Eminent Domain

by Carl Neville

  He pulls on his backpack and they head across the patch of grass outside the block, a few citizens lounging in the mid-afternoon warmth listening to some music. They have hooked up their RODs to a mini speaker system and are playing a series of long, trance-like drones together.

  The punch code lock to the main door has been disabled and the lift isn’t working, leaving the stairs as the only option. Give me a second, Abhishek says, adjusts his backpack. Lewis goes ahead of him, represses her instinct to jog up, passes a couple on the stairs coming down who smile at them, say good day, followed by an agitated man who avoids their eyes. For a second she has a strong temptation to swivel discreetly at the next landing and follow him but continues upward to the roof, then, as Abhishek starts to look over the equipment, she circles around the edge of the building to watch him emerge, follows him across the road. He stands at a bus stop, leg tapping, D7 has moved away from the doorway where they left her and is looking up at the roof.

  Something not right about him, his manner, dress, posture. I need to go elsewhere, she says to Abhi who nods back, absorbed by examining one of the rigs, accustomed to Lewis’s sudden coming and going. Thirteen flights down. She sees D7 circling the moment she comes out, leading her across the road. A bus has already pulled up. Number 73, everyone already boarded.

  Missed it. She juggles with her ROD to get the bus route, sees the stops marked, taps on the optimal route between them on foot and uses a direction and tracking plet set at Challenge level. It measures out the pace needed between stops, she breaks into a run.

  Missed it again, too slow, her ankle fine, needs to go faster. A cold start, she’s warmed up now.

  Has he disembarked? She speeds up as the bus pulls away, sees he’s not among the passengers who have alighted, veers off in a long arc across the next plaza, has to get on at the next stop, there’s no way she can track the bus on foot along the entirety of its route. Glances at her ROD: quickest route on foot between the two stops, taps the button, is three minutes, bus four minutes, taps again and is given the pace she needs to hit and maintain to get there before it arrives. Sucks in the air, expands her lungs, shuts out all distractions, narrowing everything down, recruiting all energy to a single objective.

  The patch has automatically synchronized and she feels it nudging her along the optimal path, minutely calibrating her direction. A low wall she uses her hands to push herself over, down a concrete slope into a subway and as she hits the tunnel the bus goes overhead. Jumps a couple of people sitting halfway along strumming at what looks like a guitar. Out the other side she scrambles up the slope, grabs the railings and heaves herself over as D7 goes the long way around then catches up with her.

  A straight sprint down a tree-lined avenue as the bus takes a long loop around the edge of the estate. Follows the arrows on the ROD, the instructions: increase your speed by 4%. Pushes a little harder, a flood of endorphins, the patch monitoring and augmenting.

  Barrow

  These long pauses in the interrogations, this one Indefinite: Subject PRB 2003701 under monitoring. It was never like this before, but, well, Stockholm, he should be grateful for them, he most of all. Even more extensive protocols than came in after the Breach when, in response to American condemnation of the tactics they had employed then, a whole raft of safeguards, checks were implemented. Conform to and exceed best practice with regard to questioning of suspects the mandate. Set an example.

  He sits back, feels an impulse toward action of some kind, restlessness. Swivels around to gaze through the window again, out past the hotel, knowing Rose is not there, beginning to separate himself off, to look past, away from her.

  He contemplates requesting a meeting with Katja to discuss the situation but suspects his own motive for doing so. Really Barrow, a lot of time can be wasted over idle paddling around in the warm shallows of a flirtation that will lead to nothing. He smiles to himself. That was Rose’s voice he chided himself in. Rose, woven into him, thorns in his flesh, petals on his tongue. All this entangling, these difficult disentanglings. He lowers his gaze, sees the ivy and the vines knitted into the trellis on the balcony, jewelled fruit in the low sun, the deepening purple of the half-ripe grapes under the thin netting, says to himself seeing it, there it is, that is what we are, that’s what we are. His scar itches and he reaches in to scratch it.

  He has yet to see the stadium, and rather than take a virtual tour he decides to go out there, takes the Softrail. The citizens around him on the train are drawn from a variety of Co-Sphere regions, any number of languages being spoken, none of which he understands, not unique for someone of his generation, but still, he’s in a minority, and suddenly he has a desire to travel. He has barely been outside the PRB: Stockholm the rare exception. When his contemporaries were at the academies and the departments all across the Central and Eastern Former Europe, or part of the great liberation struggles washing back and forth between the UK and the East African Federation, he was doing routine domestic subversive work, the heavy lifting, the organizing at street level, manning the barricades. Vital work, but perhaps the ambit of his experience has been too narrow, too driven by a single desire — revenge.

  Will there ever be revenge sufficient for the loss of your parents, Barrow? If not, can we expect less of our enemies?

  The stadium looms through the front window, a great shiny, top-heavy bowl that appears to be defying gravity. Barrow gets off at the West terminal and follows the crowd, who have come to the stands and displays that ring the base. He shows his pass to one of the attendants at Gate 10 and is let in, the stadium completely empty, nothing but rows of seats in lengthening concentric rings and the open central area, dim lighting around the top, an arched control booth at both ends, large blank screens hung at the cardinal points. A standard stadium, more interesting for its energy-efficient structure than anything else, stripped of any vestige of the national after early designs proved too local, too historic, a beautifully functional, anonymous post-nationalism.

  What has he hoped to understand by coming here? He climbs the central gantry until his legs grow tired, then sits in one of the chairs halfway up, puts his head back, pulls the patch off his arm, closes his eyes. Silence pools in the vast bowl and yet, there is something fluttering, some distant ever-present clamour. The unquiet heart of things. Perhaps the clamour is only in his heart, perhaps it is, as Hatayama says, that the world is slowly settling into a long blissful repose, a universal somnolence in which Barrow will remain the sole insomniac sitting, worrying away through the long Post-Historic night at something he can never truly name. He opens his eyes, a scatter of faint stars through the sodium gauze, closes them again, head lolls.

  And then the patch has pumped something into his system and he jerks awake. Checks his ROD. Care service have insisted the interrogation is postponed till tomorrow. The interviewee’s state of mind.

  Time ticking away.

  Lewis

  The next stop is relatively close on the other side of a series of low-rise flats, she goes straight through the middle of them, hops up through the back doors as the last person alights, takes a moment to get her breath back, blood hammering in her skull. Better, faster.

  A handful of passengers. She clips a tiny camera from her backpack onto the front of her jacket to try to get an image of his face they can check against the database, turns gently around as if looking for a seat then goes upstairs to the top deck. He’s in the very front seat, facing away from her, has his head down, fiddling with something in his bag, no visual ID possible. D7 lies down on the floor at her feet and she is about to nudge her into going down and interacting with the suspect, getting him to turn, when another citizen sits directly behind him, partially obscuring her view.

  The bus winds around toward the river and the miles of concrete galleries, performance spaces, museums, leisure domes, bars and Canteens that throng the spaces between the bridges across the river, the streets growing busier, more and more people getting on, many visitors
for the Games, multiple languages, all manner of unfamiliar dress. The suspect stands, takes the stairs down and Lewis gets a good shot of his face, follows him down and out onto the street. A long queue, people are getting on and suddenly a single word, mother, flashes through her mind, and she stops dead, something deep and keen piercing her. A scarred, white-dull pulse at the centre of things.

  The suspect is moving at speed, turning the corner as she stands, stalled for a second, passengers still filing in through the door, looks around, quickly tries to see where this sudden assault on her can be coming from.

  D7 is sitting a few feet from the bus looking back at her expectantly. For a moment she thinks that she will get back on, leave D7 to track him, search through the passengers for a face she might recognize as carrying the traces of her own, but doesn’t want to risk losing the suspect. Even so, she finds she is crouching a little, trying to see the passengers as the last few board and the bus sets off.

  Tom

  Is Dominic going to be investigated now too? Will his position be in question? He put pressure on him to help make Julia’s entry to the PRB easier, so she would be impressed by his competence, his contacts.

  He had so much be grateful to him for, he’s been a good friend, though given how at ease he was, how committed he was to the life of the PRB, it was sometimes hard for Tom to understand why he had always shown such interest in him.

  And he has responded by…

  No, Alan Bewes, he could never, and as for Jennifer.

  What must they think of him?

  Perhaps Dominic pitied him and their friendship was just another expression of his sympathetic and solidary nature. Was he deserving of pity?

  He would like to see them, explain that he has no knowledge of these events, no motive. But. Perhaps his motives are unknown even to himself.

  Might he have wanted revenge on Dominic? Kill the man Dominic loved most then run away to hide, get off-grid, all part of a secret plan he had no idea was unfolding within him, a plan planted in him by other forces, hidden, waiting.

  He goes to the door and presses the bell, whole body shaking as though something is trying to emerge from within him, another self breaking free to what…? Escape? Turn back to attack him? I need something, he says to the face that appears on the other side of the door. I am sick, I need a Deveretol.

  The medical team have been notified, the attendant says. I have sent in an action needed request.

  Lewis

  Lewis squats down under a tree across the road from the hotel, D7 sitting quietly beside her. They watch in shifts. It may be nothing, but she trusts her instincts, and besides she is not quite ready to be back amongst the others.

  The SSF3 Central Records Bureau has returned information on the suspect, through a facial recognition match: Franklin, B., United States citizen, born in the Former United Kingdom. Entered on 03/04. Work permit: technician for an American media company.

  Abhishek spots her from a distance. She looks so small under the tree, hardly bigger than the dog itself, and his heart goes out and thumps softly twice in the space between them, loud enough for her to look around and see him coming, then look away.

  He hands her a sandwich, just in case you get hungry, he says.

  She nods her thanks and puts it down beside her. D7 immediately sniffs at it. She can have it if you’re not hungry, he says and Lewis unwraps it, smooths out and folds the wax paper.

  We are all running on the patch at the moment, it’s the only thing keeping me going, but you know this is very good this PRB Deverotol. I feel very wide-awake. He laughs.

  I’m not really needed so much in the office right now, he says, Katja and Barrow are doing the interrogations, is there anything you need my help with here?

  She shakes her head.

  Well if you do, he says and waves the ROD around.

  Thank you, she says.

  I might sit here with you a while. Would that be alright?

  She looks at him and smiles. A slight nod.

  And you too of course, he says, as D7 trots around between them, and he scratches her between the ears.

  You got a shot of his face? Have we analysed anything?

  Yes. Nothing unusual. But I think he’s important. Though I don’t know how yet.

  Well, we all trust your instincts. They have provided many solutions to things we could not see. Then he worries he has made her feel alien, other, different, it is a difficulty with the Winter Academy graduates sometimes, understanding the level at which any communication is taking place. The way they might suddenly shift into another mode of perception the rest of them have no access to, the ways they seem to hover between worlds, times, relaying information back and forth. They are hard to reach in their physical, he almost thinks earthly, manifestations, and he glances at Lewis’s profile as she sits watching the hotel. Lying under a tree on a warm night, the breeze comes in across the river and strokes at his face, the stars look bright, amazingly low levels of light pollution for such a big city he is about to say when the patch intervenes, from feeling wide awake and wired his eyelids are suddenly flickering closed, Lewis slipping her balled-up jacket under his head as he wilts back on the exposed tree roots, the branches shifting above him, and he imagines reaching up into the copper-coloured leaves above and pulling down a Sharon fruit, overripe, and plump with juice. A butterfly wafts in on the swelling dark that presages a deep and dreamless sleep.

  She is about to say something when suddenly he’s fast asleep, leaving her alone with her thoughts. Too slow, Lewis. She finds it hard to speak and sometimes, for all the depth of her connection with things, words are needed, a medium that others take delight in, despite all its ambiguity, perhaps because of it. She has spent too much time either subsumed in the group or completely alone, perhaps.

  D7 is alert and watching and so she decides to read as a solitary night bird’s threnody starts up in the trees above her, the glow of the lights in the hotel across the road, the patches of illumination from the street lights, the sleeping Abhishek, the vigilant D7, and she becomes aware of something that has flooded out suddenly now to immerse her. Call it sadness. Call it loss.

  Mother.

  She will go back to the bookseller, so strangely familiar to her, and she will have questions for him.

  What song did the Medusa sing to relieve the loneliness, patient, untouchable, coiled into herself in the cold dusk of her cave? Did they sing together, the three cursed sisters? Sing lamentations for themselves, for those whose warm flesh their gaze had turned to stone?

  Rose

  Barely lunchtime and Gillespie’s at the end of one of the tables in the south Canteen, pint of Number 5 foaming busily in his glass. He offers her a sardonic smile that acknowledges some old enmity, some old affinity between them that she wanly returns.

  Looking forward to the conference? he asks.

  She smiles neutrally. Who would have thought that you of all people would have become an elder statesman? Why do you think they asked you to the discussion?

  Ach, Aberdeen, he says, because I was a kid during the Autarchy, I am the complete PRB-history package, I was at the Crescents then down here for the Breach.

  Why the interest in the Crescents? It was far from the only site.

  Because it had so many defectors from the army and the police defending it and because it was a place where the purpose wasn’t purely, you know, setting a nice example, but because we had guns. Because it was a waystation for the old Counterpower or whatever they call it these days.

  Rose smiles. Hard to imagine it was in your own lifetime. It seems like a different world, she says.

  Well, Gillespie says. I suppose that’s the attraction. Anyway, even the Americans are getting in on the celebrations. I have just had a chat with a very sparky wee Californian lassie there doing her PhD no less on Vernon Crane’s musical contributions.

  Yes, she said, she contacted me. I think I am due to speak with her later this week sometime. She sips at
her wine, gauzy, earthy tones thick on the back of her tongue. And Vernon, she asks, have you been in touch much?

  He’s as good as dead, he says, kept alive by a machine these days I heard.

  Hospitalized or…?

  At home, I think. Unless they’ve moved hm.

  Perhaps we should go, pay our respects. Do you know the address?

  Same place, right? Last time I saw him, what, about five years ago he was there. You not been in contact?

  Not for a while, no.

  Gillespie nods. Poor fucker, he says. Good to see him getting some respect, at last.

  He drains his glass and gestures to a young man going past with a big pitcher to a table behind theirs, Brother Comrade, would you be so good as to save an old soldier for the cause of the PRB from having to inflict further distress on his wracked and aged frame by filling his glass for him? Awful long way to those wall pumps.

  Certainly! He says with a grin. And thank you for all your efforts. Fills his glass.

  Gillespie smiles. Like puppies, he says. How do you find them, sexually? Rose takes another sip of wine. Twenty minutes before he got round to the subject. This could be a long afternoon, she glances up at the Games being shown on the central television, perhaps she will go along and participate a little later once all the Great Elders have done their marching and banner waving.

  Group sex seems the norm now, very polite and thoughtful group sex, very egalitarian, I find it rather dull.

  I have heard they are so inclusive it’s no problem if you bring animals along, Gillespie says. Must be tricky finding space if you’re a hippophile, eh? These are lines he has prepared and used many times no doubt, and she’s faintly irritated that with her he can’t at least try to be a little more spontaneous and original.