‘I’m hungry. Aren't you?’
‘Yes, but I’m just scared it will go wrong again.’
‘OK, you hang back and if it goes badly, leave me and tell Rashid what happened. Surely the worst thing here will be hassle from the police, not the threat of being ripped apart by an angry mob of hunters?’
‘Now I really am worried. When you say “the worst thing that can happen” it always finds a way of being more awful in a way we didn’t predict.’
‘Fortune favours the brave.’
‘No it doesn’t. It favours the sensible person like me who is going to spend her very last cash on breakfast and watch her idiotic partner try and dodge the cops.’
Nixie was as good as her word. She didn’t go out of sight but sat at a café on the concourse, making her croissant an excuse for her presence at the table. No one would know they were together. Picking up on some of her nervousness, Kel took a moment as he set up his stand by the exit from the Eurostar. In London, he had the comfort of being a citizen, knowing he had rights. Here in Paris with no papers, he felt exposed.
But no one hated music, did they?
Apart from those people in VilleFrançois, but he wasn’t going to count them.
Kel began his repertoire and was encouraged as the lid to the guitar case started gathering loose change thrown by the people exiting the platforms. A couple of guards strolled by, giving him a bad moment, but when the female officer winked, he relaxed. They’d decided he wasn’t too much of a nuisance.
An hour into his performance, Kel was winding up. He’d pushed his luck enough and had gathered enough to buy lunch for them both.
‘Kel! Oh my God, it is you!’ A black-haired girl in retro-punk gear was beetling towards him, towing a little suitcase on wheels. She’d decorated it with silver skulls.
‘Sadie? What are you doing here?’
She threw her arms wide to display the extra effort she had put into her outfit: mini tartan skirt, safety pin necklace, slogans in skin dye taken from the 1970s. ‘Art trip to Paris. What else?’
Kel had forgotten that the Year 13 Art class got to visit the museums of Paris. ‘It’s amazing to see you.’ He then realized that it would not only be Sadie but the rest of the class and the teacher about to come out of the platform barrier. Sadie he wanted to see, but the rest he’d much rather not.
‘What happened to you?’ Sadie looked down at the guitar case.
‘Long story.’
‘Why aren’t you with Meri?’
‘Part of the long story.’ He gathered the money and put the guitar away. ‘Do you have time now?’ He could see the familiar face of their teacher, Miss Hardcastle, among the queue to exit. She would not be pleased to find her misplaced pupil homeless in Paris—Kel knew he’d been something of a favourite with her and she might’ve taken his sudden abandonment personally.
‘Oh fried motherboard! I wish I could join you but not right now.’ Sadie belonged to the teen tribe of the comp-punks who laced their everyday language with colourful tech speak. ‘We’re plugging straight into our hotel to recharge.’
‘Meet you on Montmartre tonight at six? In the square where the artists sketch?’
‘That’s a deal. I’ll make sure I hack a way out of the planned programme. It’s good to see you, Kel.’
He gave her a hug. ‘And you. Gotta go.’ He dived behind one of the circular advertisement pillars just in time.
‘Sadie Rush, are you trying to get lost?’ called Miss Hardcastle in an exasperated tone. With a groan of resignation, Sadie rejoined the party from Wimbledon and disappeared down into the metro.
‘Who was that?’ asked Nixie, leaving the table to join him.
‘Sadie, from my school in London and a friend of my girlfriend.’ He thought he should clarify that Sadie wasn’t the mystery girl he’d mentioned in the lorry.
‘So will she know where your girlfriend is?’
That hadn’t occurred to Kel. ‘You know something? She just might.’
Dusk was falling in the Place du Tertre. With candles flickering at their feet and solar lamps lighting their easels, the painters were hard at work trying to cajole tourists into sitting for a portrait or caricature. There weren’t so many of them around this early in March.
‘Hey, lovely lady, I draw you for free!’ called one man who hadn’t had much luck so far with the passing trade.
Nixie looked up at Kel. ‘Do you think there’s a catch?’
‘Can’t imagine there is: we all heard him. He just thinks he’s more likely to get more customers if he’s seen to sketch you.’
‘OK, then.’ Nixie went over and sat on the offered camp stall.
‘I’ll circle round and fetch you in ten minutes,’ said Kel.
Sadie was late, but it was only half past six. It would be fair to guess that her blithe promise that she could make their arranged time was done without much prior knowledge of Paris. She could be staying on the other side of the river and, since the metro stations were flooded in that zone, she would have to wait until she could join the queue to cross the footbridge by the old Louvre. Kel sought a break in the buildings so he could gaze out that way. The Seine looked like a great ink spillage on the heart of old Paris. That great art collection was now split up and scattered among the surviving museums of Paris. In that French way of thinking creatively, the Louvre courtyard was now home to a colony of houseboats moored to the pyramid. He could see them, sparkling like a cloud of glowworms. They specialized in producing art from recycled and salvaged goods. Kel wondered if they were Tean Sympathizers? Thanks to Meri, he knew what to look for now. If he had time, he should go and see if he could spot any signs. It could be another route to her.
He was just about to give up and go back to fetch Nixie when Sadie clomped up behind him, out of breath.
‘The steps!’ she said dramatically, pressing her hand to her chest. ‘Picturesque but lethal.’
Kel grinned to see her in her usual boots and ripped fishnets combo. She’d had time since the station to spike her hair up and the ends were tinted red. ‘Nice. Like the new style.’
‘Out of a can, not permanent,’ she said. ‘Shall we grab a table in one of these cafés?’
‘They’re a bit out of my league.’
‘My treat. Mum gave me some spending money. I can’t think of anything better to spend it on. Who wants a snow globe of a drowned Eiffel Tower anyway?’
‘Is it OK if I just tell my friend where we’ll be?’
‘Friend?’ Sadie looked over his shoulder, expecting to see someone.
‘I’ve joined a group of No-Homers. I’m travelling with one of them before meeting up with the rest tomorrow. Nixie is Danish.’
‘Cool. Yeah, you go tell her—ask her to join us if you want.’
‘No, it’s fine. She’ll wait.’
‘I can buy her a drink too,’ said Sadie, understanding the hesitation.
‘Sadie, I don’t—’
‘Stop with the guilt-tripping. It’s fine. My pleasure.’
Kel collected Nixie from her perch. She had one of the two sketches the artist made of her as her payment for being his model.
‘What do you think?’ Nixie unrolled it for him.
‘Good likeness. He’s talented.’
‘He told me Paris is awash with artists who can’t make a living since the government cut arts funding to the bone.’
‘It’s happening everywhere.’
‘He says busking is also very competitive. You’re supposed to have a licence and pay for your pitch.’
‘Then I was lucky this morning that they let me play so long.’ They reached Sadie who had bagged a table under a lamppost at the edge of the café terrace. The spindly iron chairs had a timeless appearance, reminding Kel of Van Gogh’s famous café painting. It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him or one of the Impressionists wandering in and ordering an absinthe. ‘Sadie, this is Nixie. Nixie, Sadie Rush.’
‘Hi. What’ll you have, Nixie?�
�� Sadie asked.
‘Um, sparkling water, if that’s OK?’
‘It absolutely is. Kel?’
‘A citron pressé?’
‘Ooo, quite the French old hand now. OK, let me punch in the data at our table and see if the garçon can oblige. I hope we don’t bore you, Nixie. Kel and I have a lot of catching up to do.’ Sadie thumped her forehead. ‘Shoot!’
‘What?’ Kel felt a leap of alarm and half-rose from his chair.
‘If I’d known I was going to bump into you, then I’d’ve brought the letter Meri sent you.’
‘She sent me a letter?’
‘Yes, like months ago. I’ve been trying to find you online but you haven’t surfaced.’
‘No, I’ve not been on the web for a while. All I have is an iPhone XC with no way of easily recharging it.’
Sadie groaned. ‘That old clunker? Give it here.’
He handed over his phone which was out of charge and had been since he called Ade. Sadie muttered several unflattering things about in-built obsolescence and set to work. Kel saw Nixie watching, fascinated.
‘Don’t you have comp-punks in Denmark?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to one.’
Sadie snapped her teeth at her. ‘Our BARQ is worse than our bytes.’
‘Bark?’
‘Not like a dog; BARQ.’ Kel spelt it out for her. ‘It’s a new coding language that took over from the ancient C++. They introduced it to cope with quantum computing.’
‘And that was no picnic, unpicking the very basis on which all the software had been built from the end of the twentieth century,’ muttered Sadie, deep into compland with the phone.
‘I think a comp-punk called it that just so they could make that joke,’ continued Kel.
‘You understand us, brother.’ Sadie opened up the back of the phone, sighed, popped out the old battery and then slipped in something from her pocket.
‘What did you just do?’ asked Nixie.
‘All purpose battery from next generation materials. I got a couple from the Digital Fair at Olympia in February from a company trying to lure me onto their payroll.’
‘Did they succeed?’
‘I’m bargaining. I’m suggesting they fund my university and get me out of eco-service.’
Nixie turned to Kel. ‘Your friend must be very good.’
‘I’m better than that,’ Sadie said with no trace of arrogance, just stating the facts. ‘The battery is made from smart-materials and moulds to fit the space, even in old bits of junk like this. Right, let’s power up this baby.’
The phone woke up and prompted Kel to activate the screen with his eye-scan.
‘That’s crap technology, you realize? They worked out it could be fooled by any decent high res hologram of your eye. There was a time when all the buccs had to do was hack your selfies and then they could take over your life.’
‘The buccs?’ queried Nixie.
‘Identity thieves. We nicknamed them buccaneers, because they were data pirates. Don’t leave this lying around, Kel.’
‘I’d worry if I had a bank account for them to empty.’
‘Still worry, because one day you might try to open one and find your stolen identity is the linchpin in some mafia money laundering scam all because you used the little old iPhone XC past its sell-by date.’ Her fingers moving so fast, Kel couldn’t keep up with what she was doing, Sadie threw out a lot of the apps, downloaded some new ones on the café WiFi and then restarted it. ‘OK, that should work for a while. The battery will hold out for around three days and recharges super-fast. The G@Places app gets you on the nearest free WiFi so all you have to do is be somewhere vaguely built-up. Paris? You’ll never have a problem.’
‘Why haven’t I heard of that app?’ asked Nixie.
‘Because it’s a private thing for us comp-punks. We can share it in emergencies but it’ll disappear if you try and share it or if I remove your authorization.’
Kel brushed through the other screens seeing she’d added quite a few more things that she didn’t want to draw attention to with a girl she didn’t know present. ‘Thanks, Sadie. Meri told me you were good.’
‘I owe you both. I wish I’d been more streetwise and not just digital savvy.’ She pulled a face.
They sat back as the waiter approached and produced their drinks with a flourish. The café might have moved over to computerized ordering but the owner had recognized that the tourists came for interaction with a real French waiter and not those not-quite-convincing hospitality robots, even the ones with the programmed gestures. None of them could put as much expression and flirting directed at all three occupants of the table regardless of gender as their server could.
Kel sipped his drink. The lemony zest hit him right where he needed, making his eyes water. ‘You know, Sadie, you weren’t to blame for not suspecting that Lee had secondary motives.’
‘Secondary were they? I thought he was dating me primarily because I was a route to Meri.’
‘I never thought that. Lee’s tough about what he sees as his duty but somewhere deep inside he’s basically decent and he’d already told me long before that he likes you.’ And Sadie had no idea how hard it was for someone raised Perilous to disobey an order.
‘Yeah well, too late for that. Let’s not talk about him.’
‘What did this Lee do?’ asked Nixie, intrigued.
Sadie looked away, pretending to be interested in the nearest artist at work. ‘Hacked my system. Came in like malware to steal information that put my friends in danger.’ Lee had been her first big-deal romance. His ex-friend should’ve found another way, thought Kel.
‘Then he's a pig.’ Nixie burped, probably on purpose to lighten the dip into gloom. ‘Pardon.’
Sadie laughed. ‘I like you, Nixie. So, Kel, do you want to hear the news or not?’
Kel settled down to catch up with the developments in London. Theo and friends were out and Theo had received a letter from Meri at the same time as his had arrived. He’d made contact with Sadie via Mr Kingsley, who, as far as they were aware, had not got on the radar of the Perilous so was a safe channel.
‘Did you open my letter from Meri?’ asked Kel when the subject came up again.
‘What do you think?’
He shrugged.
‘Of course I did!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘To someone like me who loves data, a letter is a temptation too far. Meri knew that. Anyway, she told Theo to give it to me so I could scan it in for you. Give me a sec and I’ll download the image from the cloud I use.’ She got out her top of the range phone and summoned up the image. ‘I didn’t read it after her message to me, I promise. Just scanned it in case it was a cry for help. It’s mostly love stuff.’
Kel hoped he wasn’t blushing. ‘Thanks.’
‘Nothing more boring than reading someone else’s love letters, wouldn’t you say, Nixie?’ said Sadie, giving the Danish girl a nudge.
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve not had occasion to do that as none have come my way.’ If Nixie’s tone was a little stiffer than normal, Sadie didn’t appear to notice.
‘Join us comp-punks and you’ll have access to all areas. Right, I’ve forwarded it to your phone. You can read it in private, Kel.’
‘Excuse me. Us No-Homers know to take every opportunity to benefit from proper washrooms.’ Nixie got up and headed into the café to use the facilities.
‘What’s the deal with Miss Muffet?’ asked Sadie, showing she hadn’t been so blithe as she pretended. She had probably made her comment as a probe to find out the temperature of their relationship. ‘You’re not running conflicting programmes, are you, Kel?’
‘No, only one in here—and that’s Meri’s. We’ve been thrown together a lot and I think Nixie was getting a little sweet on me. But she knows I’m taken. We only had the chat today so it might take a while for it to settle.’
‘Good, or I might’ve had to plant a virus to put a stop to it.’
&n
bsp; ‘Meri would tell you that if you had to do that, then we were over in any case. But we’re not, so don’t.’
‘Command understood.’
‘Do you mind?’ He gestured to his phone that had buzzed with an incoming message.
‘Go ahead.’
He tapped on the image and Meri’s handwriting popped up. Expanding the image, he read her letter.
Dear Kel
I can’t make this as long as I would like as I’ve only just persuaded them to let me send a letter to Theo and I’m intending to smuggle this along for the ride. If I write too much and the envelope is too fat, my PM might get suspicious and break her word not to read it.
Thank God for sealing wax! (Not a sentence I ever expected to write).
(Now, Sadie, if you’re the one who has opened the letter to scan it in for Kel, you should stop reading here. I’m fine so don’t worry about me. The rest is for Kel’s eyes only, please.)
I’m not sure how to start this letter, Kel, because I don’t know where you are, how you are, or even why you left. They tell me you disembarked because you thought it best for us. I don’t know if I can believe them, even my friends among them. I’m choosing to believe in my feelings for you and yours for me. Those tell me that you must have gone unwillingly. I imagine you were left with no other option. If anyone hurt you, then trust me, I’ll make them regret it.
Kel closed his eyes briefly. That was his Meri: he and the Teans had given her a knock back by his sudden departure, and she came up fighting.
I’ve arrived at the planned destination and things are…complicated. I can’t be sure of my support. In fact, it is pretty much like it was on the boat, a mixture of enemies and allies all treating me relatively nicely because of what I am rather than who I am. There have been a few close calls because I have an impressive rival who is more their cup of tean.
He admired the ‘on purpose’ misprint. Sadie wouldn’t have noticed it in her scan, or dismissed it as a drift of the nib.
I’m OK for the moment, taking it one day at a time. It would help enormously to know you are safe and among friends. I’m working on trying to end this war between P and T but it is going to take time.
Glow Page 17