‘They do now.’
The elevator crashed to a halt at ground and I pushed the two of them out in front of me, and then took a second to send the elevator back up to the top floor. We hit the street at a run. A couple of twists and turns brought us out onto Purple 34, which is a side street off Mauve, one of Colour’s main drags. I slowed us to a fast walk and we headed up towards the intersection, keeping close into the wall. When we were twenty yards away, I stopped.
‘Okay, this is where we split. Zenda, go now. Take a right up Mauve. Hue One mono station is about a block and a half. Keep your head down and walk at a normal pace. And you,’ I said, bending forward to rub Spangle’s nose, ‘keep looking after her.’
Zenda hesitated, and then darted forward to peck me on the cheek.
‘Good luck,’ she said to Alkland. She looked me straight in the eyes for a moment, and then she was gone. I grabbed the Actioneer’s arm and led him down the alley which cut across to 35.
‘Isn’t this back the way we came?’ he panted.
‘Yeah. Chase Psychology for Beginners.’
Head down but taking care to keep our speed near normal, we crossed the road. We’d only just reached the other side when two open-top aircars whipped into the street, taking the corner virtually on their sides. I pulled Alkland gently back and we melted into shadow.
The cars slammed to an instantaneous halt outside the apartment building. Too instantaneous, in fact: one of the passengers was nearly thrown clear of the car. Two men got out of each car and ran into the building. They all carried guns, and as they entered the lobby I caught the smallest flash of lilac from the wrist of one of them. ACIA.
‘Excuse me,’ said a quiet, polite voice, causing us to jump about twenty feet in the air. When we hit ground again I whirled round: there was no one there.
‘Sorry to startle you,’ the voice apologised, and I realised it was electronic, and coming from a tiny speaker set into the wall. ‘It’s just gone seven,’ the street computer continued, ‘and I couldn’t help but notice that only one of you is wearing the regulation black jacket for this period.’
I looked at Alkland, who was of course wearing the only jacket he had with him. He looked back at me blankly, not even trying to come to terms with sartorial hassle from an unseen computer.
‘It’s dark blue,’ I whispered. ‘Won’t that do?’
‘Dark blue and black are entirely different things. Black is the absence of colour, whereas blue, however intermixed with black it may be, retains a definite spectroscopy.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I live across the street there. For reasons I’d prefer not to go into at this time, it would be great if we could just hang out here for a few moments. Then we’ll go in, okay?’
There was a pause.
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have a five-minute dispensation. Nice shirt, by the way.’
A tiny click signalled the end of the communication, and we waited for a couple of minutes, Alkland fretfully. Then the men reappeared, moving more slowly, but still with urgency, which depressed me slightly. There had been a distant chance that the pseudoflesh mess in the kitchen might have convinced them that the bomb had done its work and they could go home. That clearly hadn’t happened.
The men stood in an intense haggle in front of the lobby for a moment, and then vaulted back into the aircars. Moving at a moderate pace one cruised down the street to our right, and the other went the other way, all four men carefully scrutinising the pavements. We watched them go, and then I turned to Alkland and led him quietly down the alley.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘now we know which ways they’re searching. So what do we do? We go another way.’
‘Ah,’ he said, mollified.
‘The only potential problem is if they’ve brought a tracer for your implant with them.’
‘What happens then?’
‘Plan B.’
‘Which is?’
‘Unformed at this time,’ I muttered, speeding us up a little.
Five minutes later an alternative course of action was of rather more pressing interest, was indeed the primary thing on my mind. Actually getting out of Colour was not going to be difficult: it’s not like Stable. With my upwardly-revised impression of how bloody-minded the Centre was prepared to be I realised that the mono ports would now be staked out, and hoped that Zenda had made it out in time. Spangle would at least give her a legitimate excuse for being here, if not. For us, it didn’t matter. The mono ports are not the only way out. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that it looked as though the ACIA men had a tracer with them. We were about halfway to the edge of Colour, scuttling quickly down the deserted streets, when I caught sight of one of the aircars a few blocks down. It was going the other way, but according to the direction they’d set off in, it shouldn’t have been there at all. I took us down yet another alley, this one so narrow that it didn’t even have a name, and we stopped.
‘What?’ Alkland moaned.
‘They’re tracing you.’
The Actioneer leant back against the wall, panting heavily. He looked pretty done in, and resigned. He wasn’t expecting to make it out, I realised. He glanced at me wearily.
‘I take it Plan B is still in its embryonic stages?’
‘Pre-fertilisation, in fact.’
‘I don’t suppose your other lady friend, the one with the flying thing…’
‘No. Way too far away.’
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice, and Alkland shrank to the side, revealing a small matt black speaker set into the matt black wall. ‘It is now 7.08. Your discretionary period has elapsed. Please go inside immediately.’
‘Christ,’ I said desperately. ‘Give us a break, will you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ the voice said politely, ‘it’s out of my hands now. This is your final warning. Get indoors.’
Abruptly I realised what Plan B was. We had to run like hell. I communicated this to Alkland and we set off down the alley. At the end we dashed across the street and across into another side road. I cast a glance sideways as we ducked into the shadows, and saw exactly what I was hoping I wouldn’t. About two blocks down one of the air-cars was turning our way. The tracer was homing in. I gave Alkland a shove and so nearly toppled him over that he had to run faster to prevent himself from falling flat on his face. Crude, but effective. You pick these things up.
Side streets, black pavement, darkness, the light tapping of feet moving as quickly as they can, blurred lights, the rush of air, the ache of lungs that don’t need this kind of shit. Why do I know this so well? Why do I spend so much of my time escaping from things? As we pelted across another street the other aircar turned into it, only one street away. A shout signalled the fact that finally they’d spotted us in the flesh. I took us fifty yards down the alley and then hung a left in the direction of the street the aircar had come from. More chase psychology, but desperate stuff: they had an electronic device that remorselessly honed in on us. Breaking up patterns, doing the unexpected, that works when people only have patterns to go on. These guys had a little flashing light.
We stopped one side street down from the main intersection. The annoying thing was that we were actually very close now: the edge of Colour was only about a hundred yards away. Across the intersection, down some steps, around a corner, there was a gate, and beyond was Sound. They could follow us there, sure, but only on foot, and on foot I could lose them.
‘Attention!’ boomed an electronic voice from the wall. The polite suggestions were no more: the matter had been handed up the computer ladder. ‘The improperly-dressed person must go indoors immediately.’ And then, marvellously, a siren went off, to further ram home the Street Colour Co-ordinator Computer’s displeasure.
‘Great,’ wailed Alkland.
The featureless black wall we were cowering against abruptly changed colour. Huge red arrows suddenly pointed down at us, flashing on and off. We walked quickly up
to the intersection and onto the street, but the arrows followed us, as did the whooping siren.
‘Look,’ I hissed, turning to the wall, ‘this is a guest, okay? He didn’t know the regulations.’
‘You did,’ admonished the wall sternly and distressingly loudly. ‘You are aware of the importance of the colourless jacket period for allowing residents’ hue-appreciation faculties to rest.’
‘They’re coming,’ said Alkland tonelessly. ‘I can hear them shouting.’
‘Look, wall, there are some people chasing us.’
‘I am aware of that. They are all properly dressed.’
‘Yes, but they’re trying to kill us.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Yes, they are.’
‘Colour people,’ said the wall with imperious pride, ‘do not try to kill one another.’
‘These aren’t from Colour: they’re from the Centre.’ There was a pause, while the computer evaluated this claim. ‘Look at their wrists,’ I added plaintively, ‘Lilac cufflinks. They’re ACIA.’
‘I see,’ the wall said eventually and more quietly. ‘Have you done anything wrong?’
‘No,’ I said, and there was a long pause.
‘Well we can’t have that. Bloody can-do smartarses.’
I was a bit surprised, had not realised that anti-Actioneer sentiment ran quite so high amongst the Neighbourhood’s computers, but greatly relieved. The siren cut out, and the wall faded instantly to black. A block away, both aircars turned into the street, moving fast.
‘Step close to me,’ said the wall. Alkland was transfixed by the sight of the cars, now only sixty yards away. I grabbed him and pinned him up against the wall, and then stood close myself.
The two cars drew slowly down the street towards us, driving abreast. In each car the two ACIA agents took one side of the street each, staring hard.
‘We’re going to die,’ opined the Actioneer quietly.
I didn’t feel confident enough to contradict him. Not having a large and noisy sign pointing at us was a start, but I didn’t see how it was going to tip the balance. Closer and closer the cars came, until I could see the tiny red flashing light on the dashboard of the one in front. It was flashing so rapidly that it was almost constantly lit. They must have known that they were virtually on top of us, and I couldn’t understand how they couldn’t see us.
The cars stopped when they were exactly level with where we stood, flattened against the wall, and I held myself tensed, ready to go for my gun. I wouldn’t have stood a chance, I knew, but what else can you do in situations like that? Exactly. So you go for your gun.
The moment stretched, elongated, burst, and then, amazingly, the cars slowly started to move on.
‘Maybe they’re in the street behind.’
‘No way, look at the light, man.’
‘Well they’re not here, are they?’
‘I guess not. Okay, take us round. Kinip: do a U-turn and go round the other way.’
‘Gotcha.’
The car in front cruised down to the end of the street, while the other rotated on the spot and zipped down to the corner. Alkland and I let out staggered breaths simultaneously, and I stepped away from the wall and looked at him.
‘How the—’ I started, and then I saw. From two yards away I couldn’t see Alkland. The street computer had turned the wall we’d been up against into a huge mural, a riot of pulsating colour. The swirl passing behind Alkland exactly matched the colour of his jacket. A long splash at head height was the same colour as his skin except at the top, where it shaded into the grey of his hair. I took another step back, shaking my head. We’d been as good as invisible. ‘Wall?’ I said admiringly. ‘That was flash.’
‘No problem,’ it said. ‘Now move’
I took Alkland’s arm and dragged him across the street.
‘Gosh,’ he said, staring back at the fading colours.
‘Yeah.’
We stumbled down the steps. At the bottom is a small dark courtyard, an old, old place. I’m a bit of a connoisseur of places like that. There aren’t many like it in Colour, or anywhere in fact. Unchanged in hundreds of years, and largely unvisited, it’s like a path back to the past.
Lyric crap aside, it’s also a path to Sound. I got Alkland to take his clompy shoes off, told him not to make a sound until I said he could, and we scampered off into the darkness.
Flickering light, the soft hum of electrics turning and running, the steady rocking warmth of movement, the quietness of a deserted public place at night and the dryness of tired eyes. Through and past and over and through again, the outside just a dark tunnel flecked with blurred smears of artificial light. I half sat and half lay on the mono’s bristly seats keeping half an eye on the fitfully sleeping Actioneer, and half an eye on myself.
We lost them. I don’t know if they even made it into Sound, if they realised that’s where we went. I took a twisted path through the silent streets, doubling back, feinting, and left the Neighbourhood at the least expected angle, also the angle that would take us where we were going.
To muted colours and grey pebbles endlessly made cold by the ebb and flow of heavy water. Seagulls, floating Ms of noise against watercolour clouds and low diffuse sunlight. To the coast, to the absolute graveyard of the past, the place where it was most clearly dead because it was still there, and you could see how dead it was.
As I sat wearily, too tired to sleep, my body warm with the carriage’s heating and the back of my head cold against the window, I tried to take stock, to assimilate. The thru-mono would take us all the way there. We didn’t have to change again, all we had to do was sit. By morning we would be near the coast, near the next bit. All I had to do was sit, and listen to my aching back.
I thought about the recent days, and trawled the hours for anything else I might have forgotten, anything that might be important. I came up with only two things. Someone had tried to get in touch with Snedd, almost certainly to find out about Stable. It might be ACIA, it might not. Also, someone had tried to kill me at the Stable wall. It might be ACIA, it might not.
Not rapier-like precision analysis, but it would have to do. When something starts, you have to take things at face value for a while, because you don’t have any reason to do otherwise. Catering for every eventuality all the time just slows you up. As time goes on, you get a context, you come to understand how things are weighted, learn to predict and suspect more accurately. Things become less linear, more fragmented, and control becomes a fantasy. An all-important fantasy, but a fantasy all the same.
I thought about Zenda. I knew she’d be able to play her part, so long as things stayed under control. When they get out of control, though, there’s nothing you can do but react, and I hoped I’d be back by the time that happened. Maybe you think I haven’t been too impressive so far, and perhaps you’re right. I could defend myself, say it isn’t easy, reacting all the time, running all the time, but I won’t, because that’s not the point. The point is too deep, too personal, and too small to explain. The point is not for spectators. Nothing that’s important, really important, looks impressive, because it only means something to the person that does it. Staying alive, for example, not dying: it looks so easy, but sometimes it’s almost too difficult to be borne.
I thought about Ji, and Shelby, and Snedd. Alone, awake in the cruising carriage, surrounded by night and sleep, I thought of them and wished them well. I wrapped my thoughts up neatly, finished them, put them to bed. I wanted them in order, for sleep, as they say, can be very like death. It can be death itself, in fact.
I was not going to sleep tonight. Someone had to watch over Alkland, and wake him from such dreams as might come. Someone had to play hero, had to know that little bit more, had to be that tiny step ahead that keeps the story moving. And always, in my life, that someone is me. I’d like to sleep sometimes, watched over. I’d like to feel that someone guards my dreams and is there ready to touch my hand and help me. I’d like to be the one who
reaches out to be comforted, to be loved, the child stretching for the embrace of a sun it knows will be for ever warm. But it can’t be like that. Why? You’ll see, perhaps. If it’s relevant.
So I wasn’t going to sleep that night, nor the next day. But tomorrow I would dream.
11
What you have to understand is that sometimes things are the way they seem. By that I don’t mean that they aren’t the way they might be thought to be, beneath what you see, necessarily, what I mean is that…Christ: I’ll start this again.
Sometimes, things are not the way they seem. You look at something and it seems straightforward, and you think you understand it, and it’s only later you realise that the truth is different.
Okay: no prizes for observation so far.
Sometimes, on the other hand, you look at something and you know already it’s not the way it seems. You know because you understand what you’re seeing, you’re aware of the context and you realise that appearances are being deceptive.
But sometimes, and this is the important sometimes, that’s wrong.
Sometimes, when you think you’re being deceived, you’re not. Sometimes things are the way they look, however surprising that may be. And sometimes that can make all the difference in the world.
Let me put it another way. Why does a journey always seem quicker coming back?
At eight o’clock the next morning we were standing on the front in Eastedge Neighbourhood, looking out onto the sea. There was no one around, no one but a few wheeling seabirds and us, and no sound apart from the gentle crash of waves and, in the distance, someone playing the piano.
Alkland flipped out. I’ve come here quite often down the years, sometimes because I had to, like today, more often just to be here. I’ve seen the sea before, really seen it. I’ve stood in front of it and come to terms with it, vast dark heaving bastard that it is. Alkland hadn’t. Like most people these days, he knew it existed, he knew what its chemical properties were, but as to what it was…
‘It’s, ah, it’s very big, isn’t it?’ he said, eventually. I nodded. I don’t know why, but I find it difficult to talk properly in front of the sea. It makes me go all epigrammatic and oblique.
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