by Mark Reece
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying, will do.”
“Good. Let’s see where we are then.”
They went through the material in as much detail as Ethan knew they would, and he found it hard going at first, but after a while, he realised that he had anticipated almost all of Daniel’s questions, and felt confident that he was on top of the process. Eventually, Daniel smiled behind his hand.
“… Okay, good, I’m happy with that. I need a few things from you then for next week. We need to give the DIA a steer about where we are to keep them off our backs. So if you can summarise everything we’ve said today into a few paragraphs and send me an e-mail. You’re going to wow them, you know. I’ve worked with the DIA more than once over the last few years and they’ll never have seen anything like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“How to put it. They don’t think things through systematically like you do. Whenever you talk to them, everything is connected, but in a vague way that they can’t quite explain. And how you present things is a lot better as well. In the DIA, if you give someone a chart they’ll look at you as if you’ve just shown them a light bulb for the first time. They’ll be amazed at what you’ve done so far, I don’t know what’s going to happen when they see your full report.
“Our problem is that because we’re such a young organisation, the fifteenth floor doesn’t have enough tradition to fall back on. Allowing people to make decisions without any reference points creates difficulties.”
“Right, I’ll get something to you in the next few days.”
“The other thing I need you to do is to fill in the gaps around the occupations of the subjects of the level one to six SC breaches. I know I didn’t mention that before, but I’ve been asked about it more than once now.”
“Okay. Does that need to go in the summary?”
“Yeah. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.”
“Good. Has Pete been supporting you and releasing the people you asked for?”
“I’ve not really spoken to him recently. I had a few minutes when I was first given the project then I’ve just got on with it.”
“Is he managing your case workload?”
“I’ve got some of the jobs I was given while I was away still to do but it’s not a problem. I’ve been doing them when I’ve got a bit of downtime or when I’m waiting for people to send me stuff.”
“Right. That’s not ideal because the deadlines might clash. Can they be handed over to someone else?”
“To be honest, it’d take longer to hand them over at this point than to do them myself ’cos of how long it’d take to go through everything. I’m pretty sure I’ll be all right.”
“If it becomes an issue, speak to Pete about it and tell him that I expect Hypnos to be the priority, and that he needs to give you the support around it. If it really becomes a issue, let me know and I’ll sort it.”
“Okay.”
“Has he kept to the security arrangements we agreed?”
“So far as I know. As I say, I’ve not seen much of him lately. I will say one thing. He’s still not doing the initial notifications right.”
“What do you mean? Since you’ve come back?”
“Yeah. One of my jobs was classified and risk assessed wrong. And ’cos it was given to me while I was on leave, we missed a police deadline.”
Daniel ground his teeth. “Noted. Anyway, I’m pleased with how it’s going, keep it up…” Daniel sat back on his seat and put his arms around the back of his head in an expansive gesture, as if posing for a photograph. His legs reached across to the other side of the table and he seemed even taller than he was. “How’s Aislin these days?”
“Yeah, fine, carryin’ on, you know. She’s worried about the privatisation though, she thinks that she’ll be lucky to keep the money she’s on now and that there won’t be any chance for promotion while our ‘sponsors and official partners’ are doing their thing. It’s not right ’cos she’s the best there by miles.”
Daniel snorted. “Our ‘partners’. You know what partners do? They fuck each other. Tell her to just keep going. The worst of it will be over in a few years; it’ll be hard, but if she sticks it through then she’ll be in a good position. The strongest always come out on top somehow. Anyway, I’ve got to get a move on, send me the summary through and I’ll be in touch in a few weeks for another meeting, yes?”
“Sure.”
“See you later then, Ethan.”
Daniel was on his feet immediately. He patted him on the back then was out the room before Ethan could say anything. He stared into space a moment then summarised the instructions in his notebook.
Daniel was the only person he knew who could make him feel like a child; praise from him felt like that he had received from his father when getting good marks on a spelling test at school. Since the first time he had met him, the personal side of their relationship had been one way, in that Daniel would ask him about Aislin, but he could not imagine enquiring about his partner, if he had one.
Ethan stretched his limbs as far as they would go. He walked aimlessly around the room a few times until his legs ached then sat down again and rested his head on the desk. An indeterminate time later, he jolted and realised that he had closed his eyes. Feeling foolish, as anyone walking in could easily have had the impression that he was sleeping, he jumped to his feet, his conversation with Daniel still fresh enough in his mind to make him purposeful.
When he sat at his desk, Jo walked into the workspace. She stood in front of him and tapped his chair.
“Hi. Pete’s asked me to run something by you before I put a file in. I don’t know why, don’t blame me.”
“I don’t think I was going to. Go on.”
“He didn’t know whether we should put a finding of an illegal alarm clock through to the DIA liaison. I’ve said it was only one but he couldn’t make up his mind.”
“Right… what’s happened then exactly?”
Jo breathed inwards sharply and spoke quickly as if having already told him several times.
“Basically, the police were round some druggie’s house and they’ve found an illegal alarm clock. He was sleeping in the middle of the day so we’ve got that, it’s just whether we’ve got to do the forms for the alarm clock as well.”
“What do you mean, it’s an illegal alarm clock?”
“You can change it to whatever time you want apparently.”
“Okay Jo, I know what illegal means, but how can we prove it’s illegal? Have you seized it?”
“No, but that’s what the police have said.”
“Right, the first thing you need to do is get it over here and have it examined. It’s all very well saying it’s illegal, but he might deny that. Then, who else has used it, where did he get it from…?”
“So, do I need to do the report?”
“Jo, this is what I’m trying to tell you. You can’t just hand it over to the DIA without doing any of the work. I mean, they might be interested in the bigger picture around the black market, but they’re not going to investigate the clock are they? The illegal sleep is probably a nine, but the clock is definitely a six. If there’s a bigger network then it could be a three.”
“Well, I’m not being funny, Ethan, but what do you want me to do? Peter asked me to find out whether to make a referral, he didn’t mention anything about all that other stuff.”
“It’s section three sub-section… thirteen. I’ll tell you what, Jo, just e-mail me the file and I’ll mark up what you need to do.”
“Thanks…” She turned away as she spoke before pushing past Mohammed.
He waited a moment before saying, “Boyfriend trouble again then. You’d have thought he’d have made up his mind by now. Can you imagine having to listen to that every night?”
“I have to listen to
it most days, I probably see her more than he does.”
Mohammed laughed. “Very true, mate. Depressing, isn’t it?”
Ethan nodded. Despite having laughed off the situation, he felt furious after thinking about it a moment. Why does she think we’re here? To paint our nails? We’re supposed to be giving society a kick up the arse but we need one ourselves sometimes.
After reviewing the file and writing a list of actions for Jo, Ethan worked on the summary Daniel had asked for until his landline rang.
“SDMA.”
“Hi ya, it’s me, Aislin.”
“Oh, hi. You all right?”
“Yeah fine, you?”
“Good.”
“Can I ask you a massive favour and I’ll remember it forever?”
“Go on.”
“You haven’t promised yet.”
“I’ve got to promise before I know what it is? You haven’t sold my organs have you?”
“No.” Aislin laughed perfunctorily then immediately continued. “I’m seeing Daisy tonight and it’s hard to meet her near mine because she’s coming over on the train. She’d have to get a taxi if she was coming to my house. Is it okay if we meet up at yours?”
“Erm… yeah…”
“And if we stay over, ’cos we’ll be back late and I don’t want to drive when I’m knackered? It’ll only be for one day, then she can stay at mine for the rest of the time she’s here.”
“That’s fine but I’ll be late tonight; Dan’s been over today and given me a load more stuff to do. Is it all right if you let yourself in and I’ll see you when I can?”
“I suppose. Are you still angry at her?”
“No, I’ve just come out of the meeting, I was going to ring you in a bit. That’s completely fine. Do you want me to give you a lift?”
“I’ll be okay. What time will you be back?”
Ethan paused before deciding on being slightly later than usual rather than suspiciously absent the whole night. “About… eight?”
“That’s okay, we’ll probably still be there by then. See you later, love you.”
“Hang on, before you go, can I ask you to look at a Strategic Personality Review? It’s for—”
“I don’t manage them anymore. Send an e-mail to the generic personnel account and it’ll get picked up from there.”
“Oh. I thought you did them, you spent ages setting that up.”
“The problem is, Ethan, it was something else that I didn’t get paid for and that nobody but me cared about. Anyway, I’ll be over soon.”
As soon as he put the phone down, Ethan started calculating whether he could contact her before she left work to say that contingency had turned against him and that he would be back later than he had thought. However, she had not sounded convinced by his explanation, and if he added more to the story then she would doubtlessly question him about it and catch him out. He had used Dan as an excuse to get out of commitments too many times to be believed unconditionally. Just like she had used Daisy too many times.
He repeatedly thought through the information he needed before deciding that he could not trust a generic e-mail account, meaning that there was nothing he could do. Although he always praised Aislin to anyone who would listen, his words of encouragement had felt like homilies recently. He could not help but feel a little disappointed in her.
Six
After six o’clock, when everyone else had left, he continued typing desultorily for a few minutes before wandering around the office, kicking the air, feeling annoyed that he had tied himself into his excuse; he could not even walk around town for fear of bumping into Aislin. He was trapped within his fortress. As he moved through the workspaces, gazing out the windows, all of which were covered with the same dark security sheets that turned the city into shadow, he saw that many of his colleagues had left files strewn over their desks, the error compounded by the fact that whoever had been last to leave had left the door open. After all the times everyone had been told about security, the tardiness made him depressed.
After thinking about what he could say to Daisy, Ethan went back to his computer. His mind worked very quickly late at night, as if all the excess parts of him fell away to reveal a machine underneath his flesh.
When Ethan switched off his computer, his feet hurt in the way they did when he was so tired that he would fall asleep if he lay down, and he was very tempted to do just that.
The security barrier lips near the lift made a grinding sound when he scanned his card. He sighed and it seemed a lifetime before they finally opened. No one else is ever in the building after four. Except the porters, who probably sleep in the basement. Perhaps I could apply when one of them dies.
The gloom of his security-sheet-impaired vision became writ large when he stepped outside, as a despondent air hung over the city. The way was dark and sinister; his steps hesitating and clumsy, like those of a drunk. Everything seemed significant; the holes in the pavement, the way his laces slowly unravelled, horns from cars skidding past, the sound of retching in the distance… He felt like he did when half-awake early in the morning, dozing and unsure of himself.
Abandoned, half-finished building works looked surreal at night, as did the yellow roadwork signs that had been there since he had started working in the city. Posters flapped on walls he passed, the pictures obscured. Only the words were visible, giving orders that were senseless without any context.
He could not remember the last time he had had a headache. He could feel the circumference of his skull. He turned down a path to find himself in a concrete square where an ugly bronze statue towered over open space. There were names written on a slab underneath it, generic in their grey layout. A group blocked an alleyway. They were bedraggled and one was covered in blood that streamed from his head. Knowing that it was unwise to associate with such events, Ethan hurried away and ducked into a shop, the window of which was translucent with grease.
He rubbed his hands and blew on them. Ethan peered inside a freezer to see that it was empty but for shiny chunks of ice. Not that there was much of anything else on the shelves. This was why he did not like to shop in Central Zone. There was no facility to pay with his mobile or even to see a hologram of the chocolate inside the wrappers. Everything was dirty. He tried to think of an excuse to not go home; despite the vast variety of entertainment in Central Zone, the better parts of it, at least, there was nowhere he could sit and pass the time; in fact, it would be prohibitively expensive to do so given the cost of entrance to the ‘green spaces’, or of renting a bench.
He suddenly became aware of the silence, and when he looked around, the sales assistant was staring at him. The shop seemed to be naturally deserted, his presence there an intrusion. Feeling embarrassed, he walked to the counter and picked up some chewing gum from a display.
The sales assistant looked at him for several seconds before moving. She had thick strands of multi-coloured, interwoven hair, which were squashed together in places. There were black patches around her eyes and she wore an inscrutable expression that seemed to exist beyond her grey clothes. She served him with mechanical movements and the merest hint of a mocking smile.
There was a piece of card on the counter, on which was written a series of special offers for chocolate bars in felt tip pen. An Iklonian lightning symbol was drawn at the top of the list.
Was she an Iklonian? As he hurried from the shop, Ethan realised how few he had actually seen. In various briefings he had had on the subject, he had viewed pictures of a typical subversive, where the features of different agents had been spliced together into bizarre hybrids. Only a small number of his investigations into Sleep Code breaches had identified direct Iklonian influence, and he remembered every confirmed Iklonian he had ever interviewed. However, speaking to them for a few minutes in strictly controlled conditions before they were transferred to the DIA was very differ
ent from free interaction.
Ethan wondered whether he could get into trouble for talking to such a person, whether the DIA had her under surveillance. It was impossible to know, of course, fruitless to speculate, although that did not stop him from doing so. When Ethan looked at his watch, the pressure of a practical deadline came to him with relief and he hurried his steps. He threw the chewing gum, unopened, into the road.
He had often thought it strange that he never felt tired when driving. No matter how exhausted he was when getting in or out of his car, the moment he sat, his judgement seemed impeccable, his eyes sharp. He had investigated several instances throughout his career of car crashes caused by people falling asleep at the wheel, and had given presentations to other SDMA agents on the subject, without ever connecting them to his personal circumstances. Half an hour earlier, he would have fallen asleep if he had rested his head on his desk; now he could have travelled any distance without a problem. His thoughts drifted and he wondered whether driving induced chemicals in the brain that suppressed sleepiness. Adrenaline? Perhaps I wouldn’t have any problems if I drove around every evening after work.
He was so ensconced in the folds of his thoughts that he was surprised when finding himself home, as if he had leapt through time. It was ten past eight. The driving cocoon continued to protect him as he got out the car and he felt jaunty when walking up his path.
He opened the door and called out. “Hello?”
“Hi Eth, we’re in here.”
He was grateful that Aislin had warned him. She’s only going to stay for a few minutes. Just count down the time. He paused before going into the lounge.
“Hi ya, how you doin’?” He put the question to them both ambiguously, to test whether Daisy would answer.
“Hi Eth. You get your stuff done?”
“Yeah, just about. It never ends does it? Sometimes, you feel like you could be there twenty-four hours a day and you still wouldn’t do all that you need to. How are you then, Daisy, found your way here okay?”