The City & the City

by China Miéville

  “The nats? That doesn’t make much sense anymore. A, all this is way beyond Syedr and his boys, and B, Yolanda hasn’t pissed off anyone back home; she’s never been there. I can do my job there.” I could go beyond my job, I meant—could pull strings and favours. “I’m not trying to cut you out, Dhatt. I’ll tell you what I know if I get any more from her, maybe even come back and we can go hunting criminals, but I want to get that girl out of here. She’s scared to death, Dhatt, and can we really say she’s wrong to be?”

  Dhatt kept shaking his head. He was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with me. After a minute he spoke again, tersely. “I sent my crew back to the unifs. No sign of Jaris. We don’t even know the little fucker’s real name. If any of his mates know where he is or that he was seeing her they’re not saying.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  He shrugged. “We’ve been checking them out. Can’t find anything. Doesn’t look like they know shit. One or two of them it’s obvious ‘Marya’ rings a bell, but most of them never even met her.”

  “This is all beyond them.”

  “Oh, they’re up to all kinds of shit, don’t you worry; we’ve got moles say they’re going to do this and that, they’re going to break the boundaries, planning all sorts of revolutions …”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about. And you hear that stuff all the time.”

  He was silent while I listed for him again what had happened on our watch. We slowed down in the dark and sped up in the pools of lamplight. When I told him that according to Yolanda, Mahalia had said that Bowden was in danger too, he halted. We stood in that freezing silence for seconds.

  “Today while you were fucking around with Little Miss Paranoid we searched Bowden’s flat. There’s no sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle. Nothing. Food left on the side, books page-down on the chair. We did find a letter on his desk.”

  “From who?”

  “Yallya told me you’d be onto something. The letter doesn’t say. It’s not in Illitan. It was just a single word. I thought it was in weird-looking Besź but it isn’t. It’s in Precursor.”

  “What? What does it say?”

  “I took it to Nancy. She said it’s an old version of the script she hasn’t seen before and she wouldn’t want to swear to it yadda yadda, but she’s pretty sure it’s a warning.”

  “A warning of what?”

  “Just a warning. Like a skull-and-crossbones. A word that is a warning.” It was dark enough that we could not see each other’s faces well. Not deliberately, I had steered us close to an intersection with a total Besź street. Those squat brick buildings in their brown light, the men and women walking beneath them in long coats under the swinging sepia signs that I unsaw bisected the Ul Qoman sodium-lit strip of glass fronts and imports like something old and recurrent.

  “So who might use that kind of…?”

  “Don’t fucking tell me about secret cities. Don’t.” Dhatt looked haunted and hunted. He looked sick. He turned and bundled himself into the corner of a doorway, punched his own palm furiously several times. “What the fuck?” he said, looking into the dark.

  What lived like Orciny would live, if one indulged Yolanda’s and Mahalia’s ideas? Something so small, so powerful, lodged in the crevices of another organism. Willing to kill. A parasite. A tick-city, quite ruthless.

  “Even if… even if, say, something is wrong with my lot and your lot, whatever,” Dhatt said at last.

  “Controlled. Bought.”

  “Whatever. Even if.”

  We whispered under the foreign shriek of a flap above us in Besźel swinging in the wind. “Yolanda’s convinced that Breach is Orciny,” I said. “I’m not saying I agree with her—I don’t know what I’m saying—but I promised her I’d get her out.”

  “Breach would get her out.”

  “You prepared to swear she’s wrong? You prepared to abso-bloody-lutely swear she’s got nothing to worry about from them?” I was whispering. This was dangerous talk. “They’ve no way in yet—nothing’s fucking breached—and she wants to keep it that way.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I want to get her away. I’m not saying anyone here’s got her in their sights, I’m not saying she’s right about anything she’s saying, but someone killed Mahalia, and someone got to Bowden. Something’s going on in Ul Qoma. I’m asking for your help, Dhatt. Come with me. We can’t do this officially; she won’t cooperate with anything official. I promised her I’d look after her, and this is not my city. You going to help me? No, we can’t risk doing this by the book. So are you going to help me? I need to get her to Besźel.”

  We did not go back to the hotel room that night, nor to Dhatt’s house. Not overcome by anxiety but indulging it, behaving as if this all might be true. We walked instead.

  “Fuck’s sake, can’t believe I’m doing this,” he kept saying. He looked behind us more than I did.

  “We can find a way to blame me,” I told him. It was not what I might have expected, despite that I’d risked telling him what I had, to have him be part of this, to put himself so on this line.

  “Stick us to crowds,” I told him. “And to crosshatching.” More people, and where the two cities are close up they make for interference patterns, harder to read or predict. They are more than a city and a city; that is elementary urban arithmetic.

  “I’ve got an exit anytime on my visa,” I said. “Can you get her a pass out?”

  “I can get one for me, sure. I can get one for a fucking cop, Borlú.”

  “Let me rephrase that. Can you get an exit visa for Officer Yolanda Rodriguez?” He stared at me. We were still whispering.

  “She won’t even have an Ul Qoman passport …”

  “So can you get her through? I don’t know what your border guards are like.”

  “Oh what the fuck?” he said again. As the numbers of walkers fell our pedestrianism ceased being camouflage and risked becoming its opposite. “I know a place,” Dhatt said. A drinking club, the manager of which greeted him with almost convincing pleasure, in the basement opposite a bank in the outskirts of Ul Qoma Old Town. It was full of smoke and men who eyed Dhatt, knowing what he was, despite that he was in civilian clothes. It looked for a second as if they thought him there to bust the drag act, but he waved at them to get on with it. Dhatt gestured for the manager’s phone. Lips thinned, the man passed it to him over the counter and he passed it to me.

  “Holy Light, let’s do this, then,” he said. “I can get her through.” There was music, and the growl of conversation was very loud. I stretched the phone to the extent of its cord and huddled down, squatting, by the bar, at stomach-level of the men around me. It felt quieter. I had to go through an operator to get an international line, which I did not like to do.

  “Corwi, it’s Borlú.”

  “Christ. Give me a minute. Christ.”

  “Corwi, I’m sorry to call so late. Can you hear me?”

  “Christ. What time … Where are you? I can’t fucking hear a word, you’re all—”

  “I’m in a bar. Listen, I’m sorry about the time. I need you to organise something for me.”

  “Christ, boss, are you fucking kidding?”

  “No. Come on. Corwi, I need you.” I could almost see her rubbing her face, maybe walking phone in hand and sleepy to the kitchen and drinking cold water. When she spoke again she was more focused.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m coming back.”

  “Serious? When?”

  “That’s what I’m calling about. Dhatt, the guy I’m working with here, he’s coming over to Besźel. I need you to meet us. Can you get everything in motion and keep it on the QT? Corwi—black-ops stuff. Serious. Walls have ears.”

  Long pause. “Why me, boss? And why at two-thirty in the morning?”

  “Because you’re good, and because you’re the soul of discretion. I need no noise. I need you in a car, with your gun and preferably one for me, and that�
�s it. And I need you to book a hotel for them. Not one of the department’s usuals.” Another long silence. “And listen … he’s bringing another officer.”

  “What? Who?”

  “She’s undercover. What do you think? She wanted a free trip.” I glanced apology at him, though he could not hear me over the criminal din. “Keep this low, Corwi. Just a little moment in the investigation, okay? And I’m going to want your help getting something, getting a package, out of Besźel. You understand?”

  “… Think so, boss. Boss, someone’s been calling for you. Asking what’s going on with your investigation.”

  “Who? What do you mean, what’s going on?”

  “Who I don’t know, won’t leave his name. He wants to know, Who are you arresting? When are you back? Have you found the missing girl? What are the plans? I don’t know how he got my desk number, but he blatantly knows something.”

  I was clicking at Dhatt to pay attention. “Someone’s asking questions,” I said to him. “Won’t say his name?” I asked Corwi.

  “No, and I don’t recognise his voice. Crap line.”

  “What does he sound like?”

  “Foreign. American. And scared.” On a bad, an international, line.

  “God damn,” I said to Dhatt, hand over the receiver. “Bowden’s out there. He’s trying to find me. He must be avoiding our numbers here in case he’s traced … Canadian, Corwi. Listen, when did he call?”

  “Every day, yesterday and today, won’t leave his details.”

  “Right. Listen. When he calls again, tell him this. Give him this message from me. Tell him he’s got one chance. Hold on, I’m thinking. Tell him we’re … Tell him I’ll make sure he’s okay, I can get him out. We have to. I know he’s afraid with everything going on, but he’s got no chance on his own. Keep this to yourself, Corwi.”

  “Jesus, you’re determined to fuck my career.” She sounded tired. I waited silently until I was sure she would do it.

  “Thank you. Just trust me he’ll understand and please don’t ask me anything. Tell him we know more now. Shit, I can’t go into this.” A loud burst from the sequined Ute Lemper look-alike made me wince. “Just tell him we know more and tell him he has to call us.” I looked around as if inspiration might jump to me, and it did. “What’s Yallya’s mobile number?” I asked Dhatt.

  “Huh?”

  “He doesn’t want to call us on mine or yours, so just…” He recited it to me and I to Corwi. “Tell our mystery man to call that number, and we can help him. And you call me back on that, too, okay? From tomorrow on.”

  “What the fuck?” said Dhatt. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “You’re going to have to borrow her phone; we need one so Bowden can find us—he’s too scared to, we don’t know who’s listening to ours. If he contacts us, you might have to …” I hesitated.

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Dhatt, not now, okay? Corwi?”

  She was gone, the line disconnected, by her or by the old exchanges.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I EVEN CAME WITH DHATT into his office the next day. “The more you’re a no-show, the more people wonder what the fuck’s going on and the more they’re going to notice you,” he said. As it was there were plenty of stares from his office colleagues. I nodded at the two who had tried halfheartedly to start an altercation with me.

  “I’m getting paranoid,” I said.

  “Oh no, they’re really watching you. Here.” He handed me Yallya’s cell phone. “I think that’s the last time you’re getting invited to supper.”

  “What did she say?”

  “What do you think? It’s her fucking phone; she was seriously pissed off. I told her we needed it, she told me to fuck off, I begged, she said no, I took it and blamed you.”

  “Can we get hold of a uniform? For Yolanda …” We huddled over his computer. “Might get her through easier.” I watched him use his more up-to-date version of Windows. The first time Yallya’s phone rang we froze and looked at each other. A number appeared that neither of us knew. I connected without a word, still meeting his eyes.

  “Yall? Yall?” A woman’s voice in Illitan. “It’s Mai, are you … Yall?”

  “Hello, this isn’t Yallya actually …”

  “Oh, hey, Qussim …?” but her voice faltered. “Who is this?”

  He took it from me.

  “Hello? Mai, hey. Yeah, he’s a friend of mine. No, well spotted. I had to borrow Yall’s phone for a day or two, have you tried the house? Alright then, take care.” The screen went dark and he handed it back. “That’s another fucking reason you can field this shit. You’re going to get a pissload of calls from her friends asking you if you still want to go for that facial or if you’ve seen the Tom Hanks movie.”

  After the second and third such call, we no longer started when the cell rang. There were not many, however, despite what Dhatt said, and none on those topics. I imagined Yallya on her office phone, making countless angry calls denouncing her husband and his friend for the inconvenience.

  “Do we want to put her in a uniform?” Dhatt spoke low.

  “You’re going to be in yours, right? Isn’t it always best to hide in plain sight?”

  “You want one too?”

  “Is it a bad idea?”

  He shook his head slowly. “It’ll make life easier for some of it… I think I can get through my side on police papers and my say-so.” Militsya, let alone senior detectives, trumped Ul Qoman border guards, without much trouble. “Alright.”

  “I’ll do the talking at the Besźel entrance.”

  “Is Yolanda okay?”

  “Aikam’s with her. I can’t go back … Not again. Every time we do …” We still had no idea how, or by whom, we might be watched.

  Dhatt moved too much, and after the third or fourth time he had snapped at one of his colleagues for some imagined infraction I made him come with me for an early lunch. He glowered and would not speak, staring at everyone who passed us.

  “Will you stop?” I said.

  “I am going to be so fucking glad when you’re gone,” he said. Yallya’s phone rang and I held it to my ear without speaking.

  “Borlú?” I tapped the table for Dhatt’s attention, pointed at the phone.

  “Bowden, where are you?”

  “I’m keeping myself safe, Borlú.” He spoke in Besź to me.

  “You don’t sound like you feel safe.”

  “Of course not. I’m not safe, am I? The question is, how much trouble am I in?” His voice was very strained.

  “I can get you out.” Could I? Dhatt shrugged an exaggerated what the fuck? “There are ways out. Tell me where you are.”

  He sort of laughed. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just tell you where I am.”

  “What else do you propose? You can’t spend your life in hiding. Get out of Ul Qoma and I can maybe do something. Besźel’s my turf.”

  “You don’t even know what’s going on …”

  “You’ve got one chance.”

  “Help me like you did Yolanda?”

  “She’s not stupid,” I said. “She’s letting me help.”

  “What? You’ve found her? What…”

  “Like I told you, I told her. I can’t help either of you here. I might be able to help you in Besźel. Whatever’s going on, whoever’s after you …” He tried to say something, but I did not let him. “I know people there. Here I can’t do a thing. Where are you?”

  “… Nowhere. Doesn’t matter. I’ll … Where are you? I don’t want to—”

  “You’ve done well to stay out of sight this long. But you can’t do it forever.”

  “No. No. I’ll find you. Are you … crossing now?”

  I couldn’t help glancing around and lowering my voice again. “Soon.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. I’ll tell you when I know. How do I contact you?”

  “You don’t, Borlú. I’ll contact you. Keep this phone.”

  “What
if you miss me?”

  “I’ll just have to call every couple of hours. I’m afraid I’m going to have to bother you, a lot.” He disconnected. I stared at Yallya’s phone, looked up at last at Dhatt.

  “Do you have any fucking idea how much I hate not knowing where I can look?” Dhatt whispered. “Who I can trust?” He shuffled papers. “What I should be saying to whom?”

  “I do.”

  “What’s going on?” he said. “Does he want out too?”

  “He wants out too. He’s afraid. He doesn’t trust us.”

  “I don’t blame him one bit.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I don’t have any papers for him.” I met his eye and waited. “Holy Light, Borlú, you going to fucking …” He whispered furiously. “Alright, alright, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Tell me what to do,” I said to him, without breaking my gaze, “who to call, what corners to cut, and you can fucking blame me. Blame me, Dhatt. Please. But bring a uniform in case he comes.” I watched him, poor man, agonise.

  It was after 7 p.m. that night that Corwi called me. “We’re go,” she said. “I’ve got the paperwork.”

  “Corwi, I owe you, I owe you.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that, boss? It’s you, your guy Dhatt, and his ahem ‘colleague,’ right? I’ll be waiting.”

  “Bring your ID and be ready to back me up with Immigration. Who else? Who else knows?”

  “No one. I’m your designated driver, again, then. What time?”

  The question, what is the best way to disappear? There must be a graph, a carefully plotted curve. Is something more invisible if there are no others around, or if it is one of many? “Not too late. Not like two in the morning.”

  “I’m glad to fucking hear it.”

  “We’d be the only ones there. But not in the middle of the day either; there’s too much risk someone might know us or something.” After dark. “Eight,” I said. “Tomorrow evening.” It was winter and the nights came early. There would be crowds still, but in the dim colours of evening, sleepy. Easy not to see.

  IT WAS NOT ALL LEGERDEMAIN; there were tasks we should and did perform. Reports of progress to finesse, and families to contact. I watched and with occasional over-the-shoulder suggestions helped Dhatt construct a letter saying polite and regretful nothing to Mr. and Mrs. Geary, whose main liaison now was with the Ul Qoma militsya. It was not a good feeling of power, to be present a ghost in that holding message, knowing them, seeing them from inside the words which would be like one-way glass, so they could not look back in and see me, one of the writers.