It takes me longer to reach the accident site than it took our driver to make the opposite journey. In part that’s because I drive more slowly and use the safety protocols. I don’t, like the natives, trust to luck. I see the results of two accidents on the way there: natives standing beside their dented vehicles, probably asking themselves how it could have happened to them.
It’s starting to get dark when I reach the site. I have to park a few streets away, outside a row of squat little houses where nobody seems to be at home. I unplug the handheld and slip it into my jacket pocket. The shops are still open, their lights making more of a contrast with the shabby street. The street lights aren’t yet on and the rooms on the upper storeys are still dark. There’s a scent of spiced food overlaying the usual sewage-and-petrol miasma and odd little gusts of wind throw sharp dust in my face. The client isn’t here. She isn’t waiting forlornly in a shop doorway and the handheld doesn’t find her signature anywhere in the neighbourhood. I walk the length of the block, cross the road and walk back, glancing in each shop as I pass. She isn’t in any of them, and I’d be surprised if she was. There’s still no signal from my handheld. It sits in my pocket, inert. I might as well be carrying a pebble.
Well, I think, perhaps she’s lost. She’s had two hours, plenty of time to wander off on some unguided quest for help, and long enough to have caught a train or a taxi and be in a different part of town, or even a different town altogether. I begin to feel anxious. Erquist might say we don’t report this because it’s not important, but what if we don’t report it because it is? What if it turns out we kept quiet because reporting it would be disastrous for our company? What if I go back empty-handed and Erquist invokes some Tri-Millennium protocol that means this can never be discussed?
She’s had two hours to get somewhere else. Or be taken somewhere else.
Travellers have been kidnapped before, but not in this era or in this part of the world. This isn’t the sixteenth century, or any of the numerous dark ages where people are frightened of strangers, and, this early in the 21st, England isn’t as bad as it becomes during the NEE. Kidnapping shouldn’t happen. There have been only five recorded instances since we announced our presence, none of them in this hemisphere.
Now we have an official presence we take kidnapping seriously. Our people are rescued within a matter of hours. It could be done in minutes, but there are usually negotiations with local governments about using our own Safety Teams. What happens to the kidnappers is never disclosed. It’s assumed they’re killed on-site, although there’s a rumour among the natives that anyone who survives the initial assault is sent to a more inhospitable era. The vagueness is one part of the deterrent—only the dimmest native criminals want to spend their last hours in the Permian. The main deterrent, the feature that keeps would-be kidnappers from trying their luck, is the obvious one that we’re from the future. Our Safety Teams will know where to find them because, from our perspective, we’ve already found them. So why allow kidnappings in the first place? The rumour among the reps (and we love rumours as much as any native) is that the victims wanted to be kidnapped. They knew they were never in danger. They were Safety, dressed like tourists or diplomats. They could afford to wander without a bodyguard through a city known for its high kidnapping rate and trigger-happy cartels. When they were bundled into unmarked vehicles we suddenly had leverage with the native authorities: if you can’t ensure the safety of our citizens then we’ll have to. And the Safety Teams show up very soon afterwards with serious, serious firepower. The kidnappings always happened in recalcitrant states. They provided an excuse for a demonstration of our efficiency that usually speeded up any negotiations.
So she can’t have been kidnapped. This is England in the early 21st, an advanced, sophisticated civilisation. Nobody should be that stupid. Our client should be fine.
Except I have a feeling something is wrong.
Subjective feelings are not, of course, reliable. They can be prompted by any one of the thousand bad smells in this city: the rotting food, the exhaust fumes, the updraught from decaying sewers, the stench of dead meat that arises whenever large numbers of natives gather. (Individually they have chemical overtones. Collectively they stink. You spend your first few days in any city convinced there’s a large dead animal just around the corner.) And then there’s the noise: the continuous throb of waiting engines, the pop music that pounds out like a musical analogue to a child’s tantrum, and, below all that, the infrasonics. The combination can trigger a sense of unease. Spend too long in the early 21st and you learn to mistrust your instincts.
The handheld is telling me our client is not in this area. None of us are in this area: I can’t get a single signature. But then this is a native quarter. There are no passing groups from Heritage, or extemps. Why would there be? There’s nothing of architectural interest here, nothing of any historical significance has ever happened. The only reason to live here is because you were born here or can’t afford to move somewhere else. I head back to the car. Now I’ll have to look up transport routes and hand the case over to Safety. And then Erquist will send me home for breach of protocol.
I don’t want to give up so easily. I go back to the little row of shops. Along with the newsagents, the takeaway and the one with flowers outside is a taxi office. It can’t, I think, hurt to ask.
There are two men behind a glass screen. On this side there’s a dark blue carpet and four orange plastic chairs which look as though they would warp if I sat on them. The walls are a dirty yellow. The man at the counter is reading a native newspaper which is mostly pictures. The other man sits behind him, watching a tiny, inaudible box with a screen. Despite my time here, I’m getting no better at guessing the ages of these people: the newspaper reader might be fifty, or a socially deprived twenty-five. The television watcher is probably younger, but only five or six years away from coronary failure. Neither looks up when I walk in. It’s possible they think I’m here by mistake.
“Excuse me,” I say in This English.
The older one looks up. His expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t say anything. I doubt he speaks Modern.
“I’m looking for somebody.” I take out the handheld and project the face of our client onto the yellow wall. At home, we wouldn’t use an image for identification. It’s too easy to change your appearance: eye colour, a different nose, a new jawline. Signatures are a more reliable guide. But this is the early 21st. A picture will have to do. “Have you seen this woman?”
The man glances at the image, still expressionless. The native behind him doesn’t take his eyes off the television, which shows three men sitting in a studio. From the picture of a trophy behind them they’re talking about football, a native obsession (Tri-Millennium offers a trip to a local stadium). The older man looks back at his newspaper without answering.
I stay calm. I remind myself this is probably the first time he’s spoken to one of us. “I was asking you,” I say, “if you have seen this woman.”
“No.” He doesn’t look up. “We haven’t.”
I have the impression he wouldn’t help even if he could. “Thank you for your time,” I say, partly because it is Happiness policy to be polite and partly because I suspect it will annoy him. I leave. It’s dark now. The handheld still isn’t reading anything. Stage two: return to the car, perhaps even drive around for a while in case our client has decided to walk back to the resort and set off in the wrong direction. She’s had two hours. Even moving slowly, on foot, she could be ten kilometres away. If I don’t find her in the next hour it’s back to the resort.
Street lights are starting to come on, along with a few house lights. Motor traffic is getting heavier as people drive home. There are more pedestrians. I’m conscious of their sidelong attention. This is a poor neighbourhood, after all. For all the talk of the economic benefits we bring it will always be poor, at least until the NEE drags everywhere else down to their level, and then lower again. I’ve been in neighbourhood
s like this before, when Li tried to educate me about native culture. I saw their pubs and heard their musicians. I thought it would make me a better rep. You get used to the glances, the murmuring in corners, the sudden flash of someone taking a picture—taking pictures is as close as most people get, unless they’re Domeheads. They’ll talk to you. Some of them have even learned Modern. They have questions: Is it true that, Do you really. And listen wide-eyed to whatever you tell them. It’s surprising, the things they believe about us: that we live for hundreds of years and can read each other’s minds… They want to be our friends. They dress like us and copy our hairstyles. They want to come back and live with us in our fabulous underground cities. They’re a minority.
I doubt there are any in this neighbourhood.
“What are you doing here?” A man’s voice, behind me. Modern.
My handheld hasn’t registered any of us in the area. I turn, expecting a tragic misfit. And my first thought is that it is a native. He’s dressed like one: black coat, businessman-style. Taller than usual, thin, with a lined face and white hair. Fifty-odd, I think, and he’s spent a lot of time outdoors. He smiles: something amuses him. “Spens,” he says, “I always wondered how you got involved.”
I look more closely. Not a native. An extemp, then, who’s been here so long he’s lost his wariness about sunlight. But an extemp would have a signature, and the handheld in my pocket hasn’t moved.
He looks down at my feet. “I suppose I should have guessed.”
I don’t say anything. We’re supposed to have signatures. If we don’t it’s because we’ve gone to expensive trouble. It occurs to me that this man might be dangerous. There’s no overt threat, but he has an unnerving way of standing very still. And why is he so interested in my shoes? I realise he’s looking for Safety-issue footwear. He’s assessing how dangerous I am.
And he knows my name.
My shoes are standard Happiness Casual. Yellow, harmless.
He smiles. “You don’t recognise me, do you?”
“Should I?”
“It’s Riemann. Cantor’s brother.”
I stare helplessly. Cantor was a friend from school. I lost touch with him when he went to Tech Ed and I went to the Tunnels. Riemann had been his little brother. The last time I’d seen either of them on my line had been six years earlier.
Riemann had been ten.
“Riemann?” Travel is confusing. “The last time I saw you—”
“It’s been a while. For me, anyway.”
“You’ve changed.”
“And you’re shorter than I remember.” His smile becomes almost friendly. “And heavier. Have you had augs?”
“In the Tunnels.”
“I remember when you left. I was sorry to see you go. You were one of Cantor’s nicer friends.”
“Thanks.” My departure is, for him, a remote childhood memory. If I’m right about his age it would have been, for him, forty years ago. “When did you get here?”
“About fifteen years, give or take. You—is this your first trip?”
“You’ve settled?”
“Hardly.” A wry grimace. “But, you know, you go where the work takes you.”
Fifteen years in the early 21st. “What kind of work?”
He looks up and down the street. Natives walking home. Sidelong glances. Does Riemann look like a native to them? “You’re probably wondering why I haven’t got a signature.”
“A little.” It’s either shielding, which is supposed to be impossible, or de-augmentation, which would require official approval or a lot of currency. Official approval isn’t supposed to happen. “Are you able to tell me?”
“I can’t. You can draw your own conclusions.”
“But you’ve been here for fifteen years.”
“As I said, you go where the work takes you.” He becomes sombre. “And it wasn’t always here. Most of the time I was in South and Central America. I can tell you that much. But how are you? I’m glad to see you. And what are you doing here?”
“Looking for a missing client.”
“A client.” This seems to amuse him. “I remember Cantor telling me you’d become a rep. Who are you with?”
“Tri-Millennium.”
“The cheap one? And you’ve lost a client?”
“She got out of a coach near here and didn’t get back on.”
“And you’re concerned about her?”
“She’s my responsibility.”
“Do you think she’s in trouble?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Do you know anything about it?” It’s dizzying. Her disappearance doesn’t get reported, but here he is, being mysterious not far from where she disappeared. “I mean, is it a coincidence you’re here?”
“No,” he says. “Nothing is. You know that. You also know why I can’t tell you anything.”
I can guess. “Agency.”
“Exactly. What I can tell you is you don’t have to worry about your client. She isn’t lost or frightened. She left of her own free will. You can tell your Resort Supervisor and Safety Chief that it’s not worth worrying about. You don’t need to mention me. But then you don’t, do you?”
“No.” Because if I say anything it will be part of a record he’s already seen. “I suppose I don’t.”
Or perhaps I say something and that part of the report is removed from the Arc. Perhaps he knows I report it and is warning me anyway because that’s the procedure: he has to warn me, even though he knows I’ll ignore him. Perhaps I include his warning in the report and an official deletes the whole thing before he sees it.
Or he’s just being polite. Good travellers don’t reveal what they know about other travellers’ lines.
It’s dizzying.
He takes out a handheld. It’s been modified to look like 21st tech. Or it is 21st tech. He sighs. “I have to go. It was nice seeing you again, Spens. I always liked you.” He pockets the device and strides off. I’m frozen in place for a few seconds. A few years ago he was ten: now he’s twice my age and knows about our client. Thirty years after she left for the 21st she’s important enough for a man without a signature to be following her.
I tell myself it’s not my concern. I go back to the car, plug in the handheld. No signatures in a five-kilometre radius. I boost the range: a couple the Arc identifies as known extemps, but nothing from our client, or Riemann. On the drive back I find a concert of last-century music (Bartók, Martinů) which calms me down a little. The music is seventy years old by the local calendar. The announcer talks about it as if it’s modern. It takes my mind off the meeting, at least while I’m driving. Li bips me a reminder about Bar Five.
Kat
The world was simple. There was your home, Kat, and there were the Number Cities. Numbers, not names. Slaves instead of people. Slaves who were drugged and pampered and didn’t even realise they were slaves.
Now there are only the Number Cities.
Kat, you tell Riemann, was two cities: the old one from before the Collapse and the new one alongside and underneath it. Your city remembered its past. It kept its ruins. It was beautiful. “Our cathedral was famous. World famous.”
There is no harm in telling him this.
“Everybody thinks their home city is beautiful,” he says. “Even City Three North.”
You’ve heard their jokes: City Three North is supposed to be poor while One West is pompous and Two West is dull. Five South is ambitious.
“Beauty’s all very well.” He gives up waiting for you to laugh. “It would be more useful if you had maps.”
“They would have helped an enemy.”
“What enemy?”
“You.”
“Do you think you’re our great enemy?” He keeps lapsing into the present tense. “You aren’t even a nuisance. Your city’s a joke. We’re more concerned about the weather.”
“When you left, it hadn’t happened, had it?”
He pauses. Calculating how much he can say. Of cour
se you’re both being watched. A prisoner and a man who’s been sent forward—neither of you should be here. Everything you say is being listened to or recorded. “All I know is that I came here expecting negotiations. I thought my job was to be an escort. When I got here I was told there wouldn’t be any negotiations because City Two East is dead.” He lets the word dead hang in the air. When he speaks again he tries to sound neutral: “Instead of simply collecting people from a prearranged point I’d have to find them myself. And you were the only available guide. I didn’t think I’d need one and that I could just track the signatures. But it turns out there’s no network so I can’t do that. I have an effective range of two hundred metres.”
Signatures. You can’t remember how many you’ve had. Three, four? “You rely too much on those machines.”
“They’re usually reliable. So, without maps, how did you find your way about?”
“We knew the city.”
You tell him you were raised in a home two blocks south of Corn Street, behind Cathedral Square, and sent to a school four down from the Parliament Building.
“Simple enough,” he says. “Where I grew up there was nothing older than sixty years.”
It’s the Number City way. They ask you questions so they can talk about themselves. You tell him there were rules about giving directions: if anyone asked you how to get somewhere you were supposed to refuse. If they had a good reason to go somewhere new they would have been given directions along with their orders.
The Tourist Page 4