.

Sinclair recalled how it had been, all those years ago; the lovers, the wild times. Then he

considered the emptiness of the past five years, the isolation and the agony. He could hardly

believe his luck now. He had come to New Crete in the hope that he might find someone, but that

was all it had been, a vague hope: he had reconciled himself to spending the month alone and

celibate, thankful that for the period of the vacation he would be spared the pain that had

plagued him over the past few months.

He tried to banish the sadness he felt: he told himself that he had found sex and affection, and

that he should enjoy it while it lasted; three weeks with Andy would be better than three weeks

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without, even if the return to the cold reality of London, alone, would be all the more difficult

after experiencing what he liked to think of as love.

He was staring at the mountains that rose behind the bay when he saw the aerial explosion. Like

the other effects he'd noticed, it happened spontaneously and without warning. One second the sky

was a perfect cerulean blue, and the next it was rent with a silver starburst. This time, though,

the effect lasted. The blinding illumination shot out filigree vectors in every direction, so that

within seconds the whole of the sky was divided into parallel strips of bright blue.

Sinclair gripped the balcony rail, overcome with sudden dizziness. What if the effect was not

external, he asked himself, but internal, a manifestation of the disease, some neural dysfunction?

He contemplated the tragedy of such an occurrence so soon after finding Andy.

Then, to his immediate relief, Andy yelled: "What the hell-?" He ran onto the balcony and stared

into the sky overhead. "What's happening?"

"You see it too? It isn't the first. I noticed one yesterday, another this morning. I thought

there was something wrong with me."

Andy smiled. "It's quite spectacular. Probably some glitch in the system." He laughed when he

realised that he was standing on the balcony, in full view of whoever should look up from the

street below, stark naked.

He took Sinclair's hand and pulled him back into the bedroom.

At sunset they left the villa and made their way down the hillside. The sky was innocent of its

lateral vectors, once more a burnt-orange Mediterranean twilight.

They avoided the restaurant where Andy's erstwhile travelling companions - friends of just two

days, Sinclair was pleased to learn - were eating, and selected a cosy bistro romantically

overlooking the moored fishing boats. They ordered grilled squid, french beans cooked in spiced

sauce, Greek salad and retsina.

They talked for hours, or rather Sinclair steered Andy into talking about himself. Sinclair

experienced a deepening of affection, a heady rush of feeling he had no hope of controlling.

He asked himself why this was so wrong when it seemed so right.

Five bottles of retsina later, the sun long set and the full moon high over the bay, they finished

desert and ordered coffee.

Andy leaned back in his chair. "All this..." He looked about him, spread his hands to indicate the

bay, the bistro, the two of them. "I've never been so happy for a long time."

Sinclair felt something open up within him, a wound with no hope of cure.

"Andy..." Sinclair reached across the table and gripped his wrist. "It means a lot to me, too." He

thought of a way to break it gently, shook his head.

Andy stared at him. "But - what?"

Sinclair braced himself. "I'm dying-" The sudden pain in the young man's eyes made him stop.

Andy was shaking his head. "How... how long?"

"I've got two months at the most. I wanted to remain here right until the end, but according to

the medics I'll be too sick during the last month to maintain the link."

Andy said nothing, just sat and stared at the table.

Sinclair closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw that Andy was crying. "I don't want you to

see me, back home. I'm a walking skeleton - no, I'm a bed-ridden skeleton. Have you ever seen

anyone with Kaposi's sarcoma?" He paused, then put a hand to his chest. "This is how I looked six

years ago, before the illness." He reached across the table and squeezed Andy's fingers. "I'm

sorry. I should never have... It's my fault. I wanted to tell you right at the start, but at the

same time I wanted you so much..."

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