“I had instructions. Like you.”
He eats in silence. You feel a growing resentment: you want to tell him about your time in the 21st. You feel like telling him about the earlier meetings. It’s still too soon. You can’t yet see how it will help. You can’t be sure they happened as you remember. The memories are vivid but they might not be true.
Once back in the vehicle you feel drowsy. Only the bumps and the jolts of the road keep you awake. Riemann remains alert the whole time. You’ve never seen him asleep, or even inattentive. He studies the dents in the side panel while you try to remember the earlier meetings. There was one in a car park outside an airport. And the other?
The gaps and jumps in your memory are worrying. You’ve spent too long with the same few thoughts, tapping the walls, looking up at the ceiling. When you try to remember the past it’s like entering a storeroom and finding rats have been there first: all that’s left are scraps, mixed up and unsafe.
You had walked together down a street. Was that the first meeting? The first, that is, in your line: he would remember them in a different order. Or he will, one day. You remember a teacher explaining how travel had given the Number Cities new tenses: one for completed actions in the future, another for actions in the past you hadn’t yet done. You grope for the names but the rats have been there first.
You can remember the first meeting with the other Riemann: you stood at the edge of a paved street under a blue sky. You remember the buildings as grey, the road ahead filled with vehicles travelling impossibly fast. The air made your throat burn. There was the sound of hundreds of engines. One day, a long time from now, you meet me again. The vehicles that filled the road suddenly stop. I’m here because of that meeting.
You jolt awake. Riemann turns away: he’d been watching you. You hope he doesn’t notice your panic. You don’t want to show signs of weakness. “Was I asleep for long?”
“Not long enough.”
The vehicle hits another bump on the road. You can infer a lot from the state of a road. If a road isn’t maintained it’s because it’s not being used. No traffic, or no ground traffic. Therefore no population. The space between cities.
Or the space beyond cities. Are they really two days away from home?
Is it home after all this time? You think of a question. “It’s the first time you’ve travelled, isn’t it?”
“And the last, I hope.”
“You didn’t want to come here?”
“I didn’t volunteer.”
“Do you know why you were chosen?”
“Because I was available.”
“You were the only one?” You think you know the reason: because there’s no risk of him meeting his older self in this era. That older self is in the 21st, looking for you. You wonder if he’s realised this.
“The only one,” he says flatly. “It had to be me.”
He’s making fun of you in a way you don’t recognise. You resent it and can’t think of an answer. You sit in silence until you fall asleep again. Your latest prison jolts along the old road east. Mosk, Spad, Sver.
DomeWatch
The next day I’m awake at my usual time. I scan the native media. The news programmes are still excited by pictures of flooding in Central Europe and an election in Africa. No mention of any deaths at airports. They must happen all the time.
Hayek bips me: “We have a name for our airport casualty.”
It’s a start. “Who is he?”
“Alexander Metzger.”
Metzger, I remember, is German for butcher. Apart from that the name means nothing. “What is he?”
“Lecturer in philology, recently appointed to a new post in this country,” Hayek recites. “Fifty-two years old. Known for his work on”—his voice thins with contempt—“Greek lyric poetry.”
I’m at the laptop, tapping on its keyboard.
“For the time being there is no suspicion of illegal activity…” Hayek trails off. “There is no obvious connection to our girl.”
Their internet produces some information about Alexander Metzger: gifted scholar, specialist in Parthenius, author of numerous papers and two collections of his own poetry and, latterly, president of the German–Hellenic Society. Dutifully, I look up the German–Hellenic Society, expecting to find a worthy survival from the last or last-but-one century, a home of rarefied scholarship and occluded sexuality.
I find Nazis.
Now, Nazis have a special place in the mind of the early 21st, a significance even casual visitors find hard to miss. They’re symbols of deliberate, conscious evil in the same way that City Two East is our symbol for primitive fanaticism. If a native wants to imply a rival political movement is bad they will compare them to Nazis and, in entertainments, all a character has to do to represent evil is wear an armband with some kind of cross. Entertainment Nazis are shorthand for monstrousness, simplified versions of a movement that was simple to begin with. So finding an organisation that actually approves of them is like stumbling across a group of other mythical horrors, werewolves or vampires. (Except the 21st has grown to love its imaginary monsters. They’ve humanised, as they say, their old night terrors, while telling themselves the real killers—Nazis, people designated as terrorists—are inhuman and remote.)
So Alexander Metzger was a Nazi. Or a member of an organisation that included Nazis. Or (I read on) an organisation that was said by other people to include Nazis. The German–Hellenic Society itself did not make any public statements of its values. Other natives insisted this meant Nazi, and quoted examples of various members expressing nostalgia for the Third Reich.
It’s interesting, but it doesn’t help.
I’d hoped learning why our client had gone to the airport would provide an explanation. A clandestine drug deal made perfect sense. But what was the connection with the president of a fringe political movement? Perhaps Picon was right: she’d gone to see the planes and a man collapsing from a heart attack was a piece of irresistible local colour.
“Hayek, have you found our client?”
“She seems to be avoiding cameras. And masts.”
“Or something has happened to her.”
“That is also a possibility.” Hayek sounds like he’s enjoying himself. “I will let you know if we find anything.”
I switch off the various devices and step out into the filth and noise of the street.
The car has been vandalised. There are wavering lines scored along both sides and paint tipped across the windscreen. There are no words, though there’s something like an X scratched into the boot. I can’t tell if this is an accident or if whoever did it was interrupted before they could finish a whole word. Extemp? The cars parked on each side haven’t been touched. Mine has been singled out. It looks no different from the surrounding vehicles. The modifications are not visible from the outside. It doesn’t have special plates, or a badge identifying it as belonging to Tri-Millennium. Whoever did it must have seen me getting out. Which means they must have been watching. I look up and down the street. I can’t tell if anybody is watching me now.
I bip Erquist. His first questions: “How bad is the damage? Does it still work?”
“I’ll need to clean the windscreen.”
One of the vehicle’s modifications is passive recording (we’re not allowed to install countermeasures). As I drive to work an hour or so later (windscreen smeared but usable) I send the records to Hayek. He finds the minute when the incident took place and extracts some clear images and accompanying data (height and approximate weight of the vandals; a sound file in which one uses the other’s name) and sends it to the police who respond by giving him a number. (The native police don’t always prevent crime and can’t always catch criminals, but they’ll give you a number you take to an insurance company.) Hayek tells me he hasn’t heard of any other attacks on our vehicles. “You could be present at the beginning of a trend.” There is, he adds, still no sign of our client. The only thing he can tell me about the vandal
s is that they weren’t Gurley and Knight. “These are younger men. One of them is called Justin. That’s all I have until I can talk to my police contact.”
“You think the police already know them?”
“I would be unsurprised.”
I listen to music as I drive: recordings of Schumann songs from the 1950s. They’re close enough to the originals. There’s a news bulletin. The top story (as they call it) is the African election. Apparently the wrong people have won, always a problem with democracies. The last item is that the government has agreed to allow the March for Humanity but haven’t decided on a date. I try to remember what Picon said about the march. Hayek comes back: “Justin Bayer.” He sounds pleased with himself. “Twenty-two. Previous incidents of damage to property and starting fights in public. It seems he chose our property to damage.”
“Will the police do anything?”
“I’m told that despite the pictures and the name and address they don’t have enough information to act. Still, why should you be worried? You can look after yourself, Tunnel Boy.”
“I shouldn’t have to,” I say. “I’m a travel rep.” He’s already gone.
I go straight to Erquist. “Well,” he says. “You’ve had some interesting times.” He shows the appropriate degree of concern. “I hope you’re bearing up.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “We must have reported some of this.”
“We do report what happened to your vehicle.”
“What do we say?”
“That the damage to the vehicle was slight and you were unharmed. Operationally there’s no need for concern.” Erquist looks sorry about this. “Is there anything else I can help with?”
“There is one thing.”
“Please ask.”
“In a few weeks I’m supposed to be sent home for breach of protocol.”
“Ah.” Erquist looks, if anything, sorrier. “You know I can’t tell you what it is. Agency.”
“Could you at least tell me if I kill anybody?”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that.”
“How sure? Is it on the records?”
“Spens, I understand your anxiety,” Erquist sounds as if he understands anxiety the same way he knows about the local transport. “I wish there was some advice I could give you, but there really isn’t. Geneva has to take the long view. Take this morning’s events. One damaged vehicle belonging to one resort might seem important when it happens but from their perspective it’s not significant. Operational requirements are different from personal ones. And that means, in many respects, we’re in the same position as any native of this era. It means we have to deal with events as they arise and try not to exaggerate their importance.” Erquist’s voice is measured and slightly pained. He’s trying to justify the system to himself and failing. “It all comes down to agency. The sense of agency is so important…” He’s lost for a moment. “All we can do is try to live in accordance with our principles. And remember the Tri-Millennium code of conduct. And, where possible, avoid men with machetes.”
It’s weak, and he knows it. He looks abashed. It’s likely he’s always dreamed of one day making a stirring speech to his employees, and now that day has arrived and this is the best he can do. He stares at his blank desk for a few seconds. “Apart possibly from the business with the tonin,” he says brightly, “there’s no sign that our client is doing anything wrong. And if this Delrosso can be trusted, even the tonin isn’t strictly illegal. So there’s a good chance this is just a week-long panic over nothing.”
It’s not reassuring. Erquist is too much part of the Happiness Executive. No matter how high-ranking he is (and he is, we reps know, very well connected) when it comes to access to information he’s always going to be subordinate to Safety and Facilitation. And in the background—so far back you don’t see them—are the Millies. Erquist doesn’t just accept the official line, he’s the living embodiment of it, bred and conditioned. He’s only ever going to give you good news. I go to the reps’ room. It’s empty: the other reps are greeting the latest arrivals or jollying people along in the Entertainment Areas. I lie down on one of the couches and for a moment consider staying there for the rest of the day. Perhaps giving up is the breach of protocol for which I’ll be sent home.
It’s still morning and I’m tired as if I’d worked a full day. If I’m having this much trouble in the early 21st, what can I expect in the 19th? It will be a long trip, much longer than my stay here, all to witness a performance of music I’ve heard a hundred times already. And it won’t be a holiday. I’ll have to work to earn the right to attend.
The concert is on my handheld, one of the recordings I take everywhere. I start it now. There are crowd noises, picked up by the eight concealed microphones Anders Brink and Jim Nakamura had planted the week before. (They had been travelling as a Swedish count and his oriental manservant. Earlier they had travelled as a Persian prince and his Christian slave. Their book about their experiences is wonderful.) The microphones were good: they caught snippets of conversation, mostly complaints about the cold. I’ve often listened and wondered if I’m in the audience. If I am, I’m keeping quiet, probably pretending to be a merchant from Finland or the United States (both neutral countries) and keeping to my seat so my height doesn’t spook the locals. There’s a long wait before the music actually starts: Brink and Nakamura couldn’t be in the hall so had to record everything. On the night of the concert they were negotiating with the Viennese authorities about their right to stay in the city. As well as having recently been a war zone, Vienna was a police state. They missed their only chance to attend the concert. They couldn’t even be sure their microphones had worked until they returned to collect them two weeks later.
Brink and Nakamura were my heroes. They gave their lives to recording music. For thirty years they travelled around Europe pretending to be eccentric foreigners. They wheedled, dodged and bribed their way across borders, into concert halls and the homes of the wealthy and, at the end of that time, when they realised there was no hope of coming back, they prepared their archive, wrote their book (in ink, on good paper) and buried it in a prearranged spot where it remained undisturbed through several wars and the NEE. They weren’t the only musicologists to travel, but they were the first and the bravest. They’re the reason I became interested in music. And their book is hilarious.
I’ve listened to the recording so often I know the audience noises as well as any of the music. If I am there I do nothing to draw attention to myself. You’re not supposed to, in the 19th. You get only one chance and you have to be discreet. When I was studying I heard about a man who loved Wagner so much he attended the premiere of Tristan und Isolde twice. That kind of thing is impossible now. Being in two places at once is bad enough; being in the same place twice is strictly forbidden. Even then, when the authorities were less careful, he had to take precautions. When he came back from his first trip he changed his name, moved to a different city and retrained as a field medic so he could be included in another mission to the same era. On the second visit he had to make his way from Egypt to Munich; at the theatre he had to be careful to sit in a part of the hall where he couldn’t be seen by his younger self (he had no memory of having noticed his older self, and wouldn’t have realised if he had, but overlaps make people behave irrationally). He even made sure his absence from duty wasn’t included in the official report. He would have got away with it if he’d been able to stop himself talking about it to everybody he knew. Eventually, some colleague or kin must have heard the story once too often. He was arrested, of course, and then released when the authorities realised what he’d done wasn’t yet illegal. Now there are stringent rules for any kind of cultural contact, and your record is checked carefully. Otherwise people would be trying to buy van Goghs straight from the painter or commissioning requiems from Mozart.
The Pastoral has just started when I get a message from Hayek. “Have you heard of the Anachronists?”
I stop the mu
sic but don’t get off the couch. “What about them?” The Anachronists date back to the early years of travel, when the only people who dared use it were techs. They had access to a research prototype and a philosophy about testing history. We’re more careful now: there are protocols for all interactions with natives, strict rules about what we are allowed to say. We don’t intervene in their affairs. We can’t intervene. Really, all we can do is sightseeing or shopping. Brink and Nakamura were as much sightseers as our clients in a shopping mall; materials acquisition is just shopping on a larger scale. This wasn’t enough for the Anachronists: they wanted to intervene at Major Historical Events.
The problem is that Major Historical Events are both dangerous and surprisingly easy to miss, as Balaman Okscay, a specialist in the 17th, discovered. Unless you’re fluent in the language and up to the minute in religious and political disputes you’re likely to become the target of a mob. Okscay ended up stuck in the lost city of Bristol, pretending to be a merchant. He barely escaped with his life. He said later that for all his research into the period he never knew from week to week what would happen next. And, between religious wars and various plagues, the rest of Europe was worse. Even if you survived the fanatics and mercenaries you could still die from the plague or an impacted molar. The Anachronists, the story goes, didn’t allow for any of this. They wrote their manifesto (“Testing the Self-Consistency Principle”), made their translations and are remembered as idiots. There were even entertainments about them (for children, with pictures) which used to be cherished for their sadistic slapstick. Cantor loved the one about the inquisition.
“There’s a possibility our girl is an Anachronist,” Hayek says.
“An actual Anachronist? Aren’t they all dead?” All except one: he turned up in Southern California at the end of the last century under the name Quentinder Ward and formed his own religion—the First Church of Christ Transhumanist—with ecstatic dancing and carefully inaccurate prophecies. He’s still alive in the early 21st. Geneva keep a close eye on him.
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