The Constant Gardener

Guido was on the verge of tears. Taking him gently by the shoulders, Justin sat him on the stool before the keyboard.

"Tell me what the risk is," he suggested. "Give me the worst case."

"We risk nothing. Everything's saved. There isn't a worst case. We're doing the absolutely simplest things with this computer. If we crash, it's like before. I'll save any new e-mails. Tessa saved everything else. Trust me."

Guido attaches the laptop to its modem and offers Justin one end of a length of flex. "Pull out the telephone line and plug this in. Then we're all hooked up."

Justin does as he is told. Guido taps and waits. Justin is looking over his shoulder. Hieroglyphics, a window, more hieroglyphics. A pause for prayer and contemplation, followed by a full-screen message switching off and on like an illuminated sign, and an exclamation of disgust from Guido.

Hazardous Zone!!

THIS IS A HEALTH WARNING.

DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT. CLINICAL TRIALS HAVE ALREADY INDICATED THAT FURTHER RESEARCH CAN ATTRACT FATAL SIDE EFFECTS. FOR YOUR SAFETY AND COMFORT YOUR HARD DISK HAS BEEN CLEANSED OF TOXIC MATTER.

For a deluded few seconds Justin has no serious concerns. He would have liked, in better circumstances, to sit down at the counting table and pen an angry letter to the manufacturers objecting to their hyperbolic style. On the other hand, Guido has just demonstrated that their bark is worse than their bite. So he is about to exclaim something like, "Oh it's them again, they really are the limit," when he sees that Guido's head has sunk into his neck as if he has been hit by a bully, and his upturned fingers have bunched like dead spiders either side of the laptop, and his face, what Justin can see of it, has returned to its pretransfusion pallor.

"Is it bad?" Justin asks softly.

Flinging himself eagerly forward like an air pilot in crisis, Guido clicks through his emergency procedures. In vain apparently, for he flings himself upright again, slaps a palm to his forehead, closes his eyes, and lets out a frightful groan.

"Just tell me what's happening," Justin pleads. "Nothing is this serious, Guido. Tell me." And when Guido still does not reply, "You've switched off. Right?"

Transfixed, Guido nods.

"And now you're unplugging the modem."

Another nod. The same transfixion.

"Why do you do this?"

"I'm rebooting."

"What does that mean?"

"We wait one minute."

"Why?"

"Maybe two."

"What will that do?"

"Give it time to forget. Settle it down. This is not natural, Justin. This is real bad." He has reverted to computer American. "This isn't a bunch of socially inadequate young males having some fun. Very sick people have done this to you, believe me."

"To me or to Tessa?"

Guido shakes his head. "It's like somebody hates you." He switches the computer on again, lifts himself on his stool, draws a long breath like a sigh in reverse. And Justin to his delight sees the familiar line of happy black kids waving at him from the screen.

"You've done it," he exclaims. "You're a genius, Guido!"

But even as he says this the kids are replaced by a jaunty little hourglass impaled by a white, diagonal arrow. Then they too disappear, leaving only a blue-black infinity.

"They killed it," Guido whispers.

"How?"

"They put a bug on you. They told the bug to wipe the hard disk clean and they left you a message telling you what they'd done."

"Then it's not your fault," says Justin earnestly.

"Did she download?"

"Whatever she printed out, I've read."

"I'm not talking printing! Did she make disks?"

"We can't find them. We think she may have taken them up north."

"What's up north? Why didn't she email them up north? Why does she have to carry disks up north? I don't read it. I don't get it."

Justin is remembering Ham and thinking of Guido. Ham's computer had a virus too.

"You said she e-mailed you a lot," he says.

"Like once a week. Twice. If she forgot one week, twice the next." He is speaking Italian. He is a child again, as lost as the day when Tessa found him.

"Have you looked at your e-mail since she was killed?"

Guido shakes his head in vigorous denial. It was too much for him. He couldn't.

"So maybe we could go back to your house, and you could see what's there. Would you mind? I'm not interfering?"