Читать книгу The Humans - Matt Haig - Страница 16

There were two men.

These were different men. These men weren’t wearing the same clothes, but they did have pretty much the same face. Not just the eyes, protruding nose and mouth but also a shared look of complacent misery. In the stark light I felt not a little afraid. They took me to another room for questioning. This was interesting knowledge: you could only ask questions in certain rooms. There were rooms for sitting and thinking, and rooms for inquisition.

They sat down.

Anxiety prickled my skin. The kind of anxiety you could only feel on this planet. The anxiety that came from the fact that the only beings who knew who I was were a long way away. They were as far away as it was possible to be.

‘Professor Andrew Martin,’ said one of the men, leaning back in his chair. ‘We’ve done a bit of research. We googled you. You’re quite a big fish in academic circles.’

The man stuck out his bottom lip, and displayed the palms of his hands. He wanted me to say something. What would they plan on doing to me if I didn’t? What could they have done?

I had little idea what ‘googling’ me meant, but whatever it was I couldn’t say I had felt it. I didn’t really understand what being a ‘big fish in academic circles’ meant either though I must say it was a kind of relief – given the dimensions of the room – to realise they knew what a circle was.

I nodded my head, still a little uneasy about speaking. It involved too much concentration and co-ordination.

Then the other one spoke. I switched my gaze to his face. The key difference between them, I suppose, was in the lines of hair above their eyes. This one kept his eyebrows permanently raised, causing the skin of his forehead to wrinkle.

‘What have you got to tell us?’

I thought long and hard. It was time to speak. ‘I am the most intelligent human on the planet. I am a mathematical genius. I have made important contributions to many branches of mathematics, such as group theory, number theory and geometry. My name is Professor Andrew Martin.’

They gave each other a look, and released a brief air chuckle out of their noses.

‘Are you thinking this is funny?’ the first one said, aggressively. ‘Committing a public order offence? Does that amuse you? Yeah?’

‘No. I was just telling you who I am.’

‘We’ve established that,’ the officer said, who kept his eyebrows low and close, like doona-birds in mating season. ‘The last bit anyway. What we haven’t established is: what were you doing walking around without your clothes on at half past eight in the morning?’

‘I am a professor at Cambridge University. I am married to Isobel Martin. I have a son, Gulliver. I would very much like to see them, please. Just let me see them.’

They looked at their papers. ‘Yes,’ the first one said. ‘We see you are a teaching fellow at Fitzwilliam College. But that doesn’t explain why you were walking naked around the grounds of Corpus Christi College. You are either off your head or a danger to society, or both.’

‘I do not like wearing clothes,’ I said, with quite delicate precision. ‘They chafe. They are uncomfortable around my genitals.’ And then, remembering all I had learnt from Cosmopolitan magazine I leant in towards them and added what I thought would be the clincher. ‘They may seriously hinder my chances of achieving tantric full-body orgasm.’

It was then they made a decision, and the decision was to submit me to a psychiatric test. This essentially meant going to another rectilinear room to have to face looking at another human with another protruding nose. This human was female. She was called Priti, which was pronounced ‘pretty’ and means pretty. Unfortunate, given that she was human and, by her very nature, vomit-provoking.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I would like to start by asking you something very simple. I’m wondering if you’ve been under any pressure recently?’

I was confused. What kind of pressure was she talking about? Atmospheric? Gravitational? ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A lot. Everywhere, there is some kind of pressure.’

It seemed like the right answer.