‘Like I said, it’s not the Bureau that’s asking. But if you say he’s dead, he’s dead. It’s a shame. He could have helped me out of a tight spot.’
The nurse from the lobby came in. He must have heard the doctor’s raised voice. He was big. Icara wasn’t sure she could overpower him.
‘We’ve got a guy on a gurney, just back from Desert Ring 2. He’s had a run in with the greens. This one giving you trouble, Mag? You want me to throw her out?’
Magrat returned to her desk. ‘Don’t worry Lark. She’ll let herself out.’
Magrat was trying to keep a straight face. But Icara could tell she had spooked her.
‘I’m sure you won’t want to stay and see the Bureau’s handiwork first-hand. Those bruises of yours scream desk-jockey. I bet you’ve never even seen Desert Ring 2 on a visor. Gurk was a good man. Now he’s dead. But you greens can’t even let the dead rest. There’s no medicine in the whole world for what you’ve got. I feel sorry for you. I suppose I should be glad I didn’t have to waste a bullet. You’re dead anyway. You all are.’
Icara had heard this sort of thing and worse a hundred times before. But something about the way the doctor said it made it sting.
Now was no time to think of bruised egos. Once out of the surgery, she hid herself behind a dumpster full of medical waste and did what she was good at. Following her gut. And waiting for other people to do something stupid. Like try to alert Gurk to the fact that a Bureaucrat was on his tail.
Finally, after the last Off-Gridders had picked up their various burn-creams and gone on their way, and the nurses had turned the big ‘Open’ sign over to ‘Closed’, just as Icara was beginning to doubt her hunch, the doctor emerged. Wearing huge sunglasses that reflected the dim Sub-Urban neons. Icara followed her, keeping close to the shadows. Down criss-crossing metal stairways, deeper and deeper into the Sub-Urbs.
With her eyes firmly on Doctor Smog, she failed to notice she had a tail of her own. A hooded figure. Another shadow. A shadow with a weapon.
The odd trio took the postal railway to the end of the line. A powercut plunged the world into darkness at intervals until the train deposited them in the darkest, dankest corner of the Sub-Urbs, where a shack made of reclaimed plastic stood, repeatedly sliced by the shadow of an enormous, thrumming fan. A reclaimed aluminium sign flapped in the breeze generated by the air-conditioning unit. ‘Papa G’s Belter Cuisine!’
There was nothing for miles around but this little hut. Icara wondered how the place stayed in business. It looked as if it had probably been closed for years. But appearances can be deceptive. It had looked, for example, as if Icara would be employed at the Bureau forever. So, in case things weren’t all they seemed, ex-Government Inspector Swansong decided to case the place. She walked around, looking for signs of life. After a few minutes, the doctor emerged from the pigeon-scented interior and walked off into the darkness. Nothing moved. If she wanted Papa G, she’d have to go in and get him.
The floor seemed to be alive behind the little hut. She breathed in the smell of mice and stepped on things she was glad she couldn’t see. There was a light in one of the back windows. A little round porthole with a ghostly shadow moving across it occasionally. She hummed the Tranquelle song internally. A little victory ditty.
That must be him.
It was exhilarating. She had survived in the Sub-Urbs. Far from her desk and the warm interior of the Bureau. She had followed a lead. She had sniffed him out. This was better than Tranquelle. Better than the blue stuff. You could get addicted to the investigative rush. Curiosity satisfied. Information.
And then she felt something cold, hard and possibly metal pressing into the thin skin on the back of her neck.
That’s going to bruise.
‘Papa G’s is closed, son. Now why don’t you tell me what you’re doing snooping around my restaurant in the middle of the night? You don’t look like you’ve eaten a lot of pigeon in your life...’
Papa G’s a smart one. Move slowly.
‘No need to shoot, sir.’
‘Now I’m even more intrigued, miss. The last time anyone called me “sir” was a long time ago. And it involved a Bureau agent. What’s a Bureaucrat doing snooping round a pigeon shop at the end of the world? One of you has the nerve to eat my food while the other terrorises my niece in her surgery? Two of you in one night. Now I’d say that was an epidemic of Bureaucrats, wouldn’t you?’
The thing that might have been metal, and might have been the end of a sawn-off shotgun, pushed harder into Icara’s spine. It hurt. It took all of her Bureau training to subdue the wave of panic. Not to jump. To take back control. To make her mouth move. Her voice came out hoarse.
‘Gurk? Mr Caplan...I...I don’t know what Dr Smog told you and I don’t know about any other Bureaucrat. I’m here alone. I wasn’t sure it was you right away, but then your stance as you held me at gun-point…well, sir, it’s straight from page 12 of the Training Manual. You must be Gurk...so you can lose the old-timey accent. I’m looking for Lucian Ffogg. I need your help.’
Icara’s confidence was put on, like Gurk’s accent. But it worked.
‘Besides,’ she said as she turned around, ‘I’m no longer in the employ of the Bureau. This is what you might call personal.’
The darkness obscured Gurk Caplan’s features. It hid his age and the paunch he had earned feasting on his own Belter cooking. In the dark, he had presence. When he spoke again, the Belter drawl had gone. He spoke with the round vowels of high society, the sound Icara remembered from her tutors at the Academy.
‘Get in. At the very least I can keep a better eye on you indoors.’
As if to emphasise his distrust, he gave Icara a jab in the shoulder with the gun. That way to the door. It was a gentle jab, though. Gurk was softening.
They made their way to a back door. Gurk did a final scan of the surroundings to make sure that no one had seen him take in a Government agent. That was the kind of behaviour that could earn you a serious case of death in the Sub-Urbs. No prying eyes. Not a soul. The High Street was deserted. It would be all right. If anything could grow in the dank passages of this place outside of Gurk’s artificial greenhouse, tumbleweed would have rolled by. Satisfied, Gurk shut the back door. The sound of the deadbolt sliding into place echoed across the postal railway tracks.
All in all, it had not been the coldest welcome that Icara could have expected. Held up at gunpoint twice, but still somehow, she was alive. It remained to be seen for how long.
***
There was no point having a secret meeting with a Bureaucrat under the cover of darkness without having a little something to eat first. Can’t reason on an empty stomach. Lucian skipped meals. He didn’t reason at all. No one with an ounce of reason ends up kidnapped. Thus reasoned Gurk Caplan (lately Papa G) as he turned on the deep-fat fryer and pulled a well-marinated pigeon from an enormous plastic vat full of other marinating pigeons.
Icara watched him. His file hadn’t told her much. She knew he had worked all his life for the Bureau. He had clearly fallen out of love with the job and the City. And cleaning, too, by the look of the place he insisted on calling his ‘restaurant’.
Gurk’s eatery was a dive full of pre-loved furniture. Some of it looked like it had been reclaimed from the Bureau itself. There were six tables, made out of various items that had no business carrying plates of food. Crusty agricultural machinery; filing cabinets; rusting drums marked hazardous waste. Some of them were still leaking run-off. In one corner a tiny wireless blared endless tacky music, while its holo-link feature strobed videos full of dancing AIs and red flowers. The camera zoomed in and out dizzyingly. The flowers grew bigger and smaller to the beat. Some of them had faces that smiled inanely. The jingles buzzed, sounding more like static than music, and were frequently punctuated by Tranquelle ads. As if Tranquelle needed advertising. It was making Icara fidget
, watching all those happy Bureaucrats, puffing away. It was the ruling party. And she wasn’t invited.
Almost immediately, she knew she liked Gurk Caplan. Something in the set of Gurk’s jaw said he wasn’t going to like Icara. Icara did not make friends easily.
I don’t need friends.
You couldn’t rely on anyone else. Not for long. Family. Mothers. Grandmothers. Friends. They all left you in the end. Even the Bureau had not been there forever. The doctor’s words were ringing in her ears. Normally, Tranquelle took care of these kinds of feelings. There was nothing to fear with Tranquelle. But she hadn’t had a vape for a while, and the blue stuff she had taken the night before was having unwanted introspective side-effects. Thinking of the blue stuff, she remembered something. Someone. She would feel a lot braver going through all of this with Gretna. Right now, as the punchy scent of the marinade filled the room, she felt like crying. The last time she had eaten pigeon like this was with Gretna. The week before their final exams. They’d found an old recipe on iRemember.
Icara hadn’t seen Gretna since the last year at the Academy. And she wasn’t sure if Gretna wanted to see her. Lonely or not, the Sub-Urbs wasn’t the kind of place you came to make friends.
‘Half or whole?’
Completely and utterly ashamed. Icara batted the bad memory away.
‘Half or whole pigeon?’
Thankfully she wouldn’t have time to think about what she had done to Gretna.
‘Whole, please, Mr Caplan.’
‘It’s not for you. I just wanted to know how long this story you’re about to tell me is going to take. Now why don’t you start by telling me who you are and how you know Lu.’
‘My name is Icara Swansong, Mr Caplan...’
Gurk whistled through his teeth, and bobbed in a sarcastic curtsey.
‘Bureau royalty! I should have brought out my red carpet. An apple from Frome’s own tree, aren’t you?’
Icara flushed.
‘Bureau royalty doesn’t get fired, I think you’ll agree. I am no longer in the employ of the Bureau.’
Gurk gave a mea culpa nod, but Icara could see that there was little trust hidden behind his smile. She decided to abridge the story for his benefit. If he didn’t trust her, he wouldn’t be of any use in finding Lucian. She thought fast.
‘I was at Lot 458 to perform efficiency tests. The Bureau are, as you may be aware, finding ways to cut costs at their processing plants. Now, I understand from iRemember that you were CMO at 458. That you hired and trained Lucian?’
Gurk spoke with a mouth full of greasy pigeon meat. He had paid his last respects to the Bureau, and to anyone connected with it, when he retired.
‘Do you think, Inspector, that lying is a good way to build trust in relationships?’ Gurk wiped his fingers on a napkin. ‘I’m not what you’d call a fan of the Frome administration. Or the Bureau. And this is, to put it mildly, an understatement. You know what I was always taught, and what I taught Lucian when he came to work for me? To keep enemies close. And I’ve been keeping them so close, they can just about see the inner jelly of my eyeballs. I know all about Project Eraser.’
Icara tried to keep her face as unreadable as his. This was a game of Belt poker. But gambling was illegal in the City. She was losing. Her eyebrows rose at the name of the top-secret project. How the hell did he know about Eraser?
‘And I know a fair bit about how you were recruited onto the project. I can therefore imagine fairly well what you were doing at Lot 458.’
‘We had reason to believe that Lucian was engaged in antisocial insurgency.’
‘If Little Lu is such a persona non grata, why do you want to find him?’
She was losing him. He was getting bored.
Think, Icara! Little Lu, he said...this man cared about Lucian. Use that.
‘Because, Mr Caplan, while I was conducting said investigation, Lot 458 was...compromised.’
‘Compromised? You mean you screwed up? What happened to Lu?’
Icara paused for effect.
‘Why don’t you speak openly, ex-Inspector Swansong? You’re not in the Bureau now.’
‘The Lot was blown up. Lucian suffered Total Recall. And was later...kidnapped.’
Gurk’s face shifted. Almost imperceptibly. Frome flush!
‘Polymnesia?’
Icara nodded and paused to let the information sink in.
‘Fine thing, the Bureau. Knocks a man right out of his own mind then loses him, in a world where surveillance is so tight we’ve all got cameras in our head,’ spat Gurk. Pigeon sinew stuck to his beard and hung disgustingly.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mr Caplan.’
‘Don’t be so quick to discount my Lucian, Inspector. We went through worse together than a few bad memories.’
‘Before he...Totally Recalled...Lucian...well, he seemed to think that the explosions and the fire that destroyed the servers at 458 was an inside job.’
Gurk sucked his teeth. Internal turmoil. To tell this strange woman everything? Not to tell her? He thought of Lucian writhing like one of those actors in the old information films. A fist closed around his stomach. He wouldn’t be telling Bureau scum anything! Not now. Not ever. ‘Well, I’d be very worried then, if I were you, Miss Swansong. Because Lucian had more brains than most of the top layer of the Bureau put together. Less Helena Frome and that nasty little assistant of hers.’
Icara noted the past tense with a wince. Gurk had stopped eating. The remains of the pigeon were left to cool, untouched.
‘And,’ Gurk continued, ‘he has a history of being betrayed by the Bureau.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I suppose they must have deleted the records of how Lucian ended up at Lot 458, did they, or did you just not do your homework, Inspector? Lucian Ffogg may have looked like little more than a grubby nobody by the time you met him. But he was a boy wonder. Helena Frome knew it. She wanted to stamp him out. Can you imagine what it’s like to have your research stolen? To have your name derided in the media? To have your Lethene dismissed as a fairy story? And then for the very thing you have invented to be used to further Government corruption and human misery? They sent a Government agent to infiltrate his lab. You know what that means, don’t you, Inspector?’
This was the kind of thing Project Eraser was supposed to stamp out. The kind of double-dealing that had no place in the Bureau any more.
‘I know there were a series of unfortunate events in the late ’80s – practices that wouldn’t wash now. The Bureau have moved on from infiltration operations. They are now considered to be inhumane. But I think you must be mistaken, Mr Caplan, because Lethene does not exist.’
‘Inhumane! He’s not a bloody animal, Inspector. He’s a human being. And the Bureau took everything from him. So it could control the production of a substance it didn’t want the good Citizens getting a hold of. Anything to protect iRemember. It’s more than barbaric, Inspector. It’s criminal! And Lethene does exist. Do you know how I know?’
Icara was losing patience with these conspiracy theorists. It was well-documented that research into Lethene undertaken by the Bureau’s own chemists had yielded nothing. She felt sorry for Lucian Ffogg more than ever. His greatest achievement had been make-believe.
‘Mr Caplan, I do not think this is an appropriate time for children’s stories. A man is missing.’
‘Stories? Miss Swansong...Icara, if I may, I think there is something you need to see.’
Gurk had been observing the Inspector. There was something in Icara’s posture, shoulders back, the open face. The openness with personal facts. The sheer green-horned naivety and lack of cynicism of the young woman in front of him. Everything about her told him she believed in iRemember. And that it had already double-crossed her, though she didn’t want to believe it.
Lucian had
been like this when he first arrived at the Lot. Lost. Betrayed by a system he had full faith in. Frome drawing first-disappointment like first-blood. Gurk had spent a lot of years in regulation Bureau suits. Meaning all the time to topple it. Then Lucian had tried to do the same. Neither had succeeded. He had told himself that he could do more under cover. He told himself it was for the good of the revolution. Really, he had left it up to Lucian to finish the job. Like a coward, he had scampered under the floorboards. To the Sub-Urbs. Hadn’t the system damaged enough young lives? This woman who believed in iRemember deserved to see the truth. He held open the swing partition that separated the dining area from the kitchen, and pointed towards a ladder that led downwards.
‘Is that the basement where you keep all the young women who want to help you?’
‘If I had wanted you dead, Inspector, don’t you think I would have finished the job by now? No. What I want to do is pull the Tranquelle fog out of your brain and open your eyes.’
It was either leave and forget about Lucian and her job, or take Gurk Caplan’s ladder.
Icara couldn’t see that she had any other choice. She did, of course. Even with a Scientifically Proven God, there is always a choice. She chose the ladder.
***
It was dark under the eatery, and smelt worse than it did in the gently marinating interior upstairs. Gurk’s basement smelled like food. But also stank of the mice that the City had run deeper and deeper underground. Now they had overrun the Sub-Urbs. They had developed a complex four-tier society and an idiosyncratic communication system, involving long and short clicks. Apart from the mice, the basement smelled like rotten foundations. Sweet-sour. The Inspector could smell empty reclaimed plastic packets. Lint. Skin. The smell of empty cupboards where spices used to sit. And a smell that didn’t belong in the food store. The knife-sharp smell of toxic chemicals and tech.
More tech than Icara had ever seen in such a small space. Gurk Caplan had obviously availed himself of a significant amount of Bureau equipment. As a form of additional severance payment, the Inspector guessed. There were several visor systems, sticky with grease and cooking stains, and while they weren’t the most up-to-date, they were still more powerful than the ones any private citizen or Sub-Urbanite would have access to. Icara guessed they were cracked – old hardware with the newest software updates. The Shadow-web. She had heard the word bandied around by Frome’s Anti-Insurgency Committee, and had guessed what it meant. She never imagined that it meant something like Gurk Caplan’s den.
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