“Tunnel Boy,” Hayek says when I hobble through the door, “how’s the de-augmentation?”
I drop into an empty chair. “I don’t think I’ll keep it.”
Hayek grins. “Edda,” he purrs. “My eyes and ears.” He ignores Li. “Sorry to have dragged you here at this late hour, but events are proceeding.” He turns back to the array of screens on the wall. They seem to display nine different locations. I don’t recognise any of them.
The pain subsides from hot skewer to severe bruising. “Have you heard from Geneva?”
“The weather is lovely. They’re expecting a mild winter.” Hayek’s attention is on a row of small, terraced houses on the top left screen. A native male moves unsteadily along it. “You saw the soldiers?”
“Ours and theirs.” The native male disappears from the screen. I expect him to reappear on another one. He doesn’t. “Why did you want me back?”
“A pattern.” Hayek’s eyes follow a white van along a stretch of otherwise empty road. “Your friends can stay in the quarters here until you have to go. We have room.” He turns to one of his team. “Try the west side.” The images on three of the screens change. “Tunnel Boy, while you were in the medical bay you mentioned a name. Riemann.”
“That’s the man who was in the approach with me.”
His eyes narrow. “So your mysterious stranger had a name. Who is this Riemann?”
“The man I saw before. The one without a signature.”
Hayek doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “You never mentioned you knew him.”
“He told me not to tell anyone.”
He turns slowly in my direction. “But you did tell us. You disobeyed him and withheld information from us. Apart from his name, and the fact you recognised him, is there any other information you’ve withheld?” This isn’t mock anger. Hayek is actually angry. If it wasn’t for the pain in my leg I’d probably be more scared. “How did you know him? Was he kin?”
“He was the brother of an old school friend.”
“And what does he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did he do the last time you saw him?”
“He was a boy. When I met him here he was older.”
“How much older?”
“About forty years.”
His eye is caught by something on one of the screens. “And you’re certain the person you met was this school friend’s brother?”
I can’t be, of course. I met someone who told me he was the adult version of a boy I knew. “He was plausible.”
“Plausible.” Hayek’s usual tone of superior amusement vanishes. “After forty years. What was the connection between your friend’s brother and our girl?”
“He said he was there to stop her doing something.”
“Which you didn’t mention earlier.”
“It’s what he told me in the approach.”
Hayek pivots away. “Did that sound plausible as well?” He nods at a screen. “That one.” It’s a street of rectangular buildings, offices rather than dwellings. The pavement is empty. I wonder what he’s seen, if his attention hasn’t been caught by a fox or cat. It takes months for us to not be surprised by animals in the wild. Clients often cry out when they see their first squirrel or cow. “See?” Hayek says.
It’s faint: there’s a patch in front of the garage door as if a flaw has suddenly appeared in the image. The patch becomes easier to see when it moves in front of darker, more consistently patterned walls, like tiny, transparent creature sliding across the lens. “We looked again at the information from the airport. We noticed anomalies. At first we thought there were flaws in their tech, but then we looked closer. This data has been manipulated. It has been altered by a protocol embedded in our systems. Certain images are systematically removed.”
“Do we know who embedded these protocols?”
“Geneva,” Li says. “There are things they don’t want us to see.”
Hayek ignores her. He cycles through different images of the airport. “The local surveillance is incomplete. We can’t track continuous movement. There are blank spots; their cameras don’t always work or they’re connected to networks we can’t overlook. But once we recognise a pattern we can look for it elsewhere.” The images change: office buildings, a street of small apartment blocks. The blur appears briefly in all of them. “I can trace distortions, interruptions in the signal, erasures. There are patterns. I found this one reviewing the records from the airport. We tracked this one from the airport to one of those buildings. It hasn’t reappeared since. Could this be your school friend’s brother?”
“He was with me in the approach. I saw him walk into the cordon.”
“No.” Hayek continues staring at the screen. “You did not see him. There was nobody with you. You were alone.”
“The Safety saw him. He talked to him.”
“That man was sent home before he could be questioned. Besides, I wouldn’t trust human testimony concerning anything that happens in the approach. According to the information I do trust you were alone. It was a hallucination. Or you have a false memory now. A recollection generated by your numerous anxieties. These are not uncommon after a”—he pauses as if the phrase sickens him—“traumatic event.”
I take out the Dolman box. “He left this.” I pass it to Erquist, who passes it to Hayek.
“It means nothing.” Hayek peers at the narrow edge. “Why would he be carrying this?”
“It might have been our client’s. Ivan said she was carrying one.”
“And is Ivan a person whose information you trust? Any one of our clients could have dropped this.”
“It might explain why she’s here.”
“It might. If it was hers. If I could open it. People use them for a reason.” He tosses it back to me. “Take it back with you. Somebody might thank you for returning it. Or you can keep it as a souvenir. This school friend’s brother, whoever he is, whatever he is, could still be at large. Normally I wouldn’t care about him. But there’s this.” He indicates one of the screens. The sky above the apartment block changes. “From yesterday.” A figure walks into view, one of us in a hooded jacket. They stop outside the building, look up and down the street and walk up to the door. They keep their head down, seemingly aware of the camera. When the door doesn’t open they step back and look around again. This time they’re less careful. The film stops the second they turn to the camera. “See?” Hayek says.
It’s our client.
The film resumes. Our client walks away. “Do you see now? This is why I overruled your return and why I called you back here. I want you to go to the medical bay. They will give you something to control the pain you so obviously feel. Then you will sleep. Tomorrow, you will go where I send you and you will identify this acquaintance. You shouldn’t need to talk to him. You can sit in the vehicle and look at a screen. Edda will be your eyes.”
“Can’t I do that from here?”
“The protocols are embedded in our systems. You will need to be outside the resort. A short-range transmission from her to a screen with no other connections. Otherwise all I could show you is a blur. Or you could confront him, face to face. Whichever you choose, you have to be outside.”
“If Geneva are going to all this trouble, should we even be looking?”
“This concerns our client. She is our responsibility. And looking for her is within our jurisdiction.” He’s still angry, but it’s not directed at me. He’s been the invisible king of this resort for a long time now. He can feel his authority slipping away and is making one last assertion of autonomy before the Millies take over. “You have a personal contact with this man. Make use of that. And if you’re concerned about any trouble you might find outside, Edda is quite resourceful.” He smiles at her again, the same benign appraisal. Of course: they’re kin. That’s why she’s so at ease with him. He could be an uncle. “Besides, it will be safer than the Tunnels.”
I glance at Erquist. He nods, but doesn’t look
happy.
“I’ll go with them,” Li says.
“You won’t be needed.”
Li doesn’t give up. “I might help.”
“How?” Hayek is amused. “Have you seen his school friend’s brother as well?”
“No. But I know the people.” Li, as usual, refuses to say natives. “That might be useful.”
Hayek considers this. “It can’t hurt. Now go to the medical bay.”
It’s four in the morning. The bay has been told to expect me. The doctor is military. I wonder if the bay is being converted to cope with combat injuries. I ask the doctor if she’s expecting trouble. She doesn’t answer. The Millies don’t like dealing with civilians. She gives me some field meds and warns me to use them carefully. “On standard dosage that foot could fall off and you’ll be able to run for twenty minutes on the stump. Not that I’m saying you should.” I take half the standard dosage. The effect is immediate. I walk to the assigned quarters with the faintest of limps. Without the stimulus of pain I fall asleep in minutes.
Overlap
When you come back it’s as En Varney, a Two North woman assigned to Material Acquisitions. She was picked up at a recovery site just inside Number City territory, a daring raid by the heroic border scouts. Like Adorna Mond before her, she was kept in an isolation ward, where she demanded to be released. She was, she said, about to be sent to Geneva as part of a trade delegation. Her work was important; she’d be missed.
She was perfect: the right age, the right profession, travelling to the right period, a close enough resemblance to you and about to work with people who had never seen her before…
It had taken years to reach that point. Not just waiting for the right person: you had to win the argument with the Defence Committee, which meant making an enemy of the Assistant Director. She’d recruited Picon and took any criticism of him personally. The missed rendezvous, she insisted, must have been your fault. The stories about selling drugs to locals were either lies or part of a plan you had misunderstood. The supposed corruption of the other courier was hearsay. What were your sources? A Number City extemp with his own criminal involvement and a voice on a telephone? Could either of them be trusted? She questioned your proposed course of action. Even if you could do it without being detected, what would it achieve? She accused you of being an agent provocateur for the Number Cities and tried to kill you by assigning you to an insect factory.
You survived the insect factory. You endured the long hours and bad food, the heat and the bosses. You didn’t faint once, sustained by the conviction it would end. After three months the Committee called you back. They had received reports of a second contaminated stockpile, just as you’d predicted. The Number Cities had blamed their own workers. The logic was inescapable. Your plan had been carried out, therefore it would be approved. The Assistant Director protested. She was overruled. You moved to barracks in the suburbs to recover from the factory work and resumed training. Then they put you in the same ward as En Varney, where you pretended to be Adorna Mond, a patient from Two West with the same infectious but asymptomatic disease. En Varney was grateful for company. By the time you reached Geneva you knew her life story and could tell it as if it was your own.
You arrive earlier than on your last visit. You start in Geneva, working as En Varney, performing her official functions punctiliously for three months, cataloguing and classifying mineral purchases around the world, identifying suitable recovery sites. The work takes you to other cities and, thanks to Riemann, you know who to contact.
Alexander Metzger has an apartment in Berlin and walks his dog in a nearby park regularly morning and evening. You approach him one morning and tell him you need his help. At first he’s terrified, then suspicious, then fascinated. By the second meeting he would do whatever you ask. He has contacts, a network of locals who have already formed their mad little conclaves. Metzger vouches for you at their meetings. They listen while you confirm their worst fears: Geneva is working to take over their governments, their lives. A disaster is coming. Enough of them believe you. You’re from the future, after all: how could you not know? They accept you as a renegade from the class they believe is oppressing them.
You explain your plan and why you need their help. Your own city is too weak to take action in your own time and their groups are too weak to attack them here. Geneva and the resorts are too well defended; their own governments have been bought. The only way to harm them is indirectly. They are only here for what they can take; make that dangerous for them and they’ll leave. You don’t use the argument that convinced the Defence Committee. You want these men to think they have a choice.
It takes cajoling, veiled threats, promises of rewards and the constant assurance they’re on the right side, but you teach them how to enter and leave secure facilities without arousing suspicion, and—the hardest part—how to work together. You give them skills and a sense of purpose, reconcile them to their previously miserable lives. The damaged girl has come a long way. Metzger shows you how to organise them without leaving a digital trace. He is, he likes to boast, something of an expert when it comes to lost information. After giving you his contacts across Germany and France he promises to introduce you to groups in England—HumanTruth, Not Our Future, EPP. You make plans to meet in London, knowing he will die at the airport. You do all of this without arousing the suspicion of En Varney’s fellow workers. They’re soft: they complain about the difficulties and stress of their jobs and work fewer hours than anybody at Kat. Nobody seems to care how you spend your evenings.
You arrange a week’s holiday in England. It’s more hectic than your work: you have to follow a strict schedule.
While crossing France you contact Picon and tell him to arrange two apartments: one for you in London, another for the woman he knows as Adorna Mond. He protests: “I don’t know where she is. She missed the rendezvous.”
“No. She was in the right place. You missed the rendezvous.”
“By one minute.” He’s offended. “Two at most. Traffic was bad. She should have been more careful.”
“You should have gone to the mall.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He talks as if he’s still in charge. “Where is she now? Has she contacted you?”
“I know where she is.” You tell him to arrange the apartments and call you back with the details. “This is what the Defence Committee wants.” When the time is right you call the woman on the phone you know she’ll have just taken from a local. She doesn’t sound as surprised as you remember feeling. You tell her how to get to the safe house.
On the next day you go to the airport to see Metzger die and meet Riemann for the second time.
The case for war
At noon I’m back in the vehicle bay. Edda is already there, dressed in a black coat which contrasts with her pale skin and probably conceals at least one weapon. She’s also carrying a metal case that might as well be stencilled “This technology breaches protocol.” Li has chosen native garb that’s more a political declaration than a disguise. “Do we know where to go?”
“Hayek thinks he’s in north London.” Edda has been briefed. “A district called Enfield. We’re going there first.”
We’ve been assigned the vehicle we came in. Once again Edda drives. Li sits in the back. The roads are as quiet as they were on our journey here: a few trucks and coaches, not many smaller cars. We don’t pass any military convoys. The radio news (Edda allows me to listen to it once) makes no mention of them. The Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are reported as calling for calm. There’s been a slight improvement in export figures: the trade deficit is at its lowest for five years. There’s no mention of any disturbances which makes the calls for calm sound hysterical.
Edda turns off the radio as soon as it finishes.
Li is still intrigued by Riemann. Last night was the first time she’d heard of him. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d met someone like that?”
“He told me not to te
ll anybody.”
“You told your boss and your Safety Chief.”
“I had to tell them something. It might have been relevant to our client.”
Li stares out of the window. We pass another lorry and then a coach filled with short-haired men in identical black tops. “So who is he?”
“What I told Hayek. Somebody I knew as a boy.”
“What do you think he’s doing here?” She wants to speculate. Mish talk.
I’m not in the mood, and Edda is too intent on the road and whatever instructions she’s receiving to take part. Li, who probably feels isolated in the back, fidgets for a while, then tries again. “I don’t know why they’re mobilising. There isn’t supposed to be any real trouble now. This is meant to be the managed democracy stage. The first signs of real trouble are years away.”
“Fascinating,” Edda says flatly. We pass another canvas-sided truck, a relic pulled from a military museum. We’re driving through suburbs, miles of cramped houses, each with a car parked outside. Occasionally we pass a pedestrian, but no more than one or two at a time. “What do you think?” Edda asks. “Did we miss an announcement for a curfew?” We pass a commercial zone, the great boxes of supermarkets and furniture stores. They look like they’re closed but there are four, no, five couples pushing trolleys across the open field of the car park. They’re behind us before I can see what they’ve bought. Canned goods, water, survival provisions? “Maybe one of their royal family is getting married,” Edda says. “Or it’s a football match. Don’t they love sport?”
“Not all of them.” Li takes out a phone. “Not this much.”
Edda turns off, heading towards the heart of the city. Military vehicles pass in the opposite direction, and, once in a while, a smaller one that might be civilian. We slow down when we reach a street of office buildings. Outside one of them, a native stands next to a cleaner’s cart. He wears the shabby green overalls of the local poor, and pushes repeatedly at a button set in a wall. We’re gone before anybody opens the door. Another turn, another row of office buildings and deserted sandwich shops, and then we’re in a residential area: blocks of flats, rows of identical houses.
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