I listen, enthralled and outraged. The Bach recordings (a later team, not Brink and Nakamura) are overrated. They’re the ones it’s fashionable for this era to like. This, I say to the radio, is why your civilisation is doomed. Somebody shows you that you were wrong about something, and, even in a case as apparently trivial as this, you find a way to ignore the evidence. You people deserve the NEE. It’s an unworthy thought. They’re going to get it whether they deserve it or not.
“Our girl is still there. That’s nearly an hour now.”
“So the person she’s meeting might be delayed.”
“Perhaps. Or she likes airports.”
“I’ll be there in another forty minutes. What about Gurley and Knight?”
“Also in arrivals. They’re waiting in a bar.”
“Have you noticed anything unusual?”
“Are you expecting anything unusual?”
“I don’t know. Keep me informed.”
The radio discussion is succeeded by a Chopin recital by a native musician who once again ignores the authentic recordings. My car follows the road, along with all the weaving, dangerously unmodified vehicles. The sky, which has grown steadily darker, is now an ominous grey. The rain, when it falls, is just another annoyance. I shouldn’t have to deal with missing clients. I work for Happiness. I’m a travel rep, not an honorary Safety. The native musician takes the nocturne too slowly. I ask Hayek, “What’s happening with our client?”
“No change. Everybody is still waiting.”
The onboard estimates another fifteen minutes before I reach our allotted parking area. Allowing another ten to walk, there’s a chance I can reach arrivals before anything happens. If our client is still at the coffee shop I will walk up to her innocently, as if I’m no more than a concerned rep—because I am no more than a concerned rep—and offer to drive her back to the resort. If she wants to stay to meet someone, fine—I’ll wait, innocently, as if my concern is only for the good name of Tri-Millennium and the well-being of our clients, and then offer to drive her back. The pianist attacks a polonaise at something close to the right speed. By the time he finishes I’m almost at our allotted parking. It’s half empty: we rarely travel from public airports although a surprising amount of official business is conducted in their vicinity. I park to routine applause from a hall in Huddersfield. The pianist starts creeping through the berceuse.
“Tunnel Boy,” Hayek’s voice, less casual than usual. “You need to stop dawdling. Something is happening.”
The truth about travel
You don’t believe it at first. For as long as you can remember you’ve been told travel is a Number City lie. It goes against reason; your scientists have proved it was impossible. When people you’re supposed to trust say We built our own zone long before you were born you don’t know how to respond.
They begin with the history: how they followed plans taken from the Number Cities; how the work required the sacrifice of resources and labour hours; how it had to be kept secret from their own people. The zone wasn’t at Spad. It was further east, at the other place, the fourth one, whose name you can’t remember. Mosk, Spad, Sver, a gap. Had you ever known its name? The labourers lived in prefabricated housing near the site and were never told what they were building, the techs and organisers were sworn to silence and all communications with Kat were strictly controlled. Once the zone was complete Kat would be able to face the Number Cities on nearly equal terms. It was, your instructor said, an optimistic time.
It sounds like a fable.
The great effort failed. The zone was never used, or even tested. They had the theory but there was an engineering problem, an energy problem. It was left intact, sealed, waiting for the day when they could make it work. Until then, we tell people travel is impossible.
In Spad they tell you the truth about travel. They also tell you the truth about truth. There are different kinds: that the Number Cities have travel is one kind of truth; that they don’t is another. People are given the truth they need. You have shown you can be trusted with special truths.
If the Number Cities can travel, you ask in one class, and they’re so terrible, why don’t they go back and destroy us when we’re weak? It’s what you’d do to them.
Because they didn’t, the instructor says. They won’t. They can’t. They have a weakness: they believe the past is fixed, that nothing can be changed. This provokes questions from the other girls. Can it be changed? That’s a difficult question. What we have to ask is, Should it be changed? So, another girl asks, could we travel back and hurt them? Another good question: how could we hurt them? A bomb, you say. Bury it before they can build one of their cities, set it to explode when it will do most damage. No, the instructor said. Who can see why that might not work? Another girl can: The components would either become unstable and explode too soon or become inert and not explode at all. No, you want to say, it has to be the right kind of bomb. Does anybody have a better idea? Fight them there, another girl says. Better. Can anybody suggest how? Find them and kill them. Stop them from starting the Collapse. How? Remember they outnumber us and control the governments. So, if they don’t think they can change anything, why do the Number Cities travel? They do the same as here, the instructor says. They accumulate resources, steal whatever they can. Why do the people let them? Didn’t the pre-collapse have satellites and aeroplanes and millions of people? Didn’t they have armies and nuclear weapons? Why don’t they resist? Because, the instructor says, they didn’t realise what was happening. Could we tell them? They wouldn’t believe us. Remember, they have hundreds of people. We have only sent back a handful and they have to be careful.
There are, she says, some Number Cities who rebel against their system. Instead of fighting, they do it by running away. They choose to live in the early 21st. The Number Cities permit it if those people are no longer useful to them. These people give up everything they have in their own time and the Number Cities arrange for them to have credit in the early 21st. The only way we can get our people back for any useful length of time is by having somebody assume the identity of a Number City citizen and becoming one of these so-called extemps. It’s a difficult life. They are under continual observation. They mostly work alone. They provide us with everything we know about what the Number Cities are doing. The difficulty is communications. The only way they can send information back is by couriers. If you’re sent back, your first mission will be as a courier. The instructor thinks you’ll be impressed by this.
The girls have more questions: Can they travel into the future? Couldn’t they go there and find out everything we’ll do? No, the instructor says. We don’t know why, but they don’t travel into the future. The Number Cities are powerful but they don’t know everything. And there are complications: say they have a record that on a certain date one of their people met people from the 21st to buy a particular mineral. That person has to be sent back whether or not they want to go. What they know creates an obligation; what they don’t know gives us an opportunity. That’s why we sent a team there.
But but but. What happens if someone destroys the records? What if somebody lies about what you were supposed to have done? The instructor holds up both hands and says she’s answered enough questions for one day. If any of you are sent back the important thing is to follow your instructions. You will not have to worry about these deeper questions.
The girls hold long discussions in the dormitory. They don’t involve you.
You learn languages, self-defence, use of weapons. When you travel, you’re told, it will be from one of their cities. You will have to pretend to be one of them. Hence the languages. Hence the tech. You learn how to use early-21st tech, how to hack a Number City transport.
You see the Assistant Director again. You’re summoned to the office she’s requisitioned from a senior instructor. You’re not told why you’ve been summoned. You don’t think you’ve made any mistakes but you can never be sure. She greets you coldly and tells you to si
t, and then seems to forget you’re there while she looks at papers. It’s an act, you think: she’s making you wait. It’s either a test or she enjoys your apprehension. It’s the first time you’ve seen her up close since you were fourteen. She hasn’t changed: she’s still the person you most want to be. Finally she looks straight at you and tells you the instructors have informed her of your progress. She pauses to see how you react. You keep still and watch her face. I’m pleased to say they think you’re doing well, she says. Her expression of stern resolve doesn’t soften. A lot of girls lose focus after their first year here. As long as you don’t question orders or get distracted by emotions you could be a good fighter. Do you think you’re ready to be sent back?
Yes, Assistant Director.
Do you understand why you have to go back?
To fight the Number Cities.
She nods at your answer. Not quite. Your purpose is to follow orders.
Yes, Assistant Director.
Do you have any questions?
You have many, but you know the one she wants to hear: What are my orders?
If you are sent you must understand you may never see your friends again.
She must know you haven’t made any friends: that’s why you were chosen. Out of all the damaged girls you’re the most solitary. Not the most vicious, not the cleverest or the funniest, or the best fighter or the prettiest, but the one who can live surrounded by strangers and not care. You were made for this.
Yes.
Yes, Assistant Director. There is an agent called Picon Delrosso. You don’t need to know his real name. He is one of our best people, the first to go back. We haven’t received a report for two years. The last courier we sent did not return. We want you to contact him and find out what happened. Do you think you are ready?
Yes, Assistant Director.
The machines are always listening
There’s a small crowd gathered just outside the coffee outlet, two of them police in lurid yellow jackets. The other onlookers are dressed in the miscellaneous clothes of native travellers, a few are in civilian uniforms, workers from the shops and exchange bureaux. Our client isn’t among them. “Hayek, what can you see?”
“A gathering of people. You walking towards them.”
I stop moving. “Our client?”
“Not visible.”
“What are they gathering round?”
“The cameras are fixed, Tunnel Boy, I can’t make them move. It appears to be somebody on the ground.”
“Our client?”
“Somebody would have to get out of the way before I could tell.”
There’s shouting. Two medics run across the hall. The crowd separates, then closes in on them again. I glimpse enough of the person on the ground to tell it’s native and male. “It’s not our client.” I look around, but can’t see her. “Gurley and Knight. Where are they?”
“Still in the bar. I haven’t seen them leave.”
That’s where I find them, at the back, in a place with no clear view of whatever happened. I suspect they moved there so they wouldn’t have to answer questions about what they’d seen. They probably don’t like dealing with any kind of officialdom.
Gurley has a nearly empty pint glass. Knight is halfway through an orange juice. He notices me first. He doesn’t say anything: just gives me the stare. He probably thinks it’s menacing, but it just looks like he’s posing for one of his regular police images. Gurley turns to see what’s caught his attention. “Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” he says. “Not you as well.”
I sit at the table. “What just happened?”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gurley says again. I briefly wonder if this means he’s religious. You can never tell with natives. Knight, meanwhile, is looking at his orange juice as if he hates it.
Gurley drinks the rest of his pint. “We don’t know,” he says. “Was there something to see? We must have missed it. We only came here for a drink.”
“I’m not the police,” I say. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I told you. Nothing.”
“I know you’ve been following our client.”
“It’s not your business.” Gurley glances at Knight, who’s still staring at his orange juice. In a few days he’s going to die. I hope it’s nothing to do with me.
“She’s our client. It is my business.” I take Gurley’s glass. “Let me buy you another.”
He glares at me. It is not frightening. “If you insist.”
I stand. “Don’t run away.”
“Fucking Christ. As if.”
The woman behind the bar remembers what he’s drinking. She’s from Eastern Europe and seems surprised I can speak This English. “This is his fourth,” she says disapprovingly.
“He’s not driving.”
When I get back to the table Gurley hasn’t tried to run away. Knight is still staring at his drink.
I slide Gurley his pint. “Start with why you’re following my client.”
“Because we were asked to.” Gurley sips tentatively, as if he thinks I might have slipped him some futuristic truth drug. “By one of you.”
“Who asked you?”
“You expect me to give you a name?”
“And an address. And the reason they asked you.”
Gurley drinks about a quarter of his pint in a single gulp. “If you’re from the future,” he says, eyes narrowing, “how come you don’t already know?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Glad to hear it.” He grins, or something close to a grin. “You people,” he says, trying another approach. “You think you’re so fucking superior with your gold and platinum and your fucking tattoos. We’re not idiots. We didn’t need your signal.”
“Signature.”
“Whatever. But we were told to find her and keep an eye on her. And guess what, we might not have your fancy toys but we got here first. And that’s all we did. We kept an eye on her.” I assume he means watching her until she went somewhere less public. He’d chosen to wait in the bar because he felt comfortable there and hadn’t realised she’d be staying this long. He sneers. “What are you doing?”
I can’t let him sidetrack me, something I suspect he’s good at from years of practice with weary investigating officers. “I’m not the police. Just tell me who sent you here.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll signal those police officers and show them film of your friend waving his machete.” There is no film, but he won’t know that. I’m from the future: he probably thinks I can record with my eyes. (Hayek can, but that’s more to do with Hayek’s personality type than a job requirement.) “I’m fairly certain that would count as a criminal offence.” It’s a bluff. My grasp of 21st-century law comes from watching this era’s entertainments and they’re not always reliable. The criminals, for example, always get caught.
He thinks about this. I can see the effort it takes. Knight doesn’t say anything. He’s still staring at his orange juice.
Gurley says, “Fuck it, this isn’t our mess. If you lot want to talk to somebody try Picon Delrosso. He’s one of yours.”
“And where do I find him?”
“You can work that out for yourself. Is that it? Are you going to leave us now?”
“Not yet. What happened here?”
He looks sly. “You don’t know, do you? Well, your client shot somebody.”
I hadn’t expected this. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Some bloke off a plane. He came out, she walked towards him, pointed something and he fell down.”
“She had a gun?”
“She had something. I thought it was a phone and she was taking a picture. Looked like a phone. She points it at the people coming out, she walks away. I was watching her. And then he collapses. And she keeps on walking. Like she expected it to happen. Didn’t look back.”
“Did the police do anything?”
“Those muppets?” His professional contempt shines through. “Looking th
e wrong way, as per. They didn’t see anything. We were the only ones who noticed.” He glances at Knight. Knight doesn’t confirm his story. Knight isn’t paying attention. He’s still focused on his unfinished orange juice. Gurley looks back at me, resigned. “If she can do something like that in a place like this I’m steering clear.”
“You’re certain she did it?”
“She pointed at him. He fell down. What do you think?”
“What do I think? I think she took his picture and he had a heart attack.” Heart attacks are what kill people in this country, in this era. Heart attacks, cancers, pneumonia and strokes. Later on it will be malnutrition, hypothermia and a range of once-treatable diseases. “Are you sure you don’t know who he was?”
Gurley glares at me. “Don’t know. Don’t care. You should talk to Picon Delrosso.”
I stand up. “You’ve been helpful.”
Back in the car I bip Hayek. “What do we know?”
“I would have started with the threat about the police. Their account of events is fanciful.”
“So what happened?”
“The medical services are treating it as a health problem. Probably, as you suggested, a heart attack. There’s no sign their police are involved in anything more important than crowd control.”
I’m relieved. It means I’m not following a killer. “And our client?”
“Headed back to the station. She is now on a London train.”
“London?” It doesn’t mean she plans to stay there. London is still a transport hub. She could be on her way back to the resort. “Hayek, isn’t there some archive you can consult? Notable deaths, or deaths at airports?”
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