The Tourist

by Robert Dickinson

  One of them is missing.

  A good subordinate

  The transfer happens quickly, as if, having decided you could leave, your keepers want you gone. You return to your cell. A bag has been placed in your bed. Pack what you need, the voice says. You do as instructed: a change of clothes, your pills. The bag already contains a bottle of water. Afterwards you sit on the bed, waiting. You’re nervous. Your life has become a series of simple routines; you’ve grown used to thinking the same thoughts in the same order. Twice a day you shuffle to Room Two to eat and each time you tap on the wall and wonder if there are any other prisoners. You stop outside Room Six and look up at the ceiling and wonder if what you can see is daylight: the same thought each time. How will you cope with something different?

  Room Six, says the voice.

  Riemann is still sitting in the chair. He glances at your bag. “Is that everything?” The door behind him opens. “Follow me.”

  As you’d suspected, the door leads to an observation room with two rows of empty seats and large blank screens set in the wall. Beyond it is a corridor as white and bare as the one outside your cell. After a hundred metres it turns right. A door at the end of it opens as you approach. You go through to a high-ceilinged, windowless room with black panels set in the walls. Riemann walks quickly, as if being timed. The door on the other side of the room slides open. You recognise daylight. Your prison was on the surface after all; the diffused light outside Room Six was the sky. A transport vehicle is backed up against the door, open, revealing two bench seats facing each other.

  You still haven’t seen anybody except Riemann. You follow him in and sit on a facing bench, panting slightly, which he finds amusing. He bangs twice on the panel to his right. The vehicle doors close and you hear the low hum of its engine. It’s the first time you’ve been in a vehicle since you were brought here. Not much seems to have changed. It’s another cell, this time on wheels. Riemann seems to relax. You watch him, asking yourself: Is this the same man? You try to picture the one you met in the 21st, but the image is indistinct. And you can’t ask the man sitting opposite because if he is the same man those meetings are still in his future.

  Instead you ask, “What happens now?”

  “They drive us to our first stop. It will take about four days to reach City Two East.”

  Once again you resist the impulse to correct him about the name. Four days. How long is it since you spent more than a few minutes with any other person? You look around. “It’s just you.”

  His expression stays blank. He is so young.

  “No guards.” You spell it out. “I thought I was an important prisoner.”

  “Important, perhaps.” There’s a flicker of amusement. “But not dangerous.”

  “So it’s just you.”

  “And the driver.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I told you. Awareness, seconded to Safety.”

  You feel the old contempt for the names they use: Happiness keeps them quiet; Safety keeps them in place; Awareness spies on everybody else. “And you’re taking me”—the word sticks in your throat—“home.”

  “That’s right.” He watches you carefully. “To help me find some people.”

  It sounds implausible. All this trouble to find missing people? It’s more likely to be an execution. They’ve grown tired of keeping you alive so they tell you they’re taking you home and then drive you to the nearest deserted spot. And this is the man they’ve chosen to do it: someone young, compliant. Go there, carry that, shoot this person in the face. “These people you’re looking for, what are they doing there?”

  “A translation error.” He pauses, considering what he can tell you. “An accident caused by a power fluctuation. Apparently it put them on a trajectory towards the 25th. And you know what happens then.”

  You don’t. You’ve never thought about the 25th. You will still be in prison by then, or dead.

  “The 25th don’t like travel,” he says, like he’s talking to a child. “If they see something coming they send it back. It must be easy when you have the details in advance. This one they sent back to City Two East. It should reach there in the next day or so.”

  “Why send them there?”

  “They don’t give reasons.”

  “That’s all you know?” You would have told a better story: they were kidnapped or there was sabotage. There would be a reason, an enemy and a moral. There would have been clarity. “What happens if you find them?”

  “There’ll be a medical transport waiting for us at the perimeter. When we find them I’ll send the location and they’ll collect us. Then I return with them.”

  It’s a lot of resources for two people. “And if you don’t find them?”

  “I find them.” He speaks as if the outcome is already known. “And when I do you return here and go back to your room.”

  And then it strikes you: the reason he’s travelling with you in a sealed vehicle. The reason there was nobody else present as he led you out of the prison. That cropped and patterned hair isn’t a style that’s come round again. They’re being careful about what he’s allowed to see: in this case, nothing outside the vehicle. Riemann is just as much a prisoner as you. “They’ve sent you forward, haven’t they?”

  He stiffens, tilts his head back. Military. “That’s not relevant.”

  “Why have they sent you? If they know where these people will be, why don’t they find them? Why weren’t they waiting for them?”

  “They have their reasons.”

  “Because they don’t want to go themselves,” you say. “Because it’s still dangerous.”

  “They have their reasons.” He’s not going to be drawn. A good subordinate, the best in his class, pleased to have been chosen for this. Compliant. They send him forward, they send him back. He follows orders and doesn’t think unless he’s told to. You feel, for a moment, almost sorry for him.

  “This translation error, was it a charter?”

  “A fixed link.”

  “I thought they were safe.”

  “This one wasn’t. And how would you know? You people didn’t travel.”

  “What have they told you about me?” You watch for his reaction. “I travelled. When I was your age. A fixed link.” Offer a shared experience and they will start to think they can trust you.

  He’s sceptical. “Didn’t you think it was impossible? Where did you go?”

  “The 21st. Where else are there fixed links? You can launch a translation from inside a transport.” You don’t think he’ll know this. “There’s a procedure, a panel. You open it. There are switches. You have to throw them in the right sequence. Twelve switches,” you tell him. “It’s so simple a Happiness could do it. But you have to remember the sequence. If you get it wrong it doesn’t work.” Your right hand jabs at the air between you, faltering at the fourth switch. You start again, and stop at the same place. You let your hands fall. “I used to know it,” you insist. “I had a good memory.”

  “They didn’t tell me you were talkative,” he says flatly. “It’s going to be a long ride. You might as well tell me about your city.”

  Happiness Executive

  “Are you sure?” Erquist is perplexed. He calls up records on the display panel on his desk. The screen is local tech, adapted: we don’t make them at home. Our industries have other priorities. “Are you really sure?”

  “I checked the list.”

  “Have you checked it more than once?”

  “Three times.” Her name is Adorna Mond. She was travelling alone. “Are you saying you didn’t know this was going to happen?”

  “Are you certain it has happened?”

  We’re in his office, behind Entertainment Area Two. Erquist’s office is in the style of home: sparely furnished, softly lit, windowless. Erquist has been Resort Supervisor for two years and has never left the resort. He rarely leaves his office. Most clients will spend their month in the 21st without ever having seen him. E
ven for one of us, he’s noticeably pale and soft, like a mushroom that’s acquired human form and a talent for administration.

  He stares at the display as if he expects the record to change. “It’s not on any report. Who do you think is missing?”

  I give the client’s name. “And she’s not in the resort. I checked with Safety.”

  “Is it possible you’ve made a mistake?”

  “No. She’s missing. Isn’t this the kind of thing we report?”

  “Is it possible Safety have made a mistake?”

  “They’ve checked twice.”

  “She hasn’t found the blind spot?”

  “No.” Reps have been looking for resort blind spots ever since their existence was first theorised. Nobody has ever found one. “She isn’t in the resort.”

  “How about the approach?”

  It’s the one place where the sensors might not find her: the approach to the travel zone, right at the heart of the resort, a winding corridor with nothing to see and an unsettling ambience where equipment frequently breaks down and the techs report hearing voices. Clients will have walked along two of them to get here; they’re not usually eager to repeat the experience, and there’s a Safety at the gate to discourage the ones who want to try. Besides, to get there she’d have to cross areas where the sensors do work. “She won’t be in the approach.”

  Erquist is untroubled. “Are you sure she was on your excursion?”

  “I counted her on. We must report this.”

  “Perhaps we do.” Erquist looks up from the display. He’s concerned, but only mildly. It’s the management style. Erquist is pure third-generation Happiness Executive. He’s probably incapable of anxiety. “But it’s obviously not important enough for it to be sent back.”

  “And the accident was?”

  “That’s different. The accident could have upset our clients. They had to know in advance it wouldn’t be serious. It’s a matter of operational importance. One client wandering off—it’s important to you, but it doesn’t create an operational problem. If it’s not in the forecast it must be because she turns up safely.”

  I feel a moment of hope. Perhaps Erquist is right. Perhaps she’s made her own way back, her signature contaminated by an electronic product from the 21st picked up at the shopping mall.

  Except Safety hasn’t reported any clients returning alone. She can’t be in the resort.

  Erquist is still tapping at his desk. “Have you said anything about this to your section chief?”

  “I came straight to you.”

  “Good.” Erquist waves away the records and settles back into his chair. “We can keep him out of the cone for now. I don’t see this is a problem. She’s not on the records because we didn’t report her missing. Which can only mean that you’re going to find her quickly and we’re going to decide the whole thing was a fuss about nothing. After all, assuming our client left the group, she did so through her own agency, didn’t she?”

  He’s saying this to cheer me up. It’s typical Happiness: a contented employee is a productive employee, anger and stress do not solve problems—basic stuff, the precepts they’re taught from an early age. And it’s possible our missing client is slightly more adventurous than the average and travelling with Tri-Millennium because we’re cheap. She might have followed her own itinerary and slipped away with a scholarly guide or ancient travel text.

  Or she might just have been careless. She might have turned a corner and become so engrossed in some picturesque aspect of the 21st that she failed to notice the coach pulling away. She might be there still, alone, not speaking the language, with night falling, in a street the guidebooks don’t mention. She might be waiting for us—for me—to go back and collect her.

  So the street is the first place I ought to look.

  Erquist can see I’m concerned. “It’ll be fine, Spens. If it wasn’t we’d know about it. You’ll find her. She can’t have gone far. Or she’s on her way here now, in a taxi.” He says taxi tentatively. Erquist isn’t quite sure about the terminology. He’s never caught a taxi, or a train, or a bus. Despite his time here he’s still unused to the idea of paying for travel through space. The local obsession with turning every aspect of life into a financial transaction is something he understands only on the most abstract level. Outside this resort, he’d be helpless. “Go back to the place where you think she got off the transport. Take one of the natives to drive you. You’ll find her in no time.” He hesitates. “No, wait. It’s probably best if you don’t take a native. We’ll keep this quiet for now. You can work on your own, can’t you? You know how to drive their”—he gropes for the word, gives up—“their things?”

  “I have a licence.”

  “Good. I’ll authorise the use of a thing.” He makes hand gestures over his desk. “And don’t look so glum. You’ll find her in no time.”

  Despite his reassurances I remain glum. I don’t like the way he keeps saying in no time. I know it’s an archaic survival, but you’d think a Resort Supervisor in the travel business would be a little more sensitive to the nuances.

  But he could be right: if there’s no record of anything going wrong, it should mean nothing goes wrong. It’s the logic of travel. The company could hardly keep quiet about losing a client. For a start, there would be questions from the kin.

  People have travelled and not returned before, but they were either on official business or scholars like Brink and Nakamura, who knew the risks and travelled knowing they might not come back. Or they’re extemps, supposedly alienated from their own era, who want to live in a simpler, more natural society. Extemps are supposed to need official approval before they leave, but there’s always a few who think it’s easier to pay for a trip with one of the companies and simply not come home. Usually they’re unimportant enough to be allowed to stay. Perhaps our client is one of these. Perhaps her kin don’t complain. Perhaps they’re glad to see her leave.

  Before I go to the vehicle pool I stop by the Safety Office again. I add our client’s details and a signature tracker to my handheld and see what Tri-Millennium knows about her. Most extemps are humanities types: history, literature, music, religion, art. According to her travel application Adorna Mond was science, working with various environmental teams. I’m not a tech, but most of it looked like junior-level research: toxicity analysis, soil reclamation projects, worthy but dull, and nothing like the high-end physics required for travel. At twenty-six, she’s younger than a typical Tri-Millennium client. I study her image. We catch all the clients’ images as they arrive in the resort. It’s a concession to the native authorities, so they can tell their own people they’re taking every precaution. Adorna Mond is the hooded woman who sat at the back, staring out of the window and not asking questions. Her behaviour hadn’t seemed significant at the time. I’ve seen it with younger travellers: they’re with us because we’re cheap and they don’t mix with older people outside their kin.

  While in the office I consider comparing our image with CCTV from the accident site. I decide against. Erquist hadn’t authorised it, and I wasn’t sure if the street even had CCTV, or if it would be accessible. Besides, it’s an inefficient system. You might as well post teams of near-sighted people with sketchbooks.

  Finally I set the internals to bip me if she turns up while I’m out.

  The vehicle pool is deserted. Occasionally we’ll get a retired tech who’s read about internal combustion engines and wants to see one for himself (we’ll show them but we don’t let them touch); more often, though, the clients will get away as quickly as they can. They don’t like the smell, or are keen to share their impressions of the outside world with less adventurous friends. Our native drivers usually head straight home or go to the sleeping quarters/café we built for them just inside the dome wall. I suspect they find too much time with our clients makes them uncomfortable. I know that spending time with natives makes me nervous, even now. I’ve learned enough of their language to follow their news and w
atch their entertainments but I still miss too many nuances.

  Beyond the coach parking bays are Tri-Millennium’s stock of smaller vehicles. They’ve been customised with the usual recognition tags, so the one Erquist has authorised for me clicks and flashes its lights as I approach.

  I get in and tell it where I want to go. The key is in the ignition. I plug the handheld into the control panel, start the engine, engage the security protocol and drive very slowly and carefully towards the exit. I have a licence to operate this vehicle (four doors, a Japanese brand that’s become slang for somebody who works hard but has no character). Three checkpoints later I am on the open road, the handheld on a two-kilometre sweep in case our client is heading back in the other direction. I switch on the radio: the last user, probably a native, had been listening to the monopulse of ancient dance music. I click through talk shows until I find a Mozart piano concerto; not my first choice, but tolerable. It’s a recent performance—recent, that is, in this era—made by someone who hasn’t heard the composer’s own recordings, so the speeds are all slightly wrong. I don’t know if they haven’t heard the originals (we only made them available here a few years ago) or if they’re among the natives who think our recordings are faked. Some do, but then there are supposed to be twenty-seven per cent who don’t believe in travel. They think we’re actors in make-up and odd costumes talking a nonsense language as part of an international conspiracy, or aliens out to enslave humanity. Most of the sceptics come from the States, China or Russia, big countries that don’t like the idea they’re technologically backward, even if the people who have outstripped them are their own descendants. And then there’s the DomeWatch crowd, who accept we’re from their future but don’t trust us for other reasons. The pianist and conductor in this performance probably aren’t as crazy as them. They still cling to a way of playing that’s been shown to be wrong.