Green Valley
Page 25
Jordan fished in his inner jacket pockets for a crumpled packet of cigarettes and his lighter and fired up. As he vented the first, deep drag, even after all that had passed, it still felt subversive and wrong in this space – smoothie-swilling Gina Orban’s health club for one person and one ghost. Jordan’s smirk as his Adam’s apple bobbed and he sent out another flume was sweetly, satisfyingly sacrilegious.
‘We could do with your spook department’s help in finding her too,’ Jordan said, poking his cigarette towards the reception office. ‘We could ask her a few more questions, seek some clarification.’ Gina Orban had disappeared on the night of the raid, a remarkable feat given that the liaison office had been crawling with police and Sentinel agents. All she would have needed was a small pocket to have carried off all of Zeroth’s files into the darkness with her. The precinct-level investigation had uncovered personal journals and reams of logs, but with gaping holes gouged out before they’d been able to access her computer and files.
I’d been at Jamie Egus’s arraignment the day after his arrest, and that had offered no answers either. He’d been beaten in prison, and his hair and beard had been hacked off in some brutal act of mortification, leaving red weals and rough patches, but still he bore himself as if he were greater than us, no matter how the mob had tried to reduce him. The judge asked him questions like a terrified inquisitor facing a powerful witch. Towards the end of the session, the judge asked, ‘And have you ever managed to project an electronic avatar in a physical form?’
Egus drew himself up and laughed, filling up with a puff of that superior, lordly scorn. ‘Materialise? If I could materialise ideas, do you think I’d be here?’ He looked at his shackled hands and closed his eyes. What chilled me most was that he’d taken the question seriously.
Later, asked the same thing at his hearing, David had remained silent, slanting his eyes up into some distant future, as if imagining how he’d pitch an army of electronic minions to bidders at an arms fair, and just how far above all the dirty ethical concerns he’d be.
‘I could ask Barbra and Schindler when I go back to work,’ I said, but of course they either knew where Gina was and weren’t telling, or they’d never know. First case far more likely.
‘Barbra who?’ Jordan said. ‘Schindler who? They don’t exist. Never did.’
I smiled. ‘Now you’re learning. I can tell you’ve been working with them.’
He shook his head. ‘It was all in a dream.’
Kira was bored of the toys and stood up, her fragile bones crackling as she stretched her arms over her head. ‘Can we go see Mommy and Daddy now?’
‘Oh, sweetie,’ I said. ‘Remember what we talked about? That we’ll go to the house so you can see it one more time, but David and Eloise won’t be there.’
Kira’s eyes deadened as a thump of disappointment hit her, and then I watched the life swell back into them as she fought to control her reaction. It was as if The I were still directing her moods, but I knew that wasn’t the case. She was certified one hundred per cent clear, and what was controlling her moods was that purely human mixture – hope, shame, resilience, fear, bravery and love, each of them spurting its tiny natural nanorobots into her receptors.
I squatted down and gave her a hug, hard and warm.
She nodded, nodded again, convincing herself. ‘Yes. I remember. We’ll see them soon, though.’
‘Yes,’ I said, standing and taking her hand in mine. We’d go see David in jail on visiting day, and we could look at Eloise staring back from her ward, her mind dislodged and elsewhere. Egus – or David – had fried her mind for her betrayal, just as she’d feared. Poor Kira – she had nobody else but me.
So I followed her; I followed my nine-year-old niece down the exit corridor and into Green Valley. And the light from the sky was making grass grow, and the withered trees were sending tentative shoots out into the fresh air. Sparrows and blackbirds and pigeons and magpies were making the most of the rich and uncontested feeding grounds. Now, in the daylight, I could pick out patches and paths where we could walk without smearing our shoes.
I followed Kira, and she tugged me along. ‘Look, Lucie,’ she was saying. ‘This is where I played with the girls when they started the battle aliens game and it’s just round here we buried the treasure box. And here, and here, just round this corner, that’s where they sometimes sell cakes. Not every day, but there’s cake day. Mommy and Daddy take me sometimes when there isn’t any work.’
Along Main Street and through the town square, and listening to her voice, I could just about fool myself into seeing it all through Kira’s eyes. I let her voice guide me, and for her, I’d blind myself to the truth.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you: to Oli Munson, Prema Raj, Vickie Dillon, Florence Rees, Hélène Ferey and Jennifer Custer at A.M. Heath, and Michelle Kroes at CAA, for working to get my books into the right hands;
to Sam Matthews, Joanna Harwood, Lydia Gittins, Katharine Carroll and the production and publicity teams at Titan for all their enthusiastic efforts on Green Valley;
to Tim Müller at Heyne Verlag for taking the first affirming bite;
and especially to Bronwyn Harris, Sam Greenberg, Adam Greenberg, Rosa and Houdini, who lent me time and warm companionship while I wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote, this story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louis Greenberg is a renowned writer in his own right, having been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for his debut novel, The Beggars’ Signwriters (Umuzi, 2006), but is perhaps better known for his work with Sarah Lotz as one half of internationally bestselling S.L. Grey. Green Valley is his first solo novel to be published outside his native South Africa. He is currently based in England.
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